Thomas Carper

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Built, I think, largely by Lockheed, and a lot of the contractual work is being done in maybe close to 40, 45 States. But Lockheed does some great work. This particular aircraft, I am troubled by a number of things, as are the sponsors of the legislation. It is not just that they are troubled, and it is not just that I am troubled, but some other folks are troubled too. Let me see if we have a list of some of the people who are calling and maybe suggesting that the F-22s we have ordered are enough. Among the people who say, in this case, 187 F-22s, fighter aircraft-- not an aircraft that is used for a lot--a plane mainly built and designed to use for dogfights with aircraft from other nations in an earlier day; the Soviets or maybe the Chinese or some other country. But among the leaders of our country, they are saying, maybe 187 is enough. Not maybe but saying 187 is enough. Two Presidents, former President George Bush and our current President Barack Obama, they have said that not just in giving speeches, but they have actually said that with the budgets they submit to us, and in this case President Obama's first budget and the last budget, or maybe several budgets from President Bush. Who else has said 187 is enough? Well, Secretaries of Defense; not only the current Secretary of Defense, who is Bob Gates, but the previous Secretary of Defense, who was also Bob Gates, and I think his predecessor as well said 187 should do us. We have had three Chairs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who have said 187 F-22s is enough; we think that should do it. We have had the current members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who have said 187 is plenty when it comes to F-22 fighter aircraft. Finally, two of the most respected Members of the Senate, Senators McCain and Levin, as leaders of this committee, have said: Well, this is enough. Given our other demands and our other aircraft we have available to meet this need, 187 F-22s is plenty. Let me take a look at the next chart, if we could, and see what we have. One of the reasons why all the folks I mentioned have said 187 F- 22s is enough, we think of some of the other aircraft we used, fixed wing as well as nonfixed wing aircraft; the F-15 fighter, a number of hours flown in Iraq and Afghanistan--these are rough numbers but about 40,000 flight hours. We have a couple UAVs here, unmanned aerial vehicles, one called the ScanEagle, the other is called the Predator. The Predator is better known. But so far the ScanEagle has flown in Iraq and Afghanistan about 150 flight hours. The Predator has flown about a half million flight hours in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of our helicopters, I think the H-60, generally we think of as the Black Hawk, but Black Hawks have flown 900,000 flight hours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Down here at the bottom, the number of flight hours, as far as we can tell, flown in Iraq and Afghanistan, I am pretty sure this is correct: Zero for the F-22. That is a stark number, a stark contrast. Sometimes we tend to order weapons systems, build weapons systems, maintain weapons systems to fight wars such as the last war we fought, not thinking so much about maybe the weapons systems we need for the current war or we will likely to need for a future war. One of the reasons why this administration, the last administration, why this President, this Secretary of Defense and previous ones have said we don't think we want to do any more F-22s is because they believe that, for awhile, we are going to be fighting wars such as unfortunately we fought in Iraq and especially Afghanistan. That is going to be more the modus operandi. We are going to be fighting counterinsurgencies, and what we need are weapons systems and men and women who are trained to fight in those wars. The F-22, frankly, does not lend itself to that kind of war. I led a congressional delegation with four of my colleagues back at the end of May into Afghanistan and Pakistan, including our Presiding Officer. We learned a lot. It was wonderful, and we came home feeling very much encouraged about our strategy in Afghanistan, the men and women who are implementing that strategy, both on the military and the civilian side. One of the things we learned going into Pakistan is that, for years, the Pakistanis have been preparing to fight the next war not against the Taliban, not against al-Qaida, which happened in the northwestern province, but they have been preparing to fight the next war forever--I guess since 1947--against the Indians, against the country of India. They may have a weapons system to work just fine in that particular altercation if that were to occur. But their real threat, frankly, isn't as much India anymore; their real threat is the Taliban and the al-Qaida folks hanging out in those northwestern provinces on the border of Afghanistan. While India and Pakistan may have plenty of fighter aircraft, unfortunately, they don't have any helicopters. They need mobility and they need helicopters to be able to move their counterinsurgency forces. They don't have them. Frankly, we are sort of guilty in a way of the same thing with the F-22. Let's see what we have on the next chart. I will come to this in a bit. One of the things we think about when we think of aircraft we use is, first of all, the missions we need the aircraft for and the kind of wars and threats we are likely to face. That helps us make that decision. Occasionally, we look at how much it costs to fly an aircraft. We look at the dollars we spend to put an aircraft or helicopter into the air for an hour. I have seen a wide range of flight hour costs for the F-22--that it might be $22,000 per flight hour or as high as $40,000 or $42,000 per flight hour. I don't have that at my fingertips, the flight hour costs for other aircraft. But that is a lot of money for a flight hour for any aircraft, especially a fighter aircraft. Whether it is $19,000 or $20,000 or $40,000 an hour, that is a lot of money for the kind of job we are looking for the aircraft to do. We also look at who are we preparing to fight or what threat we are preparing to counter. Some people say just in case the Chinese ever give us trouble, to take them on we need the F-22s, or we may need 200 more. At one time, General Corley said we needed about another 200. As it turns out, we have other aircraft to meet that kind of threat. I hope that is not going to ever materialize, because China is a major trading partner. I hope we don't ever get in a shooting war with them, nor with the Russians. We have other fighter aircraft. We have the F-15, F-16, and the F-18. We are in the process of building another new fighter aircraft that will be a joint aircraft that will be able to do fights in the air and other things, including air-to-ground attacks, which the F-22 doesn't lend itself to do. I think we are going to build about 2,500 F-35s. It has broad support. We have built about 50 so far. The cost per aircraft for the F-35 is about $80 million. I think the cost for building a new F-22 is roughly $190 million. So the F-35 may be $80 million a copy, and the F-22, which doesn't have the capability or the viability of the F-35, costs about $190 million--over twice as much. That makes me pause, and I hope it makes some of my colleagues pause as well. Last, everybody knows we are wrestling through a tough economic time in our country. We have lost a lot of jobs. We had a housing bubble and meltdown, a loss of jobs in banking and financial services, and a lot of manufacturing jobs. Chrysler and GM have gone into bankruptcy. They are coming out of that, and they have a new product line coming through the pipeline. The banks are stabilized and are lending money again, and some are starting to pay back to the government the money they borrowed. I am bullish about where we are. It will take a while before jobs come back, but I think there are encouraging signs about our economy. Having said that, a lot of people would like to have a job who don't have one. If we build another 190 or so F-22s, that would save some 25,000 manufacturing, good-paying jobs. We cannot just sniff at that. Those are real numbers, and it is important for us in the States where the jobs are. If we think about it, if we are talking about building another almost 200 F-22s, and they cost roughly $190 million a copy, and we are talking about saving 25,000 jobs, if we multiply $191 million by 194 aircraft, we come up with a total price of about $37 billion for building those extra 194 F-22 aircraft. If the numbers are correct, that is about $37 billion. If we divide that by 25,000 jobs, that turns out to be almost $1.5 million per job. I nearly fell over when I saw that number--$1.5 million per job. We have passed a stimulus package, and the Presiding Officer and I voted for it. It was passed with bipartisan support, and I hope it will save a couple million jobs. Jobs make sense. But this is a lot of money for jobs. You can look at what we say we are going to spend in the stimulus package, the recovery bill, per job. I am not quick enough to run the numbers, but these are expensive jobs. I hope if we don't build another 200 F-22s, some of the folks who can build them at Lockheed Martin--hopefully, some of them will be able to build F-35s. They cost half as much to build, and they do more things. Hopefully, some of them will be bought by other countries. I am not aware that other countries have bought the F-22, but I think a lot would be interested in buying the F-35, given the variety of missions, the versatility, and the much lower cost. There you have it, Mr. President. I don't know if I have made a compelling case, but I appreciate the chance to share this with my colleagues and anybody else who is interested at a time when we are wrestling with enormous budget deficits, after 8 years where we literally doubled our Nation's debt, and when we are expected to run up the highest budget deficit in the history of our country, at a time when we have major cost overruns and a new weapon system, and when we have had literally two administrations, two Presidents, two Secretaries of State, and all kinds of Joint Chiefs saying: You know, we have a bunch of these F-22s. We have enough. It is not that we are going to stop spending money on national defense. We are going to spend a fair amount of money in Afghanistan, and even though we are drawing down the troops in Iraq, we are going to continue spending money in that country as well. The war in Afghanistan is the right war, and we need to stay with it and crush the Taliban, help the Pakistanis crush al-Qaida, and stay with the folks in Afghanistan until they can help defend themselves and go on to a better economy and a better life. That is the important thing to do. We don't need the F-22 to do that. To the folks who have spent a number of years, and a lot of our money building it, we say thank you. But I think we have enough. We have plenty of other challenges to face. I appreciate this opportunity to speak. As I look around the Chamber, obviously, nobody listened with baited breath to what I had to say. Hopefully, they are in their offices and are tuned into C-SPAN II. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I reserve the remainder of my time, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I think we are going to vote in about 12 minutes or so, but I just wanted to reiterate a couple of things that have been said. First of all, our Constitution doesn't talk about a lot of the things we do to run our government in this country, but one of the things it talks about at some length is the census. It says to do it every 10 years. We have tried to do that and do it well. It has gotten more difficult. We have a lot more people, and far flung. We have a lot more people to count next year than we did 10 years ago. People have concerns about privacy, and folks in this country speak a lot of different languages, just like they did when the first census was done. We are going to use technology. We are not going to use the technology we ought to. We need a Director who understands that and is in a position to make sure the technology we do plan to use in 2010 we use well, and when 2020 rolls around, we will use it a whole lot more effectively. It would be great to have a Census Director who was well schooled, well educated in doing the kind of work that is called on in conducting a census--counting large numbers of people. This fellow's credentials are superb. It would be great if we had someone who had actually worked at a high level in the census and demonstrated by his work his ability to run a large organization. He has done that, and at the University of Michigan he has headed up a very large organization of some of the smartest people in this country who work on these sorts of issues and has done so, from everyone we have heard, with great aplomb and great ability. As I said earlier, at the hearing I conducted several months ago with some of our colleagues on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, we reached out to people who have run the census in the last 30 or 40 years. We asked some of these folks to tell us who they thought would be good, and virtually everyone who has been involved in the census in a high leadership position has said not only would we be lucky to get a fellow with Dr. Groves's reputation, his leadership and ability, but we would be lucky to have somebody with this kind of experience. For me, and I know for my colleagues, an important issue is what is the character and the integrity of the person taking this position. I think it was Senator Collins who asked the question: If you believe political influence is being used in the conduct of the 2010 census, would you be willing to look into resigning as a form of protest against any kind of political involvement? And he said: Not only would I be willing to resign, I will resign. I would use whatever ability I could to bring to light the kind of behavior that led to my resignation, to discredit that behavior, and make it clear that is what I think we should not do, and that, literally, that behavior caused me to resign as the Census Director. I think it would be great if we had somebody who is interested in this job, willing to do the job, is well qualified, and who was willing to meet with anybody who wanted to meet with him whether they were on the committee of jurisdiction--Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs--or not; whether they were a Democrat or not. To my knowledge, he has met with all of us who wanted to spend time with him. The last thing I would say--and one of the things I found so refreshing--is that he is not a political guy. This is someone who is a scientist. He is a statistician. He is good at leading a large organization. He gets this stuff. He enjoys this stuff. How lucky we are to get someone who wants to take on this challenge for us in our Nation's history. For these reasons and others that Senator Collins and I have mentioned, he deserves our support. I hope in 10 minutes or so, when we have the opportunity to vote, we will vote for him in very large, overwhelming numbers. Madam President, how much time remains on our side?

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

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, this is not about ACORN. ACORN is not going to be hired or out there recruiting folks to go door-to-door to do the enumeration for the census. ACORN isn't going to be out there getting any money or grants. In fact, no Census Bureau partners are receiving money or grants, and ACORN is no exception. As the Census Bureau has reiterated, ACORN is actually one of thousands of organizations whose purpose in this whole matter is to try to encourage people to respond to the census. That is what they are about, trying to make sure people respond to the census. Right here is a copy of the Constitution that lays out one of the few responsibilities we have as a Federal Government. It is actually spelled out in the Constitution and says we are expected to do this. Every 10 years, we are supposed to conduct the census. It says we are supposed to count everybody. We are supposed to count everybody. Just as a ship needs a good captain, a school needs a good principal, the country needs a good President, the Census Bureau needs a good Director. We have been 7 months without a Census Bureau Director. The Census Bureau is supposed to turn a light switch on next April 1 and do the census. It is a big deal. Hundreds of thousands of people are involved, years of effort, in making sure we count everybody as closely or as nearly as we can and in a cost-effective way. It is a constitutional requirement. Gary Locke, Governor of Washington, was nominated to be Secretary of Commerce, and the census falls within the Commerce Department. I ran into him the day after, I think, his name was put out for nominee from Commerce, and I said: I have three things I want you to think about: (1) the Census Bureau Director; (2) the Census Bureau Director; and (3) the Census Bureau Director. I told him: We don't have anybody, and if you have any names of folks you think would be good, let us have them. Ironically, a week or so later, I held a subcommittee hearing focused on the census, getting ready for April of 2010--without a Bureau Director. We had before us that day folks who were involved in the census in 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000. At the end of the hearing, I said we need somebody really good to run this operation. Dr. Murdock had been the Census Bureau Director the previous year. He was only with us for a year, but I said we need somebody that good or even better. I said: By the close of this week, I want each of you to give me one or two names of who you think would be a terrific Director for the Census Bureau. Guess whose name I got back from almost every one of the witnesses. Robert Groves. Dr. Groves, in my view, is an inspired choice for this position. His extensive expertise in statistics, social research and survey methodology, and the administration of large-scale surveys makes him ideally suited for this position. He served once as the Associate Director for the Census Bureau, I think about 10 years ago. Dr. Groves knows how it operates. He has been involved in the census. He knows what the employees need, and he will be able to successfully implement the census and other programs. Those experiences have prepared him extraordinarily well to lead the census at a time when rapid changes are occurring. He elevated the University of Michigan's survey research organization. I am an Ohio State undergraduate, and I am raising the flag and promoting a fellow from Michigan, so you know he has to be good for me to do that. I said to my colleagues on this floor that we are lucky to have somebody this good and willing at this late stage to lead us into doing a great job on the census. Numerous Federal and State agencies and policymakers have sought his expertise on survey design and response. Dr. Groves has been accessible to Senators and our staffs throughout this process. Requests to meet with Dr. Groves were extended to every member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in the Senate. He also met with every Senator, as far as I know, who requested a meeting, regardless of committee assignment. Dr. Groves received two questions for the record after his hearing. They were answered within hours--not days or weeks--of the hearing's end. Every Senator who agreed to meet with Dr. Groves, Republican and Democrat alike, decided to support him. Dr. Groves--or whoever will be our next Census Bureau Director, and I hope it will be he--will undoubtedly face a host of operational and management challenges as we move closer to the 2010 census. I am confident he is extraordinarily well equipped to understand the agency's inner workings, to lead his staff, and to be a national spokesman for the 2010 census and the agency's other equally ongoing survey programs. Somewhere here, I have some questions that were asked of him at our hearing. Let's see if I can find one of them. I know this has been mentioned on the floor. I see Senator Collins, who is the ranking Republican on the committee. I think it might have been Senator Collins who actually questioned Dr. Groves about sampling and whether we are going to just sample as opposed to actually counting people and making sure things are right. The Census Bureau has been very clear that it will not adjust the 2010 census counts. The plans and designs for the 2010 census have been in place for nearly a decade. The operations are already underway. The Bureau began to address canvassing this spring, which is finding out all of the addresses--not necessarily who lives there but the addresses--and try to automate that. The Secretary of Commerce reiterated that sampling is not included in the design for the 2010 census. It couldn't be even if we wanted it to be. At this late stage of the game, not only do we not want it to be, but it couldn't be. As to what 2020 will bring or need, it is too early to tell. First, until we know how we are going to perform in 2010, what works best, and where we can improve, we cannot begin to dictate the design of the 2020 census; neither should we attempt to prescribe for the future in the Congress and in the scientific community that which we cannot, frankly, foresee. How much time have I consumed?

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

Mr. CARPER. I will reserve the remainder of my time. I thank the Chair. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, on behalf of Senator Boxer, I ask unanimous consent that Mara Boggs, an Army fellow with the office of Senator Boxer be granted the privilege of the floor during consideration of S. 1390, the defense authorization bill.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, today I recognize Vince Nesci who, in a few months, will retire from Amtrak after 33 years as its chief mechanical officer. Vince has dedicated his adult life to improving passenger rail transportation in America, and I wish him the very best in retirement. Railroaders are not employed; they serve, and Vince's retirement will culminate a lifetime of service to the railroad and country. He began his service in the Air Force as a flight engineer, flying on the remarkably durable C-130 Hercules transports. He performed aerial delivery missions of every kind--paratroop drops, low altitude equipment and cargo drops, and heavy equipment drops. After leaving the Air Force, Vince went to work on the Penn Central Railroad in 1974. Since that day, he has never drawn a paycheck that wasn't issued by a railroad. He began in the traditional way, as a laborer in the mechanical department, working on the famous GG-1 class electric engines that Penn Central had inherited from its 1930s-era predecessor, the Pennsylvania Railroad. He qualified as an electrician and a machinist, putting his natural engineering aptitude to the task of learning the tics and tricks of 40-year-old locomotives with millions of miles on them. His skill was rewarded, and he rose through the ranks. Promotion followed promotion, and he soon became a foreman and then a general foreman with Penn Central. When Amtrak took over its labor force from the freight railroads, Vince continued the unforgiving job of making sure that engines and cars would be ready to roll when the minute hand touched the top of the hour in Washington, Boston, or New York each day. He was there to work on each generation of new engines and to supervise the men and women who were working on them. He witnessed the end of the GG-1s and saw three new generations of locomotives emerge for Northeast Corridor service. When the time came to rebuild the 20-year-old AEM-7 locomotives in 2001, Vince took on the job as the company's chief mechanical officer. This was a demanding job, and the shops accomplished it in large part because Vince was there to keep the process moving, to wade into a problem on the shop floor, and to figure out the answers to tough technical questions that manuals and instructions couldn't answer. He was no mere manager--he was that very traditional combination of expert practical mechanic, engineer, and operating man that railroad chief mechanical officers have always had to be. And through some of the toughest times Amtrak has ever faced, when money to keep the trains on the road was scarce, he kept things moving. He was famous on the railroad for his good humor, his skill, and his understanding of how locomotives worked. He was liked, but more importantly, he was respected, and his opinion carried weight in both the board room and on the shop floor. Vince begins almost every day of his work with a smile. There is hardly ever a time that, when you talk to Vince, he does not greet your questions or begin his answers without a smile. When he talks about the cars and locomotives in his care, he speaks quickly because he is enthusiastic and wants you to feel the enthusiasm he has for the work he does. Whether the temperature is 100 degrees or 10 below zero, Vince always wears a short-sleeved white cotton shirt. If one asks him why he only wears a short-sleeved shirt, he will tell you without a moment's hesitation that when you wear short sleeves, you don't have to roll up your sleeves when you get to work. People like Vince Nesci don't come along very often, and when they do, we should be thankful that we get to spend time with them and learn from them. The railroad is a better and safer place because of Vince, and the good news is that he has helped train a cadre of people who will be there after he leaves to carry on the work that needs to be done. Now he has come to the end of his long career, and will soon depart into a well-earned retirement. His working life has encompassed the transformation of the Northeast Corridor, from a tentative experiment to a modern, high-speed intercity passenger rail system. Nobody has worked harder than Vince to build the railroad that may one day become a model for transportation in our country, and no one can take more justified pride in the safe, reliable, and frequent passenger rail service that travelers enjoy today than Vince Nesci. I thank Vince for the warm friendship that we share, and I congratulate him on a truly remarkable and distinguished career. I wish him, his wife Donna, and their family the very best in all that lies ahead for each of them. As we say in the Navy on occasions like this, ``fair winds and a following sea.''

Mr. CARPER

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

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, in the Constitution, we see laid out before us a framework of how our government is supposed to work, with three branches--legislative, executive, judicial. We also find in the Constitution what our relative responsibilities are, not with great detail but with some definitiveness. Ironically, one of the requirements the Constitution provides for us in this country is that every 10 years we try to count everybody. We have a census. Most nations do that. We have been doing that really for over 200 years. It does not get any easier. In fact, every 10 years it gets harder, and it also gets to be more expensive. The Director of the Census does not serve a finite period of time. The Director of the Census really serves at the pleasure of the President, and we have had Census Directors who have served as little as 1 year and some Directors who have served maybe 4 or even 5 years. This is particularly appropriate to speak about today because we do not have a Director of the Census. We had a Dr. Murdock, from down in Texas, who served for about the last year of the Bush administration as our Census Director. He did a very nice job. But at the beginning of this year, Dr. Murdock resigned. We do not have a Census Director. What we do have coming down the railroad tracks is the requirement to do the census. Next April 1--I call it a little bit like D-day. At Normandy, we sent all of our troops ashore, and they scrambled off of those landing vessels. They stormed the beaches. That took place after literally months of planning, months of preparation, and finally the day of execution came. In a way, the census is like preparing for the Normandy invasion. The efforts are underway now. They have been underway for months and will continue up to April 1 and beyond that day, as we try to count everybody. Yet, at this critical time, as we approach the need to conduct our census, to do it in an accurate, cost-effective way, we do not have a leader there. We have some good people, but they lack a Director. Last month, I held a hearing of our Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee, and we invited people who had been high-level officials in, I think, every census since 1970--the 1970 census, the 1980 census, the 1990 census, and the 2000 census. We asked them to come in and talk to us about how they thought we were doing in terms of the preparation for the 2010 census. At the end of their testimony, I asked each of them to give to us on our committee two names of people who they thought would be excellent Census Directors, and they were good enough to do that. I think every one of them included in their recommendations the name of a fellow from Michigan--I am an Ohio State guy, but they recommended a fellow from Ann Arbor whose name is Dr. Robert Groves. Dr. Groves is an expert in survey methodology. He has spent decades working to strengthen the Federal statistical system, to improve its staffing through training programs, and to keep the system committed to the highest scientific principles of accuracy and efficiency. Having once served as Associate Director of the Census Bureau a number of years ago, Dr. Groves knows how the agency operates and what its employees need to successfully implement the decennial census and other programs. He knows because he has been there. He is not just an academician--one of the most respected people in his field in the country--he actually helped run the Census Bureau at an earlier time. The combination of those experiences has prepared him well to lead the Bureau at a time when rapid developments and changes are occurring. As a manager, he elevated the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research to a premier survey research organization, respected throughout the country--actually, respected around the globe. Numerous Federal and State agencies and policymakers have sought his expertise in survey design and response. His work has received professional recognition through awards from various professional associations, including the 2001 American Association for Public Opinion Research Innovator Award and more recently the 2008 American Statistical Association Julius Shiskin Award for original and important contributions in the development of economic statistics. Ultimately, his deep expertise in survey response will help the Census Bureau focus on the most important goal of the 2010 census, which is to encourage all people to respond to the census. Dr. Groves will undoubtedly face a host of operational and management challenges as we move closer to the 2010 census. However, I remain confident he is well equipped--remarkably well equipped--to understand the agency's inner workings, to lead his staff--he has led a large organization already; he served at a senior level at the Census Bureau before--and to also be a national spokesperson for the 2010 census and the agency's other equally important ongoing survey programs. It is for these reasons that I hope the full Senate will support his nomination and move it quickly. Let me just reiterate, we are now about 8 months away from when the first forms go out as part of the start of the 2010 census. The Bureau has already completed something we call address canvassing--an operation in which 140,000 people on the ground nationwide were making sure the address lists we have to do the census are accurate. Since the 2000 count, the population in this country is estimated to have increased by over 40 million people, with increased numbers of minorities and an increase in the number of languages spoken. Further complicating the 2010 decennial operations is the mismanagement and lack of preparation that occurred in past years, most notably in the failure of the field data collection automation contract, resulting in a last-minute decision to return to paper-based questionnaires, ultimately adding billions of dollars to the census budget. And it is only going to get harder the longer the Senate delays the confirmation process. The reason we do not have a Census Bureau Director is not because we do not have a qualified candidate. It is not because our Subcommittee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has not endorsed his candidacy. We have done so unanimously, and actually we have endorsed him with acclaim. We are just lucky, very fortunate in this country to have--at a time when we are about to try to meet our constitutional responsibility to count everybody accurately and in a cost-effective way--to actually have somebody with his gifts and his talents to bring to the job. What we do not have is the permission to bring his name up for a vote in the Senate. If we leave here today without having had the opportunity to vote up or down on the nomination of Dr. Groves, we will have made a very grave mistake. I understand our Republican friends are uncomfortable, unhappy with the pace for the confirmation process for Judge Sotomayor, who has been nominated, as we know, to be an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. I voted for Chief Justice John Roberts a couple of years ago. The timetable for approving his confirmation was almost the very same from the day he was nominated by former President Bush to the day we voted for him here, it was almost the same number of days we are talking about with respect to the Sotomayor nomination. The timetable on Justice Alito: almost the same from the day he was nominated by President Bush until the day we voted here in the Senate--at least a majority of our colleagues did--to confirm him. It was almost the same number of days. I realize some of our colleagues are unhappy that we are providing the same kind of timetable for Judge Sotomayor that we provided for Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts. I, for the life of me, do not see what the beef is. Just as I believe we are fortunate to have someone with Dr. Groves' credentials to serve as our Census Director, I think we are lucky to have somebody with Judge Sotomayor's credentials to serve on the Supreme Court. I have had the opportunity to meet with her. I know a number of my colleagues have too. I must say, among the things I most like and respect about her: She is up from nothing. She was a kid born in the Bronx, raised in the Bronx, and very humble, from a humble setting, a humble beginning. She worked hard, won herself a scholarship to Princeton, went there, excelled, and later went off to law school at Yale--two of the finest institutions we have in our country. After that, she was a prosecutor for a number of years; beyond that, a corporate litigator; and finally nominated by a Republican President--George Herbert Walker Bush--to serve as a district court judge. By all observers, she did a superb job. She was not just so-so. She was an exceptional judge--so good, in fact, that a few years later, when there was a vacancy on the circuit court of appeals in her district, a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, said: I think she ought to get the nod. He nominated her for that position, and she was confirmed by a wide margin. So she has actually been through this process not once but twice. I think she has gone on to serve longer as a Federal judge--when you add together the district court time and the circuit court of appeals time, I think she has served longer as a Federal judge than anybody in the last 100 years who has been nominated to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. I have read the comments some of her colleagues have to say about her, including colleagues who were also nominated by Republican Presidents. They have been uniformly complimentary, very gracious in their remarks, very laudatory as well. So I would say to my Republican colleagues, while you struggle to get over the fact that we are going to set the same timeline or try to set the same timeline for the confirmation of Judge Sotomayor that we set for the nominations of Judges Alito and John Roberts--I just don't understand the angst you feel. I do know this: Apparently, the nomination of Dr. Groves is being held up along with 25 to 30 other names, all of whom have cleared committees, I think, by wide margins. We can't move forward on those nominations. Some of them maybe are not of grave consequence. The nomination of Dr. Groves is of grave consequence. If we have the opportunity later today in the course of business to actually consider a number of nominations that are before the Senate, that are awaiting our consideration, I would urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to allow the nomination of Dr. Groves to come here for a vote and to give us the opportunity to vote him up or down. I am sure we will vote him up, and I am equally sure he will make us proud with the service he will provide as the Director of the Census Bureau for our country in the years ahead. With that having been said, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Would the Senator restate her request.

Mr. CARPER. I have been waiting for a while.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, thank you very much.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I know my colleague from Wisconsin is standing to speak, so I will be very brief. I just want to take a moment. While Senator Shaheen and Senator Boxer were speaking, I went over and chatted a little bit with one of our colleagues from Texas who was on the floor. We talked a little bit about the debate on health care. As we approach, in a week or two, marking up a health care reform bill in the Finance Committee, he mentioned to me something I very much agree with, the 80-20 rule. Mike Enzi, the Senator from Wyoming, likes to talk about the 80-20 rule and why he has been so productive over the years with Senator Ted Kennedy. Senator Kennedy, obviously, is a liberal Member of the Senate. Senator Enzi is a very conservative Member of the Senate. They get a lot done in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. It is because they follow what Senator Enzi calls the 80-20 rule. They focus on the 80 percent of the stuff they agree on. They set aside the 20 percent they do not agree on, and they really focus on where the most agreement is. We need to do a similar kind of approach as we prepare to mark up in the Finance Committee the health reform bill, to go along with the areas of work going on in the HELP Committee. I strongly agree with Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley. We need a bipartisan bill. I know many Democrats and Republicans feel we need a bipartisan bill. My fear is, if we do not have a bipartisan bill, we will not be successful ultimately. While most of the media coverage of the health care debate focuses on the conflict--should we have a public plan or not; tax exclusions; what portion of our benefits should be excluded from taxation; should there be an employer mandate or individual mandate or should there not be-- setting all of those things aside, not that they are unimportant, there is huge agreement on a bunch of things that are important that are going to save money, save lives, reduce costs, and provide better health care for people. Part of it is in information technology; make it possible for businesses--large and small but especially small businesses--to get into a purchasing pool to be able to take advantage of much lower rates and have better choices of benefits for their folks; moving toward chronic care to make sure for people who have diabetes that we do not just wait until they get really sick and they have to have arms and legs and feet amputated, but make sure we take care of them early on as we go along. As to these purchasing pools we are going to create under health care reform, if people have a preexisting condition, they do not get excluded. They can participate as well. We are going to be covering more people for pharmaceuticals. We are going to do a much better job of making sure people who will benefit from a particular pharmaceutical--whether it is a large molecule or a small molecule-- will have access to something that is going to help them. We will be smart enough to figure out the pharmaceuticals out there that will not help somebody, so then they will not be taking those. We are going to be focusing more on primary care, less on fee for service, which drives up the cost of health care. We are going to do a better job of coordinating care and providing medical homes for people as we go forward. We are going to take examples like that in the neighboring State represented by Senator Feingold. Over in Minnesota, they have this Mayo Clinic, and they figured out how to make the Mayo Clinic provide better health care, with better outcomes, at lower cost than most other places in this country. They took their model and they went down to Florida, where costs were very high for health care. They took the Mayo model to Florida, and they ended up with better outcomes and lower costs in Florida compared to other folks who had been doing business in Florida providing health care for years. But it is not just the Mayos, it is the Intermountain folks, a nonprofit out in Utah, the Geisinger operation in Pennsylvania. There are a number of good examples out there. Part of what we are going to do through this debate, as we move toward health care reform, is to learn from those examples, go to school on those examples, and be able to put them to work for all of us. With that having been said, my friend said some people say we are not going to get health care reform done. We have to get it done. We spend more money for health care in this country than any other developed nation on Earth. We do not get better results. If we spend more money, we don't get better results. We can do better than this. Democrats working together with Republicans, we can get there, and let's just not give up. Thank you, Madam President. I thank my colleague for his patience.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I take the floor for a few minutes to draw the attention of my colleagues to the fact that there is a birthday this year, a 75th birthday--not the birthday of a Member of the Senate, not a birthday of a Member of the House, but actually it is the 75th birthday of the National Archives and Records Administration. It is 75 years old this year. My colleague who is presiding today may recall the reception that was held at the National Archives during our orientation for new Senators and their spouses back in November. As it turns out, it was a small group of people who were able to witness and to visually see and read some of the most famous short documents in our Nation's history. But as it turns out, millions of Americans come every year and visitors from all over the world come each year to visit the National Archives. The National Archives serves as the custodian of some of our county's most precious and historic records and documents, and they have been doing this for something like three-quarters of a century. I wish to take a moment on behalf of all of my colleagues, Democratic and Republican, and an Independent or two, to thank the men and women who work at the National Archives now--and who have done that for the last three-quarters of a century--who work diligently to preserve our Nation's history, not just for us but for future generations of Americans and others who will come to our shores to visit here. Established by Congress to be our Nation's record keeper, the National Archives has the critical mission of storing and protecting our most valuable and our most important documents. In fact, the main Archives facility, which is located not far from where we are gathered here today, is the permanent home of--get this--the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Thomas Jefferson once said that an educated citizenry will ensure a free society. He was right then. That is right now. Unhindered access to information about our government and leaders is truly critical to the continued health and vibrancy of our democracy. That is why I am pleased to hear that more than 1 million visitors travel to the National Archives each year to see thousands of documents--the ones I mentioned and others as well--records, and special exhibits. It is no stretch to say the National Archives is one of the most popular agencies in the U.S. Government. That probably comes as a surprise to a lot of us. But the Archives is not just a tourist attraction. Over the years, the Archives has become an international leader in developing an electrical records archiving system that will preserve digital information in any format--not just for a few years but forever. Information technology has forever altered our ability to create, access, and search information from any location in the world. Every year, billions--not millions, billions--of documents that shape and inform government decisions are never written down with pen and paper. Instead, these records are ``born digital.'' That means they are created electronically and stored not in a filing cabinet but on computers and on the Internet. Each year, the Archives preserves more and more information that is essential to understanding our democracy, our history, and our culture. To put it into some kind of perspective, it took eight C-5 military cargo planes to transport all of the paper materials created by the Clinton administration. Imagine that: eight C-5 military cargo aircraft. Following the most recent Presidential transition, it took 20 tractor trailers, 2 Boeing 747s, and a DC-8 aircraft to transport all of President George W. Bush's records. At the same time, the National Archives continues to maintain records from 1775, including the military record of every single veteran in the 20th and 21st centuries. That is no small task. So I stand here today to give my thanks--really, to give our thanks-- to the hard-working folks who work and volunteer their time at our National Archives. Winston Churchill once said: A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. I think that quote truly sums up the important role of the Archives, not just for our history but for our future. Madam President, tomorrow I will submit, with a number of my colleagues, a resolution to commend the National Archives and its employees for excellent service over the past 75 years and to wish them many years of additional service.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to extend that for an extra 10 minutes.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, do I understand that the time for morning business expires at 3 o'clock?

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, while my colleague from Alaska is still in the Chamber, let me bring her some good news, as one on our side who is a strong advocate for nuclear power and who believes it is incredibly important that we do it safely. I chair the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety, and, as she mentioned, we have now, I think, 17 applications to build 26 new nuclear powerplants. I think we have $18 billion in loan guarantees. One of the things we have done this year is we have taken off the time restriction on the loan guarantees so they can go beyond the next couple of years, if needed. Hopefully, they won't be needed, but at least the amount of money will be there and available for a number of years. Another piece we had put in the stimulus package was a provision that says that not only can renewables--solar, wind, geothermal, and all the rest--be able to participate in the manufacturing tax credits to create--if you will, manufacture--the components of solar, wind, geothermal, but also nuclear. If we are going to build 26, 27 new nuclear powerplants in the next decade or two, I sure don't want to be getting the components from China, South Korea, Japan, or someplace in Europe. We should get the components from manufacturers that are here, and part of the stimulus package has been designed to do that. The other thing I would mention regarding cap and trade on climate change, if we actually take that approach--and my hope is we will--just by its very nature, being a producer of electricity but not one that creates carbon dioxide, money will flow in the cap-and-trade approach to utilities which use nuclear energy, which will develop more nuclear energy. So I appreciate the concerns the Senator from Alaska raises. I might add that just 3 weeks ago, I hosted a roundtable at MIT, near Boston, and we brought to the table some of the smartest people around--from MIT and from Harvard--who focused a lot on spent nuclear fuel and what to do with it. As you know, a lot of the fuel rods, I am told, still have 80 or 90 percent of the energy in the spent fuel rods. One of the questions I asked was, What should we do about it? Yucca Mountain is on hold for now. And I was pleasantly surprised to hear a unanimous opinion from everybody there who said, for now, maybe for the next 30, 40, 50, 60 years, even longer, the spent fuel rods, which are stored on site with our nuclear powerplants in dry cask storage, are perfectly adequate in terms of providing security and safekeeping for the spent fuel. In the meantime--and I would hope the Senator would join those of us who are advocates of nuclear power, would also understand we need to address the spent fuel issue, and would work with us to help fund technology for reprocessing and recycling to make sure we don't wait 50 or 60 years to do that but we get started a lot sooner. So it is not all gloom and doom, but I appreciate the concerns the Senator from Alaska has raised and very much look forward to working with her on these issues, as we do on so many others, hopefully to good effect, and I thank her.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I missed you in Afghanistan/Pakistan. I understand you and another CODEL were there at the same time we were, and I think we missed you by a day or so in both countries. I don't presume to speak for you or for those in your CODEL. We had five in ours. Senator Mark Udall, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Senator Kay Hagan, Senator Mark Begich of Alaska, and I was privileged to be a part of that delegation. We had 2 days in Afghanistan and 2 days in Pakistan. We left Lahore, a large city in the eastern part of the country, about 2 days before they had the assault that killed 30 or so people, a terrorist assault. I wish to take a couple of minutes, if I could, today. We could almost take turns here. I understand you can't speak from the podium about your congressional delegation, but if we could, we could probably have quite a good conversation. There is a reason they call Afghanistan the graveyard for empires, because for a long time empires have been going there and trying to subdue the Afghans--the Brits among them, the Soviet Union among them-- and not with great success. When the Afghans sort of thrust the Soviet Union out from their country, with our support, we promptly left. As we left, we left a vacuum in Afghanistan, and we left a vacuum which was filled all too readily by the Taliban, and providing a sanctuary for al-Qaida. On the heels of 9/11, we decided to go back and clean the place out, drove the Taliban out of there, and a bunch of them took refuge over in the mountainous areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Once we had done that, we took our eye off the ball. We decided to go into Iraq and made that country take down their regime--Saddam Hussein's regime--and we transferred a lot of our troops and treasure and attention to Iraq and took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan. Into that vacuum we left came--not surprisingly--the Taliban to resume their ways of before. They are especially plentiful in the southern part of the state. As we were preparing to leave Afghanistan and head for Pakistan, we did a series of press interviews, radio and print interviews, from that country. Among the questions that were asked of our congressional delegation were: What is the exit strategy? What is your exit strategy from Afghanistan? I responded that I think the exit strategy is our new strategy. The reporters said: Why is that? I said: Well, let me take a minute to talk about that new strategy. It is not just about sending 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, a little more than half of which are marines, and some of those are being redeployed from Iraq, and some are to be brought in fresh from the United States. But, I said, if all we did was put another 17,000 or 27,000 troops in Afghanistan, that is not going to be the answer to success. It is not going to be what we need to do. In addition to the 17,000 troops who are being committed in a buildup that will occur over the next 3 months or so, we are bringing in about 150 additional helicopters to move around where the Taliban is and track them down and hopefully eliminate their presence in that country. But even that is not enough force at this juncture. The other thing that is called for in our strategy is to bring in about 4,000 trainers. These trainers are to go along with the men and women, the American troops who are embedded and mentoring Afghan units already--4,000 new trainers. Their job really is twofold: one, to help not just to stand up the Afghan army--and the Afghan army is a good fighting force. They are not big enough, given the size of their country and all the people who live there. I don't know if this is the experience of the Presiding Officer, but we met with a number of American troops who had been in Iraq and were now in Afghanistan, and I said: What is the difference in terms of the fighting force--what you saw in Iraq and what you are seeing in Afghanistan? They said: Well, there were times when we almost had to coax the Iraqis out of their barracks and try to cajole them into taking the lead on operations. We don't have to do that with the Afghans. These guys are ferocious fighters. That is why they are known as the graveyard for empires and drove out the Brits and the Soviets with our help. We want to help the Afghans double the size of their army and improve the quality. We want to help them double the size of their police force and improve dramatically the quality. The Afghans have a whole lot of respect for their army. They do not have the same level of respect for the police force. As the Presiding Officer knows, the country is rampant with corruption. The corruption includes the police. It is not uncommon for police to take bribes, to almost solicit or command money from others in their country. As a result, it is maybe less effective as a force, certainly less respected as a force. One of the smartest things done this year is the salaries of the police officers have been raised by a factor of four--quadrupled-- putting them pretty much on parity with the salaries paid to the army, taking away the need for those police officers who feel they need to supplement their income by bribing or accepting bribes from folks. One of the questions that was asked as I did that press interview was: What surprised you about what you saw in Afghanistan? I said: Well, a number of things. I didn't realize this was a country that as recently as the 1970s was able to feed itself, and not just feed itself but to feed a number of other nations in that part of the world. This is a country that is able to raise fruits, has vegetables and orchards, they can raise wheat, they can raise cotton and saffron, and they can raise chickens--some of the same things we raise in each of our States, as the Presiding Officer knows. Currently, though, for the most part, what they raise is poppies. They raise the poppies to feed the opium trade, and they use the opium to make heroin. Most of the heroin in the world, literally and figuratively, has its root in Afghanistan. The production of poppies peaked in 2007. It began coming down in 2008. We want to continue to drive it down in 2009, again in 2010 and 2011, until we get to the point where there are no poppies being grown in Afghanistan and where the farmers are able to feed themselves and to make a good living raising and selling fruits and vegetables in their country and for neighboring countries, and to be able to do the same kind of thing with the wheat they raise and the other commodities they raise too. It is not unrealistic. Our troops cannot go in and tell them how to do that, but it turns out there is a component of our strategy that calls for a significant civilian component. What we are going to see is people going into Afghanistan--our folks in many cases, sometimes our NATO allies--who are specialists in agriculture, helping the Afghan farmers diversify away from poppies and toward other commodities which will enable them to feed themselves and to feed their country. It is a smart strategy. That isn't all, though. Going back to the question of what surprised me, I was surprised to learn about those big mountains, big snow-capped mountains--they are quite beautiful--in that there are a lot of minerals and there is a potential for a very successful mining and mineral industry in Afghanistan. They need a little help figuring out how to get it going and figuring out how to transport the minerals they mine, but there is money to be made there for that country. Also, I didn't realize they have oil and gas deposits in Afghanistan. I certainly didn't realize they found, about a year ago, they have three times more oil and gas holdings beneath the surface of the Earth and in those mountains more than was originally believed to be the case. We have all seen pictures of Afghanistan. I was a naval flight officer, going through my training earlier in my career in Corpus Christi, the area of south Texas toward Brownsville. Afghanistan reminds me of that except it has these huge mountains that pop up all over the place. But the mountains give them a great opportunity for producing wind power. Just as we have windmills on the tops of mountains in this country, the wind blows a whole lot in Afghanistan. They can do themselves well by harnessing that wind and turning it into electricity. They have vast expanses of lands that would lend themselves to solar energy panels, and they also have rivers that could be harnessed and used to create energy as well, hydroelectric energy. There are a number of sources--oil, gas, wind power, solar, hydroelectric power--that could help this country meet its needs and maybe even export some of that electricity to the other countries in the region. Those are things that surprised me that I did not fully expect to see. What also surprised me was the level of corruption, the extent of the corruption. It is endemic in that country. They have not much experience or time governing themselves, 5 years or so experience with democracy. Here in the United States we have been working on democracy for how long? Over 220 years. We still struggle with it. We should not be surprised that a country that has had maybe 5 years of experience with democracy is struggling with it as well. They need help figuring out how to govern at the national level; they need help figuring out how to govern at the provincial level; and they need help figuring out how to govern at the local level. Part of what our civilian component will do there is to help, really, like Self- Government 101, them figure out how to govern more effectively, govern more honestly, and ferret out corruption where it exists. One of the most encouraging conversations I had was at Ambassador Eikenberry's residence. Right across from me at the table was a fellow I called the Secretary of Finance. He was really the Minister of Finance, like our Treasury Secretary in this country. We talked about corruption. It was a very frank discussion. He said, basically I am ashamed of what goes on in this country. He said, in my ministry, the Ministry of Finance, we basically set, last month--in April at the time--zero tolerance. We are not going to put up with it anymore. The idea that people skim revenues coming in to the government, we don't even have enough to make ends meet, even to come close. He said, on my watch, in my ministry, in my department, we are going to get rid of that. If people want to do that, they are not going to work with me. That is the kind of leader we need in every ministry. That is the kind of leader we need in the whole country. As they go to the polls, I think in August, to elect a President, they have a number of people who are running. I hope whatever flows from that will include a leader who will provide the right kind of personal example, calling on the government that he leads to lead by example and to ferret out corruption where it exists. Let me take a minute or two on Pakistan, if I could. I had not been to Pakistan either. In the weeks before we arrived there, in fact the months before we arrived, the Taliban, who were already pretty well entrenched in the territories up along the border of Afghanistan, began reaching out tentacles and spreading their influence to other parts of the country that in ways I found alarming. I know many people in this country saw the expansion of Taliban influence in Pakistan as something to be concerned about. Here is a country with about 100 nuclear warheads with the Taliban less than 100 miles from their capital of Islamabad. That got my attention and caused me a fair amount of concern; not just me but others in our delegation, in our Senate and Congress and in the administration. Something happened a couple of weeks before we got there that helped turn that situation around. The Government of Pakistan was following what I will call almost a policy of appeasement with the Taliban, trying to get the Taliban to play nice, stay in their place, if you will, and leave the rest of the country alone, a policy of appeasement that allowed the Taliban to begin to exert its influence in places where it had previously not done so. As they extended their influence and presence, the Taliban sought to replace the regular law and order of the country, the laws of the provinces and the National Government with Islamic law. One incident occurred a month or so ago which has done maybe more to change this picture than anything I can think of. It was rather remarkable. In one of the areas where Islamic law had replaced the traditional law of the community, the father of a young woman insisted that she marry a man she didn't want to marry. Apparently under Islamic law--I don't pretend to be an expert, but under Islamic law apparently that is what fathers can do with their daughters, tell them who to marry. She didn't want to have any part of that, and made it clear to him and to others. She ended up being publicly flogged in the streets of her community by the Taliban, in a flogging that was not just witnessed by a number of people but it was videotaped. That videotape ended up being played hundreds of times on every television station in Pakistan and on the Internet. Anybody who wanted to watch it or didn't want to watch it had the opportunity to do so. About the same time one of the Taliban leaders gave a major address in Pakistan and showed their true colors, what they were about if they gained the upper hand in Pakistan. The people of that country, including the military, the political leadership, multiparty--the rank and file and the military basically stood up as one and said that is not where we want to go as a country. That is not the Pakistan that we want. We don't want to have any part of seeing that kind of change occur to our country, and they turned on the Taliban. In the days the Presiding Officer and I were there, our CODELs were there, we met with the military and political leadership of the country--I am sure his delegation did--and I was very much heartened by the forcefulness with which they are going after the very people they appeared to be almost appeasing in the months before. They are determined to wipe them out, to crush them, and to be able to live their lives and govern their country in a way that I think more of us would want any country to be able to govern itself. I came back and, I say to my colleagues--I came back not wearing rose-colored glasses. I did not change my name to Pollyanna. I realize the fighting that lies ahead, especially in Afghanistan as we stand up our 17,000 troops, roughly 10,000 marines, and bring in all those helicopters and trainers. We are going to take up the Taliban in the southern part of the country, in Kandahar, in Helmand Province. That is where they raise all the poppies for the drug trade. That puts money in the pockets of farmers. It also puts money in the pockets of the Taliban and other terrorists, not only in that country but other countries as well. We do not need that. The people in Afghanistan and Pakistan don't need that either. One of the advantages of getting rid of the poppy trade and replacing it with fruits and vegetables and chickens and wheat, and so forth, is we stop supporting in a financial way the terrorists wreaking such havoc over there. But there is going to be a lot of tough fighting in the weeks that lie ahead as we raise our profile, as we raise our ability to deliver a punch. We are going to be there training our Afghan colleagues, both at the military level, the army, and at the police level. Ultimately, while we help them to stand up and strengthen themselves in the next 3 to 5 years, we have sown the seeds of an exit strategy that will enable us to draw down and eventually pull most of the fighting forces out of there--perhaps leave behind a residual to help lead the training effort as many of our NATO allies are helping with the training effort. Let me close with this. One of the other things I learned when I was over there, I was surprised to find out how many other countries are involved. We have the major part of the fighting force. There are a lot of other nations involved. I am sure my colleague, who is presiding, saw that too. One of the things that surprised me was the Japanese, who have no trainers there, no fighting forces there--I don't know that they have a civilian component there--but they are paying the salary of the police force for the whole country for the next 6 months. It is about $100 million, a substantial contribution. It is an example of what others can do to help. We hope those who are helping will do more of the same and those who are not will find ways to be supportive. The operations today and in the months ahead will be military led with a civilian component. Eventually it will transform and we will have a force led by the civilians, and the military will be a smaller part of what we do in Afghanistan. That is about it. I look forward to coming back and maybe presiding when the Presiding Officer shares what he saw and learned as well. But I look forward to working with him and those who accompanied him on his delegation trip, and those who went with us, as we help the Afghans and Pakistanis take on a tough enemy in a fight that can be won and should be won. With that, I see no one seeking to speak so I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I rise to speak for several minutes on the legislation that is before us today dealing with credit cards, something that most of us have a personal experience with--we use them; we have had good experiences and bad experiences. In some respects, those experiences guide our views with respect to how we should legislate. That is understandable. It is true with me too. Earlier today, I had a chance to participate in a number of call-in radio shows, some specific to Delaware, one to the Delmarva Peninsula, and one a national call-in show. People raised a variety of different issues about the legislation we are debating. What I did with some of the listeners, I took them back to the beginning and said: The reason why this legislation is before us actually grew out of the work of the Federal Reserve, which was begun over 2 years ago. The Federal Reserve sought to use their authority under the--I think it was the Federal Trade Commission law that says they have a responsibility to protect consumers. That includes protecting consumers as they use credit cards. For roughly 2 years the Federal Reserve held hearings, received input from consumer groups, from individuals, from the industry, from other regulators, as to how we might better protect consumers. In the end, the Federal Reserve sought to strike a balance. They sought to strike a balance that was fair to consumers and better protected their interests, which need to be better protected, and at the same time not to further disadvantage our financial institutions in this country, many of which are struggling literally to survive. That was the balance the Federal Reserve sought to strike. The Federal Reserve promulgated regulations last December after literally receiving tens of thousands of pages of comments on the draft regulations they promulgated earlier, last year. What we are doing now is, rather than simply waiting on the Federal Reserve regulations to be implemented between now and July 1 of 2010, Congress is seeking to codify, to literally turn into law those regulations and in some cases to move the effective date of those regulations up earlier and in some cases to add some provisions that were not covered by the regulations. One of the changes that is affected in this regulation was not raised in the regulation. It deals with credit cards and kids. It is really credit cards and people under the age of 21. My boys are 19 and 20. They are in college. They have been receiving preapproved credit card applications for a number of years, including when they were in high school. I think Senator Dodd has talked about one of his girls, who I think is 7 or 8 years old, having received a preapproved credit card application at the tender age of 7 or 8. The question is, do we need to do something differently? It is interesting that the Federal Reserve, in their regulations, did not think so. The legislation which comes out of the committee and comes to us for consideration says, no; we should do something. What the legislation calls for, for us to do differently in this country, is if a young person, under the age of 21, wants to sign up for a credit card, either, No. 1, their parent or guardian has to cosign for them, with them, for that credit card, or, No. 2, the young person has to demonstrate the ability to pay their debts. For the most part it means have a job, have a source of income to pay their debts. That is something that is in addition to the Federal Reserve. I agree with that. I think it is a good change, and I think most of my colleagues do, too. In terms of being guided by your own personal experiences, I don't know about the rest of you, but one person who called in today on a call-in show said: Why don't we just let the marketplace make the decisions for us? We are smart. We get these credit card solicitations in the mail. There are a lot of choices. Let the marketplace work, and let people choose what card they want. As it turns out, we have a lot of smart people in the Senate, maybe staff who are even smarter. There are a lot of people in this country who, frankly, have not had the opportunity for an education that some of us have had, and they lack, as do some of us, the financial literacy that will enable them to make the right decision on a multitude of options, choices; to understand them, read the fine print and understand how it will impact them. As a result, we are not going to just let the marketplace work as it worked in the past because it didn't work perfectly. What we are trying to do is correct some of the bad behavior, clean up some of the behavior on the part of the credit card issuers, and that will get to a point where the marketplace can work, and the market will actually work on behalf of consumers. That is really what we want to see happen. I will use a couple of examples from my own personal life. I have three credit cards that I use. One of the credit cards I use is for my personal use. Another credit card I use is for government-related expenses, official business. A third is for campaign-related expenses. The Presiding Officer may have a similar kind of arrangement. It helps keep everything straight for me. That is a benefit, a real advantage, and I believe it is an example of how our credit cards can be used for our advantage. I had a credit card several years ago for campaign-related expenses. I lived in Wilmington, DE. The credit card bill had to be paid in New Jersey. I was getting the bill about 10 days before it was due, and in one instance I remember sending a check for that bill and it took 5 days for my check to actually get to the credit card company and be credited as a payment--5 days, Wilmington, DE, to New Jersey. I could have driven it in less than 5 hours, but it took 5 days to credit. The other thing I noticed about the credit card company, the due dates for my bill were always Saturdays or Sundays. They didn't process on Saturdays or Sundays. I finally realized what was happening, and I said we will not use that credit card again. I tore it up, paid it off, and got another credit card that did not have that problem. That is an example of letting market forces work. Hopefully, a lot of us are smart enough to be able to do that sort of thing, but honest to God, not everybody is as sophisticated as they need to be to be able to lay that out for themselves. Another issue that has come before us is the issue of caps, our credit card limits. If Senator Grassley over here has a credit card limit, and I am his credit card issuer, he has a limit on the credit card he has from us, from our company, say, a $1,000 limit. Currently, if he exceeds the $1,000 limit, we let him. My credit card company lets him exceed it and he starts paying fees. If he continuously goes over the limit, he pays more and more fees. I don't think that is the way the system should work. The Presiding Officer doesn't think that is the way the system should work. The legislation before us says that is not the way this system should work. Going forward, when a person signs up for a credit card, if there is a limit--we will say there is a $1,000 limit--unless the cardholder objects, that will be a limit. It will be a hard cap. If the cardholders want to exceed that limit, they may do that, but they fully acknowledge that they will accept fees in doing so. I think that is a reasonable way to approach this. There is another major issue that has been before us, the issue of whether the credit card companies should be able to assess risk and charge for that risk, the perceived higher risk on the part of the cardholder. We worked with Senator Shelby, who is here today, to try to strike a reasonable balance that says, again, I am a credit card company, he is the credit card holder, and we send him his statement. He doesn't pay within 30 days. What the Federal Reserve said is after 30 days, credit card companies should have to charge a higher interest rate. We changed that a little bit, and we say we will give the cardholder 60 days. If the cardholder has not paid a minimum payment within that 60 days of it being due, the credit card company can raise the interest rate; however, we give the holder of the card 6 months on- time payments, minimum payments for 6 months, to earn back the lower interest rate. To me, that seems like a fair balance, looking out for the consumer, looking out for the company in addition. I want to mention, yesterday we had the opportunity to debate the question of a usury ceiling. The question was 15 percent--shouldn't we have a 15-percent uniform usury ceiling on credit card rates. Maybe 33, 35 people voted for it. I did not. I said to my colleagues wondering how they should vote, there are actually two or three problems with the amendment before us, or any usury ceiling rate. If it is a 15-percent ceiling rate, the idea was we should limit banks to charging 15 percent because credit unions are limited to 15 percent. As it turns out, credit unions do not operate under the same rules of the road as banks. The banks complained the credit unions get a break and the banks do not enjoy that in a number of ways. To simply say because the credit unions are capping at 15 percent we ought to cap the banks at 15 percent, frankly, it is not a logical argument in my mind. One thing I know is, if there were a limit of 15 percent, everybody here, all the Senators, would be able to get credit. Most of our staff would be able to get credit. The folks who would not be able to get credit are lower income people. They wouldn't be able to get a credit card because they may have a high risk, and if they do have a high risk and it is proven by their payments scheduled over time, those people are going to be cut off. That is not an intended consequence, it is an unintended consequence, but by virtue of not adopting yesterday's amendment we allow credit card companies to charge eventually for risk, but at the same time to offer the credit card holder the opportunity to earn back a lower rate of interest. I compliment Senator Dodd. I commend Senator Shelby and their staffs. They have worked very hard to get us to a point where all of us, whether we happen to come from States where we have a lot of credit card companies or we happen to come from States where we have a lot of credit card holders, to try to get a right balance. I think you came really close to doing that. I understand we may have one amendment offered later today dealing with fees that are paid by, in some cases, the merchants--the interchange fees. I understand there is language in the underlying bill that says--this is not something on which we have had hearings, I understand, in the Banking Committee. I understand maybe other committees have had hearings on it years ago. We have not had hearings on this in the Banking Committee. It is a lot more complex than people would lead us to believe. Why don't we give the appropriate agency, and I think in this case the GAO, the Government Accountability Office, a year to come back to us, study this, vet it, and tell us: This is what we think you should do. To me, this makes a lot more sense on the Senate floor, without having had the benefit of hearings, informed hearings from the Banking Committee, to tell us what we should do. Let's take our time and let's do this right. I commend my colleagues. I thank them for giving my staff and me, other Members who have had an interest, whether on the committee or not, the opportunity to weigh in, express our concerns, and have the opportunity to shape in a small way the outcome of this legislation.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, this spring, the fourth class will graduate from the Delaware Military Academy, and I would like to take this opportunity to recognize Commandant Charles W. Baldwin for his years of dedicated service to the school. The Delaware Military Academy, DMA, is a unique public charter school affiliated with the Red Clay School District. Cofounded in 2003 by Commandant Baldwin and opened that year with only grades 9 and 10, the DMA has quickly found success. Today, in addition to being a Middle States fully accredited school, the academy has grown to enroll 525 students in grades 9 though 12 and has a waiting list of more than 200 applicants. Since 2006, DMA has earned a superior rating every year from the Delaware Department of Education. In 2008, the school was named a Superstars in Education Award Winner by the Delaware Chamber of Commerce. Designated by the United States Navy as a Distinguished Unit with Academic Honors, the academy has the unique privilege and responsibility of naming nine nominations among the Naval Academy, Air Force Academy and West Point Military Academy. The unique school offers students a tuition-free, 4-year high school program. The entire school is incorporated within the Navy Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, and as the first school of this nature, has become the model high school for this Navy Training Corps. The Delaware Military Academy's college preparatory academic curriculum is supplemented with courses that include naval operations, navigation, leadership, seamanship and oceanography. With its cadet hierarchy, students are placed in leadership positions and given responsibilities rarely found in a civilian high school. As a result, they emerge from the academy better prepared to meet the demanding challenges of the adult world. In just 6 short years, the academy, under the leadership of Commandant Baldwin, has done what takes some schools more than 20 years to accomplish. It has built and maintained a successful system that instills values and responsibility into our children while providing them an excellent education. Moreover, the commitment of DMA and its student body to community service is widely known and appreciated in the State of Delaware. While success in such a short period is certainly a credit to the faculty and students of the academy, Commandant Baldwin has indeed played a critical leading role. A 24-year Navy veteran himself, Commandant Baldwin has dedicated his life to training, teaching and recruiting, including a tour of duty as principal of the George V. Kirk Middle School in Delaware's Christiana School District. Before cofounding the Delaware Military Academy, Commandant Baldwin established NJROTC programs in Delaware's Seaford and Christiana School Districts. During this time, he has received both military and civilian awards for excellence, including the Meritorious Service Medal, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, Christiana Teacher of the Year and the Christiana School District Citizenship Award. In addition, he twice received Presidential awards for management excellence. On a personal note, I have known and admired Commandant Baldwin for more than a decade. My sincere hope is that as he steps down from his leadership role at the Delaware Military Academy, he will consider leading an effort to establish other public charter schools in the state that are based on the DMA's unique model. I want to personally thank Commandant Baldwin for his commitment to Delaware, to the education of its young people, and to preparing them for lives of service. I warmly wish him the best.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise with some reluctance today to oppose the amendment before us. The amendment is being offered to what I think is a very good bill. The provisions of the underlying bill are worthy of our full support. The notion that we are going to expand the ability of FHA and Rural Housing to modify loans is something I certainly support and I believe others should. The idea in the underlying legislation is that we should expand access to the HOPE for Homeowners Program, we should provide a safe harbor for servicers who otherwise would modify a loan. We have a situation, as the President may know, where we tried to encourage the modification of loans to help people who are in a bind to avoid foreclosure. We find out that among the parties who have to agree to the loan modification are the servicers, the people to whom we send mortgage payments. They have not been anxious to participate in modifying the mortgages because, first, they get no financial incentive upfront for doing the work and, second, if they do the work to modify the mortgage, they end up being sued by the investors who own these mortgage-backed securities around the world. That is not much incentive and, as a result, servicers have not done the work they need to do to help modifications take place. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my time count against the Republican time. I understand it has been cleared with our Republican friends.

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