[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 7797-7815]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       SMALL BUSINESS ADDITIONAL TEMPORARY EXTENSION ACT OF 2011

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will resume consideration of the motion to concur in the House 
message to accompany S. 990, which the clerk will report by title.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to concur in the House amendment to S. 990, an Act 
     to provide for an additional temporary extension of programs 
     under the Small Business Act and the Small Business 
     Investment Act of 1958, and for other purposes, with an 
     amendment.

  Pending:

       Reid motion to concur in the amendment of the House to the 
     bill, with Reid amendment No. 347, of a perfecting nature.
       Reid amendment No. 348 (to amendment No. 347), to change 
     the enactment date.
       Reid motion to refer the message of the House on the bill 
     to the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship with 
     instructions, Reid amendment No. 349, to change the enactment 
     date.
       Reid amendment No. 350 (to (the instructions) amendment No. 
     349), of a perfecting nature.
       Reid amendment No. 351 (to amendment No. 350), of a 
     perfecting nature.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              Health Care

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, 50 years ago on this day, President 
John F. Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress, and he presented 
to our Nation a bold challenge. He said:

       I believe that this nation should commit itself to 
     achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a 
     man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

  It was and remains a memorable challenge. To meet it would require 
long-term commitment and unprecedented resources. It had great risk, 
and it had no simple solution. But President Kennedy put his faith in 
the talent and dedication and discipline of America. He believed his 
challenge could mobilize our country to meet this challenge and 
succeed. And he was right.
  President Kennedy's goal to put a man on the Moon and return him 
safely in 10 years was clear, was direct, and was accountable. The 
result was a vast mobilization of public and private resources that 
collaborated in innovative ways to achieve that singular purpose. And 
we did.
  I come to the floor today to call for a similar challenge to reform 
our health care delivery system. While the goal now is different, the 
urgency and the need to mobilize both public and private sectors toward 
a common and vital purpose is the same. Our massive budget deficit 
poses a real threat to our economic and national security. The Chairman 
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff identified it the other day as the single 
greatest threat to our national security, our Nation's debt.
  There is also common ground that the skyrocketing costs in our health 
care system are at the heart of our Nation's fiscal problem. I do not 
agree much with Congressman Paul Ryan, but we do agree on that point. 
He has said if we are to be honest about our debt and deficit, at its 
heart is a health care problem. So now is the time for our country to 
set out a clear challenge, as President Kennedy did, that will address 
our health care cost problem.
  That challenge must stand on two facts: One fact is that our health 
care cost problem is a system-wide problem. Republican proposals to end 
Medicare as we know it fundamentally misdiagnose the problem. Most 
everybody in America knows it does not matter who our insurer is, 
whether we are insured by Medicare or Medicaid, the VA or TRICARE, 
United or Blue Cross, in the last decade, costs across all insurers 
have gone through the roof. Indeed, just today in the news, Secretary 
Gates is reported to have said--about his Defense Department budget--
everybody knows we are being eaten alive by health care. We have a 
system-wide health care cost problem, not a Medicare problem.
  Health care expenditures are nearly 18 percent of our gross domestic 
product. The next least efficient country in the world spends only 12 
percent of its GDP on health care. We would have to go far down the 
list of our competitor nations before we find a country that has as 
poor health outcomes as America has, even though we spend vastly more 
for our care. We have a system-wide health care cost problem and a 
system-wide health care quality problem.
  The second fact is, the health care cost problem and the health care 
quality problem are related. We have at our disposal an array of health 
care reforms that will reduce the cost of health care while improving 
the quality of health care. These types of reforms--new models of care 
coordination, quality improvements in hospitals, paying for quality not 
quantity to our physicians, and reducing overhead costs in the system--
all have one liability; that is, they do not lend themselves easily to 
estimates of cost savings. Because of this, there is less attention 
than there should be to the great potential of these reforms. Bowles 
and Simpson, Domenici and Rivlin have all conceded this in our Budget 
Committee hearings.
  The promise of these reforms is immense. The President's own Council 
of Economic Advisers has stated that 5 percent of GDP can be taken out 
of our health care system without hurting the quality of care. That is 
about $700 billion a year. The New England Health Care Institute said 
it is $850 billion a year. The Lewin Group has estimated the potential 
savings at $1 trillion a year, a figure echoed by former Bush Treasury 
Secretary O'Neill. The savings are there, and they are considerable.
  The question is, How do we get at them? Well, let's first look at the 
affordable care act that we passed. The affordable care act's delivery 
system reforms provide many of the tools that we need to drive down 
costs and improve the quality of care.
  As we were working on that bill, I had a regular meeting in my office 
of experts from around the country, from the business community, from 
the labor community, from the NGO community, who really were dialed in 
to the delivery system reform problem in this country.
  We met regularly, we met early in the morning, and every time we 
asked the same question: What more can we put in this bill to make sure 
it has the tools to get these reforms done? By the time that bill 
passed, we were in agreement that everything we could want was in that 
bill.
  It provides a tool box with five major strategies we need to deploy. 
The first is quality improvement, which will save the cost of medical 
errors, of misdiagnosis, of disjointed and uncoordinated care.
  The clearest and simplest example is reducing hospital-acquired 
infections which affect nearly 1 in every 20 hospitalized patients in 
the United States. They cost us about $2.5 billion in unnecessary 
health costs every year.
  The tens of thousands of deaths that are associated with these 
hospital-acquired infections are tragic. It is made all the more so by 
the fact that they are essentially preventable. Simple reforms, such as 
following a checklist of basic instructions--washing hands with soap, 
cleaning a patient's skin with antiseptic, placing sterile drapes over 
the patient--result in huge reductions in rates of infection and in 
costs.
  So, first, quality improvement. The second strategy is prevention. 
The most inexpensive way to deal with disease is to prevent it in the 
first place. More than 90 percent of cervical cancer, for instance, is 
curable if the disease is detected early through Pap smears.
  The third strategy is payment reform. We must pay doctors for better 
outcomes, not for how many tests and procedures they order. Rhode 
Island has a promising ``medical home'' primary care payment strategy 
already underway.
  The fourth strategy is simplifying administrative processes to reduce 
overhead costs. The insurance industry

[[Page 7798]]

in this country has developed a massive bureaucracy dedicated to 
delaying and denying payments to doctors and to hospitals.
  So to fight back, the doctors and the hospitals have had to hire 
their own billing departments and expensive consultants. All of that, 
the entire war over payments between insurers and hospitals and 
doctors, adds zero health care value. It only drives up costs.
  Finally, the fifth strategy is a robust, secure health information 
infrastructure. Health information technology was, years ago, estimated 
by the Rand Corporation to save $81 billion a year. Savings may very 
well be higher as the system builds itself out. Not only is a robust 
health information infrastructure a good end in itself, but those four 
other delivery system strategies are empowered and advanced and 
expanded by robust health information infrastructure.
  These five delivery system reform strategies hold the promise to 
deliver the enormous savings we need to extract from our health care 
system, and to do so in the most humane way, by improving the quality 
of care. The debate we need to have on our health care cost problem 
must focus on delivery system reform, on how we can implement these 
delivery system reforms from the recent health care reform bill as 
quickly and as effectively as possible.
  This is what brings me back to President Kennedy's speech on space 
exploration. President Kennedy did not say: I am going to see to it 
that America bends the curve of space exploration. Had he said that, 
the speech would have been consigned to oblivion, and we would likely 
not have put a man on the Moon on time. Instead, he made a memorable 
challenge with a clear objective: Put a man on the Moon, bring him back 
safely, within a decade. Everybody could know whether that had been 
done. It was a clear and accountable purpose, and it galvanized the 
entire Federal bureaucracy toward that common purpose.
  We can and must do the same with health care delivery system reform. 
We can and must have a clear challenge to strive toward.
  It is not enough to talk about bending some health care cost curve. 
Our country has the talent and discipline to accomplish extraordinary 
things. We can significantly bring down costs in our health care 
system. I notice that the junior Senator from Minnesota has just taken 
the chair in the Chamber. Minnesota knows well what can be accomplished 
through these kinds of delivery system reforms because companies such 
as Mayo, Gundersen Lutheran in Wisconsin, Intermountain in Utah, and 
Kaiser in California are all doing this kind of work effectively 
already. We can significantly bring down costs in our health care 
system. We don't have to be last or the least efficient country in the 
world in providing health care to our people. We can do this while 
improving the quality and the experience of health care for Americans.
  I will conclude by saying that tackling these issues won't be easy. 
But to go back to President Kennedy's speech, he said:

       We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other 
     things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. 
     . . .

  I urge my colleagues and the administration--we cannot afford to 
fail. Let's raise the stakes. Set a hard challenge. The future of our 
Nation's fiscal health certainly depends on it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri is recognized.


                           Missouri Disaster

  Mrs. McCASKILL. Mr. President, this is a place that runs on words. 
The Senate is a place where there is always a great deal of speeches 
given and words spoken. Every once in a while, something comes along in 
life when words are completely inadequate. What happened in my State in 
the last few days is very difficult to express in words. I did want to 
take a few moments to recognize an incredible occurrence in the 
southwest portion of my State.
  Having been there all day yesterday and arriving very early in the 
morning and spending time with the people of Joplin--with Missourians 
who have come to Joplin from every corner of our State, with Federal 
officials, I do want to take a short amount of time to recognize the 
tragedy and to rejoice in the response.
  So many parts of this response, in fact, are the kinds of things we 
should celebrate. But the loss of life is staggering. An F-5 tornado, 
we now know, is the strongest tornado classification--in fact, this is 
the most devastating tornado we have had in this country in almost 60 
years. The loss of life is staggering--122 lives. It is, unfortunately, 
a reality that that toll will probably continue to rise--I hope only 
slightly--in the coming days. But yesterday, there were another five or 
six confirmed deaths.
  The loss of property--over 8,000 buildings were damaged; 2,000 homes 
are gone. When I say gone, I mean gone. I have responded to many 
natural disasters in Missouri during my time as a public official--a 
lot of tornadoes and flooding. I have never observed a scene that even 
comes close to what I observed yesterday. Walking among the rubble, you 
realize that what you are walking through is people's lives that have 
been spread far and wide, and that, in many ways, cannot be recovered, 
cannot be made exactly as they were before. From the air, the swathe of 
damage was incredible. We were able to get up there--because the 
weather finally cooperated--to look at the damage from the air. 
Governor Nixon and Mr. Fugate, the Administrator of FEMA, and I, with 
other officials, went up in helicopters yesterday morning. As you look 
down upon Joplin, from the air it looks like a stave mill. Through the 
middle of Joplin, miles and miles long and wide, surrounded by green, 
it looks like a massive amount of toothpicks. The trees are all gone. 
Many hundred-year-old trees are lying on their sides. The trees--what 
is left standing of them--have most of the bark ripped off by the force 
of the wind that swept through Joplin shortly before 6 p.m. on Sunday 
evening.
  The emotional toll of this devastation is one you can't calculate. 
But you see it on people's faces. What I observed yesterday was friends 
and neighbors who were standing by hoping for a miracle, and 
firefighters dug under the rubble at the Walmart hoping they would find 
someone there who was alive. I witnessed other people going through the 
rubble of their homes. In talking to them, I think the initial reaction 
for the people of Joplin was intense gratitude that they were alive. 
Now it is being replaced with the reality of their loss and what they 
have lost--from schools, to churches, to a hospital that employs over 
2,000 people in a community of just 50,000. This is an incredible loss. 
But the pain is palpable on these people's faces, and that is why it is 
so important that we don't lose sight of what they are going to need 
over the coming weeks, months and, yes, even years.
  The response I witnessed, in terms of what was on the ground, was 
remarkable--from Federal, State, first responders in local communities, 
and obviously the officials of Joplin, Missouri, all working together 
seamlessly as a team. The Federal Government--unlike many disasters 
where they wait several weeks to declare a disaster--obviously 
understood that the flexibility and the immediacy of the response was 
incredibly important in this instance, and they declared a disaster 
within 18 hours. FEMA had people on the ground. Within 12 hours, the 
National Guard deployed. They had National Guardsmen there before 
midnight. Since that moment on, more and more people have been 
responding with more and more assets to help the people of Joplin and 
the recovery effort.
  I want to call out particularly the fire chief in Joplin and the city 
manager there who have done remarkable work. The fire chief lost his 
home. As I walked through the firehouse going to the command center, I 
heard barking in one of the rooms. I said, ``Is that a K-9 unit?'' They 
said, ``No, the fire chief is living here with his family because his 
home is gone. That is his dog.'' So as he lost his home, he obviously 
had to turn to the important job

[[Page 7799]]

of initially fighting fires, and then, obviously, participating in an 
unprecedented effort of search and rescue over the following 48 hours.
  I am very proud of our National Guard. We have over 200 guardsmen 
there as we speak. They have done, as always, remarkable work. I talked 
to one man who had just finished duty in Poplar Bluff, with the 
flooding, and immediately came over to help in Joplin with the tornado 
response and recovery.
  The State of Missouri Governor Nixon has been on the ground for much 
of the last 72 hours, along with his team. He is bringing his cabinet 
heads to Joplin to work on various parts of this over the next 48 
hours, along with subcabinet members from the Federal Government, 
housing, HHS, to be of assistance.
  Let me take a minute to talk about the first responders. I am so 
proud of the police and firefighters I encountered yesterday. I am so 
proud of these men and women. As I looked around, I realized there were 
search and rescue teams from every corner of our State. Task Force 1 
from central Missouri and almost 100 Kansas City firefighters were 
there. I had an opportunity to visit with many of them as they were 
attempting a rescue on the scene yesterday afternoon. At 3 o'clock in 
the morning--yesterday morning--a caravan from St. Louis of over 100 
firefighters and all of their equipment and assets rolled down I-44 to 
get to Joplin to help their brothers and sisters, in terms of this 
effort. St. Francis County, Camden County--you name it--from all over 
the State, police and firefighters and public safety officials 
responded to Joplin.
  Frankly, people need to realize that the assets spread all over 
Joplin today, the emergency vehicles, K-9 units, HAZMAT teams, mobile 
rescue units that allow people to do very difficult rescues in very 
difficult circumstances--the vast majority of those assets were bought 
with Federal dollars. The vast majority of that equipment that came to 
these Missouri departments came from Federal grants. A lot of these 
guys worked without sleep for days. As I talked to them and thanked 
them, it was almost as though they resented being thanked because, to 
them, this is what they do.
  I tell you, one thing yesterday gave me was an incredible passion to 
fight for these folks' pensions and salaries. These are not the people 
who are causing economic chaos in this country. These are not the 
people who deserve to be diminished in public discussions about what 
they receive for their work. These are the best we have, and they 
deserve every dime of pension they have bargained and fought for.
  I am so proud of Joplin for its response. This is a community of 
great faith. This is a community that will come together, as a lot of 
Midwest communities do in circumstances when their neighbors are in 
trouble. Everywhere I have gone--in fact, our phones are ringing off 
the hook--people are saying: What do we need to do to help Missourians?
  The most important thing people can do right now is give blood, 
donate to the Salvation Army and Red Cross, and wait to hear from the 
officials from Joplin about when volunteers are needed. Right now, too 
many volunteers swarming into Joplin could cause more problems than it 
could solve. People need to check with the local Red Cross in Ozarks, 
and they need to check in with the city Web site. When there is a call 
for volunteers, it will go out, and those volunteers will be needed. 
But for now, the most important thing people can do is give money and 
blood.
  The other thing I think we can do for all of the people who lost 
their lives in this tragedy is to have a plan when there is a tornado 
warning. Many families--and I think we are guilty of it in the Midwest 
maybe more so than other places in the country because we hear sirens 
and tornado warnings a lot. I grew up with that in Missouri. I will be 
honest, I probably have never taken it seriously enough. But that will 
not happen again in my life. My family will have a plan. My family will 
know where to go and what to do if, in fact, there is a tornado 
warning. Don't ever assume a tornado warning is not serious. These 
sirens rang at approximately 5:17 in the afternoon, and the tornado 
touched ground at approximately 5:41. So there was 20 minutes there.
  By the way, the weather people here deserve a great deal of credit. 
Nobody visually sighted this tornado. It was all done through radar. 
The fact that they were able to identify this tornado and make that 
warning 20 minutes ahead of time was very important. I cannot imagine 
the loss of life we would have had if it hadn't been for that 20-minute 
warning. Having said that, there were people who were not taking it 
seriously. There were people who didn't know exactly where to go or 
what to do. So, please, have a plan for your families as a tribute to 
all those who lost loved ones in Joplin on Sunday night.
  We will survive this, with God's grace and determination. Joplin will 
roar back because of the values that are held so dearly in that part of 
our State--in fact, in our entire country.
  We will come together, and we will do this. But make no mistake about 
it, the satellite cameras are going to pack up sometime in the next 48 
hours. All those satellite trucks are going to go back from where they 
came. This will fade from the front pages. Just like the junior Member 
from Minnesota who is presiding right now, at the point in time the 
bridge collapsed, there was a great deal of attention, and then the 
attention goes away.
  In this instance, we are going to need to sustain the support to this 
community far beyond the headlines, far beyond the satellite trucks 
going home. We have to get these schools open in September. We have to 
get this hospital rebuilt. We have to make sure this community is not 
left stranded without the assistance it needs.
  There is no question that we have to be careful about the way we 
spend Federal money. But with all due respect to Congressman Cantor, I 
have a hard time believing that if this were in his congressional 
district, he would be talking about how additional disaster relief 
would not be available unless we found some other program from which to 
take it. It must be available. This cannot be a political football. We 
must provide the assistance. That is what Federal tax dollars are for, 
to provide assistance when there is no assistance available for 
communities and for States because of the wrath of Mother Nature. We 
must be there for them. We all must stand with Joplin. All of America 
must stand with Joplin. And we will.
  My heart goes out to the families for their losses. I congratulate 
the people of Joplin for their response. I say ``bless you'' to all 
those first responders. Through the greatest tragedy sometimes comes 
the greatest strength.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I appreciate the fine remarks of my 
friend from Missouri. Seeing the damage that was done by the tornadoes 
in Alabama, they have far exceeded anything I have seen before. I 
appreciate more than most the damage and difficulties the people of 
Missouri are going through. I know there will be emergency funding for 
that. There is a legitimate question as to whether we ought to not find 
that emergency spending someplace in our budget where it can be 
recovered that is not so important. But I know we will process that as 
we go forward.


                       Unsustainable Budget Path

  I truly believe our Nation is facing an economic crisis, but it's not 
so much what I believe but what every expert we have heard from 
believes and has testified to. Mr. Erskine Bowles, who cochaired the 
debt commission, who was appointed by President Obama, said, along with 
Senator Alan Simpson, his cochair, in a written statement to the Budget 
Committee, that this Nation has never faced such a predictable economic 
crisis. In other words, the deficit levels we are operating with are so 
high and they create such danger to the economy that we have to get off 
this path. Every expert has said we are on an unsustainable path.

[[Page 7800]]

  Many people have thought the problem we are dealing with today places 
a burden on our children and our grandchildren; therefore, it has 
removed to some degree the immediacy of the problem. But that is not 
what Mr. Bowles said. In his testimony before the Budget Committee just 
a month or two ago, he said that we could have a financial crisis. When 
asked by the chairman when, he said 2 years, maybe less, maybe more. 
Senator Simpson said it could be 1 year.
  We are taking a risk with the American economy. This has been echoed 
by Moody's bond ratings, and it has been echoed by S&P, which warned 
that our debt rating for our government debt could be downgraded. Alan 
Greenspan has made similar comments. Alice Rivlin, former OMB Director 
under President Clinton, made those comments. Pete Domenici, who 
cochaired a debt commission with Alice Rivlin, former chairman of the 
Budget Committee in the Senate, said to us with real passion: I have 
never been so afraid for my country. That is what Pete Domenici said.
  We know we have to take action, and now we are heading today to 756 
days since the Senate has passed a budget. We have not passed a budget. 
I say with confidence that in terms of a real, long-term threat to the 
American future, this Nation has never had a greater danger financially 
and in terms of debt because the problems we face are more severe than 
even in the nineties when we turned our business around and in 3 years 
balanced the budget. It is going to be harder to do it now.
  We went through World War II. We borrowed money. But we had a 
vibrant, growing economy and growing population, and we promptly moved 
our way through that, and growth took care of us. But we cannot expect 
that the level of growth that according to the experts we can 
reasonably predict will be sufficient to get our house in order.
  When you do not have enough money and the course you are on is 
unsustainable, you need to develop a plan that puts you on a 
sustainable path. How simple is that? That is grownup talk. How do you 
do it? What is our mechanism in the Congress?
  This is a budget. This is title II, section 271 through et seq, and 
it has the Budget Act. We passed a Budget Act. It is law. Clever 
Congress did not put any penalties on it, so we can violate it and not 
go to jail. We do not have to personally pay fines. But it represented 
a serious commitment by a previous Congress that we needed a budget. 
They also made as part of that budget law that it could be passed with 
a simple majority so it could not be filibustered. That was one of the 
reasons budgets sometimes failed to be passed. At a time when they were 
thinking about the future, they said: Let's make the budget passable by 
a simple majority. It also has a timeline in it. It says the Congress 
must pass a budget by April 15. We are long past that date--long past 
it. Are we going on to a third year now without a budget?
  Mr. President, 1,000 days without a budget while our country is on a 
debt path unsustainable to a degree that threatens the future of 
America economically--yes, that is where we are heading.
  People say: Surely, Jeff, that is not so. Surely there is some plan.
  There is not any plan--not a plan to pass a budget. What there is a 
plan to do is not pass a budget. It is irresponsible. It is unwise. It 
is dangerous for our future because we are on a certain path, a 
predictable path, as the debt commission told us, to financial ruin. 
Our debt-to-GDP ratio will reach 100 percent by September 30 of this 
year. That is above the level that economic experts tell us puts our 
country at risk. Indeed, when we passed a 90 percent debt-to-GDP ratio, 
economists Rhinehardt and Rogoff, who completed a massive study of 
national defaults of economies around the world by sovereign states, 
warned that at that level you reduce the growth in the economy by at 
least 1 percent of GDP. The average was higher than that. They said on 
a median level, it is 1 percent of GDP, and they used that number--1 
percent growth that we don't get. Well, some think we may not get 2 
percent growth this year. Would we have gotten 3? If we get 1, would we 
have gotten 2? One percent growth in GDP is a large thing in an economy 
the size of ours. It increases tax revenue significantly. It increases 
jobs. According to experts, 1 percent of GDP growth means 1 million 
more jobs. A decline of 1 percent in our economy represents a loss of 1 
million jobs. This is not a little-bitty matter.
  On Monday, I objected. I realized what is going on in the Senate, 
that there is no plan to deal with this situation, that there is a 
gimmicked-up scheme to bring up a series of budget votes that the 
majority leader knows will not pass. Indeed, he intends to bring up a 
vote on a budget that he and all his colleagues intend to vote 
against--the most responsible one out there, the House budget, passed 
by the Republican House. That is what they want to bring up for a vote 
and vote against. But the Budget Act does not say bring up a House 
budget. It says each House--the Senate and the House--should bring up 
its own budget and pass it on the floor. It should go to committee. 
None of the budgets we will be voting on have gone through committee. 
We have had no markups in committee. We never even had a markup on the 
budget. Why? What is this? What is going on?
  Let me share with my colleagues why we are not having a legitimate 
process to produce a budget at the most critical financial time in our 
history. It is about politics. Does that surprise anyone? This is what 
Democratic staffers were quoted as saying in a Wall Street Journal 
article a few days ago. What did they say about it? Did they say: We 
have a plan to solve America's future. Did they say: We have a plan to 
reduce our debt and get us on a sound path. Did they say: We understand 
the future of the country is endangered by unsustainable debt growth. 
No, they did not say that. This is what they said:

       As a political matter, Senate Democratic strategists say 
     there may be little benefit in producing a budget that would 
     inevitably include unpopular items.

  They do not want to produce an honest budget, a budget that would 
make a difference, because it would have some unpopular items in it. I 
ask, is that responsible leadership? I suggest it is not.
  It goes on:

       Many Democrats believe a recent House GOP proposal to 
     overhaul Medicare is proving to be unpopular and has given 
     Democrats a political advantage. They are loath to give that 
     up by proposing higher taxes . . .

  What does that mean? It means their budget, if they produce one, 
would call for higher taxes, and they do not want to do it. They do not 
want to propose a budget that reduces spending. They do not want to 
produce a budget that has higher taxes. Why? Because they are playing 
politics rather than serving a national interest. That is just plain as 
day. I wish it were not so, but there is no other explanation for why 
this Senate preparing to go into recess Friday for Memorial Day without 
having even commenced hearings on a budget.
  This is what they decided to do. I am quoting from the article:

       Senate Democrats plan to hold a vote on the Ryan plan--

  The House budget--

     hoping to force GOP senators to cast a vote on the Medicare 
     overhaul that could prove politically difficult.

  Give me a break. Is that what it is all about? Is that what we are 
here for? It is not what many of my Democratic colleagues tell me. They 
tell me they know we are on an unsustainable path and we have to do 
something. But why are we going through this charade, to bring up one, 
two, three budgets and vote them all down and then say: Well, we tried. 
Maybe we will have some secret talks over here and we will plop 
something down right before some emergency date and demand everybody 
vote for it, not having a chance to read it. Is that what the process 
is going to be instead of an open process where the Budget Committee 
has open hearings, amendments are offered, a budget is voted out of 
committee, it comes to the floor, and there is a guaranteed 50 hours of 
debate? But the process comes to an end. The Budget Act states that we 
cannot filibuster it. There is only

[[Page 7801]]

limited time of debate, but there is an opportunity to debate, an 
opportunity to offer amendments.
  We are told Senator Reid does not want his members to have to take 
tough votes. None of us like to take tough votes. None of us likes to 
take tough votes. Isn't that what we are paid for here? Isn't that why 
they send us--to vote on important, tough issues that impact the future 
of our Nation? I am telling you, we are so far off path it is stunning 
to me.
  I quoted his staffer earlier, but what about Senator Reid himself, 
the Democratic leader of the Senate? Anybody who has worked with 
Senator Reid likes him, and I enjoy working with him. I respect him. I 
know he has a difficult job, but at some point one has to stand and 
lead. He is not leading and neither is President Obama. But this is 
what Senator Reid said just a few days ago--I think Friday.

       There is no need to have a Democratic budget, in my 
     opinion.

  Well, there is a need, a statutory legal requirement that we send a 
budget out of the Senate.
  Then, he said:

       It would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage.

  Why does he say it would be foolish? I think my good friend, Senator 
Reid, has taken his eye off the national interest. He has taken his eye 
off the crisis our country faces, and he has his eye on politics. He 
means it would be foolish politically. He has a scheme, and this is 
what his scheme is. He is going to bring up the House budget--the Ryan 
plan. In all honesty, it is the only plan I have seen in my time in the 
Senate that comes close to providing a long-term alteration of the 
unsustainable fiscal path we are on. It deals with it. It makes some 
tough choices, but they are not unbearable and I think most of them 
will actually work.
  It is not perfect. I don't promise that I would vote for everything 
in it. But it is a historic plan to put America on a sustainable 
financial course. I thought they could have reduced spending more in 
some areas, frankly. But it puts us on a sustainable course. It was 
produced by the House Budget Committee. They had public hearings, the 
committee voted on it, they brought it to the floor, and it passed in 
the House of Representatives, in the way the Congress of the United 
States is supposed to operate.
  What does our leader in the Senate and his colleagues who support him 
do? They make a decision to do something political, not responsible. 
They are not putting forth the vision they have for the future, but 
they are going to bring up the Ryan budget so they can all vote against 
it. I don't think that is responsible. I don't think it is responsible 
at all.
  I am not going to participate in this scheme to have a series of 
votes. Count me out. I am not supporting it. I am not going to give my 
consent to it. That is the way I see it and I don't think that it makes 
sense. If I did, I would change my mind. But as I see it, it makes no 
sense for me to, in any way, consent to a process that is designed to 
fail. The whole process is designed to fail. With a simple majority in 
the Senate, our Democratic colleagues can pass any piece of 
legislation. They have 53 Members. They can win the vote. If they put 
up a good budget, they might have some Republicans--maybe all the 
Republicans, if we reached a bipartisan agreement. But there is nothing 
close to that. We have not approached this in any realistic way, and I 
am concerned that we are off track.
  Senator Schumer, who once headed the Democratic Senatorial Campaign 
Committee--he designed all that--is a Senator who is considered to be a 
guru of politics around here. He is good, and there is nothing wrong 
with being a smart politician. But at some point politics goes too far. 
This is what he said on May 23 regarding the Ryan budget.

       We will exhibit this issue as an example of why we need to 
     keep the Senate Democratic in order to counter House 
     Republicans. We will point to this week and say the 
     Republicans tried to end Medicare but a Democratic majority 
     stopped it in the Senate. It is that simple.

  That is an open statement of raw politics. Where is the national 
interest? Where is the response to Mr. Bowles, a leading Democrat, to 
Alice Rivlin, a leading Democrat, and their principled cries that we do 
something about the debt crisis we now find ourselves in? Nowhere.
  My colleagues want to go home, and they intend to go home--go home 
Friday. Our soldiers are out there, and they are not getting to come 
home from Iraq and Afghanistan. They are going down roads where bombs 
might be planted and they are putting their lives at risk. They do not 
get to come home. Their business isn't finished yet. But we plan to go 
home, apparently, not having done anything but having gone through a 
political exercise that is an embarrassment to the Senate at a critical 
time in our Nation's financial history--a very critical time.
  President Obama utterly ignored, in his completely irresponsible 
budget, the fiscal commission that he himself created to seek a 
national consensus on funding. I have to say the President's budget is 
nowhere close to what is necessary to avoid our fiscal nightmare. That 
is not a Jeff Sessions quote. That is a quote from Erskine Bowles, who 
cochaired the Commission, when he saw the President's budget plan that 
was submitted a couple months ago. He said it is nowhere close to where 
the Administration will have to go to avoid our Nation's fiscal 
nightmare.
  So that is what the President has done, and the Senate has done 
nothing. They will not even hold a markup and propose a plan. Why? They 
think it is politically unwise. They think they can gain more 
politically by refusing to produce a budget, by attacking the House 
Members who produced a budget--as they are required to by law--that is 
honest and would make a huge long-term difference in America. It would 
put us on a sustainable path, not leave us on an unsustainable path.
  I will conclude with a quote from the preamble to the fiscal 
commission's debt report. This is what they wrote to us. Remember now, 
Senator Reid's plan is to bring up the House budget and have all his 
Members vote it down so they can attack Republicans for having the 
audacity to propose any changes in Medicare--and not even in the 10 
years of the budget. It is the outyears they are complaining about, and 
it is not law. Any change will not become law until it passes both 
Houses of Congress. But it is a vision that could work to make Medicare 
sound and actually save it.
  They think they can scare people by saying we are going to end 
Medicare, so they are going to vote on it. That vote, in the minds of 
our Democratic politicians, shows that they are defending Medicare and 
that all the Republicans oppose Medicare. But the American people are 
getting too smart for that. I don't believe they are going to buy that 
story any longer. They know Medicare is on an unsustainable path and 
that it cannot continue.
  The Medicare actuaries and trustees have reported today that it is 
going to go bankrupt a number of years sooner than was originally 
expected. But this is what the debt commission said about the need to 
have a plan to fix our future:

       In the weeks and months to come, countless advocacy groups 
     and special interests will try mightily through expensive, 
     dramatic, and heart-wrenching media assaults to exempt 
     themselves from the shared sacrifice and common purpose. The 
     national interest, not the special interests, must prevail. 
     We urge leaders and citizens with principled concerns about 
     any of our recommendations to follow what we call the Becerra 
     Rule: Don't shoot down an idea without offering a better idea 
     in its place.

  Isn't that a reasonable request--don't shoot down an idea unless you 
are prepared to present a better one in its place? That is exactly the 
opposite of what our Democratic leadership is proposing. They are 
proposing to bring up a budget they say they do not like. They are 
going to vote it down without producing anything in its place. That is 
not responsible leadership, it is not respectful of the budget process, 
which is required by law, and it is not in the national interest. It is 
not in the national interest.
  Yes, we are going to have to deal with tough issues. We find 
ourselves in

[[Page 7802]]

a fix, a deeper hole than we should ever have been in, and the American 
people punished Congressmen and Senators last year because they were 
unhappy, and they were right to be. There is no way any Member of this 
Congress can stand before their constituents and justify a deficit this 
year of $1.6 trillion and defend or justify a spending program in which 
40 percent of every $1 we spend this year is borrowed. How can that 
possibly be called sanity? It is insanity. That is why every one of 
these people is telling us we have to change and why PIMCO, the largest 
bond company in the world, has said they are not buying any more 
American debt. They believe we need to get serious and make some 
serious changes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used 20 minutes.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair.
  I will just wrap up by saying that is why I think the process planned 
for this week is unacceptable and I do not intend to support it.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.


                           Order of Procedure

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 2 p.m. 
today, Senator Paul be recognized for up to 1 hour for debate only; 
that following Senator Paul's remarks, the Senate then proceed to a 
period of morning business for debate only until 5 p.m., with the time 
equally divided between the two leaders or their designees; further, 
that the final 5 minutes be reserved for the majority leader or his 
designee.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I reserve the right to object and I will 
object at this time and would like to review that unanimous consent 
request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, under the unanimous consent request 
propounded by the Senator from Oregon, I will remove my objection. I 
will not object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I and Senator 
Cantwell be recognized now as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


            Oil and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, Senator Cantwell and I were joined on May 
11 by 15 other Senators who wrote to the Commodity Futures Trading 
Commission to request that agency, which has a key role in consumer 
protection, take immediate action to impose position limits on crude 
oil futures. We asked that they would act by Monday, May 23.
  Position limits are limits on the number of contracts that a 
financial speculator can buy or sell at any given time. It is extremely 
important that consumers have this protection so we do not see these 
speculators increasingly dominate the market. As the Presiding Officer 
knows, we have a lot of folks who need gas to get to work and get to 
school. We have trucking companies that depend on affordable fuel. We 
have restaurants that need fuel. They are all getting clobbered today.
  Financial speculators who do not buy oil or consume oil are 
constantly pulling more of the oil out of the commodities market. What 
is so troubling about the approach of this key agency is they pretty 
much said they are not going to do anything soon. We have no sense of 
urgency. It is not a priority for them to try to tackle this issue. In 
fact, they are not even going to use their interim authority. They will 
not even use the interim authority they said they were going to use 
last year to protect the consumer at this crucial time.
  This is particularly unfortunate because somehow they have reached 
the judgment that the only thing they ought to be moving on is to try 
to set limits as they relate to commodities generally. I can tell you, 
my phone is not ringing off the hook about the question of cocoa 
prices. The American people are not up in arms about what is going on 
in the cocoa market today. They are concerned about the fact they are 
getting clobbered on gas pricing. The fact is, 40 percent of the oil 
futures market is now dominated by financial speculators, and it is way 
past time for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to act to tamp 
down excess speculation and its impact on higher prices.
  Senator Cantwell serves with me on the Senate Energy Committee. She 
has been a leader on this issue. She has constantly tried to blow the 
whistle on this practice of speculation. It is not the only reason 
gasoline prices are so high, but it clearly is a significant factor. If 
the financial speculators are taking so much of the oil and future oil 
out of the market to essentially hold this dominant position, that 
means there is going to be fewer opportunities for that person who is 
trying to get gas at the pump, the person who runs the restaurant, the 
trucking company, and why it is so important that we have position 
limits.
  This is a crucial consumer issue. The Commodity Futures Trading 
Commission's refusal to act quickly is especially upsetting because 
this agency knows better. They know better. Yet they wrote to Senator 
Cantwell and me and Senator Collins and colleagues that they were not 
going to do much of anything anytime soon.
  In January of 2010, after holding three public meetings on fuel 
prices, the agency proposed to set position limits on four key energy 
commodities: crude oil, natural gas, gasoline, and heating oil. At the 
time, crude was around $75 a barrel.
  Congress was so concerned about the need to control financial 
speculation that it expanded the agency's authority to set speculation 
limits last July as part of the financial reform legislation. That 
legislation specifically directed the agency to set limits on 
nonagricultural commodities such as crude oil within 180 days of 
enactment. That date has long passed. So rather than getting started on 
crucial protections for American consumers and businesses, the agency 
withdrew its January 2010 position limit proposal for energy 
commodities and basically started all over. It is inexplicable, in my 
view, that they would not even use their interim authority to take 
steps to help the consumer who is certainly going to be concerned about 
gasoline prices as we move into this Memorial Day weekend.
  This past January, instead of issuing a final rule within the 180 
days called for by the financial reform legislation, they issued 
another proposed rule. While it is certainly true Congress gave the 
agency expanded authority to set limits on multiple speculation 
holdings in the financial reform bill and not just future contracts, 
the result is there is not any limits at all. That is the bottom line 
for the consumer today.
  Under the schedule proposed by the agency in January's recent 
proposed rule, final position limits are not going to be imposed until 
the first quarter of 2012, almost a year from now. That is what it is 
going to take based on the signals the agency is sending today, and at 
least one of the Commissioners at the agency, Bart Chilton, has pointed 
out that this is really contrary to the deadlines in the financial 
reform law.
  We know most Americans walking on Main Street have not heard of the 
Commodity Futures Trading Commission, but that certainly does not 
diminish its role in overseeing the commodities markets. That is why I 
have been pleased to join with Senator Cantwell and other colleagues to 
continue to press this agency to get out of the regulatory swamp and 
take steps to go to bat for the consumer and wring the excess 
speculation out of the oil market sooner rather than later. The agency 
was directed by the Congress to set speculation limits on more than two 
dozen commodities.
  As I have indicated, I am sure setting position limits on commodities 
such as cocoa is important, but cocoa is not driving the American 
economy the way oil is every single day. Americans use about 19 million 
barrels of oil a day, and two-thirds of the price of a gallon

[[Page 7803]]

of gas is the cost of the crude oil used to make it. So setting limits 
on speculation on crude oil is going to have an impact on the price at 
the pump. The American people and our economy cannot afford to pay the 
hundreds of millions of dollars a month in additional fuel prices that 
come out of their wallets while they wait for the Commodity Futures 
Trading Commission to act. The agency ought to get about doing what it 
proposed more than 16 months ago, and that is rein in speculation, the 
speculation that is driving up the prices at the pump. The agency ought 
to do it now, before more Americans face financial hardship.
  The country is obviously entering into the peak summer driving 
season. That is why I and Senator Cantwell and Senator Collins urged 
the agency to move, and move now. I wanted to outline the agency's 
history of foot dragging.
  I see we are joined now by Senator Cantwell, who has been our leader 
in this cause. I say to my colleague, I so appreciate her leadership. 
This most recent response that we received from the Commodity Futures 
Trading Commission shows once again no sense of urgency, no sense of 
priority, not even a willingness to use the interim authority that they 
could use to go to bat for the American consumer.
  I want it understood I am going to do everything I can to be the 
Senator's partner in this cause until we get these position limits set 
and get these basic protections that our consumers deserve.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor now that Senator Cantwell is here.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oregon for his 
stalwart attention to energy markets and to the concern that many west 
coast residents have over high energy costs. Senator Wyden has long 
been a vocal critic of what's happened in some electricity markets, and 
trying to figure out what has happened with the oil markets and why the 
west coast pays higher gas prices than any place in the country. We 
still wanted to know why. People say we were an isolated market, and 
that is why we were paying the highest gas prices. Then Hurricane 
Katrina hit and our prices still went up, even though we were 
supposedly an isolated market.
  So Senator Wyden has long been a person coming to the Senate, 
fighting for the consumer, saying we should not be gouged by higher 
prices on energy.
  Energy is the lifeblood of any economy. We know what manipulation 
looks like in the Northwest because we saw it with Enron. When our 
electricity markets were manipulated, everybody said it was the 
environmentalists not allowing us to construct new generating 
facilities. Well, when we finally exposed the audiotapes, we realized 
that it was just pure market manipulation. In fact, what we found out 
is that people were taking the futures market and basically making 
plays in the futures market while they also had the ability to affect 
the physical supply market and spot prices for electricity. So by 
combining those schemes with different things such as ``Get Shorty'' 
and ``Fat Boy'' and all of these names they came up with, Enron was 
able to convince utilities and various customers that the supply was 
tight and that they were going to have to pay more for electricity in 
the future and consequently they ought to keep paying these high 
prices. Well, thanks to a lot of hard work by a lot of individuals and 
ultimately the Department of Justice, the Enron schemes were called for 
what they were--just out-and-out market manipulation.
  My colleague, Senator Wyden and I, screamed loudly about that 
situation and said we wished the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 
would have acted a lot sooner on that issue, and if they would have 
acted sooner, we would have saved a lot of jobs in the Northwest. We 
would have saved a lot of industries. A lot of people lost their jobs, 
their retirement, their homes over those high electricity prices.
  Thank God the result was such that we were able to pass new 
legislation in 2005, making it a Federal crime for anybody to 
manipulate natural gas or oil markets. I should say FERC has used that 
authority over the last several years to recoup millions of dollars 
from violations by industry officials who continued to perpetrate the 
same kind of scheme of going into the futures market and holding 
positions in the futures market and then taking physical supply and 
being able to affect the physical supply and demand.
  So this is something that is amazing to us from the west coast. I 
know my colleagues, including Senator Feinstein, Senator Boxer, Senator 
Murray, and I have all been on the same page. Senator Merkley has been 
a loud voice on this issue. We have been through this nightmare. That 
is why I have to say first and foremost that we find it appalling that 
someone would propose H.R. 1, or the Ryan budget, that would take away 
policing ability from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on the 
type of activity that would allow them to properly regulate these 
markets.
  We saw what happened. What we are so appalled about is it seems as 
though it is now happening again in the oil markets. In fact, we see 
today on the front page of the New York Times ``U.S. Suit Sees 
Manipulation of Oil Trades.'' So the commodities commission is finally 
saying now: Yes, we are looking at this case. And it should be no 
surprise what they actually see because it is the same shenanigans that 
happened in electricity, the same shenanigans that happened in natural 
gas, and, yes, the same shenanigans are happening in the oil markets.
  That is the commodity agency that says in this case there was a close 
relationship between the physical oil price and the price of the 
financial futures which moved in parallel. So basically what happened 
is that in the oil futures market, these individual companies and 
traders took large positions. In fact, their positions were so big--and 
that is what Senator Wyden has just described. If this agency would 
come in and set position limits, people wouldn't be able to come in and 
move the market in such a significant way. But at the same time, it is 
alleged that these companies actually had millions of barrels of 
physical crude oil and they actually had no commercial use for the oil. 
So here we have people buying the physical supply--again, to manipulate 
and help tie it into the futures market--when they don't have any 
commercial need for it. That is why it is so important to have the CFTC 
do its job and to interpret who are legitimate hedgers, such as 
airlines, farmers, people who actually need the physical supply, 
juxtaposed to these large institutions that are just coming in and 
moving the market.
  So what is amazing is that at one point in time, what they had as far 
as physical supply--for somebody who didn't even have a commercial use, 
at least according to this New York Times article--was two-thirds of 
the excess barrels available at Cushing. So here is somebody who had 
the physical supply and was controlling two-thirds of marginal oil 
supply and then controlling the futures market. So they were basically 
making money on the upside and they were making money on the downside. 
That is what the CFTC is alleging in its case. I think it is one of the 
first cases in which a small group of traders are being charged in the 
potential role of manipulation of gas prices.
  I don't have to tell the Presiding Officer how critically important 
this is. I have been home recently and paid $4 a gallon for gasoline. 
Many people are starting what is soon going to be the summer driving 
season, and they are outraged at the price of gasoline. It is hurting 
our economy. People who have to commute to work every day, people whose 
businesses depend on reasonable fuel costs are getting gouged with 
these prices, and we have Federal regulators who need to be more 
aggressive at investigating these cases.
  I will say I am very happy the Obama administration and the 
Department of Justice appointed a task force. That is exactly what we 
need. We need every Federal agency that has oversight of these markets, 
whether it is the physical market with the FTC or the CFTC and the 
commodities market, to work

[[Page 7804]]

together with the Department of Justice to make sure these schemes are 
not continued to be perpetrated on the American public.
  Our economy is too important to have this kind of activity continue 
to wreak the kind of havoc it has on our system. When we think about 
it, it is not as if we don't know what the scheme is. We have seen it 
time and time again with these other energy markets. So the question is 
whether we are going to be aggressive and make sure the CFTC has the 
tools it needs, which means not cutting its funding as the Ryan budget 
or H.R. 1 wants to do, and that it actually takes seriously its role 
and responsibility and starts setting position limits, starts the day-
to-day activity, because the value Senator Wyden and I are down here 
talking about, instead of this case that now is going to be 
investigated--how many days, months, and years did we live with the 
potential of higher fuel costs?
  If this case is correct, how many days did we live with the higher 
cost, and how long will the investigation take, versus if the CFTC was 
actually implementing the law and the rules we gave them and enforcing 
position limits? It would be policing the market on a day-to-day basis 
and preventing consumers from paying one dime or one penny more than 
they needed to pay for high fuel costs.
  It used to be that these oil markets were for legitimate hedgers.
  My colleague and I represent a very robust agricultural community. We 
grow lots of different products in the Northwest, probably over 200 
different agricultural products. We depend on the commodities markets 
to hedge for the future. But that market was created, after the Dust 
Bowl devastated so many farmers, to give them a chance to legitimately 
hedge. Now, all of a sudden, it has been captured by these large 
financial institution players. It used to be that those who really 
needed to hedge, such as farmers and airlines, controlled 70 percent of 
the market. Now they are only 30 percent of the market. Seventy percent 
of the market is these large players, just as was described in this 
article--people who are out there basically using their financial 
weight to move the market in a direction that then they can sell on the 
futures market and benefit from it. It is outrageous. It is outrageous 
that our economy has to put up with this, that individuals have to put 
up with this.
  I know my colleague from Oregon and I are going to be out here, and 
we are going to be loud and consistent until we have the rules and 
regulations in place to make sure these markets are properly policed. 
We don't have to wait another day. We don't have to wait 1 more day. 
The commodities commission could be doing this job. They don't need 
another legislative bill from us. They don't need another vote from 
anybody on the commission. They can use their emergency authority. They 
can implement these rules today and help consumers save on high fuel 
prices.
  So I hope my colleagues will help us in this effort to bring up the 
issues and make sure the American public understands what is going on 
so we can bring the pressure to bear on getting proper regulation in 
place.
  I thank the Chair.
  Mr. WYDEN. Would my colleague yield for a question?
  Ms. CANTWELL. Yes.
  Mr. WYDEN. My colleague has made a very eloquent case with respect to 
how this hammers the people who need oil on a daily basis--farmers and 
truckers and restaurants. The Senator from Washington juxtaposed their 
position compared to the speculators. Those people have a lot higher 
tax rate, for example, than do the speculators. So there is one 
advantage after another that the speculators have over the people about 
whom my colleague and I are concerned.
  Is it the understanding of my colleague that the next best step to 
help those people and small businesses who need oil on a daily basis is 
to get the CFTC out of the regulatory swamp and to enact these position 
limits?
  Ms. CANTWELL. Well, when we are paying $4 a gallon for gasoline, we 
are affecting and impacting everybody who moves a product for business 
or anybody who commutes to work for any kind of distance. I know my 
colleague has probably heard, as I have, from a lot of small businesses 
that when fuel costs become the second largest expense, it is hard for 
them to continue to do business.
  So my colleague is right. The CFTC could basically address this by 
just implementing the authority we gave them under the financial 
regulatory reform legislation we passed. That is all they have to do. 
Now, I would say to them that they already have the emergency 
authority. They have so many tools at their disposal.
  I am glad they are investigating this case. I think this case is 
illuminating of the type of scheme that might include the details which 
are so familiar to my colleague and me of prior schemes and how people 
work them. But I would say that an investigation of these schemes is 
only going to go so far in helping the American consumer. If they take 
another 6 to 8 months to investigate these schemes, a lot of people are 
going to lose their jobs. So why not implement the rules they have 
right now, put them in place so we can protect consumers, and certainly 
don't pass legislation here in the Senate or in the House that is going 
to take away the ability to stop the kinds of activities that drive up 
higher gas prices by manipulation.
  We want enforcement, we want it now, we want protection of consumers, 
and we will continue to be vocal about this issue. I thank my colleague 
from Oregon for joining me today to talk about this issue.
  Mr. WYDEN. I thank my colleague. I think it is critically important 
that the Senate know we are going to keep the heat on, on this issue. 
Senator Cantwell and I have tried to point out that the agency is 
dragging its feet. They could use their existing authority. We think 
the kind of shellacking the American consumers and our small businesses 
are taking is not right. We are going to continue this fight until they 
get the consumer protections they deserve.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of New Mexico). The clerk will call 
the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              Health Care

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, as you well know, I come to the floor 
each week with a doctor's second opinion, and it specifically relates 
to the health care law, the law that was passed now over a year ago, 
with many promises made by the President, one of which was that if you 
like your coverage, you can keep it. We now know that is not the case, 
as he had promised. He also talked about this driving down the cost of 
health care. We have seen the cost of health care going up.
  Last week, I came to the Senate floor and talked about something that 
is not known very well. It is a part of this law. It is called the so-
called Independent Payment Advisory Board. I gave five specifics as to 
problems with this board. So today I wish to give another five 
specifics, and I think these are things every single American needs to 
know about the mandates that are part of this health care law and what 
is going to happen to them as more and more components and parts of 
this health care law are implemented.
  People refer to this board as ``IPAB''--not ``iPod'' but ``IPAB''--
and it stands for the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board. But 
I will tell you, this is a Washington board. It is not independent. I 
believe it is going to be very harmful in terms of the health of the 
American people.
  This board often goes unnoticed, and one of the reasons is it 
actually does not become operational until after the 2012 elections, 
until 2013. But it is an extremely powerful and extremely dangerous 
part of the President's health care law. It is a Washington board. It 
empowers 15 unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, 15 full-time 
Washington bureaucrats, who will decide

[[Page 7805]]

how Medicare's dollars are spent. These Washington bureaucrats will use 
basically price controls, and they will use price controls to ration 
medical care and services all across the country.
  You remember, Mr. President, when then-Speaker of the House Nancy 
Pelosi said first you had to pass the bill before you got to find out 
what was in it? Well, now, as more and more Americans learn about this 
rationing board, they will again voice their opposition to the 
President's health care law.
  I will tell you, I want to pick up today where I left off last week. 
I want to share with the American people an additional five things they 
need to know about this board.
  The No. 1 thing today is the President wants to keep this board under 
the radar. He and his administration simply want to disguise the long-
term impact this board's price controls will have on our seniors on 
Medicare. If he does so successfully, the patients on Medicare will be 
the big losers.
  He wants to promise the American people that the board will achieve 
great Medicare savings, but he does not want to explain to the American 
people exactly what those Medicare cuts will do and how the American 
people will ultimately pay the price in their health care.
  The President and Washington Democrats have historically supported 
policies giving government the power to set health care prices. Make no 
mistake, the President is using this Washington board as a Trojan horse 
to accomplish that goal. This is exactly why this board is not going to 
be set up until after the 2012 elections. The American people will not 
face the true impact of this board and the cuts it is going to have on 
their loved ones until after the Presidential election next year. The 
President's plan depends entirely on keeping the true purpose of this 
rationing board well below the radar.
  Here is a second concern; that is, the opposition to the President's 
payment advisory board, interestingly enough, is bipartisan. Even 
members of the President's own Party know that creating a Washington 
board to cut Medicare payments and ration medical services is bad 
policy when it comes to our seniors.
  Even Representative Pete Stark of California, the ranking member of 
the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, said in an April 19, 
2011, New York Times article:

       In its effort to limit the growth of Medicare spending, the 
     board is likely to set inadequate payment rates for health 
     care providers, which could endanger patient care.

  There you have a statement by a member with ranking stature of the 
Democratic Party in the House.
  Now let's take a look at what someone else said. She announced her 
support for legislation which would repeal the President's Payment 
Advisory Board. This is Representative Allyson Schwartz of 
Pennsylvania. Actually, she is a strong champion for the health care 
law. She is also vice chairman of the New Democrat Coalition. She had a 
statement that came out on April 15, 2011--income tax day--saying:

       Congress is a representative body and must assume 
     responsibility for legislating sound health care policy for 
     Medicare beneficiaries, including those policies related to 
     payment systems. Abdicating this responsibility . . . 
     undermines our ability to represent our constituents. . . . I 
     cannot condone the implementation of a flawed policy that 
     will risk beneficiary access to care.

  Third, the President's payment advisory board sets prices and it 
gives Washington more power, not patients. In most cases, Medicare 
payments to doctors--and Members of the Senate from both parties 
understand this--are already well below market rates. That is why 
doctors often limit the number of Medicare patients they see. In more 
severe cases, doctors stop treating new Medicare patients.
  Allowing a rationing board unlimited power to control Medicare prices 
is only going to drive Medicare payments lower, and it is going to 
drive more doctors away from seeing Medicare patients. My concern is 
the prices are going to be driven so low by this rationing board that 
the government will force doctors, hospitals, and other medical 
providers to stop offering any care to Medicare patients.
  Random and punishing cuts to Medicare provider payments will not make 
this program any more efficient. It will not make people's health care 
better. But it will reduce the supply of medical care to our seniors on 
Medicare.
  The Washington board's ability to set prices gives it unprecedented 
control over personal medical decisions, and that is wrong. Those 
decisions should be left to the patient and his or her doctor alone, 
without the interference of 15 Washington bureaucrats.
  No Washington bureaucrat should ever have the right to stand between 
a patient and his or her doctor. At its core, the debate about the 
President's Independent Payment Advisory Board centers around a few 
questions: Do the American people want a Washington board of unelected 
people whom they do not know making their personal health care choices 
for them or do they want to have the freedom and choice to make their 
own health care decisions? Do they want Members of Congress, the people 
whom they send to Washington, to be able and to be held accountable--do 
they want those Members of Congress to explain exactly what spending 
cuts are being discussed and need to be made to ensure Medicare's 
solvency?
  As we know, we all heard just last week, Medicare is going to be 
bankrupt even 5 years faster than it had been thought in the past. 
Interestingly enough--this is No. 4--President Obama doubled down on 
this, on the President's Independent Payment Advisory Board.
  In his April 15 spending speech to the Nation, he doubled down on his 
commitment to this Washington rationing board. In the speech, he said 
he actually wants to give the Board more power to slash Medicare 
payments to providers. Apparently, expanding his rationing board is one 
of the only tangible proposals that the President has to reform 
Medicare and reduce the debt.
  The American people sent us to confront our financial and fiscal 
crisis head on and to come up with solutions to solve the problem. They 
did not send us to cower behind boards and commissions and empty 
promises. They asked us to come to Washington with the courage, the 
strength, and the political will--the political will--to make tough 
spending decisions. Rather than stand up to the challenge, the 
President chose to go all in, placing his bet on 15 bureaucrats yet to 
be identified.
  He asked the American people to trust him that this rationing board 
will squeeze out Medicare savings, at the same time, not impacting--he 
says--our seniors' access to medical care. But I do not think this is a 
bet our Nation's seniors should take or should be willing to take.
  Finally, No. 5, members of my party, the Republicans, are working to 
repeal the President's Independent Payment Advisory Board. Senate 
Republicans are taking a stand against this rationing board, against 
more government control. Senator John Cornyn of Texas has introduced S. 
668. It is the Health Care Bureaucrats Elimination Act. This bill 
repeals the President's Independent Payment Advisory Board, ensuring 
Medicare patients can get the care they need from the doctor they 
choose. I am proud to be a cosponsor, an original cosponsor of this 
piece of legislation.
  That is why I come to you again on the floor with a doctor's second 
opinion, as somebody who, for a quarter of a century in Wyoming, has 
taken care of patients on Medicare--many patients on Medicare--to 
provide a doctor's second opinion that this health care law is bad for 
those patients. It is bad for providers, the nurses, and doctors who 
take care of those patients, and it is bad for the taxpayers.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.


                               The Budget

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I am glad I was on the floor to hear the 
distinguished Senator from Wyoming's comments about the Independent 
Payment Advisory Board, which is Washington, DC, gobbledegook, which 
translates into a rationing board which is going to limit seniors' 
access to care,

[[Page 7806]]

as he so ably described. I appreciate him talking about that. It is a 
topic I will raise in a moment as part of my remarks. But I wish to 
express my appreciation to him for his remarks.
  My larger concern is about our budget, the Federal budget. As one of 
our colleagues across the aisle told the media this week, he said he 
looks forward to voting on the Republican budget. That may seem a 
little odd because this is the Senate and, actually, the Senate does 
not have a budget. The Budget Committee on which I serve has not met to 
consider a proposal by the chairman of the Budget Committee and we have 
not had a chance to offer amendments to vote on it and then for it to 
come to the Senate floor so we would have a Senate budget to vote on.
  Of course, what he was talking about is, he is looking forward to 
voting on the House budget. But I would say the Senate has not 
considered a budget for 750-plus days. No family, no business, no one 
in America, certainly no State can operate in this sort of fiscally 
irresponsible manner, only the Federal Government.
  Now where are we? We are spending 43 cents out of every $1 in 
borrowed money--borrowed from our kids and grandkids. The fact is, a 
newborn baby, born into this world today, inherits $46,000 in debt 
because we have not had the courage to meet this challenge as we must.
  My colleague also said that is going to be one of the defining issues 
of 2012, which, by the way, is an election year. I guess what he means 
is, this is going to be an election issue. I think he is right but not 
for the reasons he suggested.
  First, I wish to refresh everyone's memory. It was just in December 
of last year that the President's own bipartisan fiscal debt commission 
gave us a report, and truly a blueprint, for what I think would be a 
responsible start to dealing with this debt crisis we find ourselves 
confronted with.
  That report--again a bipartisan report--proposed $4 trillion in 
deficit reduction over 10 years. The report said: Federal health care 
spending represents our single largest fiscal challenge over the long 
run. As the baby boomers--people such as me and the Presiding Officer--
retire and get older, health care costs will grow faster than the 
economy. Federal health care spending threatens to balloon.
  As if on cue, the Medicare trustees issued a report just this last 
month with even a starker warning. Medicare's trust fund will be 
insolvent in 2024--about 13 years from now--and the gap between the 
promises Medicare has made to seniors and its funding--or ability to 
fund or pay for those services--is about $24 trillion. That is the so-
called unfunded liability of Medicare.
  Those estimates are, according to the Chief Actuary, an optimistic 
scenario, although it is hard to be optimistic about a $24 trillion 
unfunded liability. But we also know there have been other ominous 
warnings both here at home and around the world. The International 
Monetary Fund, in a working paper last month, noted our potential debt 
crisis.
  The S&P rating agency downgraded its outlook for American debt--in 
other words, our ability to repay those bills--from stable to negative. 
PIMCO, the world's largest bondholder, no longer is purchasing American 
bonds, choosing to purchase other types of investment. That ought to be 
a warning to us.
  If we needed any reminder, even the Chinese Communist Party has given 
an earful to visiting Senators about our debt, of which they happen to 
own about $1 trillion. But they are worried about the value of their 
own investment and, hence, as Admiral Mullen said, we ought to realize 
that because of that situation, debt is the single largest national 
security issue facing America today.
  Despite these ominous warnings and even reports from the President's 
own fiscal commission and a bipartisan one at that, the majority--
Senator Reid--our friends across the aisle, simply are not taking the 
fiscal situation seriously. In fact, the majority leader was quoted 
recently saying: It would be foolish, foolish for the leadership of the 
other party that controls the agenda on the floor and in committees, it 
would be foolish for them to propose a budget.
  The White House has shown twice this year so far that it is not truly 
serious about fiscal discipline. In February, the President proposed a 
budget that completely ignored his own deficit commission. It had $8.7 
trillion in new spending, $1.6 trillion in new taxes, and an additional 
$13 trillion in debt.
  At the time the President released his proposed budget, there were a 
number of my colleagues who were very impressed by it. Some called it 
responsible, others credible, others said it was a balanced approach, a 
good blueprint, a step forward, a careful evaluation, a solid starting 
point, and many other compliments as well. President Obama was so 
pleased with his budget proposal that he called it ``our Sputnik 
moment.'' But, of course, we know his Sputnik failed to launch. None of 
my colleagues who heaped praise on the President's proposal were 
willing to pass a budget resolution or even take up one and have it be 
considered and voted on.
  So President Obama tried again in another big speech in April, when 
he was finally brought, unwillingly, to the debate on our budget and on 
our debt crisis. In that speech at Georgetown in April, he called for 
higher taxes as well as automatic tax increases that would kick in if 
certain conditions were met. He called for deeper cuts in defense 
spending. He invented a new 12-year budget window to disguise the large 
deficits that would otherwise appear if it were the traditional 10-year 
budget window.
  Then the President, I think beneath the dignity of his office, 
verbally abused the very people who had the courage to propose an 
alternative. Then, of course, we have heard the attacks he started, 
which have continued, the false attacks that Republicans want to ``end 
Medicare as we know it.'' Well, I will say Republicans do not want to 
end Medicare as we know it. That is an intentional falsehood. That is a 
lie. Republicans do not want to end Medicare as we know it. We are 
simply trying to inject some cold, hard reality, as observed by the 
President's own debt commission, by the Medicare trustees, and everyone 
else who has taken a responsible look at the problem.
  What is that reality? Well, the reality is that Medicare as we know 
it will end unless we do something to fix it and to save it. My 
colleagues want to talk about ending Medicare as we know it. They have 
short memories because it was these very same colleagues who took $\1/
2\ trillion out of Medicare to fund ObamaCare. They injected the 
rationing commission that my colleague from Wyoming just got through 
talking about and which I will mention again in a moment.
  Many seniors found out, as a result of the health care bill that 
passed only along a party-line vote--only Democratic votes in the 
Senate--that many seniors have already lost their access to Medicare 
Advantage.
  Other retirees are seeing that their former employers have canceled 
their health care plans and found themselves dropped into the Medicare 
system. It has never been explained to me how we can possibly cut $\1/
2\ trillion out of Medicare which, as I said earlier, already has $24 
trillion in unfunded liabilities. So we are exacerbating--we are making 
those liabilities worse, not better--to fund a new entitlement program.
  I would ask: Who has changed Medicare? Who has made it impossible for 
us to continue, under the present course, to keep that promise to our 
seniors? Why is it so important that we work together to try to come up 
with a solution to fix it? Just when we think the debate could not 
stoop any lower and people could not act any more irresponsibly, we are 
confronted with political ads already about Republicans rolling a 
senior off a cliff in a wheelchair.
  I know the American people are smart enough to figure that out. They 
realize this is just an attack ad, and they are smart enough to look at 
the substance. But what we need is a real debate and a discussion and 
try to

[[Page 7807]]

work together to try to solve our problems, not just sort of ``gotcha'' 
politics, the sort of thing people have come to loathe about Congress 
and Washington, DC--not people working together to solve problems but 
people playing ``gotcha'' and focusing only on the next election, not 
on the next generation.
  My colleague from Wyoming talked about the Independent Payment 
Advisory Board, and I realize that is a mouthful. But it is 
bureaucratese, Washington speak, for an unelected, unaccountable group 
of bureaucrats--15 of them--appointed who will actually have the job of 
cutting payments to doctors and hospitals, which will have the 
practical impact of limiting seniors' access to Medicare benefits. What 
good is providing coverage to our seniors if they can't find a doctor 
or hospital to treat them?
  Well, this is good old-fashioned--I should say bad old-fashioned--
price controls, and they don't work. We have seen that already in 
Medicare. In my State of Texas alone, about a third of the doctors 
already limit their new Medicare patients, according to the Texas 
Medical Association. So if you live in the rural parts of the State, it 
is hard to find a doctor. We know the price controls of this rationing 
board will make this trend worse and accelerate it, leading to longer 
wait times and harder-to-access treatment.
  If the board forces our seniors to wait longer for the life-saving 
treatments they need, does that change Medicare as we know it? Well, it 
surely changes Medicare as people have come to expect it and deserve 
it. Yet the President has done nothing but double down on this 
rationing board. You heard in the speech he made in April--the one I 
referred to a moment ago--at Georgetown. He said we are going to 
extract, in the first 10 years another $\1/2\ trillion in savings from 
Medicare, and in the second 10 years, another $1 trillion--$1.5 
trillion sucked out of Medicare. I have to ask, what do you think that 
is going to do to people's access to a doctor and a hospital?
  That is the President's framework. It is not a budget. It is not the 
numbers we are accustomed to considering and voting on, but that is his 
proposal. If the President's proposal to cut $1.5 trillion out of 
Medicare in the next 2 decades doesn't change Medicare as we know it, 
then I don't know what does.
  We know the House of Representatives has labored mightily to produce 
a budget--the so-called Ryan plan. Many colleagues on the other side 
relish the fact that they have stood back and waited for House 
Republicans to act responsibly to try to wrestle with these problems 
and confront them, to tell the truth to the American people about the 
problem, and then they tried their dead level best to meet those 
challenges and deal with them like responsible adults. What did they 
get? A kick in the teeth--attack ads on TV.
  Well, this will allow us, under the House proposal, to fix Medicare 
and to save it. Right now, it is on the road to bankruptcy and oblivion 
and, for the reasons I have observed, and others, it will not work. 
There are some on our side of the aisle who may have some problems with 
the details of the proposed House budget. But the responsible answer to 
that is, let's take up and pass a budget in the Senate and give 
Senators on the Budget Committee an opportunity to offer amendments 
that would improve it, if they can, and then bring it to the Senate 
floor and do what we get paid for--take on these hard problems, 
confront them, debate them, and then make the best decisions we can on 
behalf of the people we work for in our States and across the country.
  I think some elements of the House budget have an awful lot of 
appeal. In fact, we have seen, based on the experience with Medicare 
Part D, the prescription drug plan we passed earlier in the last 
decade, by injecting some market forces and competition and 
transparency, we can bring down prices and increase the quality of 
services. In fact, the Medicare prescription drug plan has come in 46 
percent below what it was originally expected to cost. That is an 
example we can learn from and can begin to implement in trying to bring 
down costs and yet not ration access to care.
  Indeed, the premium support model is advocated by many Democrats and 
Republicans and is similar to how the Federal Government provides 
health insurance for Federal employees, including Members of Congress. 
If it is good enough for Congress, why isn't it good enough to consider 
for American seniors? Do Republicans want to ``change Medicare as we 
know it''? We want to save it, we want to fix it, and we want it to be 
there as a promise that we can keep, as opposed to one we cannot keep, 
because it is on a path to bankruptcy and oblivion.
  Our friends across the aisle say: No, trust us, we are from the 
government, we will fix it. The way they want to do it is with 
Draconian cuts to doctors and hospitals that will limit people's access 
to health care. We believe the transparency and choice and competition 
that has worked in Medicare Advantage and the prescription drug program 
can work here as well. If people disagree with me, I respect their 
right to do that. But why aren't we having a responsible debate on the 
floor and voting on a budget, as opposed to the irresponsible rhetoric, 
attack ads, and the campaign already begun for 2012? I am talking about 
from the White House to the Congress.
  I think some of my colleagues firmly believe in their heart of 
hearts--they have been listening to political consultants, and they say 
the way to win the next election is to scare the living daylights out 
of our seniors. I think that is irresponsible. People should resist the 
temptation to do that to win an election and keep their job. Indeed, I 
find myself in agreement with some of the comments made by President 
Obama himself last summer. He said:

       We're not going to be able to do anything about any of 
     these entitlements if what we do is characterized--whatever 
     proposals are put out there--as the other party is being 
     irresponsible; the other party is trying to hurt our seniors; 
     or the other party is doing X, Y, Z.

  I agree with that, but that is not what we are hearing across the 
aisle and on the airwaves of America. That was the President's message 
in 2010. It obviously has changed since 2012, since he began his own 
personal attack on the only responsible budget proposal that has been 
made in April.
  Unfortunately, I think it is a prematurely begun election campaign 
for 2012. It is an abdication of our responsibility to engage in this 
sort of ``gotcha'' politics, without trying to take on and confront the 
problem. I don't think it is responsible to try to scare seniors for 
political points. But also I don't think Republicans should allow 
ourselves to be merely punching bags and let the other side negatively 
characterize our motives or the seriousness of the problem our country 
faces.
  What we need is to resist the temptation to engage in this sort of 
gamesmanship and to try to do our dead level best to fulfill our oath 
and do our job as representatives of the American people. I think they 
would welcome that. But all we have seen so far is the attacks and the 
``gotcha'' politics, which I think will do nothing but earn their 
contempt, and deservedly so. We can do better and we need to try.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               The Budget

  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise to discuss the budget. I have 
long believed we need to get serious about the deficit. I have been 
listening to my colleagues across the aisle, and I believe we have to 
be responsible in the way we do it. That is why a year ago I was one of 
a handful of Senators who fought for the creation of the fiscal debt 
commission. In fact, a number of us came together and said we are going 
to get this debt commission or we won't vote for the debt ceiling 
increase. As a result, while we could not get the statutory fiscal debt 
commission, we got the debt commission. A lot of people thought it 
would result in a report that would sit on a dusty shelf, but it has 
been well received, and it is

[[Page 7808]]

the blueprint for a group of Senators who are negotiating a bipartisan 
plan for the budget.
  Like everybody, I don't agree with every single recommendation in 
that report. But I have, in fact, supported the bipartisan effort. I 
think there are a lot of good things in that report and a very strong 
way to reduce the debt in the long term.
  This week, we are scheduled to vote on the Ryan budget. If it wasn't 
already crystal clear, this vote will show that a comprehensive 
solution to our fiscal challenges cannot be achieved by drawing 
ideological lines in the sand.
  When the Ryan budget was first rolled out, some hailed it as 
courageous. But I have to ask how it can be called ``courageous'' when 
it protects the $4 billion a year we give to oil companies, it fails to 
address some of the military defense spending that even Secretary Gates 
has said could be cut. Instead the House passed its budgets on the 
backs of the middle class and seniors. In Minnesota, we don't call that 
courageous.
  Before we get into the policy, we should step back and look at the 
numbers. According to the CBO, our debt is currently projected to reach 
67 percent of GDP in 2022, but under the Ryan plan debt would actually 
reach 70 percent of GDP by 2022.
  So despite $4.3 trillion in drastic and painful cuts--two-thirds of 
which would come on the backs of the middle class--the plan barely 
reduces deficits at all over the next decade.
  Despite the fact that the budget doesn't achieve what it sets out to 
accomplish in deficit reduction, leaders in the House continue to try 
to frame the debate in terms of numbers. That is because when you take 
their plan to the American people and ask them, ``Are these your 
priorities?'' and, ``are these your values?'' the resounding answer is, 
``no.'' The American people want a reasonable, bipartisan plan that 
addresses our serious challenges. That House Ryan budget is not the 
answer. What this debate boils down to is not where we need to get but 
how we will get there.
  I believe we need to reduce this debt. I believe we can reduce that 
$4 trillion in the next 10 years. I believe there is a much better way 
to do it than what we have seen in the Ryan budget.
  It may look like this plan to end Medicare that they passed in the 
House is reducing health care costs, but it only does so by ending 
Medicare as we know it.
  This plan would gradually replace Medicare with a system of vouchers 
that seniors could use to help buy private health insurance. This would 
put private companies in control of health benefits and cause seniors 
to pay more for their health care or get fewer benefits.
  Because the voucher will fail to keep pace with increases in the cost 
of health care, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that seniors 
and the disabled would pay sharply more for Medicare coverage under the 
Ryan plan--an average of $6,359 more in the first year, more than 
double the cost under current law.
  Defenders of this plan say it won't affect anyone who is over 55 and 
that Medicare will be available for them. Unfortunately, this isn't 
true. The Ryan plan would repeal the part of the health care reform law 
that closes the Medicare prescription drug ``doughnut hole.'' This is 
the gap in coverage where seniors have to pay all of the costs of their 
prescription drugs. Currently, that number is a little over $3,600. 
This would mean seniors would have to pay much more out of pocket for 
prescription drugs. In Minnesota, that would cost our seniors $40 
million in 2012 in additional drug costs alone.
  I believe we must do all we can to rein in health care costs. 
Minnesota has always been a leader in providing low-cost, high-quality 
health care, and I believe we can be an example of how we can reduce 
health care spending, while still delivering excellent care to 
patients.
  For instance, if the spending per patient with chronic diseases 
everywhere in the country mirrored the efficient level of spending in 
the Mayo Clinic's home region of Rochester, MN, Medicare could have 
saved $50 billion over 5 years. Medicare could have saved $50 billion 
over 5 years by using the Mayo model--some of the highest quality 
health care in the world. So, yes, there are ways we can better deliver 
health care not only for less cost but also for better results.
  Medicare must continue to institute further reforms including the 
creation of the accountable care organizations, reductions in payments 
to hospitals with high readmission rates, bundled payments, and a focus 
on fraud. These reforms are meant to incentivize doctors and hospitals 
to provide high-quality, efficient care.
  The radical changes to Medicare that are proposed in the Ryan budget 
are not solutions to our long-term debt. There is a way to get the 
country on a better fiscal path, one where you are not doing it on the 
backs of our seniors. You would think that if you were going to take 
such a drastic step as any Medicare as we know it, you would put most 
of the savings toward deficit reduction. Instead, the Ryan budget uses 
its $4.3 trillion in savings for $4.2 trillion in tax breaks that would 
disproportionately go to the wealthiest Americans. Again, instead of 
putting that money into deficit savings, it disproportionately puts the 
money in the pockets of the wealthiest Americans. At the same time the 
House Republican budget is disproportionately targeting seniors and the 
middle class, it leaves the Pentagon--which makes up 20 percent of the 
budget--virtually untouched. Defense Secretary Gates himself has mapped 
out several smart cuts and alternatives we can make to the Defense 
budget to save a net $78 billion over the next 5 years. In the spirit 
of shared sacrifice, I agree we should include commonsense cuts to 
defense spending to reduce the Federal budget.
  Those are just some of the ideas. This basically comes down to value. 
Look what we can save. We can save $240 million--$240 million--simply 
by negotiating prescription drug costs under Medicare Part D--$240 
million over 10 years. We can save $4 billion annually--that is $40 
billion over 10 years--by taking away the tax breaks of the oil 
companies. We can save $78 billion with the defense cuts I just 
discussed. We can bring the tax rates back to the Clinton levels for 
people making over $1 million. Even if we set it at $1 million, we save 
$360 million over 10 years. That is real money. That is a budget that 
is based on values that protect the middle class.
  When I talk to the people of my State, they want a plan that has 
shared sacrifice, that is reasonable, and that is bipartisan. They want 
a balanced and reasonable approach. They want us to come together on a 
plan that will strengthen our country. I look forward to continuing to 
work across the aisle to make this happen. Unfortunately, that is not 
what this Ryan budget is about.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cardin). The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 
minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                    Change of Course in Afghanistan

  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I rise today to call for a change of 
course in Afghanistan. On May 1, a targeted strike by U.S. forces 
achieved a central goal of the war that began in Afghanistan nearly a 
decade ago.
  The death of Osama bin Laden by no means ends the threat posed by al-
Qaida or other terrorist groups. However, bin Laden's death provides an 
opportunity for Congress and the White House to assess a new strategy 
for keeping America safe and defending our interests around the world.
  Today, I am calling for three changes to our strategy in Afghanistan. 
First, we must begin handing responsibility over to Afghan forces and 
bring most of our troops home by the end of next year. Second, we 
should focus on fighting terrorism, not nation building. Third, our 
efforts to keep America safe from terrorism should center on where most 
terrorist threats come from, Pakistan.
  The United States should not be doing the work the Afghans should be 
doing for themselves. The Afghans need

[[Page 7809]]

to stand up and take responsibility for the security of their own 
country.
  The President has announced this July will mark the beginning of a 
transition of security responsibility to Afghan forces. However, in my 
view, the transition plan is too slow. We need to begin handing 
responsibility of security to Afghan forces immediately and aim to have 
most U.S. combat troops out of Afghanistan by the end of next year.
  We should leave behind only a small force necessary to hunt down and 
kill terrorists in Afghanistan and help the Afghan military perform 
their duties.
  We Americans are fortunate to have the best military in the world. 
These brave men and women continue to do everything we ask of them. 
They have spent almost 10 years fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many 
of our troops have spent multiple years deployed overseas, hiking over 
frigid mountains, traversing hot deserts with heavy loads on their 
backs, and spending years apart from their families. But we don't hear 
these troops complain. These Americans continue to serve and to fight 
and to die for a country we all love.
  Seeing these troops in action during my visit to Afghanistan last 
year was truly remarkable, very impressive. Their unwavering commitment 
has come, however, at a great price. As of today, 1,219 troops have 
been killed in Afghanistan, 11,411 have been wounded, 9 Montanans have 
died, and 50 Montanans have been wounded fighting in Afghanistan.
  These Montanans hail from small towns such as Hungry Horse, Darby, 
Shepherd, and Troy. Behind each of these fallen warriors are dozens of 
broken hearts in their families and communities. Thousands more will 
suffer their entire lives with post-traumatic stress disorder or 
traumatic brain injuries that have thus far gone undetected.
  These brave troops continue to fight because we ask them to and 
because they love their country. I receive letters from their families 
all the time, like this one from Janice Roberts from Malta, MT. Janice 
writes:

       Our 27-year-old son is being sent on a third combat 
     deployment to Afghanistan. This is his second ordeal in less 
     than a year. Our son has not even recovered emotionally or 
     mentally from the last two deployments. Truthfully, the only 
     people who care about what is happening to our young troops 
     are the military families.

  This letter is a reminder we have a sacred obligation to our troops 
and their families. Any mission we ask them to accomplish must be 
vital--absolutely vital--to America's national security.
  It is time we demand the Afghans shoulder more of the load. Afghan 
police forces stand at 285,000. In 2010, the Afghan National Security 
Force grew by 70,000. We have spent 10 years training them. It is time 
for the Afghans to do the job we have trained them to do.
  As we draw down in Afghanistan, the Afghans will have to step up. As 
we withdraw, they will have the task of governing their own country. 
The Afghans will develop Afghan solutions to Afghan problems, and that 
is the way it needs to be.
  Second, we need to invest more in killing terrorists and less on 
nation building. The raid that killed bin Laden relied on years of 
perseverance by intelligence officers, expensive surveillance 
technology, and the best special operations forces on Earth. We need to 
continue to make investments in these capabilities to see that other 
terrorists face the same fate as bin Laden.
  As we invest more in counterterrorism capabilities, we do so knowing 
full well we are facing enormous challenges at home. The U.S. 
Government's total debt exceeds $14 trillion.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for another 5 
minutes, and I will not ask for another extension.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BAUCUS. I thank my good friend for being so helpful.
  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ADM Mike Mullen, described 
the U.S. debt as the ``biggest national security threat.'' Since 
September 11, 2001, we have spent over $1.2 trillion in Iraq and 
Afghanistan. Just think of that--$1.2 trillion. Every month we spend 
$10 billion in Afghanistan. This is roughly $1 out of every $7 we spend 
on defense. This level of spending is simply not sustainable. We should 
focus on the core mission that led us to Afghanistan to begin with, and 
that is keeping America safe from terrorism.
  Finally, and most important, our fight against global terrorism must 
begin to focus on Pakistan. In 2008, then-CIA Director Michael Hayden 
said:

       Let me be very clear today. Virtually every major terrorist 
     threat that my agency is aware of has threads back to the 
     tribal areas of Pakistan.

  A State Department report last summer reiterated this assessment and 
found that ``al-Qaida's core in Pakistan remained the most formidable 
terrorist organization targeting the U.S. homeland.''
  We have invested enormous sums to build an effective partnership with 
Pakistan to fight terrorism. Since 2002, the United States has provided 
over $18 billion in foreign assistance to Pakistan--the highest of any 
other country in 2009 except Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet it is no secret 
that Pakistan plays a double game. Osama bin Laden's hideout location 
raises serious questions.
  I recently called upon Secretary of Defense Gates and Secretary 
Clinton to take a hard look at whether Pakistan is doing enough to find 
and kill terrorists in its own country. I will not support providing 
funding to Pakistan until I view this assessment. I am gravely 
concerned about the commitment of Pakistan's military intelligence 
services to fighting terrorism.
  During a visit to Pakistan last year, I made it clear to President 
Zardari and General Kayani that Pakistan must do more to eliminate safe 
havens within their own borders. We cannot accept excuses; we need 
results. Without progress in Pakistan, we cannot succeed in 
Afghanistan. But the sad irony is that our large troop presence in 
Afghanistan actually makes it harder to press Pakistan to crack down on 
terrorists and militants.
  Most of the fuel, food, and ammunition for our troops in Afghanistan 
is imported through Pakistan. As long as we depend on the Port of 
Karachi for our supplies, we have limited leverage on Pakistan to force 
an end to this deadly double game. To effectively defend our Nation 
against terrorism, we need to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan and 
focus more on Pakistan.
  Our military can do almost anything we ask it to do, but it can't do 
everything. To meet the growing challenges around the world, we need to 
start bringing our troops home from Afghanistan this July and complete 
the withdrawal by the end of next year. We need to work together to 
make the 21st century the American century--to focus on jobs, improving 
education, rebuilding roads and bridges, and making the American 
economy the best place to do business in the world.
  The death of Osama bin Laden marks a turning point in history. We 
must take advantage of this opportunity to chart a new course in 
Afghanistan. I salute the brave men and women who made this day 
possible and who continue to serve overseas.
  My thoughts are with the hundreds of Montanans serving in the Armed 
Forces. May God bless America and may He keep our brave troops safe.
  Mr. President, I again thank my friend for yielding me time, and I 
yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from 
Kentucky is recognized for 1 hour.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak about the 
PATRIOT Act. I think it is a shame we are not going to be debating or 
having any votes on this act, particularly since it was promised by our 
leadership.
  I would like at this time to yield the floor to my good friend, the 
Senator from New Mexico, if he would like to make a few remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, let me just say to my 
colleague from Kentucky, Senator Paul, I

[[Page 7810]]

very much appreciate his yielding a little time, and I am looking 
forward to hearing some of his statements on the PATRIOT Act. I know 
this is an issue that is close to his heart.
  I served with his father in the House, and I know he was very 
passionate on this issue. I know it is an issue on which the Senator 
from Kentucky campaigned and about which he has great passion, and he 
has brought that passion to the Senate floor. So I very much appreciate 
that and would like to work with him.
  First of all, when we call it the PATRIOT Act, I put that in quotes 
and call it the so-called ``PATRIOT Act.'' This is not a patriot act. 
Patriots stand up for the Constitution. Patriots stand up for the 
freedoms and liberty that are embodied in the Constitution. I think 
true patriots, when they are public servants, stand up and do what is 
right, even if it is unpopular.
  One of the things I talked about a little earlier today was how the 
PATRIOT Act became law. I was over in the House of Representatives, 
serving with the father of the Senator from Kentucky, and I remember 
well what happened on 9/11 when the planes went into the Twin Towers in 
New York, and then shortly after a plane was coming into the Pentagon 
in Washington, and how we were all horrified at this incident and what 
had happened. What transpired on this legislation, this bill that later 
became law, the so-called PATRIOT Act, is everybody became so concerned 
that they decided we, the institution, the Congress, could not debate 
it; we had to just pass legislation we had not even read. So we did not 
have committee hearings. We did not bring in all the people who 
normally would be brought into the process, who understand the 
Constitution. We didn't do any of that. Within a matter of weeks after 
9/11, we brought a bill to the floor of the House of Representatives 
without the normal preparation, and basically everybody was told we 
just need to pass this.
  I remember one Senator--one Representative at the time--waving a 
piece of paper and saying: There is only one copy of this on the floor, 
and it is hot off the press. He had a piece of paper from the Xerox 
machine that was still hot. Those were the circumstances in which we 
voted, and that is how we got the so-called PATRIOT Act.
  What has happened since then? Senator Baucus, my colleague here from 
Montana, talked about the capture of Osama bin Laden. We have been in 
Afghanistan, we displaced the Taliban government, we eliminated the 
training camps, we decimated al-Qaida, we captured bin Laden. We have 
done all these things, but one thing we have not done is come back and 
revisit the PATRIOT Act, taken a really hard look at it to say is it 
working or is it not and allow all the Senators here the opportunity to 
offer amendments.
  I know the Senator from Kentucky has several amendments he would like 
to offer. I have an amendment that really focuses on what has happened 
here today--in the last couple of days. We had an extension. We thought 
we were going to have debate. Because of the gridlock and everything 
that goes on here, we got jammed up. My amendment would say, let's not 
extend this for 4 years without open debate. It would say, let's take 3 
months, do another extension, and really focus on the idea that when 
that 3 months is up, we are going to be allowed the time to have 
debate, to have discussion, to have very knowledgeable individuals who 
serve on the Judiciary Committee--I believe the Presiding Officer 
serves on the Judiciary Committee, others serve on the Judiciary 
Committee and have the expertise--with all that expertise come to the 
floor. I am on an amendment with Senator Leahy which is a good, solid 
amendment that has to do with various aspects. I hope we can get that 
to the floor. We all have amendments, but we are jammed up in this 
process now. The amendment I would propose is that rather than 4 years, 
for 3 months what we do is organize ourselves so we can come back, we 
can have the debate, we can have an open amendment process and then 
move on to whatever we move on to. But at least the Senate will have 
worked its will.
  We are told over and over--and I always heard it in my civics class--
that the Senate is the greatest deliberative body. If we are a great 
deliberative body, we have not focused that deliberation on one of the 
most important aspects of our society; that is, our liberty and our 
freedom that is enshrined in the Constitution.
  I find it a little ironic, in a way, the contrast we have today with 
the situation in the Middle East. We have many of these countries where 
the people of those countries are striving for more freedom, striving 
for more democracy, and we are supporting that effort. President Obama 
and many Members of the Senate, many Members of Congress are saying we 
think this is a good idea, that there is a striving for more freedom. 
But here on the floor of the Senate, we are not willing to analyze what 
this so-called PATRIOT Act has done to our freedom in the United 
States.
  This is not just my view. There are some independent views as to why 
the PATRIOT Act needs to be examined, why the PATRIOT Act needs this 
open debate, needs deliberation. In March of 2007, the Justice 
Department inspector general came out and took a look at the PATRIOT 
Act process and the national security letters. As the Senator from 
Kentucky knows, a national security letter doesn't have court 
supervision. The FBI can issue a national security letter--an official 
in the FBI--without that kind of supervision. The inspector general 
concluded there was some serious abuse within the Department of Justice 
as to how the FBI and other officials were using national security 
letters. I put that information from an inspector general in the Record 
earlier this morning. It highlights serious problems. We have not 
looked at that. We have not debated that. We have not allowed 
amendments on that national security letter. I think the Senator from 
Kentucky has one on that, which he is going to be talking about in a 
little bit.
  Second, an independent branch of our government--the courts--has 
looked at the PATRIOT Act. Several courts have found provisions of the 
PATRIOT Act unconstitutional in terms of the fourth amendment, in terms 
of the first amendment, and many of those decisions are working their 
way up through the courts. It is only prudent that we, as the Senate, 
take a look at those rulings, analyze what the courts are saying, and 
then come back to this so-called PATRIOT Act and see whether we need to 
make changes based on what the courts have told us. We have those 
rulings. We have not taken a look at them.
  We are at a point where we need deliberation. I very much appreciate 
the Senator from Kentucky speaking out on this issue.
  Benjamin Franklin used to talk about our freedom and liberty that was 
in the Constitution, and I am paraphrasing here, but he would say that 
those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither. That is 
a very powerful statement by one of the Founders of our democracy.
  With that, I thank the Senator from Kentucky for yielding me time, 
and I look forward to hearing his comments on the floor and look 
forward to working with him so we can get an open, deliberative process 
here that will really serve America and move us toward the deliberative 
process I think we all want.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky has the floor.
  Mr. PAUL. I thank the Senator for his comments. I think what this 
shows is that it is a bipartisan effort that says we should protect our 
Constitution. Those on the left and those on the right who believe in 
the Constitution believe it should be protected. That brings together 
some of us who may not necessarily agree on all other issues, but when 
it comes to the Constitution, when it comes to the basic Bill of 
Rights, we are concerned both on the right and left, on the Democratic 
and the Republican side. The problem is that those of us who are 
concerned with the Constitution are in the minority of both sides, so 
we are being quieted down, we are being told to sit quietly in the back 
of the room and don't make waves. We want to

[[Page 7811]]

have a debate over the PATRIOT Act because we are concerned about our 
liberties. We are all concerned about terrorism too, but we don't think 
you have to give up your liberties in order to combat terrorism.
  On February 15, we extended the PATRIOT Act for 90 days. During that 
time and on the Senate floor on February 15, we were promised a week of 
debate, and we were promised an open amendment process. We are now 
amidst a process where we will have no debate and no amendments. Do we 
fear terrorism so much that we will not have debate? Do we fear 
terrorism so much that we throw out our Constitution and are unwilling 
and afraid to debate our Constitution? I think it is a sad day that we 
can't do that. Are Senators afraid to vote on the issues of the day, 
afraid to debate the Constitution, afraid to have an open forum and 
debate whether the PATRIOT Act is constitutional? I think this does a 
great disservice to the voters.
  They talk about this being the world's most deliberative body. We are 
unwilling to deliberate. We are unwilling to have questions broached as 
to whether the PATRIOT Act is unconstitutional. We have had 99 days 
since we extended it, 43 days in session, and we have had 56 votes. 
What does that mean in the context of things? We are setting a record 
for the least amount of votes ever to occur in the Senate. There are 
some important questions we should be debating, but unless it is a 
forgone conclusion, unless they have counted the votes and decided the 
outcome before we have the debate, we are precluded from debating.
  Wendell Phillips, the great abolitionist, wrote, ``Eternal vigilance 
is the price of liberty.'' The PATRIOT Act is a perfect example of how 
a lack of vigilance leads to loss of liberty.
  In the aftermath of 9/11, we amended the Constitution with the 
PATRIOT Act. You say: Whoa, we didn't have an amendment to the 
Constitution, did we? We did not do it the way we are supposed to, but 
we did in reality amend the Constitution with the PATRIOT Act. How did 
this happen? We were fearful. Mr. President, 9/11 had happened, and we 
wanted to stop terrorism. All of us want that, but do we have to give 
up our constitutional liberties in order to do that?
  How did the PATRIOT Act change the Constitution? How did the PATRIOT 
Act change the fourth amendment? In the fourth amendment, it says:

       The right of the people to be secure in their persons, 
     houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches 
     and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall 
     issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or 
     affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be 
     searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

  The PATRIOT Act changed this. The PATRIOT Act changed the standard 
from probable cause, which is a longstanding position and standard 
within the courts which limits the police from coming into your house 
unless there is probable cause that you have either committed a crime 
or are in the act of committing a crime--we changed this to a standard 
we now call relevance. But that is changing the Constitution.
  How do you change the Constitution by majority vote? It is supposed 
to be a supermajority in both bodies. Then it is to go back and be 
ratified by three-fourths of the States. It is supposed to be difficult 
to change the Constitution, difficult to amend the Constitution. Why? 
Because we thought some of these rights were so important that we 
should not allow a majority to change them. Those of us who own guns 
and believe in gun ownership think the second amendment is protected 
from a simple majority taking away the second amendment. Likewise, the 
first amendment--those of us who prize the ability of the press to 
print and to respond and to hold beliefs, however unpopular, those of 
us who wish to have a country in which religion is not hampered and we 
can say what we believe and not have it hampered by the government, we 
don't believe a majority should take away these rights.
  But a majority did take away part of the fourth amendment because we 
changed the standard of the fourth amendment from probable cause to 
relevance. So if they want to look at your records, they just have to 
say it is relevant. They don't have to say you are a terrorist. They 
don't have to say you are a foreigner. They don't have to say you are 
conspiring with anyone. They just have to say they have some interest 
in your library records.
  How often is this going on? There is something called suspicious 
activity reports. Some of this was started before the PATRIOT Act, some 
of it is separate from the PATRIOT Act, but much of it was emboldened 
by the PATRIOT Act. The suspicious activity reports are where your bank 
spies on you. You may not know this is happening, you may not even know 
if they have spied on you, and they probably won't tell you. But if you 
made a transaction that involved more than $5,000, you could well have 
been spied on by your bank and reported to the government.
  Some people say: I am not doing anything wrong; I don't care if they 
look at my records. Here is the thing: If you look at my visa bill, you 
can tell what doctors I go to. If I see a psychiatrist and I don't want 
everybody to know it, that may be on my Visa bill these days. What 
magazines I read is on my Visa bill, what books I order from Amazon or 
another bookseller from the Internet, whether I drink alcohol, whether 
I gamble. There is a lot about your life that is involved in your 
financial records, and I think they do deserve protection and we do 
deserve a standard where we don't say, well, it might be relevant, or, 
we might just want to troll through all these records to see if anybody 
might be committing a crime.
  This one is even worse than many of the other aspects because the 
suspicious activity reports do not begin with the government asking any 
questions. They tell your bank to watch you. Your bank is to watch you 
and to watch all of your transactions and to report to the government. 
So they have force.
  You say: Maybe they are only reporting terrorists. Since 2001, since 
9/11, 8 million suspicious activity reports--8 million--have been 
filed. Over 1 million of these are filed a year. The thing is, you 
could well ask for a Freedom of Information Act inquiry and ask whether 
you have been investigated by your government for your transactions.
  My point is this is an invasion of your privacy. It does not have any 
judicial restraint upon it. And the other thing is, it may not even be 
good for finding terrorists. It may be they are getting so much 
information they cannot even read or listen to all the information. It 
is kind of like what they are doing at the airports. Because they 
insist everybody be searched and everybody be patted down, we are 
patting down 6-year-olds. A little girl in my town--her dad is a 
physician and practiced with me at my same practice--was patted down 
where they are putting their hands inside her pants. This is absurd--6-
year-old girls.
  The thing is, by doing that, they are wasting time on people who will 
not be attacking us and spending less time on people who will be 
attacking us. It is the same with banking records. If they are looking 
at your banking records, they do not have the time to spend looking at 
records of people who possibly would be attacking us. Eight million 
records have been looked at--no judge's order, no judicial review. This 
one is not even reviewed by anybody in government. They are giving this 
power carte blanche to banks, and they are telling the banks: If you do 
not spy on your customer, you will be fined. They estimate that $7 
billion a year is spent by banks complying with this order to spy on 
their customers.
  The thing is, we are having trouble in our economy. The banks are 
struggling. The economy is struggling. We are having trouble with jobs. 
And yet we are going to add $7 billion of costs onto the banks to spy 
on their customers.
  Might there be an occasion where a bank transfer or bank activity 
could be a terrorist activity? Yes. If we are investigating those, 
let's ask for a warrant. You say: It will be too slow. We never get it. 
Warrants are almost never denied. There is a special court set up for 
the investigation of intelligence. It

[[Page 7812]]

is called the FISA Court. It has been around since the 1970s. Before 
the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Court never turned down a warrant.
  You say: These people are awful; we have to get them off the street. 
It doesn't matter, I don't want any restraint; I just want it done.
  Unfortunately, that has been the attitude of the people up here and a 
majority of people after 9/11. The people were so frightened that they 
said: Do anything, I don't care.
  The problem with that attitude is, even if you want to argue that has 
not been abused yet, what happens when people are elected to your 
government who decide they do not like your religion or you believe in 
a certain kind of marriage, and you want to say this and they want to 
investigate you? There is no step to stop that. There is no step to 
say: Your church believes in this unorthodox belief or this belief that 
we do not call politically correct or it is no longer acceptable, but 
we want to investigate the banking records of the church and see if we 
can take away their IRS number or tax exemption. If you do not have any 
restraint to these activities, someday we will get a government that 
has no restraint and then goes forward to say: We want to get that 
church shut down because that church is saying something we disagree 
with or these people are reading these books we do not like.
  This goes across the party aisle. The Library Association is 
concerned with this also, that people's books are being looked at. 
Think about it. Do you want the government to know what books you read? 
Do you want to be on a watchlist because of the books you read?
  They say: Oh, there are provisions. We have made provisions. That 
will not happen.
  The only way you have a real provision or protection is if you have 
procedural steps that say someone must review this before it happens.
  If we have someone who we think is terrible and they need to be off 
the streets, if they are accused of rape, accused of murder, accused of 
robbery, accused of the most heinous crimes we can think of, and it is 
2 in the morning, we call a judge and we get a warrant. It is almost 
never turned down. But it is one step removed from the police breaking 
down every door of every person they suspect and not having any kind of 
discussion with someone who has a level head, who is not part of the 
investigation.
  Many up here will say we are in grave danger. If the PATRIOT Act 
expires, all things could happen and terrorism could break loose. What 
they are arguing, though, is that there is a scenario where we would 
not get warrants to investigate terrorism. That never existed. Before 
the PATRIOT Act, we were not turning down these warrants.
  Some have argued that Moussaoui, the 19th hijacker--he was captured a 
month in advance of 9/11--many have said that if we only had the 
PATRIOT Act, we could have gotten him. That is untrue. There is a 
provision called the lone wolf provision in the PATRIOT Act, but we did 
not get Moussaoui because we did not do our job. We did not communicate 
well. The superiors to the officers and the FBI agents in the field did 
not even ask for a warrant. They turned down a request for a warrant 
without even asking the FISA Court for it.
  We have the 19th hijacker a month in advance. We have his computer. 
When we do look at his computer on 9/12, we link him very quickly, 
within a matter of hours, to all the other hijackers. It is easy in 
hindsight to say we could have stopped 9/11, but to tell you the truth, 
we have to look at the rules and say: Could we possibly have gotten 
that information? The answer is yes.
  The FBI agent in Minnesota wrote 70 letters to his superiors. The FBI 
was told that Moussaoui was possibly an agent of terrorism. The French 
Government confirmed it. That was all we needed. With that information, 
had they gone to the FISA Court, they would have gotten a warrant. When 
the 9/11 Commission report came out, they acknowledged as much. 
Moussaoui's warrant, in all likelihood, would not have been turned 
down, and there is a possibility we would have stopped it.
  The suspicious activity reports are particularly galling because they 
are businesses that are forced to spy on their citizens. There is 
another form of spying that goes on as well. These are called national 
security letters. These are like warrants. They go after your banking 
records, such as the suspicious activity reports, but they are a little 
more targeted in the sense that the government is asking for an NSL. 
But it is not a judge who asks for an NSL. The person who asks for an 
NSL is an FBI agent, essentially a police or law enforcement agent. The 
danger here is that we have removed the step where the police officer 
or the FBI agent would then ask for permission from a judge. That is my 
problem with these national security letters.
  Some say: We are not doing that many of them. Initially, we were not. 
Now we have done over 200,000 national security letters. One of my 
reforms, if it were to take place, would be to ask judges to review 
these. I see no reason why they should not review them.
  Some have said: You have no expectation of privacy. The courts have 
already ruled that you have no expectation of privacy in your papers or 
electronic records. This is the way it has been interpreted, but I 
think it has been misinterpreted. I think it has been interpreted that 
your banking records do not deserve privacy when they are not in your 
house, and I think it is an incorrect interpretation of the fourth 
amendment. The fourth amendment says that in your papers, you are to be 
protected. It does not specify those papers are in your possession or 
in someone else's.
  At this time, I yield the floor to my good friend from South 
Carolina.
  Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I thank Senator Paul. I came down to the 
floor to thank him for bringing up a number of issues of concern and 
being willing to stand here and tell America what those concerns are.
  I also respect his demanding the opportunity for debate and for 
amendments of such an important bill. It is extraordinary, particularly 
after the majority leader had promised in February that the PATRIOT Act 
renewal would get a week of debate with the chance to offer amendments. 
After a couple of weeks of doing absolutely nothing on the Senate 
floor, Senator Paul and others were denied the opportunity to offer 
amendments that would have brought up legitimate debates about the 
PATRIOT Act.
  There are a number of things a lot of us would have liked to have 
learned more about, heard some of the arguments we have heard from 
Senator Paul today. Unfortunately, that has been limited to a 
relatively small amount of time. It is, frankly, stunning to me that 
the majority is actually willing to let the PATRIOT Act expire rather 
than give Senator Paul a few amendments. That is an extraordinary 
situation for the Senate that considers itself the world's greatest 
deliberative body when one of the most important pieces of legislation 
we could consider is jammed up against a break with no opportunity for 
amendment.
  I do not want to interrupt Senator Paul's flow because I think a lot 
of the things he is talking about are important that we consider. 
Unfortunately, they will not be considered. It does not sound as if his 
debates will be allowed and for the amendments to be considered. It 
sounds as if what they are going to try to do is blame him for us 
voting late or early. But I commend Senator Paul for standing for good 
judgment and common sense on a matter of this importance. Whether we 
agree or disagree with all the amendments is not the point. It is too 
important to be handled this way.
  I will allow Senator Paul to continue, and I yield the floor. I thank 
him for what he is doing.
  Mr. PAUL. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. DeMINT. Yes, I will.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, not only are we not debating the PATRIOT 
Act, but does the Senator from South Carolina think we have given 
sufficient floor time to amendments and proposals as to how to deal 
with the debt problem?

[[Page 7813]]


  Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I think the Senator from Kentucky knows 
the answer to that question. Some of us have reserved time between 2:30 
p.m. and 3:30 p.m. for some give-and-take and some debate on the floor 
about the budget votes that will be this afternoon. But that time was 
canceled by the majority.
  We have an impending debt that everyone in the world, except for 
those inside this body, seem to understand. We are in trouble as a 
country. The majority has not produced a budget in over 700 days, I 
think it is. At the same time, we are trying to negotiate how we will 
move forward on this huge important point of raising the debt ceiling 
which none of us want to do. We are avoiding the subject of balancing 
the budget. The majority leader has said these kinds of issues are off 
the table.
  It is very frustrating, whether it is the debt ceiling, whether it is 
the PATRIOT Act and our homeland security, that we are spending weeks 
doing nothing, bringing up, in some cases, controversial judges who 
should not have been nominated in the first place, spending day after 
day of floor time and not bringing up important issues. We are all 
concerned. I know America is concerned.
  Again, I thank Senator Paul very much for the willingness to bring 
out the point that we have something here that is very important to our 
security, to the privacy of every American. It needs to be vetted, 
debated, and amendments need to be offered. Yet this has been denied 
after a promise. I certainly encourage the Senator to continue. I thank 
him for his courage.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, one other question is, we will not all agree 
necessarily on the PATRIOT Act. The thing is, even for those who feel 
it is important it not expire, why would they not consent to some 
debate? I have asked for three amendments, three votes. We could do 
them in the next hour. We could debate and have this time and there 
would be no expiration of the PATRIOT Act for those who think it 
expiring is a problem.
  Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, as the Senator from Kentucky knows, he has 
11 amendments he wishes to have considered. He was willing to compress 
the time so we could do that expeditiously. They would not agree to 
that. Senator Paul is willing to compromise to three amendments. It 
sounds as though they do not want him to offer those amendments 
because, frankly, they do not want to take a vote on some of them that 
may expose what they believe. It is a frustrating situation for Senator 
Paul. As our majority friends over here like to do, they cause the 
problem and try to blame it on us. As the Senator said, within a few 
hours, this could be decided and over. We could pass the PATRIOT Act. 
Folks could vote for or against what they want. We could send it to the 
House, and it could be done. It does appear the majority is willing to 
let this important legislation lapse just to stop the Senator from 
Kentucky from offering a few amendments. That is an extraordinary 
situation.
  Again, I thank the Senator for yielding. I appreciate him getting 
this debate out on the floor.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I do not quite grasp why they are so fearful 
of debate and fearful of votes, that they are willing to let the 
PATRIOT Act expire to prevent debate and prevent votes. The sticking 
point turns out to be an amendment basically on preventing gun records 
from being sifted through under the PATRIOT Act. People say: Well, what 
if someone--a terrorist--is selling guns illegally? Couldn't we get 
them? Yes, we could get them the way we get everybody else: Ask the 
judge for a warrant. Judges routinely do not turn down warrants. It 
worked for us for 225 years, until the PATRIOT Act, when we had a 
process, the fourth amendment, protecting us from an overzealous 
government. But it also worked to catch criminals.
  At this time I yield the floor temporarily to my good friend from 
Utah.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from 
Kentucky for standing up for the fourth amendment principles he has 
articulated today.
  This is an important issue to all Americans. Americans are at once 
concerned about our national security. They want to make sure we can 
identify and apprehend those people who would harm us. At the same 
time, Americans are firmly committed to the idea of constitutionally 
limited government--the concept that regardless of how passionately we 
might feel about the need for certain government intervention, we can't 
ever allow government to be operated completely unfettered. We have 
liberty in place whenever government is controlled by the people, and 
whenever there are certain things that are beyond the reach of the 
government.
  Senator Paul has helped identify some key areas of concern that have 
been implicated by the PATRIOT Act. He has suggested that we ought to 
at a minimum have a robust debate and discussion over some amendments 
that might be proposed to the PATRIOT Act before we proceed. Three 
months ago we had a discussion, we had a vote, and there were a few of 
us who voted against the PATRIOT Act--not because we don't love 
America, we do. We want to protect America. We voted against it because 
we love America, because we believe in a constitutionally limited 
government, because we want to make it better. We want to make this 
something that can at the same time protect Americans but without 
needlessly trampling on privacy interests, including many of those 
privacy interests protected by the fourth amendment.
  Bad things happen when we adopt a law without adequately discussing 
its merits. Years ago, when the PATRIOT Act was adopted, there were a 
number of people who raised some of these privacy concerns. For that 
and other reasons, Congress made the decision way back then--almost 10 
years ago--to adopt the PATRIOT Act and adopt certain provisions of it 
subject to some sunsetting provisions so that Congress would 
periodically be required to debate and discuss these provisions. It 
does us no good if every time it comes up we are told we have to vote 
for it or against it; we can't really debate and discuss it or consider 
amendments to it.
  We were told 3 months ago that at the end of May--and we are now 
here--we would have an opportunity to debate, discuss, and consider 
amendments. That opportunity has now been taken away from us and with 
it the chance to address many of these important privacy implications, 
many of which do implicate the fourth amendment in one way or another.
  Senator Paul has referred to some of them, including some of the 
implications of the national security letters which, while not directly 
implicated by the expiring provisions at issue right now, are 
inextricably intertwined with other issues that are in front of us, 
including those related to section 215 orders and including the roving 
wiretap issue that is up for reauthorization.
  So I speak in support of the idea of robust debate and discussion, 
especially where, as here, it relates to something that is so important 
to the American concept of limited government and so closely related to 
our fourth amendment interests. We ought to have robust debate, 
discussion, and an opportunity for amendment.
  I thank Senator Paul for his leadership in this regard.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. PAUL. When we look at this debate and we talk about exactly where 
we should go from here and why it is important, it is important to look 
at the PATRIOT Act and say to ourselves: How do we protect our 
Constitution if we are not willing to protect all parts of it? So many 
conservatives are avid for the second amendment. I am one of them. I 
want to protect the second amendment. But I tell those who want to 
protect the second amendment that they can't protect the second 
amendment if they don't believe in the first amendment. If they don't 
believe in the first amendment, they can't have that voice that it will 
take. If they want to place limitations on groups that advocate gun 
ownership under the second

[[Page 7814]]

amendment, that will limit the second amendment. But, likewise, they 
cannot protect the second amendment if they don't believe in the fourth 
amendment.
  There is no reason we should allow a government to look at our gun 
records and to troll through all of them. If a government thinks 
someone is a terrorist, name that person, name the place, and show 
probable cause. Do we want to allow government to troll through our 
records? The government has looked at 28 million electronic records--28 
million. They are just sifting through all of our records looking for 
what. I want them to catch terrorists, but I want them to look at the 
Constitution with some restraint to say this person is a terrorist or 
we suspect him to be so, for this reason. We need not be so frightened 
that we give up our liberty in exchange for security.
  Some would say our government is full of good people who would say: I 
have not done anything wrong, and I don't have to worry about it. We 
are not worried about good government; we are worried about bad 
government. Jefferson said once upon a time if all men were angels, we 
would have no concern for constitutional restraint. But there have been 
times in our history and in the history of other countries where 
unsavory characters, where despotic characters have won election.
  When Hitler was first elected in the 1920s and early 1930s, he was 
elected popularly. The thing is, they were so mad and upset over World 
War I that they basically traded. They said: We want a strong leader. 
Give us a strong leader. But if we have rules that allow that strong 
leader to grab and do things, that is the real danger. At a minimum 
now, the danger is--it is a great danger to us if we allow this to go 
on if we get a despotic government at some point in time.
  We are not worried about good people in government. We are worried 
about people who might be elected who would abuse these powers. It has 
happened. Look at what happened during certain administrations where 
people looked at IRS records of enemies. Look at what is happening now 
where the executive branch is looking at donor records for those who do 
business with government. If you are a contractor and you do business 
with government, they want to know who you donate to.
  There are dangers to allowing the government to snoop through our 
records. It doesn't mean we don't want to stop crime, we don't want to 
stop terrorism. It means we need to have a rule of law, and we need to 
pay attention to the rule of law.
  We proposed several amendments. One of them went through the 
Judiciary Committee. It was deliberated. It was amended. It was passed 
with bipartisan support, but we won't get a vote on it. It disappoints 
me that they are afraid to debate this on the Senate floor, and we will 
get no vote on amendments that were offered seriously to try to reform 
the PATRIOT Act to take away some of the abuses of it.
  We offered three amendments to the PATRIOT Act. One was on the gun 
records. That apparently unhinged people who are afraid of voting on 
any gun issues. Because of that, we are all going to be denied any 
debate or votes.
  Some will say: Oh, you are going to keep your colleagues here until 1 
in the morning. Well, I think when they are here tonight at 1 in the 
morning, maybe they will think a little bit about why they are here and 
why we had no debate and why we had the power to have the debate at any 
point in time. I have agreed and said we can have a vote on the PATRIOT 
Act in an hour or 2 hours. We could have had a vote on the PATRIOT Act 
yesterday. But I want debate, and I want amendments. I think that is 
the very least the American people demand and this body demands, that 
there be open and deliberate debate about the PATRIOT Act.
  One of our other amendments has to do with destroying records. Some 
of these records they take from us through the bank spying on us, or 
the government spying on us, are not destroyed. I think these records 
should be destroyed at some point in time.
  For goodness' sakes, if you are not a terrorist, why are they keeping 
these records? There ought to be rules on the destruction of these 
records if you are not a terrorist and they are not going to prosecute 
you.
  The fourth amendment says we should name the place and the person. We 
have one wiretap called the John Doe. They don't name the place or the 
person, and they are not required to. I think we should. Now, are there 
times when it might be a terrorist when we say, well, we don't want to 
name the person? We don't have to name them in public. We could name 
them to the FISA commission. I do not object to them being named and 
the name being redacted, but the name should be presented to the judge 
who is making the decision. I want a judge to make a decision.
  James Otis--part of our revolution--for the 20 years leading up to 
the American Revolution, there was a debate about warrants. They issued 
what were called writs of assistance. They are also called general 
warrants. They weren't specific. They didn't say what crime one was 
being accused of, and the soldiers came into our houses. They would 
lodge soldiers in our houses, and they would enter into our houses 
without warrants. The fourth amendment was a big deal. We had passed 
the fourth amendment, and it was one of the primary grievances of our 
Founding Fathers.
  I don't think we should give up so easily. I don't think we should be 
cowed by fear and so fearful of attack that we give up our liberties. 
If we do, we become no different than the rest of the countries that 
have no liberties. Our liberties are what make us different from other 
countries. The fact that we protect the rights, even of those accused 
of a crime--people say, well, gosh, a murderer will get a trial. Yes, 
they will get a trial because we don't know they are a murderer until 
we convict them. We want procedural restraints.
  People say: You would give procedural restraints for terrorists? I 
would say at the very least, a judge has to give permission before we 
get records. The main reason is because we are not asking for 10 
records or 20 records or 40 records of people connected to terrorism. 
We are asking for millions of records.
  There are people in this room today who have had their records looked 
at. It is difficult to find out because what happens--here is the real 
rub, and this is how fearful they were. When the PATRIOT Act was passed 
shortly after 9/11, they were so fearful that they said: If a letter, a 
demand letter, a national security letter asks for records, you are not 
allowed to tell your attorney. You were gagged. If you told your 
attorney, they could put you in jail for 5 years. It is still a crime 
punishable by 5 years in jail.
  If I have Internet service and they want my records on somebody, they 
don't tell me or a judge. We have no idea. There is no probable cause. 
This person might be relevant, which could mean anything, however 
tangential. If I don't reveal those records, I go to jail. If I tell my 
wife they are asking for my records, I could go to jail.
  This secrecy on millions of records, this trolling through millions 
of records is un-American. It is unconstitutional. They have modified 
the Constitution through statutory law. We have given up our rights. It 
should be two-thirds of this body voting to change the Constitution and 
three-fourths of the States. We did it by 50 percent with one bill. The 
bill was hot when it came here. There was one copy of it. No one read 
it.
  I came from the tea party, and I said: We must read the bills. I 
propose that we wait 1 day for every 20 pages so we are ensured they 
are reading the bills. The PATRIOT Act was hundreds of pages long and 
nobody read it. Not one person read it because it wasn't even hardly 
printed. There were penciled edits in the margin, and it was passed 
because we were afraid.
  But we can't be so afraid that we give up our liberties. I think it 
is more important than that. I think it is a sad day today in America 
that we are afraid to debate this. The great constitutional questions 
such as this, or great constitutional questions such as whether we can 
go to war with just the

[[Page 7815]]

word of the President, these great constitutional questions are not 
being debated because we are so fearful of debate.
  I urge the Senate to reconsider. I urge the Senate to consider 
debating the PATRIOT Act, to consider amendments, and to consider the 
Constitution.
  Thank you. I yield the floor.

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