Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I understand that I am to be able to speak as in morning business for up to 1 hour.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I call up six amendments en bloc: 648, 649, 656, 657, 717, and 718, and I ask that they be set aside after they are reported.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendments and set them aside. That way, they can be considered as called up. Senator Graham has graciously allowed me some of his time to do that. The amendment Nos. are 648, 649, 656, 657, 715, 717, and 718.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, the Senate is going to take up, tomorrow, in rather full detail, an emergency supplemental spending bill. I think it is real important, first, for the American people to know what an emergency supplemental bill is supposed to be. It is supposed to be about funding unforeseen problems we could not have anticipated in the regular appropriations process. For a very small amount of this bill, that may be true. This bill is $121 billion of your grandchildren's and great- grandchildren's money. This bill does not have to stay within the budgetary limitations Congress sets on itself. This bill goes outside every rule we have in terms of controlling the budget, living within our means, and it says: Here is a credit card. Now, by the way, on the way to funding the war in Iraq, the wisdom of the Senate has added--and it is $21 billion in the House--about $18.9 billion in a wish list. It is a Christmas tree. If each of us in our own personal lives ran our businesses or our households the way Congress is running the emergency supplemental process, we would do it for about 1 year. Then we would be going to bankruptcy court, and we would be losing the vast majority of our possessions because we would not have been deemed to be responsible with the assets we had. There lies the problem. It is the culture of Congress that thinks we can put a hood over the American people's eyes so they will not know what we are about to do in the next 4 or 5 days in this Chamber. You are going to hear all the reasons in the world why somebody needs something, except it is never going to be held in contrast to the loss of the standard of living of our grandchildren. Yes, there are agricultural needs out there we should have funded a year ago. The chairman of the Budget Committee said when he would get in power, when the Democrats would get in power, they were going to pay for it-- except here we have an emergency agriculture supplemental bill, a good portion of which is needed but it is not paid for. There is no offset anywhere else in the hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of waste in the discretionary side of the budget alone, to reduce something else so we can take care of those who need us now. There is another aspect to this funding bill; that is, the politics that plays into it over the debate on the Iraq war. What we are seeing play out is a double-edged sword of how do we hurt the troops in the field by adding things to a supplemental bill to take care of them, when there has already been a threatened veto over the bill because it adds $18.9 billion more than what the President asked for to fund the war. So as you listen, in the next 4 or 5 days, to the Senate debate this bill, there are a couple things you ought to pay attention to, and you ought to ask yourself the question: Where is the money coming from to pay for this bill? Where is the sacrifice from the generations today to do what the Members of this body want to do? There is no sacrifice. We are not calling on anybody to sacrifice. What we are saying is: Those unborn, those young, those who are about to be born, and the children of those who are young, unborn or about to be born are the ones who are going to pay for it. It portends a great moral question of our society today: How is it we can totally turn upside down the heritage of this country, the heritage of a country that has been built on the following premise: ``I am going to work hard. I am going to sacrifice. And I am going to serve so that my children and grandchildren get ahead''? Have we become such a selfish country that we do not care about the next two generations? I think the Senate has spoken, at least the appropriators have spoken. They have said ``yes,'' it is OK to do things such as pay for the conventions, in August, of the Democratic and Republican Parties for the additional funds that will be needed for police enforcement with an emergency bill. Our grandchildren are not going to benefit from that. The political process today is. But we put it in this bill because it means if we put it in this bill, it will not be charged against the regular budget process. It is another way to spend more money. So let's move more things into the emergency category, so we do not have to be responsible when the rest of the appropriations bills come through the Senate. Think about this: You have a grandchild sitting on your knee and you say: Yes, back in 2007, they had a party in Minneapolis and in Denver, and they charged it to you. You may get to go to college, you may not, but I just want you to know we had a good time at our conventions. How about $100 million for businesses that have under $15 million in revenue a year that have suffered some loss from a drought over the last 2 or 3 years. We already have several organizations within the Federal Government: Farm Service Agency, loan capabilities from the Department of Agriculture, the Small Business Administration. All are qualified to loan money to businesses that work in the agricultural area but, no, we set aside. We expanded the farm program with this bill to give $100 million to small businesses that have been hurt. If you are not connected to agriculture and you have been hurt, where is the bill to help you? Where does the precedent stop in terms of your small business? What about the fact that gas prices rose and some auto dealers went out of business? Where is the $100 million for them? What about the fact that energy prices have gone up and small business profits all across the country have been severely damaged because if they are energy dependent, their costs have risen significantly? Where is the $100 million? Where does it stop? Where does it stop that we steal-- when do we stop stealing from our grandchildren? There is also in this emergency provision $3.5 million for tours of the Capitol. An emergency, that we have to have the money now, otherwise we won't have tours in the Capitol? That isn't right, but that is what is in the bill: $3.5 million. Why? So we can have $3.5 million more to play with when we get inside the budget now that we are outside the budget. Oh, and I forgot to mention the fact the administration isn't innocent in this either, because the war in Iraq is hardly an emergency. As a matter of fact, it is in its fourth year. The administration should know what they need. Rather than send a supplemental up here, it should be in the Defense appropriations bill. It should have been in the bill we passed this last year. But instead, even the administration is complicit. Who is going to stand and speak for the future against the processes the Congress uses today to fund and grow the Government, not worrying about how we pay for it in the future? Will you? Will you challenge this process? Will you say enough is enough? Will you do your part as a citizen of this country to make a difference, to hold people accountable here, rather than let the continued culture--and I call it a culture which actually the majority party ran on. It is a culture of corruption. When you do for you and steal from those who are weak and have no access or ability to pay it, that is corruption. It is morally corrupt. It is a process by which we undermine the very foundation upon which our country has become strong. If we continue it, what we will see is a weakened nation. We now have $70 trillion of unfunded liabilities for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Think about that for a minute. Go figure out how many zeroes are associated with $1 trillion. If you had everyone who was worth more than $1 billion in the world sell all of their assets tomorrow and give every bit of that to the U.S. Government, it wouldn't even pay the interest for 1 year. How is it we can be going down this road? How is it we can be turning our backs on the principles that made us great as a nation--the idea of personal responsibility even applied to Senators, and accountability, and transparency. We are going to hear a lot of stories about what is and isn't happening with this bill over the next 3 or 4 days, but the question I hope the American people will ask themselves is where is the money coming from? Where is the money coming from? If it is not in a pot somewhere and if it is not saved, somebody is going to have to pay for it. This money is coming from the big Visa card of the Federal Government. We are going to ``cha-ching'' and we are going to say: Grandchildren, you have to pay for this war in Iraq, plus another $19 billion, because we don't have the courage to hold this Government accountable. We don't even have the courage to hold ourselves accountable. We don't have the courage to eliminate the duplication, the fraud, and the waste that accounts for over $200 billion every year in this $3 trillion budget. There is no courage here to face that. We can do oversight hearings, and we have done so. Senator Carper and myself did 46, more than any other committee of Congress, over the last 2 years. What we found was almost $200 billion of either duplicative programs, wasteful programs, or outright fraud. Yet where is the Congress offsetting those with this bill? No. It is too hard work. You might offend somebody. The next election is more important than the next generation. Being here is more important than doing what is the best thing for our Nation. So I hope as we approach this bill, the American public will ask that question about where the sacrifice comes from to do this. Where does the sacrifice come from? Unfortunately, it is going to come from the next 2 generations. It is hard to identify what that means, but with $9 trillion of actual outstanding debt we have now and the $70 trillion of unfunded liability, it doesn't take a great imagination to understand how that might impact our children and grandchildren, with high interest rates, lack of ability to afford a college education, inability to own a home, buy a new car. All of those things are coming as we continue to steal the future from our children and our grandchildren. The big government credit card. It is only available because there is a lack of backbone and spine in the Congress to do what is necessary to give the American people true value from their Government. It is hard. A lot of people get upset. But I would much rather stand here and try to change it now than try to explain to my grandchildren why we didn't change it, why we didn't do that. I have some hope the American people are starting to wake up to the budgetary gimmicks and processes the Congress uses. When they really awaken, what they are going to do is change who runs this place. It is going to be real citizen legislators. It is going to be people who care about the future more than they care about today. It is going to be people who care about a heritage that continues to be and create and hold forth the greatest experiment in freedom that has ever been. Without that change, as Will Durant said: Great societies are never conquered from without until they rot from within. This is part of the rotting process we are going to see over the next 5 days in the Senate. If people summon courage, summon long-term viewpoint, summon sacrifice of giving up of themselves, whether it be position or power so we can create something better, the country will be all the better for that. If we don't, there won't be a headline that says: ``Grandchildren hurt by supplemental bill,'' but it doesn't mean they won't be. The fact is they will. It is interesting the accounting that Washington uses. Last year the official number on the deficit was $175 billion, but the real number, the amount the debt went up, was $360 billion. If you are at home and you have a checkbook and you spend $175 more than you had in the checkbook, but at the end of the year you charged another $200 on top of it, you really spent it all, and you went into debt for that whole amount. But we don't do what national accounting standards say. We play a game. We take the Social Security money and we lessen the effect of what we are doing through Social Security and 30 some other trust funds such as the inland waterway trust fund and several others, and the retirement of the employees of the Federal Government that is not funded, and we add all that back and we make it look better than it is. The idea behind a half lie is a whole truth, but it is not. A half truth is a whole lie. So my hope is when we have this debate on this bill, this $121 billion bill, America will say: Wait a minute. Why aren't you paying for it? Why aren't you trimming some of the fat? Why aren't you trimming some of the problems? Why aren't you doing that? Because it is hard. That is not a good enough reason to undermine the future of this country. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to come and speak this evening and the staff staying here. Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I object.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I rise today as the lead Republican sponsor of the Genocide Accountability Act of 2007. I thank my colleague, Senator Durbin, for introducing this important piece of legislation. Senator Durbin serves as the chairman and I serve as the ranking member of the new Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law in the Senate Judiciary Committee. We held our first hearing, entitled ``Genocide and the Rule of Law,'' on February 5, 2007. There could not be a more appropriate way to begin examining the law as it relates to human rights than to determine what we can and must do to prevent and stop genocide. The United States is a signatory of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This convention provides that the contracting parties must ``undertake to prevent and to punish'' the crime of genocide. We have also passed a law implementing the Genocide Convention. However, our hearing demonstrated that there are changes that need to be made in law and foreign policy to respond to the ongoing genocide in Sudan and to any genocide that may occur elsewhere in the future. Fortunately, two of these changes can be accomplished right now. The first change can be accomplished through a bill Senators Durbin and Cornyn introduced last week, of which I am a cosponsor. That bill, the Sudan Divestment Authorization Act of 2007, will allow State and local governments to prohibit the investment of State assets in the Government of Sudan or companies with certain business relationships with Sudan, while the Government of Sudan is subject to sanctions under U.S. law. The second change can be accomplished through the bill we are introducing today, the Genocide Accountability Act of 2007. This act will ensure that our justice system has the authority to prosecute someone who has committed genocide if that person is found or brought into the United States. Under current law, the United States can deny admission to and exclude aliens from the United States on human rights grounds. The Attorney General can also consider avenues for the prosecution of aliens who have committed certain crimes, including genocide. However, the Attorney General can only prosecute a perpetrator of genocide if he committed his crimes within the United States or is a U.S. national. What does this mean? It means that if a person who plans or participates in the genocide occurring right now in Darfur travels to the United States on vacation, business, or even to live here for an extended period of time--as a refugee or student, for instance--a court in the United States cannot touch him. The best our justice system can do is deport him once his crime is discovered. Without question, it may be more appropriate in some cases to extradite someone who commits genocide to his home country or turn him over to an international tribunal. However, there are also times when a person's home country may not be willing to prosecute him and there is no viable alternative for prosecution. In these cases, extraditing a criminal would be no different than setting him free. This bill will not force our justice system to prosecute those who commit genocide just because they are found on our soil--it simply gives us the option. Nonetheless, in America we are blessed with great resources and the most effective and just legal system in the world. With these blessings comes great responsibility. It is contrary to our system of justice to allow perpetrators of genocide to go free without fear of prosecution. It simply makes no sense to withhold from our justice system the authority to prosecute someone who is found in the United States and who committed a crime as atrocious as genocide just because he is not American and did not commit the crime here. We have passed tough laws that ensure that we can prosecute anyone found in the United States who has committed terrorist acts or supports terrorism. We do not want to become a safe haven for terrorists, so I ask: Do we want to be a safe haven for those who have committed genocide? The answer should be clear. Fundamentally, we must decide if genocide is a bad enough crime, no matter where it happens, that it warrants the same treatment as terrorism-related crimes. I deeply believe that it is, and that is why I am proud to cosponsor this bill today.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I rise today as the lead Republican sponsor of the Genocide Accountability Act of 2007. I thank my colleague, Senator Durbin, for introducing this important piece of legislation. Senator Durbin serves as the chairman and I serve as the ranking member of the new Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law in the Senate Judiciary Committee. We held our first hearing, entitled ``Genocide and the Rule of Law,'' on February 5, 2007. There could not be a more appropriate way to begin examining the law as it relates to human rights than to determine what we can and must do to prevent and stop genocide. The United States is a signatory of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This convention provides that the contracting parties must ``undertake to prevent and to punish'' the crime of genocide. We have also passed a law implementing the Genocide Convention. However, our hearing demonstrated that there are changes that need to be made in law and foreign policy to respond to the ongoing genocide in Sudan and to any genocide that may occur elsewhere in the future. Fortunately, two of these changes can be accomplished right now. The first change can be accomplished through a bill Senators Durbin and Cornyn introduced last week, of which I am a cosponsor. That bill, the Sudan Divestment Authorization Act of 2007, will allow State and local governments to prohibit the investment of State assets in the Government of Sudan or companies with certain business relationships with Sudan, while the Government of Sudan is subject to sanctions under U.S. law. The second change can be accomplished through the bill we are introducing today, the Genocide Accountability Act of 2007. This act will ensure that our justice system has the authority to prosecute someone who has committed genocide if that person is found or brought into the United States. Under current law, the United States can deny admission to and exclude aliens from the United States on human rights grounds. The Attorney General can also consider avenues for the prosecution of aliens who have committed certain crimes, including genocide. However, the Attorney General can only prosecute a perpetrator of genocide if he committed his crimes within the United States or is a U.S. national. What does this mean? It means that if a person who plans or participates in the genocide occurring right now in Darfur travels to the United States on vacation, business, or even to live here for an extended period of time--as a refugee or student, for instance--a court in the United States cannot touch him. The best our justice system can do is deport him once his crime is discovered. Without question, it may be more appropriate in some cases to extradite someone who commits genocide to his home country or turn him over to an international tribunal. However, there are also times when a person's home country may not be willing to prosecute him and there is no viable alternative for prosecution. In these cases, extraditing a criminal would be no different than setting him free. This bill will not force our justice system to prosecute those who commit genocide just because they are found on our soil--it simply gives us the option. Nonetheless, in America we are blessed with great resources and the most effective and just legal system in the world. With these blessings comes great responsibility. It is contrary to our system of justice to allow perpetrators of genocide to go free without fear of prosecution. It simply makes no sense to withhold from our justice system the authority to prosecute someone who is found in the United States and who committed a crime as atrocious as genocide just because he is not American and did not commit the crime here. We have passed tough laws that ensure that we can prosecute anyone found in the United States who has committed terrorist acts or supports terrorism. We do not want to become a safe haven for terrorists, so I ask: Do we want to be a safe haven for those who have committed genocide? The answer should be clear. Fundamentally, we must decide if genocide is a bad enough crime, no matter where it happens, that it warrants the same treatment as terrorism-related crimes. I deeply believe that it is, and that is why I am proud to cosponsor this bill today.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. For the opposition?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this is a real simple amendment. The improper payments law was passed in 2002. By 2004, all Government agencies were supposed to come under it. The Homeland Security Department has never filed, under the six major agencies, an improper payments report. People will say: Well, this will cut off funding. No. 1, it would not cut off any funding for 18 months. No. 2, if you vote against this, you are sending a signal to every other agency that they do not have to comply with the improper payments law.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I hope the American people will look at these commonsense amendments and look at how their Senators vote. The one way to get things done is to put somebody in a bind. The fact is, this is the law. It is already the law, and we are saying we are going to put some teeth behind the law and make you do it. I raise one final point. If my colleagues vote against this, what they are saying to every other agency is: There is no consequence to not reporting and doing what you are supposed to do under the Improper Payments Act of 2002. That is the signal we will be sending. The American people want the signal the other way. With $100 billion of their tax money paid out the door, that is improper, most of it overpayments, and we are saying we are letting one of the biggest agencies of the Federal Government off the hook. If my colleagues want to vote for that, that is fine, but I hope we are held accountable for that vote in the next election cycle when we claim we want the Government to be efficient, we claim we want it smaller, we claim we want to get good value for the American taxpayer value. These votes surely will not show that, if my colleagues vote against these two amendments. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. I inquire of the Chair how much time is remaining.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, let me address Senator Lieberman for a minute. The very thing he says he doesn't want to do now, we did exactly on the PATRIOT Act. Why would I want to sunset that? The American people would like to see every piece of legislation that we do that has to do with authorization and spending sunsetted. There are good reasons for that. We don't know what the terrorism situation will be in 5 years. We don't know all of the aspects of what we are dealing with. What we know is that 4 years from now, if this is sunsetted, we will be working on a new bill that is based on the realities of the world at that time. Instead, what the opposition to this sunset amendment says is what we are doing now we know, without a doubt, is exactly what we need to do in 5 years from now in every area. I would put it to you that none of us knows exactly what we need to do 5 years from now. A sunset won't cause this to lapse. It will cause the Congress to act in year 4 to reauthorize the bill when it expires. I have 5 minutes left. Let me talk about this. We should get reports on what we have done. We should report and react in a very commonsense way to what this bill has done over the next 4 or 5 years. We should review that. We should then reform what we are doing now so that it has better application and wiser use of resources, and then we should reauthorize. To oppose sunsetting this speaks of an arrogance that is unbelievable of this body. We cannot know what we need to do 5 years from now in terms of homeland security. We don't know. It is an ever-changing situation. To imply that this will lapse--everybody here knows that is not the fact. We are not about to let it lapse. We are going to do what is necessary for our country. This amendment tells us that we ought to relook at it because we don't have that kind of wisdom. If we think we do, we should not be here because that means we are going to be making a lot of mistakes. So I will go back to that. Let me go back. Why would Homeland Security oppose the Improper Payments Act, as read by Senator Collins? Because they have not complied. They have no intention of ever complying. The one thing that the 9/11 Commission said that this Congress has not done is to have one committee responsible for oversight of Homeland Security. Senator Carper and I spent a lot of time last year, as did Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins in full committee, and we in our subcommittee, on Oversight of Homeland Security. We found a billion dollars wasted in Katrina. We found tons of improper payments in Homeland Security. We found that, in fact, there is no accountability. There is no accountability in the Department of Homeland Security. The American public deserves to have the two amendments I have offered today. They deserve to force them to do what the law says on improper payments, and they deserve for us to make a reevaluation 4 years from now on what ought to be different. We ought to reassess what we are doing and reevaluate how we do it, and we ought to say we need to apply more resources to that problem. The American people deserve to know they are getting value for their money. Right now, they are not getting that in homeland security and in multiple areas because we cannot even find out. So here we are crying that we cannot have earmarks because the agencies are going to run what they want to run. We have an opportunity to not let them run, and we are going to run against it. It is counterintuitive to me that we would be on both sides of this issue. The fact is, the Federal Government is unaccountable in many ways, and the American people know that. On these two amendments, the American people are going to ask: How did they vote? And they are going to say, once again: What are they thinking? They are protecting the interests they have there now and putting at risk the interests of the next generation--because we don't do something simple like sunset a bill or make an agency comply with improper payments. What would happen if there was a 1-month delay in grants? Nothing. But what would happen if we got the improper payment data from Homeland Security? Plenty. Then we could act on it and hold them accountable in the appropriations bills. Then we can do our jobs and do something about it. I withhold the remainder of my time.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask the Presiding Officer to notify me when I have 5 minutes remaining of my time.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, it is a curious thing that when we have hearings in the Senate, we find out problems and then offer real solutions that have teeth--as Senator Carper just said, to put them under the gun. Nobody wants to put them under the gun. This amendment on improper payments gives the Department of Homeland Security 18 months to comply before any State will see any harm from this. The fact is, the States are not without some responsibility because some of the improper payments go to some grants that go in the State. The American people need to ask: Is the Congress really serious about controlling spending? They are not. This amendment is not going to pass. All we are saying is: Here is a law they were supposed to be in compliance with in 2004. It says: If you are not going to be in compliance with it--they have not, they have not, they have not--we are saying, to be accountable, you have to be transparent, you have to have results. The results are complying with the Improper Payments Act. We also think there ought to be competition for some of the grants. There is not in this bill. There ought to be a priority set. There ought to be responsiveness. There ought to be spending discipline. As this amendment goes down--and it will--the Senators are going to reject the very idea of having accountability, the very thing they talk about with earmarks. The reason they cannot give up earmarks is because they cannot let the administration and the agencies manage the money. But here is a tool to force Homeland Security to manage its money, to hold them accountable and say in 18 months from now, if you have not done the work every other agency of this Government is supposed to have done, then we are going to hold you accountable by cutting off the money. That is tough love. It is putting them under the gun. That is exactly what we need to do. Do you know what will happen if my amendment is accepted and it comes through? Homeland Security will report its improper payments. But if we do not, I want you to think about what happens when you reject this amendment. What is the consequence for every other agency of the Federal Government to now not comply with the Improper Payments Act? There is no cost in not complying with the Improper Payments Act. According to the GAO, the following portions of Homeland Security do not meet anywhere close the Improper Payments Act. That is the Customs and Border Protection, that is the Office of Grants and Training. They have not done a thing to be in compliance with this money. Now, we can look the other way and we can say we are not going to enforce the law, but the next thing I am going to do, as a Senator--if we are not going to enforce the improper payments law, then let's get rid of it. The American people deserve to have the law enforced. It is a good law. It helps us hold the agencies accountable, the very thing that the $26 to $27 billion worth of earmarks says we cannot do. Now we have an opportunity to do it, and we are going to vote against it. Why? Because we may put something at risk. Well, quality and results depend on us putting this at risk, to force this agency, FEMA, to come into compliance with a law that is on the books with which they have refused to comply. Senator Carper mentioned the $40 billion of improper payments. That only represents 40 percent of the Federal Government. There is at least $100 billion of our money--the taxpayers' money--which is being paid out which should not be paid out, and probably $20 billion of it is in the Pentagon. We know the Department of Health and Human Services has not complied with the Improper Payments Act on Medicaid, and that is estimated somewhere between $20 billion and $30 billion. So we know of at least $100 billion. I want you to think for a minute when you vote against this amendment what you tell every other agency in the Federal Government: There is no consequence whatsoever to not meeting the Improper Payments Act of 2002. There will be no consequence even though we are going to say you have not done it. Here is a way to do it, to force Homeland Security to be accountable and to recognize they have an obligation under the law to report and look at the risk factors. Now, what does the Improper Payments Act ask agencies to do? Everything we would want done with our own money: Perform a risk assessment. Is there a risk for improper payments? Homeland Security hasn't even done that. Develop a statistically valid estimate of improper payments. In other words, go look at it and do a study to see is there potential that money is going out the door that should not go out the door. Develop a corrective action plan. Report the results of these activities to us, the Congress, the people's representatives. By voting against this amendment, you are telling Homeland Security they don't have to comply, that there is no teeth; it will never be done. Why would the Governors Association oppose this? Because they are the monied interest groups that are going to get the money. In fact, some of the problems with the money is the responsibility of the Governors. If I were a Governor, I would not want you checking on my money. It is natural for them to oppose it. But it is normal for us to protect the taxpayers by saying that every agency ought to apply and respond to the law under improper payments. It is simple. We should ask that Homeland Security follow the law. When you vote against this amendment, what you are telling Homeland Security, the Defense Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, and all of the other departments is that they don't have to comply because now we are going to be toothless and say there are no consequences whatsoever. Some will say this puts these grants at risk. There are no grants at risk. There is $4.8 billion sitting in the queue right now that won't be spent for 18 months. This bill authorizes another $3.2 billion to follow after that. If they cannot comply in 18 months, we need to stop and take a timeout and ask: Why can't you tell us where you are spending money that you should not be spending? Why can't you comply with the very simple things this act asks? Why can't they do a risk assessment in 18 months, develop a statistically valid estimate of where the problems are? They cannot do that in 18 months, develop a corrective action plan? They cannot do that in 18 months? They cannot report to us in 18 months? To oppose this amendment says we don't care about improper payments. It is going to be like a lot of other laws on the books: we don't have standing; I, as a Senator, don't have any standing to sue the Federal Government to make it comply. The reason we won't have standing is because we don't have the courage to do what is right for the American taxpayers. The last election had a lot to do with spending. This is going to be a vote to say whether we really meant what we said when we said we were going to start taking better care of the American taxpayers' dollars; that we were going to make the Government more accountable, more transparent and efficient. We are going to see a vote against this amendment, and the American people are going to get shortchanged once again because we don't have the courage to go up against the monied interests that get the grants and say we ought to at least have transparency. There is another tool coming back called the Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006, and the American taxpayers are going to know whether improper payments are made. We are not going to do our job. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, first of all, let me compliment the chairman and ranking member for their foresight in making sure we have the capability to have interoperability, with the wisdom of taking spectrum and putting it specifically for that. I want to answer several of the questions that have been raised because they are somewhat peculiar to me. But before I do that, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Kyl be added as a cosponsor to this amendment.

Mr. COBURN. First, let me sincerely apologize to the Senator from Hawaii if he took my words to mean that. I did not mean that. I referred to his words in terms of tsunami. I have no inference whatsoever that this has any parochial interest of either the Senator from Hawaii or the Senator from Alaska. But it is interesting that the debate doesn't ever come back to the fact of whether we have two programs; it is all about the money. The fact is the money will not get out there. Homeland Security has already said that. Now, the reason the $350 million--not thousand--was chosen is because at the same time this happened, you are going to have another $1 billion come through in--the fiscal year is going to be over this year on September 30 of 2007. The worst problem that happens in our Federal Government today is the indiscriminate, rushed issuing of grants, of throwing money at something, rather than a measured response of grants. These aren't competitive grants, I would remind the people who are listening to this debate. There is no competition for this money. You don't have to compete by saying you have a greater need than somebody else or you have a greater risk than somebody else. This is money that is going to go out, period. It is not based on competition for the greatest need or the greatest risk. The last thing we need to be doing is having a grant program that is rushed so we are not making sure the money is well spent. In the last 2 years we have discovered $200 billion of waste, fraud, abuse, or duplication in the discretionary budget of the Federal Government--$200 billion. We would have enough money to pay for the war, pay for expanding the military in this country, and cutting our deficit in half if we would do our job in terms of eliminating duplication, fraud, abuse, and waste. What this amendment is about is let's don't waste any of this $1 billion these two gentlemen have so wisely put for one great purpose. So that is my intention today, I assure the Senators from Alaska and Hawaii. We all know how homeland security works. We have seen all too well some of the failings and lack of efficiency and lack of responsiveness in that agency. To now assume the other side of that, that that is going to happen overnight because we have mandated by law--if it does, it will be a very poor choice of the use of this money. I thank the Senator from Hawaii and the Senator from Alaska for their debate on this issue. My goal was to have a debate about whether we should have two programs and whether we should waste money. It is not about the debate of whether we need to have 911 interoperability and the functionality that needs to be there in all the States. But we should look at the whole as well as the individual. I compliment them on finding a funding stream that doesn't add to our children's debt. Unfortunately, we have not done that in this bill with the other grants, which I think is a mistake. My hope is we will be able to have a vote on this amendment before we go to cloture--or even after cloture--because it is germane, and we can defend the germaneness of this amendment. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I say to the Senator, I would also like to note that one of the members of your committee, who was instrumental in bringing this interoperability grant program to the floor, is also a cosponsor of my amendment, realizing we do not need both programs and that they need to be combined. Now, what does DHS tell us about the present grant program? Here is what they tell us. And I say to the American public, you ask yourself if you want your Government to run this way. What they say is: We can meet the September 30 deadline, and we may be able to tell you who is going to get grants, but we are not going to be able to tell you, anywhere close, how much money they are going to get. So they can tell them who will get the grants because that is what the law says, but they will never have the capability, for several months thereafter, to know how much money they are going to get. So nobody is going to buy anything until the actual grants are going to be awarded. Let's clear up the difference between the Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security. No. 1, Homeland Security has the authority for interoperable communications. I do not care where this grant program is, quite frankly. I do not care if it is at Homeland Security or at Commerce. I do not care. But what I do know is, out of that $1 billion, the only thing the Department of Commerce is going to keep is $12 million with which to use to announce the grants. That is what they have told us. So $988 million out of that--the rest of that money--is going to go for grants, administered by, controlled by, run by Homeland Security. So if the problem with my amendment is that the money isn't going to get out there to do it, Homeland Security has already said the money isn't going to get out there to do it. Commerce has already said the money isn't going to get out there to do it. We know who will get money, but the money won't get out there regardless of what they have said, because they just came to an understanding of the agreement 3 weeks ago on administering this money. I think it is very wise what the chairman and ranking member have done in terms of allocating resources. As a matter of fact, I applaud them for that. I think it is wise to dedicate resources to certain things when we sell spectrum. I would tell my colleagues most Americans would say: You are going to give grant money, but you don't know how much you are going to give and you are not going to give it on the basis of competition in allocation of those resources because you have a date to meet that doesn't fit with fiscal responsibility. It doesn't fit with the best outcome or the ability to follow up to see what happened with the money. So we do have a date in the law by which they have to do it. But how are they going to do it, because the date in there is wrong. They are liable to give the wrong people too much money and the right people not enough, because we are telling them what they have to do. The second thing--let me put up a chart. These programs are identical, even though you claim they are not. Let me show my colleagues how they are identical. Under the PSIC grant programs, they are State and regional planning; under the DHS program, they are State and regional planning. Under the system design and engineering, PSIC; same thing under DHS. System procurement and installation; same thing under DHS. Technical assistance, the same. Implementing a strategic technology reserve is the only difference, but guess where it is made up. ``Other appropriate uses as determined by the administrator of FEMA.'' Do you think they are not going to put in that reserve there? They certainly are. They are going to do it. So there is no difference in the grant programs whatsoever, other than the deadline, which isn't going to be followed anyway. Like I say, I don't care if this is at Homeland Security or Commerce, I would as soon it be at Commerce in terms of the spectrum. But the fact is the American people shouldn't have to pay for the administration of two separate programs running parallel with two separate sets of requirements to Congress. We ought to get them together. We ought to figure out how we do it so we have one grant, and if, in fact, we need $4.3 billion. The problem is, we don't know how much money we need. We are throwing money at it. The second question I would ask is if this program belongs at Commerce, why Commerce agreed to give 99.9 percent of it to FEMA and to the Department of Homeland Security. They don't think it belongs there. The other point I would make in rebuttal to the Senator from Hawaii is this amendment doesn't decrease funding at all. This takes $3.3 billion and an amount greater than $1 billion and combines it so the same amount of money is there, except it is going to make the money be spent better. It is going to allow us the time to do it. I agree we need to get money out to our primary responders. This isn't about trying to hold that up. I am not trying to do that. But the Department of Homeland Security has already said the money isn't going to go out by your day. There isn't one application right now at the Department of Homeland Security for this money. We all know how Washington works. They haven't even written the requirements for the grant applications yet, which will take another 90 to 120 days. So we have a laudable goal that is not going to be accomplished, and if it is going to be accomplished, it will be accomplished in a very inefficient and wasteful way, which the American people don't deserve. I think this is a very good chance for us to talk about what is wrong with us in the Congress. We are working at cross purposes. We have one committee working here and one committee working here, rather than solving those problems for the best interests of our country. I want Hawaii to have everything it needs in terms of tsunami prevention, in terms of interoperability. I know there are special requirements in the State of Alaska because line of sight can't be used and much of our emergency frequencies require some of that. I believe we can take care of those problems and combine these grant programs in a way that the American taxpayer gets value, in a way where we can measure the accountability of what we do, in a way in which we can have transparency for the dollars we get in reauctioning the spectrum, and plus the other $3.4 billion that is going to come out in terms of appropriated funds for these other grant programs. The American people want that. They deserve that. To me, this isn't about a turf battle of control. To me, this amendment is about common sense for the American public to combine two programs into one so we spend less money, and we don't duplicate things and we don't duplicate efforts. I understand and appreciate very much the long service of Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens and their commitment to making sure these things are coming through. I am not trying to be a fly in the ointment to mess up what are very good-intended results, but I am a realist. The very things my colleagues have asked to happen in the Budget Act that was passed are not going to happen. Homeland Security has said that. So if those things aren't going to happen, and if the fears of what isn't going to happen can be allayed, can we not figure out a way to put these programs together where the American people get the best value, and also as a part of my amendment which says: Can we look to the private sector to not just give us interoperability in Hawaii among National Guard and first responders, but how about between California and Arizona, or Texas and Oklahoma, or Maryland and New York, if they need Maryland first responders there, which has not been addressed in any of the legislation that has been put forward. There is great technology out there. There are great companies out there that could do that. Again, without desiring to interfere or upset, I believe the application of some pretty commonsense principles ought to be applied to these two grant programs. I am willing to discuss with the chairman and the ranking member how to do this a different way. I am raising it on the floor because I think the taxpayer is not getting good value, and I think we ought to talk about that. The National Taxpayer Union endorses this amendment. The Citizens Against Government Waste endorses this amendment. Your very own committee member, who was one of the first people to say we should have auctioned spectrum for first responders, is a cosponsor of this amendment. So I am willing to defer to what the ranking member and the chairman of this committee want to do, but I think we ought to stick it out here until we can work a way for the American people to get better value, better clarity, better transparency, and better accountability for these funds. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, there is no question that unions have these rights for TSO agents. This is a commonsense approach. What is not common sense is to put in jeopardy every traveling American for the sake of paying back a raw political debt. That is what this debate is about. Do we jeopardize safety, do we jeopardize the flexibility, do we jeopardize the fine work that has come from an incentivized system that has very low turnover now compared to the rest of the industry, that has a bonus system for great performance, a performance-based system, to give them what they need and not jeopardize the traveling American public? The McCaskill amendment actually hurts our flexibility and our security. As a matter of fact, we had a hearing after this bill was on the floor, wherein Mr. Hawley and Mr. Gage came before us and talked about union representation of the TSO officers. Very revealing statements were said, especially by Mr. Gage. When we raised concerns about flexibility during emergencies and complicated issues that required absolute flexibility to move people around at all times, it was the testimony of Mr. Hawley who said they have to plan, that they are in an emergency all the time, which means they have to have the flexibility all the time. Mr. Gage's response to that was: These are sometimes bogus emergency situations. Well, the reason we have had such an effective airline screening program is because we call everything an emergency and plan for it as an emergency, so we never have an emergency. This amendment will gut the flexibility of the TSA in doing the very thing we have asked them to do; that is, protect us and have an institution that is viable, responsive, and nimble to protect us, without having to have a shop steward ask them what we can do and when we can do it. Now, the McCaskill amendment says we will let you do that in an emergency, but the fact is, we are in an emergency mode all the time. So whatever contract we might have signed is not going to have any bearing anyway. So the contrast for the American public on this vote-- and we know this is going to be a party-line vote. Even those Members who want to vote the other way have been told not to vote the other way. We know this is a party-line vote about paying back, so Mr. Gage and his associates can have 40,000 people a month pay $30 a month to put $12 million to $17 million in the coffers of the employees union. That is what this is about. This is not about security for this country and flexibility with the TSA. I urge a vote against the McCaskill amendment and a vote for the Collins amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, on rollcall vote 62, I voted ``yea'', it was my intention to vote ``nay''. I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote since it will not affect the outcome.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to spend a little bit of time talking about the process. Yesterday, curiously, we had a hearing on the opportunity for labor representation for TSO officers. It is curious in that we had the hearing after the bill was on the floor because we didn't have the hearing before to know what we were talking about before we formulated the bill. That is because we wanted to rush this bill, and rather than do it right, we did the process backward. But I think it is very instructive for us to hear what the testimony was yesterday. Kip Hawley is the Administrator of TSA. Some very important things were brought out in that hearing that most Americans probably don't think of often. Let me quote some of the things he said: The job of the Transportation Security Officer is one in which you don't know whether you have an emergency until it is over, and in the aviation business, that is too late. There are a bedeviling array of dots out there and we have the responsibility to make sure that not one of them is allowed to progress and become an attack on the United States. So we constantly try to move and adjust and change and you cannot be sure until it is too late that you have had an emergency. You do not get an advanced warning. In response to Senator Akaka regarding TSA's collaboration with employees on the decision to double the amount of bonus money that would be made available under their bonus performance plan, the question by Senator Akaka was: Did you invite any union representatives to the initial development efforts? In response to his question, he said: No, sir. Our employees didn't have to pay union dues to get that service. One of the other key points Secretary Hawley made is his concerns about his ability to move and sustain their strategy and flexibility. Also coming out of that was the note that the union which would represent security officers won't be negotiating for pay. Well, what will they be negotiating for? They will be negotiating over everything else other than pay. Why is it important? Everything else is what matters. What matters is--and specifically the reason this was not allowed when the 9/11 Commission Report was written and when the bill establishing TSA was set up--there is a moving target, and that flexibility in work rules, in relationships, in movement of people, in tier job training, and in multifaceted interface of those officers with any situation on the ground has to be able to be done and done on the move, all the time--not in an emergency because every day has to be thought of as an emergency. What we do know is all that is what they want to negotiate. That is the last thing we should be negotiating. It comes down to this point, and the point is this: Do people who work for the Federal Government have rights? Absolutely. Should they be treated fairly and have the opportunity to have a good wage, a good appeal process, whistleblower protection? Yes. But is that right greater than the right of the American people to have secure and safe air travel? I would put forth for this body that it is not, that the betterment of the whole and the protection of the whole far outweighs any individual right within TSA to collectively bargain on the very things that are going to keep the flying American people safe. What we do know is there are only 1,300 members out of 42,000 screeners now. They can all join a union, and they can have that representation in terms of their interface with management. What we also know is that the people who really want this opportunity are not the transportation security officers. Who wants this opportunity is the union and the politics of payback. So this isn't really about responding. As a matter of fact, all of the claims that have been made, we fleshed all those out yesterday in the hearing. As to severance rates, as to work injury, as to movement, as to wage rates, as to bonus, as to productivity--all that was fleshed out. It should have been fleshed out before this bill ever came to the floor but, unfortunately, it wasn't. All that was fleshed out yesterday, and what came down is we have a very responsive agency that in the vast majority of the cases is doing a great job with their employees. We have great transportation security officers who are being remunerated properly and don't want to pay $360 a year for something that wants to negotiate the very thing that will take away the safety of our air transport system. With that, I yield to the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 301 be set aside and we return to the pending amendment that we had prior to my asking that those two amendments be called up.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. COBURN. I do.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 301 be called up.