Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I associate myself and those of all minority Members with the comments of the chairman about Proctor Jones. I didn't have the opportunity to work with him as closely as others have, but the legacy the chairman has described is genuine and real. All of us in the Senate, regardless of party, wish to acknowledge that. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I am happy to cosponsor the bill Senator Schumer has just discussed, the Military and Overseas Voters Empowerment Act or the MOVE Act. As the ranking member of the Rules Committee, I have served alongside Chairman Schumer and commend him for his decision to make this a priority and move it through the committee. Our military personnel make tremendous sacrifices for this country, and we need to make sure they are able to exercise their right to vote. I thank Senator Schumer's staff as well for the cooperative way in which we have moved this forward and for his willingness to deal with two other colleagues on the committee, Senator Chambliss and Senator Nelson. When the legislation was introduced in its original form, I raised concerns with Senator Schumer about some of its provisions. He worked with me and my staff to address those concerns, and the amendment before us today effectively does so. That is why I am pleased to now be a cosponsor of the bill. The difficulties our service personnel face in attempting to vote have been well documented. The Senator from New York has described them. I believe this amendment deals with them in a proper fashion. I want to clarify several points for the record. We recognize that election administration is carried out at the local level, and we have no intention of transferring those functions to the State in this legislation. The amendment makes clear that States may comply with the obligations imposed on them hereunder by delegating their responsibilities to other jurisdictions in the States, just as they have for so many years in complying with the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. Also, the amendment requires States seeking Federal funds to meet the requirements imposed by this amendment to update their State plans which have been previously submitted pursuant to HAVA, the Help America Vote Act. The amendment clarifies that only States seeking the funds authorized by and appropriated pursuant to this amendment are obligated to update their State plans. With that clarification, I thank Senator Schumer and my other colleagues who worked so hard on this legislation: the two I mentioned, Senators Chambliss and Nelson, as well as Senator Cornyn, who is not a member of the committee but who has worked on it. I appreciate their bringing the issue before the Senate. I am proud to support it and look forward to its unanimous passage.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I am pleased to join with my colleagues in making some comments about our former colleague, Norm Coleman. I welcome Senator Franken to the Senate. I welcome him to his service here and congratulate him on his victory. But it would come as no surprise that Senator Coleman will be sadly missed. I had the experience of serving with him on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee where he served as the chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation. This is a subcommittee that has an interesting history. It has the history of some demagoguery if you go back into the past. It also has a history of some accomplishment of the various Senators who have served there. I think it unusual that a freshman Senator would serve in that capacity and serve as if he were not a freshman but a seasoned veteran. He took over that assignment and went after a number of areas of controversy, and with a persistence that served him and the Senate very well, pursued a number of difficulties. So with all of the things we have heard about Norm Coleman--his intelligence, his grace, his willingness to work hard and at the same time do so with a sense of class about him--I add my tribute to his ability to take on a difficult assignment and follow it through. I wish him and his wife and his family well in their activities now. I will not go through the resume the Republican leader has established for us. I simply add my voice of gratitude for the opportunity of serving with Norm Coleman and my best wishes for him in his future activities. He is a young and vigorous enough man that I think we will hear far more from him in the years ahead. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise today to honor Dr. Georg Schulze Zumkley and members of his team at the German Information Center USA for their dedication in promoting friendship between the United States and Germany. Dr. Zumkley's work to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift is truly appreciated. In the spring of 1948, Berlin was isolated within the Soviet occupation zone and had only 35 days' worth of food and 45 days' worth of coal remaining for the city. A massive American, British, and French airlift mounted to save the city and provide supplies necessary to sustain life in Berlin. Mr. President, 2008 marked the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, one of the largest and longest running humanitarian airlift operations in history. Dr. Zumkley's group was given the mission to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, honor Airlift veterans, and tell the story of this great humanitarian effort. They planned and implemented the successful ``Friends-Always: 60 Years After the Berlin Airlift'' outreach program, and designed, produced and managed ``The Berlin Airlift--A Legacy of Friendship'' exhibit at more than 25 venues across the United States. It is estimated that more than 150,000 people will have visited the exhibit personally and learned about the legacy of the Berlin Airlift during its tour of the United States. Dr. Zumkley ensured that Airlift veterans personally received the German-American Friendship award as an expression of appreciation and gratitude from the German people. Additionally, Dr. Zumkley has worked far above and beyond his duties and displayed outstanding leadership qualities in the fulfillment of the team's mission. I know my fellow Senators join me in thanking Dr. Zumkley and his team for their endeavors to promote U.S.-German friendship and to honor and celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I wish to speak for 10 minutes in morning business following Senator Graham, and I ask unanimous consent to proceed on that basis. I will be speaking as in morning business, as I assume the Senator will be.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and gave us our government, they did so out of a deep distrust of the power of government coming out of their experience with King George, and they created a government that limits the use of power, deliberately setting up a system of checks and balances, a doctrine of separation of powers and so on, with which we are all familiar. Out of that, Americans have become used to the idea that there are limits on governmental power, and one of the concerns I hear when I visit with my constituents in Utah is that they are afraid there are now no limits on governmental power, or at least there is certainly not enough limits on governmental power. I am asked: Where does it stop? The government can take over insurance companies. The government can take over financial institutions. The government can take over an automobile company. The government can dictate who gets to be chief executive and how much he or she will be paid. Aren't there supposed to be limits on governmental power? Today, we have a proposal brought forward by the administration with respect to how the regulatory pattern for our financial institutions should be changed. As I look at that proposal, I ask the same questions my constituents are asking: Shouldn't there be some limits on governmental power? Isn't this going a bit far? Indeed, I think it is a legitimate question, and I wanted to address it for a moment. First, let's understand a fundamental truth about the economy. That is that all wealth comes from taking risks. Farmers take risks when they plant seeds, not knowing what the weather is going to do. Businessmen and women take risks when they open businesses, not knowing what the market is going to do. New wealth comes out when we have a bumper crop. New wealth comes out when a business started in a garage turns into Hewlett Packard, but in every instance you take risks. The second element that has to be added to risk-taking is the access to accumulated wealth. Sometimes it comes by a wealth you have accumulated yourself. Sometimes it comes from loans from your brother- in-law. Sometimes it comes from running up your credit card. Sometimes it comes from venture capitalists. In many instances, it comes from banks. But you take a risk, and you have to have access to some kind of accumulated capital or you cannot create new wealth. All right. Why do people take risks? Because they expect there will be a reward in the form of a return on the capital they have taken. Whether it comes from a bank loan that they can pay back or from investor capital that will then receive dividends, there will be a reward. The risk/reward relationship is at the base of the growth and power of the American economy. In the present crisis, we have had people saying: Yes, but there are some entities that are simply too big to fail, we must not allow them to fail, and particularly in the financial services industry. So that is why we have this proposal today from the Obama administration. They want to deal with systemic risk, as they call it, or those tier 1 entities which they describe as what I have just said: They are too big to fail and we are not going to allow them to fail, and this is the regulatory regime we will set up. If there are companies or entities that are too big to fail, this regime is too big to function. It is so focused on preventing failure that it is stacked in such a way that it will penalize the risk taker and prevent the risk taker from taking a risk and therefore not reap any kind of a reward. There is a heavy emphasis on consumer protection. I am all for that. I think we should have all of the kinds of regulations that say you need labels on things that might not be safe. That protects the consumer. You need nutritional information on things that might make you too fat, which protects the consumer. But let's not protect the consumer to the point where they cannot buy anything or, in this case, protect the system from any possible failure to the point that there is no risk and therefore ultimately no reward. By giving the Federal Reserve the kinds of powers this proposal does, we are moving down that road, and once again we are raising the question: Are there no limits on the amount of power that government can have and accumulate? I am convinced that if this massive, new expansion of power in the hands of the government goes forward unimpeded, we will see the shutting off of sources of credit and therefore the contraction of the economy and ultimately the need for more bailouts, more expenditures of Federal funds to try to keep entities alive. They can stay alive if they can attract capital from the private markets, but that is risky. So if we say: No, we are not going to allow the risks, we shut off the incentive of the private market to invest in some of these entities or to loan money to some of these entities. And then we say: But the entity is so important to our economy that we cannot allow it to fail. So we turn to the taxpayer and say: Let's put more taxpayer money into the entity because it is too big to fail. That is what I see down the road for this proposal. I may be wrong. But I point out that we in the Congress have, by law, created a commission to study what caused the present mess we are in and report back to the Congress. We wrote into that law a specific date--December 15, 2010--to make sure the commission had enough time to examine all of the possibilities, to delve deeply enough into the issue to fully understand it, and then report back to us with their findings. Now we are being told: Forget the commission. Forget the analysis of what happened. We think we know. Let's put this regulatory regime in place--one that is too big to function--now. Let's do it quickly. Let's have it done by the August recess. All right, we can't get it done by the August recess. We are going to have health care done by the August recess, so we will do it before Halloween, or whatever artificial date some may choose to put on it. The reality is, the issue is huge, the issue needs to be examined carefully, and we need to do it within the parameters of the basic suspicion the Founding Fathers had about the government. We should do it with an understanding that there are limits to government power and that government power has the capacity to damage the economy every bit as much as it has the power to help it move forward. Mr. President, I say let's not move with the speed and haste we are hearing about this proposal. Let's subject it to the most careful examination we possibly can throughout the processes of Congress, and let's make sure that when we do make regulatory changes with respect to the financial institutions, we do them in a way that will not fail and that can properly function. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, we have just heard from the President of the United States with respect to an effort to get a bipartisan health care plan. I have been to the White House summit on health care. I have heard the President speak directly to this issue. I applaud him in his effort to make sure we deal with this problem intelligently, and I accept at face value his desire that it be done in a bipartisan manner. But as we have this discussion about doing this in a bipartisan manner, it all ultimately comes down to one sticking point that seems to be firmly established in the President's position and firmly established in the position of those who sit on this side of the aisle. At the moment, that sticking point seems to be irreconcilable. I want to talk about it in direct terms so that we understand what it is we are talking about and those who listen will understand why those of us who are Republicans are determined to stand firm on this point. This is the point: Shall there be a public plan, a government-run option in the choices that are available to people with respect to health care? Along with Senator Wyden of Oregon, I have cosponsored the Healthy Americans Act, which is determined to create as many options as possible, to create a wide range of choices for Americans to make with respect to their health care. We recognize we are going to have to change the tax laws in order to give people control over their own health care dollars. Right now, health care is the only part of the economy where the individual receiving the goods or services does not control the money that pays for the goods or services. So it is obvious that you will not have market forces available in that circumstance. If the individual who is receiving the goods or services controls the money that pays for the goods or services, he or she will make a different choice than if someone else is controlling the money. But in health care, somebody else makes the choice, and that is why the core function of the Healthy Americans Act, which Senator Wyden and I are cosponsoring, says individuals should be in control of their own money and we should have as many choices as possible so that individuals can go out in the market. There will be competing forces. Competition brings prices down. Competition creates new opportunities. Competition fills niche markets. We believe all of that will happen if we have this degree of choice. When we have had this conversation with officials of the administration, they don't disagree. As a matter of fact, many officials of the administration have said to me: We really like what you are doing with Senator Wyden, and we applaud you, Senator Bennett, for reaching out in a bipartisan way to try to solve this problem. But we just have one additional factor we would like to add to your bill. We would like to say that as a backup, as a final option, we want a government-run plan to be there as one of the available choices, just in case none of the others work. That is, as I say, the sticking point here. I have said to members of the administration: If we end up with a government-run plan as one of the options in my bill, I will vote against my own bill. The government-run option will change the playing field, will ultimately drive out all of the other choices because the government is in a position to subsidize it. The government is in a position to make it more attractive than anything else and thereby gain the blessing of the voters because the voters will say: The government took care of those greedy companies that would otherwise make me pay this, that, or the other. Here, the government choice is cheaper; isn't it wonderful that the government is looking out for me? Ultimately, we would end up with a government plan, single payer for the whole country. I know there are many of my friends on the other side of the aisle who want that, and they are very open about it and very direct about it. They say a number of things. They say the government plan is cheaper, the government plan provides health care for everybody, the government plan is fairer, and that is what we ought to have. I wish to spend a little time talking about the experience of those countries that have adopted that attitude. If I may be personal and give my own example before I get into the statistics, I will tell you about a situation when I was living in Great Britain and had a medical problem. I won't bore you, Mr. President, with the details of the problem, simply that I went to a doctor in Scotland to see if anything should be done. The doctor first signed me up because under the British system a doctor--this shows how long ago it was, but the system has not changed--got a shilling a week for every patient he signed up on his list. So immediately he wanted to sign me up so he would get that shilling for having me there, which would be a decimal of a pound today rather than that old designation. Once he had me signed up, as I say, he examined me. He said: Yes, you do need treatment. And he gave me a piece of paper that would allow me to go to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, where I was to see a surgeon. So I went to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and sat there for most of the day before a doctor could finally see me. The doctor saw me and checked me out and said: Yes, indeed, you should be scheduled for surgery. I said: Fine. I have a schedule. Can you give me some idea when the surgery will be so I can arrange my affairs to be available? He said: My guess would be 9 months. I said: I am going to be returning to the United States in less than 9 months, so I guess we can just forget this. I communicated that to my father, who was in the United States, and he said: I don't think so. Can you get a surgeon who would operate on you right away? So I inquired and I was told: Yes, you can get a private surgeon, but the private surgeon cannot take the health care system dollars or pounds. He is outside of it. If he stays in private practice, he cannot participate in the national health system at all. I said: OK, that is fine. My father said: I will pay it. Where can you go? I went to the private surgeon and, yes, he had a practice where he took only patients who were outside of the health plan. He looked at it and said: Yes, you need surgery. I said: All right. When? He said: Will Wednesday be soon enough? This was on a Monday. I said: All right. We went into a private hospital. It was separated from the national health service. He performed the surgery. I paid him cash, got the thing taken care of, and finished my time in Great Britain with that particular problem solved. I would like to think that was only the case back when I was younger, but I find it is still the case, not only in Great Britain but in other countries that have this kind of problem. Let me share a few statistics with you of what happens with respect to this single-payer system. One of the things we are told by those who support single payers is that the outcomes in these other countries are really not any different than they are in America, that we are paying far more in America and the outcomes are basically the same. The statistic they usually use in order to prove that America is not any better is life expectancy and infant mortality. They say as a country, our life expectancy is not that much better than anybody else's and our infant mortality rate is as high or higher than other countries. Shame on us, we are not getting good health care that we are paying for. Life expectancy is tied in very many cases to either ethnic or geographic locations. The life expectancy, for example, in Utah, where the behavior is a little different than it is in some other places, is substantially higher and has little or nothing to do with the health care. It has to do with the culture in Utah that causes people to behave in a healthier lifestyle. Let's go beyond this broad-brush approach and look at some specifics. The largest international study to date has found that the 5-year survival rate for all types of cancer among both men and women is higher in the United States than in Europe. Isn't that a statistic showing that we are getting a better result in America than in Europe? A cancer survival rate is not something that is due to the geography of where you are born. If you are born in the inner city, that has something to do with infant mortality rates, or if you live in a healthy environment, that has something to do with life expectancy. Cancer survival rate has to do with health care, and the health care in the United States is better than it is in Europe and has produced a higher survival rate for both men and women. In Britain, there are one-fourth as many CT scanners per capita as there are in the United States and one-third as many MRIs. If we think the CT scanner and the MRI produce a better result in terms of health care, we want to be in the United States. We do not want to be in one of these single-payer, government plans of the kind President Obama wants as an option destroying the other options and choices there would be if we pass the Healthy Americans Act. The rate for treating kidney failure--dialysis or transplants--is five times higher in the United States for patients between the ages of 45 and 84 and nine times higher for patients 85 years and older. Again, there is a personal interest here because members of my family have kidney disease. I want them in the United States with the kind of system we have where they do not have to wait and they do not have to worry about government regulations. I want them here where it is five times better than it is in Europe with respect to kidney disease. Right now, nearly 1.8 million Britons are waiting for hospital or outpatient treatments at any given time--1.8 million waiting in the circumstance that I described in my own situation. In 2002 to 2004, dialysis patients waited an average of 16 days for permanent blood vessel access in the United States, or 20 days in Europe, and 62 days in Canada. We often hear about the benefits of being in Canada. I have constituents who come from Canada, who have moved to Utah. Every time this comes up, they come to me and say: Senator, whatever you do, do not give us the Canadian system. Whatever you do, make sure that America doesn't go in the direction the Canadians have gone. Let me give you some examples to demonstrate why that is good advice. This is one that broke out in the debate in the Canadian Parliament. A woman by the name of Emily Morely, in March of 2006, was informed by her doctor that her cancer had spread and she needed to see an oncologist, and then she was told: You will not be able to get an appointment for months. Well, if my cancer is spreading, I don't want to wait months for an appointment. Her family raised a ruckus, they called the local newspaper, a petition was signed by her neighbors demanding she get care, and then, in response to that, the government got her to a specialist. Once again, in the government, you respond to the voters. If you are getting bad publicity in the press, or the voters don't like what you are doing: Oh, let's take her to a specialist. So she got to a specialist and he told her she had only 3 months to live. Well, she at least had time to put her affairs in order. Had she not had the intervention of her family and her neighbors, it is quite likely she would have died before even seeing an oncologist for the first time. But let's go to another example that may be even closer to home to the legislators. A member of Parliament in Canada, Belinda Stronach, strongly supports the Canadian health care system, and she would object to this kind of argument that the Canadian health care system isn't very good. But where did she go when she was diagnosed with cancer in 2007? She went to California and paid for the treatment out of pocket. Even a member of Parliament who supports the Canadian system recognized that the government plan didn't work for her. And with her own health at risk, she came to America and took advantage of what we offer here. There is the case of the mother in Calgary, Alberta who was expecting quadruplets. I am the father of twins, and they came as a great surprise. Quadruplets is something I am not sure we could handle, and certainly they would require very good facilities to deal with a pregnancy that produces quadruplets. She is in Albert, Canada, and she is flown to Great Falls, MT, to deliver the quadruplets. Great Falls, MT, is not thought of as one of the great centers of health care excellence in the United States. Yet the facilities in this small town in Montana were better than any facility available anywhere in Alberta. These are the examples of a government-run plan and because people who are getting the service don't control the money the government plan can end up focusing on overall cost control to the detriment of the people who are trying to access it. I don't think ultimately the American voters, having gotten used to the access that they currently have--being used to the idea that they do not have to wait--would ultimately tolerate a government plan. My consult to President Obama and to my colleagues here in the Senate is to slow down a little. We are talking about restructuring 18 percent of the entire economy. We spend 18 percent of our GDP on health care. I agree absolutely that it is long past time that we addressed this issue; that we rationalize the challenge; and that we do things that make it far more effective. As I have spent the last 3 or so years working with Senator Wyden to try to understand the problem and fashion the Healthy Americans Act in a way that will solve the problem, I have discovered a great truth that I didn't realize before, and that is this: The greatest cost control factor in health care is quality. The best health care is the cheapest health care. And it has been achieved in those places that have focused on quality first and the patient first, and it has not involved any government intervention. Dartmouth has done a study and told us the three cities in the United States where you get the best health care. They are Seattle, WA; Rochester, MN; and Salt Lake City, UT. I take some pride in that fact. And then the Dartmouth study goes on to say that if every American got his or her health care in Salt Lake City, UT, it would not only be the best in the United States, it would be one-third cheaper than the national average. Those are the kinds of examples we should be focusing on and learning from, and then doing our best to write legislation that would support that. Slow down. We are not going to understand this in time for any artificial deadline set for some political agenda. I understand the sense of urgency that the Obama administration feels on this issue, and I share the idea that now is the time to address it. This is the Congress in which we should pass it. But I don't think setting a deadline to say it must be done in July, when we are talking about 18 percent of GDP, is that persuasive. We can examine these alternatives a little more carefully than the present deadline will allow us to do. We can say: All right, why is quality the best cost control, and does our bill create the kinds of incentives and rewards focused on quality that will produce that result, instead of saying: Whatever else you do, you have to have a government option in there. You have to have a government plan that can compete with all the rest of this, and thus set us up for the kind of situation where we would move as a nation to imitate Great Britain or Canada or the others that have produced the kinds of examples I have talked about here. So I am more than willing and I am anxious to work with President Obama and his administration, to work with my friends across the aisle. I have worked with Senator Wyden for these past 3-plus years to try to fashion an intelligent solution. But I repeat what I said at the beginning: The sticking point in this entire debate is the demand on the part of the Obama administration that the final product have within it a government plan as one of the options. And if that happens, I vote against my own bill. If that happens, I do everything I can to say no. Because I am convinced if that happens, we end up with a situation where there is only one option that survives. One of my colleagues has described this, I think, quite well. He says: Having a government plan as one of the options is a little like taking an elephant into a room full of mice and then saying: All right, this is a roomful of animals, let's let them compete. And as the elephant walks around the room, pretty soon there aren't any mice left. A government plan is the elephant in the room. Those of us who want to solve this problem intelligently say: Let's learn from the examples of those people who have adopted a single-payer system. Let us realize that the American experiment in health care produces better outcomes in all of the areas I have outlined. And as politicians, let's realize that the American voter will never stand for the kind of rationing by delay that seems to have crept into every other system. Let's take our time to do it right. There is a bipartisan consensus to get it done. We can work together and make that accomplishment, if we are not quite so insistent that the government plan ultimately is the only way to go. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I rise to thank the chairman of the full committee, along with the ranking member, for their wisdom with respect to the money allocated for Guantanamo Bay and the prison there. I want to make a few comments with respect to the prison at Guantanamo Bay. I have visited the prison at Guantanamo Bay. I led a CODEL--for those watching on television, that means a congressional delegation--of myself, members of the House, and, on this occasion, I took some members of the European Parliament. That is interesting, because when we came back and held a press conference to report what we had found, members of the European Parliament on the CODEL said, ``We cannot participate in this press conference.'' I said, ``Why?'' They said, ``If we told the truth about what we saw at Guantanamo, we could not go home to Europe. The animosity toward Guantanamo in Europe is so strong that if we told the truth about how good things are down there, we would be attacked politically in Europe and we would lose our seat in the European Parliament.'' I said: Well, I don't want you to lose your seats in the European Parliament. I won't ask you to participate. But we did hold a press conference, and one of those who did participate said: I wish the prisons in my district back home were as good as the prison in Guantanamo. Let me describe what we found in Guantanamo, not with respect to how well the prison was designed or how well the prison was administered but who the prisoners are, or, as they are appropriately called, the detainees. If you talk to the detainees, every one of them is a goat herder picked up by accident by the American troops when they were in Afghanistan or in Iraq or wherever it was. None of them had any connection with al-Qaida at all. This was all a huge mistake. I have been in the storeroom where they keep all of the items that were taken from these detainees when they were picked up. The question arises: What is a goat herder doing with hundreds of dollars of American money in $100 bills? What is a goat herder doing with sophisticated explosive equipment in his back sack? What is a goat herder doing with forged passports and other information and documentation? Maybe these people are not all goat herders. Maybe these people really are connected with al-Qaida, just based on what they found. I have watched an interrogation take place at Guantanamo by closed- circuit television. The interrogation room is one which has stuffed furniture, pleasant surroundings. The detainee, to be sure, has irons on his legs so that he cannot leave his chair where he is sitting. They are not tying him directly to the chair, but he couldn't get up and walk out. But he is sitting on the chair, and the interrogator is sitting across the room in another chair, and they are having a pleasant conversation. You say: What kind of an interrogation is this? The interrogation is a conversation, and it goes on for an hour, an hour and a half. Then next week there is another conversation that goes on for an hour, an hour and a half, 2 hours, whatever it might be. Out of those conversations, little items begin to slip from the mouth of the detainee. The interrogator is able to take those items and piece them together, and pretty soon, after a few weeks or maybe a month or two, the interrogator knows that goat herder A has just identified goat herder B as an explosives expert high in the level of al-Qaida. Then, based on that information, when goat herder B is in for his interrogation, there is a conversation, and another thing starts to slip. Over a period of months, a pattern of information emerges that makes it possible to identify who is what and where in the whole al- Qaida operation. Understand, the interrogation is not Soviet style to try to beat a confession out of anybody. It is to find out information that can be used in the war against terror. This information is painstakingly put together over a period of time. Pretty soon, the pattern emerges, and the interrogators begin to understand who these people are, what their relationship to each other may be, and what their role was out on the battlefield. One of the things I had not realized until I got there was that as a result of this process, the determination has been made with respect to hundreds of these detainees that they are no longer dangerous, they no longer have any information we need, they are no longer in a position to be dangerous to the United States. When that determination is made, they are released. Hundreds of the detainees at Guantanamo have been released. Many of them have showed up again on the battlefield. Indeed, some of them have been killed by American troops on the battlefield as they have been fighting back, which means the interrogators who decided they were no longer dangerous made a mistake. It turns out they really were dangerous, they really were connected at a higher level than we were able to determine through the interrogator, and they had fooled the interrogator into believing they were innocent bystanders who somehow did not belong there, and they got released and found their way back to Afghanistan, back to the battlefield. Some of them whom we knew well enough from their time in Guantanamo identified on the battlefield were shot and killed by American forces in firefights where they were attacking Americans. One of the things they do at Guantanamo--``they'' being the detainees--is to make every effort to communicate with each other and create conspiracies within the prison. Conspiracies to do what? Conspiracies to create incidents that will create international outrage against the United States. Two weeks before we arrived there, there was one such incident. I had not seen it in the American newspapers. I was told that it was reported in the American newspapers but only in passing. When we got the details from the guards and the administrators of the prison describing the specifics of what had happened, I realized that the story in the American newspapers was very sketchy. Over a period of months, the detainees conspired together to create an incident in the area that was part of the exercise facility. They planned it very carefully. They worked together. They complied with all of the rules in the prison that would allow them greater freedom because as the commandant of the prison said to us: I don't have very many sticks; I only have carrots. To get people to cooperate, if they abide by the rules they lay down, we give them greater freedom, we give them greater opportunities. So these people would comply in every way until they could get to a circumstance where they could talk to each other, be on the exercise field, and hatch their plan. Finally, this is what they did. They put up some screens in the form of clothing or some kind of cover so that the guards, for a short period of time, could not see what they were doing in this room. In that period of time, they pulled down the fluorescent tubes from the light fixtures in the ceiling so that they could use them as weapons. At the same time, they covered the floor with a variety of liquids, their purpose was to make the floor as slippery as possible. Then when the guard came in to see what was going on because the screens had gone up, as he walked in, suddenly he was standing on liquids that were slippery so that he couldn't get his footing very well, and they were attacking him with the fluorescent tubes as weapons, trying to create a significant incident. Fortunately, he was able to keep his footing. He was able to pull out his weapon. He was able to gain control of the situation, and the rest of the guards were alerted fast enough to come in before it turned into serious injury. But the American guard came very close to serious injury. Their hope was, as nearly as the interrogators could figure out, to provoke the Americans into killing one of them. Their hope was to create a circumstance where there would be a death in Guantanamo that would create a worldwide outcry of outrage against the brutal Americans in this prison and thereby make their political point. There were many other examples which were given to us of attacks on the guards by the prisoners in circumstances, again, that are not appropriate to discuss in this setting but that are thoroughly disgusting and outrageous in terms of the violation of the person of the guards involved. On one occasion where it was particularly outrageous, it was a young woman who had joined the Navy and was in her first assignment doing her best to patrol up and down an aisle between the cells. In this case, the cells had screens on them through which items could be thrown. They were thrown at her and in her face. Their commanding officer said to her: Go take a shower and take the afternoon off, to recover from this horrendous kind of experience for her. She said: I will take the shower, I will get a clean uniform, but I will come back. I will not let them intimidate me to say I can no longer walk my patrol. That is the kind of valor and integrity we have from the Americans who are there policing these people. I could go on about other things we discovered. The primary health care problem the detainees have in Guantanamo is obesity. They are fed so well and they have no control on how much they eat; they can use whatever they want from the food as they come into the commissary. The doctors and the nurses who are there to take care of them say we have a problem of overweight with every one of them. They have never had this much food available to them in their lives. They are all looked after. Many of them came with significant health care problems off the battlefield, and it is the American medical corps that has made them well and whole. Why do I dwell on all of this about the nature of the prisoners? Because I am sympathetic with those Americans who say: We don't want these people in our prisons. And indeed we don't--not because of a ``not in my backyard'' syndrome, but guards who are trained to deal with the kinds of prisoners who show up in American prisons now are not prepared to deal with people who are potential suicides to make a point, people who will deliberately provoke the guard in the hope that they will get killed or seriously injured in order to make an international incident. This is not your average automobile stealer. This is not even your average drug dealer. This is someone who has a political agenda and sees the prison in America as the stage on which that agenda can be acted out. To put that prisoner into an American prison where they are going to be rubbing shoulders with other convicts who have absolutely no idea what they are getting into and call upon guards to deal with them who have no idea what they are getting into is seriously not a good idea. Where do you keep people like this? You keep them in a facility that is designed to deal with them. You keep them with guards who are trained to deal with them. And you use the facility to get the information they can give you to be helpful in the war on terror. That is what the prison at Guantanamo was built to become, and that is what it is. If the President of the United States now decides that keeping Guantanamo open is a political embarrassment with other countries in the world and it becomes necessary for us in our diplomacy to close Guantanamo, I say that is his decision. The Constitution gives him the responsibility of foreign affairs, and I will respect that decision. But as a Member of the Congress, I don't want to fund that decision until I know what he has in mind as an alternative place to put them. The idea of breaking them up and scattering them around the United States and letting them go to ordinary prisons--be they Federal, State, or local--in the United States is to ignore who they are and ignore what they can do and ignore the challenge they represent to law enforcement and penitentiary personnel in America's existing prisons. So that is why I applaud the chairman in his decision to say we are going to put this off. We are going to delay the time when Guantanamo will be closed until we have a logical place to put them. Because right now, if you want to describe the logical place to put these prisoners at this time, in this particular struggle with al-Qaida and the rest of the terrorists, the logical place is where they are right now. If it means keeping Guantanamo prison for an extra year or an extra 2 years or whatever it takes to get an intelligent alternative, I say, let's do that. Because the intelligent alternative does not exist at the moment. I hear no plans being drawn to create it in the future. I think we owe it to those Americans who would otherwise have to deal with it if the U.S. Navy doesn't, to say we are not going to turn them over to you until you have a legitimate and well-thought-out plan as to the way to deal with it. It is for that reason, again, that I congratulate the chairman and the committee on the decision to withhold this funding until such a plan has been made available to us. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, we are in the midst of a nomination discussion, and that takes place in the midst of a health care discussion. Last night, the House and Senate conferees struck an agreement on the budget resolution that will clear the way for final votes later this week, but it includes reconciliation instructions for health care and student loan forms which are quite controversial. We are told the reconciliation would not be used until after October 15, and some might find that reassuring. I am not one of those who does because if we are going to deal with the health care problem, we must recognize that it is enormously complex. Health care spending is projected to be 17.6 percent of our GDP, which is nearly one-fifth of our economy, and a bill dealing with that is going to have to be scored by the CBO before any committee can report it out. At the moment, there is only one bill with respect to health care that has received a CBO score. It is the bill offered by Senator Wyden and myself, along with 12 cosponsors, known as the Healthy Americans Act. It has been scored by the CBO as revenue-neutral during its first 2 years and then saving money for the Federal Government thereafter. With 12 cosponsors--a mixture of both Republicans and Democrats--it would seem to me that this would be the bill from which we begin our discussions in a truly bipartisan manner, and it would not require the straitjacket of reconciliation to make it possible for the majority to move ahead. We have a score. We have a framework. We have language. It is not perfect. Even some of the cosponsors have indicated that in its present form they might vote against it, but at least it is a place to begin. It is a place to start the conversation. We do not need the kind of enforcement of majority rights that reconciliation would give us. To start over again fresh with a proposal from the administration would mean that a bill has to be drafted--something we have already done; the bill would have to be referred to CBO--something we have already done; CBO would have to go through the difficulties of scoring it--an enormous challenge. I don't believe they would be able to get all that done in a timely fashion. Then we would be told on the floor: Well, we have run out of time. We have to deal with health care so we are going to move to reconciliation as the way to jam the thing through in a hurry. Let's understand right here in the beginning that that kind of activity is not required. Let's turn to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and her role with respect to the health care debate. My normal pattern has always been to say that the President has the right to whomever he wants, and I have not voted against Presidential nominees unless I felt they were completely inappropriate or incapable of carrying out their duties. I have respect for Governor Sebelius. I think she is a valuable and potentially productive appointment for the President, but I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that she is the wrong appointee for this particular assignment. She has backed a partisan process for health care reform. She refuses to support patient safeguards and comparative effectiveness research, and, perhaps most strongly for me, she has already endorsed a Government-run public health care plan, something I would have to vote against. I think most of my colleagues-- if not all of my colleagues on the Republican side--would vote against it, not for partisan reasons but for the flat fact that it doesn't work. We have seen examples of that throughout the world, and we understand it doesn't work. I have constituents who have relatives and friends in Canada who come to me and say: Based on our experience with our relatives and friends in Canada, we absolutely do not want a Canadian system. This is just an anecdote, but it is illustrative of the kind of thing that goes on in the Canadian system where they ration care by delay. They don't ration it by regulation, they simply ration it by delaying the ability of people to get access. As has been reported to me, if you can demonstrate as you go into the Canadian system that there is some problem related to heart disease, you get moved to the head of the line. So some of my constituents have told me that their relatives in Canada have discovered that if they go to see a doctor with a cold or with the flu or with some other problem, they always say, ``And this threatens my potential for heart disease'' in an effort to get ahead of the line and move forward in the Canadian system that would otherwise delay their access to a doctor. If you haven't learned that trick, you wait for 3 months, 6 months, whatever. This is the kind of Government- run public health plan Governor Sebelius has indicated that she would support. There is also the troubling problem that she failed to disclose relevant information to the Finance Committee with respect to her taxes. We have had that happen with other Cabinet nominations, and it has become something of a cause celebre with many Americans who are following this. It has become the butt of jokes on the late-night talk shows. It is unfortunate that she has fallen a victim to that as well. She has also been less than forthcoming with respect to her relationships with some of her political donors. She had a political relationship with a doctor who was involved in partial-birth abortions and was obviously anxious to see to it that he had access to public officials who would support him in that. That is an issue which carries a great deal of influence with my constituents, and it is another one that troubles me. So while I think Governor Sebelius might be well qualified for some other position, I do not intend to support her for this position. As we deal with health care problems, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is a key player in helping us solve this problem, and I believe she carries a little bit too much baggage for this particular assignment. So once again we have the framework for a bipartisan solution. It can be the beginning point of the discussion. A bill has been written around it, and it has been scored by the CBO. Why don't we start with that instead of threatening reconciliation for a whole new program that might start with the administration? I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I call up amendment 954, as modified.

Mr. BENNETT. I have only one copy which I gave the clerk. We found that some of the numbers had been omitted.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, according to CBO, the stimulus bill will spend over $150 billion between fiscal years 2011 and 2014. My amendment will remove that amount from this budget resolution because it seems to me we do not need to fund the same things twice. By reducing the proposed spending amounts in the budget resolution, Congress will be recognizing that we have already passed money to spend in that area. For those who say, yes, but the stimulus is different, we are all hoping that the need for stimulus will be passed by the time we get to 2014 and it will not be stimulative but, rather, inflationary. It is for that reason that I offer the amendment.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I understand from the distinguished Budget Committee chairman that they have accepted this amendment by unanimous consent. Therefore, I congratulate them on their wisdom and thank them. This is a serious amendment, which I hope will survive conference. I am glad to have it accepted. It deals with the tax treatment of charitable contributions. I am happy to have it accepted by the other side so that the Senate is on record saying they want the President's budget not to change the tax treatment of charitable contributions.

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, assuming a voice vote means approval, I am willing to take a voice vote.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I have listened with interest to the comments of the Senator from Arizona. I would like to point out one fact to fellow Senators and to the country: In this proposed budget, there is roughly $2.2 trillion worth of revenue. There is also roughly $2.2 trillion worth of mandatory spending. The mandatory spending eats up all the revenue. That means everything else we spend in a discretionary way--and that includes defense--is going to come out of borrowed money. That is the first time we have ever had that situation outside of wartime. It is a cautionary note. I salute the Senator from Arizona for his remarks. I rise to comment upon an amendment I have submitted, No. 759. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Hatch be added as a cosponsor of the amendment.

Mr. BENNETT. This amendment deals with the tax treatment of charitable contributions. In the trillions of dollars we have been talking about today, it may seem a relatively small amount. But to the people who are involved in it, it becomes a very major issue. It is worth focusing on. As I have said before, I have been called upon by arts organizations in the State of Utah that are very concerned that the contributions that keep them alive have dropped off as a result of the slowing down of the economy. They are hoping they might recover some of that dropoff from Federal dollars. Interestingly enough, the President's proposal calls for a reduction in the tax incentive for people to give money to charitable contributions. So the President is proposing something that will hurt the charities, will cause their income to go down in the name of fiscal responsibility and saying we need more Federal money, so let's change the tax treatment so we get more Federal money from those who would otherwise contribute to charitable contributions, and then turns around and watches the charities come in and say: We have to make that up or we will have to start laying off people. The President talks about saving jobs. The nonprofits provide over 10 million jobs. If they cannot get the money from their contributors and they cannot get the money from the Federal Government, they will lose jobs. It is foolish for us to say: All right, in the name of fiscal responsibility, let's take the money away from the contributors and bring it into the Federal coffers and then, to save the jobs, let's take the money out of the Federal coffers and give it to the charities so the Federal Government becomes the decisionmaker as to which charities get the money rather than the people themselves. Charitable giving is an almost unique American experience. As we look at other countries around the world, they do not have the level of charitable contributions we have. We contribute an enormous amount to nonprofit organizations, and we do it on the basis of what we want to support. We, unlike European nations, do not have governmental support in the form of expenditures made to churches. You go to churches in other countries, and it is the government that supports them. Their pews are empty by comparison to the religious services held in the United States because people don't take it seriously. Here the Government stays out of funding churches and says: If you want to have a viable church, a viable religious experience, you have to provide sufficient incentive to the people who align themselves with your church that they will support it out of their own pockets. That is what has made religion so viable and vigorous in America, because people do support it out of their own pockets, and it does not have a direct Government expenditure, but it does have Government approval of those kind of expenditures in the tax treatment of charitable contributions, tax treatment which the President now says he wants to change. That is a foolish thing to do, and that is why I have offered the amendment, along with my cosponsors. I hope the amendment will be voted on in appropriate fashion tomorrow. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT of Utah

Mr. BENNETT of Utah. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues Senators Bingaman, Hatch, Udall of New Mexico and Kyl as we introduce the Indian School Bus Route Safety Reauthorization Act of 2009. This legislation reauthorizes an important program that has served the Navajo Nation and specifically Navajo children since 1998. The funding provided in this program is used exclusively to maintain roads that provide bus routes for Navajo children. Two thirds of the 9,700 miles of the Navajo public roads are unpaved, dirt roads. Many of these roads are traveled everyday by children heading to school on the bus. When the rough rains and snows of winter hit, the deficient roads are frequently impassable. Damage caused by winds and rains can create huge holes and gullies that often make the roads unfit for a school bus even in good weather! This program was started in 1998 to ensure the local governments, working in partnership with the Navajo, are able to maintain the roads and ensure the school bus routes are usable and in good condition. Before children can learn at school, they have to get to school! Congress answered the urgent call for help by providing direct funding to the counties that contain the Navajo reservation to help ensure that children on the reservation can get to and from their public schools. This program was reauthorized in SAFETEA-LU in 2005 and we urge our colleagues in the Senate to join us in supporting this important project again in 2009. This bill provides for $2 million annually to be shared equally among Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. The funding goes directly to the counties that contain the Navajo reservation. These funds can only be used on roads that are located within or that lead to the reservation and that are used by school buses. I want to take a moment and pay tribute to San Juan County, UT. San Juan County has done a commendable job of working with their Navajo neighbors to ensure a strong working relationship and to truly serve the Navajo members of their community. The Navajo Nation comprises 40 percent of the San Juan County land area and the county maintains 611 miles of roads on the Navajo Nation. Of these, 357 miles are dirt, 164 miles are gravel and only 90 miles are paved. On the reservation, the county has three high schools, two elementary schools, two BIA boarding schools and four pre-schools. The funds reauthorized in this bill will allow San Juan County to continue their commitment to ensuring busses can reach the students and thus the students will be safely transported to school. I am proud to again bring this authorization before the Senate and I look forward to working with my colleagues here and in the House to ensure that this important measure is included in the upcoming transportation authorization. I thank my colleague Mr. Bingaman for his strong work on this legislation and look forward to working closely with him as well as Chairman Boxer and Ranking Member Inhofe of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Chairman Baucus and Ranking Member Voinovich of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee to ensure that this legislation is again included in the comprehensive 6-year transportation reauthorization.

Mr. BENNETT of Utah

Mr. BENNETT of Utah. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues Senators Bingaman, Hatch, Udall of New Mexico and Kyl as we introduce the Indian School Bus Route Safety Reauthorization Act of 2009. This legislation reauthorizes an important program that has served the Navajo Nation and specifically Navajo children since 1998. The funding provided in this program is used exclusively to maintain roads that provide bus routes for Navajo children. Two thirds of the 9,700 miles of the Navajo public roads are unpaved, dirt roads. Many of these roads are traveled everyday by children heading to school on the bus. When the rough rains and snows of winter hit, the deficient roads are frequently impassable. Damage caused by winds and rains can create huge holes and gullies that often make the roads unfit for a school bus even in good weather! This program was started in 1998 to ensure the local governments, working in partnership with the Navajo, are able to maintain the roads and ensure the school bus routes are usable and in good condition. Before children can learn at school, they have to get to school! Congress answered the urgent call for help by providing direct funding to the counties that contain the Navajo reservation to help ensure that children on the reservation can get to and from their public schools. This program was reauthorized in SAFETEA-LU in 2005 and we urge our colleagues in the Senate to join us in supporting this important project again in 2009. This bill provides for $2 million annually to be shared equally among Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. The funding goes directly to the counties that contain the Navajo reservation. These funds can only be used on roads that are located within or that lead to the reservation and that are used by school buses. I want to take a moment and pay tribute to San Juan County, UT. San Juan County has done a commendable job of working with their Navajo neighbors to ensure a strong working relationship and to truly serve the Navajo members of their community. The Navajo Nation comprises 40 percent of the San Juan County land area and the county maintains 611 miles of roads on the Navajo Nation. Of these, 357 miles are dirt, 164 miles are gravel and only 90 miles are paved. On the reservation, the county has three high schools, two elementary schools, two BIA boarding schools and four pre-schools. The funds reauthorized in this bill will allow San Juan County to continue their commitment to ensuring busses can reach the students and thus the students will be safely transported to school. I am proud to again bring this authorization before the Senate and I look forward to working with my colleagues here and in the House to ensure that this important measure is included in the upcoming transportation authorization. I thank my colleague Mr. Bingaman for his strong work on this legislation and look forward to working closely with him as well as Chairman Boxer and Ranking Member Inhofe of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Chairman Baucus and Ranking Member Voinovich of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee to ensure that this legislation is again included in the comprehensive 6-year transportation reauthorization.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. I have listened with interest to my friend from Illinois where everything works, every proposal makes sense, every Federal appropriation is carefully handled, and every citizen of the State of Illinois personally prospers. That would be a great world. I hope we can get to it. I don't think this budget takes us there. I rise to discuss another aspect of this budget, to discuss amendment No. 759, which I have submitted. I ask unanimous consent that Senators Thune and Ensign be added as cosponsors.

Mr. BENNETT. This amendment has to do with the tax treatment of charitable contributions. The budget the Senator from Illinois discussed has to be paid for. One of the ways President Obama has proposed that it be paid for is to change the tax treatment of charitable contributions for those evil people in America who earn more than $250,000 a year. I say ``evil'' in a sardonic sense because, in fact, we all recognize they are essential to the economy. Without them, we would not have the tremendous amount of income tax revenue we do have. We understand that they are paying the lion's share of the income tax. We should not demonize them. But some people have in their response to this and say they earn too much, and we should not allow them to accumulate too much. One way we are going to make sure they don't accumulate too much is to see to it that they are not allowed to deduct the same percentage of their income taxes for charitable contributions that other people are. Let's talk about this for a moment. Taxpayers with incomes in excess of $250,000 contributed $81 billion to charities, according to the IRS. That is an average contribution of $22,000. The people with incomes below that have made an average contribution of $2,700, nearly 10 times less. So the charitable contributions made in this country clearly come in the bulk from those who earn over $250,000 who would see the tax benefit from making that contribution go down if President Obama has his way. I have two interesting personal comments to make about that, one from my son who was having a debate with one of his liberal friends. His liberal friend said to him: Jim, you don't earn over $250,000 so this would not affect you. Why are you so concerned? He responded: I work for a nonprofit. If their contributions are cut as a result of this, it will affect me. More importantly, it will affect those people whom this nonprofit serves. I take my son Jim as an example. The nonprofits in this country employ 10.2 million people. When we talk about this budget saving jobs, we have to ask: How many of that 10.2 million people will lose their jobs as they see the contributions go down as a result of this change in tax treatment? President Obama says: You should make the contribution regardless of the tax treatment. The tax treatment should not stand in the way of your doing good work. I agree with that. But if the tax treatment holds down the amount of money you have available to do good work, it will impact it. George Washington made this comment with respect to charitable contributions: Let your heart feel for affliction and distress of everyone and let your hand give in proportion to your purse. What is happening is that President Obama is suggesting that the proportion of your purse will go down as a result of Federal action. Now I go to the second personal experience that comes out of this. I have long been known as one who is a strong supporter of the arts. I supported the arts when some members of my party wanted to eliminate them, particularly the National Endowment for the Arts. I was here on this floor to argue in favor of that and have been happy to see the arts amount go up each year since we saved it as a result of the action we did in the Senate. Our friends in the other body had zeroed it out in their budget, and we did our best and succeeded in saving it. A group of arts people have been to see me this week, thanked me for the work I have done--and I thanked them for that--and then described their problem. Their problem is, of course, that their contributions are down. Why? Because the economy is down. So they are having to lay people off. They are saying: Can't we get an even bigger Federal contribution to make up for the fact that the private contributions are down? Step back from those two comments and see how ironic it is. The President is saying: We are going to change the tax treatment so there will be less incentive for private contributions. The people who live on the basis of these contributions are saying: Our contributions are down. Will you please increase the tax contribution so we can make up the difference? The President's proposal sets up a situation which takes away with one hand and then presumably gives with another. There is a proposal in this deficit for more money for the arts. I support that proposal, as I say, because I have always been in favor of some money for the arts, but not for enough money from the Federal taxpayer to make up the amount that will be lost if we follow President Obama's proposal. My amendment will deal with that. Over one-third of the charitable contributions that are paid go to faith-based organizations, to churches. We have always recognized the importance of religion in this country. Freedom of religion is the first item mentioned in the first amendment. The Founding Fathers thought that freedom of religion and saying that Congress shall in no way interfere with religions was the most important thing they could say in the first amendment. It is there ahead of freedom of speech, ahead of freedom of the press, ahead of the right to petition the Government for a redress of your grievances. We are going to say to those faith-based organizations, all right, the large donors who make the contributions to the church universities or to the major church activities, they are going to be discouraged by virtue of this tax treatment President Obama has proposed. Yes, you can still pass the plate for the small parishioners. And I do not wish in any way to denigrate the importance of the widow's mite, but anyone who has ever run a major fundraising organization knows that you start out with the big contributions first, and then you try to add to those the smaller contributions and get everybody involved. I come from a constituency that has a long history of faith-based contributions and that has used those contributions for tremendously valuable purposes. Originally, to bring people to Utah, they organized what was known as the Perpetual Emigration Fund. People of means put money into that fund so people who could not afford to come to Utah could borrow from it; and then, when they were there, they would pay it back. That is why it was called the Perpetual Emigration Fund. We do not need that anymore. We now have what is known as the Perpetual Education Fund. People of means put substantial amounts into this fund, which then makes loans to those who cannot get an education otherwise. We heard the Senator from Illinois talk about the importance of educational loans and the importance of Pell grants. This is a fund that makes loans of all kinds, primarily to people at the bottom of the economic ladder, to give them a trade, to help them get the skills they need to support their families--mainly young people who do not have families yet and may not be starting families because they are afraid they cannot afford it. The large contributors who contribute to this fund are now being told: Well, we still need your money. We still need this effort for all of these young people who need this benefit. But the Federal Government is going to take a little more off the top than they used to. For those who say: Well, I have only so much to give, and I have to reduce it in order to be able to pay the extra tax, it is the Perpetual Education Fund that will pay the price. So we have submitted this amendment that would make it clear that nothing in this budget could be used to put in place the President's proposal, and I hope when the time comes, all of my Senators will vote for it.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, President Obama's budget is sending mixed messages to the American people. I know he faces a very difficult time, as do we all. I know he is trying to get the best counsel he can, and I applaud him for that. I do not have a degree in macroeconomics and I know some of the finest macroeconomists in the country are on President Obama's team. I do not know anybody, however, on President Obama's team who has ever run a small business. So, if I may be so presumptuous, I would like to share some of the realities of running a small business with the President's team and see if we can't understand why many of the things that are in the President's budget, in fact, will have directly the opposite effect than he wants. It is the goal of the administration to increase job creation and spur economic growth. That is a legitimate goal. However, we must understand this about how you increase job creation: You must be sure small businesses are properly taken care of because small businesses provide more than half the jobs Americans hold and small businesses create the new jobs. When large businesses start downsizing, buying people out and laying people off, where do they go? In many instances, those who do not go on unemployment end up in small businesses. If I may offer my own credentials, I have run businesses that were as small as two people--myself and my secretary. I was recruited to be the CEO--a very high-powered title--of a business that had only four employees. I made number five. We grew that business to the point that there were thousands of employees and the business was ultimately listed on the New York Stock Exchange. So I offer that to the macroeconomists on President Obama's team, to say that if you want to increase jobs and if you want to increase economic growth and thereby increase tax revenue to the Federal Government, you should pay attention to small business. One of the worst things that can happen to you when you are trying to grow a small business is to make money. That sounds counterintuitive, but it is true. Why? Because you need that money to finance your growth, but the Government shows up and says we want ours in taxes. So you want the tax rate to be as low as possible. The business that I described, that went from four employees to the New York Stock Exchange, was built during what the New York Times and other critics called the decade of greed because the top tax rate was 28 percent, and they thought that was terrible. It was only 28 percent, the top marginal tax rate? That is awful. That only goes for the greedy Americans. That meant that for every dollar we earned in that business, we got to keep 72 cents of it, which we could use to finance the growth of the business. That business was grown with internally generated funds. Yes, we had a bank line and yes we drew on the bank line, but it was the internally generated funds that made it possible for us to create those thousands of jobs. Because there were a small number of us in that business, we took the business income onto our personal tax returns. That is allowed under the Tax Code, under what is known as Chapter S, under the Tax Code. We were an S corporation. So while my tax return showed the amount I was paid while I was the CEO of that company, it also showed my share of the profits of the company. None of that came to me. All of that was reinvested in the company. But for tax purposes, it showed up on my tax return. So I, very quickly, for tax purposes, was an American earning more than $250,000 a year. I was not, but my tax returns showed that I was. Now, the top tax rate was 28 percent. This was while Ronald Reagan was President. If we were to start that business today and the President's budget were to pass and the President's Tax Code were to be enforced, we would now be paying not 28 percent but 42 percent because you would go to 39.5 percent and then you would have the other add-ons connected with Medicare and the other things that have been changed. I do not believe the business would have survived. I think that tax burden would have been so heavy that we would not be able to make it. Let me give you the numbers from my own State, to show how important this is. In the State of Utah, we have 68,758 small businesses that employ less than 500 people; we have 65,693 small businesses that employ less than 50 people, and we have 61,057 small businesses that employ less than 20 people. So the number of people employed by small businesses in Utah--this rules out the farmers, this is not agriculture--is 760,096 in businesses with less than 500 people each. That is 61 percent of Utah's entire employment population. Now, if you increase the taxes on all of those people on the assumption that they are rich, you increase the taxes on every one of those businesses because they are rich. Look, the owners of the businesses are filing tax returns to show over $250,000 so they must all be Wall Street brokers and traders. Right. Now, they are people who are struggling to make the business grow, struggling to provide the jobs. Make no mistake, the tax increases proposed by President Obama's budget will hurt Utah's small businesses, hundreds of thousands of our employees, our State's economy, and that means, at large, our national economy. So it is a mixed message. The goal is job creation, but the budget will hurt the greatest engine of job creation which is small businesses. Second, the administration's goal is to increase service in America and invest in the nonprofit sector. That sounds wonderful. Then they turn around and say: If you invest in the nonprofit sector, you, American citizens, we are going to take away a portion of your tax deduction for the gift you give to charity. This is a double hit. If I am running my small business I have just described, the tax man shows up and gives me less than I can give to charity, and then if I do give some to charity, the tax man shows up and takes more of that away from me by eliminating part of my tax deduction for charity. That is a mixed message. We want you to do this, but we are creating an economic incentive that makes it difficult for you and will penalize you. Now, finally, the administration has the goal to protect the majority of Americans from tax increases. The President has said over and over that he will not increase taxes for 95 percent of Americans. That sounds wonderful until you turn around and recognize that he is proposing a new energy tax at the gas pump and on your utility bill that will hit 100 percent of Americans. So on one side: Well, we are not going to hit you on the income tax side. But we are going to take it away from you on the gas pump and utility side. This is because he wants to create a cap-and-trade program. Other countries have cap-and-trade programs. I was in the United Kingdom. I talked to the people about theirs. As they were outlining how it works, I said to them: Do your ratepayers understand they are paying this? This is not money that is created in Heaven. The answer I got was: Well, they are beginning to. We all saw the reaction of Americans when gas was $4 a gallon at the pump, and we all felt the heat as our constituents came us to and said: You have got to do something about this; this is far too much for us to pay for gasoline. Then when the prices came down, that political outrage began to disappear. However, if you do cap and trade in the way the President wants, those prices will start to creep up again. It will be at the gas pump, it will be at the utility. So it is another mixed message. We have three mixed messages. We want to create jobs, but we are going to tax the greatest engine of creating jobs. We want people to get involved in national service, but we are going to tax them and penalize them if they do. We want Americans, ordinary Americans, to go without tax increases, but we are going to increase their taxes on energy and hit them with a fund that will amount to approximately $650 billion, by virtue of the carbon tax that will come through the cap- and-trade program. What is the consequence of all of this? My colleagues have talked about the fact that the record spending is going to double the national debt in 5 years, triple it in 10 years. How is the administration going to pay for that? In the ways I have described. They are going to do it through increased taxes. There is one last thought I want to leave everyone. We can determine here in the Congress how much we spend. We cannot determine here in the Congress how much we take in. We can pass a tax law that will project a certain amount that will come in, but that projection will not come to pass if the economy is not strong. Money does not come from the budget. Money comes from the economy. If the economy is weakened, if the generations of economic growth are weakened in the ways I have described, we will not have the money with which to pay the debt. So we come back to that which the distinguished Republican leader has said at the beginning of this debate: If you take the President's budget all in all, it spends too much, it taxes too much. And when the taxes do not cover what is being spent, it borrows too much. I may not be a macroeconomist, but I have a long history of running a business and knowing how devastating the tax man's arrival can be to that business. I have a history of creating jobs, jobs that pay taxes as the employees are compensated. I know this aspect of our economy is one that the Obama administration would be well advised to pay attention to. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak up to 10 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, for the benefit of the Senate, I would like to discuss with the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water the congressional intent with respect to the funding provided by the pending legislation, H.R. 1105, regarding the Department of Energy's loan guarantee program. The pending legislation provides a total of $47 billion for eligible projects pursuant to title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, to remain available until committed, of which $18.5 billion shall be for nuclear power facilities. In order to address budget scoring issues raised by the Congressional Budget Office, regarding third party financing, the conferees included legislation recommended by CBO counsel. CBO staff believes there is concern that the Federal Government might incur mandatory spending as a result of entering into power purchase agreements for energy projects that also receive loan guarantees from the Department of Energy. While CBO acknowledges that this scoring issue is separate from the 1-percent subsidy cost that CBO has assessed the title XVII since fiscal year 2007, the conferees were obliged to include language drafted by CBO that would mitigate the possible scoring impact. The language is drafted to capture as many possible third party financing options and as a result has created several unintended consequences. Specifically, the omnibus language could inadvertently have an adverse impact on a number of pending projects, for numerous title XVII eligible projects including the American Centrifuge Plant, ACP. The ACP project will employ more than 3,000 people in Ohio and thousands of employees with contracts to build this facility including ATK and Hexcel located in Utah. First, I would like to thank the chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water for his work since taking over this subcommittee in 2007 to support the loan guarantee program and his willingness to find the necessary resources, when budget requests were insufficient. I know the chairman is familiar with this frustrating interpretation and ask if he would be willing to work with me and others to find a solution to these inadvertent problems and to correct them in the first possible legislation following the enactment of this legislation? Would the chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water also agree with me that the Department of Energy should therefore continue to work on the pending loan guarantee applications for those projects which could be adversely impacted by this legislation if not corrected, such as those for renewable projects and for USEC's loan guarantee application for its ACP project?