Thomas Carper

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to express my deep gratitude and best wishes to Ms. Jane Holl Lute for her service as Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, over the past 4 years. Ms. Lute arrived at DHS in April 2009 with an already impressive public service record that included over 30 years of distinguished service, including time in the U.S. Army during Operation Desert Storm. She served on the National Security Council staff under both President George H.W. Bush and President Bill Clinton. Ms. Lute held senior-level positions within the United Nations, UN, where she oversaw logistical and administrative support to UN peacekeeping operations worldwide and coordinated efforts to build sustainable peace in countries emerging from violent conflict. Her record of achievement extends to her academic accomplishments. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and a J.D. from Georgetown University. I would be remiss if I did not mention that she achieved many of these extraordinary accomplishments as a single mother. Impressive indeed. As Deputy Secretary of DHS, Ms. Lute has served as the Department's second-highest official and chief operating officer, responsible for the day-to-day business and management of the third largest department in the Federal Government of the United States. Comprised of more than 240,000 employees and operating with an annual budget of over $56 billion, DHS works to secure our Nation, while enhancing Federal, State, and local capabilities to prepare for, respond to, and recover from threats and disasters of all kinds. Throughout the past 4 years, Ms. Lute has committed herself wholeheartedly to the mission set forth in DHS's Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, QHSR, which is to ensure that our Nation is a safe, secure, and resilient place where the American way of life can thrive. Against a backdrop of continued and evolving threats and hazards of all kinds, Ms. Lute has worked determinedly to fulfill the challenging and wide-ranging mission of the Department. To that end, Ms. Lute has worked closely with the many partners in both the public and the private sector who play an essential role in keeping our Nation safe. This includes all levels of government, law enforcement, private industry, and most importantly, individuals and communities, who have proven time and time again that they are our greatest allies and the key to our success. This bottom-up approach to homeland security reflects the manner in which Ms. Lute has helped lead DHS during her time at the Department. As I see it, her focus has always closely mirrored two of my core values--to figure out the right thing to do and do it, as well as to focus on excellence in everything we do. Under Ms. Lute's leadership, DHS also made significant progress in aligning operations with smart and efficient strategy through publication of the QHSR, the Nation's first ever comprehensive review of America's strategy for homeland security, followed by the Bottom-Up Review, which is DHS's effort to align programmatic activities and organizational structure with the mission sets and goals identified in the QHSR. In her role as Deputy Secretary at DHS, Ms. Lute made it a priority to institute the sound management practices that have helped place DHS on solid financial, programmatic, strategic, and organizational footing. Perhaps most notably, Ms. Lute's efforts helped DHS earn a qualified audit opinion on all Fiscal Year 2012 financial statements, a first for the Department and in record time for such a large and new department. Ms. Lute also helped to implement the framework for Integrated Investment Life Cycle Management to ensure that the DHS budget of nearly $60 billion is spent wisely and efficiently. Like a true leader, Ms. Lute has the vision to plan ahead and address future challenges. One of Ms. Lute's hallmark achievements at DHS has been her early focus in the area of cybersecurity. As Ms. Lute has said herself, it is impossible to imagine a safe, secure, and resilient Nation without a safe, secure, and resilient cyberspace. In particular, Ms. Lute oversaw all Departmental efforts to strengthen the nation's cybersecurity, including policy, planning, operations, and budget. Through the numerous transitions in the Department's cyber governance structure, Ms. Lute was a steady, reliable, informed, and persistent voice on cyber matters, and she helped ensure that cyberspace would remain civilian space. In order to ensure our Nation's success in cybersecurity, Ms. Lute personally led the implementation effort to improve the Department's ability to build a world-class cybersecurity workforce and to ensure a strong pipeline of talent for the future. Ms. Lute also helped promote a Continuous Diagnostics and Monitoring capability, which will enable Federal agencies and other organizations to see and respond to day-to- day cyber threats. These efforts and others have contributed directly to a stronger national cyber ecosystem. Ms. Lute's accomplishments are not limited to domestic operations. Her familiarity with international negotiation was of great value to DHS and her efforts abroad have helped enhance security practices here at home. As the lead negotiator for the U.S. Passenger Name Record Agreement with the European Union, she secured a landmark new data- sharing agreement with the European Union that increased the security of air travel while protecting civil liberties and privacy. In these negotiations, she bridged fundamental differences between how Europeans and Americans view privacy through tenacity and perseverance. These same traits are seen in her approach to the Department's bilateral relations as well. She expanded cooperation with our British and German allies through the Joint Contact Group and Security Cooperation Group, forged stronger ties with India through the Homeland Security Dialogue, and she opened the door to frank discussions with China over cyber and port security. The commitment to secure our Nation and create a more resilient America is a goal that is shared not only among Members of Congress and the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security, but also among everyday citizens. That security is ensured by the men and women who step forward each day and say ``Send Me.'' Ms. Lute once told me this is the very credo the men and women of DHS embrace in every crisis. So today, I sincerely thank Deputy Secretary Lute for her public service and for her extraordinary service over 3 decades to keep our Nation safe. She leaves behind a strong legacy of ``just get it done'' leadership, paving the path for future leaders and employees at DHS. I, for one, will remember her fondly for her commitment to ensuring American homeland security and for living DHS's ``Send Me'' attitude. Jane Holl Lute is a role model for us all.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I am honored and privileged to stand here today and to say good words on behalf of Ernest Jay Moniz, also known as Dr. Moniz and Ernie Moniz. He is one of my favorite people from the world of academia. I have in my hand a bio of him that I will read out loud. It is not very long, and it is worth listening to. Dr. Ernest J. Moniz is the Cecil and Ida Green professor of physics and engineering systems at MIT. His research at MIT, where he has served on the faculty since 1973, has focused on energy technology and policy. Dr. Moniz also serves as the director of MIT's Energy Initiative and the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment. From 1997 until 2001, Dr. Moniz served as Under Secretary of the Department of Energy. Prior to that time, he served as Associate Director for Science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President from 1995 until 1997. In addition to his work at MIT and the Department of Energy, Dr. Moniz has served on any number of boards and commissions, including the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology from 2009 until today, the Department of Defense Threat Reduction Advisory Committee from 2010 until today, and on the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future from 2010 to 2012. Dr. Moniz is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Humboldt Foundation, and the American Physical Society. In 1998 he received the Seymour Cray HPCC Recognition Award for vision and leadership in advancing scientific simulation. Dr. Moniz received a bachelor of science degree summa cum laude in physics from Boston College and a doctorate in theoretical physics from Stanford University. I have been privileged to know this man for a number of years. Our oldest son was an undergraduate in mechanical engineering at MIT and graduated a few years ago. I remember holding a field hearing at MIT--gosh, about a half dozen or so years ago--and Dr. Moniz was one of our witnesses. Among the things I liked about him is that he was so approachable. We have all heard the term ``good guy.'' He is a really good guy. Sometimes we think of somebody as a professor in an ivy tower and kind of out of touch, unable to communicate and connect with people. He could not be more different from that caricature. He is a real person, not to mention a very smart person. As a professor, he is able to explain complex concepts of nuclear energy and clean coal so that even I can understand what he is saying. He has a wonderful sense of humor. If you happen to be a young person or an older person, Democratic or Republican, he just works so well with everybody. He is smart as a whip. He has a great way about him. He is approachable and has a very can-do attitude. I think the President made a great choice. I say to Ernie and his family, I appreciate his willingness to serve in a lot of capacities and his willingness now to serve in this capacity. Hopefully, it will be good for him, his life, and his family. I think it certainly is going to be good for our country, so we appreciate that. I say to my colleagues who have not had a chance to get to know him, I think everyone is going to like him a lot and enjoy working with him. I know I certainly have. I also wish to discuss something I touched on earlier this week. I stood here just this week talking about the Swiss cheese we have in the executive branch of our Federal Government. There are too many positions that don't have someone confirmed for those positions. In some cases, the administration has been derelict in terms of sending us nominations because they spend forever vetting nominations because they don't want to send someone to us who has a flaw or a blemish. As a result, I think they spend entirely too much time vetting nominees. In some cases, even when a nominee's name gets here, even if they are really good and well qualified, we delay those nominations further. Whether it is a Democratic or Republican President, we put the nominees through--not torture but something pretty close to it. We need good people to be willing to serve. When they step up and are willing to serve, we need to process and vet those nominations. We need to scrub them hard, but at the end of the day we need to move them forward. In the Environment and Public Works Committee, we took a small but important step with the President's nominee Regina McCarthy to be the Administrator for the Environment Protection Agency. She is enormously well qualified. She has already been confirmed by the Senate for the air pollution side for the EPA and has done a very nice job. Although she has been nominated by a Democratic President, in the past she served with five Republican Governors. She is smart, hard- working, she has great credentials, and she is approachable. She is somebody who is able to understand and explain things. She will do a great job. We have had a hard time being able to move her nomination out of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Today we were joined by our Republican colleagues. Unfortunately, none of them voted to report her nomination out of committee. We have reported her out on a straight party-line vote. My hope is that we will have an opportunity to do what we did a number of years ago--about 7 or 8 years ago. Mike Leavitt, the former Governor of Utah, was nominated to be the head of EPA. There was some delay in his nomination. We actually had a big markup and business meeting scheduled to consider his nomination, and the Democrats boycotted that meeting. We waited a couple of weeks. At a followup meeting, the Democrats showed up, and we reported him out with Democratic support. Later, we voted for his nomination. It was a big bipartisan vote. I think there were 70 or 80 votes in favor of his nomination. My hope is that is what we will do with Gina McCarthy. She deserves a vote, and from my perspective she deserves a positive, affirmative vote. We have Ernie Moniz coming our way later this afternoon in about 40 minutes. I hope my colleagues will join me and give him a big vote so we can send him to work for our country one more time. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be vitiated.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, good evening. The Budget While I was waiting for a chance to say a few words on the floor, I was on the phone and had a conversation with someone who has run a couple of very successful companies in our country. I do not know if he is a Democrat or a Republican, but it was an interesting conversation. We talked about how the economy is coming along, and we talked about how the companies he is especially interested in are doing. We sort of looked ahead. One of the things I asked is, what do you think we could be doing here, where we are working in our Nation's Capital in the U.S. Senate? He pretty much said there are three things we need to do. He said: You need to answer maybe three questions for us. One, can you govern in a divided Washington, a divided Congress? He said: No. 2, can you be-- can we be as a nation--fiscally responsible? And the third thing he said was, can you provide some certainty with respect to the Tax Code to actually know what taxes are going to look like, not just this week or this month or just this year, but how about having some certainty going forward? I think there is a lot of wisdom in what he said. As some other folks have been talking about here on the floor today, when we were not passing the Water Resources Development Act, a good bipartisan bill, I think a responsible bill, an encouraging step, if you will, but in between we have had other people speak and talking about one side or the other moving forward on a budget. Someone talked about other issues that are in the news these days. I want to follow up on some of the earlier conversations today with respect to demonstrating that we can govern, that we can be fiscally responsible and we can provide some certainty with respect to the Tax Code. Folks who might be listening in to what is going on in the Senate this afternoon may or may not know the way the budget process works. Obviously this is budget 101. In my old role as State treasurer and Governor of Delaware--in Delaware we have two budgets. Not one but two budgets. We have an operating budget and we have a capital budget, a brick-and-mortar budget. The brick-and-mortar budget is for schools, K-12, sort of postsecondary education; infrastructure: roads, highways, bridges, prisons, that kind of thing. But we have an operating budget as well. Here we only have one. For, gosh, I want to say about 30--40 years, actually, the way we are supposed to run our finances as a country basically called for the President to submit a budget, usually in February, one budget not two but one budget. The Congress is expected to come in and sort of pivot off of that budget and create what we call a budget resolution. The Senate passes a budget resolution, the House does. The idea is to be able to do that sometime in April, and hopefully by the end of April agree between the House and Senate on that budget resolution. People think a budget resolution is a budget. But it is not. It is a resolution, a framework for a budget. It is not actually signed by the President. It is something we work out. It provides a foundation on which to pass a number of maybe a dozen or so appropriations bills that cover everything from agriculture to transportation. The budget resolution provides a framework for any revenue measures we might need to pass as well in order to get us closer to a balanced budget or to meet some kind of responsibilities for running our country. But the idea is for the Senate to pass a budget resolution, the House to pass a budget resolution, and we create a conference committee and work out our differences. For the last 4 years, our friends in the Republican Party delighted in accusing the Democrats of never passing a budget. What they meant was we never passed a budget resolution, that framework. I think of the budget resolution as a skeleton. The skeleton is the bones, if you will. But we put the meat on the bones when we pass the dozen or so appropriations bills, and whatever revenue measures are needed. That is the meat on the bones. Then eventually we have a full budget. Right now, as our colleagues know, we passed in the Senate a budget resolution several weeks ago. It called for deficit reduction. It did not balance the budget over the next 10 years, but it further reduced the budget deficit and put us on a path to stabilize our debt, and to get us on a trajectory where debt as a percentage of gross domestic product is starting to come down--not as much as I would like, probably not as much as the Presiding Officer would like, but to get us headed in the right direction. It was a 50/50 deal, 50 percent deficit reduction on the spending side, 50 percent on the revenue side. Actually, ironically, the last time we had a budget--1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 in the Clinton administration--Erskine Bowles, then the President's Chief of Staff and a woman named Sylvia Matthews, now Sylvia Matthews Burwell who is our new OMB Director, worked along with the Republican House, Republican Senate to come up with a deficit reduction plan in 1997 that led to four balanced budgets in a row. Their deal, worked out with Republicans, was a 50/50 deal. Fifty percent of the deficit reduction was on the spending side, 50 percent was on the revenue side. Anyway, this year the Senate passed a budget resolution, passed with all Democratic votes, no Republicans. It is a 50/50 deal, half of the deficit reduction on spending, half on the revenue side. Over in the House, they have a different approach. The Republicans in the House argue, with some justification, that they get more deficit reduction accomplished. You might quibble with some of their assumptions. They assume the repeal of ObamaCare. They also assume that even though they are going to repeal it, the $1 trillion in deficit reduction that CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, says flows from ObamaCare over the next 10 years in the Affordable Care Act--even though they assume repealing ObamaCare, they still assume the $1 trillion in deficit reduction. I do not know if that is entirely consistent, but that is part of their assumption. So they end up with deficit reduction that is dependent solely on the spending side. No revenues, it is all on the spending side. So they passed their budget resolution. We passed ours. They passed theirs with almost all Republican votes, we passed ours with all Democratic votes. When that happens, the idea is to say, here is the Senate budget resolution, here is the House budget resolution. Why don't we create a conference committee--I used to think of it as a compromise committee--where some of the Senators, Democrat and Republican, gather together and work out the differences between the two budget resolutions. That is what people sent us here to do. The Presiding Officer knows I like to sometimes ask people who have been married a long time, what is the secret for being married a long time? I usually ask this to people who have been married 50, 60, or 70 years. I get some real funny answers. I got a great answer about a week ago. A couple has been married 55 years. I asked the wife and husband. I said to the wife: What is the secret to being married 55 years? She looked at her husband, and she said, he will tell you that he can either be right or he can be happy, but he cannot be both. I thought that was pretty funny. He said something to the effect of, when you know you are wrong, admit it. When you know you are right, let it go. That is pretty good advice. I think the best answer I ever heard to that question of what is the secret to being married a long time--I have heard this from a number of people. The answer is the two Cs, communicate and compromise. Think about that. The two Cs, communicate and compromise. I think that is not only the secret to an enduring union between two people, but I think it is also the secret to a vibrant democracy, communicate and compromise. It is kind of ironic that our Republican friends, after beating us over the head for 4 years for not supposedly passing a budget--although if you looked at what we put in place, some of the legislation was law; we actually did have a budget. We had spending caps and directions to reduce spending in a lot of different categories. We saved in deficit reduction well over $1 trillion as a result. But, ironically, the very people who criticized us for not passing a budget have now, here in the Senate, made it impossible for us to create that conference committee, a compromise committee between the House and the Senate, and take the next logical step of reconciling the differences between the Senate-passed budget resolution and the House's. It is not going to be easy to do that, but we need to get started. If you think about the way we spend money--I want to commend the chair of the Budget Committee. She has had some very sad losses in her family. We extend our sympathy there. I want to commend the Senator and her committee for taking on a tough job, one of many tough jobs she has taken on, and to give us a budget resolution that we can go to conference with. I want to have a chance to do that. I want to mention this and I will yield. We had a bunch of Realtors in from Delaware. They wanted to talk about the budget and how we are doing. I explained that if you think of the Federal budget, think of it as a pie, think of it like a pizza pie or a chocolate pie, but think of it as a pie. The way I explained this is, over half of that pie is entitlement program spending. That is things we are entitled to by virtue of our age, our station in life, our service, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, some of our veterans' benefits. But over half of the budget of that pie for spending, over half of it is entitlement spending and it is growing. Another roughly 10 to 15 percent of that pie is interest on the debt. With the debt growing, interest on the debt--thank God the interest rates are low right now or that would go through the roof. Interest on the debt continues to maybe creep up. If you add those two together, it is about 70 percent of the pie we are thinking about. That leaves another 30 percent. What is in the remaining 30 percent? The rest of the whole Federal Government. About half of that 30 percent is defense. About half of that 30 percent is everything else from agriculture to transportation and everything in between--law enforcement, courts, Federal prisons, the FBI, education, housing, environment. Everything else is in that 15 percent. The difference between the Senate-passed budget resolution and the House-passed budget resolution is the House would make some changes in entitlement spending. We do some of that as well. We do more to try to reduce spending. But the real difference is what happens with that 15 percent of--we call it domestic discretionary spending. The other 15 percent in discretionary spending is defense. But they would take, in their budget resolution in the House, that 15 percent over the next 10 years and take it down to roughly 5 percent--5 percent. That is everything in the Federal Government other than defense and entitlements and interest. That is everything else. That includes workforce development, starting with early childhood education programs, Head Start, all the way from kindergarten up to high school; programs especially promoting the education in STEM, science, technology, engineering and math, postsecondary education. It includes infrastructure; roads, highways, bridges, everything broadly defined in infrastructure. It includes investments in research and development that can create products and technologies that can be commercialized and sold all over the world. All of that stuff is the rest of 15 percent and it goes down to about 5 percent. I do not think that is smart. I do not think that is smart for growing the economic pie because of things--the areas we need to invest in or look for. We need a world-class workforce. No. 2, we need terrific infrastructure, much better than our decaying infrastructure. The third thing we need is to invest in R&D that can be commercialized and turned into products. In any event, we have a difference in priorities here. The Senate- passed budget resolution is not perfect, but I think it is a very good document and a good starting point. The Republicans have their ideas, some with merit, some not. But the next thing we need to do is we need to meet. We need to create that conference committee and we need to go to work and let the chair of the committee and her counterpart over here, Senator Sessions, do their job, along with their House counterparts. But they cannot do their job until Republicans in the Senate agree to form a conference committee and go to conference. We need that to happen. Rather than just talking about and pointing fingers at one another, we actually need to do that. We need to stop pointing fingers, join hands, and see if we cannot work this out. I yield the floor again, with my thanks to Senator Murray for the leadership she continues to provide for all of us.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. It sure is a States rights issue. I would be remiss if I didn't say this. I know my colleague has to leave. But in my first term as Governor, I had never heard of Mike Enzi. Who is this Mike Enzi guy? It turns out he is a great guy. He is one of our colleagues and a former mayor of Gillette, WY, and he has been pushing this as a Senator forever. Mike Leavitt, who succeeded me as chairman of the NGA, has been pushing this forever, a former Governor of Utah. So I give a shout out to both of them for their leadership. If we don't give up, sometimes we can get stuff done, and Mike Enzi doesn't give up and I know the Senator from Georgia doesn't. So I thank my friend.

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I wish to join with the Senator from Georgia. There are issues we disagree on, but this is a subject we agree on--another one we agree on. I was privileged to be the Governor of Delaware for 8 years, and now I have served with the Senator from Georgia and other colleagues for the last 12 years. Delaware is one of those States that doesn't have a sales tax. I think most of these States that don't have a sales tax are not supportive of this bill. I am. Either I am out of step or maybe not. We have all these signs when people come into a State that say ``Welcome to,'' whether it is Georgia or Delaware or North Dakota. We had a sign that said, ``Welcome to Delaware, the Small Wonder, the First State'' and they all had the name of the Governor. When I became Governor, I said why don't we take down the name of the Governor and put something else up, and what we put up is ``Home of Tax-Free Shopping.'' That is what we put up: ``Home of Tax-Free Shopping.'' In our little State, we have borders with New Jersey to the east and Pennsylvania to the north and Maryland to the west. They have sales tax. A lot of people in those States come to Delaware to shop, to buy things, and help to fuel our economy, our retail economy, and to help fuel our tourism economy as well. When people say to me: As a former Governor and a Senator from a State that doesn't have a sales tax, why do you support this bill, one, I think it is an equity issue. The brick-and-mortar merchants are there collecting the sales tax in those 45 or so States that have a sales tax to help support the community, help to support the government and the services that are provided locally in States across America. Then we have folks who are selling things over the Internet to people who live in those States without collecting the sales tax, without being part of the solution. The other thing--and the Senator from Georgia knows as well as I do-- the brick-and-mortar merchants have people come into their stores pretty regularly, and they ask the merchants: How would you like to help support the Little League? How would you like to help support the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts? How would you like to support this festival or this function? They get asked about those things all the time--and they do. Meanwhile, the folks they are competing with--the Internet sales--they are not supporting those kinds of activities. So there is an equity question here. For me, why I see value in this--a guy who comes from a State who doesn't have a sales tax--is this: I want more people from other States, including the three around us, to come and buy things in my State. If they can buy things over the Internet and not pay a sales tax, then why would they come to Delaware? But if they have to pay a sales tax that is going to be collected by the Internet provider selling to people in those States with sales taxes, they might come to Delaware and shop.

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, would the Senator yield for a moment?

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. It is ironic; this reminds me of our church. Every now and then our minister is going full steam and preaching to our congregation. He says: I know I am preaching to the choir, but even choirs need to be preached to. In this case, the folks, ironically, on the floor--Senator Warner, Senator Collins, Senator Sessions, and I think myself and Dr. Coburn-- there are probably no Democrats and Republicans more committed to figuring out how do we get better results for less money in everything we do. So even the choir needs to be preached to. We just had a pretty good sermon. I have a couple of posters here I want to share. I think they might be of some interest and value in this discussion. I like to think of spending, as we are trying to rein it in and get it under control, in three elements. One of those is entitlement spending, which now is over 50 percent of what we spend in the Federal Government. It is growing. We have something called discretionary spending, which includes defense, and the domestic programs which are not entitlements, not Medicare, not Medicaid, not Social Security. Then you have got interest on the debt. That is pretty much it. That is pretty much it. If you look at, again, entitlement spending, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other things that we are entitled to, it is over 50 percent and growing. As it turns out, the part of our budget that is being squeezed is the discretionary spending. So about half of that is nondefense discretionary spending. That includes everything from transportation to agriculture, to housing, education, to homeland security, and a whole lot of other things as well. Then there is defense. If you take a look at this chart, we find that this gray line here is actually nondefense discretionary spending. We start out in 1971. It is about 4 percent of spending as a percentage of GDP. Today it is about 4 percent as well. The budget that I believe we received from the House of Representatives actually--where they actually drop their spending is in that money. That includes workforce development, it includes education, it includes infrastructure--roads, highways, bridges, rail, ports, all of the above. It includes investing in R&D, research and development, through the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and creates among other things goods and services and products that we can sell all over the country and all over the world. Under the House-passed budget, that money, instead of spending about 19 percent of our budget for nondefense discretionary spending, I think we would end up down around 4 percent for all nondefense discretionary spending--4 percent of our budget. That is not consistent with the priorities of many of us, including those on this side of aisle, include our own congressional delegation. Here we have health care. This is good. Health care as a percentage of GDP. I mentioned Medicare as a percentage of our entitlements, including Medicare as a percentage of our budget, now is up over 50 percent and climbing. If you look at health care as a percentage of GDP in this country, we are the green line. What we see from 1961 down to about 2010, the green line keeps going up and up and up. Today, health care as a percentage of GDP in this country is about 17, almost 18 percent. I think the next closest country is France. We are way ahead of anybody else. We are almost twice as high as the Japanese, for example. We spend about 17, 18 percent of GDP. They spend about 8 percent. They cover everybody. They get better results. When you have health care, the big part of Medicaid spending, Medicare spending, in fact all of it, is growing as though it is toxic. Entitlement spending continues to grow. We have got to do something about that. The discretionary spending part of our budget has actually been going down over 40 years by a significant amount of money. Today it is less than one-third of our total spending, if you combine defense and nondefense nondiscretionary spending. So what do we do about it? What we try to do about it in our side in the budget, created with a lot of input from Senator Warner, a lot of input from Senator Sanders on our side, great leadership by Senator Patty Murray, who is the chair of the committee--they have come up with a budget that is before us today that says: All right, we know we cannot continue to spend as we are doing. We have got to rein in the spending, not only on the entitlement side but also on the discretionary spending side. We need to raise some revenues. They go back to take a page out of the Clinton playbook from, gosh, 12, 13, 14 years ago, when we had a big deficit--not as big as this. But they adopted a deficit reduction plan engineered by Erskine Bowles, the Chief of Staff. They did a deficit reduction plan in 1997 with bipartisan support that said: For every dollar of spending that we cut, we raise a dollar of revenues. We ended up with four balanced budgets in a row. The budget that comes out of the Budget Committee is similar in that it is dollar for dollar, a dollar of deficit reduction on the revenue side, a dollar on the spending cuts. But unlike what happened 12 years ago--15 years ago actually--we do not get to a balanced budget. If there is a fault in the budget that has come out of the Budget Committee, while it reduces our publicly held debt as a percentage of GDP from 73 percent, 72 percent down to about 70 percent in 10 years--it stabilizes and starts to bring it down as a percentage of GDP--we still will have a budget deficit of over a half a trillion dollars 10 years from now. Is that good enough? No. We need to do better. In terms of entitlement program spending, we need to find ways to save more money. We need to do it without savaging old people and poor people. We need to do it in a way that preserves these programs for the long haul. We were in our caucus. We had some good presentations from a few of the smartest people, health economists, doctors and so forth, that have been around. They gave us a whole bunch of good ideas on how to get better health care results for less money. We need to do that and more. On the discretionary spending side, Senator Collins, who has previously chaired the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee--Senator Coburn and I have the privilege of leading it today. We focus literally every day as an oversight committee, trying to do oversight of the whole Federal Government, which is a whole lot for one committee to do. We do it in conjunction with the GAO. We work off their high-risk list, high-risk ways of saving money. Every few years they give us these great to-do lists for the Federal Government. We work on it in our subcommittee. We work on it with GAO. We work with OMB, Office of Management and Budget, we work with the inspectors general across the agencies of the Federal Government. We work with nonprofit groups such as Citizens Against Government Waste. Our whole idea is to focus on wasteful spending, as we ratchet down the spending, figuring out where are we going to get good results and where are we not. In the programs where we get the kind of results we want, we fund them more or we reduce them less. If we are not getting the results we need, we close those programs, we reduce those programs. That is the way it ought to be. That is the way it ought to be. That is the way we are trying to do it. Let me see if I have another chart here that might be relevant. When Bill Clinton was President in the last 4 years of his administration, they negotiated a deficit reduction deal with the Republican House and Senate in 1997, dollar for dollar, a dollar of revenue, a dollar of deficit reduction on the spending side. And for those 4 years we had a balanced budget, revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product. I think it was about 19\1/2\ to 20 percent, right around 20 percent of GDP. Last year, our revenues as a percentage of GDP were down around 16 percent, I think, between 15 and 16. Even with the fiscal cliff deal that was adopted earlier, we will be up to about 18 percent of GDP by the end of the 10-year period. I would suggest there are three things we need to do here: No. 1, we can build on a plan that has come out of the Budget Committee. It is a good start but it is not the finish line. We need to find additional savings in the entitlement programs that do not savage old people or poor people and preserve these programs for the long haul. We need, in addition to that, revenue. We can do that by closing deductions, loopholes, credits. We can means-test a bunch of stuff. But we need to come up with the revenue to get closer to 20 percent. The last thing, really in conjunction with what Senator Coburn was saying, is we need to look at every nook and cranny of the Federal Government--every nook and cranny of the Federal Government, from A to Z, from Agriculture to Transportation and everything in between. We need to ask this question: How do we get a better result for less money in everything we do? It is not just the responsibility of our committee, Homeland Security and Government Affairs, it is not just the Budget Committee, it is every committee. It is all of us who can win this together. It is the administration. It is the taxpayers groups. We are all in this together. If we are going to get to where we want to be, that is a fiscally sustainable roadmap to the future, it has to be all hands on deck. It has to be those three things: entitlement reform, additional reform, and to really squeeze every dime on the spending side and move from a culture of spendthrift to a culture of thrift. The budget resolution gets us going in the right direction. We are going to meet up in the House in a conference committee, their vision, our vision. That is where the real hard work begins. Out of that I hope we end up with a real focus on those three things. If we do and we can work together, and the administration and the President provide the leadership we need, we will get where we need to go in the future. I yield back.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, Senate Standing rule XXVI requires each committee to adopt rules to govern the procedure of the committee and to publish those rules in the Record not later than March 1 of the first year of each Congress. On February 27, 2013, a majority of the members of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations adopted subcommittee rules of procedure. Consistent with Standing rule XXVI, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of the rules of procedure of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, Senate Standing rule XXVI requires each committee to adopt rules to govern the procedure of the committee and to publish those rules in the Record not later than March 1 of the first year of each Congress. On February 27, 2013, a majority of the members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Emergency Management, Intergovernmental Relations, and the District of Columbia adopted subcommittee rules of procedure. Consistent with Standing rule XXVI, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of the rules of procedure of the Subcommittee on Emergency Management, Intergovernmental Relations, and the District of Columbia.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, Senate Standing rule XXVI requires each committee to adopt rules to govern the procedure of the committee and to publish those rules in the Record not later than March 1 of the first year of each Congress. On February 27, 2013, a majority of the members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Federal Programs and the Federal Workforce adopted subcommittee rules of procedure. Consistent with Standing rule XXVI, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of the rules of procedure of the Subcommittee on the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Federal Programs and the Federal Workforce.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, Senate Standing rule XXVI requires each committee to adopt rules to govern the procedure of the committee and to publish those rules in the Record not later than March 1 of the first year of each Congress. On February 28, 2013, a majority of the members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Management adopted subcommittee rules of procedure. Consistent with Standing rule XXVI, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of the rules of procedure of the Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate requires each committee to adopt rules to govern the procedure of the Committee and to publish those rules in the Congressional Record not later than March 1 of the first year of each Congress. Today, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs adopted Committee Rules of Procedure. Consistent with Standing Rule XXVI, I ask unanimous consent to have a copy of the Rules of Procedure of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs printed in the Record.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, it is rare that I disagree with the Senator from Texas--maybe once or twice in the last half a dozen years. Seriously, we disagree from time to time, but we do it in a way that we are not disagreeable with one another. I support the President's nomination of Chuck Hagel to be our Secretary of Defense, and I wish to take a couple of minutes to explain why. For folks who might be watching this from afar, this body used to operate very differently than it does today. The President would nominate people to serve in a cabinet or to serve as judges and there would be hearings. There would be debate. Sometimes people would disagree. But, certainly, for Cabinet appointments and for sub-Cabinet level appointments, for the most part, the President got the team he, or someday she, asked for. That is the way we have done it as Governors across the country, and it is the way we still do it. The idea of 4 years of this administration to still be playing a game of executive branch Swiss cheese--we have so many relatively high level positions, confirmable positions that are still vacant--is not good, whether it happens to be a Democratic administration or a Republican administration. The President, regardless of what party they are from, needs, for the most part, to have the team they want to put in place. They have been elected to lead. Let's give them a chance to lead. If they screw up, we can hold them accountable. I had the pleasure of serving with Chuck Hagel for, I guess, my first 8 years as a Senator. I like him and respect him as a fellow Vietnam veteran. He is a war hero. He was wounded not once but twice. He has the Purple Hearts and some other decorations to show, to demonstrate his valor. He came back, put his life together, built a business, a good-sized business, ran that business, and he has led some large government entities, including those that look out for our veterans and others too. As to the question of does one have the kind of intimate knowledge of the Department of Defense we would like for a person to have, he has had good training. He has had good exposure. He has been there. He has done that. He has been able to, as an innovator, as an entrepreneur, start a business, grow a business, run that business, build that business. Here he served on the committees of jurisdiction that actually enabled him to drill down on parts of the Department of Defense and part of our defense policy and foreign policy that you never have a chance to when you are over there serving in Southeast Asia or some other area around the world as a member of our Armed Services. When I went with Chuck on a codel--I want to say it was maybe in 2005--that is when we actually get to know people around here. We could be here, be kind of airdropped in on Monday afternoons, vote, and then by the time Thursday night rolls around, folks here smell the jet fumes and they are ready to go back to Hawaii or Michigan or Oklahoma or someplace such as that. We go by train to Delaware. But people are ready to head for home, and we just do not have the kind of time together, quality time together, that we used to have when people would actually stay here for weekends, when we were not focused 24/7 on fundraising, and we actually had--believe it or not--dinner clubs and people carpooled to work. Can you imagine that: Democrats and Republicans carpooling to work here? We just do not have those opportunities these days. I do not know that we ever will again. So one of the great opportunities we have to know people is when we go on codels, these congressional delegation trips. I had the opportunity to go with Chuck Hagel on a codel he led over one-half dozen years ago. We went to the Middle East. We went to Israel. We spent time along Gaza. We went to Jordan. We met with leaders of Saudi Arabia. I had a chance to actually see him interact up close and personal with leaders of all those countries, see how he handled himself, to see his knowledge of the issues, his ability to debate, discuss those issues with the leaders of three of the most important nations, allies of ours in the world. I was proud of the job he did then. I was proud of the leadership he showed on those occasions. I was proud of his grasp of the issues. Do you know the other thing I was proud of? He was willing to be honest and frank with people with whom we need to be honest and frank. He reminds me of one of the old caveats of leadership, which is that leadership is having the courage to stay out of step when everybody else is marching to the wrong tune. Leadership is also the willingness to speak truth to power, to tell people--sometimes our leaders, whether they be the President or, frankly, sometimes leaders of other countries--what they need to hear, maybe not what they want to hear. Chuck Hagel is that kind of person. I believe he is principled. I think he is hard working, that he will surround himself with good people, ethical people, honest people, capable people, bright people. I think as a former Member here, he understands the importance of the interaction between us and the Department of Defense, which I hope he will have the opportunity to lead. When we passed something called the Chief Financial Officer Act, I think in 1990 in this Chamber, coauthored, I think, by Bill Roth, my predecessor, one of the requirements of that legislation was not only would every major department in our government be required to have a chief financial officer, but also, in addition, there was a full expectation that all these departments which were not auditable--could not be audited--had to become auditable. They had to be capable of being audited. Then there was the full expectation that once they were auditable, they would be able to pass an audit fully without qualification. Today, there are two departments in the Federal Government that are not auditable and have not passed an audit in an unqualified manner. One of them is the Department of Homeland Security. They are getting real close. They are knocking on the door. I think they will get it done by next year. I congratulate the Secretary and their team for doing that. The other is the Department of Defense. For years and years and years they would say: Well, manana. We will do that manana, next year or the year after that. They have not. Why is this important? What you cannot measure you cannot manage. What we cannot measure we cannot manage. The Department of Defense is unable to measure well and, as a result, they do not manage as well as they need to. We just got a high risk update from the GAO, the General Accountability Office, 2 weeks ago. High on their list of issues that need to be addressed is the Department of Defense's need to be able to pass an unqualified audit so their financials, their accounting systems and supply systems, their spare parts systems, personnel systems actually work. Leon Panetta has done much in the 2 years he has served as Secretary of Defense to make sure the Department of Defense takes this obligation seriously. I commend him and I thank him for that. He has been like a breath of fresh air. Second, Chuck Hagel has given me his personal commitment that he will not relent, he will not turn back, but he will continue on this path of undertaking and be in a position by the next 3 years to do what the Department of Homeland Security is about to complete, the benchmark they are about to reach, the milestone they are about to reach, and the milestone that virtually every other Department of the Federal Government has reached. We are looking down the barrel of a gun this Friday--sequestration. If we are serious about making sure we do not get shot by that gun, mortally wounded by that gun, along with our economy, we are going to have to make sure we are doing three things better. One of those is, we need some additional revenues. We need to have revenues closer to the level of where revenues were in the 4 years we had balanced budgets under Bill Clinton, where revenues as a percentage of GDP, my colleagues will recall, ranged anywhere from 19\1/2\ percent of GDP to 20\1/2\ percent of GDP--somewhere in that range. Last year, it was about 15\1/2\, maybe 16 percent of GDP. With the fiscal cliff deal adopted in this body and signed by the President back in early January, revenues as a percentage of GDP by the end of these 10 years will be up to about 18, 18\1/2\ percent. But some additional revenues are needed, very much in line with what we had when we actually had four balanced budgets in a row under the Clinton administration. Remember, those were the first balanced budgets we had since 1969. So, No. 1, we need some additional revenues--in smart ways. The second thing we need to do is entitlement program reform. Over half the money we spend is on entitlements. Is it possible? The President says we need entitlement reform that saves money, does not savage old people, poor people, and actually makes sure these programs are around for future generations. I could not agree more. That is No. 2. The third thing we need to do is find ways to save money in everything we do--everything we do--from agriculture to transportation and everything in between, including defense. I am told--and I am going to look over here at Senator Levin, the chairman of the committee, and the ranking member, Senator Inhofe, and just ask a rhetorical question. I recall hearing not long ago that we spend more as a nation on defense--I say this as a 23-year veteran naval flight officer, Active and Reserve Duty, a Vietnam veteran--but I am told we spend as much money on defense as maybe the next 5, 6, 7 nations combined. As important as it is for our next Secretary of Defense to have a good grasp of military issues--foreign issues, intelligence issues, the ability to manage big operations, to have strong managers under him or her--as important as that is, it is important for us to spend more wisely. A good place to start is the GAO high risk list for high-risk places where we are wasting money and that we get a good to-do list out of GAO. It is one I think we ought to take seriously. I know the chairman of our committee and the ranking member take it seriously. Believe me, I do too. One of things we are going to use from our commitment of Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs--on which Senator Levin serves, and he chairs the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations--we are going to make sure we hold the feet of the Department of Defense to the fire, and we need a Secretary of Defense who will do that as well--someone who is a fiscal hawk, someone who understands the importance of getting better results for less money in everything we do, including providing for the defense of our country. That is not the speech I brought with me to the floor, but it is the speech that is in my heart. I just say to my colleagues, if you are on the fence and you are not sure whether you ought to vote for cloture, someday we are going to have a Republican President again. Someday we will have a Republican majority here. There is an old saying: Every dog has its day. Today we have a Democratic President and we have a Democratic Senate for confirmations. Someday that will not be the case. I will say to our Republican friends, just be careful. Just be careful. I say this with respect: Be careful of the bed we make because someday our friends on the other side will get to lie in it. Do we want to continue to go on with this precedent of maybe even denying an up-or-down vote on the nomination of a Secretary? I do not think so. I do not think that is a good precedent. An even worse precedent is to have all these sub- Cabinet-level positions that are vacant and have been vacant, in some cases, for weeks, months, in some cases for longer. That is a terrible precedent to have, and we need to stop it. A good time to stop it is right now. I am pleased to stand and endorse the nomination of Chuck Hagel. I think he was a credit to his State, to this body when he served here, and I think he will be a credit to us if he is confirmed. I urge his confirmation starting with today's vote for cloture. Thank you very much.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Again, I thank Senator Shaheen and Senator Hoeven for allowing us to have this colloquy.

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, while the Senator from Texas is still on the floor, he knows I have a lot of respect and affection for him, and I am delighted to serve with him here and also to serve with him on the Finance Committee. I appreciate Senator Shaheen for letting me jump in for just a minute. We agree on so much. We actually do. And not just the Senator and I but our colleagues here. And I think we fully recognize that although the deficit comes down from $1.5 trillion to about $850 billion or so, it is way too much. I think we also agree that one of the best ways to reduce the deficit is to strengthen and grow the economy. I believe--and I think I heard the President say this the other night--there are three things we need to make sure we address. One, we need to address--and the President said this--we need to address entitlement programs, not to savage old people or to savage poor people but to figure out how to get better health care results for less money to be able to preserve those programs for the long haul. I think we will have an interesting proposal from Senator Durbin later this year with respect to Social Security and putting it in a structured way, maybe a path forward on Social Security that makes it clear we are not trying to balance the budget on Social Security but actually do reforms that we know are needed and I know are needed so we will have that program for the long haul. I commend my side of the aisle, and I commend your side of the aisle. We acknowledge that we need some revenues, whether it is on the tax expenditure side, the deductions and loopholes and so forth, or finding other ways to raise revenue. Third, we just came from a press conference this morning with Congressman Issa, Congressman Cummings, Senator Coburn, and myself to focus on the GAO and their high-risk list, high-risk ways for wasting money. That comes out today. Every 2 years they give us this high-risk list for how to find ways to save money and spend our tax dollars more efficiently. We have all that working together, those three things: entitlement reform, some additional revenues, and actually looking in every nook and cranny to see how we can get a better result for less money. Those we can do together. My colleague and I have worked on some things together, and I want to work on those with the Senator, and I look forward to that. I think that if we do, a lot of our colleagues will join us.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise to introduce the New Columbia Admissions Act, a bill that seeks to end a longstanding injustice and give full voting representation to the residents of the District of Columbia. More than 600,000 Americans live in Washington, D.C. and bear all the responsibilities of citizenship, yet currently have no vote in either chamber of Congress. This legislation paves the way for the creation of a 51st state from the populated portions of Washington, D.C., giving the citizens who live here in our nation's capital the voice they deserve in our national government. Washington is not just a collection of government offices, monuments and museums; it is home to more than half a million people who work, study, raise families, and start businesses. These citizens serve in the military and die for our country just like the residents of the 50 States. They pay Federal taxes just like other Americans in fact they pay more per capita than residents of most states. But when it comes to having a voice in our Congress, suddenly these citizens do not count. We must ask ourselves how we would feel in their place; I think most of us would quickly decide that this is not how we would want to be treated. In fact, the United States is the only democracy in the world that treats the citizens of its capital city this way. We are the only democracy, it is sad to say, that denies voting representation to the people who live in its capital city. People have been trying to fix this injustice for almost as long as it has existed. In 1801, just one year after residents of the new Federal capital city were denied the vote, a prominent city resident began arguing for a constitutional amendment to give voting rights to residents of the District. Two years later, a House member introduced a bill to ``retrocede,'' or give back to Maryland and Virginia, the land that was ceded to create the District. Support for the proposal was based in large part on the political injustice of denying representation to the residents of the capital city. Even some opponents reportedly argued that the District might be granted Congressional representation once its population became more substantial, a threshold that clearly seems to have been met by a city of more than half a million people, a number comparable to several states. In 1978, the House and Senate approved a constitutional amendment to give the District full voting representation in Congress that was ratified by 16 states, but the measure died when it failed to win support from the required \3/4\ of the States within 7 years. More recently, in 2009, the Senate approved a bill to give the District a voting representative in the House. The bill I am introducing today creates a path for the District of Columbia to become the State of ``New Columbia'' with full voting rights in Congress. Under this bill, a federal district called Washington, D.C. would still remain under the control of Congress, as the Constitution mandates. But it would be a smaller area encompassing the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court and the National Mall, an area where few people actually live. The rest of the current District of Columbia, diverse neighborhoods that are home to more than half a million U.S. citizens no different from the ones you and I and our colleagues come here to represent would become a new State provided that its residents vote to set that in motion. The bill is similar to proposals offered by Senator Edward Kennedy in the early 1990s, and by my former colleague Senator Joseph Lieberman in December 2012. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District's sole, non-voting representative in the House who has worked tirelessly for voting rights for the residents of the city, has introduced a companion House bill. I believe we keep proposing and debating different solutions to the injustice imposed on District residents because we know in our hearts that the situation we have now and have tolerated for so long is not right. It is familiar, but it is not fair and not consistent with the values we all share as Americans. It is incumbent upon those of us who enjoy the right and the privilege of full voting rights to take up the cause of our fellow citizens here in the District of Columbia and find a solution. Earlier this week, we celebrated the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his legacy of working to bring equality and justice to all Americans. It is in that spirit that I introduce this bill, with my colleagues Senators Barbara Boxer, Richard Durbin and Patty Murray. I hope we can work together to find a way to bring the same rights to the residents of the District of Columbia that all of us living in the 50 states cherish so much.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise to introduce the New Columbia Admissions Act, a bill that seeks to end a longstanding injustice and give full voting representation to the residents of the District of Columbia. More than 600,000 Americans live in Washington, D.C. and bear all the responsibilities of citizenship, yet currently have no vote in either chamber of Congress. This legislation paves the way for the creation of a 51st state from the populated portions of Washington, D.C., giving the citizens who live here in our nation's capital the voice they deserve in our national government. Washington is not just a collection of government offices, monuments and museums; it is home to more than half a million people who work, study, raise families, and start businesses. These citizens serve in the military and die for our country just like the residents of the 50 States. They pay Federal taxes just like other Americans in fact they pay more per capita than residents of most states. But when it comes to having a voice in our Congress, suddenly these citizens do not count. We must ask ourselves how we would feel in their place; I think most of us would quickly decide that this is not how we would want to be treated. In fact, the United States is the only democracy in the world that treats the citizens of its capital city this way. We are the only democracy, it is sad to say, that denies voting representation to the people who live in its capital city. People have been trying to fix this injustice for almost as long as it has existed. In 1801, just one year after residents of the new Federal capital city were denied the vote, a prominent city resident began arguing for a constitutional amendment to give voting rights to residents of the District. Two years later, a House member introduced a bill to ``retrocede,'' or give back to Maryland and Virginia, the land that was ceded to create the District. Support for the proposal was based in large part on the political injustice of denying representation to the residents of the capital city. Even some opponents reportedly argued that the District might be granted Congressional representation once its population became more substantial, a threshold that clearly seems to have been met by a city of more than half a million people, a number comparable to several states. In 1978, the House and Senate approved a constitutional amendment to give the District full voting representation in Congress that was ratified by 16 states, but the measure died when it failed to win support from the required \3/4\ of the States within 7 years. More recently, in 2009, the Senate approved a bill to give the District a voting representative in the House. The bill I am introducing today creates a path for the District of Columbia to become the State of ``New Columbia'' with full voting rights in Congress. Under this bill, a federal district called Washington, D.C. would still remain under the control of Congress, as the Constitution mandates. But it would be a smaller area encompassing the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court and the National Mall, an area where few people actually live. The rest of the current District of Columbia, diverse neighborhoods that are home to more than half a million U.S. citizens no different from the ones you and I and our colleagues come here to represent would become a new State provided that its residents vote to set that in motion. The bill is similar to proposals offered by Senator Edward Kennedy in the early 1990s, and by my former colleague Senator Joseph Lieberman in December 2012. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District's sole, non-voting representative in the House who has worked tirelessly for voting rights for the residents of the city, has introduced a companion House bill. I believe we keep proposing and debating different solutions to the injustice imposed on District residents because we know in our hearts that the situation we have now and have tolerated for so long is not right. It is familiar, but it is not fair and not consistent with the values we all share as Americans. It is incumbent upon those of us who enjoy the right and the privilege of full voting rights to take up the cause of our fellow citizens here in the District of Columbia and find a solution. Earlier this week, we celebrated the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his legacy of working to bring equality and justice to all Americans. It is in that spirit that I introduce this bill, with my colleagues Senators Barbara Boxer, Richard Durbin and Patty Murray. I hope we can work together to find a way to bring the same rights to the residents of the District of Columbia that all of us living in the 50 states cherish so much.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise for the purpose of entering into a colloquy with Senator Reed, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, regarding funding for the Department of the Interior included in the disaster assistance supplemental. Mr. President, my home State of Delaware was unfortunately impacted by Hurricane Sandy, which struck on October 28 and 29 of this year. The damage caused by Hurricane Sandy was widespread in Delaware. Among the areas impacted was Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Sussex County. Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge, established in the 1960s, is an important part of the Eastern migratory flyway and one of the only places in the world where horseshoe crabs come to spawn. It offers world class outdoor recreation and is a key piece of Delaware's tourism industry. The refuge suffered severe damage during Hurricane Sandy. Breaches in the beach and dune system separating the refuge's marsh units from the Delaware Bay resulted in an ongoing inundation of the refuge by salt water. This has led to the loss of thousands of acres of critical habitat, as well as damage to refuge property and facilities. It severely impacted the health of the freshwater marsh system in the refuge, and the decline of the marsh has in turn led to continuous flooding of nearby farmland and communities, damaging the private property of thousands of people. I am grateful that the Appropriations Committee had the wisdom to include $150,000,000 for the Office of the Secretary of at the Department of the Interior to fund recovery and restoration activities related to Hurricane Sandy and other natural disasters. I would like to ask if the intent of this funding is to support recovery and restoration projects similar to those that will be required in my State to respond to the impacts of Hurricane Sandy?

Mr. CARPER. I thank the Senator.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, this week, the Senate passed the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Improvement Act of 2012, The IPERA Improvement Act or H.R. 4053. Earlier this month, the House passed the same legislation, which builds on the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010 (IPERA) by taking additional steps to identify and prevent improper payments by Federal agencies. I look forward to seeing the President sign into law this important, bipartisan legislation. The Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Improvement Act of 2012 goes beyond IPERA's goals for curbing agencies' improper payments with three main concepts, including provisions that: expand requirements and strengthen estimates for agencies' improper payments; mandate the establishment of a government-wide ``Do Not Pay'' program; and prevent payments to deceased individuals. As my colleagues know, improper payments are payments made in error, such as payments made to the wrong person or in the wrong amount. These kinds of preventable mistake unfortunately result in billions of lost taxpayer dollars every year. Although we have made great strides in curbing improper payments in the past year, we still have a ways to go to improve transparency and make agencies and agency leadership more accountable for better protecting the taxpayer dollars we entrust to them. At a time of record deficits, we need to be getting the most out of every dollar and cannot afford to waste more than a hundred billion annually. I will continue to work with my colleagues in Congress and the Administration to see that these measures are enacted, and properly and efficiently implemented. The bipartisan legislation requires several important steps to curb Federal Government waste and fraud. First, the bill requires agencies to strengthen the estimation of improper payments. The legislation requires improved and more consistent reporting of improper payment estimates by Federal agencies, based on recommendations from the Department of Defense inspector general and the Government Accountability Office. The legislation, for example, would prevent agencies from relying only on voluntary disclosure of improper payments by contractors, as well as require agencies to produce documentation to prove a payment was correct. Second, the bill mandates the establishment of a government wide ``Do Not Pay'' program. Too often, Federal agencies make improper payments to individuals that could easily be identified as ineligible if payments were more routinely screened against Federal databases. Unfortunately, Federal agencies are not doing this basic eligibility screening before payments are made. Through the initiative, before an agency could award a contract or grant, the agency would have to cross check against the ``Do Not Pay'' database, which will include a central comprehensive database of individuals, contractors, and others who may be ineligible to receive Federal funds, such as companies that are no longer allowed to do work with the Federal Government because of a fraud conviction or similar reason. The administration is currently establishing a ``Do Not Pay `` program based on the White House executive memorandum, Memorandum on Enhancing Payment Accuracy Through a ``Do Not Pay List.'' However, there was no statutory mandate to proceed. The legislation establishes the ``Do Not Pay'' program in law throughout the Federal Government under a specific timetable. Third, the legislation targets death fraud and improper payments to deceased individuals. Improper payments include those made to individuals who are deceased, and should therefore no longer be eligible under program rules, yet still receive payments. For example, the Office of Personnel Management Inspector General reported that $601 million in improper payments were made to Federal retirees found to have already died. However, such payments to dead people were not unique to this one program. Improving the collection and use by Federal agencies of data on deceased beneficiaries will help curb hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, in improper payments. The IPERA Improvement Act requires that the Office of Management and Budget, in consultation with other agencies and stakeholders, determine a plan for curbing improper payments to deceased individuals. Finally, the legislation requires that the Office of Management and Budget report to Congress on the current efforts by agencies to recover improper payments, including a listing of agencies that employ outside contractors for recovery efforts, and their current levels and targets for recoveries. This reporting can easily be done as part of the annual report on improper payments currently conducted by the OMB. I believe passage of the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Improvement Act of 2012 represents an important step toward curbing waste and fraud within the Federal Government. I look forward to working with the administration and Federal agencies to implement the legislation's provisions. I also look forward to working with my congressional colleagues on additional steps during the next legislative session.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I would add to that this is a commitment to civility that Senator Coons and I share, and it is also one that our Congressman John Carney certainly does, and winning in races before him, Mike Castle. If you think of all of those--Castle with a ``C'', Carney with a ``C'', Coons with a ``C'', and Carper with a ``C''--people say what is it with the letter ``C'' and the State of Delaware? If I can, before I close here, I want to roll back in time about the economy of our State. People say what do you all do there? How do you provide for your living, your income? I would say the economy of our State is pretty much founded on the letter ``C.'' It includes corn. We started off by growing corn. Then chickens. There are a whole of lot of chickens there. For every person in Delaware, there are 300 chickens. For anyone listening and wondering what to have for dinner, chicken would be good. We have chemicals--the DuPont Company. A poor impoverished French family came to Delaware over 200 years ago and established what I call the DuPont country club. They didn't have many members. They figured they needed to establish some jobs so people could join their country club, so they started a chemical company, and a power company, and now they have quite a successful science company in our State--for over 200 years. We have cars. We have built a lot of cars over the years for GM and Chrysler. We are home to corporations of over half the New York Stock Exchange, half the Fortune 500. Credit card businesses are in our State. The coast of our State is the site of the Nation's summer capital--Rehoboth Beach and a bunch of other places. So the letter ``C'' has been pretty big. People say: Well, why do they call you the First State? Well, we are actually the first colony that threw off the yoke of British tyranny on June 15, 1776 and at the same time said to Pennsylvania, take a hike, we want to be a State on our own. And then 225 years from tomorrow, to be exact, we were the first State to ratify the Constitution. We have the best beaches in the country. Last year I think there were four five-star beaches in America, with two of them in Delaware--Rehoboth and Dewey Beach. We have the best Air Force base, we think, in the world. We were first in Ph.Ds per capita. We have, I think, the finest Judiciary--acknowledged year after year after year as the finest judicial system in the States. We have the best financial controls and cash management system. We have had triple A credit rating since--what was that guy's name as Governor, Carper or something? We continue to have that kind of credit rating. So we are proud of being first. What is our State motto? ``It is good to be first.'' And we attempt to be first in a whole lot of ways. Some things you don't want to be first in, and we want to be last in those. But we are proud of what we are first in--first in civility. As Senator Coons said, this all goes back to Return Day. When you announce your candidacy for election, whether it is for the U.S. Senate or as sheriff, you know at the end of the campaign--2 days after the campaign--you are going to be in Georgetown, DE, in a horse-drawn carriage or maybe an antique car with the man or woman you were running against, their family, your family, and surrounded by friends and supporters and thousands of other people. And I think it has a very tempering effect on the nature of our campaigns, a wonderful effect. That is one of much that we are proud of in our State. We are lucky to be Senators from this State, but this is a State that works and focuses on results. This is a State where we govern from the middle, whether the Governor is DuPont or Castle or Carper or Markell. And whether the Senator is Carper or Coons or Biden or Kaufman, we govern from the middle. We are a State where Democrats and Republicans actually like each other. We just want to get things done and do what is right for our State. With that in mind, we hope some of our friends and neighbors can join us later today in the Russell Building up on the third floor. We will make a toast to Delaware and enjoy some sarsaparilla and some other goodies as well. It is a great joy to serve with my friend.

Mr. CARPER. And we have fun doing them. One of the things we are going to do--a great idea from a brandnew Senator to Delaware about a year ago--is to have a ``Taste of Delaware.'' In fact, we are doing that this afternoon. It is not something paid for by the Federal Government but sponsored by our Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, as I recall, and others of its members to sort of be able to show off some of the finest of our State, and some of them pretty tasty, as it turns out. So we are looking forward to a lot of people coming by and enjoying that.

Mr. CARPER. We have this beautiful center of Georgetown, with all these beautiful old brick buildings, courthouses and other buildings, and as we gather there in the circle of Georgetown--and the Senator may have said this and I just missed it--but the town crier comes out on the balcony of the courthouse and he has on his top hat and his tails and he announces the results of the election 2 days earlier. This is Thursday after the election. He calls out the results of the election 2 days earlier just for Sussex County, DE, where about a sixth of our State's population lives. He calls out the results of everything from President, Vice President, all the way down to justice of the peace or sheriff. And when he finishes, we have a couple of short speeches on the platform there in front of thousands of people, maybe a patriotic song or two, and then the leaders of parties, Democrat, Republican, maybe Libertarian chairman, take a hatchet--a pretty big hatchet--and they grab it, each holding on, and they put it down in a glass aquarium half full of sand. And then someone brings in some buckets of sand, maybe from Rehoboth Beach or Dewey Beach, and they cover up and literally bury the hatchet. Some of my colleagues from New Jersey said: If we had a ceremony like that in our State, and we buried the hatchet, it probably wouldn't be in the sand. It would be in the anatomy or some part of the body of our opponents. But we do it in the sand. And then we have maybe a benediction, and we go off and eat, and people open their homes for a reception. So as the day carries on and the Sun sets in the west, the travails and the passions of the election begin to dissipate and people start to think and refocus not on how do we beat our opponents' brains out but how do we work together to govern our State. It is a wonderful tradition. We have talked about this before. I think we could use a return day for our country. It certainly works in our State. It has a very civilizing effect on all our campaigns.

Mr. CARPER. Would my colleague yield? Madam President, I want to follow up--we are supposed to talk about tomorrow being Delaware Day, if I could do that. But I wish to follow up on Senator Coons' remarks on the fiscal cliff. A friend of mine who has done a lot of research on the fiscal cliff says that if you look at domestic and discretionary spending, that is not really the overwhelming problem as far as why we continue to have a big budget deficit. The problem is really twofold. One of those is that if you look at revenues as a percentage of GDP, historically when we have been in budget, the revenues as a percentage of GDP, at least in the last 10, 15 years, revenues have been about 21 percent of GDP. Today they are about 15, 16 percent of GDP. But the other big driver in our deficit situation going forward is health care costs. It is health care costs, including Medicare and Medicaid. While we have to be smart enough to try to figure it out while being humane about caring for older people and the poor who count on Medicaid and Medicare to some extent, we have to focus on how to get better health care results for less money. That is what we have to focus on--how to get better health care results for less money. There are a lot of good ideas for doing that. Some of them are actually part of the health care law for our country. So it is revenues, and the other key here is better health care results for less money. We need to make sure that we have focused on Medicare and Medicaid in a humane way and that we do so in a way that doesn't harm, doesn't hurt, is not mean-spirited to those who depend on those programs. At the same time, we need to preserve those programs for the coming generations. For the pages down here--how old are you guys? Fifteen, sixteen years of age? Several of you are nodding your heads. We want to make sure these programs are still around when you are 65, 66, 67 or older. That is what this is for. It is sort of a P.S. to the wonderful comments of my colleague from Delaware. What is tomorrow in Delaware, I ask the Senator? I seem to forget. What is this all about?