Thomas Carper

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. As many of us recall, on October 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy made landfall in my part of the United States. Its impacts up and down the east coast were devastating and heartbreaking. New York, New Jersey, and parts of New England were hit particularly hard. In Delaware we did not experience the level of devastation that was inflicted on our neighbors to the north and to the east, but our State did receive significant damage. In total there were over 200 deaths attributed to Superstorm Sandy. Today we remember the lives lost and those forever impacted by this storm. As I traveled through Delaware during and after the storm, I saw some of the massive impacts of that storm firsthand, but I saw something else as well. I saw people from all walks of life pulling together, helping one another, and taking care of their neighbors. The impacts of that superstorm are still fresh in my mind today as we continue to rebuild in Delaware, New Jersey, in New York, and in other places up the East Coast. But not only are the impacts of the superstorm still fresh in my mind, something else is as well, and that is this: the extraordinary efforts of ordinary people who left the comfort of their own homes in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and in other States as well to help people they had never met and will probably never see again. They did so not because they were paid to do it, not because someone told them to do it, but because they wanted to do it. This morning I met a handful of Delawareans who were called to action by the Red Cross to volunteer in the shelters and communities in Delaware and New Jersey and New York. Those volunteers included Charlotte and Richard Duffy, Joe Miller, and Glenn Sholley, who are joining us today in the Senate, and we welcome them. In the days and weeks following Sandy, they stopped their lives to help others, and for that we are truly grateful. I thank you all for your extraordinary service. As our rebuilding efforts continue, I am so thankful for the first responders, for the volunteers, and for the Good Samaritans who pulled together not only in Delaware but in our States to the north to ensure the safety and health of our neighbors. A few minutes ago I told the folks who gathered in my office for some light refreshments before we came over here--the same group that is joining us here today--that last night I had heard a speech from Paul Begala, who our Presiding Officer will remember was a key member of President Clinton's team during his Presidency. He was on television a million times and widely known for his wit. We saw another side of Paul Begala last night. We saw his wit as well, but we also heard from him a recounting or retelling of the story of the Old Testament and of the question that was asked in the Bible. He asked the audience: Who asked the first question? Nobody knew. He said, actually, the first question was asked by Abel, who had slain his brother Cain. The Heavenly Father, of course, knew what had happened. He tracked down Abel and said: Where's Cain? And Cain said: Am I my brother's keeper? Am I my brother's keeper? That story is retold in the Bible in a number of places as the Golden Rule, to look out and help other people the way we would like to be helped, treat other people the way we would want to be treated. Not only does that show up in the Old and New Testaments, including in the parable of the Good Samaritan, but it shows up in the sacred scriptures whether you happen to be Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu. It shows up in the scriptures of virtually every major religion on Earth--the idea that we have an obligation to help our neighbors, whoever they may be. In the parable in the New Testament, Jesus is asked by some of the Pharisees: Who is my neighbor? And that is when he tells the story of the Good Samaritan, who ultimately was helped not by someone from his community, not by a clergyman who walked by, but he was helped by somebody from another part of that country who didn't care at all for the fellow who was beaten and left for dead. The financial costs of Superstorm Sandy were also severe and estimated to be in not just the hundreds of millions of dollars but billions of dollars. It will take years to recover from devastation such as this. As my colleagues and I know, it is important we get that recovery right. I want to take a look at a few pictures of Seaside Heights, NJ, before Sandy and after. Before I turn to the photographs on my left here, I would just say to the Presiding Officer that a lot of people who might be watching this across the country on C-SPAN may wonder where Seaside Heights, NJ, is. I wondered that myself, and I am from Delaware, less than 100 miles away. A lot of people have heard of Asbury Park, where Bruce Springsteen is from. Asbury Park is just a little bit north of Seaside Heights, NJ. About 50 miles south of Seaside Heights is a place called Atlantic City that a lot of us have heard of. This is a shot taken in May of 2009 in Seaside Heights, NJ. This is a before shot. This is a little more than 3 years before the hurricane. There are a couple of buildings here where we have these yellow arrows. They are there for a purpose--so that when we look at the after shot we can figure out what happened to those structures. Here is a red arrow on this building. This is about 3\1/2\ years later when Sandy came a-calling. Here we go. These buildings aren't in the same place. They do not look the same. What looked to have been a pier along through here is gone. There used to be roads through here and now there are what appear to be sandy trails. Virtually every house here is badly damaged, many of them absolutely totally destroyed. We have another shot here, same town, Seaside Heights. This is obviously the beach, the boardwalk, and this is an amusement park. A lot of people went there over the years, for decades, and had a great time with their families. They had a roller coaster here. There were a lot of rides here. I must admit I like rides. My wife says: Are you ever going to grow up? I say: I hope not, because this stuff is still fun to me. But here is the roller coaster. Again, this is taken in late May 2009. There is the roller coaster. Let's see what it looks like after Hurricane Sandy. Here is the roller coaster. Here is the roller coaster. It is in the ocean. And here is what is left of the pier and of the amusement park. The power of that storm is demonstrated graphically by these photos, which I said earlier destroyed not just this amusement park, the beaches and the homes in this community, but wreaked havoc throughout the mid-Atlantic and northeastern seaboard and took the lives of over 200 people. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we saw many problems during the recovery phase that held communities back and created great suffering, and not only great suffering, also a lot of anger in terms of the inadequate response, the untimely response, the inept response. Money was not always well spent, the efforts were not well coordinated, and the recovery moved slowly as a result. Thanks in part to the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006, which was shepherded through the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and through Congress by Senators Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman, many of the problems we saw during Katrina's recovery efforts have been fixed, and we have seen a great deal of improvement in the emergency response efforts as a result. I have a friend who, when you ask him ``How are you doing?'' he always says, ``Compared to what?'' So when speaking of how are we doing with respect to the recovery after Superstorm Sandy, I say: Well, compared to what? Compared to Katrina, we are doing great. Can we do better? You bet we can. We have learned a lot, and 7 years later you can tell we have learned not all our lessons but certainly a number of them. That act that was passed about a half dozen years ago required FEMA to bolster their regional offices in order to build strong relationships with State, local, and tribal governments. As an old recovering Governor--and the Presiding Officer is a recovering Lieutenant Governor--we know the Federal Government can't do everything, particularly in responding to emergencies. It is the relationships with the State and the local folks, in some cases with tribal units, with the emergency responders, with the National Guard, and all of the above, that is critical. Those strong relationships not only improve the ability of the Federal Government to respond to disasters, but they also enhance FEMA's capability to support State, local, and tribal governments as they rebuild. That law also required FEMA to coordinate with other Federal departments to write a national disaster recovery strategy. This eventually lead to the National Disaster Recovery Framework, which has helped to organize and coordinate recovery efforts to Hurricane Sandy. A key question we need to ask, however, after a storm such as this, is whether it was an aberration or a harbinger of things to come. I would like to think it was an aberration. There is a good chance it was not. Just a few short years ago, hurricanes hitting the areas along the northeastern half of the East Coast were relatively uncommon. Hurricane Sandy is actually the third major hurricane to threaten or strike the northeastern coast of our country in the last 3 years. Fortunately, we are almost through this hurricane season--knock on wood--without a major storm hitting our coast. Unfortunately, the Northeast, mid- Atlantic, and other vulnerable areas are expected to see more frequent and larger storms such as Sandy in the future. Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office, affectionately known as GAO, added a new area to its recently updated High Risk List--the impact of climate change on the Federal Government and on our country. GAO explained that, among other things, climate change ``could threaten coastal areas with rising sea levels, alter agricultural productivity, and increase the intensity and frequency of severe weather events.'' The GAO also argued the Federal Government is not prepared to deal with the impacts of climate change. I might add State governments and local governments as well are not prepared to deal with the impacts of climate change. They recommended we take a strategic look at them and start to prepare accordingly. The costs associated with responding to and recovering from a hurricane such as Sandy, both in human and financial costs, are so severe we simply cannot afford to face this devastation over and over again. It might have been Einstein who defined the definition of sanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We can't do the same thing over and over. It is a different world in which we live, and we have to respond to those changes. Fortunately, we have seen States take promising steps toward addressing some of the issues GAO has identified. In particular, the States of New York and New Jersey have begun to plan to mitigate against future disasters. We know all too well that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In fact, a few years ago the National Institute of Building Sciences issued a report that concluded that for every $1 we spend on various mitigation measures we can save $4 in response and recovery costs. For $1 of investment we end up saving $4. Through mitigation, then, we can get better results--save money and, most importantly, we can save lives. We must ensure that sound and effective mitigation policies are thoroughly incorporated into this recovery effort. This is especially important as climate change drives the sea level to rise and increases the severity and frequency of coastal storms. By working together, we can rebuild and become stronger by better protecting ourselves from future storms. But in doing so, we can't ignore what I and many experts believe may be the underlying cause of storms such as Hurricane Sandy. It is not enough to just address the symptom--that is the storm, the wind, the sea level rise, the surge--we need to address the underlying cause or causes. As we recover from Sandy and put in place the protections, we need to reduce the impact of the next big one. We would make a mistake if we didn't think about what we need to do to address not just the symptoms of climate change but the underlying cause itself. We have been joined on the floor by my colleague Senator Menendez from New Jersey. Through the Presiding Officer, let me just say to my colleague, we have some folks here today from Delaware who ended up, as I said earlier, in New Jersey, and I think in New York. Our State was hit, but nothing like the Senator's State. These folks, serving in the spirit of the Good Samaritan, with the encouragement and actually the organizational skills of the Red Cross, came to his State, across the Delaware River, in order to lend a hand to people they didn't know, had never met, and will probably never see again. Someday the tables will be turned, someday it will be our State, someday it will be Delmarva that is reeling from the impact of such a storm. We know when that happens, the Senator will be there for us as well. I am pleased to yield the floor for my friend from New Jersey.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, while Senator Chiesa is still on the floor, I want to take a moment to say to him how much we have enjoyed getting to know him, work with him, and come away with a wonderful--not just a first impression but a lasting impression. Governor Christie did the State of New Jersey well by appointing Senator Chiesa to serve as the interim Senator. We had a similar experience with losing an elected Senator when Joe Biden was elected as Vice President and to the Senate at the same time. He had to choose between being the Senator from Delaware or Vice President. I don't know if he ever regrets it, but he made the choice to be our Vice President, as we know. The Governor of our State appointed Ted Kaufman to serve as the interim Senator for 2 years, and he was subsequently succeeded by Chris Coons when Chris was elected a couple of years ago. We have a tradition of folks who are appointed as interim Senators who turn out to do an extraordinary job. Sometimes I wonder--with tongue in cheek--if maybe that is not a better approach, in some cases, for populating this place with men and women from across the country. The Senator from New Jersey has been here for 5 tumultuous months, and he has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly--in some cases the very ugly. If we had more people who would bring Senator Chiesa's values and commitment to comity--not comedy with a ``d,'' but comity with a ``t''--communicating, and his willingness to compromise, not on principles but on policy, this would be a better place and a better country. As the chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, I say on behalf of Tom Coburn, ranking Republican--and on behalf of those of us who have the privilege to serve on that committee--what a privilege it has been for the Senator from New Jersey to be one of our members. We are joined on the floor by Senator Barrasso, and it has been my privilege to serve on the Environment and Public Works Committee with him. As Senator Barrasso knows, Jeff Chiesa came early and stayed late. He asked great questions and brought forth good issues--including the issue of human trafficking, which has reminded us in extraordinary ways of the terrible situation that is faced by millions of women and children in this country and around the world. That is a gift the Senator from New Jersey has brought to this body, and I think ultimately to our country. Senator Chiesa is going to leave us now and sail off into the sunrise, and we look forward to having our paths cross many times in the future--maybe even in Delaware on a summer vacation. My friend can bring his wife Jenny and his two kids. He is always welcomed in the first State. Good luck, God bless, and Godspeed. I thank my friend for serving our country and his State so well.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I say to the Presiding Officer, former Governor Manchin, I wish to follow on the comments we just heard from Senator Portman, who, as he said, served in two administrations--in one of them as OMB Director, in the other as Trade Representative. Before that he had a distinguished career in the House of Representatives. He is someone I am fortunate to serve with on the Finance Committee. I have a lot of respect for his intellect and for his intellectual honesty. Before I talk about the real reason I came to the floor, I feel compelled to say something. As former Governors, the Presiding Officer and I have made tough decisions on spending, we have made tough decisions on revenues, and they are not always well received by people. They are not always well received by people in our own party. I like to say there are three or four things we need to do on this issue to make sure our deficits continue to head in the right direction. I do not worship at the altar of a balanced budget every single year. But what I do believe is that when the economy is strengthened and growing stronger, we ought to be having the deficit heading down, and when we are in a war or when we are in an economic doldrum, then I think it is appropriate to, in some cases, deficit spend. Four things we need to do if we are serious about deficit reduction: No. 1, we need, in the President's words, entitlement reform that saves money, saves these programs for our children and our grandchildren, and does not savage old people or poor people. That is No. 1. No. 2, we need, in my view, tax reform that brings down the top corporate rates--something more closely aligned with every other developed nation in the world. At the same time we are doing that, we need to generate some revenues for deficit reduction to match what we are doing on the spending side. If you think about it, the Senator from Ohio knows and the Senator from West Virginia knows about tax expenditures: Tax breaks, tax credits, tax deductions, tax loopholes, tax gaps, add up over the next 10 years anywhere from $12 trillion to $15 trillion. We are going to spend more money out of the Treasury for tax expenditures than we are going to spend on all of our appropriations bills combined. If we could somehow capture 5 percent of $12 trillion over the next 10 years for deficit reduction, that is $600 billion. If we can match that in a Bowles-Simpson number, such as $2 of deficit reduction on the expenditure side and $1 on the revenue side, we could do about another $2 trillion on deficit reduction on top of what we have already done. Is that a grand compromise that I want and I think the Senator from Ohio wants, I know the Senator from West Virginia wants? It is not a grand compromise, but I would call it a baby grand. A baby grand is certainly better than kicking that can down the road. The last time we kicked the can down the road at the beginning of this year, I remember saying on this floor: We kicked a rather large can down the road not very far. I am tired of doing that. I do not want us to do that. We have maybe our last best chance here in this budget conference in order to do the kinds of things I talked about. Democrats do not want to give on entitlements. I am willing to do that. But I am only willing to do that if Republicans will give on tax reform that generates some revenues. I mentioned there are three things to do. The third thing is to look in every nook and cranny of the Federal Government--everything we do. The Senator from Ohio is a member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. He knows that we focus--we have large, broad investigative powers, oversight powers, authority over the whole Federal Government. There are all kinds of ways to save money, all kinds of ways to save money in this government of ours, just as there are all kinds in big corporations, big businesses. What we need to do is, in everything we do, look at that and say: How do we get a better result for less money in everything we do? I do not know if my friends from Ohio and West Virginia hear this from their constituents, but I hear from Delaware constituents and folks outside of my State these words: I do not mind paying more taxes, I just do not want you to waste my money or I do not want to pay more taxes, but if I do, I do not want you to waste my money. I do not want to waste your money or mine. The fourth thing we need to do to be serious about moving the economy and getting out of this kind of rut we are in right now is to be able to make sure we have some money around that we can invest in the things we know will strengthen our economy. Foremost among those is a strong workforce, capable workforce. The second thing is infrastructure, broadly defined, not just transportation: roads, highways, bridges; not just ports, not just airports, not just railroads, but broadband, all kinds of infrastructure-related items. The third thing is R&D, research and development that will lead to technologies that can be commercialized, turned into products, goods, and services we can sell all over the world. The fourth thing we need to do is to do an even better job--and Senator Portman was the leader as our trade ambassador. He knows what it is all about in terms of knocking down trade barriers. But while we do entitlement reform, we do tax reform, while we look in every nook and cranny of the Federal Government, investing in the three areas I mentioned, we have got to make sure when we develop these new products and services that we can sell them around the world without impediment, we can knock down trade barriers. The Senator has done a lot of work in that regard as well. As the Senator leaves the floor, I will say there are many things for us to work on. I hope we will.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, Dr. Coburn is a tough act to follow, and I am not going to try to do that. But I am happy to serve with him. We come from different parts of the country, different kinds of training, upbringing, and careers, but we have ended up here together in the Senate for the last 9 years and have had an opportunity to lead, first, the subcommittee on Federal financial management--it is a subcommittee of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee--and this year to be the Democratic and Republican leaders of the committee. I enjoy working with him. I find that we have the opportunity to do some really good for our country, and I thank him for letting me be his wingman. I want to just follow on with what Dr. Coburn has said, by asking us to think of how we spend money and what we spend it for in this government of ours. Then I actually have an op-ed that I read recently in our local paper in Delaware that I would like to read into the Record from Dr. Bob Laskowski, who is the CEO and the president of Christiana Care Health System, one of the largest hospital systems not just in our State but one of the largest in our part of the country. Before I do that, I want to follow on to some of Dr. Coburn's comments by talking about our spending in the Federal Government. I would like to think of it as a pie. It is a big pie. A little more than half of the spending pie goes for something we call entitlements-- things we are entitled to by virtue of our age, our station in life, or we might be entitled to Medicare if we are 65 or older, or Medicare if we are disabled and unable to work, or we may be entitled to early Social Security benefits at age 62, full retirement Medicare benefits 5 or so years after that. We may be entitled to benefits because we served in the military or we are a veteran or somebody with a disability. Those are all programs that are called entitlement programs. A lot of people say they are uncontrollable, we cannot do anything to control them, and they have grown like Topsy. Today, if you think of the spending pie, over half of it is for entitlement. Roughly, closer to another 5 to 10 percent of spending today is for interest on the debt. If interest rates were not so low, it would be a lot more than 5 or 10 percent. Fortunately, we are blessed to have very low interest rates, but still our interest as a percentage of that pie is somewhere, I think, between 5 and 10 percent. The whole rest of the Federal government is called discretionary spending, which means we actually have some discretion on how that money is spent. It is not an entitlement program, but we actually have to pass spending bills. We call them, usually, appropriations bills. There are about a dozen of them that cover everything from agriculture to defense, to housing, to the environment, to education, to transportation--you name it. That part of the budget--roughly, close to 40 percent, 35 to 40 percent--is called discretionary spending. More than half of that discretionary spending is for defense--I would say roughly 20 percent of the whole pie, maybe a little more than 20 percent. About 15 percent of the whole pie--a little less than half of the discretionary spending--is for nondefense matters. So if you think about it, it goes something like this: For the spending pie, over half of it is entitlements. Allegedly, those are things we cannot reduce, control. I do not agree with that. Another 5 or 10 percent is for interest. Then we have roughly 40 percent for discretionary spending, the lion's share of which is for defense, and a little less than half of it is for nondefense spending. Think about that--entitlements, interest, defense spending. You set that aside, and for the whole rest of the government you have about 15 percent. That is domestic or nondefense discretionary spending. We could actually eliminate domestic discretionary spending in its entirety--get rid of everything, everything we do in government other than entitlement programs, interest, and defense--and we would still have a deficit. For people who say we can only focus on domestic discretionary spending or squeeze that to reduce the deficit further, the deficit is down from about $1.4 trillion about 4 years ago to about half that today. So we have made progress. It is still way too big, but we cannot get from here to where we want to go in terms of a balanced budget by just focusing on domestic discretionary spending. I would like to say there are three things we need to do. Dr. Coburn has heard me say this more times than he wants to remember. The Presiding Officer has heard me say it a time or two as well. There are three things we need to do if we are serious about deficit reduction, facing the reality of today. No. 1, entitlement reform. These are the President's words: entitlement reform that saves money, entitlement reform that saves these programs for our kids and our grandchildren, and entitlement reform--these are my words--entitlement reform that does not savage old people or poor people, but it is sensitive to the least of these in our society. The second thing we need to do is to focus on revenues. We need some more revenues. If you look at our country last year, when our deficit was about $700 billion--the year we just finished--as I recall, revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product was somewhere in the area of 17 percent, maybe 18 percent--revenue as a percentage of GDP. Spending as a percentage of GDP was over 20 percent, maybe around 21, 22, 23 percent. The difference between revenues as a percentage of GDP down here at 17, 18, 19 percent of GDP and spending at 21, 22, or 23 percent, that difference right there is about a $700 billion deficit from the last year. At the end of the day we need to make the revenues come closer to, actually, the spending. I suggest that we need to take a page out of the book they did in the second term of President Bill Clinton when we had run chronic deficits since 1968. President Clinton asked Erskine Bowles, who was then his Chief of Staff, to work with a Republican Senate and Republican House--a Republican Congress--to see if we could come up with a budget plan that included revenues, included spending, to actually balance the budget. As we all know the story, famously it worked. A Democratic President, working with a Republican House and Senate, with the help of Erskine Bowles and Sylvia Mathews--now Sylvia Mathews Burwell, who was Erskine's Deputy Chief of Staff, later Deputy OMB Director--they got the job done. They reached across the aisle and worked it out. The deficit reduction plan was a 50-50 deal--50 percent on the revenue side and 50 percent on the spending side. They grew the heck out of the economy. As a result, we had four balanced budgets in a row--I think 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001. Harry Truman used to say: The only thing that is new in the world is the history we forgot and never learned. I think as we try to figure out what to do with today's deficits and how to get on an even more fiscally responsible track, it would be smart to look back about 15 years and see how it worked then. For folks who might be watching this around the country, we actually have a budget law. I think our budget law was adopted in 1974. There is an expectation in our Nation's budget law for the President to present us in the Congress with a budget--one budget, not a capital budget and an operating budget but one budget. It is different from the States. It is different from my State, where I was Governor of Delaware for 8 years, where we have a capital budget and an operating budget. But we have one budget. The President usually submits a budget in January, maybe February. This year it was a little late. The expectation here in the Congress, under the law, is that by, say, the end of April--a couple months later--the House and the Senate would have passed something called a budget resolution. A budget resolution--what is that? It is not a budget. A budget resolution is a framework for a budget. It includes not nitty-gritty line-item spending plans for everything--defense and nondefense--but it says, roughly, we will spend this much in these programs, and generally, we will raise this much money in these ways from these revenue sources. It is not very specific, but it is a framework for the budget. I like to think of it as the skeleton, and later on, when we pass appropriations bills, when we pass revenue measures, we put the meat on the bones. That is where the real specificity comes along. For a number of years we have not been able to pass in the Senate, in the House, a budget resolution--they are usually different--and then go to conference, create a conference committee to create a compromise. We have found it difficult to actually come up with a compromise budget resolution--a compromise, a spending plan, a framework for the appropriations bills and revenue measures. This year started more promising because in the Senate here, in April, under the leadership of our Senate Budget Committee chairman Patty Murray of Washington, we actually passed a budget resolution-- sadly, without Republican support. We passed one, and it was one of those like the Clinton years, a 50-50 deficit reduction deal. It did not eliminate the deficit, but it kept it going in the right track. Half of the deficit reduction was on the spending side, half on the revenue side. Over in the House, they passed a different kind of budget resolution. The budget resolution they passed did a little entitlement reform. But that 15 percent of the spending pie I was talking about--the 15 percent that is domestic discretionary spending--was reduced, as I recall, from 15 percent to like 5 percent. Think about that. We would be talking about--aside from entitlement spending, interest on the debt, and defense spending--having about the whole rest of the government be like 5 percent of our spending. That is not my vision of what our government should be about. That is not my vision. And I do not think that is the vision of a lot of people in this body and in this country. So the three things we need to do: No. 1, entitlement reform. It saves money, saves the programs. It does not savage old people, poor people. The second thing, we need some additional revenues. I remember Kent Conrad, when he was our Budget Committee chairman, gave a presentation at a meeting a year or so ago. He talked about revenues. He talked about tax expenditures. As to the tax expenditures that he talked about, he said over the next 10 years we will see about $12 to $15 trillion go out of the Treasury because of tax breaks--tax credits, tax deductions, tax loopholes, the tax gap--$12 to $15 trillion go out of the Treasury for those tax expenditures. He said more money will come out of the Treasury for those tax expenditures-- tax breaks, tax credits, tax deductions, tax loopholes--than all the appropriations bills we are going to pass. Think about that. He said we have a new way to appropriate money, we just do it through the Tax Code. I would say to our Republican and Democratic friends, this is where I think Senator Conrad was coming from. If we cannot figure out how out of $12 or $15 trillion of tax expenditures a year, maybe 5 percent of those that could be reduced or could be eliminated because they serve no useful purpose, something is wrong with us. If we can do 5 percent of, say, just $12 trillion in those tax expenditures, 5 percent would be about $600 billion over the next 10 years. Match that with entitlement spending reductions, that is about $1.2 trillion. That is a pretty good next step to take in narrowing our deficit on top of what we have already done. The third piece, in addition to entitlement reform that saves money, saves the programs for the long haul, and does not savage old people or poor people, some additional revenue, generally from eliminating or reducing tax expenditures, the third piece--and Dr. Coburn was talking a little bit about this. He was talking about the way we spend money. We have a culture in the Federal Government. We have had it for a long time. Big companies have this culture too, and some States as well as counties and cities. I call it a culture of spend thrifts as opposed to a culture of thrift. What Dr. Coburn and I attempt to do with the folks on our committee is look at everything we do in the Federal Government to the extent that one committee can. We like to work with the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, with the General Accountability Office, GAO, the Office of Personnel Management, with the General Services Administration, all of the inspector generals across the agencies, throughout the Federal Government. We like to work with nonprofit groups such as Citizens Against Government Waste and others. We do this in order to figure out what we are doing. How are we spending the taxpayers' money? Are there ways we can do those things, realize the goals we are trying to achieve, by spending less money or getting better results for the same amount of money? We need to do that in everything. One of my colleagues said to me, when I said I was coming over to speak tonight: What are you going to talk about? I said I think I will talk about regular order. We talk a fair amount about regular order around this place. We do not always follow it. Regular order, for the people watching who are tuned in wondering what is regular order, means following the rules. In this case, we have a Budget Act that says the President submits a budget the early part of the calendar year. Congress adopts a budget resolution. We do that about the beginning of May. Then we do our work on preparing appropriations bills and revenue measures. In order to go to a conference on a budget resolution, we have to get agreement. The majority leader will come or the Budget Committee chair will come to the floor and say: I ask unanimous consent to go to conference with the House and to name conferees and begin working out a compromise between the House and the Senate. For many years it was perfunctory. The unanimous consent request was made. We would go to conference with the House. We would go to work on a budget resolution between the two bodies. This year, every time that request has been made--and it has been made dozens of times by Democrats and by at least one Republican--dozens of times--there has always been an objection to keep us from going to conference to work out this compromise. As much as anything, we need to create an environment where we can focus on doing the three things I talked about: entitlement reform, tax reform that raises some revenues through deficit reduction, and try to focus on everything we do and say how do we get a better result, how do we get a better result for less money or the same amount of money. I would say to my Republican colleagues who continue to object: Stop. Please stop. Let us actually have a chance to gather in a room in this building and see what we can hammer out to address, not a short-term continuing resolution but actually a thoughtful, comprehensive spending plan as we did 15, 16 years ago when the Republicans were in the majority here, House and Senate, and we had a Democratic President. We got the job done and helped to continue the longest running economic expansion in the history of this country. I mentioned Bob Laskowski, president and CEO of Christiana Care Health System, a large regional health care system. He did a great job. We are very proud of him in our State. They provide care to a lot of people. He is a doctor and a health system leader. I thought his perspectives on health care reform and the Affordable Care Act were important enough to share on the floor. This comes from an op-ed that appeared in one of our local statewide papers called the News Journal, a Gannett publication. His op-ed was in the News Journal this past week. I am going to read it. It is not that long. It goes like this: With some in Washington promising to speak out against implementation of the Affordable Care Act until they ``can no longer stand,'' it might be a useful reality check to visit an emergency room in any town or city across America. He goes on to say: There you will find thousands of Americans each day that really cannot stand. It is not just because an injury, illness or disease has put them on their backs. Too often, it is because an eminently treatable ailment has been allowed to turn into something much worse--for the simple reason that the patient doesn't have health insurance and couldn't afford to see a doctor until things became so bad that the emergency room was their only option. In the continuing cacophony of criticism around so-called ObamaCare, this crucial fact keeps being lost: Our health care system remains badly broken--and in the absence of reform, it will continue to get a lot worse. I see this--as a physician and as a health care executive; but more importantly, I experience this as the friend of too many neighbors with no health insurance. He goes on to say: I think that might be the reason why 3 in 4 Americans surveyed in a recent Pew Research poll say they oppose efforts to sabotage the law: because they know that the people threatening to derail and defund the Affordable Care Act are not offering a better solution. Ironically, the part of the Affordable Care Act that we are attempting to implement and stand up across the country right now, the health exchanges or marketplaces, is a Republican idea. It was first offered as an alternative to HillaryCare back in the first term of President Clinton. It is a Republican idea, a business idea. But I do not care whether it is a Democratic or Republican idea. It is a smart idea to use large purchasing pools, enable people who otherwise would buy health insurance for one person or five people or for a small business--it is a way for them to bring down the cost of their care, use competition to get better options. It is a smart idea. The idea of another criticism, the individual mandates, people being individually mandated to get health care and if they did not they would maybe face some kind of fine--modest at first, it grows in time--that is not a Democratic idea. Ironically, that is an idea we got out of Massachusetts. The author, the Governor who signed it into law, was the Republican nominee for President last year, Mitt Romney. So what we have tried to do is take some Republican ideas and some Democratic ideas and, frankly, some good ideas. And over half of those who ``oppose'' the law today, say they want it fixed, not scrapped. I agree with that--fixed, not scrapped. They know that in the absence of reform, there are still too many people who use the emergency room as their only source of medical care; too many families and businesses who cannot keep up with the ever-rising cost of health care premiums; and too many Americans who find nothing but frustration when navigating our health care system--who still fill out too many forms, are prescribed too many tests that do not help them and get passed from office to office without anyone guiding them overall care. Beginning [last week], millions of uninsured Americans began to shop for quality, affordable health care through the health insurance marketplaces. These marketplaces are a key element of the Affordable Care Act and represent an important step toward putting quality health care within reach of all Americans. Just as Medicare has enabled seniors to get the care they need to live longer and healthier lives, increasing access to health insurance is vital to unlocking a healthier country, by ensuring something that millions of Americans do not have today: The opportunity to stay healthy through regular doctor visits rather than seeking help only when they get sick. In some cases very sick. It is worth remembering: Health care reform is not about special interests. It is about people like us, our families and our neighbors. It is about fellow parishioners and Little League coaches. It is about a neighbor who cuts himself making dinner and a spouse who finds a worrisome lump. Everyone we know and everyone we love--will need our health care system at some point. Three years after America debated the need for health care reform, millions of Americans who work hard, pay taxes, and raise families still cannot afford to see a doctor. That is wrong. And even though the resistance of some states to fully adopt the Affordable Care Act will tragically still leave some families in those states in the lurch, we now at long last have the unprecedented opportunity to create a system that will work better for us all. We should also remember: Over time, the Affordable Care Act promises to improve the system as much for the shrinking majority of Americans who have health insurance as for those who do not. Access is just the first step. The act provides a blueprint for a new model of care, one that rewards doctors for more coordinated care. Here at Christiana Care [and throughout Delaware] we have seen what happens when we provide that kind of care through reengineered medical practices, known as ``medical homes,'' where doctors are enabled to not only efficiently meet patients' needs but to anticipate them as well. This coordinated approach makes getting care simpler and makes the lives of those getting care easier. It makes quality better; and, by making care simpler, better, and more accessible, it saves money. No law as big or ambitious as the ACA can possibly get it all right on the first try. But let us not forget: When Medicare was signed into law, critics warned seniors would languish in long lines, and that we would all long for the good old days before reform took place. Today, Medicare has helped hundreds of millions of Americans live longer, healthier lives--while reducing the poverty rate among seniors by 75 percent. Dr. Laskowski goes on to write: I believe if these historic changes are given a chance, we will collectively create a system that is defined not by volume, but by value. Over the next several years, I know we can make health care in America more ``people focused'' and less transactional by realizing the best way to provide better outcomes at lower cost is by partnering with patients. As we in health care listen to our patients, we will learn what our patients truly value. Then we will be able to free up resources to help patients get healthy faster and stay well. The Affordable Care Act is a map toward that future. History is being made. I will close by saying: While many of our colleagues argue that the Affordable Care Act will lead to rising insurance costs and lost jobs, the truth is that in Delaware and throughout the rest of the country, millions of Americans are already learning they will be able to find quality health care, insurance plans for a more affordable price. In Delaware and much of the country, millions of Americans will be able to find quality insurance plans for less than $100 a month. I have told my constituents and my colleagues since this debate over health care reform began, this law is not written in stone. We want to make the law better wherever we can, just as we have made the Medicare prescription drug program better, which was largely supported by Republicans. But we actually made it better in the Affordable Care Act. I would urge my Republican colleagues to enable us to reopen our government, to reassure Americans and our creditors in this country and around the world that we will honor our debts. Then let's get to work right away to improve the Affordable Care Act and these insurance marketplaces and come to a consensus on a bipartisan budget resolution that lays out a spending plan that will get us from where we are to where we need to be. Last word. I spent some time in the Navy, and the Presiding Officer spent some time in the military. One of the Presiding Officer's sons may be on Active Duty today. Some of the time we used to fly in and out of Japan in Navy P-3 airplanes. I learned not long ago that in Japan they spend about 8 percent of GDP for health care. In this country, we spend about 17 or 18 percent. Think about that. They spend 8 percent of GDP for health care. We spend 17 or 18 percent. They get better results. For the most part they have lower rates of infant mortality and higher rates of life expectancy than we do. The other thing is they cover everybody. Tonight when folks go to bed in this country, this evening some 40 million will go to bed without health care coverage. The Japanese, smart as they are, cannot be that smart. We cannot be that dumb. We cannot be that dumb. There are ways to get better results for less money, including in the provision of health care. We can work together. If we work together, we can make that a reality. The last thing I will say is I think the Presiding Officer has heard me tell how I love to ask people who have been married a long time what the secret is for being married 40, 50, 60, 70 years. People give me very funny answers. Some are actually hysterical. But every now and then some of them are serious, almost poignant. And I will close with one of them tonight. A couple of years ago I met a couple who had been married over 50 years. I said to them: What is the secret for being married 55 years? They said: The two Cs. The two Cs. I said: What is that? They said: Communicate and compromise. Think about that. Communicate and compromise. I said: That is pretty good advice. I got to thinking about it later, and I thought that is also some pretty good advice and maybe the secret for a vibrant democracy--to communicate and to compromise. We think we were willing to compromise on the short-term spending resolution that is the continuing resolution by agreeing to the numbers set by the Republican House leaders. They do not regard that as a compromise, but I think it was an attempt to compromise. We need to find compromises in a conference on the budget resolution. That is where we should put our money, that is where we should put our efforts in the weeks to come. I would add one more C. Communicate and compromise, as important as they are, maybe a third C would be collaborate. That would be a good one to add. So three Cs: Communicate, compromise and collaborate. It is what the American people sent us here to do. I know the Presiding Officer feels that way, and so do I, as does Dr. Coburn. There are a bunch of us who feel that way. So let's do that. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I have a parliamentary inquiry, if I may.

Mr. CARPER. I have no objection; I can stay 10 minutes, 20 minutes. I would like for the Senator from Oklahoma Dr. Coburn to have a chance to explain what he wanted to say. I don't mean to interrupt.

Mr. CARPER. May I ask unanimous consent that the doctor be afforded another 10 minutes.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I want to thank the Senator from Indiana for invoking the name of one of my favorite actors and directors. I would say to my friend, I didn't think our friend Clint Eastwood's appearance at the Republican National Convention was one of his finest moments, but it is what it is. It is nice to be with my colleague and to follow him on the floor. Madam President, if it were left up to the Senator from Indiana and this Senator, as well as our colleagues here from North Dakota and Rhode Island, I think we could probably work out a pretty good budget deal in a fairly short period of time that raises some revenues through tax reform to reduce the deficit, reforms to the entitlement programs to save money and save the programs for the long haul, and to make sure we don't savage old people and poor people. And while we are doing that, probably we can change the culture of the Federal Government a little so that we focus even more--not on a culture of spendthrift but on a culture of thrift. Those are the things we need to do. And I am always happy to be with him and happy to follow him. It is so nice to be with Senator Coats today. Following up on what Senator Coats has been saying, it reminds me of a phone conversation I had with a Delawarean today. She asked me: Why don't we all just agree to what the Republicans are proposing and adopt a couple of bills or amendments to fund some pieces of the government but not many? And I said: Let's go back a little in time. What I sought to do in that conversation was to explain, in pretty simple, straightforward terms, how the budget process works here--how the budget process works here--and where it has gone awry. We have had a budget law since about 1974. The expectation of the Budget Act is that the President, usually in January or February of every year, will give a budget address. This is what the President and his or her administration thinks we ought to do in terms of revenues, in terms of spending--what our priorities should be. The expectation in the law is also that this body, the Senate, and the House down the hall from here, will agree on a budget resolution sometime by, say late April of the year, for a budget starting October 1 of that same year. For a number of years--about 4 years--we didn't do our job in terms of developing a budget resolution. It was difficult in a divided Congress to do that. So for several years we didn't. Republicans criticized us harshly for not having passed a budget. What they were talking about was a budget resolution. There is a difference between a budget and a budget resolution. In my home State of Delaware, we have three budgets: An operating budget for the State of Delaware, a capital budget for the State of Delaware, and something called grant and aid, which is something the legislature cares a lot about. It is only a couple of percentage points of all our revenue. But there are actually three budgets. Here we have one, and it is a unified budget with capital and operating expenses thrown in together. But there is no real direct corollary between what we do here and what we do in most of our States. Most States have an operating and a capital budget. Here we have a budget resolution. The budget resolution is not a nitty-gritty line- item budget. What it does is to set a framework for what is to follow-- the appropriations bills, roughly a dozen of them--and what we do on the revenue side through the work of the Finance Committee here and the Ways and Means Committee in the House. The budget resolution says: This is roughly how much we are going to spend in these general areas, and this is roughly how much revenue we are going to raise from these general sources. That is a budget resolution. It is, if you will, a framework. I call it the skeleton. It is like a skeleton. Later on we have to come along and put the meat on the bones. The budget resolution is supposed to be adopted here by the end of April. Usually the Senate will adopt one version, our version, and the House will adopt another version. We did that this year, by the end of April, as I recall, and they were different. In our budget resolution we did deficit reduction. We didn't balance the budget over the next several years, but we continued to reduce the deficit. Remember, 4 years ago, the deficit peaked out at $1.4 trillion--$1.4 trillion. This last year that was just concluded we cut it by more than half, as I understand, and we expect it will be brought down again further this year. Should we do better? Do we need to do better? Sure we do. The budget resolution we passed here took a 50-50 approach; half the deficit reduction for the next 10 years will be on the spending side and half will be on the revenue side. The budget resolution adopted by the House of Representatives, as I recall, did nothing on the revenue side, nothing on the Defense side, as I recall, and basically took the savings out of, for the most part, domestic discretionary spending. If we set aside entitlement programs--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid--set aside Defense, and set aside interest payments, the whole rest of the budget--everything from agriculture to transportation, everything else--that is where they took the savings. And they reduced that part of the budget from about 15 percent of all Federal spending down to something close to 5 percent. That is not my vision of what government should be about. Anyway, we came to the end of April, and the Senate and House passed different budget resolutions, and there was an effort here to go to conference--to create a conference committee and for us to send conferees. For people who might be watching and asking: What is he talking about, a conference committee is like a compromise committee-- some Members of the House, some Members of the Senate, Democrats and Republicans, go to this committee we create for just a short period of time to hammer out a compromise. In order to do that, somebody has to come to the floor--usually the leader comes to the floor--to ask unanimous consent that the Senate appoint conferees, Democrats and Republicans, to help create this conference committee and work out a compromise. That request was rejected. It was objected to. It has been objected to again and again and again, whether the person making the unanimous consent to go to conference to work out this budget compromise--it has been made by Democrats or Republicans, at least one Republican. Senator Murray has made the request--she chairs the Budget Committee--close to 20 times, and John McCain, a Republican, and Presidential candidate a couple years ago, long-time friend and colleague, has made the request close to 10 times. He wants to go to conference. He wants to solve the problems. So do I, and I think most of us do. The ways to do it are those things I talked about--entitlement reforms that save these programs, that save some money but don't savage old people or poor people; tax reform that generates, among other things, some revenues that can be used for deficit reduction; and then to focus on everything we do. How do we get a better result for less money in everything we do? Long story short, here we are. It is not the first of May, it is not the first of June, not the first of July, and not the first of August or September. It is the first part of October, and we have yet to be able to get the unanimous consent to form that conference committee to work out a compromise on the budget. That is where we have fallen short. That is where we have fallen short. We hear a lot about obstruction: The majority leader or the President won't let us work with the Republicans on these piecemeal approaches. For everybody here--and I love Dan Coats--but for everybody here in the Senate, we could all come up with our list of four. We could come up with a list of 14 priorities. If you multiply that by 100, that would be 1,400 priorities that ought to be in all this piece work, these piecemeal changes we are going to make to the spending for the next couple of weeks or next couple of months. Why don't we just do this. Why don't we agree to what the Speaker of the House agreed to, and that is a spending level for a short period of time--a continuing resolution, a spending plan, for a short period of time--not for the whole year. In this case, we have been talking about a continuing resolution, a short-term spending bill, that runs about 45 days, until maybe the middle of November. The level of that spending, we can argue about that. But what we ended up doing is, our leader, Harry Reid, talking to John Boehner, Speaker of the House--and he has a tough job. None of these jobs are easy, but they have really tough jobs. But our leader said to the Speaker: What would be a level of spending for those 45 days or 60 days for the short-term spending bill? What level of spending works for you? My understanding is the Speaker vetted that with his folks over there and they came back and said: How about using the level of spending we are at for the last fiscal year, for 2013, and to fund for those 45 or 60 days whatever is covered by the continuing resolution, funded at that level for that period of time? That is not our level. The Democratic level, to be honest, is not $986 billion, which is last year's level for discretionary spending. We were more interested in something like, I would say not $986 billion but about $1.05 trillion, something like that. Something like that, in trillion dollars. So about another $70 billion--that was our number. The House had their number. We agreed to the House number. We said: OK, we agree on the number. Now let's figure out how long we are going to fund the government at the same level as last year. Then the ship ran aground. Our friends over in the House said: That is not enough. We also want to defund Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act. This is not like a proposed bill, this is a law. I was here in the Finance Committee when we debated it, amended it, argued it, reported it out, and here when we voted on it and then the President signed it. It is law. The President ran for reelection on this and was reelected. We pretend it was a landslide reelection. The electoral vote was fairly big, but it was a reasonably close election. But he won, and he won fair and square. When you look at the Electoral College, he won by quite a bit. It has been litigated in the courts. The Supreme Court looked at the one area that some people think is unconstitutional; that is, the idea of having a so-called individual mandate. They said it is constitutional. Where did we get the idea? We got it from Massachusetts. And who was the Governor that signed the Massachusetts law into effect? The Republican Presidential nominee, who then turned around and ran away from his own idea in the Presidential election last year. I think there is some irony to that. Then, on October 1, this week, what happened? I think some good news happened, and the good news is there are 40 million people in our country who didn't have health care who had a chance to sign up for something new and different. It is not socialism, it is not communism, it is not government-run health care. It is a Republican idea called the exchange, the health marketplace. And my understanding is that when HillaryCare was discarded in the early part the Clinton administration, the Republican counterproposal to HillaryCare was something like a large purchasing pool, which in the health care exchange we call the marketplace today. On October 1, all over this country 40 million people who didn't have health care coverage had a chance to start signing up for health care in a large purchasing pool in their State, with a variety of options, health insurance companies competing with each other, driving down costs--in my State, tens of thousands of people; States like Wisconsin, probably hundreds of thousands of people; other States like North Dakota, tens of thousands of people; but States like New York and California, millions of people who don't have health care coverage have a chance to sign up there and take advantage of driving down the price--competition among insurers--and also taking advantage of economies of scale, driving down administrative costs as a percentage of premiums. To buy health insurance in Delaware for families or maybe small businesses with five employees--we would pay a whole lot more money than folks are going to pay on these exchanges, these large purchasing pools. For one thing, the administrative costs are so high when you buy for yourself or a small business; however, when you are buying health insurance for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people, administrative costs are much lower. Competitive forces bring down the prices as well. Our friends in the other party want to pull the plug on the efforts of 40 million people to find health care coverage for themselves. I think that is wrong. It is the law of the land. It is a done deal. It has been litigated. It is going to be with us. And I think some of our Republican friends are not afraid that it is not going to work; I think maybe they are concerned that it is going to work and it is going to actually meet the needs of people. Abraham Lincoln, when talking about the role of government, would say: The role of government is to do for people what they cannot do for themselves. The chamber of commerce in Sussex County in southern Delaware--a rural area--tried to set up a purchasing pool and couldn't do it. They tried it 10 years ago. Another guy, David Osborne, in the book ``Reinventing Government,'' described the role of government and said the role of government is to steer the boat, not row the boat. And the exchanges are really that. The idea is to create large purchasing pools, a partnership between the State and the Federal Government in many States, Delaware and others, but to then let the private sector do its job. These are great examples of government steering the boat and the private sector and other providers rowing the boat. I would like to close with this: People say we ought to change ObamaCare, we ought to change the Affordable Care Act, make significant changes to it. I agree. And the President already made one big change 1 month or so ago when he announced that the employer mandate was going to be delayed for a whole year to give us a chance to stand up the exchanges, make sure they are working, and then to revisit this issue of the employer mandate. The coverage, if you have more than 50 employees--a year from now it will be more than 100 employees they have to cover, I think, but at least more than 50. Some people say we have to change it right now. I want to go back in time 6, 8 years. We debated on this floor the issue of prescription drugs. Should we have a prescription drug program for Medicare? Most people said we should have had it when we created Medicare in 1965. If we could have done as much then with pharmaceuticals as we can do now, it would have been a no-brainer. Prescription drug coverage would have been part of Medicare since its inception. But it wasn't until about 2005 that we actually got to a place where we had some agreement that this is what we ought to do. Ted Kennedy and the Democrats had one idea how to do it, and some of our Republican friends--certainly President Bush--had another one. We ended up with sort of a hybrid--a little more like President George W. Bush's idea--and a lot of our Democrats objected. They didn't say: We are going to shut down the government because we didn't get our way or because we didn't get our specific prescription drug program. They said: Why don't we figure out how to make it better? Almost everybody has heard of the doughnut hole with respect to the Medicare prescription drug program. The way the original program worked is the first $2,000 of pharmaceuticals for a person in Medicare Part D--Medicare paid about 75 percent of the cost. If they used over $6,000 of prescription medicine a year, Medicare paid about 95 percent of the cost, everything over $6,000. But roughly between $3,000 and $6,000-- when the program was introduced and for its first half dozen or so years, if you were between $3,000 and $6,000 roughly in prescription medicine purchases, you got nothing from Medicare. It was all on you. When we did the Affordable Care Act, as our friends from Rhode Island and North Dakota know, we started filling the doughnut hole. Now, if you happen to be in that gap between $3,000 and $6,000, Medicare pays over half and will eventually pay 75 percent. That is the way we took a good program--Medicare Part D--and we made it better, and we can do that with the Affordable Care Act, and we will. For our Republican friends, our friend Winston Churchill once had a great quote. He used to say: You can always count on Americans to do the right thing in the end, after they have tried everything else. This is a tough time. I feel especially bad for those Federal employees across the country who have been furloughed. We are going to bring you back, I hope, this month. My hope and belief is that we will bring you back and make sure you are made financially whole. I say to my Republican colleagues, the next time, whether it is John McCain or Patty Murray or somebody else who asks unanimous consent to go to conference and work out a real budget agreement, don't object. Let's accept that and get on with the work that lies ahead.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Reclaiming my time for a moment--and I note Senator Angus King is patiently sitting over there waiting to speak--I said earlier the cleanest, most affordable form of energy is the energy we never use. The cleanest, most affordable form of energy is the energy we never use. Whoever said that first was a wise man or woman. That is the case here, and so I thank Senator Shaheen for leading us toward that goal.

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

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I rise in support of the legislation coauthored by Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman, the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act. I wish to take a minute to thank them for their leadership and for their tenacity in getting this bill to the floor, struggling through all of the amendments that are being offered to it, trying to make sure we figure out how we can actually save some energy, save some money, and do some good for our environment. I thank the Senator from New Hampshire very much. It is always a pleasure to work with a recovering Governor. We will see where this ends. I hope it ends in a good place. As our economy picks up and our Nation's energy needs grow, investing in energy efficiency is a no- brainer. Energy efficiency investments save money, save money in energy costs, save energy resources, protect our environment, and create jobs. Homeowners and businesses are already investing in energy-efficient technologies. As an extra bonus, many of these technologies are developed right here--not here in Washington but right here in America. Earlier this month I visited a company called WhiteOptics, and they are producing advanced light bulb technology. When it is used, it can deliver more light than traditional fluorescent bulbs for half the energy. Think about that, more light for half the energy. The payback for that technology is not just less than a decade, not less than 5 years, it is less than 1 year. Since the cost of lighting can comprise up to 50 percent of a manufacturer's energy bill, it is a relatively easy and inexpensive way to save money and, as it turns out, a lot of money. Through investments in advanced light bulbs, light technology, and other energy efficiency measures, our country has the potential to save as much as 40 gigawatts of power by 2018. How much is 40 gigawatts? Think of 80 coal-powered plants, all of them going full blast, is about 40 gigawatts. Unfortunately, barriers such as upfront costs and inadequate efficiency standards are preventing our country from realizing our energy efficiency potential. The Shaheen-Portman bill breaks down many of these barriers. Again, I think voting for it is a no-brainer. As an added bonus, the legislation before us will help us rein in Federal spending too, because it includes provisions that will reduce Uncle Sam's energy consumption from across the country and around the world. To illustrate that point, let me use an example from the world of sports. Similar to a lot of Americans, I spent some time the past two weekends watching some terrific football games. But on Labor Day I took the 12-year-old boy I mentor and his twin sister to see the final game of the season of the Wilmington Blue Rocks, a Single-A team, Minor League team that played in the Carolina League. It turned out to be a very good game. One of the highlights again-- the Presiding Officer is from Massachusetts and the prime sponsor of the bill is from New Hampshire. My guess is they are Red Sox fans, and we used to be a farm club for the Red Sox. Now we have a farm club of the Royals, but the minor league game we went to was terrific. One of the highlights occurred when the Blue Rocks came close to pulling off a triple play. You don't see that very much. It is very rarely seen and done in the majors, much less in the minors. While our Blue Rocks came close to pulling off a triple play that day, our Federal Government can actually pull one off, at least figuratively speaking, by reducing the amount of energy we consume every year in the Federal Government. Here is how we do it. First, you cut down on the carbon and the air pollution that is going into the air and we thus improve American's health. Second, we cut down on Federal spending. The deficit is down--what did we hear at lunch today--about $1.4 trillion 4 years ago. We are down to something under $700 billion now. It is still too much, but we have seen the deficit come down by over half, and this can help bring it down a bit further. The third point is we can cut down unemployment by creating good American jobs to produce, install, and to maintain the energy that is needed for energy efficiency technology, a lot of which I said earlier is made right here in the USA. We are not talking minor leagues here either, at least in terms of savings. This is big league stuff. The annual energy bill for the Federal Government is around $25 billion. I think the Federal Government is the largest consumer of electricity in the country. Of that, some $7 billion alone is spent on energy to operate Federal buildings, $7 billion just for the buildings alone. Last Congress, my colleague from Delaware, Senator Chris Coons, and our colleague Sheldon Whitehouse--from another small State--and I tried to pull off a triple play of our own. We produced a bill that was called the Reducing Federal Energy Dollars Act. It focused like a laser on greening down Federal energy costs. Today we are happy to see that many of its provisions have been incorporated in the Shaheen-Portman bill. If we pass it, we could pull off that triple play after all. One of those provisions takes what works and seeks to ensure we do more. Here is just one example. Not too long ago the Veterans Affairs Department, which runs the VA for us, mandated that employees turn off their computers at the end of the workday. This is not the whole Federal Government. This is one department of the Federal Government, the VA. The agency also began acquiring more energy-efficient computers and software. Combined, the Department plans to save about $32 million over the next 5 years--$32 million. This is not too shabby. Again, that is just one Federal department. The bill before us calls on all agencies to adopt these kinds of energy and cost-saving techniques. Another provision included in the Shaheen-Portman legislation adopted from our earlier legislation ensures that we build Federal buildings with some of the most energy-efficient technology that is available. These are buildings that will be with us for not just a couple of years, maybe not just for a couple of decades, they could be here a whole lot longer. They could be around when all of these pages down here are dead and gone. We still have these Federal buildings. They can still be energy efficient, but if we build them wrong, they will never be energy efficient. Maybe so. This is a chance to get it right from the start. Overall, the Shaheen-Portman bill makes major strides in promoting Federal energy efficiency. I wish to applaud its authors, both of whom I have huge respect, love and affection for, especially my former colleague in the National Governors Association. However, there is a small provision in the bill that was overlooked and one that, if added, could make possible even greater gains. I will talk about that for a minute. Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Congress overlooked geothermal as a renewable for the purposes of Federal energy requirements. Renewable thermal energy is clean, it is efficient, and it is often more cost-effective than electric energy. This is why I have joined a colleague, Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, in offering amendment No. 1851--if you are keeping score--which allows geothermal to be considered a renewable energy for Federal requirements. Our amendment gives Federal agencies another valuable option as they consider the most cost-effective way to meet their energy needs and obligations. It is another option. I again wish to thank our chair and ranking member of the energy committee, as well as the sponsors of this bill, the authors of this bill, in support of our amendment. Before I close, there is something I have to get off my chest. This is a bipartisan bill. This is a bill that seeks to do a number of things I said earlier. This is a bill that tries to reduce our energy consumption in this country, especially the energy consumption of the energy consumed in the Federal Government. This is legislation that tries to do some good things for the environment. This is legislation that helps to further reduce our budget deficits. It helps keep them coming down. This is a bill that has bipartisan support and does so much good. People offer amendments to this bill, hopefully, that are germane amendments. Let's debate them and have a chance to vote on them, up or down, but let's do it and let's move on. Let's not be dilatory. Let's not just offer amendments that have nothing to do with this legislation. Let's address some real problems--not just address them, but let's solve them. Let's solve them. And we can do that. We have plenty of work to do on this front. I wish to see us do it. We will be a lot more successful in this regard if we work together to foster what I call a culture of thrift. We need to look at everything we do in this government that has discretion and will probably get a better result for less money. One of the ways is how do we provide energy for Federal buildings and for Federal employees to use in the work we do for our taxpayers-- how do we get a better result for less money or the same amount of money. Almost everything needs to be on the table if we are to continue to whittle down the size of our Federal budget and restore our Nation's fiscal challenge for my children, for our children, and for our grandchildren. I think if we accomplish this while at the same time creating some well-paying jobs at home and save energy, we will come close to completing that triple play that the Wilmington Blue Rocks came very close to pulling off a couple of weekends ago. In doing so, we will give something for our fans--there are not a lot of them these days--to talk about for seasons to come. The last thing I wish to say is this. One of the amendments that is offered, maybe a couple of the amendments offered to this bill have to do with health care. I serve on the Finance Committee and worked a fair amount on the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare. The heart and soul of the Affordable Care Act, as far as I am concerned, is the creation of the health exchanges, Federal exchanges, or they call them marketplaces. The idea is to let everybody in this country--not everybody but a lot of people in this country who don't have health care coverage or who have paid an arm and a leg for it--have the opportunity to participate in a large purchasing pool in their own State. We have something such as the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan that all Federal employees, Federal retirees, including legislators, Members of the legislative branch, judges, folks throughout the country, Federal retirees, their dependents, postal employees, postal retirees, their dependents, everybody who wants to purchase their health insurance through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan can do that. It is up to about 7 million or so people. We don't have that many Federal employees, but there are a lot of people who use that plan to buy their health insurance. It is not free. It is not cheap. One of the things that helped drive down the cost is every health insurance company worth their salt in this country wants to sell through this large purchasing pool, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan purchasing pool. Because of the large size, the economies of scale, the administrative costs to those who get their insurance through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan, the administrative costs are not 30 percent of premiums, they are not 20 percent of premiums, they are not 10 percent of premiums--they are 3 percent of premiums. What we do with the Affordable Care Act is we allow every State to set up a health care exchange, a large purchasing pool, also called health insurance marketplaces. If you are an individual, if you have a family, a small- or medium-sized business up to 50 employees, you can buy your health insurance through the exchange in the health insurance marketplace in your State. One of the stipulations--I am not sure who authored it, but I am pretty sure it is a Republican member of the Senate Finance Committee. It may have been Senator Grassley. Somebody authored an amendment that required and said if these exchanges are such a great idea, why don't we require us, Members of Congress, and our staffs to buy our health insurance through the exchanges? If that is such a great idea, why don't we too? That is what the legislation says. We don't get our health insurance free. Members, our staff, folks who work for the Federal Government, we don't get it free. We have to pay a percentage of our premiums. Most large employers pay something. The employer contribution, the average is about 70 percent. The Federal Government pays about 70 percent of our health insurance premiums. We have to pay the rest. I think for us to set an example, I think the kind of example we should set would be if we set up these health insurance exchanges, why don't we participate in them. We are going to. Some people think we get free health care. Some people think we get a pension after 2, 4 or 6 years. People see this stuff on the Internet and they believe it. It is not true. We say in the Navy if you want to find out the truth, ask for the straight skinny. That is what you call it in the Navy, the straight skinny. Tell me the straight skinny. Give it to me straight. The great skinny is these health exchanges are a very important component of the Affordable Care Act. Every State will have an opportunity to set them up. Individuals, families, small- and middle- sized businesses will have an opportunity to participate. They will get better options to choose from. In the end, I think we will get better prices and they will be better off. Small businesses that participate, small- and middle-sized businesses will be better off as well. The last word, speaking of the truth, the words of Thomas Jefferson come to mind. Thomas Jefferson said a lot of great things, but one of my favorite things he said was if the people know the truth, they will not make a mistake. If the American people know the truth, they will not make a mistake. Our job is to make sure they know the truth about the Affordable Care Act, the kinds of options and opportunity they can find through these exchanges and through these health marketplaces across the country. Let's stick to the truth. In closing, the truth is this bill that is before us shouldn't be a vehicle for health care reform, getting rid of it or expanding health care reform; this should be a roadmap to help us save money, clean our environment, preserve energy, reduce energy, and foster American technology. That is great. That is not a triple play. If they had four outs in an inning, there would be four of them. Senator Shaheen--Senator Portman is not with us--my hat is off to both of them. Thank you for leading the way. We are happy to be, as we say in NASCAR, drafting on you, and hopefully we will draft right across that finish line with you. Thank you very much.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, most of our colleagues have finished, a lot of them packed up and are heading back to their home States to begin the August recess. I wish them all well, especially the one who just preceded me on the floor tonight. I stand between the staff here and the pages who are wrapping up their summer with us--at least a month with us. They will be heading back to their home States across America. We had one of our pages--a page, actually, in the last group, at the beginning of the summer--from Delaware, and we are very proud of her and all the ones who have been here. I have told them they are among the best group we have ever had-- even that guy from Arkansas, whose mom used to sit right down here in the row next to Mark Pryor and me. I thank the staff for their hard work throughout the course of this year. I think we are in a good place, and the Senate is starting to act more like the Senate of old. We are beginning to govern a little more from the center, and Democrats and Republicans are looking to find new ways to work together on a wide range of issues. I am especially pleased with the progress we made on the Federal student loan program, again trying to make sure the program is available and at a reasonable interest rate cost to help make sure a lot of students, young and old, if they need help, can sign up for student loans late this summer and fall and then go back to school and complete their education. Senator Enzi used the numbers 80-20. In the time I have known him, he has talked about the 80-20 rule, of which he may be the architect. The 80-20 rule is something like this: Around here, we agree on about 80 percent of the stuff and may disagree on about 20 percent of the stuff. But in the end, why don't we just focus on the 80 percent we agree on and set aside the 20 percent we don't agree on and then take that up another day? That is the spirit Senator Tom Coburn, who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and I have taken to an issue that needs to be addressed, and that is a path forward in making sure we have a strong postal system in this country, as we have had for over 200 years. We need to have a strong, vibrant, financially strong, and sustainable postal system for a long time, for as long as we are going to be a country. The nature of our needs and the way we communicate has changed dramatically. I remember finding in my parents' home, oh gosh, about 5 or 6 years ago, when, after my dad had died, my mom was going to move out of her home in Florida up close to my sister in Kentucky, this treasure trove of love letters my parents exchanged during World War II. For others of you whose parents have been in similar situations and whose folks were part of the ``greatest generation,'' you may have uncovered a treasure trove of letters like that as well. They wrote literally every day--just about every day through the war. I remember that the happiest days I spent in Southeast Asia, in the several tours I served there in the early 1970s, the happiest days for us each week were the days we got the mail. Those were the best days-- letters from home, cards, postcards, newspapers, magazines. Those were great days. Our troops in Afghanistan still get mail. They still get letters and postcards and birthday cards, Father's Day and Mother's Day cards, but it is different because they have Skype and cell phones and a lot of other ways to communicate. I asked my staff recently to go back 12 years ago to when I first came here and tell me how many e-mails we got for every letter we sent--tell me how many e-mails we got for every letter we sent and received. It turns out for every 1 e-mail we received, we received 10 or 12 letters. That was just like 10 or 12 years ago. Then I asked them to tell me what it is today, and it has flipped. It is just the opposite. For every letter we get, we receive roughly 10 or 12 e-mails. So the way we communicate in this country has changed, and that is just one clear example of it for us here on Capitol Hill. The Postal Service has struggled much like the U.S. auto industry did in the last decade or two to try to make a go of it. The auto industry found themselves in a situation where they had more plants than they needed, more suppliers than they needed, they had really in some ways more different models than they needed, and they had, sadly, more employees than they needed given their market share, which was about 85 percent when I was in Southeast Asia, and it dropped to about 45 percent 3 or 4 years ago. Fortunately, the auto industry in this country has revived, is vibrant, and is coming back. They are hiring and building cars--award-winning, highly energy efficient cars. The auto industry was an industry that had to retool itself and right size itself for the 21st century, and they have done that and done it well. The big three in the United States are back and building some of the best cars in the world. We are proud of the work they do, and they are not only hiring people but are paying bonuses to their people, and it has turned out to be a really great success story. These were companies that were literally going into bankruptcy--GM, Chrysler--not that many years ago. They are back, and we are a better country. Thank God we helped them get back. And Ford builds great vehicles. What do we do about the Postal Service? The Postal Service has about 7 million people working for it or who have jobs that are related or are connected directly or indirectly to the Postal Service--7 million jobs. What do we do about them? I think what we need to do and are trying to do is contained in the legislation Dr. Coburn and I are introducing tonight, which we have worked on for the last 6 months. I really thank him and his staff, especially Chris Barkley, who is here on the floor with us, who has worked very closely and hard with John Kilvington, who is a member of the majority staff at the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. We want to thank a lot of people, Democratic and Republican staff, majority and minority staff, for the terrific work they have done to try to find the middle, to focus on that 80 percent we can agree on, and the 20 percent we can't agree on, we will put off until another day. The legislation we have written, put simply, addresses how we make possible and ensure that this Postal Service--which was literally spelled out and called for in our Constitution all those years ago--is still relevant today; that it is able to be financially viable today and help meet our communication needs today in a different age, in a digital age. They can do this. They can do this. There is a lot in the legislation that will help make that possible. We have not written a perfect bill. The ones I have ever written or coauthored or authored, believe it or not, are not perfect. We do our best, and then we introduce the legislation and ask other people who have similar or different views to tell us what they like about our legislation and what they do not like. In introducing this legislation, we would invite folks from around the country, whether they happen to be residents, consumers, people living in homes, families who rely on the mail, whether they happen to be businesses that use the mail broadly or whether they happen to be folks who send out magazines or catalogs or other nonprofit groups or other folks who work for the Postal Service, the employees, those who are retired, the customers of the Postal Service--we welcome their input as they have a chance to look over what we have written. We ask them to see if they can help us make it better. Over in the House of Representatives, Congressmen Issa and Cummings have been working, along with their colleagues, on legislation. It has been reported out of committee over there, I think on a party-line vote. One of the things that was important to me was to write a bipartisan bill. Dr. Coburn wanted us to write a bipartisan bill. Neither one of us got everything we wanted. The nature of compromise is there are some things that, frankly, you are not all that enamored with, and that is the case here. Our pledge going forward is to continue to work together, to ask Democrats and Republicans to help us improve on this legislation. The challenge for us is this: In a digital age where people use Skype and Internet and Twitter and all, how do we enable the Postal Service to use what is truly unique--and it is a unique company, if you will; it is a public-private company, although a big company, the second largest employer in the country, and it is a business that goes to every mailbox in this country 5 to 6 days a week--to make a profit, to be financially sustainable, and to meet our communication needs without a huge ongoing reliance from the taxpayer, from the Treasury, to do that? I think they can do it. I think they can do it. I think the legislation we have written will help make that possible. I want to say a special thanks to a number of folks. I want to thank the Postal Service, led by Pat Donahoe, the Postmaster General; the Board of Governors there, which is part of the Postal Service: the folks who represent hundreds of thousands of postal workers through the union; the businesses across the country that use and rely on the Postal Service; and a lot of customers--regular people who have given us their ideas and shared their ideas with us from towns large and small, cities and States large and small. We look forward to their input and their criticism--constructive, we hope--to make this legislation even better. I would again say to our staffs who worked so hard to get us to this point a very special thank you. To our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, we look forward to working with you to make what we think is a good bill even better. I like to say that everything I do, I know I can do better. If it isn't perfect, make it better. And my last thought on this is that the road to improvement is always under construction. So we have some more work to do, and we will take what is a good bipartisan bill and hopefully make it a lot better. Madam President, with that, I will say good night to you. I look forward to seeing you in about 5 or 6 weeks. My best to you and the people you so ably represent in New Hampshire. God bless. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I think what I would like to do is try to set this discussion this afternoon in context if I can. One of the things I focus on a lot--I know the Presiding Officer does as well back in Delaware--is how do we create a nurturing environment for job creation and job preservation. I think that is one of the most important aspects of government. That is not the only one. One of the best things you can do to help people is make sure they have a job. One of the ways to strengthen our economy is to make sure we are making smart investments with Federal, State, and local moneys as well as public funds. One of the ways we create that nurturing environment is to make sure we have a world-class workforce; that folks coming out of our high schools can read, write, think, do math, have science skills, technology skills, a good work ethic. Other parts of the nurturing environment include access to capital; that is, to money, commonsense regulations, some certainty with respect to the Tax Code--a Tax Code that makes sense, is not burdensome--access to elected officials, modern infrastructure, broadly defined. Those are some of the elements. But if we are going to be successful as a country in this century, we need to invest, among other places, in a world-class workforce, those kinds of skill sets. That is not just college, not just in postsecondary, it is almost from the cradle well into their lives. A second area where it is important for us to invest is infrastructure, broadly defined: roads, highways, bridges, rail, ports, airports, water, wastewater, broadband deployed all across the country--those are the kinds of investments that will pay great dividends in the form of a stronger economy. A third area we need to invest in is research and development. We were reminded by Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, of the kind of impact sequestration is having on our abilities to invest in all kinds of health-related areas and pharmaceutical areas, medical areas. They are finding it difficult to make the kind of investments needed to be made. Part of what we need to do is invest in the kind of research that can be commercialized and turned into goods and products we can sell not just in America but all over the world. That is sort of the context. In my view, in the end this is how we strengthen our economy, how do we grow the economic pie for our country and citizens. Going back to the first item I mentioned is a world-class workforce. It doesn't start when people graduate from high school and go off to college, whether junior college or whether it is a certificate program. It is what we do before they ever go the to first grade, the kinds of investments that are made before kids ever go into kindergarten, at the age of 5 in most States. But today's debate is on college loans. I will focus on that. Let me remind us, the investments we do not make in the lives of children when they are young, before they ever go to kindergarten, can be demonstrated in Head Start. We only fund about half the kids in this country who are eligible for Head Start, only half. We fund roughly half the kids who are eligible for what is called title I, special education programs in our schools to make sure that, if they are way behind, they have a chance to at least catch up a little bit. We fund half the kids eligible. Some of my colleagues said we should provide free college education for people; that should be our policy. We are not even meeting our obligation to fund Head Start for half the kids in the country, fund special education title I for half the kids in the country who are eligible. We have a $750 billion budget deficit this year. It is down from $1.4 trillion a couple of years ago, but it is large. It is going to come down for a while and then jump back up a number of years down the line. I think for us the question is how do we get a better result for less money in almost everything we do. In a way college loans are the symptom of the problem but not the underlying problem. The underlying problem is less the Federal student loan program, it is more the cost of education, what we are spending. My wife and I put two boys through college in the last half dozen or so years and we have a pretty good idea of what it costs to go to school these days. They got a good education but, boy, it costs a whole lot. One of the things we need to be focused on when we have this debate is what can we do to make sure our young people get a good education but how do we make sure it is done in a cost-effective way. There is some interesting work going on in places such as MIT, Harvard, Stanford, that I think is informing us all in that discussion. Let's talk about the program before us today, the student loan program. For a number of years we set the rate cap at 6.8 percent and then during the great recession we lowered that cap so the top rate students would pay on their student loans, Federal student loans, was 3.4 percent. That period of time expired more than a year ago, June 30 of last year, and so the rate was supposed to pop back up to 6.8 percent where it had been previously as a cap on what could be charged to students. June 30 a year ago we were not sure what to do and we said let's kick the can down the road and put it off a year, the date of decision, and we will decide by June 30, 2013, what the new policy should be. We got here on June 30, 2013, and some were willing to kick the can down the road for another year and deal with it then. The President said we cannot do that. We can't keep doing that. The President said we need to put in place a policy, a commonsense policy that is fiscally responsible but also that is morally responsible to the least of these in our society. I think we have both a fiscal imperative here, given the large deficits we face, and we have a moral imperative here to make sure the least of those in our society have a chance to have the ability to go to college and get a college education--be more productive in our society. A lot is being said about the different rates. There are two numbers we ought to keep in mind. People have said that in years to come interest rates will go up. I suspect they probably will go up since they are pretty low at this time, but we don't know. We have had Senators come to the floor and say the interest rates will be this amount or that amount. Who knows. We don't know. What we do know is that under the current law right now and unless we pass something and get bipartisan support as well as the support of the President, the interest rate is going to be 6.8 percent for some time. If we adopt the bipartisan proposal that a number of us are offering-- it is a tripartisan proposal, actually, with the support of the President--the rate for the student loans this year will not be 6.8 percent, it will be 3.86 percent. If the student takes a loan this year, that rate doesn't go up. Even if interest rates go up, they will owe 3.86 percent on the loan that students take out this year. If they take out another loan in the following school year and the rate is 4.1 percent, or whatever that rate is, that is what they will pay on that second loan for the balance of the loan, whether it is 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, or 20 years. As interest accrues on these student loans over the next 2, 3, and 4 years while someone is in school, a reasonable question to ask is: Who pays for the accrued interest? If the student is in school, as most of us have been, the interest accrues. In the past, we have had subsidized loans for low-income students and unsubsidized loans for those who have a higher income. For a number of years, the student who had the subsidized loan--the lower income student--would accrue interest on their loan for year 1, year 2, year 3, year 4, and year 5. As for the subsidized student, the Federal Government has paid the accrued interest. Then when they graduate from school and walk away, they don't owe that interest. It has been paid for--forgiven, if you will. For the unsubsidized higher income student, the Federal Government defers the interest, but eventually interest--eventually it has to be paid by the higher income student. We don't change that. We leave that in effect. Who pays the accrued interest for the lower income students? The Federal Government. When they graduate school, then they have an obligation to pay that interest and the principal on their own. As I have talked to my colleagues, I find that not everybody knows what I just mentioned about the lower rate. As far as the example I just gave, if the rate for the student loan taken out this fall is 3.86 percent and the next year the rate is 5 percent or 6 percent, the House let's the rate go up each year. A permanent, assigned rate would not be in effect when the loan is taken out. Somebody graduates and they go to work. In this example, they find a job that pays $25,000. That is one person who has no spouse or kids. Let's say that person has $45,000 worth of debt. How much can they be compelled to pay in interest starting the year after they graduate? The answer is not $1,000 a month or $500 a month. The answer is $97 a month, and that is it. There is a mathematical formula where we take their income, less what the poverty level is for that person, multiplied by 0.15 percent. In this case it is $97 a month. Then we have this example. Let's say Sally gets married, has a child, and has a family of three. Let's say the family of three is making $40,000 a year and they have $45,000 worth of loans. How much can they be compelled to pay in interest? Again, there are three people in the family with $45,000 in loans. How much can they be compelled to pay? It turns out to be about $120 a month. Not many people realize this is the law, and it is going to stay the law under the tripartisan proposal. How about if somebody goes to work for the Federal Government or State government or local government or they go to work for a nonprofit and they do so at some sacrifice. Maybe they could make more money in the private sector, but they have this urge or compulsion for public service. After 10 years, their loan will be forgiven. If they are current on their loan, their loan will be forgiven after 10 years of public service. That has been the law and that would remain the law. How about if they don't work in public service? What if they don't work for the State, local or Federal Government? What if they don't work for a nonprofit with a 501(c) designation? Let's say they are current on their loan. After 25 years, their loan is forgiven as well. We can argue about the rate we use to determine what graduates, undergraduates or families would pay on their loan after the student graduates and whether it makes sense to peg or key that rate off the 10-year Treasury note. I think the 10-year Treasury the President has recommended is a reasonable place to begin. Some have said we should use the Fed funds rate. What is the Fed funds rate? That is the rate that is charged overnight when one bank loans money to another bank overnight. Some people say that should be the rate. This is not an overnight loan from one financial institution to another, so I don't think the Fed funds rate is appropriate. Some people said we should use a 90-day T-bill rate. This is not a 9- day loan. A 90-day T-bill rate may make sense for credit card interest rates, but a 5-year, 10-year, 15-year, 25-year student loan, I don't know that a 90-day T-bill rate makes a lot of sense as the interest rate for us to use. Some people have said: Why don't we use a rate that might be charged for a 3- or 4-year car loan? This is not a car loan that is collateralized with a car. This is not a 20-, 25-, or 30-year mortgage that is collateralized with a house. This is a long-term loan that is not collateralized. What the President has said--and I and our bipartisan group agree--is that it makes sense to use a 10-year Treasury note and peg the rate off of that and add to that a modest fee--in this case close to 1.5 points--to make sure the program is soundly run and doesn't make the deficit larger. We have heard about some large numbers assigned as to what this amounts to in terms of a transfer from students to the Federal Government. The President's original proposal had a very large amount, under his initial proposal, going from students to the Treasury, and he was going to use that money to pay for Pell grants. We would actually cover the cost of the Pell grant increases. We don't do that in our program. What we tried to do is to take the very large transfer of money in the President's proposal to the Treasury and to change that and scale that down and come as close as we could to eliminating it. This is about a $1.2 trillion college loan program, and that is about as close as we could come to eliminating the transfer, if you will, from students to the government to about $600 million to $700 million. That is a lot of money, but out of $1.2 trillion, somebody told me it works out to $2.50 per student who is getting a loan. If we can bring it down to zero from $600 million or $700 million, that would be great. Let me conclude with these thoughts: Should we have a Federal student loan program? I am sure some people think we shouldn't, but I think we should. Should it be one where we use the Government's purchasing power to make it possible for people to access credit so they can go to school? I think we should. Should we allow people to use the Federal money the Government borrows--should we let them have that money at below Government cost? When we do that, it makes the deficit go up and it makes us squeeze programs such as Head Start and the Title I Program. It is like robbing Peter to pay Paul. I think this is a good proposal. This proposal will use the Government's borrowing power and will be able to provide a lower-than- market rate for a lot of students. Students will be able to lock in the lower rate. It will then provide some help--with the Federal Government paying for the accrued interest--for the lower income students who have the subsidized loans. During the time they are in school, the Government picks it up, and they don't have to pay it back. It is covered by the Government. This will make sure that when students graduate and get a job that doesn't pay a lot of money, there are significant limits on how much interest they can be compelled to pay in a year. If somebody goes to work for the Federal Government, State government, local government, nonprofit or public service, after 10 years--if they are current on their loan--it is forgiven. For a person who doesn't go into public service but is current on their loan and still owes a ton of money after 25 years, their loan is forgiven. That is not heartless or unfair. I think it is pragmatic and reasonable. I think it makes sure we meet our fiscal obligation for the taxpayers. At the same time, we are meeting our moral obligation for those who need to borrow money to go to college. I think there was a UC request--as I was beginning to speak--from a Senator from a State smaller than Delaware. I believe he had a unanimous consent request to speak immediately following my remarks. I yield with great pleasure for my Army buddy, the Senator from Rhode Island, Jack Reed.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I wish to say thank you to Senator Manchin, former Governor Manchin, for his willingness to let me slip ahead of him for a few minutes. He is going to talk about the birthday of the State in which both of us were born, West Virginia. I am happy to be here to cheer him on and to applaud all the good work that goes on in my native State and the great work he is doing. The Presiding Officer has a baseball team up there in Massachusetts, those Red Sox, and every now and then there is a pitcher who telegraphs a pitch. I wish to telegraph a pitch this afternoon. I was surprised to find out last month from the chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, when I was down at the Mexican border of South Texas, that three out of every five people who come into our country illegally in Texas come not from Mexico, but they come from Central American countries. They come from Guatemala, they come from Honduras, and they come from El Salvador--3 out of 5, 6 out of 10. For the most part, they don't realize what they are getting into. They don't realize the risks they face on their way to the north to go to the border of Mexico and even when they get across the border into the United States. The dangers they face are of getting robbed, raped, beaten, drown in the river, and die of starvation and dehydration in the desert. Finally, they get to this country at a time when employers are tightening up in terms of whom they actually hire. They are not hiring those who are here and undocumented. There is the prospect of detention, not a very pleasant experience, followed shortly thereafter by literally being transported back to their native countries. Most of the people who are trying to get here from those three countries, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, don't know what they are getting into. They need to know what they are getting into. When I was Governor, as part of the 50-State deal negotiated by the States' attorneys general, you may recall, with the tobacco industry, we created a foundation out of that and called it the American Legacy Foundation. We ran something called a truth campaign. The idea was to convince people, such as these pages, not to start smoking and, if they were smoking, to stop. It was hugely successful. What we need is something similar to that, particularly in those Central American countries, where the majority of people are now coming from in order to get into Texas and to the United States. The other thing I would have us keep in mind, we have spent a fair amount of resources in this country trying to help the Mexicans go after the drug lords and to quash the drug trade. What is happening is it is akin to squeezing a balloon. The bad guys in Mexico have worked their way down to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and created mischief there, setting up a drug trade, creating a lot of violence, and making life very unpleasant. What you have in those countries is not a good situation. One can understand why people want to get out of it: for jobs, hope, and for personal safety. One of the things we have done to help in Mexico--and we are part of the problem. Our country's consumption of illegal drugs has created this problem for Mexico. This deal where drugs come north and guns go south--we are part of that problem, and we need to acknowledge that. But we want to be part of the solution in Mexico, and I think we are playing a constructive role. We need to be part of the solution in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala and do a similar kind of thing we are doing in Mexico. Part of that is to help a little on their own public safety, the law enforcement efforts in those three countries. Part of it is helping on economic development, job creation, so people don't feel the need to leave those countries and try to flee to our country. The last piece is to actually work with Mexico so they can do a better job of controlling their own borders, to make sure folks don't get, from south of them, into Mexico and eventually work their way into Texas and into the United States. I will be offering an amendment--not tonight but I suspect tomorrow-- that tries to say: Let's put together a truth campaign, convey what is really facing the people, particularly from those three Central American countries, who are trying to get to the United States and to also see, while we are doing that, if we can't help a little on the economic development and job creation side in those countries and in terms of helping them face lawlessness and crime. We can do a little to help there as well. I call this going after the underlying causes--not just treating the symptoms of the problem but going after the underlying cause--and I think we should do this. So I will offer this tomorrow, and I hope my colleagues will agree. I want to say again to my fellow native West Virginian, thank you for the chance to go ahead. Thank you most of all for the great job you are doing here and for being here to tell us a little bit of the good coming out of the Mountain State. I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, if the Senator will yield, that was wonderful. I am sorry more of us weren't hear to hear those words. The Senator holds the seat once held for many, many year by Robert Byrd, who until maybe this month was the longest serving person in the history of our country to serve in Congress. I think the record was just eclipsed by John Dingell from Michigan--a most worthy successor. The Senator from West Virginia knows there is another notable West Virginian who is rising now to national prominence to serve our country as the new Director of the Office of Management and Budget. She grew up in Hinton, WV, graduated from Hinton High School, played on the girls basketball team, and her name is Sylvia Mathews Burwell. So West Virginia is a State that has produced certainly a lot of coal, a lot of natural resources, but also a lot of good people and a lot of good leaders. And this Senator came to us from West Virginia having been a two-term Governor and chairman of the National Governors Association, and I know he is marked maybe for greatness--maybe for greatness. And I think his wife has a birthday tomorrow; West Virginia has a birthday the day after tomorrow.

Mr. CARPER. If I could add, Madam President, every Sunday night I turn on the radio to WNCN to hear simulcast across the country West Virginia Mountain State--it is great music, eclectic music that is wonderful and reminds me of home. I thank the Senator for enabling us to help him celebrate West Virginia's birthday as well.

Mr. CARPER. The fact is that West Virginia sort of separated itself from Virginia, and about 237 years ago this past Saturday, the State of Delaware gave Pennsylvania its independence. It is quite common to talk about what is Delaware and what is not Delaware--Pennsylvania and Delaware were joined at the hip--but as I said, on June 15, 1776, Delaware gave Pennsylvania its independence and also declared our independence from the tyranny of the British throne. But here we are 5 days later celebrating West Virginia giving Virginia its independence, and now they are on their own and making us all proud.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Gohar Sedighi, a fellow in my Senate office, and Susan Corbin and Michelle Taylor, detailees to the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, be granted privileges of the floor for the remainder of the first session of the 113th Congress.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CARPER. I wish to start tonight by saluting our Gang of 8. I won't call them by name; you know their names, but four Democrats and four Republicans. I wish to thank them for their tireless efforts to bring this bipartisan legislation to the floor. I also wish to commend Senator Leahy and the Judiciary Committee that he leads for their efforts to bring the committee together and for bringing to the floor what I think most of us agree is very important legislation. Delaware celebrated the 375th anniversary of the arrival of the first Swedes and Finns who came to America and came right through what is now Wilmington, DE. South of that spot, about 5 miles to the south, William Penn first came to America as well. Those immigrants came to our country all those years ago for a lot of the same reasons people come here today. They came to live what we now call the American dream, the remarkable idea that regardless of our background or station in life, people can still come to this country, work hard, build a better life for themselves and for their families. Today, some 400 years later after those first immigrants settled in my own State, we are blessed to live in a thriving and prosperous Nation in no small part because of millions of immigrants who came together to build this Nation. We can all be proud of that history. As a Nation of immigrants, we in Congress have a special responsibility to ensure our immigration system is effective and it reflects our values. Those values were what inspired brave, hard- working, and committed people to take great chances to come to this Nation. They are often seeking to escape violence, to lift themselves out of poverty, or to simply live a better life. These immigrants renew and enrich our communities. They enhance our economy, but we cannot and should not open our doors indiscriminately to everybody who wants to come here. we need an immigration system that is practical, is effective and, in the end, is fair--fair to us, fair to the people who want to be here, and fair to the people who have been in line to become citizens in this country sometime down the road. Today, however, our immigration system is, by most standards, broken. It is not effective in bringing in the talent we need and maintaining a strong and vibrant economy. Our immigration system does not give employers the assurances that someone they want to hire is actually here legally and eligible to do some work. That system does not always focus our security efforts on the real risks and on those who come here with the intent to do us harm. Finally, our immigration system does not address in a pragmatic or fair way the fate of 11 million undocumented people living in our country right now, many of whom came here as children and, like us, know no home other than America. With that said, how do we modernize our immigration laws in a way that is fair, practicable, and makes our Nation more secure, physically and also economically? I have always said the key to immigration reform is border security. You will recall the last major comprehensive effort this body made to reform our broken immigration system about 6 years ago fell apart because a number of my colleagues here claimed, with some justification, that our borders were not secure enough. Many of my colleagues claim, justly or not, that the border is still too porous, and we would be having the same debate 20 years later because of border control, the lack of it. People ask themselves are our borders secure enough to ensure we don't end up having this same debate 20 or 30 years down the line. The answer, for many of my colleagues and for a lot of Americans was, no, they are not. That was then; this is now. Six years later, a number of people will still argue our borders are not secure enough to even try to move forward with these reforms. I disagree. When I hear our colleagues ask are our borders more secure, I am often reminded of a friend who says, when you ask him how he is doing: Compared to what? Some say our borders won't be secure until we stop every single person who tries to get across illegally. I think it is clear this is not a realistic goal or expectation. Let's go back a little bit in time. Take, for example, the border between East Germany and West Germany, most famously the Berlin Wall. This was perhaps the most secure border our world has ever seen, with roughly 100 miles of concrete, electrified razor wire, and a 100-yard- wide kill zone guarded by some 30,000 soldiers. Still people made it safely across this highly secured border every year. In fact, a recent report by the Council of Foreign Relations concluded that East Germany only stopped about 95 percent of those who tried to cross the border and enter West Germany. Even a ruthless regime willing to kill its citizens couldn't stop desperate people in search of a better life. I don't think any reasonable person believes we should try to replicate the East German border strategy. What is the right comparison? I suggest the right comparison is what our borders looked like in 2007. Are our borders more secure today than they were then? Are they a lot more secure or just a little bit? I think they are a lot more secure. How do I know? I have the privilege of chairing the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. We held a number of hearings this year on border security. Even more importantly I have had the opportunity to visit our borders with Mexico and actually up in Canada, along with Senator John McCain, Congressman Michael McCaul of Texas, Secretary Janet Napolitano, all kinds of local officials, sheriffs, police, mayors, and other folks. About 3 years ago, I visited the California border and earlier this year Arizona and Texas and up in Michigan. My goal was to get a firsthand look at what is working, what is not, and what more we ought to do to secure the border further--and we can. Based on what I have seen, there is overwhelming success, though, that our borders are more secure than they have been--probably have ever been--and certainly more secure than they were in 2007. I saw parts of our border that were overrun with undocumented immigrants as recently as 2006, when the Border Patrol agents I met with told me they used to arrest more than 1,000 people every single day trying to get into this country illegally. Think about that, 1,000 people a day. Today those same agents told me they have a busy day if they arrest as many as 50 people. Is 50 too many? Yes, it is, but it is not 1,000 people a day. In fact, arrests at the border have reached their lowest levels since the early 1970s. With our putting massive investments in personnel and technology along the border, we are arresting significantly fewer people, and it is not because we are not on the lookout or trying to get those who are coming here. I have a slide of our southern border, from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico; from California into Arizona, to parts of New Mexico and Texas, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. So four States are divided into about nine different quadrants. We have some interesting numbers. If we look at 1992, the number of people who were arrested was about 565,000 just south of San Diego. In 2000, in the El Centro area of California, we had about 238,000. Initially, the numbers here in the West were huge. In the Navy, I used to be stationed in San Diego. These numbers were huge. It has sort of drifted this way. I used to go across the border south of San Diego into Mexico, but it is remarkably secure. The challenge now lies way over here and other places as well, but really it lies over here. We have not just Mexicans trying to get across. Maybe the majority of people trying to get across in South Texas today are from Central American countries--Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. In 2005, a year or two before we debated the last immigration reform proposal, Border Patrol was arresting, in this Yuma section right here, 138,000 people. Today, the number is 6,500. Think about that, from 138,000 down to 6,500. Let's look at the Tucson sector. In the year 2000, we were arresting over 600,000, today about 120,000. In the El Paso sector in 1993 we were arresting close to 300,000; now it is right around 10,000, and it is not because we are not trying. It is not because we don't have a lot more people there, a lot better technology. It is just that the number of folks coming across has just significantly diminished. Over here in Texas though, in 1997, there were about one-quarter million coming across and getting arrested and today still about 97,000. So there is still a good number--too high a number trying to get across--and we are arresting a number of those. But the change in these numbers--the dramatic reductions from 1997 to today--is not an accident. This precipitous drop in arrests is the direct result of the unprecedented investments we have made in securing our borders over the past decade. You don't have to take my word for it. Here is what several of our border officials and residents who are true experts have to say about the progress we have made in securing our borders. I will just quote a few. I talked to a whole lot more. Some of my colleagues have been down there and talked to a bunch of local officials in those States too. Here is what the mayor of San Antonio said earlier this year before the House Judiciary Committee. Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio said: In Texas, we know firsthand that this administration has put more boots on the ground along the border than at any other time in our history, which has led to unprecedented success in removing dangerous individuals with criminal records. The mayor of Nogales, AZ, one of the places we visited earlier this year with Secretary Napolitano, said: We used to have street chases all the time. . . . Now all those things are gone, something you don't even hear about. That was about 2 or 3 months ago. A woman named Veronica Escobar, a county judge in El Paso, said this near the end of 2011: Those of us who actually live along the border know otherwise. El Paso, the largest city along the United States- Mexico border, is also one of the country's safest cities and the heart of a vibrant bi-national community. So the truth is we spend more on border security each year--about $18 billion--according to a recent Migration Policy Institute report--about $18 billion a year--than we spend on the rest of Federal law enforcement activities combined. Think about that for a moment. We spend more on border enforcement, border security, than we spend on the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and the U.S. Marshals combined-- combined. Since 2000, the Border Patrol alone has more than doubled in size. Its funding has almost quadrupled. We have built 650 miles more of fencing along the border. That is roughly one-third of our Mexican border. To better secure parts of our border where a fence might not be as effective, we deployed a number of what I like to call force multipliers, and I will talk about some of those later on. When I am talking about technology that will help the Border Patrol do their job more effectively, in some parts of the border it might be radar, it might be drones, in others it might be cameras, towers or hand-held systems. For example, in the past couple of years, we have deployed roughly 350 land-based towers, vehicle-based towers with advanced cameras and radar. We fly more than 270 aircraft and helicopters to monitor a 2,000-mile border, and we are also using drones and the lighter-than-air assets--blimps. But you don't have to take my word for it. I think a picture is worth a thousand words, and I have a couple of pictures here of some slides I wish to show to take a look at what the border looked like 7 years ago, in 2006, and what it looks like today. This is one of my favorite pictures. It is a picture of a ranch. I believe this is a ranch in Arizona. Look at this. It looks almost like a junkyard, almost like a place where people come to drop their trash, and that is what happened, because every day hundreds of people would come through here, through this ranch, to cross the border, and this is what they left behind. Here is the same place today. This is not because the folks trying to get into our country have somehow gotten an environmental conscience and they do not litter as much. That is not what is going on here. They are not coming through as much. So if you ever hear: Is our border more secure? Does it make a difference? I would say go to that ranch and take a look. We have spent a lot of money on infrastructure. This is Douglas, AZ. We were there, along the southern border of Arizona, and this is a before shot. This is the same landscape and what we see today. Actually, it looks like we have a couple of fences, a road in between, and all kinds of detectors. This is what it looked like before. So we have made huge investments for miles and miles and miles. We have something from the Yuma sector in Arizona. The Yuma sector was out of control. Border-wise, I think we had the most illegal border crossings than at any stretch of the border in 2006. Starting in 2006, they built more than 100 miles of fencing, just in this one sector alone--in the Yuma sector--where it made a lot of sense. There is an access road so the Border Patrol agents can get where they need to go quickly. We have deployed a bunch of cameras as well. Today, Yuma is the most controlled part of our border, as I reported those numbers earlier. There is a dramatic reduction in the numbers of folks coming through. This is another place in Arizona, in Nogales. We met with a bunch of local officials there as well. This is a lovely piece of landscape right here. This may not be as lovely, but what is different here is an access road. We can't put a Border Patrol agent every 100 feet along the border, but what we can do is get them where they need to go more quickly. One of the ways to do that is with access roads, and this is one of those near Nogales, AZ. This is another shot. This is Deming, NM. What it shows is what the area looked like in 2007 along the border. It doesn't look too hard to get across, and it wasn't. This is what it looks like today: lighting, the walls, ways for the Border Patrol to move quickly if they need to. It is just a different place today, and the numbers will demonstrate that has made a difference. Here we are in Del Rio, TX. There is a lot of water here. In 2008, there was literally no infrastructure whatsoever in Del Rio, TX. That was about 2008, and this is a couple of years later. You could literally walk across the border and you didn't know it. You didn't know if you were in the United States or Mexico. Today you know it, and we built significant fencing and all those all-important access roads and now have a far more secure border. This is a place called Marfa, TX. This is a border in the western part of Texas, actually near Big Bend National Park. In 2006, the border was wide open. This is lovely, isn't it? There were some people, particularly some of the locals, who were opposed to fencing. The reason why is because this now looks like this. But the problem with this is people were able to literally walk across, wade across, in substantial numbers. They do not do that anymore. We gave up some scenic beauty, but at the same time we have a whole lot of security we never had before. Here is Harlingen, TX. We were there a month or two ago. This is the eastern part of Texas, closer to the Gulf of Mexico, but we see a part of the border that as recently as 4 years ago, right here, you could literally walk across it and you wouldn't know it. You could walk right across, and a lot of people walked right across it. This is what it looks like now, with fencing and access roads. They don't walk across it without them knowing it and, frankly, oftentimes without us knowing it. This is one of my favorite pictures. This is a fence, and this is a fence, in this case, that at least stopped this vehicle. A friend of mine likes to say let me build a 20-foot fence and someone will come along and build a 21-foot ladder. Someone tried to be very clever and find a way to get this vehicle over this fence. I don't know if that is a Jeep, but they tried to get it across and they didn't quite make it. So people trying to get across are pretty ingenious, and they will try to build that 21-foot ladder or in this case a different type of ladder. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. In this case it worked to stop them. I also wish to show some of the force multipliers that are helping to enhance security efforts at our borders and ports of entry. These are pictures of just a small sample of the massive improvements we have made along the southern border from California to Texas. It shows what any fairminded person who has been to the border in recent years can tell us; that is, the investments we have made are actually paying off. I hope so. As much money as we have spent, I would hate to think we spent it without getting any kind of result. One of the investments we have made are the drones. We don't have a huge number, but I think we have four of them in Arizona, a couple in Texas, and I think they have a couple up along the northern border, maybe North Dakota, and a couple over in Florida. But we will talk a little more about these. Let me just say, if you put up a drone and you put a VADER system on it, they can fly at high altitudes, they can fly day or night, they can see in the rain, they can see in the dark, they can see when the Sun is shining. They are an incredibly effective asset when they fly. We will talk later about the problem that they don't always fly. They do not fly when the wind is more than 15 knots. We have four of these in Arizona, with only one that has a VADER system. Of the four we have, only about two of them are flying most of the time. They only fly 5 days a week. So one of the keys, if we are going to use the drones, let's make sure we have VADER on all of them and let's make sure they are able to fly more than 5 days a week, more than 16 hours a day, and let's properly resource these aircraft. Old technology. The drone is pretty new. This is old technology. Blimps and dirigibles have been around forever. Some of you may recall seeing a video of blimps such as this from Kabul, Afghanistan. I talked on the phone this week with a fellow who is now Ambassador to Mexico. His name is Tony Wayne. He used to be the No. 2 guy in our Embassy in Afghanistan. I asked him: How do we use blimps in Kabul? We use them in Kabul very effectively. He said: The great thing about blimps is you can put them up in bad weather, when it is windy. You can't fly more than 15 knots, but these stay up and don't run out of gas. You can have more surveillance systems with pods on these than you can on a lot of the other aircraft we are flying. We use them with great effect in Kabul, Kandahar, Afghanistan, and other places, and we ought to be able to do better with them on the border with Mexico. They can be a great force multiplier as well. This is a little plane called a Cessna C-206, and it has enough room to carry two people. I think we have about 17 of them. We saw one in Arizona, and we saw a bunch more in Texas. It is really not cutting- edge technology; it is just cost-effective. You can put these planes out for a while, and they don't use much gas. They are a good platform for surveillance. Unfortunately, out of the 16 or 17 that we have, only 1 of them has a surveillance system that enables us to look down and find out what is going on on the ground. It is sort of like sending out an airplane doing maritime surveillance when occasionally we do search and rescue missions over the vast ocean with binoculars, looking for somebody in a little skiff or in a life preserver. It is like looking for a needle in the haystack. When we fly these planes, we ought to have them fully resourced with modern surveillance equipment and people operating them. We have boats, and we have helicopters. We have boats that go fast along the Rio Grande River. We need boats that go fast. We need the same thing off the coast of California. Fortunately, we have them. We don't have enough helicopters. We talked to some folks in East Texas. They basically are flying three different kinds of helicopters-- one is fairly modern, and a couple others are not. The only one the Border Patrol is really interested in is the one that is fairly modern. It is reliable, has good surveillance equipment. What we were told by some people is this: If you are going to send us the older, less reliable helicopters without the technology, don't send them. What we need to have is more of the successful helicopters, the ones in demand, where it will actually be a real force multiplier. I thought this was an interesting slide. This is with night vision goggles. We also have the ability to use the VADERS, the systems we put in our drones. In the C-206s we fly, our ground-mounted cameras are along the border. This is nighttime, but this is what we can see today, and it is pretty easy to pick people up. If we are going to ever be able to figure out how many are getting across, not getting across, we need this; we don't need this. Fortunately we have this, and it is a force multiplier. We need to make sure we use it well. This shows a different series. Some are cameras, some are radar, but they are ground-based. In this case they have an operator. Again, this is one that is mounted on a truck bed. It can be moved around. Some are more permanent. Here is one that is more permanent. You have the Border Patrol here right at the fence and the ability to look north, south, east, and west. These are just a couple examples of force multipliers. We have all these men and women on the border. We have basically doubled the border patrol. How do we make them more effective without just adding more and more bodies between the ports of entry? We can do it with this kind of technology. We can do it effectively, and I think we can do it in a cost-effective way. That is what we ought to do. The bill we are going to be debating over the next couple of weeks sets aside an additional $6.5 billion for border security on top of the $18 billion we already spend today, every year. The $6.5 billion in the bill will be used to add another 3,500 officers--not between the ports of entry, these big ports. We are not talking about water ports. We are talking about land-based ports of entry where a lot of commerce--cars, trucks, pedestrians--is getting in, and big commerce is going through those ports of entry as well. But the legislation wisely could use some of that extra $6.5 billion to hire another 3,500 officers to work in our ports of entry, to build new infrastructure at the ports of entry and make them better, to secure new surveillance systems, and for the aerial support for the Border Patrol. For the first time in our Nation's history, we have set a statutory goal for the Border Patrol in this legislation to arrest or turn back to Mexico some 90 percent of all those trying to get across illegally. So if we have 100 people trying to get in on a given day at a particular spot, the idea is to know how many are actually trying to get in and how many are either detained or actually turned back. The idea is to make sure we are going to have at least a 90-percent success rate. It is a tough law, and it ensures accountability. Do you remember what I said about Germany? In Germany, with all the hundreds of miles of concrete and 30,000 soldiers, their effective rate was 95 percent. We are talking about something very close to that--90 percent--without doing the kinds of stuff they did in East Germany. Lastly, the bill that is before us calls for achieving persistent surveillance over the entire border so we can know with a high degree of certainty how many people are trying to cross it illegally. Given the length of our borders and how rugged and how varied it is, this goal will be a challenge--and a costly one--to achieve, but it is not impossible. As I learned from my trips to the border, there is simply no one- size-fits-all solution for securing our border. It really depends on the terrain, which varies widely along the border region. That is why we need to systemically identify the best technology to allow us to use our frontline agents--the Border Patrol--more effectively and give them the tools they tell us they need to be successful. One specific thing I have seen on my trips along the border with the C-206--and just think about it. You have an airplane. You put it up to fly for 3 or 4 hours, and you can send it out with one person looking through binoculars or a surveillance system with lights out. That works in the day or the night, rain or not, and it gives us great images and a great capability. We also need to make sure the Department of Homeland Security has the flexibility to deploy resources when and where it makes sense. For example, as we talked earlier about the blimps that are tethered, they have proven to be enormously successful in northern Afghanistan. And for anybody who doubts that, I urge you to give our Ambassador to Mexico a call, who was our No. 2 guy in Afghanistan the last time I was there a couple of years ago. As I said earlier, the blimps are old in terms of the technology, but they can handle a lot of surveillance stuff and equipment, and they do great work. In some places, they will make a lot of sense; in other cases, maybe not so much. But the Department of Homeland Security needs to be able to swiftly put in place innovative tools like blimps when factors on the ground change or when they see the need for a new approach to securing certain portions of our border. I don't think we ought to be hamstringing them with mandates that make them less effective in carrying out their missions, including requiring additional fences in areas where the fencing doesn't make much sense. In a lot of places, it does. There are 600 miles or so where it does, and there are more places that it does. But there are also some places where it makes more sense to resource a drone, to have land-based radar and cameras, where it makes more sense to fly the 206s, to have helicopters with the right kind of surveillance equipment on them and be able to move people along. I want to mention some other cost-effective technology. We saw some really interesting hand-held devices that allow the border agents to see in the dark. I also saw something at one of the ports of entry. It was actually about the size of my Blackberry. I remember standing at the ports of entry where they have literally thousands of cars and trucks and vehicles and pedestrians coming across a day. But before the truck or vehicle ever got to the border, the officer had a device that would tell her the truck that was coming through, the history of the truck that was coming through, the driver who was in the truck and the history of that driver coming through, what should be in the truck, and what was the cargo in the truck in recent months. This was up in Detroit too. But one of the officers there said this is a game changer. As I mentioned earlier, this bill we are debating appropriates about $6.5 billion to continue to build on the progress we have made and achieve the ambitious goals it sets for the Department. That is good news. My goal is to make sure that much of this funding is devoted to these force multipliers to help our boots on the ground work smarter and be more effective. I don't think we need to micromanage the process. We have been joined by the majority leader. I am happy to yield.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, picking up where I left off, I don't think we, Congress, need to micromanage this process. We don't need congressional enforcement officers, so to speak. Rather, we need to spell out the goals, the priorities for border and port security which this bill does. We need to give the Department of Homeland Security the tools, skills, resources, and flexibility it needs to get this job done, which this bill also does. Then we need to let DHS do its job while at the same time continuing to provide responsible and robust oversight, not just here from Washington but along the border itself. That is why now in my Committee on Homeland Security that is what my colleagues and I will want to do to be sure this bill is implemented strongly and effectively. Still, as strong as our border defenses have become and despite how much stronger this bill will make them, we cannot defend our Nation entirely at the border. One of our witnesses earlier this year noted that we often look to our borders to solve problems that originate elsewhere. In other words, we are so preoccupied with the symptoms we are missing the underlying causes which can make finding a solution all the more difficult. We have to address the root causes that are drawing people to our country illegally in order to fully secure our borders and ensure we are not embroiled in the same debate 20 years from now. I am pleased to say this bipartisan legislation addresses the root causes in a way that I believe is tough, is practical, and is fair. My friend and former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Jane Holl Lute recently told me we have to strike the right balance between enforcing security policies at our borders and ports of entry, to keep bad actors out while facilitating and while encouraging commerce between the United States and our neighbors to the north and south, two of our biggest trading partners. This bill provides, as I said earlier, for 3,500 additional officers to work the our ports of entry--not ports along the water, actually land-based ports where a lot of traffic moves through, a lot of commerce moves through, and 3,500 additional officers actually will make a big difference. We need them. We also need to modernize our ports so these additional officers have the resources and tools they need to process legitimate travelers and trade while focusing on bad actors. Here are some of the examples of what we have done to upgrade our ports of entry. I am not going to use all of these, but we will use a couple of them. This is a before. This is a shot, probably about 6 years before. We had limited, I think, very limited percentage of traveler queries. We had limited technology and we had minimal signage. This is today. We have nearly 100 percent traveler queries on land borders, the expansive use of RFID-enabled documents and increased efficiency by 25 percent. We have new READY lanes to encourage our use of RFID documents as well. Here, it is hard--this is like signage, simple, a lot of printed stuff. Here we have gone electronic. We can just stop. When trucks are coming, when vehicles are coming, we have the ability to read the license plates before they ever get to the officers. We have the ability, if people are coming across, to use devices that read their passports and give us some idea who actually is coming up to the officer, Customs and Border Patrol officer. We use gamma rays. We are able to look inside trucks. We have detection, the ability to detect radiation on any vehicles that are coming through. It is a massive change. We don't just do it because we want to secure the vehicles and make sure what is supposed to be in them is actually in them and not some contraband or drugs or whatever, but we want to be able to expedite the movement of these vehicles. We want them to have a better throughput because there are huge economic consequences for us and for Mexico. We want to strengthen our borders. One of the reasons why we are making these investments is it is a tool to make them more secure, to keep bad people and bad stuff out, and do a better job of facilitating trade. It is smart business. It is a smart way to do business with the help of this legislation. I think that is all we are going to look at in terms of these ports of entry. I could move along. I think properly balancing commerce and security is critical because facilitating trade with our neighbors to the south and also to the north not only strengthens our own economy but also strengthens the economies throughout North, South, and Central America. Why do we care? We want their economies to be stronger so they don't want to come up here and live with us, come here illegally and try to be a part of this country, although we appreciate their desire to do that. We want to make sure their countries are strong economically too. For most who live in the United States illegally, though, what draws them to our country and enables them to stay here without legal status, as we know, is jobs. We need, obviously, a system that makes it easier for employers to do the right thing and to verify who is eligible to work. Too often today that is not the case. We also need to hold employers who normally break the law hiring undocumented workers accountable for doing that. I believe, again, the legislation that is before us comes close to achieving those goals. It requires all employers to use a strong electronic verification system, starting with large employers down to small employers over time, but a strong verification system, designed to give employers quick assurance that the new employees are eligible to work, that they are considering hiring. For many workers these will include photo tools that let the employer verify the person applying for the job is indeed the person who applied for the worker eligibility document. The law increases fines for knowingly hiring undocumented workers and increases them by more than tenfold and includes a significant criminal penalty for those who systematically abuse our workplace laws. These new penalties, including jail sentences of up to 10 years, will provide a strong deterrent to unscrupulous employers who seek to exploit undocumented workers for their own gain. We also need to convince those who want to come here for a better life that the way to do that is through legal rather than illegal immigration. While we crack down on the bad actors who try to hire undocumented workers, we also need to make sure that employers who are playing by the rules have ample access to the talent they need to keep our economy growing--and encourage people from other nations to come here legally when we do not have the talent here in this country able and willing to do some of the work that needs to be done. This legislation does help by modernizing our outdated visa system to supply sufficient workers when needed, particularly in critical areas such as high-skilled and agricultural employment. These approved legal pathways for workers and their families will shrink the flow of undocumented migrants and help our border forces to concentrate on the most serious threats at the border. Ultimately, I believe the most effective force multiplier, as much as I like the idea of these drones, fully resourced with the VADER systems on them, as much as I like the idea of the C-2006 aircraft with the right kind of surveillance, and as much as I like having the blimps with all the technology they can carry, as much as I want to have helicopters to move our border surveillance up and down the border and have all kinds of surveillance equipment, as much as I think fencing helps and access routes and all these investments help, I still think maybe the most effective force multiplier for protecting our border is to take away the need for people to come here illegally in the first place. As we address the root causes, we have to address another challenge and that is the 11 million people who are here without proper documentation, living in the shadows today. Ironically, 40 percent came in on a legal status, on a student visa, a tourist visa, a work visa. They overstayed their welcome and overstayed what the law allows. Some critics argue that the bill before us grants immediate amnesty to those 11 million undocumented people. I don't think that is true. What they get is not amnesty but, rather, a long, I think a hard path toward possible citizenship, one with many hurdles and no guarantees. It kind of reminds me of the trek a bunch of them took through Mexico just to get to the border, getting across the border without getting caught, trying to escape, in many cases, these coyotes who took advantage of them, robbed them, in some cases raped them, and once they got into this country avoiding getting detained. And a bunch got detained and ended up in the detention centers. That is not an easy path. I don't think the path this lays out ahead for those undocumented today is an easy path. Just to reach the first step, becoming what is called a registered provisional immigrant, individuals would have to clear multiple background checks, pay back taxes, pay a hefty fine. If they committed any kind of significant crime they are disqualified from pursuing legal status. Once an applicant has cleared the first hurdle, registered provisional immigrants must remain employed, pay even more taxes and fines, learn English, maintain a clean criminal record, and demonstrate they are living not below the poverty line but above the poverty line; they are gainfully employed. Most importantly, these people have to go to the back of the line, not ahead of people who are waiting to get ahead who have played by the rules, but behind them, at the end of the line--behind the folks who are here legally, who are going to get processed, as they should, first. It is going to take about 10 years before those folks who are undocumented will have a chance to even qualify for a green card. Three years after getting a green card, these immigrants would finally be able to apply for citizenship. We are not talking about 13 weeks or 13 months, we are talking about 13 years. Once again, they have to pass extensive background checks in order to successfully move forward in that process. So to our colleagues who are suggesting this bill would immediately begin legalizing the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country right away, I would simply ask: Does that sound like an immediate process to you? It doesn't to me. This is not an easy path, and, frankly, a lot of people won't make it, just as a lot of people who have tried to get into this country have not made it either. I think the process we have laid out over those next 10, 13 years, if you will, is a tough, fair, and practical approach. Call it a lot of things, but I would not call it amnesty. We also need to make sure the men and women around the world know this Nation is making unprecedented investments to improve and modernize our legal immigration system in addition to making it very difficult for folks who try to come here illegally. We are dedicating significant resources to detaining and deporting those who try to go around the rules--spending roughly $2 billion a year on this effort. In fact, since President Obama took office, removals have increased from 291,000 people in 2007, or just under 300,000 folks, to more than 400,000 last year, when we returned a record number of people to their home countries. Our Nation must also work with our neighbors to improve the process and decrease the time it takes to return our detainees to those countries of origin. When we were in Texas recently, I learned we have an agreement with Guatemala where they issue electronic travel documents to their citizens almost as soon as we apprehend them along our border--mostly Texas. This process cuts down on detention times for Guatemalans from 30 days to roughly 7 days. It has a real positive effect on the Guatemalans we arrest and take into custody because they spend less time in detention--not a pleasant experience. It saves us millions of dollars because we have to hold them, feed them, and give them a place to stay for a shorter period of time. We need to take the Guatemalan model where we dramatically reduce the detention time and see if we cannot replicate their program with our other nations, especially particularly nations such as Mexico. Finally, I will conclude by admitting this legislation is not perfect. On the other hand, I have not seen a perfect piece of legislation. Even the Constitution we adopted in Delaware on December 7, 1787, to become the first State wasn't perfect either. We amended it again and again. We amended it over 30 times. While I do believe there is certainly room for constructive criticism and debate about this bill, I am certain this legislation represents an improvement over our current system. I believe we can make it even stronger in the coming weeks, and I hope we will. I plan to offer some amendments, and my guess is the Presiding Officer will offer amendments as well as our colleagues. We ought to offer them, debate them, and vote them up or down. We must come to this debate with an understanding that the status quo is unacceptable. If we don't modernize our immigration system to allow employers to fill the jobs our economy needs and our citizens are unwilling or unable to do, we are hurting our children's future while at the same time making our Nation less secure. As a Nation founded on the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we simply cannot tolerate a shadow economy of 11 million people who are scared to live freely, who generate black markets to produce false identity documents, and who drive down the wages of U.S. citizens. To my colleagues who are still uneasy with legalization, I ask this: What is the alternative? It is not practical to find and deport 11 million people. Most of the undocumented immigrants in this country have lived here more than 10 years. Many have children who are U.S. citizens. They have deep roots in our society and contribute meaningfully to our national interests. I think the American people would want us to be tough, but they also want us to be humane and realistic. I believe this legislation offers that path, that balance, and now is the time to take that path. In closing, I am reminded of something that binds all of us together. If we actually look above where you are sitting, there are some words in Latin. If we look up there, we will see the Latin phrase ``e pluribus unum,'' which means ``out of many, one.'' It is a phrase that adorns our Nation's seal. It suggests that while we all come from many different places, in the end we are one Nation. With that thought in mind, I will simply say to our colleagues and to those who are following this discussion tonight, we have a choice. We can work together to make this bill better and adopt it in a bipartisan manner or we can remain in gridlock and let the American people down. I know what I want to do. I know what the people of Delaware want us to do. They want us to legislate, and I want us to legislate as well. I want us to make our immigration system better. I want to show the American people that Congress can come together--Democrats, Republicans, and a couple of Independents--on an issue of great importance to our country's economy and great importance to our national security. We need to get this done, and I am encouraged with the grace of God we will. Mr. President, you will be glad to know that I am done, but our work remains to be done. I look forward to working with the Presiding Officer and 98 of our colleagues to get the job done for the American people. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, on behalf of Senator Coons, Congressman Carney, and myself, I wish to recognize the Rehoboth Art League, its staff and artist members who on June 21, 2013, will celebrate its founding in 1938 and the 75 subsequent years of cultivating the arts in Sussex County and the State of Delaware. The Rehoboth Art League was Sussex County's first organized cultural arts center and has been recognized by the State of Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs for its significance and influence that extends far beyond Rehoboth and even the borders of our State. The Rehoboth Art League grew out of the tradition of the Federal Arts Project, which was a subset of the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. This tradition of art appreciation, support for working artists, and the concept of enriched community living, inspired the late Mrs. Louise Corkran to organize the Rehoboth Art League, with the help of her husband, COL Wilbur Corkran. Her involvement with the founding of the Delaware Art Museum, as well as her collaboration through the years with such renowned national artists as Howard Pyle, Frank Schoonover, N.C. Wyeth and others from the Brandywine and Hudson Valley Schools, were a significant factor in the Rehoboth Art League's development. Over the years, it has become a place that attracts and nurtures artists from all over the country, and inspires art appreciation through its many educational offerings. The Rehoboth Art League sits in the small village of Henlopen Acres, DE, on an historic campus overlooking the Lewes-Rehoboth Canal and the Valley of the Swans, and maintains two colonial period buildings, The Paynter Studio, 1791, the Peter Marsh Homestead and Stables, 1743, as well as Louise Corkran's garden, which is one of the only public gardens in Sussex County. The Rehoboth Art League owns and cares for a significant collection of Delaware art and archives, with pieces by Howard Pyle, Jack Lewis, Howard Schroeder, Ethel P. B. Leach, and others. Its collection includes the renowned ``Doors of Fame,'' providing tangible evidence of the legacy and history of the Rehoboth Art League. The tradition of signing doors was prevalent in art colonies around the country in the first half of the twentieth century. The Rehoboth Art League has, since its dedication in 1938, provided three doors for signatures by artists, dignitaries, and national and international visitors. These doors record the persons who have contributed to its success over the years. Today there are nearly 300 signatures, often accompanied by a personal artistic flourish or drawing. These signatures include six Delaware Governors, along with many artists from the State and national pantheon, educators, scientists, musicians, and other notables. Today, the Rehoboth Art League continues to attract artists and visitors from all over the country. Its members hail from 19 different States. It partners with 13 other organizations from the arts, education, and health and human services across the region to provide a variety of programming, both on the campus and around the county. Works from its collection have been on display at the Biggs Museum, Buena Vista Conference Center, the Governor's mansion, and the Federal offices of Senator Chris Coons. The Rehoboth Art League also collaborates with First State Community Action Agency to take arts education to 600 at-risk students in Sussex County and to many senior citizens in the region as well. Today we are delighted to recognize the Rehoboth Art League, which for more than 75 years has been a community of artists who share their art, inspire and support one another and enrich the lives of us all.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, today I wish to pay tribute to Mr. Charles E. Welch, who I have had the privilege of knowing for more than three decades. Known to his many friends as Chuck, he is a World War II veteran, humanitarian, lawyer and leader in the business community in the State of Delaware. Born in 1925, Chuck is a native of Columbus, OH. He graduated with a B.S. in Business Administration in 1949 from The Ohio State University, 19 years ahead of me, and went on to receive his Juris Doctor in 1951 from the same institution. He served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1946 as a rifle platoon leader and later served as a company commander in the Judge Advocate General Corps from 1952 to 1955. During this time, he was also employed by the Ohio Tax Department as Chief Counsel from 1951 to 1958. Chuck later moved to Delaware to work for the DuPont Company. There, he rose through the ranks and held the position of General Counsel until 1979 when he was appointed by DuPont CEO Irving S. Shapiro to the newly created position of Vice President for External Affairs. After a distinguished 26-year career with DuPont, Chuck retired from the company. He did not retire from an active life as a husband, father, grandfather and community leader. At an age when a lot of people are ready to slow down, Chuck picked up the pace. Chuck's commitment to the community and State was demonstrated most clearly through his passion for education and helping the disabled. Chuck and his late wife Charma understood the struggles of special needs children and were the driving forces behind the development of The Mary Campbell Center, a remarkable facility for individuals with physical and cognitive disabilities. Chuck and Charma, who themselves were parents of a special needs child, had the shared vision to develop a safe, loving place for children and young adults, and since its opening in 1976, The Mary Campbell Center has touched the lives of literally thousands of people. Chuck and Charma were the parents of six children: Ed, Patricia, John, Mary Beth, and the late Jeff and Charmie, the inspiration for The Mary Campbell Center. Chuck is now married to Barbara G. Welch. In addition to his work with The Mary Campbell Center, Chuck was a member of the Mt. Pleasant Board of Education from 1967-1973, Chair of the Vocational Education Task Force in 1986, Chair of the Delaware Compensation Review Commission, Member of the Judicial Nominating Commission, Chair of the Committee to Reorganize Farmers Bank, Head of the Commission to study New Castle County Government, Director of the Wilmington Medical Center, Past President of the Delaware Foundation for Retarded Children and of United Cerebral Palsy, and was appointed by the Governor as President of the State Board of Education in 1986 where he served for 3 years. He was also a member of the committee for the Delaware Justice Center, President of the Rockledge Community Association and Chairman of the Advisory Board of The Mary Campbell Center where he continues to serve to this day. Over the years, Chuck's guidance to both Democratic and Republican party leaders has proven pivotal to Delaware's success. He served as co-chair of Governor Mike Castle's transition team and a member of my transition team when I was elected Governor. For both Mike and me, Chuck has been an invaluable adviser and a wonderful friend. Chuck's lifetime of serving others has attracted many prestigious awards and distinctions including The Marvel Cup from the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, The J. Thompson Brown Award for Family Service, The Good Government Award from the Civic League for New Castle County, the Heart Association's Gilliam Award, an award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews and the First State Distinguished Service Award from the Delaware State Bar Association. I am proud to congratulate my longtime friend on a lifetime of achievement. He is a role model for us all. The people of Delaware, and especially the many children and adults who have benefitted from his good work, are certainly fortunate to count Chuck as a fellow Delawarean. The First State is a far better place in which to live and work because of his stewardship and his leadership.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, Senator Coons and I spent a couple of lovely hours together in Michael Beals' synagogue last Saturday as his daughter was going through bat mitzvah. I will never forget that occasion. What a joy for everyone there, people from all over the country. I know it was a source of family pride for the father, the mom, and for the rabbi to be there with their daughter on that special day. To my colleagues I would say that one of the things I pray for every day is that we will find our way to a two-state solution in the Middle East that provides a homeland for the Palestinians, a capital for the Palestinians, and security for the people of Israel and peace for the people of Israel. There is a great partnership in our State between Rabbi Beals' synagogue and my church and a number of other churches of different faiths. I just want to mention that here today and thank you for your commitment not just to the least of those in our society and those who need our help but also across the world to a really big trouble spot that needs our attention and our thoughts and our prayers. I thank you very much for being here today. Thank you for your prayer. I thank the leader for letting me say a few words.