quorum call:

quorum call:

recognized. mr. lieberman: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispeed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. lieberman: i thank the chair. mr. president, i now ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and that i be permitted to call up amendment number 3381, and that at the end of my statement, the amendment then be withdrawn. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. lieberman: i thank -- amend.

khroeupl the senator from -- the clerk: the senator from connecticut for amendment proposes amendment 3381 to amendment 3386. at the end add the following -- mr. lieberman: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. lieberman: i thank the chair. mr. president, this amendment that i rise to introduce has been cosponsored by a bipartisan group. i'm pleased to say senator collins of maine, byrd of west virginia, feinstein of california, voinovich of ohio and ensign of nevada. the purpose of this amendment is to reauthorize, literally to save the opportunity scholarship program, or o.s.p. -- some know it as the d.c. school voucher program. we are introducing our amendment to this legislation because without prompt action by

congress, the o.s.p. program, i'm afraid, will end. the current administrator has advised secretary duncan that it will no longer administer the program absent a reauthorization. and no other entity has expressed a willingness to take over, given the constraints imposed by congress under the prevailing set of circumstances. so, despite the president's stated intent in his budget to continue the program if only for those students currently participating, even that will become impossible. this amendment, as i'll explain in a moment, will reauthorize this program for five years at essentially its current levels. as i will explain in a moment, it is working. it is immensely popular with

families of children at failing schools here in the district of columbia. it is supported by the chancellor of the school system here, michelle rhee, by mayor fenty. it is warmly endorsed by the families of the students who have benefited from this program, as it literally changed their lives. and yet, it has run into opposition here in congress, i fear, from people who are committed to defending a status quo that's not working. michelle reye is working so hard to reform our nation's capital school system, public school system, so why would she be supporting this opportunity scholarship program that will allow some children, low-income children in the district of

columbia, to get this scholarship and go to a private or faith-based school. she said it in terms that are very compelling as she testified before committees of congress, which is this, that if a parent of a student in a school that literally had determined to be failing turned to her and said, can my child get a good education in the school -- the system -- the public school that the system sends her to, she can't now say yes to students -- parents of students who are in these designated failing schools. and she said i think with great strength and conviction and honesty, she, the head of the public school system here, until i can tell these parents that their children will get a good education in the public schools of the district of columbia, i cannot in good conscience oppose this plan that will enable these

children basically to give them a lifeline while she's fixing the d.c. public schools. a lifeline to abetter education, a -- better education and a better life. her estimation is that it will take her five years to get the d.c. public schools to where she wants them and every parent of the district child wants them to be. that's the length of the reauthorization of this program that our amendment would provide. i understand, mr. president, there will be a point of order raised to our amendment as well as objections to proceeding to ask for a vote on our amendment. and, therefore, i will be obliged to withdraw my amendment. it was not possible on this bill to receive the consent necessary to bring up this amendment for a vote. although i'm pleased to understand that no objections

would likely be raised on the minority side to at least bringing the vote up for an amendment. i do want to serve notice that i will continue to push for a vote on this matter because i think it's so critically important. i know that there are several bills coming before the senate, including the reauthorization for the f.a.a., which will come soon. it will be subject to amendment, and, therefore, i offer an opportunity to me and my cosponsors to amend those bills, to offer this amendment, the opportunity scholarship amendment to those bills. i don't know at this moment that we have 60 votes to pass this amendment, but what i am committed to doing is making sure that we have a debate on the amendment and votes -- and a vote on the amendment so that the senate can be heard and in

that sense is challenged to take a position on this bill -- this amendment and this program, which, i repeat, has been a lifeline for kids trying to get a decent education and build a better life. in my view this amendment really did belong on the american workers stated business relief act, the underlying bill before the senate, because, obviously, the opportunity to seek a better an receive a better education enables our children to be better, more productive workers, to help our businesses, and, of course, to grow our national economy. achievement gaps in our schools have a profound effect on quality of our workforce and on the future of our economy. and, most importantly, quality of our schools have a profound effect on the quality of the

lives of the children who go to better schools and get a better education. like -- like millions and millions of others in our country today, including, i'm sure, a lot of other members of the senate. the public schools of my hometown of stanford, connecticut, transformed my life. gave me an education that enabled me to be the first person in my family to go to college. and then i was -- i was able to go to law school after that. there are within the district of columbia so many gifted and talented students who are in schools that are not developing their gifts are growing their talents by giving them a good education. this bill takes a limited number of those, the o.s.p. program, and they're low income, and gives them a chance for a better education and a better life.

i regret that i'm not going to be able to get a vote on this amendment, on this issue, on this bill, so we're going to wait for the next opportunity to do that. i do want to make, however, some brief remarks on the substance here. i followed the status of this program, the o.s.p. program, for several years in my capacity as chairman of the homeland security and governmental affairs committee. it's one of those strange twists of senate committee jurisdiction that the governmental affairs part of the jurisdiction of our committee, the traditional historic jurisdiction before homeland security was added, included, according to the wisdom of a previous generation of senators, jurisdiction over the district of columbia. so i can tell you one need only listen to the students in the program and their parents as our committee has had the privilege

to do to know that this program has served as a life changer. not just a game changer, but a life changer for many of these children in this program. we also have a federally mandated study that documents the success of this program despite a lot of misleading statements by those who oppose the program, science behind this study, a scientific study by a previous act of congress authorizing this proposal, proves that the program is working. it's one thing to hear the students and their parents talk about how their lives have been changed with the opportunity to go to a -- a school that's made them feel that they can be a success and educated them better. but dr. patrick wolfe, the lead investigator for the study that was authorized by a previous act of congress, concluded and i

quote -- "that the d.c. voucher program has proven to be the most effective educational education policy evaluated by the federal government's official educational research arm so far." end quote. that's an awful lot to be able to say. so the -- the path that this bill has followed, the opposition to it has been so frustrating. people say that this is money coming out of the public school budget. the whole design of this original program was to add money in equal parts to the d.c. public schools, money that would not otherwise have received, a kind of compensatory balance. a same amount to the charter schools, which are doing very well here in washington, and in the same amount to the opportunity scholarship program.

so money not from the public schools, but an education opportunity for poor kids in washington going to schools designated as really unable to educate them, instead giving them the opportunity to go to better private or faith-based schools. i thank you, mr. president, for allowing me the time for my colleagues to bring up the amendment. as i say, i look forward to engaging in a larger discussion of these issues at greater length in the very near future by submitting this as an amendment to the next bill that comes to the senate floor. and pursuant, nonetheless, to the agreement that i've had with the leadership and my colleagues in the senate, understanding that there was not consent to proceed, i will now withdraw my amendment. the presiding officer: the amendment is withdrawn. mr. lieberman: i thank the chair. i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from alabama is recognized. mr. sessions: i wouldsk that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sessions: mr. president, there is a bill on the floor

that we had a cloture vote on earlier, i guess it's call the jobs bill. it has some things in it that i think are helpful, maybe, to this economy continuing certain tax cuts is important. but i've got to say it's a very -- very much a disappointment that the legislation spends $100 billion more than we have. in other words, it will add to the debt of the united state states $100 billion. it was just a few weeks ago that this senate voted for a paygo idea that asserted that we were going to not spend money we didn't have and we were going to pay for what we go. in other words, if we increase spending, we're either going to increase taxes or cut spending somewhere else and keep us on the right track.

did not do that. we -- this is $100 billion - is $100 billion -- $140 billion bill, actually. it has $40 billion in extending costs assumed by congress -- by the c.b.o. for continuing the lower tax rates that have been in place, most of them, for 10 years. those to be continued. and they score that as costing, i guess, some $40-some-odd billion. but that's paid for. my democratic colleagues are prepared for pay for continuing to allow the american people to keep money that's theirs, that the government hasn't assessed against them and extracted from them over a -- a 10-year period. now that's paid for through other increase in taxes and other activities that so far pay

for that. but the $104 billion in new spending, that's not paid for. regardless, the bill is a bill that adds to the deb debt $104 billion. i don't see how that's a responsible action for our congress. because last year in february, congress passed an $800 billion stimulus package, the largest spending bill in the history of america. every penny of it added to the debt of the united states. the kind of bill the likes of which congress has never, ever seen before, we did that. that was not long after th the $700 billion financial bailout package, the tarp bill. but one thing about the tarp bill, we always understood some of that money would come back. that we would get some of it

back and we would have gotten a lot more of it if they spent it to buy toxic assets instead of giving $180 billion to one insurance company. giving a huge amount of money to general motors that is unlikely ever to be paid back, buy that company. now the government basically owns an automobile company and an insurance company. not anything like what we were told when that tarp bill came before the senate. but i did believe at the time it was so unprincipled and such a -- a dangerous piece of legislation and i opposed it vigorously. but the congress insisted that we had to pass it and it passed and then we came back in january after the new president was in office and we had to stimulate the economy and so many of us warned that -- that the money was not stimulative in nature and it was not going to create the kind of jobs that we needed to create. it

-- it just was not. and i remember quoting from a "wall street journal" op-ed by gary becker, a nobel prize economics winner, and he warned thathat the bill was too little stimulative. but they had to pass it, and we -- it was supposed to be for crumbling bridges and infrastructure. well, less than 4% of the money went to crumbling bridges and infrastructure. most of it went to social programs, bailout of state, medicaid. not job-creating things. mr. becker told us in his op-ed shortly before the vote, giving his best judgment about what would happen, he told us it was not going to be a job-creating bill, that you should look for well above a dollar's growth out

of an investment of a dollar's stimulus funds, and their impression was, he and his team, it was going to be well below a dollar. so now we come back this year, we want another stimulus, another jobs bill because the first one didn't work. but now we're in a position where we are surging the debt of this country to a degree that it's never been done before. this really in many ways exceeds world war ii when we were in a life-and-death struggle. this is just the basic numbers. the basic number here is in 2008, the total american public debt was $5.8 trillion. in 2013, according to the congressional budget office, our own experts, based on the ten-year budget that the president has submitted --

congress actually ended up passing a five-year budget very similar to his first five-year budget, but this shows the track the president has proposed the country move on. in 2013, that would drowb doublo $12.3 trillion. i'm not making this up. and then in 2019, it would go up to $17.5 trillion. and c.b.o. is stating that next year's deficit will exceed this year's deficit, the deficit of the year ending september 30 last year, which was $1.4 trillion. they're estimating that next year will be about $1.5 trillion and so blithely our leadership walks in today and says we've got to extend unemployment insurance, we've got to do a number of other things and we haven't figured out a way to raise the money for it or reduce spending on programs that don't work and so we'll just borrow it too. that's not calculated in these

numbers. that wasn't legislation that was on the agenda or on the books before the congressional budget office made this scoring. and there are other things that they don't -- that we know are going to be a part of this and i'll talk about a few of them. one of the things that is in the legislation before us is what we've come to refer to as the doctor fix, and i feel strongly about that. i mean, we had to pass the balanced budget act in the late 1990's and it contained the growth of medicare spending on payments of physicians, and as the years went by, well, pretty quickly we realized that the cuts were too large, or at least congress didn't have the will to let them go into effect, and so we wiped it out and we didn't

let them come in, we put the money in on top of it. and we've been doing it now for over a decade, republicans and democrats -- each one had a majority -- instead of facing up to the shortfall in the physicians' reimbursement, we've allowed this problem to grow. and what it amounts to is if congress does not act, the doctors that are taking care of our parents and grandparents on medicare will have their payments cut 21%. a lot of physicians are losing money on medicare today. if this were to happen, it would massive quitting of taking medicare patients, they just won't do it anymore. and it's not right. you can't justify it from any logical approach to medicine, that we should cut physicians by that kind of amount. i think fundamentally we need to

restore it and put this on a path that's sustainable and a growth that's on a growth rate instead of a 21% cut. and we need to wrestle with how to do it. if you -- if you fix the doctor fiks an -- fix, and you allow a modest growth 261% ove 1% 21% ot ten years, that's a lot of money, $52 million. even by government standards. the annual budget of my state of alabama is about, less than $10 billion, $7 billion or $8 billion for the whole state, including education. $250 billion is a lot of money. but millions of americans are treated every day, our seniors are, by physicians and they paid into the medicare program for 40

years, being told that when they get to be seniors and retirement age that they'll get basically free physician services. so it's a commitment we made. maybe it was improvident at the time. maybe it could have been smarter, the way it was done, but that's what we told them and we have to honor that in principle today, i believe. so this bill attempts to deal with it by extending it, as we've done each time, one year, and that's what i call a budget gimmick. it's a misrepresentation of the true state of our finances. because one what will occur is that we'll put the money in for this year -- and it's going to cost $7.3 billion to fix this

year's doctors' payments. but do you know what the c.b.o. scores when they score what our debt will be? they assume that the law will go back into effect and the next year there will be a 21% or maybe the then a 22% or 23% cutn physician payments, and they'll assume that that's going to be true for nine years, leaving about a $240 billion extra money that we in congress can spend. except it's going to be paid. we can't cut the physicians that much money. we know we're going to fix it, right now at one year at a time. we don't have the courage or the will to fix it permanently like we should, it appears, so we'll just fix it and we'll use that. and then they can make the deficit look better than that.

this budget, this number that c.b.o. has scored, they don't -- they don't assume that the doctors are going to be increased 21%. they assume doctors are going to be cut because that's what the law is, unless we act to change it. they make an estimate based on what the law is today. and so we fix the doctor for one year, but for nine years out they assume that we've got a lot more money than we have because we're going to do it every year. but this kind of gimmickry is what makes us -- put us in this fix. and let me say this. an attempt was made earlier this year to do a doctor fix outside the health care reform bill. that was a very duplicitous act, in my opinion. i have to be frank with my colleagues.

why? what was wrong about that? well, the president has always said that in health care reform and fixing our health care problem, what we needed to do was deal with physician payments, the s.g.r. but when they sat in that secret room around here and moving the money around to try to figure out how to present a bill and plop it out on the floor and asked us all to vote for it, they had a problem. they had promised that the bill would be deficit-neutral. but if they fixed the doctor fix, it was going to cost $250 billion, and they couldn't make the numbers work. so you know what the democratic leadership tried to do? they brought it up separately, were going to pass a bill in the legislature, in the congress, that would have funded the fix of the doctors. every penny of it goes straight

to the debt, but because they took it out of health care reform and sat it over here, they were going to say the health care reform didn't cost any money. and i can dispute that and it's not accurate. but that's what they did. and the -- but do you know what happened? 13 democrats said no, to their great credit, under, i'm sure, pressure. they decided, i just am not going to vote for another big debt increase on a bill that's not paid for. we ought to make this paid for. they're listening to their constituents back home and they're concerned about it. i know colleagues on both sides of the aisle are definitely concerned about this deficit. but i just want to say that it would have passed and it would have been another hiding of the debt by doing it in that fashion. so since that failed, we now have it in this bill for one year and it's going to be unpaid

for and it will go straight to the debt. so i think people who voted against the last doctor fix because it was not paid for and was added to the debt should vote against this legislation because it continues to take us in that direction. and finally, mr. president, i will just say that the entire debt process that we're on is dangerous to our economy in the long run. this much money being poured into the economy, even unwisely spent, as mr. becker warned us a year ago, even though it's not wisely spent, has got to have some positive impact. for heavens sakes, you borrow $800 billion from the future and you pump it into this economy today, that's got to -- and now we're talking about another hundred billion dollars we've

borrowed from the future and pump into the economy today. those kind of actions got to have some positive impact, at least in the short run. but nothing comes from nothing. there is no free lunch. somebody will pay, don't we kn know? can anybody dispute that? that anything that we take in today and -- and distribute among ourselves and enjoy today, somebody paid for? who's going to pay for this? well, let me tell you, interest on the debt, last year the interest on the debt of the united states was $170 billion. actually, i think maybe the year before last. that's a lot of money. federal highway bill is $40 billion. interest on the debt's $170 billion. alabama, an average sized state of 4 million people, our general fund budget, less than $10 billion. interest on the debt,

$170 billion. but because we're tripling the debt -- because we're tripling the debt in ten years, in 2019, according to the congressional budget office, in that year alone, people still alive and well in the united states and making some money and trying to feed their families will pay $800 billion on the debt in interest in that year alone, $800 billion. this is a burden that that economy will be carrying for years. and, by the way, there's no plan to pay it down. in fact, in 2019, it's projected that the deficit will be almost a trillion dollars that year. but the debt -- the deficit, the shortfall in income over expenditures, in 2019 will still be growing, the debt will still be surging. and greece, that's in such a terrible fix today, their debt

amounts to about 12.7% of the entire gross domestic product of the nation of greece. they're considered to be very unstable. their economy is thoroughly in danger. they're going through some significant reforms to try to work their way out of it. our debt-to-g.d.p. this year is 9.7%. this is one of the highest in the world. and it's a danger that we face. so to get down to the nub of the matter, i'm not going to vote for this bill. and i am sure some of my colleagues will say that's because you don't like the unemployed and you don't want to help them. i do want to help them. i'm sure it's going to be because some of my colleagues

will say that you don't want to pay the doctors, you don't like doctors. and so, you're mean and cold-hearted, and don't worry about the debt, sessions. but at some point we've got to bring our house under control, just like a family budget. you cannot continue to spend dramatically more than you take in, and we passed a resolution -- this senate passes a bill that's supposed to limit expenditures through paygo mechanism. it was predicted then that people weren't seriously passing it. this will be the second time i guess we've voted in a manner of weeks to break through pa. this is $100 million. and i would suggest that there are a number of things that can

be done. one of them is, we can go back and look at the unspent stimulus money. there's about $170 billion not only not spent but unobligated at this point. that money can be utilized to take care of some of these needs that we have. and there's just no doubt that we could do that. we could find other mechanisms to deal with this, and one of the things we're going to have to face up to is that there are a lot of programs in this government that are not returning value for the taxpayers. we're extracting money from the taxpayers, and we're sending it out to programs that are not producing any legitimate return. and they should be eliminated. when is the last time we ever eltsed any expenditure in this country, where we can see that it's not been effective? a lost reports show a lot of our government programs are

ineffective. there are a lot of things that we could do to enhance our productivity as a national government, to eliminate this surging in debt, and get us out of the path that we're on that i think leads to the likelihood of financial problems in the future. alice rivlin, the former o.m.b. director under president clinton and now at the brookings institution -- i believe it was her testimony -- no, no, it was another witness who testified that their studies show that when you carry this kind of debt, the debt i'm talking about, the interest and other things that occur will pull down your growth, economic growth, and most people know that economic growth is what will get us out of this fix, if we can. but when you're burdened with high interest rates, when you're going out into the marketplace,

the united states government is, and competing with private businesses to get people to loan you money, you tend to drive up interest rates, you tend to reduce the amount of money available in the marketplace for private businesses, and they predicted that it would at least reduce the growth by one percentage point in the future. well, when you're talking about 2%, you drop to 1% growth, or 3% and you drop to 2% growth, this is serious. so it is no doubt that this kind of debt will crowd out spending, when you've got $800 billion in the tenth year just to pay interest. that would be the biggest chendzs expenditure that the government has on any account, that that is the problem. so, mr. president, i would say that it's time to take this bill back.

let's look at it. let's see if we can't contain some of the spending that's in it. and let's see if we can't pay for the rest of it and produce a bill that we can be proud of that will help people in need without socking it to the debt of america. i thank the chair and yield the floor. mr. durbin: mr. president? the presiding officer: the assistant majority leader. mr. durbin: i ask consent to speak as ifn morning business. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, so ordered. mr. durbin: mr. president, i don't quarrel with the conclusion of the senator from alabama about our national debt and the threat it poses, and i certainly understand that we're borrowing a lot of money from countries overseas, and we want to see that come to and he. that kind of indebtedness leads to a dependence which is not healthy for our economy or future or children. i certainly would agree with the senator from alabama on that. i wasn't here for his entire presentation but there are several things that i think should be made for the record. the point is that some nine years ago when president william clinton left office, he left

office with a national debt, total accumulated national debt throughout our history of about $5.7 trillion. but when you left office, we were in surplus. we were actually generating a surplus in the federal treasury. and the surplus was being used to extend the life of the social security trust fund. we were adding more and more years of solvency to social security because we were generating a surplus. it is hard to imagine that this was the case only nine years ago and yet it was. and the government was then handed over to president george w. bush, a new administration, an administration that ran on a platform of fiscal conservatism. and dealing with overspending and the national debt. and what happened at the end of eight years? at the end of the eight years, the national debt had grown from $5.7 trillion on the last day that william jefferson clinton

was in office to almost $13 trillion when president george w. bush left office eight years laimplet more than doubled in that period of time. what happened? first, the situation beyond president bush's control -- 9/11. devastating to our economy. we know what happened. people stopped purchasing, stopped traveling, there was a general concern about the safety of our country and the certainty of our future. and that took its toll on our economy. there's no question about that. and i'm not going to go into any suggestion that president bush was culpable in that regard. he was a victim, as we were as nation, on 9/11. but conscious decisions were then made by this administration, after 9/11. for instance, the decision to invade iraq. it wasn't a decision i didn't share. i was one of 23 senators who voted against the invasion of

iraq. and i happen to think that was the right decision, to stay out of that war. but, as a nation, we decided to go forward. congress voted that way. and president bush said we are going to wage this war, but we will not pay for it. we will take the cost of this war and add it to our national debt. now, if you look back in history to world war ii, for example, remember -- i think most of us remember either reading about or seeing some evidence of war bonds, borrowing from the american people to pay for war. and yet we incurred a massive debt at the same time. wars are costly. president bush initiated this war in iraq and afghanistan and paid for neither one. that added to our national debt. he also did something that had never been done in the history of the united states: in the midst of a war, pressure said, we are going to cut taxes -- presiden president bush saide going to cut taxes. we know in a war we need more

money, not just for the ordinary course of expenses in government, but also because of war costs. instead, the president cut taxes on the wealthiest americans. then came a troam modify the medicare program for prescription drugs -- to modify the medicare program for prescription drugs. we could have saved a lot of money if we had build in competition for the pharmaceutical companies. the pharmaceutical companies didn't want that. they prevailed. we ended up passing the medicare pharmaceutical program and it cost us $400 billion add to the d you start adding these things up, you realize at the end of the eight year, a president who had promised to be a fiscal conservative left us with twice the national debt that he inherited. and the weakest economy america had seen since the great depression. when president obama took the oath of office a little over a year ago, he inherited this weak economy and two wars. he inherited another $1 trillion

in debt that came out of this weak economy as soon as he walked into the office. so when my republican colleagues come to the floor and talk about how insensitive democrats are to our national debt, i have to remind them, when they were in control and their president was in control, we more than doubled the national debt, we had two wars unpaid for, we cut taxes on the wealthiest people in america, we added a medicare program that wasn't paid for, we left the economy in shambles and left a debt for the next president. it wasn't a welcome that most presidents would like at the white house. now come the republicans and say, well, the things we need to do at this moment in time with all of our unemployment is to cut government spending. i have to say to them, i want to cut otowasteful spending, but if you'll ask any credible mainline economist, they will tell you that cutting government spending in general is exactly the wrong thing to do your economy is in recession. what you need to do is to infuse the economy with investments and

spending that will keep aggregate demand growing for gods and services, keeping people in business, hiring people who then pay their taxes and go on to buy products that help others. that is the nature of the kind of economic activity that brings you out of a recession. so when the republicans argue cut spending in the midst of a recession, they're going to dig the hole deeper. there will be less money spent in the economy. there will be less demand for goods and services, fewer people working, fewer businesses surviving. the recession will get worse instead of better. the bill before us is a bill that has several provisions in it and one of them deals with providing unemployment insurance for those who have no work. now, i will concede the fact that we never had dreamed this recession would go on as long as it has. but for many people, some have been out of work for over a year, two years. they're des. there are five unemployed people for every job in america. we provide about $1,100 or

$1,200 a month, hardly a sum that you can live on comfortably in most places in merge but that $1,200 a month keeps families together, barely. and now republicans come to the floored and say, this is a serious mistake. providing unemployment insurance according to the senate republican whip, senator kyl, he thinks creates a disincentive for people who look for work. well, i would challenge him. i've talked to the people who are out of work and have yet to find any who believe that they are basking in the glow of unemployment insurance. it is barely enough to get by, and most people are exhausting their savings. secondly, this bill is going to provide for additional help to pay for health insurance for the unemployed. if you lose your job, the first casualty is your health insurance. the president said, tweendz have our government pick up $-- we need to have our government pick up 65% of the premiums for the unemployment.

they run about $1,200 for a family in my state. so it would eat up virtually every penny of unemployment just to keep your health insurance plan. we pick up two-thirds of the plan and people hang on so that they can keep their health insurance. what difference disco it make? if you lose your health insurance, you may qualify for medicaid, which is a government health insurance plan which we will ultimately pay for as taxpayers. you will certainly lose your continuation of coverage so that if someone in your family has a preexisting condition, you may find it difficult to ever qualify for insurance again. until you find that job and get into a group policy. if you have a child has a asthmatic or has a serious illness, you may find that child uninsurable because you've lost your health insurance. when members come an say they're go to vote against health insurance, they are voting against millions of americans

who are flat ow of luck and have no place to turn and are merely trying make it and get by. part of this measure is paid for in offsets and sources of revenue. i certainly applaud that. i thank the senator from montana, the chairman of the senate finance committee. but then come the republicans and say, well, let's put more money into this for all of the things included and take it out of the stimulus package. remember, the stimulus package was the president's way of trying to keep this economy moving, with tax cuts for working families, safety net for awe those out of net, money for local governments that have seen a downturn in revenues, and investments in america's future. i have a seen some of those investments. and i would just say that they are investments that will pay off in jobs today and in assets in america that will serve us for a long time to come. two weeks ago i was up on the west side of the chicago in austin where they opened a new family care health center.

it is a clinic for those -- primary care clinic for those who don't have health insurance or don't have much money where they can see a doctor. it is going to be the nicest building on the block. it is beautiful. a fourth of the money came from the president's stimulus package. they put a lot of people to work building it. it has created an asset that will serve that neighborhood and city for a long ring long time to covment down in caseyville, illinois, i saw another project with about $1.6 million of stimulus money that is going to build a community retirement home in this eample area. i saw the people working on the job this week. and ultimately beyond the hundreds that will build this project, some 50 will be full-time employees. we're investing back in the community in high-speed rail, in highways, in bridges, in basic infrastructure, and in things that will serve us for a long time to come. the senator from alabama says let's stop doing that.

let's stop putting that money into those investments. well, i think that's shortsighted. i think what we need to do is to follow the president's lead and to make the investments in our economy today to get this economy chugging and moving forward. that, to me, is the first step in reducing our long-term deficit. until we get out of this recession, get people back to work, paying their taxes, the deficit will continue to grow. what's the second thing we can do to deal with our deficit? health care cost. health care costs are going through the roof. i've said on the floor before that the mayor of kankakee, illinois, told me last week that she just got her health insurance bill for the 200 city employees for next year and the premiums are going up 83%. she's going to cut back on coverage, more co-pays, more deductibles and hope to get it down to a 50% increase. it will mean in a city hard pressed to meet basic needs, there will be an additional $1 million in health insurance premium costs next year for even

less coverage. that story is being repeated over and over again across the united states. on sunday at a press conference in chicago with four small businesses, each one told the same story, that they reached the point where they couldn't afford health insurance for themselves as owners or for their employees. they told of these terrible situations where some of them had children who were literally dropped from coverage because they couldn't continue to pay the high premiums that went through the roof. the republican side of the aisle has told us stop this debate on health care reform. let us stop and start over. i will tell you as the president said the other day, the health insurance companies are not starting over. the health insurance companies are continuing to do what they know how to do, and that is to raise prices. goldman sachs, of course, is a firm most people are familiar with, and they put out a report just very recently about what they considered the best thing for the health insurance

industry. so, goldman sachs said in this article that was published in huffington pose, what the firm sees as the best path forward for the private insurance industry's bottom line is, to be blunt, inaction. it is advised that if no reform -- health care reform -- is passed, earnings per share would grow an estimated 10% each year through 2010 through 2019 and the value of stock would rise an estimated 59%. the next best thing for the insurance industry according to goldman sachs would be if the legislation passed by the senate finance committee is watered down significantly. this says that the best way to reach higher profitability for health insurance is for us to do nothing. the second best way is to do very little. that is what we're being asked to do by the republican side of the aisle. either do nothing or do very little. take baby steps. don't really deal with the

issue. i can tell that you's not going to solve the problem. if we are going to provide competition and choice for small businesses and people buying health insurance, we should offer them what we have as members of congress. if it's good enough for us, wouldn't it be good enough for the rest of america? our plan's pretty good. it's called the federal employees health benefit program. eight million federal employees and their families are there. it's been in existence for 40 years. my wife and i have an open enrollment period to choose from nine different plans from my home state of illinois. these are plans that have to meet the basic requirements of illinois, so they are not plans that are worthless. and they are plans that we pick based on our state in life. my wife and i are at a point where we buy the biggest plan, the high-option plan. the federal government, of course, pays a share of the premium costs. we pay the rest. we would pay less if we had less coverage. but if we don't like the plan, next year we have open

enrollment again. pick another one. what a great idea for consumers to be able to pick and choose, to go xiong like you would for an -- to go shopping like you would for an automobile. pick the one that you can afford, the one that gives you the coverage you need. if that's good enough for members of the congress, senate and house, why isn't it good enough for america? why don't we have exchanges to choose from the best private health insurance plan that meets their pocket needs and health needs? that's what our bill does. many on the republican side have condemned it as socialism. socialism. the government administers that, at least sets up the plans on the insurance exchange. guess what? every senator's plan would be socialistic by that definition. i don't see them rushing down to cancel that coverage. they love it. i do too. it is the best health insurance you could ask for. to require minimum requirements in terms of the plan, what

coverage it will have, that's what our plans do. and when we say do that in the bill, they say there it is, government-run health insurance. it's not. private health insurance plans. and there are 50 million americans without insurance. we provide coverage for 30 million of them. those are people who, when they get sick, go to the hospital, get taken care of and the cost of their care is passed on to everybody else who has health insurance. that's not fair. it costs us a lot of money as individuals. we pay $1,000 a year in extra premiums for the uninsured. well, our idea is to bring people under coverage so that when they go to the hospital, their care is paid for. not by us, but in this case either by private health insurance or by medicaid, the government health insurance plan. when we ask the republicans if we cover 30 million in our approach how many do you cover of the 50 million uninsured? their answer is 3 million. that's not much of an effort if you think about it. i can understand why we need to

do more. there is one last point i'll make -- two, as a matter of fact. one is that if we're going to deal with health insurance in an honest way, we need to have, at least tell the health insurance companies that the party's over. first, their antitrust exemption which they have had for 65 years, that has to come to an end. why should they be allowed to collude and divide up the market at the expense of consumers? we ought to put an end to it. secondly, we've got to put an end to the awful practices by many health insurance companies to deny coverage to individuals because of preexisting conditions, for example, or to say if you get really sick they'll just cut you off in terms of how much they'll pay. those things are gross abuses, and they need to change. the republicans have yet to offer a plan that deals with those gross insurance abuses. so their baby steps don't even deal with the serious issues we face. finally, when it comes to medicare, 40 million americans count on it.

those who are seniors and disabled. and it only has about nine years of solvency left. our bill doubles the life of medicare another nine or ten years of longevity. that's good for seniors and it's good for all of us. we want to cut out the waste in medicare -- and there is waste. we want to provide basic quality care. but doing nothing, as many republicans counsel us to do on health care reform, means that medicare will go broke in nine years. i don't want to be around here to see that happen. i want to be part of the solution. the final point i'll make is this: we started off talking about a deficit, debt. if you don't deal with health care costs and bringing them down in this country, we can't raise enough money in taxes to keep wup this skyrocketing cost. state governments, local governments, federal governments alike will all be faced with this kind of increased bill and increased debt and increased deficit each year. that's the reality of doing nothing on health care reform when it comes to deficit and debt. mr. president, i want to ask unanimous consent to add in the

record a "new york times" piece relative to the health care insurance industry as well as this analysis of managed care by goldman sachs and several articles which outline exactly what's going to happen. the health care insurance industry is praying that we do nothing because their profits will continue to skyrocket. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent these articles be placed in the record, and i yield the floor. mr. inhofe: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma is recognized. mr. inhofe: mr. president, i ask i be recognized in morning business for such time as i shall consume. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. inhofe: mr. president, let me just respond to a couple of the remarks that my good friend, the senior senator from illinois, has said. i listen to this all the time when people talk about during the bush administration the costs of -- that have gone up, the deficits and all this stuff. you know, and i appreciate the

fact that the senator from illinois did state that the situation was a little different when president bush came into office, because there were -- of course 9/11 happened and we ended up in a couple of wars, and that made it very difficult. but that's understating the situation. what we've ended up with right after the clinton administration -- let's keep in mind, and i remember so well on this floor, and i was a member of the senate armed services committee at that time and actually was a member of the house armed services committee when president clinton first came in. the euphoric attitude that everyone had at that time was that the war is over and, therefore -- remember you talk about the peace dividends and all this stuff? the war is over and we no longer need to have a strong national defense. that is what they were saying. they used different words but that was it. they started cutting our defense system. if you look at it, i have a chart but this isn't it because i didn't know i was going to be

saying anything about this, showing what happened, the the demise of our ability to defend ourselves during the clinton administration. we went through the same thing back during the carter administration. people remember the hollow forest at that time. but during the clinton administration we went down and started degrading our military. it was reduced by 40% from what it was when he took office during those eight years. when i say 40% reduction, i'm talking about end strength. i'm talking about military expenditures. so the problem that the, that president bush when he came into office is not just that that two wars broke out, but they broke out when we had a defense system that had been reduced by 40%. the second thing that happened during that time -- and this is by the admission. i remember al gore, senator gore at that time made the statement prior to that that we -- the

recession actually started in march of the previous year before the second bush administration started. now, it's kind of an interesting thing. people forget this, that for every 1% drop in economic activity, that translates into about $40 billion of revenue or of lost revenue. turning it around, for every 1% increase in economic activity, that increases revenues about $40 billion when that happens. and, of course, so we started out with a reduced military fighting, negotiating two wars and with the recession at the same time. and obviously that had to have very adverse effects. i just want to, before we get carried away with the senator making the statement that he voted against the iraq war going into the iraq war, let me just remind my fellow senators that i happen to have been privileged right after the first gulf war,

and that was when saddam hussein, all these atrocities had taken place. we had what they called the first freedom flight. that is when we went back into kuwait to see what the situation was in kuwait. and it was so close to the end of the war that the iraqis didn't realize the war was over, and they were still fighting. you remember they were burning the oil fields and the wind would shift. all of a sudden it would be daytime and it would turn into night. and i remember so well going back there -- and by the way, i was with nine other people. there were some democrats -- tony convey low, who use -- tony coelho, who aousd to be the whip of the house when i was serving there. but alexander hague, a man we revered, alexander haig was there and we were watching and looking to see the remnants of the first gulf war, saddam hussein. here's a guy -- and i had a young girl with me who had left,

had fled kuwait. she was going back. she wanted to see if her house, a palace on the persian gulf, was still there. when we got there, we found out that had been used by saddam hussein as one of his headquarters. and she wanted to go up in her bedroom. she was seven years old. she wanted to see if her little animals were still there. we got up there; they had used her bedroom for a torture chamber. there were body parts stuck to the walls. a little kid we saw had his ears cut off because he was caught carrying an american flag. i can remember the mass graves. we stood and looked in the mass graves that saddam hussein had tortured these people. we had people who were, he had sentenced to death who were begging to be dropped in to, to ease into the acid vats headfirst so they would die quicker. this is the type of thing taking place. here is a guy that murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people up in the curd area, people -- up in the kurd area,

people by the most painful way of dying. yet, to suggest that we should not have gone back in to finish him off is, i think, is just unacceptable. now, before i finish with the comments that were made by the senator from illinois, i would only mention when he talked about how george bush came into office -- george w. bush -- and he cut taxes for the rich and all that, i recall one time in history, well actually it's happened several times in history. it happened right after world war i. they passed tax increases to support the war. when the war was over they said they would repeal the taxes. it didn't increase revenue. it reduced revenue. that was forgotten until one of our great presidents came along. his name was john kennedy. john kennedy, said that we're going to have to have an increased revenue to pay

for all of these society programs. he said the best way to increase revenue is decrease marginal rates. and so he did. he dropped then down from 90% to 70% or something like that and in the period of time -- in the next six years it was the -- the taxes went down, the increase in the revenue was just phenomenon. what he said was right. the last time i checked, mr. president, president john kennedy was a democrat, not a republican. so i don't know where they -- they forgot that along wait. we saw when reagan came into office, he actually made those cuts too, dramatic cuts. and i remember that the -- the -- i'm going from memory now. but the amount of money that came in for marginal rates in 1980, when he took office, this is president reagan, wa was $244 billion. when left office, it wa was $488 billion. it doubled in the period of time, the largest tax -- reductions in history. revenues increased when tax

reductions went down. well, anyway, that -- that all ended when the kennedy -- the clinton administration came in. we all remember the 1993 tax increases, the greatest tax increases in about four decades. that's when they increased them on everything. but the bottom line is, yet, he did cut taxes. and that had the effect of increasing revenues. and i -- i think when we talked about how the deficit, as mentioned, that was inherited by -- by the -- by -- by this -- this president, president obama, we have to remember that the deficits during the bush administration, if you add them all up, they were just a little bit more than the deficit in the first year -- the first year of the obama administration. now, as far as his comments about the $787 billion stimulus bill, you know, that wouldn't have been that bad of an idea --

i opposed it, of course, but it didn't stimulate. all of the distribution of wealth and i tried to have an amendment on there and its cosponsored by senator boxer to quadruple the amount of money that went into roads an highways. didn't work. they tee feeted it. it could -- defeated it. it could have had the opportunity to really do something. the last about the government-run systems. i thought it was interesting when the senator from illinois talked about the wonderful opportunities that i have and he has choosing from the private sector, good coverages. i think what he's describing is what we have today. i mean, i -- i agree with what he said in that respect. but when you talk about a system that is very similar to the canadian system, all you have to do is go up in the northern pat of the united states, -- part of the united states and go to the mayo clinic and look at the people who come down from canada because they can't get the kind

of treatment they want. i agree with my friend from alabama when he was talking about describing what we're up against. that's not why i'm here though. i came down to announce the introduction of a bill, it's s. 3095, it's called the honest expenditure limitation program, it's called "help", it's the "help" act of 2010. on february 1, 2010, president obama released the fiscal year 2011 budget with a funding request of $3.8 trillion. in it he announced a three-year freeze of discretionary spending for all nonsecurity related agencies at the fiscal year 2010 levels, which amounts to a total spending level of $460 billion each year for those -- those agencies. nonsecurity spend something defined as all agencies except -- except the department of defense, the department of homeland security, the

department of veterans' affairs, the department of state, and one of the national security related agencies in department of energy. the administration's office of management an budget estimates that this -- this initiative will save $250 billion over the coming decade. now, keep in mind that's $250 billion from where it started, which i'll address in main. on the surface it gives the president the appearance of being fiscally prudent. something that the american people have been demanding of their government, especially in recent months. but when i look closely at the numbers, he's presented, it's clear as day why he's able to offer this spending freeze without batting an eye. for one, the discretionary spending has increased by 20% in just two years. secondly, the massiv massive $787 billion stimulus package provided substantial spending cushion for the

spending. let's look at that. we're talking about $787 billion in a stimulus bill, but we're also talking about having increase from fiscal year 2008 to fiscal year 2010, by 20%. so what he's doing here is raising it 20% and then freezing it there. what he ought to do, if he had to raise it 20%, is start bringing it down. additionally this spending freeze proposal does too little to improve the long-term fiscal outlet of this nation. we know where we stand at the edge of disaster. doug ellmandorf, the director of the nonpartisan congressional budget office recently testified about our nation's fiscal outlook before congress and he didn't deliver very good news. i'll tell you what he said. he said last year our budget deficit was a staggerin staggering $1.4 trillion -- remember a minute ago i said that if you add up all of the -- let's say -- that's actually more than all of the last six

years of the bush administration's deficits. that apartments to less than the $1.04 ther $1.4 trillion. he said last year our budget deficit was a staggerin staggering $1.4 billion. he expects 2010 deficit only slightly lower than$1.3 trillion or 9.2% of g.d.p. looking further out the average deficit between now and 2010 is forecast to be $600 billion per year. now, this is all coming from ellmandorf, this is the c.b.o. additionally c.b.o. estimates that amount of debt held by the public would skyrocket t to $15 trillion by 2020. if it sounds like a staggering numberingnumberings -- number, s because it is. when you consider the amount of interest that we'll be paying to china and japan and others, it's embarrassing. $700 billion each and every year in 2020 and beyond.

if we do nothing about our rising deficit levels. in other words, we keep what we're doing right now with the administration, with the help of the democratic legislators in both houses, it's going to be $700 trillion. now, let's do the math and put that in perspective. if $700 billion of interest were paid evenly by every household in the united states today, it would amount to more than $600,000 per household. that's kind of interesting. i always try to do my math. when i was fighting the effort by this administration to have a cap-and-trade bill which would have been somewhere betwee between $300 billion and $400 billion, whether you're talking about the mccain-lieberman cap-and-trade bill of 2003 or the mccain lieberman bill of 2005 or the bills of 2008 or later on the boxer-sanders bill or going back to kyoto, it will cost betwee

between $300 billion and $400 billion. i don't understand when we talk about billions and trillions of dollars, what really we're talking about. i do my math all the time and say how much is this going to cost my average tack paying -- tax paying families in my home state of oklahoma, it amounted to $1 00 each year, this would have been if we were successful in passing the cap-and-trade bill. i don't care what lindsey graham or john kerry say. that's history now. people are not going to pay that kind of thing to get nothing for it. back in this -- when we were talking about the $700 billion interest they're paid every year -- that's what's going to happen by 2020 with this administration if we let it continue. that would cost each tax paying family in the -- in the united states of america $6,000 per household. each and every year after 2020. put it another way, the entire financial industry bailout, you remember the famous bank bailout? i know republicans were partially responsible for that

too. that happened -- that vote took place in this senate on october 1, 2008. it was back during the bush administration. that was back when hank paulson came and told everyone that he was going to save the nation and the republicans bought into it and many of my good conservative republican friends and voted for a $700 billion bailout. i did not. and a few others didn't. but the vast majority did. that's kind of interesting. that $700 billion is the same figure that we're using right now that it would cost people in -- by the year 2020 just the interest alone. but the $700 billion that we could spend on interest in 2020 happens each and every year. and we don't get anything for it. it's just the cost of living having this much debt in the first place. at this rate, it will become more and more difficult for government to fund priorities that we truly think are important like national infrastructure spending. for some reason nobody around

here wants to spend money on infrastructure. i know i get criticized because i know i'm considered to be a conservative. i've been rated as the number one most conservative member of the senate by human events an last week by the national journal. you're looking at a conservative. i'm a big spend in some -- spender enemy some areas, one is defending america and the other is infrastructure. we have a crumbling infrastructure system. look what happened up in -- in -- in some -- the bridges crumbling down. i guess that was -- that was in minnesota. and people dying up there. our infrastructure is crumbling. it's aging and we need to do something about it. but i can't find anyone who wants to spend money on infrastructure. instead we're spending money on social engineering. but to combat this several proposals have been recently introduced that i support. the house -- in the house congressman pence and -- and

hensarling introduced a constitutional amendment that would cap the spending at 20% of the economy. 20% of g.d.p. it's one way of doing this. i'm all for it. additionally senator demint has introduced an amendment for a balanced federal budget. i support all of that. i support these endeavors. however some of my colleagues are supporting a year-long moratorium. it was reported on monday that speaker pelosi suggested a year-long earmark moratorium. my colleagues need to consider a couple of issues in talking about earmarks. one, an earmark moratorium does nothing to combat the increasing government spending. in other words, you have a moratorium on earmarks, it doesn't save a cent. funding that would have been spent in earmarks will simply be spent by the obama administration, by their bureaucrats. i suppose it should come as no surprise that speaker pelosi supports the democrat

administration fully funding its own priorities. secondly, last year's earmarks accounted for only 1.5% of discretionary spending. 1.5%. now where's the focus on the other 98.5%? where's the focus on what i call bureaucratic earmarks? here's what happens, if you stop earmarks -- if you read the constitution, article 1, section 9 of the constitution, it says what we're supposed to be doing here in the house and in the senate. we're supposed to be making priorities. we're supposed to be doing the spending and watching the spending that our founding fathers recognized that we do a better job knowing what our needs are in the local communities than the central government does. but if we let the president in the president's budget dictate everything and then we try to make changes within that and people say, oh, that's an earmark. wait a minute, if you don't that, then you're have having the unelected bureaucrats in the obama administration do the earmarking. so the president earmarks too. if you don't believe it, look at

the appropriations conference report. where is the focus on the vast majority of discretionary spending which is dolled out every year by bureaucrats. unelected bureaucrats. i wish more people would understand this. because it's -- it's -- i find that a lot of the people that hammer and dell going the ear -- dem gag the earmark are the biggest spenders. it's a nice way of deviating from your behavior. i thinking is needs to be done immediately. today i'm introducing the "help" act, call the honest expenditure limitation program. the act of 2010. now the bill does three things. one, it places caps on nonsecurity discretionary spending, which i define exactly as president obama's budget does. i do this because i want to show the similarities between what h wants to do and what i really want to do. the second thing it enforces the caps by sequestering any

spending through across the board cuts, a process that currently applies to mandatory spending but not to discretionary. and, three, it disallows congress from evading the he is questions traition cuts -- sequestration cuts through a 60-vote of order. that's going to make it pretty tough to get through. rather than simply freezing the spending at -- as -- as the president wants to do at the 2010 levels -- let's keep in mind that he increased the discretionary spending for a year by 20% and then he wants to freeze it there. instead of doing that for three years and allowing spending to explode again, which is what his proposal does, my bill will actually cut discretionary spending for nonsecurity agencies, the same exemptses that he has back to -- exemptions that he has back to fiscal 2008 level. it's about $400 billion a year. spending would then be frozen there for five years, not three

years, but five years, through 2020. so rather than simply freezing spending levels for only three years and at artificially high levels as the president's proposal does, my initiative would hold that federal government more accountable for the next 10 years by creating real, meaningful spending cuts and then placing the cap at reduced levels. the difference in savings between my plan and president obama's plan is clearly displayed on this chart, if you look at the chart, the blue bars represent how nonsecurity related discretionary spending levels will rise over the next 10 years if allowed to increase -- this is according to o.m.b.'s numbers. these are their numbers. the red line illustrates the impact of obama's plan. and we'll have spending is allowed to increase following the three-year freezing. on the estimates of o.m.b., the office of management and budget. they're nonpartisan, by the way, and they're very accurate.

clearly the $250 billion in savings is not substantial when spread over a ten-year period. it really doesn't tighten the belt at all. my proposal is represented in the green bars. the green bars right here. this is the spending levels. and watch how they go over during the period of time of from 2010-2020. we phase down the spending levels from their high point in 2010 to a more reasonable level between 2011-2015 then stay flat thereafter. my plan, when compared to the blue bars of doing nothing -- if you don't do anything at all -- will save more than $880 billion over the next ten years. let me say that again. by reducing nonsecurity discretionary spending levels using the same definition of non -- nonsecurity as the president's using, to 2008 levels and then holding them there for -- through 2020, our nation can save nearly a

trillion dollars. and when i compare my plan directly with president obama's, my plan saves $634 billion more than his. i made my estimates using the methodologies of the obama administration office of management and budget and they are probably conservative. first off, if you look at the history of discretionary spending, annual increases are far greater than what they assume that they are here. secondly, we don't estimate how much we'd be saving in interest by not having to borrow the spending that we're cutting. so overall, this proposal will likely save much more than the nearly $1 trillion that we estimate here. now, if we do nothing to curtail skyrocketing government spending or merely freeze it at an artificially high elevated level for a few years, as the obama administration is doing -- trying to do -- we will find ourselves in a tragic situation. the clock is ticking. congress is going to have to act. some of my colleagues will probably attack this proposal

because the hardest thing to do around here is to cut spending. without cutting spending, we only leave one alternative and that is massively raise -- raising taxes. that is not what the american people want and not what would harm our economic recovery. you know, around these halls here, we seem to forget, most of the members of the senate have forgotten what happened last august during the august recess when they had all the tea parties out there and people were yelling and screaming and wanting to get involved. people were getting involved in government that -- in politics that never have been involved before, and they were concerned primarily about two things, that was -- at that time, it was the government-run health care and the second thing was cap-and-trade, which would have been the largest cap -- tax increase in the history of this country. but you know, right now, the obama administration is saying, i don't care what anybody says, we're going to stay with it, we're going to be tough, we're going to have this government-run health care system and we're going to bring back cap-and-trade.

and -- and just completely forgotten what happened. i have to agree with senator mcconnell. i said, i just -- i just hope that people remember that all the way through the election, because that's what's going to have a repeat of what i remember in 1,000 -- in 1994. others charge this proposal will harm the ability of citizens to keep in the time of need, but that's what's important to realize about this spending reduction is that it will have no impact on mandatory spending programs, like unemployment benefits, like social security, medicare, medicaid. those programs are in need of reform, but this bill doesn't do it. this only affects the agencies identified by the president -- by president obama's as nonsecurity. my budget, the help act of 2010, would take president obama's proposed spending freeze and make it truly impactful. rather than merely freezing the spending at an inflated 20% increase of the 2010 level, this

will bring it back down to 2008. i think this can be done. i really do believe that the american people are going to start getting involved in this stuff. they haven't forgotten. i was down giving a speech in florida, a bunch of people -- this was actually club for growth. and they're a group concerned about spending. and i told them some of the things we could be doing, some of the things to watch out for. watch out for those that say you can have a moratorium on earmarks and somehow affect -- you know, if you affected all of that, it would be something like 1.5%. this bill that i have affects the other 98.5%. this is the spending. we're going to have to do it right now. if we wait and each month that goes by, as i said, the budget that he increased in his deficit was as much as the last six entire years of the -- of the bush administration. so this is the help act. it's one that will work and it's

one that's come along at the right time. now is the time toage. with that, mr. president, i will yield the -- now is the time to act. with that, mr. president, i will yield the floor, and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. durbin: mr. president i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: i ask consent that notwithstanding its adoption, the isakson amendment be further modified with the changes at the desk. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, so ordered. mr. durbin: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that at 2:00 p.m. wednesday, march 10, the senate resume consideration of h.r. 4213 and all postcloture time be considered expired and upon disposition of the pending amendments, no further amendments or motions be in order, the substitute amendment as amended be agreed to, that the senate then proceed to vote on the motion to invoke cloture on h.r. 4213, as amended, with

the mandatory quorum waived that. if cloture is invoked, that all postcloture time be yielded ba back, the bill as amend be read a third time and the senate then proceed to the vote on the passage of the bill. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of senate resolution 450, submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. res. 450, to constitute the majority party's membership on certain committees for the 111th congress or until their successors are chosen. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. durbin: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to and the motion to very are be laid on the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: mr. president, as if in executive suggestion, i ask unanimous consent that the nomination of robert a. harding to be assistant secretary of homeland security, received by the senate on monday, march 8,

be referred to the oh on science and transportation, that upon the reporting or discharge of the nomination, it then be referred to the committee on homeland security or government affairs for a period tonight exceed 30 calendar days. that if the cohomeland security and government affairs has not reported the nomination at that time, then the committee be discharged and the no nominatioe placed on the executive calendar. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, so ordered. mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar number 308, h.r. 3433. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 308, h.r. 3433, an act to amend the north american wetlands conservation act and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate and any statements related to the bill be placed in the record at the appropriate place as if read. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of

senate resolution 449, submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 449, celebrating volunteers in service to america on its 45th anniversary and recognizing its contribution to the fight against poverty. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the resolution be placed in the record at the appropriate place as if read. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin durbin: i understandt senate 3092, introduced earlier today by senator reid, is at the desk. i ask for its first reading. the presiding officer: the clerk will read the bill for the first time. the clerk: s. 309, 2 a bill to designate the facility of the united states postal service located at 50070 vegas valley drive in las vegas, nevada, as the joseph a. ryan post office

building. mr. durbin: mr. president, i ask for the second reading and object to my own request. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. durbin: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on wednesday, march 10. that following the prayer and pledge the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day and the senate proceed to a period of morning business until 2:00 p.m. with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each with the majority controlling the first 30 minutes and the republicans controlling the next 30 minutes. that following morning business, the senate resume consideration of h.r. 4213 as provided for under the previous order. finally i ask the time during any adjournment or period of morning business count postcloture. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: mr. president, tonight we were able to reach an agreement to complete action on the tax extenders legislation. tomorrow afternoon under the agreement at approximately 2:00 p.m. all postcloture debate time will expire and the question will be on the substitute amendment. once the substitute amendment is

agreed to, the senate will proceed to a cloture vote on the bill, h.r. 4213. if cloture is invoked, the senate would then proceed to a vote on passage of the bill as amended. therefore, senators should expect up to three roll call votes beginning at 2:00 p.m. the majority leader would like to begin consideration of the federal administration reauthorization legislation tomorrow. if there is no further business to come before the senate, i ask it adjourn under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until 9:30 a.m. tomorrow.

to mike on c-span2, a senate armed services hearing on a portion of the defense department budget followed by a hearing on the food and drug administration budget. later, today's white house briefing. the senate armed services committee today heard from three u.s. military leaders about efforts in afghanistan. as well as continued to amend of missile defense system and greater u.s. attention to africa. the hearing is one of a series of different parts of the proposed defense department budget. it's just over two hours. [inaudible conversations] >> good morning, everybody. today's hearing is the first in a series of hearings our committee will hold over the coming weeks with our combat commanders to receive their testimony of the u.s. military

strategy and operational requirements and other areas of responsibility. this is part of the committee's review of the fiscal year 2011 defense national authorization request. this morning the committee receives testimony from at oral james g. stavridis, commander european command and nato supreme allied commander europe, general william e. ward commander u.s. africa command and general james matthis, commander u.s. joint forces command. first, let me take this opportunity on behalf of the committee to request your passalong or gratitude to the men and women in your command, to their families for their commitment and their sacrifice in carrying out the missions of the commands. while admiral stavridis is not new to appearing before this committee, this is his first

time testifying as the commander and supreme allied commander europe u.s. european command engagement with our allies and partners in europe is an essential component of the transatlantic relationship. nowhere are the benefits of this relationship more clearly demonstrated than in afghanistan where 43 countries and nearly 40,000 long u.s. troops a vast majority of which come from countries in the yukon area of responsibility are participating in the nato international security assistance force. the efforts to build the capacity and interoperable without allies and partners in europe are an important contribution to isaf's mission to bring security and stability to afghanistan. we welcome the increased commitment of forces by were isaf coalition partners since president obama announced the commitment of additional u.s. forces in december. in addition, ward soldiers --

isaf soldiers from cambodia joint u.s. soldiers and marines and afghan troops in the recent combat operations and helmand province and more than a dozen isaf troops have died in that operation. we honor their sacrifice and the sacrifice of their families. at the same time, an issue i want to get into further this morning is the continuing shortfall by the nato allies to provide the additional trainers, the nato training mission in afghanistan needs to build the afghan national army and police. it is apparent growing the afghan security forces so that they can take responsibility for insuring their countries security is essential for the success of counterinsurgency strategy and meeting the july 2011 date the president obama said for the start of the reduction of u.s. troops in afghanistan. there is no shortage of recruits

for the afghan army thanks in part to the july, 2011 date which is energized afghanistan's leaders to bring in more recruits. according to general bill caldwell, the head of our training mission in afghanistan, a major problem is the continuing shortage of traders to provide the initial basic training. training the afton mission is a nato ally should increase regardless of their ability or willingness to be on the front line of the fight. yet at a recent conference that generate forces the nato members pledged fewer than half of the approximately 1200 additional nato trainers sought by general caldwell. that is more than disappointing. it is unacceptable european command faces a number of challenges within its area of responsibility. president obama's plan for

missile defense in europe, the fee is deductive approach is supported by our nato allies. in addition, later this year than it wins to complete a revised strategic concept for how the alliance should adapt to today's security challenges, the first major revision of nato strategic concept since the even to of 9/11. general ward, the challenges in the africom aor are staggering from the conflicts that rage across borders to fragile governments to nations where peacekeeping or peace enforcing forces are the best and sometimes only hope for security and stability and to the spread of the violent extremism. while confronting some of these issues fall squarely in the lap of a military command, many do not. you're command is being directed to assist in the non-traditional

ways where the jurisdictional lines between the part of state and defense are blurred at best. the committee looks forward to your testimony on these issues and africom's activities designed to confront and counter them. the threat of terrorism from africa and particularly the potential for the havens and recruiting grounds for terrorists in under governed areas are the cause for deep concern. the attempted christmas day bombing of an airline reminds everybody that al qaeda and violent extremists who share the radiology are not just located in the afghanistan and pakistan region but in places like somalia, nigeria and niger. the committee is eager to hear how africom is working to confront those very real threats. turning to the u.s. joint forces command general mattis is responsible for the training, certification and readiness of armed forces of the joint force

provider for president future operational needs. i hope general mattis will discuss how the of changed and promoted the dod practices that result in more efficient and effective policies and coordination with respect to the joint operations as well as meeting the anticipated threats of the future. we are also interested in hearing about the role of u.s. joint forces command with respect to the drawdown of forces in iraq. specifically of interest would be your views on how the withdrawal of u.s. forces from iraq will have an impact on the ability to source the combatant commanders requirements of the future, how the services and other government agencies are preparing to execute the drawdown and how well the services are meeting their expected 12 times to restore

readiness rates. in addition as persistent conflict in afghanistan and iraq continue to stress our armed forces, our committee is interested in hearing your assessment, general, of the readiness of deploying forces. and we've thank our witness for their dedicated and continued service and look forward to your testimony. senator mccain. -- before, mr. chairman and all the witnesses for being here. i'm grateful for your services and that of the brave men and women in your command. many of my colleagues and i have been strong supporters of our transatlantic partnerships and nato alliance during the cold war nato succeeded as we all know in promoting and protecting freedom and democracy in europe and we won. but today the alliance is facing a number of very significant challenges. secretary dates release it in his speech at the nato strategic concept seminar last month and i

quote, unless the strategic concept spurs operational and institutional changes it will not be worth the paper it's printed on. right now the alliance has serious budgetary problems and is facing a budget shortfall of some $900 million. the problem is not just the current underfunding of nato. over the years, nato and the national defense budgets consistently have declined to wear only five of 28 member states are obligating the required defense spending of 2% of gross domestic product. while the war in afghanistan has shown a light on nato's chief of diminished capacity, the shortcomings are not new. for the years before afghanistan, nato due to its limited budgets has led its capabilities decline. for example, nado lacks the cargo airlift, the helicopters, refueling tankers and isr platforms needed to be effective

in afghanistan or in any other future conflict. member states should be explaining to their parliaments and to their citizens nato faces common threats and shares common goal. i of concern they continue to allow the idea to build up among the republics but nato is fighting war because the americans are making them do it. the alliance must be about more than fulfilling our obligations under article 5 has essentials as that is to read it must also serve to detour potential adversaries and build partner capacity within the alliance and beyond. only then can we begin to collectively transform our alliance from one of the common defense, to one of common security. admiral stavridis, i look forward to hearing your thoughts on the of future spending among nato allies and your prescription for developing and better leveraging the nato capabilities to meet future threats. i strongly believe it's