global war on terrorism. it's no accident that pennsylvania has suffered very heavily in this conflict. as it has in other conflicts throughout our nation's history. i think it's because in towns across the commonwealth of pennsylvania, towns and cities, dallas town, easton, philadelphia and erie, there are certain values that are deeply rooted in these communities. the importance of family, the importance of faith, the importance of community, and the importance of public service, including very much service to this nation. the conviction that freedom is worth defending is one of those convictions and a belief that a cause worth fighting for is not someone else's responsibility. these are the values that have shaped these men and women, their families, their churches and houses of worship, their communities. and these values were exemplified in the lives of our

fallen men and women in service. and they'll forever be honored by pennsylvanians as the native sons and daughters of our great commonwealth for their service to the country. and now, mr. president, i will read the names of the men and women who have made the supreme sacrifice for our country in this conflict and senator casey will complete the list that i will now begin. private first class david anthony jefferson, united states army, philadelphia. sergeant lewis robert astuka, united states army, westchester. specialist jesse david reid, united states army, horfield. lance corporal abram larue howard, united states marine corps.

specialist dale justin grid low, united states army. specialist anthony bartlet, united states army reading. staff sergeant sean falnry, united states army. gunnery sergeant justin edward malti united states marine corps, pittsburgh. master sergeant benjamin franklin bitner, united states army green castle. first lieutenant demet r*u s, lancaster. staff sergeant david edward mills injury, united states army, new castle. sergeant joseph michael garrison, united states marine corps, new bethel. staff sergeant patrick ryan dulfa, united states marine corps, moscow.

sergeant christopher matthew wrinkle, united states marine dallas town. petty officer michael joseph strange, united states navy, philadelphia. technical sergeant daniel lee sur, united states air force, york. staff sergeant eric scott holmen, united states army, everyone city. lieutenant colonel christopher keith rabel, united states marine corps, north huntington. chief petty officer, nicholas david czech, u.s. navy, monroeville. commander job w. price, u.s. navy, potts town. major wesley james hinckley, united states army, cumberland city. i yield back to the senior

senator. mr. casey: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senior senator from pennsylvania. mr. casey: i want to thank senator toomey for reading the first half of our names. i'll continue with 20 more names. sergeant derrick lee shanfield, united states marine corps, hastings, pennsylvania. sergeant first class robert james fike, united states army. sergeant first class brian allen hoover, united states army, west elizabeth. sergeant joseph davis caskey, united states marine corps, pittsburgh. lance corporal joshua thomas twigg, united states marine corps, be indiana. corporal joshua alexander hartin, united states army, bethlehem. lance corporal ralph john fabree, united states marine

corps. staff sergeant david g. weigel, united states army, philadelphia, pennsylvania. corporal eric michael torbit, jr., united states marine corps, lancaster. corporal gerald lee king, united states army, eerie. sergeant robert curtis sisson jr., united states army, alaquippa. sergeant first class john frances kim, united states army, philadelphia. first sergeant kenneth brian ellwell, united states army erie. sergeant edward william kohler iii, united states army lebanon. staff sergeant brian keith mowry, united states army

halifax, staff sergeant kenneth roland sreupb deson, united states army erie. senior airman brian richard bell, united states air force erie. captain michael ian brayden, united states army, lock haven. private first class cameron james stanbaugh, united states army spring grove. finally, staff sergeant brandon robert pepper, united states army, york, pennsylvania. mr. president, as i conclude that list of pennsylvania's killed in action over just about a two-year time period in afghanistan, and one of the names read was killed in iraq, we remember them. we think of them. and i wish we were paying tribute to them on a night like

tonight, but at the same time we're also thinking of their families as we pay tribute to them. i'm reminded of the great recording artist bruce springsteen. one of his songs is entitled "you're missing." one of the lines in that song goes something like this, the refrain over and over again is "you're missing." he says in the song -- or i should say he's able to sing and i won't -- "you're missing when i shut out the lights. you're missing when i close my eyes. you're missing when i see the sun rise." for all those families out there who lost someone in afghanistan, iraq or in other conflicts, we're thinking of them tonight and praying for them because they're missing someone in the midst of this end of the year, in the midst of the holiday season. and we're remembering them tonight, paying tribute to those that they loved and lost but also remembering them in our prayers tonight. mr. president, i would yield the

floor. the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. mr. cardin: mr. president, it is indeed unique that on new year's eve we are here in session. we still have some very important business that we need to take care of for our nation. we shouldn't have put our country in this position. we should have acted well before december 31. we all understand that. but it's important that we get this work done in the remaining hours of this term of congress. on thursday the 113th congress will take the oath of office, and we will start a new congress. before that, we must get done the work of this congress. and at a minimum, we need to deal with the impact of tax rates that would go up for every taxpayer in this country unless we take action before this congress adjourns. we need to protect middle-income families. we all talked about it. we've all agreed that that needs

to be done. we need to prevent the tax increases from taking effect through the overwhelming majority of americans, those who are middle-income taxpayers. we need to do this first and foremost because it would create an incredible burden on families, working families that pay an extra $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 of taxes. we also need to do that to help our economy. that type of money coming out of the economy through additional tax increases would have a very detrimental impact on our economy, which is coming out of a tough period. we also need to deal with what we call sequestration. i was listening to the senior senator from maryland, senator mikulski, talk about the effects of sequestration as the chair of the appropriations committee. she is absolutely right. people may not understand that term, but what it means is that there will be dramatic cuts in governmental agencies which will affect not only the performance of that agency, but also the

contracts it lets to the private sector. it will affect not just our domestic budget, but our military budget. she went through a lot of the different impacts it will have from children who are in jeopardy of losing their support for head start to our researchers being denied the resources they need in order to do vital work that's important for our economy. the bottom line is that if we allow these across-the-board cuts to take effect, it will hurt our economy and will hurt job growth in america. we cannot allow that to happen, and i would expect we can get that done before this congress adjourns on january 2. we also need to deal with what we call the physician fix in medicare. that we can get done in this congress. if not, doctors who treat our seniors and our disabled population would find that there will be almost a 30% cut in their physician reimbursement. many physicians would say i'm

not going to treat seniors any longer with that type of reduction. we understand that, so we need to make sure that we take care of protecting the reimbursement rates for physicians in the medicare system. we need to get that done and get that done before this congress adjourns. we need to extend unemployment insurance. millions of americans are depending upon unemployment insurance in a soft economic time. they can't find jobs. again, this is not only important for the individuals who would be cut off if we do not extend benefits. it's also important for our economic recovery. then, mr. president, we also need to extend the farm bill. we've heard the consequences if we don't do that. i would have hoped that we could pass the bill that this chamber passes over in the house. it's unlikely we can get that done in the next two days, so we need to make sure that we at least extend the current farm policies in order to make sure we protect the security of our

agricultural community and food prices here in america. all of that we can get done. hopefully we get it done tonight but certainly before we adjourn on january 2, we need to complete that work in order to keep our economy moving and to protect the interests of the people of this nation and, quite frankly, i don't think there's much disagreement in this chamber as to a method to get that done. i must tell you, mr. president, though i'm disappointed that we're not dealing with a broader budget framework for our nation. we should have done that well before now. we should do it for many reasons. one, we need it. we have a deficit that's not controllable. we've got to bring our deficit into better control. that means we need to reduce spending and we need the revenues in order to be able to give the right blueprint for america's future and growth. we also need to get a broader package done because of predictability. the private sector needs to know what the rules are. they need to know what the tax code is going to look like. they need to know what the

spending programs are going to look like. they need to have confidence that we have our budget under better control. we should have gotten that done. i've spoken several times on the floor about we should have adopted the simpson-bowles framework. to me, that was a bipartisan balanced approach for how we could have gotten out of our fiscal problems. we're not going to be able to get that done in the next two days before we adjourn on january 2. but we need to recognize that we need to do that. now, mr. president, i've heard a lot of my colleagues come to the floor. i've had to clarify a couple of points. simpson-bowles was basically a $4 trillion ten-year deficit-reduction package. it was looked up as the right approach. many of us have been talking how can we get $4 trillion done. well, we already have -- it's interesting that the simpson-bowles approach, approximately 60% was in spending reductions and about 40% was in revenue. that was a balanced way. bring down spending, but also

bring in the revenues that we need in order to get our budget into better balance. that's the proper way to do it. now, since the recommendations of simpson-bowles, we have done $1 trillion in deficit reduction in discretionary domestic spending. we've gotten that done. that is -- those budget caps are real, and we're living within those budget caps. now sequestration, these across-the-board cuts, would get another $1.2 trillion of spending cuts done. we shouldn't do it through sequestration, but all of us recognize that we need to find ways to reduce spending further. i've talked on the floor about how we can get that done, particularly in the health care field. yes, we have to reduce the cost of medicare, but the way to do it is to reduce the cost of health care. if we have fewer readmissions to hospitals because we implement the right delivery system

protocols, we save money for our economy and we save money for medicare. if we use preventive health care appropriately, people will enter our health care system in a less costly way, with more people insured, less use of emergency rooms. once again we save money. we need to implement, and our committees need to come up with these solutions. it's not going to come up with some two or three people getting together and coming up with a package for us. we need -- the senate and its committees need to work and come up with the right way to reduce the cost of these programs. and i think we can do it basically by making the health care system more efficient. that's much better than cutting benefits. and i would hope that we could work together to get that done. we need to do that. and, yes, we need revenue. i heard some of my colleagues come here and say, well, look at all the revenue we're going to get out of this supposed agreement, this agreement that's been talked about that we hopefully will get as early as

tonight. but we've already made a compromise. the rate at which no american will see any increase in taxes looks like it will be high than $250,000. it's been reported that it's going to be closer to $400,000. okay, well now, what does that mean? that means we're going to get less revenue in this agreement reached tonight. the numbers i've seen, mr. president, this may very well change based upon what the agreement is -- hopefully we'll have an agreement -- but hopefully around $500 billion to $600 billion. that's far short of what we've been talking about in order to reach that $4 trillion number that's -- that we would all say is the minimum amount we need, the simpson-bowles' numbers. so we're going to need more revenue. so here's the rub. here's the challenge. when we start looking if we're getting more revenue, we're talking about thousand e getting

it through tax reform. we all understand we've got to reform our tax code. it's difficult to do that when you have to produce revenue at the same time. because people are looking at trying do something about rates. if you need the revenue, you need the revenue for the deficit-reduction package, it's going to be more difficult. my point is this: i am disappointed we haven't gotten our work done well before tonight, but it's you are urgent that we -- it's urgent that we work together, democrats and republicans, and get the minimum amount done that the american people expect. that to make sure that tax rates don't go up for middle-income families. we can get that done as early as tonight. we should avoid the immediate sequestration order because that makes no sense, these across-the-board cuts, and figure out a way that we could have a much more orderly process for reducing government spending. we should make sure that medicare is not jeopardized by the -- by not having the physician fix done for -- in

this compromise, make sure the people with unemployment insurance maintain their benefits, extend the farm bill. that we can get done in the remaining hours of this legislative session. and i would urge my colleagues to continue to work together. i'm hopeful that our leaders are negotiating a package that can be brought to the floor as early as tonight, certainly before we a adjourn on january 2. if we do that then i think we've completed as much of our business as we can and setting up for the debate in the 113th congress, which will indeed be challenging. but i would urge us to work together and put the interests of the american people first. with that, mr. president, i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: is the senate in a quorum call? the presiding officer: the senator is correct. mr. whitehouse: then may i ask that the quorum call be suspended? the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: and i ask unanimous consent that morning business be extended until 7:00 p.m. with all other provisions remaining in effect. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: