Maria Cantwell

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about a resolution to honor our Nation's search and rescue personnel by designating May 16 through May 22, 2010, as National Search and Rescue Week. As many of my colleagues know, I am an avid hiker and mountaineer. Over the years, I have scaled several of Washington State's majestic peaks and hiked many of our backcountry trails. Whenever I load my pack for another trip--whether for a day hike or a trip up Mt. Rainier--I, like all people who enjoy the great outdoors, take steps to prepare myself and minimize my risk. I bring my essential gear, extra food and water, and make sure someone knows my trip plan. But no amount of preparation can protect you from a misstep or unforeseen circumstance. In such instances, it is often the swift response of trained search and rescue personnel that makes the difference between tragedy and survival. These heroes come from a broad range of agencies and organizations, including sheriff offices, police departments, national and State parks, private corporations, and all branches of the military, including the U.S. Coast Guard. All of them--whether volunteer or salaried, military or civilian--exemplify courage, commitment, and compassion in performing their duties. Whether it is an accident in the wilderness or a natural disaster in a major city, search and rescue personnel are always ready to respond. All across our country, when people find themselves in danger, they can be thankful for the bravery and willingness to serve exhibited by these dedicated individuals. Every day, men, women, pack animals, and search dogs put themselves in harm's way to ensure the safety and security of citizens in need. Their territory knows no bounds. Wherever the mission is, they go, sometimes for weeks at a time. Search and rescue teams are relentless in their training. They go to great lengths to ensure they are physically and mentally fit and well versed in the newest search and rescue techniques. This preparation enables them to approach complex search and rescue situations with confidence and skill. Their selfless dedication does not stop at our Nation's borders. Civilian search and rescue teams are ready at a moment's notice to respond to international disasters, too, including the recent earthquake in Haiti and the tsunami in Indonesia. By extending their reach around the globe to wherever there is need, search and rescue personnel have saved lives, reunited families, and boosted America's reputation abroad. In the simplest terms, search and rescue personnel take great personal risks to come to the aid of others. Carrying out their mission often demands great personal discipline and sacrifice, and some even pay the ultimate price. This selfless commitment to others is embodied in the Search and Rescue motto: ``So that others may live.'' I ask my colleagues to stand with me today to honor the members of the search and rescue community across our Nation. Their dedication to saving the lives of citizens who are lost or injured does not waver, and neither should we in adopting this small act of recognition for their heroic efforts.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for her leadership in having this resolution on the floor today. She is always focused on those who are on the front line of defense in our country and, clearly, in Washington State. I appreciate her leadership in honoring the fallen officers from Washington State. This week does mark National Police Week where officers from across the Nation will travel here to honor fallen comrades. Because we in Washington State have done so much of this lately, we understand how important this type of activity is for remembering the men and women who serve us. During this week, we reflect on the brave men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice to our community. Mr. President, 2009 was one of the deadliest years in Washington State in more than 70 years. Seven officers were killed in the line of duty. These heroes put their lives at risk for our safety. They will be missed, but they will not be forgotten. The men and women in blue keep our communities safe, and they do so at tremendous sacrifices. Deputy Mike Gallagher from Lewis County Sheriff's Office was killed after his car was struck on his way back from responding to a domestic violence incident. Timothy Brenton from Seattle was shot while sitting in his car on Halloween in Seattle. We thought those two incidents were enough to rock our community. But then, in one of the most heinous murders in the State of Washington history, four Lakewood police officers were shot and killed while on duty in Parkland: Sergeant Mark Renninger, Officer Ronald Owens, Officer Tina Griswold, and Officer Greg Richards. It was a short time later that Deputy Kent Mundell, Jr. of the Pierce County Sheriff's office died from wounds sustained in responding to a domestic violence call. We have seen in Washington State the sacrifice of these men and women, all they do to keep us safe and all that their families go through when those who are in the line of duty pay the ultimate sacrifice. I hope my colleagues will remember law enforcement across the country and in their individual States. I hope they will take time, as they see officers here in the Capitol and throughout the Washington, DC area, to thank them for their service. Let's commemorate the activities of those who have fallen and also remember those who are still working to protect us every single day. I thank my colleague from Washington for this resolution, and I hope for its urgent passage today.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, this language was also offered in the House by our colleague, Barney Frank. It is appropriate that we don't require Federal agencies to just rely on these rating agencies. It is critical that agencies such as the FDIC and the Comptroller of the Currency use their discretion to come up with appropriate standards of creditworthiness and not rely on the monopoly of rating agencies. I hope my colleagues will support the amendment.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise to speak in opposition to the Chambliss substitute amendment and to ask my colleagues to think about this substitute in a significant way because it dramatically changes the underlying bill. In fact, I almost want to ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle if they are serious--if they are serious that this is the proposal they are going to put before us in response to the catastrophe that we have seen on Wall Street. I know we have been on the Senate floor and we have had a lot of history with this, starting in 2001. I think it must have been 2002 or 2003 when we tried to regulate derivatives after the Enron crisis, and one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said: We can't regulate derivatives; we don't know enough about them. What lessons have we learned since this catastrophe? I can tell you this: We were wrong to say we can't understand derivatives because our misunderstanding or not paying attention has led us to the catastrophe we are in today. For the other side of the aisle to say we can't even propose exchange trading, that is like saying the stock market should make changes in options and stock without being on an exchange. That would be like the Presiding Officer and I swapping back and forth Microsoft or Starbucks stock and selling it to other people and having none of the trade basically being reported. Why would we tolerate that for the stock market? Yet we are saying somehow it is OK for derivatives, this product that has become this unbelievable $600 trillion market, to operate in the dark. The other side does not even want to have exchange trading? I cannot believe that. I cannot believe somebody would even propose that. I know some people will say they have clearing, but the clearing requirements in this legislation would leave 60 percent of the market uncovered. So we are talking about not having the product on exchange and not having a lot of it cleared. So the two primary principles, learning from the mistakes of the last 10 years, are basically going unnoticed, unaccounted for on the other side of the aisle. Let's go back to how we got into this situation because we used to have a law that basically said, yes; let's protect consumers. We had transparency in trades--that was reporting to the CFTC; we had on the books capital requirements, we had speculation limits, we had antifraud and antimanipulation laws, we had trader licensing and registration and public exchange trading. So, yes, we actually had it right. We had it right. We had some tools in place. We had an oversight agency that was supposed to do this job, all of these things that protected the investments of millions of people and made the functionality of people who legitimately had to hedge, such as farmers or airline industries, rules of the road so they weren't taken to the cleaners or the price wasn't artificially driven through the roof. What happened to these things? What happened to these things is, in 2000, somebody came out on the Senate floor, basically at 7:30 on a Friday night, and stuck into an over 2,000-page bill a little exemption that said: Don't regulate these derivatives. That is what happened. What happened in the marketplace is that derivatives were a very small business, only a few hundred billion dollars, as you can see, in 1999. It was kind of an uninteresting little market. But we ended up deregulating them, and since then, in this short period of time, it turned into a $700 trillion market. How do you go, in that period of time, to this $700 billion? You go because we made it a dark market. We basically said: You don't have to have the rules of the road or the regulation or the oversight or the basic things that make this a functioning market. What happened? We had no transparency, no requirements to keep records. That means you didn't have to be able to prove to the CFTC exactly what you were doing in the market. That way, you could not actually prove fraud because you didn't know what anybody was doing because nobody had to make records. It is like Bernie Madoff on steroids. We had no large trader reporting and no speculation limits. The reason you have things on an exchange is because when an exchange sees that somebody is making the market or has too large a position-- and oftentimes across several exchanges--you have a regulator who can come in and say, you know what. We have speculation limits and you cannot do that much trading because you were driving the market. So after that we had no speculation limits, we had no capital requirements, and we had this high-risk manipulation and excessive speculation. That is what we did. A lot of people thought: You know what. I wasn't here, but I know a lot of people said this is going to revolutionize things. Derivatives are going to be the wave of the future. It is going to help us in our financial markets and the amount of liquidity. Everything is going to be great. Some people said don't worry about this because they are not going to be a very big resource, they are going to be very small and it is only going to be a few people who are going to trade back and forth. I showed you the chart. It turned into a $700 trillion industry. It was a big opportunity for people to make a lot of money without the oversight. Where are we today? Have we learned the lessons of this catastrophe? Have we? It is not to say that it isn't hard to be ahead of the smartest guys on Wall Street. I will say it is very hard. That is why you have to have bright lines because otherwise people do come up with new tools. I saw it with Enron in my State. I have seen it now with derivatives. There will be something else. Unless we have rules of the road, then there will be people who will try to continue to have opaque markets and drive trading. But our underlying proposal, by the chair of the Agriculture Committee and this underlying bill, working with the chair of the Banking Committee, has the rules of the road. The other side of the aisle is proposing a substitute that would take those away. This is clear. If you have unregulated trading, none of this happens. If you had exchange trading, this is what the American public gets protected with: transparent pricing, real-time trade monitoring, transparent valuation, speculation limits and public transparency. That is what this underlying bill does and that is what the amendment is trying to get rid of. They want this to be blank over here. They want this to be blank. They don't want those things to have to be met. How could you possibly propose that after what we just went through? You had, prior to 2000, regulation. Things were working hard. You have afterwards a major catastrophe, and these are fundamentals that we have behind all of our markets and exchange trading. So why would you let one thing off the hook? I will never forget the day when one of the former CFTC staff came and testified before the Energy Committee and said to our committee: Do you know that hamburger in America has more regulation on it than energy futures? I thought he couldn't be serious, but he was right. Futures of beef have reporting requirements, have to have transparency and real-time monitoring, have speculation limits. But these energy derivatives, because they were exempted by this 2000 act, did not. So somehow we were saying that hamburger in America--making sure it played by the rules--was more important than whether oil or electricity or these other things--as we know, CDOs--played by the same rules. Make no mistake. This underlying bill gives us this kind of predictability and certainty in the tried and true ways that markets function, with transparency. We are talking about old-fashioned capitalism. We are not talking about oligarchies where people hide behind things and only a few people know. Who knows when we are going to find out what happened with the ``fat finger'' the other day and what moved the markets? But I know this: If you come back to capital trades with transparency in pricing and real-time monitoring and those speculation limits--their legislation on the other side does nothing to make sure we prohibit the excessive speculation that can move the market in a manipulative way. So I hope we do not adopt this substitute amendment. Let's show America we are serious about the kind of transparency that has worked in markets in the tried-and-true part of our capitalist system. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. The alleged market manipulation brought enforcement action against Amaranth for $291 million in civil penalties and Energy Trading Partners for $167 million in civil penalties. That is just an example of what a statute with teeth and a regulatory entity can do to actually stop manipulation when given that authority. So, Mr. President, I hope my colleagues will support this strong antimanipulation standard being inserted into the Commodity Exchange Act. It will truly put a policeman on the beat and stop the kind of manipulation that has occurred in these commodities markets. I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 1 minute.

Ms. CANTWELL. My amendment strengthens the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's authority to go after manipulation and attempted manipulation in the swaps and commodities markets. It makes it unlawful to manipulate or attempt to manipulate the price of a swap or commodity using any manipulative device or contrivance. Some people might be thinking: Why do we need legislation like that? Don't we already have something in place? Unfortunately, current law does not have enough protections for our consumers, and we have found in other areas that it is very important to have a strong bright line, a law on the books against manipulation. We want the CFTC to have strong tools to go after this kind of behavior. This amendment is about protecting the integrity of markets for people who rely on them for their business. Current law makes it very difficult for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to prove market manipulation. The CFTC has to prove that someone had specific intent to manipulate, and that is a very difficult standard to prove. Most individuals don't write an e-mail, for example, saying they intend to manipulated prices, but that is currently what the law requires the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to prove: ``specific intent'' to manipulate. As a result of this, the Federal courts have recognized that with the CFTC's weaker anti-manipulation standard, market ``manipulation cases generally have not fared so well.'' In fact, the law is so weak that in the CFTC's 35-year history, it has only had one successfully prosecuted case of market manipulation, and that case is currently on appeal in Federal court. I am going to say that again. In the 35 years of its history, the CFTC has only successfully prosecuted one single case of manipulation. This language in this amendment is patterned after the law that the SEC uses to go after fraud and manipulation; that there can be no manipulative devices or contrivances. It is a strong and clear legal standard that allows regulators to successfully go after reckless and manipulative behavior. This legislation tracks the Securities Act in part because Federal case law is clear that when the Congress uses language identical to that used in another statute, Congress intended for the courts and the Commission to interpret the new authority in a similar manner, and Congress has made sure that its intention is clear. In the 75 years since the enactment of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, a substantial body of case law has developed around the words ``manipulative or deceptive devices or contrivances.'' The Supreme Court has compared this body of law to ``a judicial oak which has grown from little more than a legislative acorn.'' It is worth noting that the courts have held that the SEC's manipulation authority is not intended to catch sellers who take advantage of the natural market forces of supply and demand, only those who attempt to affect the market or prices by artificial means unrelated to the natural forces of supply and demand. Mr. President, Congress granted the same antimanipulation authority to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2005 in the Energy Policy Act. We did this as a result of the Enron market manipulation. I am very proud of this legislation and its ban on manipulation in electricity and natural gas markets. I say that because there was a similar issue of deregulation of energy markets that led to the Federal regulators not doing their job. Since we have implemented this language in the electricity markets, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, since 2005, has used its authority to conduct 135 investigations. Of those 135 investigations, 41 have resulted in settlements involving civil penalties or other monetary remedies totaling over $49 million. Two investigations brought about enforcement actions against manipulation, one against Amaranth for $291 million----

Ms. CANTWELL. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Dodd also be added as a cosponsor.

Ms. CANTWELL. I further ask unanimous consent that Senators Merkley, Brown of Ohio, and Shaheen be added as cosponsors.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and call up my amendment No. 3786, as modified.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I appreciate my colleague from Michigan being out here, as she has been repeatedly, to talk about how our process oftentimes breaks down and what the consequences are because there is probably no bigger consequence than what has happened to the State of Michigan, and she fights every day to make sure we are aware of what will help our economy and help Main Street. So I thank her for that. I thank her for being out here to urge us to get off of a filibuster and on to important legislation that I think will help our country. I am here also to talk about something that I wish to make sure, as we enter this floor debate, people aren't confused about; that is, that we have made choices in the past that have helped accentuate the situation we are in, and if we are going to get out of this situation, we have to be honest with ourselves that this is a time when we need to do our job and make sure we understand the opportunity to make sure consumers are protected. I wish to start by talking about the Commodities Exchange Act. There has been a lot of debate about what various committees have oversight and what the important issues are. For me, there is no more important issue than making sure the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, which has oversight of financial indexes, has the authority to regulate what are called derivative markets. The reason I say this is so important is because of the fact that we allowed legislation to pass in 2000--the Commodities Futures Modernization Act--that literally deregulated these derivatives. More specifically, it prevented us from regulating. We had a Commodities Futures Trading Commission Chair, a woman named Brooksley Born, who saw what damage was happening in 1998 with these derivatives because they were unregulated. She tried to do something about it. She tried to do something about it because the Commodities Exchange Act provided oversight to deter and prevent price manipulation or any other disruptions to the market and to ensure financial integrity of all transactions and avoid systemic risk and to protect participants from fraudulent or abusive practices. That is what their charge was. When she saw in the marketplace that there were these products that were being used that basically thwarted this act, she proposed regulating derivatives. That is in the 1998 timeframe. So this problem has been around for a long time. As we saw the demise of long-term capital management and incurred a financial crisis at that time, she said: Let's make sure we are regulating these products. What happened was, she was basically run out of town for her views. She was the Chair of the Commission at the time, and a bunch of people, basically influenced by Wall Street, came down to Washington, DC, and said: That is the wrong idea. We don't need to do this. This issue isn't going to be a problem for us. So not only was she prohibited as the Chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to fulfill this act, to make sure we regulated this market-- not only that--legislation was passed by the Congress prohibiting us from regulating these derivatives. Imagine that. You actually had the Chair of the Commission doing her job; you actually had her calling out a problem in the market, fulfilling her responsibilities of oversight, and not only was she told she couldn't regulate those, Congress prohibited her from doing that in the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. How did we get to that situation? I get it because I had to live through the Enron crisis in our State and a lot of people cooked up off-book accounting and people said: Oh, it is a bunch of environmentalists not allowing us to have an energy supply. That is why we have an energy crisis--or people said: Oh, we are having an energy crisis because we don't have enough refineries. We found out it was people manipulating supply and demand with various schemes called Death Star and Get Shorty, a variety of things that all came down to this: off-book accounting. How could you fool the accountants into believing that your scheme was legitimate? So it should be no surprise that in 1994, in a little retreat effort--some of us go on retreats and talk about our policy issues. Here, some of the titans of Wall Street went down to Boca Raton, about 80 J.P. Morgan bankers, and started to wonder if there was a way to create derivatives that could bet on whether bonds or loans would default. That is what they did. They were down in Boca Raton saying, basically: How can we do off-book accounting to figure out ways in which we can bet on these things? So that is what happened. That was the start of this. A few years later, Brooksley Born, after she saw them, called them out on it, said: Let's stop it and basically was prohibited from doing it. So what happened when we prohibited the derivatives from being regulated? Well, one of the CFTC personnel, at that time, basically said all the fundamental templates we have learned from the Great Depression are needed to have markets function smoothly are gone. These are things we had put in place after the last fiscal crisis. We put them in place because we knew we had to protect things. The other side of the aisle led the charge on that deregulation, led the charge on the deregulation of derivatives and said: Let's keep our hands off. I would say at least four times we have had votes on various derivative measures and the majority of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have said: No, let's don't reregulate them. I am all for hearing what they have to say today, but this is an important issue. Let me explain why. When we look at capital markets, we have to have transparency. If we don't have transparency, people don't know what is going on and products can be manipulated. So after the 2000 Commodities Futures Modernization Act, basically on derivatives we had no transparency, no capital requirements, no prohibition on fraud, no prohibition on manipulation, no regulation of intermediaries. Why are we surprised we ended up in this situation? Because if we basically took what had been the fundamentals of the last fiscal crisis and put them in place in a law and then basically were warned and we deregulated them, why are we surprised we ended up in this situation? Because after deregulation, what it meant if you were doing trading, at least on these derivatives--on other products you had certainty and you had predictability, but on these products--let me be more specific. We had what were called dark markets and that meant because you couldn't see into these dark markets, you didn't understand what was being done. I know our colleague, Senator Levin, is holding a hearing today, and he is going to get to the bottom of exactly what was going on in those dark markets and who was trying to manipulate them. But the fact that they were dark and not traded meant we couldn't see the price that somebody was paying and thereby couldn't understand what was going on in the market. So we had no transparency. We also had no requirement to keep records, no large trader reporting, which would have been things that the CFTC would have looked at and said: Oh, I can look at that and see whether manipulation is happening. We had no speculation limits. Another thing that happens on the stock market or on trades that happen now--we hear about it all the time--is that if somebody thinks somebody is messing around with the market, we can have limits. We can come in and on an exchange--or an agency can come in and say: We are going to stop that kind of trading because we have concerns about what is going on. We also know there was no capital behind these bets as well, which is very alarming to a lot of people. The synthetic CDOs were cooked up and had no capital behind them. I know my colleague, Senator Dorgan, has been on the floor talking about an amendment he is going to be offering on the Senate floor to make sure we close that. But what it created was just a high risk for fraud and manipulation and excessive speculation. That is what happened. So when we deregulated the derivative market, what happened? Well, it should be no surprise, again, to find out that when we deregulated it, the market exploded. Here is where we were in 1999. There were some derivative products, but now look at it. It peaked at $700 trillion. It has leveled off now somewhere around $600 trillion. A $600 trillion market in derivatives grew because we created a dark market opportunity in which most people couldn't--not everybody could understand what was going on, and certainly the regulators who used to have a day job of overseeing this were prohibited from doing their day job. I should add, not only were the regulators prohibited from doing their day job, in the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000, we also had a provision in there that said States aren't able to use their authority to look into these markets and market activities as well. So we did two things. We prevented the Federal regulators from doing anything and we prevented the State regulators from doing something as well and now we have this unbelievable--unbelievable--unbelievable market of activity. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to talk about innovation. Well, I know a little bit about innovation. I worked for a company that was a startup company. When I look at that issue, I see we have to have financial markets on Wall Street that help those companies get financing through their very early stages. That is what is so important about our financial markets operating effectively. But one can see from this chart--or maybe not. Maybe you can't see from this chart because it is so hard to see, but at the very bottom there is a little yellow line, and that yellow line represents assets. It represents the loans these banks are making, the amount of money that is in loans in capital going to businesses that are the true ideas of innovation. There is a lot of innovation in derivatives. Now we know what it is: dark market derivatives that cooked up things like CDOs and synthetic instruments to basically bet against bonds because somebody had securitized loans to banks that were risky bank loans anyway and then tried to make somebody believe it was a great way to cover them financially. So all of it was just a risky game, and that is what we are doing. So we are not helping the American economy in investing in Detroit or investing in software or investing in other things, not the way we used to. We are basically investing--and people are making a ton of money--in dark market derivatives. So that is why it is so important we fix this in the legislation. Just to give an idea of where people are making the money--because I know some people like to say: Well, let's get out here and make sure we do something for small business. I think it is incredibly important to do that, but we are not going to get the big banks to make a bunch of loans to small businesses, as that last chart showed us, when they can make money in dark market derivatives. This chart shows the increased profit they have had since 2008. So we have actually had a decrease in lending. We have actually had a decrease in the amount of capital going out to the tune of something like $574 billion and an increase in trading profits. So we know where the money is going. Wall Street is not putting money into Main Street; Wall Street is putting money into Wall Street dark markets, and we have to get on this legislation to fix that. So what would we do in this legislation? Well, if my Agriculture Committee colleague's mark is put into this legislation, as I believe the leader is going to do, then we have a choice of having an unregulated market or, with this legislation, a truly regulated market with exchange trading. People say: What does that mean, exchange trading? I don't understand. What is that going to solve for us? Well, just as I said how dark the market was and no one knew what was going on, when we have a product that is traded on an exchange, we actually have transparent pricing so people can see what the pricing is, just as this situation is being described right now in the Senate Oversight Committee hearing about how people didn't know what was going on or who was paying what or who was behind what bets. We have to have transparent pricing, and we have to have real-time trade monitoring. Because someone is monitoring those trades, we know exactly what is happening in the market and who is moving what and how they are moving it and we have a transparent valuation. If my colleagues have time and they read this latest book out by Michael Lewis, ``The Big Short,'' he talks about how people didn't know exactly what was going on with the valuation of this because it was being hidden from them, so they had no way of understanding exactly what the value of these products were. That is why this scheme was able to be perpetrated on people, because they didn't know what the true valuation is. If we have exchange trading, we actually have speculation limits and we have public transparency. So when we are on the floor debating this--and I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will support exchange trading. I heard one of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle say: Well, I don't think that is the solution. Well, in my book, it is absolutely the solution. It is absolutely the solution, just as it is for the stock market. Who would buy stock on the stock market if we didn't have oversight of the exchange? If you didn't have these kinds of things--transparency in pricing, real-time trade monitoring, transparent valuation, speculation limits, and public transparency--who would buy stocks? Why do you think derivatives can operate in the dark? They cannot. The other thing we will be talking about on the floor is that unregulated trading doesn't have any capital behind the trade. If we actually had a clearinghouse--exchange trading and a clearinghouse-- then you would have capital behind these trades, and people would know somebody has the ability to deal with this transaction they are betting on. These are the things we need to do. These are the things that are critical to the type of reform we need to get done. I am concerned that we are not going to get to this legislation, that the dark market is going to continue to operate that way or that people are going to propose loopholes to basically water down this legislation. We have had a lot of conversation about loopholes. One of them is the end-user loophole. Basically, any kind of loophole in the legislation is kind of like water; the money is going to flow where it can. If it is a dark market, that is where it will flow. We had a hearing of the Commerce Committee in 2008, 6 or 7 months before the big bubble burst, and George Soros came to testify. He said we are basically inside of a bubble and it is going to cause great concern. He knew then, because he knew what kind of activity was going on. He talked in his testimony about how important it was that you apply regulation and apply it to both the regulated and unregulated market. If you don't apply it to the unregulated market, then all the money moves over to the unregulated area. I appreciated this New York Times editorial that said: If [end users] are exempted, potentially trillions of dollars worth of transactions could avoid the exposure--and stability--that comes with exchange trading. That is what we are going to debate about, whether you are going to have that kind of oversight and make sure that we end up putting the kind of regulations we need in place. As another New York Times editorial said: Strong derivatives reform is a matter of putting taxpayers first--ahead of the big banks and corporate America that are fighting hard for a return to the risky business as usual. We don't need risky business as usual. We need to reform these markets. Let's get capital flowing again and get innovation in products and services in important areas of our economy and know that having fundamental rules in markets and capitalism is to have transparency, and the legislation we are considering will do just that. Hopefully, the Republicans will say what true reforms they are for and realize that, in the past, they have been against some of the derivatives reforms that would have stopped us from having this crisis. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I wish today to pay tribute to the well-respected tribal leader and proud veteran of the War in the Pacific with the U.S. Marine Corps, Stanley G. Jones, Sr., ``Scho- Hallem.'' Mr. Jones is retiring after more than 40 years of service to his people, the Tulalip Tribes, of my State of Washington. Mr. Jones served on the Tulalip Tribes Board of Directors for the past 44 years; longer than any other Tulalip tribe member. Mr. Jones helped guide tribes in the Northwest through their legal battle to regain lost treaty rights, culminating in the Boldt Decision of the 1970s. He was instrumental in reviving the traditional First Salmon Ceremony in 1976, the practice having been outlawed by the Federal Government in the early 1900s. He was the first Chair of the National Indian Gaming Task Force, and helped set tribal policy regarding the usage of proceeds from Tulalip tribal ventures. Mr. Jones was a strong advocate for economic development. He led the Tulalip Tribes' efforts to invest their lands, and worked to create jobs and opportunities for his tribe's people, and those in neighboring communities. He also endeavored to provide educational opportunities, health care, housing and senior services to tribal members. Mr. Jones will be sorely missed but his legacy is in the growing respect for treaty rights and tribal sovereignty that he leaves behind. Today his vision is being carried on by a new generation of tribal leaders. I take this opportunity to wish him a long and well-deserved retirement.

Ms. CANTWELL

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

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, this speech is not meant to target or malign anyone. It is simply to talk about the responsibilities we have as Members of Congress to our constituents. Our country has been rocked by a financial crisis of epic proportions, one that will have Americans paying for generations to come. It has shaken the public's faith not only in Wall Street but in this institution, the Congress. Whether it is Enron or Amaranth or Bernie Madoff or the Wall Street bailout, the American people are asking themselves a fundamental question: Can I even trust those guys in Washington to look out for me when it comes to the special interests creating rules of the game that tilt the board in their favor? Some people listening today may be smiling and thinking: Senator, that is one of the oldest questions and most frequently asked in Washington, DC: Whose side are you on? But never has this question of ``whose side are you on'' had such dramatic consequences for the economic lives of millions of Americans. Over 2 million people have lost their homes, many going into bankruptcy, 7.3 million jobs have been lost, and our government has put something like $24 trillion on the line to help Wall Street in this meltdown--something taxpayers will be paying for decades, to say nothing of the kids who will not go to college because college tuition went up 32 percent or workers whose 401s have been wiped out, making it almost impossible to retire. The American people have been let down by those involved in government oversight who have feigned: Oh, this stuff is too complex for us to understand. We better listen to those outside interests. They understand this better than I do. It takes a mighty man, who was in control of our financial markets for nearly two decades, like Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan to admit his philosophy was wrong. But it took even more dogged oversight by the likes of Henry Waxman to take a subject that some people think is too complex to understand and boil it down to a simple yes-or-no question. Congressman Waxman to Mr. Greenspan: Mr. Greenspan, the premise that you could trust markets to regulate themselves, were you wrong? Mr. Greenspan, in response: Yes. Mr. Waxman to Mr. Greenspan: Mr. Greenspan, you found that your view . . . your ideology was not right. Mr. Greenspan, in response: Precisely. This debate we are about to have on financial reform, in my mind, is really about the backbone of Congress. The central issue before us today is whether Congress is going to continue to trust Wall Street and those who represent them because there is too much complexity for Congress to understand. Really? Is it any more complicated than national security or the Medicare GPCI reimbursement formulas or our Tax Code in general? Really? Is it too complicated? P.J. O'Rourke, at a recent dinner honoring journalists, said: It's a fundamental principle of the rule of law, a fundamental principle of economics, and a fundamental principle of politics. . . . that beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. I agree with him. How is it that average Americans know that a back- alley craps game with fixed dice is a no-win situation, yet a dark market with fixed financial instruments is allowed to carry on for more than a decade under the mischaracterized title of ``free market''? The issue is, we were told over the last 10 years by the Bush economic working group--and, for that matter, the Clinton economic working group and now even some members of the Obama economic working group--that these issues are too complex to understand. Really? Is that what happened when Bernie Madoff literally made off with millions of investors' life savings in a Ponzi scheme? It was not complex. And regulators were either afraid, lazy, or paid off when they failed to ask a simple question: Let me see your books. When we deregulated energy markets and Enron had at least one manipulation scheme for every day of the week--Death Star, Get Shorty, Ricochet, Fat Boy, just to name a few--these issues were not complex; it was simply shorting supply to drive up the price. No, the issue is not complexity. It is about the central issue of markets. They have to have transparency and oversight to operate effectively. Never more have the American people been counting on their Members of Congress to act like David against the big Goliath, Wall Street interests. We have been repeatedly warned about derivatives. The Long-Term Capital Management crisis almost took down the world economy in 1998 because it started using complex mathematical formulas to do derivatives. Then-Chairman Brooksley Born of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission proposed regulating derivatives. That was her agency's primary role. Not only was she told by the President's working group she could not, they helped mastermind a strategy with Congress to stop her. So instead of regulating derivatives, Congress passed a law making sure the oversight agency could not regulate them. And just for extra measure, we also prohibited State attorneys general from regulating them as well. Well, why, if you were on Wall Street, would you ever worry about what exotic financial tools you were cooking up if you knew there was no oversight? Let me say that there are people on Wall Street who operate ethically, without fraud, without manipulation, and provide an essential tool to our economy and functioning markets. But when you take away the accountability of Wall Street, something happens to the accounting on Wall Street. We have had many votes here in the last 10 years to regulate and have oversight of the derivatives market and bring them out of the dark, and those efforts have primarily failed because the so-called smartest guys in the room stopped us. Did it really take another near 1933 Depression to remind us of our fundamental role? I ask my colleagues to check their previous votes on derivatives and tell me whether they still want to vote the same way. My constituents have been so disgusted by our lack of holding Wall Street accountable, they have said: If you can't beat them, then at least break them up. So I will be offering an amendment to return us to Glass-Steagall, the law of the land previous to 2000, to help protect consumers for decades. And I will be offering an amendment to strengthen our antimanipulation laws to make sure that if manipulation happens in the future, there will be a price to be paid. I will also say that my constituents want us to get this right and get capital flowing to small business. While Treasury turned the keys over to Wall Street to bail them out, small business is still being strangled by the lack of access to capital. As one quote says: This then is more than the tale of one company's fall from grace. It is at its base the story of a wrenching period of economic and political tumult as revealed through a single corporate scandal. It is a portrait of America in upheaval at the turn of the century, torn between the worship of fast money and its zeal for truth, between greed and high mindedness, between Wall Street and Main Street. Ultimately it is a story of untold damage wreaked by a nation's folly--a folly that in time we are all but certain to see again. I wish that quote was about our current crisis that started in 2008, but it is not. That quote is from a book called ``Conspiracy of Fools'' by Kurt Eichenwald that was written in 2005. He warned us that what was happening was just a tremor leading up to a massive earthquake that was about to happen. We did not listen. Are we listening now? I am going to be working with my colleagues to offer several amendments on the floor to strengthen this legislation, to make it the strongest legislation possible, to be accountable to my constituents, and to make sure we are putting derivatives back into the clear light of day. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, today I wish to remember and pay tribute to a beloved and revered tribal leader, Edward Eugene Claplanhoo, who died on March 14, 2010. Mr. Claplanhoo served three terms as chairman of the Makah Tribe, and many years on the Tribal Council, the tribe's Whaling Commission, higher education and election boards. Mr. Claplanhoo was also chair of the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation Board for 5 years. He was known for his ability to build consensus with his calm and steady leadership. Mr. Claplanhoo was chair of the tribe in the 1970s when the Ozette archaeological dig was underway in the Makah village of Ozette. He worked with Dr. Richard Dougherty of Washington State University to ensure that the artifacts from the site remained on the reservation, and was instrumental in the foundation of the Makah Cultural and Research Center, a museum which now displays the heritage of the community. A proud graduate of Washington State University, Mr. Claplanhoo believed strongly in the power of education and encouraged young people to seek advance degrees. He was also an Army veteran and last year donated land to establish a monument to veterans and to the Spanish influence at Neah Bay. Mr. Claplanhoo will always be remembered for his many contributions to the Makah Tribe and all the tribes of Washington State, as well as the many others in the State whose lives he touched. His legacy will be cherished for years to come.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I rise to speak on the vote we had earlier on the nomination of Ben Bernanke to be the Federal Reserve Chairman. While I did not support Mr. Bernanke's reconfirmation to that post, I would like to take the time now to talk about that vote and my concerns and the challenges I think our country faces moving forward. When I look at this issue, I know that not one administration or not one Fed Chairman got us into the mess we are in. In fact, it is not even to be blamed on one party. What this is about is how we move forward with complete transparency and the proper regulation to give certainty and predictability to our financial markets. I will do my best to represent my constituents with the proper level of oversight on these issues, but I heard loudly and clearly from my constituents in December that they are, as small business owners, at the end of their rope without access to capital and that community banks are not lending. So that is where I am spending my time and focus now, in urging both the Fed and Treasury to act, without passing legislation but act now to get recovery programs specifically working for community banks that need access to capital and for those small businesses that are the engine of economic growth for our economy. While I know many of my colleagues think programs that came out of the TARP funding, such as the original TALF Program or even the Treasury Secretary's announced program in December, are things that have been in the works, I can tell my colleagues that my constituents started this debate in earnest with credit default swaps and the concern about large banks but are having a hard time, as I am, understanding the logic and the strategy that one day closes one of the largest banks in America and one of the largest banks in our State, Washington Mutual, wiping out 30,000 creditors and basically putting in jeopardy the retirement of many employees, and then 4 days later we pass a TARP bill. I believe the government picking winners and losers at that point in time was the wrong approach, and I advocated for an equity program. But today my constituents want to know why it is that it was easy to figure out how, with loans and assets and the credit activity of the Fed, over $1 trillion could be pumped into AIG at 100 cents on the dollar and yet small business owners in the State of Washington--and my guess is around the country--basically had capital cut from right under them. When I think about what happened, it breaks my heart. To think about a company such as Vancouver's Columbia Gem, where the Bank of Clark County was shut down and assets moved over to another bank across the river, Umpqua Bank, that received TARP funds. But where was the help for the small businesses that had performing lines of credit at that bank? What happened to them? I will tell you what happened to them. Even though they had performing lines of credit, their funds were cut out right from under them. In fact, it forced the owner of that company to try to fund the operation of that business out of his own pocket. Another business in that area, Beaches Restaurant, immediately their line of credit was frozen after the takeover. Vancouver Iron and Steel was current on all its loans and even eked out a small profit in 2008 and never missed a bank payment. But Vancouver Iron immediately lost its $1.5 million line of credit after the FDIC took over. How is it we can act immediately to save the AIGs but we can't act immediately to save companies such as Vancouver Iron and Steel? I guarantee Vancouver Iron and Steel was not cooking up dark market derivatives, creating credit default swaps that destabilized our economy. Nor is Vancouver Iron and Steel continuing to operate derivatives in dark markets. No, they have nothing to do with that. They are manufacturing product for America and abroad and producing jobs. The fact that we continue to make it hard for them to get access to capital is one of the reasons why I voted against Mr. Bernanke. The Fed Chairman has to realize the urgency with which the big banks have been bailed out and saved. That urgency has to be applied to Main Street. I know they are trying. I applaud the President for last night saying he is going to put forth $30 billion to help with access to capital for community banks. I urge him to do that within the administration. While I am sure my colleagues could give input, to basically spend another 2 or 3 months waiting for small businesses to get access through community banks, more and more business bankruptcies will happen. While that is a program to get right, it is very clear to Americans that when we want to act with urgency, this government can act and the Fed can act and the Treasury can act to solve these problems. I urge the Fed now and the Treasury to give consideration to making this their No. 1 priority, to get capital to these community banks as urgently as possible through an equity program that gives them the infusion it will take to get capital back to Main Street. There are other reasons why I did not support Mr. Bernanke. As I said, this is not one Fed Chairman's problem or one administration's problem. This has been caused by policies over the last several decades, prior to the repeal of Glass-Steagall, in which we continued to say deregulation of these markets was unimportant. The policies at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and other policies that allowed for this kind of dark market activity of derivatives to grow into an international $56 trillion industry are the policies that have brought us to this point. We now have to have the urgency and the leadership of everyone involved to think creatively about the urgency of getting capital to community banks and small businesses and the reforms that must be put in place now, not to check a box, not to say we did reform, not to say we are responding to something that has happened recently but to move our economy forward with the transparency and proper regulation that will provide for international stability. When I see from some of the well-known economists and investors across the globe that another bubble is forming, that this problem we think somehow we have corrected by passing TARP and doing other things is going to be alleviated, these individuals are signalling that another bubble in the exact same situation could happen again, I want to see the Fed and Treasury advocate on the Hill the policies that will give us complete transparency and regulation to assure Americans and those participating in financial markets around the world that they will function with certainty and predictability, that they are not going to be inflated with something that has no real value behind it such as the credit default schemes or, should I say, naked credit default schemes that we are trying to outlaw on the Senate floor. I know what has happened with the regulatory reform legislation so far that has come through Congress. There have been many attempts to water it down. I am not blind to what I think the challenges will be to pass this legislation when it comes to the Senate. That is why I want to see a Fed Chairman and a Treasury Secretary who are leading the charge for the principles of regulatory reform that will correct these problems with the markets, not to be for a few policies that might sound good, such as: Let's reduce systemic risk--I am for reducing systemic risk--or not to say: We want a consumer group. I am for a consumer group. But the heart of this issue is whether we are going to properly regulate derivatives, whether we are going to pass a law that says: Manipulative devices or contrivances of these markets are a Federal crime. Not only will you pay a penalty, you will go to jail. I get that many in the markets believe there is no way we can possibly control all the new tools and all the new financial terms people can come up with to deviate from the standards that are set. But I know this: Setting a statute in place and going back to Glass- Steagall can separate the risk to the taxpayer of having their money and their capital used to continue to prop up dark market activities. I certainly believe we have to have derivatives regulation. But the tactic of now saying we can have that by definition, by saying no proprietary trading on these companies, I guarantee you we will be debating the meaning of the words ``proprietary trading.'' The consequence will be there will be lots of money flowing into dark markets. I believe in the financial wherewithal to raise capital in America. It is one of the greatest things about our country. It is one of the greatest things that makes us competitive, the fact that we can create capital in such an inspiring way and that we can have, in an information age, the kind of public financing of ideas and creativity that continues to have us lead the way. But I ask my colleagues to look at how many IPOs have been created lately. I ask them to look at how much money has gone into the small businesses and community banks loaning to small business juxtaposed to the amount of money that has gone into derivatives. The truth is, you make more money on derivatives. So why would you put your money into investing in IPOs? Why would you put your money into the small businesses? What is happening is more and more concentration into the large banks that then thwart the opportunities for small community banks to truly be competitive with them. Then what happens? Less and less capital, less and less opportunities for small business or, as I saw recently, even the fact that some of the small business newspapers in this country haven't been able to get access to capital. They are going to end up in the hands of bankers. I don't know if those are big banks or small banks, but I know this: Small businesses deserve to have a choice of lenders, a diversity of market-size banks, and a Fed chairman who will pay attention to that issue. We live in a unique time, created by at least two decades of deregulation of markets that are now going to create another bubble. My vote against the Fed Chairman has to do not with the past but with the future, the future prevention of another bubble, of more bankruptcies of small businesses, of getting our regulatory policies and our transparency of markets in place so the United States can get back to both the innovation and job creation but financial markets that the United States leads in around the world, that we are not 10 years from now seeing the kind of dark market activity around the globe that has transpired here. Instead, the United States, as the President says, learns from a teachable moment and leads the rest of the world on the types of markets and transparency we expect. I hope the Fed Chairman will embrace this task of a more robust leadership on the policies and regulation that need to be put into place to prevent another bubble and to helping immediately small businesses. I don't want to leave the American people with the thought that somehow Wall Street is more important than Main Street. That is not what sent me to Washington, and it is not what sent my colleagues. I hope we will work in earnest, as Republicans and Democrats, to urge the administration and the Fed to immediately adopt and implement a program to give community banks and small businesses access to capital. One of the people I met with is a small businessman whom I used to see while eating in his restaurant many times, particularly working late at night, when I worked for a software company. When I was home in December, I found that after 55 years he was going out of business. After 55 years in his family, they were going out of business. The downturn definitely took its toll. He wasn't getting access to capital. He held on for an entire year, not laying off one employee, keeping everybody he could instead of cutting them. The end result, after that year, without any more resources, without any more access to capital, he had to close that business. Not only that, because he mortgaged his house, he was probably going to lose his house. He put his restaurant up for auction. He told me, if he was lucky, he would probably get $10,000 for it. Fifty-five years in business, weathering several downturns, not laying off any employees, he wanted to know where his lifeline was during this crisis. I am going to devote my time and energy, along with working with the President on his commitment, to making sure this program for community banks and small businesses gets implemented as soon as possible. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I know we are in the middle of a health care debate and I know we are focused on health care and we will be talking about that for several days, but I rise to congratulate the people of Washington State and the country on the 787 Dreamliner flight that took off from Paine Field, WA, just a few hours ago. Some people might think of that as just going to YouTube and looking at the video and seeing a plane take off and what is the significance. I tell you, there is great significance, not just for the State of Washington but for the country because this plane is a unique plane. It is a game changer as far as the market is concerned. But it is American innovation at its best. This plane, built now with 50 percent composite materials, is going to be a 20-percent more fuel-efficient plane. That is significant for our country. It is significant because it means the United States can still be a leader in manufacturing and it can still deal with something as complex as fuel efficiency in aviation. What is prideful for us as Americans is, this is about American innovation at its best. What would Bill Boeing say about today? He would say we achieved another milestone, where we faced international competition. Yet the United States can still be a manufacturer. We can still build a product, still compete, and still win because we are innovating with aviation. To the thousands of workers in the Boeing Company and in Puget Sound I say: Congratulations for your hard work--for the planning and implementation of taking manufacturing from aerospace with aluminum that had been the status quo for decades, to developing an entirely new plane, 50 percent with the new material. I want the United States to continue to be a manufacturer, to still build products, to still say we can compete. So I applaud the name Dreamliner. Somebody in that company had a dream, and today it got launched when it took off from that runway. I wish to say that is the innovative spirit that has made this country great and that is the innovative spirit in which we need to invest.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 minutes out of Senator Baucus's time to make a statement.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I send to the desk legislation on my behalf and Senator Collins', the Senator from Maine, dealing with putting a market signal on carbon so we can get off of carbon and move forward on a green energy economy that will create millions of jobs in America. I know we are still on health care so I am not going to take a lot of time right now to talk about this because we in the next several weeks and months ahead are going to have a lot of time to talk about this issue. But I do want to say for my colleagues, as we are introducing this legislation: The American people have been on a roller coaster ride with energy prices. I know the Presiding Officer knows this because she comes from the Northeast and knows what home heating oil costs have done to her State and surrounding States. I know my colleague from Maine knows this as well. That is part of her motivation in joining me in this cause, I am sure. The American public cannot sustain having oil prices wreak havoc on our economy for the next 30 years. We know from economists that sometime in the next 5 to 30 years we will be at peak oil, and once we are at peak oil, the cost to the U.S. economy will be even more extravagant. The American people want to know what we are going to do to transition off of that and do so in a respectable way. What they are not so interested in is a proposal that would have Wall Street come up with a funding source by doing speculative trading to continue the games that have been played for the last year or 2 years on various commodities that drove the economy into the ditch. I find it interesting that today in the newspapers coming from Copenhagen, now they have decided that up to 90 percent of all market activity in the European trading markets was related to fraudulent activity. That tells us that trading markets already existing on carbon futures have had great deals of problems with manipulation. I don't think we need to repeat that. What we want to do instead is say, we are going to make sure that consumers get a check back to help them with their energy bills. We want to say we are going to protect them from the skyrocketing prices of energy, but we are going to transition off of fossil fuels and onto new sources of energy, of biofuels, of alternatives such as wind and solar, of things such as plug-in electric vehicles, of an electricity grid that can be more efficient and a smart two-way communications system. In the end, our economy is going to be better. We are going to create more jobs. We are going to make sure that consumers are not held hostage by future huge energy spikes. If we do that, we are going to leave to the next generation a better situation. We will leave the planet Earth in better shape. But most importantly, we are going to take the U.S. economy, struggling to move ahead, and we are going to create thousands of jobs in the short term and millions of jobs in the next several years. That is good news, to think that the United States could become a leader in energy technology, that we are not going to be as dependent upon the Chinese for battery technology of the future as we are right now on Middle East oil. I introduce this legislation with the most respect for my colleagues, Senators Boxer and Kerry, Lieberman and McCain, many of my colleagues have been involved in this issue for many decades, but to work across the aisle. If health care shows us anything, we have to cut down the amount of time it takes to move these important pieces of legislation by working together in an effort to show that we do understand the needs of the American public. We have to drive down their costs, not just on health care but on fuel as well. We have to give them economic opportunity for the future. Sending this market signal is the best way to create jobs and help protect consumers for the future.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I have been on the floor now for about an hour listening to my colleagues on the health care debate. Certainly I want to express the opinion from many people in the Northwest. We know that doing nothing about health care certainly will guarantee that premiums will go up. We know it happened in the last 10 years; they have gone up 100 percent. We know that doing nothing now means they will go up 8 to 10 percent a year. We also know there is about $700 billion in waste in the system. This is about what we can do to reform the system so we can stop the rise, the increase we are seeing in our premiums. There are many things in this legislation, changing fee-for-service systems so we are driving down the quantity of health care that is delivered instead of making sure that it is quality; making sure we make reforms in long-term care; making sure we give the power to States to negotiate and drive down the costs. I know my colleague Senator Collins was on the floor with some of my other colleagues, the Senators from Oregon and Indiana, to discuss their ideas about how we improve cost containment. I hope my colleagues in the next days will join us in the discussion about how we continually improve the bill to drive down costs, because doing nothing will not get us to that point. (The remarks of Ms. Cantwell and Ms. Collins pertaining to introduction of S. 2827 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Objection.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleague, Senator Murray, in expressing my sorrow over the tragedy that struck Washington State and the law enforcement community. I extend the prayers and condolences of the Senate and the entire Nation to the families, loved ones, and colleagues of the four police officers who lost their lives in the line of duty Sunday in Lakewood, WA. Those four officers, part of Washington's best, are SGT Mark Renninger, Officer Ronald Owens, Officer Tina Griswold, and Officer Greg Richards. Collectively, they served for 47 years in the line of duty. As Lakewood Police Chief Bret Farrar describes them, they were ``outstanding individuals'' who brought a range of talents to a 5-year- old department. These heroes, who put their lives at risk for our safety every day, will be deeply missed and never forgotten. The men and women in blue who keep our communities safe make tremendous sacrifices daily, and so do their families. The senseless tragedy that claimed the lives of these four officers, as my colleague said, the deadliest attack in Washington State history, reminds us of the risk that police officers take every day when they put on their badges. The risks that police take every day was driven home again today when a Seattle police officer on routine patrol confronted, shot, and killed the person believed responsible for this crime. And at a time when we are all in shock over the loss of these officers, the police remain vigilant. They did not stop doing their job, even when tragedy struck close to home. I thank all those who participated in the law enforcement's response since this tragedy happened. I thank the Pierce County Sheriff's Office and Sheriff Paul Pastor for the investigation they have led. My heart goes out to the Lakewood Police Department and Chief Bret Farrar. I also thank the efforts of the Seattle Police Department and the interim Chief John Diaz for his efforts and his agency's work. In a matter of days, police and public safety officers from all around the country will converge on Puget Sound. They will form a long blue line in a show of respect for those who have fallen--Mark Renninger, Ronald Owens, Tina Griswold, and Greg Richards. This moving ritual, which happens all too often in our country, speaks eloquently of the solidarity all of us feel with those who risk their lives to keep us safe. This tragedy also struck our State earlier in October when Officer Timothy Brenton was struck down randomly while sitting in his police car. I hope everyone in this country will take time today and tomorrow and next week, if they see a police officer, to thank them. Thank them for their service. Express your appreciation for the job they do putting themselves at risk for all of us. We did not have enough time to thank Mark, Ronald, Tina, and Greg, but we are thanking them in our thoughts and prayers, and we are sending strength to their families with much love and appreciation for what those officers and their families have done to serve us and their communities. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, my colleague, Senator Landrieu, was going to be next, but I will switch times with her. She will join us on the floor shortly. I want to join my colleagues this morning and talk about this important issue of controlling health care costs. That is why we are here. We know Americans are facing higher and higher health care costs and that we can do something to drive down the costs of our health care system. We know health care costs are not only strangling us, but they are impacting our constituents, our budget, and they are leaving 47 million Americans without insurance. Our aim is to promote better quality care and get costs under control. Whether those costs be to consumers struggling to pay insurance premiums or to our government, we need to make sure we are doing all we can. Doing nothing in this debate is allowing health care costs to continue. I want to make sure my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who talk a lot about this legislation understand that if we do nothing, we are going to leave the American people and our budget in serious danger by not controlling health care costs. As always, in this debate we must keep in mind Federal spending, and the numbers on Federal spending are stark. In terms of doing nothing, if the U.S. Government does nothing, health care spending will double in the next decade. That is, we spend about $810 billion on health care. That is one-third of our total Federal budget. If we do nothing, Federal spending is going to go to $1.56 trillion. That is because we are not controlling health care costs, baby boomers are reaching retirement, and Medicaid and Medicare costs are ballooning. One-third of our Federal budget is a big enough bite. But if we do nothing, then our health care priorities are going to push out other priorities of our Federal Government. The biggest area where we could control costs is in Medicare. Medicare is 57 percent of all Federal spending, and it is getting bigger. By 2020, Medicare spending alone will reach $1 trillion, doubling the $466 billion we spend today. That is to say that Medicare spending has been doubling in the last 10 years, and if we do nothing as our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are suggesting by not moving forward on this legislation, then it is going to double again. This is unsustainable because if we do not address this, Medicare is going to bankrupt us. The prospects are just as daunting when it comes to our Medicaid budget because Medicaid spending over the next several years will also double, and it has doubled in the last 10 years. States are struggling, as many of us know, with what they can do to help sustain Medicaid since they pay for part of that for individuals. So we see we are in a situation where doing nothing is an irresponsible way to go. In fact, for our constituents, they are seeing a 120-percent increase in insurance premiums. While we are worried about the impact on the Federal Government, they are worried about the impact on them, on their individual budgets. That means the average family today pays about $7,000 more per year for the same health care benefits than they did a few years ago. If you think about that, that means that is less money for them, less money for their families, less money to meet the other bills in the family. Why has this happened? If we look at what has happened in our country, we see that wages have not gone up. In fact, during that same 10-year period of time, wages have only gone up 29 percent, health insurance premiums have gone up 120 percent. And where has the insurance industry been? The insurance industry has seen a 428-percent increase in profits over the last 10 years. That is why we need to do something about controlling health care costs. We cannot let the American people continue to be subject to such huge increases in premiums and then have the insurance industry walk away with huge profits and American consumers make less and less. What is going to happen if we do nothing, if we do not advance this bill to control health care costs? Those same premium increases we have seen in the last 10 years are also going to go up again. In fact, they are projected to go up another 7.9 percent in annual growth. That is, every year, they are going to go up another 8 percent. That is unsustainable. That means somebody is going to be paying $10,000 or more than what they are paying for their health insurance today for the same health care benefits. That is why doing nothing and not advancing this bill is just acquiescing to the fact that everybody is going to pay more for health care. What makes this number so scary is that it is four times the rate of inflation over the same period. That means what we need to do is look at general inflation, which is usually about 2 percent. But health care inflation, as is shown on this chart, is more like 8 percent. If we do nothing to change this, Americans are going to continue to do with less because health care costs are demanding more and more of their budget. What do we do about this? We certainly want to make sure that we change the system, and that is one of the reasons I support driving down costs by having a public option. We know that two factors are involved: We don't have enough competition and there are very concentrated markets in health insurance across the country. Many times there are only one or two insurance providers providing coverage in a market. They might have 94 percent of the market. It is too concentrated. We know if we provide an alternative in the marketplace, we can help drive down costs. One provision in this bill of which I am very supportive is the basic health plan because it lets States negotiate with private insurers for lower costs. In my State, this program has been in place for 20 years. It has been able to provide those who participate in the program--about 70,000 people today--a 30- to 40-percent savings if they had to buy that plan as an individual from a private insurer. That is incredible success in driving down the cost. Why? I call it the Costco model because like when you go to Costco and you buy in volume, the State of Washington, buying in volume on behalf of those individuals, was able to drive down the cost of health care for those individual citizens. They were able to choose between four different plans, and they were able to get access to a very good proposal for health care for them. The underlying bill includes language that says you could provide this basic health plan if States opted into it and cover 70 percent of the currently uninsured in America. I like this proposal because it gets us cheaper insurance for that population. Why subsidize insurance companies by giving tax incentives to buy more expensive insurance when what Americans want is to drive down the cost of health care by having the same negotiating clout that big businesses or other entities have? I hope we can continue to work and maybe even expand this provision to make it even more robust and to drive down costs. What is clear is that the cost of the uninsured is adding to our health care costs. In fact, the fact there are people in America who are uninsured is adding about $1,000 to our health care premiums overall. That is about $43 billion a year to our health care system. If we can change our health care system and get more people into something such as the basic health plan, we would be able to drive down costs, and that is why that plan is so valuable. We should not forget that our current system, besides insurance reform, needs provider reform. The reason why provider reform is so important is because our current health care system is flawed. It is driving up the cost of Medicare and health care in general because of the payment system. Basically, the current payment system perpetuates more spending. In fact, there is something like $700 billion in waste in our current system. If you think about it, it is this fee-for- service loop that I call it where you order more and you end up having more waste in the system, you have more spending, you have more use, and it keeps going. That is primarily because we pay doctors on volume. We pay doctors for how many patients they see every day, and we pay them for how many tests they order. Consequently, the cost continues to spin out of control. As I was saying, we spend about $700 billion on health care that we do not need to spend. That is in duplicated tests, unnecessary procedures, excessive insurance overhead, uncoordinated speciality care, and preventable hospitalization. We heard from many people during the health care debate that we have to do something to change this system. In fact, one of the witnesses before the health care committee said: We have to go after how we reimburse physicians. The current system is the most broken part of Medicare. What are we doing in this legislation to fix that? We are changing the way we reimburse for health care. In fact, we are going to look at how to get lower costs with better results. This is important because I don't think there is a person in America who doesn't know what it is like to go into a doctor's office and feel they are always in a hurry or feel as if the doctor didn't hear everything you had to say. This is about changing and rewarding physicians on the outcome of your health care so you can have shorter waiting times, better access to doctors, more coordinated care, and better outcomes. We think if you change the health care system, which this bill does, to drive down costs and get better outcomes, we are going to have better health care in America. We can continue on the path which I think my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want by not voting to move forward on this legislation, we can have less coordinated care, going from specialist to specialist without having that care coordinated and have unnecessary tests, but then everybody in America is going to be paying for those costs. Everybody is going to be paying higher health care premiums because of it. What we need to do, which is what exactly this bill sets us on a course and path to do, is to pay for value not for volume, to pay physicians on the value they deliver and the outcome of their patients instead of volume. If we did nothing else in health care reform but to change our payment structure to focus on this premise--paying for value and not for volume--then we would be delivering great long-term savings to our health care system. We have other things we need to do, and that is in the area of long- term care and Medicaid because in our long-term care system, we are seeing a doubling in health care costs, primarily because of long-term care. When you think about our Medicaid budget, everybody thinks Medicaid is this program to help the low-income population. Medicaid is turning into a long-term care program for the elderly in America. That is, they cannot get long-term care access so they are spending down so they qualify under Medicaid to basically get on that system to cover their long-term care. We can see that right now Medicaid is paying half of its funds, and that is an expense that is going to continue to grow. We have made some reforms in the State of Washington to make that cheaper. We have said let's invest in home care instead. Instead of having everybody go to nursing homes, whether they need to be there or not, let's focus on the long-term care system reforms that keep people in their community and instead use the Medicaid budget to advance other things while keeping patients at home. I think every senior in this country would rather have their health care delivered at home than in a nursing home, but our current Federal system continues to reward long-term care in nursing homes instead of in community-based care. This legislation starts us on a path to change that direction, to move closer to long-term care community services. We did this in the State of Washington, again, over 20 years ago and have reaped huge benefits. If we took an individual in the system today, the cost is only about $22,000 per individual. If we had not reformed the system as we did 20 years ago, we would be paying $42,000 for that same individual. So we have been able to drastically cut the amount of money we are spending on long-term care. This legislation includes the same kind of cost control reforms in long-term care as some States have already implemented. That is why we have to get at controlling health care costs. If we do not control health care costs in this area of long-term care, we are not going to control health care costs overall in America. What does reform mean? Why are we here today to talk about the cost of health care and what we need to do? Why are we here talking about advancing this legislation so we can get this debate on the floor for the American people? It is clear we need to have more competition through a public option, we need smarter reimbursement rates to incentivize value, and we need better use of Medicaid dollars.

Ms. CANTWELL. I thank the Presiding Officer. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will consider the important cost controls in this measure. I yield the floor.