>> so from the standpoint of eliminating that possibility that there was in this case a conus in the united states connection, i think that's another important attribute of section 215. >> thank you. general alexander, under current law when one of these so-called mistakes occurs that you refer to in your testimony, i believe

you said they were somewhat less than 3000 of them had occurred, that the current law requires at the immediate report those to the fisa court, which you do. the current law does not require that the report those mistakes congress. but you do so on your own. and i assume you have no objection to us changing the law to mandate that nsa report both to the fisa court, the administration, as well as the congress for any of those instances that might occur? >> i personally have no objection, senator, to that. i think it makes sense. i would just add that both 2776 include executive orders and fisa court your so it's all the possible areas we make across all our authorities. only a small portion of those really apply to the fisa court ones as well.

>> thank you. >> thank you, senator. member snowe we're going to go by seniority for five minute rounds. senator rockefeller. >> thank you, madam chair. i have prepared a statement so i'm going to use a little bit of my question time to make a statement. as i compare what the control over information, telephone calls analysis, data sharing between branches of government, congressional participation in oversight, around the years 2001, and a number of years beyond that, until we passed the fisa act, the patriot act, there is a world of difference so

large that it's almost impossible to explain. i'm all for public meetings, ma and i'm glad we're having them listed by the only thing i really care about is that we get it right. we did it right within the government. and that we don't ever go back to the days, you know, the chairman and vice chairman of the intelligence community are deemed to be briefed in the situation room of the house and the senate. basically told nothing, and then proclaimed to have been briefed which therefore releases the administration to do whatever they want. i lived through those days, so did senator feinstein, so did senator chambliss, and they were bad. we were helpless. we couldn't even approach doing

oversight because nobody would meet with us and nothing was shared with us. it's very different today. and i think it's because of the very solid groundwork which has been laid for fisa and other areas, 215, 702. there are some who want to outsource some of the work and the metadata to, for example, the telecommunications companies which service we use, and we gave them blanket immunity for so doing, which was very contentious back women make that decision but it was right because they were getting sued. no people involved, just a machinery. but i just think it would be the worst and we could do.

i feel so strongly about this. we have a system which now works. amazingly to me, it's a system that works as well as it does after such a short period of time now that it is in place. i don't think, general alexander, there are any willful leaks within the fisa program itself. i think they are all elsewhere. maybe that indicates we work to do, but in the main work we do it right. that's all i care about. i don't want to, you know, i like telephone companies and i'm chairman -- one of the biggest things is data brokers. data brokers feast upon available information, which the telecommunication companies collect just by definition of

the work that they do. they pay top dollar for information about people that they can use and then use commercially to their advantage and to the disadvantage of all the rest of us. nobody can say that everybody in government is perfect, but when i look at the three people before me and i think of the business that i have made, you know, to your places, the intensity of accepting responsibility and dealing with it honorably and toughly, i don't think american people will ever understand the fisa court, how that works, how that really works. what they are like, what the powers that they have. that we do here. and it's what gives me a very

strong sense that yes, the chairman and vice chairman have suggested a number of amendments, many or most of which i agree with, which can be made to improve the process. but the groundwork is built. utility bills a roman forum and then build another one next door because you found a mistake. you take what you've got, which is fundamentally very sound in my mind, i trust in my mind, to do what i care about, which is to protect our national secrets and our national security. and then you make amendments as you need to do that. obviously, people can make mistakes. obviously, any technology, especially the vast amounts that are available to nsa, there's going to be some problems. but they are not willful.

they are accidental. they are reported immediately, and if they involve people they are dealt with immediately. and it's a fair and honorable process. i say that not just to be your friend, which i'm not interested in that. i mean, i am but i'm not, professionally. i want our system to work right. and if we can make it better, let's make it better, but let's not, for fear of the public saying, oh, that wasn't well understood. that headline really made me nervous. let that not deter us from our job, which is to make, to keep the foundation safe, make it safer where it can be done, and then go about our business. thank you. >> thank you. a few very much, senator rockefeller. senator risch. >> thank you, madam chairman. general alexander, you ticked off the successes that have

taken place as a result of the operation of these laws. i think everybody on this panel is aware of those, but my understanding is, correct me if i'm wrong, the majority of those cases, the details are still classified, am i right on that? >> senator, that is correct. >> is really unfortunate that the american people don't have access to that. having said that i understand why they can't. my view of this is that, you know, this country was born by people who had a deep, deep skepticism of government and its intrusion and its intrusion into the personal life. that continues today. indeed, the governmengovernmen t itself has five that along a little bit from time to time, most recently with his irs scandal that's taken place. what we're involved in here with what you do, certainly is

something that is involved in that category of mistrust that the american people have. and so as we proceed with this, from myself, i'm going to be focus on the privacy, which is important for the american people, but at the same time reaching the goal of keeping america safe from the terrorists that you do, and actually have done very well. obviously, we've had some incidents, but with what you have reiterated their would have been a whole lot more had he done, what the intelligence community had done what he did, so thank you for what you do. i think the chairman and vice chairman have wisely taken us down this road to see if we can fine-tune this summer, and that's on going to be looking at it. thank you, madam chairman. >> thank you very much, senator.

senator wyden. >> thank you, madam chair. try to let me commend you for holding an open hearing, in my view open hearings are key to robust intelligence oversight and it allows the american people to be part of an informed debate about policy, the policy to protect both our security and liberty. and it's being done once again without in any way disclosing the details of secret operations, and i commend you for that. gentlemen, you talk in your opening statement about the damage that was done by recent disclosure. i believe any government official who thought that the intrusive constitutionally flawed surveillance system would never be disclosed is ignoring history. as senators point out on the senate floor two years ago, even a quick read of history shows that in america the truth always manages to come out.

notwithstanding the extraordinary professionalism and patriotism of thousands of dedicated, intelligent professionals, the leadership of your agency built and intelligence collection system that repeatedly deceived the american people. time and time again, the american people were told one thing about domestic surveillance in public forums, while government agencies did something else in private. now the secret interpretations of the law and violations of constitutional rights of americans, public, your agencies faced terrible consequences that were not planned for. the loss of trust in our intelligence apparatus here at home, with friendly foreign allies and that trust will take time to rebuild. and in my view this loss of trust undermines america's ability to collect intelligence

on real threats, and every member of this committee knows there are very real threats out there. the joint testimony today blames the media and others. the fact is this could've been avoided if the intelligence leadership had been straight with the american people and not acted like deceptions that were practiced for years could last for ever. i hope this is a lesson that your agencies are going to carry into the future. i also want to note, i think it's helpful senator feinstein mentioned the markup that would be held next week. with respect to her bill yesterday, senator udall and i along with senator paul and senator blumenthal introduced bipartisan reform legislation as well. and we will as part of that markup advance our proposal, and suffice it to say i think we all know we'll have a vigorous debate on those issues. now with respect to questions,

let me start with you, general alexander. as you all know if my practice to notify you in advance there will be any surprises about the kind of issues that i'm going to get into. and general alexander, about two dozen other senators have asked in the past whether the nsa has ever collected or made any plans to collect american cell site information? would be your response to that? >> on july 25, director clapper provided an unwritten response as was a classified supplement with additional detail. allow me to reaffirm what was stated in the unclassified response. under section 215, nsa is not receiving cell site location data and has no current plans to do so. as you know i indicated to this committee on october 20, 2011,

that i would notify congress of nsa's intent to obtain cell site location data prior to any such plans being put in place. as you may also be aware -- >> general, if i might -- >> i still have a few more because of -- >> i think where all the money with it. that's not the question i'm asking, respectfully. i'm asking, has the nsa ever collected or ever made any plans to collect american cell site information. that was the question. we still do not fully have not gotten an entity. could you give me an entity that? >> we did. we sent the -- please allow me to continue. as you're also aware i expressly reaffirmed to this commitment to the committee on june 25, 2013. finally, in the most recent and now declassified opinion, renewing this program, the fisa court made clear in footnote number five that notice to the court in a briefing would be

required if the government were to seek production of cell site location information as part of the bulk production of called to tell records. additional details were also provided in the classified supplement to director clapper's july 25 response to this question. so i don't want to do, senator, is put out in an unclassified forum anything that is classified here. i'm reading it exactly -- so we sent both of those to you. i saw what director clapper said and i agree with it. >> general, if you are responding to my question by not answering it because you think that's a classified matter, that is certainly your right. we will continue to explore that because i believe this is something the american people have a right to know, whether the nsa has ever collected or made plans to collect cell site information. i understand your answer. i'll have additional questions on the next round.

thank you, madam chair. >> madam chairman, the word of trust has come up a couple of times here, and i think that's clearly something that we are having to deal with. that makes it difficult to convince the american people that very significant measures have been taken to protect their privacy. what's disturbing to me is that despite the information that has been provided, declassified, made available to the public, directly available to the media has not resulted in always accurate analysis and presentation by the media, or understanding by the public. maybe they just don't want to believe it. i was shocked one morning in listening to a major network

program on one of the major networks have been discussed previously with general alexander, general clapper and others at nsa, that that media outlet had been briefed, given relevant, classified information to certain people who were in charge of this programming the only to have in a discussion during that program the comment i believe individual of, look, they are listening to everything we say. this was after a detailed discussion about the programs, but nsa does and what it doesn't do, what the intelligence community does and doesn't do. knowing the leadership of those media outlets had been briefed and given accurate information.

and yet because it's pleasing to the public, because you have to throw raw meat out there to people who refuse to look at the facts, this continues. i don't know how we address this problem. i commend you, madam chairman, and the co-chair, for having an open hearing here. i don't know how many press opportunity oppressed people or others will walk away and at least give an accurate analysis and reporting of what is said here. but it's very frustrating to know that we have programs that comply with the law, that have been approved by the congress, that have been approved by the president of the united states, that are saving american slides, and there are efforts to compromise those programs to convince a non-trusting public. i guess my question goes to this. and that is, we will be

presented with a number of proposals in terms of how to further protect american's privacy. what i would like to know is your very clear and direct and unpleasant his analysis and conclusions as to what kind of compromises to our operational programs would be the result, if we implemented these reforms. what is the consequence of trying to convince the public that apparently doesn't want to be convinced, what is the consequence in terms of compromise of operations, loss of life of those who have dedicated their life to trying to protect americans? what are we losing by having to go through this tortured exercise of continuing to get feedback, that no matter what we

say, no matter what is provided, no matter the fisa court is now looked down on as can't be trusted, do we need another organization to oversee the fisa court, to oversee the programs? how can we trust that second organization if we can't put our trust in this committee, in this congress, in this president that's what we're trying to do here is provide protection and privacy for the american people to save their lives from another horrible, poor situation like 911. we have proven we presented these programs from going forward. we will not probably always be successful. but had we not had these programs in place, i would hate to think about what we would be talk about up here this morning, the kind of headlines and incidences we would have been reporting and the public's demand for why you didn't, if you had the capability to stop

it, why were you prevented from doing it? i guess i don't have a question. my time is up. >> thank you very much. you don't want an answer? [inaudible] >> do any of you want to enter? >> well, let me briefly comment. i think you have very eloquently captured the level of frustration we have on how to counter the popular narrative. it's been a great frustration for us. as a consequence, we have i think in some risk management here in terms of opening up as much as we can. recognizing the importance of transparency and restoring trust with the american people. transparency, as i've said before, is a two edged sword. so it's transparent for the american people, it's transparent for our adversaries, too. so the to the extent that we have these discussions about how

long will store stuff or how many hops and all these kinds of things, adversaries go to school on that, too. i think we all feel though, and i'll ask others to comment, that fundamentally though if we don't have the trust and confidence of the american people, then all that is for not. so i think we have aired on the side of being transparent and being as open, but you're quite right. there are risks here. >> senator, if i could just add to that. i agree with what you said, and i would add my professional, personal opinion, if we didn't have 215, there is a higher probability, a much higher probability a terrorist act would have occurred. and i'm concerned about that and i think we as americans should be concerned about that. there are some measures that we can take, ma but the real issue that we have here and that you put on the table is the american

people doesn't have a forum that we can have a classified said the discussions that we can go off and say, here's what we're going to do, trust me, which is going after this guy. have all the bad guys stand outside the town hall and all the good people get in there, we could reveal a lot more information. but the reality is we can't do that. so we have a process set up where we can bring to the congress intcongress and to thed to the administration information that allows us to share that with the fbi, and go after that people were trying to do us harm. we have to have a process to do that. and i know everybody would like to know what's going on, but at the end of the day you get the key point, ma from my perspective. i would much rather be sitting here today defending what we are doing and being here today telling you why we failed to connect the dots once again. >> thank you very much. senator udall. >> thank you, madam chair. good afternoon to all of you.

when i started serving on this committee two years ago, i determined early on that our surveillance laws needed reform. and since then i've been proud to lead the fight along with senator wyden, and others. and now that more details of the nsa surveillance programs ever legal justifications have emerged, we are seeing a growing consensus. you here today on this committee that the status quo is unacceptable and that reforms are needed. we've heard a lot of talk about rebuilding trust and creating more transparency. and we can rebuild trust with real reform. senator wyden and i yesterday introduced comprehensive legislation that would drive real reform. and i look forward very much to our markup next week and working with all the members of this committee. general alexander, if i might turn to you initially. the recently released documents that lay out the fisa courts

interpretation of relevance in the context of section 215, to mean that the government can collect the phone records a million americans on a daily ongoing basis. if i could i would like to ask you three quick yes or no questions. under the fisa courts analysis, are their upper limits on the number of telephone records you can collect? isn't the goal of the in state to collect the phone records of all the americans? and finally do you believe that the courts analysis gives the nsa the authority to collect other kinds of old records in addition to telephone records? >> again, if you give me a yes or no answer to those three questions i would appreciate it. >> and i'm going to ask, because i'm not a lawyer, reading the penny, i'll give you the answer but i would ask the deputy attorney general to make sure that i think each of these exactly right, if we could. to my knowledge, there is no

upper limit. no. i'm not sure what your second question was. i was trying to write that down. >> isn't the goal of the intake to put the phone records of all americans? you talk about building a haystack. you want that haystack to be the ultimate size to? i believe it's in the nation's best interest to put all the phone records into a lockbox, that we could search when the nation needs to do it, yes. and the reason, and the way we do it and the way we comply would ensure better security for this nation. so the oversight and compliance regime that we have is going to be key to that. and does this give us the authority to collect other records? as i noted, footnote number five, the court has said hold off if you want to do a cell site data or plan to do that, you have to come back to the court. data into those rights to? as you know, this is records can be defined to be financial statements, utility bills, the list is a long list and i think there is legitimate concern on

the part of americans as to what could be collected. >> i think there is legitimate concern on that, and i think the fisa court 215 opinion doesn't allow any kind of record to be collected in both. if you look at the opinion, what it really hinges on is what it is we're looking for a first place. this is what relevance also goes to. to find the kind of telephone calls between people a reason to believe to be involved in terrorist activities with certain organizations and the people who their associated with. the court said the only reasonable way you can do that is by collecting all of these records so that you have that to look to enjoy look for the part you have reason to look at. there are lots of other kinds of records out there that you may not have that same kind of structure. and that you wouldn't be able to get the court to approve it because that same structure and

necessity will be present. so it's all going to rise and fall on the particular circumstances of the records and what your looking for. >> you don't think the court is going to nsa the authority now to collect both the records? >> given them the authority to collect bulk records if they can show it is necessary in order to find something relevant to a foreign intelligence investigation of particular types. but you're going to have to go to that showing. it's not just all bulk records was also not know bulk records but it'll depend on the purpose. >> i may want to explore this at a limited by want to turn to director clapper. in the spirit of transparency, jenna, which you agreed to declassify the full history of the bold collection program? >> not having read it, i would like to take that for the record. i was sure to look at i think as a general premise we are pushing transparency and we will declassify as much as we can. but i would rather read these documents and get some invites

from general counsel about it. >> my time has run out the i have many, many more questions. >> thanks, senator. appreciate it. senator rubio. >> thank you and thank you, john for being here today. this is an interesting issue to try to balance, especially when you explain to people back home. on the one hand, i'm going to echo a lot of us in the coach said but i think people understand the need to register before country although sometimes the years go by we tend to forget the threats that we face because they've been prevented in many instances. on the other hand, i think when you stand people of these privacy expectation. sometimes their privacy rights per se but they are certain expectations. americans are very uncomfortable with the notion that government that they want to see every phone call they made and everyone they call. i think all of us is for the competition but a general distrust of the federal government which is been exacerbated by the fact that it

is a history in the country of abusing intelligence information for political purposes. obviously not in recent times but in the past. these are things that people are concerned about. so now the question is how do we balance all this? on the one hand i understand the idea that the government could get your phone records anytime they want and see who you've been calling and people would think they could be targeted. as i told people osama bin laden had been making greater cost to someone on wall street, i guarantee it wasn't a stockbroker. we want to know what was. these are things we want to balance. but in light of that i wanted to talk about safeguarding so maybe the american people have a better understanding of the things that are already there that protect. i've noticed in some of the information that's been made available that there's a significant amount of resources at the nsa that are devoted to safeguarding the privacy of americans. can you, transport, discussed in more detail the size and scope

of the nsa safeguards to ensure that information about americans are protected from these sorts of things? >> senator, thanks for that question, because we do have extensive safeguards on this program and other programs to ensure that civil liberties and privacy of our people. what i mean by that is that everyone at nsa is a trained under what we call, or how we protect americans communication should we run across those. given the nature of the internet today, the probability that you'll run across a u.s. persons information is high. so in this business record, vice and others, the faa 702, we train our people through a series of programs of what they do and what they have to do when they run across u.s. persons information. but it doesn't stop there. every action to our people take is audited when they go through a collection process whether it's 702 or executive order

1233. every person putting putting something on collection, someone audits what they're doing and why they're doing it. so if, for example, i was on the position and start to target something in the united states, a flag would come up. somebody with a wire doing that? i would have to show the rationale and the authority i was using to do that collection. so we train our people on how to protect u.s. persons dated. we train them on the tools they have, the safeguards that are in the tools, and i give you a great one on the business records fisa. to ensure we don't make a typographical error. and by mistake after my records but if it's one off from a terrorists record. the numbers that are approved for suspicion are put in the list. you may recall in 2012 there were less than 300 of those approved. so there's a list of less than

300 numbers that could be used to query that database, and only those numbers would work. you had to type in the number. it had to match one of those on the list and then your query could be conducted. spent my time is going to expire. it had been reporting immediate of other agencies in the federal government what information the individual or organizations have been leaked to the press. potentially for political purposes. explained to me the safeguards are in place now of someone who works inside of one of these organizations, the nsa or elsewhere, decided that they wanted to target somebody or gather and release information about an individual american. what are the safeguards that would be in place to prevent that from happening? >> there's a couple of safeguards. first, the ability to collect, the capability go after some collection. collection. you have to have the tools to do that. in this case you would have to go into the fisa court to get an order to go after a u.s. persons. >> that would make it legal but what about access to the technology that would allow them to do its?

>> in most cases we compel a courier to give us that information, like google on e-mail, or facebook. so it's compelled nature. went to go to them to get it. for our ability to get into the google server somebody would have to hack that, what actually have to hack into the. if you use the nsa infrastructure chances are you would get caught, and if that's a willful violation can you are going to face court time, jail time spent who would you get caught by? >> by the auditing system and by our people. so the actions that people take our audited. in other words, when you go to do something, when you go to collect after somebody, in order to get the information you have to put the selectors into a system that our audited and their auditable. for our director of compliance within our directorate we have people who check on what you're doing and make sure -- >> that's my last question. so it's impossible for an individual working in this

agency to access information about another individual without others in the organization knowing that they're doing at? >> it's not impossible. people get caught doing it to those are those 12 cases and those were overseen what he did overseas. so detecting an overseas number is a lot harder than when you of an overseas location clicking on a foreign, that's where a lot of those incidents occurred. in the united states you have blacks, automatically telling you this is a u.s., wired are you doing that? that pops up. i can't say 100% this is always going to be a case. we haven't found one under the fisa were someone has willfully or knowingly done that. we haven't found. now, every complaint issue that we run across we report. so we are looking for those. i am sure that somebody will someday make a mistake. hopefully it will be unintentional. we will catch them. we will report it. they would either go through

retraining or lose their clearance. >> thanks senator rubio. senator warner. >> thank you, madam chair. thank you for having this hearing. a couple of comments. one, i'm relatively new this to pashtun new to this committee but i events tremendously impressed by the workforce of the intelligence community, their commitment to our country. and i do feel at times because of sometimes some of the misreporting in the press, an awful lot of good americans who will never be recognized for what they done to keep our country safe get brushed with some the claims that have been made in the press. that being said, i appreciate senator rubio trying to drill down on your internal precautions. some of us on the committee, many of us on the committee, we view these as well.

some of these numbers he laid out today, general alexander, about a vast number of these, the gross number is important. but i do think we have to acknowledge as we try to sort through this that whole lott of the american people have lost trust in what you're doing. and quite honestly, a bunch of senators saying it's okay, may not regain that trust. even with the reports to congress, to the administration, i worry sometimes that some politics today you seem to demonize anyone who source of public service, assumes the federal government can never do anything right. and saying these are linked to this debate. but it doesn't enhance agenda reputation of anyone who serves in the public sector.

as we look at some of the solution sets, i want to at least affiliate with senator rockefeller's comments. i spent a good deal of time in the telecom industry before i got into public service. all of the top line, something that appears reasonable about segregating this data off and remember, we all know the these are data servers one place or another, but i really need to see a lot more information about how keeping, if you were to keep information, i know countries in europe have chosen this, how you actually don't actually expand the possibilities of privacy violations because of the number of checkers, the ability to keep track of this david will be at a variety of locations. and again, from litigation standpoint and a suit of other concerns it raises. so i do want to get to a

question. one of the things i saw in your testimony, director clapper, wasn't openness to some notion of some outside nongovernmental amicus that would be wrote respected that could be that outside checker somewhere along the process whether it's in relationship to the fisa court and as we continue to think about it the definitions of privacy, new type noted, advances. i think went to acknowledge at least at this moment in time that even if these protections meet a very, very high standard, if there was a great deal of loss of trust and that we have to be willing to think about simply within some kind of tools that outside of the formal governmental channels to kind of help revalidate what you do.

i would like you to expand on the. i want to give conflict for syndicating and senator levin for the good work they've done in this area. >> i think we are generally in agreement with some form of friend of the court who could be outside the processes as it works today who could be there to render a perspective on questions of law. general, do you want to add -- >> this is an area where i think we are in agreement but i think we need to be a little bit careful. because we want to both preserve the ability to have an advocate coming and really add that peace which i think would be an important piece. when there's a significant legal issue, some sort of novel legal issue, and a port legal issue that the court would like to havhave another point of view o, large programs elect somebody bulk collection could be done. but much of what happens in fisa is very routine. and like criminal wiretaps or search warrants where there isn't a person on the other side, that should be allowed to go on. >> mr. kohl, i guess, i will

lead with this comment, my concern is i'm going back to john alexander's earlier comments, where he said we've got a lot of great americans, it would be great to get the good guys inside the town hall and share with them all the more, you can't then stop the bad guys from knowing about that. we sure as i got to be able to finally some good guys in america it can be inside that town hall and perhaps get a little more breathing, although more information to you may need to stretch a little more that are not officially aligned with the governmental structure. but i think that would help reassure americans and continue to allow you to do the very important job that you do. so i would urge you, using the very analogy that you used, that we think about this not just in a legalistic way but we get some appropriate considerations to extend the king and senator levin and i think others on this committee are bothered about. we do have to acknowledge this challenge we have with the loss

of faith from the vast majority of the american public. >> i think that's a great point and i think that's one of the roles that privacy and civil liberties oversight board, which is i think in that same venue, could serve. because we've had them, seeing the systems, and perhaps a way for them to attach that to the american people, kind of a separate party whose focus is privacy and civil liberties. so there may be something to that. >> thank you very much, senator warner. senator collins. >> thank you, madam chairman. senator warner's question is the perfect segue into the question that i was going to ask, director clapper. director clapper, you and i first worked together in 2004 when, along with senator joe lieberman, i drafted the intelligence reform and terrorism prevention act, and

that created the very job that you now hold. it also included an important safeguard which was the creation of the privacy and civil liberties oversight board. the board has been slow to get appointed and fully staffed up, but i think what would be helpful if you explained to the committee the role that the board is now playing with regard to the intelligence program. >> thanks, senator collins, and you're quite right to recall that carried a formation of the i rtca. the privacy and civil liberties board, oversight board is up and running. they have all their members aboard. we are providing support to them in terms of administrative support since had to operate in a classified environment.

but i want to stress the fact that they are very much independent, just as a special review group that the white house, the president has appointed i am supporting them administrative and with respect to the housing and access to classified information but they do not report to me. i just want to make that clear. it could serve in the role that sender -- general alexander suggested i would caveat though by saying their charter right now is limited only to ct matters, counterterrorism matters. so if they were to take on a broader charter, a broader mantle, that charter would need to be changed. my observations are that they have been very serious and conscientious about taking on this role now that they are fully up and running. they have embarked on a series

of visits, orientation visits. they are quite anxious to be active and to be useful. i think as this concept matures, they perhaps could serve a broader purpose. >> thank you. general alexander, you've been very clear today that the bulk collection program does not involve the collection of the content of telephone calls. there is, as many of my colleagues have indicated, a great misunderstanding about that among the american public. and i hope that this hearing has put that to rest once and for all. you've also made clear that you're a foreign intelligence agency. what i think would be helpful for us all to better understand is what happens when you get a

hit from a number that is associated with a foreign terrorist and you query the system and and americans phone number comes up. what happens then? do you still pursue it? does it get turned over to the fbi? what, is a court order then required? what is the standard for that court-ordered? >> senator, thanks. because you bring ou up a great point in terms of what we do. we are looking at a person overseas associated with al qaeda or associated groups. and we have some, some connection with a phone number to that person. we prove that phone connects to them with a reasonable suspicion and document that. once we had a documented, that number is on that list, what we call the emphatic aspect list.

when we create what we can do is find out what are the connections to that number, what does the network look like. we can take that and compare that with some of our information from overseas to see if the other connections with other numbers that are of interest or would be of interest. we cannot do anything beyond that with the u.s. persons part. our job, really, and it's a great question back here earlier, our job is to support the fbi and their investigation by providing them the information they need on the domestic side to then go and look at that number. they have to go through all of the appropriate court and work processes, the national security matters, whatever is appropriate, and they do that well. we provide that to them. what we can do with our capability though is speed, agility, and the foreign nexus. they can't get any other way.

and the partnership with the fbi in this case has been extraordinary. >> thank you. i think, madam chairman, that's a really important point, that it's not been well understood. that if an american is identified, it then is turned over to the fbi. and if a wiretap is needed at that point, it goes to a federal court, or the fisa court. and i believe the standard is probable cause at that point, once you have done the first identification. mr. cole, if i'm wrong, if you'd go ahead and speak no, that's correct, center. we want to get the content of any indication that on the person we have to go to the fisa court. and if it's a foreign intelligence matter and show probable cause that there is reasonable -- reasonably this

person as a foreign agent or foreign our and this is a foreign intelligence investigation. if it's criminal we have to go to regular articles record and show that there is probable cause to believe this person is involved in a crime and will get the kind of evidence with in order of the court to listen. but this as a neutral magistrate and the probable cause standard. >> thank you. >> thank you, senator collins. you, senator king were the first year. you were the last right now, but i just want you to know how much your service on this committee is appreciated. it is extraordinarily valued, and thank you for being so patient. >> thank you. it's often an advantage to be last, madam chair, because then you can hear what gone on before. gentlemen, if a historian look back at this. i think he would say that september 11 changed the world. that's a kind of commonplace observation but it seems to be in the history of warfare change the world because it pointed out

that we're in a different kind of war that we were before. we used to defend ourselves first with force, and with the mine harbors, and with antiaircraft. it strikes me that in the new world of international terrorism, our principal line of defense these intelligence. because you can't build at the aircraft that takes out some guy coming in on a tramp steamer who, with an atomic bomb in a suitcase. it's got to be intelligence, and that's what makes what you are doing so incredibly important and what i think is a fundamentally different world of conflict. and, therefore, you have to be distilled with certain powers, but that's what we run into the constitution, and rightfully so. we want to serve the preamble paragraph to provide for the common defense ensure the domestic can really. that's the business you're in. on the other hand, we have the fourth amendment and the arteries affections of privacy. what we are struggling with is how to balance those. i happen to believe that collecting these records is

vitally important, and you indicated a number of plots that have been foiled. my problem is, as you know, it will be any surprise to you or the committee, has been a concern about where these records set. now, we have a number of discussions, and i'm struggling to find a way to satisfy the public's trust and also the kind of institutional concern without compromising what it is that you do. general alexander, you mentioned a couple times today about the audit, and you use the phrase flags, up. here's the suggestion, if you can respond off-the-cuff or you can think about and talk to your technical people. how about if the flight comes up somewhere, i want to fly to come up in an essay and have the audit, but what is the flag also comes up in the fisa office? or in the privacy board so that there is some outside record of

the fact that somebody is going into that database? and then they can be, the fisa court and say, okay, in the second you've given us the record for the last 30 days, here we noticed there was a 43rd time that's not in your report. something like that technically feasible but doesn't have to be another body, another group, another human being but could simply be a technical, part of the program so that someone else outside of the nsa is alerted to the fact that the database has been queried. >> sender, great set of points. on the business record 215 and in a 72, those are all documented, all the queers are document. everything is done just as you said that anyone who touches that data, a record is made of it, justice and others can actually go through. so there is no problem sharing that with whomever. from a technical perspective,

showing that in time, you could probably set up a process. the issue that senator rubio come if i could just clarify a point, or remember, our system covers only those things from the fisa court, business records, 215, 702, three, four, which has those kind of restrictions and stuff but also the rest of the foreign intelligence system, in that what i was responding to was looking at the foreign side of this also sang if somebody tried to use that against us or did it in a program, we also have audit tools there. i was just trying to bring that out. in this case though, on the 215 there is extensive auditing and documentation of every query that goes into the database and the controls to do that. >> but all the auditing takes place within the executive branch of the government. the genius of our constitution is checks and balances that involve different branches and that's why i say could the flag go up at the fisa court as well? just to know that there was a query. it wouldn't be a permission but

it wouldn't be a response or anything else, but just the fact that a query has occurred seems to me, it would make me feel more comfortable as opposed to putting the records and a whole separate body. >> scented, i see no technical reason no operational recent not do, so yes. >> thank you very much. one for the question. mr. cole, you mentioned and i think it's important that the administration is actually supportive of some additional advocacy function within this process. and i think that's important for our consideration, because that could be part of our bill. i certainly hope you will submit to us language which will express how far you think you should go, under what circumstances. and i understand what you're saying is that the advocation got every single case, but should be available to advocate for the public, if you will, or the privacy interest in policy

cases. i commend you for taking that position, and i hope that you will give us some help in terms of specific language. because right now that's not in our potential bill, and i'd like to see some language, to perhaps pursue the. >> would be happy to work with you on that, and we think that would be an added feature here, and strike the right balance and give a perspective that could be important. >> thank you. thank you, madam chair, and thank you for generous comments. >> thank you very much, senator. appreciate it. that completes our first round. dissenters want a second round? however, we have to nongovernmental witnesses i think that are important to hear. we haven't done that before. i have to be on the floor at 5:00, but be willing if senator chambliss can stay to give you a second round after the two witnesses. senator wyden, senator udall, is that agreeable?

>> madam chair, i appreciate your courtesy. i have two questions. i want to be gracious to college. i can give them both done within five minutes. >> then why don't you do them now? then we won't keep others? >> is that acceptable to call his? >> anybody disagree? >> madam chair, i think all of us have additional questions. i think it's a little -- i thought you're going to do one round, go to the next panel. i certainly don't object. >> no, no. country in deference to senator collins, i will not ask these questions now. i, too, have to be on the floor. all senators are happy with that, and perhaps i can find a way to get to the fore and back otherwise i will post them in writing. but in deference to senator collins i won't ask them this time spent thank you very much. gentlemen, thank you.

we will proceed to the second panel. ben wittes and tim edgar. >> [inaudible conversations] >> [inaudible conversations]

>> quickly. mr. wittes. okay, i'm going to introduce the two of you, and then we will begin with mr. wittes and go to mr. edgar, if that's agreeable to benjamin wittes is a senior fellow in governance studies at the brookings institution. he is editor-in-chief of lawfare, how they regarded nine ideological national security law blog. this blog is regally read by members and staff come and understand that mr. wittes has, on occasion, consulted with our committee staff. so thank you for your frequent commentary and/or availability. you are the author of several books, a member of the hoover

institution task force on national security and law. you have previously served as an editorial writer for the "washington post," specializing in legal affairs. and as a reporter and news editor at legal time. ur graduate of oberlin college. tim edgar is a visiting fellow at the watson institute or international studies at brown university. and an adjunct professor of law at georgetown university law center. he served under president obama as the first director of privacy and civil liberties for the white house national security staff. focusing on cybersecurity, open government and data privacy initiatives. from '06-'09 he was the first deputy for civil liberties and a director of national intelligence, greater new surveillance authorities, a terrorist watchlist and other sensitive programs. prior to his government service, he was a counsel for the american civil liberties union where he advocated for safe guards for a number of post-9/11

initiatives, including the u.s.a. patriot act. it was a lot on the united states court of appeals, for the first circuit. he has a jd from harvard where he served on the harvard law review and graduated from dartmouth college. ..

>> in his press conference of august 9th, president obama said with respect to fisa saw that he believes #werbd have, quote, greater oversight, greater transparency and more con straintds on the use of this authority. so i was going to, in these remarks, describe some major opportunities i see toward these goals in the wake of the both disclosed and the undisclosed --

sorry, the authorized and unauthorized disclosures this summer. but frankly, your comments in your opening remarks, chairman feinstein, covered some of that ground and, frankly, my extended views on that subject are in my written statement. so what i'd like to do instead is make two broad points, sort of high altitude points about the stakes involved in this discussion. and the first involves our oversight structures and their integrity and what we are talking about when we say the word "transparency" in this context. so transparency, obviously, is a really important value in any democracy, but when you're talking about intelligence collection activity, it is not a simple value. and, in fact, normally with respect to intelligence programs we consider transparency as an evil because some things have to be secret, and in the context of

those things, transparency is not necessarily a virtue and some light is not necessarily a disinfectant. and in the case, in the wake of watergate, congress set up a series of reforms to the oversight and accountability system for intelligence, and notably transparency, as such, was not really part of them. the system was designed, rather, to create accountability without transparency. at its deepest level, the controversy that has followed the snowden leaks reflects a loss of faith in the continued vitality of this set of reforms. and so i support your efforts very muchas transparency in this area, but i think it's really important when we speak of transparency to decide as a threshold matter whether what we're talking about is a loss of faith in that system or whether we're talking

about transparency in the context of a system that presumes that people will be keeping secrets. so i want to lay my cards on the table about that and say i still believe in the basic integrity of the post-watergate structures of which this committee is a part. and in my view, nothing in the current disclose yours should -- disclosures should cause us to lose faith in the essential integrity of this system of delegated intelligence oversight, delegated both within the congressional context and within the judicial context. rather, the disclosures should give the public great confidence both in the oversight mechanisms that are at work here and in the underlying activity of the intelligence community and its legality. so just briefly, let me say i've gone through the declassified material very carefully, and these disclosures, to my mind, show no evidence of intentional unlawful spying on americans or

abuse of civil liberties. they a show a remarkably low rate of the sort of errors that any complex system of technical collection will inevitably produce. they show very robust compliance procedures, as mr. delong's quip earlier today reflect. they show earn and serious -- earnest and serious efforts to keep this congress informed, notwithstanding some members' protestations to the contrary. and they show a remarkable dialogue with the fisk about the parameters of the agency's legal authorities and a real commitment both to keeping the court informed of activities and complying with the fisk's judgment. the fisk, meanwhile, in these documents looks nothing like the rubber stamp that it's portrayed to be in countless caricatures. it looks, rather, like a serious judicial institution of considerable energy. and so to the extent that members agree with this

analysis, as i know many members of this committee do, the first task, it seems to me, in the current environment is to defend the existing structures publicly and energetically as both you and vice chairman chambliss have done and not to race to correct imagined structural deficiencies in the system. and critically, it seems to me the defense of these mechanisms necessarily involves a defense of some degree of limitations on transparency as well as the injection of transparency into that system. in other words, the challenge of transparency here is a really subtle one. it's to inject transparency within the basic confines of an oversight system that's actually designed to protect secrets. so the second broad, high-altitude point i want to make concerns the stakes with respect to the underlying activity itself.

there's, you know, there's this word we throw around, big data. there's no real word for the era before big data. so i guess z you can call it the old data era or the small data era. but in the small data era, whatever you want to call it, there was one model that we used to think about the relationship between collection and use of data by the government. and the model worked, basically, it had a very small aperture for collection. great restrictions on collection. but then once you'd collected material, there were very few restrictions on what you could do with it. and so you had, think about it as a small aperture for collection and then, essentially, no rules regarding what you do with the information. the era of big data, i think inevitably flips that on its head. we have a much, much wider -- and we're going to have a much, much wider -- aperture for collection as an initial matter. and we're going to have

neurorotically-detailed rules of use, exploitation and handling. and what constrains the use of that material once collected is law. and the question -- that puts enormous substantive premium -- enormous premium on the substantive law that this congress writes unless you believe that the intelligence agencies will not follow the law. and so the question is, how scared of this model should we be where you have a wide aperture for collection, really restrictive rules of use, and the major, major thing that's restraining that use is substantive law. and i would say that the answer to that question -- to go back to john delong's joke earlier today -- is ask yourself how confident you are in the compliance procedures before you

ask yourself how afraid you are of that system. it is really important to distinguish between the technical capacity to do something and whether that thing is actually going to happen. as i sit here today, the d.c. police could be raiding my house. they have the technical capacity to do it, and i have enormous confidence that it is not happening. the fbi could be wiretapping my phone. they have the technical capacity to do it, and i have a great deal of confidence that it's not happening. and the reason is both that the substantive law tells me it's not happening, and the compliance procedures associated with that system give me confidence that if it were to happen, there would be a remedy, i would find out about it, and that will act as a restraint. that puts an enormous premium on the question of compliance procedures. and one thing we have learned an enormous amount about is the

compliance procedures the nsa uses. they are remarkable. they are detailed. they produce data. and so what i would say -- and i'll stop here -- what i would say is if you want to ask how confident we should be in this basic system in which we've changed the aperture of collection in exchange for a change in the set of rules regarding use, focus on compliance and ask yourself how confident you are in the compliance regime. and that seems to me to be the nub not just of the 215 issue, but of every issue where you're going to end up. and i think as a technical legal matter, it's going to happen in a bunch of areas. we're going to collect more and restrict use on the back end more. and so i think the focus on compliance is really where the game is. thank you. >> thank you, mr. wittes.

mr. edgar? >> [inaudible] >> you want to turn on the mic? and you have to speak directly into it, move it a little bit closer close to you. >> thank you. thank you, madam chairman. chairman feinstein, vice chairman chambliss and members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to testify on reforms to the fisa. after swearing ben wittes to secrecy, i guess i will fess up and say it was my document with the four typos which goes well above my threshold which needs to be reported to this committee, so i hope we can correct that. [laughter] >> don't worry about it. >> shaped by my experience as a privacy lawyer both inside and outside the government as you explained. in the aftermath of 9/11, i was leading the work of the aclu on issues such as the patriot act and intelligence reform with a special focus on section 215. that was one of the provisions we were most concerned about. in 2006 i had a really unique opportunity to go inside the surveillance world first at the

office of the director of national intelligence and then at the white house with oversight over these very programs and seeing how they worked in practice. it's fair to say the intelligence community is facing a serious crisis in public confidence. the fact that a majority of americans regard edward with snowden -- despite his bizarre actions -- as a whistleblower, thinking their fears of government snooping on a massive scale have been confirmed should give us pause about what that mean for americans has in intelligence apparatus and its checks and balances. no doubt, thesetize a saw collection programs are certainly very broad. fisa business record orders cover met data that -- metadata that relates to substantially all the telephone calms, both foreign and domestic, handled by communications companies. on the issue of internet content, a collection of internet communications content

touches -- that's the nsa's words -- about 30 petabytes every day. google touches 20. so a little less but still vast. much of this collection is enabled by the amendments made to fisa after 9/11. i believe these authorities represent a major transformation of fisa from mostly a shield that protects american civil liberties to a sword that authorized major collection programs. i believe this new collection is vital, helping to stop 54 terrorist attacks worldwide including 13 in the united states, but i also believe public trust is equally vital. fisa should be should be amended to enhance three fundamental values; transparency, democratic accountability and privacy. so i'll go through those three. the first l value is

transparency, and here i have to disagree with senator rockefeller who said the american people will never understand how the fisa process works. i don't think they do now, but it's just now becoming more open, and so we may see greater understanding over time. it's important because the public and the government see intelligence surveillance under fisa through very different prisms. those on the inside see carefully-crafted programs governed by complex privacy guidelines administered by an army of lawyers, scrutinized by congress and subject to review by the fisa court. the public sees none of this. for decades, the only information released to the public concerning fisa surveillance was the number of applications sought and the number granted, very often the same number leading to the misimpression that the fisa court was a rubber stamp. this is where the public thought the fisa court process was secret government, secret law, not something to be trusted.

the dni has now decided to release an annual breakdown of orders under particular fisa thorts, including the number of targets affected by these orders. this is welcome, but transparency should go further while protecting sources and methods. one example of that is to require a good faith estimate of the number of u.s. persons whose communications or records are collected and the number whose information is actually examined. i believe the government should also detail the major categories of data that are being obtained that include u.s. person information both under fisa and under eo12333 authority. >> stop here. explain what you mean by the basic categories. because, you know, metadata doesn't collect -- >> right. >> -- content. >> so the american public now knows that its call detail records are obtained under fisa, but as we heard earlier, this rationale for bulk collection as

the deputy attorney general said could be much broader. it dpoandz the circumstances. -- depends on the circumstances. he gave the classic lawyer's answers to what other kinds of records could you get in bulk, and he said, it depends. if we had the right protections and had the right procedures in place, maybe we could some kind of records, maybe we couldn't. >> but presently we can't. >> right. it's my contention that those major categories should be public information. now, some risk to this because major companies that provide that data you could probably surmise that they were participating. i don't think that particular companies should be identified, but this is the kind of thing that would avoid the controversy we had over call detail records. we would say, look, we told you this is the kind of data we were getting, these are the kind of protections. the second value i believe fisa needs to be mended to address is democratic accountability to the rule of law. and basically what i mean by

that is the fisa court should be made more like other courts to the extent that's possible. the public expects that courts operate in the open, hear from both sides and that judges are selected in a manner that fosters democratic accountability while insuring judicial independence. so let's go over those. recently, major fisa court opinions interpreting the law have been released. continued release should become, in my view, a matter of course. because the excessive secrecy of the fisa court process has distorted national debate on multiple occasions. three examples, first, the fisa court's very broad interpret of what records are relevant to an authorized investigation is what permits the call detail program. the idea of all of the data in a massive database is relevant even with these back-end protections is surprising to many national security and legal experts. the fact that the court had made

this decision was not known, and that seriously distorted debate during the multiple reauthorizations of the patriot act. the intelligence community did the best they could, and this committee did as well, to make that information available to members of the congress. but that's not the kind of national debate we usually have. we have a debate in which the public participates which members get pressure from their constituents that today don't have to go into a particular room and read documents about secretive programs. so that distorted the debate. that's my first example. second, the nsa's interpretation of the requirement in section 702 for content surveillance targeting foreign persons, that those procedures must target foreign persons is also surprising. the fisa court's recently-released opinions show that communications that target foreign persons include not only communications that are to or from that person, but also those that are merely about that person in a particular narrow sense that the selector for that

person appears in the communication. even communications which are not to or from or about the foreign target at all have been acquired as the result of the manner in which some nsa collection was conducted. >> whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. >> uh-huh? >> exactly what program are you talking about? >> in the recently-released fisa court opinion about upstream collection and the compliance incidents in 2011, it was documented how information from multiple communications, what they called multiple communications transactions was obtained not by mistake, but because of the way the system was designed that included any selector that was a foreign target in the entire multicommunications transaction. and so that created a lot of controversy in the fisa court and required the fisa court to work with the justice department and the intelligence community to narrow the minimization

guidelines. >> okay. because this is important, may i interrupt this just to respond? in mid 2011 nsa notified the doj, the dni and the fisa court and house and senate intelligence committees of a series of compliance incidents impacting a subset of nsa collection under section 702 of fisa known as upstream correction. collection. this comprises about 10% of all collection that takes place under 702. and occurs when nsa obtains internet communications such as e-mails from certain u.s. companies that operate the internet background; ie, the companies that own and operate the domestic telecommunication lines over which internet traffic flows. in essence, the issue that arose in 2011 was that nsa, while trying to acquire e ma ills --

e-mails to, from or about an overseas target, realized that it was inadvertently acquiring other e-mails, including some e-mails sent between persons inside the united states that happened to be bundled with the e-mail messages nsa was trying to collect. this bundling is done by internet companies in order to make it easier to send information quickly over the telecom lines that make up the internet. unfortunately, nsa's technical systems could not easily separate the individual messages within these bundles, and the result was that nsa collected some e-mail messages. it did not intend to acquire. okay. we held a lengthy hearing on the court's ruling on october 20, 2011, at which general alexander and lisa monaco, then the assistant attorney general for national security, described the

court's ruling and what they were doing to address it. here's my point, it was a mistake. action was taken immediately to correct it. it came to us. we took action. >> yes, i couldn't agree more, chairman feinstein. that -- the point i was making is that, in essence, at bottom this was about how the fisa court had interpreted the requirement that congress had given them that its acquisitions target foreign persons and that they have minimization procedures that include certain elements and that, of course, it has to comply with the fourth amendment. because of misunderstandings about how the system is working, this incident, this compliance -- major compliance problem resulted -- yes, they reported everything exactly the way they were supposed to to the fisa court, to this committee and so forth. my point is having greater transparency about the fisa

court would have aided in public understanding of how these systems work. we know this now because these opinions have been declassified. if that happened as a matter of course, my contention is that we would have a more normal process for this court like other judicial bodies. >> you mean if the reporting happened as a matter of course? >> yes. well, when the, when the fisa court releases a major opinion like that rather than waiting for many years and releasing it now as we are over the past months, if it was just a routine process that, okay, this is a fisa court opinion, we're going to go through it, we're going to declassify it and redact some of it, we would learn about things like how did they interpret target, how did they interpret relevance, how did they interpret what minimization procedures are required. we're learning all of that now. going forward, i'd like to see us know that more at the time that it happens.

i have a third example of this which you well know. basically, the fisa court's pre-9/11 concerns about sharing of fisa surveillance with criminal investigators and the resulting wall that was created that contributed to the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. secrecy about this legal issue meant there was no public pressure to correct this information-sharing problem until the 9/11 attacks. so that example which is, obviously, old ground shows that transparency about fisa is not only about having an informed debate about privacy, it's also effective in national security. people could comment on in this crazy requirement, there could be public pressure about that kind of thing. right a now that happens only inside the tent of which this committee is certainly a part. the next step in increasing democratic accountability is to provide a mechanism for the fisa court to hear both sides such as

by creating a special advocate or an amicus. some might say that ordinary courts when hearing applications for wiretap orders and search warrants generally hear only from the goth side. however -- the government side. however, the fisa court is not ordinary. it grants orders that are never likely to result in evidence that might be challenged. under its new post-9/11 authorities, it oversees complex and vast intelligence collection programs. one need only read the most recently-deaccuracified fisa court opinions to wonder how they might have been different if the judges had heard from another side. perhaps even more useful than a special advocate and, actually, our discussion just reminded me of this, would be a special master or a team of special masters trained in computer science to assist the court. >> oh, my goodness. >> many of the most serious compliance problems have resulted from basic misunderstandings by lawyers about how the surveillance itself works; lawyers for the

justice department, a lawyer who's a special advocate if we have one, a fisa court judge. maybe we need a special master with more technical and computer science experience. and finally, i believe enhancing democratic accountability requires reform in the way in which fisa court judges are selected. fisa currently gives this power exclusively not chief justice of the united states who has, unfortunately, picked mainly judges who are like him, appointed by republican presidents and friendly to the national security establishment. while i believe fisa judge selection should be kept within the judiciary, the process should be broadened to include additional federal appellate judges and associate justices of the to supreme court. finally, i'd like to turn to privacy. fisa collection authorities and safeguards should over time, in my view, be modified to require new privacy protections. this'll require the development of alternatives to bulk collection using innovative privacy-enhanced techniques and

crypt graphic tools. and here i believe even without any malicious intent the scale of the programs already have resulted in significant compliance problems, and it is very unlikely that these programs can continue indeft without actual -- indeft without actual abuse. the biggest danger may not be political use by a future richard nixon or j. edgar hoover, but by having such information amassed in a bureaucracy that has found it difficult to keep it secret. a future snowden might sell access to our adversaries. general alexander says that would happen, he would get caught immediately. i hope that's true, but, you know, how sure are we that some of this data couldn't be potentially compromised, leaked or abused by somebody who is not acting at the behest of a president who's abusing civil liberties or even an nsa director who's abusing civil liberties, but somebody who's a malicious insider.

i believe that's a real concern. i believe the answer a may lie in phasing in requirements over time to use innovative technology to access data without amassing it in bulk. so we went from old data to big data, we might call this smart data. the odi has for years sponsored research into crypt to graphic tools that could allow the nsa to have access to the information it needs and only the information it needs while providing sound privacy assurances, tools like private information retrieval that could minimize the danger to national security of revealing the government's interest in particular data, a danger that is one of the main reasons the nsa may prefer bulk collection over individualized queries. i believe as long as the government views these privacy-enhancing tools as optional, deployment will lag. congress could phase in mandates for some of these privacy-enhancing technologies with sunsets for the broader collection authorities which, we

hope, these technologies would make obsolete. so in conclusion, while it is true that fisa's new collection authorities have made it into a sword authorizing vast intelligence collection, returning fisa to the statute as it was written prior to 9/11 would, in my view, be a mistake. i don't think that's the only option. by making significant reforms to fisa that, first, would enhance transparency, second, would insure greater accountability to the rule of law by making the fisa court more like a regular court and, finally, protect privacy through innovative technology, congress can help insure fisa remains a shield that protects american civil liberties. >> well, thank you both very, very much. mr. edgar, i might say that the administration has just sent us a proposal, and both senator chambliss and i have briefly had a chance to review it. it's on the trusty blackberry,

and it's, essentially, some language for appointment of a special counsel. this will, obviously, be made available, and we'd appreciate if you wanted the take a look at it -- wanted to take a look at it. >> sure. of course. >> we have -- i think there's something that people don't really understand. the fisa court, i think historically, has been very guarded in what they do. it's a classified court, it's appointed by the chief justice, they're all federal, sitting judges. they take it very seriously, and it's been very difficult for us to even get opinions. that is now changing. and the first opinion really that changed was the reauthorization, the 90-day reauthorization and the secondary opinion that set strictures on that reauthorization. and now i believe and we will in our bill actually compel that these opinions come to us every

90 days so that we have a chance to review them and make them available to other members as well. i think senator king has been particularly interested in this concept of a public add advocat. and so we've looked at public advocate, we looked at the term amicus which i think mr. cole spoke about a little bit, and now we have this recommendation for a special counsel from the administration. so we will be looking at that for our bill. i want you to know that. i've been on this committee i guess since a year before 9/11. i try to do my homework. i try to attend the meetings. i really believe that the nsa is extraordinarily careful in what they do. i really believe in the things that they reported from 209,

mistakes that were made, and they reported to us, they told us what they were. they were really personal misuse of the system. the people were disciplined. and i think they learned from that. so i have great faith in the nsa. i also have a deep and abiding belief that we are going to be exposed to additional attacks and that because of where the attacks come from, the language differences, the cultural differences, the inability to use human intelligence fully, that the technological aspects of intelligence are extraordinarily important to prevent an attack. and that's what this is used for, to prevent an attack. it is not used to surveil for

other purposes. to prevent and protect an attack and protect the homeland. so it's very hard for us, i think, who do these meetings twice a week kind of without end to see the whole -- people want to take out the whole system. >> uh-huh. >> and that will leave us, i believe, very vulnerable. >> yeah -- >> comment, please. >> i mean, i agree. i think these new authorities as i describe in my testimony are vital to national security. they do plug gaps from before 9/11. they have prevented terrorist attacks. so what we're dealing with here is the need to insure the public continues to have confidence in the checks and balances that protect civil liberties. and i think that, frankly, i was as surprised as everybody by the number of americans that believe that edward snowden was a whistle plower.

perhaps that had to do with the fact that i had been on the inside for many years, had seen the care with which the nsa takes its obligations. and so it's important to step back and remind ourselves that those of us who are inside that just because we know about all of these things doesn't mean everybody else does. when i hear, for example, government officials say i'm very upset about the misleading and inaccurate descriptions of programs that are classified and then leaked, you know, that's almost in the nature of a leak. if it were accurate, that would be because you knew about it. it may -- i'm not peeking for the good faith -- speaking for the good faith of the media. what i mean to say is simply that it's difficult to have a debate about something like intelligence, and so we have to create mechanisms that permit those checks and balances to work in ways that are difficult because we don't have the same degree of transparency as we do in oh systems -- in other

systems, and i've tried to outline three different ways we might be able to strengthen that. >> i was looking at your written paper. are you reading something just slightly different from what you submitted to us? because we'd like to have it, what you've said in writing. >> i've just summarized my written statement, but obviously made some comments based on what we just -- >> yeah. well, why don't you write it up and send it to us, okay? >> sure. >> mr. wittes, thanks very much. senator? >> thanks, madam chair. let me say to both of you, i've read articles that you've both written, you do your homework, you've studied this thing, and from the standpoint of civilian experts in the field of journalism, you two rank up there pretty high. and i know you're familiar with the terrorist world and how terror itselfs operate, how they work. -- terrorists operation, how today work. i'd like for both of you to comment on where you think we are on this issue.

the terror world is watched -- the terrorist world has watched very closely the snowden releases, and they will continue to watch. they're going to react, have already reacted to those releases. what in the opinion of each of you is going to be the long-term reaction of the terrorist community to releases such as snowden, basically sources and methods, unfortunately, in some instances? and what kind of damage is that going to do? mr. wittes, let me start with you. >> so i'm actually one of the people in this room probably least well positioned to address that question, because i actually don't have access to any of the classified information that underlies what you just said. so everything i'm about to say is, you know, a reaction to things i've been, i have heard,

i have read or that i assume based on the structure of the situation. so, you know, i have no reason to doubt the repeated statements of senior officials of the executive branch that the consequences of this disclosure will -- have been in operational terms terrible. and i similarly have no reason to doubt that if i were a terrorist -- some of whom are extremely intelligent, enterprising people, some of them are not -- i'm much more afraid of the ones who are, i would adapt my behavior to information in an ongoing way that i learn about u.s. capabilities. and so i, i don't know the answer to the question how bad is it going to be in the long run, but i think -- but i also

have no reservation about the proposition that we have given away a lot of information about our capabilities. some of it in the form of leaks and, frankly, some of it in the form of authorized disclosures and response to those leaks which i support. and i think, you know, the effort to, the effort required -- the effort to respond to those leaks required a certain degree of proactive release of information and proactive declassification, but that stuff has consequences too. and so i do think we are going to suffer operational consequences, but i'm not the person to ask what they will be, because you all have a lot more information about that than i do. >> i guess i'd just say i agree that the dni, you know, is going to have an authoritative statement, a damage assessment of all these revelations. a couple thoughts, one is, obviously, the terrorists know that their communications are --

we attempt to surveil their communications, telephone and e-mail communications. i think having knowledge about basic categories of information that are potentially under surveillance and in the safeguards which apply should not be things that are classified. should not be things that it may or may not help our adversaries to have that general information, but it's essential for operationing a democracy. -- operating a democracy. however, having particular companies' names -- >> chairman? let me interrupt you. chairman just whispered in my ear, what exactly do you mean by those operational instances? >> well, essentially, the biggest secret, i think, is what kinds of efforts that people make to evade surveillance are or are not potentially effective. people, you know, our foreign

targets vary widely in sophistication. they may have ideas about what works to keep their communication from being under surveillance from the movies or other popular culture that don't work. on the flip side, they may think certain things, you know, are under surveillance which there's no capability to surveil. so those things would be very damaging if leaked, and it's a delicate balance to make sure that the sufficient amount of information is given to the public to have informed debates, not just debates, but informed debates, and yet not reveal those kinds of details. and i don't envy, frankly, the dni or any officials in trying to make those very quick judgments as to what can be released in the wake of these kinds of controversies. and i'd like to, as a result, make it a more proactive process. it will be more open, it will be more transparent. we may lose certain things as a result of that, but far better

to have that planned in advance to know, okay, here's the system for declassifying fisa court opinions, here's the reporting that we do on particular categories of data and safeguards and so forth. maybe with some cost to national security, but taking away the initiative from future snowdens or other lyrics who may think -- other leakers who may think that they are being whistleblowers. >> thank you. >> senator, welcome. >> thank you. >> go ahead. >> do you want to -- >> oh, sorry. i missed you. you're so quiet over there. [laughter] no, please. senator king, go ahead. no, no -- >> go right ahead. >> i really don't have any questions, i just wanted to thank you gentlemen. i hi you've really added to the -- i think you've really added to the discussion, and it's great to have extra, extra hands. all of us are always smarter than any of us, so thank you for

your testimony. >> thanks for having us. >> senator collins. >> thank you, madam chairman. i, too, want to thank you for your testimony. i want to probe with both of you the idea of having some sort of advocate for privacy concerns or someone other than the government arguing a different view before the fisk. and i'm wondering if it would work to have the general counsel of the privacy and civil liberties board take on that role. the reason that i suggest this as a possibility, and i realize that board was slow to get up and running and the administration was slow to appoint members to it, but if

that board operates as joe lieberman and i intended it to when we wrote the 2004 law, it will be very knowledgeable about our counterterrorism efforts and the privacy implications of those efforts. so it seems to me that when there is a significant issue that the general counsel of that board could be tasked with performing the role of the amicus or the advocate or whatever you want to call the individual. the reason this approach seems to me to be worth exploring further, and i want to explore it with both of you, is if we just appoint someone from the outside, if the court appoints someone, it's unlikely that they're going to have the

background and the information unless they have the kind of experience that both of you have. but that universe is going to be pretty slim as far as having up-to-date information on our counterterrorism activities. so this is an idea that has just occurred to me as i've been listening to the testimony today. so you can feel free to shoot it down if you wish or to present an alternative approach. >> well, i certainly wouldn't want to shoot it down. i think there's, i think mr. edgar made a comment earlier today that a i think really bears on this which is that a lot of the trouble that happened both in 2009 and in 2011 was a function of failed lawyer technical people, lawyer engineer communications and that the chain of information from

engineering to msa lawyers -- nsa lawyers to justice department lawyers to the fisk causes, you know, is a game of telephone that really requires lawyers with incredibly detailed technical understanding in order to get information that's accurate into legal form before the fisk. and that's been a challenge over time. and so there is something -- i actually really agree with you that there is something, there's a kind of head scratching puzzle, well, what happens then if you appoint an outside advocate who has perhaps, you know, a very high security clearance but very little background in the technical side of this and say go argue against the government's case? that's a very, very difficult challenge, and the ramp-up speed associated with that is, i think, will raise a question about how effective that

advocate is going to be. .. one of the two added values that we are trying for here, one of them is a more adversarial presentation before -- the second essay second confidence presentation, and i do worry a little bit that this would not be perceived as fully

independent, you know, advocate who is no sort of regulatory capture relationship with respect to the intelligence community. so i think you may have a little bit of a legitimacy loss if you structure it that way. >> well, the reason i think you might be able to overcome that is the independence of that board is similar to the independence of an inspector general. and i think the public is very comfortable with the concept of an inspector general tens of to trust ig reports, and give them credibility. by they understand your point that it's still government. >> it may well be that the benefits that you get in expertise for doing it that way out way what may be a marginal compromise in perceived independence. it's just a caution i flak for

you. >> thank you. mr. edgar. >> i think is a very interesting idea. i would echo his point about the perceived independence of the special advocate being as important as the actual independence. there is extraordinarily difficult balance here. unique expertise and continued understanding of how it works. and you also need some independence. my concern is, is really a practical one of the with that general counsel be? are they at detailee from the odni? are they someone who has a long national security law career ahead of them? that might be difficult, even with the best structural independence. actually the members of the oversight board might be better because they are outsiders who do have this role over a long period of time, ability to gain expertise. i go back to my point about the special master. i think that's even more crucial as a think about the compliance incidents. you know, we as lawyers want to

think about guilt. those two incidents in 2009, 2011 were very cities ones that did not involve any real guilt on anybody's part. but they were still systemically a big deal. a big deal for the court, a big deal for the nsa, and now that we publicly know about it, a big deal for the public. having a special master, which is, you know, as time honored an institution as an amicus for the fisa court, i think there are lots of ways to strengthen the institution. magistrates to consider lower level decisions are a possibility. there are lots of ways the fisa court could be made, using the type of institutions courts have always had into a court that is able to handle this new role as a sewer to come as an oversee a vast complex until just programs. not using yes or no to national

security wiretaps, which is kind of the original 1978 fisa, you know, here's a wiretap order, does it meet probable cause? you're a federal judge the we trust you. now we are talking of much bigger attacks for the court to accomplish. >> thank you very much. thank you, madam chairman. >> i'm not going to get into a debate at this time, but i want to thank you all very, very much for anything i want to thank you for your testimony. and we are going to proceed, and hopefully, anything but sausage comes out of it. so thank you very much. >> thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> the book tells the story. it tells a story of a nuclear weapons accident in damascus arkansas that occurred in 1980. and i use use that story, that narrative as a way of looking at the management of our nuclear weapons really since the first nuclear device was invented,

1945. and i hope to remind readers that these weapons are out there. that they're still capable of being used, and that there's probably no more important thing that our government does and manage them. because these are the most dangerous sheens ever built. and i think the subject has fallen off the radar quite a bit since the end of the cold war. >> word you do not want to hear together, nuclear weapons and accidental detonation. investigative journalist eric schlosser on "command and control" sunday night at nine on "after words." part of the tv this weekend on c-span2. also this month booktv's online book club is reading this town. get involved, post your comments 24/7 on facebook and twitter. >> the senate has scheduled a number of votes for today to

fund the federal government beyond monday when the funding expires. majority leader harry reid wanted to hold these votes yesterday but republican syndrome mike lee of jacket. the senate will be in session and just over 35 minutes from now. is part of yesterday's debate. >> the majority leader. >> as indicated to the entire week, each day that goes by, each hour that goes by, each minute that goes by, we are that much closer to a government shutdown. i've been told that the house needs more time to work on this. they are saying maybe what we need is an extension of the c.r. madam president, the stock market, the financial committee, the business roundtable, the american chamber of commerce, all of america, 80% of the american people, including 75%

of republicans since what is going on here, not to take of the finances of this country us absolutely wrong. there is no reason to stall this. so i ask unanimous consent that at 6:30 p.m. today all post-culture time be yielded back with the exception of an hour, that the first 40 minutes of that our equally divided between motion to invoke cloture and the last 20 minutes reserved for the two leaders with my having the final 10 minutes and that senator mcconnell will speak before me, if he so chooses. upon reading back at that time, the senate will proceed to vote on a motion to invoke cloture on h.j. res. 59. if cloture is a voted all post-culture time will be yielded back, the read and be withdrawn and no other an msdn with the majority to be recognized to make applicable budget point of order, the

motion is agreed to, the senate proceed to vote on the reed amendment. 1974 upon the disposition of that amendment, the joint resolution to read a third time, senate proceed to vote on passage of the joint resolution. finally, although to be 10 minutes and two minutes equal divided between the two votes. i which is a lord everyone, if we got this agreement, we would vote up to four times around 7:30 p.m. the house will get the bill, probably tonight or in the morning since is going to be process. cloture would be, a vote on cloture on h.j. res. 59. motion to waive budget point of order, go to the minute on the amendment 1974 and passage of h.j. res. 59 as amended is a mini. that's my request.

>> madam president? >> if there are objections to madam president? >> senator from utah. >> if we were to vote tomorrow, if or how these votes tomorrow that would represent the product of leading two sets of 30 our parents, one with a motion to proceed one of in connection with the cloture on the boat. that cloture on the bill vote. the american people are paying attention to this. the american people are watching this. a lot of them have expected this might occur friday or saturday. so i ask the question with the majority leader be willing to modify the request slightly with the same provisions in place that with the votes to occur during tomorrow's session of the senate? >> i appreciate -- >> does the majority leader so modify? >> i appreciate my friend requests to modify my and many. i'm sorry, my unanimous consent request. madam president, my response to that would be reserving the right to see if i would accept that is this. everyone in america, everyone

knows what the issues are before this body. the amendment, the mikulski read a minute will require a vote on is pretty simple. it says that we nothing do with obamacare. we chose the date november 15 from december 15 and we've gotten rid of the pay china first. that's it. the so-called anomalies, i have met with republican leader, staff has gone over that. no problems with that. so this is an effort to stall, and i don't know why, and effort to stall. it is absurdly unfortunate. because i repeat, every minute that goes by is a minute closer to a government shutdown because when we finish this we have to then have the american people focus on whether or not we're going to have a debt ceiling,

whether we are going to again crush the economy as we did last time that threat came. so unless it's maybe someone thinks that they can come with a great speaking ability tomorrow to change everything, everybody in this body knows how the votes are going to go. this is going back to the house of representatives, and the house of representatives has said publicly and they said privately they are going to send something back to us. now, i want to make sure that if they do that we have time to process it. stalling until tomorrow means that not going to get it until sunday. we would try out the most to give it to them tonight, friday, rather than sometime late saturday or even maybe, we could get it to them sometime saturday. they need time, and under our rules, is this some kind of subterfuge to close the government? because that's what's going to

happen. we are not the house of representatives. we have rules here. it will take us a while to get places. i understand my friend from utah says we have two, 30 hours and then we were moving more quickly and the rules require. madam president, let the american people see here in the senate, this new senate, is everything is a big, big stall. never do your work now. wait until tomorrow. maybe i will give this a great speech and it will turn the world around. this is senseless. the american people -- how many times do you have 80% agree with everything? they believe this big stall is bad for the country, and it is. so i do not expect the modern -- except the modification. if there is an objection to this, if there's an objection to

my request, i'll work it out with republican and after what time we're going to do this. >> is there objection? >> try to reserving the right to object. >> the senator from utah. >> we have been one to compromise and the offer those made by my colleague, the junior center from texas yesterday, from the floor represent a significant compromise. significantly, i believe it was the senator from nevada, the majority leader, who objected to unanimous consent request made yesterday by the senator from texas to proceed with having these votes tomorrow. mr. brooks is a significant conference overcome a compromise offer that is separate to, 30 after he is required by the rules but this is not an unreasonable request. moreover, not understanding what it is about having a vote tomorrow morning instead of tonight that would make a difference between being able to get something to them tomorrow if we pushed it out versus

sunday. >> madam president speaks majority leader. >> i want to yield to the senator from tennessee, but i do want to say this. it is as obvious to me at its august to me as it is to a kindergarten student, they didn't want to vote yesterday. the big speeches we heard about how if you voted for cloture you would vote to extend obamacare they turned around and voted for. this is a big, big charade that is not getting them where they need to go. they want to stop obamacare. they want to do everything -- they didn't even want to vote on cloture yesterday. of course, they wanted to skip that until a couple days so they could talk longer. people are tired of talking. they want us to get something done here. the government is near the time that it will close. as i sit here this morning, a

woman who works in the park service, and boulder city, nevada, commission everybody that works there are afraid of going to lose their jobs. they know what happened last time. they were laid-off for 29 years and didn't get paid for it. so he'll to my friend from tennessee. >> madam president, i wonder if it would be -- >> the senator from tennessee. >> if it would be appropriate of our to ask the senator from utah a question, if you would take the question? >> without objection. >> this has been a rather confusing week i know. i don't think ever in history of the senate have we had a 21 hour filibuster, and then the persons carrying out the filibuster voted for the issue they were filibustering. i don't think that's happened in history of our country, and it shall -- i just want to make sure i understand. i was just over at the house and talk to members of leadership there. and they would like to get the

piece of legislation from the senate over there as quickly as possible so they could respond. now, i think all of us on this side would like to see some changes to the c.r., changes that we believe to be good policy. and over on the house side we have a majority of republicans, and i know that they would like to send back to a some changes that i think many of us would support. now, in talking earlier with the senator from texas, it's my understanding that the reason you don't want to send a bill over to the house, you could possibly put in place a very good policies for us here, is that you want the american people and the outside groups that you've been in contact with to be able to watch us tomorrow. and so it would seem, i'm just asking the question. is it more important to the senator from texas and the senator from utah that the people around the country

watched this vote, or the more important to us if we have a good policy out? from our standpoint, and actually have a body that has a majority of republicans to be able to react and send back something of good policy. this is confusing to me. because i know the leadership there wishes to be able to respond as quickly as possible, but i'm understanding the reason we are waiting is that y'all have sent out releases and e-mails, and you want everybody to be able to watch. and it just doesn't seem to me that that's in our nation's interest, nor is it candidly in the interest of those who want to see good policy on the conservative side come out of this c.r. i just wondered if you might respond to that. >> the senator from texas. >> since the senator from tennessee has made reference to me, i would ask unanimous consent that a might engage in a colloquy with a senator from tennessee and from utah spent

without objection. is there objection? >> objection. >> is there reasonable time? this is not going to be another performance by anybody. >> for how long do the senators wish to engage in a colloquy? >> i cannot imagine it would extend beyond 10 minutes. >> is there objection to the request? >> no. >> without objection. >> madam president, i appreciate the senator from tennessee's comments supporting the majority leader, and i know the senator -- i know the senator from tennessee is learned on senate procedures so that i know he must have made a mistake when he, moments ago, suggested that those of us who participated in the filibuster the other night, day, someone changed our position in voting for the motion to proceed. and the reason i know the senator from tennessee is

mistaken is because during the course of the filibuster i explicitly stated, i support the motion to proceed. i stated that the week before the filibuster, repeatedly. i have always stated that the vote on the motion to proceed, the vote on cloture to but she was going to be unanimous. indeed, i would note i offered a unanimous consent during the filibuster that we issued the cloture and all agreed to proceed because edwin in this chamber, i said i expected but will be unanimous. everyone in this chamber wants to proceed to this bill. the senator from tennessee being learned in the senate procedure knows that there's a big difference between that vote on wednesday, which i might note when the vote tally was down there for republicans, i put, not only did i vote yes early but i put my recommendation for every republican to vote yes. because of course we should get on the bill. the vote tomorrow on cloture on the bill is a very different bill, and i know the senator from tennessee is quite aware of

that. the vote tomorrow is a vote to cut off debate on the bill. and so as i said during the filibuster two days ago, as i said, has said for weeks, it is the vote tomorrow culture on the bill that matters. because anyone voting tomorrow in favor of cloture is voting in favor of granting the maturity and ability to fund obamacare. i know my friend understands that some sure his statement suggesting that the vote on the motion to proceed in anything other than what it ought to cement. i know that was a statement in air. well, actually i appreciate this opportunity. what we have before us is a dell that defines -- is a bill that defines obamacare. it is a bill that the house and senate over, so you are right. tomorrow's vote is a vote to end debate in support of exactly what the house of representatives has sent over.

that is a confusing thing to a lot of folks, but you are exactly right. the house has put over your, sent over here policy that i actually support. and that is the funding of the health care bill because of the damage that it is creating to our country. i wish this year number was a little door. i wish it was at 967 instead of 988, but that's exactly right. we are going to be cutting off debate on a bill that the house republicans have sent over to us. so you're exactly right, and that's an important vote and that is a vote in support of the house. something in addition supporting the house would be getting whatever we're going to do back over to them so that they are not jammed. but it's my understanding again relative to this vote tonight happening tomorrow instead is

that my two colleagues, who i respect, have sent out e-mails around the world and turned this into a show, possibly, and, therefore, they want people around the world to watch may be them and others on the senate floor. and that is taking priority over eating legislation back to the house so they can take action before the country's government shuts down. and by the way, causing them possibly to put in place again some other good policies. i yield. >> i appreciate my friend from tennessee's comments. and i would note that he suggested that this is confusing, and i guess i don't think it's all that confusing. that senator from tennessee says that a vote in favor of cloture is a vote in favor of the house bill and in favor of defending obamacare. if that's the case, the question i would post to my friend from

tennessee, why is majority leader harry reid going to vote the same what you're proposing to vote or twice every democrat in the skimmer going to vote the way you're proposing to vote? if this is a vote in favor of defunding obamacare him a if the senator from tennessee suggestion that the majority of their into thin democrats are confused about this vote? >> well, i would respond after 20 our filibuster yesterday, you voted in favor of the thing you're filibustering and senator harry reid is going to join that too. so seems to me that they are very similar. >> does the senator from tennessee dispute that the vote wednesday with a vote to take up the bill where as the vote tomorrow will be a vote that will do two things if there are 60 votes. if enough republicans cross the aisle, join harry reid and the democrats if another one cut off all debate and it will, number two, what makes the vote who are so significant as the majority leader has already filed an amendment, that amendment gets the house containing resolution

and funds obamacare in its entirety. and given that dynamic is an active cloture is invoked that the amendment can be passed with 51 votes, does the senator from tennessee disagree that once cloture is invoked, harry reid, the majority leader will be able to fund obamicons with 51 votes? >> i agree that the senate rule that's in place that allows close cloture -- cloture vote, 51 vote majority has been there for decades and generations, and it's that same rule that we have operated under for decades. so let me just ask this question. so we have a bill before us that i support. i think the senator from texas supports. the senator from utah supports, i think. so my question is, we have a bill that we support them the rules of the senate tenure for decades and for generations and

for centuries in many cases. so are you thinking the house of representatives would like for us to vote against cloture on their build? >> i thank my friend. >> let me ask you this. if you think that is what they wish for us to do, why is it that they are already developing language and legislation to send back overproducing spent have already indicated that they do this strategy as a box canyon because they understand the senate rules. and it looks as if to me they are already developing language to send something back over because, even though we are in the senate, i know all three of us are relatively new, somehow or another they knew this and rules before they sent it over. so i'm a little confused, and tell me what happens if the senate were not to invoke cloture on a bill that we support, what then happens? i would like to understand spent i appreciate that question from

my friend from tennessee and there are several pieces of the. one is with the house republicans like for us not to invoke cloture. i can tell you this morning i spoke to over a dozen house members who explicitly said it would be fantastic if senate republicans could show the same unity we did and vote against cloture because majority leader reid have filed an amendment to gut our language. i would note also the senator from tennessee kids expressing confusion. i have to admit, i do think the american people are confused. and i would ask the senator from tennessee, you agreed a moment ago if i understood you correctly, that if 60 senators vote in favor of cloture to majority leader harry reid will be able to fund obamicons in its entirety. let me ask the counterpart. if 41 republicans stood together and voted against cloture because we said we do not

support the amendment that majority leader because filed to fund obamacare, when we told our constituents we oppose obamacare, we made it. so we are not going to be complicit in giving harry reid the ability to fund obamacare. we majority leader reid be able to fund obamacare if 41 republicans stood together against cloture? >> the thing is, i think the senator from texas may be confused. we are not going to be voting on the amended. we have a chance to vote on the amendment after the vote on cloture. the vote on cloture tomorrow is a vote on ending debate on the bill we support. the amendment that you're talking about -- >> that time for the colloquy has expired. is there objection to the unanimous consent request offered by the majority leader? >> madam president? >> the senator from utah. >> i requested t the modified request made by the majority

leader. and he turned that down and in light of the fact he turned it down i of jack. >> objection is heard. >> madam president speak with the assistant majority leader. >> trying to do what we just witnessed was and ever by senator harry reid to move the votes, the critical vote on keeping the government open to this evening. what we've just heard from the republican side of the out is they want to stall and delay this even more. it isn't just a matter of losing the legislative day in the senate -- >> that time is still under the control of the republicans. >> how much time? i know there was time yielded by senator reid to the republican side and the senator grassley. so how much time is remaining at this point? on the republican side. >> the alternating time occurs at 4:30 p.m.

spent and a forgery then the democrats are recognize a? >> that is correct. >> what time is it now? >> 4:29. >> madam president, if i could -- madam president? >> senators are reminded to address each other each in the third person. not by the first and last names. >> madam president? >> the senator from tennessee. >> if i could i would just like thito say in response to my good friend from illinois, it's not the republican side that's asking to stall. we only have two republican senators that are wanting to push this off, and i don't want that to be mischaracterized, if i could come and to say that it's my understanding that the reason that we're putting this off is because they would like for people around the country that they have notified to be able to watch. and so it's that process of

making sure that everyone watches that i think it's slowing this down. it's not the entire republican side. i think most republicans, i know all republicans other than two would actually like to give the house the opportunity to respond in an appropriate way to without i yield the floor and i've enjoyed this very much. >> madam president? >> the next hour is controlled by the majority. >> madam president? >> the assistant majority leader. >> madam president, let me start by noting what the senator from tennessee has said that i've worked with senator corker on so many bipartisan issues and i salute him for his efforts to try to find bipartisan solutions. what he said i think is indicative o of the problem we face now. to senators at, and it is their right under the senate rules, a senator from utah and the junior senator from texas have decided that they want to delay this and other day. they want to stall this another

day. it isn't just losing a legislative day. and it's more. look at how long it took us to bring up the house continuing resolution. if i'm not mistaken, they voted on it last friday. we are thinking about voting on it tomorrow. seven days later. it tells you that the senate rules, even at their best, with one member of checking can mean that measures take a long, long time. ordinarily it just means we waste time, but this time it's critically more important. because the government will not be funded. come tuesday morning, all across america we will not fund the government because of the actions just taken on the floor of the senate by senator cruz of texas and senator lee of utah. they are trying to slow this down and to create a political crisis. a political crisis. they are playing high-stakes poker with other people's money. because the victims of this

political crisis will not be the senators and house members. there will be a lot of innocent people, a lot of workers across america for just want to get up and do the work for this government to make this the greatest nation on earth. some of them are risking their lives in uniform. they will be paid but their paychecks will be delayed. what it means is they have to contact their wives and spouses back, come tuesday if this cruz and lead delay continues to go have to contact them and say, honey, maybe i'll get difficult as paper. a downloadabl double double getk because congress has shut down the government. there are others, to get all across america. thousands of them. doing their work for this government, at the fbi and intelligence agencies that will go dark. why? why have we reached this point? why do these two senators, to senators, think this is in the best interest of the united states of american? we have heard reports from economists this cannot help our

nation. shutting down the government, failing to extend the debt ceiling. they are going, we're going to find ourselves in a position where this economy is going to start to stall. people will start searching their savings accounts, and notice their investment are going down in value. why? because two republican senators insisted that we couldn't speed up this vote and move this process forward to solve this problem. the best explanation they can gegive us to have notified their friends in the media and those on e-mail to stay tuned for friday. friday is going to be the big day. their big day in the sun. and so we are delaying our actions here for a full day so that they can get adequate publicity for what they are about to do. that's not the best interest of the city. it's sure not in the best interest of the united states of america. i listen to senator reid. he made an effort to come forward and expedite this process. there are people outside who warned us not to do that.

they said you send us back over to the house committee gives the mouse to do something. senator reid has said from the start, we will not be party to the link is critically important. there's too much at stake. we'll move through this as quickly as we can, and we have to. at this point now it is on the shoulders of those two senators. those two key part of republican senators who have decided that they want to close down the government, or at least come closer to running the risk of closing down this government. that is in the best interest of dealing with the issues that face americans. madam president, my job on the senate appropriations committee is to be the chair of one of the most important subcommittees. the defense appropriations subcommittee never dreamed i would have is responsibly, but with the passing of a genuine american hero, dan in a way of hawaii, dismantle fell on my shoulders. almost 60% of all domestic discretionary funds spent by the federal government go through

this one subcommittee. there's a lot of hard work and follow putting the appropriation together, but when you consider the responsibility we have it's even more substantial. this appropriations supports our men and women in uniform in the nation's intelligence agencies that keep our country safe. let me tell you what a government shutdown is going to mean for them. a government shutdown is going to mean a lot of hardship. i mentioned earlier uniform troops calling their spouses to say when i going to get our paychecks on time this month, tried to make do if you need. something totally unnecessary, something brought on by action on the floor of the united states senate just minutes ago by two republican senators. thethere are more than 700,000 civilian employees at the department of defense come and half of them will be sent home immediately come tuesday morning. sent home. men and women who work at military installations in the pentagon sent home from work. over 80% of the department of

defense civilians work outside the pentagon. 12,000 of them work in my state. they will be given notice on tuesday morning, you have to go home. why? because there was a promise made for some publicity on friday but a couple of senators. that's unacceptable. the substantial number of these hard-working men and women are going to be furloughed because of already face furlough because of the sequestered. and out if you allow this government to shut down once again they will have to figure out how to make ends meet. men and women who are just kind to keep us safe in this country, many risking their lives, are not going to be pawns in this political game. it's an unconscionable reach of faith. we were risk the national security imposed by shutdown is not confined to the military. it will cripple our intelligence community. these men and women serve as our country's first line of defense. we rely on their agencies to warn us of threats, to prevent terrorist attacks and inform leaders making critical national security decisions.

the intelligence community workforce overwhelmingly made up of civilians and the greatest portion of them will be furloughed because of the government shutdown, a government shutdown that is totally unnecessary, brought on by the house republicans into senate republicans. this shutdown will be quick and the principal agencies will largely go dark within four to eight hours of the shutdown order. america, its intelligence agencies that keep us safe, are going to go dark because of this political strategy. is the government shuts down, all dod work will stop on weapons and equipment maintenance, not directly related to war. basis will not be maintained which was hit degradation of facilities. you will see massive disruption all across this country. the rock island arsenal in my state, a critical arsenal that supports more than 54,000 active reserve and retired military, the arsenal is the largest

employer in the illinois-iowa region with more than 7500 employees and more than 70 federal tenets. the facility at $1 billion to the local economy, supporting 14,000 jobs in the region. a government shutdown will throw production schedules at rock island indicators. as orders to cu get back and civilian sit at home under furlough. i couldn't imagine going to these men and women and saying, the reason that you've had this furlough and can't come to work is because the two senators decided they needed some publicity on friday. putting the arsenals capabilities at risk decorated the defense industrial base, and jeopardize our national and local economy. same thing is true at scott air force base. in a shut down its 5000 employees would expense the same loss of pay as everybody else. the 5500 active duty military personnel and their families would have to get by on savings and reserve while they wait for

reimbursement with later paychecks. when you go through these lists, and the lists are long, you think are totally unnecessary this is. senator reid has come to the floor repeatedly to tell you what the american people think. 80% of the american people think this is foolish and wasteful. foolish and wasteful. 75% of republicans have given up on this strategy. and yet, a handful of willful members of the house and senate decided they're just going to keep going down this road. well, and i hope that they will have some revelations in the next few minutes or hours. maybe overnight. i hope that they will reconsider what they have done here. the risk that they're putting this country at. it's just not appropriate but it's not fair. i listen to them try to explain how they can have a filibuster for 21 hours and then turn around and unanimously vote for the next item up on business. it may be an argument that the

senator from texas thinks he understands could. most americans don't understand what he was saying for 20 hours and then turning around and voting overwhelmingly to move forward on the bill. and let me make one thing clear before going any further. obamacare as we know it is already funded. it's already funded. senator harry reid is not going to be defining obamacare. is already funded. and it will be. it will be on the appropriation bills that we passed in c.r.s and this notion that the summit was going to do something sinister. let me remind the critics. we are brought us to vote in the senate and one of the most historic votes, painful votes. senator reid can you may remember when our colleague, senator ted kennedy was brought here on the floor of the united states senate to vote for that affordable care act, the man was literally dying of cancer. this meant so much to him that he came down here for the vote. a great personal risk and sacrifice but it was great to see his smiling face come see

that -- see come through that door again. we knew we were never seen again, and we didn't. that was the kind of sacrifice made. then in the next presidential election there was a referendum on obamacare and the american people were clear. they reelected president obama. they rejected governor romney's promise to repeal the obamacare. these members, at least two of them, can't accept the verdict of history. they continue to want to fight this battle. as i said, they are fighting it at the expense of a lot of innocent people across america. at the expense of some of the best workers in the world. those in military uniform and those in a civilian capacity do a great job for us every single day. picking on them, deciding to make them the gift of this political exercise is beneath us as a great institution. let me close by saying this, i will give credit to senator cruz when he was doing his 21 hours by asking point blank, so you want to eliminate the protection

and obamacare that says that health insurance companies can't discriminate against children and families that have preexisting conditions? yes. he said i did the i want to eliminate all of them. and i said, you want to eliminate the provision that says you can't eliminate health insurance policies of people have enough money for a serious illness and cancer therapy and surgery? i want to eliminate it all, he said. you want to eliminate that protection for families to keep their kids on their own health insurance policies up to age 26? young people looking for jobs or may not have health insurance, you want to eliminate that? i want to eliminate every bit of it. he was consistent. consistently wrong. because he faile fails to underd what working families across america face every single day, what 50 million uninsured americans face with no protection, no peace of mind. god forbid he ever spends a moment with a parent of a sick child without health insurance.

i've been there. you never want that experience in your life for yourself or anybody else. i asked senator chris, tell us about his own personal health insurance, since he's decided he's going to be the arbiter on health insurance for the rest of america and for congress. he won't give me a straight answer on how he has his own health insurance for his family. i think he owes it to the case told us a lot about his great friend, and there's some wonderful stories. it comes to this issue, giunta tells the what does he get his health insurance? who pays for a? what's the impose contribution? what's the tax deduction taken by your employer, if any, for your health insurance? these are legitimate questions. he's raised these questions about millions of fans across america and says they are just fine. we can do without obamacare. let's hear his explanation of how he protects his family when it comes to health insurance. i don't think that's an unreasonable question. after all, he's the one who raised the issue. madam president, i yield the

floor. >> that on the senate floor yesterday, and today the u.s. senate about the government to get things started. more work expended on the bill providing temporary funding for the federal government from october 1 through december 1 team known as containing resolution. to up to four votes are scheduled for 1230 time occasion today. that may include final passage. as written the measure would also defined the health care law. majority leader harry reid has filed an amendment that would strip health care law language and would shorten the length of the c.r. from december 15 to november 15. and now live to the senate floor here on c-span2. holy god, you created us for freedom, so keep us from shackling ourselves with the chains of dysfunction. use our senators today to serve your purposes for this

generation, making them ever mindful of their accountability to you. lord, deliver us from governing by crisis, empowering us to be responsible stewards of your bounty, using judicious compromise for the mutual progress of all. provide this land we love with your gracious protection, and may we never cease to be grateful for the numberless blessings we receive each day from your hands. we pray in your merciful name.

amen. the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to our flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington d.c., september 27, 2013. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable angus king, a senator from the state of maine, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: patrick j. leahy, president pro tempore. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: following leader remarks the senate will resume consideration of h.j. res. 59 which is the continuing resolution. the time until 12:10 will be

equally divided and controlled between the proponents and opponents of the motion to invoke cloture on h.j. res. 59. the time from 12:10 until 12:30 will be reserved for me and senator mcconnell. we'll control -- i'll control the last ten minutes. he'll control the first ten minutes, so that block of time. the filing deadline for second-degree amendments to h.j. res. 59 is 10:30 a.m. today. at 12:30 there will be up tpo four roll call votes in relation to the following -- in the following order: cloture h.j. res. 59 motion to waive budget points of order, the reid-mikulski amendment. we'll vote on that, passage of the resolution as amended if amended. mr. president, as i indicated, i'm not going to give remarks this morning. i want to leave as much time as possible to those who haven't had an opportunity to speak or wish to speak again.

so i'm told the republican leader won't be here either. i'll return at approximately 12:20. i suggest the absence of a quorum and ask the time be divided equally. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mr. reid: can i suggest that maybe we need unanimous consent to do away with the quorum call since we've never come into session? the presiding officer: without objection. under the previous order the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order the senate will resume consideration of h.j. res. 59 which the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 195, house joint resolution 59 making appropriations, continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2014 and for other purposes. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the time

until 12:10 p.m. will be equally divided between the proponents and opponents of the motion to invoke cloture.

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. harkin: i ask that further proceedings -- oh, we're not in a quorum call. mr. president, well, here we are. this is like the movie "high noon." the two sides are walking down the street. i just hope that, like the movie "high noon," i hope the good guys win. in other words, i hope that reason and judiciousness and a sense of responsibility to the people of this country prevail and not some knee-jerk reaction to what a few people in the

house of representatives want to do to our government. there seems to be a sense, mr. president, among some members across the aisle here and certainly among a bloc of republicans in the house that shutting down the federal government is no big deal. well, i suppose if you are of an anarchist mind, which i think some of them may be, then you don't want government. you want to create chaos. you want to create confusion. someone might ask why would someone want to create chaos and confusion. well, i think if you read your history, if you read your history, you'll find that most authoritarian governments and most authoritarian movements that are based upon a minority view or a minority support, they gain their power through

confusion and chaos, by disrupting, disrupting the public body. i don't care whether it's authoritarian movements of the left or the raoeuft, that's -- or the right, that's what they do. they know they cannot gain power through the normal channels, especially in a democratic government, and so, therefore, they do everything they can to skew the way government operates . first, you manipulate the district lines for how you elect members of the house of representatives so that you have a lot of safe districts for one party. got to hand it to the republicans, they were very keen on this for the last ten years or so, and they focused on redrawing the district boundaries so that they would have what we might call

sinecures, safe seat. if you look at the results of the last election more voted for democratic members of the house than they voted for the republican members of the house. but the republicans are in charge of the house. well, that's because of the way the district lines were drawn after the last census was taken. and so that's one way you do it. you skew it that way. and then what happens is you bring a minority bloc of tea party-type people to the house of representatives, and they want to sew more confusion -- sow more confusion and more chaos because they know that is the only way their views are going to prevail. they will never prevail in the open marketplace of ideas and debate and discourse among the american people. on what do i base that, that statement?

well, just look at the last election. a lot of what the tea party is proposing and what they're now doing in terms of focusing on shutting down the government, much of that was proposed by their candidate for president. not all of it, but a lot of it. and i think the american people soundly rejected that. and so, the tea party being frustrated because they cannot get their way electorally or in the open marketplace of ideas and discourse and public debate now see their only way to do it is to create confusion and chaos. well, one might say that if they're doing that, certainly the public will turn against them. i think to a certain degree that's happening, but for the vast majority of americans out there who go to work every day and work hard, raising their

families, thinking about where the next paycheck is coming from or whether or not they're even going to have a job, young people getting out of school, mountains of debt, trying to get a job and start a family perhaps, they're not focusing on the everyday activities of what we do around here in washington. they read the headlines. they may see the news or see something on their latops or on their ipads or whatever. and what they see is a congress that is muddled and mixed up and can't get anything done. and so you read the polls, and the people blame all of us for this. and so i think the people in the tea party have seen that, and i think they believe that if they can create more confusion and chaos and disruption of government, that both sides will be blamed. and out of that they believe

somehow they can rise to the top of the heap. and infuse the government with their minority views. that's really what's happening here is a small group of willful men and women who have a certain ideology about how our country should run and what we should do, who cannot get their way in the normal, as i say, discourse and debate and votes either here in the congress or in the body politic at large, and since they can't get their way, they're going to create this confusion and discourse and hope that the public will be so mixed up in who is to blame for this that they'll blame both sides.

and perhaps they feel that they're a minority, which is so, so imbued with this passion of theirs, this ideology, this rigidness of ideology of theirs that they are the ones that will come out and vote en masse in the next election. other people will be so discouraged they will say a pox on both your houses, i won't vote and that's the path they see to taking over government. it's dangerous. it's very dangerous. i believe, mr. president, we are at one of the most dangerous points in our history right now. every bit as dangerous as the breakup of the union before the civil war. we're at a point where will this congress allow a small group dedicated -- i give them credit

for working hard -- but a small group of dedicated ideologically driven individuals are able to dictate to the senate and the house what our course of action is going to be? we just can't give into that. so i call upon my friends in the republican party who are moderates -- and there are a lot of them, in my own state, around the country. they're conservative but they are responsible conservatives. they may look at democrats and say you want to go too fast one way. we might want to go a little bit slower that way. or maybe we want to go in a slightly different direction, so let's get together and work it out and see which way we go. that's being a responsible conservative or responsible liberal too, i would say. i call upon them to disabuse themselves of this idea that somehow they have to march in

lock step with this small band of tea party, call them what you will. right wing ideologues, you can use whatever adjectives you want. but they must disabuse themselves of the idea that they have to somehow march in lock step with them. i keep reading in the pairs that somehow the speaker of the house is trying to find a way out of this. well, i don't know john boehner real personally, but he was on the education-labor committee all the time i was here. we always went to k and worked things out in a reasonable manner. there is a way forward. that is for the speaker basically to take what we do here, what we are about to pass today is a stripped-down version of a continuing resolution that will keep the government running until november 15. but it knocks out all that other

junk the house put in about defunding obamacare and all this other stuff they put in there. it is just a straightforward amendment. the compromise we made was to give up on our budget line. we had a certain level that we wanted to fund the government much the republicans had a lower level. so we accepted the lower level. we accepted that lower level. and in turn we asked, rather than going until december 15, going to november 15 on this continuing resolution of funding the government. so we accepted the lower level -- hard for some of us to swole swallow. i didn't believe in that lower level. we needed to fund the infrastructure, and other

things. in the spirit of compromise we took the lower level. we said, let's go to november 15 so that we can bring our appropriations bills outen the floor hopefully between now -- out on the floor holy between now and then and work on an overall spending package for next year, one that's not just a continuing resolution that keeps things going. but maybe we want to make some changes, and we do. in my committee we wanted to change some things, hopefully make them work better, and so by doing that by november 15, then that gives us a month from november 15, let's say, till christmas to get it all worked out. if we go to december 15, we won't have the time to do that. we won't have the time to do that. so that's what's before us today. now, here is the speaker's avenue to act responsibly and to let the american people know

that there are responsible republicans. all he has to do is take the bill we pass here on the floor and bring it up on the house floor and encourage some of his more moderate republicans to support it. he can get the democrats to support i it, and they'd pass it in a bipartisan fashion. however, if the speaker wants to then just cater to this small band of ideologues, well then, he'll take what we pass here, change it arntiond add this, add that -- i hear they have a laundry list -- and then send it back to us. that's totally irresponsible. so, there is a path forward. i.t. the path of responsibility, of being responsible, being judicious, not giving in to a small band of ideologues who want to sew confusion and discord, a small band of

ideologues who want to use the power of the minority to use what they can do to disrupt government in order to get their way. you know, when we were kids, there was always some kid that was playing marbles with you or whatever it was, playing games, who didn't get his way and so they picked up and went home, through a temper tantrum. well, for kids who are out playing, as we did, in the fields in small communities, temper tantrums were something you lived with. didn't really do much harm. but that's not true here in the congress. we cannot afford the temper tantrums of a few ideologues. there's more i could say about what they want to do and how they want to nullify haas by

doing this. -- laws by doing this. we have the affordable care act. we passed it here. it's being implemented. there's been a lot written about the exchanges starting next week. well, i.t it's the law of the l. been upheld by the supreme court. yet a small band, a small group on -- not on this side -- just a few on the republican side, want to nullify that law. they want to nullify it by shutting down the government or not paying our bills when the debt ceiling comes, defaulting on our debt, nullification of a law through that type of action. that's sort of like picking up your marbles and going home. but when you're a kid, not too many -- no one really gets hurtment but who gets hurt from this? the american people. i think there's a the although of people who say, well shutting down the government is no big

deal. it is a big deal. o.m.b. recent stlimented that in 1996 when the government shut down, it cost in today's dollars, $2.1 billion. just because of a few days of the shutdown of government. so those who say they are fiscal sceivives ought to think about that, what the cost would be to the american people of shutting it down. but i'll end on this. mr. president, i happen to be privileged to chair the appropriations committee that funds things like head start programs, early child development programs, elementary education, pell grants, student loans, medical research. i can tell you that if the government shuts down, a lot of people are going to get hurt. 22 head start providers will be delayed, about 18,000 kids will be denied head start programs.

the national institutes of health will not be able to fund new biomedical research projects. social security offices will close. every day in this country 445,000 people call the social security office. they've got a missing check, they've got is being wrong, they need some help. when the government shuts down, they wants' won't be able to car social security office and get that kind of help. so i could go on and on, mr. president. but this is not a game and hopefully we're not children. hopefully we are responsible adults. i believe what we're doing today is responsible in passing a tripped-down continuing resolution to keep the government going until november 15. i understand that we'll have the votes to do that. i just hope that the house of representatives will be responsible and forget about

kids' games like picking up your market and gimmic going home, or throwing a temper tantrum, or shutting down the government because you can't get your way. this is a dangerous time, and i just hope that the members of this body, the senate, and the house of representatives in which i was privileged to seb fo--to serve for ten years wille to the occasion and let the american people know that we are going to act responsibly. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. mr. merkley: mr. president, i yield ten minutes of proponent time to senator cornyn. mr. cornyn: i understand there's been time allocated to opponents and proponents, but there's no breakdown for individual speakers in terms of how much time is allocated. the presiding officer: the senator is correct.

mr. cornyn: mr. president, obamacare is more unpopular today than it was when it was passed in 2010s i know the proponents of obamacare are democratic friends who voted pour it in a party-line vote. i had hoped that it woul wouldnt meet their expectations and the promises that the president and other people made about how it would be implemented and what its impact would be on our health care system. i am amazed, though, that our colleagues say, you know, i.t. the law o -- it's the law of the land. we can't change it. that's completely contrary to our constitutional system where the very legitimacy of our laws depend on the consent of the governed. and, o of course it's within the power of congress to change the law. that's what we do. when the law turns out that it doesn't work as those who hoped

it would or it, unfortunately, meets the expectations of those skeptics like me who thought it would never work. so it is within our power to change this law, and we will be voting today on a very important provision which will give us an opportunity to start over again to address the failures of obamacare that even some of its most ardent advocates had hoped it would meet. so today we will vote on a number of matters, including a cloture vote on the underlying bill, that i will be voting "yes" on cloture because i don't understand how i can otherwise vote on a matter that i want to see passed. in other words, we will vote to proceed to a bill that defunds obamacare, and i believe we

should defund obamacare. indeed, just as we did on the motion to proceed, we had 100 senators vote for cloture on the motion to proceed. i don't know why we wouldn't vote to proceed on the cloture vote on the underlying bill, especially those of us who believe that we ought to go ahead and defund obamacare today in light of experience between 2010 and 2013, which shows it hasn't lived up to expectations and promises. now, there are some people across america that are so upset with obamacare -- and i understand their frustration -- that they say we ought to shut down the federal government. well, our colleague, senator coburn, asked the congressional research service to lack at what would happen to -- to look at what would happen to obamacare if the government shut down for some reason. their conclusion is that obamacare would continue to be funded, even though the government were shut down,

because there were alter national sources -- there were alternatalternate sources of reo queep ikeep it going. so i say that to my friends that say we should ge shut down the government to get riffed obamacare, it won't work u our economy is bouncing along the bottom of slow growth, high unemployment. so i think the real vote today is going to be on the vote that the majority leader will offer to strip out the defunding language. and i hope that we have five democrats -- perhaps those who hoped in 2010 that obamacare would actually work, but in light of subsequent experience will reconsider and say maybe we ought to start over again

because obamacare has not worked. and maybe i.t. not the best way to make health care policy to have a bill that is strictly a party-line vote because no one is invested then in trying to actually make sure it will work, as when tip o'neill and ronald reagan fixed social security and secured it for subsequent generations. unfortunately, we've seen the president of the united states govern by waiver, exception, and exemption when it comes to implementing obamacare. we have learned that obamacare is not ready for prime time, even though the exchanges are supposed to go into effect next tuesday. so why are the american people so upset with obamacare? why are there some people who are so upset, they're willing to see the government shut down in order to get rid of it and change it? well, it's simply because when the president was promoting his health care overhaul in 2009 and

2010, he repeatedly assured the american people that if you like what you have, you can keep it. if you like your doctor, you don't have to worry; nothing will change. he made that promise time and time and time again. and he was always 100% unequivocal. here's a direct quote from the president's speech in june of 2009 before the american medical asoasmtion he said -- quote -- "if you like your doctor, you'll be able to keep your doctor, period. if you like your health plan, you'll be able to keep your health plan, period. no one will take it away, no matter what." close quote. now, that's the president of the united states. when the president made these remarks four years ago, many americans believed him.

oaor at least gave him the benet of the doubt. unfortunately, we now know that obamacare was sold to the american people under false pretenses. the congressional budget office projected obamacare will cause millions of americans to lose their existing health care coverage. employers large and small have already announced that because of obamacare, they're ending their employer-provided coverage for their employees and some of their retirees. in a front-page story, even "the new york times" admits that because of obamacare -- quote -- "many insurers are significantly limiting the number of doctors and hospitals available to consumers." so if you like your doctor, you like your hospital, you won't necessarily be able to keep them. for that matter, earlier this year one of my constituents sent me a letter that she got from

her insurance company informing her that because of obamacare the coverage she had would be terminated by the end of 2013. that letter said -- quote -- "never have we experienced the uncertainty and immense challenges that confront the insurance industry during this time of health care reform. mr. president, it's now painfully clear that many people who do want to keep their existing coverage, who adopt to keep their current doctor will not be able to do so if this law is implemented and that's why we're seeing some leading democrats who are saying maybe we ought to consider in the light of experience since the time we voted to pass obamacare in 2009 and 2010. it's also clear that obamacare is destroying our economy. recently a group of labor

leaders went to the white house to ask for a special carveout because they said that obamacare as implemented was killing the 40-hour workweek. now these were some of the folks who were biggest cheerleaders for obamacare at the time it passed, but they have realized based on subsequent experience that it is making full-time work into part-time work. so that employers can avoid some of the penalties and costs. and we know that it's having a particular impact on some specific types of employment like restaurants, retailers, hotels, the people who develop medical devices which save lives and increase life span. and it's having a negative impact on hospitals as well. for example, the francis can alliance health system announced because of obamacare, it was eliminated about 125 jobs in

president obama's hometown of chicago. meanwhile, in a recent letter to a d.c. city council man, the owner of a popular washington area restaurant chain described obamacare as the biggest mandated cost ever in the history of restaurateurers. in the history of restaurants, this restaurant owner added we still haven't figured hout we're going to pay for it. and as i mentioned a moment ago because of the tax on medical devices to pay for obamacare, medical device manufacturers are leaving the united states, or they're not hiring new people. i had some from texas come in to see me and say they have an operation in costa rica and they're going to be, instead of hiring more people in texas, they're going to be moving that operation to costa rica for one reason and one reason only, and that's to avoid the medical device tax in obamacare. and we know that because of

obamacare's impact on the economy, many college graduates who advocates celebrate are now able to stay on their parents' health insurance until they're 26, those same young men and women are unable to find jobs because of obamacare. and we know that its impact on the medical professional is having a dramatic outcome on people's access to health care. it's very important to make a distinction between coverage and access. so just because the government provides medicare coverage doesn't mean you're going to find a doctor to see you. it doesn't mean because you're covered by medicaid that you're going to be able to find a doctor to see you. and increasingly in my state and around the country, doctors are saying you know what? we can't afford to see new medicare and medicaid patients because of how much the

government compensates for that service. as a matter of fact, in texas, only about one out of every three doctors who currently sees medicaid patients will accept a new medicaid patient because of the low reimbursement rate. so medicaid is already failing to meet the important needs of the most vulnerable people in our country. but because of obamacare, states are preparing for a massive spike in individual health premiums. and because of obamacare, insurance providers are already limiting consumer choice. as we learned years ago, and many of us warned years ago, obamacare affects everyone. it affects working families who are happy with their employer-provided coverage. it affects medicare recipients living on a fixed income. it affects medicaid patients who

are already having trouble finding doctors and den teufrts who will take -- den teufrts who will take their insurance and it affects young people struggling to pay off student loan debt and affects small business owners who want to expand their workforce. the presiding officer: the senator has consumed ten minutes. mr. cornyn: i thank the chair. it affects medical device companies. the false promises of obamacare have been shattered by the harsh realities of obamacare, a law that was supposed to solve some of our biggest health care problems in the country has instead made those problems even worse. now we have a second chance. congress has a second chance as the elected representatives of the american people, under our constitutional system, of learning from the experience we've had since 2010 when

congress passed obamacare on a party-line vote. so we have a second chance today to do the right thing, a chance to stop obamacare in its tracks, a chance to reverse the mistakes of 2009, and to allow congress instead to pass real health care reforms that will lower costs, improve access, and expand quality insurance to more people. republicans said we have an alternative to obamacare. some said the only people you can cover people with preexisting conditions is obamacare, a $2.7 trillion expenditure. that's baloney. we all know many states have health risk pools, and if we provided additional funding to those state health risk pools, people with preexisting

conditions could get coverage without having to embrace the whole behemoth of obamacare and at much more affordable costs. we're eager to adopt reforms such as equalizing the tax treatment of health insurance to make health care price and quality information more transparent and accessible so peek can actually shop based -- so people can actually shop based on quality and price. what a concept. by letting people buy insurance across state lines and allowing both individuals and businesses to form risk pools for individual markets, by curbing frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits and as i said, using state-based health insurance pools to cover people with preexisting conditions, to give states more flexibility to improve medicaid and to bring more competition to medicare. republicans have spent years advocating these policies, and now that we know that obamacare

has stated -- has failed in its intended purpose, it's time to look to these alternatives. we're prepared to defund obamacare and to move ahead with real reform like i described. the only question is today, how many democrats are going to learn from the evidence since 2010, how many of them are going to listen to their constituents and say we can do better than this failed attempt by the federal government to take over our health care system and deny people access to their doctors of their choice and to keep the insurance coverage they have. mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: i yield ten minutes of proponent time to senator sanders. the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. sanders: thank you, mr. president. let me begin by saying i think

debate over obamacare, debate over health care is good for the nation because i think many americans understand the united states today is the only country in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care as a right to all of our people. and today before the initiation of obamacare, we have 48 million people who have no health insurance. and i would tell my good friend from texas that the state of texas, i think, ranks first in the country in the percentage of their people under 65 who have no health insurance. one out of four. george w. bush was president for eight years. where were the ideas about how we provide health care to all of our people? and it's not just 48 million people today who have no health insurance. there are many more who have huge deductibles which prevent

them from going to the doctor. they have high co-payments. and at the end of the day, mr. president, in this dysfunctional health care system that we have, we are spending almost twice as much per capita on health care as do the people of any other nation, many of which have better health care outcomes than we do in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality and the treatment of a number of diseases. in my view, obamacare is a step forward, but we have got to make significant improvements. and that's a good discussion and debate to have. but one thing is absolutely certain is you do not hold the american people hostage by threatening to shut down the government or for the first time in the history of our country not paying our bills and bringing this country and perhaps the entire world into a

major financial crisis. that is what you don't do. obamacare was passed with 60 votes in the senate. it was passed in the house. it was signed by the president. obamacare was challenged in the supreme court. the supreme court ruled it constitutional. there was an election a year ago on this very issue, one of the major issues in the campaign, and the republican candidate said let's defund obamacare. he lost the election. republicans lost seats in the senate. they lost seats in the house. and that's what democracy is about. what democracy is not about is a handful of members of the house of representatives, extreme right-wing republicans, saying if we do not get our way, we are

prepared to punish tens of millions of americans. yeah, we lost the election. yeah, we lost seats in the house and the senate. but we are prepared to bring this government down. we are prepared to cause perhaps a major global financial crisis unless we get our way. that is not what the american system is about. that is not what democracy is about. so if we want to debate about how we improve obamacare, good debate, let's have it. but let's not tell men and women in the united states armed forces who today are putting their lives on the line to defend us that they're not going to get paid. let us not tell police officers here in washington and elsewhere they may not get paid. let's not tell working families who take their little kids into head start so they can then go out to work that that program

may be killed. let's not tell senior citizens who are on the meals on wheels program, who can't leave their homes, who depend upon a meal, let's not punish them because you've got a small number of extreme right wingers who want to get their way at the expense of millions and millions of people. mr. president, let's have a debate. obamacare will provide health insurance for 20 million more americans. good step forward. 28 million more remain uninsured. many of the trade unions are concerned about provisions, and i share those views. let's change that. let's improve it. but let us not shut down the united states government and make us look like fools throughout the entire world because a handful of right-wing extremists are so determined to try to destroy this president. mr. president, senator cruz was

on the floor the other day, and i appreciate anyone -- i was on the floor a couple years ago for eight and a half hours; he was on the floor for 21 hours. that's turvetion and tough, ant anyone who can do that. he did say one thing that i think was right. that is, that we need a serious debate about fundamental issues. and, mr. president, what i believe very strongly is that this debate about obamacare is kind of small change, nickel-and-dime, chaired to -- o where many of our right-wing republicans really want to go. and it is important that we have that debate, because i think the american people are not understanding the role that multibillionaires like the koch brothers, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the tea party, really what this debate is about. and it is a lo about a lot moren

obamacare. senator cruz was right. the texas republican party platform calls for an immediate and orderly transition away from social security. in other words, they want to kill social security. that's a good debate. let's have it. how many of the american people think that we should end social security and go back to the days of the 1920's when the elderly people were the poorest people in america? that is what right-wing republicans want to do. let us have that debate. republicans in texas -- and, again, their view represents a whole lot of folks here in the senate and in the house -- they want to privatize veterans' health care. i am the chairman of the veterans' committee. and i will tell you very strongly that the veterans of america want to improve and expand the v.a. health care system, not privatize it. let's have that debate.

mr. president, the republican party in texas -- and, again, reflecting the views of, i believe, a strong majority of republicans here in washington -- they believe, and i quote from the texas platform, "we believe the minimum wage should be repealed." end of quote. the minimum wage today is $7.25 an hour. you've got millions and millions of workers who are trying to get by on $8 an hour, $9 an hour. i think the minimum wage should be significantly expanded, raised. republicans -- many republicans say, let's abolish the minimum wage. you know what that means? it means in maine, in high unemployment areas, in detroit, in high unemployment areas, in vermont, in high unemployment areas, the employer will say, look, there aren't no jobs around here. you want to work? here's $3 an hour. but we've got the government out

of the your lives. there's no longer a minimum wage. they consider that freedom. i consider that wage slavery. let's have the debate about whether we should abolish the minlminimum wage, abolish social security. the ryan budget a couple of years ago in the house wanted to use a voucher system for health care. go to the doctor, go to the hospital. you'll get good care ... for about two days. then we don't know what will happen. we're going to make devastating cuts in medicaid. we're going to give more tax breaks to the rich at a time when the rich are doing phenomenally well and the middle complas iclass is collapsing. let's have that debate. that is a good debate to have. the other thing, mr. president -- it's very interesting. there was a cbs/"new york times" poll that came out the other day, absolutely consistent with every other poll that i have

seen. what these polls do, they say to the american people, what do you think are the most important issues facing america? america what should congress be focusing on? they're not talking about obamacare, they're not talking about taxes. the american people are saying, we need jobs. real unemployment that i had is close to 14%. youth unemployment is higher. we need to create millions of jobs. where is the debate? we bring forward ideas about rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, creating jobs, moving to a more energy-efficient society, creating jobs. where are their ideas on jobs? they don't have any. all they can say is, let's give more tax breaks to billionaires. one out of four corporations doesn't pay any taxes. let's give more tax breaks to the rich and the corporations, trickle-down economics has not worked. mr. president, what the american people also understand is that most of the new jobs that are

being created are low-wage jobs. often they're part-time jobs, a trend, by the way, that has been going on for many, many years, well before obamacare. major employers didn't need to figure out that if you hire people for 25, 28 hours a week, you don't have to provide them with benefits. let's discuss about how we create decent wages in this country. the presiding officer: the senator's yielded time has expired. mr. sanders: last point i would make, maybe the most important discussion we should have is ending and overturning this a disastrous citizens unitd decision which gives the billionaires the ability to control what goes on here in the united states congress, forcing members of the house and senate to have to raise unbelievable sums of money. one thing we should not be debating about is shutting down the united states government in order to achieve a narrow political goal. with that, i yield the floor.

mr. sessions: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. sessions: i would like to use 15 minutes of the opponent time and be notified at ten minutes. the presiding officer: the senator is recognized. mr. sessions: thank you, mr. president. look, what we're here today about is that the democratic majority in the senate has built a fortress around the obamacare affordable care act legislation. they refuse steadfastly any serious reevaluation of it. they've blocked every attempt to do that. and the house and senator cruz and republicans and others are trying to force our -- this congress to confront the obvious flaws in that legislation. they have refused to do so. and so that's why it's all come down to a force -- a debate at the end of the year over what are we going to do?

do we just give up? do we allow the majority? the -- do we allow the majority in the senate to not allow votes in the weeks to come? they will not. they will not do it unless they're forced to. they made a strategic decision to reject and fight off any attempt to bring up a vote on the floor of the senate. people cannot believe, i'm sure, in america that if a member of the united states senate desires to try to fix and improve the affordable care act that they cannot get the floor and get a vote on it. that's exactly what's been happening. ever since it passed, the americapolling data show that te american people want substantial changes in it. even democrats want some changes. but nothing gets done to act to make a real change in the bill. president obama, senator reid's plan will accept no changes.

indeed, senator reid has made clear his plan is to move to a single-payer, that he said openly and publicly just a pee fe-- just a few weeks ago. a single-payer for the united states. that can only be described are as socialized medicine. that's what the gl is. and we have got to confront this. so i wanted to say that first of all. but i'm -- ranking member of the budget committee, i wanted to share a few thoughts about where we are financially and what's going to happen with this legislation. first and foremost, we have to know that the affordable care act is deeply unsound financially. the president's promise, repeatedly made, that he would

not add one dime to the debt -- in the state of the union he said that. he said he would not add one dime to the debt, now or ever, period -- close quote. is that true? sno nono, sir, it's not true. this is a hugely unsound, new entitlement program that will endanger the financial future of america at a time when we need to quit digging ourselves deeper in debt and begin to work ourselves out of debt. the president is on the budget committee. we know these numbers. so we are dealing with social security, desperately trying to figure a way to make social security sound so our seniors it go to bed at night and not have any worries about the future of social security. medicare is even more stressed. and now we're adding this bill, the obamacare legislation. what does it do? the government accountability office, headed by an independent

important, actually appointed by president obama, has issued a report. under the likely financial scenario over the next 75 years -- and that's how they figure social security and medicare's liabilities -- they conclude that this bill will add $6.3 trillion to the debt of the united states. social security's unfunded liabilities is only $7.7 trillion. we're talking about adding almost as much unfunded liabilities as social security has and we need to be fixing social security, not adding another one. we need to be fixing medicare, not adding another one. we need to be fixing some of our pension liability plans that are unsound, not adding more debt. and we were promised it wouldn't happen. so we're going to have a budget point of order coming up later, and you're going to hear

arguments that this bill makes money. and this is how a country goes broke. this is how a country goes broke. we're going to have a score from the congressional budget office that says over ten years this bill will bring in more money than goes out, and in one sense that's correct. but where do they get the mo en? -- but where do they get the money? the money, $500 billion or so, is coming out of medicare. and it is medicare's money. they're cutting doctors and hospitals, providers $500 billion. and they're saying, therefore, the u.s. unified treasury, the conventions of accounting, the c.b.o. says, will -- that shows increased money. therefore, it can be spent by an entirely new program. but it's not the new program u.s. treasury's money, it's not congress's money. this is medicare's money, and it

will be loaned by the medicare trustees to the u.s. treasury, so it can be spent on this program. so the obamacare money comes out of the medicare savings, it is borrowed money. it is not free money. it is not new money. it's borrowed, borrowed from the trustees of medicare, and it's headed in a downward spiral, and they'll call those loans in very soon. there's just no money there. that's how it all comes out, the government accountability office says that it will add $6 trillion -- $6.3 trillion to the unfunded liabilities of america. mr. akin said in the first ten years it would be $500 billion added to the debt of america. so they will contend otherwise, but it's indisputable that this is so. and we're adding to the debt.

it's unfunded, and it's going to threaten the future of america. i would also point out that, as we work our way through the entire effort to focus on our debt and what we'll do for america, we need to understand how this accounting works. the congressional budget office, december 23, the night before the bill passed in 2011 in response to my request, sent a letter, and they said, you cannot simultaneously use the money from medicare and fund a new program. those are conventions of accounting -- though the conventions of accounting might indicate that. you cannot use it for both purposes. they used the phrase it was "double counting."

that's our own congressional budget office. the night before this bill was rammed through the senate, they told us that. but yet we still have the president, we still have members of this body insisting that this bill is fully paid for and won't add to the debt ever, period. nothing could be more false. nothing could be more false. so when we deal -- i know -- i know there is h -- good people feel like we have to keep this process moving, we have to sending i something to the hous. i understand that. but i want everybody to know. i know and we all know that we need to fully understand, this bill is unsound financially. this health care plan will never work. secondly, i am disappointed in our colleagues in th, and our colleagues in the house has sent a bill over that would add $20

million more to our debt than the budget control act will allow. colleagues, we have got to be so careful about this. i know they have an excuse for it. i know by the entdz o end of th, the sequester will cut those spending levels down and it won't add to the debt at the end of the year. don't worry about it they say, t right now we couldn't agree so we spent more money on the discretionary side than we should have otherwise. we're going to spend $9 # 8 billion -- $988 billion instead of $968 billion, $20 billion more at that rate. they say after three months or two months when this c.r. ends it will all be fixed. but i'm worried about that, mr. president. it's going to be harder, i think. i think the pressure is going to be more intense two months from now to keep spending at that level. i don't think they should have sent a bill to this floor, even

though they can correctly argue that if current sequester laws stay in effect, it will be reduced, they can continue to argue that, i recognize, but fundamentally -- the presiding officer: the senator has consumed ten minutes. mr. sessions: i thank the chair. fundamentally it's going to be harder for us to confront this problem as we go forward in the future because we'll have more cuts over ten months or nine months than would otherwise have been the case if we don't make any of them in the first two months in this congress. so i would say to our colleagues who are thinking about, well, we may need to waive the budget points of order. let's just go forward and somehow we'll work all this out in the future, we're going to be watching. i can't support it.

those who feel like they have to to keep the ball moving, we need the house, when they send another bill back over here, it ought to be on the budget level, not above it. and i hope that they will do that. and that would relieve one more problem. but the big, big issue truly the big issue is how you understand the cost of this health care bill. my colleagues, using a score from the congressional budget office, are going to contend that if you eliminate obamacare it will cost the treasury money. that's what they're going to tell you, and that's what the score of c.b.o. allows and states. but the c.b.o. director told us it's double counting the money. you can't score this money twice, but according to the

conventions of accounting, in the ten-year window over which this occurs, by reducing the cost of medicare, you can therefore spend more money on discretionary in the u.s. treasury to fund a new program. you can do that and it will appear not to add to the debt. but the amount of money coming in is not -- you can't count this money because it's social security money. it's simply borrowing that money from social security. it's going to add to the debt. and our own independent government accountability office has said according to the likely analysis of events over the next 75 years, as they do for social security and medicare, this plan is going to be unsound by $6.3 trillion. in other words, what they're saying, you would have to deposit $6 trillion in an

account today to have enough money to honor the commitments that are going to be met -- that are being made with the affordable care act. so you'd have to do that much money in addition to the other revenues and taxes that are in the legislation in the payments that are made by americans is not going to be enough. and you need that much more money. but we're committing to this benefit to american citizens. it becomes an entitlement. we're committing these benefits to them, and we don't have the money to honor the commitment. that cannot continue. we cannot as a nation continue. wall street and others tell us we've got to get our house in order. we cannot continue to add to our debt in this fashion. i understand the difficulties members will be facing when they

cast the vote as they come up here today. i'm not going to criticize any member on their vote, although i'm not going to vote to waive the budget. i think we ought to stay within our budget, and i think we ought -- we cannot get by with this idea that the affordable care act is actually going to improve the financial condition of america when it absolutely is not. ms. mikulski: would the senator yield for a question? mr. sessions: i would be delighted. the presiding officer: the senator from -- mr. sessions: the senator is such a fine leader of the appropriations committee and one of the most knowledgeable people here, a person i respect greatly. ms. mikulski: and i feel the same way. i understand that the senator from alabama is the ranking member of the budget committee. could the senator tell me why six senators have objected on your side of the aisle from having a conference on the

budget? the senate passed a budget bill five months ago -- five months ago -- and we could have been in a negotiation to resolve that. could the senator tell me why those six senators object? and, therefore, because of that objection, we do not have a budget. senator murray passed a budget working here in a marathon. you remember that? mr. sessions: well, i certainly do. i think i may have had a little role in the fact that a budget was passed, since i've been complaining a democratic majority went four years without even bringing -- without passing a budget, several years without even bringing it to the floor, when the house was passing a budget every year the senate failed and refused -- ms. mikulski: but this is now. session -- the fundamental legal -- mr. sessions: the fundamental legal requirement to bring one. but this year our new chairman,

senator murray did bring a budget through and did send it through the body. one senator said we want you to commit not to raise the debt ceiling on a budget reconciliation because you could raise the debt ceiling with 51 votes instead of 60 votes. i know that senator may not like that, but that's exactly what was said. and senator durbin on this floor said he did not think that it could be done under the rules of the senate, that we could raise the debt ceiling on the budget. but why wouldn't you agree to that? that was asked from the people who rejected to sending a budget forward to conference, was based solely and expressed it

repeatedly on the concern that budget reconciliation would be used to raise the debt. and, therefore, not be subject to a 60-vote majority. ms. mikulski: i thank the senator for his answer. i dispute the logic and the reasoning, but i thank the senator. and thank you for working with senator murray to move the budget. i will comment on that. mr. sessions: mr. president, i will yield the floor. and if i've not used all my time, i reserve the balance of the time. ms. mikulski: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. ms. mikulski: thank you, mr. president. i now yield three minutes of the proponent time to senator murray, the chairperson of the budget committee, who actually did pass a budget five months ago, but has been precluded because of sheer rigid ideological posturingor be able to go to a conference, sit in a room with paul ryan and

work out what the budget of the united states of america should be. this is why we have gone from the greatest deliberative body to the greatest delayed body. so i yield three minutes and any other time she would like to consume to senator murray, who's done an outstanding job. and i wish people would follow her lead and let her go to the conference so we can have a budget. the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: mr. president, i want to thank the senator from maryland for her tremendous leadership, and she is absolutely correct. we are here in a manufactured crisis. this senate and the house passed their budgets last spring. for six months we've been trying to get those two budgets together to conference a deal to set our budget priorities for the next several years. we've been precluded from doing that by the same republicans who now want to kill a continuing resolution that will just simply keep our government open for a few short weeks so we can do the work we should have been doing for the last six months.

mr. president, the answer to this is easy. let's pass a clean resolution, keep the government open for a few short weeks, do the responsible thing, say to the nation and to the world we will pay our bills and raise the debt ceiling, and then do what we need to do -- every one of us knows what we need to do -- is work out the differences between the house and senate budget. but we are here today in a manufactured crisis because the same republicans who are now leading us to a shutdown are saying that they don't want us to talk. mr. president, i agree with the senator from maryland. let's keep the clean resolution, send it to the house, keep government open and do the responsible thing that we should do as leaders and adults and come to a budget agreement. but, mr. president, i also want to speak today on the, and urge my colleagues to support the majority leader's motion that he will bring to us to waive the budget point of order against the continuing resolution that we will vote on here in a few hours. now, my republican colleagues who announced their intent to

raise this point of order are concerned that the funding levels in both the house and senate continuing resolutions violate the budget control act. but, as we all remember, mr. president, sequestration was never supposed to be implemented. it was supposed to be so unthinkable that it would force a compromise, which is what we are going to have to do here anyway. but since those automatic cuts took effect, we have now heard from families and communities across the country, sequestration is costing us jobs, it is slowing our growth, it is harming our national security. that is exactly why the senate and house budgets both -- both -- require changes to the budget control act. now it's true we took very different approaches to altering the automatic cuts. the senate budget, our side, fully replaced the sequestration. we did it with an equal mix of spending cuts and new revenue we raised by closing loopholes that were skewed towards the wealthiest americans and biggest corporations.

the house budget on the other side replaced sequestration fully also, but they did it by fully funding defense programs paying for that with very deep cuts to investments in families and jobs all the while protecting the wealthiest americans from participating in this at all and helping to pay for it. so we do have a lot of work to bridge that divide. there is no doubt about it. but that alone shows how important it is that we pass a clean temporary continuing resolution to keep the government operating while we have that space to negotiate a longer-term budget agreement that works for our families and economies. mr. president, i ask for one additional minute. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. murray: to do that, we've got to be able to finish this bill, send it back to the house and get our country on the right course again. so, mr. president, voting to sustain this point of order isn't voting against a funding level or a policy. voting to sustain this point of

order is -- is -- voting for a government shutdown. because, mr. president, if this bill dies that's in front of us today, it is very likely the government will not be open for business on tuesday and then our american families are going to have to deal with disruption and all the uncertainty that will cause. mr. president, there is no reason to let the gridlock and dysfunction in washington, d.c. cause more harm to our families and businesses. a vote for this point of order is a vote to kill this bill and shut down the government. and we do not want that to happen. so i oppose it. i urge my colleagues to join me in waiving the point of order when we have that vote later today. let's pass a clean continuing resolution, have the house pass a clean continuing resolution and then do the job we were sent to do. every one of us knows it needs to be done which is to bridge the divide between the house and senate budgets and get our country back on track again. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. ms. mikulski: mr. president?

the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. ms. mikulski: thank you, mr. president. i want to thank the gentlelady from washington state for her comments, because as usual, they were clear, cogent and compelling. we need to get a job done today. our job today, am i correct, is that we pass a continuing resolution, which means we keep the funding at fiscal 2013 in place until we resolve other budgetary issues with the house. is that correct? mrs. murray: that's absolutely correct. ms. mikulski: thank you. mr. chairman, shortly we will be voting at 12:30 on four votes. those four votes are, one, cloture on the continuing resolution, waiver of a budget act on the point of order, the amendment that i offered on the continuing resolution, and final passage. but essentially it's all pretty

much the same thing. it's four separate votes that get there. our goal today is to send to the house of representatives a continuing resolution stripped of ideological riders that keeps the government funding until november 15 while we work out other budgetary issues. the continuing issue has all been meant to be short-term, to get us over problems -- to keep the government functioning while we solve problems that we have been working on, and it has always been historically not to have ideological riders attached to them. so what we want to send to the house of representatives -- we, the democrats, and hopefully with others who will join with

us to find the sensible center, the sensible center; america always governs best when it finds the center, a sensible center. that we want to find that and send it to the house where, number one, our continuing resolution would be until november 15. this gives us a couple of weeks to work these issues out. number two, to take out the ideological riders. the first rider is to defund president obama's affordable care act. we want to strip that out because it is now the law of the land. there is no need to keep fighting the same battle. number two, there is an ideological rider on how we structure paying our debt. it is -- that rider is that wey china first before we pay other

obligations here in our own country. we want to strip that out and then send the continuing resolution, which is not new money, mr. president -- it keeps the government operating until november 15 at fiscal 2013 levels. that's where we are. so i want to explain that if we don't do this, we could head to a government shutdown. and it is harmful to our country, it is harmful to our economy, and it is harmful to our standing in the world. in plain english, after the debate -- after debating the continuing resolution last thursday, we now have these four votes: a vote to waive a point of order, one of which is is ae to waive a point of order against the continuing resolution. they're essentially putting --

we could end up with more sand in the gears. where we are now is that the vote on the senate amendment to the house c.r., means stripping out partisan ideology, shortening the date, and moving on so that the courthouse look at it. a government shutdown is a serious matter. if we don't come together across the aisle and across the dome and across town, we will be facing a damaging government shutdown. here are a few things that will happen: if we cannot enact a clean continuing resolution by october 1, our troops, including troops deployed overseas, will not be paid on time. 800,000 civil servants who serve the american people will be sent home and told they are nonessential. shutting down the government will have an immediate and harmful effect on our economy. small business administration approval of loans will be put on

hold. important rural development housing and farm loan grants will stop. our economy is struggling to pick up steam. the uncertainty that we will create in the marketplace and in our own country and in the world will put on the brakes of our economy. it is irresponsible and unacceptable for this to happen. every day thousands of federal workers keep americans safe. we don't hear about them every day, but they do make a difference. every time a defective product is removed from the market, every time an inspector recommends a change to keep people safe in terms of approving the safety of oregon our -- the safety of our food supply or drug supply, every time a schemer or scammer is arrested for fraud, the federal government and the people who work thor them have played an important role. in my own state i represent the national institutes of health.

last spring, director dr. frances collins announced that we had reduced cancer rates in this country by 15%. instead of pin ago medal on the men and women who did the basic research that could then lead to the private sector inventing new pharmaceuticals and bine biological products that would put that into clinical prarks insteain-- into clinical practi, instead of that, they had to announce a furlough. how would you like to be working at n.i.h. right this minute and told you're not essential? you're trying to work upon a secure for cancer, you're trying to come up with a cure or cog cognitive stretchout for alzheimer's. anne anand then you're told youe nonseaning. -- you're nonessential. we have a void a government shutdown and a government

showdown. what we need to be able to do today is to be sthiew sure thatk on our amendments and make sure that we have cloture on the continuing resolution. we've had substantial debate. it is now time to bring that together. waive the budget act on the point of order, and then have final passage. the time is to act now. you hear in my voice great frustration. i'm frustrated because -- not because of solutions that i don't like. that's give-and-take in a legislative process. what i'm frustrated about is the continual process of delay where we not only throw sand in the gears of our ability to function, we're now throwing cement into those gears.

mr. president, i hope we can move. there's cool heads on both sides of the aisle. there are people on both sides of the aisle that have worked together and can come together. let's pass this continuing resolution, have the house act so that we can avoid a shutdown, so that our focus is on solving the important issues facing our country. yes, there are those who call for reducing the public debt, and i support that, and we can do that through a balanced approach -- additional strategic cuts, a review of mandatory spend, and a look at closing tax loopholes. but there are other debts that we have. we have the issue of chronic unemployment, of growing education unattainment, where our standing in the world is slipping. i can worry about the fact that we won't fund the research and

development necessary, working with the private sector, to come up with those new ideas that lead to new products that lead to new jobs. darpa, a government agency, helped create the internet. then the genius of our private sector unleashed the power that the world has never seen. this is what america is known for -- discovery, entrepreneurship, moving our own country ahead. and this is what i would hope we would get back to. let's get through this process. let's get through this quagmire, and let's keep america being what america can be. mr. president, i yield the floor. mr. inhofe: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: mr. president, i do have time right now that is scheduled. however, my very good friend from alabama had one other

mention to make, and i'd like to yield maybe, let's say, two minutes of my time to the senator from alabama. mr. sessions: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. sessions: mr. president, as i explained the unfunded liabilities of the affordable care act, i want to make something really clear. it's a lot more than that. we are assuming, unlike social security and medicare, you pay -- there's a dedicated tax that supports those programs and are on our payroll, the withholding every week, the fica withholding. that is dedicated to social security and medicare. there's no dedicated tax support for obamacare. so if you assume all the new taxes that they raise are actually used to fund obamacare, then there would be a $6.3 trillion shortfall, a liability.

but if you do it like it really should be accounted and assume that there's no -- none of this money that's being raised in taxes is actually dedicated to the affordable care act, then it runs about $17 trillion. and congress is well-known -- unless your tax money is absolutely legally dedicated to something, it gets spent on other things. so we have no confidence we'll come in just at $6.3 trillion. and it's likely to be far higher than that, the way we know this body operates. i thank the chair and would yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: i thank the -- and slrcertainly do agree with my gd friend from alabama. he has done a good job on this subject. i would like to say that one of the things i enjoyed about the presentation that was made by my good friend from texas, senator

cruz, was that we were in a position that's very rare in this body where we could talk as long as we wanted to. in fact, we actually tried to talk longer and were looking for other things to fill in. things we may have forgotten. so i have to share with my good friend from the chair, something i am going to say is going to be very offensive to a lot of people, but i really don't care, because at my age and being here, i think i know what this country is all about and i think i know that we have an obligation to express our true feelings. i am -- i have written a speech and have put it off, and i'll not going to give it today, but i was rereading it this morning -- i had no intention of coming down and talking, because i talked long enough during the course of the cruz talk, but i went back and reread the speech that i was going to give, and what it is is to answer the

question -- really, one of my sons said to me -- and everyone has been saying this over a period of time in oklahoma; i don't think oklahoma is that different from other states. but they asked me over and over and over again, they say, what happened -- why is it that we have an administration and people in government, not just the obama administration but others, who ar who are praisingm and trashing christianity, trashing the judeo- christian values and the other things that are happening today. we yo all know it is true. how do you answer that? it is a tough answer. so i was going to make -- i'm preparing and i'm going to later on give you a little warning, ail be making a little talk. there is a guy called paul johnson who wrote the history of the american people in that he talks about how we got where we are today. this is going it tie into obamacare, but -- and he says that the pur puritans were devod

and singleminded to their vision of built ago colony built upon the teachings of jesus christ. paul johnson, the guy who wrote -- who i told you about, is right to object that the document was not just a contract between a servant and a master or a people and a king but between a group of like-minded individuals with god as a witness and symbolic cosignatory. and why is this important? it's important because william bradford and the other puritans understood that while forming a civil government was fully within their right, there were limitations -- limitations -- to what they could and could not do. they're talking about government here. and those eliminatio limitatione established by god and unumerated in the -- enumerated in the able to. i quoal quote the apostle paul n

romans. there is no time for a that. it is within the foundation of the biblical authority that the puritans crafted the mayflower compact and their system of government at policewomen ogee colony. paul johnson rightly observes that this was critical to laying the foundation for a successful united states of america. and ultimately it is a morality derived from god that had its strongest enduring influence over the nation, and this is what has crafted our history as a strong nation. i say all of this as a predicate to the answer -- the answer that people ask me, you know, why is it that we're trashing our judeo- christian values in favor of something that was not american to start with? and sadly our nation does not have the same belief today that we had back during the -- during that time in our history. we've become arrogant, inward-focused individuals indi.

rather than sit submit to god's authority and definitions of truth, justice as we conduct our government's business, we have replaced them with our own ideals defined by what feels right at the time. as americans, we now look inward to ourselves to define with validity and foundation of truth. we have allowed ourselves to become ultimate arbiters of what is right and wrong instead of the higher morality of god. lastly, what is going to be in this talk and this time getting back to the subject at hand, today instead of having leaders who are protecting the church from government, we have leaders who believe it's government's job to impose on churches what should be universally upheld as truth instead of leaders who are protecting an american's freedom to practice his or her religion on their choice. i'm not talking about the choice you may be thinking about.

they are instead using government institutions and law to force them to do or buy things that are in violation to their religious and conscious believes. now that's the issue we're talking about now. government has become so strong and influential in our lives that we are losing our powers -- and these are our ordained powers that we know were part of this country. there's not a person in here who didn't study the pilgrims coming over on the may flower and having that meeting in the captain's chamber. i'm going to give you an example because i have a friend in oklahoma whose name is david green. david green started a company called hobby lobby. david green and his wife started this company by making picture frames in their garage, and then they had the first store was 300

square tpaoefplt and it was -- feet. and it was open with the profits they made in their garage operation. over the years the business has grown to 550 stores. it has annual revenues of $2.5 billion. david green has had success despite running his business in a very countercultural way. for instance, all of the retail stores close at 8:00 p.m. each night and all day on sunday so employees can spend time with their families. this is appreciated by the company's 16,000 employees. it all started in the garage. who are paid at a minimum of $12 an hour despite what they could be paying, a much lower rate, legal rate. at one point the company was challenged by a competitor who said they would bury hobby lobby with their money so the firm opened its doors on sundays ultimately earning the company an additional $100 million in

revenue each week. but eventually david green was challenged. he said he was challenged by god to trust in him with his business to go back to his policy of closing on sundays, and he did, and his business has prospered. one of the largest businesses in america today. david's christian faith runs deeper than his desire to have a profitable, successful company. and when he faces a decision of whether to make more money or obey god, he chooses to obey god whatever the consequences. keep all that in mind and listen to this. this is where i'm getting around to this subject. recently he was faced with a new test. it didn't come from a competitor. it came from the united states government. part of the obamacare law requires employers not only to provide health care insurance to their employees, but also to provide free access to the pills that terminate pregnancies. and david, as i do and many others believe, and some don't

believe that we believe that life begins at conception, and offering an option to end that life would be in violation, in his case, of his moral compass as defined by his faith in jesus christ. as a result, he said he would rather pay the $1.3 million a day in daily fines from the obama administration than imply with the law. here -- than comply with the law. here's a guy who feels so strongly in his beliefs that i think are consistent with the beliefs that made this country great -- but that's just my belief -- that he would pay $1.3 million a day in fines from the tk*epld rather -- obama adminis. today the obama administration is opposing hobby lobby's challenge to the mandate claiming this privately owned business is waging a war on women for not agreeing to

provide these treatments for its employees free of charge. you know, that's just one example of what's happening. by the way, in my state of oklahoma, and i don't think we're that different from most other states, last week four universities in my great state of oklahoma have filed a lawsuit against the federal government over the obamacare mandate to provide certain types of contraception to their employees. these are four universities joining with this one great american named david green. and so we have now the faith of an individual and the feeling that he has and what he's willing to do, and he is willing to stand up to this abusive government that we have today and to this law, this obamacare law and is willing to pay $1.3 million a day. now, you know, i look at this, and i have strong feelings, just

as strong as he has on this subject, but that's a subject for another day. i always remember i've got -- my wife and i have 20 kids and grand kid. back in the old days when we were having our kids, there was kind of a rule. you couldn't go to the hospital, i say to my good friend occupying the chair. so you couldn't see this. you had to wait outside and didn't have all this notice of what the baby is going to be and all that. but in this case, my first -- it was my first grandchild, i found out that my daughter called me up and said, all right, daddy, come on over, it's time. i went over to the hofplt it was actually in the -- i went over to the hospital. it was actually in the delivery room. what a great experience was that. we're talking about a number of years ago, 16 years ago, 17 years ago. i watched this take place. i honestly, a tear did come out to my eye at that time. we were talking about partial-birth abortions and the fact they could have taken baby

jason, jammed scissors into his skull and sucked his brains out. that could have happened but it didn't happen. the point i'm making here is you can make all the arguments about this, and i've made arguments on the floor during the cruz debate that i remember 19 years ago hillary health care, same thing. it was government taking over the health care system. and i have my friends in parliament and great britain who call up and say what's wrong with you guys over there? don't you realize we are just getting away from this thing. it hasn't worked. socialized medicine. don't kid yourself and think this isn't a road to socialized medicine if we end up not being able to do something about obamacare. it is. in fact, i have great respect for the leader of the senate, harry reid. senator reid himself said, yes, i believe this is a, leading to, and i endorse leading to the single-payer system. we are talking about socialized medicine. they call and say what's wrong

with you guys? it hasn't worked in great britain, hasn't worked in denmark, hasn't worked in canada, and yet you're somehow thinking it's going to work there. that's kind of the big issue. this is the greatest single step we've witnessed in the last four years as to the abuse taking place. so i really believe we need to look at the big picture, do something about this. you say it can't be done now, it's too late. you're probably right now but they said the same thing about hillary health care 19 years ago and i'll never forget it because i was on the plane going back to oklahoma with a stop in chicago and i thought we finally today drove the final nail in the coffin and killed hillary health care, and yet i picked up the "wall street journal" and there is a full-page ad by the a.m.a. endorsing hillary health care because they had given up and that was the day before they had given that story. it is never too late. this is something that needs to be stopped.

i have faith in the american people that somehow we're going to win this thing. i thank the chair. i know my time has expired. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. a senator: mr. president,. mr. reed: mr. president, i would yield eight minutes to the senator from new hampshire, senator shaheen. the presiding officer: the senator from new hampshire. mrs. shaheen: mr. president, i'm pleased to join my colleagues on the floor today, the members of the appropriations committee and others who have been down to speak in support of passing this continuing resolution. i'm a new member of the appropriations committee, and i've been very impressed with the work that our chair, senator mikulski and ranking member shelby have done. they have crafted the appropriations bills that would really address the budget for the coming year. those appropriations bills would replace the harmful cuts from sequestration.

those are cuts that people on both sides of the aisle have said they opposed. but unfortunately, because of the obstructionism, we've seen so clearly this week, those bills haven't yet come to the floor. and so we need a short-term c.r. to keep the government open. now, we all know that the continuing resolution that's before us today is not ideal. it's short term and it doesn't replace sequestration. so it doesn't either deal with the cuts or give businesses and our economy the certainty that they need. but this suggestion that we should refuse to keep the government open is just irresponsible. there is just too much at stake for our economy, for our small business, for our families across this country. and unfortunately, what we've seen this week is that there are some who are pushing this country to the brink of another

manufactured crisis as a tactic to prevent health care reform from going into effect. now, i'm not going to review what senator mccain said, i think, so well about how the democratic process works in this country, about the fact that once a law goes into effect that it's important to implement it. i think democracy works, but it doesn't always work the way i want it to either. but when a law is passed, we have a responsibility to go ahead and make it work. and we've seen a small minority of this beaned of the house who are -- of this minority and of the house who are willing to defund the health care law. the people i talk to in new hampshire don't think that shutting down government is a good approach because they understand the serious consequences it would have for them, for their businesses and for the country. it would especially hurt small businesses which are the foundation of the economy in new

hampshire, and the presiding officer's home state of maine and rhode island, senator reed's home state. those small businesses create two out of every three jobs. many of those small businesses in new hampshire and throughout the country rely on federal contracts as they figure out how they're going to grow and create new jobs. we talked to one c.e.o. of an innovative small company in new hampshire who told me if its contracts were shut down -- and i quote -- "our income would drop to essentially zero. we would burn our very thin cash reserves. and when that money is burned, it is not able to be replaced. so our basic financial stability can be irreversibly damaged. there would be no way to recover those dollars." we heard from former secretary of treasury bob rubin this week

who said unlike 1959 when there was a short -- 191995 when there was -- 1995 when there was a short term consequence to shutting down the government, it would be felt for decades to come. s.b.a. lending programs are critical to business in new hampshire and across this country. on average s.b.a. supports loans to over 1,000 small businesses per week. and then there's the housing market. in new hampshire and across this country, the housing market has been one of the slowest sectors to recover. but in the last year, we've begun to see some signs of improvement. the federal housing administration has been a big part of that recovery because they have helped families afford homes and kept our housing economy afloat. under the shutdown, it's estimated that assistance to 34,000 homeowners would be delayed. and with all of the problems

that have been caused by the housing crisis, we should not be stalling one of the most effective programs we have for assisting homeowners. and that's what we would do with a government shutdown. and then of course this would be terrible timing for the tourism industry in new hampshire and across new england because fall foliage is one of the our biggest seasons and tourists come from all over the world. they spend money in our local restaurants and hotels. many small businesses rely on this time of year to increase their revenues. but if the government shuts down, we'll be turning away those customers. applications for visas will come to a halt. and according to the congressional research service, during the 1995-1996 shutdowns, approximately 20,000 to 30,000 applications by foreigners for visas to come and visit in america went unprocessed. that's going to affect not just the tourism industries in new hampshire.

it's going to affect airlines. it's going to affect people across the country. then of course there are federal workers. in new hampshire there are 7,400 of them. these are just some of the effects on the economy. and considering the many industries that would be affected, i.t. n it's no surprit economists have forecast that failure to pass a continuing resolution, as bob ruben said, would do significant damage to our economy. even a three- or four-day shu shutdown could slow growth by

.2%, according to economist mark zandi. it doesn't have to be this way. i was a gone for three terms. the presiding officer was a governor for two terms. we understood what it was like to work across the aisle, and we always passed a budget because we had to put in place a budget. there are a lot of differences on both sides of the aisle, but we understood the importance of compromising because it would have been impossible to get something through the new hampshire legislature and get a budget to my desk if people hadn't been willing to compromise, if they'd been continuing to play the kinds of political games that we're seeing here in washington. it's unacceptable. congress can do better. we need to work together. we need to work together to pass this continuing resolution and then to raise the debt ceiling later this year so we avoid the negative effect to families, to

businesses, and to our economy. thank you very much, mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. reed: mr. president, i would yield three minutes of proponent time to senator coats and also by agreement of the other side, three minutes of opponent time. mr. coats: thank the senator. the presiding officer: the senator from indiana. mr. coats: mr. president, there has been a great deal of confusion over what has been happening here. i know who i hoosiers want a clr explanation, so i would like to take a moment to explaining where i stand. this is the relate that i we face: -- this is the reality that we face: every single republican opposes obamacare and wants to see it defund. we're all together on that. the house has sent us a bill that would defund obamacare while keeping the rest of the government running. i supported that bill and i think we all support that bill. third, senate democrats are

united in their opposition to repealing obamacare, and, unfortunately, the fact is -- unfortunately from our standpoint -- the fact is they control the senate and they control the white house, and we don't have the votes to prevail. so now the confusion sets in because -- well, let's face it. we have a lot of confusing procedures here in the united states senate. but i have always been guided by the principle that, to the extent possible, a "yes" should be "yes" and a "no" should be "no" on the issue itself. we have all these procedural motions here, and members like to attach, well, it is what it means if you vote to go forward, or this is what it means if you don't vote to go forward. it is so easy to run home and say, well on the issue, politically, that was procedural, so don't pay any attention to that. sometimes you have no other option because the majority leader won't allow any votes on the issue itself. in this case, the majority leader has allowed that vote. that is not the case here. so we don't need a procedural

vote to determine whether you're for or against obamacare. we will be able to have a vote, if we invoke cloture and move forward and keep this alive or continued debate not just this week but next year or however long it takes to deal with this issue. we need to move forward or everything else comes to a standstill. that is why i will be voting to move forward. i will be voting to keep this process alive. otherwise, everything stops. there is no further action on this. the house of representatives, controlled by our party, is waiting for us to send this bill back. if we deny cloture, it doesn't go back. they don't have an opportunity to go to the next step. there's bipartisan support for a bill that i have introduced in the senate and todd young, the congressman from southern indiana, has not only introduced but passed in the house of representatives to delay this process for a year so we can continue to address and

hopefully repeal obamacare. the president delayed -- for business, just today, for small business, he can delay for individuals. and that will give us time to continue this effort. voting for cloture today so that we can get something back to the house is not a vote against obamacare -- for obamacare. it is exactly the opposite. it is against obamacare. it keeps the process alive. saying otherwise is misleading, and if that was the cairks then- and if that was the case, then the procedural vote we had on wednesday would not have been 100-0. soy thosso those who try to defe this as a procedural vote, is stopping the government from running. if affects veterans and military families, it affects thousands and thousands of people l in critical jobs. it affects people all across my particular state. sometimes -- sometimes if you

achieve the goal, the problem is this doesn't achieve the goal. we all know that obamacare has a major proportion of it funded through mandatory spnd spending. that is not what we are doing here. we can only affect the discretionary spending, less than 50% f it achieves the goal -- and maybe ultimately we'll have to do this -- but if it achieves the goal, it may be worth considering. but if it doesn't achieve the goal, let's keep this process alive. and let's all of us be on the record with our "yes" or "no." let's get this bill back to the house i so we can continue the fight and let's be straight up on where we stand on this issue. not through a procedural vote but through a clear "yes" and "no." the american people deserve no less. i commend the passion of my colleagues talking on the floor, trying to get rid of obamacare. we have a difference of opinion as to how tactically to do this best. i've come to the judgment and

conclusion that i think many are coming to that instead of just stopping everything, being at a total impasse, shutting down the government, even if we were successful, it wouldn't address the full shutdown and defunding of obamacare. i have come to the conclusion that we ought to move forward. our house republican members are waiting for us to send them legislation, that we can keep this going and come to hopefully a much better resolution than just simply using a procedural gimmick, a procedural process here to define where we stand on this issue. i take back seat to no one on where i stand on obamacare, and i will not give up the fight until we achieve the goal. mr. president, i yield the floor. -- i yield any time may have left. mr. reed: mr. president, i would yield five minutes of proponent time to the senator from massachusetts, senator markey.

mrthe presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. markey: mr. president, where is america now? the dow was at 7900 when george w. bush left office. it is over 15,000 right now. our deficit is heading downward. unemployment is still high, but jobs are coming back. but, as we make this progress, people continue to struggle and they expect us to put together a business plan for america out here on the senate floor and work with the president, work together as democrats and republicans to put that plan together for every american family. and what is the tea party republican response? it is to shut down the government. stamp out signs of our fragile economic recovery, send the signal that america can't perform the most basic job of

government, and that is to pass a budget. and what is driving these tea party republicans? well, i know all these tea party extremists i served with in the house of representatives -- i served over there for years. they live by the republican tea party paradox. they hate the government, but paradoxically, they have to run for office in order to make sure that the government doesn't work. and that is where they are today. they sent us a bill from the house. they know it won't pass. this is a bill to nowhere, and nowhere is where the tea party republicans want the government to go. the tea party republicans want to repeal obamacare. i say to those who want to repeal obamacare, to those who do not like obamacare, to those who like obamacare, we have had that debate. we debated it here in congress.

the bill passed. it was signed by the president. it was held up by the supreme court of the united states. it is the law. it is time to stop playing games and let the law work. but that's exactly what the tea party republicans are afraid of, that the law will actually work. shutting downhe government for obamacare is like canceling the world series because your team di't make it. obamacare is the law. you can't cancel the government. you can't cancel the world series. you have to accept the reality that it is the law. we had an election. but what we have here are the mad hatters of the republican tea party here in congress who have decided that their approach to government, to the old, to the sick, to the needy, to every single principle of the united states of america that we stand

for, it's off with their heads for all of those people who depend upon these programs in you are a country. we are living in an be a sord "alice in -- we are living in an absurd "alice in wonderland" tea party world, mr. president. this government has to work for the american people. and instead, what they're about to do over this weekend is send another maalox moment in the marketplace signal to the credit markets of the world that the united states cannot be depended upon to operate a government, to pay its bills, to respond to the needs of the families within our own country, to meet its obligations not only here but around the world. and to those families who are dependent upon a paycheck from the defense department, they're wondering; the families that are dependent upon a federal helping

hand, they're wondering whether or not they're going to get that help over the next week, over the next two weeks, over the next month. and i'll just give you one final example. the national institutes of health budget -- well, it's really the national institutes of hope. that's what we give to families who have somebody with alzheimer's, with parkinson's, with cancer, with heart disease. that budget is being cut, and cut and cut and cut. it's being cut at the same time that last year we spent $132 billion worth of taxpayers' money on alzheimer's patients in our country. so you can't cut the money for the cure and simultaneously say, we want to cut the money for taking care of those who have the disease. you can't have it both ways. that's what this knee hil this s

bringing to our people. the presiding officer: the senator's time has expired. mr. markey: so i thank the gentleman for yielding, and i just hope that the tea party republicans come to their senses. mr. thune: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from south dakota. mr. thune: mr. president, we're going to have the opportunity to vote today to reverse course. i think everybody -- most people agree -- that obamacare is not working out as it's intended. in fact, there are members on the other side -- we had a democrat recently say that when it comes to complementation of obamacare -- implementation of obamacare, it is a train wreck. now, whether you believe this is a train wreck, which is what i happen to believe, or whether it is a slow-motion derailment, it is time for us to reverse course. we have an opportunity to go in a different direction with the vote we're going to have here in about an hour on whether or not to defund obamacare. i think that the overwhelming

opinion across this country, an overwhelming number of americans believe that this is a -- this is not working; it's hurting middle-class families; it is costing us jobs, driving up health care premiums for people across this country and we need to do something to reverse course. so if you look at how this impacts average people in my state of south dakota -- i'll use that as an example -- you've got young people today who when they look at this awhat they're paying in terms of health insurance premiums this year and what they'll pay under the exchanges when they kick in -- and this is some analysis done by the manhattan institute -- say that a healthy 30-year-old in south dakota is going to be looking at, if you're a wombing, -- a woman, a 223% premium increase as a result of obamacare. if you are a young man -- and i use a 30-year-old again in south dakota as an example of this -- you're going to facing a 393% premium increase. when you compare the data that

is being put out by the department of health and human services with what people in my state of south dakota are paying today for similar coverage. and i am ape using th using then as a case in point. so for a young person in south dakota you're talking about $1,500 more a year to pay for health insurance if you are a woman and $2,000 a year more if you are a man. this money is money that could be used to pay off student loans, save for a home, maybe start a family. and it's not just young adults that are going to be faced with making tough budget decisions between having health care and paying for other items. we know also that families are seeing health care premiums skyrocket. since the president took office by about $3,000, by about $2,500 since obamacare became law. and that's happening at a time, mr. president, when average household income is going down.

if you look at the arnlg household income since the president took office, it is down by $3,600. families are seeing health insurance premiums going up by $3,000. average home household income going down by $3,600. middle-class families are being squeezed from both ends. we have an opportunity to correct that. and today, mr. president, is a vote on defunding obamacare. i've been a big advocate for delaying, defunding, replacing, repealing. when this comes in this issue, count me as one of the all all-of-the-above. anything we can do to get rid of this law an and the harmful imps it is having. i would dare say that every republican in this chamber will be casting a vote to defund obamacare. there isn't a single republican in the chamber today or when this vote was cast, when this was passed back in 2009, that

voted for it. since that time we've had numerous votes. i think 29 or 30 votes here in the united states senate on repealing all or parts of obamacare. so everybody here is going to be on the record today in favor of defunding this bad law. all it will take is five democrats -- five democrats to get us to the 51 votes necessary to change the direction, change the course, turn this train around and head it in a different direction. mr. president, republicans are going to be united 0e on that point. there is sometimes a dins of opinion on -- a difference of opinion on tactics about the best way to reach the goal. but one thing that unites all republicans is the goal -- that doing away with this bad law, it's harmful impact on the american people, on middle-class families and on jobs and our commitment of the question before the house is, are there going to be democrats, a handful of democrats -- five is all it takes -- to stand with

republicans today and help us defund this law? nearly 60% of americans say they oppose obamacare. we can stop it. we can kopp stop it. we can start over, get a do-over, if you will, and do this the right way. and we've talked about many time, mr. president, the things that we would do differently if we had the opportunity to right write a law that would actually address the health care challenges that people face in this country, that would create greater competition in the marketplace by allowing people to buy insurance across state lines, by allowing groups, small business, to join larger groups and pools so they get the benefit of group purchasing power, by reducing the cost of defensive medicine, by end ago lot of the junk lawsuits that clog up the system today, by allowing people to have a refund baling tax credit where they can buy their own health insurance, and they have more choice, more competition. these are all approaches, mr. president, that we think make sense and would provide a positive alternative to the american people that wouldn't cost us the jobs, that wouldn't be driving up health insurance

premiums by 393% for a 30-year-old man in the state of south dakota or 223% for a 30-year-old woman and that would give american families an opportunity to save more for their future, to provide for their families and hopefully to invest in what is a better and a more prosperous future for their children and grandchildren. so that's the -- that's the vote before us today, mr. president. again, i don't have to i don't think belabor the point when it comes to the harmful impacts this has had. if you look at what it's doing to jobs, if you look at what it's doing to employers. we talked to people all the time. i don't doubt there's a member here in the united states senate who when they go them to their states on weekends that don't have conversations with small businesses and employers who are talking about what this is doing to their aibility to create jobs, to put people to work, to raise salaries, to make sure that the people they employ have a better future for their families. but clearly, as long as this -- this bad law stays in place, it is going to be more expensive

and more difficult for businesses in this country to create jobs. it is going to be more difficu difficult, more expensive for middle-class families to make ends meet. and it is going to create a much bigger, more expansive government that is going to cost the american taxpayer way more than i think was originally promised and certainly is going to add significantly to the massive amount of debt that we're passing on to future generations. we have an opportunity to get a do-over today. there have been talk -- the talk during the implementation of this that it's got glitches and bumps and inaccuracies and malfunctions. well, this isn't ready for prime time. i think we can all acknowledge that. at a minimum, we ought to figure out a way to delay this and change course, change direction and go in a better direction for america's future. mr. president, i yield the floor.

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

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. lee: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be suspend. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. lee: mr. president, everyone knows that the vote we're about to take -- cloture of the

house-passed continuing resolution -- is essentially a vote to allow the democrats to gut the house bill. that's why the senate majority leader, the senator from nevada, senator reid, and every other senate democrat are supporting it. 21 house members know that this is a vote to gut the bill that they passed, that they worked so hard to pass out of the house of representatives. that's why they signed a letter yesterday asking the senate republicans, stand united and vote against cloture on this bill. you see, what happened was the house of representatives, acting boldly and nobly and in response to a growing cry from the american people, a cry for help, acted to keep the government funded, to fund government while

defunding obamacare. protecting the american people from a law that they're becoming increasingly aware of. a law that was passed 3 1/2 years ago without members of congress having read it in all of its -- and all of its 2,700 pages. a law that has since led to the promulgation of 20,000 pages of implementing regulatory text. a law that has since been rewritten not just once but twice by the supreme court of the united states, which, having concluded that the law, as written, was constitutionally deficient in two respects, became convinced that it was its duty, its prerogative, and within its power to rewrite the law in order to shoehorn it within the provisions of the u.s. constitution. a law that has since then be rewritten three or four times by the president of the united states without any statutory or constitutional authorization to

do so. a president who has acknowledged that the legislation, this law, the patient protection and affordable care act, is not ready to be implemented. if the president of the united states is convinced that this law is not ready to be implemented, if the president of the united states, who pushed this law through congress 3 1/2 years ago and counts this as his signature legislative accomplishment, if this same president is unwilling to follow the law and is convinced that it's not ready to implement, congress should not fund it. and congress should keep government funded while protecting the public from obamacare. millions of americans are concerned about what this law will do for them. we've seen millions of americans worried about keeping their jo jobs, noticing that jobs are becoming harder and harder to find m. are losing their jobs -- harder to find. many are losing their jobs.

many are seeing their wages cut. others are seeing their hours cut. many, including those 20,000 americans who work for home depot, who were informed last week that, like many other americans, they'll be losing their health coverage. this is why the house of representatives acted. this is why what the house of representatives did by passing this continuing resolution is such a good thing. it keeps the government funded and it protects the american people from the harmful effects of obamacare. now we get over to the senate. and when we came to the senate, we saw that the senate really had -- had a couple of options, a couple of very legitimate options. upon receiving this legislation from the house, the senate could take up this legislation and subject the legislation to an open amendment process, allowing democrats and republicans to submit amendments as they deemed fit and debate those amendments, discuss their relative merits, their pros and their cons and ultimately vote on them, making

compromise and adjustments along the way in the forum that has long been honored and revered in this institution which heralds itself as the world ace greatest deliberative -- world's greatest deliberative body. another option, of course, could be to bring it up for a vote as is, an up-or-down vote base odd what the house passed -- based on what the house passed. can vote on it as it was passed by the house or you can subject it to an open amendment process. either of those things would be fine. if that's what we're looking at, i would be voting "yes" on this cloture vote on this bill. that, however, is not the option that the majority leader, harry reid, selected. instead, what he chose was a different procedure whereby he would select a single amendment, one that guts the house-passed bill of its most important provisions without allowing anyone else the opportunity even to present an amendment and have that considered for a vote.

well, the american people are tired of the games that hide the true meaning of this kind of tactic, of this kind of vote. and so it's incumbent upon us to try to explain them as best we can. the people who elect us do expect us to do what we say we're going to do. not sometimes. not just when it's convenient. in fact, they expect us to do what we say we're going to do, especially when it's inconvenient. and that's really what this first vote is about. cloture on this bill is about showing the american people that we'll do what we say we're going to do, even when, especially when, it's inconvenient. we have the ability to prevent the majority leader, senator harry reid, from unfairly gutting the house continuing resolution. if we all vote "no," that is what we will achieve.

it's what many of us have told -- have promised the american people that we will do. i, along with several of my colleagues, including senators ted cruz, marco rubio, rand pa paul, and several others, have promised to do everything in our power to bring the message that we've received, received overwhelmingly and repeated ly from the american people, to bring that message -- repeatedly from the american people, to bring that message to the chamber, inside these halls. that's what this effort has been all about. we promised to do everything we can to improve the procedure and improve the outcome for the american people, taking their message to washington, incorporating their message into our legislative strategy. across this great country, americans stayed up with us this week. they stayed up with us even overnight, choosing to forgo sleep, just to show that they

were supportive in this effort, and we greatly appreciate that. i want you all who have participated in this effort in one way or another to reflect on how you feel at this very moment. it's been said that opportunity looks a lot like hard work. change is really hard work, especially here in washington. this is what it feels like to take on washington. this is what it feels like to take on the immense and intimidating inertia of big government. this is what it feels like to do what the american people ask and expect and demand. those of you who have been involved in this effort should be proud, should feel energized and motivated to take on the next big challenge. the american people of course expect more and deserve better than what they frequently get from washington. i wish i could say that the fight that has ensued over the

last few days were just about obamacare and nothing more. sadly, obamacare is just one symptom of a much larger problem. it all stems from the syndrome of self-importance that the political ruling class in washington tends to feel. the bigger problem in washington is that the bigger the problem the american people face, the more people in washington tend to think washington has all the answers. obamacare, like the fiscal cliff, like our $17 trillion debt, like our almost $1 trillion annual deficit, like our $2 trillion annual regulatory compliance costs in this country, are all the natural inevitable result of a federal government that is simply too big and too expensive, that delves far too

deeply into the lives of the american people, delves far too deeply into everything from our communications to our health care decisions and to everything from what kind of light bulbs we use to how much water our toilets flush. these are deep and personal decisions that are getting deeper and more personal every single day. the american people understand that they are the sovereigns in this country. they are not subjects. we, the people, are citizens. the government works for us even though it sometimes has started to feel like it's the other way around. all these things show what happens when the political elite, not we the people, pretend to be in control. this is not about any one person or even any one policy or any one political party. this is about this town and it's about the american people, what they deserve, what they demand, what they expect and what they have a right to, which is the right to live free of undue

interference from their national government. this vote is not the end. it's not even the beginning of the end. this is simply the end of the beginning. washington may appear to have the upper hand at this moment, but it's essential that we remember that the american people will always have the final word. thank you, mr. president. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cruz: mr. president, three and a half years ago, perhaps reasonable minds could have

differed over whether obamacare would work. perhaps reasonable minds could have differed over whether it would cripple the economy. perhaps reasonable minds could have differed over whether it would be devastating to millions of americans. mr. president, today that's no longer the case. today we've seen the impacts of obamacare. we've seen what it's doing. and obamacare is a train wreck. it is a nightmare to use the words used by its lead democratic author in the senate and a union leader who previously supported obamacare. obamacare is the single largest job killer in this country. obamacare is forcing americans all over our nation into part-time work, to working 29 hours a week or less.

obamacare is causing health insurance premiums to skyrocket all over this country. and obamacare is jeopardizing the health care for millions of americans, threatening that they will lose their health insurance altogether. it quite simply isn't working. and, mr. president, perhaps saddest of all, the united states senate isn't listening. the senate democrats are not listening to the millions of americans who are being hurt by obamacare. if you're a young person right now coming out of school and finding door after door closed to you because small businesses aren't growing, because jobs aren't there, because we have the lowest labor force participation in decades, the senate democrats aren't listening to you. if you're a single mom right now , perhaps waiting tables at a diner and you're seeing your hours forcibly reduced to 29

hours a week, 29 hours a week are not enough to feed your kids, but that's what obamacare is doing to you, and senate democrats aren't listening to you. if you're a recent immigrant trying to raise a young family, working hard and seeing your health insurance premiums skyrocket and you're wondering how on earth you're going to be able to pay these rising premiums while still meeting the needs and expenses of your young family, senate democrats aren't listening to you. if you're retired, if you're a person with disabilities, getting notice from your insurance carrier that the policy is going to be dropped because of obamacare, or if you're concerned that you will be getting notices, so many others across this country have been, senate democrats aren't

listening to you. if you're married and on your spouse's health insurance and you have received a notice like 15,000 employees at u.p.s. recently received a notice telling them that their spousal coverage was being dropped, that their husbands and wives were losing their health insurance because of obamacare, senate democrats aren't listening to you. if you're a union worker working hard to provide for your family to seek the american dream and you're discovering that the health insurance that you like, that you have worked for, that you have paid for is going to be taken away from you because of obamacare, senate democrats aren't listening to you. now, perhaps, mr. president, some might say how could it be

that this is happening? surely senate democrats would listen to the american people if that sort of suffering were happening. well, if you don't take my word for it, let me urge you to take the word of james hoffa, president of the teamsters, and i'd like to read a portion of a letter mr. hoffa wrote recently. the senate majority leader harry reid and house minority leader nancy pelosi." dear leader reid and leader pelosi, when you and the president sought our support for the affordable care act, you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. sadly, that promise is under threat. right now, unless you and the obama administration enact an equitable fix, obamacare will shatter not only our hard-earned benefits but destroy the foundation of the 40-hour

workweek that is the backbone of the american middle class." that's not me speaking. that's james hoffa, the president of the teamsters. "like millions of other americans, our members are on the front line -- are front-line workers in the american economy. we have been strong supporters of the notion that all americans should have access to quality, affordable health care. we have also been strong supporters of you." i would note this is addressed to senate majority leader harry reid and house minority leader nancy pelosi." in campaign after campaign, we have put boots on the ground, gone door to door to get out the vote, run phone banks and raised money to secure this vision, the vision of a democratic majority in the senate. so how is that democratic majority in the senate working out for union workers across this country? well, the next sentence in this letter is -- "now this vision has come back to haunt us." mr. president, i would note this is the exact same sentiment i

expressed a moment ago. senate democrats aren't listening to you. the letter continues -- "time is running out. congress wrote this law. we voted for you. we have a problem. you need to fix it. the unintended consequences of the a.c.a. are severe. perverse incentives are already creating nightmare scenarios." note that word nightmare which i started my remarks by quoting. that's not my word. that's the teamsters describing obamacare. indeed, the letter concludes by saying on behalf of millions of working men and women we represent and the families they support, we can no longer stand silent in the face of the elements of the affordable care act that will destroy the very health and well-being of our members along with millions of other hardworking americans. mr. president, let me note, number one, mr. hoffa says

millions of working men and women. not hundreds, not thousands. millions. and what does mr. hoffa say is happening to those millions of working men and women? that their health care is being destroyed and destroyed is the word he used, and what answer do we get today from the democrats in the senate? nothing. president obama has granted exemptions from this failed law to big business and to members of congress. so the friends of the administration don't have to bear the burdens of the law's collapse, but hardworking americans, those without lobbyists, without friends in the corridors of power, they're getting no exemptions from senate democrats. mr. president, that's wrong. now, in roughly an hour, if senators vote as they have announced publicly they intend to vote, this body will vote to put back to restore the funding for obamacare and gut the house

continuing resolution, but the good news is the process isn't over. it's going to go back to the house of representatives, and i salute the house for having had the courage to stand up and fight and defund obamacare, and i remain confident, hopeful and optimistic the house will stand their ground, will continue the fight, which means this issue is coming back to the senate. and that is good news. that is good news, number one, for republicans. it is unfortunate that there has been republican division on this issue, and when it comes back to the senate after the house stands their ground yet again, we will have an opportunity for republicans to come home, for republicans to stand together, and i very much hope the next time this issue is before this body in a few days, that all 46 republicans are united against obamacare and standing with the american people, that we listen to the american people the way senate democrats are not. and let me tell you, i hope also that it's not just 46

republicans. our friends on the democratic side of the aisle go home to their states, they listen to their constituents. they are hearing the suffering from the men and women who elected them. it is not easy to disagree with your political party, but at the end of the day, what we're doing here is bigger than partisan politics. what we're doing here is fighting for 300 million americans across this great country. and so i hope when this issue comes back, when the house stands their ground and sends this back to us, that instead of just exercising brute political power, as this body is getting ready to do, i hope that senate democrats begin listening, that they begin listening to young people, begin listening to single moms, they begin listening to immigrants, they begin listening to people who are retired with disabilities, that they begin listening to married people, that they begin listening to union workers, all of whom are suffering under obamacare. this is an opportunity for the senate to return to the finest traditions of this body, where

we listen to and fight for the american people. that hasn't happened in a long time, but i am very hopeful that we are in the process of seeing it begin to happen now. thank you, mr. president, and i yield the floor. i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: