government accountability office including private communications about setting interest rates. we are expecting a procedural vote this afternoon at 2:30 p.m. eastern. the president pro tempore: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. everlasting god, our light and salvation, you remain our strength and shield. today, we claim your great and precious promises, as you sustain us with your presence. thank you for promising to

supply our needs and to lead us toward abundant living. continue to sustain our senators with your eternal presence remind them that your hand is on the helm of human affairs and that you still guide your world. renew their strength, as you provide them with the courage to carry on. may they refuse to do anything which could bring them regret, remorse and shame. we pray in your strong name. amen. the president pro tempore:

please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: tonight we'll welcome the president of the united states for the state of

the union address. it's his final address, and it gives us cause for reflection. many of us recall a moment in boston when a state senator became a national star. his rhetorical gift was undeniable. it was a soaring elocution made in confetti that promised a new and more inclusive beginning. it inspired many. it propelled barack obama to the highest office in the land. americans assumed that campaigning would eventually come to a close and the serious work of governing would eventually commence. but it's now many years later, and the obama for president campaign never really ended. speeches still substitute for substance. straw men still stand in for serious debate. slogans still surrogate for

governing. we've been promised even more campaigning tonight, this time for the candidate president obama would like to see succeed him. it leads americans to wonder when is the serious work of governing ever going to begin. governing isn't easy. governing often requires serious engagement with the congress the american people elected, not the one the president wishes they'd elected. but here's a simple fact. you don't make change through slogans. that's something president obama once said. i wish he'd taken his own advice, because here's what we know as we enter the twilight of his presidency. he's presided over a sluggish and uneven economic recovery that's failing too many of our citizens. health premiums and deductibles have continued to shoot ever higher. wages have flat lined for too

many. inequality has grown. manufacturing has shrunk. poverty seems too entrenched. the middle class has continued to collapse to the point where it no longer constitutes a majority of our country. the obama administration says it wants to help the middle class but its policies often tell a different story. we've seen the negative impact obamacare has had on so many middle-class families. we've also seen this administration declare a war on coal families who just want to get ahead. tonight i've invited a kentucky miner from pikeville, howard absher, as my state of the union guest. he's watched as the obama administration's heartless approach has helped contribute to devastation in his community and to the loss of thousands of

jobs in kentucky, one of which was his own job. and here's what his message has been to president obama. howard absher said we're hurting and we need help. but we don't want to be bailed out, we want to work. many kentuckians feel the very same way. many americans feel similarly too. today only 20% of our citizens think things are headed in the right direction in their country. nearly three-quarters want the next president to take a direct, to take a totally different approach from the current one. these are the simple facts, and they present the president with a choice. president obama can try to blame others for it. he can try to convince americans they're wrong to feel the way they do, or he can take responsibility and chart a new course.

americans are losing faith in the future. they're losing hope their children can lead a better life. they watch as challenges continue to mount around the world, like those from isil, iran, russia, al qaeda and ever-aggressive china, north korea, and of course the taliban. while this administration seems to have no plan to deal with any of it. this hurt in our country and the failing approach from the white house should be disheartening to all of us. perhaps the worst part is it didn't have to be like this. it really didn't have to be like this. i believe that when the american people elected a divided government, they aren't telling us to do nothing. they're telling us to work together in the areas where we can agree so we can make progress for our country. this congress has racked up a growing list of bipartisan accomplishments for the american people over the past year.

some thought the measured reforms we passed in areas like education and transportation and medicare and tax relief are all impossible in the current political climate. we proved those pundits wrong. we showed how significant bipartisan accomplishments can be achieved when good policy is the goal. perhaps we've inspired the president to finally try his hand at bipartisan achievement as well. we'll see tonight when he delivers his last state of the union address. if he proposes real plans to do things like defeat isil, grow economic opportunity and strengthen the middle class class, plans actually designed to pass this congress -- not just provide talking points for the next campaign -- we'll know he's ready to join us in meeting the challenges of tomorrow. because republicans aren't afraid of the future, and we don't think president obama should be either. we want him to join us in

recognizing the challenges of today while working for the solutions of tomorrow. it is true that we as a nation have a lot of challenges to confront. the pain and the worry in our country is real. it's palpable. but none of it is insurmountable. that's the hopeful message i expect governor haley to deliver tonight. i expect her to contrast a failing presidency that's stuck in the past with a republican party that's oriented to the future. nikki haley knows the american dream. she's lived the american dream. she believes in the continuing promise of our country and she understands the importance of opportunity and upward mobility for our middle class. when governor haley talks about hope and change, she means it, because she actually worked to deliver it.

there's nothing wrong with inspirational speeches. we all need to be inspired, especially in trying times like these. soaring rhetoric matched with the right policies and hard work to actually achieve them is usually good for our country. just ask ronald reagan or jack kemp. but empty eloquence wrapped in left-wing ideas of yesterday that hurt the middle class, it's time to leave that behind. it's time to look to the future. we'll see tonight if president obama is ready to do so and move beyond the failed policies of the past. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the democratic leader. mr. reid: if this were a card game -- which it's not -- i guess what i would do is trump

what the republican leader has said. mr. president, my friend lives in a world that doesn't exist. let's talk about this person named barack obama. what has happened under his time in office, his seven years, in spite of the unheard of, unrecognizable senate that the republicans have created, cloture had to be filed more than 500 times because they set out to block everything that hee wanted. in spite of that, in spite of that, the state of the union now reflects the last seven years, we have 14 million private-sector jobs have been created. during the obama years, the economy has grown. the private sector has created jobs for 70 straight months, the

longest stretch in the history of our country. unemployment is at 5%. five percent. when barack obama took office, it was in some states as much as 14%. during the years of barack obama, 17 million uninsured million americans have gained access to health care. 17 million, and the number is climbing. renewable energy production has increased significantly. you drive across america today, you see wind farms in the middle part of this country, farmers make more money from producing energy on their farms than they do harvesting corn and soybeans because of what the president suggested and we legislated in this so-called stimulus bill.

solar, wind, geothermal has increased significantly. and it will continue to grow more because they have tax incentives now for as long as seven additional years. and you know what else we've done? not enough. but the wealthiest americans who don't mind paying more than their fair share, the only people in america today who believe that these rich people should pay a little more are the republicans in congress. not republicans around the country. so we made sure the wealthiest pay a little more. we've secured permanent tax relief that will help lift 16 million lower-income working families out of poverty. and on to industry which was on the brink of destruction, general motors, this icon of american industry, went begging for help. chrysler motor was begging for

help. the republicans said no. we democrats said yes. we were right, republicans were wrong. hundreds of thousands of jobs have been created in the auto industry. last month was the largest number of -- i'm sorry. more american cars and trucks were sold than any time in the history of our country. why? because of barack obama's leadership. osama bin laden is gone. he's been killed, and we've destroyed the greatest terrorist organization that threatens our nation. we have more to do? of course we do. historic agreements on climate change and stop iran from getting access to nuclear weapons have been achieved. within the last few days iran shipped out of iran 12 tons of uranium. 12 tons. it's because of barack obama.

we have a lot more to do for america on behalf of the american people, but we can't ignore the progress that's been made. my friend talks about the new senate. there is a new senate because you have a constructive minority we democrats have been willing to work with them. the issues that we have been able to pass here have been issues we should have passed years ago. we couldn't because republicans have filibustered and obstructed everything we tried to do. so i repeat, we have a lot more to do for the american people, but it's a wonderful country and i'm so pleased with the progress we've made during the seven years of barack obama. the business of the day, i see no one on the floor, mr. president. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will be in a period of morning business until 12:30 p.m. with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each and with the first hour equally divided, the majority controlling the

first half and the democrats controlling the final half. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from missouri. mr. blunt: mr. president, i want to talk for a few minutes at the beginning of my remarks about what the response has been in our state, in the state of missouri to flooding. i was in st. louis county with congresswoman wagner on saturday. i was in st. charles county the week before that. i was in cape girardeau following up on the work that senator -- that congressman smith has done there. i was at many other places in our state, places spread pretty far apart. but we had a flooding situation that was almost totally generated in our state, different than the floods that we normally deal with and the communities reacted with very little time in an impressive way.

the corps of engineers also was there to help. the national guard there to do what they needed to do, and now we see fema and s.b.a. stepping in to see who qualifies for what kind of assistance. but there was loss of life. more often than not, mr. president, the loss of life was somebody drove around a sign that says don't pass this sign and then got caught in a situation that they didn't anticipate, thought was less than it turned out to be, and so some families clearly are grieving that loss of life. we had five international soldiers that lost their life near fort leonardwood who may be the whole idea of a low water bridge that you and i would be used to was something they hadn't thought about. we had three interstate highways closed, interstate 55, interstate 70 and interstate 44.

not only exactly the same time but all for somewhere in the 24- 36-hour time frame. and we have to look at that and determine what we can do to be sure people don't needlessly lose access to where their kids are, where their job is, where health care is and then just the economic impact of that interstate system that comes together in so many ways in missouri shutting down was something that clearly once we get beyond the immediacy of dealing with the flood itself, we need to look and see how we can prevent that problem from happening again. i don't know of a time when any two of those highways were ever closed at the same time before, but i know that interstate 70 and interstate 44 were closed at the same time. that has a real impact on people traveling east to west or economic things happening east to west anywhere in the country.

i also was able to talk about some good news and i'm not sure that we will -- how much good news we are going to hear over the next few days, but certainly the good news of stepping up and looking at health care research and the impact it can have in the country, things that are beginning to happen in mental health and things that are -- we're trying to do to respond to prescription drug abuse that becomes opioid abuse in all areas. in health care research, the national institute of health hadn't had an increase in their research funding since 2003. there was an effort made right before that to make a substantial increase and the case is so easily made, the fact that the congress stopped and

the administration stopped has always been very frustrating to me, but we were able to see an increase this year for the first time in 12 years. now, that meant you had to create a priority for too many people in government. anything anybody wants to do is a priority. when there is a discussion, we have to fund our priorities. a lot of our colleagues hear that saying that means we have to fund anything anybody has ever convinced the government for no matter how short a period of time that the government should put on the list of things we're interested in. being interested in something doesn't make it a priority. it just makes it something that if everything else was going the right way maybe this is somewhere you should look. but to fund n.i.h. at a new level, we have totally eliminated 18 programs, zeroed them out, didn't eliminate the authorization for them, just eliminated the money to run those 18 programs that the

congress accepted the argument and the president eventually accepted the argument that -- for the greater good these 18 things don't need to continue to be done. the president asked for 23 new programs that didn't get funded either, but that allowed us to make a commitment to really set a priority. now, why would you want to set a priority -- and by the way, the increase was -- the first increase in 12 years was almost 7%. it was 6.6%. we went from $30 billion that was being spent on health care research last year to $32 billion this year. and hopefully this is the first step toward trying to solve health care problems with all the things that are changing in health care. everything from smartphone technology to individual medicine. now that we know what we know about the human genome and how do we find that out? we found that out through n.i.h.

research. if we hadn't had n.i.h. research, it's unlikely that the human genome would still -- would not be something we understand but something still a mystery to us. it was a mystery to us for all of people's existence on the planet until just a few years ago, and the only reason that happened was the national institutes of health and the congress decided it's going to be helpful if we can figure out how all of us are different from each other, which also means now we're trying to figure out how a different approach to a disease and different approach to cancer, a different approach to alzheimer's or different approach to heart disease would make a difference. and what difference does it make? what is sort of the priority of why you would want to spend taxpayers' money in this way? one is the clear impact that health care research is having every day on individuals and

families that aren't dealing with problems that ten years ago they would have been dealing with. and what do we do moving forward for people at the first priority? let's see if we can find things that meet the challenge of a health care challenge. for their families that become theirupport group and their caregivers, let's see what we can do there, but for taxpayers generally, even if you weren't the individual beneficiary of this, the estimates are that the medicare system will be absolutely overwhelmed between now and 2050 by things like alzheimer's, things like cancer. if you can figure out a cure, if you can delay onset of alzheimer's by five or seven years on average, the unbelievable impact that would have on the cost of that devastating disease, both the real cost to taxpayers and the emotional and psychological costs to everybody involved

pretty overwhelming. but the medicare system won't stand the projections that we now have how much money would be spent if we don't find ways to deal with these new challenges. as people get older, alzheimer's and cancer are more likely to end life than heart and stroke. that doesn't men we still don't need to be focused on the neurological research or on heart research. all of those things are important and a relatively small investment by the terms of what the federal government spends on health care, a relatively small investment to try to do something about that matters, and also i think it's generally understood that health care is going to dramatically change in the next ten years, the next 20 years. where the research is done is likely to be where the jobs and the economic impact of that research occurs.

i don't want to be going to the chinese ten years from now and say will you tell us how your investment on this research paid off because we're better at this than anybody else in the world and we need to continue to be better. there are reasons for us to be better, and i have visited some of the places where those reasons occur. i was at the seitman center on the campus of washington university, one of the premier cancer focus centers in the country. washington university, by the way, is where a third of all the research was done to understand the human genome. so one-third of the activity -- of that activity was done right there on that campus, but meeting with the alzheimer's association, meeting with the american cancer association, meeting with the family of a young guy that when he lost his fight before he was ten years old to cancer, his mom and dad formed the super sam foundation

to encourage other families and to encourage research. they were there with his sister representing the super sam foundation. the thompson center for neurological research at the university of missouri. another place we're looking to see what we can do to determine early and then help solve problems. the new chancellor at the university, hank foley, was with me there as was the director of that center, dr. steven kahn. they are doing good stuff and will continue to. in kansas city, i was at a private company, m.r.i. global with cancer, with environmental research making a big difference. the head of their company, dr. thomas sach was there as we talked through what they were doing and what they would hope to do. my hometown, springfield, also

the home location of the alzheimer's association, the missouri chapter, another chance to talk about the three reasons this matters that i have just mentioned here today. i also would meet with people from the alzheimer's association, the american cancer society, the american diabetes association and then on to southeast missouri state university where again at another autism center trying to figure out how we can deal with this, detect it earlier, find new and effective ways to do it, and that's what they're also talking about doing at truman state university in kurskville. so to see the efforts of researchers, to see and hear stories about how frustrated young researchers have been and how just a 6.6% increase -- but

remember, that's the first increase in 12 years, and during that 12 years, the buying power of the research dollar went down by about 20%. so we restored a little of that 20% in the effort to do at the government level -- and, you know, the federal government has been involved in research at least since the founding of the department of agriculture in 1862. and whether it's health care research or ag research or environmental research or energy research, there is a level of that research that should and will be done by the private sector, but there is another level of research that is most benefited by everybody being able to share fairly in the results of that research. and in mental health, a lot of excitement in missouri and around the country of the potential to be one of the pilot states in excellence in mental health that would combine, as

senator stabenow from michigan and i envisioned when we introduced excellence in mental health a few years ago, that would combine treating with behavioral health, treating mental health just like all other health. another way that money is saved because of that mental health situation -- by the way, the national institutes of health says that one out of four adult americans has a diagnoseable and almost always treatable mental health issue. if that mental health issue is being treated, whatever your other health issues are likely to be treated in a much more effective way. and looking for more choices to deal with that, the kind of thing that from vietnam veterans and to our youngest veterans, a lot more interest and more options and more choices, and mental health issues being dealt with like all other issues. eight states are going to be doing that.

24 states have applied, and senator stabenow and i are going to be talking more about what happens and what we might do to encourage those other 16 states. and the president says he wants to spend more money in mental health. i hope that everybody understands that if you don't have a place to go, it really doesn't matter how you share the information about what your mental health provider last told you or how many mental health providers you have if there is no place to go and access points and treating behavioral health like all other health is what excellence in mental health did. let me close with one final area. i think there's a lot of response to understanding, addressing the opioid epidemic, the drug issue. deaths from prescription drugs, from prescription opioids, pain-relieving drugs, quadrupled

between 1999 and 2013, claiming more than 145,000 lives over the past ten years, but a substantial portion of those lives just over the last couple of years. these overdoses cost the economy an estimated $20 billion in medical costs and lost work productivety. some people died from overdosing. many other people have to be treated in health care and just the personal loss of becoming addicted to prescription drugs. our veterans -- i went to the missouri general assembly and i had the chance to talk to them last week. our veterans are often the victims of this because of the serious injuries that they sustain and the pain-killing drugs they're given to help deal with the pain of those injuries.

but then this leads to an addiction to that drug and others. approximately three of four new heroin users abuse prescription drugs before switching to heroin s. -- we made a new commitment to this, programs that were taghted to combat -- targeted to combat opioid abuse at the centers for disease control and prevention and substance abuse and the mental health services administration, almost three times the investment that the country made before. but this is truly becoming an epidemic and we need to deal with that epidemic sooner rather than later. many of our members and their states have talked effectively about fighting heroin, fighting drug addiction, but also the transition from drugs that you were prescribed to have to drugs that you shouldn't have.

we're looking at new opportunities there. the senate has stepped out the, new republican-led senate to deal with those opportunities in new ways. i hope that we haven't made those successes for the spending year we're in now a onetime only event but a new commitment to try to solve problems early so that the society and the programs that taxpayers fund aren't overwhelmed by those problems later. and i would, mr. president, yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from south dakota. mr. thune: i appreciate the senator from missouri, senator blunt, laying out some of the things that the majority, the republican majority here in the

senate has attempted to accomplish. the advances we've made, things that have been done in this last year which i think lay a foundation hopefully that will lead to future successes in the coming year. mr. president, tonight president obama is going to come to congress to deliver his final state of the union address which raises the question, what is the state of our union? and the truth is that while the strength and spirit of the american people remain a beacon of hope for our future, our country is facing a number of serious challenges. global unrest has grown over the course of the president's administration, most notably with the rise of isis. on president obama's watch we've experienced the worst economic recovery since the eisenhower administration with stagnant wages and millions dropping out of the labor force as the lasting trademark of the obama economy. american families are seeing their dreams for the future erode as they struggle under ever-increasing government

burdens and the lack of economic opportunity. any serious discussion of the state of our union needs to address these challenges and offer solutions. and that is the kind of speech, mr. president, that i wish we were going to hear tonight. but unfortunately all indicators suggest that that's not the kind of speech the president plans to give. instead the president apparently intends to take a victory lap, despite the fact that the american people clearly don't think that there's much to celebrate. a recent "new york times"/cbs news poll found that 68 l% of the american people think our country is on the wrong track, and most americans believe that the next generation will be worse off, not better off. in a preview of the president's speech, the white house notes -- and i quote -- "we have made extraordinary progress on the path to a stronger country and a brighter future." end quote. but, mr. president, that is not

how the american people are feeling. and it doesn't reflect the reality of the president's administration. the president plans to talk about his supposed economic successes tonight. but while our economy has recovered to a certain extent since the recession, it has never fully rebounded. wage growth continues to lag. december marked the 77th straight month in which year over year hourly wage growth was at or below 2.5%. underemployment also continues to be a problem with millions of americans continuing to work part-time jobs because they can't find full-time work. almost five years after the recession ended,s the percentage of americans working full time has still not returned to prerecession levels. while the most commonly mentioned unemployment rate is 5%, the measures which measure

the unemployed workers and underemployed workers is 9.9%. those considered long term unemployed make up 26%. and labor force participation remains near record lows. in short, stagnation has become the new normal for the economy under the obama administration, and economic opportunities for families have been few and far between. in addition to the lack of economic opportunity, families have had to shoulder new burdens, thanks to the obama administration. chief among those burdens, of course, is obamacare, the president's disastrous health care law which has failed to reduce the cost of health care, ripped away millions of americans' preferred health care plans, forced families on to insurance plans that they don't want and can't afford, reduced patients' access to doctors and hospitals, increased taxes and wasted literally billions of taxpayer dollars.

and then there are the burdensome regulations the obama administration has imposed which have made it more challenging for businesses large and small to grow and create jobs. the obama environmental protection agency in particular has done more than it's fair share to make things difficult for americans. during the course of the obama administration, this agency has implemented one damaging rule after another. from a massive national backdoor energy tax that would hurt poor and working families the most to a new rule that would subject ponds and puddles in americans' backyards to a complex array of expensive and burdensome regulatory requirements. again and again i've heard from south dakota farm and ranch families, homeowners and small businesses about the difficulties they're facing thanks to the obama e.p.a.'s massive new regulations. mr. president, if the president's record on the economy and middle class

opportunities is bad his record on foreign policy is worse. a white house document on the state of the union quotes the president redefines the 21st century. during the president's last year in office, the white house says -- and i quote again -- "we can show the world what is possible when america truly leads." republicans couldn't agree more that americans should truly lead. the problem is that the president's first seven years in office have generally been distinguished by a lack of leadership. back in june former president and a fellow democrat, i might add, jimmy carter described president obama of's successes on the world stage, minimal. he goes on to quote on the world stage to be as objective as i can, i can't think of many nations in the world where we have a better relationship now

than we did when he took over. that again from former democrat president jimmy carter. mr. president, neither can i. the white house claims the president has ended two wars, yet neglects to mention that since the u.s. withdrew from iraq large sections of the country descended into chaos thanks to isis. the president's failure to enforce his red line in syria when president bashar al-assad used chemicals on his people and the president's lack of strategy to defeat isis contributed to a massive refugee crisis with no easy solution. meanwhile assad remains in power and isis continues to thrive. with the terrorist attacks in paris in november, isis expanded its theater of operations beyond the middle east. as we witnessed in the case of the san bernardino shooting, as long as isis continues to exist, its demented ideology will inspire, disturb individuals to commit acts of terror.

the united states is in desperate need of a comprehensive strategy to confront the threat posed by isis, yet the president has so far made no move to develop one. on another foreign policy front, the president has repeatedly touted his nuclear deal with iran as one of the major foreign policy achievements of his presidency. yet, the agreement he signed actually improves -- improves iran's long-term prospects for developing a bomb. and in a clear violation of u.n. restrictions, iran recently tested a ballistic missile, demonstrating once again that it has in no way curbed its aggressive behavior. elsewhere russian aggression has increased on the president's watch. in north korea recently conducted yet another nuclear test. mr. president, the obama administration has left the american people with a host of problems at home and abroad, but once again it sounds like president obama's state of the union address will fail to offer

any substantial solutions. more than that, it sounds as if the president will largely ignore the problems. and that's unfortunate. the president is missing an opportunity to offer substantive solutions before turning the problems of his administration over to his successors. mr. president, i don't want to give credence to those obama administration accusations the republicans are all doom and gloom. as i said above, i believe that the strength and the spirit of the american people mean that the future of america is always bright. but realizing that future requires understanding and developing solutions to the problems facing our nation, and that's something the president has been unwilling to do. mr. president, republicans have worked hard over the past year to make our economy stronger, our government more efficient and accountable and our nation and our world safer and more secure. but there is a lot more work

that needs to be done, and we need a partner in the white house who's willing to meet us halfway. we hope the president will use his last year of his presidency to work with us as we seek to address the challenges that are facing the american people. mr. president, i yield the floor. mr. president, i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. durbin: mr. president? the presiding officer: the assistant democratic leader. mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: mr. president, a few minutes ago, my colleague from missouri, senator blunt, took the floor and spoke to two issues that we have in common. i'll speak to one of them in a moment, the flooding in the midwest, but i'd like to also address another one which he raised on the floor. senator blunt has been in an extraordinary position, given an opportunity to handle the appropriation bill for health and human services. within the health and human services appropriation bill is funding for most of the biomedical research by the federal government. i have spoken to senator blunt over the past year and even before about my strong feelings on the subject. i feel as most americans do that our investment in biomedical

research is a wise investment. scaring people from the disease and death that could follow, from an illness, but also making an investment in america's innovative economy, creating opportunities for jobs and for expanded research and new products and pharmaceuticals. senator blunt took that challenge to heart and when he was faced with the appropriation bill for this department made a special effort when it came to medical research. i am so happy that he did. it was only a few years ago that we had automatic across-the-board cuts called sequestration. it was devastating. as a net result of that, many of the youngest and most promising researchers gave up on the field because they didn't think that there was a commitment from congress, from the president, from the government to continue and expand biomedical research. we saw the median age of

researchers climbing because younger researchers look for the jobs. that is a horrible waste of talent and squandering of an opportunity, i'm sure, to find ways to make life more bearable and to cure diseases across america. several years ago when i visited the n.i.h., the head of it, the head of the national institutes of health, dr. francis collins told me that if we could have 5% real growth in biomedical research at the n.i.h. for ten years, he could light up the scoreboard. we were on the cusp of so many discoveries that this was an opportunity if the investment were made to really have some medical breakthroughs. i took that to heart, introduced a bill called the american cures act, and i'm sure senator blunt and many of my colleagues are tired of hearing about it, but the notion is a ten-year commitment by congress, 5% real growth each year when it comes to the n.i.h. as it turns out, this year we are knocking on the door of

doing just that with the investment that was made by the appropriation bill. this investment is almost $42 billion in biomedical research. $32 billion at the national institutes of health. that's a 6.6% increase over last year. $7 billion from the centers for disease control and prevention, 4.5% increase over the fiscal year 2015. there are two other areas of research opportunities in biomedical research. the veterans medical and prosthetics research program and the department of defense health program. that's an appropriation bill that i have something to do with, working with the chairman, senator cochran. both those programs received a 7% increase over the previous fiscal year. these increases at n.i.h., c.d.c., veterans and defense are a real turnaround. they bring to an end decades-long downward trends when it comes to biomedical

research. but senator blunt has said and i have, too, this shouldn't be a one-hit wonder. we've got to repeat that this year when it comes to the appropriations for the next fiscal year beginning october 1. we've got to make sure that we make our promise and keep it when it comes to biomedical research. if we do it, this level of fungi know is going to result in dramatic positive developments. there are so many areas that we need help with. i think of the few that are obvious -- alzheimer's. an american is diagnosed with the alzheimer's disease once every 67 seconds. when my staff told me that, i didn't believe it. i said go back, recalculate, tell me the real number. it turns out they were right. once every 67 seconds, a person is diagnosed with alzheimer's. last year, we spent over $200 billion in medicare and medicaid for alzheimer's care.

that is just a fraction of the total cost. think about what individual families spent, what private insurance sources spent, the charitable care that was given to alzheimer's patients. but $200 billion. so when we talk about increasing the n.i.h. budget by $2 billion for one year, it's a tiny fraction. it's 1% of the amount that we're spending on alzheimer's. if we could find, if we could find a way to detect alzheimer's earlier, delay its onset, reduce the period of time of suffering or perhaps even a cure, god willing, it would have a dramatic positive impact on so many lives and families and an our bottom line federal budget. now, take that argument about alzheimer's and apply it as well to cancer. how many of our families and friends are suffering and fighting cancer right now? my wife and i were struck over

the holidays by how many of our close friends are battling cancer at this moment. we know that they're looking for hope, they're looking for drugs, they're looking for something that will break through and give them a chance at life. that's why i believe this biomedical research is so critical. let me add one postscript. stopping with these agencies is not enough. i recently visited the department of energy. the new secretary there, ernest monis and i were talking about biomedical research. he said when it comes to the technology for imaging that is making such a difference in the world, it isn't just in biomedicine. it's in engineering and science as well. and the -- in the department of science within the department of energy. so let's not be shortsighted. let's have an open mind about innovation and creation. last week, i was in peoria, illinois. proud to represent it. went to visit o.s.f. hospital there. went to what is known as the jump center. you don't forget that name very

easily. jump center. what they have done in the jump center is to combine the illinois -- university of illinois medical school and the university of illinois engineering departments in a common effort to bring new engineering and new technology to medicine and medical breakthroughs. what they're doing there is amazing. first, training doctors and medical professionals to do their job effectively without mistakes. that, of course, is the ultimate outcome we're looking for. they do that. and over the shoulders are engineers, technicians who are looking at these doctors doing their work, finding new applications of computers and engineering technology that can make their work easier and more effective. they showed me the model of the human heart. it was the heart of an infant with serious heart problems. this model that they gave me was the actual human heart reproduced of an infant who was

facing surgery. they took the m.r.i.'s and the cat scans, put them into a 3-d copier and produced this little heart that you could hold in your hand. they were able to give that heart to the surgeon to look at before the surgery, and they opened it so that that surgeon could look inside that heart model, a model which tracked the reality of that infant and know before the surgery what he would find. it meant less time on a heart lung machine and more likely recovery. it was the use of technology and engineering of moving forward and give that baby a fighting chance. i thank senator blunt. i want to especially thank my colleague senator patty murray, a terrific leader in this field both on the appropriations and authorizing committees. and also senator lamar alexander. i think we've all come to conclude that regardless of how much time we have in the senate we should leave a mark that makes a difference.

when it comes to biomedical research this year's budget which senator blunt referred to will make a difference. now let's make sure it's not a one-hit wonder. let's make sure we do it again in next year's budget as well. mr. president, i'd also like to speak for a moment about the flooding situation in the midwest in illinois, of course in my colleague's neighboring states of missouri. last month right in the midst of the holidays rainstorms swept through my state, covering it with seven inches of rainfall in a very short period of time. the heavy rainfall caused water levels in the rivers to reach record highs. we expect this in the spring, not in december. communities had to evacuate their homes for their own safety. sadly, these storms were so severe, they flooded roadways, claiming the lives of ten people whose vehicles were swept away by the floods. many of them didn't realize how high the water actually was in these flash floods or how fast it was moving, and they got caught in dangerous waters.

two areas that were some of the worst impacted were alexander and randolph counties on the mississippi river. monroe county i might add as well. last wednesday i went to visit olive branch and evansville. in olive branch i meant with the the alexander county board and spoke with brandon phelps, working diligently to help the community recover. i have some photographs which i think will tell the story. this is a photo from olive branch. you can see water completely surrounding the home and covering the nearby areas. the lef vee that protects the communities of olive branch was breached and overtopped by a record crest at the mississippi river. these overtops caused miles of flood damage impacting ag lands, homes and businesses. local law enforcement and emergency responders tried to

evacuate everybody as quickly as possible. thankfully a lot of people heeded the call and went to find shelter. many residents i spoke with in these towns were still concerned about being able to recover from the flood and damage. one man from olive branch, bruce ford, said his auto repair shop was engulfed by water. he worries he could be out of business for months. bruce is working night and day to clean out the debris and move his equipment back in. he just wasn't sure when his shob would be ready to open. even worse if the levee breaches this spring he worries he won't have the means to fix it all over again in a few months. in evansville -- and this photo is a photo taken in that area -- this was taken on new year's eve, crossing the mississippi river in st. louis. it shows the devastation of the illinois side. as you can see, these buildings are nearly completely submerged in water, for many areas around st. louis the damage you see

here is typical. when i went to visit evansville about an hour south from here, i met with residents who worked around the clock to sandbag homes and businesses to keep the river out of their town. i met with the mayor, emergency management codirector nancy shelly who did a great job in making a presentation to me and a state representative. i was given a tour. as is often the case with disasters like these i was impressed with local residents, first responders, local officials and volunteers who stepped up and started filling sandbags. by building a wall of sandbags around downtown, evansville residents were able to hold off the worst flooding. last week i spoke with the illinois energy emergency agency director and the fema regional director about the rain and flooding. the governor declared 23 counties state disaster areas, state and local emergency responders were dispatched to

affected areas. the state provided almost a million sandbags, 997,000. 4,000 tons of sand and 117d.o.t. trucks for flood mitigation. as the water recedes, agencies are working together to assess the damage. there is one issue that senator kirk and i looked at over and over again. we are blessed in our state to have about 13 million people, and the largest percentage of them are around the chicago land area. but we have a vast state beyond chicago. it's where i hail from, down state illinois. hundreds of miles of small towns and rural areas. when they go through flooding like this and they're making a calculation of how much damage there has to be in order for the federal government to step in and help pay for the damage, they take into account the entire state and its population. the net result is had this

flooding occurred in a sparsely populated state, they would have received federal assistance. but we have to hit a threshold number of about $18 million in public infrastructure damage before we qualify for federal assistance. senator kirk and i have both witnessed the damage of two tornadoes in illinois which at first glance we thought would clearly qualify for federal assistance. one in washington, illinois. another one in harrisburg. and in neither case did we make the threshold $18 million in damage. so i think this formula needs to be recalculated. the fact that we happen to have a great city like chicago and the region around it as part of our state should not really inure to the detriment of people down state in smaller rural areas who suffer this kind of damage from flooding and tornadoes. i'm proud of the volunteers who came forward. i want to thank our national guard. they are always there when we need them.

local law enforcement never gets enough credit. our firefighters and police, first responders, hospitals, and volunteers. when i went into olive branch, it's a tiny town. most of the activity in the community center that i went into was happening in the kitchen. and they said go to that lady wearing the pink hat. she's in charge. she had been there every single day since this go flooding started, asking all the neighbors to bring in covered dishes and some food for the volunteers and people who were displaced from their homes. god bless them for caring so much for their neighbors and responding in this time of need. i want to recognize the hard work of the federal and state employees whroive engaged in this. i have no doubt that the people of my state who have been impacted by these floods are going to roll up their sleeves and clean up the mess and get ready to make life normal again. my thoughts are with the many people who lost their loved ones. there are about 25 who died in these floods in the midwest. and we will again stand with them and others as we prepare

for the future to rebuild as the people of illinois and the united states always do, stronger for the experience. thank you, mr. president, and i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: a senator: mr. president?

the presiding officer: the senator from florida. mr. nelson: i ask that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. nelson: mr. president, we're going to mars. mars or bust. we're going to send a human crew to mars in the decade of the 2030's, and we are right at the cusp of the breakthrough to show 0 how this is possible. i just returned from the kennedy space center with its director bob cabana. all of the ground infrastructure, the two launch pads are all being reconfigured. old, abandoned launch pads on cape canaveral air force station are being redone with new commercial launch pads and less than two years from right now --

september of 2017 -- we will be launching americans again on american rockets to go to and from the international space station. and three years from now we will be launching the full uptest of the largest and most powerful rocket ever invented by mankind, the space launch system with its spacecraft orion that will be the forerunner that will ultimately take us to mars. mr. president, this appropriations bill that we passed just before christmas treats nasa with a decent increase of over $1 billion and puts the resources into each

part of nasa, its scientific programs, its technology programs, its exploration programs, its aviation and especially aviation research programs, to keep us moving forward in our development of technology. i'm especially enthusiastic about bringing this message because 30 years ago today i had the privilege of launching on the 24th flight of the space shuttle into the heavens for a six-day mission. let me tell you about some of the members of this crew, just to give you an idea of how accomplished these people are. in nasa terminology, in the space shuttle, the commander sits on the left seat. on the right seat, his pilot.

he in effect is copilot. he handles all of the systems. in almost all cases those pilot astronauts are military test pilots, and they are so good, when they land that space shuttle without an engine, they've got one chance, they're so good they can put it on a dime. and of course our crew 30 years ago launching from pad 39-a, the same pad that i saw on saturday that has now been transformed to a commercial launch pad under lease to space x. that crew was the best of the best. the two pilot astronauts, naval

aviators in the left seat, commander hoot gibson, robert gibson, the best stick and rudder guy in the whole astronaut office, he could put it down, and you would hardly know that the wheels had touched. and in the right seat, then-marine colonel, now marine general retired, charlie bolden, who then went on to command three missions thereafter, and today is for the last seven years the administrator of nasa. he's the one that has transformed nasa and has us going in the right direction now to go to mars. at the same time working out the arrangements for the commercial marketplace to flourish as we're seeing by boeing and spacex which will be the two rockets

that will launch in less than two years, taking americans to and from the international space station. let me tell you about the rest of the crew that launched 30 years ago today. the flight engineer, steve hally, an astro physicist, he's the one, by the way, that deployed for the first time the hubbell space telescope. an astrophysicist, dr. george nelson. by the way, all of these guys are doctors, they're ph.d.'s and dr. franklin chaindias, an astronaut who came to america from costa rica, not speaking a word of english after high school, taught himself english, he has a ph.d. in plasma physics from m.i.t.

and while he was still flying seven times as an astronaut, he was building a plasma rocket, and today that plasma rocket is one of the propulsion systems that nasa is considering when we go to mars. if you saw the matt damon movie "the martian," the author of the book had consulted with franklin about the technology, and that is referenced in the book as the propulsion that sent that spacecraft to and from mars. engineer bob sinker, an r.c.a. engineer, we launched an r.c.a. communications satellite in the course of the mission. and the seventh, yours truly. i performed 12 medical

experiments, the primary of which was a protein crystal growth experiment in zero g, sponsored by the medical school at the university of alabama at birmingham, their comprehensive cancer center. the theory being if you could grow protein crystals out pft influence of gravity, then you -- out of the influence of gravity, then you could grow them larger and more pure so when you brought them back to earth, examining them either through x-ray defraction or an electron microscope, you could unlock the secrets of their architecture and get the molecular structure. i also performed the first american stress test in space in an unmechanizeed treadmill, and you wonder how in zero g can you

propel yourself running on a treadmill. i had to put on a harness with bungee cords that would force me down onto the treadmill and pulled and pushed with my feet. we were trying to see what happens to our astronauts that go outside on space walks. their hearts would start skipping beats. so the idea was to get the heart rate up and use me as a comparison. indeed, what happened was i ran for 20 minutes pulling and pushing, and lo and behold discovered that the tape recorder was not working and had to repeat it. it made so much racket in that small, confined space that our true was mighty happy when i got

through. and thus, the space doctors had additional data to try to study, and they have published that. we thought it was the first stress test in space, but later on we found out that the soviets had done stress tests. we don't know how long. so, mr. president, on this occasion of 30 years later on something that was transformative to me, i want to take this occasion to say that i am so optimistic of where we are going because we are going to mars. if you ask the average american on the street, they think the space program is shut down because they visualize it as the shutting of the space shuttle. but they will be reminded and

will be re-energized and enthused and excited as only human space flight can do when those rockets start lifting off at the cape in september of 2017, less than two years, and we are beginning on our way to mars. mr. president, thank you for this opportunity on this 30th anniversary. mr. president, i yield the floor. mr. toomey: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. toomey: thank you, mr. president. i rise this morning to speak about the legislation that will be -- that we will be considering this afternoon, specifically my understanding is we'll be voting on a procedural measure which will allow us to take up legislation that is

commonly known as auditing the fed. i wanted to address this. let me start with the context that i think is important when we consider about whether or not we ought to change the relationship even modestly that exists between congress and the fed. it starts for me with a simple observation that the financial crisis of 2008 is over. it actually ended a long time ago. it's been a number of years now that our financial system and our economy has not been in the i am inept crisis meltdown mode that it was in in the fall of 2008. in fact, for several years now, we have had meager but we've had some economic growth.

our majority system has been massively recapitalized. there is no current or imminent wave of bankruptcies in any segment of the economy, really. and yet, despite the fact that we are clearly not in a financial or economic crisis, we have crisis-era monetary policy. policy from the fed that one would expect to occur presumably only in a crisis. and the recent very, very modest change in fed policy, the movement in the fed funds rate from a target of zero to 25 basis points to 25-50 basis points is arguably the most modest tightening in fed history. you couldn't even beginning to suggest that this is a tightening of monetary policy. this is just a very slightly less easy money policy.

that's what we have. so in my view, there are huge dangers and problems that are associated with the fed pursuing this completely unprecedented and i would say radical experiment in monetary policy, and i want to talk about a few of those this morning, mr. president. and one of the first and clearest problems is because the fed has kept interest rates so low for so long, the fed has caused a big misallocation of resources. it's undoubtedly caused asset doubles that are existing today that would not have occurred had it not been for the abnormal monetary policy. take, for instance, sovereign debt markets. in many, many countries, especially in europe, we have debt issued by governments and the return on those instruments is negative. in other words, it doesn't cost

the government money to borrow money, which is normal. you have to pay interest to borrow money normally. in fact, the government gets paid to borrow money, which is ridiculous and extremely abnormal, and it's happened in the united states. not at the moment but in recent history as a result of this fed policy, we've had the bizarre world of negative interest rates. that's just one category that clearly has been in a bubble. most observers believe that the high yield market, the junk bond market was in a bubble. that's gone through a very turbulent time and a big selloff. obviously, some of the years coming out of that bubble, but who knows? there has been considerable speculation that there are real estate bubbles, other financial assets. this is inevitable when the fed distorts monetary policy, and it's a disturbing echo of the distortion that occurred back in the early part of the very beginning of this century when

the fed's extremely low monetary policy with very low interest rates contributed to a housing bubble, which of course ended up collapsing in the financial crisis. but that's just one category of problems the fed causes with these ultralow interest rates. a second, of course, is the corollary that people who have saved money and want to invest in a low-risk investment are completely denied an opportunity to get a return. these savers are forced to -- as the expression is, to reach for a yield, which is to say take your money out of the bank and buy something else because you're earning nothing with the bank. well, you know what? for a lot of people, a savings account at the bank is appropriate for their circumstances, for their risk tolerance. but they're driven away from that because bank deposits yield pretty much zero. consider the case of maybe an elderly couple that lives in allentown, pennsylvania. they worked their whole lives, saved whenever they could,

sacrificed, chose not to squander their money. they lived modestly rather than lavishly. they did it in the expectation that when they retired, this nest egg that they had worked for decades to build, this savings account at the bank was going to yield a little bit of income to help them make ends meet in their retirement, to help supplement whatever social security and whatever pension they might have. well, what we've done to those folks -- and they're all over america -- who have spent a lifetime living prudently, carefully, sacrificing savings, we've said well, you made a huge mistake because the government is making sure that you earn nothing on those savings. joseph stiglitz is a very respected economist. his research has demonstrated that this zero interest rate and quantitative easing, as it's described, this fed monetary policy, has contributed significantly to expanding income and wealth inequality.

it's really not a surprise. this fed policy has been pretty good for stocks. stocks prices have gone up generally. it's been terrible for people with a bank account. wealthy people have a lot of money in stocks. people of much more modest means tend to have much more of their money sitting in a savings account, which as i have just described earned zero. so it's exacerbateed the income inequality problem. in addition, what the fed has been doing has encouraged fiscal irresponsibility here in washington. what the heck. borrowing is free, which it basically has been for the federal government. why not run big deficits and borrow lots of money? that's an attitude that some people have, and it frankly diminishes the pressure on congress to pursue sensible and responsible monetary policy.

when the fed is willing to just buy up all the debt and buy it at an extremely low interest rate, it encourages irresponsible behavior. and now, of course, because the federal government has accumulated this mountain of debt, $18 trillion now, if and when interest rates return to something like normal, which one day they will, whether the fed likes it or not, then that's a devastating problem for our budget outlook. so all of this is particularly disturbing to me when you consider that this massive creation of money, that's flooding the world with dollars that the fed has engaged in, does not create wealth. there is a difference between money and wealth. so people, some people might feel wealthier when they see the stock prices rise if they have stocks, but that can be a very

artificial phenomenon. it's an inflation in asset prices. it's not an improvement in productivity. it's not an expansion in our economic output. it's not actual wealth. it's numbers on a piece of paper. and of course what the fed is able to inflate in this artificial means by creating lots of money, well, that can eventually deflate, and whatever good they think they were accomplishing on the way up, why should we think that we couldn't see the reverse on the way back down? here's what i think is the fundamental problem, mr. president. the fact is we have factors that are holding back our economy that are very real and very important, and the fed's monetary policy can't correct that. so we have a tax code that's completely uncompetitive. it discourages work, it discourages savings, it discourages investment. it makes us less competitive than countries around the world that have more sensible tax

codes than we have. we need to fix the tax code. monetary policy can't make up for a badly flawed tax code. we have unsustainable entitlement programs. they are the ultimate drivers of large and growing deficits, and we will not be on a sustainable fiscal path until we fix these programs, and monetary policy can't make up for the cloud that they cast over our economy. we have a declining percentage of americans who are participating in the work force. this is a huge problem for us. and again, monetary policy does nothing about that. and finally, we have been overregulating this economy on a completely unprecedented scale. the massive wave of overregulations that this administration and in some cases congress have inflicted have n 0 you are -- have on our economy clearly contributes in a great deal to the subpar economic growth that we have been living

through. again, monetary policy doesn't reverse that, doesn't change that. it seems to me that despite all their good intentions, their intentions themselves were flawed. in that the fed seems to be trying to competent for the flawed policy in these other areas. and, mr. president, given the magnitude and the persistence and the dangers of pursuing this kind of monetary policy, i think it's time that congress reassert its authority over monetary affairs. so the constitution clearly gives congress the responsibility to mint coins and to print money. in 1914, congress delegated the management of that exercise, the management of our currency, to the fed. and for a long time, there was a sense that we ought to just leave them to their own devices and not pay very much attention. i think those days are past.

i think the fed has -- the fed's behavior obligates us to take a different approach. one good beginning step would be the legislation that we're considering today, the legislation that would audit the fed. all it really does is it would give congress the opportunity -- and the american people -- the opportunity to examine and understand the mechanics, the thinking behind changes in monetary policy in something close to realtime. i think we absolutely need that and i will say, i was a skeptic about this for a lot of -- for a long time, i thought, oh, i'm not so sure it's such a good idea to have congress looking closely over the shoulders of the folks who are making monetary policy. but i think that the dangerous behavior that the fed has engaged in for years now means that they have squandered the right to be independent. we need to have more supervision. i think a next step that would

be very important would be for congress to require the fed to adopa rule that would govern monetary policy. i'd prefer that we let the fed decide what that rule should be and if circumstances require it, in the opinion of the fed, they ought to be able to deviate from that rule but they should come and explain to the american people and to congress when and why they're deviating rather than have year after year of this bizarre, unnatural policy that is very hard to explain and understand. so, mr. president, i'm going to support the legislation we're considering this afternoon, the audit the fed bill. it is one of many important steps that we can take to restore the accountability that the fed ought to have. it's important that we get on a different path with our monetary policy. i understand that's not going to occur overnight and that's not going to occur entirely as a result of this legislation, but

this policy has been going on too long and it's time for congress to reassert its authority. and i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from nevada. mr. heller: thank you, mr. president. i come to the floor today to offer my strong support for the legislation we're considering today that would finally audit the fed. since i came to congress, i have supported auditing the fed and when i was first elected to the house of representatives, i would attend briefings hosted by congressman ron paul. senator paul's father, and i learned why more accountability and transparency was needed at the fed. i remember talking to congressman paul on the house floor about various issues at the fed and that's when i started to support this bill to

audit it, just as i'm supporting his son's bill today. i want to thank senator paul for continuing to take up the cause and for building the momentum to audit the fed that has led us to where we are today. mr. president, since its founding, the federal reserve has often operated in secrecy. even though it is the biggest influence on our country's economy and the fed's actions affect every american family and their hard-earned income. i'm fortunate to be chairman of the economic policy subcommittee of the senate banking committee, where i have direct oversight over the federal reserve's monetary policies and i can tell you that the federal reserve's actions warrant passage of this legislation. for several years, we've seen unprecedented monetary and regulatory policies coming from the fed. one of the riskiest policies i've ever seen is the fed's stimulus program of quantitative easing. the federal reserve essentially turned on their computers, fired

up their electronic printing presses, created new money out of thin air and started to buy assets. now, you may be asking yourself, how big is this stimulus progr program? and it's an unbelievable number. as of today, it is nearly $4.5 trillion. let me say that again. $4.5 trillion and that's with a "t." that's more than four times the cost of president obama's own failed stimulus program. and who is benefiting from this quantitative easing? and i can tell now two words -- it's wall street. that's right, wall street hit the jackpot because the fed's easy money policies drove everybody into the equities market to get any return they possibly could on their investments. wall street won and main street lost. savers lost and workers lost.

the scary part is the fed won't rule out buying more assets in the future. and if you ask the fed today, when or how are they going to begin to reduce this $4.5 trillion balance sheet, there's nothing but silence. is that being transpattern? is that -- is that being transparent? is that accountability? no, absolutely not. and this is just one of the reasons why we must pass this bill to audit the fed. i find it iran take the federal reserve is so opposed to being audited because they themselves go around auditing lending institutions all the time. i'm frequently hearing from community lenders out in nevada who have either the federal reserve, the fdic, the national credit union administration or the consumer financial protection bureau knocking on their door all the time. these community lenders did not cause the financial crisis yet they are the ones that are feeling the brunt of all these audits. why should there be a double standard, that the government

agencies can examine every american's bank account but the american public can't approximate those same agencies back? again, this is why we must pass this legislation to audit the fed. i want to remind my colleagues that even though most of the news about the fed revolves around interest rates and the fed's monetary policy, the fed ifed -- also responsible for every aspect of our financial system. i support reasonable regulations but only after thoughtful and careful evaluations. i think it should be mandated that the fed's conduct a cost-benefit analysis of all of their proposed regulations and always allow public comment on these proposed regulations. i'm also very concerned that the fed is getting involved in financial sectors that they have not been in the past. we have a long tradition here in the united states of having a time-tested and effective state-based insurance regulatory system. unfortunately, dodd-frank has

changed all that and now the federal reserve has new authority over the insurance sector. right now as we speak the fed is attempting to regulate capital standard requirements for insurance dmp companies in the united states. this will be the first time the federal government opposes -- imposes domestic federal capital standards on the state-regulated insurance industry. i've worked very hard to make sure bank standards are not inappropriately applied to the insurance industry by the feds. but not only does the fed want to add their own domestic rules on top of state-based insurance regulations, they even want another layer of one-size-fits-all of interned insurance standards on top of that. mr. president, i almost have to laugh because it's only in washington, d.c., where a federal agency puts the trailer in front of the horse. unfortunately, that's exactly what the fed is doing by working

on international capital standards before they complete their own domestic standards. i have serious concerns about these international efforts and together with senator tester of montana, we introduced the bipartisan international insurance capital standards accountability act which would compel the federal reserve and treasury department to complete a study on the impacts on consumers and markets in the u.s. before supporting any international proposal or international insurance capital standard. mr. president, these are just a few of the examples of some of the fed's questionable actions. and as i said earlier, this legislation to audit the fed is critical to bring transparency and accountability to the fed. but even more fundamental changes need to be made to the fed. a few months ago chairman shelby put together an impressive bill that the senate banking and housing committee passed with my support, which would make important reforms to the fed. one provision would establish a

commission to study the potential restructuring of the districts of the federal reserve system. chairman shelby's bill would also require the fed's open market committee to make more frequent and detailed reporting requirements to congress and increase transparency by reducing the time lag for federal open market committee transcripts from five years to two. these are very reasonable changes that i think democrats and republicans alike can support and i hope that chairman shelby's bill will be brought to the senate floor soon. mr. president, the federal reserve recently celebrated its 100th anniversary and in many aspects, the feds have not changed much since woodrow wilson's time. as most of us know, a few months ago we cut a very specific def defend that banks receive for buying stock of the federal reserve system in order to pay for the highway bill. while it mostly centers on how much to cut the dividend, i was trying to figure out why the federal reserve requires banks

to buy these so-called stocks to begin with. after all, it doesn't look like the fed is in desperate need of funds because over the past half dozen years, the feds have sent nearly a half a trillion dollars in profits to the u.s. treasury. a hundred years ago, these stock purchases and dividends were meant to incentivize banks to join the federal reserve system. since that time, laws have been passed that essentially don't give a bank the choice as whether or not -- as to whether or not they want to be supervised by the federal reserve system because by law, the fed has gained authority over all banks that are eligible for fdic insurance. just because something was the standard practice over a hundred years ago doesn't mean it's still needed today and i think it's time for congress to review and examine these federal reserve membership requirements even further. to my colleagues, it's essential that congress exercise its constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight and scrutinize the federal reserve in an open

and transparent way, which is why i proudly vote today to move forward with auditing the fed and encourage my colleagues to join me. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. brown: thank you, mr. president. i rise today to speak to the legislation -- in opposition to s. 2232, the federal reserve transparency act. i'm concerned that out of all the issues before the senate, of all the things we need to work on in terms of job growth, in terms of isis, in terms of wage inhe equality -- inequality, in

terms of transportation and so many other issues that this is the first bill that the senate considers in the beginning of the year. i -- you know, talking in a moment about the direction we should go into but i want to talk about this issue. we're not talking, as i said, about national security or job ceax other college affordable, or immigration. in my time in ohio over the past several weeks, people talk to me about all kinds of different issues that congress should be addressing, but it frankly comes as no surprise to anybody watching or to any of my colleagues that not one person came up to me and said, you know, congress needs a greater say in monetary policy. there is no demand for that except from those who want to score political points. there's no reason for this. there's no legitimate public function that -- that we should even do this legislation, the federal reserve transparency act, and don't be -- don't be fooled by the name of the bill because it really isn't about transparency.

it's about the federal reserve but not about transparency. but let me -- let me move on. federal reserve chairman janet yellen recently wrote to senate leaders and copied all of us in the senate and spoke to the central problem with this legislation. here's what she said. "this bill risks indoing the study progress that has been made on the economic recovery over recent years, an environment with low and stable inflation expectations. congress -- progress that was made in part because the federal reserve is able to make independent decisions in the longer term economic interests of the american people. audit the fed legislation" -- the name that people use for this bill -- "would undermine the independence of the federal reserve and likely yiel likely n increase in inflation fears and market interest rates, would lead to a diminished status of the dollar in global financial markets, would mean increased debt service costs for the the federal government and reduce economic and financial

responsibility." janet yellen, the chairman of the federal reserve, is exactly right. this legislation's about 535 members of congress getting involved in federal monetary policy. i can't imagine that the american people want a federal reserve where congress is so involved that it's disruptive, that it's become so political and that's really what this is all about. it's about a hand full of members of the house and senate who want to govern monetary policy in a way that won't work in the public interest. it's about their political talking points. it's about all of that. let's go back, when president obama took office -- and you'll hear about this i assume in tonight's speech down the hall in the house of representatives -- our country was losing about 800,000 jobs a month when he took office. in february 2010, when we did the recovery act and the auto rescue, by february 2010, we

have seen job growth for about 69, 70, 71 straight months since the auto rescue. i know what the auto rescue meant in my state. we now see an auto industry doing very, very well and see a lot more people getting back to work. officials say they want to make the fed's operations and activities more transparent but we know that is not what this is about. in a statement in july, the senate banking chair, my colleague in the banking committee, richard shelby, hit the nail on the head. here's what he said. a lot of people called for an audit of the fed for years. but we already audit the fed. i don't believe they're just talking about an audit like you audit the books of somebody. this is senator shelby talking. they're talking about monetary policy. they're talking about 435 members the house, 100 members of the senate getting in the day-to-day business of the monetary policy of the federal reserve. we created the fed, congress

did, to get politics as far as we could from the federal reserve's monetary policy. i don't believe, he said, we need politics back in the federal reserve. chairman shelby's right, we don't need 535 members of congress on the federal open market committee. one of the most important components we need for sound monetary decision making policy is political independence. senator paul argues we need to understand -- quote -- "the extent of the fed's balance sheet. congress already requires the federal reserve to have its financial statements audited every year by an external audit tor, someone who is outside and independent of all matters relating to the fed. the fed releases a quarterly report and information on the combined financial position and results of the federal reserve banks and that report is released to congress. the wrort is available to public on the fed's web site.

anyone can go to federal federalreserve.gov and read it. each week the fed publishes balance sheets of recent trends. since the crisis and there are legitimate complaints of the federal reserve, always have been and probably always will be because of its reach and complexity. but since the crisis, the fed has gotten better. it's gotten better in part because of the last two chairs of the federal reserve -- ben bernanke, a bush appointee, then an obama nominee a second time. and with janet yellen, an obama nominee. since the crisis the government accountability office conducted audits of the activities. many relate to the financial crisis, include the fed's emergency lending activities. and there should be -- there is more and there should be more. the fed is transparent and accountable in the following ways. let me list them. this is not an out-and-out defense of the fed. they should be open to criticism and there is still much to

criticize about them. but this legislation really solves nothing except to politicize the fed. the chair has required -- these are the ways that the fed is transparent and accountable. the chair of the federal reserve is required to testify before the senate banking committee and the house financial services committee twice a year on monetary policy. in practice she'll testify at additional hearings on other topics. the governors of the federal reserve and senior staff -- that's others of the nine members of the federal reserve -- testify dozens more times every year. the fed releases a statement after each federal open market committee meeting to describe the fomc's decisions and the reasoning behind those decisions. the chair holds press conferences four times a year after fomc meetings, minutes of fomc meetings are released three weeks after each meeting and are available on the federal reserve's web site. transcripts of the meetings are released earlier than before, five years after each meeting and available on the web site,

much earlier than most other central bank's released transcripts for obvious reasons. summaries of the economic forecast of participants including their projections for the most likely past of the rate are released quarterly. the board's office of the inspector general audits and investigates all the fed board. the fed board and reserve bank programs and frchg tions. these completed assessments and reviews are listed in the federal reserve's annual report. the fed releases detailed transaction level did the on th. this is relatively new, required by dodd-frank wall street reform law. clearly congress knew that the fed was not as responsive and open as it should be, and one of the things we did in dodd-frank was this reform. all securities that the fed holds are published in the federal reserve bank of new york's web site.

the new york fed also published the most important district regional federal reserve -- there are 12 of them, including one in the city i live in in cleveland. the new york fed is the most important for a number of reasons. it publishes an annual report of the system open market account that includes a detailed summary of open market operations over the year. it includes balance sheet and income projections. i would add too this chair of the federal reserve is more open to the public. this chair of the federal reserve is out and about the country, as her predecessor was, chairman bernanke and chair yellen even more so. she was in cleveland not too long ago last summer making a speech to the cleveland city club. and afterwards she and i went to visit a large cleveland national manufacturer with a large site in cleveland so she could see sort of the real economy and talk to workers and see how important manufacturing is, especially in the middle of the country, to all things federal

reserve. it goes on and on. i wonder, mr. president, how many of those claiming the fed is not transparent have actually taken the time to read some of these reports i've mentioned, to read whether it's the annual report, whether it's some of the audits, whether it's some of the transcripts of fomc. and i wonder if they've listened to very many of these hours of testimony from chair yellen or from governor turrillo or a number of others, governor powell or others on the federal reserve. the fed is far from perfect. i have been one of its major critics in this body, as the ranking democrat on banking. i argue it should be a stronger regulator of the nation's large bank holding companies. i appreciate what it's doing with living wills. i think that's very important. i especially appreciate what the fed has done for stronger capital standards. that, to me, is the most important thing we can do, more important than reinstatement of

dodd-frank, more important than my amendment of five years ago to break up the largest banks, making sure that banks have the capital, significant enough capital to make the system safer and sounder. but it's hard, mr. president, to dispute that one of the most -- that this fed is one of the most transparent central banks in the world. what's this really all about? i know some people are unhappy about decisions the federal reserve made during the financial crisis, including holding interest rates near zero for seven years. they want to show their anger at the fed by taking away its independence. but without the fed's extraordinary monetary policy actions, which would have not -- which might not have been possible if its actions were micromanaged by congress, our economy would likely be in a far worse situation today. several months ago i was asked by c-span to interview chairman bank on one of its shows called

"book notes." we sat for an hour in a studio in washington and discussed the member wore chairman bank began to write when he left the federal reserve a couple yearsing a. it was clear -- a couple years ago. it was clear then that because congress pursued, in terms of fiscal policy, such austerity, he saw the economic growth that started with the auto rescue and the recovery act, he saw that economic growth not immobilized perhaps is not the right word. he saw that economic growth stalled. and he knew that because congress was starting to squeeze the economy at that point with the wrong kind of fiscal policy, that he had to make up for it by low interest rates and ultimately by quantative easement, which is what he did. so understanding that he knew he would offend some members of congress with that action, he also understood that because he was independent, he could do the kinds of things as chair yellen has been able to do to get this

economy growing. hence, in large part because of the auto industry, but in large part because of q.e. that the federal reserve has done through the last two chairs of the federal reserve, one a republican appointee, one a democratic appointee, the fed has been independent enough to do the right thing. inflation becomes low. we have a dual mandate where the federal reserve is responsible for working to keep inflation at no more than 2% and unemployment at no more than 5%. and the fed has balanced that well. inflation remains low despite the doomsday prediction by many of this bill's proponents. we know that our economy still has a way to go. that too many americans are struggling. but it's clear that increase in interest rates before last month would have been premature and would have been harmful to working americans. if congress were involved in that and the way that the sponsor of this bill seems to want, our economy would be in much worse shape. i don't think there's much question about that. out of the fed legislation is also a backdoor piecemeal way of

instituting something called the taylor rule which is an attempt to impose a monetary policy role on the fed. this is really the heart, to me, of this legislation that when they look at the dual mandate, they think way more about inflation, which is what the bondholders on wall street want them to do, and way less about fiscal policy and way less about low interest rates and way less about employment. so the dual mandate again is inflation and employment. if you lean far too much towards inflation, which, again, is what wall street wants, then people on main street are left out. and that's been, frankly, the story of the fed for far too many years. that's why what chairman bernanke did and what chairwoman yellen have done is so important. but if audit the fed, the audit the fed sponsors have their way, we'll see some kind of taylor rule. in november, house republicans passed a federal reserve reform

bill that imposes the taylor rule. the enforcement mechanism, g.a.o. reviews audits and reports. is there any doubt this is where the audit the fed effort is headed next? i urge my colleagues to vote "no" this afternoon. this vote will take place in a couple of hours. it's in the interest of all of us to understand the role and the operations and the activities of the federal reserve. we can do that better in this body. this is not the way to do it. we can do it better. but it's also in the interest of the american economy for congress to keep it's political hands, if you will, out of monetary policy decision making. if republicans were really serious about making the fed work better, they would confirm the two pending nominees to the board of governors. a republican community bank named al landon has been waiting for a nomination for a year and catherine domingues has been waiting for nearly six months. instead of working to improve the fed's operations, we're considering this bill to undermine it. it's a big mistake.

most people i know that have any expertise in the federal reserve reject. i ask my colleagues to vote "no." proin the republican whip. -- the presiding officer: the republican whip. mr. cornyn: mr. president, tonight the president of the united states will offer his last state of the union speech and one that i know we will all be listening carefully to. but i couldn't help but reflect on the first speech he gave to a joint session of congress back in 2009, shortly after his inauguration.

it was a hopeful speech. it was an optimistic speech, one that appealed to the better angels of republicans and democrats and the whole nation alike. he said that we needed to pull together and confront boldly the challenges we face. but somewhere along the way he seems to have forgotten the benefit of finding common ground where folks can agree. it seems we've seen the obama administration more involved in dividing the american people when facing option and then -- facing opposition and then preferring to go it alone rather than working with congress under the constitutional scheme created by our founding fathers. tonight in his final address on his priorities as president, i'm sure president obama will want to talk about what his legacy looks like once he leaves office.

and that will invariably include times when he has simply done an end run around congress. we've seen it time and time again, and it's a mistake. it's shortsighted. but it is his method of governing and presumably being able to tell people, well, i've gotten my way. and i haven't had to do the hard work of working with people of different points of view to find the areas where we agree. i've said it before but i -- i think it's worth noting the comment of the senator from wyoming, the senior senator from wyoming, who i asked when i came to the senate, i said, you're on the health, education, labor and pengtsz committee with -- pensions committee with teddy kennedy, the liberal lion of the senate, who i served with for awhile before he unfortunately passed away. but i -- i asked senator enzi, i said, how is it that you're able to work with somebody whose

world view is so opposite of yours to actually get things done? to which he replied, it's simp simple. it's the 80-20 rule. we look at the 80% of things that we can agree upon, if we can, and we do those and we forget the 20% we can't agree on. i fear that we've become, our country and the congress has become a congress that looks at the 20% we can't agree on and said we can't do the 80% because we disagree on the 20%. that's a mistake. it's also not the scheme of government that was created by america in our constitution. and it would be a mistake to do nothing because we can't agree on the 20% when we could agree on 80%. now, i know there's some areas where we're just going to have fundamental disagreement and we're going to continue to fight and oppose each other's points

of view. but i've been around here long enough that i know there are people of goodwill on both sides of the aisle, some of whom i disagree with strenuously but working together we can find ways to solve problems and help move the country's agenda forward. but somewhere along the way, the president forgot that and so i suspect he'll be talking about some of his executive orders. and there they have been -- they have been a terrible miss sake. first of all, we saw on his executive order on immigration, there was a lawsuit and a federal judge issued an injunction, which has so far been upheld, which bars implement aches of his -- implementation of his executive order. so what did he accomplish there? other than to enrage people and to polarize people and poison the well when it comes to actually trying to solve --

begin the process of solving and fixing some of our broken immigration system. so the president has poisoned the well and made it virtually impossible for us to work with him on solving or fixing our broken immigration system because of what? an executive order that was subsequently enjoined by a federal court. and so he wasn't able to accomplish his goal but he was able to kill meaningful immigration reform debate here in the senate. and, of course, as we've seen on the iranian negotiation, on the iranian nuclear negotiation, the president seems content not to engage in a treaty process, which is actually binding on his successor, but one that is simply a political document. it's not even in writing, and to try freeze out the american people, who we represent, and the sort of educational and

consensus-building process that's good for our country. i mean, that's how we become unified as a county, by looking -- country, by looking at the things that we can work together on, not just focusing on the things -- on our differences. because if we're going to focus on our differences, we're never going to get anything done. now, there's some people that may be okay with that, but, frankly, i think the american people voted for republicans and new leadership in the last election not because they didn't want to get anything done but because they wanted to give us responsibility for setting the agenda and doing the things that were their priorities. and so that doesn't entail doing nothing. that entails doing those things that reflect the priorities of the american people, working together where we can. nobody here is a dictator, not even the president of the united states. it's shortsighted. it's a mistake and it's really in contravention of the whole

constitutional framework that was set up 230-something years ago. and we saw it most recently on the president's announcement on -- on gun -- gun issues, where he again ignored congress and said, well, i'm going to do it my way. maybe he's impatient. maybe he doesn't believe in consensus building. maybe he just doesn't like his job very much. sometimes i think that's true. temperamentally, i think the president may not be suited for the kind of consensus building and legislative process that's necessary to actually get important things done. you know, i was thinking as we were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the civil rights acted a short time back, do you actually that i we could do something like that given this polarized political environment and given a president who's unwilling to work with congress? well, i would say lyndon baines johnson was a lot of things but he knew how to get things done

and he was the antithesis of this president when it comes to rolling up his sleeves, working with congress and people of different points of view and actually trying to find the possible, the doable. not to focus on failure tout buo focus on where could we make progress. well, unfortunately as a result, the president's legacy is i think going to be discussed in a way that he probably isn't going to fully appreciate. i'll tell you what, his political legacy, i was reminded in the "wall street journal" this morning, where it was reflected that since president obama took office, his party has lost 13 senate seats, 69 house seats, 910 state legislative seats, and lost majority -- or lost majority party status in 30

state legislatures. that's an amazing statistic given that the president came out of the starting gate so strong. unfortunately, he chose to use his political capital for purely partisan purposes by passing legislation like obamacare with just democratic votes. that's not a way to build durable and sustainable policy or to build consensus. that's a way of jamming it down the throat of the minority party and then saying, you're going to have to just live with it. well, that's not the case. and as we reflected in the recent vote we had on repealing obamacare that the president vetoed, we've got the political will and the votes to change that ill-considered and misguided health care law and to replace it with something that makes more sense, something that's more affordable and something that suits the needs of individual americans. what we do need is a new

president and i think we demonstrated that. but if you look at item after item, you look at our struggling economy, after the terrible events of 2008, i admit the president had a tough hand because america's economy cratered. we went into a recession. but typically what economists will tell us, and i take some of my economic advice from former senator phil gramm, who's a ph.d. economist, but he wrote, i think it was the "wall street journal," or maybe "the washington post" or otherwise, that following recessions, you have a v-shape of the economy, you hit bolt tom and you bounce up. -- bottom and you bounce up. but what we've had in this economy because of president obama's political views, you've seen an economy struggling to

recover with stagnant wages and slow economic growth. and then foreign policy, i just had the privilege of meeting with a group of people with the king of jordan talking about the battle against the islamic state in syria, right out his back door, and the work they've been doing with us to try to teal with -- to try to deal with russians taking advantage of the chaos there, a lack of a master strategy or plan to deal with this threat, which is not just a threat over there. as we've learned, it's a threat over here because of the use of social media and the ability to radicalize people who live in the united states to commit acts of violence right here in our country. so we've got a mess in syria and no real strategy to fight isil. and i mentioned obamacare just a

few moments ago because i can't help but remember the president when he was selling obamacare, when they jammed it through on a purely partisan vote, that he said, if you like what you have, you can keep it. well, that was not true. i was former attorney general in texas. we had a consumer protection division that sued people for consumer fraud. when you lie to people about what it is they're going to get in exchange for their hard-end money and they don't get it because you've deceived them, well, that usually ends up in court and you end up getting sued. well, we know that premiums didn't come down an average of $2,500 for a family of four. they've skyrocketed. and stories we're reading in the press show that a lot of younger people who need to be part of the pool in order to keep rates

down because, frankly, you need young, healthy people as part of that insurance pool to hold down rates for the whole country and that isn't happening because people aren't buying it. because they don't think it suits their needs, it's too expensive. they're being forced to buy coverage that they don't -- can't use. so i say all this to say that the president has i think in some ways squandered his mandate when he was elected. i remember 2008, the president talked about hope and change. i wasn't quite sure what he meant but we all agree that hope is a good thing, change frequently is a good thing and we were hopeful that this new president, the first african-american president elected in american history, to many of us was a very positive thing.

it represented a huge transition for a country that unfortunately committed the original sin of treaty african-americans as less than fully human. and we paid a terrible price for it. we continue to pay a terrible price. but i was hopeful, like many were, that he would actually use this position of presidency to bring people together and to work with us. but i will tell you that i'm an optimistic person and so despite the last seven years, i -- i hope the president talks tonight about what he plans to do in his last year in office. he still has one full year in his two terms, his eight years in office. he has a choice to make really, like we all choices to make. the president can decide to double down on his go-it-alone strategy, which has proved to be a disaster.

it doesn't work. it's not enduring. and it polarizes the political parties and the american people. i think actually the way this president has chosen to govern is more responsible for the polarization we see among the american people when it comes to politics than some of the sort of craziness that we all talk about privately of our current political process. i think he's actually largely responsible for that. maybe not entirely but largely. but the president could decide that, well, my last year in office i actually want to do something. i actually want to try to work with congress. and i'll suggest an area where we can find common ground and work together and that's reforming our criminal justice system. actually, i've been involved for several years, as have many members on the democratic and

republican side, on looking at our criminal justice system and saying, how can we do better? we have for too long, for example, treated our prison system at the state and the federal level as a warehouse for people and we've forgotten some of the basic tenets of the criminal justice -- of the goals of criminal justice, which is to rehabilitate people. you can't rehabilitate everybo everybody. you've got to have a willing heart, you've got to have people willing to change and take advantage of an opportunity to turn their life around. but there are people like that and we've demonstrated that in many of our state penal systems like texas, where we've seen if you provide the right insin actives -- incentives, that people will take advantage of opportunities to turn their life around, to deal with their addictions, to deal with their lack of education, to deal with their lack of skills, to turn

their life around so they no longer have to live a life, as one person told me in houston, he called himself a frequent flier in the criminal justice system. every time he got out, he ended upcoming back until he finally took advantage of the opportunity to turn his life around. but we do have legislation that passed out of the senate judiciary committee 15-5. ere are some things that we still need to continue to work with our colleagues on, but i think it represents a great opportunity, something that the president himself has said that he wants to see us do, and i think could be a genuine legacy item for him and something that offers hope to people without much hope. it's also good for the taxpayers. we have actually been able to shutter three different penitentiaries in texas and save the taxpayers billions of dollars, although it strikes me

it's a win across the board. so i think that reforming our criminal justice system is a great opportunity. i also believe as i mentioned yesterday when i spoke on the floor that addressing our broken mental health system is another area that we can deal that -- that we could deal with productively on a bipartisan basis, that would be a legacy of this president and certainly of this congress. we know that -- that our mental health delivery system is broken. all we have to do is look at people living on our streets, homeless people, people who frequent our emergency rooms because they have got various medical conditions, but because of their mental illness, they never get the treatment that they need and so they go in and out of that turn style, and -- turnstile, and then we also know

some people tragically become a danger not only to themselves but their loved ones and the communities where they live. i know it's a simple fact borne out by public opinion polls that most people understand that some of the acts -- not all but some of the acts in fact public opinion polling i have seen says that 76% of respondents of public opinion polls think that mental illness is a factor in incidents of mass violence, including shootings, places like sandy hook, places like aurora, colorado, charleston, others. you can count -- you can name those incidents and those tragic circumstances. but until we get serious about working together to try to improve access to mental health services and give families additional tools they need in order to get their loved ones compliant with their doctor's orders and their medication, then we're never going to be able to make progress in this area.

i think about adam lanza, the shooter at sandy hook, who stole his mother's own gun, killed her with it, and then went on to that elementary school and killed those poor, innocent children. horrific tragedy, but adam lanza's mother knew that he was sick. she knew he was basically living downstairs and was not -- and was getting -- descending into his mental illness and getting sicker and sicker, and she didn't have much in the way of options, so she tried to find common ground with him and work with him, but obviously that wasn't enough to overcome his mental illness. if we could just do some simple things like provide outpatient, court-ordered mental health treatment, something that's included in a piece of legislation that we'll be having

a hearing on in the senate judiciary committee, that would provide families additional tools, other than involuntary commitment which is just temporary and donlt solve the long-term -- doesn't solve the long-term problems. one of the biggest problems i have learned in our mental health system is so often people who need treatment refuse treatment. in other words, frequently they don't take their medication, and as long as it's purely a voluntary matter, particularly for people who are a threat to their own safety as well as the community's safety, then we are going to continue to see repetitions of this and more and more tragedies, more families torn by mental illness when they could actually -- we could actually offer them some help and some hope. there's a gentleman named pete early who is an award-winning journalist who wrote a book called "crazy." this is not about his son, although his son did suffer from

mental illness. this is about our broken mental health system. he called it crazy. and he wrote a book which i would commend to anybody about his own family's experience dealing with a mentally ill son and how hard it was to get him to comply with his doctor's orders and take his medication and the like. and i hope that -- i hope that pete early will come testify in senate of the senate judiciary committee later this month, along with some really innovative programs like those in san antonio, bexar county, texas, where they have found a way to not just warehouse the mentally ill in our jails but to actually divert them for treatment and to get them in a better place and out of this turnstile of the criminal justice system. so those are just a couple of ideas, mr. president, about what this president could do and i hope areas that he would perhaps address tonight that he would be willing to work with us on.

criminal justice reform and mental health reform. i think if he were willing to do that, he would find republicans and democrats alike willing to work with him to try to build that common ground and consensus and actually that would be one of the lasting legacies of his final year of his administration. mr. president, on another matter, i have a -- four unanimous consent requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. this has been approved by the majority and minority leaders. i'd ask consent that these requests be agreed to and that they be printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. cornyn: thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mrs. ernst: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to speak for ten minutes as if in morning business.

the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. ernst: mr. president, i rise today to talk about the searching for and cutting regulations that are unnecessarily burdensome -- an unnecessarily burdensome act, more affectionately known as the scrub act. this past summer, my colleague senator hatch and i introduced this legislation to help free american families and small businesses from the unnecessary burdens of our regulatory system, and i am pleased to mention that this bill passed the house last week on a bipartisan basis. for too long, our nation's innovators and employers have been trying to comply with a swath of outdated, duplicative or obsolete regulations that hamper their growth and creativity. many of these regulations also come with stacks of paperwork requirements that force our small businesses to spend time on filling in the blanks rather than filling in jobs.

the scrub act would peel back these types of regulations so our businesses can focus on doing what they know best, innovating and creating jobs. the purpose of this bill is to take an objective and in-depth look at major regulations that are at least 15 years old and could be repealed because they have, number one, achieved their goal and there is no threat to the problem recurring. number two, technology or market changes have made the regulation unnecessary. or, number three, they are ineffective or overhappened with other federal or state legz. for decades, lawmakers and presidents on both sides of the aisle have recognized the need to unleash our small businesses and job creators from rules and regulations that don't make

sense. you see, when new rules are proposed, there is very little, if any, attention paid to how the new rule will work with the hundreds of other rules that came before it. this buildup of rules are a cumulative burden on our businesses which ultimately slows job growth and hits families that are already struggling to make ends meet even harder. in fact, according to one study, if the cost of all of these regulations were considered an independent country, all of the costs of these rules and regulations, it would be about the tenth largest economy in the world. and let's face it -- the more expensive it becomes to make a

product or deliver a service, the more money the consumer will have to dig out of their own pockets to pay for it. and as those families that are working multiple jobs to provide for their kids that are going to be hit the hardest. mr. president, this bill is how we start to solve that problem. the scrub act establishes a bipartisan blue ribbon commission to give a fair and thoughtful review of our nation's existing regulations. once the commission is finished with their review, it would provide its recommendations to congress, and we would have an opportunity to vote on them. if an agency wants to impose a new regulation, they can do that under the scrub act, but they would have to offset the cost of

that new regulation by repealing an existing one that is of equal cost and has been deemed unnecessary or outdated by the commission. i know iowa families do this. they know how to prioritize. so why can't our federal agencies? we simply cannot allow the buildup of unnecessary and costly regulations over time. i will end with just one last comment. rules and regulations often have unintended consequences. it is our responsibility as lawmakers to not only recognize when this happens but to then proactively fix it. the scrub act is a commonsense solution that forces lawmakers

and our agencies to be honest about their regulatory system by fixing the rules that need fixing and dropping those that have outlived their useful purpose. i want to thank senator hatch for his leadership on this and urge all of my colleagues to support this legislation. and, mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate stand in recess as if under the previous order. the presiding officer: without objection. the senate stands adjourned until -- the senate stands in until -- the senate stands in

>> as president obama prepared for a state of the union address, he released this video on twitter. >> i'm working on my state of the address. it's my last one, and as i'm writing i keep thinking about the role -- the road we travel together. that's what makes america great. our capacity to change for the better. our ability to come together as one american family and pull ourselves closer to the america we believe in. it's hard to see sometimes in the day-to-day noise of washington but it is who we are and it is what i want to focus on in his state of the union

address. >> c-span's coverage starts tonight at 8 p.m. eastern with senate historian, and real clear politics congressional reporter looking back at the history and tradition of the president's annual message and what to expect in this year's address. at nine, live coverage followed by the republican response is south carolina governor nikki haley, push a reaction by phone, facebook, tweets and e-mails as well as those from members of congress on c-span, c-span radio and c-span.org. also live on c-span2 after the speech and we'l we will hear frm members of congress in statuary hall with their reaction to the president's address. >> former defense secretaries talked about u.s.-china relations recently and the obama

administration's pivot to asia's was nuclear tensions on the korean peninsula at the risk of conflict in the south china sea. they talk for about an hour and a half. >> good evening, everyone. i'm steve orlins, president of the national committee on u.s.-china relations, and i'm thrilled to welcome you all to the first special program of the national committee 50th anniversary. for 50 years we have been educating americans about china, and chinese about america. from inpo diplomacy to today's program -- ping pong -- we've strengthen the bilateral relationship by fostering exchanges and informed discussion. today's program is th