Barbara Boxer

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Delaware because he and the occupant of the chair are very important members of this great committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee. As one or our most senior Members, he has taken a tremendous interest in everything we do. I look to his leadership on a number of issues, including controlling mercury, which is dear to his heart and mine. He is a leader on nuclear plant safety and has been extremely helpful. I thank him for the good role he plays on that committee. We will have a number of amendments. It is going to be delicate with the amendment process. That is fine. I encourage everybody, if they have an amendment, to go for it. But we have an agreement that the leadership on the committee--we are either all going to go for an amendment or not. We don't want to stymie this. I appreciate the Senator alerting us that he is going to offer those two amendments. I urge the Senator to get them to us so we can share them with Senator Inhofe. We have received another letter of support, which I am proud to put in the Record. I ask unanimous consent to have it printed in the Record.

Mrs. BOXER. It is from the Transportation Construction Coalition. They are urging all of us for an ``aye'' vote on the motion to proceed to the Transportation bill. They have said wonderful things about our bill--that they like the steps we have taken to accelerate all the reviews and flexibility for the States, greater authority for our States, and the fact that we did this in a comprehensive way and in a bipartisan way. I am very grateful. What I would like to do is read the names of these organizations because it shows you the depth in America of the support for this bill: The American Road and Transportation Builders; Associated General Contractors; the American Coal Ash Association; the American Concrete Pavement Association; the American Concrete Pipe Association; the American Council of Engineering Companies; the American Subcontractors Association; American Iron and Steel Institute; American Society of Civil Engineers; American Traffic Safety Services Association; the Asphalt Emulsion Manufacturers Association; Asphalt Recycling and Reclaiming Association; Associated Equipment Distributors; Association of Equipment Manufacturers; Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute; International Slurry Surfacing Association; International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers; International Union of Operating Engineers; Laborers-Employers Cooperation and Education Trust; Laborers' International Union of North America; National Asphalt Pavement Association; National Association of Surety Bond Producers; National Ready Mixed Concrete Association; National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association; National Utility Contractors Association; Portland Cement Association; Precase/Prestressed Concrete Institute; the Road Information Program; and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. The reason I read these 29 organizations--there are 1,000 organizations behind our bill--I want colleagues to understand how people have come together from all sides of the aisle--union workers, nonunion workers, the businesses and union businesses. Everybody has come together--Democrats, Republicans, and Independents--on our committee. The reason is that we are coming out of a very tough and deep recession where housing was hurt deeply, and we are having a very tough time coming out of the housing recession. Construction workers have a 15-percent or more unemployment rate, compared to an 8.3-percent unemployment rate in the rest of the workforce. If you put them into Super Bowl stadiums, they would fill 15 Super Bowl stadiums. Imagine that. We have an obligation to come together on behalf of jobs and the aging infrastructure that needs to be fixed. We have bridges collapsing and roads that are not up to par. We have problems in this Nation, and we can stop them and solve them only if we come together. I will end here because my colleague would like the floor, and that is fine. I think we will have an opportunity at around the 2:15 hour or so to come together united and give a great vote of confidence to this bill, to move it ahead with an overwhelming vote. Maybe I am dreaming, but I hope for well over 60 votes to go forward. Then let's get to the amendment process and let's not offer extraneous amendments that have to do with everything but transportation. Let's keep this focused. Then we can get to conference and get a bill to the President. In closing, if our bill is the law of the land, we would save 1.8 million jobs and be able to create up to another million jobs. There is a lot riding on this bill. I hope we will come together this afternoon. Thank you for your indulgence. I yield the floor.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Well, I do have some remarks I would like to make.

Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Chair. I think Senator Inhofe and I will have to talk about how we are going to yield back and forth, but at this point I had not finished my remarks and I wanted to respond to his. We are here as partners on this bill. We are not partners on a lot of things. And I didn't say, when I opened my remarks, where we are not partners, but my friend did, so I am going to respond to his opening comments in which for some reason he wanted to open by saying that the one place we differ--and he is right on this--is that he blames President Obama for the deficit. Now, I want to put this on the record: I do not. Let me tell you why. When Bill Clinton was the President of these United States, he turned over a booming surplus of $236 billion to George W. Bush, and it didn't take him but the blink of an eye to turn those surpluses as far as the eye could see into raging deficits, and he left President Obama a $1.4 trillion deficit, for which my colleagues on the other side blame President Obama. Not only did George W. Bush leave him this kind of deficit, but he left him the worst recession since the Great Depression, a total collapse of Wall Street, bleeding jobs--800,000 a month. Yet we have turned it around. The President has shown magnificent leadership--saved Detroit. My friend further said that another place we disagree--and he is right--is that President Obama is driving manufacturing overseas. No. The Tax Code, which the Republicans support, which rewards companies for moving overseas, is very much responsible for that. So that proves the point. We get mad at each other. He is annoyed now that I am saying these things, and I was annoyed at him for saying what he said. But the great news today is that we are here to pass a bill. My friend said I had a problem with liberal Members in my own party. I have to say there was concern, for sure. He is right. But once I explained to them that the ranking member and I have to work together, they were terrific about it. And I think some of my colleague's Republican friends said the same. They said: OK, we have to make this happen. So I congratulate all Members on both sides of the aisle who put aside these really tough differences we have, and you just saw a little bit of it. I am not going to get into the climate change area because my friend believes it is the greatest hoax and I believe it is a scientific fact. We could go on and on with these arguments. It would be interesting. It would be like ``Crossfire.'' Do you remember that show where two people got up there and argued? Yes, we could do that in every way. But in this bill we have decided to fight for what we believe in but at the end of the day get a bill we believe is fair. Did my friend want me to yield?

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I wish to take 2 minutes to respond to Senator Barrasso, who offered a second opinion. I hope my colleague will also talk about that. I have to say it is stunning to see the assault on women's health that is taking place from the Republican Party day after day after day. First, they tried to stop women from getting breast screenings. Then they tried to stop us from getting cervical cancer screenings. Now they are going after our ability to get birth control. I have to say this: We know that for a full 15 percent of women, birth control is pure medicine. They suffer from debilitating monthly pain, endometriosis. We have stories of women who couldn't afford birth control pills and a cyst got out of hand resulting in the loss of an ovary. We know that birth control is used for a very serious skin condition. So if they want to stand here and say that women don't have a right to our medicine, that is their right but don't put it into the frame of religious freedom. We know President Obama said he was going to do what 28 States have done; that is, to make sure women who work in this country have the ability to get access to birth control pills through their insurance. That is as simple as it gets. Twenty-eight States do it. I never heard a word out of them--never. And eight of those States had no exception when President Obama made an exception for 335,000 churches. So let's not stand here and talk about the overreach of the Federal Government and the rest of it. The fact is our States have been doing this for years. More than 50 percent of women in this Nation have the ability to get contraception. It is about health. It is the Institute of Medicine that said it is critical. It will cut down on tens of thousands of abortions when families plan their families. So as long as our colleagues on the other side want to make women a political football in this country, there are many of us here, women and men alike, who are going to stand sentry and say: You can't do this to the women of this Nation. This is the 21st century, and we are arguing about birth control instead of how to get out of this economic malaise when we are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel? Oh, no. I am hoping we go to a highway bill this afternoon, but we have to now have this diversion about an issue that was resolved, frankly, in the 1950s and in the 1960s. So I thank my colleague for this opportunity. Senator Barrasso has a right to a second opinion, but I think his opinion is off the mark. I yield the floor.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleagues. This is a tremendous vote here to move forward with one of the most important jobs bills we could do in this session, because we are talking about protecting 1.8 million jobs and the possibility of another 1 million jobs being created through an expanded TIFIA Program which leverages local funds at very little risk to the Federal Government. So this is a good vote. I wish to take this opportunity now to thank colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but also to thank the over 1,000 groups out there-- everyone ranging from left to right and everything in between; from workers organizations, to businesses, to the Chamber of Commerce, to the AFL-CIO. It is rare we can walk down the aisle together. But now the true test comes. We have a lot of work to do to complete this legislation, to make it real, to give that certainty out there, get those jobs going. We have a lot of work to do. We have the Banking Committee which, under the able leadership of Senators Johnson and Shelby, has a title we have to add. We have to add a title from the Finance Committee. We want to add the title from the Commerce Committee. Then we would have all four committees represented in this legislation. Then we can move to get a strong vote and get it to conference, and, I have to say, tell the House side that we have a truly bipartisan bill that deserves their consideration. But if we start seeing amendments that go to issues that are unrelated to this-- the hot-button issues of the day, the issues where we have the ideological divide--we are going to slow this down. I guess I wish to say to my colleagues on the Democratic side and the Republican side: Please do not mess up this bill and load this bill with extraneous matters. Senator Inhofe and I are very happy to look at germane amendments. We are ready to look at those. We have made an agreement that if we don't agree, we are going to oppose it. We are working together. But extraneous matters don't belong on this bill unless they have overwhelming support and they are not controversial. I am very hopeful, but I have seen bills come to the floor and get loaded down and at the end of the day the American people lose. We cannot afford to lose this bill. I want my colleagues to imagine 15 Super Bowl stadiums and imagine in your mind's eye what it looks like, and in all of those 15 Super Bowl stadiums every seat is filled, every seat is filled with a construction worker. That is how many construction workers are out of work--more than 1 million. So we cannot fail these workers. We cannot fail these businesses. These are good jobs. The housing crisis is not yet behind us. We have a long way to go. Construction has slowed down. So we need to make sure our construction workers are back on the job. We need to make sure we fix our bridges that are crumbling. We need to make sure we keep goods moving. This is a 21st century economy with an infrastructure that is not keeping up. I want to take a moment to thank again the members of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Senator Sanders, who is in the chair, is a very important member who is focused like a laser beam on jobs. He focuses on jobs, jobs, jobs. He knows, as I do, that we didn't get everything we wanted in this bill, not by a long shot. But we know there are times you have to put that aside for the good of the people so we get something done; and something done here is protecting 1.8 million jobs and creating up to 1 million new jobs with our expanded TIFIA. So I thank the Presiding Officer for his hard work on getting us to this moment. I thank Senator Inhofe for his amazing cooperation; Senators Baucus and Vitter and all the members of the committee; Senators Johnson and Shelby of Banking; Senator Rockefeller, who worked so hard with Senator Hutchison, and we hope will resolve the outstanding issues in Commerce; Senator Baucus, who worked with Senator Hatch, and we did get a good Finance piece. We are so ready to go. We are going to wait to see whether our colleagues on the other side will insist upon 30 hours going postcloture or whether they will yield back that time and allow us to get started on the amendment process. So at this moment, I am going to put in a quorum call, note the absence of a quorum, and hope we can quickly move to amend this bill. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I am honored to salute the life and service of retired CMSgt Luther Jefferson, Sr., who served as a Tuskegee Airman in the 332nd Fighter Group. Chief Jefferson will be remembered not only for his valor and service to his country but also for his compassion, optimism, and generous spirit. He died at his home in Victorville, California on January 19, 2012.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 9, 2012, at 2:30 p.m.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 9, 2012, at 9:30 a.m.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 9, 2012, at 10 a.m., to conduct a Committee hearing entitled ``State of the Housing Market: Removing Barriers to Economic Recovery.''

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on February 9, 2012, at 2:15 p.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on February 9, 2012, at 10 a.m., in SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct an executive business meeting.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 9, 2012, at 9:30 a.m., in room 366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I am also very proud to be here with my colleagues. I think Senator Murray was eloquent, along with Senator Shaheen and Senator Mikulski. I am here to put it in my own words; that is, here they go again. Sadly, politics has once again entered into women's health care. This time we see an attempt to deprive women of a critical benefit: access to contraception through their health insurance plans. Just last week, what did we see? A move to punish women by taking away their free breast cancer screenings all because of rightwing politics. Before that, as Senator Murray eloquently indicated, we saw a Republican move to defund family planning because of politics. My Republican colleagues almost shut down the government over family planning, and now, if they have their way, millions of women could lose their contraceptive coverage, which could expose them to declining health outcomes and their babies to declining health outcomes and could cost them about $600 a year. Let's step back and look at where we are. Some months ago, the Institute of Medicine, which is comprised of a number of leading scientific and health experts, made a decision. They advised the Obama administration on what preventative benefits should be included for women--specifically for women--in new health insurance plans. That is what this whole to-do is all about. This organization that has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with health care made a very clear recommendation to the Obama administration. They said there are a number of preventative benefits that should be included for free for the women of this country: screening for gestational diabetes, HIV screening, cervical cancer prevention, annual well women visits, and access to contraception. Now, just as these women, our women of this Nation, are ready for these preventative services--services they need, services most of them want--my Republican friends, from Presidential candidates Romney to Newt Gingrich to the Senate and House Republican leaders--I heard Senator McConnell threaten legislation to take away these benefits--to Speaker Boehner to individual Republicans in both Houses, they are gearing up to repeal one of these benefits: access to birth control--access to birth control. Now, I believe women in this country deserve respect. Some of them do not want access to birth control. They have a religion that dictates their views, and they have every right to make that decision. Others decide that they need to have access to birth control. So the Obama administration said to the women of this great Nation that they believe there ought to be access. But I think it is very important that the Institute of Medicine said: No exception. They think access to contraception is so important to women's health, they did not want any exception. But the Obama administration made an exception for churches and for religious institutions, and under the Obama administration's rule, 335,000 religious organizations will not have to offer birth control if they have a conscience reason not to do so. That is a compromise. Remember, the health experts said: No exceptions. The Obama administration said: Well, I want to respect the religious institutions and so I will allow them, if their mission is religious, and the people they serve and the employees they hire are basically of one religion, they are a religious institution, they will not have to offer contraception in the health care benefits to their employees. But guess what. There is another part of this equation. Women. Women. They have to have their religious beliefs respected. That is why the President also said: If you run an organization that serves a diverse number of people from different religions, and so on, and different beliefs, let them have the right to make that decision if they want to obtain free birth control through their insurance. Now, here is the thing. This outcry is astonishing to me since 28 States already assure access to birth control. I have never heard any of my colleagues--maybe they did. Maybe they did come on the Senate floor and complain. But more than half of our women--over 28 States, more than half of women have similar access to birth control. So this is not some new benefit. This is just making sure all women, except that very narrow band that work for strictly religious institutions, have the right to have access to free birth control. The outcry is unbelievable, a political outcry making this a political issue when it is a medical issue. The President compromised. He said: If you are strictly a religious institution, you do not have to do this if you do not want to. Now, here is the other thing. All organizations that have any religious issue have an extra year to determine if they are going to offer this or how they can do it. They may be able to find a way in that year to get women access and at the same time not violate their consciences. They have an extra year to do that. But, oh, no, we are going to see legislation--I can assure you we are going to see legislation to overturn this, legislation that even goes further than this. And it is going to be a battle on the floor of the Senate, I am afraid. I am not afraid of the fight; I welcome it because, let's be clear: Virtually all women have used birth control at some point in their lives. Let me repeat this. Virtually all women have used birth control at some point in their lives, including 98 percent of Catholic women. That is a fact. And 71 percent of American voters, including 77 percent of Catholic women voters, support the administration's policy. So if my colleagues decide they are going to take this issue on in the face of overwhelming support for this policy by the American people, I say we are ready. We are ready to make the case. Access to birth control is directly linked to maternal and infant health. This is not some theoretical right. It is a right that is necessary. Health experts tell us that women with unintended pregnancies are less likely to get prenatal care in the first trimester, and in some cases they never get it. If there is one thing that should unite us, it is healthy babies, healthy outcomes from healthy pregnancies. That is what we are talking about. I want to talk about something else we do not hear enough of. I want to compliment Senator Gillibrand on this because she is the one who brought this issue to my attention. A full 14 percent of women who use birth control pills--that is 1.5 million women--use them to treat serious medical conditions, not to prevent pregnancies. One of those conditions: Debilitating monthly pain, irregular cycles, conditions like endometriosis, serious conditions. I just learned of a young woman at Georgetown University. Their insurance policy did not cover free birth control. Her doctor told her she had a serious medical condition and she needed to use birth control pills that had nothing to do with pregnancy or anything else, or preventing pregnancy. It was a serious medical condition. The diagnosis was--I may not say it right--polycystic ovary syndrome. Now, what happened is, she was told: You must go on birth control pills. But we at Georgetown, we will not pay for that benefit. She had to go out and get it. It was more than $100 a month. She could not afford it. Within months she developed a large ovarian cyst that had to be removed surgically. In addition, she lost an ovary. So please do not stand here and tell us that women do not need access to birth control pills or contraception because we have story after story after story. Let me tell you something else some folks may not know; that is, on many occasions when a woman wants to become pregnant and has irregular cycles and cannot, she will be put on birth control pills. A British scientific study came out and showed that after 5 years on birth control pills, women who wanted to get pregnant had a decreased risk of delayed conception--so they were better able to become pregnant and become mothers. So this is not some simple pat statement. This is about making sure the women of this country--the young women, the middle-aged women of child-bearing age and older woman who have other conditions-- get the medicine they need--and, by the way, get them for free because $600 a year for many middle-class or working poor women is just out of reach. So I say to my Republican friends who came to the floor previous to our statements, do not punish women again. Do not try to. Under the administration's plan, churches are respected and women are respected. All sides are respected. No one is forced to use birth control; it is up to the women. In 28 States more than 50 percent of the women already have this benefit. Why are you bringing politics into this? My Republican friends want to turn back the clock on birth control. Some of us remember the days when birth control was illegal. Well, I have news for them. This is the 21st century. Wake up. Look at your calendar. It is the 21st century, and women ought to be respected. Women ought to be trusted, and their families ought to be trusted and respected. We are not going quietly into the night on this one. We will be here. We will fight back. We will fight for women and their families and health care, and we will fight to keep politics out of the equation. I yield the floor.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I believe my amendment is next.

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I would be delighted to take a voice vote on this amendment, which I am proud to say was written by myself and Senator Isakson. I am very pleased Senator Collins suggested the modification. All this amendment does is broaden the mortgage disclosure requirements on all of us--Members of Congress--and it does the same thing for the President, the Vice President, and the executive branch employees who are subject to the advice and consent of the Congress. I think it is fair, I think it is wise, and I think we have had issues that require this to be done. With that, I yield back my time to Senator Collins.

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I ask for a voice vote.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. I call up amendment No. 1489 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mrs. BOXER. I am sure, listening to that, it is hard to understand exactly what this is all about, so let me take a moment. I want to first thank Senators Lieberman and Collins for all their hard work and I want to thank Senator Gillibrand for writing the STOCK Act. I come to the floor as the chairman of the Ethics Committee with an amendment that we wrote together, Senator Isakson and I, who is the vice chair of the committee. So this is quite a bipartisan amendment and I don't think it should be controversial or troublesome in any way. This amendment actually comes from a bill that Senator Isakson and I wrote together after the Countrywide fiasco. If you want to recollect that unhappy issue, it was a situation where Countrywide had set up a VIP program and they literally targeted Members of Congress of the House and Senate to put them into this program and never told the Members of Congress that there was this program, and yet it went forward. And because there is no rule that personal mortgages be shown on the disclosure form, this was quite a shock when it all came out. What we are saying is we want to improve the disclosure requirement on home mortgages. Right now, if it is at your own personal home, you don't have to show the mortgage, and this would correct that. It would mean that you have to show the date the mortgage was entered, the balance, and a range, the interest rate, the terms, the name and address of the creditor. So it is an omission--but actually it is a pretty glaring omission--in our financial disclosure requirements because, again, of the Countrywide example. We don't want to have a situation--because we are not allowed to get better treatment than anyone else. And the fact that we didn't disclose these mortgages--it was quite a story when it came to light that there was this special VIP program at Countrywide. So this legislation, this amendment, addresses this omission. It requires Members of Congress to make a full and complete disclosure of all the mortgages on their personal residences. Again, right now this requirement is in place for mortgages that you may have on investment properties but not on your personal properties. It would include Members of Congress and their spouses as well. In his State of the Union Address, the President spoke about the deficit of trust between Washington and the rest of the country. I don't know that this amendment is going to cure all those problems, but I do think it shows that we are ready to learn from a bad experience, which was the Countrywide experience. So I think the Boxer-Isakson amendment and the underlying bill are sensible steps toward rebuilding our Nation's faith in government. Again, the rules are already clear that we are not permitted to get any financial arrangements that are better than they are for any other constituent, so I think by this disclosure we are saying that even in our own personal mortgages we have to be aware of this. I think this listing is called for, and I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and the underlying legislation. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mrs. BOXER. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment.

Mrs. BOXER. I very much thank Senator Collins for that question. Senator Isakson and I, as the chair and vice chair of the Ethics Committee, are applying this to the Members of Congress. That is because the scandal that took place with Countrywide involved the Members of Congress. We are not including staff in this. It also applies to more than one residence, because some of our Members have seven homes, six homes, four homes, two homes. If you have mortgages on any of those properties, you would now have to disclose those.

Mrs. BOXER. The Senator can't yield--I would like to have the floor now. She can't yield to another colleague except if it is for a question. I would like to have the floor since the Senator just said I was incorrect. I would like to correct her, if I might.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I would be happy to go on as a cosponsor to Senator Collins if she wants to take on the additional burden of moving this idea forward. I don't have any problem with it. The point is, I am here--and I have been very open about it because I know what I am talking about when it comes to Members of Congress, because as chair of the Ethics Committee, I don't oversee Treasury. This is not my role, this is not my expertise, and I am very humble about that. I did see what happened here, along with, I would say, every member of the Ethics Committee and Senator Isakson. This is a bipartisan amendment and we know what we are talking about, and we are saying there was a problem and Members of Congress were courted by Countrywide. Did they court other people? I don't know. But if there is some proof that they did and there is need to go and cover them with a similar amendment, I would be happy to work with my colleague on that. But I am not going to change this particular piece of legislation, because I know what I am talking about here. I know how to fix this. I know we have made a big mistake, and I feel it is our job to clean up our own business. And our own business, when it comes to this, is not good. Would I wish to look over at what the Bush administration did or what the Obama administration is doing or what other administrations will do? I am happy to do that. But I am here to address our house--our house. Clean it up. Act as a role model. I do not have any problem with supporting another piece of legislation. Maybe there is a problem over there. I, frankly, do not know what their ethics rules are. I know what our ethics rules are, and I know we have made a glaring omission when Members may have three, four, five, six, seven houses; they may have two, three, four, five, six mortgages and they never have to show them. Let's clean it up. If my friend believes there is need for another amendment, I am happy to look at it. But Senator Isakson and I are doing something we have long wanted to do. This is not something we just made up. We have had a bill for a long time doing exactly this. This is a moment we would like to get it done. I yield the floor.

Mrs. BOXER. I thank my colleague for that because it was a little surprising. My understanding, and I hope to stand corrected by the Senator from Maine, if I am wrong, and the Senator from New York, that the whole idea behind the STOCK Act, the bill written by Senator Gillibrand and the bill written by Senator Brown, did not deal with the executive branch. I thought the whole notion behind this was for us to clean up our act. Clean up our act over here. That is the best way to proceed. I have no problem if my colleague wants to write an amendment, she herself, on this particular issue. If she can make the case that it has been shown that VIP loans were given to members of the executive branch--whether under George Bush or Barack Obama--and I think in the years she is looking at it would have been under Bush, but those are the years the Countrywide scandal took place--if my friend has absolute information for me that shows that members of the Bush administration or the Obama administration got special treatment from the Countrywide scandal, I would like to know about it. I do not know anything about that at this time. If my friend believes it would be a good thing to do, to offer a separate amendment covering certain members of the executive branch, I am happy to look at it. But it strikes me as bizarre that this has become an issue. It sounds like what is going on from the Republican side is all of a sudden they want to turn attention over to the executive branch rather than focus it on us--which I think is critical. But I am happy to look at any amendment that deals with abuses the Senator can show me were occurring over on the executive branch side during those years that Countrywide was doing its damage. I would be happy to support an amendment. But I think we should keep this amendment clean. I think this amendment should be clean because we are looking at a particular ethics rule and we are essentially cutting out a loophole which has allowed colleagues to not have to list their personal residences when, in fact, we know some of them got special treatment. I yield the floor.