[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3452-3518]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AND VETERANS AFFAIRS, AND 
             FULL-YEAR CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2013

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senate will proceed to H.R. 
933.
  The clerk will report the bill.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 933) making appropriations for the Department 
     of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other 
     departments and agencies for the fiscal year ending September 
     30, 2013, and for other purposes.


                     Amendment No. 26, as Modified

                (Purpose: In the nature of a substitute)

  Mr. REID. On behalf of Senators Mikulski and Shelby, I call up their 
substitute amendment, as modified, which is at the desk.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the 
amendment.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid], for Ms. Mikulski and 
     Mr. Shelby, proposes an amendment numbered 26, as modified, 
     as follows:

  On page 1, strike lines 3, 4, and 5.
  (The text of the amendment is printed in the Record of Monday, March 
11, 2013, under ``Text of Amendments.'')
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. I withdraw the cloture motion.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The cloture motion is withdrawn.
  Mr. REID. The first two amendments we will go to on this bill, 
according to the two managers, are the amendments by Harkin and Cruz. 
If Senator Harkin is not available immediately, then Senator Cruz can 
do it. These are the first two amendments, and I ask that both of them 
come to the floor at the earliest possible time. In fact, soon. The two 
managers, Senator Shelby and Senator Mikulski, will be here shortly.
  In the meantime I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I will withdraw my request for a quorum 
call. I didn't know my friend, the distinguished Senator from Illinois, 
was here wanting to talk, which is a rare occasion.

[[Page 3453]]


  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, if we could continue our dialogue.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I want to thank the majority leader before 
he leaves the floor. I look forward to amendments and debate. Again, I 
apologize to all my colleagues if we held up this legislation, but we 
did want time to examine this legislation as we had previously 
requested. I thank my colleagues and look forward to moving forward 
with amendments. The Senator from Oklahoma and I are prepared with 
amendments whenever they are in order.
  I thank my friend from Illinois, and I appreciate the enormous 
responsibility he has in his new position.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Arizona as well. 
I think we have a rare moment of peacemaking and harmony in the Senate. 
It may not last for long, so I want to speak while we have that moment 
and say for the Record that I don't dispute any of the statements made 
by the Senator from Arizona nor do I question his right to do so, 
including his responsibility to raise questions about spending.
  We are at a time when we are cutting spending right and left--even at 
the Department of Defense. I do want to put on record the following: 
This bill, which we are considering as it relates to the Department of 
Defense in its entirety, is the bill that was passed by the House 
Republican majority. This is not a bill which was written on this side 
of the Rotunda. We have received it. That doesn't mean we should not 
ask questions about what the House did, but I don't want to be assigned 
the blame or asked to take responsibility for provisions which I did 
not author. We took the House version and brought it to the floor in an 
effort to get this moving in an expedited manner.
  I know some of the questions the Senator from Arizona has raised are 
not new. There was a longstanding debate here in the Senate about 
whether to expand the notion of minority contracting to include Native 
Alaskans and Native Hawaiians. Understandably, Senator Stevens of 
Alaska, who chaired the subcommittee for a long time, and Senator 
Inouye, who also chaired the subcommittee--and unfortunately he passed 
away just a few weeks ago--believed that the minority status for 
contracting should include their native tribes people. They fought for 
it, and it was included. I know the Senator from Arizona perhaps took 
exception to that and debated with them. To renew that debate is 
perfectly appropriate, but it is not a new provision in the bill. It is 
something that has been there for some time. I welcome the debate. I 
think it is a fulsome debate and an important one, but I wanted to say 
that for the Record.
  This is the House Republican bill and the measures which the Senator 
from Arizona addressed have been debated for a lengthy period of time. 
Some issues that were raised are new to me. I have to look more 
closely--and I should--to find out the merits of the provisions.
  Before we go any further with that, I----
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, could I briefly respond?
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, if I could ask any time that we use from 
now until the managers arrive on the floor be for debate only. I ask 
unanimous consent for that purpose.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I say to my friend I had no assurance that 
what came from the House--the defense portion of this bill--was going 
to be ``preconferenced,'' and that it was going to be the final bill. 
So to expect for me to honestly examine the House-passed bill without 
knowing what the disposition of it would be on the Senate side is a 
little much. During the intervening time, the Senator from Oklahoma and 
I have found items in this bill that have nothing to do with the 
defense bill. For example, $65 million for Pacific coast salmon 
restoration for States including Nevada. I know there are rivers 
coursing through Nevada all the way to the Pacific Ocean, but the point 
is there is $993,000 in grants to dig private wells for private 
property owners.
  We have a list of provisions which we were able to uncover which we 
find controversial and should be open for debate and discussion. But it 
is over, and we are moving forward.
  I hope the Senators whose amendments have just been made and ordered 
will come to the floor so we can debate and vote.
  I thank the Senator from Illinois, and I yield the floor.
  Mr. DURBIN. I see my friend and colleague from the State of Rhode 
Island, who serves on the Defense Appropriations Committee as well as 
the Armed Services Committee, and I will yield to him next.
  I do want to say a word about the Department of Defense appropriation 
contained in this bill. This act provides $604.9 billion, including 
$87.2 billion for overseas contingency operations. That is a reduction 
from the 2012 level of $633.2 billion. There were no changes in the 
bill that passed the House last week. The bill fully complies with the 
spending caps in the Budget Control Act. It contains no Member-
requested earmarks in compliance with the earmark moratorium. Congress 
has cut the defense budget to find programs which we believe are 
excessive to accommodate scheduling delays, budget errors, and unspent 
funds.
  The bill includes 671 cuts to programs in the budget request that 
have funds that are not needed for the remaining 6\1/2\ months of the 
year. I believe everyone should agree with the notion that if we are 
going to replicate last year's budget--for goodness' sake, we are not 
going to build the same ship twice, so we are trying to avoid those 
obvious misappropriations and waste of Federal tax dollars.
  The bill also rescinds $4 billion in unspent prior-year 
appropriations for 87 programs that have been delayed or terminated.
  There has been talk in the press that the Defense appropriations bill 
included here gives an advantage to the Pentagon when it comes to 
sequestration, but that is not true. Until this bill is enacted, the 
Defense Department is dealing with two challenges: sequestration and 
the threat of defense being under a full-year continuing resolution for 
the first time in our Nation's history.
  This bill does nothing about sequestration. Nearly $42 billion in 
defense cuts have already been ordered by the President, and this bill 
does not change that at all.
  Some people think the Defense Department is being afforded special 
treatment in being able to transfer money to deal with sequestration. 
In fact, this bill keeps a tight rein on the Pentagon's transfer 
authorities. The bill actually provides less transfer authority than 
what the Defense Department requested in February of 2012.
  The Defense Department asks for $5 billion in general transfer 
authority. The bill allows $4 billion. The Defense Department asks for 
$4 billion in transfer authority for overseas contingency accounts. The 
bill provides $3.5 billion. All these transfer authorities are subject 
to congressional approval processes.
  The perception that this bill gives the Pentagon excessive 
flexibility to deal with sequestration is not correct.
  The other challenge facing the Department of Defense is the threat of 
a year-long continuing resolution if we fail to pass this bill--a bill 
that would do nothing more than extend the authority of last year's 
spending bill. Some of the Department's most pressing fiscal challenges 
relate to trying to live in today's world using last year's budget. 
Passing a defense bill will give the Pentagon relief from the threat of 
living under a full-year continuing resolution for the very first time. 
But that is not because of flexibility, that is because an 
appropriations bill is a better steward of taxpayer dollars than a 
continuing resolution.
  Here are five reasons why a continuing resolution would be harmful to 
our national defense: Readiness. Readiness is the way to measure 
whether our troops are properly trained and equipped to do their 
mission. Under

[[Page 3454]]

last year's funding bill, operation and maintenance accounts would be 
underfunded by $11 billion. In other words, if we just took last year's 
bill, we would be short $11 billion in preparing our troops for battle. 
I will tell my colleagues that these operations and maintenance 
accounts which result in readiness training mean survivability for our 
men and women in uniform. It is that basic. That directly translates 
into less training, if we don't do something about it, and delayed 
repair of equipment. Every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has 
warned us that readiness is on the verge of plummeting because of 
fiscal uncertainty. That is disgraceful and unacceptable. Once 
readiness goes down, it takes years to rebuild it.
  Spending on unneeded programs is also a concern. Continuing last 
year's bill would fund $17 billion worth of programs that are no longer 
needed--specifically 31 programs that have ended.
  For example, a continuing resolution would provide $2.6 billion for 
MRAP armored vehicles. The Pentagon has already bought these vehicles, 
and with our troops beginning to draw away from Afghanistan, we don't 
need more at this moment. This bill would not provide funds for 
unneeded programs such as this.
  Third, no new starts or multiyear authority. A simple extension of 
last year's bill would extend the prohibition on new programs and 
multiyear contract authority. A multiyear contract must be specifically 
authorized by law and only when the government would save approximately 
10 percent compared to buying each year's requirements.
  If this authority is not provided, the taxpayers stand to lose $150 
million in cost savings for the V-22 Osprey and as much as $373 million 
in savings on the Army's Chinook helicopter. To put that in simple 
terms, if we can enter into multiyear contracting and get discounts on 
what we will need in the future, it is in the best interests of our 
national defense and the taxpayers. Losing that multiyear contracting 
results in the opposite. We overpay for things we know we will not 
need.
  When the government needs to be finding ways to make taxpayer dollars 
stretch further, a simple extension would require the government to 
turn away from cost savings that have already been negotiated.
  On the fourth point, shortfalls will go unaddressed. There is a long 
list of shortfalls in the defense budget that are not controversial but 
wouldn't be fixed by a continuing resolution. Here are just a few 
examples we are considering: $1.5 billion for National Guard equipment; 
$2.3 billion for ship operations; $271 million to close the shortfall 
in TRICARE health care programs; $211 million added for the Iron Dome 
missile defense program that protects Israeli cities from short-range 
rockets.
  The President of the United States visited us yesterday for lunch and 
talked about his upcoming trip to the Middle East to meet with our 
allies in Israel. I will tell my colleagues the President, as well as 
the leaders in Israel, know how important the Iron Dome missile defense 
program is and we should not shortchange it.
  Another example: $45 million is added to focus intelligence efforts 
on finding Joseph Kony, the notorious leader of the Lord's Resistance 
Army in Uganda.
  I recently visited Africa. I have been in the field with our troops 
who are stalking this man and they will find him. He is a notorious 
murderer. The President has said we will put an end to his reign of 
terror and we will. This bill, the bill we are considering, will 
provide the funds to finish that.
  Let me summarize by saying this bill is a compromise solution that 
meets budget caps, does not unfairly help the Department of Defense 
compared to other agencies. It eliminates wasteful and unneeded 
spending, lowers the risk to readiness and the threat of a hollow 
force, takes care of our troops and their families, and addresses the 
priorities of our national defense.
  I will not quibble or argue with my colleague from Arizona or any 
other colleagues. If there are provisions in the House bill--which is 
included here in its entirety--that need to be challenged, addressed, 
debated or changed, so be it. That is why we are here. But we are 
starting with this and with the good intention of finding funds for the 
Department of Defense in very challenging times.
  I yield the floor to my friend from Rhode Island.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, first, let me commend the Senator from 
Illinois for a very thoughtful statement about the pending 
appropriations bill, particularly with respect to the funding of the 
Department of Defense.
  I wish to spend a moment to talk about another looming issue that is 
beyond appropriations but is rapidly approaching.
  In June of last year, as we commemorated the 40th anniversary of 
legislation to establish the Pell Grant Program, we narrowly averted a 
doubling of the interest rate on need-based student loans.
  Back in January of 2012, Congressman Courtney and I introduced 
legislation to permanently extend the 3.4-percent interest rate that 
has helped make college loans more affordable for millions of students 
across the country. But my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
instead voted for budgets that effectively called for the doubling of 
the rate. They did this at a time when students are struggling--and I 
will point out some of the difficulties we face--at a time when college 
costs are increasing and at a time when college is becoming more and 
more essential for obtaining any type of long-term, stable employment 
and ability to contribute to the continued economic growth of the 
country.
  It took thousands of calls and letters and rallies from students and 
parents across the country and President Obama himself getting involved 
in this issue to bring everyone to the table to negotiate. However, we 
were only able to get a temporary, short-term fix. Essentially, we were 
able to keep the interest rate at 3.4 percent but only until July 1 of 
this year. Interest rates will again double then on these need-based 
loans unless we act.
  One of the other ironies, of course, is that even at 3.4 percent, 
that is a substantial interest payment at a time when Federal fund 
rates are closer to 1 percent and when large financial institutions can 
borrow at these very low rates, et cetera. So given that factor also, 
it is essential we once again respond, prior to July 1, to the 
anticipated doubling of the student loan rate.
  Now is the time to develop not just a short-term solution but a long-
term solution to this growing burden of student loan debt, the rising 
cost of college, and the need to improve higher education outcomes so 
students complete their degrees and get the full benefit of their 
investment in education and we get the benefit as a society and as an 
economy of their education.
  Everyone agrees college costs are too high and are climbing higher. 
There has to be real reform by higher education in terms of the way 
they deliver services. They cannot continue to pass on increased costs. 
If that continues to happen, families will be priced out of a college 
education, even with our grants and loans; so we have to do something.
  Student loan debt is the next big financial crisis we are facing. 
Even if we act now, we are looking at some very sobering statistics 
about the growth of student loan debt already. That should prompt, 
again, action now to prevent the doubling of the interest rate and 
longer term action to control the costs of higher education and the 
ability of families to respond to those costs.
  Student loan debt continued to rise throughout the recession. In 
fact, one of the ironies of the recession is people can't find jobs; 
they are going back to college to get more training and sometimes they 
are going back to college because that is what they can do. So the 
irony, of course, is we are adding to the student debt. In fact, today, 
student loan debt is the second largest outstanding balance after 
mortgage debt. It eclipses credit card debt. It is the second largest 
outstanding balance in our economy behind mortgage debt. Borrowers are 
struggling under that debt.
  The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently reported that 17 
percent

[[Page 3455]]

of student loan borrowers are more than 90 days past due on their 
payments--a large increase from under 10 percent in 2004. So in roughly 
a decade, we have seen an increasing amount of students unable to 
shoulder the burden of their debt. Even worse, if we consider that 44 
percent of student loan borrowers are not in repayment--these are 
people who statutorily don't have to start paying--the effective 
delinquency rate rises to more than 30 percent. That is stunning.
  This is affecting also the lives of these young people at a time when 
they are beginning to establish or are hoping to establish households. 
A recent Pew Research Center survey illustrates what is happening. As 
the percentage of young adult households with student loan debt climbed 
from 34 percent in 2007 to 40 percent in 2010--again, a huge increase 
in debt--the share of younger households owning their home has declined 
sharply from 40 percent in 2007 to 34 percent in 2011. Home ownership, 
which is one of but not the only measure of the American dream, is also 
one of the strongest supports of the American economy, but it is 
rapidly being priced out of the reach of young students because of 
their student debt. They literally can't qualify for mortgages.
  Car ownership shows a similar trend. In 2007, 73 percent of 
households headed by young adults owned or leased at least one vehicle. 
By 2011, that figure dropped to 66 percent.
  Students are caught literally between a rock and a hard place. Huge 
financial debts for their college education prevent them from buying 
homes, buying cars, and prevent this economy from growing as it has in 
the past because of new households, young households coming into the 
marketplace, buying homes and buying cars and starting families.
  We can't do away with education. It is more important each day in a 
global economy. We have to deal with this issue of rising costs. The 
cost of attending college has increased by more than 550 percent since 
1985. Let me repeat that: 550 percent. That is rising faster than 
gasoline, health care, and other consumer items. It is skyrocketing. 
Again, the universities, the colleges, education leaders at every 
level--Federal, State, and local--have to begin to respond to this 
rising cost of education. But keeping student loans affordable and 
interest rates low is one part of the solution, particularly this 
immediate crisis facing us by
July 1.
  The Federal Government should price student loans based on our actual 
costs of operating the student loan programs. We should set the student 
loan interest rates in a way that minimizes the cost for students while 
covering most of the cost for the taxpayer. The Federal Government 
provides student loans to increase the number of Americans who can 
obtain college degrees. We do not and should not run these programs to 
generate revenue. They should be to increase the capital--the human 
capital--of our country. I plan to introduce legislation to set student 
loan interest rates based on the principles of keeping costs low for 
both students and taxpayers.
  Providing more grant aid through Pell grants and other programs is 
another way to tackle these college costs. However, if college costs 
continue to rise at the current rate, students relying on the Pell 
grant will continue to lose ground. We need States and institutions to 
partner with us to make college affordable. Again, it has to be a 
cooperative effort.
  With respect to the Pell grant, I have talked about the loans, but 
the Pell grant is just an outright grant of funds to the student 
without the need to repay. It was for a long time the backbone of our 
Federal support to students in college and families trying to put their 
children through college.
  In 1976 the Pell grant maximum was $1,400. That was enough to cover 
72 percent of the cost of attendance at a public 4-year college. In 
fact, in those good old days, with a Pell grant and a summer job and a 
little help, you were usually able to emerge from college after 4 years 
without a huge debt, and you could start your family and buy your car 
at a younger age.
  In 2010 the maximum Pell grant was increased to $5,550, but that is 
only enough to cover 34 percent of the cost of attendance at a public 
4-year college.
  In my State, we have been particularly hard hit by this recession and 
economic downturn, and students and families are feeling this pressure 
of increased tuition and higher fees at schools and colleges acutely. 
They need these resources, and we have to ensure that they get these 
resources.
  As I indicated, I am planning to introduce legislation to strengthen 
our higher education system and student aid programs by reestablishing 
a strong Federal-university-State partnership for college access and 
affordability and by requiring institutions to assume more of the risk 
in the student loan programs and to do so in a way that I think will 
vindicate our best principles and our soundest economic rationale.
  I look forward to working with Chairman Harkin. He has been a leader 
on these issues for so many years, both as the chairman of the HELP 
Committee and chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee. We want to 
start by preventing, obviously, the doubling of student loans by July 
1. That is step 1, but it cannot be the last step.
  Mr. President, with that, I yield floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican whip.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I come to the floor on the 1,414th day 
since the Senate has passed a budget and on a day where, amazingly, the 
President of the United States is reported to have said: ``We don't 
have an immediate crisis in terms of [our] debt.''
  Well, we do have a debt crisis that threatens both future 
generations--because somebody is going to have to pay that debt back, 
and thanks to abnormally low interest rates, right now they are not 
spiraling out of control, but if interests rates were to return to 
historic norms, I believe for each additional percentage point in 
interest we would have to pay on our national debt, it would result in 
roughly $1.7 trillion more we would have to pay back. So in many ways 
the United States is lucky, even though we are on the brink of what 
scholars such as Reinhart and Rogoff have said--we are on the precipice 
of a debt crisis because once interest rates begin to rise, the 
creditors lose confidence in our ability to repay that debt, and our 
economy spins out of control, resulting not only in a severe recession 
or worse but also harm to some of the most vulnerable people in our 
society who depend on the safety net that government provides.
  It is also, in a debt crisis, impossible for the Federal Government 
to do what it must do in terms of national security. Indeed, that is 
what led the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, 
to say that the single greatest threat to our national security is our 
debt. And it keeps getting worse and worse because the President seems 
unwilling to deal with the obvious and to enter into what he likes to 
call the grand bargain but one that can only occur if the President is 
willing to talk about the entire economy and not just raise taxes.
  The President has said that we must embrace a balanced approach to 
deficit reduction. Of course, reasonable people can disagree on what a 
balanced approach looks like, but we all know what a balanced budget 
looks like.
  Yesterday morning House Republicans released a plan that balances the 
Federal budget over the next 10 years. We still do not have the 
President's proposed budget even though it was due on February 4, and 
we are now advised that we may not see the President's own proposed 
budget until sometime in April, which, coincidentally, is after the 
time that the House and the Senate will act on their proposed budgets. 
It seems once again that the President has taken to leading from 
behind.
  For that matter, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has told us 
that the President's proposed budget will not even try to balance the 
budget but, instead, put us on what he calls a ``fiscally sustainable 
path.'' But that cannot be true. Unless the Federal Government adopts 
serious reforms to Medicare and Social Security, mandatory

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spending programs which occupy roughly 61 percent of all Federal 
spending--the kinds of reforms the President has constantly rejected--
we cannot put our country on a fiscally sustainable path by definition.
  As the President knows because his own bipartisan fiscal commission 
told him so in December 2010, to save Medicare we must make structural 
changes that ensure the program will be affordable over the long term. 
I do not know any young person the age of my two daughters--30 and 31--
who actually believes Medicare and Social Security are going to be 
there for them when they retire. They simply do not believe it because 
they see the irresponsibility of the present generation in not only 
racking up bills they are going to have to end up paying, they are 
seeing us do nothing to address the fiscally unsustainable path for 
Medicare and Social Security.
  Any of us who have studied the problem understand what the problem is 
with the Medicare system. Right now, an average couple will put, let's 
say, $1 in the Medicare trust fund for every $3 they will ultimately 
take out of it. This is not a pay-as-you-go system by any means, as 
opposed to Social Security, where basically you will get $1 out for 
every $1 you put in Social Security--but not Medicare because of its 
unique problems.
  The current Medicare system incentivizes quantity over quality, and 
its price controls distort the entire health care market. In my State, 
in Texas, about one-third of the doctors will not even take a new 
Medicare patient because of government price controls that basically 
provide compensation to them roughly one-third less than what private 
health insurance plans would provide. Expanding those price controls, 
as the President has proposed, would only make Medicare's problems 
worse.
  For all the challenges Medicare has, Medicaid--which is designed to 
provide health care to low-income Americans--is even worse in terms of 
the compensation provided to medical providers, hospitals, and doctors, 
and so many of them simply will not take Medicaid patients, leaving 
Medicaid-eligible beneficiaries ``coverage'' but no access in many 
instances.
  By restructuring the Medicare Program and increasing competition, we 
can hold down cost growth in Medicare and make it available not only to 
the present generation of seniors but also to future generations of 
seniors. That is the sort of serious issue that is not going to go away 
that the Senate budget should deal with.
  It should also provide a framework for sensible Tax Code reform. We 
all know the Tax Code is way too complicated. We also know it is 
riddled with tax credits, deductions, credits--what the Simpson-Bowles 
Commission called tax expenditures. Yet the President does not want to 
eliminate those tax deductions, credits, and expenditures for the 
purpose of reforming the Tax Code, bringing down marginal tax rates not 
only for businesses and individuals, he wants to use it to raise taxes 
again.
  There is a bipartisan consensus, however, that tax reform should 
lower the rates and broaden the base. Indeed, those are the 
recommendations of the Bowles-Simpson Commission and the Domenici-
Rivlin panel as well. But, as I said, the President wants to use what 
he calls tax reform as a Trojan horse to raise taxes again. He argues 
that we will not have a balanced approach to deficit reduction unless 
we pass another massive tax hike, and that is after the President 
raised taxes by $600 billion in January.
  From what I understand, our friends across the aisle--Senator Murray, 
as the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee--are about to unveil a 
budget proposal that would raise taxes again by at least $1 trillion.
  I realize that if you think government is the answer to almost every 
question that comes up in America today, you are going to need bigger 
government, more intrusive government, funded by higher tax revenue. 
But they seem to be forgetting a few things. First of all, the 
Congressional Budget Office tells us that Federal tax revenues in 2014 
are already projected to exceed the historical average. Secondly, the 
President's health care law, ObamaCare, already contains another 
trillion-dollar tax increase that is discouraging job creation and 
hurting our economy. Finally, as I pointed out, Democrats in this body 
already got a $600 billion tax increase earlier this year, while hard-
working Americans--the middle class in America--got a tax increase with 
the return of the payroll tax.
  By my view, no one should be talking about another tax increase until 
the Federal Government quits wasting so much taxpayer money. My 
colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Coburn, who was just on the Senate 
floor, has singlehandedly worked tirelessly to expose frivolous and 
unnecessary spending, and the numbers are remarkable. For example, when 
Senator Coburn asked the Government Accountability Office to 
investigate how much Federal spending was duplicative, the Government 
Accountability Office found that more than $364 billion of duplicative 
spending existed. And the President wants to close down tours at the 
White House because of the budget sequester. Give me a break.
  How can anyone support another massive tax increase when the Federal 
Government is literally spending hundreds of billions of dollars on 
redundant services? For that matter, how can anyone support another 
massive tax increase when we are spending nearly $15 million each year 
to give millionaires unemployment checks? How can anyone support 
another massive tax increase when we are spending $\1/2\ million on 
shampoo products for dogs and cats? That is your Federal Government at 
work for you. How can anyone support another massive tax increase when 
we are spending $181,000 studying the effects of cocaine on Japanese 
quail? I know these sound ridiculous to the extreme, but that is the 
whole point. The Federal Government is littered with spending that we 
simply do not need, and yet, rather than do something about that, our 
friends across the aisle want to raise taxes once again, along with the 
President of the United States.
  No one said cutting spending or reforming entitlement programs or 
overhauling our Tax Code would be easy. But if the President truly 
wants a balanced approach to our fiscal and economic challenges, he 
will stop leading from behind and start leading from the front.
  I am shocked the President would say in an interview with Jon Karl, 
ABC News, that there is no immediate crisis in terms of the debt. What 
he might be forgetting is what economists tell us: When the debt gets 
so large, it retards economic growth. Forget the debt crisis part. That 
has an immediate impact on job creation in America.
  We are all wondering why the recovery from the recession of 2008 has 
been the slowest since the Great Depression. Well, one reason is people 
are worried about tax rates going up because they see debt upon debt 
being piled up. They are sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what 
is going to happen. They are also experiencing additional costs in 
terms of health care, when they were told by the President back in 
2008-2009 if we passed ObamaCare, the average family would see a 
reduction in their health insurance premiums by $2,500. They were also 
told a lot of other things, such as if you like what you have, you can 
keep it. That did not end up being true either.
  The President needs to listen to his own experts, such as the 
bipartisan fiscal commission he himself appointed. Not only do we risk 
a debt crisis if we do not deal with the $16.5 trillion debt we have if 
interest rates were to go up, it is having an immediate impact on 
unemployment. More than 20 million people in this country are either 
out of work or working part time and want to work full time. That ought 
to be enough to get the President to act.
  Should he choose to act, should he choose to lead, we will be happy 
to meet him halfway to deal with the single most important issue facing 
the country today. But it starts with passing a budget, something 
Senate Democrats have not done for 1,414 days.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

[[Page 3457]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, thanks to the cordiality and 
cooperation of Members on both sides of the aisle, but particularly 
those who initially had an objection to us going forward, we now can 
move forward. We are waiting for the junior Senator from Texas, Mr. 
Cruz, to come to the floor. He will be offering the first amendment. As 
soon as he gets here, we are off and running.
  I am going to thank everybody for getting us to this point: Senator 
Shelby for working with me on the bill, Senators Reid and McConnell, 
and particularly now Senators McCain and Coburn. We have a way of 
addressing their concerns. So we are ready. We are waiting for the 
Senator.
  I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Texas.


                  Amendment No. 30 to Amendment No. 26

  Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, I call up my amendment No. 30.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Texas [Mr. Cruz], for himself, Mr. Lee, 
     Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Paul, Mr. Rubio, Mr. Cornyn, Mr. Johnson of 
     Wisconsin, Mr. Risch, Mr. Vitter, Mr. Coburn, Mr. Scott, Mr. 
     Heller, Mr. Toomey, and Mr. Johanns, proposes an amendment 
     numbered 30 to amendment No. 26.

  Mr. CRUZ. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment 
be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

    (Purpose: To prohibit the use of funds to carry out the Patient 
                  Protection and Affordable Care Act)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

     SEC. __. PROHIBITION ON FUNDING.

       None of the funds made available in this Act may be used--
       (1) to carry out any provision of the Patient Protection 
     and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148) or title I or 
     subtitle B of title II of the Health Care and Education 
     Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-152), or the 
     amendments made by such Act, title, or subtitle; or
       (2) for rulemaking under such Act, title, or subtitle.
  Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, I rise to deliver my first official speech 
on the floor of the Senate on an issue which I believe is the most 
urgent issue facing the country; namely, the dire need to restore 
economic growth to our Nation.
  I will note at the outset this is the second opportunity I have had 
to speak on the Senate floor. The first was last week during the 
historic filibuster led by the junior Senator from Kentucky for nearly 
13 hours.
  I will note a particular debt of gratitude I owe to Senator Paul. The 
very first time I spoke on this floor was in a colloquy with Senator 
Paul. I had the opportunity to read Travis's letter from the Alamo, to 
read Shakespeare's ``St. Crispin's Day Speech,'' to read the opening 
monolog from ``Patton,'' and to read Ronald Reagan's 1964 speech, ``A 
Time to Choose.'' This is a debt I will always owe Senator Paul. As 
they say in the beer commercial: ``It don't get no better than that.''
  Sadly, I promise my colleagues in the rest of my tenure, I am 
confident we will not have an opportunity to rival those glorious words 
William Barret Travis penned as he was standing for principle 177 years 
ago.
  This being said, the topic of the day is, in my judgment, a topic of 
exceptional importance. Every elected Member of Congress, whether 
Republican or Democratic, should have as their very first priority 
restoring economic growth in this country. In the last 4 years we have 
seen stagnant growth. In the last 4 years our economy has averaged 0.8 
percent growth each year. To put that in context, this is a fraction of 
historical levels. Since World War II, our economy has enjoyed 3.3 
percent growth per year.
  Last quarter the economy was struggling along and grew 0.1 percent. 
It was effectively stagnant.
  If we want to solve the great many fiscal and economic challenges 
facing this country, growth is the critical precondition. If we want 
the 23 million people who are struggling to find jobs to get back to 
work--and I know every one of us wants those 23 million people to get 
back to work--we must restore economic growth. If we want to turn 
around the train wreck which is the balance sheet of the Federal 
Government, our perennial recurring deficits and debts, this can't be 
done without restoring growth.
  In my view we should be working across the aisle in a bipartisan way 
to focus on bringing growth back. This should be our No. 1 priority. 
Given that, the purpose of this amendment is to advance economic growth 
and, in particular, to delay funding of ObamaCare until economic growth 
returns.
  Let me be clear. In my view ObamaCare should be repealed in its 
entirety, which was the very first bill I introduced in the Senate. At 
a minimum, in my judgment, ObamaCare should not be funded and 
implemented at a time when our economy is gasping for breath, at a time 
when our economy is struggling to such a degree that implementing it 
right now could well force us into a recession.
  It seems to me every Member of this body should stand together in 
acting decisively to prevent this economy from being pushed into a 
recession. Implementing ObamaCare at a time when the economy is so weak 
could do just that. ObamaCare hurts the economy. It hurts jobs. It 
hurts young people. It hurts Hispanics. It hurts African Americans. It 
hurts single moms. It hurts everybody struggling to climb the economic 
ladder.
  I would like to initially talk about four promises which were made 
when ObamaCare was passed and the reality we have seen as it has begun 
to be implemented. It is ironic the law is called the Affordable Care 
Act. In the 3 years it has begun to be implemented, it has proven to be 
neither affordable nor caring.
  No. 1, before ObamaCare was adopted, President Obama promised the 
American people ObamaCare would reduce the cost of insurance. In 
particular, the President said American families would pay $2,500 less 
for their insurance premiums by the end of his first term. I would note 
his first term ended not long ago. Today, American families are not 
paying $2,500 less in health insurance premiums. They are not paying a 
penny less. Indeed, today American families are paying $3,000 more in 
health insurance premiums than they were. That is a $5,500 swing out of 
the pockets of hard-working Americans who are struggling make ends 
meet. The reality has not lived up to the promise.
  The management consulting firm Oliver Wyman issued a new study 
recently which predicted people aged 21 to 29 could see a 42-percent 
hike in premium costs. The higher premiums in particular are hitting 
young people. Indeed, I would point out, if you are a young person, 
this law going into effect right now when the economy is struggling is 
particularly problematic. If you are a young person coming out of 
school today, you are facing: No. 1, fewer jobs. If you didn't graduate 
from high school, you are facing an unemployment rate today of over 12 
percent. You have less opportunity. If you are between 16 to 19, you 
are facing an unemployment rate of over 25 percent.
  If you are a minority, if you are Hispanic, you are facing an 
unemployment rate of nearly 10 percent. If you are African American, 
you are facing an unemployment rate of over 14 percent.
  What are you seeing actually in the job market if you are lucky 
enough to get a job? More and more employers are dropping health care 
coverage because of the burdens of ObamaCare. More and more employers 
are forcing

[[Page 3458]]

employees to work fewer hours because of the burdens of ObamaCare. More 
and more individuals are seeing their premiums climb, especially young 
people. If you are a young person coming out of school today, you may 
not find a job.
  It is harder to find a job because of economic growth right now. If 
you do find a job, there is a real possibility that job will not have 
health insurance and you will find your hours reduced. If you do have 
health insurance, you will pay higher premiums. The promises have not 
lived up to the reality.
  The second differential between promise and reality is President 
Obama repeatedly told Americans, ``If you like your health plan, you 
can keep it.'' This unfortunately has not proven to be the case.
  The latest forecast from the Congressional Budget Office estimates 
some 7 million people are expected to lose or be dropped from their 
employer-provided health insurance by the year 2020. Indeed, health 
insurers in 34 States have stopped carrying child-only insurance 
policies. In my home State of Texas, one of the largest insurance 
markets in the country, every single carrier has dropped its child-only 
health insurance coverage. The same is true for other large States such 
as Florida and Illinois. The promise, if you like your health care 
coverage, you will be able to keep it, has not lived up to reality, as 
more and more Americans are losing their health insurance.
  No. 3, President Obama pledged repeatedly not to raise taxes on 
families making less than $250,000 a year. That promise has not 
materialized. Within ObamaCare, there is a tax on those who do not 
maintain government-approved health insurance. There are increases on 
the threshold of the deduction for unreimbursed medical expenses. There 
is an increase in taxes on distributions from Health Savings Accounts 
and from flexible spending arrangements. Indeed, in total, over $1 
trillion in tax increases are contained within ObamaCare. The promise 
has not lived up to the reality.
  The fourth promise which has not lived up to the reality is in 
February of 2010, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said ObamaCare 
would create 4 million jobs, 400,000 jobs almost immediately.
  This was in 2010. By 2011, the CBO Budget Director testified before a 
House Budget Committee that ObamaCare would result in an estimated 
800,000 fewer jobs in the United States by 2021. The promises have not 
lived up to reality.
  I wish to talk about five distinct harms which have come from 
ObamaCare and made life more difficult for Americans.
  No. 1, ObamaCare harms the poor and those who are struggling to climb 
the economic ladder. Right now, 60 million people are enrolled in 
Medicaid. Medicaid is a program which is struggling, which is 
challenged and desperately in need of reform to improve how it 
operates. ObamaCare, by raising the eligibility age and trying to 
incentivize and pressure States into expanding Medicaid, is designed to 
move at least an additional 18 million people onto Medicaid over the 
next 10 years.
  The data demonstrates Medicaid beneficiaries face worse health 
outcomes than just about anybody else in the marketplace.
  In 2010, the ``Annals of Surgery'' issued a landmark study which 
examined the outcomes from nearly 900,000 individuals undergoing 
surgery from 2003 to 2007. The conclusion of this study was Medicaid 
patients were almost twice as likely to die as those with private 
insurance. Medicaid patients' hospital stays were 42 percent longer and 
cost 26 percent more.
  Even more striking, Medicaid patients, when compared to people 
without health insurance, people who were uninsured, Medicaid patients 
were 13 percent more likely to die. They stayed in the hospital for 50 
percent longer and cost 20 percent more.
  In 2011, Johns Hopkins did a study of patients undergoing lung 
transplantation. Their conclusions were very much the same. They found 
that Medicaid patients were 8.1 percent less likely to be alive 10 
years after the transplant compared with those with private insurance 
and also compared to those without any insurance at all. Overall, the 
Johns Hopkins study found that Medicaid patients faced a 29-percent 
greater risk of death, and yet ObamaCare is moving more and more of the 
economically disadvantaged onto Medicaid, which subjects them to those 
worse health care outcomes.
  No. 2, ObamaCare hurts seniors. ObamaCare took $716 billion from 
Medicare, a large portion of which came from the Medicare Advantage 
Program which serves a great many seniors, and especially poor seniors. 
According to the Office of the Actuary at the Center for Medicaid and 
Medicaid Services, the Medicare Advantage cuts in ObamaCare will reduce 
enrollment from 14.8 million to 7.4 million by 2017. It will cut it in 
half. Seven million people will lose their coverage under Medicare 
Advantage.
  I would remind everyone that the President said, ``If you like your 
health insurance, you can keep it.'' Yet 7 million seniors are losing 
Medicare Advantage.
  The Heritage Foundation found the substantial cuts to Medicare 
Advantage in particular hurt seniors in the States of Texas, 
California, New Mexico, Louisiana, Alaska, New York, Massachusetts, and 
also in the District of Columbia. Those States are expected to lose 
more than 50 percent of their enrollees by 2017.
  I would suggest that each of us, as we return to our constituents, as 
we return to address seniors, any in this body who vote today to 
implement ObamaCare despite the difficult economic times, should be 
prepared to answer to seniors in our States who say: Why did you vote 
to damage the Medicare Advantage Program that I was relying upon?
  Also, the harm to Medicare Advantage in particular is visited upon 
minorities. Hispanics are twice as likely to enroll in Medicare 
Advantage than the average Medicare beneficiary. African Americans are 
10 percent more likely. So ObamaCare targets a program that is helping 
seniors and in particular is helping those seniors who are most 
vulnerable. In addition, 31 percent of African-American Medicare 
beneficiaries and 38 percent of Hispanic beneficiaries are enrolled in 
Medicare Advantage plans.
  So those of us who return to our States that have substantial 
minority populations need to be prepared to explain to Hispanic seniors 
and African-American seniors why this body, why the Federal Government 
is damaging a program they are relying upon for essential health care.
  No. 3, ObamaCare is harming jobs. In March 2013, the Federal Reserve 
said, in its annual ``beige book''--which analyzes economic data from 
across the country--that ``employers in several Districts cited the 
unknown effects of the Affordable Care Act as reasons for planned 
layoffs and reluctance to hire more staff.''
  Added health care costs are making it harder for businesses to hire 
new workers and especially low-skilled workers. This is a point that is 
worth underscoring because the detrimental effects of ObamaCare are not 
uniformly distributed throughout our population. They fall the hardest 
on those who are most vulnerable among us. The Heritage Foundation 
found that ``workers who cannot produce at least $20,000 per year'' for 
a single plan ``or $27,500 per year'' for a family plan ``of value to 
employers will have serious difficulty finding full-time jobs.''
  Madam President, when I read those statistics, those are not simply 
empty words on a page. Those are data that strike very close to home 
because 55 years ago that precisely described my father. When my father 
came as an immigrant from Cuba in 1957, he was 18, he was penniless, 
and he could not speak English. The very first job my father received 
in Austin, TX, was washing dishes making 50 cents an hour.
  The reason--he told me--he got that job was, he said: Look, I 
couldn't speak English. I couldn't interact with people as most jobs 
required, but I could wash dishes. So he worked 7 days a week. The 
reason he worked 7 days a week is because when you washed dishes, they

[[Page 3459]]

allowed the employees to eat, and he didn't have the money to buy food. 
So by working 7 days a week, he ensured he ate 7 days a week.
  So when I read statistics like this and the words, ``those who cannot 
produce $20,000 per year in value to an employer will find themselves 
unable to find jobs,'' I can't help but think about my dad as that 18-
year-old kid just beginning to climb the job ladder, not speaking 
English, not having yet developed skills, but what he could do was wash 
dishes. And working at 50 cents an hour is what enabled him to pay his 
way through the University of Texas. It is what enabled him to 
graduate, to get a higher paying job, and eventually to start a small 
business. Then, today, to become a pastor.
  My father is here today visiting me, and I think about the impact 
these burdens would have had on him, and I tell you I am grateful that 
in 1957 this so-called Affordable Care Act had not been implemented 
because it could well have shut down the opportunity for him to survive 
and pay his way through school and begin climbing the economic ladder.
  Additionally, ObamaCare keeps small businesses small. ObamaCare is 
designed so that its principal burdens are triggered when a business 
has 50 employees or more. As a consequence, there is an incredible 
deterrent to small businesses hiring more than 50 employees because 
hiring that 50th employee triggers enormous burdens and expenses. That 
has particular implications for everyone in this economy struggling to 
find work because two-thirds of all new jobs come from small 
businesses. By keeping these businesses small, what we are doing is 
stifling the ability to grow the economy, and in particular to grow the 
economy by creating opportunities for those who need to begin and want 
to begin climbing the economic ladder.
  By hiring the 50th employee, if a small business does not provide 
government-approved insurance, it faces a penalty of up to $3,000 for 
each uncovered worker beyond 30 employees. Thus, as the Wall Street 
Journal explained:

       If a company with 50 employees hires a new worker for $12 
     an hour for 29 hours a week, there is no health insurance 
     requirement. But suppose that worker moves to 30 hours a 
     week. This triggers a $2,000 Federal penalty. So to get 50 
     more hours of work a year from that employee, the extra cost 
     to the employer rises to about $52 an hour--the $12 salary 
     and an ObamaCare tax of what works out to be $40 an hour. 
     Moving to 33 hours a week costs the employer about $10 more 
     in ObamaCare tax.

  The result is small businesses are staying smaller, and the 
opportunities for those struggling to achieve the American dream are 
limited. That leads to the fourth harm: ObamaCare hurts workers.
  One of the consequences we are seeing over and over is that in order 
to avoid the crushing costs of ObamaCare, employers are limiting the 
hours employees can work. So, for example, in January, a Wendy's 
franchise in Nebraska announced it would cut the hours of nonmanagement 
employees to 28 hours a week. As a result, about 100 employees' hours 
were cut. That is a direct impact of ObamaCare for those 100 employees 
who were working at Wendy's.
  Now, some may say: Well, is Wendy's a career? So many kids, so many 
young people, so many Hispanics and African Americans begin, as my 
father did, washing dishes or flipping burgers, and they use those jobs 
to gain skills and advance up the economic ladder. To have a law that 
forces small business owners to reduce those hours, to limit the hours 
those workers can work, is particularly harmful.
  A Taco Bell in Guthrie, OK, has also cut worker hours. A single 
mother of three told Oklahoma News 9:

       They informed everybody that nobody was considered full 
     time any longer, that everybody was now considered part-time, 
     and [they] would be cutting hours back to 28 hours or less 
     due to ObamaCare.

  She went on:

       Several of the people I work with, some of them are single 
     parents, and we do the best we can, and 28 hours a week just 
     isn't going to cut it for the bills.

  For those who are struggling, for the single moms in this country who 
are working as hard as they can to provide for their kids, seeing their 
hours reduced because of the consequences of this law is a real and 
material hardship, and that, sadly, is happening all over the country.
  Stephen Caldeira, president of the International Franchise 
Association, predicts that ``many stores will have to cut worker hours 
out of necessity.''
  Let me point out, by the way, it is not hard-heartedness on the part 
of those small business owners. It is the simple reality of trying to 
survive in this economy. As Caldeira continues, it could be the 
difference between staying in business or going out of business.
  Indeed, a 2011 Hudson Institute study estimates that the insurance 
mandate will cost the franchise industry $6.4 billion and put 3.1 
million jobs at risk. That is worth underscoring: 3.1 million jobs at 
risk of kids flipping burgers, of single moms struggling to provide for 
their kids who are facing hard times because of ObamaCare. It is those 
who are most vulnerable who are hit the worst.
  Indeed, if we look at the premium increases, in particular for young 
people, they have been significant. If ObamaCare is fully implemented, 
they are likely to be extraordinary. According to a 2013 staff report 
from the Senate Finance Committee and the House Energy and Commerce 
Committee, the ObamaCare impact on young adults in the individual 
market is expected to be staggering.
  If we look at the city of Austin--a city I have lived in for many 
years, a terrific city, a city whose slogan unofficially is ``Keep 
Austin Weird.'' It is a young, hip, vibrant----
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Weird?
  Mr. CRUZ. Weird, which in Austin is very fitting. It is a young, hip, 
vibrant city. It is referred to as the ``Live music capital of the 
world.'' Right now, a young adult in Austin in the individual health 
insurance market pays an average premium of $648. Under ObamaCare, that 
is anticipated to rise to $1,836. That is a 183-percent increase.
  I wish to repeat that, to underscore it. Today, they are paying $648. 
That is expected to rise to $1,836. An additional $1,200 out of the 
pocket of a young person struggling to survive is substantial. And, 
indeed, nationally, that is consistent with the pattern that is 
expected all over the country. That is the average annual increase. It 
is parallel to what is expected in Chicago, Phoenix, Atlanta, and 
Milwaukee.
  Madam President, I have been informed that the Senator from Utah has 
a time issue. I ask unanimous consent to yield to the Senator from 
Utah, and thank him for joining me.
  Ms. MIKULSKI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, as the manager of the bill, I thought 
we were going to--of course Senator Cruz has offered his amendment--but 
we were going to rotate speakers from the Democrats and Republicans. 
There was no agreement to do roundrobin here, where the Senator from 
Texas would yield to the Senator from Utah. I think there is some 
confusion. I wish to follow the traditional regular order, where the 
Senator from Texas, the proponent of the amendment, has full and ample 
time; then other Senators respond, and then Senator Lee. I am not going 
to make a scene, but that is the way we usually do it.
  Has the Senator from Texas concluded his remarks?
  Mr. CRUZ. In terms of my remarks, I have about an additional 10 
minutes I wish to give. But I was just informed that the Senator from 
Utah had a scheduling issue, and asked if we could show him 
consideration. I am being told now that--if the Senator from Maryland 
would prefer, I am happy to continue my remarks.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. And for the Senator from Utah, we all have scheduling 
issues. What we would want to do is make sure everybody has their say. 
If the Senator from Utah has a statement he wishes to put into the 
Record or wishes to return, we welcome him back. We in no way want to 
impede his ability to speak.
  Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, the issue has been obviated. So if I may 
simply continue my remarks, and when I conclude, I will yield the 
floor.

[[Page 3460]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CRUZ. The fifth impact of ObamaCare is that it imposes a 
substantial harm on the economy. On the economy altogether, ObamaCare 
includes more than 20 tax increases. The Joint Committee on Taxation 
estimates that over the next 10 years ObamaCare will raise $1 trillion 
in taxes. That is $1 trillion from the private sector that is not going 
to be available to be used to hire new workers.
  Job losses just in the medical device industry, as a result of the 
medical device excise tax, could total as much as 47,100 or 10 percent 
of the medical device industry employment. Those jobs are needed. Those 
job losses are not driven by market conditions. Those job losses are 
driven by one thing, which is the policy decisions of the Federal 
Government to implement ObamaCare.
  On March 5, 2013, Russell George, the inspector general for the IRS, 
testified in the House Committee on Appropriations:

       It is unprecedented in recent history the amount of 
     responsibility the IRS is being given in an area that most 
     people don't think of as an IRS function.

  He went on, ``This is going to lead to problems.''
  The Congressional Budget Office expects ObamaCare penalties to total 
$130 billion over the next 10 years. That is up $13 billion from 
previous forecasts. And more taxpayers will be hit with ObamaCare taxes 
as time goes on. There is a 0.9-percent tax surcharge on individuals' 
earned income, and a 3.8-percent surcharge on investment income for 
individuals making more than $200,000.
  But those taxes are not indexed for inflation. And so as inflation 
raises the nominal income of Americans, it will push more and more from 
the middle class into paying those taxes. The Tax Policy Center 
estimates that by 2013, 2.4 percent of households will pay one or both 
of those taxes; by 2022, 4.6 percent of households will pay; by 2032, 9 
percent of households will pay. That is a significant additional tax 
burden falling on Americans.
  In addition, one of the most problematic short-term and long-term 
implications of ObamaCare is less innovation. The United States has 
enjoyed tremendous advantages because our free-market system encourages 
investment in innovation. In health care in particular we have seen 
incredible innovation--whether in medical devices or whether in 
pharmaceuticals--because the incentives are there to invest in new 
health care treatment. As a result, millions have lived better lives, 
have lived longer lives, have not died from diseases that previously 
were incurable and previously were untreatable. Because of the 
innovation we have had in the medical field, it has led to the United 
States enjoying a world-class health care system. ObamaCare is 
substantially diminishing innovation in health care.
  Venture capital, the seed money that funds new research and 
development in health care, has dropped precipitously. In 2010, venture 
capital in health care services was $1.2 billion. By 2011, it had 
dropped more than in half, to $541 million. According to Dr. Scott 
Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute, only about 30 venture 
stage health care services companies got funded last year, compared to 
hundreds from previous years.
  If we want to continue the incredible medical innovation we have seen 
over the last century, we can't be drying up the capital that is 
devoted to research and development, that is devoted to new and 
innovative companies. And that is exactly what ObamaCare is doing.
  Then there are the compliance costs. The compliance costs from 
ObamaCare are, quite simply, massive. ObamaCare will require American 
businesses, families, health care providers to spend more than 127 
million hours per year in compliance costs. What could be done with 127 
million hours? The problem with big numbers is it is hard to get your 
mind around them. What does it mean that 127 million hours are being 
spent on complying with ObamaCare?
  To put that into perspective, Mount Rushmore--which took 14 years to 
build--could be completed over 1,000 times, and that is each and every 
year. That underscores how staggering; we are talking about 1,000 Mount 
Rushmores each and every year. I would note there may be some Members 
of this august body who would like to see themselves on those 1,000 or 
more Mount Rushmores.
  But rather than needless compliance, we should be putting that energy 
into productive endeavors. None of that compliance cost is productive. 
As we say in Texas, it produces neither trucks nor tortillas. It is 
simply wasted time dealing with the burdens of government.
  To give you a sense of the volume of burdens, as of today the 
administration has created more than 19,000 pages of regulations, 
bulletins, and guidance since ObamaCare became law. If the IRS and HHS 
and the Department of Labor continue at their current pace, we can 
expect an additional 3,000 pages of rules--which is what I have here, 
3,000 pages--in the next 6 months, the period covered by this 
continuing resolution.
  This is 3,000 pages right here. I will tell you, I am very glad I 
don't have to sit down and read these 3,000 pages. But I will tell you 
also, yesterday I held a tele-townhall with thousands of Texans. A 
small business owner asked a question. She said, Look, in our small 
business, we are struggling to make ends meet. How do we ascertain what 
these regulations contain? I will tell you, I was very frustrated that 
I could not give her a good answer, because on my desk here is 3,000 
pages, and yet what has already been promulgated is over 19,000 pages. 
So take this stack and send it six times up in the air. It would reach 
nearly into the gallery.
  I told her, I don't have a good answer for how you, struggling to 
make payroll, to make sure your employees keep their jobs, possibly 
digest 19,000 pages of regulations, with new pages coming out without 
ceasing.
  Why is our economy struggling? It is not hard to figure out why our 
economy is struggling when you think about the compliance costs and 
regulations that are being heaped on small businesses, when they are 
told, Figure out what is in the 19,000 pages of regulations, and if you 
get it wrong, you can be assured the hammer of the Federal Government 
will come down upon you.
  That is why I am introducing this amendment today. This amendment to 
the continuing resolution is a very simple amendment. It simply 
provides that none of the funds within the continuing resolution shall 
be spent to implement ObamaCare or to engage in rulemaking under 
ObamaCare.
  Let me be clear. In my view, ObamaCare should be repealed altogether. 
I think the harms from ObamaCare--and particularly the harms of the 
most vulnerable among us--are significant enough that we should repeal 
it in its entirety. I recognize that is not a view shared by every 
Member of this body. At a minimum, however, I would submit that every 
Member of this body will agree that restoring economic growth should be 
a critical priority. And with our economy gasping for breath--last 
quarter, we were at 0.1 percent growth--allowing ObamaCare to be fully 
implemented right now has the potential of pushing this economy into a 
recession. I know no Member of this body wants to see the economy go 
into a recession. No Member of this body wants to see the American 
people pay the price for damaging economic growth. If we allow 
ObamaCare to be funded and implemented right now, each of us who votes 
to do so will bear a significant amount of responsibility for the 
economic damage that comes.
  I would submit that every Member of this body, Republican and 
Democrat, should stand together and say, at a minimum, let's restore 
growth first; at a minimum, let's wait until we get back to historic 
levels of growth--3.3 percent--before implementing such an incredibly 
antigrowth, job-killing omnibus bill.
  Let me close with a simple observation of the power of growth. If we 
could get back to historic averages, 3 percent to 5 percent, every 
other problem this

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body wrestles with becomes much simpler to resolve. Four percent growth 
for a decade would create over 10 million new jobs. Four percent growth 
for a decade would produce over $3 trillion in additional tax revenue. 
I would note, that exceeds the tax increases. The revenue from the tax 
increases that have been proposed by President Obama exceeds the 
revenue from the tax increases that, my understanding is, the Budget 
Committee will include in its budget before this body.
  I am all for new revenue to pay down our debt. I just believe the 
revenue should come from economic growth and not from higher taxes that 
hammer small businesses, kill jobs, and restrict growth.
  Most importantly, 4 percent growth over a decade would lift over 3 
million out of poverty and into the middle class. Growth sometimes 
seems to be an abstract number that only economists worry about, but 
sustained growth is what has led to the unprecedented prosperity of our 
great Nation. It is the reason why for centuries millions of people 
have come to America seeking a better life, because there has been no 
country on Earth that has allowed so many people to start with nothing 
and achieve anything.
  A stagnant economy hurts, first and foremost, those struggling to 
climb the economic ladder. And, in my opinion, every one of us should 
come in to work every day fighting for those struggling to climb the 
economic ladder to make sure we remain the land of opportunity; to make 
sure we remain the hope and beacon to the world; to make sure that 
every American has a fair chance to achieve the American dream. With 
stagnant growth, millions are shut off from that American dream. And I 
know no Member of this body wants to see that happen.
  Respectfully, I would urge my colleagues to restore growth first. Do 
not allow this bill to be implemented, to kill economic growth, to kill 
jobs, and to potentially push this economy into a recession. Instead, 
let's get growth back, let's maintain our economic strength and 
security, and let's make sure opportunity remains--not just for us but 
for the next generation and the generations after that.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I guess I am compelled to say: Here we 
go again. We have been down this road a few times before since we 
passed the Affordable Care Act. Let me see, my notes tell me it is 33--
this makes the 34th time that someone on the Republican side has tried 
to do away with the Affordable Care Act. This is the 34th time, and 
they failed every time. But they are free to offer amendments, I 
understand that. I respect the Senator's right to do that, but we have 
already made our decisions on this and we are moving ahead.
  I have said many times as the chair of the HELP Committee, if someone 
has suggestions on how to improve the Affordable Care Act, to make it 
work better, be more efficient, I am open to that. That should be 
allowed, and we should have a constant exchange on maybe how we can 
improve it. But this idea that we are going to repeal it? I would also 
say I wonder if my friend, the Senator from Texas, saw the last 
election. The Senator from Texas got elected, that is for sure, and I 
congratulate him on that. But the Presidential candidate of the 
Republican Party who said he wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act 
lost. President Obama, who was the President who initiated this and 
signed it into law won, I think quite convincingly.
  So the American people basically have said it is time to move on with 
the Affordable Care Act. Yet here this amendment basically would repeal 
it.
  I wonder if the Senator from Texas understands it is not just the 
Affordable Care Act his amendment would hit, it would hit a lot of 
other things. When we passed the Affordable Care Act there were 
authorizations for other programs that were included with it. When the 
amendment says we cannot fund any of the provisions of the Affordable 
Care Act, I just made a note that we also reauthorized the Nurse 
Training Partnership Act. So a lot of the funds there go for training 
nurses.
  Does the Senator really believe we should stop funding training for 
nurses in America at this time when we need more nurses and more nurse 
practitioners than ever before, at a time when our nursing profession 
is facing a kind of age cliff? We have a huge cohort of nurses now who 
are going to be retiring. We need to bring in new nurses. Yet his 
amendment would cut funding. He says nothing we can do could support 
nurse training yet in America.
  Medicare fraud and abuse--fighting fraud and abuse in Medicare; that 
was also included in the Affordable Care Act. Again, they have tried 
frontal assaults on getting rid of the Affordable Care Act. Now this 
amendment says we are going to not fund it. It would be strange. We 
have a law in effect but no funding to take advantage of it.
  It is almost like some people on the other side of the aisle have an 
obsession with tearing down health care reform. I think it is 
unfortunate that some missed the results of the last election, so it is 
time to move on. This amendment really is the equivalent of repeal. It 
would turn back the clock on all we have accomplished in the past year. 
The administration would not be able to build the insurance exchanges 
or enforce the act's requirements on private insurers.
  Again, if this amendment were adopted, it would mean we would go back 
to the good old days when the insurance companies were in the driver's 
seat, telling you what kind of health care you are entitled to and when 
you are entitled to it.
  Ever since we passed the Affordable Care Act, and during the time we 
debated it on the Senate floor, we kept asking our friends on the 
Republican side: What is your alternative? Basically, what we got was 
the status quo: Let's just stay with what we have.
  I think the American people got pretty fed up with what we had, where 
insurance companies could turn people down at the very moment when they 
got sickest; when people had preexisting conditions and could not get 
insurance or had to pay exorbitant prices for it.
  I had a note, we had a family, the Grasshoffs, from Texas--the 
Senator's home State. They were unable to find coverage to pay for 
their son's hemophilia treatment. Why? Because they had reached their 
lifetime limit on insurance payments.
  The Affordable Care Act bans lifetime limits, so now they can get 
treatment. More than 100 million Americans are currently protected by 
this provision. This amendment would take it away. So the Grasshoffs' 
treatment for their son with hemophilia would end, and they cannot 
afford to pay for it out of their own pockets. Keep that in mind when 
you vote on this amendment.
  The Affordable Care Act allows young people to stay on their parents' 
policies, we know, until they are age 26. More than 3 million young 
people are taking advantage of this right now. Repeal would take that 
away from families. The adoption of the Cruz amendment would take that 
away because, obviously, we could not fund anything to help make this 
work.
  I mentioned preexisting conditions--people who have high blood 
pressure, diabetes, heart disease, previous bouts with cancer. Right 
now the Cruz amendment would say no. The insurance companies can say: 
No, we are not going to insure you or if we do, you are going to pay 
sky-high prices for insurance.
  One of the big things we put in the Affordable Care Act was 
prevention and wellness programs that would prevent illness. So we 
provided for free preventive services such as mammograms and 
colonoscopies, so people can get those without paying copays, sometimes 
as much as $300 to as much as several hundred dollars for these 
essential services. The Cruz amendment would put us back where we would 
have to pay for those preventative screenings.
  The Cruz amendment would deprive States and localities of vital 
funding to combat chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart 
disease, as well as funding to make sure our kids have

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access to lifesaving vaccines. Thanks to health reform, the Prevention 
and Public Health Fund is saving lives. The Cruz amendment would stop 
that.
  I picked up a little bit of what the Senator from Texas said about 
young people; that their insurance rates are going to go sky high. Has 
the Senator ever heard of the marketplace? It is where people compete. 
Under the Affordable Care Act, all of these insurance companies now 
will have to go on the exchanges in the open market, with full 
transparency, and they are going to have to compete. We have not had 
that in the past, but under this we do. The Cruz amendment would take 
that away--a real market out there for insurance, for individuals, 
small businesses. They would have the same purchasing power and choice 
that only big companies had before.
  I guess what is most important is these exchanges that we are setting 
up will bring coverage to 32 million Americans who do not have coverage 
right now. They live in the oppressive fear that they are just one 
illness away from bankruptcy, losing their homes, not knowing if they 
can afford another doctor visit.
  Did anyone tell States to stop this, stop what they were doing to 
help serve our citizens? That is what this Cruz amendment does. The 
Cruz amendment would take us back to the days of the doughnut hole for 
the elderly because the Affordable Care Act closes that doughnut hole. 
We are closing it year after year; 6.1 million seniors have already 
saved more than $5.7 billion in discounts on drugs purchased in the 
doughnut hole. The Cruz amendment would stop that. It would increase 
seniors' drug prices by an estimated $3,500 per person over the next 10 
years.
  One of the key features we put in the Affordable Care Act was going 
after Medicare fraud, preventing Medicare fraud. We have increased 
criminal penalties, we have launched innovative technologies to detect 
and pursue those who would defraud Medicare, and we have put more cops 
on the beat to preserve Medicare funds for beneficiaries and not those 
who would scam the system. The Cruz amendment would stop all that, stop 
our efforts we put in there to get a handle on Medicare fraud.
  Something that is very important to so many of us is what is 
happening in rural areas. Right now, under the Affordable Care Act, 
there are incentive payments paid to rural primary care providers in 
rural America--States such as North Dakota and Iowa and Texas. Right 
now the Cruz amendment would stop that incentive payment for primary 
care providers in rural areas.
  I mentioned preventive services--right now every senior gets a 
wellness visit once a year. More than 34 million seniors got that last 
year, a free preventive service in Medicare so they can go in and get a 
wellness check to find out if they need to do something to take better 
care of themselves. They do not have to pay for that. The Cruz 
amendment would say if they want to do it now, they have to start 
paying for it.
  Since this is kind of a blunt instrument, this amendment we have 
before us would defund all activities related to health reform, 
including paying the Federal employees who administer Medicare. 
Secretary Sebelius has informed us payments to Medicare providers would 
be significantly disrupted by this. You just cannot separate the 
Affordable Care Act from all the other provisions of Medicare that are 
being run by Health and Human Services or by CMS, the Center for 
Medicaid and Medicare Services.
  Oh, yes, the Senator also talked about the deficit, reducing the 
deficit. I don't understand why someone would want to stop something 
which the Congressional Budget Office said would reduce the deficit. I 
guess we are going to reduce the deficit by increasing the deficit? 
That is sort of the logic of this amendment.
  The Congressional Budget Office affirmed that the Affordable Care Act 
reduces the deficit by more than $100 billion in the next 10 years, and 
more than $1 trillion in the decade that follows. So the Cruz amendment 
would roll that back. I guess the Senator wants to reduce the deficit 
by increasing the deficit. Go figure that one out.
  It is time to stop the silly games, but I guess it will continue. 
After all, in 1935 the Congress and President Roosevelt passed the 
Social Security Act. Seventy-five years later there are still some on 
the Republican side who would like to get rid of that.
  I guess we will continue to have a few voices--not everyone--who will 
still be fighting the Affordable Care Act a year from now.
  In 1965 Congress passed Medicare--the Republicans fought it bitterly, 
by the way--and 45 years later a few on that side are still trying to 
undo Medicare by voucherizing it, and that sort of stuff. I just have 
to say: Here we go again.
  William F. Buckley was the founder of the National Review and sort of 
the godfather of the modern conservative movement in America. He was a 
very intellectual kind of guy. He was very intellectual and a good 
writer and speaker. I always enjoyed watching William F. Buckley. He 
once said: ``A conservative is a fellow standing athwart history 
yelling: Stop!''
  Well, is that really the role? I think there should be a different 
role, and that is to stand with liberals, moderates, and everybody else 
to figure out what is best. We need to figure out what is best for 
moving ahead and not to just yell ``stop'' or repeal something. We need 
to do something that is so meaningful and so broadly supported, then 
figure out how to make it work the best.
  I kind of conclude where I began. If people have suggestions on how 
to make the Affordable Care Act work better, smoother, be more 
efficient, more cost effective, fine. That would be a good debate and 
discussion. Just to say: No, we are not going to fund it is an 
ideological approach. It is not based on budget considerations, it is 
not based on reducing the deficit, which I just pointed out. It is not 
based on a rational reading of the bill and what is happening out there 
in terms of setting up the exchanges and all the other things I 
mentioned. It is just an ideological approach. It is sort of tearing it 
down and sort of going after President Obama, I guess, one more time. I 
don't want to take the position that somebody cannot offer an amendment 
such as that. Sure, they can offer an amendment. They can do anything. 
However, reasonable, rational people in the Senate don't need to follow 
that. We need to do what is best for the American people and leave the 
ideology behind.
  I hope the Cruz amendment will be seen for what it is, an attempt to 
repeal ObamaCare at this moment in time when we are on the cusp of 
actually having it fully implemented. States have already moved ahead. 
Even very conservative Republican Governors have joined in and said: 
Yes, we want to extend Federal Medicaid coverage in our States. 
Conservative Republican Governors are setting up exchanges. We are 
moving ahead. Now is not the time to say: Well, we are going to cut the 
funding.
  Again, keep in mind, this doesn't just defund the Affordable Care 
Act. I said there were other things, such as the Nurse Professional 
Training Act, which we put in the Affordable Care Act, which would also 
be defunded. It was reauthorized along with the Medicare fraud and 
abuse and the area health education centers. There are a number of 
things that were put in with the Affordable Care Act that would also be 
defunded under the Cruz amendment.
  I hope everyone will see the amendment for what it is, and I hope the 
Senate will soundly reject it.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, we will be alternating on both sides 
of the aisle. I regret Senator Lee had to leave, and we welcome those 
who support the Cruz amendment to speak before we have to take a break.
  I have to go to a meeting with Senator Reid and other members of the 
committee at 12:30 p.m. We ask those who have views on this to come 
forward and speak. I do have some comments on the Cruz amendment.
  First of all, we welcome Senator Cruz. He is the new Senator from

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Texas. He replaced a very dear friend, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. 
Senator Hutchison and I were close friends and we usually agreed on 
goals, but there were times we didn't agree on methods. With Senator 
Cruz we agree that we do need a job-creating strategy. We know we need 
to promote economic growth in whatever we do and even follow the 
physician's adage of ``do no harm.'' That is why I absolutely disagree 
with the Senator's amendment. The very things he wants to accomplish 
and his underlying premise--though obviously well argued from his view 
in a persuasive way--I totally disagree with.
  First of all, let's talk about what the Cruz amendment does. It 
prohibits discretionary funds from being used for the Affordable Care 
Act. It is affectionately known by some of us as ObamaCare, because 
Obama does care. So the Cruz amendment would prevent the Department of 
Health and Human Services from implementing the Affordable Care Act. 
This would mean the staff, for example, CMS, could not issue or enforce 
regulations on insurance abuse practices, such as gender 
discrimination. Quality reforms that improve the care that everybody 
does and actually lowers cost would also be affected. For example, 
Johns Hopkins lung transplants were cited as one study--Madam 
President, I could go on, but if the Senator from Utah is ready to 
speak, I will yield the floor. We were alternating, so it is actually 
the Senator's turn.
  Madam President, as robust as my remarks would be, I will yield to 
give the Senator from Utah his rightful chance to speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Madam President, I wish to extend my gratitude to my 
colleague from Maryland for allowing me to speak at this time. I 
appreciate that.
  I rise in support of the amendment proposed by my good friend, the 
Senator from Texas, that would defund the implementation of the Patient 
Protection and Affordable Care Act for the remainder of this fiscal 
year. Almost everything the American people were told about ObamaCare 
by the bill's proponents has turned out to be incorrect. We were 
promised it would save money. Now we know it will cost us more money. 
In 2 short years, the projected cost of the government health care 
takeover has ballooned from $940 billion to $1.76 trillion. We were 
told it would help a struggling economy. Now we know it will help 
smother a still struggling economy.
  Employers cite ObamaCare as a principal reason and reluctance to hire 
new employees. According to the National Federation of Independent 
Business, ObamaCare's unconstitutional mandate--which the Supreme Court 
salvaged only by rewriting it as a tax--will kill between 125,000 and 
249,000 jobs over the next 10 years. According to the Congressional 
Budget Office, ObamaCare will reduce total American employment by 
800,000 jobs by 2021.
  In fairness, these are only projections. Although I believe even 
those projections are optimistic, they certainly contradict the 
fairytale arguments in favor of ObamaCare in 2009 and 2010, but they 
are still just best guesses.
  The reason Senator Cruz introduced, and the reason why I support, 
this amendment is that the case against ObamaCare is rapidly moving 
from fears about tomorrow to pain that is felt today--right now.
  In 2008, then-Senator Obama promised that his policies would lower 
health care premiums for the average American family by $2,500; 4 years 
later--and 2 years after President Obama signed ObamaCare into law--the 
Kaiser Foundation reports that family health insurance premiums have 
actually risen by $2,370. This is one of the things we were told we 
needed to pass the bill in order to find within the bill a $5,000 
premium hike on working families.
  What else have we found? We found that when the Federal Government 
requires businesses to provide health insurance for their full-time 
employees, businesses respond by cutting employee hours. Other 
companies have chosen to go farther and have simply laid employees off 
altogether or shifted those jobs overseas. Other companies have 
admitted that the cost ObamaCare adds to their business will have to be 
passed on to their customers in the form of higher prices.
  Then there is the devastating impact ObamaCare has had on our medical 
device industry, which is targeted for a special punitive tax under 
this law. Companies from Boston Scientific, Stryker, Smith & Nephew and 
others are laying off workers and shipping their jobs overseas.
  It is important to remember that each of these layoffs is, in a 
sense, a double strike against our economy. On the one hand, when 
people lose their jobs and their health insurance, the economy suffers 
in and of itself because of that impact. On the other hand, at the very 
same time this is occurring because ObamaCare and the rest of the 
President's failed agenda are weighing down our economy quite heavily, 
there are not enough new jobs being created for the recently unemployed 
Americans to fill. So the unemployed are not only staying unemployed 
for longer than normal, but they are also increasing demand for already 
overburdened government assistance programs. Thanks to ObamaCare, fewer 
people are working and paying into the system to support people 
ObamaCare is preventing from finding work and health insurance in the 
first place.
  The beauty of the Cruz amendment is that we don't have to pass it to 
discover what it would do. We already know exactly what it would do. It 
would delay the implementation of ObamaCare and thereby save taxpayer 
money and American jobs. It would also restore a semblance of 
democratic accountability to a process that is badly in need of 
precisely that. After all, the various departments of the Federal 
Government have already issued some 20,000 pages' worth of regulations 
to formalize the ObamaCare system. In other words, the 2,700-page 
monstrosity Congress passed in 2010 was only a fraction of the final 
deforesting product.
  Does anyone--literally anyone in the entire country--know what those 
20,000 pages of regulations say? For all we know, we could be violating 
ObamaCare right now. Somewhere in those 20,000 pages there might be 
something saying we cannot do what we are doing at the moment.
  Some might think I am exaggerating, but as we were all shocked to 
learn recently, 98 percent of individual health insurance policies in 
the United States right now are in violation of ObamaCare's standards. 
When ObamaCare goes into full effect, those Americans who own those 
policies will have to either buy more expensive insurance than they 
have now or pay the unconstitutional fine. The unconstitutional fine 
was, according to the Supreme Court, unconstitutional as a fine and 
could be sustained by the Supreme Court only because the Supreme Court 
rewrote the law as a tax instead of a fine.
  To recap, ObamaCare is already costing us jobs that we need badly. It 
is raising health care costs. It is adding to our deficit and debt. It 
is forcing families off their health insurance policies they have and 
like. It is a Trojan horse for 20,000 of new law that no elected 
official wrote and not a single citizen in the United States has read.
  Then, of course, there is the slow-motion train wreck of the law's 
implementation. A majority of States in the Union have already refused 
to set up their own ObamaCare exchanges. The bill has been passed and 
the American people now see what is in it and they want no part of it. 
So the Department of Health and Human Services is now charged with 
setting up Federal exchanges in those States, but they don't know how.
  The clock is ticking. People are losing their health insurance. The 
exchanges are supposed to be ready to handle the massive influx of 
people dumped by ObamaCare onto those same exchanges, and the exchanges 
are not going to be there.
  What will be there? Well, according to a report issued by the 
Associated Press, uninsured Americans will find a 15-page, 21-step 
application that will

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need approval from three separate Federal agencies. There are expected 
to be more than 4 million of these applications next year alone. Even 
as an advocate of the program says in this same AP story: The form will 
take a considerable amount of time to fill out and will be difficult 
for many people to be able to complete. That part of the process ``does 
not get you to the selection of a plan.''
  ObamaCare is going to make doing your taxes feel like a round of 
golf. For this reason, there are some who believe the only way to 
expose ObamaCare and rescue the health care system is to let nature 
take its course, to let it go into effect as soon as possible. They say 
that the sooner it collapses, the sooner we can repeal it and start 
over.
  The Senator from Texas and I and everyone else supporting this 
amendment reject that logic. We cannot in good conscience send millions 
of innocent Americans into a dangerously dysfunctional health care 
system run by unaccountable, if well-intentioned, bureaucrats. We will 
not sacrifice millions of families to prove a political point. People's 
lives and livelihoods are at stake. The American people are not pawns 
in Washington's partisan political game. We work for them, not the 
other way around.
  As public servants we have an obligation to protect the American 
people--those who elected us to serve. ObamaCare is going to hurt our 
country, our economy, our constituents, our friends, and our neighbors. 
It is the single greatest threat to our economy and to our health care 
system. Eventually, ObamaCare will be repealed. The American people 
will see the damage it does and demand that we scrap it and start over. 
But for now we must at least defund it, at least for the life of this 
continuing resolution--for the remainder of this fiscal year.
  Senator Cruz and I have been assured that this amendment will fail 
and ObamaCare will move ahead as planned. If that is the will of the 
Senate, then so be it. But when ObamaCare does start to break down--
when waiting times start to grow, when costs start to explode, when 
taxes start to rise, when doctors and nurses start to quit, when 
hospitals start to close, when businesses start to shutter, when take-
home pay falls and jobs disappear, when patients and families truly 
find out what is in this bill, then the American people will know who 
is responsible for the catastrophe of ObamaCare and who, like the 
Senator from Texas, tried to help.
  A few years ago, when then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi famously 
told Members of the House that you have to pass this 2,700 page bill in 
order to find out what is in it, she perhaps saw what we would be 
experiencing today or at least some aspect of it. But either way, today 
we now see what is in what they passed back then. We, as Members of the 
Senate, have had an opportunity to review this piece of legislation 
over the last few years. We know what economic impact this law is 
already having as its still massive implementation has moved forward.
  We need to make ourselves accountable to the American people for what 
is in this law and what we now know is in this law. I, therefore, 
respectfully urge each and every one of my colleagues to support this 
amendment.
  Thank you, Madam President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I rise to speak on the Cruz amendment. 
I am glad Senator Lee had a chance to speak.
  As I said, the Cruz amendment would prevent the Department of Health 
and Human Services from implementing funding for the discretionary 
spending aspects of the Affordable Care Act. Since the Presiding 
Officer knows the Affordable Care Act so well and played a major part 
in it when she was a Member of the House of Representatives, she knows 
this amendment would have disastrous consequences. It would essentially 
defund the Affordable Care Act. They call it ObamaCare. I call it 
ObamaCare. As I said earlier, Obama does care, and that is why we 
passed the legislation in the first place.
  The Cruz amendment means that CMS couldn't do their job to, for 
example, issue regulations on ending gender discrimination. It has been 
said that there are all these pages of regulation. But why should we 
pay more for health insurance than men of comparable age and health 
status--as much as 50 percent more?
  The Affordable Care Act also ends discrimination on the basis of 
preexisting conditions. As the Presiding Officer knows, in eight States 
women were denied health insurance because domestic violence was deemed 
a preexisting condition. They were battered in their own home, and then 
they were battered by their insurance agency. What are we doing here? 
This is not where we are going.
  Excuse me. I promised I wouldn't try to incite; I would try more to 
inspire. But I feel very strongly and passionately that the Cruz 
amendment should not pass. It should not pass.
  I wish to speak to what the Senator said about economic growth. He 
said he is for economic growth. I want to be on that list. He is a 
progrowth Senator. I want to be on that list too. I think it is a 
committee of 100. What I want him to know is that without a form of 
health care that provides universal access but insisting on delivery 
models of reform, we will have a catastrophe and not only in an earned 
benefit program such as Medicare. What happens is if people don't have 
health insurance, it gets shifted onto other people who do have health 
insurance and the employers who have the generosity and wherewithal to 
pay for it.
  So if we want to be for economic growth, the first thing we need to 
do is clean up our own act here. This is what we need to do here. The 
politics of brinkmanship, ultimatum politicians, shut down, show down, 
and slam down must end. That is what we are trying to do here. What we 
are trying to do is move legislation so there is no government 
shutdown.
  Businesses don't invest in creating jobs because they don't have 
certainty. They don't have reliability. Where is the Federal Government 
going? What is it going to do? How is it going to get its act together 
so businesses can invest, whether it is in their own employees or 
perhaps bringing money back home from overseas, legally earned profits, 
to put into infrastructure? So if a person is progrowth, they want to 
have health insurance.
  The two costs business cannot control are the cost of health care and 
the cost of energy. We can control the impact on reforming the cost of 
health care through ObamaCare. Why do I say that? First of all, if a 
person doesn't have health insurance, they get sick and go to the 
emergency room. Do my colleagues know what the average cost of an 
emergency room visit is? It is $1,000. Do my colleagues know what a 
primary care doctor gets? He gets $40. Now, what is wrong with that 
picture? He gets $40, not $400, by the time all of it is taken out.
  I wish to bring to the attention of my colleagues a fantastic 
documentary that was on CNN on Sunday night. It was called ``Escape 
Fire.'' It was a complete 2-hour documentary from CNN, not some lefty 
think tank or nothing like the Institute of Medicine. This was a CNN 
documentary on the cost of health care and how the system we have now 
increases costs but does not increase or improve health outcomes.
  I am not going to argue all those dynamics here today, but if we 
really want to lower the cost of health care, we want to have President 
Obama and our Affordable Care Act. This is what businesses want. What 
they don't want is cost-shifting. Because some people don't have it or 
because they got it too late in their own situation, the cost is 
actually greater.
  The other side has talked about small business. Senator Cruz just 
told this wonderful story about his father--a Cuban refugee, 
essentially--who came to this country. Because he couldn't speak 
English, he took a job where it wasn't required, washing dishes. And 
then here we go, one generation later, Senator Cruz is a Senator. I 
think that is a wonderful personal story. He then went on to talk about 
business.

[[Page 3465]]

  His story is a lot like my own family's story. We came from Poland. 
When we came from Poland, it was not because we were rich; we came 
because we thought that Lady Liberty and her shining light really meant 
something. My family started small businesses. My grandmother ran one 
of the best Polish bakeries in Baltimore. My father had a small grocery 
store. Because of a large family, he left school in the eighth grade, 
but through his own grit and determination, with my mother at his side, 
he served a community. Over 700 people came to my father's funeral 
because they loved him as much, in their own way, as we did. My father, 
through his grit, determination, and working--the same as Senator 
Cruz's father--my father worked 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. He sent 
his three daughters to college to be sure they had an education in 
post-high school.
  He wanted to have health care. My father was crazy about Social 
Security and BlueCross and BlueShield. My father couldn't get on Social 
Security until the 1950s because small business was excluded. The 
reason he liked Social Security was that he worried about my mother and 
he worried about his girls. He was worried that if he died, would his 
own insurance--my father had insurance. My father was a planner and a 
provider--a planner and a provider--but he worried about whether that 
would be enough to take care of us. So when he was eligible for Social 
Security, he said: I will pay my fair share so if anything happens, 
fine, and if nothing happens, I am glad to pay my fair share.
  As a small businessman, he didn't have access to big markets, but 
through the Maryland Grocers Association--again, in the 1950s--he could 
come in on BlueCross and BlueShield. He wanted health insurance for 
himself, for my mother, for his daughters, and, if he could, for the 
few people who worked for him because he knew that people were one 
financial bankruptcy away if a big illness happened.
  What my father faced in the 1950s America is facing now in 2013.
  So what does ObamaCare do? It improves access for 35 million 
Americans who are without health insurance. It ends the punitive 
practices of insurance companies, one of which is gender 
discrimination. The other is the preexisting condition denials. It also 
strengthens Medicare in a way that actually reduces health costs. Data 
has been released in the last several days that actually shows health 
care costs are going down, and it is not because of the recession. It 
is because our reforms are going into effect, such as the famous 
Pronovost checklist developed at Johns Hopkins University that was 
quoted in another study: If we wash our hands and take care of certain 
things in the OR, we won't get an infection. And if we don't get 
infections, we don't stay in the hospital longer than necessary.
  I chaired the quality initiatives committee that examined how we 
could, through improvements in quality, not only save lives but would 
it save money, and the answer was a resounding yes. I didn't make that 
up.
  They said: Mikulski, you are a social worker. What do you know about 
delivering health care?
  It wasn't my idea. I went to learned societies, such as the Institute 
of Medicine, that said to err is human, but it is also costly. I am not 
talking about the medical malpractice stuff--infections, returning 
admissions to hospitals within 10 days or 30 days because of the way 
people are often discharged, the issue of prevention.
  I am the author of the so-called preventive amendment that went into 
the health care bill.
  What was that all about? It meant that early detection and screenings 
save lives--early detection and screenings save lives. That means if 
you get your mammogram, if you get your PSA test for a man, you are 
more likely to find it.
  But it is not only for that dread, awful ``C'' word. Let's take a 
``D'' word: diabetes. A lot of people walk around and do not know they 
have diabetes or high blood pressure. Both are silent killers. They can 
result in strokes or death. If you have undetected diabetes, it can 
kill you through a coma and other things, but it can also kill you 
slowly. The consequences of prolonged diabetes can result in the loss 
of eyesight, the loss of a kidney, diabetic myopathy, where you cannot 
walk. And if you come in so late, you are often--rather than facing an 
amputation, wouldn't it have been better to find it 10 years before and 
get you into the right program, with the right diabetic educator, to 
make sure we not only control your diabetes but we are not paying for 
amputations, which is a heartbreak for the family and the person and a 
budget buster to us?
  This is what prevention is all about. It is not some gooshy-pooh 
thing. It is not like a slogan on a cereal box. This is the real deal. 
If you find certain of these chronic conditions sooner, you can manage 
their escalation. That helps the family and the patient. It also helps 
control our costs.
  This is what we are talking about. This is why we care so much. And 
for women, we were helped through this bill, dealing with gender 
discrimination, preexisting conditions. Children were helped. And now, 
right now--because ObamaCare is not fully implemented--it stops 
insurance companies from denying families health insurance or charging 
sky-high premiums because their child has a preexisting condition.
  What are we talking about here? We are talking about autism. We are 
talking about type 1 diabetes. We are talking about even children who 
have arthritis.
  The other day I had such a poignant thing happen. I was dashing to 
the elevator, and there was a family with a young lady, a young girl 
about my height, but about--well, she was 13 and a tween. When they 
showed me their picture of the last time we met, that tween, that young 
lady, was in a wheelchair. We do not think of someone around 11 or 9 
having arthritis, but she does. This is going to be a chronic condition 
with this young lady. But through the work of NIH, other great 
research, and working with a biologic that was used for other medical 
issues but allowed under FDA to work with her, under very strictly 
controlled conditions, with parental consent, of course, this young 
lady stood next to me. We laughed and we joked, back to back, because 
the little girl that was in the wheelchair is now a tween, and she is a 
lot taller than I am. We had a good laugh. But I will tell you, when I 
got on that elevator I had a good cry, and I was so emotional about it, 
I even feel it today.
  What are we doing here? Don't we want to give this little girl a 
break? When her mother and father applied for health insurance, do we 
want the schoolmarmish no--the nos of the insurance company saying: No, 
that kid has arthritis. We cannot insure you.
  That kid does have arthritis, but she is walking today. She is 
standing proud with her mother and father, joking with a U.S. Senator, 
doing well in school. Isn't that what we want for our country and for 
our young people? Why would we want to repeal legislation that does 
that?
  I could talk a lot about this bill. I feel so strongly about the 
incredible infrastructure we have in our United States--NIH, academic 
centers of excellence, learned societies from IOM to the American 
Academy of Pediatrics that have advised us along the way--all of us 
working together. The biologic was developed by the private sector--the 
private sector--working with doctors, working with FDA, to say: Can we 
try an off-label that meets all the ethical things where children are 
involved?
  We did it, and look at the story. That is just one story. We are a 
country of 300 million people. That story is being acted out every 
single day, and it is being acted out right now in the ER. If you came 
to the ER with me at Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland, at 
Mercy Hospital, are there people who are there from trauma? Yes. Are 
there people there who were in an automobile accident? Yes. I was there 
3 years ago myself with a fall coming out of church. Yes. But over 70 
percent who are there are there because they do not have health 
insurance. And they are using a thousand dollars a visit being in 
there. What kind of system is that?

[[Page 3466]]

  So if we repeal the President's Affordable Care Act, the consequences 
on families, the consequences on business, will be horrific. We are 
simply shifting the cost rather than solving the problem.
  Are there reforms necessary? Yes. Do the Senators from Texas and 
Utah, who spoke, offer suggestions? Yes. But let's let ObamaCare go 
forward. Let's evaluate, let's do due diligence, and let's do oversight 
and make sure health reforms we have instituted are working, but do not 
repeal it. We will endanger lives, and we will endanger our economy.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time 
until 2 p.m. be equally divided between Senator Cruz and myself or our 
designees; that at 2 p.m. the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the 
Cruz amendment; that there be no amendments in order to the Cruz 
amendment prior to the vote; further, that upon the disposition of the 
Cruz amendment, the next amendment in order be an amendment offered by 
Senator Harkin relative to Labor-HHS appropriations.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time 
in the quorum call be equally divided.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, I rise to speak on the pending question, 
which is the Cruz amendment, to defund ObamaCare. I appreciate him 
offering the amendment on this very relevant issue. I am glad we are 
talking again about it.
  When I ran for office 2 years ago, this was one of the central 
issues. There has been a court decision since then. We need to 
understand, court decisions are about the constitutionality of 
something. They do not speak to its policy wisdom. That is what this 
debate is about today. I think it is important because since the 
election--and even going into the election--we had lost some view on 
this.
  But let me begin by saying health insurance is a problem in the 
United States. There is no doubt about it. I think that to be in 
opposition to the health care bill is not to say that we think nothing 
should happen. On the contrary, I know health insurance is a major 
problem for millions of Americans. Its affordability is a problem. Its 
access is a problem, the ability of people to get the kind of health 
coverage they want.
  In fact, when I was speaker of the Florida House--I had the honor of 
being that for 2 years in Florida--we actually worked on some ideas 
that created a marketplace where the private insurers and others could 
come together and create creative packages for people. That is the kind 
of insurance you need. Not everybody needs the same health insurance. 
Let me give you an example.
  A family of four with two children--I have four children--I promise 
you, you are going to wind up in the pediatrician's office quite a bit, 
for everything and all kinds of stuff. We are very blessed. My 
children, thank God, are very healthy. And even then, there are issues 
where you need to bring them, whether it is primary care, whether it is 
vaccinations, whether it is a cold that does not go away--whatever it 
may be. I think it is so critically important to have that. So families 
in that circumstance need a certain type of coverage.
  Then there are other people, people I know who are in their mid to 
late twenties. They never go to the doctor. But if they ever get sick, 
it is probably going to be, unfortunately, something very bad. So those 
folks maybe would rather have a plan that covers them upfront with some 
primary care coverage--maybe a higher deductible that you could pay 
with a health savings account--but on the back end some catastrophic 
hospitalization costs so if you truly get sick, God forbid, you have 
the opportunity to have the kind of coverage you need.
  The point is everybody needs different kinds of health care coverage. 
My hope is that this country and the Federal Government--to the extent 
it has a role to play in all this--would help incentivize the creation 
of marketplaces for those sorts of innovative health ideas.
  As I said, not everybody needs the same health insurance. That is why 
there are some principles that should have guided us when this was 
debated before I got here and should guide us going forward.
  For example, I think one of our guiding principles should be that 
Americans should be able to buy health insurance from any company in 
the country that is willing to sell it to them. Right now, health 
insurance is regulated at the State level. In essence, these States 
have mandates as to what insurance companies must offer in order to 
sell insurance in that State, and you cannot buy insurance if it does 
not have all of those. The equivalent would be of saying: You either 
have to buy a Cadillac Escalade or you have to buy nothing. Some people 
do not want a car that is that big and that fancy. They need something 
that is a little different.
  The point is those choices are not available to consumers. We should 
start with an organizing principle by saying every American should be 
able to buy health insurance they want from any company in America that 
is willing to sell it to them.
  Another part of that is you should be able to buy health insurance 
for yourself. Let me tell you why that is problematic. If your employer 
buys the health insurance for you, they do not have to pay taxes on the 
money. Taxes are not paid on the money that is used to buy that health 
insurance. But if you buy it for yourself, it is income, it is treated 
as income. You have to pay tax on it. That is problematic for a couple 
reasons. No. 1, some businesses and some employers would rather give 
them the health care money so they can go out and buy the plan they 
want. Others would want to buy you plans or give you options among 
different plans.
  Federal employees know very well what that is like. Let me tell you 
what a Federal employee gets. A Federal employee gets a book. In that 
book you get to choose between--depending on where you live--a bunch of 
different plans. You go right down the graph, and it tells you: This is 
how much this plan offers, this is how much you have to pay in premiums 
per month, this is how much you are going to owe in copayments if you 
go to a doctor, if you go to a specialist, if you go to a hospital.
  How many people in America get that choice? How many people in 
America get the same choices on buying health care that their 
Congressmen and their Senators get? Very few. To me, that is a serious 
problem.
  The good news about this--imagine now, for a moment, a country where 
people control their health care dollars, where you got to buy the 
insurance you wanted from the company you wanted. Let me tell you what 
the market is going to do. It is going to react to that. What the 
market is going to do--when there are people out there who are going to 
have choices over how they spend their health care dollars--they are 
going to start creating insurance packages that people want to buy. 
They are going to realize: We have a bunch of 25, 27, 29-year-olds in 
the United States who do not get sick. We should create special 
packages of insurance for them. They are going to realize: We have a 
lot of families out

[[Page 3467]]

there who can afford to pay ``X'' amount of money for a family coverage 
plan. We should go out and create a special plan for families like 
them.
  By the way, along the lines of this level of flexibility, you could 
see where small businesses all of a sudden can get together with other 
small businesses. As an example, a small chamber of commerce in a 
midsize city somewhere can decide to bring all of those companies 
together. Together they can buy health insurance for their employees. 
It is hard to buy group coverage if you only have four or five 
employees. But if you can get together with a bunch of other companies 
that have three, four, five employees, all of a sudden you have a 
buying pool. That buying pool gives you leverage and power to go out 
and create plans for all of your employees.
  There is no one size fits all. We should have that kind of 
flexibility in our insurance marketplace. We do not. These are not 
going to cure everything, but these are important steps forward.
  By the way, I would be remiss in talking about medicine to not talk 
about the malpractice insurance rates, especially for specialties. Do 
not underestimate what a significant impediment that is for some people 
to go into the medical profession or to stay in the medical profession.
  Right up front, let me tell you, if a doctor is negligent, if a 
doctor commits malpractice, you should have a right to recover your 
economic damages, and there should be some level of punitive damages to 
encourage people not to do that in the future and to be careful. The 
problem is it has gone beyond that. In many States we have a crisis 
when it comes to litigation and medicine. People are not just suing 
because, unfortunately, something went wrong. They are suing on 
outcomes. They are not just suing because the treatment was bad. The 
result is that doctors practice defensive medicine.
  You go to a doctor, you go to a hospital, they order a slew of tests. 
It is not because you need them, but because they want to make sure 
they are covered; that if they ever wind up in a court they can be able 
to say to the jury: Look at all of those tests I ordered--even though 
most of them might not have been necessary. Who do you think pays for 
that? We do.
  It is worse than that. There are places like in Florida where 
obstetricians do not even have coverage at all. They go bare. They hire 
lawyers to protect their assets so they cannot be sued. I know true 
stories of obstetricians who will not see certain patients anymore 
because they are afraid of the outcome of what may happen.
  So I think we need to look at, perhaps, not as a part of the 
insurance situation but in health care across the States, a way to 
incentivize States to pass medical malpractice reform that protects 
patients. People should always have the right to access the court 
system for wrongdoing, and especially to be compensated for their 
economic damages. If a doctor commits malpractice and you cannot work 
anymore, all of those lost wages that you are not going to be able to 
work for in the future, you should be able to be rewarded for that.
  If we allow doctors to continue to be sued in this country as an 
industry, which is what it has become, people are not going to go to 
medical school.
  Here is another problem we are starting to see. A lot of young people 
in medical school do not want to go into the complex issues anymore. 
They do not want to become brain surgeons. They do not want to become 
OB-GYNs. They want to go into some other specialty that in addition to 
offering better hours--your beeper does not go off if you are a plastic 
surgeon at 3:00 in the morning. In addition to that, they do not have 
to worry about liability. Let me tell you, that is a problem. In 
Florida, most of our cardiologists are over the age of 50. What does 
that mean 10 years from now? That means we are not going to have enough 
cardiologists. It is discouraging people from going into very important 
professions in medicine because they are afraid they are going to get 
sued--not for doing something wrong but because things did not turn out 
well in treatment.
  Let me put on the record that I am not against people being able to 
sue a negligent doctor. In fact, I think negligent doctors should not 
only be sued, they should lose their license. I am just saying, if we 
go too far, like anything else in the world, you are going to lose 
people from medicine. They are going to decide not to go in it.
  Let's talk about this issue for a moment and the amendment that is 
before us. The problem with ObamaCare is that it is a one-size-fits-all 
approach to the entire country. The health care needs of Americans are 
very different. No. 1, they are very different geographically depending 
on where you live; No. 2, they are very different depending on your 
family situation, your health situation, et cetera.
  Now, some people are very sick. They are chronically ill. That is 
where we can have a conversation about high-risk pools because these 
people are very difficult to insure. If someone is sure to get sick, it 
is hard to find an insurance for them because you are guaranteed to be 
sick. So we have to find a solution for that problem. That is where 
conversations about high-risk pools at the State level are a valid 
thing to talk about. But beyond that, I think people should have 
flexibility. That is not what ObamaCare does.
  I understand that people read the newspapers and say: This is good. 
We are going to get a health care plan. We are going to be able to buy 
insurance. My boss is going to be forced to give me health insurance.
  That is not how it is going to work out, guys. That is not how things 
work out in the real world. We are already starting to see the impacts 
of it. What is amazing to me is as this law begins to develop, as 
people start to see the true impact and the unintended or maybe even 
the intended consequences of this law, I predict right now that the 
number of people who were excited about ObamaCare is going to dwindle 
dramatically.
  The proof is how many groups have come here already and asked to be 
exempted. How many unions, how many other groups have raised their 
hands and said: Please do not make us live under the laws that we 
supported. Do not make us live under their laws that we held rallies 
for. Do not make us live under these laws that we bragged about because 
it has a negative impact on us. And some of them are coming to bear 
right now.
  No. 1 is the cost. When this bill was passed, they said it would be 
about $1 trillion--$940 billion to be exact. Now we know it is $1.7 
trillion in gross cost over the next few years.
  How about tax hikes? Absolutely, because starting in 2014, the IRS is 
going to create a problem for millions of Americans and small 
businesses. Basically, if you are not buying health insurance of the 
kind they want, of the kind the law requires--not just health 
insurance, a specific kind of health insurance--you are going to owe 
the IRS a fine. Think about that for a moment. If you are a small 
business owner or an individual, and you are not buying the health 
insurance the government says you must have, you now are going to have 
to pay a fine every year to the IRS.
  Some people are going to do the math. They are going to say it is 
cheaper to pay the fine than it is to buy the health insurance. That is 
problematic, but it is a cost.
  We are trying to grow our economy. That is the only solution to our 
problems. Over the next couple of weeks, we are going to debate 
budgets, we are going to debate continuing resolutions, and the word 
``debt'' is going to come up. We cannot tax our way out of this debt. 
There is no tax increase that gets us out of this debt. To my own 
party, I say while we always have to have fiscal discipline, you cannot 
cut your way out of this debt alone either. The only real solution to 
our debt problems--and the debt matters because it is killing jobs in 
America--the only real solution to our debt problems is a combination 
of two things: rapid, robust economic growth.
  If we can grow our economy at 4 percent a year, we could generate $3 
trillion for debt reduction over the next decade, and we would create 
millions of

[[Page 3468]]

jobs and pull people out of poverty and strengthen our middle class, 
which is the source of our exceptionalism as a country.
  The second thing we need is fiscal discipline on future spending. 
This bill violates both. This bill violates both. It hurts economic 
growth because the only way you are going to grow your economy is if 
you make America a better place to create jobs and start businesses. 
That is how economic growth is created. When someone takes money they 
have or money they borrowed or money someone invested in them, and they 
use it, they risk it to open a new business or to grow an existing one, 
as the idea works, they start hiring people, and those people now are 
making a middle-class salary. Those people are now buying things and 
spending money, creating jobs and opportunity for others.
  That is the formula for growth and prosperity. This hurts that 
because what you are now saying is, in addition to everything else you 
have to put up with in America--all the State and local regulations, 
all the complicated Tax Code stuff, the natural downturn in the 
economy, globalism and the changes that it has brought--in addition to 
all of that, here is one more thing you are going to have to do: You 
are either going to have to offer health insurance of a certain kind or 
you are going to owe the IRS a fine.
  I promise you that is not the kind of thing chambers of commerce put 
on their pamphlets when they try to attract businesses to their 
communities or their States. This is not going to help in job creation. 
The tax hikes are a big problem. It is especially bad for small 
businesses because they have this arbitrary number of people--50 
employees or more--who have to do certain things. OK. So what do you 
think a lot of businesses are going to do? I know people. They have 
already told me about this.
  If you have 51 employees, this is a huge incentive to only have 49 
employees. So you think about that for a moment. If you own a small 
road-paving company with 50 full-time employees or 51 full-time 
employees, you sit down with your accountant to do your math for next 
year. Your accountant will tell you: By the way, if you get rid of a 
couple of employees, this is how much money this is going to save you 
because of ObamaCare.
  So do we want to have an incentive in our laws to have businesses get 
rid of workers because it helps them avoid certain costs mandated by 
government? This is happening. This is not pie in the sky, this is 
going to happen. There are people planning to do that already. It is 
happening right now.
  Here is another thing. How about part-time workers versus full-time 
workers. We have already seen evidence of this across the board. But I 
will tell you where you are seeing it already is in people who own a 
bunch of franchises. So you own a chain of Kentucky Fried Chickens or a 
chain of McDonalds, and all of a sudden you have incentive to move as 
many of those people as you can to part time because they do not 
trigger the ObamaCare mandates either. So now you have all of these 
businesses across America that have an incentive that we have created 
in this law--I say ``we,'' the people who were here when this passed--a 
perverse incentive to cut people's hours so they do not trigger the 
mandate. These are horrible consequences that are going to have an 
impact on our country at a time when we should be growing our economy 
and creating middle-class prosperity, not working against it.
  So my prediction is that when they start to fully implement this over 
the next 12 to 18 months, it is going to be an epic disaster. Not 
because it was ill-intentioned, per se. I think the goal of providing 
an environment where everybody can buy affordable health insurance is 
something we should take very seriously and something we have to work 
on. You cannot have a strong, stable middle class if people cannot 
afford the cost of living. You cannot have a strong and stable middle 
class if people do not have access to quality health care at an 
affordable price. We should work on that. We should work on that very 
hard. But we have to do that with balance.
  This is not balanced. This is an across-the-board application to the 
entire country that is going to hurt a lot of people. There are people 
in America who are going to lose hours at work because of this bill. 
There are people in America who are going to lose the health insurance 
they have which they are happy with because of this bill. There are 
people in America who are going to have to lay off people, and 
therefore there are people in America who are going to lose their jobs 
because of this bill. Our debt is going to grow.
  I hope we will pass this amendment. I hope we will defund this 
program. It was ill-designed. As the true ramifications of this bill 
begin to apply over the next few months and the next couple of years, 
we are going to be right here on this floor trying to fix it because 
this country cannot be what it is meant to be if it has to deal with 
something like this hanging around its neck.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Before the Senator from Florida leaves the floor, I 
just wanted to commend him for his observations. I listened carefully 
to what the Senator from Florida had to say. It reminds me of the 
prediction many of us made when it was passed: It would be the single 
worst piece of legislation in modern times.
  Everything the President predicted would happen has not happened. 
Premiums have gone up; jobs have been destroyed. The single biggest 
step in the direction of Europeanizing our country that we could 
possibly have taken we took with ObamaCare.
  So I just wanted to commend the Senator from Florida for his 
comments. They are right on the mark.
  I also want to thank Senator Cruz for offering this amendment. I 
offered it in the last Congress myself. There is no way to fix this 
thing, no way to fix it. It needs to be pulled out by its roots. The 
Senator from Florida pointed out it is also destroying jobs.
  I was on a tele-townhall the other night. A restaurant manager called 
in and said exactly what the Senator from Florida just said, that they 
were moving to lower their employment and to have more part-time 
workers in order to try to deal with the impending ObamaCare explosion.
  So I am sure the Senator from Florida is running into that in his 
State as well.
  Mr. RUBIO. Let me say a couple of things--actually, a true world 
example. Here is the startling thing about it. A lot of people are not 
fully aware of what this means yet. This may surprise some of us who 
are here every day or the people who cover politics on a daily basis, 
but most Americans are not tuned into C-SPAN 24 hours a day. They get 
their news in tidbits in the morning when they are making their coffee. 
They have the radio on. They hear some stuff on the radio on the way to 
work. Then they go to work for 10, 12, 14 hours to run a business. They 
get home, they have to do homework with the kids, make dinner, put them 
to bed. Maybe they get to watch an hour or two of TV. They wake up 
tomorrow morning and they do it all over again. They are not in touch 
with all of this on a daily basis. They have lives to lead.
  You will be surprised how many small business men and women and how 
many employees around the country are not even aware of this yet, do 
not even realize the decisions they are going to have to make next 
year. So if you are in a business that has anywhere between 45, 55, 60 
employees, when you sit down at the end of this year with your 
planner--be it your accountant, your lawyer, whatever it is you use, 
your human resources people--and do next year's planning, they are 
going to tell you: OK, next year we have this new law. This new law 
says we have to offer this kind of insurance. Here are your choices: 
Option No. 1 is you can offer the insurance, and this is how much more 
it is going to cost than what you are paying right now. Option No. 2 is 
do not offer any insurance and pay a fine to the IRS every year from

[[Page 3469]]

now on. Here is how much that is going to be. Option No. 3 is to let 
some people go so you do not have to do any of this.
  I am telling you, a lot of these people are going to say: You know 
what. It breaks our heart; we do not want to do it; it is not good for 
our business, but of the three options, the only one that is going to 
allow us to survive is to let some people go. That is not good for us. 
That is not good for us.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Well, the Senator from Florida may have mentioned that 
earlier in his remarks. But so far there are 20,000 new pages of 
regulations--so far--a stack this high.
  This is absolutely indecipherable by very intelligent people, and 
they are just getting started.
  I want to thank the Senator from Florida for his comments. I think 
they are right on the mark. This is a huge mistake for our country. 
Hopefully, someday, maybe even beginning with this amendment, we may 
begin to undo this massive mistake we made a few years ago.
  Madam President, we have been saying for 3 years this bill will be 
too expensive; it won't do what it promised. Every day we are seeing 
further proof of that.
  The Federal Reserve said it will cost jobs--the Federal Reserve not 
the RNC. We predicted that. Yesterday we had a glimpse of the 
application process for ObamaCare. It turns out applying for it will be 
as difficult as doing your taxes.
  Today there is another AP story saying some folks will see their 
insurance bill double next year as a result of this law. As I 
indicated, so far there are 20,000 pages of regulations and many more 
are expected. This bill is an unmitigated disaster for our country, an 
absolute disaster.
  I applaud Senator Cruz for offering this amendment. I strongly 
support his efforts. Not a single Member of my party in the House and 
the Senate voted for this bill in the first place. We need to get this 
bill off the books and straighten out our country. This would be a big 
step in the direction of achieving that.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I assume a number of my colleagues have 
seen the movie ``Lincoln.''
  One particularly brief but poignant moment of that movie showed the 
President's staff discouraging him from spending so much time talking 
to regular people, leaving the White House and inviting normal people 
who weren't involved in politics every day or didn't work in the White 
House into the White House to talk.
  They were saying: Mr. President, you need to run this war. You have 
so much to do. You shouldn't be meeting with people as much.
  President Lincoln said to his staff: I need my regular public opinion 
baths.
  Just listening to the last few speakers, particularly the Republican 
leader, I think it is more important more people in this institution go 
out and talk to real people who are affected by this health care law. 
There is the 25-year-old who has already benefited from staying on her 
mother's health care plan, the person in the high-risk pool who has 
insurance now--such as a friend of mine in Port Clinton in Ottawa 
County, Ohio, does--because of this law. People have seen the consumer 
protections. They haven't lost their insurance because they were 
expensive for an insurance company.
  My colleagues need to get a public opinion bath, walk around their 
States a little more and listen to people outside of the country clubs 
and outside of the trade associations who are charged ideologically and 
not really particularly open about these kinds of issues.
  I rise to oppose the amendment offered by Senator Cruz, the badly 
named ``Restore Growth First'' amendment, which would prohibit 
resources included in the continuing resolution to implement the 
Affordable Care Act.
  Specious claims about how the health law will harm our economy have 
already been debunked by the hundreds of Ohioans who are able to have 
annual wellness visits, by the tens of thousands of young adults 
staying on their parents' insurance plans, by the seniors who are 
seeing the doughnut hole coverage gap closing with real savings on 
prescription costs.
  It has been debunked by Americans who are no longer denied coverage 
because of a preexisting condition, by the Americans who are not forced 
to pay more for insurance because of a preexisting condition, by women 
who may now rely on affordable, accessible reproductive health 
services; and starting in 2014, Americans who have not been able to 
afford health insurance in the private market will be able to 
comparison shop, if needed, to purchase insurance.
  These much needed health care reforms which will benefit Americans 
next year are already benefiting Americans and have been for a couple 
of years. Continued implementation of these reforms is crucial for 
improving the quality of care and bending the cost curve.
  I agree with Senator Cruz on one thing: health spending is related to 
the economy and to the deficit. Let's be clear. We know the health care 
law will reduce the deficit by over $100 billion over the next decade. 
These are Congressional Budget Office numbers, not Republican numbers 
or Democratic numbers. On the Cruz amendment, repealing the health care 
law would increase, not reduce, the deficit.
  We know how it is helping people. There are 100,000 reasons in my own 
State of Ohio to stand up for this health care law and reject this 
amendment: Nearly 97,000 of Ohio's young adults are now able to stay on 
their parents' plan until age 26.
  Mr. INHOFE. Would the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?
  Mr. BROWN. I yield to the Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent to be recognized at the end of 
the Senator's remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BROWN. Almost 100,000 of Ohio's young adults are now able to stay 
on their parents' health plan. Seniors have saved almost $300 million 
in prescription drugs just since the passage of the health care law, 
with an average per beneficiary savings of $774. And up to 147,000 
small businesses in Ohio are eligible for tax credits.
  Finally, thanks to the health law, more people in my home State and 
across the Nation have access to free preventive services. As I said, 
there are 100,000 reasons for Ohioans to like this law and oppose this 
amendment.
  There are 2 million Ohioans with private insurance who have gained 
preventive health services with no cost sharing. This means major 
illnesses may be detected earlier. It means decreasing treatment costs 
and human suffering over the long term.
  The Affordable Care Act was the most promising initiative to control 
health care costs in decades. The health care law is about reducing 
health costs for consumers and investing in more affordable preventive 
care for Americans.
  The health care law is about containing costs as we extend insurance. 
It means people, rather than going to the emergency room with a sick 
child, may go to the family doctor and receive preventive care prior to 
the child's ear infection becoming serious. Under the new medical loss 
ratio rules health insurance plans must spend at least 80 percent of 
premium dollars on health care costs, not executive bonuses, not other 
administrative expenses. In Ohio, 143,000 received over $11 million in 
rebates.
  The Prevention and Public Health Fund is the part of the health care 
law which will give us test data about how to bend the cost curve 
through preventive programs. Ohioans received more than $17 million 
already to prevent chronic diseases and decrease smoking rates.
  Mr. DURBIN. Would the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. BROWN. Certainly.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. I would ask of the Senator, pending before the Senate is 
the Cruz amendment which would literally remove any funding to 
implement the Affordable Care Act, as I understand; is that correct?
  Mr. BROWN. That is correct.

[[Page 3470]]


  Mr. DURBIN. We have heard from the Republicans on the other side of 
the aisle that they oppose this intrusion of government into health 
care and creating health insurance exchanges so Americans who currently 
don't have a choice in health insurance and want to get a different 
policy, if they care to get one, would have a choice through the 
exchanges?
  Mr. BROWN. This is what they have been saying, yes.
  Mr. DURBIN. The premise behind this is the government shouldn't be 
involved in this, as I understand the Republican argument; is that 
correct?
  Mr. BROWN. That is what they say.
  Mr. DURBIN. Did I hear the Republican leader come to the floor and 
speak about thousands of pages of regulations, government regulations, 
which will now be part of health care?
  Mr. BROWN. You did.
  Mr. DURBIN. I would like to ask the Senator from Ohio, is he aware of 
the fact every Member of the Senate has a government-administered 
health insurance plan?
  Mr. BROWN. I am aware of it. I assume my colleagues are too.
  Mr. DURBIN. Is the Senator aware of any Senator on the Republican 
side who has come forward--and there may be one, I don't know--who has 
said: I am so opposed to government-administered health care, and as a 
Senator I will not take advantage of the Federal Employees Health 
Benefits Program?
  Mr. BROWN. I have not heard any say that.
  Mr. DURBIN. The same Senators who are critical of ObamaCare because 
the government is involved in health care have themselves, their 
families, and children protected by a government-administered health 
insurance plan?
  Mr. BROWN. It is my understanding this has been sort of the hypocrisy 
we have woven through this debate over the last 3 years.
  Mr. DURBIN. What is good enough for these Senators apparently is not 
good enough for the rest of America?
  Mr. BROWN. Apparently not good enough for a senior, not good enough 
for somebody who is low income but working two $10-an-hour jobs, I 
guess it is not good enough for them.
  Mr. DURBIN. Is it not true the amendment by the Senator from Texas is 
breathtaking because it says we eliminate all funding for the 
Affordable Care Act in terms of, for example, the extension of the 
availability of health insurance for children up to the age of 26?
  As I understand the Cruz amendment, we couldn't fund that aspect of 
the Affordable Care Act.
  Mr. BROWN. The Cruz amendment doesn't just anticipate changes in the 
future, it takes away all these services which have been out there that 
I have been talking about: the thousands of people in Illinois, Ohio, 
and Wisconsin who have benefited; 25-year-olds, 22-year-olds, such as 
somebody who graduates from Champagne, Urbana, Madison, or Columbus and 
don't have insurance but have a job, are 23 years old and may stay on 
their parents' health plan. All of the preventive care literally 
hundreds of thousands of seniors in Ohio now receive with no copay or 
no deductible would all be wiped away. All the provisions people have 
benefited from already would be taken away by this amendment.
  Mr. DURBIN. This breath-taking Cruz amendment would actually say to 
these families with children who are currently on the family policy up 
to the age of 26: It is over. Those kids are now on their own.
  Mr. BROWN. These kids would be on their own, but the Senators who are 
pushing this amendment would still have their health insurance, just to 
reiterate that.
  Mr. DURBIN. The Cruz amendment does not eliminate the government----
  Mr. BROWN. It doesn't take away the insurance for those people voting 
on this amendment; that is correct.
  Mr. DURBIN. The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, which 
protects Senators and Congressmen, is not affected by the Cruz 
amendment?
  Mr. BROWN. My reading of it is it is not affected.
  Mr. DURBIN. They don't hate that aspect of government-administered 
health insurance?
  Mr. BROWN. Apparently not.
  Mr. DURBIN. Is it also true the seniors who would receive benefits 
under the Affordable Care Act, for example, annual physicals which are 
available, those would be eliminated as well?
  Mr. BROWN. In my State and the Senator's State, since his State is 
slightly larger than mine--over 1 million seniors in each State and 
hundreds of thousands in the Presiding Officer's State of Wisconsin--
millions of seniors have received some kind of preventive care, such as 
screenings for diabetes, screenings for osteoporosis, and not paid a 
copay or deductible. They have received their physicals and not had 
their deductibles, copayer deductibles, waived as a result of the 
Affordable Care Act.
  The Cruz amendment would, while still protecting health insurance for 
Senator Cruz and others, wipe away those benefits for seniors.
  Mr. DURBIN. Is it also not true in the U.S. Capitol we have an 
Attending Physician's Office run by the U.S. Navy, a government entity, 
which makes itself available to each Senator if they care to pay a 
monthly fee for annual physicals--a government-administered annual 
physical for Senators?
  Mr. BROWN. It is true. That is true. This is open to people 
regardless of how they vote on the Cruz amendment.
  Mr. DURBIN. Does the Cruz amendment eliminate this government-
administered physical exam which is available for Members of the 
Senate?
  Mr. BROWN. It does not.
  Mr. DURBIN. I am starting to note a pattern here. The Senators who 
wish to do away with government-administered health care for everyone 
else want to keep it for themselves. Does that pattern emerge from the 
Senator's analysis?
  Mr. BROWN. We had this discussion back in 2009 and 2010 when we 
debated this health care law, that Members of the House and Senate 
continue to receive health insurance.
  I recall one House Member was unhappy during campaigning against the 
Affordable Care Act, as he recently came to the House. He didn't get 
his insurance for the first month paid for by the government, as he 
tried to take away insurance for low-income, moderate-income people in 
my State, my district and the Senator's State.
  Mr. DURBIN. I would say Senator Cruz would certainly be able to offer 
an amendment which eliminated all government-administered health 
insurance as it applies to any person in the United States. If he did 
that, he would be consistent. Instead, what he has done is go after 
those today who are struggling to find their own health insurance, 
cannot afford it, and are simply asking for the same option as Members 
of Congress have today: to be able to go to an insurance exchange and 
choose the insurance plan that is best for them and their families. I 
think it would be more consistent.
  I ask the Senator from Ohio if he thinks it would be more consistent?
  Mr. BROWN. I would like to see Senator Cruz or one of the supporters 
of the Cruz amendment offer an amendment.
  Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN. I appreciate the words of the Senator from Illinois.
  To close, Senator Durbin's comments accurately explain that there is 
a bias in this institution on tax policy and health policy for some 
Senators to take care of themselves and people like them, a little more 
than paying attention to the rest of the country. I think this 
amendment shows this and is one more good reason to vote against the 
Cruz amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, we have been discussing and debating 
ObamaCare for 3 years--several years anyway. I have not heard the 
argument before where they say you have the same government-run plan. 
That is not true. That is not true at all.
  I have worked in the corporate world and been on the leadership part 
where we were making decisions and offered our employees the benefits 
of different companies. It could be Aetna, Blue

[[Page 3471]]

Cross-Blue Shield or anybody else. We could make that determination as 
to what we wanted and then we paid for it.
  I don't think that argument has ever been used, to my memory. I 
wasn't coming down to talk about that, but I will, since I am a 
cosponsor of the Cruz amendment. I think anything you are able to do to 
get rid of ObamaCare is in our interests.
  Right now, the attorney general in the State of Oklahoma is Scott 
Pruitt. I spoke with him this morning. He has a lawsuit with an amended 
complaint challenging the implementation of ObamaCare. Scott Pruitt is 
arguing the IRS is attempting to redefine ObamaCare's mandate tax in 
order to hike taxes on Oklahoma employees. That is what is happening 
right now in my State of Oklahoma. I don't know how the polling goes. I 
would only say this: I sense an air of anxiety with a lot of these 
people trying to support ObamaCare right now, because people have 
caught on. People in the State of Oklahoma have caught on. In Oklahoma, 
we would have to spend an additional $400 million over the next 10 
years on Medicaid in order to cover those who already qualify and will 
be forced into the program--this government program we are talking 
about--due to ObamaCare and the mandate. This money will be diverted 
from schools and from roads and other needs, public safety, in the 
State of Oklahoma. Our research shows that premiums in Oklahoma could 
increase anywhere from 65 to 100 percent due to the coverage mandates 
required by ObamaCare. It is as if we are having this debate all over 
again, but they are bringing up things now I have never heard of.
  I want to mention one thing, and that is there is a friend of mine in 
Oklahoma whose name is David Green. David Green several years ago 
started with one store, a thing called Hobby Lobby--1 store in the 
State of Oklahoma--and now he has 500 stores in 41 States and he has, I 
don't know, I think it is over 50,000 employees. He is now facing a new 
type of intimidation he has never faced in his life, and it is the 
intimidation of saying because of David Green's religious convictions 
against providing his employees with abortion-inducing drugs his 
company now faces fines amounting to $1.3 million a day.
  All those pro-abortionists out there like this. This is wonderful. 
But he is someone who has hired thousands of people in 41 States in 
this country and is now providing all these benefits for Americans, and 
all he is saying is his religious convictions don't allow him to 
participate in abortion-inducing drugs. So he is under the threat right 
now, if you do the math, of a $1.3-million-a-day fine. And I guess I am 
more sensitive to this than I should be because I have known him from 
the very beginning.
  I want to speak briefly, because I know I have a couple of colleagues 
who wish to speak. Does the Senator wish to make a UC to get in line?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Yes, I came to the floor today to support 
the Cruz amendment. Does the Senator from Oklahoma still wish to speak?
  Mr. INHOFE. Yes, I just wanted to ask whether the Senator wanted to 
lock himself in with a unanimous consent request while I finish on 
another subject.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Yes. Madam President, I ask unanimous 
consent to speak for up to 5 to 7 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I do cosponsor this amendment, and I 
will be voting for it at 2 p.m. today. But there is another one that 
will come up, amendment No. 28, and it could be coming up in a very 
short time this afternoon, and I was afraid I wouldn't have a chance to 
make a couple of comments about it.
  I am cosponsoring this amendment by Senator Paul, and it withholds 
funding to go to Egypt until Egypt's President Morsi declares he 
intends to abide by the Camp David peace accords, which have kept the 
peace between Egypt and Israel for over 30 years.
  If you talk to any of your Israeli friends, they will tell you this 
is significant, and I appreciate the fact he recognizes that. In fact, 
the bill I had introduced back in--well, I actually introduced it 
earlier, but reintroduced it on January 25 of this year--S. 207--calls 
for the suspension of the shipment of F-16s and other military 
equipment and services to Egypt until Morsi agrees to continue to 
uphold Egypt's commitment under the 1979 Camp David peace accords.
  A lot of people don't realize they have been our friend, and if you 
ask any of your Israeli friends, they will tell you they are. It 
happens that this President is a Muslim Brotherhood president. He is 
not like the ones we have had in Egypt before. People who think of 
other countries having the same kind of system we have, they do not. 
Right now the military is a military we trained. There is a Major 
General Elkeshky, who happens to be here now and who is a friend of 
mine, and he was trained at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. The majority of the 
middle-grade officers in Egypt have been trained in the United States. 
They are our friends. And that is what we are getting at here.
  So I made that qualification when I said we want to reduce the things 
we are doing, and I was talking about military equipment--the F-16s--
way back in January, until they make that commitment. I think that is a 
very reasonable commitment.
  The amendment that will be coming up, amendment No. 28, will be by 
Senator Paul and myself and it will talk about support for Egypt and go 
into other areas of support over and above military equipment, saying 
that until such time as they agree with what they have agreed to over 
the last 30 years or so--that they will continue to be our friends--
then we want to withhold this. It is the only leverage we have. I said 
this back in January, that the only leverage we have, in order to 
encourage them to come with us, is to say we are going to withhold some 
things, and that is what we are doing.
  So when that amendment comes up--of course, I still have my bill, S. 
207, and it is essentially the same as the Paul-Inhofe amendment. It is 
not necessary to have them both in terms of a vote, but I think on one 
we will have to have a vote, but it should tie in to what their 
behavior has been in the past, what it should be in the future, so that 
we don't have a Muslim Brotherhood guy running a country and we don't 
know how our equipment is going to be used.
  Our F-16s and other equipment, our tanks, have been used to 
participate in the defense of our friends in the Middle East, primarily 
Israel and of ourselves. I am hoping we will get to that when we have a 
chance to have a vote on it.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Madam President, I thank the Senator from 
Oklahoma for his comments.
  I came to the floor to voice my support for the Cruz amendment. I 
want to concentrate on the cost of the health care law, which is why we 
are asking in this amendment to defund that bill because we simply 
can't afford it. So much of our budget already is not considered. 
Frequently, during negotiations on how we stabilize our deficit and our 
debt situation, there are many items off the table, things such as 
Medicare and Social Security. As unsustainable as those programs are, 
they are off the table in terms of negotiation. But if you want to take 
a look at the problem with the health care law--ObamaCare--it is the 
fact that it is simply not affordable. I know the name of the bill is 
the Affordable Care Act, but we simply can't afford it. Basic economics 
101 describes the problem, because ObamaCare will dramatically increase 
the demand for health care. Thirty million more Americans--and let's 
face it, we all want those Americans to have access to affordable 
health care--will be accessing health care or trying to, demanding 
health care through some kind of program,

[[Page 3472]]

such as Medicaid, while at the same time the supply will be 
dramatically reduced. That is going to be an economic disaster.
  What I wish to do is put up a couple of charts and graphs showing the 
true cost. We don't talk about the true budget window when ObamaCare 
fully kicks in in the year 2016. This is based on the CBO estimate, and 
all we have had to do is extrapolate the final 3 years. Basically, it 
shows that ObamaCare won't cost the $1 trillion it was originally 
estimated to cost when it is fully implemented between 2016 and 2025. 
It will actually cost $2.4 trillion, at a minimum. And, of course, it 
will be paid for by these taxes, fees, and penalties, which I guess now 
are taxes, equaling about $1.4 trillion.
  So given the $2.4 trillion worth of cost, we have $1 trillion worth 
of taxes--and, by the way, the majority of those or a great portion of 
those taxes will be indirect on middle-income Americans--that leaves 
about a $1 trillion hole in the current budget window. That is the $716 
billion that will apparently be taken out of Medicare providers. We are 
not sure what will be happening in the full budget window, but that is 
a $1 trillion deficit risk.
  Again, these are all estimates, and I would argue in general that the 
Federal Government is not particularly good at estimating anything. 
Back when they first passed Medicare in the mid 1960s, they projected 
out 25 years and said Medicare would cost $12 trillion in 1990. In 
fact, it cost $110 trillion--over nine times the original estimate. I 
don't believe the Federal Government has gotten better at estimating in 
that intervening time period.
  As a matter of fact, President Obama famously repeatedly said that if 
we passed a health care law, by the end of his first term the cost of a 
family plan would actually decline by $2,500. Unfortunately, that 
guarantee has not come true. When President Obama took office, the 
average cost of a family plan was a little over $12,000. If his promise 
had come true, we would be looking at a family cost of $10,000. In 
fact, the cost of a family plan today is now $15,000. Again, that is 
somewhat of a broken promise.
  But let's take a look at what I think is the greatest risk in terms 
of cost projections by the CBO in that estimate of the total cost of 
ObamaCare--the $2.4 trillion we are talking about in the true budget 
window. The CBO estimated only 1 million people net would lose their 
employer-sponsored care and get dumped in the exchanges with the 
subsidies. But it is going to be far worse than that, because 160 to 
180 million Americans access their health care through their employers. 
I was one of those employers. I purchased health care for more than 31 
years. The decision employers are going to be making in terms of 
whether to carry health care has dramatically changed under the health 
care law. Now the decision is going to be: Do I pay $15,000 for a 
family plan and then try to comply with the now 20,000 pages of law--
rules and regulations?
  Leader McConnell printed out those 20,000 pages. You can see it in 
the hallway. It is an enormous burden for anybody trying to comply with 
that.
  Anyway, the decision is: Do I pay $15,000 trying to comply with 
20,000 pages of rules and regulations or do I pay the $2,000 to $3,000 
fine--the penalty--and in so doing I am not exposing my employees to 
financial ruin, I am making them eligible for huge subsidies in the 
exchange? If an individual has a median household income of $64,000, 
they will be eligible for $10,000 in those exchanges--$10,000 worth of 
subsidies. Who isn't going to take that deal?
  And that is my point. As employers, we will drop coverage. Employers 
are incentivized to do so. So rather than 1 million Americans losing 
their employer-sponsored health care and enjoying those subsidies, 
there will be tens of millions.
  One of the amendments I will be offering in this budget process will 
be asking the CBO to provide the worst-case scenario: What happens if 
the McKinsey study is true, 30 percent of employers will drop coverage 
or 50 or 100 percent? It will be a simple amendment to get the worst-
case scenario.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to speak in 
support of the Cruz amendment and I do that as a doctor, as someone who 
has practiced medicine for 25 years taking care of families all around 
the State of Wyoming.
  When we entered into the discussion about health care, and then 
ultimately the discussion of what became the Obama health care law, I 
would come to the floor and say, yes, we need to do health care reform. 
Patients know what they want. They want the care they need, from a 
doctor they choose, at lower cost. Because cost was the driver of all 
of this.
  Then we got into the debate and into the discussions and what we 
ended up with was a health care law over 2,000 pages long. I said then: 
Does that make a lot of sense? Let's go back to what one of our 
Founding Fathers said. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, 
said: Congress shall pass no laws so voluminous they cannot be read nor 
so incoherent they cannot be understood. Regrettably, that is exactly 
what we got with this health care law--a law so voluminous it cannot be 
read and so incoherent it cannot be understood.
  And when you say: Well, how do we know it is so long that it could 
not be read, how voluminous, well, Nancy Pelosi said it herself. She 
said: First you have to pass it before you get to find out what is in 
it. Well, the American people now know what is in the health care law. 
They know it, and they don't like it.
  I have had townhall meetings all around the State of Wyoming. When 
you go to a community and talk about the health care law and ask the 
simple question, Do you believe that under the President's health care 
law you will be paying more for your health care, all the hands go up. 
And then you ask the question, Do you believe that under the 
President's health care law the quality of your care and the 
availability of your care will actually go down, and again all the 
hands go up. That is why as of today this health care law continues to 
be very unpopular. Nationwide, more people think the health care law is 
doing harm than believe it is doing well.
  Let's take a look at what the President promised during the 
discussion and why some people supported it.
  First of all, the President said that under the health care law, if 
you like the plan you have, if you like the care you have, you can keep 
it.
  We now know from many studies and reports that is not the case. It 
seemed in having just read the law as it was being discussed that you 
weren't going to be able to keep it, but it wasn't until now that 
people realize more and more that they are not able to keep what they 
had if they liked it.
  The other thing the President promised is that under his health care 
law, insurance premiums for a family would drop by $2,500, he said, by 
the end of his first term in office. The first term has come and gone, 
and what families around the country are seeing is that health care 
premiums didn't go down, they actually went up--up quite a bit, up by 
over $3,000 per family.
  Why is it that the law is so unpopular? There are many reasons, but 
part of it is this so-called individual mandate--the mandate that the 
government can come into your home and tell you that you have to buy a 
government-approved product. Many people around the country believe it 
is unconstitutional. It actually went to the Supreme Court, and the 
Court ruled. The Court ruled that it was not unconstitutional. But it 
is still unworkable, it is still very unpopular, and it is absolutely 
unaffordable for us as a nation.
  I talk to physicians and I talk to the nurses who take care of 
patients. This health care law is bad for patients, it is bad for 
providers--the nurses and doctors who take care of those patients--and 
it is terrible for the American taxpayers.
  The most interesting thing to me in the last week has been the report 
called the ``Beige Book,'' which the Federal Reserve comes out with 
every

[[Page 3473]]

month. They travel around the country and ask their Federal Reserve 
people what is happening in this community, that community, in this 
part of the country, in that region of the country. And what is 
happening to the economy? In this past month's report, it said that 
specifically as a result of the health care law, businesses aren't 
hiring. The Federal Reserve has called this a drag on the economy--the 
health care law.
  How can that be? Well, there are a couple of things. One is the huge 
uncertainty--businesses not knowing what the impacts of the health care 
law specifically in terms of dollars and cents are going to be. But 
there are a couple of components of the health care law that are really 
hurting in terms of businesses hiring people. One is that things kick 
in for businesses once a business has 50 employees. So if a business 
has 49 full-time employees and they are trying to expand and they have 
more business and they want to hire more people, they have to decide, 
what is the cost of that additional 50th employee?
  Well, the costs are dramatic because it then kicks that business into 
the huge expenses of supplying government-approved health care--not 
necessarily health care or insurance at a level that those employees 
might need or want or that business can afford, no; a government level 
of approved health care that may be much more than that individual 
needs or wants or can afford because the government is saying: We know 
what is best, the government knows what is best for you, the family in 
this community or that community and people working for that business. 
So that is part of it. So those folks aren't hiring.
  Remember, I said full-time employees. They define full time as 30 
hours or more a week. So we have the businesses known as the 29ers, 
where they are, for purposes of not having additional full-time 
employees, hiring people for 29 hours a week. There have been reports 
in the press of different businesses where people are working two 
different jobs at two different businesses because they can only get 
part-time work, and the reason they can only get part-time work is 
because when they are part-time workers, the businesses aren't mandated 
to pay for very expensive health care which makes it much more 
difficult to be successful as a business and to keep hiring more 
people.
  There was a report of a Five Guys hamburger chain in one community. 
They said: We are not going to expand, we are not going to build 
another, we are not hiring any more full-time people, and we are going 
to cut the hours of the people we have. We are putting in more part-
time people.
  This is one of the unintended consequences of the health care law--
hurting the economy directly through impacting jobs.
  The President says he wants to improve the economy, get people back 
to work, get America on the road to recovery. Yet the health care law 
is--according to the Federal Reserve in this month's ``Beige Book''--
hurting the economy, dragging down the economy.
  So I come to the floor today to support the amendment by Senator Cruz 
because the American people know what they were looking for in health 
care reform, which was, of course, the care they need from a doctor 
they choose at lower cost, and that was not at all provided under the 
President's health care law.
  Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REED. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REED. Madam President, I rise to speak today in opposition to the 
Cruz amendment, which would prohibit any funding in the continuing 
resolution from being used to carry out the goals of the Affordable 
Care Act.
  The broad scope of this amendment clearly indicates that anything 
anticipated under the Affordable Care Act would be subject to 
defunding, and that is a broad category of activities. In fact, we 
already have seen the Affordable Care Act produce demonstrable positive 
results in my State of Rhode Island, and those results could be 
eliminated or reversed.
  For example, because of the Affordable Care Act, there are 
protections in place today for children with preexisting conditions to 
ensure they are no longer denied coverage. There are over 15,000 
children who have a preexisting condition who could have been dropped 
from insurance coverage prior to the enactment of the Affordable Care 
Act. Their parents and other adults--approximately 200,000 Rhode Island 
adults also living with preexisting conditions--will gain protection 
from being dropped from coverage beginning in January. We began with 
children, and now we are expanding it to adults. If we don't do that, 
then we are going to have a whole category, a huge segment of my 
population who may lose access to insurance, and the inevitable result 
will be that they will go to expensive emergency rooms, and they will 
cost all of us more money. Rather than saving money and dealing with 
the deficit in a responsible way, this will just add to our deficit 
problems and deny people health care.
  The law, the Affordable Care Act, included new tax breaks for small 
businesses to make health insurance more affordable. Small businesses 
have been able to access a tax credit of up to 35 percent of their 
health care costs every year since 2010. Beginning in 2014, these 
businesses may receive a tax credit of up to 50 percent of their health 
care costs for any 2-year period. Again this support under the 
Affordable Care Act could be jeopardized or eliminated under the 
proposed amendment.
  Also in jeopardy are discounts on covered brandname and generic 
prescription drugs for seniors who have reached the prescription drug 
coverage gap known as the famous or infamous doughnut hole. Already in 
Rhode Island, seniors have saved--individual senior citizens of Rhode 
Island have saved $20.5 million as a result of these discounts since 
the law was enacted. These discounts will continue until the coverage 
gap--the doughnut hole--is eliminated in 2020. The Cruz amendment will 
stop that. Essentially we are telling seniors go back to the time of 
the doughnut hole, more money out of your pocket at a time when you can 
afford less and less for prescription drugs.
  Many of my colleagues on the Republican side say they support these 
aspects of the Affordable Care Act, yet this amendment would 
effectively do away with them or cast so much doubt or confusion that 
they would not be effectively implemented. We have to, I think, 
continue to effectively implement the Affordable Care Act, not only in 
terms of providing access to quality care for all of our citizens but 
because within the Affordable Care Act were significant efforts to 
improve health care efficiencies. Indeed, through these reforms, we 
were able to extend the Medicare Program by, I believe, 8 years, to 
2024, in terms of our funding models. All of that would be jeopardized 
by this amendment.
  There are some other examples, too. For example, the Affordable Care 
Act would reauthorize funding to help immunize uninsured and 
underinsured children and adults. Every year my State of Rhode Island 
receives $3 million to immunize this population. Funding for 
immunizations is critical for the child and the family, but it also 
benefits all of us, because if you can immunize 75 to 95 percent of the 
population, immunologists and health specialists will tell us we are 
all protected through something that is technically known as herd 
immunity. It makes sense, if you have a sufficient number of people who 
are vaccinated against the disease, when an outbreak occurs the 
likelihood of it spreading is diminished dramatically. This is another 
example of a public health initiative under the Affordable Care Act, 
which, if it is repealed or defunded, will leave us all vulnerable to 
diseases. That is not a benefit, that is a detriment to all of us.
  We have to, again, I think, consider other aspects of the Affordable 
Care

[[Page 3474]]

Act. One other aspect I wish to mention is the critical area of health 
care workforce programs, programs that help train doctors and nurses. 
Many of these programs are funded in the continuing resolution and 
they, too, would be either eliminated or so uncertain as to be 
unreliable for the institutions. In my home State, colleges and 
universities, such as at the University of Rhode Island, are using 
these programs to help train a new generation of health care 
professionals, not just physicians but physician's assistants and 
nurse-practitioners. Indeed, what we are seeing, because of the 
Affordable Care Act, is a refocus to more emphasis on family 
practitioners, primary care that is less expensive and more effective 
over the long term in terms of prevention--all that would be 
jeopardized under this proposed amendment.
  There are countless other examples of not only interfering with 
health care access for a vast number of Americans, but actually setting 
back our efforts to reduce the deficit and to sustain programs such as 
Medicare. The burden might be particularly felt by seniors because one 
of the things that was most compelling in the debate about the 
Affordable Care Act was closing this doughnut hole. Seniors believe we 
have taken a positive step to do that. This would be an about-face for 
the seniors of America, causing them to see more and more costs in 
their limited budgets.
  These are not the messages we want to give to seniors or families. I 
urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. JOHANNS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. JOHANNS. I ask for 3 minutes to speak on the Cruz amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. JOHANNS. Madam President, today I rise to speak on behalf of the 
Cruz amendment. I want to spend a couple of minutes explaining my 
thoughts behind the amendment and why I am proud to be a cosponsor of 
this amendment.
  All across Nebraska I do roundtable meetings, where I sit down with 
hospital communities, I sit down with medical professionals, I sit down 
with small businesses. I have done this for years and years.
  Over the last couple of years since the Affordable Care Act was 
passed, I have had a number of opportunities to sit down with small 
businesses. Invariably the first issue that comes up is the crushing 
effect of the regulatory environment. Businesses will tell me they 
simply are afraid to grow or cannot grow because of what Washington is 
burdening them with. More specifically, they talk to me about the 
Affordable Care Act and the toll it is taking on their businesses.
  I will give you a perfect example: a small business, a franchise 
business. They have a franchise in Lincoln, they have a franchise in 
Omaha. The owner of that business said to me: You know, my business is 
not too bad. We could actually grow this business. We look out there in 
the future and see some opportunities to grow this business.
  They went on to say: We have about 48 employees now, and we are not 
going to grow. I said: Why would that be? Why have you decided you are 
not going to grow this business? Their answer was straightforward. They 
said: When we grow to over 50 employees, we become subject to the 
requirements that are impossible for a business our size to meet under 
the Affordable Care Act. The owner said to me: Mike, I met with the 
accountants and the lawyers. We have looked at this in every possible 
way we can, and we decided we are going to stay a business of this 
size.
  It was not isolated to that business. I went down the interstate and 
sat down with another business in a different community and the story 
was the same. I was told business was pretty good and that business was 
there for them to grow. They had about 47 or 48 employees, and they 
made the decision they will not grow. This is at a time in our Nation's 
history where we are desperate for employment in the United States.
  In Nebraska, we have been fortunate. We pay our bills. Our 
unemployment never got over 5 percent because we are a conservative 
State. Having said that, when we hear businesses say the greatest 
impediment to their growth is not the competition down the street or 
across the street, the greatest impediment to their growth is the 
Federal Government, when we hear that, we have to realize we have done 
something very seriously wrong.
  I want to wrap up with another thought, and it is on a different area 
of the Affordable Care Act.
  Madam President, I ask for an additional minute to finish this 
thought.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. JOHANNS. Madam President, I met with a group of young people 
today. They have their whole lives in front of them. They are talking 
and thinking about what they are going to do in terms of going to 
college and what their careers might be. They asked me about the 
Affordable Care Act. I said: One of the things that is important to 
point out is that my generation is going to do very well under this 
act. We have caps on how much our premiums can go up, and we have 
Medicare out there. Then I said: Your generation is not going to do 
well. Why? Because your premiums are going to go straight up and you 
are at a point in your lives where you are not going to use a lot of 
health care. I am at a point in my life where I will use a lot of 
health care.
  This imbalance is going to be devastating to the younger generation. 
When they start thinking about starting their families, buying their 
first home and making an investment, what is the Federal Government 
going to do? It is going to place a crushing blow upon them in terms of 
higher premiums, and that is the reality of the situation.
  I will wrap up with this thought; I could go on and on. As a former 
Governor, I can tell everyone that adding 24 million people to Medicaid 
is such a flawed policy approach. I could talk about the impact this is 
going to have on accessibility for care by people who desperately need 
that care, but the bottom line is this: This was a flawed policy. I was 
here when it was passed. It is a policy that needs to be defunded. We 
need to do the right thing with health care, and this is not it.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Heinrich). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, could we just have quiet. We are going 
to have our first vote on this bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the Cruz 
amendment.
  Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Lautenberg), 
the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Manchin), and the Senator from 
Rhode Island (Mr. Whitehouse) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 45, nays 52, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 34 Leg.]

                                YEAS--45

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr

[[Page 3475]]


     Chambliss
     Coats
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Enzi
     Fischer
     Flake
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johanns
     Johnson (WI)
     Kirk
     Lee
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Thune
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--52

     Baldwin
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Cowan
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Johnson (SD)
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Levin
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Warren
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Lautenberg
     Manchin
     Whitehouse
  The amendment (No. 30) was rejected.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.


                  Amendment No. 53 To Amendment No. 26

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk, and I ask 
for its consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Iowa [Mr. Harkin], for himself and Mr. 
     Cardin, proposes an amendment numbered 53 to amendment No. 
     26.

  (The amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text of 
Amendments.'')
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, the spending package we are considering 
this week I think is a little bit unusual, to say the least. Five of 
the twelve Appropriations subcommittees get detailed, full-length 
spending bills: Defense, Military Construction, Agriculture, Homeland 
Security, and Commerce and Justice. The other seven appropriations 
bills are basically on autopilot, continuing resolutions. So with a few 
exceptions, whatever the government spent last year on programs in 
these seven subcommittees the government will spend this year.
  I know for a fact this is not what the chairwoman of the 
Appropriations Committee wanted. She fought hard for an omnibus that 
would have included all 12 spending bills. I am very respectful of 
that. She fought hard for it, but this is where we stand right now.
  I am speaking today because the programs under the jurisdiction of 
the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education 
Appropriations Subcommittee, of which I am privileged to chair, would 
be put on autopilot. I suppose it comes as no surprise I think that is 
a terrible mistake.
  The Labor-HHS bill--or Labor-H, as it is known in the terminology 
around here--is how we fund the National Institutes of Health, the 
preeminent biomedical research entity in the world. This bill is how we 
fund the child care and development block grant, which gives working 
families access to high-quality childcare. It is how we provide Federal 
funding to teach students with disabilities--the Individuals With 
Disabilities Education Act--it is how we help local school 
jurisdictions meet their constitutional obligation to provide a free 
and appropriate education to all kids, even kids with disabilities.
  These services are critical to this Nation. It has been said before--
actually, the first person I ever heard say it was a recently departed 
and beloved chairman, Senator Dan Inouye, who once said: The Defense 
Appropriations Committee is the committee that defends America. The 
Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Committee is the 
committee that defines America--who we are as a country, what we are 
about as a people, what we are going to do for the future of our 
children in America.
  So we need to examine every year whether we are spending the right 
amounts of taxpayer money for these services. If that makes sense for 
the Defense appropriations bill, to take a look at it yearly, to see if 
we are spending the right amounts, if it is right for Homeland Security 
and Agriculture, why shouldn't the same level of oversight be applied 
to the Labor, Health and Human Services bill?
  As a way of sort of describing where we are, this past December, we 
negotiated a fiscal 2013 spending bill with Republican and Democratic 
counterparts, House and Senate. So I, Senator Shelby, Congressman 
Rehberg, and Congresswoman DeLauro on the House side all read this bill 
through in December and signed off on it.
  That was going to be in the omnibus bill. Well, as we know, we did 
not have an omnibus spending bill. So the talks were bicameral and 
bipartisan. They were difficult talks and we hammered out an agreement 
and we had a compromise. I got some of what I wanted and I lost some of 
what I wanted. But that is the nature of compromise. So with an 
exception, which I will explain shortly, the amendment I have just 
offered is what was agreed upon in December. No more money, not adding 
any money. But we are changing some of the accounts to better represent 
what we decided, both bicameral and bipartisan, should be priorities. 
That is the amendment I am offering. Again, I repeat, it is what we 
decided upon in December in terms of what our priorities ought to be. 
If we just go with Labor-H in a CR, all of that is wiped out. So what I 
am proposing to replace that is the autopilot version with a detailed 
bipartisan compromise.
  I want to emphasize this point. This amendment is not my Labor-HHS 
bill. Now, obviously if I had my druthers, I would have spent dollars 
as I wanted them to be spent. But compromise does not work that way. 
This amendment includes the priorities from the other side of the aisle 
and from the other side of the Capitol. It was a give and take. Even 
though there are things in the amendment I would like to change, it is 
vastly superior--vastly superior--to putting all of these programs on 
autopilot and doing this year exactly what we did last year and the 
year before, because we were on autopilot last year too.
  Let me point out two things that are different in this amendment than 
what was in December. I said it was the same but there are two things 
different. The agreement we hammered out in December, with Republicans 
and Democrats in the Senate, Republicans and Democrats in the House 
Appropriations Committee, included money for the Affordable Care Act, 
for ObamaCare. This amendment I am offering today took that out, just 
took it out. Even though we had agreed upon $513 million for that in 
December, this is not in my amendment. I want to make that clear.
  The second major difference between the December bill and this 
amendment is the total cost. As I said, the December bill would not fit 
within our new budget cap. We have a new budget cap since December. So 
this amendment fits within that budget cap by a very small, across-the-
board cut of 0.127 percent. That is one-eighth of 1 percent to every 
program in the bill. I did not do an across-the-board cut on some at 
the expense of others. No. We just did it on everything, .127 percent. 
So the programs that would have received increases in the December bill 
still get the increases, just minus .127 percent. The programs that 
were cut in the December cut will still get cut, they will just be cut 
by .127 percent more. But other than those two changes, no additional 
health reform money, no other kinds of cuts. The amendment is basically 
identical to what we agreed upon in December. So I want to take a look 
at it and see why it is better than what I call the autopilot version 
or the continuing resolution.
  Let's start first with education. Title I is the cornerstone Federal 
program for helping all students, especially those from disadvantaged 
backgrounds, helping them meet high academic standards. More than 90 
percent of the school districts across America receive title I funds. 
My amendment, the one that is before us, has $107 million more for 
title I. What is in the bill before us has absolutely no increase, 
zero.

[[Page 3476]]

  We were able to bump that up again by an amount equal to .127 
percent, as I said. It is basically the same. That is title I. Special 
education, I mentioned IDEA, we have a $125 million increase in the 
amendment I am offering; in the CR, no increase whatsoever.
  National Institutes of Health, we are especially proud of this. The 
omnibus, the Senate CR that is before us, has $71 million more than 
last year. This amendment bumps it up to $211 million. So the CR has 
$71 million, we have $211 million for an NIH increase.
  Childcare. The underlying CR includes $50 million more than last 
year. My amendment would increase that to $107 million. That means the 
childcare subsidy for working families of 10,000 additional children, 
families who basically depend upon this so they are able to go to work.
  AIDS drugs. The Ryan White AIDS Drug Assistance Program provides 
lifesaving drugs to people living with HIV. My amendment includes $29 
million more for this program. The CR has no increase whatsoever.
  So far I mentioned only some of the larger programs in the bill. My 
amendment addresses dozens of smaller priorities as well. At the full 
committee markup of the Labor-H bill back in July of last year, Senator 
Inouye, who was chairman at that time, promised Senator Murkowski that 
the final fiscal year 2013 spending bill would include $10 million for 
suicide prevention among Alaska Natives and Native Americans. I did not 
make that promise, but it was made by the chairman of the committee. I 
am honoring that promise. I honored it when we negotiated this in 
December. We included that $10 million. That is in my amendment also.
  Again, a small increase for suicide prevention is not possible in a 
CR. But it is in my amendment. If we approve it, that funding will 
become law.
  TRIO Program. It is an important program to many Members on both 
sides of the aisle. It has had broad support. The TRIO Program makes 
the dream of a college education possible for low-income students. As 
we know, this goes basically to students who are the first in their 
family to go to college. So if your parents had not gone to college, 
they would be eligible for TRIO, based upon income levels.
  The bill we negotiated in December included an increase for the TRIO 
Program. Again, that is not possible in a CR, the bill that is before 
us. But it is in my amendment. If Congress approves it, TRIO will get a 
$14 million increase this year. I just did not have it on my chart.
  I could go on and on. There are a lot of things. Food safety, lead 
poisoning screening for kids in this country, lead poisoning screening, 
diabetes prevention, worker safety. These are important priorities. 
They are all addressed in my amendment, because we addressed those in 
December. But they are not in the bill before us.
  Again, let me sort of sum up what we have here in this amendment. It 
is the same total cost as what is in the bill before us, no additional 
money. It was a bicameral, bipartisan compromise that we hammered out 
in December. There is more money for NIH, childcare, education, I 
mentioned things such as TRIO, I mentioned things such as IDEA and 
others. I think it fulfills our constitutional duty to be good stewards 
of the public's money, to do adequate oversight on appropriations, and 
to mold and shape, again in a bipartisan, bicameral method, to work it 
out.
  There are some who say, gee, if we pass this, the House will not take 
it. I do not know why not. They agreed upon it in December. I do not 
mean the whole House, but the House Appropriations Committee, under the 
chairmanship of Chairman Rogers, agreed on this in December. It was all 
signed off on. So I do not know why they would not accept it. They did 
not put it in their bill when they sent it over here. Okay. They did 
not. Well, there are some other things they did not put in the bill 
when they sent it over here too. So I think it is incumbent upon us to 
do our duty, to make sure we look at these programs and decide where we 
want to bump some up, maybe some we want to cut down, some we want to 
modify. That is what we did in December. Well, we finished in December. 
I think we started working on it back around July, if I am not 
mistaken. We finally got it worked out in December.
  If we had had an omnibus, we would have had this. I would not be here 
today offering this amendment. Again, to those who say: Well, if we had 
this, the House would not accept it, is that a reason for us not to do 
our duty? Is that a reason for us not to do what is right and just and 
fair, because someone says maybe the House will not take it? I mean, 
the House would have some serious explaining to do on why they would 
not take it since it was already in the December compromise that was 
reached.
  I would point out again that the defense bill, the Defense 
appropriations bill that is here is what they agreed upon in December. 
If that is the case, then why cannot we do Labor-H and all of the 
things that we fund the same as what we had in December also? That is 
my basic point here.
  As I say, we did make a couple of changes. One change we did is we 
took out the funding for ObamaCare, which I think is a good deal. I 
mean, ObamaCare is something we have to continue to implement. It is 
going to save us a lot of money. It is going to make lives better for 
people all over America, already is making lives better for people with 
preexisting conditions, people with very intricate diseases and 
conditions that need to be managed, young people who are staying on 
their parents' policies until they are age 26, the elderly who get 
their free health screenings every year under Medicare. So it is 
already making a big impact. I am a big supporter of ObamaCare. I want 
to make sure it gets funded and implemented. But the fact is that we 
could not do that. Well, that is no reason then not to increase NIH and 
childcare development block grants, IDEA, TRIO Programs, a host of 
other things. If the will of the body was that we could not do anything 
to implement ObamaCare, then at least let's do our duty and agree to 
meet the goals and meet the targets we set in December in our 
negotiations.
  We laid the bill down earlier. As I said, it is basically what we had 
in December. I am hopeful that Senators and their staffs will take the 
time to look through it and see what is in there, because I think they 
will come to the same conclusion. No more money than what we have in 
the CR. It is basically the same with the exceptions I mentioned of 
what we did in December. We will have a better result, a better 
platform going forward the rest of this year and next year by not doing 
a CR but by doing this bill in a bill form, just as we have done for 
other bills in this appropriations measure.
  Again, I want to thank Chairman Mikulski for fighting so hard for 
this. I know she has done everything possible. But, again, sometimes it 
falls to an amendment that we have to do to get things done. I am 
hopeful my friends on the other side of the aisle again will take a 
serious look at this and support this amendment. As I said, I see no 
real reason not to support it.
  I mean, I am anxious to see if someone has some arguments as to why 
we shouldn't support this since, as I said, we had hammered out this 
agreement over a long period of time last fall. We always spoke about 
how we want to work in a bipartisan fashion, we want to accept the 
results of bipartisan negotiation.
  That is what we did last year. I think we started probably around 
July, had an August break, at least by September--probably started in 
July, then September, October, November, December we worked it out in a 
very bipartisan fashion, although I didn't get everything I wanted in 
the bill.
  If my friends on the other side of the aisle now want to say: No, we 
are not going to accept this, what is the use of engaging in long, 
hard, difficult, strenuous bipartisan negotiations where we reach an 
agreement and they respond: Well, we don't care. We are not going to 
support it anyway.
  I have taken great pride in working with my colleagues in a 
bipartisan fashion last year on the reauthorization of the Food and 
Drug Administration bill, the drug user bill, the drug

[[Page 3477]]

safety bill. We worked long and hard on these for probably almost 2 
years and were able to get them through. There were other bills I have 
been involved in where we did good bipartisan negotiating, and that was 
the same as this.
  This is not something I rammed through and said: This is my bill; 
take it or leave it. That is not the way I work. I have been the chair 
or ranking member of this subcommittee since 1989. It is a great 
subcommittee because it meets the human needs, social needs, 
educational needs, and, yes, biomedical research needs and disease 
control needs, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is 
also funded under our subcommittee.
  It keeps Americans safe. The Defense Committee keeps us safe from 
foreign entities, other entities that would want to do us harm 
militarily. Homeland Security does the same.
  This committee keeps us safe from diseases. It keeps us safe from 
illnesses. It provides for the kind of research which has overcome so 
much in the last 20 to 30 years and the great strides we have made in 
cancer and other chronic diseases. We have made great strides because 
we have invested in them. This is what the subcommittee does.
  It also provides for education, making sure kids who come from the 
poorest families and poor areas also receive a fair shake in education 
funds, programs for students who go to college, Pell grants and student 
loans. It is incumbent upon us, as we can't continue to have continuing 
resolutions on this type of bill. Times change, circumstances change, 
and we need to modify the bill and do things which recognize some of 
the new realities. This is what we have done. I am hopeful we can get 
support for this amendment. I don't think it is a heavy lift at all for 
anyone to support this.
  I said, and I will repeat, repeat, repeat and keep repeating: There 
is no new money, no more than what is in the underlying bill. It is 
basically the same as we hammered out in December through long 
negotiations.
  Hopefully, it may be a little easier for my Republican colleagues, as 
there is not any money in there for the implementation of ObamaCare. 
This is something I didn't agree with, but that is life and one of the 
compromises one has to make. The other items in this bill are vitally 
important to the health, the welfare, the education, and safety of the 
American people.
  I hope the amendment will pass, and I ask my colleagues for their 
support.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an explanatory statement 
and a detailed funding table accompanying the amendment be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

   DIVISION__--LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND 
                            RELATED AGENCIES

       Following is an explanation of the effects of this division 
     (hereafter referred to as the ``bill''). Funds for the 
     individual programs and activities within the accounts in 
     this act are displayed in the detailed table at the end of 
     the explanatory statement for this act. Funding levels that 
     are not displayed in the detailed table are identified in 
     this explanatory statement.
       In implementing this bill, the Departments and agencies 
     should be guided by the language and instructions set forth 
     in Senate Report 112-176 accompanying S. 3295 unless 
     specifically addressed in this statement. In cases where the 
     language and instructions in the Senate report specifically 
     address the allocation of funds, those that should be 
     implemented have been restated in this explanatory statement.

                                TITLE I

                          DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

                 Employment and Training Administration


                    TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT SERVICES

                     (INCLUDING TRANSFER OF FUNDS)

       The bill provides $84,291,000 for migrant and seasonal 
     farmworker formula grants, including $5,678,222 for migrant 
     and seasonal farmworker housing grants, of which not less 
     than 70 percent of this amount shall be used for permanent 
     housing grants. The Secretary of Labor shall submit annual 
     reports documenting the use of farmworker housing funds. The 
     reports should include information on the amount of funds 
     used for permanent and temporary housing activities, 
     respectively; a list of the communities served; a list of the 
     grantees and the States in which they are located; the number 
     of individuals or families served listed by State; and a list 
     of allowable temporary housing activities.


                          OFFICE OF JOB CORPS

                     (INCLUDING TRANSFER OF FUNDS)

       The Department of Labor's mismanagement of Job Corps 
     appropriations led to considerable disruptions for current 
     and new students at the end of program year 2011. The 
     Department delayed notification to the Committees on 
     Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate 
     regarding the shortfall once discovered.
       In October 2012 the Department began implementing several 
     cost-cutting measures and shall provide quarterly reports 
     detailing its cost-cutting measures and their impact on both 
     centers and students.
       The bill includes language allowing the Secretary to 
     transfer up to $30,000,000 for Job Corps operations from 
     unobligated balances. The bill requires the Secretary to 
     transfer not less than $10,000,000 within 30 days of 
     enactment of this act.
       Contracts provided for the operation and maintenance of Job 
     Corps facilities are generally let on a 2-year basis, with as 
     many as 3 option years depending on the quality of 
     performance. When evaluating contract renewals or re-bids, 
     the Secretary shall provide due consideration to the Federal 
     investment already made in high-performing incumbent 
     contractors as a part of a full, fair, and open competitive 
     process. As part of this process, the Department shall 
     consider documented past performance of student outcomes and 
     cost-effective administration as key factors in determining 
     fair market value in Job Corps procurements.

             Occupational Safety and Health Administration


                         SALARIES AND EXPENSES

       The language in Senate Report 112-176 directing the 
     Department to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking on silica 
     stands as a recommendation of the Senate Committee on 
     Appropriations. There is a need to protect workers from 
     developing silicosis. Therefore, not later than 30 days after 
     enactment of this bill, OSHA shall provide the Committees on 
     Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate 
     a report describing its efforts in this area, including a 
     chronology related to its silica standard-setting effort 
     initiated in 1997 and the number of silica enforcement 
     activities the agency has undertaken since that time.

                 Mine Safety and Health Administration


                         SALARIES AND EXPENSES

                     (INCLUDING TRANSFER OF FUNDS)

       In order to prepare properly for emergencies, the Mine 
     Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) should continue to 
     devote resources toward a competitive grant activity for 
     effective emergency response and recovery training in various 
     types of mine conditions. The Committees on Appropriations of 
     the House of Representatives and Senate also expect to be 
     notified in advance of any reallocation of funds pursuant to 
     new bill language included in the bill.
       The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is directed to 
     provide an additional analysis as a follow-up to its report 
     (prepared in response to a request in last year's conference 
     agreement) concerning MSHA's proposal to lower the 
     permissible exposure limit for coal dust. The follow-up study 
     should discuss the available data and estimates to date 
     regarding trends in the prevalence of coal workers 
     pneumoconiosis and other occupational respiratory diseases 
     among coal miners over the past two decades. The study shall 
     include including the adequacy of the data, methodologies, 
     and conclusions that can be drawn regarding trends in 
     prevalence both nationally and to particular regions or 
     categories of mining. The GAO shall provide to the Committees 
     on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and Senate 
     an interim report not later than 90 days after enactment of 
     this bill.

                       Bureau of Labor Statistics

       The Bureau of Labor Statistics shall follow the language 
     under the Bureau of Labor Statistics heading in Senate Report 
     112-176.

                           General Provisions


                       General Transfer Authority

       The bill includes a provision modified from last year's 
     bill that provides transfer authority of not to exceed 1 
     percent of the funds appropriated for fiscal year 2013 in 
     this Act for the Department of Labor.


               TRANSFER AUTHORITY FOR EVALUATION PURPOSES

       The bill modifies a provision that allows up to 0.5 percent 
     of discretionary appropriations provided in this act for all 
     Department of Labor agencies to be used by the Chief 
     Evaluation Office for evaluation purposes consistent with the 
     terms and conditions in this bill applicable to such office.


           TEMPORARY NON-AGRICULTURAL EMPLOYMENT H-2B PROGRAM

       The bill continues a provision relating to the ``Wage 
     Methodology for the Temporary Non-Agricultural Employment H-
     2B Program'' regulation published by the Employment and 
     Training Administration and includes a new provision relating 
     to the ``Temporary Non-Agricultural Employment of H-2B Aliens 
     in the United States'' regulation published by the Employment 
     and Training Administration and the Wage and Hour Division.

[[Page 3478]]




                    WORKING CAPITAL FUND RESCISSION

       The bill includes a new provision that rescinds $10,337,000 
     from ``Departmental Management, Working Capital Fund''.


   EVALUATION FUNDING FOR THE TRADE ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE COMMUNITY 
               COLLEGE AND CAREER TRAINING GRANT PROGRAM

       The bill includes a new provision that allows up to 3 
     percent of funds provided for the Trade Adjustment Assistance 
     Community College and Career Training grant program to be 
     used for evaluation and technical assistance purposes.


            TRANSFER OF COMPTROLLER GENERAL RESPONSIBILITIES

       The bill includes a new provision that transfers Davis-
     Bacon Act claims responsibilities from the Comptroller 
     General to the Secretary of Labor.

                                TITLE II

                DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

       This explanatory statement includes tables allocating 
     funding for the programs, projects and activities in this 
     Act. The agencies funded in this act are expected to fully 
     implement these allocations in accordance with this 
     statement, except as permitted by the reprogramming and 
     transfer authorities provided in this act. Any action to 
     eliminate or consolidate programs, projects and activities 
     should be pursued through a proposal in the President's 
     budget so it can be considered by the Committees on 
     Appropriations.
       HHS is directed to include in its fiscal year 2014 
     congressional budget justification the amount of expired 
     unobligated balances available for transfer to the 
     nonrecurring expenses fund (NEF), and the amount of any such 
     balances transferred to the NEF. This should include actual 
     or estimated amounts for the prior, current, and budget 
     years.

              Health Resources and Services Administration


                           PRIMARY HEALTHCARE

       Community Health Centers.--The bill includes statutory 
     language to require all funds provided for the Community 
     Health Centers program to be obligated prior to October 1, 
     2013. Bill language also provides $48,000,000 for base grant 
     adjustments to existing health centers.


                            HEALTH WORKFORCE

       Within the funds provided for Primary Health Care, HRSA is 
     expected to provide not less than the fiscal year 2012 level 
     of funding for the Native Hawaiian Health Care Program.
       Within the funds provided for Training in Oral Health Care, 
     the bill includes not less than $8,000,000 for General 
     Dentistry programs and not less than $8,000,000 for Pediatric 
     Dentistry programs, $12,344,000 for State Health Workforce 
     grants, and $4,048,000 for other programs authorized under 
     section 748 of the Public Health Services (PHS) Act, to 
     include public health dental residencies, dental faculty loan 
     repayment, and geriatric dental training programs.
       The bill includes language prohibiting health workforce 
     funds to be used for section 340G-1, the Alternative Dental 
     Health Care Providers Demonstration program.
       The bill moves a long-standing general provision regarding 
     the continuation of the Council on Graduate Medical Education 
     to this heading.
       Public Health Workforce Development (formerly Public Health 
     and Preventive Medicine).--The program line has been changed 
     to Public Health Workforce Development to better align with 
     the congressional budget justification, which uses this title 
     to encompass a wide variety of training activities authorized 
     in the PHS Act. Sufficient funding has been included to 
     continue all activities at last year's level. In addition, 
     increased funding over fiscal year 2012 shall be used for a 
     center of excellence on integrative primary care for the 
     purpose of developing and disseminating best practices for 
     integrative medicine training for physicians and nurses.


                       MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH

       The bill includes a provision setting aside $78,641,000 for 
     Special Projects of Regional and National Significance 
     (SPRANS). The bill provides $551,181,000 for State grants and 
     includes sufficient funding to continue the set-asides for 
     oral health, epilepsy, and sickle cell at not less than 
     fiscal year 2012 levels. The set-aside for fetal alcohol 
     syndrome is funded at $500,000.
       The bill provides not less than the fiscal year 2012 
     funding level for the protection and advocacy services under 
     the Traumatic Brain Injury program.
       Within the funds provided for the Autism and Other Related 
     Disorders program, not less than the fiscal year 2012 level 
     shall be provided for the LEND program and for programs 
     authorized under section 399BB of the Combating Autism Act.
       The bill includes a $2,000,000 increase for the Heritable 
     Disorders program to support wider implementation of newborn 
     screening for Severe Combined Immune Deficiency and related 
     disorders.


                      RYAN WHITE HIV/AIDS PROGRAMS

       The increase provided for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program 
     is intended to be awarded according to the statutory formula.
       Four transitional grant areas changed status in fiscal year 
     2011 and HRSA transferred funds from Part A to Part B in 
     accordance with Section 2610(c)(2) of the PHS Act. Sufficient 
     funding has been included for these areas within the Part B 
     allocation and bill language ensures that no additional and 
     redundant transfers take place with respect to these four 
     areas. This is intended to fulfill the intent of the 
     authorizing statute. This should in no way preclude the 
     authorizing statute from taking effect for any transitional 
     grant area changes that occur for the first time in fiscal 
     year 2013.
       HRSA shall allocate funds for the Minority AIDS Initiative 
     within the Ryan White HIV programs at not less than the 
     fiscal year 2012 funding level.


                          HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS

       The bill includes language that permits the Secretary to 
     collect a fee from each purchase of drugs made through the 
     340B Drug Pricing Program.


               HEALTH EDUCATION ASSISTANCE LOANS PROGRAM

       The bill allows for the transfer of the Health Education 
     Assistance Loans Program to the Department of Education.

               Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

       The bill includes $5,589,285,000 in discretionary 
     appropriations for the Centers for Disease Control and 
     Prevention (CDC). In addition, $386,357,000 is made available 
     under section 241 of the Public Health Service (PHS) Act and 
     $205,925,000 in transfers from the Public Health and Social 
     Services Emergency Fund.


                 IMMUNIZATION AND RESPIRATORY DISEASES

       The bill includes a total of $589,114,000 for Immunization 
     and Respiratory Diseases, which includes $525,201,000 in 
     discretionary appropriations, $12,864,000 that is made 
     available under section 241 of the PHS Act, and $51,049,000 
     that is made available from amounts in the Public Health and 
     Social Services Emergency Fund.
       Within this total, the bill includes the following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Section 317 Immunization Program............................367,870,000
Program Implementation and Accountability....................62,302,000
  National Immunization Survey...............................12,864,000
Influenza Planning and Response.............................158,942,000
       Section 317 Immunization Policy.--Immunizations play an 
     important role in protecting and promoting children's health. 
     On July 10, 2012, CDC proposed a policy that prohibits 
     section 317 funds from being used to vaccinate insured 
     individuals. The transition may require more time. For that 
     reason, the bill directs CDC to delay the policy from taking 
     effect during fiscal year 2013 to allow CDC and States to 
     review and adjust to the proposed change in a manner that 
     maintains a strong vaccination program.


     HIV/AIDS, VIRAL HEPATITIS, SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES AND 
                        TUBERCULOSIS PREVENTION

       The bill includes $1,101,956,000 for HIV/AIDS, Viral 
     Hepatitis, Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Tuberculosis 
     Prevention.
       Within this total, the bill includes the following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Domestic HIV/AIDS Prevention and Research..................$786,176,000
  HIV Prevention by Health Departments......................392,636,000
  Activities to Improve Program Effectiveness...............363,702,000
  School Health..............................................29,838,000
Viral Hepatitis..............................................19,694,000
Sexually Transmitted Infections.............................155,788,000
Tuberculosis................................................140,298,000
       Sexually Transmitted Infections.--The increase provided for 
     the prevention and control of sexually transmitted infections 
     shall be used to expand the Infertility Prevention Program.


               EMERGING AND ZOONOTIC INFECTIOUS DISEASES

       The bill includes $266,458,000 for Emerging and Zoonotic 
     Infectious Diseases. Within this total, the bill includes the 
     following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Emerging and Zoonotic Base Activities.......................$19,822,000
Vector-borne Diseases........................................23,083,000
Lyme Disease..................................................9,000,000
Food Safety..................................................39,781,000
Prion Disease.................................................6,000,000
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome......................................4,707,000
Emerging Infectious Diseases................................123,359,000
National Healthcare Safety Network...........................14,840,000
Quarantine...................................................25,866,000
       Food Safety.--Within the increase provided for food safety, 
     $4,300,000 is for a microbiological data program to be 
     undertaken in partnership with appropriate state agencies. 
     The remainder of the increase shall be used to support 
     upgrades to PulseNet, enhance surveillance and response 
     capability, and develop new laboratory tools.
       Lyme Disease.--CDC is encouraged to consider expanding 
     activities related to developing sensitive and more accurate 
     diagnostic

[[Page 3479]]

     tools and tests for Lyme disease, including: the evaluation 
     of emerging diagnostic methods; improving utilization of 
     validated diagnostic testing to account for the multiple 
     clinical manifestations of Lyme disease; epidemiological 
     research on tick-borne diseases to include determining the 
     frequency and nature of any long-term complications; improved 
     surveillance and reporting to produce more accurate data on 
     their incidence; and prevention of Lyme and tick-borne 
     diseases through product development, community-based public 
     education, and physician and healthcare provider programs 
     based on the latest scientific research.
       Prion Disease.--The bill includes increased support for the 
     prion disease program targeted toward extramural activities.


            CHRONIC DISEASE PREVENTION AND HEALTH PROMOTION

       The bill includes $797,081,000 for Chronic Disease 
     Prevention and Health Promotion.
       Within this total, the bill includes the following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Tobacco....................................................$108,077,000
  Environmental Health Lab....................................1,963,000
Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity....................48,998,000
School Health................................................13,522,000
  Food Allergies................................................487,000
Health Promotion.............................................19,984,000
  Community Health Promotion..................................6,106,000
  Glaucoma....................................................3,319,000
  Visual Screening Education....................................508,000
  Alzheimer's Disease.........................................4,202,000
  Inflammatory Bowel Disease....................................677,000
  Interstitial Cystitis.........................................651,000
  Excessive Alcohol Use.......................................2,440,000
  Chronic Kidney Disease......................................2,081,000
Prevention Research Centers..................................17,900,000
Heart Disease and Stroke.....................................54,975,000
Diabetes.....................................................74,434,000
Cancer Prevention and Control...............................359,690,000
  Breast and Cervical Cancer................................211,490,000
    WISEWOMAN................................................21,304,000
  Breast Cancer Awareness for Young Women.....................5,040,000
  Cancer Registries..........................................51,643,000
  Colorectal Cancer..........................................44,225,000
  Comprehensive Cancer.......................................20,857,000
  Johanna's Law...............................................5,134,000
  Ovarian Cancer..............................................5,041,000
  Prostate Cancer............................................13,541,000
  Skin Cancer.................................................2,208,000
  Cancer Survivorship Resource Center...........................511,000
Oral Health..................................................19,000,000
Safe Motherhood/Infant Health................................43,803,000
Arthritis....................................................13,001,000
Epilepsy......................................................7,757,000
National Lupus Patient Registry...............................2,000,000
REACH........................................................13,940,000
       Consolidated Chronic Disease Prevention and Health 
     Promotion.--The proposed consolidation of CDC chronic disease 
     programs is rejected. CDC is expected to demonstrate that 
     funds are spent in the exact amounts allocated and for the 
     purposes specified in this explanatory statement. Although 
     the bill does not provide the 5 percent flexibility included 
     in Senate report 112-176, CDC is directed to explore ways to 
     better achieve overlapping chronic disease goals, leverage 
     resources, and reduce the reporting burden.
       Diabetes.--Of the increase provided, $5,000,000 shall be to 
     expand the National Diabetes Prevention Program.
       Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity program.--Of the 
     increase provided, $5,000,000 shall be for extension and 
     outreach services at land grant schools for health education 
     in counties that CDC determines have over 40% obesity rate.
       Ovarian Cancer.--Within the funds provided for Johanna's 
     Law, $1,500,000 shall be used for a review of the state of 
     the science on ovarian cancer, as described in the Senate 
     report. In addition, CDC and the National Institutes of 
     Health (NIH) are expected to conduct a joint workshop to 
     examine the research gaps that remain in ovarian cancer 
     science.
       Oral Health.--Sufficient funding is included for an oral 
     health literacy campaign, a conference on innovative 
     strategies to prevent early childhood caries, and not less 
     than $150,000 for planning and technical assistance to expand 
     public-private media campaigns.


              BIRTH DEFECTS AND DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES

       The bill includes $132,037,000 for birth defects and 
     developmental disabilities.
       The administration's proposal to consolidate disability and 
     health programs is rejected. This bill retains the fiscal 
     year 2012 position that no consolidation will be considered 
     without an assessment of the needs of the populations 
     currently served and an analysis of the impact of a 
     consolidation on those populations. Within the total for 
     Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, the bill 
     includes the following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 Level
Child Health and Development................................$60,161,000
  Birth Defects..............................................18,387,000
  Fetal Death...................................................806,000
  Fetal Alcohol Syndrome......................................9,862,000
  Folic Acid..................................................2,779,000
  Infant Health...............................................7,868,000
  Autism.....................................................21,265,000
Health and Development for People with Disabilities..........56,585,000
  Disability & Health........................................17,779,000
  Limb Loss...................................................2,820,000
  Tourette Syndrome...........................................1,698,000
  Early Hearing Detection and Intervention...................10,630,000
  Muscular Dystrophy..........................................5,828,000
  Paralysis Resource Center...................................6,700,000
  Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder....................1,715,000
  Fragile X...................................................1,681,000
  Spina Bifida................................................5,734,000
  Congenital Heart Failure....................................2,000,000
Public Health Approach to Blood Disorders.....................7,935,000
  Hemophilia Treatment Centers................................5,500,000
  Thallasemia.................................................1,856,000


                   PUBLIC HEALTH SCIENTIFIC SERVICES

       The bill includes a total of $391,741,000 for Public Health 
     Scientific Services, which includes $129,614,000 in 
     discretionary appropriations and $262,127,000 made available 
     under section 241 of the PHS Act.
       Within the total for Public Health Scientific Services, the 
     bill includes the following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Health Statistics..........................................$138,683,000
Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Informatics.................217,129,000
Public Health Workforce......................................35,929,000


                          ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH

       The bill includes $107,316,000 for Environmental Health 
     Programs. Within this total, the bill includes the following 
     amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Environmental Health Laboratory.............................$42,383,000
  Newborn Screening Quality Assurance Program.................6,825,000
  Newborn Screening/Severe Combined Immuno-deficiency Diseases..965,000
Environmental Health Activities..............................33,135,000
  Safe Water..................................................7,109,000
  Volcanic Emissions............................................197,000
  Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Registry................5,869,000
  Climate Change..............................................4,800,000
  Built Environment and Health Initiative.....................3,000,000
Asthma.......................................................25,298,000
Childhood Lead Poisoning......................................6,500,000


                     INJURY PREVENTION AND CONTROL

       The bill includes $137,693,000 for Injury Prevention and 
     Control activities. Within this total, the bill includes the 
     following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Intentional Injury..........................................$93,282,000
  Domestic Violence and Sexual Violence......................31,042,000
    Child Maltreatment........................................6,959,000
  Youth Violence Prevention..................................14,968,000
  Domestic Violence Community Projects........................5,411,000
  Rape Prevention............................................39,389,000
Unintentional Injury.........................................30,966,000
  Traumatic Brain Injury......................................6,026,000
  Elderly Falls.............................................. 1,958,000
Injury Control Research Centers...............................9,974,000
National Violent Death Reporting System.......................3,471,000


         NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH

       The bill includes a total of $292,588,000 for the National 
     Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which includes 
     $181,222,000 in discretionary appropriations and $111,366,000 
     made available under section 241 of the PHS Act.
       Within the total for Occupational Safety and Health, the 
     bill includes the following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Education and Research Centers..............................$24,268,000
Personal Protective Technology...............................16,791,000
Healthier Workforce Centers...................................5,016,000
National Occupational Research Agenda.......................111,366,000
  Ag, Forestry, Fishing......................................23,000,000
Mining Research..............................................52,363,000
Other Occupational Safety and Health Research................82,784,000
  Miners Choice.................................................646,000
  National Mesothelioma Registry and Tissue Bank..............1,020,000


       ENERGY EMPLOYEES OCCUPATIONAL ILLNESS COMPENSATION PROGRAM

       The bill includes $55,358,000 in mandatory funding for 
     CDC's responsibilities with respect to the Energy Employee 
     Occupational Illness Compensation Program. A long-standing 
     provision, transferring funds to the Advisory Board on 
     Radiation and Worker Health, has been deleted without 
     prejudice. CDC has the authority to transfer funds to the 
     Board under the authorizing statute.


                             GLOBAL HEALTH

       The bill includes $353,794,000 for Global Health 
     Activities. Within this total, the bill includes the 
     following amounts:

[[Page 3480]]

        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Global AIDS Program........................................$117,118,000
Global Immunization Program.................................160,287,000
  Polio Eradication.........................................111,286,000
  Other Global/Measles.......................................49,001,000
Global Disease Detection and Emergency Response..............41,601,000
  International Emergency.....................................5,997,000
  Global Disease Detection...................................35,604,000
Parasitic Diseases/Malaria...................................19,367,000
Global Public Health Capacity................................15,421,000
  National Public Health Institutes...........................7,000,000
  Field Epidemiology and Lab Training Program.................8,421,000
       Global Public Health.--CDC shall provide an operating plan 
     for all international activities funded through this and 
     other CDC accounts to the Committees on Appropriations of the 
     House of Representatives and the Senate.
       Global Health Strategy.--CDC, FDA, and NIH are expected to 
     develop, coordinate, and plan jointly global health research 
     activities with specific measurable metrics that are based on 
     sound scientific methods and to track the progress toward 
     these agreed upon global health goals.
       Global Health Capacity.--The bill reduces overall funding 
     by $800,000 to reflect the elimination of the Sustainable 
     Management Development Program. Funding for the Field 
     Epidemiology and Lab Training Program shall be maintained at 
     not less than last year's level.
       National Public Health Institutes (NPHIs).--The bill 
     includes $7,000,000 to assist other nations in setting up and 
     strengthening NPHIs. This initiative is intended to be an 
     organizational effort, and in no way limit capacity building 
     work in other programs of CDC.


                PUBLIC HEALTH PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE

       The bill includes $1,380,889,000 for public health 
     preparedness and response activities, which includes 
     $1,226,013,000 in discretionary appropriations and 
     $154,876,000 made available from amounts available in the 
     Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund.
       Within the total for Public Health Preparedness and 
     Response, the bill includes the following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Public Health Emergency Preparedness Cooperative Agreements$642,000,000
Academic Centers for Public Health Preparedness...............8,000,000
All Other State and Local Capacity............................7,767,000
CDC Preparedness and Response...............................128,802,000
  Upgrading CDC Capacity....................................100,000,000
  BioSense...................................................20,727,000
  Lab Reporting...............................................8,075,000
Strategic National Stockpile................................594,320,000
       Preparedness Administrative Costs.--CDC's proposal to 
     consolidate administrative costs into funding provided for 
     Public Health Emergency Preparedness cooperative agreements 
     is rejected. The bill includes $7,767,000 for these costs, in 
     addition to the funds provided for the cooperative 
     agreements.
       Public Health Emergency Preparedness Index.--CDC is 
     expected to work with the States to develop a method to 
     measure the preparedness of each State.
       Strategic National Stockpile (SNS).--The bill provides 
     $154,876,000 from the 2009 supplemental appropriations bill 
     to support the SNS in fiscal year 2013. The Secretary is 
     expected to pay particular attention to ensuring the needs of 
     special populations, such as children, are met in the SNS. 
     CDC shall submit a report within 180 days after enactment of 
     this act on steps being taken and resources dedicated to 
     maintain the integrity of the SNS and its effectiveness in an 
     emergency, particularly with regard to the need to rotate old 
     supplies and equipment, and purchase new countermeasures, 
     devices, and equipment to ensure the preparedness level is 
     sustained.


                        BUILDINGS AND FACILITIES

       The bill provides $46,000,000, which includes $6,600,000 of 
     unobligated Individual Learning Accounts balances for 
     Buildings and Facilities activities.
       The National Institutes for Occupational Safety and Health 
     facilities that support the underground and surface coal 
     mining safety and health research capacity and the applied 
     technology and occupational hazard evaluation field research 
     capabilities may be becoming obsolete and not fully 
     operational. The bill provides $35,000,000 for CDC to support 
     competitive acquisition, renovation, replacement, or 
     consolidation of these capabilities to save operational 
     costs, improve productivity and support the capacities listed 
     above. CDC is expected to take positive steps to ensure the 
     capabilities are maintained to support mine safety research.
       In addition, within the total provided for Buildings and 
     Facilities, $11,000,000 is for CDC-wide repairs and 
     improvements. CDC is expected to ensure future budget 
     requests include resource allocation requests to support 
     appropriate facility stewardship.


                CDC-WIDE ACTIVITIES AND PROGRAM SUPPORT

                     (INCLUDING TRANSFER OF FUNDS)

       The bill includes $591,500,000 for CDC-wide activities.
       Within this total, the bill includes the following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Preventive Health & Health Services Block Grant............$105,000,000
Business Services Support...................................380,000,000
Office of the Director......................................106,500,000
       Budget Information.--CDC's value to public health and 
     preparedness is widely recognized and budget processes that 
     link programs and activities to measurable public health and 
     preparedness goals are strongly supported. CDC is directed to 
     explain in the congressional budget request how sound 
     scientific data are linked to measurable public health and 
     preparedness goals and objectives for each program, and how 
     those goals directly relate to the budget request. In 
     addition, CDC is directed to provide the following 
     information in the fiscal year 2015 and future budget 
     requests:
       Program evaluations--an identification of the timeframes 
     and criteria used to evaluate each program;
       User fee, reimbursement, and other sources of funding--an 
     itemization of the actual and estimated collections for each 
     activity and the actual annual costs related to each 
     associated user fee, reimbursement, and other funding source 
     used to support CDC activities;
       Accounting--a more detailed accounting of how funds are 
     spent in each program. The budget justification should not 
     only be an accounting of how funds will be spent in the 
     coming fiscal year, but also how funds have been spent in the 
     previous fiscal years, potentially under different budget 
     structures or organizations;
       Types of activities supported--the breakdown of intramural 
     and extramural funding for each program; and
       Working Capital Fund (WCF)--The object class breakout of 
     annual WCF resource inputs, assets, expenditures, carry over, 
     WCF-supported FTE, WCF-supported contract FTE, and WCF-
     supported overhead for the prior actual year, current year 
     and budget year at each Center, Institute, or Office, in 
     addition to the CDC aggregate levels. The budget 
     justification should include the projected and actual reserve 
     with a breakout justification to explain the projected use 
     and identification of any reserve and residual funds for the 
     prior actual year, current year, and budget year. Further, 
     CDC shall brief jointly the Committees on Appropriations no 
     later than July 15, 2013 on the WCF governance structure, 
     rules in place to ensure appropriate activity and accounting, 
     and hypothetical impact of the fund if it were implemented in 
     fiscal year 2013 and funding adjustments for the expected 
     implementation at the beginning of fiscal year 2014.
       Repairs and Improvements--the categorization of the needed 
     repairs for CDC facilities in areas such as security, life/
     safety repairs, condition index, and other repairs.
       Data Reporting.--Significant opportunities exist to create 
     administrative and economic efficiencies in the reporting of 
     public health data. For that reason, the Director of CDC is 
     directed to work with State and local health officials, to 
     submit a report to the Committees on Appropriations no later 
     than 180 days after enactment of this act on the 
     opportunities for consolidating the various data collection 
     systems in CDC. The report should include the opportunities 
     and costs, advantages and barriers, and projected timeline to 
     such a consolidated data reporting system, along with 
     recommendations for adoption. The report should include full 
     consideration of a single Web-based data collection 
     information technology platform.
       Individual Learning Accounts.--A long-standing provision 
     extending availability of funds for the Individual Learning 
     Account program has been deleted, as well as a long-standing 
     general provision regarding the management of this program. 
     The training and professional development of CDC staff shall 
     be supported and maintained by the centers and leadership of 
     CDC.
       Office of the Director (formerly Public Health Leadership 
     and Support).--The program line has been changed to Office of 
     Director to better reflect the activities these funds 
     support.
       Scientific Research Coordination with NIH.--CDC programs 
     are expected to coordinate with the Institutes and Centers of 
     the NIH to identify scientific gaps for ready opportunities 
     to accelerate understanding of diseases and their prevention 
     in NIH and CDC research portfolios. Specifically, updates are 
     requested in the fiscal year 2014 budget request on this 
     effort as it relates to each of the CDC cancer programs.


                     NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH

       The bill includes $30,873,259,000 for the accounts that 
     comprise the NIH total appropriation. This amount includes a 
     $40,000,000 increase for Institutional Development Awards 
     (IDeA) within the National Institute of General Medical 
     Sciences and a $15,000,000 increase for the Cures 
     Acceleration Network within the National Center for Advancing 
     Translational Sciences (NCATS). To improve transparency, the 
     bill also includes an increase of $25,300,000 for NCATS to 
     fully fund the Clinical and Translational Science Awards 
     (CTSA) program within that Center; in fiscal year 2012, CTSAs 
     were funded partially through contributions from other 
     Institutes and Centers (ICs).
       Other than the adjustments described above, funding for 
     each IC is increased over

[[Page 3481]]

     the fiscal year 2012 level by an equal percentage.
       In accordance with longstanding tradition, the bill does 
     not direct funds to any specific disease research area. NIH 
     is expected to base its funding decisions only on scientific 
     opportunities and the peer review process.
       NIH is expected to adopt a reasonable NIH-wide policy for 
     non-competing and competing inflation rates that is 
     consistent with the overall funding increase. Further, NIH is 
     expected to support as many scientifically meritorious new 
     and competing research project grants as possible, at a 
     reasonable award level, with the funding provided in this 
     act.
       All the NIH ICs are expected to continue to support the 
     Pathways to Independence program, which provides new 
     investigators with mentored grants that convert into 
     independent research project grants. In addition, New 
     Innovator Awards, Director's Pioneer Awards, and the 
     Transformative R01 Program are supported through the Common 
     Fund. NIH should have a reasonable policy for inflationary 
     increases on research training stipends that are not below 
     the federal pay policy. The Office of the Director (OD) shall 
     ensure, as practicable, the programs and offices within OD 
     receive increases proportional to the overall increase, 
     unless otherwise specified.
       NIH is expected to limit funding for the Intramural 
     Research Program to the same share of the overall NIH budget 
     as in fiscal year 2012. The percentage of funds used to 
     support basic research across NIH is expected to be 
     maintained.
       CTSAs.--NIH shall make no changes to the CTSA program until 
     the Institute of Medicine (IOM) completes its evaluation of 
     the program, due in June 2013. Following the completion of 
     that evaluation, if NIH then determines that adjustments to 
     the CTSA program are needed, the NCATS Director is directed 
     to brief the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations 
     before implementing the changes.
       Clinical Trials.--GAO is requested to conduct a review of 
     how NIH has applied the recommendations from the 2010 
     Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommendations on NCI's clinical 
     trials across all ICs to improve all NIH-wide clinical trial 
     activity. The review should examine the specific 
     recommendations NIH can consider to further improve the 
     efficiency and effectiveness of administering, monitoring, 
     managing, and supporting clinical trials.
       Clinical Trials Patient Enrollment.--NIH is directed to 
     host a workshop on the challenges regarding enrolling and 
     retaining patients in clinical trials. The workshop should 
     include public foundations that provide clinical trial 
     navigation services, the NIH Foundation, and other 
     appropriate organizations. Topics should include the 
     development of ways to track, monitor, and improve 
     participation and enrollment in NIH-funded clinical trials, 
     particularly among underrepresented and uninsured 
     populations. The workshop should also discuss potential 
     public-private partnerships that could address these goals.
       Common Fund.--NIH is expected to continue the longstanding 
     policy for Common Fund projects to be short-term, high-impact 
     awards, with no projects receiving funding for more than 10 
     years. NIH is directed to discontinue health economics 
     research within the Common Fund.
       Extramural and Intramural Research.--NIH plans to impose an 
     additional level of scrutiny on extramural principal 
     investigators with grants of $1,500,000 or more. NIH is 
     directed to ensure that this policy, and any other new 
     measures which are intended to improve oversight and 
     accountability for extramural researchers, should apply 
     equally to intramural researchers as well.
       Peer reviewers for extramural research would benefit from 
     knowing the scope of intramural activities that are related 
     to the subjects under consideration to reduce the possibility 
     of duplication. Therefore, NIH is directed to make such 
     information available to extramural peer review study 
     sections.
       Improved Trans-NIH Coordination.--The Director of the 
     Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic 
     Initiatives is requested to develop a strategic plan to 
     improve coordination and facilitation of trans-NIH research. 
     The plan should include measurable objectives and specific 
     steps that NIH and the ICs will take to reduce duplication 
     and increase the effectiveness and efficiency of research 
     activities occurring in multiple ICs. The plan should be 
     posted on the NIH Web site within 180 days after enactment 
     and updated routinely thereafter regarding progress made 
     toward reaching the objectives.
       Kennedy's Disease.--NINDS supports research related to 
     spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy, also known as Kennedy's 
     disease. NINDS is encouraged to continue research into the 
     causes of this disease and animal testing for possible 
     avenues for treatment.
       Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards.--The 
     number of Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service 
     Awards has declined each year since fiscal year 2007. While 
     there is a need to increase stipend levels, NIH should put a 
     higher priority on maintaining the number of awards. NIH is 
     expected to continue efforts to support new investigators.
       National Children's Study (NCS).--There have been 
     significant concerns in the scientific community about NIH's 
     plans to change substantially the design of the NCS. 
     Therefore, the bill requires NIH to charter a comprehensive 
     IOM/National Research Council review to evaluate the proposal 
     and make the results public before contracts are awarded for 
     the NCS Main Study. Topics covered by the review should 
     include: the representative sample size, participation of 
     traditionally underrepresented groups, generalizability of 
     the data, participant retention rates, statistical artifacts, 
     required infrastructure, involvement of academia, study 
     costs, and other factors determined relevant by the review 
     experts.
       NCATS.--NCATS should make every effort to prevent 
     duplication, redundancy, and competition with the private 
     sector. To that end, NCATS is directed to work with industry 
     representatives to initiate a process that will inform the 
     private sector on a regular basis about the Center's current 
     and planned programs and activities. A plan and timeline to 
     implement this process is requested within 90 days of 
     enactment.
       Opioid Drug Abuse.--The June 2011 IOM report on pain 
     indicates that abuse and misuse of prescription opioid drugs 
     resulted in an annual estimated cost to the Nation of 
     $72,500,000,000. Therefore the National Institute on Drug 
     Abuse is urged to support scientific activities that provide 
     companies with the basic science to develop and implement 
     innovative strategies to reduce opioid drug abuse. Such 
     strategies may include new chemical molecule structures, 
     coatings, agents, or other processes with a goal of 
     preventing abuse while still providing the necessary pain 
     relief required for patient care.
       Improved Coordination and Dissemination of Research.--The 
     OD is expected to work with the ICs and other HHS operating 
     divisions to establish a systematic means of disseminating 
     research results for the purposes of preventing duplication 
     of effort across the Department and enabling NIH to target 
     its research more effectively.
       IDeA.--NIH is expected to maintain the fiscal year 2012 
     levels for the Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence 
     (COBRE), IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence, and 
     the IDeA Clinical Trial and Translation Program programs. NIH 
     is directed to divide the increase over the fiscal year 2012 
     level for IDeA equally between a new COBRE competition and 
     additional awards for the IDeA Clinical Trial and Translation 
     Program. Last year NIH was urged to give the IDeA Director 
     the flexibility to include all States that qualify for the 
     Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research 
     (EPSCoR) program in the IDeA program. An update on this 
     proposal was requested in the fiscal year 2013 congressional 
     budget justification. NIH failed to respond to either 
     request. Therefore, NIH is directed to review whether changes 
     to the eligibility criteria are warranted, including the 
     possible inclusion of all EPSCoR-eligible States, and to 
     present its recommendations in a report to the House and 
     Senate Committees on Appropriations and the relevant 
     authorizing committees no later than 120 days after 
     enactment. In addition, the NIH and IC Directors are 
     requested to work with the IDeA Director to implement a plan 
     to improve coordination and co-funding of IDeA awards and 
     programs to increase opportunities to improve biomedical 
     research capacity and training.
       Scientific Management and Review Board (SMRB).--The NIH 
     Director has rejected the recommendation by the Scientific 
     Management and Review Board to create a new Institute on 
     substance use, abuse, and addiction-related research, and has 
     decided that the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the 
     National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism should 
     pursue ``functional integration'' to advance this research 
     rather than consolidation. NIH is expected to provide 
     specific details on how the two Institutes plan to achieve 
     such integration in the fiscal year 2014 congressional budget 
     justification.

       Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

       The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services 
     Administration (SAMHSA) is expected to provide more detailed 
     information in its annual congressional justification, 
     including budgetary and programmatic information on programs 
     as they existed in prior fiscal years, even if the budget 
     request proposes a new structure or consolidation. SAMHSA 
     shall not make changes to any program, project, or activity 
     as outlined by the budget tables included in this explanatory 
     statement without prior notification to the House and Senate 
     Committees on Appropriations.
       SAMHSA and the Department are directed to exempt the Mental 
     Health Block Grant (MHBG) and the Substance Abuse Prevention 
     and Treatment (SAPT) Block Grant from being used as a source 
     for the PHS evaluation set-aside in fiscal year 2013, as was 
     done prior to fiscal year 2012.


                             MENTAL HEALTH

       Within the total provided for Mental Health Programs of 
     Regional and National Significance, the bill includes the 
     following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Capacity
  Seclusion & Restraint.......................................2,444,000

[[Page 3482]]

  Youth Violence Prevention..................................12,817,000
  National Traumatic Stress Network..........................48,713,000
  Children and Family Programs................................6,474,000
  Consumer and Family Network Grants..........................6,224,000
  MH System Transformation and Health Reform.................10,603,000
  Project LAUNCH.............................................34,640,000
  Primary and Behavioral Health Care Integration.............30,749,000
  Suicide Lifeline............................................5,512,000
  GLS--Youth Suicide Prevention--States......................29,682,000
  GLS--Youth Suicide Prevention--Campus.......................4,966,000
  AI/AN Suicide Prevention Initiative.........................2,938,000
  Homelessness Prevention Programs...........................30,772,000
  Minority AIDS...............................................9,265,000
  Criminal and Juvenile Justice Programs......................4,281,000
  Grants for Adult Trauma Screening and BI....................2,896,000
  Tribal Behavioral Health Grants............................20,000,000
Science and Service
  GLS--Suicide Prevention Resource Center.....................5,550,000
  Practice Improvement & Training.............................7,437,000
  Consumer & Consumer Support T.A. Centers....................1,923,000
  Primary/Behavioral Health Integration T.A...................1,996,000
  Minority Fellowship Program.................................5,089,000
  Disaster Response...........................................2,950,000
  Homelessness................................................2,302,000
  HIV/AIDS Education............................................773,000
       In order to address the high incidence of substance abuse 
     and suicide in American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) 
     populations, the bill provides $20,000,000 for a new Tribal 
     Behavioral Health Grant program within the Center for Mental 
     Health Services. Not less than $10,000,000 shall be used for 
     competitively awarded grants targeting tribal entities with 
     the highest rates of suicide per capita over the past 10 
     years. Funds shall be used for effective and promising 
     strategies that address the problems of substance abuse and 
     suicide and promote mental health among AI/AN young people.
       Within the funds provided for the National Child Traumatic 
     Stress Network, the bill provides $1,500,000 for the targeted 
     collection of new outcome data from selected centers, as well 
     as analyses and reports related to the National Center for 
     Child Traumatic Stress core data set.
       All grants awarded for the Primary and Behavioral Health 
     Integration program shall be funded under the authorities in 
     section 520(K) of the PHS Act.
       Funds provided to Project LAUNCH should not duplicate 
     activities eligible for funding elsewhere in HHS and should 
     focus on mental health promotion and promotion strategies for 
     children aged 0 to 8.


                       SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREATMENT

       Within the total provided for Substance Abuse Treatment 
     Programs of Regional and National Significance, the bill 
     includes the following amounts:


        Budget Activity                                   FY 2013 Level
Capacity
  Opioid Treatment Programs/Regulatory Activities.............8,886,000
  Screening, Brief Intervention, Referral, and Treatment.....28,187,000
  TCE--General...............................................13,256,000
  Pregnant & Postpartum Women................................15,970,000
  Strengthening Treatment Access and Retention................1,000,000
  Recovery Community Services Program.........................2,445,000
  Access to Recovery.........................................87,666,000
  Children and Families......................................29,678,000
  Treatment Systems for Homeless.............................41,571,000
  Minority AIDS..............................................65,863,000
  Criminal Justice Activities................................70,000,000
Science and Service
  Addiction Technology Transfer Centers.......................9,064,000
  Minority Fellowship Program...................................546,000
  Special Initiatives/Outreach................................1,436,000
       SAMHSA shall ensure that Addiction Technology Transfer 
     Centers continue to maintain a primary focus on addiction 
     treatment and recovery services in order to strengthen the 
     addiction workforce.
       All funding appropriated to the Center for Substance Abuse 
     Treatment for drug treatment courts shall be allocated to 
     serve people diagnosed with a substance use disorder as their 
     primary condition.
       SAMHSA shall ensure that funds provided for Screening, 
     Brief Intervention, Referral, and Treatment are used for 
     existing evidence-based models of providing early 
     intervention and treatment services to those at risk of 
     developing substance abuse disorders.


                       SUBSTANCE ABUSE PREVENTION

       Within the total provided for Substance Abuse Prevention 
     Programs of Regional and National Significance, the bill 
     includes the following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Capacity
  Strategic Prevention Framework/Partnerships for Success...109,754,000
  Mandatory Drug Testing......................................4,906,000
  Minority AIDS..............................................41,307,000
  Sober Truth on Preventing Underage Drinking (STOP Act)......7,931,000
    National Adult-Oriented Media Public Service Campaign.....1,000,000
    Community-based Coalition Enhancement Grants..............5,931,000
    Intergovernmental Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of 
      Underage Drinking.......................................1,000,000
Science and Service
  Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.............................9,802,000
  Center for the Application of Prevention Technologies.......7,511,000
  Science and Service Program Coordination....................4,082,000
  Minority Fellowship Program....................................71,000
       SAMHSA shall make continuation awards for Strategic 
     Prevention Framework State Incentive Grant/Partnerships for 
     Success (SPFSIG/PFS) grantees at amounts not less than what 
     grantees received in fiscal year 2012. Furthermore, SAMHSA 
     shall use any additional funding to provide new grants under 
     SPFSIG/PFS. These new grants shall be awarded as the program 
     was originally designed prior to fiscal year 2011, with 
     similar eligible applicants, a multiyear project period, and 
     reliance on epidemiological workgroups. SAMHSA shall award 
     these multiyear grants on an annual, incremental basis rather 
     than fully funding them in fiscal year 2013.


                HEALTH SURVEILLANCE AND PROGRAM SUPPORT

       Within the total provided for health surveillance and 
     program support, the bill includes the following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Health Surveillance..............................................29,424
Program Management...............................................72,229
Military Families.................................................3,500
Public Awareness and Support.....................................13,545
Performance and Quality Info. Systems............................12,940
       SAMHSA shall prioritize the award of the Military Families 
     Initiative policy academy service grants to States with 
     higher populations of military families not eligible for or 
     with reduced access to the services provided through the 
     Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense.

               Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality


                    HEALTHCARE RESEARCH AND QUALITY

       The bill provides $349,053,000 for the Agency for 
     Healthcare Research and Quality. These funds are made 
     available through section 241 of the Public Health Service 
     (PHS) Act.
       Within the total for the Patient Safety Research portfolio, 
     the bill provides $4,000,000 for research grants authorized 
     by section 933 of the PHS Act, as proposed in Senate Report 
     112-176.
       Within the total for the Crosscutting Activities Related to 
     Quality, Effectiveness and Efficiency Research portfolio, the 
     bill provides $38,555,000 for investigator-initiated 
     research.

               Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services


                           PROGRAM MANAGEMENT

       The bill includes $3,826,187,000 for the Program Management 
     account. The bill moves the State Health Insurance Assistance 
     Program from CMS Program Management to the Administration for 
     Community Living. The conferees recommend the following 
     levels within the Program Management account:


        Program management                                FY 2013 level
Research, Demonstration and Evaluation......................$21,160,000
Program Operations........................................2,608,785,000
State Survey and Certification..............................381,278,000
State High Risk Insurance Pools..............................44,000,000
Federal Administration......................................770,964,000
       The bill includes funding for Research, Demonstration, and 
     Evaluation activities, including the Medicare Current 
     Beneficiary Survey. CMS is requested to include in its fiscal 
     year 2015 congressional budget justification all programs, 
     projects, and activities authorized in the Affordable Care 
     Act (ACA) intended to be supported, along with amounts 
     expended in the current year and 3 prior fiscal years.
       CMS Policy Guidance.--CMS uses Medicare Administrative 
     Contractors (MACs) as its agents in lieu of federal employees 
     to process reimbursement activity. The MACs may develop and 
     implement independent policies, which can be perceived as 
     being inconsistent

[[Page 3483]]

     with CMS guidance. CMS is requested to provide a detailed 
     description in the fiscal year 2015 budget request of the 
     mechanisms CMS has in place or plans to put in place to 
     ensure its contracting agents consistently adhere to CMS 
     policies.
       Critical Access Hospitals.--The Secretary is urged to 
     create a review process for those hospitals less than 35 
     miles by primary road from the nearest hospital for the 
     purpose of improving access to essential health services, 
     including acute medical inpatient care. If changes are 
     required, HHS should work with Congress for approval. CMS is 
     encouraged to work with the Office of Rural Health Policy in 
     HRSA to ensure that rural patients maintain access to 
     necessary health services.
       Fungal Meningitis.--The 2012 outbreak of fungal meningitis 
     remains a concern, with more than 500 illnesses and a median 
     patient age in the late 60s. While the primary responsibility 
     for ensuring the safety of drugs lies with other agencies of 
     Federal and State government, CMS should consider whether 
     there are actions it can take to ensure that the providers 
     are operating in a manner that is consistent with State and 
     Federal standards, and report to the Committees on 
     Appropriations within 180 days of enactment of this act 
     regarding its conclusions.
       Fraud, Waste, and Abuse.--CMS is urged to implement a 
     process across all operations to increase its focus on 
     preventing improper payments and paying claims right the 
     first time. A 2010 GAO report found that CMS had no formal 
     process in place to ensure that vulnerabilities identified by 
     the Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program are addressed. 
     CMS is directed to include in its annual report to Congress 
     the steps it has taken to implement a systematic process 
     across all operations to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse in 
     both federal and contractor-operated program and 
     administrative activities and an accounting of RAC-reported 
     vulnerabilities. Similar language was proposed in the Senate 
     Report 112-176.
       Rural Patient Access.--The Committees on Appropriations 
     strongly support efforts to preserve and improve rural 
     patient access to providers and durable medical equipment 
     (DME). CMS is requested to provide an update in the fiscal 
     year 2015 budget request on the steps CMS is taking to ensure 
     changes due to the competitive bidding process will not 
     negatively impact rural patient access to quality DME.


              HEALTH CARE FRAUD AND ABUSE CONTROL ACCOUNT

       The bill includes $309,790,000 from the Medicare Trust Fund 
     for the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control account.
       Medicare Fraud Prevention.--CMS is expected to develop a 
     more robust set of tools to prevent fraud, for example using 
     the latest technology to ensure only valid beneficiaries and 
     valid providers receive benefits and ensure that payments are 
     for authorized benefits. GAO is directed to review the 
     feasibility, cost, benefits, and barriers for CMS to 
     implement a Medicare transactional system with ``smart card'' 
     type technology. The review must examine technology related 
     to beneficiary and provider validation and authentication at 
     point of entry for provider care within the Medicare program 
     and consider ease of implementation, impact on the 
     beneficiary and provider, ease of use, cost attributes (long 
     and short term), and other criteria relevant decision making, 
     sourcing and implementation. GAO is expected to publish a 
     report within 1 year after enactment of this act.

                Administration for Children and Families


                     REFUGEE AND ENTRANT ASSISTANCE

       The Department of HHS shall provide a briefing within 45 
     days of enactment for the House and Senate Committees on 
     Appropriations regarding the rate of expenditure for all 
     Refugee and Entrant Assistance programs, including 
     information on the number of unaccompanied alien children 
     placed into the Department's care, the number of arriving 
     refugees and refugees otherwise receiving services, and how 
     the characteristics of these populations have changed over 
     recent years.


                 CHILD CARE AND DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT

       The bill includes a $110,000,000 increase for the Child 
     Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), including a 
     $14,035,000 increase in existing set-asides for quality 
     improvement activities. HHS is encouraged to continue efforts 
     to improve the quality of child care programs, including the 
     early childhood care and education workforce.
       Under current law State child care agencies may use CCDBG 
     funding to pay for a wide variety of initiatives, including 
     helping providers with the cost of supplies, such as diapers 
     for infants and toddlers.


                CHILDREN AND FAMILIES SERVICES PROGRAMS

       Within the funds provided for Head Start, the bill includes 
     $25,000,000 to support the transition costs associated with 
     the Designation Renewal System and $25,000,000 for grantee 
     cost-of-living adjustments.
       The bill includes $3,000,000 within Child Abuse 
     Discretionary for competitive grants to support the 
     implementation of research-based court teams models that 
     include the court system, child welfare agency, and community 
     organizations in order to better meet the needs of infants 
     and toddlers in foster care.
       The bill includes up to $10,000,000 for the Healthy Foods 
     Financing Initiative within the Community Economic 
     Development Program.
       The Department of HHS is encouraged to support efforts that 
     help TANF recipients graduate high school or complete a GED, 
     which is often critical to securing employment.

                  Administration for Community Living


                 AGING AND DISABILITY SERVICES PROGRAMS

                     (INCLUDING TRANSFER OF FUNDS)

       The bill transfers the State Health Insurance Assistance 
     Program from the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services to 
     the Administration for Community Living (ACL).
       Within the funding provided, the bill provides $998,000 to 
     continue the 24-hour call center to support Alzheimer's 
     family caregivers.
       The House and Senate Committees on Appropriations received 
     no advance notice that the Department intended to establish 
     the ACL when the fiscal year 2013 budget was submitted to 
     Congress. Carrying out such organizational changes without 
     advance notice ignores the critical oversight role of the 
     Committees on Appropriations. This is not a precedent that 
     should occur again and the Department is urged to provide 
     advance notice of such mergers, particularly when they have 
     an impact on appropriations structures and funding levels. 
     ACL shall provide the House and Senate Committees on 
     Appropriations a briefing within 30 days of enactment on how 
     ACL is balancing the needs of the disabled and elderly 
     communities.

                        Office of the Secretary


                    GENERAL DEPARTMENTAL MANAGEMENT

       The Department is directed to include in its annual budget 
     justifications the amount of administrative and overhead 
     costs spent by the Department for every major budget line. 
     Beginning in fiscal year 2015, and each year thereafter, the 
     Department shall include the amount and percentage of 
     administrative and overhead costs spent by the Department for 
     every program, project and activity.
       The Department is directed to issue a report identifying 
     which programs throughout HHS address teen dating violence 
     and healthy relationship strategies as a means to prevent 
     teen pregnancy.
       The Comptroller General is directed to issue a report 
     within 180 days of enactment on the Department's coordination 
     of activities related to patient centered outcomes research 
     (PCOR), whether funded in this bill or through the Patient 
     Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund. The report should 
     review the processes and practices used by the Department to 
     ensure that the various operating divisions supporting 
     patient centered outcomes research prevents duplication and 
     is coordinated. Further, the report should review the 
     criteria and procedures used by the Department prior to 
     disseminating or making recommendations based on patient 
     centered outcomes research results. The report should also 
     include a review of the evaluation criteria used to allocate 
     funding and determine research topics, as well as the metrics 
     to measure effectiveness.
       The bill provides $250,000 for the Advisory Council on 
     Alzheimer's Research, Care and Services, $1,000,000 for a 
     competitive grant or contract for the principal purpose of 
     providing assistance regarding transportation assistance for 
     individuals with disabilities, $1,000,000 to continue the 
     national health education program on lupus for healthcare 
     providers, and $3,010,000 to continue the preventing violence 
     against women initiative.
       HHS is directed to include in future budget requests 
     information on user fees, reimbursements, and other sources 
     of funding available to HHS operating divisions that itemizes 
     the actual and estimated collections for each activity and 
     the actual annual costs related to each associated user fee, 
     reimbursement, and other funding source used to support these 
     activities.
       The Department is directed to ensure that all necessary and 
     feasible steps have been taken to ensure that Antideficiency 
     Act violations similar to those reported on July 14, 2011 do 
     not occur in the future. The Department is directed to ensure 
     that future Antideficiency Act violations are submitted in a 
     timely manner with the appropriate account adjustment or 
     other action to remedy the violations.
       HHS is urged to work with Congress to propose a special 
     hiring authority in lieu of the continued expanded use of 
     title 42. The Department is requested to issue a report on 
     the key parameters that would need to be included in a 
     special hiring authority within 180 days of enactment to the 
     House and Senate Committees on Appropriations and the 
     relevant authorizing committees.
       The Secretary is encouraged to issue the rules and 
     regulations required by P.L. 111-353 in a timely manner.
       The Department is urged to continue existing programs run 
     by the Office of Minority Health that address health 
     disparities in rural and disadvantaged populations.


                      OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL

       The Office of Inspector General (OIG) is directed to 
     provide a report to the Committees on Appropriations of the 
     House of Representatives and the Senate that provides an 
     update on OIG activities related to the investigation of 
     grantees' use of taxpayer resources to influence laws, 
     regulations or

[[Page 3484]]

     policies at the State or local level. Additionally, the 
     report should include detail as to how HHS is implementing 
     any new policies and how the Department is tracking or 
     monitoring grantee performance.


            PUBLIC HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES EMERGENCY FUND

                     (INCLUDING TRANSFER OF FUNDS)

       The Department is directed to issue a report, not later 
     than 90 days after the date of enactment of this act, on the 
     implementation of a 5-year budgetary planning process for the 
     development of medical countermeasures. The report should 
     include end-to-end details of planned investments, including 
     the costs associated with existing and anticipated new 
     research and development, the costs of procuring and 
     maintaining all materials placed in the Strategic National 
     Stockpile, and the costs associated with distribution, 
     dispensing and surveillance. The report should include the 
     costs necessary to ensure sustainability of the multiple 
     Centers for Innovation and Advanced Manufacturing. The report 
     should also include details of the investment and progress 
     made to date in the development of products for diagnosis, 
     protection and treatment for the full range of radiation 
     exposures from nuclear and radiation threats.

                           General Provisions


                          EVALUATION TAP LEVEL

       The bill modifies a provision establishing reprogramming 
     requirements for evaluation tap funding.


 PUBLICLY AVAILABLE ACCESS REGARDING THE USE OF FUNDS PROVIDED BY THE 
               PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

       The bill includes a modified provision relating to the 
     improvement of a more accessible Web site that details the 
     use of funds made available under section 4002 of the Patient 
     Protection and Affordable Care Act.


  PERSONNEL SUPPORT FOR THE PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

       The bill includes a new provision relating to the public 
     disclosure of the number of full-time equivalent Federal 
     employees or contractors assigned to activities to carry out 
     the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care 
     Act.

                               TITLE III

                        DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

                    Education for the Disadvantaged

       The bill includes a new provision clarifying that title I 
     funds may be used to address the transportation needs of 
     homeless children and youth, as well as support homeless 
     liaisons.
       The bill includes new language under the School Improvement 
     Grant (SIG) program that allows funds to be used to implement 
     a research-proven, whole-school reform model.
       New language is also included that will allow a State 
     educational agency, with the approval of the Secretary, to 
     establish an alternative State-determined school improvement 
     strategy that may be used by local educational agencies under 
     the SIG program. The purpose of this alternative strategy is 
     to allow State educational agencies to develop their own 
     flexible models that can be implemented by local educational 
     agencies that receive SIG funds.
       It is expected that any approach taken with SIG funds 
     should address school-wide factors, whole school culture, the 
     individual needs of the students and data to inform 
     instruction and for continuous improvement; ensure that the 
     needs of students are addressed through the organization of 
     the school, curriculum and instruction, and social and 
     emotional support services; as well as address teacher and 
     leader effectiveness, including through training and support 
     for teachers and school leaders in school improvement efforts 
     and in the needs of students.
       The bill also includes new language to allow local 
     educational agencies that are eligible to receive services 
     under the Rural Education Achievement Program to modify not 
     more than one element required under a school improvement 
     model.
       Over the past decade Bureau of Indian Education schools 
     have received approximately 0.7 percent of each year's 
     appropriation for ESEA Title I Grants to LEAs. The Department 
     is urged to continue using its existing formula in allocating 
     these funds and to follow this practice in any relevant 
     future emergency funding that provides it the same authority 
     and discretion.

                               Impact Aid

       The bill includes language providing for formula grants for 
     Impact Aid construction grants.

                      School Improvement Programs

       The bill allows for up to 3 percent of funds available for 
     the State Grants for Improving Teacher Quality program to be 
     used for competitive awards to national not-for-profit 
     organizations for recruiting, training, or providing 
     professional enhancement activities, including in the area of 
     civic education, for teachers or school leaders, particularly 
     for high-need schools most likely to face shortages in these 
     areas. The bill allows up to 10 percent of the set-aside 
     funds to be used for related research, development, 
     evaluation, dissemination, and technical assistance.
       The bill provides $380,000,000 for formula grants to States 
     and $9,214,000 for competitive grants to improve the quality 
     and reliability of assessment systems within the State 
     Assessments and Enhanced Assessments Instruments program.

                       Innovation and Improvement

       The bill includes $549,284,000 for the Race to the Top 
     program. These funds are available for obligation through 
     December 31, 2013.
       The Departments of Education and HHS are directed to use 
     this appropriation for another competition under the Race to 
     the Top--Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC). In combination 
     with additional resources allocated for the CCDBG and Head 
     Start programs, it is expected that these investments will 
     help improve early learning and development systems and 
     opportunities for young children.
       The bill includes $149,417,000 for the Investing in 
     Innovation program, as described in Senate Report 112-176. 
     The bill does not include the new authority and funding 
     proposed in the Senate bill regarding ARPA-ED.
       An opportunity to review the results from the significant 
     investment made in both the RTT and Investing in Innovation 
     programs is expected. The Secretary is directed to continue 
     to provide the Committees on Appropriations of the House of 
     Representatives and Senate the findings from evaluations, 
     including impact evaluations and interim progress 
     evaluations, of activities conducted using these funds.
       The bill includes $14,097,000 for continuation costs for 
     the School Leadership program.
       Within FIE, the bill includes funding for the following 
     activities in the following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Arts in Education...........................................$26,500,000
Data Quality and Evaluation...................................1,276,000
Full Service Community Schools...............................11,094,000
National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities.............1,000,000
Peer Review.....................................................350,000
Child Literacy Initiative....................................29,000,000
       The bill also includes $10,000,000 for a new STEM 
     initiative, as described in Senate Report 112-176.

                           Special Education

       The bill includes new language clarifying provisions of the 
     Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The first 
     provision clarifies that penalties paid by States for 
     violating maintenance of effort under part B of the IDEA 
     shall be reallocated to States by formula to those States 
     that did not violate those requirements. The language further 
     clarifies that both the reduced State allocations due to 
     penalties paid and increased amounts under the reallocation 
     shall not be considered in fiscal year 2013 or future years 
     for allocations under the statutory formula. The bill also 
     includes new language clarifying that the level of effort 
     under part B that a LEA must meet in the year after it fails 
     to maintain its fiscal effort is the level that it should 
     have met in the prior year. This language clarifies 
     congressional intent and is consistent with the Office of 
     Special Education Program's (OSEP's) April 4, 2012, informal 
     guidance letter on the issue.
       Additionally, the bill includes language clarifying that 
     funds reserved under section 611(c) of the IDEA may be used 
     to help improve State capacity to meet data collection 
     requirements under the IDEA and improve data collection, 
     quality, and use under the act.
       The bill includes new language allowing the Department to 
     use up to $2,710,000 for incentive grants to States that 
     choose to serve children 3 years old until entrance into 
     elementary school, as described in Senate report 112-176.
       Within this account, the bill includes $1,996,000 to remain 
     available through September 30, 2014, for the Promoting 
     Readiness of Minors in SSI (PROMISE) program. The bill 
     includes language that slightly modifies the program as it 
     was initially created in last year's bill. The bill also 
     includes new language that allows a portion of the funds 
     provided to be used for Pay for Success awards, as described 
     in Senate Report 112-176. The Committees on Appropriations of 
     the House of Representatives and Senate expect to be notified 
     prior to the issuance of any notice related to the Pay for 
     Success activity.

            Rehabilitation Services and Disability Research

       The bill includes $3,624,226,000 for Rehabilitation 
     Services and Disability Research.
       The bill includes $6,075,000 for Demonstration and Training 
     Programs. Within this amount, the bill includes $750,000 to 
     support a new competition for parent training and information 
     centers. The Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) 
     shall coordinate with OSEP in carrying out this activity. The 
     bill does not include funding for new technical assistance 
     activities at RSA.
       The bill continues language allowing unmatched funds in 
     excess of any funds requested during the reallotment process 
     to be available for the PROMISE program referenced under the 
     Special Education account. Such funds used for the PROMISE 
     program will remain available for obligation through 
     September 30, 2014.

[[Page 3485]]

       The bill allows up to $20,000,000 made available to PROMISE 
     after reallotment to be used for Pay for Success, as 
     described in Senate Report 112-176. The Federal Government 
     will use funds to pay for defined outcomes, such as 
     employment or graduation. Philanthropic groups and social 
     impact investors will finance the services and would earn 
     payments if those services lead to the agreed-upon outcomes. 
     Any funds deobligated from Pay for Success projects will be 
     immediately available for programs authorized under the 
     Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
       The bill includes $37,771,000 for the Assistive Technology 
     program. This includes $30,492,000 for State grant activities 
     authorized under section 4 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973; 
     $4,283,000 for protection and advocacy systems authorized 
     under section 5; $996,000 for technical assistance activities 
     authorized under section 6; and $2,000,000 to support 
     alternative financing programs (AFPs) that provide financing 
     mechanisms for loans.
       AFPs have had success in providing low-interest loan funds, 
     interest buy-down programs, revolving loan funds, and loan 
     guarantees, and in emphasizing consumer choice and control 
     and other partnerships that help people with disabilities 
     acquire assistive technology devices through loans. Such 
     devices and services enable people with disabilities to live 
     independently and often are the means that enable them to 
     become or remain employed. While many State programs have 
     developed equipment demonstration projects, lending libraries 
     and reuse programs, these do not cover certain types of 
     higher-cost expenses that promote independence, such as 
     adapting vehicles and modifying home entrances and showers to 
     enable people to remain in their homes.

           Special Institutions for Persons With Disabilities


               NATIONAL TECHNICAL INSTITUTE FOR THE DEAF

       The bill includes $65,422,000 for the National Technical 
     Institute for the Deaf. Funding for construction will be 
     considered in the future as needs may warrant.

                      Student Financial Assistance

       The Department shall provide the same funding in fiscal 
     year 2013 as in fiscal year 2012 for the Work Colleges 
     program authorized under section 448 of the Higher Education 
     Act (HEA) from the Federal Work-Study Program appropriation.

                            Higher Education

       The bill includes $67,432,000 for International Education 
     and Foreign Language Studies--Domestic programs. The increase 
     in funds over the fiscal year 2012 level will support new 
     awards in the Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign 
     Language programs and expand access to study abroad, as 
     authorized by section 604(b) of the HEA.
       The bill includes language allowing funds awarded under the 
     Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need program to be 
     used to fund continuation costs for the Javits Fellowship 
     program.
       The bill includes $29,494,000 for the Fund for the 
     Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). Within the 
     amount for FIPSE, the bill includes $25,000,000 for the First 
     in the World initiative, with up to $9,000,000 set aside for 
     minority-serving institutions; $1,128,000 for the Training 
     for Realtime Writers program; $2,366,000 for continuations 
     for international consortia projects; and $1,000,000 for the 
     Secretary to enter into an agreement with the National 
     Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences to 
     conduct a study on the impact of Federal regulations and 
     reporting requirements on institutions of higher education as 
     authorized under section 1106 of the Higher Education 
     Opportunity Act of 2008.
       The bill includes $854,932,000 for TRIO. The last Upward 
     Bound grant competition may have disadvantaged applicants in 
     rural areas. Many of the rural programs that were not renewed 
     in the last round are located in areas of extreme poverty 
     that would appear to be prime targets for Upward Bound 
     grants. The Department shall provide an analysis within 60 
     days of enactment of this act of how selection criteria and 
     outcomes changed in the past Upward Bound grant cycle, in 
     order to determine whether applicants from rural areas were 
     put at a disadvantage compared to other applicants.

  Historically Black College and University Capital Financing Program 
                                Account

       The bill includes language allowing funds for the HBCU 
     Capital Financing Program to remain available through 
     September 30, 2014.

                    Institute of Education Sciences

       The bill includes $38,077,000 for Statewide Data Systems. 
     The bill allows up to $10,000,000 to be used for awards to 
     public or private agencies or organizations to support 
     activities to improve data coordination, quality, and use at 
     the local, State, and national levels. Prior to obligating 
     any funds for this purpose, an operating plan describing the 
     proposed purpose and use of such funds shall be submitted to 
     the Committees on Appropriations of the House of 
     Representatives and Senate.
       IES is directed to continue support for research and 
     development activities related to gifted and talented 
     education that directly support learning and improve the 
     academic achievement of gifted and talented students, 
     including those who may not be formally identified as gifted 
     and those who are from underrepresented populations, as 
     called for in Senate Report 112-176.
       IES also is directed to support a National Research Center 
     on the Gifted and Talented and to ensure that gifted and 
     talented education is reported in national reports produced 
     by IES, as called for in Senate Report 112-176.

                           General Provisions


            OFFICE OF CAREER, TECHNICAL, AND ADULT EDUCATION

       The bill includes a general provision renaming the Office 
     of Vocational and Adult Education as the Office of Career, 
     Technical, and Adult Education.


                          EVALUATION AUTHORITY

       The bill includes a new provision related to the evaluation 
     authority established under section 9601 of the ESEA. Not 
     later than 45 days prior to the submission of the operating 
     plan required under this provision, the Department is 
     directed to brief the Senate Committees on Appropriations and 
     Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and House Committees on 
     Appropriations and Education and Workforce on the programs 
     being considered for inclusion in the plan. Further, the 
     conferees expect the Department to include in future 
     congressional budget justifications a discussion of its 
     planned use of this new authority.


       NOT-FOR-PROFIT LOAN SERVICERS AND STUDENT AID ELIGIBILITY

       The bill includes a new provision that clarifies 
     eligibility for funding for not-for-profit loan servicers and 
     allows students enrolled in ``career pathways'' programs who 
     do not have a high school diploma or GED to become eligible 
     for student aid if they have passed an ability to benefit 
     test, completed a process designed by the State, or 
     successfully completed six credit hours.


                   HBCU GULF HURRICANE DISASTER LOANS

       The bill continues a provision that authorizes the 
     Secretary to modify terms of Gulf hurricane disaster loans to 
     HBCUs if such modifications result in no net cost to the 
     government and if such modifications are approved by the 
     Departments of Education and Treasury and the Office of 
     Management and Budget.

                                TITLE IV

                            RELATED AGENCIES

             Corporation for National and Community Service


                           OPERATING EXPENSES

       The funding included in the bill for the State Commission 
     grants reflects a consolidation with Training and Technical 
     Assistance.
       Within the total provided for Innovation, Assistance, and 
     Other Activities, the bill includes $44,815,000 for the 
     Social Innovation Fund, $3,992,000 for the Volunteer 
     Generation Fund, and $992,000 for the Martin Luther King Day 
     of Service.
       The bill includes $207,491,000 for the National Senior 
     Volunteer Corps programs. Sufficient funding is provided to 
     maintain all programs at the fiscal year 2012 level.

                Institute of Museum and Library Services


    OFFICE OF MUSEUM AND LIBRARY SERVICES: GRANTS AND ADMINISTRATION

       Within the total for IMLS, the bill includes funds for the 
     following activities in the following amounts:


        Budget activity                                   FY 2013 level
Library Services Technology Act:
  Grants to States..............................................156,365
  Native American Library Services................................3,869
  National Leadership: Libraries.................................12,000
  Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian..............................12,470
Museum Services Act:
  Museums for America............................................20,643
  Native American/Hawaiian Museum Services..........................926
  National Leadership: Museums....................................7,880
African American History and Culture Act:
  Museum Grants for African American History & Culture............1,410
Program Administration...........................................16,391
       Within the amount provided for Program Administration, the 
     bill includes $1,886,000 for research and data collection 
     activities.
       IMLS is encouraged to maintain current staffing levels and 
     continue to work toward improving efficiency to decrease or 
     eliminate requirements for FTE growth in future years.

                     Social Security Administration


                      SUPPLEMENTAL SECURITY INCOME

       Research and Demonstration.--Within the Research and 
     Demonstration activity conducted under sections 1110, 1115, 
     and 1144 of the Social Security Act, the bill includes 
     $7,200,000 for the Promoting Readiness of Minors in SSI 
     (PROMISE) program and up to $3,000,000 for a demonstration 
     program to test the impact of providing financial literacy 
     information on the Old Age and Survivors Insurance, 
     Disability Insurance and SSI programs to high-school aged 
     youth.
       SSA shall provide a briefing within 45 days of enactment 
     for the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations on the 
     factors SSA considers in the review and graduation process 
     for research and demonstration

[[Page 3486]]

     projects. SSA shall continue to describe the specific section 
     1110 research graduation process in the fiscal year 2014 
     budget request and include the year each project or 
     consortium was initiated.


                 LIMITATION ON ADMINISTRATIVE EXPENSES

       Work Incentives Planning and Assistance [WIPA] and 
     Protection and Advocacy for Beneficiaries of Social Security 
     [PABSS].--The bill includes not less than $23,000,000 for the 
     WIPA program and not less than $7,000,000 for the PABSS 
     program. Because these programs were not funded in fiscal 
     year 2012, SSA shall make these funds available as soon as 
     possible to eligible organizations to minimize any disruption 
     in services.
       Representative Payee Oversight.--SSA is strongly encouraged 
     to continue efforts to improve representative payee oversight 
     through partnerships with outside organizations.
       Social Security Annual Statements.--The bill includes not 
     less than $20,000,000 for the mailing of annual Social 
     Security Account Statements. SSA shall provide statements in 
     a manner that maximizes their effectiveness, including 
     leveraging online resources, to inform individuals about 
     their contributions and benefits under Social Security 
     programs and to provide individuals an opportunity to review 
     their earnings record. Further, SSA shall brief the House and 
     Senate Committees on Appropriations within 45 days of 
     enactment on their plan for mailing statements in fiscal year 
     2013.
       Information Technology Investments.--SSA shall provide a 
     quarterly accounting of the Limitation on Administrative 
     Expenses (LAE) expired unobligated balances and the amount 
     made available from these balances without fiscal year 
     limitation for information technology investments. This 
     should include the total amount of Information Technology 
     (IT) expenses and the actual or estimated amount paid for 
     with LAE funds and no-year IT funds.
       Long-range Strategic Plan.--The production of a strategic 
     plan for SSA requires the input of an external body that is 
     competent in addressing complex management challenges within 
     the public sphere. Therefore, SSA shall provide the final 
     draft of the strategic plan currently under development to 
     the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) for its 
     review and comment. SSA is also directed to incorporate 
     NAPA's views into the final document. Such incorporation may 
     be accomplished by including comments noting instances where 
     SSA does not concur with NAPA's views. The bill includes 
     $500,000 within SSA's LAE account to cover any expenses NAPA 
     incurs to complete this review. The final version of the 
     strategic plan shall be submitted within 180 days of 
     enactment to the House and Senate Committees on 
     Appropriations, the House Committee on Ways and Means, and 
     the Senate Committee on Finance. SSA and NAPA shall jointly 
     report to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations 
     within 30 days of enactment on the plan for producing the 
     document.

                                TITLE V

                           GENERAL PROVISIONS


                        PORNOGRAPHY RESTRICTIONS

       The bill includes a new general provision that prohibits 
     the use of government-provided information technology 
     resources to view, download, or exchange pornography.


                REPORTING ON BALANCES OF APPROPRIATIONS

       The bill includes a new general provision modifying the 
     application of requirements for reporting on balances of 
     appropriations to the Indian Health Service.


                         HEAL PROGRAM TRANSFER

       The bill includes a new general provision that permanently 
     transfers the Health Education Assistance Loan program from 
     the Department of Health and Human rvices to the Department 
     of Education.


                       INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES

       The bill includes a new general provision that limits the 
     attendance of Federal employees at international conferences.


                         EXPLANATORY STATEMENT

       The bill includes a new general provision related to the 
     explanatory statement accompanying the bill.

                  Full-Year Continuing Appropriations

       The bill includes a new general provision that makes 
     ineffective certain provisions from the Full-Year Continuing 
     Appropriations Act related to this bill.

             FY 2013 LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, EDUCATION AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS
                                                   [$ in 000s]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                              FY 2012                          Harkin  Amendment
                                                             Comparable      Harkin Amendment     versus FY12*
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Department of Labor
    Employment and Training Administration
        Training and Employment Services
            Grants to States:
            Adult Training, current year.......       D             58,811             57,465             -1,346
              Advance from prior year..........      NA          (710,654)          (712,000)            (1,346)
              FY14.............................       D            712,000            712,000                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Adult Training.....................  ......            770,811            769,465             -1,346
            Youth Training.....................       D            824,353            824,353                  0
            Dislocated Worker Assistance,             D            148,151            146,526             -1,625
             current year......................
                Advance from prior year........      NA          (858,375)          (860,000)            (1,625)
                FY14...........................       D            860,000            860,000                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Dislocated Worker Assistance.......  ......          1,008,151          1,006,526             -1,625
        Subtotal: Grants to States.............  ......          2,603,315          2,600,344             -2,971
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Current Year...........................  ......          1,031,315          1,028,344             -2,971
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        FY14...................................  ......          1,572,000          1,572,000                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Federally Administered Programs:
            Dislocated Worker Assistance Nat'l        D             24,066             23,688               -378
             Reserve, current year.............
                Advance from prior year........      NA          (199,622)          (200,000)              (378)
                FY14...........................       D            200,000            200,000                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Dislocated Worker Assistance   ......            224,066            223,688               -378
         Nat'l Reserve.........................
            Total, Dislocated Worker Assistance  ......          1,232,217          1,230,214             -2,003
        Native American Programs...............       D             47,562             47,562                  0
        Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker               D             84,291             84,291                  0
         Programs..............................
        Women in Apprenticeship................       D                996                996                  0
        Youthbuild.............................       D             79,689             79,689                  0
        Workforce Innovation Fund..............       D             49,906             40,000             -9,906
        Subtotal: Federally Administered         ......            486,510            476,226            -10,284
         Programs..............................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Current Year...........................  ......            286,510            276,226            -10,284
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        FY14...................................  ......            200,000            200,000                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            National Activities:
        Pilots, Demonstrations and Research....       D              6,603                  0             -6,603
        Reintegration of Ex-Offenders..........       D             80,238             80,238                  0
        Evaluation.............................       D              9,563                  0             -9,563
        Workforce Data Quality Initiative......       D              6,463              5,000             -1,463
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: National Activities..........  ......            102,867             85,238            -17,629
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Total: Training and Employment       ......          3,192,692          3,161,808            -30,884
             Services..........................
================================================================================================================
        Current Year...........................  ......          1,420,692          1,389,808            -30,884
================================================================================================================
        FY14...................................  ......          1,772,000          1,772,000                  0
================================================================================================================
        Office of Job Corps
        Administration.........................       D             29,077             29,132                 55
        Operations.............................       D          1,569,078          1,574,000              4,922

[[Page 3487]]

 
                Advance from prior year........      NA          (589,883)                  0         (-589,883)
                FY14...........................       D                  0                  0                  0
        Construction and Renovation............       D            104,792             80,000            -24,792
                Advance from prior year........      NA           (99,811)                  0          (-99,811)
                FY14...........................       D                  0                  0                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Job Corps.......................  ......          1,702,947          1,683,132            -19,815
================================================================================================================
        Current Year...........................  ......          1,702,947          1,683,132            -19,815
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        FY14...................................  ......                  0                  0                  0
================================================================================================================
        Community Serv. Employment Older              D            448,251            448,251                  0
         Americans.............................
        Federal Unemployment Benefits and             M          1,100,100          1,421,000            320,900
         Allowances............................
        State Unemployment Insurance and
         Employment Service Operations
            Unemployment Insurance
                State Operations...............      TF          3,225,047          2,994,912           -230,135
                National Activities............      TF             11,266             11,297                 31
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Unemployment Insurance.......  ......          3,236,313          3,006,209           -230,104
            Employment Service:
                Allotments to States:
                Federal Funds..................       D             22,595             22,595                  0
                Trust Funds....................      TF            678,247            693,204             14,957
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Employment Service Allotments  ......            700,842            715,799             14,957
         to States.............................
        ES National Activities.................      TF             20,912             20,912                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Employment Service...........  ......            721,754            736,711             14,957
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Federal Funds......................  ......             22,595             22,595                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Trust Funds........................  ......            699,159            714,116             14,957
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Foreign Labor Certification
            Program Administration.............      TF             50,323             50,323                  0
            State Grants.......................      TF             15,070             15,070                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Foreign Labor Certification..  ......             65,393             65,393                  0
        One-Stop Career Centers/Labor Market          D             63,473             63,473                  0
         Information...........................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: State UI and ES.................  ......          4,086,933          3,871,786           -215,147
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......             86,068             86,068                  0
================================================================================================================
            Trust Funds........................  ......          4,000,865          3,785,718           -215,147
================================================================================================================
        Advances to the UI and Other Trust            M            171,000                  0           -171,000
         Funds\1\..............................
        Program Administration
        Adult Employment and Training..........       D             46,677             46,677                  0
            Trust Funds........................      TF              8,518              8,518                  0
        Youth Employment and Training..........       D             12,260             12,260                  0
        Employment Security....................       D              3,476              3,476                  0
            Trust Funds........................      TF             39,343             39,343                  0
        Apprenticeship Services................       D             27,676             27,676                  0
        Executive Direction....................       D              7,048              7,048                  0
            Trust Funds........................      TF              2,083              2,083                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Program Administration.......  ......            147,081            147,081                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                Federal Funds..................  ......             97,137             97,137                  0
================================================================================================================
                Trust Funds....................  ......             49,944             49,944                  0
================================================================================================================
        Total: Employment and Training           ......         10,849,004         10,733,058           -115,946
         Administration........................
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......          6,798,195          6,897,396             99,201
================================================================================================================
                Current Year...................  ......          5,026,195          5,125,396             99,201
================================================================================================================
                FY14...........................  ......          1,772,000          1,772,000                  0
================================================================================================================
            Trust Funds........................  ......          4,050,809          3,835,662           -215,147
================================================================================================================
    Employee Benefits Security Administration
     S&E
        Enforcement and Participant Assistance.       D            145,243            145,243                  0
        Policy and Compliance Assistance.......       D             31,205             31,205                  0
        Executive Leadership, Program Oversight       D              6,705              6,705                  0
         and Administration....................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: EBSA............................  ......            183,153            183,153                  0
================================================================================================================
        Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
        Pension Insurance Activities...........      NA           (86,023)           (75,943)          (-10,080)
        Pension Plan Termination...............      NA          (243,372)          (240,611)           (-2,761)
        Operational Support....................      NA          (147,506)          (162,459)           (14,953)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: PBGC, program level.............  ......          (476,901)          (479,013)            (2,112)
================================================================================================================
        Enforcement of Wage and Hour Standards.       D            227,061            235,730              8,669
        Office of Labor-Management Standards...       D             41,289             41,289                  0
        Federal Contractor EEO Standards              D            105,187            105,187                  0
         Enforcement...........................
        Federal Programs for Workers'                 D            115,720            115,720                  0
         Compensation..........................
            Trust Funds........................      TF              2,120              2,120                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Federal Programs for Workers'                       117,840            117,840                  0
         Compensation..........................
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......            115,720            115,720                  0
================================================================================================================
            Trust Funds........................  ......              2,120              2,120                  0
================================================================================================================
            Special Benefits
                Federal employees compensation        M            347,000            393,000             46,000
                 benefits......................

[[Page 3488]]

 
            Longshore and harbor workers'             M              3,000              3,000                  0
             benefits
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Special Benefits.............  ......            350,000            396,000             46,000
            Special Benefits for Disabled Coal
             Miners
                Benefit payments...............       M            177,000            158,000            -19,000
                Administration.................       M              5,227              5,220                 -7
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Spec. Bens. for Disabled Coal  ......            182,227            163,220            -19,007
         Miners, program level.................
        Less funds advanced in prior year......       M            -41,000            -40,000              1,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total, Spec. Bens. for Disabled Coal     ......            141,227            123,220            -18,007
         Miners, current request...............
================================================================================================================
        New advances, 1st quarter FY14.........       M             40,000             35,000             -5,000
        Energy Employees Occupational Illness         M             52,147             54,962              2,815
         Compensation..........................
        Black Lung Disability Trust Fund
            Benefit payments and interest on          M            242,609            250,043              7,434
             advances..........................
            Office of Workers' Compensation,          M             32,906             32,906                  0
             S&E...............................
            Departmental Management S&E........       M             25,217             25,217                  0
            Departmental Management, Inspector        M                327                327                  0
             General...........................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Black Lung Disability........  ......            301,059            308,493              7,434
        Treasury Adm. Costs....................       M                356                356                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Black Lung Disability Trust Fund  ......            301,415            308,849              7,434
================================================================================================================
        Total: Office of Workers' Compensation   ......          1,002,629          1,035,871             33,242
         Programs..............................
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......          1,000,509          1,033,751             33,242
================================================================================================================
                Current Year...................  ......            960,509            998,751             38,242
================================================================================================================
                FY14...........................  ......             40,000             35,000             -5,000
================================================================================================================
        Trust Funds............................  ......              2,120              2,120                  0
================================================================================================================
    Occupational Safety and Health
     Administration S&E
        Safety and Health Standards............       D             19,962             20,463                501
        Federal Enforcement....................       D            207,753            207,075               -678
        Whistleblower Enforcement..............       D             15,873             18,445              2,572
        State Programs.........................       D            104,196            104,196                  0
        Technical Support......................       D             25,819             24,880               -939
        Compliance Assistance:
            Federal Assistance.................       D             76,355             76,355                  0
            State Consultation Grants..........       D             57,890             61,844              3,954
            Training Grants....................       D             10,709             10,709                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Compliance Assistance........       D            144,954            148,908              3,954
        Safety and Health Statistics...........       D             34,739             34,313               -426
        Executive Direction and Administration.       D             11,491             11,491                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: OSHA............................  ......            564,787            569,771              4,984
================================================================================================================
    Mine Safety and Health Administration S&E
        Coal Enforcement.......................       D            164,500            166,180              1,680
        Metal/Non-Metal Enforcement............       D             89,063             90,380              1,317
        Standards Development..................       D              4,765              5,090                325
        Assessments/Accountability & Special          D              7,103              6,732               -371
         Enforcement...........................
        Educational Policy and Development.....       D             38,325             34,745             -3,580
        Technical Support......................       D             33,613             33,613                  0
        Program Evaluation and Information            D             18,157             17,990               -167
         Resources (PEIR)......................
        Program Administration.................       D             17,768             18,962              1,194
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: MSHA............................  ......            373,294            373,692                398
================================================================================================================
    Bureau of Labor Statistics S&E
        Employment and Unemployment Statistics.       D            209,367            214,367              5,000
        Labor Market Information...............      TF             67,176             67,176                  0
        Prices and Cost of Living..............       D            205,888            210,860              4,972
        Compensation and Working Conditions....       D             80,391             80,391                  0
        Productivity and Technology............       D             12,013             12,013                  0
        Executive Direction and Staff Services.       D             34,236             34,236                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Bureau of Labor Statistics......  ......            609,071            619,043              9,972
================================================================================================================
        Federal Funds..........................  ......            541,895            551,867              9,972
================================================================================================================
        Trust Funds............................  ......             67,176             67,176                  0
================================================================================================================
    Office of Disability Employment Policy S&E.       D             38,879             38,953                 74
    Departmental Management
        Salaries and Expenses
            Executive Direction................       D             33,220             32,722               -498
            Departmental Program Evaluation....       D              8,484              8,484                  0
            Legal Services.....................       D            128,877            130,938              2,061
                Trust Funds....................      TF                325                326                  1
            International Labor Affairs........       D             92,309             92,309                  0
            Administration and Management......       D             30,282             29,614               -668
            Adjudication.......................       D             29,172             29,496                324
            Women's Bureau.....................       D             11,559             11,559                  0
            Civil Rights Activities............       D              6,785              7,273                488
            Chief Financial Officer............       D              5,340              5,340                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Total: DM S&E......................  ......            346,353            348,061              1,708
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......            346,028            347,735              1,707
================================================================================================================
            Trust Funds........................  ......                325                326                  1
================================================================================================================
        Veterans Employment and Training
            State Administration, Grants.......      TF            165,081            172,000              6,919
            Transition Assistance Program......      TF              8,983             14,000              5,017
            Federal Administration.............      TF             35,155             35,155                  0

[[Page 3489]]

 
            National Veterans Training               TF              2,439              3,414                975
             Institute.........................
            Homeless Veterans Program..........       D             38,185             38,185                  0
            Veterans Workforce Investment             D             14,594                  0            -14,594
             Programs..........................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Veterans Employment and Training  ......            264,437            262,754             -1,683
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......             52,779             38,185            -14,594
================================================================================================================
            Trust Funds........................  ......            211,658            224,569             12,911
================================================================================================================
        IT Modernization
            Departmental Support Systems.......       D             11,830              7,985             -3,845
            IT Infrastructure Modernization....       D              7,985             11,830              3,845
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: IT Modernization................  ......             19,815             19,815                  0
================================================================================================================
        Office of the Inspector General
            Program Activities.................       D             77,790             77,790                  0
                Trust Funds....................      TF              5,898              5,898                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Office of the Inspector General.  ......             83,688             83,688                  0
================================================================================================================
        Total: Departmental Management.........  ......            714,293            714,318                 25
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......            496,412            483,525            -12,887
================================================================================================================
                Current Year...................  ......            496,412            483,525            -12,887
================================================================================================================
                Current Year (emergency).......  ......                  0                  0                  0
================================================================================================================
                FY14...........................  ......                  0                  0                  0
================================================================================================================
            Trust Funds........................  ......            217,881            230,793             12,912
================================================================================================================
        Total: Department of Labor.............  ......         14,708,647         14,650,065            -58,582
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......         10,370,661         10,514,314            143,653
================================================================================================================
                Current Year...................  ......          8,558,661          8,707,314            148,653
================================================================================================================
                FY14...........................  ......          1,812,000          1,807,000             -5,000
================================================================================================================
            Trust Funds........................  ......          4,337,986          4,135,751           -202,235
================================================================================================================
            Two year availability..............
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES
    Health Resources and Services                ......  .................  .................  .................
     Administration
    Health Resources and Services                ......  .................  .................  .................
        Bureau of Primary Health Care..........
            Community health centers...........       D          1,566,892          1,566,892                  0
            Free Clinics Medical Malpractice...       D                 40                 40                  0
            Hansen's Disease Services..........       D             16,045             16,045                  0
            Buildings and Facilities...........       D                128                127                 -1
            Payment to Hawaii, treatment of           D              1,960              1,960                  0
             Hansen's..........................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Bureau of Primary Health Care  ......          1,585,065          1,585,064                 -1
        Health Professions
            Training for Diversity
                Centers of excellence..........       D             22,909             22,909                  0
                Health careers opportunity            D             14,822             14,822                  0
                 program.......................
                Faculty loan repayment.........       D              1,243              1,243                  0
                Scholarships for disadvantaged        D             47,452             47,452                  0
                 students......................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Training for Diversity.......  ......             86,426             86,426                  0
        Training in Primary Care Medicine......       D             38,962             44,481              5,519
        Oral Health Training...................       D             32,392             32,392                  0
        Interdisciplinary Community-Based
         Linkages
            Area health education centers......       D             27,220             27,220                  0
            Geriatric education................       D             30,629             30,629                  0
            Mental and Behavioral Health.......       D              2,892              4,000              1,108
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Interdisciplinary Comm.        ......             60,741             61,849              1,108
         Linkages..............................
        Workforce information and analysis.....       D              2,782              5,000              2,218
        Public health and preventive medicine         D              8,111             10,111              2,000
         training..............................
        Nursing programs
            Advanced Education Nursing.........       D             63,925             63,925                  0
            Nurse education, practice and             D             39,182             39,182                  0
             retention.........................
            Nursing workforce diversity........       D             15,819             15,819                  0
            Loan repayment and scholarship            D             83,135             83,135                  0
             program...........................
            Comprehensive geriatric education..       D              4,485              4,485                  0
            Nursing faculty loan program.......       D             24,553             24,553                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Nursing programs.............  ......            231,099            231,099                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Health Professions...........  ......            460,513            471,358             10,845
        Children's Hospitals Graduate Medical         D            265,171            275,171             10,000
         Education.............................
        National Practitioner Data Bank........       D             27,963             28,016                 53
            User Fees..........................       D            -27,963            -28,016                -53
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Bureau of Health Professions.  ......            725,684            746,529             20,845
        Maternal and Child Health Bureau
            Maternal & Child Health Block Grant       D            638,646            640,098              1,452
            Sickle Cell Anemia Demonstration          D              4,665              4,665                  0
             Program...........................
            Traumatic Brain Injury.............       D              9,760              9,760                  0
            Autism and Other Developmental            D             47,142             47,142                  0
             Disorders.........................
            Heritable Disorders................       D              9,834             11,834              2,000
            Healthy Start......................       D            103,532            103,532                  0
            Universal Newborn Hearing..........       D             18,660             18,660                  0
            Emergency medical services for            D             21,116             21,116                  0
             children..........................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Maternal and Child Health      ......            853,355            856,807              3,452
         Bureau................................

[[Page 3490]]

 
        HIV/AIDS Bureau
            Ryan White AIDS Programs
                Emergency Assistance...........       D            671,258            666,071             -5,187
                Comprehensive Care Programs....       D          1,355,640          1,390,827             35,187
                AIDS Drug Assistance Program         NA          (933,299)          (963,299)           (30,000)
                 (ADAP)........................
                Early Intervention Program.....       D            215,086            215,086                  0
                Children, Youth, Women &              D             77,167             77,167                  0
                 Families--Part D..............
                AIDS Dental Services...........       D             13,485             13,485                  0
                Education and Training Centers.       D             34,542             34,542                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Ryan White AIDS programs,      ......          2,367,178          2,397,178             30,000
         appropriation.........................
                Evaluation Tap Funding.........      NA           (25,000)           (25,000)                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Ryan White AIDS programs,      ......          2,392,178          2,422,178             30,000
         program level.........................
        Subtotal: HIV/AIDS Bureau..............  ......          2,367,178          2,397,178             30,000
        Healthcare Systems Bureau
            Organ Transplantation..............       D             24,015             24,015                  0
            National Cord Blood Inventory......       D             11,887             11,887                  0
            Bone Marrow Program................       D             23,330             23,330                  0
            Office of Pharmacy Affairs.........       D              4,472              4,472                  0
            340B Drug Pricing User Fees........       D                  0              6,000              6,000
                User Fees......................       D                  0             -6,000             -6,000
            Poison control.....................       D             18,830             18,830                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Healthcare Systems Bureau....  ......             82,534             82,534                  0
        Rural Health Programs..................
            Rural outreach grants..............       D             55,553             55,553                  0
            Rural Health Research..............       D              9,866              9,866                  0
            Rural Hospital Flexibility Grants..       D             41,040             41,040                  0
            Rural and Community Access to             D              1,100              3,000              1,900
             Emergency Devices.................
            State Offices of Rural Health......       D             10,036             10,036                  0
            Black lung clinics.................       D              7,140              7,140                  0
            Radiation Exposure Screening              D              1,935              1,935                  0
             Education Program.................
            Telehealth.........................       D             11,502             11,502                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Rural Health Programs........  ......            138,172            140,072              1,900
        Family Planning........................       D            293,870            293,870                  0
        Program Management.....................       D            159,894            162,517              2,623
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Health resources and services,    ......          6,205,752          6,264,571             58,819
         appropriation.........................
================================================================================================================
            Evaluation Tap Funding (NA)........  ......           (25,000)           (25,000)                  0
================================================================================================================
        Total: Health resources and services,    ......          6,230,752          6,289,571             58,819
         program level.........................
================================================================================================================
    Health Education Assistance Loans Program
            Liquidating account................      NA            (1,000)            (1,000)                  0
            Program management.................       D              2,807              2,807                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: HEAL............................  ......              2,807              2,807                  0
================================================================================================================
        Vaccine Injury Compensation Program TF
            Post-FY88 claims...................       M            235,000            235,000                  0
            HRSA administration................       D              6,477              6,477                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Vaccine Injury Compensation       ......            241,477            241,477                  0
         Trust Fund............................
================================================================================================================
        Total: HRSA, appropriation.............  ......          6,450,036          6,508,855             58,819
================================================================================================================
            Evaluation Tap Funding (NA)........  ......           (25,000)           (25,000)                  0
================================================================================================================
        HRSA, funded in this bill..............  ......          6,475,036          6,533,855             58,819
================================================================================================================
            Prevention and Public Health Fund..  ......                  0                  0                  0
================================================================================================================
        Total: HRSA, program level.............  ......          6,475,036          6,533,855             58,819
================================================================================================================
    Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
        Immunization and Respiratory Diseases..       D            576,083            525,201            -50,882
            Balances from P.L. 111-32 Pandemic       NA                  0           (51,049)             51,049
             Flu...............................
            Evaluation Tap Funding.............      NA           (12,864)           (12,864)                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Immunization and Respiratory   ......            588,947            589,114                167
         Disease...............................
        HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB         D          1,099,934          1,101,956              2,022
         Prevention............................
        Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious              D            252,476            266,458             13,982
         Diseases..............................
        Chronic Disease Prevention, Health            D            756,377            797,081             40,704
         Promotion and Genomics................
        Birth Defects, Developmental                  D            137,287            132,037             -5,250
         Disabilities, Disability and Health...
        Public Health Scientific Services......       D            143,972            129,614            -14,358
            Evaluation Tap Funding.............      NA          (247,769)          (262,127)           (14,358)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Health Information and Service, program  ......            391,741            391,741                  0
         level.................................
        Environmental Health...................       D            104,998            107,316              2,318
        Injury Prevention and Control..........       D            137,693            137,693                  0
        National Institute for Occupational           D            181,864            181,222               -642
         Safety and Health1....................
            Evaluation Tap Funding.............      NA          (110,724)          (111,366)              (642)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Occupational Safety and Health, program  ......            292,588            292,588                  0
         level1................................
        Energy Employees Occupational Illness         M           (55,358)           (55,358)                  0
         Compensation Program..................
        Global Health..........................       D            347,594            353,794              6,200
        Public Health Preparedness and Response       D          1,299,479          1,226,013            -73,466
            Balances from P.L. 11132 Pandemic        NA           (30,000)          (154,876)          (124,876)
             Flu...............................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Public Health Preparedness and           ......          1,329,479          1,380,889             51,410
         Response, Program Level...............
        Buildings and Facilities...............  ......             24,946             39,400             14,454
        CDC-Wide Activities....................       D            592,967            591,500             -1,467
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Centers for Disease Control,      ......          5,711,028          5,644,643            -66,385
         appropriation.........................
================================================================================================================
            Mandatory Funding..................  ......             55,358             55,358                  0
================================================================================================================
            Discretionary Appropriation........  ......          5,655,670          5,589,285            -66,385
================================================================================================================

[[Page 3491]]

 
        Evaluation Tap Funding (NA)............  ......          (371,357)          (386,357)           (15,000)
================================================================================================================
        Balances from P.L. 11132 Pandemic Flu..  ......           (30,000)          (205,925)          (175,925)
================================================================================================================
        Total: CDC, program level..............  ......          6,112,385          6,236,925            124,540
================================================================================================================
    National Institutes of Health
        National Cancer Institute..............       D          5,062,805          5,090,976             28,171
        National Heart, Lung, and Blood               D          3,073,329          3,090,430             17,101
         Institute.............................
        National Institute of Dental &                D            409,951            412,232              2,281
         Craniofacial Research.................
        Nat. Inst. of Diabetes & Digestive &          D          1,793,721          1,803,702              9,981
         Kidney Diseases.......................
            Juvenile Diabetes (Mandatory)......      NA          (150,000)          (150,000)                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        NIDDK, program level...................  ......        (1,943,721)        (1,953,702)            (9,981)
        National Institute of Neurological            D          1,623,357          1,632,390              9,033
         Disorders and Stroke..................
        National Institute of Allergy and             D          4,482,138          4,507,078             24,940
         Infectious Diseases...................
        National Institute of General Medical         D          2,425,588          2,479,085             53,497
         Sciences..............................
        Nat. Inst. of Child Health and Human          D          1,318,954          1,326,293              7,339
         Development...........................
        National Eye Institute.................       D            701,413            705,316              3,903
        National Institute of Environmental           D            684,303            688,111              3,808
         Health Sciences.......................
        National Institute on Aging............       D          1,120,401          1,126,636              6,235
        Nat. Inst. Arthritis & Musculoskeletal        D            534,795            537,771              2,976
         & Skin Diseases.......................
        Nat. Inst. on Deafness & Other                D            415,504            417,816              2,312
         Communication Disorders...............
        National Institute of Nursing Research.       D            144,502            145,306                804
        National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and       D            458,669            461,221              2,552
         Alcoholism............................
        National Institute on Drug Abuse.......       D          1,051,420          1,057,270              5,850
        National Institute of Mental Health....       D          1,477,528          1,485,749              8,221
        National Human Genome Research                D            512,263            515,113              2,850
         Institute.............................
        National Institute of Biomedical              D            337,731            339,610              1,879
         Imaging and Bioengineering............
        National Center for Research Resources.       D                  0                  0                  0
        National Center for Complementary and         D            127,820            128,531                711
         Alternative Medicine..................
        National Institute on Minority Health         D            275,929            277,464              1,535
         and Health Disparities................
        John E. Fogarty International Center...       D             69,493             69,880                387
        National Center for Advancing                 D            574,334            617,830             43,496
         Translational Sciences................
        National Library of Medicine...........       D            364,822            366,852              2,030
            Evaluation Tap Funding.............      NA            (8,200)            (8,200)                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        NLM, program level.....................  ......          (373,022)          (375,052)            (2,030)
        Office of the Director.................       D          1,457,181          1,465,289              8,108
            Common Fund (NA)...................      NA          (544,930)          (547,962)            (3,032)
        Buildings and Facilities...............       D            125,308            125,308                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: National Institutes of Health,    ......         30,623,259         30,873,259            250,000
         appropriation.........................
================================================================================================================
            Evaluation Tap funding (NA)........  ......            (8,200)            (8,200)                  0
================================================================================================================
        Total: National Institutes of Health,    ......         30,631,459         30,881,459            250,000
         Program Level.........................
================================================================================================================
        Substance Abuse & Mental Health
         Services Adm.
            Mental Health:
            Programs of Regional and National         D            275,757            290,996             15,239
             Significance......................
            Mental Health Block Grant..........       D            438,717            448,717             10,000
                Evaluation Tap Funding.........      NA           (21,039)           (21,039)                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Mental Health Block Grant, program   ......            459,756            469,756             10,000
             level.............................
            State Prevention Grants............       D                  0                  0                  0
            Children's Mental Health...........       D            117,314            117,315                  1
            Grants to States for the Homeless         D             64,794             64,794                  0
             (PATH)............................
            Protection and Advocacy............       D             36,238             36,238                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Mental Health, appropriation.  ......            932,820            958,060             25,240
        Subtotal: Mental Health, program level.  ......            953,859            979,099             25,240
        Substance Abuse Treatment:
            Programs of Regional and National         D            398,243            373,568            -24,675
             Significance......................
                Evaluation Tap Funding.........      NA            (2,000)            (2,000)                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Programs of Regional and National    ......            400,243            375,568            -24,675
             Significance, program level.......
            Substance Abuse Prevention Grants..       D                  0                  0                  0
            Substance Abuse Block Grant........       D          1,721,132          1,741,132             20,000
                Evaluation Tap Funding.........      NA           (79,200)           (79,200)                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Substance Abuse Block Grant, program     ......          1,800,332          1,820,332             20,000
         level.................................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Substance Abuse Treatment,     ......          2,119,375          2,114,700             -4,675
         appropriation.........................
        Subtotal: Substance Abuse Treatment,     ......          2,200,575          2,195,900             -4,675
         program level.........................
        Substance Abuse Prevention:
            Programs of Regional and National         D            185,956            185,364               -592
             Significance......................
        Health Surveillance, Crosscutting
         Issues & Support
            Program Management.................       D             76,894             72,229             -4,665
            Health Surveillance................       D              1,996              1,996                  0
                Evaluation Tap Funding.........      NA           (27,428)           (27,428)                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Surveillance, program level........  ......             29,424             29,424                  0
            Military Families..................       D              3,493              3,500                  7
            Data Requests & Publications.......       D                  0              1,500              1,500
                User Fees......................       D                  0             -1,500             -1,500
            Public Awareness and Support.......       D             13,545             13,545                  0
            Performance and Quality Information       D             12,940             12,940                  0
             Systems...........................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Health Surveillance & Support  ......            108,868            104,210             -4,658
         appropriation.........................
        Subtotal: Health Surveillance & Support  ......            136,296            131,638             -4,658
         program level.........................
================================================================================================================
        Total: SAMHSA, appropriation...........  ......          3,347,019          3,362,334             15,315
            Evaluation Tap Funding (NA)........  ......          (129,667)          (129,667)                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: SAMHSA, program level...........  ......          3,476,686          3,492,001             15,315
================================================================================================================
        Agency for Healthcare Research and
         Quality
            Research on Health Costs, Quality,
             and Outcomes (HCQO):
            HCQO, Federal Funds................       D                  0                  0                  0
            HCQO, Evaluation Tap funding.......      NA          (235,768)          (219,931)          (-15,837)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Research on Health Costs,      ......          (235,768)          (219,931)          (-15,837)
         Quality, and Outcomes.................

[[Page 3492]]

 
        Medical Expenditure Surveys, Federal          D                  0                  0                  0
         Funds.................................
        Medical Expenditure Surveys, Evaluation      NA           (59,300)           (60,700)            (1,400)
         Tap Funding...........................
        Program Support, Federal Funds.........       D                  0                  0                  0
        Program Support, Evaluation Tap Funding      NA           (73,985)           (68,422)           (-5,563)
================================================================================================================
        Total: AHRQ, appropriation.............  ......                  0                  0                  0
================================================================================================================
            Evaluation Tap Funding.............  ......            369,053            349,053            -20,000
================================================================================================================
        Total: AHRQ, program level.............  ......            369,053            349,053            -20,000
================================================================================================================
        Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
         Services
            Grants to States for Medicaid
            Medicaid current law benefits......       M        253,884,907        250,398,918         -3,485,989
            State and local administration.....       M         12,808,496         14,735,346          1,926,850
            Vaccines for Children..............       M          4,030,996          4,271,015            240,019
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Medicaid program level.......  ......        270,724,399        269,405,279         -1,319,120
            Less funds advanced in prior year..       M        -86,445,289        -90,614,082         -4,168,793
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Grants to States for Medicaid...  ......        184,279,110        178,791,197         -5,487,913
================================================================================================================
        New advance, 1st quarter...............       M         90,614,082        106,335,631         15,721,549
            Payments to Health Care Trust Funds
            Supplemental medical insurance.....       M        178,041,000        189,520,000         11,479,000
            Hospital insurance for the                M                  0                  0                  0
             uninsured.........................
            Federal uninsured payment..........       M            262,000            228,000            -34,000
            Program management.................       M            222,000            192,000            -30,000
            General revenue for Part D benefit.       M         51,431,000         60,744,000          9,313,000
            General revenue for Part D federal        M            475,000            424,000            -51,000
             administration....................
            Reimbursement for HCFAC............       M            310,378            309,790               -588
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Payments to trust funds,       ......        230,741,378        251,417,790         20,676,412
         program level.........................
            Less funds advanced in prior year..  ......                  0                  0                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Payments to trust funds, current  ......        230,741,378        251,417,790         20,676,412
         law...................................
================================================================================================================
        Program Management
            Research, Demonstration and              TF             21,160             21,160                  0
             Evaluation........................
            Program Operations.................      TF          2,608,785          2,608,785                  0
            State Survey and Certification.....      TF            375,203            381,278              6,075
            High Risk Insurance Pools..........      TF             44,000             44,000                  0
            Federal Administration.............      TF            770,963            770,964                  1
                                                                                                               0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Program Management lim. on new    ......          3,820,111          3,826,187              6,076
         BA....................................
================================================================================================================
        Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control
            Discretionary MIP..................      TF            219,463            219,463                  0
            Office of Inspector General........      TF             29,674             29,674                  0
            Department of Justice..............      TF             29,674             29,674                  0
            Medicaid/SCHIP PERM................      TF             30,979             30,979                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Health Care Fraud and Abuse       ......            309,790            309,790                  0
         Control...............................
================================================================================================================
        Total: Center for Medicare and Medicaid  ......        509,764,471        540,680,595         30,916,124
         Services..............................
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......        505,634,570        536,544,618         30,910,048
================================================================================================================
                Current year...................  ......        415,020,488        430,208,987         15,188,499
================================================================================================================
                New advance, FY14..............  ......         90,614,082        106,335,631         15,721,549
================================================================================================================
            Trust Funds........................  ......          4,129,901          4,135,977              6,076
================================================================================================================
        Administration for Children and
         Families
            Family Support Payments to States
            Payments to territories............       M             33,000             33,000                  0
            Repatriation.......................       M              1,000              1,000                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Welfare payments.............  ......             34,000             34,000                  0
            Child Support Enforcement:
                State and local administration.       M          3,780,819          3,272,647           -508,172
                Federal incentive payments.....       M            526,158            539,838             13,680
                Access and visitation..........       M             10,000             10,000                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Child Support Enforcement....  ......          4,316,977          3,822,485           -494,492
================================================================================================================
        Total: Family support payments, program  ......          4,350,977          3,856,485           -494,492
         level.................................
            Less funds advanced in previous           M         -1,200,000         -1,100,000            100,000
             years.............................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Family support payments, current  ......          3,150,977          2,756,485           -394,492
         year..................................
================================================================================================================
            New advance, 1st quarter, FY14.....       M          1,100,000          1,100,000                  0
            Low Income Home Energy Assistance
             Program
                Formula grants (non-emergency).       D          3,471,672          3,471,672                  0
            Refugee and Entrant Assistance
                Transitional and Medical              D            323,195            412,875             89,680
                 Services......................
                Victims of Trafficking.........       D              9,775              9,775                  0
                Social Services................       D            124,305            153,407             29,102
                Preventive Health..............       D              4,730              4,730                  0
                Targeted Assistance............       D             28,073             48,401             20,328
                Unaccompanied Alien Children...       D            267,211            363,767             96,556
                Victims of Torture.............       D             11,045             11,045                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Refugee and Entrant Assistance..  ......            768,334          1,004,000            235,666
================================================================================================================
        Child Care and Development Block Grant.       D          2,278,313          2,388,313            110,000
        Social Services Block Grant (Title XX).       M          1,700,000          1,700,000                  0
        Children and Family Services Programs
            Programs for Children, Youth and
             Families:
                Head Start, current funded.....       D          7,968,544          8,018,544             50,000

[[Page 3493]]

 
                Consolidated Runaway, Homeless        D             97,355             97,355                  0
                 Youth Prog....................
                Prevention Grants to Reduce           D             17,901             17,901                  0
                 Abuse of Runaway Youth........
                Child Abuse State Grants.......       D             26,432             26,432                  0
                Child Abuse Discretionary             D             25,744             28,744              3,000
                 Activities....................
                Community Based Child Abuse           D             41,527             41,527                  0
                 Prevention....................
                Abandoned Infants Assistance...       D             11,553             11,553                  0
                Child Welfare Services.........       D            280,650            280,650                  0
                Child Welfare Training.........       D             26,092             26,092                  0
                Adoption Opportunities.........       D             39,179             39,179                  0
                Adoption Incentives............       D             39,346             39,346                  0
            Social Services and Income                D                  0                  0                  0
             Maintenance Research..............
                Evaluation Tap Funding.........      NA            (5,762)              5,762                  0
            Native American Programs...........       D             48,583             48,583                  0
            Community Services:
                Community Services Block Grant
                 Act:
                Grants to States for Community        D            677,358            677,358                  0
                 Services......................
                Economic Development...........       D             29,943             34,943              5,000
                Rural Community Facilities.....       D              4,981              5,981              1,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: CSBG Act.....................  ......            712,282            718,282              6,000
        Individual Development Account                D             19,869             17,000             -2,869
         Initiative............................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Community Services...........  ......            732,151            735,282              3,131
            Domestic Violence Hotline..........       D              3,197              4,500              1,303
            Family Violence/Battered Women's          D            129,547            135,000              5,453
             Shelters..........................
            Independent Living Training               D             45,174             45,174                  0
             Vouchers..........................
            Faith-Based Center.................       D              1,370              1,370                  0
            Disaster Human Services Case              D              1,992              1,992                  0
             Management........................
            Program Direction..................       D            198,645            201,645              3,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Children and Family Services      ......          9,734,982          9,800,869             65,887
         Programs, appropriation...............
================================================================================================================
            Current Year.......................  ......          9,734,982          9,800,869             65,887
================================================================================================================
            Evaluation Tap Funding (NA)........  ......            (5,762)            (5,762)                  0
================================================================================================================
        Total: Children and Family Services      ......          9,740,744          9,806,631             65,887
         Programs, program level...............
================================================================================================================
        Promoting Safe and Stable Families.....       M            345,000            345,000                  0
            Discretionary Funds................       D             63,065             63,065                  0
        Payments for Foster Care and Permanency
            Foster Care........................       M          4,288,000          4,143,000           -145,000
            Adoption Assistance................       M          2,495,000          2,537,000             42,000
            Independent living.................       M            140,000            140,000                  0
            Kinship Guardianship...............       M             80,000             90,000             10,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Payments to States..............  ......          7,003,000          6,910,000            -93,000
            Less Advances from Prior Year......       M         -1,850,000         -2,100,000           -250,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Current year....................  ......          5,153,000          4,810,000           -343,000
================================================================================================================
        New Advance, 1st quarter...............       M          2,100,000          2,200,000            100,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Administration for Children and   ......         29,865,343         29,639,404           -225,939
         Families, appropriation...............
================================================================================================================
            Current Year.......................  ......         26,665,343         26,339,404           -325,939
================================================================================================================
            Evaluation Tap Funding (NA)........  ......            (5,762)            (5,762)                  0
================================================================================================================
        Total: Administration for Children and   ......         29,871,105         29,645,166           -225,939
         Families, program level...............
================================================================================================================
        Total: Administration for Children and   ......         16,316,366         16,727,919            411,553
         Families, discretionary...............
================================================================================================================
    Administration for Community Living
        Aging and Disability Services Programs
            Grants to States:
                Supportive Services and Centers       D            366,916            366,916                  0
                Preventive Health..............       D             20,944             20,944                  0
                Protection of Vulnerable Older        D             21,798             21,798                  0
                 Americans--Title VII..........
                Family Caregivers..............       D            153,621            153,621                  0
                Native American Caregivers            D              6,376              6,364                -12
                 Support.......................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Caregivers...................  ......            159,997            159,985                -12
                Nutrition:
                Congregate Meals...............       D            439,070            439,070                  0
                Home Delivered Meals...........       D            216,830            216,830                  0
                Nutrition Services Incentive          D            160,389            160,389                  0
                 program.......................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Nutrition....................  ......            816,289            816,289                  0
            Grants for Native Americans........       D             27,601             27,601                  0
            Aging Network Support Activities...       D              7,873              7,873                  0
            Alzheimer's Disease Demonstrations.       D              4,010              4,010                  0
            Lifespan Respite Care..............       D              2,490              2,490                  0
            Adult Protective Services                 D                  0              5,000              5,000
             Demonstrations....................
            Senior Medicare Patrol Program.....       D              9,402              9,402                  0
            Elder Rights Support Activities....       D              4,088              4,088                  0
            Aging & Disability Resource Centers       D              6,457              6,457                  0
            State Health Insurance Program           TF             52,115             52,115                  0
             (SHIPs)...........................
            Developmental Disabilities
             Programs:
                State Councils.................       D             74,774             74,774                  0
                Protection and Advocacy........       D             40,865             40,865                  0
                Voting Access for Individuals         D              5,235              5,235                  0
                 with Disabilities.............
            Developmental Disabilities Projects       D              8,317              8,317                  0
             of National Significance..........
                University Ctrs. for Excellence       D             38,792             38,792                  0
                 in Developmental Disabilities.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Developmental Disabilities     ......            167,983            167,983                  0
         Programs..............................
        Program Administration.................       D             29,311             29,652                341
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Administration for Community      ......          1,697,274          1,702,603              5,329
         Living................................
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......          1,645,159          1,650,488              5,329
================================================================================================================

[[Page 3494]]

 
            Trust Funds........................  ......             52,115             52,115                  0
================================================================================================================
        Administration for Community Living      ......          1,697,274          1,702,603              5,329
         Program Level.........................
================================================================================================================
    Office of the Secretary
        General Departmental Management
            Federal Funds......................       D            218,262            223,253              4,991
            Trust Funds........................      TF                  0                  0                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal...............................  ......            218,262            223,253              4,991
        Teen Pregnancy Prevention..............       D            104,592            104,592                  0
            Eval Tap...........................      NA            (8,455)            (8,455)                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal...............................  ......            113,047            113,047                  0
        Minority Health........................       D             55,782             55,782                  0
        Abstinence Education...................       D              4,991              5,000                  9
        Office of Women's Health...............       D             33,682             29,120             -4,562
        Minority HIV/AIDS......................       D             53,681             53,681                  0
        Embryo Adoption Awareness Campaign.....       D              1,996              1,996                  0
        Planning and Evaluation (Eval Tap).....      NA           (60,756)           (60,756)                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: General Department Management...  ......            542,197            542,635                438
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......            472,986            473,424                438
================================================================================================================
            Evaluation Tap.....................  ......           (69,211)           (69,211)                  0
            Trust Funds........................  ......                  0                  0                  0
================================================================================================================
        Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals      TF             72,011             79,908              7,897
        Office of the Nat'l Coord. for Health         D             16,415             16,415                  0
         IT....................................
            Evaluation Tap Funding.............      NA           (44,811)           (49,842)            (5,031)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Health Information Technology, program   ......           (61,226)           (66,257)            (5,031)
         level.................................
================================================================================================================
        Office of the Inspector General
            Federal Funds......................       D             50,083             55,483              5,400
                HIPAA funding (NA).............      NA          (196,090)          (196,669)              (579)
            Evaluation Tap Funding.............      NA                  0                  0                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Office of the Inspector General,  ......             50,083             55,483              5,400
         appropriation.........................
================================================================================================================
        Total: Office of the Inspector General,  ......          (246,173)          (252,152)            (5,979)
         program level.........................
================================================================================================================
        Office for Civil Rights
            Federal Funds......................       D             40,938             38,966             -1,972
            Trust Funds........................      TF                  0                  0                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Office for Civil Rights.........  ......             40,938             38,966             -1,972
================================================================================================================
            Trust Funds........................  ......                  0                  0                  0
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......             40,938             38,966             -1,972
================================================================================================================
    Medical Benefits for Commissioned Officers
        Retirement payments....................       M            375,016            395,452             20,436
        Survivors benefits.....................       M             28,350             31,043              2,693
        Dependents' medical care...............       M             93,984            100,656              6,672
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Medical benefits for              ......            497,350            527,151             29,801
         commissioned officers.................
================================================================================================================
    Public Health and Social Service Emergency
     Fund
        Asst. Sec. for Preparedness & Response:
            Operations.........................       D             32,982             32,982                  0
            Preparedness & Emergency Operations       D             29,583             24,647             -4,936
            National Disaster Medical System...       D             52,735             52,390               -345
            Hospital Preparedness..............       D            374,650            323,004            -51,646
            ESARVHP............................       D              4,989              4,990                  1
            Biomedical Advanced Research &            D            415,000            445,000             30,000
             Development.......................
            Medical Countermeasure Strategic          D                  0             15,000             15,000
             Investor..........................
            Medical Countermeasure Dispensing..       D                  0              5,000              5,000
            Policy, Strategic Planning &              D             15,674             15,164               -510
             Communications....................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: ASPR.........................  ......            925,613            918,177             -7,436
        Assistant Sec. for Administration/Cyber-      D             39,924             40,000                 76
         Security..............................
        Assistant Secretary for Health/Medical        D             11,247             10,971               -276
         Reserve Corps.........................
        Office of the Secretary:
            HHS Lease Replacement..............       D                  0             17,000             17,000
            Office of Security & Strategic            D              6,448              7,428                980
             Information.......................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: OS appropriation.............  ......              6,448             24,428             17,980
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: PHSSEF appropriation............  ......            983,232            993,576             10,344
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Office of the Secretary.........  ......          2,133,015          2,184,923             51,908
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......          2,061,004          2,105,015             44,011
================================================================================================================
            Trust Funds........................  ......             72,011             79,908              7,897
================================================================================================================
        Total: Department of Health and Human    ......        589,591,445        620,596,616         31,005,171
         Services..............................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Federal Funds......................  ......        585,337,418        616,328,616         30,991,198
================================================================================================================
                Current year...................  ......        491,523,336        506,692,985         15,169,649
                FY14 advance...................  ......         93,814,082        109,635,631         15,821,549
================================================================================================================
            Trust Funds........................  ......          4,254,027          4,268,000             13,973
================================================================================================================

[[Page 3495]]

 
Includes Mine Safety and Health
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
    Education for the Disadvantaged
        Grants to Local Educational Agencies
         (LEAs)
            Basic Grants
                Advance from prior year........      NA        (2,956,911)        (2,962,510)            (5,599)
                Forward funded.................       D          3,611,410          3,611,410                  0
                Current funded.................       D              3,984              3,984                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Basic Grants, current year     ......          3,615,394          3,615,394                  0
         approp................................
        Subtotal: Basic Grants, total..........  ......        (6,572,305)        (6,577,904)            (5,599)
        Basic Grants FY14 Advance..............       D          2,962,510          2,962,510                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Basic Grants, program level..  ......          6,577,904          6,577,904                  0
        Concentration Grants
            Advance from prior year............      NA        (1,359,726)        (1,362,301)            (2,575)
            FY14 Advance.......................       D          1,362,301          1,362,301                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Concentration Grants, program  ......          1,362,301          1,362,301                  0
         level.................................
        Targeted Grants
            Advance from prior year............      NA        (3,252,025)        (3,258,183)            (6,158)
            Forward Funded.....................       D             29,943             92,443             62,500
            FY14 Advance.......................       D          3,258,183          3,258,183                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Targeted Grants, program       ......          3,288,126          3,350,626             62,500
         level.................................
        Education Finance Incentive Grants
            Advance from prior year............      NA        (3,252,025)        (3,258,183)            (6,158)
            Forward Funded.....................       D             29,943             92,443             62,500
            FY14 Advance.......................       D          3,258,183          3,258,183                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Education Finance Incentive    ......          3,288,126          3,350,626             62,500
         Grants, program level.................
        Subtotal: Grants to LEAs (program        ......         14,516,457         14,641,457            125,000
         level)................................
        School Improvement Grants..............       D            533,552            533,552                  0
        Striving Readers.......................       D            159,698            159,698                  0
        State Agency Programs:.................
            Migrant............................       D            393,236            393,236                  0
            Neglected and Delinquent/High Risk        D             50,231             50,231                  0
             Youth.............................
        Evaluation.............................       D              3,194              3,100                -94
        High School Graduation Initiative......       D             48,809             48,809                  0
        Special Programs for Migrant Students..       D             36,526             36,526                  0
        Total: Education for the Disadvantaged.  ......         15,741,703         15,866,609            124,906
================================================================================================================
            Current Year.......................  ......          4,900,526          5,025,432            124,906
================================================================================================================
            FY14...............................  ......         10,841,177         10,841,177                  0
================================================================================================================
        Subtotal: Forward Funded...............  ......          4,808,013          4,933,013            125,000
================================================================================================================
    Impact Aid
        Basic Support Payments.................       D          1,153,540          1,173,540             20,000
        Payments for Children with Disabilities       D             48,413             48,413                  0
        Facilities Maintenance (Sec. 8008).....       D              4,845              4,845                  0
        Construction (Sec. 8007)...............       D             17,441             17,441                  0
        Payments for Federal Property (Sec.           D             66,947             66,947                  0
         8002).................................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Impact Aid......................  ......          1,291,186          1,311,186             20,000
================================================================================================================
    School Improvement Programs
        State Grants for Improving Teacher            D            785,126            785,126                  0
         Quality...............................
            Advance from prior year............      NA        (1,678,263)        (1,681,441)            (3,178)
            FY14...............................       D          1,681,441          1,681,441                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        State Grants for Improving Teacher       ......          2,466,567          2,466,567                  0
         Quality, program level................
        Mathematics and Science Partnerships...       D            149,716            149,716                  0
        Supplemental Education Grants..........       D             17,619             17,619                  0
        21st Century Community Learning Centers       D          1,151,673          1,151,673                  0
        State Assessments/Enhanced Assessment         D            389,214            389,214                  0
         Instruments...........................
        Education for Homeless Children & Youth       D             65,173             65,173                  0
        Training and Advisory Services (Civil         D              6,962              6,962                  0
         Rights)...............................
        Education for Native Hawaiians.........       D             34,181             34,181                  0
        Alaska Native Education Equity.........       D             33,185             33,185                  0
        Rural Education........................       D            179,193            188,693              9,500
        Comprehensive Centers..................       D             51,113             51,113                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: School improvement programs.....  ......          4,544,596          4,554,096              9,500
================================================================================================================
            Current Year.......................  ......          2,863,155          2,872,655              9,500
================================================================================================================
            FY14...............................  ......          1,681,441          1,681,441                  0
================================================================================================================
            Subtotal: Forward funded...........  ......          2,720,095          2,729,595              9,500
================================================================================================================
    Indian Education
        Grants to Local Educational Agencies...       D            105,921            105,921                  0
        Federal Programs:......................  ......  .................                  0                  0
            Special Programs for Indian               D             18,986             18,986                  0
             Children..........................
            National Activities................       D              5,872              5,872                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Federal Programs.............  ......             24,858             24,858                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Indian Education................  ......            130,779            130,779                  0
================================================================================================================
    Innovation and Improvement
        Race to the Top........................       D            548,960            549,284                324
        Investing in Innovation................       D            149,417            149,417                  0
        Transition to Teaching.................       D             26,054             18,200             -7,854
        School Leadership......................       D             29,107             14,097            -15,010
        Charter Schools Grants.................       D            254,836            254,836                  0
        Magnet Schools Assistance..............       D             96,733             96,733                  0
        Fund for the Improvement of Education         D             65,776             79,220             13,444
         (FIE).................................
        Teacher Incentive Fund, current funded.       D            299,433            299,433                  0
        Ready-to-Learn Television..............       D             27,194             27,194                  0

[[Page 3496]]

 
        Advanced Placement.....................       D             30,027             36,027              6,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Innovation and Improvement......  ......          1,527,537          1,524,441             -3,096
================================================================================================================
    Safe Schools and Citizenship Education
        Promise Neighborhoods..................       D             59,887             80,000             20,113
        National Activities....................       D             64,877             48,600            -16,277
        Elementary and Secondary School               D             52,296             52,296                  0
         Counseling............................
        Carol M. White Physical Education             D             78,693             78,693                  0
         Program...............................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Safe Schools and Citizenship      ......            255,753            259,589              3,836
         Education.............................
================================================================================================================
    English Language Acquisition
        Current funded.........................       D             47,589             47,589                  0
        Forward funded.........................       D            684,555            684,555                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: English Language Acquisition....  ......            732,144            732,144                  0
================================================================================================================
    Special Education
        State Grants
            Grants to States Part B............       D          2,294,472          2,434,472            140,000
                Advance from prior year........      NA        (8,576,143)        (9,283,383)          (707,240)
                FY14...........................       D          9,283,383          9,283,383                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Grants to States, program level....  ......         11,577,855         11,717,855            140,000
            Preschool Grants...................       D            372,646            372,646                  0
            Grants for Infants and Families....       D            442,710            452,710             10,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: State grants, program level..  ......         12,393,211         12,543,211            150,000
        IDEA National Activities (current
         funded):
            State Personnel Development........       D             43,917             45,011              1,094
            Technical Assistance and                  D             54,781             54,781                  0
             Dissemination.....................
            Personnel Preparation..............       D             88,299             86,205             -2,094
            Parent Information Centers.........       D             28,917             29,917              1,000
            Technology and Media Services......       D             29,588             29,588                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: IDEA National Activities.....  ......            245,502            245,502                  0
        Special Olympics Education Programs....       D                  0  .................  .................
        Promoting Readiness of Minors in SSI          D              1,996              1,996                  0
         (PROMISE).............................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Special Education...............  ......         12,640,709         12,790,709            150,000
================================================================================================================
            Current Year.......................  ......          3,357,326          3,507,326            150,000
================================================================================================================
            FY14...............................  ......          9,283,383          9,283,383                  0
================================================================================================================
        Subtotal: Forward funded...............  ......          3,109,828          3,259,828            150,000
================================================================================================================
    Rehabilitation Services and Disability
     Research
        Vocational Rehabilitation State Grants.       M          3,121,712          3,230,972            109,260
            Discretionary modification.........      NA                  0                  0                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Vocational Rehabilitation State Grants,  ......          3,121,712          3,230,972            109,260
         Program Level.........................
        Client Assistance State grants.........       D             12,240             12,240                  0
        Training...............................       D             35,515             35,515                  0
        Demonstration and training programs....       D              5,325              6,075                750
        Migrant and seasonal farmworkers.......       D              1,262              1,262                  0
        Protection and advocacy of individual         D             18,031             18,031                  0
         rights (PAIR).........................
        Supported employment State grants......       D             29,068             29,068                  0
        Independent living:
            State grants.......................       D             23,359             23,359                  0
            Centers............................       D             79,953             79,953                  0
            Services for older blind                  D             34,018             34,018                  0
             individuals.......................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Independent living...........  ......            137,330            137,330                  0
        Helen Keller National Center for Deaf/        D              9,145              9,145                  0
         Blind Youth and Adults................
        National Institute on Disability and          D            108,817            106,817             -2,000
         Rehab. Research (NIDRR)...............
        Assistive Technology...................       D             32,836             37,771              4,935
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Discretionary Programs.......  ......            389,569            393,254              3,685
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Rehabilitation Services.........  ......          3,511,281          3,624,226            112,945
================================================================================================================
    Special Institutions for Persons with
     Disabilities
        American Printing House for the Blind..       D             24,505             24,505                  0
        National Technical Institute for the
         Deaf
            Operations.........................       D             65,422             65,422                  0
            Construction.......................       D                  0                  0                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: NTID.........................  ......             65,422             65,422                  0
        Gallaudet University
        Operations.............................       D            117,541            117,541                  0
        Construction...........................       D              7,975              7,000               -975
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal, Gallaudet....................  ......            125,516            124,541               -975
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Special Institutions for Persons  ......            215,443            214,468               -975
         with Disabilities.....................
================================================================================================================
    Career, Technical and Adult Education
        Career and Technical Education
            State Grants:
                State grants, current funded...       D            332,030            332,030                  0
                Advance from prior year........      NA          (789,505)          (791,000)            (1,495)
                FY14...........................       D            791,000            791,000                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            State Grants, program level........  ......          1,123,030          1,123,030                  0
            National Programs..................       D              7,829              7,829                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Career and Technical           ......          1,130,859          1,130,859                  0
         Education.............................
================================================================================================================
        Adult Education:
            State Grants/Adult basic and
             literacy education
                State Grants...................       D            594,993            594,993                  0

[[Page 3497]]

 
            National Programs
                National Leadership Activities.       D             11,302             11,302                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: National programs............  ......             11,302             11,302                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Adult Education..............  ......            606,295            606,295                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Career, Technical and Adult       ......          1,737,154          1,737,154                  0
         education.............................
================================================================================================================
            Current Year.......................  ......            946,154            946,154                  0
================================================================================================================
        FY14...................................  ......            791,000            791,000                  0
================================================================================================================
        Subtotal: Forward funded...............  ......            946,154            946,154                  0
================================================================================================================
    Student Financial Assistance
        Pell Grants--maximum grant.............      NA            (4,860)            (4,860)                  0
        Pell Grants............................       D         22,824,000         22,824,000                  0
        Federal Supplemental Educational              D            734,599            734,599                  0
         Opportunity Grants....................
        Federal Work Study.....................       D            976,682            976,682                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Student Financial Assistance....  ......         24,535,281         24,535,281                  0
================================================================================================================
    Student Aid Administration
        Administrative Costs...................       D            675,750            711,618             35,868
        Servicing activities...................       D            367,637            393,745             26,108
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Student Aid Administration......  ......          1,043,387          1,105,363             61,976
    Higher Education
        Aid for Institutional Development:
            Strengthening Institutions.........       D             80,623             80,623                  0
            Hispanic Serving Institutions......       D            100,432            100,432                  0
            Promoting Postbaccalaureate Opp.          D              9,011              9,011                  0
             For Hispanic Americans............
            Strengthening Historically Black          D            227,980            227,980                  0
             Colleges (HBCUs)..................
            Strengthening Historically Black          D             58,958             58,958                  0
             Graduate Insts....................
            Strengthening Predominately Black         D              9,262              9,262                  0
             Insts.............................
            Asian American Pacific Islander....       D              3,119              3,119                  0
            Strengthening Alaska Native/Native        D             12,859             12,859                  0
             Hawaiian-Serving Insts............
            Strengthening Native American Non-        D              3,119              3,119                  0
             tribal Colleges...................
            Strengthening Tribal Colleges......       D             25,713             25,713                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Aid for Institutional          ......            531,076            531,076                  0
         development...........................
        International Education and Foreign
         Language:
            Domestic Programs..................       D             66,586             67,432                846
            Overseas Programs..................       D              7,451              7,451                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: International Ed and Foreign   ......             74,037             74,883                846
         Language..............................
        Fund for the Improvement of Postsec.          D              3,494             29,494             26,000
         Ed. (FIPSE)...........................
        Postsecondary Programs for Students           D             10,957             10,957                  0
         with Intellectual Disabilities........
        Minority Science and Engineering              D              9,466              9,466                  0
         Improvement...........................
        Tribally Controlled Postsec Vocational        D              8,131              8,131                  0
         and Technical Institutions............
        Federal TRIO Programs..................       D            839,932            854,932             15,000
        GEAR UP................................       D            302,244            302,244                  0
        Graduate Assistance in Areas of               D             30,909             30,909                  0
         National Need.........................
        Teacher Quality Partnership............       D             42,833             42,833                  0
        Child Care Access Means Parents in            D             15,970             15,970                  0
         School................................
        GPRA data/HEA program evaluation.......       D                607                607                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Higher Education................  ......          1,869,656          1,911,502             41,846
================================================================================================================
    Howard University
        Academic Program.......................       D            201,637            201,637                  0
        Endowment Program......................       D              3,593              3,593                  0
        Howard University Hospital.............       D             28,834             28,834                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Howard University...............  ......            234,064            234,064                  0
================================================================================================================
    College Housing and Acad. Facilities Loans        D                459                459                  0
     (CHAFL)
    HBCU Capital Financing Program
        Federal Admin..........................       D                352                352                  0
        Loan Subsidies.........................       D             20,150             20,150                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: HBCU Capital Financing Program..  ......             20,502             20,502                  0
================================================================================================================
    Institute of Education Sciences
        Research, development and dissemination       D            189,787            189,787                  0
        Statistics.............................       D            108,748            112,748              4,000
        Regional Educational Laboratories......       D             57,426             57,426                  0
        Research in Special Education..........       D             49,905             49,905                  0
        Special Education Studies and                 D             11,415             11,415                  0
         Evaluations...........................
        Statewide Data Systems.................       D             38,077             38,077                  0
        Assessment:                              ......  .................  .................                  0
            National Assessment................       D            129,616            124,616             -5,000
            National Assessment Governing Board       D              8,690              7,690             -1,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Assessment...................  ......            138,306            132,306             -6,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: IES.............................  ......            593,664            591,664             -2,000
================================================================================================================
    Departmental Management
        Program Administration
            Salaries and Expenses..............       D            446,259            446,259                  0
            Building Modernization.............       D                  0              2,211              2,211
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Program Administration.......  ......            446,259            448,470              2,211
        Office for Civil Rights................       D            102,624            102,624                  0
        Office of the Inspector General........       D             59,820             59,820                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Departmental Management.........  ......            608,703            610,914              2,211
================================================================================================================
Total: Department of Education.................  ......         71,234,001         71,755,150            521,149
================================================================================================================

[[Page 3498]]

 
        Current Year...........................  ......         48,637,000         49,158,149            521,149
================================================================================================================
        FY14...................................  ......         22,597,001         22,597,001                  0
================================================================================================================
RELATED AGENCIES
    Committee for Purchase from People who are        D              5,375              5,375                  0
     Blind or Severely Disabled................
    Corporation for National and Community
     Service (CNCS)
        Domestic Volunteer Service Programs
            Volunteers in Service to America          D             94,820             94,820                  0
             (VISTA)...........................
            National Senior Volunteer Corps:
                Foster Grandparents Program....       D            110,565            110,565                  0
                Senior Companion Program.......       D             46,722             46,722                  0
                Retired Senior Volunteer              D             50,204             50,204                  0
                 Program.......................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Senior Volunteers............  ......            207,491            207,491                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Domestic Volunteer Service     ......            302,311            302,311                  0
         Programs..............................
================================================================================================================
    National and Community Service Programs
        AmeriCorps Grants......................       D            344,348            344,348                  0
        Disability Placement Funds.............       D                  0                  0                  0
        Innovation, Assistance, and Other             D             53,280             53,014               -266
         Activities............................
        Evaluation.............................       D              2,994              3,994              1,000
        National Civilian Community Corps......       D             31,882             30,742             -1,140
        State Commission Grants................       D             15,437             15,437                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: National and Community         ......            447,941            447,535               -406
         Service Programs......................
================================================================================================================
        Total, Operating Expenses..............  ......            750,252            749,846               -406
================================================================================================================
        Payment to the National Service Trust..       D            211,797            208,744             -3,053
        CNCS, Salaries and Expenses............       D             82,843             85,886              3,043
        Office of the Inspector General........       D              3,992              5,400              1,408
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Corporation for National and      ......          1,048,884          1,049,876                992
         Community Service.....................
================================================================================================================
    Corporation for Public Broadcasting
        Budget Year +2 (Current Request).......       D            445,000            445,000                  0
        Budget Year +1.........................      NA          (445,000)          (445,000)                  0
        Budget Year............................      NA          (444,159)          (445,000)              (841)
    Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.       D             46,163             46,163                  0
    Federal Mine Safety and Health Review             D             17,604             17,000               -604
     Commission................................
    Institute of Museum and Library Services...       D            231,954            231,954                  0
    Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access              D              5,989              7,500              1,511
     Commission................................
    Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.......      TF             11,778             11,778                  0
    National Council on Disability.............       D              3,258              3,258                  0
    National Health Care Workforce Commission..       D                  0                  0                  0
    National Labor Relations Board.............       D            278,306            278,306                  0
    National Mediation Board...................       D             13,411             13,411                  0
    Occupational Safety and Health Review             D             11,667             11,667                  0
     Commission................................
    Railroad Retirement Board
        Dual Benefits Payments Account.........       D             50,904             45,000             -5,904
        Less Income Tax Receipts on Dual              D             -2,000             -3,000             -1,000
         Benefits..............................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Dual Benefits................  ......             48,904             42,000             -6,904
        Federal Payment to the RR Retirement          M                150                150                  0
         Account...............................
        Limitation on Administration...........      TF            108,649            111,149              2,500
            Inspector General..................      TF              8,155              8,155                  0
================================================================================================================
    Social Security Administration
        Payments to Social Security Trust Funds       M             20,404             20,402                 -2
        Supplemental Security Income
            Federal benefit payments...........       M         47,557,000         54,245,000          6,688,000
            Beneficiary services...............       M             47,000                  0            -47,000
            Research and demonstration.........       M              7,998             17,000              9,002
            Administration.....................       D          3,611,552          4,061,552            450,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: SSI program level............  ......         51,223,550         58,323,552          7,100,002
        Less funds advanced in prior year......       M        -13,400,000        -18,200,000         -4,800,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: SSI, current request............  ......         37,823,550         40,123,552          2,300,002
================================================================================================================
        New advance, 1st quarter, FY12.........       M         18,200,000         19,300,000          1,100,000
        Limitation on Administrative Expenses
            OASDI Trust Funds..................      TF          5,320,028          4,870,028           -450,000
            HI/SMI Trust Funds.................      TF          2,089,794          2,089,794                  0
            Social Security Advisory Board.....      TF              2,146              2,146                  0
            Acquisition Workforce Capacity &          D                  0                  0                  0
             Capabilities......................
            SSI................................      TF          3,123,576          3,573,576            450,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Subtotal: Regular LAE..................  ......         10,535,544         10,535,544                  0
================================================================================================================
        Program Integrity Funding:
            OASDI Trust Funds..................      TF            268,076            268,076                  0
            SSI................................      TF            487,976            487,976                  0
        Subtotal: Program Integrity Funding....  ......            756,052            756,052                  0
        SSI User Fee Activities................       D            153,596            170,000             16,404
        SSPA User Fee Activities...............       D                998              1,000                  2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: LAE.............................  ......         11,446,190         11,462,596             16,406
        Office of Inspector General
            Federal Funds......................       D             28,887             28,887                  0
            Trust Funds........................      TF             73,396             75,396              2,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Total: Office of Inspector General.....  ......            102,283            104,283              2,000
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......             28,887             28,887                  0
================================================================================================================
            Trust Funds........................  ......             73,396             75,396              2,000
================================================================================================================
        Adjustment: Trust fund transfers from        TF         -3,611,552         -4,061,552           -450,000
         general revenues......................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[[Page 3499]]

 
        Total: Social Security Administration..  ......         63,980,875         66,949,281          2,968,406
================================================================================================================
            Federal funds......................  ......         56,227,435         59,643,841          3,416,406
================================================================================================================
                Current year...................  ......         38,027,435         40,343,841          2,316,406
================================================================================================================
                New advances, 1st quarter......  ......         18,200,000         19,300,000          1,100,000
================================================================================================================
            Trust funds........................  ......          7,753,440          7,305,440           -448,000
================================================================================================================
        Total: Related agencies................  ......         66,266,122         69,232,023          2,965,901
================================================================================================================
            Federal Funds......................  ......         58,384,100         61,795,501          3,411,401
================================================================================================================
        Current Year...........................  ......         39,739,100         42,050,501          2,311,401
================================================================================================================
        2013 Advance...........................  ......         18,200,000         19,300,000          1,100,000
================================================================================================================
        2014 Advance...........................  ......            445,000            445,000                  0
================================================================================================================
            Trust Funds........................  ......          7,882,022          7,436,522           -445,500
================================================================================================================
            Emergency Appropriations...........  ......                  0                  0                  0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I wish to speak on the bill and 
comment on the amendment.
  First of all, I want to say to the Senator from Iowa how much I 
admire him and the fantastic job he has done on behalf of the poor, 
people who didn't have health care, and the disabled people who had no 
voice in Washington. I want the Senator to know I am so sorry he is 
retiring. I really am. The Senator is neither shy nor retiring in the 
leadership role he played and the very pragmatic solutions he came up 
with over the years.
  If I may ask, how long has the Senator chaired the subcommittee on 
Labor-HHS?
  Mr. HARKIN. Before I respond specifically to the question, let me 
also state how proud I am of the Senator from Maryland and her long 
service, now the longest serving woman in the history of the Senate, 
and her devotion to the underprivileged, to those who lack a voice and 
a vote in the Senate. There is no one stronger for them than the 
Senator from Maryland.
  It has been a pleasure of mine to work with the Senator through all 
these years. I can honestly say I don't remember any time we have ever 
disagreed on anything.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. The Senator is correct. If I might comment back, we 
sound like two war horses at the VFW Hall. The next thing, if it wasn't 
prohibited, we would be doing shooters on the Senate floor.
  Mr. HARKIN. I appreciate the Senator's sentiments. One of the things 
which makes me feel comfortable about retiring is knowing this 
committee is left in good hands, and I mean that, really good hands.
  To answer the Senator's question, I have been either chair or ranking 
member of this subcommittee since 1989. When the Democrats were in 
charge I was chair up until 1995, and then Senator Specter was chair 
from then until 2001. Following that, I became chair for about a year 
and a half or two. It went back to Republicans, and I picked it back up 
again in 2007. Since 1989, I was chairman or ranking member of the 
subcommittee.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. This would be, in 2014, essentially the Senator's 
diamond jubilee, 25 years.
  Mr. HARKIN. Yes.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. We could exchange a lot of things about diamonds, but 
that would be quite a benchmark.
  This is what I am going to say: What we would like to do is return to 
regular order where the Senator could have brought his bill to the 
floor all by itself--not in the midst of a threat of a showdown, 
shutdown, lockdown. He could have brought it up with his ranking 
member. Now you have the Senator from Kansas, Mr. Moran, and we have 
open, public debate, transparent, going through category after 
category: education, special education, funding for the National 
Institutes of Health, the Department of Labor, all of those things.
  The Senator's subcommittee is one of the most robust, other than 
defense, and second in size in expenditure. It funds the entire 
Department of Labor, the entire Department of Education, and the entire 
Department of Health and Human Services. Under that, there are 
spectacular agencies and independent agencies, such as the Social 
Security Administration, which is literally headquartered in my 
hometown of Baltimore.
  It has, I would say, 40 percent of the domestic expenditures which 
meet compelling human need. It also funds the kinds of programs we need 
for the workforce of the future and our research of the future.
  The Senator deserves to have his day. Anyone who wishes to analyze 
it, scrutinize it, amend it, improve it from both sides of the aisle 
should do this.
  I say to my colleague, what I want to do is get this bill through 
this Senate, working with my colleague Senator Shelby, who has been my 
ranking member over the years and who is so well versed on the 
agreement. Essentially, the ideal situation would have been regular 
order where we would have passed our bills before October 1. You could 
have been on the Senate floor.
  Now we are in something called a continuing resolution where the 
entire Federal Government is in one package. Everybody is trying to 
parse it, understand it, and they should. This is not the way to 
govern. We shouldn't be threatened with these deadlines and kind of an 
ultimatum-type situation.
  We are going to try to do the best we can. The Senator has made his 
point and done it robustly. He produced a great bill, along with 
Senator Shelby, in terms of coming out of the subcommittee, and then 
fashioned it. It is not only great on content, policy, but it has the 
sense of receiving value for the dollar as well and keeps an eye on 
that.
  At the same time, we were able to fashion a bipartisan agreement, but 
you couldn't move the bill. Here we are now into this larger issue. My 
job is to get this bill through the Senate, working with Senator 
Shelby. This is our job.
  I am going to say to Senator Harkin and to all Members on both sides 
of the aisle, we need to get back to regular order. We can't be doing 
big bills nobody understands, that everybody is suspicious of. We need 
to be able to do this the way the founders of the Appropriations 
Committee wanted us to, committee by committee, out in the open, with 
full and open debate where we could focus on the content. When we bring 
Commerce-Justice-Science,

[[Page 3500]]

we can focus on the Justice Department, focus on Federal law 
enforcement, and focus on science programs.
  We can look at Labor-HHS, which has such an enormous labor impact on 
our economy and an impact on the future of our economy. Remember, 
research and development, the workforce of the future, through 
education, Pell Grants, are all of the great things on this bill.
  As the Senator proposes this amendment and the Senate works its will 
on this amendment, I want to say get the job done. Let's get the bill 
passed and then let's solve the sequester problem, which has a 
Draconian shield hold over us. Let's get rid of brinkmanship, shutdown, 
showdown politics.
  Let's return to our regular order where we may produce bills, debate 
them in the full sunshine of the Senate--and not only do a good job, 
but the American people can understand what we are doing. There aren't 
just views on policy. This is America. That is what a democracy is and 
what a parliamentary body is. We should be able to bring process and 
procedure. This means following a regular order with our legislation.
  I thank the subcommittee chairman, Senator Harkin, for his advocacy 
in the last 2 years. He and Senator Shelby worked together to produce a 
great bill. We are where we are, and I hope we do all we can to pass 
the bill and return to regular order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SHELBY. Madam President, I would be remiss, while we are on the 
Senate floor, as I was thinking about Senator Harkin, Senator Mikulski, 
both senior Members--she is the chairperson of the Senate 
Appropriations Committee where I have had the privilege to serve a 
number of years. We all go back to our House days. That is where I 
first met Senator Harkin. He was a couple of years younger then, and so 
was I. Senator Mikulski and I were on the same committees over there. 
Senator Harkin came to the Senate a couple of years before we did. We 
have been involved together on the issues and against each other and so 
forth, but we stayed friends. And I think Senator Harkin is absolutely 
right. Senator Mikulski is very on point on regular order; that what we 
are trying to do on the Appropriations Committee--and this is a big 
start here--is to go back to the way we used to do things--regular 
order. We would have our spirited debates--and they were spirited--in 
the subcommittees of Appropriations, the full committee would come to 
the floor, and we would debate it, vote on it, and go to a conference 
with the House, work it out, come back, and live with it. We haven't 
done that in a long time. What we are trying to do now is get back on 
that track, and this is a big first step.
  Having said that, I would like to take just a few minutes to speak on 
Chairman Harkin's amendment. I believe there are three critical points 
my colleagues should understand about this amendment. First, the draft 
omnibus that has been talked about was never finalized. There were more 
than a dozen significant items not agreed to at the time negotiations 
ended in December. A lot of those negotiations were done at the staff 
level. Critical decisions regarding health care, education, and labor 
policies and billions of dollars in funding decisions at that point 
remained undecided. They were never finalized.
  I think these provisions have been decided and put in this amendment 
without consultation by Senator Harkin. These items included such 
critical issues as conscience protections for health care providers and 
provisions limiting the job-killing rules by the National Labor 
Relations Board. Those were critical issues for us.
  Second, the Harkin amendment replaces a bipartisan continuing 
resolution which the distinguished chairperson has been talking about 
here for 2 days which includes key provisions in this bill we filed 
which would support research at the National Institutes of Health and 
emergency operations at the Centers for Disease Control with a 160-page 
bill that no Republican has approved. I believe the Harkin amendment 
both begins new programs and makes authorization changes to programs.
  In addition, any program that did not receive an increase in funding 
during negotiation on the draft omnibus that he has talked about is cut 
in an across-the-board cut. These reductions hit critical job-training 
programs and funding for hospital preparedness.
  Finally, if the Harkin amendment is agreed to, it will undo a very 
fragile consensus and poison the entire continuing resolution we have 
put before us, putting our government at the risk of a shutdown. None 
of us want that. House leadership has already stated they cannot and 
will not support the inclusion of the Harkin amendment, and I don't 
believe we should risk funding the entire Federal Government to do so.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I want to respond to my friend from 
Alabama, and he is my friend, and he knows that very well. We have 
traveled together. Our spouses are friends, and he is a dear friend of 
mine. We have worked together, as he said, going clear back to our 
House days. But I am disappointed that my friend opposes this 
amendment. If there is one thing that has been clear in my association 
with the Senator from Alabama through all these years, I think it is 
that he has been an unrelenting champion of NIH research. I am told the 
University of Alabama at Birmingham ranks 11th in terms of NIH funding. 
That is even higher than the University of Iowa, by the way.
  So my amendment, as my friend knows, would put in a $211 million 
increase for NIH funding that goes around the country. It doesn't just 
go to Maryland, although some goes to Maryland, but a lot goes around 
the country. So this does that.
  Then I would say to my friend from Alabama, during the negotiations 
from last year, the Senator from Alabama offered an amendment during 
our full committee markup--that was last July--that would require the 
Department of Labor to delay both the wage rule and the comprehensive 
rule regarding H-2B visas. I opposed the amendment, but I included it 
because it was, again, part of a bipartisan, bicameral agreement.
  The Senator is right that this agreement was never signed off on 
high--I guess by the Speaker of the House or the majority or minority 
leader here in the Senate--but usually they have been very 
accommodating if the Appropriations Committee agrees and we all agree 
on what is called the four corners: the Republican House, the 
Democratic House, the Republican Senate, and the Democratic Senate. 
Basically, we would move those bills.
  So, again, this amendment that was offered by my friend from Alabama 
that would require the Department of Labor to delay both the wage rule 
and the comprehensive rule regarding H-2B visas is in this amendment, 
even though I oppose it, because it was part of a bipartisan agreement. 
The only way this provision can take effect is by approving my 
amendment because it is not in the CR. Since my friend from Alabama 
offered this amendment, I think he considered it to be important, he 
fought for it, but it won't take effect in a CR.
  I would also remind my friend and others that the cost of this 
amendment is the same as in the underlying substitute.
  My friend said there were other things in the bill in December that 
were not finalized. That is true, I say to my friend. That is very 
true, there were other things. But these were called riders. Some were 
Republican riders, some were Democratic riders. Are they in this bill? 
No, because they weren't agreed to. They were there, but they were 
never agreed to--and for good reason. Some of them were, obviously, 
very closely held by Democrats and some very closely held by 
Republicans, so there just wasn't agreement.
  I am just saying that in the amendment now before us are the things 
on which we did agree. So the Senator is right. Some of the things that 
were out there on the riders we didn't include

[[Page 3501]]

because they simply were not agreed to in December. I am just saying 
that what is in this bill is what we did agree to in December.
  With that, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown). The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for up to 20 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                                  EPA

  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, this week, March 10 to 16, has been 
designated Sunshine Week. What better time for it this year since 
President Obama has a brandnew nominee to head the Environmental 
Protection Agency, and that agency is in desperate need of sunshine and 
transparency. In the midst of Sunshine Week, I wanted to talk about 
these very serious issues.
  First of all, let's go back a little bit. The first day President 
Obama took office in 2009, the White House Web site declared that his 
administration would become ``the most open and transparent in 
history.'' The President issued high-profile orders pledging ``a new 
era'' and ``an unprecedented level of openness'' across the Federal 
Government. Those are great goals and great aspirations. Unfortunately, 
the record--particularly, as I said, at the EPA--is a lot different.
  President Obama's EPA has earned a reputation for ignoring 
congressional information requests, ignoring and frustrating FOIA--the 
Freedom of Information Act--hiding elite e-mails, which is completely 
contrary to EPA policy, and hiding other important information from the 
public. Is it in desperate need of a new leader who will 
reverse these antisunshine, antitransparency practices and build a true 
culture of transparency and openness. Unfortunately, President Obama's 
nominee, Gina McCarthy, comes from inside the very troubled agency and 
she has been directly involved in many of these problem areas. That is 
why I think we need to talk about these concerns.
  I wish to go through four important categories where the EPA--
including during Gina McCarthy's service--has exhibited a complete lack 
of transparency. It has been exactly the opposite of sunshine, 
openness, and transparency.
  First of all, e-mails and the growing e-mail scandal. A lot of the 
EPA's troubles have surfaced through their dubious e-mail practices, e-
mail practices that have been used, in my opinion, clearly to 
circumvent transparency laws such as FOIA and to circumvent 
congressional oversight. We have uncovered the use of alias e-mail 
accounts and private e-mail accounts to conduct official agency 
business.
  What is the issue there? The issue is that clearly this is a way to 
avoid transparency, avoid these being produced through FOIA requests, 
and try to avoid producing these important e-mails when Congress has 
asked for them and to keep the public and Congress in the dark.
  The most infamous example of this is Lisa Jackson, the former EPA 
Administrator's complete disregard for transparency through her Richard 
Windsor e-mails. Richard Windsor was an alias. I think, clearly in my 
opinion, she used this alias when it came to openness and producing 
documents, et cetera, that this was not necessarily her.
  As it turns out, multiple EPA officials have been conducting business 
through aliases or through private e-mail accounts, and these private 
e-mail accounts are absolutely prohibited by the EPA. In spite of that, 
we have uncovered a pattern. This is not an isolated incident. It is 
not just Richard Windsor who has been used as an alias, but there is a 
pattern. The Acting Administrator, Bob Perciasepe, has used an alias 
private account. Region 8 Administrator Martin used me.com, a private 
account; Region 9 Administrator Blumenfeld used comcast.net, a former 
account; former Deputy General Counsel Yang, a lawyer for the EPA, used 
a gmail.com account. That is completely contrary to the clear rules of 
the EPA.
  It doesn't stop with the use of these completely improper private e-
mail accounts for official business. We have also uncovered high-level 
officials collaborating with environmental groups to push their biased 
agenda. Administrator Martin--since he resigned over all this when we 
had this come out--regularly communicated with far-left environmental 
groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund on his personal e-mail 
account to circumvent Federal transparency laws. His personal e-mails, 
which we have since gotten, exposed the EPA's efforts to further bury 
coal plants under crushing regulations.
  Again, this is not just some technicality. These private accounts and 
aliases were clearly used to hide stuff from Congress, hide stuff from 
the public, and to try not to disclose all this collusion with outside 
environmental groups and what--in my opinion--is a far-left agenda.
  Another very important category is FOIA. FOIA is the Freedom of 
Information Act. It was passed into law by Congress in 1966. It was 
passed for a very simple purpose: to direct sunshine onto the Federal 
Government. Here we are in the middle of Sunshine Week, and FOIA is a 
classic example of an important tool to direct sunshine onto the 
Federal Government.
  Under former Administrator Jackson's leadership, FOIA has become a 
joke at the EPA. Al Armendariz, the former EPA Administrator, had to 
resign after claiming it was EPA's policy to ``crucify'' domestic 
businesses. He actually called FOIA ``nonsense.'' As others at the EPA 
would try to have others think, Al Armendariz was not some rogue EPA 
official. In fact, this is the general attitude of the EPA.
  The Obama administration again has tried to get away with the claim 
that they are ``the most transparent in history.'' Yet as the 
Associated Press has reported, they sometimes produce a lot of pieces 
of paper under FOIA, but ``more often than it ever has, it cited legal 
exceptions to censor or withhold the material, according to a new 
analysis.''
  This is a perfect example. This is a document produced under a FOIA 
request. It is one of the infamous Richard Windsor e-mails. Guess what 
is produced. Nothing. It is one thing to redact a few words or a 
particularly sensitive sentence. They have produced absolutely nothing. 
There is not a single word from the body of the e-mail. This is 
routine. The EPA has regularly mismanaged FOIA requests. It is clearly 
in the business to frustrate these sorts of requests and not to follow 
the law.
  I would like to show some other examples. Again, these are produced 
e-mails. Most of them are from the infamous Richard Windsor e-mails. 
Again, not a word in the body of any of these e-mails is produced. 
There is not a single word. This is another good example. There is not 
a single word produced. So we get plenty of paper, but what information 
do we have for the public? Nothing.
  There is something else that is particularly outrageous. We have an 
e-mail that was produced from the Office of General Counsel to Region 6 
officials. That e-mail talks about standard EPA protocol regarding FOIA 
requests. It is not about a particular FOIA request, which might be 
overbroad, inappropriate, and might have arguments against it. Again, 
this e-mail is from the EPA lawyers to an EPA region, and it is about 
how to deal with FOIA in general. That standard EPA protocol--according 
to this e-mail--is ``to alert the requestor that they need to narrow 
their request because it is overbroad, and secondarily that it will 
probably cost more than the amount of money they agreed to pay.'' Then 
when the requestor doesn't immediately respond to that, they just shut 
down any EPA response.
  Again, this is outrageous. This was not a response to a particular 
request.

[[Page 3502]]

This was the advice from EPA lawyers about how they should always 
consider responding. Just always say it is overbroad, just always say 
it is going to cost more money, and then shut things down, foot drag, 
and obstruct. That is absolutely ridiculous.
  A third important category in this pattern of activity is EPA's use 
of secret data. This EPA, more than any other in history, has been 
promulgating rules and regulations which have a dramatic effect on 
major sectors of our economy. Obviously, this is a big deal and big 
concern, particularly when it costs us jobs or potentially shuts down 
businesses. Yet the EPA has been completely opposed to releasing any of 
the numbers, the science--the alleged science--and the data behind 
these decisions.
  Again, many of EPA's regulations have big pricetags. Yet EPA refuses 
to publicize the basic scientific data underlying virtually all of what 
they have done. The new Clean Air Act rules are the biggest example. 
Implementing the Clean Air Act happens to be the responsibility, by the 
way, that Gina McCarthy has been directly overseeing since June of 
2009.
  The National Ambient Air Quality Standards, for example, are complex 
and sweeping in their nature. The law requires, as it should, that they 
be based on sound scientific data and that it be implemented through a 
robust decisionmaking process. Unfortunately, that has not been the 
case and recent standards have suffered from a rushed process, reliance 
on secret data, and biased scientific review.
  The only way we can fully know what is going on and have a discussion 
about this is if EPA releases the underlying scientific data--the 
underlying numbers. I have personally asked for this. In fact, this 
request is 20 months outstanding. I asked for it almost 2 full years 
ago. Yet EPA has adamantly refused.
  Recently, it has come to light that EPA fails to complete 
comprehensive economic analyses of a majority of its rules. A February 
2013 study reveals that the Agency's disregard for economywide impacts, 
as well as any other discrete negative impacts, renders their cost-
benefit analyses to be misleading and based on manipulated data. Again, 
this is a very important category.
  If sunshine is to mean anything, if it is to have any real meaning as 
we stand here in the midst of Sunshine Week, we need to see the data 
behind these enormously important decisions. EPA cannot use secret 
data. That is contrary to the letter and spirit of the law. It is 
certainly contrary to the public having access to important information 
and to our responsibility in Congress on oversight.
  The final category I wish to mention is the so-called unified agenda. 
Under Federal law, every agency is required to produce their regulatory 
agenda. In fact, they are required to produce it under law twice a 
year--once in the spring and once in the fall, and that is called the 
unified agenda. Again, every agency is required to produce that to the 
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
  The problem is this requirement is observed sort of like the 
requirement to pass the budget is observed in the Senate. In 2012, the 
EPA was 8 months late producing their spring 2012 regulatory agenda, 
and they have yet to submit their fall 2012 regulatory agenda. Again, I 
have asked EPA directly about this. More than 6 weeks after the 
deadline passed, EPA has yet to respond to the simple question of when 
they will submit their spring and fall regulatory agendas. We have not 
seen a bit of either of them yet.
  This is important because it is about sunshine, openness, and 
transparency. It is about being fair and open to the American people 
and giving the American people--including through its representatives 
in Congress--full information. This is an important area that the 
nominee to head the EPA, Gina McCarthy, has to address. It is awfully 
basic and legitimate to say to Gina McCarthy: If you want to become the 
new EPA Administrator, you will need to answer these big, obvious, and 
pertinent questions. It is particularly important since you come from 
inside this very troubled, completely nontransparent agency and have 
been at the heart of many of these troubling areas.
  One thing I will question her directly on is her active coordination 
with Al Armendariz, whom I mentioned earlier, in shutting down key 
energy projects. That direct coordination was highlighted in an e-mail 
we did get from Armendariz celebrating the death of a petroleum coke 
plant in Texas. Armendariz wrote in that e-mail: ``Gina's new air rules 
will soon be the icing on the cake.'' Shutting down jobs, shutting down 
American businesses is going to be the icing on the cake.
  In conclusion, I want to underscore that President Obama's EPA, 
unfortunately, has been the worst example of how hollow his promise is 
of being the most open and transparent administration in history. As we 
begin to consider the confirmation of a new EPA Administrator, this 
needs to be a big focus of our attention. Surely she needs to commit in 
very concrete and specific ways to change this culture. I am concerned 
that she has been part of this culture. She comes from inside the 
agency. She is directly involved in many of these very troubling areas. 
So we need to hear how she is going to reverse this culture and usher 
in a new era of openness and transparency. I will have specific 
requests for her that will allow her to prove that commitment, and I 
know many other Members of the Senate have similar concerns.
  I look forward to that discussion with Gina McCarthy. I look forward 
to continuing this discussion with the entire U.S. Senate. Transparency 
Week is an important time and an appropriate time to start that 
important discussion and to end these abusive practices by the current 
EPA.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the continuing 
resolution before the Senate to fund the government and keep this 
country moving forward. This is a very difficult assignment that they 
have been handed, especially as we have a brandnew chair and ranking 
member.
  The bill increases support for firefighters battling blazes out West. 
That is very good. It maintains a critical safety net for women and 
children. That is very good. It returns full funding to several 
critical conservation programs and reaffirms our commitment to 
veterans, especially rural veterans--all very good. I thank Senator 
Jack Reed and Senator Tim Johnson in particular for their efforts in 
those areas.
  But while no bill is perfect, I am deeply--deeply--disappointed by 
two provisions that were slipped into this bill by the House of 
Representatives when this deal was being cooked up in December.
  This is Sunshine Week for the Federal Government. It is a time to 
highlight the need for greater transparency and openness so voters can 
hold their elected leaders accountable and for what happens here in 
Washington, DC, and to just know what is going on.
  I take transparency seriously. When I first ran for the Senate 7 
years ago, I campaigned on the need to bring more accountability and 
honest leadership to Washington, DC. My first vote in this body was for 
a sweeping ethics bill that, among other provisions, improved 
disclosure rules and reformed the earmark process so that everybody 
would know which Member or Members of Congress requested an earmark, 
and it required Members to certify that they and their families had no 
financial interest in that earmark.
  Under regular order, folks had a chance to come down to the floor and 
try to remove earmarks they did not like. In fact, a few years ago I 
remember former Senator Jon Kyl and I had a

[[Page 3503]]

pretty good debate on this floor about an important project for the 
city of Whitefish, MT. So we debated it, and we took a vote on it in 
the Senate.
  That is why I am so upset by two agriculture-related provisions that 
someone from the House of Representatives put into this bill--and that 
the Senate seems willing to accept. I do not know who authored this 
provision. Maybe someone in Washington knows, but no one is willing to 
put their name on it, and that is a shame. It is a shame that folks who 
get so bent out of shape about earmarks do not seem to be troubled by 
these provisions.
  Montana is home to thousands of working families who make a living 
off the land. Like my wife and me, they are family farmers and 
ranchers. The House of Representatives is prepared to toss those 
working families aside in favor of the Nation's large meatpacking 
corporations. The House inserted a provision in the bill that gives 
enormous marketing power to America's three largest meatpacking 
corporations while stiffing family farmers and ranchers.
  Family-run production agriculture faces tremendous market 
manipulation. Chicken farmers, hog farmers, and cattle ranchers all 
struggle to get a fair price from the meatpackers, and if they fight 
back, they risk angering corporate representatives and being shut out 
of the market. Thanks to this provision, the Agriculture Department 
will not be able to ensure a fair, open market that puts the brakes on 
the worst abuses by the meatpacking industry.
  What is worse is that the USDA took congressionally mandated steps to 
protect ranchers from market manipulation over the last few years. That 
is what we told them to do in the 2008 farm bill. This provision will 
actually overturn rules the USDA has already put into place. But 
apparently intense, behind-the-scenes lobbying won out in the House of 
Representatives, and now we are back to square one with the big 
meatpackers calling the shots.
  The second provision sent over from the House tells the USDA to 
ignore any judicial ruling regarding the planting of genetically 
modified crops. Its supporters are calling it the ``farmer assurance'' 
provision, but all it really ensures is a lack of corporate liability.
  The provision says that when a judge finds that the USDA approved a 
crop illegally, the Department must reapprove the crop and allow it to 
continue to be planted--regardless of what the judge says.
  Let's think about that. The U.S. Congress is telling the Agriculture 
Department: Even if a court tells you that you failed to follow the 
right process and tells you to start over, you must disregard the 
court's ruling and allow the crop to be planted anyway.
  Not only does this ignore the Constitution's idea of separation of 
powers, but it also lets genetically modified crops take hold across 
this country even when a judge finds it violates the law. Once again, 
agribusiness, multinational corporations are putting farmers as serfs. 
It is a dangerous precedent. It will paralyze the USDA by putting the 
Department in the middle of a battle between Congress and the courts.
  The ultimate loser will be our family farmers going about their 
business in feeding America in the right way. Sunshine Week should not 
be show and tell. Slipping corporate giveaways into a bill at the same 
time that we call for more open government is doubling down on the same 
policies that created the need for Sunshine Week. That is why we need 
to remove those corporate welfare provisions from the bill.
  Montanans elected me to go to the Senate to do away with these shady 
backroom deals, to get rid of handouts to big corporations, to make 
government work better. We still have many challenges in front of us. I 
commend the leaders of the Appropriations Committee for their 
commitment to working together to bring us a plan on which we can vote.
  These two provisions undermine our good work to support family farm 
agriculture. These provisions are giveaways, pure and simple, and will 
be a boon worth millions of dollars to a handful of the biggest 
corporations in this country. They deserve no place in this bill. We 
simply have to do a better job on both policy and process.
  I know Chairwoman Mikulski is committed to doing better. I strongly 
support her efforts. I wanted to thank her for that commitment. But we 
ought to start right here and now by striking those corporate 
giveaways.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the 
pending amendment and call up amendment No. 33.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Would the Senator withhold?
  Mr. McCAIN. I yield to the chairwoman.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. First of all, I know the Senator has been waiting 
patiently to file his amendment. I have been waiting patiently for him 
to be able to do it. As I understand it, we are trying to negotiate a 
sequence to vote on the Harkin amendment and for the Senator to be able 
to offer his amendment as promptly as swiftly as we can.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum without violating 
the Senator's rights.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCAIN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                  Amendment No. 33 to Amendment No. 26

  Mr. McCAIN. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending 
amendment and call up amendment No. 33.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Arizona [Mr. McCain] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 33.

  Mr. McCAIN. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment 
be disposed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To strike certain authorities relating to the use for grants 
  of funds of the Office of Economic Assistance of the Department of 
                                Defense)

       Strike section 8039, relating to the use for grants of 
     funds of the Office of Economic Assistance of the Department 
     of Defense.
       Strike section 8104, relating to the use of funds of the 
     Office of Economic Assistance of the Department of Defense 
     for grants for Guam.
  Mr. McCAIN. I come to the floor to talk about amendment No. 33, which 
would strike sections 8104 and 8039 of the bill. It is a pair of Guam 
earmarks that directly contravene the explicit directions provided by 
the Armed Services Committees of the Senate and the House of 
Representatives in the conference report on the fiscal year 2013 
National Defense Authorization Act.
  Congress has not yet received a sufficient cost analysis of the 
proposed movement of the troops from Okinawa to Guam. Because of that, 
and the whole operation of these troops from Okinawa to Guam has still 
not been decided, the Armed Services Committees of the House and Senate 
explicitly prohibited this type of premature investment in civilian 
infrastructure.
  At a time when the Department of Defense is facing the impact of 
sequester, on top of the $487 billion in cuts directed by the 
President, it is appalling and disgraceful that the authorizing 
language would be directly circumvented by the authorizers.
  I want to read the language for my colleagues' benefit. After hours 
and hours of hearings, of amendments, of markup, of 3 weeks on the 
floor of the Senate, the product stated:

       Restriction on development of public infrastructure. If the 
     Secretary of Defense determines that any grant, cooperative 
     agreement, transfer of funds to another Federal

[[Page 3504]]

     agency, or supplement of funds available in fiscal year 2012 
     or fiscal year 2013 under Federal programs administered by 
     agencies other than the Department of Defense will result in 
     the development (including repair, replacement, renovation, 
     conversion, improvement, expansion, acquisition, or 
     construction) of public infrastructure on Guam, the Secretary 
     of Defense may not carry out such grant, transfer, 
     cooperative agreement, or supplemental funding unless 
     specifically authorized by law.

  So here is clear language of the National Defense Authorization Act 
directly contradicted by this continuing resolution. What in the world 
is the job of the authorizers if it is not to have the language adhered 
to? At a time when the Department of Defense is facing the impact of 
sequestration, on top of $487 billion in cuts already directed by the 
President, the appropriators decided that we would spend $140 million 
on Guam. It is absolutely unbelievable, I say to my colleagues.
  Now, let me tell my colleagues about the effect of the sequester that 
has happened now. According to this line item in the appropriations 
bill, it will spend $140 million on a wastewater treatment plant on 
Guam and another project. So we are going to spend $140 million on 
that.
  Meanwhile, I say to my colleagues, here is what has already happened, 
with the sequester to the Armed Forces. The Army: Cancels four brigade 
exercises at the National Training Center or Joint Readiness Training 
Center. The Army: Reduced base operations by 30 percent; cancels half 
the year of helicopters and ground vehicle depot maintenance; stops 
post-war repair of 1,300 vehicles and 17,000 weapons; reduces readiness 
of 80 percent of the Army's nondeploying brigades; stops tuition 
assistance for all Active and Reserve soldiers.
  Navy: Cancels several submarine deployments; reduces flying hours on 
deployed carriers in the Middle East by 55 percent; steaming days by 22 
percent; reduces Western Pacific deployed operations by 35 percent; 
nondeployed Pacific ships lose 40 percent of steaming days; reduces 
Middle East Atlantic MED ballistic missile defense patrols; shuts down 
all flying for four of nine carrier air wings 9 to 12 months to restore 
normal readiness at two to three times the cost; cuts all major naval 
exercises; defers emergent repairs; cancels Blue Angels shows in third 
and fourth quarter; USS Truman carrier deployment delayed indefinitely.
  I might say that deployment was to the Middle East where the 
centrifuges are spinning. The USS Eisenhower career deployment extended 
indefinitely; USS Nimitz and USS Bush carrier strike groups will not be 
fully ready for scheduled fiscal year 2013 deployments.
  Air Force: Likely prevent Air Force's ability to achieve the 2017 
goal of being fully auditable; defer nonemergency facility 
requirements; reduce repairs by 50 percent over 420 projects at over 
140 installations across the Air Force; affects runway repairs and 
critical sustainment projects; delays planned acquisition of satellites 
and aircraft, including JSF and AC-130J, which will increase the future 
cost of these systems; reduces flying hours for cargo, fighter and 
bomber aircraft; stops tuition assistance for all Active and Reserve 
airmen.
  Marine Corps: I hope my colleagues will listen to this. The 
Commandant of the Marine Corps says:

       By the end of this year, more than 50 percent of my combat 
     units will be below minimal acceptable levels of readiness 
     for deployment to combat.

  I repeat. The Commandant of the Marine Corps says:

       By the end of this year, more than 50 percent of my combat 
     units will be below minimal acceptable levels of readiness 
     for deployment to combat.

  Unable to complete rebalancing of Marine Corps forces into the Asia 
Pacific region; will cause 55 percent of the U.S. Marine Corps forces 
to have unsatisfactory readiness ratings; 50 percent of the U.S. Marine 
Corps aviation squadrons will fall below ready-to-deploy status; U.S. 
Marine Corps will not be able to accomplish planned reset of equipment 
returning from overseas expeditionary forces; depot level maintenance 
will be reduced, delaying resettability by 18 months and reducing 
nondeployed forces; facilities sustainment will be funded at 71 percent 
of requirement, reducing effectiveness of home station training and 
quality of life.
  These are the effects of sequestration. So what do they do? What do 
they do in the continuing resolution? They add $140 million for Guam 
for a wastewater treatment plant. Talk about divorced from reality. 
Talk about insensitivity to the men and women who are serving this 
country. I am already beginning to hear from them, I will tell you 
that.
  There are a lot of bright young men and women who are serving this 
country, are serving it with courage and skill and are the best 
probably we have ever seen. I am hearing from their leaders. They are 
making decisions about whether to stay in the military. It is an All-
Volunteer Force. I can tell you what a lot of them are deciding when 
they see something as ridiculous as this, and there are other 
outrageous and stupid things in this bill.
  While all of the things are taking place in the Air Force, the Army, 
and the Marine Corps, we are now on this list--we have $5 million--they 
are adding money, adding money, adding millions. In fact, it comes up 
to billions--$5 million for the National Guard Youth Challenge Program, 
$5 million for the Department of Defense Star Base Youth Program, $154 
million for an Army, Navy, and Air Force ``alternative energy resource 
initiative,'' $18 million for unspecified ``industrial preparedness,'' 
$16 million for Parkinson's disease research--there is a whole bunch in 
here for medical research. They are taking it out of defense. I am for 
research in all of these programs, whether it be Parkinson's or 
neurofibromatosis or HIV/AIDS research, but they are taking it out of 
defense.
  They are adding $9 million for unspecified radar research, $20 
million for university research initiatives, $7 million for a Civil Air 
Patrol Program increase, $45 million for Impact Aid. The list goes on 
and on and on.
  While the Air Force is unable to fly, the Civil Air Patrol will get 
an additional $15 million. I am a great admirer of the Civil Air 
Patrol.
  The fact is that what we are doing is we are cutting the flying hours 
and affecting the readiness of the men and women who are serving in the 
military in this country. I repeat a statement of the Commandant of the 
Marine Corps: By the end of this year, ``more than 50 percent of my 
combat units will be below minimal acceptable levels of readiness for 
deployment to combat.'' What did these appropriators do? They put in 
$140 million for wastewater treatment on Guam, which is expressly 
prohibited by the National Defense Authorization Act.
  I have been on this floor for many years fighting against what I 
believe is encroachment by appropriators on the authorizers' business. 
I have never, in 26 years as a member of the defense appropriations 
committee and the Armed Forces committee, seen anything quite as 
egregious as this.
  I say to my colleagues, who are authorizers and not appropriators, if 
you let them get away with directly violating and contradicting the 
express language of the National Defense Authorization Act, you are 
next. You are next. This is unacceptable. I hope my colleagues will 
vote on the issue of whether we need to spend this money, particularly 
at this moment, with the condition of our military.
  Many of our constituents say: Why is this being so hard hit? Why is 
the military being so hard hit?
  They don't quite understand sequester--this thing the President said 
won't happen. This sequester affects 19 percent of what we call the 
discretionary spending. They exempted about two-thirds of all of the 
discretionary spending and then took 50 percent of what was left of 19 
percent of the spending. This has a dramatically increased effect on 
what we need most; that is, our national security. It is shameful.
  I hope my colleagues and friends know that this Guam provision would 
provide, which is expressly prohibited, $120 million for a public 
regional health laboratory and civilian wastewater improvements. The 
Department

[[Page 3505]]

of Defense wants to move marines to Guam but does not know how much 
military infrastructure will be needed--military infrastructure will be 
needed to support the move--what the implications will be to 
operational responsiveness in the Pacific theater or how much any of it 
will cost.
  Over the last 2 years, the Armed Services Committee received many 
hours of testimony, briefings, and meetings on the troop realignment in 
the Pacific and directed the Center for Strategic and International 
Studies to conduct an independent assessment on U.S. force strategy in 
the region. The assessment--delivered in August 2012--recommended a 
better alignment of engagement strategies between the U.S. Pacific 
Command and the Department of Defense in order to improve our 
capabilities in the region and respond to a range of contingencies. The 
CSIS was clear in the appraisal that the Department of Defense had not 
adequately articulated the strategy behind its future posture planning 
nor aligned the strategy with resources in a way that reflects current 
budget realities.
  After more testimony, briefings, and meetings, the Armed Services 
Committee acted and, through the vehicle of the fiscal year 2013 
National Defense Authorization Act, prohibited the use of funds for any 
military realignment to Guam until the Department of Defense and the 
U.S. Pacific Command provided a detailed set of reports. These reports 
will address the plan for ensuring that any proposed force realignments 
in the Pacific region to include moving U.S. marines from Japan to Guam 
and Hawaii are supported by resources that will allow our forces to 
meet operational requirements. Admiral Locklear, commander of the U.S. 
Pacific Command, told me yesterday that these reports would be ready 
this summer.
  The Department of Defense has planning left to do. While Congress may 
someday authorize some number of marines to be realigned to Guam, it 
will only be after we have a clear understanding of the clear 
implications and costs. In this context, the Appropriations Committee 
would fund unrequested civilian infrastructure--not military 
infrastructure, civilian infrastructure--far greater in scope than 
would be required in the event the most extreme estimates of troop 
realignment occurred. There is absolutely no justification for it.
  This is why the Armed Services Committee expressly prohibited such 
funding, because we don't know how much military or civilian 
infrastructure we may need, if any. Has one single marine, sailor, or 
airman been assigned to Guam as part of the intended buildup that would 
justify using DOD money to rebuild Guam civilian wastewater facilities 
or build a new civilian health laboratory? The answer is obviously no. 
The support payoff to Guam to solve an already existing problem has 
nothing to do with any future military realignment to Guam. This is no 
better than last year's set of earmarks for a cultural artifacts 
repository.
  It should be very clear by now that these expenditures pushed through 
in direct contravention of the bipartisan, bicameral decisions of the 
Armed Services Committee are a shameful waste of taxpayers' money. In 
my view, this is a clear example of political abuse of the 
appropriations process.
  I could go on for a long time. In fact, instead of doing a continuing 
resolution, we should be doing everything we can to avoid the 
sequester, which has such a disastrous effect on our military.
  I am sure my colleagues are aware that in Tehran the centrifuges are 
spinning. North Korea just had another nuclear test. They threatened to 
cancel the cease-fire of 1953. They are making very aggressive noises 
toward South Korea and, I believe, our 30,000 men and women who are 
stationed there. Tension between Japan and China is very high. For my 
colleagues' information, I am sure they know that the Chinese have 
increased, doubled, and redoubled their spending on their military. The 
Middle East is in a state of turmoil, which could lead to an 
international crisis almost at any moment. Seventy thousand Syrians 
have been slaughtered by Bashar al-Asad. There are over 1 million 
refugees, as that conflict shows all possibility of spreading to 
Lebanon and to Jordan.
  What are we doing? We are imposing Draconian cuts on the U.S. 
military, which caused the Commandant of the Marine Corps to say 50 
percent of all his combat units will be below minimal acceptable levels 
of readiness for deployment to combat.
  I have been around this body and this Nation for a long time. I have 
seen this movie before. Everybody talks about war weariness. Everybody 
talks about how weary we are of Iraq and Afghanistan, and indeed we 
are. We were war weary after Vietnam. We cut the military, cut the 
military, and we cut the military as we are doing today. The Chief of 
Staff of the U.S. Army in the late 1970s came before the Armed Services 
Committee and said we have a hollow army. Do you know what we are doing 
right now with sequestration? We are hollowing out our military. To add 
insult to injury, we are putting on a long list of wasteful, 
unnecessary programs, many of which have nothing to do with defending 
this Nation. Some are outright pork-barrel spending.
  I hope my colleagues, particularly those on authorizing committees, 
will understand that if the appropriators are able to directly 
contradict language in authorizations that are passed by both Houses of 
Congress and signed by the President of the United States, then you 
become irrelevant to the process. I don't think the 80-so of us who are 
not members of the Appropriations Committee should be subjected to 
irrelevance.
  I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland is recognized.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I wish to say the Senator who currently 
now chairs the Subcommittee on Defense will speak on the amendment of 
the Senator from Arizona. I wish to speak about the process and about 
sequester.
  First, the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense finished its work 
before the August recess. The authorizers didn't get it done until 
December 20. There is a gap here because Senator Inouye--a very happy, 
blessed, and beloved memory--moved his committee in an expeditious way, 
which appropriators are supposed to do.
  Remember, appropriations are supposed to be done before October 1. 
Senator Inouye chaired the committee, chaired the full committee and 
then chaired this Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. Senator 
Inouye did his job under the authorization that was present before him.
  The authorizers didn't pass their bill until December 20. We want to 
respect the authorizers not only on defense but on every committee. 
They need to pass their bills before we pass ours. We work on our bills 
by holding our hearings under regular order beginning when we get the 
President's budget, which we wish would be up-tempo a bit. Then we 
start our hearings, mark up our bills in May and June, and begin to 
move them through the process.
  Before we attack the Appropriations Committee, we should attack the 
process and get back to regular order, where authorizing and 
appropriating are in sync.
  The second thing I wish to comment on is sequester. I want to 
acknowledge what the Senator from Arizona said about the impact of 
sequester. Sequester is an awful, awful, awful thing. That is not on 
this bill. When the Budget Committee comes up, along with the 
negotiations by the President with the leadership of the House, I 
absolutely agree with him, we must cancel sequester and ensure that not 
only our Defense Department but others who defend America, such as our 
Border Patrol guards, are not unduly harmed. And we are hollowing out, 
to use the quote from General Amos, an extraordinary Commandant.
  What we need to do is get a process in order to have the proper 
policy debates.
  I note that the subcommittee chairman will now comment on the 
specifics.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant Senate majority leader is 
recognized.

[[Page 3506]]


  Mr. DURBIN. Let me thank the chairwoman of the Appropriations 
Committee, Senator Mikulski. This is her first major assignment on the 
floor of the Senate. It is an awesome responsibility. I note that she 
was not only up for this job, she was made for this job. She has the 
knowledge, skill, and drive we need to make sure the Appropriations 
Committee is playing its important historic role in the Senate.
  I commend the Senator from Alabama, my friend Senator Richard Shelby 
too. Senator Shelby and Senator Mikulski have been close partners in 
developing a very complicated bill. This bill we are considering is 
going to fund the Federal Government for the remaining 7 months; 
otherwise, when we run out of money March 24, literally, the government 
will close. They are working and have worked hard for the last several 
weeks to get this bill ready.
  A version of the bill passed the House. Now it is being considered on 
the floor of the Senate and Senators are being allowed to offer 
amendments, which is their right.
  One of the Senators who just offered an amendment is Senator John 
McCain of Arizona, who is well known to virtually everyone in America 
as a former candidate for President and by virtue of his service to our 
Nation. I would say I count John McCain as a real friend. We came to 
the House of Representatives the same year. We have maintained that 
friendship here in the Senate. We have worked closely together on 
immigration reform and many other issues. I can't think of a finer 
Senator on the other side of the aisle.
  I don't need to speak to John McCain's reputation when it comes to 
military service. We know the story: a Navy pilot shot down over 
Vietnam, captured and held captive, subjected to torture for more than 
5 years. John's body still bears the scars of that terrible experience. 
Thank God he survived and continues to serve in the Senate representing 
the people of Arizona and the Nation in his capacity as a Senator. He 
has been the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, so he 
knows those issues not only as a veteran, a man who served in the 
Vietnam war, but also as a Senator who has looked closely at each of 
the issues that affects the Department of Defense. He doesn't hold a 
candle to anyone, take a step back to anyone when it comes to his 
commitment to our military and our Nation's defense. But now it is my 
responsibility to come to the floor of the Senate and argue against an 
amendment Senator McCain is offering on the Department of Defense bill. 
You might think to yourself: Durbin, how did you get this assignment? 
The fact is, as chairman of this particular subcommittee, it is my 
responsibility to argue the other side of the issue that Senator McCain 
has brought to the floor.
  I come to this assignment brandnew, just a few weeks now, since the 
untimely passing of our great friend and national hero, Dan Inouye of 
Hawaii. Because of his passing, there were vacancies created, and I 
ended up in this position as chairman of the Subcommittee on Defense 
Appropriations in the Senate. It is a job I am learning, and I confess 
there are many here who know it better than I do. But I will do my best 
because I know the awesome responsibility attached to it.
  I stand today to urge my colleagues to vote against the amendment 
John McCain has offered to this continuing resolution as it relates to 
the Department of Defense. There are basically four provisions in 
this--three or four provisions in the McCain amendment--and I wish to 
address each of them.
  One of the provisions allows the Department of Defense to give grants 
to organizations. That sounds like a very easy thing to explain, and it 
is. The three organizations that receive the grants from the Department 
of Defense are well-known to most Americans; certainly two are--the USO 
is one.
  The USO for decades has been an organization which has tried to 
provide help to our veterans, usually stationed overseas, and to give 
them things as basic as entertainment, to counseling, or when they go 
through airports to make sure they have a place to stop by and get a 
cup of coffee and a doughnut. That is the USO. I have understated their 
mission, but we are all familiar with it.
  The other organization is one known to every American, I am sure, the 
Red Cross. The third is an organization new, but important, called 
Fisher House. Fisher House. Let me tell you about Fisher House.
  Two years ago, I was invited to the grand opening of a Fisher House 
facility near the Hines VA Hospital in Chicago. Fisher House is to 
military and veterans hospitals what Ronald McDonald houses are to 
children's hospitals. What we are saying here in the underlying bill is 
that the Department of Defense can provide grants to these 
organizations--Fisher House, Red Cross, and USO. The McCain amendment 
says no, they can't. The McCain amendment strikes the authority of the 
Department of Defense to give them these grants. I think that is a 
mistake. And for that reason alone, I hope my colleagues will vote 
against the McCain amendment.
  The services being provided through these organizations and at these 
facilities are nothing short of remarkable. Fisher House, right in the 
city of Chicago, near Hines VA Hospital, is a beautiful home--a place 
where families who have a loved one who is going through surgery or 
rehabilitation at the Hines VA Hospital are given a chance to stay 
overnight. They do not have to pay for a hotel room and they are 
treated like royalty, as they should be. These are military families--
mothers and fathers, spouses and children, who are treated like royalty 
at Fisher House while they are waiting for their loved one to finish 
the treatment or surgery they need to come back home.
  Why wouldn't we do that? Why wouldn't we provide that kind of 
service? The Fisher House facilities are largely built by charitable 
contributions, donations from everybody. So to give to the Department 
of Defense the ability to transfer up to $4 million a year--$4 
million--to the Fisher House, why, of course, we want to do that. 
Across America they do such extraordinary things.
  In terms of the Red Cross grants, here is what the Red Cross does, 
and every Member of Congress knows this. A family will call a Senator 
and say: Senator Shelby, we live in Mobile, AL, and I wanted you to 
know the mother of a soldier overseas has just passed away and we have 
to get the word to him right away. What Senator Shelby or what Senator 
Durbin would do is to call the Red Cross and say: You have to help us. 
We have to get in touch with this service man or woman overseas 
somewhere. So it is an opportunity for them to use their network of 
volunteers and communications to reach out to that soldier, that 
sailor, that airman, or marine. That is what they do. They spend about 
$10 million in emergency communication services to keep a hotline 
running connecting servicemembers, veterans, and their families with 
the services they offer. There is $2 million for theater support of 
deployed troops--emergency communication services between deployed 
servicemembers and their families back home.
  They provide lounges, the Red Cross does, in these theaters of 
operation, war settings, for troops to have access to computers so they 
can be in touch with their families back home.
  One of the big surprises I ran into as I visited our troops in 
Afghanistan and Iraq was to find many of them Skyping away with their 
families while they are far away. Some of these facilities are being 
provided by the Red Cross.
  The list goes on and on of all that the Red Cross does to support and 
help our troops. But the list can't tell you in specifics what Red 
Cross volunteers do. These men and women--and you see them everywhere 
under the flag of the Red Cross--show up when a tornado hits, when a 
flood hits, and they always show up when our troops need a helping 
hand.
  When our troops get off the plane in Landstuhl, Germany, after being 
grievously wounded or injured overseas and are about to be 
hospitalized--maybe facing their first surgery--one of the first 
smiling faces they will see will be a Red Cross volunteer, there to 
say:

[[Page 3507]]

What can I do for you; can I get in touch with your family; is there 
something you need? The stories are legendary about soldiers who land 
at these bases and a Red Cross volunteer walks up to them.
  I recall one story in particular about one of the soldiers who 
volunteered at the Red Cross who said: What do you want? And the 
soldier said: I need a rootbeer float. Imagine, a rootbeer float. And 
in a matter of 15 minutes, up pops the Red Cross volunteer with a 
rootbeer float. It was a small thing for that soldier, but it was an 
important thing.
  So to say we are not going to allow the Department of Defense to 
provide grants to the Red Cross, the USO, or to Fisher House I think is 
a mistake. These are great organizations with great volunteers and they 
do a wonderful job day in and day out to help our troops overseas. If 
it were my son or daughter overseas, I would like to know the Red Cross 
is going to be there. I would like to know the USO is going to be 
there. And God forbid that we would ever need some work at a military 
hospital; I would like to know there is a Fisher House nearby in case a 
family needs it because they can't otherwise afford to stay at a hotel 
for a number of nights.
  The McCain amendment would stop the grants by the Department of 
Defense to these three organizations. If it were not for the fact that 
such a fine man, a veteran, offered this amendment, some people might 
say: Why would you do that to our military servicemembers? I don't 
think we should.
  There is also a situation that has been going on for some time 
regarding Guam. Guam is an important place for stationing some 16,000 
marines--16,000 men and women who volunteered to serve in the U.S. 
Marine Corps and are stationed on Guam. It is a challenge. I have been 
there. It is a remote location, but important for our national 
security, particularly in the Pacific theater. Wouldn't we want to say 
to the men and women who are there in uniform that they are going to 
have the basics taken care of? And wouldn't we want to say that one of 
the basics is to make sure they have safe drinking water and wastewater 
treatment facilities?
  Here is what we found out. We found out that on the island of Guam 
our 16,000 marines are in a facility that has reached the absolute 
limit in terms of wastewater treatment. The Department of Defense came 
to us and said: For these troops, we have got to build a new wastewater 
treatment facility. Well, of course, we do. We don't want to 
shortchange them or jeopardize public health in any way.
  The McCain amendment would eliminate this money, $106 million in 
funding, for a wastewater treatment plant on Guam. This is not some 
frill, this is a basic. Everyone wants to believe their son or 
daughter, volunteering for the Marine Corps and stationed somewhere 
overseas, is being taken care of by our government--that the government 
is doing everything we can to make sure they have the basics they need 
to stay healthy. Well, this is one of those basics--$106 million for a 
wastewater treatment plant in Guam.
  There is also a $13 million ask here that I think makes sense when it 
comes to the safety of these troops. We want to make sure there is a 
public health lab in Guam. God forbid these men and women in uniform, 
or anyone who represents the United States, is facing some biological 
terrorist. God forbid there is some substance being used that could 
endanger their lives, and God forbid we would have to rely on 
laboratory facilities in Atlanta, GA, if you are halfway around the 
world. That is where the most professional facilities are. So the 
Department of Defense said: Let's put a $13 million investment in a 
basic public health lab in Guam to protect the safety of Americans and 
our troops.
  Look at these things. Look at what I am asking for--not for museums, 
not for things that may be considered frivolous and unnecessary in a 
given context but, rather, for the basics to support our troops in the 
field and to provide those who are stationed on Guam some of the most 
fundamental and basic public health facilities.
  So it pains me to come to the floor and to resist an amendment 
offered by my friend Senator McCain, but I do it in memory of Senator 
Dan Inouye, who helped write this bill, who himself was a recipient of 
the Congressional Medal of Honor and had a distinguished career of 
service in the military.
  I hope my colleagues will listen carefully to this debate, and though 
they feel the strong positive feelings I do toward Senator McCain, they 
will go to the merits of the issue and defeat the McCain amendment. 
Make sure the ability of the Department of Defense to continue to work 
with Fisher House, the Red Cross, and the USO is authorized in law. 
Let's make sure the 16,000 marines on Guam have the most basic things 
they need to be safe and healthy and come home just as we want them to. 
That is what this is all about.
  I urge my colleagues to vote against the McCain amendment.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blumenthal). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent that the time until 5:30 p.m., 
for debate on the McCain amendment, be equally divided between Senators 
McCain and myself or our designees; that at 5:30 p.m. the Senate 
proceed to a vote in relation to the McCain amendment and that there be 
no amendments in order to the amendment prior to the vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I don't know if Senator McCain is nearby, 
but if he is, I want to give him a chance to come over and use the few 
minutes remaining before the rollcall vote.
  But for those Members of the Senate who did not listen to the earlier 
statements by Senator McCain and myself, this amendment is very basic 
and very straightforward: Senator McCain would cut or eliminate the 
ability of the Department of Defense to give grants to three 
organizations: Fisher House, Red Cross, and USO.
  Fisher House is the Ronald McDonald House of military and veterans 
hospitals. I have visited the one in Chicago. I have talked to my 
colleagues about other Fisher House facilities around America. They are 
remarkable and amazing places.
  Fisher House is where a family who may not be wealthy has a chance to 
stay and be treated like royalty while their son, their daughter, their 
husband, their mother is being operated on in a military hospital. That 
is what Fisher House is all about. I have seen it. The volunteers who 
man these houses make sure people are treated in the way they should be 
and make us proud as Americans. The McCain amendment would eliminate 
the authority of the Department of Defense to give money to the Fisher 
House to continue their operations.
  The McCain amendment would also eliminate funding grants that are 
given to the Red Cross and the USO. The Red Cross is an extraordinary 
organization, and every American knows what they are about. But in the 
fiscal year 2010, the Red Cross provided more than 597,000 emergency 
communications services for nearly 150,000 military families, and they 
provided nearly $6 million in financial aid to 5,000 military families, 
not to mention thousands of Red Cross volunteers--including 
servicemembers, veterans, and military spouses--offered comfort and 
support to our wounded troops and their families at hospitals around 
the world.
  The USO is another great organization which has provided assistance 
and entertainment to our troops, many of them stationed far away from 
home and far away from their family.
  In addition, the McCain amendment would eliminate the construction of 
a wastewater treatment facility in Guam. We have 16,000 marines 
stationed in Guam. The administration--the President has asked for this 
money because the wastewater treatment facility in Guam is inadequate. 
It is not

[[Page 3508]]

safe. It is a public health hazard. An environmental impact statement 
prepared for the realignment of marines from Okinawa to Guam clearly 
finds that the current system is near capacity and needs upgrading.
  So whether you argue that Guam is going to have a large future, a 
small future, the current allocation of marines in Guam deserves the 
most basic sanitary wastewater treatment facility. You would expect it, 
would you not, for your son or daughter serving in our Marine Corps? We 
should expect no less, and the McCain amendment would eliminate the 
funding necessary for this wastewater treatment facility, as well as a 
public health laboratory to test samples of suspected toxic substances 
in a timely manner to protect Americans and our troops in that theater 
of the world.
  I don't know why Senator McCain has picked out these elements. I 
think they are all positive elements. I hope my colleagues will join me 
in defeating the McCain amendment. It is an amendment which would take 
needed resources away from the USO, Red Cross, and Fisher House and 
deny this wastewater treatment facility in Guam. I hope my colleagues 
will join me in opposing the McCain amendment.
  At this point I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum, in the hopes that Senator McCain can return before the vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded. I wish to give my friend, Senator McCain, the 
author of this amendment, the opportunity to speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I guess the time here is short. Sometimes 
when you can't argue the merits of an issue you just make up something. 
Senator Durbin claims this amendment would cut funding for the Fisher 
House, Red Cross, and the USO. If you read the bill, the Fisher House 
is covered in the CR in section 8070. The Red Cross and USO are covered 
in section 8078. This amendment strikes section 8039, which pertains to 
the Office of Economic Adjustment fund, the OEA fund. It has nothing to 
do with Fisher Houses, the Red Cross, mothers of America, apple pie, or 
the flag--nothing to do with those except that it strikes legislation 
which is expressly prohibited in the Defense authorization bill. It 
strikes language which is directly prohibited by the National Defense 
Authorization Act.
  If the Senator wants to claim that Fisher House, Red Cross, USO, 
small animals, children, the United Way, whatever else he wants to, 
they are covered in other parts of the bill. I suggest to the Senator 
from Illinois reread the bill which says--section 8070 talks about 
Fisher Houses; section 8078 talks about the Red Cross and the USO. Our 
amendment strikes 8039, which is the Office of Economic Adjustment, 
that funding.
  I thank the Senator for recognizing that. It is already part of the 
record. It is very clear this has nothing to do with the Fisher House.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, we have been assured by the House in the 
construction of this bill that this provision was added explicitly to 
make certain that there be no question that the grants that are given 
to these organizations would be authorized and included in this 
appropriations process. That is their belief. With an abundance of 
caution, we support their belief because we know of the importance of 
these organizations.
  I now move to table the McCain amendment No. 33, and I ask for the 
yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. 
Lautenberg) and the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Whitehouse) are 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 48, nays 50, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 35 Leg.]

                                YEAS--48

     Baldwin
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Cowan
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Johnson (SD)
     Kaine
     Klobuchar
     Landrieu
     Leahy
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Warren
     Wyden

                                NAYS--50

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Chambliss
     Coats
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Donnelly
     Enzi
     Fischer
     Flake
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johanns
     Johnson (WI)
     King
     Kirk
     Lee
     Levin
     Manchin
     McCain
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Thune
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Lautenberg
     Whitehouse
       
  The motion was rejected.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate? If not, the question 
is on agreeing to the amendment.
  The amendment (No. 33) was agreed to.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set the pending 
amendment aside to consider----
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, the Senate is not in order. I know there 
is a lot of gloating over this amendment--I don't mean yours. Could we 
kind of keep it quiet so Senator Inhofe can offer his amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first, I ask unanimous consent to set 
aside the pending amendment for consideration of my amendment.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. I just 2 minutes ago got a copy of what my dear friend is 
going to offer, and here we go again with a series of environmental 
riders that have nothing to do with this bill, that would change laws 
that protect our rivers and our streams, and involve the EPA making 
sure we prevent oilspills.
  Frankly, I am objecting to this at this time unless I know we are 
going to have a 60-vote threshold; otherwise, I will put us in a quorum 
call at this time.
  Mr. INHOFE addressed the Chair.
  Mrs. BOXER. I have the floor because I am reserving the right to 
object.
  Mr. INHOFE. No, I have the floor.
  Mrs. BOXER. All right. Go ahead.
  Mr. INHOFE. First of all, I would not object to a 60-vote threshold 
in order to get things to move along. I would say my good friend from 
California has seen this bill several times before, and several months 
ago we actually had a vote on it, but I have no objection.
  Mrs. BOXER. Thank you so much.


                  Amendment No. 29 to Amendment No. 26

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. This is something we are all familiar with. There is a 
spill prevention or an SPCC----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will suspend.
  The clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Oklahoma [Mr. Inhofe] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 29 to amendment No. 26.

  Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment 
be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

[[Page 3509]]



 (Purpose: To prohibit the expenditure of Federal funds to enforce the 
Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure rule of the Environmental 
                   Protection Agency against farmers)

       At the end of title VII of division C, insert the 
     following:
       Sec. 17___.  No funds made available under this Act shall 
     be used to implement or enforce with respect to any farm (as 
     that term is defined in section 112.2 of title 40, Code of 
     Federal Regulations (or successor regulations)) the Spill, 
     Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure rule, including 
     amendments to that rule, promulgated by the Environmental 
     Protection Agency under part 112 of title 40, Code of Federal 
     Regulations.

  Mr. INHOFE. This is a bill that for years and years has come up. It 
was originally designed for refineries that have very large amounts of 
storage, of oil, of propane, of all that type of material, and it was 
designed for them to have the necessary safeguards in place. Then, 
later on, there became a gray area. I ask the question because it has 
never been answered: Should they now be able to apply this to farms? 
Farms may have perhaps a little bit of propane over here and over here, 
someplace else, something else. It might add up to the 1,320 gallons at 
one time. If that is the case, then they would be under the same 
requirements as we currently have for refiners. I am talking about them 
having to do volumes and volumes of paperwork. They would have to 
purchase new double-lined containers and build berms around their 
storage facilities. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of 
dollars, and this could be an average-sized farm.
  The EPA has not done enough outreach to farmers to help them get into 
compliance. When this came up before, we introduced this same amendment 
that would give them time, with the assurance at that time that they 
would do this. In fact, I recall personally visiting with Lisa Jackson 
and she had every intention to go ahead and make these notifications.
  So the EPA shouldn't be allowed to enforce the rule against farmers 
at this time. What this amendment does is asks for an extension to give 
them time. I plan on talking to the new Director of the EPA about this 
very issue. This is not just exempting farmers. This is giving more 
time, in this case, until the end of this fiscal year.
  So I would like to be able to pass this. I do urge its adoption and 
ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, if we are still on the Inhofe amendment, is 
there still an opportunity to speak on the amendment before a vote is 
called or is the Senator asking for a vote immediately?
  Mr. INHOFE. I am sorry, I could not hear the Senator.
  Mr. REED. Is the Senator asking for a vote immediately or is there 
still an opportunity to speak?
  Mr. INHOFE. No. We are asking for a vote sometime tomorrow.
  Mrs. BOXER. Does the Senator wish to have time?
  Mr. REED. I would like to, at the appropriate moment, be recognized 
to speak, respectfully, against the Senator's amendment.
  Mrs. BOXER. Well, now is the time.
  Mr. REED. Now is the time? Well, in that case, let me go ahead and 
speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, Senator Inhofe is proposing a very sweeping 
amendment that would affect a rule the EPA has developed over the 
normal rulemaking process, with notice and comments over many, many, 
many months. It is scheduled to go into effect in May of this year. The 
amendment the Senator is offering, as I understand it, exempts all 
farms from this EPA oilspill regulation. Again, this rule is designed 
to prevent or significantly prevent the pollution of navigable waters 
by oilspills coming from agricultural operations.
  One of the issues here is the definition of what appropriate farm 
should be exempt. As I understand the amendment, it is all farms. That 
includes large agribusinesses that have the capability not only of 
mitigating these hazards but also the resources to do so and, 
collectively, would contribute to environmental quality.
  I know the agricultural community is concerned. And I know also this 
the type of very complicated legislation that is best resolved at the 
authorization level. The Senator from Oklahoma, I think, has already 
indicated there are bills pending, and these bills are much more finely 
attuned in nuance to address more specifically the problem rather than 
a total effective preemption from the rule for all farms.
  So I would urge very strenuously that--and I know the intentions of 
the Senator from Oklahoma are to assist the agricultural community, but 
I do not think this is the place or the time, as we try very seriously 
to get a bill through by the end of the week, essentially, that will 
keep the government operating, to decide on these complicated 
authorization issues, effectively cutting out completely a very serious 
and detailed rulemaking process that the EPA has undertaken.
  So I will urge my colleagues at the appropriate time to resist the 
amendment.
  Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield?
  Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield?
  Go ahead.
  Mr. REED. I will certainly yield.
  Mr. INHOFE. I want to correct and make sure it is clear the 
understanding of what this is. This is something that is in existence 
today, and it is going to be temporarily holding this until the EPA 
will study to see what kind of hardship this is going to be to all the 
Senator's farmers and my farmers. This is not the bill that--I actually 
have a bill that would exclude farmers from this. This is not that 
bill. This merely extends that deadline to give them time to do what 
they had agreed they were going to do in terms of the EPA studying this 
issue.
  I wanted to make sure that clarification was on the Record.
  Mr. REED. I appreciate very much that clarification. But let me 
retain my time and then yield to the Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. If I could ask my colleague a couple questions, if he 
would engage in a colloquy with me.
  Mr. REED. I will yield.
  Mrs. BOXER. I know the Senator from Rhode Island--and I appreciate 
what he said about how sweeping this is. The Senator has the amendment 
in front of him, does he not?
  Mr. REED. I have the amendment, yes.
  Mrs. BOXER. I need to say here, please, colleagues, this is not any 
kind of an extension of time. This says:

       No funds made available under this Act shall be used to 
     implement or enforce with respect to any farm. . . .

  And it goes through the Spill, Prevention, Control, and 
Countermeasure rule.
  Does my colleague read it the way I do? This is not an extension of 
time. This is a prohibition on EPA implementing the rule. Am I correct?
  Mr. REED. I believe the Senator is absolutely correct. There is no 
time extension. One could argue that as this CR runs out maybe this 
provision would run out. But the intent of the bill is clearly that 
there is no money to be expended for any implementation against any 
farm.
  Mrs. BOXER. Exactly.
  Mr. REED. That is the language of the bill.
  Mrs. BOXER. I want to ask my colleague a couple other questions.
  Farmers are exempted if they store less than 1,320 gallons of oil 
aboveground or less than 42,000 gallons underground. That is the rule.
  Is my colleague aware of that?
  Mr. REED. Well, I thank the Senator for bringing that to my attention 
because one point I would make--and I think Senator Inhofe does want to 
engage also--but one point I would make is that in this EPA rulemaking 
process there is a requirement to evaluate the cost and benefits with 
respect to the rule. In that sense, many of these issues have been 
addressed, and they have been done so in a very careful way.
  Two, it has been done by listening to--in fact, requiring legally to 
take the opinions, the comments of many people, stakeholders from all 
sides. And then, frankly, the other cost and the traditional cost to 
protest a rule is not to legislatively eliminate it, particularly in an 
appropriations bill, but

[[Page 3510]]

to contest the rule in court based upon the facts.
  Mrs. BOXER. Will my colleague yield for one more question? I know my 
colleague, Senator Inhofe, wants to speak. By the way, we have a deep 
friendship. But this is something we have never agreed on.
  I want to make a point about the EPA rule. Farmers storing any amount 
of oil, I say to my colleague, are exempted if an oilspill could not 
reasonably be expected to reach rivers and streams.
  My colleague was talking about this as some Draconian rule. The fact 
is, even one quart of oil, used oil, can contaminate up to 2 million 
gallons of drinking water.
  I am a little blindsided on this, I have to say to my friend. If he 
is going to keep on doing these riders on here that threaten the health 
of the American people, I wish he would take it to me and at least give 
me a personal heads up because this is something that is very serious, 
and I will be speaking more on it tomorrow.
  I thank my colleague for yielding.
  Mr. REED. I believe I still have the time.
  Let me make one point. This is a complicated rule that has tried to 
balance various equities--environmental protection, protecting the 
navigable waters of the United States, recognizing small farms or farms 
where in no way their oil could reach down to where it should be 
exempt.
  Here, on the other side, is an amendment that is very broad, open 
ended--no funds, all farms. I think in this context, I would urge my 
colleagues to resist the amendment.
  I think the Senator from Oklahoma wants to speak.
  Mr. INHOFE. Yes. Let me make one comment for clarification.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. We will have the opportunity to look at this closer, as 
the Senator from California suggests, tomorrow. We have talked about 
this in the past. This is extending that May 30 date to the end of the 
fiscal year. As you know, everything that would be an amendment adopted 
on this would expire at the end of the fiscal year. So it is just an 
extension of that time. Because by their own admission, the EPA has not 
had time to listen to the concerns of the farmers. And I am talking 
about farmers in both of your States there as well as my State of 
Oklahoma.
  As far as making the determination as to where the oil might go, I 
think we all know that would be a very difficult thing to do. There has 
been an effort for quite some time to take the word ``navigable'' out, 
which would open it to anywhere.
  So I think perhaps tomorrow we will have time to get into this. I 
really wanted to get it in the queue. I have done that, and we will 
have a chance tomorrow.
  I thank the Senator.
  Mr. REED. If I could reclaim the time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Let me say, I think the Senator's comments are accurate in 
that because the CR terminates on September 30, then because it 
terminates, the CR, this language might go away. But the clear language 
here is not a--and I think that is the point the Senator from 
California made--is not a time-certain extension for the EPA to do 
something. It is: No funds, no farms. And I think there is a reasonable 
concern--that certainly I have--that this will not just be a deliberate 
delay of several months, but this is the intent to stop this law 
indefinitely, as this language was drafted.
  Mr. INHOFE. Look, I would conclude by saying, yes, that would be my 
intent, but not with this legislation. This amendment does not do that. 
I actually do have a bill that I have up that would permanently exempt 
farmers in certain categories from being under the jurisdiction of 
these limitations. But that is not what this is at this time.
  I thank the Senator very much.
  Mr. REED. I thank the Senator from Oklahoma, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               The Budget

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, here in Washington, DC, the budget debate 
is often discussed in terms of abstract numbers and political winners 
and losers. But the truth is that budgets are about far more than that. 
They are about our values and our priorities, and they are about the 
people across the country whose lives are impacted by the decisions we 
make.
  Today the Senate Budget Committee discussed one approach to tackling 
our budget challenges, an approach that, while getting our debt and 
deficits under control, will also create jobs and build a foundation 
for prosperity from the middle out.
  Tomorrow we will continue this discussion and vote on a plan. Then we 
will move this debate here to the Senate floor, and then, hopefully, 
work toward a balanced and bipartisan agreement with the House of 
Representatives, while the American people have a chance to weigh in.
  I believe our budget must meet not just one but many pressing 
challenges of our time. We have come a long way since early 2009 when 
President Obama entered office facing massive deficits and an economy 
that was shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs per month.
  We have made progress toward getting our debt and deficits under 
control, and we have added back jobs, but the recovery is not as strong 
or as fast as it needs to be. Millions of workers continue struggling 
to get back to work, and we still have some very serious challenges 
when it comes to our medium and long-term deficit and debt challenges.
  In the coming weeks and months, we will be asked to make tough 
choices as we work to tackle these challenges responsibly. This process 
is not going to be easy. There is a serious difference of opinion about 
what our government should be doing to keep our economy and our 
national finances moving in the right direction.
  One approach is to follow a path back to the economic policies of the 
last administration. This is the path to more tax cuts for the rich but 
less opportunity for the middle class to get ahead. It is a path not to 
prosperity, which can only truly be built from the middle out, but to 
the deterioration of our national infrastructure and the decline of our 
schools and the dismantling of the Medicare promise we have made to our 
seniors. This approach, in fact, was on the ballot last November. 
Voters around the country rejected it. Instead, they want an approach 
that puts the middle class first, that returns our Nation to the fiscal 
and economic policies that have worked for this country before, by 
focusing on jobs and the economy, cutting spending responsibly, and 
calling on the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share.
  The Senate budget--which we put out today--reflects the progrowth, 
pro-middle class agenda that the American people went to the polls and 
supported in November.
  Our budget is really built on three principles: No. 1, we need to 
protect our fragile economic recovery, create jobs, and invest in long-
term growth. No. 2, we need to tackle our deficit and debt fairly and 
responsibly. And, No. 3, we need to keep the promises we made to our 
Nation's seniors and families and our communities.
  We believe with an unemployment rate that remains stubbornly high and 
a middle class that has seen their wages stagnate for far too long, we 
simply cannot afford any threats to our fragile recovery.
  That is why this budget uses equal amounts of responsible spending 
cuts and new revenue from the wealthiest Americans to fully replace the 
cuts from sequestration--cuts that, by the way, threaten hundreds of 
thousands of jobs this year, and cuts that endanger economic growth for 
years to come, and cuts that are being felt in States such as mine, 
where military families are losing services, local housing officials 
are being forced to cut housing vouchers for the homeless, and 
furloughs are being handed out to those

[[Page 3511]]

 who are cleaning up nuclear waste that threatens our environment.
  The budget we are offering invests in infrastructure and job training 
to get Americans back to work now. It prioritizes education, as well as 
research and development, so that our workforce of today and tomorrow 
has the skills to compete in the 21st century global economy.
  Our budget puts jobs and the economy first and foremost. But it also 
builds on the work we have done over the last 2 years to tackle our 
deficit and debt responsibly.
  Since 2010, Congress and the administration have worked together to 
reduce the deficit by $2.4 trillion--$1.8 trillion coming from spending 
cuts, $600 billion coming from allowing tax rates to rise on the 
wealthiest Americans, which we voted on in the year-end deal.
  The Senate budget takes us the rest of the way to that $4 trillion 
goal and beyond. It builds on the $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction 
already done with an additional $1.85 trillion in new deficit 
reduction, for a total of $4.25 trillion in deficit reduction since the 
Simpson-Bowles report.
  Our budget reduces the deficit to below 3 percent of GDP by 2015 and 
keeps it well below that level for the rest of the 10-year window in a 
responsible way. It pushes down our debt, as a percentage of the 
economy, moving in the right direction. Our budget tackles the deficit 
the way the American people have consistently said they want it done, 
with an equal mix of responsible spending cuts made across the Federal 
budget and new revenue raised by closing loopholes and cutting wasteful 
breaks that primarily benefit the rich.
  This budget cuts spending responsibly by $975 billion, finding 
savings across the budget, including health and defense. It matches 
those responsible spending cuts with $975 billion in new revenue, which 
is raised by closing loopholes and cutting unfair spending in the Tax 
Code for those who need it the least, while locking in tax cuts for the 
middle class and low-income working families and protecting them from 
having to pay a penny more.
  Since we have so far been unable to get a deal because Republicans 
reject using new revenue from the wealthiest to help us reduce the 
deficit, I want to emphasize that there is bipartisan support for 
deficit reduction through making the Tax Code more fair and efficient. 
During the recent fiscal cliff negotiations Speaker Boehner proposed 
that we reduce the deficit by $800 billion by closing what he called 
special interest loopholes and deductions. This budget takes him up on 
that.
  In addition to investing in jobs and economic growth and tackling our 
deficit and debt responsibly, this budget also keeps the promises we 
have made to our seniors, our families, our veterans, and our 
communities. We strongly reject the call to dismantle Medicare by 
voucherizing it because this critical program that seniors and families 
support, paid into, and depend on should be protected. This budget 
takes a responsible, fair approach. It is the one endorsed by 
bipartisan groups and experts. It is the one supported by the vast 
majority of the American people.
  The House of Representatives is also working on their budget 
resolution today. I know there are going to be serious differences 
between the visions and values and priorities within the budgets which 
will emerge from our Chamber and theirs. But the American people are 
going to have an opportunity now to examine these budgets side by side. 
They are going to be able to decide which approach is best for our 
economy, best for our jobs, and best for the middle class. They will 
let us know whether they want to go back down the path of the trickle-
down policies that decimated the middle class and threw our economy 
into a tailspin or if they would prefer the approach we have seen work 
before: to tackle our deficit responsibly, to reinvest in the middle 
class, to build a strong foundation for growth, and to restore the 
promise of American opportunity.
  The Senate budget is a balanced and responsible approach to taking us 
down that second path. I am hopeful the House of Representatives will 
join us at the bargaining table so we can end this gridlock and work 
together toward a responsible and bipartisan budget deal that the 
American people expect and deserve.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, before the Senator leaves the floor, the 
chair of the Budget Committee--first of all, I want to compliment her 
on the work she has done on the Budget Committee. It is indeed 
impressive. I want to compliment her because she is headed for a 
balanced approach, really. Increased revenue. We are not talking about 
rates, we are talking about getting rid of tax break earmarks, earmarks 
that go on not for one group for 1 year but go on indefinitely, such as 
subsidies for corporate jets and sending jobs overseas.
  But the other areas she is looking at are how we can be more frugal 
in our spending, and then a rigorous review of mandatory spending. We 
have to review it to see how we can get more value for our dollar.
  The Senator has championed veteran's health care. She and I know we 
can get more value there. I compliment the Senator on that.
  I am going to ask the Senator a question about timing and process. 
Does the Senator have a time mandate that has been assigned to her to 
complete her bill?
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maryland. First 
of all, let me just say it is truly a pleasure to be on the floor with 
the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. I just remember when the 
Senator and I were here back in 1992, the Year of the Woman, and now 
here we are managing these critical financial bills.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. It is the economic framework for the United States of 
America.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Exactly. Families across the country should be grateful 
for the work the Senator is doing on the appropriations side of the 
committee, which focuses on making sure their kids can go to school, 
that they have the research and investment they need for their health 
care, and so many transportation infrastructure projects that allow 
them to go to work and raise their families in a responsible way.
  I respect and admire the work the Senator is doing right now on a 
very difficult and challenging budget CR that no one wishes looked like 
it does, but we recognize the reality of the task the Senator has been 
given. She is managing it in the best way possible.
  To answer the question, I would tell the Senator that we are in a 
very short timeframe. Our Budget Committee will proceed through the 
amendment process, and tomorrow night pass out our budget after many 
amendments. At that time, our staff will work over the few short days 
they have to have the paperwork ready to lay down our bill on the floor 
of the Senate, hopefully, Monday night. We are under a very constricted 
timeframe. It is the one piece of legislation that comes before this 
body like that with 50 hours of debate and multiple amendments. We need 
to finish that before we can leave for the April break.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Well, I want to share the Senator's sense of urgency to 
get her bill done. In order for her to get her bill done, I need to get 
my bill done. I want to pledge my cooperation, and I believe that of my 
vice chairman, Senator Shelby. We have a sense of urgency to move our 
bill because we must take it over to the House. There, we have a 
deadline that is a Draconian one: If we do not have a continuing 
funding resolution passed before the Easter-Passover break, we will 
face a government shutdown. That is horrific in terms of our economy 
and the people who want the U.S. Government to govern itself. It is 
also one more sign that we have a problem governing. I say that 
because, while the Senator is marking up her bill tomorrow, we want to 
move through here so that we are done.
  I would like to have this bill done tomorrow. There are those who 
have obligations in their States and even at an international 
conference. I would like

[[Page 3512]]

to support that, but Senator Shelby and I need support too. So we do 
not doubt people offering amendments, we do not question their content 
or their policy, but we have timing and process.
  Our bill is not meant to be ``pin the tail on the donkey.'' It is not 
meant to solve every problem the U.S. Government has. Our job is to 
keep the continuing resolution.
  I want to say to the Senator, while, speaking to a much larger 
audience, I know there is pent frustration not to be able to offer 
amendments and debate. We are doing that. You win some, you lose some. 
That is called the Senate. I want the Senator to know we want to work 
with her so that we do not interfere in her work. But I believe one of 
the ways we can get to the budget, which is the real framework for how 
we can even vitiate sequester, is to get out our bill, meaning the 
continuing funding resolution.
  So I want to compliment the Senator on her work. I pledge to support 
it, but I ask the support of all of the other 98 of our colleagues. 
Let's look at what we need to get done on the continuing funding 
resolution, not what we would like to get done.
  Mrs. MURRAY. If the Senator from Maryland, the chairman of our 
Appropriations Committee, would yield for a minute, I want to back her 
up on that. I know there are probably 8,000 amendments that can be 
offered to this because nobody is happy with the fact that we are faced 
with a continuing resolution that does not reflect the needs of all of 
our communities. I know she did not come here to debate process or to 
be the mother of Senators and get them over here to offer amendments. I 
know where her passion is. It is fitting for her kids and families and 
communities in Maryland. That is what she wants to get back to.
  If we can get past this and put the CR in place, swallow hard and 
then get our budget done and work toward a process of a bipartisan 
budget, we need to do that so we can then give the Senator the ability 
to put the Appropriations Committee bills together. They will come out 
here and we will be able to offer amendments and people will have their 
say about the spending of the future. We cannot get to that unless we 
get that work done.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. That is right. An open and transparent process in that 
legislation that we put together over a weekend, 571 pages. Senators 
McCain and Coburn were right, but I could not do any more because I did 
not get it from the House until Thursday. So, again, I am not here to 
debate process, but I am the prodder of the process. So I am out here 
prodding and pleading: Please, let's get a simple, contained order of 
amendments. We thank the other side of the aisle. They are working with 
us.
  In terms of the floor staff who is working on this, we need the 
cooperation of the Senators.
  Mrs. MURRAY. I would back up the Senator and urge Senators to, 
please, finish this product, move on to our budget next week, and get 
that done. Then we can get to the point that America will respect the 
work of this body and not lurch from crisis to crisis as the Senator 
has outlined and get back to focusing on the policies those families 
she cares about and represents so well want her here for.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Absolutely. I see my colleague from Maryland, such an 
able and active Member, a member of the Finance Committee that is known 
to make a contribution. We want him to make a couple of trillion 
dollars' worth of contributions, as a matter of fact.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, let me thank my colleague from Maryland, 
Senator Mikulski. I was listening to the exchange between Senator 
Murray and Senator Mikulski. I just want to concur in their comments. 
We need to act on H.R. 933, the amendments offered by Senator Mikulski 
and Senator Shelby. It is important for us to move forward on this for 
several reasons.
  First, we are over 5 months into the fiscal year. We need to enact 
the fiscal year 2013 budget. If we are going to the fiscal year 2014 
budget, we have to get past the fiscal year 2013 budget. So it is 
critically important that we pass the continuing resolution omnibus 
bill, send it back to the House, and, hopefully, reconcile those 
differences very quickly because we only have a few more days to get 
this enacted in order to make sure government continues, but just as 
importantly to give predictability to our agencies for the next 7 
months.
  We are very close to getting that done. I urge my colleagues to 
cooperate as the chairperson of the Appropriations Committee, Senator 
Mikulski, has said. I certainly strongly support the work that has been 
done. I thank Senator Mikulski and Senator Shelby for bringing us 
together in a way that I would hope the Senate would operate, that we 
work together, Democrats and Republicans, come together on a bill, and 
move that legislation.
  Having said that, I must tell you I share the frustration that 
Senator Mikulski talked about. There are provisions that are not 
included in this legislation that I would like to see included, and 
there are some provisions that are included that I would like to see 
not included. Let me talk about one of the provisions that is included 
that I regret is there. That is the provision that would extend the pay 
freeze for our Federal workforce through the remainder of the current 
budget year, fiscal year 2013.
  I am proud to represent the people of Maryland in the Senate, along 
with my colleague Senator Mikulski. We represent 130,000 Federal 
workers. That is about 5.6 percent of the Maryland workforce who are 
Federal workers. These are public servants. These are people who are on 
the frontline. These are people who are providing critical services 
every day to the people of this country.
  A couple of weeks ago, I was at the National Institutes of Health. I 
had a chance to talk to the workforce there. What they are doing is 
critically important to the people of this country. I could tell you 
that the basic research they do is critically important to a lot of 
companies in the creation of jobs. That is absolutely true.
  I will tell you the story of one individual I happened to meet. One 
of the scientists there took me to the program on which they are 
working. The work they are doing is in the field of research on renal 
cancer. The reason I say this is I had a chance to meet with one of the 
individuals who is in the program. He comes from a different State and 
was diagnosed a while ago with having a form of renal cancer with no 
cure. He was told by his doctor that he had basically two choices: We 
can treat you with the only technology we know here or at any facility 
in the country--and you have 6 months to live--or you may participate 
in an NIH program where they are looking at alternative ways to treat 
this form of renal cancer. This person chose the latter course, 
traveled to Bethesda, MD, and participated in the program. They 
discovered for this form of cancer a drug therapy that will stop the 
growth of the cancer cells. He is now living a somewhat more normal 
life with hope of survival. He didn't have that just a few months ago.
  When I spoke with this person about what he felt about sequestration 
or about government shutdowns, do you know what he told me? He said: I 
never thought I would need government. I was working. I never thought I 
would need government. NIH needs the money we give them. It helped save 
my life, and it helped develop the type of scientific base we need in 
this country.
  This story could be told many times over. They need the 
predictability of a budget. They need the legislation Senator Mikulski 
is promoting, which will give them funding for the remainder of this 
year so they can continue their critically important work.
  I visited the Social Security Administration a week ago and met a lot 
of hard-working Federal workers who were trying to send Social Security 
benefits to those who need them. We have people with disabilities 
trying to get a disability determination to receive a check. There is a 
delay in getting this done--a delay that will only become longer if the 
Social Security

[[Page 3513]]

Administration doesn't have the people it needs in order to process 
those claims.
  I could mention many other agencies--NSA and the critical work they 
do in cyber security. These are the best mathematicians in the world 
who are Federal workers serving in the most noble of public service. 
This includes Departments such as NIST, National Institute of Standards 
and Technology, which develops technology needs for our future, and the 
work done at FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, on food safety.
  These are all people working in my State of Maryland for a Federal 
agency as Federal workers. They are getting the job done for the people 
of this country and deserve our support. They have already sacrificed 
and have seen budgets that have shrunk. There are fewer people working, 
and their mission has increased--more work, fewer workers. They have 
now been through 2 years--which will now increase to 3--of a pay 
freeze. This translates into a $90 billion contribution to the deficit 
problems of this country. This is what the Federal workers have done.
  Quite frankly, I find it disappointing that a very modest pay 
adjustment for a 7-month period--a .5 percent, one-half of 1 percent 
increase, which was in the President's budget--was held off for the 
first 5 months and will now be held off for the remainder of this year. 
I think this is wrong. That pay adjustment should have gone forward. I 
regret that it is not included in the legislation we will act on.
  The Federal workforce will have additional sacrifices because this 
continuing resolution on the omnibus bill incorporates the lower 
numbers caused by these across-the-board cuts by sequestration. As a 
result of that, many of our Federal workers will be getting furlough 
notices. What does a furlough notice mean? That means as many as 1 day 
out of 5 they will be asked to not show up for work, which translates 
into a 20-percent pay cut, and some possibly 1 out of every 10 days, 
which is a 10-percent pay cut. If you have a mortgage payment to make 
or your utility bills to pay, creditors are not going to accept the 
fact that it can be 10 percent less because you have been furloughed 1 
day out of every 10 days.
  Our Federal workers will even do more, and I think we need to 
acknowledge that not by just saying ``you are doing a great job at 
public service'' but by giving them the support they need. I hope that 
as we move forward on the budget considerations for fiscal year 2014, 
we will take into consideration the sacrifices already made by our 
Federal workforce and give them the support they need to get the job 
done for the people of this country.
  There are provisions which were left out of this continuing 
resolution omnibus bill which I think should have been included. Let me 
support Senator Harkin and the amendment he has pending, which would 
basically put into the continuing resolution the work that was done 
during regular order by the Appropriations Committee on the Labor-HHS 
appropriations bill. It really accepts regular order. It doesn't 
increase the total at all; it just adjusts the money that was spent in 
fiscal year 2012 to the committee priorities established in fiscal year 
2013. In other words, it establishes regular order with the same 
appropriation dollars in order to update the spending in the agencies 
under the committee's jurisdiction. This makes sense.
  Let me give you one example, and I could give you many others. I 
spoke about the National Institutes of Health. I spoke about how 
valuable the work is that they accomplish. Well, as a result of budget 
reductions, they may now only approve about one out of every seven 
grants. They make grants to our universities and to groups who work to 
find answers for these diseases. They only now may do one out of every 
seven. As was explained to me by Dr. Collins, they must choose between 
the really great grants that are submitted and the great, great grants 
that are submitted. They can take only a few of the really great 
projects that are out there.
  We need to do better. Senator Harkin's amendment would increase the 
amount of money going to NIH by about $140 million. Once again, it 
doesn't change the overall totals; it adjusts the priorities from 
fiscal year 2013 to fiscal year 2014. I urge my colleagues to support 
the Harkin amendment to enable an agency such as NIH to receive the 
help needed without affecting the overall spending of this Nation.
  I really do look forward to us working together, Democrats and 
Republicans, in the national interest to compromise in a bipartisan 
manner. This is what we need to do. This is exactly what Senator 
Mikulski and Senator Shelby have done in bringing forward this 
legislation. It deserves our support.
  I listened to Senator Murray, as I know we will be voting on a budget 
next week for fiscal year 2014. What we need to do is work together, 
Democrats and Republicans, let these bills go to conference, work 
together and bring out a budget that represents the best for our Nation 
to move forward.
  What I hear most from the people of Maryland is that they want us to 
make decisions. They need the predictability of a budget. We can give 
them that for our current year by the enactment of the bill that is 
currently before us, and then we could give them the predictability 
they need for the future decisions of our Nation by approving in a 
bipartisan manner the budget for fiscal year 2014. I would hope we 
could do that also as this would clearly be in the best interests of 
our Nation.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Heinrich). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we began a markup on the budget today. 
It is the first time in 3 years the Budget Committee has actually met 
to begin to mark up a bill. We had opening statements today. We made 
opening statements before we saw the chairman's mark, and the mark was 
produced later after the opening statements were completed.
  Tomorrow we will have a markup on the budget and it will be 1 day, 
and amendments will all be completed tomorrow. There will be several 
interruptions, but the determination is to finish, which, of course, is 
contrary to what we would like to have happen. The Republican members 
of the committee asked that we have a week set aside and we do opening 
statements beginning Monday or Tuesday and that we actually have 
amendments up during a normal process and be able to actually engage in 
the kind of debate I think would be helpful for the financial future of 
our country. The chair and the Democratic majority decided we would 
just do opening statements this afternoon and we would do all the 
amendments tomorrow and we will complete tomorrow regardless. So that 
is where we are.
  I am glad we do have a budget being brought forward. If it is brought 
to the floor, it will be the first time in 4 years the Democratic 
majority has brought a budget to the floor. This is in violation of 
plain law, statutory code of the United States, 1974, requiring a 
budget be passed every year and brought forward. They refused to do so. 
The majority leader said it was foolish to bring a budget. What he 
meant was it was foolish politically. Surely he wouldn't contend it is 
foolish for America that the Democratic leadership in the Senate bring 
up a budget. Surely it would be good for the country to do this every 
year, as the law requires. But that is where we have been. So we are 
glad.
  The House passed earlier this year a bill that said no budget, then 
no pay. It said, Congress, if you don't pass a budget, at least out of 
your own House, then you don't get paid. So that picked up the pace, 
apparently, and we have a budget, although the President has not 
submitted his budget. Amazingly, I think it is the first time in 90 
years, somebody said--the first time certainly in my memory--the 
President of the United States, who is required by law to have the 
budget in by February 4,

[[Page 3514]]

has waited for the House, which is marking up a budget today, and the 
Senate to do their budget first. That goes against what mayors and city 
councils do and Governors do. But that is where we are.
  I will tell you one thing that we have learned in the short time we 
have had the budget that I think defines a lot about where our majority 
wants the country to go. Over 10 years, this budget--at a time of a 
dangerous fiscal crisis--spends more--$640-some-odd billion more--than 
the current law we passed about 20 months ago in August of 2011. We 
agreed to the Budget Control Act. We agreed to a certain amount of 
money that we would spend and no more. The President signed it and both 
parties in the House and Senate agreed to it. But what happens? Here we 
are with their proposing a budget that will spend more money than we 
agreed to spend just a few months ago.
  The worst thing about this is that the Budget Control Act did not go 
far enough. We should have reduced spending more. In addition to that, 
it looks as though there will be about $1 trillion in new taxes in this 
budget. So it is tax more and spend more. It is the wrong direction for 
America.
  People say: Well, that is just politics; what is the matter with you 
guys. Why can't you reach an agreement? It is hard to reach an 
agreement when the country is on an unsustainable debt path that puts 
us in danger of financial crisis; a path that is already slowing growth 
down in our country. Agreeing to a budget that continues down this path 
is not the right thing to do. So I am deeply disappointed that we are 
in this fix.
  I wish we had had an opportunity in committee to really have a lot of 
discussion about it back and forth, because there are good Democratic 
members of our committee, talented members, good Republican members, 
talented members, who bring so much to the discussion. But it was just 
both sides talking today. Some good statements were made but not the 
kind of engagement we would like to have had. So that is a 
disappointment.
  Under the current baseline we are on, according to the Congressional 
Budget Office, in the tenth year of this budget we are dealing with 
right now--the Budget Control Act--interest on our debt will be $850 
billion--$850 billion in interest payments for 1 year on the money we 
have borrowed--the almost $17 trillion we have borrowed. This is why it 
is such a dangerous thing. The highway bill is $40 billion or $50 
billion a year, aid to education may be $100 billion.
  I am saying that in just a few years, because we have run up 
unnecessarily so much debt, that interest will be $900 billion. That 
will be more than the Defense Department by far. The Defense 
Department's base budget is about $540 billion, and it is actually 
being cut. Interest will be the largest growing item in the budget.
  Food stamps went from $20 billion a decade ago to $80 billion. I just 
left my farmers, who came up from Alabama, and we were talking about 
that. The farm bill is about $100 billion a year. Of that farm bill, 
$80 billion of it is the food stamp budget. It has gone up four times. 
The $20 billion that goes to farmers, in aid and insurance, actually 
was cut this year, but nothing was cut out of food stamps. They 
resisted that, and rejected even a modest amendment I offered to end a 
clear abuse which wouldn't have hurt anybody. I guess what I am saying 
is we are in serious business here and we have to get off the debt 
course we are on.
  Erskine Bowles, who was appointed by President Obama to head the 
fiscal commission, along with Alan Simpson--the Simpson-Bowles 
Commission--said this Nation has never faced a more predictable 
financial crisis. What he was saying was, if we don't get off the debt 
path we are on, we are going to have a financial collapse. They didn't 
say exactly what, but something like Greece, something like we had in 
2007, throwing our country back into a recession, which would be a very 
dangerous thing. It was a bipartisan warning to us that we needed to 
act, and we haven't acted since then, and that was over 2 years ago.
  We haven't done anything. So a lot of people are saying and you have 
heard it said that we have to act because we are worried about our 
children and our grandchildren. And we should be worried about the debt 
that is out there for our children and grandchildren.
  Senator Kelly Ayotte from New Hampshire put a picture up in our 
Budget Committee today of her two children, ages 5 and 8, and she had 
one with $1,100,000 on that child's picture, and the younger one had 
$1,300,000 on her picture. That is what was calculated will be the 
share of the Nation's debt that they will carry when they are adults. 
This is wrong. We should not--must not--do this to our children and 
grandchildren. It was not done to us. Our parents left us with a 
country much more responsibly managed than this.
  We have never, ever had a situation in which we have had four 
consecutive years of deficits amounting to $1.2 trillion a year. Never. 
Oh, President Bush spent too much. Yes, he did. He deserves some 
criticism. I think he does deserve some criticism. The year before he 
left office, his deficit was $161 billion; his last year was $470 
billion. For the last 4 years, we have averaged $1.2 trillion, and it 
is systemic and it is deep and it has to be changed.
  Now, there is one more thing I really would like for my colleagues to 
focus on, and I will wrap up with this point, but it is really 
important. The question is: When you have debt equal to $17 trillion, 
does it impact the economy now? Yes. It puts us at risk for some sort 
of fiscal crisis. If there is a collapse in Europe, a collapse in 
Japan, a collapse in China, it could kick us off into a major financial 
disaster in the United States. It is a very fragile situation.
  But the question is: Does the debt we have now slow growth today? I 
think that is a really important issue, and so we have done the 
research.
  The issue was originally raised by Rogoff and Reinhart. They have 
done a number of studies and wrote a big book about all the nations 
that have gone into default and have had a debt crisis over the last 
200 years. It is a thoroughly respected work of two highly competent 
and proven, respected economists. What they concluded was that when 
debt reaches 90 percent of the size of your economy, you slow economic 
growth by 1 to 2 percent.
  Where are we now? A lot of people have been using the ``public debt 
of the United States.'' That is one way to calculate it, and our public 
debt represents about 76 percent of our gross domestic product. But the 
other debt that we use, the one you have seen most often, is the $16 
trillion figure that has the numbers spinning on it--$16 trillion is 
what is called the gross debt. A lot of people seem to think we are not 
in danger because Rogoff and Reinhart were talking about the public 
debt. That is not so. We have examined their work, and we have examined 
their footnotes and their reports and analysis. It is the gross debt. 
That is what they were using; that is what they calculated. We are at 
104 percent gross debt, so we are well over the 90.
  I would contend that the reason our economy has failed to meet, for 
the last 3 years, the growth expectations that were out there is 
because our debt is dragging us down now. And there are hundreds of 
thousands--millions of Americans who are probably out of work today 
because of the debt drag.
  We need to get off this path, and the budget the majority moves in 
our committee gets us nowhere off this path. It never brings our gross 
debt below 90 percent or 94 percent of GDP, and we haven't finished the 
analysis of it.
  In addition, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central 
Bank, the International Settlements Bank--all three have done similar 
studies with a little different approach, and they all reach the same 
conclusion. What they have concluded is that however you calculate the 
debt, the United States is already above the line where growth is 
slowed.
  I think it was 2 years ago that the Congressional Budget Office--our 
nonpartisan group who makes projections for our debt and finances in 
the future--calculated that this year, 2013,

[[Page 3515]]

we would have 4.6 percent growth. They predicted a much higher growth 
last year than the 2.2 percent we got the year before that, and they 
missed the previous year. They missed 3 consecutive years, predicting 
higher growth than occurred. And growth means a lot.
  White House economic expert Christina Romer has estimated that a 1-
percent growth in the economy--a difference between 2 and 3 percent--
means you would create 1 million jobs to have 3 percent growth rather 
than 2 percent growth. That is what growth does to job creation, to 
wages, the possibility of getting raises, getting more wages, more 
overtime, perhaps, more bonuses, because the economy is growing. And if 
it is not growing, our workers are hurting.
  So in our vision--I think the members of the Republican side of this 
Budget Committee--we are united in the belief that we can bring this 
budget under control and we can balance it.
  Now, I have to tell you, the budget Chairman Murray produced tonight 
does not balance ever. It never balances. They say it is a balanced 
approach. They even said a couple times that it is a balanced budget, 
in our hearing. All they were trying to do was use the word 
``balance,'' I think maybe--surely not but perhaps--they were hoping 
people would hear them say they have a balanced budget, which comes 
nowhere close to balance. With $500 billion, $600 billion, $700 billion 
of deficit out there for years and years, it never balances. 
Congressman Ryan made his budget public, openly, a day before he 
commenced his hearing, and it balances in 10 years.
  This is the deal. There is good and bad news in what I am saying. The 
good news is that we can increase spending every year by 3.4 percent 
and the budget will balance. The path we are on, the CBO current 
baseline projects us increasing spending each year at 5.4 or 5.6 
percent. So if you reduce that growth instead of growing at that level, 
you grow at 3.4 percent, the budget will balance. And 3.4 percent is 
higher than what the Congressional Budget Office says inflation will 
be. They say it is about 2.2 percent; it will be about 25 percent over 
10 years. So you can increase spending over 10 years by 40 percent 
above the inflation rate, and the budget will balance. You just can't 
keep increasing it by 5.4 or 5.6 percent.
  It is critical for America that we get on the right course. So this 
is deeply troubling to me. I know we can do this. It is not that hard.
  But here is the bad news and why it is painful a bit to get there; 
that is, because more than half of our budget now is the entitlement 
programs and interest. As I said, interest on the debt--you have to pay 
it. You really can't cut the interest except by reducing your debt. And 
there is no balanced budget in the short-term future, so the interest 
is going up at a solid rate.
  Then you have our big entitlement programs. You have Medicare, you 
have Social Security, and then you have some large ones--Medicaid, 
which is a surging program growing at 8 percent a year, projected to 
increase by 117 percent over 10 years, and then food stamps is 
considered to be an entitlement. You put all those entitlements 
together and you have a problem. Those are in law. And ``entitlement'' 
means that if your income is at a certain level, your age is a certain 
age, you are entitled to the benefit that the law gives you whether the 
government has any money or not. Congress doesn't have to appropriate 
it. The government has to go out and borrow the money if they don't 
change the law.
  So we need a plan to change Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, 
and some of the other entitlement programs in a way that saves them 
from the financial disaster they are headed toward, puts them on a 
sound path, and actually begin to restore the finances of America.
  There is still waste, fraud, and abuse in the remaining part of the 
government. There are still programs that don't do any good for the 
money they get. There is still money spent on projects that should 
never have money spent on them from Washington, DC, and they ought to 
be eliminated. But to slow growth from 5.4 percent a year to 3.4 
percent a year, we need to touch a little bit of everything. And 
spending will still go up. That is the good news. We can still spend 
more, but we just can't spend it quite at the increased rate we are on.
  Some people say: Why don't you balance it now? Why are you talking 
about waiting 10 years?
  We probably should do it sooner than 10 years. But I think it is a 
realistic appeal to Democrats and Republicans alike--let's get on this 
path, this path that is not too hard to achieve what would be fabulous 
for America.
  Two things. First, I believe that if we were to pass a budget that 
would be on the path to balance in 10 years, we would feel some 
economic growth that we have never felt before. Investors worldwide, 
investors in the United States, and businesses would feel so much 
better about our country. I really think that is true. Second, we would 
reduce the huge debt hanging over us that is already slowing down 
growth. Those two things we can accomplish.
  I don't know where we will go. We will pass a budget out of 
committee, I am sure, on a party-line vote. Maybe it will pass here on 
the Senate floor by a party-line vote, and then it will go to 
conference. I don't know, maybe Speaker Boehner or Chairman Ryan's 
budget will match up with the Democratic budget out of the Senate, and 
maybe something good will happen for America and we can reach some sort 
of agreement. But we cannot tax our way out of this. We can't keep 
increasing spending, for heaven's sake. We need to reduce the growth of 
spending to a level that is reasonable and can put us on a path to 
balance.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise today in support of an 
amendment that I have filed, along with Vice Chairman Chambliss, to the 
appropriations bill now on the floor, which will address a unique 
problem the intelligence community faces in applying the sequester 
reductions to the National Intelligence Program, NIP, budget.
  In short, this amendment would ensure that the intelligence 
community--which has to be as predictive and agile as possible--will 
have the same level of flexibility in implementing budget cuts as the 
Department of Defense, where most of its budget is located. Without 
this relief, the intelligence community will be far less discriminating 
in how it adjusts personnel and financial resources to address the 
dynamic and unforeseen threats our Nation will face in the upcoming 
months.
  This is a commonsense amendment. It does not cost a dime, and it will 
likely avoid a great deal of harm to our intelligence capabilities.
  Let me briefly describe the background and how the amendment would 
work.
  As has been described many times, the terms of the sequestration 
require that the same level of budget cuts apply across the board. That 
is, departments and agencies have to apply the same percentage cut 
across each account.
  It therefore becomes very important how those accounts are defined. 
If the account is very large, a manager has more leeway to prioritize 
funding and cut the least important, or the least urgent, needs. By 
contrast, if the account is defined as being smaller, there is less 
flexibility to cut funding responsibly, and more important programs 
will suffer.
  Because of language included in the Fiscal Year 2012 Defense 
Appropriations Act, however, the intelligence community must apply the 
sequester in a highly restrictive way. That legislation required that 
the definition of an account for sequestration in the intelligence 
community is at something known as the Programs, Projects, and 
Activities--known as PPA--level. The intelligence community's budget 
has 685 PPAs, and each will need to be cut equally. The most 
problematic of these PPAs for the intelligence agencies are the 354 
PPAs within the intelligence agencies' Operations and Maintenance, O&M, 
accounts. These are the accounts which fund current operations and 
salaries.
  The overall Department of Defense budget is roughly 10 times that of 
the

[[Page 3516]]

intelligence community, but it has only 3 times more PPAs--in other 
words, it has relatively fewer accounts that are affected by 
sequestration, and thus greater flexibility to absorb the sequester 
cuts, since they can be applied within larger budget accounts.
  This amendment would help alleviate this problem by permitting the 
agencies in the intelligence community that are funded by the Defense 
Appropriations bill to use the same definition of what constitutes a 
Program, Project, and Activity Account as the Defense Department when 
applying sequestration reductions to its O&M accounts. This specific 
change will reduce the number of these PPAs from 354 to 5 and will not 
affect other PPAs. No budget outside of the intelligence community is 
affected--we simply provide these intelligence agencies with the same 
level of flexibility as the Pentagon.
  In times like today, where the threats are neither static nor 
predictable, I ask that my colleagues approve this amendment so that 
the intelligence community may be nimble and responsive to the dangers 
our Nation faces.
  This is not a simple budgetary matter. How the cuts of sequestration 
are applied makes a great deal of difference in practical terms.
  Just yesterday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and 
other intelligence agency heads testified at the Senate Select 
Committee on Intelligence's hearing on Current and Projected National 
Security Threats to the United States. They described the numerous, 
complex, and interrelated threats we face. Director Clapper noted ``how 
quickly and radically the world--and our threat environment--are 
changing.'' He stated there is an increasing risk to U.S. critical 
infrastructure from cyber attacks, in particular from isolated state or 
non-state actors using less sophisticated but still effective 
techniques that are more prevalent today. I ask unanimous consent that 
an excerpt from this transcript be printed in the Record at the 
conclusion of my remarks.
  The terrorist threat continues to become more diffuse since the al-
Qa'ida core leadership has been degraded and its affiliates in the 
Arabian Peninsula and Africa look to fill that void and strike against 
the United States. Countries like Iran and North Korea continue their 
efforts to develop ever more deadly weapons of mass destruction, and 
look to market them to counter their failing economies. And, the 
instability in the Middle East and North Africa that has grown since 
the Arab spring continues to create more dangers and potential 
flashpoints in countries that 3 years ago were not assessed to have 
such risks.
  In the past 6 months, it has been clear that the intelligence 
community needs to surge additional resources to collect and analyze 
intelligence on Northern Africa. Our policymakers need more and better 
information to deal with instability and terrorist activities in Libya, 
Mali, and Algeria. Under sequestration, however, agencies would be 
limited to do so. The same needs apply to address threats that emanate 
from Iran, North Korea, Syria, and cyberspace, to name just a few.
  There is no doubt that the intelligence community can reduce spending 
and contribute to the Governmentwide reductions. But to strip it of all 
flexibility to cut programs and personnel across the board makes no 
sense.
  If our intelligence agencies are to absorb the cuts required by 
sequestration, our Nation's security would be better served by 
providing the intelligence community with the flexibility it needs to 
implement cuts in as responsible and thoughtful way under these 
circumstances.
  The changes my amendment seeks are necessary to help the intelligence 
community adapt to a changing world as the sequestration reductions are 
implemented. I understand there may be concerns with how the other 
chamber will view this amendment, but I believe that our counterparts 
on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence--Chairman Mike 
Rogers and Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger--support making these 
changes to help intelligence agencies succeed in their mission.
  Finally, Mr. President, let me make clear that this amendment is 
intended, and I believe does, have no effect on the visibility that 
Congress has in how the intelligence community will make budget 
reductions due to sequestration or with how these agencies reprogram 
funds. The only thing affected by the amendment is the size of the 
accounts from which sequestered funds must be taken.
  On behalf of myself and Vice Chairman Chambliss, I urge adoption of 
the amendment.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

Excerpts From the Testimony of Director of National Intelligence James 
Clapper, Before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, March 12, 
                                  2013

       In my considered judgment as the nation's senior 
     intelligence officer, sequestration jeopardizes our nation's 
     safety and security. And this jeopardy will increase over 
     time. The National Intelligence Program, or NIP as it's 
     called, which I manage is spread across six cabinet 
     departments, and two independent agencies. Much of it is 
     included in the DOD budget. For that portion of the NIP, the 
     Congress directed that the National Intelligence Program use 
     an even more onerous set of rules to carry out these cuts 
     than that imposed on the Defense Department.
       This restrictive Program Project and Activity, or PPA, 
     structure as it's known, compounds the damage because it 
     restricts our ability to manage where to take deductions in a 
     balanced, and rational way. Accordingly the sheer size of the 
     budget cut, well over $4 billion, or about 7 percent of the 
     NIP will directly compel us to do less, with less. Some 
     examples, and I'll have to be circumspect here, in a--in an 
     open, unclassified setting, and we're prepared to speak more 
     specifically in a classified setting, of the impacts of 
     sequestration.
       We'll reduce human technical, and counter intelligence 
     operations resulting in fewer collection opportunities while 
     increasing the risk of strategic surprise. This includes for 
     example, possibly furloughing thousands of FBI employees 
     funded in the National Intelligence Program. Our cyber 
     efforts will be impacted. This is an area where, as you all 
     know, we must--we need to keep ahead of rapid technology 
     advances to maintain and increase access to adversaries as 
     well as provide warning of a cyber attack against the U.S.
       Critical analysis and tools will be cut back. So we'll 
     reduce global coverage, and may risk missing the early signs 
     of a threat. Our response to customers will suffer as well. 
     We'll let go over five thousand contractors, and that number 
     may grow, who are an integral part of the intelligence 
     community, and this is on top of the thousands of contractors 
     we've let go in previous years. We'll delay major systems 
     acquisitions, and decommission older, but still productive 
     overhead reconnaissance capabilities, thus reducing coverage. 
     Virtually all of the 39 major systems acquisitions across the 
     intelligence community would be wounded.
       We'll have to re-negotiate contracts and slip schedules to 
     the right, which in the long run, will cost us more. And 
     we'll scale back cutting edge research that helps us maintain 
     a strategic advantage. Since we're already halfway through 
     the fiscal year, the mandate of across the board cuts are 
     equivalent to 13 percent, because we'll be forced to take 
     them in just seven months. These condensed timelines magnify 
     the impact these cuts will have on the I.C. So in response, 
     our approach starts with the premise that mission comes 
     first. Therefore, our two highest priorities are: One, to 
     protect our most valuable resource, our civilian workforce so 
     we can focus on the threats we face. And two to support 
     overseas operations.
       Our civilian workforce works 24/7 around the world and is 
     crucial to performing that mission. It is our civilian 
     professionals who will provide the resilience and ingenuity 
     to help compensate for the other cuts we'll incur. I am 
     resolutely committed to minimizing the number, and lengths of 
     furloughs that would be required, not only because of the 
     direct impact on our mission because of the severe impact on 
     the morale of the people who do it. I plan to follow Deputy 
     Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter's sterling example, and have 
     my pay reduced as well in solidarity with any I.C. employees 
     that have to be furloughed.
       Now let me emphasize here that we are not arguing against 
     taking our share of the budget reductions. What I am saying 
     is we must manage this budget crisis, and continue our vital 
     missions. And in so doing, we'll minimize the impact on our 
     nation, and on our employees. Therefore, I plan to submit a 
     reprogramming action that mitigates some of the most 
     egregious cuts to help us cut in a more rational mission 
     focused manner. And in this, I'm asking for your support, and 
     the other intelligence oversight committees for expedited 
     management and consideration.

[[Page 3517]]

       And Madam Chairman I want to on behalf of the entire 
     intelligence community, thank you for your leadership and 
     your care for the mission of the intelligence community, and 
     introducing a bill that would give us that flexibility. Now I 
     must tell you that, unfortunately, I've seen this movie 
     before. 20 years ago I served as director of Defense 
     Intelligence Agency, the job that Lieutenant General Mike 
     Flynn has right now. We were then enjoying to reap the peace 
     dividend occasioned by the end of the Cold War.
       We reduced the intelligence community by 23 percent. During 
     the mid to late '90s, we closed many CIA stations, reduced 
     human collectors, cut analysts, allowed our overhead 
     architecture to atrophy, and we neglected basic 
     infrastructure needs, such as power, space, and cooling. And 
     we let our facilities decay. And most damaging, most 
     devastatingly we badly distorted the workforce. All of that 
     of course was--was reversed in the wake of 9/11, and thanks 
     to the support of the Congress over the last decade, we 
     rebuilt the intelligence community into the premier in such 
     capability on the planet.
       And now if we're not careful, we risk another damaging 
     downward spiral. So I'm going to do all I can to prevent 
     history from repeating that cycle. But to be clear, the--the 
     scope and magnitude of the cuts already underway will be long 
     lasting. Unlike more directly observable sequestration 
     impacts, like shorter hours of public parks, or longer 
     security lines at airports, the degradation to intelligence 
     will be insidious. It will be gradual and almost invisible, 
     unless and until, of course we have an intelligence failure.

  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise to speak on an amendment I have 
offered with my colleague from Colorado, Senator Udall, but before I do 
so, I want to commend the senior Senators from Maryland and Alabama, 
Senators Mikulski and Shelby, for putting forth a bipartisan proposal 
to prevent a government shutdown, and to congratulate them both on 
their new roles as Chairwoman and Vice Chairman of the Senate 
Appropriations Committee. I look forward to working with both of them 
as we complete work on the fiscal year 2013 funding bills and begin the 
fiscal year 2014 budget process.
  I also want to thank my friend from Colorado, Senator Udall, for 
working with me to develop this bipartisan amendment, which is based on 
a stand- alone bill that we introduced last week.
  Our amendment would help mitigate the harmful effects of the 
indiscriminate across-the-board cuts, known as sequestration, which 
took effect on March 1.
  Our amendment would not reverse the automatic spending reductions, 
but would empower the heads of Federal agencies and departments to set 
priorities and implement the cuts in a smarter way.
  Without this amendment, sequestration will be applied without 
distinction between high and low priority programs, programs that have 
a proven track record of success and those that should be reduced or 
eliminated.
  To ensure appropriate Congressional oversight, the amendment requires 
agency heads to submit their spending proposals to the House and Senate 
Appropriations Committees for approval.
  This Congressional oversight is an important step in the process 
because the Appropriations Committees know the budget of each agency 
inside and out. This review process also provides a strong incentive 
for each department or agency to put forth a serious plan if it wants 
to avoid the across-the-board cuts that would otherwise take effect.
  Mr. President, this is an approach that our intelligence community 
has requested. The Nation's senior intelligence officer, Director 
Clapper, testified yesterday before the Intelligence Committee that 
sequestration jeopardizes our Nation's safety and security and that the 
across-the-board nature of the cuts compounds the damage by limiting 
``our ability to manage where to take deductions in a balanced, and 
rational way.'' His plea was for flexibility, saying ``All we're asking 
for is the latitude on how to take them to minimize the damage.''
  The Udall-Collins amendment would provide that needed flexibility to 
the intelligence community and other areas of our government, and I 
urge my colleagues to support the amendment.
  Finally, I would like to note how pleased I am that the legislation 
currently before the Senate includes full-year funding bills for a 
number of departments and agencies, including the Departments of 
Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, Veterans Affairs, Commerce, and 
Agriculture. While I wish we had been able to move all of the annual 
appropriations bills, at a minimum, we appear on the verge of passing 
full-year funding bills for the departments I just mentioned, which is 
particularly important for the Department of Defense.
  Military leaders have repeatedly warned that failure to enact a full-
year defense funding bill would have dire consequences for our 
military. Military readiness would suffer, and the military would not 
be fully ready to respond to crises because DOD could not transfer 
funds from investment accounts into readiness accounts.
  A year-long CR for the Defense Department would have resulted in a 
hollow force because the Pentagon would not have been able to increase 
production rates for existing weapons, start new programs, or sign 
multiyear procurement contracts that will provide significant savings 
for taxpayers.
  When I questioned Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter on February 14, 
2013, at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing about what the 
continuing resolution means for the Navy and our domestic shipbuilding 
capability, he testified that:

       We're in the absurd position where we're five months into 
     the fiscal year and we have the authority to build the ships 
     that we built last year and no authority to build the ships 
     that we plan to build this year. That's crazy . . . and that 
     has nothing to do with sequester, by the way, that's the C.R.

  The full-year funding bills that are included in the continuing 
resolution offered by Senators Mikulski and Shelby will help alleviate 
some of the impacts of sequestration on the departments and agencies 
funded through those bills.
  Unfortunately, the departments and agencies that find themselves 
funded under a continuing resolution, operating under a budget based on 
last year's needs, are not as lucky. It is all the more important for 
these departments and agencies that we provide additional flexibility, 
as the Udall-Collins amendment would do, in carrying out the cuts 
mandated by the Budget Control Act.
  Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to support this amendment so that 
the cuts that are taking place now can be targeted at programs that do 
not work while sparing those programs that do.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following 
leader remarks tomorrow, March 14, the Senate resume consideration of 
H.R. 933; that there be up to 1 hour of debate equally divided in the 
usual form on the Harkin amendment; that upon the use or yielding back 
of time, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the Harkin 
amendment; that there be no amendments in order to the amendment prior 
to the vote, and the amendment be subject to a 60-affirmative-vote 
threshold.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the request?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.


                            Cloture Motions

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have a cloture motion on the Mikulski-
Shelby substitute amendment at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     hereby move to bring to a close debate on the Mikulski-Shelby 
     substitute amendment No. 26, as modified, to H.R. 933 a bill 
     making appropriations for the Department of Defense, the 
     Department of Veterans Affairs, and other departments and 
     agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013, and 
     for other purposes.
         Harry Reid, Barbara A. Mikulski, Sherrod Brown, Barbara 
           Boxer, Robert

[[Page 3518]]

           Menendez, Patty Murray, Amy Klobuchar, Debbie Stabenow, 
           Max Baucus, Tim Johnson, Benjamin L. Cardin, John D. 
           Rockefeller IV, Charles E. Schumer, Carl Levin, Thomas 
           R. Carper, Richard J. Durbin, Maria Cantwell.

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have another cloture motion to the 
underlying bill at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     hereby move to bring to a close debate on H.R. 933 a bill 
     making appropriations for the Department of Defense, the 
     Department of Veterans Affairs, and other departments and 
     agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013, and 
     for other purposes.
         Harry Reid, Barbara A. Mikulski, Sherrod Brown, Barbara 
           Boxer, Robert Menendez, Patty Murray, Amy Klobuchar, 
           Debbie Stabenow, Max Baucus, Tim Johnson, Benjamin L. 
           Cardin, John D. Rockefeller IV, Charles E. Schumer, 
           Carl Levin, Thomas R. Carper, Richard J. Durbin, Maria 
           Cantwell.

  Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum required 
under rule XXII be waived with respect to both cloture motions.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________