Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I am a member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, as is the Presiding Officer today. We have gone through this bill--this is the second time--looking at 9/11 and what we need to do in terms of our risk, in terms of how we protect the homeland. As this bill is drafted, its implementation authority never expires. It never stops. So what we have is approximately $4 billion a year from now on. Actually, what we say is: however much money is needed in year four of the bill to be spent on homeland security, whether or not we need to or whether it is time to relook at the priorities of the bill. This is an amendment that I offered in committee. I got one Democratic vote for it and my own. But what this amendment does is sunset this bill in 5 years and says it is time to take a look at it again. One of the critical things we did following 9/11 was the PATRIOT Act, and we sunset it. Last year we took it up again and we sunset a good portion of it again. So we will look at it again. This bill is never sunset. It is like the hundreds of other bills this body has passed, that we pass and we never look at again. We never do oversight. We never make the decisions. We just let the money keep rolling out the door and charging it to our grandchildren. This is a very simple, straightforward amendment. All this amendment says is that 5 years from now, this one goes ``time out,'' it is over, do it again with a fresh look at the problems that we face in this very dangerous world, a fresh look at the success we have made, the accomplishments today, and ask where we need to go. The bill, as written, assumes that nothing in the future, in terms of our risk, is going to change. I would put forward 5 years from now everything will have changed in terms of the risks that we are going to face. If we have done our jobs right with this bill, many of the areas of preparedness that we are attempting to direct funds to in this bill will be solved. Why should we continue to have money going to areas that we have solved rather than redirect money to areas that we have not solved, or maybe for our children's sake, not spend any money because there is no need other than the need for politicians to tell people at home that we sent money to them. So this is a very simple, very straightforward amendment that says improving America's security by implementing the unfinished recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007 will cease having an effect on December 31, 2012. Good government is what the American people both expect and desire. They also deserve good government. They deserve the wisdom of knowing we cannot know what is in the future today, so let's limit what we do until we can relook at it again. Having held 46 hearings with Senator Carper in the last 18 months on the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee of the Homeland Security and the Government Affairs Committee, what we know is what Congresses have done in the past have created about $200 billion worth of waste per year in this country. Now, sadly, the Congress refuses to address those duplications, the fraud and the waste that is associated with that $200 billion worth of waste, fraud, and abuse. We should not add to that. We should not have a program that goes on ad nauseum addressing needs of today and saying it is OK. All I am asking with this amendment, and I think most commonsense Americans would ask, what is so hard about saying this ends and we have to look at it again in 2012? Make the decision again based on what the very real risks are and, oh, we might even consider what our financial condition is when we decide what we are going to spend on security and what else might ought not be paid for by the Federal Government as we fund homeland security and protect this Nation. This provision will cause us to review the needed programs and authorize spending. It will cause us to make better decisions 5 years from now than we can make today. I will draw the corollary as a primary care physician, what I know about my 55-year-old patients with hypertension and high cholesterol. And I am going to have an example today. I said: Here is what you need to do for the next 5 years. Do not come back and see me. Your risks probably are not going to change. I can predict exactly what you are going to need. Do not worry. I will just give you prescriptions for the next 5 years. That is what we are doing on this bill. We are not doing it for just 5 years, we are doing it for the rest of the patient's life. We would never go to a physician who treated us that way. Yet that is the way this bill approaches the future. What are the reasons to oppose this bill? One is lack of a desire to tackle the hard job of looking at this again in 5 years. One is arrogance; we know what we are going to need. There is no way we can. Political expediency, that might have something to do with it, to be able to tell the special interest groups and our campaign donors that we have got them taken care of for the next 10 years. I quote my chairman for whom I have the utmost respect. Here is what his quote was on the PATRIOT Act. The best thing we did with the PATRIOT Act was to sunset it, was to say that it needs to be reauthorized or it will go out of existence. And we are going to look back and see what happened with the PATRIOT Act so we can make a better decision in the future. I have trouble not understanding why that same wonderful logic and great common sense should not be applied to this bill. Senator Reid in 2005: But we are currently considering renewal of those provisions that were considered so expensive or so vulnerable that Congress wisely decided for a 4-year sunset. The author of the act wanted Congress to reassess in a more deliberative manner with the benefit of experience. We are presented with an opportunity again now, 4 years later, to get it right. Why would we not want to sunset this bill? I have even a bigger one. Why do we not want to sunset every bill, to go back and look at it and reassess it so we get rid of the waste, the fraud and duplication, to do the very things that we were sent to do? I will not spend a great deal more time. I recognize that the ranking member, Senator Collins, and Senator Lieberman have some business they want to consider. I would remind Senators there is no score on this bill. CBO hasn't scored this bill. We know the one from the House was $20 billion. Should we not look at $20 billion worth of spending again in 5 years and ask if it is under our priorities? Were we wise? What have we learned? What can we do better? What worked? What did not work? Why would we not want to do that? I think it is a no-brainer to sunset this bill so that we, in fact, can learn from our mistakes, learn from our priorities, look at the world the way it will be 5 years from now rather than the way the world is today, and also, yes, consider the fiscal situation in which we find ourselves. I also am adamantly opposed to any piece of legislation that says, ``such sums.'' Well, does this legislation mean we want to spend $100 billion 6 years from now? That is what we are saying if we are giving to the Appropriations Committee all our power to make the decision on areas that are under our purview 6 years from now. Don't we believe we ought to do that? I believe we ought to maintain that power, and actually it is not 6 years, it is 4 years from now because in the fourth year is when we do that. Congress needs more sunsets, not fewer sunsets. We have an inexcusable situation that we have seen today with much of the Government operating on expired authority--expired authority. Madam President, $170 billion of what was appropriated last year was under expired authority. Congress has not done its job to reauthorize those programs. So let's look at this again in 5 years, in 2012. We can start with January 2012. By the end of that year we can have said: Here is what we need to do for 2013. We will do it with wisdom; we will be able to do it with insight. We also will be able to do it with competence that we know what is best for our country, which we cannot predict today under this bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I would ask unanimous consent that after the three votes I be recognized on the floor for another amendment.

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

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I want to discuss an amendment that has been previously called up, amendment No. 294. This is an amendment on the 9/11 bill.

Mr. COBURN. I will be happy to yield for a question.

Mr. COBURN. I will be more than happy to be interrupted by the chairman.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized, following the Senator from Arizona for 3 minutes and the Senator from Connecticut for 5 minutes, for such time as I might consume on an amendment on this bill.

Mr. COBURN. I have no problem agreeing to debate this again tomorrow.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, what is the pending amendment?

Mr. COBURN. I ask unanimous consent that pending amendment be set aside in consideration of an amendment that has already been called up, my amendment, No. 345.

Mr. COBURN. This is a pretty straightforward amendment. I also ask unanimous consent Senator McCain be added as a cosponsor of this amendment.

Mr. COBURN. One of the first things we found out after 9/11 was a lot of our emergency workers could not talk to each other. That was one of the most glaring, obvious defects in our response to emergencies--that emergency personnel had difficulty, from one group to another, talking to one another. As a matter of fact, it limited their ability to save lives. From the beginning of the 9/11 Commission and from the start, in 2002, that has been addressed in multiple ways. The purpose of this amendment is to describe what is obviously something that is not good for us as a nation. We presently have occurring with the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 an electromagnetic spectrum which was sold off and $1 billion reserved under a program called the Public Safety Interoperability Public Service Grant Program. That $1 billion was carved off and that is where we are going to spend it. I don't disagree with that at all. What this bill has is another $3.4 billion for interoperable grants addressing the same problem in a different way than what the other grant program was. One of our problems as a nation is we have too many programs that are doing the same thing. They duplicate one another. One is better and the other is not. Yet we continue sending money down both holes, not making adjustments as to which gives us the best value for our money. What has happened with this money from the Commerce Department, through a memorandum of understanding, is the administration of this grant program has been transferred to the Department of Homeland Security with a little fiat that the Department of Commerce kept $12 million for themselves. This memorandum of understanding was dated just a few weeks ago, February 16, and what it did is it gave the administration near complete administrative control of this grant program, the one from Commerce, the one from 2005, to the Department of Homeland Security. This grant program has yet, to date, to receive any applications for any grants to be administered under the program. This is 2005; 2006 we did this. Now we are into March of 2007, and we have not received the first application. S. 4, being considered on the Senate floor now, as I said, creates yet another interoperable grant program, the Emergency Communications and Interoperability Grant Program. This program is also going to be administered by the Department of Homeland Security. The purpose of this grant program is to make grants to States for purchasing interoperable equipment and training personnel, testing on how and when to use it--similar to the PSIC grant which was mainly for equipment. This program authorizes $3.3 billion to be authorized in grants over the first 5 years of the program and indefinite amounts, ``such sums as are necessary,'' after that. A question comes to mind: How much money would it take for every first responder in this country to have interoperable communications? We don't address that in this bill. We just keep sending the money for it, after we send the first $3.3 billion and then whatever it takes after that, rather than looking and reassessing what our need is. If S. 4 passes in its current form, Congress will have authorized the creation of two nearly identical interoperability grant programs. Again, interoperability is this concept that first responders can talk to one another: if there is a fire going on in Tulsa, and there is a need that Oklahoma City firefighters will be there, that they can talk to them; that if there is something going on in Arkansas and Oklahoma first responders need to be there, there is the ability for them to talk to one another over their communications gear. One of these grant programs is housed at Commerce but run by DHS. The other is going to be housed at DHS. The differences between these two programs in their details are minimal. Both provide for funding of equipment, both provide for funding for training, and both will exist side by side until 2010, when PSIC expires. The purpose of this amendment would be to combine the two duplicative grant programs for interoperability. It does it by repealing the PSIC Grant Program at Commerce and it redirects the funding set aside for the PSIC Grant Program at Commerce to funding the Emergency Communications and Interoperability Grant Program at DHS. This will not decrease the amount of money. We are going to still spend $4.3 billion. But we are going to do it through one grant program rather than two. There are not going to be two sets of signals out there for the States that want to go after this money or the communities that need to go after this money. There is going to be one. There are a couple of technical changes with this that are required, which is repealing the Call Home Act of 2006, which sets a deadline of September 30, 2007. We haven't had the first grant application right now, so that gives us less than 6 months to get grants in and advised and granted on the PSIC Grant Program. Finally, I think a very important part of this amendment requires that DHS study and report to Congress on the feasibility of engaging the private sector in developing a national interoperable emergency communications network. Neither of these grant programs address the national focus that would be needed. One of the problems in Katrina was all the people who went down there, the 9/11 responders and emergency responders, couldn't communicate with the emergency responders in Louisiana. What this says is, aren't there some brains out there in the private sector who could tell us what we need to do and then we could have our grant programs actually go to buy the equipment, the training, so the program is already figured out so we don't have duplication so the people in Oklahoma can talk to the people in Kansas and Nebraska and in New York--all across the country. There is no national security reason why we need two interoperable communication grant programs for the States. The second point: The administration--this is another area of this bill that they strongly oppose, setting up two identical or very similar grant programs. No. 3, the Department of Commerce has essentially contracted this grant program out to DHS. It rightfully should be. No. 4, the 9/11 economic report explicitly stated that Congress should not use grant programs as porkbarrel. If we have two grant programs running side by side and one isn't talking to another and a State has gotten one and they don't know the State is applying for the same thing at the other, how much stewardship have we practiced with the American taxpayers' money? We have not. One of the prime recommendations of the 9/11 Commission was to reorganize the grant programs to eliminate confusion. That is exactly what this amendment does. It reorganizes the grant programs into one grant program, one place where you go to get it, one source of planning, one source of administration for it. I will not go into the reasons why we have two programs, but needless to say it is because Members of Congress are not talking to each other. We have two interoperability grant programs that are not interoperable because we have a Congress that is not interoperable in communications with one another in terms of committee to committee or Member to Member. The Department of Homeland Security has been cleared as the lead Federal agency for interoperability emergency communications. That is where these grants ought to be. That is who we are going to hold accountable. By not having them both in the same department, then we are not going to be able to hold them accountable when we do oversight. The other thing is the average American cannot afford to purchase two of anything. Many times with these two programs, we are going to see the same thing paid for twice because the right hand is not going to know what the left hand is doing. There is no good policy reason for the Federal Government to have these two programs. The other thing I think is fairly easy to recognize is if you have two grant programs, it is hard for the American public to realize how much money we are spending on the grant programs because you have got to find one and then the other. The total, which is going to be $4.3 billion, is not recognized now. The final reason is our first responder organizations write grants. They are already required, in terms of all of the things we have done in terms of emergency preparedness, to provide multiple proposals annually right now to get Federal funding. Why would we not want them to have one application for interoperability? It is a waste of their time and the State's time. The arguments you are going to hear tomorrow--we are going to debate this amendment again tomorrow afternoon with my colleagues from Hawaii and Alaska. They are going to say the PSIC Grant Program is only authorized until 2010, so after that there would not be a problem anymore for two grant programs. That is not a good reason to have two grant programs. The public safety interoperability program requires the department to coordinate its efforts with the Secretary of Homeland Security. Yes, they did. They signed a memorandum of understanding that says they are going to run it all. Finally, the Commerce Department has the authority and expertise over emergency communication grant programs. Although the PSIC Program was placed in Commerce, all of the operational authority for that grant program was essentially transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Homeland Security essentially treats the PSIC as part of its own budget, showing that Commerce has no real role in administering this program. Another argument would be the programs are not identical but focus on different aspects of communications interoperability; it would hurt the emergency response community to get rid of either one of the programs. Well, the one that is in this bill does it all. The one that is in the Commerce bill that we have already allocated $1 billion for is mainly about equipment, it is not as much about training. We ought to know, if we are going to spend $4.3 billion that emergency responders anywhere ought to be able to talk to one another. We do not know that with this money. There is no string on this money that says that is the end goal. That is why a study coming out of the Department of Homeland Security that says go look at the outside and ask the private sector to tell us how do we take this spectrum that has been set aside, two different sections of spectrum for this, and how do we create a plan so that throughout the whole country, no matter what the need is, one group of emergency responders can talk to another? That is what we ought to be getting for our $4.3 billion. That is not in either one of those programs. So what we are going to do is we are going to spend $4.3 billion on these grant programs, with no assurances that we are going to accomplish the very thing we seek to accomplish. I believe there could not be a more wasteful attempt at our spending when we do not know what we are going to do for an endpoint on the spending. A few comments about the overall bill. There has to come a point in time in this country where we recognize that we do not have enough money to do everything we need to do to protect us. That is true today. Where we ought to be putting our money is where we think the highest risks are. I agree with the Presiding Officer. Areas such as New Jersey are at much greater risk and ought to get much greater funding. They have a greater risk and a greater need. Does that mean I am pleased if that means soft targets in Oklahoma are going to be exposed? No, but there has to be a dispensing of the money based on what the most likely risks are. So when we finish all of this, we will have gotten what we wanted. Earlier today, I offered an amendment to sunset this bill in 5 years. We will look at it again and see what have we accomplished. What is left to accomplish? Where is the greatest area of risk? What do we still need to do? We have not done that in this bill. That is how we are going to make good policy--making sure that the dollars we spend to protect America are spent on the areas that will get us the most in this bill that we are debating today. We refuse to do that. It authorizes this bill to continue forever. There is no sunset to it. There is no stop to say that we need to relook at this. There is nothing for the Congress to come back and look at as we did in the PATRIOT Act, where we required that we had to come back and look at it. We sunsetted it. And even though we passed the PATRIOT Act last year, we took sections of it that we said we know we are going to want to look at again, so we sunsetted it. If we are going to be good stewards with the American taxpayer's money, we ought to sunset this bill. We ought to sunset these two interoperability programs so that we know whether we have accomplished what we desire and know what the problems are so that we can predict them. By not sunsetting, by not combining the programs, by not efficiently spending and wisely planning the spending of the American taxpayer dollars is getting us on down the road where we do not want to be, which is more and more of what we are spending today being paid for more and more by our grandchildren and children of tomorrow. I thank you for the time. I look forward to debating this bill tomorrow with Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye. My hope is that Senator McCain, who is a member of the Commerce Committee, will be here to aid in this. There is no reason for us to have two programs making States apply for two different grant programs that essentially do the same thing. We would not do that ourselves in our homes. We would not set up two parallel requirements to accomplish the same goal. We should not be doing it in this bill.

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 345 be called up and the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, the unanimous consent request was for myself, followed by Senator DeMint, and I will be happy to yield if I have remaining time. I need to do a little housekeeping first. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside to call up amendment No. 345.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, earlier we called up an amendment that was pending. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside for the moment while we call up amendment No. 294.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with, and I ask that we return to the pending amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Will the leader yield for a parliamentary procedure?

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. COBURN. This letter was sent to Secretary Chertoff. The Federal Financial Management Subcommittee of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs had four hearings on improper payments. We know what is required. We know they can do it. What the Congress has to do is make them do it, if they want to spend the money. It is only right for our children and grandchildren to get fair value for the taxpaying public, as we send out this money. I am a skeptic when it comes to this body, when it gets away from the political porking that goes on. I am not sure this amendment will pass. But if it doesn't pass, I will offer an amendment to get rid of the Improper Payments Act because there is no reason to have a law that we are not going to enforce. If we are not going to enforce it, why is it on the books? It is similar to enforcing the borders. The law is there, but we don't do it. We have to be accountable to the American public to make sure that agencies follow the law. This is a simple amendment that requires Homeland Security to follow that. By the way, we have not had an answer to this letter. It was dated November 16. I spoke in error. United Nations Funding I want to correct something I said last week on the United Nations. My numbers were wrong. We, in fact, do pay for about 22 percent of the unified budget at the United Nations, and our total contribution is in excess of $5 billion. I had the ratios right, I had the numbers wrong. I want to correct that for the Record today. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, by our estimates, this bill is about $17- plus billion. As I said, it has not been scored. The House bill that will be merged with this in conference is over $20 billion. That is a large chunk of change for the American taxpayer. What we know is a lot of the grants which make up about $3-plus billion a year over the next 5 years of the vast majority of this bill will be homeland security grants of one type or another. What we know is the Department of Homeland Security has not followed the law when it comes to improper payments. What the Improper Payments Act of 2002 required of every agency of the Federal Government was that they perform a risk assessment of every program they have, that they develop a statistically valid estimate of improper payments, that they develop a corrective action plan, and they report the results of those activities to us. This is not an optional plan for the agencies. Yet this plan has been ignored since its inception and since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. We are getting ready to send another $17- to $18 billion-plus out the door for homeland security grants--that is the majority of this--and we know the Department of Homeland Security is not in compliance with the Federal law. The reason the law exists is to make sure we get good value for the taxpayers' money. The year 2004 was the first year the agencies were required to respond to this act. It is worth noting again that there is not an agency of the Federal Government, not one agency, that is exempt from this law. This is not a request. This is a statutory requirement of every agency. The Department of Homeland Security has not even complied with the first step of this law. They have not performed risk assessments for the programs to be of significant risk of making improper payments. They are an at-risk program according to the analysis, yet they have not even looked to do a risk assessment. The Government Accountability Office has found at least six major programs at this Department are out of compliance with the Improper Payments Act. The Department of Homeland Security's independent auditor has repeatedly cited noncompliance, and the Department of Homeland Security continues to face significant challenges with FEMA and the Individual and Households Program. Based upon the Department's performance and accountability report and their independent auditor assessment, the following programs are out of compliance with the improper payments act: Customs and Border Protection; Office of Grants and Training; Federal Air Marshals--the Coast Guard was supposed to have done a performance evaluation and risk assessment but it has not been done; FEMA; the Transportation Security Agency; and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Not one of them has performed the first risk assessment as to improper payments. In case you think that is not a lot of money, we have already spent over $25 billion in grants through the years for these programs, of which we have not looked at the problem accounts. The press is replete with problems in terms of these grants: $9 billion on State and local preparedness grants--that is what we get from DHS. Secretary Chertoff at the most recent hearing said $5 billion of the money, another $5 billion--part of which has been obligated but has not gone out the door yet. I think we owe it to the American people, if there is a law on the books, before we send more money out the door the agency ought to comply with the law. They ought to at least do a risk assessment. If there is no risk, that is fine. Then they will have complied with the law. But if there is risk, we ought to be identifying the risk. Every dollar we spend wastefully is a dollar we don't use to protect ourselves in terms of our security. KPMG was the independent auditor for 2004, 2005, and 2006 for the Department of Homeland Security. In each one of those years they were out of compliance with this act. Specifically, the Department is cited for not instituting a systematic method of reviewing all practices and identifying those believed to be susceptible to erroneous, improper payments. The most important part of the Improper Payments Act is to create the process of good, strong oversight within the Department to make assessments about whether they are making improper payments. What this assessment does is it identifies where those improper payments could have been made, and that is essential to find out where the problems exist. This amendment does not debate any of the merits of the Department's programs. It simply demands compliance with the transparency and accountability measurements that already exist under current law. If we want the American people and the executive branch to take us seriously, Congress must demand compliance with the laws that are laws. We cannot back off. This amendment is not a surprise to the Department of Homeland Security. They know they are failing and they need to respond to it. This amendment in no way jeopardizes State funding. Let me tell you why. It is because there is a pipeline of 9 to 12 months in the works already on grants that are going there. For this to have any impact would mean they would have to not respond for another year before those grants would be in jeopardy. Some of my colleagues say, You can't do this. You can't put these grants at the risk of noncompliance of an agency in terms of meeting the law. The question ought to be, Why not? Why shouldn't we put the agency at risk with their grants for being noncompliant? The other point I make is most of these grants go to States and localities. The problem with the grants is there is some culpability on the part of the States and the localities in terms of these grants. The States are not totally innocent. There is $2.5 billion that has not even been awarded yet that still can be awarded before this takes effect. So there is still another $5 billion, which is greater than the amount we spend in any one year on these grants. What this amendment says is they cannot go past that unless they have complied with the law. If we are not going to agree to this amendment, then we need to trash the Improper Payments Act. If we are not going to say the Department of Homeland Security has an obligation to follow the law, then we ought to take the law off the books. We know for sure in the other areas of the Federal Government we have somewhere between $40- and $80 billion worth of improper payments. We know we have $40 billion of improper payments, overpayments, in Medicare; somewhere close to $30 billion in Medicaid. We have a third of the Earned Income Tax Credit that we know were improper payments and we have only looked at 40 percent of the Government; 60 percent of the Government still isn't complying. We ought to say right now if we are going to put more money through the door, the American taxpayer ought to have value for the money they send through that door. What we are saying is we want them to be accountable, to be accountable as an agency of the Federal Government. There ought to be transparency. We ought to be able to see where they are making mistakes and where they are not. The question of not even asking the question is what we are debating with this amendment; they are in absolute noncompliance with the Federal law that requires them to be compliant about whether their grants are improperly paid or funding other than what they expected to fund. Investigation showed FEMA spent millions on puppet shows, bingo, and yoga in south Florida. There is an article in the National Review, 7/ 19/05, on homeland pork. Baltimore Sun, 5/29/05, chasing security with dollars. The only transparency we have here is that there is a total lack of transparency in the Department of Homeland Security. Needless to say, this is a bill that goes far outside 9/11 recommendations. The 9/11 recommendations said all money should be risk based. What we have turned around with the 9/11 bill, this one and what had passed in the previous Congresses, is a way to dole out money to States and not hold them accountable. What this amendment says is you are going to have to start being accountable. If we are going to send out another almost $20 billion in terms of grants, Homeland Security ought to have to follow the law in terms of improper payments. Remember, these grants are not competitively awarded--which is very different than the grants we have in almost every other Federal program. The fact they are not competitive is another reason, a much greater reason, for us to demand accountability and transparency at the Department of Homeland Security. These grants are also not let on the basis of risk. Some are. In some of these it will be down to .45 percent, others at .75, and a few at .25. Most of them have no local match so there is no risk on the side of the States or the municipalities that get these grants. Just a note: The best way for Congress to practice spending discipline is to demand that the agencies comply with the laws assuring appropriated dollars are spent adequately, appropriately, and lawfully. We have yet to do that with many agencies. DHS is a good place to start. FEMA awarded $22.6 million for crisis counseling for victims of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina--$22.6 million. Katrina did not even hit Florida. Yet a large portion of that was spent in Florida. There is no accountability. There was no risk assessment. Was there a risk? They have not done the work we demand by the law and what is being demanded of other agencies. There was an article in the Florida Sun. I cannot vouch for its accuracy, but where there is a little smoke there is some fire. Of the $1.2 billion in aid that FEMA granted to individuals--not municipalities or contractors but to individuals--affected by the weather disasters between 1999 and 2004, the Florida Sun-Sentinel found of $1.2 billion, at least $330 million of that went to people who did not personally suffer any damage or disruption from the storms. That is a fourth of the money out of that $1.2 billion. No wonder we have a deficit. No wonder. Because we are not willing to take the time to force an agency to do what they should be doing under the law. I want to talk for a minute about this bill. The 9/11 Commission was very succinct and direct, noting that we have tremendous vulnerabilities and risks and exposures throughout this country. They were very clear to state that money that comes out of Congress to address those ought to be absolutely risk based. The House bill at least is down to 0.25 percent for every State. What that gives us is about 15 percent of the money is going to go to the States regardless of their risk. So that is about $3.5 billion or $4 billion--no risk, you are going to get Homeland Security grants even though you have no risk. Think about what we are going to ask ourselves if we have another terrorist attack and it is in one of the high-risk areas and we have sent, year after year after year, $4 billion to areas that do not have a high risk and that money could have prevented that action. With good fiscal discipline, we will best protect the people of this country. I know the tendency of this body is to make sure you get enough for you and to make sure you can go home and say we got this for you. You pat yourself on the back. But I wonder how many of us will be patting ourselves on the back when we buy things that are not absolutely necessary with these grants that are going to States and we ignore the very high-risk east coast, west coast, gulf coast, and the large metropolitan areas in this country that need more money while we are playing politics with 15 to 20 percent of the money. We will be judged on that, and that judgment will not be a pretty picture. This amendment simply says no funds can go for any of these grants until FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security start complying with the Federal statute, which is called the Improper Payments Act of 2002. It is very straightforward. What we will have raised is the fear that my State may not get some money. They have a year to comply. They have plenty of time to do what they have been asked to do. Senator Obama and I, this last year, over 8 months ago, sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security asking why. I ask unanimous consent to print that letter in the Record.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 325.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I rise to support the amendment. I think it is important for the people of America to understand, first, what is at stake here and, No. 2, the tremendous failure of the U.N. in terms of proliferation. The best example of that right now is the enrichment of uranium for purposes of weapons of mass destruction by Iran. The reason Iran continues to do that is because two world powers, China and Russia, through the U.N., failed to support adequate enforcement of sanctions for behavior that would otherwise not allow nuclear proliferation. Senator Thune very thoroughly outlined the failures of the U.N., but let me outline them a little further. This country sends over $5.3 billion a year to the U.N. Our entire contribution to peacekeeping is wasted, according to the U.N. Inspector General's own reports. We don't get to find those reports because the U.N. won't be transparent on either how it spends its money or who gets the money it does spend or whether they are held accountable for it. Senator Thune outlined the effectiveness of this initiative by the State Department with 80 other countries. That is 80 countries that help us every day to interrupt, disrupt, and stop either the passage, transfer, or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. I do not understand the motivation, why someone would want to take this to a bureaucracy that has proved, time and again, it fails to accomplish the very purposes for which it was set up--whether it be the rape of U.N. peacekeepers in the areas in which they are serving; whether it be the U.N. Oil for Food scandal, where only one person out of several has even been indicted in the corruption racket that was ongoing with that. The fact is the U.N. has failed in multiple areas at multiple times to accomplish the very things it set out to do. Senator Thune mentioned that the No. 2 position on the nonproliferation committee at the U.N. is chaired by none other than Iran. What we do know is, had adequate sanctions been applied to Iran, the continued enrichment of uranium would not be there. The House has gutted one of the most effective tools we have, in terms of interdicting weapons of mass destruction from across this world. Why is it important? Let me give an analogy. Today, when somebody comes into the emergency room and they are bleeding internally, we don't stop and have a committee meeting among doctors on what to do. What we do is look at the signs and symptoms we find--i.e., the intelligence, the actual knowledge of what is going on--and then we treat the condition on an emergent basis. This whole initiative will be gutted by bringing it to the bureaucratic process of the U.N. The thing that happens now is good intelligence, in terms of cooperation with people--the other 80 countries that are working cooperatively-- institutes action. The failure to act on internal bleeding ends up with death. The same thing is going to happen if we let a bureaucracy, dominated with a veto power by China and Russia, determine whether we can intercept weapons of mass destruction. I understand we need a world body. I understand the U.N. is that world body. But the U.N. has so many problems today in terms of being effective at what it is trying to accomplish. It is absolutely nontransparent with how it does that--nontransparent with how the money is spent and is utilized today, so that every step of the way two countries are blocking our attempts to block the development of weapons of mass destruction in Iran. We can let the patient die, bleed to death internally, while we have a committee hearing and get the approval and then get it vetoed by China or Russia because it plays out more powerfully to their benefit, or we can continue to do what we have been doing successfully 24 times in the last year. Twenty-four times in the last year, in coordination with these eight countries, based on great intelligence, we have interrupted or disrupted the transmission of weapons of mass destruction. Why would we want to get rid of that? Why did this PSI get started in the first place? Because of problems in the U.N. If the U.N. were to work as it should, there would be no need for a PSI. It will not and it does not because it is not necessarily to everybody's advantage in the U.N. that these weapons be controlled. I believe the House has been very shortsighted. My hope is if this is included when it comes out of conference, this bill is vetoed. It should be vetoed. It ties the hand of a President trying to do what is best for this country and instead makes the rest of the world have veto power over our ability to defend ourselves. We should never give up that right. I am very thankful Senator Thune has put this amendment on the floor and my hope is we will have a vote on it next week. What this bill does is to violate our Constitution. We give up sovereignty to protect ourselves by giving that sovereignty to the United Nations. That is something we ought not do. It would be different if the United Nations were transparent. It would be different if a third of peacekeeping funds were not wasted every year out of the billions that are spent in the U.N. $15 to $20 billion budget. But that is not the case. That is not the real world. Until we have cogent, realistic, proper reforms, including transparency, at the U.N, including equality at the U.N., including accountability at the U.N., we should not move any initiative affecting our own protection and that of those other 80 countries that are working with us in this regard, to give them veto power over our own security. I yield the floor.