have found the effects of the sequester to be not quite what the president predicted. one of our local utah news stations reported that there were -- quote -- "no signs of sequester pain -- quote -- "clot the airports. when asked about it, one reporter said if they can't handle a 2% reduction in spending, i guess we need better and brighter people to be running our government. other press reports indicate the administration's doomsday claims have misled the public. "the washington post" reported the secretary's claims about teacher layoffs turned out simply not to be true. and "politico" recently published a story showing the president's claims about some capitol staff getting pay cuts to be false. so i ask you, senator barrasso, after all these scare tactics over the last two weeks, does the president have a credibility problem with the

american people when it comes to the sequester? mr. barrasso: i believe my friend from utah is absolutely correct. there is a credibility gap here. these modest cuts should prompt washington to take a closer look at how we spend taxpayers' money. i saw today that the white house is now because they claim because of the sequester, canceling white house tours. i mean astonishing when they say they're not going to cut the personnel there in terms of the security but they're going to cancel the tours. i would invite people all around the country planning traps to washington to come to the senate, come to the house, come to the capitol. we'll make sure they receive tours if they'd like. but you talk about the loss of credibility, you know, "the washington post" evaluates statements by folks, and over the last week there has been -- they give what are called pinocchios for those not telling the truth. and there have been a parade of

pinocchios, a dozen of these pinocchios given, one with the president's false claim on friday during his news conference of capitol janitors. they gave him four for that, not true. on the threat to meals -- free meals for seniors, pinocchios there. the secretary of education's false claim of pink slips for teachers, another four pinocchios. the claim that 70,000 children would lose access to head start and early head start services, another two pinocchios there. and you had mentioned the concerns about the f.a.a. with furloughs and closed air towers. the verdict is still pending on that. so you have a parade of pinocchios with a administration at a time when the american people know that so much of their taxpayer dollars are being wasted. i traveled around wyoming this past weekend, people at home think at least half of the money they send to washington is wasted. so it's time now to take an opportunity to eliminate

wasteful, duplicative spending. we should streamline federal bureaucracy, make government programs more efficient, we should be more thoughtful in terms of how targeted cuts will work to ensure vital programs continue without interruption. but at the end of the day, we should make sure taxpayers are getting value for their hard-earned dollars. the administration doesn't see it that way at at all. instead of promoting responsible spending -- the administration is promoting panic. as senator leahy has pointed -- lee has pointed out, the administration is threatening the american people with pink slips for teachers, cuts to airport security, cuts to the coast guard patrols, cutting border patrol and enformat, closing national parks, eliminating head start, meals on wheels, will the list goes on -- the list goes on. we need to be honest with the american people that we are $16.5 trillion in debt. it's not a threat, it's the

truth. and we can no longer afford to ignore the truth. washington is burying our children and grandchildren under a mountain of debt, and if we don't treat washington spending addiction, the problem is just going to get worse. so we must not allow the debt to tie the hands of future generations and prevent them from reaching their dreams. i believe we have to take responsibility for the reality that we're facing and have to take action to change the course that we're on. and, of course, that means difficult decisions have to be made but these decisions don't need to be reckless. they don't need to be dangerous. they don't need to imperil our students, teachers, military, senior citizens or national security. they need to be smart, target and maximize the value of each dollar spent and minimize the risks and the burdens to taxpayers. so i believe to my colleague from utah that rather than hitting taxpayers where they'll feel it the most, the administration really has an obligation, i think, a responsibility to work hard to

cut spending where the need is the least, and i know the leadership that you've shown on cut this, not that, really is something that i think americans would just agree with completely. mr. lee: thank you, senator barrasso. i find it interesting what you observed on the streets of towns like evan stoond cheyenne and jill -- and cheyenne and gillette in wyoming is backed up by a recent poll by glup. that polls -- gallon-up. that -- gallup. this gallup poll shows that americans believe more than half of every dollar that hard-working americans earn and send to washington gets wasted. congress and the president should be working together to target, reform, diewf and

eliminate -- reduce, and eliminate wasteful spending that the american people are noticing. and they should be working to get rid of and reform ineffective programs. the president meanwhile is threatening to make cuts to government spending as painful as it can 30sably be. instead of targeting waste the president is using scare tactics to persuade americans cuts have to come from important services like law enforcement, national security, border patrol, first responders. and educators. just today, the administration announced that it was going to furlough schoolteachers who educate the children of military families on u.s. military bases. recognizing, of course, that, you know, most school systems are operated at the state and local level and funded primarily at the state and local level, but you started focusing on teachers who teach on bate baste to military families suggesting those teachers would have to be furloughed. republicans have a better idea.

the senate budget committee and in particular the ranking republican serving on the senate budget committee has found that the cost of president obama's recent golf vacation with tiger woods cost americans an amount of money that if saved would have allowed us to prevent the furlough of 341 federal employees. can the president cancel a vacation or two in order to avoid some of these furloughs? that's the question that has prompted us to start this information campaign that we refer to as cut this, not that, as depicted in this graphic here showing under cut this, golf vacations by the president. and under the not that, showing military base teachers. that's what we should be focusing on. that's where we ought to prioritize. is -- is on identifying those areas where there can be a lower priority attached to something

we're already spending. cut this not that sends a message to the president and the american people washington should be setting priorities rather than wasting hard-earned tax dollars. senator barrasso, how can it be that this administration chooses to cut essential services like national security, border enforcement, first responders and educators instead of the fraud and waste so rampant in the federal government? mr. barrasso: i appreciate the question. i would say you're spliewl absolutely correct, the cuts threatened by the administration defy common sense and logic despite claims to the contrary the president actually does have a choice. he can take a thoughtful, reasoned approach to plimenting the sequester by cutting wasteful spending and that we all know exists. or he can continue to threaten and scare the american people with needless cuts to vital programs and services. i put together a list of a few places where i would new jersey the president to look for a reasonable cuts because there

are so many programs that are inefficient, ineffective, or just overlap with other programs. you know, there are over 80 economic development programs that operate out of four different cabinet agencies, department of agriculture, commerce, housing and urban development, small business. there are 173 programs promoting science, technology, engineering, and math education across 13 agencies. these are important things but do you need 173 programs when one department of the government doesn't know what the other one is doing? 20 agencies oversee more than 50 financial literacy programs. there are more than 50 programs that support entrepreneurs across four different departments of government. there are 47 different job training programs. is job training important? absolutely. 47 different programs, nine different agencies, cost $18 billion in fiscal year 2009.

only five of the programs of these 47, only five of them have had an impact study completed since 2004 to see if they actually work and whether participants in the program actually get a job. these haven't been reviewed since 2004. do we need 47? could they be improved upon? so, you know, we're looking at this sequester, the president proposed the sequester, the president signed the sequester into law and now he claims he can't live with the effects. i'm here to tell you that he's wrong. responsibly implementing the cuts from the sequester is not only possible, i believe it's necessary as we see here. cut this, not that. this debate isn't about as we read in "the washington post" that the president is trying to force it to the election of the house of representatives in 2014, it's about the economy economy and the future of our country. it's not about smaller government, it's about smarter government. people think they're not getting

value for their money. i believe it's past the time for washington to take the smarter approach to our nation's spending addiction and i appreciate the leadership of the senator from utah. mr. lee: thank you, senator barrasso. it's important for to us recognize that all these observations draws back to one central conclusion which is that the sequester and wasteful spending that we see so rampant throughout our federal government are the natural product of the failure by the majority leadership in the united states senate to work with republicans to pass a budget. republicans last year in the senate proposed three different budgets, receiving as many as 42 votes. 42 more votes than the president's budget received in this body last year, or the year before or in the house last year or the year before. but the majority party in the senate, those in charge of this body, elected to lead in this body, have now refused to even

propose a budget for the country for more than 1,400 days. we have spending priorities. i'm sure my friends across the aisle have spending priorities as well. it's time that we do the right thing for the american people. and that we sit down, we have an open, honest dialogue with the american people and with each other to hammer out these ideas and come up with a budget that fairly and accurately represents the priorities of the american people. but we need to pass a budget. and i urge my colleagues to do so. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. mr. barrasso: madam president, i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. coburn: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. coburn: i ask that the quorum call be dispensed with and speak as if in morning business for such time as i may consume. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. coburn: i'd also ask unanimous consent to use an oversized poster. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. coburn: there's been a lot made of the sequester and the things that may or may not happen associated with it. having spent the last eight years looking at the federal government, i wrote the secretary of agriculture a letter this week outlining some things that they could do that would not put in jeopardy food inspection and other things.

in my eight years of looking at the department of agriculture, there's extensive waste and duplication, the g.a.o. has confirmed that and those things should be cut first and eliminated and consolidated before staffs that are in critical positions are furloughed. the usda currently employs 120,000 employees, and they have over 16,000 offices. just thinking about 16,000 offices ought to give us some pause. why would any agency no matter what their requirements are need that number of offices? the agency notes on their web site if they were a private company, they would be the sixth largest private company in america. that's how big the usda is and how effusive. today there's one usda employee for every eight farmers.

one usda employee for every eight -- or people employed in the farm area. overall, one usda employee for every 18 farms, primary or otherwise. so weekend farmers have a usda employee and regular farmers, people who is primary business, an employee for every eight of them. at the end of 2011, usda was sitting on $12 billion in unobligated federal balances. in other words, that's money that's sitting in an account that hasn't been obligated to any purpose, sitting there waiting to be spent that we've borrowed money, $12 billion, that they have not obligated that money for. one of the things that my staff discovered is the usda has upcoming conferences in terms of

food tasting and wine tasting on the west coast. now, normal times, there wouldn't be anything wrong with federal employees traveling to the west coast to both encourage and assess where we are in terms of some of our agricultural production. but i would think that maybe this is one of the things that the u.s. department of agriculture ought to cancel, given where we are and the threat that's been put out there in terms of food safety that has been announced in terms of layoffs or time off for agricultural department employees. two usda agencies, the rural development and agricultural marketing service, are sponsoring the 26th annual california farm conference -- small farm conference next week. in addition to speakers from usda agency, the gathering will

feature field trips and tasting, receptions -- the tasting reception, according to the web site, is the most well-attended networking event of the conference and showcases says the regional bounty from local farms, chefs, wineries, buries, bakeries and other food purveyors and special guest chefs will turn local donated agricultural products into tasty dishes to sample, with exceptional wines provided. there's nothing wrong with that in normal times. there's plenty wrong with sending multiple employees to these types of conferences when we find ourself in the position that we find ourself in today. these conferences, i'm sure, are fun, interesting, even educational getaways for usda employees. but food inspecting rather than food tasting should be usda's priority at this time. so -- and not just to pick on them but the -- the thing is, is

americans aren't aware of how expansive and duplicative many of the programs we have are. in the domestic food assistance programs, look inside -- this is what g.a.o. shows us that we have running. 18 federal different programs across three departments that spend $60 billion a year on this program. according to g.a.o., the availability of multiple programs with similar benefits helps ensure that those in need have access to nutritious food that can also -- does increase the administrative costs of these programs. so while our goal is great, the fact that we have this many programs doing essentially similar things, with similar

overheads, g.a.o.'s recommendation was to do consolidation. 15 of these programs are running -- run by the department of agriculture, ranging from snap programs to fresh fruit and vegetable program and a special milk program. according to g.a.o., the effectiveness of 11 of these 18 programs is suspect. and the reason it's suspect is nobody's done any oversight. no member of congress has done oversight on it. not the budget committee, not the appropriation committee or the agricultural committee. we also have inside the usda research and education activities within the rural development programs that

duplicate predominantly existing programs of almost every other agency in the federal governme government. let me say that again. almost every one of these programs are duplicated in another agency of the federal government. in other words, we're layering on. they both have the same goals, the same hoped-for outcomes. one run by one agency. here's the ones that are run just by usda. according to g.a.o., the rural development program administers 40 housing programs, business community infrastructure and facility program, as well as energy, health care, telecom programs, most of which duplicate the initiatives of other agencies, yet under the guise of serving exclusively rural citizens. rural populations are not excluded from the other programs which are run with the same purpose that serve the general population. according to the congressional

research service, more than 88 programs administered by 16 different federal agencies do the exact same thing that these programs do. so we have 88 other programs from 16 other federal agencies that are targeting rural economic development and needs. it's not hard to see why we're in trouble and yet the g.a.o. has done the work we've asked them to do. the appropriate committees have not addressed any of these issues. they've not offered any amendments or bills to reduce the consolidation or at least look at the outcomes and the cost-benefit ratio of having multiple layers of programs doing the same thing. let me just give you some questionable expenditures just that we've seen in the last ye year. $54 million loan to build a casino. $1.6 million in loans for a

asbestos removal company. created hundreds of jobs in guatemala and eventually went out of business and defaulted on a loan. $2.5 million low interest loans to the birthplace of country music association for construction of its smithsonian style cultural heritage center. a tennessee county spent $10,000 in federal rural development grant to just upgrade its tourism web site. $12, 500 went to milk and honey soap l.l.c. for marketing its soaps and lotions made from goat milk and bees wax. i mean, these are private businesses and we're taking taxpayer money or we're borrowing the money and we're subsidizing private individual businesses with grants. we also have within the usda research and education

activities the national institute of food and agricultural spent $706 million last year on research and education activities through more than 45 different programs. meanwhile, their agricultural research service has a budget of $1.1 billion annually and is home to an additional eight federal research and educational activity programs. so what we have is layer after layer after layer, most of them well-intentioned, not denying that some of these are significant roles for the federal government, but congress is the problem because we haven't addressed any of the recommendations that the government accountability office has given us in the two reports thus far and the final report that will come out this year on overlap and duplication. finally, i'd like to talk about the usda's market access progr program. at the request of congress, united states department of

agriculture has spent more than $2 billion on the market access program, which has directly subsidized the advertising of some of the most profitable companies and trade associations doing business overseas. so we're subsidizing companies like welches, sunkist, blue diamond, combined sales of greater than $2 billion a year, and we gave them $6 million last year to advertise their products. now, it's one thing to promote exports, but we don't do that with every other business in america. not every business gets -- that has $2 billion in sales gets $6 million of federal taxpayers' money to promote their products overseas. so we have this disparity. i don't know if this is good policy or bad policy. what i do know is, is that it's indiscriminate in terms of -- it's discriminatory in terms of

how we treat one group of businesses versus another group of business. also receiving money from taxpayers for private overseas advertising are trade groups like tyson foods, purina, georgia pacific, jack daniels, hershey's, the california wine industry has domestic sales of $18 billion a year. they took in $7 million to promote their products overseas the cotton council received $20 million from market access program and another $4.million from usda market development program. so i come to the floor so that the american people can see, we've gotmanty of ways to save -- got plenty of conveying to save money. what we've got is an intransigence in congress to do the hard work and also an

intransigence by the administration to recognize the need to lead on eliminating these areas of duplication. last week on the floor i put a letter into the record from the mayor of mcallister, oklahoma. the president pro tempore at the present time is a native of oklahoma, and she knows that town. and he had a budget shortfall. and he outlined the steps that he went through with the help of the city manager to meet that and they did it in a way that we would all be proud of. and he gave us an example. today i want to submit for the record a letter from the mayor of los angeles county board of supervisors in terms of what they've done. and that is letter i received in 2011 when we started raising the issue of duplication and making tough choices so we continue to provide benefits, we continue to create a safety net for those truly dependent on it but we don't waste money spending it on

things we don't absolutely need. and i would put forward -- you know, when we have the multitude of programs and the overlap, we as members of congress don't have an excuse for not fixing that. because the things that are critical in people's lives eventually are going to suffer. every dollar that we spend on low-priority duplication, every dollar that we spend that doesn't have a metric to say it's doing what it should be doing is eventually going to be a dollar that's not there to support a food stamp recipient or a medicaid recipient or housing for the indigent or care for the homeless or implementing justice grant programs for policing and tribal courts. so it's not a matter of just solving the duplication problem. it's a matter of the arithmetic that's going to hit our country and that by delaying the time at

which we decide that we're going to address this multitude, which is now 1,400 programs through the first two years of reports from g.a.o. and $367 billion of expenditures, and that doesn't count the other $800 billion that goes out of the federal government every year for grants, that also address some of these same issues. so the time is now. sequester gives us a good time to start looking at priorities. and one of the things i'm thankful for is we have tremendous federal employees. we're starting to hear them speak up now on what can be cut, what is wasteful. they now feel the freedom to not be criticized because they're going to take a critical eye of the way the american taxpayer dollars are being spent in their own agency. and we're starting to hear from them.

here's things we're doing that we shouldn't be doing. here's things that are not a priority. rather than lay off a meat inspector, maybe we ought to do this. cut this, not that. you know, we ought to cut out wine tastings for federal employees and keep the meat inspectors employed. there's no reason we need to furlough the first -- with the waste in the department of arks there's no reason -- with the waste in the department of agriculture, there's no reason that the first significant program, any program of the department o department f agriculture, ought to suffer a furlough or layoff because there's millions of dollars spent there that are not wisely spent but poorly spent with poor return. and when you have two programs doing the same thing, let me describe for you what happens on the beneficiary end of that. people don't know, which is where there's a need. you get across what the requirement is in one program is

a different requirement in another program. in terms of duplicated grants, what we have is people who apply for a grant and get it from one arm of the department of agriculture and then go over here and make the same application from another arm of arks get the same grant, and then go to one of the other agencies that are doing the same thing and get another brandt for the same thing, all of them not knowing that each have given a grant for the same purpose. so it's just not good business practices. it's not good management. and it's not good stewardship for the future of our country. so i'd ask my colleagues to think about the great work that the government accountability office has done. they've done great work for us, and we've failed to act on it. and it's time we start acting. come april 1 we'll see the final report from the g.a.o. where they now, over four years, will have looked at every program in the federal government, and they're going to to be able to give us a list. and i've come out here with my

big chart charts and shown whate duplication are. we're going to have four more charts that are going to say the same thing. think about how discouraging it is for the people at g.a.o. who do all of of hard work, think about how discouraging it is for the people trying to meet the individual needs in the individual agency to know that we're duplicating things with poor results. we're not meeting our requirements under our oath. we're not meeting the moral ritters tenvironments to be pruh the american taxpayers' money. in the long run the people that will suffer will be the very people that we intend to help. because if in fact we don't do these things and we don't respond in a way that creates a positive vision for our country in terms of growth again and a positive vision in terms of responsible behavior by congress, ultimately the arithmetic swallows us up. and i'll close with this.

if you take today's budget, when the federal reserve starts unwinding the quantity taiive easing they've done, these very law ar artificially low interest rates, or if something would happen where the world economy would look at us and say, we don't think you're deserving of our aaa- rating, the difference is about 3% to 4%. let's sates a 3% -- or historical average is 5.83%, what we borrow money at over the last 50 years historically. we're borrowing at under 2% now. 3% times $17 trillion, you kno, is $510 billion a year. and we all lose when that happens. and how do we lose? because the dollars we're going

to be spending on that additional interest cost is a dollar that isn't going to help somebody that's homeless, a dollar that's not going to go to match the fmap for medicaid, and consequently, the cut cuts thate will make then will be much harsher than the cuts if we decide to do it proactively now. and you don't have to have partisan disagreement about the goal of a program but certainly we should be able to come together and say we don't want to duplicate things. we want to have good outcomes, we want to put metrics on it to see if it's working. there can't be any disagreement on that. that's just plain, good, ol' common horse sense. and yet no action on anything in three and a half years. on any of these recommendations by the government accountability office. now, the administration has paid attention, i'll give them

credit, in a lost areas where they've dean -- in a lot of areas where they've seen this, they've done things. but we have not. i don't want to be the heritage of my time in the senate ais when we -- we were the congresses that failed to meet the challenge. i believe our country can cheat history. if you look at history, it's not great for republics. they've all failed. but we have the opportunity to cheat history, and the way we do it is by getting off our rears and starting doing the job that we were sent up here to do, which is oversight and legislate, the elimination of waste, abusing, an and duplicat. and we can do that but it requires leadership. it requires leadership on the part of senator reid, on the part of senator mcconnell, every committee chair, every ranking member, it requires leadership that we're going to do that of the and i'm proud to

say that tom carper, chairman of the homeland security -- we have a plan to oversight all of homeland security, the whole thing, and the rest of the government as well because we don't really believe that the rest of the committees are going to do it. so we've -- we're building our staffs to oversight, to grab this information, to make cogent recommendations and legislation where we can that will actually address these problems. we're way past the starting point of when we should have begun. but it's not too late. but it requires us to make a decision. are we more interested in the parochial benefits of allowing g continuing programs that are not effective or duplicative to continue to run because we won't get any blowback, or are we courageous to say that we are going to do the right thing for the right reasons for the long-term well-being of our country? i believe that's the feeling of most of the members of senate.

i just think we need the leadership to call us to act. with that, i yield the floor and note the absence of a quarrel. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: a senator: madam president? i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. lee: madam president? the presiding officer: yes, senator. mr. lee: i rise today to speak in opposition to the nomination of caitlin halligan to be a circuit judge on the u.s. court of appeals for the district of columbia circuit. the d.c. circuit is arguably the most important federal appellate court in our country's judicial system with primary responsibility to review administrative decisions made by many federal departments and executive branch agencies. it has also served in many instances as a steppingstone of sorts for judges later appointed to the united states supreme court. as a result, the senate has a longstanding practice of carefully scrutinizing nominees

to the d.c. circuit and when evaluating particular nominees, we've also carefully considered the need for additional judges on that very court. in july 2006, president bush nominated an eminently qualified individual named peter keisler to fill a seat on the d.c. circuit. mr. keisler, whom i know personally, is among the finest attorneys in the country and is also among the finest individuals that i know. because of his nonideological approach to the law, mr. keisler enjoys broad, bipartisan support throughout the legal profession. despite these unassailable qualifications, democratic senators blocked mr. keisler's nomination. he did not receive any floor consideration whatsoever, not hurricane katrina a cloture vote. -- not even a cloture vote and his nomination languished in the judiciary committee. at the time, a number of democratic senators sent a letter to the judiciary committee chairman, arguing that

a nominee to the d.c. circuit -- quote -- "should under no circumstances be considered much less confirmed before we first address the very need for that judgeship." close quote. these senators specifically argued that the d.c. circuit's comparatively modest caseload in 2006 did not justify the confirmation of an additional judge to that court, even though this was a position that, by law, already existed. more than six years have passed, and ms. halligan has been nominated once again to that very same seat on the d.c. circuit, the same seat for which peter keisler was nomineed. but the court's caseload remains just as minimal as it was then. according to the administrative office of u.s. courts, the d.c. circuit's caseload is so light that the number of appeals pending per judicial panel is 54% less than theage of for federal courts of appeals.

with just 359 pending appeals per panel, the d.c. circuit's average workload is less than half of that other similar appellate courts. the d.c. circuit's caseload has actually decreased since the time democrats blocked bel keisler. since 2505, the total number of appeals filed is down over 13% and the total number of appeals pending is down over 10%. some have sought to make much of the fact that since 2005 two fl coral of the court's judges have taken senior status leaving only seven active judges on the d.c. circuit today. but the court's caseload has declined so much in recent years that even filings per active judge are only slightly higher than they were in 2005. of course that doesn't account for the six senior judges on the d.c. circuit who continue to hear appeals and author opinions

on a regular basis. their contributions -- the contributions of the senior judges on that court -- are such that the actual work for each active judge has declined and the caseload burden for d.c. circuit judges is less than it was when democrats blocked mr. keisler on the basis of a declining insufficient caseloadd the average filings per panel, perhaps the truest measure of actual workload per judge in a u.s. court of appeals, is down almost 6% since that time. in each of the last several years the d.c. circuit has canceled regularly scheduled argument dates due to a lack of pending cases, and those who work at the courts suggest that in reality the workload isn't any different today than it has been in the past. according to the democrats' own standards and particularly when there are judicial emergencies in other courts across the country, now is not the time to

confirm another judge to the d.c. circuit. and it certainly is not the time for us to consider confirming a controversial nominee with a record of views that many view as extreme with regard to the law and the constitution. and so make no mistake, ms. halligan is not what we would call a consensus nominee. the senate has already considered and rejected her nomination. nothing material has changed since that time. many of my colleagues have discussed a wide range of ms. halligan's views, so i'll limit myself today to just one example. in 2003, while serving as solicitor general for the state of new york, ms. halligan approved and signed a legal brief arguing handgun manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers should be held liable for criminal actions that individuals commit with those guns. three years later, in 2006, ms. halligan filed another brief arguing handgun manufacturers

were guilty of creating a public nuisance. such arguments amount to an invitation to the courts for the tkorts engage in -- courts to engage in sweeping judicial activism. and the positions she took are bewildering with the original understanding of the second amendment rights that all americans enjoy. in conclusion, as measured by the democrats' own standards and their own prior actions, now is not the time to confirm another judge to the d.c. circuit. and it is certainly not time to consider such a controversial nominee for that very important court. the senate has already spoken and has rejected ms. halligan's nomination. i urge my colleagues once again to oppose her confirmation. thank you, madam president. i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will read the roll. quorum call:

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mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from nevada. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent the call of the quorum be terminated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent the senate consider the followingle nominations, as -- are we in executive session now? thank you. mr. president, that's calendar numbers 27, 28, 29, 30, 1, 3 2-rbgs 33, 34, 5, 36, 7, with the exception of calendar number and all nominations placed at the secretary's desk of air force, army and never, the nominations be considered en bloc, there be no intervening

action or debate and no further motions be in order to any of the nominations and president obama be immediately notified of the senate's action. the presiding officer: without objection mr. reid: mr. president, calendar number 28, i now include that with the exception of colonel scott c. long. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: okay. i ask unanimous consent that we now proceed to a period of morning business, senators allowed to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent that the appointment at the desk appear separately in the record as if made by the chair. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent senate that when the senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. wednesday, march 6. that following the prayer and

the pledge, the journal of proceedings -- the mourning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the daythat following any leader remarks -- day and that following any leader remarks, the senate resume executive session to consider the nomination of caitlyn halligan to be united states circuit judge for the d.c. circuit, with the time until 10:30 a.m. equally divided and controlled in the usual form. at 10:30 a.m., the cloture vote on the halligan nomination will occur. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: there will be a cloture vote then, mr. president, on the halligan nomination at 10:30 tomorrow morning. if there's no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it adjourn under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until senate stands adjourned until

>> tomorrow the united states senate will hold a cloture vote on the nomination of katelyn halligan to serve on the u.s. court of appeals or the district of columbia circuit.

it is disappointing that a cloture vote is even necessary for someone as clearly well qualified as metallica and who has bipartisan support from lawyers and law enforcement. when republicans filibustered her nomination 2011 several of them hung their objections not on her qualifications or heard judicial philosophy but on the d.c. circuit workload. in essence they didn't object to her as a judge, just the seed in their minds did not need to be filled. send them there is an additional vacancy on that circuit leaving the court with 36% vacancy. the caseload has increased almost 15% since 2011. after 726 days of delay we strongly urge the senate support and an up or down vote for this well qualified nominee with credentials from across this political spectrum for a court that is 36% vacant.

i have some slides that i hope will turn up. in fact last night we released an ample graphic on whitehouse .gov showing katelyn halligan is not alone in suffering delays for a vote. as you will say 78 or sense of president obama circuit court judges have waited more than 100 days for a vote compared to 15 of president bush's nominees. on the second slide, this obstruction also applies to president obama's district court nominees. 32% of her district court judges have waited more than 100 days for a boat compared to eight of resident bush's nominees. on slide three you can see that the average wait time for a judicial time to get a vote both for the circuit and district court is three to four times as long as it was under our predecessor. this is a problem that needs to be resolved for the sake of our judicial system, for the sake of

the carrying out of justice in our country and an expedited and deliberate manner, and we have seen some positive signs of late that perhaps the logjam is beginning to break on capitol hill when it comes to confirmation of judges and we certainly hope that the spirit that informs that change, modest as it has been will inform the both vote that the senate takes on katelyn halligan. >> that was part of today's white house briefing. you can see the whole thing later in our programming schedule and in the meantime in our video library at c-span.org. you can see the procedural vote for katelyn halligan's nomination during the senate session tomorrow live here on c-span2. also tomorrow attorney general eric holder will be on capitol hill to testify before the senate judiciary committee

to answer questions about the justice department programs. >> she has been read since 1840 when her grandfather first published an edition of her letter which went through four editions in the 1840s and it was, it shows the bestseller the 19th century when people knew her. she has always been famous.

a report by the number government analyzed how impending cuts in military spending will affect congressional districts. we discuss the discussed the report with bloomberg senior defense analyst. >> host: robert levinson's senior defense analyst with bloomberg bloomberg government out within a report looking at defense contract spending by congressional districts. first of all because this report focuses solely on defense contracts pending. how do you find that? >> guest: that's right greta. that's the money the department defense spends on basically goods and services and it's evenly divided between goods and services and is somewhere around $315 billion a year. >> host: how did you gather this data? >> guest: we ingest all of the contract data reported to the federal government and we ingest that and then we manipulated and clean it up and we have tools for basically extracting the data in various ways and one of

the ways you can extract the data is by congressional district. >> host: we don't really have a good number on how many federal contractor agencies there are in the governmengovernmen t, so do we have a good handle on the money being spent on defense contracting? >> guest: well we don't have a good handle on the number of people that are actually working as defense contractors. he even secretary gates talked about we didn't have a good number. in terms of the number of contractor dollars we spend we do have a good handle on that. we know how much money spent because all these contracts are ported through system. they're classified contracts to deal with intelligence work and other things which are reported but the rest of his basically reported and we have a good handle on on that. there are some 140,000 companies that do business with the federal government and we know who they are. >> guest: what are the headlines coming out of this report? >> guest: the most important headline is counterintuitive that the democratic districts represent democratic members of

congress tend to get little bit more of defense contract dollars in a republican district. >> host: here's a look at the top 10 districts for 2012 defense contract spending. this is in billions, $11 billion spent in the first district. you can see the numbers from their in the members of congress. there are two republicans and the other eight are democrat. >> guest: in the top 10 and a lot of it has to do of course with a lot of that is industrial stuff in urban areas where there is more industrial capability and those tend to be more democratic districts. >> host: do we know what type of defense contracting spending is going on in these districts are the military installatinstallat ions? >> guest: it's interesting. in most cases the big contract dollars are not with the installations. the installations to spend money on contracts for services to the base but in this case like the

first one which was a surprise because representrepresent ative clay is not a big voice on defense issues and he doesn't sit on the defense committee that he has a huge amount of lowering manufacturing an aircraft manufacturing in his district. he is in a pretty good spot because with the sequestration a lot of his money is coming from saudi arabia to buy fighter jets from the saudi air force but it flows very department defense. there is other boeings ethic of the cut. >> host: what about jim moran? >> guest: he is the most vulnerable in terms of the coming to defense contracts. defense services is not a big manufacturing like aircraft. its i.t. services and the biggest contract in his district is actually translation companies providing translation services, the department defense but he's got a wide variety of companies headquartered close to washington d.c. and services kind of business. >> host: some others. >> guest: in fort worth texas

the congressional district of texas is almost all, 95% of the dollars spent in the district is a little over $9 billion is almost all lockheed and that portion of that is 35 fighter jet which is the largest program in the defense department. you can see these are two ways defense dollars are spent. submarines are ships or the services for the department defense. >> host:>> host: this report fln its head the perception that republicans protect the pentagon more, protect pentagon spending more than democratdemocrat s do. >> guest: this is a perception that the republicans have been more protective at the defense department historically. i don't think that's necessarily because of the spending and somehow the spending moves to democratic districts and that's going to change however what we have seen more the republicans is a real focus on austerity and

cutting budgets and restricting the government and many more republicans than in the past of and willing to talk about the pentagon needs to be trimmed as well. >> host: how will sequester impact the defense contracting spending? >> guest: will sequester impact it very much. basically for the department defense it's about 7.9% or 7.8% of the discretionary side of spending that is cut and that goes across-the-board. the department of defense says it doesn't want to break contracts which you can do. it doesn't want to break them. >> host: are there penalties? >> guest: if the pentagon terminates the contract for convenience of the government there sort of a negotiation between the contractor to say hey these include profits and here's the money we have already spent. we are entitled to that. there's a negotiatinegotiati on process between the government and the contractocontracto r did side with the legitimate expenses are. they have a special court that can deal with this and they can

appeal that but there are penalties. in a lot of cases the budget is scaled back the amount of money spent on this particular contract. less fighter jets this year are going to exercise -- to say on how to break the contract that they will scale scale back spending and then they don't have to pay the penalty. >> host: we are talking about limburg government's new report on defense spending. in 2012,, 20% of all defense contract money spent in the top 10 districts he were democratic districts into a republican. the average defense contract spending in all districts were 2012 democratic districts 900 million, more than republican districts at 600 million so all 435, 436 members in the district of columbia get defense contract spending. >> guest: yes and i think there's a district in brooklyn that gets $300,000. this is 2012 data and these are

what we call prime contracts. these are the contracts and the companies are directly -- there's a lot of subcontracting or spending that lockheed built a fighter jet and a gets paid by the federal government. between 60 and 70% of the money the subcontractors who make various parts of the jets of 60 to 70% winds up in the hands of the subcontractor. you can take that down many levels. there is the guy who makes the tire for the f-35 in the company makes the rubber for the tire so it cascades downward. >> host: you made this point in your report. democrats won 47% of house seats in and 2012 elections. 58% of the military 2012 contract spending went to those districts. why do you make that connection? >> guest: it's interesting to see how the money flows. i think the primary reason for a lot of this is the democratic districts tend to be more the urban districts and that is where the a lot of the companies are located. a lot of republicans districts

are rural districts and frankly there's not a lot of defense business and manufacturing. some of the military bases are in areas that tend to be more republican but not as many they contract dollars. most of the personnel dollars in the cellars of the men and women in uniform or the civilian defense employees and those employees, bazillions are going to feel the impact of sequestration in the military personnel are exempt from that. >> host: we will go to greg in huntsville alabama, republican color. you are on for robert levinson. go ahead. >> caller: thanks for taking my call. i was -- i'm not sure i know you are looking at dollar for dollar and i'm not sure you're looking at the population community and also i think per square inch we have more -- than anywhere in the world. here in madison county there are 350,000 people that are directly

impacted. every job is impacted in the community. i keep hearing we are not going to feel the pain and it's not going to be an impact like everyone says. it's going to decimate -- and it's not going to be a good thing. the growing frustration on my part, we both have a business and is going to directly impact a lot of people's lives. ..

and both the defense contractors are going to be people out as contracts are readers and the federal federal employees look at furloughed. it looks think they're going to get 22 days of unpaid leave the rest of the year. that's basically effective salary for the rest of the year. >> host: house republicans to keep a sequestered place and give the pentagon veteran flexibility in how they spend. what does that do is sequester? >> veterans is basically exempt from the sequestered. for the department of defense, it would give flexibility to

make strategic heads beard defense officials have said at this point bouma got seven months left. it doesn't help them because they have to do so much in a short period of time. the president has said he does not want that flexibility because he doesn't want to acknowledge everything has to come from cuts. he's still looking for a compromise or republicans are not accepting that right now. we seem to be at an impasse. postcode mr. levin said, why use defense contractors? contract performance is reported as four with lawsuits. >> guest: there are problems with contracts, but some things can't be done by troops. some of the services talk about roadwork to troops peeled potatoes and worked in kitchens into delighted that his contract. the troops don't build weapons systems. building at 35 is private

industry and the united states government has to build the equipment. there's always a dispute about some of these jobs that could be done by soldiers or government employees. depending on the cost, it's hard to tell there's a real dispute because federal employees have good retirement benefits and a longer lifetime. contractors have a higher cost in terms of the salary they earn on a day-to-day basis. post a independent collar, hi, mike. >> caller: i just have a question. i'm not trying to be sarcastic, but he was going to clean the buildings and scrub the toilet? >> host: what do you mean quakes is sequester has-beens? >> caller: wouldn't that be federal contract euros to do that stuff? >> guest: it is federal contractors to do that in most cases. when i worked in the pentagon, a blood that is done through

companies that employed handicapper developmentally disabled people and work is picking the trash in the pentagon on those are federal contracts. it doesn't mean they'll be cut altogether. instead of twice a week they'll take one day a week are things like that. >> host: why is hawaii the next biggest spender besides the d.c. area and why have we not heard from that delegation on sequester issues? >> guest: hawaii is the case but there's a lot of money associated with military installation. it got pearl harbor, the army has installations there. so hawaii has a lot of money coming to it. i don't know how much you've heard from the delegation. you had senator in a way who is chair of the defense appropriation committee and he was vocal about this before he unfortunately passed away. he was a strong voice against

the cut considered a real hawkish in terms of spending money on department of defense. >> host: democratic collar. >> caller: hi, yes. i have a question that i think to preface by saying the contractors and mercenaries seems like an historical site all, something you see towards imperial decline and collapse like overreliance on the german barbarian mercenaries. but i was just wondering if you look at defense spending in the u.s. have to say, they plot almost exactly. i was wondering when that bubble will collapse. >> host: you are talking about a bubble in defense spending?

>> caller: yes. if you look at the line graph, defense spending, it's pretty parabolic at this point and i wonder what the bubble will collapse. >> host: defense spending keeps going up historically. what happens to the economic bubble? to the first quakes >> guest: defense spending tends to go up and then it comes down. we ended the war in iraq and were getting out of afghanistan said defense spending does tend to come down. historically defense spending goes up during war. we are in a draw down and historically if you look at korea, vietnam, defense spending could come down by a third. it usually takes 10 years to do that. >> host: next to calvin. hi, calvin.

just go i decided question on military and i want to talk about medicare. i am a retired coal miner. this sequester ain't going to hurt people or anything. i've got three granddaughters that you started head start to put it they going to do about that? just like social security, making turk social security in iran or somewhere in the pudding every time that. >> host: those are two different topics for another day. were talking about defense contracts pending this morning. bloomberg government with airport i'm not. democratic caller.

>> caller: my husband is in the military and i want to know what is going to happen as far as entitlement, as far as the women. >> host: another topic for another day. sheila in connecticut, independent collar. we're talking about defense contracts pending. we have a fourth line for those in the military and defense industry. 20258 i 3881. >> caller: i have a statement and a question. i feel not another penny needs to be spent on defense. we are the superpower and we have more than enough weapons and fighter jets to accomplish far i don't know how many years. and also when we have all those million given out, someone

1 million in stanford the other day. six where does the other go? isps politicians and all they tell me in the general fund. but all these taxes they take out, put that towards the people. forget about defense spending. it's only defense contractors to keep people going. >> host: those are sheila's comments. do you have some thought? >> guest: it is time to debate with the appropriate level of defense spending is. a lot of money goes to contractors, but a lot to pay and services for the troops, retirees and things like that. we do have to have a discussion about the appropriate levels. there's a legitimate date to be had. how much do we need to spend? and not think anybody thinks they can go to zero, but it's a

legitimate debate to have. historically in periods like this it's gone down by as much as a third. >> host: i wonder how much they continue contracting has to do with employment location, employment and location. >> guest: well, i guess what i would say is these are our jobs and it does affect the overall unemployment rate. defense contracting seems to be concentrated in urban areas and a lot of them are really good jobs, well-paid jobs, high skilled workers. cutting back will have an effect on the employment rate. >> host: and are in maine. republican collar. what is the name of your town? >> caller: bowdoin ham. i work in maine and i was wondering what contracts are going on. i just like to know what's going

on without them what they see happening. >> guest: those contracts at everything else will get looked at. does tend to be big contracts with lead times that the navy just signed up for a new contract yesterday for the littoral combat ship. so they may scale back the buyer or the pace of the bill. some money will be cut, but they will cut out programs completely. >> host: if you get rid of defense contract to us, she writes, people lose their jobs. unemployment rate is out. >> caller: yes, i have a question. medical contracts where personnel combat or wars. they go to the va hospital. these medical contracts, do they go directly to drug companies? there's a big problem with folks

like myself to take a particular kind of medicine. the prices are very inflated, but i really don't know. >> host: bill, you're talking about in general. right now is defense contracting. >> caller: i didn't know whether i got on the program late. i was curious when guys come back from wars. >> host: okay. >> caller: they've got to have a specific drug. do they get that directly from the drug companies or three contractor had is that where? >> guest: there's two programs. the military provides help care for 10 million people, military act of duty, family members and retirees. also the veterans administration. they do contract for medical services and buy drugs. sometimes a middleman for

distributor. i think the va has the ability to negotiate, unlike medicare that's prohibited from doing that. so the va is getting a better price on these things. the strikes are not manufactured, so they have to buy them from the company that make them. >> host: we haven't reevaluated military from an application standpoint as far as old tech versus new tech in the enemy has changed. >> guest: there's a lot of discussion. fighting another ground war like iraq or afghanistan. the military doesn't want to do that again and they talk about the strategy released in january of last year about not wanting to do that again. who's the enemy's fighting and the technologies. maybe the big heavy equipment isn't suited to their same-sex space capabilities are cybercapabilities or special operations that receive foreign

affairs. >> host: jeff, go ahead. >> caller: since we are going to reduce the military any time of war since we can't preplan these things, i wonder if they will reenact the draft so they can build the military during that conflict because we haven't been able to plant any of the worst we ever had and i'm concerned about her future. >> host: before you go, what are you in tampa, florida. are you at a base there? >> caller: i have almost 30 years military service between if memory serves. i'm assigned to a yen in orlando florida. >> host: thanks for the phone call. robert levinson. >> guest: thank you for your service, just. we all appreciate that. in terms of a draft we have the selective service system. every male who is 18 or over has to register, so we could

reinstitute a draft. they're talking about cutting the size of the force. everybody lakefield volunteer force, so i don't think it's realistic. at the debates now is that opening up positions for women in combat, there's a discussion whether women will need to register for service as well and that should be an interesting discussion to see go forward as the debate continues. >> host: another phone call in florida. rich, democratic collar in ocala, florida. >> guest: hi, i am concerned. the thing that irks me is the defense contract for weapon system in the contract overruns and it's five times the original contract and the government goes along and paste it. why is that allowed?

is there a penalty? >> host: mr. levinson. >> guest: there are cost overruns. the status of badges coming down, there can be much more aggressive. there's a new contract with boeing for a tanker. there have been some overruns and basically boeing has to eat this cost them a run to the hundreds of millions of dollars. the government says you promised us this price and that's what we'll pay. there are cases for the government is being more discerning about this in forcing contractors to be some of those. on the other hand, the f. 35 fighter jet was first conceived in 1996. technology has changed and sometimes estimating what these things are going to cost in the beginning gets a little tough and there's cost growth that

nobody can anticipate. the government over always been a tougher task master and looking to contract is to eat more and more cause because people are tired of the government paying for the overrun. >> host: back to twitter here. why is that congress is now acting to renegotiate sequestration effects on the pentagon only? who is behind this? >> guest: there've been some moves to renegotiate and the pentagon only. but others if they want to undo this, but i'm not going to insult the pentagon of the skies. some other republicans are more concerned about the pentagon, but the democrats say we don't like any of this and we want to renegotiate all face. the president has said that as well. the pentagon is the biggest bill payer in the sequestration. there's a lot of attention focused on it. >> host: some of our viewers

are late, we're talking about bloomberg's to report on contracts pending with the type tenderest turks for 2012 spending included eight democrats into republicans. chris, jamaica, new york. >> caller: my question is concerning contracts overseas. this morning you covered how we break down the contracts across the united states. others wondered what percentage of contracts are outsourced overseas and i know that would support the economies overseas more than ours. i was curious about that question. also, you mentioned a lot about the f. 35. i thought the f-22 is going to be the last manned aircraft looking forward. so i was kind of concern.

>> host: got it. robert levinson. >> guest: this kind of two questions here. they certainly go to foreign companies. picking up the trash at a base in germany is going to a foreign company. bea is the largest that does a lot of a lot of business themselves. actually some more into the british military. they have a u.s.-based division. so there is some of that and some subcontracting work may be outsourced overseas. i can't trackback anything. the question about the f-35, the f-22 is the last fighter jet we completed. the air force 5187, but the f-35 is a manned aircraft. there's been talk of an inversion because that aircraft is bought. right now the last scheduled by the same 2034.

you may see it go to some sort of unmanned version in the not-too-distant future. things have been going that way. >> host: taurean pittsburgh, go ahead. >> guest: yeah, when clinton was in office for every infantrymen, there's eight logistical people. one army and seven rn -- and now they've got rated for seven contract varies to help maintenance guys do their job. so logistically we are crippled. pad you were talking about if an american come any that merged with them. i can't believe they have done this, that they have crippled the united states army. when we went to iraq, most of

the equipment in that people manning the equipment, so we ran through like it was nothing. these are the spirits are not soldiers. >> guest: off i agree that we've crippled ourselves such a sickly. contractors provide statistics support. there are occasionally issues with that, but i'm not really aware of huge complaint that forces are crippled and unable to do combat mission. if the contractors than being dependent and how many do you deploy forward. if you replace of military personnel, were sometimes they do. often their missions are critical in the combat positions. if they will question of where do we put and rely on them. i don't know if i'd agree that things have been crippled. >> host: a former murray and kevin still, indiana.

my question is, why is it the contractors get paid such large amounts between 100,150,000 for service overseas when the average soldier or marine only makes 38,000? >> guest: is hard to say. contractors to get pretty good salaries, but they can be terminated very quickly. sometimes you have to look at the lifetime costs. they don't always have other benefits. they duke it tax breaks overseas. this is a constant area of debate as to how much contract first charge and how much they should be paid. i do know that there's any agreement. it constantly comes up as an issue. >> host: democratic caller. >> caller: yeah, when i was in the service we did our own staff. we did it for patriotic purpose, not for the money.

we've got a bunch of white elephant sitting at there that cost a billion dollars that's what this for nothing. >> host: mr. levinson, any thoughts quite >> guest: you mentioned kp or kitchen duty. in a lot of cases those are drafty soldiers and we didn't pay them very much. we have an all volunteer force them to want to provide the people who volunteer to pretty good package of salaries and benefits, so it doesn't make sense to pay people in uniform to do these jobs do you compare contractor a lot lies in cases like that to save your men and women in uniform for the critical combat jobs in service in dangerous areas. >> host: frank rizzo wants to know what about closing foreign bases like germany and japan?

>> guest: these are areas under discussed in this part of the overall footprint we still have a lot of forces in japan and germany. we have significant forces in korea and a lot of people think we need to scale back these commitments. there's been various studies about pulling back out of germany where there isn't much of a threat in europe. some is a legacy from the cold war and there's a lot of discussion along those lines. it's not clear how much you save if you press soldiers back home. some of the support cost or receive are paid by foreign governments. this is an area that needs discussed. >> host: woodstock, ohio, republican caller. >> caller: there's two things i want to say. first i want to ask you if you're familiar with the industrial military complex and expand to the audience how it relates to defense spending.

there were colors to ask why shouldn't they didn't have anything to do with the topic this morning and that shows people are not familiar with this sort of thing as much as they need to be. >> guest: to military-industrial contacts. president eisenhower as he left office talked about the military-industrial complex. what he was talking about was the alliance between the defense department in industries that supply and members of congress and lobbyists and people like that. that's certainly something to be concerned about. there were members of congress who have weapons systems because that manufactured in their district. they also get donations from weapons companies and it's not clear they are buying the surface the most important for national security, that helping special interests. when you're spending on the defense budget over half the trillion dollars, there's going to be a lot of people interested in the money we have to be

careful were spinning the great money for the right reasons and not because it is helping out a particular industry or region, but rather something critical for national defense. >> host: well in columbia, tennessee. >> caller: yes, good morning. i appreciate c-span does for us. i was just thinking about the analysts for the money this going in to the defense program. i was thinking about how obama came up during this new town in sudan, where the children were taken out that automatic weapons and how much money goes into a face. i'm a bit late activities going on going on with the drones overseas now that are being used

in the million dollars warheads to either afghanistan or iraq or even iran, which is 30 threaten the united states. the sad thing about the situation is this a bit of hypocrisy going on and it doesn't matter who is taking care of the defense spending. what is happening in the days of jesus christ to the political leaders as well as religious leaders and even the military leaders, just simply said how can you escape the damnation of is coming? we've got great powers and they look as if an easy candidate for how they're taking us. >> host: mr. levinson. >> guest: i don't know anyone who would say that were easy to be overtaken. depending how you measure it, we spend more than the next 17 countries combined on national defense and most of those would

be countries like russia and china are allies of the united states. with cuts that are coming, will still be the dominant military power in the world. we've got aircraft carriers that go all around the world and we still have a nuclear deterrent which is substantial. despite what people say about cuts, we have to be careful to not overhyped them. united states is is the only superpower and will continue to remain the dominant literary power for quite some time. >> host: wife of a federal contractor, is that right? >> caller: that's right. my concern is that it has been asserted the military readiness mission. my husband and my brother, whereby generation military family. the problem that i'm seeing is in two weeks i have spent will

be further. so these cuts are going to affect the training and readiness of the military, which will at some point weaken the military. sawicki. we are a large power as far as military is concerned and that is true. but if we start cutting deeply into the readiness programs and things like that, it will have a serious impact. my brother has already been laid out and he builds military training facilities all over the united states. he works for a subcontractor that does that is already been laid off. so we are getting into dangerous territory with our nation. >> tma brings up a really good po