Jeff Bingaman

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me just get the attention of Senators for a minute. We made good progress on this bill yesterday, and then, of course, we just had a vote this morning. We are anxious to try to complete this bill before this briefing which is scheduled with General Petraeus at 4 o'clock this afternoon, if we possibly can. So we would be very appreciative if Members would come to the floor with any amendments they have and offer those amendments and take a short time to explain them. For any of them it appears we can accept, we are glad to try to accept them. Some we will not be able to accept. But we are anxious to get any additional amendments any Senator wishes to have considered brought to the Senate floor as soon as possible. I believe both Senator Domenici and Senator Alexander want to say a word, and then I believe Senator Sanders wishes to speak to his amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that on Wednesday, today, April 25, at 2 o'clock, the Senate proceed to debate concurrently three Coburn amendments, Nos. 918, 921, and 922; that there be a total of 60 minutes of debate, divided as follows: 40 minutes under the control of Senator Coburn and 20 minutes under the control of myself or my designee; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to each amendment in the order listed in this agreement; that there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided as specified above prior to the second and third votes; that no amendments be in order to any of the amendments covered under this agreement prior to the vote; and that the second and third votes in the series be 10 minutes in duration.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I am glad to accommodate the Senator from West Virginia. He asked if I would restate the unanimous consent request. I am glad to do that. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that on Wednesday, April 25, at 2 p.m., the Senate proceed to debate concurrently three Coburn amendments, Nos. 918, 921, and 922; that there be a total of 60 minutes of debate, divided as follows: 40 minutes under the control of Senator Coburn and 20 minutes under the control of Senator Bingaman or his designee; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to each amendment in the order listed in this agreement; that there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided as specified above prior to the second and third votes; that no amendments be in order to any of the amendments covered under this agreement prior to the vote; and that the second and third votes in this series be 10 minutes in duration.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for his courtesy. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator DeMint be recognized to offer amendment No. 930; that there be 20 minutes of debate prior to a vote in relation to the amendment, with the time equally divided and controlled between Senator DeMint and myself or our designees; that no amendments be in order to the amendment prior to the vote; that at the use or yielding back of time, the amendment be set aside to recur at a time to be determined by the majority leader, following consultation with the Republican leader.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for coming to the floor and making his argument for this amendment at this time. He is right, under this unanimous consent agreement the plan would be to add it to a package of other amendments we are voting on later this afternoon at a time chosen by the majority leader. I will speak briefly in opposition to the amendment at this point. I know the Senator from South Carolina has had to leave the floor, but I do think it best in order that anyone who is following our discussions here on the floor can know the problem I have with the amendment. First, I agree with the concern about Congress stepping in and diverting funds from the good purposes we lay out in this legislation and diverting those to other, more parochial applications. That is a valid concern. I object to that and I hope we can prevent that from happening in the future. But I would argue this amendment is not the way to keep that from happening. This amendment sets up a unique process. It basically says you cannot bring an appropriations bill to the Senate floor unless you have 60 votes. Any appropriations bill you try to bring to the floor is subject to a 60-vote point of order if it contains in it what is described as a congressional earmark. You say, What is meant by a congressional earmark? It goes on to say that is any provision or report language--if you have a report that accompanies the appropriations bill, that is report language--that provides or authorizes or recommends a specific amount of funding or discretionary authority or credit to an entity. That is pretty broad. Essentially what we would be saying is the Appropriations Committee, for example, if they determine--one example the Senator from Tennessee and I were talking about today as we were discussing this amendment was, if we said we want $60 million spent for the supercomputing program and the Appropriations Committee said, no, it ought to be $80 million, an extra $20 million for the supercomputing programs in a particular agency of the Federal Government, that is in fact within the definition of ``earmarked Congressional funding here,'' so a 60-vote point of order could be raised against that provision. I don't think the Congress wants to go to that extreme in tying its own hands. You would have essentially two sets of rules: one set of rules that would apply to most appropriations bills and a different set of rules that would apply to appropriations bills that would cover the subjects that are the subject of this legislation--that would be Health and Human Services, because there is a substantial amount in this legislation that goes to the Department of Education; that would be the Commerce, Science and Justice legislation. Let's see, what is the other--the Energy and Water appropriations bill, of course. Those are appropriations bills that would be subject to this different and more strenuous point of order requirement. This is well intentioned, I am certain. I have no doubt about the good intentions of the Senator from South Carolina. We have all been concerned about the overuse of earmarks in the Congress in recent years. I know there is a great deal going on to require more transparency, to require that all these things be out in public so we can know what is being voted on and we can object. That is the best shield. He talked about an earmark shield. That is the best shield. It is the eternal vigilance of people here in Congress, paying attention to what is in the bills and insisting only those things are in the bills that in fact further a good public purpose. So I do object. I yield the remainder of the time that is reserved in opposition to this amendment. But before I yield the floor, let me do another consent agreement. Amendments Nos. 931, As Modified; 923, As Modified; 941, and 960 There are four amendments that have been filed that relate to the Commerce Committee's jurisdiction and that have been cleared on both sides of the aisle. There is a modification at the desk to amendment No. 931 by Senator McCaskill. She spoke to that amendment a few minutes ago. There is a modification at the desk to amendment No. 923 by Senator Obama. There is an amendment No. 941 by Senators Snowe and Kohl. There is an amendment No. 960 by Senators Levin and Voinovich. I ask unanimous consent that these amendments, as modified if modified, be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me, to alert my colleagues as to the state of activity here at the current time, say what it is, as I understand it. We have a unanimous consent agreement to consider three amendments Senator Coburn of Oklahoma wishes to offer. That will begin at 2 o'clock this afternoon. We are not certain if we will require a rollcall vote on all three of those amendments or only two of those amendments, but that will be determined in the future. We also, of course, now have a unanimous consent agreement to have a vote on the DeMint amendment we were discussing. That will be scheduled presumably after we have the votes on the Coburn amendments or in some sequence around that same time. I am informed we also have an amendment Senator Inhofe wishes to bring to the floor and to discuss and offer, which I hope can be done between now and the 2 o'clock time for beginning the discussion on the Coburn amendments. I see Senator Inhofe is on the floor. If he is agreeable to going ahead with his amendment at this time, he could argue in favor of his amendment, and then I will have some arguments against his amendment, and there may be others also wishing to speak against his amendment, and we could hopefully schedule a vote on that as well. That is a total of five amendments I am aware of that may require rollcall votes. I hope we can get all of those amendments debated and scheduled for votes and voted on before we have the briefing at 4 o'clock, the briefing by General Petraeus. If we were able to do that, I don't know why we couldn't also go to final passage before 3 o'clock, or if there were a problem in doing that, of course, we could come back after the briefing and have final passage. But I know of no other amendments. If Senators are sitting in their offices or their staffs are sitting in their offices with other amendments they intend to offer to this legislation, we urge they come to the floor and offer those amendments in the very near future. I will defer to my colleague from Tennessee for his observations, but as far as I am informed, once we have disposed of these five amendments, we will have disposed of all of the amendments people have insisted on having rollcall votes on. With that, I yield the floor and I will allow my colleague from Tennessee to speak.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator's willingness to consider modifications in the amendment. We are still checking with particular Senators who have expressed an interest in this on our side. It will still be a few minutes before we are in a position to say whether this is still an amendment on which we would require a vote. I hope this is something on which we can agree not to have to have a rollcall vote. Perhaps we will know in the next few minutes. Amendment No. 905, as Modified While I have the floor, let me indicate there is an amendment which has been filed which relates to the Energy Committee's jurisdiction. It has been cleared on both sides. It is a modification that is at the desk to amendment No. 905 by Senator Obama. I ask unanimous consent that this amendment, as modified, be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. BINGAMAN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I am informed by the chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee, whose jurisdiction this would be under, that the amendment Senator Inhofe has offered, amendment No. 955, as modified, which is now at the desk, is acceptable to both sides at this point. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be brought up, agreed to, and that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I will speak briefly on the amendment. I know the Senator has two other amendments he wants to also discuss, and there may be others who want to come back and say something about this amendment. I urge my colleagues not to support this amendment. Under the rules of procedure that we follow in the Senate, an appropriation can be objected to if the underlying activity that the money is being appropriated for has not been authorized. So we try to pass authorizing bills. That is what this legislation is. This is authorizing legislation. If everything were perfect around this place, then we would always get our authorizing bills reauthorized in time so that there would never be a lapse. Unfortunately, that is not the case. There are a lot of authorizing bills that we have allowed to lapse. That does not mean that we quit funding those activities. We, in fact, continue funding those activities through the appropriations process until Congress organizes itself and passes a new reauthorization. But the old reauthorization remains in place until there is something new to replace it or until there is some conscious decision. These are not new activities, by and large, we are talking about in this legislation. A lot of this is activities that we have done for a long time, and we are trying to, once again, authorize them. We are trying to increase the amounts available for these different activities, whether it is science education, scientific research-- whatever the issue is. If the amendment of the Senator is adopted, my understanding is that effective on October 1, 2011, there is no authorization at that point from then on for any of this bill. Therefore, any Congress that tries to appropriate the funds, a point of order could be raised that this is trying to appropriate money for an activity for which there has not been an authorization. I think that would be unwise. That is my basic view. I certainly favor the Congress performing its appropriate job of coming back by the time these authorizations are completed, the various dollar figures we have in this bill, and looking at this again and doing a rewrite of the authorization. That is what we are trying to do with No Child Left Behind right now. I can tell you that before No Child Left Behind was ever enacted, there was a year or 2 years where the Elementary and Secondary Education Act essentially had expired by its language. There was no sunset such as the Senator is recommending here, but the 5-year authorization had expired. Yet we could go ahead because the underlying language still had force and effect. I also have great questions as to the legal effect of this amendment. Here we say the provisions of the act and the amendments made by the act shall cease to have force and effect on or after October 1, 2011. Some of the provisions of the act are repeals of other acts or repeals of other provisions. Are we saying that in one bill we would be saying we are repealing this provision, but we are also saying as of October 1, 2011, the repeal no longer has any force and effect and the provision comes back into effect? I think there are all sorts of confusion that would be sown by trying to adopt this amendment. I oppose it myself. As I say, I think there are others who wish to speak on it before we get to a vote. I know the Senator has two other amendments he wishes to address. I yield the floor, and yield to my colleague from New Mexico, Senator Domenici.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me speak, again regretfully, against the Senator's amendment, and I do so first on behalf of Senator Inouye as chairman of the Commerce Committee. This is, of course, within the jurisdiction of the Commerce Committee. The provisions of the amendment relate to the Department of Commerce and NOAA, and the statement I have been given by Senator Inouye is pretty straightforward and says the amendment, while possibly based on good intentions, actually causes substantial harm to numerous NOAA programs and activities and missions. Some of the specifics cited are that the provision requiring that audits be posted on the Web within 60 days does not contain safeguards for proprietary information that may have been gathered as a result of the audit. Also, a concern has been raised about the prohibition in section B on the use of NOAA funds for meetings. The provision in the amendment says: No funds made available by the administrator through a grant or contract can be used by the person who received the grant or the contract to attend any conference other than a conference related to training or routine meetings of officers or employees of the administration. One of the basic activities scientists and engineers engage in is doing their research and then presenting that research at conferences so they can have reaction from their colleagues and their peers and have an interchange about the validity of the work they have done. This would prohibit the use of funds for that purpose, which is one reason it would be objectionable. The other concern that has been raised is we are setting up a separate procedure here with regard to handling conflict of interest issues at NOAA which would be separate and apart from the general procedures the Federal Government has with regard to grant review processes. The thought is that those general processes should be made to apply and we should not be writing into law, particularly as an amendment to this legislation, some kind of separate provision and requirement with regard to just this one agency within the Department of Commerce under the jurisdiction of the Commerce Committee. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Michigan.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

Mr. BINGAMAN. How much time on the side of the Senator from Oklahoma?

Mr. BINGAMAN. Let me go ahead and use the remainder of our time in opposition to the amendments, and then the Senator from Oklahoma can use as much additional time as he would like, obviously. I agree with the comments the Senator from Michigan has just made about the ATP program. I do think one of our weaknesses historically, particularly in recent decades in this country, is although we have done reasonably well on basic research, we have not done as well in taking that basic research the next step and getting it to a point where it can be commercialized and manufacturing can occur in this country. I have a chart I was going to show. Let me put up the chart and try to make the point as to where the advanced technology program is in the development cycle, as I understand it. This chart tries to point out the venture capital funds focused on late-stage research. There are five different categories represented on this chart: seed funding, startup funding, other early stage, expansion, and then later stage. Regarding venture capital funding, the higher bars on the chart, of course, are in the later stage. The seed funding and the startup funding are the two areas on which the Advanced Technology Program concentrates. It does so in a way which is intended to get the very best results. These programs are peer-reviewed. There is real competition, rigorous peer-reviewed competition in the allocation of this money. The funds go to those researchers and those technologists who are most likely to be able to take these basic discoveries and turn them into commercial products and commercial services. There are many examples of successes in this area. Unfortunately, we do not have as many today that we can point to, relative to the rest of the world, as we used to have. The competition, frankly, between ourselves and many of our competitors, is very severe at this point. When you go to a country such as Japan and look at the extent of the Government's support of this kind of technology development, it is extremely impressive. We shy away from that. We say we are not going to help; it is up to our individual companies to do the best they can. Sometimes they do well, sometimes they do poorly. But the Advanced Technology Program helps them to do better. It has been a very good investment. The Academies of Science did a report looking at this very thing a few years ago. Their expert panel included top executives from companies such as Intel and Xerox and groups such as Sematech, venture capitalists, also academic researchers. They concluded the following: The Advanced Technology Program is an effective Federal partnership program. The selection criteria applied by the program enabled it to meet broad national needs and to help ensure that the benefits of successful awards extend across firms and industries. Its costshared, industry-driven approach to funding promising new technological opportunities has shown considerable success in advancing technologies that can contribute to important societal goals such as improved health diagnostics, developing tools to exploit the human genome, and improving the efficiency and competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. This is a program I think deserves the increased levels of support that are contemplated in this legislation. I urge my colleagues to resist the amendment of the Senator to delete funding for the Advanced Technology Program. Is there still time on my side?

Mr. BINGAMAN. I yield the remainder of my time.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I am happy to respond. I would respond by saying we are not providing funds to particular companies so they can compete effectively. What we are doing is saying there are sectors of U.S. industry which are in very substantial competition with their counterparts worldwide. Whether it is the automobile industry, whether it is the semiconductor industry, whether it is the biologics industry, whatever the area is, we have companies in our country that are competing in those areas, and there is early stage research and seed development--early stage development into which they should be putting significant efforts. When you look at it from the point of any individual company, it might not make that much sense to say we are going to devote a substantial portion of our research dollars to this because it is long term. It may not pay off in 10 years. It may never pay off. But here we can use some taxpayer dollars to prime the pump, so to speak, and to go to these companies on a cost-shared basis and say: You guys get together. We will help you develop advanced battery technology because otherwise we may eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. But we are going to become dependent on foreign battery cells. That is not good for the U.S. economy as a whole. If General Motors happens to be one of the participants in that consortium of companies that is working on that advanced battery technology, then so much the better. But I do not consider that corporate welfare. I consider that good, intelligent allocation of our resources in order to keep our industry competitive in the world marketplace.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask the Senator if he will yield for a question.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Here is the information I am given. I would cite this to the Senator and ask if he has a reason to disagree. Of the single applicant awards under the Advanced Technology Program, 78 percent have gone to small businesses, 11 percent have gone to medium-size businesses and nonprofits, and only 11 percent of solo awards have gone to large businesses. Is that accurate?

Mr. BINGAMAN. That is 21 percent over the last 14 years?