attorney general on plenty of issues. my colleagues know that i have been particularly in disagreement with the attorney general on this issue of secret law. i think there are real questions about whether laws that are written here in the congress are actually the laws that govern their interpretations. so i've disagreed with the attorney general on plenty of matters. i think i've demonstrated by writing that law with senator bond that i want to be as tough as possible on leakers. but, mr. president, i would now have to object to the request from our colleague from arizona simply because i believe it is premature and -- and for that reason, mr. president, i object to the request from the senator from arizona. the presiding officer: objection is heard. without objection the material will be placed in the records.

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: mr. president, i think i have time reserved now for up to 30 minutes. and would like to first of all say that the subject we just have been listening to is -- is life-threatening. it's critical. that's not why i'm down here today because we have something else that's very important. so, mr. president, i've come to the floor today with some breaking news. the momentum to stop president obama's war on coal is now so great that some of my colleagues, senators alexander and pryor, are going to introduce a countermeasure to my resolution, my resolution would put a stop to the second most expensive e.p.a. regulation in

history, a rule known as utility mack which is the obviouser of the chair is very familiar with. it's a cover vote, pure and simple. while my resolution requires the e.p.a. to go back to the drawing board to craft a rule in which utilities can actually comply, the measure that senators alexander and pryor are offering would keep utility mact in place but delay the rule for six years. this alternative is a clear admission that the obama e.p.a. policy is wrong but it doesn't fix the problem. it simply puts it off, puts off the day of execution for a matter of six years. now, what's really going on here? since my s.j.r. 37 is what privileged motion it must be voted on by monday, january 18 unless we spend stepped it until after the farm vote that fakes place, that might be a better idea.

it requires 50 votes to pass. the alexander cover bill will likely be introduced tomorrow and will likely never be voted on and require 60 votes to pass. the senators who want to kill coal by opposing s.j. 37 will put their names on the alexander-pryor bill as cosponsors to make it look like they're saving coal when in reality that bill, be the alexander-pryor bill kills coal in six years. we've seen this before. i remember when we considered the upton-inhofe energy tax prevention act when it came to the floor last year. it would have prevented the e.p.a. from regulating greenhouse gases under the clean air act. i'd like to expand on that but there isn't time to do that. my colleagues offered a number of counteramendments so they could have a cover vote. they wanted to appear like they were reining in the out-of-control e.p.a. and i think everybody knows what's going on with all those regulations.

for their constituents back home all the while letting president obama go through with his job-killing regulations. some chose to vote for the only real solution to the problem, the energy tax prevention act, and some chose for the cover vote. but all in all, 64 senators went on record that day as wanting to rein in the e.p.a. but some of them didn't have the courage to stand by it. of course it's highly unlikely that utility mact alternative by senators alexander and pryor will ever get a vote but that's not the point. the point is just to have something out there that senators in tough spot can claim to support. as i've said many times now, the vote on s.j.r. 37 would be the one and only opportunity to stop president obama's war on coal. this is the only vote. there's no other vote out there. if we don't do this, and that

rule goes through, utility mact, coal is dead. this is is the only chance we have. unfortunately we have a thing called the c.r.a., it's a process whereby a senator can introduce a -- a resolution to stop a -- an unelected wrath bureaucrat have having some kind of onerous regulation. that's what i've done with this. this is my only chance for colleagues to show constituents who they really do stand with. do they -- which of their colleagues will vote for the only real solution which is my resolution in which other colleagues will vote for a cover vote. so what's changed over the past few weeks to the extent of my colleagues suddenly feeling it necessary for a cover vote. a lot has changed because the american people are speaking up and they're not happy about the obama e.p.a. when i go back to oklahoma, i mean that's all i hear. it doesn't matter if you're in the ag business, you're in the military business, if you're in the manufacturing business,

they're all talking about the onerous regulations that are taking place in the e.p.a. i'm pleased to say we've picked up support of groups representing business and labor, even more encouraging is a growing number of elected officials are working across the aisle to save coal in the, and the senate has taken notice of the first senate democrats are beginning to come aboard. i want to commend the senator, joe manchin who who happens to be occupying the chair at this time and senator ben nelson, they were the first two senate democrats to come out publicly in support of our resolution. and i must say i'm very glad to see that they have made the right choice to stand with their constituents. senator manchin, his announcement came just after democrat governor of west virginia, governor tomblin, sent a letter asking him as well as senator rockefeller to vote for my resolution because he said e.p.a.'s rules have -- and

i'm quoting now, and the occupier of the chair will know this, quoting now, the democratic governor of west virginia, he said the e.p.a.'s rules have coalesced to create an unprecedented attack on west virginia's coal industry. still quote,, he said this will have disastrous consequences on west virginia's economy, our citizens and our way of life. and that e.p.a. continues on this ill-conceived path to end the development of our nation's most reliable, cost-effective source of energy. i'm very proud of a lot of the officials in west virginia for what they've come out with. the governor tomblin isn't the only democrat to be concerned. the west virginia lieutenant governor, jeffrey kessler, sent a separate letter to the west virginia senators and others asking them to pass s.j.r. 37 in order to save what he called west virginia's -- i'm quoting -- most valuable state natural resource and

industry. he reminds the senators that on may 25, 2012, the state of west virginia challenged the mats rule, that's the kill coal rule and cited four reasons for why the defective rule should be rejected. that's not all. a group of bipartisan slate state slairnlings also from west virginia wrote senators and others urging the support of s.j.r. 37 out of concern for the devastating impacts on west virginia. as they wrote, again quoting, several west virginia power plants have announced their closure and the loss of employment that comes with it. additionally, it is projected that with the implementation of this rule consumer electricity rates will skyrocket. we all know that's true, even the president has stated that. i'd like to note that we have support of nearly 80% of the private sector -- those businesses that president obama claims are doing just fine. apparently they don't think they're doing all that fine.

american businesses are suffering because of aggressive overregulation by the obama administration. let me take a minute to read the names of just some of the groups who are supporting the -- our efforts to pass s.j.r. 37. the national federation of independent business, the u.s. chamber of commerce, american farm bureau, national association of manufacturers, consumers of america, american chemistry council, association of american railroads, american forest and paper association, american iron and steel institute, the fertilizer institute, western business roundtable, national rural electric co-ops association. that's just part of them. and the unions. the unions are coming, too. i've talked about the businesses and read all their groups. they've come to stop the -- the overregulation that's killing jobs. cecil robilities, i had occasion to immediate mete him once, he is the president of the united mine workers, one of the largest labor unions in the country. he recently sent a letter to

senators saying union support for my resolution is -- quote -- "based upon our assessment of the threat that the e.p.a. mats, the coal killing rule, poses to united mine workers association members' jobs and the economies of coal field communities and future direction of our national energy policy." remember, cecil roberts was the one who traveled across the country in 2008 campaigning for president obama. but after four years of his regulatory barrage designed to kill the mining jobs, his union is trying to protect, mr. roberts has said this group may choose not to endorse president obama or just sit the election out. as he explained -- quote -- "we've been placed in a horrendous position here. how do you take coal miners' money and say let's use it politically to support someone whose e.p.a. has pretty much said you're gone?

" with even the democrats and the unions supporting my efforts to save millions of jobs that depend on coal, the e.p.a. has got to be feeling the pressure. gina mccarthy, the assistant administrator for air radiation, came out with a statement last week vehemently denying that utility mact and e.p.a.'s other rules are in effect an end to coal. she said -- quote -- "this is not a rule that is in any way designed to move coal out of the energy system." everybody knows better than that. administrator lisa jackson echoed this sentiment saying it is simply coincidental these rules are coming out at the same time natural gas prices are low so utilities are naturally moving toward the natural gas. her message was don't blame the e.p.a. last week on the senate floor i described why their public health and natural gas arguments don't hold up so i won't go into that today but would i would

like to focus on today is that these claims backing up their efforts to kill coal are just a part of the far left environmental playbook. now, there's a pretty big difference between what e.p.a. is saying publicly and when they talk about their friends when they feel they can let their guard down and admit what's really going on at the e.p.a. it's exactly what happened in a video uncovered, al are a man dare is while president obama was poising in oklahoma pretending to support oil and gas, he told us the truth that the e.p.a. is -- quote -- "general philosophy is to crucify and make examples of oil and gas companies." you may remember last week when i spoke on the senate floor. i talked about a newly discovered video of region one administrator curt spaulding who is caught on tape telling the

truth to a group of his environmental friends at yale university at a gathering there. he said that e.p.a.'s rules are specifically designed to kill coal and that the process isn't going to be pretty. he openly admitted -- quote -- "if you want to build a coal plant, you got a big problem." he goes on to say the decision to kill coal was -- and i'm quoting now -- "painful every step of the way because it could would devastate communities in west virginia and pennsylvania and any area that depends on coal for jobs and livelihood." that's kind of worth repeating. he said it's going to be painful. at least he recognized that. and we all know exactly what he is talking about. i read his whole quotes on the floor of the senate. they're a little too long to read now but he talks about how painful it's going to be for all these families losing their jobs because we're killing coal. i talked a lot about president obama's war on coal last but what i didn't have time to address was the obama

administration's allies in this war. it would come as no surprise that administrator spaulding and many of the e.p.a. are working hand in hand with the far left environmental groups to move these regulations to kill coal. last july administrator spaulding spoke at a boston rally for big green groups -- that's capitalized, big green, supporting e.p.a.'s utility mact rule. that's the rule that would kill coal. in a youtube video, administrator smawlding gushes over the environmental community thanking them profusely for -- quote -- "weighing in on our behalf." you have the e.p.a. admitting big green is working for them. his speech was out of the environmental playbook. this is all about the so-called health benefits of killing coal. he said -- quote -- "don't let anybody tell you these rules cost our economy. this is out of their play book.

administrator spaulding isn't alone in his alliance with big green also appearing with these far left environmental groups was region five administrator susan headman. according to paul chesser an associate fellow for the national league and policy center, headman told supporters at the rally, i'm quoting now, "we really appreciate your enthusiastic support for this rule. it's quite literally a breath of fresh air compared to what's going on in the nation's capital these days." of course the former e.p.a. region 6 administrator are a man dare is -- are a man dareas showed us how close it is with the far left groups. armendariz had agreed to testify before congress. it was actually over in the house. but at the last minute, he canceled. as it turns out, armendariz was in washington that day. while he apparently couldn't find time to testify before congress, he did have time to stop by the sierra club for what

has been described by the group as a private meeting. i suspect that armendariz was there for a job interview. his crucify them resume makes him the perfect candidate. of course, e.p.a. in their big -- and their big green allies can't tell the public the truth that they are crucifying oil and gas companies or that their efforts to kill coal will be painful every step of the way, so they have been deceiving the public with talking points from their playbook. when i say playbook, i mean a literal document telling activists exactly how to get the emotional effects that they want. we recently got a copy of this, and i have got to saiths contents are quite revealing. a coalition of several environmental groups. it's a guideline for environmental activists when they attend hearings with the e.p.a. to support the agent's -- agency's greenhouse gas regulations. a quick search revealed that it

was apparently written by a key player in the sierra club's beyond coal campaign, which is an aggressive effort to shut down all coal plants across america. after offering some tips on the word limit and how to deliver the message, the document urges activists to make it personal. it asks are you an expectant new mother, a grandparent, and if so, it suggests you bring your baby to the hearing as it states some examples of great visuals are -- quote -- "holding your baby with you at the podium or pushing them in strollers, baby seats and so forth. older children are also welcome. it encourages the visual aides of -- quote -- asthma inhalers, medicine bottles, health care bills and all these other things that they -- are good visuals. the american lung association certainly took a page out of this playbook. we have all seen the commercials of the red buggy in front of the capitol. and, of course, the sierra club

put their principles to practice by inundating the american people with images of small children with inhalers. the posters for the beyond coal campaign also featured abdomens of pregnant women with an arrow pointing to the unborn baby. the words on the arrow are -- quote -- "this little bundle of joy is now a reservoir for mercury." another one says she is going to be so full of joy, love, smiles and mercury. of course, the sacramento irony is that the campaign that claims to be protecting this unborn child is the same one that is aggressively pro-choice. it's coming from a movement that believes there are too many people in the world and advocates for population control and abortion. just after my -- after a hearing in may of this year, the sierra club posted pictures of their efforts, and sure enough there is one of mary ann height,

director of the sierra club's beyond coal campaign holding her 2-year-old daughter hazel. but for all their efforts, it is clear that their campaign is about one thing only and that is killing coal. at a hearing, mary ann height with the sierra club said -- quote -- "we are here today to thank the obama administration and show our iron-clad support for eliminating dangerous carbon pollution being dumped in the air." she apparently sees the obama administration as the closest ally in the sierra club's effort, as she has said about the beyond coal campaign. quote -- "coal is a fuel of the past. what we are seeing now is the beginning of a growing trend to leave it there." of course it's not just coal they want to kill. they want to kill oil and gas and coal. it wasn't that long ago that the executive director of the sierra club, he said, and i quote -- "as we push to retire coal

plants, we're going to work to make sure we're not simultaneously switching to natural gas infrastructure. we're going to be preventing new gas plants from being built." so it's not just coal. it's oil. it's gas. you have to ask the question. at least i get the question asked when i go back to my state of oklahoma because there are normal people there and they say if we don't have coal, oil and gas, how do you run this machine called america? the answer is you can't. so as this vote on my utility resolution approaches, look for many of my liberal friends to take their arguments directly out of the far left environmental playbook. get ready to see lots of pictures of babies and children wearing inhalers, but these are the same members who voted against my clear skies bill that would have given us a 70% reduction in real pollutants. i'm talking about sox and nox and mercury. we had that bill up. that's one that would have had that greater reduction than any

president has advocated. when president obama spoke, at that time he was in the senate, he said i voted against the clear skies bill. in fact, i was the deciding vote despite the fact that i'm in a coal state and half of my state thought i had thoroughly betrayed them because i thought clean air was critical and global warming was critical. at an april 17 hearing this year, senator barrasso and another of the sturgeon for tomorrow who testified before the epaw committee, -- quote --n sportsman families been better off had those reductions already gone into effect when they had the opportunity to pass the clear skies? her answer was yes. we're talking about by this time six years from now, we would be enjoying those reductions. now there is crucial differences between clear skies and utility. clear skies would have reduced emissions without harming jobs in our economy because it was

based on a commonsense market-based approach. it was designed to retain coal in america -- american electricity generation while reducing emissions each year. on the other hand, utility mec is specifically designed to kill coal as well as all the good-paying jobs that come with it. e.p.a. itself admits that the rule will cost $10 billion to implement but $10 billion will yield $6 billion in benefits. well, wait a minute. that doesn't make sense. that's a cost-benefit ratio between $10 billion and $6 million of 1,600-1. if their campaign is so focused on public health, why did democrats oppose our commonsense clean air regulations? very simple, because we didn't include co2 regulation in the clear skies regulation. president obama's quote only verifies that he is on record of voting against these health benefits because regulating against greenhouse gases which

have no effect whatsoever on public health was more important. in other words, the real agenda is to kill coal. just before president obama made the decision to halt the e.p.a.'s plan to tighten ozone regulations, then the white house chief of staff bill day lee asked what are the health impacts of unemployment? that is one of the most important questions before this united states senate in preparation for the vote on my resolution, to stop iew tilt m.a.c. what are the health impacts on the children whose parents lose their jobs due to president obama's war on coal. what are the health impacts on children and low-income families whose parents will have less money to spend on their well-being when they have to put more and more of their paychecks into the skyrocketing electricity costs? well, e.p.a. administrator spaulding gave us a clue about the impacts of unemployment. it would be as he said painful, painful every step of the way. do my colleagues in the united

states really want that? so, mr. president, i deeply regret that i have to be critical of two of my best friends in the united states senate, senators alexander and pryor. i say particularly senator pryor, three of my kids went to school with him at the university of arkansas. he is considered part of our family. he is really my brother, but if you have been to west virginia and to ohio and to illinois, to michigan, to missouri and the rest of the coal states as i have and personally visited with the proud fourth and fifth generation coal families as i have and certainly the occupier of the chair has and you know that they will lose their livelihood if alexander pryor saves the e.p.a.'s effort to kill coal, i can't just stand by and idly allow that to happen. let me conclude by speaking to my friends in this body who have yet to make up their minds as to whether they will support my resolution. i know that everyone here in the united states senate wants to ensure we continue to make the

tremendous environmental progress that we have made over the past few years. we really have. the clean air act of many years ago has cleaned up the air, we have had successes. unfortunately, this administration's regulations are failing to strike that balance between growing our economy and improving our environment. rather, this agenda is about killing our ability to run this machine called america. again, i want to welcome the support of senators manchin and ben nelson who listened to their constituents. the rest of the senators from the coal states that i'm concerned about. what about senators levin and stabenow who come from a state that uses coal 60% of its electricity. what about senator conrad from the state -- a state with 85% of the electricity coming from coal? ohio where senator brown is from, 19,000 jobs depend on coal. then there is virginia, home of the senators warner and webb which has -- let's put that up, will you? virginia, it's 31,600 jobs.

16% to 19% increase in utility rates. let me see the next one. the arkansas, the war on coal there, that's 44.9% of electricity generation in the state of arkansas. the next one. the tennessee, 52% of electricity generation, 6,000 jobs. missouri, 81% of electricity generation. 81% in the state of missouri. that's 4,600 jobs at stake. montana, 58%. what's the last one there? it should be pennsylvania. put that down. louisiana, that's 53% electricity generation. these are all states that depend on coal for their electricity generation. and lastly, pennsylvania, 48.2% of electricity generation. 49,000 jobs would be lost in pennsylvania if utility mac

passed. that's significant. i wouldn't be surprised if all these senators from coal states that i just mentioned will vote for senators alexander and pryor's bill. it says let's kill coal but let's put it off for six years. i repeat, it doesn't do any good to delay the death sentence on coal six years. contracts will already be violated and the mines will be closed. so i say to my colleagues that your constituents will see right through those of you who choose a cover vote. the american people are pretty smart and they know that there is only one real solution to stop, not just delay e.p.a.'s war on coal. i hope they will join senator manchin and senator nelson and me and several others and stand with the constituents instead of president obama and his e.p.a. which will make it painful every step of the way for them all. we need to pass s.r.j. 37 and put an end to president obama's war on coal.

you know, this is the last chance that we have to do this. there is no other vote coming along. if you don't want to kill -- if you don't want to kill coal, you have got to support s.r.j. 37. it's our last chance to do it. again, we don't know when this is going to come up. it is locked in, in a time limit unless we by unanimous consent increase that time, and i have no objection to putting it off until after the farm bill because that's a very important piece of legislation, so we'll wait and see with that what takes place. with that, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands in recess until 2:15 p.m.

you. >> a debate now on conservism and the republican party. two american enterprise institute political scholars laid out for and against the perception that the republican has become too extreme. norman ornstein was joined by his colleague steven hayward. this is about an hour. >> good afternoon. good afternoon. my name is carly bowman and a senior fellow here at aei. i would like to welcome all of you to this american enterprise debate, is the republican party too extreme? one of the first things i

learned in coming to aei many, many years ago was the institute's mission statement. 10 simple word. the competition of ideas is fundamental to a free society. with this slogan aei's president, william j. brodie did not mean we simply value competition among various institutions in washington though of course we do. he was equally at home with and championed as his successors have done, spirited debates within the aei family. within the halls of aei we've had many such debates. to name just a few, our scholars have differed strongly over antitrust policy and particularly the wisdom of the microsoft case. those of a more conservative bent have disagreed with libertarians over many issues including abortion, gay marriage and even euthanasia. they have differed on the wisdom of organ donation. scholars here publicly sparred over the merits of a carbon tax. there were disagreements about the iraq war and about

democracy promotion. in the fall aei will publish a book on competing views of china's rise. scholars have even differed with one another about the merits of plastic bags. the debates, the debates have always been vigorous and always civil. our debate tonight on whether the republican party is too extreme is very much in keeping with that history. i would like to acknowledge the work of daniel hanson and lori sanders who worked so hard to make this series a success. our speakers are well-known to you and biographical material is available on aei website. norman ornstein is resident scholar and long time observer in politics. his columns in "roll call" are must read on capitol hill. steve hayward is fellow at aei, an important presidential biographer. we're fortunate to have stuart rothenberg tonight. he is the editor and publisher of the rothenberg political report. a invaluable newsletter

covering house, senate and presidential campaigns and political developments. writes about this twice a week for "roll call" always with with an even-handed tone. perfect for our moderator. stu. [applause] >> thank you, karlin. pleasure to be here for this interesting debate. i feel like i'm the jocko conlan of intellectuals. if you don't know who that is look it up try wikipedia. i am here to give you the rules and and then i will leave the stage to these two gentlemen. i will be back for the q&a. it is pretty simple. we'll begin with eight minute opening statements by each of our combatants followed by five-minute rebuttals by each. a 27-minute, i don't know, who figured this out, it is not 26 or 28 but it will be

27 minutes of q&a or a free-for-all or whatever. followed by five minutes of closing statements by each gentleman. we will be taking questions via e-mail and twitter. for those of you so inclined, the twitter handle is, hashtag aei debates. you can tweet your questions to that. and e-mail is aei debate debates@aei.org. at the end of each round there will be a buzzer or a bell or -- ah. that. which will sound the end of the round. and i will be back in a bit to moderate questions. so now, eight minutes each opening round. followed by five minutes each rebuttals. gentlemen. begin. norm? >> okay. thanks so much, stu. oh.

okay [laughing] thank you, stu and karalyn. thank you all for coming. this debate was precipitated by a "washington post" outlook piece by coauthor, tom mann and i did key to our new book, it is enworse than it looks which by the way makes a great holiday gift. [laughter] i want to start by thanking my friend and opponent, steve hayward but i also want to give profuse things to jeb bush, an aei favorite who said today both ronald reagan and his father would have a difficult time getting nominated by today's ultraconservative republican party, commenting disapprovingly as he did on quote, orthodoxy that doesn't allow for disagreement, doesn't allow for finding some common ground. thank you for your impeccable timing, jeb. i also want to thank allen west, richard murdoch, ted nugent, herman cain, donald trump, michele bachmann, the

237 house republicans and 90% of the senate republicans who signed the norquist no tax pledge and too many more to name for making my task so much easier. after all these thank you i'm tempt to do a seally field and say, you like me, you really like me but surveying this audience, no. [laughter] so onto the debate topic. is the republican party too extreme and i'm going to talk quickly because i've got a lot of things to say and evidence to provide and eight minutes isn't a lot. i won't talk as quickly as my son who did policy debate where you blurt things out but i'll allied over some things. let me start emphasizing what i will not be saying. i will not say one party is good and the other is evil. there are no angels here. sharp partisanship and hard ball politics are normal and both parties often will edge up to the line and sometimes go over. i will not say that all republicans are extreme.

many including some very strong conservatives want to solve problems and find common ground where they can. and i will not say that it is conservatism that is extreme. ronald reagan, jeb bush, bob bennett, bob english, chuck hagel, mitch daniels, mickey edwards to name a few of many are plenty conservative and not extreme. now i'm going to suggest that a party can be extreme in three ways and i will discuss each. tactics, ideology and rhetoric. first tactics. i should emphasize tactics do depend on context. i posit that the gop has adopted a set of parliamentary tactics in a nonparliamentary system in a way that is unlike any we have seen before. underscoring some of jeb bush's points, purely oppositional and obstructionist disdaining problem-solving, defining its partisan adversary as the enemy and opposing positions often because of who is supporting them, not because of what is in them. now the first evidence comes

from the filibuster, let me put up a chart. which is now being applied in a fashion unseen in all of previous american history. i don't have time to go over the history of the filibuster. much of it is in the book. did i mention it makes a great holiday gift? but, let me say that in the past filibusters were used rarely for an issues of great national moment by a minority feeling intensely about them and willing to stop everything and throw themselves into making their point. now it is used routinely as a weapon of obstruction. cloture motions were roughly two a month in the 1970s. three a month in the 1980s. now there are two or more a week. i have to say to be sure that the minority has a point here. many cloture motions are filed prematurely. they're designed to shut off the minority's ability to debate an issue. that's true. and it is a chicken and egg

question here but it doesn't explain multiple filibusters on bills and nomination that garner unanimous or near you nan mous support. some examples the workers, homeowners business assistance act. two filibusters passed 98-0 but took four weeks and seven full days of floor time. credit cardholders bill of rights. 90-5. seven days of floor time. fraud and enforcement recovery act and mortgage and security ford. 92-4 on passage. six days of floor time. simply to stretch out the time frame and take the most precious commodity of the senate and block things from happening. the same has been true of nominations. the most prominent being court of appeals judge barbara keenan. 99-0 on cloture vote. 99-0 on confirmation but filibustered and delayed for weeks and nomination that took many months before it came up. even more striking on nominations, filibusters used for what we call the

new nullification, also unpresented. blocking people who are widely considered even those opposing them being fully qualified and passing every vetting standard but blocked for things like the consumer financial protection bureau, the center for medicaid and medicare services because the people blocking them don't like the laws that have been legally and constitutionally enacted and want to keep them from being implemented. now on tactics if i had a lot of time i could go on to talk in detail about the debt limit used for the first time in history as a hostage to nonnegotiatable demand and filling mitch mcconnell's prediction, used apparently routinely for hostage-taking. two other washington examples of extreme tactics. the greg conrad fiscal commission where people who supported it and cosponsored it and voting against their own bill because they didn't want to give a victory to the other side. the same with the bennett-wyden health reform bill. i want to emphasize these sorts of tactics are not

simply limited to washington. earlier this year a bill sent to pennsylvania governor tom core bet to name a bridge in pennsylvania after a local victim of the 9/11 attacks in new york. the mary ellen tiese memorial 9/11 bridge was adopted by pennsylvania house and senate governor corbett reduced toe sign it and accepted all other comparable bills? why? because it was introduced by a democrat, state representative camille george. these tactics have been succinctly defind by richard murdoch who beat richard lugar for the nomination for senate in indian who said among any things by partisan ought to consist of democrats coming to the republican point of view. now on ideology, in a larger sense, vote records and public opinions surveys show what happened idealogically to the two parties in congress. let me quickly put up a couple of charts that show what's happened over time in congress, voting records for the senate and the house.

and what you will see is, clearly the republicans in congress are the most conservative that they have been in our lifetimes and indeed, perhaps more conservative than in a century. democratic party especially as it lost its southern democrats, moved somewhat to the left but nowhere near as much. let me quote on this particular topic of ideology, maybe the most prominent and respected conservative intellectual. this kind of conservatism would be unrecognizeable to, for example, calvin coolidge, a current sentiment tall conservative favorite who favored minimum wage laws and child labor regulation. or president reagan who favoredded large-scale government science research beyond missile defense. that quote came from steve hayward. [laughter] the new republican party in congress voted just recently to pick an example to kill the census bureau's annual american community survey and economic census which

has been used by businesses for a variety of vital purposes to establish transportation routes, track inventories, pick plant sites. used by police departments to track the crime and just let me quote, representative daniel webster who sponsored it of the survey. it is not scientific. it is a random survey. you can see, you can see why he is not on the intelligence committee. [laughter] now i've got lots of other examples. of course examples on rhetoric that start with allen west and move to many others which we'll have to discuss during rebuttal or other times. that's my eight minutes. >> i want to begin by thanking alan grayson, bernie sanders and democratic state senator in maine who said dick cheney should be executed for war crimes. those are the gifts that keep on giving. that is not really i want to start. i'll start this way.

the legend is told when conquering roman generals would return to the victory parades on the boulevards of rome they would place a slave behind him to whisper in his ear, all glory is fleeting. norm is our slave here at aei. although some people might use a more contemporary word beginning with a b. >> [inaudible]. >> so people ask me a t, so what's the trick? does norm have make ked pictures of arthur brooks or something? no that wouldn't work because arthur works out. norm is very valuable presence around our hallways. he keeps us on our game. he prompts us not to confuse ideology with partisanship or let ideology become idiocy through laziness or complacency. it is quite useful toe have someone around to point out our inconsistencies and blind spots and petty hypocrisys. norm makes us better here and sharper in our work even if we sometimes mutter about his latest provocation when

he leaves the lunchroom. seeing interest in unloved congress stems for his deep affection for the first branch. his grief is broken and sincere. worry about its future well-founded. his work here at. aei on continuity of government project urges us to takes respective remedies against a worst case terroist strike is highest value in contrast to the continuity of government project i'm less enamored when i take his community of liberalism project emerges in the new book in the recent washington post features. about the book i read it and say it is indeed even worse than it looks [laughing] though it does make a, does make a good holiday gift. i agree with that. [laughter] now, there is no doubt that we live in a time of heightened polarization making task of government earning immensely difficult. observing unstable equalibrium a very distinguished political scientist made the following observation. quote, democrats and republicans are at the same

time swaggering and uncertain. secure and paranoid. each side is confident in its own domain but thrown off stride but its abject failure to extend its popularity and control for the other's turf. each party is fearful that it will make a mistake and lose its own empire not just for one term but for decades. and each side is hopeful that it can finally capture its rightful and complete majority by forcing the other to make a fatal mistake. the result is passive aggressive politics. the politics of avoiding blame. each side so so concerned about avoiding mistake and so intent on tarring opposition taking risks to make better policy is increasingly uncommon. that is pretty good of analytical description of the scene today. correctly perceiving fearful symmetry of the two parties and rightlies assigning equal blame to both parties. this assessment comes from, norm ornstein writing back in 1990. what happened to that guy? i miss him.

was his body snatched by pot pod people from planet mann? by the way, the title of that article those words appeared was called the permanent democratic congress. maybe there is some nostalgia at work. seems like a golden age when norm put it in the article the republicans were the chicago cubs much american politics. according to the mann-stein hypothesis i call it, republicans are insurgent outlyer in american politics disproportionately responsible for the problems of government norm described. they say polarization is asymmetric or as they put it bluntly in the post, it is the republicans fault. now it is passing strange to call one of the political parties an outlyer when it happens to be at its highest level in terms of elected officials nationwide in 70 years. unless you're prepared to take the next step suggest the american people have taken leave of their senses. some people on the left do that but does not appear in the norm's book.

it is conspicuously absent in fact. although i will say one of the odd things about the book you hardly notice that the election of 2010 took place. moreover, it has to be inconvenient for the man-stein high path is republicans didn't start winning majorities when they began self-conscious term to extremism they deplore. some people never got over the 1994 election. subject of extremism in a moment but i want to lay down a couple of markers. norm's charts are compelling on surface and the book does contain a catalog of genuine republican embarassments and hypocrisys. that data is susceptible to alternative explanations. more to the point is it true the partisanship of pubbings today that kind of partisanship tip o'neal to forbid house democrats to. same position by hill democrats in george w. bush's second term when i proposed entitlement reform? is the republican

harrassment and obstruction nominees no more frequent and fundamentally different than the way democrats use the oversight process to harass reagan appointees in the 1980s when they didn't agree with the policies agencies were trying to promote? that extended on occasions to eliminating salaries and budget appropriations. or cutting programs funds for long established programs. now we could waste a lot of time debating whose political calipers are more finely tuned. it is quite foot tell it argue in a soldier mann mow he had. we can dispense with the balance sheet. i think wither into nothingness when the veil is torn away. take for example, the view that expressed in the book that the democratic party is quote, more idealogically centered and diverse and is a status quo party, protective of the government's role as it has developed over the course of the last century. now seems to me it doesn't take an extremist to say that's precisely the problem.

let's see. let me see if i got this right. democratic party is status quo party until they get the opportunity to ratchet up the state in a big way which has been the story of most of the last century. after which they sit back and protect the new status quo and republicans are supposed to be just fine with this? this is base stealing that would astound ricky henderson. they further argue that quote, the culture and idealogical center of the republican party must change if u.s. democracy is to regain its health. what this amounts to the republican party should return to the historic role of last century of playing the washington generals to the democratic party harlem reform trotters as he call them. or return to accommodating moderation that prompted great eugene mccarthy say the principle use of moderate republicans is shoot the wounded after the battle is over. i suspect that the mann-stein ideal of good government would be president david gergen. so to the question question is the republican extreme?

i can only answer i certainly hope so. let us recall that the republican party began its life as an extremist party dedicated to purpose of abolishing the twin relics of barbarism. polygamy and slavery. within a year of its founding supreme court dedeclared the republican party platform unconstitutional. the republican he wishes wrae should have we should accommodate ourselves to the status quo. likewise today there is little reason or purpose for the republican party unless it acts with a new determination to call a decisive halt to the endless ratcheting of expansion of centralized government power and reckless spending. the man-steen hypothesis is gaining prominent placements in the post and procuring adoration from daily show audiences but i remind norm one thing, all glory is fleeting. [laughter] i had it timed out. >> first minute 1/2, steve,

i don't disagree with a thing that you said. [laughter] let me next say that i don't know which is more disorienting to me. picturing naked pictures of arthur brooks or david gerg begin as president. they're both on the same par. let me move on to some of your arguments when i wrote that piece in 1990, by the way i noted in that point what would likely end the democratic majority moving up towards 38 years would be a democratic president and the counterpoint that would take place. but things have changed since 1990. and indeed many of the arguments that i would make here, i want to go back where i started, that, neither party is an angel here. both have often crossed lines and done things that are deplorable and i in the past have condemned democrats for the way they handled the bork presidential or excuse me, supreme court nomination. blocking miguel estrada.

statements like people like allen west or cynthia mckinney. steve wrote earlier when we singled out allen west who said, you will recall, that between 79 and 81 democrats in the house are members of the communist party, and he wrote, well, what about cynthia mckinney. i don't remember the democrats condemning her. so i just went back and looked and, -- we have this, a faulty timer. and, i got a whole bunch of newspaper and other clippings, democratic leader condemns mckinney. democrats get distance from mckinney. so there are differences here. on that front. but more significantly, is so much of this is a matter of degree and not kind but also some of the unprecedented things that itch mentioned. we want to look at blocking nominations, i can show you chart after chart of the number of nominations

blocked compared to what we had in the reagan years, and the swiftness with which executive and judicial appointments went through. if we want to talk about cooperating with the president instead of drawing lines in the dust, i look at just two points of comparison. when george w. bush came into the white house, in, in a white house that was at that point in tatters almost. we had the most controversial election at least in our lifetimes if not in american history. you had a president who had no coattails. 36 days to come in, facing an adversarial environment. it would have been very easy for democrats to hold a indidder meeting on inaugural eve say the way we can really regain power is to stomp on his neck and never let up. vote against everything he wants and block him and his presidency will die. instead they cooperated immediately on no child left behind with george miller and ted kennedy i did. that gave him a victory that

established the legitimacy of his presidency whether you like the substance or not. democratic votes provided the margin for the tax cuts, like those were a hallmark of the bush presidency. democrats saved the votes on the tarp program, like it or not, that saved the bush presidency. now contrast that with what we know from another book, robert draper's about the meeting that took place with top republican leaders on inaugural eve in 2009. a president who came in a landslide with 70% approval rating and worst economy since the great depression. we'll vote against everything and make the victories look so ugly it will delegitimatize it all. i think that is the difference. i think when you look at things like blocking nominations that are widely acceptable because you don't want bills to be implemented that is a difference. now let me address for just a second the argument that you made that our colleague peter wallison made in print when he said tom and i had lost our marbles and how could a party be extreme if it wins elections and continues to win elections?

let's think of some examples in history of parties that were very extreme and won elections. now, peter is old enough to remember the 1930s. in fact he is very, very old. [laughter] he is perhaps our oldest colleague. but, i could give you some examples from the '30s. parties win elections when people are unhappy. in our system, especially, elections get won and lost far more often because they are referendums what is going on. bad economies bring bad elections. what republicans learned from 1994 and 2010 is, if you make the process look awful, look even worse than it usually is, make it even worse than it looks, you may well win elections as people rebel against what they see as party in power. that is a good thing if you want to win elections. it is not a good thing if you want to solve problems and govern. i think that is what behind jeb bush, no raving liberal being upset about the direction in which his party

is going. >> well, i will say about jeb bush the bush family still hasn't gotten over losing in 1908 to re onaldus magnus i will leave it at that. a lot has changed since 1990 even the early 80s people didn't start to crystalize this until the 1990s and this. came up in the famous question in the debate this year of the republican candidates, would you take a tax deal that was one dollar of taxes for 10 dollars of spending cuts and they all raised their hand no. on surface this is propros trusted idea. you keep one dollar taxes and i will take the $9 in cuts. no one had the wit to say that. why was that answer given by the field the history of the last 30 years, longer than that since politics became closer is that these deals never work for republicans.

they have seen this movie before. how many times did the republican charlie brown have to fall for the lucy and the football trick? that explains a lot of the idealogical fervency that is much stronger than it was 25, 30 years ago. and i think it explains why you now see the rise of the tea party. which i do think is the republican analog of the antiwar movement in the democratic party 35, 40 years ago. a very disruptive force. might even tear the party apart. we'll come back to all that. you mentioned the great, gregg conrad commission. president walking away from the simpson-bowles commission. we can play tennis like this all day. make one other point and stop and go to audience questions. want a little piece of evidence why i think the fundamental, a, not a fundamental problem is that the democratic party has never gotten over the presumption that they deserve to be the permanent ruling party in america this

explains some of i think symmetry, ferocity of the political competition. maybe best example, this one is little old and i still think captures very well, 2004 election. remember all that? republicans extended their majorities held in house and eight and a half years in the senate in that election. and, remember that tom daschle was defeated, the majority leader in part because of the argument that he had been obstructionist to nominees, right? well, in comes harry reid as new majority leader. "new york times" asked for comment from joe biden who said this. that people are looking to harry to being a spokesperson of the democratic party. that is not a role all majority leaders fulfilled before. what did he say, majority leader? hadn't been in the majority 10 years. joe biden, but he is vice president. already dianne feinstein who i like to call the queen mum of the democratic caucus who told "the times" in the same article if we keep going on

this way we'll be a minority party. now, this kind of presumption made perfect sense in 1955 or 1965 or even as late as 1985 to a certain extent. it really doesn't make sense after the 1990s. and so one of the things that you see, this is subtext often in liberal righting and liberal analysis, that there is something unnatural about a republican majority. i think this adds to the ferocity, quite properly so in some respects republicans say we'll not kick that football again. so let's bring stu back. . .

>> mitt romney as his presidential nominee and four years earlier nominated john mccain as his presidential nominee. how does that fit with your idea that this is such a bunch of crazy radicals, and that's part a. and, steve, i thought i'd ask you, um, to address the following point, that what might make the republicans radical in this day and age is their understanding or maybe norm might say their misunderstanding of the legislative process, that the nature of a legislature involves give and take and negotiation and compromise and that if you listen to many republicans these days, compromise is a dirty word, and they seem unwilling to compromise. and if that's how they approach the nature of the legislative process, it undermines the institution, the fundamental

nature of the institution. norm, why don't you start and then, steve? >> sure. and i think the best way to answer that is to look at what mccain and be romney had to do to win nominations and where they are. i worked a lot with john mccain who has been through much of his career very conservative and a problem solver, somebody who looked for solutions on immigration, on climate change, on campaign finance and in other areas and abandoned all of those positions as he moved forward to win a republican nomination. i look at a mitt romney who's taken a position on immigration that has made sheriff arpaio and rustle pierce -- russell pierce ecstatic and a position that i would view as extreme and outside the bounds of our normal politics. a candidate who openly embraces donald trump who even george will calls an ignoramus but has gone over the line, it seems to

me, in terms of somes of the things he's said. and when i've talked to jon huntsman who couldn't even get traction in a presidential contest partly because of his own missteps, but about the litmus test he views candidates now have to take. and once you take those positions, you have to hold to them. and i view mitt romney as somebody who is not just the etch a sketch guy, but the chameleon. but that doesn't matter. he will move into office and basically be both bound to what he has promised in the past, but also to a legislature that has moved far enough outside, and that includes budget and tax positions that it seems to me go very far from what we have seen in the past that would leave him at the edges, whatever his internal beliefs, if they exist. >> all right. [laughter] steve? >> actually, i'm going to speak analytically about this a little

bit. i actually think there's quite a bit to be said that the republican party, i'm not sure if it's not understanding the legislative process or isn't very good at it. i have a couple thoughts on this. one is i think the republican party's ability to as a legislative party atrophy during those decades when they were out of power. and during that period what did republicans succeed at? well, they succeeded in electing presidents, starting with eisenhower and especially the nixon era. the two parties had a slightly different character somewhat related to their ideology, but somewhat related to their experience. the democrats became a more legislative-minded party. they're better at running congress, there's no question about that, and republicans have yet to prove they're any good at governing as a majority. this is looking back at a moment to organize the tea party, it would have happened earlier. so in 2006 when tom delaware lay says we -- delay says we can't cut spending anymore, there was

nothing left of conservative republicanism in running congress. they'd become an establishment party that was only maybe -- actually, not really any better than a democratic party from a conservative point of view. so the big challenge for republicans if they can win, in the gingrich years they had clinton as a foil. so they got things done because that kind of worked in opposition, but they have yet to prove that they can actually govern as a majority party, even a parliamentary sense or any other, and that's going to be a big test if they happen to win the election. >> okay. we're going to go to questions, but i want to remind people they still can either e-mail their questions to aei debates at aei.org or twitter at hash tag -- i've now said hash tag twice today, that's the most times i've ever said "hash tag" in a 4-hour period. [laughter] >> your kids are so impressed. >> aei debates. let's start off with this one,

and i'll add a p.s.. what is the role of the tea party, and is it the reason or how much of the reason at all that you think that the republicans are extreme, and how do you think that the tea party fits into the republican party and this whole question of extremism? why don't we have steve start. >> well, i already mentioned a little bit. i think it really is for the first time, i don't know, maybe norm will correct me, but it is a pretty substantial populist movement on the right. you never saw conservatives out in the streets much over the years. i mean, they do lots of stuff, but actually doing rallies the way the tea party did, that was unprecedented. >> they were all in the country clubs though. [laughter] kidding. >> come on, help me, there's got to be a good joke about a country club riot, right? [laughter] this has been coming for a long time in a lot of ways. as i said, i'll just dilate the point a little more. just as the new left and its associated parts pushed the democratic party to the left in

the '60s and '70s to the rue nation of johnson in '68 and mcgovern, you know, lots of problems. the tea party's problematic for republicans. i happen to like them myself, because they're my kind of peeps. but at the same time as an analyst you can see, i'll put it to you this way, i was going to say this in my closing, but i'll do it now. one of my ironic criticisms of norm's book is they don't actually take its thesis seriously enough in this sense. seems to me there's a real prospect and problem for the republicans is that they might fracture in two either for the reasons i was just mentioning or for other reasons. and there was talk of would there be a tea party candidate this year. should there be tea party candidates challenging for congressional offices and independently, right? and, you know, that would look like something like -- not quite the same, but manager like the wallace -- something like the wallace candidacy in '68. and it split the republican party. at that point i predict that tom and norm would look back with

fuzzy sentimentality on the prudent leadership of mitch mcconnell and john boehner. [laughter] >> norm, could i ask you to comment on the tea party, and then i'll ask you a part b, although it's not asked here, could you then comment on the occupy wall street movement and whether you regard that as extreme. >> sure. and, you know, i think these -- let me say the tea party movement is a populist movement just as the occupy movement is. it rose during a time, as it usually does, of economic turmoil. populism is deep this our dna. it was an attack on leadership and establishment leadership. but i think we often use tea party as a kind of shorthand that simplifies things a little too much, and it gets to one of steve's points. the headaches for john boehner especially, less membership mcconnell -- mitch mcconnell who i think has been very cold-blooded in the his strategy in a way that boehner hasn't, but it was in the house far more

than the freshmen tea party members, the members of the republican study committee including long-time veterans like jim jordan of ohio and mike pence and a thurm of others -- a number of others who posed a much deeper challenge. but with all of that a part of the problem was there's a natural tendency when you have this movement emerging and people who are energized to ride that tiger and to exploit it as much as you can and believe that once you have taken them past the finish line, you can co-opt them. and i'll change the animal metaphor. if you cultivate a hungry and rabid rot wilier and it scares everybody in the neighborhood, that can be fabulous for you until you have to go outside. and then it may not recognize who the master really is. and i think it's been frustrating for a john boehner who at root is a legislator and a problem solver that he can't control his troops. and that's a part of what's going on here.

what's also true and, stu, you know this as well as anybody having interviewed is and talked to candidates who become members, the tea party coming in the as freshmen in 2010 viewed themselves as different from the 1994 class, the gingrich class. what's the difference? we share a lot of ideology, but they went washington. so if you think the 1994 gingrich republicans went washington and they compromised and you're not going to do that, that tells you something about where we are. a word or two on the occupy movement which i think, also, emerged from the same roots in a similar way, but it tells you a little bit of a difference, almost the tribal difference between the two parties. the tea party movement was leaderless, it emerged from the bottom up, but they organized. they found candidates. they moved through and into the political process as it was to have an impact, and they did. the occupy movement has occupied. they're sitting this waiting for something to happen -- there

waiting for something to happen. and can they've had an impact, i think, in changing the dialogue. the 1%, the 99% that's out there. and the fact that you even had the publisher of the manchester union leader before the new hampshire primary saying that he was going to endorse newt gingrich and not mitt romney because mitt, nice guy, embodied the 1% tells you the impact that they've had. but have they had an impact on our politics or on the legislative process? no. find me one candidate who was recruited as an occupy wall street candidate to run for any office. i haven't found one yet. so there's a real difference and, of course, it gets back to why will rogers said i'm not a member of any organized political party, i'm a democrat. [laughter] >> all right. i have a -- now, a number of these questions are combatants here have already taken a, sort of a shot at, been part of their earlier comments. but i think this is a very

direct question, and norm, i'll start with you on this. maybe i'll elaborate. the question is simply doesn't it seem like democrats are unwilling to meet the gop halfway? and if i may just add to that, um, it seems to many -- i think, steve, that the republicans went more than halfway for much of the last century, they went 80% of the way, 90% of the way and that now simply the republicans are sticking up for republican principles while democrats are refusing to move at all their way. comment? >> i don't, i do think that there is a point to be made that if you're a status quo party and you're a party that doesn't like the status quo, there's some unease that you just continue that status quo. although we made a point of saying we're talking about a status quo that goes back a century. it's a status quo that started with teddy roosevelt and building even some basic regulatory regime that carries through the new deal. moving back before the roosevelt

era -- and we're already starting there, the new gilded age is upon us -- still leaves me with some pause. but i can understand that point. having said that, i think if you look at, for example, the trajectory of discretionary domestic spending which is most of government as we know it, it has been both leveled off and declined significantly. steve talked about how those deals were all so bad, and republicans have been screwed repeatedly. i'll go back to my friend jeb bush who noted the 1990 budget agreement where you actually got some very significant spending restraint with tax increases, and as conservative bruce bartlett has said many times, when you find that you cut taxes, you don't cut spending, when you raise taxes, you do. and can that's where we've seen those dynamics at work. i think you do see some significant opportunities here to do more than meet halfway with the gang of six plan. and steve mentioned the

simpson-bowles commission. i will just note that when president obama said positive things about the gang of six plan and said this is a framework from which we can work, a senior republican leadership aide in the senate wrote to politico and said, well, that kills it. if he's for it, we're against it. so i think we're not seeing that dynamic play out quite the way some of the critics would have suggested. >> now, oh, this is way too fun. [laughter] first of all, we should, i think, speak precisely and say ex-conservative bruce bartlett. anyway, and then obama saying positive things about the gang of six deal, you know, i had a slightly more cynical take on that. that was his way of killing it. given the atmosphere you've described, the quickest way for obama to kill a deal he doesn't like is to praise it directly and out front. maybe i'm being too cynical, i don't know. so here's the problem, to sort of restate it. i've actually, i'm surprised norm hasn't brought it up yet.

i've actually toy with the the idea that, yeah, maybe we should raise the taxes on the 1% because so many of them vote for obama, and they deserve it. [laughter] but the more serious part of the theory is that if you want people to want less government, maybe they ought to pay for all the government they get and they'll want less of it. welcome to grover's wednesday meetings. however, here's the difficulty. what we've seen now under obama is we have seen the federal government's share of gdp go from its his to historic range t 21-23% during peacetime with all the projections and entitlements taking it up over 0 in the years -- 30 in the years ahead. we've already raised the baseline for a lot of programs going forward, and we're told, oh, meet us halfway. that's notwithstanding any reasonableness on my part or, i suspect, babier and others have -- boehner and others have said we're open to higher

revenues. but obama doesn't want to have that argument. he really wallets to tax the rich -- wants to tax the rich whether it's pro-growth or not, and that's going to be -- people are going to have to move off of that if there's going to be any move on the republican side. >> do you want to respond? >> um, well, i could give a fairly robust response to that including that, basically, if you look at most of government other than entitlements which have been supported by both, um, that spending has gone down. but the more important point is you've seen a willingness, you know, you can say it's a cynical move by supporting something. when a president says he is supportive of a plan that makes dramatic cuts in most of government which is what the gang of six plan endorsed by tom coburn, saxby chambliss, mike crapo among others did, you have laid down a marker that's a very different marker than what

republicans other than john boehner have laid down. as soon as they got to a dime in revenues in the negotiations around the debt limit, eric cantor walked out and made it clear that there wouldn't be any negotiations over that sort. and we're now dealing with a world in the which there will be some increases overall because we have a population that's aging and living longer. that however you want to deal with it, we are going to have some increases in entitlements although we can curb that rate of growth. but when you've got taxes that are at the lowest level of gdp since the 1950s, the idea that cutting them further will enable you the deal with deficits and debt can, i find just bizarre. >> with okay, the next question. there are members -- i get this question all the time when i give speeches. this is one of the classic questions of any speaker. we have members of the media here, so this is a terrific opportunity to beat up on somebody, right?

[laughter] so the question is, and we'll start with you, steve, and then norm. how much does the media make the republican party look more extreme than they really are? is this, does the media become a factor here or not? >> um, i think it was, there's this quote that went around, i think, in the 2004 election i think it was from, i think, evan thomas that said the media's worth 15 points to john kerry. i think that's completely wrong. republicans seem to be able to win despite media criticism or hostility. and also i think what's really fun these days is people, i just watched robert rice give a lecture about, gosh, we all liked the good old days when we watched the same network news. well, the media monopoly's over. that's not without its problems. that's a reasonable criticism. but i think to the extent that media bias was really the most egregious in the goldwater

years. media coverage was atrocious. i think a lot of it is still pretty bad, but i don't want tend to play that game much. >> norm, any thoughts? >> yeah, of course. tom and i have rib a lot about this -- written a lot about this. i do think there was substantial media bias in the 1960s, there's no doubt about it. i think, of course, our media environment has changed radically. we have a partisan press now that is back to the future, but with much greater reach, depth and immediacy than we have ever seen before. and that has added to our complications because it's creating different sets of facts for people, and if we're going the talk about the media, you have to start with that. and, you know, when you live in a world where 30 or 40% of the self-identified members of one party believe the president isn't legitimate because he wasn't born in the united states, it tells you something about the way our media dynamic is working. that's left the remaining mainstream press with a bit of a dilemma, and i believe they've

solved that dilemma by falling back on you report both sides of the story. whether there are six sides or one side, you report both sides of the story. so that means if there's a holocaust denier and a holocaust victim, you want to give both sides equally. if there's a hit and run driver and a hit and run victim -- and i don't think it works very well. and among other things, i think it's helped to enable some of the disfunction we have now. go back to the filibuster. when you get news stories that say that bills died in the senate when they got a majority of support and died only because of filibusters and you don't mention the filibuster, that seems to me to be an inaccurate way of reporting what actually went on, and it means that in the end -- however this plays out with either party -- you're not holding people accountable for their actions. >> norm, i want to follow up, and then you get a shot at this. try to imagine -- this might be

uncomfortable -- but try to imagine mitt romney is elected president, the republicans win the senate, pick up six seats or something, the house is about the same. shouldn't we expect the democrats in op is decision to behave -- in opposition to behave just like the republicans are behaving now, or do you think that they will be magnanimous, looking to concede the republican agenda? are they really going to behave so differently? >> um, it'll be interesting to watch. i think democrats are going to say you did it to us, we'll do it to you. but whether they can work together to do that remains to be seen. but let me give you another scenario that's a little more comparable. imagine if the democrats hold the senate and mitt romney becomes president. do i think at that point the democrats are going to say crew you, we're -- screw you, we're going the behave the way the house republicans did, block

everything, hold everything hostage? no. i think mitt romney is going to go to democrats in the senate far more frequently than he will to republicans and say, please, help me out here. and i would bet a considerable amount -- not $10,000, i don't have that kind of money. [laughter] but i would bet a considerable amount that he would find plenty of democrats willing to cut deals with him. >> steve? >> um, one of the problems that norm and can tom correctly identify in their book is that both parties are now subject to enormous pressures from the outside groups. now, i didn't develop that, sorry we don't have to, but some of their reforms over the past 30 years are part of the cause of that. it's their fault this has happened. however, the groups are -- so there exists on the left, i have to think of some examples, the rough equivalent of grover norquist's pledge. the pressures being brought from

organized labor, from certain other groups for the democrats to draw a line in the sand is going to be enormous. hard to resist these days with independent money and the way political organizations are established. and this point, this is one of my arguments with norm we've had in another domain on political reform in general. richard lugar might still have a seat if you had the old, robust central part organizations that have been undermined by various campaign finance reform schemes and so forth that have diminished the power of central party organizations and and increased the power of independent organizations and insurgent groups such that a political party establishment is not very well established anymore and can't come to the rescue of their moderates or long-time, long-serving members. >> probably have time for maybe one or two before closing statements. so let me start with you, steve. this is a question that was asked, and norm raised the debt ceiling vote or votes earlier, and so somebody asked was the

debt ceiling debate an example of extremism, or do you think that it was an appropriate tool to constrain government? >> um, i'd answer it this way, the fight over the debt ceiling represents the new moment we're in when republicans are saying -- they've actually become now the buckleyite conservative party yelling stop, enough is enough. now, norm is right, it's a very dangerous thing to do although i'm not much inpressed by credit ratings. the same beam who said -- people who said that fannie mae and freddie mac were just find. the optimist in me thinks that however the election turns out that first be run of the debt ceiling which ended as a butt of a -- as a bit of a train wreck, it hike the fiscal equivalent of the reykjavik summit of arms control which everyone knows ended in failure and gloom and

turned out to be the key moment when people came back and said, no, we're going to have to see our way through this. so we may have to go a few rounds on this. i'll stop there. >> norm, isn't this just a modern version of the game of chicken, and the republicans are playing it better than the democrats? >> i will say i was appalled by what happened with the debt limit, and we've written about this. you don't play chicken with the full faith and credit of the united states. and, you know, it's true, the debt limit -- which is a stupid thing to do, first of all, we're one of only two countries that does it, you are ratifying previous debts, you're not actually extending it, but it's been a political football ever since we've done this. and if you look at all of the votes over the decades, it's almost funny when you watch the parties exchange their scripts with one another as the presidencies change and the level of hypocrisy as you piously say you're going to stand firm for fiscal responsibility when it's the other guy's president, and then

you take the script from the other guy and say we've got to be responsible here when it's yours. all of that is enough to leave anybody cynical. but the fact is that every time in the past the leaders knew that it was a game, and they weren't actually going to endanger the full faith and credit of the u.s., and they had votes in reserve if they needed them. lots of hebbs needed cover so that they wouldn't -- members needed cover so they couldn't be attacked. this was different. i don't want hold much trump with ratings agencies, and i view standard & poor's as both standard and poor. but when they wrote about this and said here's another 11th hour rescue, but the politics of this leave us with no confidence that you're going to be able to manage the future. and can then we looked at the debacle that followed with the supercommittee. here are the political equivalent of the avengers, but with kryptonite. and they can't act. and now speaker boehner, who

said when he became speaker there's some things now we're going to have to behave like adults and be responsible, and that includes the debt limit leading the charge for another hostage-taking mechanism, it says to me we're operating on danger ground here. -- dangerous ground here. and we can get away with it as long as other countries and systems are doing worse than we are, but it's not a game i believe we should be playing. >> this reminds me, i was interviewing a candidate earlier this cycle, i won't say what office he was running for or what state he is from, but we were discussing his position on raising the debt ceiling and the like. and i said, well, would you really, would you really, um, would you really push hard enough so that we would actually go into default in and the candidate, who was, i thought, reasonably bright and articulate and knew something about this area looked at me, and he said, well, you know, yes, because everyone would know it would just be a technical default.

the u.s. government isn't really going to default, it would just be a technical default. and and i thought to myself, well, i'm sure the european markets would be very content with that. we don't have to worry about that. [laughter] i don't know whether that's radical, but that is different. okay. now we're going to go to a point where each of the gentlemen here will have five minute closing statements, and then i'll have a brief conclusion, and we're going -- i gather this has been all figured out. apparently, we're beginning with steve with a five-minute closing statement on the question about whether the republican party now is too extreme. >> okay. start my timer. it seems to me that you cannot conclude the republican party is too extreme when you begin with this very odd premise that democrats or liberals are merely pragmatic problem solvers. even as in the case of obama, they self-consciously use the fundamental rhetoric of

large-scale changes. but when conservatives seek changes or reforms, they're being radical or extreme or rolling back the clock. this is a nice way of avoiding having to argue the merits of any issue very closely. i think it's a species of lazy historicism. but i think we should avert our gaze from some of the particulars of the hypothesis we've discussed tonight including some of the reforms that norm suggests of reforming the filibuster, voting reforms and so fort which i think would make very little difference, actually. but i think i want to step back for a moment and look at this from the summit, so to speak. everyone ought to put on the top of their reading list an article called "the fourth revolution." you can find it at new criterion.com. the author makes a challenging argument that i think may be correct. he says we're on the cusp of a fourth great political revolution in america. the succession that brought a whole new order to our

governance. usually that was through a new party becoming a dominant and long-lasting majority. it could be that a fourth, this fourth revolution is already underway. we can see the results from wisconsin last week. now, political scientists will recognize this is a variation of the classic realignment theory as described most famously by sam lubell, but the salient fact is this, the blue state model of governance is irretrievably broken. we're not just looking at some growth of entitlements, we're looking at multiple times of gross gdp in another 0 or 40 years. 30 of 40 years. it seems that some state-level democrats get this. democrats in san jose, san diego, chicago -- the mayor of chicago, the governor of new york, the democratic legislate of rhode island seem to get this, although i think national democrats don't seem to know it

yet. it's argued compellingly that even if obama is reelected in november, increasingly he and his ideology are going to look like the last gasp of a dying era of governance putting him in the same league with the heralds of an end of an age. this is why i say that. the supposed clash of the parties that's been described here could be diminished or ameliorated through process reforms. i think it takes optimism to a whole new level. and as i said a few moments ago in extemporaneous comments, i actually think that the thesis norm lays out ought to be taken more seriously. i mean, i think that the problem of democratic stability has been taken too much for granted, and the prospects for instability have been too much banished from the our mind by the great success of post-war democracies both here and in europe. i think it is not impossible that six months from now greece could be governed by a military government or that spain could

ask for help from nato in keeping order in the its streets if its unemployment goes to 40% because of the gathering storm on the continent. our prospects are not nearly as dire despite norm cleverly suggesting that the republicans might be extremist in the same way that holocaust deniers were extremist. we're more stable than that, but i do think there's some prospect of the republican party breaking up unless it holds together for its principles. if it becomes another me too party again, then they'll just be cut up by the tea party, and what's the use of a republican party that does that anyway? and that's why i'll repeat what i said earlier and conclude on this note, if that prospect comes along, norm, as i say, look back with fuzzy warm feelings for john boehner, mitch mcconnell, and at that point, stu, you can pass the airsick bag to norm and the last word. [laughter] >> thanks. let me just start by saying how much i valued having steve as a colleague, and can i'm sad that he's going to be leafing us

soon. -- leaving us soon. he's, steve is, of all things, moving to california. [laughter] and we won't go into that. but, um, i would also note that steve has been somewhat of an apostate within the conservative movement in his own party, and we quote liberally and quite favorably from pieces that he's written trying to rein in a conservative movement, and we also have in steve somebody who takes a very conservative position on climate change but acknowledges there may be a problem which has resulted in him being ostracized by many as well. so i have a lot of sympathy for him in what he's trying to do. i am uneasy about the future. i don't believe we're going to see the emergence of a new majority. i think we are an evenly-divided country. i think a large part of the problem we have is not structural, it's cultural right now. and moving beyond that and moving beyond a kind of tribal politics back to something where

we view the tribe in a larger sense and look towards problem solving is going to be difficult to do. and as much as anything, our book is a lament about the decline of problem solving. and as i look over the trajectory of the last few years and think about the entitlement state and think about the reality that reining in the costs and size of government comes down fundamentally to health care costs and that we didn't have two people playing, two parties playing to rein in health care costs. repeal and replace is basically repeal and we'll talk about it later. when i think about medicaid, the single largest component of it is long-term care for the elderly, and we're looking at a population that as i said and you know is getting older and people living longer. long-term care is going to be a huge problem. we funded largely through medicaid. anybody who really believes that if you just cut it 30 be % and give it to the states, they're going to find a formula for taking care of the elderly in nursing homes that goes beyond

moving from one nurse's aide for every five patients to one for every 20 patients is simply deluding themselves. but have we had or has there been any willingness to sit down and discuss how either liberals or conservatives can figure out a way for the society to deal with the problem that people are going to have with their parents and grandparents down the road? these are problems that whether you are liberal, conservative or anything else need to be resolved. they're not going to be resolved entirely by goth, but government is going to play a role, and we are no longer at a point where we can even have a conversation on those things. how we move to that point remains an enormous challenge for us. a challenge for both parties. i worry about a democratic party that over time may well itself become more extreme or more liberal. it has moved, as we have said in our jargon, probably on the whole to about the 25-yard-line while i believe the republican

party has moved beyond its own goalpost. but you can imagine a democratic party that loses almost all of the remaining elements of its moderate and conservative movement, and that decides more and more to dig its heels in. i do not think that's happened, and i think some of the rhetoric has been kind of ridiculous. a democratic party that took all the reins of power and didn't enact card check or any of the labor wish list items, that came up with a health care plan ha not -- that not only didn't do sickle payer -- single payer, but didn't include the that option. the idea that this is an administration and a democratic party that as herman cain said just the other cay consciously, deliberately is trying to destroy capitalism i find a little bit ridiculous. but you can imagine both parties moving further apart and leaving those traditional conservative jeb bush-type republicans with no easy place to go.

i do not think a third party is going to emerge. our system and our culture won't tolerate that. but we're going to have to find some way to get back to a culture of problem solving, or the rest of the country may end up looking like california squared. >> i'd like to thank steve and can norm for a terrific debate. [applause] during which -- [inaudible] hold on, stay right there. during which they showed their great intellect and civility. this and other debates are available at aei.org, and transcripts are also available at the site. i'd like to note that norm's book will be available for purchase after we adjourn. norm, show me -- [inaudible] here it is. it's even worse than it looks. and finally before we adjourn, please, look at these two gentlemen. if the title of this book is "it's even worse than it looks," look at them, they're even better than they look.

we're adjourned. thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> members of the senate taking a break now to attend weekly party caucus lunches. back at 2:15 p.m. eastern. we expect a vote on the andrew hurwitz judicial nomination and possibly a further debate on the farm bill. more live senate coverage when the gavel comes down at 2:15 here on c-span2. earlier today we had lye coverage -- live coverage of the second day of this week's leveson inquiry, the investigation into the relationship between the media and british politicians. more scheduled tomorrow with

testimony from deputy prime minister and liberal democrat leader nick clegg. watch that live starting at 5 a.m. eastern tomorrow here on c-span2. and we'll wrap things up thursday when current british prime minister david cameron is expected to take questions. that's also live at 5 a.m. here on c-span2. and join us tomorrow when defense secretary leon panetta and the chairman of the joint chiefs, general martin dempsey, will appear before a senate appropriations subcommittee to talk about the 2013 defense budget. that's live tomorrow starting at 10:30 a.m. eastern on our companion network, c-span3. >> nancy pelosi began her career in the u.s. house in 1987. >> mr. speaker, as you know, eight years ago this month the soviet union invaded afghanistan. to no one's surprise, the occupation of afghanistan has turned into a bloody war with no victors, a group of human rights lawyers from the united states, britain, sweden and malta

documents countless acts of terror or perpetrated imeps the afghan people. >> twenty-five years later, the current house minority leader and can former speaker was honored on the house floor by republican and dem crangt leaders. watch those tributes online at the c-span video library. >> next, from today's "washington journal," e.j. dionne discusses his book, "our divided political heart: the battle for the american idea in an age of discontent." >> host: e.j. dionne writes for "the washington post," he's the author of a new book called "our divided political heart: the battle for the american idea in an age of discontent." thanks for coming in this morning. >> guest: thanks so much for having me in. >> host: you start off by saying fear of decline is one of the oldest american impulses. fear of decline, why does that scare us so much, and why does that matter? >> guest: it's funny because i begin the book talking about the

decline, and it's not a declinist book at all. i think that, in fact, we have a lot left in us as a country, and the fact that we have so often gone through these bouts of declinism actually suggests we have a pretty high opinion be of ourselves because we usually think we're in a place from which we can decline. but i think fears of a decline have been the underlying theme of american politics for the last five, six years, and i think the obama campaign like the reagan and kennedy campaigns before us was very attuned to this sense. when you think back to obama's slow -- slogans, one was that famous poster with "hope" underneath, and then the "change we can believe in," slogan, and i always thought believe was as important as change because we quickly go from, well, what's wrong with the economy or our position in the world to a kind of spiritual crisis which is why the obama campaign had this religious crusade quality. and i still think we're going

through that because, you know, sadly for the country, the economy still is at over 8% unemployment, um, and i think the same impulse that helped give rise to obama helped give rise to the tea party. and one of the things that happens in the these periods of decline is that we think a lot about the question, who are we? who are we as americans? what does it mean to be american? and we repair a lot to our history and try to figure out from our past who we are. and i argue in the book that we can't agree on who we are because we can't agree on who we've been be. so in a way my book takes issue with the tea party's analysis of who we are, though at the beginning of the book i actually say thank you to the tea party because one thing i agree with them on is that it makes sense to go back to the beginning and say, okay, who are we, how do we get here, what do the founders and the people who came after them tell us about what it means to be an american? >> host: e.j. dionne writes in his book:

>> host: are we optimistses, or are we pessimists, and what does it matter? >> guest: that's the last question is really interesting. i mean, i think at heart we're optimists, we're a hopeful people x my favorite line on america which i never tire of repeating is winston churchill's great line where he said americans always do the right thing after first exhausting all of the other possibilities. you know, we're people with a great capacity for self-correction. tokeville, that great french student in the 19th century was struck by this capacity for self-direction, and the core argument of the book -- and that's where the title comes from -- is from the beginning we've been torn by a deep but healthy tension between our love of individualism and our affection for community, our love of liberty, but our sense that liberty requires a concern for the common good if we're going to stay a free people.

and i think at various moments we tilt one way or the other in that sort of balance, but we work best when we are in balance, and that's not only a balance between individuals and community, it's also a balance between the private market and government and between private and public. and i go back and look at the founding and the constitution and also at figures like clay and hamilton and lincoln to note that, you know, government engagement in our, in the economic life of the nation didn't just start with the new deal or the progressives. it goes all the way back to hamilton, clay and lincoln who thought government could do a lot of things to make our economy stronger, to build the country. clay talked about the importance of investing in internal improvements. internal improvements a much nicer term than infrastructure. i like all advocates of infrastructure investments to start talking about internal improvements. but i think that we have often in our argument we act as if, you know, goth is a new --

government in a new force in american life, and it isn't. and we should look for, you know, a continuation of this balance which is, i this i, what helped make us a great nation. >> host: e.j. dionne writes: >> host: if you'd like to talk with him, here are the numbers to call. republicans, 202-737-00002 andic dependent callers, 202-0205. debbie joins us from philadelphia on our democrats' line. hi, debbie. >> caller: hi, good morning. >> guest: good morning. >> caller: i heard mr. dionne make the statement who were we. well, you know, i'm an african-american, and i hear a lot about the founding fathers. why don't we ever acknowledge the fact that the country was stolen, people were killed,

robbed, you set up your own government, you always talk about your ancestry? well, black folks can't talk about how their ancestry came over here. and people always ignore that position. and i would love to know, you know, we want to talk about who were we, that's who we were. we were thieves and robbers and murderers, and we brought people over here that didn't want to be here. that's who we were. i would love for you to respond to that. >> guest: well, thank you for that. i mean, you -- the book is, i talk a lot about race and slavery and our struggles to make ourselves a fairer country, and if i may say one of the reasons i want to engage in this conversation about american history is i think people on the progressive side of politics have not battled for our history enough, have not embraced our history. because when you look at it, you're absolutely right. we began as a country that had slavery written indirectly into

the constitution. the founders made a whole series of compromises in creating that constitution, and one of them was, in effect, to continue to permit slavery. but what happened as americans reflected on that history is that they came to see that the inherent promises of the declaration of independence -- all men are created equal, we now say all people are created equal -- and the promise of the constitution were diametrically opposed to slavery and to the way we treated african-americans. so in the book i talk about a lot about both lincoln and martin luther king who went back to the founding documents and said, wait a minute, we are not keeping these promises. i have an analysis, commentary on martin luther king's great "i have a dream" speech. and all of the early paragraphs of that speech are a reflection on american history, and he talks about the promise of america that was not kept, and he said famously in that speech that the founders handed

african-americans a promissory note that had come back stamped "insufficient funds." and so i think within our history was this promise that we were not living up to. and i think what you've seen throughout our history is the steady advance of a more democratic, that's a small d democratic view, and you've seen a steady advance of equality because i think those are are inherent in the american promise. now, that didn't come without a lot of struggle, and i talk about how the history of reconstruction after the civil war was distorted for many, many years and ignored the fact that african-americans played a huge role in demanding the whites that they got after -- the rights that they got after reconstruction, lost for a while after jim crow and won back in the civil rights years. so african-americans are very much part of this broad story that i have to tell, and i think it's good that the united states read its promises as promising equality to everybody.

>> host: the new book is "our divided political heart." e.j. dionne is senior fellow at the brookings institution, he also teaches at georgetown university and and writes for "the washington post". you can also hear him talking politics on npr. here's a tweet from rick. do the tea party people have any use for community? >> guest: you know, it's interesting. i struggled with that in the book actually because as human beings, as fellow americans lots of tea party members, i'm sure, belong to ptas, they coach little leagues, they do a lot of the work of community on the ground, and i try to be careful in the way i talk about people in groups. i don't want like prejudice against groups, even groups i happen to disagree with on some political questions. but i do think what the tea party and people allied with them have embraced is a kind of radical individualism which i think is quite different from the traditional american individualism. it's a radical individualism that kind of asserts that we're really on our own, that we make ourselves that not only does

government have no role, but they are very suspicious sometimes when people like me talk about the common good. they wonder if the common good is just a term used by socialists or collectivists trying to create a different kind of country. and i think the real battle in our politics now is between a radical individualism that really sees only liberty as the american promise versus a more tempered american individualism which absolutely sees liberty as part of the american promise but also sees our quest for community as something we've engaged in from the beginning. >> host: steve, republican in scottsdale, arizona. welcome. >> caller: hi. you know, i was going to say, you know, it just seems like the morale is really low. everybody's i think when they turn on the tv and they see, you know, not only the national debt and and everything, but just like their local commitments running up, you know, really bad debt and not being able to cover the costs and there's always,

it's always this thing where it's never, there's never enough fund being for anything. -- funding for anything. and i think people really get tired of that. i don't see why they can't, um, balance the books better, the politicians, you know, the people in charge. it seems like people's morale every time they turn around it's always, it's always about the, you know, the major just millions and millions in deficit. i think they should be a little more creative, you know, like sell off some land or sell off some assets, do whatever it takes to get the, you know, to get the books straight. it just seems crazy -- >> host: steve, when you talk about that negative mood, do you see that more when looking at communities and the federal government in debt, or do you see that when you look at individual mesh americans' experience? in we have a headline in "usa today," families' wealth dives

39% in three years. so is it perm or looking at the outside? >> i see everybody, i think you just see a general sadness for the way things are being ran. you know, it just seems like they're not trying hard enough to balance -- every time you turn around, you see even the local governments there are never enough money. it's always, oh my gosh, you know, we're a million dollars behind, you know? we're at million dollars in the red or -- >> host: okay. let's go to e.j. dionne and see what he has to say. >> guest: thank you for your comment. i think there is a lot of unease, unhappiness in the country. and we took one big wallop in this financial mess, and, you know, the economists tell us that financial crises are harder to get out of than just normal, normal recessions. and what you're seeing at the local level is a real contraction of revenue that's even with the same tax rates,

sometimes even with higher tax rates, you're taking in less money because there's less economic activity because the value of people's houses has gone down, so the property taxes aren't yielding what they used to. so i think when you talk about the debt question, it's two things at the same time. a big piece is simply the economic downturn, and we'd feel a lot better if unemployment were at 4% and revenue was rolling in. in a lot of states when that revenue was rolling in, you know, they cut taxes, so now the revenue wasn't there. some created rainy day funds, but some of those funds got exhausted. i think the question is how do we have a reasonable conversation about debt at the national and local level? i think in this recession one of the things that's hurt us badly is how many jobs have been, we've lost at the local level. that famous, now-famous so-called gaffe by president obama when he said the private sector was doing fine, what he was saying is that we've at

least had some job growth in the private sector. he quickly explained i know the economy's not doing well enough, but we've lost a lot of jobs in the public sector, jobs we didn't lose in the recovery, by the way, under ronald reagan. t one of the great ironies -- it's one of the great ironies that government grew more in the reagan recovery than it has in the obama recovery. so that's part of the problem. but we need a reasonable conversation about the deficit at the federal level. i don't personally see how we will achieve balance unless we are willing to do some combination of cuts and tax increases. i don't want use revenue incleese creases -- increases because that's a dodge people in washington use. we need tax increases. one of the reasons for that is we are an aging population, and another reason is that health care is, health care costs have risen. we've got to figure out how to contain that. i wish as a baby boomer you could repeal the aging of the baby boom. it would be a wonderful thing if

we could stop aging, but we're not going to do it. so we've got to figure out how can we pay for all these people who are going to retire, invest in the things we want government to invest in and still approach a balanced budget? and i think for a while we've been kind of stymied because a lot of people just aren't willing to say we need to raise some taxes, and i think we personally need to raise some taxes which i'm sure will make the phone lines go -- >> host: here's the washington post yesterday, government is the solution. >> guest: right. well, i'm frustrated with -- i don't think of myself as a liberal or progressive, and i get frustrated with my side of the argument because conservatives have been waging a very tough and focused campaign for over 30 years on government. and, you know, ronald reagan famously said government isn't the solution, government is the problem. and progressives come back and often they don't directly defend government.

they say, well, they mumble, mumble, yes, i'm for government, but i'm really for the private sector. and i think liberals have to come out and say we really believe government can solve problems. now, i also think parallel to that should be a commitment to reforming government and making it work better. we believe so much in government as a useful instrument that we want it to work a lot better than it does. and if you look at the economy, whatever you say about obama's policies, a very broad consensus -- doug elmendorf of the congressional budget office said this to congress last week, there's a very broad consensus that the stimulus created somewhere around three million jobs, probably kept the economy from going back into recession. i would have had a bigger stimulus at ha time. i think the sluggish growth suggests we needed a bigger one. but a lot of times when republicans say government doesn't create jobs, i think that progressives should say back, oh, yes, it does. it not only creates jobs

directly by support being local governments that are laying off people, but it puts money in the pockets of people who then spend it for private sector jobs are created. so i think liberals just have to stop being so fearful of polls. and, look, if i could close on this, there's been a real discontent with government going all the way back to vietnam and watergate which is a long time ago. it's not as if all of this anti-government sentiments is just created by politics. and, yes, you've got to deal with that substantive dissatisfaction with government by making it work. but throughout our history, and that's one of the reasons i wrote the book, throughout our history we have used government to make us a stronger and better country. >> host: billy joins us from buffalo, new york. independent caller, hi. >> caller: good morning. >> guest: morning, sir. >> caller: yeah, e.j., how would you explain the utter failure in the war on poverty and the role

of big government on that? it's been going on for many, many years, and things have gotten progressively worse. there's more people below the poverty level than there ever has been, and there's been trillions of dollars invested in this. and i'm also curious about your bigotry against the catholic church, and i'll hang up and listen to your answer. and i admire your haircut, buddy. [laughter] >> guest: thank you. i am a catholic, i love the church, and i write -- i like to think -- with a lot of affection for the church. and beyond that, um, i think that a lot of what i believe comes from the fact that i'm a catholic. i always joke that i became a liberal because i'm a cat -- catholic which con found people, but it's because of what the church has taught us about our obligations to the least among us. i have some disagreements with the direction some of the bishops are taking. you know, for example, on the health care law i thought that

sister carroll had it right. i don't think the health care law included coverage for abortion. i think the analysis the bishops relied on of the original health care bill was wrong on that. and i had a lot of conversations with people in the church about that. and i worry that the signals that some of the bishops are sending now are signals that really are pushing the church well to the right of where it used to be even 20 years ago. and i would note that 20 years ago, back in the mid '80s when they were putting out statements on nuclear war, it was my conservative catholic friends that were saying they had disagreements with the catholic church. i hope my conservative catholic friends don't tell me now that i'm anti-catholic because i disagree with the direction that some of the bishops are taking. on the war on poverty, i guess

we should somehow sit down up there at a tavern in buffalo and have a long argument because i don't agree that the war on poverty didn't work. medicare has kept an enormous number of senior citizens out of poverty. food stamps have put food on the table of many, many poor people, particularly poor people who work for a live being don't make enough -- living and don't make enough money to balance the books. head start has given opportunities to kids who might not have had those opportunities, and i could go on. senator moynihan, the great senator from new york whom the late tim russert worked for in his youth -- i still miss tim -- but senator moynihan once said of that period there were more successes than we wanted to know. so, yes, there are a lot of poor people now because the economy has turned down, and poor people get hit hardest when the economy turns down. but i just reject the premise of

the question that the war on poverty failed. i think there are a lot of programs passed under lyndon johnson that made the country a lot better, and i dare say almost all the senior citizens watching this show think they are better off because medicare became the law of the land. but thank you for your call. i hope we can have that argument in the buffalo someday. >> host: your book, "our divided political heart," we talked a moment ago about community and individualism, those values. joe tweets in and asks: >> host: something you address directly in your book. >> guest: right, it's a great question. and i try to be very careful about this because there are moments in the book and in what i've just said where community seems to align into government. and on the one hand politically they are quite different because community can be the neighborhood you live in, community can be all of those organizations that are not exactly part of the government or part of the private economy like, you know, little leagues

and elks clubs and veterans' organizations. but i also think that we often, the community often expresses its interest, its concerns through government. i get very troubled when we see goth as only -- government as only the realm of them. in a free, democratic country government is the realm of us. it's something we have under our own control, and we have a right to exercise that control. there are times when we call in government when we think that there is too much concentrated power in certain private hands. it's what teddy roosevelt and woodrow wilson talked a lot about back in the progressive e rah. the american system is a system of countervailing power. we do not want too much power concentrated in government, but neither do we like it when certain private entities like monopolies exercise too much power over us even though they don't have government authority

formally behind them. and i think, again, you know, i like to think of this book as a call to balance in a lot of spheres. and i think that is, that is one of them. but i appreciate the question, and be i hope you take a look at the book because i go on in more detail, obviously, to parse out this distinction between community and government. one of the things my editor pushed me on as i was writing the book, so he will appreciate your tweet. let's hear from christopher, a democratic caller, in hamburg, new york state. hello, christopher. >> caller: hello. i am a 54-year-old man. i've worked 5 years of my life -- 35 years of my life, never collected a check of unemployment in my life, and now i'm on disability. i am afraid if republicans get into office that my disability will probably be cut. i am wondering how soon or how

far from the election obama could have a tate of the union -- a state of the union address, president obama, i should say, a state of the union address to make his side of the argument saying that the republicans are the obstruction to the government? and i'll take my answer off the air. >> guest: thank you very much. you know, president obama was giving speeches like that for a while. one of my favorite speeches he's given in recent years was, in recent sort of months was the one he gave in kansas. i think i liked that speech better than anybody except the president of the chamber of commerce there because it was a place where teddy roosevelt went back in 1910 and gave a famous speech on the new nationalism which i'd already written about in my book, actually, at the time that obama gave that speech. and he talked a lot about our

obligations to each other, and he did mention then and he's mentioned subsequently that, for example, the jobs bill that he proposed, most of it has been bottled up in the congress. in terms of your own situation, i can't speak to exactly what the republican policy is on disability, but i do think you're right to raise this as the broader question in the campaign. and that question is one of the central questions is what do we do as a country about when some of of us fall onto hard times through no fault of our own which is, you know, clearly your case having been on disability after working your whole life. and it troubles me sometimes in the argument that people who get government benefits are always seen somehow as leaning on the rest of the commitment because

they don't -- the rest of the community because they don't want to work. we invest in people in the country. we not only provide them with disability or unemployment when they fall on hard times, we invest in the people on the front end of life. i got government student loans and some scholarship to go to college as well as social security survivors' benefits. that was an investment in me. i have more than paid that back in the taxes that i've paid the government since. um, and so i think we also ought to see this as investing in our fellow human beings. but, yes, at times when people fall on hard times, i don't think we should be at all unhappy about the fact that we're going to help people in that situation. then again, i think progressives ought to speak out forcefully on that. i actually think we need to do more than we're doing on behalf of the poorest people in our country, and i think, again, that's something at an election that people are reluctant to say. but i appreciate your call and good luck to you, sir.

>> host: here's a headline: obama to revisit economic debate. he'll use a campaign policy speech thursday to contrast his preferred approach for the country's economic future with ideas proposed by his likely republican opponent, mitt romney. he's planning campaign events today, but we're going to see more of that. meanwhile, mitt romney's going on a bus tour, he's about to embark on visiting some contentious areas. do you think the president is playing defense right now rather than the offense bive drive of progressives that you're talking about? dana mill bank writes in "the washington post" today: it's been a rough week, everything from the commerce secretary having car accidents to the president's quote being used by republicans on friday, defense or offense? >> guest: i think the last week to ten days he's been on defense. if they made a mistake, i think it's the following; that when the good jobs numbers were coming out at the beginning of the year, when it looked like,

hey, we might create at least 200,000 jobs a month between now and election day, if those numbers had held, the president would be in much better shape now. and they kind of moved to other issues. they didn't talk as much in that period about the unpassed parts of the jobs bill. i think in retrospect, and i think some folks in the administration believe this, they should have stayed on the offensive on that jobs bill and said, wait a minute, we haven't done our jobs yet, we need to pass some of this legislation. the congress is blocking it. back in the fall when they were banging away on this, they got parts of it through, for example, on the payroll tax cut. and so i think they are now returning to where they probably should have been for the last couple of months. but i think i agree with the underlying premise of your question which is i think the president looking forward can't just run a tactical campaign. of course, everybody runs a tactical campaign. president bush ran a pretty effective partly tactical

campaign against john kerry in 2004. but i think he does have to give -- in order to make that argument with romney about the future of government, i think between now and the election he's going to have to lay out here's what i'm going to do in my second term, here's what i'm going to continue doing, here's what i am going to get, what i'm going to get done for middle class people, what i'm going to get done to deal with these inequality, what i'm going to get dope to solve the budget problem. -- get done to solve the budget problem. there's a very good piece in the washington post, and i think they really need to lay that out with more specificity, and i have a hunch that the logic of the campaign will get them there. >> host: e.j. dionne, author of "our divided political heart." let's go to california and hear from benjamin who joins us on the republicans' line. hi, benjamin. >> caller: hi, how you doing?

>> host: we're good. >> caller: my question was just to stay on the topic about the divided political view, because i think politics like science and technology is pa art of -- a part of our lives, but they make sure the normal person doesn't know how it works. oh! >> host: are you still with us, benjamin? >> caller: yeah, i'm still with us. your perception of it gets viewed, like the earlier caller's talking about, you know, taxes and debt and stuff. even uncle sam has to pay back his debt to the central bank which is a private corporation that loans uncle sam and our government money at 1% or any kind of interest on the dollar. it is very skewed how it works. but divided is because we do have the power, and the government really works for us. and when that view is distorted, politics can become superpowers almost in a way, like back in the day in rome how the gods could be compared to normal people. >> guest: well, i think that, you know, that's an interesting thing you said at the end about the romans because one of the

powerful things, you know, we forget in some ways how radical what the founders did was at that moment. that large parts of the world, most of the world was governed at that time through monarchies, and these guys were small r republicans. they believed in self-rule. they believed the people could govern themselves. and so i think the notion of looking at our government as if the this is simply a continuation of a kind of monarchical rule, that's not who we are. that's not the system that we have. and can looking at the founders as people who would kind of want to put chains around us in terms of how we might innovate in order to solve problems that they didn't conceive of because no one at that time could conceive of them, i think, misunderstands who the founders were. these were very, very brave and adventurous people who had, as i say, remarkably radical ideas for their time, radical ideas

that worked out quite well for the country. it doesn't mean there were personal radicals. a lot of them were business people, a lot of them were planters. but theoretically they broke with a very long tradition which said people can't govern themselves, and they said no -- i mean, they said, yes, people can govern themselves. so i, you know, i'm glad in a way you've raised that analogy to rome because i think we, our system is quite antithetical to particularly rome after the roman republic. >> host: pat tweets in: >> host: we see a recent pew survey that partisanship polarization has hit a 25-year high in the u.s. broken out by key dem graphics, you can see party or political affiliation has the biggest jump in how people feel divided, how they feel on their team and how they really see the opposing

side as being on a totally different team. where does that get us? >> guest: it's a real problem. your guest before i was hear is a friend of mine. we like to talk about politics. we disagree on some things, we agree on some things. he was kind enough to say something nice about my book on the back of the book. and i like to argue with, in a civil way with conservatives. i grew up, and i think it's true of a lot of people in the country, in a very diverse extended family. our thanksgivingings and christmases were always, you know, characterized by these raucous political arguments. one of my very dearest uncles was somebody i spent 35 years arguing politics with. so i learned very young that you can really like someone, you can even love someone and have profound political differences with them. and we don't always act that way. and i confess, i can be a sinner on this front myself. so i agree with that, and i wish we could find ways of, um, you

know, also disagreeing in ways that try to make progress. i mean, there are some arguments where you can sort of exchange ideas to see is there any way you can get to a solution to a problem in and other arguments where we're just enjoying yelling at each other. in terms of that pew poll, it is a fascinating study, and folks out there -- this is a political audience -- you really should take a look at that because i think you'll find it enlightening. what struck me about it was and, obviously, when you've written a book as i have, everything becomes fodder for making the argument of the book you're out there talking about. but what particularly struck me was the shift to the right among -- >> we're leaving the last few minutes of this recorded program, and as always you can watch any of our journal segments online at c-span.org. the senate is back in session after their weekly party lunches. coming up, a vote on a judicial nomination and possibly more

debate on the farm bill. live coverage here on c-span2. 88888888 a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from south carolina. mr. demint: thank you, mr. president. i'd like to speak for a few minutes on the farm bill which we are debating this week. four years ago, president obama was elected on the promise of change, the promise to cut the

deficit in half in the first year and to get unemployment before the end of his first term below 6%. we all know what happened to those promises. two years ago, a wave of republicans were elected with the promise of cutting spending and borrowing and debt, yet debt has continued to explode as has spending. we were promised change but we got more of the status quo, a lot more of it. a lot more spending, borrowing and debt to the point where most americans at this point are deeply concerned about the future of their country. and americans are still demanding change for good reason. we must change the way business in washington is done because we're nearly $16 trillion in debt. we talk about the debt all the time. these numbers are facts.

and now we're poised to spend nearly $1 trillion more on a massive farm bill that some people in washington have the nerve to tell the american people saves money. and i want to talk a little bit about that. because we obviously need to save money. but despite all the fuss about the need to cut spending, the debt ceiling debate and the fact that we're actually cutting our military, our defenses to the bone because of our overspending in other areas, let's look at what we've really done this year as a senate. we've passed a highway bill that's that spent $13 billion bailing out a highway trust fund because we spent too much there. we've spent another $140 billion in corporate welfare reauthorizing the export-import

bank. we passed an $11 billion postal service bailout. and now we're working on a $1 trillion farm bill. no one here can bring up one bill where we've actually cut spending. yet we know our country is going off a fiscal cliff. the farm bill supporters are telling us that this bill saves money. but, unfortunately, we're using the same smoke and mirrors accounting that is often used in washington. a lot of gimmicks that make it appear less expensive is really an affront to the american people, who are demanding less spending and debt. there's absolutely no connection between what some of my colleagues are telling their constituents back home and what they're doing here in washington as far as cutting spending.

they talk about cutting spending, but now they want to pass this farm bill. the farm bill we're debating today will cost -- or is projected to cost by the congressional budget office about a trillion dollars over the next ten years. the last farm bill cost $600 billion. this is a 60% increase. and if we are just to look at these numbers, you can understand the rest of the debate. and the congressional research service has confirmed these numbers. that in 2008 we passed a farm bill that was projected to spend over ten years $604 billion. the bill we are considering today is projected to spend nearly a trillion, $969 billion. yet the folks who are speaking here about the farm bill are telling us this saves some $20

billion. only in washington could they look at you in a straight face and say this saves money. let's talk about how they actually get that figure. okay, 2008, about $600 billion. this farm bill, about a trillion dollars. what happened in the meantime was mostly the president's stimulus package which spent about a trillion dollars had a lot of money in it for food stamps. it was a short-term, temporary stimulus, supposedly with a lot of new money for food stamps. between 2008 and now we've increased food stamp spending about 400%. 400%. i think that number actually goes back to 2000. but during periods of good economy, low employment, we

increased food stamps and we've continued to increase that dramatically over the last few years. so most of this increase was supposed to be a temporary increase in food stamps. so we're actually locking that spending in permanently with this new farm bill, but since it's slightly lower than this temporary increase, the folks speaking to you here today are saying this is big savings, america. we're saving money on the farm bill. it's actually a 60% increase in the last farm bill. there is only one question here: does this bill really save money? and the answer is absolutely not. instead of doing the reforms that we need in the food stamp program, which frankly is about 75% or more of this bill, we're passing a farm bill that locks in what is supposed to be a

temporary spending level for food stamps over the next five years. what's really in this farm bill? a lot of it is food stamps, there's some foreign aid, some things for climate change, housing and foreclosures, broadband internet. it's really a catch-all for a lot of things but in order for us to get what we need to d for the farm industry in america, we have to agree to this huge additional increase in these other programs. the stunning expansion of the food stamp program is particularly concerning because now one in seven americans are on the food stamp program. as i mentioned before, the number of people the program -- in the program has increased dramatically, 70% since 2007, 400% since the year 2000, and this, again, is when our economy was good and unemployment was low, we were

still increasing. unfortunately, many politicians are using the food stamp program to buy votes. the small part of the bill that actually deals with farming replaces one form of corporate welfare for another. the bill eliminates the controversial direct payment system, but it replaces it with something that many consider far worse. a new program in this bill called the agricultural risk coverage promises farmers that the government will pay 90% of their expected profit if the market prices decline. under this scheme, farmers will pay no attention to the laws of supply and demand because the government will guarantee their profits. americans want less spending and less debt. all the polls we've looked at, national journal poll just came out and said 74% of americans believe the spending on food

stamps should stay the same or decrease and the spending on the farm bill, 56%, should stay the same or decrease. yet we're increasing it 60%. it's hard to answer the question of why do we continue to do this. why we continue to spend money, borrow money, talk about the need to cut our debt, yet one program after another we increase spending. i oppose this bill for the reasons that i've talked about. it spends a trillion dollars. we need an open debate, which we're not -- we're being told we're not going to have, that we're not going to have all the amendments that we're talking about that we need to fix this program. so if the leader decides to limit the debate, limit the amendments, i will absolutely oppose this bill and do everything we can to stop it. but i plead with my colleagues to start telling americans the truth. this farm bill increases spending, it does not save

money, it adds to our debt, and it locks in spending on a program that we need to change. particularly for the beneficiaries of the food stamp program, who are not being helped, they're being trapped in a dependent relationship with government indefinitely instead of us doing things that actually help them get a job and improve their status in life. so i encourage my colleagues to oppose this bill and, mr. president, i yield back. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from indiana. mr. coats: mr. president, i rise today to discuss the issue of national security leaks. a few weeks ago, the world learned that u.s. intelligence agents and partners disrupted an al qaeda plot to blow up a civilian aircraft. we are all very familiar with the success of this effort, and we do applaud those involved in preventing a truly horrific

terrorist attack. however, my concern today and since that time has been that the public has become too familiar with this successful operation. specifically, due to an intelligence leak which we now -- all the world knows about, the world learned of highly sensitive information, sources and methods that enabled the united states and its allies to prevent al qaeda from striking again. this irresponsible leak jeopardizes future operations and future cooperation with valuable sources and intelligence partners overseas. the release of this information, intention hadlal -- intentional or not, puts american lives as risk as well as the lives of those who helped us in this operation. now, unfortunately, this is not the only recent leak to

occur. as a member of the select -- senate select committee on intelligence, i am deeply concerned about a troubling rash of leaks exposing classified intelligence information that has come out in the last several weeks. this paints a disturbing picture of this administration's judgment when it comes to national security. there's the questionable obama administration collaboration with hollywood whereby the administration decided to give unprecedented access to filmmakers producing a movie on the bin laden raid, including the confidential identity of one of our nation's most elite warriors. discussions with reporters in the aftermath of the raid may also have revealed the involvement of the pakistani doctor who was sentenced to 33 years in prison for treason

after playing a critical role in the hunt for bin laden. the pages of our newspapers virtually every day have highly classified information publicized pertaining to intelligence operations in yemen and iran. currently the two most concerning foreign policy challenges that this nation faces. and this is in addition to the frequency with which top administration officials now openly discuss the once highly classified execution of drone strikes in yemen and other places. all too frequently as we read these publications, highly placed administration officials are the source of confirmation of previously classified information. now, sadly, these incidents are not the first time this nation's secrets have spilled into the streets or into bookstores. the problem stems in part from

the media's insatiable desire for information that makes intelligence operations look a lot like something out of a hollywood script. this media hunger is fed by inexcusable contributions from current and former government officials. mr. president, i would like to repeat that last statement. this media hunger to publish classified information is inexcusable when it comes from current and former government officials. we now know that investigations by the f.b.i., c.i.a. and now two special prosecutors are underway, but more must be done to prevent intelligence disclosures from occurring in the first place. now, mr. president, the question of whether the white house purposefully leaked classified information as the

president refiewtsz is not my main -- refutes is not my main point. whether it was intentional or not has little bearing on the result. highly classified information still got out and it appears to have been enabled by interviews with senior administration officials. at this time, mr. president, i take the president at his word that the white house did not purposely leak classified information. but what about his administration leaking it accidentally? or what about mistakenly? and perhaps the best adjective that might apply here is what about stupidly? there remain a lot of unanswered questions about the white house judgment and whether the actions by this administration intentional or not enabled highly sensitive information to become public. the house and senate intelligence committees are working together in a

nonpartisan -- let me emphasize that. we're working together in a nonpartisan fashion to address this issue. as a member of the committee i'm working with my colleagues to address a range of reforms, including legislation, in a way to reduce or hopefully eliminate the opportunity for further leaks. i want to commend the chairman, chairman feinstein and vice chairman chambliss for their efforts and genuine interest in moving forward with this. and i thank them for their leadership on this matter. our committee which will work across with the house intelligence committee will bring forward recommendations, including legislation to address this growing problem. now, as the department of justice conducts its investigations, we cannot lose sight of important questions that must be answered, such as but not limited to the

following: question number one kwr-rbgs did the white house -- question number one, why did the white house hold a conference call on may 7 with a collection of former national security officials, some of whom are talking heads on network television? that meeting, to discuss the confidential operation to disrupt the al qaeda bomb plot. question number two, why is the white house cooperating so candidly with hollywood filmmakers on a movie about the obama-osama bin laden raid one of the most highly secretive operations in the history this have country? while we don't know the date of release of this hollywood production, we can be sure any release prior to the november presidential election will fuel a firestorm of accusations of political motives. why would the confidential identity of an elite u.s. military personnel be released to hollywood filmmakers?

why would administration officials even talk to reporters or authors writing books or articles about incredibly sensitive operations? did any administration officials in the white house or not authorize the disclosure of classified information? these are just some of the key questions that must be asked in this investigation. there also remains several questions surrounding the current investigations. the appointment of two special prosecutors to lead criminal investigations into the recent leaks is a step forward, but the scope remains unclear. as well as the question of whether we should insist on a special counsel, given the current concerns about the credibility of the justice department. will these investigations focus just on the imminent iran issue or will the probe leaks involving drone strikes and

other leaks that have occurred in the past month be target of the investigation? will white house officials be interviewed? which officials will or will not be available to take part in the investigations? will those who are no longer and former members of the administration and the federal government or those outside of that also, including those reporters in question, will they be part of this invtigation? and will e-mails or phone calls of administration officials be analyzed to identify who spoke with reporters and authors in question and when? again, mr. president, whether these officials are intentionally leaking classified information is not the main point. if they put themselves in situations where they are discussing or confirming classified information, they must also be held accountable. public pressure is required to

shape these investigations and to ensure all our questions about these events are answered which is why i'm speaking here today. every day, mr. president, we have men and women in uniform serving around the globe to protect and defend this great country, and every day we have intelligence professionals, the national security office working behind the scenes with allies and potential informants to prevent attacks on our country. these leaks undermine all of that hard work and all of those countless sacrifices. additionally, it risks lives and the success of future operations. not only must we plug these damaging and irresponsible leaks, but we also must work to do all that we can to eliminate or greatly reduce the opportunity for them to occur in the future. criminal prosecution and congressional action is not the only solution. we also need public accountability. administration officials continue to speak off the record

with reporters and authors about classified information even after these recent disclosures. it's a practice that contributes to unwise and harmful consequences. purposely or accidentally, loose lips can bring about disastrous results. perhaps the best advice is the saying: you don't have to explain what you don't say. or maybe it's even simpler than that. maybe the best advice for those who are privy to confidential stph-fgs what former -- information is what former defense secretary robert gates said, and i paraphrase -- just shut the heck up. mr. president, i yield the floor. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: we're going to move shortly to confirm the judge we had last night. i ask the senator from oklahoma how long do you want to speak?

mr. coburn: i will speak in conjunction with the majority whip for a short period of time. i don't have a long speech. mr. reid: if you'll be patient we'll get this done very quickly .

mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: the matter now before the court is the -- before the court. it goes back a few years. the matter now before this body is the nomination of judge hurwitz. is that right? the presiding officer: the senator is correct. mr. reid: i yield back all time on this nomination. the presiding officer: hearing no further debate, all further time is yielded back. the question is on the nomination. all those in favor say aye. all those opposed, no. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the nomination is confirmed. a senator: if the majority leader would permit me to make a brief statement? mr. reid: i will in one second. i ask unanimous consent that immediately upon the adoption of motion to proceed to s. 3240

there are a -- there be debate only on the bill until 4:00 p.m. today and the majority leader be recognized at that time. the presiding officer: is there objection? hearing no objection -- mr. coburn: mr. president? the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate will now resume legislative session and will resume the consideration of the motion to proceed to s. 2340, which the clerk will report. the clerk: motion to proceed to calendar number 415, s. 3240, a bill to reauthorize agriculture programs through 2017 and for other purposes. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the motion to proceed is agreed to. a senator: mr. president?

the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. mr. alexander: thank you, mr. president. i thank the majority leader. i want to say i did not object to a voice vote for mr. hurwitz because i wanted to make this statement. last night i voted for cloture because when i became a senator, the democrats were blocking an up-or-down vote on president bush's judicial nominees, and i said then that i would not do that and did not like doing that. and i've held to that in almost every case since then. i believe nominees for circuit judges in all but extraordinary cases and district judges in every case ought to have an up-or-down vote by the senate. so i voted for cloture last night, although if we had had a vote today, i would have voted "no" against confirmation because of my concerns about mr. hurwitz' record on right-to-life issues. thank you very much. i yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. coburn: i just want to be, have a note to the record that i would have voted "no" on this nominee had we had a recorded vote. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from e-inn. mr. coats: mr. president -- the senator from from indiana. mr. coats: i would have also voted no. i wish we would have had a recorded vote. i didn't understand what the majority leader was saying it was spoken so softly. if we had a recorded vote, it would have been listed as "no. ." the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: for the record i want to be recorded in the affirmative on the previous nominee. the presiding officer: so recorded. mr. durbin: i come with my friend and colleague from the state of oklahoma, senator coburn, to discuss an amendment which we hope to offer to the farm bill which is i believe the pending business before the senate. i say to the senator do you wish to go first? i'll make a brief statement and

then yield to my colleague from oklahoma. i come to the floor today to speak about an amendment i intend to offer with senator coburn. our amendment would reduce the level of premium support for crop insurance policies by 15 percentage points for farmers with an adjusted gross income over $750,000 a year. according to a recent g.a.o. report, the federal government pace on average 62% of crop insurance premiums for farmers. let me put that in perspective. these farmers are buying insurance so that they can protect themselves against the risk of low prices or bad weather. and the premiums that are charged to them are collected to pay to those farmers who collect at the end of the day. 62% of the value of the premiums for the crop insurance are paid by the taxpayers. in other words, a 62% subsidy,

federal subsidy on these premium support payments for crop insurance across america. the amendment which i offer with senator coburn would change that. the reason came out very clearly in the g.a.o. report on crop insurance. last year the federal government, the taxpayers, spent $7.4 billion to cover that 62% of crop insurance premiums. $7.4 billion in subsidies for crop insurance for farmers. and the amount spent by taxpayers each year has been growing dramatically to cover roughly the same amount of acres the federal government paid nearly $2 billion more in 2011 than in 2009, because the value of the crops, the price for the crops had gone up during that period of time. further, and this is a opponent we'd like -- a point we'd like to make and hope our colleagues

would note, 4% -- 4% of the most profitable farmers in america are farming entities accounted for nearly one-third of all the premium support provided by the federal government. this is an indication here on this chart of what we're talking about. the premium subsidies for 3.9% of farmers across america accounted for almost -- a little over 32%, almost 33% of all the federal premium support subsidy. these are pretty expensive farmers when it comes to the federal subsidy. facing stark realities, we can't justify continuing to provide this level of premium support to the wealthiest farmers. net farm income, as i mentioned earlier, has gone up dramatically. in 2011, reaching a record high

of $98.1 billion. the usda forecasts that income will continue to grow at a slightly higher rate than costs over the life of this farm bill which is before us. the net income, much like government payments, ag payments, are concentrated in our largest farms. farm size has a direct impact on the profit margin of the farm. we have many large farms in illinois, certainly across the country. but we have many smaller farmers, too. what's the difference? on a smaller farm, with lower income, there's less return, less profit, higher risk. according to the usda, farms with sales ranging from $100,000 to $175,000 have an average profit margin of 1..2%. in a bad year they're wiped owvment take a look at the larger farms.

with more than $1 million in sales each year, their average profit marc margin is $ 28.6%. there is money to be paid. that's the basis for senator coburn and my drawing the line in saying there will be a reduction in the federal subsidy for crop insurance premiums for the most profitable farms. these larger and wealthier farms can afford to cover more of their own risk, and they should cover more of their own risk. the single-largest recipient of crop insurance premium support last year received $2.2 million to cover the federal government's share of the policy to ensure nursery crops -- insure nursery crops across florida. in another example, an individual received over $1. ^ 6 million in premium subsidies to insure corn, potatoes, sugar

beets. the total value of the crops insured -- $23.5 million. and back home in illinois, a limited liability corporation received nearly $1 million in premium subsidies from the federal government to insure corn and soybeans grown in 17 counties across my state. total value of th of the kroll 8 million. are you telling me that a producer insuring a crop valued at th 57 million will stop participating in the program if the federal government only pairs on average about 50% of the premiums? instead of the current 62%? i don't think so. our amendment is simple and straightforward. if you have an adjusted gross income on your farm at or above $750,000, your premium support will be reduced by 15 percentage

points. a provision in the underlying bill increased premium support for beginning farmers -- we're taking care of the new farmers and those are smaller farms -- and it sets a precedent. our amendment takes the same technical approach already accepted in the underlying bill. it's already applied to title 1 programs. our amendment is commonsense reform that limits the future crop programs. let mthis is not an attack on cp insurance. we need crop insurance. everywhere i go, crop insurance is the most important tool the federal government offers farmers to manage lisk risk. i recognize the role crop insurance has played in managing the federal role of providing

crop assistance. this amendment does not exclude anyone from participating in crop insurance. the vast majority of farmers will see absolutely no change in the leaflet of premium support provided by the federal government. this amendment only impacts farmers, the largest farms with the highest income, those most able to cover morph their own risk. why are we doing? because we have a deficit. the we need to deal with it in an honest fashion. the underlying farm bill savings money in direct payments and other means over a number of years. i commend senator stabenow and senator roberts for that effort. what senator coburn and i will do over the next ten years to reduce the deficit by another $1.2 billion with this simple change limiting the federal subsidy on crop insurance to those wealthiest, largest farms in america. how can we ask americans to share in any sacrifice to cut spending or reduce the debt if we cannot summon the political will to ask the wealthiest farm

operations to take such a modest cut in the federal subsidy for crop insuranceman, i yield the floor. mr. coburn: mr. president? the presiding officer: clrt the pending business. the presiding officer: s. 3240, a bill to reauthorize agriculture programs through 2017 and for other purposes. the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. coburn: thank you. i want to compliment my colleague in outlining very clearly what this amendment does. the farm and ag production in this country is vital, both to the country and to our export markets. we have through the years tried many different approaches to make sure we had the stability and the production power in this country for our needs and also to many beneficial aspects of our foreign policy where we use agricultural products.

imagine, if yo if you are a buss other than agriculture and that you have decided that regardless of the mistakes you might make or the uncontrolled variables that might impact your business or the downturn in the economy that you can actually with 62% of the government funding, you can buy an insurance policy to guarantee you a profit. that's what this new farm bill has moved to. that's going to be our agricultural program as far as the senate is looking at. there is a real differential there between the rest of commerce and the farm program in america. i understand the need for that. but this bill actually increases our costs for the crop insurance program by $5.2 billion as its written. and what the senator from

illinois and i have proposed is a commonsense earnings limit that is associated with every other program in title 1 that would say, we're going to help you, but we're just not going to help you as much because you, therefore, and by your own success have the neons help yourself. -- have the means to help you so help yourself. it is ads 94.6 billion. and what senator durbin and i are proposing is $1.2 billion in sakes for that. a lot of people don't realize the advances that our farmers and the industries that supply them have made. as senator durbin pointed out, farm income has been up the last five years and is projected to continue to increase.

input costs for fertilizer are going down. input costs for seed and other chemicals are going up. we want a viable farm program but what we don't want is we don't want the next generation paying for additional wealth for those that in fact can afford to insure themselves. this is a very modest proposal. i mean, we could have had an amendment that said, if you make over $750,000, we shouldn't be subsidizing any of your crop insurance. we would still have a crop insurance program for this very well-off 4% had we done that. what we said is now is the time to start looking at that. we'll look at it again with the next farm bill but certainly those that are so well-positioned to maximize profits off of agriculture don't need a 62% subsidy to their crop

insurance. and so this is a controversial amendment, we understand that. we know a lot of people are going to disagree with us. but the point is, at how much income should you be able to make -- should the average hardworking american still be paying taxes to supplement your income? and that's really the question. is a factory worker making $45,000 a year, do they need to supplement somebody who's making $10 million or $12 million or $15 million a year through a crop insurance program? all we're saying is this needs tock moderated and moderated in a way that won't impact anybody except this top 4%. and if we do that, what we'll do is start solving, as the senator from illinois said -- start solving some of our budget. it is not a lot compared to what our problems are, but the way

you get ous get out of $1 trilln deficits is like this. what we're going to be asking to everybody to sacrifice. what senator durbin and i are saying is to the best, the most efficient, to those who make the most money, we want you to start sacrificing now by limiting by ^15% the subsidy that comes to you for this bill. i think it is common sense. it is also fair. i would have gone further in a lot of arks but i think -- in a lot of areas, but i think we have an agreement that this is something that we should do, we can do and it will have no negative impact in terms of our production agriculture, in terms of quantity or quality. and with that, i'd yield the floor. mr. alexander: mr. president? ithe presiding officer: the sphrr from tennessee.

mr. alexander: i want to speak for a moment about clean air. over the last several years first as governor of tennessee, later as united states senator, i have learned that healthier air also means better jobs to tennesseans. that's why i intend to vote to uphold the clean air rule that requires utilities in other states to install the same pollution control equipment that the tennessee valley authority is already installing on coal fired power plants in the t.v.a. region. t.v.a. alone can't clean up our air. tennessee is boarded by more state -- is bordered by more states than any other. if we in tennessee want more nissan plants and more volkswagen plants we'll have to stop dirty air from blowing into tennessee. back in 19080 -- i was governor then -- nissan came to

tennessee. the first thing the nissan executives did was to go down the state air quality board and apply for an air quality permit for their paint emissions plant. if the air in the nashville area had been so dirty that nissan couldn't have gotten an air quality permit for additional emissions, nissan would have gone to georgia and we would not be able to say today that one-third of our manufacturing jobs in tennessee are auto jobs. every one of tennessee's major metropolitan areas is struggling today to meet the standards that govern whether industries can ecquire the air quality permits that they need to locate in our state. i once asked several chamber of commerce leaders to name their top priority. they said to me, clean air. it is not certainly a hot bed of

left-wing radicals. it is the mosit is where dolly s born. live in the next county, right up next to the great smoky mountain park. east tennesseans know that 9 million visitors come each year to see the great smoky mointains, not to see the great smoggy mountains. and we want those tourist dollars is and the jobs they bring to keep exphg. kipe coming. despite a lost progress, the great smokies still is one of the greatest polluted mountains in america. you should be able to see about 100 miles through the natural blue haze about which the cherokees sing, yet tait today on a smoggy day you can see only 24 miles.

mr. president, there are 546 tennesseeians who work today in coal mining in our state. that's according to the energy information administration. every single one of those jobs is important. this has been an important tradition in a few counties in east tennessee. but at the same time there are 1 2,00 tennesseeians who work at the austin plafntses in knoxville and chattanooga that will supply the country with most of the pollution control equipment required by this rule. every one of those tennesseans' jobs is important, too. of the five-worst cities for asthma in the united states according to the asthma and allergy foundation of america, three of those are in tennessee. they are memphis, chattanooga and knoxville. and only last year nashville dropped out o top to enworst u..

cities for asthma. for causes of high levels of mercury, health advisories warn against eating fish caught in many of tennessee's streams. nationally, mercury causes brain damage in more than 315,000 children each year, according to the mount sinai school of medicine. it also contributes to mental retardation. half of the united states manmade mercury comes from coal-fired power plants. this new rule requires removing 90% of this mercury. the rule also controls 186 other hazardous pollutants, including arsenic, acid gases, and toxic materials. -- toxic metals. utilities have known that this was coming since 1990, because these pollutants -- these 187 pollutants, including mercury -- are specifically identified in

the 1990 amendments to the clean air act as amendments that need to be controlled by utilities. and now the federal courts have added their weight and ordered the environmental protection administration to control these pollutants. an added benefit of the rule is that the equipment installed to control these hazardous pollutants will also capture fine particles, a major source of respiratory diseases that is primarily regulated under another part of the clean air act. this new equipment will add a few dollars a month to residential electric bills. the e.p.a. estimates a 3% increase nationwide. but, mr. president, because the tennessee valley authority has already committed to install these pollution controls, the customers of t.v.a. will pay

this rate increase anyway, with the rule or without the rule. to reduce the costs, the senator from arkansas, senator pryor, and i will introduce legislation to allow utilities six years to comply with the rules, which is a time line that many utilities have requested. now, earlier today, the senator from oklahoma, who's sponsoring a resolution to overturn the rule, referred to the legislation which senator pryor and i offer as a cover amendment and suggested in some way that it wasn't a sincere effort. mr. president, i greatly respect the senator from oklahoma. sometimes we have different points of view but i have different points of view with the senator from minnesota, the senator from arkansas, the senator from almost every place in -- in the country. but i respect those different points of view, just as i respect senator inhofe's different point of view. but i hope he will respect mine, and here's mine. ever since i've been in the united states senate.

i've introduced legislation to clean up the air in tennessee. why have i done that? because we don't want the great smoggy mountains, we want the great smoky mountains. we don't want to pefer pech wallly have -- perpetually have three of the top five asthma cities in the countries. we don'tment to have -- want to have health advisories on our streams so we can't each fish. we don't want to create another big auto plant to a big memphis site and be told they can't come there because the memphis area doesn't qualify for -- for a clean air permit because of its dirty air, especially if that dirty air is blowing in from another state. so what this rule is about is requiring our neighbors in the rest of the country to do the same thing we're already doing. and if they don't do it, we have no chance in the world ever to have clean air in tennessee. and if we don't, we'll have worse health and we'll have fewer jobs.

now, as far as the six years goes, the law gives states the right to add a fourth year to the three years utilities have to comply with the law. the federal law today gives the president of the united states the right to add two more years to that. that's six. so in the law today, the president and the states could make sure that utilities have six years to comply with this rule. i believe that makes sense. if i were the king and could wave a magic wand, that's what i would do. and why would i do that? because we're getting the environmental benefit over the six years. so what will happen is the utilities will assess their coal plants, they will decide which ones are too old or too expensive to operate, they will decide within three years to close those that they're not going to continue to operate, and then they'll have six years to spread the costs of

implementing the expensive pollution-control equipment -- most of it's called s.c.r.'s and scrubbers -- on their coal-fired power plants. the -- most of the utilities have suggested this six-year time line as the single best way to clean the air and to do it in a way that has the least effect on electric bills. so we'll introduce our legislation to offer -- to have -- to give utility executives six years to implement the rule, but we'll also write president obama a letter and urge him to grant the six years so utility executives can have that certainty. mr. president, some are saying that this rule is anticoal. i say that it is procoal in this sense -- because it guarantees coal a future in our clean energy mix. the tennessee valley authority, as i have said, has decided to

put on all of the coal plants it continues to operate the pollution-control equipment it needs to make coal clean. that doesn't count carbon. that counts all the hazardous pollutants, it counts sulfur, nitrogen, mercury, arsenic, those things. that means that long term, the t.v.a. will be producing more than a third of its electricity from clean coal. that guarantees its future for the foreseeable future in our region. and this is the largest public utility in the world. the rest of our electricity in the tennessee valley will come from even cleaner natural gas and from pollution-free nuclear power and hydropower. mr. president, ever since tennesseans elected me to the united states senate -- which was about ten years ago -- i have worked hard to clean up our air. tennesseans know that. most of them agree with me.

they thank me for it when i go home on weekends. they do that because they know that if i do not help clean up our air in tennessee, if i don't stop dirty air from blowing into our state from other states who don't have pollution controls on their coal plants, that it jeopardizes our health and it jeopardizes our opportunity to continue to be one of the nation's leading states in attracting auto jobs and in attracting tourism. mr. president, i notice on the senate floor the senator from arkansas, senator pryor, and i thank him for his leadership on the issue and i thank him for his practical attitude. we have the same goals, i believe, which are, clean the air, number one, but keep the electric bills down at the lowest possible cost. and we believe we have the most constructive proposal to do th that. we hope president obama will agree with us. we hope first the senate will agree with us and -- and uphold

the rule. that, second, the president will agree with us and grant six years. and, third, if he does not, that the congress will agree with us and pass a law giving iewments six years to spread out -- giving utilities six years to spread out the costs. i thank the president, and i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas. mr. pryor: i would ask that i be given ten minutes to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. pryor: thank you, mr. president. i would like to commend my colleague from tennessee and his leadership when it comes to clean air. he does have a long history of fighting for clean air in tennessee and in this country, and we do share the common goal of maintaining a safe and reliable source of electricity but also one that's safe for human health. cleaner air means better health for arkansans, for tennesseans, for everyone in the entire

country. you know, this all started back in 1990 with some clean air act amendments signed by president george h.w. bush that authorized the e.p.a. to regulate hazardous air pollutant emissions from power plants. now, these decades -- excuse me, these regulations have been two decades in the making. it started back in 1990, as i said. a lot has changed since then, but one thing that has improved greatly since then is technology and these clean air rules to try to make these coal-fired power plants 90% cleaner, they can now achieve that 90% reduction from uncontrolled emissions of mercury and other pollutants because of technology. we have the ability to make this achievable today. i don't know if that was true 20

years ago but it is certainly true today. so i'd like to just visit with my colleagues for the next few minutes about the plan that senator alexander has put forward that i heartily join him in. it's really a three-step plan. first, vote "no" on senator inhofe's resolution that we understand will come up sometime in the next several days. second is consider voting for the legislation that we are proposing and that we'd like to move to the senate floor within a reasonable amount of time that would basically say that all the utility companies get six years to comply with these new rules. again, these new rules that have been 20 years in the making and that are now on the books and have been on the books since february. and also the third step is, we are proposing a letter to the president of the united states to urge him in the interim, to urge him to give the additional two years which he has the

authority to do under the law. he can do two years with an executive order. and let me just walk through those very quickly. one of the -- some of the reasons why i'm going to vote "no" on senator inhofe's resolution of disapproval is because although i feel that the e.p.a. is wrong in their timetable -- i think that three years is too short; i don't think that's enough time. as senator alexander said a few moments ago, you can do the math that's in the statute and in the regulations and it probably adds up to six years. let's go ahead and just be upfront and give them the six years and just say, you know, six years will do it. that creates certainty. that means people can plan. that means that people can schedule equipment and skilled laborers that come from the u.s., not outsourced from overseas but folks here that come from the u.s.

and the equipment, most of it will be made in the u.s. and that gives our utility companies time to do all this. i think the e.p.a.'s wrong in the sense that they're trying to force this over a three-year period. i think four is the minimum and really six is what you really need, and i think that just makes the most sense under the circumstances. another thing is, with all due respect to senator inhofe, who i have a lot of respect for, his resolution of disapproval is wrong. i think it's the wrong appropriate. i think it's over the top. it reverses course. and it basically, if i understand it, it allows the utility companies to pollute at will. and it actually creates a legal problem that i'm not sure we adequately discussed here on the floor -- and i'm sure we will as we go through this process and as senator inhofe's resolution actually comes to the floor -- but it creates a legal problem. if it were to pass, you know, what does the future hold?

the law says if a resolution of disapproval passes, then the -- the agency cannot put forward a substantially similar regulati regulation. well, what does that mean in this circumstance? there's no legal precedent for that. some argue that if the resolution of disapproval pass passes, that it's -- it's katie bar the door, that there's n no-holds-barred, so to speak, when it comes to oil and coal plants in what they can produce. i certainly hope that's not the case. i don't know if that's the case. but legal experts disagree and i don't think that that is a chance that we should take. there's no doubt -- there's no doubt that sending plumes of mercury and particulate matter and things like sulfur dioxide, et cetera, create serious health hazards for children and for adults. and you can look at the statistics when it comes to heart attacks or premature deaths, asthma, all kinds of

different ailments that -- that human beings suffer, there's no doubt that these coal-fired plants contribute to that. and as we've seen, when we grandfather these plants, they don't, you know, out of the goodness of their heart do the things nose stop the polluting. what they do is they keep running them because they are grandfathered. that needs to stop at some point in the future, too. i think our approach really helps in that way as well. the third thing i would like to say -- i talk about the e.p.a. being wrong, i talk about senator inhofe having the wrong approach on his. but the third way is i would say let's extend it, not end it. basically i think by us giving the president -- or making clear that we want the full six years. this is three years in the statute, the one year from the state, the two years that the president has discretion on, i think that that six years gives

everybody ample time to plan, take care of the businesses they should and make sure that we have the electricity capacity in this country and also i'd say we need to stop the scare tactics about jobs and the sky is falling and this is the end of the coal industry in america. i completely disagree with that. i think that the u.s. would be very smart to continue to use coal because we have something like 400 years' worth of coal. we're kind of like the saudi arabia of coal. and so i'm not trying to hurt the coal industry, i'm not trying to kill jobs or do anything like that, but i think if we look at the small cost -- you have to understand that these plants are worth billions and billions of dollars. we are talking about adding some costs to that. one estimate i saw is it's going to add about 3%. but if you look at the balancing the cost of what we are trying

to accomplish here versus the health costs in savings that we get, it's really no comparison. i think it's fair to say that what the alexander approach does is it actually is -- it saves kids' lives. it is good for business. it's good for our environment. it's good for our people. and i think what we see here is a false choice that some people are trying to present. some people say you have to be either pro-coal or pro-health. that's not -- that's a false choice. you can be both. you can be both pro-coal and have a good, robust coal industry. if you open a magazine here in washington or "the washington post," oftentimes you will see a full-page ad that talks about clean coal. turn on television, watch some of the news shows. the coal industry is advertising clean coal. what are they talking about? this is what they're talking about. they're talking about cleaning up these coal plants so we can

still use this precious american resource, but we do it in such a way that we limit 90% of the pollution and the harmful particulates that are in coal, 90%. that's clean coal. that's what they are talking about. so let's do this, but let's do this over a six-year period, not over a three or four-year period. and let's not force ourselves into a false choice. let's do the right thing for this generation and the generations to come. mr. alexander: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. mr. alexander: i'd like to congratulate the senator from arkansas for his very clear explanation of what we're about here. the united states produces 25% of all the wealth in the world every year. in order to do that, we use about 25% of all the electricity in the world. we need low-cost, reliable, large amounts of clean electricity, and we need for coal to have a secure part of

the future of our clean energy mix. i have said for years, all we have to -- we know what to do about sulfur, nitrogen, mercury and the hazardous pollutants. we have the pollution control equipment to capture all of those. we can make the coal clean, except for carbon -- let's put that over on the side for a minute. we can make the coal clean and we should do it. we should have done it in a law over the last few years. we have had 17 senators equally divided on both sides trying to pass a law, we couldn't get it done, so we have really defaulted to the e.p.a. so they have had to do the rule, but the congress told e.p.a. to write this rule in 1990. it listed the pollutants that have to be controlled, and a court then, after president bush in 2005 tried to write a rule, the court threw it out and in 2008 said to the e.p.a. you have to do it. so we have told them to do it, the courts have told them to do it and now they have done it, according to the law. if you don't like the rule, you

have to change the law, which we're not doing here today. so the constructive thing we can do, let the rule go forward. let's have clean coal a part of our clean air mix, and then let's allow utilities what they have asked for, most of them, six years, six years to -- to implement the rule. and hopefully our legislation will pass. hopefully just the mere introduction of it, particularly by those of us who support the rule will persuade president obama that it would be a reasonable executive order for him to make, to assure people across the country that we'll have no interruption in the reliability of our electricity, we'll have no great increase in cost in most parts of the country, and then i agree with the senator from arkansas, coal needs to be a very important part of our future. this will make it in our region an important part. if the t.v.a. produces -- is the biggest public utility in the

country and it's going to produce a third of its electricity from coal with plants. that's clean coal. but the real roley grail of energy for me is the scientist that discovers a way to turn carbon from existing coal plants into something commercially useful. it will probably be in energy. in the department of energy right now, they have an interesting experiment where they are applying a biologic process, really bugs to electrodes, turning it into oil. imagine what would happen if all the coal plants in our country could turn the carbon they produce into other kinds of energy. then suddenly we would have this 400-year supply of coal, and the carbon as well as all of the other parts would be clean, and we could use even more coal than the one-third that it is likely to represent. so i appreciate very much the senator from arkansas' leadership, his advocacy, his clear statement of the

condition, and i'd like to say both to our republican and democratic colleagues, if you're looking for a way to have clean coal, clean air and do it at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer, let's do what most of the utilities have asked for and give them a timeline of six years to implement the rule. the easiest way to do it would be for the president to introduce the executive order in each state to give the utility one more, because those -- that authority is already a part of the federal law. mr. pryor: the senator from texas is waiting, so let me conclude if i can over the next couple of minutes. we talk about clean coal and why that's important. let me tell you why that's important. based on the statistics, the health benefits are between $37 billion and $90 billion. that's an estimate for 2016. for every dollar we put in, we get about -- up to nine dollars back in health benefits. the new rules could prevent up

to 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks, 130,000 asthma attacks, 140,000 cases of respiratory symptoms, over 9,000 cases of bronchitis, 5,700 hospital and emergency room visits, 540,000 missed work or sick days, 3.2 million days when people must restrict their activities. mercury, they say, causes brain damage in more than 315,000 children each year, half of the u.s. man made mercury comes from coal-fired power plants. the new rule requires removing 90% of that mercury. so back to senator alexander's point, this approach provides certainty, it ensures grid reliability. it allows sufficient time for the utilities to comply under this bad economy. it gives manufacturing and

skilled labor jobs to u.s. companies and u.s. workers, and it also reduces health problems and costs associated with the coal industry right now. so, mr. president, with that, i would like to ask my colleagues to consider looking at the alexander and pryor approach, and i would love to visit with any of my colleagues that are so inclined. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cornyn: mr. president, this morning during a hearing in front of the senate judiciary committee, the attorney general appeared, and in the exchange i had with him, it culminated with my call upon him to resign his position as attorney general. that's a very serious matter. and i want to take a few minutes to explain why after long deliberation i have come to this conclusion. i do believe it's the right

decision and it's long overdue. i served as an attorney general of my state, an elected attorney general, not an appointed attorney general, but i believe strongly that the american people deserve a chief law enforcement officer who will be independent of political influence, who will be accountable to the law and who will be transparent, particularly in his dealings with the congress. unfortunately, attorney general holder has failed on all of these counts. at his confirmation hearing in 2009, in front of the judiciary committee, eric holder said that his department of justice would serve justice and not the fleeting interests of any political party, and that's a quotation. he also said he would seek to achieve a full partnership with this committee and with congress as a whole.

that's also a quotation. i wish he had kept his word. regrettably, he has not. in the past few weeks, i have joined my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in our shock at news articles that have disclosed some of the most sensitive classified programs of our national security apparatus. these were reportedly covert operations aimed at thwarting terrorist attacks, as well as defeating iran's nuclear aspirations. the leaks, according to the chair of the senate intelligence committee, senator feinstein, i believe i'm paraphrasing here, but i believe she says these are some of the worst that she has seen in her tenure on the intelligence committee. others have suggested that these are some of the most damaging

potential leaks in our history, certainly recent history. according to the very stories that reported these programs, the sources some from the highest reaches of the executive branch of office -- executive branch of our government, namely the white house. as democrats and republicans have both made clear, the unauthorized release of classified information is a crime. it's a crime because it threatens our national security and puts the lives of those who are sworn to defend our nation in jeopardy. as many have hastened to point out, it also jeopardizes the cooperation of our allies, and who would be motivated to be a source of classified highly sensitive information that would be provided to our intelligence community if they knew that they were likely to be outed on the front page of the "washington

post" or "the new york times"? the news articles containing the leaked information paint the president in a flattering light. and the concern is that they appear just as his re-election campaign is getting into full swing. let me be clear. these facts raise legitimate concerns about the motives behind what everyone agrees is criminal conduct, and that's why it's so important to have an investigation of these leaks that is independent, nonpartisan and thorough. unfortunately, attorney general holder has demonstrated at least to me that he is incapable of delivering that kind of investigation. just hours before senators mccain and senators chambliss called for a special prosecutor -- or in the parlance of the statute now, a special

counsel -- holder's deputy attorney general jim cole told me he didn't think an independent investigation was warranted because the leaks didn't come from the white house or this administration. amazingly, he hadn't apparently done an investigation before he reached that con collusion. -- conclusion. attorney general holder apparently takes the same view. he has already decided who is -- who is not to blame, and he's excluded the administration and the white house and the reported sources of the information, although not named, they were named by category. he's already written them off and suggested that they could not possibly be the source of any of these leaks. well, i looked into the special counsel law which says that a special prosecutor is called for when an investigation would present a conflict of interest for the justice department. now, i can see the attorney

general has a very tough job. he's a member of the president's cabinet but he has a special and independent responsibility as the chief law enforcement officer of the country, and he can't let -- he can't be confused about those roles. there have been some reports that some of these leaks may have even emanated from the justice department itself. in fact, this morning the attorney general acknowledged that some of the department of justice's national security division had recused itself from an ongoing leak investigation. we don't know the details of that, but he did concede that his own national security division at the department of justice, some members of that division had already recused themselves. these leaks in "the new york times" -- i'm talking specifically about the drone program and about the cyber -- cyber attacks on iran's nuclear capability -- quoted senior

administration officials and -- quote -- "members of the president's national security team." now, that's not a large number of people to question or to identify. and, in fact, that is the very source given in these stories that reported the leaks. quote senior administration officials, quote, the president's national security team. this is the same story that said on the president's so-called kill list that he personally goes over with his national security team identifying targets of drone attacks, that also david axlerod his chief political advisor sat on at least one, maybe more meetings. instead of an independent process, attorney general holder has appointed two attorneys in his chain of command and who will report to him and who are directly under

his personal supervision. one of those is united states attorney of -- for the district of columbia, ronald matschen who volunteered on the obama campaign in 2008 and has given thousands of dollars to at the present time's political campaigns over the years. i don't have an issue with that. it's his right as an american citizen but it raises questions about his ability to be independent and to conduct the kind of investigation that i'm talking about. by the way, mr. hechen got a start -- matschen got a start when he went to work for u.s. attorney eric holder. that is not an independent investigation. that's the point. and it helps to demonstrate why it is that attorney general holder has a conflict of interest himself that requires the appointment of a special counsel. not the appointment of two u.s. attorneys who are directly responsible to him and through

whom he can control the flow of information to congress and others. reasonable people will wonder where does the attorney general's loyalty lie. to the president of the united states to try to help him get elected? or his duty to enforce the laws of the united states government. you know, this would be troubling enough to me if this were an isolated event, but what's brought me to this serious conclusion that attorney general holder should in fact resign goes back much further. because this is only a symptom of the department of justice's complete lack of accountability, independence, and transparency. take the tragedy known as operation fast and furious. as we know, under attorney general holder's watch the department of justice ordered the transfer of more than 2,000

high-caliber firearms to some of the most dangerous drug cartels operating in memorial. -- mexico. the attorney general disingenuously tried to confuse this with operation wide receiver done in consultation with the mexican government and where the point was not to let the guns walk without surveillance but to track them. it was ended when it became very difficult to track them, thus gave rise to the operation known as fast and furious which had an altogether different mode of operation. instead of tracking these firearms and arresting cartel agents trafficking them, under operation fast and furious department of justice officials ordered law enforcement agents to break off direct surveillance and allow these guns to walk. apparently under the mistaken belief that they could somehow find them at a later time and through alternative means of surveillance discover the nature

of the organization and the distribution of these guns and help them bring down some of these cartels. but, unfortunately, and quite predictably, the weapons from this flawed operation have been used to commit numerous violent crimes on both sides of the southern border, including the murder of border patrol agent brian terry, in december, 2010. far from being apologetic, attorney general holder's conduct during the congressional investigation of this flawed program has been nothing short of misleading and obstructionist. having complete disregard for congress' independent constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight and investigations of the department of justice and other federal agencies. for example, attorney general holder has stonewalled the investigation turning over less than 10% of the documents. >> by a congressional --

documents s&ped -- they claimed that operation fast and furious did not even exist. there was no program to allow guns to walk into the hands of the cartels and to lose direct surveillance of them. now, we now know that's false but only because lanny breuer nine months later in november, 2011, came before the senate judiciary committee and said, you know, that letter we wrote in february, 2011 saying there wasn't any gun walking program known as fast and furious? that was false. that wasn't true. so for all that period of time attorney general holder and his department misled congress by claiming falsely that fast and furious did not exist. and then in addition, attorney general holder has misled representative issa who has led

the investigation in the house of representatives by testifying that he only learned of operation fast and furious -- quote -- "over the last few weeks." that was in may, 2011. he said he only learned about it in the last few weeks. brian terry was murdered in december, 2010, yet eric holder said he only learned in the last few weeks about operation fast and furious, and that was in may, 2011. we now know that's false. attorney general holder also misled the public at a september, 2011 press conference by claiming operation fast and furious did not reach into the upper levels of the justice department, and we now know that is false. i personally reviewed some of the wiretaps that were produced as a result of a whistle-blower through the house investigating committee and it makes clear that the rationale for securing a wiretap was because they did not expect to be able to keep

track of the weapons directly, by direct surveillance. describing in essence the tactics of operation fast and furious. those required the authorization of high-level department of justice employees, including those in lanny breuer's office, and again attorney general holder and his staff misled the public, claiming operation fast and furious was unknown at the upper reaches of the justice department. attorney general holder misled the senate judiciary committee last november by testifying that he did not believe that these wiretap applications approved by senior deputies included detailed discussion of gun walking. as i said, we know that to be false. i read them with my own eyes yesterday. although they remain under seal and attorney general holder has refused to take any step to ask the court to modify that seal so we can then review those and

compare his story with what's revealed in the affidavits. so instead, as long as these documents remain under seal we're left with a he said/she said that he could resolve if we agree to go to the court and ask that they be unsealed for purposes of the congressional investigation. and then when i asked attorney general holder when there were reports of gun walking operations in texas, in houston, texas, at a sports dealer known as carter's country, i asked him whether there were gun walking operations in my state when you had a legitimate seller of firearms say hey, i think there's something suspicious going on, you have people make bulk purchases of firearms and i'm worried they may be going to the cartels or other sources, they were told don't do anything about it. let him go. but when i asked attorney general holder confirm or deny that there was an operation fast

and furious look-alike or that fast and furious itself operating in my state, again, i got no reply. i have no idea what else the attorney general and his department are concealing from the american people or more importantly, the brian terry family who deserve to know what happened and how this operation went terribly awry. perhaps worst of all has been the lack of accountability starting at the top. in the last 16 months since operation fast and furious was uncovered, eric holder has not fired a single person in his department for supplying 2,000 high-caliber firearms to drug cartels in mexico. that's really astonishing. i have to ask if no one has been held accountable, what does it

take to get fired at the holder justice department? attorney general holder's litany of failure does not end there. again, putting politics ahead of his job as the chief law enforcement officer of the country. and indeed putting what appears to be a political agenda ahead of the law. for example, another example, attorney general holder has targeted commonsense voter i.d. legislation passed by the texas legislature and the south carolina legislature which the supreme court of the united states has overwhelmingly upheld the constitutionality of since 2008. so here's the texas leggetd, the south carolina legislature, and others perhaps sitting in the wings trying to take steps to protect the integrity of the vote, of qualified voters in their state and who is the chief

obstructionist to that goal? it's the attorney general and the department of justice. so now we find ourselves, my state, south carolina and others find themselves in litigation asking the courts to do what the attorney general will not, and acknowledge that the supreme court decision in 2008 is the law of the land. these voter identification laws are designed to require citizens to produce a valid photo identification. if you don't have a valid photo identification, you can get one for free. in my state you can show up without any i.d., vote pro visionally as long as you come back within a period of time and produce one. so it's no impediment to participation in votes. and you know what? the american people are accustomed to presenting photo i.d. because every time you get on an airplane, every time you want to buy a pack of cigarettes or a beer, you got to -- if

you're of a certain age, produce a photo i.d. to prove you are of a certain age. but in mr. holder has been so outrageous as to compare these voter i.d. laws to jim crow poll taxes. it's outrageous. a charge that's defamiliar tri and an insult to the people of my state and to anyone with common sense. you know what? you got to show a photo i.d. to get into eric holder's office building in washington, d.c. yet it's discriminatory somehow somehow, it's discouraged qualified voters from casting their ballot? it's ridiculous. while attorney general holder is blocking state efforts to prevent voter fraud, he neglects the voting rights of the men and women in uniform who serve in our country's armed forces. in 2010, actually before that,

on a bipartisan basis we introduced legislation and passed it overwhelmingly, something called the move act. it's a military voting act. but after its passage, which was designed to make it easier for troops that are deployed abroad or civilians deployed abroad to cast a ballot in the u.s. elections, the attorney general failed to adequately enforce this legislation which was designed to give -- to guarantee our active duty military and their families the right to vote. if mr. holder spent as much time and effort enforcing this law as he recently spent attempting to get convicted felons and ill yell aliens off the voter rolls in florida, thousands of military voters might have gotten their ballots on time rather than be disenfranchised in 2010. and these aren't the only duly enacted laws that the attorney general has failed to enforce in

order to carry out the political agenda that apairnltd -- apparently he believes is more important. the attorney general has announced he will refuse to defend the bipartisan defense of marriage act that was signed by president bill clinton despite the fact it's been the law of the land for more than 15 years. it is, in fact the duty of the department of justice to defend laws passed by congress that are lawful and constitutional, and yet he refuses to even do so. and the litany goes on. in addition to using the justice department as a political arm of the obama campaign, he's also moved the department in a dangerously ideological direction in the war on terror. attorney general holder has failed to grasp the most important lesson of 9/11 and the 9/11 commission, that there is a difference between criminal law enforcement for violating crimes and the laws of war that are

designed to get actionable intelligence and prevent attacks against the american people, not just punish them once they have occurred, which is the function of the criminal law. his actions have demonstrated that he believes that terrorism is a traditional law enforcement problem warranting the same old traditional law enforcement solutions. but they, by definition, occur after the fact, after innocent people have been murdered rather than designed to prevent those attacks. for example, attorney general holder attempted to hold trials for master minds of the 9/11 attack, like khalid sheik muhammad in civilian court in manhattan. he wanted to do so in spite of the outcry of local communities and the fact that civilian trials would give terrorists legal protections that they are not entitled to under our constitution and laws and which

they do not deserve. attorney general holder attempted to transfer terrorists from guantanamo bay, cuba, to prisons in the united states over the repeated objection of local communities and the congress. what's more, when federal agents detained, thankfully, the christmas day bomber in chicago that was trying to blow up an airplane with a bomb that he had smuggled and that was undetectable to law enforcement agents, he insisted that instead of being treated as a terrorist and enemy combatant that he be read his miranda rights. that's right, attorney general holder insisted that this terrorist be told, "you have the right to remain silent. you have the right to a lawyer." those are the sorts of muddled thinking that i think have created such potential for harm,

treating a war and terrorist as if they were conventional criminals who ought to be handled through our civilian courts. while attorney general holder was worrying about the rights of people like the christmas day bomber, he was targeting some of the very americans who risk their lives to keep america safe. in fact, he appointed a special prosecutor -- he thought this was sufficient to appoint a special prosecutor not to investigate these classified leaks, but to investigate united states intelligence officials in conducting their duties. he appoint add special prosecutor to investigate c.i.a. interrogators during the prior administration. men and perhaps women who did what they did based on legal advice from the department of justice and based on the belief that what they were doing was important tohe safety and security of united states citizens. and i think they were right.

attorney general holder has also seen fit to release top secret memos detailing interrogation methods, information which of course quickly found its way into the hands of america's enemies and which they could use to train or resist or intelligence-gathering efforts. attorney general holder's failure to grasp the most important lesson of the last decade, that we are at war against al qaeda, demonstrates more than just a willingness to carry a political agenda for this administration. it is a sad result of an ideological blindness for the law, and it has moved the department of justice and, unfortunately, this country in a dangerous direction. mr. president, i will continue on with examples of eric holder's litany of failure, but i believe the case is clear-cut. the american people deserve an attorney general that is independent of politics, that is

accountable to oversight of congress and that is transparent. mr. holder has proven that he is none of these things and it is with regret, not with anger, but with regret and sadness i say it is time for him to resign. i yield the floor. ms. klobuchar: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from minnesota. ms. klobuchar: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business for up to ten minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. klobuchar: mr. president, i rise today to stress the critical infrastructure needs across our nation and to urge the house of representatives to act quickly and to pass a meaningful transportation bill. on march 14 the senate passed

the moving ahead for progress in the 21st century act by a strong bipartisan vote of 74-22. later that month i came to the floor of the senate to highlight passage, the importance of the passage of our surface transportation bill. since then the american people have been waiting for the united states house of representatives to act on their version of a transportation bill. now three months to the week after the senate passed our transportation bill on a 74-22 bipartisan vote, with the nation continuing to wait for action and the june 30th deadline to renew or extend the transportation program coming closer and closer, the united states house of representatives leaders have announced not a short-term extension, but they have announced their interest in a longer-term extension to the end of 2012. i suppose the good news is that that means that we have some

interest in moving forward with the transportation, but that is not good enough for the people of this country. in minnesota, as you know, mr. president, the construction season has begun. and because of our cold winters, we don't always have a long construction season. this kind of delay, where you have a very good bipartisan bill which includes $700 million in construction projects for our state, the state of minnesota, this kind of delay can be crippling. we have a much smaller window of time in which we can complete much-needed projects for easing congestion and improving safety, problems that will help get commuters out of traffic and moving in the twin cities. projects to help ensure that farmers and food producers across greater minnesota can transport their supplies at the right time to the right place to ensure that we continue to have a safe and reliable food supply. you think about the projects in minnesota that need to be

completed: highway 52 in rochester. highway 52, a longtime problem in terms of deaths and traffic accidents, still an area where people get killed. u.s. highway 14 in southern minnesota continuing to wait for that to be completed. 101 in the western metropolitan area, a little girl just killed walking her bike, getting on her bike, going across that highway 101. killed. 94 out by rogers, a bottle neck all the time. i've been in it several times myself. 23 in marshal needs to get done. major company out there, schwans, but you have a highway that isn't able to carry the food and the goods to market that it should because that construction hasn't been done. roads from morehead to the iron range to duluth, all that needs to be completed. that is why, mr. president, it is not good enough to hear the house of representatives talk about a simple extension when we have a strong bipartisan,

bipartisan transportation bill that came out of the united states senate. we also need to be aware of the costs incurred by each additional day of delay. the longer it takes for the congress to pass a transportation bill, the longer it takes projects to be completed, the more expensive they become to taxpayers. that goes to reason. anyone that's built an addition on their house understands that. delay, delay, delay. that is a waste of taxpayers' money and that is why we have to get this bill done. state departments of transportation, contractors, construction workers, engineering firms and other industries need certainty to move forward with the bill. these are private-sector jobs, mr. president. private-sector jobs that await the passage of this bill. they should not have to wait any longer for the u.s. house of representatives to act. take, for example, caterpillar. that might not be the first company you'd think of when you

think about the transportation bill. everyone has seen caterpillar tractors, caterpillar trucks throughout the rural areas. this business employees 750 people at its road paoeufg kweuplt manufacturing facility in minnesota. i've been there. they gave me a pink caterpillar hat. i spoke to all their employees. they are people on the front lines of american industries, helping to create the real made-in-america product that puts jobs in our country and puts dollars in our economy. they're ready to get to work, mr. president. they are ready to get to work improving our nation's roads, our bridges, our tunnels and our highways. i ask the house of representatives why are we making these workers wait? they are ready to get these paving projects done. they're ready to help the commuters in our state to get to work faster. they want to get going. there is no reason to delay getting this bill done. for decades passing a transportation bill was considered one of the most basic

noncontroversial duties of the united states congress. and we have an opportunity to come together to find commonsense solutions to move america forward. we cannot afford to keep the engine of our economy idling by limiting our talks to yet another extension of the surface transportation program. the senate transportation bill is fully paid for and will allow states to move forward to make the critical infrastructure investments in our nation's roads, in our bridges and in our transit system. in addition, the bill makes critical reforms to transportation policy. just last week the centers for disease control and prevention released a report announcing that 58% of high school seniors had texted or e-mailed while driving in the previous month. 58% of kids out there on the road where you're all driving. you've got to remember that 58%, nearly 60% of the kids out on the road are doing a text or doing an e-mail while they're

driving. that is not acceptable. the bipartisan transportation bill includes provisions that i helped to work on to help prevent texting while driving and implement graduate license standards. the bill gives state departments of transportation increased flexibility so that they can address these unique needs. the senate-passed surface transportation bill also reduces the number of highway programs from over 100 down to 30. by saying they're not going to pass this bill in the house they stop us from getting rid of those kinds of duplication. it defines clear national goals for our transportation policy. it streamlines environmental permitting. why would they want to stop that? why would they want to stop us from streamlining environmental permit stph-g that is what they are doing by asking for extension. the minnesota department of transportation has successfully used this program in the past and it will continue to be a key element of our states and other

states' transportation networks in the future. the fact of the matter is that we've neglected the roads and bridges that millions of americans rely on for far too long. no one knows that better than we know it in our state, where that i 35w bridge tragically collapsed in the middle of a summer day, something no one could expect would ever happen. it is not just a bridge. it is an eight-lane highway six miles from my house. if that can happen there, it can happen anywhere in america. we simply can't wait and delay any longer when we have a bipartisan bill with 74 senators that voted for it. there is absolutely no excuse for the house of representatives not taking this up. if you want to know if there's other bridges with problems, look at this. the number from the federal highway administration shows that over 25% of the nation's 600,000 bridges are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. for proof look no further than

the 2009 report card for america infrastructure. it gave our nation's infrastructure a near failing grade. crumbling infrastructure doesn't just threaten public safety, it also weakens our economy. congestion and inefficiencies in our transportation network limit our ability to get goods to market. they exacerbate the divide between urban and rural america. they can strain economic development and competitiveness and they reduce productivity as workers idle in traffic. americans spend a collective 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic. 4.2 billion hours a year at the cost to the economy of $78.2 billion or $710 per motorist. so i ask the house of representatives how can you look at those numbers and decide not to move forward with a bill that streamlines our programs, that actually makes some smart decisions in terms of reform and that actually puts the money out there that we need to build our

bridges and build our roads? it's simply time to act. thank you, mr. president. and i yield the floor. mr. nelson: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from florida. mr. nelson: mr. president, i ask consent that the period for debate only on s. 3240 be extended until 5:00 p.m. and that the majority leader be recognized at that time. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. nelson: mr. president, may i be recognized? the presiding officer: yes, the senator from -- the snoer from recognized. -- the senator is recognized. mr. nelson: mr. president, as i was heading to the capita capl

today, i couldn't help but think about the jolting news from my state that the u.s. department of justice will have to sue my state of florida over its purge of the voting rolls. well, i can tell you, madam president, that being a native floridian whose family came to florida 183 years ago and having the great privilege of serving the people of my state for a number of years, it's simply hard for me to conceive that the state of florida is trying to deliberately make it more difficult for lawful citizens to vote, but the governor did sign a new law that the legislature passed over a year ago to reduce

early voting days, to make it more difficult to vote if you move to another county, to blunt registration drives, and to eliminate sundays in the sunday before the tuesday election in early voting. and then governor scott launched his massive purge of the voting rolls, hunting for suspected noncitizens, and in so doing he's now defying federal authorities who point to federal law, who say you cannot conduct a purge of the voter rolls so close to an election. we're two months away from a primary election in the middle of august. we're a little over four months

away to the general election. and yet the governor and his administration end up doing this. well, what they ought to do is ensure the credibility of our voter rolls, not suppress citizens from voting under the fiction of some perceived fraud. but, above all else, the state of florida must ensure that every lawful citizen who has the right to vote, who can do so without hindrance and impedime impediment. it was quite a while ago, but something that dr. king once said about voting rights seems very appropriate again. dr. king said the denial of this sacred right is a tragic

betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tr traditions. it is democracy turned upside down. madam president, i hope the governor of florida will heed those words, and i yield the floor. and i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. brown: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. brown: thank you, madam president. i ask to speak in morning business for up to ten minutes and dispense with the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: thank you, madam president. i rise today to speak about the violence against women act, vawa, otherwise known as a landmark piece of legislation, one that i believe has saved many lives and brought us together as americans in standing up for what we believe is right. with this law we have said that the united states takes domestic violence very seriously and we are taking a moral stance against it now. in april of this year i was

proud to join a strong bipartisan group of senators in passing senate 1925, the leahy-crapo violence against women reauthorization. 68 senators from this chamber supported the bill. madam president, many of us were moved by the personal stories coming out of our states about the critical impact of vawa in local communities. in massachusetts, i was inspired by the work of organizations like jane doe inc., the ywca, just to name a few and there are many, many more. in march of this year i visited service providers in central massachusetts that received vawa funding and learned a great deal more about how vawa is change lives for the better. new problems are plaguing our communities and as these times change, government must adapt as well if it is going to make a difference. fortunate lurks the senate bill includes many improvements that have been developed over time with various nonprofits and law

enforcement agencies and individuals that deal with these challenges each and every day. i'm very proud to be a cosponsor of what is clearly a good, thoughtful bill. unfortunately, following the bipartisan senate action, the house passed a dramatically scaled-back version of the vawa legislation that did not include corps provisions that would -- core provisions that would improve the law. rather than work through some of these proficiency the house was just content to pass a bill that did not address the number of growing problems facing individuals today. that's not how we legislate. that's not how we should be legislating. we need to pass a bipartisan, bicameral bill that the president will sign. because the house took up the bill -- excuse me, because the house took up a bill that did not go far enough, the house bill passed largely on party lines, as compared to the bipartisan senate bill that we passed just a short time ago. now once again the house and

senate are at an impasse. as someone who has personally experienced domestic violence up close and seen its effect on not only families but my family, this is completely unacceptable. the vast majority of the bill is broadly supported by both sides of the aisle. it's beyond frustrating that the house has become distracted bay tiny percentage of the bill that has caused gridlock. even works it seems some are willing to allow procedural technicalities to block its way forward. i have to tell you, it just makes no sense to me. at a time when people's lives are potentially at stake. this bill should be done already. women in massachusetts and throughout the country, survivors of violence, deserve better and we should provide that leadership immediately. madam president, today i'm calling on the house and senate leadership and committees of jurisdiction to listen to the calls from millions of americans and come together and pass a bill that addresses critical needs of our communities and

citizens of those communities. all sides need to come together and work through the small amount of differences they have. as i've said before, in my experience, when people of good will work together and do one good deed, it geats other good deeds and so on and so forth. and we can get together in a room, we can work through these challenges, we can come up with solutions, around i frequently -- and i frequently here from many of my colleagues that this is the way things used to be done around here. i know we're relatively new still and i would yearn and work every single day i'm here to get back to that way of bipartisanship and spirit of doing things together. so i'm hopeful that we can get some of that bipartisan spirit back, that bipartisan, bicameral spirit back and pass the violence against women act reauthorization.

in close, i'd like to say that we need to start to look out for the people's interests, not our political, personal interests or the party's interest, but the people's interest. we need bridge builders in this chamber to get this bill across the finish line and on the president's desk. the challenges we face in reauthorizing the violence against women act are not insurmountable. you know it, i know it. far from it, i'm confident that the house and senate come together and work out those difnses, we can pass a bill that we can all be proud of a understand -- and send it to the presidentes desk and save lives much let's put politics aside and focus on solving problems sms we're not democrats or republicans or independents. we're americans first. we need to start to work in that vaij to get things -- vein to get things done. thank you, madam president, i'd suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call: quorum call:

a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from missouri. mr. blunt: are we in quorum call? the presiding officer: we are. mr. blunt: i would move to suspend the quorum call and be asked to speak. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blunt: i thank the president for recognizing me. i know we're talking, among other things, this week about the agriculture bill and i am supportive of moving forward with that bill, like so many other things in our economy. the more certainty we can create

for farming families, for agribusinesses, the more likely they are to make decisions now and to make decisions that create good results. the more things you know normally in advance in decisionmaking the more things there are. there are plenty that you don't know in agriculture. my mom and dad were dairy farmers and there's lots that can go wrong on the farm and you don't know how many things there might be. weather and lots of other things that you can't count on. it would be nice to have a farm bill that you could count on, and i know the bill we pass here will only be half of the work of getting that bill passed, but we need to do that and we need to get our economy going again. like so many others, i disagree with the president's sense that the private sector is fine because the private sector's not fine and the economy's not fine. it's not -- private sector job creation as i've said on the floor many times in the last two

years, should be the number-one priority domestically of the government today. what can we do to create more private-sector jobs? two years ago, the administration, the white house kicked off the recovery summer. they said that the success of the $831 billion stimulus plan had done its job. secretary geithner penned an op-ed in "the new york times" saying welcome to the recovery. still we see employment higher than it should be, 8.2%. if we were looking at the same work force that we had 30 years ago -- and we know that the population has gotten bigger, so logically the work force got bigger, too. if we were looking at a work force that was reflective of the work force in january of 2009,

unemployment would be 11.1% today. it's 8.2% because we're considering a work force that is smaller, the that people that are actively out there considering themselves either in the work force or wanting to be in the work force, lower than any time in the last 30 years. certainly the recovery summer didn't work. the rhetoric was high, but the economy didn't grow as we would have hoped it would. the creation of jobs didn't occur. g.d.p., the gross domestic product, grew at 1.7% in 2011, and still below 2%, 1.9% in 2012. only 77,000 jobs were created in april, and only 69,000 jobs were created in may. and, madam president, we're just not doing the job here. the stimulus didn't work, and

part of the stimulus was to try to help states offset the shortages they had, but to some extent all that did was postpone for another year or maybe even two years states having to make decisions that only states should make. you know, the federal government has enough things to run without trying to run everything. the federal government shouldn't be responsible for the things that states are responsible for, and we should do the things we do at the federal level the best they can possibly be done. starting with defending the country. we're looking at some reduction in defense spending that if it happens, will not only negatively impact our ability to defend the country, but if we don't do those reductions exactly right, it will also have real impact on the economy. the stimulus didn't create the

jobs, the labor force participation rate's at a 30-year low, middle-class incomes have dropped $4,350 in the last four years and the private sector is not doing well, nor is the economy doing well. the number of long-term unemployed has doubled to -- to five and a half million since the president took office. housing prices continue to decline. many of the economic forecasters, including the congressional budget office, project that economic growth downgrades and skepticism toward the recovery will continue. the congressional budget office recently released a dismal long-term budget outlook showing that the country's federal debt per person is on the track to triple in a generation. now, that track has to stop. we can make the decision do we

want to be europe, do we want to be greece, do we want to be italy, do we want to be ireland or portugal or spain, and all you have to do is pick up a paper any day of the week now to know that surely that's not who we want to be. or do we want to get our government right sized for our economy? do we want to get back to where we don't let our economy be overwhelmed by the government. what's happened in so many of the countries i just mentioned and others in europe is that they've let the government get bigger than the economy can support. the c.b.o. talked about what would happen if don't want take this action between now and early next year, if we let taxes go back up, if we let defense spending go in the direction that it appears to be heading, what happens then. even president clinton and former secretary of -- former domestic advisor and secretary

of the treasury summers said we need to continue current tax policies for some time in the future. i remember the end of 2010 the president said now's not the time to discourage jobs. well, exactly when would be the time to discourage jobs? the job of the federal government domestically should be to figure out what we can do to encourage jobs. because the federal government with only the rarest of rare occasions, the federal government with few exceptions doesn't create jobs. the federal government, however, has a lot to say about the environment where people make that decision as to whether they're going to create a job or not. with constant discussion of energy policies that don't make sense and too much regulation and raising taxes and health care costs that are unknown for every job you add, people just don't add those jobs. so whether it's the agricultural economy which again, i'll say

even know the unemployment there is twice as high as government sector unemployment. the ag economy, it's almost twice as high as the 4.2% of government sector unemployment. it's still a bright spot in the current economy, but that economy will be better if we give people more of a chance to plan. the recovery summer didn't work. we'll see know what the court has to say about the affordable health care act, but i will tell you that you only have to talk to a few job creators and not for very long to know that the affordable health care act is standing in the way of job creation just as are regulations, the e.p.a. keeps regulating, the shortest path to more american jobs would be more american energy and we have energy and resources in greater abundance than we believe we had

just a few years ago. oil shale, gas shale, we should produce more of our own energy that would allow us to make things again. and what we can't produce, if we can buy it from our closest neighbors and dependable friends, we should do that. there's nothing wrong with buying things from people who don't like you, but it's crazy to have to buy things from people who don't like you. particularly if you can buy things from people you like you. when we send a dollar to our neighbors in canada they send almost a dollar back every single time. the likelihood that canadians will decide they don't want to sell us oil or gas is virtually zero. we can't say that about every country that we have gotten too dependent on in recent years. so let's do the right things, madam president. let's have a true path to recovery. let's have good energy policy, let's have good tax policy, let's have good regulatory policy. and let's see if we can't get

the private sector the kind of priority in job creation it needs to be, and, of course, that includes one of the brightest lights in the private sector, which is farming families and the ag economy and our ability to compete in a world because of the great job we do in agriculture. and i would yield back and suggest that there's not a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are. mr. inhofe: i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection.

mr. inhofe: madam president, senator blumenthal is due down on the floor and i'd -- when i see him come in, i'll cease, but i wanted to make a couple of remarks about a couple of opinions so i ask unanimous consent that i be recognized out of turn and will leave when he shows up. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. inhofe: the biggest threat to the future of farmers -- i come from a farm state of oklahoma, are really the burdensome and costly regulations. i've got three amendments, the amendment that i'm proposing today will provide significant regulatory relief for farmers struggling in a tough economy. there's virtually no history of oil spills from agricultural operations in farms simply do not pose the risk of spills that other sectors do. starting next year, farmers who have oil and gas tanks -- that's all of them. they all have oil and gas tanks on their farms. they're located in different areas, if they have a certain aggregate amount they'll be required to hire a certified professional engineer to design

a spill prevention control and countermeasure plan like major oil refineries. they may be required to purchase capital commitment to comply with the rule including dool dwal containment tanks -- dual containment tanks that will necessarily raise the cost. my amendment would exempt the farmers from these regulations for above-ground oil storage tanks that have an aggregate storage capacity of less than 12,000 gallons. i happen to know a small wheat farmer in northwest oklahoma by the name of keith kissling. he is a wheat farmer, he is one of the only farmers who took the time to actually comply with the spcc regulations. those are spill regulations. most people didn't even try to comply with it. first he had to fill out over 80 pages of paperwork that he did

not understand. he hired an online service to help him comply which cost him money. he didn't make his job much easier, he must keep a copy of this plan on his property at all times in case he's inspected. if he had older tanks, the rules would require him to purchase new double walled taption that are incredibly expensive. in addition he has to build a berm around his tanks to hold 18,000 gallons of fuel in case it does leak. this will be very expensive and time consuming. he also must install a liner underneath the tanks and at the bottom of the berm to contain any leaks. he reports the rules are extremely confusing and the regulations did just don't makey sense given the fact that farmers would not let leaks go unnoticed because diesel fuel is too expensive. in addition to providing this exemption, it will allow farmers who are regulated to self-certify instead of going to

the ex expense -- expense of hiring engineers to do that for them. i'm hoping that my colleagues will look at this as a regulation that is not needed and accept my amendment. i have a second amendment having to do with -- with storm water. one of the biggest threats is the overburdensome and costly regulation but one of the best ways to stop these rules is ensure when an agency states that they will collect the best available information before imposing a new regulation, that they do that. this amendment will ensure the e.p.a. keeps its word and fully evaluates a current storm water regulatory situation. what practices works and what don't work, what the costs are and what the benefits are, and before barreling ahead with new uncertainty regulations. e.p.a.'s current storm water regulations they committed to complete an evaluation of the current rule. this amendmentally simply stops the e.p.a. from issuing any new

regulations until they comply with the rule. in other words, they've said they would do this. this stops them from invoking a regulation and completing it until they've completed what they have already agreed to. rest assured that this is nothing new to the e.p.a. in fact, in the e.p.a. guidance that accompanied the current regulations they recommended the same thing. and that until the evaluation of the current program is completed, new requirements be imposed. especially for small communities. so as you can see all this really does is force the e.p.a. to do what they've already agreed that they would do and that should be a very easy one to pass. i still don't see -- the senator has arrived and i would yield to him at this point.

a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: thank you, madam president. i am here today, madam president, to speak about a bipartisan amendment that i've offered to the farm bill. it's an amendment that incorporates a bill that i offered, the animal fighting spectator prohibition act. and i've introduced it with cosponsors: senators kirk, cantwell, brown of massachusetts, wyden, and landrieu. and i ask unanimous consent that senator kerry be added as a cosponsor. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blumenthal: thank you, madam president. commonly, in advocating or introducing bills, senators will have photographs or visual aids, and i thought about doing that today and then realized that the photographs appropriate for this bill are of mangled, cruelly

torn animals, animals that died in the midst of torture, a blood sport that really has no place in any of our american towns or cities or countrysides. a blood sport that involves animal fighting. this activity is not only cruel and inhumane, it is also a sport that fosters and promotes and encourages illegal activity, including drug dealing, gangs, gambling, and it is a source of really the worst instincts. it encourages the worst in the human condition and the worst in the individuals who participate and who come to watch it. and so the congress has recognized this fact in the

past, as recently as 2007, but upgrading the federal law against animal fighting. it is prohibited, and the act of 2007 made the interstate transport of fighting animals or cock-fighting tools a federal felony. in 2008, in the wake of the michael vick case, congress approved the lawmaking the training of fighting animals a felony and enhancing the upper limits of jail time for anyone engaged and convicted of it. so the federal law now is very comprehensive and very powerful. it prohibits exhibiting, buying, possessing, training and transporting an animal for participation in a fighting activity. it is comprehensive and powerful, except for one

loophole. one loophole. and that's the one that i propose to cover through this amendment, to the farm bill. this legislation would prohibit knowingly attending an animal fight by setting penalties that include a fine or imprisonment of up to one year or both. it would also extend stricter penalties for any individual who knowingly brings a child to an animal fight, and the penalty for engaging in that activity would be a fine and prison sentence of up to three years or both. so the loopholes here are that spectators are not covered and bringing children to these events is not covered. and that's why this legislation is absolutely essential.

why spectators? well, spectators are commonly participants. in fact, the sport wouldn't exist without spectators. they are the ones who gamble, who engage in other criminal activity, who come there simply to engage in that activity. and they are there not only to watch, but to bring their own animals to fight tor gamble illegally or for drug dealing illegally or gang activity illegally. spectators are the source of financing. they make it profitable. they must be subject to federal law and federal prohibitions in the same way as anyone who actually engages in already prohibited activity. this type of criminal element --

gathering at dogfights or cock fights -- ought to be subject to the same kinds of prohibition. why children? well, without stating the obvious, coming to a cockfight or a dogfight, a blood sport leads to other kinds of violence. i don't need to cite the scientific evidence for anyone who is a parent and a member of this body. right now there's no law that applies to bringing children to such an event, and we need to close that loophole. again, if i had photographs here, one would be of a small girl crying, literally crying at the sight of one of these animals mangled and cruelly torn

apart before death. it would provide proof that a person is such aware of an animal fight. it would not intrude on states' rights. 49 states already have similar laws. we need a federal law because many of these activities are in interstate commerce and the power of the federal government as an enforcer is i irreplaceabe and the federal government ought to be on record against the crimes involved committed by spectators and against bringing children to this kind of event. when animal fighting involves players from a number of different states, a county sheriff or a local law enforcer simply lacks the power to deal with it and to root out the entire operation.

not just to make arrests at the site, but to root out the whole operation so that the penalties are more comprehensive and the organized criminal activity is ended. these crimes are a federal matter, and the federal response ought to be overwhelming. in the michael vick case, just as an example, the local commonwealth attorney refused to take action, and federal authorities had to prosecute this case. this measure has law enforcement endorsements not only from sheriffs and others who care about this problem -- the local sheriffs are in favor of it, but also the federal law enforcement officers association and the fraternal order of police. it is supported as well by the american veterinary medical association and the humane society of the united states,

which has been a strong partner in this effort and does so many great things, so much great work to protect animals in this country and around the world. my thanks to the humane society for its courageous leadership in this area. there would be no cost to the federal government, just to answer a question that is always raised. the congressional budget office has scored this legislation and found that it has zero cost. zero cost to the federal government. so let me just say the legislation is bipartisan. it's commonsense. it's humane. it's right. and it will cost zero dollars to close this last remaining loophole. this last remaining refuge for a blood sport that has no place in civilized society. it gives federal law enforcers the tools that they need to stop

it and that they badly need. and i urge its adoption and yield the floor. thank you, madam president. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blumenthal: i ask unanimous consent that chadril shaw, a fellow in senator mark udall's office, be granted floor privileges for the duration of the senate's session this week, on june 13 and 14, 2012. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blumenthal: thank you, madam president. i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. blumenthal: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blumenthal: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the period for debate only on s. 3240 be extended until 5:30 p.m. and that the majority leader be recognized at that time. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blumenthal: i yield the floor and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: