united states with the infection had contact in the health care system. they were health care professionals. we use in this country and many parts of the world strategies to protect health care personnel. we've got infectious diseases in all of our hospitals every single day, and back in the day 150 years ago, we actually built separate infectious disease hospitals because we needed to contain these, but we can't think we could prevent the spread to other patients. what we know now is by sticking to some pretty straightforward practices, we call them standard precautions, we can, we cannot only prevent the spread from, you know, one patient to the next, but we can protect our health care personnel. we don't want doctors, nurses and students, volunteers becoming ill just because they take care of patients. so these practices are used uniformly for all care. that is something that is built into our medical system, and i think we see the benefit of that in the fact that we don't have health care personnel getting

sick left and right. in places where we see this kind of spread through health care personnel, many times what we see when we look is that those infection prevention practices are either not well established or, if they're established, the adherence to them is spotty. and that's certainly what we seem to be seeing in many parts of the world. >> host: your colleague at the cdc, dr. tom frieden, tweeted out that mers risk remains very low, ongoing communications help us how to reduce the spread. so how is the cdc working with the world health organization on thisesome. >> guest: so we have many partners, and one of the major one is the the world health organization. the who sends teams around the world and is able to bring together multi-national groups that help us bridge communications challenges and bringing multiple perspectives to the ground.

there are also regional offices that are supported by the world health organization, and so the combination of cdc's global platforms and who's platform sites allows us to have both a sustainable response rather than just going in with one or two people. we're able to maintain a presence. we're able to support our staff in the field with those shared resources and have a bigger impact. i think it's a dual benefit of this kind of partnership. >> host: we'll go to georgia. donny is watching us there, a democrat. go ahead, donny. >> caller: yes, good morning, greta, and good morning, dr. bell. i have two quick questions. my first question is, i mean, how safe are we and how -- i mean, could this possibly become an epidemic here in america? and my second question is kind of unrelated. i want to know how close are we to finding a cure for the aids virus. thank you.

>> guest: so let's start with the mers. i think that as you just read from dr. frieden's tweet, the risks to this country right now from mers is extremely low. we're taking it very, very seriously, though, because as i said, a proportion of people who get infected don't just have a mild illness, but they go on to become very sick, and we don't want that kind of infection to spread. it's the same reason that cdc pushes so hard for people to get their flu shot every year. most people have a mild illness, it's something that might keep you in bed for a few days, but you get better. but a good proportion of people with influenza end up in the hospital, and many people die every year. this is just like that. what we don't want is a new challenge coming into our country for which we don't have a vaccine or treatment yet, so we're being very aggressive in tracking people down and making sure we control it. in general, the risk to most people in this country is extremely low. in terms of a cure for hiv, that's something that's an ongoing discussion. there are many researchers working very hard, and i'm not

going to go into it because, frankly, it would take us in another direction. but it's an important aspect of public health as well. >> host: staying on mers, the hill had this story on their web site: will budget cuts help spread deadly mers virus in the united states? the national association of county and city health officials say more than 50,000 local and state health jobs have been cut since 2008 as local governments reduce budgets because of falling tax revenue during the session. during the recession. what impact, dr. bell, does this have on preventing the spread of a disease like mers? >> guest: so local and state health departments are a hugely important safety net that exists in this country. without it we wouldn't have the ability to reach out quickly and contain diseases. and when that safety net becomes weak, our entire public health system is at risk. the challenge that we have, frankly, is that it's invisible until it fails. it's like so many of those things that, you know, we don't

think about. a bridge is kind of ignored as long as it's working, but if there's a loss of structural integrity, all of a sudden there's a catastrophe. and the public health safety net is very much like that. so it is certainly concerning when state and local health departments are weakened. i can also say that that's one of the reasons that cdc is working to make investments that strengthen that safety net. investments in state and local health departments, their laboratories and in better technology. i mentioned that we distributed the mers tests to state health departments around the country. that's parking lot of the way that we use -- that's part of the way we use that safety net to make sure that we have a rapid and effective response to this problem. similarly, we're investing in advanced molecular diagnostics so that rapid tests and very precise testing can be updated and spread throughout our health system. >> host: we're talking about mers and the virus in the united states, but take a look at the map, the world map of the mers

virus. this is from the mers map that shows that there have been 636 infected, 194 have died. this was updated about 11 hours ago, and there is a 30.5% fatality rate. paul in largo, florida, independent caller. hi, paul. >> caller: hi. >> host: morning. go ahead. >> caller: yeah, i'm about middle -- in about the middle '90s, i went to the hospital, i had my gallbladder out. and right after that i started getting these little pimples. and i went to the doctor -- excuse me -- and they gave me antibiotics. anyways, the next day after what looked like a pimple, it would be a golfball size. this happened about three times, and then it happened on my face. so i told the doctor, i can't deal with this on my face. he finally sent me to a special

doctor, it was a infection disease control doctor, and it was called mrsa. i was wondering what the difference to that was, and he gave me this stuff, and i put it on the end of a cotton long stick and put it up as far as i could -- >> host: okay. so, dr. michael bell, people have heard of mrsa. talk about the difference between these two. >> guest: ah. so they are about as different as could possibly be. what our last caller was describing was a staph infection. staph infections happen when hands aren't clean or when surfaces are contaminated and often can be associated with health care even though we're seeing a lot of it in the community in general. mrsa is a kind of staph that doesn't respond to one of the very common antibiotics. and that's an interesting comparison, because while we're making a big deal about mers, the virus from the the middle

east, even though it's affecting a very tiny number of people in this country, antibiotic resistance -- of which mrsa is an important part -- is a huge problem. we see two million cases a year. we see as many as 30,000 depths from that. that's the size of a small college campus being killed every year by resistant infections. and, you know, it's the sort of thing that if it happened all in one place like that, it would make huge headlines. but because it's mixed out and spread throughout our communities, we don't actually see it. this is something that is a huge problem for this country. >> host: are they both superbug, and what is a superbug? >> guest: ah. so superbug, obviously, is a generic term. the mers virus, i would say, is the on the sit of a superbug. it -- the opposite of a superbug. it doesn't spread like wildfire, and while it does have some people getting very ill, the it is not a super high fatality

infection. right now the only thing that makes it super is that it's new, and there isn't a clear treatment or vaccine yet. but other than that, it's really not a lot different from something like influenza. it's a respiratory virus that spreads if you're in close contact and for which, you know, we have ways of preventing that spread. the word "superbug" has been used a lot related to a type of resistant bacteria. so as opposed to a virus which uses the human being as its way of reproducing bacteria, they divide on their own. they multiply by themselves, and they can live in the environment and multiply. that's the big difference. and the superbug bacteria that we often talk about these days is cre. it's a mouthful. what that really means is this is the family of bacteria that includes e. coli, a lot of common gut bacteria. we all carry them, and we have to carry them. if we don't have them, we get

very sick. these bacteria are gaining the ability to resist treatment with a lot of different ability -- antibiotics, and we're getting to the point where some of these are completely untreatable. in other words, we're getting to the point where if you go back 150 years, somebody with a bad infection, all you could do was give them some aspirin and a cold towel on their forehead. when we developed antibiotics during the early part of the last century, that was a game changer. it allowed us to treat these infections that killed people left and right. in the civil war, more people died of infected cuts than bullets. when we think about farm injuries pack in the day, a lot of amputations happened not because the hand was mangled, but because there was such a bad infection that you couldn't treat it. you don't see very many amputations anymore. so we have grown up, at least some of us have grown up, in an era of tremendous health

capability, health capacity thanks to antibiotics. one other thing i'd like to share is that it's kind of like our prick health system -- public health system, this invisible safety net. antibiotics provide a safety net that let us do things we otherwise couldn't do. if i were to get hit by a truck and, you know, my guts were spilled all over the road, there are talented sures that could put -- surgeons that could put me back together. but all that bacteria that gets inside me will cause an infection, and if we can't treat it, the best surgeon in the world won't be able to save my life. for cancer, we have amazing technology not f now. the ability to transplant stem cells to give chemotherapy, but all of those things require turning off the patient's immune system for a while. and if during that time we don't have antibiotics to treat an infection, the person will die. so whether it's intensive care medicine, whether it's cancer care, burn care or surgery, all of those things rely on the ability to treat infections. and if we lose that ability,

we're in a very different era. we end up going back to the dark ages. >> host: bob is next, indian rocks beach, florida. republican caller. >> caller: hi, how are you? >> host: morning. >> caller: hi, doctor, i have two questions, actually. the first is has patient zero been identified, and the second is, is this a possibility that this is a weaponized, biological weapon? thank you. >> guest: ah. >> caller: i'll hang up and hold on for your answer. >> guest: great questions. there's an interesting pattern that we see almost every time there's a new virus introduced into human beings. and that is that patient zero is almost never found. i'll use a different virus as an example. we bowl la, it's taken -- with ebola, it's taken us decades to pin down the original source, and even now we're still trying to confirm that it's bats at fault.

i blame bats a lot, because they tend to carry nasty things. we didn't know that for the longest time because the first person who has contact with a dead bat or whatever, maybe walks into the wrong cave, that person tends to spread it to a few other people and then die, and then two or three other generations of spread occur before there's an alert. these things tend to happen in remote, rural places. and so months have gone by. you're on your fifth or sixth generation of infection. often in a more urban setting. and then, finally, there's an alert that there's an outbreak. by that time, no one actually remembers that first case because that chain has really been largely removed because the virus so deadly. similarly with mers, it's very difficult to go back in time and figure out who that first person was who got ill. remember that at the beginning of this there was no test to detect mers, and so it's likely that somebody developed a fever and died of a respiratory

infection. they might have been told that the family member died of pneumonia or what have you, but i doubt very much that there was any specific diagnosis. so that patient zero is likely to remain a mystery when it comes to mers. now, about weaponization, this is something that we're always very concerned about. it's one of the reasons that we maintain such a large lab capacity. our laboratories at cdc are tremendous, and they're a national and international asset. one of the reasons we do that so we can understand new pathogens when they appear. in this case what we're seeing so far with the limited number of samples that we've had available is that the viruses that we're seeing are very, very closely related to the natural viruses we're finding in the camels. so there's no evidence that anybody is weapon weaponizing this at this point, and it still looks very much as though the camel reservoir is the real source. >> host: dr. bell, why is finding patient zero important?

or is it? >> guest: you know, in this case it's not. in other cases when the actual source of the reservoir, if you will, the place where the virus hides between outbreaks is an issue, then finding that original patient is very important because that's the person who can tell you what they touched, what they ate, where they went. but when we already see a pretty clear connection with a source, that's quite a bit less important. the other value in finding a source patient is to understand transmission dynamics. with sars we had patient zero in that hotel in hong kong. now, was he truly the original patient zero? >> no. surely there were, you know, cases of sars being transmitted related to the marketplace in china in those palm -- [inaudible] but in that particular global web of transmission, we were able to trace it back to this one individual. and that helped us understand the efficiency or lack of

efficiency with which that virus spread. >> host: ray is next in liverpool, new york. democratic caller. hi, ray. >> caller: very informative program. doctor, i would like to know what your opinion is about shaking hands between a patient and a doctor. i don't think it's necessary, it should be avoided because of the obvious public health aspects. what is your opinion about that? >> guest: well, in a perfect world i would hope that everyone's hands are so clean that shaking hands wouldn't be an issue. you know, i think that there's a trade-off to be had. we live in a culture that values a handshake, and if you are somebody who wants to make a strong connection with your doctor, sometimes that hand shake is valuable. so the main message here is to make sure that hands are clean every time. and i'll digress for just a moment and say that before the handshake, i am the first to say you need to ask your doctor, your nurse or your visitor to

wash their hands where you can see them do it. and sometimes it comes off as obnoxious, but it's okay to be a little bit obnoxious when you're defending your health or the health of your family member. or you can ask in a nice way. i'm neurotic about this, and i'd really appreciate it if you'd use the hand sanitizer or wash your hands for me. and once they do, thank them and shake their hand. but saying handshakes should never happen might be a little bit extreme. >> host: twitter asks this question: do airlines have any equipment to stop germ spreading on planes? >> guest: ah. this is a very interesting topic. i've learned much more about airplanes than i ever thought i would. being a physician, you would think that that's an engineer's job. it turns out that a couple of things work. first and foremost, routine hygiene is important. so making sure that surfaces are wiped down, especially in the bathrooms between trips is one way that airlines help us stay safe.

but the air handling system on airplanes is also very interesting. the reason the air is warm is that it gets heated through heat generated by the engine, and that heated air is, essentially, very, very clean. so from a safety perspective, from that hygiene perspective, the mere air handling system of an airplane is beneficial. and in a large passenger plane, the air sort of travels in little discs like lifesavers in a package. and that's another way that the airplane actually reduces the chance of spread. so the combination of that engineering approach and the ability of individual passengers to either cover their own coughs and make sure their hands are clean, those are things that we can all do to keep from catching diseases in planes. >> host: dr. bell, as you're talking, cnn is doing a segment right now on how superbugs can survive on planes for days. >> guest: so those superbugs

that they're talking about, i imagine, are probably the bacteria like the antibiotic-resistant ones that we've talked about, and many of those do survive. they survive not only on planes, they survive on, you know, household furniture, they survive in any number of public places. anything that is touched by human beings is likely to have some organisms on it, quite a bit actually, and every now and then somebody will do a study and do bacterial cultures of, i've seen kitchen sponges and cutting boards -- yes, those things should be kept clean but, no, they're never sterile. sometimes people focus on grocery cart handles. yes, those have a lot of nasty things on them, but so does your steering wheel. everything that you touch has a ton of bacteria. the key is making sure you don't deliver them to someplace susceptible. on a healthy person that's, generally speaking, your eyes, nose and mouth. the hands that we clean are the ones that keep us safe. the other thing that can happen

is if you have a wound, if there's a -- >> see the rest of this discussion on our web site. go to c-span.org. we're going live now to the u.s. senate as senators are returning from their weekly party lunches. general speeches and votes after 5:30. mr. cornyn: madam president, the steady trickle of allegations surrounding abuses of our veterans has turned from a trickle into a monsoon. it seems like every day that goes by, there is an additional bad news story about appointment lists that have been cooked to look like the waiting times were not as long as they were. allegations like at the veterans administration hospital in phoenix where allegedly there were secret waiting lists where 40 veterans died waiting to get health care, and the secret waiting list was being created to make the backlog not appear

as serious as it really is. well, as we discuss and debate all the numbers on wait times and backlogs, it's important, as always, whenever we're talking about statistics and numbers, to remember that these are real human beings and these are our veterans, these are real individual stories. they help people like dale richardson who is a vietnam veteran from east texas who died of cancer after reportedly waiting two months to hear back from the v.a. about scheduling chemotherapy treatments. they help people like thomas breen, a navy veteran, who like mr. richardson died of cancer after a two-month period in which he reportedly waited in vain to hear back from the v.a. about an appointment time. they also represent people like

edward laird whose story was written up in the "los angeles times" this last weekend. mr. laird was a navy veteran aged 86 who discovered a couple of unusual marks on his nose, and so he went to the doctor at the phoenix v.a. hospital to get it checked out, and according to the "los angeles times," the doctor said he needed a biopsy, but it took almost two years before mr. laird was allowed to see a v.a. specialist, and when he finally did get to see the specialist, he was told that the biopsy was unnecessary, and so it wasn't done, but mr. laird found it hard to believe but that's what they told him. unfortunately, by the time he got to the v.a. hospital in phoenix, by the time he got them to agree to see him, the situation with his nose which he could tell as simply a layman had gotten worse and worse and worse. so mr. laird was ultimately diagnosed with cancer and

literally half of his nose had to be taken off because of the cancer. as mr. laird told the "los angeles times," he said i have no nose, and i have to put an ice cream stick up my nose at night so i can breathe. i'll just mention one other story from the phoenix system earlier this month. a woman named kim sertage told "the arizona republic" that her father received such poor care at the phoenix v.a. that she was forced to pay for private care until he ultimately died in 2011. in her own words, she said -- quote -- "whenever anyone asks how my father died, i say from being in the v.a. hospital." the icing on the cake was when i received a letter of condolence

from the hospital and they had the wrong name for my dad. so, mr. president, it's obvious from anecdote to anecdote to anecdote, from drip, drip, drip, drip that then turns into a flood, there is something terribly wrong with the health care and the way that the veterans administration is administering claims with the backlog of, well, more than half of the claims of the 589,000 claims, more than half of them are backlogged according to the the -- the own standards and criteria of the veterans administration. so this is something that we know has been -- we have known that the backlog has been a problem for years. indeed, we have tried to come in on a bipartisan way and legislatively through the national defense authorization bill where we added money, we have added resources to the v.a.

system, but obviously we have not gotten to the bottom of the problem, and part of it, i'm afraid, is systemic, and some of it sadly is part of the bureaucratic culture at the v.a., one that -- where accountability is unknown. you don't get credit for doing a good job, you don't get demerits for doing a bad job. there is just no accountability, and this is what you get without accountability. so not only is the v.a. system failing to provide our military heroes with the reliable health care that they deserve, there are also news reports that v.a. staffers across the country have been conspiring to falsify appointment data in hopes of covering up long wait times. i mentioned that a moment ago, and sadly some of those allegations come from my state. we have had allegations of data manipulation of these appointment times in places like austin where i live, harry

harlingen in south texas, in san antonio and waco. for that matter, a former harlingen v.a. doctor named richard krugman told "the washington examiner" that up to 15,000 v.a. patients in south texas were either denied colonoscopies -- of course, those are cancer-screening examinations -- or they were forced to endure long, pointless delays. dr. krugman fears that many of those patients simply died waiting their cancer screening or awaiting treatment. if the problems with the v.a. are just a fraction as serious as what they appear from the news reports that we see day in and day out or stories like i have recounted here today, if they are just a fraction as severe of what they appear to be, we have a national scandal of the highest order. and let's be clear about what's

happening. u.s. military veterans are literally dying because of bureaucratic failures, and in some instances, bureaucratic fraud. there is simply no good excuse for what reportedly happened in harlingen, in phoenix or in any of the cities where veterans or veterans' officials have made their allegations, and yet it still disturbs me that i'm not sure that the president is taking this with the requisite urgency. now, apparently it's the -- in the talking points to say when somebody raises this scandal, i think jay carney said the president is mad as hell. well, that's what eric shinseki said when he testified before the senate veterans' affairs committee last week, but that's, frankly, not good enough. we need less rhetoric and more

action. for starters, the president has still not demanded the resignation of the person in charge of the veterans' affairs administration. we all admire general shinseki for his service in the united states army, but he on his watch has presided over some of the biggest scandals at the v.a. in history and is painfully aware, no matter what you think about general shinseki and i admire him for his service in the army, but it is painfully clear that the v.a. now needs a fresh new set of eyes, it needs new leadership in order to recover, reform and regain the confidence of america's veterans. president obama still stands by his v.a. secretary while nothing seems to be happening. yes, we read about, well, there is an audit here, audit that, but we need top-to-bottom review

reform and we need to see the v.a. once again to regain america's confidence. well, it's not just knee that says that. one of the largest veterans' affairs organizations in america, the american legion has called on general shinseki, secretary shinseki to step down and new leadership to be appointed. here's just another example of the administration's unserious response to this scandal. the person who has been nominated to serve as the v.a. under secretary of health, dr. muralski, currently oversees the v.a. health system in illinois that was recently rocked by all-too-familiar allegations of secret waiting lists. i note that dr. muralski spent two years as the direct survivor of sharon helmand who worked in the great lakes health care system before becoming director

of the phoenix system. as we all know, ms. helmand was placed on administrative leave after the phoenix v.a. was charged with creating secret waiting lists of its own. for these reasons, i have asked president obama to withdraw dr. muralski's nomination. we need a clean break. we need new leadership. we need a fresh set of eyes, and we need a new sense of urgency in what is a growing scandal. as i said a moment ago, if even a fraction of these reported failures and abuses are true, it would represent a national scandal of the highest order. it's not enough for the v.a. secretary to say i'm -- quote -- mad as hell, close quote. that d doesn't solve anybody's problem, that doesn't fix what's broken in the v.a. health care system. what americans want and they deserve is bold reform and new leadership. president obama has the power to

make that happen. and it's long past time for him to use it. madam president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the time until 5:30 p.m. will be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees. ms. stabenow: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from michigan. ms. stabenow: thank you, madam president. i'm here today to talk about the future of our country and the future of our middle class, which i know our presiding officer cares deeply about as well. you know, a hundred years ago in michigan something quite extraordinary happened, 1914, a man named henry ford did something that all of his business friends said was crazy. he doubled the wages of his workers to $5 a day.

the headlines at that time showed those on wall street literally thought he was going to ruin the economy and everyone said that he was going to go under. it was the craziest thing they'd ever seen. but exactly the opposite happened. in fact, there were stories a month after he did this when, by the way, tens of thousands of people showed up for these jobs, but around the plant there were newspaper interviews that were done about all the small businesses that had seen their businesses double. that were hiring new people for the hot dog stand or the clothing entrepreneur who was selling shoes and suits and so on, who said that it had been wonderful for them. and we all know what happened to henry ford. he went on to be one of the wealthiest men of his generation by doing the right thing and understanding, we all do better if everybody has a fair shot to

make it and we do better as a businessperson if everybody had a shot. and, in fact, we're very proud and we believe that we started the middle class in detroit, michigan. so, madam president, we celebrate success in this country, and we also understand that we're all in this together, our family, our community, our country. we can do great things by ourselves but ultimately, what makes us great is americans -- as americans is we are connected and we are in it together. that's the idea that america was built on. everyone contributes their fair share and we give everybody a fair shot to work hard and get ahead in life. just like henry ford, we understand that the economy's not working, our country is not as strong as it should be unless it's working for everyone, not just the wealthy few. and, in fact, henry ford showed

you can become very wealthy yourself by doing the right thing. so we now have choices to make in our economy. and, unfortunately, today a small number of incredibly rich people in our country are doing the opposite of what henry ford did. they're literally trying to buy a government that works for only them, only them, at the expense of every other american. the supreme court's outrageous citizens united decision and other decisions that have followed have paved the way for multibillionaires to spend secret money on fake front groups and hundreds of millions of dollars on television and radio ads to twist the facts or just make things up so they can impose their own extreme views on our country. and i want to speak today about

two who are at the forefront of this effort. and what their views mean for the future of our country, the people i represent in michigan, people in wisconsin and the future of middle-class families all across america. the koch brothers. two petrochemical magnates, are reportedly now worth over $100 billion. $100 billion. in just one day last month, their fortune grew by $1.3 billion in one day. how many average americans would work a lifetime, added up together across this country to ever try to reach $1.3 billion, made in a day. they have built what "the washington post" called -- quote -- "a far-reaching operation of unrivaled complexity built

around a maze of groups that cloak its donors." doak them in secrecy. this maze of groups raised $400 million in 2012. just last week we found out one of the groups, americans for prosperity, plans to spend $125 million in secret, undisclosed money in this year's election alone. $125 million on people that support their views of america. one expert on taxes and political groups a professor at notre dame law school, said he had never seen anything like the network of koch groups before. it's designed to make it opaque as to where the money is coming from and where the money is going, it would only be worth it if you were spending the kinds of dollars the koch brothers are. because this is not cheap.

front groups that call themselves senior citizen groups, groups that call themselves environmental groups, groups that call themselves veterans groups, go on and on and on, all these fake front groups through which they are funneling money. well, madam president, the koch brothers may be able to hide their money and hide behind shadowy groups but they can't hide their radical views from the american people. radical views. let me be clear. it's not just that i'm saying that they are radical. that's how charles koch described his own views, radical. senator sanders recently spoke here on the senate floor about some of the koch brothers' extreme anti-middle class views. i want to thank him for helping to shed some light on ideas that i will, i will the vast majority of americans disagree with.

and many of us find frightening. frankly, for the future of our country. we don't have to guess what these views are, since david koch ran for vice president on the libertarian party ticket in 1980. and loudly trumpeted them for all to see. what did david koch promise to do when he ran for the second highest office in the country? he promised to end the -- i quote -- "fraudulent, virtually bankrupt and increasingly oppressive social security system." oppressive social security system, which has lifted millions of seniors, a generation of seniors out of poverty and given them dignity. as they have moved to older years. he promised to abolish medicare and medicaid and, by the way, the majority of medicaid funds is used on low-income seniors in

nursing homes. he promised to get rid of the post office. don't cut it back to five days. just get rid of it. you know, i suppose you can just deliver the mail yourself or you can go hire somebody i guess, someplace, to somehow deliver the mail and what be trying to get that social security check? i guess it doesn't matter because he doesn't think you should have social security or medicare sore so it doesn't matter if you get that check as a senior. he proafdz and promised to abolish the environmental protection agency, the agency that makes sure that we have air that we can breathe and water we can drink and for those of us in the great lakes, that we have the blessing of being able to fish and being able to boat and have the beauty of the great lakes. he promised to end all programs for the poor. children, seniors.

low-income veterans. repeal all taxation. no funding for the police department, the fire department, no funding for the roads, no funding for the military. no funding for the veterans that we just heard, and i agree with, great concern about what's happening for our veterans and the people supporting our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the top two donors, said there should be no taxation and no funding for them. get rid of the minimum wage. remember how henry ford became one of the wealthiest men of his generation and helped build the middle class. he doubled the wages and, by the way, if we were using henry ford's formula, the minimum wage would be close to $15 an hour right now. well, the koch brothers don't want any minimum wage at all, no minimum wage, no social security, no medicare, no help for anyone, just go out and

earn a billion three in a day and purchase whatever you need. seniors, children, people with disabilities, including our veterans. left with no support. and, of course, no taxes for the koch brothers and their big shot friends. madam president, this is truly a radical agenda. and here's the truly shocking part. the koch brothers' agenda which again charles koch himself proudly calls a radical agenda, is exactly the agenda we are seeing coming from the republican house of representatives right now. right now. in too many members in our senate republican caucus. they want to privatize social

security and gamble seniors' money away in the stock market. they want to eliminate medicare as we know it. they've passed budgets, the ryan budget which does that. they want to privatize the post office. they've passed a budget that guts efforts to help americans in need or even invest in the future of education and innovation. this isn't what we said in 1980, this is what has hafd and is being promoted right now. which is why they are putting so much money into the elections, their agenda is being appropriated right now -- promoted right now which they themselves called radical. and they refuse to join us in giving americans a raise so that people working full time, full-time jobs on minimum wage which, by the way, a majority of them are women, raising children, they refuse to join with us to make sure if you're

working 40 hours a week in this country you are at least above the poverty level and have a fair shot to get ahead. we also don't have to guess how this radical "i've got mine, you're on your own" koch brothers agenda works in practice. in michigan, we've seen how this plays out. in gaylord, michigan, beautiful northern michigan, hundreds of workers used to work at a plant making particle board. used to work. that is until the koch brothers bought their company, closed the plant, and left town. you're on your own. instead of good-paying jobs that paid workers $15 to $20 an hour so they could have a family and enjoy the great outdoors in michigan and send the kids to college, jobs that gave workers a fair shot to get ahead, the koch brothers left behind rubble and scrap metal.

rubble and scrap metal. that's what the koch brothers leave behind. and that's not all the koch brothers leave behind. imagine that you're outside with your family and suddenly you see a giant cloud of toxic black dust blowing towards you. or maybe you're just inside your house, your apartment, and you start to notice black dust piling up, dust you later find out includes a toxic metal that's believed to cause cancer, or you own a restaurant and you're forced to sweep up the same toxic dust from your patio and have you to worry about what it's doing to your pregnant wife and unborn child. this isn't something out of charles dickens' novels or a story about the pollution in china today. this actually happened to the people in detroit. why? because a company owned by the

koch brothers decided to illegally store piles of a by-product of refining dirty tar sands oil alongside the detroit river. these piles were up to four stories high. piled up right next to where people lived. and just the other day, i read a story about the exact same thing happening to people in chicago. another company owned by the koch brothers is storing giant piles of pet coke in a reese dengs area, something i know senator durbin is very concerned about. and it doesn't stop there, madam president. last wednesday, senator levin, congressman fred upton from kalamazoo and i wrote to the environmental protection agency about a toxic waste site in kalamazoo, michigan. we wanted to make sure that it

finally gets cleaned up. guess who owns that toxic waste site and hasn't cleaned it up for years and years and years. that's right, the koch brothers. we have come together in this country and decided that it's not fair for the rest of us to have to breathe dirty air and drink dirty water so a multibillionaire can have an even bigger profit. the koch brothers, however, whose companies have been fined numerous times apparently think it's just fine to pollute our air and our water and then save every american -- say to every american you're on your own, you clean it up. "the new york times" reported this weekend that david koch even ran ads calling for the complete deregulation of the energy industry.

can you believe it? an oil man, a billionaire oil man who thinks there should be no rules for big oil. at the expense of the public. so whether it's clean air and clean water rules, whether it's medicare, whether it's social security, funding for seniors in nursing homes through medicaid, other vital services that keep the promise of the american dream within reach for every american, the koch brothers want to get rid of those things in order to help themselves and their powerful friends. they want to rig the game in their favor. they're trying very hard to do that with hundreds of millions of dollars of secret money and phony groups. they are willing to use their billions to create a government that works for them, just them

and their friends. heads, they win. tails, the rest of america loses. madam president, that's not what this country is about. we need to stop this assault on our democracy and our middle class by passing a constitutional amendment to get this secret money out of our elections, and that's why i am so proud to join in supporting and cosponsoring an amendment cosponsored by senator tom udall that so many of our caucus are supporting because we need to make it clear this is not acceptable in a democracy. in the meantime, though, we need to make sure the american people understand the real agenda behind the front groups and the secret money. that's why i'm here today.

and that's why our majority leader and others speak out. it's because it matters. it's the money promoting the agenda. the money promoting actions like closing plants and petcoke going into the rivers and our neighborhoods. it's an agenda that is not the american people's agenda. in america, everyone deserves a fair shot to work hard and get ahead, everybody. it's not about rigging the game for a few. you shouldn't be able to buy all the rules of the game by putting secret money and front groups out there and telling things that aren't true and getting people in there that you know will just work for your own radical agenda. that's not what america's about. we have got too many people barely holding onto the middle

class, struggling to get into the middle class, and all they want is a fair shot to make it. that's what we are about. that's what we are fighting for every single day. i see my colleague on the floor who is authoring the constitutional amendment that would address this issue of getting the light of day under money and politics in our great country. i want to again in his presence commend senator udall for doing that, and i want to urge us to come together. this is -- what's happening right now with the money is the worst of america, not the best of america. we can do better than that. people expect us to do better than that. and i'm going to continue with my colleagues and democratic caucus to fight to make sure that happens. i yield the floor. mr. durbin: madam president? the presiding officer: the democratic whip. mr. durbin: madam president, i thank my colleague from michigan

for her statement because it raises a theme which we really need to focus on in the senate. i went back to illinois this last weekend, traveled around as i have over the last several months, and after you have been in this world of politics for a while, it doesn't take long for you to sit down with most gatherings and crowds and kind of test out ideas. they either fold their arms and look up at the ceiling and pray that you will stop talking or they start getting on the edge of their chair and listening. what i have found over the last several weeks is that everywhere i go, everywhere in the state, down state small towns, medium sized cities and the city of chicago, there is one issue that has everybody sitting up and listening. the issue is student loans. and you wonder, well, why would that have so many people interested? 44 million americans are paying

back student loans now. in the state of illinois, it's 1.7 million student loan -- people paying back student loans, 1.7 million. 15% of our population are paying back student loans. there is more student debt in america today than credit card debt. and some of the loans that these students have taken out to go to school are outrageous. there is no other way to describe it. these young people 19 or 20 years old sitting there, sitting there at the desk at the college as someone is shoving across the desk a piece of paper for them to sign saying if you will sign up here for your loans, you can start classes on monday. and that young man or woman who has been told since they were just little kids go to college, go to college, go to college, signs on and heads to class. and at the end of the day, those students end up with $20,000 in debt, $30,000 in debt and more, dramatically more. many of them don't have a clue

the indebtedness they're getting into to go to school. some of them don't know that they're being lured into these for-profit colleges and universities. sadly, too many of them are worthless. students are signing up for these for-profit colleges and universities, thinking they're real schools. think it's just like the university of wisconsin, it's just like the university of illinois. no, it isn't. it's a business. it's a business that makes its money off of kiting the cost of tuition for students, and if they can stick around to finish, handing them a worthless diploma. how does a student know this? well, the honest answer is they don't until it's too late. hannah moore has been to my press conferences twice. she went to one of these awful for-profit schools and ended up with $120,000 in debt for her bachelor's degree and a worthless diploma. she couldn't get a job. the debt is now closer to

$150,000. she can't pay it. here she is barely 30 years old with over $100,000 in debt for a worthless diploma. that's the extreme. but for 10% of the students graduating from high school in america today, those are the schools they go to, for-profit colleges and universities. and who are the biggies? the university of phoenix, number one. devrys university from illinois number two. kaplan university, which used to own "the washington post." these are the big ones. remember three numbers when you think about the for-profit colleges and universities. 10% of high school students go to these schools. these schools get 20% of the federal aid to education because their tuition is so outrageously high. 20%, over $30 billion a year going to this industry. and here's the kicker. 46% of all student loan defaults

are students at for-profit colleges and universities. what does that tell you? they charge too much. their educations are not worth it. the students can't get a job. now, that's the most extreme example, but let's go over to the rest of the world. 90% of students going to other colleges and universities. they are running up debt at record numbers, at a record pace, and unfortunately many of those debts lure in their parents and sometimes grandparents to help them along, and the student debt grows and grows and grows. and sadly, if they make the bigamies take of going not to a for-profit school but the regular schools and signing up for private loans, they're in for a beating and they don't know it. they are young students. how could they possibly know what they are signing up for? a school that would lure them into a private loan to go to college and then subject them to

the harshest, toughest, meanest, unrelenting collection agency you have ever seen coming after these students on their student loans. that's the world we live in, and that's a world that needs to change. and when i go home and talk to people about it, they are either directly personally affected by it, their family is affected by student debt or they worry that their sons and daughters whom they want to have a chance at higher education will get sucked into the same scam. well, help can be on the way. i have joined with two of my colleagues here, jack reed of rhode island, elizabeth warren of massachusetts. we have a package of three bills, three bills that will give students from middle-class families, working families across america a fair shot at an affordable higher education. my bill, student borrower bill of rights said the school has an obligation to tell you. stick with the government loan,

it's a lower interest rate, not lure knew a private loan. jack reed has a bill that if your school keeps sinking students deep in debt and they can't get out of it, eventually the school has to accept responsibility, financial responsibility. that will get their attention. but the big bill of the three comes from elizabeth warren, and we're joining her to refinance college debt, refinance college debt at lower interest rates, bring them down from 7%, 8%, 9%, 10% to the 3.8%. does it make a difference? anybody who has ever had a home mortgage will tell you it does. lower that interest rate to 3.8%, finally some of these families and students can start paying off the principal on the student loan and put it behind them. consolidate the loans at lower interest rates. that's what our bill says. oh, senator, great idea. who is going to pay for this? tell you exactly how we'll pay for it, exactly. does the name warren buffett

ring a bell? one of the richest men in america? the seer of omaha, berkshire hathaway. he came to congress a few years ago and said something's wrong with the tax code. you know what's wrong with it? warren buffett is paying a lower income tax rate than warren buffett's secretary. why, he said, is my secretary who makes dramatically less money than i do paying a higher income tax rate than warren buffett? the reason is pretty clear. most of his income comes from capital gains, and that's lower than the regular income tax rate, so warren buffett said we ought to have a rule that says if you are a millionaire in america, you're going to pay taxes at at least as much as the people who work for you, the buffett rule. the buffett rule generates enough money in the tax code by imposing that tax burden on millionaires to refinance college loans across america.

is it worth it? you bet it is. because i'll tell you why. i don't begrudge millionaires their wealth if they come by it legally. i believe mr. buffett has. but they have an obligation to this great country that set the stage for their success, and that obligation is to be a good citizen, pay your taxes. that's what mr. buffett has suggested. he is willing to accept that responsibility. and if we can refinance student loans, it doesn't just bring relief to these families. it does something else. hannah moore is living in her parents' basement with $148,000 in student loan debt. she is barely 30 years old. the thought of borrowing more money to go to a real college, out of the question. the thought of living in her own apartment, out of the question. the thought of buying a car, no way. for some young couples, even having children is out of the question because of student

debt. do you see that when we bring this debt under control, we unleash a positive growing force in our economy where these young people can get back and participate, buy homes, buy cars, become full-fledged members of the economy again. so it now only brings relief to families, gives them a fair shot at college education they can afford, but it also is going to help our economy overall. we don't have a single cosponsor from the other side of the aisle yet on this. not one. they're scared of waiving the buffett rule, the idea that millionaires might have to pay higher taxes scares them away. well, if they've got a different way to pay for it, come on down. let's hear your ideas. let's actually have a dialogue on the senate floor. how about that? that would be historic. and we could talk about solving a problem in america like this runaway college debt and these awful for-profit colleges and universities. we need to work on this

together. what we have before us is a tax extender bill and a bill which involves a lot of different sections of the tax code, and this bill is not paid for, by and large not paid for. some of us believe that unemployment compensation which was cut off for millions of americans over the last several months should be there to help them get back on their feet. when we suggested it to our republican friends, they said no, no, you'll have to either raise taxes -- which we'll oppose -- or cut spending to pay for unemployment. twhe comes to tax cuts for businesses good or bad, they look the other way. they don't think it has to be paid for. i think helping unemployed americans get back on their feet, find a job, take care of their families, is central to putting this economy on the glide path to the future. i hope as we measure these issues that we can debate here on the floor of the united states senate, we will start

with those issues that interest the people we represent and that affect their lives and give working families a fighting chance. madam president, i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from new mexico. mr. udall: thank you very much, madam president. let me applaud senator durbin for his comments on the fair shot agenda and on affordable college, affordable college education for all of our kids. i think it's something that parents and families and people in new mexico talk to me about all the time. and i think i just want to join you in your comments and say let's get this done. let's see if we can get republicans to work with us in a bipartisan way. and i applaud your speech today. madam president, next monday -- pardon me. mr. president, we've had a

change up there. it was quick. mr. president, next monday is memorial day, a day when we remember the men and women who gave their lives defending our freedoms, a day to remember our solemn, solemn obligation to veterans. i rise today to speak about that obligation and about very troubling allegations, allegations that should outrage all of us, of sick veterans desperate for care, of secret scheduling lists, of mismanagement at veterans affairs medical centers, and of cover-ups and misuse of taxpayer funds. if true, this is a great disservice to our veterans. this isn't quality care. it is betrayal, and it is unconscionable, whether it is only one facility like the facility in phoenix or more, or in new mexico and other facilities. for many people, this story

began in phoenix, arizona, but i do not think it ends there. i asked secretary shinseki on may 8 to extend the investigation to cover the entire regional network, which includes arizona, new mexico, and texas. the next day secretary shinseki announced an audit of the v.a. nationwide. today the v.a. appropriations subcommittee marked up an important bill, to fund the department of veterans affairs and to address these allegations. i'm thankful to chairman johnson and ranking member kirk for including a key provision i requested to provide funding to expand the v.a. inspector general's investigation and calling out new mexico as one of the states that urgently needs the attention of the inspector general. these secret waiting lists, according to whistle-blowers, were efforts in deception and

fraud, hiding management failures. they kept appointment requests out of the v.a. computer system in order to cover up a waiting list to see a doctor. preventing veterans from receiving necessary care. and at worse, this deception not only kept veterans waiting but may have contributed to the death of some who were very sick. there are not also reports -- there are also reports that allege these efforts to manipulate the schedule were taken to make managers look better, to receive bonuses, bonuses that were supposed to be awarded for meeting high quality care standards, not for failing them. if true, this is a tragedy and possibly a serious crime. thankfully, the appropriations subcommittee has taken action to freeze this bonus system while the investigation continues.

and i hope the full senate will move quickly to do the same, to eliminate bad incentives which hurt our veterans. if management disguises the wait time at the v.a., congress does not have the tools to address needs. the v.a. veterans assistant i.g. john day testified before the committee on veterans' affairs regarding a facility in south carolina. he said -- and i quote -- "over 50 veterans had a delayed diagnosis of colon cancer, some of whom died from colon cancer." the v.a.'s director of health care, debra draper caused about past issues causing veterans to receive delayed care and delayed appointments.

the g.a.o. cited these shortcomings in a 2013 report and also made multiple realmations to the v.a. -- recommendations to the v.a. on how to drape them. ms. draper noted the v.a. still has problems to work out. the g.a.o. concluded that -- quote -- "ultimately the ability to ensure and adequately monitor access to timely medical reports is critical to ensuring quality health care to veterans who may have medical conditions that worsen if access is delayed." close quote. the g.a.o. report speaks to a bigger picture, one that we should not lose sight of and that is the ongoing problem with scheduling gimmicks. with ways to game the system first identified by the v.a. itself in april 2010 in this memo, these practices have led

to delayed appointments and care. this is not an allegation. this is a fact. congress and the v.a. need to continue to work together for transparency, for accountability and for real solutions. the allegations being investigated are very disturbing. not just of failure to provide timely care -- that's bad enough -- but also an intentional effort to cover up that failure by creating separate scheduling lists and gimmicks and harming veterans as a result. these allegations are serious and we take them very, very seriously. for every veteran in this country, for every men and women who put their life on the line to defend this country, a full inspector general investigation is essential, and in some cases a criminal investigation may also be needed. we need to find out what is truly happening at our veterans

medical centers. this investigation should be thorough. it should be exhaustive. it should uncover the truth. and it it should hold those accountable responsible. i want to commend those who brought these concerns to the public and send a clear message to them congress will not tolerate interference or harassment with public servants who simply are trying to get out the truth, trying to do their job and doing the very best to serve our veterans. the whistle-blower protection act is very clear. if you retaliate against an employee who is trying to expose the truth, then you are in the wrong. the congress and the president should speak with one voice. we will not tolerate actions to retaliate against v.a. employers or contractors who shine the light on the truth. similarly, no one in the v.a. should be destroying or hiding

any evidence of these practices. destruction of a federal record can be a crime. v.a. managers should come clean, not cover up. i urge any new mexico v.a. patient, family member, current or former v.a. employee to report serious management problems to the v.a. inspector general either directly or through my office. and to those employees who do continue to provide quality care to our veterans, this is not about you. overall, the v.a. does provide great health care, and i have heard from veterans who have testified to this fact. many veterans would not go anywhere else. we must act quickly and decisively to restore faith in the v.a. and provide the care our veterans deserve. today the appropriations committee took a step in the

right direction to expand the investigation and halt the bonus program. and i look forward to continuing this work with the full senate and also with the administration. all of us who work to support our troops and our veterans have a sacred obligation to make sure they have the care they have earned. they have been there for us. we have to be there for them. i yield the floor, mr. president. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from south carolina. mr. graham: i believe i'm to be recognized for 15 minutes. is that correct? okay. let me know which he 15 minutes -- the presiding officer: the senator may proceed. mr. graham: thank you very much. i would like to discuss the state of play on benghazi. i think senator boxer came on the floor this morning to talk about the investigations and all

the things that have been done to find out what is going on in benghazi. those serving in libya today, you're definitely in our thoughts and prayers. my advice to the administration is get those folks out as quick as you can because this thing is going downhill very quickly in libya. let's don't have another benghazi on our hands. i feel like the security environment in libya is deteriorating as i speak. if i can set the stage for my concerns, one, i think most people on this side of the aisle, right or wrong, believe that the names were changed; this whole attitude toward finding out what happened in benghazi would be different. it would be the bush administration, condoleezza rice, not susan rice, that we would be on fire as a nation to find out how the president could have said two weeks after the attack, mention of videos that caused the attack, that all of the information coming from the

intelligence community to the white house and others, there was never a protest. if secretary rice had gotten on the national news, or mr. hadley, or john bolton, the u.s. ambassador to the united states that got on television and told the story about the level of security we believe in. it was a protest caused by video, not a designated terrorist attack. if that had been said by the bush people there would have been a different approach about this issue. that to me is very sad. you may not agree with that operation. but almost everybody here i believe believes that. mr. zucker, says nobody is trying to bully. i've got some questions for cnn to answer, if somebody would answer questions that i think are very relevant. what is the state of play?

we've had the u.s. committee on intelligence issue a report on january 15, 2014. i think they did a very good job covering their lane. they did not have jurisdiction over the state department, so their report was limited. there was a minority report inside the report by republicans taking some issue with some of the findings. but the bottom line was the senate intel committee in a bipartisan fashion looked at benghazi and said it could have been prevented. so that's something to be positive about. now, the armed services committee, they have done tphofplgt -- nothing. they haven't issued any report. this is the report of the armed services committee in the senate looking at d.o.d.'s responsibility that night. the foreign services committee, this is their responsibility, nothing. we've had hearings but the relevant issues have -- relevant

committees have not issued. a good job talking about the role until benghazi. i want people to know and the senate, the reason i want a select committee in the senate -- we're not the house. two of the committees very relevant to oversight of benghazi haven't issued any report. the armed services committee has done nothing, nor has the foreign relations committee, and i think this is worthy of our time. this is a bipartisan report issued in 2008 by the armed services committee about detainee abuse. i participated in this report during the bush administration. we had some serious system breakdowns when it came to detainees in u.s. custody. senator mccain and myself worked with democrats to issue this report. i thought that was important to get to the bottom of system failure in the bush administration. but i would argue that four dead americans were worthy of report

and we have not had one. so there are a lot of things that should be done that have not been done. what would i like to find out about benghazi that we do not know? this is the accountability review board, an internal investigation by the state department. two fine men led this investigationate pointed by secretary clinton. this thing has more holes in this than swiss cheese. they miss add lot. they didn't talk to clinton or rice, secretary clinton or ambassador rice. in this report, they talk about the reason that ambassador stevens was in benghazi is that they were looking at closing the consulate in benghazi in december. i finally got to talk to one survivor after about 18 months of trying, and i found from that survivor the person in charge of security at benghazi on the night of attack, that they had renewed the lease on the consulate in july for a year. so that makes no sense. the report says he went down there to look at closing up the

place and they just renewed the lease in july before he goes down in december. so not by any means an exhaustive review of benghazi. this is a statement -- a readout on september 10, 2012, the day before the attack. this is a readout of the president's meeting with senior administration officials on our preparedness and security posture on the 11th anniversary of september 11. apparently the president has a meeting in the white house, i assume, with all of our national security folks to talk about what they can expect on september 11, because twases the it was the 11th anniversary of 9/11. "during the briefing today, the president and the principals discussed specific measures we are taking in the homeland to prevent 9/11 related attacks as well as the steps taken to protect u.s. persons and facilities abroad, as well as force protection. " did they bring up libya and talk about the security

situation in benghazi and libya? if not, why not? because based on this statement, this is a real estate assuring statement to the american people that the president and his team are on top of this. well, they were not on top of it when it came to libya. so i want to find out, did that meeting have any discussions about the deathtrap called benghazi. this is the security situation in benghazi pre-9/11. march 28 there was a request for additional security, which was denied. our security footprint was very light. we had an agreement with a militia in benghazi that was supposed to be our primary action team. libyan militia that approved to be less than reliable. on april 6, an i.e.d. was thrown over the past i post in a post n

benghazi. no one has ever told us that the president was aware of this. on june 6, a large i.e.d. destroys part of the security perimeter of the u.s. post in benghazi, leaving a hole big enough for 40 men to go through. they commissioned a study or some kind of review. where is it at? it's been attacked in april and june. did the president know about these attacks? they blow a hole in the wall large enough for 40 people to go through. on june 11, five days later, the british ambassador's motorcade is attacked very close to the benghazi facility, our facility, and u.s. personnel go help the british ambassador. after this atashing the british close their consulate in benghazi. why did we leave ours open? july 9, request for ambassador stevens for additional security? no response. july 11, lieutenant general necessarilienellerr e-mails reqg

additional security. there is a 16-person special forces national guard team ready to vole tear for an extra year to help our folks in benghazi and the state department said no thanks. august 6, the international red cross had been attacked four times. they finally close up and leave town on august 6. the british leave, the red cross leaves. lieutenant colonel woods was a national guard soldier trying to help security, doing a site security team investigation. instead of being extended -- and he volunteered to stay for an additional year -- he was sent home in august. august 16 -- this is the most damning of all -- there was a cable that was sent from benghazi by our ambassador telling the people in washington that the consulate could not withstand a coordinated terrorist attack and the

al qaeda flag is flying all over town. this is on 16 august, basically begging for additional security, letting people in washington know that we cannot withstand a coordinated terrorist attack and al qaeda flags are flying all over the place. that's the state of play. that's the background in terms of security regarding the consulate in benghazi. let's fast-forward. these are statements by the regional security officer, who was asking for additional security. he was so frustrated by the response he had received in washington, he said the following: "for me, the taliban is on the inside of the building." what he was talking about is that the people in wal in washin seem to be completely deaf as to his need needs for additional security. he thought the people in washington were working against him and he was very worried about what would happen if there

was an attack and believed that one was coming. this is lieutenant colonel wood, the utah national guard special forces soldier that left in august. here's what he said. "it was instantly recognizable to me that it was a terrorist attack ... mainly because of my prior knowledge there. i almost expected the attack to come. we were the last flag flying ... it was a matter of time." and this had gone up d.o.d. channels, swrls department of state. -- swps department of state. as well as department of state. so that's the history of the security situation in benghazi. now to the people at cnn, to my democratic colleagues, to anybody and everybody, please explain to me how the 16th of september, five days after the attack, susan rice, the u.s. ambassador to the united nations, was chosen to appear on five sunday talk shows to talk about the attack in benghazi and

other facilities. but i can assure you, she was very worried about what was going to happen with regard to the questions about benghazi because that's where we had four people killed. here's what she said about the level of security. 16 september, "well, first of all, we had a substantial security presence with our personnel and the consulate in benghazi." i've got a question. who told her that? nothing could have been further from the truth. when you look at the history of the security footprint in benghazi, it was begging and pleading by the people in libya to have more help and everything was denied. it was to the point that the person in charge of the security felt lying the taliban were inside of the building here in washington and lieutenant colonel woods said it is just a matter of time. we were the last flag flying. and on 16 august, before the september 11 attack, you get a cabling going back from the ambassador chris stevens to washington saying "we cannot defend this compound against a

coordinated terrorist attack." those are the facts. here's what susan rice told the world. "well, first of all, we had a substantial security presence with our personnel and the consulate in pension." goii got a simple question. who told her that? who briefed her about security in benghazi? because the person who told her that needs to be fired, because they're completely incompetent or they lied to her. if she made this up, she needs to resign, because nothing could have been further from the truth. if she just made this up to make the administration look good in light of all of other evidence about security, then she's not an honest person when this comes to conveying national security incidents. so please, after all these investigations, after all these hearings, can somebody tell me where susan rice got this information from? how could she conclude based on what we know now that we had a substantial security presence with our personnel in the

consulate in benghazi? she went further to say, "well, we obviously did have a strong security presentation." she said this on abc, this on fox. if you l.a.n listened to her an6 september, you would believe we were well-prepared for this attack with the security skull flat a reasonable fashion. if anybody had looked at the actual record, the information available to our own government in you are own files, you could not have said that honestly. i'm sure this was a good thing to say six weeks before an election. the problem is, it's not remotely connected to the truth. and to this day, nobody can answer my question, where did she receive information about the security level in benghazi? because she's nevada been interviewed by -- because she's never been interviewed by anybody ... 20 months later. why was she chosen?

if john bolton had taken secretary of state condoleezza rice's place to talk about a consulate not under his control but under her control, people would want to know, where was the secretary of state? now, ambassador rice was the u.n. ambassador, united states ambassador to the united nations. she had no responsibility for consulate security. the person responsible for consulate security and our footprint in libya was secretary clinton. i've always wondered why they chose her. to this day, no one has answered that question. but here's what susan rice said 12/13/2012. "secretary clinton had originally been asked by most of the networks to go on. she had an incredibly grueling week dealing with the protests around the middle east and north africa ... i was asked. i was willing to do so. it wasn't what i had planned for that weekend originally, but i don't regret doing that." and she further said, she had no receipt grets about what she --

she had no greets about what she told the american people. i ask for five more, if i could. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. graham: am i into your time? one minute. okay, to be continued, i cajts do this justice in 15 minutes. but here is what i'm suggesting: if this is true that the secretary of state could not go on television to talk about the consulate under her control and tell us about how four americans died at that consulate, the first ambassador in 33 years, because she had a grueling week, if that's true -- and i don't really believe it is. but if it is, we need to know. because that will matter to the country as we go forward. if it's not true, why would susan rice say it? to be continued, there's so much about this incident called benghazi that we don't know that makes no sense to me. i'm not going to give up until i can tell the families what i believe to be the truth and what i've been told is nowhere near the truth.

with that, i yield. mr. sanders: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. sand sand i apologize to my -- mr. sanders: i apologize to my friend from north carolina. mr. president, i want to talk about an issue that millions and millions of people all over this country are increasingly concerned about, and that is that last week the f.c.c., the federal communication commission, release add proposal in response to a recent federal court decision that struck down the commission's 2010 open internet order. the proposal would, for the very first time, allow internet service providers to be able to pay for priority treatment. what this means in point of fact is the end of net neutrality and

the end of the internet as we know it. mr. president, what net neutrality means is that everyone in our country -- and in fact the world -- has the same access to the same information, whether you are a mom and pop store in hardwick, vermont, or whether you are wal-mart, the largest private corporation in america, you should have the same access to your customers. net neutrality also means that a blogger -- somebody who just backlogblogsout hr his his or hf view in a small town in americas should have access to his or her readers as "the new york times" or "the washington post." if the f.c.c. allows huge

corporations to negotiate -- quote, unquote -- fast-lane deals then the internet will eventually be sold to the highest bird. companies with the money will have the access and small businesses will be treated as second- or third-chase citizens. this is grotesquely unfair and this will be a disaster for our economy and for small businesses all across our country. i want to take this opportunity to thank commissioners clyburn and rose enwasel for their strong support of net neutrality. they are doing exactly what the american people want from the commission. during last week's commission hearing, the commissioner stated -- and i quote -- "we

cannot have a two-tiered internet with fast lanes that speed the traffic of the privileged and leave the rest of us lagging behind." commissioner clyburn noted -- quote -- "the free open exchanges of ideas is critical to a democratic society." and she is, of course, absolutely right. now, i have to say, mr. president, and i don't mean to be particularly partisan on this issue but the facts are the facts. that in contrast, the republican commissioners are jeep py and michael o'reilly, would like to completely deregulate the internet. commissioner o'reilly said in response to the proposal -- and i quote -- "as i've said before, the premise for imposing net neutrality rules is fundamentally flawed and rests on a faulty foundation of make-believe statutory authori

authority. i have serious concerns that this ill-advised item will create damaging uncertainty and head the commission down a slippery slope of regulation." that is republican commissioner o'reilly. now, what does all of this mean in english? what it means is when you talk about deregulating the internet, you're talking about allowing money, big money, to talk and allowing the big-money interests once again to get their way in washington. and that is very, very wrong. we cannot allow our democracy once again to be sold to the highest bidder. i think, mr. president, all of us agree that the internet has been an enormous success in fostering innovation and

enabling free and open speech across the country and throughout the world. you know, we kind of take it for granted. but, mr. president, when you and i were growing up, there was no internet. and i think we can all acknowledge now what a huge advance it has been for business and for general communication. unfortunately, these republican commissioners on the f.c.c. want to fix a problem that does not exist. what they want is to change the fundamental arc sect tour of the internet to remove the neutrality that has been in place for decades since the inception of the internet and to allow big corporations to control content on-line. mr. president, let me tell you that the american people -- people in vermont and across this country -- care very deeply about this issue. a little while ago, in advance

of the f.c.c.'s vote, on my -- on my internet, i asked people in vermont and throughout the country to share their views with me, to write to me and tell me what they thought about the attempt to do away with net neutrality. i was blown away by the response that we got. mr. president, more than 19,000 people have submitted comments to my office so far and what they are saying in statement after statement after statement is that the f.c.c. has got to defend net neutrality. and i think these 19,000 people represent the vast majority of the people in this country who understand how important net neutrality is. and i just want to take this opportunity and take a very few

moments to share some of the comments that i received through my web site. anthony drake of moreno valley, california -- quote -- "net neutrality is vital for a free and open internet and the economic advantages that is throughout our nation and the world. please work to reclassify i.s.p.'s as common carriers under title 2 of the communications act." stam ford, vermont, resident roy gibson concurred -- saying that internet providers should be treated -- quote -- "like utilities." and i agree with roy gib gibson. reg jones of vermont said, "president obama must uphold his campaign promise to uphold net neutrality. net neutrality should be mandated, as president obama promised.

any attempt to allow differential speeds and access to the internet should be squashed and those who propose it should be replaced by people who represent all of the citizens of this country. internet access should be for the good of all, not for the select few who already have too much power and more money than they need." williams lafrana of versailles, kentucky, said -- and i quote -- "everyone should have equal access to the internet. the internet was developed with taxpayer funding and should not be held hostage to corporate piracy." patricia moriatti from harwage point, mass marks wrote -- and i quote -- "the internet is the only place where we truly have freedom of speech and the ability to freely exchange new ideas around the world. leave the internet open." patricia moriatti writes. mr. president, president obama himself has long been on record

supporting net neutrality. in 2007, then-presidential candidate obama said -- quote -- -- quote --"what you've been se lobbying that says that the servers and the various portals through which you're giving information over the internet should be able to be gatekeepers and to charge differential rates to different web sites. so you can get much better quality from the fox news site and you're getting rotten service from the mom-and-pop sites and that i think destroys one of the best things about the internet, which is that there is this incredible quality there." that's barack obama when he was campaigning for president. barack obama was right when he said that and i would very strongly urge the president to stand up for what he said when he was campaigning for president and defend net neutrality. now, i understand that the f.c.c. is an independent body,

but the american people have spoken with a clear and unified voice that they want to maintain net neutrality. what is so frustrating for the american people is to elect a candidate -- in this case, the president, president obama -- who campaigned on an issue and then now see the f.c.c., many members of whom he appointed, move it in a different direction. it is simply not enough for the president to sit on the sidelines on this issue. we need him to speak out for net neutrality, as he did when he campaigned for president. so, mr. president, let me conclude by simply saying that the commission will soon consider whether or not to reclassify the internet as a so-called common carrier. under this distinction, the internet would be treated like other utilities. being classified as a common carrier will mean that internet service providers must provide the same service to everyone

without discrimination. this is the only path forward to maintain an open forum free of discrimination. over the next few months, the public will have an opportunity to weigh in on this proposal by the f.c.c. each of us and i hope every member of congress should be concerned about this issue. i encourage you to be vocal. if people want to write to my office -- sanders.senate.gov -- we already have 19,000 people commenting. we welcome even more. but i would hope that the american people rally around this issue of net neutrality and we defeat any proposal to do away with that. and with that, mr. president, i would yield the floor. mr. nelson: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from florida. mr. nelson: mr. president, i ask consent that dr. andrew abuch, who is one of our details from the department of h.h.s., the office of the inspector general, that she be granted the

privilege of the floor during the pendency of this session of congress. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. nelson: mr. president, i am joined today by my colleague, senator collins, to introduce legislation aimed at strengthening the government's hand in stopping medicare fraud. senator collins and i have tried to offer some decent leadership to the senate committee on aging and in the process we've heard a lot about medicare and medicaid fraud. and i want to thank senators carper, grassley and casey for partnering with us in joining to sponsor this legislation that we

are filing today. earlier in the year, senator collins and i convened a hearing of the aging committee to examine what was government doing to prevent medicare fraud. and the committee heard from law enforcement who told us that despite the recent increases in prosecutions, that medicare fraud continues to run rampant. it's especially true in my state of florida, where south florida remains unfortunately ground zero for medicare fraud. we also heard from the medicare organization itself about what the program is doing to try to better detect and prevent the con artists from defrauding the

system. and then we heard from victims like patricia gresco, a former schoolteacher from michigan. she testified this unbelievable scam about how her doctor talked her into spending thousands of dollars for treatments for an illness that she later discovered she didn't have. these treatments then caused her to have chest pains and forced her to endure intravenous infusions that took hours. her doctor was arrested for bilking $225 million from medicare. and this is what he did. falsely telling patients that

they had cancer -- if you can believe this -- that they had cancer so that he can bill for expensive chemotherapy treatme treatments and miss gresco did not have cancer and she had to endure all of that. now, today we're losing about $60 billion to $90 billion a year in medicare fraud. just last week, federal agents arrested 90 people, 50 of them, you guessed it, were in miami and it was on charges that they had stolen $260 million from the medicare program. fortunately when we passed the affordable care act, we put in provisions -- some, i might say,

at my insistence because of ground zero being in our stat state -- and put into the law such things as background chec checks, site visits for prospective medicare providers and suppliers. another one is stronger criminal and civil penalties. and the authority to withhold payment in law where there is a credible allegation of fraud. now, that's just a few of the weapons in law as a result of the a.c.a. but this recent set of arrests of 90 people on charges of medicare fraud tells us something else. we have to stop playing the game of whack-a-mole with medicare

criminals trying stamp out the fraud one bad actor at a time. you know, what whack-a-mole is? you whack this creature on a table and once you've whacked it, they pop right back up. so naturally, we talked to sylvia burwell, the president's nominee for secretary of h.h.s. h.h.s., and we echoed that last week at her confirmation hearing in the finance committee. and she stated that we need to move away from the pay and chase model, which is what has happened -- you have to chase them down, if you catch them, they pop back up again. and so we need a better

strategy. and while we're making the strides by more aggressively pursuing this kind of fraud, obviously more needs to be done, and that's what senator collins and i are introducing today. the stop scams act, it will require medicare to verify that those wishing to bill medicare not have owned a company that previously defrauded the government. and it's going to also allow private insurers and medicare to share information about the potential fraudulent operators in the system. and the bill also anticipates problems c.m.s. may face in the future. it doesn't delay the rollout of

the ten new medical codes in any way, or shall i say, what they refer to, the icd-10 medical codes. there are a lot more of those medical codes. but it takes some lessons learned from the costly delays that have occurred with these codes and uses them to make the process better for the future. the legislation also requires for the new medical coding systems after the icd-10 that the agency assess the impact on fraud prevention systems and do appropriate testing. so, mr. president, to combat this fraud, it's going to be one of the core missions of our aging committee. we've taken a look at many types of fraud scams, jamaican phone

scams, identity theft, social security fraud, payday lending, and now we're continuing to focus on medicare fraud, and we'll continue to examine additional issues. every day senator collins and i hear from seniors about scams, and they let us know on our committee's hotline, and i want to remind everybody out there, this hotline is there for you to report these scams. 1-855-303-9470. and we're going to keep this committee going after these scams, and in the meantime, senator collins and i hope that our colleagues will join us in support of this legislation to try to really further clamp down

on medicare fraud. and i'm so happy to have the partner that i have in helping lead the aging committee, senator collins. i would say in closing that we've really got a broad array of folks that are supporting us on this legislation. the national health care antifraud association, america's health insurance plans, blue cross/blue shield association, the national coalition against insurance fraud, the national insurance crime bureau, and humana insurance company, they're all supporters of this legislation. mr. president, i anxiously await the comments of my colleague. the presiding officer: the

senator from maine. ms. collins: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i'm delighted to join my friend, the chairman of the senate committee on aging, senator nelson, in introducing legislation to help combat the fraud in the medicare program. we are introducing the scop schemes -- stop schemes and crimes against medicare and seniors, or the stop scams act. as senator nelson has described, at our hearings earlier this year, we heard absolutely appalling testimony from a woman who had had to endure painful seven-hour-long series of infusions for a disease that she did not have, just because her doctor was

bilking the medicare program. imagine a physician who would do that, who would subject a vulnerable patient to the anxiety of thinking that she had a disease that she did not have, and then treating her for a disease she did not have, just to collect medicare dollars. it really was appalling. mr. president, for decades the government accountability office, go, has -- g.a.o., has identified medicare as being at high risk for improper payments, abuse, and fraud. in the year 2012, medicare reported that it had lost more than $44 billion in improper payments due to waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement, and that estimate, mr. president,

may well be too low. $44 billion. think what we could do with that money to improve the quality of health care, the coverage that we're providing to our seniors, or to reduce our unsustainable national debt. this is simply unacceptable. the loss of these funds not only compromises the financial integrity and increases the cost of the medicare program, but also undermines our ability to provide needed health care services to the more than 54 million older and disabled americans who depend on this vital program. mr. president, back in the late 1990's, when i was chairman of the permanent subcommittee on

investigations, we held a series of hearings to examine fraud in the medicare program. we identified the dangerous trend of an increasing number of completely bogus providers entering the system with the sole and explicit purpose of robbing it. one of our witnesses actually testified that he went into medicare fraud because it was easier and safer than dealing in drugs. he could make a lot more money at far less risk of being caught. our hearings led to the adoption of some safeguards and better internal controls, but what our continuing hearings many years later that we've held have demonstrated is that

unscrupulous individuals are always adopting and seeking out new ways to rip off the system. they seem to be always one step ahead of the authorities. i do want to emphasize an extremely important point, and that is that the vast majority of medical professionals are caring, dedicated, health care providers whose top priority is the welfare of their patients. when we were investigating medicare fraud in the late 1990's, what we found were a whole lot of individuals posing as health care providers who had no medical training whatsoever. i remember one memorable case where had there between a site visit, it would have been

discovered that this bogus provider had an office in the middle of the runway of the miami airport. but, unfortunately, back then there were no site visits. health care providers, the true professionals, are the ones who are most appalled by the unscrupulous bandits who take advantage of weaknesses in the medicare program to bleed billions of dollars from the program. as i indicated, we have made some progress over the years in the battle against medicare fraud since i chaired those hearings. unfortunately, however, there's no line item in the budget entitled waste, fraud and abuse, that we can simply strike to eliminate this problem and solve it once and for all. the task of fettering out

wasteful and fraudulent spending is made all the more difficult by the ingenuity of the scam artists, who continually adopt new methods of ripping off both the medicare and the medicaid program. it is clear, as my distinguished chairman indicated, that we must do more than shift from a pay-and-chase strategy to combat medicare fraud to one that prevents the harm from every occurring in the first place. that is what the bawcial that we're -- bipartisan bill that we're introducing today would do. among other provisions, our legislation would require medicare to verify that health care provider ownership

interests using databases before new health care providers are allowed to enroll in the program. that's an upfront control that we can and should implement. currently medicare relies on self-reported information. as a consequence, providers who previously had an ownership interest in an organization that defrauded medicare, can potentially get back into the program by simply using different names and failing to disclose their interests in a previous organization or practice. our legislation would also allow private insurers to share information about potentially fraudulent providers with medicare and with each other to prevent further health care

fraud. it would also allow the medicare payment advisory commission to make recommendations to us regarding fraud prevention, and our bill would require the medicare program to develop a strategy for more accurately and reliably estimating just how many dollars are lost each year to fraud. mr. president, our legislation as the chairman indicated, is endorsed by a wide variety of organizations, including the national health care antifraud association, the blue cross/blue shield association, humana, the america's insurance plans, and the coalition against insurance fraud. i urge all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join

us in cosponsoring this important bill, legislation that i believe really can make a difference. i would hope, mr. president, that this is a bill that we could move quickly. it's a commonsense bill, it will save taxpayer and beneficiaries dollars, and it will help to curb the excessive fraud, the unacceptable fraud that is depleting dollars from a program, the medicare program, that is already under financial strain. so let's move this bill, let's send it to the house and on to the president for his signature as soon as possible. thank you, mr. president. and, again, i want to commend the senator from florida for his leadership. it's been a great pleasure to work with him on this important

issue. thank you. thank you, mr. president. mr. levin: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from michigan. mr. levin: mr. president, along with 16 cosponsors, i have introduced and i am introducing today the stop corporate inversions act of 2014. this legislation is designed to address a loophole which unless we close it will be used to unleash a flood of corporate tax avoidance that threatens to shove billions of dollars in tax burden from profitable multinational corporations onto the backs of their american competitors and other