Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the Presiding Officer for the time to speak on the Senate floor. I am supportive of the bill that has come out of the HELP Committee to reauthorize user fees for the Food and Drug Administration. We have tried these user fees in the past, and under this bill they would be reauthorized for prescription drugs and for medical devices. This seems to be a way to help get these items to the consumer faster, to get them through the approval process more quickly, and to allow the companies that develop new medical devices or new prescription drugs to recoup their investment in a quicker way, which also allows them to get to the generic market in a quicker way. I think it serves the purpose of health care well, and the community that pays the user fees appears to be in support of their continued use, and I am too. This bill provides for faster verification of generics. It also adds a product called biosimilars to the process where fees would be paid. For all of the same reasons, it seems that those fees would also make sense for health care and make sense for health care costs. Again, it allows for recouping the investment that is made to develop a new drug quicker. That allows it to go to the generic market quicker. I hope this bill can be approved, and I hope it will be approved even before we leave for the Memorial Day work period. I think Senator Harkin, Senator Enzi, and their committee, the HELP Committee, have worked hard. I don't serve on that committee. I am on the appropriating committee for the Food and Drug Administration--for agriculture, rural development, and FDA. I am glad to be on that committee, and I have the contacts I have with FDA because of that. But, certainly, I support this bill. There will be amendments, and we will look at those amendments as they are offered; although I think the committee has worked hard in a bipartisan way to bring a bill to the floor that is legislated the way we should legislate wherein the committees do their work and there is a bipartisan approach. That approach seeks input, continues current policies, and improves on those policies in a way I hope the Senate and then the House can be supportive of. I know one of the areas where we are likely to have amendments will be the debate we have had over and over on whether prescription drugs can be imported into the country. If that amendment is brought up, I would have the same position I have had in the past, which is it is fine as long as someone from our government is willing to say those prescription drugs are what they appear to be. They have been out of the chain of custody, out of the closed pharmaceutical chain supply system that we believe is always essential to be sure that the drug one is getting is the drug one is getting. Senator Durbin spoke about vitamins earlier. I don't know what is in that capsule and neither does he unless someone has verified what is purported to be in there is really in there. It is very easy for that not to be the case. There are all kinds of examples of that all over the world. We want to be sure that American consumers who are taking a health product take that product for a good cause. The Senator from Illinois even mentioned that he thought dietary supplements should be filed with the FDA. Certainly anyone who would think that should also think the same for prescription medicines, pharmaceutical medicines--that someone would need to verify that a prescription medicine is the medicine one believes it to be because a person is not taking it for some additional dietary reason; a person is taking it because their doctor has told them it is a medicine they need to take. It means there must be some medical reason they are taking it, and they must be certain, in my view, that a specific health care reason is being met. Also, I read this week that in a time of trillion-dollar deficits, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it was going to go forward with a provision in the affordable health care act that apparently allows the department to spend $20 million of taxpayer money to launch a PR campaign to convince Americans they should like the affordable health care act better than they apparently do. We are spending $20 million at a time when we have trillion-dollar deficits, at a time when, in fact, the health care law is even being challenged in Court. We will find out within the next month what the Court thinks about the potential constitutionality of the health care law. This is the same Department of Health and Human Services that, during the health care debate, told insurance companies they could not tell their customers--they could not communicate with their customers in any way that suggested any possible negative impact this law might create. I thought that was an incredible position for the government to take at the time, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised that now the government would spend $20 million on a PR contract to convince people they should like this health care plan better than they do. In fact, poll after poll shows the more people know about the health care proposal, the less they like it. Two years after its passage, opposition to the health care law, I believe, is stronger than it has ever been. The recent Rasmussen poll said 56 percent of voters favor a repeal of the affordable health care act, believing that it is perhaps neither all that affordable or all that good for health care. According to a USA Today Gallup poll, 72 percent of Americans think this bill will make things worse or would not help their family health care situation. They believe it would not make things better or it will even make things worse. It is clear, in my view, that this is a bad law that we can't afford--bad for families, bad for seniors, bad for job creators. I guess maybe that is why the government is going to spend $20 million to convince me and others that it is not nearly as bad as we think it is. This is not the first time the administration has used taxpayer money to roll out publicity initiatives or to move forward in a way that will try to encourage the use of this law. Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services asked Congress to quadruple the budget for its public affairs office to $20 million. So the request was, let's have $20 million in public affairs to double the staff, quadruple the budget. Let's have another $20 million to hire a PR firm to convince the American people that the affordable health care act is going to be good for them. Let's sway seniors by using $3 million for an ad campaign featuring Andy Griffith, who is one of my favorite actors of all time, who took on the role to convince people the health care law is good for seniors. The nonpartisan factcheck.org concluded that the ads used--they said ``weasel words'' to mislead seniors. I certainly would not imagine that Andy Griffith would use weasel words, but I do know they used taxpayer dollars--taxpayer-paid-for words--to talk about how this plan is going to be good for them. Then the administration recently decided to spend $8.35 billion--now we are talking about real money; we are not talking about $20 million or $3 million. We are talking about $8.35 billion to postpone the vast majority of the Medicare Advantage cuts until after the end of this year, which is, coincidentally, after Election Day as well. This supposedly comes out of money that would usually go for a demonstration project. As I understand demonstration projects, it is to take an idea and prove whether it will work. Well, apparently, this demonstration project is merely to not allow these provisions of the affordable health care act to go into effect until after the election. I think we can all see what that demonstrates. It demonstrates there must be something the administration believes the American people and seniors would not like if they found out before the election that $8.35 billion was scheduled to be taken out of Medicare and put into another health care program. In fact, the affordable health care act will spend $500 billion that will come out of Medicare at a time when Medicare, we all know, is about to be in real trouble. If someone made this argument anywhere but Washington, DC, I think they would be laughed out of the room. We have one fund that is about to be in big trouble, so we are going to take money from it and start another program that we also don't quite know how we are going to fund. The Government Accounting Office has said this demonstration project--I think they have identified it as a sham demonstration project because it doesn't demonstrate anything. This is not a health care system proving that if you take care of seniors on a per capita basis, you do a better job keeping them well than if you wait until everybody gets sick for them to be able to see a doctor under Medicare. This just simply demonstrates that the administration would not like people to know what the impact of the law is going to be during this even-numbered year. Government spending is out of control. Federal debt is at a record high. It is unacceptable to me that the administration has decided to waste money on a PR campaign or to waste money to see that the impact of the law is not evident until after election day. Instead of spending time and taxpayer dollars to try to convince people that unpopular things should be liked, I would like to see the President work with the Congress to help us get the 23 million men and women who are either unemployed or underemployed back to work. If we are going to spend money, let's spend money for purposes like that. I yield back and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I appreciate the leader's desire to get this done. I would like to get it done too. In fact, the original Iran sanctions language was drafted in my office when I was in the other body. This is an issue I have been involved in for a long time. This morning I have had a chance to look at it only within the last half hour. I suppose I could have been here at 10:38, but even 10:38, for an issue such as this--and my view also is that it is not as strong as the Presidents's policy. It is not as strong as any other resolution on this topic we have ever passed. And the question that would logically be asked is, Why not? I would like to think that is an oversight in drafting, that we can work this out over the weekend and make this reflective of our national policy and the President's policy. But I would be very concerned about moving to this language today and would hope that we could work with the leader to have language that we could bring up as early as Monday and pass and send the message to the world that the Senate supports the stated policy of our government on this critical issue. Nobody wants Iran to be able to move forward and attain nuclear capacity, and I would be very concerned about moving forward on this language as it currently appears to me to be stated.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I think the law even requires it. I think the leader on the other side, the majority leader, has been pretty clear about it. It is bad politics to have a budget, bad politics to tell the American people officially what we are for, bad politics for our Members to have to go on record saying what they are for. The President submitted a budget. There are 54 Members of the President's party here in the Senate. Fifty-one of them could pass this budget. It would be the Senate-passed budget. Then you would go to the House and say: OK, let's look at the House budget and the Senate budget and see if we can agree on a budget. But they actually have been pretty transparent. You have to give them some credit for not trying to be different than they really are. They said: It would be politically foolish for us to pass a budget because then people would know what every one of the 51 of our Members is for, and they would have to say what they are for. My guess is that nobody in the majority will say they are for anything today--not for the President's budget, not for any budget we will submit. So you go home and say: I am not for any of that. You can't accuse me of being for a bad plan because I am for no plan. That is where we are.

Mr. BLUNT. No, we cannot. Last year, for the first time ever, all of the money that came in was less than the money that went out automatically to these programs, where, if you meet the definition for the program, you get the money. It is at 60 percent now. It has not been that many years ago that it was at 50 percent. It was not that many years before that it was at 40 percent. So we have to deal with these issues because they lead us to an inevitable place. Do we want to be Europe today a few years from now? Surely not. Surely the answer is no. We cannot avoid that unless we have a plan. It is easy to talk about how bad the other plan is. But what we all ought to be doing is coming up with a plan that gets us to where we all know we need to be.

Mr. BLUNT. I would like to stay on this. Saying the Budget Control Act is a budget--as Senator Thune mentioned, if that was the budget, why did the President submit one? Nobody believes that is a budget. The Parliamentarian said it was not a budget. But what it is--it would be as if your family sitting down to decide what money you are going to have to spend this year said: OK, we have X number of dollars. Let's go out and spend it. That is no budget, particularly when you had to borrow 40 percent of the X number of dollars you said you had. We are borrowing 40 percent of the money we are going to spend. The only number we have that we have agreed to is the maximum amount we will spend, knowing we do not have anywhere near that number, and we have not allocated that in any way. That is no budget. Everybody knows that. Everybody also knows you cannot get there unless you have a way to get there. Your family says: OK, we have done the budgeting for the year. We decided if we borrow almost as much money as we make, and we spend that somewhere, that is our budget. We have not decided where we are going to spend it, we have not decided how we are going to spend it, and we have not even decided a reasonable way we are going to get it, but we said: Here is the number we are going to spend. Now, family, let's all go out and start spending and we will meet here later this year and see how it worked out. It makes no sense at all, and everybody knows that. Interestingly, we do not hear much about this. It is surprising to me that every day there is not a story about why for the first time ever for 3 years straight now the Senate has decided it does not have to do the work the law requires it to do, as we dig this hole deeper and deeper and deeper. The longer we wait, the more difficult the solution is going to be. Every single day that passes, it is harder to solve this problem than it would have been the day before. Now we have gone 3 years without a budget and apparently we are going to go through the rest of this process without a budget. By the time we get to the end of this year, we will be approaching that fourth year without a budget. It is not as though this would be a good idea, the law says we have to have one. And we should have one.

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I am embarrassed that we are not serious about this issue. Senator Thune and I served in the House together while the Senator from Alabama was leading in these budget fights in the Senate, and we had a budget every year. We didn't always every single year have a budget the House and the Senate could agree on, but the House always had a budget and the Senate always had a budget. We always complied with the 1974 Budget Act that says we have to have a budget. It says we have to have a budget by April 15. Frankly, we can't do our work without a budget. We can't get spending under control without a budget. We can't appropriate the way we should without a budget because the budget sets forth how much money we are willing to spend on defense and how much money we are willing to spend on military construction and how much money we are willing to spend on energy. If we don't have that, we don't have a starting place. I have all the respect in the world for our friend from North Dakota, Senator Conrad, but to be the chairman of the Budget Committee and to have to come to the floor and talk about what is wrong with the other budgets that have been produced when his committee hasn't produced one has to be frustrating for him, no matter how effective he seemed when he was talking about what was wrong with the people who had a plan. It is easy to find out what is wrong with somebody's plan, particularly when one doesn't have any obligation, apparently, on their own part to come up with a plan. We remember when the White House was asked a few weeks ago, when Senator Reid said the Senate will not have a budget and what their position on that was, they said: We don't have a position on that. The President submitted a budget. Why did the President submit a budget if he doesn't want the Congress to act on a budget? The House voted on his budget this year. It was 414 to 0. Not a single Democrat or Republican in the House voted for the President's budget. Last year we voted on the President's budget, as I assume we will again today. Not a single Democrat or Republican voted for the President's budget last year, and the position of the White House is they don't care. It is an amazing situation to find ourselves in. Whoever is in charge of the Senate in the future needs to have a commitment to the American people that we are going to have a budget, we are going to have an appropriations process, and we are going to get this spending under control. We have maxed out the credit card; everybody gets that. The Senator from Alabama showed this morning with his chart the figures representing our debt relative to the countries we sort of laugh at, how irresponsible they are--numbers that I think we ought to look at pretty carefully. When our debt per person is greater than the Greek debt per person--I haven't seen the front page of a paper in a while that didn't have something about chaos in Greece on it because they have let their government get bigger than their economy can support. They have let their debt get bigger than the gross domestic product of their country by almost two times, but now we have exceeded our debt by--our debt exceeds our potential to produce goods and services in a year for the first time ever. In fact, in the 3 years we haven't had a budget, the debt of the country has increased almost $5 trillion, as we have spent over $10 trillion in those 3 years without a budget. It is unacceptable. Everybody here knows it is unacceptable. And every American family, frankly, who thinks about it knows it is unacceptable. The Senator's fight, along with what I am sure has to be Chairman Conrad's frustration to not have a budget, could not be a more important topic for us to be talking about today or for the American people to be asking the question: Why not? Why are you refusing to do your job? I know nobody in this Chamber knows as much about the budget, in my opinion, as the Senator does. Your frustration of where this does not allow us to go to do the right things is as great as anybody's, maybe greater than anybody's. But I think all of us know we should be doing the right thing here, which is to obey the law, create a budget, and have a budget that gets us to the place we know we need to get to, where our economy, once again, is right-sized to our government or, more importantly, our government is right-sized to our economy.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, on May 22, 2011, the city of Joplin, MO, was struck by an EF5 tornado. The path of devastation was an incredible 6 miles long and almost 1 mile wide. The destruction was beyond words. Too many were lost, and lives were upended. Homes, schools, and businesses were destroyed. Joplin's mayor that terrible day was Mike Woolston. Mayor Woolston showed the world that Joplin was up to the challenge of not only surviving but rebuilding. Mayor Woolston grew up in Joplin. Mike graduated from Joplin's Parkwood High School and Missouri Southern State University. After graduation from MSSU, Mike served his country in the U.S. Marine Corps at a number of locations at home and abroad. In 1988 Mike returned to Joplin and embarked on a career in real estate. For nearly 25 years Mike has been active in the Joplin community, serving on a number of community organizations such as United Way of Southwest Missouri, Community Blood Center of the Ozarks, American Red Cross, Salvation Army, and Joplin public schools' Bright Futures Program. Mike was elected to the Joplin City Council in 2002. In 2010 his council peers elected him mayor. Mike was serving in that position when the most destructive tornado of the last 60 years struck the city of Joplin. Mayor Mike Woolston spent countless hours guiding the city through rescue, recovery, and eventually the beginning of the rebuilding process. Mayor Woolston's calm demeanor, positive attitude, and recognition of the thousands of others who were involved in every stage of post-tornado actions gave the citizens of the Joplin area hope for the future. As the face and voice for the city of Joplin, Mayor Woolston gave the Nation and the world a shining example of the spirit of cooperation and can-do work ethic which exemplifies Joplin, MO. I hereby recognize and thank Michael R. Woolston for his leadership of the city of Joplin in the wake of the May 22, 2011, tornado and for his commitment to the citizens of his community.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I worked with Senator Bennet on this amendment. I think it does ensure that communities are not notified a facility is closed without having any opportunity to have input. It provides for advocacy and also gives the post office system some flexibility that they do not have now to provide postal services in new and innovative ways. I urge my colleagues to adopt this amendment.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I thank my good friend for yielding and for taking consideration of my schedule. I rise to support Judge Brian Wimes as the nominee for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri. He spent his entire career working in the public sector. He has been involved in many groups and organizations dedicated to serving disadvantaged individuals. He was born in Kansas City, MO. He earned his bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Kansas. We don't hold that against him. He got his law degree from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University in 1994. When he graduated, he became the attorney advisor for the litigation branch of the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the Department of Justice here in Washington. Judge Wimes represented the Bureau in civil actions by inmates throughout the country. In 1995, he left the Bureau and became an assistant prosecuting attorney for the Jackson County prosecutor's office in Kansas City. Beginning in 2001, Judge Wimes served as the Jackson County drug court commissioner for more than 5 years. The drug courts in our State, and in other places, have served a good and integral role in combating drug abuse. The drug court is a program that offers nonviolent first- time offenders a chance to participate in an outpatient-based treatment program rather than to face prosecution. More than 1,200 people have graduated from the Jackson County drug court. More than 96 percent of those people were conviction free 5 years after their graduation. As a prosecutor, Judge Wimes received national honors, including being named Rookie Prosecutor of the Year during his first year in the Jackson County prosecutor's office. In 2002, he was honored as a member of Ingram magazine's 40 under Forty. In 2009, the Call Newspaper recognized him as one of the 25 most influential African Americans in Kansas City. He has been deeply involved in Big Brothers and Big Sisters and Hope House Domestic Violence Shelter. He is a member of St. Monica's Catholic Church. In 2007, Judge Wimes was appointed by my son Governor Matt Blunt to serve on the 16th Judicial Circuit Court of Jackson County, MO. If Matt Blunt made any mistakes as Governor, this was not one of them. Judge Wimes has continued not only to serve on the court but to serve on boards in Kansas City for the Kansas City Youth Court, which is affiliated with the UMKC School of Law as well as the Criminal Justice Advisory Board of the Penn Valley Community College in Kansas City, the Mental Health Association of the Heartland. I believe his experience makes him a highly qualified judicial nominee, and he will serve the American people well in this job. I am supportive of him. Mr. President, I have a statement on another matter that I also mentioned to my friend from Vermont that I will make while I am here, and I ask that it appear separately in the Record.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to talk for a few minutes about Chuck Colson, who was a friend of mine and the founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries. He died on Saturday at 80. Before Chuck Colson was 40, he was counselor to the President of the United States, Richard Nixon. At about that same time, about the time he was 40, he pled guilty to offenses related to the Daniel Ellsberg break-in. When he did that, I am told, even though his lawyers advised him not to plead guilty at that moment, he said pleading guilty was ``the price I had to pay to complete the shedding of my old life to be free to live the new life.'' In June of 1974, he began to serve his prison sentence. What was the new life? In August of 1973, Chuck Colson's good friend Tom Phillips had counseled with him, and that was the moment Chuck Colson said he decided his life would be led as a Christian, that he would surrender his life to the Christian view and the Christian belief. He personally told me at one time that it was T.S. Eliot's writing ``Mere Christianity'' that then later became the intellectual basis for his faith. But initially his faith was needed more than he clearly understood he had, and he found that in his faith. It was an active faith. I am constantly amazed that an active God can take the bad decisions people make and, while God would not have wanted those to be the decisions people make, can turn them into incredible opportunities. In the life of Chuck Colson, that incredible opportunity became the founding of Prison Fellowship Ministries and the impact it had on so many other Lives. Twenty years ago, I became the first chair of the Missouri Prison Fellowship. As Chuck Colson was reaching out and trying to see how this idea could become an idea that would sustain itself and perhaps in the future within States. As a House Member, 10 years ago, I hosted a speakers series that was the Chuck Colson speakers series, and I was able to spend time with him virtually every week for 2 or 3 months as we had people come in and visit with House Members in a great speaker series. I personally benefited from lots of advice and discussions with him. Just to sum up a couple things about him as I reach a conclusion that doesn't begin to express the impact he had on people's lives. He founded Prison Fellowship Ministries in 1976. He founded Justice Fellowship in 1983. They have both grown to serve literally thousands of prisoners in this country and around the world. Prisons around the world saw Chuck Colson walk into them as well to try to help people. In 1993, he won the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion; in 1994, he was instrumental in drafting the publication and publishing a document called the ``Evangelicals and Catholics Together.'' In 2008, he was awarded the Presidential Citizen Medal by President George W. Bush, and he is survived by a family who cared about him and lots of friends. For almost 40 years, starting with the Mike Wallace interview--as I suppose only Mike Wallace could interview someone--there were doubters and skeptics who questioned his faith, who questioned the change in his life beginning in 1973, but of course, they questioned it less so every year. I would say, in 2012, that Chuck Colson passed any test about whom he had become. The test is both past, P-A-S-T, and passed, P-A-S- S-E-D. He won the race. Lives continue to be changed, and I would just say, I thank God for Chuck Colson, and I thank my good friend from Vermont for giving me a few moments on the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I thank my friend and my congressional neighbor. When we were in the House, we represented adjoining districts in Missouri and Oklahoma, and it is good to be serving in the Senate with my friend and to hear his commonsense approach on how we need to solve the problems we are facing as a country and the needless problems the government seems to be willing to create for itself. We have been talking so much--at least the President has been talking about economic fairness as the principal goal of the Tax Code. Frankly, the most fair thing we can do in the Tax Code and in the Senate would be to work to be sure we are dealing with the important issues the job creators and families are dealing with across the country today. All of us have had the opportunity to be home over the last 2 weeks. I was able to be in the last of the 115 Missouri counties that I hadn't been in since I was sworn into the Senate 15 or so months ago. I learn a lot when I am out there. What I learned this time is that people are focused on fuel costs. Fuel costs are on track to hit an average of $4 per gallon by summertime. This is more than double what fuel costs were in January of 2009, and it set the all-time record for the last 2 months. I talked to the people in south central Missouri who are trying to provide transportation for older Americans and disabled Americans, and the fuel cost increase of $150,000 means they have to cut back their services. The chamber of commerce survey this week found that nearly one out of four small businesses reported that their top concern was gas prices. When we think about that, whether it is delivery or whether it is employees getting to work or whether it is people deciding they cannot go to that small business--the restaurant, the bowling alley, a movie theater, or whatever it might be because they just put too much money in the gas tank of their cars--we should be concerned. Unfortunately, instead of working to pass solutions that would jumpstart our economy and restore consumer confidence, we simply want to talk about the wrong thing over and over. We had a vote on the so- called Buffett tax this week, which almost everybody who talked about it said it is more of a gimmick than a solution because even if we collected this new tax on Warren Buffett and his wealthy friends, in a year we would collect what the Federal Government deficit is in a day. We will not solve this problem dealing with one three-hundred sixty- fifth of the deficit like it is the solution to the problem. The lead sponsor of the Buffett tax in the Senate, Senator Whitehouse, said on the Senate floor that the aim of the bill is not to lower the unemployment rate or the price of gasoline. Why would we not have a bill on the Senate floor the aim of which is either to do something about energy prices or job creation? This bill would generate less than 1 percent of the $7 trillion deficit projected in the 2013 budget during that same period of time. It would take 250 years to collect enough money under the so-called Buffett rule to pay the 2011 deficit. If the solution to last year's deficit would take us 250 years of recovery, the truth is we are just wasting a lot of time on little things rather than big things. We can make little things sound big. We can make it sound as though fairness is the critical element of everything the government should do, as opposed to opportunity being the critical element of everything the government should do. We can make it sound as though people will still invest money, their IRAs or their lifetime savings--their return is, even if they are successful, zero. But that is not what is going to happen. I just finished reading a book about President Eisenhower and General Eisenhower. There are many pertinent things in that book, but one was when General Eisenhower and others came back from World War II, the top tax rate was 90 percent. From 1933 1934 until 1981, it was at least 70 percent. Two points can be made there. Nobody paid it if they figured out how to avoid it, and almost everybody figured out how to avoid it--lots of passive investments instead of active ones. It had to be a good time for municipal bonds because there was no tax on them. So why not put your money there. If you made any money, 70 percent would go to the Federal Government or, in 1946, 90 percent would go to the Federal Government. But the capital gains rate--which happened to be the rate at which World War II memoirs were taxed, which is why it was in this book--was 25 percent. Even when the top rate in the country was 90 percent, nobody thought the capital gains rate should be even one-third of that because they knew people would not invest money if there was no return. We need tax policies that multiply the opportunities created in our economy rather than subtract from those opportunities. If we want this not to be about politics but about math, it needs to be about multiplication not subtraction and about how to drive an economy to encourage more private sector jobs. How do we encourage investment and encourage people to take risks? If nobody takes a risk, somebody else doesn't get an opportunity. People being willing to take a risk means that an opportunity is created for somebody else that would not have been created otherwise. Last month, we were here talking about tax hikes on American energy producers that clearly would be passed along to consumers. Nobody even argues if we had passed those tax hikes last month that gas prices would not go up. Why in the world would we argue about anything that would raise gas prices rather than lower gas prices? The sponsor of that bill said nobody has made the claim that this bill is about reducing gas prices. The majority leader, Mr. Reid, admitted that this is not a question of gas prices. Senator Schumer said this was never intended to talk about lowering gas prices. Senator Begich said the bill would not decrease prices at the pump for our families and small businesses--and these were the supporters of the bill. Why would we have a bill on the Senate floor to do that when we could support what the President says he is for, which is an ``all-of-the- above'' energy strategy? Let's do what we can to solve this problem. The most glaring recent example is, of course, the Keystone Pipeline, which would run through North Dakota, go through Nebraska and other States, and get to our refineries. It would create 20,000 jobs, and it would decrease our country's dependence upon people who don't like us very much. It would also encourage more North American energy and encourage energy from our best trading partner, Canada. It is just one of the commonsense steps we can make. If someone would have told me a couple years ago that when we went home in the spring of 2012, one of the things people would be talking about is why aren't we building a oil pipeline from Canada, I would have said that is a pretty detailed understanding of our energy problem, but it is an understanding that is out there. If we are going to create real economic fairness, we need to work together to pass solutions that will bring down the prices at the pump and get Americans back to work. That is why I believe we need to utilize all forms of American energy, including wind, solar, renewable, biomass, shale gas, shale oil, coal, and nuclear alternatives. An announcement is being made today by one of our Missouri utility companies and Westinghouse about small nuclear and how that might be part of this all-of-the-above solution. I am ready to work with my colleagues across the aisle and anywhere else to do what we can to help American families. I hope we can do this together. The shortest path to more American jobs is more American energy. The best and the most fair thing we could do is what is good for American families and small businesses and job opportunities. I hope we can get to work on that. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, this week the majority brought a bill to the floor to talk about gas prices and energy-producing companies. That was yesterday. Today the majority brought another bill and tried to move away from that bill. We ought to be talking about gas prices. We should be talking about what impacts so many families and so many businesses and so many individuals. I talked to somebody on the phone just yesterday, a friend of mine from St. Charles, MO, where gasoline is about $3.50 a gallon. That is a little lower than it is maybe in other places where it is $3.90, the national average, though I am sure we can find a place in St. Charles where the gas is $3.90. But my friend talked about gas prices, how it affects his business, the restaurant business. I have said on this floor before, when American families stand before that gas pump and the cost goes from $40 to $50 to $60 to $70, almost every family in America watches those numbers and thinks of something they were going to do that week or that weekend that they are not going to do. Certainly, if you are in the restaurant business, as my friend is, you know that. But he said: I was at the gas station just yesterday, and there was a woman there in a car with a child. She said: Could you just give me $5? I don't think I can get home with the gas I have. I don't have any money. I need to put a little more than a gallon of gas in the car just to know I can get home. Could you put $5 of gas in the car for me? He said: I put $20 of gas in the car. And $20, at $3.90 a gallon--the national average--does not last very long. People who are putting $5 or $10 in their gas tanks are not doing it because they love to go to the gas station. They are doing it because they cannot afford to put the gas they need in the car to do the things they need to do. The national average hit $3.90 just a day or two ago, and it is on the way up now. It is more than double what it was in January 2009 when gasoline was about $1.90 or $1.91 a gallon. People feel this. I cannot think of a meeting I have had in the last 2 weeks with any group who did not have some story about how energy and gas costs were impacting them. Now, why we would have a bill on the Senate floor that would raise gasoline prices I have no idea. But that is the bill that is on the floor. I think the idea is that the majority is wanting to blame somebody else rather than the President's energy policies. The American people do not accept that. I asked people in Missouri to talk to me about some of the challenges they are having with these skyrocketing fuel prices. Remember, the President, in the fall of 2008, said at the San Francisco Chronicle, under his energy policies, energy costs would ``necessarily skyrocket.'' So I guess he has to believe his policies are doing exactly what he thought they would do. But here is what they are doing to people all over America. Trent Drake, a farmer in southwest Missouri, who raises soybeans, corn, wheat, and cattle, told me--of course, like every farm--he is heavily dependent on fuel, in his case diesel fuel. His fuel bill went up 125 percent over last year. That is more than twice the fuel bill he had last year. Roger Lang, who owns a company, Byron L. Lang Inc., in Jackson, MO, told me a majority of all the profits they are making are now going back into paying the fuel costs, which, of course, means they cannot look at profits they made and think: What can we do for better benefits or better wages or to hire more employees? They have to think: How much higher is this gasoline bill going to go? How much higher is my energy bill going to go under the energy policies we are working under now? According to Roger Lang, if something is not done, he believes this one issue will end his business. A business his family has been operating since 1947 would be ended because we have energy policies that do not make sense. Linda Yaeger, who is the executive director of the Older Adults Transportation Service--I do not know what it is called everywhere else; it is called the OATS system in Missouri--provides transportation for seniors and people with disabilities in 87 of our 115 counties. For every penny gas goes up, Linda said it costs her program $15,250. For every penny that gas goes up in 87 counties all over Missouri-- essentially, for vans and buses that take seniors and handicapped people where they need to go--for every penny gas goes up, it costs $15,250. And for every penny that is a loss of the equivalent of 10,000 one-way trips for the people they serve. Multiply that $15,250 by the 200 pennies gasoline has gone up in the last 3 years and suddenly we have a budget that does not do what we would hope it could do for the people they serve. The Ozarks Food Harvest in Springfield, MO, where I live is a regional food bank that serves one-third of the State of Missouri, delivering about 1 million pounds of food a month. Bart Brown, who runs the Ozarks Food Harvest, cannot, obviously, predict--as none of us can--these gas prices. But they did just have to raise their delivery costs from 4 cents a pound to 6 cents a pound. So there is a 50-percent increase in the delivery costs to the Food Harvest in getting food to people's homes. The charities of America are incredible in their ability to make money last, to stretch a dollar, to do everything they can to make their contributions have real impact. The Food Harvest--I have been to a lot of these food banks, and they benefit from getting food from people who are food producers, the processors who have an overrun or they have a damaged box or they have whatever is still perfectly good, but they are willing to make it available to somebody else because it does not quite fit the way they do business. But when they have to increase their delivery costs by 50 percent just because gas has gone up--gas has gone up 100 percent. So if they increase their delivery costs by 50 percent, I guess they are still trying to make the most of the situation in which they find themselves. It is not the only part of the cost, but it is a big part of the cost. That is going to have a big impact on all the people in one-third of the counties in Missouri that get food from the Ozarks Food Harvest. Meanwhile, a lot of my colleagues on the other side have already admitted this tax hike on American energy producers would do nothing to lower gas prices. This clearly is a messaging bill. But why, if they were trying to divert attention away from the President's energy policies, they bring this bill to the floor is a surprise to me. In May 2011--a year ago--the bill's sponsor, Senator Menendez, acknowledged: Nobody has made the claim that this bill is about reducing gas prices. Well, why would they be talking about it if they could be spending the same time doing things that would reduce gas prices. The American people believe the government could have an impact on gas prices. I believe the government could have an impact on gas prices. This bill we are talking about is not even designed, according to the sponsor, to reduce gas prices. Senator Begich said the proposed tax hikes ``won't decrease prices at the pump for our families and small businesses.'' He may or may not be for the bill, but he certainly has figured out what the bill would do. Senator Baucus noted ``this is not going to change the price at the gasoline pump. That's not the issue.'' Well, what is the issue? Maybe we ought to figure out what the issue is. Families think it is the issue. Families think, when they see that sign go up three different times maybe in a week--that the price goes up--that there is some issue we ought to be dealing with. Senator Schumer admitted this bill ``was never intended to talk about lowering prices.'' Probably this bill was never even intended to be on the Senate floor. I assume the majority brought this bill to the floor thinking Republicans would not want to talk about this topic of whatever tax policies are designed to encourage more American production. But why wouldn't we want to talk about that? Why wouldn't we want to have more American energy of all kinds? Senator Landrieu told Americans this bill ``will not reduce gasoline prices by one penny.'' She is absolutely right. Even the majority leader, who brought the bill to the floor, said this bill ``is not a question of gas prices.'' So, really, this bill maybe is not a question of anything we ought to be talking about, so let's talk about what we should be talking about. We ought to be talking about what increases American energy. The shortest path to more American jobs is more American energy--the jobs that produce energy and the jobs that benefit from competitive energy prices. We are not some little European country. I know in the fall of 2008, before the President chose him, the Secretary of Energy said our problem was that our gasoline prices were not as high as the gasoline prices in Europe, where at that moment they were $8 or $10 a gallon. I do not think that is our problem at all. In fact, we are not a European country. We are the United States of America. We are a big country. Our transportation needs are different. Our energy needs are different. We generally do not walk to work or we generally do not only benefit from food products and other products that come from 5 or 10 miles away. That is not who we are. That is not who we are going to be. We need to have energy policies that work for us. Congressional Republicans in the House and the Senate have long supported a plan that uses all American energy. In fact, at the State of the Union Message, one of the few smiles on the Republican side of the aisle that night was when the President said he was for an ``all- of-the-above'' energy strategy because that is what we have been for for a long time, and mean it. That can include wind and solar, renewable, biomass, shale gas, shale oil, coal, nuclear--all of the above. It seems to me the message has not gotten through to the regulators and the legislators that we need to be doing all we can to find more American energy--all of these things, every one I mentioned: Nuclear, big and small; natural gas. We now think we have more natural gas than anybody in the world. Let's go after it. Let's use that resource to the advantage of our economy. They all have bipartisan support, and I think there is bipartisan support for investing in the future. Let's figure out what comes next in the energy world, but it will not come quickly, and our economy could not afford for it to come quickly. If we decide: OK, tomorrow we are not going to drive cars powered by gasoline, that would be a huge mistake. It would be an equally huge mistake if we decided 10 years from tomorrow none of us will be driving cars powered by gasoline. We do not even know what the next power source will be. We are going to use these fossil fuels for a while, and we should use them to our benefit. Instead, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to talk about raising taxes on domestic energy and domestic energy manufacturers--tax hikes that absolutely will be passed along to consumers. Some of these things in the Tax Code are to encourage American energy production. There is energy all over the world. Why wouldn't we want to encourage the energy production jobs to be here rather than somewhere else? I know the President said we are going to give money to Brazil, and we want them to drill in the deep water, and we will be glad to buy some of their oil and gas when they produce it. But why would that be our alternative when we could, in fact, do things that encourage American energy production or, if it is not from the United States of America, what about our neighbors? The Keystone Pipeline--80,000 barrels of oil a day is going to go somewhere because they are going to use that resource to their benefit, and it is either that the pipeline is going to come south to our refineries or it is going to go west and be sold to Asia. Why we would not want the 20,000 jobs to build that pipeline--not taxpayer-paid jobs but jobs for people who pay taxes, working for companies that pay taxes--why we would not want those jobs to be right here in the United States rather than in Canada, sending that pipeline west to eventually have that same oil sold to Asia, is a mystery to me. If the President wants to support an ``all-of-the-above'' energy strategy, he should stop blocking all this energy. The President should work to enable all sources of energy we have in the United States. The best place for us to meet our own energy needs is right here. The next best place is our best trading partner, our biggest trading partner, our closest neighbor, Canada. Then even the Mexican energy appears to be on a rebound in a positive way that could benefit us. Let's be as independent as we can be on energy and the energy that relates most directly to American jobs. The responsible development of more domestic energy will help create jobs, bring down prices at the pump, and position our country to have greater energy security. The shortest path to more American jobs is more American energy. Let's get on that path instead of this path that is discouraging the very thing that can help us the most. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I think that is what we are all hearing. Whether you are for this bill or not, my guess is that you are hearing that if you are asking that question. Another of the President's promises was that an average family, if this health care plan went into effect, would pay $2,500 less, as the doctor just said, per year. In fact, since he became President, insurance premiums have risen by $2,213 a year--not a $2,500 cut but a $2,213 increase, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The survey says that in 2008, for employer-provided insurance, the average family premium was $12,860. Last year it was $15,073. These are incredible increases for families, coupled with the bad energy policies and other policies that put families into a condition they would hope not to be in and we hope for them not to be in. So you have increased costs to families, increased costs to the system. That is the other thing the President said. Another broken promise was that this health care bill would control costs. Recently, according to the Medicare Actuary--the person who calculates these costs--the estimate was that national health spending would go up at least $311 billion over 10 years under this plan. Now, that is not cost control; that is $311 billion, almost one-third of $1 trillion in increases. Payment reductions to hospitals--the Senator from Wyoming mentioned this board that will make these decisions. I am not sure there will be enough people on that board who understand rural hospitals and understand why it is critical that rural hospitals that are critical- care hospitals continue to have different arrangements with the government than others do for the government-provided health care, such as Medicare and Medicaid. And if they understand that, there may not be enough people on the board who understand the unique needs of urban hospitals that have a heavily uninsured population. How is this 15-member board going to be better than the 500 Members who serve people in Washington now, trying to look at specifics and then be accountable? To whom is this board accountable? What decision do they make that somebody can challenge in a meaningful way, in a way that they would be really concerned about? So it doesn't control costs as the President said it would. It doesn't reduce insurance costs as the President said it would. I think it will wind up with maybe even more people uninsured as long as the penalty paid is less than the premiums paid, particularly for young workers who are outside the system today. Under the President's plan, we eliminate the advantage they have for being young and healthy by saying: No, you can't really classify groups, whereas if a person gets life insurance, that person will certainly pay more if they are 75 than if they are 27. They are just going to pay less. It is the same way today for health insurance as well because it is clear that the likelihood of a person using that plan at 26 is different than it is at 62. So all of these things just don't add up, and people are beginning to figure that they don't add up. I thought Senator Grassley made a very good point about even when we passed the bill, we wouldn't know all of the costs of this bill until it actually goes into effect. I am very much in support of his view that we never want to let this get so far down the road where we would know how much it would really cost or all the rules and regulations we would really have because it will head health care in a direction where we might not be able to reverse course and get to a health care system that is really focused on patients and health care providers rather than government bureaucrats deciding what is the best health care for everybody. I want my doctor to decide. I want to be part of that discussion. I do not want some government bureaucrat deciding what procedure is the only procedure that is acceptable for me.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I thank the doctor for his leadership on this issue during the debate on the health care law itself and right up to now, the second anniversary of it being signed into law. Certainly Missouri voters were the first voters who went to the polling place and registered their views on this. As I recall, 72 percent said they did not want to be a part of it. The famous comment made on the other side of the building by the Speaker--we will know what is in the bill once we pass it--has proven to be very true and not very positive from the point of view of that bill. The Senator from Wyoming and Senator Grassley have talked about the promises made already--the promise not to touch Medicare, the promise that if you like what you have, you can keep it--surely nobody can say that with a straight face anymore--and the promise during the campaign that there wouldn't be a mandate. Four years ago this was the big division of the two principal candidates for the nomination on that side. Senator Obama's view was that there would be no mandate, that there was no need for a mandate. In fact, at one point he said that having a mandate would be like solving homelessness by mandating that everybody buy a house. Now, that is not my quote, that is President Obama's quote when he was Senator Obama--having a mandate on health care would be like solving the housing problem by saying we are going to require that everybody buy a house. This plan does not work. It doesn't come together. The parts of the plan that were supposed to pay for the plan are one by one being discarded. Remember the so-called CLASS Act, the long-term care act, which technically, I guess, would have produced some money because it collected money the first 10 years; the first 10 years, we are counting the money and we are not allowed to spend any of it for the first 10 years. So, sure, that would be a net income to the Federal Government. We are not spending and money is coming in. But even the Secretary of Health and Human Services said what many of us said at the time, which is that this plan won't work, so we are not even going to collect the money because we know there is no way this particular structure will do what it is supposed to do. It is just one broken promise after another, it is just one set of provisions after another, and the more the American people look at it, the more they realize this just doesn't add up. Not only does it not add up financially, it doesn't add up to better health care. We are going to see lots of people--the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that I think 20 million people who get insurance now at work would lose that insurance at work once this goes into effect, and that was not a calculation in the original bill. Everybody was at least calculating that anybody who has insurance now would keep what their employer would continue to pay for. Well, for 20 million of them, apparently, that is not going to be the case. I yield to the Senator from Wyoming on that topic of just what employers are going to have to decide to do once they are faced with this new mandated policy that covers not only what they think they can afford but whatever some government official decides is the perfect policy for all Americans. Now, imagine that--the perfect policy for all Americans. One-size-fits-all almost always means that one size doesn't fit anybody. And these employers, it is now understood, are in many cases just going to take the option that they will pay the penalty that is less than they are paying now for insurance or they are going to have to require their employees to go get their insurance in a subsidized exchange. That means taxpayers will be helping buy insurance for people who today have insurance through their employers at the rate of at least 20 million, and I think that number will be a lot higher than that.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, this amendment would continue the current practice in which 15 percent of the bridge money that goes to States goes to local governments. If you have talked to a county commissioner anywhere in the country about the highway bill, my guess is they mentioned continuing the current policy on sharing some of this bridge money with local governments. It doesn't increase the amount of money; what it does is continue current policy. I think every county commissioner in America would be relieved if they were going to continue to maintain their bridges. I urge a ``yes'' vote on this amendment.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the Senator for yielding. I am pleased to join him on this amendment. This would allow family farmers to use their vehicles within 150 miles of their farm without having to have a commercial driver's license. It is a requirement that wouldn't make sense for those businesses. I urge its passage. I yield to Mr. Toomey.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the clerk for reporting. Mr. President, this amendment deals with the whole issue of off- system bridges. These are bridges that are not part of the State system, are not part of the Federal system, but normally are run by county governments. In our State, as in most States near or east of the Mississippi River, we have lots of counties. We have 115. They have large numbers of bridges, and for a number of years now they have benefited from 15 percent of the bridge funds that go to States. I think most of us, if we meet with county commissioners or those responsible for county government about their highway concerns, this would be an issue we have all heard about. The Senator from Pennsylvania Mr. Casey and I have introduced this amendment. It doesn't change current law. In fact, it just goes forward with current law in this bill. This bill would eliminate the requirement of States to give 15 percent to counties if counties have a use for it, and I think that would be a mistake. So I join Senator Casey and others in hoping we are able to approve this amendment next week. Mr. President, I also would like to speak on another amendment, an amendment that we apparently will not vote on; that is, amendment No. 1743. This is not at the desk, I don't think, at this moment, and it doesn't need to be read if it is. But I hope this is an issue that, as this Transportation bill progresses, we can continue to look at. This is an amendment I have introduced with the Senator from South Carolina, Mr. DeMint, and the Senator from Utah, Mr. Lee, on the commerce portion of the highway bill. Overall, almost every portion of this bill has gone through the open process of committee hearings, of markups, and now of floor time. The one part of this bill that hasn't had a committee markup or even a committee hearing in this Congress is the rail portion of the bill. In fact, the first time I saw this version of the bill was just a few weeks ago when the underlying bill was already pending and it was too late to have the normal process to look at what could happen and should happen as it relates to railroads. As a member of the committee of jurisdiction, the Commerce Committee, I am concerned we haven't done our due diligence, and my amendment would simply strike this section of the bill in response to this closed process. I hope that is the final determination of this bill before it goes to the President's desk. Since the Congress abolished the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1995, there has been no Federal licensing system for entry or exit of new rail passenger operators, only Federal requirements to ensure safety. That meant anybody who wanted to get into this business could, as long as they met the safety requirements. Currently, State transportation agencies increasingly use competitive bidding to choose a contract rail operator who can provide the best value. As a result, we are starting to see an actual competitive and robust rail passenger market with more than seven companies--which includes Amtrak but isn't limited to Amtrak--competing for these contracts. Unfortunately, the language in the highway bill requires passenger rail operators, both public agencies and private businesses, to deal with an expensive and time-consuming licensing process in front of political employees at the Surface Transportation Board. However, this new regulation will not apply to Amtrak, putting its competitors at a distinct disadvantage. The bill, as it stands, would subject the passenger rail industry to an ever-changing political dynamic at the discretion of the Surface Transportation Board, likely resulting in a government-sanctioned passenger rail monopoly. The board would also hold broad veto powers to prevent a track-owning railroad to make agreements with any preferred operator other than Amtrak. This bill would also require passenger rail operators to obtain a new board license every time a contract operator is replaced. This requirement appears to be aimed at preventing competitive selection of private sector contract operators, discouraging the replacement of operators through competitive bidding. At a time when we are looking to promote private sector job creation, I believe this language is simply a step in the wrong direction. If this language becomes law, it will stifle any kind of private sector competition and job growth. The seven companies that have been formed in recent years and that compete actively against each other will no longer be doing that, and it will promote a government-run, taxpayer subsidized rail system. My amendment would take this language out of the bill so that we could go through the normal process and decide if that is what we want. If the Congress, through the normal process, decides that is what we want to do, that is one thing. But putting it in a big bill without hearings--a bill we all believe to be important--is the wrong step. The American Public Transportation Association, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, the National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America all support this amendment. We will not be voting on it next week. But I hope as this bill progresses toward what could be a signature by the President we at some point take another look at this part of the bill and decide if this is a step that is in the best interest of the country or of rail passengers now and in the future. I think the answer to that is no. I am prepared to live with whatever the answer is, if it is an answer we arrive at through the normal process. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 1540, which is at the desk, and I ask unanimous consent that it be reported by number.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to honor the memory of a man whose life was dedicated to serving his community and protecting his fellow citizens. One year ago today, Deputy U.S. Marshal John Brookman Perry was killed in the line of duty while serving his country and community. Deputy Perry was assigned to the U.S. Marshals Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis and was serving a warrant when he was fatally shot. Today we honor his memory and the sacrifices he made for all of us. Deputy Perry was born on the west side of Chicago in Glen Ellyn, IL, and graduated from Southern Illinois University with a bachelor's degree in geology. He went to work for the Madison County probation office in Edwardsville, IL where he served for 16 years. In 2001 he graduated from the U.S. Marshals Academy and went to work at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Deputy Perry returned to the Midwest in 2005 when he was assigned to the Eastern District in St. Louis. There, he served as a team leader on the fugitive task force and was the district's firearms instructor. Deputy Perry came from a family dedicated to public service and was a natural fit for the U.S. Marshals Service. His brother, Bart Perry, has worked for the State of Illinois for over 25 years as a probation officer, and both his father and grandfather were Federal judges. His father served as a bankruptcy court judge and his grandfather was a former coal miner who became a district court judge. As a young boy, Deputy Perry was exposed to the Federal courts and became familiar with the U.S. Marshals Service and their work. We should never forget the sacrifices that men like Deputy Perry and their families make daily to protect all of us. Our society depends on these dedicated individuals who risk their lives to protect the common good. I want to express my gratitude and thanks and ask the Senate to join me in remembering U.S. Deputy Marshal John Brookman Perry.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to speak on the amendment I have offered with my friend, Senator Casey from Pennsylvania, on the highway bill, amendment No. 1540. In my State, and I think in the whole country, the question we hear over and over again is: Where are the private sector jobs? What can we do to get the economy back on track? There are very few places the Federal Government can create private sector jobs. One of the few places we can do that is in public works, such as the highway bill, where most of the work to build a new bridge or a new highway is done by competitive bid and by private sector employers and private sector employees. While we probably take a different approach to how we get there, I think all of us understand it is critical we work together to find common ground to create jobs and to create economic growth. This infrastructure bill could be--and I hope it turns out to be--a good start. There is no doubt that infrastructure is the foundation of our economy. Quality transportation is vital to connect people and communities, to connect people to the places they work, to connect the products they make to the places they need to go. That doesn't happen without a good infrastructure program and one that maintains and expands as needs to be the infrastructure that we have. I am very hopeful this bill can provide that additional element to getting our economy back on track. At the heart of the problem for small towns and for local governments in so many States, and particularly in Missouri, is the bridge system that is not part of the Federal structure. It is the so-called off- system bridge network, where local communities are responsible for bridges. Missouri has perhaps more bridges than any other State. I was in one of our counties just recently where the county itself--and we have 115 counties. So unlike some of the Western States, the counties aren't huge. They are designed to be compact, and people could get across them in the 1820s and 1830s in 1 day, before automobiles. So we have lots of counties, and 1 of them has 148 bridges. Our smallest county by population, with only 4,000 people, has 100 bridges. So every 40 people in that county are essentially responsible for maintaining a bridge, and bridges are expensive. That off-system bridge network carries schoolbuses, emergency vehicles, lots of agricultural products, families going about their daily routine. Without those bridges, that local infrastructure doesn't work. What we are suggesting and calling for in this amendment is simply to continue the current policy. I am not talking about any new money for bridges. We are not talking about any new program for bridges. But the bill itself doesn't continue the 15 percent of the bridge funds that has been allocated for some time now to local government. This would continue to have that same 15 percent going to local governments. There are almost 600,000 bridges in the country--more than 590,000, and 50 percent of those are considered off-system, and approximately 28 percent of that 50 percent are currently considered deficient. Thirty- two percent of the bridges in Missouri in the off-bridge system are considered deficient. They either aren't adequate for the traffic they now carry or are in need of repairs. One out of three bridges in our State needs an investment. The new penalty section of the underlying bill that would replace the current off-system bridge program makes that program even more uncertain at times when communities and job creators need it the most. Without our amendment, States would only have to sustain the previous number of deficient bridges every other year in order to avoid investing in their off-system bridges. It is a formula that doesn't work. It might work in big communities that have lots of miles that they maintain, but I doubt that. I think this makes an inconsistent investment in bridges all over the country. Our amendment ensures that counties are not left bearing the full responsibility of these off-system bridges. If they are left bearing that full responsibility, many of these bridges will not be fixed. This has been a major source of funding for counties working on bridges. This amendment would give States and counties the proper tools and resources and the assurance of a steady flow of funding in order to invest in the Nation's bridges. Additionally, the amendment establishes a procedure where the Transportation Secretary can rescind this requirement if State and local officials determine they have inadequate needs to justify these expenditures. In other words, if they can't justify spending the money in their State, then the Federal Government clearly doesn't have to allocate that 15 percent to local communities and to States for the off-system program. When I listen to community leaders, and certainly when I listen to county commissioners, this is a topic that comes up in most of our counties with great concern. The counties where it doesn't come up wouldn't have to apply for the money. That 15 percent, allocated appropriately, will make a big difference. Community leaders and job creators are looking for things that allow them to prepare for a more certain future. They need the ability to look beyond 6 months or 1 year to plan and anticipate how they are going to repair bridges, which bridges they are going to look at this year, which bridges they will then put off until next year. But right now, they would have no way of knowing whether there would be any Federal assistance to these communities. We need to be sure we provide this certainty for off-system bridges if we are going to promote job creation and economic development. We have to work together in the Nation's Capital to make smart investments in our Nation's transportation system if we are going to provide communities and job creators with greater certainty to prepare for the future. I wish to thank Senator Casey for his hard work on this issue. I am glad to join him on this amendment. It is critical to the State of Missouri and many other States. The National Association of Counties, the National League of Cities, the National Conference of Mayors, the National Association of County Engineers, the American Public Works Association, the National Association of Regional Councils, and the National Association of Development Officials are all in support of this amendment. I hope we have it included in the amendments we get to vote on, and I urge my colleagues to join in this bipartisan effort to create more certainty for local governments. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for all the comments she has made about Judge Edwards, his family, and the school. This is truly a remarkable story. I know both of our staffs have been telling us for some time now of incident after incident of young people's lives that are being changed by this school, by a judge who decided he needed to get outside the courtroom to make a difference in the lives of kids. In fact, People magazine calls this the ``School of Last Resort.'' It is a chance, it is an opportunity of which many are taking advantage. Judge Ohmer, presiding judge of the circuit where Judge Edwards works, put out the following statement. He said: The editors of PEOPLE magazine have selected St. Louis Juvenile Court Judge Jimmie Edwards as one of the publication's `Heroes of the Year' for 2011. Judge Edwards was profiled in a recent issue of the magazine and the announcement was made in the November 7, 2011 issue. Quoted in this comment from his colleague, the magazine said: ``We chose men and women who reached across boundaries to help strangers or worked within their communities to deepen bonds. From Logan, Utah . . . to Judge Jimmie Edwards of St. Louis who started a school for wayward teens, the 2011 winners never let daunting odds stand in their way,'' said Managing Editor [of People magazine] Larry Hackett. In 2009, after watching a string of teen offenders come through his courtroom, Judge Edwards decided to take action. Along with 45 community partners, he took over an abandoned school that he and I were talking about earlier today and opened the Innovative Concept Academy. Providing strict discipline, counseling, and programs such as, as my colleague mentioned, music, chess, and creative writing, the center literally has changed life after life of young person after young person, giving them the opportunity to graduate from high school and lead successful lives after they had been expelled from high school at an earlier time. These winners each received an award of $10,000 that they were able to use for their favorite causes, and certainly Judged Edwards has this cause and others. Quoting Judge Edwards: I am thrilled that our school has received this recognition but also amazed at the other individuals across America profiled by the magazine. Judged Edwards is married to Stacy, and Stacy is here today in Washington with two of their three children--Amy, Ashley, and John. His colleagues at the circuit court admire what he has done. The families involved, the teachers involved, the community partners involved admire what has happened here. MERS Goodwill, the St. Louis public schools, according to the judge himself, court employees, all the teachers and staff and volunteers at the school have made a difference in the Innovative Concept Academy. Judge Edwards said: By supporting our school St. Louis is refusing to give up on troubled juveniles and, in turn, the students are proving that hope for a better life is a universal dream. What a great story this is. His colleagues see him as a hero among us. People magazine has talked about this. I notice and like in the People magazine article what they refer to as Judge Jimmie's rules. Here are three of Judge Jimmie's rules. One headline is, ``No Saggy Pants.'' Like mumbling, bad grammar and rudeness, droopy pants are big no-nos [at this school]. ``Kids need to understand what it means to be civilized,'' says Edwards. Another rule: ``No Loitering.'' Edwards wears his kids out with after-school activities. ``I expect them to be so tired that they can't do anything but go [home and go] to sleep, get back up and start [the day] all over again.'' Then maybe the best rule of all: ``No Quitting.'' ``As long as you're trying,'' says Edwards, ``you're succeeding.'' This is being proven time after time, day after day: One person can make a difference, and the way this one judge has made a difference is inspiring a lot of other people to come together and make that difference, and then inspiring these kids and others who care about them to decide that this is the school of last resort, but the school of last resort can produce lots of great results, and we are seeing that happen. I am proud this is going on in our State and hope that Judge Edwards's example becomes an example for community after community around this country. I yield back the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 5 minutes.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, the reason this amendment is being debated right now is because the administration issued an order that is unprecedented. It is unprecedented because the mandate provisions of the health care bill are also unprecedented. That is the reason we are debating this now. The administration brought this up. I am still amazed by the fact that the administration would not have excluded all of at least the faith-based institutions from their order. The Catholic hospitals, the Baptist universities, the Catholic schools of all kinds, the Christian schools of all kinds, the Muslim daycare centers--why would they not have exempted these people? They say: We exempted the church itself, as if the work of the church or the character of the church or the faith distinctives of the church, the synagogue, the mosque are only what happens inside that building. There is a reason we have so much of our health care, our social services provided by faith-based institutions, and one of the reasons is those faith-based institutions want those institutions--that they fund, they support, they encourage--to reflect their faith principles. What is wrong with that? There are a couple of issues here. One is the separation in the President's mind of the work of the church or the synagogue or the mosque from the building itself. It is impossible to separate those two things; otherwise, you have another high school that has a chaplain, you do not have a Christian high school or you have another hospital that is run by the Sisters of Mercy, you do not have a Catholic hospital, because you have decided you are going to define the character of what that hospital stands for and what they provide. The administration recently took a Lutheran school to court. The EEOC took a Lutheran school to court and asserted that school did not have any special constitutional protections as to how they hired people, and you could have heard all these same kinds of arguments: Well, they will discriminate against people; they will not hire people who otherwise should be hired; they will not make accessibility to the handicapped. You could hear all of that sort of thing, none of which would have been true, and the Supreme Court voted 9 0 that the administration was wrong. You can try all you want to separate these two issues, but they do not separate. They are both fundamental first amendment issues. Let's talk about some of the things I have heard here this morning. My good friend, Senator Bennet from Colorado, said if this amendment passed, 362,000 Colorado women would lose their current health care services. Why would that be the case at all? This amendment does nothing to modify State or Federal laws that are now in effect. If you have those services now, there is nothing in this amendment that would change the world we live in right now. People have the same protection today to exert their religious views in their health care policies that they provide as an employer that they would have if this amendment passed. They have those protections now. They would not lose those rights. It does not modify any State or Federal law. And there are plenty of Federal laws. There is a Federal law on pregnancy discrimination that says pregnancy-related benefits cannot be limited to married employees. That law does not go away if this amendment passes. State laws that require things to be in health care policies, if you have one, do not go away if this amendment passes. It only amends the new mandate provisions of title I of the new health care law, the health care law that has received so much controversial attention, for good reason. And this is one of those reasons. Supplying respect for religious beliefs and moral convictions is already part of Federal health programs of all kinds, it just does not happen to be in the new law. There is no health care law since 1973 that does not have these provisions in this bill that are part of the law. The law is there now, and the world does not change. No Colorado woman will lose any health care benefits they have today if this amendment passes. No New Jersey woman will lose any benefits they have today if this amendment passes. Regarding any health care service people may be worried about, we asked one question: Are people allowed to exclude this service from their health care benefit under current State or Federal law? If they are not allowed to exclude it under current State or Federal law, they would not be allowed to exclude it if this amendment passes. If they are not allowed to exclude it, they are still not allowed to exclude it under this amendment. And if they are allowed to exclude such service, why haven't the critics been protesting before? This amendment does not change anything in the law today. So why haven't we heard these speeches before about how the law does not protect employers from deciding not to offer this or not to offer that? In fact, this makes it much more difficult to exclude services than it is now. In fact, it allows for an actuarial equivalent to have to be added to a policy if you take something away. That means there is no financial reason--there is no financial reason--to exclude a service because if you exclude a service because you believe it is the wrong thing, the Secretary of Health and Human Services has the power to say: You have to come back and include a new service of equal value that we did not require. I assume everybody on the other side of this debate would think that employers must be motivated to exclude these services if they are not legitimate religious beliefs and moral conviction; that they must exclude them because they would save some money. We do not allow them to save money. So there is no reason. The Secretary of Health and Human Services can say: OK. You can exclude that, but you have to include something we did not require something of equal value. That means something that is going to be equally used. That means something that is going to be equally costly to the employer. Why would the employer do that? I mean, why are we not hearing all these stories now about how--why did the 200,000 women who have these health services today--I think it is 20 million--why do they have those services? There is nothing in the law that requires it. This law does not change the laws today. From the point of view of having a political discussion instead of a discussion about what the amendment does or why it is consistent with what we have always done, I think the other side has done a great job of that. But consistently we have protected this principle of first amendment freedoms. In fact, in 1994, in the bill Mrs. Clinton, the First Lady at the time, worked so hard for, that was introduced by Senator Moynihan--here is what it said. This was the bill that also would require people to provide insurance. You know we do not have much about insurance because we have not required people to provide it before. There are some Federal health benefits about insurance I may talk about in a minute that also are protected. But this was a bill that required people to provide insurance, and Senator Moynihan said about his bill in 1994, less than 20 years ago, ``Nothing in this title shall be construed to prevent any employer from contributing to the purchase of a standard benefits package which excludes coverage for abortion and other services if the employer objects to such service on the basis of religious belief or moral conviction.'' The most amazing aspect of this whole debate, to me, is that in 20 years, this has gone from language that would be in what was considered the most progressive, liberal health care bill that had ever been offered, by one of the most respected Senators by Americans of all political philosophies but most agreed with by Americans of the more liberal political philosophy, that he would just put that in the bill-- I have asked: Is there any indication in the debate on that bill that this was a big item? The answer I hear is: No, it was not a big item because it was part of who we are. It was part of what we had been as a nation. It was part of protecting the first amendment. This amendment does not mention any procedure because I do not know what kind of--and nobody knows what might be, at some future date, offensive to somebody's religious beliefs, but they have no financial reason to not provide a service. So the only reason they would have under this amendment would be a true moral objection. I had some initial hesitation myself. I said: OK. I understand the faith-based institutions. I used to be the president of a Christian university and so I understand why it is important those institutions keep their faith-based distinctions. But what about other employers? Frankly, I did not have to think about that very long to realize that if someone is of a faith that believes something is absolutely wrong, as an employer why would they want to pay for that? They believe this is a wrong thing to do. Why would they want to pay for that? The language of equivalency in this bill means, if they choose not to pay for that, the Secretary can say: OK. Come up with something else that would be equally used and equally valuable that they would pay for. So there is no financial reason not to do it. The only reason not to do it is they truly believe it is a wrong thing to do. Surely, every person in the Senate has at least one thing that because of religious reasons they believe is wrong to do. Do they want to be forced by the government to be a participant in that wrong thing? The things we are talking about, in my particular faith, I am not opposed to all these things the President said he would require. But that does not mean I should be any less concerned about people who legitimately, week after week at their place of worship, express this to be something that they would not participate in. If the congregants want to go on their own and figure out how to participate, that is one thing. If they want to go on their own and provide insurance to their employees that include these things that they heard at church are wrong to do, that is another thing. But if they want to say, look, I am not going to do that--but under the new mandate, we do not do anything that eliminates the mandate. There is still a mandate--under the new mandate, I am not going to do that, but I am going to have to add something to the policy to the mandate that would be of equal financial value, of equivalent value. So the only reason to object is they believe it is wrong, and that what the first amendment is all about. That is why, consistently, through employment law we have protected--even though the administration lost a 9-to-0 case trying to interpret that the same way they want to interpret this--the government knows best. If we are allowed to, we will abuse the hiring situation. Now they say if we are allowed to, we will abuse the health care providing situation. I think we have taken away the financial incentive to do that. I believe what this does is protect first amendment rights. The first freedom in the founding documents is freedom of religion, and we have protected it over and over and over again. Every Member of this Senate who has been here in any recent time, except the very newest Members, have voted for bills that had this language in them, whether it was the Clinton administration, whether it was the Moynihan proposal, whether it was the Patients' Bill of Rights or the religious freedom law. It was all there. I think it is--to come up with all these cases that they would not treat prenatal care, might not treat cancer--why would they not do that? Why would they not do that? If they do not treat that, they have to pay for something else of equal value. Look at the very last provision of this amendment. So there is no financial reason not to do this. The only reason is that they believe it is against their religious views. The phrase we use in this bill is exactly the phrase Senator Moynihan used, it is exactly the phrase Frank Church used, it is exactly the phrase people on the floor at this moment voted for when they said we do not want people to have to participate in capital punishment or prosecuting crimes where capital punishment is a possibility because of religious belief or moral conviction. It was good enough for everything up until now, including this principle, until we get to 2012. Suddenly, we have all these reasons people cannot make faith decisions that relate to providing health care to employees. I disagree with that. I think the first amendment protects that. I believe if and when--if this rule goes forward, it will go to the Supreme Court. It will be something close to that 9-to-0 decision on hiring rights. There is no difference in the principle. Again, I would say, look at the last section of this bill if one believes employers are going to do this to save money. Otherwise, what motivation do they have, besides the moral conviction and religious belief that is protected by the first amendment? I hope my colleagues will read this amendment carefully, will understand that protection currently in the law is taken away by this amendment. If one has a right now, one would still have it if this amendment passed. To argue otherwise denies the facts of both people who have coverage today and 220-plus years of constitutional protections in the country. Read the bill. It may not change any minds today. But this issue will not go away unless the administration decides to take it away by giving people of faith these first amendment protections.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the Senator. Mr. President, I want to go next to my neighbor in the Congress, and now my neighbor in the Senate, and my neighbor in real life from northwest Arkansas. I am from southwest Missouri. I am glad Senator Boozman came down to discuss this issue.