yes, it does go to increased revenue. the revenue that we're talking about is not -- is to close these juicy loopholes to end these outrageous tax earmarks that happen in the stealth of the night. look, we got rid of earmarks on the appropriations committee. let's get rid of tax earmarks on the finance committee. that's one way to do it. i want to compliment the senator from rhode island, senator whitehouse. he has done incredible research on just exactly what these cushy, lobbyist-driven tax breaks are. our closing the loopholes cuts spending and it also cuts the middle class, ensures essential government services and keeps america strong. what does it do? yes, it does reform the tax

code. the first loophole it closes is something called the buffett rule. it saves $53 billion and it means wealthy taxpayers will pay lower effective tack rates than the middle class. plain english, madam president, do i like that phrase, madam president -- it means -- this is what warren buffett said -- that a billionaire should pay the same taxes as somebody -- same tax rate as somebody who makes about $55,000 a year. and guess what? we democrats believe in entrepreneurship. we believe in rewarding hard work. so that tax doesn't kick in until your second million. hey, if i were a billionaire, i'd take that deal, but i'm not a billionaire, but more importantly neither is 99% of the american population. we also eliminate a special

loophole to the oil and gas industry for $2 billion where they get oil from tar sands that would be also subject to a tax. but my also favorite one is that it eliminates tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. another significant amount of money. but you know, i'm an appropriator, so let me talk about spending cuts. we have come up with spending cuts. yes, it's 27.5 in domestic spending and 27.5 in defense. let me start first with defense because much has been said about defense. many tables have been pounded. many chests have been thumped talking about it, and we do have to look out for our military. but our $27.5 billion recognizes the reality of boots on the ground, reality of boots on the ground, our troops are coming

home. they will all be home by the summer of 2014, so our defense cuts kick in 2015, so nothing that we do will in any way dilute, diminish, end or terminate money that would go to men and women in our harm's way, so our cuts don't kick in until 2015, and then it will be $3 billion a year over a nine-year period, which our generals and our acting secretary of defense, secretary hagel now concur with. so we're okay with defense, and most of all the military is okay with it. then we also cut domestic spending. here we cut $27 billion, cuts in the farm bill. it eliminates subsidies that we don't need to do anymore. the presiding officer is from an agricultural state. we love your cheese.

we even from time to time cheer on the green bay packers, but -- from time to time. but at the same time -- so we know agriculture is important, but essentially we have a tax subsidy structure that goes back to the 1930's. a different economy, a dust bowl, people vacating homes in oklahoma and following the grapes of wrath trail to california. so we came up through the new deal a way of subsidizing farms, restoring the land and restoring people to their land. but a lot of those subsidies aren't needed anymore, and quite frankly a lot of it goes to agribusiness for crops we don't even plant. so working with the agriculture committee, the appropriations didn't just do this out of the blue. we come up with $27.5 billion. now, much is said about asking democrats if we know math. yes, we know math.

we have 27.5 cuts in domestic spending, 27.5 cuts in defense, kicking in in 2015, that's $55 billion, $55 billion getting rid of tax break earmarks and making those who are -- who really make more than $2 million a year pay their fair share, we come up with 110. quite simply, that's our plan. i have spoken quite a bit during this week about the enact on the plan, and -- on sequester. sequester was never meant to happen. we have got to end sequester. we could do it this afternoon. for all those people who were crying their tears and don't want it, but they have to ask their question -- do they want to protect america's middle class, the 99%, or do they want to protect billionaire tax break earmarks? that's the choice.

so they can rally, we don't want to pay more taxes. you know, you can't have a government without paying taxes. the ordinary people pay them every day. you know what drives me wild? there is this fix the debt crowd that flew in. did you follow that? well, you're not supposed to comment as the refer here. i watched them fly in. i loved it. they flew in in corporate jets that receive a tax subsidy. they stayed in washington where they could take expense account deductions while they came to lobby us. and what did they come in on their subsidized tax break jets and their expense accounts that they could deduct from sushi to cabernet? they came to tell us to raise social security. and then they told us to raise the age in medicare because after all people live longer. well, you know, maybe if you

have all that wealth and you can afford health care and you don't need medicare, you don't need it. you know, nobody has got to take medicare. if you don't need it, you don't have to take it. if you don't need social security, they don't need to take it. so my whole point was often the very solutions that are given by people are given by people who get the most tax breaks. anyway, that's a pet peeve of mine, but really what hurts me is this, and i will conclude. i represent some of the great icon i can institutions of america, the national institutes of health, the national security agency, each doing their own way to protect the american people, the federal drug administration. i have 4,000 federal employees keeping their drugs and medical devices safe for the american people and food safety. we have to make sure those people work so that our private sector works and we keep our economy strong. please pass the democratic alternative.

it is sound from the standpoint of policy, sustainable, reliable, we could end sequester this afternoon. so, madam chair, i yield the floor. i will be back to talk more about it, but i think we have a good idea here. let's not follow the politics of delay and let's not dither in the united states senate. madam president, i yield the floor. mr. whitehouse: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: i believe that under the existing order, i am next because i believe that senator inhofe yielded his time when he had this question answered. the presiding officer: that is correct. mr. whitehouse: i think at that point the order has ended and it is jump ball at the end of my remarks, just to clarify the floor position. i want to rise today -- mr. toomey: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. toomey: i would like to ask a question clarifying the procedure and the process because it is my understanding there is time reserved for me after the senator from rhode island finishes with his

comments. the presiding officer: no order has been propounded to that effect yet. mr. toomey: but there will be time available. mr. whitehouse: having the floor, why don't i propose now that at the conclusion of my remarks, senator toomey be recognized, and i believe senator murray wanted to speak as well and that she be recognized at the -- not necessarily. okay. mr. toomey: i have no further questions. i thank the senator from rhode island. the presiding officer: without objection, the senator from pennsylvania will be next. the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: thank you, madam president. i'm rising today in strong support of leader reid's proposal to stop the sequester. we need to reduce our debt and deficit. we should do so in a thoughtful manner. we have so often on this floor heard our friends criticize

republican legislation as job killing, a job-killing bill, a job-killing proposal. we hear that all the time. often that charge has been frankly without much factual support, but it is part of the common rhetoric in this room, but now we face an event that actually is expected to cause the loss of one million jobs. and yet, so many republicans support these cuts in their fixation, frankly, on what economists call budget austerity, cutting your way out of a recession. well, how has the budget austerity record worked? there is a record now because a lot of countries have tried it from spain to portugal to greece, countries slashed spending to address deficits in the name of budget austerity.

their record -- lousy, persistent, double-digit unemployment and negative economic growth. the u.s. unemployment rate of 7.9% which is actually even higher than my home state is for sure too high, but it is far better than the rate of 26% unemployment in spain and greece, the record of 16% unemployment in portugal. our 2.3% growth rate may seem inadequate and it is, but as we recover from the deepest recession we've seen since the great depression, it is much better than the negative growth rates in the countries that took the austerity path. the results are clear -- the evidence is in from the

austerity experiments. the countries that cut the deepest have hurt the most. if we want to continue growing our economy and creating jobs, we need to resist the european path that is championed by republican austerity advocates. we need to maintain the balanced approach that has brought the u.s. economy up out of recession. admittedly not fast enough, but look at what the alternative has been. leader reid's bill would replace the indiscriminate cuts of the so-called sequester with targeted cuts to agricultural subsidies and defense spending, as the chairman of the appropriations committee said, after the troops are home when the costs can necessarily come down, paired with revenue not from raising taxes but from closing a loophole, a tax loophole that allows the highest paid people in america to pay

lower tax rates than regular middle-class families. i heard the passion of senator mccain and i respect him immensely on the harm that the sequester will do to the military. we have a way out. it's a question of priorities. do you really want to protect the military from these cuts or is it more important to protect the low tax rates of billionaires? that's the choice, and that's the choice that they are making. leader reid's is a smart and balanced bill, and i hope it will pass. put this into some context about where we are and spending cuts. the ranking member of the budget committee said this week that president obama was opposed to spending cuts. i have the transcript of what he said in committee. he said -- "the president believes no spending, even wasteful spending, should be cut." well, let's look at the facts. through the budget control act of 2011 and several other

measures, we have cut spending almost $1.5 trillion in the budget period of next decade. when you include interest savings, the top part, from that reduced borrowing, it comes to $1.7 trillion in spending cuts and associated interest savings. on the revenue side, we have only generated a little over $700 billion from extending ending the bush tax cut for the top 1%, at least over $400,000 in income, and from the associated interest savings. this together puts us $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction toward our goal of $4 trillion in total deficit reduction that most economists agree is needed to stabilize our budget.

but notice in the balance between spending cuts and new revenues, spending cuts are ahead by a trillion dollars. the ranking member of the budget committee said that president obama believes no spending cuts, even wasteful spending cuts, should be -- i need my glasses to read the word -- should be cut. no spending, even wasteful spending, should be cut. that's what he said. and he's a trillion dollars ahead on spending versus revenues. we've cut $7 of spending for every $3 of revenue, even though right now government revenue, united states government revenue, is at its lowest percentage of g.d.p. in more than 50 years, more than half a century. and our proposal going forward

is 50-50, spending cuts and revenues. so let's not pretend that we're immune to or allergic to spending cuts. there have been more spending cuts than new revenues. we've tried to find a balanced approach. and so far, in this $2.4 trillion, we haven't even looked at tax loopholes, at the spending that happens through the tax code that mostly benefits big corporations, special interests, and super high-end american earners. now, take a look at how big that amount is. we collect in individual income tax revenue a little over a trillion dollars every year from individuals. but the total liability of individuals under the tax code is over $2 trillion.

what happens to this other $1.02 trillion? it flows back out. it never comes into the government as revenues. it goes back to people as tax deductions, loopholes, and various ways that we spend money through the tax code. if you look at the corporate income tax side, it's about the same. we look at our corporations, which, by the way, contribute about a sixth as much into our national revenue as they used to. they are at an all-time low in terms of contributing to our national revenues in the last couple of decades. 60 years, i want to say. there at $181 billion that actually gets collected and becomes revenue. there's another $157 billion that is corporate tax liability but we let them get it back through loopholes in the tax code. you put those two together, you

got $1.16 trillion that we can use to help defeat or replace the sequester. it is a big deal to look at the tax spending as well as just the revenues that come in. so we've done nothing on that yet. that should be part of this discussion, and that's what we do in the proposal that i've put out. now, last year we spent a great deal of time in this body debating whether the top income tax rate should be 35% or 39.6%, and we ultimately set the rate at 39.6% for families whose income is over $450,000. but what we know is that many of those families will never pay anything close to that rate. the tax code is riddled with those special provisions that i talked about, the loopholes, the tax spending.

they disproportionately benefit ultrahigh-income folks, special deals for special interests and of them all perhaps the most egregious is the so-called carried interest loophole that allows billionaires, literally billionaires to pay lower tax rates than regular families. that's why in the last election it became apparent that mitt romney was saying something like an 11% tax rate. it's not just mitt romney. the i.r.s. tracks the effective tax rates paid by the top 400 highest income earners in the country. in 2009 the last year that they have data, the top 400 earned an average of over $200 million each, one year's income, over $200 million each. what did they pay in taxes on average? about 20%. about 20%.

on average. some paid more, the nominal rate is supposed to be 39.6%. but how many mitt romneys are there paying 11%, in order to average to 20%? and 20% is the same rate that an average firefighter pays in rhode island or a brick mason pays in rhode island. don't tell me that a billionaire hedge fund manager can't pay a higher tax rate than a brick mason. and it's not just the top 400. the congressional research service estimates that about a quarter of people in america who make more than a million dollars a year, about a quarter of them pay lower tax rates than over ten million middle-income taxpayers. in that sense, the tax code is upside down in favor of these high-income earners. loopholes let them do that. so we cut across all these

loopholes with the so-called buffett rule. supposed to pay 39.6%, the buffett rule says okay, take all the loopholes you want, but you can't go below 30%. we'll let you take off 9.6% of the rate the law says you're supposed to pay but you can't blow 30%, you can't go to 11%, you can't be paying lower than what a brick mason pays. that's in our sequester replacement bill. produces $71 billion. high earning professionals can perform another trick. they can avoid paying social security and medicare taxes by calling themselves corporations for tax purposes. you heard the republican presidential candidate say corporations are people. this is the flip side. these people are corporations. and if you make enough money,

you can afford to turn yourself into a corporation to dodge paying your social security and your medicare contributions. so the second item on my list list closes that loophole, too, which is another $9 billion. the next item on the list contributes $3 billion by ending special depreciation rules for private jets. private jet owners can depreciate their aircraft faster for tax purposes than commercial aircraft. now, i'm very happy for anybody who is successful enough to have a private jet. but that luxury need not be subsidized by taxpayers. setting aside the need for this, because of the sequester, this is a change that makes sense just on fairness grounds. it stands on its own. and it's another $3 billion. the fourth provision in my bill would end tax breaks for big oil companies. over the past decade, the big

five oil companies have collectively enjoyed over $1 trillion in profits. yeah, trillion with a t. repealing taxpayer giveaways to them is something we should be doing anyway and it's another $24 billion towards getting rid of the sequester. the final provision in my plan helps replace the sequester by ending a tax break that unbelievably, rewards manufacturers that close up shop in the united states and move jobs to other countries. it does that by allowing those corporations to indefinitely delay paying taxes on profits from those foreign overseas operations. ending the deferral loophole for companies that manufacture goods overseas for sale to american customers is something we should do anyway to support our domestic manufacturers.

and it adds almost $20 billion toward replacing the sequester cuts. each one of these five provisions would make the tax code fairer for ordinary americans. i love our chairman of appropriations. she can speak to issues on the floor of the senate like nobody else. and when she said these are cushy, lobbyist driven earmarks she is dead right. they do not deserve to stand on their own and we can get rid of some of the smelliest ones and spare ourselves the sequester and the loss of a million jobs at the same time, gosh, i think we ought to be doing that. i strongly support leader reid's bill to replace the sequester cuts with a 50-50 mix of revenue and spending but i also want to show that we can avoid the sequester for the coming year by looking at the vast tax spending

we do through loopholes and gimmicks in the tax code. usually for the benefit of powerful corporations, special interests, and very high-income individuals. when you set that against the economic harm that the sequester is going to cause to our country, closing those loopholes should be the higher priority. on economic grounds, and on grounds of fairness. i thank the chair and i yield the floor. mr. leahy: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. leahy: madam president, i want to thank the distinguished senator from pennsylvania for allowing me to go first and i assure him i will be very, very brief, and i know the distinguished senator from washington state is here, and she has an interest in what i

want to say because of her strong support of the violence against women bill. people think we can't come together but we often do in this chamber. earlier this month, the senate came together in the very best tradition of the chamber to pass the leahy-crapo violence against women act with a strong bipartisan vote. this was an enormous step forward from the original violence against women act. i just want to report the house of representatives just passed the bipartisan senate-passed bill as we passed it. so we did it a bipartisan way here, republican-controlled house has just passed it, the legislation will go to the president, it's going to be signed into law, it helps victims of rape and domestic violence, victims of human trafficking who could not wait for another day to act, and i

certainly want to thank senator crapo for being my partner in this legislation from the beginning. he and senator murkowski, senator murray, all of us worked together, and senator crapo, senator murkowski and i wrote to speaker boehner and asked him to join with us on this. representative cole in the other body steadfast dedication. to preserve the protections for native women. don't want to hold up the debate here but having worked on this for a couple years, i am very happy that the senate has done what it should do, the house has done what it should do, and perhaps we've taken -- and i believe we've taken a major step to protect women against violence. i yield the floor and and i thank my colleagues. i ask unanimous consent my full statement be part of the record. the presiding officer: without objection.

mr. toomey: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. toomey: i rise to address the issue of the sequestration and the democrat and republican alternatives. but i want to start by expressing just how disappointed i am that we're having the debate in this fashion. this is certainly among the very most important issues that we are grappling with, should be grappling with as a congress, as a senate, as a federal government, getting ourselves on a sustainable fiscal path is as important as anything we could be doing. the sequestration is an important part of that, and, unfortunately, the majority party here doesn't want to have a full and open debate, and won't permit multiple amendments from both sides. now, i don't know how many ideas there are on the democratic side. i know there are three or four or five different ideas on the republican side. and frankly, i think any sensible approach to this ought to have a full and open, robust debate and i'm happy to vote on

every one of then. i'd vote against some, probably vote for others, but why in the world would we say there can only be two choices, one democrat choice and one republican choice? i have to say i am extreme exeel disappointed we have gotten to this point where we cannot have an open debate and amendments on a wide range of ideas because the challenges require that kind of response, and it's very disappointing that the majority party refuses to conduct that debate and appears unwilling to have those votes. nevertheless, i have developed a bill together with senator inhofe which i think is a much more sensible way to achieve the savings that we badly need. and i will say unequivocally we need to trim spending. we cannot continue spending at the rate that we've been spending money, we can't continue trillion-dollar deficits, we have a $16 trillion debt, the massive

deficits and the accumulated debt are today costing us jobs and holding back our economy. so we need to begin the process of getting spending under control and frawnl the -- frankly,, the sequester barely starts that process. the president has been campaigning around the country spreading this idea that somehow we're going to have a complete economic disaster and meltdown if this modest spending discipline goes ahead. we keep hearing about austerity. the question is what austerity? let me put a little context into what we're talking about here. first of all, over the last 12 years, the federal government has doubled in size. we spend 100% more now than we did a dozen years ago. and after this huge runup in the size of federal spending, this sequester if it goes into effect or its equivalent would reduce

spending by 2.3%. after growing by 100%, really, we can't find 2.3%? by the way, that's budget authority which means permission to spend. the actual amount that would be spent this year would go down by about 1.2%. that's -- that's less than .5% of our economy. here's the other thing. this is how much austerity we're talking about. if the savings of the sequester go into effect, total spending by the government in 2013 will be greater than spending was in 2012. so let's just be clear about what's going on here. this is -- this is not nearly the amount of savings that we need. this is merely one step in the right direction. and while government has been growing, the economy has not. we have had all this spending growth, we have had massive deficits, and what have we gotten in return? the worst economic recovery from

any recession since the great depression, unemployment that's persistently unacceptably high. around 8% the official measure, but when you take into account the people who have left the work force altogether and who have given up looking for work, it's much, much higher than that. the fact is economic growth doesn't depend on a bloated government that's always growing. in fact, we'll have stronger economic growth as soon as we begin to demonstrate that we can get on a sustainable fiscal path, as soon as we can start to take the threat of a fiscal collapse off the table by showing we can get spending under control. so it's absolutely essential for the sake of our economy and job growth that we achieve the savings of this sequester. but i am the first to acknowledge there are a couple of problems with the way that this legislation goes about it. and that's the reason that i have introduced this legislation along with senator inhofe. the two big problems are, one,

the savings hits our defense budget disproportionately. the defense budget is about 18% of total spending, but it's half of this whole sequester and that's after we have already cut defense spending. so i'm very sympathetic to the concern that this imposes a real problem on our defense budget. and the second problem is that the cuts are not very thoughtfully designed. there is no discretion, there is no flexibility. those categories that are subject to the sequestration, those categories of spending are cut across the board. now, there are huge categories that are not subject like the entire social security program and many others are not affected at all, but for those programs that are, there is no ability to be discerning in what programs should be cut more, what should be cut less, what should not be cut at all. so the bill that we will be voting on and i will be introducing today, the cloture

motion, along with senator inhofe, addresses both of these problems. it does require that we achieve the savings of the sequester because that's very, very important, but it would allow the president flexibility in how it's achieved so that we don't have these very ham-handed, poorly designed across-the-board cuts. what the president will be able to do if this bill passes, he could go to his service chiefs on the defense side, he could go to his agency and department heads on the nondefense side and say okay, look, you have been used to budgets that just keep growing and growing, that's what's happening. and this year, you're going to have to cut back a little bit, a few pennies of every dollar. so look for the programs that are working least well or not at all, look for areas where there is waste and inefficiency, look for redundancies, and that's where we're going to trim a little bit and we'll hit these goals. that's what any competent manager in any business would do. that's what families would have

to do. that's what state and local governments have to do. that's what we need to do here, and that's what this bill would enable the president to do, to find the areas where we can make the cuts without causing great disruption. now, this is not a blank check for the president. there are constraints on what the president could do under the legislation that senator inhofe and i are proposing here. for instance, there could be no tax hike. we don't think we need still more tax increases after all the ones we have recently been through. the defense cuts could not be any greater than what's contemplated in the subsequent sequestration. under senator inhofe's approach and mine, they could be less. the president could choose to follow the advice of his senior military advisories and cut the defense budget a little bit less and shift this to elsewhere. i am one that believes the defense department, our defense department, should not be exempt from scrutiny and from spending discipline and some cuts, but i think they ought to be done carefully and thoughtfully.

the president would not be able to increase any amounts. this isn't an exercise in just shifting money to another account. it's a question of where can we do the cuts most thoughtfully and sensibly. any cuts in the defense budget would have to be consistent with the national defense authorization act that's been passed. the president would have to achieve 100% of the savings. that's part of this. and he couldn't use any gimmicks to do it. no phony cuts in the future offset by promises for cuts at another time, none of that. it would have to be straightforward, it would have to be honest. and then finally, i think this is an important part, congress would have a final say. when the president under this approach if it passed and were signed into law, the president would be required to propose an alternative series of cuts and then congress to choose to disapprove them if congress chose to do that. so ultimately congress would still control that important element of the purse strings, but we would allow the president

to find the most sensible way to do this. now, the president is saying he doesn't want this flexibility. this is kind of unbelievable to me. he is going around the country scaring the american people, threatening all kinds of disastrous things that he says he will have to do, and then he says in virtually the same breath, by the way, don't give me the flexibility to do something else. i don't understand that. it seems to me the obvious thing to do is to do these cuts in a way that won't be disruptive and won't do harm. let me give one particular example. a good example is the f.a.a. if the sequester goes into effect on the f.a.a., the budget there will be cut by $670 million. that's from a total of just about $17 billion. now, the president and the transportation secretary have said that if the sequester goes into effect, they are going to have to lay off air traffic controllers, might have to shut down control towers, we're going to have long delays at airports,

flights canceled, all kinds of problems. well, it's interesting to note, though, that if the sequester goes into effect, the amount of funding available to the f.a.a. will still be more than what the president asked for in his budget. now, in his budget request, was the president planning on laying off air traffic controllers and shutting down airports and air control towers? i rather doubt it. so if we gave the president the flexibility within the -- just within the f.a.a. budget, the president could adopt the kinds of savings that he proposed in his own budget and have enough money to pay all the air traffic controllers and deep the airports running. the point is even within the f.a.a.'s budget, there would be no service disruptions whatsoever, they are not necessary. but our bill would give the president even more flexibility than that. he would be able to achief the savings in other areas. he wouldn't have to, in other

words, hit a particular savings number for the f.a.a. he might find savings in other places. let me suggest that we have an unbelievably lengthy list of opportunities to reduce wasteful government spending and he can assessive spending. instead of closing down air traffic control facilities or military bases or f.b.i. offices, maybe what the president could do is cut down on federal employee travel. we spend a billion dollars a year for federal employees to go on conferences and trips. maybe we could cut back on the cell phone subsidies where we buy cell phones for people costing $1.5 billion a year. we have -- we spend millions of dollars on an old-fashioned style trolley in st. louis, millions on a sports diplomacy exchange program. we have 14,000 vacant and underutilized properties. we spend money for a cowboy

poetry festival and a million dollars for taste testing foods to be served on mars. i don't know about you, but i think that some of these are a little less important than keeping our air control system intact and safe, and it seems like common sense to me that we ought to give the president the discretion to reduce the spending on the less vital things and continue to fund the important things. but we don't have to only go after wasteful spending. we have an unbelievable number of redundancies in duplicate programs. just a few examples. we have 80 different economic development programs spread across the federal government. we have 94 different programs to encourage the construction of green buildings. we have 47 different job training programs. doesn't it make sense that if we're going to have some savings, we look to those programs that aren't working so well. it can't be that every program is equal. i guarantee you some of them are not working so well.

i would like to think that the administration has metrics for performance and it knows which ones are performing better and which ones are not, and we could concentrate the cuts on those that aren't working. or we could decide to consolidate this huge plethora of programs and save a lot of money in overhead and administrative and bureaucracy costs. there are just any number of ways to achieve savings. senator tom coburn has made an enormous contribution to our federal government by -- by providing exhaustive litanies of duplication and redundancies and wastes and excesses. that would be a very useful place to begin in terms of finding alternatives in addition to the many that i have mentioned. so i would simply say, madam president, we have got a simple choice here. this sequester is going into effect. nobody here suggests that they have the votes or they have a way to prevent it, so the question is are we going to

achieve these savings through badly designed spending cuts that make no attempt whatsoever to distinguish between more sensible government spending and less sensible government spending o'or will we adopt this bill that senator inhofe and i have introduced which will give the president the flexibility to cut where the cuts won't be painful, where there is waste, where there are excesses. we're talking about what will amount in actual outlays a little over 1% of the total government spending. this is a government that's doubled in size in the last 12 years. the people in pennsylvania that i represent don't believe that every dollar of government spending is spent wisely and prudently and is necessary. they know that there is a lot of waste. so this is all about these next six months. as we know, the $1.2 trillion in savings in subsequent years are achieved by statutory spending

caps, and in those years, the savings will be figured out by the appropriations committee, which is where this should be happening. i wish we had taken up an appropriation bill this last year, but we didn't. at least given the reality that we face, we have an opportunity to avoid the kind of calamity and disaster that is being threatened and is completely unnecessary. so, madam president, i hope we'll do the commonsense thing, adopt a bill that will give the president the flexibility that he needs to make these cuts in a rational and sensible fashion. we need to achieve the savings for the sake of economic growth and job creation. this is no time to trade higher taxes for more spending, as my democratic colleagues would prefer. this is a time to make sensible cuts in spending. we can do that, and i urge adoption of the measure that senator inhofe and i have proposed, and i yield back the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: thank you, madam

president. you know, in the last two weeks, we have learned more and more about what the across-the-board cuts from sequestration really mean for our families and our communities that we all represent. we have heard about workers who are on pins and needles about getting a layoff notice. we have heard from businesses that are expecting fewer customers. we have heard from school superintendents wondering how they are going to absorb even deeper cuts into budgets that are already extremely tight. madam president, after two years of watching our economy lurch from crisis to crisis, i think we can all agree the american people have dealt with more than enough of this. that's why i'm here today urging our colleagues to support the american family economic protection act which will replace the automatic cuts from sequestration in a responsible and in a fair way. our legislation builds on the precedent that was set in the year-end deal, and it is in line with the balanced approach that

the american people favor. it would replace the first year of the sequestration with equal amounts of responsible spending cuts and revenue from the wealthiest americans and biggest corporations. half of the deficit reduction would come from responsible cuts evenly divided between domestic and defense spending. as the drawdown from afghanistan is completed, our bill will make targeted reductions in an overall defense budget which will be phased in responsibly as the drawdown from afghanistan is completed, in line with a strong military strategy for the 21st century. and our bill would eliminate the direct payments to farmers that have been paid out even during good times for crops that farmers are not growing. those are the kinds of cuts we can and should make because responsibly tackling our debt and deficit is crucial to our country's long-term strength and

prosperity. but to do this in a way that puts american families and our economy first, we are all going to have to do our fair share and middle-class families and seniors and the most vulnerable americans shouldn't be asked to do and share this whole burden alone. so our bill would replace half the sequestration with new revenues from the wealthy americans and biggest corporations. it calls on the wealthiest americans to pay at least the same marginal tax rate on their income as our middle-class families pay. it will help reduce the deficit by eliminating a tax break that encourages companies to ship jobs overseas and by getting rid of a special tax loophole for oil companies. because at a time today when there are smeen american families struggling to get their kids to college or pay their mortgage or put food on table, it only seems fair to ask those who can afford it the most to

contribute to this national challenge as well. madam president, my republican colleagues will say the year-end deal closed the door on revenue. most of them seem to think that closing loopholes for the richest americans is too high a price to pay, even to replace the serious cuts to defense that are going into effect. instead they say all we need is more spending cuts. but you know what, that's not how the american people see it. month -- more than a month after the year-end deal, 76% of americans -- and, by the way, 56% of republicans -- favor a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases to reduce our deficit. we also know the american people want an end to this cycle of looming deadlines and uncertainty and political posturing seeing in washington, d.c. they have spent enough time wondering if infighting in congress will impact their paycheck or the business they work to rebuild or the future they want for their children.

iwe can all agree our constituents deserve a solution and a certainty. madam president, our legislation meets republicans halfway. it reflects the balanced approach the majority of the american public wants, it protects families comiewntsd we represent from slower and fewer jobs and weakened national defense and it allows us to move past this sequestration debate towards a fair, comprehensive budget deal that provides certainty for american families and businesses. madam president, while the democrats have taken a balanced and responsible approach in our sequestration replacement bill, republicans have gone in a very different direction. they seem to be more focused today on trying to make sure president obama gets the blame for these cuts than actually trying to stop them. we've all been hearing from our constituents. they want us to come together to solve this problem. they want to see compromise, they want to see a balanced replacement.

but, madam president, the republican inhofe-toomey bill fails to meet those expectations. it does not solve the problem. it doesn't stop sequestration. it is not a compromise, and i urge all of our colleagues to oppose it. the republican inhofe-toomey bill would keep in place the massive cuts to both domestic and defense spending and it wouldn't replace them, it would lock them in. instead of making the tough decisions that are required to replace those cuts with responsible deficit reduction, the way our bill does, the republican bill simply hands the problem off to the president. instead of taking a balanced approach, the approach that is favored by the vast majority of the american people, the republican bill would protect the wealthiest americans and biggest corporations from paying even a penny more in taxes to help us solve this. while pushing the entire burden of deficit reduction onto the backs of our families and our

communities and national defense programs. their bill would protect defense spending from cuts, open up nondefense spending to more cuts and specifically prohibit raising revenue to replace the cuts. now, one of my republican colleagues is very concerned about the cuts to defense spending, that would be locked in by this republican bill, called this approach -- quote -- "a complete cop-out." and that same republican said today if something like this were to pass, republicans would be forcing president obama to make impossible choices and then -- quote -- "every decision he'll make, we'll criticize." another republican opposed to this approach as well, saying "i believe the appropriation process belongs in the legislative branch." that's us. the congressional budget office has estimated that sequestration would cause 750,000 workers to

lose their jobs by the end of this year. they estimated that the economy would shrink by .6% by the end of the year and federal reserve chairman ben bernanke said on tuesday that rearranging these cuts would not have any substantial impact on the near-term economic picture. madam president, republicans have spent months talking about how they would not raise taxes on the rich and that we needed a cut-only approach. now they can't even agree on a bill that names a single cut. they want the president to do it. leader reid and leader mcconnell grood gratd to have -- groolt to have these votes to weeks ago and it took the republicans until last night to decide what they were going to bring to the table. after all that time, they decided to play political games and not make any of the tough choices. madam president, tackling our debt and deficit responsibly is a serious issue. so i hope republicans get serious. i hope they will listen to their constituents, come back to the

table and work with us on a responsible replacement to these automatic cuts that are scheduled to begin to hit tomorrow. i urge our colleagues to support our approach, the american family economic protection act and oppose the toomey-inhoff bill. before i yield the floor i want to say i'm very, very pleads the house of representatives just took up and passed the long delayed and very hard-won and badly needed victory for millions of women in this country, the violence against women act that was just passed. that means that after over 16 months of struggle, tribal women in this country, the lgbt community, and women on college campuses will have the tools and resources this lifesaving bill provides. its passage today is validation of what we all have been saying on this side and i'm proud of the senate and the bipartisan work and i see senator crapo here today and i thank him for his leadership on this really critical issue. you know, i've heard from so

many women throughout this long, month-long -- months-long battle and i especially want to mention one today, deborah parker, a member of a tribe from my home state who happened to be here many months ago when members of congress wanted to dump the tribal provisions in order to move the bill and she stood up with all the courage she could muster and told the story she never told before about the abuse she had had when she was a very young girl watching the same person who abused her abuse other tribal members because she had nowhere to go and no recourse. today, that changes. for deborah parker and thousands and thousands of other tribal members and women and men in this country, i'm very proud of the bipartisan work and very excited that this president is going to sign this bill into law and pass something that's going to make a difference in the lives of many americans. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor.

mr. coats: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from indiana. mr. coats: thank you. as i look at my watch, the clock is ticking toward midnight. midnight becomes march 1, and the point at which the sequester kicks in. the sequester, which is across-the-board cuts, hardly massive, when this year it will be about 1.2% of our total budget, and so i'm not sure how the word "massive" can be used with any credibility, but nevertheless, this is going to happen. republicans have proposed a way to address the president's very concerns, the very concerns that have been stated on this floor that across the board is no way to govern. because it doesn't separate the essential from the nonessential, and i think we as republicans couldn't agree more.

it's not the best way to govern. because it does treat everything as an equal basis, and basically says that every federal program, no matter what its performance over the years, doesn't deserve a look in terms of how to adjust that for its lack of performance, it doesn't separate what the essential functions of the federal government are from the -- this is what we would like to do but can't afford to do right now, from the dysfunctional, and to say that this government and the out-of-control spending that has occurred over these last several years is totally functional and that every penny that we have spent is wisely spent and done so in the interest of the taxpayer and protecting their hard-earned dollars and that the money we're extracting from them through ever-increasing taxes, some of which just happened less than two months ago, on every

american, every american's paycheck was reduced. so it's not just the millionaires and the billionaires that took the hit. $620 billion over ten years of money comes out of americans' paychecks. and so one, to say what we're doing is massive when it amounts to, this year, a 1.2% cut, when virtually every business in america, every family in america has had to tighten its belt given the recession and the slow economic growth, when we continue to have 23 million unemployed or underemployed people in this country, and to simply say we don't have a spending problem as the president famously said defies common sense. we don't need fancy explanations or fancy words like sequester to let the american people understand what's happening here. they see their states having to

tighten their built, they see their companies they work for having to tighten their built, as families they see themselves having to cut back on some of their spending or some of their future plans because they no longer can afford to do it. the only entity they see in the united states not addressing a fiscal imbalance is the united states government. and so in an attempt to deal with this a year and a half ago, this congress passed the so-called sequester. and the sequester was a fallback inin case we weren't able to come to grips with the problem that we have and reach an accommodation, an agreement on how to address it in the best way possible. this was the fail-safe, and all the attempts starting with at the present time's own commission which he rejected that program, with the gang of six proposals, the

committee -- the super committee of 12, all the efforts, many of them on a bipartisan basis, for whatever reason, they did not succeed. and so what was put in place to drive a solution didn't drive a solution, and as a result, here we are with a sequester. but to say that this sequester cutting this year 1.2% is going to make the sky fall and cause a total economic meltdown and keep people from getting on their planes and keep us from ordering meat because meat inspectors can't go to the meat processing plants to certify the quality of the meat, and all the things that the president is out campaigning for, his own program, it was the president's idea. now, maybe it was his staff but he certainly had to agree to it. it was proposed by the president and now he's campaigning against

it. it wasn't that long ago he said if it didn't go into effect, he would veto it. there's been a real change here and i won't go into the motivations for all of that. there's also talk about balance. balance is a code word for new taxes. and for more taxes. it has been said over the past couple of years during the campaign and leading all the way up to the so-called -- the fiscal cliff vote, that republicans would refuse to give in on any kind of tax increase, even if it was on millionaires and billionaires. in the end, the president won that battle, and republicans supported it. and so even though we did not believe that was the best way to go forward, to get our economy to grow and to provide the kind of economic growth that we are all looking for, we supported that. and now we hear just two months

later the same tired phrase that republicans won't take one penny from the rich when they just took $620 billion from the rich rich, and therefore what we need are more taxes on the american people to achieve balance. it seems that the white house has an obsession with solving this problem through increase in taxes, -- through increasing taxes and not wanting to take the hard decisions to cut even 1.2% of our total budget, 2.4% in succeeding years. now, to say that we cannot through our oversight responsibility find 2.4%, and this year 1.2% of waste, of corruption, of misuse, of programs that no longer are viable, maybe they were well

intended in the past but they certainly have not proven themselves worthy of asking taxpayers to keep sending their hard-earned money to washington in order to cover that spending, when senator coburn, senator toomey, when many of us -- i have been standing here every day virtually every session saying just through waste and ineffective programs, we can easily come up with this amount of money. everyone else in america has had to do it, then why can't we? now, the charge that we have heard over and over is that this is such a terrible way to address it that we need the flexibility so that these agencies can move the money around and take the money from the nonessential programs to keep the security at the airports and the f.a.a. and the air traffic controllers and the meat inspectors and the others

that are essential, in order to keep them from having to take the hit, we came up with the idea, senator toomey and senator inhofe, that okay, let's give the executive branch the flexibility. that's what they have been crying for for all these years. you have got to have the sequester. just don't do it across the board, because it forces us to do things we don't want to do, but if we had the flexibility, you could give us the flexibility, then we could move the money within the accounts. we would still reach the same amount of cuts, the 1.2%, but we would have the flexibility to not have to scare people or keep people waiting in lines at airports for two hours and do all the things, all the doomsday scenarios that have been proposed by the president and his cabinet members. and so we bring that forward and then suddenly 180% reversal on the other side which basically

says no, no, no, we don't want flexibility. that's not the way to do it. well, what do you want? i mean, yesterday you wanted flexibility. today we gave it to you and today you're saying no, we don't really want that. so it sounds like what they really want is not a solution to this problem without a big increase in taxes. now, this word balance which i said is a code word for taxes. i just came from a joint economic committee where a very respected economist, michael boskin, said, you know, the administration defined balance -- well, he didn't say the administration. i want to be correct here. he said balance is not 50-50 if you want economic growth because every dollar you raise in taxes is a hindrance to economic growth. he said i'm not saying there shouldn't be increases in taxes, but the ratio should be, and i quote him, five or six to one. if you want to position this

country for growth, you need about five to six times the amount of spending control as taxes increased. and so balance 50-50, according to a very respected economist and many others, i don't know of anybody who said raising taxes encourages growth because it takes money out of the private sector and gives it to the public sector, but rather than getting into that argument here today, what the president defines as balance is simply ever more taxes to solve our problem when we know that after four years of effort here that that hasn't worked and it will not work. so -- mr. durbin: will the senator yield for a unanimous consent request and i will yield right back to him? i ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the motion to proceed currently pending, that at 2:30 p.m., the senate resume the motion to proceed on s. 16

and the senate proceed on the cloture votes and the motion to proceed as provided under the previous order with the time until 2:30 p.m. equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, further and that all other provisions of the previous order remain in effect. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: thank you very much, and i thank my colleague from indiana. mr. coats: mr. president, i am going to wrap up here because my colleagues want to speak also. but let me say this. i have been saying from this platform, i have been saying from everywhere i can open my mouth and say some words where people will listen that we need to move to the solution to the problem, and the solution to the problem involves, i believe, three or four essential elements, and i think there is widespread consensus on this among liberals, conservatives, democrats, republicans, economists and others. unless we address that which is growing out of control, which is

our mandatory spending, no matter what we do on the spending level and no matter what we do, what else we do, we're not going to solve this problem and we're going to keep careening from short-term fix, short-term measure to the next one, from fiscal cliff to fiscal cliff. already we have another cliff. people don't -- haven't paid much attention to at the end of this month where we have to fund the government for the rest of the year. and that will be another drama, soap opera drama played out before the american people. and then in may, we hit the debt limit. none of this is necessary. none of this had to happen. if we had taken the steps that we knew we needed to take that was presented in the simpson-bowles presentation to the president years ago and unfortunately rejected, that basically said we're headed for catastrophe, we're headed for

insolvency because this mandatory spending is growing out of control and the amount of discretionary spending we have which we can control here is evershrinking. yes, we need to sort out the fat, the duplication. my colleagues here and i have been laying out things that i don't think any american who looks at it carefully would say of course we don't need that. of course that's not an essential function of the federal government. it's had a miserable performance as a program. and why do we keep throwing money at it, particularly the time of austerity when so many people are out of work. yes, we need to do that, but that needs to be coupled with what i think there is almost full agreement on, the need for comprehensive tax reform. and that's where closing the loopholes which republicans are willing to do in order to lower the rates to make us more

competitive and make our tax code much simpler and much fairer, that needs to happen. and of course it can't happen if we take closing loophole money and use it for spending, which is what the president wants to do, instead of using it to make our code simpler, fairer and make us more competitive around the world and to promote growth. that's a proven process. and unless we put that together with some regulatory reform but most important of all, most essential of all is to address the runaway mandatory spending which if not addressed will undermine the sanctity and the solvency of entitlement programs like social security and medicare, the trustees don't trust a republican, confident saying this. the trustees of the programs

have said you have got to deal with this, and the longer you put it off, the tougher it is and the more painful it will be. this morning again from dr. boskin and even dr. gulsby, the president's former economic council head, have said you have got to do this, you have got to take it on, and you are taking it on to, one, save the programs, and two, save the country from bankruptcy, and number three, give us the opportunity to have funds to pay for these essential functions of government. we're not against government. we want it to be more lean, more efficient, more effective. my state has taken measures that quintuple what is being talked about here. we ended up with achieving a surplus. we have a aaa bond rating. we have made our state government the most efficient, effective government in terms of use of the taxpayer dollars of any state in the country.

it can be done, and it can be done here, but what we have that's different than what our states have is the fact that mandatory spending, that spending which we have no control over is eating our lunch, and until we step up and deal with it, we're not going to solve this problem. we're going to keep careening from crisis to crisis to crisis. and so the real issue here is whether or not at this point with the sequester going in place, can we not step up and sensibly adjust it through flexibility in terms of how we reach that goal and can we summon the will and the political courage to do what we all -- i believe all need know that we need to do, and that is simply to do what's right for the future of america, america's

interest, not our own political interest. and finally, in my opinion, that can't be done, despite all the time -- all the efforts made here, many on a bipartisan basis. simpson-bowles was bipartisan. gang of six was bipartisan. committee of 12 was bipartisan. it's not true that we're at a standoff in terms of how to go forward here. what we haven't had is leadership from the white house. something of this magnitude cannot be done without presidential leadership, and the president has refused to do anything other than plead on a campaign basis for yet ever more taxes, which he calls balance. so that's our challenge. we need you, mr. president, to lead the way. we will work together with you in putting together a package which achieves the right ratio. we will work together who do what's right for the future of america and not what's right for

our political future this year or next. so i guess we're pleading with the president, like presidents of the past, ronald reagan a republican and bill clinton a democrat took on the toughest issues and together we worked forward for the benefit of our people and for the future of this country, and we made enormous strides in that regard, but it would not have happened had the president not become engaged, and at this point, the only engagement the president has made is to call for higher taxes and go out and campaign against those of us who are trying to sincerely address this problem. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from new hampshire. mrs. shaheen: mr. president, i come to the floor this afternoon to applaud the passage just a little while ago by the white house of the violence against women act. i want to also congratulate my

colleagues, senator leahy, my neighbor from vermont, and senator crapo for -- who is here on the floor today for their leadership in getting this legislation passed so early in this session and for helping to see that it got shepherded through the house where it had been such -- so challenging. this is legislation that treats all victims equally, regardless of whether they are native americans, whether they are members of the lgbt community, whether they are immigrants. it supports law enforcement by providing critical funding for police officers and prosecutors so they can hold abusers responsible. it supports crisis centers for women and families to provide for immediate needs like shelter and counseling. and on behalf of the thousands of women and families in new hampshire who will benefit because of this reauthorization, i just -- i want to thank all of the 268 members of the house who

voted for it, all the people in the senate where it had such a broad bipartisan majority, and again thank my colleagues, senator leahy and crapo, for all of the leadership they provided in getting this done. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from idaho. mr. crapo: i, too, want to stand and congratulate the house for their passage of the violence against women act. i thank the senator from new hampshire for her kind remarks. i am honored to have worked on this bill with senator leahy and my other colleagues here in the senate. senator leahy and i have worked together for years on issues of domestic violence and stalking, and this is one of the key endeavors that we needed to get across the finish line, and now we see that we will and we'll send this important legislation to the president. i'd also like to commend the advocates across the nation and specifically the idaho coalition against sexual and domestic violence who have worked

tirelessly on this issue. as a long-time champion of the prevention of domestic violence, i'm glad to see that there are areas in congress where we could come together to support these important causes. this act provides critical services to victims of violent crime as well as to the agencies and organizations which provide important aid to those individuals. for nearly two decades, the violence against women act has been the centerpiece of our nation's commitment to ending domestic violence, dating violence, and sexual violence. this legislation provides access to legal and social services for survivors, it provides training to law enforcement. and to prosecutors, to judges, attorneys, and advocates to dreat dreas these crimes in our nation's communities. it provides intervention for those who witnessed abuse and are more likely to be involved in this type of violence. it provides shelter and resources for victims who have nowhere else to turn. there is significant evidence

these programs are working, not just in idaho but nationwide. the u.s. department of justice reported that the number of women killed by an intimate partner decreased by 35% between 1995 -- excuse me, 1993 and 2008. in 2012 it was reported that in one day alone 688 women and their children impacted by violence sought safety in an emergency shelter or received counseling, legal advocacy or children's support. mr. president, these important provisions are making a difference in the lives of people across this nation. and i again want to commend all of my colleagues to supported this legislation to help move this critical piece of legislation to the president's desk. thank you very much. the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. mr. corker: i rise to speak about the votes we're going to

have at 2:30 regarding sequestration and i really want to strongly support the notion of giving the executive branch the flexibility that it needs over the next seven months only to work through this situation in a more graceful way. to put this in perspective for the american people, we're going to spend $47 trillion of your money over this next decade, and it was incumbent upon a bipartisan group, incumbent upon a bipartisan group, about a year ago to try to come up with $1.2 trillion in savings over that ten-year period. believe it or not, that didn't happen. the sequestration was a method to ensure that at least there was some reduction in the growth of spending, and i do want to say there have been a lot of discussions about reductions in spending. the overall effect of sequester over this 2e7b year period is not to reduce any spending but to slow the growth of spending over the next ten years.

we're one of the few entities in the world that doesn't budget off last year's spending, it's not like you're a city or you're a county, or your state government or your household or your business. we budget off of projections in growth. so the task a year or so ago was for a group of six republicans and six democrats to come up with $1.2 trillion. it's beyond belief that that did not occur. so sequester was put in place as a mechanism to ensure that there at least was some slowing of growth. the first seven months of the sequester is the most ham-handed portion of it and it's cut at the p.p.a. level, it's across the board, and focused on two important categories. i agree that it's ham-handed and the only thing worse than sequestration in my opinion would be kicking the can down the road on some much-needed fiscal discipline here in

washington. so i hope that would we'll do today is get behind a very thoughtful proposal that would say look, we're still going to reduce spending by this amount, but we're going to give the executive branch, because this first seven months is handled so differently than what happens after that --, after that, by the way, appropriators live within a top-line number but they're able to weigh in on how that money should be spent. again, in two more specific categories than just the overall budget. so it's just this first seven months. and so it was at home last week-week in tennessee, up talked to diverse groups of citizens, democrats thanked me for being willing to give some flexibility to the president to work through this. business people obviously hailed this as incredibly intelligent. they have to deal with these kind of issues, right now, many of them over the last several years have had to do the same kind of thing.

so obviously to them it's a very intelligent thing to give the executive branch a degree of flexibility where they have some transfer authority to work through this in a more graceful way. and republicans thanked me because it was a way for us to at least begin turning the curb in a different direction and certainly still having the cuts that are necessary in growth, i might add, not in real spending, but that's where we are. so today we have a proposal, it's the toomey toomey-inhofe proposal which gives the executive branch flexibility to work through this. it's my understand theg don't want that flexibility. i can't imagine being president of the united states and having that i thought was a little bit ham-handed and congress say look, we'll candidly defer to you to make some transfers, i've talked with some of the folks, by the way, in our security apparatus in this nation and what they have said to me is corker, look, we understand we're going to have some reductions but if you would

just give us to flexibility we can work through this gracefully. we can live within these constraints. and speaking of the constraints, i want to say that there's a number that's been thrown out of $85 billion over the next seven months. again, know that this is washington language. we're really only talking about half that. in real spending outlays. we have budgeted amounts and then we have outlays. we do things very differently than most people back home do them. and so this is not near the amount of reductions that people are talking about as far as real money flowing out. so i strongly support the toomey proposal, the inhofe proposal. i hope that others will join in and at least move to debate this issue. i have a sense that that's not going to be the case today. maybe next week when some things happen, maybe others will be open to doing this.

but i can't imagine anybody in this body if they think draconian things are happening in a specific area and that some judgment could be used to really alleviate that, i can't imagine why anybody in that body would not want to give the administrators of these various agencies the ability to have some degree of transfer authority to make it work better. i don't imagine there's a business in our country where whether it's a one-man shop or a large corporation, that wouldn't want that flexibility. i can't imagine a democrat or a republican really thinking it's a bad idea to give the administration the ability to be more graceful in dealing with this. but today it looks like we might have a partisan vote. it's a shame. again, this is ham-handed. we can make it work better. hopefully on march 27 if we continue on this course, until that time, obviously to me, the only thing worse than this ham-handed approach is not

enacting the $1.2 trillion in cuts. so that has to happen in my opinion. but maybe on march 27 when the appropriators come forth with a continuing resolution, maybe they will have shifted this around to a degree so we end up with the same amount of spending reductions -- that's the way regular order should work here, it's the way the senate should work, the way the house should work. it's not that far down the road. as a matter of fact, i'm understanding that if the appropriations committee wanted to, they could pass out an omnibus, not a c.r. but an omnibus that's already gone through the checks, i think the two staffs have been working, talking about at the house and at the senate, it's my understanding thekdz pass something out in a week. i think maybe there are going to be discussions about this later in the majority leader's office. hopefully he'll give the green light to the chairmen of the appropriation committee to move ahead with something like this which would be very sensible, in my opinion. i think most people around here

would love to see something actually happen under regular order, and then these reductions which are necessary in my opinion to get our fiscal house in order, much more needs to be done beyond this $1.2 trillion, much, much more, i don't think there is anybody that doesn't believe that deficit reduction greater than $1.2 trillion needs to occur and right now we're focused on the cuts side. we fowkd on the income side -- focused on the income side at tend of the year. but as we move ahead if we can deal with these issues under regular order where committees have looked at the impact, that is the best way to go forward. so, again, sequester will kick in tomorrow. i think we all understand that. there's a better approach. there's an amendment today or a bill that would allow the executive branch to have the flexibility it needs to work through this in a way that is least harmful to the american people. if that doesn't work, another step with a continuing

resolution in three or four weeks, there's another way of hitting this in an intelligent way. so, mr. president, i hope we have the opportunity to work this out in a way that is better for the american people, but at the same time i hope we will not back away at all from at least $1.2 trillion in spending reductions. i hope we'll move later this year into real entitlement reform which is really where all the money is and, by the way, to the american people, the reason that we're moving to sequester and the reason that we're cutting discretionary spending is we don't have the courage in the united states senate to deal with entitlements. when the vord "entitlement" comes up, everybody runs for the hills. they know that's where the money is, 6 % of our spending --, 62% of our spending, in ten years that is going to be 90% of our spending but the reason we're really here today is that

this body has not come to terms with the fact we have to deal with entitlements for them to be here for future generations and certainly people are getting ready to retire. that's a shame, so we're going through this pain again due to lack of courage in the united states senate to address the real issues of the day. that's a shame, and that's what you're going to see playing out is solely because of that. i've got a bill that would deal with, lamar alexander my colleague from tennessee is a cosponsor, based on bowles bowles-simpson, bipartisan concepts, but when it -- for some reason when it comes to dealing with real issues of america, this body body runs for the hills. hopefully we'll deal with this in a mature way, deal with the real issues our nation is dealing with, solve them, put it in the rear view mirror and all of us come together on

focusing on those things that would make our country stronger. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. and i notice the absence of a quorum. and maybe something else. i ask unanimous consent that all quorum calls before the votes at 2:30 today be equally divided. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. corker: thank you, sir. i now notice the absence of a quorum and will also note this may be the most productive thing i've done today. thank you. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. sessions: i would ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sessions: mr. president, we have heard a lot of discussion recently about the author bob woodward and his comments about spending and the sequester. basically, his -- i quote from what he said. it's important for us to understand this. this is not an easy matter.

we have got a lot of confusion i think is what's been happening in the senate, so from my perspective as ranking member on the budget committee, i'd like for all of us to understand the issue at stake. he says this -- quote -- "so when the president asked that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts, some other spending cuts somewhere in the government so that they don't fall so hard on defense, for example, when he includes not just spending cuts -- quote -- but also new revenue, he's moving the goal post." he goes on to say -- "that was not the deal he made." so if we will all remember what happened, colleagues, we need to remember that in august of 2011, after the american people were

aroused and spoke strongly in the 2010 election, the debt ceiling was reached. we couldn't borrow any more money. since we're borrowing almost 40 cents out of every dollar, it amounted to a 40% cut in spending had we not raised the debt ceiling. so it was important to raise the debt ceiling but it was important to do something about the surging debt. so a bipartisan agreement was reached, and the agreement essentially said we will reduce spending $2.1 trillion and we will raise the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion. the good news for those who want to keep spending was we spread the spending cuts over ten years, but that we have already reached the debt ceiling again. we have already spent $2 trillion more than we take in already. we have got to deal with that again very, very soon. so what i would say is to my

colleagues that that agreement called for no tax increases, it calls for a modest reduction in the growth of spending, something like instead of spending going on $10 trillion, it would go up $8 trillion. instead of adding $9 trillion to the debt of the united states of america, we would add $7 trillion to the debt of america by simply constraining the rate of growth and spending, not really cutting spending. except the way the sequester part of that agreement was reached, the cuts fell disproportionately on defense and maybe a few other programs and over ten years defense would take a real cut. and this isn't more costs. this is the fundamental problem there. so what i would say to my colleagues is please don't come in and say well, there is loopholes we can close or we can

tax the rich more here and we can do this, that and the other. in order to bring in more revenue, in order to spend more. you see? what we have already -- we have already done is we have agreed to a new baseline in spending. it passed the house and the senate and the president signed it into law. he agreed to it. and he was the one that insisted on the sequester even though he's denied it since, and he -- he got that, he and his budget director, mr. lew, he was just promoted to secretary of treasury. so he agreed to that, and closing loopholes, all that is is a tax increase, of course. so if we agree at some point to close loopholes, it ought to be part of tax reform and it ought to be part of reducing the deficit, not funding new

spending. because you see we have agreed to this new baseline and when the president says don't do the sequester, the sequester amounts to $1.2 trillion -- $1.1 trillion out of the $2.1 trillion in reduced spending, he's talking about increasing spending over the amount he just agreed to 19 months ago. he is talking about increasing spending at a time this nation has never faced a more serious systemic financial debt crisis. and he wants to -- his excuse is well, we'll close loopholes, but you see, reducing the deficit increase over ten years from $9 trillion in new debt to $7 trillion in new debt is not enough. the budget commission, experts, everybody knows. if you asked everybody in this

senate, liberals and conservatives, i don't think a single one would say that increasing the debt by $7 trillion over ten years is sufficient. our current debt is 16. so this is not a healthy trend. we know we can't give away the cuts we just agreed to. what can we tell the american people? we told them okay, american people, i know you're unhappy that we're going to raise the debt ceiling, i know you're mad at us that we put the country in such a fix, but we're going to cut spending. trust us. trust us. and then here we waltz in less than two years later and the president is saying oh, no, we can't cut like we promised to cut, that i signed and i agreed to. oh, that's too much. the country -- and i'm not going to help you find a smarter, more effective way to do the cuts. you have got to use these cuts

just like it was passed in the dead of night when the b.c.a. was passed. i don't think that's good policy. so what i urge my colleagues to do, and i believe it's the right thing, it's a decision we have no choice but to make, and that is that, mr. president, we're not going to give up this little spending cuts we achieve in 2011. really not spending cuts, is it? the little reduction in growth in spending we agreed to. we stand ready, and i'm confident i can speak for the republicans in this chamber. we stand ready to try to spread those cuts out in a way that's smarter and does -- and is less painful on any one organization because everybody should tighten their belt to help get this country on a sound path. we are really willing to do that, but we will not allow you

to breach your agreement, as you and mr. woodward said, the deal you made, you signed that's in law that's created a new spending baseline. we're not going to give up on that 19 months after we agreed to to it. what a mockery that makes of integrity in the conference and commitment to fiscal responsibility. so let's work together on that. you have had a big tax increase in january, the spending cuts occurred august of 2011, and let's get on with it and operate in the real world that we are, and i don't believe it will happen. i don't believe we're going to avoid the sequester by raising taxes and raising spending over the level we agreed. it won't happen, so we might as well get serious and figure out a way to help make this work in a more rational way. i thank the chair and would

yield the floor.

mr. hatch: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. hatch: mr. president, today as we debate proposals for avoiding the so-called sequester, we find ourselves in a uniquely awkward position. not only is there a general disagreement about what has

brought us here, who is responsible, who is to blame, et cetera, we also disagree about where here is to begin with. president obama has been touring the country, giving speeches describing just how bad the sequester will be and why republicans are to blame for it. this is of course par for the course with this president whose motto seems to be why solve a problem when you can campaign on it? you would think that after having won the election, the president would be the first to acknowledge that the election is over, but nearly four months after election day, the president's campaign road show continues. the problem with the president's sequestration campaign is that once again, his claims are at odds with the facts. everyone in washington knows that despite the president's efforts to put the blame on republicans, the sequester was his idea to begin with. the record is clear, and it's

not in dispute. the idea for the sequester was pitched by the president's then-o.m.b. director jack lew as a negotiating tactic to get republicans to vote in favor of raising the debt ceiling. and not only did the idea originate in the white house, the president threatened to veto house-passed legislation designed to replace the sequester. moreover, in these final weeks leading up to the march 1 deadline, the president spent more time on his national sequestration campaign than he has in sitting down with republicans to reach an agreement on a replacement package. so if the sequester goes into effect and at this point it appears that it will, the american people should not blame republicans in congress who have been working in earnest to replace it. no, the blame should fall squarely on president obama who proposed the idea in the first place and has refused to work on a passible solution.

so, mr. president, that's how by got here. the bigger, more complicated problem is determining where here actually is. the president and his allies spent a lot of time misleading the american people on that as well. if you describe the sequester using the worst possible numbers, it is an $85 billion reduction from $3.5 trillion of yearly federal outlays. yes, that's $85 billion out of 3,500 billion. when all is aid said and done, it's a reduction of less than 2.5% from overall federal spending. and as the congressional budget office has made clear, not all of the $85 billion in reductions will even take the form of reduced spending this year. and even if it did, keep in mind that $85 billion would represent less than nine days of federal spending based on the rate of spending last year.

once again, that's if you describe it in the worst possible terms. for a moment let's go with these numbers. or with those numbers. the president would have the american people believe that a 2.4% reduction in federal spending out -- out of $3.6 trillion will cripple our government and irreparably damage our economy, even an economy that the president must have felt was strong enough to absorb a $600 billion tax hike back on new year's day. the ramifications of the 2.4% spending reduction are so great, according to the president and his allies here in congress, that the only alternative is to raise taxes yet again. i'll be the first to admit there are better, more responsible ways to reduce the deficit than the president's indiscriminate sequester. but these scare tactics don't even pass the laugh test. does the president really expect the american people to believe that our government is so

fragile that it cannot absorb a 2.4% sputt less -- spending cut less than nine days' worth of federal spending without inflicting massive damage on the american people and our economy? apparently so. once again, i'm describing the sequester in the worst possible terms, just to demonstrate the out landish nature of the president's arguments. however when you look at whether the sequester even represents a reduction in spending, you find the claims are even more absurd. when you look at whether we are cutting spending at all relative to last periods, you can easily see that we are not even with the sequester. the so-called spending cuts in the sequester are measured against 2010 spending levels. we should all remember in fiscal year 2010, spending levels were highly elevated as a result of the president's stimulus and other temporary, in quotes,

spending measures passed in response to the financial crisis and recession. so, in other words, the sequester reduces spending only if you're measuring against an extremely high baseline that was at that time. supposed to be temporary. whether something is an increase or a decrease depends on what you are measure against. if you measure relative to a big number like the democrat-fueled spending of 2010, then proposed spending looks like a cut. but if you look at spending levels relative to more reasonable baselines, you'll find future spending will actually be up even with the sequester in place. for example, if you look at -- if -- for example, you'll see what post-sequestration spending looks like relative to a more reasonable baseline. according to the congressional budget office, baseline

estimates for post-sequester budget authority totals $978 billion for fiscal year 2013. the average during the bush years in inflation adjusted fiscal year $2,013 was $957 billion. neither of these figures includes spending on wars or emergencies so this is -- this is an apples to apples comparison. in adjusted current dollar terms, post-sequester spending this year would be more than $20 billion higher than the average during the bush years. someone may have to refresh my memory but i can't believe the government cease to function during the bush years. i don't remember hearing anyone sples express concerns about the elimination of basic governmental services. i don't think anyone remembers the bush years as being a time of spending restraint here in washington. indeed, we've all heard president obama claim that it was the extravagant spending of

the bush administration that in part caused our current budget woes. now the president is telling the american people a return to those spending levels will devastate our country leaving children hungry, and our border unprotected. not surprisingly, the president and the democratic leadership solution to this problem is more tax hikes which makes these claims about the impact of sequestration all the more transparent. indeed, it appears that the president's current campaign on the sequester is less about reaching an agreement to replace the sequester than it is about satisfying his drive to, once again, raise americans' taxes while also serving his desire to vilify republicans no matter what the costs to the american people. mr. president, i don't want to minimize the negative impact the sequester may have in some areas. i think there are very few of us

who would not like to see the president's indiscriminate sequester replaced with more responsible spending reduction alternatives. there are alternatives to the approach we're debating today. but whatever we do, we should do it through regular order. today we are yet again debating a bill that has bypassed the relevant committees of jurisdiction. regular order around here as become an exception rather than the rule around here. which is extremely frustrating i think to both sides. there are consequences to skipping the established committee process. if legislation does not go through the relevant committee, it is not studied and vetted. it simply shows up out of the majority leader's office before anyone has a chance to even look it over. bypassing legislation os -- regular order is shortsighted. short circuiting the committee

process prevents members from having to take tough votes in committee. but taking tough votes is part of being in the senate, or at least it used to be. these days no one in the majority has to take a difficult vote. the majority leader has made sure of that. i have a chart that has -- that has the title "honest leadership and open government." you can see the large letters at the top and small letters right against the podium that senator reid is at. my friends on the other side of the aisle won the senate majority in the 2006 elections by campaigning on this theme. unfortunately, in the six years since they've been running things here in the senate, things have gone exactly the other way. back-room deals are the rule. regular order is the exception.

open government is the casualty, and committees are ignored with aplomb. i have and will continue to urge my colleagues to support the restoration of regular order here in the senate because in the end, it yields better legislative results and it's a much more fair way to legislate. and it involves everybody, not just a few people in one office. despite the fact that the president and congressional democrats just get over -- just got over $600 billion in tax increases out of the fiscal cliff deal, the democratic leadership's bill that we are debate celebrating today contains even more tax increases. the congressional budget office wrote earlier this month over the next ten years revenues as a percent of g.d.p. will average 18.9%. over the last 40 years, according to c.b.o., revenues have averaged 17.9% of g.d.p. so over the next ten years, federal revenues are set to

exceed the historical average. at the same time, government spending which is projected by c.b.o. to reach about 23% of g.d.p. in 2023 an historical average will be on an upward from traject tri and far in excess of the 40-year average of 21%. the problem is not that the american people are undertaxed. it's that washington is overspending. given this basic point, i filed a motion to commit the leadership bill to the finance committee to strike all the revenue increases and replace them with spending cuts and help further the process i've prepared a menu of options to select from. these come from dr. tom coburn's book "back in black" a deficit reduction plan. during the 2008 campaign, the president promised to find spending cuts by going through the budget line by line. dr. coburn has done what the president promised but failed to

do. today, i'm drawing from a small body of dr. coburn's hard work. for instance, instead of the latest incarnation of the buffett tax, we could according to "back in black" save $71 billion over ten years by substituting a -- instituting a five-year freeze for federal workers or reduce travel budgets of federal agencies. that would save just over $43 billion over ten years. another revenue increase in the majority leader's bill that could be replaced with a spending cut is the elimination of what some democrats have described as -- quote -- "a tax break for shipping jobs overseas." indeed, we've dean this proposal proper up several times. some may recall the chief of staff of the joint committee on taxation wrote a letter to senator stabenow and representative pascrell. the authors of the bill to close this so-called loophole, that

stated -- quote -- "under present law there are no specific tax credits or disallowances of deductions solely for locating jobs in the united states or overseas." i previously challenged my colleagues to point out to me if they thought that was incorrect. to date, no one has tried to meet that challenge. yet efforts continue to raise a tax under the guise of closing a loophole where no loophole exists. one spending cut from dr. coburn's book that could be used as a intowt for closing the phantom loophole is to reduce the federal limousine fleet back to the level it was in 2008. according to dr. coburn's book, the government owned 238 limousines in 2008. by 2010, that number had grown to 412. what schaingd in government between 2008 and 2010 that increase of over 73% in the number of limousines needed to

shuttle brats? if anyone -- bureaucrats? in anyone knows, please let the american people know. there are numerous other places where we can cut spending immediately. instead of pursuing the democrats' tax hike strategy, or the president's indiscriminate sequester, we should instead sensibly restrain spending through proposals such as these. now, i anticipate some of my friends on the other side will argue we should pursue these spending cuts in addition to passing more tax hikes. my response is that we should be saving all these revenue raisers for future tax reform efforts. there is a growing bipartisan consensus here in congress in favor of comprehensive tax reform. the leaders in both the tarik writing committees are committed to this effort and i believe that we have a real opportunity to accomplish something on tax reform this year. however if we start closing

loopholes and eliminating preferences in order to raise revenue to avoid the sequester, they won't be there to help us lower marginal tax rates later on when we're working on tax reform which will make an already difficult process that much more difficult and that much harder. ultimately if we follow the path my democratic colleagues want to us take we'll be raising taxes on the american people while at the same time hampering future tax reform efforts. madam president, this is simply not the way to go, particularly when there are perfectly reasonable spending cuts available to replace the president's sequester. like i said, whatever we do we ought to do it through regular order. that is why i filed this motion to commit and hope my colleagues will support it. now, -- while i'm waiting for someone to represent the

majority because i am going to ask a unanimous consent request that i understand will be objected to, and i want to protect the majority's right to do that, as much as i don't agree with it, assuming that happens, madam president, i know that there is an agreement in place for consideration of the sequestration bill and i don't want to stand in the way. but at some point we need to have a conversation about a return to regular order. for too long we have been avoiding the committee process in the senate and i think the results speak for themselves. i want to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to find way to restore the deliberative traditions of the senate by allowing the committees to do their work. if we can return to regular order, the words "honest leadership" and "open government" will be more than a campaign slogan. i understand my unanimous consent request will be objected to, and so i ask unanimous consent that i be immediately

recognized to make this -- to make this motion -- or this unanimous consent request as soon as -- as soon as the distinguished chairman of the finance committee arrives. with that, i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: without objection, the clerk will call the roll. mr. hatch: madam president, you didn't rule on -- i asked that it be -- that we not move there yet until you rule on my motion. my unanimous consent request. did you rule? okay. then i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: who have mr. president -- madam president? the presiding officer: the

senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. inhofe: i thank you, madam president. and i thank my friend from utah for his comments. i think it's important, since we have two votes coming up starting in less than 30 minutes, that we talk a little about the background of where we are today and what we're going to be faced with in these votes abvotesand what the options are. back when the -- about five weeks ago when it looked like sequestration was going to kick in, my concern -- and i understand that there's a lot of concern on the domestic side and on the defense side, but my concern is mainly on the defend side. i am the ranking member of the senate armed phs is committee. i am concerned about what's happened under this administration, the last four years, in the disarming of america, the devastation that's taken place already. a lot of people don't realize

from this administration we are projecting now cuts already at $487 billion in defense -- $487 billion. now, if sequestration should come in, it would raise that up to $1 trillion. now, $1 trillion over that period of time is, in fact, devastating. it's -- the secretary of defense, leon panetta, came out immediately and said, this can't happen. we cannot adequately defend america if we allow this to take place. he was talking about sequestration. well, sequestration, i think people kind of lose sight of what it is. it is the equal cutting all the way across of all these accounts in order to come up with a savings, which i think is kind of interesting. here we're talking about all this effort -- all this anguish we're going through right now just for $1.2 trillion that

would be -- it when you stop and realize, in the president's own budget over four years, he has $5.3 trillion of increase. so we're talking about ten years to come up with $1.2 trillion when he has been accountable for $5.3 trillion in four years. that's really not even believable. when i say that back in my state of oklahoma, they -- they just -- they shake their heads and they think there must be some miscommunesmiscommunication; tht be right. but the problem has been in this administration over the past four years is that all the cuts have come into the military. they haven't come from anywhere else. it's an oversimplification, but you can make the statement that they are cutting -- i will yield to my friend from utah because i understand he has a request request and i would be happy to

do that. but i ask unanimous consent that the floor would be returned to me. mr. hatch: i thank my dear colleague for his courtesy. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. hatch: i appreciate it. madam president, i ask unanimous consent that following the two cloture votes today, it be in order for me to make a motion to commit s. 388 to the finance committee, the text of which is at the desk, and the senate proceed to vote moodily on the motion -- immediately on the motion without intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: there objection? mr. baucus: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from montana. mr. baucus: i ask the senator -- i'm probably not paying enough attention here. is this the senator's motion -- mr. hatch: it is the motion to commit. mr. baucus: thank you. madam president, i respect my

rankinranking member's attempt o alter the leader's bill. however, i think time is at a premium. we need to consider the reid legislation today. recommitting the bill to the finance committee will delay a solution to the sequestration cuts for weeks, if not months. i believe most members believe we should address the issue here and now. there's no time to waste. we will have full opportunity to discuss additional deficit-reduction ideas in the coming weeks when we consider the budget resolution, the continuing resolution, and the extension of the debt limit. i agree we need to cut our debt to get our fiscal house i housen order. we know there are places to trim the fat in federal programs. to give families and businesses certainty, we must agree on a balanced, comprehensive plan to cut the debt that includes both revenue and spending cuts. the math will not work any other way. a long-term, balanced plan will

bridge the budget battles and make real progress solving the problem. i look forward to working with senator hatch and taking on these fiscal challenges and crafting policies that create more jobs, spark growth. but the only way in my judgment we will be able to get past these budget battles is by republicans, democrats, house and senate members working together. however, at this time i object to the motion to commit. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. hatch: madam president, if my colleague would just -- if my colleague from oklahoma would allow me to just make a short comment. look, this place is not being run on regular order. the committees are being ignored. the committees are established to be able to really intentionally look at these matters and to hear both side and to hear the top experts in the country.

so i -- i feel very badly that this simple motion has to be objected to. and i feel badly because i know that neither of the amendments that will be filed will be heard and voted on are going to pass. and one reason they won't is because we haven't followed the regular order. mr. inhofe: mr. the senator yield? mr. hatch: i will be happy to yield to my colleague. mr. inhofe: i ask unanimous consent that i be recognized after the two of you went through this. can i inquiry as to how much longer it will be? i am the author of a bill that is mug up for a vote in a -- that is coming up for a vote in a few minutes. mr. baucus: could the chair indicate the time remaining. the presiding officer: 22 minutes. mr. baucus: and might i ask, madam president, which side has 292 minute -- has the 22 minutes? the presiding officer: the majority. mr. baucus: i would be glad to yield time to my friend from oklahoma.

mr. inhofe: i appreciate that very much. houghow much time? mr. inhofe: it is my understanding that the other author of this bill, senator toomey, wants to be heard for two minutes prior to the vote. i'd like to be heard for a few minutes -- mr. baucus: at this time? mr. inhofe: at this time, yes. right after his time, yes. mr. baucus: i fully understand. i would be happy to yield ten minutes to the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: i appreciate that very much. thank you, sir. prior to the time that they propounded the unanimous consent request, i was talking about my frustration over what's happened fiscally in this snavment durins senate during the last four years. and the mere fact that you should this administration we have increased deficits by $5.3 trillion. now we're trying to come up with something far less than that in a period of ten years, and to me people look at thatcy and, what'thatcy and --look at that s

that all about? the reason i about this up is because the amount of money that's come out of the military is actually a reduction. and if you look at the increase in the spending, in the last four year, it's all come utah of non-defense -- it's all come out of non-defense accounts. and so you -- it's all come out of defense accounts. so it's the defense that's been take the hit on this. so government has expanded, approximately 30% across the board. at the same time, our military has been reduced in terms of our budget for defense accounts. so, any way, when it came up a few weeks ago, i thought it wasn't going to happen, we were going to have something come up and change this whole idea of the -- of having to make these reductions. so what i did at that time was draft a women o a bill. if we're forced with sequestration, let's allow the chiefs -- speaking of the military -- to reevaluate

everything that is in there. so that they can look and see where we can take cuts and it won't be any devastating. i called each one of the five service chiefs and i said, would it be less devastation if you were able to take the same amount of money out but take it out selectively of accounts where it wouldn't be as significant? they said, yes, it would be. i said, would you be able to prepare for it in the next four weeks? the answer was yes. that's where we are today. they have said they're able to do that. the frustrating thing is that this president -- and i am a getting criticized on both sits. people are saying, you're giving too much to the president. well, we're not because we have safeguards in here which i'll slain iexplaining in a inin. but at the same time the president comes out and he says that he will issue a veto threat against this bill. and what does this do? it gives flexibility for the president. aim going to read you something -- i am a going to read you something, madam president. it was a statement that president obama said february

19, 2013. he said, quote, "now, if congress allows this meat cleaver approach to take plashings it will jeopardize our military ready in it will eviscerate job creation, creating investments in education and energy and medical research, it won't consider whether we're cutting some bloated program that has outlived its usefulness or a vital service that americans depend on every single day. it doesn't make those distinctions." and he goes on to say that he wants that flexibility. this is the president asking for it on the 19th of february of 2013. so here we come along with a bill that gives him that flexibility, with certain restrictions, so that he can't pick and choose areas that we find are against the policy that has been set. i'll give you an example, madam president. we had a national defense authorization act. it was one that took months and months to put together, took a

long time to put together, and we made evaluations with a limited budget on the on budgetd to. all this does is says, if we have to make some changes late make them consistent with the national defense authorization act. in other words, all those weeks and months of work by the senate srmd services committee, and the house armed services committee, would not be in vain. these cuts would be consistent with the intent, and we -- and to make sure that the president would do this, a lot of people say, you can't trust the president, he's going to make more cuts in places where it would not be in keeping with what the senate armed services committee wants, but we have a provision that is called a congressional disapproval mechanism. that means if the president doesn't do what the intent of this legislation is, then we can

go ahead and disapprove it. so we have those two safeguards. one is they have to follow the criteria that is consistent with the senate armed services committee, the national defense authorization bill, which is the house and the senate, and it also has to be sure that we will be able to do that. it has the disapproval mechanic missile. -- it has the disapproval mechanimechanism. if you take the same amount of money that we're talking about in sequestration and allow the service chiefs to massage this within and make changes in flexibility to go after programs that are not as significant as some might otherwise be cut, the bill allows the president to listen to the advice of his military leadership. it offsets some of the devastating impact pz on sequestration. if the sequester is allowed to take place and the continuing resolution is not fixed, the department of defense stands to waste billions of dollars

through the cancellation of contracts. people don't think about this. we make commitments backed by the united states of america that we are going to do certain things. a lot of these are contractors that if they're terminated, it could cost quite a bit of money. the termination of multiyear contracts is something we'd be concerned about. providing the department of defense the flexibility to determine how these cuts will be implemented will let us take this into consideration. i'd like at this point to ask the senator from pennsylvania how much time he would like in concluding remarks. i'd be glad to quit at that time. mr. toomey: madam president, i thank the senator from oklahoma. i will only ask for a minute or two to make my closing comments. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. inhofe: i appreciate that very much. i see he's been a great partner. we started out, and i have given a background of what went on five weeks ago, our discussions with the service chiefs and the

fact that i was hoping this day wouldn't come and we wouldn't be faced with the continued devastation of our military. the time is here. tomorrow is the first of the month. with that, i think that the senator from pennsylvania and i have come up with a bill that will be voted on and it will minimize the damage and still preserve the cuts that are mandated and are out there. so with that, i would say that this corrects one other problem too. we haven't talked anything about the continuing resolution. when i was talking to the different service chiefs, one was general odierno of the army, and he said, just as devastating is how the c.r. is set up. this corrects that problem at the same time. so we have something here that is not going to cost any more. believe me, a lot of my closest friends like over in the house of representatives who think this is a good thing that we're making these mandatory cuts.

i can't argue with that, but we can at least minimize the damage in these cuts. i'm going to read something else. i was so in shock when i saw that the president had issued a -- i'm not sure if it is a veto message on this. was this a veto message? it was. here we have a bill that gives him flexibility with the restrictions that we talk about, and yet -- and he says he's now going to viet tow it. it's -- going to veto it. it's worth reading again to get in the record. this is his quote on february 19, 2013. this is the president speaking. it's a quote. "if congress allows the meat cleaver approach to take place it would jeopardize our military readiness, eviscerate job-creating investments and education, energy and medical research. it won't consider whether we're cutting some bloated program that outlived its usefulness or a vital service that americans depend on each and every day. it doesn't make those

distinctions." we are now giving him a vehicle that makes those distinctions so we can have that flexibility. it does have the safeguards that take care of the problems that have been brought up. so i think it's not a good solution. right now it's the only solution. with that, i would yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. toomey: thank you, madam president. i would like to thank and compliment the senator from oklahoma who's been a terrific leader and ally in this. and i appreciate his hard work. and the work product that we have come up with. at the end of the day, this isn't really complicated. it's really pretty simple. do we go ahead with indiscriminate across-the-board cuts that give us no ability whatsoever to establish priorities, to recognize that some spending is more important than others? or do we adopt this flexibility approach and give to the president of the united states the flexibility to turn, for him

to turn to his service chiefs and say to them, folks, is there a pw-rt way to do this -- a better way to do this? i'm sure they know best what their needs are. i'm sure they can come up with a better set of spending cuts than these across-the-board cuts that are in law. similarly on the non-defense side, any competent middle manager of any business in america knows when you have to tighten your belt, you go through and prioritize things. so when the president and the secretary of transportation go around the country saying we're going to have to lay off air traffic controllers. we're going to have to shut down towers. we're going to have delays. none of that is necessary. it's not necessary if we pass this legislation because it would give the president the flexibility to cut the items that would not be disruptive to our economy, would not be disruptive in any meaningful way. i gave the example earlier on of the f.a.a. where post sequester

of the f.a.a. would have as much money, more money than what the president asked for. obviously what the president needs is the discretion to be able to make some cuts where they can be best be borne. a total budget that has grown by 100% over the last 12 years, we can find the 2.3% that's needed now. these are flexibility measures that we would give the president for the remainder of this fiscal year. there after, the savings that we will achieve will happen through the spending caps and, therefore, will be decided by the appropriations committee. i urge my colleagues to support the republican alternative, and i yield the floor. mr. durbin: madam president, i ask for an opportunity to respond to the gentleman from pennsylvania and then yield the floor to the senator from iowa. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: madam president, we just met with the secretary of transportation ray lahood, former republican congressman from illinois. he said exactly the opposite of what you just said, senator. the secretary of transportation said exactly the opposite of

what you just said. the sequestration is going to force him to reduce the payroll in his department, and the largest payroll source is the federal aviation administration. and the largest cohort within that administration, air traffic controllers. so sequestration is going to result in an announcement by the department of transportation within the next several days, if we don't avoid it with a vote on this senate floor, of restrictions on airports across the united states because of sequestered air traffic controllers -- a senator: will the gentleman yield? mr. durbin: i will when i'm finished. because we know we have to tell them you're only going to be able to work four days out of the week. it is mindless to stand here on the senate floor and say we can cut $1 billion out of the department of transportation and no one will feel it. come on. get real. we have seven months left in this year. these agencies are trying to

come up with the savings, and the only places they can turn are very limited. ash con. carter, deputy secretary of defense just went through what they're facing. these are not easy because the sequestration was never meant to be easy. it's hard. please don't sugar coat it and say there is a magic wand out there to find all this money, find $1 billion in the department of transportation. and if the president would look closely, i'm sure we could do it. it isn't that simple. and the senator has been involved in the super committee, been involved in looking at this budget. he knows on a bipartisan basis, we can find savings. there's money to be saved if every single agency of government. but you don't do it with a heavy-handed sequester approach. and please don't suggest that we're favoring the idea of air traffic control being limited in america. i want it expanded. and, unfortunately, the sequestration is going to limit it in the state of illinois and

in the commonwealth of pennsylvania. i will be happy to yield. mr. toomey: i appreciate that because it's hard for me to follow this because you are decrying the effects of the sequestration. and what senator inhofe and i are offering is a way to minimize this damage. and i would just ask, in the president's submitted request for the f.a.a., did he contemplate laying off air traffic controllers or closing towers? i know the answer. the president's budget request which he submitted to congress, which is a public document, he requested a certain funding for the f.a.a. and i can -- mr. durbin: for the next fiscal year? mr. toomey: no. for the current fiscal year, the president's most recent request. and it was for -- and the president's request was for less money than the f.a.a. will have if the sequester goes through. i don't think the president was planning to lay off air traffic controllers. mr. durbin: i was happy to yield to the senator for a question but reclaiming my time and this is getting perilously close to a debate which i might tell those in attendance never happens on the floor of the

senate. but i will tell you at this point in time, we are dealing with a c.r. with last year's appropriation for the department of transportation. so that is what secretary lahood is using. he is using the budget control act numbers. so the president's request not withstanding, i'm not sure how you voted, but there was a bipartisan vote for limiting the amount of money that can be spent in this fiscal year. i voted for it. and that's what the secretary's operating under. but the reality is this. even with the inhofe amendment, $1 billion has to be cut from the department of transportation. even with that amendment. and the flexibility not withstanding the options are so limited at this point in time. and i will just tell you point-blank, i believe we need to reduce this deficit. sequestration is a terrible way. but there is an alternative. there will be an alternative this afternoon. and we will say to the senator from pennsylvania and to the senator from oklahoma, are you prepared to say -- are you prepared to say that we are

going to limit the direct agriculture support payments to farmers who have had most profitable years in their lives and don't need them? are you prepared to say that people making $5 million a year in income ought to pay the same tax rate as the secretaries that work for them? if you are, we can avoid the worst parts of the sequestration. if you're not, be prepared. we're in for some pretty rough ride. mr. harkin: would the senator yield? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. harkin: madam president, -- [inaudible] -- the amount of cuts that we've already taken in our appropriations bill on labor, health, human services, education, n.i.h., centers for disease control. but i couldn't help but hear my friend from pennsylvania talk about the president's budget as though that is controlling. would my -- would the republicans want to adopt everything in the president's

budget? i don't think so. they might want to select this or that or this or that. but are we now hearing from my friends on the other side that we should cart blanche rubber stamp the president's budget? i sure hope not. i would remind my friends that the constitution of the united states clearly, clearly says that this body has two functions: taxing and spending. not the president, not the executive branch. the executive branch can propose whatever budget they want. it's up to us to decide how both to collect the taxpayers' money and how to spend it. so, it doesn't really matter to me exactly what the president proposes. what i want to know is what do we collectively as senators and as congressmen, how do we feel about where we should be investing our money? and what we ought to be spending the taxpayers' money on? and so that idea that somehow the president's budget says this or that, people can pick or choose whatever they want to about it. i submit again i'll bet my friends on the other side will

not say we'll adopt the president's budget as it is tkpwapbd with that. i don't think they're ready to do that. i wouldn't even do that myself even for a president of my own party. but i want to talk a second again about sort of the intransigence on the part of my friends on the republican side not only in this body, but in the other body, of not countenancing any other funding raising of revenues. i keep hearing the speaker talk about, well, we gave revenues last month, $700 billion. revenues last month. now it's time to talk about spending cuts. what the speaker has done is he's drawn an arbitrary starting line of january of 2013. what about last year and the year before when we adopted over $1.4 trillion in spending cuts that's already been adopted? what about the starting line there? that's when we really started to address the $4 trillion that we needed by 2020 to stabilize our

debt. so we've come up with about $1.4 trillion in spending cuts and about $700 billion in revenue. so, it's not the idea that we've already given up -- that we collected enough revenues. that's not it at all. going forward, we need a balance between revenues and spending cuts. i just wanted to read some of the things that we've done in our own committee. last year $1.3 billion in cuts, eliminated the education technology state grants which a lot of people, by the way, kind of liked. even start program, eliminated. tech prep education state grants, eliminated. mentoring children of prisoners, eliminated. foreign language assistance, eliminated. civic education, eliminated. alcohol abuse reduction program, eliminated. career pathways innovation fund,

eliminated. many of these -- of many of these programs were started by my friends on the republican side sometime in the past. some were started by democrats. some of them, most of them were jointly, republican and democrat. what i'm pointing out is that we have already cut a lot of things out of health and human services, out of education, out of n.i.h., centers for disease control. i can tell you that dr. francis collins, head of n.i.h., warned that the sequester will slash another $1.6 billion from n.i.h.'s budget at a very time when we were on the cusp of really having some good breakthroughs in medical research. and a lot of medical researchers that have been lined up doing great programs out there, and all of a sudden they're going to have the rug pulled out from underneath them. but that's what's going to

happen. might i mention kids with disabilities and what's going to happen with the funding for idea, the individuals with disabilities education act? i'm told about 7,200 teachers' aides and other staff that help our communities and our schools hope with kids with disabilities who come into schools because under idea, we are providing that kind of support, but that's going to be cut. it's going to be cut. so i -- i just -- this idea that somehow we could just keep cutting and cutting and cutting and we're going to get to some magic land where -- where we can continue to function as a society just isn't so. we need revenues. we need revenues. and that's what's in the bill that the majority leader has proposed, revenues that will help us to reach that point where we can have both spending cuts and revenues and to stabilize our debt at a

reasonable percentage of our g.d.p. i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mrs. toomey: i ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call on the motion to proceed to s. 16. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. under the previous order, the senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to s. 16, which the clerk will report. the clerk: motion to proceed to calendar number 19, s. 16, a bill to provide for a sequester replacement. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture. the clerk: we the undersigned senators in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to proceed to s. 16, an inhofe-toomey bill to cancel the budgetary resources for fiscal year 2013,

signed by 17 senators. the presiding officer: by unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived. the question is is it the sense of the senate that debate on the motion to proceed on s. 16, a bill to provide for sequester replacement, shall be brought to a close. the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: any senators wishing to vote or wishing to change their vote? on this vote, the ayes are 38, the nays are 62. three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn have not

voted in the affirmative and the motion is not agreed to. under the previous order, the motion to proceed to s. 16 is withdrawn. the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture. the clerk: cloture, we the undersigned senators in provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate, hereby move to close a bill to appropriately limit sequestration to eliminate tax loopholes and for other purposes signed by 17 senators. the presiding officer: by unanimous consent the mandatory quorum call has been waived. the question is, is it the sense of the senate -- i know that word -- that debate on the motion to proceed to s. 388, a bill to appropriately limit sequestration to eliminate tax loopholes and for other purposes shall be brought to a close. the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.

the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

mr. reid: madam president? i ask my vote be recorded as "no."

the presiding officer: on this vote the yeas are 51, and the nays are 49. three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted in the affirmative, the motion is not agreed to. mr. reid: madam president, i enter a motion to reconsider a vote by which cloture was not invoked on my motion to proceed. the presiding officer: the motion is entered.

majority leader. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent we proceed to a period of morning business with senators allowed to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: madam president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from kansas. mr. moran: madam president, i ask the quorum call be dispensed with. unanimous consent. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. moran: thank you so very much. madam president, as we all know, our country faces tremendous fiscal challenges. we expect our president, our leaders and here in congress to engage in a meaningful and honest discussion about debt, deficits, and the direction of our nation. unfortunately, i think what americans, certainly kansans are hearing from the white house and from some prominent democrats is a relentless focus on political gimmicks to solve our problems. one of those, an example of that is the so-called corporate jet loophole. we're focused on that instead of a serious plan to address the

looming sequestration cuts that threaten to harm our economy. the president's fixation on corporate jets stand in direct contrast with his supposed desire to help the aviation industry and create jobs. ending accelerated depreciation schedule for general aviation aircraft will send hundreds, if not thousands, of hardworking kansans straight to the unemployment line. our state is blessed with a significant number of people who work in the aviation industry. even the rhetoric is dangerous. it's certainly hypocritical. the five-year depreciation schedule that has been law for nearly a quarter of a streupb and was not -- century and was not created for the benefit of the quote rich and quote wealthy but was created for the 1.2 billion marianas who make -- americans who make a living building these aircraft. i'm disappointed the president

continues a campaign to score political points rather than work toward a solution to solve our nation's fiscal challenges. when 23 million americans are looking for work our government's first priority should be to create an environment where business can grow and hire additional workers. increasing taxes on corporate jets and other general aviation aircraft sales will only further stifle economic recovery and result in additional job losses. according to our joint committee on taxation, closing the, quote, loophole would only generate $3 billion in revenue over the next ten years, less than the government borrows on a single day. kansans, in particular, along with the rest of rural america, would be negatively impacted by any change in depreciation schedule for noncommercial aircraft. farmers use general aviation aircraft to dust their crops and rural small business owners rely on these planes to connect their businesses with the rest of the world. it makes no sense for a commercial jumbo jet liner to be

depreciated on the same schedule as a farmer's air tractor. this distinction between commercial and general aviation aircraft is neither a loophole nor unique. as the five-year depreciation period is applicable to many other types of depreciation -- dedee-- depreciable assets. why single out one specific industry instead of taking a comprehensive approach? because attacking corporate jets is apparently a nice political sound bite. the political sound bites don't solve problems. because of the expiration of the bush tax cuts on january 1 of this year, president obama received $600 billion in tax hikes to help fund his vision for government expansion and less than two months later it's back on the campaign stump asking for american taxpayers for more. while the amount of revenue our government currently brings in is near historical averages, spending remains well above

those historical norms and is projected to escalate dramatically in the years ahead. it's a long -- it's long time passed to address the real problems with meaningful spending reductions and every moment spent talking about corporate jet loopholes is a wasted moment. americans expect leadership from their elected officials here in washington, d.c. if we fail to take action now and leave it for a future president and future congress to solve, we will reduce the opportunities of the next generation to experience the country that we know and love. and we will diminish the chance that every american has the chance to pursue the american dream. madam president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: i would ask the calling of the quorum be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. grassley: madam president, if it's possible under the agreement, i'd like to speak for 15 minutes as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. grassley: thank you. the last two days, the debate here, a lot has been said about the sequestration that presumably is going to happen tomorrow. and i would like to speak on that subject because it's very, very important, particularly the

history of sequestration and what has gone on here in recent weeks as we have discussed this issue. so august, 2011, a compromise was reached to grant president bush's -- president obama's request to raise the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion. i believe that that was because we had a feeling that there ought to be 1-d decrease in spending for every 1-d increase in the debt -- one dollar decrease in spending for every one dollar increase in the ceiling. that adds up to $2.1 trillion. in exchange for the debt ceiling increase, we republicans in congress ask for spending reductions. this all added up to the budget control act passed on august 2, 2011, so we have had decisions

we're debating today were decided 18 months ago. so if you don't like them in 18 months, you have an opportunity to change them, but here we are at the last minute talking about some changes. the budget control act of august august 2, 2011, included budget caps to cut about $900 billion in spending immediately, immediately august 2, 2011. and then, as you know, it set up a super committee to find at least $1.2 trillion in addition to deficit reduction. now, the history shows that the super committee could not reach an agreement. so the failure of the super committee to reach an agreement led to the sequestration that we're now debating and facing tomorrow, which is then, as we

know, that automatic spending reductions of $1.2 trillion over the next ten years. i isn't support the budget control act. i don't criticize those who did it, and to be fair, it was a bipartisan vote that got the budget control act adopted. i knew at the time and one of the reasons i voted against it, the super committee was unlikely to reach an agreement and would ultimately only further delay difficult fiscal decisions that needed to be made, and that's the sequestration we're talking about that will happen tomorrow. but at the end of the day, as i said, bipartisan majority in the senate and the house passed and president obama signed the budget control act, a bill to

bring about $2.1 trillion in spending reductions over the next ten years. most believe that sequestration is a terrible way to reduce spending. i agree. there are surely better ways to reduce spending by the $85 billion that's going to happen this year, of which, by the way, only $44 billion are -- only $44 billion are going to be spent between now and september 30. when that is done, we're going to have a situation where every year there is going to be some decision made of whether or not to put -- continue the -- the $1.2 trillion, and i hope for the good of the country that that continues, whether it's by across-the-board automatic cuts

or maybe there will be found a compromise that can be reached to do it in a more studied way. the republican-led house of representatives soon after the 2011 decision recognized that these automatic reductions wasn't the best way to do it, so last year they passed two bills to recognize -- to reorganize those cuts in a more structured way. did the senate consider those two bills? no. the majority-led senate, led by the democrats, produced or considered no bill prior to the day -- to today to avert the sequester. so i think it's fair to say tha for 18 months when we would have

been working together to find an agreement, nothing was done. at least nothing was done after the house of representatives worked that agreement. now we have all these crocodile tears flowing from the majority here in the senate because of the terrible hardship that this sequester may cause. well, where have we been for the last 18 months? why this they not proposed a single piece of legislation to avert sequestration until this very last minute, the two votes we just had today as an example. why has the senate avoided regular order with such vigor? in other words, regular order, let the committees hold hearings, let the committee debate, amend, vote a bill out, let it come to the senate floor, debate, amend, vote it to a conference with the house of representatives, but no regular

order. under regular order, you work to compromise, but the senate failed to act after the house acted. so here we are at the 11th hour to consider an alternative. just like their inability to produce a budget in nearly four years, this senate majority has again failed to act. and you know, a budget is a very important part of fiscal discipline, but we haven't had a budget debate for three years even though the 1974 law requires our having such debate and passage. so the president tomorrow is going to meet with leaders in the congress to see what can be done about sequestration, why the very same day the sequestration is taking place.

what has the president been doing? well, we have seen him traveling around the country generating mass hysteria about what might have happened and wouldn't have had to do it if we had had regular order here in the senate in the meantime. i'd like to remind my colleagues that not only was the sequester a product coming from the white house, he explicitly pledged a veto proposal to replace the cuts sometime when it was brought up in late 2011 and 2012. this is what the president said on -- in november, 2011. quote -- "some in congress are trying to undo these automatic spending cuts. my message to them is simply no. i will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending. there will be no easy off ramps

on this one." end of quote of the president, november, 2011. now the president and democrats are here in the senate and want us to agree to more tax hikes on the american people rather than the cut that $3.6 trillion budget by just 2.4% which they agreed to as part of the 2011 deal. tax hikes were not included in that deal. they weren't included because we know that spending is the problem, not revenues. the president must be absolutely frustrated. he apparently can't manage a meager 2.5% reduction, even though just a few years ago he stated -- quote -- "i want to go line by line through every item in the federal budget and eliminate programs that don't work and make sure that those that do work work better and cheaper." end of quote.

he must not have had any success because once again he is asking for a tax hike to reduce the deficit rather than address the real cause of the problem, which is spending. over the past several years, we have heard a lot from the other side about increasing taxes on the so-called wealthy. the president, my democratic colleagues argued that this was necessary to make the rich pay their fair share. well, on january 1, the other side got their wish. the top statutory tax rate increased from 35% to 39.6%. when this statutory rate increase is coupled with a hidden rate increase from reinstituting personal exemption phaseout and the limitation on itemized deductions that top marginal effective tax rate is not 39.6% but somewhere around 41%. not only did we see an increase in the income tax on january 1,

but we also saw a significant tax increase on capital gains and dividends, the fiscal cliff bill instituted a -- a top 20% tax rate on capital gains and dividends. however, this is not the whole story. a provision from the health care reform reform bill that imposes a tax on investment income also went into effect at the start of the year. thus the top rate has jumped not from 15% to 20% but instead to 23.8%. and that, of course, is nearly a 60% rate hike. you would think after securing these tax hikes on the so-called wealthy, the other side would claim victory and move on. at least one would think they would move on from the tired old

rhetoric that the wealthy do not pay their fair share. even before the most recent tax hikes, that claim was dubious at best. according to the congressional budget office, and remember, that's a nonpartisan study group that gives us just basic information on changes of law, they -- they say the top 1% already had an average federal tax rate of 29% compared to 11% for the middle 20% of households. yet the other side continues their politics of division. they continue to pit american against american and single out politically unpopular industries like -- for tax hikes. while this may be good politics, it does not make good policy. you know, it's the other rule we ought to follow. good policy is good politics. the other side has resurrected in addition as part of this

package that's now before us, the so-called buffett rule which would phase in a minimum 30% tax rate for taxpayers earning more than a million dollars. this is despite the fact that this proposal was voted down by this body less than a year ago and they know that there has been no chance of it passing at this point. moreover, their argument for this provision makes even less sense now given the tax increases that went into effect on january 1. it also is not clear to me why when we're talking about reforming the tax code we're now seeking to add an additional layer of complexity not to a tax code we already agree is too complicated. at the time -- at the end of the day, all the buffett rule will accomplish is siphoning off more job creating capital and investment for main street so that we can spend it here in

washington, d.c. and i hope we all know that government consumes wealth, it doesn't create wealth. the wealth is created outside of this -- this city of washington, the seat of our government. and we have to take that into consideration, that it takes capital to create jobs. if you want to get unemployment down, you don't take capital out of the private sector. in addition to the buffett rule, the other side has resurrected another proposal voted down by this body less than a year ago. this proposal has to do with businesses deducting ordinary and necessary business expenses. the rhetoric from the other side is that their proposal would close a loophole that incentivizes companies to ship jobs overseas. the problem is, no such provision exists. the deduction for ordinary and necessary business expenses is a mainstay of our tax code.

it is an income defining provision that accounts for the cost of doing business. what the proposal before us actually does is target companies doing business on a worldwide scale for a tax hike. this will not create jobs in america, it will not bring jobs that have relocated offshore back home. what it will do is punish business that seeks to expand in the international markets which in turn could actually cost us jobs here at home. the final tax increases included in the other side's proposal today is more of a budget gimmick than serious proposal to help pay for the delay in the sequester. the proposal would subject oil from tar sands to taxes that support oil spill liability trust fund. however, if the revenue raised from this proposal is really dedicated to this trust fund,

how can it at the same time be dedicated to deficit reduction? if we're going to get serious about deficit reduction, we need to put an end to this double counting charade. the only spending the other side is willing to cut is farm subsidies. using farm subsidies to help pay for sequester replacement puts the agriculture committee in quite a problem area. i want to remind my colleagues, though, that when we wrote a farm bill last year that passed the senate by a bipartisan majority, didn't pass the house of representatives, but we cut $23 million from that. we did away with direct payments, we maintained the crop insurance program, we saved money in other programs, and in food stamps as well. there is broad support for the farm bill here in senate from both democrats and republicans, and there is broad support for making spending reductions.

but for democrats to include cutting subsidies outside the context of a farm bill will make it difficult for us to write a farm bill. as we all know, there has been a lot of history of rural and urban legislators working together on a farm and nutrition issues in the farm bill by cutting farm programs in this sequestration replacement, my democratic colleagues are undermining the ability of the agricultural committee to craft a bill that will gain the needed support to move through the senate in a bipartisan way like it did last june. i think that the proposal will hurt our agriculture communities and i think the agriculture people will oppose it. at the end of the day, though, there will be money saved in the farm bill. if given that opportunity we can provide savings from a lot of

programs. we should -- we showed the ability last year. we all know that the farm bill faced big challenges in the house last year, the challenges probably still exist in that chamber. but we shouldn't put ourselves in the position where we cannot even get a bill through the senate because not going through the house of representatives, we aren't accomplishing a whole lot. for those of us who support the farm bill, we should be very concerned that this plan the democrats are putting forward to avoid sequestration could seriously undermine the ability to pass a farm bill in either chamber this time around. we just had an opportunity to vote on the democrats' tax increase. this was the first vote in the senate on an alternative to sequestration, and the first alternative offered by the senate majority, and over a period of 18 months they had an opportunity to offer that

alternative just like the house republicans offered us two alternatives that we never took up. we also have the opportunity to vote on one alternative from the republican side of the aisle. but both of these votes were for show. i hope that we can now work together in a bipartisan way in regular order to make sensible spending reductions. it's time to end the ins is and talk of more tax hikes on americans when those tax hikes already took place on january 1, when we know that the problem is, in fact, runaway spending. it's time to end the constant campaigning and do the work that the american people expect us to do so that we can leave the next generation a better generation than -- a better life than the present generation has. i yield the floor.

and i'll suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that dispense with the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: i ask unanimous consent after my remarks to be followed by remarks from the senator from louisiana, senator vitter. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: thank you. i welcome senator vitter to -- i welcome his cooperation and appreciate the work that he has done on the issue that i'm going to address and that he's going to address in terms of the concentration of the financial system in this country and that means to the middle class, what it means to business lending for small businesses, what it means to the potential again of too big to fail, something senator vitter has been a leader on for a number of years and sitting -- we sit together on the senate beigessing committee and what we hope we can do together. more than 100 years ago one of my preye predecessors, john she, who lived moo my hometown of

mansfield, ohio, the only other senator from that town who has served here -- john sherman, the author of the sherman antitrust act, said, "i do not wish to single out standard oil company. still, they are controlling and control the market coz absolutely as they choose to do it. it is a question of their will. the point for us to consider is whether on the whole i.t. safe in this country to you leave the production of property, the transportation of our whole country to depend upon the will of a few men sitting at their counsel board in the city of new york for there the whole machine is operated." at the time senator sherman was talking about the trusts -- specifically standard oil, but other trusts -- large, diverse industrial organizations with outside economic and political power. his words are as true today -- then as -- are as true today as they were then.

today our economy is being threatened by multitrillion -- that's trillion-dollar financial institutions. wall street megabanks are so large that should they fail, they could take the rest of the economy with them. i am stead of failure, -- instead of failure, however, taxpayers, if this were to happen, are likely to be asked to cover their logs, as we did -- their losses, as we did five years ago. it transfers wealth from the rest of the economy into this megabanks. it suspends the rules of capitalism, it perpetuates the moral hazard that comes from saving risk takers from the consequences of their behavior. just as senator sherman spoke against the trusts in the late 19th century, today people across the political spectrum, both parties, all ideologies, are speaking about the dangers of the large concentrated wealth of wall street megabanks. another republican in 2009, alan

greenspan, said, "if they're too big to fail, they are a he too big. in 1911, we broke up standard oil. maybe that's what we need to do today." unquote. if you thought the biggest banks were too big to fail before the crisis, i have news for us. they have -- i have news for you. they have only gotten bigger. these are the six largest banks and their growth patterns. in 1895 these six largest banks' combined assets were 18% of g.d.p. 18 years ago they were 18% of g.d.p. today they are up -- they were over -- combined assets, over 60% of g.d.p. over that time, 37 banks merged 33 times becoming the four largest behemoths. the top four now range -- the top four now range from $1 pi $4

trillion in assets to j.pp. morgan chase, $2.43 billion in assets. since the beginning of the crisis they have grown by marriagers by more than half a trillion dollars. the six largest banks have twice the combined assets of the rest of the 15 largest banks. these six banks: morgue began stallly, j.p. morgan khaoeus, bank of america, their assets of those six banks are larger than the assets combined of the next 50 largest banks. put another way, if you add up the assets banks 7 through 50, the bank that resulted would be half the size of a bank made of the assets of the top six. as astonishing as these numbers are, they don't tell the who i will -- whole story.

many supporters say they are small relative to international banks. as bloomberg reported last week, fdic board member tom hoddig exposed a double standard in our accounting system that allows u.s. banks to actually shrink themselves on paper. under the accounting rules applied by the rest of the world, the six largest banks are 39% larger than we think they are. that's a tk-frpbs of about $4 -- that's a difference of about $4 trillion. instead of being 63% of g.d.p. under international accounting rules these banks are actually 102% of g.d.p. the six biggest banks combined assets are slightly larger than the size of our entire economy. when measured against the same standard as every other institution in the world, we see the united states, yes, has the three largest banks in the world. these institutions are not just big, they are extremely complex. according to the federal reserve

bank of dallas, the five largest u.s. banks now have 19,654 subsidiaries. on average they have 3,900 subsidiaries each and operate in 68 different countries. these institutions are not just massive and complex. i don't object so much to that. it's they are also risky. according to the regulator, the office of the comptroller of the currency -- and i met with him today -- none of these institutions has adequate risk management. let me say that again. in stress tests, not one of the largest 19 banks has adequate risk management. it's simply impossible that these behemoths will not get into trouble again. we saw what happened with one of the best managed of the banks, have a lot of employees, some 16,000, 17,000 employees in my state alone. in one site more than 10,000 in columbus. j.p. morgan chase, a well managed bank with a competent

c.e.o. but a bank that lost $6 billion or $7 billion not so long. it is impossible they will not get into trouble again and they'll not be unwound in an orderly fashion should they approach the brink of failure. if you don't believe me, ask the president of the federal reserve bank of new york bill dudley. he said -- quote -- "we have k-rl ways to go to -- considerable ways to go to finish the job and to reduce to tolerable levels the social cost of a megabank's failures. he said more drastic steps could prove necessary. governor dan tarillo from the federal reserve threw his support behind senator ted kaufman to cap the nondeposit liability of megabanks three years ago in this body. these men are not radicals. they are some of the nation's foremost banking experts. history taught us we'll never see the next threat coming until it's too late and almost upon us. when we passed dodd-frank, it

contained tools regulators can use to rein in risk taking. unfortunately, many of these rules stalled. most will not take effect for years. don't think that's not just because not just the economic power of the banks, but the political power in so often having their way in this city and with regulators all over the country. dodd-frank focuses on improving regulators' ability to monitor risk in enhancing action regulators can take if they believe the risk has grown too great. the last five years alone, we've seen faulty mortgage related securities, foreclose fraud, big losses from risky trade, we've seen money laundering, we've seen libor rate rigging. until dodd-frank rules take effect, the rest of us stand by idly as megabanks take more risks that eventually lead to their near failure. we shouldn't tolerate business as usual. monitoring risk until we're once again near the brink of

disaster. we should learn from our recent history. we shoulding correct our mistakes by dealing with the problem head on. that means, mr. president, preventing the concentration of banks too big to fail, whose favored status encourages them to engage in high-risk behavior. how many more scandals will it take before we acknowledge we can't rely on regulators to prevent subprime lending, dangerous derivatives, risky proprietary trading, financial instruments that nobody understands, including people running the banks in many cases, and even fraud manipulation? wall street has been allowed to run wild for years. we simply cannot wait any longer for regulators to act. these institutions are too big to manage. they are too big to regulate. and they are surely still too big to fail. we can't rely on the financial market to fix itself because the rules of competitive markets and creative destruction don't apply

to wall street megabanks as they do to businesses in louisiana, delaware or ohio. megabanks shareholders and creditors have no incentive to end too big to gail. that is why as a result they'll engage in riskier behavior. in the end they get paid out when banks are bailed out. taking the appropriate steps will lead to more mid-size banks, not a few megabanks creating competition, increasing lending, providing incentives for banks to lend the right way. if there is one thing people in washington love is community banks. senator vitter has been involved in helping community banks deal with regulations and other rules. kim fine, the head of the independent community bankers of america is calling for the largest banks to be downsized because he sees that his members, the community banks -- they might be 50 million, they might be 100 million, they might be less than that in assets, but they are at a disadvantage.

about the only people who will not benefit from reining in these megabanks are a few wall street executives. congress needs to take action now to prevent future economic collapse and future taxpayer-funded liabilities. i want to, before turning it over, thank senator vitter who recognizes this problem with an acuity most don't have here and in joining me in doing something about it. i'm pleased to announce today we're working on bipartisan legislation to address this too-big-to-fail problem. it will incorporate ideas put forward by tom honnig, richard fisher and sheila bair. the american public doesn't want us to wait. they want to ensure megabanks will never again gamble away the american dream. to those who say our work is done, i say that we passed seven financial reform laws in the eight years following the depression, so it's clear there is precedent for not just one time, one fix, but a continued addressing of this problem until

we know we have the strength of the american financial system in the way it once had. thank you, mr. president. mr. vitter: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. mr. vitter: thank you, mr. president. i'm proud to join senator brown on the floor to echo those comments. i agree that too big to fail unfortunately is alive and well, and that poses a real threat, a real threat to all of us, to consumers, to citizens everywhere, fundamentally to the american economy. coming out of the financial crisis, it seemed to me that the biggest threat and the biggest problem was continuing too big to fail. and i think now, several years after the passage of dodd-frank, we have objective numbers in evidence that that did not bury too big to fail. again, there are objective numbers and evidence and pricing in the market that too big to fail is alive and well. now, i think the fact that

senator brown and i are both here on the floor echoing each other's concerns, virtually repeating each other's arguments is pretty significant. i don't know if we quite define the political spectrum of the united states senate, but we come pretty darned close. and yet, we absolutely agree about this threat. i think senator brown's historical analogy is right. it's like the unfettered growth and power of the trust in the late 19th century. and there too folks of all sorts of ideologies correctly recognized that threat. liberal democrats as well as senator brown's republican predecessor, senator sherman, and of course the biggest republican trust buster of all, teddy roosevelt. it's the same issue. it's the intense concentration of power. and as a conservative, i'm very

suspicious and nervous about that, whether it's when it's in government or whether it's when it's in the private sector. i think the sort of bipartisan consensus that perhaps we personify here on the floor is also growing outside congress and outside this institution. senator brown alluded to some of it, but let me flush that out. you have, for instance, federal reserve board governor dan turrila. he was appointed by president obama. he was a prominent figure in drafting and implementing dodd-frank. but he has recently lamented -- quote -- "to the extent that a growing systemic footprint increases perceptions of at least some residual too-big-to-fail quality in such a firm" -- meaning a megabank" -- not withstanding the panoply of dodd-frank and our regulations, there may be funding advantages for the firm

which reinforces the impulse to grow." close quote. in a little more blunt terms, our colleague, senator elizabeth warren, who was also a figure in coming up with dodd-frank, said recently in our banking committee hearing with chairman bernanke -- quote -- "i'd like to go to the question about too big to fail, that we haven't gotten rid of it yet. and so now we have a double problem. and that is the big banks, big at the time they were bailed out the first time, have gotten bigger. at the same time investors believed with too big to fail out there it's safer to put your money into the big banks and not the little banks in effect creating an insurance policy for the big banks that the government is creating this insurance policy not there for the small banks." close quote. in a similar way you have those concerns echoed in the real world outside this body on the right was well. recently george will said --

quote -- "by breaking up the biggest banks, conservatives will not be putting asunder what the free market has drawn together. government nurtured these behemothing by weaving a safety net and by practicing crony capitalism." and peggy noonan, another well-known conservative, said -- quote -- "if you are conservative, you're skeptical of concentrated power. you know the bullying and bossism it can lead to. too big to fail is too big to continue. the megabanks have too much power in washington and too much weight within the financial system." close quote. so, mr. president, i do think that there is a real and growing consensus in this body, in washington, and in the real world, as i've suggested by those observers' quotes. and i think we need to build on

that consensus and act in a responsible way. senator brown and i have been doing that, first with joint letters to chairman bernanke and others, focusing on the need for significantly greater capital requirements for the biggest banks. we think this would be the best and first way we should try to rein in too big to fail, to put more protection between megabanks' failure and the taxpayer. more incentive for the megabanks to perhaps diversify, perhaps break up or at least correctly price their size and risk to the financial system. and where following up on that initial work that was reflected in letters and preserving suggestions to chairman bernanke with legislation that is quite far along that i know we'll be

talking about more both today and in the near future. with that, let me invite senator brown to round out his comments, and then i'll have a few more words to say. mr. brown: i want to thank senator vitter for his work. this began -- i remember the first discussion senator vitter and i had about this when he was asking some tough questions of a couple of regulators. it phaoeufrbt secretary of the -- it might have been the secretary of the treasury. how important it was, as he just mentioned, these banks have the kind of capital reserves that are so important in making sure these banks are healthy. we probably most of us in our lives have sao*ep the movie "it's a wonderful life" and know what happens when a bank isn't

capitalized. that was a small-town example of a bank that serves the country in a way community banks do. it is a different story today perhaps. i think his insight into capital reserves, and then we continued these discussions and both came to the realizeization, as he pointed out, people across the political spectrum, from some of my more liberal democratic colleagues to people like george will and others who have been very involved in its business leaders and speaking out on issues that really matter. i thank senator vitter for his work. we will be working on legislation soon. i'm hopeful that as more of my colleagues see how important this issue is, that we can continue to work together. and i yield the floor. mr. vitter: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. mr. vitter: and i again thank senator brown for his partnership. senator brown with those posters made crystal clear the facts. the fact is that since the financial crisis, the megabanks

have only continued to grow in size and dominance and market share. in fact, that has accelerated significantly. now, some folks will say oh, well, that was a preexisting trend. that's because of a number of factors. well, certainly true, there are a number of factors at issue, but the growth has only accelerated since the crisis and since dodd-frank. it has not let up. in addition, there have been several recent studies that actually quantify the fact that too big to fail is a market advantage, is in essence a taxpayer subsidy, as elizabeth warren suggested, for the megabanks. an fdic study released in september says that. it says that the dodd-frank wall street reform act was explicitly intended to in part put an end

to the too big to fail de facto policy, but it concludes that -- quote -- "the largest banks do, in fact, pay less for comparable deposits. furthermore, we show that some of the differences in the cost of funding cannot be attributed to either differences in balance sheet risk or any non-risk related factors. the remaining unexplained risk premium gap is on the order of 45 basis points. such a gap is consistent with an economically significant too big to fail subsidy paid to the largest banks, close quote. another recent study and working paper is an i.m.f. working paper. it specifically attempted to quantify that taxpayer too big to fail subsidy. according to that subsidy, before the financial crisis -- according to that study, before the financial crisis, the

subsidy -- quote -- "was already sizable, 60 basis points. it increased to 80 basis points by the end of 2009." close quote. and then most recently, bloomberg has tried to put pen to paper and refine that calculation. bloomberg's calculation is $83 billion. $83 billion subsidy of the five biggest u.s. banks, specifically because of artificially cheap rates created by the market believing that they are too big to fail. now, i don't like huge size and dominance in market share, period, but certainly, certainly we shouldn't have government policy that is driving, that is exacerbating it. it seems to me that should be a

solid consensus left and right, democrat and republican. and so senator brown and i are following up on our previous work and drafting legislation. of course, we're not ready to introduce that today, but it would fundamentally require significantly more capital for the megabanks and would distinguish between megabanks and other size banks, namely community banks, mid-sized banks and regional banks, and the largest banks would have that significantly higher capital requirements. it would also try to walk regulators away from three and rely on new rules that are simple and easy to understand, that are transparent and that cannot be gained the way we think that basil 3 can be

manipulated and gained. requiring this i think would be one -- would do one or both of two things. it would better ensure the taxpayer against bailouts, and/or it would push the megabanks to restructure because they would be bearing more cost of that risk to the financial system. and in addition, we are contemplating another section of this bill that i think is something that is very important to do at the same time, create an easier, not a -- not a lax but a more appropriate regulatory framework for clearly smaller and less risky financial institutions like community banks. so again i thank senator brunn for his partnership, i thank him for his words today, i look forward to continue to work on

this project, as i believe a true bipartisan consensus continues to grow on this issue. thank you, mr. president. mr. brown: thank you, mr. president. for one more moment, and then i certainly yield to senator alexander. i appreciate very much senator vitter's words and comments and insight. i want to just expand for two or three minutes on one thing he said about the subsidy that these largest six banks get. you can see again from this chart that 18 years ago, these six banks' total assets were 18% -- 18 years ago, 18% of g.d.p. today through mergers and growth and i would argue unfair competition in many cases, there are over -- they are over 60%. what senator vitter said and i think is really important to expand on a bit is the subsidies these banks get. bloomberg said it was about $83 billion a year in subsidies that they get because of government action or inaction,

frankly. interesting that $83 billion when we're talking about sequester today is about $85 billion, but that's not really relevant except putting it in some context. but the reason they have this $83 billion subsidy -- or $85 billion subsidy or so, 38, 84, 85, or they have these -- the advantage when they go in the capital markets and get an advantage of 50, 60, 70, 80 basis points, that is, 80 basis points is .8% interest rate advantage is because the capital markets are -- believe that these banks, that their investments in these banks are not very risky because they believe these banks are too -- the markets believe these banks are too big to fail because they have the government backup for them. so if they have no risk, people are willing to lend money to them at lower interest rates. that's why the huntington bank

in columbus, ohio, a large regional bank about $50 billion in assets are key. a larger bank in ohio, still, though, a regional bank or the bank in coldwater, ohio, or sycamore, ohio, or third federal in cleveland banks that maybe are only a few tens of millions or maybe even up to a billion dollars in assets don't have that advantage, they pay higher interest rates when they borrow because they -- the people who lend to them know that they're not going to get bailed out if something bad happens. it's only these six largest banks that have that advantage. so because they can borrow money from the markets at a lower rate, they are in effect being subsidized because we have not fixed this too big to fail problem for the nation's banks. so it's not -- it's not a u.s. senator, a conservative republican or a progressive democrat from louisiana or ohio making this case that they are getting this advantage. it's the capital markets that have decided yes, these are too

big to fail so we're going to lend them money at lower rates than we would lend to the huntington or key or fifth third. that really is the issue, mr. president. that it's our actions or inactions that have given these banks a competitive edge that nobody through acts of government, whether you're a liberal or conservative, should believe it should be part of our economic system and our financial system. so i thank senator vitter and yield the floor to senator alexander. mr. alexander: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. mr. alexander: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, today i'm introducing legislation along with senator mcconnell, senator paul and senator corker to prevent the united states army corps of engineers from restricting fishing rights on some of the best fishing areas in the states of tennessee and kentucky below ten dams along

the cumberland river. i have talked with the corps several times about this. they have told me the only solution is legislation. i'm hoping that there is some other solution by a reasonable compromise, but i'm taking the corps' advice. on tuesday, congressman ed whitfield in kentucky introduced legislation on this matter, and so i'm introducing legislation today. i have also drafted language that could be included in an appropriations bill, would prevent the corps of engineers from using any funds to restrict fishing in what's called the tail waters below these ten corps of engineers dams on the cumberland river. today i spoke with the secretary of the army, john mchugh. i urged him to have the corps give congress enough time to consider this matter, perhaps to work out something with the corps a compromise, or if not to pass legislation. on monday, i'm introducing -- i'm meeting with the assistant secretary of the army, joellen

darcy who is in charge with the corps of engineers to ask that the corps stop now taking any further action to build physical barriers along the cumberland river. earlier, i have met with james lapp, the colonel who is the commander of the national district. then i met along with congressman whitfield and congressman cooper of nashville, tennessee, with major general michael walsh who is the deputy commanding general. so i have had a number of meetings on this subject, mr. president, and i am determined to get some result one way or the other, and i'm delighted to have the republican leader, senator mcconnell, my colleague senator corker from tennessee and senator rand paul of kentucky as cosponsors on the legislation. now, when they say with a large number of problems facing our country from iran to the sequester, why is a united states senator in fact for and a

number of congressmen interested in fishing? well, mr. president, there are 900,000 tennesseans who buy fishing licenses each year, and one of my jobs is to represent them, and i know and they know that these are some of the best fishing areas in our state. this is an area where grandfathers and grandsons and granddaughters go on saturdays and go during the week. there are lots of tennesseans who consider these prize properties and their lands, these are public lands, and they feel they have a right to be there. now, the problem is that the corps of engineers wants to erect physical barriers below the dams to keep the fishermen out of the area that is just below the dam. the corps' goal is laudable. the goal is to improve safety, they say. now, we all support safety, but there are much better solutions

than this. let me give you an analogy. when you have a railroad crossing, you don't keep the gate down at the railroad crossing 100% of the time. the track's not dangerous if the train's not coming. well, the water comes through these dams only 20% of the time, and the water's not dangerous if the water is not spilling through the dams. so if we kept the gate down at the railroad crossing 100% of the time, we would never be able to travel anywhere, and that's the same sort of reasoning we have here from washington. the department of the army is saying that they have a policy, which they have since 1996, which they have never applied on the cumberland river that suddenly they have decided after all these years that they have to close the fishing area 100% of the time, even though it might be dangerous only 20% of the time.

now, i'm not the only one who thinks this is an unreasonable policy. last week, i went to old hickory dam near nashville. about 150 fishermen were there with me on the banks of the cumberland river. i met with the corps officials. they turned the water on so i could see it spilling through the dam. then they turned it off. i met there with the director of the tennessee wildlife agency, with mike butler, the chief executive of the tennessee wildlife federation. i've talked with the kentucky wildlife people, and this is what they say. they think the corps' plans to improve safety are so unreasonable that the wildlife agencies won't even help them enforce it. but they say on the other hand that there are reasonable ways to improve safety and that is to treat the waters below the dam the way the tennessee valley authority does, for example, which is to erect large signs, some of which already exist at old hickory dam, blow the siren

when the water's coming through. you could close the parking lot, you could patrol the area. there are lots of ways to put the gate down in effect on these fishing areas 20% of the time. that makes a lot of sense, and the local areas are willing to do that. so our legislation makes clear that for purposes of this act installing and maintaining sirens and signage for alerting the hazardous waters shall not be considered a part of the prohibition. but it makes no sense to take these public lands and say to people the lawyers came in and said we have to be careful. of course we have 250b to be careful but being carefuls to not mean you keep the gate down over the railroad crossing 100% of the time and it doesn't mean that you close the area to fishing 100% of the time when it's dangerous only 20% of the time. i'm also concerned, mr. president, about the $2.6 million that the corps is going to have to transfer from

other parts of its budget to put up these physical barriers. where is that money coming from? i thought we were in the middle of a big sequester, a big budget crunch. i thought we were out of money and one of the areas that has the most difficult part -- problems to deal with is the department of the army. this is no time to be wasting money building barriers which the wildlife people in tennessee and kentucky whose job it is to encourage boat safety think is an unreasonable proposal. so, mr. president, i'm doing what the corps has said needs to be done, which is to provide legislation. but i look forward to continuing to work with the corps of engineers. my hope is that we can work out a reasonable solution with the wildlife agencies, the county judges on both sides of the border are very involved in this. they see the economic benefit that comes from the large number of people who come into those

areas for recreational purposes, they leave their dollars behind, that creates good jobs in tennessee and kentucky. but basically these are public waters. tennessee and kentucky fishermen ought to have access to them and shouldn't be a an unreasonable addict from washington that puts the gate down across the railroad crossing 100% of the time. i'm doing my best to see that doesn't stand. i hope we can work it out but if it doesn't i'm glad to introduce this legislation with senator mcconnell, senator paul, the same with congressman whitfield and i look forward to meeting monday with the instant secretary of the army. i ask unanimous consent to include following my remarks a dope of the legislation. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. alexander: and i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from alaska. ms. murkowski: mr. president, i am pleased to stand with so many

colleagues not only here on the senate side but over in the house to recognize an accomplishment, an accomplishment of the congress. it is important to recognize that in these times that are so contentious where a lot of messages go back and forth but at the end of the day we really haven't governed, we haven't done what we had hoped, we haven't legislated, haven't helped people. today we can be proud that we have worked to help people, particularly women, and that is through final passage of the violence against women act. it has been a long time coming. as you know, mr. president, we successfully moved that legislation through this body last year. i was a proud cosponsor, an early cosponsor. this ought not be a republican issue or a democrat issue. it ought not be a woman's issue or -- it is an issue that

should -- should bother all of us, that when we cannot stand together and help those who have been victims of domestic violence, if we can't do that as a minimum, we really aren't doing our job here. we really aren't doing service to people. so it is exceptionally good news that not only have we seen final passage in the senate again this congress with 78 senators in support, but today the house has voted on a vote of 286 ayes to 138 nays to advance violence against women reauthorization. i want to acknowledge the good work of the judiciary chairman, senator leahy, for his leadership and continually pushing. sometimes you just have to keep going at it until it is recognized that the time has

long passed come and gone that we should act on this. so i am pleased that we have heard the call of some 1,300 organizations representing domestic and sexual violence groups, like the awake shelter in anchorage, so many of the shelters across my state, truly those -- those agencies, those people who have done very much to help so many. i think there is cause for celebration that the congress has finally done the right thing to help those victims of domestic violence. i'm pleased to acknowledge that accomplishment today. mr. president, i want to -- i want to continue with a story that i began a few weeks ago. i stood before this body and decried the actions of the fish

and wildlife service when they had announced that they were moving forward with a no action alternative in a -- in an area of the state of alaska on the aleutian chain in the aleutians east bororugh where king cove, a community of less than a thousand people, was being denied access to an all-weather airport, an airport that could help relieve the suffering, the anxiety, truly, the trauma that comes when there's a medical emergency in your community and you're trapped in because of the weather, you can't get a plane in, you can't get a boat safely to you, but there is an option. and that option would require that a ten-mile stretch of road road, a one-lane gravel road

designed for noncommercial use, that road could be placed through the refuge on the edge of the refuse fiewng -- refuge to allow for safe access for this aleut community to access the rest of the world for help, for medical help. so i school district and i told my story -- i stood and i told my story and i wanted to update the senate as to where we are today. as much as i would like to say cvs successful in encouraging the secretary of the interior to act in the best interest of the people who live in king king cove, respect their safety, their lives as much as the refuge is being respected -- and i would need to update you, i say okay, it was a good winl

win for all. it's important for people to understand exactly where we are. after about -- this is now the sixth visit that the people of king cove have made from king cove, alaska, some 4,000-plus miles to washington, d.c., they were given an opportunity to 3450e9 with secretary salazar salazar -- meet with secretary salazar this morning. i had an opportunity along with senator begich to get an update on that meeting and i hear that the secretary listened and i hope that the secretary listened not only with his ears but his eyes as he saw the tears of those people with his soul as he heard their -- their fears, their anxieties. and i hope, i so hope that the secretary appreciates that when he says his highest moral responsibility is to the native and indian people, that he is

then able to translate that into action, into positive action. for these people in king cove. what i'd like to share with you in the few minutes that i have remaining are some of the stories that the secretary heard this morning. in the community of king cove, which is, again, out in the allusions, about 6 -- aleutians, about 600 air miles from anchorage, about a $1,000 round trip particular ticket to get to apg raj. you say why do you need to get to anchorageam ? king he can cove as a medical assistant, but if you have anything more serious than the need to set a broken bone, for instance, you have to leave the village for care in anchorage. so you have to make that trip. so you've got a community like king cove, real mountains. real mountains. it's tough to get in and out by

plane. in fact, the coast guard who was called in to do five rescues last year, the coast guard says getting in and out of king cove airstrip is one of the worst places in alaska because of the terrain, the weather, the wind sheers that come off the mountains, the turbulence that pushes a helicopter down. it's just a bad case scenario. fixed-wing, helicopter, doesn't make any difference, it's tough. so you have an option. king cove is on the water. but the waters in king cove are not always calm and in this picture, unfortunately, almost tropical looking with the blue waters. this is the dock in king cove. you may not be able to see it from where you're sitting, mr. president, but each one of these rungs is about two feet. if you were down here in your boat, if had you been delivered

by crab boat from king cove about a 2 1/2 to 3-hour ride cries waters that can be 20 feet high and the blowing gale, you'd have an opportunity to come to the dock and this is the way you get up the dock. if you were like lanny's father, his father was here, he had double pneumonia, a 67-year-old man, had to get him out of king cove to get him to anchorage. in order for this very sick man to get up this ladder, his son, who is right down here, is pushing him up from behind. they have a line from a crab pot that is around his -- his upper body. this gentleman just had shoulder surgery a couple months prior to this and they literally hauled him up. this was several years ago. you might think, well, maybe things have gotten better in king cove. this picture here is an individual being hauled up off

of the docks in a gurney type of a sled. this is the dock here he's being called up here. this is how we haul the crab pots out of the water. this guy broke his leg in four different places, was in danger of losing his foot if he couldn't be medevacked out to anchorage. this is two weeks ago. so the technology hasn't gotten better, we haven't been able to figure out how you move people safely if they are injured. you've got situations with aircraft where because of the wind sheers, because of the topography, you have landings like this. this is the landing that della trumble who came back to speak to the secretary this morning, witnessed as her daughter who was in this plane is on approach, and all of a sudden gusts come out of nowhere and this aircraft is pushed down,

smashed into the runway. fortunately there were no fatalities. but tricia, her daughter, who also came back to talk with the secretary, is so frightened to fly anymore that it's pretty amazing that she was even able to make the trip back. the -- the stories, the stories are so real, and the stories are so now. and we think about those who aren't here to tell the stories. these are some of the individuals that over the course of years have died whether in an airplane crash some years ago where four individuals died, whether it's christine or mary or kathy or ernest or walter. these are folks who didn't make it out. but, mr. president, what we don't have here are those people who are living now who have

their foot, barely, or who recovered from that double pneumonia, barely. they're living to tell the story, or their family members are living to tell the story, but they are horror stories. and there is a simple answer, and the simple answer is a ten-mile, one-lane gravel road with a cable along the length of that road so that you can't go off the road and go joyriding in the refuge. we're talking about a small community, less than a thousand people, being attached to another community where there is less than a hundred people. you are never going to have the volume of traffic that you have in your state, mr. president, or that i have in the more urban areas of alaska. we're talking about a connector road to be used for noncommercial uses. en