efforts in medicare on preventive care starting in early 2011. some 600,000, 6-700,000 women in ohio, senior women in ohio on medicare began to have preventive services, mammograms, various kinds of physicals at no, paying no co-pay, no deductible. that was the beginning of this. and tomorrow in my state, starting tomorrow, 1.8 million women will have access to these services. notable among them and the story you will hear from ann is not a typical story, a typical story of someone with the courage that she's shown, perhaps, but a story that's all too common. she's the mother of four and, as she says, four kids and the grandmother of 12 kidlets, as she's said to me. she's from holland, and she has a story to tell. and with all the numbers we cite, hundreds of thousands in

other states, but she is really the reason that we all make these fights. i remember sitting in health committee with senator mikulski and with tom harkin as we wrote some of the preventive, the preventive elements in this bill and how important they were and the fights that those two made to do the right thing. and it really is because of people like ann craich that we know are out there living their lives every day, caring so much about the community. and she's willing with all of her illnesses over the past, she's willing to step up and fight in an ongoing way. she's an activist in toledo, she's an activist here, and we're proud, and i'm proud to introduce ann craich. ann, thank you. >> thank you. i'm proud to be here. thank you, senator brown, and senator mikulski. it is a pleasure to be here, and it is an honor. and listening to all of everybody speak, three minutes is kind of a tough ting to stay with when you're pleading for a human life here, but that's exactly what i'm doing. pardon me? >> talk as long as you want.

>> okay. i am a three-time survivor of cancer. you live with cancer every day of your life, it doesn't just go away. i have been very fortunate and blessed. my first bout was 30 years ago when i was diagnosed with breast cancer, and i did have insurance, thankfully. i also had checked myself for 18 years because when i was 18 years old, they had found a lump, and i'm lucky i had a doctor who said do self-examination and watch out and pay attention to your body. and i did, and i did find my lump when i was about 36 years old. i did have insurance, so i had double mastectomies, and i had about eight other surgeries for repair work that was done because of the mastectomies. but it all worked out great. and then in -- that was 1982. and in the year 2000 i was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. i will tell you i had no signs at all until i found a little bit of blood one day. and because i paid attention to my body, i realized this shouldn't be. so i called the doctor right

away, and they did a test on me, and they found a large tumor that they felt, and i had certain different doctors' opinions, they all felt that it was a ten-year growth of that tumor. now, i was 55 years old at that time. that was 11 years ago. had i had a colonoscopy at 50, cancer might have been avoided altogether. had i had it at 45, i may never have had to go through anything. thankfully i had good insurance at that time because i ended up in washington, d.c. at a hospital for a very special procedure that a doctor had taught and did all over the world. and i was fortunate enough to be able to get into him to have the tumor removed. but when it came back malignant, i had to have much more extensive surgery, and i went back to columbus, ohio, and had that because nobody wanted to work on me in toledo. the expertise wasn't quite there at that point in time. now, we come forward, and in the

year 2000 i was rediagnosed with breast cancer. and i called my insurance company right away because the insurance that i finally got -- i was denied insurance after my employer had asked me right after my colorectal, an employer had asked me if i would, please, go off the insurance because i was costing everybody too much in the company. the figure that he gave me, and i later found out it was costing the company, it wasn't costing the individuals, but there were several individuals in that company that were carrying a couple different jobs, and there was no way i wanted them to pay extra money because of me. so i said of course i would check out for other insurance, and i had no idea what i was walking into. i was refused by never insurancy several insurance companies, i finally ended up at what they wall open enrollment -- call open enrollment. i finally end up with insurance at about 385, but i was on total life exclusion for cancer and respiratory, and the respiratory came up because, apparently, through the anesthetic i got a

little bit of copd from the colorectal surgery. don't take any medicines for it or anything, but i'm denied. so in 2010 when this happened, when i got rediagnosed, i called the insurance company right away, and i said are you going to cover me? they said probably not because if it comes back negative, you don't meet your deductible. i'm not a sick person. i take good care of myself, but i do get cancer. i don't know why. so if it came back positive because i had cancer and because it was a pre-existing condition, they were not going to cover me. so i canceled my insurance right then and there because i was paying money and not getting anything back. so luckily, i was approved for the bccp program, and i was very, very fortunate for my bill for my one-day surgery was almost $40,000. and that would have -- i'm single, and that would have really put me back. so i was very fortunate to have that, and i'm very glad that they took over.

i still had about $8-$10,000 of bills on my own, but that was a sure cry difference. >> [inaudible] >> pardon me? >> or being dead. >> there you go. i am a voice representing thousands and millions of people, women and men. but being a woman, i can't even tell you how much we appreciate what you're doing and how much the impact is going to be on women. most of the people that i know around me are women fighting cancer. i have a friend fighting bone cancer. she's been fighting it for six years which is a recurrence from breast cancer many years ago. she can't move. she can hardly get in and out of her car, she can't go out in her backyard because of the medication, but it's too hard for her to get down and up. getting out of her bed is a project in the morning, and she could be around for another six to ten to twenty years. you can live with bone cancer for a long time, and i will tell you, it's painful. so to live in a world of pain and agony and fear, and when you

hear those words "you've got cancer," i will tell you, it is a paralyzing moment. and once you get past that moment, you have to decide what to do. because that decision in itself is gigantic. and until you make that decision, you're in a very black hole. and then you have to move forward and do what you're going to do and make up your mind that you're going to get better. but the screenings and the testing and learning about your body and being educated is so very important because most of these cancers can be avoided. i know that i would not have had colorectal cancer if i would have had a colonoscopy before the time that i did. it could have been avoided. my breast cancer could have been a lot worse. i have been very fortunate. there are thousands out there, millions that are not as fortunate. and i'm just going to throw one thing out. um, if you look at -- i'm talking about just cancer patients now alone -- but if you take 9/11 and you take a 9/11 every other day of the year,

then you have the same amount of people that are dying from cancer in our country. 9/11. it was horrific. it was every expletive that you could think of. but these are people that are dying day by day and are living with pain and fear and devastation, financial devastation. some losing their families. i do have four kids, and i have 12 kidlets, and i look at them, and i don't want them to go through the same thing that i went through or that i see many of my friends go through. i lost my brother three months ago, and my sister was just diagnosed with melanoma internally. and this is tough. it's very tough. so i thank you very much, senator, and all of you that have supported this and are putting this into effect, and i implore upon you to go with very strong voices to people that are not putting human life as a top priority. i don't understand how they can't, but since they've not, thank you, and please take those

voices in strong. i would like to introduce marsha greenberg, and she is a founder and co-president of the national women's law center. [applause] >> before marsha and judy come up, i just wanted to thank them and all of the advocates because i think in what you heard in ann's testimony -- she's worked with the american cancer society, the cancer action network, the national women's law center, judy goodman and the national partnership for women and families -- we couldn't have done it without each other. and we were all in it together. and i want to thank the advocates. because it's their voice that really brought this to the floor. many nice things were said about me today, but really you have to talk about the people who are in the trenches every day, the people who are affected, the people who give voice to the

law, to the statistics and so on. i want to publicly thank them because we could never have done this without their incredible, incredible homework. and, ann, what a compelling personal narrative. shows why we will never let them repeal or even try to repeal this bill. and so we will fight it, and now one of the great warriors, marsha. >> thank you so very much, senator mikulski, all of the champions for women's health who are here in this extraordinarily exciting day. and, ann, your story is such an amazing reminder that we're not talking about statistics, we are talking about people, we are talking about the most heart-wrenching of health circumstances that can be avoided and certainly

ameliorated with access to the health care system, with decent health insurance for every american in this country. that is what the affordable care act promises. and with this preventive health care coming into effect tomorrow for each new plan as it comes online the promise for women and their families is just incalculable. i want to just add a few things to what has already been said so movingly by others who have spoken earlier. first of all, it's actually the 40th anniversary this year of the national women's law center. ten by step -- step by step by step, effort by effort, it has taken this long and longer to

reach a day when women's health is not an afterthought, when it isn't an add-on, when we aren't trying one service at a time to get included, when the model of health can include and health care can include women as well as men. and that is really what is so fundamentally thrilling about what we are on the brink of experiencing. because of this affordable care act and the preventive health care amendment that senator mikulski led towards passage, women are not only not a pre-existing condition, but we have had experts identifying from the get go what is it that

makes women healthy? what are the services that women need? they need to be included. they need to be a part of what is available in this country. not through charity, not through happenstance, but because the law incorporates women's health as one of it fundamental purposes. you know, the national women's law center a number of years ago did a report of the individual market, and ann told pretty movingly how difficult it was to be on your own and have to go buy health insurance. and what we found was that women who had to buy insurance were not only charged routinely more than men, as much as 85% more than men, but also that was

excluding maternity coverage, excluding contraception. now we will face and meet the day when women are not charged more than men, and their health care needs are covered. whether it is counseling services as domestic violence survivors, when it is the kind of -- whether it is the kind of testing to try to detect gestational diabetes, whether it is the availability of all forms of fda-approved contraception so that women no longer have to avoid because of the cost the safest and most effective means of contraception for them. whether it means a well woman visit so that the maternity coverage and follow-up is

available for women, these kinds of services are life saving, they are recognition of the fact that as has been said, women do have to take care of their health and often are -- because of the costs -- the first ones to put their health care last as they take care of others. so as each new plan turns over and women across this country and their families can really let out a sigh of relief that they will get access to this coverage once and for all, we have a lot to be thankful for, but we know that it didn't come without effort, without fight, without leadership, without determination, and we have to continue all of those efforts to keep this progress in place.

one of the things on the banner is a hashtag, her health. and i know there's going to be a lot of tweeting and following through out today and tomorrow all of the important aspects of what this new day will bring and what it promises over time. so it is important to stay involved and stay engaged and stay in the fight so that we continue this progress and make sure that it turns into a reality for every man, every woman, every child in this country. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> oh, i need -- >> i forgot to introduce a dear colleague and a dear friend, judith litman, for the national partnership for women and families. >> thank you, marcia.

and thank you, senator mikulski and, of course, secretary sebelius, and all the wonderful champions on behalf of the affordable care act and most especially women's health. this law is the greatest advance for women's health in a generation, and tomorrow, august 1st, one of its promises becomes a reality. as you've heard, for millions of women who will be healthier as a result. beginning august 1st, the affordable care act will insure that new insurance plans cover preventive health care without cost sharing and with no co-pays. that for too long have put those critical sfts out of reach for -- services out of reach for so many women like ann. this is one of the most tangible benefits from reform. thanks to the affordable care act no longer will women go

without birth control because they can't afford the co-pays. no longer will women go without hiv and sexually-transmitted disease testing they urgently need. no longer will cost prevent pregnant women from being tested for gestational diabetes. no longer will costs prevent new mothers from getting the supplies they need to breast-feed their infants and give them a healthier start in life. no longer will teens and adults at risk for domestic violence go without potentially life-saving screening and coming. it is about time. the affordable care act covers annual breast exams, mammograms and pap tests at no cost. tomorrow cost ceases to be aer ther the -- a deterrent to the prevebtive care that millions of

women need, and soon reform will outlaw gender discrimination in pricing. at long last. as more benefits roll out, we should all focus on implementing the law and insuring that all women and all americans can access these critical services. to those who try to argue that repealing reform is right for this country and for our families, i say this: you can't talk fast enough, you can't sow enough confusion or in any deceive the women of america and the men who care about them. no longer. better care for pregnant and nursing mothers, screenings for hiv, sexually-transmitted infections and domestic violence and no-cost access to birth control and other preventive services will make women and our families and our country

healthier. starting tomorrow, we have the affordable care act and its champions to thank for that. and we thank you. >> thank you, judy, very much. senator mikulski had to go to the floor. there's -- had some time reserved this morning on the floor to speak about this, and she's our leader, so she asked me to try to field any questions if you have any questions. >> senator harkin? >> yeah. >> senator harkin? the other women's health issue in the capitol today is the house bill to ban abortions after the 20th week in the district of columbia. what are your, a, reactions on that and, b, given the gulf between the to chambers chambere two parties on the issues, is that something that's going to have to be resolved after the election? >> a long time ago -- i guess not that long ago -- i chaired the committee on the district of columbia. p i said then, i believed then and i have believed ever since

that the congress of the united states should not interfere in the government of the district of columbia. regardless of banning abortions after 20 weeks or whatever that is, this is no business of the u.s. congress, period. >> [inaudible] >> yes. >> the catholic bishops have unanimously declared this this regulation to be an illegal and unjust mandate. a judge on friday issued an ip ip -- injunction -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah, in colorado, enforcing a cap on if you're a business owner. >> preliminary injunction. >> right. do you believe the federal government has the moral right to force small business owners to -- [inaudible] >> what i do believe is that the obama administration had carved out a very sensible sort of

middle ground exception to this. in which churches, religious organizations, certainly, are exempted from this. but for-profit businesses that cover a broad variety of people, they don't have to pay in they don't want to for the individual. but they do have to pay into the health care. and it's up to the insurance companies whether or not they want to carry as a provision. so i think the exception that the obama administration come up with sensible. i think we also have to keep in mind that a lot of times we talk about birth control or contraception, many times for many young women of child-bearing age it's not just to prevent a birth or prevent pregnancy. there are many women who take

birth control pills, for example, because they have terrible menstrual cramps once a month, some of them almost incapacitated, can't work. i know of young women myself who because of this are able to work and be productive. and it's prescribed by their doctor. are we now being told that a woman hats to take that prescription -- has to take that prescription from a doctor and take and show it to her employer? or show it to her insurance company? about what the diagnosis is? you wouldn't ask anyone to do that. i wouldn't ask any woman to do that either. so i think that, i think that we have to move ahead on this. i don't know what the outcome of this case in colorado is going to be, i know it's a preliminary injunction while the case, while it's decided. i don't know all the facts in the case. i just don't. but i do believe that we have carved out, the obama administration carved out a

viable exception for religious organizations and churches. anybody have anything to add to that, some of my legal experts here? marcia? [laughter] >> well, i will just say briefly that it is very much in the beginning preliminary injunction stage, and i think if you look at any of the legal precedents that this particular provision is well within, um, the legal bounds as well as being sensible as senator harkin said. and, of course, in this particular case a company that is, i believe, installs heating and air-conditioning and the like -- that is what the company is -- ironically enough, of course, for those who happen to work for this company who never thought they were working for a religious company, and they aren't, it's not a religious organization at all, um, they

are paying in, um, whatever their, their share of insurance is. and so women need to be able to get access to needed health care just like men can. and, of course, one of the things we have to make sure of is that this does respect women's health needs and women's own religious principles and beliefs too. so in the balancing, legal and constitutional precedents take all of this into account, and that's why we're quite confident as this case and others move forward that the provisions will be upheld. >> i think so too. yes. >> over the course of the last couple of year, a number of studies have come out regarding the health care debate that recorded that breast cancer screening, mammograms, prostate

cancer screenings, these kinds of things have become excessive, they've become -- they created emotional concerns for people because they were initially positive and then negative. um, it seems as if this is a response to some of this discussion, that these prescreening tests are absolutely crucial and necessary. um, the problem also is that a lot of these studies are coming out of increasing insurance rates. there has to be a fundamental regulation on insurance. i think that the debate on single-payer and the public option has to be retaken under this consideration and explicitly because what you see was deregulated financial industries like we saw with the wall street situation and libor scandal, we need fundamental legislation like we need glass-steagall, so maybe you can take up -- >> so that's a statement -- >> no, i mean -- >> [inaudible] >> i'm with executive intelligence review. but the question i'm asking is

what are we going to do about the private insurance companies? what's going to regulate them and mandate them to keep the prices low? if you're going to say we need to have real health care for people, how do you provide affordable health insurance? competition doesn't simply do the job. >> well, on the exchanges it will. you're going to have a different system start anything 2014 with the exchanges, with more transparency, with people being able to see what's offered on the exchanges and what different companies are offering. quite frankly, the american people will get what we have here in congress. same kind of thing. every year we have an open season, and i think we get, what, 15 or 20 different plans we can pick and choose from. i know i've changed my plan from when i was here just my wife and i, then when we had kids we changed it, then when our kids got older we changed it, then when our kids left, we changed it to conform to whatever our family situation was. most people haven't had that option, but now they will in

2014. and we hope that that will keep prices down. but with i also believe, i believe as strongly as anything that what we're talking about here in terms of moving to more preventive care, early detection is going to do more as they say, i hate to use this phrase, bend the cost curve than any other single thing we've ever done, and this is part of it, the women's health care, preventive health care's a big part of that. somebody else -- >> [inaudible] >> thanks. [inaudible conversations] >> thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] >> under sequestration, the defense department's budget will be cut by $500 with over the

next decade. today the house armed services committee holds a hearing on the effect of those cuts on the military. you can see live coverage beginning at 10 a.m. eastern on c-span3 and c-span.org. >> we have to be really clear about the very many ways that we own ourselves and that we own our history and that we make decisions that our history is phenomenal, vital and special. >> the former president of bennett college, julianne malveaux, writes and comments on politics, education and african-american economic history. and this sunday your questions, calls, e-mails and tweets for the author of "surviving and thriving: 365 facts in black mix history," julianne malveaux, in depth live at noon eastern on c-span2's booktv. >> well, the u.s. senate is about to gavel in to start their day. more work is expected on the

cybersecurity bill today. negotiations do continue off the floor addressing the concerns of lawmakers on a number of provisions. the senate may also take up a bill dealing with stronger sanctions against iran once the house approves that measure which we do expect today. and now live to the senate floor here on c-span2. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. o god, the light of the world, as you illuminate our path, may we walk in the brightness of your presence. use our senators to select the plans that most honor you.

may they feel concern when our nation drifts from your precepts and labor to restore those values that will keep america strong. lord, help them to do their very best each day and leave the results to you. give them the wisdom to lift each other's burdens by being as encouraging to others as you have been to them. we pray in your sacred name. amen. the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america

and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington, d.c, august 1, 2012. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable kirsten e. gillibrand, a senator from the state of new york, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: daniel k. inouye, president pro tempore. mr. reid: madam president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: i now move to proceed to calendar number 476, which is the veterans corps service act. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: motion to proceed to calendar number 476, s. 3457, a bill to require the secretary of veterans affairs to establish a veterans job corps and for other purposes.

mr. reid: madam president, the first hour will be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or they are designees. the republicans will control the first half, the majority the final a yesterday i filed cloture on the cybersecurity bill. the filing deadline for first-degree amendments is 1:0 1:00 p.m. today. we will let the senate know about votes scheduled. we're trying to do one on burma and the african trade bill that we've wanted to do for a long time, but the republicans have held it up to this point, but we'll see what we can do to move forward on that. last week general keith alexander, commander of the united states cyber command, was asked to rate how prepared america was to face a cybersecurity attack on a scale of one to ten. here is what he said. "0 from my perspective, i'd say about a three." keep in mind, one is totally

unprepared, ten is totally prepared. three is what he said. one of the country's top national security experts gave us three out of ten, a failing grade by any standard. he went to ensay that the type of cyber attacks that could wipe out the nation for up to three weeks. he said a cyber 9/11 is eminent they say frailties are most urgent, a threat to our national security. snog more important. so it was with disappointment last night that i filed cloture on legislation to reinforce our defense against these motions from attackers. some are countries, some are organizations, some are individuals. the national security experts have been complaining about the urgent need to act. they say the question is not whether to act but whether we

will act in time. one need only look at the headlines and papers all over america today, all over the world today. as we speak, 600 million people in india are without electricity. now, it's not believed there was any terrorism involved in that. it's believed it relates to the unusual weather, based probably, many experts say, on global warming. they've never had such heat in india, which has put a tremendous burden on their fragile power system. this legislation that we're trying to finish here, madam president, has been worked on for years -- years. not this congress, but going into last congress. i was pleased to hear last week that many of my colleagues were working on thoughtful amendments to improve an strengthen this

measure, in spite of the untoward pressure by the chamber of commerce to kill this legislation. senators on both sides have worked hard to address every concern raised by the private sector about this legislation. senator lieberman and collins have been exemplary. the bill that's before this body now is not nearly as strong as i would like it, but that's what compromise is all about. i accept what they felt they had to do. i really expected a healthy debate on this issue, this important issue. i also expected to process many relevant amendments. unfortunately, that wasn't good enough for a few of my republican colleagues. instead of amendments that deal with our nation's cybersecurity, they're insisting on political showboats. instead of substantive amendments that deal with our nation's cybersecurity, they're look beining at other things.

i thought they were going to be sear why about this, but they're not. protecting our electric grids, water supplies, financial systems should be above political wrangling, so i was disappointed to watch the process derail. on a woman's right to choose her health care generally, as 47 million americans were set to gain access to preventive services with no out-of-pocket costs, republicans insisted once again on a vote to repeal these benefits. they want to roll back the clock on the days when insurance companies could discriminate against women. why? because they were women. they had a preexisting disability. their gender. and to make matters works they're willing to kill a bill that would protect our nation from cyberterrorism in the process. but this isn't a new tactic. you may remember, as we all do,

and i was reminded of that yesterday when a question was asked to me by the distinguished assistant leader, senator durbin, who reminded the entire senate in a question to me that on a transportation bill, surface transportation, that put 3 million jobs at risk, their first amendment was by senator blunt on women's access to contraception. still, i admit i was surprised that senator mcconnell would so brazenly pull partisan politics into the debate. the health care bill that we passed designates that women will no longer be second-class citizens as it relates to health care. so i can't imagine a more untimely attack on women than yesterday. yesterday senator mcconnell and i received a letter from general alexander, who runs a

national security agency, one of the top leaders there, urging us to move more quickly. here''s what he wrote partially. "the cyber threat facings the nation -- we cannot afford further delay. we need to move forward on comprehensive legislation now. i urge you to work together to get it passed." what more do we need, madam president? what more does the chamber of commerce need so that they can release my republican colleagues? i share general alexander's concern. mr. durbin: would the majority leader yield? mr. reid: i would be happy to. mr. durbin: i would like to ask the majority leader if he was aware of the statement that i had yesterday on the floor of the senate by senator whitehouse, who has been one of the leaders in putting together this cybersecurity bill relative to an incident at the chamber of commerce, and i would like to read it, if i can, very briefly.

and i quote senator whitehouse from page s-5720 of the july 31 "congressional record. "even the u.s. chamber of commerce has been the victim of a long-term cyber intrusion. just last year "the wall street journal" reported that a group of hackers in china breached the computer defenses of the u.s. chamber of commerce, gaining access to everything in their system including information about 3 million members and they remain on the chamber's network for at least six months and possibly more than a year. the chamber only learned of the break-in when the f.b.i. told the group that servers in china were stealing their information. even after the chamber was notified and increased its cybersecurity, the article stated that the chamber continued to experience suspicious activity including a thermostat at a town house owns on capitol hill that communicated with an internet

address in china and a interprosecuter used by the chamber executive spontaneously printing pages with chinese characteristics." as senator said, "these are the people we are supposed to listen to about cybersecurity?" i would ask the senator from nevada, was he aware of the fact that the opposition by the chamber belies the fact that they have been hacked by the chinese themselves and didn't even mow it until the federal bureau of investigation reported it? mr. reid: madam president, in answer to my friend, this is -- we are living in a modern world. a thermostat -- isn't that what you just said? mr. durbin: that's right. mr. reid: is the kind of activity that china wants to get from the chamber of commerce. remember, madam president, that's only one way they get this information. with the numerous instruments we carry around -- blackberries,

iphones, all of these instruments, every one is a vehicle to find out what's going on in my life, your life, the life of the chamber of commerce, and so i can't imagine how my republican friends can follow this lead. i don't know how -- we've had republican leaders in the past on security. they've all said do something about this. i would love to have a bipartisan bill to work through this. some amendments. i don't expect anyone to think that the bill that senator lieberman and senator collins did is perfect. but it is a lot better than nothing. and i hope that people when we vote on this tomorrow will invoke cloture and pass their bill. i had no choice but to file cloture and i will continue towork with all senators to find

out if we can reach a compromi compromise. i wish i had better news, madam president. ignorance is bliss. i wish i didn't know as much. i wish i -- the briefings i had down in the classified area of the capitol -- a the although of that information is kind of scary. and it's scary that we're not doing something about this bill. would the chair announce the business of the day. the presiding officer: the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the following hour will be divided and controlled divided and controlled between the that leaders or their designees with the republicans controlling the first half, the majority controlling the final half. mr. isakson: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from georgia. mr. isakson: while the majority whip is on the floor, i want to pay him a compliment.

a group of six people in the senate, three republicans and three democrats, about a year and a half ago began getting together to deal with our fiscal problems in this country, both entitlements, as well as our tax system. i am going to talk exactly about what this senate and congress has got to do to deal with the fiscal cliff we're about to go o but i want to acknowledge the fact that many of us have been working on solutions that we are going to have to take if we're going to save the republic and save this economy. i just wanted to n.a.s. on to the distinguished -- i just wanted to pass that on to the distinguished majority whip. madam president, in my state of georgia, the most recent report on unemployment posted our unemployment rate at%. in our state, we advertise foreclosures every friday leading up to the first tuesday. we set a record in the month of july on number of foreclosures being advertised. yesterday i had a meeting with the president of lockheed no,

sir my office -- who was in my office. they have one of their largest manufacturing facilities in marietta, georgia. we just got the second quarter g.d.p. report that says we slowed down in growing down to 1.5% from a previous quarter of 2%, all indicators are that we're heading toker a second pump in our economy. it has been a very weak and tracted recovery and is beginning to fail. we are looking at a fiscal problem that will affect this country for decades to come. i want to encourage my fellow colleagues in the senate to recognize the time is running out. we can no longer postpone doing those things we must do as a congress to save our republic, to save our economy and to begin producing jobs in this country. the most important thing people need is certainty. certainty in regulation, certainty in tax policy. the american people need to know we're going to do what we have to do to save this republic and save this economy.

for the few minutes i have this morning i want to talk about that, because all the solutions are on the table. the problem is none of us seem willing to take them off the table, put them on the floor and deal with them. let's talk about spending. our deficit has just been announced for this particular fiscal year at $1.2 trillion. $100 billion less than the total spending of the united states government. we've got to cut spending, discretionary spending. but we can't totally balance our books by cutting discretionary spending. we have entitlements. they are growing disproportionately because of our economy. food stapl -- stamps up to $87 billion because a lot more people are out of work. why many other programs are rising rapidly. they are because of the economy. if we deal with spending and we deal with entitlements, and we begin to bring back real certainty and our economy comes back, jobs come back and there's less pressure on the entitlement programs. we're also going to have to bite the bullet and recognize

entitlements is not the right word for things like medicare and social security. those are contracts with the american people. i've paid 6.2% of my income, the president has as well, for the payroll tax for my social security. i paid 1.35% my entire life for medicare. that's a contract with my government. but we've got to fix those programs. social security is easy. social security is fixable by moving the eligibility dates and the out years. for my grandchildren, eight of them under 8 years old, that probably ought to be 67 or 69 years old before they become eligible. we don't need to cut their benefit or raise their tax but put up their eligibility. that's what ronald reagan and tip o'neill did in 1983 that saved social security until the pressure it's under now. medicare is the tough animal to deal with but we're going to have to recognize we've got to get out of the fee for service business and into a premium support. we can qualify premium support and know how much we're spending, and the american people have the choice of buying the insurance and coverage for medicare that they want. it ought to be means tested.

we ought to make sure that those that can afford more insurance like myself have less support. those who are in need have more support. but it be quantified in terms of the support for premiums, not a fee for service reimbursement system. and then in terms of our revenues, everybody's always wanting to talk about taxes. last week we had a debate that was meaningless and worthless over political positions of two political parties on our tax system. we need to take a look at what bowles-simpson said. we need to clean up our tax code. we need to use the tax expenditures that we get as income by reducing them and waiving them and use that income to reduce the rates on corporate taxes and all the marginal rates of taxation. so we encourage people to spend their money, invest their money, make our tax code simpler. we don't have to raise people's taxes. we need to raise their opportunities, raise their attitude. we need to improve the plight the american taxpayer has today by giving them certainty, giving them a tax code that's clean, a tax code that's fair and a tax

code that produces jobs, revenue and growth. my message this morning is this, as we go up to the day, probably friday when we're going home for the month of august and we come back in september and spend six days and wait until the election, we're putting off dealing with the things that affect our economy, affect our people and affect our future. i for one straepbd did i the minute the -- stand ready the minute the leaders are ready to put these issues on the floor and vote on them. let's deal with the future of the american people, deal with their taxes, deal with their guarantees we made to them on social security and medicare. let's deal with our responsibility. let's don't sequester spending. let's cut where we should cut and add money where we should add money and run this country like a business and not like a political action committee. madam president, i yield the floor. i don't recognize the leader, but i yield to the leader.

mr. mcconnell: madam president? the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: yesterday i came to the floor to draw attention to the administration's transparent attempts to conceal the impact of defense cuts president obama demanded as part of last year's debt ceiling deal. i was referring, of course, to the administration's monday notification to businesses which work with the government that they're under no obligation -- no obligation -- to warn employees who might lose their jobs as a result of these cuts. now, incredibly, the administration's argument was that they don't expect the cuts to happen.

even though the president hadn't done a thing to prevent them. and even though congress had to pass a law requiring the administration to tell us what the cuts would look like. so let's be clear, the administration officials who sent out this notification instructing businesses to keep quiet about these cuts know just as well as i do that they're coming. the cuts are coming unless senate democrats act or the president of the united states finally decides to come up with a credible plan to replace them. the only reason the administration sent out this guidance to employers earlier this week was to keep people in the dark, keep them in the dark about the impact these defense cuts will have until, of course, after the election. so the white house is clearly trying to hide the ball here,

just trying to hide the ball from all of us. and the clearest proof of that is the fact that no one even denied it after i noted it here just yesterday. but if we did need further proof, we actually got it yesterday when the obama administration's office of management and budget issued guidance of its own to departments and agencies telling folks that they should prepare -- prepare -- for the cuts. so let's get this straight. government workers should prepare for cuts, but private businesses and their employers shouldn't. not a week seems to pass that we don't see more evidence of the president's absolute contempt for the private sector. and here's the latest. the federal government is told to prepare for cuts, yet the

private-sector businesses are specifically told it would be -- quote -- "inappropriate" to tell people they could lose their jobs. the cuts to the defense department under sequester is the law of the land. and until congress changes that fact, they're totally forseeable. yesterday the director of o.m.b. exempted appropriations for military personnel from the sequester, providing even more certainty that the cuts to defense will fall upon training, maintenance and weapons procurement and development. so the fact is private businesses have a higher degree of certainty than their workforce -- that their workforces will be hit. yet here's the administration's message: if you're in the public

sector, prepare for cuts. if you're in the private sector, don't even warn your employees their jobs actually may be on the line. what a perfect summary of this administration's approach to the economy and jobs over the past three and a half years. private businesses didn't earn their success. somebody else made that happen. now the president says if you work hard in the private sector, you don't even deserve to know -- you don't even deserve to know if your job is on the chopping block. the private sector's doing just fine. it's the government that needs help. that's the message of this

administration. just as disturbing is what this says about the administration's approach to our national defense. the president's own defense secretary has said these cuts would hollow out our armed forces. yet, the president himself has not said a word about how he plans to responsibly replace them or if he accepts a weakened national defense, how he will carry them out. congress had to actually pass a law forcing him to make these plans clear to everybody. now he hasn't signed a bill yet. it went to him by voice vote out of the senate last week. the defense cuts that will be triggered under the sequester are in addition -- in addition -- to the $487 billion in cuts to the department

identified by secretary gates. it's time for the president to provide the leadership to avoid these reductions that will render his own strategy unsustainable. a lot of people are ron tkerg how they'll be affected by these cuts. the fact that many of them will be voting in swing states in november is no reason to leave them wondering about their fate any longer. madam president, i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from wisconsin. mr. johnson: madam president, as i've been here now for a little more than 18 months and

listening to the debates on taxes and debt and deficit, i came to the floor with visual aids, charts and graphs, to try to dispell some of the myths i've been hearing. the first myth i constantly hear is about the draconian cuts being proposed in the house budget. i think this chart pretty well dispels that myth by showing that ten years ago, in 2002, the federal government spent $2 trillion. this last year, this year we'll spend about $3.8 trillion. we've doubled spending in just ten years. and the debate moving forward is under the house budget they have spent $4.9 trillion. president obama's budget proposes spending $5.8 trillion. i think it's pretty clear to see in this chart that nobody's proposing net cuts in spending. we're just trying to limit the rate of growth in spending. another way of looking at spending is over ten years. and just quickly, in the 1990's,

the federal government over a ten-year period spent $16 trillion. the last decade, from 2002 to 2011, the federal government spent $28 trillion. and again the debate moving forward is over the next ten years do we spend $40 trillion, as the house budget proposes, or do we spend $47 trillion? again, no cuts; just trying to reduce the rate of growth. let's just talk a little bit about what the federal government has spent under the current administration. over the four years of president obama's administration, the federal government in total will spend $14.4 trillion. think back to that last graph. that's almost as much as we spent in the decade of the 1990's. the entire deficit for that time period was $5.3 trillion. in other words, we had to borrow $5.3 trillion of the $14.4 billion that we spent.

that's about 37 cents of every dollar spent we borrowed. we put that debt burden on the backs of our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. now often i hear that the whole problem with the deficit is being caused by the war costs or the 2001-2003 tax cuts. we've added those to the chart here. you can see the total amount over that four-year period of the overseas war costs and the bush tax cuts was $1.2 trillion. less than 25% of the total deficit. again, they're a factor but they are not what caused the deficit. the cause of the deficit primarily is spending. this chart basically shows what has been happening over the last 50 years. the structural deficit that we have incurred is the basic result of, on average, the federal government spending has been about 20.2% from 1959 to

2008, prior to this administration. on the other hand, revenue generation has averaged about 18.1%, which gives us a 2.1% structural deficit. that's why our debt has continued to grow. but under this administration, starting with the recession, that deficit, that structural deficit exploded, with tax revenue dropping to about 15% and spending skyrocketing 25%, now about 24%, but it's on trajectory to hit 35% by the year 2035. clearly, that's unsustainable. another way of taking a look at the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 in terms of their total effect on our deficit figure is to actually put them ton a bar chart. the red bars represent the total deficit. the blue portions on the bottom of those red charts are the actually reductions in revenue

from those tax cuts. you can see it is not a very large figure. in total, over that -- i guess that's an 11-year time period, the total bush tax cuts were about $is1.7 trillion while the entire deficit was $1.5 trillion. a small portion of the deficit has been on the spending side of the equation. what does the president offer for solutions in last year he proposed the buffett rule, and in september in a speech on september 26 in proposing the buffett rule, he basically said that that basic principle of fairness that he said the buffett rule washings he said if that was applied to our tax code, it could raise enough money to not -- that not only do

we pay for his jobs bill, but we also stablize our defici debt ad deficits for the next decade. think about what president obama said there. he said that the buffett rule would not only pay for his jobs bill but would stablize our debt and deficits for the next decade. now, here's a chart. here's the fact. the buffett rule for four years would raise about $20 billion total. president obama's four years of deficit is $5.3 trillion. $5,300,000,000,000. it doesn't take a math major to realize that it doesn't come close to stabilizing a deficit of $5.3 trillion. president obama misled the american people. i you this the president of the united states has a far higher

duty to the american people. he should be honest with them. last week we debated the other tax proposals proposed by our friends on the other side of the aisle here. and in doing -- in proposing this -- and actually unfortunately passing this piece of tax legislation -- the majority leader said that that piece of legislation is about debt. it is about the debt, he said. we have to do something about the debt, and we have tried mightily to do that. we've tried mightily. well, again, let's take a look at the facts. the first year of that tax legislation -- and it's really the only year that counts -- would have raised $67 billion compared to last year's deficit of $1,326 billion. is that really trying mightily to fix the debt and deficit? i don't think so. if you were really serious about

fixing our debt and deficit situation, if you were trying mightily do that you might have tried passing a budget in the last few years. you might have actually put appropriations bills and brought them to the floor so they could be debated and pass and then conferenced with the house and signed into law so we're not faced with what we're faced with right now is having to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government in 2013. so, again, dispel the myth. the democrats' tax proposal would do nothing -- almost nothing -- to stablize the deficit and debt. it is simply a political exercise. it is political demagoguery. it is class warfare and i really ask the american people to consider a simple question: if they're really for increasing taxes on the productive sector of our economy, those small businesses, those millions of small businesses that would be affected by this, the money that would be taken out of those

small business to expand therapy, buy capital equipment, increase wages, pay for health care, invest in 401(k) plans, it does not stablize the debt and deficit. it does nothing that. i think republicans basically agree with president obama and president clinton. back on august 5, 2009, just as we were coming out of a recession, president obama said, "you don't raze taxesness a recession." i agree he with that. republicans agree with that. back in december -- or this is actually november and december of 2010, right after the lame-duck session when all the bush -- all the ta tax cuts were extended for two years, president obama said, "if we allow these taxes to go up ... the economy would grow less." he was right. back then, by the way, average growth if our economy was about 3.1%.

the last four quarters now the economy has only grown about 2%. our economy is in worse shape. it only grew at 1.5% in the last quarter. you can see the downward trajectory. president clinton said the best thing we could do is extend all the tax rates. take that lull of uncertainty off the table. that's what the republicans are proposing. let's not crease taxes on any american at this time. let's not threaten any kind of government shut down. as much as fiscal conservatives do not like the budget control act or those spending limits, we think it is reasonable policy to pass a six-month continuing resolution so that a responsible leader can come into this town and actually start fixing our debt and deficit situation. so that's, i believe, what republicans are all about is taking the uncertainty of a shutdown off the table, taking

the uncertainty of what people's tax rates will be over the next year, being responsible. with that, madam president, i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from nevada. mr. heller: thank you, madam president. i don't believe any state -- any state has felt the brunt of this recession more than the state of nevada. we're a state that leads the nation in unemployment, leads it in foreclosure, and leads it in bankruptcy. there's not an evening that goes by or day that goes by that i'm not thinking what can be done to create jobs and get our economy moving. we must tear down the barriers to growth and the opportunity and launch this nation into its next great chapter. small business, our nation's economic backbone, and we're built on the very same values of

hard work and determination our nation was founded upon. this issue is very personal to me. i spent most of my childhood working at my fathers automotive shop in carson city, heller's engine and transmission. and at this small business, my dad taught me how to fix engines and transmissions. but more important, i listened about hard work, i learned about personal responsibility, and you learn -- and i learned how to provide an important service to our community. though my fathers's shop has been closed for sometime, i have asked him what he would do as a small business owner today, in today's environment. first of all, he said, he couldn't open that same shop, not with the regulations, the taxes, the overhead that you would have from what this government has produced. but his simple answer is, he would have to close his shop because of the uncertainty and the cost due to all the new federal regulations and mandates.

contrary to what some here in washington may believe, my father built his business, and he worked long hours to make it successful. it was through this business that he provided for my mother and my five brothers and sisters. and i can't thank my father enough for the values he instead in me. all around our country sons and daughters are still learning from their parents who are making a living at their small businesses. these businesses are often struggling to make payroll, pay suppliers and in some instances can't even afford to pay themselves. these americans are fighting every day to achieve the american dream but what they get from washington is more attacks on their livelihood in the form of new regulations, new mandates, and of course every day the talk of new taxes. just last week the majority party offered a tax plan that

would kill 6,000 jobs in nevada and more than 700,0000,000 jobs nationwide. in a stagnant economy suffering from chronic unemployment, we should be looking for ways to strengthen job growth, not pushing destructive tax increases that serve as nothing more than political talking points. every week i hold telephone townhall meetings with nevadans from across the state. lately, a lot of nevadans have discussed how some in the majority party are willing to take our economy off a fiscal cliff if republicans won't vote for tax increases on small businesses. for the past two weeks i've asked all these participating in these town hal mealings if they believe this type of -- these townhall meetings if they believe this type of partisanship is good the econo economy. a vast believe partisanship at the expense of the economy needs

to end. with that, i agree. last friday i visited joe dutra who owns kimy candy in reno and visited his fact terrorism he talked about how he is fighting to grow his business with his kids john and katherine, and unfortunately instead of supporting small businesses throughout our country, washington has been making a difficult situation even worse. joe has been getting a lot of heat lately from the press because he is standing up against politicians who belittle his efforts and has had the courage to fight the destructive policies coming out of washington. let me assure you, joe built his business and works hard to keep it going. as with many small businesses across this country, they have wanted nothing more than to expand their businesses, hire more people, pass on a legacy to their children and grandchildren that shows, with hard work and

dedication, anything -- anything -- is possible in america. instead of encouraging this, washington has increased their burden with miles of regulatory red tape. passed a health care law that is costing jobs and continues with a top-down washington-knows-best mentality that has led to an anemic economy. small businesses are the life blood of our economy and will be a key component to our recovery. and it's far time for washington to recognize this. and encourage their growth in getting our nation on the right track. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll men. quorum call:

quorum call: a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. a senator: thank you, madam president. i ask that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: whitehouse. mr. merkley: -- without objection. mr. merkley: madam president, i ask my intern for the day be granted privileges to the floor. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. merkley: thank you. i ask the clerk to call the roll. the presiding officer: without objection, the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from nebraska.

mr. johanns: madam president, i ask that the quorum call be set aside. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. johanns: madam president, i come to the floor today to discuss an issue that i've brought up before here in the senate, continues to trouble me. whenever i meet with farmers and ranchers in nebraska, they often raise concerns about regulatory overreach. i hear about the need for agencies like the e.p.a. to provide a more predictable and commonsense regulatory environment, so today i am introducing a bill that will do exactly that. it stops the e.p.a.'s use of aerial surveillance of agriculture operations for a period of 12 months, one year. earlier this year i began hearing about this issue from constituents that were worried about privacy concerns.

thus, a few of my colleagues and i wrote to administrator jackson in late may asking her several questions about e.p.a.'s practice of flying over livestock operations and taking pictures. we were curious about the scope of flights over agriculture operations in nebraska and around the country. we asked how the agency selects targets for surveillance and whether any images of residences, land or buildings not subject to e.p.a. regulation were being captured. additionally, we asked a very fair question. we asked about the use of the images. where are they stored? how are they used? who are they shared with? and how long they would remain on file; all seemingly

straightforward, fair, basic questions. well, to say the least, e.p.a. has been less than forthcoming about the use of aerial surveillance. e.p.a. has acknowledged aerial surveillance activities in nebraska, iowa, west virginia. but despite repeated requests, details concerning the national scope of this program and its management by e.p.a. headquarters have not been disclosed. you see, i believe the american public deserves open, straightforward, honest information about why e.p.a. is flying over their land. not just in nebraska, but across the country. time and time again farmers have consistently proven that they're

excellent stewards of the environment. they make their living from the land, and they are very mindful of maintaining it and protecting it and leaving it improved. and i agree wholeheartedly that we should ensure our waterways are clean and our air is safe. i want to be very clear, this legislation does not affect e.p.a.'s ability to use traditional on-site inspections. but given e.p.a.'s track record of ignorance about agriculture, if not down right contempt for it, farmers and ranchers do not trust this agency. and they sure as heck don't approve of the e.p.a. doing low-altitude surveillance flights over citizens' private property. so until e.p.a. takes a more

commonsense, transparent, open approach, we need to step on the brakes. and this bill just simply does that. it places a one-year moratorium on e.p.a. from using aerial surveillance. this will give the agency time to come clean about its activities nationwide and make the case that these flights are an appropriate use of agency authority and taxpayer money. unless the e.p.a. does that openly, the level of trust between farmers and ranchers and the e.p.a. will continue to erode. in the meantime, passage of this legislation will help provide our farmers and our ranchers and others in rural america with much-needed regulatory certainty. i offered an amendment on this issue during a recent farm bill debate. it got broad bipartisan support,

56 votes. ten of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle joined me in this effort. so it's not a partisan issue. i urge my colleagues to continue their support of this effort to bring accountability and transparency to the environmental protection agency. madam president, i yield the floor and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. udall: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr. udall: madam president, as you know -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mr. udall: thank you, madam president. i'd ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. udall: thank you, madam president. as i begin to talk this morning about the wind production tax credit, i think we all know that tax credits have encouraged our wind industry to invest in that great new cutting-edge form of power, and that's resulted in the creation of thousands of

american jobs and wind projects all over our country. 48 states have a stake in our wind energy industry. but the production tax credit that's driven this investment in american manufacturing and job creation is about to expire at the end of this year. i've been coming to the floor on an ongoing basis to make the case that we ought to extend the wind production tax credit as soon as possible. i know the presiding officer has been here on a couple of occasions and i've spoken about this before. in fact, this is the 14th time i've come to the floor to speak to this important opportunity, but also the peril that awaits us if we don't extend the wind production tax credit. the key here is we've created uncertainty. the wind production industry is beginning to back off investments for next year. they need certainty. they need predictability. i've come to the floor to talk today as i have been on a particular occasion about each state and that state's

contribution to the wind energy. today i want to talk about north dakota. it is a state with enough wind energy potential that it could meet more than 240 times its own electricity needs. 240 times its own electricity needs. in fact, we all know north dakota sits in an ocean of wind and it could power much of the midwest if we could get that electricity to the city centers that need it, and if we keep the wind production tax credit in place. what i wanted to talk about in particular, north dakota has a couple of manufacturing facilities that are there. in the late 1990's, l.m. glass fiber opened a facility in grand forks which is in eastern north dakota, close to the border of minnesota. they produce wind turbine blades there. a few years ago d.m.i. industries, a company that manufactures the towers, opened a factory in west fargo. that's also in eastern north

dakota and south of grand forks over here on the minnesota border as well. these wind turbines -- and the presiding officer knows this -- are magnificent machines. they sit on towers that in some cases are 100 meters tall. the wind blades themselves are like aircraft wings, in a cell that sits on top of the tower where the gear box and all the technology is. these are very technical, very complicated, very sophisticated machines, and manufacturing them brings out american greatness. so these are two -- the point i'm making are these are two important facilities in north dakota. i also want to talk about the leadership that exists in north dakota when it comes to wind energy. i want to start with our colleague, senator conrad. he's been a proponent of the production tax credit for over a decade. and his reasoning is that this is a great opportunity for north dakota as well as for the country and the wind production

tax credit creates certainty. his colleague, senator hoeven, has also taken up the cause during his first term in the senate. one of the key points here i want to make is those two senators, our colleagues, are from two different political parties yet they each support the wind production tax credit. just last month north hosted a renewable energy action summit in bismarck. during the summit, national leaders talked about how north dakota's robust energy sector has provided a model. i have to say that this strikes me as the most intelligent kind of policy. it is a mix of traditional energy sources for sustainable energy such as wind and what you get from that, madam president, is advanced technology. you have certainty for developers, you spur investment, and you create jobs. i want to applaud north dakota's

leadership in putting in place a smart energy policy an an all-of-the-above energy policy. the point i'm making is that north dakota recognizes that and investment in wind energy is an investment in jobs. some of these numbers make that point. of 2,000 jobs in north dakota, they're supported by the wind energy industry. that's jobs are there no doubt because of the existence of a tax credit. and i would add, madam president, that the tax credit is a production tax credit. so you produce the power and then you get the tax credit. this isn't speculative. this isn't hoping that something will happen. this is based on production of electrons. that's why it is such a powerful tax it's been used in the past -- that's why it is such a powerful tool. it's been used in the past.

the wind energy industry provides $4 million in property taxes from wind projects that goes to supporting local communities and vital services tied to those communities. so where does north dakota rank nationally? they rank tenth in terms of installed wind capacity and third in terms of electricity derived from the wind with almost 15% coming from wind power projects. 430,000 homes being powered by wind. that number -- i know this is important to the presiding officer -- equals about 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide that are not released in our atmosphere every year. madam president, it's simple. the wind industry is important to america's future, and it should be incurren incented in

communities that can support it. the wind energy tax credit is that incentive. if this incentive is allowed to expire, this industry will shrink, move overseas and take thousands of american jobs with it. so as i've done when i come to the floor, i'm imploring our colleagues to work with me to work with us, to stop this possibility from becoming a reality. wind energy is not a partisan issue. as i've noted, many of our colleagues agree with me, whether they are owe on this side of the aisle or the other side of the aisle. they understand that if we don't extend the p.t.c., we risk losing thousands of jobs and crippling a very important, successful, exciting industry. so it would be a decision that we would all regret for a long, long time if we let the p.t.c. expire. so as i close, madam president,

i again implore and urge my colleagues to work on this together. if we really believe in energy independence and job creation, as we say, then we need to work together. let's show americans that we understand that the economy is job one and that one of the ways that we create new jobs is to extend the wind production tax credit. one of the ways we lose jobs is if we let the wind production tax credit expire. so we ought to be passing the p.t.c. as soon as possible. the production tax credit equals jobs. it is crucial to our future. let's not let the wind production tax credit be a casualty of election-year partisanship. we can't -- america can't afford it. madam president, thank you. with that, i yield the floor. nor senator madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon.

mr. merkley: i thank my colleague for his remarks about the production tax credit. this is incredibly important to the wind industry. it is just a big factor in the economy of colorado and certainly a substantial factor in the economy of oregon. so i join in his making his case, if you will, that we need to make sure that we continue to drive forward this clean energy manufacturing economy that produces zero carbon dioxide. and i can tell you, i recently had the chance to drive from the northern border of oregon to the southern border in an electric leaf. we have enough charging stations along the interstate to make it possible, and it felt miraculous to not produce a single molecule of pollution out of that car tripment antrip.

and if that energy from that car is coming from wind, then zero carbon dioxide is produced, zero impact on global warming. so what is good for the american worker, for the american economy, is also good for our air and the environment here in our nation and around the world. so we must get this production tax credit passed, and i'll continue towork with him to make this -- continue to work with him to make this happen. thank you. madam president, i rise today to address a critical issue for oregon's ranchers and farmers who are dealing with wildfire devastation, huge devastation. i'm going to put up some pictures. we've had in the last month the largest fires in oregon in over a century, an enormous amount of

land has been burned in the process. the long draw fire in maleure county burned about 900 square miles. this is the largest wildfire in oregon since the 1800's. this chart shows the incredibly power flames that these ranchers and farmers have been dealing with, as these flames sweep across the grasslands, the cattle and other livestock are often killed in the process, and the land does not quickly recover because of the intensity of the fire and how it affects the soil. and let me give you another view of this same fire. this is actually a picture taken from nevada looking towards

oregon, and you see this massive wall, this massive wall of smoke coming across. it is an inen credible sight to behold -- it is an incredible sight to behold when a fire is in full rage, as this was. now, the long draw fire was one of the major fires, but the miller homestead fire was another. it burned about 250 square miles. here again you can see the dramatic flame front that southeast oregon was fighting. this is moving through the sagebrush, just continuously progressing, moving very, very quickly when the wind is driving it, creating an enormous wall of smoke. and let's take one more view. here we see the aftermath of the fire when it was stopped by a road, as an interlude, and the

completely destroyed land on one side of the highway, and what it looked like, this green grassland. this was not all dry and sparse. this is the green grassland before the fire moved through. in addition to these two huge fires we've had a number of others -- the almost ex fall fire, the baker canyon firings the west crater fire in malleure county. each have an impact. together these fires have consumed over 1,100 square mil miles. that's roughly an area the size of rhode island. so an entire state would fit into the area burned in oregon. these fires are now under control. and southeastern oregon is

surveying the damage and picking up the pieces. and one of the things that they would immediately turn to, our farmers and ranchers, would be the disaster assistance that has always existed within the farm bill. but guess what? these programs are not available because the house has failed to act on the farm bill. the senate passed the farm bill, a bipartisan bill, republicans and democrats coming together, and in it are the reauthorization of four key programs. one of them is the livestock indemnity program which addresses when there is a natural disaster like this, addresses the death and loss of cattle and other livestock. a second is the emergency assistance for livestock called elap program which addresses the

lost value of forage on private land and then the livestock forage disaster program which addresses the loss on public land. those of you who are not from the west may not be aware that a lot of the our livestock are operating on land that is leased to our ranchers, and so when a fire like this affects those public lands, it's also affecting the value of the lease to those farmers and the ability of their livestock, those that have survived the fire, to be able to find forage and continue to live. so, it is deeply disturbing, deeply disturbing, that the house has not voted on a farm bill and sent it to conference. and i urge them to act on this quickly. without these key disaster relief programs, ranchers and farmers who have lost livestock or grazing land are left with

few options, and that is wrong. a rancher in southeastern oregon who has already been devastated by filed wildfires shouldn't pay the price because the u.s. house of representatives won't bring a farm bill that it can pass and send to conference. soy let's be clear. the best solution to this problem would be for the thousands pass the bipartisan senate farm bill. this would bring timely relief to all those who have suffered in this disaster and certainly to the farmers and ranchers across oregon who have been struck by the largest fire in this century, a fire larger than the state of rhode island. but if we can get consensus to bring immediate relief in the face of the inaction by the house, then we should do so, and that is why i've introduced the wildfire and drought relief for ranchers and farmers act to extend the most urgently needed

programs immediately. this would extend the program for livestock indemnity. this would extend the program for forage loss on public lands and forage loss on private lands. i urge my colleagues to take the same bipartisan spirit that they brought to the farm bill, to recognize that this chamber has already voted to extend these disaster programs and, if necessary, move quickly to extend these disaster programs -- if necessary by themselves -- in order to help our ranchers, to help our farmers who have been affected by these natural disasters, including this once-in-a-century fire in the state of oregon. so again i encourage the house of representatives to immediately get the farm bill to

conference because this should be done in the context of many, many programs that need to be renewed that have been worked o but in the absence of that, let's find a way to move quickly to assist our farmers and ranchers in the face of devastating natural disasters. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. ms. klobuchar: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from minnesota. ms. klobuchar: i ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business for the duration of my remarks. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. klobuchar: madam president, i rise today to speak on the five-year anniversary of the horrific collapse of the i-35w bridge in minneapolis and to pay tribute to those who lost their lives on that tragic summer day. as i said the day after the bridge collapsed, a bridge just shouldn't fall down in the middle of america. not a bridge that's a few blocks from my house, not an eight-lane highway, not a bridge that i drive over every day with my

husband and my daughter. but that's what happened that sunny summer day in minneapolis, minnesota. i can't even begin to count how many times i have thought about that bridge and everyone in our state actually remembers where they were the day that it collapsed. it was one of the mot heavily traveled bridges in our state, and in all that day 13 people lost their lives and scores were injured. so many more could have been killed if not for the first responders, if not for the volunteers who instead of running away from that disaster when they actually had no idea what had actually happened, they ran toward it and rescued their fellow citizens. everyone was shocked and horrified. but on that evening and in the days that followed the whole world watched as our state came together as they did in the minutes and the hours after the collapse. i was proud to be a minnesotan.

the emergency response to the bridge collapse demonstrated an impressive level of preparedness and coordination that should be a model for the nation. we saw true heroes in the face of unimaginable circumstances. we saw an off-duty minneapolis firefighter named xi'an in -- shannon hanson who ran to the scene. tethered, she swam from car to car searching for survivors up and down in that river. we saw that school bus perched precariously on the falling bridge deck. i called it the miracle bus. inside there were dozens of kids from a very poor neighborhood who had been on a swimming field trip. their bus was crossing the bridge when it dropped. thanks to the quick action of responsible adults and the children themselves, they all survived. they all got off that bus. although you can never feel good about a tragedy like this one, i

certainly felt good about our police officers, our firefighters, our paramedics and all the medical personnel that literally saved dozens and dozens of lives. on this, the five-year anniversary of the bridge collapse, we should again honor those heroes and the countless lives that they saved. and i just want to for a minute, madam president, tell you a few examples. a woman who writes for the star tribune gathered some of their stories this weekend. lindsey waltz, she was in a folks wag again, went -- a volkswagen, went over the bridge, kicked out the doors and windows and was able to get out and survive. she is putting the collapse to work in her career. she is a youth worker who counsels children and teens. she discovered her trauma as hard as it was wasn't so different as that of her clients. she felt insecure in the world

wondering if another bridge would collapse under her and she realized the homeless teens she counseled felt insecure wondering where they would sleep at night. it is a lesson she takes with her in her job. betsy sather, her husband was 29 years old he he died in that collapse. they had just gotten married. they planned on having a family. you know what she did? she decided to adopt children. she decided to adopt children from haiti. in the aftermath of that earthquake, she already knew the names of the children she was going to adopt, she wouldn't let those kids just be left in that rubble. she contacted our office. we worked with her and brought alise and ross back from haiti and she is their mother. i saw them this weekend with their big smiles and their mom. that's an inspirational story. the colter family, they were in their minivan. the kids, the mom, the dad. it was clear at the beginning

that they were severely injured and the mom, paula, they didn't think she was going to survive. they also then, after they learned that maybe she was going to make it -- she had devastating injuries to her brain and her back. at one time during one of the surgeries they had to jolt her heart back to life. they actually suggested her family start looking for nursing home care. burr she didn't give up -- but she didn't give up. paula didn't give up, her family didn't give up. after two years with the help of some great therapists she could walk and move again, go back to her county job part time and two summers ago she and her trainer ran a 5k race. that's inspirational. but then there's the bridge itself. after it collapsed, it was so clear to us that we had to rebuild it and we had to rebuild it right away. in just three days senator kohlman and i worked together in the senate to secure $250 million in emergency bridge reconstruction funding. representative jim oberstar led

the way in the house. approval of the funding came with remarkable speed in this chamber. it was bipartisan and we were able to get the funding. and from the moment that bridge started construction to the end, it took less than a year to rebuild the bridge that is now a ten-lane highway. today the new i-35w bridge is a symbol of pride and resilience to the community. this year when i was at a twin cities parade with our veterans, the organizer of the parade said tonight they're lighting up the bridge red, white and blue so it literally has become a symbol of hope in our state. the new bridge is a 1 hundred-year -- 100-year bridge with more lanes. it is safer. it includes state-of-the-art technology as well as shoulders which the old bridge didn't have. of course bridge safety was on the minds of all americans, especially those of us in minnesota following the bridge collapse.

immediately afterwards the minnesota department of transportation inspected all 25 bridges, and minnesota with a similar design as the i-35w bridge. the inspection led to the closing of highway 23 bridge in saint cloud where a bulging of plate was found. it accelerated the planned replacement of that bridge which opened in 2009. reforms were not all structural. since then the department of transportation in our state has improved the way the inspections and the department handles critical information and necessary repairs. just like in minnesota, bridge safety became a priority nationally as well. after the national transportation safety board identified gus set plates as being heavily responsible for the collapse, a critical review of gusset plates was conducted on bridges across america and there was new attention focused on deterioration of steel and weight added to bridges over the years through maintenance and

resurfacing projects. and the national organization that develops highway and bridge standards, the american association of state highway transportation officials, updated bridge manuals that are used by state and county bridge engineers across the nation. i will say, madam president, that five years later we have still not made as much progress as i would have liked. the federal highway administration estimates that over 25% of the nation's 600,000 bridges are still either structurally deficient or functional obsolete. and the american society of civil engineers gave bridges in america a c grade in its 2009 report card for america's infrastructure and a d for infrastructure overall. we did take a positive step forward with the recent bipartisan transportation bill that will help state departments of transportation fix bridges and improve infrastructure. for minnesota, that bill means more than $700 million for

minnesota's roads, bridges, transit, congestion mitigation projects and mobility improvements. the bill gives greater flexibility to address federal resources to address unique needs in each state. it establishes benchmarks and national policy goals including strengthening our nation's bridges and links those to federal funds. it reduces project delivery time and accelerates processes that will reduce in half the amount of time to get projects underway. however, we all know that more needs to be done. while other countries are moving full steam ahead with infrastructure investments, we seem to be simply treading water. and in an increasingly competitive global economy, standing still is falling behind. china and india are spending respectively 9% and 5% of their g.d.p.'s on infrastructure. we need to keep up. we need to build our infrastructure. that's why i authored the rebuild america jobs act last

fall, which would have invested in our nation's infrastructure. it also would have created a national infrastructure bank, something that you're very familiar with, madam president, to help facilitate public-private partnerships so that projects could be built that would otherwise be too expensive for city, county or even a state to accomplish on its own. and we included a provision to set aside a certain amount of funding for rural projects. unfortunately, while we got a majority of the senate voting to advance this bill, we were unable to break the filibuster. so five years to the day, after the 35w bridge fell into the mississippi river, we know we have much to do to ensure our 21st century economy has a 21st century infrastructure that we need. i know that i am committed to move forward and working in a bipartisan way to address our nation's critical bridge and infrastructure needs and prevent another tragedy like the collapse of the i-35w bridge.

they didn't distinguish on that bridge today who was on that day five years ago, who was a democrat or republican. and certainly those first responders that showed up, the cops and firefighters, they didn't ask what political party someone belonged to. they simply did their job. that's what we need to do in the united states senate. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. mr. lieberman: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. lieberman: i thank the chair. madam president, i rise to speak about the cybersecurity act of 2012, which is numbered s. 3414. last night the majority leader, senator reid, filed a cloture petition which would ripen for a vote tomorrow. senator reid said that he was saddened to have to file that

cloture petition. he used the word which we don't hear used around here anymore but it seems right, he was tphrupl -- flummoxed on the need to file a cloture petition on bipartisan legislation that responds to what all of the experts in security in our country from the last administration and this one say is a critical threat to our security, which is the lack of defenses in the cyber infrastructure that is owned by the private sector. and senator reid was saddened, as i was, that he had to file for cloture because, of course, there can be disagreements about how to respond to this threat to our security and our prosperity, because hundreds of billions of dollars of american ingenuity,

american money are even stolen by cyber thieves operating not only from within our country but more often from outside. so you can have differences of opinion about how to deal with the problem, but the fact is that people started to introduce totally irrelevant amendments such as the one to repeal obamacare. that's a debatable issue. we've debated it many times. certainly the house has. but not on this bill. not on this bill, which we urgently need to pass and send to the house to go in a conference and then hopefully pass something this year and send it to the president. madam president, i was at a briefing with more than a dozen members of the senate representing a wide bipartisan group, ideological group with leaders of our security

agencies, cybersecurity agencies, department of defense, department of homeland security, f.b.i., n.s.a., national security agency, and they could not have been clearer about the fact that this cyber threat is not just a speculative threat. the fact is we're under attack over cyberspace right now. what's been -- in terms of economic threat, we've already lost a tremendous amount of money. general keith alexander, chief of the u.s. cyber command, described the loss of information and intellectual property and just plain money through cyber theft as -- quote -- "the greatest transfer of wealth in history." that's going on. we're also under cyber attack by enemies that are probing the control systems, cyber control

systems that control not the mom and pop businesses at home, not the internet systems over which sko -- so many of us shop these days, but the cyber systems which control the electric supply, that control all of our financial transactions, large and small, that control our transportation system, our telecommunications system, all the things that we depend on to sustain our society and our individual lives. that's who we're talking about here, the greatest transfer of wealth in history. but our enemies are already probing those private companies, cyber systems that control that kind of critical infrastructure i've just described. there's some reason to believe that they may already, because of the vulnerability of those systems and lack of adequate defenses, placed in them

malware, bugs, whatever we want to call it. in the old days we called it the sleeper cell of spies or more recently in terms of terrorism, a sleeper cell of terrorists. i worry , to put it personally, without stating it definitively on the floor, that i worry that enemies of the united states have already faced -- placed what i'd call cyber sleeper cells in critical cyber control systems that control critical infrastructure in our country. and everybody will tell you that some companies that own critical infrastructure are doing a pretty good job at defending it and us, but some are not. that's why -- that's one of the reasons this bill has occurred, to try to create a collaborative process where the private sector and the public sector could act together in the national

interests. the businesses themselves are going to be -- god forbid there is a major cyber attack on the u.s. the businesses that control cyber infrastructure are going to be enormous losers. they're going to be subject under the current state of the law to the kind of liability in court that may bring some of them down, may end their corporate existence. a senator: would the senator yield for a question? mr. lieberman: i would be glad to yield to my friend from delaware, cosponsor of the main bill 3414. mr. carper: the message you're conveying today is so important. i hope folks who aren't sure about whether to support our legislation, i hope they're listening. i was briefed today by a large multinational company that manufactures, among other things, helicopters. apparently within the last 12 months, maybe the last six months, the plans for developing, manufacturing one such helicopter was hacked and

obtained by another nation, presumably the chinese. they will develop, they will build their version of our helicopters. they won't be built by americans. it will not provide american jobs. it will not provide revenues for that company or tax revenues to our treasury. they will be really apprehended, if you will, by another nation. that is the reality of this day. i was reminded again just this morning, given what you're talking about, what general alexander says is the largest theft, economic theft in the history of our country, it is taking place. i was reminded of it just early this morning. mr. lieberman: i thank my friend from delaware very much. i think you crystallized the moment we're at. senator reid filed a cloture petition that will ripen tomorrow. so this -- this immediately -- again, he did it in sadness. i was sad that he had to do it. it's the kind of issue on which i had hoped we would overcome

gridlock, special interest driven, i.d. logically -- ideologically driven, but we couldn't do it. the majority leader had to do exactly what he had to do in my opinion in the national security interest. this does two things. one, as my colleagues know and i repeat just to remind them, we have a 1:00 p.m. deadline that any member of the senate can file a first-degree amendment to this bill. that's important to do. i want to say that the managers of the bill, senator collins' staff, the republican cloakroom, my staff, the democratic cloakroom, are going to be working on these amendments to see if we can begin to move toward a finite list so that we can give some sense of certainty. senator reid has been very clear. he has not wanted to use the idiom of the senate fill the tree, which is to say limit amendments. he's wanted to have an open amendment process, which really ought to happen in a bill of this kind, but open for germane and relevant amendments, not

amendments on repealing obamacare or i say respectfully on enacting more gun control. those are both significant, substantial issues, but they're going to block this bill from passing if people insist on bringing them up here. so the first consequence of -- and a positive consequence of senator reid's cloture petition, one we all signed, is to -- is to require that the amendments that people have been talking about come forward by 1:00 p.m., bipartisan staffs will be working to try to winnow that down to a finite list. secondly, if we don't have an agreement on a finite list and we can't vitiate the cloture vote for tomorrow, then the members of the senate, every one in their own heart and head, is going to have to make a decision. am i actually going to vote against taking this bill up while all the nonpolitical

experts on our security -- general keith alexander, director of cyber command within the pentagon, head of the national security agency, one of the jewels and treasures of our government protecting our security appealed to senator reid and senator mcconnell in a letter yesterday that this legislation is critically necessary now. he was -- this legislation will give our government and the private sector operators of critical cyber infrastructure powers that they don't have now, authorities that they don't have now to collaborate, to take action, to share information to adopt what general alexander in a wonderful phrase says the best computer hygiene, the best cyber hygiene to protect our country. and i don't know how people -- let me just say that's the

question. member of the senate will have to decide in the face of that kind of statement of the urgency of some form of cybersecurity legislation in this session from the director of cyber command an honored, distinguished veteran of our uniformed military, u.s. army in this case. will people really vote -- are we going to find it hard to get 60 members of the senate to vote, to at least take this bill up and debate it? i hope not. i think people are -- it's going -- for me, it would be hard to explain. i will put it that way, why i would vote against it. no matter what the controversy is. i will just say -- my friend from delaware has been involved, and i'm going to yield to him if he would like to make a statement. we have been working really hard, three groups, the group that sponsored us, 3414, the cybersecurity act of 2012, the group that sponsored secure i.t., senators hutchison, chambliss, mccain, et al., and

the third group, bipartisan group that sprung up because of the urgency of this danger, this clear and present danger to america led by senator kyl and senator whitehouse who is on the floor and really played -- has played an important role in bringing the two sides, if i can put it that way, closer together. frankly, there was a chasm that separated us at the outset of this. we've changed our bill. we have made it much more voluntary, carrots instead of sticks, as you and i have said. and -- but still there are differences, and i just say shame on us if we can't bridge those differences on national security of all topics. so these are -- this is an important day to see if we can come together. senator collins and i are ready and willing to immediate with

the sponsors of the other bills with senator whitehouse and senator kyl to see if we can come to some type of an agreement on critical parts of this legislation and to come up with a finite list that we can agree we will support. just a final word. i want to thank the majority leader, senator reid. senator reid has a tough job, and it's obviously battered by the political moment that we're in whenever we're in it, and of course this is a particularly political moment partisan because of the election season, the campaign we're in. but i -- i know harry reid for quite a while. i have the greatest confidence and trust in him and an awful lot of affection. he is a personal friend. he got briefed about the threat, the cybersecurity threat more than a year ago, and he called me in and we talked about it, and he said he was really worried that we had to do something in this session of congress to protect our security, and he has been

steadfast in that belief, and he has refused to give up. he filed the cloture petition to bring this to a head and hopefully to get to that finite list of amendments. i think he's going to stretch within the process and time, great authority, power that the majority leader has. some people say it may be the only power these days, but i think he has more because of his skills. controlling the schedule. i think if there is a hope that we can bring a bill together and pass the cybersecurity bill, i think senator reid is going to give us every opportunity to do that, and so i wanted to just put on the record my thanks to him for his own commitment to improving the cybersecurity of our country because he's listened to the experts and they have convinced him. this is rising to be a greater threat to america than any other threat we face today. that's -- that's saying a lot.

but i believe it. i thank the chair and i yield the floor to my friend from delaware. the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. carper: i thank you very much. we have been joined on the floor by senator whitehouse. we might just take a moment here, mr. chairman, just to have a little bit of a colloquy and then i will head off to one of my hearings. i just want to say while he is here a special thanks to senator whitehouse for the work that he and jon kyl, our colleague from arizona, chris coons, our colleague from delaware, and others have done and really helped to put the meat on the bones of our -- as you will of our original legislation. you have done great work on that. i just really admire it and want to thank all of you. over at the other end of the capitol, they spent a whole lot of time in recent weeks and months on the issue of fast and furious. i just wanted to mention i think the american people, one of the reasons why they are furious with us is because we're not

going fast enough to deal with the economy, to create jobs. in government, we don't create jobs. presidents don't create jobs, governors don't create jobs. there is an old governor i know know -- as an old governor i know. what we do is help create and nurture an environment for job creation and job preservation. that's what we do. that includes a lot of things. that includes world-class work force, infrastructure, access to the capitol, reasonably priced and accessible energy, reasonably priced health care. it also includes as we go forward in time the assurance that if a company spends a lot of money, a lot of r&d and investments and they come up with a really good idea that has commercial application and before that they could even build that idea, create that idea, sell the idea in this country and manufacture and sell it around the world, the idea is going to be stolen, stolen by

someone from another country or use that idea to make money on their own. that introduces an uncertainty in this economy in this country that we never had to worry about before. we just have not had to worry about before. and general alexander has said and been quoted here already today that the greatest economic thievery in our history is under way right now through cybersecurity. this is as much a job issue as it is a security issue. it's an economic security issue. we have to be mindful of that. i have spoken to some of our friends at the chamber of commerce with whom we work on a variety of issues. we need their involvement, we need their support, we need their help. if they have ideas, good ideas, if they have read the legislation as we have redrawn and will share those ideas with us today, democrats and republicans, that would be a

huge help. if anybody over in the chamber is watching today, and i hope they are, this is a request for you to just be more involved in a constructive way. it's not just that we need you in the senate, we need you as a country. the folks that are your members across the country, they need you to be involved as well. legislation has started out as more of a command and control deal where the homeland security department will say these are our standards. we expect companies and industries in critical areas, we expect to you comply with those, and that's it. that's an oversimplification to the original approach in our legislation. we have moved so far from that, it's amazing. and what we have moved from is from a command and control system to one where we say to critical industries, sensitive industries you figure out amongst yourself what the best practices and what the standards ought to be, protecting you and your businesses and your ideas. you figure it out. you share those ideas, develop those ideas really in a collaborative way with a council that includes the department of

commerce, department of justice, department of defense, homeland security, and in the interim process, refine those ideas, refine those best practices, refine those standards which would then be implemented. if companies didn't want to comply with them, they don't have to. it's a voluntary basis. if they do, there is rewards. if they don't, they don't participate in those rewards, including protection from liability. i mean, this is a -- you know, we -- sometimes we get stuck on legislation and we just say this is it, we're not going to change it. this is it. nobody can -- you can try to amend it, we're not going to let you do that. we've changed this legislation dramatically, and i think for the best. some people say we have changed it too much in order to try to get to yes. the last thing i will say before i yield to senator whitehouse is the legislation before us, this is not a democratic idea. this is not a republican idea. this is not a conservative idea. this is not a liberal idea. this is a good idea.

this is an idea that's gooden better over time. this is an idea whose time has come. and we -- we need to be mindful of the fury across our country, and we need to move faster to take good ideas like this, make them better and to implement them. with that, let me just yield to senator whitehouse again for just a big thank you for the great work that you and senator coons and senator collins and others are doing. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: i thank the senator from delaware. a senator: will the -- mr. whitehouse: of course mr. chairman. mr. lieberman: i thank my friend from rhode island. i want to interrupt briefly to offer this unanimous consent. madam president, i why eight unanimous consent requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they've been approved by the majority and minority leaders. i ask unanimous consent that these requests be agreed to and printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. lieberman: thanks to my friend. i yield the floor back.

mr. whitehouse: thank you. i'd like to speak, if i may, in the nature of a colloquy with the chairman and the senator from delaware and first let me thank him for his very kind remarks, senator carper, as i think everybody knows in the senate is really a bellwether of bipartisanship and constantly seeks cooperation and i appreciate very much his efforts to bring us together here. the situation that i believe we're in mr. chairman, you've been working very hard on these bills for many years, the bill that is on the floor now is the product of considerable work in your committee, homeland security committee, considerable work in the intelligence committee, and considerable work in the commerce committee, primarily, although we in judiciary have had some input as well. and so while there has been no specific hearing on the assembled bill because it covers so many committees, it has to be brought together at some

point and its components have had extensive committee work. so we've all put a lot of effort into this and we've actually all come a very, very long way i believe. so our window is very short, and i hope and expect that we can put the hours ahead of us literally to work to try to close this gap. but i believe that the distance that we have come, and particularly that list bit of distance that we came when you changed s. 3414 to go from a traditional mandatory regulatory system to the new voluntary standard-setting approach really has moved us an enormous, enormous way, and now we're almost on the one-yard line and it would be such a shame i believe with things being that close if we couldn't close the deal. and i'd like to ask you to react

to that assessment of our situation and i'd also like to ask you to react to one other point, which is that the house took action on cybersecurity but it only did so in the form of legislation on information sharing. all of our information, the letter yesterday from general alexander, everything from we have heard from our national security officials, is that that's not enough. you have two really important jobs. one is information sharing and the other is defending america's privately owned critical infrastructure. our electric grids, our communications networks, our financial data processing systems. those are our great liability. those are the things that secretary of defense panetta was referring to when he said the next pearl harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack. so are we as close as i think and is it important that the senate do its job because the

house simply failed to address the critical infrastructure part of our responsibilities? mr. lieberman: again, i thank my friend from rhode island, i thank him for the extraordinarily constructive role he's played, and unusually here, unfortunately, in bringing the group of eight members, four -- he together with senator kyl ofs a, four -- of arizona, four democrats and four republicans who created a bridge that invited senators collins, carper and rockefeller and i to come halfway across to change our bill from mandatory to voluntary. my answers to your two questions, however, are yes and yes. we are a lot closer than we were really just a month ago, a matter of weeks ago. there is a remaining difference, and it's real, but -- but considering where

we've come, if we're all -- if we show a willingness to compromise, and, again, as i've said over and over, not a compromise of principle but a compromise that acknowledges that everybody in the senate insists on getting 100% of what they want on a bill, nobody's going to get 1% of what they want on a bill because nothing's going to pass. we've come back from our 100% quite a lot and we hope -- and we're still open to ideas that will enable us to achieve what we need to achieve in improving our cybersecurity, which means changing where we are now. that's why as my friend from rhode island knows, we're going to keep meeting today with the leading sponsors of the other bill, and with the peacemakers in between to try to see if we can find common ground and avoid i think what will be a very -- could be a very disappointing cloture vote, very divisive, destructive cloture vote

tomorrow. the second point is a very important one, that the house has acted but it's only acted with regard to information sharing. this is important but it's only half the job. the information sharing in brief says that private companies that operate critical infrastructure can share with other companies if they're attacked, so they can mutually strengthen each other. they can also share with the government and the government through the department of homeland security can help the private sector strengthen itself. those kinds of communications which are critical and don't seem -- seem natural don't happen now in too many cases because the private sector is anxious about liability it might incur. and even the public sector is limited in how much it can reach out and help.

so that's important that the house has addressed that part of it. i will say and not just parenthetically, that there has been very significant concern among a lot of americans and quite a remarkable coalition of groups, remarkable in the sense that it's right to left along the ideological spectrum, all concerned about the personal privacy rights of the american people, that they not be compromised as a result of this information sharing. those advocacy -- privacy advocacy groups are not happy with the house information sharing bill. i'm pleased that they have praised what we've tried to do as a result of negotiations with colleagues in this chamber that are concerned about privacy. but the point you make, senator whitehouse, is so true, that's only half the job. and everybody who cares about cybersecurity has said it.

there was a really, i must say, encouraging and inspiring for us, editorial in "the new york times" today supporting essentially the s. 3414, the underlying bill, and really crying out to us to take action. i'm not going to drag down into gridlock by special interest thinking. here's a statistic that jumped out at me. i saw it once before but we haven't heard it in this debate. in thele the times times editorial, it says last year a survey of more than 9,000 business executives in more than 130 countries by the price water house coopers consulting firm found only 13% of those polled had taken adequate defensive action against cyber threats. now, that's worldwide, but i can tell you from what i know, the number in our country is not much better.

and that's why we need this set of standards, best practices, computer hygiene. no longer mandatory but i think once we -- but we create an incentive, if a company chooses to go into what my friend from rhode island i think has quite vividly described as fort cybersecurity, we're going to build fort cybersecurity of the best practices to defend critical are infrastructure and we're going to leave it to the companies that operate critical infrastructure to decide totally on their own whether they want to go into fort cybersecurity. if they do, they will have some significant immunity from liability in the case of a major attack. so my answer to your questions are yes and yes. i just want to come back to something you said at the outset of your remarks because there is -- i never know how much this argument weighs on

senators' minds, but once again, it's being made here, which is this bill has received no hearings, and it's not ready for action. good god, i attended -- i went back and looked at the record. i attended my first hearing on cybersecurity held in wafs then the governmental affairs committee, chaired then by senator fred thompson in 1998, 14 years ago. i can tell you that in recent years senator collins and i have held ten hearings on the subject of cybersecurity. that's only in our committee. that's not counting judiciary, intelligence, commerce. i think foreign relations may have held some hearings on it, too. in fact, we held a hearing just earlier this year, i believe it was march on cybersecurity in

the legislation that we knew we were going to bring forward so this has been heard he heard and i want to say this, i mentioned senator reid's commitment to doing something about cybersecurity. last year in what -- i'm trying to think, but i can't remember a time on another bill where i saw this happen. senator reid asked the republican leader, senator mcconnell, to join him in calling in the democratic chairs and the ranking republican members of all of the relevant committees to cybersecurity that we just talked about and made an appeal that we work together to bring one bill which he would then as he's done before, when a subject covers one committee, blend into a single bill and bring to the floor under the majority leader's authority pursuant to rule 14 of the senate rules, which he's done today. so there hasn't been a specific hearing on this bill, but lord

knows there have been a lot of hearings and this bill has been vetted and negotiated not only with many members of the senate but by our committee and all the other committees by stakeholders, private stakeholders, by some of the very businesses and business organizations that now seem to be the main block to moving forward on the bill. so i've probably responded to my friend at greater length than i might have or perhaps he expected, but your questions were right on target and i thank you for giving me the opportunity. mr. whitehouse: would you answer another question? you mentioned it was important, to use your words, to help the private sector strengthen itself. and some of the debate that has surrounded this bill has suggested that if we just get the heavy hand of government out of the way, and let the nimble

private sector do its thing to protect critical infrastructure, all will be well. and that a purely private sector way of proceeding is really the best way to proceed. in that context, you mentioned the study that showed only 13% of the private businesses that were reviewed were adequately cybersecurity prepared. the ncijtf which is the n.c.i.-led joint task force that protects our national infrastructure, has said when they detect a cyber attack and they go out to work with the corporation that has been attacked, nine out of ten times, the corporation had no idea. and it's not just a government agency, the ncijtf, saying that. there is a company called mandient, sort of a who you

going to call, ghostbusters, they said the same thing. these companies had to find out they had been penetrated from a government agency telling them, by the way, you've been hacked. they're in there. in fact, he said 48 out of the last 50 companies they dealt with had had no idea. the aurora virus hit 300 american companies. only three of them knew it. and the chamber of commerce, which is very active in this debate, had chinese hackers with complete impunity throughout its cyber systems without knowing about it for at least six months. and it was only when the government said, by the way, guys, your info is on a server in china, that they realized, oh, my gosh, we've been hacked, too, and you've used the statistic that i've used before that general alexander, who is the head of cyber command has adopted which is america is

now on the losing end of the biggest transfer of wealth in history through illicit means as a result of the cyber industrial espionage stealing from us our chemical formulas, manufacturing processes and various things that create value here in the country. so i'm not just pinpointing individual examples. if you look at it from a macro point of view we're getting our clocks cleaned in this area and the private sector, it seems to me, all of the evidence suggests this is just an area in which it is not adequately protecting itself without a government role to spur cooperation and to set an agreed standard that n.s.a. and the people watching this with real anxiety every day know is an adequate standard to meet the needs. if you would respond to that, i'd be grateful. mr. lieberman: basically i'd say i agree, senator whitehouse, there's not much i can add to

that. this is not legislation that is a solution in search of a problem. this is a real problem. and, again, we're hearing it from all the cybersecurity experts. and if the private sector owners of critical cyber infrastructure -- electric power grid, telecommunications, finance, water dams, etc., telecommunication, if they were taking enough defensive action, we wouldn't want to act. but they'r -- but they're not. we understand why. as you know, we've talked about this, a lot of the c.i.o.'s, the chief information officers, in the companies get frustrated that their c.e.o.'s don't want to donate enough time and resources to beefing up their defenses. you said something that's really important, which is cyber theft and cyber attack is so insidious

that a lot of people who are victims of cyber attack, companies, don't even know it. and you know my great fear is that there's a lot of malware or bugs -- i called it earlier a kind of cyber cell planted in some of our critical cyber control systems in our country waiting for the moment when an enemy wants to attack us. senator reid yesterday -- because people have a hard time imagining this -- pointed to this terrible tragedy in india where the power system has gone out. there's no evidence that this is a signary tack. but i saw today -- there's no evidence that this is a cyber attack. but i saw today, 600 million people are without electricity and it's had a terrible effect on the quality of life, on the economy, et cetera. unfortunately, this is what today an enemy who's capable -- and they're out there -- could do to us. so i thank my friend.

mr. whitehouse: i would be glad to yield to the senator from maryland but the conclusion is that it would be prudent to -- the only reasonable conclusion one could draw is that it would be prudent to view with some caution and some skepticism the claims of folks who are hacked and penetrated at will and who often don't -- usually don't even know it, that "don't worry, trust us, we can take care of this, everything is fine." mr. lieberman: i thank my friend and of course i agree, and that's why we're legislating. but we're trying to legislate as minimally as we possibly can to begin to solve this problem. so i would yield the floor. the senator from maryland is here and the senator from north dakota is here. does the senator from north dakota -- [inaudible] mr. hoeven: i would like to thank the good senator from connecticut. i'm here to speak but certainly want to accommodate schedules. mr. lieberman: no, we would, in

the order of the senate and fairness, we would yield to my friend from north dakota. the presiding officer: the senator from north dakota. mr. hoeven: madam president, i rise to speak as if in morning business on the subject of energy rather than cyber. i want to commend my colleagues for their excellent work on cyber and i look forward to working with them and i thank them for the incredible amount of work and diligence they're putting into this extremely important effort. i rise this morning to speak on the incredible importance of energy security for our country. last week i introduced the domestic energy and jobs act along with 30 sponsors on the legislation. it's a comprehensive plan for energy security for our country. when i say "energy security," what i mean is producing more energy than we scie consume, geg

our nation to energy security by not only producing enough energy for our needs but even beyond that. and it's absolutely doable. there's no question we can do it. it's about pursuing an all-of-the-above strategy. and i mean pursuing an all-of-the-above strategy, not staying and then picking certain types of energy we want and don't want, instead creating a climate and a national comprehensive energy policy that -- that truly empowers private investment to develop all of our energy resources and all types of energy. now, the domestic energy and jobs act is actually a package of energy bills. many of these have already passed the house and we've introduced them now in the senate as well. 13 separate pieces of legislation pulled together into this energy package with energy leaders from both the house and the senate. and it clearly demonstrates that we have a strategy, we have a

comprehensive energy plan to move our country and that it's ready to go. if you look at the situation right now, there are hundreds of billions of dollars of private investment, of capital that would be invested in energy projects in this country but they're being held up. they're being held on the sidelines, these projects, because of inability to be permitted or because of burdensome regulation. we need to create the kind of approach, the kind of business climate, the kind of energy policy that will unleash that private investment. and that's exactly what this legislation does. first, it reduces the regulatory burden, reduces the regulatory burden so these stalled energy products -- and, again, hundreds of billions of dollars in private investment, not government spending, in private investment that would move forward with energy projects that would not only develop more energy, more cost-effectively,

more dependablely but also wit with -- dependably but also with better environmental stewardship, with the latest, greatest technology, deploying the latest, greatest technology that would produce the energy and do it with better environmental stewardship not only for this country but actually leading the world to more energy production with better environmental stewardsh stewardship. but these projects are held up either because they can't get permitted or because they can't get through the regulatory red tape to get started and get going. this legislation cuts through that. it also helps us develop the vital infrastructure we need for energy development. great example -- ski ton -- key. pipeline, a $7 billion, 1,700-mile pipeline that would move oil from canada to our refineries in the united states but that would also move home from my home state, a hundred thousand barrels a day for starters, to refineries. we need that vital infrastructure. that's just one example. this legislation also develops our resources on public lands as

well as private lands, so we're talking about expedited permitting both onshore and offshore on private lands and on public lands, including for renewables. it sets realistic goals. it sets a market-based approach that would truly foster all of our energy resources rather than picking winners and losers. it would also put a freeze and require a study of rules that are driving up gasoline prices that are hitting families and businesses across this country. and it includes legislation that senator murkowski of alaska ha has -- has added to our package that would require an inventory of critical minerals in the united states and set policies to develop them as a key part of developing a comprehensive energy approach, a comprehensive energy plan for our country. so what's the impact? well, what is the impact? u.s. chamber of commerce in march of last year put forward a report. in that report, they showed that

there are more than 350 energy projects nationwide that are being held up either due to inability to get permitted or regulatory burden, as i've described, more than 350 projects that if we could just greenlight these projects would generate $1.1 trillion in gross domestic product and create 1.9 million jobs a year just in the construction phase. so this legislation truly is about energy, more energy, better technology, better environmental stewardship. but it's also very much about creating jobs, creating jobs at a time when we have more than 8.2% unemployment, more than 13 million people out of work looking for work. this will create an incredible number of jobs. it is about creating economic growth. you look at our debt and our deficit, our debt now approaching $16 trillion. we need to get this economy going and growing to reduce that

deficit and reduce that debt. along with controlling our spending. but we need economic growth to goat top of that -- get on top of that debt and deficit. as i described, just the 350 projects alone i mentioned, $1.1 trillion in economic g.d.p. to put people to work and help reduce our deficit and our debt. and let's talk about national security. the reality is, with the kind of approach that i'm putting forward, here in the united states and working together with our closest friend and ally canada, we can get to energy security without a doubt in of five to seven years. that means producing more energy than we consume within five to seven years. think how important that is. look what's going on in the middle east. look what's going on in syria. what's going to happen there? look at what's going on in iran, their efforts to pursue a nuclear weapon, and what's going to happen with the straight of hormuz, an in--

the strait of hormuz, an incredible amount of oil that goes through that area. look what's snapped egypt with the mud -- what's happening in t with the muslim brotherhood. do we really want to be dependent on the middle east for our oil? i think the american people have said very clearly, "no." and we don't have to be. we do not have to be. we just need the right approach to make it happen right here. and to work with our closest friend and ally, canada. the reality is, developing our energy resources is an incredible opportunity and we need to seize it right now with both hands. we can do it. that is exactly the plan we are putting forward. earlier this year, we passed legislation through the house and here through the senate, it was in conjunction with the payroll tax credit legislation. attached to it, we required that the president make a decision on the keystone x.l. pipeline. he chose to turn it down.

shortly after that, the prime minister of canada, steven harper, went to china. he met with chairman hu and the chinese leaders, their energy leaders, and he signed a memorandum of agreement. that memorandum of agreement between china and canada called for more economic cooperation and more energy development, the chinese working in conjunction with canada. just last week, cinook, one of the largest chinese company, government-controlled company, made a $15 billion tender offer for the nexxon oil company, a large oil company in canada, $15 billion to purchase their interests in the canadian oil sands. also includes mineral interests offshore, lease interests offshore of the united states, in the gulf region, as well as in the north sea area.

but primarily it -- it is an acquisition by the chinese of huge amounts of tracks in the -- in the oil sands in canada. so here we go, just what we said f. we don't work with canada on projects like the keystone x.l. pipeline, the oil that's produced in canada, instead of coming to the united states, will go to china. or americans will be put in the position of buying canadian oil from the cheap knees. from -- from the chinese, because of a failure to act on key things like the keystone pipeline, because we're not acting on the kind of energy policy we're putting forward right here. ask the american people what they want. what sthept that we move forward with the -- what they want is that we move forward with the energy package that we've put forward. and we need to do it. if you check gas prices, they're now back up to $3.50 a gallon national average. when the current administration took office, they were $1.85

national average per gallon. that's a 90% increase. what ramifications does that have for our economy? what ramifications does that have for small businesses? what ramifications does that have for american families, hardworking american families? i think we all know the answer to that. the time to move forward is now. it couldn't be more clear. we control our own destiny. we need to take action. we need to move forward on the kind of energy plan that truly benefits our people and our country. i call on my colleagues to join me in this effort, and i yield the floor. ms. murkowski: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. ms. murkowski mr. mikulski: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. mrs. mikulski: madam president, i come to the floor to talk

about cybersecurity, the collins-lieberman bill, and our need to act and our need to act before we adjourn for the august break. madam president, i come today to the floor as i did when i spoke yesterday, i don't come as a democrat. i come as an american. if ever there's an issue where we have to forget, are we red states or blue states, it is this issue. madam president, i'm going to just stop my remarks. i note the gentleman from arizona is on the floor. i know that he was scheduled to speak at 12:45. i was scheduled to speak at 11:30. i have about 10 minutes. is that -- i just want to -- just kind of acknowledge where we are. okay. thank you. so resuming my comments, madam

chair, what i wanted to say -- madam president, what i wanted to say is this -- if ever there is a place where we have got to forget are we red states or blue states, we have to forget what we have on our bumper stickers, and we've got to come together and not be the red state party or the blue state party but to be the red, white, and blue party for the united states of america. we must put aside partisan differences and ideological pet viewpoints. we need to act, and we need to act in the defense of the united states of america. the senate has a great opportunity today and tomorrow to pass legislation to protect, defend and deter a cyber cyber k on the united states of america's critical infrastructure. what do i mean by critical infrastructure? it is our electric power grid,

our financial services, our water supplies, those things that are the bread and butter of keeping america, its business and its families going. through voluntary participation, we can work with the private sector who owns and operates the critical infrastructure to keep our critical infrastructure hardened and resilient against attack. i worry, i really worry about the possibility of an attack. we know that there are already attacks going on, particularly in our financial services. we know that our personal identity is being hacked. we know that small business is being attacked. i'll give examples later on. but not only do i worry about an attack, i equally worry about our inertia, where we do nothing, we do nothing.

now, i bring to the senate and all who are watching's attention that leon panetta, the secretary of defense, has called our cyber vulnerability our potential digital pearl harbor. we don't want a digital pearl harbor. the gentlelady is from new york. we don't want a cyber 9/11. we can act now. we can act when it is within our power to protect, defend, deter these attacks. that's what i want. i want us to have a sense of urgency. i want us to go to the edge of our chair. i want to put our best thinking on to be able to do the kind of job we need to do to find a sensible center on how we can do that. right now, our adversaries are watching us. we're debating, protecting america from cyber attacks, and it looks like we're doing nothing, that when all is said and done, more gets said than gets done.

our adversaries don't have to spy at us. they can just look at the senate floor and say what the heck are they doing? you know what they do? they're going to look at us and say there they go again, there they go again. we know that their own inability to pass legislation, their own partisan gridlock and deadlock works to our predatory enemies in a positive way. they're saying well, our first line of attack is for them to do nothing, so we know then, how can we make sure the critical infrastructure is vulnerable? how can we weaken the critical infrastructure, one of which is not to pass legislation, putting in those hardened, resilient ways to protect, defend and deter. our adversaries are laughing right this minute. they just have to watch us. well, i'm telling you this is no

laughing matter. this is no laughing matter. what is the intent of a cyber attack? what is the intent? is it the same intent as a nuclear attack? is it the same intent as flying into the world trade center? it's all the same. it's to create chaos. it's to create civil instability, and it's to create economic catastrophe that makes 9/11 look like a minuscule. just think about a cyber attack in which our grid goes down. think of a blackout in new york. think of a blackout in baltimore. you remember when we did the cyber exercise here where it showed what would happen? the stoplights go down, the hospital -- the lights go out in the hospitals, the respirators go off.

business shuts down. commerce shuts down. 9/11 shuts down. america is shut down, and we will be powerless and i am potent to put it back on in any quick and expeditious manner. right now, we are in the situation where we have an early missile detext -- detection section zone. we need to do now to do something. with this cyber attack, think of the chaos of no electricity, just think of it. we all go through blackouts. we had a terrible freak storm here a few weeks ago. and then look at what -- no matter how late pepco, bg & e, dominion was responding, they get it back on. what happens if they can't get it back on? what happens if they can't get it back on for weeks or longer? and there we are, powerless and i am potent.

the president of the united states wondering what to do. remember, the attack is to humiliate, intimidate and cripple. humiliate? making us look powerless. intimidate, to show there is this power that can do us. and to cripple our functioning as a society. i find it chilling. we saw an attack on a little country called estonia. madam chair, that's how i got into this, sitting on the intelligence committee. i can say it now because it's been more than five years ago. it was brought to my attention that estonia, a brave little country that resisted communism, now part of nato, who had challenged the soviet union, was being attacked. the electricity was going off around estonia. we thought in the intel committee that it was going to be the first cyber attack on a nato nation and we were going to trigger the nato charter article

5, that an attack on one is an attack on all. but thanks to the united states of america, our great british allies, we had the technical knowhow to go in and help them. but who is going to have the technical knowhow to come in and help us? so we have the technical knowhow right now to make our critical infrastructure hardened and resilient. we shouldn't harden our positions so that we can get to resilient critical infrastructure. i could go on with examples. i know my colleague from arizona wants to come to the floor, but i just want to say this -- i have been really involved in this from not only my work on the intel committee, but i fund the justice department through the appropriations committee and have been very involved hands on, very involved hands on with the policy issues around the f.b.i. now, if director mueller were here, he would say that the f.b.i. currently has 7,600

pending bank robbery cases, but guess what? he has 9,000 pending cyber banking attacks. we are being more cyber -- there are more cyber heists than there are regular heists. that doesn't make it right. now, is a cyber attack coming? is it something out of buck rogers or betty rogers or cyber betty crocker cookbook or whatever? our nasdaq, as the gentlelady again from new york knows, nasdaq and the new york stock exchange have already been attacked. hackers have repeatedly penetrated the computer networks at the nasdaq stock market. the new york stock exchange has been the attack -- has been the target of cyber attacks. that sounds so vague, but remember, successful attempts to shut down or steal our

information is going on every day. madam chair, do you remember 2010? the dow jones plunged 1,000 points because of a flash crash? that was a result of turbulent trading but that could be manipulated by cyber and it could happen several times a week. what are we going to do? you know, our banking industry clears $7 trillion worth of financial goods and products and actual real money every day. imagine what would happen if that was thrown into turmoil or shut down. i don't want to go through grim example after grim example, but let me say this. good people in this body have been working on both sides of the aisle. we were really close. we were really close, and i urge my colleagues now, let's either vote for cloture or come to a regular agreement to be able to offer amendments, because i will

tell you this -- for those who worry about the cost, for those that worry about regulation, to those who worry about homeland security, i say i understand that. that's why i would be willing to sunset the bill so we could always look ahead and re-evaluate, but i want you to know -- and i say this right now -- if a cyber attack comes and happens to the united states and we have failed to act, we will overreact, we will overregulate and we will overspend. and why do i have a sense of urgency right now? let me say this -- when we adjourn tomorrow for the august break, we don't come back until september 10. we will go out somewhere around october 1. that means we have -- if we don't act by tomorrow or friday, we will only have essentially about 14 working days in september to do this.

we can't let this go. so i conclude my remarks by saying this -- to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, let's be the red, white, and blue party. let's come to the middle ground here, let's do what we need to do to protect and defend the united states of america. there are good people that are working on this, some with extraordinary national security credentials. let's put our best heads together, come up with the best amendments, and let's come up with the best protections of the united states of america, and let's do it by tomorrow night. god bless america, and i yield the floor. mr. mccain: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from arizona. mr. mccain: i ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with the senator from georgia, senator chambliss, the senator from south carolina, senator lindsey graham, and if he wants to, the senator from indiana, senator coats. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mccain: madam president, before i go to the issue that we

wanted to discuss, i just want to point out that in this debate that has become so impassioned and the issue obviously is one of cybersecurity is one of transcendent importance, and i want to again reiterate my respect, appreciation and affection for both senator lieberman and senator collins, but i also point out to my colleagues that the people who are directly affected by this, and that's the business community of the united states of america, is unalterably opposed to the legislation in its present form. they are the ones who will be affected most dramatically by cybersecurity legislation. the united states chamber of commerce has a strong letter, a strong letter, the united states chamber of commerce which represents three million businesses and organizations of every size, sector and region, supports the legislation that we

have proposed. now, i would final just like to say that i have had hours and hours and hours of meetings with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle trying to work this out. i believe that we can work this out. we understand that cybersecurity is importantance of transcendent importance, but to somehow allege that the business community, the three million businesses in america should be left out of this discussion, of course, is not appropriate nor do i believe will result in effective cybersecurity legislation. but i really came to the floor today to talk about, again, the issue of the leaks, the leaks which have jeopardized directly american national security. at the asman security firm just in the past couple of days, the head of securities command, admiral mcraven, have observed that the national security risks have put lives