told that the rate is going to go down next year, do you think that you're going to see a lot of assets sold this year? you'll have hardly any economic activity unless it's absolutely necessary, but on january 1 of next year when the rate goes down, you'll see all kinds of activity because the rate at which that activity is taxed is reduced. by the same token if you've got a rate that's low today and you say is going to go up tomorrow, you'll see a lot of activity today, but not much tomorrow. and that economic activity is what produces revenue which is what the government taxes and as i said ironically a lower rate generates more revenue to the treasury and that's what happens when you reduce the capital gains rate. i believe that if the president were to announce tomorrow that he has not -- he is -- he is asking congress to pass legislation to send to him that would fix the tax -- the

marginal income tax rates, the dividends rate, the capital gains rate at exactly where they are right now for, let's say, a period of five years, the certainty that that would create, even though some of those rates are too high in my opinion, leave that go. the certainty that that would create because the rates would be known for a period of five years. and these, by the way, would be the so-called bush tax cut rates, so they're much lower than they would be if they were allowed to go up again. if the president were to do that, i think he would see the stock morkt skyrocket the next day, and the job rate would be incredible, businesses would know that the taxes would not go up and be able to hire people and afford to do so. if you leave the tax rate in question or hint that they're going to go up or, in fact, ensure that they're going to go up as they do under the health care bill, for example, it's no wonder that businesses don't

create jobs. in the health care bill, we actually have a couple of payroll tax increases. now, all tax increases hurt business and hurt their ability to invest more and to hire more people. but a payroll tax is a direct tax on jobs. it says that the more people you hire, the more taxes you're going to pay. the more people you keep on your payroll, the higher your tax liability is going to be. there's one provision that says if one of your employees leaves an gets a sub defor the -- subsidy for the insurance exchange, you have to pay an 8% to 10% payroll tax on all of the rest of your employees. that's a job killer. and another tax raises by just under 1%, the medicare payroll tax. that's a job killer. so there's a relationship between job creation and taxes, economic activity and, therefore, revenues to the federal treasury and tax rates.

tax rates and taxes are not the same thing. you can reduce tax rates and actually collect more taxes. again, it sounds paradoxical, but it's true. think of this when you go to the store before christmas and they slash their prices by 40%. they're not doing that to go out of business. they're still making money. they're making more money on the volume that increases because a lot more people coming into the store even though they reduced the cost of each of the items than they would if they increased the cost of each of the items. i guarantee if they raised their prices before christmas, their competitors would reduce their prices. not to make less money, they would get more people in, make more volume. and make more money. when you -- so i'm very reluctant to support a commission which i believe will undertake to reduce our deficit by raising tax rates.

it's not good for job creation. it's not good for the economy. it's not good for families, of course. and, ironically, i don't think it's good for the federal government. but i mostly don't think it is because at the end of the day, we always have the courage to talk big about cutting spending, but we don't do it. and i'll just close with this, madam president. the last budget increased the funding for the departments of government dramatically at a time we're in a deep recession, families are having to cut their budgets, and, yet, you go to the department of agriculture, i think it was like a 23% increase or 26% increase. about the same for the department of state and so on. i think the average was over 12%. only the twens department took a hit. -- only the defense department took a hit. i think that says something else that we need to be very careful

of here. it is one thing for a commission that's not elected by the people to have the specific goal of reducing the deficit. it's quite another to have the perspective of all of the things that members of congress have to pay attention to in making decisions that offset each other or that take into account the needs across the entire spectrum of government. and it would be very bad, indeed, if we're not able to factor into our decisions, for example, the need to increase defense spending next year. because it got hit last year, it's going to have to be increased. and i dare say i -- i hope and i almost predict that the administration will find a way to increase in its budget this year defense spending. because it -- it cannot be sustained at the level that it is. and, yet, if we were having to cut spending across the board, that would be difficult to do. that's what we are elected to do

as members of the house and senate. an as hard as that job is, we should be doing it to -- to adequately represent our constituents. i understand the argument that we need some help sometimes. and, frankly, i support some alternatives to what i'm talking about here. senator sessions and senator mccaskill, for example, have an amendment, which i support. because it focuses on spending. it starts with the 2010 budget, which is more than i would like to start with. at least it say that's spending has to be constrained relative to that budget. and i think there will be another amendment that relates to spending which focuses on other ways to save money. senator brownback, for example, like senator coburn, has talked about trying to end duplicate programs where departments or agencies or programs or commissions whose job has -- has -- is finished and we don't need them anymore, for exam. those are the kind of things

that i think we need to look at and we can save big money if we do. madam president, the final point i want to make sheer is some -- here is some say, well, isn't this a little bit like the health care commission that would reduce medicare spending? and the answer is that there is a similarity at fleece concept. the idea in the health care commission, though, is to reduce spending primarily by reducing what we pay doctors and hospitals and other health care providers. that's a tough way to reduce medicare spending and still provide the services that our senior citizens deserve. the way it should be done is to find the so-called waste, fraud, and abuse. and that's easier said than done. no one denies that it's there. but we've had decades to get to the problem. if we could, we'd be doing it right now i have no doubt that if president obama knew that he could save $100 billion by

eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse, he would have gotten to the job by now and wouldn't be waiting to see what provisions we put in the health care bill before starting the job. private sector can't afford to waste that much money. federal bureaucrats, as hard as they work, don't have the responsibility. it's somebody else's money, it's everybody else's problem. it's not my problem. in the private sector they can't afford to do it. it's one reason that the insurance companies get criticized because they have people making sure that they don't pay claims that shouldn't be paid. sometimes they're criticized for that kind of activity. their administrative cost are a little bit higher than government's because of that they hire people to make sure that they don't have a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse. and so the amount of waste, fraud, and abuse against the insurance companies is pretty low. and they're able to stay in business as a result. with the federal government you have the sort of did you ever wash a rental car syndrome where it's somebody else's money,

count have to be as careful about protecting it and as a result there's a huge amount of money lost in government programs like the medicare program, for example. and what i'm hoping is that the kind of legislation the amendments that senator sessions and mccaskill are presenting and that i believe senator brownback and some others will be presenting are going to focus on how we can actually save money in the way that i'm talking about rather than cutting services. because that is the wrong way to save money if they are essential services as the medicare services are. and that's the distinction between those two items that i think it's important to draw. so the bottom line, madam president, the people who are proposing this commission idea are very well motivated and i respect their -- their position. reasonable people can differ about the wisdom of what they are proposing here. i would prefer to first focus on whether or not we could actually reduce spending with a little

help from a commission or some other kind of group, depending on which amendments you want to adopt and actually identify where we save the money and force us to act upon that. i would rather do that first than to start out with a proposition that we could do it through tax increase. because that is a sure way to hurt economic recovery, prevent job creation, take more property and freedom from the american people and potentially in the long run provide for less revenue to the federal government. a friend of mine always likes to say there is a rate. well, there are two rates at which the government collects exactly no revenue. zero and 100. and it's true. if you set a very, very high tax rate, whatever it is that you're taxing, you're going to get very little of. and if you want check activity that represents economic growth in this country and a high standard of living and a lot of job creation, you cannot achieve that by imposing a lot of taxes even if you are worried about

the deficit. the way to solve that problem is to stop spending money rather than to try to take more money from the american people. madam president, i note the absence quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. sessions: madam president?

the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. sessions: i would ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sessions: madam president, lieblgd to share a few thoughts at this time about the supreme court case today, citizens united v. federal election commission. the points -- some comments were made about that at the judiciary committee earlier today, some criticizing the decision. i think it's a sound decision. i think it's consistent with our constitution, the first amendment, and it deals with a reality of free speech. it simply not going away. i know sometimes people are irritated by seeing ads on television. i know politicians are not happy when people run ads against them. but this is a fre a free countrd we are not immune to criticism and people seeking to promote their point of view throughout our nation. the court overruled two recent

precedents that them selves -- that undermined and were inconsistent with this nation's long tradition of protecting political speech. in doing so, the court recognized that political speech is protected by the first amendment. now, we've got -- there's nominee dubious things that have been argued under the first amendment, such as pornography is absolutely of any kind, shape, or fashion -- even child pornography, some argue, are protected under free speech. but there can be no doubt that the founding fathers, when they wrote this constitution, contemplated that people would have rebust political debate and -- robust political debate and speech. and that includes criticizing people who are running for office, when they're running for offers. the decision today was an interesting matter, and it shows

how far some of our congressional past laws reach. maybe it indicates sometimes that when we write these bills, they reach further than we intended for them to reach. for example, it reinvolved around the film that was critical of the -- of one of main candidates in the 2008 presidential election. under the recent so-called bipartisan campaign reform act, it was illegal for the plaintiffs in this case -- a group called citizens united -- to broadcast this film during the 30 days before the election because the group had received money, contributions from u.s. corporations. so the group produced this film. they wanted to put this documentary film out, and i wouldn't want one put out against me, but it's a free

country. and they -- they wanted to film it and they said they couldn't do it. chief justice roberts, writing for the majority of the supreme court, correctly sums up, think, the holding in today's opinion. we'll probably talk more about it in detail as we go forward when we have a little more time to examine it. but he says this. quote -- "congress violates the first amendment when it decrees that some speakers may not engages in political speech at election time when it matters most." close quote. or, as justice scalia characterized the holding in his concurring opinion, quote, "a documentary film critical of a potential presidential candidate is core political speech, and its nature, as such, does not

change simply because it was funded by a corporation." close quote. well, i think that -- regardless of what we might think about it, we hear speech that makes us irritated and frustrated a lot of times, but we just have to put up with it because that's the free country we live in. and i think that's good. so -- and i don't think it is justified in saying that americans who come together in some sort of corporate body can no longer speak. and i would just add that the current administration has been a bit insensitive about this. we had the incidents earlier in the year when an insurance company put out material to their insured pointing out criticism of the health care bill. the administration tried to get

the c.m.s. or h.h.s. to punish this company and deny them, threaten them with loss of business if they didn't stop expressing an opinion. the insurance company did this kind of business. people had bought this kind of insurance coverage. and they had every right, i think, as free americans to send out a notice that this is not good for our company or you, we think. they are a not allowed to do this? they're going to be threatened by the white house with punishment if they communicate with people that they do business with? that's not a little by thety matter. we've got to get our heads straight. the first amendment protects speech, real substantive speech about poirns like insurance -- about important issues like insurance, like who's going to be elected president.

you know, justice scalia in 2005 -- it was one of the cases they reversed -- he dissented in thew case. i this is it was 5-4. he dissented in it, and this is what he wrote. he's a good writer. he says, "in the modern world, given the government power to exclude corporations from the political debate, enables it effectively to muffle the voices that best represent the most significant segments of the economy and the most passionately held social and political views." so you exclude them. you can't talk. and unions are prohibited in their corporate form, also from doing this. so they get around it by using members and turn out the vote

efforts to be e -- enhance their political power, which is all right and apparently legal. but i don't see anything wrong with a union using their political action money to run an ad, along as it says "paid for by the afl-cio," or whoever. at least i don't see how that violates the constitution. people -- he goes on to say, quote, "people who associate, who pool their financial resources for purposes of economic enterprise overwhelmingly do so in the corporate form and with increasing frequency in corporation is chosen by those to associate to defend and promote particular ideas, such as the american civil liberties union, the national rifle association, parties to this case" -- in other words, these are entities that file briefs in

the case before the supreme court at that time. and so, again, what we have the spectacle of in essence was an attempt to promote a film, a so-called documentary -- i don't know how wonderful it was or how bad it was -- and they said it couldn't be shown because it was near an election time and corporations had given some money to putting it on. and i think that's not healthy. in fact, the whole approach to constricting and limiting people in pooling their money and running ads is, i think, pretty clearly in contact -- in

conflict with the first amendment. i would just say this: the supreme court ma made clear that all of the limits on corporations about giving to political campaigns, those were not instruct down. and didn't apparently deal with any of the individual rights. but we've had a number -- we've had a debate over this for a long time. it's roared in this senate for many years, and people passionately have argued about the first amendment and when it means and -- and what it means and is this an evisceration of it and i used to say in my speefs, i just don't think -- in my speeches, i just don't thinks right to tell an american or even a group of americans who come together to run a corporation that they can't buy an ad even in -- on the eve of an election and say jeff sessions is bad for our business, bad for our state, bad for our nation and ought for

thrown out of office. if that's a problem, it can be perhaps sometimes, i might think it would be, but the balancing test that we use are the plain language of the first amendment, the right to free speech shall not be abridged, that infringed -- that right is important, as it's written, and we incur great danger when we say, well, you can talk, but we're not going to let you make a political message 30 days before the campaign. or you can contribute, but only under our rules. and a clear case can be made, being an incumbent, i can say this without fear of being self-interested, it favors incumbents.

i'm not worried about -- i mean, i've had many multiples of individual harped money, noncorporate contributions -- hard money, noncorporate contributions more than my last two opponents, and i've been successful in my race. it's not personal with me. i don't have and really don't desire to have corporate money. butch -- but i do think the supreme court's opinion should be respected -- respected -- in the fact that it takes very seriously -- it's asking very fundamental questions about what power politicians in washington have to constrict the right of americans either individually or corporately to defend their interests and speak out. think about it. "the new york times" -- this is

all good government. but what is "the new york times"? is it a corporation? yes, it is. can "the new york times" run an editorial every day saying they don't like this party or they don't like this senator and criticize him repeatedly? why, sure they can. but can ford motor company defend its interests? can it run an ad and say, we're getting a little bit tired of federal government giving another $3 billion to general motors acceptance corporation, and we don't get any money from the federal government to help ford motor credit. this threatens our existence. this is wrong. don't vote for this person because he wants to support my competitor and has a plan to do so, and i ought to be -- i think they ought to be free to push back and defend their interest. otherwise it allows us in this insulated city the ability to

aggregate power and favors to benefit one or another and avoid being criticized for it, i think. so that's my two cents' worth, madam president. i think the chase is one of significance and is one that we've debated so long here. i know senator mcconnell, the republican leader, had been be so eloquent and consistent for probably 15 years in debating this issue, and in many ways this opinion validates some of the principal constitutional arguments that he made. i thank the chair and would yield the floor. mr. burris: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. burris: thank you, madam president. madam president, over the past few days i've heard a number of my colleagues come to the floor to discuss whether this congress should vote to raise the limit on the national debt.

as this debate unfolds, i'm beginning to hear from my friends on the other side of the aisle. instead of offering constructive criticism or original ideas of their own, my republican colleagues keep returning to the same irresponsible politics and empty rhetoric that got us into this mess in the first place. they seek to shift the blame and to hold democrats responsible for the failed policies that led us to this point. the american people remember who really -- who really is responsible. in 2001, at the end of the last democratic administration, our country enjoyed a $236 billion budget surplus with the projected surplus of $5.6

trillion over the next decade. but then republicans took control of the congress and the white house. were there good stewards of the surplus left by the clinton administration? did they spend only what america could afford? were they responsible with our pocketbook? after all the decade is over, madam president, i ask them: where is the $5.6 trillion surplus? it's nowhere to be found, madam president. republicans squandered our surplus by spending wildly on massive tax breaks for the wealthy and the special interests. they tried to place the blame on president obama, but the reality is that this president inherited a massive deficit of $1.3

trillion on the day that he took office last year. and now as we try to clean up the mess that we've inherited, our republican friends are trying to pass the buck. they seem to be more interested in scoring political points than making sound policy. who's going to be hurt if we don't extend this debt? we're all going to be hurt. it's not going to be democrats that are hurt. it's going to be republicans and every american is going to be hurt. mr. president, we need to raise the debt limit so that america can avoid the economic catastrophe that would be created if the united states defaulted on our debt. if we fail to take action now, our nation's credit would be undermined, our economy would be further weakened, and important programs like social security and veterans benefits would be at grave risk. raising the debt limit is the

only responsible course of action at this time. it would not authorize one penny of new spending, but it will allow to us pay the bills we've already incurred. we've ate the meal. we've had the dinner. now we've got to pay the check, madam president. so i'm asking my republican friends to join us on this measure. i'm asking them to take responsibility for the mess that they helped to create and to be a part of the solution rather than leaving other people to clean up their mistakes. during the year when they were in control, senate republicans voted seven times to increase the debt limit. they refused to pay for major initiatives. they cut revenues and increased spending. madam president, it didn't take a financial expert to recognize that this is just plain

irresponsible. so when republican colleagues talk about fiscal responsibility, they're talking about an issue on which they have absolutely no credibility. their record simply does not match their rhetoric. this demonstrates yet again that they do not have a plan to solve the economic challenges they helped create. madam president, i believe it's time to move forward. so let us be honest with the american people. let us work together to solve this problem rather than hiding behind the same irresponsible policies that got us here in the first place. i call upon my friends across the aisle to join us in passing this measure. this should not be a partisan issue, madam president. well have keep this nation on the road to economic recovery, and we do not extend this debt ceiling, what would the consequences to the american people be? it is essential that we get the

extension of this debt ceiling and that we do pass this legislation and that we be responsible as we go forward in our programs and policies of spending so that we will not have to be back here time and time again talking about we're going to raise the debt ceiling. we must get it under control at this time because if we don't, the catastrophe could be overwhelming. and we may not even recover from it. thank you,nd i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: mr. president, i ask consent that further oceedings der the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. mcconnell: mr. president, the senate reconvenes in a new calendar year. it's hard not to notice that many of the toughest challenges we face in 2010 have been with us for a long time. among the most persistent of these is the ongoing global war on terror. more than eight years have now passed since september 11, 2001, and yet we are reminded nearly every day of the need to remain just as vigilant now as we were in the weeks and months after that terrible day. this fact was recently brought home to us in a vivid way when a nigerian-born terrorist

attempted to kill nearly 300 innocent people in the skies over detroit on christmas day. in what could have been a terrible tragedy became instead the reminder of the need to remain focus; a wake-up call, if you will. but even before abdulmutallab boarded the plane, many americans had already begun to wonder whether we had become too slack over the past year in the fight against terrorism. and who could blame them? time and again the administration has made decisions that suggest a pre-9/11 mind-set, of prosecution over prevention, decisions which have left most americans scratching their heads and concluding most of the administration's priorities are dangerously out of whack. most americans didn't understand why the administration was in such a rush to close guantanamo, for example, for it had a plan for dealing with the dangerous

detainees who were held there. most didn't see why classified memos detailing classified interrogation techniques that saved lives were made public. and most recently most people were shocked again when we treated the christmas day bomber not as a potentially rich source of intelligence for stopping future attacks, but as a common criminal who needed a lawyer. we should have gotten every bit of information we could have about this man's plans, his connections, and his cronies in al qaeda in the arabian peninsula. instead the administration placed a higher priority on reading him his miranda rights and getting him a lawyer. even more outrageous is the administration's apparent plan for getting information out of the christmas day bomber, offering him a plea bargain and

hoping he'll talk. these are just some of the signs when it comes to prosecuting the crimes owar on terror, the pends swung too far in the wrong direction. no one wants to sacrifice one for the other. but in many cases all that's involved is a simple question of judgment. and when a judgment call has to be made, our priorities should be clear. keeping americans safe should always -- always win out. over the past year the administration has grappled with these questions. it sought to find the right balance. in some cases it's gotten it wrong. in others it's been quite sensible. the president was clear in convincing, for example when he explained our goals in afganistan last december. to deny al qaeda a safe haven,

to reverse the taliban's momentum, and deny the ability to control po population centers and the safety of afganistan government so they can take the lead of afganistan's future. the president had it exactly right. but americans know that in this fight in the global war on terror getting the strategy partly right will only lead to partial success. and as the attempted christmas day bombing showed all too plainly, partial success isn't good enough. so today i'd like it discuss some of my own impressions of how our mission is going in the place where the attacks of september 11, 2001, were launched and to describe the mission within the broader context of the global war that extends to places like yemen and to our own borders. because success in one place overseas could be easily overmined by neglect in another.

an success in both could still be undermine by neglect at home. we simply cannot prevail in this fight if we treat the various elements of it as separate events or if we fail to restore the proper balance between safety and civil liberties. as the years ware on it's easy for some to forget where we're committing young men and women to fight in faroff places like afganistan or why our national security interests demand that we prevail. that's why it's important to recall that al qaeda and other extremists are at war with the united states long before the attacks of 9/11. the world trade center had been attacked eight full years before the 19 hijackers stride it on september the 11, 2001. the kobar towers killed military personnel and injured hundreds more. thousands were injured and

hundreds were killed including a dozen americans in the east africa embassy bombings in nairobi and darasalom. that same year osama bin laden determined to kill americans or allies is an obligation for every muslim who is able to do so in any country. a year before 9/11, al qaeda attacked the u.s.s. cole killing 17 sailors an injurying -- and injurying dozens more. 9/11 may have been the day we realized the consequences of inaction, but the pattern of attacks leading up to that day is undeniably clear. from the first days after 9/11, our strategy has been the same to deny al qaeda and its affiliates sanctuary and to deny them a staging ground from which they could plan or launch another attack on u.s. soil. this is why we resolved shortly after 9/11 to rid afganistan of

the taliban which harbored al qaeda and its leader osama bin laden. we had early success in that effort. by november 2001, the taliban had been driven by kabul. soon after that an international body met to name an interim government in afganistan to be led by its interim president hamid karzai. despite the early success al qaeda's leadership was able to find a safe haven in pakistan's tribal areas. a few years later it gained enough strength to once again pose a serious threat to the u.s. meanwhile the taliban reestablished its headquarters in pakistan and gained enough strength as a result of inadequate afghanistan security forces. by last year the situation had grown so pa perilous that generl stanley mcchrystal issued a

report stating that our failure to gain the initiative and reverse the momentum of the taliban within 12 months to make defeating the insurgency impossible. it was largely as a result of that assessment that the president agreed last year to send 30,000 more troops to afganistan. earlier this month i and some of my colleagues had the opportunity to visit afganistan and pakistan to assess the situation on the ground firsthand. among other things, we saw progress in the crucial southern provinces of kandahar. though in the early phases general crystal's -- mcchrystal's plan to hold the taliban and build afganistan security forces and build a

government for future stability show early signs of success not unlike the kind of success during the surge in iraq. taliban continues to put up a fight. as recently as last week taliban leaders accused nato forces of defiling the koran, a charge that led to major pr protests. and this monday the taliban demonstrated its lethalty when it launched an attack against the government in kabul. our commitment and our partners has given afganistan and its government a chance to succeed. while ultimate success is far from certain, everyone is impressed by the quality of those sent to afganistan. pakistan must do its part. the ultimate success of our mission in afganistan depends upon the continued efforts of

the government of pakistan to fight extremist networks in the tribal areas. over the last year pakistan has waged aggressive campaigns in the swat valley and south wasterus stand and needing with the afganistan chief of staff and the prime minister we concluded that their national interest will be served in defeating the pakistani taliban. still action against the leadership of the afghan taliban harbor just across the border in neighboring pakistan isn't likely to occur until the pakistanis are convinced that the u.s. has the endurance to remain committed in both pakistan and afganistan. and to defeat the taliban in afganistan as well. in this regard the leaders we spoke to in both countries were

clearly troubled by the obama administration's announced deadline of july 2011 for the withdrawal of the u.s. forces. we saw firsthand on our trip that the fight in afganistan and pakistan is difficult and the situation is fragile, but complicating matters even further is the resilience and determination of al qaeda and its affiliates and we must not fail to appreciate all the implications of this. now, in this regard the administration showed a shocking lack of common sense when it failed to treat the christmas day bomber as an enemy combata combatant. instead reading him miranda rights and giving him a lawyer. as i said earlier, in my view

the administration has on a number of instances struck the wrong balance over the past year between safety and civil liberties. its preference for prosecuting a terrorist like the christmas day bomber in civilian courts shows a dangerous preoccupation with prosecution over prevention just as its haasy decision to close guantanamo for safety over symbolism. whether it is guantanamo, interrogation memos or prosecuting terrorists in civilian courts, many of the administration's priorities in this fight appear to be dangerously misplaced. take the case of khalid sheikh mohammed. here's a man who admits to planning the most catastrophic terrorist attack in u.s. history. nearly 3,000 people dead on our own soil in a single day. yet once in court he will enjoy all the rights and privileges of

an american citizen. classified information may be compromised as it has been many times before in such cases. the consequences are easy to imagine. trying k.s.m. in a civilian court makes even less sense in light of the fact that the administration decided to prosecute other foreign terrorists in a military commission. creating a baffling scenario in which those who target innocent people in the homeland are treated better than those who attack a military target overseas. the administration also needs to ensure that our intelligence professionals and men and women in uniform are free to gather intelligence from detainees wherever they're captured. a u.s. marine assigned to a nato-led security and development mission in afganistan shouldn't have to relief or turn over a captured terrorist within 96 hours as is now the case. nor should the christmas day

bomber be treated as a common criminal here at home when the nation where he met his al qaeda handlers, yemen, is actively pursuing al qaeda in the arabian peninsula. the intelligence community must be able to gather information from detainees in a way that is lawful and which protects american lives. equilibrium between safety and civil liberties must be restored and currently it is not in my view. a plea bargain for a terrorist who tried to blow a plane out of the sky on christmas day? it is wrong to think that al qaeda won't use a civilian courtroom in new york or a long-term detention facility inside the united states for the same recruiting and propaganda purposes for which they have used other courts an guantanamo in the past. this fact alone eliminates the administration's only

justification for closing guantanamo, that it was some kind of recruitment tool. we need a place to send terrorists like the christmas day bomber and that place is not a civilian courtroom or a prison in the midwest. once here, these terrorists will enjoy new legal rights including quite possibly the right to be released into our country. as one federal judge previously ordered with respect to a group of detainees from gitmo. the war on al qaeda will continue for years to come. in order to prevail we must not only remain focused on the threat, but also reliant on the reasonable tools that have served us well in the past. for example, now is not the time to experiment with the patriot act. we should clearly reauthorize its expiring provisions rather than eliminate one of them, sunset another, and tinker with those that remain. as the administration or some of

its congressional allies propose. as we continue to pursue this global network, we will rely more heavily on intelligence personnel. a point that was recently underscored by the decemberth suicide attack that killed seven c.i.a. employees in afganistan. we mourn the lost of these -- loss of these brave americans. their sacrifice, along with the attempted christmas day bombing and recent plot to attack the u.s. subway system reminds us that the threat from al qaeda and other other extremists has not -- i repeat not diminished. but in its