Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, conversations continue today about exactly how we are going to meet the financial obligations our country faces. A fundamental question on hand seems to be do we borrow more and spend more or do we make the serious decisions that will get our Nation back on sound financial footing. Today, our national debt stands at over $14 trillion. Unemployment continues to rise, with more than 14 million Americans out of work now, and the government continues to spend more money than it collects, or that I believe it should collect. As the cochairs of the President's own fiscal commission have warned, if we fail to take swift action, the United States faces, according to them, the most predictable economic crisis in history. A quote attributed to many people, including my fellow Missourian Mark Twain, would be that it is hard to make predictions, especially when you are talking about the future. But the easiest to predict is demographics. If you know how many people are here now and have all the other demographic information you need, you should be able to figure out what the population is going to look like. As the population gets older, our programs for seniors will cost more. At his news conference yesterday, President Obama was asked about Social Security reform. He said, in a statement that I didn't quite understand, that Social Security is not the source of our deficit problem. Then he went on to say that the reason we do Social Security in the debt ceiling plan is to strengthen Social Security, to make sure benefits are there for the seniors in the outyears. I agree totally. This is the time to deal with Social Security-- particularly the time to deal with it if you are going to deal with Social Security in a way that doesn't impact anyone who is retired or who is approaching retirement. The President went on to say the Republicans want to talk about Social Security as part of a broader deal because it is politically difficult to vote on. I actually think a lot of Democrats and Republicans want to talk about Social Security because we know now is the right time to save it. If you are going to save it for future generations, you have to start sooner rather than later. Our colleague, Senator Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, said during a hearing in May on deficit reduction and Social Security: Addressing our deficits and debt is an economic issue, a national security issue, and a moral issue. He went on to say: We have a moral obligation to leave this place better than we found it. I agree with his quote. If we are going to leave Social Security better than we found it, we have to begin to work on it right now. Each year, Social Security costs are higher. This year, they are going to be 3.6 percent higher than last year. That is a 1-year increase--3.6 percent in 1 year. The workers-to-beneficiary ratio--and we know how Social Security works, with people paying in who largely fund the money going out today. The people paying in in 2035 will be 2.1 for every person working. In the current system, there is no way the pages on the floor today are going to be able to pay half of whatever the average recipient gets. But that is what you would have to do if we don't change the system. We have to deal with the deficit facing Social Security. I think we need to deal with that now, whether it is politically difficult or not; otherwise, there won't be a Social Security Program that works for the people who are paying in today. Social Security no longer collects what it spends. We have a $45 billion deficit, or a shortfall, in 2011, and the truth is that we are still cashing in the IOUs to Social Security, and we will do that as long as they are there, but eventually those IOUs will run out as well. Over the next 10 years, it is projected that we will spend $447 billion more than comes into the Social Security trust fund. According to this year's Medicare and Social Security trustees report, Social Security is now operating under permanent annual deficit for as long as they can calculate. Permanent annual deficits won't work, so what would work? Today, I want to discuss a plan to put Social Security on a path that means our children and grandchildren can have confidence that the contributions that come out of their hard-earned paychecks will result in benefits when they retire. Ask people you know at work who are in their twenties and thirties if they expect to collect Social Security benefits. Just under 26 percent of voters under 40 believe it is even somewhat likely they will receive all their promised Social Security benefits--26 percent believe it is somewhat likely--not absolute but somewhat likely. And just to give you an idea, 15 percent of people believe Social Security will be fine if it is not reformed--15 percent--while 20 percent of people polled believe aliens exist and live among us. So the number of people who believe aliens exist and live among us is higher than the number of people who believe Social Security will be fine if it is not reformed. The last time the Senate and the House made comprehensive changes in Social Security was 1983. Well, it is time to do it again. It is time to do it again, and we can make changes in the program that will not affect those who are approaching retirement, though that will be always the charge: They are going to take Social Security from retirees. Well, this is a plan that talks about people who are 55 and younger and no change for anybody who is 55 or older today. So if you are 55 or older, and you hear the discussion about this plan, it has nothing to do with you. It will not affect your Social Security. So that is the first point. The second point is we would need to look at a new cost-of-living index that is based on the costs that seniors have. The third point is that we need a new distribution formula. If we do those three things, we will have a solvent system for at least seven decades. In the next 70 years, somebody can look at this to come up with a plan to be sure it goes beyond then. But seven decades is about as far as we can safely predict anything. This would protect the life of Social Security for at least that long as a solvent system. Most seniors live on a fixed income, and they feel it when their utility bills go up, their health care costs go up, or when their food prices go up. The current cost-of-living adjustment, the so-called COLA formula--calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, known as the CPI or the Consumer Price Index--tracks purchases by working-age individuals. Frankly, what working-age individuals buy may be quite different from what seniors spend their money on, or at least how most seniors spend their money. Many economists believe this causes the CPI to misrepresent the inflation that impacts seniors, and seniors deserve better. For example, the rising cost of education and childcare are heavily weighted in the current formula. These costs don't often have the same impact on seniors as they do on the working-age population or the younger population. But health care costs and utility bills, as an example, have more impact on seniors and on the budget of seniors than they do on the working-age population. My plan directs the Bureau of Labor Statistics to develop a more accurate method of calculating COLAs for Social Security recipients. It would move to a chain-weighted CPI that accounts for the purchasing habits of individuals--not of all ages--who are over 65, and health care costs would account for a much larger portion of seniors' spending in this type of index. What seniors spend their money on is what we would be looking at instead of what everybody who is in the working-age population spends their money on. This plan will eliminate the program's long-term funding shortfall and ensure payments for the next 70 to 75 years. As does the President's fiscal commission, my plan would account for the increase in life expectancy and would call for an increase in the normal retirement age. Now, remember, primarily these are for retirees who don't believe they are going to benefit from the system anyhow. Most of the people we are talking about who will be impacted don't think the system is going to be there for them. We are trying to ensure it will be. Over time, the retirement age changes to 65 years. That is 1 year younger than the proposal of the President's commission, but I think it is an age that works, and it looks like it is working as we look through these numbers. This means the retirement age will rise slowly for future retirees--3 months for each year from 2022 to 2030. Nobody would be impacted at all until 2022. The person who was going to retire in 2022 would retire 3 months later, and that would be added on every year until 2030. Likewise, the plan would change early retirement benefits from 62 to 64 beginning in 2022. So it only, again, impacts people who get to that age in 2022. Our current benefit structure is simply not sustainable, and that is why my plan would also modify the current benefit structure to ensure that seniors who earn at or below the 40th percentile receive exactly the same amount of retirement benefits as they would if the program continued exactly as it is today, and a new index slightly reduces benefits that would occur above the 40th percentile. Wealthier future seniors can plan for their retirement years through personal savings, through retirement plans, through alternative investments, through IRAs, or through employer-sponsored plans. But those who are not in that category would continue to get exactly the same benefit when they retire they would get at today's retirement age. So back to President Obama's comments yesterday. Let's look at a plan that does the following, President Obama: Let's look at a plan that has no higher rate of contributions, no means test for Social Security recipients, no tax on future beneficiaries but slightly lower benefits and a slightly longer time to work until retirement. The difference is, if you work until retirement, you actually get a benefit. This is no longer a topic we can avoid, so let's not miss this opportunity. Let's make a promise right now--while we are dealing, hopefully, with big issues--to workers paying the bill today that Social Security will be there for them when they retire. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I would like to say to both Senator Sessions and Senator Johnson, who were primary leaders in this idea that we shouldn't go home, that Republicans shouldn't vote to adjourn, that you were going to object to things that didn't relate to the business we need to do, and, of course, that is right. As Senator Johnson was talking, I was thinking the other deadline, the other April 15 deadline, every American had better comply with that one. It is in the law just like the one that we are supposed to comply with. What if everybody in America decided they were going to miss their legal deadline as well? OK, we are not going to have a budget, and we are not going to pay our taxes. Of course, they would be in trouble. The Senate is not in trouble, but the country is in trouble because the Senate is not doing its job. Neither the House nor the Senate did their jobs in the last Congress, for the first time ever. So that is how we go now into 3 years of no budget, 3 years since we had a working document that we should have to work with. That is important. What did we do this week? The disappointment to all three of us is we said we wanted to stay this week and deal with these issues, and what did we deal with? We started out by trying to deal with a Libya resolution that apparently wasn't important enough to deal with last Thursday when we were going to take a week to be working in our States, but we will debate the Libya resolution. Then when people on the Republican side said they thought we ought to be debating the reason we were supposed to stay, we still didn't do that. We have this amendment that I think was supposed to be a sense of the Senate, and is a sense of the Senate that millionaires aren't paying enough taxes. We all understand the politics of that, just like we understand the politics of no accelerated depreciation for business airplanes. Whenever that was done, it was done to try to create more American jobs quicker by a little more demand. I think how that works is that plane is depreciated in 5 years instead of 7 to encourage people to go ahead and buy a plane and keep people who make planes at work. But what is that $3 billion over 10 years? We are borrowing $4 billion today, and we try to have this debate as if it is about $3 billion over 10 years. We are borrowing $4 billion today, and we want to have this false debate about who is not paying their share. We are spending too much money is the problem. The problem is not that we are not taxing enough. We are spending almost 25 percent of the capacity of the country to produce goods and services. Until the beginning of 2009, for 40 years the average was 20.6; $1 out of $5 was going to the Federal Government, not $1 out of $4. I was asked by some reporters yesterday: Why is this so different than other times when the debt limit has been increased? You mentioned one of them earlier. One of the differences is we have added 35 percent to the debt in about 30 months--35 percent to the debt in 30 months. Another one is the Federal Government is suffocating the economy by spending too much money. There is no money left for people to borrow and take a risk and create a job and create an opportunity for somebody else. On the millionaire tax, 1 percent of all the taxpayers pay 38 percent of all the taxes now. Maybe we ought to get to where 1 or 2 percent just pay all the taxes. We already have 47 percent of the individuals in the country paying no income tax. By the way, you value what you pay for. If you don't pay any income tax, you don't care about the income tax as much as if you did. So there aren't as many people out there fighting excessive taxation because they have less of a stake in it. But 1 percent of the people in the country already pay 38 percent of the income taxes, and 10 percent pay 70 percent. Maybe we just ought to let that 10 percent pay 100 percent. I guess that would get all the millionaires and billionaires. And, oh, I remember the tax. Do you remember the millionaires' tax, but only like 155 people would pay or something? It was the alternative minimum tax; 155 people were going to pay that millionaire tax, and now some huge percentage of all Americans pay it because, eventually, once we start down this path, everybody is impacted by higher tax rates. The frustration of being here and not doing anything all week--we had one vote to compel the Members who didn't come, to come to the Senate, and another vote was cloture on a bill that doesn't matter. The frustration of your leadership and then that result is pretty incredible to me. But thanks to both Senators for insisting for weeks before last week that we should stay and have a discussion, a debate, a vote on the things that matter. I am sorry that we didn't have that, particularly based on the intensity on the part of both Senators of insisting that we have that kind of debate this week, and we didn't have it.

Mr. BLUNT. I will. I also asked the Senator about his view of this budget situation. The Presiding Officer and I were secretaries of state together some time ago and have known each other a long time. I am glad to have him in the chair as we have this discussion. I don't think the House, until the last Congress, ever failed to pass a budget. I am not sure the Senate didn't always pass a budget until the last Congress, though there were times when the House and Senate could not agree. But at least each side had a plan. There is an old adage that when you fail to plan, you plan to fail. It sure looks to me that is the trajectory we are on now. Members are more and more talking about maybe we will have another continuing resolution this year. That will be the appropriations process because we have no plan. Of course, as the Senator pointed out, as a person who knows as much about the budget process as anybody in Washington, we passed the April 1 deadline, then we passed a May 1 date, and then a June 1 date, and now we passed the July 1 date. We are up to that 800th day since the Senate passed a plan or had a plan of any kind. We are waiting for a plan to move forward with the work of just funding the government. Clearly, that is not acceptable. We see the economy continuing to wait for some signs of certainty from the Federal Government, certainty about where our budget is going to be, certainty about our tax structure, certainty about regulations and utility bills. We are just not seeing that happen. In fact, things are getting progressively worse and worse. Gas prices have almost doubled now in the last 30 months. Unemployment is up 17 percent. In fact, there is no statistic I know of that is better than it was in January of 2009. Has the Senate, in the past, until the last 3 years--has there ever been a time when the Senate didn't even attempt to have a budget?

Mr. BLUNT. It shows we have been 800 days without a budget, and basically 800 days without any structure or process of how we spend the people's money. It has been 800 days since the last time we could come up with an appropriations process, so maybe they will suggest we will modify that a little bit and move forward. But that clearly is not good enough. In that 800 days, as the Senator pointed out, we have gone to where we are--we have added 35 percent in a little over 800 days, in 2\1/2\ years, to the Federal deficit. This is not defending anybody else's effort to make the revenue and the expenditures of the Federal Government balance, but we can't continue to spend more than we have. If we don't have a plan, a blueprint, or if we don't have a budget like families have to have--if we don't have a budget at the very least, and we are managing our money, we write checks until the money runs out, and we can't do much more than that. We are at a point now that we are spending $3.7 trillion or $3.8 trillion and collecting $2.2 trillion. I am like Senator Cornyn on this topic--by the way, everybody else is too, including the Secretary of the Treasury. Nobody knows how much money this is, but we all know if someone is making $22,000 a year and spending $37,000 a year, and they have already borrowed more money than anybody should have ever lent them, they can't continue to do that. There has to be a point where they say: We are going to have to get real. We are making $22,000, so we better start spending no more than $22,000, and that includes paying off the money that we have already borrowed when we were spending $37,000. There are so many zeros and numbers that if any of us really understood how much money we are talking about and how long it will take to pay it back, we would all be more scared than we are. Certainly, the people we work for would be more scared than they are because we are doing irresponsible things, and as irresponsible as any of those things is not having a plan. In all those years the Senator spent on the Budget Committee and his leadership there now, he knows if we don't have a plan--the appropriations process doesn't move forward unless we agree first how much money we are going to spend in that process. So, eventually, we just go back and say: Let's go back to last year and modify slightly the terrible job we did last year, and let's borrow that much more money again. That is not acceptable.

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I am pleased to have a chance to talk about the work I think we should be doing this week and surely will do in the weeks to come. We are really discussing who we are going to be as a country, what model we are going to follow. Are we going to continue to be a country that believes we need to help create opportunity or are we going to be a country that believes the government needs to continue to accept more and more of the challenges of life? Our debt today is over $14 trillion, and apparently that is not enough, so every discussion in Washington, including some that you are in, is focusing around the idea of how do we get even more ability to borrow more money so we can pay off the money we have already borrowed. There are 13 million Americans out of work today, looking for a job, and during that process we continue to spend money we don't have for things we don't have to have. I think we ought to be focused totally on two things domestically right now. At the top of every list should be what do we do to create more private sector jobs and how do we get Federal spending under control. The Federal Government doesn't create private sector jobs in very many instances. By the way, if we are going to have something we are going to be paying for 30 years, I hope we are investing in something that will last for 30 years. But the most the Federal Government can do that impacts jobs is create an atmosphere that takes all the uncertainty out of the decisionmaking process. There are enough risks in creating jobs without having the additional risks of how fast can the utility bill go up, how high will the taxes be, and what new unknown regulations are you going to have to deal with. Frankly, those are the wrong messages in all three of those areas right now if you hope to be focused on the idea of how do we create jobs for those 13 million Americans who are looking for jobs and better jobs for the Americans who have jobs. What are we doing to encourage private sector job creation for the future? We are now spending at the Federal level almost $1 out of $4, right at $1 out of every $4 that the economy can create in goods and services. The number for 40 years, ending in 2008, was $1 out of $5. There is a lot of difference in an economy--who competes for that dollar that the Federal Government is now spending that for 40 years was available for somebody else to get their hands on and use to create opportunity for somebody else? We have to get that under control. The Cochairs of the President's own fiscal commission say we are looking at the most predictable economic crisis in the history of the country. There is a train moving down the track to a destination nobody wants to go, and it continues to move at that same speed. It is totally predictable. It is something we have to do something about, and we cannot continue to spend somewhere between $3.7 and $3.8 trillion in this spending year and collect $2.2 trillion. I have said on this floor before that I am not sure anybody really has a good grasp of what $3.8 trillion is. But we do know that if you are making $22,000 and you are spending $38,500--oh, and you have already borrowed all the money anybody really should have ever loaned you--you have a problem you cannot deal with for very long without changing behavior. That behavior has to change. It has to change in ways that look at the programs where we, up until now, have just been able to define who benefits from the programs without any real controls over how that money is spent. This year, the $2.2 trillion that I mentioned the Federal Government collected, that all was spent by the programs that we normally do not even appropriate money for because we have defined who gets that money. For the first time ever, those programs exceeded all the money that came in. Most of those programs, of course, are the big programs we want to be sure are there as safety nets for people who have been told they need to rely on them. I think about 80 percent of that side of the budget is Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. We need to see what we can do so those programs continue to work. But if all of that side of the budget spent all of the money, that means every other penny the Federal Government spent for an air traffic controller; for somebody to open the gates to a national park; sadly, for somebody to put on a military uniform or to put a gallon of jet fuel in a plane or to buy a gallon of paint for a ship--that was all done with borrowed money. We are defending the country on borrowed money. The No. 1 obligation of the Federal Government is just that. We have to figure out what to do to structurally begin to define how we spend the money that comes in and to make sure we don't spend more money than comes in. That is why I am supporting the balanced budget amendment. I think we need to spend a lot of July talking about what we do to get this budget back in balance, how long it takes, and I look forward to that debate being the principal debate of the next month. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my friend Senator Carl Levin in introducing this legislation to create a new U.S. Department of State special envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East. As we observe the political upheavals occurring throughout the region, we need to remember that this region is the birthplace of three of the world's major religions. I am particularly interested in ensuring that the shrinking minority of Christians in places like Egypt, Iraq, the West Bank, and Afghanistan receive adequate attention by our foreign emissaries. I expect this bill to encourage the State Department to redouble its efforts to call attention to all religious minorities and demonstrate to leaders in the region that the United States takes religious freedom seriously. I am hopeful that as change takes place in many of these countries, they will look to the United States as a model of religious tolerance and freedom. I thank my friends in the House of Representatives, Frank Wolf, Anna Eshoo, Joe Pitts, and many others, for their efforts on this bill's House companion, which was introduced earlier this year. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the Capitol and with the Administration to enact this important legislation.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my friend Senator Carl Levin in introducing this legislation to create a new U.S. Department of State special envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East. As we observe the political upheavals occurring throughout the region, we need to remember that this region is the birthplace of three of the world's major religions. I am particularly interested in ensuring that the shrinking minority of Christians in places like Egypt, Iraq, the West Bank, and Afghanistan receive adequate attention by our foreign emissaries. I expect this bill to encourage the State Department to redouble its efforts to call attention to all religious minorities and demonstrate to leaders in the region that the United States takes religious freedom seriously. I am hopeful that as change takes place in many of these countries, they will look to the United States as a model of religious tolerance and freedom. I thank my friends in the House of Representatives, Frank Wolf, Anna Eshoo, Joe Pitts, and many others, for their efforts on this bill's House companion, which was introduced earlier this year. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the Capitol and with the Administration to enact this important legislation.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, Missouri has withstood a number of tremendous natural disasters this spring. In fact, the flood our good friend from Montana just talked about is headed down the Missouri River from Montana, to the Dakotas, to Missouri right now. We have had floods along the Mississippi. We have had floods of the Black River that required the evacuation of part of Poplar Bluff, MO. We have had tornadoes in both St. Louis and Joplin and now, as I said, the Missouri River floods. The Missouri River flood is beginning to reflect what has happened upstream with the above-normal snowpack that we do not see much of, but we see it when it melts in the spring. And high rainfall amounts this spring have made the difference in what is happening in our State. The flooding along the Missouri River, which is about to get to crisis stage, will now join floods along the Mississippi River, the Black River, and tornadoes in St. Louis and Joplin. River levels are expected to rise near record levels and remain there until early or mid-August. This, of course, will put a tremendous pressure on our levee system. The estimates I heard this week were that between now and 2 weeks from today, there will be at least two dozen levees underwater, which means the water will have gotten high enough to come over the tops of these levees, and maybe over 50 levees on the Missouri River before it gets to St. Louis will be underwater and will have water on both sides of them until well into the summer. Of course, that begins to undermine the very basis of the levee itself when it stands in water on both sides. The Corps and local sponsors are working to reinforce the levees along the Missouri River. We see that the Department of Agriculture and the Corps also have to get engaged to get the damaged land cleared and rehabilitated for all this levee protection to be restored. There is some discussion on the opening of the levee in the boot heel, a place called Birds Point. That had been the plan, to open that levee in a flood disaster, since 1937, but it had not happened since 1937. Mr. President, 130,000 additional acres of farmland means at this moment we probably have 500,000 acres of farmland--a little more than that--underwater, and that number will be much higher than that by this time next week. But that 130,000 acres at Birds Point will still be underwater most of next year unless the Corps goes back in, as they committed they would, and gets a temporary levee that becomes a permanent levee in as soon as possible. We also cannot underestimate--and it would be hard to even overestimate--the challenges Joplin, MO, faces, a city in which the death toll from the tornadoes has now exceeded any tornado in the last 50 years. I think the mid-1950s was the last time this much loss of life occurred in a tornado. I live about 60 miles from Joplin in Springfield, MO. I represented both Joplin and Springfield in the House of Representatives for 14 years. I had an office in Joplin. I have been there literally hundreds of times. And as a southwest Missourian, I have seen lots of tornado damage, but I have never seen anything like this damage. I went to the area Tuesday after the tornado hit over the weekend. I think the tornado hit on Sunday afternoon late. I was there most of the day Tuesday. I was riding with a veteran police sergeant down streets that both he and I had been down many times, and neither of us could ever really tell quite where we were because the devastation was that great. Every street looked like the street next to it. The buildings were ground up. The 2 by 4s had become toothpicks. It was almost unrecognizable. This same tornado, if it would have hit and stayed on the ground for 6 miles in an area of farmland, would have done some damage, but there would not have been nearly as much damage. As it happened, it ripped through the city of Joplin in a swath that was at least half a mile wide and in some places three-quarters of a mile wide. It stayed on the ground for 6 miles and destroyed approximately 30 percent of the buildings in a town of 50,000 people. There were 141 people killed, including those who in the hospitals from injuries since the tornado, because of the tornado. More than 900 people were injured, and 8,000 homes and apartments were destroyed. And I think here the word ``destroyed'' is the right word. Others were damaged; these were destroyed. Mr. President, 8,000 places where people lived 3 weeks ago aren't there today, and more than 500 commercial properties were demolished by this devastating tornado. Homes, churches, the high school, the vo-tech school, three elementary schools, and the Catholic school at all levels are all gone, and then other schools were damaged. How you get back to school in August and September of this year with those schools gone is a huge challenge, one that a community would assume it would never have to meet, but the community has been meeting it, as have people from all over the country and particularly from our State. Rescue efforts, led by groups such as Missouri Task Force 1 and other public safety officials--fire departments, law enforcement, medical personnel, the volunteers--have up until now been tireless, but I can tell you they are getting pretty tired. People in Missouri and across America have been overwhelmingly generous with their time and resources in the aftermath of this storm, and all Missourians are grateful for it. Large corporations and small community organizations and individuals have helped. People have responded to calls on the phone by doing whatever they were asked to do to make a small donation. The General Motors Foundation announced a $100,000 grant to the Red Cross, along with two vehicles, full-sized vans, and free access to their OnStar service after the disaster. The Ford Motor Company donated another $50,000 to Feeding America for Joplin, and their employees in the Kansas City plant are assisting as volunteers in relief efforts. Walmart committed $1 million. Home Depot and Walmart both had--there was a Walmart supercenter and a Home Depot store that were totally demolished, 100-percent demolished. In both cases, they had late-Sunday-afternoon shoppers in them. In one store was a man and his 4-year-old and 1-year-old. I am not sure they were on the way to the Home Depot, but at the last minute they were running into the Home Depot, thinking that would be the safest place to be, and those big concrete walls collapsed inward, and the mom who sent them to get lightbulbs or whatever she had sent them to get never saw those three people who were so much of her life before. The St. Louis Cardinals donated $25,000 to Convoy of Hope. The Kansas City Royals and Kansas City Chiefs each gave $35,000 to Heart to Heart International. Duracell opened a Power Relief Trailer. Tide opened a Loads of Hope location, offering laundry services for the thousands of affected families. Heart of Missouri United Way collected over $1 million and pledged that 100 percent of those funds that were raised in that drive would go to Joplin. Target contributed $95,000 to relief. AT&T and Verizon both gave $50,000. Sprint, a Missouri company, a Kansas City area-based company, gave $100,000. TAMKO gave $1 million. Their headquarters are in Joplin. Their headquarters were not affected, but many of their employees were. Loves Travel Shop gave $150,000. Great Southern and Southwest Missouri Bank both donated $10,000. The Girl Scouts in Houston, MO, were collecting toys for the children of Joplin who had lost their toys. The University of Missouri produced a tornado relief t-shirt with the slogan ``One State. One Spirit. One Mizzou.'' The Mizzou football team and D. Rowe's Restaurant partnered to fill a semi truck of groceries and other items to send to the location. The American Red Cross, the Harvesters Community Food Network, sent 14,000 ready-to-eat meals. The Kansas Speedway and the Highway Roadhouse and Kitchen collected items for victims. The Ozarks Technical Community College is collecting funds to help people. The students in a high school in St. Louis, which had its own tornado, sent things to Joplin as well. FEMA is doing what it can. We need to prioritize spending. As I reach the conclusion of my remarks and mention the people who need to be mentioned--I sent President Obama a letter. I spoke with Secretary Napolitano shortly after this disaster insisting that the Federal Government do what we did in Katrina and reimburse taxpayers for their expenses at the 100-percent level. We have gone from 75 to 90, so only 10 percent more, and I will be happy with that number. Mr. President, 75 percent was the first number discussed, but we are at 90 now. The Federal Government needs to do this. And local utility companies need to get the same kind of assistance others have had in similar disasters. In all cases, the first responders were people's neighbors. Their neighbors will still be there 6 months later when people are still struggling. But with thanks to everyone who has helped, with appreciation for the Federal employees who have been there and absolute insistence that we do everything we need to do to treat this disaster as it needs to be treated because it truly is a disaster, I will be working with everything we can find to make this situation a challenge the community can meet. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, when GEN Matthew Bunker Ridgway passed away on July 26, 1993, he was one of the most decorated soldiers in the U.S. Armed Forces. Members of his family, including some of my constituents from Columbia, MO, gather each year. This year, they will honor General Ridgway's leadership, character, and courage as they celebrate the 60th anniversary of his command as Supreme Commander of the United Nations forces in Korea and Supreme Commander of the U.S. Far East Command during the Korean war. General Ridgway was born on March 3, 1895, in Fort Monroe, VA, to COL Thomas Ridgway and Mrs. Ruth Ridgway. He went to high school in Boston, MA, and afterward planned to follow in his father's footsteps at West Point. Young Matthew failed the math portion of his entrance exam but was not deterred. He studied harder for his second attempt, passed, and graduated from West Point. In 1917 he was commissioned as second lieutenant. After the disappointment of not being sent into combat during World War I, Lieutenant Ridgway said, ``The soldier who has had no share in this last great victory of good over evil would be ruined.'' After serving on various generals' staffs and commanding the 15th Infantry in Tientsin, China, General Ridgway would get his chance to fight. In August 1942, General Ridgway succeeded Omar Bradley when he was given command of the 82nd Airborne Division. The 82nd was chosen as one of the Army's five new airborne divisions. The conversion of an entire infantry division to airborne status was an unprecedented and daunting task which Ridgway successfully accomplished. In 1944, General Ridgway helped plan the airborne operations of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Europe. In Normandy, he courageously jumped with his troops, who fought bravely for 33 days in advancing to Saint-Sauveur- le-Vicomte near Cherbourg, France. In 1950, as the Korean war raged, General Ridgway was given command of the 8th Army. When Ridgway assumed command the 8th Army was in tactical retreat and suffering from low morale. After a successful reorganization of command structure and service at the front lines, General Ridgway had repaired morale among his soldiers. Ridgway shifted tactics and, relying heavily on coordinated artillery, went on the offensive, helping slow and later stop the Chinese at the battles of Chipyong-ni and Wonju. When General MacArthur was relieved of command in 1951, General Ridgway took the helm as Supreme Commander of U.N. forces in Korea and Supreme Commander of the U.S. Far East Command. Over the next year, Ridgway was responsible for conduct of the Korean war. He also followed General MacArthur as military governor of Japan, where he oversaw the restoration of Japan's Independence and sovereignty. In 1952, he replaced GEN Dwight D. Eisenhower as the Supreme Allied Commander for the North Atlantic Trade Organization, where he was credited for improvements through command structure, forces, facilities, and training. For his last assignment, General Ridgway served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army from 1953 until his retirement in 1955. In retirement, General Ridgway would serve on boards, write, speak to groups, and advise other leaders, including President Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan awarded General Ridgway the Presidential Medal of Freedom. GEN Matthew Bunker Ridgway passed away at his home outside Pittsburgh at the age of 98, on July 26, 1993. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, and during his eulogy Colin Powell said: ``No soldier ever upheld his honor better than this man. No soldier ever loved his country more than this man did. Every American soldier owes a debt to this great man.''

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, as the Memorial holiday approaches, and the Nation remembers our brave soldiers who have served and are serving in our military, I ask the Senate to join me in remembering a decorated war hero and a fellow Missourian, F.T. ``Hogan'' H'Doubler, Jr., M.D., who passed away on November 24, 2010. Dr. H'Doubler was born in Springfield, MO, on June 18, 1925. In December 1942, at the age of 17, he graduated from high school a semester early to enlist in the Navy. He was assigned to the V-12 training program at Miami University in Oxford, OH. He earned his medical degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After the conclusion of World War II, F.T. ``Hogan'' H'Doubler, Jr., M.D. reentered the Navy as a lieutenant junior grade in the Medical Corps. During the Korean war, he volunteered with the Fleet Marines, and while treating a wounded marine, he received multiple gunshot wounds and was evacuated from Korea. Because of these injuries, he received a Purple Heart with the Oak Leaf Cluster and a Bronze Star. Dr. H'Doubler became a Shriner in 1956 and served as Potentate in 1968. He later became the Imperial Potentate of the Shrine of North America from 1980 1981. He was an Emeritus Trustee of Shriners Hospitals for Children, and served as chairman of both the Medical Research Planning Committee and the Budget Committee. He was also a member of the Finance Committee and an Emeritus Representative of the Shriners International. He is credited with starting the Stop Burn Injury Program, which is still active today. Dr. H'Doubler belonged to many professional organizations, including the American Medical Association, Missouri State Medical Society, Greene County Medical Society, American Thyroid Association, and the American Academy of Alternative Medicine, of which he served as president in 1985. He is survived by his wife Marie, and his four children: daughters Julie Thomas and Sarah Muegge, and sons Kurt and Charles, and six grandchildren. I would like to pay tribute to this wonderful man who served his Nation and his community with distinction and achieved the Shriners goal of free orthopedic and burn care for all children. Dr. H'Doubler was always a trusted resource on medical issues on whom I could rely at any time. His insight, his compassion, and his willingness to lead on important issues made him a sought after expert. I always enjoyed spending time with Dr. H'Doubler, and he often took time to mentor me on medical and political topics. He was a remarkable man with a full, rich life, and I was glad to call him my friend.

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I rise today to talk about President Obama's speech today on the support of the Arab spring, at least what we are calling the Arab spring. I believe and hope, as many of my colleagues do, that it is in the best interests of the United States to advance freedom in the Middle East. Supporting free people and democratic governments has always guided American foreign policy. Lending our support to people who yearn for freedom is really part of our national DNA. Doing so in a practical and pragmatic way within the context of regional stability is imperative to our own national security. In recent weeks I have been very supportive of the President's actions as they related to Osama bin Laden and the decisions that were made there. In recent months I thought the President has been a little unsteady in advancing the principles I mentioned earlier. He demonstrated uncertainty in dealing with President Mubarak before withdrawing his support and, if I can say so, withdrawing his support suddenly. After hesitating for several weeks and allowing Mr. Qaddafi to regroup, we then authorized U.S. participation in a NATO air operation with a confusing mission that does not have the kind of U.S. leadership that it might have benefited from. Then in Syria we stood on the sidelines for weeks while terrible things happened to profreedom demonstrators before we finally announced a series of sanctions just this week. Of course, we all recall that in 2009, the Iranian regime possibly could have been unseated by proponents of freedom. At that time the President and the United States barely lifted a finger to support those elements. Indeed, the President's entire narrative has been unclear since he took office, from the time of his Cairo speech in 2009. I think that speech has left our friends in the Arab world both disillusioned and confused. Nobody, from the American people to the Arab street, seems sure of what our policy is in support of freedom. So I was very interested in the President's speech regarding a new American policy in the region targeted toward rapidly changing situations in the Middle East. The President laid out a plan for an AID program for some Middle Eastern countries whose internal stability is challenged by recent events. The plan would consist of a combination of grants, of loans, of debt forgiveness, and the President's plan, I believe, has merit and there is value to a robust role for the United States to support certain governments at a critical time. However, it is important that we recognize that any support given to these emerging or existing Arab governments can only be helpful to them if they are helpful to themselves. I believe Congress must be a partner in the development of this package for it to work. Congress will have to ensure that whatever aid is given is both targeted toward an outcome that is in the national security interests of the United States and does not increase the U.S. deficit. It will be a matter of looking at where we can find resources to use them in this new and different way. My support for the President's idea will also be contingent on several principles being met by the government that receives any U.S. aid. As a member of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Committee I am going to be looking for things where the President would certify that the following conditions are being met to proceed further with this plan he outlined today. First, I think the government and its leaders must reject all forms of terrorism if they expect to receive this kind of assistance from us. Second, they must demonstrate a credible plan for economic development and poverty reduction. Lack of access to economic opportunity has been the driving force behind what has happened in these countries. It was not about us; it was not about Israel; it was about jobs and food and economic opportunity. So that has to be one of the criteria that these governments would be looking at. Third, they need to demonstrate a record of support for the rule of law, a prerequisite for ensuring that U.S. aid dollars will not be used to subvert the system of justice or to veil opponents or undermine constitutional government. Fourth, they must respect minority and religious freedoms, including women's rights. Fifth, they must have a sustained commitment to democratic reform and institution building. Nobody believes that democratic societies spring up overnight, but recent months remind us that failing to demonstrate commitment to more open systems of government can end in upheaval and force change. Sixth, these governments, if we help them, must respect international norms such as honoring their treaty obligations and respecting universal human rights. Last, but certainly not least, any government participating in the aid package like the one the President talked about today must be committed to regional peace. In particular, that includes peace with Israel. Israel has both the most to gain and the most to lose as new attitudes toward freedom and democracy spread throughout the Middle East. Leaders who are tempted to bait their populations with antisemitism and then respond to their passions may be even more dangerous to Israel than the regimes they are replacing. But an adage of international relations is that truly free and democratic societies respect one another's existence, recognize one another's right to peace, and resolve their conflicts through peaceful resolution, not violence, not threats, not terror. As nations throughout the Middle East undergo change, we should closely monitor their attitude toward Israel. Only nations that are constructive in their attitudes and policies toward our ally, Israel, should be eligible for the kind of aid the President discussed in his speech. None of these conditions are meant to suggest these governments must be identical or that their leaders must always agree with the United States. I believe, for example, the Kingdom of Jordan currently meets these standards. I am hopeful Egypt's new leaders will commit to these principles as well. Leaders in the Palestinian Authority should look to them as a model for receiving aid from the United States and other western governments. The President also addressed the need for a peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It would be hard to find anyone in this body who does not agree with that concept. We need peace, the Israelis need peace and the Palestinians need peace. But we need to be very careful that we do not set expectations so high that we create deep challenges not only for that process but also for the kind of regional acceptance of Israel that must occur in order to achieve peace. In particular, I am concerned that the President believes that unilateral concessions by Israel, including redefining its borders, are a pathway to peace. I simply do not think that makes sense. There does not even appear to be a Palestinian partner capable of making the hard decisions that must occur in order to get an agreement. Do we really think that Hamas, which has recently joined the government, is going to be a party to a peace deal with Israel? The Palestinian Authority has made real progress on the West Bank in recent years, while Hamas has brought chaos to Gaza. A Palestinian Authority that cannot recognize Israel cannot make peace. That is why any financial relationship the United States has with the Palestinian Authority needs to be based on the principles I just described. In his famous Westminster speech in 1982, President Reagan told the world the following: While we must be cautious about forcing the pace of change, we must not hesitate to declare our ultimate objectives and to take concrete actions to move toward them. We must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky few, but the inalienable and universal right of all human beings. I believe those words are no less true today, 30 years later, than they were then. We are at an extremely important moment as we watch a movement toward freedom unprecedented in the history of the Arab world unfold. It is important to note that those taking to the streets are not burning American flags or shouting anti-Western slogans. It is also probably important to note that they are not waving American flags. It is simply not about us; it is about them. Their passions are driven by generations of economic stagnation and a lack of political and economic freedom that has left them behind much of the free world's prosperity. These freedoms are exactly what the United States stands for. America's role is to support responsible leaders committed to peace and sustainable democratic change. I am hopeful the President will work with my colleagues in the Congress to extend a helping hand to those leaders who are truly committed to these values. If he does, I hope to be part of that process as well. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I hear talk about gas prices and the economy, the effect on the economy and our future. We need to work hard to be sure we are producing more American jobs. Frankly, I can't think of a better way to do that than to produce more American energy. We use about the same amount of energy in a good economy as we do in a weak economy. It is the place to go where we know the consumers are, whether it is the electric bill or the gasoline at the gas pump, and we ought to be doing all we can to produce those jobs. Certainly there are many factors that affect the price of oil, things such as the value of the dollar, supply and demand, and the global events that affect oil, such as the problems now in Libya and other oil-producing countries, or even the weather. I live in a State bounded by the Mississippi River, and the flooding down the Mississippi has had some impact on the north-south movement of refined products in the country. All those things have impact on gas prices. One thing that will come up this summer and that I have worked hard on and on which many of my colleagues have joined me is looking into what we can do to be sure our efforts to have clean air don't needlessly restrict the supply of gasoline. As we get into the summer months, too many cities have their own unique blends of fuel. That means we turn the refineries into profit centers making these unique blends of fuel instead of places that process oil into gasoline and different blends of gasoline only when necessary as opposed to whenever someone has convinced a city that a unique blend of fuel is the only one they can possibly use. In my State of Missouri we have one blend of fuel in the summer in St. Louis, another blend of fuel across the State in Kansas City, and a third blend of fuel in between. All those have to be blended separately, trucked separately, sold, obviously, separately. The Gas Act, which I hope we can talk about more in the next few weeks, is one of the ways we can bring as much common sense into the system as we can. Let's take the supply that we have available and use it in the way that makes the most sense. In fact, right before Katrina in 2009, the President was given new authority in cases of natural disaster to suspend these fuel blends if there is a restriction of supply, and the President did that. I don't think he had the authority a month before Katrina hit. The President did that, and in the 6 months that authority was used, gas prices did not go up in any significant way at all, as I recall, because for that 6-month period of time gasoline became a commodity again. If one could get gasoline, one could sell gasoline. If somebody had gasoline, one could buy gasoline. It did not matter whether it was the unique blend that one had become convinced that in their community that was the only one right for them, and we set some standards on those blends at the time, in the Gas Act, with 38 of my colleagues who cosponsored it. We will set more standards. That is one way to try to use the supply we have in a way that makes the most sense. Another way, clearly, is to go out and find more. Our approach to energy needs to be threefold: to use energy more efficiently so we use less, to find more, and to invest in the future to find out what those things are that we need to be looking at as we transition the system. I am not at all of the opinion we will not have a system, a fleet of cars that is powered in different ways at some date in the foreseeable future. But the foreseeable future would be 25, 30, 40 years. I am equally convinced that no matter what direction we go for fueling automobiles, 25 years from now the majority of cars on the highway are still going to be using gasoline. That means we need to find more of it here. That is what the Offshore Producing and Safety Act that Senator McConnell introduced does and what I am cosponsoring along with my colleagues. This bill tries to restore our offshore exploration of energy. Thirty percent of our domestic energy supply has come from the gulf in recent years. We want to be sure that number continues to remain at that level. Since April of 2010, the administration has only approved 53 shallow- water and 14 deepwater permits--most of those underway before the Deepwater Horizon spill a year ago. In fact, the moratorium has, for all practical purposes, become what some people are describing as a permatorium. We permanently decided we were not going to look at the gulf for the kind of oil that it can, should, and needs to produce. In fact, offshore energy production is projected to fall by 210,000 barrels per day this year. That means in the gulf we would be getting 210,000 fewer barrels of oil every day this year than we got last year. Surely, that is no solution, to become more dependent on other countries that are recipients of the jobs that follow our energy future. We need those jobs to be here. The estimate is, we would be down 190,000 barrels per day in 2012 because we have not been pursuing the drilling permits. It is possible that 2011 could be the first year since 1958 that the Federal Government will not hold an offshore lease sale--the first time since 1958. Does that mean we are less dependent on oil and gasoline than we were in 1958 or 1959 or 1969? No, it does not mean that. We are more dependent, and we need to move forward with looking at the resources we have. Recently--recently meaning Saturday, in his Saturday speech--the President appears to have reversed course on this issue and has called for Alaska and Gulf of Mexico leases to be reinstated and for an extension of leases impacted by the moratorium. I think this bill actually helps what the President called for on Saturday. It would be lightening speed for the Senate to pass a bill on Wednesday or Thursday that the President asked for on Saturday. I think this is very much in line with what I would admit is a new position for the President to take, but it is one he seemed to take firmly on Saturday. This legislation would help him. The number of lease sales is undetermined by the President's address, but we could help by pursuing leasing and permitting with this act. This act directs the Interior Department to conduct the offshore lease sales that the administration canceled in December of 2010. These were lease sales that were underway, the process was well along, and the administration canceled those lease sales in December of last year. These were lease sales in the western and central gulf and on the Virginia Outer Continental Shelf and the Alaska Outer Continental Shelf. Let's go back to that point: Let those lease sales move forward as they were doing before they were canceled. The President just said Saturday: Let's do this. Let's do it, and let's give him the tools and encouragement he needs to do it right now. This would end the permanent moratorium that occurred last year in the gulf. It includes a 30-day time limit for the Interior Department to review and decide on drilling permits. If rejected, the Interior Department has to disclose why it rejected the permits. There should not be anything wrong with that. If a permit should be rejected, everybody ought to be told why, and it ought to be part of the record. It also provides for default approval if the Interior Department does not make a decision within 60 days. Finally, it improves safety procedures by adding additional requirements for a spill response plan and a containment response plan to see that was done. This would mean we would have more American energy, and more American energy has two impacts. No. 1, it would inject more supply in the marketplace, putting price pressure on the worldwide marketplace. If we fully pursue our own resources, that does have an impact on the short- term response of the industry because they know America is going after its resources. I urge we approve this bill. I intend to vote for it. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to the energy tax bill that would eliminate so-called tax preferences for some oil companies. Actually, I agree with part of the bill--the part that says several companies will not be exempted because we want to continue to encourage them to do what we want to continue to encourage the industry to do. The rationale that the people who are the largest suppliers do not need to be encouraged also does not make good sense to me. My good friend Senator Schumer, who is actually chairman of the Rules Committee on which I serve, said this bill is not intended to lower gas prices. Actually, I suggest we should have a bill on the floor that is intended to lower gas prices. Gas prices are costing jobs. Jobs cost revenue. We generate a lot more tax revenue if we encourage private sector job creation that will solve a problem here by I think he said $4 billion a year. That is how much money we borrowed today; $4 billion is how much money we borrowed today. And we are looking at this as opposed to looking at the real problem we face. This bill is brought up to make it even harder to create American energy jobs. If there are any jobs you almost certainly will create, it is producing more American energy. I looked at the numbers. We use about as much electricity in a bad economy as we do in a good economy. We use about as much gasoline in a bad economy as we do in a good economy. We ought to be producing every bit we can with American jobs. But instead, we have had a moratorium on drilling in the gulf. We have had the suspension of drilling leases that were issued in 2008. Some of the first acts of this administration were to eliminate those. We now talk about new taxes on energy companies, as if that is going to solve the problem. The administration recently announced it would encourage the sale of offshore leases. Why is that? I think it is because the administration has finally decided that the economy does not benefit from policies that increase energy prices. This is in stark contrast to what we are talking about today. The administration has had a hard time actually issuing the permits to make leases worthwhile. There is lots of complaining about the fact there are leases out there not being used. Surprise, surprise. The leases to be used have to have a permit, and the permitting process has never been more difficult than it is right now. In fact, some of the reasons are the actions of the EPA. Shell Oil, being talked about today in another way, recently canceled its 2011 exploration plans in the Beaufort Sea in Alaska because EPA would not grant them the necessary Clean Air permits. There was nothing different about how they were going to extract this oil in the Beaufort Sea now than there was when the exploration permits were issued and billions of dollars were spent to pursue the oil in the Beaufort Sea, and then suddenly the EPA says: Oh, no, we are not going to give you the permit it takes to get that oil out of the sea so American customers, American consumers will not benefit from it. Both the Senate majority, as well as the administration, have not been willing to address this energy crisis in a way that solves the problems. The tax increases will not reduce and will almost certainly increase gasoline prices. If these companies are anywhere nearly as bad as the people on this floor say they are, why wouldn't they pass this along? In fact, why wouldn't they pass it along if they were just any American company? People pay taxes; companies do not pay taxes. Way too many of those taxes are being paid right now at the gas pump as we have tax dollars that could go for something else going not to encourage job creation but we see just the opposite happening. The President's policies, as he said clearly when he was running for President--at least clearly to the San Francisco Chronicle--that under his energy policies, energy costs would necessarily skyrocket. Senator Hatch mentioned earlier Secretary Chu, right before he was chosen Secretary--so it is not anything that would have been a surprise to anybody--in December of 2008, he said what we need is to get our gasoline prices as high as the prices in Europe. Those prices are now approaching $10 a gallon. I suppose this bill might have the impact of adding cost at the pump. Certainly, nobody suggests it has the impact of reducing cost at the pump. I would think that the President and the Secretary of Energy and others will begin to realize that where we need to be focused is not on making it less likely that we will produce American energy but making it more likely we will produce American energy. These incentives are to produce energy here as opposed to somewhere else. One of the incentives is a fraction of the manufacturing incentive that we try to give every manufacturer. These companies have resources around the world, as they should, and what we do is encourage them to go other places to seek those resources. By the way, that means the jobs are in other places, not here. We need to find more American energy of all kinds. In doing that, we do not need to figure out ways to make the current search for American energy more expensive. We need to be focused on gas and oil, natural gas and coal, nuclear and solar, wind energy and biomass. If I left anything out, it is not because I intended to. We need to be looking everywhere we can for more American energy. This makes it more difficult. Our policy should be to find more, to use less, to look for ways to conserve the energy we have, whether it is better insulation in windows or cars that eventually run on something that is some combination of gas and battery powered or no gas at all and electricity. All that is fine, but most of that is not going to make any difference for quite a while. Twenty years from now, most cars are still going to be running on gasoline. And 20 years from now, we are still going to need more U.S. oil and more U.S. refined gas. We need to be less dependent, not more dependent. The money we spend should be to invest in the future and figure out what comes next and what is the best thing to do for the future. We need to be focused on jobs and on spending, and this bill is not focused on the targets we ought to be focused on today. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, Bill Gipson, president and chief executive officer of Empire District Electric Company, is retiring on May 31, 2011. Bill is an example of the American dream: humble beginnings, hardworking, successful and modest. Bill, a native of Jasper County, MO, worked his way through Missouri Southern State University earning a degree in management technology. He went to work at Empire in 1981. He was director of the utility's commercial operations and economic development departments before becoming executive vice-president in 2001 and then chief operating officer. Bill has been a member of Empire's board of directors and has served as president and chief executive officer since 2002. During Bill's tenure as president, Empire District Electric Company's assets have doubled. Involvement in the community has been one of Bill's trademarks. Bill is a past chairman of the Joplin Chamber of Commerce, the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and the Missouri Energy Development Association. Additionally, Bill is on the Missouri Southern State University School of Business Advisory Council, the Missouri Southern State University Foundation and a member of Rotary International. At their annual banquet on May 5, 2011, the Joplin Chamber of Commerce named Bill the Outstanding Citizen of the Year. Bill and his wife of 33 years, Tracy, are looking forward to their retirement home on Table Rock Lake, but I know Bill Gipson's contributions to Missouri will continue for years to come.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I stand, as every Member of this Senate does today, I am sure, in support of not only this resolution but everything this resolution stands for. The elimination of Osama bin Laden as a symbol of murder, of tyranny, of repression is an important moment. It is a moment that came 10 years after it should have. If we could have found Osama bin Laden 10 years ago when we were looking for him, 9/11 might not have occurred. But it did occur. The message for him and the message for others is you cannot hide from the forces of freedom and democracy. This was a moment when the forces of freedom and democracy triumphed over the forces of repression. This was a moment when the symbol of one view of the future was eliminated with the kind of violence he himself had perpetrated on so many others. The President made a great decision to send this team of the best of the best into this compound to find Osama bin Laden, to know for sure face to face that he was either going to be captured by Americans or, in this case, killed by Americans, to be able to take the hard drive, the documents. The information he had surrounding him will tell us a lot about his contacts, and who knows what it might tell us about the network of al-Qaida. The President could have made a decision to bomb the compound. I guess we would be sifting through the ashes today to see if Osama bin Laden was there. We might have been able to confirm that, but we would not have been able to confirm all the information the SEAL team was able to take with them. These are two important decisions made by the President. I think the decision to bury Osama bin Laden in an unknown spot but with the kind of respect his own religion required was also another good decision. I want to be supportive of the President and the decisions made. There are times when a Predator missile is the right thing to use and times when it is not. One of the things we see from the death of bin Laden is that there is value to capturing our enemies and getting information from them. That thread of information that began maybe as long as 9 years ago finally was able to unravel in a way that made the connection that needed to be made so that Osama bin Laden could be found, so that justice could be done, so that the price would be paid by him, as it has been paid by so many others in defense of freedom. Certainly, there are questions today about Pakistan, but there is no question that Pakistanis have died fighting alongside Americans in the last decade. There is no question that Pakistanis have been the victim of terrorism. Hopefully, this will be a moment that brings all of those who should want freedom to the same side. I just returned from a quick visit to Egypt, which could very well be on the right path in the Middle East, a path where, without violence, people stand and want more freedom, they want democracy. That is not the goal of the extremists of Islam, for whom Osama bin Laden became the great symbol. We do not believe Osama bin Laden has been in operational control of al-Qaida for some time. It would be wonderful if we find out in the next few days that he was and the terror of al-Qaida would be eliminated. I do not think we will find that out. But we do know he was a symbol in a way that is unique, in the way he symbolizes this wrong view of the future, the way he symbolizes the wrong view of the requirement that everybody living together be exactly the same. We, unlike any other country in the world, defy that view of the future. We have proven like no other country has ever proven that people can live together in great diversity, that people can live together with different points of view, and we can live in a society that still flourishes. Of course, we are the enemy of a world view that that is not possible. It is not because of anything we have done to the extremists in the world community; it is because of who we are. Yesterday, the message of who we are was registered again in a powerful way as we all over this country and people all over the world talked about what happened the evening before, certainly not only the SEALs who went into the compound to see that justice was done but also all of those who are willing to serve, those who could have been among the elite who went in or all those who have served, the over 4,000 Americans, including many Missourians, whose lives have been lost in the last decade, in addition to the 3,000 lives that were brutally taken by the operatives of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden on September 11, 2001. This resolution that recognizes the courage to bring justice, that recognizes the evil that was done by Osama bin Laden and his followers, that recognizes the importance of freedom and democracy in a society is a resolution I am proud to support. I am proud of what the men and women did for us in executing this well-planned mission, but also of everybody who serves every day, for all the families who have a missing place in their hearts, for someone whose life was lost serving this country, for all the families who live with someone with a disability because of the kind of war we are in now. I am pleased to stand here representing my State but hopefully representing, as all of us do, the forces of freedom and democracy that will ultimately triumph over the forces of repression and murder and chaos that one-world view would try to perpetuate. We recognize today another step against that view of the world. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend from Illinois, a long-term proponent of this concept. We will continue to work for solutions that make gasoline and the fuel system work better and make more sense for people all over America.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the Senator for those comments. Using his chart, in Missouri you can buy one blend of gas in St. Louis, another blend of fuel in the Kansas City area, and a third blend yet in between. So, clearly, these areas are not even unique in the fuel that is used there. If you buy fuel driving from one city to the other and use the other half of the tank while you are driving around in St. Louis, you are using fuel that is available generally anyhow. This does a couple of things. One, it allows, in a time where it is hard to get fuel for any reason, the President to waive those standards. The other thing it does is, it caps these fuels so if the EPA decides under the Clean Air Act that you have a clean air attainment problem in your city, you have to go and look at the existing fuel blends and choose from one of them rather than what had happened in the country up until 2005, which was every city somehow became convinced there was a unique fuel blend for them that only would work there that never would quite work anywhere else. That doesn't make sense. We have headed in the other direction. This legislation heads us a little further and a little faster in a direction to where we don't have these unique blends. We have fuel as fuel again. Whether it is the restaurateurs whom some of us may have seen today or various businesses, if fuel is $4 a gallon, something has to give, and it goes throughout the entire economy. This helps solve that problem. Hopefully, we can be talking about an energy bill before too long. But, clearly, whether it is a small business bill or any other bill, the cost of fuel makes a real difference in the country today. This amendment that we hope to offer eventually to the small business bill is one of the things that will help solve the problem.

Mr. BLUNT. It is $3.88 in St. Louis, which would be the area that we have that uses specialty fuel.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to talk about another topic. Senator Kirk and 36 other Members of the Senate are cosponsoring an amendment we would hope to add to the small business bill if we ever get back to it. This is an amendment we offered independently as a bill 1 month ago, the Gas Accessibility and Sustainability Act. What this bill does is take further an effort that was put into law in 2005, right before Hurricane Katrina, that allowed the President to suspend the unique boutique fuel standards in the country if there was a natural disaster. That happened immediately--within a couple weeks, as I recall--after the bill became law. The President used that authority. In the 6 months following Katrina, even though the gulf was obviously disrupted and a couple of refineries were very disrupted, gas prices did not go up because, for the first time since the passage of the Clean Air Act, gasoline was a commodity again. What this bill would do, as we now see gasoline prices at $4.37 in Hawaii, at $3.88 in St. Louis, and particularly prices that are high in communities that have a unique blend of fuel that is only available in that community, is allow the President to have that authority, if there is any kind of disruption, if the Suez Canal was shut down for some period of time, if a refinery went down, if there was a pipeline disruption that truly made it very difficult for communities to get their unique blend of fuel but was much easier for them to get fuel that met the standard of being ``fuel'' at the gas pump. Senator Kirk and I introduced this together. He was a great advocate of this bill when it passed the House. I would like to turn to him for a moment and see what he has to say today about this bill that allows us to look at the gas prices that are creating real problems in the country today.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the Senator. Of course, they have every right to be mad. They have every right to be as frustrated as we are that the work in which the Senator from Alabama is so involved as the leading Republican on the Budget Committee hasn't been able to produce a result. We are unlikely to have a budget again this year. I was just asked by a reporter walking over here--and, yes, I was in the House for some time before I came to the Senate--for somebody like you who has been in Washington, wasn't the tea party a big challenge? I said: No, the tea party was not a big challenge. They were a great opportunity for us to have someone out there talking about getting this spending under control. And I listed the struggle we were involved in before Senator Barrasso got to the Senate, where we actually took on entitlement spending in 2005. As I recall that effort, I got lots of calls on entitlement spending reforms, where we cut entitlement spending the only time in a decade by $40 billion. I got lots of calls, and not one of them was supportive of cutting spending. As far as I know, every phone I had rang everywhere I had a phone for 100 days, as far as I know, all the time. No matter how early we came in or how late we were leaving, those phones were all ringing. Every call was: Don't cut my program. As Senator Isakson said, as he was talking to the friends we are seeing today from hospitals around the country, the ones from Georgia, we have to look at everything. We have to look at ways to produce better results. The government is the last place left in America--and this relates to government at almost every level and almost every government at every level--where we measure how much we care about something based on how much we spend on it instead of the results we get. Everybody else, 20 years ago, made the decision if they were going to be competitive they had to produce a better product, a better result, and spend less money producing that better result. Only the government still thinks the other way--and we do this without a plan, apparently. The Senator can correct me if I am wrong because the Senator is a student of the budget in ways that are not exceeded by anybody in the Senate, but we are still trying to finish last year's work. I think it is the only time in the history of the Budget Act where neither House of the Congress passed a budget. There have been times when both of them passed them and couldn't agree. There have probably been times when somebody didn't pass one but never a time when nobody passed a budget. Nobody passed a single one of the 12 appropriations bills it takes to run the government. How irresponsible can we be? Now we have this situation where we are spending so much more money than we are taking in, and the numbers are so big it is hard to be as afraid of them as we should because who knows how much money $3.8 trillion is. It is not just Senators and House Members; I don't think the Secretary of the Treasury really knows how much money that is. But we are spending way more than we are taking in. Have we ever had a time before when neither House of the Congress passed a budget?

Mr. BLUNT. If the Senator will yield for another moment, while we have a hard time dealing with these big numbers--and I think they approach now $3.8 trillion in spending and $2.2 trillion in money coming in--we are adding $4 billion a day. We are borrowing $4 billion a day. So in the time we had a continuing resolution for 10 days to try to decide how we cut spending, we borrowed more money in that 10 days than we saved. Then people said: That is Draconian. It is terrible. We can't spend this much money and continue to do it. If your family was bringing in $22,000 a year and spending $38,000 a year, and you had already borrowed way more money than any bank should lend you, as you just suggested, you would know that was a problem you couldn't sustain very long. If your business was bringing in $2.2 million a year and spending $3.8 million a year, you would know you are not going to be in business very long. Those are the kinds of real- world situations we have multiplied by thousands of times, but it has to be solved. The blueprint to solve that is the budget. We don't have one. The Senator's responsibility for the country is to be in that budget fight. I know the Senator is there. I know he is frustrated we don't have a blueprint, but we need a blueprint. Then we need to spend lots of time on this floor and in committees figuring out how we produce a better result and spend less money and what the Federal Government is doing that just simply isn't well done, and shouldn't be done, and constitutionally there is no authorization to do and stop doing that. I am pleased to be in this fight with the Senator from Alabama and with the Senator from Wyoming.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to talk a little bit about the McConnell amendment that I think we will vote on on the floor of the Senate this week. This is the amendment that really clarifies whether Congress ever intended to give the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. They have a finding that gives them that authority, but the people who were involved in passing that law initially say that wasn't the intention of the law; that if it is the intention of the law, the Congress should step up and clarify that. I think this amendment clearly expresses the view of the American people that the Congress should do its job, not leave it to the regulators to do the job. Senator McConnell has brought that amendment to the floor. It is an amendment that Senator Inhofe has worked on regarding this topic for a long time. Senator Barrasso has also worked on this topic. I am convinced that as the ballots are cast and the votes are made this week on this bill and on this amendment, Senators from both parties are going to say: No, that is not the job of the EPA. It is not what the Congress intended EPA to do. This is a great example of the Congress trying to step up and make the point that the regulators should not be able to do by regulation what the legislators are unwilling to do by legislation. This issue was discussed last year--the cap-and-trade law that passed the House in the last Congress. People around America looked at it and said that higher prices were not the way to get more efficient energy policies. The way to get more efficient energy policies is to look for ways to produce more American energy, to have a marketplace that has more choices than the ones we have now. As people looked at this issue, they said: Let's find more American energy of all kinds, and let's be conservationists and encourage that we use that energy as efficiently as possible, and let's also be out there researching and investing in the future so that we know what we want our energy picture to look like a generation from now--not that we blindly rush in and think high prices will solve our energy problems. We all know that the President of the United States, before the election in 2008, in talking to the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle, made the comment that under his energy policies, energy prices would necessarily skyrocket. The President has looked at this economy closely--I hope--over the last 2 years of his Presidency, and clearly every signal from the administration now is that they have concerns about $4-a-gallon gasoline, even though there are people in that advisory group who at one time said gas prices should be as high as the gas prices in Europe and that is the way to solve our use of gasoline. We don't live in Europe. We live in a country that is large, expansive, and requires travel and commerce. So high gas prices are not the answer to our transportation problems, and higher utility bills are not the answer to our energy problems. In fact, as people looked at the potential of cap and trade on utility bills, they looked at how much of our utilities come from coal. Of course, cap and trade--and the EPA regulations that would try to impose cap and trade by regulation--cap and trade is particularly focused on coal-based utilities. From the middle of Pennsylvania to the western edge of Wyoming, 50 percent of the electricity in the country comes from coal. Mr. President, in your State and my State, a significant majority of the electricity comes from coal. In Missouri, it is 82 percent of the electricity that comes from coal. In our State, the utility providers got together--the rural electric cooperatives, the municipal utilities, the privately owned and publicly owned--and funded a study with which nobody ever found fault. Nobody has challenged the study. In that study, in our State the average utility bill would go up about 80 percent in the first 10 years under cap and trade. It would come close to doubling in the first 12 years. For many utility customers, it would double. If the average bill is going to go up 80 percent, for many customers out there, their bill would double in 10 years, and for the average customer, it would double in about a dozen years. Who benefits from that? At a hearing the other day with the EPA Administrator, I talked about a visit I had last fall with someone who explained to me that he was an hourly employee at a company--by that point, with the discussion of cap and trade, almost all Missourians knew our utility bills would double in about 10 years--and he said: If my utility bill doubles, that is a bad thing. If my retired mother's bill doubles, that is worse. If the utility bill at work doubles and my job goes away, then the other bills don't matter that much because I can't pay mine and help my mom pay hers. That individual has a Ph.D. in common sense, if not economics. That is what happens if we allow these bills to go up. Because of that discussion, I stand here today absolutely confident that, in the foreseeable future, Congress will not impose that penalty on our economy. If the Congress won't impose that penalty on our economy, we should not let regulators impose that penalty on our economy. What the McConnell amendment does--again, with the hard work of Senators Inhofe, Barrasso, and others--is simply redefine the authority or maybe reemphasize the definition Congress thought it was giving the Environmental Protection Agency, and it says: You can't regulate these greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. It doesn't stop the Clean Air Act's provisions to protect clean air in every way that was anticipated until the recent determination that somehow EPA had the authority to also regulate greenhouse gases, but it does refocus the EPA on the intention of the Clean Air Act, not their expansion of the Clean Air Act. By the way, the EPA has no ability to expand the Clean Air Act. That is the job of the Congress of the United States. Fine, if we want to have that debate. In fact, we had that debate last year. The House passed a bill that would have done what the EPA's new sense of their own mission would do, and I think the American people spoke pretty loudly about that. Because of that, the last Congress didn't pass that bill. The House of Representatives passed a bill, but the Senate didn't pass that bill. This Congress isn't going to pass that bill either, and I would predict that the next Congress won't pass that bill. Why won't they pass the bill? Why won't we pass a bill in this Congress? Why won't the next Congress pass a bill? They know it has a devastating impact on our economy; and if the Congress doesn't want there to be a devastating impact on our economy, we also shouldn't want the Environmental Protection Agency to do something that would have a devastating impact on our economy. In fact, when we look at the economies around the world, the economies that have the greatest problems with air and water are the economies that failed; the economies where, at some point, those countries decide, ultimately, they are going to do whatever it takes to get back to where they can have jobs that allow families to live. The EPA is bound, and should be bound, by what the Congress initially intended with the Clean Air Act, not what the EPA thinks today is their job--and particularly if it is not a job that everybody in this building knows the legislators will not do. If the legislators won't do it, the legislators shouldn't let the regulators do it, and this simply clarifies that. I urge my colleagues this week to vote for this amendment, to make it clear to the Environmental Protection Agency that they have plenty of things to do and many things that we will support them as they do, but this isn't one of them. This hurts our economy. It is not their mission. It was not the intention of the Clean Air Act. This amendment allows that to be reinforced once again by the Congress, the group that is supposed to pass the laws. Laws aren't supposed to be passed by regulators. I suppose they are intentionally determined to be implemented by regulators but not created by regulators or created by the administration. That is our job. This bill reemphasizes our job. Again, it doesn't let the regulatory group do a job that increases the utility bill, that doubles the electric bill in Missouri, and raises the electric bill for the vast preponderance of Americans, for people retired, on a fixed income. Clearly, jobs will go away if those electric bills are raised, and they will not go to other places in the United States in most cases; they will go to other countries that care a whole lot less about what comes out of the smoke stack than we do. So if the EPA is allowed to do with greenhouse gases what it says it wants to do, we will lose the jobs and the problem will get greater because these jobs will go to countries that care a whole lot less about emissions than we do. Let's let the legislators do their job. I encourage my colleagues to vote for this amendment this week as they think about how we approach this important issue--about our economy, about our jobs, about our families and our future. I yield the floor, Mr. President, 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.