Daniel Coats

Mr. COATS

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, today I return to the floor for talk No. 49--49 weeks of coming to the floor to talk about what we have described as ``waste of the week.'' We originally started this about 50 weeks ago in this cycle, with some skipping of weeks when we were not in session, trying to look at ways to make government more efficient and effective and to save taxpayer dollars. We set a goal of reaching $100 billion. Whether it was the Congressional Budget Office, whether it was the inspectors general overseeing expenditures in the various agencies, we kept receiving these reports about taxpayer money that is wasted through waste, fraud, and abuse. We have talked about everything from the ridiculous to the really serious in terms of mismanagement, fraud, and waste that has occurred in this Federal Government. At a time when we cannot begin to balance our budget, when expenditures keep significantly exceeding revenues that are coming in no matter how much tax we collect, we find ourselves in a situation where we are continuing to borrow and borrow and borrow and borrow into the trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars--a truly unsustainable rate which will cause great harm to the American people at some point, if it hasn't already. Clearly, it is holding down our ability to grow. Clearly, it is putting us in a situation where expenditures on just paying interest on the money we have to borrow continues to increase, depriving us of the opportunity to address some essential needs, such as infrastructure and basic science. NIH research, the CDC, and others are being squeezed because we simply don't have the funds available without continuing to go into debt. So this is No. 49. It is one of the more minor ones. Keep tuning in because next week we have a big one coming. We could come down here almost every day and talk about something, with the backlog of waste, fraud, and abuse documented by agencies that are nonpartisan. They are not Republican. They are not Democratic. These are agencies that just deal with numbers, they just deal with facts, and they report to us, as Members of the Senate and the Congress, to make this available to the public and to demonstrate that we could run a much better shop here and save the taxpayers a lot of money. Today I want to highlight abuse of a fund that exists within the Department of Health and Human Services. It is called the Nonrecurring Expenses Fund, otherwise known as NEF. ``Nonrecurring expense fund'' is another fancy description the Federal Government has put out so that nobody can understand what it is, but we looked into this and found that the Nonrecurring Expenses Fund is a fund that was created to place money which wasn't used. There was money appropriated by Congress for specific purposes, but they didn't use all of it. Instead of turning it back to the Treasury or the taxpayer, they said: Let's create this fund that we can put this excess money in that hasn't been used for the purpose it was designated. We will put it in a fund, and it will be there for use for some other purposes. Well, you know how government works: Never return a penny of the money that has been allocated to you by the Congress because the next time it comes up on an annual basis for your allocation, Congress may say: Well, they didn't need all that money, so let's give them less money next year. Oh, no, we don't want to be in that position, so let's make sure we find a way to spend it. Anyway, the money is sitting here in this slush fund called the Nonrecurring Expenses Fund, and it is supposed to be used for one-time expenses that come up on construction or IT projects and they can go to the fund and take some money out and use it for specified purposes. Well, all that was fine, I guess. I think it should have gone back to the Treasury. They did put a 5-year limit on it, and if it is still there after 5 years, it is supposed to go back to the Treasury but instead goes to this fund. Well, along came ObamaCare and all of its promises: Don't worry, it is not going to cost you a penny more than what is already being paid. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Your premiums won't go up. All that was promised to us by the President. After every declarative thing he said, he added: Period. Not one penny increase, period. Keep your doctor, period. Done deal, folks. Trust us. Well, of course none of that happened. ObamaCare seems to be collapsing under the weight of its own regulations and rules and operations. We read every day, almost every week of an exchange closing, of premiums skyrocketing. We are in for a very big surprise this fall. Some of this has been documented about the numbers coming in and the increases in premiums in the various States that are staggering. People are dropping out, people can't afford to get in, and on and on it goes. In any event, under ObamaCare, as we all remember, when they set it up, the Web site didn't work and people couldn't make the phone calls, so the expenditures have been significantly higher than what we were told and what was projected, and we are talking about big money here. So the administration thought, well, let's sort of look around, dig around, and maybe we will find a fund somewhere where there is some excess money we can use to prop up ObamaCare rather than having to go back to the Congress. Now, this is money appropriated for a specific purpose and not to be used or tapped into to pay for some other failing program over here, but, of course, that didn't stop the White House from doing that. It seems nothing does stop them, including laws passed by the Congress. In any event, they determined that, wow, here is a slush fund. Over the course of 4 years, it had about $1.3 billion in it. So why don't we just take it? It breaches the rules, maybe even the constitutionality of the fact that Congress appropriates money for specific purposes and puts it in specific places, and the administration doesn't have the right to simply go over there and say: Oh, there is a pot of money over there. It has been sitting there. Even though the law says it should expire after 5 years and it has to go back to the Treasury, we will ignore that and take that money, and we will apply it to pay for some of the bills on ObamaCare. And that is exactly what they did. So $1.3 billion was taken from a fund without a congressional vote--an abuse of power undermining Congress's constitutional authority over appropriations. So here we are adding to our total the $1.3 billion that could have been saved, that was appropriated but not used. It could have been used for many things. We are talking about trying to find ways to pay for Zika funding. This is a serious matter. Zika is having an impact. We have known that. The opposition here--the Democrats--have voted three times to prohibit us from going forward on that. But one of the issues here is the pay-for that we are under. If we are going to start a new program or appropriate more money to a program, we want to find something else to pay for it. Well, here is the perfect way to do it, and the amount of money is more than actually requested. Mr. President, $1.3 billion could be easily used as a pay-for for the Zika problem. That would get the CDC and get the States out there to deal with this very significant and difficult problem. But no, nope; it had to go to ObamaCare. It had to sort of once again fill the gap from expenditures that have gone all over the place. So what we have done is shown that this is money that we could have saved the taxpayer or that could have used for a better purpose, and under the waste of the week total here, we are now adding this $1.3 billion, which brings our total to $240 billion--$240,785,726,817. It just keeps going up. Here we are sitting on a total of nearly $241 billion of waste, fraud and abuse. As I said, fasten your seatbelts, folks; the next one coming in next week is a staggering number of documented waste, fraud and abuse. Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, in June I spoke on the floor about the appalling practice of the Palestinian Authority to reward terrorists and encourage more terrorism against Israeli citizens and Americans. My purpose then was to draw attention to these payments and especially the fact that U.S. taxpayer money was being used in this disgusting way. I had hoped that others would share my outrage. Unfortunately, that has not yet occurred, although I think it will. Already, the country of Norway has raised this issue through its Foreign Minister. Just recently, a German parliamentarian of the Green Party raised this issue. Countries are becoming aware of the fact that they are subsidizing terrorist acts by Palestinians against Jews and against Americans in Israel and that aid money which is going to that country from our countries--from a number of foreign countries--is being used for that purpose. Let me give some of the facts regarding that. I want to repeat these. Some of this is a repeat of what I said in June, but I think this is so unconscionable, such inhumane behavior that we are subsidizing, that we need to understand what it is and we need to take action to make sure this does not continue. Since 1998, the Palestinian Authority, which I will refer to as the PA, has been honoring and supporting Palestinian terrorists serving criminal sentences in Israeli prisons and rewarding the families of those terrorists, those who have committed these criminal acts, rewarding their families with financial support based on the severity of the crime. As we have learned through some documentation obtained, this system has now been formalized and expanded by President Abbas's Presidential directives. Palestinian terrorist prisoners are regarded by the PA as patriotic fighters, as heroes, and actually as employees of the government of the Palestinian Authority. While in prison, they and their families are paid premium salaries and given extra benefits as rewards for their terrorist actions. When they are released from custody, the terrorists then become civil service employees. Shockingly, monthly salaries for both incarcerated and released prisoners are on a sliding scale, depending on the severity of the crime and the length of the prison sentence. Thus, the more heinous the crime, the longer the sentence, and a longer sentence entitles the criminal and his family to a much higher premium salary. For example, a Palestinian prisoner with a 5-year sentence because they committed a criminal act against an Israeli or an American citizen or someone who is not a Palestinian receives about $500 per month, whereas a more serious criminal, say serving a 25-year sentence, perhaps for murder, receives $2,500 a month. It is an incentive to do an evermore criminal, heinous act against a human being. They are paid on a sliding scale basis. That, by the way, is six times the average income of a Palestinian worker. Where else in the world does a prisoner receive such benefits that actually increase with the severity and violence of the crime? U.S. Federal prisoners, for instance, earn between 35 cents and $1.15 per hour and certainly not on a sliding scale and certainly not to that level. In May of 2014, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a Presidential decree that moved this payment system from the PA to the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The openly acknowledged reason for this shift was to sidestep the increasingly critical scrutiny of this payment system by foreign governments--including us, the United States--that are contributing so much of the money that keeps the PA afloat. So they were receiving criticism, and there were inquiries by countries providing aid, including ours, including our State Department, and including some legislation that was enacted by the Congress. They created a shell game. They simply took the money that was given to the Palestinian Authority, and because there was criticism of their use of it as to these payments, they shifted it to the PLO through a shell game process that they thought we would not discover, and we did. Fortunately, we did. Unfortunately, given these facts, given the fact that we now know what is happening with American taxpayer dollars and some of our allies' taxpayer dollars, there should not be any question in terms of what is happening and what we ought to do, but apparently many of our leaders have been intentionally turning a blind eye to this practice in the hopes that we will ignore what is going on. This nefarious scheme has been going on now for 18 years and almost no one has been saying anything about it. That is why I am on the floor today, that is why I was on the floor in June, and that is why I will be on the floor again to continue to bring these facts to light so we can take action to prevent this from happening. Where is the outrage--outrage over the fact that a government is deliberately encouraging and financially rewarding its citizens to engage in a criminal act. This administration has explicitly avoided criticism of the PA on this matter, and it is ignoring the misuse of taxpayer money and helping the PA reward its terrorists to honor its martyrs. It is time they stood up, acknowledged the facts, and put an end to this. How can this silence be consistent with our antiterrorist efforts and counterterrorist efforts? How can this silence be ignored? One answer is that the administration has ignored the misuse of taxpayer dollars simply because it doesn't want to stir the pot. There are problems in the Middle East. We are dealing with a number of them. I am just speculating, but maybe the conclusion is let's not raise another issue that could cause further conflict in the Middle East. Yet there are worse things here than just silence because not only does the State Department decline to actively oppose these terrorist payments, they even offer false excuses for the outrage, excuses no rational person would believe. For instance, the Department of State's Bureau of Counterterrorism said in a recent report that this payment system was ``an effort to reintegrate [released prisoners] into society and prevent recruitment by hostile political factions.'' This is simply an absurd interpretation of the terrorist rewards programs, and its far more sinister motives are obvious to anyone who is paying attention. At the same time, we must admit that this payment scheme has gotten little or no attention in the Senate. For 18 years, the PA has been using American taxpayer money to reward terrorists. Yet until I spoke about it in June, I am not aware this subject has even come up on the Senate floor in any of the recent years. We should be holding hearings on this issue in appropriate Senate committees, as there have been recently in the House of Representatives, and thank goodness for that. More of my colleagues should be demanding that we stop financing such a scheme and we should enact legislation to impose that solution, if necessary. I can only speculate why outside groups that support Israel are also hesitant to press Congress to take action. Some may be reluctant to impose more pressure on a financially weak and dependent PA, believing that it would deprive Abbas of what little remains of his authority and status as a negotiating partner, thus making a negotiated settlement even less likely. Even some Israeli officials may share this view and have worked for years to act as a brake on efforts by Congress to cut off aid, presumably to preserve the PA's stability as a West Bank security provider. Well, we have seen where that has gone--nowhere. Despite possible consequences, we simply cannot give the PA a pass to support, to condone, and even reward terrorism, no matter what the consequences might be. The Palestinian Authority does not deserve immunity just because of its fragility. These payments provide rewards and motivations for brutal terrorists, plain and simple. To provide U.S. taxpayer money to Abbas and his government so they can treat terrorists as heroes or glorious martyrs is morally unacceptable. To tolerate such an outrage because of concern for Abbas's political future or preserving the PA's security role amounts to self-imposed extortion. If the PA's fragile financial condition requires U.S. assistance, then it is their policy--not our policy--that needs to change. We need an immediate response to this outrage. First, I am working with my colleagues to end American financial support for incarcerated terrorists or the families of these so-called martyrs. We will identify the amount of money that flows from the PA to the PLO for this purpose and cut U.S. assistance by that amount, at the very least. Legislation to that effect is now in both the House and the Senate versions of appropriations bills, and we must work together to ensure that this language survives any future omnibus or continuing resolutions and is repeated in future appropriations bills. If this partial cutoff of U.S. aid is not sufficient to motivate the Palestinian Authority to end this immoral system of payments to terrorists, we should propose a complete suspension of financial assistance until they change their policy. I am aware that suspending assistance to the Palestinians will have other consequences that we and Israel will have to address, but I believe the pressure that we and other like-minded governments could apply to this matter will bring President Abbas and other Palestinian officials to their senses. In any case--whether it does that or not--the moral imperative is clear: Payments that reward and encourage terrorism must be stopped and must be stopped now. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, it is time once again for the waste of the week. This is ``Waste of the Week'' No. 48. For 48 weeks I have been coming to the Senate floor during this Senate session, a 2-year session, talking about the waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money. The ever-growing need to tackle our soaring debt has been brought to our attention once again this week by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. On Tuesday, the budget office released its long-term Federal budget update, and it is not pretty. Once again, CBO bluntly told Congress that we need to reduce the Federal debt as soon as possible. How many times do they have to send a report here saying: Look, the house is on fire; you have to do something about it. I say, once again--but I can say once again, once again, once again, once again, once again--the Congressional Budget Office is nonpartisan. It is not Republican; it is not Democrat; it is not liberal; it is not conservative. These guys deal with numbers, and the numbers don't lie. You don't have to be a math genius to figure out that we are spending far more than we take in, and we have to borrow against that. Just under this administration, we have nearly doubled from $10.7 trillion of national debt to almost $20 trillion of national debt. This is the legacy the President wants to carry? You never hear him talk about this. You never hear this mentioned. Oh, ObamaCare is the best thing that has ever happened in the world. If you have been listening to the disaster that is rolling out under ObamaCare and the premiums that have doubled and the copays that have tripled and the exemptions that have been lost and all kinds of things happening to people in America here today under this flawed Federal program, you would understand this. We are talking about a budget out of control, spending out of control. I have been a part of efforts to deal with this on a macro basis. All of those have failed, and they failed because the President of the United States has refused to come to a conclusion in working with us. Oh, he made some attempts to do it. He made some nice statements, but in the end it was always: Can't go there. I decided I would at least try to point out documented issues of waste, fraud, and abuse. The very least we can do is stop this kind of spending. We have totaled up a pretty good total here. We are approaching $250 billion of documented waste, fraud, and abuse. CBO projects that the combined Social Security trust funds will be exhausted by 2029--5 years earlier than the Social Security trustees estimated a little bit ago--forcing automatic benefit cuts on seniors and people with disabilities. Let me repeat that: forcing automatic cuts to seniors and those with disabilities. Do you hear Senators talking about the fact that we are going to have to do this? No, I don't hear this on the floor. Do you hear the President talking about this? No, let's pass this on--2029, I mean, that is way in the distance. Why do we need to worry about that now? That is what they were saying when the debt was $10.7 trillion. That is what they were saying when the debt was $5 trillion: We can do this later. Well, the clock is ticking. Is anybody out there listening? Hello, hello. We are on the road to insolvency, and your elected representatives and your President aren't doing anything about it. As you can tell, I get pretty worked up about this. I am down to some of the small stuff, pointing out: Can't we at least do this? Can't we at least come together as a Senate and as a House of Representatives, and can't we at least eliminate the waste, the documented fraud, the abuse of programs? I am now on week No. 48. I have a card here that details all of the issues we have done. It keeps adding up and adding up, and I am only scratching the surface. I can be down here every day, maybe every hour of every day the Senate is in session, talking about a waste of the week. What the CBO puts out, what the Government Accountability Office puts out, what independent agencies put out--we can do 24-hour filibusters and just rack one up after another. This is your Federal Government in action. The tragedy is these are the tax dollars that you work hard for every week and that you send to Washington, and you want them responsibly used. Yes, of course, we have to fund the military. Yes, we want to take care of the veterans. We want to take care of our national security. We are a threat now from ISIS; we are a threat from terrorists around the world, some of them domestic. We want police forces, we want intelligence, and we want all those entities that are involved in keeping us safe. We need to fund those agencies. What about medical research? What about disease control? We are talking about Ebola. We are talking about Zika. We are talking about a number of things that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deals with in Atlanta. How about education? How about roads? How about sewers? How about waterlines? How about the raft of things that require spending in order to keep our Nation healthy, in order to keep our Nation functioning, in order to make us competitive in the world? All of that is at risk. All of that is at risk because our entitlements keep growing out of control. No one is saying there is a fire on the way. It is growing, not diminishing, and you are not calling the fire department out to deal with this issue. Let me get to the essence of this recent issue here. Remember the Lifeline program? That is the program that provides people of lower means, perhaps some in rural areas, a lifeline so that they can call 911. There has been some documentation that some people can't afford this. The President came along, and they call it the Obama Phone program now. It is advertised--I think it is a private advertisement, but it is a government-sponsored legislative program, and it is contracted out. Free cell phone--the government pays for your wireless service--free phone, free minutes, free enrollment, no payment ever. This well-intended program was to provide people a lifeline in case of an emergency--the ability to dial 9-1-1. This lifeline is important to low-income earners who couldn't afford a phone. That program has some benefits and is something that maybe we ought to do, but we ought to put controls on it to make sure the program is not abused. Initially, this program helped low-income families pay for landline phone service, but landline, as you know, is out of date. I doubt if any of these pages even know what a landline is since they have grown up in the cell phone era. It happened just a few years after I came to the Senate. This program--like almost every other program the government sponsors--is well-intended but runs amok because of mismanagement, misuse of the law, misinterpretation, abuse, waste, and people taking advantage of it. Under the Obama administration, the cost and number of beneficiaries in this program have skyrocketed, and with this increase came a number of issues. The inspector general for the Federal Communications Commission, which is called the FCC, which administers this program that they contract out, did a study. They noted that prior to 2012, it was, as they said, ``well known'' that some individuals were receiving duplicative benefits or receiving benefits despite their eligibility for those benefits.'' For instance, there was supposed to be one phone made available per home, one per family, if they couldn't afford one. They found home addresses with dozens of phones and handing them out. There were posters like this that said: Get your free phone. People were grabbing them up as fast as they could. Word got out on the street that you can get a free phone line and the government will pay for it-- yet another program the government is going to take care of. Well intended, yes, but there was a public outcry when stuff like this came out here. People said: What is the deal? I thought the phone was for emergency purposes. I thought we needed one per household to give them the opportunity to call 9-1-1 when needed, or if it was a single person--or a couple who needed a phone, maybe they should share it. The inspector general said that the one-per-household rule wasn't working very well, and so the FCC apparently implemented a policy that basically said subscribers could override the eligibility for this because maybe these people need more than one cell phone. The IG has learned that abuse within this program is more widespread than anybody previously believed. First, the IG learned that, as I said, the FCC instructed employees to override the computer system that prohibits more than one applicant per household. Second, the FCC--on the form that you have to send in--basically said: All the subscribers need to do is provide a check in the box that says the applicant is eligible. But multiple applications came in from the same address, and no one asked, as the law required, applicants to provide any supporting documentation. The IG found that this override option was also enabling subscribers to use fake names and fake Social Security numbers to avoid detection. How many times have I been down here talking about fake names, stolen IDs, and stolen Social Security numbers that were used to obtain Federal benefits with no oversight? The IG noted that between October 2014 and April 2016, nearly 4.3 million people enrolled in the Lifeline Program by overriding the internal eligibility controls. That is more than 35 percent of all subscribers and accounts, and that rivals the population of the entire State of Oregon. These aren't people who needed phones; these are people who overrode it so they he could get as many phones as they wanted. Obviously our Washington bureaucrats have not been good stewards of our taxpayer dollars. Sadly, this is not the end of the story. It is important to note that the IG is still in the process of reviewing these egregious actions to determine just how widespread the problem is. In the meantime, what I am calling for here on the Senate floor is that the FCC stop allowing people to enroll in the Lifeline Program through the override process and to verify every single beneficiary so that we can weed out the bad actors. Whether you are in private business or the government, is that what you would expect? If you are selling or distributing a product--and in this case, distributing a product based on taxpayer dollars--don't you think you would want to, No. 1, adhere to the law, and No. 2, adhere to the regulations and not have some kind of arbitrary override, especially when you have stuff like this on the street and people are gobbling up free service on cell phones by the millions? What is the total? The total we can project for unverified Obama Phone beneficiaries is $4.76 billion over the course of unverified Obama phone applicants. I am not here to say this program should be abolished. I understand why people need to have a phone in their household for an emergency purpose. If they qualify under the eligibility criteria, I am OK with that, but if they are abusing the program, I am not OK with that at all, and I guarantee that the American taxpayer is not willing to accept that. They did not send us here to stand by, as responsible U.S. Senators, and watch this kind of abuse go on and on and on, and this Senator has barely scratched the surface in an effort to document waste, fraught, and abuse. We now have $239-plus billion of documented fraud, waste, and abuse by accountable government agencies, and it is totally unacceptable. I yield the floor.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I return to the floor now for the 47th week for the 47th edition of the ``Waste of the Week.'' I highlight documented examples of waste, fraud, and abuse of hard-earned taxpayers' dollars that come to the Federal Government and that the public has every right to expect us to spend wisely, effectively, and efficiently. Nonpartisan agencies like the Government Accountability Office and inspectors general are the watchdogs that examine how various agencies spend money and then report areas where they think expenditure doesn't live up to the promises that have been made, in terms of what it would accomplish, or question whether it ever should have been provided in the first place. Some of the examples I have provided over these 47 weeks have been labeled simply as ridiculous. I raised those because it grabs the attention of the American public, saying: How in the world could the Federal Government allow something like that to happen with my tax dollars? I get up every Monday morning and go to work and I work hard for those dollars and I have a mortgage to pay and I have bills to pay. I have gasoline I have to put in my car to get to work and back. Then I hear something on the floor of the U.S. Senate, from the Senator from Indiana, that is a documented expenditure that falls clearly within the category of simply a ridiculous decision--waste, fraud, or abuse. So whether it has been Federal grants to perform massages on rabbits--yes, massages on rabbits--to see whether a massage makes them feel better after a strenuous workout, I think any one of us could basically say you don't need to spend several hundred thousand dollars to prove that is something that works, or whether it is solar-fried burgers--I think 7,000 or so--that fly over a mirrored number of acres in a desert in California that are reflecting sunlight to a boiler, which has not proved to be cost-effective, and in the meantime it creates so much heat it has caused the cables that are necessary to produce the heat to be fried and also birds that fly over this solar field. I am surprised the environmentalists are not on top of that. Then there are the gambling monkeys, to see whether the monkeys were willing to take a greater risk and continue gambling if they had a reward for it--like, in their case, for food. I could have proven that with my dog that will eat anything I put in front of him, no matter how much I put down there. We are talking about several hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Those are ludicrous. They are designed to catch people's attention so they will pay more attention to some of the examples of egregious wastes of money, designed for, perhaps, a good motive or the right purpose, but exposed, it is something that falls within that category of waste. In one of my very first ``Waste of the Week'' speeches, I talked about the issue of double dipping in Social Security disability funds and unemployment insurance. To receive clearance to receive Social Security and disability payments, you have to prove you can't work; you are disabled, you can't work. But to receive unemployment insurance, you have to be working and then be told you can no longer keep your job, and in that interim period of time until you get a new job, we are going to pay you insurance benefits. What the General Accounting Office found out was that people were getting checks for doing both. Look, you can do one or the other but not both. That was no small change. That was $6 billion. I think it is $5.7 billion of documented waste every year. Well, here we are at No. 47, and I would like to highlight yet another serious and very concerning example of waste: improper payments of taxpayer money through Medicare. All of us agree Medicare is an important program for millions of Americans, and we need to do what we can to preserve these important health care benefits for those who depend on them and need them, but an essential part of preserving these benefits is protecting Medicare from waste, fraud, and abuse. Throughout its history, we have read, and it has been determined by inspectors general and by the Government Accountability Office, Medicare has been plagued by improper payments which are payments that are not justified can occur because of fraud or bureaucratic mismanagement. These improper payments not only threaten the solvency of Medicare, they leave millions of seniors vulnerable because when these improper payments are the result of fraud and abuse, they can jeopardize the health and well-being of Medicare beneficiaries for this reason: The reason is, Medicare is going broke. It is careening toward insolvency. The Medicare trustees have said we are only 12 short years away from insolvency under Medicare Part A. When you determine waste, fraud, and abuse, on a year-after-year-after-year basis in the billions and tens of billions of dollars, these are dollars not available to keep that program solvent. That is going to have a devastating effect on the ability for us to provide the Medicare services people of a certain age need. How many taxpayers' dollars am I talking about today? Well, in fiscal year 2015 alone, just in that year, the last year where the audits have been done, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, which administers Medicare, improperly paid out $59 billion for health services--in one single year, $59 billion of improper payments, representing nearly 10 percent of the total amount Medicare spent that year. As I said, just last month the Medicare trustees said Medicare Part A would be insolvent by 2028. Think about how much that 1 year of $59 billion can do to help keep the program solvent. All of this is why it is all the more necessary for Congress, the administration, and the health care agencies to work in unison to solve this crisis of Medicare solvency. There is a group known as the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, and I commend whoever put that idea in play. It needs to be advanced significantly, but the idea with the strike force was it could root out the bad actors and bring them to justice. As an example, recently the strike force uncovered a ring of over 300 people--from physicians and pharmacists to nurses and government officials--who have allegedly conspired to defraud Medicare out of $900 million. How did they do it? Well, some of the examples in this fraud ring include the billing of Medicare for procedures the providers claim took place after the patient passed away. They were submitting Medicare claims for dead patients and receiving significant payments. Other providers billed Medicare for home health care, which is reserved for bedridden seniors, for services that were not even provided to the patients in need. It was fraud, in terms of people submitting many bills to CMS and receiving payments when the services were not provided. In Detroit, a so-called medical clinic billed Medicare for tens of millions of dollars, when in fact the clinic was determined to be a front for a narcotics diversion scheme. The clinic operators and recruiters targeted poor drug addicts who needed help and offered those addicts narcotics so clinics could then bill for Medicare services that were not provided. This was tens of millions of dollars. These are just examples of what the IGs found in terms of looking at Medicare payments. That is why I continue to come down every week to urge my colleagues in the Senate, in the House of Representatives, and the administration to take the necessary steps to tighten the screws on bad actors in Medicare, in agencies across the realm of this government, not only because they are gambling with the health of some of America's most vulnerable patients but also because we have such precious little time to work to save this program from insolvency. Our goal should be--in fact, it must be--to protect seniors, to promote good government practices, and achieve real savings by addressing these issues now. With that, I am adding another major amount of waste, fraud, and abuse for an ever-growing total. This week it is $59 billion for Medicare improper payments, bringing the total all the way to $234-plus billion in waste, fraud, and abuse of hard-earned taxpayer dollars. We wonder why the public has lost confidence and faith in their elected representatives and their institutions of government, when we see this kind of bureaucratic mess, when we see this kind of waste of hard-earned tax dollars, the fraud that is involved that is not detected and the abuse and terrible decision making by people who, respectfully, work for government agencies but don't exercise the kind of judgment the American taxpayer expects from them in terms of dealing with the money they send to Washington. Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 22, 2016, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a classified hearing entitled ``Security Assistance: Cutting Through a Tangled Web of Authorities.''

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 22, 2016, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Renewing Communities and Providing Opportunities Through Innovative Solutions to Poverty.''

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 22, 2016, in room SD-628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, at 2:15 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Accessing USDA Rural Development Programs in Native Communities.''

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 22, 2016, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Oversight of the Drug Enforcement Administration.''

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 22, 2016, at 2:30 p.m., in room SR-418 of the Russell Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Examining the Progress and Challenges in Modernizing Information Technology at the Department of Veterans Affairs.''

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety of the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 22, 2016, at 2:30 p.m., in room SD-406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Examining Pathways Towards Compliance of the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for Ground-Level Ozone: Legislative Hearing on S. 2882 and S. 2072.''

Mr. COATS

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

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, there is a lot going on around here. Before lunch, we finished a vote that I was very disappointed did not reach the 60-vote threshold so we could proceed to debate and vote on what I think is one of the more important issues we are dealing with; that is, our ability to stop terrorist attacks. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, we have had the opportunity to meet several times with Director Comey, the head of the FBI, asking him if they have the tools necessary to prevent terrorist attacks against innocent Americans. Simply because of changes in technology, a tool they had before--and by ``tool,'' a method they had before to try to determine who is trying to do us harm--works for one type of technology, but new technology, basically because of an omission in the language that was never intended by the Congress, does not give us the ability to so-call connect the dots to give us the opportunity to then go and seek a warrant for further investigation. This was the vote we had on the floor. We came up just one or two votes short. I know the majority leader made a motion to reconsider so we will be taking this up again. I hope my colleagues who did not vote for this will take the opportunity as a Member of the U.S. Senate to come to the Intelligence Committee to sit down, look at the classified information, and assure themselves this does nothing that invades anyone's privacy rights. There seems to be a lack of information as to what is being asked for. In that regard, hopefully during this next few days, we will have the opportunity for our colleagues to come and understand this. Frankly, it is something many had voted for but were not aware of this glitch in the language that has put us in this particular position. I will be happy to accompany any of my colleagues to a place where we can look through, on a classified basis, why this is so important. Wasteful Spending Mr. President, I want to do what I have been doing now for about 46 weeks in the Senate in this cycle; that is, to discuss the waste of the week. The waste of the week is something we have been talking about. While I deeply regret we have not been able to fashion a long-term program dealing with our debt and our deficit, which is so critical for the future of this country, the least we can do is look at the way we currently spend taxpayer money, and in doing so, weed out those programs that simply don't justify the use of taxpayer money. I was going to do this last week, and after the tragic events of Orlando, I didn't think it was the appropriate time to do so. So today I am doing two wastes of the week to make up for last week and this week. This week, the Senate is considering legislation that funds a number of agencies, including the National Science Foundation. When Congress created the National Science Foundation, the agency's goals were to promote progress in science, help secure our national defense, and advance national health, prosperity, and welfare. That is a great goal. I am not here today to question the validity of the National Science Foundation. There is no question that research funded by the NSF has led to remarkable discoveries in that the majority of the work they do, their research, is worthwhile. However, thanks to the work started by my former colleague Senator Tom Coburn, it has now become clear that the National Science Foundation has funded some research that truly falls in the category of a waste of taxpayer dollars--either because the research has questionable benefit or because it is research that should more appropriately be conducted by the private sector or perhaps it doesn't even need to be conducted. By the way, these are all documented. Inspectors general--the Government Accountability Office goes in and does audits and they look at how money is spent. Then they report this back to us. We look at this and say: How in the world did this ever get approved? Who agreed to spend this kind of money on this kind of research project when we are running deficits, when we are deeply in debt here as a nation? Is this a wise way to spend hard-earned tax dollars? We are trying to bring these to light in a transparent way so our Members will say: Let's crack down on this kind of stuff. I don't want to go home and tell my constituents their tax dollars are going toward this kind of stuff. We had another example several months ago about--you can't make this stuff up--whether, if people are hungry, they are more disposed to be a little curt or a little angry with their spouse. Somebody came up with the idea: Let's test this out. The expenditure was considerable for this research. I can't remember exactly what it is right now, but they gave husbands and wives voodoo dolls and a bunch of pins. They said: Every time you feel a bad feeling or want to say something mean to your spouse, you take your voodoo doll--you have your voodoo doll that looks like your wife and your wife has one that looks like her husband--and you take a pin and stick it in the voodoo doll. When you did this, you were asked the question: Were you hungry at the time? If you were hungry at the time, they said to count all the pins and say: Well, OK, we have proven the fact that if you are hungry, you are more likely to be upset with your spouse than if you are not hungry. To come here and explain this, people say this can't be true. Tell me, tell me tax dollars are not used for something like this out of an agency as respected as the National Science Foundation. Yet they defended this process as a legitimate grant, expenditure of taxpayer dollars, and used a new word, ``hangry.'' It is the combination of being hungry and angry, and it is hangry. Are you hangry? And if you are, you might be upset with your spouse a little more quickly because the pins in the voodoo dolls prove that. I promise you, I am not making this up. This is documented. This is what the research project included. Today, I want to name two additional examples. I am not picking on the NSF, but we keep reading about this. Here are two examples that cost taxpayers nearly $2.2 million. The first example is a $171,000 grant to research how monkeys gamble. Yes, you heard that correctly. Researchers actually taught monkeys to gamble to see if they could develop a hot-hand mentality. Now let me put my cards on the table and explain what this means. Researchers taught monkeys to keep gambling and keep playing, despite potential risk, in order to maximize their rewards. Instead of earning money, which the monkeys weren't going to take the money to a store and spend, the monkeys were rewarded with food. It turns out the monkeys tried to get as much food as possible from their gambling game. In other words, knowing there was going to be the reward of more food if they kept gambling, the monkeys kept gambling. First of all, I didn't know monkeys could gamble so I guess we learned something there. Secondly, my bet is that taxpayers agree with me that there are much more pressing issues that deserve Federal funding. The second example I want to talk about is the nearly $2 million grant to Cornell University for a study on popular landmark photos. This money was used to study photos that have been posted--I think we have a chart here. We actually found a picture of the monkeys gambling. Here are their chips. Somehow they taught them to gamble. They were rewarded with food. The monkeys figured out pretty quickly that if they kept gambling, they could get more food. It is not unlike my dog. We wake up in the morning, and the first one up in our house--my wife or myself--feeds the dog. If we forget to tell each other that we fed the dog--I go off to work, catch a plane to come back to Washington--I get a call from my wife: Did you feed the dog? Yes, I did feed the dog. Well, she is sitting here begging, looking like, ``Poor thing, I didn't get anything to eat this morning''-- soulful eyes on Honey Hoosier. That is our dog, soulful eyes looking at you, ``Oh, if you could just give me something to eat.'' My wife says: I fed the dog because I thought you surely didn't feed the dog because she looked so sad. Hey, she is gaming the whole program here. She is very successful with me because I look at her and say: Oh, you poor thing. Let me give you some food. And then my wife comes out later and says: You know, I fed the dog. I hope you didn't feed her again. Anyway, the animals figured it out pretty quickly, and I don't know what this leads to as a conclusion. All I know is, why should the taxpayer be paying for stuff like this? These are fun things maybe to do for somebody if they want to do them, I suppose, but the conclusions they come to, it may benefit society, but does it have to be done with taxpayer dollars? So on and on we go. The second issue here is this Cornell study on photos. The researchers claim they searched the 40 billion pages of Web sites with photos to make photo archives available to social science for research. In reality, the researchers examined photos that had been uploaded to a popular photo-sharing site called Flickr and then determined some of the top photograph sites in the world. What did they find? Unsurprisingly, the most popular sites included the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Empire State Building. Unfortunately, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was not included, which is disturbing to me. They also found that the Apple store on Fifth Avenue in New York City is more popular on Flickr than the White House. You can come to your own conclusions as to what you might think about that, but we have to ask ourselves: Was this basic Internet research really worth $2 million of taxpayer money? The researchers said it is because the work can help with online travel guides and improve social media sites' ability to guess where a photo was taken. Helping improve online travel guides and social media geolocation services is not exactly part of the NSF's original mission, which I read to you. What can Congress do about these kind of things? One problem with Congress's inability to crack down on wasteful spending is the lack of transparency, and what we are doing here is trying to be transparent. We are exposing to my colleagues, we are exposing to the American public the kind of waste that is going on with their hard-earned tax dollars. They sent their hard-earned tax dollars to Washington thinking that it would be invested in building new roads, infrastructure, providing for our military defense, or the veterans who have come home and need support. No, instead it goes to grants that go to these kinds of crazy things. That is why I submitted an amendment to this week's bill to require the National Science Foundation to publish the full documents submitted by NSF grant recipients outlining what the research will entail. We can no longer trust the decisionmaking process of the National Science Foundation. We want them to publish and provide documentation to the Congress so we know who is and why they are making these decisions and where this money is going. As of today, the NSF provides only short summaries of the proposals that are awarded funds, but these summaries are very limited, and, of course, they are written in a way that makes it look as though it is legitimate and something that we really need to do. We cannot appropriately fix the problem without all of the information and a clear understanding of the intent of the research grants that are awarded by the National Science Foundation. Taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent. Our ever-growing accumulation of wasted taxpayer dollars can now add over $2 million for gambling monkeys in a photo popularity contest, bringing our pricetag to nearly $176 billion of taxpayer money wasted on projects that really provide little or no benefit to the American people. That is what the inspectors general at the Government Accountability Office and others have determined, and this is not small change. People work really hard to raise this kind of money and are then taxed at a level of $176 billion only to see every dollar and every penny of that essentially wasted through fraud or abuse. I will keep coming to the floor, so stay tuned for next week's revelation. I could probably come down and do this every day when the Senate is in session because I am just scratching the surface. We will keep pointing out how the people's money is being spent, and hopefully on the basis of that, Congress will take action to make sure it no longer falls under the category of waste, fraud, and abuse. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COATS

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

Mr. COATS. Madam President, terrorist violence against civilians in Israel has been accelerating in recent years amounting to what is now called the silent intifada, the term meaning ``violent uprising.'' Perhaps it is called silent because we are not paying enough attention to the atrocities that are currently taking place in Israel. The first intifada lasted from December 1987 to 1993, the second, from 2000 to 2005. This third uprising, the so-called silent intifada, began in Jerusalem in 2014. Last year, the latest intifada was characterized with a new name, ``knife intifada.'' Earlier, we witnessed media accounts of Palestinian terrorists slaughtering Israelis and others, including American citizens, by blowing up restaurants or schoolbuses or using automatic weapons. Breaking news on CNN or FOX, or whatever we were watching, showed us the scenes of body parts, pools of blood in the streets, ambulances, with sirens screaming, rushing to the nearest hospital or aid station with mutilated and badly injured victims of these attacks. Lately, though, the weapons of choice seem to be increasingly the knife. Apparently, in some ways, the Palestinians think the direct face-to-face bloody slaughter of a teenager or a grandmother by a knife-wielding thug makes it even more personal and horrifying. Americans may know, through recent media reports, about this wave of violence injecting new poison into the region, but I think what most don't know is that American taxpayers are supporting this with their tax dollars. Let me repeat that. While we may be aware of some of what is going on in Israel through this knife intifada, through the continued horrors and the murders that are taking place, what Americans don't seem to know--in fact, what many of us have now learned--is that their tax dollars are supporting this effort. Since 1998, the Palestinian Authority has been encouraging such attacks by honoring and supporting Palestinian terrorists serving criminal sentences in Israeli prisons and rewarding the families of those who were martyred by their own violent acts. Since then, the system of payments has been formalized and expanded by President Abbas in Presidential directives. Palestinian terrorist prisoners are regarded by the Palestinian Authority as patriotic martyrs, fighters, heroes, and actually as employees of the Government of the Palestinian Authority. While in prison for their crimes, they and their families are paid premium salaries and given extra benefits as rewards for their service--their service being a criminal act, an assault, and even a murder. It is interesting that they use that word. Under release from custody, the terrorists then become civil service employees. Shockingly, monthly salaries for both incarcerated and released prisoners are on a sliding scale, depending on the severity of the crime and the length of the prison sentence. Thus, the more heinous the crime, carrying a longer sentence, enables the criminal or his family to receive a much higher premium salary. For example, a prisoner with a 5-year sentence or his family receives about $500 a month; whereas, a more serious criminal serving a 25-year sentence will receive $2,500 a month--six times the average income of the average Palestinian worker. Where else in the world does a prisoner receive such benefits that actually increase with the severity and violence of the crime? In May 2014, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a Presidential decree that moved this payment system from the PA, Palestinian Authority, to the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization. The openly acknowledged reason for this shift was to sidestep the increasingly critical scrutiny of this payment system by foreign governments--including the United States--which are contributing much of the money that is keeping the Palestinian Authority afloat. In 2014, I, along with Senators Graham and Kirk, cosponsored an amendment to the fiscal year 2015 appropriations bill providing for the reduction of budgetary support for the PA by an amount the Secretary of State determines is equivalent to the amount expended by the PA as payments for acts of terrorism by individuals who are imprisoned after being fairly tried and convicted for acts of terrorism and by individuals who died committing acts of terrorism during the previous calendar year. That is something Senator Kirk, Senator Graham, and I worked on to try to address this issue. Subsequent annual appropriations legislation continues now to include this provision. Once that prohibition was enacted and became law, PA President Abbas formally ended the program and transferred that support function to the PLO, by transferring to the PLO the exact amount that had been budgeted by the Palestinian Authority accounts for this prisoner support purpose; in other words, nothing but a shell game. Oh, we are getting a lot of criticism about providing support to these so-called martyrs, these criminals who have been convicted in Israeli courts. We are getting criticized for doing that--actually, people are telling us it is an incentive to do this. The sickness of this is that families benefit by having one member of their family actually go out and commit a crime, including a murder, getting sentenced to prison for a number of years, and then the family or the criminal is being rewarded for that very act. So when criticism came and the language we passed in the Congress which enforced this came, Abbas simply pulled out a shell game and said: I will just shift the money and the authority over here, designating that the cutoff of aid by the United States and other countries now was going to a different authority. Now, the relationship between the two organizations, while complex, is also very intertwined. While the PLO claims it is an independent body, the PA receives its legitimacy and mandate from the PLO in agreements with Israel. In effect, the PA is subordinate to the PLO. I am speaking on the Senate floor because I have become increasingly concerned that this payment issue is not receiving the public attention and criticism it deserves. People think, well, we have solved the problem through the language which we passed a couple of years ago but are now discovering that a shell game was simply in play and that money is simply fungible and then shifted over to another function under the PA called the PLO that is then now distributing the money to the families. It appears some pro-Israel organizations may be hesitant to bring more pressure on the financially weak, dependent PA, believing it would deprive Abbas of what little remains of his authority and status as a negotiating partner, thus making a negotiated settlement with Israel less likely. It also appears that some Israeli officials have been reluctant to support the cutoff of aid to the PA, presumably to preserve the PA's stability as a West Bank security provider. Our administration--the U.S. administration--is similarly not eager to enforce this issue. The Department of State's Bureau of Counterterrorism said in a report last month that this payment system was ``an effort to reintegrate released prisoners into society and prevent recruitment by hostile political factions.'' There is nothing in the PA Presidential directives establishing this system that justifies such an absurdly positive view of its purposes. The U.S. Government should not see this payment program in such a positive light at all, nor does the Palestinian Authority deserve immunity because of its fragility. These payments provide rewards and motivations for brutal terrorists, plain and simple. To provide U.S. taxpayer money to Abbas and his government so they can treat terrorists as heroes or glorious martyrs is morally unacceptable. To tolerate such an outrage because of concern for Abbas's political future or preserving the PA's security role for Israel amounts to self-imposed extortion. If the PA's fragile financial condition requires U.S. assistance, then it is their policy--not ours--that must change. Let me be more specific as to why we need to take immediate action to stop the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to reward the PLO for its barbaric acts. Since 2014, there have been at least 45 terrorist attacks in Israel killing 585 people, including Americans. Just this past March, Taylor Force, a U.S. Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist in Jaffa. Taylor was a graduate of the U.S. military academy, and as a former U.S. military officer, he was buried with full honors. His attacker was killed by the Israeli police. This terrorist then received the honors of his own community and a burial ceremony that glorified him as a martyr, the highest religious achievement in Islam. The official Palestinian Authority spokesman said the celebration funeral was ``a national wedding befitting of martyrs''--a reference to the Islamic belief that a martyr marries 72 dark-eyed virgins in paradise. The family who presumably paid for this celebration received substantial rewards from the Palestinian Government and will now receive a permanent monthly stipend. Some of that money is paid into the U.S. Treasury by American taxpayers and is given as assistance to the Palestinian Authority, which is then shell moved over to the PLO and then provided as a reward for killing an American soldier. I, for one--and I am sure I am speaking for the American taxpayer--am not interested in paying for a martyr's funeral or his so-called wedding. I am also not interested in paying for what amounts to civil servant salaries for the two terrorists who shot four Israelis to death this past June in Tel Aviv or the two Palestinian boys who attacked customers in a supermarket in February or the 16-year-old terrorist who stabbed an Israeli mother of six to death in her own kitchen last January. I could go on and on about these atrocities and murders, and to think that American taxpayer dollars are paying the families and criminals of those who committed the crimes, with our tax dollars. As I said earlier, we need an immediate response to this outrage, and I am ready to lead the effort. First, I intend to work with my colleagues, particularly Senator Graham and Senator Kirk, who are on the relevant committees and had joined me years ago to try to put a stop to this. I want to work with them to end American financial support for incarcerated terrorists or the families of these so-called martyrs who have earned that status by the brutal slaying of Jewish citizens, including some Americans. We will identify the amount of money that flows from the PA to the PLO for this purpose and cut U.S. assistance by at least that amount. If that partial cutoff of U.S. aid is not sufficient to motivate the PA to end this immoral system of payments to terrorists, I propose a complete suspension of any financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority until their policy has changed. I am aware that suspending assistance to the Palestinians will have other consequences that we and Israel will have to address, but I believe the pressure that we and other like-minded governments could and should apply in this manner will bring President Abbas and other Palestinian officials to their senses. Whether or not this will occur, the moral imperative is clear: Payments that reward and encourage terrorism must stop. We have a moral obligation to do all that we can, as soon as we can, to stop financing the murder of innocent Israelis and Israel's friends and supporters. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, as my colleagues know, I come to the floor each week to deliver a ``waste of the week'' speech. My concern over excessive government spending and spending on nonessential programs in wasteful ways needs to be shared with the American people, and my colleagues need to know that a lot of hard-earned tax dollars are wasted through waste, fraud, and abuse. Some of these have been very serious, resulting in literally billions of dollars of waste. Some have been smaller expenditures but ludicrous expenditures, the kinds of expenditures where people say why in the world does the Federal Government have to do that? Or why--where's the common sense here? The American people work very hard to earn the dollars they send to Washington. A lot of them are scraping by to pay the mortgage that's due at the end of the month, to pay the rent that is due at the end of the week, to get the groceries in the house or the savings to put in the savings account for an education; any number of ways the American people today, as the statistics are showing us today, have less spending money. The average American worker today has up to $3,000-plus less per year in earnings than they did at the beginning of this administration. I don't know how the President keeps going on the airwaves saying things are just great and look how much better we are doing when people are earning on an average $3,000 less than they earned 8 years after the President first took office. However, walking over to the floor to deliver this--and this one is one of those speeches--you can't make this up. It's so ridiculous. Can you believe that really an agency that is held in high regard, the National Science Foundation, actually is issuing grants of taxpayer money for these kinds of projects? Normally it would bring a lot of laughs and a lot of outrage over this waste of money. I couldn't help but think of what is plaguing most Americans this week, after the tragic shooting in Orlando, Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, and all of the other breaking news and tragedies we have been hit with as Americans. I am having trouble with it, as all Americans are having trouble with it. We are trying to fight toward a solution. I am not sure what that solution is. It is not a simplistic solution. Clearly, in a democracy as free and as open as America, whether it is ISIL- inspired or terrorist-inspired or whether it is just someone mentally ill, someone whose hatred drives their life, or someone sitting in their basement at 2 a.m. Being inspired by ISIS web sites or just simply some of the stuff that comes across the internet, we are facing a tough situation here. But this week seems to be importantly difficult, and we are searching for ways--and the last thing we need to do is to politicize this issue. We have to address issues to make sure we have done everything we possibly can to prevent the wrong people, to prevent terrorists, from purchasing and owning weapons of mass destruction or that can cause the kind of issues we are dealing with in Orlando and other places. There is not a Member of this body, Republican or Democratic, who has not been impacted by what is happening not just in Orlando but by a series of events similar to this. There is not a Senator here--Republican or Democratic, liberal or conservative--who doesn't want to find a way to address the situation in a way that would reduce the incidence or hopefully eliminate the incidence of these issues. We are working through that now, and working through that is difficult because we do want Americans to have the ability and the rights that are promised to them under the Constitution and the Second Amendment, which is to protect themselves. We want to make sure their constitutional rights aren't breached for their own self-defense. What do we say to a woman living alone in a neighborhood where there is a lot of drug dealing going on and a lot of random shootings and a lot of home invasions that she can't protect herself? We don't want to do that. We don't want to say to someone who owns a business and wants to ensure that the business is not broken into and they lose everything they have invested and who hires a security guard or someone to provide protection, that we are going to take away that right. By the same token, we don't want these kinds of weapons used in these mass killings to be in the hands of the wrong people. So we are trying to find that balance. The best way to do that is for all of us to work together to find that balance, instead of blaming one side or the other side for not doing enough or for doing too little. This is not an easy issue to resolve. It just doesn't seem appropriate for me to come to the floor and talk about the waste of the week because that involves something people normally would laugh at. This is not a week to laugh. This is a week to mourn. This is a week to work together to find a sensible way of trying to prevent these kinds of things from happening, and we are working through that. So next week I will come down and do two waste-of-the- week issues because this waste keeps going on, and it is an issue we all need to be aware of because the people we represent are forced, through the tax system, to send money to Washington, and they want it reasonably spent and reasonably used for necessary purposes. With that, let's keep our focus and our eyes on the task at hand in respect and in mourning for what has happened in Orlando and what has been happening across our country far, far, far too often. Let's work together to find a reasonable solution that can take us in the right direction toward preventing these things from happening. Not one of us--not one of us--wants to have a process which puts these weapons in the hands of terrorists or those who mean to do us harm. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. President, it appears there is an absence of Members here, so I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. COATS. Madam President, I will try to be very brief. I know time is constricted. When I first came to the Senate, we had Members on both sides who had principled positions on any number of issues, but we rarely, if ever, because of our principled stand, denied the opportunity for debate and vote. The Senate is here for the purpose of debating and voting. Sometimes we win, and sometimes we lose. The consequences are recorded, and the bill goes forward--as this one would--to be combined with the House, to go to conference, and finally issue a resolution. We are not talking about just any piece of legislation here; we are talking about the national security and national defense for our Nation. There are important issues that need to be debated and need to be voted on. Yet we are denied that opportunity. Someone on our side was denied that opportunity. The other side has every right to say: Well, if you are going to play that game, we are going to play that game. That is not how the Senate should operate. The Senator from New York and the Senator from Washington on the Democratic side have principled amendments. I don't support the amendment from the Senator from New York, but it ought to be debated and it ought to be voted on and it ought to be worked through. That is why we are sent here. No wonder the public across the Nation is so frustrated with us--because we are in total stalemate. Senator McCain and Senator Reed have made every possible effort to move this process forward. Yet here we are. As we know, under the procedures, one person has the right to stop anything from going forward if they use those procedures, and that has happened. It is very unfortunate. In comparison to my time here earlier when we functioned as the U.S. Senate, we are in total dysfunction because people are not willing to go forward and debate and accept the fact that they win or they lose but the process goes forward. I thank my colleague from Arizona and colleague from Rhode Island for the opportunity to speak, and I yield back.

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

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I am not on the floor to interrupt any kind of debate relative to this bill, but given the fact we are at a stalemate situation and nobody is on the floor, I thought I would at least highlight a foreign policy speech I have been wanting to give. I plan to do it in significant detail on Monday, if the hours work out as I think they will. Let me just take this short amount of time to summarize some of what I have been thinking and that I think is something my colleagues and all of us ought to be thinking about in terms of our foreign policy. Of course, it is related to our national defense, and that is what we are debating today, supporting our military. It is unfortunate we are in the situation we are in, but nevertheless I wish to take a few minutes to discuss what the next President will be inheriting--whomever that President turns out to be, a Republican or Democrat and potentially, I guess I should say, an Independent, although I don't think that will happen. The next President is going to be faced with a bucket full of foreign policy issues that President is going to have to deal with. As I said, I hope to speak next week at some time in greater length about the challenges our President will face, but let me summarize a few key points that deserve further discussion among my colleagues, and, hopefully, by the Presidential candidates during the election campaign. It is clear to me, and I believe it is clear to my Senate colleagues, that the President has failed to clearly define America's global role and a coherent strategy to pursue that goal. It is equally clear that his vision of America's role has been woefully inadequate to respond to the growing crises throughout the world. Someone earlier here mentioned, and I had mentioned before, that the world is on fire. The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, with 51 years of service in the intelligence world, has said he has never seen anything like this in his 51 years of service--the multitude of crises that exist around the world and that we are confronted with. As the world's leading Nation--the Nation that has provided freedom for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people by taking the lead to fight terrorism, to fight the evil that exists in this world--it is important we understand America's decisions. The decisions made by America's leaders have enormous impact on events around the world. For nearly 8 years, we have been trying to read the President's foreign policy tea leaves to divine his purposes and methods of a foreign policy that, to me and to many, seems chaotic, ad hoc, and directionless. We don't know what the administration is trying to accomplish--whether we should or should not engage and at what cost it would be. These all remain mysteries--mysteries to us here in the Senate, where we have an obligation to advise and consent on foreign policy, and to the American people, who continue to ask us: What is going on here? What is America's role? What are we doing? What should we be doing? What is the debate? The task is made even more daunting by the crisis-ridden world we now face. The next President will face foreign policy challenges from across the globe, but three stand out that I would especially like to touch on this evening and that I think are especially dangerous. Those three are the Middle East, Europe, and Russia. Let's look at the Middle East. The region is disintegrating. We are now in the midst of the most profound and dangerous redefinition of the region since the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1917. Borders, regimes, stability, and alliances are all being swept away with no clear successors. In the center of all of it is ISIS--the most lethal, best funded, dangerous terrorist organization in history--created and metastasized in a vacuum largely, unfortunately, of our own making. At the same time, the civil war in Syria is continuing into its sixth year. The war has created nearly 300,000 dead, with millions of refugees and internally displaced persons and with no end in sight. Iran continues its long history of destabilizing, hostile activities in the region, now growing its disruptive capacity in the wake of the misbegotten nuclear deal. Europe is dealing with the largest refugee migrant flow since World War II. This migration is entirely unsustainable and unmanageable, threatening European unity and individual state stability. This crisis could unravel the EU itself and cost trillions of euros. More than that, it is a humanitarian disaster. The Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Breedlove, in a discussion I had with him not that long ago, correctly said the migration flow has been ``weaponized.'' He argues the migration crisis has become a cover for flows of dangerous terrorists to Europe and beyond. Our Russia policy is one of the biggest and most long-term failures of American leadership in our age. The administration's infamous reset of Russian policy, loudly championed at the time by Mrs. Clinton, by the way, preceded Russia's invasion and annexation of a neighbor. Since the so-called reset with Russia, Russia has acquired a vastly greater role in the Middle East, where Russia had not before been present, much less dominant. It has demonstrated reliability as a modern capable military partner, in contrast with our own unreliability. These are just three of the crises the next President will face. James Clapper, speaking at a public hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, handed out the current assessment of the crises the world faces. It was 29 pages long, with eight regional crises--I named three of them--and each one of them posing a significant threat to world order and to our own people here in the United States. Since that reset, Russia has acquired a vastly greater role, as I have said. The next President is going to have to face not just these three major crises but many, many more, and I will talk about some of them next week. We need a policy from this President and from the White House that is based on a clear linkage to U.S. national interests and that will articulate a coherent strategy to guide policy and actions that we take; that will be an accurate assessment of consequences, both short- term and long term; that will be transparent, with candor and realism; that will have ensured resources adequate to secure the defined policy or task that is being laid out; and that will show strength and leadership coming from the Nation that every other free nation in the world depends upon for guidance, for strength, as an ally or coalition. The American people are yearning for a coherent foreign policy that is clear-eyed, articulate, transparent, and with common sense. They want to see it, and they want to understand it, and we have an obligation to let them know what it is. We are not going to get that out of this administration. That is clear. There continues to be confused, behind-the-curve reaction to world events and a lack of a solid policy to deal with it. If the next President can give the American people a coherent foreign policy that is clear-eyed, articulate, transparent and with common sense, we will once again begin to reassert ourselves in terms of being a nation dedicated to finding peace and solutions to major crises around the world. But if we remain guessing about purpose and direction, while the world disintegrates around us, our sons and daughters will pay a great price. As a consequence, America will continue to be a nation in retreat, and the free world will be confused and looking for a leader. With that, I yield the floor, as I notice another of my colleagues on the floor to speak.

Mr. COATS

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

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, it is week 45 of ``Waste of the Week,'' where I have been here talking about waste, fraud, and abuse, and trying to find ways to save taxpayers' dollars. As I have said a number of times, our efforts since 2010 are to go big to address the real fiscal situation that this country is dealing with, the runaway entitlements, the ever-shrinking discretionary pot, and the deficit spending, leading to borrowing that has taken us from $10.7 trillion just in my first term here now in six years--from $10.7 trillion--to $19.2 trillion. I don't think any of us can contemplate what $19.2 trillion really means. But what it means in terms of its impact and effect is that we are passing on to future generations a debt that they will not be able to repay without serious consequences to our economy and serious consequences to their pocketbooks. That is a speech for another time. ``Waste of the Week'' is simply an attempt, since we have not been able to address the larger issue, to look at documented examples, exposed by inspector generals, the Government Accountability Office, and other agencies of clear waste, fraud, and abuse that has used taxpayers' dollars in an improper way. So this 45th edition now highlights close to $170 billion, exceeding our goal of $100 billion considerably and with no end in sight. We are debating last week and this week the National Defense Authorization Act, critically important for our national security and to provide for the kinds of things our military needs to be an effective military. So I think it is appropriate to raise the issue that no agency is sacrosanct. While I am a committed supporter of national defense, while I served on the Senate Armed Services Committee for a 10-year period of time in my former time in the Senate and I support much of what the military does, it is important that we point out that they are not sacrosanct from falling into the category of abuse, waste, or money that should have been better accounted for and spent. So I am taking this opportunity during this debate to point out the fact that each agency of the Federal Government needs to be looked at, even those that we favor and want to support. Obviously, any penny, dime, nickel, dollar, or more saved from something that need not be spent is something that can help our soldiers be better trained and can help us have a stronger military. If not needed there, it can used to offset other programs within the Federal Government, or, most importantly, hopefully sent back to the taxpayer or reduced from the taxes that we take from the taxpayer. Today I want to talk about the acquisition process. The Department of Defense weapons acquisition system is the process by which DOD, or the Department of Defense, procures weapons systems or related items from various defense contractors. They include the design, development, deployment, and disposal of weapons used by our military. Since 1990, the Government Accountability Office has included the Department of Defense's weapons acquisition system on its annual High Risk List. Let me explain that. The High Risk List, which is put out every two years by the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, lists spending that falls under the category of, frankly, ``Why are we spending this money in the first place?'' or ``Let's look at how we are spending this money and see if it can be spent in better and more efficient ways.'' It is looking at programs' vulnerabilities to waste, fraud, and abuse. One of the biggest problems with the system is that frequently significant dollars are spent on weapons programs that end up never being completed. Between 2001 and 2011, the Department of Defense spent $46 billion on a dozen different weapons systems programs that were never completed. Let me repeat that: $46 billion of money was spent on programs, well intended, but never completed for various reasons. I want to use just one example of that $46 billion category, and that is a program that was initiated but was never finished and is an example of how taxpayers' money can be spent in significant amounts and with no results. It was clear that after 9/11 we ought to be looking at the Presidents' transportation. In this case, Marine One is the helicopter the President uses when transferring to Andrews Air Force Base to climb aboard Air Force One or is used overseas for special short trips. Marine One was deemed to be somewhat behind on its technological capabilities, especially its communications and security capabilities. The Department of Defense initiated an effort to build a new helicopter; yet the requirements and engineering needed for this new helicopter design were never finally fixed. As the process went forward and the money was being spent, new ideas and new technologies came into play, and the thought was this: Well, let's add this here and change that there and incorporate this into it. As a result, the original engineering that had been mapped out, the requirements, the design were not followed. There were constant changes, constant pleas that we need to spend more money, we need to do more and more. On and on it went. Without those fixed and agreed-on guidelines, the Department of Defense continued putting more add-ons over the years until, ultimately, the helicopter became so weighted with so much new technology and security position adjustments and so forth that the helicopter's mission capability was compromised. As such, the program finally had to be scrapped in 2009, and the cost to the taxpayers was $3.7 billion--spent for no purpose whatsoever. It was a good idea, a good intent, probably the right thing to do, but without a sufficient acquisition system and development system, without an ability to say: Look, let's get this thing fixed in terms of what we want it to look like, what we want it to be, and let's go forward with it, and perhaps there are a few adjustments that we can make. But, certainly, it would be better to incorporate the new technologies at a rate that we thought we could accomplish within a limited amount of time, rather than simply ongoing--2001, 2002, 2003, all the way to 2009--and finally say we are never going to get there, ending up, as I have said, with $3.7 million of waste. That is just one example. In the 2014 report, the Government Accountability Office found problems like this have persisted within weapons acquisitions for decades. GAO found that many defense programs are launched before officials have enough information needed to determine whether the proposed program is even viable. Meaning, there is a mismatch between the new defense system's wish list of all the things the DOD would like to have versus the current technology that would be able to provide within the current financial and time constraints for developing programs. In turn, the program sometimes gets the green light to move forward with unrealistic costs and timetables, leading to increased costs and development delays. The Government Accountability Office and military experts have emphasized the need to increase DOD staff training on how to properly estimate project needs and technology capabilities before launching a project. Now, we would think this would have been simple. We would think this would be the guidelines from the very beginning: You don't start a project until you estimate what the project needs and the technological capabilities and the capabilities of providing those needs before you start. But there is a history within the Department of Defense--and, frankly, within policies of defense contractors--to get it started. Once it is started, they are not going to turn it back down. History is replete with Department of Defense acquisitions that have incorporated changes that, once started, you can't stop the thing. Then the narrative turns from this: Why are we doing this in the first place, because we never fixed the requirements and fixed the cost and agreed not to go beyond that cost? It turns into this: Oh, well, we need to spend more. We can't turn back now because otherwise we have wasted that money. The Presidential helicopter is a perfect example. We are talking about $3.7 billion. On and on it goes. I have just given one example. I am pleased that Senator McCain and Senator Reed, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have acknowledged this. This National Defense Authorization Act of fiscal year 2017 makes some very important reforms to the DOD acquisition process. They have taken note of this, and the committee has taken note of this. Before us now is this bill--the bill that sits on my desk and on every desk here and that we are debating and adding amendments to and hopefully will finish this week. In this legislation we are debating and talking about and hope to pass are a number of reform processes and reform legislation to help us address these problems. This legislation would reform the current regulatory process and make it easier for companies to compete for DOD contracts in order to boost competition and lower costs. In addition, the bill would increase training--maybe this is the most important of all--for those at the Department of Defense who plan and oversee the acquisition process. It will put greater emphasis on technological innovation, which could help save money while spearheading new, cutting-edge defense systems. That is the goal. That is the goal we have outlined in this legislation and why we need to support this legislation. It is an example of how the Senate can tackle waste, fraud, and abuse right now, and I encourage my colleagues to support these proposals. Having said that, let me add, as we do each week, $3.7 billion for failed efforts to develop the new helicopter for the President, which brings our total taxpayer price tag to nearly $176 billion--not small change. Think what we could do with that if it was spent wisely or, more importantly, if we didn't have to take it from the taxpayer in the first place. Mr. President, having said that, I yield the floor.