[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3629-3642]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




    TAX ON BONUSES RECEIVED FROM CERTAIN TARP RECIPIENTS--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I want people to understand that the 
Federal aviation reauthorization process is moving slowly but steadily. 
We take several steps forward but none backward. Yesterday we approved 
14 amendments. There was a tremendous amount of work done by the staff 
to work those out. We have another large group we hope to be able to do 
this afternoon. So large chunks of the bill are actually getting done. 
Then, we have a number of controversial amendments, or potentially 
controversial, and we are in the process of getting those locked down 
so the Presiding Officer can pronounce a unanimous consent agreement 
with 2 minutes equally divided.
  I yield the floor to the Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, my distinguished colleague and 
chairman of the committee and I are working very hard to clear further 
amendments as well as get a vote on the Sessions amendment, with a 
Pryor amendment connected to that, and a McCain amendment, so that we 
can try to finish this bill by tomorrow. So that is what we are working 
on. We are of the same mind on that. I hope very much that we will be 
able to get the amendments cleared that are very important. I would ask 
all of our colleagues to work with us to expedite matters so that we 
can finish this bill early tomorrow.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I thank the chairman as well for working 
with us on this issue.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I think the distinguished chairman of 
the Judiciary Committee wishes to speak, but he is waiting for 
something, so I will proceed.
  This Federal aviation bill is enormous in scope, but we are doing it 
in little pieces and with little amendments, so sometimes it is hard. 
It has seven different titles in it. One of them has to do with 
community air service to rural, underserved areas, which is very 
important in my State and in the Presiding Officer's State--really all 
of our States. Even California and New York have many very rural areas 
where they need air service.
  I spent 10 years chairing the Aviation Subcommittee, and I enjoyed it 
enormously. I now chair the full committee, which I enjoy enormously. 
But one focus throughout has been trying to protect small and rural 
communities and give them air service. They travel. If the local 
airport promotes itself, as a product must--it is not just a place 
people go to; they have to announce themselves to the public and say: 
We can take you here, we can take you there, while others of us try to 
get flights in. It is tremendously important, so they are worth 
fighting for, and we do that.
  Large and urban States sometimes question that, but if they look in 
their hearts, they have a lot of the same requirements themselves. It 
is really about equality, and it is about the economy, and it is about 
fairness. What is the difference between somebody from a city and 
somebody from a smaller community? They both do business. One may not 
have a big jet and therefore may require a smaller airplane, a commuter 
airplane to get to where he or she wishes to go, but it is important 
that they be able to get there. So it is vital to our economy.
  Every single business considers, along with the school system, the 
so-called quality of life, the crime rate, all of this, they consider 
air service when they are deciding whether to locate or to expand in a 
particular State. And so for that, we have this wonderful program 
called the Essential Air Service--the EAS. It is a program which has 
proved vital to communities across this country. It has allowed them to 
keep air service they might not otherwise be able to keep, and 
literally so. It doesn't bail them out to do that. I mean, it doesn't 
pay the cost of that, but it helps them and they use it.
  The first option of air carriers, naturally, but regrettably, as far 
as a small community is concerned--if they are in distress, as our 
airlines, our legacy airlines in particular, have been in recent 
years--is they go to the end of the food chain to make their first 
cuts, and that is always the small communities--the small airports and 
the small centers. That doesn't make them less important.
  Every time I think about that, I think about the time I ran for 
Governor and I was defeated. I became president of a wonderful small 
private college which had a grass airfield. They didn't get any Federal 
help, because you can't do that with grass. But I always remember there 
was a little yellow farmhouse when I drove out there, and it is still 
the same little yellow farmhouse today. But if you go inside it has a 
worldwide educational CD, video. It is the highest possible technology 
company you can imagine. It just doesn't happen to want to build a

[[Page 3630]]

big building. It is happy in this little yellow farmhouse. You don't 
have to have tall skyscrapers to do business. So the small community 
air service development program has helped people.
  My bill takes several important steps toward Kay Bailey Hutchison's 
bill. We worked side by side--and I can't say this enough--every step 
of the way. It is sort of a perfect combination of a ranking member and 
chairman. We do several things here: We increase the authorized funding 
for the Essential Air Service to $175 million. That is an increase of 
$48 million. That is not a whole lot of money, but on a nationwide 
basis that does a lot. That keeps many small airfields open and allows 
them to have control towers and run air service.
  We permit the Federal Aviation Administration to incorporate 
financial incentives into contracts with the Essential Air Service 
carriers to encourage better service. You have to keep your eye on 
them. It is not just the question that Senator Dorgan has talked about; 
that is, what is the name on the airplane. Sometimes there are two 
names and you don't know which one you are riding on--is it United or 
Colgan or what--and you need to know that. We correct that elsewhere, 
in another title in our bill.
  We also authorize the Federal Aviation Administration to negotiate 
longer term Essential Air Service contracts. That makes sense because 
that gives a sense of stability and predictability to an airfield--to a 
small airfield--and to the public which is interested in it.
  We authorize the development of financial incentives for carriers to 
improve their service, as I indicated. It is quite amazing, the whole 
structure of what people get paid to fly, from these little carriers to 
commuter airlines. I am not going to give numbers to their salaries, 
because you would be shocked at what they get paid--a lot less than 
teachers. But they accept that because the seniority system says if you 
have flown a long time, you get paid a lot. And they have accepted that 
because people who know how to fly love to fly, and they want to fly. 
But you have to keep your eye always on the quality of service.
  Maintenance is a very high order, because that is the kind of thing 
which could be neglected and people might not notice. It is like 
keeping up your house. You can't defer maintenance or you pay a 
terrible price. In the case of airlines, the price is very obvious.
  We also authorize the Airport Improvement Program to convert 
Essential Air Service; that is, small airports, into general aviation 
airports. That turns out to be very convenient. There are thousands of 
general aviation--big jets, little jets, and King Airs--all over this 
country, and they fly everywhere, and we want them to. So we try to 
encourage the EAS to do well by them.
  We have increasing funding for contract towers. That is important. 
You have to have a tower. I had a 9:30 appointment this morning, and 
from not a large airport. Before taking off, there was fog, so they 
couldn't take off. I assume they could see the fog themselves. But if 
they were in doubt, the air traffic controller said: You aren't taking 
off. That is called a service to them; less to me but to them, and that 
is what counts.
  In closing, I will mention something very important to West Virginia 
and to other States. Our global economy is growing and we are much more 
interconnected. It becomes very important now, for example, that 
commuter services don't just take you from, let's say, Charleston, WV, 
to Cincinnati. Sometimes, more importantly for business, they can take 
you to Dulles Airport and you can connect to the international air 
flight business, so that somebody from Bloomfield, WV, or Beckley, WV, 
can be flying and go see his or her customers, or potential customers, 
from a little commuter airport and a little commuter airplane, which 
then turns into a much larger airport and international flow. I am 
proud of this. And this is just part of our bill.
  In the absence of other business, as we wait for amendments to be 
worked out, we will do three of those this afternoon. Then we will 
have, as I say, a tranche of agreed-to amendments--a very large 
tranche. In the tranche of yesterday, which was 14 amendments, and the 
tranche of today, which is almost that, that will be the bulk of the 
bill.
  We have been 3 years waiting on this bill. It has been sort of held 
over or extended 11 times. Indeed, it will be 12 times by the time we 
pass it, which will be, hopefully, tomorrow evening.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burris). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I offered, along with Senator Claire 
McCaskill, my Democratic colleague, an amendment that will help contain 
our tendency in this body--a bipartisan tendency, unfortunately--to 
bust the budget, to spend more than we state we are going to spend. It 
is a temptation that is all too real. We are faced with competing 
choices to spend and spend, and some of our Members just find it hard 
to say no.
  We have to be careful about that because each time we do that, the 
baseline of the budget or the emergency spending goes up, and we have 
gotten into a habit of it that is surging us on an unsustainable path. 
Mr. Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve, the Obama 
administration's leaders, independent economists, and Republicans 
across-the-board are saying we are on a spending path that is 
unsustainable, that we cannot keep on. But I have to tell you, a lot of 
this is bad because we budgeted it; but a lot of it is bad because we 
break the budget and spend more than the budget says.
  We have a historical incident in which this Congress passed statutory 
caps on spending to support the budget. In effect, Congress passed laws 
that said this is our budget for the next several years. We have actual 
spending dollar limits in our budget. Let's pass a law that says if we 
go above that, it takes a supermajority.
  Our bill says it would take a two-thirds vote to exceed the spending 
the budget allows. Some say: A two-thirds vote? That is a high vote. 
But it is based on the budget and the passage of a budget, and the 
budget is passed by a 50-vote majority. So the budget essentially will 
be the Democratic colleagues' budget. What they pass is what they 
expect the levels of spending should be and where we should cap it and 
where we should not go any further.
  This legislation would enhance our ability and state with clarity, as 
a bipartisan act of this Senate and Congress, that this is where we are 
going to stay and that we are serious about it this time and we are 
going to do something about spending that is out of control.
  The simple truth is, we cannot continue to spend as we are. The 
simple truth is, we are spending into debt, deficit, more than we ever 
have in our history. Let me just show this chart. I think it is a 
pretty indicative chart that should cause the average person to lose 
their appetite--maybe even have their hair stand up. I used this chart 
a week or so ago. I was meeting later with a Foreign Minister from a 
European country.
  He said: I happened to be watching C-SPAN. I saw you yesterday on the 
floor with this chart. He said: Do you use charts on the floor often?
  I said: Yes, sir, we do, Mr. Minister.
  He said: I thought it made a lot of sense. You ought to go all over 
the country and show that.
  This is the Congressional Budget Office numbers based on the budget 
that is out there. It shows what our debt held by the public is. The 
debt held by the public is the debt where we sell Treasury bills and 
people give us their money. They loan us their money, and we promise to 
pay them back--over 10 years or 2 years or 30 years--at a certain rate 
of interest. Some people say: You should not count the internal debt; 
that is not exactly accurate. The only thing that really counts is the 
public debt.

[[Page 3631]]

  The internal debt, the gross debt is much larger than this, but let's 
just use these numbers. In 2008 the total public debt of the United 
States was $5.8 trillion. Since the founding of our Republic--in 1789, 
I guess, since the Constitution was written. In 2013, according to CBO 
staff, it will double to $11.8 trillion. That is just 3 years from 
now--double. Then, in 2019, it is projected to go to $17.3 trillion, 
more than triple. This is not a little-bitty matter. That is why people 
are saying we cannot continue this way. That is why Moody's, the debt 
rating agency, is continuing to discuss whether to downgrade the 
American debt.
  There are entities out there that insure debt. Some people are so 
nervous about debt they want to insure the Federal Government debt and 
they pay an actual insurance premium to make sure if the government 
doesn't pay them what they owe, the insurance companies will pay them 
what they owe. I am not sure that is a smart deal. Maybe it is in a 
smaller country. At any rate, people pay this.
  The amount of insurance that has been paid on the American debt has 
tripled. It is not a lot, but it says something about what independent 
people are valuing.
  The debt of Greece amounts to 12.9 percent. The 1-year deficit for 
Greece amounts to 12.9 percent of their total economy--GDP. We are at 
9.9 percent, our debt. This year--the year ending September 30, last 
year--that deficit was $1.4 trillion, three times the largest debt in 
the history of the American Republic--three times.
  Is this year going to be better? No. This year they are projecting 
when September 30 arrives, our deficit for that one fiscal year will be 
$1.6 trillion. According to some of the estimates, the debt would drop 
down to about $600 billion over the next 10 years, through 2019. But 
now we are seeing numbers that indicate that was too rosy a scenario 
and we probably will not drop below $700 billion, and then it starts up 
in 2018, 2019, 2017--almost $1 trillion a year annual deficits.
  These numbers are low by any estimate. Already this year's deficit 
was supposed to be a little over $1 trillion, but it is going to be 
$1.5 trillion; maybe $1.6 trillion. That is a lot of money. We just 
passed another bill that added another $104 billion to the debt for a 
jobs bill.
  What we are saying is, we are on a pathway that is unsustainable. We 
cannot continue to run trillion-dollar deficits. We are going to 
average almost $1 trillion a year deficit for the next 10 years--
probably it will average maybe more than that. That is why I think all 
of us are concerned about it.
  Senator McCaskill and I, as a first step, offered legislation that 
said we are going to stick with our budget. If we will just stick with 
our budget things will be better than they would be if we do not stick 
with our budget. It is not a cure-all. It does not deal with 
entitlements and all the things with which we are confronted, but at 
least our discretionary spending will stick with our budget.
  The first vote was 56 voted for it. We made some changes to 
accommodate concerns of some of our colleagues, and 59 voted for it--18 
Democrats joined in voting for that amendment. So we need one more vote 
to make it law, and I am pleased to work with Senator McCaskill because 
we are serious about this good step.
  When it was done, similar legislation was passed in the early 1990s 
and continued throughout the 1990s. That was a factor, no doubt, in 
going from substantial deficits in the early part of the 1990s and in 
the 1980s to surpluses in the latter part of the 1990s. That was a big 
part of it because we stuck to our budget numbers and we made progress.
  Again, what number are you saying--is it a freeze on spending? Not 
really. The President talked about a freeze on spending. I will support 
that aggressively, but we are talking about a 1-percent or 2-percent 
increase, according to the budget. So it will give us a hard limit on 
how much increase in spending we will have. It will not require a cut 
in spending.
  How does this play out in terms of our economy? Well, what is a $1 
trillion? We used to talk about millions, and then billions, now we are 
talking about trillions. Is that really a lot of money? Yes, it is. One 
trillion dollars is one thousand billion.
  In Alabama State, we are almost 1/50 of the American population, and 
Alabama's general fund budget is about $2 billion. Alabama, counting 
education, is less than 10. One trillion dollars is an amount of money 
difficult for us to comprehend. We have never, ever dealt with numbers 
as dramatic as these numbers.
  What is wrong with borrowing? Why don't we just borrow? We have to 
pay interest on it. This is public debt. We do not have any internal 
surpluses anymore, or very little, from Social Security and Medicare. 
We have to go out and borrow this money on the marketplace and we pay 
interest on it. We pay interest every year on what we borrow. Congress 
passed, over my objection, an $800 billion stimulus package. Every 
dollar of that was borrowed because we were already in debt, and when 
we spend $800 billion more we have to borrow it and we pay somebody 
interest on it. It comes out of our money that we collect in taxes. We 
have to pay interest first just like you do on your mortgage. The first 
thing, you pay your house note, otherwise they are coming to foreclose 
and out in the street you will go.
  How much interest do we pay? That is a question I think drives home 
how serious our unsustainable course is. A simple truth is that the 
interest on the national debt is growing in an incredible rate and will 
soon surpass defense budgets and everything else in our budgetary 
items. Look at these numbers.
  In 2009, last year, we paid $187 billion in interest. What about the 
highway program? The Federal highway program that we talk so much about 
and argue and debate about exactly how much that should be is $40 
billion a year, just $40 billion. We paid last year $187 billion in 
interest. This is a lot of money. But as I told you, since we have an 
unsustainable annual deficit every year, huge deficits on top of the 
debt we have already accumulated, our interest payment on the public 
debt will go up. Look at these numbers.
  In 2020--from 2009 to 2020 the number hits $840 billion in 1 year we 
will have to pay in interest because we borrowed so much money. That is 
why we hear people say time and again this is immoral. We are borrowing 
from our future, from our children and grandchildren, so we can spend 
today and live well today without worrying about the impact it is going 
to have in the future. Do not think this will not impact the economy 
adversely also. This money is all a product of borrowing from the 
economy, so the government is now crowding out private borrowing by 
sucking up the money itself.
  If you are a private person and you needed to borrow money and you 
say: I promise to pay you back, and the guy said: I think you will pay 
me back, but the U.S. Government will pay me 5 percent on a T-bill. Why 
should I loan you money at 5 percent? If I loan to you, you are less 
secure. I want 7 or 8 percent from you, big boy. That is how things 
happen. It drives up our wealth and capital for the expansion of 
businesses and home buyers and that sort of thing.
  So look at that chart. It is a stunning chart, and it is a chart that 
has the numbers on President Obama's budget that he submitted to 
Congress, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office.
  Well, that is why we have to do something. There are a lot of things 
we need to do. But I am hopeful that in our debate and discussion in 
recent days that we have had this vote up, this will be the third time 
we vote on it. I am hopeful my colleagues will see this as at least one 
firm step we will take that will help us contain our tendency to not 
stay with our budget.
  If we were to stay with spending increases that did not exceed 1 or 2 
percent that is in the budget of the next 4 years now, according to the 
budget passed last year, we would see a positive impact on spending.
  Unfortunately, in the last year, we had bills such as Agriculture 
increased to 10 percent; we had bills such as Interior get about 15 or 
20 percent; we had

[[Page 3632]]

bills such as EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, a 30-percent 
increase; State Department, a 30-percent increase.
  A 30-percent increase in a budget, the budget is going to double in 
about 3 or 4 years. At 7 percent, money will double in 10 years. So I 
just would say, this is a dangerous thing. This will help us contain 
that spending. That is why Senator McConnell and I are so interested in 
seeing if we can be successful with this legislation.
  I understand Senator Pryor has an alternative; they call it a side by 
side. ``Vote for mine, do not vote for theirs'' kind of amendment. I am 
not exactly sure what it says. Hopefully, I can support his too. I 
understand his may be just a 1-year binding cap. It provides no point 
of order to waive the cap. It increases spending in a number of 
accounts. So we will look at that. I would like to be able to support 
his too.
  But what I would say to my colleagues is, the advantages of the 
amendment Senator McCaskill and I are offering are, it is a proven 
procedure, it requires a two-thirds vote to break the budget, it allows 
us to tell ourselves, tell our constituents, and the world financial 
markets that we get it, we are willing to begin to contain this 
spending and that we can do better and we will do better in the future 
and there will be other steps we will want to take.
  But I do believe this amendment will be one of the first things we 
can do, in a bipartisan way, to help control the growth of spending and 
put us back on track. In the 1990s, it led to actual surplus. So I urge 
my colleagues to support the Sessions-McCaskill amendment. I believe it 
is the right thing for our country. It is a significant step that will 
work. It is not going to solve all our problems, but it will be a big 
help.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I would ask if Senator Sessions notes 
the absence of a quorum.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent to be recognized to speak as in 
morning business for such time as I may consume.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, let me say that I do like 
all the guys I am opposing on this legislation. I have been 
particularly close to Jim DeMint for quite some time. It happens that 
Senator DeMint and I, almost every rating that comes along, are 
considered always in the top five most conservative Members of the 
Senate.
  In fact, I tell the occupier of the chair who already knows this, 
that just last week I was declared by the National Journal to be the 
most conservative Member of the Senate. I say that because I am 
disagreeing with a lot of my friends who have come forth to try to do 
something about what they call earmarks.
  Let me try to make a couple points that I think are significant. 
First of all, an earmark that is in a current underlying bill, if it is 
defeated, does not save one cent, not one.
  People out there believe--and I have heard the talks on the floor 
where they say: Well, we have to do something about the next generation 
and all that. Look, I have 20 kids and grandkids. I am the guy who is 
concerned about the next generation.
  So when you try to make people believe you are doing something that 
is saving money and doing something about the horrible spending that is 
going on, it is not sincere, because an earmark does not add money. 
What you do when you kill an earmark is redirect it or you might say 
you have an earmark, but you do not like what they put in, so you are 
going to reearmark it to something else.
  I will give you a couple examples. These examples, I know the Chair 
is familiar with this because he serves on the Armed Services 
Committee. They are two earmarks that Senator McCain had; one was the 
earmark for the F-22, where the President had had an amount of money 
for the F-22, our fifth-generation fighter. I thought it was not 
enough. Several of us added more, about $1.75 billion to that program.
  Senator McCain--and I respect the fact that he disagreed--disagreed 
on this issue. But he had an amendment to strike that earmark, which 
was a successful effort. So he struck it. However, that did not change 
the fact that the NDAA, that is the National Defense Authorization Act, 
was still at $679.8 billion, the same as it would have been had that 
earmark not been struck.
  What happens to that money? That was the $1.75. Well, that goes back 
into the defense system, into the Pentagon, where President Obama and 
his people can make a determination as to how to spend that.
  Using another example very similar to that, when we had the 
appropriations bill--that was authorization--when we had the 
appropriations bill, it was at $625.8 billion. We had an earmark that--
you can call it an earmark because we increased the amount of money 
within the bill, and we offset it to increase the number of C-17s. We 
felt, in our judgment, that is what should happen. That would have been 
$2.5 billion.
  So Senator McCain tried to get that out of it, and he was 
unsuccessful. So I have given you two examples, one where you 
successfully defeat an earmark, one where you are not successful. But 
neither one changes the underlying bill.
  So for that reason, it does not happen. Another one the Senator had 
was having to do with transportation. I respect him. I do not agree 
with him. But he had an amendment that would strike some things from 
the Transportation bill amounting to about $1.7 billion. He redirected 
that to NextGen. NextGen is a program I am very familiar with because 
it has to do with the next generation of avionics and all of it. I know 
the Chair is aware of this; that when Senator Glenn retired, that left 
me as the only active pilot in the Chamber or the only commercial 
pilot. So I stay on those issues.
  I found out I disagreed with Senator McCain on that because CBO said 
we could do the NextGen without this additional money. So the point I 
am trying to make is, eliminating earmarks does not save any money.
  Here is another thing that I think is significant. Sean Hannity had a 
three-night report that I enjoyed. What he did, he had a list of 102 
earmarks. He went down these earmarks, and everyone enjoyed it. Last 
night he had the last 20. So he went: Earmark No. 20, 19, 18, 17, 16--
went all the way down to earmark No. 1. There is not time to cover all 
102 of these. I did this on Monday on the floor, by the way.
  But it was such things as the $3.4 million to the Florida Department 
of Transportation to build an ecopassage to allow turtles to cross 
under the highway so they would not get hit by a car. That was $3.4 
million; $450,000 for 22 concrete toilets in the Mark Twain National 
Forest; another earmark, $325,000, to study the mating decisions of 
female cactus bugs. That was another one. This country needs that, of 
course; $300,000 to buy a helicopter equipped to detect radioactive 
rabbit droppings; $400,000 to study whether adults with attention 
deficit disorder smoke more than other adults. This is one that really 
wound me up: $500,000 in a grant to a researcher named in the 
climategate scandal. Here is a guy who has been cooking the science, 
and we are going to give him half a million dollars. Then there is 
$500,000 to study the impact of global warming on wildflowers in 
Colorado.
  I could go through all 102. But there is one thing they all have in 
common. I will bet you not many people know what that is. Not one of 
these 102 was a congressional earmark. These were all Presidential or 
bureaucratic earmarks. There is where the problem is. But they won't 
talk about it because

[[Page 3633]]

the public has been duped into thinking congressional earmarks are a 
problem.
  Let me tell you what happened over in the other House. I am 
criticizing my own Republicans now. The Republican caucus got together 
and they had a resolve. They said:

       Resolved, that it is the policy of the Republican 
     Conference that no Member shall request a congressional 
     earmark, limited tax benefit, or limited tariff benefit, as 
     such terms are used in clause 9, rule XXI of the Rules of the 
     House . . .

  That finally defines what an earmark is. I was thankful for that. 
Even though their policy was bad, at least they talked about what an 
earmark is. Here is what it is. Clause 9, rule XXI applies to all 
legislation in the House of Representatives, whether it be 
authorization or appropriation. That is what we do for a living around 
here.
  There is an old document nobody pays any attention to anymore. It is 
called the Constitution. If you look up article I, section 9 of the 
Constitution, it says that no money shall be drawn from the Treasury 
but in consequence of the appropriations made by law. That is us.
  Besides, if you remember studying about this--I know the Chair and I 
have talked about his knowledge of the Constitution--it was James 
Madison who was the father of the Constitution. He was the one who came 
up with the three coequal branches of government--the judiciary, 
executive, and legislative. He is the one who coined the phrase ``power 
of the purse.'' That was James Madison. If you read the Federalist 
Papers, he made it clear what we were supposed to do. What we in the 
House and we in the Senate are supposed to do is pass laws that are 
necessary to have appropriations and authorization.
  The Chair and I are both on the Senate Armed Services Committee. That 
is the authorization committee. We go through and study what we need to 
defend America--missile defense, for example. We need to have 
redundancy in all phases--the boost face, the midcourse face, the 
terminal phase. All these things are complicated, and we really can't 
expect the general public to be aware of it because they are too busy 
making money to pay for all this fun we are having up here. We have 
this authorization. That is what the Constitution says we are supposed 
to be doing.
  Then appropriations. After we authorize something, study as to 
whether it should be a priority, then we have an appropriation to put 
it into law. That is, again, what we are supposed to be doing. The 
Constitution tells us we have to appropriate and authorize.
  The oath of office--everyone here has taken the oath of office. In 
that oath, we say we solemnly swear we will support and bear true 
allegiance to the Constitution of the United States.
  Wait a minute. They are going to uphold the Constitution, but they 
have just said by their own resolution that they are going to break the 
Constitution.
  I look at this, and I think about how people, if they only knew this 
was going on, if they only knew that all these earmarks Sean Hannity 
talked about, all 102 were earmarks that came from unelected 
bureaucrats--people not responsible.
  There was an interesting article in the Hill paper the other day. It 
was from February 4. They say lobbyists are now going to Federal 
agencies because of all these efforts because of earmarks and all that. 
So we have turned over and given to unelected bureaucrats what we are 
supposed to be doing under our sworn oath.
  I know Senator McCain is going to have an amendment coming up 
tomorrow. I would like to suggest that people who talk about not doing 
earmarks have done earmarks. In the case of Senator McCain, there was 
an article titled ``McCain Breaks Own Pork Rule.'' This was from 
November 7, 2003.
  Then we have Senator DeMint, who--again, I really value him. He is 
one of my closest friends. I remember when he was first running for 
office. I went to South Carolina, and they talked about how roads were 
so important down there, and he swore he would support them. So he did. 
He kept his word. These are earmarks. Senator DeMint: $10 million for 
the construction of I-73 at Myrtle Beach; $15 million to widen U.S. 278 
to six lanes; $10 million, engineering, design, and construction of a 
port access road; $10 million in improvements to U.S. 17; $5 million, 
widening SC 9; $3 million to complete construction. These are earmarks 
that were done by Senator DeMint. I don't blame him. That is what we 
are supposed to be doing. I have done the same thing. You add up all 
these earmarks on just that bill, and it comes to $110 million. Those 
are Senator DeMint's earmarks on that one bill.
  What I am saying is, these guys all earmark, but somehow the public 
thinks there is something wrong with earmarks. I say: Fine. Define 
earmarks. Be as honest as the House of Representatives. The House of 
Representatives says earmarks are authorizations and appropriations.
  What we need to do is remember what our jobs are here. Again, the 
thing that frustrates me is that there are so many people writing 
editorials thinking earmarks are going to somehow cut spending. They 
don't cut any spending. Eliminating an earmark merely transfers it from 
our constitutional responsibility to the executive branch. I am hoping 
people will understand this.
  I can remember 8 years ago. Everyone said at that time that global 
warming was caused by manmade gases, anthropogenic gases. I thought, it 
must be true; everybody says it is true, until the Wharton School of 
Economics came along and did a study during the Kyoto Treaty days. They 
said: What would it cost America if we were to sign and ratify that 
treaty and live by its emissions restrictions? The range they gave us 
was between $300 and $400 billion a year. We are talking about $300 to 
$400 billion a year.
  I see my friend from Arkansas. I suggest to him, that $300 to $400 
billion a year would cost every taxpayer he has who files a return in 
the State of Arkansas just under $3,000 a year. That is what it would 
cost. We didn't ratify that.
  Along came, in 2003, the McCain-Lieberman bill--another cap-and-trade 
bill to do essentially the same thing Kyoto did--and then the McCain-
Lieberman bill in 2005 and the Warner-Lieberman bill in 2008 and the 
Sanders-Boxer bill in 2009. All of these have one thing in common; that 
is, cap and trade. Right now, we have Senator Lindsey Graham and 
Senator John Kerry trying to change the word, not use ``cap and 
trade,'' but essentially it would be cap and trade.
  All of that would have cost between $300 and $400 billion a year. I 
bring that up because it is pertinent to this. I brought it up because 
8 years ago nobody believed me when I said it is going to cost that 
much money and it will not accomplish anything.
  Then, as the years went by, finally the Environmental Protection 
Agency director, appointed by President Obama, in response to a 
question I had--I asked: Let me ask you this. If we were to pass this 
bill--that was the Markey bill; they are all the same; cap and trade is 
cap and trade--how much would it reduce the emissions of 
CO2? Her answer was: It wouldn't reduce it.
  Common sense tells us it wouldn't. If we do something unilaterally in 
America, it will not reduce the worldwide amount. As we lose our jobs 
here, they to go China and Mexico, places where they are generating 
more electricity. It will have the effect of increasing not reducing 
it.
  It took America 7 years. I was a bad guy for 7 years because in 
advance I said that this is what it was going to cost. It was a phony 
issue. Finally, they agreed.
  This has endured 3 years. I have been trying to explain to people for 
the last 3 years that you don't save any money if you kill earmarks. We 
need to define what they are. The House has been honest. They have 
defined it as authorization and appropriation, which is what the 
Constitution says we are supposed to do. Everybody who says they are 
against earmarks has been introducing earmarks.
  The bottom line is, we need to really address something meaningful.
  What I have done is I have introduced a bill that will do what 
President

[[Page 3634]]

Obama said he was going to do; that is, freeze the nondefense 
discretionary spending at the 2010 levels. The only problem with that 
is he increased it in his budget by 20 percent. You are talking about 
increasing the nondiscretionary or the discretionary nondefense 
spending after you have increased it by 20 percent. So I introduced a 
bill that says let's take it back.
  This President is always talking about what he inherited from the 
Bush administration. In 2008, the amount of money that was called 
discretionary spending was 20 percent less than 2010. If it is good for 
2010, let's bring it down to 2008. We have an opportunity that would 
save just under $1 trillion in the next 10-year budget cycle. That is 
the answer. That is what I think we ought to be doing instead of 
sitting around and deceiving the public into thinking that just because 
the media doesn't understand it, somehow earmarks are going to 
accomplish something worthwhile.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.


                Amendment No. 3548 to Amendment No. 3452

  Mr. PRYOR. I move to set aside the pending amendment and call up 
amendment No. 3548.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Arkansas [Mr. Pryor], for Mr. Reid, for 
     himself and Mr. Pryor, proposes an amendment numbered 3548.

  (The text of the amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text 
of Amendments.'')
  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I know this Nation is in a fiscal crisis. 
Anybody who is paying attention to the details understands that. We 
have to get serious about deficit reduction. I believe that in order to 
do so, we have to look at the full picture. We can't just look at 
discretionary spending.
  I thank the President for saying he wants to freeze discretionary 
spending. It is going to be an unpopular decision, but we need to start 
taking steps like that. I also thank Senators Sessions and McCaskill 
because they have offered an amendment that is going to be voted on in 
a few minutes that freezes discretionary spending and puts a cap on it. 
It is for fiscal years 2011, 2012, and 2013. I voted for that on a 
couple occasions and still support the concept.
  But in order for us to get serious about getting our fiscal house in 
order, we have to put everything on the table. That is the bottom line. 
When we do the fiscally responsible thing, it is going to be hard. It 
is going to be difficult politically. It will take determination and 
political will. But we have to put everything on the table.
  The multiyear discretionary spending caps were a key part of the 
1990, 1993, and 1997 deficit-reduction packages. However, one of the 
differences in those packages and what Senators Sessions and McCaskill 
are offering today is those deficit-reduction packages looked at all 
spending, mandatory and discretionary, as well as revenues. That is 
what my amendment, the Reid-Pryor amendment we will also vote on this 
afternoon, does. It puts everything--almost everything on the table.
  We have to get serious about fiscal discipline and restoring fiscal 
order in the United States. There is a story in yesterday's New York 
Times--I am sure it was widely reported--that Moody's is considering 
downgrading our bond rating from AAA down to something lower because of 
the enormous national debt we have.
  By establishing limits only on discretionary funding sources, we 
greatly reduce the likelihood of any bipartisan agreement we can make 
in this Chamber to fix our long-term deficits and long-term debt 
problem. I think for us to fix this and to get our fiscal house where 
it needs to be, we have to approach this in a bipartisan way. My 
concern is, if we just do discretionary spending, we will never get to 
a bipartisan agreement.
  The other thing about this: If the Reid-Pryor amendment were adopted 
today, I think the markets would like it. I think Wall Street and the 
global markets and all these folks such as Moody's and all these other 
people who are watching would see this as a very positive signal and it 
would help the U.S. economy in many ways beyond just the pure numbers 
in the budget.
  I trust the members of the President's National Commission on Fiscal 
Responsibility and Reform. I trust they will provide very viable 
options and solutions. I look forward to their hearings and all of 
their suggestions as they go through this year and try to address some 
of the fiscal challenges we have.
  The Senate has six Members on this commission: Senators Baucus, 
Coburn, Conrad, Crapo, Durbin, and Gregg. All of these people bring 
great experience. They all bring to the commission great depth of 
knowledge on these issues. I am afraid if we do the cap on 
discretionary spending, as we talked about before, it might actually 
serve to undermine the commission's very challenging work.
  I have a chart here that lays out a few things. This actually comes 
from CQ Today, from Tuesday, February 2, so it is a little more than a 
month old. But it paints a couple of pictures that I think we need to 
emphasize today as we compare these two amendments.
  The first picture shows these pie charts. I do not know if the 
cameras can pick these up for the folks back home, but, as shown on 
these two pie charts these are the 2011 revenue estimates and the 2011 
proposed outlays.
  One thing that I think is critically important is that when we look 
at the Sessions-McCaskill amendment--you can see this purple slice of 
the pie right here. You can see it is much less than half of the 
Federal budget. You can see that very easily. But in the fine print 
here--this is discretionary spending--that is nondefense and national 
defense right there. Of course, they are carving out for national 
defense. So my guess is, they are only talking about, I will guess, 20 
percent of the Federal budget. I am not quite sure how much. So they 
are trying to fix all of our problem with just about 20 percent of the 
budget.
  What our proposal does is it actually includes almost everything in 
this pie, instead of saying 20 percent, probably 80 percent, 85 
percent, 90 percent of the Federal budget will be included in trying to 
address the fiscal challenges we have.
  There is another thing I want to point out on this chart. It has been 
around a long time. I have seen it in many publications. On this chart, 
you can see our deficit spending, starting with the Jimmy Carter 
administration, going through the Reagan years, the George Bush years, 
the Clinton years, the George W. Bush years, and the Obama years. You 
will see that, of course, the Obama years are mostly projections.
  But what you see in these purple lines, all down here--under zero--
those are our deficits. Then they actually go up during the Clinton 
years above zero. We go into surplus spending for the first time in a 
long time, paying off national debt, trying to be fiscally responsible, 
making tough choices. Not everybody was happy about that. We were 
trying to do that. Then you see what happened after 2000, where our 
numbers plummeted.
  This yellow line--that maybe is hard to pick up on television--is the 
percentage of GDP. But, nonetheless, you see on this chart a sharp 
dropoff, and then you see this other sharp dropoff. So we have to 
understand, when this President came into office, President Obama, he 
did inherit a lot of problems, a lot of fiscal problems. But it is also 
because of the recession, because of the near global economic collapse, 
because of two wars and just because of some of these fiscal policies 
of the previous administration and because of the stimulus and because 
of some of his priorities. But you see the numbers going way down.
  To President Obama's credit, he is moving the purple lines back up, 
and that is great. But it is not enough. It is not enough. We need to 
move these lines on up here, and we need to get above zero. We have to 
get back to surpluses in this government so we can pay off the national 
debt, and do this before our children and our grandchildren are stuck 
with us living beyond our means.

[[Page 3635]]

  I think that is the bottom line. I think the Reid-Pryor amendment is 
the amendment that does that. We can talk about how we have an annual 
deficit this year of--I think it is $1.2 trillion. I have forgotten the 
number. We can talk about the national debt of--I think it is $13 
trillion, and growing every single year. We have to get that turned 
around. We are on an unsustainable course. We have heard the chairman 
of the Budget Committee. We have heard the ranking member of the Budget 
Committee. We have heard people who care about this issue say time and 
again: We are on an unsustainable course.
  I would ask my colleagues to look at the Reid-Pryor amendment. In 
some ways, it is structured like what Senator Sessions and Senator 
McCaskill have offered. Again, I voted for previous versions of that. 
They changed it a little bit this time. But I think the greatest 
liability for the Sessions-McCaskill amendment is it does not take in 
the whole picture. Like the pie chart, it takes in a little bit of this 
pie chart but not the whole thing.
  If we are going to get serious--get serious--about fixing our fiscal 
equation, we have to put everything on the table. That is discretionary 
spending, mandatory spending, as well as revenues. We have to put it 
all on the table, and we have to work through this together, hopefully 
in a very bipartisan way.
  I do not think we can fix this overnight. Even if our amendment were 
to pass this evening, it does not mean we are out of the woods yet. 
What it does is set the table for the deficit commission and others in 
future Congresses to come in and do the things we need to do and get us 
back where we need to be.
  The last point I want to make about this chart right here is, if you 
look at this purple line, this chart is basically a graph of political 
courage. That is what this is. Because the easiest thing in the world 
for a politician to do--the easiest thing for a politician to do--is to 
cut taxes and raise spending. That is exactly what you see on this 
chart. You see tax cuts coming in at various times, and you see 
spending going up at various times. These purple numbers get way out of 
balance when Congress and the White House take the easy way out, and 
that is exactly what you see on this chart.
  That is why we are in this situation today. It is not one President's 
fault. I do not want to blame it all on this President or on the 
previous President. This has been going on for a long time. It is not 
one Congress's fault. It has been going on for a long time. But we have 
to have the political will to change the way we do things around here.
  I hope tonight will be a very important step in that process. I hope 
my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will look at the Reid-Pryor 
amendment that contains all three fixes--and that is discretionary 
spending, mandatory spending, as well as revenues--and try to get this 
passed tonight and get us moving in the right direction.
  I say to the chairman, I think we are waiting on Senator Inouye. So 
until he gets here, all I wish to say is, what the Pryor amendment does 
is to freeze all discretionary spending caps at the levels proposed by 
President Obama for fiscal year 2011. It freezes all discretionary 
spending caps for fiscal years 2012 and 2013 at 40 percent of the 
difference between President Obama's budget proposal and last year's 
budget resolution. The reason we do that is because Senator Sessions 
and Senator McCaskill used last year's budget numbers, and it may be 
fair under the circumstances this year. We are splitting the difference 
there.
  The third thing is that these two freezes will reduce discretionary 
spending by at least $77 billion over 3 years-- reduce discretionary 
spending by $77 billion over 3 years--a pretty substantial cut.
  When we talk about discretionary spending, we are talking about 
mostly the popular programs the government has. It may be things such 
as auto safety. It may be things such as child product safety. It may 
be things such as the Federal Trade Commission and some of the 
oversight they have to keep consumers safe. It could be the EPA. There 
are a lot of things--clean drinking water, clean air. That is what we 
are talking about when we talk about discretionary spending. So we are 
doing cuts there. Those are going to hurt. Again, people are not going 
to be happy about that.
  It also requires the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and 
Reform to find at least an additional $77 billion of deficit reductions 
over the 3 years to close the gap between the projected revenues and 
entitlement spending. It basically says they have to find some spending 
cuts as they do their work.
  It also requires Congress to enact the debt commission's 
recommendations by January 2, 2011, for fiscal years 2012 and 2013 
discretionary spending caps to go into effect. It has a sense of the 
Senate that the total amount of deficit reduction by the debt 
commission shall be at least equal to the reductions in discretionary 
spending.
  One of the differences between the Reid-Pryor amendment and the 
Sessions-McCaskill amendment is theirs is just about spending. And 
listen, spending is important, and that is half of the equation. We are 
spending too much money, and I recognize that, a lot of other people 
recognize that. I know a lot of people in Arkansas recognize that. But 
that is only half the equation. The other half is how much we are 
taking in, and can we do better and smarter all around the board and 
put everything on the table to try to fix this.
  The real problem we face, in my view, is not spending alone but it is 
the spending that is leading to these enormous deficits every year and 
this enormous national debt. So I think our approach is more 
comprehensive. I think it is fairer. I hope many of my colleagues, once 
they see the language of the legislation, will consider voting for it.
  With that, Mr. President, 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. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, while we are continuing to wait, as we 
have basically waited all day for amendments to be offered and debated 
and voted on to the FAA reauthorization bill, Senator Rockefeller has 
remained on this floor most of this day. This is a very important piece 
of legislation. It is disappointing that it has slowed down, as have 
most of the issues we have dealt with in recent months, in the past 
year.
  Apparently, we will vote either later tonight or likely tomorrow on 
an amendment to the FAA reauthorization bill that has nothing to do 
with the bill. It is so characteristic of the Senate that we bring a 
bill on air safety and modernizing the air traffic control system, on 
essential air service, on passengers bills of rights, and an amendment 
is offered that has nothing to do with those subjects. The rules of the 
Senate allow that.
  Let me at least talk for a moment about an amendment that will be 
voted on probably next and probably tomorrow, I guess, by Senator 
Sessions and Senator McCaskill. I know Senator Sessions spoke about 
this recently. He used a very large chart to show the growth in Federal 
budget deficits and also debt. There is no question that the level of 
budget deficits and debt are unsustainable and dangerous to this 
country. There is no question about that.
  What we ought to do is understand, No. 1, how did we get here and, 
No. 2, how do we get to a different direction that addresses these 
issues. Let me describe briefly the first part and then the second 
part.
  Ten years ago, there was a budget surplus in this country--the first 
time in 30 years, a budget surplus 10 years ago. Then President Bush 
was elected, and President George W. Bush said at the time: There is a 
budget surplus,

[[Page 3636]]

and it is expected now there will be a surplus for the next 10 years. 
He had Alan Greenspan, then-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, 
whispering in his ear and saying: And, by the way, if we have surpluses 
for 10 years, I worry a lot about paying down the Federal debt too 
quickly. I worry that may be a real problem for our economy. I hope he 
did not spend a lot of sleepless nights worrying about that. He needn't 
have, I guess.
  The President then, with that kind of counsel, said: I am going to 
cut taxes, and I am going to cut taxes for 10 years at least. What I am 
going to do is cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans because I believe 
this economic engine works best by putting something in at the top and 
letting it trickle down to everybody else.
  We had a tax cut proposal that was very generous to the people at the 
top. I stood on this floor and said: I don't think that makes any sense 
at all. I think we ought to be a little conservative. First of all, 
these are budget estimates of surplus. They don't exist. They are just 
estimates by economists who cannot remember their home telephone 
numbers, let alone what is going to happen 3 years from now. So let's 
be a little conservative.
  The President and those in the Chamber who voted for it in 2001 said: 
Nonsense. Katy, bar the door; we are going to have budget surpluses 
forever. We are giving big tax cuts and, yes, we are giving big tax 
cuts to the wealthiest because they are the ones who make this economic 
engine hum. And they did. I did not vote for it.
  Very shortly then we found out we were in a recession.
  That was a problem. Six months after that, we found out terrorists 
were bent on injuring this country, and we had the 9/11 attack that 
killed several thousand innocent Americans. Then we were at war with 
terrorists--at war in Afghanistan and then at war in Iraq--none of it 
paid for, not a penny. We sent men and women off to fight and did not 
ask anybody to pay for a penny of it and put all of those costs on the 
Federal budget debt. Just put it right on top of the debt.
  In the meantime, as that decade--which I think will be known perhaps 
as ``the lost decade'' of lost opportunity in some ways--moved on, we 
also had people come into this town who were to be regulators and were 
paid to be regulators who boasted: We are going to be willfully blind 
for a few years. You do what you want. We won't watch. We won't tell.
  The result was a field day for the biggest financial interests in 
America, creating the most exotic financial instruments, such as credit 
default swaps, CDOs, derivatives--by the way, synthetic derivatives. 
What does that mean? That means you have an instrument that has nothing 
on either side. It is just flatout gambling.
  We have some of the biggest financial institutions that were spending 
a decade trading trillions of dollars of derivatives, synthetic 
derivatives, much of it by hedge funds and other financial entities 
that were unregulated.
  Again, Mr. Greenspan said, when those of us in the Senate pushed for 
regulations: No, they don't need to be regulated. It will all work out 
fine. Self-regulation--they are not going to do anything stupid. Self-
regulation will work just fine.
  In the meantime, we had the home loan scandal, massive amounts of 
money in subprime loans put out there to people who could not afford 
them by companies that were making billions of dollars. Mr. Mozilo ran 
Countrywide, the single largest home lender in America. He left with a 
couple hundred million dollars. He is now under investigation. They 
were putting teaser loans out.
  They said: By the way, you have bad credit, no credit, don't pay your 
bills, no pay, slow pay. They said: Come to us. We want to give you a 
loan.
  All of us understand that does not work. Yet that is what was going 
on. They were awash in money by moving all these assets and securities 
around. Unbelievable. That is the subprime loan scandal.
  All of this transpired, and then it collapsed. When you create a 
house of cards, the slightest little wind blows the house of cards 
down. That is exactly what happened. We discovered that some of the 
biggest financial institutions in this country had much more leverage 
than they were able to sustain, and the entire thing came crashing 
down.
  The Federal Reserve Board now has spent untold amounts of money--
untold because they would not tell us. We asked them. They said: You 
don't deserve to know nor do the American people deserve to know how 
many trillions of dollars have gone out the back door to sustain 
investment banks and others who made bad judgments. Those too-big-to-
fail institutions, no-fault capitalism, they were too big to fail, and 
the American taxpayers got stuck. The American taxpayers and American 
citizens lost about $15 trillion in value, and at the same time had to 
bail out big financial institutions that made massive amounts of money.
  By the way, right now they are paying, once again, bonuses of $120 
billion, $140 billion in some of those same industries, and they are 
showing record profits while some 15 million, 17 million people went 
out to look for work and could not find it. Small- and medium-size 
businesses are still having difficulties. Those at the top, too big to 
fail, who received massive amounts of government help, are now making 
record profits and paying record bonuses. All of that exists.
  When we hit this ditch, this financial wreck, we lost a substantial 
amount of income coming into the Federal Government--about $400 
billion. The economic stabilizers we have, such as unemployment 
insurance, food stamps, and others, the cost of them went way up. Had 
Barack Obama, winning the Presidency, done nothing--walking across the 
threshold into the White House for the first day, had he done nothing 
for the next 10 to 12 months he would have had a $1.3 trillion Federal 
budget deficit not of his making. That was his inheritance when he won 
the Presidency.
  We have these giant budget deficits. I find it interesting, people 
come out and talk about these big budget deficits who have spent the 
last 10 years saying: You know what. Let's go ahead and send men and 
women to war, and we will just charge it. We will not ask anybody to 
pay for it, ratcheting up this deficit, helping create these problems.
  Now, all of a sudden they are having an apoplectic seizure over 
budget deficits and the increased level of debt. We should have a 
seizure over it because it is unsustainable, and we should fix it.
  We need to understand what happened to create it and making sure we 
fix it so that it does not happen again. That means financial reform. 
That means paying for wars we are fighting, and so on, which is not 
happening yet. Even more than that, the question is, What is the 
medicine or the solution? So our colleagues bring an amendment that we 
will vote on tomorrow that says what we should do is to freeze domestic 
discretionary spending for 3 years--domestic discretionary spending. 
Well, people who don't work around here don't know what that means so 
much. What it means is they are proposing to freeze that portion of 
Federal spending that has not blown through the lid here. What is out 
of control are the entitlements--massive increases in Medicare and 
Medicaid. What is out of control is the substantial increase in defense 
spending that is not paid for. What is out of control is the 
dramatically less revenue that comes from giving tax cuts to people who 
didn't need it.
  If you have a million dollar income a year--which would be a good 
thing to have--and somebody says: You know what, you just won the 
lottery. Our government says: We are going to give you a $79,000 tax 
cut. So a proposal that says: You know what we are going to do, we are 
going to take that smaller portion of the budget and we are going to 
freeze that for 3 years--you know, the kinds of things that educate 
kids, the sort of things that invest in people's lives, human capital, 
human potential, the kinds of things that make life better. We are 
going to freeze all that, but we are not going to touch anything on the 
revenue side. No, we want to protect those tax cuts for the biggest 
interests. We are not going to

[[Page 3637]]

do anything in the entitlement areas, despite the fact that we have 
dramatic growth in Medicare. There is nothing in this that says: Let's 
take a look at all spending. They say: Let's take a look at a bit of 
spending. And there is nothing in here that says: Let's take a look at 
revenues.
  You have to look at all of these things. If you are serious, if you 
are a deficit hawk and you are about getting your hands around this 
deficit problem and getting rid of this problem, then you have to be 
serious out here and say we are going to do it all; that we are going 
to take a look at every single area of spending and we are going to 
take a look at revenues as well.
  Let me mention one example. In 2008, the highest income earner, pure 
income, in America is a man who made $3.6 billion--$3.6 billion--
running a hedge fund. So he goes home at night and his spouse says: How 
are you doing, honey? Pretty good. I made $10 million today. It is a 
lot of money for a day, isn't it? Well, $3.6 billion is $300 million a 
month, and so $10 million a day. But that is not his only success. It 
wasn't just that he made $3.6 billion. It was that he gets to pay a 
lower income tax than almost anybody in the State of Minnesota--the 
State of the Presiding Officer--because most of the constituents of the 
Presiding Officer pay income tax rates that are much higher than 15 
percent. But that $3.6 billion earner gets to pay an income tax rate of 
15 percent because it is defined as carried interest. That is a 
loophole that you can drive a Humvee through, and it is one that we 
ought to close right now.
  You say you want to do something about deficits. How about making 
somebody like that pay a fair share of taxes? If somebody is going to 
work all day as a drill press operator and come home and shower after 
work and try to figure out how he is going to pay the bills and so on, 
if that person is paying a 20-percent, 28-percent, 30-percent, 35-
percent income tax rate, how about the person who is making $3.6 
billion?
  Somebody will listen to this and say: That is that old populism 
again. That is not populism, to talk about things that are necessary 
and right. It is not populism. It is deciding that everybody ought to 
be treated fairly, and it is not fair if those who are at the low end 
of the income ladder are paying the highest tax rates and those who are 
at the high end are paying the lowest tax rates.
  Warren Buffett, the second or third richest man in the world--a guy I 
like and whom I have known a long time. He is a wonderful man. He did 
an experiment at his office in Omaha, NE. I think he said they had 
something like 20 or 40 or 50 people working at Berkshire Hathaway at 
the office. So he asked them, I believe voluntarily, to disclose what 
their income was--although his company pays them--and what their tax 
rate was. What he discovered was this: Of all the people in his office, 
the person who paid the lowest combined tax rate of income taxes and 
payroll taxes was the third or second wealthiest man in the world: 
Warren Buffet. He paid a lower tax rate than his receptionist. Warren 
Buffett said to me: That is so unbelievably wrong. It has to change. 
You all have to change that. I am paying what I should pay, but he 
said: It is not right that you have a Tax Code that has me paying a 
lower tax rate than the receptionist in my office.
  My point simply is this: We could change that, and should, and 
increase some revenue as a result by making the tax system fairer and 
having those who should, pay their fair share. That is one way to 
reduce the deficit, isn't it? Except it will never be done with this 
resolution because it looks at that portion of the budget that would be 
used to fund a school or to build a water project or to build a flood 
protection project--just that domestic discretionary in which you 
invest in America. Well, that doesn't make any sense at all.
  Senator Pryor came to the floor and said he is going to offer an 
alternative, which I am going to support, which includes all of these 
things. It says: Yes, tackle this budget deficit, do it now, don't 
delay, but tackle it with seriousness, seriousness of purpose, not just 
taking one piece that hasn't exploded and ignoring the other pieces. 
Take the piece of domestic discretionary spending that has not exploded 
and say: Let's take all the savings out there. I don't understand that.
  I understand the motive. The motive is to say: Well, we have a bunch 
of people who don't want to touch taxes in any way, even asking the 
$3.6 billion person who pays a 15-percent rate to start paying his fair 
share. I understand they want to protect that. I don't. I want that 
person to pay a fair rate of taxes to our government. They would call 
that a tax increase. I don't. I think it is just evening up the score, 
saying: You want all the benefits America has to offer but don't want 
to pay the full obligation of being a citizen? The same is true with 
some corporate interests that decide they want everything America has 
to offer them but they want to run their employees through the Grand 
Caymans so they can avoid paying payroll taxes.
  By the way, the same people who are paying a 15-percent income tax 
rate on carried interest running hedge funds are setting up deferred 
compensation accounts in the Bahamas to avoid paying even that 15 
percent. So is that something we can shut down? Of course. Would that 
help reduce the budget deficit? Yes. Is that tackling domestic 
discretionary? No. It is more effective than doing that, because we 
know where this money is and we know how we could reduce the budget 
this way.
  I am in favor of tackling every part of the Federal budget and seeing 
what works and what doesn't. There are a whole number of things this 
government does that it doesn't need to do anymore.
  I know Senator Kaufman wants to speak, but I want to mention one 
thing first. I have been here at this desk a long time now, and let me 
describe how unbelievable it is that even waste has its constituency in 
this Chamber--even waste. We are doing this: We broadcast television 
signals into the country of Cuba every single day that the Cuban people 
can't see. We do it every single day. We have spent $\1/4\ billion 
doing it. We broadcast from 3 in the morning until about 7 in the 
morning and the Cubans routinely block them. The purpose of it was to 
broadcast--under what is called Television Marti--and to inform the 
Cubans about how wonderful freedom is. They are pretty well aware of 
that by listening to Miami radio stations. And we know they understand 
freedom because they get on rafts trying to find their way to this 
country. But we have Television Marti, which is a big group of people 
that is pretty well funded, about $20 million a year, or $25 million a 
year now, and so we send television signals to the Cuban people that 
they can't see. We first did it with a big blimp called Fat Albert, way 
up in the air shooting signals down that the Cubans could block. Then 
Fat Albert got off its tethers and landed in the Everglades, and what a 
mess that was. Then they bought an airplane and they send the signal by 
flying these planes, which the Cubans routinely block.
  I have offered amendment after amendment after amendment to try to 
stop spending to send television signals to no one, but you can't get 
it done. Isn't that unbelievable? I will continue to do that because 
that is an area of spending, it seems to me, where it takes a 
nanosecond of thought to say: That is just stupid. That is just dumb. 
So stop it. Except government doesn't quite work that way, or that 
well.
  But if the Pryor amendment is offered tomorrow, I fully intend to 
support that aggressively because we are on an unsustainable path. Most 
of us know how we got here, but not everybody yet knows how we are 
going to get out of it, and I think that is a decent step in the right 
direction. I would say that the Sessions-McCaskill amendment is 
seriously deficient and is not, in my judgment, the serious way to 
address what is a very serious problem.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for up to 5 minutes.

[[Page 3638]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


   In Praise of Jeffrey Amos, Marvin Caraway, Jr., and Colin Richards

  Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I rise once more to highlight some of our 
Nation's outstanding Federal employees. I have spoken before about 
those who, in serving our Nation, place their lives in danger in order 
to protect others. On March 4, a lone gunman opened fired near the main 
entrance to the Pentagon, wounding two security officers before being 
quickly subdued. These two officers and a third who assisted them 
provide an example of the bravery and excellence of Federal employees, 
and especially Federal employees in law enforcement who take risks 
every day.
  These three men all worked for the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, 
which oversees security for the Defense Department's headquarters as 
well as several other Defense facilities in the Washington area. It was 
created after the attacks of September 11, 2001, to provide 
comprehensive threat prevention for one of the buildings targeted on 
that fateful day. Like those serving in other law enforcement and 
security agencies, the men and women of the Pentagon Force Protection 
Agency undergo rigorous training. Many are veterans of the Armed Forces 
or have worked previously as police officers for States and 
municipalities. They train to be ready at a moment's notice for 
scenarios they pray will never come. Often these security officers will 
stand at a checkpoint for hours at a time at the ready during days and 
weeks and months of quiet.
  As a youth, I worked two summers as a lifeguard in Philadelphia, and 
we always used to say it was hours of boredom interspersed with seconds 
of sheer terror. Well, sheer terror happened for these great Federal 
employees. For these three officers from the Pentagon Force Protection 
Agency such a moment came just before 7 o'clock in the evening of March 
4, 2010.
  Officers Marvin Caraway, Jr. and Colin Richards were standing guard 
at the main entrance to the building--the Pentagon--when a suspicious 
figure approached. Marvin sensed something was amiss, so he walked 
toward him to check out his identification. When the man pulled a gun 
from his jacket and began firing, one of the bullets grazed Marvin's 
thigh. Undeterred, he held his ground and fired back. Later, his fellow 
officer would tell reporters that Marvin was like ``Superman''--``a man 
of steel.''
  Colin ducked behind a barricade and began to return fire. Hearing the 
shots, a third officer, Jeffrey Amos, ran over from his post nearby and 
joined the effort to subdue the gunman. In the process, he was wounded 
in the shoulder. The whole incident took only a minute and the three 
officers fatally shot the assailant.
  The quick reaction and undeterred professionalism of these three are 
inspiring. All brought to the job a strong background in law 
enforcement and public service. Marvin, who lives in Clinton, MD, is a 
former marine, who served in the first Persian gulf war, and has 
experience protecting our embassies overseas. Jeffrey, from Woodbridge, 
VA, is a retired member of the Air Force Reserve. He spent 11 years in 
the New Orleans Police SWAT team.
  Colin, who resides in Arlington, VA, recalled how his experience and 
training prepared him to act quickly. He said: ``My vision was big; my 
hearing--I could hear everything. When the shooter started running, he 
looked like a big target. At that point I felt like I couldn't miss.''
  Federal security officers, such as Marvin, Jeffrey, and Colin, are 
our modern-day ``Minutemen''--trained and ready to keep us safe from 
threats to our liberty and security. We owe all of them our constant 
appreciation.
  I must add that we see the same dedication and professionalism right 
here each day in our very own Capitol Police force as well. I know how 
proud Majority Leader Reid is of his own service as a Capitol Police 
officer when, as a young man, he stood guard at one of the entrances to 
this building.
  I hope my colleagues will join me in thanking Marvin Caraway, Jr., 
Jeffrey Amos, and Colin Richards for their bravery and a job well 
done--as well as all those who serve as Federal security officers 
standing at the ready. They are reminders of our great Federal 
employees.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burris). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BURRIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kaufman). Without objection, so ordered. 
The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. BURRIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                            new philadelphia

  Mr. BURRIS. Mr. President, in 1777, when our Republic was just a year 
old and the Revolutionary War was raging, a man named Frank McWorter 
was born in South Carolina.
  In 1795, when the war was over and George Washington was President, 
he moved to Kentucky. He married a woman named Lucy.
  And in 1830, he and his family moved to Illinois--the very same year 
that a man named Thomas Lincoln, along with his son Abraham, moved to 
there from Indiana.
  Frank McWorter decided he would settle down, and so he bought a farm 
in Pike County's Hadley Township, and he began to plan out the town of 
New Philadelphia. Other settlers moved in. Soon, there were family 
homes, businesses, and even a school.
  And when Frank McWorter died of natural causes in 1854, having lived 
more than three-quarters of a century, he died in the town he founded 
and guided to prosperity.
  The community of New Philadelphia continued to thrive until it was 
bypassed by the expanding railroad in 1869. Left behind by the steam 
engine, and the wave of expansion it pushed across the western 
frontier, the residents of New Philadelphia began to disperse by the 
late 1880's, and the town gradually disappeared again into the Illinois 
prairie.
  The story of Frank McWorter and New Philadelphia is an extraordinary 
one.
  But as I told this story a moment ago, here on the Senate floor, I 
left out one defining detail.
  If Frank McWorter had been a farmer, or a banker, or a soldier, his 
tale would be remarkable because of the era in which he lived--but in 
many ways, he would have been no different from thousands of others who 
grew up in the early days of our country.
  But Frank McWorter's story is extraordinary because he was not a 
farmer, or a banker, or a soldier--no, he was a slave.
  When he moved to Kentucky in 1795, he did not go voluntarily. He went 
with his owners. On the day he met Lucy, his future wife, the two of 
them were slaves on neighboring farms.
  Eventually, Frank was allowed to work odd jobs, and hire out his own 
time and labor. He learned to mine a major component of gunpowder, 
which proved profitable.
  By 1817, he had earned enough money to purchase freedom for his wife. 
And in 1819, he bought his own freedom--and set out to build a life for 
himself, as a free American. That is the story of Frank McWorter.
  So, when he started the town of New Philadelphia in 1836, he 
accomplished something truly remarkable and unique. He became the first 
known free African American in history to legally found and plan a 
town.
  And he used the proceeds from land sales to purchase freedom for 15 
of his family members.
  I invite my colleagues to imagine what life must have been like in 
New Philadelphia in the mid-1800s. In pre-Civil War America--in a time 
when this country still legally permitted slavery--New Philadelphia, 
IL, was a place where people of all races lived and worked side by 
side.
  Federal census records indicate that the town was populated by 
teachers, blacksmiths, merchants, cabinetmakers, and shoemakers. There 
was a

[[Page 3639]]

seamstress, a doctor, a wheelwright, and a carpenter. New Philadelphia 
even had its own post office, which also served as a stagecoach stop.
  Imagine what we could learn from studying this unique place, which 
existed during such an important time.
  An in-depth study of New Philadelphia could yield important 
information about what life was like in an integrated community during 
that period. It could add new dimensions to our understanding of the 
history we share.
  I urge my colleagues to join with me in preserving this historic 
site, which was designated a National Historic Landmark last year.
  But I believe it's time to take the next step to ensure that the 
extraordinary story of Frank McWorter and New Philadelphia is preserved 
for generations to come.
  I ask my colleagues to support S. 1629, a bill I have introduced to 
direct the Secretary of the Interior to begin a Special Resource Study, 
which would determine whether the New Philadelphia site can be managed 
as a unit of the National Park Service.
  Today, not much remains of the structures where the town's residents 
lived and worked. For passersby, the site is an open field just 
southeast of Springfield, IL.
  But in 2004, a three-year National Science Foundation grant allowed 
archaeologists to explore this site for the first time. They found 
building foundations, wells, pit cellars, and a total of more than 
65,000 artifacts. They recognized that these exciting discoveries have 
the potential to yield even more information.
  And if we pass this bill, and allow the Secretary of the Interior to 
evaluate the national significance and suitability of this site, we 
could pave the way for its preservation as part of the National Park 
Service.
  We can re-discover the incredible history that has been hidden among 
the prairie grass for more than a century.
  We can reclaim the spirit that drove Frank McWorter--a man born into 
slavery--to reach for equality and opportunity, to establish himself 
and his family as free African Americans, in a time when freedom was 
extremely hard to come by, and to establish a thriving community--a 
place of inter-racial peace and cooperation--in a dark period for race 
relations in America.
  I believe we must act to preserve this legacy. I believe we owe it to 
ourselves--and to future generations of Americans--to examine the 
history of New Philadelphia, and the life of pioneers like Frank 
McWorter.
  Let us pass S. 1629, so we can better understand those who came 
before us. In the process, I have no doubt we will discover some 
remarkable things about ourselves.
  I yield the floor.


                             Social Justice

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as a result of the greed, recklessness, 
and illegal behavior by a small number of executives on Wall Street, 
the American people today are suffering through the most serious 
economic conditions we have seen since the Great Depression of the 
1930s. Since the recession started in December of 2007, 8.4 million 
Americans have lost their jobs and, while the official unemployment 
rate is 9.7 percent, according to the latest Gallup Poll, nearly 20 
percent of the American workforce is either unemployed or 
underemployed. In other words, we have people who are working, but they 
are working 20 hours when they need to be working 40 hours.
  Further, long-term unemployment is soaring. Today, over 6 million 
Americans have been unemployed for over 6 months, the highest on 
record. This is not a situation where people are losing their jobs and 
a few weeks later they go out and get another job. People are losing 
their jobs and they cannot find another job, which is why it is so 
important that we extend unemployment benefits and so reprehensible 
that there are those in this Chamber who have resisted that effort.
  Today, there are fewer jobs in the United States than there were in 
the year 2000, even though the workforce has grown by 12 million since 
that time.
  Today, we have the fewest manufacturing jobs than at any time since 
April 1941, 8 months before the start of World War II.
  Today, home foreclosures are the highest on record, turning the 
American dream of home ownership into an American nightmare for 
millions of our people.
  Further--and we do not discuss this enough--in the United States 
today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of 
any major country on Earth. That means that while the middle class is 
in rapid decline, while poverty is increasing, the gap between the 
people on top and everybody else is wider than in any other major 
country on Earth and growing wider.
  The reality is, today the top 1 percent now earns more income than 
the bottom 50 percent and the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the 
bottom 90 percent. Meanwhile, while the folks on Wall Street give 
themselves tens and tens of millions of dollars in bonuses for having 
destroyed our economy, the United States has, by far, the highest rate 
of childhood poverty among major countries. Almost one-quarter of our 
children today are dependent on food stamps. Approximately 19 percent 
of our kids are living in poverty, and one out of four kids in the 
United States, in order not to be hungry, is dependent on food stamps.
  While the Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, recently talked about how ``the 
recession is likely over,'' I urge him to meet with America's blue-
collar workers or those few people left who do manufacturing in this 
country. As the Boston Globe reported several months ago:

       The recession has been more like a depression for blue-
     collar workers, who are losing jobs much more quickly than 
     the nation as a whole. . . . [T]he nation's blue-collar 
     industries have slashed one in six jobs since 2007, compared 
     with about one in 20 for all industries, leaving scores of 
     the unemployed competing for the rare job opening in 
     construction or manufacturing, with many unlikely to work in 
     those fields again. . . .
       Up to 70 percent of unemployed blue-collar workers have 
     lost jobs permanently, meaning their old jobs won't be there 
     when the economy recovers . . .

  That is a staggering fact.
  So when talking about the recession hurting people, it is hurting 
some of the people who already are in the most serious trouble; people 
who do not have a whole lot of money to begin with. That is what is 
going on in the real world today. But, sadly and significantly, what is 
going on today simply is an acceleration of what was going on the 
previous 8 years. It is not like, oh, times were good, the middle class 
was doing well, and, oops, the reckless behavior of Wall Street plunges 
us into a major recession.
  What is not talked about enough is that this continues and 
accelerates a trend that has been going on for a number of years. 
During the 8 years of the Bush administration, here is what happened: 
Over 8 million Americans slipped out of the middle class and into 
poverty. Over 7 million Americans lost their health insurance.
  Our Republican friends are vehemently objecting to us going forward 
in terms of health care. When they had the power, when they had the 
Presidency, when they had control over the House and the Senate, during 
that period millions of Americans lost their health insurance. Do you 
recall them coming forward and saying: We have to do something about 
this crisis; more and more people are losing their insurance; more and 
more people are unable to afford their insurance? I did not hear a 
word. But they are very vocal now. They are very loud: Stop it. We 
cannot do anything. No. No. No. They had their chance, and it is sad to 
say that right now, all they can do is play the obstructionist role and 
be the party of no.
  I make this point not to just relive history but to understand where 
the anger comes from today. It is not just in the last year and a half 
millions more people lost their jobs, lost their health insurance. 
During the 8 years of President Bush, median household income declined 
by over $2,100--$2,100. So people came out of that period, from 2000 to 
2008, staggering. They were earning less than they did before that 
decade began, and than they walked into the greed and recklessness of 
Wall Street, which created a massive recession.

[[Page 3640]]

  The Washington Post reported last January: The past decade was the 
worst for the U.S. economy in modern times. That was before the Wall 
Street crash.
  Let me say it again. The Washington Post last January: The past 
decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times. It was, 
according to a wide range of data, a lost decade for American workers--
a lost decade for American workers.
  There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. Imagine 
that. Since December 1999, the country has grown zero jobs. Middle-
income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than 
they did in 1999. The number is sure to have declined further during a 
difficult 2009.
  So there you have it. You want to know why people are angry, why 
people are frustrated, why people are pointing their finger at 
Washington and us and saying: Hey, we are in trouble: massive 
unemployment; real wages have gone down; people are working incredibly 
hard, if they are lucky enough to have a job; and, at the end of the 
day, they are worse off than they were 10 years ago.
  According to a September 2009 article in USA Today--this is quite 
incredible--and these are statistics that we do not talk about enough: 
from 2000 to 2008, middle-class men experienced an 11.2-percent drop in 
their incomes. Can you imagine that. From 2000 to 2008, middle-class 
men experienced an 11.2-percent drop in their incomes, which amounts to 
a reduction of $7,700 after adjusting for inflation.
  So imagine that you work hard for 8 years. At the end of those 8 
years, you have lost $7,700. Even worse, the USA Today article goes on 
to report that many age group Americans are poorer today than they were 
in the 1970s. We talk about the American dream and that parents work 
hard so that their kids will do better than they did.
  Well, we are moving in the wrong direction. Today the average 
American worker, or at least millions of American workers, in terms of 
inflation-accounted-for dollars are worse off than they were in the 
1970s.
  Without going through all of the reasons the middle class is 
collapsing and poverty is increasing, without going into great length 
about the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, I think 
it is important to say a few words about our good friends on Wall 
Street, people who have made it clear to everybody in this country that 
the only thing they care about is making as much money as they possibly 
can in any way they possibly can.
  Recently, in the last several years, 40 percent of all profits in 
this country went to the relatively few people in the financial 
industry--40 percent of the profits. We have seen hedge fund managers 
and owners earning billions of dollars. We have seen CEOs of major Wall 
Street banks being worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, 
all the while the middle class collapsed.
  We have the highest rate of childhood poverty. Millions of people are 
losing their health insurance.
  We talk about people living in a gated community, people living in 
very expensive homes protected by armed guards and surrounded by gates, 
driving around in their chauffeured limousines, getting into their 
private jets, having no clue about what is going on in the real world. 
That is what Wall Street is about. They are engaged in producing 
esoteric financial instruments which very few people understand which 
are producing nothing real in the real world. They are not creating 
real jobs. They are not creating real products, real services. They are 
a gambling casino whose function in life is to make more money for the 
people who own that casino.
  Now, after we deal with health care, and I hope we can finish that as 
soon as possible, the issue of financial reform is going to come into 
this Chamber. I hope very much that we can respond to the frustration 
and the anger of the American people about what Wall Street has done 
and promise them, through legislation, that those people will never 
again get away with the crimes they have committed against the working 
families of this country.
  Let me suggest a few of the areas I think a serious and real 
financial reform bill should address. Every week I hear from 
constituents in Vermont, and I suspect you hear from constituents in 
Illinois who say: How in God's name can these large financial 
institutions we bailed out with our tax dollars now charge us 25 or 30 
percent interest rates on their credit cards?
  I hear this all of the time. And let's be clear. When a large bank--
and about two-thirds of the credit cards in this country are issued by 
the four largest financial institutions in America--when a large 
financial institution is charging a working American 25 or 30 percent 
interest on their credit cards, we have to be very clear and call that 
what it is. That is loan sharking; that is usury; that is immoral.
  The Bible, in all of the major religions--Christianity, Judaism, 
Islam, all of them--talk about the fact that usury is immoral; that you 
cannot lend money at excessive rates to struggling people who need that 
money to survive. That is what is happening today.
  The loan sharks today are not gangsters out on the street who break 
kneecaps. These are guys in three-piece suits who, in some cases, make 
hundreds of millions of dollars a year by stealing money from working 
people through excessively high interest rates.
  The middle class is collapsing, poverty is increasing, and often, in 
order to deal with the day-to-day needs of a family, whether it is 
food, whether it is gas to get to work, whether it is money to heat 
their homes, people are using credit cards. To be charged 25 or 30 
percent is simply immoral, in my view, and it is something that has to 
be eliminated.
  As you know, a number of States all over the country have passed 
usury laws. But as a result of the Marquette Supreme Court decision a 
number of years ago, these credit card companies go to certain States--
South Dakota--where there are no usury laws and charge anything they 
want, all over the country. They have nullified State usury laws.
  Well, you know what. We need a national usury law. We have to say 
straight out it is immoral; it is wrong to be charging working people 
20, 25, 30, 35 or more percent interest rates on their credit cards. As 
part of any serious finance reform legislation, the American people 
have to know we are going to end usury.
  My view is--and I have introduced legislation to this effect--that we 
should do for the private banks what we do with credit unions right 
now: 15 percent max, except under certain circumstances, which now take 
them up to 18 percent. No more 25 percent. No more 30, 40, 50 percent. 
No more payday lending. We are going to end that.
  I think that has to be incorporated into any serious financial reform 
legislation. Any part of a serious financial reform bill has to deal 
with the need to increase transparency at the Federal Reserve.
  I will never forget, about a year ago, the Chairman of the Fed, Ben 
Bernanke, came before the Budget Committee on which I serve. I asked 
him if he could tell us which banks received trillions of dollars in 
zero interest or almost-zero interest loans, trillions of dollars, 
placing the taxpayers of this country at risk.
  Mr. Bernanke said: No, I am not going to tell you that. Well, we have 
introduced legislation to demand that he tell us. The American people 
have a right to know which financial institutions have received 
trillions of dollars in loans. One of the great scams of our time--you 
want to talk about welfare. There is abuse. These are ``welfare 
queens.'' We have heard that expression before. Those guys are getting 
zero-interest loans from the Fed, or maybe they were paying one-half of 
1 percent, and then they go out and lend that money to the Federal 
Government, they buy government securities at 3\1/2\ or 4 percent, 
having taken money from the government at zero percent or half a 
percent. How is that? You get a nice spread there. You have a 3-percent 
spread on that. The money that you are lending is guaranteed by the 
faith and credit of the United States, never once failed. That is a 
pretty good deal.

[[Page 3641]]

We give you money at zero interest, and you go out and get guaranteed 
money at 3 percent. Not a bad deal. That is welfare for billionaires, 
and that is unacceptable.
  We have a right to know which financial institutions are engaged in 
that. Most importantly, we have to end that right now. So we need 
transparency at the Fed. They cannot continue to operate in that kind 
of secrecy.
  We also have to end the too-big-to-fail phenomena. Here is a fact 
that I think many Americans do not know; that is, while we bailed out 
Wall Street because institutions were too big to fail--if they went 
down, they would take the whole economy with them--well, guess what. A 
year later, three out of the four financial institutions are bigger 
today than before we bailed them out.
  Now, what am I missing? It does not make a whole lot of sense to me. 
Not only that, not only are they a greater danger to the economy today 
than they were before, but there is something else which is going on 
which we also do not talk about too much. Maybe as the only Independent 
in the Senate--I am not a Democrat or Republican. Maybe it is my job to 
be raising these issues, but somebody has to raise them; that is, the 
top four financial institutions in this country have enormous amounts 
of economic power over this country.
  As I mentioned earlier, they issue two-thirds of all of the credit 
cards in this country. Does that sound like a very competitive 
situation to you? The four largest financial institutions issue two-
thirds of the credit cards in America. I do not think that is a healthy 
thing for our economy.
  So not only do we have to end this, these huge financial 
institutions, because they are too big to fail, but we also have to 
allow for increased competition within the banking industry, in doing 
away with this huge concentration of ownership. Not only do the top 
four--which is JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and 
Citigroup--issue two-thirds of the credit cards, they also issue half 
of the mortgages. I don't think that is a healthy state for this 
country. We have to start breaking up these guys.
  The last point I would make is maybe the most important. In Vermont 
and all over the country, small and medium-size businesses are in 
desperate need of capital, of affordable loans so they can better 
produce the products and services they need and, in fact, create the 
jobs our economy desperately needs. I am sure the case is similar in 
Illinois, but in Vermont, I have small businesses coming into my office 
saying they can't get the credit they need to expand and create jobs.
  You have Wall Street operating as a gambling casino, selling and 
playing with esoteric financial instruments. It is time they started 
investing in a productive economy and creating jobs.
  The American people are hurting. They are suffering through a 
terrible moment economically. People are wondering whether, for the 
first time in the modern history of America, our kids will have a lower 
standard of living than their parents. This is the reverse of what the 
American dream is about. People are wondering how they will be able to 
afford to send their kids to college, how they will pay for childcare, 
how they will pay for the mortgage on their home, when they are either 
losing their jobs or real wages are going down.
  They are looking to Washington. They are becoming increasingly 
frustrated by the Republican party of no which seems to gain 
satisfaction every time they can stop legislation which attempts to 
address real problems, whether it is health care, jobs, extending 
unemployment benefits. It is no, no, no from the Republicans.
  The American people are beginning to catch on that there have been a 
record number of filibusters in this session, a recordbreaking number 
of obstructionist tactics. What the American people are saying is: Hey, 
Congress, Mr. President, we are hurting. We need action or else the 
middle class is not going to survive.
  As difficult as it is, as much as we understand that when we 
deregulated Wall Street, they spent $5 billion in 10 years in lobbying 
and campaign contributions, making sure the Congress did what Wall 
Street wanted--in 2009, Wall Street spent $300 million on lobbying. I 
don't know how you spend $300 million on lobbying. There are 100 
Members in the Senate and 435 in the House. These guys will spend and 
spend and spend to make sure Congress does nothing to prevent them from 
going on their merry way of doing whatever they want without any 
serious kind of regulation.
  In these difficult moments, I hope the Senate and the House will 
summon the courage to do the job we were elected to do and what we are 
paid to do, and that is to represent working families and the middle 
class and not only big money and Wall Street.


                           Amendment No. 3548

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that amendment 
No. 3548 be designated as a Pryor amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, earlier today the senior Senator from 
Oklahoma incorrectly claimed that an article entitled, ``McCain Breaks 
Own Pork Rule'' that ran in Roll Call on November 6, 2003, proved that 
I had broken my pledge against requesting earmarks. However, the 
Senator failed to mention that Roll Call subsequently ran a correction 
to this article on November 17, 2003, stating that, ``the article 
inaccurately stated that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) violated his own 
rules against so-called ``pork barrel'' spending.'' I ask unanimous 
consent that the entirety of the original story and, more importantly, 
the correction published in Roll Call be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                     [From Roll Call, Nov. 6, 2003]

                          Correction Appended

                           (By Emily Pierce)

       After years of crusading against ``pork-barrel'' spending 
     projects in Congressional appropriations bills, Sen. John 
     McCain (R-Ariz.) may be breaking his own rules.
       McCain pushed for, and got, $14.3 million for Arizona's 
     Luke Air Force Base inserted into the just-completed fiscal 
     2004 military construction appropriations conference report.
       The only problem is the project to acquire more land near 
     the base was not requested by President Bush or fully 
     authorized by the Senate Armed Services Committee--two of 
     McCain's criteria for identifying so-called ``pork.''
       ``Even though this project is in clear violation of the 
     McCain rule because it was not authorized nor requested, we 
     are happy to provide the funds at his request and the request 
     of other members of the Arizona delegation,'' said House 
     Appropriations Committee spokesman John Scofield.
       Scofield also noted that the provision may violate other 
     tenets of McCain's ``pork'' rules because the purpose of the 
     funds--to acquire land to prevent the encroachment of 
     residential development near the base's live-fire range--is 
     not included in Defense's long-term strategic plans and may 
     not be achievable within a five-year time frame.
       Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who 
     has bitterly fought McCain's repeated attempts to strike even 
     the smallest of pork projects during Senate floor debate on 
     appropriations, was blithe about the news that McCain had 
     secured an earmark for his own state.
       ``One man's pork is another man's alternate white meat,'' 
     said Stevens. ``We don't discriminate. . . . If he asked for 
     it, we put it in.''
       McCain defended his actions, saying he first sought 
     authorization for the measure in the fiscal 2004 Defense 
     Department authorization bill.
       ``The fact that the appropriations bill may [be sent to the 
     president] before the authorization bill is not relevant to 
     my point of view, because we did the authorization before we 
     did the appropriations bill,'' McCain said of the order the 
     bills came to the Senate floor.
       McCain, who sits on the Armed Services Committee in charge 
     of devising the Defense Department authorization, said he has 
     little control over the process once it passes the Senate 
     floor.
       ``It was my job to get it authorized,'' he said. ``So I had 
     no involvement after that.''
       Part of the problem is that the Defense authorization bill, 
     which gives the Appropriations committees the official 
     authority to dole out money to the Pentagon, has been stalled 
     in conference negotiations for months over various issues, 
     most notably McCain's insistence that an Air Force-Boeing 
     lease deal be scrapped.
       McCain has charged that the Boeing deal to lease 100 tanker 
     planes over several years

[[Page 3642]]

     would cost much more than simply buying the planes outright. 
     Meanwhile, the Defense Department has argued that the plan 
     will expend less money in the short-term and that they don't 
     currently have enough money to buy the planes.
       While Armed Services negotiators in both chambers say they 
     have made some progress toward resolving their differences on 
     the Boeing lease deal and other issues, it is unclear whether 
     the bill will actually become law this year.

                       Correction: Nov. 17, 2003

       The article inaccurately stated that Sen. John McCain (R-
     Ariz.) violated his own rules against so-called ``pork 
     barrel'' spending. The Senate Parliamentarian's office 
     maintains that the provision was properly authorized in the 
     Senate-passed version of the fiscal 2004 Defense 
     authorization bill and did not need to be signed by the 
     president to be considered ``authorized,'' as the article 
     suggested. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), chairwoman of 
     the Appropriations subcommittee on military construction, 
     told Roll Call that McCain never specifically asked her to 
     put the $14.3 million project for Arizona's Luke Air Force 
     Base into the fiscal 2004 military construction bill.

                          ____________________