not one of them has ever been measured to see if it effectively teaches somebody financial late reas. we have 47 job training programs, cost $18 billion a year, nine different agencies, nine different sets of bureaucracies, and all of them but three overlap with the other. that's according to the government accountability office. why? why would we do that? we have 18 programs for food for the hungry. that's something we all want to be involved in. 18? why 18 sets of bureaucracies? how well are they working? are they effective? could we do them better? the question hasn't been been asked by congress. we have homeless programs for both prevention and assistance, 20. six different agencies. so you have 20 different sets of bureaucracies that are designed to do the same thing.

disaster response and preparedness, inside fema alone , inside fema alone we have 17 different programs. inside that one agency which is part of the department of homeland security. i asked the question why? why has it been a priority for us to work on those? why would you do? a senator: would the senator be willing to yield for a colloquy? it may surprise the senator, i hope not. but it might surprise some people listening to this. mr. kerry: to hear from this have side of the aisle a lot of people here have enormous respect for what the senator has been talking about and fighting for and what he has achieved. and i might add he is one of those courageous senators who has come together in the last months, working months as part of the so-called gang of six,

to try to bridge the gap here. and see if we can't find a way forward. and as i listened to him, there's an enormous amount of common sense in the questions that he's asking. these are questions all of us need to join into, and we need to join into them in a process that allows us to be able to fairly and in a balanced way work on the grand bargain, as you call it, the big fix. now, i'd ask the senator, because i think a lot of americans listening to this debate -- i've been listening to it somewhat on the floor, somewhat back in the office -- and i think people have got to be saying to themselves, these guys are kind of talking past each other or something's being missed here, because you hear this side, some things sound reasonable, you hear reasonable things over here. so people say what's hanging up this process? why is the entire country being held hostage here? so i'd like to help my colleague if he'd kind of help us bear

down on what we need to do here. and i'd ask him if it isn't fair and accurate to say that the so-called gang of six -- terrible name, i think, maybe we call them the g-6 -- came together with an understanding that we needed balance in the approach to satisfy both sides and build a critical mass. and that balance required cuts. you have to put the big items, the big-ticket items on the table. that means fixing social security, reforming it for the long term, medicare, medicaid, unsustainable on the current paths. defense, we've got to find a handle on some of the procurement and expenditures. but we also -- and i think the senator joined in this -- have to close some tax loopholes and have tax reform and find some level of revenue at an appropriate ratio that allows us to fix this. and that's where the problem has

been, that there are a group of folks over in the house who have just insisted no revenue at all. and what i'd ask the senator, isn't it fair to say that the gang of six came up with a sort of more balanced approach on which i believe the senate could find the ground of compromise? what senator reid has proposed i believe has cuts that republicans have supported. maybe not quite enough yet so maybe we can negotiate that. mr. coburn: let me reclaim my time. mr. kerry: absolutely. mr. coburn: there are absolutely no cuts in either what senator reid or speaker boehner proposed in the discretionary spending. the spending will rise $832 billion over the next two years -- ten years in the discretionary accounts. now, only in washington is that a cut. and, quite frankly, i'm willing to work with my colleagues. i've been out there. i say we have to move and

eliminate some of these loopholes, that we have to reform the tax code. i'm willing to take the heat from my side on that. i don't have any problem. what i'm not willing to take any more is a senate that won't work on the details of the specific problems. and what i'm trying to do is to outline where the problems are. where is the -- and we didn't do it when we were in charge either, senator kerry. there's been a failure of leadership in this country, in this body to attack the very problems. when we have 47 job-training programs and none of them are working well, because that's what we do know, because the very few times they've been looked at, they don't work, and we're spending $18 billion a year and we're not fixing them? the american people got to say, what is wrong with you all? so what -- what we have to do is we have to evaluate the effectiveness of every program in the federal government.

we have to limit the overhead costs of federal programs. we've put ideas out there. this is $9 trillion worth of cuts. not washington cuts, american cuts, money you're not going to spend that's less than what we're spending today, not money you're not going to spend that you would have spent more the next year. this is real cuts. each one of these is in here backed up by the facts, not biased. you could disagree with where you would make the cuts but you can't disagree with the facts in here, because all the facts come from the congressional research service, the general accounting office, the office of management and budget, the president's budget in terms of his recommendations and why, and the c.b.o. we won't go there. my problem with the senate is we won't do our work. and we're as guilty. i don't -- this is not partisan to me. our country's future is at sta

stake. and when we have two bills, one last night and one today, that is -- are literally lying to the american people when they say "cuts," i think it's unconscionable. mr. kerry: would the senator further yield? mr. coburn: well, let me finish if i will, i will give you a chance and i will yield back to you in a moment. mr. kerry: very good. mr. coburn: the fact is, we won't tell the truth to the american people. and the first truth is, if we'll be honest with them, they will understand what the necessities that will have to be brought forward in this country to be able to solve the problems. by denying what the problem is, we will never get the consensus in this country and the embrace of the american people to do what everybody in this body knows is eventually going to have to be done. we will not have a medicare system that's like the medicare system we have today in five years. it is absolutely unsustainable. we will never be able to borrow the money to do it. we're going to get a debt downgrade no matter what we do. we will not be able to borrow the money. so rather than continue to be

dishonest with the american people about the status of where we are, what we ought to do is embrace them and call for the very things that made this country great, the sacrifice of the citizens of this country to rebuild the potential for our future, to re-create a renewal in our country that embraces the things that made us great, a true free enterprise system with a limited government that will actually allow people to be rewarded for hard work, their own blood, sweat and toil and get that back and have a government take a fair share of that. on theup side, it should be more. on the downside, it should be less. i agree. the question is, is will we do it? will we continue a charade to the american people, continuing to tell them we're going to cut $800 billion, $900 billion out of the discretionary budget when, in fact, we're going to increase it $832 billion? there's only $2 billion difference between senator reid's plan and speaker boehner's on discretionary spending and both of them are untruthful to the american people.

both of them take the american people at a lap and say we can wink and nod at you and we can tell you something's that not true and we can walk out of here saying we spent less money. well, you're only going to spend less money than what we planned to spend, which was way too much in the first place, which was totally unsustainable as well. so let's just be honest with them. our deal is we don't have the courage to actually make the cuts that are listed in here. we don't have the courage to eliminate the waste. we don't have the courage to eliminate the duplication. why? because every one of these programs has a political backing and we're politicians. and -- and unfortunately, too often we're that instead of statesmen. it's time for us, both sides, to lead this country, to lead the country in a vision of here's the real truth of our problem. now let's have a debate about what should be the number-one priority. how much should we spend on

defense? should we continue to allow contracts to go way overrun? should we continue to allow requirement creep in contracts, not just in defense, in homeland security, in h.h.s.? we have the same problems we have in defense, we have in all the other big agencies. we buy $64 billion worth of i.t. every year in this country. and $37 billion of it is wasted, totally blown. why? and what have we done about it? not one thing. just go look at the high-risk list for the g.a.o. on i.t. every year that happens. the census bureau spent $600 million on a device that never worked, there was no penalty for the company that did it. we paid it anyhow. it was a cost-plus contract. and the reason it never worked is because we had requirement creep all the way through. we don't have any grownups

making the purchases for this country. nobody with experience. so we're doing the wrong things at the wrong time. what we need to be doing is the right things at the right time for the right reason considering that we make sure we take care of those that need us to take care of them and then we demand participation of everybody else. we need to cap the total number of federal employees. not because we want to but because we don't have any other choice. and we don't have to let anybody go. just through attrition, we can downsize the federal government. we waste $15 billion every five years on managing properties in this country that we own that -- that -- they're vacant, and yet we're spending that money on them. but we can't get a real property bill through. how -- how -- how valuable to us is $15 billion? we've got to start paying attention to the pennies and the

nickels and the dimes, and we won't do it. unnecessary government printings, including us. i've been trying to get the elimination of this for three years. there's millions and millions and millions of dollars we can save by not printing the copies of this every day that nobody looks to except i did see my good friend from illinois actually look at a vote last night. but he could have got it on-line out of his blackberry. the point is we're tearing down trees to print paper we don't need. how much time do i have left? the presiding officer: the senator has 8 1/2 minutes remaining on the republican side. mr. coburn: all right. [inaudible] mr. kerry: mr. president, i would just ask the senator again, what i'm trying to do is help us get out of this predicament we've got where we've got a couple of days before the united states defaults. everything the senator has said is worthy of inquiry, but isn't

it true that if we could get -- i mean, part of the reid proposal and the boehner proposal proposes a joint committee that will be structured somewhat like a base closing commission that will require the senate and the house to vote in expeditious fashion on these kinds of proposals, whatever the joint committee proposes, and if the joint committee doesn't succeed in proposing something, then hopefully either the gang of six or the simpson-bowles commission. so isn't it key now to resolving this crisis and not defaulting our ability to be able to come together on a sufficient trigger or some sufficient mechanism that guarantees we're actually going to deal with the things similar to what the senator is raising? mr. coburn: well, i would not disagree that those negotiations are going on as we speak. i'm not a party to them. i don't know if you are. i suspect the -- the -- the

president pro tempore is, and we're not going to get to decide that. that's going to come to us for a decision. i don't -- look, i worked a long number of months with my colleagues from the other side of the aisle. i put my name on a bill that really doesn't fix it but it was something to get us moving, it's better than where we are today. i agree with you. but what i would tell you is that's not good enough. we are not good enough yet to where we need to be if we're actually going to solve the problem. let me just finish going through this. we need to end no-bid contracts in this country. give you a specific example. before he left here, senator lemieux got through the business bill prescreening of payments on medicare payments so that we look -- rather than we pay them and then go chase the fraud, we got through a bill

that required the center for medicaid services to put in a program to look to see if they ought to pay the bill. and what did they do? they signed a cost-plus contract for $77 million with a firm that's never done that before and didn't take a particularred-price contract from firms that have already done it before. tell me how we let that happen, and yet it happened. and when we had testimony in our committee, they said it was a fixed-price contract tonal write back and say it wasn't a fixed-price contract. we need some common sense in our government. i'll finish this up real quick. we need to disclose the text and cost of legislation prior to passage. we need to identify duplicative government programs. we've done that. that's in here. there's hundreds and thousands of them throughout the federal government. we need to eliminate them. we need to mandate congressional oversight. that's where our leaders, i think, have failed on both

sides. they haven't mandated the committee chairmen have to do the oversight that's required to solve this problem. we need to freeze the size of this government. we can't afford the government we have today. the debate is about what will happen in the future, what will be the revenue increases, what will be the spending increases. but nobody's talking about decreasing the size of the federal government. we can't afford this government. we can't afford to continue to spend the money that we're spending. so i'll close with this, if we continue to be less than straightforward with the american people about what we're doing here, about the reid bill -- the reason i wanted to debate the boehner bill is i wanted to make this point on the boehner bill. when we call something a cut of

$900 billion, just because the c.b.o. says we're going to spend $900 billion less than what we were planning to spend but still $832 billion more than that we are spending now, that's not a cut anywhere except in washington. and we ought to admit it. if that's the best we can do, the american people need to know that's the best we can do. but we can't play the games anymore. i have another colleague, i think, that would thraoeubg speak, and with the -- like to speak and with the remaining time i would yield. is the senator from alaska interested in speaking? ms. murkowski: i thank the senator from oklahoma. it was my understanding that we were bumping up against the vote here at 5:30. is that correct, mr. president? the presiding officer: the republicans have 3 minutes and 15 seconds remaining. ms. murkowski: mr. president, i had hoped to be able to speak

at greater length than three minutes this afternoon. the message that senator coburn has been delivering here, i think, is so incredibly important, and i want to join in senator kerry's remarks in thanking him for being one who has been working to find not a deal, but to find a solution to the issues that we face today. as we have deliberated all day long, there's been a lot of finger pointing, a lot of blame, and as the senator from massachusetts as noted, a lot of times it seems as if the comments are just going past one another rather than directed in a purposeful way that would actually make a difference to this debate. we started out this morning with the messages from the leader arguing over who was

filibustering. we've all talked about the need to see compromise here, and then we go on to say why we can't compromise. what we need to be working towards is that solution to the problems as opposed to attempting to deal, cobble together a deal at the last moment that will gain those necessary votes. the one thing that i would hope that we are all working towards is to avoid the default that we all fear, that we've all been listening to our constituents calling us this weekend, as we read our e-mails, as we talk to friends and neighbors. the concern is very real. one thing that we have managed to do on a bipartisan basis here in this congress over the past few days is to incite fear in the american public, to make our constituents angry, frustrated, and mad.

well, misery loves company. we're angry, frustrated and mad here, but i would like to suggest that as the hours wind down, we are able to come together as a body here in the senate and in the house to find that compromise. senator isakson stood on the floor here earlier this afternoon and spoke of the contours of a proposal that worked to integrate the good ideas of several different members, of senator reid, of speaker boehner, and of the minority leader here, senator mcconnell. we should be working to find those areas where we agree, because those areas are in fact in place. i'm hopeful, mr. president, that as the majority leader comes back from his meetings, he will

have some encouraging news for us as we work through these last hours. i'd like to gain some additional time later on this evening to speak more in detail, but i see the majority leader before us waiting to speak. the presiding officer: the senator's time has expired. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the presiding officer: a quorum is not present. mr. leader. mr. reid: i move to instruct the sergeant at arms to request the presence of absent senators and ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll.

vote:

vote: