helmet that you mentioned sir started as a joint effort between the united states army and united states marine corps. they did the first round of research and development testing. there was certainly potential in a new composite material that we looked at. we took on the next step then of actually put out the request for proposals to industry and awarding a number of development contracts for test items. when we got those test items in and tested them, they did not perform as we had hoped and anticipated. we provided the results of those tests back to our industry partners so they could make modifications to their designs. we would expect to begin to start receiving the next set of test items early this summer, sir. >> very well. let's see. could someone go over with me, i know in the isr area that we've been flooded with

data. i think that the primary problem seems to be, too much information coming in and inability to sort it in realtime in order to have an effect on the battlefield. can you tell me what improvements there are in terms of managing the information coming in from various isr platforms? >> i can speak to two initiatives that were discussed with us during the course of our work for the air-land subcommittee. one is national security agency is finding innovative ways to find more linguists to help in translating and dealing with the signals intelligence data that is being corrected. again, these are initiatives that were are unable to measure how many impact they have. in addition, the air force has announced plans to add 2500 analysts to their,

their corps to be able to process more and exploit and disseminate of the data coming off the isr systems. so these are two that we mention in our report and that were raised to us. so people are trying to deal with it. it is breaking the back of the back end of the cycle with all this flooding of data. but again, it is too early to tell how effective these efforts are going to be. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> thank you, mr. kelles. >> thank you, gentlemen and thank you for being here today. i would like to note while me being near the end of the line and asking questions i do want to note that i have a whole row allocated to me here. so, that is show you where i am in important. >> the room is a little big. we're very happy back in rayburn when we get back there. >> we're, kind of lose track

who is behind you down there. >> i didn't see you down there for a couple of minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i do have a question and, it is kind of hard to, general fuller, i think maybe this question goes to you. this is question i normally might run through channels. and i'm not advocating a particular vendor here. but we had, being in so much of our conversation has been about body armor and about, can we move ahead to a new technology, new generation, had a jent man come to -- gentleman come to my office a while back was on one cutting-edge of sif ends on one end of the idea and using some of the oldest technology known to mankind on other. if what he said is true it would seemingly be a huge step forward in possibility of reduce weight and

increasing strength to protection to our people. he has been working with department of defense and just seemingly getting more and more frustrated as he went. i'm going to ask my mile terri ally, captain tim med doors for you to get who you like to get back you. i would like a report back from you all, is this a possibility? is what he is talking about realistic? is it a step forward, a giant step forward as he is talking about? i'm not pushing this vendor. i'm just wanting some feedback because if it is, let's pursue it. if it is not, i can say i'm sorry, this is not what we're looking for. but there are some things here that got me somewhat curious about what he's offering. and general oates, in the scheme of, and mr. bartlett said it today, that the proportion of amount of money we spend in fighting ieds and protecting our soldiers versus cost of ieds,

and, there is obviously we've got to keep doing that, we've got to protect our soldiers but are we catching up or are they getting further ahead? >> sir, it's a great question. i actually think iraq might be informative here. if we go back and look at, what has transpired in iraq and the funding that come forward to protect our soldiers but also allow us to understand the networks that were engaging us begin to attack them directly, understand the devices and defeat a great number of them, the trendlines are fairly clear. we can get back to you on the record about specifics over the years but in aggregate, it took the enemy more ieds to attack us to achieve the same results. those are all positive trendlines, to now where, iraq doesn't begin to resemble this year as i had did the first time i was there in '03 and several more times after that.

i do believe that if we look at the investment provided to the services and to jieddo, it would translate to protecting our soldiers and attack the networks over there, the results are clear. the difficulty is tying individual dollars to what will 10 more dollars get you in terms of effects against the ied? that one is very tough. we're going to, we're going to try to do better to the chairman's question and try to play back what we believe the reasonable measures of effectiveness are. i think iraq is informative of great success we've had in this area. >> i don't want to indicate at all this is monetary issue. we've got to protect our soldiers. i'm just wondering is all the technological things we're doing, all the efforts we're making are they getting farther ahead or are we catching up in terms of protecting our soldiers? i do also want to follow up with what congressman hunter said about chairing

technologies and making sure we have something sitting somewhere because somebody chosen not to use it at that point in time we're not just ignoring the fact that somebody else might, have need for it because there has been a couple situations brought to our attention we followed up on that that happened. and we, he with want to make sure all our assets are being used. i yield back. thank you, mr. chairman. >> chair thanks the gentleman. chair recognizes the gentleman from virginia, mr. whitman. for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman and panel members for joining us today and appreciate taking time out of your busy schedule and thank you for service to our nation. general spoehr at last year's force protection hearing i asked general lennox, what small arms capabilities and m-9 miss sole and m-4 carbine. in regards to the m 9 i cited findings 2006 naval

analysis study of shoulders in afghanistan an iraq who engaged with the enemy with their weapons in combat. in that study, 48% of the respondents were dissatisfied with the m 9 pistol with 26% requesting a larger caliber weapon and 20% saying the m 9 should be replaced. fy 201 1d od budget includesed authority for handgun to replace the m-9 and the it might already be jroc approved. can you tell us what progress the army's made towards replacing m-9 more powerful modern and feature-rich sidearm and when can the committee expect an rpf for the new handgun? what's the army's timeline for fielding the new weapon? >> thank you, sir. as you say, there has been a new joint requirements oversight council

requirement for a pistol approved, actually submitted by air force who felt the need for a new pistol. so that requirement was approved. we are still examining the other requirements in the army for a new pistol. we're aware of the study you mentioned and soldiers feedback on the pistol. in light of their feedback we've done a couple key improvements for pistol. we've given them improved magazine. general fuller's people will put new hand grips, modular hand grips to accommodate variety of people's hand sizes for pistol. we think that is fair amount of the dissatisfaction with that weapon. we are going to look at the air force's requirements. they have done a lot of work to get it to this point. if we think and we believe that requirement meets the army's requirement i think we could proceed with the program but no decision has been made yet, sir. >> i know there's been some talk about the caliber of the handgun and its stopping power. people being concerned about the small caliber that they currently have. i'm assuming that will be one of the array of issues

you will address for looking at replacement for the m-9? >> yes, sir. as you're aware, stopping power is caliber. but there also as component of ammunition. you probably heard in recent press reports about something called green am mission which we'll be fielding soon for the m-4 carbine. much more stopping power. more we believe lethality. we believe that same technology has applicability to the m-9 pistol. as we fielding green ammo for the carbine, we'll look importing some of that same technology over to the pistol where it may make up for any lethality gaps we currently have. >> do you believe some of the concerns with the m-4 as far as its range of capability will be taken up with this green am mission? in other words, is the, are the main objections to the weapon basically its stopping power? are there other aspects of the m-4 are creating challenges for our men and women in service?

>> sir, most of the concerns we hear about the m-4 have to do with reliability and how many rounds between stoppaging, rounds between stoppages. the carbine as it is now is demonstrating performance well beyond its specifications. was only required to do 600 rounds between stoppages. and demonstrating around 3600. we're looking at improving the carbine, giving it heavier barrel. some other improvements. there has been over 60 improvements made to the m-4 carbine. we don't get a lot of complaints about the m-4 carbine. it has met with fairly widespread success. i would defer to general fuller if you have anything you want to add. >> thank you, sir, in light of your question what we think about when we talk about our m-4 and our other weapons. it is combination. it is weapon, ammunition, it is optics and training. equally important how it interfaces with the soldier. as general brogan and i worked through not hanging

things on to soldiers we need insure for what we do for body armor doesn't adversely impact a sold arrest ability to get a good sight picture on their weapon. in light of what general spoehr was talking about we're looking to improvements to the m-4 we believe we actually made very recent one that will have significant impact in the field where we're doing additional testing. we saw the magazine did not reliably feed ammunition straight into the upper receiver. we field ad new magazine. we pushed that into theater. now part of rapid fielding initiative and we're rapidly getting capability out there. we're also getting ready to release a, rfp, request for proposal that, would give us the ability to give the soldiers that heavier barrel so they have increased sustained rate of fire. the army is asking us to look at giving them back the fully automatic mode in that m-4. we're also looking at changing some of the bolt, upper receiver components

and we're looking at all these different options. at the same time we're working on the m-4 we're looking new carbine. is there something better out there than what we currently have? we believe the m-4 is, provides very good capability to our soldiers but it is a combination. i think the green ammunition will give back a lot of that lethality that the soldiers were asking about. where did it go? because we gave you as much shorter barrel, a round that was designed for longer barrel and a lot of other technical components, sir. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. chairman. again i want to thank all of our panel. particularly, lt. general oates. i think with your combat experience in iraq you bring, you all bring a lot to this conversation but in particular your experience. general oates, the, our nation's ability to deliver vehicles that have mine resistance has been a challenge. humvee was a great vehicle

until the enemy discovered it had explosions beneath it which resulted in fielding of mine-resistant vehicle. stryker is great vehicle. now that the bar is raised with the introduction of a mine-resistant vehicle, stryker appears more vulnerable to that problem. what steps are you taking to address that? what does this committee need to do to help you? above all, what are the lessons we learned in the development of the mrap? all though again i will always commend general brogan on a great job he did, but just a sad fact from the time we made up our minds we were going to buy 18,000 mraps until filled with people needlessly died in iraq and afghanistan. what staps are we taking for more survival of the stryker? what did we learn from the mrap program so we can field it quicker and even though general brogan did a

phenomenal job fielding the mrap? >> sir, thank you very much. as you know this is a extremely complex set of independent variables on the vehicle. afghanistan, what we've learned is, due to the absence of improved roads, that, there is another significant ingredient to survivorability of vehicles and that is the enemy's placement of the ied and the, in some cases inability to go off- road. the stryker is a very, very surviveable vehicle in my opinion. i've been in it and in combat with it. in afghanistan it has unique capability go off-road and very quiet and seek to avoid obvious placements of ieds. just taking that independent variable you can conclude the stryker is more surviveable given the mrap is largely confined to the road where the enemy has very clear attack axis. we have studied, processed

the m wrap in jieddo and looked evolution and looked at u-shaped and v-shaped holes. we're looking at mrap task force to see what new technologies there may be out there that we have not yet explored and how we offer some assistance to the mrap task force. what we discovered in our own tech logical reviews, to date, my major concern trying to help forces in afghanistan detect these underbody explosions where they're located and seek to defeat them before we drive over them. that is my primary focus right now. mrap task force is currently looking at the new set of vehicles and we're in support role there, sir and we offer advice along those roads but we don't produce the vehicle platform itself. so i, i may have to defer on this issue to my good friend down there who does the mrap

business or understands it better than i do. >> would anyone like to address what steps are being taken on the stryker? it is my understanding that one of the manufacturers has come up with a double v-type bottom. the immediate question that i would have is, i general explained to me the drivetrain with a v uninsended consequence shaping the charge, force of the blast tended to go into the cab because of that. my question would be with it, that double v, do you get same problem with the unintended consequence of shaping the charge? i guess that would be the apex where the two vs come together. >> yes, sir. as you mentioned industry come to the army with a proposal for the striblg kerr what we call the double v hull. it is really a "w." we were concerned about the same thing. apex wouldn't that channel all energy and perhaps make

things worse? industry believes not. they have done actual blast tests. they have done modeling as well. they say because that apex is significantly higher than the floor of the stryker used to be the exponential difference and height from the ied makes a huge difference in surviveability. nevertheless we're going to ask, we've asked osd for permission to build prototypes of this vehicles quickly as we get the prototypes we tend to take them up to aberdeen and blow them up for real. >> my next question would be going back to our responsibilities, do you have the financial resource, do you have all the financial resources you need to expedite this program? >> sir, in fiscal 10 we believe we can initiate this effort with no support needed from congress. if that changes. if we, develop some need we'll immediately come back to this committee. >> general oates going back to your observation since you actually mentioned potassium chloride and

ammonium nitrate being part of the problem, i'm curious how, i will make an observation. the center for remotes satellites happens to be in south mississippi. one of the things they pointed out to me from space, looking at extremely slight differences in temperatures of trees, they can tell me or you which trees in the forest, have pine needles. which trees in the forest are stressed for lack of water. they can tell you the 10 most likely places to catch blue fin tuna, updated every 90 minutes. a number of things that are just absolutely remarkable. they can tell us from information coming from space. i would imagine ammonium nitrate and, potassium chloride have to give up vapors. i would imagine they have to give off heat. to what extent have you just put out the word to industry, i need someone to help me find a better way to locate these substances when

they're in concentrations of 10 pounds or more? unds or more? >> mr. chairman it is a great question i would like to take that one off-line with you only because we actually have some pretty good technology right now that we believe is going to assist us in detecting these items, but we are actively looking for additional assistance in both change detection on the road and the detection of the actual items. i would be happy to share with you for the record on an emerging tech elegy that we intend to put in either very same. it returns, if we can achieve assistant sur it will increase our confidence of understanding with the enemies operating, woody's doing with those roads. to that end, this is one of the top priorities for a simple command with the placement of additional technical take

abilities as much as we used in iraq and that's the first charge of items that we have funded and will be moving forward in afghanistan. if the technology you're describing will be very interested there and we have openly and directly with vendors indicated that we would like to close that gap. >> i'm going to ask you the same question. is this committee now appropriated counterparts, have they provided you all the resources, financial resources you need to pursue it? >> yes, sir. we don't have any issues unlike a friend here, based on what you've told me personally, we will turn to illegally because they understand the sense of urgency if we need additional resources i would not hesitate to come and ask for it. >> lastly, i'll open this up to the panel. on a most every theater we asked the troops but it is you want, what can we get to, almost in

every instance it comes back they seiji if you could just make my body armor lighter. what sort of resources do you have to pursue that end again is not adequately addressed? do you have the resources you need if the manufacturer were to come to you today with a 10% or 20% reduction in that way? would you have the funds available to see if that product is worth purchasing? >> we really are looking for a new technology to be able to get into that later weight and in particular to our hard plates. i don't know how much we would buy, but we would be fine -- we don't have it out there right

now. >> again, general fuller, if it was found, do you have the resources available, now what you need in the additional line item in the appropriations bills. i guess that's what i would like to know. do you have the authority to pursue that if you sell a product that you like about was worth it? >> we absolutely have the resources we would need to go test it to see if it was in fact better. we entertain frequently industry members who think they have an idea of what could be a better body armor. unfortunately, many of those are in powerpoint and that's how weak they are. very few people bring us actual product that we can go shoot. if someone has that, we have the capability to legally go to aberdeen and test them. and then using our special reprogramming authority and because zero and none is a fungible appropriation, we can

very easily moved out and begin to buy it. and then if we made a significant who put out in the yoko request or like we've often received the june traditional. >> follow-up follow up on that because this is -- i have to come as most members of this committee very protest community. there's a lot of people who are serving and are serving and therefore a lot of moms and dads who follow this issue very closely. so if someone were to come to you with a better item, sir, are you telling me that you had the financial resources to not only test it, but to begin acquisition immediately. >> we certainly have to test in the money to begin production, probably not for the influence and would come to you to that. i have right now on my desk a

letter from the father of a marine who is convinced that nasa has an armor that we should be using just because he knows in the states the armor is bad. i can tell you in california and look at what they have and it's not designed to stop bullets. it designed to stuff small pieces of junk that are flying at high velocity. we truly do reach out and try and find a solution. >> thank you very much. ms. smith. >> i think i just want to follow up on the stryker discussion. it has received rave reviews from the soldiers who abused it not just in iraq but in afghanistan. i think it's an important point to make that achievement for its maneuverability really improves its survivability. gives them a little bit of control of their own destiny.

they're counting on their own ability to perceive danger and react to it. they very much appreciate that. i guess the one question i have as we go through double d. -- w. as we passed and goes onward we do want to make sure as quickly as possible to make sure it works. i know you know that, but it's going to be particularly difficult in this instance because of it does work for going to want to do it quickly. there's a couple different people to this question. if it works to the fact we want to do this. the situation is that it is not possible to retrofit the existing end and abruptly 2400 strikers. the way this is designed, it will have to be built on new strikers. is that your understanding. >> sir, you're correct. we've asked the question, could

we hypothetically be a strikers striker and put the top back on it. fortunately there's an active productions of this improvement were to play out, we would ask the manufacturers so it would become a part of the new strikers coming off the line you're confident they can be that as we go forward. just following up with the original point. you know, if we do this, it's important to emphasize that the existing stryker fleet is still very, very useful. we certainly don't want to create the impression we have a new variant is still very effective for the war fighter. thank you. i don't have anything further. i yield back. >> chair recognized mr. stoner.

>> a brother is a striker and a constituent. but this third boy, his third baby, first boy on his three-week leave and then he goes back to six months on iraq so much and make sure those strikers are good to go. one thing that i want to bring up that i think is important and i think it's important that jieddo remains a consistent entity, probably forever because the one thing we haven't talked about in future wars, the enemy knows how to get to us now. it's iuds. so if you look at the level of ied and afghanistan, think about what iran could do with their level of sophistication. think about china could do or a country that's not a backward spotlight in afghanistan. the enemy knows how to do it now. it's going to be a threat to us

forever because we haven't been able to actually defeat ied's. so i think this is something we're going to have to keep in mind forever. it comes to warfare. why go into line with us when you could just ied the hell out of us forever. whenever were in someone else's territory. so i think this is something that even when afghanistan dies down it will be up to us here into you while to us or for us to maintain this persistence when it comes to iuds. we're going to see forever and we're going to see it for 20 years or 30 years. we now have to do this. i'll ask a last question. for general oats, he wrote during her testimony the last several months task force has been supplemented to force liberty aircraft to do in effect. we're not where we need to be yet on this capability, but are rapidly moving to change the scab. do you have metrics? how do you know it's working?

have ied found downward spin flying? that we've been killing guys? >> yes, sir. colonel don galli who commands third cad and i go back about ten years and i was back and then we didn't have liberty in iraq. another celebrity in afghanistan and they are roughly halfway through -- about a third will of the way through their intended fielding of liberty. i have had shalom metrics of share with you on the effects we've had with oden. a problem today has been carrying the load for the whole country. now it's about seven liberty aircraft and about 14 more to come, maybe 15 more, i think i will be a look to expand the coverage. there is a direct compelling corollary between integrating air assets like oden or liberty with a maneuver force toward success on defeating the ied.

>> interrupt you there. is the pretty integrating like oden does or is it being used as the air force uses headlines based on priorities. or is it being used that sensor shooter out in relationship maybe so effective. is it being used that way? >> no, sir. own resides inside the combat aviation brigade and it is a very tight linked with a maneuver force. liberty though is following the priorities of the ground commander. and so although it doesn't work directly inside the u.s. army combat aviation brigade, it does respond to the ground commander's priorities. the way the air force and the army and marine corps utilizer aviation assets come you know a somewhat different. we really look at effects. i personally believe the personal assets of liberty will generate those effects were looking for, but the command-and-control structure is different there's no doubt about

it sir. >> would you recommend the army had tactical control of liberty? as it is intermixed with oden? >> sir, i don't dodge many questions and i'm not dodging this one, but i do believe that the inherent authority of the commander in afghanistan to determine how wants to command-and-control those assets. i'll defer to his judgment. >> okay, how about this. as a division commander would you rather have control of the air assets that are watching your roads or would you rather have the different service provide that for you? >> sir, the division candor in iraq i control the inner assets that operated in my area, but i also received assets based on priorities. so as a grad maneuver guy i've always been more comfortable by culture having an air ground team under my direct control. but when i was the priority effort in iraq i see traditional assets and i think sometimes that not quite understood.

i received actually more asset to fund the priority and there again goes to the ground commander. so if full faith and confidence guys over there know what they're doing and if they need to make a change, and evidently they made a change to the command and control relationships of the engineer route clearance teams based on an observation that they should be in direct support, not in general supports and we can show you to write corollary proven and not regard. but the command made that call. >> i would've to see those metrics, too. thanks, gentlemen. >> gentlewomen from massachusetts. >> thank you, general broken and general fuller. as you can see the issue body armor is a consistent theme here and i have one more question before we head out to vote. both of you i testify to the fact that you feel as first procurement goes, you have the right amount of body armor to support the forest.

you also said when asked about lighter weight body armor that the technology just isn't there to reduce the weight of the small arms protective inserts. and so we find ourselves in dilemma. industry is now saying that because of services that almost stopped buying body armor, they no longer have the internally generated funds to continue development of lighter weight products. in the number of firms to supply body armor and its ceramic tile is being reduced to lack of procurement. so how do we balance this? you're not really buying body armor which leads to the industrial base shrinking. there is no investment from dod and research and development and now the industrial base isn't putting its own money into research and allotment because it doesn't have any. you're saying the technology just isn't there to reduce the weight of body armor, but doesn't seem like anyone is actually investing in technology. so where do we go from here given those realities?

>> yes, ma'am. you do show the challenge that we have inside the department of defense right now. because have such large picture meant we didn't have the industry invest their own ir indeed that they had a large picture meant to balance on investment but they've made. we'll were trying to do right now is bundle all of our systemic contracts to gather under different of logistics agency between the marines, army, air force and other services to ensure why were working to the faction after we have a research and development line dedicated to soldier protection items that we at least maintain that industrial base. so if we want to go in contact with them for research and developments come at the, future activities, they'll still be in the business of wanting to do this. at the same time we are still working those s&t endeavors when we have the question about the enhanced combat helmet, for example. that technology actually started in the mrap and other heavy

combat vehicles. it was part of the add-on armor that we are reasoning, that new technology. we're not taking it and trying to confirm it into a homage design and that's where robinson challenges. it doesn't work as well when working for a minute. so the s&t offers will continue to move forward. we're still investing another rain and we might see some teacher after it's coming out of that. but i recognize we do need to look at a dedicated research and development. we're going to work with the other services in the department of defense to articulate what exactly is an outline and how much is an outline. why were doing or going to maintain that industrial base or bundling all are contracts to keep them viable. >> general broke in. >> congresswomen, the only thing i would does is at least one of the vendors imagine is one of the five largest defense contractors in the united states. kind of difficult for me to believe they don't have any ird.

they may not place it here because they don't see the large return on investment compared to some other efforts. we do have to have s&t dollars to work for the breakthrough. it's not anything valuable for us to continue to buy ceramic plates and large excess of what we need to keep it in place because if we find that breakthrough in technology, we are going to want to buy that next best thing and we will have created an obsolete item that we have spent the taxpayers money on. so it is a challenge to adequately balance. i think we need significant communication between us and the industry as opposed to lobbyists and you will. i'm talking with us would be valuable and we have provided them in our public communication forum the desires of what it is we need so that we can help them

target those ird funds. the other not often used research and development tools, something called a cooperative research and development act dvd, where the u.s. government and industry cooperatively develop and i think we probably need to explore that. >> thank you both for your testimony. >> gentleman or colorado. i would remind agenda meant that there is about six minutes left on this though. >> thank you, mr. chairman. one quick question and that is sometimes there is an ied blast left on a catastrophic kill for that vehicle, but because of the over pressure that causes casualties, have we been able to make any gains in terms of force protection relative to the over pressure from the blast? >> that most likely happens in the up-armored humvee where the capsule is compact perforated

and unfortunately as we know the ua ages often a catastrophic kill. what we find most often is we keep the blast over capture. our injuries of a result of acceleration and not blast over pressure. suffers the vehicle is accelerated up into the air by the force of the blast that happens happened very rapidly and causes compression injuries of the spinal column and the lower back and then second that the occult impacts the ground, which is a slower event relatively speaking, similar to a non-emotive crashing wave energy absurdities to try to deal with that. the unfortunate thing and i think what you're getting at, mr. coffman, is dramatic rain injuries. those are not only caused by crash. it's what causes they had to twist and either sheeran occurs inside the brain or the brain

moves slower than the school and the school stops in the brain than impacts the goal causing bruising, swelling or if it happens to the central cortex loss of consciousness. no helmet is able to protect against bad. and because their arguments of the vehicles need to be able to scan, use the windows, we can't tether their head like they would in a nascar. so what we're looking for are ways to improve the cd and restraint system to help decouple the acceleration experienced by the vehicle from that which is delivering the occupants. >> sir, also in light of that, they are fielding a helmet sensor. read a generation one that we fielded. what we're trying to do is measure what's happening to the individual when they do have any of dramatic event so we can capture that data, provided back to the metal community as general broke and was talking about medical conditions that are happiness to go through this event. we want to be able to write that

data back to the army medical community so they can assist in understanding what actually happened and were measuring the three new homicides center that will measure what's happening in full access to the soldiers at the other helmet when the event is going on. and then were getting ready to feel that capability. with initial capability out there now were getting ready to field an upgraded one. you don't have to go out there and touch every helmet to get the data off it. we can do it remotely and it also can measure more access of movement, really what your head is doing inside that helmet. >> six degrees of freedom sir. >> i would appreciate if you would read a description of what you just mentioned. if you could give that to myself and other members of the community. >> there are four minutes left but i'm going to verbally on her sandra day o'connor. >> very quick comment. i think it's unlikely were going to be purchasing body armor that

has the capacity, the capital to invest in r&d which is why we need to have the creativity and innovation and they just don't have the capital to do that. we need the help. >> gentleman, i think each and every one of you for what you do for your service back your stateside. i think it has been one of the better hearingthat we've had. i thank you very, very much for being straightforward with us. general brogan for the phenomenal john, lifesaving job of the merit program. with that there are no further questions, this committee was adjourned.

>> the senate banking committee began speculative financial regulation overhaul today with more than 470 amendments. you can watch the process live at 5:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 3 and online at c-span.org. and now on c-span 2, financial reporters talk about their methods for covering capitol hill as well as the new legislation from a conference hosted by the american banking association. this is just under 40 minutes. [applause] >> thanks, diane and floyd and thanks to all of you for participating. okay, many of us watch the news and wonder why we bankers can't get a break on reporting. what do the media, financial and

editions in your bank have in common? how can bankers make our case and the media so that others will understand what it is we do as the engine of the economy? well, today we've got a panel of expert to guide us and thinking about that here in so i am pleased to introduce victoria mcgrane, financial services reporter for the politico. barnes, senior washington correspondent of the fox business network and jeffrey birnbaum, president of pgr public relations. and jeff has been a columnist for the "washington post" and white house correspondent for the white house journal. and andy will moderate the panel. >> by now i do. >> well, needless to say bankers are very frustrated by the media coverage as it relates to banks and in a nutshell the

fundamental problem seems to be at the media will call anything a bank, whether it be bear stearns or lehman brothers or aig or fannie mae or mortgage brokers or whatever. traditional banks as he notes it not cause the crisis, but we do get lumped in with everybody else. and as i said before, this isn't just a problem of hurting our feelings, which it does, that is a problem that we can lead to bad policy. here to discuss this issue and what we can do about it are three -- i want to stipulate very good reporters. they're not on our site. they are fair and balanced. [laughter] >> well, our marketing is working. >> we're going to have some questions from the audience at the end, but let me have a little bit further introduction. in the middle is peter barnes

was a senior washington correspondent for fox business news. he previously worked for hearst argyle and cnbc. he follows banking issues very closely and he's very knowledgeable. and part of that maybe because he actually has an mba from wharton. so he actually studied. >> and finance. >> and finance. a tory mcgrane covers banking on the capitol hill and newspaper politico, which is kind of taken washington by storm and is widely read within washington but now has increasingly got a national profile. it's a bit of a difficult feat i will say because she has to produce a long story almost every day, which is not easy, but she does it very well and very accurately i will say. and she also has a strong academic background in our area because she has a master's from the london school of economics. jeff birnbaum is president of pgr public relations here in

washington, but for many years he was one of the top columnists and commentators in washington. many of you have seen them on various tv panels being a pundit or a talking head as we say. most recently on fox news, he's worked for fortune wall street journal, "washington post" among others in a row probably the most famous but somebody is called showdown and gucci gulch. i just want to see that the neither floyd or i ever owned a pair of gucci's. [laughter] but let me start with peter. let's start with a broader context. and there are many changes going on, particularly for the last few years with respect to the media. i awake think it's made all of you have to work much, much harder and in some cases unfairly hard. did you, first on what are the changes that are taking place with the media?

>> well, as you know, we've entered the digital world and we now talk about -- when i take to journalism students in school now, i don't say to them you're going to be a newspaper with porter or you're going to be television reporter. i tell them you're going to be digital platform reporter. because the wire. at fox, for example, i not only report on the air. i rate for the website. maybe d.o. interviews appear on cell phones now. i mean, it is an amazing time, a scary time particularly for print journalists and i have a lot of friends in the business were struggling. but what this has done is it has made the news cycle even more immediate than before and i came from the newspaper world. jeff and i were both at "the wall street journal" together. please do the 6:00 deadline and then we could go home. well, no. i like most of you who are also

lobbying this issue and paying attention to this, i'm working 24/7. i get e-mails from some of my friends in the lobbying community, so my friends from hill. i'll be watching jay leno or something and making e-mail and it says hey, dodd and shelby are meeting right now. and they're trying to cut a deal. and so i write something up and i send it out and our web team posted immediately at midnight. so that has changed how we do our jobs and were under a lot of pressure, a lot of deadline pressure especially for breaking news. i live in fear of the tory because she's -- she breaks a lot of stuff. and it should break something i'm in trouble. so then i'm up till 2:00 a.m. >> victoria, do you want to comment on that? >> i was at the deadline

pressure is alive and it leaves them a lot less time to think and analyze and be as thoughtful as they'd like to be. it's just the pressure of the business anymore and there just isn't the same time there used to be. i've been a reporter for eight years and even in that period of time, it's incredibly sped up even since i've been a politico which is 2.5 years. everything just increasingly gets faster it seems like every day. so i think it's good to keep in mind that reporters don't necessarily have the time to digest things. i do think that leaves an opportunity for people who are willing to speak up and, you know, give me a call and try to explain it from your point of view. that can be incredibly helpful and influential on sort of how i see it because we need all the help we can get. >> jeff? >> my last stop before i switch

to public relations, was the managing editor of the "washington times" and was in charge of digital operations among other things. and it became clear to me that there are fewer and fewer reporters doing more work, which means that there is more in accuracy and more dependent on tran dependence on people in my new business pitches public relations and more reliant on people with real skills to explain things like add yingling who i depended on for years to expand financial services and banking. without him i probably wouldn't know half the things i now know about thinking. but what this means is that interest groups in general have to be more engaged and have to be more careful about what they

present and how they presented him to the they present it because there is less of a filter than when peter and i first started in journalism to chew over and doublecheck and triple check things. so there's both an opportunity and that's an also a tremendous danger. >> sounds like that because and we see the downsizing, whether it be recently at "the new york times" or wherever. it sounds like do you have to do more stories faster, get more information faster and it probably means that very quickly you have to know who's credible and who isn't. and if you find somebody who's credibly to relying on maybe more than you should. but if they're not, if they ever give you something that's not credible, it sounds like they're out. would that be correct to some degree because you just don't want to rely on them?

>> yeah, yeah i would say that's very true if i -- you know, people, you know, you have a lot of people to try to buy for your attention and try to make pretty quick judgments as to what is worth my time in who isn't. so yeah, you know, i think that's actually very true. >> the danger though is that a lot of reporting is a lot more short-term, more shallow and has less insight into the broad sweep of things, which can lead to journalism becoming much more led either knows, by those with the biggest megaphone for example, the white house can steer something and the point of view of much more easily these days i think dan was the time

when i covered t years. >> i was just going to add though that all of this is true, but i would also add that for example, i find very helpful in my reporting, when john hall and his team at aba, for example, quickly send out a press release on the aba's position on initiating. in the same for the other trade groups as well. financial services round, too. and that becomes helpful to me as a reporter because i want to know clearly and concisely what the position is of an organization that engaged in the legislation and four at the table. and so i tell my friends and public relations and trade association business, keep them coming. i read every single release that

your pr department and this team put out. >> gap, and i would also say with the growing competition maybe the white house has more ways to shape the story. i think with increasing competition there's also an increasing cynicism and increasing premium put on -- tell us what this means. and it is harder to do that, but at the same time at least in my publication, they don't want just a straight news story. they want to use up, who's down, you know, who's reacting to this. they'll never be satisfied with just chris dodd unveiled his bill today and this is what the net. so you know, that's where, you know, write a quick press release where i can say okay i know what the position of this group is and i can include that in my story right away.

>> i hate to say this because it sounds terrible, but sometimes over the last year and a half, i would hope for other people to have really big problems -- [laughter] because it would help us a lot. and so that we don't feel it's always just us, and no offense to all of you that don't toyotas, but you know, could you talk a little bit victoria on how these big media circuses, if you will, and since we've been in the center ring for about a year and and a half know how that turned to play out. >> well, i think it depends on what market you are dealing with. i mean, for me a politico and politico is a very hill focused, washington focused publication, is it's how is it playing out in congress, which is bad news for banks because congress, members

of congress have definitely seen an opportunity to capitalize on anger out there and they tend to do a lot of hearings and really play up the political theatrics of an issue and there's a market for that. and there's going to be a focus on that. in the story like any other there's going to be local coverage and i started at a local newspaper. and for a century by with a lot that paper, the wail of the gutted would be talking to local toyota dealers, local toyota owners. what is the local angle on this? which i don't know to what extent that have happened, the coverage of the financial crisis and some of this new legislation, but there could very well be appetite for that. and then, you know, just the way it's covered i think advanced it takes a lot coming in now, legislation, the administration making a big deal about it is

going to keep the media focused on it because that's what drives a lot of the national coverage at least. >> jeff and npr. >> there's a lot of coverage of crisis is spurred by the need to keep upgrading on news channels. i'm actually thoughts contributors so i can say this aloud. >> not for long. [laughter] careful, buddy. >> no, it's -- the word crises is overused. everything -- so many things are terrible, need to be focused on every hour. what people forget about a lot of coverage, especially on

television is that it's not meant to actually be watched hour after hour. you can turn the tv off i guess. [laughter] i have definitely gone now. [laughter] that was it. it's actually done so that people checking in every once in a while can get a sense of what the most interesting or spectacular story is and then they can go on with their business. but more people seem to be entirely glued to the tv, even during the day sometimes some of which is good for facts, which is okay, right? but it does lead to a misperception and overly intense focus on whatever is the latest thing. the only good news about that for people caught in the crosshairs is that even within this last year and a half, there have been a good two or three

weeks, maybe for where you really weren't the focus. [laughter] and that ought to expand to maybe five. >> we call that a description -- we call that the car chase every day. i mean the oj simpson of television because we have with this technology that allows us to follow the car chase every day. >> so we don't have to worry about helicopters following me home. >> i'm working on that. you know, it's cable 24/7. we're following at yingling's car home. listen, it is what it is. i think while we are bombarding our viewers and our readers more

and more and more because of this technology, this incredible technology, i don't know if that's bad. i actually -- when we do -- i try when i do my stories, i try to -- i assume that the reader is pretty smart and engaged. i have confidence in that. and i always try to make sure that if i'm writing about a white paper that comes from the aba, for example, in my story and the one thing i love about being a cross-platform reporter is i have to do my minute 30 when i grab ed in the hallway and do an interview with them and trying to hit the headlines. remember, ben bradlee said it best with the first rough draft of history. but an ideal world, the news consumer starts with our

headlines and car chase and if that reader or viewer wants to be educated about that certain topic, they then have other resources to go to, for example, to the web story that i've done or where a link to the position paper that you have written so that those folks can find the source material for themselves and we do for themselves and because educated for themselves. so yes, there are two sides to this story as there always is. there is the need to do the car chase, to report that every day, but that's okay, particularly if we have a hurricane headed to washington. you don't want to read about that in tomorrow's paper. you want to read about that now so that you can prepare for it or see it on television right now. so there is good and bad and all of this, that i tend to try to

trust the reader in the customer in the audience to give them the resources to make intelligent decisions and be informed in our democracy. >> okay, let me get to the big question for bankers and then we'll open it up to the audience. just, starting with you, bankers feel they are unfairly being. if so, is that true in why would that have been quiet >> well, let's take a minute with this. i do think that bankers and financial services companies are being and you will continue to be as they calculated a lyrical strategy, especially by the president. the president is a populist. that means that he divides the world in a way. he takes the largest faction in

tears himself to it and attacks a smaller relatively unpopular alternative and demonizes it. he has done so with health insurers grady stomached with rich people and he's going -- he's about to stab at doing it today. financial services companies, but he'll talk about it as wall street. and that's going to start right after the health care debate i think in a very major way. this is something that i think you need to prepare for. it's something that is going to start this year and probably will continue for a while. but there are some things that you can do about it. the first is to not allow the president to divide your industry. and he's attempting to do that already. as a abraham lincoln said

correctly, a house will fall. and i that will be the case with things with the so-called responsibility fee. he is already preparing to carve out community banks and smaller banks and put the burden already on larger banks. if you accept that and allow the banking industry to be divided, it will be your own fault when soon after the initial fee is imposed, which it maybe sometimes in the not-too-distant future. because deficit reduction will soon become a priority and revenue will be at a premium. do not be surprised if the bigger banks are affected first. you will be affected and iraq were. so do not allow yourselves to be divided as a strategy. secondly, it's important i think

for the industry to use its many depositors as a bulwark against these attacks. i know that you're all here and you're all lobbyists basically going to bail. you are not the most sympathetic of people in washington. in part because of this populism, but also because you are bankers in a for-profit business. your customers, your depositors, people who used her credit card are much more sympathetic and you should probably take a page from credit unions. some years ago you might remember when they were fighting an adverse supreme court decision. they organized their depositors

who i think there's a different name for their depositors, which i forget now, but you lot know. they began to receive over a long period in their monthly statement policy information about how their industry, about their bank, how their credit union with about to be more or less destroyed by federal policy. they organized at the state and local levels and they mobilized their depositors to fight against things like the responsibility tax, which is what you need to do, probably need to begin to think about it as the irresponsibility tax. and you need to make that case in a formal serious way that overregulation or taxation will do the exact opposite to what is in the best interest of what the

federal government really is going to be focused on what the next year or so, which is job creation and economic growth. if there is overregulation or extra taxation on you, there will be less mundane or money available for the creation of jobs and for economic growth. and by mobilizing depositors to make that case in making the case that there really are economic consequences of to the populism that is being pushed by the president, and you will have a chance i think to fight back, not as bankers but as the spokespeople for your consumers. >> thank you. victoria then peter. >> well, i certainly can't comment on what the best strategy would be. i just know from what i have observed there is a clear divide

on congress and i think broader media and across the country and how people deal quote, unquote big tanks that are wall street or so smaller banks, community banks and credit unions. there's a good story and "the wall street journal" just a couple days ago looking at how a number of state and local governments, state and city governments were trying to direct more money towards community banks and the vocal, you know, smaller local financial institutions, a couple of states were actually passing legislation to make that happen. they talked about mayor bloomberg was trying to steer money towards credit unions. and i think that that's, as i follow the financial reform legislation on the hill that that is very much a divide, that you know, barney frank said it best, he's like community banks,

there's a community banker never districts. those are members and constituents. there've been carveouts are exceptions made for community banks and credit unions that are not being given to the larger banks. >> in a way that good news in a way because -- >> there's a distinction, yes. >> but i would tell you when this started when steny hoyer referred to that meeting, there wasn't that distinction and we have worked and worked and worked in the state associations and others have been pounded and pounded to say, we try to use traditional banking versus wall street. it still gets muddled in the middle, but i don't think that's because we worked pretty hard. >> sure, i wasn't saying that it's good or bad. but there is a distinction. you also have seen that movie or money campaign was started by arianna huffington. that has got a lot of mainstream press coverage. and so i think there definitely is a recognition out there among

customers and average folks that, you know, when they say banks and big banks andall street, it's the big banks, it's not their local bank. >> peter. >> an old trick of mine from local news both newspaper and local television when i would drop into someplace for some big story, the first place i went to the two get kind of the lay of the land, the two best sources i found were barbers because they talked to everybody and cab drivers because they talked to everybody. so to test my thesis on the way in this morning i took a cab and i asked tom. i said tom, what do you think about the banks right now? so with a survey of one, he said, they're all bad. and so of course doing my job i asked a couple more questions, including well, what about the

big banks versus the small banks? and he said, big come a small, doesn't matter to me. they're all bad. and i found out that he had been turned down for a mortgage by not a community bank, bible code via wells fargo. >> and i also point out it's a d.c. cab driver. he's only been in the country for two weeks. >> but he listens to c-span every day. >> actually the guy was from alexandria whereas the. but because i thought and i agree with victoria that at least in the way i've been reporting this story, one of the members appears dead we didn't cause the crisis. but clearly, there's still a pr or a perception problem out there because at least with tom, the cab driver, he's lumping you in. the community banks at the big tanks. but i do think that we

understand -- >> policymakers. >> and policymakers. in fact come the president had meetings with two community bankers. he had a meeting with the wall street bankers, the jamie diamond, the void and find and ripped into them. and if things were getting rough out there, he reached out inside my gosh, we're saying that it was about community banks. and i think we talk afterward. but the president went out of his way to draw a distinction between the big money center banks in the wall street firms in the community banks. he tried to backtrack. remember, we repair? we were covering that. but based on my survey of one cabdriver, they're still perception out there that she's got to work on. >> i can confirm. we made a lot of process, but they still do get lumped together and i do the same kind of thing when i travel. okay, we've got time for maybe

one or two quick questions from the audience if somebody has one. go ahead. go ahead back there. we'll take one here and then when he or and then we'll have to stop. i'm sorry. >> your taxidriver story was a good segue into my question. i remember a time when if somebody did not receive a mortgage on a loan or their business individual, people would question, what if that person's credit worthiness? what is this psycho score? of the not paying his bill? i was the managing his business? and today the perception that seemed to fix in that example in the idea that banks don't want to lend any money. what is media's role. in your experience with the research and talking with a bow, do you think there's any basis for that perception, that shift?

>> i would probably attribute that sort of shaved to -- i mean, there's a feeling of broken trust. there's a lot of anger, anger that existed before even the financial crisis really had with credit cards. i mean, credit card legislation was driven by, you know, populist anger, lawmakers getting letters. the federal reserve got more letters than anything else that's ever gotten. so i think these things tend and i'm sure media plays a role in it, feeding this, but it's just perception have rolled together. you know, one area where people are angry, they just personified the bank as an evil entity out to get them, as opposed to the trusted local banker who was going to help you buy your first house. and i think some of that has to do with, you know, the new products and how everything has

changed. it's not their traditional relationship that used to exist in that confuses people. and when people don't understand something, they tend to fear it and feel angry about it. >> we also just report the facts as well. when we joined the stories, when we hear politicians say the banks are lending. and we know you're all caught between the regulators and the politicians. the politicians who want to help get in good standing with their constituents are up for reelection this year are saying those darn banks, they are not lending, but then we turned around and we hear the stories about the examiners coming in and saying yeah, don't lend. preserve that capital. your problems with other loans and we want to make sure you have plenty of reserves and safety and soundness trumps the loans. but we go -- i know victoria

when we hear politicians say the banks are lending, we go get the facts, the fdic data, the fed data and that stuff, you know, they're not lying there. we saw from from the fdic fourth-quarter report the largest top in lending in 60 something years. right? wasn't that what it was? though we also know that it's anecdotal and it depends on each community. and i are member dorothy we were talking and making business loans. so anyway, we do the best we can, which is we try and report the facts and then we hope that people will make up their own determinations. and now we can do is report what the facts are. >> thank you. i have found this very interesting, but i'm struck at two things. as community bankers, we probably have pretty good

relationships with our local media. i'm struck because i'm not sure that good relationship can overcome the more cable channels and the broader media. the other thing -- >> will lead this event to go live to the u.s. capitol as the senate is convening for morning business. that's it. of speeches on any topic. then we'll presume on federal aviation administration and authorization bill that's been stalled since july. the bill contains an air passengers bill of rights, creates an oversight l2 speed the transition-based air traffic control system. will call votes perhaps including final passage are expected at about 5:30 eastern today. over the house members considering how they doesn't address both including living legislative work getting undeay. at this hour you can see the house live on c-span. and we now take you live to the senate floor for life in a covered cheer on c-span 2.

mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: following leaders remarks the senate will be in morning business until 3:00 p.m. with the time equally divided and controlled between 2002 leaders or their designees. at 3:00 p.m., the senate will resume consideration of h.r. 1586, the federal aviation administration legislation. at 5:30 the senate will proceed to a series of up to three roll call votes in relation to the f.a.a. bill. senators will be notified when we know exactly roll call votes will be necessary. mr. president, our country has lost a friend, a patriot, an environmental pioneer, stuart udall. stuart udall did more to preserve and protect the american landscape than probably anyone else. he died this weekend, and our thoughts are with his family and many friends.

on my last trip to new mexico, i had the the good fortune to be able to sit and talk to stuart udall for about an hour. it was a wonderful experience for me. i had never met him. i served with his brother in the house of representatives. but this is the first conversation i had with him and it was wonderful. he was physically a little impaired but his mind was as sharp as a tack. and we talked about things that had happened and things that were happening. he was in great spirits and good humor. that's how i'll always remember him. stewart udall was the last surviving member of president kennedy's cabinet. he served as secretary of interior for nearly the entire 1960's for both the kennedys and johnson, left an indelible imprint on our land. his legacy as secretary of the interior includes four national parks, six national monuments, eight national seashores, nine

national recreation areas, 20 historic sites and 50 wildlife refuges. that's hard to comprehend. he served our nation in the army and air corps. he served in europe during world war ii. he was a significantly good basketball. he was a guard. he taught students and wrote books. he reached the summits of mount kilimanjaro and mount fuji. at 84, he was still rafting the colorado and hiking the grand canyon. before he was secretary udall, he was arizona's congressman udall. decades later, as i indicated, i served with his famous brother mo udall.

now we serve with secretary udall's son and his nephew tom and mark. what a great legacy, two cousins serving in the senate. and, mr. president, a lot of people don't know their first cousin was gordon smith, the senator from oregon. it is an accomplished family. as a dedicated steward to our environment, stewart udall leaves a legacy. mr. president, the house of representatives deserves the appreciation of the entire nation for what they did last n.i.h. clearly, a majority of -- last night. clearly a majority voted to affirm what the senators passed on christmas eve. tomorrow the senate will begin to put the final touches on this

enormous effort. last night's vote took courage and common sense. their votes were momentous. they were historic and they were right. after a century of working and waiting, going back to the days of theodore roosevelt, reform would become the law of the land not in a matter of years, months or weeks, but in a matter of hours. in the very near future, parts of this bill will take effect and improve the lives of millions. soon insurance companies will no longer be able to refuse to cover children with preexisting conditions. they'll no longer be able to drop your coverage just because you get sick. small businesses that today can't afford to cover their employees will soon get tax credits that would often right that wrong. tens of thousands of small businesses will benefit in nevada alone. before it means if you have a preexisting condition with no health insurance, you'll soon be

able to afford the care you need to get and to stay healthy. if you're one of the many senior citizens stuck in the prescription drug doughnut hole, you'll soon get a check to help pay for your medicine. that will help seniors stay healthy while we completely close that loophole once and for all. 360,000 nevada seniors and millions more across the country. also starting this year no insurance company will be able to pull the lifetime limit on your benefits. those changes are just the tip of the iceberg. there are only some benefits that will kick in immediately or almost immediately. some three months, some six months but none longer than what i'm going to talk about today. when all is said and done, more than 600,000 nevadans will be able to access affordable coverage, more than 300,000 nevadans will get tax credits to help them buy health coverage on

the private market. another 300,000 seniors will get free annuals services like physicals and checkups. nevadans who buy insurance on their own will save money. because of this bill their premiums will go down as much as 20%. this bill will save our money, and lots of it. over the next ten years it will slash our deficit by $143 billion. in the next ten years, $1.3 trillion deficit reduction. many senators deserve credit for getting us this far and many will help us cross the finish line this week. i thank especially chairman baucus who oversaw the financial aspect of this bill. chairman dodd who oversaw the parts of reform that will ensure more healthy americans. he did that in the "help" committee. not only will it allow people to

stay healthy; it will allow them to stop being sick in the first place. our friend, ted kennedy, must be surely proud of this work. chairman harkin, who's led the "help" committee down the homestretch and deserves our thanks for the work he's done by making college more affordable. and chairman conrad will continue to guide us through the budget reconciliation process, a fiscally responsible final piece that will reduce the deficit and ensure more americans can afford health insurance. i hope republicans finally learned a strategy of delay and fear might slow the process but cannot stop it. i hope this week when we take up the final revisions, our republican friends will finally act in the interest of their constituents and not in the interest of the insurance industry or their political party. the other side has made it clear

that they'll try to stop progress based on a technicality. but with substance, mr. president, they're powerless. what this budget process is all about is simply making a good law that we passed on christmas eve even better. the other side is still talking about the number of pages in the bill. we won't stop talking about the number of lives that we'll save. mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: last night marked a turning point in our politics and in our nation. on a sunday night in march, with the nation howling in opposition, a bare majority of democrats in the people's house ignored the people to claim a win for their party. and then they celebrated. the american people watched all

of this in utter disbelief. the american people watched all of this in utter disbelief. here's what the democrats voted for last night: a vast expansion of the entitlement state that we can't afford. massive cuts to medicare, higher taxes, higher health care costs, worse care, taxpayer-funded abortions. and don't believe the spin; this wasn't a party-line vote. yes, not a single republican voted for the bill, but a whole lot of democrats voted against it as well.

the fact is the so-called senate version of the health care bill that passed the house last night couldn't even pass the senate today. and why is that? because this bill is so deeply unpopular that the voters in the most liberal state in the country just elected a republican to the senate for the first time in nearly four decades in order to stop it. democrats want to pretend this didn't happen. they want to pretend that new jersey and virginia and massachusetts simply didn't happen. they want to pretend that the views of the people who sent us here really don't matter. they want to pretend we can afford a $2.5 trillion entitlement in the middle of a recession when we can't even meet the obligations that we

already have. they want to pretend that future generations won't have to bear the burden of their actions. they want to pretend that our actions today won't affect the american dream tomorrow. well, mr. president, they're living in a fantasy. and today that fantasy becomes even more absurd. as if the bill they voted on yesterday wasn't bad enough, now they want to make it even worse. that's what's going to happen in the senate. that's what's going to happen in the senate this week. democratic leaders now want us to take the bill that passed the senate back in december and that the house voted on last night and make the tax hikes even higher and the medicare cuts even deeper. and they want us to endorse a

raft of new sweetheart deals that were struck behind closed doors just last week so this thing could limp over the finish line last night. americans said they didn't want this bill. democrats passed it anyway. they said they didn't like the deals and they didn't like the giveaways. democrats struck them anyway now, mr. president, they want to make this bill even worse. they want to add more deals on top of the other ones. well, i have a message for our democratic friends: enough is enough. no more tax hikes. no more medicare cuts. no more deal making. no more backroom deals. democrats may have won their vote last night, but they lost

the argument. and they've lost the trust of the american people. now, americans know you don't drive down the cost of health care by spending anothe another $2.5 trillion on health care. they know we can help people with preexisting conditions without slashing medicare to do it. they know we can do all of these things without crippling the economy or forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions. americans see through the false choices they've been handed by the democrats here in washington. democratic leaders may have gotten their votes. they may have gotten their win. but today is a new day. already we're seeing democrats in the senate distancing themselves from this to make a bad bill worse. so we already know that reconciliation is guaranteed to have bipartisan opposition.

democrats were hoping they could silence the voices of the american people last night. but starting today -- but starting today those voices are going to be heard. senate republicans are going to make sure those choices are heard. -- those voices are heard. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: under the previous order the leadership type is reserved and the senate will be in a period of morning business until 3:00 p.m. with senators permitted to speak therein for 10 minutes each with the time equally divide and controlled between the two leaders or their designees. mr. begich: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from alaska alaska. mr. begich: i rise to introduce the permanent station memberses relief act. i'm proud to introduce this legislation and thank my

cosponsor senator murray. this will provide our service members and their families much-needed financial relief during these hard economic times. like most families, our service members are pinching their pennies too. unfortunately they incur many unnecessary financial burdens related to their service and their sacrifice. for instance, right now our service members with spouses and children are only reimbursed for shipping one vehicle to and from alaska, hawaii, guam during permanent change of stations. this means if they get directed to move to mate base from alaska alaska to texas or texas to alaska alaska they must pay to transports a second car themselves or sell the vehicle and purchase a new car at the next location. this can be a costly option. many military families cannot afford to ship a second vehicle or purchase another car. without a second vehicle, spouses and children who accompany a service member on a

permanent change of station move maybe unable to hold a job, run daily errands or otherwise participate in their new community. many states have large military bases like in alaska alaska, with housing on one end and base services on another, some families cannot even get to the grocery store or take their children to a doctor in an emergency. colleagues, it is unacceptable that we put our military families in a position where they have to make a choice with an inability to meet daylighty -- daily needs or take care of their family in an emergency or pay $1,500 to ship a vehicle. under this act our military families will be able to ship a second car to hawaii, alaska alaska, or guam to alleviate

further costs. the legislation will increase the gas mileage reimbursement rate during a permanent change in station. currently when our personnel drive from one military base to the next on a government-directed move, they are reimbursed half the amount given under temporary duty assignment. this reflects the true cost of operating a vehicle. the current p.c.s. reimbursement rate of 16 cents per mile does not create financial burden for service members. it doesn't make any sense that the gas mileage reimbursement rates are different amounts for p.c.s. and t.d.y. our service members get official orders to move. it's not optional. they're both official business expenditures. we already ask so much of our service members and their families. they're fighting two wars. they move at the military service's direction, relocating themselves and their families to

new military bases every -- every few years. it's unfair we are asking them to pay out-of-pocket on the government-directed moves. our experience unwarranted and pointless partships due to financial constraints. in these tough economic times it is more important than ever that we show our support for our service members and their families. relieving stress and strain during a perform change in their station is the least we can do. i ask my colleagues to support the service members p.c.s. relief act. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the tens. mr. alexander: mr. president, i was talking to the senator from new mexico and the senator from wyoming about stewart udall, who

the majority leader just talked about a little earlier. he's the father of senator tom udall, the uncle of mark. and, really, a great, distinguished american. lived 90 long good years and did so much in our country to focus on conservation and the outdoors and so we remember and celebrate his life and send our -- from our family and i'm sure from the entire senate the -- our best wishes to our colleagues, tom and mark, and to their families. mr. president, i've been in and out of public life a long time. and i -- i have never had anything affect me in a personal way like the health care debate. i got up this morning and -- in west miller's cove in blunt county and drove to the knoxville airport and almost

every single person with whom i talked on my way into the airplane had something to say to me about the health care debate. and when i get on the plane, here comes another fellow down the aisle and hands me a note that says, thanks for all of your hard work. mr. president, none of them are for the health care bill that passed last night. they're all deeply concerned about it. they're worried about it. they see it as i see it. they see it as a historic mistake. and unlike the social security bill, the medicare bill, the -- the medicaid bill, the civil rights bills of 1957, 1964, 1968, and later, all of those bills passed with significant bipartisan support. but the bill last night was completely partisan act. the only thing bipartisan about it is the option to it. and i think it's important that we continue to say why that's

true. the fundamental mistake, mr. president, is that what the bill basically do is expand a health care delivery system that we all know is too expensive. in a time of enormous concern about the national debt, in the middle a great recession we are expanding this health care delivery system that we all know is too expensive instead of focusing our attention, working together to set as a goal reducing the cost of the health care delivery system so more americans can afford to buy insurance. that is the basic difference of opinion. the democrats believe we should expand the system we have now. of course they make some changes in it. but, basically, it's an

expanding of a system that's too expensive and they make it more expensive. we believe that what we should do instead is to reduce the cost of the american health care delivery system and by doing so make it possible for more americans to be able to afford health insurance. here is what the bill, as we now see it, does -- it imposes larger taxes on job creators in the middle of a recession. it means medicare cuts and premium increases new orleans of americans. -- for millions of americans. now, the medicare cuts, it is said, are already because there's some fraud and abuse in medicare. we agree with that. but what we are saying is that medicare, according to its trustees, is going broke by

2015, and every penny of savings in medicare ought to go to medicare. -- to medicare to help make it stronger. this bill spends the money, almost all -- all the money on a new entitlement. the bill last night cuts medicare even more deeply. some say, well, it only hurts providers, hospitals. well, those hospitals are the ones who may announce -- some are announcing we're being reimbursed so little that we're not going to accept medicare patients anymore. but it also cuts medicare beneficiaries' benefits. the congressional budget office says that fully half of those who have medicare advantage -- and that's one out of four of the medicare beneficiaries in the country -- will see their benefits cut. that's what this bill does.

and as far as premium increases go, the president and i had a friendly discussion about that at the health care summit. i said for millions of americans the individual premiums will go up. he said, no, they won't. i said, with respect, mr. president, the congressional budget office says, yes, they will, 10% to 13% on average. he said, oh, no. oh, no. they'll be getting a better policy. but that's like saying if i require you -- if the government requires you to buy a better car and it's more expensive, it maybe better, but it's still more expensive. for a variety of reasons premiums are going to go up. one is the government requirement that you buy a better policy. senator collins, who was the insurance commission and -- commissioner in maine has surveyed her state and her conclusion is that 87% of the individual policies there will be more expensive under this bill. now, it is true that maybe half of those persons would get subsidies paid for by taxpayers.

but that still leaves maybe 40% of the individual policies in maine where individual premiums will go up. they'll go up because we're dumping more people in medicaid, the state program for low-income americans, and we don't reimburse physicians and hospitals adequately for those patients. so today one half of doctors won't see new medicaid patients. so what do the hospitals and the doctors do when they do see a medicaid patient? they transfer part of the cost of seeing that patient, that medicaid patient, on to someone who has private insurance. so that forces premiums to go up. and when you have a provision in the bill, as this does, which says that my policy can't go up much as compared with my son's policy, well, that might keep my policy from going up as much, but my son's going to be paying a lot more. so for millions of younger americans, i think you're going to be very surprised about the cost of your policy as it goes

up. and then the provision to require people to buy insurance was weakened and because it's weak, a lot of young people, especially, may not join the policy. and when they don't, that will leave sicker and older people within the system, and that will help drive premium cost up as well. so for all those reasons, mr. president, for millions of americans it's right to say -- accurate to say that premiums will go up. i was at the university of tennessee this morning. a tremendous the university, dr. chu, the energy secretary was visiting there today and tomorrow, i wish i could be there to talk about the work between the oak ridge national laboratory and the science division, mr. bingaman has visited that before. one of the undercurrent stories in america today is the condition of american public higher education. state funding for public higher education has been flat for the

last 10 years. why is that? because medicaid costs continue to rise. governors can control those budgets, control those costs. the reason they can is because we write the program up here and then send them about 30% to 40% of the bill. and they can't afford it. so what do they do? they cut -- they cut the amount of money that goes to the university of virginia, the university of tennessee, the university of new mexico or wyoming. then what happens? either quality goes down, fewer students are served, fewer faculty are attracted or tuition goes up, which is why the students who are protesting in california about the 34% increase in tuition at the university of california probably didn't even imagine that the reason for that is because the federal government is causing medicaid costs to continue to rise and governors therefore make cuts, and tuition goes up and this bill will make that work. then on top of that, you have the last-minute take overof the

federal student loan program. suddenly, 19 million students -- well, 15 million of those 19 million will go to the federal government to get their loan beginning in july instead of 2000 lenders across the country. and the government is saying well, we're going to spend money. well, that may be true but guess what the government is going to do with its money. they're not going to say because the government can borrow the money at 2.8%, it's going to cost us less to operate the program, therefore we'll give the students the savings. they're going to spend the savings. they will borrow it at 2.8% and lend it to the students at 6.8%. that's overcharging america's students to help pay for the health care programs. now, these students aren't wall street financiers. they are working people, some of them pretty grown up, in their 30's and 40's. going back to community college. they often have a job. they are not going to be very happy when they find out that they are paying a higher

interest -- the estimate that we have made in our office, it might be $1,500, $1,700 in ten years in more interest. that's the amount the government will be overcharging them to help to pay for other government programs, including health care. so, mr. president, the action that's being taken may be historic, but we feel that it is an historic mistake and that throughout the rest of this year the debate won't end about health care, it will change and it will be larger than just health care. as the president himself said last year, the president himself said last year, the health care debate is a proxy for a larger debate about the role of government in america's life. we believe that. we believe that's a debate our country should have and we believe the country will soundly reject a policy of more taxes, more spending, more debt and more washington takeover. i thank the president. i yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from new mexico. mr. bingaman: mr. president, let me indicate i just heard my colleague's comments about health care and i will plan to return to the senate floor to discuss health care in some detail here in the next couple of days, but i wanted today to rise to speak about a great american who has inspired me and countless others with his leadership and commitment to public service. that great american is stewart udall. at the outset, i do extend my condolences to his friend, to my friend and colleague, stewart's son tom udall, to tom's wife jill, to his nephew mark udall and to his wife maggie and to all of the udall family for this enormous loss.

in several conversations i had with stewart in recent years, it was clear that tom's own exemplary public service and i'm sure mark's as well were a source of great pride to him. stewart udall is best known for his lifetime of service in preservation of our public lands. his accomplishments as secretary of interior under presidents kennedy and johnson are legendary. those accomplishments were recounted yesterday in "the new york times." it said he presided over the acquisition of 3.85 million acres of new holdings, including four national parks, canyon lands in utah, redwood in california, north cascades in washington and guadalupe mountains in texas. six national mountains, nine national recreation areas, 20 historic sites, 50 wildlife

refuges and eight national seashores. i would ask that the obituary from the "times" be included after my comments in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bingaman: stewart udall's commitment to and his achievements in conservation and preservation are unequaled in our country. he was a moving force behind all of the landmark environmental legislation of the 1960's, including the clean air act of 1963, the federal water pollution control act of 1965, the wilderness act of 1964, the land and water conservation act of 1965, the endangered species act of 1966, the national trail system act of 1968, and the wild and scenic rivers act of 1968. long after leaving public service, he was instrumental in securing the enactment of the radiation exposure compensation

act of 1990 which i was proud to support. but his commitment to our public lands was part of a larger lifetime commitment, that is, a commitment to public service. with all of the rancor and heated rhetoric that surrounds us in washington today, it is easy to lose sight of what is good about our system of government, and one of the very best things about our great country and our system of government is that it has attracted to public service many of the best among us to devote their lives to work for all of us. stewart udall was one of those people. he devoted his life to pursuing the common good, the greater good, and he left this nation a better place because of it. stewart cared deeply about the people of this great country, and that caring was evident in each encounter that he had.

my wife anne has fond memories of heartfelt conversations she had with stewart where he spoke forcefully about the challenges that we face. i myself was fortunate to always hear from him words of encouragement and constructive advice whenever we would visit. stewart udall set the highest standards for public service and for decency as a human being. as ben johnson said of shakespeare, he was not of an age but for all time. stewart udall had, as he urged his grandchildren to have, a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth. we are all the richer for it. mr. president, i yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. enzi: thank you, mr. president. i rise in opposition to the reconciliation legislation that the senate will shortly be considering. like many of my colleagues, i first read this legislation when it was filed in the house last week, and one of my first thoughts was what a difference 15 months makes. today the senate is debating legislation -- or shortly will be debating legislation that will increase health care costs for working americans and wipe out a successful bipartisan 45-year-old student loan program without a single committee hearing or even a markup. this bill is an attempt to fix what is perceived to be the problem with health reform legislation that the senate passed on christmas eve of last year. these fixes are being considered because the american people overwhelmingly oppose that

legislation. unfortunately, that bill does nothing to fix the problem that this bill, the reconciliation bill does nothing to fix the problem that prompted this opposition. nothing in the bill that we're going to be considering will prevent half a trillion dollars from being cut from the medicare program to create a brand-new entitlement program for the uninsured. if this bill is passed, millions of medicare beneficiaries will lose the extra benefits they currently receive. in fact, this bill will actually make matters worse, cutting even more money than the provisions in the senate bill. one out of every four medicare beneficiaries are already enrolled in medicare advantage plans, and every one of them will see their benefits reduced. if this bill is passed, the care of medicare beneficiaries across the country will still be put at risk because of the unsustainable payment cuts to hospitals and nursing homes. the president's own chief

medicare actuary said these costs could jeopardize medicare's beneficiaries' access to care. he said that as a result of these cuts, roughly 20% of all hospitals and nursing homes in the country would become unprofitable, which, of course, could lead them to end their participation in the medicare program. it's either end it or go broke. if you can't go to a hospital or get a doctor to treat you, you don't have health care. but this bill does nothing to fix the medicare payment cuts in the senate health reform bill from christmas eve. this bill will still cause health insurance premiums to increase. the congressional budget office said the senate bill would increase premiums by 10% to 13% for individuals. they said that 10% to 13% increase is above what would happen if we did absolutely nothing.

yes. escalating health care costs are a problem, but this bill passed by the house last night with these supposed fixes that are in here will increase premiums 10% to 13% for individuals over what would have been done if nothing would have happened. it doesn't sound like a solution to me. there are solutions out there. the bill also contains provisions that will increase premiums for 85% of americans who already have health insurance. this bill does nothing to stop health care costs from increasing our national debt. the c.b.o. estimates estimates of the bill are required to ignore medicare payments to physicians. how many times have we ignored the medicare payments to physicians? that's right, never. how do we fix it? we just need to come up with

with $300 billion more dollars. we had a chance to do that through the bill, keeping medicare money for medicare. but no, we took the medicare money and we have decided to put that into new programs, new programs for the uninsured. now, there are solutions out there for making sure the uninsured are covered, too, and it didn't have to come out of medicare. so the c.b.o. estimates the bills are required to ignore the issue of medicare payments to physicians. the bill also does nothing to fix the scheduled medicare payments to the other health providers. does the majority really believe the medicare payments to doctors will be cut 21% later this year? not if history keeps itself up. but let me tell you, that that $132 billion that's supposed to reduce the deficit in the first ten years in the senate-passed bill, that's ignoring the need for for $300 billion to fix the doctors. now, if we fix the doctors, we're $170 billion in the hole.

you know, the president didn't visit china -- and secretary giant on a separate trip didn't visit china to see the great wall. they were told to come over there by china to explain how we're ever going to pay for our bonds. last year, they dropped about $38 billion in our bonds. and i notice today that we have this clamor that we want them to adjust the value of their money compared to our money, and they said you've got to be kidding me, we own you. well, they didn't say it in quite those words, but that's what they meant. in addition to assuming massive reductions on medicare payments to doctors, the health care reform bill also relies on budget gimmicks and other unsustainable payment cuts to allow its sponsors to argue that it will not increase the deficit. as ruth marcus wrote recently i "the washington post," claims that the bill will reduce the deficit are premature at best and disillusional at worst. rather than creating this new entitlement, we should be using the savings from medicare to pay to fix medicare's problems.

these payments issues are not going away, and this or a future congress is going to have to pay for them or increase the debt. and we have maxed out our credit cards already. people coming in -- and this is the season for it. they come in and they ask for increases in the programs they already have and they ask for -- or they ask for new programs and the funding to go with that program because, of course, the federal government is known as the great piggy bank in washington, and they know that we just print money. they didn't know that there could be a limit to how much we print money. i would suggest that those people kind of save their travel money and use it in their program because we are going to have to tell people that not only is the money not there to expand programs and to add new programs, we're going to have to actually cut programs. we're going to have to cut programs to stay solvent. they are looking at changing our bond rating. that means that it would be less favorable for people to buy u.s. bonds. now, the reconciliation bill

before us also raises taxes by by $569 billion. if you can believe it, that's that's $50 billion more in new taxes than the original senate-passed bill, so the fix-it bill we have in front of us -- or will shortly -- will put even more pressure on small business owners and entrepreneurs who could help lead our nation's economic recovery. this bill also does nothing to stop the billions of new dollars in job-killing taxes. unfortunately, the policies in this bill will only make the situation worse for workers and for businesses across america. this bill will increase to $52 billion the new taxes imposed on employers, which will eliminate millions of americans' jobs and reduce wages for millions of other american workers. the nation's unemployment rate is 9.7%. millions of americans have lost their jobs and millions more go to work every day worried about keeping the job they have.

businesses of all sources are strug yostruggling to keep theis open and are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. mr. president, we shed more than 3.5 million jobs since january of last year, and the average workweek is now down to 33 hours for the american worker. yet the bill before us today will actually make that situation worse. the congressional budget office has told us that the new job-killing taxes in the senate bill will lower wages across this country. rather than addressing the issue and enacting reforms that would lower health insurance costs, the majority's health care bill instead increases the taxes that these businesses will have to pay, which takes money away from hiring new workers. when i'm home in wyoming, which is nearly every weekend, my constituents ask me, what does health care reform mean for me? unfortunately, i have to tell them that when the senate bill becomes law, their jobs and

paychecks will be in daifnlg i also found it ironic that on the very day president obama signed a show--- a signed a so-called jobs bill, representative pelosi signed a jo tax bill. the bill before us fails to address any of the fundamental problems with that bill. if the legislation we're about to debate is enacted, taxes will still be raised by $569 billion. $525 billion will still be cut from the medicare program. wages will stilling reduced and jobs eliminated for millions of americans. health insurance premiums will still be driven up, driven up more than if we did nothing at all. and 23 million people will still be left without insurance coverage. we need to do better than that. and i believe we can. while most of the discussion

today will focus on health care, we must not forget that the reconciliation bill drastically alters decades of education and labor policy. specifically, i'm speaking about eliminating the 45-year-old family-friendly bank loans for education program called ffel. we like to put initials on them when it has anything to do with the government. this one is the one that works through the banks, which was success -- which would successfully help millions of americans realize a college education -- and a shift to a government-program. that occurred without a single markup in the "help" committee, where i serving as a ranking member. the administration and majority have been promising students since the beginning of this congress that their pell grants would be increased dramatically so that college would be

affordable. even with this bill, this promise rings hollow. what does the transfer of $36 billion to the pell grant program really get for students? yes, $36 billion. first, it kicks the can down the road by only partial filling tlg the pell promise for this year. the remainder only modestly increases the maximum pell grant award by $50 a year. how much do you think tuition is going up? the senator from tennessee explained that every time that we add medicaid people, that costs the states and the only place the states have to cut is in college tuition -- or in colleges, and if the college tuition is cut, the board for the college has to raise the tuition. i'll have a chart out here one of these times that'll show what the difference is between how fast college tuition is rising

compared to health care costs, compared to the cost of living index. stunning. so we're just going to kick the can down the road and only increase the minimum -- the maximum pell grant by $50 a year. in exchange, students are forced into the siz one-size-fits-all program. schools have had the choice of switching to the direct program for nearly 20 years, but most -- just over 4,000 as of march 1 -- have chosen to remain in the family-friendly bank loan program for education. why? because the family-friendly program provides services that meet student needs, far better than the cookie-cutter approach of a government-run, direct-loan program. got nothing things the government is running. more of this this last year.

this puts at risk the availability of thousands of loans for students this fall. under the terms of this bill, all 4,000-plus institutions of higher education now in the family-friendly bank loan for education program will be required to participate in the bureaucratic direct-loan program, as of july 1, 2010. just a few month months away. less than four months from today. i do not believe that these schools or the u.s. department of education have the time or capacity to successfully meet that deadline and the experts at the department seem to agree. according to a february 20, 2010, department of education procurement document, schools need between four and six months to successfully switch to the direct-loan program. as a result, many schools will not have in place what it takes to get needed aid to students this fall. yes, it's true that reconciliation has been used to effect student loans in the past. however, in those instances it

was used to level the playing field between the two loan programs and provide greater access by students to the loans. this bill is nothing more than a government takeover that will turn the department of education into one of the largest banks in the nation. probably not under the financial reform requirements either. and transfer billions of dollars from middle-class students and taxpayers to pay for only a modest expansion of the pell grant program, which does nothing to lower the cost of college education. i will propose amendments that address out-of-control college costs that give schools time to thoughtfully switch to the direct-loan program that make transparency the actual cost of the program, that put real money toward debt reduction. the majority will tell you that what you are doing -- what they are doing is being dong at no cost to the taxpayer. you think america believes that? i, as the accountant in the

senate, disagree with this assertion. the family-friendly program provides lenders through private lenders provides the capital necessary for a fund of billions of dollars each year. with the direct-loan prarnlg the freash will provide all the capital for these loans, which amounts to nearly $1 billion a year. where does the money come from? it comes from increasing the public debt. and the american taxpayers, many of whom do not have a college education, shifting the financial burden from those who directly benefit from a college education raises concerns about equity and again does nothing to address the larger problem of rapidly increasing costs of a college education. the presiding officer: the senator has used his ten minutes. mr. enzi: i would ask that the balance of my speech be included in the record along with a letter that explains what the reconciliation bill is going to do to the black loan funds. the presiding officer: without objection.

mr. enzi: i would ask unanimous consent that -- for both of those things. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. enzi: thank the chair and yield the floor. mr. mccain: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from arizona. mr. mccain: ask unanimous consent at that-to-address the senate as if this morning business for not more than 10 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mccain: i thank the president and i come to the floor to -- obviously to comment on the events of the last couple of days in the other body. the nation watched as the process went forward and the votes were cast, and my understanding, according to media reports, champagne was poshed and the celebration went on. -- champagne was poured and the seem bracing went on inside the beltway. outside the beltway, in the homes and offices and all of the

residences and places where people gather across the country there's a sense of outrage and a sense of betrayal. because for the first time in history we have enacted a major reform in a strictly partisan basis about which the process has angered the american people as much as the product. the deals that were made behind closed doors where individuals names of which we've all become familiar -- the cornhusker kickback, the louisiana purchase, the gator-aid -- and also the purchases made of the various entities in the health care industry in america.

most egregious probably is that of pharma, but the list goes on -- the a.m.a., the hospital association -- it goes on and on. americans are disillusioned and they're angry, and americans are not going to forget it. there seems to be an inside-the-beltway and liberal media view. the american people will forget about it and they'll appreciate it. and what a magnificent victory this is. you know it may be in the view of some a victory for the president of the united states. what it is is a defeat of the american people, because the overwhelming majority of american people, by a 2-1 margin -- said stop and start over. they said they didn't want this, and they didn't like this process, they didn't like the behind-had the-hadthe-closed-do.

to wit, this morning's "wall street journal" opinion entitled "inside the pelosi sausage factory," michigan re bart stupk sold his soul for an executive toothless order." "never before has the average american been treated to such a live-action view of the sordid politics necessary to push a deeply flawed bill to completion. it was dirty deals, open threats, broken promises, and disregard for democracy that pulled obama care to this point and yesterday the same machinations pushed it across the finish line." then the same article goes on to describe how -- and i quote from

the article -- "as for those who needed more er persuasion, california rep jim coughs stay demanded the administration increase water to the central valley district on tuesday the interior pushed up its announcement giving the central valley farmers 25% of water supplies rather than the expected 5% allocation. mr. costa, who denies there was a quid pro quo on saturday, said he flipped to a yes. florida rep susan castas admitted in her own thursday meeting with the president she brawpt the need for more nasa funding. on friday she flipped to a yes. so watch the nasa budget. democrats inserted a new provision provided $100 million in extra dmaid money for tennessee. retiring tennessee rep flipped

to a yes vote on thursday. " the list goes on and on and those are the ones we know about. those are the ones that have been publicly sighed. we know about pharma. we know about the deal they got and the $100 million or so that they've spent on advertisements and paid ads, touting this legislation which will give to them billions of dollars in profits. the same pharma that changed the administration position on reimportation of drugs from canada that is in direct contradiction of the position that then-senator obama had that we should be able to reimport drugs from canada. the same administration that supported competition amongst pharmaceutical companies for medicare enrollees and now changed that position as well. there will be months and even

years where we will find out what went on behind closed doors. either the majority leader's office, the speaker's office, or in the white house. and there are those who believe that the attention span of the american people is rather short. i disagree. i was home on -- back in my home straight of arizona on saturday. two town hal meetings. hundreds of people packed into the town hall meetings. every one of them angry about what this will do. what this will do to companies and corporations like caterpillar, that announced -- caterpillar corporation announced that it would cost them just in one year $100 million in additional taxes. people who have figured out that the gimmickry, imposing taxes

and cutting benefits for four years before a single beneficiary receives any help. the gimmickry that the myth that we will actually cut 21% from doctors' payments for treating medicare enrollees that will take place in fall. is there anyone that believes that we are going to cut doctors' payments by 21%? if so, i'd like to meet them and hear from them. we're not. and the word is out. the word is out. don't worry, we'll fix it. and they will fix it, because we can't do that to physicians. but yet they used that $271 billion in the reduction in physicians' payments for treatment of medicare enrollees

as a way to disguise the true deficit. in fact, that alone would have shown the deficit -- that the -- that this legislation would have resulted in an increase in costs rather than decrease. i haven't got that much time except to say i want to make it very clear, the people i represent in the state of arizona are not going to sit still for this. they're going to want this repealed. we will challenge this in the courts. we will challenge this in the -- in the towns. we will challenge this in the cities. we will challenge this in the farms. we will challenge this all over america, and the will of the people will be heard. and the will of the people that they do not like this process, they do not like this product and we will prevail over time. i am confident of that.

. president, i yield the floor floor. the presiding officer: expressions of approval or disapproval of statements on the floor are not permitted. morning business is closed and under the previous order, the senate will resume consideration of h.r. 1586, which the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 36, h.r. 1586, an act to impose an additional tax on bonuses received from certain tarp recipients. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the time until 4:30 p.m. will be for debate only with the time equally

divided and controlled between the senator from west virginia and the senator from texas. mr. rockefeller: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. mr. rockefeller: mr. president, i note the absence of a quorum and ask that the time be equally divided. the presiding officer: without objection. the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call:quorum call:

mr. kyl: m pside? i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kyl: mr. president, this evening there is a vote scheduled on the ensign amendment which would amend an archaic legislation called the d.c.a. perimeter rule, limited travel options for those that fly out of ronald reagan national airport or d.c.a. as it

is called. the rule restricts the departure or arrival of nonstop flights to or from airports that are beyond 1,250 miles from d.c.a. this restriction forces passengers coming from western states or going to western states to use either dulles international airport or to connect in some other city and then come on in. obviously this is inconvenient and discriminatory. the rule was first codified as a federal statute in 1985, but actually it goes back to you 1962 -- it goes back to 1962. it first had existed as a federal rule in its various iterations since the 1960's when dulles was first built. the original purpose of the d.c.a. perimeter rule was to establish dulles as the long-haul airport serving the washington area, and that has worked n.1962, dulles only

served about 52,000 passengers, but today dulles is thriving. in 2009, the airport served approximately 23 million passengers. according to the metropolitan washington airport's authority -- and i'm quoting -- dulles has emerged as one of the fastest-growing airports in the world and a major east coast gateway for domestic and international travelers as well as cargo activities. end of quote. given the success of dulles and the improvement and technology, including quieter jet engines over the years, congress has granted a limited number of exceptions to the d.c.a. perimeter rule, because the traveling public is eager for travel options. yet, today there are only a dozen nonstop flights between ronald reagan national airport and the entire western united states. there are four to denver, three to phoenix, two to seattle and one to las vegas, los angeles

and salt lake city that's it. put that number in perspective, that's 12 flights beyond the perimeter at d.c.a. out of approximately 400 flights daily. the beyond the perimeter flights represent 3% of all daily operations at d.c.a. just 3% of all flights out of d.c.a. to serve our nation's largest cities like phoenix, los angeles and cities like las vegas and san antonio. a 1999 study by the transportation research board found that perimeter rules -- and i'm quoting -- "no longer serve their original purpose and produced too many adverse side effects, including barriers to competition." the study found further that such rules, "arbitrarily prevent some airlines from extending to these airports and discourage competition in the region and among airlines that use these

airports." end of quote. there's also recent legislative precedent that supports the argument that the d.c.a. perimeter rule should be repealed. the wright amendment of 1979 was a federal law restricting flights at dallas' la field airport. it limited nonstop flights from la field to destinations within the perimeter of texas and neighboring states. in 2006 congress passed the reform act which issued full repeal of the love field. issuing restrictions at love field gave the traveling public more flight options. it also cut prices and made traveling more efficient. the ensign amendment would amend the d.c.a. perimeter rule by allowing any carrier which currently pulls slots at d.c.a. to convert those flights, flights now serving large hub airports inside the perimeter, to flights serving any airport outside the perimeter. this is referred to as the slot

conversion provision. in other words, no new flights, no more flights simply converting a flight that exists to go to a different city. the ensign amendment would cap the number of flights that could be converted to 15 round-trip flights per carrier. the slot conversion provision ensures service to small and medium hub airports within the perimeter would not be affected. there is no restriction, however, on converting a flight that serves a large hub airport within the perimeter to a small or medium hub airport beyond the perimeter. presumably the ensign amendment could kpapbd service to small and medium hub airports beyond the perimeter. i know some of the airlines do intend to use some of these conversion slots to go to hubs outsaoeutd perimeter. the amendment would not alter the regulations at d.c.a. or increase the number of allowable flight operations at the airport. the number of flights currently serving d.c.a. would remain the

same. residents around the airport would not hear an increase in noise from takeoffs and landings and would not see larger planes operating at d.c.a. the only change is that a few of the planes would have a different destination. let me speak to how this amendment would or would not affect dulles. as i mentioned, the conversion provision capped at 15 round-trips, round-trip flights per carrier. it is expected that only five carriers could take advantage of this provision, making the total maximum number of new flights that could go beyond the perimeter to 75. but not all of the five airlines will make full use of all 15 slots. it's estimated that the five eligible airlines would only convert to perhaps 30 flights. so how could flights, say 30, at d.c.a. that go beyond the perimeter affect dulles? according to the latest figures from the metropolitan washington airport authority, dulles has

401 daily flights. so 30 additional beyond the perimeter would have negligible effect on the operations or demand for service at dulles. according to a recent g.a.o. study -- and i quote -- "g.a.o. did not find evidence in passengers or fare data that would indicate that the new service between reagan national and the six beyond the perimeter cities have substantially affected service from dulles or baltimore-washington international airports to these cities. " there is no reason to believe that 30 additional beyond-the-perimeter flights would be any more consequential to dulles airport. the bottom line is that the ensign amendment is not about changing the character of dulles international airport as the long-haul airport for the region or increasing the amount of flights at d.c.a. it simply would allow a limited number of direct flights out of d.c.a. to reach the western states so that passengers there have more choice. it would also allow more

tourists and business travelers another option for visiting the nation's capital and its surrounding states, like the state of virginia. my colleagues he will realize a lot has -- my colleagues realize a lot has changed in 50 years, and they realize the need that has previously existed to protect dulles airport has lessened due to its own success. thanks to a recognition of this fact and some assurances that have been made by senators dorgan and the presiding officer, the senator from virginia, a vote on the ensign amendment may not be needed tonight. instead, it's my understanding that senator dorgan and other conferees will make a good-faith effort to modify the d.c. perimeter rule when the f.a.a. reauthorization dulles conferenced with the house. i know my friend from north dakota intends to pursue this matter in conference, and i appreciate what he has said on this matter. and i also very much appreciate the spirit by which the presiding officer has approached

this issue. as his predecessors have done, he has very much acted out of concern both for the traveling public and also the airports in his state of virginia and would expect him to do nothing less. and i appreciate the open mind that he has in trying to deal with an issue that we out west have that hopefully could be worked out in such a way that it would be a win-win and recognize the fact that times have changed since the early 1960's. mr. president, unless the senator from west virginia has anything, i'll suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. kaufman: i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: i ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business for up to five minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: thank you, mr. president. i raise once again to tell the stories of the federal employees. libraries have been celebrating national reading month. children from coast to coast have been learning about the importance of books. schools are promoting literacy as a tool for academic advancement. this month-long celebration of reading from dr. seuss' classic "the cat in the hat" to joyce's ulysses reminds us not only of the joy found in the written word but also the role libraries play in all our communities. libraries have always been a staple in american life dating back to our early colonial days. in the decades before the american revolution, america's

first libraries enabled the dissemination of the very ideas that inspired our founding patriots. in the 18th century, the athenians of new england and the shareholder libraries of benjamin franklin served as precursors to our robust, modern network of public libraries. in the 1800's, our predecessors in the 16th congress established a research library to help those in government carry out their work with access to scholarly volumes on every subject. today, the library of congress is the largest library in the world, and its ornate reading room remains an awe-inspiring cathedral of learning. i have chosen today to honor three public servants who libra. mary klutz began her federal career as a u.s. marine. in 1990, she came to the library of congress as a budget analyst. in her 20 years there, she has become an expert in every aspect

of the library's operating budget. since 2007, when mary was named budget officer, she set out to transform the way the library's budget proposals and funding justifications are formulated. her work has helped make the library's budget and operations more transparent. its funding proposals are more concise. now library of congress budget proposals often cited as the model for the legislative branch. as a result of mary's efforts, the library receives strong support from congress and appropriations for the last two fiscal years. during this time of economic challenges, mary has helped demonstrate where every dollar taxpayer money for the library goes and why. another outstanding library of congress employee is donna sheier who has worked there for over 40 years. having worked in a number of roles throughout her career at the library, donna was be a

early -- an early champion of integrating computers into libraries, and she introduced the idea of electronic briefing books for congress. she is recognized as a leader in the information management field, and she has guess lectured around the world on the topic of legislative library management. donna's also a former president of the special libraries association. until recently, donna was serving as the acting law librarian of congress, and she was awarded the federal librarian's achievement award in 2009. an active member of washington, d.c., community, she serves as chair of the eastern market community advisory committee and on the board of the old naval hospital foundation. when not spear heeding innovative initiatives with the library, donna spends time relaxing at her home on the delaware shore. one of the branches of the library of congress most revered to us who serve in the chamber is the congressional research service or c.r.s. this nonpartisan office helps

scholars prepare reports on every policy issue and effects on the proposed enacted legislation. they are our go-to guys for information on every topic, and they are truly great in their jobs. the third person i am honoring today has been an analyst with the c.r.s. since 1984. when ronald o'rourke joined the c.r.s. as a naval analyst, he arrived with an impressive background as a phi beta kappa graduate of the johns hopkins university. he was also valedictorian of his class of the school of international studies where he obtained his master's degree. at c.r.s., ronald quickly distinguished himself as a leading expert object naval strategic and budgetary issues, and he frequently briefs members of congress and their staffs on defense programs and appropriations. he has even been called to testify as an expert at congressional hearings. although he already had a busy schedule as a specialist in naval affairs, he stepped in when the c.r.s.'s expert in military aviation passed away suddenly last year.

ronald took responsibility for that portfolio in addition to his own. as his reports on high-profile aviation programs proved invaluable during the congressional debates on defense spending in the 2010 budget. mary klutz, donna sheier and ron o'rourke continue their work in public service at the library of congress to this day. they are just three of the many, many talented and dedicated men and women whose work benefits not only those of us in congress but also tens of millions who have accessed resources from community libraries throughout our nation. mr. president, i hope my colleagues will join me in recognizing the important contribution made by the employees of the library of congress. they are all truly great federal employees. 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 new mexico. a senator: i ask the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bingaman: mr. president, i would ask unanimous consent that kirsten talkin spaulding, a national park service fellow working on the staff of the committee on entering and natural resources this year be granted floor privileges for today and for the remainder of the senate's consideration of h.r. 1586. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bingaman: mr. president, i rise in opposition to the mccain amendment numbered 3528. i understand we are scheduled to consider that amendment and a series of votes beginning at 5:30. the amendment deals with commercial air tours over grand canyon national park, and i'd

like to just take a few minutes to explain the reasons for my opposition. the grand canyon, of course, is one of the crown jewels of the national park system. it's one of the earliest areas that was set aside for conservation purposes originally in 1893 as a forest reserve. later, it was designated as a national monument by president theodore roosevelt in 1908, and in 1919, it was designated by congress as a national park. the colorado river winds its way over 275 miles through the park and forms one of the most explore series of canyons anywhere in the world. the park is one of the most heavily visited sites in our country. with just under 4.4 million visitors last year. visitors come not only to see the awe-inspiring views and

float down the colorado river, but also to experience the quiet and the solitude that much of the park offers. in recent years, however, experiencing the natural quiet has become more difficult. as noise associated with aircraft flights over the park resulted in increased noise on the ground in the park. recognizing this fact, in 1987, congress enacted the national park overflight act. this law included a finding that, quote -- "noise associated with aircraft overflights at grand canyon national park is causing a significant adverse effect on the natural quiet and experience of the park." end quote. the 1987 park overflight act directed the secretary of interior to submit to the federal aviation administration recommendations regarding

actions necessary for the protection of resources in the grand canyon from adverse impacts associated with aircraft overflights. and it also went on to say that the secretary shall provide for substantial restoration of the natural quiet and experience of the park and protection of the public health and safety from adverse effects associated with aircraft overflight. importantly, the act also directed the f.a.a. to implement the secretary's recommendations unless the f.a.a. administrator determined that doing so would adversely affect aviation safety. in response to the 1987 law, the national park service developed recommendations which were implemented by the f.a.a. and which remained in place for several years. however, by 1996, both the park service and the f.a.a. concluded that the policies in place were

not achieving the goal of restoring the natural quiet in the grand canyon, and in addition, a projected increase in commercial air tours over the park would result in even more noise at the park. since then, the agency has attempted to finalize new rules to improve noise conditions in the park but those rules were challenged in court, both by air tour operators who thought the rules were too restrictive and by environmental groups who thought that the rules did not go far enough to limit aircraft noise. the challenges went to the court of appeals on two separate occasions. this is in the d.c. circuit court of appeals. and following clarification of the law from the court in its most recent decision in 2002, the agencies refined key definitions and have worked with affected stakeholders to be able to finally implement a rule that will achieve the congressional directive to restore the natural

quiet in the grand canyon. i'm told that currently the national park service and the f.a.a. expect to have the draft environmental impact statement for the proposed rule ready this summer, and the final environmental impact statement completed in a record of decision implemented sometime next year. so that's a lot of history. it has been 23 years since the national park overflight act was enacted. i appreciate the frustration that all parties have with the fact that a final rule still is not in place that meets the goals and requirements of the 1987 law. however, as evidenced by the history of the process i have described, the delays are not the result of inaction or of inattention to the law but rather the result of the difficulty of establishing accurate models for acceptable noise standards as well as the multiple legal challenges that have occurred.

i have several concerns with the amendment senator mccain has proposed. my principal objection is, however, that i do not believe it makes sense to legislatively enact new standards when the national park service is close to putting out its new recommendations, especially since it has taken so long to get to this point. i believe the better action would be for us to wait and see what the agencies actually proposal. then if there is disagreement with the new proposed rule, then we can enact legislation to correct that. besides the fact that i believe the timing of the amendment is premature, i also have concerns with many of the specific provisions that the amendment would legislate. and some of these get somewhat detailed, and let me -- let me indicate that there is a concern that i have with -- with the

definition in this legislation for substantial restoration of natural quiet. what does that mean? the legislation would establish a certain definition of that which is significantly different than what has been assumed and worked for for a long time by a great many people. the amendment also prohibits the national park service from considering aircraft sound from sources other than commercial tour operators, which will significantly limit the ability to control aircraft noise over the park. the amendment prohibits the allocation for commercial air tours over the grand canyon from being reduced, notwithstanding any other provision of law, regardless of the noise effects over the park.

it goes even further and directs that the f.a.a. begin a rulemaking to increase the flight allocations over the park. because the proposal has not been through a standard committee process -- as to my knowledge, there have not been hearings on this proposal, input from affected agencies and stakeholders have not been solicited, the potential impact of several other provisions in the amendment remain unclear, at least to this senator. for all these reasons, i believe we should not proceed with this amendment, and i would urge my colleagues to oppose it. let me mention also a very good editorial on this issue that appeared in the "arizona republic" yesterday. it's entitled "congress should not foil process." and it starts in its first couple of sentences, "the plan to reduce aircraft noise at the grand canyon is finally wrapping

up. suddenly there's an attempt in congress to make a last-minute end run around the process that -- this makes no sense. the draft environmental document is weeks away from being released. multiple stakeholders have weighed in. after years of work we're on the verge on the plan to restore natural quiet to one of the most majestic places on earth." then it goes on to discuss in very substantial detail what the amendment of senator mccain would try to do. it says "congress" -- it ends by saying "congress should hold o. a faln to -- congress should hold off. let the process go forward." mr. president, that sums up my sentiments exactly. i hope we will heed the good

advice contained in this editorial. and i ask unanimous consent that the editorial from the "republic" be inserted in the record immediately following my statement. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. rockefeller: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. mr. rockefeller: mr. president, we do have some time here. i'm sorry. did you do a quorum call, senator bingaman? mr. president, i ask unanimous const th ord of the quorum call be rescinded. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. rockefeller: thank you. mr. president, as we approach a final vote on f.a.a. reauthorization -- which we are doing slowly -- that will take place in -- at about 5:30. i want to close by, or rather talk about briefly why i think this is so important. and i know that my distinguished colleague from texas is -- who

i'm going to praise so much in my final comments, so she'll just have to wait for that. why we have spent so much precious time in the middle of a national debate on health care and jobs and the economy to work on this bill, which we have been doing now for several years. as i've often pointed out, it's been pushed forward 11 times without a final result. we want a final result this evening. i believe we're going to get one. mr. president, we're here today because f.a.a. reauthorization is about more than aviation, so much more than aviation. it's everything about safety for our people. it's about jobs. it's about our economy. it's about, frankly, our self-esteem as a nation in the world of aviation. 50% of all the flights that take place in the world are american

planes. you know, it's -- we're behind in some ways, and we shouldn't be. and the congress has allowed us to be behind simply because we haven't been able to put attention on this because time is hard to get on the floor. and i really appreciate leader reid's willingness to give us this time, even as these other momentous matters are going on. so, to me, it's all about improving commercial aviation air service to small and rural counties, communities. you would expect that from me. i represent my state. but as chairman of the committee, i represent the country too, as does my distinguished ranking member. and it's also very much about establishing better consumer right -- protections for the people who fly, who we call passengers and we also call consumers. ultimately it's about improving safety and about modernizing our system, which i've taken for

years very, very seriously and about which we've done precious little. in other words, it's about people's lives every single day. i can remember years ago that i can say that a relatively few percent of folks from my state flew. they just didn't fly. i mean, a lot did but most didn't. that's changed now. you can't really do business, and west virginia can't do anything without getting on an airplane, if you can find one to get on and if you can cram yourself into one, which would be a problem for the presiding officer as well as the present speaker. in other words, it's our utmost priority that there always has to be safety of our skies, in the skies, and the passengers and their families, they have to trust us to get this right. there is a lot that goes wrong. there is a lot that doesn't get

noticed that goes wrong. but we do notice and we correct it, and we have a moral obligation to correct it. let me say a word about safety. statistically we have the safest air transportation in the world. it's true. our airlines talk about it. politicians talk about it. but it's so much less safer than it could so easily be if we could be a bit more far-sighted and a little more energetic. we have done that now in the commerce committee and we've put forward a bill which does that and which creates a much more wholesome story. and i will get into that. it's been a little bit more than a year since the tragic crash in buffalo, new york, of flight 3407; took the lives of 50 people. it's clear that we need to take serious steps to improve pilot training, to address flight crew fatigue, which seems to be an esoteric subject until you look at it. byron dorgan, who is the

chairman of our subcommittee, senator dorgan, had some charts which brilliantly showed what pilots in some of these commuter airlines have to go through to get to work, and sometimes two nights of no sleep and then fly. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that's dangerous. you have chatter in the cockpit. you had in one instance an 1- or 11-year-old -- an 8- or 11-year-old kid helping to land a plane. it's ridiculous. our bill does a lot to address these problems. we need to have resources for all of our airports, both large and small. this legislation is about equality among airports and economic stability as amongst airports. we have to provide adequate resources to airports both large

and small, both urban and rural. and you know, when people think of california, they think of san francisco, los angeles, and they don't think of the dozens of places in between and above and below that are rural and people have a hard time -- or the inner part of california where people need air transportation. the continuing economic crisis has hit the united states airline industry very hard. that's easy to say, but it's been devastating for our legacy airlines. i mean, they have been in and out of bankruptcies, the mergers have taken place. they're always on the edge. i remember at one point they were showing how they were going to move the seats about an inch closer to each other, and there was an uproar and so the pretzels disappeared. the potato chips disappeared and

we've come to understand that. they're not doing that because they want to treat us badly. they're doing it because every penny is desperate for them. either they have overwhelming problems with the recession and even before the recession were having overwhelming problems. and that's the whole question with the deregulation of airlines. a lot of things happened, not all of them good. i can remember -- aeupbd hope my ranking member -- and i hope my ranking member will indulge me -- when i went to west virginia in 1964, i think i -- no, i drove in actually. there were eastern airline jets, there were united airline jets, there were american airline jets; big jets for the time. within three weeks of deregulation, they were all gone. now i take my 6'6 1/2" and

always pray i get the exit row. i have to have that exit row, which is always number 7, or else i'm in big trouble. the continuing economic crisis has hit the united states industry extremely hard and this affects the future of hundreds of our communities, and particularly rural communities because rural communities are always at the end of the food chain. and when you're at the end of the food chain, it's like being at the end of the line. you're the one that's cut out. no more seats in the house. you're just cut out, cut off. i've witnessed that a lot in west virginia. it hurts. it hurts. i've seen time and time again how important the lifeline it is for local communities, and, therefore, it continues to hurt. the federal government needs to provide additional resources and tools for small communities to attract adequate airline service. that is possible, you know. it is not just a matter of the

federal government supplying a certain amount of money or the essential air service t.'s a matter of the low -- it's a matter of the local airports taking themselves very seriously as a product. and we discovered that in west virginia. others have discovered it perhaps before us or after us, but it makes no difference. you have to market yourself. an airport is not just a place where planes land. it's a consumer product. it has to be marketed. it used to be lots of our people just drove to cincinnati and took southwest. you know, there was nothing we could do about it, except of course there was something we could do about it, and that was to market our airport in charleston, west virginia. we did that. we did that. and they marketed on the air, they marketed in the newspapers, they marketed in every way possibly. and gradually the people who had been going to cincinnati stopped going to cincinnati because they discovered they didn't have to spend the gasoline to get out there, didn't have to spend

overnight motel rooms to get there. they could simply just go to charleston to the airport, to huntington or parkersburg or wherever it was. it is a tough fight for local communities. it's easy if you're in a big city. it's hard if you're in a small state. and the presiding officer is familiar with that. so, our legislation accomplishes this business of new resources by building on the existing programs and strengthening them. there's some very, very good programs. i won't go into all of them now, but they're very very good programs. the airport improvement program was started a number of years ago. it's absolutely superb what it does. it allows airports to expand, to build parking garages, to expand runways, to build sort of offramp safety places, you know, for trucks have, speeding too much and all of a sudden there

is something that shoots up the hill. they have something called e-mass at the end of the runway. if a plane lands on a short runway, because most of our airports are on the tops of hills, if they overshoot a little bit, they can end up in an e-mass, and they're safe. it's just soft concrete blocks. 34 lives were saved there in the last month and a half because that e-mass system happened to be there. that's got to be all over the country. consumer rights -- this bill also strengthens passenger protections by incorporating elements of the passenger bill of rights to deal with the most egregious flight delays and cancellations. and we're rather specific about that. you never know exactly how things work out, but we've set some rules. we say that you can't -- nobody can wait more than three hours without food, without medical attention, without bathroom facilities. they've got to go back, take the passengers back, get them to

unload so that you don't have these nine hours, eight hours, seven-hour waits that, you know, that always become national stories whenever they happen. that's not a question of being practical. it's a question of being humane. it makes sense. it takes away people's anger. makes them more likely to want to fly. and passengers, really, have had it with endless delays. they really have had it. they don't like the way they're being treated, especially when they're stuck on a tarmac in the summertime. and, you know, people feel badly sometimes when they're just in an airplane, and the white-knuckle syndrome, whether -- even if it's not flying, just being in one. the air is not always so good, and people can come close c to a point panic.

you don't want that. so we deal with that in this legislation. so we do have a responsibility to bring their rights back into the equation and take them seriously. modernization -- our system is outdated. it's strained beyond its capacity. i feel very, very compassionately about this one. i have for years. america's air traffic control system is literally using a world waworld war ii technology. we are eight only ones in the industrial world to do that. it's embarrassing beyond belief. it is costly beyond belief. it is climate-unfriendly beyond belief. it is dangerous beyond belief. because everything is based upon radar. it is ancient. world war ii. we haven't changed. everybody else has. mongolia has done t we have not. and so on the committee we decided we were going to get into it in a very, very big way. the next generation air

transportation system called nextgen, that's what we call it, will save our economy billions by creating additional capacity and more direct routes, allowing airport aircraft to move more efficiently because it will be g.p. srks it'll be digitalized, it'll be realtime streamin stref where airplanes are. you'lthe pilots and the ground control people will know exactly where they are at all times. that means that we may be able to bring the planes closer together. maybe they can land more often. or they can fly a little bit closer together. things that cause the whole system to purge itself with inefficiency but not unsafe but safely because you're using a digitalized system which the rest of the world is already using. and it has the further advantage which i've indicated of reducing

carbon emissions and noise emissions. and noise emissions are very important. the noise emissions can be overestimated by some but, nevertheless, if people feel strongly about it, they feel strongly about t and people do feel strongly about it. you see that in our local area here and so we want to be able to helpful on that. a modernization system will provide pilots and their air travel controllers with better situation awareness. i've said that. it's so important giving them the tools to see other aircraft. both the same time. both streaming information, real-time. and also the weather maps so they have precise knowledge, not just visual knowledge of where there might be a thunderstorm, but precise knowledge. but this kind of modernization

requires sustained focus and substantial resources. we have worked that out in our bill. and we will have a nationwide system but by, i believe, it's . we only have one in place in the gulf, which is working. we have to do the whole system. it costs us money. and both by the federal government and by airlines, which aren't going to love that but it's part of the deal. so this authorization takes steps to make sure that we begin all of this now. so in closing, we have to move boldly. this is a huge subject, a huge part of our economy. 500 million -- i guess it's 7 million peopl -- i guess it's 70 million people fly today each year. in the next ten years it'll go

way over, maybe 1.2 billion people in the air over the course of a year. at any given moment there are 36,000 planes in the sky. how do you keep track of them all? how can you be sure that they're safe, this they're not going? how do you shut off the chatter business, where pilots are just talking to each other about things which are not -- how far do you go on that without invading privacy rights? if you don't go far enough, then you're invadin invading consumed passenger safety. i lean in that drefntle last week when i spoke about the main four goals we set out to achieve with this bill. one is to address critical safety concerns. second, to establish a road map to implement nextgen -- that's the modern system -- so we can catch up with mongolia. and accelerate the f.a.a.'s key

modernization programs. three, invest in airport infrastructure. this is so important. if you look what's happening at dulles airport -- that's sort of an extreme airport because that's preparing for the 23rd century, not for the 21st or 22nd. but they've got it right. they've got all the land out there. he havthey've got bonding sthomt they've got a -- they've got bonding authority. they'vthey have heand fourth cog small communities access to the i have a significance system. yoyou know i'll never deviate fm that coming from the state of west virginia. uma proud of where we've come and prouder still that we got here. in a truly bipartisan fashion. it's refreshing. it was quite wonderful.

working with senators dorgan -- obviously senator hutchison being the key with senator dorgan, terrific chairman of the aviation subcommittee, absolutely tear rifnlgt and also senator demint towards a vibrant, strong aviation system so fundamental to our country. so i urge my colleagues to give the f.a.a. the tools, the resources, the direction, and the deadlines to make sure that the agency can provide effective oversight of the aviation industry. this is a big-ticket item. it appears not so dramatic, at s events of the recent days but over the course of our country, it is extraordinarily dramatic. so i will at the proper time urge my colleagues to support reauthorization. as i say, we've put this off now 11 different times. and this will last for two years

after conference, maybe three years. i'd take more than that, myself. but we can't afford to wait any longer. i thank the chair and yield the floor. and i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mrs. hutchison: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mrs. hutchison: mr. president, on behalf of the senator -- the presiding officer: we are in a quorum call. hutch hih asunanou consent that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. hutchison: on behalf of the senator from arizona, senator mccain, i ask unanimous consent that amendment

number 3528 be withdrawn. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. hutchison: mr. president, let me just say, i know that senator rockefeller and i will have a little time toward the vote to talk about the summation of the bill. but while we are at this stage, i do want to say that i think we have come a major step forward in f.a.a. reauthorization. as many who have worked on this product know, we have had 11 extensions of the f.a.a. reauthorization since 2007, short-term extensions because we haven't been able to get the agreements that are necessary to propel this bill from the floor. and there are some very important provisions of this

bill that i hope we will eventually have final passage and that we can all support. however, we're not yet. we are at the stage of getting it from the senate floor, but there are still some issues, mr. president, that will have to be resolved even before we go to conference, i think, before weigh appoint conferees, there will still have to be some agreements that have not yet been clearly reached. one of those is the perimeter rule, and i'm going to talk a little bit more about that when my colleague, senator ensign, comes because his amendment is the pending amendment on that -- on the bill. but, besides the perimeter rule, the issues that are in this bill that are so important that will take us a major step forward for the traveling public in our country is that there are safety

provisions in this bill throughout all sectors of the aviation community, and i think they are major improvements in our airline safety, although we know that we have the safest system that we've ever had, very few accidents. but i do think that the accidents that we've had are still teaching us what can be done in the area of i fatigue of pilots and human factors, which has always been the hardest part of the aviation system to address, and we do have some standards and a way forward that i think will improve our aviation safety, because none of us want to have anything less than 100% aviation safety. and that's what we're striving for. the bill also will modernize our air traffic control system. our air traffic control system is using technology probably

based back in the 1960's. it is time for us to have a satellite-based system. this is going to be expensive, and having the start-up of this nextgen system is essential for our country to stay in the forefront of efficient use of our air travel control system and also eventually, hopefully, when it is all in place, we will also be able to open up more airspace, so that we can better utilize our air traffic control system. the bill will provide infrastructure funds for our airports. that's one of the reasons we need to get this bill from the floor and assure our airports that the airport trust fund money is available, it is stable, and they can count on the funds flowing from the airport trust fund in an orderly

way so that the improvements to our airports can be done. the bill will improve rural access to aviation through the essential air service program. this is a very important part of our whole system, not only do we have a great general aviation community, which does so much for capabilities for volunteer and recreational pilots to use our airspace but also the business aviation, the smaller aviation facilities that are private but also very important and then of course our regional airlines. -- are a very important part of our overall air service and we will have improvements in those sectors. the bill will improve passenger and consumer protections. no doubt. the passenger bill of rights is long overdue, and i think we have come it a goo a good placeo protect passengers from sitting

on the tarmac for five hours without the ability to get off an airplane, issues like that that have cropped up are being addressed in our new passenger bill of rights. and it will strengthen aeronautics and aviation research as well. there is a lot that's good in this bill as well. and we still have a long way to go to finish it. but i do look forward to working through tonight, getting the bill passed from the senate, and then working on these issues that are not yet completely agreed to before we go to conference and then from there hope we can take the next step, which is not going to be an easy one, and that is resolve the differences between the house and senate bills. the differences are pretty big, so i think we're going to have a job cut out for us that means we're not anywhere close to being finished yet, but we are certainly in a better place than we have ever been since 2007,

when fao if f.a.a. reauthorizae previous bill, was lambed and we have been doing short str-term extensions since then. i will look forward to wrap wrap and more discussion of the perimeter rule when senator ensign aesrrives. thank you, mr. president. and i yield the floor. mr. vitter: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. mr. vitter: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i stand to talk about health care on this significant day, the day after the -- the day after the house passed the obama-care bill and the day before the reconciliation bill comes here to the senate. needless to say, mr. president, i am deeply, deeply disappointed by the house's actions, for all the reasons i and so many others have raised, the concerns we've

raised previously on the senate floor. at its -- mrs. hutchison: mr. president, could i ask the gentleman to yield for a parliamentary inquiry. mr. president, would the gentleman yield? mr. vitter: yes, i'll yield. mrs. hutchison: i just wanted to ask my colleague from virginia because he been on the floor i think seeking recognition and i wanted to make sure that we ask him -- that we protect his place following senator vitter. how much time did the senator from virginia want to use? mr. webb: i thank you for inquiring. i would like to speak for up to ten minutes about the ensign amendment. mrs. hutchison: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that following the remarks by the senator from louisiana that the senator from virginia be recognized for up to ten minutes. the presiding officer: without

objection. mr. webb: mr. president? yeah, it was my understanding that the ensign amendment was going to be called up at 4:30. the presiding officer: the senator is correct. mr. webb: and wouldn't that be the proper topic of discussion on the floor? i've been waiting since 4:15, when i was slated to speak. mrs. hutchison: i would be happy to call up the ensign amendment, after which senator vitter ha had -- had the floor and did give me the right to protect you. so, if possible, i'd like to call up the amendment, ask that senator vitter be allowed to speak up to ten minutes and then following that, we -- then i would like to protect the senator from virginia's time,

following senator vitter. mr. webb: may i ask for a courtesy from the senator from texas and the senator from louisiana, i have a commitment that i cannot break back in my office that was supposed to begin at this moment. would it be -- would you feel it would be appropriate if i were to ask that my statement be inserted in the record at this point with respect to the ensign amendment since you called it up and then i would -- mr. vitter: i have no objection. mrs. hutchison: let me ask the senator from louisiana, would he be able to allow the senator from virginia to go forward? mr. vitter: i'm afraid i cannot for exact the same reason, i'm late for a meeting in my office, but i would certainly have no objection to his placing his comments in the record and -- and regaining the floor at a future time. mr. webb: and i would say to the senator from texas, i appreciate that courtesy, and if there were an opportunity for me to come back later, i would try. otherwise, if we could have my statement inserted in the record at this point, i would appreciate it. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. hutchison: i would say if

the senator does come back, i'll do everything possible to give him a chance to speak because i know this is very important to his state, and i would like to r him to have his views known. senator ensign is on his way and i'll do everything possible to give him some time. mr. webb: and i also thank the senator from louisiana for yielding for this exchange. mrs. hutchison: thank you. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the amendment. the clerk: the senator from texas, mrs. hutchison, for mr. ensign, proposes amendment numbered 3476, as modified, to amendment number 3452. the presiding officer: the senator fr louisiana. mr. vitter: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, again, like so many other americans, i was deeply disappointed by last night's house vote. at its core, that health care reform legislation will put the government between us and our

doctors. it will raise health care costs significantly, and that's not me saying that, that's nonpartisan sources like the congressional budget office. it will try to be paid for, quote, unquote, through a half a trillion-dollar raid on medica medicare, another half a trillion-dollar set of tax increases, and, of course, that's the cause of pushing up health care costs. and then to add insult to injury for so many americans, including so many will you lieuans, it will -- louisianans, it will provide taxpayer funding of abortion. so it was truly a sad day for our country, in my opinion. but i take the floor today not so much to focus that but to focus on the continuing fight and to focus on the future. and my message is very simple. just speaking for one senator, for myself, this fight is not

over by a long shot. i'll be on the floor regularly all this week fighting the separate reconciliation bill, and certainly if any house democrats throughout all aspects of that bill would pass into law to fix, quote, unquote, certain portions of the underlying senate o obama-care bill, i thik this week they will be sadly disappointed. there are many aspects of that bill that are subject to serious challenges that will require 60 votes and won't get them here on the senate floor and we'll have a number of important debates and amendments. and i'll also continue the fight to try to repeal this very counterproductive legislation. today at 2:00, as soo, as soon - absolutely as soon as it was in order, i filed a bill to repeal obama-care, to repeal what has

passed already through the process. i'll join with so many other members, so many other americans across the country to fight to that end however loc long it ta. it may not be this congress but i believe that day will come, because the great majority of americans, certainly including the great majority of louisianans, want that to happ happen, want us to act instead in a focused, positive way, attacking real problems with real solutions, not a 3,000-plus-page bill. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor.

the presiding officer: if neither side yields time, time will be equally charged to both sides. the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. mr. rockefeller: i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. mr. rockefeller: and i would hope that time would be charged

equally on both sides. the presiding officer: without objection. the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent to suspend the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: ask consent to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: mr. president, when you reflect on great families in american politics, we really have had our fair share, you think of john adams an john quincy adams and what they gave to america.

in our time you think of the kennedy family and how much those brothers gave to this nation. some of us were honored to serve with ted kennedy and the sons and daughters of those great senators of the past. but there's another family from the west that has given so much to us. that would be the udall family. i was blessed to serve with morris udall. he was a joy. not only a great man of principle, but a great sense of humor. it was just fun to be around mo udall. he had an ill fated run for the presidency, which probably generated more one liners than any race in american political history. but he was one of two brothers, stewart udall being his brother before him, who served us well. served in the house of representatives from the state of arizona and backed a man for president named john kennedy in

1960. because of his support of john kennedy, when john kennedy was he lectd, -- elected, he called on stewart udall to serve as secretary. last saturday stewart udall passed away. i came to this floor to speak about this great man and the contribution he gave to america. he was one of the first real activists as secretary of interior. i want to read some of the things that he achieved serving as secretary of interior under presidents kennedy and johnson. the acquisition of 3.85 million acres of new holdings, four national parks, canyon lands in utah, red wood in utah, six national monuments, nine national recreation areas, 20 historic sites, 50 wildlife refuges and eight sea shores. he had an issue of preserving

historic sites and saved carnegie hall from destruction. what a legacy stewart udall left as a leader in america's efforts in conservation. he was an extraordinary man, a real renaissance man in his interest. he held even meetings at the interior department and invited the likes of carl sandberg, hal holgbrook and a pulitzer prize-winning author. it was stewart udall who suggested that john kennedy invite robert frost to recite a poem at the kennedy inauguration, which is one of the most celebrated in history when john frost stood in the crowd for john kennedy. i think about his work when it came to the environment. rachel carson was the

inspiration for many, her book, "the silent spring," it had stewart udall to look at the world we live in. under the kennedy administration he began efforts to establish the nation's first national sea shores and it wasn't really welcomed by a lot of people affected. people living in cape cod and massachusetts and cape hatteras in north carolina objected to taking coast coastal lands out of private hands saying it would ruin the local economy. exactly the opposite occurred when these became protected areas, it drew more tourism and economic development than anyone before realized. he was born on january 31, 1920 in st. john's, arizona. his family had strong ties to the mormon church. they used to say you could find the udalls all over the political history of the west.

his brother, morris, of course, representing the state of arizona for so many years. i remember one story i read recently in "sports illustrated" an mention it had to stewart udall -- i mentioned it to tom udall, his son, who represents the state of new mexico. it isn't a story well known. it goes back to the early 190's when stewart udall, as secretary of interior, decided to challenge the washington redskins football team. it turned out in the early 1960's it was an all-white team. the owner took pride that there were no black players on the team. stewart udall contacted the president and said, mr. president, it turns out the federal government has the least on the stadium that mr. marshall's using for his football games and we want to make it clear to him that he better integrate that team. mr. marshall wouldn't hear anything about that. he was going to fight them all

the way on this. there were pickets and protests and demonstrations an harsh words bac back and forth, in the end, stewart udall and president kennedy preveiled. the redskins were integrated and some of the first black players ended up in the hall of same. interior secretary udall did the washington redskins and their fans quite a favor. that was in the early 1960's. those who listened to the fight song for the washington redskins, the train talking about the fight for old d.c., it used to be fight for old dixie. there were changes and stewart udall was part of the change. he relished physical challenges as his son still does. my colleague, senator tom udall and markda