if reasonable doubt remains, the accused is to be acquitted. we set a very high bar for conviction and answer stree -- n extremely high bar for prosecution. and we still sometimes have gotten it wrong and have executed people after jury trials mistakessenly, -- mistakenly. but now we're talking about only accusations. are we comfortable killing american citizens no matter how awful or heinous the crime they're accused of? are we comfortable killing them based on accusation that is no jury has reviewed? innocent until proven guilty, the concept is tested. we are being tested. it is tested when the consensus is that the accused is very likely guilty. in this case the traitor that was killed in all likelihood is guilty.

the evidence in secret appears to be overwhelming. and yet, why can't we do the american thing? have a public trial, accuse them, and convict them in a court. it is more difficult to believe in the concept of innocent until proven guilty when the accused is unpopular or hated. the principle of innocent until proven guilty is more difficult when the accused is charged with treason. the bill of rights is easy. it's easy to defend when we like the speech or sympathize with the defendant. defending the right of trial for people we fear or dislike is more difficult. it's extremely hard. but we have to defend the bill of rights or it will slip away from us. it's easy to support a trial for someone who looks like you, for someone who has the same color skin or for someone who has the same religion. it's easy. presumption of innocence is,

however, much harder when the citizen practices a minority religion, when the citizen resides in a foreign land or sympathizes with the enemy. yet, our history is replete with examples of heroes who defended the defenseless, who defended the unpopular, who sometimes defended the guilty. we remember john adams when he defended the british soldiers, the ones that were guilty of the boston massacre. we remember fondly people who defend the unpopular even when they end up being declared guilty because that's something we take pride in our system. we remember his son, john quincy adams, when he defended the shraeupls who took over -- slaves who took over the amistad. we remember fondly henry sel pho*pb twho -- henry selmon when he defended susan b. anthony.

we remember eugene dove when he was accused of being against the draft and was given ten years in prison. we defend the unpopular, that's what the bill of rights is especially for. we remember clarence darrow twho defended the unpopular in the scopes monkey trial. we remember thurgood marshall when he convinced the supreme court to strike down segregation. where would we be without these champions? where would we be without applying the bill of rights to those whaoe don't like, those whaoe don't associate with, those we think are guilty. where would the unpopular be without the protection of the bill of rights? one can almost argue that the right to trial is more precious the more unpopular the defendant. we cannot and we should not abandon this cherished principle. critics will argue that these are evil people who plot to kill

americans. i don't dispute that. my first instinct is like most americans, to recoil in horror and want immediate punishment for traitors. i can't stand the thought of americans who consort with and advocate violence against americans. i want to punish those americans who are traitors, but i am also conscious of what these traitors have betrayed. these traitors are betraying a country that holds dear the precept that we are innocent until proven guilty. aren't we in a way betraying our country's principles when we relinquish this right to a trial by jury? the maxim that we are innocent until proven guilty is in some ways like our first amendment that presumes that speech is okay. it is easy to protect complimentary speech. it is easy to protect speech you agree with. it is harder to protect speech

you abhor. the first amendment is not so much about protecting speech that is easily agreed to. it is about tolerating speech that is an abomination. likewise, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth amendments are not so much about protecting majorities of thought, religion or ethnicity. due process is about protecting everyone, especially minorities. unpopular opinions change from generation to generation. while today it may be burka-wearing muslims it has at times been yamaka wearing jews. it has at times been african-americans. it is not beyond belief that sometimes evangelical christians could be persecuted in our country. it is an incredibly important one and difficult one.

even with a jury justice is not always easily discovered. one has only to watch the jurors deliberate in 12 annry man to understand finding justice even with a jury is not always straightforward. today virtually everyone sympathizes with tom robinson unfairly accused in "to kill a mockingbird" because the reader knows robinson is innocent, the reader knows his accusation is based on race. it is a slam dunk, easy for all of us to believe that he should get a trial. it is easy to object to vigilante justice when you know the accused is innocent, when the mob attempts an extra judicial execution, we stand with attikasfinch, we stand with the rule of law. what if an american is guilty,

what if an american is a traitor who deserves punishment? are we strong enough as a country to believe this person should get a trial? do we have the courage to denounce drone executions as nothing more than sophisticated sreupblg lan -- vigilantism? due process can't exist in secret. checks and balances can't exist in one branch of government, whether it be the advice of one lawyer or 10,000 lawyers, if they all work for one man -- the president -- how can it be anything but a verdict outside the law? a verdict that could conceivably be subject to the emotions of prejudice and fear, a verdict that could be wrong. this president, above all other presidents, should fear allowing so much power to gravitate to one man.

it is admittedly hard to defend the right to a trial for an american citizen who becomes a traitor and appears to aid and abet the enemy, but we must. if we cannot defend the right to trial for the most heinous crimes, then where will this slippery slope lead us? the greatest of american jurisprudence is that everyone gets his or her day in court, no matter how despicable the crime they're accused of. critics say how would we try these americans? they are overseas, they won't come home. the constitution holds the answer. they should be tried for treason. if they refuse to come home, they should be tried in abstentia. they should be given the right to legal defense should be provided. there should be an independent legal defense that does not work for the government. if they are found guilty, the method of punishment is not the issue. the issue is and always has been the right to a trial, the presumption of innocence, and the guarantee of due process to

everyone. for these reasons, i cannot support the nomination of david barron. even if the administration releases a dozen barron memos, i cannot support barron. the debate is not about partisan politics. i have supported many of the president's nominees. the debate is not about transparency. it is about the substance of the memos. i cannot and will not support a lifetime appointment of someone who believes it is okay to kill an american citizen not involved in combat without a trial. now some will argue and say the president yesterday, now has changed his mind. he's going to release these memos to the public. if that's true, why don't we wait on the vote and let the public read these memos? why don't we have a full-throated debate over this? why don't we actually see what the public thinks about the right to trial by jury?

wouldn't you think that something we've had for over 1,000 years deserves a bit of debate? wouldn't you think that we'd take at least the time and realize this is not the position of the administration. this is the position of the administration now that it is relenting to the verdict of the second district -- of the second circuit court. they are releasing this memo under duress, and my guess is they are releasing this memo because they need a few more votes, and they'll get a few more votes by releasing these memos to the public, or promising to release these memos. they will not be released -- the memos justifying the killing will not be released before the vote takes place. so the question is: is this really, is transparency good enough for you to cast aside the whole concept of presumption of innocence? the whole concept that an accusation is different than a conviction? there's been much discussion of what due process is, and as we've looked at this debate, there are some really valid

questions and some good writing that's been on this. freedensdorf has written on this and writes about the lawyer who enabled extra judicial killing of an american. he asked the question. he said should the constitution be entrusted to a man -- and this is essentially what happens, a circuit court, an appellate court judge. the constitution shall be entrusted to him. should it be entrusted to a man who thinks that americans should be killed without due process? the fifth amendment, he says, is very clear. no person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless upon the presentment or indictment of a grand jury. it doesn't say except or on presentment of an accusation by the executive branch without a trial. it says nor shall any person, the fifth amendment actually says nor shall any person be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process.

the question is what is due process? and you would think this would be pretty clear and that there wouldn't be much dispute over due process. but when you listen to some of these descriptions, we actually now have the administration -- and this is a description glenn greenwald writes this about both the bush and obama administrations. he says the core of the distortion on the war on terror under bush and obama is the orwellian practice of equating government accusations of terrorism with proof of guilt. realize that what we're talking about. there is a big difference between an accusation and a conviction. if you want to realize how important this is, there are senators on the other side of the aisle who have called senators on this side of the aisle terrorists on multiple occasions. who are we potentially going after with these directives towards killing?

people that are either senior operatives of al qaeda -- for which there are no membership cards, so that is open to somewhat debate. but we're also going after people who are associated with terrorism. the definition of terrorism, since on some occasions we've been accused of terrorism by the other side, can be somewhat loose. the bureau of justice put out a memo describing some of the characteristics of people who might be terrorists, which might alarm you if you're traveling overseas. people are missing fingers. people have stains on their clothing. people have changed the color of their hair. people who have multiple weapons in their house. people who have more than seven days' worth of food in their house. these are people you should be suspicious of according to the government. these are people who might be terrorists. and these are people you should talk to and inform the government about these people. if these are the definitions of someone who might be a terrorist, wouldn't we kind of want to have a lawyer before the accusation becomes a conviction?

when we talk about conviction, we talk about the conviction or the bar for conviction being beyond a reasonable doubt. so you can pretty much think, you can be in a jury pool and pretty much think someone killed someone. you've got a suspicion. you've got an inclination they're probably guilty but you're supposed to be so convinced it's beyond a reasonable doubt. in these memos, there's a different standard. realize what the standard is from the person who will now be appointed to a lifetime appointment, one step from the supreme court, the standard is that an assassination is justified when an informed high-level official of the u.s. government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the united states. so we're not talking about beyond a reasonable doubt anymore. that standard's gone. we're talking about an informed

unnamed, high-level official in secret deciding that an imminent attack is going to occur. the interesting thing about an imminent attack is we really don't go by much the plain wording of what you would think would be imminent anymore. the memo expressly states it is inventing -- this is also from glenn greenwald. the memo states it is inventing a broader concept of imminence that is typically not used.specs assassination power does not require that the u.s. have clear evidence that a specific attack will take place in the immediate future. so you wonder about a definition of imminence that no longer includes the word "immediate." the aclu's jami jamil jaffer exs that the memo redefiance the word "immense" in a way that deprives the word of its ordinary meaning.

when we talk about due process, it is important to understand where due process can occur. due process has to occur in the open. it has to occur in an adversarial process. if you don't have a lawyer on your side who is your advocate, you can't have due process. due process cannot occur in secret, but it also can't occur in one branch of government. this is a fundamental misconception of the president. the president believes, with regard to either privacy in the 4th amendment or to killing american citizens and with regard to the 5th amendment, he believes that if he has some lawyers review this process, that that that is due process. this is appalling because this has nothing to do with due process and can in no way be seen as due process. some have said, well, this is a judicial opinion. barron has written an opinion. he's justified the president's actions. people have also said this with regard to the n.s.a. spying

case. 15 judges have approved of it. well, the judges were in secret, the majority of them, in the fisa court. and that's not due process as well. but also the memo that was written by david barron, as also recounted by glenn greenwald, was not written by anyone independent of the president. on multiple occasions, they have justified and the memo argues that due process can be decided by internal deliberations of the executive branch. the comedian steven colbert mocked this and wrote -- or presented, "trial by jury, trial by fire, rock, paper, scissors, who cares? first the president meet wses his advisors, decides who he is going to kill and then kills them. it is actually called terror

tuesday with flashcards and powerpoint presentation." noel felledberg writes that there is no precedent for the idea that due process could be satisfied by some secret internal process within the executive branch. so to those of my colleagues who will come on down here today and just stamp approval on someone who i believe disrespects the bill of rights realize that other esteemed prefers and colleagues of harvard disagree and that you cannot have due process by a secret, internal process within the executive branch. and to those who say, oh, the memos are now not secret, are we going to be promised that from now on this is going to be a public debate understand that there will be some -- and that there will be some form of due process? no i suspect that the next time they kill an american, it will be done in secret by the executive branch because that's the new norm.

you're voting for someone who has made this the historic precedent for how we will kill americans overseas. in secret by one branch of the administration without representation based upon an accusation. we've gone from not guilty or you have to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt to an accusation being enough for an execution. i'm wh horrified that this is we we are. to my colleagues, i would say that to make an honest judgment, shoe look at this nomination as if it -- you should look at this nomination as if it came from the opposite party. i would promise you, this would absolutely be my opinion -- and this isn't particularly the most popular opinion to take in the country -- that i would oppose this nomination were it coming from a republican president. what i would ask my democrat colleagues to look deep within their soul, to look deep within their psyche and say, how i

would vote if this were a bush nominee? if this were a bush nominee that had written legal opinions justifying legal torture in 2006, 2007, how would i vote? i think 90% would vote against a bush nominee. this body has become too partisan sms there was a time when there were great believers in the constitution in this body and we've degentlemen of the jury rated in a body of partisanship. there was a time when the filibuster actually could have stopped this nomination. there was a time in which there would have had to have been compromise. there is a time in this body when we would get people more towards the mainstream of legal thought because those on each extreme would be excluded from holding office. the people who have argued so forcefully for majority vote, for not having the filibuster, are the ones who are responsible now for allowing this nomination to go forward. this nomination would not go

forward were it not for the elimination of the filibuster. some say the filibuster was, oh, that was obstructionism. the filibuster was also, and in many cases, about trying to prevent extremists from getting on the bench. we will now allow swung who has an extreme -- someone who has an extreme point of view, someone who has question about whether guilt must be determined beyond a reasonable doubt. that person may say, only if you're overseas. some consolation if you are a traveler. what i would say is that we need to think long and hard and examine this nomination objectively, as if this were a nomination from the president of the oppose sit party. we need to ask our sel our selfr bill of rights? we need to ask our he was also, it is hampletd we need to

examine. it is hard when you know swung is guilty, when you have now seen the evidence and you feel this person deserves punishment. i sympathize with that and think that this person did deserve punishment. but i also sympathize so greatly with the concept of having a jury trial, so greatly that an accusation is different than a conviction that i can't allow this to go forward without some objection. i hope this body will consider this and i hope this body will reconsider this nomination, and at the appropriate time i will offer a consen unanimous consens agreement, this unanimous consent request will be to delay the david barron memo, to delay the david barron nomination until the public has a chance to read this memo. the and i will return at an appropriate time and we will offer the that as an unanimous consent. thank you, mr. president.

mr. president, i notice the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. paul: madam president? quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from kentucky. mr. paul: i ask unanimous consent that the cloture motion on the nomination of david barron -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mr. paul: madam president, i ask

unanimous consent that we vitiate the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. paul: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the cloture motion on the nomination of david barron to be a u.s. circuit judge be delayed until such time as the public can review documents that are now being promised to be revealed by the president but have not yet been revealed, and so i ask that we delay until such time that the public can review the text of his memos on the use of targeted force against americans. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. sanders: objection. the presiding officer: objection is heard.

mr. wyden: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: madam president, it wasn't very long ago when the senator from kentucky and i were here on the floor talking about drones previously, and i just want to make sure that it's understood that senator paul's passion, his intellectual rigor and his devotion to these issues of liberty and security, which he and i have worked on together now for a number of years, is much appreciated. and i wanted to come for a few

minutes and especially talk about what senator paul and i have discussed in the past, and that is how vigorous oversight -- and particularly vigorous oversight over the intelligence field -- needs to get more attention. it's not something you can minimize. it goes right to the heart of the values that the senator from kentucky and i and others have both talked about, and that is that liberty and security are not mutually exclusive. we can have both. the senator from kentucky and i often joke about how the senate would benefit from a ben franklin caucus. and, of course, ben franklin, you know, famously said, in effect, anybody that gives up their liberty for security, really doesn't deserve either. so the senator from kentucky and

i certainly have some disagreements from time to time on a particular judicial nomination, but i thank him for the time this morning, and i thank him for the opportunity that we have had over the years to make the case about how important these issues are; that the american people ought to insist, ought to insist that their elected officials put in place policies that ensure that we have both liberty and security. and i thank him for that and will just have some brief remarks this morning, madam president. of course, the senate is going to be voting today on the nomination of david barron to serve as a judge for the first judicial circuit. his nomination has been endorsed by a wide variety of americans, including respected jurists from across the political spectrum. mr. barron has received particularly vocal endorsements

from some of our country's most prominent civil rights groups. of course, the aspect of his record that has perhaps received the closest scrutiny in recent weeks is his authorship of a legal opinion regarding the president's authority to use military force against an individual who was both a u.s. citizen and a senior leader of al qaeda. now, madam president, i am quite familiar with this particular memo. the executive branch first acknowledged its existence three years ago in response to a question i asked at an open hearing of the senate select committee on intelligence. i followed up by working with my colleagues and pressing the executive branch to provide this memo to the intelligence committee. this month, of course, the administration made this memo available to all members of the senate.

an executivand executive branchs have now said that they will provide this memo to the american people as well. madam president, this is, in nigh view, clearly a very -- in my view, clearly a very constructive step, and i am going to vote "yes" on mr. barron's nomination. i do want to take a minute to outline that this whole matter is about much more than a single memo. it really drives home, madam president, how incredibly important vigorous congressional oversight, you know, is; that is, of course, the mission of the intelligence committee, and it really is the mission of all of us. in his classic work on democratic government, woodrow wilson wrote that conducting oversight was one of the most important functions of the congress. he suggested that it might be more important than passing

legislation. woodrow wilson wrote, "it is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees." he added, "the congress must examine the disposition of the executive branch and scrutinize and sift them by every form of discussion." woodrow wilson said, if the congress fails in this duty, then the american people would remain ignorant "of the very affairs which it is most important that they understand and direct." now, woodrow wilson might not have been able to anticipate the size and scale of the modern national security apparatus, but i wanted to say this morning, his words are just as true today as they were a century ago.

as the elective representatives of nearly 4 million men's, i have spent years now working from the theory that all of us here in the senate have an obligation to understand how the executive branch is interpreting the president's authority to use military force against americans who have taken up arms against our nation. and i have long believed that it's my obligation to make sure that those that i'm honored to represent all across oregon understand that as well. i believe that every american has the right to know when their government believes it is allowed to kill them. in the case in question, as i've said before, i believe that the president's decision to authorize a military strike in those particular circumstances was legitimate and it was lawful. and i have detailed my views on this case in a letter to the

attorney general that is posted on my web site. so i agre agree with the conclun that mr. barron reached in what has now certainly become a famous memo. to be clear, while i agree with the conclusion, madam president, this is not a memo that i would have written. it contains what, in effect, are some, i guess, leaps -- analytical leaps that i would not endorse. it jumps to several conclusions, and it certainly leaves a number of important questions unanswered. and i'm hopeful that making this memo public will help generate the public pressure that is needed to get those additional questions answered. i'm talking here about fundamental questions like how much evidence does the president need to determine that a particular american is a

legitimate target for military action? or can the president strike an american anywhere in the world? what does it mean to say that capture must be infeasible? and exactly what other limits and boundaries apply to this authority? mr. barron wasn't asked to answer these questions, but in my view, madam president, it is vitally important that the american people get answers to those questions. those questions, in my view, are essential to understanding how americans' constitutional rights will be protected in the age of the 21st century, and i am a saying this morning -- i'm saying this morning that i'm going to stay at it until the american people get answers to those questions. in addition to getting detailed public answers to these matters, another important step will be for the congress to review the other justice department memos regarding the president's authority to use military force

outside of an active war zone. clearly, the most important memos on this topic are the ones that the congress has now seen regarding the use of lethal force against americans, but it's going to be important for the senate to review the memos on other aspects of this authority as well. the past few years have shown that when the public is allowed to see and debate how our government interprets the law, it has led to meaningful changes in terms of ensuring that there are additional protections for privacy and civil liberties without sacrificing our country's security at a dangerous time. now, it's unfortunate that it took mr. barron's nomination for the justice department to make these memos public. i will say here that it has been frustrating over the past few years to see the justice

department's resistance to providing congress with memos that outline the executive branch's official understanding of law. when mr. barron was the head of the justice department's office of legal counsel, i believe that congressional requests to see particular classified memos and legal opinions were appropriately granted. in the years, however, since mr. barron moved on from that position, congressional requests to see memos and opinions have frequently been stonewalled. and i use that word specifically, madam president -- "frequently stonewalled." the executive branch often make the argument that these memos constitute predecisional legal advice to the president. here is the problem with that argument: the president has to be able to get confidential legal advice before he makes a decision. but once a decision has been made and the legal memo from the

justice department has been sent to the agencies that will carry out the president's decision, that memo is no longer predecisional advice. it is the government's official legal basis for actual acts of war. and, as such, in my view, it is entirely unacceptable to withhold it from the congress. the congress has the power to declare war, and congress votes on whether to continue funding wars, so it is vital for the congress to understand what the executive branch believes the president's war powers actually are. in that classic work that i have discussed from woodrow wilson, madam president, woodrow wilson said, "it is even more important to know how the house is being built than to know how the plans of the architect were conceive conceived." and as a former basketball player, i often say that

sections of the playbook for combating terrorism will often need to be secret, but the rule book that the united states follows should always be available to the american people -- and all of the american people. our military and intelligence agencies often need to conduct secret operations, but they never should be placed in the position of relying on secret law. so i'm very pleased this morning that we know that the executive branch is going to provide this memo to the american people, and i believe that this constructive step must lead to additional steps that are equally important. this episode is an object lesson in how the united states congress can use the levers that it has to fulfill one of the most important functions of

government. and as my colleagues and i engage in our perennial discussions about how to make congress more functional, i hope this is an experience that we will remember. madam president, i yield the floor. mr. blunt: madam president, i want to talk a little about the continuing concerns we see in our office and hear from missourians about what's happening with the implementation of the health care plan. the more people know about the path we're on in health care, the more concerned they appear to become. i know the white house has suggested that somehow the numbers would reflect that people are responding to this program in a positive way. when you take away the insurance

that people have and there's only one place that they can go to get the insurance that they think they need, obviously they're going to go there. that doesn't mean they like it. in fact, there's a new political poll that suggests that nearly half of the american voters say they are for outright repeal of this law. and nearly 90% say that it'll be important to them in determining how they would vote this year. i would say in another point, in terms of why we want to start over again, everybody knows what the consequences are when you make bad decisions about people's health care in a way that i think most americans wouldn't have anticipated in 2009 and 2010. when you fundamentally get involved in issues that impact people and their families like health care, when you do things that fundamentally impact the way that their money is going to be spent and that decision is made by the federal government

instead of by that family whose only decision might be to pay a penalty or not have insurance -- and not have insurance at all or to pay a whole lot more than they were paying, the government has involved itself in an area where the government should have looked for better choices, more options, more ways to seek coverage, better ways to be sure that you could have coverage if you had a preexisting condition. all those, by the way, madam president, were proposed. this is not -- these are not ideas that weren't out there a few years ago, but they would be taken much more seriously today if we did what nearly half of the american voters say we should be, and let's just see what would happen if we start all over. several states have announced that their web sites won't work. this includes oregon, this includes massachusetts. there's a report that in four of the failed state exchanges, $474 million of taxpayer money was spent in nevada, in

massachusetts, in maryland, in oregon, just those four, for systems that then wouldn't work. many of these systems around the country that now are being abandoned were put in place partially if not totally with grants from the federal government. if you get a grant from the federal government to do something and then you don't do it, every other grantee has to give the money back. you can't say i'm going to take millions of dollars from federal taxpayers to put together an exchange and then announce, well, that didn't work out very well and have no obligation to give that money back. there was a time when we were concerned in washington, there appeared to be great concern that states weren't putting an exchange in place. now we find out states with this particular plan, ill-conceived as it was, put a -- can't put a system in place, apparently, that works. the state of oregon, one of the

earliest advocates of adopting this system, my belief is and i've read, weren't able to sign up one single person from october 1 until they abandoned their web site just a few days ago, not one person. subsidies appear to be incorrect. "the washington post" reported last weekend that a million americans who have enrolled in the plan may be getting incorrect health care subsidies because the web site was defective and didn't appropriately calculate what your subsidy would be. if you get too much of the subsidy, you have to pay it back. if you get too little of the subsidy, you may have decided that you're not going to take the health insurance available because you're not getting the assistance you had hoped for. potentially hundreds of thousands of americans are, according to that article, receiving bigger subsidies than they deserve and will be required to return the excess

next year. under federal rules, consumers are notified if there is a problem with their application and asked to send in or upload pay stubs or other proof of their income, but apparently only a fraction have done what they are supposed to do. and whose fault is that? if the government goes ahead and allocates the subsidy if you haven't complied with the law, is that your fault or the government's fault? it's the government's job to comply with the law and to insist that you do if you're going to be part of a federal program. it's not your absolute obligation to say well, i -- i need to send that final piece of paper in. if the government says we're going to go ahead and give you this subsidy, don't worry about sending this in, we're going to do this anyway, but there will be a reconciliation moment here where people find out that their subsidy was more than they deserved and suddenly you have to pay it back.

the processing centers, kmob, a television station in st. louis, recently broke a story regarding the claims of workers at a wentzville facility which was one of a handful of facilities that the federal government financed around the country to handle paper applications. only on the one side did the applications appear not to work coming on the web site, the easiest thing you thought would be possible -- the easier thing would have been to fill out the paper application and send it to one of these locations that was set up at the cost -- the contract cost of over a billion dollars. 600 people working at the wentzville site. and the allegations from people working there are that there is just nothing to do. they're told refresh your computer screen once every ten minutes, hit the refresh button so it appears that you're doing something. the 600 of you, don't process

more than one or two applications a month. that way, everybody has a chance to process one application. my belief is that these are the kind of applications that you would have assumed every individual would have easily processed dozens a day, they're told not to process more than one or two a month because there just aren't that many people making applications at these centers. the television station kmob did a freedom of information request to c.m.s. on april 8. they are two weeks past the 20 days that the government is supposed to have to comply. i wonder what would happen if you had an e.p.a. penalty and the -- and as a taxpayer, you're a couple of weeks late in complying with whatever that penalty is. last week, i joined senator alexander, who is the ranking member of the senate committee on health, education, labor and

pensions in a letter to the c.m.s. administrator expressing my concerns and his concerns and requesting answers to a number of questions no later than the end of this month. hopefully, they will be better complying with us than they were the freedom of information act and the st. louis reporter. the full five-year contract, contract, $1.25 billion. the facility, 600 people. we're now hearing from a couple of the other facilities that they have exactly the same problem. they're going to work, they are a library. books are stacked on the table so you can read a book during the day as they wait for what i guess will eventually be this onslaught of applications coming in, but so far it hasn't happened. we're october 1, november 1, december 1, january 1, february 1, march 1, april 1, may 1, soon june 1. you would think these would be coming in, because we're paying

these people to do this. and, frankly, people need jobs. if they were hired, it's hard to fault them for showing up every day until somebody says, you know, the truth is there is just no work here for maybe 590 of the 600 of you, maybe you should -- we need to go ahead and eliminate these particular jobs which were supposedly to help implement this system. facilities in missouri, kentucky, arkansas, oklahoma and lots of indications that everybody is seeing the same experience. this is a -- the american part of this company, circo, is based in reston, virginia, but this is a british company. they were already in trouble with the british government, i have read, for not providing the services they guaranteed to provide. it's amazing to me that to do the work to implement this program, to get a canadian company to design the web site

that's already in trouble with the canadian government for failure to do what they said they would do, but we hire that company anyway. you would think there would be american companies with -- who aren't in trouble with anybody's government who could design a web site. and then you get a british company who is in trouble with the british government, said we want you to operate these centers for the written applications, no wonder taxpayers are wondering who's minding the store? who is managing the government? who is doing things that would just make common sense anywhere else? and i continue to hear from missouri families every week of the problems they have. we talk to them, we verify these problems, we try to see if there is a solution, including going through the affordable care act and trying to find assistance so they can afford to pay for a policy that costs more than they ever thought they would pay, but we're not finding those solutions. i have got two letters here from

, one, a substitute teacher, a retired teacher who was a substitute teacher who is no longer able to work the substitute hours they were able to work because of the unintended consequences of the affordable care act. people now 30 hours the law says is when you have to provide full-time benefits. different companies had different rules in the past. if we go back to the 40-hour workweek, a lot of people would be working 35 and 36 and 38 hours now that are working 25 and 26 and 28 hours. another letter from a student, stephanie, in jackson, missouri. the schoolteacher was in kansas city. stephanie in jackson, missouri. trying to go to school, trying to do everything she could to pay her own way through school, but her hours have been cut at work because she was working in the past more than 30 hours to try to do what kids used to do. what's -- what's one of the solutions to not having a lot of debt when you get out of college?

work your way through school. what's one of the things that the affordable care act has made it harder to do? work your way through school. so stephanie, the student i'm talking about, says she is looking for a second part-time job now that would give her the kind of hours she used to have at her other part-time job because the affordable care act's -- because of the affordable care act's consequences. just a couple more examples. rich from portageville, missouri. his rates have increased from $412 a month to $732 a month. rich says he is 49 years old. his policy covers he and his son who is 22 years old. they are both healthy, but their insurance went up $320 a month. roy from oak ridge, missouri, says his deductible has gone from $250 to $650, and if his wife wasn't a veteran and couldn't get her medications through the veterans administration, they would have real health care problems. and just one last example,

madam president. rodney from new franklin, missouri, says his rates have jumped. he says my health insurance for my wife and myself has jumped from $320 per month to over $700 per month, and now there is a $5,000 deductible, despite the fact that we're both in great health. it doesn't include eye or dental coverage. i'm self-employed, rodney says, so it makes a really big difference to him whether he can continue to pay well over two times what he was paying before with a higher deductible. so the problems in implementing the system appear to be not dealt with in the right way, and then what happens when people do get coverage turns out for them not to be coverage they can afford, and of course, whether they had a policy they liked or not, almost nobody has been able to keep the policy they had, particularly if they had it as an individual, and i think we're

going to see fewer and fewer people having the policies they've had at work. i think i'll go back to the 50% of americans -- almost 50% of americans and say why don't we just start over and do this the commonsense way and solve these problems in a way that benefit families and their health care rather than benefiting more government employees and more government regulations. and i would yield the floor. mr. cruz: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cruz: madam president, i rise to discuss the nomination of mr. david barron to be a federal court of appeals judge. i want to commend my friend, senator rand paul, for his excellent remarks earlier today and his leadership against mr. barron's nomination. i have known mr. barron a long

time. he and i were classmates in law school. he is a smart man. he is a talented man. he is a professor at the harvard law school, and a well-respected professor, but mr. barron is an unabashed judicial activist. he is an unapologetic and vocal advocate for judges applying liberal policy from the bench and disregarding the terms of the constitution and the laws of the land. if the members of this body vote to confirm him, we will bear responsibility for undermining liberty and undermining rule of law in this country. it is well known that mr. barron is a senior official in the obama justice department authored memos allowing the united states government to use drones to kill american citizens abroad who were known or suspected to be terrorists. without any trial, without any

due process. and to date, we still don't have the details of all of those memos. a number of us, including me, have called for releasing the memos that would allow the u.s. government to use lethal force against u.s. citizens. i'm pleased to say the administration has in part complied. but we don't have all of those memos. yet, this body is asked to procd with giving mr. barron a lifetime appointment without knowing the full context of the advice he gave. i would note mr. barron in 2006 joined a group of legal scholars calling for more transparency in the o.l.c. opinions that he subsequently wrote and that the administration is now keeping secret. but beyond that, beyond mr. barron's providing the legal basis for the targeted killings of american citizens abroad without judicial process, mr. barron, both in law school and in his writings as a law

professor has been an enthusiastic activist for judicial activism. some nominees say even if their record is to the contrary that i th*e say i will comply with the law. to mr. barron's credit his demeanor has a bit of candor that is unusual. for example, he's argued that courts should override elected state legislatures and enforce left-wing policies. in one particular article that he wrote, mr. barron in one law review wrote -- quote -- "state supreme courts, not state legislatures led the revolution in school financing equality, though judicial actions have catalyzed political responses." and he went on to say that liberals should not object to conservative court decisions because progressive

constitutionalists enamored of the anticourt rhetoric rarely take into account its potential downstream effects on state court interpretation and legitimacy. in other words, he's worried that people on the court might be arguing that courts should follow the law because that would constrain the ability of courts to instead impose a far-left political policy agenda. likewise, in a different article, he argues it is precisely because the anticourt strain singles out conservative judicial activism as the problem that it threatens to work progressive constitutional theory into a attorney. it needlessly rejects the progressive potential of a significant wielder of power: the courts. madam president, let me underscore that. every member of this body that votes to confirm mr. barron is voting for a candidate who has stated he intends to use the courts as a -- quote --

"significant wielder of power." and indeed, what is the agenda that he would embrace? he has elsewhere written that he -- quote -- "we contend that the constitutional argument favoring precluesive executive power necessarily rests on a strong form of living constitutionalism." madam president, there are members of this body, democratic members of this body who are campaigning right now in their home states saying they don't support judicial activism. they don't support a so-called living constitution, judges imposing far-left policies and disregarding the law. well, let me say any democratic member of this body that votes for mr. barron is on record in support of judicial activism and living constitutionalism. beyond that mr. barron has explicitly written his opposition to federalism. indeed he says "there is precious little in the constitution text or history of

its adoption that compels a particular conservative allocation of national local powers favored by the rehnquist court." he has made clear his agenda to overturn or ignore supreme court precedents when he says there's little in the text or history, it seems somehow he has not read or focused on the 10th amendment or "the federalist papers" or debates on ratification. beyond that, he is an emphatic advocate of the takings clause of government power taking private property such as the kilo decision, big moneyed interest going to government and using government power to condemn your private land. he is an emphatic advocate of that and courts facilitating and expanding that. he has written that the executive branch should be able to waive laws with which it disagrees, a lawlessness that sadly has run rampant in this administration. madam president, anyone who cares about property rights

should be dismayed by this nomination and should vote against it if you don't want to see overly aggressive takings jurisprudence that allows the government to take your private property. anyone concerned about free speech should be concerned about this nomination if you don't want to see expansive government power taking away the rights of citizenry to free spaoefplt anyone that cares -- speech. anyone that cares about local control and federalism and the ability of local school boards and legislatures to make policy decisions should be concerned. anyone concerned about our right to life should be concerned about drones having the power to take our life without judicial process. and, madam president, anyone concerned about liberty and the rule of law should be deeply concerned about a judicial nominee who embraces courts as a tool of power and the president disregarding the law. madam president, i urge my colleagues to oppose this nomination. i yield the floor. mrs. boxer: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from california.

mrs. boxer: what is the order? the presiding officer: we are in morning business until 12:15 p.m. mrs. boxer: i ask that i be able to speak for as much time as i will consume until that time. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. boxer: madam president, senator cruz makes an impassioned plea against a nominee who is considered by some to be exemplary, and it's his right to do that. but let me just say before my friend leaves the floor, as impassioned as he is, calling mr. barron a liberal, i've heard many call mr. barron a conservative. so he must be doing something right. and i think it's interesting. so let's keep politics out of this and look at someone's record. madam president, with all the argument and debate that goes on around here and in a very legitimate way, it's fair. parties have grown very far apart, whether you look at the minimum wage with the democrats

wanting to raise it, the republicans, some of them say do away with it altogether, extended unemployment benefits where you can barely get a handful of them to go along with us; i could just go on through the list. we're going to have a chance to make sure students have a fair shot at refinancing their student loans. we don't know where they are, but so far i haven't seen them join senator warren in her very important move to allow students to refinance their student loans. i could go through a list, you know, longer than i am tall. i'm not that tall, but still it's five feet of differences. we finally have come together in a way that i'm very proud. as chairman of the environment and public works committee, we have two sides of our committee, the environment side which tends to be very difficult. big splits. then we have the public works side. and by putting aside our differences, our deep

differences on the environment and focusing on the other side, we've been able to come up with a couple of really good bills. the first one is the water resources reform and development act, called wrda. it's so important to our nation whether you're a coastal port or inland port. and it's crucial that this get done. the last wrda bill was seven years ago. i was proud to be involved in it at that time. this one, seven years later, is long overdue. and i'm going to talk to you more about it. we also voted out a highway bill out of our committee. we're very proud. we've worked, senator vitter and i, very closely. and senator barrasso, senator carper and all the members on both sides and their wonderful staffs. so tomorrow i believe we're going to vote on wrda. we're going to vote on the water bill. but i know we have a very hectic day tomorrow, so rather than take the time then, i'm going to

take the time now and i'm hoping to be joined by some colleagues today. but if not, i will lay out why we need to do this bill. first, i want to say, madam president, a wonderful thing happened in the house yesterday when the conference report passed over in the house 412-4. i mean, this was really pretty terrific. and everyone pretty much rose above partisan politics. and i am very pleased that senator reid is moving forward with this and all colleagues on both sides want us to pass that conference report, send it to the president. he will sign this bill. and let me tell you what's at stake. at least half a million jobs. half a million jobs. first of all, we deal with ports and waterways. the conference agreement makes important investments and reforms related to our nation's ports.

our nation's ports and waterways move over 2.3 billion tons of goods. that's amazing. every year. 2.3 billion tons of goods. so we need to keep our ports modernized. we need to invest in our ports. so in this bill, we do. we include a project in texas, for example, to widen and deepen the sabine e natchez waterway which will have over $115 million in benefits. this waterway transports over 100,000 goods every year. it is the nation's top port for movement of commercial military goods and it's vital to our nation's energy security. this bill will allow the court to address dangerous cross currents at the port of jacksonville, florida, as another example that creates safety concerns for ships entering and exiting the port and allows the deepening of this

vital hub of commerce. this bill also authorizes a project to deepen the boston harbor to 50 feet. this will prevent heavier road traffic in the busy northeastern corridor by allowing larger vessels coming through the newly deepened panama canal to transport cargo all the way north to boston harbor. without the access to boston, these vessels would have to off-load in other ports and put the cargo on trucks to their final destinations in the northeast. and, madam president, what i'd like to do now is yield to my friend, the senator from louisiana, senator landrieu. i just want to say -- and i will finish my remarks when she has completed hers because she has a very hectic schedule and i'm able to stay on the floor for awhile. senator landrieu, let me just say this, whenever i see her, she talks to me about her state.

and she -- and her state is magnificent. and i've been there. i was there after katrina at her urging. i've been there since to see some of the progress we've made. but louisiana is a special place. and this special senator never forgets what needs to be done, and part of it is playing a big role in a bill like the water resources reform and development act. so at this time i would yield, if it's all right, through the chair. am i permitted to do this? can i yield the time that i took to my friend for as much time as she may consume? the presiding officer: without objection. ms. landrieu: thank you, madam president. i thank the courtesies of the chairwoman from california and for her really extraordinary leadership to bring such an important infrastructure bill to the floor of the senate. without her dogged determination, we would not be here today, and louisiana and so many other states that are

benefiting from the projects authorized and green lighted in this bill would simply still be laying on the cutting room floor, jobs not being created and people not being employed and the future looking a lot less bright than it is today, senator. and i thank you so very, very much. not only has she given attention to her home state of california, but she has been very mindful of several other states in the union that have particularly difficult water challenges. louisiana would be one such state. louisiana isn't our largest state. it's not smallest. it's, you know, in the medium size. it's 4.5 million people. but yet our state is positioned geographically in the country, in the lower 48 that we drain almost 50% of the continent, the water of this continent comes

through this extraordinary delta , with almost without peer on the planet. it's the seventh largest delta on earth. and while some states are struggling to find water, we normally have too much of it in the wrong places. or at times we have too much of it in the wrong places, like when lake pontchartrain reached its, the drainage project's, program's projects collapsed and two-thirds of the city of new orleans went under water, some neighborhoods 14 feet. or when isaac hit or ike, or other hurricanes, we have really been bombarded with tremendous challenges to the southern part of the united states. now, every region has their challenges, but the southern part of the united states, what i'd like to call america's energy coast -- texas,

louisiana, mississippi and alabama -- have particular challenges that need addressing in this bill. and i want to thank senator boxer for addressing some of them, particularly as it relates to louisiana's challenges, because our challenge is not only to keep commerce open for everyone so that the entire country can benefit, especially when the panama canal opens, larger ships are going to be moving across the oceans into our ports, the mississippi river port system combined all the four southern ports of mississippi, mississippi river the largest port system in the world. not second. the largest port system in the world. so we have a responsibility to make sure this commerce continues to move. so we've got to have rivers and bodies of water that are open for commerce but yet protected with the right kinds of levees, madam president, that protect the people that live there so we

don't drown every time it rains heavily. we're not talking about category four and five hurricanes. we're talking about highways that go under water in a heavy rain. because the delta is sinking. due to several factors. the waters are rising due to several factors. this water bill is the only -- one of the only answers to build a resilient and sustainable coast. that's why the louisiana delegation fights so hard for it, why we're so anxious for this bill, why we don't like to wait seven years for a wrda bill because we need new authorizations every two and three years. in fact, we need a whole new way of funding some of these projects which is a work in progress and i look forward to continuing to work with the senator. as an appropriator, i am very anxious to find a new, more expedited way. i've proposed revenue sharing

and will continue to propose revenue sharing as a way for not only louisiana but coastal states, to redirect a portion of offshore oil and gas revenues to come back to the coastal communities, america's energy coast, america's working coast, and build the infrastructure that helps our economy continue to grow, create jobs, and most importantly, or equally importantly, protects the people that have to live close to the water for those jobs and -- those jobs to be made real and for the economy to benefit. not everybody can live in veil, colorado and commute to the coast every day to work. it's just not going to happen. you know, we have to live along these rivers and we've been living there an awfully long time, like 300 years, as far as baton rouge and new orleans, we'll be celebrating just three cities in our state, their

300th birthday. we did not move there in the 1980's to sun bathe. we've been down there for hundreds of years building the economy of this country, we're proud to do it, we're happy to do it, but we need help every now and then. and this bill helps us. the wrda bill is important. there are a couple of projects and i'm going to finish in just about three minutes and -- four minutes and turn it back over to the senator. first, more gansa to the gulf which was originally authorized 20 years ago that's going to provide levee and flood control protection to one of the fastest growing, most dynamic cities in this country, homa, louisiana. it is an energy epicenter, it is an energy powerhouse, what the people of houma, the supply companies like you know in north dakota which is really the fastest growing -- one of the fastest growing communities in

our country, madam president, you can appreciate this, we're like that on the coast, except that when the hurricanes come, it can literally threaten to wash away the whole place because there are no levees around houma. you've had some terrible flooding in your state so you can appreciate what happens when the levee system fails. but we are not only along rivers but we're also along the coast, we're also a strong energy center, and it's not just the people and the companies that range from, you know, very small mom and pop to some of the largest international energy companies in the world but it's international fabricators that have billions of dollars of infrastructure along this coast that is at risk. so this-hour gansa project -- morganza project, it was not in the house bill, i knot hard to make sure, i want to give senator vitter a good bit of credit for his leadership on this committee and do not want

to underestimate the role he played in securing all these projects but we work together as a team to make sure that morganza to the gulf was included and i am very proud it was in the final conference report, a $10.3 billion authorization. louisiana coastal area for $2.1 billion is also included. it's one of the only new starts in the president's budget. it's authorized at a higher level in this bill, again we're going to have to find some additional funding which is where i think revenue sharing comes in and i hope to convince my colleagues to move in that direction for the benefit of not just our state but many coastal states in the country. because building this coastal protection for louisiana, mississippi, texas, and alabama, and florida, is critical, but so are -- is the east coast and the west coast in great need as well. one of the projects, and i have

just two more to talk about i'm particularly proud of, is the authorization for us to get about the work of dredging the new iberia port. i've tried to explain on this floor because we only think about ports like the traditional big cargo ports, you think about long beach or you think about the port of seattle or new york or new jersey, kind of that's what people think when they think ports. those are big cargo ports and big container ports. they're very important. but also tucked along our coast are energy ports that people completely forget about. they don't even know what an energy port looks like. i'm very proud to be taking secretary moniz to his first energy port this next week in louisiana because these energy ports aren't bringing in big containers and big cargo ships but they're bringing in liquefied natural gas or taking it out or bringing in oil, imported from the rest of the world or exroarting -- exporting when we can get exports out but right now

bringing crude oil in. they're manufacturing the huge platforms and fabricating the huge platforms that go out into the gulf of mexico without the proper dredging of these ports, without the proper security of these ports, america cannot be an energy powerhouse. we just can't do it. we have to have that port infrastructure, so one of my big pushes since i've been a senator is to try to get the federal government to understand that one size doesn't fit all. there are certain projects that work well for these big container ports and cargo ports but there are other important ports in our country, particularly along america's energy coast, which is texas, louisiana, mississippi, and alabama coast, the only coast that allows offshore oil and gas drilling to allow that industry to continue to grow so that the country prospers and all the states are benefited by the work

that goes on there. so the new iberia port channel will be dredged deeper, fabricators will be able to have more projects domestically here, not have to do so much work in korea and other places around the world, we can produce using american steel, american workers, american fabrication techniques to create jobs right here at home. and finally, madam president, senator boxer was so helpful in pressing for the inland waterway trust fund to authorize and completely -- to authorize the trust fund, to basically say that the moneys that are collected will stay in the trust fund and be used and authorized to help our dams and inland waterways around the country. senator casey and i have an amendment pending on the floor that would make sure that the increases in user fees could

potentially be applied this year so that it's not just an authorization but there's actually funding in the trust fund to pay for these projects, which is so important to keep our maritime industry moving and growing, which is a real feather in our cap right now. the maritime industry is expanding, it pays really much above the average wage. they're really high-paying jobs and instead of stymieing in their growth we need to be expanding that part of our economy. so this wrda bill because of senator boxer's leadership, first of all, it's gotten to the floor for a vote, it never would have happened without her dogged determination. they are wonderful projects, necessary projects for the whole country, but particularly for louisiana, a state that has an awful lot of water, we're happy to have it but it's got to be directed correctly or it could

cause many disasters and much heartache and pain. and so getting our rivers dredged correctly, getting our levees built so that they don't fail and continuing to be diligent in helping our people live safely along the coast is something that i know senator boxer shares with me and the people of california have some similar challenges that she is, of course, well aware of in the sacramento valley. so i just want to thank you, senator, i really appreciate your help, your visits, several visits to louisiana, particularly after the storm, helped to i think make a firm imprint to you about the importance of this and i'm excited about your looking to the netherlands for a possible partner with building even stronger infrastructure, using really first-class technologies for our states and i thank you so much, again, for your leadership and i yield the floor.

mrs. boxer: thank you, senator landrieu. the presiding officer: the senator from california. mrs. boxer: take back my time here. i want to say to the senator, she has taid maid the case, this wrda bill is life and death, it truly is, in so many of our states. we all saw katrina, we all know, superstorm sandy and i could tell you -- i know it sounds like an overstatement, i can assure you it president is, if we have a situation like that the sacramento area because of the businesses located there, how many people are there -- you know our state has 38 million people. the devastation would be worse than we've ever seen because of the numbers of people. so this bill takes care of that problem, too, so we can fix our levees. that is critical. our levees are falling apart. so the senator from louisiana, you know, has made the case so forcefully for her state but also she calls attention to the fact that we are experiencing extreme weather.

we can't put our heads in the sand. i was thinking the other day you put your head in the sand, you're going to get sand in your eyes, you'll never be able to see too well. we've got to get our heads out of the sand. extreme weather is here. it's here because of climate change and we have teal with it. my preference is to do what we can to avoid climate change but it's late in the game even now. so we have to adapt and my friend from louisiana, i have to say, has been just a stalwart in protecting her state. madam president, i have 11 unanimous consent requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they all have the approval of both leaders. i ask unanimous consent that these requests be agreed to, these requests be printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. boxer: so, madam president, we've heard from the senator from louisiana as to why the water resources reform development act is so important, wrda. you've heard a little bit from

me, i was talking about the important projects across this nation. i discussed the one in texas where they move so many military goods through, i discussed the one in florida where they have these cross winds that are dangerous, and i began to discuss a project to deepen the boston harbor to 50 feet. this will prevent heavier road traffic in the busy northeastern corridor by allowing the larger vessels coming through the newly deepened panama canal to transport cargo to the boston harbor. without that access to boston these vessels would have to offload in other ports and put the cargo on trucks to their final destination in the northeast. we really have to think about our ports as the alternative in many cases to putting cars on the road. in our state we call it kind of the sea highway and our idea in california is to tie our ports

together so that there can be a seamless way to transport cargo. in addition to authorizing crucial port projects, the bill reforms the harbor maintenance trust fund to increase port investment. despite significant maintenance needs at our nation's ports, only roughly half of the fees collected in the harbor maintenance trust fund go to port activities. madam president, these are user funds. they ought to be used for the purpose with which they were intended. this conference report calls for a full expenditure of all revenues collected in the trust fund by 2025. and i want to say i've had some very good talks about the appropriators, chairman mikulski, the ranking member shelby, they have ports in their great states and they know the need to utilize these funds at the ports. you collect funds for the harbor maintenance trust fund and then

they're going to every other kind of use. it just doesn't make sense. it's not right. i believe in user funds whether it's for the highway trust fund, the harbor maintenance trust fund, they're targeted funds. they should stay and be used for we do set priorities for larger ports, smaller ports, for the great lakes, the seaports. we say if you're a large donor port, you ought to deserve to have some attention. and i could tell you that i represent the ports of long beach and los angeles, through which 40% of imports pass. 40%. and they put so much money into the trust fund and they get so little back. and there's many cases like that. i'm just particularly familiar with these because i hear from the folks from those particular ports. we also have very important inland waterway system and this conference report makes

important reforms to those. it's essential for transporting goods throughout the country. these include efforts to expedite project delivery and better prepare for future floods and droughts that can slow or even stop navigation at our inland waterways. now, we talked a little bit about extreme weather. i know that, madam president, in your state, i'll never forget right before you got here seeing pictures of what was happening in your state with floods and fires. it was just the most on pock lic scene that senator conrad had these photos of. and it was just shocking and we're seeing more and more of this extreme weather. so we need to get ahead of it. we need to do much-needed flood control, coastal hurricane protection projects across the country. and we talked a little bit about sacramento. sacramento in california

faces -- it's our state capital -- it faces some of the nation's most severe flood risk. the bill contains flood protection measures that will allow the corps to strengthen the levees in the natomis basin and sacramento. here's how many pleem be peoplee safeguarded -- 100,000 people will be safeguarded, and $8 billion worth of process. the bill focuses also on lifesaving flood protection for more than 200,000 residents of fargo, north dakota, and morehead, minnesota. we are talking about states all across our great nation who have to protect their people. the bill will restore the reliability of the levee system that protects topeka, kansas. these levees protect thousands of homes and businesses in the city and this project will return over $13 in benefits for every $1 invested. the bill will provide lifesaving hurricane protection for

communities in coastal louisiana. we heard from senator landrieu, senator vitter was very strong on this as we worked together. you know, we all have to -- when we're chairmen, we have to do what's right for the country and also do what's right for our states. the conference report is going to improve our responses to extreme weather events, whether they occur in fargo, in sacramento, in new orleans. after the devastation caused by hurricane katrina and superstorm sandy, it became clear that communities need assistance to protect lives and property and improve infrastructure resiliency. what does that mean, "resiliency?" it means you build your infrastructure in a resilient way so it lasts, it doesn't collapse when you need that protection. and for the first time this bill allows the corps to conduct immediate assessments of affected watersheds, allowing them to make recommendations following an extreme weather

event. you know, in the old days, before all this extreme weather, the corps would come back and fix places just like they were before the event. now we're saying, if there was an extreme weather event, please, corps, identify and look at the ability to construct small flood-control and ecosystem restoration projects, such as levees and flood walls, restore wetlands without going through the full study process and having to go through that whole congressional authorization. madam president, we don't waive any environmental laws, we just say, when you have an emergency here and you can show us how it can work, just go do it because we want people to have their communities back. the conference report calls for the corps to use resilient construction techniques that are far more durable. what good is -- as i remember, i was in a big debate with a republican senator when we had a bridge collapse in -- after an

earthquake, an approach to a bridge, and he said, well, why are you spending more money than it was to build it? i said, because we don't want to rebuild it the same way because it didn't withstand an earthquake. it's kind of a "duh" moment. you don't want to spend taxpayer money rebuilding a flawed piece of infrastructure. make it strong, make it resilient. that's what we have to do. and for the first time, we're going to make sure this happens. we require the national academy of sciences and the g.a.o. to evaluate options for reducing risk so it's not just the corps going out there, they're going to depend upon the scientists and they're going to depend upon the g.a.o., government accountability office. ecosystem restoration. the bill authorizes investment in vital ecosystem restoration projects across this nation. these projects not only preserve

our precious natural heritage but they provide essential benefits to local communities, such as improved flood protection and a boost to local tourism. a lot of people don't understand the function of a wetland. you know, you see a stretch of wetland and you say, wow, that's flat land. i can go build on it. well, frankly, over the course of our great nation's history, that's what we used to do. we filled those wetlands in, we ignored the fact that they were really a gift for us to protect. because what did they do? not only were they beautiful and a place for wildlife and all of that, but -- and help the air quality, but they acted as natural flood control. and when you hear senator landrieu discuss this -- and i went to louisiana, i saw how critical that was, the -- the wetlands restoration is critical to absorbing the floodwaters so they don't destroy property and

lives. wrda continues the commitment to restoring one of the nation's greatest environmental treasures, the florida everglades. if you've never seen the florida everglades, you need to see the florida everglades. it's called a river of grass. it's the most extraordinary thing. i'll never forget it. senator nelson invited my husband and me and he and his wife and my husband and i went out and saw this river of grass and saw flora and fauna, deer jumping from little patch of grass in the water. it's just a miracle from god. and what we do is we allow four everglade restoration projects to move forward. we also reauthorize important restoration programs in the chesapeake bay. and i want to thank senator cardin for his amazing leadership on this. of course, senator mikulski as well. and columbia river basin. we enable the corps to work with

the states along the north atlantic coast to restore vital coastal habitats all the way from virginia up to maine. and we allow the corps to implement projects to better prepare for extreme weather in the northern rocky mountain states of montana and idaho. if you've been following this -- this speech, i think what you will recognize is how broad a swath we cut with the wrda bill. we really tried to step back and help everybody. this is one nation and we need to take care of our heritage and that means you've got to protect it from floods, from hurricanes. you have to make sure commerce can move forward from our ports, and you want to restore this god-given environment that we are supposed to protect. we give the corps priority to ecosystem restoration projects that will also provide benefits for public health. so it means that projects like restoration of the salt and sea, where i live, which both

restores vital habitat and addresses serious air quality concerns, can move forward. this is an amazing thing, the salt and sea, this incredible lake. and it is a stop-off point for the most amazing array of wildlife. it is drying up. it is drying up. and if it continues to go this way, it will not only be a disaster for the wildlife, but it will be a disaster for the people because the odo rs that are coming from this drying-up sea float all the way to los angeles, where we have millions and millions and millions of people. and the jobs that we could create there with clean energy and other types of development, we have to move on that. so i was excited to see that everyone agrees that if you have a body of water that is deteriorating, that if you don't pay attention to it, it could cause public health crisis. then it should have some kind of a priority. the conference report also

addresses important ocean and coastal resiliency issues, allowing the corn to carry out ocean and coastal resiliency projects in coordination with a broad range of stakeholders, including states, federal agencies, and n.g.o.'s. i want to compliment sheldon white houssheldonwhitehouse fort into this provision. it's very, very important. you know, our oceans and our coasts, they are not only magnificent gifts but they really are important to our economy. you know, people come to california, you know, they like to see the whole state but people graf state to the coas coast -- people gravitate to the coast. it's so magnificent. and so we have to make sure that we treat our coasts right, that we treat our oceans right. and that means making sure that if they are endangered, we do something about it. and this is a first. this is exciting for sheldon whitehouse and i'm very thrilled to have been able to help him. and i have to give a shout out

to senator reed, without whom this provision wouldn't have made it in the bill. i could just tell you that. we were down to that one issue. we had taken care of 150 issues, right, jason? but we were down to that one issue and leader reid, he was able to help us. and i thank the house for their working with us. so i don't know how many of you have heard of this, tifia is a new program we put into the highway bill and what it does is it leverages funds. so if our states our localities in our states pass, say, a half-cent sales tax to build transportation, the federal government now has a way to, through the tifia program, to come around upfront, take a project that has, say, 20 years of revenue coming in, upfront that cost right there and build that project out quicker. we did the same thing for water. we call it wifia. and it's a new initiative. we hope it will be interesting

to folks and that they'll use it. it will assist localities in need of loans for flood control or wastewater or drinking water infrastructure to receive those loans from this new funding mechanism, the water infrastructure finance and innovation act. wifia will allow localities an opportunity to move forward with water infrastructure projects in the same way that tifia in transportation does. where there's a local source of funding, the federal government can front those funds. and i've got to tell ya, it's working so well, the tifia program, i just went to an amazing press conference with the folks from los angeles. they've gotten an $800 million tifia loan. it's enabling them to build a subway. i mean, it's very exciting. and the federal government has no risk really, almost zero risk because the funds that will be paid back from the sales tax. these funding arrangements supplement existing programs to help leverage more investment in our nation's aging

infrastructure. the conference report updates the clean water state revolving fund to ensure that our existing sources of water infrastructure are able to continue to meet the pressing needs. now, you've heard of chiefs' reports. the conference report authorizes 34 critical army corps projects where the chief of engineers has completed a comprehensive study. this was an absolute necessity for the senate side. you know, the house and senate came at this in a very different way. their priority was making sure they could hold hearings on all the chiefs' reports. our priority was saying, look, we're not going to go ahead with any project that doesn't have a completed chiefs' report. so that's the "r" for reform. their reform -- making sure congress holds the hearings. our reform -- making sure there's a completed chief's report. so we're very happy about these chiefs' reports. they're all over the nation.

i gave you some examples of them, as i -- as i did in the beginning of my statement. they will restore vital ecosystems, preserve our heritage, maintain navigation routes for commerce and movement of goods. now, in the future, we're looking forward. how are we going to continue, because these wrda bills come every seven years. it's very slow. what is a better way to deal with the future needs of our states, madam president? so we developed a system with the house that allows local sponsors -- just say someone from your state, a flood-control agency in your state can make their case now directly to the army corps and then the corps would recommend those projects to congress. so i think it's interesting, we kind of took ourselves, because of the earmark ban, out of the picture and allows people from fargo, from los angeles, from humboldt, wherever they're, from

to go and see the corps, make the case for their project and then the corps would say, we sat down with these local officials. there are 10 or 15 projects we think are important. and that's going to be a new w way. we're going to give more local input. now, i have to say, madam president, i am very, very, very excited and happy to be standing here today on this issue, because it was one year ago, almost to the day, that the senate passed the boxer-vitter wrda bill by a vote of 83-14. it was almost a year ago, it's been a year of being in conference, a year of struggling with issue after issue after issue, a year of people saying that's it, we're done, we're walking out the door. wait, come back. it's been a year. when you read how a bill becomes a law, madam president, it sounds so simple. it says the house passes a bill, then the senate passes a bill. then the