March 20, 2013/United States/U.S. Senate Congressional Record (raw)

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Call to order
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The clerk will please read a communication to the Senate from the.

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Under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved.

Department of Defense, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013
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Under the previous order, the Senate will resume consideration of.

The clerk will report the bill.

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The majority leader is recognized.

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Mr. President, following leader remarks, the Senate will resume consideration of the continuing appropriations legislation. The time until 11:15 a.m. today will be divided and controlled equally between the two leaders or their designees.

At 11:15 a.m. there will be three rollcall votes in relation to the continuing resolution: the Toomey amendment, which is a 60-vote threshold; adoption of the Mikulski-Shelby substitute amendment; and a cloture vote on H.R. 933, the underlying bill.

Budget Debate
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Mr. President, for the last few years my Republican colleagues have been hollering, yelling, and screaming that the Senate has not passed a budget. They have done so in spite of the fact that Republicans in both Chambers voted for the Budget Control Act which set spending levels for the last 2 years. It was a law. Every reasonable political observer admits that the Budget Control Act, which had the force of law, was a budget, period. No, it was not a resolution. It was a law, which is much stronger than any resolution we do here.

As I indicated, they have yelled and screamed. Still, Republicans pine for the days of the so-called regular order when the Senate would vote on a budget resolution that would set spending priorities for the fiscal year. Republicans--we were told, we heard, we saw--were desperate to have a budget debate. They were desperate. They have had charts out here. They were desperate for an amendment. They wanted a vote-arama. They had charts, speeches, and demonstrations to prove it.

They have had press conference after press conference after press conference. They even had a calendar they brought out almost daily tallying the days since the Senate passed a budget resolution--not a law, which was already in effect, but a resolution.

Yesterday I was amazed, flabbergasted, and stunned when Republicans blocked attempts to begin debate on the budget resolution. In fact, the ranking member of the Budget Committee said: Let's put it off for a while. Let's wait until after Easter.

Can you imagine that? They have been pining for regular order, and we now have a chance to have a debate. They said: No, we can't do that. Can't do it. There was a chance, and they were not interested in doing it.

My friend, the junior Senator from Kansas, objected to a request debating the budget unless we vote on his proposed amendment to the continuing resolution. He is concerned about air traffic towers in Kansas because of these across-the-board cuts.

I say to all of my colleagues--I say to the Senator from Kansas--we are all concerned about the impact of these budget cuts. They are senseless, they are ridiculous, and we should do away with them. We have already cut $2.5 trillion from the debt. We can continue to do it but do it in a responsible and reasonable way, not a meat-cleaver way.

More than 100 families in Nevada--almost immediately--are going to lose access to low-income housing because of the sequester. I met with the housing authority people yesterday. Some might say: Oh, that is not such a big deal. It is a big deal for those 100 families. Nationwide, 70,000 little boys and girls are going to lose their ability to go to Head Start. Some may ask: What is that? Head Start will allow them to get started in life.

These cuts--and I have only mentioned a few of them--are painful for millions of Americans, and it is only going to get worse. They are arbitrary.

We are all concerned. The concern for the sequester is not focused on the Senate delegation from Kansas, it is all over. Instead of whining about it, let's do something about it. Let's get rid of it. That is why the Senate Democratic budget proposal actually reverses the sequester. That is one way of doing it, but there are other ways.

The policy outlined in Senator Murray's budget will save hundreds of thousands of jobs, safeguard communities by keeping police, air traffic controllers, and meat inspectors on the job. Reversing the sequester would alleviate Senator Moran's concern about air traffic controllers in Kansas. The Senate cannot debate a thoughtful way to replace the sequester if the Republicans will not even let us debate our budget proposal.

We know Republicans and Democrats will not agree on every aspect of the budget which sets priorities for how the government spends money and how it saves money. Republicans have one plan for Medicare. Their plan is to turn it into a voucher program which will change Medicare forever. Democrats have another plan. The Democrats' plan is to preserve and protect Medicare for our children and grandchildren.

Republicans have a plan for taxes. Listen to this one: They want to lower taxes for the rich and let the middle class foot the bill. Democrats have another plan. We believe the wealthiest individuals and corporations should contribute a little bit more to reduce the deficit. Surprisingly, the intelligent American people agree with us--Democrats, Independents, and Republicans--by almost a 60-percent margin. The only Republicans in America who disagree are those who serve in Congress.

Republicans have one plan to reduce the deficit which will rely on harsh austerity that shortchanges the elderly, veterans, middle class, poor, and others. The Democrats have another plan. We have a balanced approach that couples smart spending cuts with new revenue from closing loopholes that benefit the wealthiest Americans.

We have our differences, and that is fine. But Democrats are willing to discuss these differences; we are willing to debate the issues. Let's debate the issues. The Republicans have said for months and months: Let's debate the budget. Why can't we debate the budget? Because they will not let us.

This is senseless. We have 60 hours of doing nothing--nothing. The American people are on our side. This is a debate we can win, but at least let's have the debate.

Will the Chair announce the business of the day.

Under the previous order, the time until 11:15 a.m. will be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees.

Who yields time?

Mr. President, we are not in a quorum call, are we?

We are not.

Who yields time?

If no one yields time, the time will be divided equally.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that the time during the quorum call be equally divided.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

H.R. 933
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Mr. President, I wish to discuss with my colleagues here in the Senate an amendment I have filed to the continuing resolution that is now pending before the Senate. It is amendment No. 55. I have spoken about this issue on the floor previously this week but want to reiterate the merits of this amendment and ask my colleagues for their support.

Amendment No. 55 deals with this issue of air traffic control towers. Under the administration's plan in implementing sequestration, the plan is to close, on April 7--just a few days from now--173 air traffic control towers across the country. The amendment I wish to offer avoids that. The administration would no longer be able to do that. I believe they should not for numerous reasons, but what we do, in order to accomplish that, is to transfer $50 million from two accounts, one dealing with research at the Department of Transportation and one dealing with unencumbered balances.

This is an example of what we have talked about before: that we can make better decisions than across-the-board cuts. In fact, the amendment I wish to offer deals with an issue that is not even an across-the-board cut.

In closing the contract towers, in eliminating the Contract Tower Program, the administration is cutting that program 75 percent. Sequestration is described to us as, in most circumstances, an across-the-board 5-percent cut. The amendment I wish to offer continues the 5-percent cut. That would occur for the air traffic Contract Tower Program, so that they would be treated like other programs at the Department of Transportation and throughout government, that they are not singled out for elimination of a program, resulting in a 75-percent reduction in that program's funding, not just the more minor 5 percent. So the administration's decision to close contract towers is far from balanced, and in choosing this program, in my view, has taken the opportunity to damage the safety and security of the flying public of America.

I want to talk about that in a moment. But there was also the suggestion that this is a provincial argument on my part, that it is something I care specifically about for Kansas, my home State. Certainly there is not anything wrong with caring about our home States. That is what we do here, and it is part of our responsibility. But this is far from just being a Kansas issue. Many States and Members of the Senate are more greatly affected by this cut, this elimination, than my home State.

In fact, this amendment has the sponsorship of 26 Republican and Democratic cosponsors. More Democratic Senators here are cosponsors of this amendment than Republican Senators. It is Senators Roberts, Inhofe, Blumenthal, Blunt, Johanns, Kirk, Manchin, Hagan, Klobuchar, Baucus, Tester, Enzi, Vitter, Boozman, Pryor, Merkley, Wyden, Kaine, Warner, Ayotte, Shaheen, Risch, Crapo, Murphy, Rockefeller, and Wicker.

It does not sound very provincial to me. In fact, 42 States will have their air traffic control towers eliminated. This amendment is broadly supported by the aviation industry. If there is an aspect of this that is unique to Kansas, it is that we manufacture many general aviation aircraft. We are the air capital of the world. But this amendment, while being supported by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, by National Business Aviation Association, the National Air Transportation Association, is also supported by the American Association of Airport Executives and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

Again, it is not a very provincial amendment when sponsored by so many of my colleagues, affecting 40-some--43 States of the United States, and broadly supported by the aviation industry as a reasonable, commonsense solution to a problem we face.

I have been adamant about bringing this amendment to the floor. I am a member of the Appropriations Committee. I will have the opportunity--in fact, I serve on the subcommittee that deals with the Department of Transportation. I should and hope to have the opportunity to deal with this and other issues related to the Department of Transportation in the normal appropriations process that, hopefully, will follow the passage of a budget. So I ought to be in a position to be helpful to the cause I believe in at a point later in time.

But here is the problem: The air traffic control towers will close on April 7. We will never get to an appropriations process between now, here at the end of March, and April 7. So the Appropriations Committee and, ultimately, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the President will never have the ability to restore a program that is gone April 7.

So while I have tried to put myself in a position to be helpful to the cause in the long run, there is no long-run battle to be fought because the control towers are gone in just a matter of a few short days.

This amendment matters. This is my last opportunity. If and when cloture is invoked later today on the underlying bill, there is no opportunity for amendments to be considered. So my colleagues who indicate to me so strongly that they support my amendment, this is the only opportunity we have to have success.

This clearly is not about my success in an amendment. Although I would love to have the opportunity for this amendment to be voted on, it may or may not pass. But the Senate ought to work its will in making that determination. With the broad support of the industry, with the broad support of my colleagues here in the Senate, one would think this is an amendment which is at least worthy of a vote. That has not been the case.

So it is important for me to again reiterate to my colleagues that if you invoke cloture this afternoon or later this morning, if you invoke cloture, there is no other opportunity for us to address this issue, this problem. So let me again request the opportunity.

I lay awake last night from 3:30 on trying to figure out what it is I can say to my colleagues to get their attention about why this is so important. There are lots of things that can be said. We have so little time before this is either a program that existed in the past and will no longer exist in the future--the consequences are so dramatic that I would again ask my colleagues for their assistance in at least bringing the amendment to the floor so that the Senate can make a decision, yes or no, about the merits of the amendment.

This is about safety. There was an article I just happened to read today in reading my clips from Kansas. This is in a Kansas paper, but it is an AP story from Chicago. The article is entitled ``Trouble in the Air,'' and here is what the AP reporter writes about the planned shutdown. The article says:

The planned shutdown of nearly 240 air traffic control towers across the country under federal budget cuts will strip away an extra layer of safety during takeoffs and landings, leaving pilots to manage the most critical stages of flight on their own.

But airport directors and pilots say there is little doubt that the removal of this second pair of eyes on the ground increases risk and will slow the progress that has made the U.S. air system the safest in the world.

It's not just private pilots in small planes who stand to be affected. Many of the airports in question are serviced by major airlines, and the cuts could leave towers unmanned during overnight hours that some big-city airports such as Chicago's Midway and General Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee. The plans have prompted airlines to review whether the changes might pose problems for commercial service that could mean canceling or rescheduling flights.

Without the help of controllers, risk ``goes up exponentially,'' said Mark Hanna, director of the Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport in Springfield, Ill., which could see its tower close.

But many in the aviation sector are frustrated by the political brinkmanship in Washington that has affected such a sensitive area of aviation. Jim Montman, manager of the Santa Fe Municipal Airport, which is on the list for tower closures, said the absence of controllers raised the risk of midair collisions ``or some sort of incident where somebody lands on the wrong runway. ..... That critical link is gone.''

Pilots are trained to watch for other aircraft and announce their position over the radio during approaches, landings and takeoffs. But past crashes, however rare, have exposed weaknesses in that system. On November 19, 1996, a 19-seat United Express flight landing in Quincy, Ill., collided with another twin-engine turboprop that was taking off. They slammed into each other at the intersection of two runways, killing all 14 people aboard the two planes. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded the probable cause was a failure of the pilot in the outbound flight to monitor the radio frequency for air traffic and to properly scan for other planes. ``If a tower was there, it's highly likely that the accident would have been prevented,'' said Hanna, who became the director of the Quincy airport about two years after the crash.

The 238 air traffic control facilities that could be closed were chosen because they are at airports with fewer than 150,000 flight operations per year. They are located in every state.

Again, the point of this amendment is not whether or not I find the right words to convince my colleagues to allow this amendment to come to a vote. As much as I struggled through the morning hours trying to figure out what those might be, the real issue is not about my words or my personal success in getting this amendment considered, but it is about the safety of Americans.

I cannot figure out why this amendment cannot be made in order. Again, broad support--broad support with Republicans and Democrats. I have had many Senators, including very senior Senators from the Democratic side of the aisle, come to me and express amazement that this amendment, so broadly supported, so important, cannot be considered. I cannot come up with an explanation. I do not know why this is the case.

Every Senator I have talked to about this amendment tells me they do not oppose it, it ought to be voted on, they support it. Yet for some reason the Senate is incapable of agreeing to even a vote on an important and critical amendment that promotes the safety of the American people. I can only guess--and it is always difficult to attribute motives, but as I talk to my colleagues, the only explanation I ever get that has any semblance of truth is that there is a point to be made here. By denying the amendment's passage, we prove that sequestration cannot work; we cannot cut money from budgets.

Again, I did not vote for sequestration. So when the majority leader says this morning about the hatchet being taken to programs and it is all bad--I did not vote for sequestration. I believe in the appropriations process that allows us to make these decisions to increase funding for some things, decrease funding for other things, and eliminate programs. Yet sequestration, in my view, has an effect upon all programs equally, whether they are effective or ineffective, whether they are valuable or invaluable. We treat them the same.

So I am not here on the cause of sequestration, but apparently there are those in this city, in Washington, DC, who want to make the point that if the air traffic control towers are eliminated, it will demonstrate once and for all--I don't know; to Republican Senators, to Senators in general, to Congress, to the American people--that there is no opportunity to cut budgets.

If people want to make that point and if they can convince people that it is true that there is no opportunity to eliminate $85 billion in spending, that is fine with me. That is what this place exists for, is for us to have the debate about whether we can reduce spending, increase spending, what our Tax Code ought to be, what the value is of government services and programs and how they ought to be funded. But if it is true that the reason this amendment is not being considered is because we want to prove a point--that there is no money to be cut, that sequestration is a bad idea, that reducing spending is a bad idea, that we have to raise taxes--if that is the point that is trying to be made here in the process of denying this amendment's consideration, then it is a very dangerous way to try to prove a point.

Prove your point in argument and debate about the merits of spending, about the merits of the program. Prove your point in the Appropriations Committee, in which we take testimony and hear from people about what is important to them, priorities, what their needs are, what their wants are, what has value, what does not. But do not try to make the political point about this topic by reducing the safety of people who fly in and out of communities across the country. As the article said, this reduces the nature of our air traveling safety from the best in the world to something less than that.

So make the point. Have the debate and argument about the value of sequestration, about the value of what money we spend and do not spend. But let's not try to prove the point by reducing the chances that the American people, when they travel, are safe and secure in our airways.

I do not know, and I hope this is never the case--this point may never be proven about the safety, but once there is an accident and someone dies and a plane crashes, the question will always be, what if there had been an air traffic control tower there? What if we had left the program in place?

These communities that have the air traffic control towers have spent years in developing a plan to put them in place, have worked with the FAA and the Department of Transportation over decades to bring their airports and airport safety, flying safety to high standards. An issue here is that this is going to disappear overnight. So you can be an airport manager, an airport authority, a member of an airport board anyplace in the country with 200-plus air traffic control towers, and you have worked hard over years, decades, to get the standards in place and to have the air traffic control process at your airport. In one day, April 7, one night, the lights go off in the tower. They no longer exist. All the work you have tried to accomplish on behalf of your community and those who fly in and out of your airport disappears in one stroke.

So I speak with a level of passion about this issue, for really the purpose of which I think we are here to do, which is to advance the common good of the American people. It is not a provincial amendment. It is not something that just Moran and Kansas need. There are many States much more affected by this. But the truth is that every American, every person who flies will have less safety and security in the skies as a result of this issue, as a result of the decision made by the Department of Transportation to eliminate this program.

So, once again, I intend to ask later in the morning, when our leaders are on the floor, for unanimous consent to bring this amendment forward before the time expires. In my time in Congress--I have only been in the Senate a little more than 2 years--I have not been trying to be obstreperous. I have not tried to be difficult to deal with. I believe in the opportunity to reach out and work together. I followed the rules. I did what everybody tells me to do: Go find people who support this amendment who are Democrats and Republicans, bring them together.

And as the leader said earlier in the week--I guess it is now last week--earlier last week about how we are going to get back to regular order, we are going to have amendments offered, I hope we can dispose of them quickly, we have an opportunity to do that with this amendment. It is not controversial. It is not partisan. It is about something that ought to be of importance to all Americans, certainly to every Senator.

Later in the morning when the leaders are present, I will ask unanimous consent once again that we consider this amendment. I know there are others who want to offer amendments. I see my colleagues from Arkansas and Missouri on the floor. I know they have an amendment--I think it is No. 82--with which they want to offer the opportunity to address a problem by taking money from one account and putting it in another account in order to keep meatpacking plants operational, that we have the meat inspectors present at the plants. Boy, that is an important issue too. That is about the safety and security of Americans. It is about food safety. I hope no one objects to the amendment Senators Pryor and Blunt are going to offer this morning. That is another amendment which is very similar in nature, about deciding that we are smarter to spend money here than here.

As the Pryor-Blunt amendment comes before the floor, I would ask my colleagues, just as I would ask them to grant unanimous consent, I hope no one objects to their request for unanimous consent that their amendment be considered. I would ask that no one object to the amendment I intend to offer. I certainly will not object to the Blunt-Pryor amendment. I wish it was leverage to get my amendment considered, but it is too dangerous to play that game. That is what we do here in Washington, DC, is strike a deal. In this case, when we strike that deal, we are leaving people behind whose lives are going to be adversely affected.

I certainly will not stand in the way of people who work in the meatpacking industry and the consumers of meat products across our country, in the way of trying to solve a problem that is clearly there. I hope their amendment receives unanimous consent, and I hope it passes by this Senate's will. I would ask the same thing. When the appropriate time comes, I will ask for the same thing on an amendment that is about the safety and security of American people.

I thank the Presiding Officer for his indulgence and at least his appearance of listening to me.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the next quorum call be equally divided between the Republicans and Democrats, the majority and the minority.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

H.R. 933
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Madam President, I come to the floor to speak about an amendment I made to the continuing resolution. This is a continuing resolution for appropriations bills which are pending on the floor right now, and we are spending over $1 trillion.

I filed an amendment, amendment No. 127, which would have struck the funding of $380 million for a missile to nowhere. This is funding for a program called the Medium Extended Air Defense System, otherwise known as MEADS. Up to this time, we have expended $3 billion for this system. Yet we will never receive a result our Army or our military can use. This is why it is a missile to nowhere.

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin, has said of the funding for this MEADS program: With regard to the committee, we feel strongly that it is a waste of money.

In the 2012 Defense authorization, the Senate Armed Services Committee made very clear this was going to be the last appropriation for this missile to nowhere. In the 2013 authorization, on a unanimous bipartisan basis before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the committee voted to say no more money for a missile to nowhere.

Right now, our military is facing great challenges with sequestration. We have heard this from our military leaders. These are difficult choices they must make to cut training for our troops and cut needed flying hours when our troops absolutely need to be prepared and ready. For equipment, an announcement was made we were going to withdraw a carrier, which sends the wrong message to Iran.

Despite all this, the continuing resolution, which is on the floor with the appropriations bill attached, contains $380 million for a missile to nowhere. This is something our military will never be able to use.

And why is it there? It is there because people are worried about their parochial interests, that their State builds part of this, and also because, apparently, they want to provide employment to the Germans and the Italians, because they are getting a substantial amount of this money. Yet we will never see anything our troops can use from it.

My amendment was very straightforward. The amendment would do this: It would take the $380 million and strike it from the MEADS Program, then take those resources and, instead of spending the $380 million on the MEADS Program, it would go to the operations and maintenance fund for our troops for real needs they have on the ground--whether it is equipment or training--rather than for a missile to nowhere that they do not need and don't want.

It seems to me we owe it to our troops to make sure our taxpayer dollars don't continue to be wasted on funding a MEADS Program we will never get a result from. In fact, we have had large unanimous agreement on a bipartisan basis about striking this MEADS Program. In fact, I mentioned the Senate Armed Services Committee has said we should prohibit funding for it. The House Armed Services Committee did the same thing and said we should prohibit funding for it, and the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee zeroed out funding for MEADS. The only committee that allocated funding for it was the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee. Talk about a waste of money.

It is shocking to me, by the way, that this amendment makes so much sense, that it has bipartisan support, and yet I can't get a vote on the floor of the Senate to strike the money for this missile to nowhere and to apply the funds to where our troops need them so the funds can actually be used to make sure they have what they need to be prepared. It is appalling that I am being denied the right to offer this amendment, to bring it to the floor, to let people vote on it. At a time when we face great fiscal challenges, it is absolutely appalling to me that here in the Senate we can't strike $380 million in funding for a missile to nowhere when we are almost $17 trillion in debt. This is what is wrong with Washington. It is appalling we cannot be in a position to get a vote that is germane to fund a program that the Concerned Veterans for America has said is wasteful, in support of my amendment; that the Citizens Against Government Waste agrees as well and supports my amendment; and that I have bipartisan support for my amendment. In fact, Senators Begich and Shaheen are cosponsors of my amendment. So this is not a partisan issue, this is about not wasting taxpayer dollars. I can tell you this sort of thing is what is appalling to the American people, that we cannot and we will not strike wasteful spending. We can't even get a vote on it here in the Senate.

I am going to continue to fight to end the funding for this program and other wasteful spending programs and to make sure the money we have and the taxpayer dollars, particularly in the Pentagon but in every area of government, go for what they are intended--for things our troops need, and not a missile to nowhere where we are protecting, apparently, parochial interests that people are worried about more than they are worried about the overall fiscal state of the country.

This is something that has been very disappointing to me. I think it is appalling we wouldn't allow a vote on such a relevant, germane amendment on a bill in which we are going to spend over $1 trillion. I don't know why we continue to fund things such as the missile to nowhere when there are real needs our troops have. I know this amendment had bipartisan support in the past. Both sides of the aisle do not want to spend money on a missile to nowhere when there are real needs our troops have.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this issue on the floor today.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

H.R. 933
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Madam President, it took 4 years to get a budget from the Senate majority--4 long years.

As the days go by, it has become increasingly clear why it took so long; their budget is so extreme and so unbalanced. That is why they are having such a hard time selling it to the American people and why they have had to fall back on some tired talking points to defend it, claiming their budget would, for instance, grow the economy from the middle class out. That is a clever sound bite, but it doesn't describe the Senate Democratic budget at all.

Maybe a better way to put it is that the Democratic budget would grow the bureaucracy from the pockets of the middle class out. That is because it would increase Federal spending by almost two-thirds by imposing a massive tax hike that could cost the average middle-class family literally thousands.

The Democrats like to say the up to $1.5 trillion tax increase authorized in their budget--the largest tax hike in American history, by the way--would be funded by closing loopholes for millionaires and billionaires, but the math simply doesn't add up. They will have to come after the middle class to fund this spending spree.

There is something else. The Senate Democratic budget wouldn't balance ever--not in 2013, not in 2023, not in 2023, not ever. It wouldn't balance in any of our lifetimes. It wouldn't balance in the lifetimes of our children or our grandchildren. It would simply never balance.

Think about it. That means a child born today would grow up knowing nothing but massive deficits their entire life. That means trillions upon trillions in more debt and an economy that would never ever reach its full potential. That is simply not right, but it is what we would get with the Senate Democratic plan. It is an extreme approach that is more than just fiscally reckless; it is deeply irresponsible.

That is why so many middle-class families agree with Republicans that we should be growing the economy, not the government. They know we need to control Washington spending and balance the budget in order to kick-start economic growth and to create American jobs. They are so tired of the Obama economy.

They are tired of the endless pivots to jobs that never result in the kind of sustained job creation we need. They are tired of the sluggish growth, of always looking to the future with anxiety or worrying whether Medicare will even be there when they retire.

They are tired of the ideological DC Democratic extremism that got us here: knee-jerk, tax-first solutions to almost every single problem, massive overspending, steadfast opposition to reforms that would make government programs more efficient, effective, and sustainable.

So my friends across the aisle shouldn't be surprised their budget is getting such a rough ride. It contains up to $1.5 trillion in new taxes. This would be the largest tax hike in American history. It contains $ 1/2 trillion more in spending, money that could be siphoned out of the economy and into the hands of politicians and bureaucrats.

It lacks meaningful reforms to save and strengthen Medicare, allowing it to go bankrupt in just a few years, and it enshrines massive deficits into law, ensuring they continue forever and ever without end.

The Senate Democratic budget is nothing more than a rehash of the same tired politics that continue to pummel the middle class. It is time to move beyond this failed extremist approach and try a new one. Instead of expanding the power of the bureaucratic elite at the expense of hardworking taxpayers, I would urge Washington to change course. Let's focus on growing the economy, not the government.

Obamacare
I would also like to discuss ObamaCare for a moment.

As I just stated, Senate Republicans want policies to grow the economy, not the government. Yet ObamaCare is a law that grows the government and will slow our economy. On Saturday, we will mark the third anniversary of its passage into law.

Republicans have long warned that ObamaCare would have a devastating impact on our country. I have spoken about 100 times on the Senate floor against ObamaCare and I have warned about its consequences: increased premiums, lost jobs, and higher taxes.

Unfortunately, many of those things have already started happening. It is not just off in the future. It has already happened, and the Federal Government has only just begun implementing the law.

Instead of premiums going down $2,500, as President Obama promised, they have actually gone up by about the same amount, $2,500. Congress's own nonpartisan budget experts tell us the premiums will increase by about $2,100 after more rules, more taxes, and more mandates take effect.

The Federal Reserve also came out with a report that confirmed something else Americans already know: ObamaCare is costing us jobs. By some estimates, it could end up costing 800,000 jobs at a time when we desperately need more of them.

Members of the President's own party have begun sounding the alarm about the law's tax hike, including its tax on medical devices.

His union allies are concerned the law will make them less competitive too. Of course it will. Perhaps some of the union bosses should have more thoroughly considered the well-being of their members before supporting ObamaCare's passage in the first place.

ObamaCare has already become a regulatory nightmare. I would call the attention of my colleagues to this chart. This is the ObamaCare law, hundreds of pages in itself. But these are the regulations so far: 7 feet tall, almost 20,000 pages of ObamaCare regulations so far.

The law itself is not small, hundreds and hundreds of pages. But nearly 20,000 new pages of regulations, 7 feet tall, and they are just getting started. This monster of a bill, as I indicated, was hundreds of pages long itself, but that is actually nothing compared to the regulations it has spawned.

This more than 7-foot stack of paper next to me is what has become known as the redtape tower--the redtape tower, almost 20,000 pages of ObamaCare regulations so far. It is nearly 20,000 pages' worth of complexity. That is just what the bureaucracy has dreamed of so far, and we can only imagine how much more is yet to come.

Do we expect small businesses to be able to cope with all the rules in this tower? If you were a small business owner, how could you? Would you even be able to read through all of them and figure out which ones applied to you? I doubt it. I don't expect the average American to have much luck either.

The administration released a draft ObamaCare application last week. It is 21 pages long. Unbelievable. If you like doing your taxes, you are going to love applying for the ObamaCare exchanges.

So Washington Democrats may pop the champagne this Saturday to celebrate the law's third anniversary, but more Americans and small business owners will be reaching for an aspirin once they are forced to start navigating this bureaucratic nightmare.

In my view, ObamaCare is a colossal mistake for our country. There is no way to fix this thing. It needs to be pulled out by its roots, and we need to start all over. This bill needs to be repealed and it needs to be replaced, not with another unreadable law or another 20,000 pages of regulations but with commonsense reforms that actually lower health care costs.

Anyone who thinks we have given up this fight is dead wrong.

I yield the floor.

The Senator from Maryland.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

H.R. 933
Page: S1967

Madam President, in a few seconds I will be propounding a unanimous consent request. We were originally scheduled to have a series of votes at 11:15. We think we have a way of working out some of our concerns if we just take a little bit of a breather and do the kind of negotiation based on the civility and common sense that we have been using during this deliberation.

Therefore, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous order, all postcloture time be considered expired at 2 p.m., with the time until 2 p.m. to be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, with all other provisions of the previous order remaining in effect.

Is there objection? Without objection, it is so ordered.

Madam President, just to give everybody the lay of the land, it means we are working through our legislative issues, and at 2 o'clock we will then proceed to a series of votes which will be announced in plenty of time for people to know what is happening.

I ask unanimous consent that the quorum calls be equally divided, and I thank the able floor staff for giving me advice. There are days when I think it is an opera and they are calling out the arias we need to sing. But we are moving, and I thank Senator Shelby for consulting with his side of the aisle.

At 2 o'clock we are going to have a series of amendments, and I think the Senate will feel very solid about the direction in which we are going.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk will call the roll.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 127
Page: S1967

Madam President, in a minute I am going to call up an amendment that I was speaking about on the floor of the Senate over the last few days. Essentially, this is an amendment that is pending to the bill--the continuing resolution and appropriations bills--that would strike $380 million of spending for the MEADS program. It is essentially a missile to nowhere that our troops will never be able to use in theater. We want to transfer that money to the operations and maintenance funding for the troops so we can make sure there are resources they can use to, obviously, make sure they have what they need for the very best equipment and training--particularly in light of sequestration and what we are facing. I know there is an agreement that is being worked out, and I hope my amendment is included in that agreement.

At this time I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment so I may call up my amendment, amendment No. 127.

Is there objection?

Madam President, I object.

Objection is heard.

Thank you, Madam President.

Madam President, before the Senator leaves the floor, I have listened to most of her speeches, and she has been very articulate. I appreciate how she feels. There are some Democrats who agree with her, but the problem is it is hard to arrive at a list of amendments. I appreciate her intensity, and I certainly do not in any way denigrate what she has been trying to do, but this is the situation in which we find ourselves.

I reluctantly object.

The Senator from Kansas.

Amendment No. 55
Page: S1967

Madam President, I too have an amendment that I have been attempting for a number of days to have made in order. This is the amendment that deals with the air traffic control towers. It is an amendment that very directly and simply transfers money from two accounts that have lots of money in them--the unencumbered balances of the Department of Transportation as well as a research fund--transfers $50 million from those two accounts to the air traffic control program. If we do that, we can at least avert--at least what the Department of Transportation says is necessary to eliminate that program--closing more than 170 air traffic control towers on April 7.

I spoke earlier this morning, and I intend to speak before the vote occurs. I will not repeat myself at this point in time, but this morning I outlined--and I hope my colleagues were listening--the importance of this amendment to the safety of the traveling public. The modest nature of what we are trying to accomplish has the bipartisan support, as well as the wide range of support, from groups outside the Congress that support this amendment.

I again ask unanimous consent to amend the previous order and bring up my amendment. It is amendment No. 55, that 10 minutes be equally divided, and we proceed immediately to a vote on that amendment.

Is there objection?

I object.

Objection is heard.

Thank you, Madam President.

Madam President, I note the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Madam President, I withdraw that. My understanding is the Senator from Montana has a brief statement to make regarding a big event in Montana.

That is basically correct.

The Senator from Montana.

I ask to speak as if in morning business.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

H.R. 933
Page: S1967

Mr. President, at an appropriate time I will ask for some consideration of an amendment of mine, amendment No. 6. My amendment would hold the Obama administration accountable for its recent decision to release more than 2,000 undocumented immigrants from detention centers across the country in the past month. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement claimed they were releasing these people because they needed to reduce their average daily detention population of about 34,000 people--a congressionally mandated requirement. They claimed they had to reduce the detention population for budgetary reasons. Week after week, agents were tasked to release so many individuals.

At first the Department of Homeland Security claimed it only released a few hundred people. However, last week the Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted that the administration had misled the American people by confessing that over 2,200 aliens were actually released. They continue to stand by the excuse that budget cuts were the reason for releasing these individuals.

Simply blaming budget reduction as a means to turn a blind eye toward the national security of the American people is a very dangerous plan and one that calls into question the Department's preparation for sequestration, particularly when we consider that months before sequestration the Office of Management and Budget put out an order to all departments that national security, law enforcement, and safety and health should be a top priority. So if keeping criminals off the streets of the United States shouldn't be a top priority--as per the order from the Office of Management and Budget--I don't know what should be. So I want an accounting for it, and that is what my amendment does--requests a simple accounting for why they were released and what it was all about. What is even more disturbing is the fact that the Department had billions of unobligated funds from the past 2 years that could have been put into protecting the American people.

On February 27 I sent a request to Secretary Napolitano questioning the decisions of the Department. The letter, cosigned by Chairman Goodlatte of the House Judiciary Committee, was an attempt to better understand--just a simple understanding--how the Department will better confront sequestration and reduce operational challenges that could affect the life, safety, and health of the American people--the same life, health, and safety of the American people evidenced by this very administration's directive going out from the Office of Management and Budget of the priorities that ought to be established during sequestration.

Now, you know what. So often what we find from this administration--and have even found in previous Republican administrations--is that letters that are embarrassing go unanswered. Unfortunately, this is not unusual. About a dozen of my letters to the Secretary of Homeland Security on just the immigration issue have gone unanswered. There is no respect for congressional oversight. It is very frustrating.

We are on the cusp of undertaking a massive reform of our immigration system. Yet getting answers to the most basic questions seems to be an impossible operation. Time and again, we have seen this administration refuse to be held accountable, and what we want is just information. It is not as though we are saying that what the administration has done--even if we disagree with it--can't be done or shouldn't be done. But shouldn't the people know about who is being turned out in the streets when they have been held in confinement for a long period of time? I fear what will become of the President's promise of transparency if and when we do pass an immigration bill. And this is an example of things to fear in the future. Enacting a bill is one part of the process, and implementing the law is another part of the process. If we don't have faith in this administration now, what about trust for the future?

So my amendment would require U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to submit weekly reports--just submit reports--to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations and the Judiciary. The reports will be required to contain detailed budgets on how ICE will maintain the 34,000 detention bed occupancy levels authorized by Congress. It also requires ICE to provide the number of aliens released from detention as well as the following information on aliens released for budget-related purposes: the conviction or charge for which they were detained, fugitive status, existence of a prior deportation order, and the terms of release.

My amendment happens to be cosponsored by Senators Inhofe, Vitter, Boozman, Roberts, Coats, McConnell, and Collins.

Within the last few days, we have had the Director of ICE, Mr. Morton, testify--well, it was just yesterday in the House. Chairman Goodlatte said his testimony raised more questions.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a press release that expresses the testimony of Director Morton.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the, as follows:

Last week Mr. Morton said they released 10 level 1 offenders. These are people convicted of violent crimes. They are repeat drunk drivers, as an example. Yesterday he said they only released eight, but he also said they were trying to relocate them and bring them back in. Well, if you have these dangerous people out on the streets, the public ought to know about it.

So I suspect that when I ask unanimous consent now, the other side will object to my amendment. And I don't know why they want to go to such lengths to protect this administration when all we want is simple information--just simple information. We aren't saying that the decisions made--even though we disagree with them--ought to be changed. We are just saying that the public ought to know when we put violent people out on the streets, and when we put people out on the streets who shouldn't be out on the streets, we ought to know where they are, why they were put out there, and what it is all about.

I think the objection to allowing this amendment to have a vote--as I presume it will be objected to--is indefensible, but at this point I call up for consideration my amendment No. 76, and I ask for just 10 minutes of debate and a vote on my amendment. I ask unanimous consent to do that.

Is there objection?

Reserving the right to object, I understand how the Senator feels. Over the years I have served with him, he has always made his opinions very clear. We had his amendment in the list of amendments we were going to do before, with some modifications that my friend wouldn't agree to. So I understand his feelings about this, but the good news is that within the very near, foreseeable future--hopefully, I can start it in the next work period--we are going to start immigration legislation here on the floor. We are finally going to be able to move to something that will include issues people have wanted to deal with for a long time.

So I say to my friend, I object, but I understand how he feels about the issue.

Objection is heard.

H.R. 933
Page: S1967

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding cloture having been invoked, the following amendments be in order to the Mikulski-Shelby substitute: Coburn No. 69; Coburn No. 93; Coburn No. 65, as modified; Coburn No. 70, as modified; Inhofe-Hagan No. 72, as modified; Mikulski-Shelby No. 98, as modified with changes that are at the desk; Leahy No. 129, as modified with changes that are at the desk; and Pryor-Blunt No. 82; that no other first-degree amendments to the substitute or the underlying bill be in order; that no second-degree amendments be in order to any of the amendments listed above prior to the votes; that the time until 2:15 p.m. be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, with 30 minutes of Republican time under the control of Senator Moran prior to votes in relation to the amendments in the order listed; that upon disposition of the Pryor-Blunt amendment No. 82, the Durbin second-degree amendment to the Toomey amendment No. 115 be withdrawn; that it be in order for the Toomey amendment to be modified with the changes that are at the desk; that the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the Toomey amendment No. 115, as modified; that upon disposition of the Toomey amendment, the Senate proceed to vote on the Mikulski-Shelby substitute amendment, as amended; that all amendments, with the exception of the Mikulski-Shelby substitute, be subject to a 60-affirmative-vote threshold; that upon disposition of the substitute amendment, as amended, the Senate proceed to vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the underlying bill; that if cloture is invoked on H.R. 933, as amended, all postcloture time be yielded back and the Senate proceed to vote on passage of H.R. 933, as amended; and, finally, that all votes after the first vote be 10-minute votes and there be 2 minutes equally divided in the usual form between the votes.

Is there objection?

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I appreciate everyone's understanding on both sides. This is going to allow us to get to the issue at hand very soon, and that is the budget, with Senators MURRAY and SESSIONS leading us on that issue.

Also, we were able to get a number of these amendments that people have been wanting very badly to get. So I appreciate everything people have done to this point.

Amendment No. 72
Page: S1967

Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to support an to H.R. 933 requiring the military services to resume their tuition assistance programs, which are so vital to our military's professional and educational development.

On March 5, 2013, the Department of Defense Comptroller Robert Hale sent a letter to the services to provide “additional guidance for handling budgetary uncertainty in fiscal year 2013.” In his letter, Secretary Hale said that “all services should consider significant reductions in funding new tuition assistance applications.”

Three days later, on March 8, the Army suspended tuition assistance for all its soldiers--Guard and Reserve--and as a result, more than one million Army soldiers immediately lost this important education benefit. There was not a single exception, not one, not even for troops wounded in combat.

The Air Force, Coast Guard, and Marines also suspended their tuition assistance programs.

This matter concerns me greatly, and I hope it does my colleagues as well. I understand the difficult fiscal decisions facing our military as a result of the sequester, but I object to the way they are handling tuition assistance with what amounts to blunt force policy making.

I want to reexamine the exact wording of Secretary Hale's letter. He stated that the military services “should consider significant reductions in the tuition program.” I want to repeat, he said to ``consider significant reductions.'' Although his guidance was non-specific in terms of what amounts to “significant,” four of our five military services followed with the most extreme reduction possible--they suspended all tuition assistance, indefinitely.

This decision affects lives, real lives of one of our nation's greatest treasures--the less than 1 percent of our fellow citizens who are willing to volunteer and serve in our Armed Forces, regardless of the dangers they are likely to face in the defense of freedom.

I want to highlight one example of the thousands of lives now affected--a young soldier who recently enlisted in the National Guard. His personal story reflects the negative impact the tuition assistance cuts are going to have on our Armed Forces.

I saw him interviewed by a news station. He is 19, but with his new buzz cut, he looked much younger. His military mannerisms were unmistakable he gave short responses, always beginning with a “Sir” or “Ma'am.”

When asked how the decision to suspend tuition assistance affected him, he said, politely, “I was really counting” on tuition assistance for college.

You see, this young man does not have any comparable education benefits to fall back on. He is only 19, as I said, and just back from training. As a Guardsman, he would need to deploy at least once to receive some of the new GI Bill benefits.

What do you think he will tell his friends about the military as a result of this experience? What will his family say? And how much warning did we give this young man that he could no longer count on $4,500 per year in tuition assistance?

As I said, this young man was 19 years old. Last month the veterans' unemployment rate for those ages 18 to 24 rose again. It is now a very troubling 36.2 percent. We are in the midst of a grave unemployment crisis and now is the time to invest--not divest--in continuing education for our military.

This is not the way we should treat our service men and women. We should keep our commitments, especially those we have made to those who are willing to sacrifice everything for their fellow Americans and the Nation.

I urge my friends and colleagues to support to require the services to resume tuition assistance the minute this bill passes. It is sponsored by Senators and, and it is a necessary response to an unnecessarily harsh and short-sighted policy decision.

The sequester is not a thoughtful or balanced approach to cutting spending, and we should find an alternative. But, until that moment occurs, everyone, especially the military services, must reject the impulse to “grab low hanging fruit,” and cut it down, in its entirety, simply because it is more convenient.

H.R. 933
Page: S1967

Mr. President, I commend the chairwoman and vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senators MIKULSKI and SHELBY, on crafting a strong bill to close out the remaining 6 months of the fiscal year. This bill was developed under difficult circumstances and time constraints, and I really feel they have done a good job of returning some semblance of regular order to this process. I am hopeful this progress will continue in the coming fiscal year.

One of my disappointments with this legislation, however, is that we are not able to fund any new Army Corps of Engineers projects.

The lack of new starts in the Corps is of particular concern to my State, as it impedes progress on the flood control project in Hamilton City, CA. It is a project that could potentially serve as a model for Corp projects throughout the Nation. More importantly, the construction of a new levee is critical for the protection of Hamilton City and Glenn County from catastrophic flooding. The project has been ready for construction for several years now but has been entangled in the new starts prohibition.

It is my hope and intention that for fiscal year 2014 we will have regular order in appropriations, and I will work to support this project moving forward.

H.R. 933
Page: S1967

Mr. President, I met with FAA Administrator Michael Huerta last week to discuss sequestration and how it will affect our national aviation network. Sequestration will reduce the FAA's budget by approximately $600 million in the middle of this fiscal year. The Administrator told me this swift and sudden reduction in funding will have serious consequences to the efficiency of our national aviation system, especially in Illinois. Airport managers throughout the State of Illinois have also registered their serious concerns about the sequestration impact on commercial and general aviation.

The FAA will have to severely reduce service or completely close approximately 180 air traffic control towers across the country. Nine air traffic control towers in Illinois will have their service either eliminated or severely reduced: Alton, Aurora, Bloomington-Normal, Decatur, DuPage, Carbondale, Marion, Springfield and Waukegan. The FAA has also said that overnight air traffic control service at Peoria and Midway airports could be eliminated. These are serious steps that will increase delays, reduce capacity and potentially compromise the safety of the airspace in the areas surrounding these airports.

I will continue to monitor this situation and will work with the FAA and airport managers throughout the State of Illinois to address aviation safety and air traffic delays.

However, the aviation system is not the only harm sequestration will have on this country. The White House estimates sequestration will reduce the readiness of our troops; put up to 10,000 veterans at substantial risk of becoming homeless; drop 70,000 children from Head Start, including 2,700 from Illinois; take nutritional assistance away from 600,000 families because of cuts to WIC; and reduce foreclosure prevention and other counseling to 75,000 fewer households.

Many Republicans have said they are comfortable with allowing sequestration to continue. They think no one will notice what sequestration does to the country. I disagree. These sequestration cuts will have real impact on real people in Illinois. We need to stop sequestration with a balanced solution of budget cuts and revenue. I am pleased we will soon start debating the budget resolution. Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray has produced a budget that will stop sequestration and the negative impacts it will have on our economy, our troops and working families across America.

H.R. 933
Page: S1975

Mr. President, I will vote for the bill before us because it ensures the continued operation of government. The overall spending in the bill conforms to the Budget Control Act yet provides needed flexibility for agencies to operate as best they can while under sequestration.

I will continue to seek a comprehensive, bipartisan approach to avoid the harmful effects of sequestration. Any compromise to do so will require both prudent spending cuts and additional revenues. Considering that revenues are necessary as part of the way to alleviate the negative effects of the sequester, this bill is not the appropriate vehicle to address our current budgetary situation. I am hopeful that by passing this bill and ensuring no government shutdown occurs, we can work in a bipartisan and responsible manner to undo sequestration.

This bill does contain important funding for Michigan, including $210.5 million for Army research on combat vehicle and automotive technologies through the Army Tank and Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, TARDEC, in Warren. TARDEC is the Department of Defense's leading laboratory for research and development of advanced military vehicle technologies, including efforts to protect Army vehicles against rocket propelled grenades, improvised explosive devices and explosively formed projectiles; advanced materials for tactical vehicle armor; more efficient engines; fuel cell and hybrid electric vehicles; unmanned ground vehicles; computer simulations for vehicle design and training of Army personnel; and technology partnerships with the automotive industry.

The bill also includes funding for the programs of the Army's TACOM Life Cycle Management Command, LCMC, in Warren. TACOM LCMC is the Army's lead organization for the development and acquisition of ground vehicle combat, automotive and armaments technologies and systems. TACOM LCMC-managed systems include the Abrams main battle tank, Bradley Fighting Vehicle, Stryker Armored Vehicle, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, and all Army tactical vehicles, such as the HMMWV and Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles.

The bill provides full funding for transportation programs authorized under MAP-21, the 2-year transportation bill signed into law in July that provides critically needed funding for our Nation's roads and bridges. This is a victory because the CR for the first half of the year, and the House-passed CR, do not include the full funding levels authorized in MAP 21.

The bill also provides needed support for American manufacturing. The Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program, MEP, receives level funding at $128.5 million. It is the only Federal program dedicated to providing technical support and services to small and medium-sized manufacturers. MEP is a nationwide network of proven resources that enables manufacturers to compete globally, supports greater supply chain integration, and provides access to information, training and technologies that improve efficiency, productivity, and profitability.

This program has been used extensively in my home State by the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center, which operates the Michigan's Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program. MMTC works with manufacturers around the State of Michigan to innovate so they can become more efficient and profitable in order to grow and create jobs.

The bill protects the life and safety of boaters on the Great Lakes by including a provision that denies the administration request to close the U.S. Coast Guard Seasonal Air Facilities in Muskegon. Closing the station would put at risk the large number of boaters on Lake Michigan during the summer. The Muskegon facility has been in place since 1997 and provides an important safety presence during the boating season on Lake Michigan.

During the course of consideration of the Continuing Resolution, the Senate adopted by voice vote an amendment offered by Senators Coburn and McCain that will limit the use of funds of the National Science Foundation for political science research. The amendment was modified before it was adopted under an agreement between the sponsors and Chairman Mikulski and represented a significant improvement over the original amendment. The amendment as modified allows for political science research projects to be conducted when the Director of the National Science Foundation certifies those projects as promoting the economic interests or national security of the United States. I am concerned that this amendment will restrict high quality research in critical areas beyond our national security and economic interests and creates a threshold for certifying eligible political science research projects that could eliminate very worthy projects, if it is not applied wisely and thoughtfully. I hope that a broad interpretation will avoid unnecessary restrictions of legitimate research.

I am disappointed that the continuing resolution does not provide for adequate funding for our financial markets regulators, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. I worked with a number of my colleagues on an amendment to improve their funding to ensure they have the resources they need to police the markets. Unfortunately that was not adopted.

On balance, while the bill does not contain sufficient funding for many programs, it also contains funding important to Michigan and ensures the continued operation of government. For this reason, I will vote for it.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum, and ask the time be equally divided.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 69 to Amendment No. 26
Page: S1975

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment be called up.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

The clerk will report.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 93 to Amendment No. 26
Page: S1975

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside and amendment No. 93 be called up.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

The clerk will report.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 65, as modified, to Amendment No. 26
Page: S1975

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside and amendment No. 65, with modifications, at the desk be called up.

Without objection, the clerk will report.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 70, as modified, to Amendment No. 26
Page: S1975

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside, and amendment No. 70, as modified, be called up.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

The clerk will report.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I want to comment a minute, before I talk about the individual amendments, on the process we have seen.

We are going to have several amendments, and this is well in excess of $1 trillion in spending. We have had four amendments voted on, and I think unanimous consent will give us seven or eight more. So we are going to have a total of 12 amendments. All but the first one were not tabled, but we are at 60-vote margins, which is fine. But for a bill that spends $1 trillion, to choke down the Senate in a way that does not allow either side the appropriate opportunity to impact $1 trillion worth of spending doesn't fit with either the culture or the history of the Senate, and certainly doesn't fit with the agreement going forward and the rules changes we had this year.

On a bill that has $1 trillion worth of spending, in past history--if you look at the 104th, the 105th, the 103rd Congress--bills of that size would have 70 or 80 amendments, and we are going to choke down to 11 or 12 amendments on this. The question is, Why would we do that? Why would we limit the discussion and the division of thought, manifested through votes, for the American people to actually see what we are doing? There are only two reasons why this is happening. One is--and from a phone call with the President, in his own words, he wants sequester to hurt.

Now, think about that for a minute. And he is my friend. I challenged him on that when he said it to me. But there is a philosophical divide in this country. The Federal Government over the last 10 years has grown 89 percent, while the average median income has declined 5 percent.

The reason my colleagues want sequester to hurt and be painful is they want to rationalize that bigger government is better, that we cannot afford to cut a penny out of the Federal budget. So what we do is the Federal Government is doing less with more money while every American is doing more with less money. That goes against the greatest tradition of our country. It is also a prescription for failure for our country when we are willing to sacrifice, in the short term, direct benefits to major segments of our population for a political point.

Nobody has done more oversight on the Federal Government than I have in the last 8 years, and I will tell you, conservatively, out of the discretionary budget, $250 billion a year is spent that does not positively impact this country in any way. Yet we cannot get up amendments to demonstrate that.

Not only can we not have an amendment up, we cannot even spend the time on it to have a real debate about it. That is because they really do not want to debate these issues of waste, duplication, fraud, and inefficiency.

Then the second reason we are not having amendments, or we are having amendments at 60 votes, is to provide the political cover. Our country is in so much trouble it should not matter what party you are in. What should matter is if we are fixing the long-term problems of our country in such a way as to secure the future of our country.

What we have seen through this process last week and this week is a focus on the short term, a focus on the politically expedient, a focus on the parochial--and from both sides of the aisle. This is not just Democrats, this is Republicans too. Senator Ayotte can't even get an amendment to eliminate spending for a missile program that is never going to be built. It is never going to be built, but we are going to spend $360 million on it next year because it is a parochial prize to a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Washington is not sick because it is partisan. Washington is sick because it is political, and it is short term in its thinking. Nobody in their right mind, no matter how much it benefits their State, would say they want to spend $380 million or $360 million--I am not sure of the exact amount of money--on a program that is never going to come into fruition unless they are thinking about them and not our country and not the families of our country and not the programs that have to be reformed to save them. Nobody would do that. Yet we have 60 votes on all these amendments we are going to offer because they are going to offer protection for people to vote on them to know that they will not even pass, but they can still get the cover for a vote. They can say: I voted for it but it didn't pass because it has to have 60 votes.

That is the smallest part of the problem. To have to go through what we have gone through over the last 5 or 6 days and only have had four votes says something about this place. I would just proffer that I bet had we had an open amendment process we would have been finished with this bill yesterday.

When I came here, for the first 2 years you could offer an amendment for anything at any time at a 51-vote threshold. So all this time we have wasted in quorum calls or on speaking on issues that have nothing to do with the bill in front of us is because we really do not want to govern. What we want is we do not want the body to do its work and have the input of both sides into a bill--other than in the committee. What we want is a fixed outcome that will allow the administration to make sequester as painful as it can be.

So when you shut down packing plants, when the USDA says they cannot have food inspectors there at the same time the USDA is advertising for social service workers and event planners--which, if you did not hire them, could at least give you 52 people not being furloughed for a week. What is happening to America today is we are focused inward on the politics rather than our country. We are focused on gaming the system rather than governing. We are focused on all the wrong things because it is all about the next election.

We have our eyes so far off the ball that now every bill that comes to the floor has to have essentially a rules committee of one, which is the majority leader, deciding whether he wants his members to vote on a bill. That doesn't have anything to connect with the history of the Senate. This is no longer the greatest deliberative body in the world because we do not deliberate; we do not have an open amendment process; we are too afraid of our own shadows to cast a vote and think we might have to defend it.

If you cannot defend any and every vote in this body, you do not have any business being here. To stifle debate and to limit amendments in the way this bill has done certainly will not breed any goodwill going forward and certainly does not do service that the American citizens are due.

Mr. President, I will now take some time to talk about the various amendments I have called up. Amendment No. 69 is the first amendment I called up. As the ranking member on Homeland Security and the ranking member on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, what we know is Homeland Security, in its grants program, through what is called the Urban Area Security Initiative, is out of control. They have not prioritized their funding. They have not put metrics on their funding. They have not controlled their funding.

We put out a report in December 2012 called Safety At Any Price, and we highlighted the problems with this particular grant program. No clear goals, DHS has not established any clear goals for how the funds should be used to improve national security. The 9/11 Commission warned against DHS spending becoming pork spending. UASI, this Urban Area Security Initiative, has become another porkbarrel program providing public safety subsidies to cities such as in my home State, Tulsa.

No. 3, what we found is a tremendous amount of waste in these grants. The lack of clear goals has led States and cities to use this funding on wasteful projects, including paying for overtime for employees; purchasing computers, printers, televisions, underwater robots, bearcats--all the things that do not really connect to national security and the prevention of terrorism.

This amendment prohibits $500 million allocated for the UASI grant program that has been wasted on items that do not relate to homeland security. It prohibits the use of funds on overtime, backpay--backfill pay, security at Major League baseball parks, spring training camps, attendance at conferences, and the purchase of flat-screen TVs.

The other thing we found in our report is the Department of Homeland Security doesn't know what this money was spent on. Not only do they not have goals and metrics for what the money is supposed to be spent on, they cannot tell us what the money was spent on because they don't actually have any record of it. We have spent $35 billion in total on all DH grant programs since 2003. We have spent $7.1 billion on this program.

What I can tell you is it has helped some communities, I don't doubt that, especially during our tough times. It has filled in. But if we are ever going to get out of the problem we are in as a country in terms of our debt and deficits, we have to have programs that have metrics on them that have to be followed up. The grants have to be followed, and they need to be held to account.

My colleagues, I have no hopes of this passing because most of my colleagues will not look at the research done on this, will not look at the ineffectiveness of it, will not look at the waste, and will vote a party-line vote to defeat this amendment. We will get 45 or 50 votes or 51 or 52, but it will go down. So, consequently, real problems that have been oversighted by the Permanent Committee on Investigations--really oversighted by the Department of Homeland Security--the real solutions to problems will not happen because of the way this place is being run.

Next, I would like to talk about amendment No. 93. Amendment No. 93 follows a recommendation of the President. It is not my recommendation, it is the President's recommendation. What this amendment would do is actually take money that has been directed for expired heritage area authorizations that were not any recommendations of the President--actually the President's recommendation was to cut this money in half--and we are going to do exactly that with this amendment. We are going to cut it by $8.1 million.

What heritage areas are, when we started them--the 12 heritage areas this is about are at least 16 years old. One of them is 25 years old. The whole idea behind heritage areas was to fund them with a grant program to get them started and then let them run on their own with State and local funds. They have become a dependency program.

The OMB and the President's budget said we ought to eliminate the dependency of these by trimming back the amount of money. Instead of becoming temporary programs directed toward self-sufficiency as originally intended, these national heritage areas have turned into permanent entities that continue to grow in number and funding amount--totally opposite the original authorization intent. In other words, they are parochial based.

As a matter of fact, one of them, the John Chaffee Blackstone River National Heritage, has existed for more than 25 years. They actually thought the funding might get cut, so they created another way to pay for it, just as the government had intended for them to do, and they raised the money for it this year. But we are going to fund them anyway in this appropriations package, this Omnibus appropriations package. It is not really a CR, it is an Omnibus appropriations. Of these, 12 have already received $112 million, more than half the total ever spent on national heritage areas.

So they have been in existence at least 16 years. They should have become self-sufficient. They need to become self-sufficient, and we should not be spending the money. What will we do with the money that will amount to about $16 million? We will turn that money into opening the tours at the White House, opening Yellowstone National Park and the rest of the parks. In terms of the way that money is spent out, we will be able to take $6 million or $7 million of that money and the national parks will open on time.

Most of you haven't heard about this, but in Jackson Hole, WY, and Cody, WY, the citizens of that State are raising private money to plow the snow so Yellowstone National Park can open on time. I want you to see the contrast because it is important to their livelihood and their commerce. They are going to sacrifice personally to get that park open on time. At the same time we are going to send money to 12 national heritage areas that have been dependent on the Federal Government for 16 years.

Tell me what is wrong with that picture. We are going to create a dependency, and then we are going to indirectly tax the people of Wyoming--one of their great areas of commerce, a place where visitors come to Wyoming to see Yellowstone Park--and have them use their own post-tax money to pay for that. That cannot fit with the vision of America that almost everybody else in this country believes in. It doesn't fit.

Other national parks have reported campgrounds that are going to be closed to reduce maintenance. So we are going to take this $6 million, and we are going to use it to help open these parks and allow the Park Service to have the parks open on time. In the original authorization, it was not supposed to get any money. They should not have been getting money for the last 10 years. Instead of creating a dependency in the program, we are going to take that money and do something for the American people.

The next amendment is amendment No. 65, as modified. And this is one that really gets my goat. The National Science Foundation funds lots of great scientific endeavors in this country. As a matter of fact, they have about four times as many applications for grants as they have money to give out. But they spend a considerable amount of money doing such things as funding ``research in political science.'' In 2008 they spent $8.6 million funding research in political science, $10.9 million in 2009, $11 million in 2010, $10.8 million in 2011, and $10.1 million in 2012. What this amendment does is prohibit the National Science Foundation from wasting Federal resources on political science projects and redirects that to other areas within NSF that are going to give the American people a much greater return on their investment.

Let me give some examples of what they fund: campaigns and elections, citizen support, and emerging and established democracies, bargaining processes, electoral choice, democratization, political change in regimes, transitions. Those are all important things if we were not in a budget and spending crisis. Tell me whether it would be better to have the next new computer chip generation developed through a grant at the National Science Foundation or if the actions of a filibuster in the Senate are more important to the American people. Which one is a greater priority? Which one is more important to the further advancement of this country? I guarantee it is the former and not the latter.

In the years hence, we are going to be making a lot of choices about priorities, and every amendment I am putting out here today is about priorities. Do we fund things that do not adequately or accurately help us in the short term in creating jobs, in being wise and prudent spenders of taxpayers' money, or do we fund things that are a low priority and let things that are high priority suffer? That is basically what this amendment does. It says: Until we get out of this pinch, we should not be spending money to--for example, the $251,000 used to study Americans' attitudes toward the Senate. We spent a quarter of a million dollars last year studying Americans' attitude toward the Senate; $106,000 was spent to study the rise of candidate-centered elections over those dominated by political parties; $47,000 was spent to study the President's level of cooperation with Congress when they utilize Executive orders; $28,000 was spent to examine the prohibition movement. It has been a long time since we had prohibition in this country. That has to be a priority for us. How about a quarter of a million dollars to investigate how people perceive the political attitudes of others? That has to be important right now. It has to be a priority right now for our country. We spent $144,000 to track how politicians change their Web sites over time. Who cares? That money--$144,000--will keep a whole bunch of meat inspectors at meat plants. There will not be any furloughs if we get rid of this kind of stuff. I could go on.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record what I consider nonpriority studies that the NFS has funded.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:

This is where we should be doing our work. We should be making choices for the American people. We should be making the hard choices that say this is more important than this. We don't have enough money. We are borrowing $40 million a second, and we are going to fund these kinds of political studies that have no benefit except to the politicians and the political science professors because they are the ones who will read them. The average American doesn't care. But they do care whether their meat is going to be safe and whether they are going to get meat.

Mark my words, this amendment will go down. It won't be passed because we don't have the courage to make priority choices in the Senate. We don't have the courage to allow the number of amendments, such as this--there should have been 30 or 40 such as this--on the floor to make those choices.

Finally, I will talk about amendment No. 70. This amendment has been modified. The appropriators have requested that Homeland Security-related reports--which are demanded in this bill--come to them. They do appropriate for Homeland Security, but there is an authorizing committee. It happens to be the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. What this amendment says is: If you are going to give information from the administration to appropriations, you might want to think about giving it to the actual committee that has the authority to authorize and change the program.

I hope this will be accepted. We are going to get it 14 days after the appropriators. I don't know what that is all about, but I am willing to concede. I think Senator Carper and myself ought to see what the administration is saying to the appropriators about programs that are run through the Department of Homeland Security. So of all the amendments we have, I think this is the only one that has any possibility.

I yield the floor.

The Senator from Kansas.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate for up to 20 minutes.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, when I was on the floor this morning, I outlined the merits of an amendment I tried to have to this continuing resolution. It is amendment No. 55. It is an amendment that deals with the air traffic Control Tower Program that the Obama administration has indicated will be terminated on April 7. I don't want to go over all the things I talked about this morning, but I do want to talk about how we got to the point we are today in which apparently this amendment is not going to be considered by the Senate.

This morning I indicated how, in my view, important this amendment is. I read from an AP story from Chicago about how air safety was in jeopardy. There were indications that a plane crash which occurred previously would not have occurred if there had been an air traffic control tower present. The complaint by Americans is that our aviation sector is so frustrated by the political brinkmanship which goes on in Washington, DC.

Again, this is an important amendment that is about the safety and security of the American people--particularly those who fly. It is amazing to me that despite the continued efforts to bring this amendment to the floor for consideration--not that I expect any guarantee. There is no such thing as a guarantee that this amendment would pass. But the inability to have it even considered is very troubling and surprising to me.

Last week when we started on the continuing resolution, I was pleased to hear what the majority leader said about the process on the CR. This was not stated years ago or months ago, it was just last week. The majority leader said, when he was talking about the continuing resolution: There will be amendments offered. We are working on a process to consider those amendments. This week we will be off to another opportunity for the Senate to return to regular order, an opportunity for this body to legislate through cooperation, through compromise, as we used to do. This legislation will be a test of the Senate's goodwill. We are anxious to move forward and start doing some legislating. We are going to take all amendments and try to work through them as quickly as we can. I hope we can move forward and set up votes on every one of them.

That is the announcement that was made as we started the continuing resolution. As the majority leader indicated, this legislation will be a test of the Senate's goodwill. I think the Senate has clearly failed the test of goodwill. But more than goodwill, we are failing the American people in taking the steps necessary to secure their safety.

This is not an amendment about me or an amendment about Kansas. Certainly, I am talking about my home State. There is nothing wrong with representing our home State which is affected by the loss of these control towers. There are 43 States--almost all of us--that have control towers. On April 7, they no longer will be operating.

I indicated this previously, that one of the reasons why I thought this amendment, perhaps above others, should be considered is because the Control Tower Program will be eliminated April 7. I am a member of the Appropriations Committee. I am a member of the Subcommittee on Transportation. I will work to see that these programs are continued once we get to the regular appropriation process when the CR is behind us. My colleagues and I will never have the chance to do that because in a matter of just a few short days the control towers will be gone. They will be closed. The lights will be turned off.

So my role as an appropriator and as a Member of the Senate--which I share with 99 other Senators--and the idea that we would then come back and restart a program that has disappeared is not going to happen. In the absence of this amendment passing--in the absence of this amendment being considered and passing--the ability for me to do my job on behalf of a program that I think matters to the American people disappears.

I have never tried to be a difficult Member. I believe in collegiality. I believe in the goodwill the majority leader talks about. But I cannot imagine what I was supposed to have done. It is an amendment that is germane. I am not here trying to offer an amendment that doesn't matter to the bill at hand. I am not trying to score political points, I am not trying to put Democrats on the line for casting a vote that the voters might object to. There is nothing here that is political or partisan in nature. I did what I thought I was supposed to do.

There are 26 cosponsors of this amendment. More than half are Democrats. The Senators include, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and. If 26 of us in that group can agree upon the value of an amendment, why is it the Senate cannot even take a vote on a germane amendment that is broadly supported? It is broadly supported outside the Chamber of this Senate. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the National Business Aviation Association, National Air Transport Association, Association of Air Medical Services--they believe this is important for the ability of LifeWatch patients--NATCA, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, and the American Association of Airport Executives.

This is not a provincial issue that is all about trying to take care of something for himself, nor is it about trying to create political difficulties for anybody. We broadly agree on a bipartisan basis that this amendment should be made in order.

I have been in the Senate for a little more than 2 years. I served for a number of years in the House of Representatives. One of the things I thought was true and why I sought the opportunity to serve in the Senate is that it would be different from the House. Any Member of the Senate ought to be here--whether Republican or Democrat--on behalf of their ability to offer amendments.

We had a debate about changing the rules and the proffer was made that if we would agree to change the rules, amendments would be made in order.

I thought that was a positive development.

Now, it seems to me, while I left the House in hopes of having the opportunity to represent my constituents as best as I know how and to represent America as best I know how, somebody stands in my way. I can't find out who that is. I have not talked to a Senator who is not supportive of my amendment. Every conversation I have is, well, I think it is a good idea. I don't know why it is not being made in order. There is no good explanation.

Who sits down and develops the list and decides which amendment is important and which one isn't? This ought to be something that is not turned over to a one-person Rules Committee.

Again, the House and Senate are structured differently. This is a historic body with a legacy of allowing debate, discussion, and amendment. And, again, not for purposes outside even the nature of the bill we are talking about, how can it be controversial to transfer $50 million in a bill that has more than $1 trillion of funding, of spending? How can it be so difficult to transfer $50 million from two accounts--unencumbered balances and a research account--to save air traffic control towers, leave them in place until I at least get the opportunity to work with my colleagues to extend their life through the appropriations and legislative process into the future.

So for a Senator such as myself--I lay awake last night from, I don't know, 3:15 to 4:30 trying to figure out what I could say that would convince my colleagues to support this amendment or to allow whoever is making the decision that it can't even be debated and heard and voted on--I don't know that there are any magic words. It does concern me. It bothers me greatly.

We ought to all be here protecting the rights of each and every other Senator. This is important to us as a legislative body, not to us and our egos as Senators. It is not the sense that we have the right to say everything--we are Senators, we are important and powerful people--it is that on behalf of the American people, a person such as myself who represents 2 1/2 million Kansans ought to have the ability to bring a germane amendment to a bill on the Senate floor.

Had we brought these amendments forward, had we agreed to debate and pass my amendment, we wouldn't be here today still stalled on moving forward to conclude this business and move to the budget. We could have debated the amendments and voted on the germane amendments days ago. But for some reason we once again get bogged down in somebody deciding that this amendment qualifies to be considered and this one doesn't.

So this is another example of where--again, I guess if we were to tell the story to the American people, it would be that today we are going to pass a bill that spends $1.1 trillion, and we have had four or five amendments offered and perhaps approved, maybe a couple more today.

This bill has not worked its way through the Appropriations Committee. It comes from the House. We take it up immediately. It is written so perfectly that only three or four individual Senators have the opportunity to alter the bill--not the guarantee to change the bill but the opportunity to suggest to our colleagues whether it makes sense and then cast a vote, yes or no, based upon whether what I am saying has merit. We can't get to the point at which I am given the opportunity to explain on the Senate floor why this amendment is something that is important.

I came to the Senate from the U.S. House of Representatives in hopes that the Senate was different, where individual Members have value unrelated to their relationship with the Speaker or the minority leader of the House, unrelated to my relationship with the members of the Rules Committee. I have not always been the most perfect follower of my political party. I have tried to do what I think is right, and therefore I have not always developed the relationship I needed in the House to be able to get my amendments considered on the House floor.

The Rules Committee is there for a purpose. It is a very unwieldy body, the U.S. House of Representatives, of 435 Members. Here we have 100. Surely, based upon the history, the legacy, the rules of the Senate, we have the ability as Senators, whether we are in favor or disfavor and whether our amendment meets with a person's satisfaction on behalf of the American people, we have the right to represent their interests and have votes taken.

The majority leader said the other day that I am an obstructionist. I lay awake last night thinking, I am not an obstructionist. I am following the rules. The majority leader said this morning that we need to show that sequestration is damaging to the country. I didn't even vote for sequestration, and yet I can't fix a problem that is caused by somebody else's vote. Again, it is so baffling to me how this works.

I finally found somebody who would tell me they oppose my amendment. Today I talked to the Secretary of Transportation, who said: The administration opposes your amendment. So maybe that is the explanation. I have asked my colleagues on both sides of the aisle why I can't--a person who followed the rules, who did what one would think one should do to get an amendment made in order--why can't this amendment be heard?

The only explanation that I guess makes sense is that there are those in Washington, DC, who want to prove we cannot cut spending without consequences that are dramatic. OK, prove that point. Come to the floor. Have the debate about spending, about budgets, about taxes. Have this conversation about whether we can afford to cut spending. Prove it to us. Take the votes. Demonstrate that it can't be done. But to use sequestration as the example for why we can never cut any money from any program, particularly on the amendment I am offering, is dangerous. What it says is, we want to make a political point, as compared to worrying about the lives of the American people who fly.

So this circumstance in which I find myself--again this morning I lay in bed realizing that the radicalization of Senator Moran is occurring. The only way, apparently, to get an amendment heard is to be difficult. It is not my personality. It is not my nature. But on behalf of Kansans and Americans, if what it takes is for me to become more difficult to deal with so my amendments are considered--it is not about me personally--so amendments that matter to my constituents and, at least in my view, to America can be heard--you have to make yourself a pain around here if that is what is required in the Senate. I hope that is not the case.

I hope the majority leader is right that this is the path by which we are going to get back to regular order. I want to be a member of the Appropriations Committee that works, debates, and discusses, we listen to witnesses and figure out that we can spend more here, but we have to spend less money here; this program matters, and this one is inefficient.

I voted against sequestration because I don't believe across-the-board cuts are responsible. What that means is that everything deserves the same reduction. There are things that we do well and that are appropriate for the government to be involved in, and there are things that we do poorly and that the government shouldn't be involved in. Yet we treat them all the same. I want to be a member of the Appropriations Committee that says: We are going to evaluate each one of these programs and make decisions about spending, and we are going to choose to spend money here and not here, or the decision will be made by the Senate and the House and the President that we are going to raise revenues so we can spend more money.

But that is not a reason to block this amendment. It is not a reason to say that those people who are going to be traveling out of 179 airports that have control towers--that their lives are going to be less safe and secure and run the potential of loss of life and injury as a result of us trying to prove the point that we apparently can't cut budgets around here because we want to show there is damage to be done when that occurs. That is a very dangerous political point.

Will the Senator yield?

I yield.

First of all, as a cosponsor of the amendment, I am glad the Senator is getting around to the merits. Yes, it is a great injustice the Senator is going through right now, not getting his amendment heard. I have to say, though, as probably the only active commercial pilot in here, I jumped on this bill because a lot of people don't realize that the contract towers are just as in need of control as the noncontract towers.

The Senator is aware that the University of Oklahoma in northern Oklahoma is contracted out. I have gone in there before where they are using all three runways at the same time. It is a huge issue.

But what I want to ask the Senator is, why is it that when the bureaucracy is opposed to something they, No. 1, won't tell you about it; No. 2, they go whispering to the President; No. 3, they go whispering to other people around here?

I went through this same thing, I suggest to my friend from Kansas, when I passed the Pilot's Bill of Rights. I had 67 cosponsors in the Senate, and they wouldn't bring it up. For an entire year they never would bring it up, and we had to rule XIV it on the floor. That is what is wrong. When we have something everybody is for, it is a good thing, but somehow--in this case, I know what it is: the same thing that happened to me. I got mine passed. It took me a year to do it.

Best of luck to the Senator from Kansas. I would only say to him that this is a time to stay in there and fight for this because this is a great example to use. Everything that is being cut in government right now--all of these people who had to wait in line to get in here, there is no reason to do that. Everything people really want and the things that are popular, this is what they cut. So the Senator from Kansas is a victim of that. Just hang in there and try to make it happen.

I thank the Senator from Oklahoma. I know he has great expertise on the topic of aviation and airports and airplanes.

Again, I am here to decry a system that is failing. And while it is personally troublesome to me--it bothers me--it is embarrassing not to be able to accomplish what seems so straightforward and simple. We all like to have victories, but it is not really about me. Every Member of the Senate ought to have the opportunity to present germane amendments and let the will of the Senate--let those 99 other people, as well as me, make a decision based upon the merits, however we all make decisions around here or whether we vote for or against something. This is not about my right as an individual Senator as much as it is about the rights of all of us on behalf of the American people, on behalf of our home State and constituencies, to be able to do our jobs.

If there is a political game afloat that is preventing this amendment from being considered, then I would suggest we have transversed that plane in which we no longer are caring for Americans but we are caring about our own political skills, our own political reelection as compared to what we are here to do.

This place is way too political. This is not a political amendment. It ought to be made in order. Yet, despite all the efforts, it has not occurred.

I hope, in the few minutes that remains, there is still a chance that my unanimous consent request will be agreed to. I appreciate that others were able--a handful of folks were able to offer their amendments. I think we ought to have more of that, not less. It is about the Senate doing its job; it is not just about Senator Moran not being able to accomplish his on this particular day.

I appreciate the indulgence of my colleagues.

I yield for the Senator from Pennsylvania.

The Senator from Pennsylvania.

Amendment No. 115
Page: S1975

Mr. President, I rise to discuss briefly an amendment I have that is going to be voted on later today, but I wish to begin by completely agreeing with the Senator from Kansas. It is extremely unfortunate, to say the very least, that the majority party is so afraid of casting votes, they are now disallowing the most ordinary, sensible, germane amendments that transfer modest sums of money from one account to another account. I am not suggesting that everybody needs to agree with it. I am not sure I agree with the amendment of the Senator from Kansas. But the idea that an amendment such as that shouldn't even have an opportunity to be debated on the Senate floor is amazing.

Let me address the amendment I have introduced. I will start by observing that the bill under consideration today significantly underfunds the Defense Department's operations and maintenance accounts. The Army's subset of this category of funding is underfunded by $2 billion. That is just the Army alone. This has implications for the safety and readiness of our troops. I am not suggesting that my amendment solves that whole problem--it doesn't, but it makes a modest step in the right direction.

Just quickly, some of the things the operations and maintenance account funds--it is a lot. It is maintenance of ships and tanks and aircrafts. It is avionics and engines and navigation systems. It is artillery. It is all kinds of things our service men and women use to fight and to win and to protect themselves. It gets funded through the operations and maintenance account, and it is not only maintenance of this important equipment, it is also training--training such as unit training when an Army battalion, for instance, trains in an exercise against an opposition force that is modeled after a real-world potential enemy. That kind of training is very important. It gets funded out of this account, the operations and maintenance account, and that account is underfunded. So I would suggest that this is a very important account, and I think there is almost universal acknowledgment that it is being underfunded.

Meanwhile, in the same bill, while we are underfunding our operations and maintenance account, we have a bill that would spend $60 million forcing the Defense Department to build biofuels refineries. This forces our Defense Department to build these expensive refineries to make very expensive fuel. How do we know it will be very expensive fuel? How many of us fill up our gas tanks with biofuels? The component we are forced to buy--the ethanol--is part of what drives up the cost of gasoline. The fact is that conventional fuel is much cheaper than these biofuels, but we are going to force the Defense Department to spend a whole lot of money building a refinery, the purpose of which is to produce extremely expensive and inefficient fuel. I would suggest that is a waste of precious resources we can't afford to waste.

Now, the House Defense appropriations bill did not include this, and the Senate Armed Services Committee--these are our experts who analyze this--opposed wasting money this way when they reported the bill out of committee. Unfortunately, when it got to the floor, it got put in, and this is our opportunity to correct it.

Now, some have suggested these biofuel refineries are somehow a solution to the expensive cost of moving fuel to combat zones. The only problem is this item is going to fund the construction of refineries in the United States. They are not going to be in combat zones. So that is just not true.

I would suggest if anyone thinks this is a good idea--to force taxpayers to build expensive, inefficient refineries to produce very expensive fuel--shouldn't it at least happen through the Department of Energy or some other experimental research-oriented institution?

Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

I will be happy to yield to the Senator from Oklahoma.

I know something about this being the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. We went through this.

Is the Senator aware that in one purchase the administration--now, I am talking about the White House--forced the Navy to buy 450,000 gallons of fuel at $29 a gallon? You can buy it on the open market for $3 a gallon.

Secondly, I think the Senator does know this because I heard him mention the Department of Energy, when we formed the Department of Energy, they were supposed to do all this stuff.

But I would have to make one observation. We have a President, an administration, that has been cutting dramatically, and we are all concerned about what has happened to our military, our ability to defend ourselves. They do it in three ways. No. 1, they cut; No. 2, they delay; but, No. 3--and this is what we are getting to now--they take the agenda, and in this case this green agenda, and put it not where it should be but under the defense budget. So for every dollar that goes to the green energy programs, the Senator and I would like--since I am cosponsoring the Senator's amendment--every dollar is something we cannot spend for our fighters in the field.

Well, reclaiming my time, I completely agree with the Senator from Oklahoma. We already force our Defense Department to waste enormous amounts of money purchasing fuel that is much more expensive than readily available alternatives. I think that is a very bad idea. And I think it is a bad idea to do even more of that in the form of building these biofuel refinery plants that would further propagate this ill-conceived process.

If you think it is somehow a good idea to do this then, as the Senator from Oklahoma suggests, wouldn't it make sense to at least do this in the Department of Energy rather than wasting precious Defense Department resources at a time when we know we are underfunding the operations and maintenance account? This is the reason for my amendment.

My amendment transfers $60 million out of the biofuel refinery account in the Defense Department appropriations bill and moves money--the amount permissible under the budget rules--into the operations and maintenance account. This is not a complete solution, I understand that, but it is a modest step in the right direction of providing a little bit more resources to an area that is badly underfunded.

I urge my colleagues to support my amendment.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

On amendment No. 69
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Mr. President, I just would briefly say that I believe Senator Moran, Senator Ayotte, and maybe others have good amendments on which they are seeking to vote. I am aware that Senator Moran's amendment, I believe, has 28 cosponsors--a large number of Democratic cosponsors. Virtually no one seems to be opposed to it, but somehow a decision has been made by the majority leader to not let him have a vote.

I believe we need to understand something very fundamental in the Senate, and we are heading to a crisis on this issue; that is, a duly elected Senator who serves in this body should be able to bring up an amendment that is reasonable, that is germane, and get a vote on it. It is amazing to me that it seems to be now accepted that the majority leader picks and chooses the people who get their amendments.

I think the Moran amendment, from what I have seen and heard about it, would pass. So it is not going to pass. It is going to fail because someone, presumably the leader, has decided they will not get a vote, and it has been killed in that fashion. That is not the tradition of the Senate. I am worried about that. We cannot continue that way.

To our new Senators--Republicans and Democrats--you need to understand that as a Senator, you have a right to have votes that are legitimate on bills that are legitimately amended. That is where we are, and I am disappointed those votes have not been allowed.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Will the Senator withhold his suggestion?

Mr. President, I withhold my suggestion of the absence of a quorum.

The Senator from New York.

Opposing amendment 69
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Mr. President, I rise today in vigorous opposition, and with very deep concern, to an amendment offered by the Senator from Oklahoma that would prohibit Urban Areas Security Initiative, or UASI, funds from being used to be able to pay local public safety employees overtime and backfill pay.

I share the Senator's commitment to ensuring that homeland security funds are spent wisely. I believe his efforts are in good faith, and I am eager to work with him toward this goal. However, as the threat from al-Qaida has metastasized to the Arabian Peninsula and elsewhere, there are still terrorists whose objective is to inflict wide-scale harm to Americans on our homeland.

New York City remains the No. 1 target for terrorists around the world who want to do us harm. Therefore, we must remain vigilant and continue to provide local law enforcement with all the tools necessary to keep us safe. So as well-intentioned as this amendment may be, law enforcement organizations across the country have been loud and clear: This is simply the wrong prescription at the wrong time.

This amendment is opposed by a range of law enforcement and first responder organizations, including the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the International Association of Firefighters, Major Cities Chiefs Association, Major County Sheriffs' Association, the National Fusion Center Association, the National Homeland Security Coalition, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

In fact, I have a letter from our Commissioner Kelly that I ask unanimous consent be printed in the Record, along with another letter.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the, as follows:

Amendment No. 26
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Under the leadership of New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, 16 publicly known terrorist attacks on our city have been thwarted since 9/11. Our local law enforcement must continue to have every tool available to them to remain one step ahead of terrorists at every single turn. Even at a time of fiscal restraint in Washington, protecting our families from the unimaginable should not be a place where we make cuts.

According to Police Commissioner Kelly, this amendment would ``jeopardize our collective efforts to safeguard New York City .....  and that ``without a doubt, the overtime and backfill funding that the NYPD uses to support investigations, training and deployments is essential to the NYPD's layered approach to security.

I ask my colleagues to stand with local law enforcement officials, to stand with the American public who have given us the duty to protect them. I urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment because, if passed, this amendment will put the training and security deployments needed to keep us safe in jeopardy. These are not esoteric programs. We are talking about programs that include counterterrorism training, region-wide planning exercises designed to prepare emergency responses to large and catastrophic events, and boots-on-the-ground security measures, including heavy weapons training and intelligence sharing.

These overtime funds actually reduce costs. If the NYPD needed to hire full-time officers or assign current full-time efforts to the specialized patrol and intelligence duties described, they could not afford to do so.

So while I commend my colleagues for attempting to be good stewards of the taxpayers' money, these are cuts that our families cannot afford. We have a solemn duty to protect the American people. That should be our first priority in this body. I ask each and every Member of this body to ask themselves how history will judge them if we fail to live up to that duty.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to Coburn amendment No. 26 which deals—

All time is expired.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 2 minutes to address this amendment.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to Coburn amendment No. 26. What it does is prevent certain types of funding to be given to UASI, which is the lifeblood of New York's antiterror programs. It has gotten rave reviews from people. The person in charge is Ray Kelly, who is very much in the mainstream, right in the center of our fight against terrorism, not only in New York but in the country.

As you know, New York City has more than 100 police officers devoted exclusively to antiterrorism. They work very closely with FBI taskforces and others. Some of this amendment is befuddling. To say that UASI, our antiterror division of the New York City Police Department, could not buy computers, flat screens makes no sense.

The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative is an antiterrorism computer system. It is one of the mainstays of preventing terror. How do we fight modern 21st century terrorism and say they cannot use computers. That makes no since whatsoever. Make no mistake, if this amendment passes, New York City training and security deployments would be in jeopardy.

Another aspect is we often need to use overtime in our antiterrorism units. For instance, we have to guard bridges and tunnels, particularly when there are threats against them. To have officers constantly changing because of time commitments and time limitations makes no sense whatsoever.

The bottom line is simply New York had a terrible tragedy on 9/11/2001. America rallied to New York's side, of which we are very appreciative. One of the ways, one of the most material and important ways was this U.S. grant. It has been used well. It has received plaudits from around the country. To tie the hands of the very people who are leading the fight on terror and saying they can do this but not this, they can do this but not this, this is the kind of micromanaging for which I think most people in America resent Washington.

I urge that this amendment be roundly defeated.

I yield the floor.

Vote on Amendment No. 69
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All time has expired.

Under the previous order, the question is on agreeing to offered by the Senator from Oklahoma,.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second.

The clerk will call the roll.

I announce that the Senator from New Jersey is necessarily absent.

Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

On this vote, the yeas are 48, the nays are 51. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is rejected.

Amendment No. 93
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Under the previous order, there is 2 minutes of debate equally divided prior to a vote in relation to offered by the Senator from Oklahoma,.

Who yields time?

The Senator from Rhode Island.

Opposing amendment No. 93
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Mr. President, I would like to speak on the amendment, but I see the sponsor is here. If he has no objection, I will speak, then ask for a vote.

The proposes to reduce funding for 49 national heritage areas by $8 million and redirect $6 million to park operations. It also strikes the reauthorization of 12 areas located across the country, including one in my State of Rhode Island but also in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia, among other States.

The amendment doesn't provide a real fix for the problems with respect to national park funding. Moving $6 million is not going to make up for the $134 million cut we have had to impose upon the Park Service.

In addition, there has been some suggestion this would help restore White House tours. Those tours are governed by the Secret Service budget, which is not part of this amendment. So that would not be affected.

These heritage areas are private-public partnerships. They are not national parks. They provide huge economic development. They are located across the country. It is something we should restore, maintain, and not cut.

With that, I would simply add the National Park Conservation Association opposes the amendment, and I ask my colleagues to oppose the amendment.

The Senator from Oklahoma.

In favor of amendment No. 93
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Mr. President, the average age of the heritage areas in this bill is 16 years. If you look at the original authorization, none of them was supposed to get any Federal money now. As a matter of fact, the Senator's heritage area has planned and raised the money for his area and had an alternative plan to do it.

The fact is, the national parks will open with this amount of money on time this year, so it will make a big difference in Yellowstone and all the rest of the national parks. The National Park Service does have something to do with the White House tours because they can take this money and allocate that. It is not a Secret Service problem, it is a national park problem.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Is there a sufficient second?

There appears to be a sufficient second.

The clerk will call the roll.

Vote on Amendment No. 93
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I announce that the Senator from New Jersey is necessarily absent.

Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

On this vote, the yeas are 45 the nays are 54. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is rejected.

The Senator from Maryland.

Mr. President, what is the next regular order?

Vote on amendment No. 65, as modified, to amendment No. 26
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The next amendment is.

Mr. President, we have some good news. The good news is that the Senator and I have reached an agreement.

There is an acceptable modification. I didn't know if the Senator wanted to speak on this amendment. May I continue.

This amendment ensures that the NSF funding for political science research is widely used focusing on national security and economic interests. I, therefore, believe we can agree to this amendment with a voice vote.

I ask unanimous consent that the 60-vote threshold be waived for this amendment.

Is there objection?

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Is there further debate?

Mr. President, I request a voice vote.

The question is on agreeing to the amendment.

The amendment was agreed to.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider that vote.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

Vote on amendment No. 70, as modified, to amendment No. 26
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The next amendment is, as modified.

The Senator from Louisiana.

Mr. President, I am happy to tell our colleagues we have also worked this out and can take this by voice vote.

I appreciate the cooperation of the. We have no objection to providing the reports to the committee which he has requested, reports to Homeland Security. However, many of these reports are expenditure plans, and all we ask is that the receive them 2 weeks in advance. The Senator has agreed to that, and we have no objection to taking this by voice vote.

I believe we can agree to this amendment with a voice vote, so I ask unanimous consent that the 60-vote threshold be waived for the amendment.

Is there objection? Without objection, it is so ordered.

Is there further debate?

If not, the question is on agreeing to the amendment.

The amendment was agreed to.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and to lay that motion on the table.

Amendment No. 72, as modified, to amendment No. 26
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Mr. President, I call up and ask for its immediate consideration.

The clerk will report the amendment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to waive the reading of the amendment.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

In favor of amendment No. 72
Mr. President, I am perfectly willing and I know some of the Democratic sponsors of, Senator and others, would be in agreement to go ahead and accept this by voice vote.

What this does is reverse the decision from the Department of Defense that took away some of the abilities our troops, when they are brought into service, have in terms of subsidizing their tuition. So this would return it to the way it was before.

I have to say quickly and briefly, this is something I have talked about to our troops in the field. Many of them were so alarmed that it was even suggested they would take away the very thing that caused them to enlist in the first place.

I think this is one that is going to enjoy wide bipartisan support for a voice vote, and I ask for its adoption.

The Senator from North Carolina.

In favor of amendment No. 72
I would like to speak on. I think it is a very good amendment. We have 100,000 servicemembers in our Active-Duty military who actually utilized this last year, and 50,000 of them received diplomas, certificates, and licenses. It truly does help prepare our servicemembers for a successful transition into the civilian workforce when they choose to leave the military.

This is good news for a recruitment tool and it is good news as a retention tool and I think it is imperative that we continue to offer this tuition assistance benefit to our members.

I certainly want to thank Senator for working with me on this issue. I think it is a very good amendment. I also want to thank Senators, , , and for helping us reach an agreement and move this amendment forward.

I yield the floor.

The Senator from Maryland.

Vote on amendment No. 72
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Mr. President, thanks to the excellent work of both Senators and, who reached an agreement on this, I believe we can agree to  with another voice vote.

I ask unanimous consent that all time be yielded back and that a 60-vote threshold be waived for this amendment.

Is there objection?

Without objection, it is so ordered.

The question is on agreeing to.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and to lay that motion on the table.

Vote on amendment No. 98, as modified, to amendment No. 26
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Mr. President, I now call up the, as modified.

The clerk will report.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading be dispensed with.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, this amendment makes technical changes to citations, bill language related to the Department of Homeland Security and an adjustment resulting from a CBO scoring.

I believe we can agree to this amendment with a voice vote, so I ask unanimous consent that the 60-vote threshold be waived for. I want to thank Senator for the excellent work he and his staff have done in cleaning up this bill for the technical aspects.

Is there objection?

Without objection, it is so ordered.

The question is on agreeing to.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and to lay that motion on the table.

Amendment No. 129, as modified, to amendment No. 26
Mr. President, I call up my, as modified.

The clerk will report.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading be dispensed with.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, this is a technical correction amendment. Current law prohibits transfers of U.S. cluster munitions that do not meet certain reliability requirements.

Years ago Japan purchased U.S. cluster munitions that do not meet such requirements, and that Japan now wants to dispose of. Japan has contracted with a company in Germany to do this. But transferring the cluster munitions to Germany violates the law.

Section 1706(c) of the continuing resolution provides an exception to the prohibition on transfers if the purpose is to dispose of the cluster munitions.

The Leahy amendment No. 129, which is supported by Senator, fixes a minor drafting error. It is a purely technical amendment which does not affect the substance of section 1706(c).

Mr. President, I suggest we dispose of this amendment by voice vote. It should not be controversial.

I yield back all time.

The Senator from Maryland.

Mr. President, this too is an amendment I believe we can agree to with a voice vote. Again, I wish to thank Senator Leahy for the excellent job he did.

I ask unanimous consent that all time be yielded back and the 60-vote threshold be waived for.

Is there objection?

Without objection, it is so ordered.

The question is on agreeing to the amendment, as modified.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and to lay that motion on the table.

The Senator from Arkansas.

Amendment No. 82, to amendment No. 26
Mr. President, I call up.

The clerk will report the amendment.

I believe this has been basically agreed to by both sides. I do not think we will require a rollcall vote. I believe we can go by voice vote. I thank my cosponsors. We have had several Senators working on this: Senator, Senator , Senator —I appreciate his great leadership—Senator , who relented earlier and said he would not object to this, and also Senator. He has done a fantastic job of moving this through.

This is about the Food Safety Inspection Service. Basically this has a very direct impact on the private sector. When these Food Safety Inspection Service employees are furloughed, that means basically the processing plant is furloughed. They have to close for the day because they have to have a food safety inspector there when they are producing.

I think it is agreeable, and I ask unanimous consent, that we do it by voice vote. I thank all of my cosponsors.

Is there objection?

Without objection, it is so ordered.

The question is on agreeing to.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

In favor amendment No. 115
Under the previous order, the to the  is withdrawn.

There will be 2 minutes of debate on the, as modified.

Mr. President, I rise to make the case for. I think we all know that this bill funds the Defense Operations and Maintenance Account to a very large degree. This is a very important account from which we fund the maintenance of all kinds of military equipment, from trains to tanks to avionics—you name it, it gets funded from this account. So too does a whole lot of training come from this account.

Meanwhile, we have $60 million going to build a biorefinery that would force the Defense Department to pay too much for fuel. This is about priorities, and it is my suggestion and my amendment to take $60 million out of this account that would force us to build an inefficient, expensive refinery to make too-expensive fuel and transfer it into this Operations and Maintenance Account that we need.

I appreciate the support of the ranking member of the for this amendment, Senator, and I urge my colleagues to vote in its favor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Is there a sufficient second?

There is a sufficient second.

In opposition to amendment No. 115
I know Senator Udall wanted to speak against the. In his absence, I will comment on the Toomey amendment. I believe the Senator proposes to cut $60 million from the Advanced Drop-In Biofuels Production Program. He would move $25 million from these funds to the Operations and Maintenance Account. The Department of Defense recognizes that its dependence on foreign oil supplies presents a real risk to its ability to operate around the world. I agree. As the largest single customer of oil in the world, DOD spent $17 billion in fiscal 2011 on oil. DOD estimates that for every 25-cent increase in the price of a gallon of oil we incur over $1 billion in fuel costs. Every time oil prices go up, so does the cost of running the Department of Defense. Imagine if our military were cut off from these supplies.

The Senate has made it clear that there is support for biofuels. The Senate has voted twice in support of the Department of Defense biofuels program during floor consideration of the Armed Services Committee Defense bill. The funds appropriated for this project are available until expended. When the Departments of Energy and Agriculture are able to meet their obligations to fund this program, as required by the National Defense Act, the Department of Defense will have their funds ready. The Toomey amendment would cut a modest investment to provide security alternatives to petroleum dependence.

I urge the defeat of the amendment.

In opposition to amendment No. 115
Mr. President, could have a profound impact on our Nation's energy security by reducing funding for efforts that support finding clean energy replacements for oil.

High oil prices and tensions in the Middle East could not present a better national security case for moving quickly away from our military's overwhelming dependence on oil, especially as currently supplied to critical operations and facilities in the Middle East, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and elsewhere. The military's dependence on oil is one of its most significant vulnerabilities; as a recent Army release noted, our Nation loses one soldier for every 20 convoys transiting through Afghanistan; fuel comprises 50 percent of the load carried by these convoys.

Last year, the Department of Defense used 4.3 billion gallons of petroleum, and spent about $20 billion on fuel. I encourage the Department of Defense to continue to support efforts that will lower the risks and future costs to our armed forces by supporting technologies like solar energy at forward operating bases, the production and procurement of advanced biofuels and other clean alternative fuels, and improved energy performance of materials to lighten and improve the capability, load, and endurance of our troops.

I will continue to do everything that I can to help move the Nation toward a safer, cleaner, and more secure energy future.

Vote on amendment No. 115, as modified
The question is on agreeing to, as modified.

The yeas and nays have been ordered.

The clerk will call the roll.

I announce that the Senator from New Jersey, is necessarily absent.

Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of, the amendment is rejected.

Vote on Amendment No. 26, which is a substitute to H.R. 933
Under the previous order, there will be 2 minutes of debate prior to a vote on the.

The Senator from Maryland.

Mr. President, before I speak and have time counted against me, the Senate is not in order.

We are now coming to the last three votes.

The Senate will be in order.

Mr. President, we have three more votes. The first vote is on the Mikulski-Shelby substitute amendment. This is the bill we have been working on now for 8 days. After that, we will have a vote on cloture, and then we will go to final passage. If we could just have the Senators' attention and if they could stay nearby, we can finish this expeditiously.

The Senate will be in order.

Mr. President, I now speak on the Mikulski-Shelby substitute amendment, which is pending.

I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan continuing resolution. It accomplishes many things. First, when we pass this, we will avoid a government shutdown, but we do better than that--we will protect our national security needs, meet compelling human needs, and lay the groundwork for investing in science and technology. Second, we complied with the Budget Control Act--costing no more than $1 trillion--and it is bipartisan.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Is there a sufficient second?

There appears to be a sufficient second.

The clerk will call the roll.

I announce that the Senator from New Jersey is necessarily absent.

Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

The amendment, as modified, as amended, was agreed to.

Cloture Motion on H.R. 933
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Under the previous order, there will be 2 minutes of debate prior to a vote on the motion to invoke cloture on.

The senior Senator from Alabama is recognized.

Mr. President, we have just voted, as everybody knows, on the. Our next vote is a cloture vote. Then, assuming cloture is invoked, we will have final passage. It is my understanding that the House is waiting on this bill. I hope we can get it to them as quickly as we can.

I yield back the remainder of my time.

The senior Senator from Maryland is recognized.

Mr. President, I just want to echo the comments by my vice chairman, Senator Shelby. It is time to bring this bill to closure, and I would hope we could pass it. I really want to thank Senator Shelby for the bipartisan tradition in which we have been able to operate, and I hope we get a 60-vote majority and move this bill and this country forward.

All time has expired.

Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.

Cloture Vote on H.R. 933
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By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived.

The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on, 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, shall be brought to a close?

The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.

The clerk will call the roll.

I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Lautenberg) is necessarily absent.

Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

On this vote, the yeas are 63, the nays are 36. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.

Under the previous order, all postcloture time is yielded back. Under the previous order, there will be 2 minutes of debate prior to a vote on passage of H.R. 933, as amended.

The majority leader.

Following the statements of Senator Mikulski and Senator Shelby, I would ask to be recognized.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Passage of H.R. 933
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In favor of passage of H.R. 933
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Mr. President, we are now coming to a vote on final passage of the bill. I am going to thank all of our colleagues who supported cloture to bring the debate to an end. This is indeed a very important moment, because as we moved the bill, we have shown that we have done something pretty terrific in that we have continued a bipartisan tradition of the Appropriations Committee.

I cannot thank my vice chairman, Senator Shelby, and his staff enough for their cooperation, as well as the Republican leader and the Democratic leader, often giving very wise counsel. We had three principles in this Senate continuing resolution: The House sent us a bill which we felt was skimpy and spartan. We wanted to not only avoid a government shutdown--remember, the full funding of the U.S. Government expires on March 27; we did not want brinkmanship politics; we did not want ultimatum politics. We wanted to be able to move our bill forward protecting national security needs and meeting compelling human needs and complying with the Budget Control Act. This bill will cost no more than 1.3 trillion, the same as the House continuing resolution. It does meet the needs of our constituents.

This bill is co-sponsored by my Vice Chairman, Senator Shelby, and I am so glad he is my partner. We have worked across the aisle and across the dome to improve the House bill, while at the same time we have kept poison pills out of the bill, in order to prevent a government shutdown.

When we began this process, I had three principles for the Senate CR. First, avoid a government shutdown, while protecting national security needs and also meeting compelling human needs, such as investing in human infrastructure like early childhood education and in research and innovation, so that we can create jobs today and jobs tomorrow. Not shutting down the government allows us to protect the middle class and our fragile economic recovery. Second, comply with the Budget Control Act. The Senate CR provides $1.043 trillion, the same as the House CR. Third, establish a path to return to regular order for our fiscal year 2014 bills.

This bill meets all three of these principles. We will avoid a shutdown. We are at $1.043 trillion in total budget authority, as required by the Budget Control Act. We have shown that we can work in a bipartisan manner, to move this bill to final passage.

The bill we will vote on today is five full appropriations bills: Agriculture; Commerce, Justice, Science; Homeland Security; Defense; and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs.

The remaining seven bills are in the CR: Energy and Water; Financial Services; Interior and Environment; Labor-HHS; State-Foreign Operations; Transportation-HUD; and the Legislative Branch. This means they are provided current funding levels and policies, with some limited changes to fix pressing problems.

This bill has been on the Senate floor for a week. The Senate has debated and voted on amendments to eliminate funding for the Affordable Care Act, cut defense funding for projects in Guam, and cut funding for defense biofuels programs, among others. This afternoon, we accepted a number of amendments by voice vote, again, in a very bipartisan fashion.

I will be the first to admit that this bill is not perfect, but it is the bill that we need right now. I wanted an omnibus to provide complete bills for all the departments and agencies of the government, and not just some. I regret that the bill could not include a 1/2 percent pay raise for Federal workers, who now face a third year without a pay increase.

This bipartisan bill keeps Americans safe in their communities. The Senate bill provides more than the House CR for State and local first responder grants, providing a $208 million increase above the House CR, and for fire grants, providing a $33 million increase above the House CR. The Senate provides more for COPS grants, an $18 million increase above the House CR, to put a total of 1,400 new police officers on the beat.

When it comes to infrastructure, this bipartisan bill fully funds highways, transit, and road safety programs at the authorized levels, a difference of almost $700 million above the House CR.

This bipartisan bill also supports the innovation needed to grow the economy and to create jobs today and tomorrow. The Senate bill includes $174 million more than the House CR for National Science Foundation basic research. That means 400 more grants supporting 5,000 scientists, teachers, students, all of them focused on making new discoveries leading to new products, new companies, and new jobs. For the National Institutes of Health, the Senate contains $75 million more than the House CR for research on cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and other devastating diseases

The Senate bill meets compelling human needs. It includes $33.5 million more than the House CR for Head Start, to help them to implement reforms and improve quality. The Senate bill includes $250 million more than the House CR for the Women, Infants and Children, a program that provides basic nutrition support for low-income mothers and their children. For homeless assistance grants, the Senate bill contains $147 million more than the House CR for shelter and housing support for 28,000 more homeless people.

This legislation will put us on the road to a return to regular order for our appropriations bills. I am so proud that we have reached across the aisle and across the dome to come to a bipartisan solution to funding the government for the next 6 months. I thank my Vice Chairman, Senator Shelby, for his support, in making this possible.

As we start our work on fiscal year 2014 bills, this process should serve as a model, showing that the Congress can get its work done, and can exercise the power of the purse in a bipartisan way.

My vice chairman and I have worked very hard to get to this point to provide a bill that Democrats and Republicans can support. I hope they will join with us to vote for final passage of the Senate CR, and return it to the House, so it can be considered and sent to the President for his signature.

I urge adoption of this bill and thank everyone for their cooperation.

The Senator from Alabama.

In favor of passage of H.R. 933
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We know we are ready to vote. I urge everyone to support this bill. It needs to go to the House. The House, I think, is ready to act on it. This will fund the government through September 30. It is the first big step toward regular order.

The majority leader.

On the coming vote H.R. 933
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Mr. President, the week before last, the House of Representatives sent us this important bill to prevent a government shutdown, to fund the government for the next 6 months. I have said it before, I say it again: I commend Speaker Boehner for giving this bill to us at a time where we could do some constructive work on it. The House did their work on time. We are going to do our work on time.

I applaud and commend my counterpart, Senator McConnell. When that bill came from the House, he sat down with me and the two managers of this bill. He said: The House did their work, now we need to do ours. We could not do all the remaining 10 appropriations bills, but we added three. That was good. It would not have happened but for Senator McConnell acknowledging that we needed to get some of this work done. It could not have happened even though Senator McConnell and I thought it was a good idea but for the work of Senator Mikulski and Senator Shelby. They are veteran legislators. They are people who believe in this institution. They know this institution needs to get back where we are doing things the way we used to. The way we used to do things was fund the government in a timely fashion. We have the opportunity to do that now. We are taking care of the next 6 months.

During this 6 months, the government will be functioning because of what we have done here. They will work on having 12 appropriations bills that we will bring to the floor. Everyone should know we are not going to be able to spend a week on every appropriations bill, but we need to do all 12 appropriations bills. That is our goal. It is the goal of the two managers of this bill, it is the goal of the Republican leader, and it is my goal. We need to do this.

I so appreciate--I say it again--the work done by the two managers of this bill. They worked in good faith. They both gave up things they believed in for the greater good. They produced a substitute amendment. We had added a few things to it. I know people are disappointed because they wanted to rearrange things differently. I would like to have rearranged things differently. There are things that are happening in Nevada because of the sequester that I would like to have taken out of this bill. They are not good things that are happening either.

I hope this practical, commonsense leadership will be a good sign for our regular appropriations bills and other work in the future. The work done by these two managers should be and is exemplary for what needs to follow. And what is going to follow immediately is our budget. We are going to have a budget debate. It is going to be a good debate.

We have two differently opposed views as to what should happen to this country economically. But that is what the Senate is all about, to allow us to do that. So I say to Senator Murray--everyone has heard me talk about how good she is, and I really do believe that--I hope she and Senator Sessions are looking at what was done by these two Senators. Senator Mikulski and Senator Shelby have totally different views about how government should operate, but they also have views as to how the legislative process should operate. Legislation is the art of compromise. Everybody here has to understand, you are not going to get everything you want. You cannot throw a monkey wrench into everything just because you do not get what you want on one issue.

We are going to move to the budget. There will be no votes tonight. We have a lot of debate time on this bill, and the two managers are going to determine when the votes will start.

Again, this is a very good day for the Senate. I am very happy we reached this point.

The bill was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read the third time.

Vote on passing H.R. 933
Page: S1975

Under the previous order, the bill having been read the third time, the question is, Shall the bill pass?

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Is there a sufficient second?

There is a sufficient second.

The clerk will call the roll.

I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Lautenberg) is necessarily absent.

Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

The bill (H.R. 933), as amended, was passed.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The Senator from Maryland.

On passage of H.R. 933
Page: S1975

Mr. President, this is an enormous victory--that we just passed this bill and are now sending it to the House. Again, I wish to thank everyone.

I also wish to say that today is exactly 90 days since I took over the full Committee on Appropriations. During these 90 days, with Senator Shelby and his staff and the help and support of many people on both sides of the aisle, we were able to pass the Sandy urgent supplemental and we were able to pass the continuing funding resolution. This is pretty good. It shows we can work on a bipartisan basis; that we can actually govern and that we can conduct ourselves with decorum.

I think for all, as they watched the debate that occurred during this last week, they saw civility, they saw sensibility, they saw, yes, differing ideas, but at the end of the day, I think we all agreed on our goal--we want to keep America moving. So I am glad we have moved this bill to the House and we are going to keep our government functioning and keep America moving forward.

Again, I wish to thank everyone for what they have done, and I look forward to moving the other 12 appropriations bills on a regular basis, working, again, on a bipartisan basis across the aisle and across the dome.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Concurrent Resolution on the Budget Fiscal Year 2014
Page: S1990

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 28,.

Is there objection?

Without objection, it is so ordered.

The clerk will report the concurrent resolution by title.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that any time spent in quorum calls during consideration of S. Con. Res. 8 be equally divided.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that no amendments be in order for the remainder of today's consideration of.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the use of calculators be permitted on the floor during consideration of the budget resolution.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that staff be permitted to make technical and conforming changes to the resolution, if necessary, consistent with amendments adopted during Senate consideration, including calculating the associated change in the net interest function under section 104, and incorporating the effect of such adopted amendments on the budgetary aggregates under section 101 for Federal revenues, the amount by which Federal revenues should be changed, new budget authority, budget outlays, deficits, public debt, and debt held by the public.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Finally, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the period of debate for economic goals and policy under section 305(b) of the Congressional Budget Act occur on Thursday, March 21, at a time to be determined by the two managers.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

S. Con. Res. 8 Budget Resolution
Page: S1990

Mr. President, we are now on the floor of the Senate with the budget, and I wish to start by thanking my counterpart, Senator Sessions, for all his work and his staff's work--and all our staff--to get us to this point this evening that we are debating this bill and this amendment. Senator Sessions has been very gracious in working with us. We have gotten to this. We obviously have differences of opinion, but I wish to commend him for the tremendous amount of work he has put into this. It is going to be great to be working with him on the floor.

When I go back home to Washington State, my constituents tell me they are sick and tired of the gridlock and dysfunction in Washington, DC. They can see that our economy is slowly getting back on its feet and businesses are beginning to hire more workers, but my constituents--and people across the country--are very frustrated that the constant political crises are holding our recovery back right when we need to be doing everything possible to support it.

After 2 years of debate about fiscal and economic policy and an election in which voters spoke loudly and clearly, the American people want their elected representatives to stop arguing and reach some solutions. I come to the floor to discuss a budget plan that meets this challenge.

The Senate budget that passed through the Budget Committee last week, with the strong support of all 10 Democrats and 2 Independents, is a responsible and balanced plan that puts the economy first and tackles our deficit and debt responsibly and credibly. I am hopeful that after it passes the Senate, the House of Representatives stands ready to compromise as well, and we can come together around a balanced and bipartisan deal that the American people expect and deserve.

The budget debate is too 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. They are about our visions for how government should be serving its citizens today and for generations to come, and, most of all, they are about the people across the country whose lives are impacted by the decisions we make.

The budget we will be debating on the floor this week puts those people first. It reflects the progrowth, pro-middle-class agenda that the American people went to the polls in support of last election. I believe it is a strong and responsible vision for building a foundation for growth and restoring the promise of American opportunity.

Our budget is built on three principles. No. 1, we need to protect our fragile economic recovery. We need to create jobs and invest in long-term growth. No. 2, we need to tackle our deficit and our debt fairly and responsibly. No. 3, we need to keep the promises we have made as a nation to our seniors and our families and our communities.

The highest priority of our budget is to create the conditions for job creation, economic growth, and prosperity built from the middle out, not the top down. We believe that with the 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. So this budget fully replaces the cuts from sequestration that threatens 750,000 jobs this year alone and economic growth for years to come, as well as our national security, and the programs families and communities depend on. It replaces those automatic cuts in a fair and responsible way following the precedent that was set in the year-end deal.

Half of the new deficit reduction to replace sequestration comes from responsible spending cuts across the Federal budget and half comes from new savings found through closing loopholes and cutting wasteful spending in the Tax Code that benefits the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations.

In addition to replacing sequestration with deficit reduction that is far more responsible, our budget follows the advice of experts and economists across the political spectrum who say it makes sense to invest in job creation in the short term while putting ourselves on a strong path to responsible and sustainable deficit and debt reduction over the medium and long term.

We believe that in order to truly tackle our economic and fiscal challenges in the real world and not just make them disappear on paper, we need a strong foundation for growth built from the middle out. So this budget invests in a $100 billion economic recovery protection plan to put workers back on the job repairing our Nation's highest priority deteriorating infrastructure and fixing our crumbling schools and installing critical educational technology such as broadband that our students need to succeed.

This plan creates an infrastructure bank to leverage public funds with private investment. It invests in our workers by making sure they have the skills and training they need to move into the 3.6 million jobs businesses across the country are trying to fill, and it is fully paid for by closing loopholes and cutting unfair spending in the Tax Code that mainly benefit the well-off and well-connected.

Our budget also makes sure we are not reducing our fiscal deficit while increasing our deficits in education and skills and infrastructure and innovation. While cutting spending responsibly overall, it protects our investments in national, middle-class, and economic priorities, such as our schools and our roads and bridges and our clean energy and manufacturing industries.

This budget puts jobs first and our 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.

In 2010, President Obama established the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform--commonly referred to as Simpson-Bowles. That bipartisan group came back with a report recommending approximately $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years from a balanced combination of spending cuts and new revenue. The report pointed out that this level of deficit reduction is more than any effort in our Nation's history. Other bipartisan groups, including Domenici-Rivlin and the Senate's Gang of 6, as well as economists across the political spectrum, agreed that $4 trillion over 10 years was a reasonable and responsible goal. Since that time, Congress and the administration have worked together to reduce the deficit by $2.4 trillion--$1.8 trillion coming from spending cuts, $600 billion from allowing tax rates to rise on the wealthiest Americans in the year-end deal.

The Senate budget takes us the rest of the way to the $4 trillion goal and beyond. It builds on that $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. It 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 and it pushes our debt as a percentage of the economy down, moving it in the right direction.

Our budget tackles this issue 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, and we make some tough choices to get there. We think every program--including the ones we know are important--need to be wringing out waste, trimming fat, and reducing costs to taxpayers. So $500 billion of our deficit reduction comes from responsible savings on the domestic spending side, including $275 billion in health care savings made in a way that doesn't harm our seniors or our families. We believe everything should be put on the table, but we do it in a responsible way that preserves, protects, and strengthens programs such as Medicare and Medicaid that the American people strongly support.

This budget saves $240 billion by carefully and responsibly reducing defense spending while giving the Pentagon enough time to plan and align those savings. We all know this involves some tough decisions, but it is a responsible path that is nothing like the across-the-board cuts from sequestration which would be devastating to defense programs and jobs if they weren't replaced.

This budget takes a balanced approach to deficit reduction, and it matches the responsible cuts with $975 billion in new revenue which is raised by closing loopholes and cutting wasteful 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 paying a penny more.

This shouldn't be controversial. There is bipartisan support for making the Tax Code more fair and more efficient. We just think that instead of that savings going toward more tax cuts for the rich, that savings ought to be used to reduce the deficit and invest in our middle class.

If this budget were to be enacted, the total deficit reduction since the Simpson-Bowles report would consist of 64 percent spending cuts, 14 percent tax rate increases on the rich, and 22 percent new revenue raised by closing loopholes and cutting wasteful spending in the Tax Code for the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations. That is a responsible approach. It is a balanced and fair approach. It is the one that is endorsed by bipartisan groups and experts, and it is the one supported by the vast majority of the American people.

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, to our families, to our veterans, and to our communities. We think Medicare should be protected and preserved for our children and our grandchildren, and we absolutely reject calls to dismantle or privatize Medicare by voucherizing it.

The House Republican budget being considered this week could also repeal the health care law and increase the cost of care to our seniors, throw students off their parents' plans, cause tens of millions more Americans to be uninsured, and put the insurance companies back in charge of patients' care. Our budget rejects that approach, and it builds on the health care law to continue reducing costs responsibly, increasing efficiencies, and improving care.

Our budget also maintains the key principle that every other bipartisan group has maintained but that has been rejected by the House Republicans. We don't think the burden of deficit reduction should be unfairly borne by the most vulnerable children and families who have already sacrificed so much. Everyone in America needs to be a part of this solution, but the House Republican approach would shred the safety net that has offered a hand up to millions of families across America, including my own when we needed it, and we reject that approach.

The budget we are considering this week also makes the investments we need to keep our military strong, to protect our communities and environment, and uphold the sacred commitment we have made to our veterans. I believe our budget reflects the values and priorities of the vast majority of families across our country. It is a responsible and credible approach, and it offers a clear path to a balanced and bipartisan deal.

House Republicans are debating a very different approach this week. The proposal that passed through their Budget Committee would be devastating for our economic recovery and threaten millions of jobs. It would make extreme cuts to the investments in infrastructure and education and innovation that we need right now to lay down a strong foundation for broad-based economic growth. It would dismantle Medicare and would cut off programs that support the middle class and the most vulnerable families. It would do all that while refusing to ask the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to even contribute their fair share.

The American people are going to have an opportunity to examine these budgets side by side over the coming weeks. They are going to be able to decide which approach is best for our economy, best for jobs, and best for the middle class. They are also going to have a chance to weigh in.

After the Senate passes our budget and the House passes theirs, I am hopeful we can work together, listen to the American people, and come to the balanced and bipartisan deal this country desperately needs.

I yield the floor.

The Senator from Alabama.

S. Con. Res. 8 Budget Resolution
Page: S1991

Mr. President, I thank Chairman Murray for her good work. It has been 4 years since we have had a budget in the Senate. This is her first year as chair of the committee, and we have gotten a budget moved forward to the Senate floor. I congratulate her on that.

I note Senator Conrad, her predecessor, would have loved to have moved a budget forward, but the leadership somehow decided that was not the right thing to do. Indeed, they said it would be foolish to have a budget. So this is progress, and although we would have liked to have had more time in committee, Chairman Murray set up this system in a way that she was clear about, and gave us full time all day Thursday of last week to debate and make the points we believed were important, and so did our Democratic colleagues. They got to speak out. I thank her for having an open hearing and being respectful of those of us who had different views and were anxious to share them.

My colleague uses the phrase ``responsible and balanced.'' But what you have to know, I say to colleagues and friends and Americans, is that this budget is anything but balanced. It never comes close to balancing. It never balances over the entire lifetime. It does not put us on a trajectory that would ever balance. It is not a budget that in any sense balances the amount of money coming in with the amount of money going out. It just does not. And we need to talk about that.

I think the American people want a balanced budget. I believe they asked for that. I think they expect that of us, and will be disappointed to find out that the leadership in the Senate, unlike the leadership in the House, does not produce a budget that is balanced.

Today we begin debate on the budget resolution. This is the first budget resolution on the Senate floor in 4 years, crafted by our Democratic majority. We are required to produce a budget, but over the last 4 years, in violation of plain statutory law in the United States Code that requires the passage of a budget by April 15--by April 1 it should be produced in committee, we have not acted. It has been disappointing. I have had many of my constituents say: How can they not produce a budget when the law says you should have one?

Senator Reid said it would be foolish to have a budget. That was his excuse or reason for not bringing up one--foolish to have a budget when we have the largest deficit this Nation has ever seen, and we face the greatest systemic debt threat we have ever seen.

I do not think we can have a greater symbol of an arrogance of power than the refusal to produce a budget resolution over the last 4 years. It was a decision to place--as I have said before, and I have been clear on this--political ideas and values over the American interests.

Our friends in the majority speak of their deep concern for struggling Americans. Yet year after year there has been no plan produced that will actually help them. America has never been in a more perilous fiscal condition, never needed a sound budget plan more than today. So what has changed? Why are we moving forward? The answer is a simple one. The House of Representatives passed legislation. It said: No budget, no pay. So now we have a budget. Hopefully, we would have had one anyway, but I am glad that one is moving. Our colleagues probably like to get paid.

Today we know the Senate majority resisted offering a plan for these years. The budget before us today is a bankrupt vision that will bankrupt the country. It is a jaded tax-and-spend budget that surges the Nation's debt and achieves no reduction in our annual deficits. It is a budget that never balances--never.

I think this quote sums it up well:

That is not my analysis but I agree with it. That comes from an editorial of the Washington Post after this budget was produced.

Senate Democrats have made no attempt to make the government leaner or more productive. Their proposal goes to extraordinary lengths to shield failing government programs from reform. Just add more money. It grows the government at the expense of growing the economy. It enriches the bureaucracy at the expense of the people. It has no plan to help discouraged workers move from dependency on the government to independence. Its surging debt and taxes will crush American workers, close American factories, and depress American wages.

I ask the American people to answer this question: Do you believe the government is wasteful; that it needs to do a better job of saving your money? If your answer to that question is yes, then consider this: The Democratic budget does not achieve a single penny in net savings. After 4 years they have failed to identify any way to save money through real reform of government spending, not a solitary cent.

So any Senator who votes for this budget apparently believes the budget is perfect and needs no reform. Any Senator who votes for this budget is saying to the American people: Washington is not the problem, you are the problem. They are saying: We have managed your money well, we have done it all right, we did nothing wrong. The problem, see, is you. You have not sent us enough money. In fact, this budget says: Send us another $1.5 trillion in more taxes. Send more money.

They also say: But don't worry, you will not have to pay those taxes. We are just closing loopholes. But closing loopholes does not come close to getting this many taxpayer dollars--it just does not. When they talk about the closing of loopholes, what that really means is it is slashing popular deductions to pay for more Washington spending--charitable deductions, home mortgage, or other exemptions. That is where the money is in the deductions. You will not raise much money with loopholes.

Let's take a moment to look at the numbers in this budget and what it claims to do. First, I would like to examine the claim that this budget reduces the deficit by $1.85 trillion. That is a significant sum of money. It is not nearly enough to balance our budget, but it is a significant sum of money--over 10 years, the claim is. When many Americans hear this they might think it means the budget authors are proposing to reduce America's debt by $1.85 trillion. Not so.

According to their own budget tables our Nation's debt will climb another $7.3 trillion over 10 years, passing the $24 trillion in total Federal gross debt that our Nation has accumulated. It does not reduce the debt, not even close. The Nation's debt grows by $7.3 trillion.

Their promotional materials, however, claim $1.85 trillion in deficit reduction--they claim that. This claim refers to an alleged reduction in the size of the projected debt increase. So the debt is going to increase, but we are going to reduce the increased rate of the debt--that is what we are going to do--by almost $2 trillion. But even that $1.85 trillion claim is totally false. It just is. It is a fabrication. It is not so. Several accounting tricks are used to create this number.

The biggest of these tricks is that their budget completely eliminates the savings that have been placed in law by the sequester, but it fails to count the elimination of the reduction in spending in the sequester as a spending increase. We voted 20 months ago--Congress did, August 2011--to reduce the growth of spending $2.1 trillion in order to obtain a raising of the debt limit by $2.1 trillion over 10 years. That is what it would be. And 60 percent of that $2.1 trillion--$1.2 trillion--is the sequester. They would eliminate the sequester but not count the fact that they have increased spending of the current law that is in place, and it is not going to be changed except to be modified so it is more rational in where the cuts fall. But they would wipe it out and not count that as increasing spending.

This is how the country goes broke. This is how America confuses what it is doing--I would say deliberately--to try to convince the American people they are acting responsibly when we are acting irresponsibly.

I asked Chairman Murray's fine staff about this at the hearing. They didn't want to talk about it, I have to say. But when pressed, like good staff people do, and the question was put to them plainly, they gave an answer--the correct answer, I think.

Sessions: Relative to current law, under your plan if it is enacted, how much deficit reduction will occur?

The staff answer:

Again, if you want to go straight to CBO baseline that we started when I was talking to Mr. Johnson it would be about $1.75 trillion. If you want to make the adjustments and take out the sequester--

And of course we should--and the disaster, yes, obviously it's much less. I think the total deficit reduction is about $700 billion in the plan.

Mr. President, $1.85 trillion claimed in reduction. If you count the sequester you are at $700 billion. $1.2 from $1.9 leaves $700 billion. But there are more gimmicks than that which take us down to zero deficit reduction, really.

So I asked this question again to the staff of the majority in the committee:

Can you honestly say that under this budget you can achieve $1.85 trillion in deficit reduction and eliminate the sequester with only $975 billion [you claim] in new taxes?

And the answer was, ``No.''

Of course you cannot, but that is basically what they were saying. That is what they said in their promotion of this budget, that it achieves $1.85 trillion in deficit reduction. Any American budget balances in 10 years. We don't have to slash spending. We can even allow spending to increase, but we have to manage the growth of it. We can do this.

The recovery we are seeing from the 2007 recession is the slowest since the end of World War II and slow growth is expected to continue. The Commerce Department reported last month that the economy barely grew in the fourth quarter of 2012. We had virtually zero growth in the fourth quarter. That was a surprise. CBO expects the U.S. economy to limp along in 2013 at about 1.4 percent after inflation is taken out. That is a muddled, slow-growth, economy well below what they were predicting 2 years ago, which was a growth of about 4.6 percent, as I recall, for 2013. So no one disputes that this is the slowest recovery since 1945.

Why is it so slow? It certainly is not because the government has spent too little of the taxpayers' money. It is certainly not because we borrowed too little and spent too little. Total Federal spending has gone up 30 percent since 2007, and our annual deficit today is 7 times greater than the annual deficit was just 5 years ago. So as a consequence of huge annual deficits, our debt has grown by 73 percent since the beginning of the recession, over which time we added $6.6 trillion in new debt.

It seems quite clear that a substantial reason our recovery is slow is because of the depressing effect of high debt, big spending, a burdensome tax code, and regulations that are unnecessary. But every time Republicans have tried to reform the government, they meet the same response from our Democratic leaders--from the President to Senator Reid to Chairman Murray--attack the reformers.

Majority Leader Reid said of one Republican reform effort that it was ``a mean-spirited bill that would cut the heart out of the recovery we have in America today ..... it goes after little children, poor little boys and girls.''

I think that is an unkind thing to say. I don't think anybody proposed any legislation that would have that effect or ability or intent to do anything like that.

Chairman Murray said:

I will not agree to a deal that throws middle-class families under the bus .....

Well, we are not throwing middle-class families under the bus. We want economic growth. We want prosperity. The real truth is that the debt increases borrowing, and spending has not worked. The debt is already so high and we have irresponsibly run up so much that it is pulling down the economy because it is over 100 percent of GDP.

We don't need to be attacking people who disagree over solutions in harsh personal terms, but we do need people to focus honestly on the disagreements and the challenges we face.

The real victims we are seeing here today are the millions of people trapped in poverty by failed government programs. The real victims are Americans who are being denied help by those who would defend the Washington establishment at all costs and won't reform. The real victims of the left's rhetorical assaults are the communities out there that are thirsting for growth and opportunity but denied any policies that would create more jobs and actually create better and rising wages. The real victims are the millions who lost or can't get jobs, and they are out there--we have fewer working today than we had in 2000--or those who didn't get a pay raise because the debt has pulled down economic growth.

So I think this budget shows no really effective concern for Americans living in poverty, struggling to work, trapped in a stale bureaucratic welfare state. There is no reform that will actually work to help them. That is what I am concerned about.

Look at a city such as Detroit, governed by liberal policies for decades--a city once rich with business and commerce and opportunity. More than half of all Detroit children now live in poverty. Look at our Nation's Capital, another major city locally governed for decades by very liberal policies, a city filled with finance and deep-pocketed businesses. Washington, DC, is flowing with Federal funds. No city gets more from the Federal Government than Washington. Yet, despite this cash, one in three youths in our Nation's Capital lives in poverty. Two in three live in single-parent homes--two in three.

So this budget perpetuates the misguided policies that are causing social and economic harm in every State, in every region, in every part of this country. That is my view. Others may disagree, but I am prepared to defend it, and I think that empirical data and observations show it is correct. Compassion, if we care about people who are hurting, demands that we change, does it not?

We need to grow the economy, not the government, and do it for all Americans in every State and city.

We need to create rising wages and better jobs without just borrowing money and handing it out through some government check. That is not working. It is over. We need to understand that. We need an economic policy that provides our children with more jobs, not more debt. We need jobs. We don't need to be burdening our children for the rest of their lives with an unconscionable debt so we can live high today.

We need to reform and improve ineffective government programs so they help more Americans actually achieve their financial goals. How can we do this without running up the debt? Is there something we can do? Don't we have to have government investments? Don't we have to borrow more money? We don't have any. Any new money we spend is all borrowed. We are in debt. Aren't there some things we can do? Absolutely there is, and they are things that do not cost money. How about this: create a new tax reform system that creates growth, revenue-neutral but simpler, more pro growth-oriented and fairer. Can we do that? Yes.

What about more domestic American energy production? Produce more energy here instead of sending our money abroad, creating jobs here, creating tax revenue for our States, cities, and counties.

Let's make the welfare office--which gets from the Federal Government today hundreds of billions of dollars in spending--a place that restarts lives, that helps people rejoin the workforce, not trapping them in government benefit programs year after year.

Let's defend American workers from unfair foreign trade practices--and there are a lot of them. It is time we stood up to it.

Let's make government leaner and more productive. A leaner government, a more productive government is good for America. I don't see any reform effort there.

Let's eliminate every burdensome Federal regulation that isn't needed. Those are job-killers. If a regulation promotes safety and is economically viable, that is OK, but if it is not--and many are not--let's eliminate it. It is a drag on growth and prosperity.

Let's enforce Federal immigration laws, and let's protect American workers and legal immigrants from those who care only about importing more and more cheap labor.

Let's balance the Federal budget. As I said, balancing the budget and reducing the debt of America over time will get our debt down so it won't be a drag on the economy.

The American people have heard a lot of rhetoric from their elected officials and a lot of buzzwords about financial discipline this week. Rhetoric will be matched against reality. Every Senator will have to stand and be counted. I encourage the American people to tune in to C-SPAN and see where their Senator stands on the great issues of our time: Do we balance the Federal budget? Do we reform the bureaucracy or just keep spending more money? Do we keep sending even more money to Washington through more taxes? Do we embrace our great constitutional inheritance of freedom or do we let it slip away? These are questions of our time.

The budgets reflect where we stand on these issues. I would say the Democratic budget represents more government and less commitment to efficiency--not the kind of change and progress we need. We need to have a budget that balances, that is oriented toward growth and prosperity.

I look forward to the debate today. It will be an interesting challenge throughout the next couple of days. I have been very passionate here today, very frank here today, but I know we have great colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

In our debate in the Budget Committee, we had some great Senators on both sides of the aisle who have different views and expressed them ably. Chairman Murray is so articulate and wonderful to work with, but we do disagree.

It is time for change in this country. It is time to understand that our goal must be to promote prosperity and job creation and higher wages, not more government. That is what the debate is about. I urge my colleagues to be engaged in it, and let's begin to change the direction of our country and put it on the road to prosperity.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

The Senator from Mississippi.

S. Con. Res. 8 Budget Resolution
Page: S1995

Mr. President, I thank Senator Sessions for his leadership.

I come here today as a new member of the Budget Committee, fresh from the committee process with some observations and some disappointments, but principally today I come to the floor to talk about the urgent need for budget reform and a lasting budget that will put us on a path to fiscal responsibility.

I suppose we should be delighted at least to be on the floor with a budget. After 4 years of trillion-dollar deficits and after 4 years without a budget, at least we have an opportunity as representatives of the American people to debate the financial future of this country and an opportunity to discuss putting our Nation on a trajectory away from constant debt and uncertainty and on a path toward security and prosperity, on a path that is designed to create better job opportunities for the people we represent.

Unfortunately, the budget our friends on the other side of the aisle unveiled last week ignores the spending problem that continues to drive the Federal debt skyward. Don't take the word of one Senator from Mississippi on that. Let's listen to the words of the Washington Post editorial board. Not exactly what one would call a center-right entity, they observed on March 14--and I quote the Washington Post:

This document gives voters no reason to believe that Democrats have a viable plan for--or even a responsible public assessment of--the country's long-term fiscal predicament.

Those are the words of the Washington Post in utter disappointment about the product we will be debating on the floor for the next several days.

Being a member of the Budget Committee and being part of the budget markup process has certainly been revealing to me as a new member of the committee. We were given an opportunity before amendments were offered to ask technical questions--not really to debate but just to ask technical questions of the staff members about exactly what this budget does. We learned from these professionals--when we just asked them the questions, we learned these facts about the Democratic proposal for a budget for the next 10 years: It does not balance at any point during the next decade. Never in the next 10 years would this document bring the Federal budget into balance. Not only that, in propounding further technical questions to the staff, we learned that this budget puts our country on a spending path that never comes into balance. There is no plan for decades and decades to come, as far as the eye can see, for this budget ever to get the Federal Government into balance. Yet it was supported by friends of mine on the other side of the aisle who have certainly given lipservice to the idea not only of a balanced budget but of a balanced budget constitutional amendment.

I am going to predict that Democratic Members of this body who come in here and vote for this document will have coauthored a balanced budget constitutional amendment, who have actually voted for or cosponsored a balanced budget constitutional amendment. Yet they will be voting for a document that not only doesn't balance within 10 years but that never, ever comes into balance. Indeed, the document that we will be asked to support and that we are trying to amend grows the Federal Government at 5 percent each year for the entire decade. It raises taxes to the tune of $1.5 trillion over the decade. And this is important for us to realize: It doesn't raise taxes on that rich guy behind the tree who we think can afford it, it raises taxes on the middle class. There is no question about it. We can't get $1.5 trillion out of the American economy without raising taxes on the middle class, and that is exactly what this budget does. So it never comes into balance, but it does raise a ton of taxes right out of the middle-class economy of this country.

Now, we will have an amendment process, and there will be a number of amendments, but it will, in essence, give us an opportunity to slow the trajectory of growth of Federal spending.

Members of the Senate will be offered an amendment in this process to balance our Federal budget by the year 2023. We will be given an opportunity to debate that and to visit on a plan that would get us there. How does it get us there? By slashing and burning? By tough austerity in the budget? Absolutely not. I think it would surprise many people within the sound of my voice in this city and elsewhere to know that we can grow the size of Federal spending by 3.4 percent each year over the next 10 years and still balance the Federal budget by the year 2023. Let me repeat that. Federal spending is not going to be actually cut under the Republican proposal we will present as an alternative. Federal spending will go up each year by an average of 3.4 percent per year, and still we will be able to balance the budget by the year 2023. So we need not let anyone say that we are having to slash and burn in order to balance the budget.

There will be adequate funds to perform the functions of government and still we will be able to balance the budget.

I say what so many of my colleagues have said and what our distinguished ranking member from Alabama has said repeatedly: We are not in this business simply to say we balanced the budget. It is not some artificial goal like winning a game. We are in this process of trying to save our country from a mountain of debt in order to create jobs for the American people, in order to grow the economy, rather than growing the size of the Federal Government. We have an opportunity to avoid the fate that is occurring to our allies in Western Europe, even as we speak.

I have heard it said recently that: Well, we don't have a debt crisis yet. There are some people who would dispute that. But there are people in this Federal Government, the President included, who say: We don't have a debt crisis at this moment in the Federal Government. I ask this in response: Must we wait for an absolute crisis before we act? We see it coming. We see what has happened to our friends who have overspent in Greece, in Spain, in Portugal, what is happening to our allies, our NATO allies in France. We can avoid this fate. Must we wait until the absolute last moment when people are losing their jobs and we are unable to perform the necessary functions of government?

So I say this: We need to act now. We need to act to avoid that crisis which is not that far down the road, and we want to act to grow the economy and create jobs.

I wish to mention three issues briefly, and then I notice there are other people who want to speak on this important issue. There is hardly a more important issue that we could be talking about, and thank goodness, for the first time in 4 years, we are going to get that opportunity. Let me mention Social Security, let me mention Medicaid, and then Medicare.

Social Security is a wonderful program. My dad relies on Social Security. We are going to keep the commitment that we have made to our senior citizens in the form of Social Security. But everyone agrees the numbers simply do not add up long term. They agree with that much, as President Ronald Reagan and Speaker Tip O'Neill agreed to the very same notion back in 1982 and 1983. The numbers were not adding up long term for Social Security and something had to be done and some painful decisions had to be made in the early 1980s. To this day, we thank God for President Ronald Reagan and Speaker Tip O'Neill for having the bipartisan courage to do the tough things, to make the tough decisions, and adjust an important program so that Social Security has been saved for the past three decades.

We need that kind of statesmanship out of the White House today. Frankly, we need that kind of leadership out of the White House. We are calling for bipartisan action. I think it is worth noting--and it pains me to say this--for the first time in 92 years, we are considering a budget without seeing a plan from the President of the United States, and he announced just last week that he was going to wait in sending us his budget plan. It will be 2 months late by the time it arrives, according to the President's own timetable. In fact, this is the fourth time in 5 years that our President, that my President, has missed this deadline. But we need the same leadership out of this White House that we had out of the Reagan White House three decades ago. We can save Social Security, but it will have to be a little different.

We can save Medicaid and make it better. We are going to have an opportunity, as legislators, as policymakers, to give the States an opportunity to design their own Medicaid Program to serve their individual States better.

Let's give one State or let's give five volunteer States the opportunity to take a Medicaid block grant and see if they cannot provide better health care to their underserved population with a Medicaid block grant. Let's give them an opportunity to do that. The program does not work very well now.

Then the statement was made--and correctly--by some of my Democratic colleagues in the Budget Committee that Medicare is a promise we have made and we ought to keep that promise. I could not agree more. There is not a soul in this Senate who does not want to keep the promise we have made to American workers and to American retired people with regard to Medicare.

But the fact remains--and every Senator in this body understands this--Medicare, as it is currently written, cannot last for many more years. The numbers simply do not add up. I am glad the point is being made, and it is being picked up by the mainstream media now. An American worker pays $1 into Medicare and gets $3 back in benefits. A system like that simply cannot be sustained long term. The numbers do not add up. The math does not. It is not that flexible.

So we need to--as Reagan and O'Neill did--as responsible custodians of our Federal Government, as responsible trustees of the future of this country, make changes to a program that has served us well.

Americans are calling for leadership and bipartisan action now. There are hopeful signs: the National Commission on Social Security Reform, the Gang of 6, the Simpson-Bowles Commission, various bipartisan groups that are trying to forge an honest long-term deal to deal not only with our debt but these three important entitlement programs.

I do not see that sort of realism in the document the Democratic majority has provided to us through the Budget Committee. I hope we can amend it. Perhaps we will not in the next few days, but we are going to have to in order to be the trustees of the future, to be the responsible leaders that our voters demand and that the people who come after us would hope we could be.

I look forward to the process. I look forward, cheerfully and realistically, to making the case for our position that we could grow the government by just a little less and balance the budget within 10 years, and in so doing we can make a better life, a better future, a better ability for our people to earn a living and support their families.

Thank you very much. I look forward to the debate. At this point I yield the floor.

The Senator from Texas.

S. Con. Res. 8 Budget Resolution
Page: S1996

Mr. President, I will be brief because I know we have other speakers on the floor.

This is all we need to know about the budget that was voted out of the Budget Committee, along party lines, with Democrats carrying the day: It would raise spending by about 60 percent, it would raise taxes by $1.5 trillion, it would increase our national debt by $7.3 trillion, and--this is the most important part--it would never ever, ever balance.

That is the exact opposite of what America needs to get our economy moving again and get a handle on our long-term finances. We have already reached a point where the Federal spending levels are unsustainable. We all know that. We have already reached a point where our national debt is exerting a drag on our economy.

I read the other day the President said there is no risk of an immediate debt crisis. We can debate that. But what we cannot debate is that our national debt is so big that it is dragging down economic growth, crushing job creation, and resulting in a loss of hope and certainly a loss of opportunity for 23 million Americans who are out of work or who are working part time and who want to get back to work and provide for their families.

We also know, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that an unprecedented--or at least in the last 30 years--number of Americans have just simply given up looking for work. They have been so discouraged that the labor participation rate is at a 32-year low.

When our colleagues across the aisle say all we need is just a little bit more revenue; in other words, more taxes, we have already seen taxes go up by more than $1.6 trillion since President Obama became President.

Simply put, we cannot act as if the laws of fiscal gravity do not apply to the Congress or the Federal Government. That is why every single Senator on this side of the aisle has cosponsored a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, which would require the Federal Government to live within its means and require a congressional supermajority to raise taxes or raise the debt ceiling.

I have heard colleagues across the aisle say: We can't pass a balanced budget amendment. That would tie Congress's hands.

That is the point. It would tie Congress's hands in spending money we do not have, running up these dangerous debts, and being a wet blanket on economic growth and job creation.

How do we know that government can live within its means? Virtually every State has some type of balanced budget requirement. Why should the rules in Washington be any different?

Some across the aisle argue--I think they actually believe this--that embracing fiscal discipline will jeopardize the safety net. In fact, the opposite is true. If we do not embrace sensible fiscal discipline, our safety net programs will eventually collapse because we will not have the money to provide for the national security and we will not have the money to provide the safety net programs we all agree are necessary for the most vulnerable of our citizens.

As I have said before, if we reform some of these programs gradually--as the Senator from Mississippi was referring to, Medicare and Social Security--we could minimize the impact and protect our most vulnerable citizens. But if we do nothing to reform and preserve Social Security and Medicare and we experience a Greek- or Spanish-style debt crisis, these programs will be slashed abruptly. The very people our colleagues say they want to protect the most will be hurt the most because the cuts will be much harsher and they will be disproportionately impacted.

One last point. By reducing the growth of Federal spending--and that is all we are talking about doing; we are not talking about cuts in the sense that anybody else in America talks about cuts; we are talking about just reducing the rate of increase in Federal spending ever so slightly--but by reducing the growth of Federal spending, we would prevent the need for tax hikes in the future. Indeed, that is what I hear from so many people in the private sector. When we ask them: Why are you sitting on the sidelines with cash in the bank, and why aren't you investing in either new physical structure or jobs, they say: Because the debt is so high and Congress has shown a lack of willingness to deal with it, all we can do is expect that taxes are going to be a whole lot higher and greater burdens placed on job creators, and so we think the more prudent thing is to sit on it and not invest it in new job creation.

But new tax hikes would increase long-term economic uncertainty, and they would discourage job creation. Conversely, if we work hard to keep taxes within reason and certainly not raise them any more than have already been raised, this would increase long-term economic certainty and encourage job creation. After all, investors and business owners and job creators are not stupid. They understand that without real spending restraint and real entitlement reform, we are ultimately headed for another massive tax increase.

Indeed, that is what this budget, voted out by our Democratic colleagues along party lines, promises: higher taxes and more spending. That is exactly what this economy does not need for us to get back on track, to create the jobs and to create the opportunities for people to provide for their families and live the American dream.

I yield the floor.

The Senator from Washington. State.

The Senator from Michigan is here. I would like to ask her how much time she would like me to yield to her.

I believe we have other colleagues coming as well. We were hoping to have 30 minutes and possibly more.

I will yield to the Senator from Michigan and her colleagues 30 minutes. I am happy to yield more.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

The Senator from Michigan.

S. Con. Res. 8 Budget Resolution
Page: S1997

I look forward to colleagues who will be joining me to express strong support for the budget that has been reported out of the Senate Budget Committee. I first want to thank our chair, who has done a yeoman's job in putting this together. She has had so many different assignments dealing with the budget and efforts to come to responsible reform and put our country back on the right track in order to bring down the deficit and grow the economy. One more time she has stepped up to the job. So I want to thank our chair for all of her efforts.

Let me start, first of all, by saying this is very simple when we look at what we are talking about in this budget. As I said also, I want to thank the ranking member for his courtesy throughout the budget process. While we have very different views, this was done in a very professional and courteous way on all sides. I really appreciate that.

But this is a very different view, both in what we debate and how we view this budget, which is a values document for the country, and the budget that is being debated in the House of Representatives. It comes down to something very simple. Our budget strengthens the middle class. We believe it is critically important that we grow the economy from the middle out. That means making sure folks who are struggling to stay in the middle class have a fair shot, people trying to get in the middle class have a fair shot, and that we grow the economy by understanding the economic engine of America comes from having a strong middle class.

On the other side, the Republican budget just plain simply protects the special interests, special interest deals in the Tax Code and other special interests in other kinds of policies. It is just very different and does not grow or support the middle class.

I also think it is very important that we not just talk in theory but talk about what has happened in the past and what has worked and what has not. We should do more of what works and less of what does not work. We need to start by looking at what happened as we came into 2001.

I was fortunate to be a new Member of the House of Representatives in 1997 when, under President Clinton, we all worked together and balanced the budget for the first time in 30 years.

I came to the Senate in 2001. We were debating the largest budget surplus projected in the history of the country. That is where we were. The question was, What kind of economic policies, what kinds of approaches will be put in place to be able to manage that fact, that we had the largest budget surplus projected in the history of the country?

There were two proposals put forward at that time. When you look at the way the debt was going from 2001, it is amazing. If we had only taken a different track than what happened. I remember as a new Member, a new Democrat, that our leader on our side of the aisle, Senator Conrad, came forward with a proposal that I believed was eminently reasonable. He said: Why do we not take that budget surplus and divide it into thirds: one-third of it for strategic tax cuts to grow the economy; one-third of it for strategic investments in education, science, R&D, moving the economy; and one-third to prefund the liabilities for Social Security for the next 75 years.

Imagine if we had done that. Instead, what happened was the surplus was put into a huge supply side tax cut, benefiting, as we know now, the wealthiest in the country, adding to a situation where the wealthy have gotten wealthier and wealthier in the last decade, the middle class has shrunk and shrunk, and more and more people are struggling today. So it was all put into a large tax cut, and then we proceeded to go into two wars that were not paid for, a Medicare prescription drug plan not paid for, and nothing else paid for for a decade. We ended up with the largest deficit in the history of the country. That is what this President walked into. That is what we have been faced with.

Now, when we look at where the debt has come from, and why it is important that we focus on the economy, we know the biggest piece of where the debt came from was the tax cut geared to the wealthiest Americans, which has been famously called trickle down economics. The folks in Michigan are still waiting for it to trickle down.

Then we saw the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are so appreciative of the President leading us out of the war in Iraq. We are closing down the war in Afghanistan. So that piece is being addressed. We have addressed the tax cuts at the end of the year, to ask those at the top to do more of their fair share. So that is being addressed. We go on down to the Recovery Act, which was so important to be able to try to focus on the middle class and get things going again. We did have some success with this. Then the other piece, the 30 percent of what is happening right now is the economic downturn.

So as we go forward today, even though we have addressed the high-end tax cuts, the wars ending, we no longer see the rescue-and-recovery measures. The economy is still 30 percent of our deficit. Frankly, we will never get out of debt with 12 million people out of work, which is why we, as Democrats, have made sure we are front and center focused on jobs and the economy in this budget.

We have to create opportunities for jobs for small businesses, for manufacturers, for the private sector, for entrepreneurs to be able to be successful so we have strong economic growth while we are putting forward a balanced budget. That is what we are attempting to do. That impacts what we do in this budget.

In fact, the efforts we put together--we know what happened when the President came in: 700,000 jobs a month being lost, the banks and financial markets in big trouble. We all know the story of what happened and what the President walked into on day one. But we have been focused on supporting an economic growth structure that would create jobs, create jobs. We are seeing that turnaround from the lost decade of jobs. We saw certainly in manufacturing huge job losses from 2001 on up to 2008. We know what happened with the automobile industry, which, by the way, because of our rescue efforts and support for them, is roaring back now and creating jobs. By the way, tremendous private sector investment is coming into the city of Detroit. The private sector is helping us turn that around. We are very proud of that. We are also seeing now jobs being created. As fast as we want? No. But we understand we have to focus on these numbers, which is creating jobs, if we are going to, in fact, get out of the deficit hole.

We have to reduce the deficit if our country is going to be more competitive, and we have to grow more jobs. We have to create opportunities for middle-class families. We know we need progrowth policies such as the ones in our budget that focus on innovation, education, rebuilding America through infrastructure, whether it is our courts, whether it is our roads or rails or water and sewer projects or what we do on technology. To compete we have to build, and we have to focus on what will create jobs.

We are now at a spot where we know if we focus, as we are in our budget, on growing the economy from the middle out rather than the top down, based on what was done in the 1990s when we did that, when we balanced the budget in the right way by investing in the future, investing in education, investing in innovation, and then also making smart cuts to balance that out, we balanced the budget. We had 22 million jobs that were created.

That is what this budget does again. It is focused on those policies that worked, not just debate back and forth in theory, but policies that actually worked in the 1990s to balance the budget, to grow the economy. We saw the policies being advocated by our friends on the other side. We did that already. We did that 2001 to 2008.

I do not know about anybody else, but I know people in Michigan do not want to relive that. That was not our idea of economic growth. It certainly did not balance the budget. It put us in the largest deficit in the history of the country.

So the budget in the House says: Boy, if you liked 2001 to 2008, you are going to love this. Two million jobs next year alone are lost in the Ryan Republican budget. And similar policies are being advocated by colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

Let me just take a moment; I see my colleague, Senator Reed from Rhode Island, is here, who I know wants to be a part of this and is such an important voice. But let me just say a couple of things. We understand we need to make smart spending reductions in order to balance the budget. In fact, we have already started doing that. One of the things which is so frustrating to me is to hear colleagues talk about spending cuts without acknowledging what we have done for the last 2 years. So we already know we have put ourselves on a path for $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction. And 70 percent of that has come out of services for the middle class, the most vulnerable. It has been cuts in spending for things that would actually grow the economy, innovation and research.

I am desperately concerned as chair of the Agriculture Committee because we have seen agricultural research decimated around issues of food safety and pest and disease management and other critical things, on invasive species, that we may not feel right away but are things that will affect our future. So we have already seen major cuts.

At the end of the year a small amount of money, 30 percent of the deficit reduction, was done. We have actually been asking those at the very top, who have the most benefits from the tax cuts, the most benefits from the efforts to rescue Wall Street, the most benefits in general, just to do a little bit more--30 percent of what we have already done. So what we have said is that going forward, the final amount we need to do, between the $2.4 and $4 trillion, we are insisting that be done in a balanced way and not one more time to come back on the middle class who have already had the brunt of the sacrifice, the brunt of the cuts. It is not fair.

So we have replaced across-the-board cuts. We have had colleagues in the last few days complaining about the sequester cuts. Please vote for this budget. It stops those across-the-board cuts and puts something in that is much more common sense.

Those across-the-board cuts would cut 750,000 jobs this year alone. When you add what the Ryan Republican budget would do in the House, that is another 2 million jobs next year. It is a jobs killer.

What we are saying is replace it with a responsible, balanced approach. That is what we need to do, but it does it in a way that sets priorities.

The House says spending cuts again. This is predominantly education, innovation, construction. They also include eliminating Medicare. There is no way our majority will support this policy.

There is a whole range of things that hit the middle class, seniors, veterans, and vulnerable citizens. We say our cuts will be different. We are willing to make priorities and smart cuts on the direct spending side, but there is a whole range of things we can do in the special interest deals and Tax Code for the other half.

I totally reject the idea which has been put forward here so far today that our budget somehow raises taxes on the middle class. That is absolutely false. We have report after report after report which indicate by closing loopholes which are sending jobs overseas, cutting subsidies that aren't needed anymore, such as the top five wealthiest companies in the world, the top five oil companies--there are trillions of dollars in savings. Do this by cutting things that aren't necessary and are special deals in the Tax Code. We say half of the amount needed, yes, should come from there.

On the other side of the building, what we see is a very different picture. The Ryan Republican budget, when they look at their tax cuts, 55 percent of what we are doing in tax cuts goes to the top 1 percent. I feel this is Groundhog Day over and over. It is the same thing we have heard over and over. Give it to the top, it will trickle down. We did that. It did not trickle down. At least it didn't hit Michigan.

This budget does it over and over. Two-thirds of what they do in the House goes to the top 5 percent of taxpayers. What is left for middle-class families? We say something very different to grow the economy. We say we need in a global economy to outeducate, outinnovate, and outbuild. The President has said that over and over and our budget invests in those things that allow us to compete, grow the middle class, and create jobs while doing what we need to do to make smart, commonsense decisions on spending in the Federal Government.

Here is what I am worried about. Right now, when we look at U.S. investing in research and development, compared to what is happening around the world, the greatest country in the world, the United States of America, is down. We are losing ground on investments while everybody else races to be like America--everybody else. China wants to be like us and have a middle class. They are investing in innovation. We see proposal after proposal after proposal to cut our ability to compete for the future. This is why the Senate budget prioritizes research and development by replacing the devastating across-the-board cuts with a balanced and responsible approach which preserves $10 billion in R&D funding every year and for the future.

We continue support for medical research, one of the areas where we are the leader. We strengthen the National Institutes of Health. We have increased investments in renewable energy technology. There are so many opportunities for us. I am very proud today Michigan is No. 1 in new clean energy patents, and new ideas are coming. It is part of the economic engine which is bringing jobs back to Michigan.

Investing in our 21st century manufacturing sector is also here. Senator Baldwin put forward a proposal on manufacturing hubs which I strongly support. Other colleagues, Senator Coons and others, have supported the manufacturing extension partnership to help small manufacturers as well.

We are also investing in exports and opening markets abroad. We know when American companies are able to increase their exports by $1 billion, they create 5,000 new jobs.

In infrastructure, we need roads and bridges. The chair of our committee is a strong advocate for ports as well in the global economy, being able to export and import. That investment in rebuilding America is in this budget. The American Society of Civil Engineers just released their report card, and they gave America a D-plus. We are not going to outcompete the world with a D-plus on infrastructure.

This budget makes historic investments in our workforce. We know from hearing from CEOs that workforce development education is absolutely key to our future.

Before asking my colleague from Rhode Island to join in this discussion as well on jobs--I speak as the chair of the Agriculture Committee--I thank the chair for including in our efforts creating a 5-year farm bill, which not only participates in deficit reduction of $23 billion but is twice what we would be required to do under sequestration.

The farm bill is a jobs bill. I don't know of any other bill that has an impact on 16 million jobs in this country. The farm bill does. It supports agriculture and rural America. The farm bill is a part of this effort.

My colleague from Rhode Island is deeply involved in efforts to create jobs, balance the budget, and reduce the deficit. I ask unanimous consent I be permitted to join in a colloquy with Senator Reed at this point. He has been a champion in job creation, and I am very grateful he came tonight to join us.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

S. Con. Res. 8 Budget Resolution (colloquy)
Page: S1999

I want to thank the Senator from Michigan for allowing me to participate in this colloquy. I also commend her for a thoughtful, insightful, and extremely compelling argument about creating jobs as a way not only to give people a chance to rise in the middle class but also to accomplish our other objective, which is ultimately to reduce the deficit.

As the Senator pointed out, when I was here with her in the late 1990s, we reached the point where we had a projected surplus of perhaps $5 trillion over 10 years. She has catalogued the way in which that surplus has been eroded. What we need to do is focus, as she suggests, on the urgent need to create jobs and ensure our Nation's budget makes investments in growing and strengthening the middle class. We are all here as beneficiaries of the programs and policies of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, which consciously built the middle class and invested in us. Our parents invested in us. We need to do the same thing. She is absolutely correct, the investments we are proposing in this Democratic budget will be critical not only to individual success but to our success as an economy, and as a global competitor. I thank her for her words.

I am here to join her to address this pressing need to create jobs, to strengthen the economic recovery, and to underscore the vast differences between the proposal we are making, and the budget proposed by the House of Representatives, by our Republican colleagues.

Let me state what is a very disturbing figure. There are 12 million unemployed Americans, with 4.8 million of these individuals unemployed for more than 6 months. We are seeing unprecedented levels of long-term unemployment. Americans are struggling to stay in their homes, put their children through school and put food on their table.

In my State we are unfortunately among the top States in a category no one wants to be leading, and that is unemployment. The harsh reality of what we are facing in Rhode Island was brought home with a stunning article in last Sunday's Washington Post. It noted some 180,000 Rhode Islanders, over 15 percent of our population, receive SNAP benefits, supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits. Some are receiving SNAP because they don't have jobs, although they have looked from month to month to month. Some have jobs, but the pay is so little they qualify under the income limits of the SNAP program.

I want to particularly thank the Senator from Michigan for her valiant efforts to increase SNAP funding. Literally we are talking about putting food on people's tables. Fifteen percent of my State of Rhode Island depends on food support to have a healthy diet for them and particularly for their children.

When we talk about what we want to do with the budget, it is about getting people back to work. That is what they want. They don't want a SNAP benefit. They want good jobs. They want the same opportunities, from which we benefited, which helped build a strong middle class. What is their greatest fear? Not just falling out of the middle class, but that their children won't even have a remote chance of middle-class income or a middle-class lifestyle, those opportunities which we in our day took almost for granted. We must turn things around.

As the Senator pointed out, the Republican policy is focused on cutting taxes for the very wealthy. This policy has been demonstrated over the last decade to not produce good-paying jobs for middle-income Americans. However, it does produce very substantial benefits for the wealthiest of Americans.

That is not the way to grow a country. That is not what many people today and through our history have sacrificed their lives for. They are not out there serving in Afghanistan and other places so those who have much could have more. It is so those who have very little would have a chance, at least a chance. This is what we are talking about behind all the numbers. We are talking about investing in America. We need to make that investment.

The other side of the aisle indulges in what I believe is a fallacy: The only way of fixing the economy is cutting the deficit. But, instead of focusing exclusively on deficit reduction in the near term, we need to pass legislation which will put people back to work, give them a job, give them hope, and give them an opportunity, give them a sense they can make their lives and their children's lives much better.

The Democrats have proposed a series of initiatives over the last several years to do just that, such as tax incentives for small business to hire people, repairing schools, roads, bridges, or tax breaks for low- and middle-income Americans so they may have a little bit more in their paychecks. We have tried to pass these measures but have been frustrated consistently, even though we have the majority, because of filibusters and procedural delays. The American people understand that we need to create jobs. They want us to act. They want us to act to their benefit, not for the very few but for the majority of Americans.

The other approach Republicans espouse is hand-in-hand with this notion of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans is that austerity through spending cuts can grow the economy. That you can cut programs, cut everything, and that will grow the economy.

That is not reality. What we see and what history suggests, when you are cutting during an economic recovery, you are basically counteracting the recovery. You are contracting economic expansion. You are not adding to the momentum of growth, you are subtracting from the growth.

If you want a current example, look across the ocean to Europe and Great Britain. They embarked upon an austerity program several years ago. Most commentators suggest they are in worse shape today than they were 3 or 4 years ago when they started this austerity program. This is the result of cutting, cutting, cutting. If we proceed down that pathway, we will be in worse shape several years from now than we are today. We can be in better shape by investing in our future and by creating jobs.

Another aspect of this too is it is not only the question of filibustering our proposals to create jobs--but that we know in August 2011 there was a real threat to undermine the full faith and credit of the United States, to refuse for the first time in modern history to increase the debt ceiling, to pay the debts which we owed. And the majority of those debts, at least the much of the recent ones, resulted from the previous administration. And so the debt ceiling crisis triggered the whole process which has led us today to sequestration. Now Americans will have to suffer through sequestration. The Congressional Budget Office has already said if we don't reverse sequestration, we will lose 750,000 jobs. Those are the jobs middle-income Americans are expecting and hoping for. We are losing about .6 percent of growth. We will be headed where our friends across the ocean are headed, not expanding but contracting; not increasing employment but decreasing employment. We are worse off because of these austere policies, not better off.

What the Democratic budget does--and my colleague from Michigan has outlined it very well and with great articulation, that the way you should deal with these issues is through a balanced approach--a balance of revenue and spending cuts which will not harm our economy.

That is what we did in 1993 and 1994 when I was a Member of the House of Representatives. President Clinton came to us and said: Here it is, we are going to cut spending and we are going to raise revenue. And we passed it by one vote in the House, one vote in the Senate--not one Republican vote, but still by one vote here and one vote in the House of Representatives. That set the stage for the later efforts that finally led not only to a balanced budget but to a surplus, and that is the approach we have to adopt today. It's an approach that works.

The Republican budget calls for a total of $4.6 trillion in cuts and would leave the sequester in place. So it would compound the damage of the sequester. The Republican budget has also been estimated to provide millionaires an average tax cut of $400,000. Once again, the big winners in this proposal are the wealthiest Americans, not those who are struggling to put food on the table, to get a job, to see their children have a better future. And, again, the Republican budget refuses to responsibly address the $1 trillion sequester. They provide nearly $6 trillion in tax cuts that, again, overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans, but don't address the $1 trillion sequester. So essentially their budget is compounding the difficulties we have in growing this economy and creating jobs.

I wonder if my colleague would allow me to ask a question.

I will be happy to yield.

The Senator from Michigan.

Did I hear correctly that the Republican budget would give an average of $400,000 in additional tax cuts?

Those are the estimates I have received, and I believe they are reliable. Many commentators have looked at the budget and concluded that this represents a remarkable reduction in taxes for the wealthiest Americans.

And once again, it shouldn't come as a surprise because, as we recall--and I was here in 2001, when I voted against the Bush tax cuts--the mantra back then was that they are the job creators; just cut those taxes and those jobs will grow. But we saw during the Bush administration one of the poorest private job creation records of any President since World War II. And here Republicans are repeating the same line, as they say, deja vu all over again: Cut the taxes, and magically the jobs will grow. But, you grow jobs by having a balanced approach and through investment in human capital and physical capital, such as roads and bridges, and also by having the revenue to be responsible so you pay your way.

The Senator from Michigan.

I thank my colleague, the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island. When I think of him, I think of his advocacy for our men and women who make up our troops--and I know our budget chair as well--and his strong leadership on veterans issues.

I think about $400,000 being an average tax cut for a multimillionaire under this budget versus what will happen to our veterans or folks coming home from the war and now trying to get a job, trying to do what they need to do to get back into the community and society and so on, and I wonder--the Senator has been such a leader on this and, of course, has experience with his own distinguished career in the military--if he might speak about those issues, his own experience with people coming home. Are they getting the $400,000 tax cut?

Well, no. In fact, there was a front page story today, I believe, in one of the major newspapers declaring the fact that they are home from the battlefront and are now in the unemployment line. So we are seeing a remarkable number of veterans who are unemployed. And these are men and women in their twenties. They certainly want to work. They worked very hard defending this country, yet now they are coming home and have significant levels of unemployment.

That is one of the real problems, as well as our need and our obligation to support veterans health care, particularly mental health care, to support the Veterans' Administration.

The irony, of course, is that we are seeing even higher levels of unemployment, in some cases, among young veterans than we are in the population at large. That is particularly bitter and ironic for those people who have served and sacrificed and are continuing to serve and sacrifice.

The Senator from Michigan should be aware that her time has expired.

Might I ask through the Chair if we could have a few more moments.

I am happy to yield more time, and I really appreciate both Senators talking about one of the really important aspects of our budget; that is, how critical it is to invest in jobs and the economy, which the American public knows and understands are the biggest challenges facing all of us today. And you don't do that with the promise of just tax cuts for the wealthy.

We know trickle-down doesn't work. We all saw what happened from 2001 to 2008 when we gave away the tax cuts. Here we are today, now having to deal with the deficit. We all remember what happened during the Clinton administration when we had a balanced package that had both investments and responsible revenue and what happened in that decade when our economy rebounded and we got to a surplus and people felt strong again.

So that is what our budget is based upon, and I would be happy to yield additional time to both Senators to talk about this critical aspect of our budget.

The Senators from Michigan and Rhode Island are recognized.

Senator.

I would simply, first of all, again thank our chair, who understands and gets this, not only about how to grow the economy and the middle class and in a commonsense way to balance the budget, but she has been such a leader on veterans issues and reminds us every day about those coming home and what they need, as does Senator Reed as well, with his own service as well as his efforts with regard to our veterans.

I would be happy to defer to Senator Reed, if he has additional comments. I didn't mean to interrupt him before. If he has additional comments to make, I would certainly allow for that, and then I would be happy to wrap up at some point.

I would like to reemphasize the point the Senator from Michigan has made and Senator Murray has made, which is that we have been down this road before. We can't simply cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans to magically create jobs. What it produced in reality was a huge deficit, along with two unfunded wars. But that seems to be the message again from the other side--let's just cut taxes and then, of course, cut spending too. That is not the balanced approach we need in the Nation. That is not the balanced approach that in the 1990s, as my colleague pointed out, got us to a surplus, got us to a sense that we were really moving forward and that the middle class had a chance, that their children would have a better life. And that is what we have to do again.

When I look at my State of Rhode Island, I can cite a myriad of examples of the harm that would be caused by the Republican budget. The budget they are proposing, which leaves the sequester in place would result in about a $4.5 million cut in Federal support for our public schools. I can tell you that every city and town in Rhode Island is struggling just to keep the lights on. If they lose $4.5 million of Federal aid, that is going to make it even harder. And do you know what happens? Well, guess what happens to property taxes. They go up. And not just Rhode Island, all across the country because one of the ironies here is that every mayor understands that ultimately they have to balance their budgets, and so they will raise taxes and they will cut spending. But they will do it, hopefully, in a balanced way, similar to what we are espousing in our approach to the budget.

Now, we also have a situation where, if we look at the Republican budget, there are all sorts of abstract cuts--nondiscretionary domestic spending, et cetera--that translates into real harm, and that affects real lives. For example, there is an estimated $3.3 trillion in cuts to programs that benefit low- and middle-income Americans. Of that $3.3 trillion, $2.6 trillion are cuts to Medicaid and subsidies that help modest-income American families across the country to get health insurance. As I mentioned before, there is a projection--and the Senator is an authorizer for this program--of $135 billion being taken out of the SNAP program.

Again, let me go back to last Sunday's Washington Post story. Fifteen percent of the people in Rhode Island depend on this to help them get just adequate nutrition including children--and we are going to cut $135 billion out of this? And on the other side of the spectrum, we are giving a $400,000 tax cut or more to the wealthiest Americans? That is not fair, and it is not good economics. We can't have a generation of children who have been deprived of good nutrition, who have been deprived of good housing; if we do, we are not going to have the productive workers who will lead this Nation forward in this century and beyond. These spending cuts and tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans just do not make any sense. It doesn't balance the books, and it doesn't keep our obligation to the majority of Americans to give them a fighting chance.

Our budget, in contrast, has $100 billion in projects to put Americans to work and repair the worst of our crumbling bridges and roads. There is not one of our colleagues who can't find some 20 or even more bridges in their State that require repair right away, and that would put hundreds of people to work productively and would increase the economic efficiency of our Nation.

Let me give an example. We had a major portion of I-95, the north-south road in Rhode Island--north-south right past Providence-Pawtucket, RI. for several years being rebuilt. The good news is that it is being rebuilt, but before we could rebuild, we had to divert truck traffic, which meant they couldn't efficiently deliver their loads. We had to station State police 24 hours a day to prevent the trucks from going there. So we had to engage all those individual law enforcement officers because the bridge couldn't support basic travel. We are now close to completing the whole project so we should no longer have to have State troopers out there 24 hours a day, and truckers no longer have to take a 20-mile detour to deliver their loads. When we talk about infrastructure, we are talking about economic efficiency as well as putting people to work. The Democratic budget does this.

I think we have also made very difficult choices--tough choices--in making sure that we are paying our way, that we are paying down the deficit and doing it in a way that doesn't cost us the recovery and creating the jobs we need right away.

I commend Chairman Murray because she has done a remarkable job of shepherding this bill through, of balancing so many complicated issues and making sure we have kept faith with the Americans who sent us here. They just want a chance. They just want to be able to think that their child is going to have a better life than they have had. I think this budget goes much further than our colleagues' to give them that chance, to give them that hope, and to give them that opportunity.

With that, I yield back to the Senator from Michigan.

I thank the Senator from Rhode Island again for his comments, his leadership, his advocacy for our military men and women and our veterans, and for the economy, for people who need help. As he said, there are a lot of people on the edge right now trying to just hold on, to stay in the middle class, or trying to get in the middle class, and our budget is for them. It is about growing the economy from the middle out.

What makes us different from other countries around the world is that we don't have just a few very rich people and a lot of poor people. We have had a robust middle class. People in Michigan feel that eroding every day, so we need to be laser-focused on making sure we keep that strong middle class that not only grows the economy but creates opportunity for young people to grow up and go to college, to dream big dreams and know that in America they can succeed and be whatever they want to be, that they have a shot. That is the American dream, and that is what we are fighting for.

Our budget, bottom line, strengthens the middle class. It creates opportunities for people to work hard no matter where they live, what their background is, so they have a shot at making it. We believe that to our core.

The Republican budget is represented by the House budget, and the proposals here on the floor on the Republican side are geared to the wealthy and the well-connected, the special interests of this country, to keep their special deals going. Let's try trickle-down economics one more time. It didn't work from 2001 to 2008. We lost 5 million manufacturing jobs. But, hey, why not try it again? Well, we say no, let's use something that has worked.

So let me in conclusion say again that the Republican tax cuts represented by the Ryan budget--55 percent of the benefit goes to the top 1 percent. As my friend the Senator from Rhode Island indicated, those at the very, very top are getting $400,000 in a tax cut, and $400,000 is more than the vast majority of Americans and certainly the vast majority of people in Michigan make in a year. Can we afford to do that? Is that the right priority?

I find it so interesting that we had a colleague speaking passionately for the past couple of days now about his concern about closing airports in rural areas. I have those concerns about closing rural airports. Well, our budget doesn't do that. Our budget invests in infrastructure and keeps those open, as opposed to the across-the-board cuts that have been objected to by the Senators trying to make changes in the budget this year and the Ryan Republican budget in the House.

We believe strongly that we should build a budget in the future on what has worked in America, and what has worked is strengthening America with investments so we can out-educate, out-innovate and out-build to win in a global economy. That is what this is about.

Our businesses tell us they are concerned about getting the right workers for the right jobs. It is a major issue right now.

That is something we have a responsibility to be a part of.

The Democratic budget invests in education, invests in innovation, and invests in building for the future. I worry every day about this kind of a chart that shows that the United States of America--not a third world country--is investing less in research and development than competitors around the world. It makes no sense. The innovations are here. The smart scientists are here. The cutting-edge technology is here. And we need to keep it here. Our budget places a huge value on it.

Then, finally, it is all about jobs and making sure when we figure out and when we look at how to balance a budget, that we understand we will never balance a budget with more than 12 million people out of work. We have to focus on jobs and growing the economy. We have to.

Thirty percent of our deficit right now as we look at this going forward is in the slow economic recovery. We know it was bad prior to 2009 when President Obama was elected. It has gotten better, but it is not where it needs to be. And it won't be where it needs to be unless we invest in innovation, in education, and rebuilding America's infrastructure. That is what we do. This budget makes sense. This budget is for middle-class families all across America.

I urge my colleagues to support it.

The Senator from Alabama.

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Page: S2001

Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to be with our colleague, Senator Stabenow, who serves on the Budget Committee.

Just briefly, and then I would yield to Senator Roberts, President Obama, on March 13 of this year, said:

And so--you know, my goal is not to chase a balanced budget for the sake of balance.

Now, my colleagues--and we have been counting--so far have used the word ``balanced'' at least 14, maybe 15 times already. They use the word ``balance,'' but their budget comes nowhere close to balancing. It never balances. It has no potential to balance. It is focused on spending and more taxes, not balancing the budget.

Senator Reid said: We want to pay down the debt. There is no plan whatsoever to get our deficit to zero so we can begin to pay down debt.

I believe Senator Stabenow used the phrase, ``a commonsense way to balance a budget.'' There is no plan to balance the budget. Let's be honest. Those words can be said repeatedly, over and over, but I really can't hear them. What I hear is the budget document itself, and it says: I am not balanced, I will never balance, and that is a fact.

It is great to have Senator Roberts of Kansas here, and I yield to Senator Roberts.

The Senator from Kansas.

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Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, the fully declared champion of fiscal responsibility, defender of hard-pressed taxpayers all across the country, doing a splendid job here as a Senator who actually asked to be on the Budget Committee to try to meet these challenges, and I credit him for his leadership and example.

I rise today to speak on my Democratic colleagues' proposed budget resolution upon which they have just been waxing poetic before the Senate. I have mixed feelings about this budget. I have mixed feelings even being here on the Senate floor in that I am bereft of charts. What on Earth am I going to do making comments about this budget without the appropriate charts? Everybody has charts. Look at these stands around here.

My colleagues across the aisle--who have now left the Chamber since I began speaking--have displayed charts. I wonder if the Parliamentarian could inform this speaker if we could turn off the lights and I have a PowerPoint and a laser pointer?

I will not ask that.

But I don't have a chart. I just have some remarks that I would like to put together about the challenge we all face. I am pleased, everybody is pleased, finally, that the Senate has again, finally, taken up its constitutional responsibility to consider a budget in regular order--or at least some framework of regular order. However, I have the temerity to suggest that after 4 years, this budget resolution does not cut the spending muster and, from a constitutional responsibility, I fear it has indeed been very irresponsible.

At the same time, I look at this budget and I ask: Is this all we waited for these past 4 years? In the words of the famous song, ``Is That All There Is?'' Or better put, is this more than all there is? And it certainly is more.

There is an old saying that if you want to be remembered by your children, leave a lot of debt. Well, if this budget is passed and it sticks, then there are going to be a whole lot of people who vote yes who will certainly be remembered.

The solution was, indeed, to return to regular order, return to the regular process: Examine the President's budget, pass a budget resolution, and provide clear directives to the authorizing and appropriations committees to develop legislation to reflect the tough decisions made in the budget. A lot of words. None of it is very easy, but that is called regular order. That is what we should have been doing the last 4 years. We have not been doing that. We haven't been doing that at all.

Everybody knows the process around here. What happens is we have a major bill to do, we have our obligations to do, we have our constitutional responsibilities to do. We try that. We ask for amendments; we don't get amendments. We file cloture, they don't get 60 votes, and the bill fails. Or we have a continuing resolution, some giant body of legislation that is the worst way to do business--or a sequester, the same kind of thing. And people back home scratch their heads. People on that side of the aisle perhaps have an issue--not a bill, but they might have an issue. Then the blame game starts. I think the American people are tired of it.

None of it is easy. I understand that. But it works much better, much better than lurching from crisis to crisis as we have done and experienced in the last 4 years.

So I am pleased that we are slowly returning to some aspects of regular order, but I remain deeply concerned about the daunting fiscal challenges we face and the fact that we are not answering these challenges. The Federal balance sheet is now truly frightening.

Today, almost 1,500 days since we last considered a budget resolution on this Senate floor, we are fast approaching $17 trillion in debt--and beyond. It is climbing. Our per-person share of that debt is now more than $53,000. This is why I am so frustrated, and many of our colleagues are frustrated and disappointed by the budget resolution we are about to consider.

Yes, again, we have brought this resolution through regular order. I appreciate that. But the recommendations fail. They fail to begin to meaningfully address the key fiscal issues that we are all generally agreed are sustainable.

I don't have a chart, but I think people can understand this. The numbers are startling.

Since 2009 we have added nearly $6 trillion to the national debt. Under the proposed budget resolution, despite a massive new tax hike proposal, new debt will rise--since I don't have a chart, just sort of imagine it here--$7 trillion over 10 years. I hasten to add, that is on a projection by the Congressional Budget Office, and I think it is probably low.

Spending will increase another $645 billion above the projected growth over 10 years, including $162 billion in the next year alone.

The deficit will increase in the next fiscal year by $95 billion above current forecasts.

I could have a chart with a big zero on it. It is not a soft drink. This is something pretty serious. Zero. That is right, zero--zero real deficit reduction through spending reductions. It would never and doesn't pretend to try to balance the budget--precisely what the Senator from Alabama has been pointing out. In my view, this resolution would further damage our fiscal condition over the long haul, exactly what we don't want to do.

We do not want to kick the can down the road any further. We can't do it. We have reached that point of no return. And here is the kicker for me. The budget resolution includes a proposed $1.5 trillion in new taxes. That is on top of the $600 billion tax hike that was just enacted in January. This would include a $923 billion reconciliation instruction to the Finance Committee. I am a member of that very prestigious committee. I look forward to trying to achieve tax reform, but I worry about a $923 billion reconciliation despite the negative impact this would have on critically needed progrowth tax reform.

The budget also includes about $500 billion in unspecified loophole closers to increase spending on infrastructure and to replace the current sequester.

Loopholes. Loophole closures. Boy, is that in the eyes of the beholder. I am concerned about it. No doubt the Gatling gun kind of criticisms we heard in the past campaign, singling out tax reform targets--and I always want to add, you always want to worry about what lurks under the banner of reform of whatever banner someone is waving.

Time after time I heard the President talk about fat cat corporate jets. Boy, am I tired of hearing about that. That is business aviation. That is 1 million jobs. That is a great number of aircraft that is adding to our exports. The President has said: Let's double our exports, and still we hear this pejorative of fat cat corporate jets. Also, oil and gas subsidies, two major industries of Kansas, even those are critical, successful industries with all the hallmarks we should want in an industry--good, high-tech paying jobs.

Sure I am for tax reform, and sure I want to reach the specified numbers that we could all agree on--if we could all agree on a specified number. But policy counts, and you don't want to do anything terribly counterproductive. The call for a gigantic tax hike to pay for more spending is misguided and will harm our chances for tax reform. It will do little to place our budget on any sustainable path. Not only that, this budget is a job killer.

The Tax Foundation analysis I just read today indicates the legislation in its current form will result in the loss of 800,000 jobs over 10 years. It is a job killer.

Why on Earth would we be considering a budget resolution that will result in the loss of 800,000 jobs? In Kansas, that hit would be about 10,000 jobs. That is low. I have no doubt this number understates that problem.

We all know the time is long past for us to reform our overly complex, costly, anticompetitive tax system. That is a given. We know that. I might add that the Finance Committee, under the chairmanship of Max Baucus and the ranking member's leadership, Orrin Hatch--all of us on the Finance Committee have been meeting as Republicans and Democrats together. We can do this job. Give us 6 months to do it right. Give us a flashing light at the end of the room saying ``Do No Harm,'' and we can get this done.

The current system is a drain on individual and business resources. It is one of the main causes of our sluggish economic growth.

We need to put in place a Tax Code for the 21st century, one that recognizes the nature of the international trade system in which we compete--and there is competition--and one that recognizes the changes to our domestic business environment. We also need to lower corporate rates so the United States no longer has the highest rate in the developed world.

It is critical that Congress encourage economic growth and private sector job creation by putting in place a tax system that is simpler and fairer to all taxpayers, a tax system that doesn't change every year or two, one that provides certainty. We need to provide certainty by establishing a permanent Tax Code that will allow families to plan for their future and give businesses the confidence to expand and create jobs.

Adopting a fair and simple tax system that lowers marginal rates, encourages economic growth, promotes our competitiveness, and eases compliance--read regulatory reform, read a Katrina of regulations that now affects virtually every business endeavor in the country, read all that--that is the most powerful step we can take to improve our economy.

While I support considering a budget through regular order--thank goodness we are finally achieving that--we are presented with a profoundly disappointing document, a budget that includes a massive job-killing tax increase, increases spending, raises the deficit and debt, and all but kills prospects for tax reform--just what the doctor did not order.

After 4 years of deliberate inaction, my colleagues and I had hoped for better.

I yield the floor.

The Senator from Alabama.

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Page: S2003

I thank the Senator from Kansas. He is an excellent member of the Finance Committee and he is experienced on these issues. I appreciate his insight. I would like to ask him a question.

He has noted this budget never ever balances. It doesn't come close to balancing. It has no intention of balancing. But we have been counting, I say to Senator Roberts, and our Democratic colleagues who have been promoting this budget have, I said earlier, about 14 times used the word ``balanced. Actually, already tonight they have used the word ``balanced 23 times in reference to a budget that never balances and never intends to balance.

I wonder if you thought that might reflect a guilty conscience on the part of those promoting this budget?

I am glad you will not be arrested for that device on the floor.

But I think it is pretty sad that we have such a use of that word.

Let me say, if I might, and I appreciate the question and I have talked to the Parliamentarian, when people inadvertently leave their cell phones on, but the call is from their wife, that is all right.

At any rate, balance? If I heard it once, I heard it at least 10 or 15 times since I have been here and the distinguished Senator from Alabama has been here. Balance--it never balances in regard to the goal of actually balance the budget. We are talking about balance. But we are actually talking about redistribution. We are talking about balance, but what we are actually talking about is a certain kind of class warfare. When we are talking about balance, we are talking about means testing. We are talking about somebody in Washington on this floor defining who is rich or who is not or who is just a little better off--maybe $250,000, maybe $200,000. Guess what. These taxes are going to hit the middle class, and they do not think it is balanced. I don't think it is balanced, and I think it is out of whack.

If you are going to get something in balance, you ought to take a look to see can we get the budget of the United States headed toward balance and not use ``balance'' as a synonym for the proposed goals of social reform or whatever it is that you would like to accomplish under the banner of tax reform.

We should use tax reform for taxes, not for any political purpose or favoring one particular segment of the industry over another or, for that matter, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, et cetera. Everything has to be considered, but everything has to be considered under the auspices of when are we going to live within our means? When are we going to achieve spending reductions, quit overtaxing people, try to spur job growth? That budget resolution they are talking about on that side of the aisle--and I know they are very sincere, apparently, in their belief--doesn't feed the bulldog. It doesn't answer the problem.

I got a little excited about that, but I think I am due that in regard to all the rhetoric we have heard from the other side. I appreciate the Senator's question.

I thank the Senator. I note again the President said to George Stephanopoulos, live, on March 13, ``And, so--you know, my goal is not to chase--a balanced budget just for the sake of balance.''

I am also pleased the distinguished ranking member of the Finance Committee, senior, actually, member of the Budget Committee on the Republican side, Senator Chuck Grassley, who has been involved in these issues for many years and been a leader for many years, is with us.

I yield to Senator Grassley of Iowa.

The Senator from Iowa.

S. Con. Res. 8 Budget Resolution
Page: S2003

Mr. President, I say to Senator Sessions, the distinguished ranking member, I am going to try to show him and other Members of the Senate that the numbers that they think they can raise revenue from, to $1 trillion, are not going to work. We can take different taxes and add them up and up and it will come out to $1 trillion. But I am going to show him, based upon votes that have been taken on the other side of the aisle, that it is not politically possible for them to do it unless they are willing to vote differently than they have ever voted before because they have to take on some of the most popular tax credits that are in the Tax Code. That is what I am going to do in the few minutes the Senator has devoted to me.

I thank the Senator and ask him to take as much time as he chooses. But I note, as ranking member on the Finance Committee and having been on it and having dealt with these issues for many years, the Senator knows what the political situation is and he has the staff to help him ascertain the correct numbers. I think this will be an important bit of information to share with us, and I look forward to it.

Mr. President, over the 10 years that I was chairman or ranking member of the Finance Committee, I worked with several Budget Committee chairmen. They were Senator Domenici, Senator Nickles, Senator Gregg, Senator Conrad. We did not always agree on every issue, but by and large there was coordination between the Budget Committee and the Finance Committee. Basically, I had past chairmen, Republican or Democratic, come to me and say: Tell us what you can do or not do within the Finance Committee so we do not give you an impossible task when a budget resolution is adopted by the Senate. It worked very well because they respected the institutionalized knowledge within the staff of the Senate Finance Committee, both Republican and Democratic staffs, as well as the more important institutionalized information that comes from the Joint Committee on Taxation.

As I said, we did not always agree on every issue, but by and large there was that coordination. Unfortunately, the coordination receded somewhat, starting somewhat in the year 2007. Since 2010, we fell into this 4-year pattern of not even having a budget debate in the Senate, even though the law requires that the Senate adopt a budget every year.

Finally, getting back to abiding by the law--coordination provided the means then between the budget and Finance Committee that allowed the Finance Committee to realistically address the demands of the tax, trade, health and welfare policies that were intended by a budget resolution. This usually happened in a bipartisan way, but this year is different. This budget resolution does not realistically address the needs or the capabilities of the Finance Committee. By capabilities, I don't mean it is not there to get it done and people are willing to do it, but the possibility of doing it is very remote based upon the unrealistic assumptions in this document.

Despite claims to the contrary, this budget is not balanced unless one believes balance is more of the same fiscal behavior of the last 4 years of the Senate Democratic leadership fiscal policy. That policy has resulted in higher taxes, higher spending, and yet higher debt. Where there is fiscal pressure, it is placed on the Finance Committee by this document now before the Senate. The Finance Committee is called upon to do all the heavy lifting.

The principal lift is in the heavy tax increases. The Finance Committee has reconciled under this document with an almost $1 trillion tax increase. Reserve funds, in addition to that $1 trillion, reserve funds anticipate another $500 billion in tax hikes to pay for even more spending.

The task put on the Finance Committee is described as curtailing or eliminating what is called ``spending through the Tax Code, and ``loopholes. But if we look at the document, and particularly if we look at recent history, we will find a different story that says what they assume is not very realistic.

We will find tax increases. I wish to explain that. But first I will account for revenue raisers the majority party has specified and supported with votes in this Congress and the last one. What those votes show, unless there is a big change of heart on the other side of the aisle, is there is not going to be that revenue ever raised. So that makes the document on the other side, if it is not possible, blue smoke and great hope and good luck.

What this is going to tell us is that the unspecified and undefined tax increases the budget resolution is seeking, once we have the undefined tax increases--I am going to then define that. I will define it by taking the universe of tax base broadeners and working through the list to explain to all the unreality. I will be able to show one of two conclusions. The first conclusion I can show, the math doesn't work and there are not sufficient revenue raisers to fill the revenue goal of my friends on the other side of the aisle or, No. 2, the budget resolution would need to go much further down the income scale and do what we just heard Senator Roberts say, start taxing middle-income taxpayers. But it is going to be hard to get them to admit that on the other side because all we have to do is tax the wealthy 1 percent and we can solve all our problems.

But we cannot only tax that 1 percent. We could confiscate--not tax but confiscate the income over $200,000 and we are going to run the Government for just a very few months. But people tend to believe that. It is very difficult to preach the other side, how unrealistic it is, but that is a fact.

All of us should take a careful look at the claims of the Democratic leadership and see how the claims stack up to the cold, hard numbers that I will give you and the analysis by the tax-writing committee staff. So let's turn to those numbers.

Over the 10-year budget window going out to the year 2023, the budget resolution demands revenue and related outlay savings of $975 billion. There are two reserve funds, as I already said, that total up to about $580 billion in tax increases if that is taxed. And around here, with the ability--the willingness--to spend what they want to spend, they wouldn't mind tapping it, but I think that is unrealistic as well.

I am going to show my colleagues this chart. The first chart is a water well. Here is the top of the well, and we can see it is a long well to the bottom, and there is a little bit of water in the bottom. But most of the well from this point to the top is dry right now, and that is what they have to fill by their budget resolution.

At the top of the well we will see this number, $1.503 trillion, plus money to raise money for the reserve fund. That is what it takes to go from here to here to fill it.

If we want to put this another way, this budget puts the burden on the Finance Committee to come up with $1.5 trillion in offsets over the next 10 years. This budget assumes the well of revenue raisers is full to the brim, but they are starting out at this point.

My colleagues know I am a farmer. I should say my son is a farmer; I am kind of like a hired man now. I think that gives me something to know about wells and the predictability of well water. We on the farm always hope we will get rain, and particularly now, as it is dry in the middle west. So now we get a decent level of water so we can fill up the well to the top so we have plenty of reserve.

As a former chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee, I think I can tell my colleagues something about revenue raisers. In the positions I held on the Finance Committee, I led efforts to identify and enact sensible revenue raisers aimed at closing the tax gap and shutting down tax shelters. And as a senior tax-writing committee member, I continued to look for ways to shut off the unintended tax benefits.

Given this experience, I know what is realistic when it comes to revenue raisers. From 2001 through 2006, Congress enacted over 100 offsets with a combined total of not necessarily a lot of money but still a lot of money compared to this stuff we are talking about here, but it still scored for $1.7 billion over 1 year; over 5 years, $51.5 billion; and over 10 years, $157.9 billion. That is from about 100 offsets.

What other revenue raisers have been identified and scored? The President's last budget, the one we got in February of 2012--and they are supposed to be out every February and we are not going to get it until April 8 now; why I don't know--but the President's budget in 2012 contained a package of a lot of revenue that the Joint Committee on Taxation said would raise $1.4 trillion over 10 years.

The majority party has largely left these revenue-raising proposals untouched over the last 4 years. So if we have a Democratic President of the United States suggesting $1.4 trillion of revenue in his budget, as the suggestion from the White House, and the other side here in the Senate wants to raise a tremendous amount of revenue and they haven't touched it in the last 4 years, what makes us think they are going to touch it now? Is it realistic to think all of these taxes will be raised if even the Democratic President asks for it and his friends on the other side of the aisle--our friends as well--ignored it?

The majority party has, however, identified and specified and voted for tax hikes that amount to $108.3 billion. That is $108.3 billion of identified and scored revenue raisers. That is only about 7.8 percent of the amount that is needed to make this budget work. So we see how unrealistic this budget resolution is.

Based on these facts, what is the likelihood the Finance Committee will be able to come up with revenue raisers of this magnitude? In my view, from my 10 years as chairman and ranking member, that chance is not very high. If that is the case, then what will happen? The revenue side of the budget will be ignored, but the spending side will be followed. The net effect will be a massive tax increase, a bigger deficit, or both.

Now back to the chart. So the revenue-raising well is about 7.8 percent full. We have heard a lot about tax expenditures. As I have said before, the people have been told there are trillions of dollars of spending through the Tax Code. I am going to look at the individual income tax expenditures because the administration and the Democratic leadership have said they want to leave the corporate tax expenditures for lowering rates.

Here is a little irony. The Congressional Budget Act defines refundable tax credits as spending. It makes all the sense in the world because the tax benefits go to individuals who don't pay income tax. These credits are actually paid out in the form of a check in excess of any income tax liability of that individual. However, we won't hear the majority advocate reducing, let alone eliminating, any of those refundable tax credits. In fact, the majority's budget would increase them further. They represent even more significant tax expenditures.

I have another chart here based on the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation data. Here are 10 tax expenditures. The chart shows the top 10 individual income tax expenditures from this year, 2013, through the year 2017. These top 10 expenditures represent 70 percent of the total individual tax expenditures.

No. 7 is the earned income tax credit. That is a refundable tax credit designed for low-income taxpayers.

No. 8 on the list--I won't bother to point to it--is the premium tax credit enacted by ObamaCare. By 2017, this credit will actually make its way into the top five. Like the earned income tax credit, the premium credit is fully refundable.

No. 9 on the chart is the child tax credit which is partially refundable.

For each of these credits, more than half of the value of the benefit is paid out in the form of a government check exceeding tax liabilities. That is direct spending through the Tax Code. Yet these credits are considered off limits by the majority.

So let's take a look at the tax expenditure No. 1. That is the tax-free treatment of employer-provided health care. Americans can look forward to $1 trillion of health care-related taxes coming due over the next 10 years. All of this tax increase is thanks to 21 tax increases contained in ObamaCare. My guess is the majority doesn't want to take on that group.

So No. 2 is tax-deferred retirement savings plans. It is defined benefit plans and section 401(k)-type plans. To be sure, some higher income taxpayers benefit. Defined benefit plans tend to dominate in the unionized world. Section 401(k)-type plans are more common now. Some high-income taxpayers do, in fact, benefit because they are owners of a business and we want them to set up and maintain the plans. About 4 percent of this tax expenditure goes to taxpayers at $1 million or more of income.

No. 3 on the list is the preferential rate for capital gains and dividends. It is true that higher income taxpayers tend to have more capital gains. But a few months ago the rate rose 59 percent with the ObamaCare and fiscal cliff deal tax hikes kicking in. Do we want to choke off more savings and investment?

No. 4 is the deduction for State and local income and real property taxes. The New York Times editorial page is usually very in tune with the majority. An editorial on December 6, 2012, has a title that says it all: ``Keep The State Tax Deduction.'' My guess is that with the heavy hit on heavily taxed blue State taxpayers, the majority will not want to visit that deduction.

No. 5 concerns the American dream of home ownership. It is the home mortgage interest deduction. It disproportionately goes to the middle-income taxpayer. Do we really want to tank the tepid housing recovery now underway?

So look at No. 6. It is the tax benefit from the Medicare benefits the Federal Government pays. We have heard a lot about the Medicare reforms contained in the Ryan budget from the majority. Does the majority want to cut the value of Medicare benefits by taxing them?

I have already discussed Nos. 7, 8, and 9 on the chart which are all refundable credits. They are the earned income tax credit, the premium tax credit, and the child tax credit. Significantly, the premium tax credit makes the list while only being in effect 4 out of the 5 years we have examined.

So how about the last one then, No. 10? It refers to the step-up in basis that occurs on death time transfers. Higher end taxpayers tend to pay the estate tax when they die. This policy ensures they don't pay a double tax on the transfer. Does the majority really want to reopen the estate tax debate that we all thought just ended on January 1?

If we were to expand on this list and look at the top 20 expenditures instead of just the top 10, we would account for 90 percent of the individual tax expenditures. They include such things as charitable deductions, tax incentives for college, and the exclusion of capital gains from the sale of a home. Does the majority want to raise taxes on the backs of college students or cause heartburn for middle-income homeowners when they sell their home?

Well, let's take a step back for a minute. Where does the budget take us? The terms of the budget documents tell us the majority Members say they want to eliminate or curtail spending through the Tax Code--$1 trillion plus another $500 billion if they decide how to spend it. Yet they themselves would vehemently oppose eliminating or reducing tax expenditures that are defined by our budget laws as spending.

I challenge the budget authors to tell me which tax benefits they want to curtail. Do they want to cut back the tax treatment of employer-provided health insurance? Do they want to cut back defined benefit plans or 401(k) plans? Do they want to increase capital gains and dividend rates even further than the 59 percent? Do they want to cut back on the State and local tax deduction? Do they want to cut back on the mortgage interest deduction? Do they want to tax Medicare benefits? Do they want to raise the tax level on death time transfers?

Well, I conclude: This budget represents a dramatic step backward for the American taxpayer. For the first time in 4 years, thank God, we are debating a budget. Yet it repeats the same fiscal pattern of the first term of this Presidency. It spends too much, it taxes too much, and it results in too much new debt.

As former chairman and ranking member--and I suppose this is the fourth or fifth time I have said this, so people get tired of me saying it--but in that former position, I am sorry to say the experience I have had is that this budget doesn't even attempt to match the demands of the Finance Committee with the numbers in this budget.

I hope deficit hawks on both sides of the aisle pay close attention. The only thing certain here is that new spending will occur.

The deficit impact of not realistically dealing with the tax, trade, and health policy spending priorities of the Finance Committee disguises the deficit built into this budget.

I have many other concerns about the budget proposed by the majority. Simply, today, I wanted to let the Senate know how the numbers on the revenue side do not work from the standpoint of the usual stands that people take on closing loopholes and not closing loopholes and based upon what is politically feasible out of the Finance Committee.

As we take up amendments, I am hopeful we can make the budget mesh with the Finance Committee's policy demands.

I yield the floor.

The Senator from Alabama.

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished ranking member of the Finance Committee. That was a very fine presentation. I believe he is absolutely accurate. It is easy to say we are going to close loopholes and we are going to raise a trillion dollars-plus from closing loopholes. But the Senator just showed, based on the votes of our Democratic colleagues, and others too that it is much harder to harvest money from legitimate tax deductions and credits than a lot of people think.

Would that be fair to say?

Absolutely. And based upon the experience we have had of actually voting on those issues in the past--or the fact that I stated how the President put certain things in his budget of February 2012, and none of those ideas have ever been brought up by the majority party in the period of time they have been before them. So if their own President--when I say their own President, the President of their party--our President proposes that they raise revenue from those places, and they do not do it, it signals to me it is a pretty difficult job to do, and it is not going to be any easier this year than in past years.

I thank Senator Grassley so much for his insight on that.

We also have Senator Enzi here, who is a member of the Finance Committee, and is a senior member of the Budget Committee also. He understands these issues deeply.

I yield to Senator Enzi.

The Senator from Wyoming.

S. Con. Res. 8 Budget Resolution
Page: S2005

Mr. President, I rise today to share with the American public exactly what they are getting with the majority's budget for the coming year. I will be blunt. It is not good news. In fact, after 4 years of not bringing up a budget for consideration by the Senate, what the majority has offered is a severe disappointment. We have to grow the economy, not the government. But, unfortunately, the majority's budget focuses on growing the government--more taxing, more spending, more government.

During our last break, I had an opportunity to travel around Wyoming. I did about 2,000 miles, and I did a bunch of listening sessions. That is where I just take notes while people tell me what is on their mind. They are not going to be pleased with this budget. In fact, they think the best way to grow jobs is to cut government. And they were very adamant on making sure the sequester happened, which would be the first real cut in government we have had in forever. They recognize that what we usually call a cut is when an agency asks for a billion dollars, and they only get a half a billion dollars in new money. They call that a half billion dollar cut. It is not a cut, it is an increase of half a billion dollars. But around here that would be a cut. So we do not really do cuts. Sometimes we slow the growth of government, but we do not do cuts.

They actually want to see some action to cut, to balance the budget, and eventually to pay down the debt. They recognize that if interest rates go up, $16 trillion is going to be tough to pay the interest on, let alone pay back any principal, let alone do any other function of government.

So this is a budget that looks out over the next 10 years. It provides for significant tax increases, upwards of $1.5 trillion. But it also provides for significant spending increases. It is not as though we are increasing the revenue so that we could decrease the deficit and eventually decrease the debt. It is so we can add to spending--$162 billion next year alone. It provides for spending increases of 62 percent from today's budget levels.

Any savings are being claimed after the first year--after the first year. We never get to the second year, so the savings never make it--never pan out. It reminds me of a sign I saw on a restaurant. It said: Free drinks tomorrow. Of course, if you came in tomorrow, they said: No, no. Read the sign. It says: Free drinks tomorrow. That is the way we budget around here. We are always promising these things, but the real things do not happen.

Our problem is not that we tax too little but that we spend too much. A budget should serve as the blueprint to get the revenues and the spending aligned. Individuals have budgets. That is what they do. They see how much revenue they have coming in, and they see how much they can spend. They do not see how much they can spend and then see what the revenue is going to be. You cannot live in that kind of a world, but we do here.

Unfortunately, the majority's budget fails miserably in that respect. In fact, it does not balance the budget in any year over the next 10 years. The budget that was offered by the House Republicans, on the other hand, balances the budget in 2023. And, of course, the other side of the aisle talks about what a terrible budget that is. But they got it to balance. They have even introduced and passed budgets in the House for the last several years, and that takes a lot of courage when you know all that is going to happen over in this body is for it to get shot down by the majority. But those budgets have gotten some votes in favor of them.

The President has presented some budgets. The last 2 years, he has not gotten a single vote for his budget. I mean, he was not able to talk a single Democrat into voting for his budget--not one--let alone a Republican.

So the budget that was offered by the House Republicans balances in 2023. I have introduced a bill. It is called the Penny Plan. That cuts spending by 1 percent from every dollar for each of the next 3 years. If we could do that--true cuts--1 percent for each of the next 3 years, the budget would balance in 2016. I really think that is where we need to be--not 2023--2016. And, hopefully, we would not stop the cuts of 1 cent for every dollar. Families across America are having to cut more than that.

When I present this in Wyoming and other places, they say: Well, my wife just got laid off. We had to do a 20-percent cut, so why can't the Federal Government do a 1-penny-out-of-every-dollar cut? That would balance it by 2016. If we kept it going a little more, we would actually be paying down the debt--not just reducing the deficit but paying down the debt.

Our Nation owes $16 trillion, and no one is talking about reducing it. We have to get to balance--the sooner the better--and start paying down the debt. And do not get confused by the language the majority will use. They will say that their budget takes a ``balanced approach.'' But it does not balance. There is a big difference. ``Balanced approach to them means ``fair tax increases. I am not sure what that means, but that is what they mean by ``balance.'' And it is tax and spend, it is increasing deficits, and increasing debt as far as the eye can see. This is not the plan America needs to get its fiscal house in order. Next year alone, the majority wants to increase spending by nearly $162 billion, and the deficit next year is anticipated to be $152 billion above current projections. Over the next 10 years, deficits are expected to total $5.2 trillion. If we adopt the majority's budget, that is $5.2 trillion in addition to the $16 trillion we already owe. That is not balancing the budget. That is not a balanced approach.

None of this spending is associated with any kind of reforms to the drivers of our out-of-control deficits and debt that will bankrupt--bankrupt--Social Security and Medicare. The majority's budget provides no path to save Social Security and Medicare. They are hoping the Republicans will do that and take all the flak that is involved for it. Well, if we do it soon enough, there is not as much flak as if we do it later.

It has been a shame that we have been years without a budget, and when the majority finally gets around to doing it they do not even address the biggest driver.

Earlier this evening, the majority leader commented that we can learn from the bipartisanship shown by Senators Mikulski and Shelby on their work on the bill that will fund the government for the rest of the year. I think it was a massive opportunity and expenditure of effort that they did. But what I want to point out is that they had the opportunity to work things out together--together. That is bipartisan. That means sitting down together and figuring out what both sides think are the priorities, and seeing if there is not some way to put those into a single budget. I know it has not been done in years, but it is something I imagine America dreams about. I wish the majority would have provided that same opportunity in the Budget Committee. Maybe then the majority would have brought a bipartisan budget to the Senate floor. This does not have to be a shooting match. It can be a realization of a way to match spending with the revenues we have.

I was disheartened last week when I finally received the majority's budget to see that it simply continues the mantra of ``tax and spend.'' We cannot tax the American people every time Congress screws up, every time we overspend. And there are a lot of ways we do overspend.

One of the favorite things around here is to propose a grand new idea, and since that grand new idea would have a huge pricetag on it, we reduce it by saying: We will just make it a demonstration project. We will just do it in five States to start with, with a very minimal budget, and that will prove the value of this project. And practically every one shows they are a valuable project.

Well, at that point the local governments or the States are supposed to take them over and sell it to the rest of the country so that everybody winds up with this tremendous project. That is not what happens. They come back the next year and they say: This worked phenomenally, so we need to expand it to all 50 States because everybody deserves a great program such as this.

Well, we increased it from 5 to 50, so we increased it tenfold, at least. And chances are pretty good that some of those projects are done in small States. So when you put them into big States, they are an even bigger blowup of the budget. That is the way we bust the budget around here--just one of many ways.

Rather than looking for waste and abuse and duplication in government spending--and we know there is some--the majority simply decided to ask the hard-working American public to send in more of their hard-earned dollars to Washington to pay for more spending. These tax increases the majority calls for will hit the middle class. They say it will not hit the middle class. But we did some of the rich, and I noticed, in the alternative minimum tax--that is a great phrase. That sounds like everybody ought to be paying tax, and that is kind of an American principle, but it is not something that happens around here. Over 50 percent of the people do not pay any tax now. But we had this alternative minimum tax so that the rich would pay more. Well, inflation changed it so that 34 million Americans are being hit by that in the middle class. Consequently, we changed it. That is what we do when we try and mess around with classes of people.

To my constituents back home in Wyoming and fellow citizens across the country, let me be clear: It is your money, not the government's money. That is what they were telling me as I traveled around Wyoming for 2,000 miles and did my listening sessions.

They say it is our money. As legislators, we have to do a better job of taking care of the funds they provide us and ensuring that it is spent wisely.

The majority thinks it knows best how to spend the money the American people work hard to make. The budget they have offered seeks more than $1 trillion--let me repeat that: more than $1 trillion--in new taxes over the next 10 years. And debt will still grow by $7 trillion. That would be $23 trillion. That is a lot to pay interest on. Take and figure that out, if you can, with all those zeros that are out there, how much money that amounts to--at some moderate rate, say, 5 percent, because that is what it is anticipated to grow to in that same amount of time. And I think it could go well higher than that. Because if the rest of the world that is loaning us 40 percent of our money decides we are not the best place to put that money, the interest rates will have to go up dramatically in order to encourage the kind of money to keep borrowing $23 trillion--or $16 trillion; that is, if we can balance the budget quickly. In fact, the majority wants to set up a fast-track legislative process to get $975 billion from you as quickly as possible.

Now, we had the discussion earlier about taxes. We thought we had worked the tax problem for everybody and preserved people's taxes for 99 percent of the people. We thought there were going to be some spending cuts coming. Somebody sent me this little chart that I have to share.

This says ``Republican'' on it: OK. I will raise taxes if you promise to cut spending.

Well, Lucy says: It is a deal.

But we have been watching this cartoon for years and years. We know what happens. When we go to pick up the spending cuts, the football suddenly gets lifted out of the way and we end up on our back, the American public winds up on its back. Those are not the kinds of spending cuts we are looking for. We are looking for some real spending cuts, not just a decrease in the growth but some real spending cuts. There is a way to do those.

Wyoming has been faced with probably an 8-percent reduction in its income. How did they handle it? The Governor saw that coming, got a hold of every department and program and said: I need a plan from you for how you would cut 2 percent, how you would cut 4 percent, how you would cut 6 percent, and how you would cut 8 percent. When he got the four plans from every department, he took a look at them to see if they were cutting the worst first--you know, reducing the pain as much as possible. It worked that way. There was hardly a whimper and hardly anything noticeable to the customer; that is, the people who live in Wyoming. That is good management, not an e-mail that goes out that says: Make the cut as painful as possible. That is the sequester we are going through now. That should never happen in any kind of a managed business or a managed government. I guess that would be saying it is not a managed government.

When we took up the budget in committee last week, I offered an amendment to strike the language that provided for the fast-track tax increase process. My amendment was meant to ensure that the tax reform would be conducted in a bipartisan manner, to generate a more efficient, fairer, and simpler Tax Code and spur economic growth rather than raise revenues through legislation that can be passed with a simple majority here in the Senate.

A simple-majority vote would ensure that the minority party's views would receive little, if any, consideration. We would have no input. Debate time and the number of amendments that could be offered to improve the legislation would also be limited. We need to have an open process where all Members can have their voices heard. We simply need to stop dealmaking and start legislating.

We have had the system around here for a while where we work from contrived crises that have very specific dates at which the sky falls and the United States is demolished. Of course, that does generate a lot of publicity and all the media and everything leading up to that crunch. A group goes off and makes a deal. We find out about that deal in the last hour. Our choice at that point is take it or leave it. Well, if the sky is going to fall and America is going to be destroyed, what is the choice?

That is not the way to do it. We have to quit dealmaking and start legislating. The way you legislate is to have the chairman and the ranking member and other interested people on the committee who have a very specific interest in an issue sit down together and see if they cannot work out a basic package. It only has to be a basic package. It does not have to be a comprehensive package. This basic package would then go to committee. That is where the people can turn in amendments and improve it from their viewpoint.

The reason we have so many people in the Senate and in the House is so that we can see as many unintended consequences as possible. But if it does not go through committee, we have turned those people off. We have said: Your views do not count; your amendments do not count. Consequently, we do not end up with a good piece of legislation coming out of committee. If you get it out of committee in good shape, you can get it to the floor in good shape. If you get it to the floor in good shape, you can take additional amendments and improve it maybe more. That has been my experience with this. Yes, there have to be some tough votes with that. That is what we do. That is what we get paid for--legislating, voting.

We have spent the last week working on a continuing resolution. We got to vote three times. There were only requests for 11 more votes. We did not get to vote on those until tonight. So they had it arranged in a very fast process. Some of the people did not actually get their say.

We have to stop dealmaking and start legislating, particularly on big and important issues such as tax reform. We have to get back to a regular process so all Members can give input and improve the legislation.

Senator Gregg and Senator Wyden worked on income taxes for a long time. Then Senator Coats and Senator Wyden worked on income taxes for a long time. Now I am working with Senator Wyden and Senator Coats on income taxes. I think we can come up with something that will work. We can do both the individual and the corporate tax rates at the same time because they are very interrelated. We would not have that big of a tax code if it were not for all of the interrelationships. It is time that we made it simpler and fairer. It can be done, but it is not going to be done on a partisan basis in a very short period of time and get it right. So we have to get back to that regular process so all Members can give input and improve the legislation.

Unfortunately, my amendment was defeated. Every Member of the majority voted against it. But I will try here again on the Senate floor. Senator Grassley, who was a former chairman of the Finance Committee, and I have come together. We will offer an amendment to get rid of the fast-track process and provide for progrowth, revenue-neutral tax reform for corporate, business, and individual taxes.

I have a few other amendments I plan on filing as well to improve this budget. One would provide for a phase-in or transition for any changes to the Tax Code so that people and businesses can plan accordingly and we do not inadvertently put companies out of business or add people to the unemployment rolls.

Another amendment would require that each Federal agency identify and prioritize its programs, its projects, its activities so that they can cut the worst first, as I mentioned in the Wyoming example. That way we get what is the least harmful and least painful. There would be spending reductions. We might even get into duplication between agencies.

Senator Coburn and I did a little study of the health, education, labor, and pension programs. We found there was $9 billion--$9 billion of duplication. You cannot get rid of all of that, but you ought to be able to get rid of half of it. Well, Senator Coburn got so enthused by it that he went and took a look at the rest of government. He found $900 billion a year in duplication. Now, how is that possible? Well, my jurisdiction was rather limited, but what I have jurisdiction over is duplicated in almost every way. Almost every department, agency, and program has something to do with financial literacy. Based on our budget process, I would say that is probably failing. Maybe we ought to get rid of all duplication.

I will also file an amendment that would provide for protecting and restoring monies in dedicated funds, such as the trust funds, so we will not steal money from other areas to make up for shortfalls, as the majority did with the abandoned mine land money for 10 years that was owed to Wyoming but instead was used to pay for a 2-year highway bill.

Finally, I will file an amendment reflecting the goals of the Marketplace Fairness Act so that we put all businesses, whether brick-and-mortar, online, or catalog, on a level playing field with respect to the collection of sales and use taxes.

The majority's budget would severely harm my home State of Wyoming. The more than $1 trillion in tax increases would mean losses in personal income, household disposable income, and job opportunities. Over the next 10 years, the tax increases would cut personal income in Wyoming over $4 billion. You have to remember, we are a small State. We finally got past the half-million mark in people. So $4 billion is a lot. It would cut household disposable income on an average of $26,000 per household. There would be an average of nearly 1,900 job losses. You have to remember, we only have half a million people. These tax increases clearly are not the recipe for fixing our ailing economy and certainly not the answer for the hard-working folks back home in Wyoming.

When you start with one party doing the drafting--and those who wrote the budget hold the majority on the Budget Committee--you can expect the bill to be one-sided. If you keep on doing what you have been doing, you can expect to get the same result. Unfortunately, I believe that is what we will see this week as we debate the budget on the Senate floor.

The majority kept us in the dark on the last budget until last Wednesday evening. We had to present our opening statements in the Budget Committee before we even saw the budget the majority would offer.

Now, I do have to say in the defense of the majority that is the way it has been for several years, both when the Republicans were in charge and when Democrats were in charge. That does not mean it is right. If you want a good budget, you have to share the information, and share it before people have to comment if you really want good comments.

Then we had to turn around and start voting on the amendments the next morning in the Budget Committee. We were not part of that process. It was on a partisan line.

I was particularly disheartened by one amendment that failed on a party-line vote that was offered by Senator Portman from Ohio. His amendment was simply asking the Congressional Budget Office to provide additional information with the cost estimates it provides on legislation affecting revenues. That is right--he was just asking for additional information. Every Member of the majority voted against it. How could a request for additional information be so partisan? We can and must do better for our constituents and our country.

Several weeks from now, we may see the President's budget proposal. Of course, he will be late to the game since the House and Senate will have already acted on the budget. That would be the first time in over 90 years that would be the case. By the way, his budget was due nearly 2 months ago. I anticipate it will include many of the same things we have here in the Senate majority's budget--more taxes, more spending, more government.

As we are learning all too well with the majority's drive to repeal the recent spending cuts called sequestration, taxes generally go on forever, but spending cuts seldom make it through the year. We were promised spending cuts, but the football is about to be jerked out. We have to grow the economy, not the government. Unfortunately, the majority's budget has it backward: It grows the government at the expense of the economy.

I look forward to the debate on this budget and filing amendments to improve it both for my constituents in Wyoming and my fellow citizens across the country. I know the debate around here has delayed the beginning of the budget process so that we are going to be under a crunch. Perhaps it will go into the weekend and give us an opportunity to do all of the amendments rather than just trying to fatigue us on Friday.

I yield the floor.

{{C113crb-s|Mr. SESSIONS. I thank Senator Enzi. Senator Enzi is an accountant, a businessman. I do not believe any Member of this body has traveled his State more on the ground than he in the last number of years. As a matter of fact, I will say with certainty that is so. He travels constantly, talks to people all over the State.

I just have one question of the Senator. When you talk to people in Wyoming, real people in gas stations—

{{C113crd-s|Mrs. MURRAY}} Would the Senator yield for a second on a unanimous consent?

{{Mr. SESSIONS. I would be pleased to yield.

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I ask unanimous consent that the title amendment for H.R. 933 which is at the desk be agreed to.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

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So I guess the President here has said: Well, so you know my goal is not to chase a balanced budget just for the sake of balance. But when our colleagues talk about a balanced approach and they have a budget that does not actually balance--I guess what I am saying is that the Senator talks to his constituents more than any Senator here, I am sure. Does the Senator think they really believe we should have a balanced budget, revenue equaling outgo? I ask an accountant that question.

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The Wyoming people absolutely think there should be a balanced budget. They do not think it ought to take 10 years to get there. They know how they have to operate. These are just hard-working, ordinary people with big hearts and an interest in jobs and their families. They are not seeing jobs happening. They are not seeing the economy improving. They are seeing taxes rising and people just talking about raising taxes. That is not where they expect us to go. All of them can suggest someplace within their realm of work that there ought to be a change.

Most of them say the best way to improve the economy, the best way to do jobs is just to get the government out of our way. These are people sitting on a tractor, even working in government during the day, thinking of ways their job could be reinvented to maybe be a little bit better. That is how governments can improve. They come up with some commonsense suggestions. I haul it back here, but commonsense doesn't go very far around here. I will keep hauling it, continue talking to people and continue to see what their expectations are, and hopefully we can meet those expectations. It doesn't take an accountant to know we are overspending.

The Senator mentioned--which it does seem to me we are doing here by this budget--if it were to pass, we don't have any plans to change what we are doing. The problem is that you haven't sent us enough money. As the Senator indicated, send us more money, and we will all be happy in Washington. That is not what my constituents are telling me they think we should do. What are yours saying?

They are saying there should be quite a changeover back here until we have people who understand that you are not supposed to spend more than you take in. The answer is not charging them more in taxes every time we can't meet that expectation. They already think there are enough programs out here. Sometimes I have to agree with them.

When I started as the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions--HELP--Committee, within my jurisdiction was preschool programs. There were 119 preschool programs. We spent more on preschool than we did on K-12. Senator Kennedy and I were able to get those down to 69 programs. People wonder why we can't get it below 69 programs. Most of them aren't handled by the departments we work with. They are handled by Agriculture, Commerce, and other agencies. We don't get to dabble in those. There are ways we can eliminate duplication and save a little money, but we are not looking for that.

Here is the GAO report I think the Senator referred to, the 2012 annual report: ``Opportunities to Reduce Duplication, Overlap and Fragmentation, Achieve Savings, and Enhance Revenue.'' I think my constituents would say this is exactly what you should do. Do yours?

Absolutely. It looks like a tremendous manual. We have a thing called the Government Performance and Results Act, which is where every agency is supposed to list what they do and how we will know they completed it. At the end of the year, they are supposed to evaluate themselves to see if they did what they said they were going to do. Most of them don't report, and those that usually do fail, and that is a lot of what is in that report. The agency is saying: No, we didn't do what we are supposed to do.

It is. It lists here on page 51 specific examples. The Senator mentioned duplication. This one is employment of people with disabilities--a very good goal. This is something we would like to see if we can facilitate and help them work. It states: ``Better coordination among 50 programs in nine Federal agencies that support employment of people with disabilities.'' There are 50 programs in 9 agencies. Does the Senator believe we could get more help for the disabled if those programs were consolidated and brought together in a single or a few programs?

One of the things that happen with the programs is they usually get named after some Senator and he is very protective of his particular program. This is one of the things that make it very difficult to eliminate programs. Yes, if the duplication is eliminated, you may put the emphasis on the programs that are really working and that should succeed. That should make a bigger difference to everybody.

That is common sense. I thank the Senator so much for his contributions. I do believe the American people have a right to say to us: You fix the duplication. You fix some of this waste. You quit throwing money at Solyndras and hot tubs in Las Vegas before you ask us for any more money.

We haven't done it.

I know fundamentally it is fair to say the Chief Executive of the United States is the person responsible for managing this bureaucracy. We are sort of like an active board of directors that monitors this.

Would the Senator not expect that a really committed President, Chief Executive of the United States, should be sending to us proposals on a regular basis that are based on reports of his Cabinet and sub-Cabinet people to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse? Wouldn't that help us if we had more support from the President's side?

That is probably the only way it can be done, is to have the President suggest this is leadership, this is management, this is what the White House is supposed to be in charge of and could do.

I also know that even if the President talks about eliminating a program, there will be the 10 good examples from across the United States that actually work that will come in and flood us with comments about how that program cannot be eliminated. This is why I have the penny plan--one cent of every dollar across the board. Then you don't run into that problem. As I said, that would balance in 3 years, not 10 years.

If we reduce by 1 percent, one penny out of every dollar of spending for 3 years, the budget would balance in 3 years, 4 years?

Yes. These are the latest figures. After the sequestration and after the fiscal cliff, it came down to that. Before that, it would have taken us 5 years.

I thank the Senator for sharing that and thank him for sharing his thoughts with us tonight.

I thank the ranking member for the tremendous job he has done and the hours he and his staff have put into reviewing these things. This is not an easy thing to follow. The book we have is an actual manual. The bill we receive to work from is just a bunch of numbers. It is hard to put that all together, and I thank the Senator for the information he has provided.

I thank the Senator.

I yield the floor.

The Senator from Washington.

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Mr. President, we do have some serious differences of opinions between the two parties when it comes to our values and our priorities. We believe our budget should reflect this, and we are having a good debate. Those differences will be difficult enough to bridge, and we should be able to at least agree on what the facts are.

I wish to take a moment tonight to correct an inaccuracy I have heard a lot in the last few days, including on the floor tonight. We are hearing some Republicans say that the Senate budget includes a $1.5 trillion tax hike. This simply is not true. Here are the facts.

Of the $975 billion in new revenue, which comes from those who can afford it the most, $480 billion is matched with responsible spending cuts to fully replace the sequestration, $100 billion goes toward targeted high-priority infrastructure repair and job training to help restore the recovery, put Americans back to work, and the rest goes to help reduce the deficit.

Unfortunately, rather than seriously considering the credible path we have presented in our budget plan, some Republicans have decided to play games with the numbers, and they are not telling the truth. Instead of subtracting the sequestration replacement portion and the investment package from the $975 billion in total revenue, they are trying to say you should somehow add them all together. They are taking one side of the ledger, combining it with the other side of the ledger, and coming to some conclusion that makes absolutely no sense to us. It would be like handing over $2 to buy a cup of coffee and having someone say: Well, the price was actually $2 plus the value of that coffee. It doesn't make any sense.

You don't have to take my word for it. Fact checkers and reporters have called this claim false and a step too far. The Washington Post Fact Checker even gave it two Pinocchios.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a story from the Washington Post on this inaccurate claim.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the, as follows:

We are having an important conversation about the direction of our country, what kind of Nation we want to leave to our children and grandchildren. It will not be easy to reach a deal. We are working very hard to get a budget passed out of the Senate and to move forward from there. This is what the American people expect. It is what they deserve.

I hope our colleagues will stick to the facts and not try to muddy the water and help us focus on the urgent task at hand.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

The Senator from Alabama.

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Mr. President, another thing that I think is important and that we do agree on is the concept that our plan should be to create growth, jobs, and prosperity. A budget-balancing exercise must be a part of that whole vision of how we make America a better, more prosperous place. What we are learning is that we can't borrow our way to prosperity.

I will never forget being in Evergreen, AL, a few years ago at a townhall meeting when a nice African-American gentleman stood up. He said, ``My daddy always told me you can't borrow your way out of debt.''

If you think about it, that is basically what we are saying we are going to do. We are saying it is not a spending problem. This is not the problem we have. The problem we have is that we don't have enough money.

We have two solutions: One is to borrow more money, and the other is to tax more, taking money from people who otherwise would use it in the economy to invest, expand businesses and the like, or raise--increase spending or borrow the money, adding to our debt.

Debt accumulates over time. Each billion dollars, trillion dollars that is added to the debt, we pay interest on. People lend us that money. A lot of people haven't thought about it much, but we have to pay interest on it. It is projected by the budget before us today that in 10 years we will be paying $800 billion--virtually $800 billion a year in interest. Think about this. Interest on our debt will be almost $800 billion a year. Under the CBO current baseline it is a similar number. The Defense Department budget, which is actually being reduced--one of our largest--is $500 billion, Social Security is about $750 billion, and Medicare is about the same or a little smaller. It would exceed every other budget item in our budget--interest on the debt--every year.

We have been wrestling, nickeling and diming, cobbling together money for a budget for our highways--$40 billion or so we could put together and have a program that doesn't cut our highway funding. We have more efficient cars, people are not buying as much gas, and taxes aren't as much as we projected they would be a number of years ago. It is getting to be a tight budget. We spend about $40 billion--maybe a little more now--on the highway budget every year. This is maybe 1.1 percent of the total Federal Government budget.

We will be spending $800 billion on interest each year. The money we spend on interest produces us nothing. All it does is help remind us of the good old high time we had back in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, when we were spending and borrowing. We can think back: Wasn't that a great time when interest rates were unbelievably, artificially low. They will not stay at that rate; they are going up. We have had a great time, but the piper is going to demand his due as the years go by. It is just a fact.

This is how countries get in trouble. Greece and all of those countries in trouble in Europe, their debt became so high, their interest rates started going up. People were afraid to lend them money, and they wouldn't lend them more money unless there was more interest. All of a sudden, their interest payments were so large that their whole economy and governments were threatened. I think this is a big deal.

We keep hearing that spending is not the problem. I would like to talk about this a little bit because it is very important.

Nancy Pelosi, minority leader in the House, said this earlier this year: ``So it is almost a false argument to say we have a spending problem.''

We don't have a spending problem. The American people need to send us more money, I guess is what she would say. No, don't look at these duplicative programs; don't look where we are wasting money. It is important. You can't have austerity and actually cancel a worthless government program. They somehow might lose their job and the country will sink into the ocean.

America will be better, our economy will be stronger, if we are leaner and more productive as a government. Surely, we can agree on that. Surely, we can't maintain, as Paul Krugman did the other day--unless he is advising the Democratic majority in the Senate--that even wasteful Defense Department spending shouldn't be cut because we want to stimulate the economy with borrowed money, throwing money at programs that are no good. That is no way to do business.

Steny Hoyer, one of the Democratic leaders in the House, says: Does the country have a spending problem? The country has a paying-for problem. We don't pay enough, Mr. Hoyer says. Mr. Hoyer says we need to pay more to Washington so Washington can keep spending.

We are not changing. It is the American people's fault. Don't you know, we are investing for you. Give us more money so we can invest. Don't you think all these programs work? Aren't they doing great? No, we are not going to reform them. We can't cut a single one--children will be thrown into the streets; old people won't have drugs for their health care. And all of this because of a modest reduction in the growth of spending?

Congressman Ryan has demonstrated, and the numbers are absolutely clear, that we can increase spending by 3.4 percent a year, and the budget will balance in 10 years. We don't even have to cut spending. We have to reduce the rate of growth in spending from around 5.4 percent to 3.4 percent and the budget balances. But President Obama says he is not interested in balancing the budget. My goal is not to chase a balanced budget, he says.

I know my colleagues have used the word ``balanced. I said earlier they used the word ``balanced tonight 14 times, but I have been corrected. It is 24 times already tonight that my colleagues have used the word ``balanced'' in relation to this budget that never balances and never will balance because they are not concerned about balancing the budget. That is not what it is about with them. They think bringing the budget into balance, as most States have to do, as all cities and counties have to do, is austerity. Oh, we can't have austerity. That might hurt the government. Somebody might lose their job. They no longer would be paid to do some worthless job that doesn't produce anything. We have to keep paying them anyway because it would be austere to cut that out.

Senator Harkin said in February: We have the richest Nation in the world. If we are so rich, why are we so broke? Is it a spending problem? No, it's because we have a misallocation of capital, a misallocation of wealth. If we are so rich, why are we broke, he says. Is it a spending problem? No, it is because we have a misallocation of capital, a misallocation of wealth.

What he means is the government hasn't taken enough wealth from the American people who worked hard and earned it, so they can distribute it around. That is what he means; that we are entitled to more of it from the economy, and we can extract more of it and then we can pass it out and we can tell all the people who get our checks how much we did for them. By the way, we ask them to vote for us while we are at it. See what I sent you? I need your vote now. By the way, these awful Republicans, they are talking about taking those checks away. You might not get all that money now, or you might get $98 instead of $100, and I am going to protect you.

So this is the politics of this thing. It is clear we have a mentality around here that is not healthy, and the mentality is that it is not a spending problem and we don't have to cut spending and the Democratic budget increases spending over the baseline we are on. It raises taxes. We will submit a document for the record that we think shows we have $1.5 trillion in tax increases in this bill. But whether it is $1.5 trillion or $1 trillion, the deal is that spending goes up, and there is virtually no alteration in the debt course of America over the next 10 years.

So why is it that it is a spending problem? Let me explain it. It actually came to me more clearly during a hearing recently where Mr. Elmendorf, who is the Director of CBO, the Congressional Budget Office--and a very smart man and a decent individual--was talking about the growth in spending and taxes and the tax increases that just occurred and that sort of thing. This is the story.

I asked him this: If we raised enough taxes to balance the budget today, and if the economy is growing at 2 percent, would the taxes grow at about 2 percent a year?

He said: Yes. They work hard to figure out what kind of tax growth it is, but taxes basically grow with the economy. As more people are working, the economy grows, and they pay more taxes. If they grow at 4 percent, the government takes in more money than if it grows at 2 percent.

But the question was, What if spending is growing at 5 percent? Even if we raise enough money today to close the $1.2 billion deficit we had last year to zero, and the economy is growing at 2 percent, and spending is growing at 5 percent, we will immediately start off on an unsustainable debt course.

So I asked him: Well, then, that is the definition of an unsustainable course, isn't it; that you are on a path to raise spending more than you are on a path to have revenue come up?

And that is where we are. We can't keep raising taxes and keep allowing our spending rate to increase beyond what the economy will sustain. This economy, this government, this America that has produced the greatest wealth, the greatest freedom, the greatest prosperity, the greatest growth, the greatest innovation the world has ever known was not built on a state-dominated economy. It is not a socialist government state; it is not a European economy. It is a growth economy. We will make a mistake that we will regret, and it will be a colossal error for the future of this country if we alter that great characteristic of this fabulous country of which we are a part.

We are a government of limited powers, a constitutionally controlled government. It does not dominate our economy. It does not dominate the people's lives. People are free, and they should be encouraged to be independent and resourceful and to take care of themselves and their families. When they have a hard time, we need to help them. We have programs that spend $750 billion a year. I kid you not.

If you cobble together all the means-tested welfare programs that go to some--well, Medicaid. Medicaid is a free program for people whose income is below a certain level. Medicaid is a means-tested welfare social program, and there are a lot of them. It is the biggest. But you put all those together and it amounts to $750 billion a year in expenses or outflow. There are at least 83 of these programs, which are not brought together. They have independence, an independent management, different and independent departments of our government. They are not coordinated.

What we need to do when a person is hurting and they have lost their job and they need food stamps and TANF and unemployment compensation and other benefits that they are entitled to, and will get--and will continue to get, at least that kind of compensation--we need to be producing a system where these programs are brought together. We need to meet with that person--perhaps a single mom who has lost her job, maybe a young person who hasn't been able to find work--and we need to use some of those monies instead of just sending aid out and a person comes in every month and signs up and gets a benefit to help that person. What kind of skills do they need? Do they need an automobile to go to work? How can we help them move from dependency to independence? How can we help them create a healthy life for themselves, their family and their future? That is where we need to focus, and we are not doing that. We are not even close to that.

The 1996 welfare reform accomplished a lot of that. The number of children in poverty dropped dramatically. They did a lot of reform. The welfare office became an employment office in many areas of the country. It helped people move into an advanced lifestyle and away from dependency. But we have gradually drifted through the Bush years and into the Obama years to where those qualities of that program have been undermined, and President Obama is overtly advocating relaxing some of the rules that mandate work requirements for some of the people involved. He is retreating, too, and that is the wrong way to go.

We have a group of our excellent Senators--fine people--meeting in secret. Maybe they are down the hall now. I don't know where they are, but they are plotting right now on how to pass an immigration plan. We just can't wait to see what it is so we can just vote for whatever they decide we ought to have. You know what they tell us? We can't get workers. We have to have foreign workers. Yet we have never had more people on welfare, never had more people on food stamps.

In 2001 we spent $20 billion on food stamps. Last year we spent $80 billion on food stamps. It has gone up fourfold, but we are told there are not enough Americans to do work. Somehow this welfare office needs to be dealing with this problem, and we need to have a consolidated program. But there is no plan in this budget, and no plan that has been offered on the floor.

Any time anybody makes a suggestion that we make reform, they get attacked. I have been attacked. I offered an amendment when the Agriculture bill was moving last year and we were on track to spend $800 billion over 10 years on food stamps. We found there was a categorical eligibility provision that was being abused substantially, allowing people who basically did not qualify for food stamps under the program to get the food stamps. So I proposed to close it. It would have saved $10 billion. We would spend $790 billion over 10 years rather than $800 billion. And I was attacked. I was kind of shocked, really. It was said that I was trying to balance the budget on the backs of hungry people. I wasn't trying to balance the budget on hungry people, I was trying to close an abuse of the program and, actually, thankfully, would have saved $10 billion--$1 billion a year over 10 years.

So this is where we are. We have a firm resistance to reform throughout the system, and it is not a little bit of money. These 80-some-odd welfare programs--hold your hat--over the next 10 years are supposed to grow, as predicted by the Congressional Budget Office, by 80 percent--80 percent.

My fine budget staff has looked at those numbers and they have concluded if we could improve those 83 programs and let them grow at 60 percent instead of 80 percent, we could save the taxpayers $1 trillion over 10 years.

I kid you not, $1 trillion. This goes a long way toward balancing our budget and helps us in a lot of different ways. If it is done right, it will be better for the people who need help than the present 83 disjointed programs that have no coherence and no focus on helping poor people actually improve their lives.

I grew up in the country. I grew up with poor people. I was poor. We didn't have central heating. I have no doubt our income was below the poverty line most of the time I was growing up. We had a garden. My daddy had a country store. We got by. But we didn't have any money. I remember when we got our first air conditioner--and it gets hot in Alabama. We moved from one room to the other when you turned it off. You didn't want to pay for electricity you didn't need. We had a fireplace in the living room. That was the only heat we had. The fireplace burned in the winter all the time. We cut our own wood. I worked construction in the summers both summers I was going to college, saving a few bucks being a carpenter's helper and working out in the Alabama heat. It didn't hurt me. And this idea that people aren't willing to work and we have to import foreign labor and we have to give people welfare because we can't find them a job, while businesses say we don't have enough workers, is somehow a messed-up idea. This is not helping. We have got to confront this problem. There is no plan to confront this problem or talk about it in any realistic way. It is time for us to be honest about this country's problems.

We do have a spending problem. Spending is going up faster than the economy is growing, and it will always create a deficit. You can't create something out of nothing. Julie Andrews sang, ``Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could.'' That is so true. So we need to have a government that is leaner, that is more productive, that does more for the American people than it is doing now for less money.

My office has been spending less than we are allocated every year. I believe this year the Senate has reduced its budget about 10 percent over the last couple of years. I am down about 20 percent. This idea that you can't cut spending throughout this government is one of the most ridiculous ideas that has ever been raised.

I was a U.S. Attorney. I managed an office of lawyers and staff. When Ronald Reagan came in and we didn't have any money, we watched every dime we spent. The former Deputy Attorney General of the United States, Larry Thompson, was from Atlanta and I was U.S. Attorney in Alabama. We were such dyed-in-the-wool frugal Reagan hawks, when we were made U.S. Attorney we came to a conference and we roomed together, in separate beds, but we thought it was cheaper and saved money for the taxpayers. This is the kind of mentality that needs to get back into what we are doing, and I would say that it is time for us to confront this.

The vision of the Members of this side, and I think a lot of Members of that side, is not that far apart. But I want to be clear about a couple things. This budget needs to be put on a path to balance. It can be done without cutting spending in any dramatic way. All you have to do is reduce the rate of growth in spending. The budget will balance in 10 years. We need to do that. We need to plan to do that. As I explained before, the debt is already pulling down economic growth in America. It is pulling down the growth we have. The debt has reached such a level, 104 percent of GDP, that it is above the limit and the level that the International Monetary Fund, the Bank for International Settlements, the European Central Bank, and the Rogoff-Reinhart study say begins to pull down growth. We are losing jobs, we are losing promotions, we are losing pay raises as a result of this debt right now.

We share the view on both sides of the aisle that we need to be looking to create growth. Our colleagues say, Let's keep doing what we have been doing the last number of years. We have another stimulus package, we have another $100 billion, and we are going to borrow this money because we are already in debt, and to spend an additional $100 billion requires borrowing an additional $100 billion, so we are going to borrow $100 billion and we are going to spend it, and this is going to make the economy stronger. Sorry. We have been there, done that. We say no. We have got to end this mentality. We need to make this government leaner and more productive. We need to have this government do things that create growth and jobs that do not add to the debt.

What are some of those things? Simplified taxes, eliminate unnecessary regulations, more American energy. Those are the kinds of things we can do that don't cost money that create jobs. Complete the Keystone Pipeline. Don't keep sending money to Venezuela or Saudi Arabia. Create jobs in America. Ask the people in North Dakota; they have got growth and prosperity as a result of energy production. These are the kinds of things we can do and we believe in and will continue to work for.

I would say that maybe, even though we have a big difference--and this budget will be quite different from the House budget--I don't say it is impossible that in conference some sort of more global agreement could be reached to put America on a sound path. We will have to deal with the entitlements. Entitlements represent half of the spending--and, with interest, more than half of the spending. Medicare, Social Security, those are growing well above the inflation rate and their growth level needs to be contained a little bit. We can make them sound, and people can retire and know that Medicare will be there for them, it won't fail, and that Social Security will be there for them, it won't fail. And we are going to stop adding to our debt until it reaches such a level that it could not only slow growth but could cause a financial crisis, as we had in 2007, and as they are having now in some of the European countries and that so many countries have had over the years.

We are excited to have a budget on the floor for the first time in 4 years. It does provide an opportunity for the American people--as our chair, Senator Murray, said--to compare the visions for America. It also provides an opportunity for our Members to learn about what things cost, how much you can get through tax increases, what kind of spending cuts are required, whether we have to cut or how much we can grow spending and still balance the budget. These kinds of things are learned when a bill actually goes to the floor.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, President Obama, being interviewed on ABC by George Stephanopoulos, not only said ``my goal is not to chase--a balanced budget but he also said, ``we don't have an immediate crisis in terms of debt, and ``in fact, for the next 10 years, it's gonna be in a sustainable place.''

I would say two things about that. He appointed Mr. Erskine Bowles to be chairman of the fiscal commission. They spent quite a lot of time working on this debt question. They took testimony from experts, they examined documents, and they did what a good, public, spirited group would do. Mr. Bowles was Chief of Staff for President Clinton and a very successful businessman. Alan Simpson, his Cochair, was a former Republican Senator from Wyoming.

That is not what they told us. In the committee, 2 years ago, in the Budget Committee--maybe a little over 2 years now--they gave a joint statement in which they said this Nation has never faced a more predictable financial crisis.

What they were saying was the level of debt we are operating on, the unsustainability of the debt path, was so great that we will have some sort of fiscal crisis.

I remember about that same time, the Chairman of the Fed, Mr. Bernanke, testified that we have all these outyears and we talk about the debt numbers and all that, but we don't have to worry about them. I am paraphrasing, but this was pretty close to what he said. I think these were his exact words: But it will never happen.

What he basically told us was there would be a fiscal crisis before we get this far down the road--the demographics, the aging population, fewer workers, greater debt every year--mushrooming in the outyears.

I am troubled the President thinks that as a matter of fact, the next 10 years is going to be in a sustainable place. I don't believe he knows that. I will tell my colleagues a couple reasons why. Senator Stabenow had a chart about how great the economy or the fiscal situation of the country looked about the time President Bush took office. The last month of President Clinton's term in office was negative growth. I think that was the first month of negative growth in maybe 8 years. In fact, when President Clinton took office, he didn't inherit a recession, regardless of what the myth is around here. Former President Bush did have a recession in his second year or so of his term and he took action and the economy bounced back. About the time President Clinton took office, the economy was growing and it continued to grow through the decade. We don't know all the forces. We talk about it. We play politics about it. But nobody knows precisely what moves an economy, whether it was something 10 years ago or something 10 months ago that caused the difficulty. We make guesses and we do our best judgment.

So here we go. In early 2000, I am on the Budget Committee and Mr. Greenspan testified--the maestro, the guru, the Federal Reserve Chairman, the greatest we had ever had; the economy had long years of growth. He told the committee we are going to have surpluses as far as the eye can see. He discussed with the Budget Committee what would happen when we had all these surpluses and we would pay down the entire debt of the United States of America. Then he asked us what we would do. What is the Federal Government going to do with the extra money? Are they going to buy the bonds of Venezuela? Does it buy British bonds? What does it do with its money? Does it buy property? This was the mindset in early 2000, and he was the Federal Reserve Chairman. Didn't he see the demographics? Didn't he recognize--there was a little caution in his statement, but he was very positive.

I went back and read it again recently, because it teaches me that this man, at the peak of his powers--one of the greatest economic minds in history; at least it was so felt at that time--completely missed it, I have to tell my colleagues. He didn't think we had a problem in the future with debt. He didn't say by 2009 we are going to be running trillion-dollar deficits, right? So this makes me a bit humble about our ability to predict.

Mr. Bowles said we are on a path to a debt crisis. That is what he told us in the committee. I believe Chairman Conrad or ranking member Judd Gregg asked him: When?

He said: I think about 2 years.

Two years came and we didn't have a debt crisis. So now the President of the United States is saying we can continue for 10 years, no problem, no worries. I am happy. You are happy. We don't have to cut spending. We need to keep borrowing. We need to keep running up debt because we absolutely don't want to have austerity. We don't want to have austerity. We want to be happy and spend. So that is the deal.

I am telling my colleagues, nobody knows. It can happen just that quick. Kent Conrad told me--we were standing right over there--he said the rate we are heading is coming off that wall like a rubber ball at warp speed. He was on the debt commission, the fiscal commission. He was worried about the fact of our unsustainability on the debt course.

Things look good. The Sun is shining out there today. We don't want to talk about that. Who wants to be negative? Who wants to be Dr. Doom? Do my colleagues remember Dr. Doom or Nouriel Roubini, who said: We were going to have a debt crisis in 2005 or 2006. I am not sure when he predicted that. He said: The banks are borrowing too much money. It is unsustainable. We are going to have a crisis.

Months went by and we didn't have a crisis. One year went by, we didn't have a crisis. They mocked him. They called him Dr. Gloom. After 2007, when the bottom fell out and we had the worst recession since World War II, the reasons it happened were just what Mr. Roubini said. People said: Dr. Gloom wasn't so wrong after all. Maybe we should have listened to him.

I am just telling my colleagues, I believe we have a responsibility as men and women of public service, managing the finances of the United States of America, and we have a President who is in denial.

I think it is time for this Congress to assert itself and say we are not going to risk this country. I believe our debt is already too high. I believe it without a doubt. It is a fact. The Rogoff and Reinhart study was based on public debt, and our public debt is now over 100 percent of GDP. It is greater than the entire economy. That means we pull down and we place our country at risk because we are slowing growth, as I indicated earlier.

But this is what Secretary Geithner said in 2011 before the Budget Committee. I asked him what did he think about the Rogoff and Reinhart study, because it was troubling to the committee. Everybody on the committee knew about it. The fiscal commission people had consulted about it. We had Carmen Reinhart testify before the committee and then again a little later. So I asked him about it. This was his answer to my question to him, as I recall:

It's an excellent study. And you could say in some ways what you summarize from it, understates the risks, because it's not just that governments or countries that live with very high debt-to-GDP ratios are consigned to weaker growth.

As I have been contending throughout the day--

They're consigned to the damage that comes from periodic financial crises as well.

February 17, 2011, Secretary Geithner, President Obama's own Secretary.

So he was warning us that when the debt gets this high, we are in a danger zone.

We know there are some countries that have more difficult problems than we. There was an article recently from the CATO Institute talking about some of the countries in the world. Japan is one of the most dangerous. What if the third, fourth largest economy in the world, Japan--one of our key trading partners--was to have an economic collapse such as Greece? Do my colleagues think it can't happen? I don't think it can't happen. I don't know. They are running way too high a debt-to-GDP ratio. Their population is aging even more quickly than ours.

Then we have France and Spain and Italy. Any one of those countries had an economy so large they can't be bailed out like Greece. What would happen if Europe were to go into turmoil? I am not predicting that to happen, but I am telling my colleagues we are on a path where I don't believe any responsible person can say it couldn't happen to us, and we could be embroiled in this too. The worst thing that could happen to us is we have to face a fiscal crisis where we get our debt under control at a time when the country is in a recession as a result of financial mismanagement. It would make it be an utter nightmare. As many experts have said, we have shifted a lot of debt from the private sector to the government. The government picked up liabilities it had no business picking up and the result is it has increased its debt substantially.

I am very concerned that we not treat this lightly. I am very unhappy the President of the United States who, to my knowledge, never had an economics course in his entire life--a community organizer--is going on national television when the needle of our debt is in the red zone, by any estimation, and he blithely says: We don't have an immediate crisis in terms of debt. In fact, for the next 10 years, it is going to be in a sustainable place.

I don't believe he is correct to say that. I have not heard any economists say that with full authority, certainly not a lot of them, and I am worried about where we are.

There is another chart I wanted to show about the question of taxes. This is a chart that I saw in Barron's magazine just a few weeks ago. Gene Epstein did this chart. On the cover of Barron's was a picture of the President, having made his State of the Union Address, and the caption on the front of the newspaper was ``The way to Greece'' or something like that, and it was a very serious analysis of the deep, systemic debt problems this Nation has, and a plea for us to act, to move forward and avoid the risks we are now undertaking.

One part of what they did was to actually analyze what we could do with more taxes, particularly taxes on upper income people, and they ran the numbers. I believe this is an accurate run of the numbers. On the left side, it has the public debt as a percentage of the GDP and on the right at the bottom are the years over time. Mr. Epstein ran it based on increasing taxes and increasing taxes a lot.

His first run was the purple line, how much the debt would go up; how much the debt would go up if the current tax rate stayed in effect. This is the purple line. It grows a little faster than the green line and the red line. It grows a little faster because the taxes are a little lower than his next two estimates.

Then he estimated for the wealthy people who were raised from 35 to 40 percent, what if they were raised to 50 percent? In Alabama, it is about average. We have a 5-percent income tax in our State. So for the wealthy, making it 50 percent, plus paying 5 percent to the State, he is paying a pretty big chunk of his money right off the top. But let's assume it went up there. It has almost no impact on the debt course of America according to the Barron's analysis.

The third one, the red one is based on raising the tax rate of upper income people to 50 percent and then rolling back all the tax cuts President Bush had for the lower income people, the middle-class people who got substantial reductions in their rates and we have been operating that for about 13 years now and we made those permanent.

President Bush was attacked for having tax cuts, but I am pleased to see my Democratic colleagues are joining with the Republicans to make 99 percent of those tax rates permanent. It must not have been so evil if everybody overwhelmingly voted to make them permanent. So if we raised all those rates and had a 50-percent tax increase on the wealthy, we still hadn't changed the debt course of America.

What does that say? It says the debt problem in America is a spending problem, and a big part of that spending problem is the huge mandatory programs we have.

I am a lawyer. What is a mandatory program? It means when you reach 66, 67, you walk in and ask for your Social Security check and they have to pay you whether there is any money in the bank or not, whether the government has any money or not. The government has to borrow the money and pay your check because you are entitled to it as a matter of law at a certain age you qualify. Many of our entitlement programs are based on income. If your income is below a certain level, you are entitled to the money whether Uncle Sam has it or not, and that is based on law. That is based on legislation Congress passed that entitled people under certain circumstances to obtain Federal money and get it as a matter of entitlement.

When those programs are surging at 6 percent a year--Medicaid, the poor person's insurance program is projected to grow 8 percent a year over the next decade, 117 percent over the next 10 years--when those programs are growing at that rate and the economy is growing at 2 percent, you have a problem. You do not have to go to the Harvard Business School to know that. You really do not have to go to Harvard to know that.

When I talk to the American people, they understand it fully. They expect that we are going to have to make tough choices in this country to get the country on the right path, and they are girding themselves to support such tough choices, but they want them fair. They are willing to tighten their belt, but they do not want somebody who never works and lays around and watches TV all day, the soap operas, to have an advantage over people who are out working hard every day. But, anyway, people are prepared for that. The good news is, that as the economy grows, we do not have to cut spending, we just have to reduce the rate of growth in spending. This is not a myth I am talking about. This is absolute fact. You can spend more. This government can spend more every year. We can spend more at the rate of 3.4 percent, instead of increasing it at 5.4 percent, and the budget balances over 10 years. How much better is that? Most people think we have to have cuts across the board.

Now some programs are going to have to be cut. And let's be frank. What is the real challenge for us? Social Security and Medicare are great programs that our seniors depend on, and can grow steadily, can grow more than 3.4 percent, really. But those programs have a double problem. Not only do we want to see a cost of living occur for our seniors, but we have more seniors on the program every year. So this makes the numbers harder to deal with.

So you can say: Well, Social Security is just going to grow 4 percent instead of 5.5 percent and people will not lose much money. They will get a $4 increase instead of a $5.5 increase. No, no, it is more complicated than that because since you have more people on Social Security and Medicare, because of the age of the population that we have, it will be a larger impact than that--not disastrous, sustainable.

And we can do other things. We can say: Well, we want to work a little longer. We want to change the rate of the increase, the inflation index that most experts tell us should be altered under a new system that would save some money on the inflation index. So that is the kind of thing people have been talking about. The Gang of 6 talked about it. The President talked about it. Vice President Biden talked about it. The debt commission talked about it. The gang, the 12 people, in the Budget Control Act, tried to talk about a serious alteration of our spending path in which we fix Social Security and put it on a sound path, we fix Medicare and put it on a sound path, and we fix the entire budget of the United States in a way that is sustainable.

I would say people I talk to in the business community, people I talk to who testify before the committee, experts and just common people, tell me repeatedly: If you guys put this country on a sound path, so we knew we could see what the future is, we could plan for the future, and we would know our finances are getting better and moving to a balanced budget instead of getting worse. We believe people would not lose money, they would spend more money. We would have more growth. More people would be working and not drawing welfare and unemployment insurance, and the budget of the United States would start improving right there because more people would pay taxes and fewer people would need help from the government.

That is the spiral we need to be on. We are now still muddling through with exceedingly low growth, and they are still predicting low inflation. So you consider Social Security, maybe increasing it 6 percent a year, and inflation is just 2 percent. The Congressional Budget Office is predicting that inflation will be 2.2 percent, I think, a year, equaling almost 25 percent over 10 years. That is how much inflation will add over 10 years. Who knows? But we have kept low rates longer than anybody thought. The economy is not moving. If the economy actually jumped 4 percent or 5 percent growth for 2 or 3 years, you probably would have a jump in inflation. Obviously, CBO is not expecting that. They are expecting only slow growth over the next 10 years, and I think that is consistent with the consensus of independent analysts. So I wanted to share that thought.

The question before the House is--and all our colleagues need to confront it honestly--is this budget the kind of budget that puts America on a sound path? Is it what we need to do at this moment in history to change the debt course of America, to create confidence, to create the kind of growth that will increase that 2-percent growth, to get it to 3, 3.5, 4 percent?

Just 2 years ago, the Congressional Budget Office projected growth for 2013--the year we are in--would be 4.6 percent. The year before that, they predicted, last year, 2012, that we would have over 3 percent, 3.6 percent, something like that, growth. We have fallen way below that both years. I think the reason is the debt is pulling down growth, at least that is part of the reason. But regardless, the truth is, we are having to adjust ourselves to what Bill Gross at PIMCO, the largest bond group in the world, would call a new normal. The new normal is, we are not likely to see 5, 6-percent growth even in really great times in the next 10 or 15 years--maybe the next 20 or 30 years. We are just not likely to, for a lot of reasons. Of course, nobody knows. Mr. Greenspan thought we were going to have surpluses, and we did not. And we could have growth we are not expecting. Nobody knows. But we just have to make the best judgment we have, and the best judgment we have is that we are not on a sound path.

So we are responsible leaders, and we have to ask ourselves, is the budget here going to do the right thing? We must remember and can never forget who will suffer the most if we have a fiscal crisis. Won't it be the poor? Won't it be the people in the most fragile working environments? Won't it be the people with less skills? Won't they be the ones who would suffer the most? Don't we have an obligation as a Senate to reach out to the House and say: We get it. This is dangerous. We do not know for sure where we are going. But we know. Shame on us if we allow decent, hard-working people--struggling to get by right now--to get hammered by another fiscal crisis that Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson virtually guaranteed was on the way?

I think we have a duty. I think we have a responsibility. I think when the American people find out it is not going to take massive slashing of spending, as our colleagues say--a lot of the programs can be more efficient than they have ever been, and we get just as much benefit, even if they do not get as much money. There has not been any reform, any management improvements in this government in decades.

I will just say politically, I thought that was the greatest offer Governor Romney had. He was a very good manager. In my opinion, we have had enough speechmakers, we have had enough war Presidents, we have had enough grand and glorious stuff. We need somebody to run this government, like the Presiding Officer ran the State of Virginia. It takes hard work, and you have to stay on top of it. It would have been great for us to have had a real top management, so that every Cabinet person, when they are hired, understands they have a duty to produce more for less for the American people, and every subcabinet and subcabinet and subcabinet person, and every department head gets the message, from top leadership on down: You are expected--as Larry Thompson and I did--to share a hotel room if need be to save running up debt in the U.S. Government.

This budget does not do it. I think we quoted earlier what the Washington Post said on March 15:

In short, this [budget] document gives voters no reason to believe that Democrats have a viable plan for--or even a responsible public assessment of--the country's long-term fiscal predicament.

That is a serious condemnation.

What about USA Today, I guess maybe the widest read publication of its kind in the country? A USA Today editorial:

That is USA Today. They are not a rightwing publication, but they have written some good material on the budget. So has the Washington Post. Both of those have covered the budget situation more than most publications--both of them--and they have been trying to say to the Congress and to the President: You guys need to get together and do something. So both these editorials reflect a very informed judgment by two independent publications of national repute that the Senate--which they have been watching--has failed to produce a budget that puts the country on a sound path. I just have to tell you, I think they are totally correct. I wish it were not so.

Investor's Business Daily:

Boy, that is correct. They vastly overstate how much spending is cut in this bill. It goes on to say:

In fact, it could be that the Senate [budget] would, if enacted, increase federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Was Investor's Business Daily correct? Yes. Spending increases under this budget. Spending is not decreased at all under this budget, although we are told that it does. And we are told 20-some-odd times it is a balanced plan. They even go so far as to say it is a balanced budget. They have said it is a balanced plan so much, they started saying it is a balanced budget. It is nothing nowhere close to being a balanced budget. What they mean by ``balanced'' is, they promised that there will be $1 trillion in tax increases and $1 trillion in spending reductions. And it increases spending. Give me a break. There is not a one-to-one. It increases spending. There is no cut in spending off the current law we are now on.

They tried to claim credit for the Budget Control Act almost 2 years ago. President Obama resisted that. You remember how he just threatened the whole government was going to sink into the ocean? Why? Because we would not raise the debt ceiling. The Republicans said: We have to have some cuts, Mr. President. We have to do something about the debt course. We cannot continue. We are not going to allow you to continue running with the credit card of the people of America if you do not show that you are changing your habits and you are containing some of your lust to spend.

So, finally, an agreement. He hated it worse than anything. Finally, an agreement was done. He signed it. I agree if you will raise my debt ceiling right now, for $2.1 trillion, I promise in the future that I will cut spending $2.1 trillion. Over 10 years. If you let me do it over 10 years, OK, I will sign it. But I have to have my debt ceiling now.

Less than 2 years later we have already increased the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion. We are right up there again having to raise the debt ceiling again. It will be a matter of weeks that this has to be confronted again. Well, what about the spending cuts?

Before the ink was dry on that agreement signed by the President himself--I have the document right here. In blue ink, ``Barack Obama'' right there, agree to cut $2.1 trillion in spending over 10 years. This was not a big cut. If spending were flat for 10 years, we would have spent $37 trillion. As I recall, if under the baseline then in effect we were expected to grow to $49 trillion over 10 years--$49 trillion. This would have reduced it to $47 trillion.

So we reduced the growth of spending from $37 trillion to $47 trillion instead of $49 trillion. You would have thought we were throwing the sink in the country into the ocean. But in January, 6 months later, he proposes a budget which wipes out 60 percent of that agreement, those savings. So I am just going to tell you the way I felt. I have talked to my Republican colleagues. You know, we all--none of us are perfect. Sometimes we make improvident promises. We cannot just fulfill them. We cannot honor them. I try not to do that, but I have done it. Any person who is honest knows they have had to face those choices. But I am not voting to change the sequester. I am prepared to change it, and I support totally the spreading out of the cuts. They are too much on the Defense Department. I can explain how much it hammers the Defense Department. It is not acceptable.

But I am going to tell you, I told the American people that the Congress of the United States agreed to cut $2.1 trillion in exchange for raising the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion. And 6 months later, I am not changing; 18 months later, I am not changing. If we give up on that, we have no credibility whatsoever. The American people should never trust this Congress again. They ought to vote all of us out of office.

That was a solemn promise made before the whole world that we would sustain these cuts. President Obama has not stopped trying to eliminate them. This budget does just that. It eliminates 60 percent of the Budget Control Act cuts. It eliminates the sequester entirely. It is absolutely unacceptable. It will not happen. I do not know why anybody would want to vote for the budget. A vote for this budget is a vote to go back on a promise that was made in August 2011 to act a little bit responsibly when the debt ceiling of the country was raised.

The Wall Street Journal, March 15, right after the budget comes out. They have been very critical. This is just one of them. Well, first, Politico, March 17. A Washington beltway publication, Politico--they like to dig up stuff. This is what they said, ``To win over her caucus, Murray begins from the left of Obama himself.''

Apparently, Politico’s conclusion is that the budget that came through committee was driven by people to the left of President Obama. I know this: Last year the chairman of the Budget Committee, Kent Conrad, was prepared to bring a budget to the floor. My staff and I spent weeks preparing for the markup. They met in a Democratic conference. Some of the more liberal members hollered they could not accept Kent Conrad's budget, the Democratic budget he was going to set forth. So they, basically, refused to let him mark up a budget in the Budget Committee and refused to bring it to the floor of the Senate even though U.S. law called for the Budget Committee to have hearings and called for a bill to be brought to the floor. They just refused to do it in violation of plain law.

So the Wall Street Journal said: The bill manages the unique achievement of offering no net nondefense spending cuts and no entitlement reform worth the name, while proposing to raise $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue in such a way that would ruin the prospects for bipartisan tax reform.

Let me stop right there. Our colleagues keep saying we are going to close loopholes and we are going to raise revenue and nobody is going to have to pay more. Well, these loopholes, as Senator Grassley showed us from the Finance Committee chart, these are real serious deductions. They are programs that are deeply entrenched, and many of them our Democratic colleagues have protected and expanded with great tenacity. They will never vote to give them up probably unless some epiphany occurs around here. So how are we going to get tax reform?

Last week at the Budget Committee hearing the chief Democratic witness testified that he believes the corporate tax rate in America was unacceptably high, that we now have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world, and that 35 percent is not acceptable. He said it needs to be the mid-twenties. This is not the Republican witness, but the Republican witness agreed with him. Most Republicans agreed with this approach. Many of the Democrats did.

So he said: You close loopholes on corporations, make the tax simpler, more growth oriented, you can bring the tax rate down to 25 percent without in any way losing revenue. You can make it revenue neutral. So that was an interesting thing.

I asked him as a followup: But if you close the loopholes on corporations, if you close the loopholes on corporations and raise revenue, do you not need that money so you can reduce the rate from 35 to 25?

He said: Yes. All of it should be dedicated to rate reduction. We have Senator Ron Wyden, a Democratic Senator, Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, all believe this needs to be done.

A lot of work has been done on this for several years. The President has even indicated that this is the kind of approach that is worthwhile. But our colleagues, claiming they are going to close loopholes, do not save the money for tax reduction. They want to take the new revenue raised from closing loopholes and spend it. Then it is not available for the bipartisan tax reform to which the Wall Street Journal made a reference.

That is when I asked the witness: Do you not have to save this money to reduce rates at the end of the year?

He said: Yes, you have to save these loopholes, these deductions--really most of them are perfectly legitimate deductions that businesses use. But they are going to take them away from them, in effect raising the amount of taxes they pay. But they were going to bring the rates down.

That is the bipartisan plan that was in the works for a long time. Mr. Kleinbard is our witness. This is what he said: Corporate income tax statutory rate of 35 percent is today far outside world norms. The rate needs to come down. I, therefore, conceive of corporate tax reform as a roughly revenue-neutral undertaking in which the corporate tax base will be broadened through closing business tax expenditures and loopholes and the resulting revenues used to pay down the corporate rate.

That was March 5 in our committee. I know a lot of Senators, Democrats on the committee, agreed with that. If we look at the budget, the new revenue obtained from closing loopholes, really closing deductions and some tax expenditures--liberals have started calling deductions tax expenditures. So if you have a charitable deduction or you have an interest deduction or you have some sort of depreciation as a business, those are not deductions anymore. They have become tax expenditures. So it is like the United States Government is mad at you because you did not send enough money.

But the truth is, it is the corporate person's money or the corporation's money or the private individual's money. When you eliminate his deductions, you make him or her pay more taxes. So Mr. Kleinbard was crystal clear. This is what the bipartisan discussions have been. The Wall Street Journal is exactly right. If you spend that money that you raised from closing loopholes, expenditures, and deductions, you do not have it to reduce rates. You cannot fix the tax reform.

The Wall Street Journal goes on to say:

I have to say, I think that is correct. Hard for me to understand how anybody can dispute that. Next. I have been saying--I have not heard much pushback--that the sequester elimination which allows the expenditure of $1.2 trillion more than we are presently on a path to extend, that this elimination of the sequester was not scored in the Democratic budget.

When I asked the staff members, he said: Well, you know, we never did intend to make that permanent. It was always temporary. Then he said: Well, we got billions of dollars in Paul Ryan's budgets over here.

I said: No, no. I am talking about this budget. You claim you are not scoring, as an increase in spending, $1.2 trillion, which you allowed to occur by eliminating the reduction in spending required in current law that is part of the law of the United States today and will not be changed?

This is baloney. Surely, Congress will never change this. Surely, we will not go back on the promise we made in 2011 when we raised the debt ceiling. But, anyway, this is what the Associated Press said about it: Because the Democrats want to restore $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts over the same period, cuts imposed by Washington's failure to reach a broader budget pact--the committee did not reach an agreement, so these automatic cuts occurred--Murray's blueprint increases spending slightly when compared with current policy.

So you take the $1.2 trillion there, and you have tax increases over here, but the increases in spending are greater than the taxes. They conclude that it increases spending overall, increases spending overall.

The chairman, and probably the Budget Committee Members who support this, want to assert somehow this is a one-for-one budget, a balanced plan, a balanced budget amendment. You have $1 trillion in tax increases and $1 trillion in spending cuts, but they are not there.

This chart is a very important chart on the subject I am talking about. It is, I believe, pretty much not disputable. I don't like to raise this, but I am not going to take it.

Mr. Lew came before our committee, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and he said our budget will not add to the debt, spends only money we have and puts us on a path to pay down the deficit.

I asked Mr. Lew--he said it on national television, CNN with Candy Crowley. He said it with other networks too when he announced his budget. Three days later, he was at the Budget Committee. I asked him was that accurate. He said it was accurate.

It absolutely was not accurate. His budget never produced a single year in which the deficit fell below $600 billion. Yet he told the American people squarely in the eye his budget would stop adding to the debt, spend only money we have, and allow us to pay down the debt.

This is one of the greatest misrepresentations in history. We are never going to have bipartisan agreement in this Congress until we learn to be honest about numbers. This budget is not honest about numbers, I need to tell you.

They claim a big savings and big reduction in spending and totally overlook this. Where is the deficit? They claim they reduce the deficit by $ 1.85 trillion, $1.850 billion. Let's look at that number. What about the sequester I have been talking about? They eliminate sequester and spending goes up $1.223 trillion.

Was this scored in their number? No. They tell us we have 1.85, and we have to take off 1.2 because they didn't score the obvious increase in spending that their budget plan for the next 10 years includes. Take that off. We have looked at it more carefully. It took us a while to find this and took a while to get these in the budget numbers, but we have a good staff.

They found out, unlike what we thought at first, there was no pay-for for the doctors. For the last number of years, we found the payment schedule for doctors is totally inadequate based on a law passed in the nineties which has cut their payment to a degree that if we cut them another 20-some-odd percent, they would quit taking patients. They couldn't operate.

We put the money in every year because we need to put the money in or else they will not treat our patients. They can't afford to. Everybody, Republicans and Democrats, we hate it. We wish it weren't so, but it is every year we need to confront this thing which should have long been made a permanent fix. Every year it hasn't been, so every year we need to find the money.

We also found the 2009 stimulus extension in the bill which continued more borrowing and spending for a stimulus was not accounted for. You add those, and there is another $348 billion which ought to be scored. It leaves us with a subtotal of $279 billion. That sounds nice, but that is not correct.

Where are we next? Is there anything in this budget we have found that is not sound, gimmicky, which misrepresents the facts? Yes, there is, a big one. That is the war spending.

President Obama has long been very late in producing his budget. It should have been here in the Senate February 4, and it still hasn't been produced. It is one of the oddest things I have ever seen. He basically punted to the Congress and refused to lay out the budget the law requires him to submit. He violates it all the time.

People ask me all the time, why does the President not follow the law? It is a very bad thing. He should follow the law. He sets a bad example. Children around this country, adults around this country, when they find out the President ignores law, the Senate ignores law, it is not good for America. We are a nation of laws.

The President, the last budget he sent, last January of 1 year ago, he laid out what he projected the costs would be for the war on terror. He is bringing those costs down dramatically, some say too fast, some say not fast enough, but they are coming down dramatically. He projects, however, we are still going to have military efforts against our enemy with whom we are at war, al-Qaida, for the next 10 years.

That costs money. He projected the cost over 10 years for the war on terror would be $467 billion. I think that is pretty close to accurate. You could give or take a little bit, but apparently we are not stopping drone attacks.

I just met with our Ambassador who is negotiating an agreement with Afghanistan. We are projecting to have troops over there for a long time. More and more are in the support role, but it is an expense to maintain the war against terror.

We are free to attack al-Qaida wherever they are. We have people in Iraq, Yemen, Mali, and different places throughout the world where our interests have been threatened, and that costs money.

What did our good friends on the Senate Budget Committee do? They needed more money in savings. They wanted to say they cut spending. They came up with a clever idea; we will just cut all the war spending and pretend we will not spend it. That is it. OK. We will just pretend we are not going to spend that much.

One year from that, the total amount they say we are going to spend over 10 years is not $467 billion, it is 75. The last 8 years will be zero, so we spend 75 over 2 years, and we will not spend any more money. There will be peace in the world, we will not have to chase al-Qaida, we will not need drones, troops, and special forces operating around the world. We will be completely out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Won't that be great? Let's just play it that way.

I have to tell you, they know that is not going to happen. Even President Obama is projecting substantial reductions.

If you take that down, what we find is the budget doesn't reduce the deficit at all. The budget increases the deficit based on the course we are on today, apples to apples, oranges to oranges.

We are not playing around with different baselines to gimmick it up. This is the right way to analyze the situation.

I just have to say, the American people need to know the budget before us does not do what it says it will do. Even what it says it will do is insufficient, but it doesn't come close to doing what it says, and it is not close to doing what is needed. It will never balance the budget, not in 10 years, not in any time. It makes no changes, none, to the deeply troubling surging growth of our entitlement programs, welfare programs, of Medicaid; the 83 means-tested welfare programs which are expected to grow 80 percent over the next 10 years, there are no changes.

There is no reform there we believe in. I am disappointed. Presumably, we may see it pass out of the Senate on a party-line vote, go to the House, and we will see what happens in conference. Could anything come out of conference? It is possible. I am not overconfident, particularly if we can't get Members of the Senate to lay out good numbers.

How can we negotiate with a person such as Paul Ryan, who absolutely knows what is up and what is down? There is not a person in America who knows the numbers better than Paul Ryan.

He has integrity. He works hard. He has dedicated himself to mastering this subject. He has mastered it, and he has laid out a plan. I am not saying I agree with everything in his plan. It is not before us. He has laid out a plan. He is prepared to negotiate, to discuss with people who are willing to discuss how to reach some compromise and some consensus on some of the things we need to do. It is very hard to do that if you are putting up bogus numbers such as this.

What about The Hill, another one of the inside Washington publications. On March 13, The Hill reported:

Murray argues that her budget cuts $1.85 trillion from deficits over 10 years. But once the sequester cuts are turned off, Murray's budget appears to reduce deficits by about $800 billion, using the Congressional Budget Office's baseline. The Murray budget does not contain net spending cuts with the sequester turned off.

We score here about 700 after you take that--645. They estimated 8, but essentially they are making the same point. The budget the Democrats produced did not score the sequester.

As we wrestle with these issues, talking about spending and how we create growth in our economy--and all of us want growth--we just contend growth is better achieved through progrowth policies than by borrowing and spending.

I wish to say there is academic research which validates that opinion. Senator Murray's budget, the Democratic budget, proposes yet more stimulus and proposes a 60-percent increase in spending over the next 10 years, a $162 billion increase over next year alone.

This is an increase in spending next year, not a reduction, of 162 next year. It is a fair criticism around here that the only budget that counts is the next year. It does tend to control next year, but it often normally gets altered before the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, but it doesn't tell us a plan.

I contend reducing excessive spending without increasing taxes makes the economy stronger, not weaker. Let's look at this. Real evidence supports this. It shows reducing spending can help an economy which has too much debt. A Harvard University study which I think all of us have seen, the OECD, developed nations, looked at 107 different periods of fiscal adjustments in these nations.

This is what they have found:

I believe that is accurate. If it is, that is very important for us to know. Many countries have reduced spending and had large increases in job growth thereafter.

You would hear our Members say: Oh, you can't cut spending; it will hurt job growth. You could have something in the short term, but these countries have had substantial increases in job growth after cutting spending--Austria, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden. This chart gives some of that insight: ``Job Gains 5 years After Successful Spending Reductions.'' Look at these again. Japan in 1987 had an 8.6-percent growth; Canada in 1997 had 11.1 percent; Netherlands in 1997, 9.5 percent; United States in 1997, after spending reductions, 5.2 percent. That is when we were on the path to balance the budget.

That was when Newt Gingrich and the House Republicans met with President Clinton and negotiated and fought and wrestled and shut the government down and cut spending and the economy grew. And then Sweden, in 1998, had 6.5 percent growth. The average job growth over these five countries was 8 percent after cutting spending.

One I noticed on here is really something we should consider; that is, the small country of Estonia, which was part of the Soviet Union, dominated by Russia and the Communists. It is a great little country in the Baltics. I was there 2 years ago. Senator Jon Kyl took us there. They had just suffered through the same financial catastrophe in 2007 to 2008 that we had, but it hit them worse. They had a larger drop in GDP than we did, and it was very damaging. They had to decide what to do about it, so they began to consider what to do about it, and they didn't go for this idea that they had to borrow, borrow, borrow so they could keep spending because the revenue had dropped so much and they were going to keep spending at the same level. That isn't what the Estonians decided to do. This new democracy, this free enterprise, this free country, so excited about their future, do you know what they did? They cut spending. They cut spending big time--big time.

This is what a Cabinet member told me. We had dinner, a group of us, and he said Cabinet people had their pay cut 40 percent. He said their pay was cut 40 percent, and he said: But I can tell you who is really mad and giving me a hard time.

I said: Who is that?

He said: My wife. She is a doctor. We hammered them too.

So Estonia hardly had a debt increase at all. Now Estonia has been showing some of the fastest growth of any country in Europe, maybe any country in the developed world. So cutting spending, making their government leaner, more productive, and people taking pay cuts did not destroy their economy. It allowed them to bounce back quite successfully. I am so proud to see their numbers continue to be great economically because they were courageous. The first thing their leaders did was take pay cuts themselves.

Other countries have not followed this path. Other countries haven't tightened their belts or they have relied too heavily on tax increases to reduce deficits. These countries have not fared as well. Greece, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Spain all have had big tax increases as part of their deficit reduction plans, and these results are confirmed by studies at the International Monetary Fund, the University of Chicago, and the University of California.

So we spent $830 billion on stimulus in early 2009. That passed through here without my vote, and I opposed it at the time vigorously. But it was passed, and every dime of it was borrowed. We didn't have the money. We were in debt. But the geniuses said we have to stimulate the economy. Oh, if we don't borrow money and spend it, we will sink into oblivion. It wasn't what Estonia did, but we did that. We spent the money, and we haven't seen the growth we needed. We helped surge our debt.

We continue to spend substantially. We continue to run up debt the likes of which we have never seen before. I believe that debt right now is slowing economic growth and that debt right now could be a threat to our financial security in the future. It is sad to see us go in that direction.

Spending reductions are doable. We can do this. A lot of people think it is not possible. They get depressed, and every time someone talks about spending reductions, people start whining: It can't be done. It can't be done. We will hurt the Defense Department because the cuts on the Defense Department were too great.

But the Defense Department will still be there if we don't fix it the way these cuts are imposed. It will still be there--and who knows, it could be stronger.

I am worried about it. In fact, the way the sequester was crafted, at the request of the President, one-half of all the cuts in the entire $1.2 trillion in cuts fell on the Defense Department, which makes up one-sixth of the Federal Government. So these cuts fell on the Defense Department disproportionately. Medicaid was increasing at 8 percent a year, no cuts; food stamps had gone up from $20 billion to $80 billion in 11 years--fourfold--but got no cuts; and, of course, Social Security had no cuts. There was a 2-percent maximum reduction trim on Medicare providers, which are the doctors and hospitals. They had a minor cut. So a huge portion of the budget had none, but the Defense Department took a huge, huge cut. It was not smart the way we did it, but the amount of cuts, if properly allocated across the entire government's spending, would have little impact on reducing growth but would really begin to solidify public confidence that we have a smart plan to get out of this debt.

If we just slow the spending growth to 3.4 percent a year over the next 10 years, we could balance this budget without raising taxes. You have heard that said. It is true. This is true. We do not have to have substantial spending cuts; we can do it and still have growth.

Some programs need to be cut. Some programs have to be cut. Some programs are growing much faster than 3.4 percent. Medicaid is growing at 8 percent. It needs to be reformed. We can't sustain that kind of increase year after year after year.

Most Americans know the old story about the rule of seven. If you increase something at 7 percent a year on your savings account, it doubles in 10 years. So if you have 8 percent, you are seeing a 117-percent increase in spending over 10 years.

So if we allow 3.4 percent a year in spending growth, that means we would spend $11,000 per person in 2022, 10 years out--$11,000 per person by the Federal Government. That is a higher rate of spending per person than we had in 2007. Yet we are going broke.

We can reduce spending without affecting services. We can. Federal programs--many of them--are very wasteful, very inefficient, duplicative, and subject to fraud. I just held up the GAO 2012 report that listed a pile--page after page--of programs that are wasteful, duplicative, and so forth. We have social service, domestic disaster assistance, Internal Revenue Service enforcement efforts that all have duplicative gaps and are not properly managed. They talk about how the programs are duplicative, how the programs are mismanaged, how they need to be tightened up, and there is a whole list of these things. There are about 50 different major programs--51--that need reform. We haven't done any of that.

What does Congress say to the American people? Well, we don't have time to execute, carry out, or study GAO's report. That is too much work. Just send us more money. No, we don't have time to do this. You don't understand--these little programs, they do not save much money. They do not make any difference. We don't have to focus on them. Send us more money. You have to send us more money.

I think the American people may be getting tired of this.

Nine different agencies, according to GAO, run over 50 job-training programs for people with disabilities. This budget proposes to create more. We had an amendment offered at the Budget Committee that would create another job program. I mean, we have them all over the place. It sounded like a good idea. Something good happened in some State, so we have a plan to offer Federal legislation to do it here or expand it.

Last year alone, Washington paid out $44 billion to people who, through deceit or error, did not deserve Medicare payments. Let me repeat. Forty-four billion dollars was paid out to people who, through deceit or error, did not deserve Medicare payments. That is more money than we spend running our national parks, the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers' civil works projects, and the Internal Revenue Service combined. Forty-four billion is a lot. That is just about what the Federal highway budget is--$44 billion. Fraud, deceit, and error out the door in Medicare alone.

Well, Mr. President, we have been at it a long time. I am very unhappy that the budget process has been shifted to the end of the week. I am very unhappy that we are at a point where we are not going to have as full a debate because people are going to be stressed, they are going to be here at night and maybe into the weekend. Somebody may say: Well, Sessions, it is your fault. Why don't you just yield back this time? But it would take every Senator here to yield back the time. And if I did, I am sure somebody would object. And I am not yielding back time now.

We have problems. We can yield, we can work through the night, we can compromise tonight and maybe save a few hours, or we can work to be as accommodating to our colleagues as we can. I am willing to do that. But I just have to say that this budget should have been up earlier. We should have reached an agreement with Senators Moran and Ayotte and given them amendments early in the week or last week, and we could have had the budget up Monday. We wouldn't have had all this fuss. We would have had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and we would have had a full day, completed all amendments, and been out of here. But, oh no, I think there is something to the fact that it was considered to be a good idea just to carry this budget over to the end of the week and that Senators would want to leave and we would just wrap it all up, do it in the dead of night so the American people wouldn't see, perhaps, what is going to be done, wouldn't pay much attention to the votes, and we could get out of here and do the least possible public discussion of this bad budget that we can.

Now, some might say: Well, that is really not so.

I think it is so. We haven't had a budget on the floor for 4 years. Why? Senator Reid said publicly that it is foolish to have a budget. Why did he say that? He meant it was foolish politically. I have said this before. He knows how I feel about it.

He said it was foolish--politically, basically--to have a budget. Why? Because writing a budget requires a party to lay out their vision for the future, to be prepared to defend it in public debate, and to have amendments on it. He has been controlling this Senate to a degree no majority leader has ever controlled the Senate, and the one thing he is not able to control is the budget process: You have 50 hours and virtually unlimited amendments. He didn't want to do that. So he was willing to violate the law of the United States and not bring up a budget so he wouldn't have to do this.

Finally, this year the House got fed up. They have been passing an honest budget that lays out a future plan for America. They have defended it publicly. They have taken unfair attacks and abuse for doing their duty every year--like they are supposed to do.

So they sent over a bill this year. It said: No budget, no pay, Congress. If you don't bring up your budget, you don't get paid. So now we have a budget for the first time in 4 years. Maybe the House should be given a medal for that.

But I am not happy. I don't believe we are doing this right. I was disappointed that for the first time in 3 years, when a budget was brought up in the Senate committee, we had statements made one afternoon for a few hours before we even saw the chairman's mark. It was produced after that, and we had 1 day--the next day--to offer amendments. That wasn't a very good process, in my view.

If we really want to deal with the debt--the greatest danger of our time--and deal with it properly, why wouldn't we want to have an open public hearing? Why wouldn't we have had expert witnesses all year to help talk to us? We had a few hearings, but we could have had a lot more because this has complex questions for us to decide. We should have had more time in committee, and we should have had full time on the floor of the Senate. So I don't make any bones about it. I wish we had done it differently.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Page: S2019

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Without objection, it is so ordered

President's Middle East Trip
Page: S2019

Mr. President, President Obama arrived in the Middle East today. It is his first visit as President to Israel and the West Bank.

Some in the press have focused on the fact that the White House has lowered expectations for what will be accomplished in the 3 days of the President's visit. Others, including Members of Congress, have signed letters to the President.

Rather than prejudge what can be achieved by this trip or try to tie the President's hands concerning the Middle East, I want to simply make a few straightforward points.

First, no one who knows the Middle East can honestly expect momentous accomplishments from a short visit like this, especially when the new Israeli Government is still in the process of forming. But despite that, it is very positive that the President is traveling to the region, and this is as good a time as any.

Second, the peace process, as we have come to refer to it, between Israelis and Palestinians has been stalled for a dozen years. In many ways the prospects for an end to the conflict are worse today than in the mid-1990s, and there is plenty of blame to go around. Just traveling to Israel and the West Bank reaffirms this administration's interest in helping the parties find ways to make progress on the key issues. Ultimately, however, it is up to them, not the United States, to resolve their differences.

Third, it reaffirms President Obama's longstanding support for Israel. While during the Presidential campaign there were shameful attempts to portray the President as somehow not committed enough or supportive enough of Israel, that was pure politics. The record is abundantly clear that he has been, is--and, there is every reason to believe, will continue to be--a strong supporter of Israel. Top Israeli officials have acknowledged this.

That is not to say that we and the Israeli Government are going to agree on every issue. Israel and the United States share fundamental interests, but we are different countries and sometimes our interests diverge. That is to be expected.

Fourth, the President's visit is an opportunity for Israelis and Palestinians to recognize that the status quo is unsustainable. Maintaining this untenable limbo is neither in their interests nor in the interests of our great Nation. Unilateral actions by either side are harmful to the peace process. Rhetoric that dehumanizes or demonizes the other is harmful. Settlement construction in disputed territory is harmful. Incitement to violence is harmful. Both sides need to demonstrate that they want lasting peace through negotiations.

The President will also visit Jordan, which is facing increasing pressure from the flood of Syrian refugees, an issue that concerns us all. The fiscal year 2013 continuing resolution that is expected to pass the Senate this week includes additional assistance for Jordan and for Syria's other neighbors to help address these needs.

And, of course, there are growing concerns about Iran's nuclear program. I believe the President has wisely proceeded with caution in the way his administration has responded to this grave threat. While some have urged the President to adopt a purely military policy toward Iran, the advice of our top military leaders is restraint. We should exhaust other means at our disposal to try to convince Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions and to avoid another war in that part of the world.

Mr. President, I commend President Obama for traveling to the Middle East. Real peace with enduring security between Israelis and Palestinians has long been and remains a key goal of the United States. It is one toward which the Congress and the administration should work together.

Free Speech in the Americas
Page: S2021

Mr. President, there is much at the Organization of American States that needs to be reformed, but the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, IACHR, is not among them. Yet that is what the Government of Ecuador and some other Latin American governments purport to be calling for when the OAS general assembly meets this coming Friday.

In reality, it is not about reform at all but a concerted effort to severely weaken the IACHR, the one institution in the Americas that has been a consistent, strong defender of free expression and other fundamental human rights that have been too often denied by those same governments.

I have spoken previously about the courageous work of Colombian lawyer Dr. Catalina Botero, the special rapporteur for freedom of expression. I have also spoken about the efforts by Ecuador's President Rafael Correa to intimidate and control what remains of an independent press in his country. So I will not repeat myself here.

But the United States is the largest contributor to the OAS, and we have provided additional funds in recent years to support the critically important work of the IACHR. I want to be sure Senators are aware of what is happening, as it could have serious consequences for our future support for the OAS. I ask unanimous consent that an article in the Washington Post by Cesar Gaviria Trujillo, former President of Colombia and Secretary General of the OAS, be printed in the Record.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the, as follows:

Climate Change
Page: S2020

Mr. President, during the past 50 years there has been significant progress in improving living standards in developing countries. Some of the successes have been particularly noteworthy: eradicating smallpox and almost eradicating polio, stabilizing population growth rates in many areas, longer life spans, lower infant mortality, fewer people living in poverty, the expansion of democracy.

Investments in international development made by government agencies, nonprofits, businesses, and philanthropic foundations in the United States and around the world have made a difference. Our country is more secure and our economy more resilient than it would otherwise be, thanks to these investments.

Yet there is plenty of room for improvement to get better value for our overseas investments, particularly to increase the sustainability of the assistance we provide. Too often we set unrealistic goals, do not hold governments accountable for corruption, ignore local input, and channel our aid through contractors that charge high fees and put profit over results.

There are other critical areas that have not received nearly the attention they deserve, either by our government or other donors, including the explosive growth of cities and the world's changing climate.

The President mentioned the looming threat of climate change in his inauguration speech, and like many others I am glad he did. To date, our efforts to address this global challenge have been painfully slow and woefully inadequate. As anyone who works the land will tell you, the world's climate is changing fast--spring is coming earlier, polar ice and glaciers are melting, and storms are more violent. Scientists say these changes are potentially catastrophic, and that we will experience even more frequent severe weather events, shrinking water supplies, more intense heat waves and droughts, the spread of disease, and more and more threats to food production.

It is the poorest people who are most vulnerable to these phenomena, and who are most likely to be uprooted from their homes as a result. If the international community does not mobilize quickly to address this challenge we risk the reversal of many or most of the international development gains of the last 50 years, leaving an unprecedented crisis for our children and future generations.

Then there is the related challenge of urbanization. I am proud to say that a Vermont organization called the Institute for Sustainable Communities, founded by former Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin, is leading an effort to accelerate climate solutions among more than 320 U.S. cities--and the list is growing. The institute is focusing on cities because it is in densely populated areas that the opportunity to quickly strengthen climate resilience and reduce greenhouse gas emissions is greatest. This work should be expanded on a global scale.

Currently, only a very small percentage of international development dollars is spent to address problems in urban areas, yet 70 percent of the world's population will live in cities by 2030. The number of people migrating to New Delhi, Mumbai, Dhaka, Lagos, Kinshasa, and Karachi each year is greater than the entire population of Europe. Between now and 2030--only 17 years--the world will need to build a city of 1 million people every 5 days to keep up with the urbanization of the developing world. That is a staggering and frightening statistic.

Those cities are not remotely prepared to handle this flood of desperate people. These are not places like Boston or London, Washington or Paris that expanded gradually over centuries becoming stronger as they grew. Cities in developing countries expand through shantytowns, like the vast slums of Nairobi and Lagos. And bit by bit, the edges of the city creep out and suddenly the city's size has doubled, or quadrupled. Closer to home, Tijuana, on the United States Mexican border, is one of Mexico's fastest growing cities. Tijuana adds about 80,000 people each year, and is projected to be the second largest city in Mexico by 2030. Many of its inhabitants arrive with no place to live and no job. The city's infrastructure is utterly unprepared to handle them. It is a recipe for crime and misery.

Slums are not infrastructure, and in general most infrastructure decisions are not well planned. Most of the developing world does not have running water or reliable electricity, and nearly 40 percent of the world's population does not have access to basic sanitation, including 1 billion children. That number is likely to rise as rapidly expanding cities become even less able to meet the demand for basic sanitation and health care.

This immense growth in cities is a cauldron for chaos and instability. People living in cities without safe water or electricity, plagued by hunger, disease and unhealthy living conditions, threatened by rising sea levels and violent storms--these desperate conditions are likely to lead to violence, displacement, and even the toppling of governments.

Rapid urbanization is already putting tremendous pressure on the environment and threatens productive farmland. What will happen when there is not enough food or water for cities filled with millions of people? What will happen if the population of Jakarta doubles without an improvement in living conditions?

Yet as cities grow we also have an opportunity to prevent chaos. Growing cities are going to be constructing new buildings--let's make sure they are energy efficient. They are going to be creating new transport systems--let's focus on low-carbon strategies that move people, not just cars. They are going to need to feed hundreds of millions of hungry people--let's make sure urban centers are connected to the rural economy in a sustainable way. And as they build new infrastructure, let's make sure that it is designed to support livable communities and built in ways that are more resilient to extreme weather and sea level rise.

Investing in cities gives us economies of scale. We can accomplish a great deal through investing in efficient infrastructure, and we can apply lessons learned all across the developing world. An estimated 60 percent of the infrastructure needed to keep pace with the growth in urban centers has not been built yet, but it will be by 2030.

Let's focus on helping cities build smarter. It is a lot easier and cheaper to build it right the first time, than to go back and fix it later. And here in the United States there are companies that produce some of the world's best technology and some of the world's best thinking about creating smart cities. Together with our international partners we can meet this challenge if we share our expertise.

International donors, led by the U.S. Agency for International Development, should devote a larger portion of resources and effort to addressing the urgent problems of climate change and rapid urbanization. It is a critical investment for the 21st century.

Vermonters Making a Difference
Page: S2021

Mr. President, I have been privileged to serve Vermonters for many years as a voice on foreign policy matters, and I am always reminded that my work is a reflection of the outward looking posture of the people of my State. Vermonters have a long history of defending human rights and social justice at home and abroad. The longest functioning international exchange program is based in Vermont, and there are over 3,600 nonprofits registered in Vermont that are carrying out programs to protect the environment, support public health, and many other activities here and abroad.

These small businesses help bring Vermont values to such far off places as Vietnam, central Africa, the Middle East, and Central America. One example of the far-reaching contributions Vermont small businesses make every day is the BOMA Project. Based in Manchester, VT, Kathleen Colson started the BOMA Project in the mid-2000s as a way to help women in Kenya escape extreme poverty. Kathleen's company replaces loans with grants and creates opportunities for these women to start small, sustainable income-generating businesses. To date, her company has launched over 1,100 micro-enterprises across northern Kenya.

Other examples of Vermont organizations doing innovative work to improve the lives of people overseas are the Institute for Sustainable Communities, Pure Water for the World, Clear Path International, the ARAVA Institute for Environmental Studies, and World Learning. And there are many others.

A February 10, 2013, article by the Associated Press quoted Peace Corps recruiter Brian Melman as he spoke about the people who work with these Vermont organizations: ``These are people who are willing to think big with small resources. They will go out of their way to make relationships with anyone that they can and to make believers out of all they come across because the passion is so genuine.'' That article, entitled ``Vt. home to many worldwide development groups,'' is notable because it points out the many ways our small State has contributed in a big way to those less fortunate all across the globe. I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the article be printed in the Record.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the as follows:

Big Sky Conference Champions
Page: S2022

Madam President, Johnny Wooden, the 10-time national championship winning coach of UCLA, once said: ``The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.''

It takes a little star power and teamwork to win 10 championships, but it takes something extra special to win the Big Sky Coach of the Year Award 20 times.

That is Lady Griz Coach Robin Selvig.

Coach Selvig hails from Outlook, MT. He has true grit. He grew up north of the Hi-Line. I know the occupant of the chair knows where the Hi-Line is. That is up in northern Montana. There is a Hi-Line across Montana that even stretches over Highway 2 over into North Dakota.

Under Coach Selvig's leadership, the Lady Griz have made it to the Big Dance 20 times in the NCAA's 32-year history. Selvig has 798 wins in 35 seasons.

I also rise to honor Montana Grizzly men's basketball coach Ben Tinkle. Coach Tinkle was also honored this week as the Big Sky's Coach of the Year for the men's basketball program. Coach Tinkle is leading the team to their second trip in a row to the NCAA tournament, after winning a dramatic Big Sky Conference championship against Weber State. Jordan Gregory's free throws in the final seconds of the game were icing on the cake that pulled the Griz ahead to win the game. The Griz basketball teams have had many spectacular seasons. And the Congress, I might add, could learn a lesson or two from the Big Sky Conference basketball champions. Both programs join a long tradition of excellence and a long tradition of teamwork that makes Montana proud. That is why they win games. These teams have shown a dedication to their school, their fans, their studies, and their community that is a reflection of our Montana values.

As both the Lady Griz and the Grizzly Men's basketball teams head into the NCAA tournament this week, I take this opportunity to publicly congratulate each player on the roster, the coaching staff, and the entire University of Montana community for this terrific season. I join Montanans in celebrating their teamwork and wishing them the best.

Go Griz.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the names of the players and coaches be printed in the Record.

Honoring Our Armed Forces
Page: S2023

Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to the life of SSG Steven Blass, who was killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan while serving his country. My thoughts and prayers are with his wife Tricia, his young son Hayden, his parents, Randy and Carol, and all his family and friends. I know they are feeling his loss very deeply now, as is the entire community of Estherville, IA, his hometown. I understand that Steven Blass was patriotic even as a child and that joining the Army had been a dream of his. He was doing what he loved when he gave the ultimate sacrifice. His love of country and zeal for freedom represent the very best of America. Like all the patriots before him, his sacrifice has helped keep the torch of liberty burning bright. The United States of America is indeed fortunate to have a native son like Steven Blass, eager to serve his country and risk everything for his fellow citizens. We are forever in his debt. Although it is a debt which we can never repay, it is a debt we must honor by remembering SSG Steven Blass and what he did for all of us.

Affordable Care Act Anniversary
Page: S2023

Mr. President, this Saturday marks the third anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act. At age 3, the law is protecting consumers against abusive insurance practices, helping seniors by lowering prescription drug costs, and building the infrastructure to expand health insurance coverage to millions of Americans. For the first time, patients' interests and needs are being put ahead of those of the insurance and drug companies.

The Obama administration has worked tirelessly to implement the law, in the face of constant opposition. My Republican colleagues in Congress have voted to repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act well over 30 times. It is a chilling, if useless, political refrain from the tea party.

On this third anniversary, it is important not only to reflect on how far we have come but to continue pressing forward on the Affordable Care Act's many improvements to our health care system, particularly the delivery system reforms.

The Council of Economic Advisers' 2013 ``Economic Report of the President'' identified a number of sources of waste in our health care system, including the fragmentation of the delivery system; duplicate care and overtreatment; the failure of providers to adopt best practices; and payment fraud. The council notes:

Taken together, [these factors] have been estimated to account for between 13 and 26 percent of national health expenditures in 2011. The magnitude of this waste offers an equally large opportunity for spending reductions and improvement in quality of care an opportunity that underpins many of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

Thankfully, we have the tools necessary to seize the opportunity described by the Council of Economic Advisers to drive down costs and improve the quality of patient care. The Affordable Care Act included 45 provisions dedicated to improving the way we deliver health care in 5 priority areas: payment reform, primary and preventive care, measuring and reporting quality, administrative simplification, and health information technology.

The effort to extract from the wasteful swamp of our health care bureaucracy a lean, humane, patient-centered system is vital. National health spending hit $2.7 trillion in 2011 or about 18 percent of GDP. The next least efficient developed country--the Netherlands--spent 12 percent of its GDP on health care in 2010. Germany and France spent 11.6 percent of their GDP on health care. If we were as efficient as the Netherlands, if we merely moved from last place to second-to-last place in health care efficiency, we would save over $800 billion per year.

For all of our excess spending, one might expect that Americans live longer, healthier lives. But that is not the case. The Institute of Medicine recently compared the United States to 17 peer countries. We were worst for prevalence of diabetes among adults, worst for obesity across all age groups, and worst in infant mortality. We suffer higher death rates and worse outcomes for conditions such as heart disease and chronic lung disease.

According to the Week, avoidable infections passed on due to poor hospital hygiene kill as many people in the United States--about 103,000 a year--as AIDS, breast cancer, and auto accidents combined. These deaths are tragic because they are largely preventable. As we have shown in Rhode Island, when hospital staff follow a checklist of basic instructions washing their hands with soap, cleaning a patient's skin with antiseptic, placing sterile drapes over the patient, etc.--rates of infection plummet, and the costs of treating those infections disappear. The costs of treating the 100,000 who die, as well as the hundreds of thousands who suffer nonlethal infections, disappear.

Delivery system reform has real promise in improving the management and prevention of chronic disease. These diseases accounted for 7 out of 10 deaths in the United States in 2011 and at least 75 percent of our health care spending.

I am not alone in saying that a correct diagnosis of the problem will lead us to delivery system reform. Gail Wilensky, the former Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President George H.W. Bush, said in 2011, ``If we don't redesign what we are doing, we can't just cut unit reimbursement and think we are somehow getting a better system.''

In the private sector, George Halvorson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente said, ``There are people right now who want to cut benefits and ration care and have that be the avenue to cost reduction in this country and that's wrong. It's so wrong, it's almost criminal. It's an inept way of thinking about health care.''

Saving money by reforming how we deliver health care isn't just possible, it is happening. At a 2011 hearing I chaired of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Greg Poulsen of Intermountain Healthcare said:

Intermountain and other organizations have shown that improving quality is compatible with lowering costs and, indeed, high-quality care is generally less expensive than substandard care.

So when Republicans say we must cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits to fix our deficit, that assertion is flat-out wrong.

Attacking Medicare and Medicaid is consistent with a particular political ideology, but it is not consistent with the facts. It ignores the fact that we operate a wildly inefficient health care system and that our health care spending problem is systemwide, not unique to Federal health programs. It is not just Medicare and Medicaid; former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said of the Defense budget, ``We're being eaten alive by health care.''

The President's Council of Economic Advisers estimates that we could save approximately $700 billion every year in our health care system without compromising health outcomes. The Institute of Medicine recently put this number at $750 billion. Other groups are even more optimistic: The New England Healthcare Institute has reported that $850 billion could be saved annually. The Lewin Group and former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill have estimated annual savings of a staggering $1 trillion. Most recently, the Commonwealth Fund laid out a set of policies that would accelerate health care delivery system reform and slow health spending by $2 trillion over the next 10 years.

These savings will have a dramatic impact on the Federal budget. The Federal Government spends 40 percent of America's health care expenditures. If the estimate by the Council of Economic Advisers is correct, we could reduce the Federal deficit by up to $280 billion per year. If we achieve only one-quarter of the Council of Economic Advisers' estimate, the Federal savings would be $70 billion annually. Over a 10-year budget period, that amounts to $700 billion in Federal health care savings all without taking away any benefits, all while likely improving quality of care.

In a report I issued last year for the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I found that the administration has made considerable progress on implementing the 45 delivery system reform provisions in the law. But more can and must be done. Specifically, I again urge the administration to set a cost-savings target for health care delivery system reform. A cost-savings target will focus, guide, and spur the administration's efforts in a manner that vague intentions to ``bend the health care cost curve'' will not. As the Commonwealth Fund concluded, ``The establishment of targets can serve both as a metric to guide policy development and as an incentive for all involved parties to act to make them effective.''

In 1961, President Kennedy declared that within 10 years the United States would put a man on the Moon and return him safely. The message--and the mission outlined--was clear. The result was a vast mobilization of private and public resources to achieve that purpose.

This administration has a similar opportunity--particularly now, at the height of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. We need to put the full force of American innovation and ingenuity into achieving a serious cost-savings target for our Nation's health care system. But it is hard to do that if they won't set one.

I urge the administration to set a cost-savings target, with a number and a date. And then let's get to work to give American families the health care system they deserve. Instead of waste and inefficiency, poor outcomes and missed opportunities, we would have a health care system that is the envy of the world.

Page: S2024

Music Education
Page: S2024

Mr. President, I rise with great pride that my home State of West Virginia received special recognition today for its support of music education in our public school system. The recognition came from three organizations that are committed to music education--the VH1 Save The Music Foundation, the National Association of Music Merchants--NAMM, and the National Association for Music Education--NAfME.

I want to extend my personal thanks to the leaders of all three organizations for recognizing West Virginia, for their support of our efforts to rebuild music programs in our State and for making a special day even more special--with an award ceremony today that included performances by singer-songwriter Vanessa Carlton, jazz guitarist and former New York Yankees champion Bernie Williams and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith.

I enjoyed their performances, but I also was moved by their stories of personal and professional benefits from their music education. Their stories made clear how the opportunity to learn about the arts and to perform as an artist helps students' ideas and realities beyond words and numbers in textbooks.

But even more special was the fact that the Save The Music award ceremony included a performance from a student jazz ensemble from Shepherdstown Middle School, which received a VH1 Save The Music grant in 2012. I was so proud to listen to these young musicians. They are a wonderful example of the extraordinary way music can impact the lives of students, not just in West Virginia but all over the country.

I would like to congratulate these students on their performance today and on their many accomplishments leading up to this special day--and I wish them many more successes in the future. Also, I would like to especially thank Shepherdstown Middle School Principal Elizabeth Best and Shepherdstown music teacher Mrs. Chad Conant for their generous contributions and assistance.

On behalf of the State of West Virginia, I was honored to accept, along with fellow West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller and Randall Reid-Smith, Commissioner of the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, a Support Music Award from NAMM, which works in partnership with the VH1 Save The Music Foundation and NAfME.

I deeply appreciate the acknowledgement of our efforts to support music education. And, of course, I deeply appreciate the contributions to music education that these organizations make in West Virginia and throughout the United States.

The VH1 Save the Music Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring instrumental music education programs in America's public schools, and raising awareness about the importance of music as part of each child's complete education. To date, VH1 Save the Music has provided more than $49.5 million in new musical instruments to 1,850 public schools in more than 192 school districts around the country, impacting the lives of over 2.1 million children. Research sponsored by NAMM shows clearly that students participating in music education do better in school and go on to college.

Since 2009, the VH1 Save the Music Foundation has given instrumental music education grants valued at $1.05 million to 35 schools in 30 counties throughout West Virginia. And I am informed that the Foundation is committed to funding music education in all 55 counties of the Mountain State. This initiative started when I was Governor, and I am pleased to see it moving forward so positively.

This collaboration is a true example of the huge benefits of public-private partnerships. It is also a strong incentive for all of us to work for more Federal and State funding to enhance music education in our public schools.

In today's global economy, creativity is essential. Consequently, education in the arts is more important than ever because education in the arts helps students be inventive, resourceful and imaginative. Music education is not just a privilege--it is essential.

Remembering Virginia “Ginny” Hill Wood
Page: S2024

Mr. President, today I wish to honor Virginia ``Ginny'' Hill Wood. On March 8, 2013, Ginny passed away at the young age of 95. Alaska lost a true pioneer and advocate for Alaska's wilderness. The Alaskan outdoors was always at the center of her life; she guided her last backcountry trip at age 70, cross-country skied into her mid-80s, and gardened into her early 90s.

Born Virginia Hill on October 24, 1917, Ginny grew up in Washington and Oregon, where she fell in love with the outdoors. She took her first plane ride at the early age of 4 sitting in her father's lap as they flew with a barnstorming pilot. Ginny attended Washington State University, and in 1938 she took a break when she biked through Europe for a year before resuming her studies at the University of Washington. She was eager to pursue her passion for flying, and joined the Civilian Pilot Training Service in college. During World War II, she enrolled in the Women Airforce Service Pilots corps, known as WASP, and ferried all types of military planes throughout the Lower 48.

Her flying and sense of adventure brought her north to Alaska. Ginny landed, literally, in Fairbanks, AK at Weeks Field on a very cold New Year's Day in 1947--along with fellow pilot and great friend Celia Hunter in a second aircraft. Her arrival in Fairbanks when the town was just barely out of its rough mining camp days is illustrative of her pioneering spirit. People were not flocking to Fairbanks in January of 1947, and it was especially rare to find a female pilot. She soon began flying tourists from Fairbanks to Kotzebue. In the late 1940's Ginny took a bicycling tour throughout postwar Europe with Celia Hunter, and when asked where she was from, Ginny would say ``Alaska.''

In 1950, Ginny married Morton ``Woody'' Wood, a forest ranger at Mt. McKinley National Park. On a rainy day in the summer of 1951, Ginny, Woody, and Celia arrived near the northern boundary of Mt. McKinley National Park in search of some land to homestead within view of Denali. That fall, Celia Hunter homesteaded 67 acres. Together, the founders built Camp Denali with locally-harvested spruce logs and reclaimed materials from the National Park Service, often with the help of friends and visitors, who would drop in just to look, but would stay to help haul logs. Ginny and Celia ran Camp Denali for 25 years, operating the remote tourist resort, forging livelihoods out of ingenuity, hospitality, and love of the land.

Ginny was a committed, persistent, eloquent voice for conservation issues in Alaska. She was not afraid to speak on behalf of her values, and will be remembered in part as Alaska's pioneer conservationist. Her independent lifestyle, from building cabins, flying in the bush, and guiding in the Brooks Range and ANWR has inspired and served as an example for those around her. Her service as a WASP earned her a Congressional Gold Medal. She also received the Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Award for her flying in 2002. I had the honor of presenting Ginny her Congressional Gold Medal at her cabin in Fairbanks in 2010 as she was unable to attend the ceremony in Washington, DC. Pouring through her scrapbook and listening to her stories was a visit I will always remember.

Though many have noted that she served as a role model for other women, Ginny stated that ``I did what I wanted to do and I happened to be a woman.'' I admired her strong commitment to protecting the beauty of Alaska and her zest for life.

I extend my sincerest condolences to Ginny's remaining family; her daughter Romany Wood and son-in-law Carl Rosenberg of San Cristobal, NM. Alaska has lost a friend and champion. May she rest in peace.

Page: S2025

The following communications were laid before the Senate, together with accompanying papers, reports, and documents, and were referred as indicated:

A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Amitraz; Pesticide Tolerances'' (FRL No. 9381-1) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 19, 2013; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.

A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Revision to the California State Implementation Plan, South Coast Air Quality Management District'' (FRL No. 9779-2) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 19, 2013; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Approval and Promulgation of Implementation Plans; Region 4 States; Prong 3 of Section 110(a)(2)(D)(i) Infrastructure Requirement for the 1997 and 2006 Fine Particulate Matter National Ambient Air Quality Standards'' (FRL No. 9792-2) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 19, 2013; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Approval and Promulgation of Implementation Plans; State of Washington; Revised Format of 40 CFR Part 52 for Materials Incorporated by Reference'' (FRL No. 9768-9) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 19, 2013; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Approval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plans; Minnesota; Flint Hills Resources Pine Bend'' (FRL No. 9792-8) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 19, 2013; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

A communication from the Director of the Regulatory Management Division, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Designation of Areas for Air Quality Planning Purposes; State of California; Imperial Valley Planning Area for PM 10; Clarification of Nonattainment Area Boundary'' (FRL No. 9791-6) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 19, 2013; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Physical Protection of Byproduct Material'' (RIN3150-AI12) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 19, 2013; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

A communication from the Program Manager, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Requirements for Long-Term Care (LTC) Facilities; Notice of Facility Closure'' (RIN0938-AQ09) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 19, 2013; to the Committee on Finance.

A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Update of Weighted Average Interest Rates, Yield Curves, and Segment Rates'' (Notice 2013-23) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 18, 2013; to the Committee on Finance.

A communication from the President of the United States, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to the United States having provided limited technical support to French forces that conducted an operation in Somalia; to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

A communication from the Deputy Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary and Chief of Staff of the National Security Staff, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to the War Powers Resolution (Public Law 93-148); to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

A communication from the Acting Assistant Secretary, Legislative Affairs, Department of State, transmitting, certification of a proposed amendment of an export license pursuant to section 36(c) of the Arms Export Control Act (Transmittal No. DDTC 13-019); to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

A communication from the Acting Assistant Secretary, Legislative Affairs, Department of State, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to the effectiveness of United Nations efforts to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse and trafficking in persons in UN peacekeeping missions; to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

A communication from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a petition to add workers from the Hanford site in Hanford, Washington, to the Special Exposure Cohort; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

A communication from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a petition to add workers from General Steel Industries, Granite City, Illinois, to the Special Exposure Cohort; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

A communication from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a petition to add workers who were employed at the Baker Brothers site in Toledo, Ohio, to the Special Exposure Cohort; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

A communication from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a petition to add workers who were employed at the Joslyn Manufacturing and Supply Co. at the covered facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to the Special Exposure Cohort; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

A communication from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a petition to add workers who were employed at the Battelle Laboratories King Avenue site in Columbus, Ohio, to the Special Exposure Cohort; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

A communication from the Investigative Specialist, Directorate of Whistleblower Protection Program, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Procedures for the Handling of Retaliation Complaints Under Section 1558 of the Affordable Care Act'' (RIN1218-AC79) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 11, 2013; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

A communication from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report entitled ``The Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness (PAIMI) Program Activities Report for Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010''; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Page: S2025

The following reports of committees were submitted:

By, from the , without amendment:

An original bill to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to reauthorize user fee programs relating to new animal drugs and generic new animal drugs.

Page: S2026

The following executive reports of nominations were submitted:

By for the.


 * Frederick Vollrath*, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary of Defense.
 * Alan F. Estevez*, of the District of Columbia, to be a Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense.
 * Eric K. Fanning*, of the District of Columbia, to be Under Secretary of the Air Force.
 * Air Force nomination of Lt. Gen. John E. Hyten*, to be Lieutenant General.
 * Air Force nomination of Maj. Gen. Tod D. Wolters, to be Lieutenant General.

Marine Corps nominations beginning with Brigadier General John J. Broadmeadow and ending with Brigadier General Vincent R. Stewart, which nominations were received by the Senate and appeared in the Congressional Record on January 22, 2013.

Navy nomination of Rear Adm. Bruce E. Grooms, to be Vice Admiral.

Mr. President, for the Committee on Armed Services I report favorably the following nomination lists which were printed in the RECORDS on the dates indicated, and ask unanimous consent, to save the expense of reprinting on the Executive Calendar that these nominations lie at the Secretary's desk for the information of Senators.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Air Force nominations beginning with Alexander M. Archibald III and ending with Timothy Y. Salam, which nominations were received by the Senate and appeared in the Congressional Record on February 27, 2013.

Army nomination of Michael J. Burke, to be Major.

Army nomination of Charles A. Slaney, to be Colonel.

Army nominations beginning with Sara L. Carlson and ending with David R. Trainor, which nominations were received by the Senate and appeared in the Congressional Record on February 27, 2013.

Army nominations beginning with James W. Ness and ending with Zachary T. Irvine, which nominations were received by the Senate and appeared in the Congressional Record on February 27, 2013.

Marine Corps nominations beginning with James B. Thompson and ending with Jason A. Woodworth, which nominations were received by the Senate and appeared in the Congressional Record on January 23, 2013.

Marine Corps nominations beginning with Michael A. Brown and ending with Michael E. Samples, Jr., which nominations were received by the Senate and appeared in the Congressional Record on January 23, 2013.

Page: S2026

The following bills and joint resolutions were introduced, read the first and second times by unanimous consent, and referred as indicated:

By :

A bill to require the Secretary of the Interior to conduct certain special resource studies; to the.

By (for himself and ):

A bill to amend title 18, United States Code, to prevent unjust and irrational criminal punishments; to the.

By :

A bill to withhold the salary of the Director of OMB upon failure to submit the President's budget to Congress as required by section 1105 of title 31, United States Code; to the.

By (for himself,, , , , and ):

A bill to amend the Controlled Substances Act to make any substance containing hydrocodone a schedule II drug; to the.

By :

An original bill to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to reauthorize user fee programs relating to new animal drugs and generic new animal drugs; from the ; placed on the calendar.

By (for himself and ):

A bill to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to ensure the continued access of Medicare beneficiaries to diagnostic imaging services; to the.

By (for himself,, , , , and ):

A bill to amend the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990 to require criminal background checks for child care providers; to the.

By (for himself,, , and ):

A bill to provide for a biennial appropriations process with the exception of defense spending and to enhance oversight and the performance of the Federal Government; to the.

By :

A bill to de-link research and development incentives from drug prices for new medicines to treat HIV/AIDS and to stimulate greater sharing of scientific knowledge; to the.

By :

A bill to provide incentives for investment in research and development for new medicines, to enhance access to new medicines, and for other purposes; to the.

By (for himself,, , and ):

A bill to amend title 10, United States Code, to extend the duration of the Physical Disability Board of Review and to the expand the authority of such Board to review of the separation of members of the Armed Forces on the basis of mental condition not amounting to disability, including separation on the basis of a personality or adjustment disorder; to the.

By (for himself,, , , , , , , , and ):

A bill to amend title 38, United States Code, to recognize the service in the reserve components of the Armed Forces of certain persons by honoring them with status as veterans under law, and for other purposes; to the.

By (for herself,, , and Ms. ):

A bill to establish a partnership between States that produce energy onshore and offshore for our country with the Federal Government; to the.

By (for himself,, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and ):

A bill to allow Americans to earn paid sick time so that they can address their own health needs and the health needs of their families; to the.

Page: S2026

The following concurrent resolutions and Senate resolutions were read, and referred (or acted upon), as indicated:

By (for himself,, and ):

A resolution commemorating the 30th anniversary of the proposal for the Strategic Defense Initiative; to the.

By (for himself,, , , and ):

A resolution supporting the goals and ideals of Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week; to the.

By (for himself,, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and ):

A resolution recognizing the 192nd anniversary of the independence of Greece and celebrating democracy in Greece and the United States; considered and agreed to.

By (for himself and ):

A resolution designating April 2013 as “National Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness Month”; considered and agreed to.

Adjournment
= Resources =