reimbursements to hospitals with high rates of infection, would go away. these changes are designed to lower health care costs, but the ryan proposal would eliminate them. his plan is simply cost-shifting, not cost saving. because we had scored by the congressional budget office, a bipartisan agency here, a savings of $120 billion in the first ten years from our health care reform. so instead of reducing the deficit, chairman ryan's proposal will increase the deficit by at leas lease $120 billion by repealing health care reform. next, chairman ryan proposes converting medicaid into a block grant program. he says this will help the states rein in costs with more flexibly. in fact it shifts the costs to state, low-income beneficiaries, and medical providers. he would be reducing medicaid reimbursement back to the states by 28%.

who were some of the beneficiaries of medicaid in illinois, pennsylvania, new hampshire? the beneficiaries include a lot of elderly people living in nursing homes. these are folks who no longer have a savings account, they have a medicare payment and medicaid payment and that's. it if you reduce the reimbursement under medicaid, unfortunately many of them can't stay in the nursing homes that they now live in. so we have to think carefully about the way we deal with medicade by my estimation, my staff estimation, th the $770 billion cut in medicaid with the ryan budget proposal is about a 28% cut in reimbursement for medicaid in the years to come. that's not the worst part. the worst part, i'm afraid, is chairman ryan, proposes ending medicare as we know it. back in the 1960's the creation of medicare was the answer to prayers to many senior citizens. they had social security which provided them with a basic

monthly paper that might help them main tear their independence and might help them on. then came medical expenses and with medicare we said, if you will pay in through payroll tax through a lifetime when you retire, you'll be covered with medicare insurance. story after story's been told in my family and others of people who found themselves not medicare eligible, but without health insurance. i had a brother, a late brother, who had heart issues. and he retired as a member of management from boeing aircraft and then had a massive heart attack and surgery and then was canceled. his health insurance was canceled before he reached age 65. he was worried. worried that he'd have to dip in savings if he ever had to go back to the hospital. fortunately for him he didn't have another problem until he reached chair eligibilty. to medicare ends up being a lifeline for many seniors

otherwise they would see their savings exhausted which they planned to use for the rest of their life and their security. chairman ryan proposes ending medicare as we know it and instead giving seniors subsidies to enroll in private health insurance plans. this might save some federal funds, but that's because the federal subsidy wouldn't cover the full cost of private plans that are as good as medicare. i'm glad to see senator bill nelson of florida on the floor here. my guess is medicare's a pretty important issue in florida and i think you probably have some strong feelings about this issue. what chairman ryan has proposed in the house budget resolution, would mean that seniors would lose the guaranteed benefits they have today. how much of a cut in benefits? he's very explicit. 60%. 60% cut in medicare benefits for senior citizens. how is that going to work? how are we going to find ourselves in a situation where private health insurance

companies are somehow going to provide 60% more in services for the current cost? it's not likely to happen. this won't bring down overall health spending, it just pushes the cost on to seniors and makes them sicker when they finally show up at the hospital. in fact, medicare provides health care for seniors at a price less than the same benefit. the point i'd like to make and i see my colleague here and i'm going to yield the floor to him. is i share chairman ryan's concern about the deficit and concern about health costs. but if we are going to be honest and deal with this, as i said at the outset, we can't cut our way out of the problem, we can't tax our way out of the problem. we have to think our way out of the problem. we have to find approach that's more effectively use the wonderful medical resources in this country at a savings. we have to reward value when it comes to health care as opposed to volume. we've got to make certain that those who are ripping off

current programs see that activity come to an end. if we work together on a bipartisan basis, we can achieve that. i hope, mr. president, that we can do it on a bipartisan basis because it's the only way that will work. trying to impose this by one party, whether it it's on -- it's on the continuing resolution or the budge resolution is not like -- budget resolution is not likely to achieve the goals that most of us would hope it would achieve as a member of the congress. mr. nelson: would the senator yield for a question? the senator has pointed out very accurate lit analysis of this most recent proposal by the chairman in the house of representatives. if i recall distribution we not address cutting som some $400 billion out of medicare over the next decade in health care reform bill that was passed last year? mr. durbin: that's exactly right. i say to the senator from florida, and there were people critical of us and said we were,

unfortunately, cutting medicare benefits, which we were not. the senator may recall that one of the first amendments on the floor, it may have been from senator bennet from colorado, said we're going to protect medicare benefits, but we're going to cut the waste out of the medicare program, the duplication that's going on. so seniors won't pay in terms of health care, but the taxpayers won't be held spont for something -- responsible for something that isn't really serving them well. mr. nelson: would the senator, mr. president, respond to another question? mr. durbin: be happy to. mr. nelson: is it true that in the proposal from the chairman in the house of representatives, that he would take the medicaid program, which genuinely is -- gel rally is a -- generally a split for health care for the poor and the disabled, that his

proposal is that he would give this as a block grant to the states for the governors and state legislatures to decide how they were going to distribute it? mr. durbin: yes, i'd say to the senator from florida, that's my understanding. but it also includes a 28% reduction in the amount of money that the federal government's going to pay into this. so in your state, and mine too, a lot of elderly people live in nursing homes an depend on medicare. without medicare and medicaid, they couldn't stay there. if you cut by 28% the reimbursement under medicaid, i wonder what's going to happen to those people. mr. nelson: and would the senator believe that the experience of the state of florida, when they have tried to put all medicaid into insurance companies, otherwise known as h.m.o.'s, health maintenance organizations, that those

organizations pulled out of serving the poor in rural counties and, yet, that is a proposal in front of the state legislature of florida at this very moment. mr. durbin: i would say to the senator from florida, representing a state as diverse as his, with rural areas, that there are areas where private insurance companies are not going to business because it's not profitable. when chairman ryan says that we will try to shift this into the private insurance market, i'm afraid many, those in rural areas, maybe those with preexisting conditions are going to find themselves without health insurance coverage. mr. nelson: and a further question, mr. president, to the senator from illinois: would he characterize the proposal by the chairman in the house of representatives on medicare as

not only cutting the payments to medicare, but the way medicare is being delivered by altering that into the private sector? mr. durbin: i say in response, and this will be my last response, because i have to run to a meeting. the interesting thing to chairman ryan's proposal, the money doesn't go to the senior citizens under medicare, it goes to the insurance company. think about that. a voucher to an insurance company and the hope is they would provide the coverage you need. medicare, i want to tell you, is like social security, one of those programs that people have confidence in. they know the coverage and know know what's happened. since 1960 under president johnson when we anybod initiated medicare seniors lived longer, healthier and they're independent. that's what you get with good quality health care. when you make 60% cuts in medicare benefits, like chairman ryan's house republican

proposal, you really run the risk that a lot of people won't have the good coverage that they have today under medicare. mr. nelson: i would say in conclusion, and i thank the senator for yielding, all you have to do is ask a senior citizens, do they like their medicare or would they prefer to have it done by an insurance company? and i think you'll get a resounding answer. mr. durbin: mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from alaska. mrs. murkowski: mr. president, i'd like to take a few minutes this afternoon to perhaps switch the -- the discussion from what my colleagues were -- were referring to earlier in terms of the budget and speak a little bit about the issue of energy. obviously a topic of great concern. the president has -- has addressed it as recently as --

as last week in a major address here in georgetown. and a loss of discussions about what it is that we need to do to respond to the higher prices that families are paying at the pump and just how we deal with the issue of -- of energy in general. and there's been much discussion about this concept of use it or lose it. and i want to speak to that proposal a little bit this afternoon. it's -- it's a rather strange proposal that claims to address the rising cost of oil and gas for america's working families. and the premise of this is that even with oil at more than $100 a barrel and even though lease terms are already limited by law to -- to five to 10 years, energy companies somehow are are hording federal lands and refusing to produce the lands leased to them. use it or lose it has been a way

to increase our nation's energy production, but even a cursory review will show that this is fundamentally flawed in its premise. this proposal will not increase american production. it will not increase jobs or create jobs. it will not raise government revenues or bolster our security. instead, i believe it's a diversion from our more critical need to produce more of our own resources and to streamline our burdensome regulatory processes. now, the idea behind use it or lose it is to simply punish companies for not drilling on lands that they have leased. so they either drill or give back the acreage to the government which can then resell it to someone else. but interestingly, this proposal has -- has drawn some support

from a number of senators and from the president himself who have said, until recently, they've claimed that, well, we can't drill our way out of this. we can't drill our way to lower gas prices. america's oil, and we've been repeatedly told this, has minimal impact on global prices and takes too long to bring online so, i don't know, maybe this is a change of heart if that's so -- heart. if so, i'm glad to see it. i do hope that their proposal is a signal that, indeed, they would like to see drilling on every leased federal acre on shore, off shore. that is the premise of this even though it's a pretty major departure from the previous. the advocates of use it or lose it have pointed out that there are millions of acres leased in this country that are not

currently producing oil or gas. but they have misidentified the reason why. chances are maybe there's just no oil present on that land. perhaps exploration is ongoing or in many cases the federal government has simply blocked the drilling. and add a new penalty to this process and to add a new layer to existing bureaucracy will only backfire. from the outset i think it's important to understand what is involved in oil-and-gas production. this is an incredibly capital intensive, labor intensive business. and from a technological perspective, the process is really complex. i think we saw after the -- the deepwater horizon, cameras trained a mile below the service

of -- surface of the ocean there and it was described by many as this is -- this is akin to -- to how we deal with putting a man on the moon. this is complicated stuff here. and there's no x marks the spot as to where that oil is actually going to be found. it can take years, not to mention tremendous amounts of money to finally locate these -- these commercial deposits. and when there is resource present, it takes some teams of some pretty highly skilled and trained engineers to figure out how we're going to bring it to market. the entire legal systems -- the legal departments that have to wade through the multitude of the permits, the analysis, the plans that are required by our federal government. this process takes a considerable amount of patience and, you know, from -- lots of good reasons, but the government

is certainly not in 0 hurry to provide lease holders the approval that they need to move forward. last week the tire tear department had an opportunity to -- the interior department had an opportunity to explain what goes on in the process and explain why not all federal leases immediately produce oil and gas. and instead what they did is the interior department issued a report that attempts to portray many federal leases as idle or unused. what -- what really could have been a very helpful and instructive process was -- was instead, i think, hopelessly politicized, and that's really very unfortunate. the findings of the interior department's report, i believe, defy common sense, general business principles, and what we know to be true about the federal regulatory process. the definition of "inactive"

purposefully excludes many important development activities, and there's no acknowledgment that oftentimes it is the government itself that is causing the delays in drilling. now, one o more of the more, i guess, telling examples of what's wrong with the interior department's new report is its depiction of what is happening up in alaska right now. companies have been trying for years, trying for years to bring their federal leases in the state of alaska into production. these efforts have been blocked. they have been delayed by the federal government, especially this administration, and they've been blocked at every turn. and despite this, the interior department's report claims that just 1% dpsh 1% -- of alaska's leases are producing and puts

the blame on industry. when i talk to folks back home, when i talk to those who are trying every single day, getting up and trying their hardest to advance so that we can get to levels of production only to find that there is yet one more hurdle, one more roadblock that is thrown up and thrown up by the government, it causes incredible frustration. it really is hard to pick what would be described as the best example of companies trying to produce from their leases, which i might add they've bought, they've purchased at the invitation of the felgt, and yet they're being forbidden by the administration -- they've purchased at the invitation of the federal government, and yet theater a being forbidden by the administration to follow their exploratory investigations. this is the national petroleum

reserve alaska. pretty ironic we can't get started there and one of the reasons, the biggest reason that we can't is we're being blocked, the state is -- the producers are being blocked from getting a permit to build a bridge over a river to get started. now, as regrettable and really as ironic as that example is, there's even a more higher-profile example that we see up north, and this is what shell is attempting to do. they have set a record and a record that is certainly not enviable. but a record nonetheless for both dollars invested and frustration experienced in return. this is a situation where a company has spent a little over $4 billion -- this is billion with a "b" -- they've spent $4

billion to buy federal acreage in alaska's outer continental shelf nearly seven years ago. since that time, shell has done nothing but slog through an incredibly long, incredibly arduous permitting process. air permits that take six weeks to acquire in the gulf of mexico have now been delayed for over five years. mr. president, i ask you just to put that in context. a company at the invitation of the federal government purchases leases, purchased them over seven years ago, has put more than $4 billion into trying to get to exploration, five years waiting on permits where in other parts of the country permits can be turned around in six weeks, and they have yet the opportunity to even start.

so can anyone -- anyone honestly suggest that we ought to punish shell or any company who's going through this for the federal government's failure to allow even exploratory drilling to proceed? is it fair that we demand that shell pay the price because the government has failed to issue a permit that even the e.p.a. -- even the administrator of the e.p.a. has acknowledged poses no human health risk? this is where we're sitting right now. i -- i was just incredulous. i had an opportunity to ask the secretary of the interior, who is a friend of mine, most certainly a friend that i acknowledge has a very, very difficult job, very challenging job, but he could not assure me -- he could not assure me that the so-called use it or lose it fee would not apply to the

millions of acres of lease lands in alaska, both onshore and offshore, where the federal government has sold the leases but is not allowing drilling activity. mr. president, it's like -- it's like a commercial real estate company offering to rent some office space to you. we go ahead, you pay the rent, i never give you the key, so you can't access your commercial office space here, and then i'm going to go ahead and we're going to assess a fine, we're going it penalize you when you fail to open your doors for business. that's kind of what's happening up north. it's not a use it or lose it policy. it's a heads we win, tails you

lose. and you have to imagine, you know, what would such a policy say about the way that our government conducts its business and manages its resources? use it or lose it is drawn from a desire to do the right thing -- and that's to increase our domestic production -- but i also believe that it reveals a fundamental lack of understanding about how energy resources are developed and how they're brought to market. it risks very real consequences for our energy production here in america, because instead of encouraging producers to find energy faster, it would actually discourage them from discovering it in the first place. instead of creating jobs, it would likely end jobs. instead of raising new revenues for the federal government, it would likely diminish taxpayers' returns from leasing and production. it seems like every time that oil prices are on the rise, we come together, we debate how

we're going to respond to them. and every time someone points out that we should be producing far more of our own -- frankly, a very tremendous resource base. someone stem cells forward with the -- someone steps forward with the potential scapegoat to distract the need to produce more lands. instead of making hard choices about what we can do to better insulate ourselves from higher crude prices and geopolitical instability, we seem to impose windfall profit taxes, to pour unprecedented sums of money into unproven alternative technologies, to rein in sec laters, to sue opec, to raise taxes and fees on productions and now to force companies to act faster or to face greater penalties. until we see some evidence that companies are refusing to develop their leases, i've got to call it like i see it.

use it or lose it is a claim that if you support increased domestic production without doing anything to ensure that domestic production is the actual really result of our federal energy policies. now, there's been a lot of discussion when we're taking about energy -- been a lot of discussion about brazil and their potential, how that nation is set to slig ramp up its oil production -- set to significantly ramp up its oil production and we commend the brazilians. they've been able to make a number of very important discoveries, estimated about 50 billion barrels of oil equivalent. according to "the wall street journal," brazil's oil production rose by 876% over the past 20 years, 876% over the past 20 years. they're now planning to double their current production in less than ten years. some pretty remarkable things that are going on there. and even while brazil is developing their current rebase, they're -- their current resource base, they're actively

looking for more, they're working aggressively. and they're pursuing that objective while expanding their production and use of alternative sources. they're kind of pursuing the all of the above that we talk about so often here. here in the united states we have technically recoverable oil resources estimated add a 157 billion barrels, more than three times -- more than three times what brazil has recently found. i don't understand -- i don't understand why we refuse to set the same ambitious goals for increasing our production that brazil has, even as we continue to pursue alternative energies that will diversify our splice, equally important -- our supplies, equally important. when it comes to energy, we should strive to be our own best customer, not brazil's. as federal policy-makers, we need to think carefully about what we demand of if i industry,

including oil and gas, and when you tax is the fact of the matter is you get less of t and i don't think we want to make ourselves even more dependent on important oil right now. i would don't want to discourage domestic production, especially under the guise of promoting it, and we have no reason to yet add another layer to an already daunting regulatory system. i would strongly urge us in the senate, here in the congress, to recognize use it or lose it for what it is. it is an attempt to extract more money from the companies, not to extract more energy from the ground. it's not the right approach for america, and it will not move our energy policy in the right direction. now, i do take, i guess, comfort in one fact, and that's this: at least the debate is now about how to produce more oil and not whether to produce more oil. my work on the energy committee

certainly what goes on in the state of alaska has taught me much about how and how not to achieve greater oil production. if we want more domestic production, and i think we all recognize the president's verbal commitment to this and the change of heart amongst some of my clerks it's time to eliminate the needless red tape and allow access to america's huge resources that are still off-limits. mr. president, i thank you for the time this afternoon, the opportunity to speak on yet another aspect of our country's much-needed energy policy and how we can continue to find those ways that will move us towards a future where we do engage in energy sources that are clean and renewable while also harvesting our bountiful harvest here in this country, as we find out ways to produce more domestically.

with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. mr. nelson: mr. president, would the senator yield for a question? ms. murkowski: yes. the senator from florida. mr. nelson: mr. president, first of all, i want to say to the senator from alaska that she knows my respect for her and my personal friendship with her and my personal opinion that she is one of the finest senators that we have. i do want to ask the senator a question, and it's just a circumstance that i happen to be here to be next in line to speak about a different subject than what the senator spoke about. this senator is one of those sponsors of the use it or lose it legislation. and i certainly will defer to the senator from alaska with

regard to alaska and the drilling offshore there. but my question is about the drilling in the gulf of mexico of which this senator has some familiarity, that there are 37 million acres in the gulf of mexico under lease, where the oil is, but they are of the 37 million acres, there are only 7 million that are drilled. 30 million acres are not drilled and have been that way for years and years. the senator makes a compelling argument with regard to alaska, but how can that argument apply to the 30 million acres in the gulf of mexico that are not drilled but, as the senator has said, ought to be drilled?

ms. murkowski: well, mr. president, i appreciate the question from my colleague from florida as we recognize coming from different parts of the country where we have access in close proximity to the oil and gas resource, but recognize that there are differences between where we are in our geography and perhaps the approach. down in the gulf of mexico, i think your climate allows for exploration and production probably 365 days out of the year. a little bit different up in antarctic environment, and we respect that. but to the senator's question, which is a very legitimate and very fair question -- and this is why we had hoped so much that this report from the department of interior would have really allowed for a breakdown so that we can understand what is happening with these many, many, many thousands of leases that

are out there and existing. what is the true status? to put it in idle or unused is not very clear, quite honestly. what does that mean? are we in the ex-floor torry -- exploratory phase and so we're not in production and what category is that in? is this an older lease that perhaps they have determined there simply is not the, given that for instance you're drilling in some deep waters, extraordinarily costly, as i mentioned. these are very complex, the technologies are considerable. and so if you have done some exploration but you find very, very limited or perhaps nothing, as i mentioned, we don't have that magic "x" that leads us to what we call in the north the elephant finds. so i think it is important to understand what it is that we have and the status of these

leases. this information is critical to us because if the, if they are in the exploratory phase and it's just taking longer because, quite honestly, we have higher standards with the environmental permits. it's just taking more time. i think we realized after, after the deepwater horizon and a great deal of scrutiny on m.m.s., quite honestly, we didn't have sufficient numbers issuing permits within that agency to kind of keep up. so we need to understand where the issue is, where the problem is. there may in fact -- and i will concede here on the floor that there may be some leases that are in existence where the producers have said, you know what, we, we've only got so much ability to move forward with just the financing of all of

this. and so we're going to explore and produce in wells 1, 2 and 3, but 4 and 5, we don't -- we are not prepared at this point in time to advance on them as quickly as we are. we think that they may have potential, but we don't know that. how can we help to facilitate that? what is it that we need? do we need nor people within m.m.s., now bomer, to help expedite the permits? what does it mean to be an idle lease? what does it mean? i will just digress for one moment, if i may, because i think it is important for people to recognize that when we're talking about exploration in the arctic, a five-year, a ten-year time period is simply not sufficient because we cannot explore 365 days.

most times the season is limited to about 60 days during the coldest, darkest, most difficult time of the year. but that's when the ground is frozen. that's when the permits are issued for exploration. so it takes multiple, multiple, multiple seasons to even get through the exploration phase. so continuing's important to recognize -- so i think it's important to recognize that not all leases are equal. not every lease that a producer purchases from the government actually has anything worth developing. we need to know and understand a little bit more. we had hoped that we would learn that from the department of interior report. unfortunately, it didn't give the detail that we had hoped. but i appreciate my colleague's question. mr. president, i yield the

floor. mr. nelson: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from florida. mr. nelson: mr. president, as the senator is from alaska is leaving the floor, i would just say to her that i appreciate her point of view that what she has expressed, there is certainly an opportunity for working something out. as i stated in my question to her at the outset that i don't know -- this senator doesn't know a lot about the leases in alaska, but i certainly do know a lot about the leases in the gulf of mexico. and for 30 million acres in the gulf of mexico to go undrilled for years and years and years, where out of a total of 37 million acres are leafed but only -- are leased but only 7

million acres are actually drilled and produced, seems to me that there's a wonderful opportunity for a lot more production not just in 7 million acres, but 30 million acres additionally. and that if the company that holds that lease and has held that lease for years and years is not going to drill it and produce, then let somebody else do it. and that was the theory behind this senator's sponsorship of that legislation. and as the senator from alaska has pointed out some differences in her state, then it seems to me that this is, as the good book says, a place where people of good intentions can come and let us reason together. mr. president, i wanted to speak on another subject. i will tell my colleague that i'm not going to be speaking

very long. this is short. i just wanted to bring this to the attention of the senate. this is the "wall street journal" from last weekend. here is a article, transocean cites safety in bonuses. this is worth this senator reading for the record and call to the attention of the senate. "transocean has had its best year in safety peformance" that's in quotes -- "despite the explosion of its deepwater horizon rig that left 11 dead and oil gushing into the gulf of mexico, the world's largest offshore rig company said in a security filing on friday.

accordingly transocean's executives received two-thirds of their target safety bonus. safety accounts for 25% of the equation that determines the yearly cash bonuses along with financial factors including new rig contracts." mr. president, it's hard for me to believe that. and even if it were to meet some mathematical formula of awarding bonuses to executives in oil companies, why in the world that that company would not have been sensitive enough to the families of 11 people who lost their

lives as a result of what the president's task force investing the deepwater horizon oil explosion and spill, the task force cochaired by our former colleague from florida, bob graham, said that the main responsibility for that explosion was the fact that the blowout preventer did not work like it was designed to. and who was the owner and operator of that? transocean. now, as we know, there are lawsuits that are going on between b.p., which had the lease, and transocean, its subcontractor that had the equipment that was supposed to work to prevent the spill that

malfunctioned. and those lawsuits are going to be going on for some period of time, sorting it out. but the investigation done by a highly respected investigative task force came to that conclusion. and here, that very same company whose blowout preventer deep on the floor of the ocean malfunctioned, caused the explosion, 11 lives lost, untold billions of dollars of damage to the economies of the gulf states, untold who knows how many billions of dollars of damage to the marine life and the ecology of the gulf of mexico. and safety is cited by this company as a reason for giving

bonuses to its executives. it defies common sense. it defies reason. i am sufficiently agitated about this, that even with the company coming out and issuing some kind of retraction that this senator intends to ask the secretary of the interior, secretary salazar, what authority he has to regulate not only the leases of oil and gas tracks like b.p. was held the lease, but also what authority he has to regulate the rig owners like transocean and other subcontractors who

actually had the responsibility for the safety of the drilling operation, and that safety did not work. and i'm going to ask, mr. president, i'm going to ask the environment, our committee on the environment chaired by senator boxer -- i've already talked to senator boxer and her staff director. i'm going to ask them to hold hearings on the questionable response, the cleanup, the environmental and the financial practices not only of transocean, but its contractor, b.p., what in the world is going on? now, why do i bring b.p. into this? well not only they held the

lease, but it was interesting. last week the head of the washington office of b.p. came in to give me an update. we had a very am i can't believe chat -- a very amiable chat and i asked a series of questions. and one of the questions i asked was: with all of our people down there, many of them losing their businesses, losing their homes to foreclosure because they don't have income coming in as a result of the tourism trade that was acted by the b.p. spill, what was all this about? the first full payment off was a $10 million payment paid in full from the gulf coast claims facility, $10 million to a b.p. partner. the head of the office in

washington of b.p. said he didn't know. it's been in the newspaper over and over and over. i've asked the question over and over and over. i've written to the department of the interior as well as to b.p. and have received no answer to the question -- i've written to the gulf coast claims facility. why was the first payment paid in full in damages done to a business partner of b.p.? and the representative of b.p. could not answer the question. so i think the senate committee on environment and public works ought to get into that, and i'm going to also ask the -- our

finance committee in the senate to hold hearings on the financial practices of b.p. and transocean and other corporations like them. a corporation like transocean that i think is domiciled in switzerland, and who holds a lot of their assets and earnings abroad, earnings that come as a result of doing business in the united states, but of which those earnings are held abroad and taxes are not paid for the privilege of doing that business and earning profits in their business that is conducted in the united states.

now, mr. president, i think we owe this to our taxpayers. this senator certainly owes it to his constituents who have suffered mightily as a result of this b.p. oil spill, along with the malfunctions that went along and the procedures and in the equipment of that tremendous disaster that so many have suffered so long. mr. president, i yield the floor. mr. thune: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from south dakota. mr. thune: mr. president, this friday, we run out of the current which is now the sixth continuing resolution, short-term continuing resolution which we have been operating on now since the end of the fiscal year, which was september 30 of last year. we started a new fiscal year october 1. and judging by some of the rhetoric that you have been

hearing around here, you would think that somehow it was these big, bad, evil republicans that are just trying to shut the government down with -- by trying to get a bill passed that actually would reduce spending for the balance of this fiscal year which would end on september 30. and so i just want to remind my colleagues -- and i know at some point it probably gets a little bit redundant, but it's a fact. the reason that we are here is because last year, the democrats in the congress failed to pass a budget. didn't pass a single appropriation bill. so there was no budget passed last year for this fiscal year, not a single appropriation bill passed before the end of the -- before the fiscal year ended september 30, but even beyond that, we had a lame-duck session where we were here but we were here basically from after november's election until the christmas holiday and never did we have a budget considered on the floor of the senate, nor did we consider a single appropriation bill. and so the reason we're here,

mr. president, is to finish up the unfinished business of last year. this is last year's mess that we are now cleaning up. well, we think that the voters in the election spoke pretty clearly and sent an imperative to the congress that we want you to reduce spending, and so we have been trying, as we have attempted to fund the government through the end of this fiscal year, september 30, to achieve some level of spending reduction started in the house of representatives. they passed a bill that reduced spending by $61 billion over the previous year. and so it came over here to the senate, we had a vote on that to reduce and trim $61 billion and it failed. the democrats put a bill on the floor that would trim trim $4.7 billion from last year's spending level, and which seemed to be completely divorced from reality about how to seriously, meaningfully address this issue of spending and debt and how to address the concern

the american people have voiced about this year over year, year, $1.5 trillion deficits that we're seeing and now we're going to see even longer now that the president submitted his 2012 budget. so, mr. president, the reason we're here is to do last year's unfinished business but hopefully conclude it in a way that does matter to the american people, and that is get runaway spending in washington under control, starting to live within our means. something that every family in america has to do, something that every small business has to do in america. and so here we are again, coming up against this friday deadline because there is resistance to reducing by $61 billion the -- the amount that congress spent over the -- below the previous year. now, the $61 billion, if you look at the total budget, represents a little under 2%. even if you look at it in terms of discretionary spending, that amount that we are actually appropriating for annually that is the smaller part of the

budget here in washington, it's a small percentage. we are not talking about relatively speaking a lot of money. i think it's reasonable. i think the american people believe it's reasonable, and yet we're having this huge meltdown around here because we don't have the political courage to do what the american people have asked us to do, and, frankly, if we were to reduce spending by the amount that the democrats proposed when we had a vote here in the senate, it would be about the equivalent of one day of the debt. in other words, in this year, the amount of debt that we're going to rack up, the amount that they were talking about trimming from the budget was the equivalent of one single day of the federal debt. about a little over $4 billion. so it wasn't serious. nobody could take it seriously by any objective measurement. now, just to put it in perspective, in the last two years, spending has increased by about 24%. this is nonnational security

discretionary spending has increased by about 24% at a time when inflation was only 2% in this country. so discretionary spending was growing at more than ten times the rate of inflation. so it seems reasonable that we could go back to those 2008 levels indexed for inflation, which is what the proposal passed by the house that was defeated here in the senate would do. and we have had lots of testimony from the former chairman of the federal reserve, gropes greenspan, who said that that -- federal reserve, alan greenspan, who said he expected we could face a debt crisis in the next two to three years. he said there is a 50% probability of that. we have had the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, admiral mike mullen say that the biggest threat to america's future is our national debt -- the biggest threat to america's national security is our national debt, which i think is a stunning statement coming from the highest ranking military official in this country. so you have people saying you have this potential for a debt

crisis, 50% probability that you have this national security issue that is impacted by the level of spending and the level of debt, and then you have what i think, too, is an even more compelling argument because everybody talks about the need to grow the economy and create jobs and yet this amount of spending and debt, according to most of the research that's been done, suggests that we are costing ourselves as an economy about one percentage point of economic growth every year which translates to about a million lost jobs. now, that's a significant, as i said, body of research that has been done that studied economies over the past half century or so that concluded that there is a correlation between debt and economic growth when your debt to g.d.p. ratio reaches 90%. well, we're there, we're there in the united states. we're well past 90%, and it's going to grow significantly more under the president's budget. so we can't wait until tomorrow to do this. we have to attack this problem every opportunity that we have, and getting a vote on a continuing resolution that

actually funds the government through the end of the year but does it at a reduced level of spending makes a lot of sense, and we don't have -- i don't know of anybody here that wants to see a government shutdown. we're all here simply because that is unfinished work from last year, unfinished business from last year. we have to get this budget passed and we ought to do it in a way that actually does in a meaningful and somewhat serious way, i would add, reduce spending. now, the president's budget, which he came out with here a couple of months ago and would start the 2012 budget discussion, failed on every level to address the major challenges facing the country. not only does he not deal with this issue of discretionary spending, and frankly he has been missing in action in that debate entirely. we have not heard from the administration about this, but more importantly, his budget does nothing to address the big part of the budget, social security, medicare and medicaid which constitutes today 55% of the federal budget and it will grow dramatically over time as

the 80,000 baby boomers begin to retire. and so what he proposed in his budget was increased spending, increases in taxes and about a a $12 trillion increase in the federal debt over the next ten years. and so nothing serious done in terms of addressing spending, debt or taxes. it is a colossal failure of leadership not to take on what is the most compelling and profound issue that faces this country right now, and that is this huge cloud of debt that hangs over our economy and over our children's future. now, the president said recently that he didn't want to take a scalpel -- i should say he didn't want to take a machete to this, he thought we should use a scalpel. what he is talking about doing i would suggest doesn't constitute using a toothpick. there isn't anything in here that gets serious about trimming the size of the federal government. and so what happened today? the house republicans came out with a budget. and lo and behold, it's a budget

that actually reduces spending by $6.2 trillion over what the president's budget proposed, or or $5.8 trillion over what the congressional budget office base line would suggest that we would spend over the next decade. it reduces debt by $4.4 trillion below the president's number, and it does it without raising taxes. now, the first argument you heard is you have got people coming out here to the floor of the senate -- and i heard some of my colleagues earlier talking about, oh, this is going to be so awful. just think of the senior citizens. well, let me tell my colleagues, according to the house budget proposal, senior citizens aren't impacted. senior citizens are protected from any changes in social security or medicare, as are people age 55 and older. so if you're a senior citizen today or you're someone nearing retirement age, you're not impacted by this. what it does do is it makes

reforms in these programs so that future generations of americans will have those programs available to them when it comes time for them to retire. and the fact of the matter is we all know this. if we don't deal with these -- these parts of the federal budget, we are not serious about dealing with the future. now, this is a serious issue. it requires a serious solution, and it requires serious leadership. and, mr. president, we have seen none of the above from the president or his administration or the democrat leadership here in the congress. and so so far, the only effort that has been made to address the issue of spending and debt and jobs in the economy is being done by the republicans here in the congress and considering the fact that there is only one body of the congress that's controlled by the republicans, the house of representatives, the democrats control the senate here and set the agenda, and we've got a democrat administration, a democrat white house. you would think that to do

something of this consequence and this magnitude, it would take a bipartisan effort. you would siewsm that -- assume that this would be a discussion, a bilateral discussion that would be occurring here between the white house and congress and not just the democrats in congress and the republicans, but none of that seems to be occurring and there doesn't seem to be any interest on the part of the president in stepping forward and putting forward a plan that actually does deal with this massive debt and gets serious about putting people back to work and growing the economy and creating jobs. this budget, mr. president, as i said, increases spending about about $400 billion, increases taxes by $1.5 trillion, and adds somewhere on the order of over over $12 trillion to the federal debt. that's the president's budget. the republican budget that was put forward today -- and i'm sure we're not going to agree with every aspect of that, but at least it is a meaningful, serious effort. it reduces spending by by $6.2 trillion over the president's number and and $5.8 trillion, again, below

what the congressional budget office says it will spend over the next decade. it reduces debt $4.4 trillion more than what the president has put forward. and it actually gets government spending as a percentage of our gross domestic product down under 20%, which is where our historical average has been for the last four years. that's about what we have been looking at. and so it takes -- it takes on these issues, and whether you like the approach or not, please at least leforts -- let's have a discussion about this, let's have a debate and let's have a proposal put forward so we have something that we can actually have a discussion about. because so far, all we have is a one-sided discussion. the republicans have let the debate about how to deal with the discretionary part of the budget that we're dealing with with this continuing resolution on the floor today, and the republicans now have the only proposal that's been put forward that deals with the long-term issues of social security, medicare, medicaid, tax reform -- which by the way is an important issue to our competitiveness and to our

ability to grow the economy and create jobs. all those issues are addressed in the budget that was put forward by the house of representatives. it's been put forward by -- what's been put forward by the administration isn't serious. these are serious times that require serious leadership that require serious solutions for the future of this country. and, mr. president, we aren't getting that out of the white house, nor are we getting it out of the democrat leadership here in the united states senate. but i hope that that will change. i hope that my colleagues here in the senate will recognize and the president will recognize we can't afford to wait any longer. we have added over $3 trillion to the federal debt just in the first two years of this president's administration, and that number, as i said, will grow by about $12 trillion over the next decade. the interest alone that we will pay by the year 2015 will exceed what we spend on national security. we will spend more on interest on the debt than we actually spend in the defense of this country. that is the trajectory that we are on. we cannot afford for the future of our children and

grandchildren to stay on that trajectory. we have got to change the direction that we are headed in this country, and it starts now. so i give great credit to our house colleagues. i hope that we will be able to get to a meaningful discussion here in the united states senate about how to get spending and debt under control, how to grow the economy and create jobs, how to rein in the size of the federal government -- it seems here at least a lot of my colleagues must be very comfortable with spending over 25% of our g.d.p. on the federal government because that's where we are today. and as i said before, the 40-year average is down in the 20% to 21% range which is where the house republican budget would take us. i think it's a good starting point. it should trigger, i hope, a discussion in this country, but i certainly would hope as well, mr. president, that the other side, the democrats here in the congress and the white house would engage the debate, enter this discussion, please put forward an alternative instead of just coming out here and attacking and particularly attacking in a way that is misleading and misinforming.

senior citizens are not impacted by this proposal that was put forward today. if you're 55 years and older, you are not affected by this. you keep the programs you've had today, but this does in a meaningful way reform those programs so that they are available to future generations of americans, and we have a moral obligation to them to take the steps that are necessary to provide a future that doesn't saddle them with a mountain of debt. and, by the way, that debt has grown from about $1,900 per person in 1970 to $44,000 per person today. and under the president's budget ten years from now will be ove over -- will be $88,000 per person. that's what ware doing to the -- what we're doing to the future of our children and grandchildren unless we take steps to change our direction. mr. president, i yield the floor. mr. coats: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from indiana. mr. coats: mr. president, today,

along with senator wyden, we introduced a bipartisan tax reform legislation -- piece of legislation that i believe and both of us believe, and hopefully we can gather a consensus in this body to believe, that it's necessary to be a component of addressing the current fiscal situation we're in today. the senator from north dakota just articulated very well the plight we currently are facing with our current federal deficit and the accumulating debt. and i don't think i could have said it better than he did. laid out what i think, as most americans are now realizing, and that is that we have to get a grip on our current fiscal situation in this country if we're going to provide any kind of opportunity for the future, prosperity, opportunity for our young people to get good jobs, buy homes, raise a family, send their kids to college. and even in the more current

sense, it's get our economy moving again to the point where we can get people back to work and become a prosperous, leading nation in the world. we are gradually and accelerating all the time, losing that position because of our fiscal situation. this morning, a number of us of met, both republicans and democrats, in one of a series of meetings that we've been having with wowsd experts -- with outside experts, dr. carmen rinehart and ken rogoff, both distinguished and respected economists, and others who have studied the situation, laying out the current status of our fiscal situation and the economic plight that it is putting our country into. one of the things that they've said, and i think the reason that i'm on the floor this evening, is that unless we address all the aspects of both dealing with our -- in dealing with our fiscal crisis, both in terms of excessive spending

that's taking place and has taken place over the last civil years, but also -- last several years, but also components for growth, we are not going to successfully address this. we not only have to look at the spending which has accelerated dramatically in the last few years and the amount of deficit we're accumulating every year and the amount of debt that we're rolling up, but we also have to look at ways in which, in addressing that by cutting spending, we can also spur the economy to growth. and the component for growth pretty much falls along the lines of tax reform. senator wyden had worked for two years with former senator gregg. they spent a great deal of time putting together a very comprehensive plan. senator gregg, as everyone knows here, retired after many, many years of distinguished service, was recognized as one of if not the leading proponent of budget

stability, of economic growth, of all the aspects that go into dealing with economic situations. he's greatly missed. i had the privilege of being his friend, of serving with him and then having him encourage me to take his place in moving this legislation forward. i spent the last three months working with senator wyden, who is the coauthor of that along with senator gregg. we've made some refinements to this. we are introducing it today. we will be doing a formal introduction of it together in the coming days. but the agreement and the growing consensus i think that we hear from everyone is that tax -- comprehensive tax reform has to be a component of addressing our fiscal plight and getting us back into a period of sustained growth. s. 727 is the bill. it will be available for people to look at. the bipartisan tax fairness and

simplification act of 2011. it simplifies our current tax system. it holds down rates for individuals and families. it provides tax relief to the middle class and creates incentives for businesses to grow and invest in the united states. now, as we know, when any structure that is built, the first thing do you is build a solid foundation, and what we're trying to do in tax -- our tax reform package is build that foundation based on several basic principles. we believe that to avoid and to bring forward i on a bipartisan basis, we have to have a tax package that is revenue neutral, so it is not stereotyped and characterized as a bookdoor means of raising taxes or of cutting spending. but revenue neutrality means that we can go forward knowing that it is not used for that purpose but for the purpose of putting in place a tax system that will stimulate growth,

provide for better competitiveness for our industries and businesses, and make us a more prosperous nation. simplification is a key foundational principle as well as protection for middle class and families. fairness across the board and, as i said earlier, economic growth. and i'd like to address each of those. first of all, achieving a revenue-neutral bill, this has been analyzed by the joint tax committee and basically we have information back that it is revenue neutral. this analysis is based on a static basis. as we all know, if you -- if you put in place policies that will encourage growth and stimulate growth, it becomes a dynamic scoring. but c.b.o. doesn't do dynamic scoring, nor did j.t.c., the joint -- nor does j.t.c., the joint tax committee. nevertheless, even at the static analysis of this bill, it

achieves revenue neutrality and it is our goal to maintain that throughout as adjustments might be made. simplifying the tax code has to be one of the very first things that we do. today, the u.s. tax code is 71,684 pages in length and it includes a tangled web of over 10,000 exemptions, deductions, credits, and other preferences. now, mr. president, i took three tax courses in law school. i don't begin to understand the 10 to you-plus exemptions and deductions and flearchesz are in there. -- preferences that are in there. i turn over to an accountant who spends every working hour of his week every day of the year trying to stay up with the complexity of this tax code. it is no secret that americans spend 6.1 billion hours each year filling out tax forms and

rough $163 billion a year is spent on tax compliance. it's a great benefit for accountants and tax lawyers but, nevertheless, the average person simply cannot begin to comprehend the complexity of this code and we pay a significant price for that. along that line, people sense a real sense of unfairness about this. you're always wondering if your neighbor has got a better accountant or a better tax attorney or has figured out a way to take advantage of a deduction or exclusion or a tax preference that you weren't aware of. and, you know, you're having coffee on april 16 and you're talking about filling your taxes -- filing your taxes yesterday and saying, well, you did take a deduction for x, y ore z, didn't you? or how about that extra room in your house that you use for business, did you know that you could deduct the cost of pencils but also driving dawn to pick up a latte if you meet somebody for

business? i mean, the stuff just goes on on and on forever and you think gosh, i didn't know that, i got a -- he got a better deal than i did. and we lose a sense of confidence in terms of the fairness of the tax system. so simplification is absolutely essential, and for a 71,000-plus page tax code, i think it's an absolute necessity. we reduce the number of tax brackets, first of all, for individuals from six to three, and we also eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which means you have to calculate your taxes twice in many instances to see which one is the higher and which one you pay, which doubles the amount of time or adds a lot to the amount of time. i want to point to this chart here on my right, the wyden-coats tax reform act of 2010. this is what a simplified u.s. income tax form will look like if this bill is passed. it is one page. it incorporates obviously the information about who you are and whether you're married and

your spouse's social security number and yours, et cetera, et cetera, whether you're head of household. very simple provisions here that's on the tax form now. we all can figure out how to work through here. right here you list your dependents and the relationship to you and you get their social security number. and then to see whether or not you qualify for a dependent's deduction, and you put that -- check those off and you list your capital gains and your dividends here, your total income is added together. and then you adjust that by some very simple, retained exemptions that we have not taken out, and deductions, tax credits, all still on one page. you come down to the payment, you either get a refund or you owe the government a little bit more money and that's it and you send it in. we also have a provision in there that if you don't want to do this yourself or you have some confusion, it is basic enough that you can electronically or by telephone

or whatever ask the i.r.s. to do it for you. they will calculate it for you, send it to you, you can review it and then certify that it's correct or you have questions that can be answered. so point number one, simplification is absolutely necessary. it can be done and we have structured it so with three brackets that allow us and allow individuals to do -- fill out their taxes on the basis of this simple form. secondly, we've talked about -- thirdly, after revenue neutrality and simplification, we're talking about how do we use this to grow the economy? clearly, with the fiscal situation we're in today, we are not going to solve our problem just by cutting or by raising taxes. we need to have a growth component so we can achieve more revenue through the prosperity and growth of corporations and income levels of individuals and so forth. so we are reforming our code in

a way to help us get out of this fiscal situation by improving the prosperity and growth of the country. our current tax system places the tax -- the employee -- the employers, excuse me, and businesses at a disadvantage in the global marketplace. if you look at this chart on my left, the united states out of 36 countries which are the most competitive countries for competing for global business around the world, out of 36 countries, the united states is 35th out of 36 in the highest rate of taxes paid by our corporations. and they're competing against countries like germany and france and austria and turkey and -- and chile and all these that are listed here, asian nations and so forth, that have much lower combined tax rates than the united states. we want to lower this level of payment of taxes from the united states -- in the united states

by u.s. businesses to 24% from the current rate of 35%. and if you go by a combined rate, it ends up -- the number's a little bit different than that, but we want to move the united states down here into the competitive area where we are competitive with all those countries that we compete with to sell products overin this -- in this global economy. and we do that and pay for it by eliminating a lot of the credits, special preferences, exemptions, deductions that are available in those 10,000 plus pages -- excuse me, 71,000 pages resulting in 10,000 or more special exemptions. we eliminate a lot of those in return for a lower corporate rate. i talked to a number of businesses, small, large, and medium saying, you know, if you

can just get the rate down where we're competitive, we don't need to dig into the tax code to try to find all these special exemptions. it's been called corporate welfare. it doesn't always fall under that category. some of this is legitimate. but it is not across the board. while it addresses problems of a specific industry or specific company, it doesn't address it across the board in a way for their competitors to be treated in the same way. so under wyden-coats we tried to 11 the playing field and make investing in the united states more attractive to businesses of all sizes. we have a repatriatism provision in there which at another time we'll explain in more detail. but a number of organizations, including heritage and manufacturers alliance have -- have done studies and produced information that show that a lowering of this rate is a job

creator. it's a growth component that the heritage foundation found that the legislation could create up to 2.3 million new jobs a year while cutting the federal deficit by an average o of $61 billion a year just through the changes that we have made and the corporate the structure of taxation. the manufacturers alliance published a paper concluding that such an approach and i quote -- "would create nearly two million jobs on a net basis and add an extra $500 billion to g.d.p. by 2015." the alliance also estimated that it could reduce the debt b by $1.2 trillion over the coming decade. i want to repeat that. while c.b.o. or the joint tax, congressional budget office, joint tax might score this on a static basis, meaning that lowering tax rates does not --

they don't calculate in what the potential growth from that would be in a fluid way, a dynamic way. history shows us that every time taxes are lowered there is an uptick in economic activity and more important an upknick the hiring and -- uptick in the hiring and drop in unemployment rate. so getting us more competitive with our competitors around the world will clearly bring a yet undetermined number of more revenue coming into the government based on higher profits by our companies and more resulting in -- resulting in more employment. that is a key component of this tax reform. protecting the middle class and families is also another key component of our tax reform and of the wyden-coats plan. today a family of four in indiana making $90,000 and filing jointly would owe nearly $13,000 in personal income taxes.

under wyden-coats, that family would keep more of their hard-earned money and save approximately $5,000 in personal income taxes. we protect and extend important tax deductions for families. we don't eliminate all deductions to reach our -- our simple -- simplified tax code, only three levels of taxation without increases we retain the rates that are -- we don't raise any of the rates that are currently in place. we keep the dependent tax credit, which is set to drop t to $2,400 in two years. we in the wyden-coats plan permanently set that benefit at $3,000, a benefit to families. the child tax credit is scheduled to revert to $500 in 2013. wyden-coats eases the tax burden on families by permanently setting the child tax credit

at $1,000. we promote personal saving and investment. we think it's important that we encourage the saving and investment. today we have three separate i.r.a. or individual retirement account plans for savings and investments available to -- to individuals in the united states. wyden-coats promotes this by expanding tax-free savings opportunities and consolidating these three new accounts into one account that would allow a married couple to contribute up to $14,000 a year to tax favored retirement and savings accounts. so we take the three current plans in existence, we consolidate it into one, we increase the amount per year that -- that can be tax free, donated to those savings and retirement accounts as another way of looking out for families and their need to save for the

future. making the tax code fair. today our current tax system picks winners and losers. hundreds of specialized tax rates that benefit some, but not all. these credits specialized earmarks within this tax code that we're working with today are a total of $1.1 trillion. we want to eliminate under wyden-coats a number of those exemptions and end a number of specialized tax breaks that favor one sector of the economy or special interest group over another. we want to level this out. now, i recognize, and senator wyden also recognizes that there will be issues with this bill. especially from groups that benefit from these special exemptions. but those special exemptions and tax earmarks often put other companies at a disadvantage and it's time to make our system, as i said, fair and more simple.

ronald reagan once said, to put it simply, our tax system is unfair, it's inequitable, it's counterproductive, and all but incomprehensible. reagan went on to say were he living at this time even albert einstein would have to write to the i.r.s. to help him fill out his 1044 each year. now it's 25 years since we've had any kind of meaningful tax reform. 1986 was the last time. during that time our government has vastly expanded the tax code reform into a complicated, tangled web of deductions and loopholes for tax lawyers to decipher. if we can reform this tax code and encourage job investment here at home by doing this, create more american jobs and make our country more competitive in a global market, we will have taken a major step to moving forward in terms of addressing the fiscal plate that we're currently in.

senator wyden and i are open to suggestion. this is not set in concrete. this is not a be all, end all plan. we don't have all the answers to this complex problem, but we think this is an essential start to a debate that is necessary to be accompanied by other solutions that we have to bring to our current fiscal situation. and we want to put this in as a starter, as a way of saying two years plus of hard work by two people who are knowledgeable about this -- about this topic, and i don't begin to -- to bring myself up to the speed that senator wyden and senator gregg achieved in the two-plus years of very, very hard effort, but i'm trying to learn as fast as i can. we want to bring forward a bipartisan democrat-republican plan which we think are based on -- on principles that are necessary to stimulate our growth and provide fairness

an -- it and simplification of our tax code. we're asking everybody to look at it, examine it, come to us with your questions. there will be something -- there are a lot of things to like here. there will be some constituents that will find some things that they don't like because it takes away a special exemption that they perhaps depended on. but we want to explain the basis on which we have made these decisions. we are open to suggestions as long as those suggestions allow us to retain those basic principles and maintain us at a revenue neutrality level and a fairness across the board to families and businesses and individuals throughout the -- throughout this country. so i urge my colleagues to take a look at this, to work with us. the door is open for us to sit down and talk to whether there are -- are colleagues here in the senate or businesses or families or individuals across the country that want to bring

their special input to this particular effort, we look forward to working with them and over time incorporating this in the plan to make us a healthier fiscal country and a country that is dynamic and growing and a place of pros merity and opportunity for -- prosperity and opportunity not only for those of us today but for our future generations. mr. president, with that, i yield the floor and i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mrs. shaheen: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator north carolina. mrs. shaheen: i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. shaheen: mada mr. presideni rise today to urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join together to prevent an irresponsible government shutdown. the american people did not elect us to shut down the government. mrs. hagan: democrats and republicans in both the house and the senate must tighten the federal government t belt just like americans are doing every day at their titchen -- can i haven tables. as we all know, our escalating national debt is our country's most pressing problem. our country's current fiscal course is simply unsustainable. in just the last ten years, our federal dwebt has risen from roughly a third of our gross domestic product to nearly two-thirds of g.d.p. in 2010. based on the nonpartisan congressional budget office

estimates, without proactive action by congress, that percentage will continue to increase over the next ten years with public debt expected to reach 90% of g.d.p. in 2020. meanwhile, nearly half of our current debt is owned by china and other foreign creditors. it is time for congress to work together to chart a new bipartisan course that puts our fiscal house in order. mr. president, before coming to the u.s. senate, i served for ten years as a state senator in the north carolina general assembly. i served as cochair of the budget committee, and i know that crafting a budget is never easy. there are always difficult choices and both sides have to make sacrifices. and as a budget cochair, i worked for five consecutive years to ensure that north carolina's budget was balanced, that we still made critical investments in our communities while eliminating unnecessary spending.

it takes cooperation across party lines to meet fiscal challenges and to ensure government is both leaner and more effective. we need bipartisan cooperation this week to prevent a federal government shutdown, which is an irresponsible outcome. keeping the government functioning for the american people is congress's core responsibility. we must come together to cut spending and support critical priorities, such as education that strnen our -- that strengthen our economy in north carolina communities and in communities across america. and while i believe we all share the common goal of reducing our nation's deficit, we should remember that our most troubling economic challenges cannot be solved in one year alone. that's why i am concerned by some of the cuts passed by the house. the house proposal would result in the loss of some 21,000 north

carolina jobs and decimate important education priorities like head start and investments in historically black colleges and universities. nearly one in five african-americans who earn an undergraduate degree has a diploma from an historic black college or university. north carolina has ten four-year hbcu's, more than any other state in the country. and funding through the department of education allows these institutions to strengthen programs and provide critical services for students who are often among the first in their families to attend college. and the house would cut funding to hbcu's by nearly a quarter -- $85 million below last year's level, a cut that would have a disastrous impact on these institutions and their students while not even scratching the surface of our current deficit.

in addition, by insisting on dozens of divisive policy riders, house republicans are disrupting our ability to chart a pragmatic and responsible fiscal course for the country. we cannot take our eye off the ball. the president's bipartisan fiscal commission, cochaired by north carolina's own erskine bowles, and former senator alan simpson, made important progress in beginning to diagnose and attack the root causes of our nation's fiscal crisis. the bipartisan work of the fiscal commission is evidence that common ground is possible. reducing spending will absolutely be a part of any comprehensive solution, but we must begin to have a broader discussion to create meaningful deficit reduction. and for that reason, i am supporting senate 211, the biennial budgeting and appropriations act which was introduced by my colleagues,

senator isakson and senator shaheen. this bill would take the washington-as-usual politics out of the budgeting process. the bill changes the budget process from the current annual spending debate to a two-year deliberative process that allows us to work together on commonsense cuts coupled with sensible investments. similar to what is done in north carolina, which balances its budget every year. and right now congress rarely passes the 12 government funding bills by the end of the fiscal year, and this year we've been operating on short-term fix after short-term fix. a biennial budget process is part of the long-term solution we need to remove partisanship from the budget. the status quo is unacceptable. mr. president, i hope that we can continue to work across party lines this week in moving

forward on a bipartisan, comprehensive plan for the nation's budget that tackles head-on our mounting debt. mr. president, i ask -- i notice -- i ask that we have a quorum. -- a quorum call. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

you

quorum call:

mr. bennet: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado's recognized. mr. bennet: i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennet: thank you, mr. president. i had -- i had the chance to sit in the chair this evening just before you came and listen to people on both sides of the aisle talk a little bit about our debt and our deficit situation pending shutdown of the federal government. i shutter to think that we might actually do that, but it may happen. i thought i would might keep my senior senator a little bit of company. the hour is late and the floor is empty to have a chance to talk a little bit about how we see this from colorado.

like you, i've had the chance to travel one of the most beautiful states in the country in the last two years 40,000 miles across the state of colorado having town hall meetings in red parts of the state and in blue parts of the state. and believe it or not, and know you would believe it, because you're talking to the same people that i'm talking to, and maybe important important than -- important than that, listening to the same people that i'm listening to, i think a fairly substantial consensus emerged out of those meetings. by the way, not a single one of those town hall meetings, not one in two years, no matter what part of the state i was in would any self-respecting cable television producer want to put on cable tv at night. because we don't scream at each other in colorado. we have our differences. we have our disagreements. we have a lot of shared values though whether we're democrats

or republicans, tea party members, independents. we're about a third republican, a third democratic, a third independent. and that consensus that emerged from these meetings on our debt and our deficit were straightforward. three part test for people in colorado. the first was, they want us to come up with a comprehensive solution that materially addresses the fiscal challenges this country faces. they don't want a bunch of gimmicks. they don't want a bunch of talk points. and they don't want people in this chamber or the chamber on the other side of the capitol spending their time scoring political points at the expense of the american people. so the question they're going to ask first when you and i go back there, i think, is did you get to a comprehensive solution? not by the way, did you fix it overnight? because they know it can't be

fixed overnight. but can we be secure in the idea that we're not going to leave our kids and our grandkids what is today $15 trillion in debt and a $1.5 trillion budget deficit because all things being equal we'd like to allow our kids and our grandkids to not have their choices constrained by our inability to get anything done here in washington. so that's the first test for people in colorado. the second tess is, they want to -- test is, they want to know that any solution that we come up with is one where we're all in it together. that everybody in america has the chance to make a contribution to solving this fiscal nightmare that we face. they're not interested in pitting one group of people against another group of people. in fact, that makes them feel suspicious about what we're doing. they want to know that we're all in it together, which brings me

to the third common sense colorado point of view on this issue, which is, they would like this -- in fact, they're insist that the solution be a bipartisan solution because they don't have confidence in one party's ideas on this question. that's a lucky thing because we have a republican-controlled house and we have a democratic-controlled senate and the president's a democrat. we can't solve this problem in these times without it being a bipartisan solution. that's it. if i can go home and say, we materially addressed the problem, we're all in it together, and it was bipartisan solution, i think people would say, you guys have finally done something. we feel patriotic, like we've done something useful for our kids. now, as the presiding officer

knows, there are people all over our state, local government officials that are republicans and democrats that are making really tough decisions about their budgets. and i have an incredible amount of sympathy for what they're dealing with. i had the great fortune earlier in my career to serve as the chief of staff for our now governor john hi higgin, when jn went into that office and i went in as his chief of staff, we faced a huge budget deficit by denver's standards. and we had to cut 11% of our expenditure. and we met with people living all throughout the city and county of denver. we sought their advice, we established a set of priorities. we passed it through a city council. and you know what?

denver lived to fight another day, our economy grew, and things were pretty good there for a while until this current recession. when i became superintendent of the denver public schools, as the president knows, a district that year after year after year for almost a decade, maybe even longer than that, was the poster child for cutting every single year. every year people in other school districts would say, thank god we're not the denver public schools. every year the denver public schools would lose teachers to other districts who could afford to pay them more. and every year we cut and we cut and we cut. -- cut as a district. when i became superintendent, one of the cases i made to the school board was, we have profound structural problems in our budget. and instead of approaching the budget in a way that diminishes

the academic environment for the kids, what we ought to figure out how to do is establish a set of priorities and build a public case to deal with the structural problems that existed in our budget. and because of the good work of the school board, i should say, the courageous work of the school board, we were able to get that done. we were able to close schools for the first time in a long time. that's hard work. those meetings were harder than health care town hall meetings, i can tell you that. we're able to deal with the pension liability that our district had and we were able year after year to invest more money, not less, in our schools and in our classrooms. and now, under the current leadership there, who i think are doing an exceptional job, the district no longer is the poster child for anything except

fighting hard on behalf of the children in the denver public schools. now, here's the thing that drives me crazy about what's going on and the conversation that we're having now about this shutdown, there is no way that any superintendent of schools in colorado or any school board in colorado or any city council or any mayor from the biggest city to the smallest town would show up to work and say, we might close the government two weeks from now. it's an option for us that we will not pick up your trash two weeks from now. -- now or plow the streets. we still get snow in colorado at this time of the year. or plow the streets two weeks from now. we're going to close down. it wouldn't occur to anybody working in a local government in our state to say that they were going to do that.

you know why? because people would come unglued, unhinged. they'd say, we hired to you do a job. work it out. we're doing our jobs or we're looking for jobs. we don't have time to solve these problems. you were hired to do this job. work it out. come to an agreement. don't come home and tell us you're shutting the government down. that you're not going to pick up the trash. that you're not going to plow the snow. that you're not going to educate our kids. the idea that as a -- you know, i got in trouble when i closed school for snow once -- once. it turned out to be a great decision because it was one of the worst blizzards we ever had, but it could have gone the other way. because people rely on us to do the work that we're supposed to

do. they have plans. and the idea that at a time when we are fighting wars all across this globe, at a time when there are governments and countries that are trying to seek an economic advantage over the united states of america in a global economy that has shrunk the way that ours has shrunk that we would say to ourselves, we're going to pause. we can't even keep the government open in this democracy. i think would reflect terribly not on the american people and not on our democracy, but on this institution of government. there is a reason why we are in the basement as an institution in terms of polling. why should people have confidence in an institution that can't actually even keep running in the short term? and i think it's important, based on the conversation that i heard here tonight on both sides

of the aisle, for the american people to understand that this debate about this government shutdown is not a debate about our deficit and our debt. not really. it's been about scoring political points. and what i want to say is this, just as one member of this body, i hope and i would encourage the leadership of both sides of the aisle here, the leadership in the house, our president to find a way to work it out and to make sure that we keep this government open. i think closing it sends entirely the wrong message, and i know there are people on both sides of the aisle here that believe that. and i hope people do absolutely everything they can do between now and the end of this week to make sure that we send a message that we are not as dysfunctional as we appear to be. because i think this place ought to meet the standard that people

at the local level of government are held to in our state. no business would say, i don't know. maybe we'll close for two weeks or close for a month. they're figuring out to invest and grow even in this challenging economy. we should be doing the same. now, mr. president, you and i were in a meeght this morning -- in a meeting this morning -- we started the day at 8:00 in the morning -- with 33 senators, republicans and democrats, who came together to hear some very thoughtful observations about how important it is that we come to a comprehensive solution to deal with our deficit and to deal with our debt. heard an important presentation about how there's no silver bullet here. there's no easy way to solve any of this. but perhaps the least painful way to think about it is the

most -- is with the most comprehensive plan, which, by the way, is the intuition of people in colorado, as i said earlier today. it gave me great confidence that there were a bunch of republicans and a bunch of democrats in a room listening to this message. and willing, i think, to work together in a bipartisan way. i was very fortunate to draft a letter that mike johanns co-signed with me from nebraska, a republican, that called on the president to engage after this period that we're having a discussion about right now in closing the government or keeping it open or whatever it is we're going to do, asking the president to engage in a conversation that is comprehensive that says, you know what? we know this is going to involve cuts to discretionary spending, both domestic and military. we know this is going to involve reform of our entitlements. we know that it's going to

involve reform of our tax code as well. senator coats from indiana was out here today with a lot of common sense around how our tax code doesn't drive innovation and competition and growth, and he's right about that. there's a lot of work to be done here, and i have every confidence that it can happen. that letter that we wrote turned out to have 64 signatures on it. 64 people signed that letter. that's more than the 60 that are required to pes a piece of legislation. that's a majority of the democrats in the senate. it's a majority of the republicans in the senate, and i know it's just a letter, but it reflects what i believe to be true about what people in this body believe. which is that we can solve this issue. we can solve this problem, but we're only going to be able to

do it if we do it together. and we're only going to be able to do it if we get to a place where we're no longer as concerned about winning political points as we are about actually addressing the problem. and i have confidence we can do it. someone said to me today, they said, you seem to be a guy that feels like the senate is really dysfunctional. you got a reputation for believing that the senate is dysfunctional, and there are -- i'll confess, there are gaze when i wonder, and there are days when i wonder like it is. but on this set of issues, i think the senate can shine. on this set of issues, i think this is the place where leadership really can take hold and where we can create a bipartisan solution to this. and the people of colorado and i think the american people expect us to do everything we can to

get this done. so there are two conversations going on simultaneously, and i thought it was just important to point out that, one is about the very, very short-term issue of what we're going to do with this continuing budget -- by the way, no one in doll coul would stand for the idea -- in colorado would stand for the idea that you don't pass a budget in the year that you're in. but that's another washington cultural artifact that we ought to get rid of. but that's distinct from the comprehensive discussion we need to have around here on our deficit and our debt. and, you know, at the end of the two-year discussion that i was having and the beginning of a new discussion now with colorado it became pretty straightforward what people want, not just on the debt and deficit but other things that they're concerned about, that we ought to be turning ow attention to -- our attention to here.

instead of having this back and forth about whether we're going to keep the government open, it ought to be assumed that we're going to keep the government open. we just came off the first decade in the country's history, in our history, when median family income fell -- it was lower at the end of the decade than it was at the beginning of the decade. it's never been true before in the united states. for families in colorado, that means that they're actually learning less at the end of the decade than they were at the beginning. but their cost of higher education has gone up by more than 40%. their cost of health care has gone up by more than 100% over that period of time. we've created no net new jobs in the united states or in colorado since 1998. people would like to see that turned around. people loo like to see us working -- people would like to see us working together on a tax code that drives innovation, to make sure that we don't have

regulations that unnecessarily stifle economic growth. they'd like to see that. they'd like us to break our reliance on foreign oil from the persian gulf. even before what's happening -- what's happened in the middle east and in libya occurred in the last month or so, even before that, people were saying to me, michael, we don't think it makes much sense for us to be buying oil from the persian gulf. we don't understand why we have an energy policy that requires us to ship billions of dollars a week to the persian gulf to buy oil when we could be investing that money developing our energy resources here in the united states. that's work we could be doing together in a bipartisan way. and as the president know, i have a passion for public education, as do the people that are living in colorado, and they know we're not getting the job done there either.

we have before us the reauthorization of no child left behind, but we somehow can't move that forward. and teachers and kids and principals and moms and dads all over our state are expecting us to get that work done. we have to find a way to educate our kids for the 21st century economy that hopefully we will build for them. and we're not getting the job done, as i said on the floor the other day, if you look at this question from the perspective of poor children living in our home state of colorado or all across the united states of america and if you think about this room that we're in right now and the fact that there are 100 desks that don't belong, i guess, to 100 senators because they belong to the american people, but where 100 senators sit and work, if these desks reflected the odds of poor children living in

our country succeeding case -- educationally, things would look pretty grim in here. 42 out of the 100 chairs in this place would be occupied by a child living in poverty. 42. by the time our children in poverty got to the eighth grade, only 16 kids would be reading at grade level. that's four and four, four -- that's about 16 desks. the entire rest of this senate chamber would be full of children that couldn't read at grade level in the eighth grade today in the 21st century in the united states of america. by the time our poor children would be graduating from

college, only nine -- one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine -- nine would be graduating from college. these two rows and 245 chair right there. the entire rest of this chamber would have no college degree. in a global economy that's requiring that as a pathway to the middle class, to meaningful participation in the democracy, to meaningful participation in this global economy. 91 people in this place would be shut out because they were born into a zip code that's poor. those odds look pretty long to the kids that are living in those neighborhoods. i've spent a lot of time with our kids in those neighborhoods.

not just in colorado but all across the united states of america. they think we've already made a promise to them, that they live in a land of opportunity that is going to reward their hard work and that if they stick with it, they're going to end up with a college degree. that's what they believe. we have -- we may have made that promise, but we certainly haven't followed through on that commitment. and why should that matter to us? some people look at that and say, well, someone h else's problem. i don't need to worry about it. mackenzie has done a study that shows us that the effect of those outcomes is to create a permanent recession on the united states. the effect of that dropout rate creates a permanent recession on the united states. that actually is about the same as the recession that we just

went through, which means that if you are concerned with economic growth in the united states, you need to concern yourself with the educational outcomes that our kids in poverty are facing. if you're concerned with income inequality in the united states, you need to be concerned with the outcomes that i just described. you know, last year the top 1% of income earn irrelevance in this country earned 23 -- of income earners in this country earned 23% of the income. almost a quarter of the income. the last time that was true was 1928. that doesn't lead me to conclude that somehow we should redistribute t but it does lead me to conclude that we ought to fix our education system so that more people have the chance to put themselves and their families into the middle class. we can't afford in this country to repeat the decade that we

just went through. we can't atoured to have an economy where immediate -- we can't atoured to have an economy where median income is falling. we can't afford to van economy where we are not creating jobs. we can't afford a debt and burden that sometime the capital markets are going to say we can't aford to finance it anymore. and we can't afford not to educate children in this country just because they're poor. we also can't afford to have an energy policy that commits us to a dependence on oil in the persian gulf. i think the people of colorado and across this country are expecting us to do our jobs just as they are doing their jobs. and so i say again, i hope the leadership of both parties, working in good faith, can keep this government open, and i hope that we can move on to a broader and more comprehensive conversation around debt, around

deficit, around our economy and around the education of our kids. i see the majority leader has arrived, and i will yield the floor, mr. president. i appreciate your attention. thank you. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader is recognized. mr. reid: ask unanimous consent that at 1:00 a.m. wednesday, april 6, the senate resume consideration of s. 493 and the pending amendments be set asondes senator reid or his designee be recognized to call the following amendments: baucus 236, stabenow 277, rockefeller 215, coburn 217, coburn 223, coburn 273, inouye 286. that the pending sanders amendment 207 be modified with the changes at the desk, the senate then proceed it a period of debate until 4:00 p.m. with the time equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, votes to the votes listed blow, baucus, stabenow, rockefeller 216, mcconnell

183, coburn 187, inouye, coburn 273. that there be no amendments prior to the votes and the motion to reconsider be made and laid on the table, all after the first vote be 10 minutes in duration, the amendments be subject to a 60-vote threshold for adoption. that upon the disposition of coburn amendment 273, amendment number 184 and 217 offered by senator coburn be agreed to, and that no amendments be in order to the coburn amendments 184 and 217 prior to their adoption, and all of the above occurring with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, so ordered. mr. reid: mr. president, i appreciate everyone's patience in regard to getting this consent agreement. none of these votes are going to be easy, but they're votes that are necessary. mr. president, i would also say

in relation to the statement made by my friend from colorado -- i forgot who is the senior senator between the senator in the chair -- the junior senator from colorado, the statement that he made, we're doing our very best to work something out on the c.r. that will fund the government until the end of this fiscal year. as has been reported in the press, i had a meeting with the speaker tonight at 4:00. we're still negotiating in good faith. we're not that far apart. and hopefully we can work something out. it's something we should be able to do, and certainly we're trying. as we speak you our people are working on this. so i want everyone to know that the government is not going to be shut down -- yet.

there's still air in the tire, at least we still have some miles to travel. i hope we have enough air in the tire to get us where we need to go. i ask unanimous consent that the "help" committing discharged from consideration -- further consideration of s. 129 and the senate proceed to its consideration. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 129, honoring the 29 coal miners who per arabed in the explosion at upper big branch mine in mt mt. call, west virginia. the presiding officer: without objection, the 0 committee is disarnled and the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. reid: i further ask that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, there be in intervening action or debate and any statements relating to this matter be placed in the record at the appropriate place as if

given. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: i would note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. bennet: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado is recognized. mr. bennet: mr. president, i ask the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennet: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate now proceed to the consideration of senate resolution 130, which was submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 130, designating april 5, 2011, as gold star wives day. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. bennet: i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennet: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of senate resolution 131, submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 1 131, designating april 2011 as tsunami awareness month. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will

proceed to the measure. mr. bennet: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and any statements relating to the matter be placed in the record as if read. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennet: mr. president, i understand that h.r. 1255 has been received from the house and is at the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will read the bill for the first time. the clerk: h.r. 1255, an act to prevent a shutdown of the government of the united states and for other purposes. mr. bennet: i would ask for its second reading and object to my own request. the presiding officer: objection is heard. the senate will have its second reading on the next legislative day. mr. bennet: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it recess until 9:30 a.m. on wednesday, april 6. that following the prayer and

pledge, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, the senate proceed to a period of morning business until 11:00 a.m. with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each, with the time until 10:40 a.m. equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority controlling the first half and the republicans controlling the final half. and that at 10:40 a.m., senator ayotte be recognized to deliver her maiden speech to the senate. and that following morning business, the senate resume consideration of s. 493, the small business jobs bill, as provided for under the previous order. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennet: mr. president, senators should expect a series of up to seven roll call votes to begin at approximately 4:00 p.m. in relation to amendments to the small business jobs bill. mr. president, if there's no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it recess urunder the previous order.

the presiding officer: the senate stands in recess until senate stands in recess until

your help them understand the role of the federal government.

>> there is a new opportunity everyday. you've got your own place tuesday and it's just the way you like it. you can hang around on campus all day long and do whatever you want and you don't have to worry about anyone paying for that health insurance you don't use anymore, well let's say to the contrary and it isn't only good things but also includes dangers. you could get hurt at any moment in a car wreck, attack or even just from a casual accident. if you don't have health insurance, [inaudible] mabey students nationwide face the problem.

in fact one out every five college students is on injured. our government has acknowledged this as another flaw in the health care system. that is why the health care reform bill was formed. >> if you don't have insurance or if you're abroad to graduate and you're not sure what your next job is going to be or there's a gap between getting the job with insurance all the new plans and some current ones allow you to spend on your parents' insurance policy until you're 26-years-old. >> perhaps starting this new-found independence college students seem not to be dependent on their parents. however one thing parents can provide this protection of injuries and illness from their health insurance. the federal government recognized that students in our community past age 21 or dropoff of their parents' plan. with this knowledge, the extended the limit to age 26. >> dependents now can free man

on their parents' insurance up to age 26 if they are enrolled in school, not enrolled in school, there are all these rules about that and now they are not. so there for a lot of students can be covered under their parents' insurance when they couldn't before. >> i think the fact that college students can stay on their parents' insurance up to the age of 26 even if they graduate is a big change, because it used to be as soon as you graduated you no longer were allowed to be on your parents' health insurance. but a lot of people it takes a little bit of time to get settled into a job after they graduate if they are even able to find one and to get your health insurance. so now you no longer have the gap. estimate this addition is probably the most significant in college students' lives. >> i can be on my parents of until 26, i'm working age of

both graduates to pay for school and i don't have to worry about paying for health care because i need to focus on more important issues. >> not only does it help them and their students but also after graduation and looking for their first job children with a pre-existing condition will finally be able to purchase the coverage they need. >> starting september 23rd, insurance companies can no longer deny coverage to a child because they have a pre-existing medical condition. >> along with the amendment comes a mother supported edition in the health care bill. this is a restriction of self insurance companies turning away or not covering someone with a pre-existing condition. this is already in effect for kids and should keep in place for adults and 2,003. the health care reform also impacts college students through individual mandates. >> in 2014 there is a

requirement everybody in the united states has to have health insurance. >> that's going to be a major change is everyone will be required to have health care insurance and they will have a significant impact on college students. >> the individual mandate makes a requirement in insurance if you do not meet this requirement you have to pay a penalty of either $750 or 2% of your income, the greater of the two. many refer to this as unconstitutional and question its legality. >> and stand the basic provisions of the act and an act but to a great extent most americans do not favor, certain congressional and other leaders decided they would pass it notwithstanding. >> many americans voice their opinions on this including a federal judge. >> what he did what do is will the individual mandates or unconstitutional. >> constitutional or not the

individual mandate is something that needed of college students in the long run. islamic young adults particularly in their 20s may be for affordable the reasons may be because of the sense of invincibility while generally young folks aren't sick they don't really see the need for health insurance, so a lot of college students and a little bit older have no health care insurance and it's quite a gamble. a lot of times they don't use a lot of health care but when they do use health care it is because of very serious or catastrophic accidents. >> one of the many purposes of the reformist to lower cost for those especially in need of financial aid. this could assist numerous college students. >> we all know they have been going up and we are starting that. >> in a couple of years after we set the whole thing up millions of the families of

small-business owners are going to have more choice and competition and are going to be able to purchase quality affordable care and get a better deal. ischemic health care reform is designed to help it comes with downfalls. one of these downfalls is having to pay for other people's insurance. >> it's estimated in the that is what they're trying to do in congress right now in the election that we pay an average of eight to 10% additional federal income tax to pay for folks that didn't have insurance. so it would further drive the economy down. >> the doctor went over to say that with over 200,000 pages of legislation most americans are confused what is in the bill. is that nobody knows what is in the bill, as you know. nobody knows what is in the bill. even in congress people voted on it so that is what is giving us such a hard time. what is the fee schedule and to be?

>> it has positives and negatives. >> by early 2011 we will see it altered or fallen. [inaudible] >> we believe the health care reform does have its flaws but it's a good idea. [inaudible] >> it will directly affect us [inaudible] >> go to studentcam.org to see all of the winning videos.

pentagon spokesman told reporters early on today that a possible federal government shut down would be disruptive to the defense department but would not affect key national security activities. we begin with a reporter's question on the possible government shut down. here is part of the briefing. >> you said that the holders of your is that the government shutdown could be averted but what would be the impact, the dod, the military even fact the government were shut down at the end of this week? >> well, jim, let me say this, i think as if witnessed today at the white house with the president posting congressional leaders, this is a issue of concern to the political leadership of this country. they are clearly very focused and i think collectively the president, the administration,

the president, congressional leaders from both parties are really determined to avoid a government shutdown. i think negotiations are clearly a very sensitive point so i don't think it is wise for me to delve too much into this. our hope is we can avoid a shutdown come midnight on friday evening and so that's our position. that said, i want to underscore as i did at the outset that even if that were to come to pass which we hope it doesn't we would continue to protect our vital interest and the world and continue to safeguard the nation's security to wage the war we are fighting and the operations we are conducting right now so that's what our focus is right now.

sort of encouraging, hoping this gets solved before the friday deadline but thankful that at the same time we retain the ability to still safeguard the nation if that were to come to pass. >> if that happens what is -- >> welfare is i think as you know the office of management and budget has put out guidance to all of the departments and the government that they should begin planning. it's the responsible thing to do for the possible eventuality of the government shut down. that is going on in this building the deputy secretary has been -- is running this effort, and he will -- he's in the process of putting out guidance to the major components in this department about how they should go about planning for a possible shutdown including such things as what would constitute an xm operation and mission, sort of an essential operational mission,

and who would be the necessary personnel to continue to carry that out in the event of a shutdown so that guidance is being worked on and it should be put out shortly, so i think that is the focus right now of the planning effort. >> let me ask you one specific. >> as you know, jim, we have been through this many times before. so we are not having to learn how to do this again. we have a fundamental understanding of this and we can do try a which is likely. it isn't without plan but we are familiar and so we will have the ability to do so in the timeframe we have left. >> if there were a government shut down with any man or women in uniform have their paychecks suspended? >> well, i've seen some of these reports that have suggested that that issue has been determined.

i will tell you this, it is something that we are still working through right now and i think it's premature for anyone to suggest that a determination has been made one way or the other. we are working through, having come to a determination yet, but obviously that area of concern for us we are not alone, that is something facing potentially all government employees but as i said we're still working through it. yes? >> what about military families and military family programs and various programs, can you give them assurances they will continue? >> i can repeat what i've said which is that working through all this stuff right now guidance is being formulated and will soon be disseminated and the different major components have to make determinations of what constitutes the core mission that needs to be

conducted even through a government shutdown. but i'm not in the position here today to tell you precisely what each and every one of those is. of course from the ones i mentioned at the outset which are essentials to the nation's security. and protecting our vital interests around the world. >> i hope this is not a snarky question. is to make it wouldn't be the first. maybe not from you but it wouldn't be the first. >> is your reluctance to talk about the specific impacts of a shutdown at all related to a political calculation as these delicate negotiations are under way? >> i think we've made clear we are at a very sensitive point in this budget negotiation. and it is being led not by this department -- we are fundamental observers of this process -- and it's being played at the highest levels of the government. you saw today the president hosting the speaker, the senate majority leader and so forth. so this is three much taking place at that level.

we're not directly involved in the negotiations. so i just don't think it's appropriate for me to speak too much to this. that said, having established its sensitive, there are certain things we haven't come to a determination yet on like the question jim raised or the question you just raised. the we are going to permit the guidance, it will make the out shortly and then the major components are going to him and make those recommendations. obviously the clock is ticking and we are getting ever closer to the end of our sixth continuing resolution so it's time of the essence. but i obviously hope these components can have the time to figure out these things. >> can i ask a technical question. the sixth three of the air force on the pay issue says there's an amount of money sitting in an account to pay air force people

and it's being expanded and the government shutdown but would continue the money would run out sooner rather than later. so -- >> i'm not -- actually i didn't put all your formulation but even if i have i'm not going to get into it. this is stuff that is still being worked out. i don't have a definitive answer to you on what exactly what happened in that even if the government shut down to the specific programs or function. >> you said you've been through this process before. there's been talk about government shut down for months now. why on the eve are you still formulating? >> not quite on the eve of it, and these are determinations that are sort of -- they aren't necessarily deemed durable even though we've been through their before there may be different factors into this calculus as to what is essential at this time. so, we will reissue the direction to the major components and they will respond with what they believe to be

their corps and vital functions, and then there will be determinations made by the secretary and others about how to proceed, but as i said, we are just formulating the guidance and we've got time to get this all done. but again, hope it can be averted. clearly people are working very hard to try to for the southcom and we are very helpful it can be avoided. >> hold on. >> khalid sheikh mohammed and others are being referred to -- >> let's just finish this topic and then we will come back to ksm. >> when you set components, did you mean that you all -- osd, office depot will setup parameters and then the services will then get to decide within themselves -- >> the guidance is still being

worked on. there is a lot there and there's a lot there to help people figure held with is -- what's hannity satchel or xm operation or service or mission. let me not preempt that. it's still being worked on. it hasn't been issued. hold on -- this will be the major component of the services to the osd components and so forth. this is the direction of the deputy secretary vance. it obviously comes with the authority to enforce it. yeah, go ahead. i mean, but we aren't going to prescribe, so there has to be -- people know best what is in their component -- what is an xm or non-exempt function but there obviously are guidelines to help them better understand the parameters here. >> i understand you're limited in what you can say on page there's already is rumors downrange paychecks are stopping

as of april 15th. and really they deserve an answer of some kind. so can you say what options are on the table about how and when the u.s. troops would be paid in the east end of a government shutdown? >> i can -- you are the "rumor doctor," right? is that the column? >> this isn't a "rumor doctor" story. >> no i'm not going to help the "rumor doctor" out here because i think if the rumor is that a decision has been made to stop the checks on april the 15th, i can tell you no such decision has been made to it we are still working to avoid a government shutdown. that's our focus. so this is not a fait accompli. i think it the highest levels of this from people are working to avoid that possibility. when i tell you as always do, when i -- when i tell you, geoff, we haven't been able yet to arrive at a conclusive determination about how everyone's pay would be impacted by this we are still working through that, so i don't have a

definitive answer for you to relate to our forces in iraq or afghanistan. unfortunately that is still an issue being worked. >> it is an issue that is still being worked. >> that's not an answer. >> it is an answer. you may not like it as an answer but it's an answer. larry. >> on yemen, cicatrix supported the defense -- >> are we done with the budget? >> [inaudible] on the components you said okay, the guidance will be done shortly. i'm just trying to figure out when will the rest of the department be delivering some kind of an answer, because that's what i'm not getting here. i mean, you're going to have the guidance that will be delivered. the different departments are going to base what they need to do. is it going to be by fri? >> i would certainly hope so. >> we will have some kind of answer? >> this is all designed as a contingency for if the government were to shut down.

again, we hope to avoid that but obviously the sixth continuing resolution runs out on midnight friday evening. so, the plight of this is to get this done so that we know, come the stroke of midnight, how the global enterprise would be impacted by that. so yes, this is something that needs to be turned quickly. we are done with the budget. we are moving on. okay. if we are moving on, let me go to anna and then larry, and then we will want to japan and we will go to a couple of years. and then we've got to go. >> it's a guantanamo question. i mean, now that ksm has been referred to the dod for tribunals, could you walk us through a little bit about what happens next and if you can give us a sense of when those tribunals are going to start. and i don't -- minow, the convening authority, the prosecutor, they're going to have to figure out the timing. so why can't forecast pris