Benjamin Cardin

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I take this time because I think it is important people recognize that what we do has such an important impact on local law enforcement and on local agencies. Last year I hosted a roundtable discussion in Prince George's County, MD, to discuss the importance of reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, known as VAWA. This roundtable brought together victims, social service agencies, law enforcement, clergy, and others on the frontline of providing support and protection to victims of domestic violence. VAWA has a proven track record of protecting women from domestic violence, and it is hard to understand opposition to legislation with the goal of curbing domestic violence. Saving women's lives should not be a partisan issue. The statistics of domestic violence are alarming. Yet domestic violence remains one of the most underreported crimes in the country. These victims need to know they have our support, including access to justice, help with housing, medical care, and economic opportunity. In 2010, there were 10,574 protective orders in my State, and peace order filings in Prince George's County was one-fifth of the total 50,363 filings in the State of Maryland--so 10,000 in Prince George's County, 50,000 in Maryland. At the roundtable I held in Prince George's County, I heard a number of examples of the importance of VAWA from those on the frontline of combating domestic violence. Prince George's County sheriff Melvin High told me the oath he took obligates him to protect all people without political consideration. He strongly stated that VAWA should be reauthorized; that it is an extremely important tool that he uses to help protect the people of Prince George's County. State attorney Angela Alsobrooks told me that for more than a decade, her office has received funding from VAWA that has allowed her domestic violence unit to provide greater services to the victims of abuse. Without this funding, she told me she would lose a domestic violence advocate and a prosecutor who is assigned specifically to domestic violence cases, reducing their ability to help victims. She urged the House at that time--because we had passed the bill in the Senate--to pass the Senate version of VAWA in order to ensure they continue to receive this critical funding. Malinda Miles is the executive director of the Family Crisis Center in Prince George's County, which is the premier domestic violence program in the county, serving women and children for more than 30 years. She stated she believes the House bill, if passed, would set back women 50 years--the bill they were considering last year--and would be a travesty for the women and children of this Nation now and for years to come, urging at that time that the bill we passed last year--the bill we are considering on the floor now--needs to pass as quickly as possible. Prince George's County police chief Mark Magaw told me that combating domestic violence remains a primary focus of his department, and he is thankful for support provided by the VAWA grant program. The Violence Against Women Act was passed by Congress and signed into law in 1994 by President Clinton. This law has a proud and bipartisan history. Congress passed this legislation in 1994 after growing awareness of crimes associated with domestic violence, including sexual assault and stalking cases. Congress needed to address the prevailing attitude at the time that domestic violence was a private so-called family matter, which in many cases police were hesitant to arrest abusers and prosecutors were reluctant to send abusers to jail. We have changed that, and VAWA helped us change that. The passage of VAWA will help our local agencies protect women and hold those abusers accountable for their actions. VAWA enhanced investigators and prosecutors of sex offenses and created a number of new grant programs that included law enforcement, public and private entities, services providers, and victims of crime. Congress approved reauthorizations of VAWA that expanded its protections by bipartisan votes in 2000 and 2005. In 2000, Congress enhanced Federal domestic violence and stalking penalties, added protections for battered immigrants, and added new programs for elderly and disabled women. In 2005, Congress enhanced penalties for repeat stalking offenders, added protection for battered and trafficked immigrants, and added programs for sexual assault victims and American Indian victims, as well as programs designed to improve the public health response to domestic violence. Now, in 2013, the Senate is trying to approve VAWA once again, since its original passage nearly 20 years ago. The Senate-passed version of the law includes measures to ensure that victims are not denied services because they are gay or transgender. It protects Native American women from domestic violence and sexual assault and includes nondiscrimination provisions for all victims, regardless of their race, color, religion or gender. VAWA encourages collaboration among law enforcement, judicial personnel, and public and private service providers to victims of domestic and sexual violence. It also works to increase public awareness. One in four women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime. An estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner every year. In Maryland, in 2009, there were more than 18,000 reported cases of domestic abuse and 38 fatalities. That period of time has been the lowest number of domestic violence-related deaths on record for the State, but these numbers are still very much unacceptable. I am disappointed that last year the House refused to take up this legislation we approved and also refused to allow us to go to conference to work out the differences between the two bills. I urge my colleagues in the Senate to pass this legislation, and I urge my colleagues in the House to quickly take up the Senate bill and enact it into law.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, last week the Senate passed legislation that had already been approved in the House that extended the debt ceiling until late this summer. It was the right thing to do. It was the right thing to extend the debt ceiling of our Nation because it allows us to pay the bills we have already incurred. There is not one dime of new spending that is authorized under the legislation we approved. My only regret is that we did not extend it for a longer period of time, giving greater certainty to the financial markets. If we were ever to violate the debt ceiling, the consequences would be that the taxpayers of this country would have to pay more for the obligations of our Nation in interest costs. It would permanently damage the reputation of this Nation as far as our ability to pay our bills. It would be counterproductive to everything we are trying to do to help the taxpayers of America. It was the right thing for us to do, to extend the debt ceiling, but we still have a lot more work we need to do. Our current accumulation of debt is not sustainable. We cannot continue to spend what we are spending today and collect what we are collecting today in revenue and sustain the fiscal integrity of the United States. We spend too much and we do not bring in enough revenue. That is the issue we need to address. It was not addressed in the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling should have been extended. But we now need to deal with the fundamental problem that our spending and revenues are not in line. We could talk about the cause of how we got here. We could talk about how the Congress reduced tax revenues while we were at war, a policy I spoke out against and voted against. But our responsibility is to figure out how we go from where we are today, with budget deficits that are not sustainable, to how we can bring our country into better fiscal balance. We need a balanced approach. We need an approach that looks at spending, looks at revenues, that acknowledges that job growth is, first and foremost, our objective. We have to create more jobs in our economy--more people working, less people needing governmental services, more people paying tax revenues; all that helps generate the growth in our economy. We have to protect the middle class. The middle class has been particularly vulnerable during this slowdown in our economy from which we are now recovering. It has to be real, what we come up with. That means it really does deal with the deficit problems of this country and should be long term. I think all of us are tired of these short-term extensions. They may avoid an immediate problem but they do not give the type of predictability that is necessary for our economy to take off and grow. If you are an investor, it is tough to invest if you do not know the ground rules, if you do not know what the Tax Code is going to look like, what the Federal budget is going to look like. How do you invest in expanding a plant to deal with expanded Federal needs when you don't know what the budget is going to be? How do you deal with the Tax Code if maybe you want to develop an energy company when you do not know what the tax provisions are going to be for that operation? We need to give predictability. Therefore, long-term solutions are better. And it needs to be truly bipartisan. I was here on New Year's Eve at midnight. I saw the Democrats and Republicans come together in a true compromise that I think put the Nation's interests first rather than our partisan interests. I would have wished to see us do things a lot differently than in that agreement, but it was bipartisan, we compromised, we listened, and did it in the best traditions of the Congress. I wish to take us back 2 years ago when we started to struggle with how we would deal with our fiscal problems. President Obama appointed the Simpson-Bowles Commission, and we know a lot about that. They made their recommendations. Some of the recommendations' specifics were pretty controversial, but I think as to the overall framework of the Simpson-Bowles recommendations--the amount of additional revenue we need to bring in, the types and parameters of the spending cuts--I think there was general national agreement that that was the framework which would allow us to move forward in the best interests of our economy. I point out in the last Congress the Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee adopted that approach as our framework to move forward. I think that is what we need to look at. Let me make a couple of points, because I have listened to a lot of my colleagues come to the floor and talk about how we have not made progress, that our deficits are too large. We have made progress. We have. We have gotten about halfway there. Simpson-Bowles was somewhere between $4 and $5 trillion of deficit reduction over a 10-year period. We are about halfway there. We have about $2.5 trillion we have gotten done. We got that done because we passed the Budget Control Act, and the Budget Control Act put in lower caps on discretionary spending on the domestic side. That is now the law of the land. Over $1 trillion of deficit reduction was accomplished because of the Budget Control Act. We did another $1 trillion of deficit reduction on New Year's Eve, the fiscal cliff agreements that brought in more revenue by making permanent the 39.6-percent tax rate for high-income taxpayers and bringing in some additional spending cuts. That is real. My colleagues say we still have these large deficits and they are larger than they were before, but if we did not do the Budget Control Act and we did not do the fiscal cliff agreements, the deficit would be much higher. Again, using some common baseline, such as Simpson-Bowles did, we have done about half of what, if you agree on the framework of Simpson-Bowles, we need to do. We have to get more done; we are not there yet. The revenues of this country traditionally have been about 19 percent of our economy. That is what it was under President Clinton when we balanced the Federal budget. We actually had surpluses. Our economy was growing. There was job growth. We were moving in the right direction. Our revenues have dipped to about 15 percent of our economy, so we are not anywhere near having as much revenue as we need in order to have a balanced approach that allows for job growth. And, yes, our spending is too high, particularly on what we call the mandatory side. We agree with that. If you look at our health care costs in this country, they are much higher than those of any other nation in the world and we do not have the health results that would demonstrate why we are spending so much more. We need a more efficient system. That is why a lot of us supported the Affordable Care Act, because we see in it delivery system reform that will make our health care system more efficient, bring down the cost of hospital care by reducing readmissions, bring down the cost of hospital care by reducing hospital infection rates, bring down the cost of high-cost interventions by dealing with people with complicated issues, multiple issues, in a much more managed way; using health technology more efficiently; using preventive care to actually reduce health care costs. We know early intervention saves lives, saves costs, and when you bring down the cost of health care you bring down the cost of Medicaid, you bring down the cost of Medicare, and you help our budget get into better balance. We also believe we can save money in the military. The baseline for military spending assumes the high level of military operations in Afghanistan. Well, our troops are coming home. I think we can now safely assume that our Active military needs will not be at the high levels they have been over the last decade, and that will save money. I personally think we need to look at a BRAC-like process for our international military facilities, as we did for our domestic military facilities. All of that can save money. So what do we need to do? We need to get together, Democrats and Republicans, on a balanced approach. We need to do it in the month of February because on March 1 these automatic cuts, known as sequestration, take effect. The automatic cuts were put in during the Budget Control Act as a way to get us to act. None of us wanted to see across-the-board cuts to both our domestic and our military budgets; we didn't think that made a lot of sense. After all, some programs are more important than others, and we should make the hard choices. We should not be using an across-the-board cut. We need to come together. As I have indicated, there are areas in the spending where I hope we can come together so we can make our system more efficient, particularly on the delivery of health care. There are certain reductions we can make in the overseas contingency accounts in our military. On the revenue side, we have brought out areas where there are loopholes and shelters in our Tax Code. We can do a better job. It is interesting that the top 1 percent of the taxpayers of this country receive 25 percent of the benefits on what is known as tax expenditures. I heard my colleagues come to the floor and talk about how we have to bring down the cost of spending. Well, yes, we do spend through appropriations bills, but we also spend through tax expenditures, which are provisions we put in the Tax Code to give breaks to some--not all--of our constituents. When we add up all those tax expenditures, it comes to $1.2 trillion a year. That is what the tax expenditures come to. That is larger than our entire discretionary spending. We are spending more through the Tax Code than we are through appropriations bills. We can certainly find some savings in those tax expenditures, and we can use that in a balanced approach to be able to avoid the across-the-board cuts and get our budget back into better balance. That is where we need to move as a Congress and as a nation. It is important for us to take timely action. Let me underscore that. We need to act in February. We don't want to go through the uncertainty of what sequestration means. I have talked to a lot of businesspeople who depend on Federal contracts. Will that contract be let? They don't know. We need to give predictability so that our economy can take off. I hope we all put our Nation's fiscal interests ahead of any of our partisan objectives, and that means listening to each other. Democrats and Republicans need to listen. My colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle have made some good points in regard to mandatory spending. My colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle have made some very valid points about the need for revenue. I hope we will listen to each other, resolve our differences, and put a proposal forward that brings our Nation back to a stable fiscal future, which will allow us to create the types of jobs we need by investment and fiscal prudence so our economy can continue to lead the world. We need to act in a responsible, balanced, bipartisan, and timely way. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I would like to join with Senator Menendez and Senator Corker in urging our colleagues to promptly confirm Senator Kerry as our next Secretary of State. It is a great honor to serve in the Senate. It is a great privilege and honor to represent the people of Maryland here in the Senate. Part of that special privilege is the people we serve with, the incredible public servants we have had the privilege of serving with in the Senate, and I put Senator Kerry at the top of that list. He has devoted his life to public service in the finest manner. He is so qualified to assume the responsibilities of Secretary of State. He understands this complex world in which we live and the differences among countries. Many are strategically important to the United States. Yet they don't share our values. Senator Kerry understands that and understands the importance to advance U.S. interests--we need to understand the concerns of other countries and we need to establish relations with other countries. He has made a personal commitment to understand the world in which we live. I do not think there has been a Member of this body who has spent more time, gone to more places, met with more people in order to represent our Nation on the international stage. Senator Kerry has always done that with the greatest degree of competency and representing our country in the finest traditions. He has broad experience: experience as a soldier serving in Vietnam, experience as a Senator, 28 years representing the people of Massachusetts in the Senate. We know about his service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I want to talk about two other committees on which he served. One is the Senate Finance Committee on which I had the pleasure of serving with him. There is no Senator who has taken the fiscal challenges of our country more seriously or understands the impact our fiscal condition has on our national security interests. In fact, during his confirmation hearings he mentioned the need to get our fiscal house in order. I think he understands that and understands the commitment he has, once confirmed and once heading the State Department, to help us bring about fiscal sanity in the United States to do what is necessary worldwide, but also to do it in a most cost effective way. I also served with Senator Kerry on the Small Business Committee. The small business community did not have a better advocate when Senator Kerry was chairman of that committee. I was pleased how many times we brought out initiatives to help America and small businesses grow because we know the growth engine for jobs has come from small companies. But, clearly, it has been in the last few years that I had the privilege of serving with Senator Kerry as he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that I got to see so up close and personal his extraordinary commitment to our country and his ability to carry out so many important responsibilities. Senator Kerry understands our national security, yes, depends upon a strong military, but that also the other key ingredients to national security are diplomacy and development assistance. We had Secretary Clinton before our committee. Someone mentioned that was about 1.5 percent of the budget, and she corrected it and said it is really less than 1 percent of the budget. Diplomacy and international assistance is less than 1 percent of the budget. We know what we spend on our military is a lot larger than that. All three are important to national security. Senator Kerry understands that. He understands through diplomacy we can avoid unnecessary military action. He understands through diplomacy we can make America safer. He understands through international development assistance we can strengthen countries, make them more stable, and be less likely to need to use our military. That is the type of leader we need as Secretary of State. We have a great leader today, Secretary Clinton. I think Senator Kerry will follow in that tradition. Take a look at Senator Kerry's record of advancing America's interests. We have a safer world today through Senator Kerry's efforts. As you know, we approved the New START treaty with Russia, reducing the amount of nuclear weapons between Russia and the United States. That makes this world safer. His record on human rights is well known. From Cambodia to Burma to Kosovo and many other places around the world, Senator Kerry has been a leader in advancing the cause of human rights. We already heard Senator Menendez point out his efforts in Vietnam. He represented America to get an accounting of our POW/MIAs. It was unprecedented in modern times to be able to go to a country with which we are at war and have that kind of accounting. Senator Kerry used his talent in order to bring closure for many American families, and that was an incredible accomplishment. Then he was able to improve the relationship between the United States and Vietnam, recognizing it is in America's interests that we are able to communicate with other countries. I particularly appreciate his work on elevating the importance internationally of human trafficking. The United States has taken the leadership in saying, whether you are a receiving country or an origin country or a country of transport, we all have a responsibility to stop what we call modern slavery: the trafficking, usually of young girls, but also sometimes boys. The United States has taken the leadership there. I like to think Senator Kerry's taking leadership on this started with his position on the Helsinki Commission. He is a former member of the Helsinki Commission. I now have an opportunity of being the Senate chair of the Helsinki Commission. We raised the issue of human trafficking and Senator Kerry was one of the great advocates to advance America's leadership internationally to stop human trafficking. He has protected people with disabilities. As Senator Menendez mentioned, he has been our leader on energy and climate issues, recognizing the importance of the United States to demonstrate international leadership in order to deal with a global problem, a problem that is important for us to deal with as a citizen of the world but also important for us to deal with in regard to America's economy and America's energy needs and America's security responsibilities. Senator Kerry has been a great leader on that. He has provided U.S. leadership for humanitarian assistance. I remember the hearings we had in the committee on Haiti and the personal commitment he made to make sure America was in the leadership for a country in our own hemisphere that suffered such a horrible disaster, and his work there was extremely important. He led our efforts in dealing with HIV/AIDS, in doing the responsible things as far as America's position on that problem. He understands the importance of international development assistance to advance gender equality. It is interesting, if you want to take a look at the health of a country, look at the way they treat their women. We have a pretty strong commitment as far as international development assistance around the world. We need to make sure countries advance the rights of women. It is not only the right thing to do from what we believe as Americans, but it also provides a more stable country for us to have relations with. Senator Kerry understands that. He has been one of the leaders in fighting corruption in other countries. I will always remember the hearing we had in our committee when former President Clinton and Bill Gates testified before us. These are two individuals who have headed a lot of international development assistance. They have a zero policy in dealing with countries that cannot control corruption because they want to make sure their assistance doesn't go to fuel corruption. Senator Kerry understands we don't want America's international development assistance to be used to fuel corruption. That is the type of leadership we have in the Secretary of State. The list goes on of what he has been able to do to advance the rights and interests of the United States. I am confident that Senator Kerry's legacy of fighting for democracy, human rights, and global peace will continue as he assumes his new responsibilities as the Secretary of State for the United States of America. I urge my colleagues to support his nomination. I thank Chairman Menendez for bringing this nomination to the floor so quickly and thank Senator Corker for accommodating it. It is important that President Obama has his security team in place as quickly as possible. I am proud the Senate will be doing its share, its work by voting on this nomination later today. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. I certainly agree with my friend from Arizona. They may not have understood what caused the problems, but when they see the type of gridlock where the Senate can't take up amendments for 1 week or can't take up a bill for 2 weeks or debating how to proceed on a motion to proceed, not only on substance, they wonder what is going on here. So the Senator is absolutely right. Also, we are going to be in a much better start to this Senate with Democrats and Republicans agreeing on the rules collectively. That is certainly a better place for us to start to work with this Congress, and it gives us the opportunity to work together with more confidence, beyond just rules but also dealing with the difficult issues this country faces.

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, first, let me compliment Senator Harkin for his incredible leadership in bringing to the attention of this body something I think everyone understands; that is, with the procedures of the Senate and the way it is operating today, there is a problem. There is a very serious problem. All one needs to do is to turn on C-SPAN to see the Senate in a quorum call for hours to know there is a better way for us to operate. All one has to do is to look at a week that goes by where there are very few recorded votes to know there is opportunity for debate and action that is being lost in the Senate. We can do better. The procedures we are following today, the way that is being honored by the Members of the Senate, we need to change the rules and procedures of the Senate. I want to thank the majority leader and the Republican leader for negotiating and getting together to understand the frustrations that are out there in both of our caucuses and to try to come up with reasonable changes in our rules. I see Senator McCain is on the floor, and I acknowledge his leadership, along with that of Senator Levin. I was honored to work with that group, along with Senators Pryor, Schumer, Barrasso, Alexander, and our former colleague, Senator Kyl. We sat for hours debating, and it was very educational for me, Mr. President, because I listened to the concerns of my Republican colleagues--and it was a lot different than what I heard in the Democratic caucus--and I think we both learned a lot from each other. But there was general agreement that there is a real problem in the operation of the Senate, and we have an obligation to take a look at our rules and see whether we can't modify the rules so we can have the type of deliberation, debate, and voting that is expected of the Senate. One of the problems that became very apparent to all of us is that individual Senators are able to block the consideration of amendments and bills on the floor of the Senate indefinitely. That is wrong. My colleague from Arizona pointed out that someone could be in their home State and offer an objection, and a bill could be brought to a standstill. That is not how the Senate should operate. We should be able to consider legislation, and individual Senators should not be able to block the consideration of that legislation. I could give examples of hundreds of bills that have been reported out of our committees in the Senate that have never reached the floor of the Senate. Quite frankly, the reason is an individual Senator blocked consideration, and it would take the majority leader too much time to go through cloture motions in order to bring those issues to the floor of the Senate. We also have seen an abuse of the 60-vote threshold. The 60-vote threshold shouldn't be the standard working procedure of the Senate. A simple majority should control our actions. Yet in too many cases we have used the 60-vote threshold in order to move legislation forward. We have also seen that it is very difficult to bring amendments up for consideration. It has been very difficult to get action on individual amendments on the floor of the Senate. So we need to change our procedures. We need to be the great deliberative body which historically the Senate has been. I want to compliment many of my colleagues--I already mentioned the group that worked on some suggested rules changes and made those recommendations to the majority leader and the Republican leader--but I also want to thank my colleague, Senator Harkin, who just spoke, for his leadership on this issue, as well as Senators Merkley and Tom Udall, who have been leaders on this matter. We have brought this to the attention not only of our colleagues but to the attention of the American people, and they expect us to take action to improve the operation of the Senate. Let me talk a moment about the negotiated agreement between the Democratic leader and the Republican leader--between the majority and minority leaders--and what I understand will be recommended to us very shortly, and I hope we can act on it as early as this evening. First, one of the frustrations is that we find it difficult to bring a bill to the floor of the Senate in a motion to proceed. The threat of a filibuster on the motion to proceed has denied us the opportunity to even start debating an issue. Under the agreement I expect will be brought forward, the majority leader will have two additional opportunities to start debate on an issue. First, if the Republican leader is in agreement, they can bring that bill to the floor immediately, without any preconditions. That could particularly work well on institutional issues that need to be dealt with, such as appropriations bills, so that we can get onto appropriations bills a lot sooner than we can today. There is then another opportunity where the majority leader could bring a bill to the floor without the fear of a filibuster, without having to file cloture, by offering amendments. There would be a guaranteed right to offer up to four amendments: two by the minority, two by the majority. That gets us started on legislation. Now, it is very interesting, if one looks at the process that has been used where bills come to the floor and where we are most pleased by how the process has worked--such as in the case of the national defense authorization bill, postal reform, and the Agriculture bill in the 112th Congress--in each of those cases the committees voted on the bills, they came to the floor with the managers, we started on the bills, and we completed the bills. I think we were all pretty proud with the manner in which those issues were handled on the floor of the Senate. Under this process, the majority leader could get us started. The managers can get us started on legislation. Once we start on legislation, once we start debating the issues, we can see what amendments are out there, and we can try to manage the time appropriately and actually get action and debate and votes on the floor of the Senate on the amendments and on final passage. I do think this empowers our committees. We all spend a lot of time in our committees. We are there for the hearings, we want to see committee markups, but we also like to see the products we bring up in the committee be the major work on the floor of the Senate. Well, now, with this reform and the ability of the leader to bring forward a bill that has come out of our committees, our committee products will be more respected, and we will have a better legislative process because we are using the products that come out of our committee. We are respecting the work of our committees. We are rewarding our chairmen and ranking members working together and bringing legislation to the floor of the Senate. I think that is a real major improvement and something that will allow the Senate to operate in the way it should. We also allow for conference committees to be formed in a more expedited way. Right now it could take three cloture votes to get into conference. We contract that into one. I think that is going to be the recommendation. I had the honor in the 112th Congress to serve on a conference committee that dealt with the payroll tax extension. We got our work done, brought a bill to the floor of the Senate and the House, and got it enacted into law because we were able, in a very open and transparent way, to work with our colleagues in the other body, resolve our differences, and bring legislation forward. I might be wrong, but I think that was the only conference committee that operated in the 112th Congress. There haven't been many. I think most Members of this body would be hard-pressed to remember when they last served on a conference committee. Yet we know there are significant differences between the products that come out of this body and the products that come out of the other body. We need to reconcile those differences. Being able to go into conference allows us the opportunity to let the legislative process work the way it should. One of the procedures the majority leader is going to talk about is that once cloture is invoked, if you have to use cloture, you have 30 hours. But you don't guarantee 30 hours. That 30 hours is the maximum. Each Member is entitled to only 1 hour to speak, and a quorum call during postcloture can be considered dilatory if we have already established a quorum. The majority leader and the minority leader are going to talk about the fact that postcloture, if you want to speak, come to the floor and speak. If you don't, the Presiding Officer should put the issue to the membership for vote so we can expedite issues and not waste a full day letting the 30 hours expire. There will also be recommendations to deal with nominations. We were extremely frustrated. I served on the Judiciary Committee. I had the opportunity to recommend to the President several appointments to the Federal bench. It took months for these noncontroversial nominees to be approved on the floor of the Senate. It truly affects our ability to recruit the very best to serve on our courts. The same thing is true with the President on his team to have in place, and there will be recommendations to shorten the postcloture time if a cloture vote is needed on judicial nominations to, I think, 2 hours, and sub-Cabinet appointments to around 8 hours. That allows the leader to be able to bring these issues to the floor without the threat that it would tie us up for weeks to take up just a couple appointments. These are all major improvements. Let me make it clear. If I were writing the rules of the Senate, I would go a lot further. I know I might be in the minority in this body, but I happen to believe in majority rule. I happen to believe the majority should make the decisions. I think there should be adequate time for debate, et cetera. The Senate is different than the House. I accept that. But at the end of the day, I am in favor of majority rule. But I am also in favor of trying to get our rules done in a bipartisan manner because, quite frankly, the Democrats may not be in the majority forever. If we look since 1981 through the end of this Congress, but for Senator Jeffords' decision in May of 2001 to become an Independent and caucus with the Democrats, the Senate would have been divided as follows: Sixteen years under Democratic control, 16 years under Republican control, and 2 years split 50-50. I think it is very important we all understand these rules need to work regardless of which party is in the majority. That is why it is the right thing to do to negotiate between the Democrats and Republicans rules that can withstand the test of time and be fair to both the majority and the minority. Once again, I would have majority rule. That is what I believe and I know there will be a chance to vote on that and that is how I will express my vote. But I do believe it is best for us to work together, Democrats and Republicans, and come together with a true compromise on the rules changes. I think that is exactly what Leader Reid and Leader McConnell have done. They have taken the recommendations of many of us, they have listened to a lot of us, they have listened to both caucuses, and they will come forward with recommendations that will allow this body to carry out its responsibilities in a more effective way--in a way that is better understandable to the American people, where we can get on legislation a lot sooner, debate issues a lot quicker, take up amendments and actually vote on amendments and be able to move legislation that comes out of our committee and approve nominations in a much more efficient way. To me, that gives us an opportunity for a new start in the Senate as we begin the 113th Congress. Let's hope the cooperation we see developing on the changes of the rules will allow us to work together to deal with the problems of the Nation in a more collegial way, recognizing that compromise is how this country was formed, listen to each other, and move legislation in the best traditions of the Senate. I yield the floor.

Mr. CARDIN. A long time. Certainly, I have not been in the Senate since that happened. But I do think now we have a better opportunity. If our committee could mark up a Defense authorization bill--and maybe it would take a week or two. Maybe we would have to work Friday or Saturday to get it done, but we should do that. But we now have the opportunity for the leader to bring that to the Senate floor immediately and allow the amendment process to start. Once it starts, normally we can get the type of consideration by all of us as to a reasonable number of amendments, and we can get the bill, hopefully, through the Senate. That is what I think is the real plus of the type of reforms we are talking about that allow the right legislative process to work. As I said, it doesn't cover everything I wanted to cover. I would have gone further. But I do think it does give us a chance, allows us to do our work in the way that we should.

Mr. CARDIN. Could I inquire because I want to use the two Senators as the example. They did that on the Defense Authorization Act. They were able to get the bill to the floor. They started on the bill, had a little rough start, but started on the bill and then set up a series of votes. We were able to vote on I don't know how many amendments. But it is interesting, if my memory is correct, there was no requirement for a 60-vote threshold on any of those amendments. You voted them all on majority so there was no need for a cloture vote because we started on it and people believed the process was fair. They had the opportunity, they had a chance to debate. So we had full and open debate on many issues. National defense authorization opens a whole host of issues which are very controversial: What do we do with detainees? What do we do with our civil liberty rights? What do we do with our troop levels? There were a lot of issues that could have divided us, and we had the type of debate that I think was in the best interests of the Senate and we completed that bill in a timely way. I think the way the two Senators were able to come forward--there are a lot of other committees. I serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. We talked today, yesterday, during--Senator McCain is also on that committee. We talked--Secretary Clinton--wouldn't it be nice to get a State Department authorization bill on the floor of the Senate?

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the period of morning business be extended until 6:30 p.m. today, and that all provisions of the previous order remain in effect.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I wish to pay tribute to a proud veteran, a committed Marylander, a great American, and my good friend, Francis Joseph ``Frank'' Chase. Frank passed away on December 11, 2012 in his Columbia, MD home after a brief illness. He leaves behind his beloved family: his wife of 50 years, Carole, a daughter Amy, and a granddaughter Grace.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, today I am proud to introduce the Justice Thurgood Marshall's Elementary School Study Act. The elementary school that Justice Marshall attended, known as PS 103, located in my hometown of Baltimore, is a place of national significance because it marks the site where one of our Nation's greatest legal minds began his education. Thurgood Marshall is well known as one of the most significant historical figures of the American civil rights movement. By the time he was 32, he was appointed the chief legal counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP. He served at the NAACP a total of 25 years and was a key strategist to end racial segregation throughout the United States. Perhaps the greatest illustration of this effort was his victory before the Supreme Court overturning the Plessy doctrine effectively ending school segregation with the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, in 1954. Not only did this case open up educational opportunity and sparked the civil rights movement in this Nation, it also marked the beginning of Thurgood Marshall's career, still a young attorney from Baltimore, as one of the greatest legal minds in all the land. This case was just one of the 29 cases he won before the U.S. Supreme Court. Fittingly, Marshall was the first African American confirmed to the Supreme Court. He was nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967 and served 24 years, until 1991. On the high court, Marshall continued his fight for the Constitutional protection of individual human rights. But Thurgood Marshall was not always a legal giant. He was once a young boy growing up in West Baltimore. He received the first 6 years of his public education at PS 103. An apocryphal story goes that a young Thurgood Marshall studied the U.S. Constitution in the basement of the building while serving detention. Regardless of whether or not this is true, the building powerfully tells the story of racial segregation in America, PS 103 was a ``blacks only'' school when Justice Marshall was a student, and marks the academic beginning of one of the country's most brilliant legal thinkers and a pioneer of the civil rights movement. The building is located at 1315 Division Street in the Upton Neighborhood of Old West Baltimore. The building is part of the Old West Baltimore National Register Historic District, and is listed as a contributing historic resource for the neighborhood. The Old West Baltimore historic district is one of the largest predominately African American historic districts in the country, and its significance is centered on the African American experience in the area. In Baltimore, we are fortunate to have the National Park Service operate two historical sites, Fort McHenry and the Hampton Mansion. Adding PS 103 is a unique opportunity for the National Park Service to work in Baltimore's inner-city and to reach out and engage people about African American history. Needless to say, Thurgood Marshall's legacy is one that should be preserved. He was one of our country's greatest legal minds and a prominent historical figure of one chapter of our country's great history--the civil rights movement. This bill authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a special resource study of PS 103 to evaluate the suitability and feasibility of establishing the building as a unit of the National Park Service. Preserving the building that was Justice Marshall's elementary school will give Americans insight into Justice Marshall's childhood. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, today I am proud to introduce the Justice Thurgood Marshall's Elementary School Study Act. The elementary school that Justice Marshall attended, known as PS 103, located in my hometown of Baltimore, is a place of national significance because it marks the site where one of our Nation's greatest legal minds began his education. Thurgood Marshall is well known as one of the most significant historical figures of the American civil rights movement. By the time he was 32, he was appointed the chief legal counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP. He served at the NAACP a total of 25 years and was a key strategist to end racial segregation throughout the United States. Perhaps the greatest illustration of this effort was his victory before the Supreme Court overturning the Plessy doctrine effectively ending school segregation with the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, in 1954. Not only did this case open up educational opportunity and sparked the civil rights movement in this Nation, it also marked the beginning of Thurgood Marshall's career, still a young attorney from Baltimore, as one of the greatest legal minds in all the land. This case was just one of the 29 cases he won before the U.S. Supreme Court. Fittingly, Marshall was the first African American confirmed to the Supreme Court. He was nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967 and served 24 years, until 1991. On the high court, Marshall continued his fight for the Constitutional protection of individual human rights. But Thurgood Marshall was not always a legal giant. He was once a young boy growing up in West Baltimore. He received the first 6 years of his public education at PS 103. An apocryphal story goes that a young Thurgood Marshall studied the U.S. Constitution in the basement of the building while serving detention. Regardless of whether or not this is true, the building powerfully tells the story of racial segregation in America, PS 103 was a ``blacks only'' school when Justice Marshall was a student, and marks the academic beginning of one of the country's most brilliant legal thinkers and a pioneer of the civil rights movement. The building is located at 1315 Division Street in the Upton Neighborhood of Old West Baltimore. The building is part of the Old West Baltimore National Register Historic District, and is listed as a contributing historic resource for the neighborhood. The Old West Baltimore historic district is one of the largest predominately African American historic districts in the country, and its significance is centered on the African American experience in the area. In Baltimore, we are fortunate to have the National Park Service operate two historical sites, Fort McHenry and the Hampton Mansion. Adding PS 103 is a unique opportunity for the National Park Service to work in Baltimore's inner-city and to reach out and engage people about African American history. Needless to say, Thurgood Marshall's legacy is one that should be preserved. He was one of our country's greatest legal minds and a prominent historical figure of one chapter of our country's great history--the civil rights movement. This bill authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a special resource study of PS 103 to evaluate the suitability and feasibility of establishing the building as a unit of the National Park Service. Preserving the building that was Justice Marshall's elementary school will give Americans insight into Justice Marshall's childhood. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. I thank the Senator for raising the issue. Let me tell people what happens all too frequently in this body. The President will nominate a person to be at a Cabinet-level or sub-Cabinet-level position that requires confirmation of the Senate. Individual Senators say: I have a problem. Maybe it is the person in the health department. I have some problems in the health department that I would like to see paid attention to. It has nothing at all to do with the nominee. In fact, getting a confirmed person in that position would be very important to getting those issues resolved. The Senator uses what is known as the courtesy of a hold to hold up that position in order to try to get changes made in that agency. That may take a week. That may take a month. That may never be resolved. In the meantime, we are not acting on many of the positions that require confirmation from the Senate. I think we are down to about 500 positions now that require Senate confirmation. We streamlined that in the last Congress. We eliminated some that required the confirmation of the Senate. That was a good change we made 2 years ago. That worked. We now have somewhere around I think 500 or 600 positions that require Senate confirmation. Let me give a little arithmetic here. If the majority leader has to bring a cloture motion in order to break an individual hold of a Senator on those 500 nominees, the Senate will do nothing but nominations. We will not be able to do any other business because, as you know, it could take up to 30 hours of postcloture time to consider just one nominee. So under the current rules of the Senate, if one Senator wants to stop the confirmation process, that Senator can basically stop it and bring it to a halt. That has happened. We have seen that happen too frequently. One of the suggestions that has been made is that when we have these confirmations that have been approved by the committee, allow us to bring them to the floor and certainly eliminate or restrict the postcloture time because it is not used other than for a delay purpose. In that way, we can bring forward nominations more efficiently. If there is a serious problem, let a Senator register the problem. Let a Senator come to the floor and speak about the person. But we have not had discussions on the floor. It is interesting--when we finally break that hold and the nomination comes forward, we finally get a cloture motion passed, the debate time is virtually zero. There is no debate time needed for these. It is not as though Senators are delaying it because they need debate time. These are strictly dilatory actions. For the sake of any administration, whether it is a Republican administration or Democratic administration, whether it is the first term or second term, that President should be able to get his or her team in place. Yes, we should take seriously the advice and consent of the Senate. That means we should vote on those nominees. If there is a serious concern, let's vote on it, and if we want to filibuster it, be on the floor debating why. We think the minority has a responsibility--or in some cases it could be a minority within the majority--to argue why we believe it is important to bring this matter to the attention of the American people. But don't continue the practice that has been used in recent times where nominations are delayed months and sometimes indefinitely because of basically unrelated issues or the will of the minority or a number of Senators--in some cases, just a handful. That should not happen. We should be able to do these more efficiently. We have a recommendation for this, and it is very simple: Let's eliminate the postcloture time. That way, we would be able to bring the nominations to the floor and act on them in a much more timely way if there is really an issue about getting a vote on a nominee. There are ways we could do that, but it should be part of the reforms of the 113th Congress. I thank Senator Udall for bringing up that issue. That is a very important issue for any administration, whether it is a Republican or Democratic administration. It is hard to hold an administration accountable if they do not have the confirmed top leaders of their team.

Mr. CARDIN. I probably am in a position that most of the Members of this body are not in. I have served on one conference committee--I have been here 6 years--and it was a successful conference committee. It dealt with the payroll tax extensions and some of the other changes. I was able to serve on that and we were able to reach a conference agreement and we were able to get our work done in a timely way. We got it done early by Senate standards and the legislative standards. I am trying to think if there were any other conferences that were reported back. I think we had one maybe on aviation that was reported back. I don't think there were more than a handful of conferences that have met in the last several congresses. There were maybe a couple each Congress. Think about how many bills were between the House and the Senate. It is a rarity. It is virtually not used. Interestingly enough, when it is used, we generally get better results, earlier results, and more open results. I appreciate the Senator mentioning serving in the State legislature. I am a former speaker of the State legislature. I think we get better laws when we use the legislative process and have a more open process where the committees work and bring the bills to the floor, actually debate them and amend them on the floor of the Senate. That way when there are differences between the House and the Senate, they are worked out by the Members. They actually meet and work out their differences. We are the ones who are accountable for the legislative process. It should not be some supercommittee or bargaining units that are set up by the President and the Congress. They should not be the ones. It should be the legislators who make these decisions, and that is why I think it is so important to get the committees functioning, get the floor of the Senate functioning, and get the conference committees functioning. I think if we can do that, we are going to get better laws, laws that make more sense, better understood, and that will stand the test of time. That is what I think all of us are trying to do. We seek these jobs because we believe in our system. We believe in the richness of an independent legislature where we are held accountable for the work we have done. Quite frankly, it is difficult for us to get our work done in an accountable way if we don't have an open and transparent system. When we don't have conference committees that can function or we don't have committee work that can come to the floor of the Senate, then we are diminishing our constitutional responsibility to the people who elected us.

Mr. CARDIN. The Senator is absolutely right. I think when those rules were promulgated, the view was they would be done routinely and that there would never be a challenge to the action taken. The action is going to conference, appointing conferees, and instructing the conference. The Senator is absolutely right, they are all the same. It is getting us into conference where the House and Senate Members can be together, resolve their differences, and report a common bill back to both bodies. That is the whole purpose of a conference committee. I think it is particularly important today that when we have the House controlled by Republicans and the Senate controlled by Democrats, we should use regular order. We should meet with our Republican- controlled delegations with the Senate and try to resolve our differences in an open and transparent way that the rules apply. Under the current rules, since each one of those is a separate action--as Senator Udall pointed out--we can object to it being routinely approved. At that point, under the current rules, we can force--this is all precloture--a cloture motion being filed on each one of those three separate actions. I already went over how much time it takes for a cloture motion to ripen. Let's assume we can get over that hurdle--which we cannot--each one of those cloture votes, even though they may be 99 to 1, will have 30 hours of postcloture. If we start to add it up, we are going to lose over a full week just to get into cloture, which obviously means we cannot get it to conference. We cannot use the deliberative process to resolve our differences and we cannot use the Senate unless we have unanimous consent, basically, and that is wrong. So we do have a recommendation, and I am pleased the Senator pointed out that we are working with Republicans. We have had a group of Democrats and Republicans working together to try to resolve some of these differences, and I think there is general agreement to collapse those three motions into one motion so that at least we can eliminate the extra two votes and potential cloture votes and postcloture time which would be required. I think that is a relatively easy change for us to make. I don't know of anyone who objects to that. I have not heard of anyone who objects to that. I hope we could get that done. When we start looking at where we could change the procedures and where we hope we could get bipartisan support, I think going to conference is one area on which we could get bipartisan support. I agree with the Senator in that I have not heard of anyone who believes the motion to proceed has been used in the proper way. I think we can find a way to condense that. I hope we can. There have been some bipartisan recommendations to have orderly ways in which we could go to the motion to proceed immediately by certain guaranteed amendments or where the two leaders have agreed to go to a bill, so I think we could do that. I think there has also been some agreement on the nomination to shorten the time so we can move that along. I think we have both Democrats and Republicans who are in agreement with that. I hope we can figure out a better way so we don't have to file all these cloture motions and waste a lot of time and those who object on the floor with the burden to debate the issue--I think that is the important reform that needs to be done.

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Udall for taking the time and for his commitment to this institution so that it operates correctly. I thank Senator Merkley for his leadership. I agree with both Senators. If you are going to engage in extraordinary action such as a filibuster, you should be on the floor talking about it. That makes sense, that when the Senate is in session, we should be conducting business. We shouldn't have to go through extensive quorum calls because a single Senator is objecting to us proceeding. We want to get back to the traditions of the Senate where this becomes the greatest deliberative body in the world, where we debate issues and we resolve issues and we act on issues. I was listening to the distinguished Senator from Alabama, and he was pointing out how he believes that the Senate is not working the way it should and that we should be debating more amendments. I think we should be debating more amendments. I think the key we need is that we need to change the way the Senate has acted and operated in recent times, and that means we need to get more legislation more quickly and actually debate bills. We have to have committees able to report out legislation that could be acted on on the floor of the Senate. We have got to bring issues to conclusion. There are two problems here, as I see it: One, we have had individual Senators who have used their right to object to a unanimous consent, delaying almost indefinitely--in some cases killing--legislation from being able to move forward by a single objection, and a lot of times they are not even on the floor of the Senate to make that objection. They just through their leader say, We don't want this bill to move forward; and maybe, yes, we will let it move forward if you will let us have 50 amendments. That is the same as killing the bill. So we have seen individual Senators exercising their right to object who have brought legislation to a standstill on the floor of the Senate. That is wrong. And as my distinguished colleague, the Senator from New Mexico, pointed out, the majority leader has had to file record numbers of clotures to end debate because the minority party, for whatever reason, has not allowed us to proceed with legislation for debate. Normally the majority party has the right to determine the agenda of the Senate. They don't have the right to pass bills; that is up to a majority of the Senate. But the majority leader should have the right to bring a bill to the floor of the Senate. That has been denied over and over by the minority party. That is wrong. I agree with my friend from Alabama that there should be the right to offer amendments. I think we should debate issues. I agree with that. But that hasn't been the problem. The problem has been that a certain number of Members have used their right to object, working through the Republican leader, blocking us from considering a lot of bills on the floor of the Senate. So what do we need to do? We need to be able to first move legislation forward. We need to be able to bring bills out of our committees and have them on the floor for debate, get on the amendment process. We just took up the National Defense Authorization Act. We used that process. It worked. That bill passed the Senate by an overwhelming number. We considered many amendments. By the way, every amendment was considered by a majority vote. That is how this should work. Majority rules should rule on the floor of the Senate. I agree with all of that. The first order is to be able to bring bills to the floor in a more efficient way. The second problem we have, quite frankly, is that the Republicans have blocked the ability to orderly consider the nominations of the President, whether they are his Cabinet or subcabinet positions or whether they are the article III judges. In many cases, once we get to the nomination it passes by an overwhelming majority. I can't tell you how many nominations have been approved basically by voice vote in the Judiciary Committee that have had to wait months for consideration on the floor of the Senate. In my State of Maryland we had several nominees, not controversial at all, who had to wait month after month for confirmation before they could sit as a district court judge. First of all, it is unconscionable to make people wait when we need to have judicial positions filled. Secondly, it is affecting us getting the very best people to step forward to serve, because do they really want to go through that type of uncertainty, not even clear whether the Senate will act on their nomination before it adjourns? So the second issue is we have to act on nominations in a more efficient way. The third--and I agree with my colleagues here. Ultimately, the majority of this body should be able to move legislation. And at a minimum, I agree, if you are using an extraordinary measure as a minority to block legislation, you should be on the floor of the Senate speaking on that issue. Your responsibility should be to talk. If you are using a filibuster, you should be there engaged in that filibuster. I think these are reasonable reforms that we should try to move forward. This body operates on a lot of unanimous consents; we move a lot of legislation. We have what is known as the hot line, where at the end of the day we try to clear bills and then the leader brings them to the floor for consent or voice vote. At times there are Members who put a hold on a bill, and we have had Members who put holds on hundreds of bills. They should come to the floor to object. In many cases these are not broad bills. These are bills that affect perhaps land in New Mexico or establishing a national park in Maryland that have gone through the whole committee process and we have worked out all the cost issues so there is no cost involved. They have passed the committee by overwhelming majority votes--in most cases unanimous votes. But now you need to move them forward so we put them on the hot line, and we don't even in some cases know who is objecting. The Senator who objects should come to the floor of the Senate and object and give a reason. I know we got rid of the so-called secret holds, but they still exist today. We should operate with Members being here on the floor conducting business, not in their office either in the Capitol or in their home States. They should be here on the floor of the Senate if they intend to exercise their right to object, and then give us an opportunity to work that out so we could move legislation more efficiently. The bottom line, what we need to do, is make this system work more efficiently. This is the greatest deliberative body in the world. We should be debating issues. That means bringing bills to the floor in a more timely way, getting on amendments in a faster way, voting and debating issues for the American people. I applaud the Senators from New Mexico and Oregon. They have taken the leadership on bringing this to the attention of the American people. I think for too long a period of time Americans didn't focus on this issue. Well, they are focused on it today. They understand that a lot of the bills they wanted to see passed in the 112th Congress didn't get passed and they want to know why we didn't even debate those issues. Let us reform our rules and procedures on the floor of the Senate to reflect the best traditions of the Senate. That is what the Senator from Oregon, the Senator from New Mexico, and others are trying to do. The Senator from Alabama talked about restoring the traditions of the Senate. I hope we can do it in a bipartisan manner. That is the way it should be done. We should come together to preserve the institution. It should work whether the Democrats are in the majority or the Republicans are in the majority. The same rules should work. Whether we are in the majority or minority, we should believe that we should come to the floor of the Senate to debate the issues that are important to our constituents. I thank again my friend from New Mexico for allowing me to engage in this colloquy with him. I applaud him again for standing up on this issue. I know it has been difficult at times when many people come over and say, Why are you trying to change the traditions of the Senate? The truth is we are not trying to change the traditions of the Senate. We are trying to restore the Senate to the type of body it should be. I don't think there is a single Member of the Senate who believes that we conducted business in the best traditions of the Senate during these past 2 years, and that has been because we have seen the abuses of individual Senators holding up bills and not being able to debate issues. We have to overcome that. I think we have a chance to do that at the beginning of the 113th Congress, which will start in less than 24 hours from now. I am pleased that the three of us will all be in the Senate in the 113th Congress, and I hope we will have a chance to resolve these issues because I think it is critically important for the people we represent in our respective States and in the country.

Mr. CARDIN. I can tell my friend from New Mexico, that is happening today. I have talked to people in Maryland who are very reluctant to put their names forward because they do not want to put their families and themselves through the uncertainty. Let me tell you what happens. Let's say you are a distinguished attorney in a law firm and we would love to get you as an article III judge, so we convince you. You are the most distinguished person for this job, the person everybody wants, not partisan at all, no controversy. The Bar Association will give you the highest ratings. You have already been vetted through the FBI process. There is nothing in your background that would raise a concern with anyone. But you look at the calendar here and say: If I go through this, I am going to be on this calendar for at least 6 months, it looks like. What does that do to my law firm? Can I try cases? What do I do for the next 6 months? It is not fair to me, it is not fair to my law firm, and it is not fair to my family. So you are not going to put yourself forward. Let me tell my colleagues about another problem. In many of these circuits where these judges are sitting--these nominees are waiting month after month, and we have judicial emergencies. We have a chronic problem of moving cases in these circuits, where the administrators of the courts--these are independent branches of government--tell us they cannot do their job because they do not have the manpower to do it. And we are holding up confirmations not because of any substantive reason but because of the process or because of one person in the Senate who, for reasons unrelated to that individual, is holding up all of these nominations. That is not right. We are denying our country the very best, who cannot step forward under this type of circumstance, and in many cases we are denying justice in our circuits because we do not have people in place to be able to timely resolve rule-of-law issues, which is the basis of our system here in America. It is a very serious situation. We need to resolve how we handle the Article III confirmation process in the next Congress, which starts again in less than 24 hours, as well as the individuals whom we want on the boards who need confirmation--the sub-Cabinet and Cabinet positions. The same thing is true of Cabinet positions. If you are an expert in securities issues and we want to get you on the Securities and Exchange Commission and you have to be out there for 6 months, what is it going to do for your business? Can you do your profession? It is just not right. I think people are willing to be subjected to the scrutiny of advice and consent. They understand that. What they do not understand is dilatory delay, and that is what has to come to an end. I thank my colleague for raising those issues.

Mr. CARDIN. I ask my colleague--I daresay most people in this country do not know what a motion to proceed is all about. They do not realize the majority leader cannot bring a bill. A bill might be reported. We might have a farm bill or a Defense authorization bill or we might have a bill coming out that reforms some of our judicial codes. It comes out of the committee with a bipartisan vote. I think our constituents will be surprised to learn that the majority leader cannot bring that bill to the floor. It has to go through what is called a motion to proceed. What might happen in that motion to proceed? You might just tell us the problems we have today because we couldn't get to a lot of motions to proceed.

Mr. CARDIN. Under current policy, the motion to proceed has to be approved before anyone can offer any amendments. My friend from Alabama is talking about amendments. We cannot offer any amendments until we get the bill to the floor. So the majority leader is trying to bring up this bill to deal with housing because we have a housing crisis. It came out of the committee, everybody was ready to move on it, but he cannot get the motion to proceed approved. Now we are literally in no- man's land. We cannot offer amendments and cannot proceed on it. The majority leader has one of two choices: He could wait for us to reach an agreement--if we ever reach an agreement--or file cloture. He should not have to do that. He should be able to offer the bill and offer amendments and get started. We cannot do that. We have to approve the motion to proceed first. So the majority leader tries to condense the clock. People complain that we are not getting work done, so he files cloture on the motion to proceed. As a result, we have to waste one full legislative day before we can get through to the vote on the cloture. If we get to the vote on the cloture--this is on the motion to proceed. This does not deny the right of any Member to offer any amendments, whether germane or not germane. Let's say the majority wants to approve the motion to proceed and get 60 votes on the cloture--and, remember, this is the third legislative day. Let's say it is approved 95 to 1, because there was one objection. That's why we could not get the motion to proceed done. Now we are on the third legislative day and we have 30 hours of postcloture time. Another 2 days go by, and we are now on the bill, but we cannot debate the bill. We have not even started the amendments. My friend from Alabama is saying he wants to deal with amendments. Well, I want to deal with amendments. Why do we have to waste all those days to get to the bill? That makes no sense at all. A lot of us think we should be able to bring up a motion to proceed. We have some recommendations on how we can expedite that and guarantee some amendments as part of the process. That is all part of what we have all been working on: How can we get the Senate back to its traditional way of considering legislation in a fair manner and making decisions? At the end of the day, this is a democracy and the majority should be able to control the policy of this body. At the end of the day, it should be able to do that. Certainly those who object should be on the floor telling why they are objecting. I think that is what we are trying to do. We are trying to get this process to work in a fair manner, and I understand we have to protect the rights of the minority. My friend from Alabama raised a very good point. There are no guarantees of how long one party will be in the majority. We understand that. The political whim of Americans changes over time, political preferences change over time, and we have to make sure that the rules we operate under protect both the majority and the minority. That is absolutely important. The Senate is a deliberative body, and we want to make sure that all rights are protected, including the minority. However, what is wrong is when one, two, or a small group of Senators can basically bring this institution to a halt. They have done that over the last couple of years at a time when we could have done more business. I think starting tomorrow we have a chance to change some of those procedures. I hope we will be able to get that done. Senator Udall has really brought these issues to light--whether it is the motion to proceed so we can start debate or whether it is how we can dispose of amendments, handle a filibuster, deal with court and other nominations, these are all important issues. How we deal with what we call comity, or respect of Senators, how Senators deal with objections, how they should be on the floor of the Senate to raise those objections, and how objections are done. When a committee is considering a bill on the floor and the managers are considering that legislation--they have an orderly way to consider the amendments--and all of a sudden we hear one Senator objects and stops us from moving forward on amendments--well, that should not take place. If the Senator is going to object, have the Senator on the floor saying why he or she is objecting. Don't do it by saying we can stop consideration of the bill and go into a quorum call and lose all that valuable time. I think there are some commonsense changes. I do hope we can get Democrats and Republicans joining together for these reforms. Whether Democrats or Republicans are in the majority, that is how the rules should work to protect all the Members of this institution.

Mr. CARDIN. The Senator from New Mexico has been the one who has brought this to us, and I know he has included others and certainly Senator Merkley has been in the forefront of this. The Senator from New Mexico has taken a real leadership role and he has done it in an open way. We want this done with Democrats and Republicans working together because we recognize the system only works when Democrats and Republicans can come together. That is why he has taken the time today on the floor of the Senate, and he has been very open about this issue. He has taken it to a lot of groups explaining the impact. People ask us all the time: Why can't we do more to help the environment? Why can't we do more to help working families? Why can't we do more for affordable housing? Why can't we do more for affordable health care? We say: We can't get that bill to the floor of the Senate. They say: What are you talking about? You are a Senator. Bring it up on the floor of the Senate. We heard Senator Sessions say the Senate can offer an amendment at any time. Just try. We want the system to work. Whether a person is a Democrat or a Republican, we want the system to work. That is why we are taking this time today, at the end of the 112th Congress, to say: Look, what happens on Senate rules and procedures affects every person in this country. I have talked to so many people who have come into my office with individual concerns, including families who are worried if their children will get the type of attention they need if perhaps they have a disability and they are working on a bill that will help, and they have all these cosponsors of the bill and they hear the committee reported it favorably and they are wondering why we can't act on it on the floor of the Senate. That is what is at stake. We can say to them: Oh, I am a cosponsor of that bill. I voted for that bill, but the bill didn't become law because of the process we have now. That is what we have to correct. That is going to be our responsibility starting tomorrow, at noon, to deal with rules and procedures so we are in a position during the next 2 years to end the gridlock that has happened on too many issues. Yes, the public understood somewhat the gridlock on the fiscal cliff. They don't understand the gridlock on that bill that affected that family with a child with a disability. They don't understand why that bill couldn't make it to the floor of the Senate. We understand that. What the Senator from New Mexico is doing is taking action so we can be held accountable and do our work in the most efficient way. I am proud to join him in these efforts and I urge all my colleagues to do everything we can in the next 24 hours so we can get progress made. Look, we all know we are not going to get everything we want. This institution doesn't work that quickly, but let's make progress, and I think we can make progress in the 113th Congress. I thank the Presiding Officer and I thank the Senator from New Mexico for their leadership.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, it is indeed unique that on New Year's Eve we are in session. We still have some very important business we need to take care of for our Nation. We should not have put our country in this position. We should have acted well before December 31. We all understand that, but it is important that we get this work done in the remaining hours of this term of Congress. On Thursday, the 113th Congress will take the oath of office and we will start a new Congress. Before that, we must get the work of this Congress finished. At a minimum, we need to deal with the impact of tax rates that would go up for every taxpayer in this country unless we take action before this Congress adjourns. We need to protect middle-income families. We all talked about it. We know that needs to be done. We need to protect Americans from the tax increases that will take effect for the overwhelming majority of Americans--those who are middle-income taxpayers. We need to do this first and foremost because it would create an incredible burden on working families to pay an extra $2,000 to $4,000 of taxes, and we also need to do it to help our economy. That type of money coming out of the economy through additional tax increases would have a very detrimental impact on our economy, which is coming out of a tough period. We also need to deal with what we call sequestration. I was listening to the senior Senator from Maryland, chair of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Mikulski, talk about the effects of sequestration. She is right. Some people may not understand that term, but what it means is that there will be dramatic cuts in governmental agencies, which will not only affect the performance of those agencies but also the contracts they let to the private sector. It will affect not only our domestic budget but our military budget. She went through a lot of the different impacts it will have, from children who are in jeopardy of losing their support from Head Start, to our researchers being denied the resources they need in order to do work that is vital to our economy. The bottom line is that if we allow the across-the-board cuts to take effect, it will hurt our economy and hurt the job growth in America. We cannot allow that to happen. I expect that we can get this done before this Congress adjourns on January 2. We also need to deal with what we call the physician fix of Medicare. We can get that done in this Congress. If not, doctors who treat our seniors and our disabled population will find that there will be almost a 30-percent cut in their physician reimbursement. Many physicians would say they are not going to treat seniors any longer with that type of reduction. We understand that. We need to make sure we take care of protecting the reimbursement rates for physicians in the Medicare system. We need to get that done and can get it done before this Congress adjourns. We need to extend unemployment insurance. There are millions of Americans who depend on unemployment insurance in a soft economic time. They cannot find jobs. Again, this is not only important for the individuals who would be cut off if we do not extend the benefits, it is also important for our economic recovery. We also need to extend the farm bill. We have heard the consequences if we don't do that. I had hoped they could pass a bill--which this Chamber passed--over in the House. It is unlikely we can get that done in the next 2 days, so we need to make sure we at least extend the current FARM policies in order to make sure we protect the security of our agricultural community and food prices here in America. All of that we can get done. Hopefully we can get it done tonight but certainly before we adjourn on January 2. We need to complete that work in order to keep our economy moving and to protect the interests of the people in this Nation. Quite frankly, I don't think there is much disagreement in this Chamber as to the method to get that done. I am disappointed that we are not dealing with a broader budget framework for our Nation. We should have done that well before now. We should do it for many reasons. For one thing, we need it. We have a deficit that is not controllable. We have to bring our deficit into better control. In order to do that, we need to reduce spending and we need the revenues in order to be able to give the right blueprint for America's future and growth. We also need to get a broader package done because of predictability. The private sector needs to know what the rules are, and they need to know what the Tax Code and spending programs are going to look like. They need to have the confidence that we have our budget under better control. We should have gotten that done. I have spoken several times on the floor about how we should have adopted the Simpson-Bowles framework. To me, that was a bipartisan, balanced approach for how we could have gotten out of our fiscal problems. We are not going to be able to get that done in the next 2 days before we adjourn on January 2, but we need to recognize that we need to do that. I have heard a lot of my colleagues come to the floor to speak, and I have to clarify a couple of points. Simpson-Bowles was basically a $4 trillion, 10-year deficit reduction package. It was booked up as the right approach. Many of us have been asking, how we can get $4 trillion done? Well, it is interesting that with the Simpson-Bowles approach, approximately 60 percent was in spending reductions and about 40 percent was in revenue. That was a balanced way to bring down spending but also bring in the revenues we need in order to get our budget into better balance. That is the proper way to do it. Since the recommendations of Simpson-Bowles, we have done $1 trillion in deficit reduction in domestic discretionary spending. We have gotten that done. Those budget caps are real, and we are living within those budget caps. Sequestration--these across-the-board cuts--would get another $1.2 trillion of spending cuts done. We should not do it through sequestration, but all of us recognize that we need to find ways to reduce spending further. I have talked on the floor about how we can get that done, particularly in the health care field. Yes, we have to reduce the cost of Medicare, but the way to do it is to reduce the cost of health care. We would have fewer readmissions to hospitals if we implemented the right delivery system protocols, and we would save money for our economy and Medicare. If we use preventive health care appropriately, people will enter our health care system in a less costly way, with more people insured and less use of emergency rooms. Once again, we save money. Our committees need to come up with these solutions. It is not going to happen with two or three people getting together and coming up with a package. We need the Senate and its committees to work and come up with the right way to reduce the cost of these programs. I think we can do it basically by making the health care system more efficient, and that is much better than cutting benefits. I hope we can work together to get that done. We need to do that. Yes, we need revenue. I heard some of my colleagues come here and say: Well, look at all the revenue we are going to get under this supposed agreement that has been talked about, which hopefully we will get as early as tonight. We already made a compromise. The rate at which no American will see any increase in taxes looks as if it will be higher than $250,000. It has been reported it is going to be closer to $400,000. OK. Well, now, what does that mean? That means we are going to get less revenue as a result of this agreement reached tonight. The numbers I have seen--and this may very well change based upon the agreement; hopefully, we are going to have an agreement--but somewhere around $500 billion to $600 billion. That is far short of the $1.2 trillion or $1.4 trillion we have been talking about--the whole--in order to reach that $4 trillion number we all say is the minimum amount we need as per the Simpson-Bowles numbers. So we are going to need more revenue. Here is the rub, here is the challenge: When we start looking to get more revenue, we are talking about now getting it through tax reform. We all understand we have to reform our Tax Code. It is difficult to do that when we have to produce revenue at the same time because people are looking at trying to do something about rates. Well, since we need the revenue for the deficit reduction package, it will be more difficult. My point is this: I am disappointed we haven't gotten our work done well before tonight, but it is urgent that we work together, Democrats and Republicans, and get the minimum amount done the American people expect; that is, to make sure tax rates don't go up for middle-income families. We can get that done. We can get that done as early as tonight. We should avoid the immediate sequestration order because that makes no sense--these across-the-board cuts--and figure out a way we can have a much more orderly process for reducing government spending. We should make sure Medicare is not jeopardized by having a physician fix done in this compromise. We should make sure for the people who are getting unemployment insurance, to maintain their benefits. And we should extend the farm bill. That we can get done in the remaining hours of this legislative session. I urge my colleagues to continue to work together. I am hopeful our leaders are negotiating a package that can be brought to the floor as early as tonight, certainly before we adjourn on January 2. If we do that, then I think we have completed as much of our business as we can, as well as setting up for the debate in the 113th Congress which will indeed be challenging. But I urge us to work together and put the interests of the American people first. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I would like to pay tribute to the Senators who will not be returning when the 113th Congress commences next month. I have already spoken about Senator Kyl and about Senator Inouye, one of the truly great Americans and giants of this institution. At the time of his death, Senator Inouye was just a few weeks short of celebrating 50 years of Senate service. Only Senator Byrd served in this institution longer. Turnover is a natural occurrence, but it's important to acknowledge that the Senators who are departing have served in the Senate for a combined total of 237 years, or nearly 20 years per Senator, on average. Add Senator Inouye, and the total is close to 300 years. That service represents an enormous amount of expertise on issues ranging from national defense and foreign affairs to the Federal budget to energy policy. The departing Senators will also take with them vast institutional knowledge and bipartisan friendships and working relationships that will leave a void we will need to fill. Daniel Akaka Mr. President, Daniel Akaka was born on September 11, 1924 just 4 days after Senator Inouye and, like Senator Inouye, he overcame the prejudice and hostility directed at Asian Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor to serve with distinction in the U.S. Army during World War II. Senator Akaka was a civilian worker in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 1943 to 1945. Then, he was on Active Duty in the Army from 1945 to 1947. After Senator Akaka finished his military service, he devoted his career to education, first as a teacher and then as a principal and later as an official in the State of Hawaii Department of Education. He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1976 and then appointed to the Senate in 1990 upon the death of former Senator Spark Matsunaga. He won an election that November with nearly 54 percent of the vote, and was re-elected to the Senate in 1994, 2000, and 2006, twice receiving over 70 percent of the popular vote and never dropping below 61 percent. Senator Akaka is America's first Senator of Native Hawaiian ancestry, and the only Chinese-American Member of the Senate. He chairs the Indian Affairs Committee and, like Senator Inouye, he has been a stalwart supporter of Native Americans, Native Alaskans, Pacific Islanders, Asian Americans, and Native Hawaiians. One of his highest priorities has been to secure passage of the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, S. 675. That bill was just placed on the legislative calendar and hotlined, we need to get it across the finish line in the waning days of the 112th Congress. It's the right thing to do. I have been privileged to work with Senator Akaka on efforts to protect the Federal workforce. Federal employees have no greater champion than Senator Akaka, who has chaired the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management. Senator Akaka is committed to making the Federal government an employer of choice capable of attracting and retaining the best and the brightest. In 2009, he introduced the Telework Enhancement Act, which became law in 2010 and expands telework opportunities at executive agencies. Senator Akaka has also fought to create a culture of transparency and fairness in the Federal Government, authoring the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, which I was proud to cosponsor. President Obama signed that bill into law last month. And Senator Akaka has been a civil rights champion, partnering with Senators Lieberman, Collins, me, and others to support domestic partner benefits. I also appreciate Senator Akaka's determined advocacy for financial literacy and consumer protections. His Credit Card Minimum Payment Warning Act was included in the 2009 Credit CARD Act. Now, thanks to Senator Akaka, credit card bills must include a disclosure box to show consumers how long it will take to repay their entire balance if they only make minimum monthly payments. The so-called ``Akaka Box'' also lets consumers know how much it will cost to pay off their outstanding balance within 36 months, which is a typical length of a debt management plan. Senator Akaka was also an author of portions of the Dodd-Frank Act addressing financial literacy (establishing the Office of Financial Education within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) and investor protections. Throughout Senator Akaka's long and distinguished career in Congress, he has also been an ardent environmentalist. As a former chairman of the Subcommittee on National Parks, legislation he authored has created, expanded, or otherwise improved each of Hawaii's national parks. His Hawaii Tropical Forest Recovery Act established the Hawaii Experimental Tropical Forest in order to promote the recovery of tropical forests in Hawaii and undertake needed research to better protect tropical forests around the world. A hallmark of Senator Akaka, like Senator Inouye, is his soft-spoken and courteous manner. The Senators from Hawaii have always treated the rest of us with respect and graciousness. They have reached across the aisle to foster bipartisan cooperation. And they have exhibited a rare and calming serenity when partisan tempers have boiled over. I will miss the warm and gentle and friendly personalities of Senators Akaka and Inouye, their wise counsel, and their service here in the United States Senate on behalf of Hawaiians and all Americans. Jeff Bingaman Mr. President, Jeff Bingaman is another Senator whose quiet demeanor belies his tremendous skill and effectiveness as a legislator. Senator Bingaman and I were born 2 days apart October 3 and October 5, 1943, respectively. Both of Senator Bingaman's parents were teachers, which may help explain his interest and involvement in educational policy. He graduated from a public school in a small town in New Mexico and then went to Harvard for his bachelor of arts degree and Stanford for his law degree. From 1968 to 1974, he served in the U.S. Army Reserve and in 1978, he was elected attorney general of New Mexico. Senator Bingaman was first elected to the Senate in 1982 and then won reelection four times, only once dipping below receiving at least 61 percent of the popular vote. Senator Bingaman has worked on everything from drop-out prevention in schools with low student achievement and graduation rates to phasing out the waiting period for disabled individuals to become eligible for Medicare benefits and to eliminate it for people with life-threatening conditions to the establishment of ARPA-E the Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Department of Energy. Earlier this month, the Energy Information Administration, EIA, reported that with improved efficiency of energy use and a shift away from the most carbon-intensive fuels, U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide, CO2, emissions are likely to remain more than 5 percent below their 2005 level through 2040. Emissions from motor gasoline will decline as a result of the adoption of fuel economy standards, biofuel mandates, and shifts in consumer behavior. Emissions from coal used in the generation of electricity will decline as power generation shifts from coal to lower-carbon fuels, including natural gas and renewables. These are all significant accomplishments, made possible largely by Senator Bingaman's steady hand at the helm of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where he has helped to shape and pass all of the major energy bills for over the past decade. In 2009, Senator Bingaman shepherded the Omnibus Public Land Management Act to passage. That legislation added wilderness protection to over 2 million acres, designated 1,100 miles of wild and scenic rivers, and added more than 2,800 miles to the national trail system. I believe it was the biggest wildness bill Congress has ever enacted after the original Wilderness Act of 1964 and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980. The epitaph on the stone plaque where the great English architect Sir Christopher Wren is buried reads, ``If you seek his monument, look around you.'' The same could be said for Senator Bingaman with regard to the preservation of our natural world. Two weeks ago, Senator Bingaman gave his farewell speech to the Senate and I would like to quote from the beginning of that speech. He remarked, In 1981, in his first inaugural address, President Reagan said, ``Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.'' I came to the Senate two years later in 1983 with the firm belief that in most cases his statement was wrong. I believed then and I believe now that the Federal Government can be a constructive force for good; in protecting and maintaining the civil liberties of all Americans, in maintaining and strengthening our economy, in protecting our environment and in helping Americans live productive and fulfilling lives. I agree wholeheartedly with Senator Bingaman and am grateful that for the past 30 years in public service, he has lived by those words and beliefs. Scott Brown Mr. President, Senator Brown shook the political establishment when he won a special election in 2010 to replace the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Senator Brown was the first Republican to win a Senate race in Massachusetts since Senator Edward Brooke won re-election in 1972. Senator Brown previously served in the Massachusetts State House of Representatives from 1998 to 2004 and then in the State Senate from 2004-2010. Senator Brown has been here just a short time, but he has been in the ``thick of things'', given his willingness to reach across the aisle. According to Congressional Quarterly, he has the second-most bipartisan voting record in the Senate, and helped the majority pass the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, STOCK, Act, which he co-authored; the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed with exactly 60 votes; the repeal of the Department of Defense's ``Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' policy; the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment, HIRE, Act, and the New START Treaty. In the wake of the horrific shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Senator Brown was one of the first Republicans to express his support for reinstating the assault weapons ban. On a more parochial note, I would note that 9 months ago he started serving as an active member of the Maryland National Guard, and we are grateful for his service. Kent Conrad Mr. President, few, if any, other Senators have devoted as much time and energy as Senator Kent Conrad has to trying to balance the Federal budget. There are few more important--or difficult--tasks. The Senate will miss his steady hand as chairman of the Budget Committee and his expertise on budgetary and fiscal matters as a former tax commissioner for the State of North Dakota. As Senator Conrad likes to note, he was 16 years old when he sat in the visitors gallery to this Chamber, listened to former Senator Hubert Humphrey speak on the Civil Rights Act, and decided that he wanted to be a United States Senator. Not only did he make that decision, he committed himself to running for a Senate seat in 1986 or 1988. After Senator Conrad received degrees from Stanford University and George Washington University, he worked as an assistant to our former colleague, Byron Dorgan, who was the North Dakota Tax Commissioner from 1969 to 1980. He succeeded Senator Dorgan as tax commissioner but beat him to the Senate, defeating Republican incumbent Mark Andrews, who had represented North Dakota as a Representative or Senator since 1963. Senator Conrad won that election in 1986. As he remarked in his farewell speech, ``That is the power of a plan.'' Senator Conrad pledged that he would not seek re-election in 1992 if the Federal budget deficit had not declined by the end of his term. He honored that pledge. But North Dakotans, to their credit, encouraged him to run in a special election that year to fill the remainder of Senator Quentin Burdick's term. Senator Burdick, the State's senior Senator at the time, had died in September 1992. Byron Dorgan was elected to replace Senator Conrad, and Senator Conrad was elected to replace Senator Burdick. He was re-elected three times, with 58 percent, 61 percent, and nearly 69 percent of the vote, respectively. This is an extraordinary political accomplishment in a largely Republican State and a testament to Senator Conrad and the discernment of North Dakota voters. Agriculture is the single biggest component of the North Dakota economy. Senator Conrad has successfully fought to make sure farm programs benefit North Dakota's farmers and ranchers, from winning formula fights on drought legislation in his first term to leading the charge for disaster assistance in the late 1990s and playing a leading role in writing the 2002 and 2008 farm bills. North Dakota receives far more farm program benefits, on a per capita basis, than any other State, and they have helped produce prosperity in farm country. Senator Conrad has also brought hundreds of millions of dollars to North Dakota to develop water supply and flood protection projects. Key victories include passage of the Dakota Water Resources Act to bring Federal legislation in line with North Dakota's contemporary water needs, ensuring Federal help to protect Fargo against record spring flooding, and securing over $1 billion to rebuild Grand Forks and build new flood controls following the 1997 flood, an additional $1 billion to respond to the ongoing, devastating flooding in the Devils Lake basin, and a final $1 billion to respond to the record breaking 2011 flooding in Minot. While Senator Conrad has been a leader on farm and energy policies, he has been the leader on budget policies as chairman of the Budget Committee and a senior member of the Finance Committee. Six years ago, he teamed with former Republican Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire to propose a bipartisan commission to tackle the debt. That idea ultimately prompted President Barack Obama to create the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, also known as the Bowles-Simpson (or Simpson-Bowles) Commission after its co-chairs, former Republican Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, in 2010. Senator Conrad was appointed to the Commission and has subsequently served in the bipartisan ``Gang of Six'' and ``Gang of Eight'' groups of Senators attempting to find a budget compromise that would forestall the tax increases and automatic spending cuts scheduled to commence on January 1, 2013. Senator Conrad has been indefatigable in his pursuit of sound budgetary and fiscal policies. He has brought a soberness to the subject, along with his trademark patience and extraordinary ability to discuss complex budget issues and large numbers in a way that is accessible to everyone accompanied, of course, by his myriad charts! Senator Conrad has always promoted a balanced approach to addressing our budget deficits that includes higher revenues, spending cuts, and appropriate entitlement reform. The Bowles-Simpson Commission's report, which he helped draft, should serve as a blueprint for Congressional action. No matter how arduous the budget negotiations become, Senator Conrad is eternally optimistic. As he noted in his farewell speech, I think we all know our country needs a plan now, and we know plans have worked before. I was here in 1993 when we had just come off the largest deficit in the history of the United States. The country was in the doldrums. The economy was just plugging along, not doing very well, we had a weak recovery from a deep recession, and we passed a plan to get the country back on track. We did it the old-fashioned way. We made tough decisions, some that were unpopular, but it was the right thing to do and it worked. We balanced the budget. We had the longest period of uninterrupted economic growth in the Nation's history. Twenty-three million jobs were created, and we were actually paying down the debt of the United States at the end of the Clinton administration. I share Senator Conrad's fervent hope that his farewell speech won't be his final Senate speech; he indicated that he will take to the floor again if we reach agreements in the next few days on the 2012 farm bill and the so-called fiscal cliff negotiations. If we do find a way forward, Senator Conrad will have played a key role in both instances. It has been my honor to serve on the Budget Committee under Senator Conrad's leadership. Kay bailey Hutchison Mr. President, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison has been shattering glass ceilings her entire life in a career that has spanned law, banking, TV news reporting, owning a small business, and politics. She was one of five women in her University of Texas Law School class. She was the first Republican woman elected to the Texas House of Representatives. In 1990, she became state treasurer--the first Texas Republican woman elected to statewide office. Her 1993 special election victory to succeed Senator Lloyd Bentsen made her the first--and only--woman to represent Texas in the Senate. She was re-elected in 1994, 2000, and 2006, receiving over 60 percent of the popular vote in each instance. In 2001, she was named one of the 30 most powerful women in America by Ladies Home Journal. Senator Hutchison was the Senate architect of our military forces' transformation from Cold War-based forward basing, with extensive overseas infrastructure, to a strategically balanced approach that emphasizes rapidly deployable military forces based at large, modern, centrally located U.S. military installations. As chair of the Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee, she has played a crucial role in developing larger, soldier- and family-friendly U.S. installations and improving the quality of life and the quality of health care for our servicemen and women and their families. As ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, Senator Hutchison authored major legislation in 2005 and 2010 to create a balanced, bipartisan blueprint for America's post-Shuttle space program. She also protected $100 billion science and research investment in the International Space Station by paving way for commercial crews. Senator Hutchison is one of Senate's leading advocates for bolstering the Nation's science and technology education and competitiveness. In 2007, she co-sponsored the America COMPETES Act, which included her legislation to allow college students majoring in science, technology, engineering or mathematics--STEM--to be concurrently certified as elementary and secondary school teachers. Senator Hutchison has been a strong voice for women's economic empowerment and family-supporting tax policies. She joined with my colleague, Senator Mikulski, in sponsoring the Homemaker IRA legislation, which was enacted in 1997 and allows affected spouses to make equal, $2,000, fully deductible contributions to individual retirement accounts, IRAs. She also successfully advocated for elimination of the marriage tax penalty. In 1975, while she was serving in the Texas House of Representatives, she sponsored pioneering legislation to protect rape victims by redefining consent and shielding them from invasive personal questions that implied ``blaming the victim.'' The Texas law became the national model for state laws to protect rape victims. In 2003, here in the Senate, she won passage of bill that created the national Amber Alert; more than 550 abducted children have since been reunited with their parents. Senator Hutchison is also an accomplished author. In 2000, she and other woman Senators co-authored Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate. In 2004, she wrote American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country, which was followed in 2007 by the bestselling book, Leading Ladies: American Trailblazers. I'm not sure, but I believe she is the only sitting U.S. Senator to have appeared on an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger with Chuck Norris! Senator Hutchison has a solid conservative voting record and outlook. She is thoughtful, accessible, and collaborative. These qualities and her hard work have made her an outstanding Senator. We will miss her. Herb Kohl Mr. President, Senator Herb Kohl embodies the American dream. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia who started a chain of grocery and department stores. Senator Kohl earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1956 and a Master of Business Administration, MBA, degree from Harvard Business School in 1958. Between 1958 and 1964, Senator Kohl was a member of the United States Army Reserve. Senator Kohl had a highly successful business career before he was elected to the Senate in 1988 with 52 percent of the vote. In each successive re-election effort, his share of the popular vote rose, all the way up to more than 67 percent in 2006. I have served with Senator Kohl on the Judiciary Committee and have seen firsthand his commitment to ensuring the fairness of our legal system. Senator Kohl introduced legislation to create a tax credit for employer-provided child care after Congress passed the welfare reform bill in 1996, to help families move from welfare to work. The credit was codified in section 45F of the Internal Revenue Code as part of the package of tax cuts passed in 2001. Section 45F offers a tax credit for 25 percent of what it costs a business to build and maintain an on-site child care facility and 10 percent of their expenses for child care resource and referral services. It is capped at $150,000 a year per company to target the benefit to small businesses. Throughout his career, Senator Kohl has championed the National Institute of Standards & Technology's Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program, MEP, a public-private partnership that provides technical support to small and medium manufacturers. Since MEP arrived in Wisconsin in 1998, its two centers have created or retained over 13,000 high quality manufacturing jobs with almost $2 billion in economic impact throughout the State. In 2007 and 2010, Senator Kohl introduced bipartisan legislation to authorize appropriations for MEP and, in both instances, those bills became public law: the former as part of the America COMPETES Act of 2007; the latter as part of the American COMPETES Reauthorization of 2010. For over a decade, and despite budgetary pressures, MEP has received the resources it needs to continue to help small manufacturers in Wisconsin and across the nation, prompting the American Small Manufacturers Coalition to name Senator Kohl a ``champion for small manufacturers.'' Senator Kohl's quiet but effective contributions to our Nation aren't limited to his service here in the Senate. He is a committed philanthropist, too. For instance, he donated $25 million to the University of Wisconsin at Madison for the construction of its new sports arena. It was the largest single donation in University's history. In 1990, he established the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation Achievement Award Program, which provides annual grants totaling $100,000 to 100 graduating seniors, 100 teachers, and 100 schools throughout Wisconsin. And he is much beloved in his hometown for purchasing the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team in 1985 to prevent the team from being moved to another city. Joe Lieberman Mr. President, few Senators have struck as independent a path in recent years as Senator Joe Lieberman. He was the first prominent Democrat to chastise then-President Bill Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky but did not support removing the President from office. He was the Democratic Party's nominee to be Vice President in 2000--the first Jewish candidate on a national party ticket in American history. Senator Lieberman has confounded people because he has been willing to follow his conscience and to place principle over party loyalty. Senator Lieberman is a proud son of Connecticut. His parents ran a liquor store in Stamford; both his paternal and maternal grandparents were immigrants from Poland and Austria, respectively. He graduated from Yale University--the first member of his family to graduate from college--and then received his law degree from Yale Law School. In 1970, when Senator Lieberman was just 28, he was elected to the Connecticut State Senate as a ``reform Democrat''. He served in the State senate for 10 years, including six as majority leader. In 1982, he won the first of two terms as Connecticut's Attorney General, and was immensely popular for championing environmental and consumer protection. Senator Lieberman pulled off perhaps the biggest upset of the 1988 election cycle when he defeated incumbent Republican Senator Lowell Weicker in a close race, winning by just 10,000 votes. But 6 years later, when Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress, Senator Lieberman won re-election with over 67 percent of the vote. In 2000, while he simultaneously ran for Vice President, he received over 63 percent of the vote for the Senate seat he held. Here in the Senate, Senator Lieberman has been a strong advocate of recruiting, training, and equipping a 21st century fighting force and using it to defend America's security, values, and interests. Senator Lieberman was one of five Democrats to co-sponsor S.J. Res. 2, which authorized the use of force in the first Gulf War in 1991. He partnered with Senator McCain to push for U.S. intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s, and he was a proponent of former President George W. Bush's ``surge'' strategy in Iraq. Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Senator Lieberman led the charge to establish the 9/11 Commission, whose mission was to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the attacks. Then, in response to the Commission's recommendations, Senator Lieberman worked with Senator Susan Collins to implement the largest reorganization of the intelligence community in over half a century. As Chairman of the Government Affairs Committee, Senator Lieberman led Congressional efforts to establish the Department of Homeland Security, which integrated all or part of 22 different Federal departments and agencies. He has since continued to oversee the Department's work in his position as ranking member of the Committee between 2003 and 2006 and as Chairman again since 2007. Senator Lieberman is a committed environmentalist. He played a key role in drafting and passing the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, which established the sulfur dioxide ``cap and trade'' program to combat acid rain, one of the most successful programs in history. He has introduced every major climate change bill in the Senate, and every bill that has been brought to the floor for a vote. In 1994, Senator Lieberman worked with then-representative Nancy Johnson, a Republican, to secure Wild and Scenic River status for the Upper Farmington River, the first in the State of Connecticut. He has led several successful filibusters against legislation that would have opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ANWR, to oil and gas exploration; he also has introduced legislation every two years to protect ANWR permanently. In 1994, Senator Lieberman introduced the Video Game Ratings Act, held hearings on violence in video games, and played an important role in establishing a rating system and restricting sales of mature games to minors. In the wake of the terrible tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, he has called for the creation of a national commission to study gun violence in a comprehensive way. In 1998, Senator Lieberman introduced and helped pass the Charter School Expansion Act, which expanded the number of high-quality charter schools available to children across the United States. Three years later, he was a lead sponsor of the No Child Left Behind legislation, NCLB. Because of his involvement, he was invited to join the NCLB conference committee despite not serving on the committee of jurisdiction. In 2007, Senator Lieberman was a lead sponsor of the National Innovation Act and the National Innovation Education Act. These were underlying pieces of the final American COMPETES Act, intended to spur innovation and ensure that our workforce has the education and skills necessary to compete in a global economy. In 2010, Senator Lieberman led the successful fight to repeal the Department of Defense's ``Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' policy. He also has introduced legislation to provide domestic partnership benefits to federal employees, and was an original cosponsor of the Employment Non- Discrimination Act. Senator Lieberman is a highly accomplished Senator because he has put pragmatism above ideology and because he has been willing to forge bipartisan alliances and compromises. He is a deeply religious man whose motto might well be the prophet Isaiah's plaintive cry, ``Come now, and let us reason together'' (Isaiah 1:18). The Senate will miss his devotion to public service, cheerfulness, and optimism. Richard Lugar Mr. President, Senator Richard Lugar isn't just one of our leading Senators; he's one of the Nation's greatest statesmen over the past quarter-century. We have been fortunate indeed to have Senator Lugar at the helm of the Foreign Relations Committee, either as chairman or ranking member, for so many years. He is quite literally a gentleman and a scholar. After graduating first in his class from high school and from Denison University, he attended Pembroke College at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where he earned a second bachelor's degree and a master's degree in 1956. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1956 to 1960, earning the rank of Lieutenant, Junior Grade. While he was in the Navy, he was an intelligence briefer for Admiral Arleigh Burke. To this day, Senator Lugar shows his fifth generation Hoosier roots, managing the family's 600-acre corn, soybean, and tree farm. When he was just 35, he was elected Mayor of Indianapolis and served two highly successful terms and was elected President of the National League of Cities in 1971. Senator Lugar defeated incumbent Senator Vance Hartke in 1976 with 60 percent of the vote in a year when the Democratic candidate for president, Jimmy Carter, won the election. He was re- elected five times. On three of those occasions, he received well over 60 percent of the vote. In 2006, he received over 87 percent of the vote while Democrats were recapturing control of Congress for the first time in 12 years. Before Senator Lugar chaired the Foreign Relations Committee, he chaired the Agriculture Committee, during which time he authored the 1996 Farm bill. He established a biofuels research program to help increase U.S. utilization of ethanol and combustion fuels, and led initiatives to streamline the U.S. Department of Agriculture, reform the Food Stamp Program, and preserve the Federal school lunch program. Over the course of his career, he has been deeply involved in food security issues, both domestically and around the globe. Senator Lugar generally holds conservative economic views, but he supports President Obama's DREAM Act and certain restrictions on gun ownership. He was the first Republican Senator to announce his support for President Obama's first Supreme Court nominee, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor. He also voted in favor of President Obama's second Supreme Court nominee, Solicitor General Elena Kagan. I was proud and privileged to work with Senator Lugar on an extractive industries transparency provision that we are able to include in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act. And I have learned so much from Senator Lugar serving on the Foreign Relations Committee. In a long career of dazzling accomplishments, Senator Lugar has made his greatest mark with respect to foreign affairs. In 2006, Time magazine rated him as one of America's 10 Best Senators in an article entitled ``The Wise Man''. According to the article, Senator Lugar's ``thinking has often proved to be ahead of the curve.'' He pushed for democratic governments in the Philippines and South Africa and the development of alternative fuels to reduce our reliance on foreign supplies of oil in the 1980s. He has been influential in gaining Senate ratification of treaties to reduce the world's use, production, and stockpiling of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In 1991, he collaborated with then-Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat from Georgia and chairman of the Armed Service Committee, to eliminate latent weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. To date, the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program has deactivated more than 7,500 nuclear warheads. Three months after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Senator Lugar enunciated the ``Lugar Doctrine'', which commits the United States to use ``all of its military, diplomatic and economic power--without question--to ensure that life threatening weapons of mass destruction everywhere are accounted, contained and destroyed'' and which ``asserts that the U.S. should encourage democratic institutions and decrease dependence on foreign energy sources.'' Few, if any, people have done more than Senator Lugar over the past 36 years to ensure security, promote freedom and peace, and reduce the threat of war. In 2008, Senator Lugar received the Paul H. Douglas Ethics in Government Award, which is awarded by the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs. He gave a profound speech on the nature of bipartisanship when he received that award. I think the speech perfectly exemplifies Senator Lugar and his approach to governance, and I would exhort everyone to read it and take it to heart. This is part of what he said: Too often bipartisanship is misrepresented as the byproduct of moderate political views or the willingness to strike deals. We should be clear that bipartisanship is not centrism, and it is more than just compromise. It is a way of approaching one's duties as a public servant that requires self-reflection, discipline of study, and faith in the good will of others. I believe this type of independent self reflection and discipline of thought is at the core of any politician's attempt to be truly bipartisan. In today's political environment, politicians are bombarded by demands from our respective parties and loyalist groups to adopt certain orthodox positions. To some extent this is a necessary element of a two-party system. But when positions are adopted purely on the basis of partisan advantage or strategic opposition to the other party, our system begins to break down. Some members may genuinely agree with their party 50 percent of the time, others may genuinely agree with their party 99 percent of the time. The question is whether a politician arrives at those conclusions through honest reflection and careful study of the issue or whether they arrive there because they have adopted an ``us-versus-them'' mentality. Increasingly at all levels of American politics, capable leaders are succumbing to the temptation to put politics first. . . Particularly destructive is the misperception in some quarters that governing with one vote more than 50 percent is just as good or better than governing with 60 or 70 percent support. Under this theory, the compromises necessary to achieve greater consensus among the American people and Congress merely dilutes the strength of one's partisan accomplishments. The problem with this thinking is that whatever is won today through division is usually lost tomorrow. The relationships that are destroyed and the ill will that is created make subsequent achievements that much more difficult. If the minority is not a participant, it begins to see its job as frustrating the majority, rather than as trying to advance its ideas or contributing to good legislation. A 51 percent mentality deepens cynicism, sharpens political vendettas, and depletes the national reserve of good will that is critical to our survival in hard times. Leaders should not content themselves with 51 percent if they can expand a working majority through outreach, judicious rhetoric, bipartisan alliances, and thoughtful argumentation. National unity is not simply a civic nicety; it counts in real policy terms. . . . Senator Lugar concluded his speech by remarking that former Senator Paul Douglas' life ``provides us with an extraordinary example of what can be achieved through thoughtful dedication to public service.'' The same can be said for Senator Lugar. Ben Nelson Mr. President, Senator Ben Nelson is a native Nebraskan who earned his B.A., M.A., and J.D. degrees from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. He embarked on a highly successful career in the insurance industry, working for Central National Insurance Group of Omaha. In 1975, he became Nebraska's State insurance director before going back to work for Central National Insurance first as an executive vice president, and then as president. With regard to politics, Senator Nelson decided to start at the top. In 1990, in his first run for office, he was elected as Governor of Nebraska. In 1994, he was re-elected with 74 percent of the vote. During his tenure, he cut spending relative to the previous administration by 64 percent, promoted legislation to cut crime through the Safe Streets Act & Juvenile Crime Bill, advocated for low-income families through the Kids Connection health care system, enacted welfare reforms, and cut taxes for over 400,000 middle income Nebraska families. He was forced to step down because of term limits, but then he successfully ran for the Senate seat vacated by Senator Bob Kerrey. While that race was close, he was re-elected in 2006 with just under 64 percent of the vote. Senator Nelson is a moderate to conservative Democrat, which is fitting given the conservative tilt of Nebraska voters. For the past 12 years, he has frequently reached out to Republicans to try to get things done. For instance, he was a member of the co-called ``Gang of 14'' that helped to resolve the judicial nominations controversy in 2005. He has worked hard to protect and promote the State's agricultural interests, becoming a champion of ethanol and farm-based alternative energy sources. He is a member of the Armed Services Committee and has been at the center of shaping our Nation's defense policies, securing a new headquarters for STRATCOM, and a new Veterans Administration hospital for Nebraska's veterans. Senator Nelson has always been true to his beliefs and true to his word, and it has been a pleasure to work with him. His desire to seek bipartisan compromise is a noble one. He likes to quote Henry Ford, who said, ``Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success''. Senator Nelson has always heeded those words; we would be well-served to do likewise in his absence. Olympia Snowe Mr. President, few people have faced the personal adversity Senator Olympia Snowe has overcome on her way to becoming the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the United States House of Representatives; the first woman to have served in both houses of a state legislature and both houses of the U.S. Congress, and the first Greek-American congresswoman. Senator Snowe, a first-generation American, was orphaned at a young age and then her uncle, who was raising her with his family, died a few years later. Her first husband was killed in a car accident when she was just 26 and, later, her 20- year-old stepson died from a heart ailment. And yet, Senator Snowe didn't just persevere. She ran for her late husband's seat in the Maine House of Representatives at the age of 26 and won. She was re-elected to the State House in 1974 and, in 1976, won election to the Maine Senate. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1978, and represented Maine's 2nd Congressional District from 1979 to 1995. Senator Snowe successfully ran for the seat vacated by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell in 1994, winning 60 percent of the vote. She was re-elected in 2000 and 2006, winning 69 percent and 74 percent of the vote, respectively. In nearly 40 years of holding elective office, Senator Snowe has never lost an election. During her time in office, Senator Snowe has been a quintessential Yankee Republican, putting her constituents and the Nation ahead of political party. While she served in the House, she was a member of the moderate wing of the Republican Party known as Gypsy Moths, working with southern Democrats known as Boll Weevils to forge bipartisan budgets. Here in the Senate, she was a member of the Gang of 14. Prior to that, during the Senate's 1999 impeachment trial of then-President Bill Clinton, she worked with her Maine colleague, Senator Susan Collins, to find a middle ground approach, drafting a motion that would have allowed the Senate to vote separately on the charges and the remedy a ``finding of fact'' resolution. When the motion failed, Senator Snowe and Senator Collins demonstrated the courage of their convictions by voting to acquit the President on the grounds that his actions didn't warrant his removal from office. During consideration of the 2001 tax cuts, Senator Snowe worked with former Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat from Arkansas, to increase the amount of the child tax credit and make it refundable, so that low income families who don't earn enough to pay federal taxes could still benefit from the credit, ensuring that it would assist an additional 13 million more children and lift 500,000 of those children out of poverty. But 2 years later, she joined Senators Lincoln Chafee and John McCain as the only Republicans to oppose the 2003 tax cuts. Pragmatism, not fealty to a rigid political ideology, has been her guiding principle. Senator Snowe was one of eight Republican Senators to vote to repeal the ``Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' policy. Although she represents a largely rural, pro-hunting State, she has supported sensible gun control measures. She teamed with our former colleague, Senator Ted Kennedy, to co-author the landmark Genetic Nondiscrimination Act, which prevents insurance companies and employers from denying or dropping coverage based on genetic tests. I have been proud to work with Senator Snowe on a number of small business initiatives, including our legislation to increase the cap on surety bonds. Senator Snowe has stated repeatedly that she inherited a legacy of bipartisanship and independence from former Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who delivered her seminal ``Declaration of Conscience'' speech against the bullying tactics, smear campaigns, and intimidation of former Senator Joe McCarthy. As Senator Snowe remarked in her ``farewell'' speech the other day, Senator Smith's stand demonstrated truly uncommon courage and principled independence. Senator Snowe has been a worthy heir and guardian of Senator Smith's legacy. We will miss her common sense, her pragmatic approach to governing, and her ability to promote bipartisan consensus. Jim Webb Mr. President, Senator James Webb is a highly decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War, the first Naval Academy graduate to serve as a civilian Secretary of the Navy, lawyer, and accomplished author. Senator Webb grew up in a military family and noted in his 2004 book, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, that his ancestors fought in every major American war. Senator Webb's father, a career officer in the U.S. Air Force, flew B-17s and B-29s during World War II, and dropped cargo during the Berlin Airlift. After Senator Webb graduated from Annapolis, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps. As a first lieutenant during the Vietnam War he served as a platoon commander with Delta Company, 1st Battalion 5th Marines. He earned a Navy Cross, the second highest decoration in the Navy and Marine Corps for heroism in Vietnam. He also earned the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. Senator Webb's son Jimmy has continued the Webb family's long, proud record of military service to our Nation as a rifleman and Marine Corps Sergeant, served a tour of duty in Iraq with Weapons Company, 1st Battalion 6th Marines. Senator Webb has served just one term but he has made it a productive one, passing the 21st Century GI Bill to provide the same educational benefits to post-9/11 veterans that the World War II ``Greatest Generation'' received. He introduced the bill his first day in office, and saw it enacted into law. More than 800,000 veterans have since received educational benefits through the program. What a wonderful legacy for Senator Webb to have. Senator Webb also dedicated his time in office to refocusing and rebalancing our relationships in East Asia. He has long argued that getting mired in Iraq and Afghanistan was a strategic mistake, and that our long-term interests lie with Asia. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations East Asia Subcommittee, he visited nearly every country in the region, focusing particularly on the countries of mainland southeast Asia and our treaty allies. His 2009 trip to Burma was the first by a U.S. leader in 10 years; the visit is widely credited as the beginning of efforts to change our relationship with that country. Senator Webb remains the only U.S. leader to have met with Than Shwe, the former junta leader, and he also met with Aung San Suu Kyi while she was under house arrest. Senator Webb has also worked continuously to resolve the basing issues with our main ally in the region, Japan, and to help pass a trade agreement with South Korea. A hallmark of Senator Webb's lifelong service to our Nation is his willingness to tackle the tough, unglamorous issues. Here in the Senate, he led an effort to reform our criminal justice system, introducing legislation to establish a commission of experts to review the entire spectrum of the American criminal justice system from drug laws to sentencing, prison conditions, recidivism, and judicial reform. Mr. President, these men and women who will be leaving the Senate soon have made extraordinary sacrifices to serve our Nation. We are fortunate that they have chosen to spend significant parts of their lives in public service. All Americans owe them a debt of gratitude. Those of us who will be in the Senate next month when the 113th Congress convenes can best honor the legacy of our departing colleagues by reaching across the aisle as they have done so many times to forge bipartisan consensus and solutions to our Nation's most vexing problems. The men and women who will be leaving the Senate at the end of this Congress understand that compromise isn't a dirty word; it is the genius at the heart of our political system. We will miss them. Joseph Lieberman

Mr. CARDIN

Mr. CARDIN. I have no further debate. I am prepared to let it go on a voice vote.

Mr. CARDIN. Fine. I know of no further requests for time and I am prepared for a vote. I yield the floor.

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, this amendment is totally noncontroversial. In the bill, they increase the surety bond limits for small businesses from $2 million to $5 million. It was an amendment I worked with Senator Landrieu on in the Small Business Committee. It was included in the Recovery Act. It expired. It has been very successful. It has generated a lot more contracts than anticipated. Making the limit permanent has no cost. This amendment would strike the provision from this bill since it has already been included in the National Defense Authorization Act, which has passed this body at $6.5 million, made permanent. So there is no need to include this provision in the supplemental appropriations bill. I know of no controversy on this amendment. We do not need any debate time. I am hopeful we will clear this for a voice vote tomorrow. I wish to thank Senator Landrieu for her work and Senator Snowe on the Small Business Committee and thank Senator Mikulski for her work. The Small Business Administration's surety bond program provides a guarantee on surety bonds, which are issued by contractors to assure customers that contract work will be completed. The surety bond program gives small businesses critical support to secure work, which will be especially important during recovery and rebuilding efforts after Superstorm Sandy. The underlying bill contains a provision, requested by the administration, which would increase the maximum surety bond guaranteed by SBA from $2 million to $5 million. The Defense authorization conference agreement contains a provision that would raise the maximum to $6.5 million. The amendment strikes the provision in the supplemental related to SBA surety bonds in order to avoid conflicting with the House and Senate's conference agreement in the Defense authorization bill. This amendment is a simple but important technical fix supported by Chairwoman Landrieu and Ranking Member Snowe of the Small Business Committee. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. TESTER addressed the Chair.

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I call up the Cardin amendment that was made in order, amendment No. 3393.