normal productive weeks. i started the week in california, i went to ohio, and i, um, did my, my meeting with the board of directors in ohio. then i had to go to baltimore right after that, and i was doing a tv show with tavis smiley, and i did that. and then i had planned this weekend in las vegas with my, um, best friends, and they were, we were going to a concert. and so that saturday evening i went to watch this comedian with my friends, and if you had walked in there and saw me, you would have seen me just laughing and having a great time, and if someone would have told you that in three hours that man right there would be fighting for his life, you would have said that's ridiculous. so about three hours later i had what i thought was another asthma attack. i discovered later i was having

full blown congestive heart failure. and they got me to the hospital literally just in time to, um, place me in a coma, which i was in a coma for three days, and then they brought me out. and they told me that i damaged my heart from the infection and that they would ultimately need to do open heart surgery. and i wanted the open heart surgery back here in san francisco at my kaiser facility right up here on gary boulevard which happened to be the very first kaiser that i worked at when i joined kaiser permanente, and i actually was a project manager for the open heart unit never thinking that i would one day -- [laughter] be a patient of that. um, and when they flew me from vegas to san francisco for my open heart surgery, um, i'm telling you this as a true story, some of the nurses and others that met me at the door were some to have nurses that i hired over 20-something years ago who took care of me while i

was in san francisco. my second story which is always be nice to people you never know. [laughter] and so i, um, i went through, um, the open heart surgery and, um, went through it fine and recovered fine and five years later i have not been sick since. and i'm monitored all the time, and i, believe you, i use my kaiser resources and have all of this. now, the reason i share it, i'm a pretty intelligent person by some standards. and, um, my doctor said to me as a result of your heart surgery, there are certain bad habits that you've had in the past you have to let go of. well, what are we talking about? well, take the oreo cookies, for example. [laughter] you've got to lay off those oreo cookies. i can do that. and your ice cream. hmm, now it's getting serious. [laughter] so i say, okay, i can lay off on

my ice cream. and you need to go from 240-something pounds down to 220, 220. five years postsurgery. no matter how hard i work, i am still at about 237. five years. postsurgery. my weight will go down to 225 and go up to 230, slip back up to 235, slip down to 230, go up to 240, go down. so the last time i saw my doctor, and she did everything. she did all my tests and everything. and she said, it's unbelievable. you're doing great. she said, the last thing i want to do is i want to give you a, um, resting heart study. i said, okay, great. she had me lie down, relax. she took my resting heart rate. it was 60. 60. almost perfect. so she said, this is incredible.

so once i realized that i was healthy and i was going to live, i turned on her, and i said, you know, you are one of the greatest doctors on earth. and she said, oh, thank you. she got bashful, thank you very much. i said, you have helped me in so many ways, and i feel great. and she said, yeah, and you're looking great, you're doing great and all that stuff. i say, well, you have failed in one area. and she was shocked. why's that? no matter what i do, you've taken me off of cookies and ice cream and hamburgers and everything, but i keep going up with my weight and down with my weight. [laughter] up with my weight and down with my weight. and she says, so, you're going to blame me now for your weight problem. i said, yes! she said, okay, fine. i'm now going to assign you to a nutritionist. [laughter] so that's the medicine that i got now. [laughter] i'm now, um, seeing a nutritionist. and i'm trying to work out my

issues with weight control. now, i only share that story with you to end the night to let you know that i'm also a human just like you. and the point that i want to raise and end with is, um, health and health care and taking care of yourself is complicated. it is complex. i had a doctor that told me one time, he said, um, what i want you to watch is whenever you are under stress, your body will crave for salt. and it is amazing that that is exactly a bad habit that i've had to address. and so in terms of people taking perm responsibility it's all -- personal responsibility it's always about getting that information, learning and understanding that every single day is a new day. maybe i fell off the bandwagon yesterday, maybe i shouldn't have eaten the cookie or the ice cream, but i have today to make up for it and tomorrow and the

day after and the day after. and so my message to the questioner is, just take it one day at a time. thank you. [applause] >> all right, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] [applause] >> i do want to thank mr. tyson, the chief operating officer of kaiser permanente for coming here tonight. health is important to all of us, and it was very illuminating tonight. thank you so much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> fabulous job. >> oh, thank you. >> god bless you. >> thank you so much. >> i like your watch. [laughter] [inaudible conversations] >> it was a wonderful job.

>> thank you. i'm a health care futurist. >> okay. >> i want to come visit you. >> oh, sure. >> all right. >> um, you should meet donna. i don't know where she went. i'll make sure she's got the information. okay, great. >> put this in your pocket. >> all right. [inaudible conversations] >> you're so much on target, i'd like -- this is something i wrote for you. >> okay. >> and i'm convinced that a trillion dollars that could be taken out of our medical care. you're talking about $3 trillion, your numbers indicate everybody a member of ciezer and paying -- kaiser and paying $5,000 -- >> we're going live, now, to the heritage foundation this afternoon for remarks from three former u.s. attorneys general, john ashcroft, michael mukasey and edwin meese.

they're expected to discuss whether the president or congress is responsible for insuring homeland security as set forth in the constitution. this is live on c-span2. >> welcome everyone to our douglas and sarah ellison auditorium. we, of course, welcome those who are joining us on our heritage.org web site and would ask everyone here in house if you would be so kind to check that cell phones have been turned off as we prepare to begin the program. we will post the program on our web site within 24 hours for everyone's future reference as wellment hosting our discussion this afternoon is attorney general, former attorney general edwin meese. he served here as the ronald reagan distinguished fellow, public policy and also as chairman of our center for legal and judicial studies. please join me in welcoming mr. meese. [applause] >> thank you, john, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen. today we continue our series of

talks and panels on the topic of preserving the constitution. and the topic we're discussing today is a very important one, and that is that portion of the constitution that provides that one of the duties of the united states of america is to provide for the common defense. on the 11th of september, of course, we recognized with the rest of the country the tenth anniversary of what was, has been the most serious attack on mainland united states since the war of 1812. and subsequently, of course, what i call the global war against terrorists. today we have conflicts, one ending in iraq, another continuing in afghanistan. and these conflicts and the overall effort against terrorism has raised a number of questions of a legal nature, perhaps more so than in any conflict that the united states has been involved in. and as we discuss with my two

colleagues here before the coming up here, these legal questions continue to multiply and are raised in everything from the basic powers under the constitution to conduct wars down to the role of battlefield commanders at the brigade and battalion level and what they're able to do. and for the first time we've now had judge advocate officers who are serving with the battlefield commanders to give them legal advice. and, of course, this brings in the department of justice as the font of legal advice, something that all three of us have had a good deal of experience in our own careers. from the earliest days, the questions have been raised, of course, on this whole issue of the power of congress, the power of the president in dealing with the matter of war. war is, of course, one of the primary areas in which the national government has a

preeminent role as was recognized back in the 1780s, and one of the major reasons why the new constitution, then-new constitution was adopted. and so there those earliest days there's a certain amount of building tension between the role of the president and the role of congress. this is all part n a way, of the division of power which the founders understood was essential in order to preserve liberty and as a means of, as madison said, ambition countering ambition, so that there would be no branch of the federal government that became so powerful that it would interfere with the liberty of the people. and so article i, section 8 gives to congress the power to declare war and to make the rules for the military to call the militia and so on. whereas article ii makes the president the commander in chief. now, this was the situation up until this current series of

wars, and now for the first time in history we have a new entrant into the conflict, if you will, or the power game you might say, and that is the judiciary branch. and as justice scalia said in the recent case of pew need yen in 2008 in which he said for the first time in our nation's history the court confers a constitutional right to habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war. he went on to say the game of bait and switch that that opinion plays upon the nation's commander in chief be -- will make the war harder on us. it will almost certainly cause more americans to be killed. and then he talked about what had been the law up until that time. which was set forth in a case known assizen tagger which held

that the constitution does not insure habeas for aliens by the united states in areas over which our government is not sovereign. indeed, justice robert jackson in that case of johnson against eisentrager had said it would be difficult toty vise a more effective commander than allow the enemies to call him to account in his own civil courts and divert his efforts and attention from the military offensive abroad to the legal defensive at home. nor is it unlikely that the result of such enemy litigiousness would be a conflict between judicial and military opinion which would be highly comforting to enemies of the united states. well, there we have it. let's look a little more deeply then into what it means to provide for the common defense. of article ii, section 2, as i mentioned earlier, of the united

states constitution states that the president shall be commander in chief of the army and navy of the united states. and, of course, in modern terminology that would include the air force. and of the militia of the several states when called into the actual service of the united states. so reads the constitution. although it is beyond dispute that the president is the commander in chief, what does that heene in practice? -- what does that mean in if practice, and what is his relationship then to the other two branches? as in previous wars, the department of justice was called upon after 9/11 to provide legal guidance. immediately after that terrible day, the department was asked first and foremost for its opinion as to the scope of the president's authority to take military action in response to the attack of 9/11. four days after the afact, the department -- attack. the department provided the legal guidance that was sought concluding several things. first, that the constitution's

text and structure vested the president with men their authority to use military force abroad. second, that executive and judicial statements and decisions interpreting the constitution and the president's powers under it confirm that conclusion. third, that relevant practice of the united states in the past supported the view that the president had the authority to deploy military force in response to emergency conditions such as those created by 9/11. and fourth, that congressional enactments such as the war powers resolution and the september 14th, 2001, joint resolution acknowledged the president's authority to use force to respond to the terrorist attacks on the united states. well, as i mentioned earlier, ten long years after that terrible september morning, the war continues. many of the administration's

wartime policies adopted by president bush have been adopted by the current administration. while others have been eliminated altogether. and so as we continue this preserve the constitution series, we thought it entirely appropriate to revisit the role of the constitution and the common defense. as the title of today's panel asks, who insures america's national security? i can't think of two more qualified gentlemen to answer that question as they led the justice department during the critical times after 9/11. each is a devout student of the constitution, a patriot, and an extraordinary american. i am privileged and honored to call each of them a friend, and we are extremely pleased to have them with us today. our first panelist will be attorney general john ashcroft who served as the 79th attorney general of the united states during the administration of george w. bush.

prior to that, he had been a united states senator, governor of missouri and held several other offices in that state. as president bush's first attorney general, john ashcroft was a key supporter of the act which became known by the mnemonic, the usa patriot act, and other counterterrorism tools that were put in place after the attacks of 9/11. after leaving public service, attorney general ashcroft founded the ashcroft group which specializes in strategic consulting for corporations worldwide in the areas of national security, corporate governance, litigation strategy and crisis management. our second speaker will be michael mukasey who served as the 81st attorney general of the united states, again during the administration of president george w. bush. he'd been an assistant u.s. attorney in the famed u.s. attorney's office for the southern district of new york

and then was nominated as a federal judge in new york by president ronald reagan. as a federal judge, he already had had a taste of this subject as he presided over numerous important cases including the terrorism trial against the blind sheikh, the defendant known as the blind sheikh, who orchestrated the first world trade center bombing in the early '90s. today he's a partner at the law firm of duboise, plimpton in new york city where he focuses primarily on internal investigation, independent board review and corporate governance. please, join me in welcoming our first speaker, john ashcroft. [applause] >> good afternoon, and met me just -- let me just say how much i appreciate the opportunity to be here at the heritage

foundation. i believe that freedom is inescapably linked to the capacity of a society to properly frame and discuss and debate issues. and the contribution that has come to the united states of america as a result of the establishment, development, growth and maintenance of the heritage foundation is a major contributor to the freedom of the american people. and before i would do anything else, i just want to express my appreciation. i hope you would join me in doing so to the heritage foundation. [applause] in may of 1861, abraham lincoln went before the joint session of the congress of the united states, and in the midst of charges that he had exceeded his authority, um, posed the question or literally sort of raised the idea some would say

that i should respect a single law about habeas corpus, and by respecting that law destroy the entirety of the union, or others would say that i should take the action that i needed to take in order to preserve the union if, perchance, at the expense of the single statute. he didn't really say he had suspended habeas corpus or allege at that time an impropriety in doing so, but he posed a question which i think has faced many chief executives, and that is the difficult question of how do you relate the respondent of the president in -- the responsibility of the president in context can which finds the nation in great peril? and if it's necessary, to displace what would otherwise be the rules of conduct in order for the president to save the united states of america. chief justice rehnquist in

writing his very interesting treatise on presidential power in wartime, all the laws but one cites -- i believe it's charles evans hughes, who while not on the court at the time of making the statement, asserted the president had the power in wartime to defend the united states. and someone asked him, well, how much power is that? he said, he had the power to defend it successfully. i think most of us would agree with that. none of us would want the president to have almost enough power to save the united states of america. but not quite enough so that he could, perhaps, flex credibly his muscle but not win the war. it is important to note that the power of the president is an implied power largely flowing from his designation as commander in chief of the armed

forces in the constitution. and it was with significant wisdom that the framers did not try to elaborate every power the president would have. i think the framers understood that the art of war would be a dynamic art. it had been in history, it would be in the future, and that there would be new technologies that would require the president to deploy the resources of the country in ways that perhaps have never been thought of previously. so leave to the president the capacity to defend the united states, and is do not try to elaborate the specifics of that capacity in a document which would have to serve for quite some time. normally, as a rule of law we tend to honor the specifics of a legal document over the generalities, but i don't think that should be the case in honoring the specifics of the constitution say as it relates to congressional power and to suggest that the executive branch's power in conducting a war would be any less valid

because they were not specific. the reason for not being specific in elaborating the defense of the united states as a power of the president was to provide the flexibility so that the president's defense, indeed, would not be hamstrung, but would, indeed, be a defense which could be credibly made and which could be successful. it's in this setting that we find ourselves live anything a dynamic -- living in a dynamic world where the capacities of individuals to disrupt or to threaten liberty are in a constant state of evolution, and the president does have to find himself with the responsibility and opportunity to defeat charges or assaults against the united states and to take what measures are appropriate and necessary to do so. most of us have witnessed this process in the news of late, and this is a principle which i believe is widely respected in

our country, and it really is one that i think is unchallenged. most of the challenges which have come to the power of the presidency in regard to the most recent conflicts have been pretty much peripheral challenges, challenges about the way in which we would handle detainees and challenges about the rights of individuals who have been participants in an assault on the united states or on the liberties which we cherish. but they haven't been, no one stands to say the president of the united states doesn't have the authority or power to defend the interests of the united states, nor should they. that's an appropriate consensus, and we can rejoice in it. i would raise a couple of items which i think are worthy of our discussion though as we seek to provide a solid basis upon which the executive branch can effectively defend the liberties

and freedoms of the people of the united states. as i mentioned earlier, the statement of charles evans hughes it occurs to me signals that the president can do what is necessary. and this is an implied not only power of the president, i believe it's a duty of the president. so often when we talk about presidential powers we're speaking, well, the president has a right to do this. i think there is a higher responsibility than simply his right to defend the united states. i think it is something he has a duty to do, he has a sworn duty to defend the united states, and i think he has a duty to do so in a way which survives, which survives with the republic. so this idea of necessity is at the core of the president's powers. and if there is a transition that is, has been and is being made, i believe it's one that could be referenced to the opening remarks of attorney general meese in that the courts are injecting themselves as

evaluators of the necessity, whereas in previous times the courts largely yielded to the judgment of necessity, and that judgment being rendered by the executive branch in the executive branch. i'm not sure why courts want to insert themselves into this assessment of necessity. it may be the availability of information which is profoundly greater now than it has been in previous times, but that's simply the public information which is now profoundly greater, and the intelligence information certainly isn't as available to the courts, nor should it be. the intelligence information should be safeguarded and limited to as few people as are necessary to making decisions, not broadcast widely because intelligence frequently loses its value as soon as it is understood that it is known.

so i don't think the courts would justify an expansive role in determining necessity based on the fact that they could do a better job of assessing this than the president. but it's pretty clear that in recent cases the courts have sought to, if you will, second guess the president in terms of the necessity. and i think that's a matter of significant concern to me. formerly, the courts did yield that to the president, that he had the information, he had the regular reports, he could do, make necessity evaluations in realtime rather than in retrospect which sometimes seems clearer and seems like 20/20 hindsight is more accurate. but frequently, i think, that's an illusion. the realtime situation is in many respects what is important for us to understand, and i think i would be very reluctant to withdraw from the president the opportunity to make determinations on necessity.

but it's obvious to me that the courts have made that decision that they will be making decisions about necessity and the role of whether or not there was a necessary action on the part of the president. the second thing that bears our, i think, inspection, our evaluation, our discussion is the role of international law in, in these determinations of the president and the way he conducts himself. and in particular whether or not international treaties are pleadable, are self-enforcing and, as a result, are available not just to high-contracting parties who would raise them in litigation that relates to whether a person is properly detained, what the rights of the person are and the like, but whether the courts are going to find ways to have international law become a self-enforcing sort of item that can be raised by an

individual party's litigant. these circumstances and these trends which appear to be developing of having the courts make decisions about necessity and having international law be available to individual party litigants rather than being reserved to high-contracting parties of treaties are two of the developments which i think bear our inspection because i think each of them could make significant inroads into a necessary power of the president to properly defend the liberty and freedom of the united states. one last comment, and i just throw this out for discussion, we have gone through the series of cases from hamdan, boumediene and now the mcelb case where

the rights of prisoners being detained in bagram are being discussed, and it's a very interesting matter to me that after what i think happened in the twisting of eisentrager to come up with the outcome desired by nebs of the -- members of the court in boumediene, the district court of appeals, pardon me, managed to use the boumediene formula to provide a result that indicates that individuals detained basically on the battlefield but in prison settings proximate to the battlefield do not have the same rights as people would if they were in guantanamo or other settings where, or further removed from the battlefield this has an anomalous sort of and puzzling incentive in it, and it is that if you don't want to have to comply with a variety

of onerous due process requirements, you house people on the battlefield. to house people on the battlefield in prisons closer proximate to the battlefield, it seems to me puts the prisoners at incredible jeopardy. it puts those who are guarding the prisoners at incredible jeopardy, it increases the risks of those that are on the battlefield that if prisoners were released, they would have the opportunity to rejoin the battle if they were somehow to be involved in the breakage of their bondage. and so the court has finally found itself in extending rights to the place of an absurd extension. then at least currently the denial of extension of rights geographically all the way to the battlefield but then realizing that, whoa, by stopping here we've provided a

perverse incentive that is not in the best interests of the prisoners' safety, the safe oi of our -- safety of our own fighting forces or the like. and the court at the end of the opinion sort of raises a question, well, is there a situation in which, by which we would have said that it's okay to detain them in these settings without the full due process rights. maybe we've set up a situation where people can, quote, turn off the constitution by putting people in these settings that they don't have traditional constitutional rights. and they express some serious misgiving about the idea that someone could turn off the constitution. i would be, i would have real misgivings about anybody who could turn off the constitution. but i also have misgivings about people who turn on the constitution where it doesn't

exist. for me, the constitution is to be respected, and i don't think it's noble to extend the constitution without amending the constitution or providing authority in the document itself, any more noble to turn it on than to turn it off. .. places where it's necessary for us to defend the country that we have the right of a president to do so and

providing a full range of rights similar to those in criminal settings for individuals who are involved as unlawful combatants against the united states to turn on the constitution there would be to amend it unduly. as we deal with the so-called organic law, which i have little affection or respect for, i believe the law should grow when it is amended and not by virtue of some organic process. we have to be careful that we don't make it impossible for good decisions to be made by honest public officials seeking to fulfill their responsibilities by living up to their oaths of office and the law which changes induces two basic things. one is paralysis because no one wants to make a ruling or do something that would be against the new law if it were to be announced that it was improper and that's the

thing that i worry about the most because paralysis is the not consistent with the effective defense of american liberty by presidents in time of war. paralysis is not the stuff of which victory is made. it is the stuff which difficulty is encountered and lives are lost. [applause] >> thank you, attorney general ashcroft. and now please join me welcoming attorney general mukasey. [applause] >> i too would like to thank the heritage foundation in doing this. it is a pleasure to be in the company of a people who while a lot of folks are braying about the constitution, are actually thinking about it. i want to start my part of

the conversation with a little return to basics and try to figure out how it is that we got to where we are? my copy of the constitution, and i will admit, maybe it is just, and i got it for nothing so. [laughter] maybe they didn't give me the whole thing. it says, the executive power shall be vested in a president of the united states of america. that is the way article 2 begins. it says the executive power. doesn't say all except a small part of the executive power. all except a teeny bit of executive power. it is all of it, the executive power. that explains how it is that people are spending literally billions of dollars to be elected president. why why would you want-to-be president if you didn't get all the executive power? on the other hand, the congress powers of congress to legislate are enumerated.

the framers very carefully listed the subjects which they may lerge late. yes, there is a necessary and proper clause that encompasses everything that is necessary and proper to do whatever else they can do but again it's what's necessary and proper to do the other things that are enumerated, not whatever they think is necessary and proper period. given the fact that congress has limited legislative power, given the fact that the president has the executive power, and that the supreme court by implication took unto itself the power to simply decide what it is that is consistent with the constitution and what it is that is inconsistent with the constitution by way of statutes how did we get to where we are now? and i would suggest to you, this was a question that was really framed by general ashcroft where he said, i'm not sure why judges want to insert themselves into these issues. and this is actually a trend that i think started outside

the context of war. it started with a case called griswold versus connecticut, in my experience at any rate. a case involving the question whether connecticut could ban contraceptives or not, could ban the sale of contraceptives or not. in point of fact that was a statute that was never enforced but a mischievous yale law school professor decided to take it to court. a well coming supreme court decided to decide it. we were and are off to the races. the reason the race has gone on i think for as long as it has is that both at various times, both the executive and the legislative branches of government have felt that somewhat to their advantage to allow courts to decide controversial issues. after all presidents and members of the legislature have to stand for election or run for election as we say. whereas judges don't. and so if judges can decide controversial questions,

then legislators don't have to and executives don't have to and they could simply lean back and blame any result on the court and we can kind of live with that when all we're talking about is day-to-day existence because there's a certain amount of pulling and hauling back and forth. when it comes however to war powers, then a lot of folks can get killed if people who have absolutely no training in deciding these issues, absolutely no background in deciding them, no basis for finding out fact independently, no background whatsoever wind up deciding them, it is said that to some people with a hammer everything looks like a nail. we are now in a position where some folks with a gavel everything looks like a case. with the result that we have, as you have heard, lawyers

sitting at the elbow of people doing things like selecting drone targets, to determine whether that particular drone target or indeed that particular target at all is lawful and how are these lawyers finding the law with which to do that? only place they could conceivably find sit in decisions that have absolutely nothing to do with target selection. they have to do with the granting of or denial of habeas-like relief in challenges to custody based on the boumediene that general ashcroft referred to. so judges that have no background whatsoever in the military or making military decisions deciding not only who can be held, who should be held, what kinds of people we should keep in custody, a decision which they are by no means fit to decide but whether they know it or not they're also deciding who we can make war

against. in order to to show how, what distance we've come i would urge of you who are old enough to imagine what curtis lemay's reaction would have been placing a lawyer at his elbow to decide which targets he could bomb and which targets he could not bomb in japan or, what douglas macarthur's reaction would have been to placing lawyers at his elbow to decide where he could invade and where he could not invade and what his troops could do once they got there or what general patton's reaction would have been. it's, it's a very, it's a very sobering thing and a sad and perilous state we've come to and judges essentially are told that they can open their arms and welcome to the courthouse any controversy that they

want because we're here to decide and no case is too big or too small. in by 9:00, out by 5:00. that is not, i think the way the framers envisioned the constitution but it's really up to the electorate at large, included and the people they elect, including the members of the legislature and the members of the executive to set right because the judges are aren't going to set it right on their own and there has to be laws put in place limiting the jurisdiction of federal courts which laws then have to be read and respected by the federal courts and, actions taken and decision taken that protect the national security with the understanding that the people who take those decisions then have to face election, stand for election, based on their success or failure and not simply abdicate those vital

decisions to people who have absolutely no responsibility whatsoever to the populace at large, and who can pretty well, unless they commit an indictable offense, do as they please. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you to our first speakers for setting the stage. and now it's the opportunity for you in the audience to ask questions, make comments and join the discussion. so i will look for the first question. please raise your hand and wait for the microphone arrives. right here. >> hi. [inaudible] to what do you attribute the increasing wiblgness of judges to place themselves outside of the normal bound of what used to be

considered their role? >> who was -- okay? >> is that for me? part of it is the history that i suggested. part of it is what you get in law school. students are trained in, when they study, when they study the law they study it in the form of cases. and the people to be admired are the great common law judges who in a sense made the law. there isn't a lot of law left to be made now. it is mostly statutory interpretation and that challenges the self-control of people whose imaginations and whose intelligence seem to carry them beyond narrow limits like that. so i think part of the problem is that judges are either too smart or are not

as smart as they think they are. and it's important to get judges who are smart enough to decide cases but not so damn smart that they wind up with excess iq to commit mischief. and who also have a good sense of their own limitations. >> john, do you want to comment? >> no, sir. i think that was a very good answer from a person who sat on both sides of the bench. and i respect very much his answer. i think, you're right, i don't have any comment. >> well, general mukasey mentioned law schools and i think if i can add this point. law professors all the way back to the time when i went to law school which my kids call the stone age, law professors were always egging on the court to go

farther and to do more because they didn't have cases. they were teaching students and it was more exciting to them rather than to simply talk about what the law was, and it was try to stir up some action and get new ideas into the courts and i think that has had a profound effect on some judges, going beyond what most people would think is their authority under the constitution. but i might depart from that to ask the next question and that is, what's the remedy? how do we get judges back within the confines of the constitution? john, we'll give that one to you. >> well i think it's to elect the right people who will appoint the right judges. we have some judges who, if you will look at the, you know, the string of cases, hamdi, buomediene and the most recent judge we find

people reciting the right kind of restraint. the restraint is not so much a repudiation of judicial arrogance, it is the idea that there is a democratic process and the people have a role to play and there are ways to change the law that that are not for the judiciary and the presumption that, i've seen it happen at the state and local level when i was governor. i had a chance to appoint a lot of judges. i guess i appointed over 200 of them and i appointed the entire supreme court of my home state and i was grateful for the opportunity but it was a court prior to my appointment had sort of given out ultimatums. if you don't address these problems in the legislature we'll make a judicial determination. sort of the idea that the inactivety of the legislative branch is a matter of dereliction of duty rather than a additional point. if a point of not doing something is just as much to

be considered the public's intent as the point of doing something, and i think we have a failure on the part of the judiciary, sort of thinks well, we're the last bastion of getting the right things done and sooner or later, if they don't do it we'll have to step in for them. really to displace a decision of the people which has not been not to do anything, rather than to make a decision for the people to do something which they should have done had they enjoyed our superior intelligence. >> mike, want to add to that? >> nope. [laughter] >> okay. we have a question in the back row here. >> hi. i was wondering what your interpretation of the president's authority to authorize the assassination of a u.s. citizen who has essentially denounced his u.s. citizenship? there is debate about obama's and bush's

announcement they authorized the killing of al-awlaki. do you think simply denouncing u.s. citizenship is legal precedent or legal authority for the president to then authorize that person is, a, has given up their rights and therefore the president can then authorize military should go after him and assassinate him? >> yeah. for both of you. do you think there is that legal authority that simply by denouncing your citizenship, allows obama or bush to do so. >> respectfully there is a lot of fallacy lurking in your question. which is the notion whether you can be targeted or not has anything to do with your citizenship. it doesn't. back during world war ii there were two groups of saboteurs, one who rand off long island and the other off florida. they were eventually rounded up by the fbi. they were tried by military commission on direct orders of president roosevelt. one claimed to be a u.s.

citizen. by the time the case got to the supreme court, the decision was issued after they were already dead. the supreme court determined that haupt's claim of citizenship was essentially irrelevant. once he had decided to throw in his lot with the hostile force, to join a hostile force, whether he was a citizen or not didn't matter. same is true of al-awlaki. and one of the things, i mean there are a couple things that disturb me about the news about the memo that was used to analyze this problem. number one, the fact it was in the newspaper at all obviously means somebody at the department is running his mouth when he shouldn't. secondly, there were some distinction made about, in that memo apparently, about what the rights of a u.s. citizen are in a situation like that as opposed to the rights of somebody who is not a u.s. citizen.

imagine a brigade of marines confronted with an enemy force, some of whom were u.s. citizens, some of whom are not. they are supposed to make decisions based on who they shoot and how, whether they were citizens or not? it is ridiculous. so, i mean once al-awlaki embarked on a course of conduct which he embarked, he became a target and i think he jolly well knew it. >> johnny follow-up? >> well-said. i, i believe that the case law is instructive on that. the one distinction with u.s. citizens might be in the detention phase. i'm not sure if it is clear, the hamdi case if i'm not mistaken where citizenship existed because he was born in the united states but he was still held by the court to beholdable for the pendency of the conflict. as i recall justice scalia mentioned for u.s. citizens

in settings for detention that could be indefinite we had but one choice. that either to suspend the writ which obviously had not been done or charge them with treason. so when it comes to actual combat situations if a person is an enemy combatant i think they are eligible for treatment as an enemy combatant. they become an enemy combatant detainee i think the rights are arguably different but only, i don't even think they, for the, i think most of the, the majority opinion on the court is they're still detainable for the pendency of the conflict. >> interestingly by the way when those saboteurs, those german saboteurs landed during world war ii, they landed in uniform and took off their uniforms and buried them on the beach. when you stop and consider how have errable, that is most vulnerable part of an operation. only conceivable reason they would have done that i could

imagine and i haven't seen anybody make this point specifically but i can't imagine any other reason, had they been captured at that point i think they wanted to claim pow status based on the fact they were fighting in uniform. they took off their uniforms and buried them on the beach and put on civilian clothes. so the distinction between lawful and unlawful combat and what your rights are and they aren't goes back a long way and a whole lot of people know it. >> yeah. the entirety of the premise of the court in the capital cases involved in the case was that they fought and violated the rules of conflict by not wearing uniforms. as a result of that infraction of the law of war, were eligible for the death penalty which was carried out here in this city on the majority of 9 defendants. >> okay. next question. over here. >> hi. i have a follow-up question

to attorney general ashcroft's mention of the role of international law. you seem to be suggesting that in order to carry out the president's duty to protect the country that sometimes it might be necessary to interpret statutes or treaties narrowly. is it possible that sometimes a broader interpretation of international law may increase america's national security interests, particularly where servicemen and women may be in need of the profession of say the geneva conventions? is it the case that sometimes greater adherence to the rule of international law may be in the interests of america's national security? >> well i don't know what you mean by greater adherence. we adhere to international law or we don't. there were cases in which individuals thought to allege their rights under international law to raise treaties that they had been abused in that respect. most of those treaties within themselves have, have

provisions which limit the parties that can raise them and enforce them to the high contracting parties, not to the citizens of various nations and that's what i had referenced to in the eisentrager case the supreme court specifically declined to enfours, to consider alleged violations of international law because they hadn't been raised by a high contracting party and the individuals who were alleging them were simply ineligible because they were not contracting parties to the, to the treaties. i believe we ought to abide by our responsibilities in international law. now a president has a right, and a may perhaps a duty to even go beyond our responsibilities if he thinks that will enhance our ability to defend our freedoms. for people involved in the litigation against the president i'm loathe to have the idea that we should

expand the number about of people allowed to raise that when we enter a treaty understanding that it's only to be enforced by a high contracting party or another nation. one of the things that was most unsettling came up in either concurring or dissenting opinion in the hahm den case where one of the justice of the supreme court would not only he, support the idea that provisions of the conventions are enforceable by individuals and not by just nation states but he also said that certain provisions that never been embraced by the united states should be enforced against the united states because the reasons they weren't, ratified by the senate and included, were not reasons that were related to the case and i thought to myself, how strange, that a justice of the united states supreme court is basically arguing there are only two kinds of

international treaties that ought to be, that ought to be appropriate to the shape our behavior, the ones that we have signed and the ones we haven't signed. [laughter] and you know, i think that carries the international law situation far beyond what is prudent and in the interests of the country. >> question over here. >> mr. attorney general ashcroft, on the use of international law, you spoke about its intrusion into the powers of our presidency but isn't there also a danger of a court implementing international laws or bringing that in when discussing constitutional questions as an intrusion also on the congress? and maybe additionally the states? >> i don't think there is any question but, and i didn't do all that well in constitutional law. you all can figure that out

by my comments today but i think the earliest, some of the earliest cases in regard to international treaties and the rights of states and all, i think, as i recall, oddly enough affected whether states could deal with wildlife on their own terms or whether international treaties regarding the flight paths of geese overruled not only the united states's ability to make contrary decisions to the international treaties regarding the preservation of the wildlife but it also set aside the ability of states to deal with it. so i think there is a question, perhaps for another day, in regard to the constitution of the united states and to what extent can the constitution of the united states be amended through the back door if you will by the ratification by the united states senate of an agreement made by an administration with a group of foreign nations changing the dynamics of how

decisions are made in the united states without including the states who are the real parties in interest to the treaty we call the constitution of the united states. >> okay. >> that won't be on the quiz or final exam because i'm not sure what i said but i think i did the right thing. [laughter] >> question over here. >> thank you. the question i have is that this notion of necessity that the, that the president is limited even by the text of the constitution as in lincoln's habeas corpus case, only to the extent that it's possible to prevail. the question i would have is, is the president limited in the extent to which the

president can bypass the specific restrictions of the constitution to achieve its more general purpose in situations of war, to only the minimum? and in exercising such a power where does the burden of proof lie? does it lie with the president to show, to prove that this is the minimum necessary necessary or does it lie with those who would challenge the president's use of power to prove to prove that the president has exceeded the minimum necessary? >> well under the category of fools rush in where angels fear to tread. let me part of that issue. courts have not given the idea that the constitution is of no effect here. that would be wrong and i,

so the question at what level deliberation and consideration must the president show in order to have, if you will, involve himself in the decision-making process in a do or appropriate process. and i think historically courts were, instead of saying we'll make this decision for the president, we'll ask if the president made a, a deliberate decision, in other words were there deliberations? did he, did he just throw a dart at, you know, did he have vanna white stand next to a big circle of options and have her spin it and do whatever it was? or did he come to a reasonable judgment about this? in the past what i think what courts had requested of the president to have the courts have an awareness whether he made an intelligent decision on this based on facts and evidence, not necessarily judicial evidence.

the whole idea of process always having to be judicial process is a misleading idea. and i think what has happened, i think we find ourselves, and we found ourselves in the recent line of cases with a court that expressed its distrust of that process so profoundly they wanted to substitute and not evaluate whether the president had made a deliberate decision on the basis of evidence of the like but they're going to say, no, we're going to look what evidence there is and see whether we would come to the same judgment. so i think, my preference is the, of course, and the judgments that we made and advice we, let me just, i will reframe that i don't want to advice we ever gave or didn't give because i don't think that is what lawyers do, recount their advice but i think it is appropriate to rely on the cases that had basically said that the president, if he makes decisions that are

not, that based on reasoning and a rational basis, we don't look beyond that. and i think that's where you should find yourself. not that the president doesn't have to observe the constitution. he does. he lives within it. the constitution bind everyone but when it comes to the decisions made by the president in this respect he has the right to make decisions that are, as long as they are properly framed in reason, don't deserve second-guessing by the court. >> mike? . .

>> to support the president's determination that he was an enemy combatant, some evidence in the lowest standard known to the law, that courts were obligated to defer. and, frankly, i think that if it ever gets to a court, which i think it shouldn't in most instances but if it ever does, that's the appropriate stance. >> i disagree with you on the case but i agree with you on your comment here. [laughter] >> in the back there. >> it is a very old question, lots of -- excuse me.

harvey mansfield probably wrote the best book, there such a thing about extra constitutional prerogative. but it seems to me that aside from circumstances like the one general mukasey is referring to you clearly have an individual who is theoretically -- in almost all of the cases people think about those issues where you have some power problem. judiciaries are ill-suited, people try to bring brought suits whether not the president has exceeded the scope of his warmaking, assume that he did. the courts are the wrong bodies if you take other constitutional ones, so can we all agree that the main instances, there's an article i versus article ii problem. that's different like you were

talking about. >> john? >> in reading the recent cases i get the idea that the people of the united states are not part of the court's understanding of oversight. they expect every excess or every policy air or disagreement to be remedied judicially, or congressionally. so the court said then in a position of trying to allocate whether something is a congressional power or an executive power. simple matter of fact is i think if you were to draw out in a diagram it would have circles that overlap. there are places where, and so the real, find out who really controls where they overlap. and i think in allocating power to the congress away from the executive which has been i think a preference of the courts

recently, which i disagree with, and in bringing to the bosom of the court the right to displace decisions of the present, the court has sort of said well, somebody got to look after the president, and the congress is closer to the people than the president, and the president has come if the congress can't do it, we must be it ignores the fact that i think most responsive, maybe politician in the country to the people is the president. he is the only person in the country that's elected exclusively to pursue the national interest, and he is, he's an individual that people know about. a lot of people can't name their congressman or senator but they darn well know who the president is. some don't, most do. and the congress has been so gerrymandered that i'm not sure there's any accountability in the congress in terms of, and the senate only runs every six years.

i think it's unfortunate that too many of us, as well as the courts, seem to ignore the fact that the people are in a position to correct what they consider to be the abuses in the executive, and i think we should expect them to. and i think courts have ignored that. and in so doing they have attended to allocate authority away from the executive toward the congress that they mistakenly believe is closer to the people, in my judgment, and to the courts which they think if the congress can't remedy this, then we must. it knowing the fact that oversight by the people is a major expected responsibility of the constitution, in my judgment. >> do you want to add to that? >> not a lot. i think that, it's what fits most of these controversies. i can recall during, actually before my confirmation ice began

i was expected to make what were known jokingly as courtesy calls on various members of the legislature, courtesy was only on their side, very little to do with it. more on mine for that matter. [laughter] and one of them who was not named as but one remain unnamed for the purpose of this discussion as to what i thought the warmaking powers were of congress. and i glanced a little bit and tried to do my best but i feel like i could come up with, most of what i came up with was power of the purse. you mean all weekend to sign checks? and he didn't like the fact that i mostly agreed with that formulation. congress wants to extend itself. the president wants to extend himself. and courts generally stay out of it. this is where they are meant to

rub against one another, and if you get resolved in the usual sloppy way in which we do it, but it's one that is at least politically responsive, as general ashcroft pointed out. such that people make the wrong decision, if they do, can be held to account. they don't get resolved in court. >> okay, the last question up here. >> just first of all would like to thank all of you for all of the contributions and the insights you've offered on how war powers are divided. and since one of the major areas of focus message of has to be the constitution and its original understanding, i was just wanting whether you would be a, any of you would be able to speak to either the concerns raised, the constitutional convention about an executive could essentially make war on his own, or about the repeated

emphasis on a desire to avoid the balance of power that characterize the king and parliament from whom they just fought a war to leave. >> mike, do you want to take a? >> not really but i will. [laughter] i'm wasn't at the convention. [laughter] believe it or not. but the concern about the executive being able to wage war on his own i think is great for law school discussion. but is totally unrealistic. number one, yes, the president is the commander in chief, but for the likely began as a political matter, and even drag the armed forces of the united states to enter into a battle that is completely a matter of his own whim seems to me to be

highly remote, given the way generals think and the way folks think of the pentagon. even if he could i think congress illustrated very nicely in his treatment of the administration's attempt to bring people here from guantánamo that the power of the purse is substantial. and that if the president decides to do something that they fervently disagree with, they can simply squeeze off the money, which is what they did, means nobody can be brought from guantánamo to the united states. so i, that concern is well taken care of. >> john, do you want to have the last word? >> thank you very much for your kindness. [laughter] [applause]

>> ladies and gentlemen, you have taken care of what i was going to ask you to do, and that was to thank the panel. we do thank them. i think we've had a very interesting discussion today. and it illustrates really what the founders had in mind. they couldn't predict everything that would happen. they gave us a constitution that has important applications of power, and allocations of power sometimes rub up against each other within the three branches of government. i think we've had a good example in these questions and in the answers in the discussion today of how that happens. but the most important part of it really is what both of our speakers have said, and that is the ultimate responsibility to make sure that things go right is in the people themselves and who they elect. and so i think that's a good lesson for us to take away. so please again join me in thanking our panel. [applause]

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[inaudible conversations] >> if you missed any of this discussion you can see it again on our website at c-span.org. look for the c-span video library. the u.s. senate returns to session this afternoon at 2:00 eastern with the general speeches. at 5:30 p.m. senators will hold three votes and then final passage of the china currency bill.

>> host: our topic for the next 45 minutes, the national school lunch program and joining us is the undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services at the agriculture department, kevin concannon. let's begin with what is the school lunch program and why did it start? >> guest: interesting this is national school lunch week we are celebrating across the country. each day an american school some 31 million children have lunch and the program interestingly enough was started just after

world war ii when american leaders reflected on the lorgues and absurd that too many americans were so underfed that when they were drafted into the military, they were really unprepared for the burdens they're going to face. so it has its roots in that regard serving children for generations, and just this last year interestingly enough some 60 plus years later, a national group called mission readiness made up of about 250 retired generals and admirals lobbied congress right behind us here for the successful passage of the healthy hunger free kids act. the new federal law that provides us major opportunities to improve the meals that children, to improve access for children across the country, and it's part of an effort both to

maximize investments we are already making in children in terms of their learning, there's lots of evidence that if kids are adequately fed they will learn better. so we are very excited about this week. there are more than 100,000 american schools as we meet here this morning that will be serving lunch today to children across the country, and it's a major part of an investment in health. >> host: we will get to the new guidelines but how does the current program work? >> guest: the federal government reimburses schools collectively across the country through state agencies to the tune of about $16 billion. that's billion with a b., over the course of the year. there are three categories of payment for school meals. there is what's called the fully paid meal, a reduced price meal, and a free meal. these income levels are based on the federal poverty level.

so if a family earns less than 130% of the federal poverty level, that child receives a free meal. typically the federal government reimburses, for example, for lunch about $2.75 each meal out. >> host: how much does a meal on average cost? >> guest: schools can provide a healthy meal that meets all the dietary guidelines within the framework of that reimbursement. so that actually helps schools. schools fine if they can increase the number of children that are receiving free or reduced price meals, that helps the school operate its news programs. >> host: how much do the parents pay or the students pay for lunch on average? >> guest: it depends. i've got a sheet here that i need to check, but we reimbursed even a so-called paid meal the federal government reimburses about 28 or 29 cents per meal,

and schools should be charging, over time, what that meal actually costs them to produce. we find that one of the provisions in the federal law that was just passed, over time requires schools to require or to actually ask parents to pay for an amount that much more closely reflects the actual cost of the meal, minus the subsidy that the federal government provides even to those new. >> host: here's a piece written in aashto, this person writes about school cafeteria magic, to personalize the main reason i so admire these folks is that they perform magic. they get $2.77, for a reimbursable meal provided to a child that qualifies, and after subtracting for labor and other costs they managed to cook and serve meals for our schoolchildren on a little more than 1 dollar. schools that participate receive

subsidies from the federal government and receive an agricultural surpluses to support their program. >> guest: yes. i mean, we are partnered with the school nutrition association across the country. these are the professionals, their organization of all the folks in the food line, men and women, mostly women, who provide the meals to kids at schools. i've visited many, many schools from one end of the country to the other, and we've seen the magic, both relationship they have with students in the schools, but the fact that they produce these healthy meals on relatively small amounts of money for the actual food program. >> host: there are nude dietary guidelines coming down the pipeline. what would they be? >> guest: every five years the federal government through the department of agriculture and the department of health and human services promulgate something called a dietary guidelines for all americans, all of us are sort of guided and should be guided by that.

those 2010 guidelines were released in january of this year. we hired a national organization -- >> host: let me clarify, we went from the pyramid to the plate. is that what you're talking about? >> guest: if you don't mind i brought a copy of that plate. the plate is the new icon, and it's i think much more easier to understand for the average american, but those dietary guidelines basically have said to all americans, we need to enjoy our food. we don't need necessarily to give as much food and we should eat more slowly often, and that our diet should include more fruits, more vegetables, less sodium, and more lean meats, more dairy that is fat free or lower fat, and more whole grains in our diet. well, those dietary guidelines became the basis of the recommendations for the new

school meal pattern, and we released earlier this year the proposed new guidelines for school meals. we received 133,000 comments. the majority of them very positive, but a number of people wrote in as well to say, they are concerns about this or about that. we have review them carefully, and it is our intent later this calendar year to release the permanent recommendations for schools. >> host: will that include less food? >> guest: what it does include for the first time, interestingly, in the past the school meal programs set minimum caloric levels for schools. it did not set maximum calorie levels. so for the first time these dietary guidelines will propose both minimum and maximum, and also will tailor that to the age of the student so that younger children don't need as many calories as would say, a high

school student. >> host: phone calls. murray a democrat in new jersey. we're talking about federal school lunch program. >> caller: we are calling from vineland. listen, i'm sorry, i'm confused. i want to congratulate the gentleman for the program that is being administered. we here in cumberland county, the poorest county in the whole state, and most people are at the poverty level. that is the positive comment, greta. the question that i have for the gentlemen is come in the past two years our food service has been privatized by the said tepco company. they have some adverse publicity in the past, particularly in the state would be president -- caught them for shipping the state of new jersey, directed several millions of dollars. what is the gentlemen's comment

in so far as the privatization of the food service, and particularly poor areas such as i live in? thank you. >> guest: thank you very much come and vineland, when i hear vineland, vineland is very famous in the developmental, so-called the vineland skill. i remember that from my medicaid days. but to the gentleman's question more directly, we work with both private organizations as well as the public unions, as well as direct school operated food programs. that is a choice at each local school district asked to make, but we are clear that both the state agencies and the federal government will not allow inappropriate or misuse of these funds, be they by a particular school which occasionally happens, or any contracted situation. our goal is to make sure that

children in those schools get healthy meals appropriately delivered, and that the taxpayer funds are protected basically. >> host: greg is republican in california. >> caller: good morning, greta. good morning, kevin. >> guest: good morning. >> caller: this is the only thing, i listen to you, you say your main concern is protecting the taxpayers fund. i just think we are appropriating too much money for school lunches. you know, i understand that the government provides like powdered eggs and powdered milk. why aren't we, in order to lower the cost, giving the children, you know, a healthy diet and providing more, you know, grains and the powdered milk and government-subsidized cheeselike we were doing in the '60s? we need to figure out a way to

cut back on the amount of money that is appropriated to, you know, and to provide nourishing meals to these children. >> guest: well, you know, you raise a number of pleasure, i should point out that as i mentioned in my opening remarks, a national group of retired generals and admirals have been very strong proponents of the program largely because they realize that this is one of the best preventive health investments the country may make. these days and 27% of american youth between ages 17-24 do not qualify for military service because you are so seriously overweight. these generals approach congress and said, it's not just a nice thing to do, it's a matter of national security. so we have that as a major investment. we also know that to the extent that we provide healthy meals

and we encourage kids how to beat healthy over their life course, we will avoid later very expensive costs in preventable health conditions. so it's a rethink if. and a third point you raised, the federal government now provides between 15-20% of the meal cost to schools through something called usda food. baiter are 180 commodities are u.s. foods, usda food, and we purchased local schools have their choice in that regard, and that helps lower the cost of that meal. but you need to look up the cost of the meal in the context of the real expenses that schools are paying for the education of the child. and we do the meals as just a way of making sure that that child is nutrition, supports the learning environment so we get

the return on that investment. >> host: annual budget for the federal school lunch program is what? >> guest: including both breakfast and lunch and those usda foods that are purchased, in round figures it's about $60 billion nationally. >> host: "the new york times" breaks down the eligibility requirements and they say families with income up to 130% of the poverty level, about $20,000 a year for family of four are eligible for free meals. those that earned 185% of poverty level or about 41,000 for family of four qualify for reduced price meals. >> host: independent in california, you're up next. we are talking about the federal school lunch program. >> caller: thank you. thank you. i'm an independent in california but i also worked at a school.

i see these people. when did it become the government's responsibility to feed, clothe, shelter, provide the medical care for all these children, a lot of whom who are here illegally? and icpd that fatty foods like pizza, and then they have the food fights and stuff. i just see a lot of waste and they don't see it as the taxpayers responsibility. parents need to take responsibility. >> guest: well i can, i mentioned at the outset, the birth and the roots of national school lunch program really came immediately after world war ii. and as they meet with people from one of the country to the other, including california to maine, i hear lots of testimony over the years, individuals now adults, the benefited from that school lunch program. many of them grew up in very poor households, and the school

lunch program was a major part of the calories that they consumed each day. we know that again there's lots of research that shows to the extent that child has access to healthy foods, he or she is going to learn better. so you need to look at in the context of this is an important investment for the education, and the health of the child. and these young children now are going to be the future workforce for the country, and so it's very important for us to make that investment, to do it on a science-based basis, and we pay attention. when you mentioned waste, we watch what is called plate waste. that's one of the factors we looked at, but we are in the new school meal guidelines directing that there be less fat in their diet. so the point you made about children choosing options that really may not be if they eat

too much at a particular product healthy for them, we have an answer for that in the form of recommended school meal guidelines that are coming our way later this year. >> host: under the legislation that allows you to make these new guidelines, also allows the schools to raise the price of the school lunches. by how much our school lunches expected to go up? >> guest: you mentioned the third category is so-called paid news. the federal government reimburses or subsidizes them at the rate of 28 cents per meal. but instead is across the country we found that many school systems, not in all, that those paid meals were in effect being further subsidized by the programs. so the healthy hunger free kids act requires schools over time, gradually and i want to emphasize gradually, the federal government requires at least up to 10 cents per year, i'm sorry, 10 cents per meal over the

course of a period of years, the cost of those meals for paid students must truly reflect the actual cost that is incurred by schools. so is referred to as the paid meal equity provision. it's very incremental or gradual your overtime that will provide more funds for the school to put into its food environment. >> host: when was the last time the schools are the federal government raised the price of school lunch? >> guest: it is literally decades, so we are very, very excited about the fact that the healthy hunger free kids act for the first time in decades, literally, will become first schools, higher amounts based on performance. the schools that will receive the higher reimbursement must meet these new criteria in terms of healthier u.s. meals. interesting enough as i travel around the country, i've had many me schools that already

part of what's called the healthy u.s. school challenge. there's about 1500 of them come and go schools for the most part are meeting those new standards already. and the majority of the schools are doing so within the framework, within the reimbursement framework that is already out their. >> host: if you're interested in these new guidelines and standards that usda is going to be studying here soon, go to this website, we will hear from hannah next, a democrat in washington, d.c. >> caller: thank you. there has as you know so much controversy about the proposal to limit vegetable to twice week and am wondering if undersecretary can comment on what schools are already serving and if this limit actually is realistic for schools? >> guest: i appreciate that question because i think there's been a lot of misinformation floating around, even as recent as a week ago in washington. a public event that had a

tremendous amount of misinformation about what the proposal is by the usda, and what the current history is. interestingly enough, the usda sponsored something called school nutrition dietary assessment, and and the snda study showed that even then the majority of schools across the country were meeting already or very close to the proposed starchy foods provision that is in the usda proposal. so we recognize that potato is a very important just as we recognize that other foods are very important and that group. but remember, change this time through in the dietary recommendations to schools put a maximum on the number of calories students consumed over the course of the meals at school.

and within that framework, we have made recommendations as it pertains to starchy vegetables. we've reviewed those carefully, and paid careful attention to the comments we received from across the country, both those urging a more liberal approach to starchy vegetables as well as those who said we support the standard that was in the first set of recommendations. so we are mindful of that. we are also mindful, as i say, that studies have shown that many me schools are already there. certainly i listen to national public radio program a week or so ago from my home state of maine, and the school nutrition director pointed out at a school not too far from my home that her school system was already meeting the guidelines. so i think we need to step back and look at what's in the total interest of the child, and look at the facts, not look at some

of the overstatements we've heard from some quarters. >> host: fort worth, texas. >> caller: good morning, greater. i really enjoyed your interview last week. a few years ago when i was in college i did some substitute teaching at the elementary level, and notice the overall physical condition of these kids. i would think is readable to attribute their condition due in part, their diet and lack of physical activity. why either soft drinks in the schools? why are there these high sugar snacks available in the schools when it's known that they don't contribute to healthy lifestyle? and you just commented limits on meals are there. how could you can roll the caloric intake on food drinks that are purchased by the students? even they get a free meal sometimes they have money they bring to school and they load up on these snacks. if you could comment on that, and thanks for being on the

show. >> guest: thank you. thank you for the questions. let me say a part of the emphasis, both in the dietary guidelines for all americans as well as for schools, is to exercise in effect some people say calories in, calories out. you really need to burn off those calories and hence, the new school proposed new standards reflected in the age groups so that in the past there were minimum calories even up to this year, minimum calories for students throughout k-12 area, whereas now it will be more focus on particular age groups. but there is a provision in healthy -- healthy hunger-free kids act that will provide to the usda the authority for science-based standards for all foods in the school. and that includes, that will address that issue as to many sugars, sweetened beverages that students face, as well as

already will require lower fat dairy, for example, milk. what i've been out at the schools, many schools are already implementing either a fat-free or 1%. and we are headed in that direction. i've seen lots of kids, once they get used to it, they very much enjoyed it. and we are very focused on that whole issue of making sure the school food environment during the school day is a healthy one. so that kids are not tempted to the commentators question, tempted with their own cache of going off to a machine and purchasing something that many of the healthy. >> host: does that mean usda is regulating the vending machines that are on school property as well? >> guest: yes. during the school day, during the school day the authority will be for all school, all foods in the school environment that are sold. and so that will include the vending machines.

i've actually been to a school way out in rural georgia where, in a very poor county, where the high school, i went to the high school among several schools that i visited, and the vending machines there now have healthy foods in the vending machine. the school director toby she was serving at that time about 265 lunches each day in a school of about 1000 students out of the vending machine. but the difference being those foods are healthy foods. >> host: here's a story from new york with the headline schools dangled carrot snacks but it's a tough sell. they write that the healthy food was 296 items totaling about $388 from september 1-september 19, less than one-third of the sales made by a nearby machine that offered less nutritious fare, more over the top selling items of new machine machine was baked potato chips and less fat than fried chips but less than ideal with

almost no takers. >> guest: again, looking down the road i think we will have more of a universal approach to science-based food environment. so you don't put kids in the situation of being tempted one way or another. and to the extent these healthier foods become mainstream again, i've seen in the healthy u.s. school challenges of which there are about 1500, and again, the schools i've mainly visited, different parts of the country, some in very wealthy areas are relatively so. some in very poor areas. those kids already are regulating that food environment. >> host: back to the article, some students complained that items in a new machine were either unappealing or expensive. some as much as $3. >> guest: i think affordability has to be one of

those actors realistically. and we know that healthy foods can be made affordable. we know that schools, for example, can purchase, we are encouraging something called -- more locally grown foods are available to the school systems. but throughout that as well we emphasize the fact it has to be affordable. >> host: new york, independent, thanks awaiting. >> caller: high gear. i would just like to say that the importance of having a low carbohydrate and whole foods are essential to children's nutrition. and there's a lot of debate about what exactly constitutes a healthy meal. the incidence of children being overweight, along with the high diabetes rate, is perpetuated by a high carbohydrate food.

>> guest: well yes. we recognize that we have a major challenge in the country in terms of both overweight adults as well as overweight schoolchildren. and the major set of changes proposed for school meals, and the overall food environment in schools i think both approaches or the collective impact of those approaches can make a dent in the challenge we're facing as as a country, with our over dependence on frankly too many processed foods that we are also, as i say in our initiatives around schools, encouraging schools to be able to purchase locally. i was in virginia here about two months ago where we brought together, encouraging them and also educating them on how to procure locally grown foods,

economically so that their kids can be exposed. and i've seen this in schools where they can't come if they know, i was in the school in maine, southern maine, where the kids were eating kale enemy and selecting it and something we call offer versus or. the child was encouraged to do so because they had a hot house attached to the school. the more we expose children to wear foods come from, healthy foods, i think it can all contribute to improving the kids, not only having those foods available to them, but actually consuming. >> host: duncan, a republican, your next. >> caller: your next. i went to a private school for four years, and in that time on mondays we had chicken, and tuesday's we had spaghetti, wednesdays we had burgers,

thursdays we had pizza, and fridays we had fish. is a very common for schools to have that sort of ritualistic process in school lunches? >> guest: no, i think in fairness it isn't. is much more varied. in fact, one of the phenomena we are very aware of is that schools, within the framework of the dietary guidelines, very across the country. if you're out in california, i was in the valley within the last month or so, where so much of the nations produce is grown and produced, their ability in the school to provide locally grown and foods that the kids are more likely to be used to win their own family environments would differ from, let's say, schools in the northern part of the country. so in fairness i think it's fair to say that schools, there's more variability, over the course of the school week, but also in different areas of the

country. >> host: here's a two week. asked this question. how did usda choose the vendors for school meals? meals? >> guest: defenders actually for school meals are chosen by the local school boards. this is across the country. everything we do at usda into food and nutrition space we do through state agencies. typically the state department of education, or department of health and human services, or the department of agriculture in about a half a dozen states, and the state agencies work with local schools. the local schools make the decision from whom they're going to procure the foods. now, every school in the country has the option of procuring from a list at usda foods what used to be called commodity foods. there are about 180 foods on that list. but schools can choose which of those foods they want.

and that amounts to about 15-20% of the food in the school lunch and breakfast program. but for the rest of it, they can go to local vendors. that's typically what's done. they do it on a bit process. >> host: fred, independent color. welcome to the conversation. >> caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. i'm just wondering how do they collect the data from all these different schools all over the country as far as complying with the requirements or the goals of this program? is it objective data or is it self-report? >> guest: no, we collect data from both schools here from state agencies, and then there are provisions to audit that data as well. so we will audit the school, and then the healthy hunger-free kids act by the way, passed last december, the frequency of those

audits is increased as directed by congress. but we are also promoting access to something called direct certification. and by that, in everyday terms it means that a child, for example, in a household in which the parents may be receiving public assistance, or may be receiving the help from the staff, those individuals have to report their income information to a state agency. that information in a shared automatically by databases with the school system. and it's referred to as direct certification. we find that that's the preferred way because we can verify that information indirectly fund the initial application, let's say for the snap program. and these days about 72% of the children across the country who

are eligible through direct certification are now receiving that benefit that way. so it's easier for the child and the family, and also we have further background information and income information to support the rate that the child's meal is reimbursed for. >> host: what are these audits of the school lunch cafeteria look like? >> guest: they look at a number of things. they both look at whether the meals when they audit, for example, i was at some schools in maryland last year where i had breakfast with the students. i actually had breakfast that morning. i live in maryland myself, so when i went through the line with a student, i only picked a piece of fruit. when i got to the end of the line, the cafeteria cashier looked down at me, she did know who i was, and she said sir, that is not a reimbursable meal. and i said man, you don't know what you've done for me.

you made my day today. that is one of the factors. caches will verify that, in fact, the neo meets the criteria that we have set federally for a nutritious meal. now, we also verify on income, whether the income has been properly reported. so there are two aspects of the. id. you'll qualify? did we have accurate information on the family and? so those are major -- >> host: how are these kids supposed to do with reimbursable or not? >> guest: it's not an automated in effect process. there are adults in line that often will help them, encourage kids to try different things. one of the major sort of pillars of the school breakfast and school lunch program is something called offer versus serve where kids go through the line and they can see various items that are offered. they need not take every item. they make a, you know, those which they're going to prefer

and often a dose, no more than our own households, you'll be encouraged, tried abruptly, you may find you enjoy it more than you think. >> host: tracy, democrat in washington, d.c. >> caller: thank you and your staff for doing the great work of trying to element that law you are talking about. especially thrilled that something is work in this area for a number of years about their proposal to improve the quality of school meals so we're hoping that those get finalized soon. we think it will be really great on the millions of kids who participate in the program. one question i had. you said earlier in response to the proposal that should received over 103,000 comments. that's an incredible amount of comments. can you talk about the nature of the comments? where they supported or just a little bit about that because that seems like an awful lot to plow through. >> guest: you know, 133,000 comments took a great deal of time, but we carefully reviewed

them, actually summarized and even the summary was 150 pages long. and then a summary of the summary, so to speak. but a majority of those comments were very positive. i think we recognize we're at a turning point in the country where we both have a challenge of obesity, a challenge about health care costs, a challenge even as retired military leaders have said, a challenge of future national security. and we have this opportunity of science base opportunity, i don't know if i mentioned it earlier, but a committee that made the recommendations to us had a number of health professionals, nutrition professional, dietitians, it was chaired by a pediatrician from university of pennsylvania, school of medicine. we were very pleased against with a science-based foundation of these recommendations. and we are very anxious to move

forward. the majority of the comments we received were very positive. we have some concerns expressed to us, and we have incorporated, when we look at those concerns, we are weighing those before we promulgate the final regulations later this year. but i should also mention that the act provides additional resources for technical assistance for both states and for schools. because as i think will come no surprise to most folks, this represents significant change. change while people say we like change, when it actually comes down to it, they have an anxiety attack about oh, my gosh, this change is coming my way fast. we are very committed to work with schools, to work with school nutrition folks. we ran something this year, mentioned earlier called produce safety university as a way of helping school nutrition staff

and leaders to become more confident and comfortable with purchasing locally grown produce from their regions of the country. so we're excited about many facets. >> host: is every school required to have a nutritionist on staff? >> guest: that's a great question. not every single school, often school districts, they have a wonderful school nutrition director. very passionate. i was out there because all 135 of their elementary schools have met the criteria, the standards for healthy u.s. school challenges. in the act, the healthy hunger-free kids act, it increases the education and training requirements for school nutrition directors. so it can be a school nutrition director over a school system, over a cluster of schools. there's a various ways to implement that, but basically it recognizes this is an important

professional in the lives of all these children. >> host: kevin concannon so said at food nutrition and consumer services at the agriculture department. for more information about the federal school lunch program go to fns.usda.gov. thank you for talking to our viewers. >> guest: thank you so much. >> you can see washington general every morning at seven eastern on our companion network c-span. coming up in a couple of minutes president obama will be talking about his jobs plan in pittsburgh, pennsylvania. he will be at the international brotherhood of electrical workers training center. live coverage of his remarks at 1:50 p.m. eastern, a little after that. you can see it on our companion network, c-span3 when it gets under way. in a couple of moments we'll go live to the floor of the u.s. senate. senators will gavel in for the week. they will be in a period of morning business until 5:30 p.m. they are expected to take three roll call votes.

also a procedural vote on a variation of the presidents $447 billion jobs measure. specifically majority leader harry reid's version which would be offset a 5.6% surtax on household income. see the senate live in just a moment here on c-span2. the house gavel and for morning our speeches at noon eastern. legislative business getting underway in just a couple of moments. members will work on a number of veteran expansion bills. also, thursday at 4:00 eastern the house will have a joint meeting with the senate colleagues with her senate colleagues for a speech from president of south korea. the house live on c-span, and, of course, the senate cabinet and in just a moment here on c-span2.

the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. eternal god, source of all goodness

teach us how to master ourselves that we may serve others. may this self mastery inspire our lawmakers to serve others by joining you in bringing deliverance to those in capitivity because of life's painful circumstances. support our senators with your strength as you guide them with your wisdom. may your peace that surpasses all human understanding be with us all our days. lord, unite our lawmakers in the common cause of justice, righteousness, and truth.

we pray in your merciful name. amen. the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington d.c., october 11, 2011. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rus

of the senate, i hereby appointe honorable jim webb, a senator from the commonwealth of virginia, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: daniel k. inouye, president pro tempore. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: following leader remarks, the senate will be in morning business until 5:30 this evening. at 5:30 there will be three roll cal votes. the first will be confirmation of jane margaret triche-milazzo. that's a vote for a judge. we appreciate the cooperation we've gotten on that. the seconds will be on passage of 1619, china currency and the third will be on 1616, the american jobs act. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. the majority leader is still recognized. mr. corker: i would like to ask a question if i could. mr. reid: i'll be happy to yield to my friend for a question.

mr. corker: mr. president, fall, i think most -- first of all, i think most people know to spend 995 days on the free trade agreements just coming to the floor, i had a good conversation with the majority leader and i thank him for his courtesy. but it's my understanding for all those who want to see the free trade agreements ratified prior to the time the south korean president comes on thursday to make his joint address, for all of those who want to see that passed and in hand in advance of that, if we were to get on the jobs bill, as i understand it it, we would have to stay on the jobs bill for 30 hours. by getting on the jobs bill, it would preclude us from being able to successfully pass those free trade agreements in the time that all of us would like. i'd like for that to be verified by the leader if that's possible, mr. president. mr. reid: mr. president, around here you can do anything by unanimous consent. the work that the republican leader and i went through,

perhaps a little easier on his side than mine, to get the trade bills in the position they're in was fairly difficult. and it would take unanimous consent to get off a particular piece of legislation we're on to move forward on the trade bills. that's my understanding. and as i've indicated, we're looking forward to the votes this evening. and i will be happy and as cooperative i can with everyone involved. in direct response to my friend's question, i think it is clear it would take unanimous consent to do that. mr. corker: mr. president, my opinion understanding is unanimous consent would be very unlikely considering the fact there are a number of folks that actually don't want to see these trade agreements passed. the evidence is that if we were to get on the jobs bill -- and i thank the leader for talking with me about this -- it's very unlikely the free trade

agreements will pass in the time all of us would like to see prior to the president of south korea being here. i yield the floor and i thank the majority leader for letting me have this dialogue and for having the dialogue we had on thursday evening. mr. reid: mr. president, i say to, through the chair to my friend, i was happy to have that dialogue. as we've indicated, if at some time we get on a jobs bill, we'll, as i've indicated, i appreciated the comments of a number of people in the press today. i specifically address myself to john cornyn, the senior senator from texas. he and i haven't always seen, see the same peck tour on legislative -- same picture on legislative matters but i thought his statement in the press were very well constructive. he in effect said he would hope we could get on legislation and work on it the way we used to.

that would be to have some agreement on how we move forward with amendments. the republican leader and i are trying to do that. mr. president, this evening the senate will vote on legislation to end the unfair practice of currency manipulation by the chinese government. it's pretty clear by now that china undervalues its currency to give its own exports an unwarranted advantage in the global marketplace. this costs american jobs. it costs lots of jobs by unjustly tilting the playing field against american manufacturers. america's trade deficit with china has ballooned from $10 billion in 1990 to $273 billion today. it costs 3 million american jobs already. two million of those lost jobs came from the manufacturing sector. american businesses don't need special advantages to compete. they just need an even playing field. tonight we have the opportunity to stop china from continuing to cheat american workers. that is pump $300 billion into our economy and support 1.6

million american jobs. this legislation has twice advanced in this chamber with bipartisan supermajorities. 31 republicans voted to move to this legislation on the senate floor early last week. i urge each of them to stand firm on their support this have job-creating legislation, to stand with american workers rather than side with china. i remind my republican colleagues that those who revolt support of this important measure for the sake of partisan politics must answer to their constituents. today the senate will vote to proceed to the american jobs act, president obama's plan to put americans to work without adding a penny to the deficit. this legislation will also ask the richest americans to commit their fair share to get our economy back on track. the president's plan will put construction crews back to work, building the things that make our country stronger: roads, bridges, dams, sewers, water systems and up-to-date schools

where children get the best education possible. mr. president, there are schools in our country who are not wired for the internet. there are schools in america, the average school in america is a little more than 50 years old. technology changed a lot since those schools were constructed. sadly our schools haven't. this work is essential and americans are desperate for jobs it will create. the american jobs act would also extend unemployment shaourpbs for americans who are -- insurance for americans. economists agree this boost to the economy because the long term unemployed spend the money immediately on grocery, gas and rent. this legislation would cut taxes for middle-class families and businesses, something republicans have supported. the president's plan contains many ideas republicans supported consistently over the years, especially when their party controlled congress, the white house or both. republicans oppose those ideas now, i guess because they have a

proven track record of creating jobs, all of these programs. but i guess republicans think if the economy improves it might help president obama. they root for the economy to fail and impose every effort to prove it. americans have demanded congress pass legislation to create jobs and pass it now. americans support our plan to fund creation by asking people who make more than $1 million a year to contribute their fair share by a margin of three to one. that's 75%, mr. president. mainstream americans agree we can't ask seniors and the middle class to shore this burden. today we'll see whether the republicans have gotten the message or if they still put the wants of millionaires and billionaires ahead of the needs of seniors and middle-class families. americans demand republicans

admit putting republicans back to work requires shared sacrifice. i would note the absence of a quorum, mr. president. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: a little later today the senate -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mr. mcconnell: i ask consent the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. mcconnell: later today the senate will vote on president obama's second attempt to address our nation's ongoing jobs crisis with a stimulus bill. and republicans actually welcome the opportunity. if voting against another stimulus is the only way we can get democrats in washington to finally abandon this failed approach to job creation, then so be it. the president's been calling for this vote for weeks, and in my view, we can't have it soon

enough. in fact, on the previous bill i kept trying to get a vote on the president's first version of the stimulus bill. we'll be voting on the second, sort of modified version of the stimulus bill here this afternoon. this is a vote republicans are anxious to have. for nearly five years democrats have controlled the senate, for the last three of those years they have also controlled the white house. by proposing a second stimulus, democrats are showing the american people that they have no new ideas for dealing with our jobs crisis. today's vote is conclusive proof that democrats' sole proposal is to keep doing what hasn't worked, along with a massive tax hike that we know won't create jobs. so it's hard to overstate the importance of this vote. the president's first stimulus was a legislative and economic catastrophe. nearly three years after passage, we're still learning about its failures and its

abuses. we knew it was a bailout for states. we knew all about the absurd projects it funded. and over the past few weeks we've also learned that the obama administration was doing the very thing with solar companies that it once rightly criticized many others for doing on wall street. gambling with paoerpl's money. -- other people's money. the federal government playing venture capitalist with our tax money. there's really only one thing you need to know about the first stimulus to oppose the second one, and it's this: $825 billion later, there are 1.7 million fewer jobs in this country than there were when the first it stimulus was signed. that's the clearest proof it was a monstrous failure. tanned's the surest proof -- and it's the surest proof we have that those who support the second stimulus are not doing so to create jobs. as i see it, that's what today's

vote boils down to. everyone who votes for this second stimulus will have to answer a simple but important question: why on earth would you support an approach that we already know will not work? of course the truth of the matter is most democrats know as well as i do that passing another stimulus and tax hike has allowed the idea, which is why the democrats are having such a hard time convincing their colleagues to vote for it. so here's what they have decided to do instead. democrats have designed this bill to fail. they have designed their own bill to fail. in the hopes that anyone who votes against it will look bad for opposing a bill they have mistakenly referred to as a jobs bill. that's not just my interpretation. that's the senior senator from new york that has been out there telling reporters that what the democrats are going for today is

contrast. the senior senator from new york said this is all about contrast, not about jobs. about contrast. it didn't seem to matter that this bill won't pass or that even if it did pass, american businesses would be stuck with a permanent tax hike. forget about all that. what matters most to the democrats who control the senate, according to the stories i have been reading, is that they have an issue to run on for next year. this whole exercise by their own admission is a charade that's meant to give democrats a political edge in an election that's 13 months away. well, with all due respect to the senior senator from new york, mr. president, the american people don't want contrast. they want jobs. they want the democrats who control the senate to stop thinking about how they can improve their own political prospects 13 months from now and start thinking about how they can help other people's job

prospects right now. they want democrats to focus on job creation, not political preservation. so i've got a better idea. how about we get this vote the democrats already know won't pass behind us so we can focus on real job-creating legislation that we actually know is worthy of passing with bipartisan support. republicans have been calling on democrats to work with us on bipartisan job-creating bills for three years, and every once in a while, we convince them. tomorrow we'll approve three free trade agreements that i have been calling on the president to approve since his first day in office. these agreements won't add a dime to the deficit, they are expected by democrats and republicans to create tens of thousands of jobs, they will have strong bipartisan support and they don't contain a single

job-destroying tax hike. both parties also came together earlier this year to pass a patent reform bill that president obama and democrats in congress touted as a job creator, and democrats and republicans came together this summer to pass a highway bill extension, f.a.a. extension that will lead to just the kind of job creation that has bipartisan support. now, you don't hear much about any of this from the president. it gets in the way of his campaign strategy, but that doesn't mean republicans can't continue to urge the president to work with us, and that's just what we plan to do. over the next weeks and months, republicans will continue to press our friends on the other side to work with us on legislation that will actually do something to create jobs in this country. our first criterion for any proposal is that it would actually lead to more jobs, not fewer. i know that may seem crazy to some, but in our view, it's not a jobs bill if it leads to fewer

jobs. our second criterion is that it doesn't add to the deficit. there is no reason we need to exacerbate one crisis in an effort to tackle another one. now, democrats like to point out that the second stimulus will have a -- we'll have a vote on today is -- quote -- "paid for with tax hikes" and that it contains a tax cut. what they don't tell you, of course, is that the tax cuts last for 13 months while the tax hikes last forever. they hide the fact that over the next five years, it will actually increase the deficit by nearly $300 billion next year alone. permanent tax increases, temporary tax cuts. increase in the deficit next year, $300 billion alone. another thing the democratic

supporters of this bill fail to mention is that four out of five of the people who would be hit with their new taxes are, in fact, businesses, including thousands of small businesses across the country. in other words, the very people americans rely on to create new jobs. so the legislation we'll be voting on today is many things, but it's not a jobs bill, and republicans will gladly vote against any legislation that makes it harder to create jobs right now. the president's advisors have said they are counting on a do-nothing congress. that's why we will be voting for legislation today that's designed to fail. if you ask me, this is a pretty sad commentary on the state of the democratic party in washington. i think the american people deserve better. i think the 16.5% of americans who are looking for work or who stopped looking for work deserve

better. i think the 4.5 million americans who have been out of work for more than a year deserve better. i think the nearly 15% of young americans who can't find work right now deserve better. americans deserve more than a clumsy political stunt. they deserve better than the same well-rehearsed talking points we have been hearing from democrats over the past few weeks. above all, they deserve a different approach to this crisis than the one they have gotten from democrats over the past few years. for nearly three years, democrats in congress have done firstually everything the president asked of them, everything he asked of them, and i would remind everyone that they owned the government the first two years of the obama administration. they got everything they wanted. they passed his health care bill. they passed his financial

regulations bill. they passed his stimulus. they waived through all the regulations, the bailouts and the massive spending bills. and what did we get? a bad economy became worse, record deficits and debt, a first-ever credit downgrade and 1.7 million fewer jobs. democrats may have run out of ideas, but republicans are ready to work with them on a new approach. it's why we're here, and we're ready to act. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will be in a period of morning business until 5:30 with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes. mr. corker: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. mr. corker: mr. president, i rise to talk a little bit about the conversation we just had on the floor. there's no question in the state of tennessee and all across our

country, i think the biggest item on anybody's mind is our economy and people having jobs in each of our states. mr. president, i still believe that the very best thing we can do to create a sound economy in this country is for the deficit committee to do the things that it needs to do in november and december and for us to show the american people that we have the ability to deal with the big structural issues that our country faces. i believe that with all my heart. i don't think there is a business in our country today that is looking for some sugary stimulus bill that will be here and gone and leaving us with lots of debt and increased taxes down the road. i believe that. and i guess, mr. president, i'm disappointed that again we're in a situation just like we were last thursday night where we're really not here to solve problems, neither side candidly. we're here to have some political stunt take place. i do want to say to my friends

on both sides of the aisle there are numbers of people here that have worked hard to get the free trade agreements in the place that they need to be, and i think we're all expecting them to pass tomorrow, and i think all of us who support these three free trade agreements that have been languishing for 995 days -- and by the way, that includes lots of senators on both sides of the aisle -- i think what we just heard the leader say that if we were to get on this jobs bill as he is advocating that we get on today, the likelihood of us actually taking up these free trade agreements and passing them tomorrow is almost nil. i mean, it's not going to happen. we know there are people who oppose the free trade agreements, and i doubt very seriously we're going to see a unanimous consent to move off a jobs bill that everyone knows is really for show on to something that is serious like the free trade agreements that some people oppose. so i have had lots of conversations with senators on

both sides of the aisle over the course of the last 72 hours regarding the need for us to have a real debate on jobs, and i hope that at some point we'll actually have a real debate on a real jobs bill that people really want to pass. i would say that to make that happen, that would actually mean that the republican leader and the democrat leader would actually have to sit down and craft a piece of legislation that there is common ground on. of course, that's not what is happening, and we know that, and for all of us who have things that we have done in life that are productive and we have chosen to come serve our country in this way, we have the ability to be productive in other ways, for all of us to come up here and to watch this continual charade taking place in this body is disappointing. it burns up a lot of time and we accomplish nothing for the american people. so candidly, mr. president, i want to have a debate on jobs.

i know that again moving to the jobs bill tonight would negate the opportunity for the only thing that we have done, could do recently to actually create jobs, which is passing these three free trade agreements which what they will do is enhance american manufacturers' ability to make and sell things overseas, enhance farmers across our country and their ability to sell their goods overseas. it is a one-way positive street for us because these countries already have low trade tariffs -- low tariff barriers in our own country, so it lowers those barriers for us an to their country. so, mr. president, i am going to vote against proceeding to the jobs bill. i am disappoint thad we continue to do things. we know we have a republican house, and we know to pass something that's good for this country, that requires a

negotiation between all the players, and so each time we bring these bills up that are totally crafted in partisan ways, we know that all we're doing is wasting time. i do have one glimmer of hope, and that is this deficit reduction committee. the fact is that this committee was put together with six republicans and six democrats. so this committee has the ability to do some things that no one can blame the other side. i mean, we're talking about something that's totally split. i will say one other thing, mr. president. this committee was put together on the solely -- and solely conceived by leadership in the united states senate and the house. so we had four people, the leaders of the house and senate, who conceived of this super committee, and they are the ones that appointed the members to this super committee. they decided who the members of this committee were going to be.

they set it up purposely so that it was equally balanced, six and six. and so candidly, the success of this committee is totally, totally in the hands of our leadership. and so it appears to me that for the first time in a long time, we actually have within leadership's hands totally the ability of something that's great for our country to pass, and anything short of getting to the trillion and a half dollars that is laid out in this legislation is totally a failure. and so one thing i'm sure of, mr. president, is that since this was totally set up in a bipartisan way by leadership on the republican and democratic side in both the house and senate and they chose the members, there's no question in my mind that this is going to be

successful or candidly be viewed by many as a failure, a failure of leadership, candidly. so i'm certain that we're going to get to a trillion and a half, and i'm hopeful, as are a number of republicans and democrats within the senate here -- i think we have a list of over 40 that we're actually going to get to a $3 trillion reduction in the deficit, that we're going to go big or as some have said that we end up with something that is qualitatively equal to that. many of us know that trying to get $3 trillion in savings over a ten-year period might be difficult. i still hope it happens. i still think it can happen. i think there is numbers of people in this body that have worked to make that happen. but some people have said well, you know, maybe we can get some major reforms to medicare and other siendz of programs in the second ten and maybe qualitatively, that's equally as

good. mr. president, i'm certainly willing to look as one senator at all of those things, but in spite of the fact that i think it's a waste of time to be bringing up totally bipartisan bills in this body, knowing that to become law they have got to pass the house of representatives, which means anybody who brings up something in this body today that's totally partisan knows that in advance, that's discouraging to me. it's discouraging to waste time talking about something that we know is never going to become law for campaigns, for house members, senate members and the president to campaign on. but at least i'm hopeful that in november and december we are going to have something big happen because again, this is totally in the hands of bipartisan leadership who totally appointed the members, who totally are working with

this group, and again, mr. president, to me that is the best, the best stimulus we can possibly create for this country, is for small businesses and big businesses, for republicans and democrats all across this country to see that this body actually has the ability to do something to create some stability this this country and actually tackle the number-one issue that can continue to dissipate our country's standard of living and that is our inability to deal with debt. to me, that is the greatest jobs stimulus we can deal with. there's all kinds of regulatory issues and american energy issues and all kinds of things to me that we could take up in a true jobs bill and it my hope that we'll do that soon. but all i had to hear today, in addition to knowing that this really is a partisan effort, which again, i hate to see ever taking place on this floor, is

the fact is, that for any senator, for any senator who wants to see the three free trade agreements that have been languishing, any senator on the democratic side, any senator on the republican side, that wants to see the three free trade agreements passed into law tomorrow as has been planned, anybody that wants to see that happen must vote no on the jobs bill being debated because as the majority leader has stated today, if we begin to debate the jobs bill, that means that we cannot, we cannot without unanimous consent, which we know will not happen in this body, we cannot pivot and go to the trade agreements. so mr. president, in addition to the fact i know this is not a serious effort although i'd love to debate jobs, the fact that i know that if we get on this bill

we cannot pass these free trade agreements in time, i certainly plan to pass -- to vote no on proceeding to them and hope at a date when we really want to take up a true jobs bill, we'll have a vigorous debate in this body and actually have the ability to pass something that will create jobs. i yield the floor. mr. president, i notice the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. lieberman: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. lieberman: i thank the chair. mr. president, i ask to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. lieberman: i thank you. mr. president, i come to the floor to speak about two of the

votes that we'll be casting at approximately 5:30 this afternoon and to explain why i'm going to vote, how i'm going to vote. on the first, the legislation regarding china's currency policy, i'm going to vote "no," and i want to explain why. managing our economic, military, and diplomatic relations with china is going to be one of the great challenges of this century. china is obviously a rising power today, though not one without problems, as i'll get to in a moment. but we -- we have come to a point with china and the united states where we not only interact and sometimes bump up against each other, militarily, diplomatically, economically, but we've also in many ways become dependent on one another. what each of us does has an effect on the other, often a significant effect, and that's

why i say that one of the great challenges of this century will be to manage our relations with china in a way that's certainly beneficial, protective to the united states, but hopefully to china from its perspective as well. i say this as background to what i want to say about china's currency policy. irm a troublei'm troubled by chy policy. china has ofn obviously kept its currency too low and that has resulted in products being made in china selling elsewhere at a price that's lower than other manufacturers can compete with, including american manufacturers that are directly in conflict with china. so we're right to be upset about that policy. our government has been

expressing its frustration, its anger to the chinese government. we've been negotiating, cajoli cajoling, i must say in acknowledgment of reality that the chinese have slowly allowed their currency to rise, approximately 30% in value over the last six years. but it should be allowed to rise more. on the other hand, i do want to say, in fairness, that china's currency policy does have effects that are not all bad for everybody in the united states. the fact that its currency is undervalued means that some of the products that it brings into our country sell at a lower cost, and that's obviously particularly important to middle-income, lower-income families who are buying products

that otherwise would cost more. so i understand this legislation to be an expression of -- of anger at the chinese government and an attempt to pressure the chinese government to more rapidly allow its currency to rise. i would say, as i understand it, that the legislation before us is intended as a warning shot across china's bow, as it were. but china may, from its perspective, see this as an attempt to make a direct attack, a direct hit on its bow, and it may be tempted to retaliate economically. and of course the worst result would be that we would end up in a mutually damaging trade war. in some sense, it's no surprise

that we are considering legislation like this now, though i think at any time we'd be concerned about china's currency policy. but during times of economic recession, such as the one we are in now, a recession that we're fighting to come out of, another recession that we worry we'll go into, over history nations have raimente repeatedle protectionist in their economic and trade policies. but history also shows that most of the time that protectionist policy makes the economic problems worse, not better. today -- i get back to what i said about china being a rising power but not one without problems -- china's economy in its way is also fragile. it's dealing with a real estate bubble, a bubble in real estate values that's growing. and as the papers today indicate, it' its banks are losg

their credibility, inflation is rising, unemployment is rising. so it would be foolish for china to get into a trade war with us in response to legislation like this. china in fact may be more vulnerable in a trade war than we are, but china's vulnerability economically today, i think, carries great risk for the united states and the world. if a trade war sends china's economy into a recession or worse, the resultant economic instability would seriously hamper prospects for the global economic recovery everybody hopes for and, of course, it would greatly dampen our hopes for an american economic recovery and creation of more jobs here at home. so, bottom line, i think that the risks that this proposal

will aggravate the current global and american economic problems, which concern us most, are greater than the rewards of, again, trying to force china to allow its currency to rise more rapidly, and that's why i will vote against the china currency legislation that comes before us later this afternoon. mr. president, i also want to speak about the american jobs act, which will come before us for a cloture vote. we're obviously hearing americans, related to what i just talked about, going through the most difficult economic period since the great depression of the 1930's. unemploymenunemployment hovers d 9.3%. millions more will worried they will be next to lose their jobs. confidence in our future among the american people, among critical decision-makers and businesses is at a real low.

anger -- confidence in our national government is low and falling. anger at our rising national debt is high and rising. the american people are demanding that we do something, particularly to protect the jobs they have and create new jobs if they've already lost them. it is in their context that the president proposed the american jobs act. a series of interesting ideas aimed at creating jobs that will cost almost half a trillion dollars. so, what am i going to do on this one? on this one i'm going to vote against the filibuster of the american jobs act because i believe our country and our constituents need and deserve a debate here in this senate on what each of us, all of us think we would do, we should do to get our economy moving again. and it should be an open debate,

without effective limit on amendments, with many ideas being offered as to what we should do and hoping that that will lead to us some consensus. so i'm going 10 vote against the -- so i'm going to vote against the filibuster in the hope that we will bring about such a debate. but i must say that if cloture is granted and the filibuster is ended, i will seek to amend the american jobs act down to a very few of its constituent parts that i think are worth their cost. if a vote were called on the american jobs act as it is now -- in other words, if the tree were filled and that's what happened -- i would vote against the american jobs act, and i want to explain why. and the bottom line here is that i don't believe the potential in this act for creating jobs justifies adding another $500

billion to our almost $15 trillion national debt. in fact, i think the most important thing we can do to improve our economy, reduce unemployment, create jobs is to bring our national debt under control. and the best way to do that is to adopt a tough, comprehensive, balanced deficit-reduction plan like the one recommended by the bipartisan simpson-bowles commission. the budget control act, which we adopted over the summer, to deal with the debt ceiling, kraetd the so -- created the so-called super committee. the joint special committee. that committee of 12 now gives us another chance to deal with our debt in a constructive and bipartisan way. we all know that that's not going to be easy, but the american jobs act would make the task of the joint special

committee even more difficult because it spends almost $500 billion that we don't have. $500 billion that the act now proposes to raise with a surtax on people making more than $1 million a year. i don't have any objection to a tax increase of that kind. but if we use it for the american jobs act, it's not going to be there to be used by the joint special committee as part of an overall bipartisan deficit-reduction plan. and we desperately need to have some sources of revenue, along with spending cuts, to adopt the kinds of reductions in our debt that the country's future urgently needs. now let me come back to what i

said a moment ago and try to explain briefly why i believe that these two great problems we have are limping -- our limping economy, our persistent level of high unemployment and our national debt really come together and more explicitly why i believe that reducing our debt is actually the best thing we can do to create jobs. the jobs we need are going to come from the private sector. government in our system economically never has created the jobs itself. it shouldn't. it can't anymore because 2003 don't have the money to do so. the jobs always will come where most people have been employed in our country and that's the private sector. if you chart corporate investment on the same graph as

job creation, you will see that the two lines follow each other almost exactly. this is a chart prepared by the bureau of economic analysis at the bureau of labor and statistics of the federal government. over the last 50 years, beginning in 1961 going to 2011, it charts two things. the gray line is investment in real equipment and software spending. and the purple line is private employment numbers. this is, to me, when i saw this, i thought it was a stunning chart and very compelling. because you can see that corporate and private business investment is almost exactly along the same line. a little bit of a digress here. but because jobs fell more than

investment, where investment was falling and jobs fell at the same time, for 50 years this, i think it's probably the single-most significant, the single-most significant predictor of job growth in our country is business investment. so we've got to ask ourselves how can we stimulate that kind of business investment today, because that's what we need. we niece those jobs. i mutt say, i regret to say that i don't believe we can do it with the mexico that's in the american jobs act. it seems to me like the kind of mini stimulus, the stimulus, $800 billion which was adopted a few years ago which i supported, i think made the economy better than it otherwise would have been. it didn't give the economy what

the president said he hoped it would give, we all hoped it would give, which was a jolt. this american jobs act which is a kind of mini stimulus that will cost $500 billion, is less likely for obvious mathematical reasons give the economy a jolt. but it will cost a half trillion dollars we don't have and have to find somewhere to raise. to me, what we've got to do is restore confidence and people in the business sector to invest. that's what missing in our economy. they don't have confidence in our economic future. tkhoepbt have confidence in -- they don't have confidence in our government, us. they don't have confidence that we'll work together to reduce our debt, some predictability in the years ahead. that's why i say that the best thing we can do to restore the

confidence of the business community erbgs necessary for them to begin investing again -- they've got money. they're just not spending it because they're nervous by the community -- is for us to come together in a bipartisan deficit-reduction program -- debt-reduction program. it's not this american jobs act. i know it's been put forward with good intentions, but i don't think it does the job we need it to do for american aeupbd know that will cost -- and i know will cost another $500 billion that we desperately need to reduce our debt, which will do the job, to create new jobs for our fellow americans. i thank the chair and yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from virginia. mr. webb: mr. president, first let me say there's a great deal of what the senator from

connecticut just said we are nearly in full agreement on. we're probably going to cancel ourselves out on these two votes later in the day. for essentially the same reasons that the senator just gave, and i am to talk about that -- and i want to talk about that on the floor today. but i thank the senator for his comments and particularly this second piece of legislation which i've been struggling with exactly the same way the senator from connecticut has. mr. president, i have two unanimous consent requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders. i ask unanimous consent that these requests be agreed to and that these requests be printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. webb: mr. president, i'd like to begin my comments today by expressing my strong support for the majority leader in terms of how he handled this very

difficult discussion on thursday night. i think we can all agree that the senate at times has become quite dysfunctional over the past couple of years. i was very interested to hear senator corker's comments. he and i arrived ne staple at the same time. i empathize with a lot of the comments he was making although i guess in terms of looking for accountability, depends on which end of the telescope you're looking through. for phaoerbgs looking at the situation -- for me, looking at the situation we faced on thursday night, we have to start with the reality that these were not serious amendments that were being offered at the end of the debate of this piece of legislation. they in many ways epitomize the paralysis of serious debate here in this body and how it affects all of our ability to get serious things done.

only one of those nine proposals was skwrerp main. that was -- was germane. that was from my good friend senator hatch. they were not relevant. this is what the majority leader is being faced with time and again. we're talking about one amendment on a bill with respect to china currency that wanted to talk about the regulation of nuisance dust. another one that wanted to talk about the use of pesticides in navigable waters. and another one that wanted to talk about e.p.a. regulation on cement manufacturing. there may be a time and a place for that kind of discussion. but if you look at the impact of this type of, i have to agree with the majority leader's characterization, this type of dilatory conduct, they prevent responsible, germane legislation from moving forward. i'll give you one example from my own attempt to approve this

bill. that was the amendment i offered last week that would have prohibited intellectual companies from transferring technologies that were assisted with the american taxpayer to such countries as china that require technology transfer as a result of doing business there, that amendment is not going to get a vote. i've that is something that this american -- country want to see passed. because we have been in this state of presidential seus, now we're -- paralysis, now we're moving forward with a bill that doesn't have these sorts of issues in it. and i'm going to vote for, by the way. with respect to the jobs bill, i'd like to make a couple of comments here, first associating with some of the comments that senator lieberman made. but there's an issue here with respect to economic fairness and

the disparity in this country between top and bottom that i don't think is being properly debated in the context of this bill. in the end, as senator lieberman pointed out, i strongly believe that the way to bring good jobs back is to improve our economy in the private sector. and that means more capital investment. win ton churchill once said something to the effect that you can't tax your way out of an economic downturn any more than you can pick up a bucket if you're standing in it. there's a lot of money out there. we can work to incentivize conduct that might encourage, encourage investment. i think people on both sides need to set aside the partisan pw-bt going onlookersing into next year's election and work

toward that end. at the same time there are two difficulties i have with this legislation. the first is the timing. senator lieberman was very eloquent in his concerns about the timing of this bill with the super committee working on these issues in a larger context, getting ready to report out within the next month or so. and senator corker made a very valid point that i hadn't really thought about, and that is we have worked -- and i've been one of those who have worked to bring these free trade agreements to conclusion and we have a very short window with the president of south korea arriving this week and hopefully having a free trade agreement passed by the time he makes his presentation to the joint session of congress. there's another issue, and that is the pay-for. we're talking about this millionaire surcharge, this 5.6% that would be put on top of these other tax increases for

the millions, quote unquote. in many cases, this isn't even a tax on the wealthiest americans that it's designed to reach. let me preface what i'm going to point out here by saying i believe i have been one of the loudest and most consistent voices on the issue of economic fairness in this country. i tput on the table nationally -- i put it on the table nationally when i responded to president bush's state of the union address in 2007. i put the issue of disparity in executive compensation from when i graduated from college, a c.e.o. making 20 times what the average worker makes to today when it is about 400 times. i introduced a windfall profit tax when it was clear the money we were going to use from tarp

was going to be used dimple. this was a -- used differently. this is a narrow bill that said you could get a bonus. anything after that you had to share with the people who bailed you out because they were bailing out the economy. i couldn't get a vote. let's be fair. i couldn't get a vote because neither side wanted a vote. people don't want to take a vote on something that is that directly related to how they finance their campaigns. that is the honest truth. i didn't get a vote on it, but i think my record on this issue is absolutely clear. but one thing that i have stated from the first moment that i ran for office is that i do not believe that we should raise taxes on ordinary earned income. and when this proposal was first put in front of the american people, there was a part of it in the pay-for here that was called the warren buffett rule, but what i just said is the warren buffett rule, and it's

been misrepresented in this debate. warren buffett has the same position, my understanding of his position, and i have read it very carefully, that you shouldn't be taxing ordinary earned income. in fact, he made a clarification about a week ago about this is warren buffett on the warren buffett rule. "my program would be on the very high incomes that are taxed very low, not just high incomes. somebody making $50 million a year plague baseball, his taxes won't change. if they make a lot of money and they pay a very low tax rate, like me, it would be changed by a minimum tax." well, how do you do that and does it matter? well, it matters a whole lot because we're not talking about this distinction when we are addressing issues of fairness in society with the true nature of what has happened at the very top in this country. the present proposal looks good at first glance, it sounds good

on a tv bite, but in all respect to the people who put it forward, i do not believe it's smart policy and it does not go where the real economic division lies in our country. this is what warren buffett is talking about. mr. president, if you look at the top .1% of our taxpayers, the very top, two-thirds of the money that they take in is from capital gains and dividends. only one-third is from wages. what does that mean with respect to this surcharge that we're going to put down? this is what the surcharge on earned income for millionaires will do. it will bring the tax on ordinary earned income from 35% first under the assumption to

39%, which is the failure to renew the bush tax cuts, and then to 45.2%. someone making wages -- who is really in this category? very few people. a lot of them -- let's say you're an athlete, as warren buffett mentioned. you have got three or four years in your career where you can actually make the money. you're going to get your income because it's ordinary earned income taxed at 45% of everything you make just for the federal, at the same time that capital gains tax, which is where two-thirds of the top .1% of our earners make their money is going to stay at 15%. that's what warren buffett's talking about. he's sitting here saying i make my money off stock sales, these basic transactions where i get capital gains and i'm at 15%. my secretary's paying double what i am.

and now the people who have ordinary earned income are going to pay three times the rate of what somebody is making on -- on capital gains, and that is two-thirds of what the people at the very top make. if you went after capital gains gains -- let's just say notionally, mr. president, let's just say we allowed the bush tax cuts to expire on capital gains but keep them on ordinary earned income, this margin would be 35% on ordinary income versus 20%. what would that do? according to the joint committee on taxation, over five years, five years you could recoup $402 billion. that is almost as much as this other surcharge could make over ten years in order to pay for this legislation. so -- and most importantly,

you're going into the issues of fairness that we have been trying to bring to the table, and that is truly focused on those at the very top who have benefited the most from what has happened in what is frequently becoming a fractured economic society, so, mr. president, i'm going to vote the exact opposite way that the senator from connecticut is going to vote, but i think he and i share many of the same concerns, it's just how you get there. if people are ready to discuss capital gains, moving it back up to what it was from 15% to 20%, if you're willing to discuss capital gains, i know you're serious. if you're not ready to discuss capital gains, i think we have seen this movie before. i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president.

the presiding officer: i'm sorry. the senator from new hampshire. ms. ayotte: i know it's thoord see number 100 over here. i ask unanimous consent the order from the quorum call be rescinded. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. ayotte: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with senator john mccain. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. ayotte: thank you. mr. president, i rise today to talk about the state of affairs and where we are in the senate, particularly with regard to the defense authorization bill. right now in the senate i'm a freshman member of this body, it's been over two years since we passed a budget, we've only passed one appropriations bill. last week, the democrats changed the rules in the senate because they didn't want to vote on amendments. and for the first time in my lifetime, the defense authorization bill is not being brought to the floor by the

majority leader. this is at a time when we are engaged in two wars and the threats to us and our allies from the islamist terrorists remain. in fact, today authorities broke up an alleged plot to bomb the israeli and saudi arabian embassies in washington and to assassinate the saudi arabian ambassador to the united states. and why at a time like this when there is nothing more important we can do in the united states senate than to ensure the national security of the american people, the majority leader is refusing to bring forward the defense authorization to this floor because he objects to one provision in it addressing detainees. i'm concerned that this is no longer the most deliberative body in the world and i'm new here and i'm often asked as a new member of this body what has

surprised me most as a new senator, and i have to say honestly how few votes that i've taken since i've been in the u.s. senate. in fact, the number of votes that i've taken in the u.s. senate since i've been here are far below what we took last year and what we took the year before and yet the problems that our country faces and on issues like this in terms of our national security, what could be more important than voting on a defense authorization bill? i would ask my other can -- distinguished colleague from arizona who is a senior member of this body, have you ever seen the senate like this? is this how the senate is supposed to operate? mr. mccain: i would like to respond to my colleague, by the way, i noilted she said it would be the first time in her lifetime we had not passed a defense authorization bill. it would not be the first time in my lifetime.

but since it's been 41 years. but i'd say to my friend and colleague who has played a very important and essential role on many of the issues before the armed services committee, not only because of the background, the military background of your family, including a husband who is a distinguished a-10 pilot, but also as a former attorney general of your state and very familiar with many of these issues that surround the detainee issue. and i would like to say to my colleague that it was her amendments that were passed in the committee concerning detainee treatment that became part of the legislation that i believe the legislation, that section was passed by a vote of 25-1 in the committee. so it's not as if there were

sharp divisions between both sides of the aisle on the issue of detainee treatment. and yet apparently that seems to be the objection of the administration to only to the bill but even taking up the bill for consideration before the full senate. as to the -- the senator from new hampshire pointed out, the first time in 41 years. and i just want to explore with her for a second this whole issue of detainee treatment. just in the last week or so, we were able to kill one of the al qaeda leading operatives, and that action was supported by i think the majority of opinion in america thanks to passage of legislation after 9/11 including the fact that the president had a finding that this individual

was a terrorist, and yet somehow the president's counterterrorism experts seems to say that -- that under our legislation we would never be able to turn the page on guantanamo and i quote from his speech in harvard, and he went on to say our counterterrorism professionals would be come pelsd to hold -- compelled to hold all captured terrorists in military custody. first of all, i'd ask my colleague, is -- number one, isn't there a national security waiver that the president could exercise if he wanted to in the legislation? and second of all, is it not true that you would have to be designated al qaeda before it would be required to be held in military custody? my question is, is mr. brennan either misinformed or simply

contradicting what is actually the case in the legislation that we passed by a unanimous vote through the senate armed services committee? ms. ayotte: senator, mccain, you're absolutely right, there was an overwhelming bipartisan vote in support of the detainee provisions that now are, according to senator reid, is where they are not being brought to the floor, and in my view, the president's counterterrorism advisor, mr. brennan, has it wrong. i'm not sure that he's read this legislation based on the objections that he's raised, because we are giving the president authority to detain, which is very important authority, which he can exercise based on the national security of this country, and in order to have military custody, you have to be a member of al qaeda or an

affiliated force, and planning an attack against us or a coalition partner. that's where the mandatory -- where the military custody comes in place and i think that's very important because, of course, if you're a member of al qaeda and you're planning an attack against the united states of america or our coalition partners, it seems to me that's a very appropriate instance for military custody given that we remain at war with al qaeda and that the threats from al qaeda are still very grave to our country as demonstrated -- mr. had mr. mccain: i ask my colleague, so the statement mr. brennan made on his speech on september 16 at the harvard law school saying our counterterrorism professionals would be compelled to hold all captured terrorists in military custody is not correct? ms. ayotte: senator mccain, i'm really concerned that

mr. brennan again has not read this legislation because that statement is not correct. we, as you know, you worked very hard on a compromise with the chairman of the armed services committee, chairman levin, and senator graham, and in that compromise provision that we passed in a very strong, overwhelming, bipartisan vote, to have military custody you have to be a member of al qaeda, and planning an attack against us or our coalition partners. it's limited to a very narrow category of dangerous, dangerous individuals. it isn't every single terrorist that is encountered. but the important issue is this: senator mccain, when you read mr. brennan's speech, did you see anywhere in his speech to harvard where he talked about this topic where he ever mentioned what is happening with those that have been released

from guantanamo? mr. mccain: you know, it's interesting that he didn't because those who have been released as the latest numbers that i have was about a 20%, roughly -- and i don't know if the senator from new hampshire's information is different, but at least 21 out -- one out of every five return to the fight and some in leadership positions of al qaeda which is obviously unacceptable. mr. chairman --, i mean mr. president, i ask for an additional three minutes for the senator from new hampshire and me. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mccain: i just wanted to mention very quickly because in some respects the senator from new hampshire dproms a military family, isn't it true in this legislation, and it's so important that we care for the men and women and the former pay -- in the form of pay raises in the form of housing, in the form of benefits, in the form of all the things that is congress' obligation to the men

and women who are serving in the military and now we are telling those men and women well, because of one provision in this legislation which should be resolved through debate and amendments and votes, we're not going to take up the bill that authorizes the men and women, the things that are necessary and vital for the men and women who are viting in two wars? ms. ayotte: senator mccain, you're absolutely right. it's absolutely outrageous that one provision that a was a bipartisan provision is holding up the authorization from coming forward when it addresses things like pay raises for our military, addresses services foreour wounded warriors, addresses military construction that is needed for our soldiers. very important issues, and to hold up this at a time when we're at war, at a time when our soldiers need to know we are fully behind them dpl in my view does a huge disservice to our country. and these are issues that if there are problems with the

detainee provisions should be fully debated on this floor. the american people deserve to know, as you mentioned, the recidivism rate from guantanamo, director clapper testified before the intelligence committee recently the recidivism rate is now 27% for those re-engage manage the battle, detainees that we've released who are encountering our soldiers and our coalition partners trying to harm americans. so to not bring forward the defense authorization bill, a, to help our soldiers, most importantly, to do what is right for them, but also, b, to have a rigorous debate over this very important issue of protecting our soldiers from those detainees that have gotten back and making sure that we are protecting those that we have a place -- have a place to put those who are captured now seems to me to be a disservice to thissed would -- this body and to our country. mr. mccain: i thank the senator from new hampshire who

has played a very important role in the defense -- in the armed services committee, particularly on these issues of detainee treatment which are important to the american people as she just mentioned, one out of four have returned to the fight. it's a red -- it's a courage -- of courage and legitimacy for someone in al qaeda who has been released from guantanamo. i hope the majority leader and the urging of our colleagues would agree that we could sit down and bring this bill to the floor, have votes, amendments, and then let the men and women who are serving and those who have served, including our wounded warriors, know that we care enough to pass legislation that is vital to their ability to defend this nation and to make sure that they are properly equipped and properly compensated. i thank the senator from new hampshire. ms. ayotte: thank you very much. i thank very much the senator

from arizona and no one has been more dedicated to our military through his own service and the service of his family but also as ranking member of the are -- of the armed services committee who has worked across the aisle to bring forward this defense authorization and i share in his comments that the majority leader would bring it forward, it is so important for our country. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from florida. mr. nelson: mr. president, as the senator from arizona is at the back of the chamber i just want to say that i, too, this senator appreciates his long public service and his dedication to this country. mr. president, as one of the senators from a state that borders the gulf of mexico, naturally we have been quite concerned in the followup to the

deep water horizon oil spill. you remember that was an oil spill that at first b.p. said, oh, it was only a thousand barrels a day and it wasn't until senator boxer, the chairman of the environment committee, and i were able to wrangle the actual streaming video from 5,000 feet below the surface and put it on my web site that the scientists could then calculate how much oil was coming out. it wasn't anywhere close to 1,000 barrels a day. in fact, tended up being 50,000 barrels of oil a day that was gushing into the gulf of mexico. and, as a result of that, total number of days, almost 5 million barrels of oil that had gushed into the gulf, we can expect

some serious economic and environmental consequences, and particularly the consequences on the critters. now, mr. president, it is hard to go down to 5,000 feet and get data because of the pressure there of what's happening on the critters. but, we had an taunt to find out what's -- we had an opportunity to find out what's happening whereby all of that oil seeped into -- towards shore, onto the beaches, into the he is tiew esd those were the closest to the coast of louisiana. and what i've learned in

subservice when you are addressing a problem, if it is a problem of this enormous consequence to not only the livelihoods of people who live up and down the gulf, whether their livelihood be tourism, as so much of our state of florida was affected, 0er whether it be the livelihoods of the actual critters themselves and, therefore, the livelihoods of a lot of people because of the shrimping and the fishing industry, which is major coming from the gulf -- what i've learned over my years in public service is that what you got to do is you have to dig down and you have to start relying 0 on science to inform you what is at the root of the problem and how you go about solving the problem.

and i can tell you that even though they shut off the oil gushing in, the spill, mr. president, is not over yet, and so we're going to have to do the kind of informed planning of what we're going to do to address this environmental disaster, and science is the key to developing a plan. we got a pretty good indication from former governor ray mabus, who is a now our second of the navy, who the president had tapped to head that task force on what to do about the best way to address the damage. and based 0 on governor mabus's recommendations, the president then issued an executive order, and it established an ecosystem restoration task force comprised

of the relevant federal agencies and each gulf coast state. and so, in the meantime, what we've done is up here worked with our colleagues in trying to figure out how to fund this important work. and for this work, for this senator, science is one of the key components. i can tell you from my experience in doing everglades restoration in the state of florida, if you don't have the science first to determine what to do, then you don't know how to do it. and you waste a lot of money and a lot of time. and the science will help you make sure that you accomplish what you were planning to do, and then your efforts are going to pay off. in other words, when a patient

is sick, the doctor is first going to determine what's wrong and then is going to figure out the treatment options and then is going to monitor the patient's progress, and, similarly in this case, to get the best outcome for restoring the gulf, we must use this same scientific framework. now, why am i harping on this? because when the nine gulf coast senators, minus only one gulf coast senator -- all five states' senators -- signed up as cosponsors of this legislation, headed by mary landrieu, when we filed this "restore" act to take part of the money -- in fact, most of the money from the fine that the department of interior is going to level under the already existing law of the oil

pollution act, whatever that fine turns out to be, we have filed legislation to direct that money that comes from the fine. naturally, some of it is for environmental restoration. some of it is for chick restoration. some of it is for planning for the future. a lot of it, we hope, is going to be going into the determination of science. and even though some economic development will come out of thiout -- outof this, in this ln that has come out from the environment committee a few weeks ago, even though economic development is going to be part of it, we got to know if we in fact are achieving our goal. and the science is the dethat.

-- and the science is the key to that. so, mr. president, just this week i met with two scientists -- professors at louisiana state university. i won't say what was the outcome of what happened in the football stadium that afternoon when the university of florida met with louisiana state university, but that morning i had met with these two l.s.u. professors who received a rapid grant from the national science foundation, and in their research on what is called killie dish, dr. whitehead and dr. galvis found that even in areas where the visible oil has disappeared, these little dish -- about that large -- these little fish --

about that large -- these little fish and their embryos sustained long-term genetic damage. well, let me show you what i'm talking about. mr. president, the killie fish is a small egg-laying fish found in the gulf of mexico. they spawn from march to october in shallow water in the marsh grass beds. killie fish, which when adult are about that long, are a popular bait fish and they eat a lot of mosquito already larvae. so they become part of mother nature's natural pest control. and so in april of 2010 when the

deepwater horizon began to gush the oil, it was in the midst of killifish spawning season, and when the oil continued to flow all summer, inching ever-closer to the marshes, the killifish were exposed to it. and here's the proof. now, th the l.s.u. researchers t traps off the oiled areas off of louisiana in an area close to a barrier island between berateria bay and the gulf of mexico. this is what that particular marcmarshy area looked like.

you can see all the oil on the surface here. the problem is not the oil on the surface. when it gets into the marshes and gets into the grasses, this oil will sink and eventually it'll sink all the way through the water column, and then it gets mixed up in the sediment, and these small fish that are part of the natural chain out in the gulf of the bis fisheries, e little fish will root out down in that sediment, and i want to show you now the gill tissue of healthy killifish. this is the tissue taken from the gills that were not exposed

to the oiled marsh. the l.s.u. professors had set these traps in six different locations from louisiana all the way to alabama where the oil had come in. it went, of course, as far on into florida, but they set these six locations. they found the area outside of this area near barataris bay was where there was very little exposure, sand so killifish -- this is a cross-section of some of their gills. remember, for a fish, its gill is like our lungs. it oxygenates the blood rs and it removes the carbon die ukes idea. it's just like us breathing except it's a fish.

-- except it's a fish that's breathing. and this gill tissue looks like it has the main trunk and the branches coming off and they're evenly spaced. and this was outside of the area where we found a lot of the oil down in the sediment. as in the previous picture of where that marsh was off of louisiana. and what this healthy tissue does, it 0 provides a lot of surface area for oxygen to enter into the fish's bloodstream. all right, now let me show you the slide that shows the gill tissue of a killifish from the marsh that i showed you where all the oil was. the reddish-brown here, you see, is the staining used by the

researchers. and there's a protein that would react to the uptake of oil and show where there has been exposure, and that's the reddish-brown that you see on these branches coming off the trunks, and you can see just how dark it has stained. and look at something else. and look at seelings on this exposed tissue of the fish's gill. look how discouringed and warped these branches now looked. compare that to the symmetrical shape on what you saw on the healthy fish. this, of course, is going to interfere with oxygen and carbon dioxide and the ion transfer in the bloodstream of these fish, and it's going to make it harder for the fish to breathe.

and so in an area that is so economically and ecologically important as the gulf, this information is crucial to determining the extent of the harm. the gulf provides almost a third of the nation's gross domestic product, about a third of the seafood. a third of the nation's seafood is coming from areas that are being exposed. now, i asked the professors, does that mean that you can't eat the fish? they said there is no evidence that it's harmful to eat the fish, but what it is showing is when their ability to breathe starts being encumbered, that means these fish are not going

to live or they are going to be significantly reduced in size or they are going to be significantly -- the population is going to be reduced. and if that's happening to this little fish that big called the killifish, can you imagine what's happening to the whole food chain? i talked to one of the owners of one of the major new orleans restaurants. i said tell me about your fishing. tell me about your shrimpers. he said the shrimpers, some of them off of louisiana are having to go 200 miles away in order to get their catch of shrimp. and naturally, that's having an economic effect because they're having to spend all that much extra time and money and fuel to get their catch of shrimp in a

region that is so economically and ecologically important as the gulf as a producer of one-third of all this nation's seafood, you can see we potentially really have a problem. historically we don't know much about the gulf. it is on the average a mile and a half deep, where the deepwater horizon spilled, it was a mile deep. and as the oil hit, we began to realize that we did not have good baseline data about the resources that are injeopardy. and so, moving forward, science is going to have to be a priority. we've got to know the extent of the impact so that the american

people do not pay for b.p. or transocean's actions. why should the american taxpayer pay for this? and we've got to find out how best to restore the gulf so that it can continue to be the source of an environmental and economic wealth that it has historically been to this country. so there are a number of us here that are going to continue to press for baseline data collection. long-term monitoring and innovative research to inform gulf coast restoration. and i hope our colleagues are going to join us in the first step toward that, which is the passage of the restore act, which has come out of the environment committee, which is bipartisan, supported by almost all the senators of the gulf,

and of which we need to allocate the be simone it will go into -- allocate the money so it will go into good uses instead of the current law being poured into the liability trust fund. mr. chairman -- mr. president, we are going to have the opportunity in the coming weeks to pass it in the senate, send it down to the house and see if we can get our colleagues down there to make a step out and strongly and boldly for letting science inform us as we try to restore the health of the gulf. mr. president, i yield the floor.

the presiding officer: the senator from florida is recognized. mr. nelson: mr. president, it is somewhat providential that my colleague from alabama has come on to the floor probably to speak on another subject, but i would point out to the senate that he is a cosponsor of the restore act to try to restore the health of the gulf coast and understand the changes that i have just talked about, some of the initial research that has come from, sourced by, funded by the national science foundation. mr. president, i thank the senator from alabama for his cosponsorship along with our other colleagues from the gulf coast. i yield the floor. mr. sessions: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from alabama is recognized. mr. sessions: i thank my colleague from florida and appreciate his work on this. we have had a bipartisan effort. i was pleased that chairman

boxer, at the environment and public works committee, of which i'm a member, joined with us in moving the legislation forward. i think it's time for us to do that now while we have an opportunity to make a decision that's fair to all parties. and i believe that this legislation is a thoughtful way to do it that would make the gulf a more healthy place. thank you, senator, for your leadership. i am, mr. president, here to share a few thoughts as we move to the final vote on the china currency legislation that i believe we must pass. i find it difficult, almost impossible to believe that there's a universal acceptance of the fact that the

manipulation of currency by the china government, their efforts to keep their currency low tied directly to the united states senate currency regardless of the economic forces in the world that would argue for and set a different relationship between those currencies. the net result of that has been to damage the american economy. i don't think anybody disputes it. in fact, some of my colleagues in this body who have opposed the legislation out of fear for a trade war or something else have all acknowledged that the currency factors set by china are not good. they all acknowledge it adversely impacts the economy of the united states and cost american jobs.

and it's not right. it's just not right. and we are losing jobs dramatically. the federal reserve chairman, i would ask, you know, us to ask ourselves is mr. branch, chairman of the federal reserve -- mr. bernanke, chairman of the federal reserve a protectionist? is he somebody that doesn't believe in trade? is he somebody that's trying to stop trade. i don't think so. this is what he said last week on the question of jobs in his testimony before the house. "right now our concern is that chinese currency policy is blocking what might be a more normal recovery in the global economy." blocking a normal recovery from a recession. he goes on to say, "it's to some extent hurting the recovery."

close quote. that's the federal reserve chairman. so i don't understand the thought that somehow when we say we have an obligation to our constituents to defend their legitimate interest on the world stage in a global economy to make sure the global economy, where trade is so valuable to us is conducted in a fair way. it's not a fair system. and it's been going on for over a decade. our leaders, former presidents, president obama, all of them, when the chips are down don't do anything significant to confront this problem. they just allow it to continue, and we are hemorrhaging jobs. maybe more than a million jobs have been lost as to this one currency manipulation alone.

i think it's unhealthy for the country. i'm worried about the middle class in america. i don't believe you can have a middle class in america without a vibrant manufacturing base. you know, we've had them in the past talking about a service economy. we're going to become a service economy. but i don't see people working in the service industries making the kind of $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year salaries that people do in major manufacturing companies. they just don't. there are various benefits from some of those jobs and some of people enjoy it. and if it's their skill level and what they want to do, it's fine to say that. but to acknowledge we no longer are going to be a manufacturing nation does not make sense to me. and i believe we have no choice

but to develop a sustained, effective policy to raise this question in a way that it cannot be avoided and to confront our trading partners, china, with this manipulation and to say we'd like to have a great positive relationship here. we're not afraid to trade. we're not trying to hamper your economy. we think the world would be better if china's economy is healthy and growing. but not at our expense. not in a way that unfairly places american manufacturing at a disadvantage. when your currency is 25% to 30% undervalued, what it means is that when we export a product, its cost in china 30% more than

it would otherwise would cost if the currency was right. and china is not going to buy it if it costs 30% more. and if you import a product from china, manufactured in china to the united states, not only do they have an advantage of lower wages, but they have a 30%, a 25% currency advantage. and we're just going to say, oh, this is just the way of the world, nothing we can do about it. we believe in free trade. well, as i said, i believe in trade. i believe in good trade. my record, i think, will indicate that. but i have told my constituents, and i think most of us in the senate, in the house are talking to our constituents, we say we believe in trade but we believe in fair trade. we believe in defending our workers from unfair competition. we'll stand up and take our lumps and we'll take our gains

in a fair competition. but not -- we don't sit by and let our workers lose their jobs, have our plants close as a result of an unwillingness on behalf of the government in washington to defend their interests. i mean, how much common sense is that? so, mr. bernanke, the "wall street journal," all the others, club for growth, they all acknowledge that this is an unfair trade practice. they all acknowledge it hurts us. but they say we can't do anything about it. well, we just keep on talking, we'll let the administration keep talking, and maybe they can work this thing out. but it's been going on for years, and it hasn't been worked out for reasons i'm not able to understand. now, if a major american

manufacturer decides that, well, china has lower wages and now they've got a 30% advantage in currency, we could close our plant here in new mexico or we could close our plant in alabama or ohio, and we'll move it to china, and we'll make that product over there, and we can import it 30% currency advantage on top of labor, we'll make more money that way. now, i think that's how decisions are being made in this country right now. it is being made in that fashion. and if you are a stockholder in one of those companies, you would say that makes common sense to me. but i'm not here as a stockholder in a company. i'm here as a united states

senator representing four million alabama constituents, really representing the interest of the united states of america, and i don't think it's good for america. it may be good for this company or that company, but it's not good for america. i don't think. in fact, i'm confident it's not. it's got to end. and we need to defend aggressively on the world stage the legitimate interests of american manufacturing and american workers. and we have not done that. and it's caused a lot of frustration out there, and it's caused a lot of job loss, in my opinion. well, they say if you stand up here and you tell the chinese that, look, you've had 9% growth last year, looking for another

9% growth this year. number-two economy now in the whole world. but if we tell them that a lot of this has been takenning -- is the result of taking advantage of the united states' trade policy and you've got to stop, this will somehow make them mad. and this will make them angry, and they will commence a trade war against us. that's what the argument basically is. and they say oh, you remember during the depression, smoot-hawley tariff act. that created tariff war around the world and helped prolong the depression, and it did. well, let me tell you this is not smoot-hawley tariff. it's just not. first of all, the united states was a major exporting juggernaut in the 1930's, and we placed

tariffs on goods coming into our country to try to give an advantage to our folks, and others retaliated, and we as an exporting nation ended up losing more than they did. it was stupid policy and it redounded to our disadvantage. and it was a worldwide tariff we placed on all products. hopefully there will not be any tariffs imposed under this legislation. hopefully as the process goes forward, my chinese trading partners will begin to retreat from the indefensible position, and it won't happen. but it again is only targeted where you have a major currency manipulation. it's not a worldwide tariff, number one, and number two, as mr. gordon chang wright in "forbes" magazine noted --

writing in "forbes" magazine noted indisputably, china is exporting juggernaut in today's world. we're the world's biggest importer. i don't guess there has ever been in the history of the world a larger trade imbalance than between the united states and china. we import, they export. so as he noted in a trade tariff situation, which is bad for everybody, i acknowledge, the nation that is hurt the worst is the exporting nation, and that would be china. so why would china, despite their bluster, why would they create a real trade war with the united states? a third of their exports and more go to the united states. this is a huge, huge part of their growing economy, and i'm happy that china's making

financial progress, and i sincerely hope that they will be able to continue to do so, but it can't be done at our expense. so i would say that smoot-hawley argument is not a good one. neither is the fact that china would execute a trade war with the united states. it just makes no sense for them to do so. they would be cutting off their nose to spite their face. one of the things you have to have, one of the things that's good in a manufacturing economy is that you sell product and you bring home wealth, and if you can manufacture and you can export that product, you can bring home wealth and that wealth can be used to purchase other foreign products and bring those into the country, and it's the kind of thing that can

properly conducted benefit the entire world. i tease my free trade colleagues, those who for whom e trade is a religion that if they believe that trade, once it breaks out in the world, peace will abound and cancer will be cured. that's all you have got to do is eliminate all trade barriers. but the trade barriers aren't being eliminated. that's the problem. one of the biggest trade barriers we have is the currency manipulation by china. it's by far -- they do a lot of things. they steal our manufacturing copyrights and secrets and techniques in violation of international law. they subsidize domestic manufacturing in many different ways. if you want to do business in china, you have to partner with

a chinese company and give them half the company. they block the sale of precious metals around the world. they do all kinds of things that are not the kind of things good trading partners ought to be doing, not to mention their foreign policy which buddies up with north korea and iran and other rogue nations. china needs to be participating positively in the world community, not being out here trying to take advantage of bad countries and make bucks off them and try to do things that just seem at times for no other purpose than to frustrate the legitimate interests of the united states and the world community. so china has got some problems here. it's time for them to get straight. i urge them to do so, and they cannot continue currency

manipulation. just destroying jobs in the united states, and we will not have it. and when we have this vote that will be coming up before long, i think it would be more than just a normal vote around here. i believe it would be a vote that -- i believe it will be a vote that says to the whole world the united states is waking up. we are free traders all right, but not any trade agreement is going to be good in the future. if you're not complying with your agreements under trade agreements, we're going to hold you to them, and we will do what it takes to hold you to them, and we will not continue to trade with you if you manipulate the trade rules, and we insist that the world economy operate on fair and lawful -- a fair and lawful basis. that's the healthy thing for us.

if we do this right, we can do it in a way that's not protectionist, not antitrade, but creates the foundations for even more and healthier, better trade for the whole world. that's my vision of where we are today, and i think we should move forward, pass this legislation, and i urge my colleagues in the house to do likewise. in the long run, we'll benefit. mr. president, i thank the chair for the opportunity to speak. i thank my republican colleague, senator graham, and others on this side who voted for it and senator schumer and senator brown and senator stabenow and others on the democratic side who have been leaders in this effort. i believe it's time for the president to get the message. i think it's time for wall street to get the message. i think it's time for the american people to get focused that there are some decisions being made now without

protectionism, without nativism but legitimate public interest that will create jobs in america. i thank the chair, would yield the floor. ms. klobuchar: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from minnesota is recognized. ms. klobuchar: mr. president, i rise today to speak in support of the american jobs act. rarely is our economy discussed these days without mention of the 14 million americans that are currently out of work and searching for a job, but as you know from your home state, this isn't just a statistic. it's real people, people who are struggling, people who have had their hours cut, people who may have worked at a job for a very long time and poof, it's gone away. that's what this is about. two years after the recession officially ended by the accounts, unemployment is still stubbornly high at 9.1%, 9.1%.

when you factor those that are working full time because they can't find a full-time job, those numbers go much higher, up toward 16%. now, my home state, the state of minnesota, is much better. we have an unemployment rate of 7.2%, but there are still too many people out of work or who are struggling with reduced hours at their jobs. while no group of workers has been spared by the high rates of long-term unemployment, the hardest hit have been older workers, those with a high school diploma and then those which i am sure you have seen in the construction trades. they have been hit very hard. we also have had issues with our timber industry in northern minnesota. we have had some trouble in our iron ore mines but they are bouncing back, but the biggest problem that i have heard is for those in the construction industry. it's my firm belief, mr. president, the role of congress is to promote the interests of the american people, and the american people

have said loud and clear that we need to focus on initiatives that stimulate job creation, in particular private sector job creation. in fact, the majority of americans want us to pass the american jobs act that we are debating today. when americans are asked about specific provisions in the bill, that message is even clearer. 74% say that they support providing money to state governments to allow them to hire teachers and first responders. 65% say that they support cutting the payroll tax for all american workers. 64% say that they support increased spending to build and rare -- repair roads, bridges and schools. of course, no one knows that better than me in my state. i live just a few blocks from that bridge that collapsed in the middle after summer day. as i said that day, a bridge just shouldn't fall down in the middle of america, but that's what happened. so obviously, people in my state

understand the need to continue funding bridges and roads. 58% of americans say that they support cutting the payroll tax for all american businesses. but passing this bill isn't the right thing to do just because it is popular. it's the right thing to do because it will have a positive impact on our economy. economists from across the political spectrum agree that steps taken in this legislation would increase economic activity and add to jobs. according to mark zandi, chief economist of moody's, the plan -- and these are his words -- the plan would add two percentage points of g.d.p. growth next year, add 1.9 million jobs and cut the employment rate by a percentage point. that's the economist's words, not mine. it would accomplish this by initiating targeted measures, much of which have garnered overwhelming bipartisan support in the past. the employee payroll tax cut that would be extended under the american jobs act was originally introduced by my friends,

senator schumer and senator hatch. it was ultimately included in the higher act which overwhelmingly passed the senate by a 68-24 vote early in 2010. just over a year ago, it was extended again. this time 139 house democrats and 138 house republicans joined in to support it. in the senate, 37 republican senators joined 43 democratic senators in voting for the extension. cutting the payroll tax for all american businesses is another idea that has gained strong bipartisan support. in fact, it has been the centerpiece of several jobs packages put forward by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. and we all know the negligented state of our nation's infrastructure. crumbling infrastructure just doesn't threaten public safety as it did in minnesota when that bridge collapsed. it also weakens our economy. congestion and inefficiencies in

our transportation network limit our ability to get goods to market. we all know that one of the main ways we're going to get out of this downturn is with exports. well, to truly have the kind of exports that we want to see in this country, we have to be able to take those products and get them on a -- on a truck or get them on a train and get them to a port and get them across the sea or get them on an airplane, and the only way we're going to do that is if we have a transportation system that matches the economic system that we want to be. the congestion, the inefficiencies in transportation exacerbate the divide between urban and rural america that can strain economic development and competitiveness, and they reduce productivity as workers idle in traffic. americans spent a collective 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic. 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic, at a cost to the economy of $78.2 billion or $710

per motorist. think about that. over $700 per motorist simply because of people waiting in line on our highways. what better way to get our struggling economy back on track than to build the 21st century transportation network that our economy demands while creating jobs in the construction industry which, as i mentioned, has been one of the hardest hit industries. the american jobs act would establish the infrastructure bank as a new financing authority to help address some of our nation's most important transportation projects. road, freight rail and water projects in my state of minnesota and across the nation would benefit from access to loans and loan guarantees from this public-private partnership. this approach has bipartisan support here in the senate, as do the other proposals i have discussed, and in march of this year, u.s. chamber of commerce president tom donahue endorsed the idea, saying this -- "a

national infrastructure bank is a great place to start securing the funding we need to increase our mobility, create jobs and enhance our global competitiveness." so pieces of this bill have been supported by the chamber. pieces of this bill have been supported by my republican colleagues. in fak, the major provisions of this bill have been supported on a bipartisan basis. there are other great ideas in this bill as well such as an extension of the bonus depreciation which would allow businesses to continue to immediately write off the cost of investments in new property and equipment. i have to say this was the one thing, mr. president, when i met with our small businesses over the last few years this was the one thing they kept mentioning that this was very helpful for them and would create an incentive for them to invest in equipment. this bill also includes a returning heroes hiring tax credit for veterans which would provide a tax credit up to $9,600 to encourage companies to

hire unemployed veterans. at a time when unemployed veterans of iraq stands at 11.7%, the importance of a provision like this is clear. there is no reason those people who served our country should have to come back to this country and not have a job. when they signed up to serve our country, there wasn't a waiting line and when they come back to america and they need a job or they need college, or they need health care, there shouldn't be a waiting line in the united states. so i'm very glad that this provision is included in this bill to create an incentive to hire the returning veterans, the post-9/11 time period is the most important when you look at that time unemployment rate. with our economy struggling and 14 million americans still out of work, minnesotans want congress to put the politics aside and come together to move our economy forward. it's time to step up and show some leadership, it's time for us to work together to show the american people that washington isn't broken, that instead,

we're willing to put aside our politics to do what we were elected to do, to do what is right for america. i would urge my colleagues to vote for this important piece of legislation that would put americans to work, would help our struggling economy, to get back on track. thank you, mr. president. and i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from ohio is recognized. mr. brown: mr. president, we're in morning business? the presiding officer: that is correct. mr. brown: thank you, mr. president. in an hour or so the senate will be voting, an hour and a half maybe, on our currency bill, s. 1619, the bipartisan bill that i'm the prime sponsor with senator schumer and senator graham and senator sessions and

a whole host of other senators in both parties, senator stabenow, senator snowe, senator collins, senator hagan. i thank my colleagues for the vote last week, well in excess of 60 votes, bipartisan votes, allowing us to consider this measure. i'm struck by some of my colleagues, though, who dismissed this bill. there are opponents to this pill. there are always people who don't want to stand up to china and i think they are frankly undercutting our ability to stop the hemorrhaging in on manufacturing jobs. that's their decision to make, but i'm struck by how some of my colleagues dismissed this legislation as, quote, a message bill. i don't know what a message bill means to anybody outside of washington, d.c. but i know this bill is all about, this is a jobs bill. we've lost -- i was just talking to -- to an anchor on msnbc who said and he's right, we've lost almost three million jobs in the last decade to

china, most of them manufacturing jobs. this isn't a message bill. this is legislation finally standing up to the chinese saying no, you're not going to game the currency system, no, you're not going to export from china into our market and have a 25% or 30% or 35% subsidy, no, you're not going to put up a tariff using currency as that tariff by and large in effect to add 25% or 3030% or 35% to the cost of an american good sold into china. this legislation is all about jobs. it's about jobs and industries that have been holding on for dear life, like paper and steel and tires and aluminum but it's not just paper and zoo steel and tires and alum new mexico. it's no longer a trade deficit. we no long sear a trade deficit in t-shirts and bicycles. this trade deficit with china which has trip entitled the last decade, it's now almost $800 million a day, that means every day, we buy $800 million

more in santa fe and in dayton than we sell to china, every day we buy $800 million more than we sell. we can't keep doing that as a nation. but this trade deficit with china has risen through the economic food chain all the way to advanced technology products. it's not just tires and steel. it's important -- as important as they still are to many, many, many workers in this country, it's also jobs in solar and wind and clean energy component manufacturing. in the auto supply chain, the aerospace supply chain. those are millions of jobs around the country. let -- let me -- the -- this legislation, what this means in so many ways is we can be competitive on all fronts with china and germany and japan. we can compete on productivity, we have skilled workers, we have world-class infrastructures but how do you compete dependence a 25% to 30% subsidy? how can workers in finley who make tires or chill cothlyi who

make paper or defiance 0 make engines? senator merkley noted it's a 20% to 30% tax on our expert. if a company in albuquerque or atlanta or ashtabula makes a product and sends it to china it costs 25% to 30% more because they put a currency tariff on that product. i find it hard to believe that some of my colleagues -- and there were about 30 of them, works want to continue this tax on our exporters. it's pure and simple it's a tariff, a tax on our exporters trying to sell things into the chinese market. senator feinstein spoke about the compelling image she saw from her san francisco home. she said looking at the san francisco bay, she counted the cargo ships departing for asia half filled with mostly scrap paper and other scrap while the incoming ships are

filled with goods. that tells you we buy $800 million more a day to china. not because our workers aren't productivity proif, not because 0-companies aren't efficient, our power scientists and researchers aren't the most innovative in the world, it's because china has a 25% to 30% tax on our are pructsz going there and a subsidy on their products coming here. that's pretty pure and simple, mr. president. for a state like mine trying to get a foot hold on the clean energy and research and production, the race against china will only accelerate in the coming weirs yoo. -- years. that's why it's imperative we don't sit idly by. this is no message bill. we don't sit idly by while china subsidizes its exports through its currency regime. let me speak as the sponsor of this bill specifically about some other charges that have been made about the bill. some of my colleagues note

china's currency has increased about 30% in recent years. no doubt the renminbi has appreciated. since the senate acted in 2005, the renminbi, the chinese currency, has appreciated about 30%. but as the peterson institute for international economics has shown, full disclosure, the institute is not an anti-free trade, pro-fair trade, liberal, progressive, socialist, it's a middle-of-the-road, most free trade organization staffed by -- by sort of elite economists in the northeast. even the peterson institute for international economics has shown it's -- the r.m.b. is more undervalued than just a year ago because of china's rapid growth the past few years as well as inflation and productivity. the peterson institute estimates china's currency manipulation increased from 24% from 2010 to 28.5% in 2011 despite the fact that china's real exchange rate

appreciated over the past year. what that means, mr. president, it's getting worse. so if we want to call this a message amendment, call it whatever you want. it doesn't work with the american public. it may work with some in this institution. but the fact is this is getting worse and that means our manufacturers, the bennett brought in brunswick, ohio, i'll tell you about in a moment. the bennett brothers came to me, we're talking to them in northeast ohio fairly recently, a couple weeks ago. they run a company, family company, been around about 35 years in northeast ohio. and this company is called automation tool and die. they were about to have a million dollars sale to an american company that was looking for their products, and at the last manipulate the chinese came in and undercut them by 20%. why could they do that? because they got a 25%, 30% subsidy, bonus because of their currency. the point is that china is massively and increasing,, increasingly intervening in its

currency. the international monetary fund knows it. the i.m.f. accounted the account surplus which is the broadest measure of the trade balance which double to $852 billion in 2016. the problem is getting worse. if one thing is clear since the senate voted in 2005 to slap tariffs on chinese goods, it's this: the renminbi is pegged to american political pressure. if we can predict anything, we know that if we take the pressure off, china will get worse. if we can predict another thing, we know if this passes and begins to work its way through the house, to the president's desk, that the chinese will respond by significantly appreciating -- appreciating its currency. some of my colleagues wring their hands we might set off a trade war. some say this is the second coming of smoot-hawley. the facts are clear that it's very different from that. during when smoot-hawley was

enacted by the congress, in those days the u.s. had a trade surplus so countries around the world were angered that while we had a trade surplus, we were enacting smoot-hawley more tariffs. today we have the largest trade deficit, one of the largest trade deficits in american history, in world history. so we're in a very, very different position. but as senator sessions has said, when he hears this criticism we might set off a trade war, he says we've been in a trade war for a long time in this country and the chinese seem to be doing very, very well. but they have declared a trade war, that's why they do this with their currency, why they sub disies disiez water and paper and steel and capital lapped. it features spied, the theft of intellectual property and it features that 30% stealth subsidy that gets applied to every export china ships to the united states. so we're in a trade war. the only difference is that on the floor of the united states senate we've taken a big step toward abandoning the failed

tactic of unilateral disarmament. workers in my state know we've been waving the white flag in this war. to my friend i remind them that the united states has more leverage than any of china's trading partners. as china's overly dependent on access to our market. this isn't smoot-hawley as someone wants you to believe. it doesn't mandate sanctions against china or any other nation, does not slap an across-the-board tariff which the senate considered doing once on chinese imports tomorrow as china has effectivelily done to ours. if this bill becomes law the duties would apply currently to less than 3% of chinese imports. and when you think about this, mr. president, the chinese -- the america, of all chinese exports about one-third of them come the to the united states. if senator durbin is in business in chicago and he has a company -- has a company where he has a customer and his company that buys one-third of all of their goods, he's going to be good to that customer.

he's not going to declare war on that customer. the chinese aren't going to declare economic trade war on us because we buy so many of their exports. the presiding officer: the senator's ten minutes have expired. mr. brown: unanimous consent for one more minute, mr. president. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: this bill gets sets in motion a series of steps to place pressure on the chinese nation to stop rigging the exchange rate. c. fred bergsten of the peterson institute tied said some corporations will fret these actions will needlessly antagonize the chinese and threat ean trade war. i believe these fears are overblown. the real threat to the trade system is the protectionist policies of other countries and the vast trade imbalances that result including the undervalued currency. even mitt romney said taking action to prere-move protectionist distortions

wouldn't influential a trade war but failing to act would mean the u.s. has accepted trade surrender. we can vote yes on s. 1619 today. it will mean we'll stand up to the heinz, more importantly a victory for american workers and smeally small manufacturers. -- especially small manufacturers. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois is recognized. mr. kirk: mr. president, i want to talk briefly about the breaking news today that the justice department and our attorney general, eric holder, announced that a plan was conceived, sponsored, and directed from iran to conduct bombings in washington, d.c. and potentially also in buenos aires, argentina. this is from a government that secretary of state clinton designated as a state sponsor of terror and is what i would think of as a very audacious,

forward-leaning plan to attack the united states, its people, and foreign embassies here in the nation's capital. tomorrow in the senate banking committee we will meet with our under secretary of the treasury, a very able man named david cohen. and by -- and i would urge the administration to look at what is the most effective sanction currently pending on our docket against the terrorists in iran. earlier this year, we had 92 senators, just about the entire senate, sign a letter to the president calling for the treasury department to execute a strategy to collapse the central bank of iran. these are the paymasters of the iranian revolutionary guard corps and the intelligence service of iran, the mois, that appear to be involved in the

plot that the attorney general revealed today. it's that action to cut the central bank of iran off from the central payment backbone of the federal reserve, obviously to do it in cooperation with saudi and israeli officials, and given indications from london, from paris and from berlin, probable action by our nato allies as well to cripple iran's currency, to make sure that what's called bank berkaz has no access to the payment mechanisms of the west will lead to a collapse of its currency. i applaud david cohen for designating at least five individuals as sponsors of terror who were part of the iranian revolutionary guard's kuhd's force, with the attorney

general of the united states directly blaming the government of iran for this bomb plot against antarctics in the capital city of the united states. it's clear with over whelming bipartisan support, 92 senators, to collapse the central bank of iran, that would be an effective way to address what is clearly an uttererly irresponsible and largely out-of-control irgc and mois who are seeking to attack american targets. with that, i yield back. mr. durbin: mada mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority whip is recognized. mr. durbin: let me commend my colleague from illinois for speaking out about this iranian plot -- state-sponsored iranian plot to destroy the coted di sad israeli embassies here in washington, d.c. this is an outrage, that they would reach this far this

obviously into the united states. we know that they have backed terrorism forever, as my colleague said, recognized by our government as a state sponsor of terrorism. we need to heightening the sanctions on iran and make it clear that this type of action will not be countenanced. many of us still recall that it's only a few days after the 10th anniversary of 9/11 the last time when terrorists decided they would strike here in the united states. rarms of where the embassy -- regardless of whether the embassy is for the united states, it is in the united states, and being here it is a protected property of our nation. so i would say to the administration, to back up my colleague from illinois, let us look for every available means to let the iranians know that this conduct is not only unacceptable but we will do everything we can to disable them through sanctions from any other further actions along these lines. mr. president, i ask that the

remainder of my statement be placed in a separate part of the record. record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: earlier this morning, the republican leader came to the floor to talk about a vote we will have later this afternoon. we all know the state of our commitment of we're in a position now with 14 million americans out of work, 9 boy 1% unemployment, private-sector jobs going up so slowly that it really isn't getting us back into the kind of economic progress that we need. we listen monthly as the unemployment statistics come out and we are reminded of the weakness of our economy. we have to do something. the choices are to allow this economy to languish or to decline or to step up and do something. president obama has decided that he needs to lead on this issue and bring together democrats and republicans for that purpose. he spoke to a joint session of congress that we attended. it was widely reported.

he said i'm going to put my best ideas on the table, and i invite my republican colleagues to do the same. we cannot stand idly by and do nothing. the president put his proposal forward. it was very clear what he wanted tovmentd he reminded the republicans that many of the things he proposed were actually ideas they had endorsed in the past. and we waited and we waited. and at the end of the day i'm fraid when this vote taken, you will find that few, if any, republican senators will support any effort to try to create jobs in the united states as president obama has proposed. the president has made his position clear. those of us who will vote in support of the president's plan have made our positions clear. but the position on the other side of the aisle is becoming increasingly clear as well. and it really comes down to two things. first, the republicans will not countenance, approve, or even consider one dollar more in taxes for the wealthiest people in america.

for them, that is unacceptable. it is better to do nothing than to impose $1 more in taxes on people making over $1 million a year. they've said that consistently, at every level of the republican party t doesn't reflect the feeling of republicans in america. 59% of them believe the president is right. it is not unfair to ask those who are making over $1 million a year to share the burden and sacrifice of moving the economy forward. independents feel strongly about trgs and obviously democrats do as well. the only republicans who don't share that belief happen to serve in the united states senate, and they believe that $1 more in taxes to pay for the president's jobs program, if it came from the accounts of people making over $1 million a year, sun fair. so we know they're clear on that position. but there's a second position that the republicans have taken that is equally clear. they are prepared to oppose any ideas coming from the obama administration, even ideas that they have conceived and voted for in the past.

i ask my staff to take a look at some of the proposals of president obama in his jobs bill which will come up later this afternoon and see what the record is on the republican side. it is interesting. senator mcconnell and 232 of-- d 32 of his republican colleagues supported president bush's economic stimulus job of 2008. it included tax rebates for individuals tax cuts for small business, which we find in the obama plan, and no offset incidentally. it wasn't paid for. it added directly to the deficit. senator mcconnell and 32 of his republican colleagues voted for that because it had president bush's name associated with t i'm afraid most if not all of them will vote against this proposal because president obama has brought it forward. republicans have supported a payroll tax consistently in the past. here's what senator mcconnell said on fox news on january 2009. "if you want a quick answer to

the question of what would i do, i'd have a payroll tax holiday," senator mcconnell said ""for a year or two that would put taxes in the hands of everybody that has a job. so it would be both a business tax cut and an individual tax cut immediately." mr. president, that's the centerpiece of president obama's jobs plan. it is a plan that was criticized on the floor this morning by senator mcconnell. the approach the president is taking is exactly what senator mcconnell said when he was speaking in the bosom of the lodge at fox news in january 2009. republicans have supported federal help to states -- i won't go through the list, but they have in the past. and it used to be dogmatic that gh came to bidding infrastructure in america, roads and highways and bridges and ports and airnghts it was a bipartisan issue. when the president puts it in his jobs bill, it is rejected.

and you know what the republicans say about the president's jobs bill? you know we've tried all of this before and it didn't work so let's not try it again. so they are summarily jacketing payroll tax cuts for families they have supported in the past. they are rejecting tax cuts for impis to hair the unemployed -- for businesses to hire the unemployed. they are rejecting the notion that we need to build america's infrastructure for the future of our economy, and they have basically said when it comes to trying to make it economy move forward, the only thing they want to do is to pass a trade agreement. we'll consider three of those trade agreements shal agreement. at least two, maybe all of them will pass. it may increase trade, but certainly not in the near term and certainly not to the benefit of 14 million americans -- pardon me, 14 million americans

who are currently unemployed. so, mr. president, it comes down this-to-this: we are going to have a vote later this afternoon. it will be a vote on president obama's jobs proposal. he has spoken to it clearly and n. a joint seelings of congress. he has taken his case to the american people. and he has included provisions which the republicans have historically supported. and i am afraid they're going to walk away from this. the republican approach to this is to do nothing. absolutely nothing. protect millionaires from tax increases and don't give president obama a victory. well, i'll tell you, this is not about a vickery for president obama. it's a vickery for unemployed people across america. that we would do something specific, something direct, something that will have a measurable impact in creating jobs i a troubled that the republican approach is one that just says novment he talks about

the tax hike that is included in our bill that tax hike is a tour tax on those making over $1 million of n.r.c. of 5 30eu6%. it is not too much aifies to ask from those who are the most well off in america. when the senator from kentucky comes and tells us that the earlier stimulus bill failed, i would say to him, remember, over 40% of that bill consisted of tax cuts. it also invested in america in ways that will pay off for years to come. for example, the stimulus bill paid for and built a new terminal at the peoria airport. it is a terminal that created jobs today and will serve the community for decades to come. that stimulus bill has also led to the creation of an intermodal center in bloomington, in downstate, illinois. a proposal that will create jobs now for construction and build for transportation in that community for decades to come.

so for that stimulus to be dismissed is not creating results. i am afraid senator mcconnell needs to journey a little bit north of kentucky and we'll show him results in illinois and all across the united states. mr. president, i yield the floor. and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent that the quorumming disptioned w. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i thank my colleague from illinois for his remarks. in a few wins we're going to vote on a bill that could actually change the coshes of how we trade with china. for a decade, getting worse every year, china has taken advantage of america in every way. currency is at the top of the list. but it's been the theft of intellectual property, the subsidy of indigenous chinese businesses, it's been monopolizing things like rare earth, it's been excluding american products from china when those products would have a competitive advantage, and for the first time this body in a bipartisan way has the ability to say, enough is enough. uncle sam is no longer uncle sap. we are going to create fair

trade with china. this relates to our future, because it no longer is competition over shoes or clothing or furniture, labor-intensive businesses. it is competition over the most high-end things we do, and our companies can win and create jobs here in america if china plays by the rules and plays fairly. but everyone who has been up close to the way the chinese operate know that that will not happen by persuasion, by multilateral talks, by wishing it were so, or even by the healing of time. it will only happen if america stands up for itself, for fairness, for equal treatment. and for the first time, we have the opportunity to get that to happen. some say this is a