mr. coburn: mr. president? i'd ask that the pending amendment be set are aside and coburn amendment 1003 be called up. the presiding officer: is there 0,? -- is there objection? objection is heard. burning bun mr. coburn: i am gok about this amendment. let me set the stage for this. we are going to have somewhere between a $500 billion and $00 billion deficit. we have got $17.5 trillion worth of debt today. what this amendment does is it prohibits people who are tax evaders from receiving government assistance including grants, contracts, loans, and tax credits provided in the farm bill, with the exception of snap. so we're still going to take care of food provision, even if they refuse to pay their taxes. we're still going to provide them food. but we're not going to allow, with this amendment, them to take advantage of other programs within the farm or any other area that's associated with direct grants, associated with the ag bill. the most critical issues facing our country today -- and everybody knows how t

mr. coburn: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. coburn: reserving the right to object, and i take the intent of my colleague that he wants to try to solve this problem. and as he knows, several of us have another proposal. what i would suggest is that we compromise on the president's proposal. it's a combination. it's a hybrid. the president is trying to address this. what i would propose is rather than us have dueling unanimous consents and playing the political game, what we really need to do is solve the problem. and what i would put forward to the senator that i would be happy to work with him to try to bring the president's proposal to the senate, which does fix this permanently, which does get people -- it fixes it for all the loans, not just for 40% of the loans. and it gives people certainty. if my colleague didn't see today, the c.p.o.'s accounting, there is no savings in this. there is a cost. no matter whose program it is, accurate accounting, which should give us all pause to try to fix this thing in the long term. i wou

mr. coburn: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. coburn: thank you. i appreciate my colleague from texas and his earnest desire to solve the problems in front of us. i would say at the outset, the recognition over the last eight and a half, nine years of become in the senate is that we have a problem wind to solve and -- that we need to solve and i don't think anybody disagrees with that. i think there's two important points that the american people expect us to pay attention to. one is what reagan described as the shiny city on a hill and that people coming here make us better. there's no question about that. and that what he described was -- what he wanted was in 1986 was not all walls like single payer people wants and not all doors, like some people wanted, but a wall with doors. so there's two basic facts that confront us. one is that the rule of law is the glue that holds us together, and when we hear talk about the american people having confidence on whether or not we're going to enforce the rule of larks whether it is on immigration or any ot

mr. coburn: i have refrained from being on the floor during this debate as i listened to it and watched, and i would compliment my colleagues in trying to solve a very difficult problem, but i just heard a speech by my colleague from new mexico that quotes all sorts of statistics that are not accurate. i'm the ranking member on homeland security. here's what we know, is we have estimates, and that's all we have, but we don't know the total attempts to cross our border. we don't know what they are. so when somebody quotes 70% to 80% and you have no idea what the denominator is, you don't know what the numbers are. now, here's what the council on foreign relations says about our border. and how did they get this data? they went out and interviewed 6,700 illegal immigrants to find out their frequency of attempts, whether or not they have gone home, what their difficulty was, what their communities were like, and here's what they say, is right now is the control of our border, it's somewhere between 40% and 65%. so we have the administration that says one thing, but when you ask them for the

mr. graham. >> earlier this week, senator coburn wrote an op-ed and talked about among other things tax reform. he said in today's atmosphere of the best thing a president can do to help the administration is give the house ways and means committee and offer they cannot work on the same that would be a piece of litigation that would start the process moving forward. [inaudible] what can the president do to make this happen? is he doing what he needs to do to help with this at this point in time? >> well, i think you wastefully is looking at tax reform the same way he's approached immigration. that is carefully. in this climate, it might not be wise to be too upfront too soon, too early because it may cause a bit of a storm, but he's very involved. i met with him on tax reform. i meet very frequently as chief of staff, who by the way i find is very good. he's going out of his way coming up to the hill, talking to members of the house and senate and engaging congress very, very deep on lots of different issues. the president clearly cares about a fiscal solution. clearly cares about tax reform be

pleased to be joined by senators vitter, portman, roberts, enzi, sessions, coburn, crapo, rirks scott, johnson and lee. since 200, mr. president, the come to spik -- since 2008, mr. president, the domestic oil production that is increased by 40%. 40%, mr. president. this has never happened before. that's just in the last -- in the last -- since 2008, in the last four years. the interesting thing about this is that because of the new applications for such processes as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, we have been able to do this. but the most interesting thing about it is that with a 40% increase, that's 100% of that has been in the state or in private land. now, that's something that is critical because we keep hearing from this administration that they somehow want to take credit for the fact that we've had an increase in that period of time. when the fact is that that has all been done in private land or in state land. not any of it has been done in federal land. in fact, the -- there is a congressional research service came out and i'm going to quote from them right now. this is earlier this year. th

mr. cantrell, figure this out. >> good afternoon, chairman harper, ranking member coburn. we appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today about prescription drugs and diversion in medicare programs. in addition to the medicare dollars stolen there are few areas of welfare fraud will we see such a direct and devastating impact on patient. the cdc characterizes it as an epidemic and too much of the time the bill is paid by medicare. this is a drug trade subsidized by taxpayers. bringing the criminals to justice is a top priority for oig. our prescription drug fraud investigations every quad tripe bulled in the last years. of particular concern are those prescription drugs that result in park deaths, often associated with sham pain clinics or pill mills. one clinic was associated with the deaths of over 60 patients. the doctor and his wife, who was a nurse and the office manager, were sentenced to over 30 years in prison in order to pay back $114 million for their crimes. prescription drawing fraud also often involves sophisticated criminal enterprises. one case involved

mr. tangherlini, for being here. thank your family as well. i want to ask about the recent june i.g. report, that senator coburn referenced in his opening statement that is troubling. the conclusion that the management improperly intervened an -- award extension of of a contract and resulted in the contract being inflated. if you look at it, to have the gsa contacting officers tell that theythe oig feared for their jobs because they were trying to protect taxpayer interests and companies were able to go above their head and gets a more favorable officer to change a decision that was in the best interests of the tax payers. this is troubling in terms of culture. we want the contract and officers to fill in power. we want everyone to be focused on saving taxpayer dollars. what are you going to do to change this culture? what are you going to do to hold the people accountable that improperly over rhode the decision of the contacting the of theoad the decision contract officers? >> i appreciate your question. we have already taken some personnel action directly related to an individual named in that report. we will

mr. mcconnell: i ask consent the senate proceed to the consideration of the bill introduced earlier today by senators manchin, king, alexander, coburn, burr, and carper, further, that there be one hour of debate equally divided in the usual form, no amendments be in order to the measure, the bill be subject to any applicable budget point of order, and that following the use or yielding back of time, and disposition of any waivers if necessary, the bill be read a third time, and the senate proceed to vote on the passage of the bill. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. reed: i object. the presiding officer: the objection is heard. the senator from rhode island. mr. reed: let me thank the republican leader for cooperating. we are attempting to move forward legislation with respect to student loans. we have reached or will shortly reach july 1. at that point the student loan rate for subsidized stafford loans doubles to 6.8%. the legislation i proposed would be a one-year extension of the rate allowing students, low- and middle-income students to benefit from a low interest rate. our core principles in advancing this one-year

mr. coburn: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from mississippi. mr. cochran: mr. president, i'm pleased to join the distinguished senator from michigan in urging the senate to approve this compromise bill that's been developed by the committee on agriculture and is now before the senate for a final vote. we need to pass this bill. it provides a framework to help farmers and ranchers in all regions of the country manage their risks more effectively. it consolidates 23 conservation programs into 13. it contains improvements to nutrition programs, and it addresses fraud and abuse. it also reduces the cost of its programs by $24 billion. this bill reflects a real sense of fiscal responsibility but still provides a strong safety net for producers. i want to thank and congratulate the distinguished senator from michigan, the chair of our committee, for her hard work and her strong leadership. she's managed the legislation with skill and a commitment to meet the needs of agriculture producers as well as american consumers. i urge the senate to approve the motion to invok