Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I went through that exercise, and I know the Senator from Vermont does not disagree with all those amendments, but he is doing what he has been instructed by the majority to do. The fact is we could have a debate, we could delay this for 2 weeks, and we could make this bill far better. We could decide not to spend an additional $3.1 billion of our grandkids' money if we allowed a true debate. In the last Congress I took a lot of criticism for going after my party on fiscal issues. I am not going to quit going after my party on fiscal issues, but I will tell my colleagues, I am certainly not going to quit when the majority party claims--falsely claims--to be doing something in the best interests of this country in terms of fiscal responsibility when, in fact, they are not. There is no question what I have laid out here today is factual. There is no question that what we are seeing is more of the same in Washington. It is time for it to stop. It is time for the American public to hold everybody accountable, and we ought to be about America, not the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. We ought to be nonpartisan for the long-term future of this country. We ought to be nonpartisan in order to restore the idea of sacrifice and service for the next generation, rather than taking it for us today. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside and my amendment No. 252, which asks for the transparency of our contributions into the Global AIDS Fund be called up.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside and my amendment No. 251 that will apply $1 billion for the farmers who are in dire need in this country today be called up.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment No. 250, which allows all report requests by the Appropriations Committee--40 of them--be made public, that the pending amendments be set aside and that it be called up.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I have another unanimous consent request, which is that the pending amendments be set aside and that amendment No. 235, the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, be called up.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment No. 236 be called up and the pending amendments be set aside. This is an amendment that will allow us to continue to discuss this for 2 weeks.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I believe under the unanimous consent agreement I am recognized until 4:15; is that correct?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I want to turn to the bill in front of us and make a few remarks about how things change, but they never change. We had an election this last fall. The election was based on changing the control so we can control the spending, so we can secure the future, so we can eliminate wasteful Washington spending. I would put forth that the bill in front of us is more of the same--actually I want to guard the words I use--more of the same lack of clarity, lack of transparency and game playing that Congress has been known for the last 25 to 30 years. The bill before us manipulates the numbers. The bill before us is untruthful about the costs. The bill before us is put on the floor of the Senate without any debate to bring forth transparency. No amendments are going to be offered to bring forth transparency. No amendments are going to be offered to offset the cost. This $3.1 billion expense is going to go directly to our grandchildren because what is not spent for military construction and BRAC costs will be added to the supplemental which we are going to be taking up in March. We are going to be taking up more of the same games, so what you got for what you thought was change is not a change at all. It is just a change in name only. It is important for the American people to understand it is not Republican or Democrat, it is short-term vision versus long-term vision for our country. We have a bill before us on the floor of the Senate that does a lot of things--a lot we should have gotten done. There is no question. The majority is within its rights to do what it has done. The predicate that Senator Reid used, that it was used on the Democrats before--there was no complaint with that. It has been done. It is not a good process. But what we are seeing is not what was promised. We thought we bought a new car, and what we bought, what the American people bought, was a car that had been wrecked and repainted and sold as new. I want to talk about several of the problems, things that are wrong with this bill. I want to raise the question why should we not fix it now. I will start first with the BRAC money--$3.1 billion to move tens of thousands of troops out of Germany, back here. It is not going to happen. The money may come with the omnibus but not in time to achieve the savings that we were hoping to achieve through the BRAC process. So there is a double cost. One is, if we took that money and we spent it to grow the Government--debatable. It is not debatable that some of the things that are funded with that are not good--but are they the priority? We are going to grow the Government, No. 1, and then we are going to take that money and put it on the supplemental bill. A supplemental bill is a bill that comes forward outside the budget parameters, so therefore any of the money spent doesn't have to be within the budget limits. That money goes directly to the credit card of your grandkids. There is $3.1 billion. Then we are going to lose the benefits through delay of the BRAC closure process which is going to be another $3 to $5 billion. So by playing the same games Washington has been known for for years, we are going to add $7 or $8 billion more to the debt of our grandchildren. If you thought things changed, they didn't. They changed in name only. This game with this maneuver in it is a sham for our grandkids and anybody else who thinks we are going to be fiscally responsible with your money. The second thing it does is it destroys some of the help that was out there to help the most vulnerable. There was a provision in the new Ryan White AIDS bill that saves the life of newborn babies. We know it works. The two States that have done it have reduced HIV infection in newborn children by about 98 percent--for $85: $10 to test and $75 to treat newborn children. In New York they used to have 500 babies a year born who were infected with HIV. Last year they had seven. Why? Because women who did not know their status were given an opportunity to opt out of being tested. If they didn't want to be tested, they didn't have to be. But if they did, they were given an opportunity to get tested. And if they didn't want to be tested, their baby was tested, so if, in fact, they were carrying HIV, we could prevent, 99 percent of the time, those children from becoming infected with HIV. The money was taken out in this bill. This is a chart for the infections, perinatal infections. Just in these States alone, for which we have a record, these are going to be the preventable cases of newborn baby AIDS that are going to not happen because of what this bill does. Thousands of babies are going to get infected with HIV because we are taking away the incentives. In terms of this bill, it is small numbers, $30 million--incentives to get States doing what New York and Connecticut have done. Shame on us, shame on us, to claim we care and then to take this and eliminate it. They went so far as to talk to the administration about this, hoping that they would have a letter coming that would say we don't want the money. In fact, they want the money. It is in the President's budget. He wants the money. Why? Because it actually does something. Your dollars actually go to make a difference. How do they make a difference? Not only do they save the life, the cost to treat a baby over their life--their life expectancy is only 25 years if they get HIV. But that is a quarter of a million dollars versus $85, and the vast majority of that money is going to be paid by the American taxpayers. So shame on us. Shame on us for doing that. These are, just in these States alone, the number of children who are going to get infected with HIV without this program going forward. Another amendment I wanted to offer so we could offer ways to try to change these things is to delay the CR for 2 weeks and let's have the debate about these issues, but we are not going to be allowed to even offer an amendment to continue it for 2 more weeks so we can actually debate it. That is the majority's right. I respect their right. It was probably done to them before I got here. It doesn't mean it is the correct process for our country to solve the big fiscal problems that are in front of us. One of the items which Barack Obama and I got through the last Congress in coordination with several key Members in the House was the Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006. What that act says is by January 1 of next year, you as the American taxpayer are going to start finding out how we are spending the money. The whole idea behind it is if you know, we are going to be held to a higher standard. We are going to be held more accountable. Also the idea behind it is if you know the American people are going to know, maybe you won't do some of the things for your buddies you are up here doing. But in this bill there are 40 reports that are demanded of the administration that aren't available to you, that have nothing to do with national security. I can't even get them. The President pro tempore of the Senate right now can't get them unless he sits on the appropriations subcommittees of those reports coming back. That is not transparency. What that is is working in the dark so the American people don't know what is going on. I have an amendment that says those reports ought to be made public to the American people. It is their money. It is our money. But we have--here we go--an appropriations bill that has 40 reports from the Federal Government agencies to report back to Congress. Yet the Senator from Vermont and the Senator from Oklahoma cannot see those reports, and neither can you. What is that all about? Why shouldn't you be able to see those reports? You should be able to. But that amendment is denied under this process. More of the same. More work done in darkness without the light of day for the American people to see what is going on in their Government with their money. They should reject that. We all should reject that. But change comes slowly. The reason I am out here talking about it is I think the American people ought to know what is going on in this bill. Yes, the threat is if we don't pass this, the Government will shut down. The Government doesn't have to shut down. We could continue this for 2 weeks, but we are playing the game. Who will look worse if you vote against it. What the American people care about is whether we have an open and transparent government. That is what I am about: making sure we know the cost of what we are doing, making sure we know who is responsible, and holding those accountable when they are not doing what is in the best long-term interest of our country rather than what is in the best short-term political interest of either political party or any individual Member of Congress. Another amendment I was going to offer but have been precluded from doing so is we have thousands of people waiting for assistance with their drugs for HIV. As a matter of fact, there are several hundred, 350-some in South Carolina alone who don't have any money, are not getting treated, their HIV is progressing, they are going to AIDS, and they are going to die. That number is in the thousands across the country right now, and although we have increased the AIDS drug assistance program, we haven't increased it enough to where we are taking care of those who do not have any other resource with which to get the medicines to save their lives. That amendment is foregone. We can't do that, not available. Another amendment I had, which is certainly necessary--and we have had the Senators from North Dakota and South Dakota talking about it-- is the fact that we have had a disaster in the Central Plains of this country, in western Oklahoma and many other agricultural areas, where we have a tremendous need--an agricultural disaster by any means that we have addressed before. We tried to address it before we went home, but we didn't want to pay for it. So that didn't go anywhere. That is going to go somewhere when the supplemental comes. It will be a part of the supplemental package that comes out of the Appropriations Committee and we will pay $4 billion or $5 billion or $6 billion. It won't be paid for, we will charge it to our kids, and we will help these farmers. There is $1 billion in my amendment that is paid for--paid for; we don't have to charge it to our grandchildren--that will help immediately those farmers who have suffered through this tremendous drought in the Central Plains. We can not offer that amendment. We can not help the people who need us to help right now because we are playing games. We are playing the same old political games that were played when the Republicans were in charge. This isn't a new day; this is just a new manager under the same scams. It is a scam, and the American people need to know it is a scam in terms of their money. Finally, the money we are stealing from the BRAC, a portion of that we are giving to the Global AIDS Fund. We are the largest contributor to the Global AIDS Fund--$300 million. We are going to bump that to $750 million, except there is no accountability in the Global AIDS Fund. The Boston Globe recently released a report on some inside auditor work inside the Global AIDS Fund showing the slush funds, showing the money that has been wasted. Yet we can't have access to those reports. We are the largest contributor, but we are denied access. I have an amendment that says if they want the money, then they have to show us the internal transparent workings of that organization, since we are the largest contributor. That is denied. That is common sense. If you were giving money to a charity and they were wasting it, you would want to know how they were spending your money. As a matter of fact, we make charities in this country show how they are spending their money. We actually audit them. We are precluded from knowing how $750 million of your money is going to be spent. And the waste we have found out about in that program is denying the very people we are hoping to help, those innocent young African children who are infected with HIV, with their medicines every day. So the way to have great government is to have transparency. The way to get rid of wasteful Washington spending is to have transparency. The way to lower the taxes on everybody in this country is to get rid of the waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication that is present within our Government. This bill does none of that. What this bill does is spend more of your money and with sleight of hand and under the cover of darkness transfer billions to our grandkids that they have shut out now but will ask for again when we have a supplemental and, consequently, our children will be directly impacted. If you are born in this country today--if you go talk to David Walker, the Comptroller General, who is a nonpolitical person; he is a straight shooter; he knows what we are facing is an impending crisis in this country and that we are on a crash course toward fiscal bankruptcy. But here is what we know. If you are born today in this country, you have a birth tax of $453,000. That is what your share is of the unfunded liabilities we refuse to fix that we are adding to with this bill--we are going to add $10 billion to $12 billion actually with this bill when the new supplemental comes out--that is my prediction-- at a minimum, $3 billion, probably $10 billion to $12 billion. What we are doing is going to add to that birth tax. What is the great thing about our country? The great thing about our country is it was built on the sacrifice of one generation creating opportunity for the next. This bill does the opposite of that. This bill steals from the next generation to take care of us now. There is no long-term thinking in this bill; there is only short-term thinking. Is it partially my fault we are here? Sure. I will take that. But the process and the false claims that we are under a new day, that we are under a new fiscal paradigm, is hogwash. There is no fiscal responsibility in this bill. This bill actually claims that it eliminates all the earmarks. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, hopefully today, I understand, the President is going to say they are not going to honor the unwritten earmarks. There is $17 billion worth of unwritten earmarks that will continue in this bill the way this bill is written. Now, they get to claim in the press that they have a little section in the bill that says none of the earmarks in this bill carry the force of law. Well, that doesn't do anything. None of those earmarks carried the force of law last year. None of those earmarks next year will carry the force of law. It does nothing to eliminate those earmarks from continuing to be spent. We know what earmarks are. We know how they create conflicts of interest within this body and within the lobbying community and individuals throughout this country. They ought to be gone. None of them should be honored, unless they are in the bill and people are willing to stand up and defend those and they have been vetted by the committees of this Congress. So bear in mind as I vote against this bill, it is not because I want to shut the Government down; it is because it is a vote saying it is more of the same, American people. You didn't get what you bargained for, again. Hold us accountable, come ask the questions, and don't take the spin. The fact is there is a $453,000 birth tax for every child who is born this year in this country, and it is going to grow by over $1,000 with this bill. So it is going to go to $454,000. Now, imagine what you have to earn a year to pay the interest on that. The fastest growing portion of our Government budget--what is it? It is not health care. It is interest. It is interest on the debt, and we have perpetuated that with this bill. I know none of my amendments will be made in order, but I am inclined to show the ridiculousness of this process. So with notice to the Presiding Officer, who I expect to object, as is his right as a Senator from Vermont, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside and my amendment No. 234 be called up.

Mr. COBURN. I will try not to take that much time.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I want to take a few minutes first to talk about someone who was a very dear friend whom I think was emblematic of what our forefathers thought about when they thought about a U.S. Congressman. His name was Charlie Norwood. He died yesterday. Charlie was a ``tell it like it is'' guy. His motivations were always altruistic. They were never self-centered. He had never been in politics. He was a dentist, and he got fed up. He came here and had a tremendous impact in terms of his voice of common sense, reason, and compassion. The House of Representatives is going to miss that voice, but more important, the American people are going to miss one of the few voices of common sense that we have in Congress today. He leaves a wife, Gloria, and two sons, all supportive of his sacrifice to serve here. There are a lot of stories told about Charlie. I won't go into that. He was always fun to be around. He was always invigorating. And he never quit believing in this wonderful thing we call the American dream. He fought hard for what he thought was right on immigration. He recognized that if we build a wall, it is not to keep people in; that the opportunities here are so great, what has been created by our Founders and grew through the years is so tremendous, that we ought to continue to take advantage of it. What I really liked about him was that he was a true citizen legislator. He abandoned his practice and his easy life and came to do the hard work of representing the people of Georgia with common sense and down-home, plain family values. He will be sorely missed. But he leaves a legacy, a legacy to everybody who is out there today who thinks we need to change the Congress of the United States. The legacy he leaves is this: If you are willing to sacrifice and get into the fray, you can come here and make a difference. That is what he proved. His life was not that of a career politician--although that is a wonderful service, and we have dedicated people throughout both Houses of Congress who have dedicated their lives to public service. But he brought a freshness and he brought ideas because his experience was what everybody else in the country was experiencing, not what is experienced among the political elite in this country. The challenge that Charlie leaves for all of us who are not in Congress, who do not like things the way they are, is to actually get involved. That legacy will live on for a long time--I know in his district in Georgia, and also through the State of Georgia--but also for those of us who will continue to remember him and the sacrifices he made.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. This program doesn't match the definition or criteria of an earmark approved by the Senate in January or used by the Congressional Research Service. On January 16, 2007, the Senate approved an amendment by a vote of 98 to zero, defining the term ``earmark'' as a provision or report language included primarily at the request of a Member, delegate, resident commissioner, or Senator, providing, authorizing or recommending a specific amount of discretionary budget authority, credit authority or spending authority for a contract loan, loan guarantee, loan authority or other expenditure with or to an entity or targeted to a specific State, a specific locality or a specific congressional district, other than through a statutory or administrative formally driven competitive war process. This doesn't come anywhere close to that definition. It doesn't meet any of criteria that the Senate has defined as earmark. It is not directed to any specific State, any entity, any location, and does not bypass the statutory award process. CRS defines an earmark as funds set aside with an account for specific organization or location, either in the appropriations act or the joint explanatory statement of the conference committee. CRS notes that such designations generally bypass the usual competitive distribution of awards by a Federal agency. This doesn't meet any of that. It is hogwash to call this an earmark, and everybody knows it. Everybody knows it. Claim: This program would violate the privacy rights of women by requiring mandatory HIV testing. This doesn't require mandatory HIV testing. It offers women to have testing and they can say, ``I don't want to be tested,'' rather than for them to have to ask to be tested. Current laws mandating extensive pre- and post-test counseling make HIV testing the most overregulated diagnostic and thereby discourage health providers from offering patients screening for HIV. Testing newborns for HIV is too little too late. That is the other point I have heard. The science doesn't support that at all. If the baby has HIV antibiotics, 99 percent of the time we can prevent them from becoming infected. Of those who do, the 1 percent who do become infected, we can treat so much better by knowing it at an early stage. We can extend their life for years at less than $40,000 a year, at $10,000 a year. By not knowing and waiting until their CD4 counts come down precipitously low, we go from $10,000 a year in treatment to $40,000 a year in treatment. I will finish with a couple of comments. In the early eighties, I delivered a little girl. Her name was Megan. Two years later, her mother re-presented to me with full-blown AIDS. The mother died 3 weeks later. Megan lived an additional 8 years. Had we done this and had we known to have done this, Megan would be alive and flourishing. Her mother would be alive with HIV. Megan would have never gotten HIV. I will never have that little girl's face removed from my memory. We, by this bill and not allowing the reestablishment, are creating thousands of Megans in this country--thousands, thousands. If this body wants that on their shoulders, continue what we are doing today. But if we claim to be here to help the helpless, to put in place policies that, No. 1, the best of the science tells us are the right policies, and No. 2, makes a massive difference in individual lives, then make in order this amendment to restore this money. By not doing so, you walk out of here condemning hundreds of infants, thousands of infants to death, at worst, and a life on medicines for the rest of their life. You also condemn a large group of African-American women to the lack of knowledge and the lack of effective drugs that can give them a normal life. You can decide. The power is on the majority side. They get to decide this issue. But you dare not come back into this Chamber saying that you care for children, that you care for minorities, and at the same time have gutted one of the programs that will give hope to those same groups of people. You can't have it both ways. You can't single out good medicine, good public health care, and true compassion for those most at risk, and then come back and claim you care. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. I am happy to yield to the senior Senator from West Virginia.

Mr. COBURN. About 10 minutes.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I want to spend a few minutes talking about the importance of what we are doing with this bill and why amendments ought to be allowed in order. I have a very specific amendment I have filed that has to do with health care in this country. Basically, it has to do with the health care of the most vulnerable in this country, babies. In the early 1980s, an epidemic of an unknown virus started in this country. We now know it as HIV/AIDS, and a lot of progress has been made in that fight. During the Reagan Presidency, his AIDS Commission recommended routine testing. That was in 1986. In 2005, the CDC finally recognized the wisdom of that AIDS Commission recommendation, and it is now CDC policy that routine testing from the ages of 17 to 64 be carried out on everybody in this country who encounters health care. The Ryan White bill, which was recently passed in the 109th Congress, took note of those recommendations. And within the HIV community, there has been debate about the CDC guidelines. But some of that was put to rest on the basis of what we know has been an exemplary program in two States that have all but eliminated HIV transmission to babies. The policies in many States in this country require extensive counseling before anybody can be tested. What was found by the CDC, and many other organizations, is that a small number of people who are pregnant will actually get tested. New York, led by a courageous Democratic legislator by the name of Nettie Mayersohn, passed a law in 1996. In that year they had 500 babies born with HIV. In the last 2 years, since that law has been passed, they have had less than 7. Now, what happened? What did they do? What they did was they used commonsense public health, and they said: we test women who are pregnant for lots of diseases antenatally so we can know how to handle them and take care of their infant should they have one of those problems. They applied that same common sense to HIV, and hundreds of babies are born every year in New York who do not get HIV because commonsense public health policies were applied. It is very simple. If we know your HIV status, and you are positive, 99 percent of the time we can keep your child from getting HIV. There is not hardly any other disease we have in obstetrics--and I am an obstetrician--that is that effective. What we have done in the bill before us is take away all the money for that, take all the money away the CDC says now is the guideline, their recommendation, the recommendation of the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Why are we doing that? There is a claim it was an earmark. I will not spend the time to bore everybody with the definition of an ``earmark.'' This came as part of the Enzi-Kennedy Ryan White bill because it is good public health policy and it applies as an incentive to every State out there to start doing something that will make a difference in someone's life. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that HIV be a routine testing procedure. Washington, DC, has a wonderful Director of their AIDS Commission, Marsha Martin. Last June they started routine testing in this city. This city has 3.5 percent, it would seem, of its population infected with HIV--about three and half to four times the rest of the Nation. They have identified almost 1,600 HIV patients. Now, why is that important? The reason that is important is because 70 percent of the infections that are now occurring in HIV are occurring in people who do not know they are infected. And if they do not know they are infected, they will transmit the disease without knowing they are transmitting it. Before the Nettie Mayersohn law in New York State, only 62 percent of the women who were pregnant knew their HIV status. After that, we are at almost 96 percent. The difference is 500 babies a year born with HIV versus 7--a very significant difference. What does that mean in terms of the children? It means a life not having a disease, not being stuck, not being given medicine, and having a life expectancy of less than 25 years of age. That is what that means. So with that leadership in the State of New York, what has been accomplished is 99 percent of the prenatal transmission of HIV has been prevented. It also means those pregnant women who are HIV positive are now being treated at a much earlier stage in their disease, which gives them far greater--probably the same life expectancy as you or I because of the tremendous advances in medicine. What we do know is the later the diagnosis, the shorter their life expectancy and the higher the cost. Now, let me walk you through, for a minute, what others say about this. CDC also recommends prenatal testing and treatment of newborns. Here is what they have said: Considering the potential for preventing transmission, no child in this country should be born whose HIV status or whose mother's status is unknown. It costs $10 to test, it costs $75 to treat, to prevent 99 percent of them. It makes a major difference in thousands of children's lives every year. It makes a major difference in thousands and thousands of women's lives every year to have this diagnosis. What happens if we do not do it, if we do not encourage it? And this part of the Ryan White Act was meant to incentivize States to move to the CDC recommendation. It costs $10,000 a year to treat a newborn who is infected with HIV. One of the problems with this tremendous epidemic that we face is it narrows in on a group of people, a large percentage of whom happen to be African-American women. They account for two-thirds of the infection in women yet are 13 percent of our population. How dare us take this away. Multiple organizations have supported this policy. The Early Diagnosis Grant Program was established by the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act. It provides $30 million for grants that will be utilized for States that become eligible to do the testing and the treatment for both mothers and their infants. To be eligible for the funds, they have to offer a voluntary opt-out HIV testing program for pregnant women. They have to commit to universal HIV testing of newborns when the HIV status of their mother is unknown. They have to offer voluntary opt-out HIV testing of clients at sexually transmitted disease clinics. And they have to offer voluntary opt-out HIV testing of clients at substance abuse treatment centers, where we know most of the disease tends to be seen. This is current CDC policy--the people whom we trust to tell us what to do. Funding for this grant is provided out of existing HIV moneys at CDC, prevention funds that are already there, which they know will have tremendous positive effects. Now, think about it: 500 infants at $10,000 a year, every year. Multiply it, multiply it, multiply it, and it only takes 4\1/2\ years to spend $30 million if we do not do this. These funds are targeted for those most at risk of infection, as well as those most likely to benefit from treatment. President Bush, in his budget, asked for this money to be directed as well. So this is not something that does not have broad support, both in the health community, with the President, and many of those most active in the HIV community. The point we should not forget is baby AIDS can be virtually eliminated if expectant mothers with HIV are identified and treated for HIV during their pregnancy. When treatment is provided during pregnancy, labor, and delivery, and to infants after birth, the risk of transmission goes down to less than 1 percent. Without treatment, 25 percent of the infants will become HIV infected. But how do we treat? We cannot treat unless we know they have it. We cannot know they have it unless they are tested. We cannot test unless we have the incentives to test. So this creates the incentive programs for States to copy what both New York and Connecticut did. Connecticut has not had an HIV-infected baby since 2001. They have eliminated it in Connecticut. Why should we not do the same thing? Why should we disallow an amendment to restore this funding that goes to the heart of those most vulnerable in our country? It also goes to help those who are most disaffected, those who are on the poorer spectrum, those who have less opportunity because that is where we see more infection. For the 1 percent who would not be cured, what we know is, we are treating early. We are not waiting until they get the disease in a full-blown state. What we know is, your likelihood of dying, if you are diagnosed when your CD 4 count is below 50, exponentially goes up. So early diagnosis with HIV is of paramount importance. It also needs to be said that one out of every four people in this country who have HIV don't know it. They have no knowledge that they have it. That one out of four accounts for 70 percent of the new infections in this country. So the CDC policy of frequent testing, opt- out testing, more testing is a policy that makes absolute sense from a public health perspective. Because only a few States have similar laws to Connecticut and New York, hundreds of babies will still become infected this year. To take this money out, to say none of the money can be spent for this program, condemns hundreds of newborn babies to a life of HIV infection and AIDS. That is what this bill does. It condemns hundreds of babies in this country to a life with HIV. It is a preventable disease. Why would we do that? Why would we come anywhere close to that? I mentioned Marsha Martin. Since last year, they started a policy of routine frequent testing, and 16,000 individuals in Washington, DC, have been tested. Five hundred eighty people who would not have otherwise been tested have been diagnosed with HIV at a stage at which we can save their life. Some of those were pregnant women. People say: You don't need to do this. Why is it important for every woman to know whether she is HIV positive or negative if she gives birth to a baby? Because only 25 percent of the time does this virus get transmitted to the baby at birth. But what they don't think about is, if they breast- feed the baby, they will transmit the virus as well. So your baby may not be infected at birth, but if you breast-feed your baby and you are carrying HIV, it is a death sentence for the baby. So to not know your status puts your baby at risk, even though it was not infected at birth. Here is what happened in Connecticut. They went from 28 percent of the women who knew their HIV status before they passed the law to 90 percent of the women. What does that translate into? That translates into saving lives, not just the women who were HIV positive who found out and had early treatment but their children as well. Why would we not want to incentivize the rest of the States to do what has been successful in New York and Connecticut and several other States? The health commissioner of New York is pushing to change State law to make testing more convenient for patients and health care providers: We are aggressively offering testing to patients who come to us for routine physicals, heart disease, a sprained ankle. We are lessening the stigma sometimes associated with HIV and helping connect many more HIV-positive individuals with early treatment. Here is the other difference I would hope the esteemed Members of the Senate would recognize. By doing early testing, the cost to treat is $10,000 a year. By doing late testing, the cost to treat is $40,000 a year, with much more in terms of complications. Again, to test costs $10, to treat a newborn is $75, versus $10,000 a year at a minimum. Women, children, and African Americans will be most affected by the termination of this program. Since the beginning of the HIV epidemic, African Americans have accounted for almost 400,000 of the estimated 1 million AIDS diagnoses in our country. According to the 2000 census, African Americans made up 13 percent of our population. However, in 2005, 49 percent of the estimated 40,000 new cases were African American. It is 24 times the rate in African-American women than it is in white women. Why would we not want to intercede with testing to save their lives? Between 120 and 160,000 women in the United States are infected with HIV. In 2001, the National Congress of Black Women issued a report entitled ``African American Women and the HIV/AIDS Initiative,'' that outlined that group's strategy to combat HIV/AIDS among black women. Among their recommendations: Every State should be required to screen all pregnant women for HIV and test all newborns for the virus and Congress should appropriate funds for such initiatives. Every year that passes results in hundreds of more cases of baby AIDS that could have been prevented. Who supports doing this perinatal testing and treatment? The American Medical Association, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, the AIDS Health Care Foundation, the Children's AIDS Fund, multiple medical groups, and, yes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the one agency we fund to tell us what we should do. It is their policy. We are denying their policy. We are denying infants the right to live without HIV. Here is what they said: Based on information presented in the MMWR, the available data indicate that both ``opt-out'' prenatal maternal screening and mandatory newborn screening achieve higher maternal screening rates than ``opt-in'' prenatal screening. The status quo. Accordingly, CDC recommends that clinicians routinely screen all women for HIV infection, using an ``opt-out'' approach and that jurisdictions with statutory barriers to such prenatal screening consider revising them. In addition, CDC encourages clinicians to test for HIV any newborn whose mother's HIV status is unknown . . . CDC recommends rapid testing of the infant immediately postpartum so that antiretroviral prophylactics can be offered to HIV-exposed infants. Ninety-nine percent, we can prevent. We have taken out the capability for other States what New York and Connecticut have done, and we are refusing to allow the replacement of that to save the weakest and most vulnerable in our country. What are the claims we have heard? Here is the first claim: Even without funding for this particular HIV testing grant program, Federal funds will still be available for HIV testing. What is true is that other Federal funds can provide HIV testing. As written, section 20613(b)(1) of this bill specifies that none of the funds appropriated for 2007 can be used for any early diagnosis grants. This would specifically forbid Federal funding for HIV testing of pregnant women in any area--newborns, patients receiving treatment for substance abuse, and those accessing services at STD clinics. These populations include those most at risk for HIV, as well as those who can most benefit from early treatment and intervention. It is counterintuitive that this would be a part of this bill. What are the activities that are supported by this $30 million that are going to be prohibited, including HIV AIDS testing, including rapid testing? It only costs $10. It precludes prevention counseling. It excludes treatment of newborns exposed to HIV. It excludes treatment of mothers infected with HIV or AIDS and the costs associated with linking the diagnosis of AIDS to care and treatment for that disease. The $30 million instead will revert to other CDC HIV/AIDS program activities which in recent years have included the following: Beachside conferences, flirting classes, erotic writing seminars, zoo trips, and other dubious initiatives that do not have any lifesaving impact or near lifesaving impact as early diagnosis and treatment. This $30 million is either going to be spent effectively or it is going to be wasted. President Reagan's AIDS Commission was right. They said it in 1986. The CDC caught up last year in 2005 to the policies that were recommended to this Congress in 1985-1986. Few, if any, States would benefit from the funding provided by this program. The point of this program is to encourage States to update their policies to reflect CDC's recommendations for HIV testing and baby AIDS treatment. That is the whole purpose. That is part of the whole Ryan White grant. It is to improve our approach to HIV, to eliminate newborn infections, and to eliminate transmission from those who don't know. While few States would immediately qualify for early diagnosis grants, the availability of the funds was intended to get them to move to the point where they would take advantage of that, which means they would be saving hundreds of babies' lives every year and protecting the lives of the mothers who were there to nurture them. It makes no sense that we would prohibit money for this process. Many States, including Illinois, are already moving in this direction. States such as New York and Connecticut have had the policies in place for over a decade. And the proof is there. What is the other claim? This bill defunds all earmarks. The Early Diagnosis Grant Program is an earmark and, therefore, has not been singled out but has been removed, along with other special funding projects. Fact: The Early Diagnosis Grant Program is not an earmark. All States with routine testing policies are eligible for the funding provided by this grant. Those which are not currently eligible can become eligible by passing the law or implementing State regulations to meet funding eligibility.

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I spend a few minutes talking about the supposed continuing resolution we are going to have that is really an omnibus. Every time we have an omnibus, the American people get hurt. The reason is we play games. We came off an election in November of 2006 where we had the claim made that the party in power had used earmarks irresponsibly, had played the budget gimmicks, had done all these things. We had a claim we would work toward bipartisanship, be honest and open in what we do. I come to challenge that in terms of what I would call an ``omni terrible'' bill. First, under the rules of the Senate, although we are going to be shut out on amendments, it is harmful for the American public that there are no amendments to this. It is harmful because, first, it destroys comity in this Senate. It creates hard feelings. I would be the first to admit that the procedure that is being used on this was first used by a Republican. It is wrong. The second thing that is important is there are all sorts of budget gimmicks with it. The quote is we stay within the budget. That is a lie because what they do is they steal money from our grandchildren which they will get back on the next supplemental, but that won't have to be within the budget limitations. So we are playing games. Nothing has changed about the Senate and the wink and the nod to the American public about what is happening to our future financial conditions. Mr. President, $3.1 billion out of this will be transferred to the next supplemental to pay for things that absolutely have to happen with our troops in terms of transferring them from Germany and the BRAC relocation process. That has all been stolen so we can do other things. They may be a priority, but maybe something else should be eliminated rather than to break the budget and charge more to our grandkids. So that is not true. The third thing that is extremely wrong with this is the claim that this has no earmarks. In 2006 appropriations bills, 96 percent of all earmarks were in report language. That means there is a bill that is a law and then there is language that accompanies the bill that is not law. That is where we find most of the shenanigans going on in Congress. And it is equal among Democrats and Republicans as far as the earmarks. To make the claim that there are no earmarks in this bill is an outright falsehood that the American people should not accept. The reason it is false is there is a little statement in this bill that these earmarks don't carry the force of law. It doesn't say they eliminated them. But you know what. They don't carry the force of law now. They haven't for the last 10 or 12 years. They haven't ever carried the force of law, but they carry the force of coercion because the agencies know if this is written into the report language and they don't do it, there is retribution they will face when it comes to the Congress and the appropriations process. Ninety-four percent of all the earmarks that were in 2006 in these bills are in this bill. To claim otherwise is inaccurate and it should make the people of America reject with disdain how this Senate operates. I remind this Senate that it wasn't but 2 or 3 weeks ago that Senator DeMint put in transparency of earmarks, much like Congresswoman Pelosi had asked. That was voted against by the majority of the Democrats until they found out they were going to lose. Then we modified it so they could vote ``yes'' after they had voted ``no.'' That is okay if you don't want them, but be honest about it. The fact is, there is no transparency with these earmarks. Most Americans will never know how they got there. The lobbyists will know; the Members will know; the campaign checks that come from them will know. But the regular ``American Joe'' won't know. So the claim that we are operating under a new standard, the claim that we are going to have bipartisanship, the claim that we are not going to use budget gimmicks is all a farce. It is a farce. Let's change that. Let's give the American people something to be proud of. Let's have the hard debates on the questionable areas on this bill. I will spend a minute and talk about one area of this bill. The one area where we have been very successful in eliminating HIV infections has been women who are pregnant and are having babies who are HIV infected. In 1996, New York passed a law saying all babies whose mothers' status with HIV wasn't known would be tested, and if they carried the antibodies for the mother, they would be treated. New York, since that time, has gone from at least 500 babies a year getting infected with HIV to less than 7. Connecticut passed a law in 1998. They have gone from whatever their level was to zero since 2001. It is an area of hope where we have made tremendous progress in terms of preventing transmission to young babies, identifying pregnant women so they can be under treatment earlier so they don't go to full-blown AIDS, and preventing infection of other people by identifying people who are infected. It is all based on an option of being able to opt out. If you do not want to be tested, you do not have to. This bill precludes any moneys to be spent on that. How dare we. How dare we stop the area where we are most effective in the country at preventing HIV infection. Let me detail that a minute. For a newborn baby--we don't know the mother's status--it only costs us $10 to identify whether that baby is carrying the antibodies from a woman who is infected with HIV. The treatment, which is 99 percent curative, costs $75. Now, to abandon all this, the treatment to treat a baby infected with HIV--which will result in this--costs a quarter of a million dollars for the first 10 years--$25,000 a year. So it is not only that we are not preventing an infection, we are not preventing an infection after that through breast-feeding, we are wasting money that could go to buy drugs for those people who cannot afford drugs today who have HIV. The HIV epidemic is totally controllable. To block the funding, especially for African-American women who carry the burden of this disease in pregnancy, is unconscionable. There is not a good answer for why this prohibition was put into this. And whoever did it--whoever did it--does not care a whit about the innocent children who are going to get the HIV infection, does not care about the African-American woman who is carrying it but does not know she has it, who could be treated and never progress to AIDS. What they care about is politics and political correctness. Former President Clinton recently announced he thinks we need to reassess, we need to be testing. That is a 180-degree turn from where he was. Why? Because he looks at this country and says: Why aren't we controlling this epidemic? It is because we are not testing, we are making it too hard to be tested. We have had great advances in drugs. We have great ways to prevent transmission. But if we do not know who is carrying it--and one out of every three people in this country who have HIV does not know they are infected. So what we should be about is making testing easier--easier to do, more available, more accessible-- and in a way that will make a major impact on people's lives. I am sorry the majority leader has decided to run this bill this way because I think it portends lots of things for the future of this body that are not going to be good. Nobody can accuse me of being partisan on earmarks. I went after my own party harder than I went after anybody else. I did not see anybody last year from the other side come down here and challenge an earmark. I saw nobody in the last 2 years from the other side come down here and challenge an earmark. And then to claim there are no earmarks in this bill, and to try to do a wink and a nod to the American public that oh, yeah, we are fixing it, when in fact 95 percent of them are there, it gives us cause to pause: Has anything changed? It has not. It is still the game, American public. The only way you are going to have this place cleaned up is transparency in everything we do. I hope the majority leader will reconsider his position on not allowing amendments to this bill. If he does not, one, he hurts the next year and a half in this body in terms of relationship and fairness; but, No. 2, he hurts the American public worse than that. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that an analysis of the consequences of our actions in Iraq entitled ``Now What?'' by Army Retired LTG Jerry Max Bunyard be printed in the Congressional Record.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I have not come to the floor, except once, in the 2 years I have been here to discuss the war in Iraq. I have been to Iraq and had experience in Iraq as a medical missionary during the first gulf war. I am very much concerned as to how the world will read us. What we know is that enemies try to defeat us not by trying to defeat us on the battlefield or in Iraq; they try to defeat our will, try to defeat the will of the American public. Senator DeMint talked about leadership. Leadership is laying out the real consequences of our action. What are those consequences? What next? What is going to happen next? What is going to happen? We heard this morning that we are trying to delay this resolution. We are not trying to delay it. As a matter of fact, they are saying we would not debate it. We are debating it right now. The fact is, we believe you ought to have a resolution that says we support our troops in this group of resolutions. Unless we get some semblance of saying we want to send a signal to our troops that we support them, we should not have a rule that precludes that. So politics aside, and the next election aside, and the Presidential election aside, what does it mean to the American people about what we end up doing in Iraq? That is the question we should be asking. We should be making sure that the mistake we do not make is to have an ill-informed American public about what the consequences will be. Regardless of whether we should be in Iraq, we are there. We cannot change that. The question comes, what does the Iraq Study Group say? They said we needed to secure Baghdad; they said we needed reinforcements to be able to do that; they said we needed more funds to make a difference in people's lives. These are the funds that go to the generals to actually approve things. Can we accomplish something in Iraq or do we walk away? Here is what happens when we walk away. No. 1, there will be a genocide in Iraq. The minority Sunni population will scatter out of Iraq, and those who don't will be killed. The northern Iraqis, the Kurds--what will happen to them? If we are gone and full-blown civil war breaks out, what will happen to the Kurds? This is a group of 36 million people who have not had a homeland since the Ottoman Empire. Genocide was committed against them by Saddam. What will happen to them? They will be seen as a risk to Turkey. Turkey already has problems with its Kurdish population. What will happen in Lebanon? Probably civil war. What will happen in Jordan? What will happen to the Sunni gulf states, as they now fear Iran and its dominance? This is a war Iran wants us to leave. Why? Because they want to empower themselves to be the dominant force in the Middle East. We can talk about all of the resolutions and how we disagree; that is basically political posturing, and you can disagree. But as the Senator from South Carolina said, unless you put something into force of action, it is criticism, not leadership. We need to calculate whatever we do in this body, based on what the outcome of that calculation is going to be, not by giving bellicose speeches that set up false choices that are not there. The fact is we have an obligation to the very people--the innocent people-- in Iraq today. We can walk away from that, but history will judge us harshly. The estimates are there will be 5 million people displaced out of Iraq. There will be between 700,000 and 1 million additional Iraqis who will die. Do we not have an obligation to make that not happen? Do we not have an obligation to do what is in the best long-term interests of this country? Is it in our best interest for this country to get out of Iraq? Is it? How does that fit with the war on terror and our ability to conduct that war when we create in Iraq, by withdrawing, a new state that is run by al-Qaida and by the Shia, which will in fact have the funding to dominate in the international arena with terrorism and hatefulness and murder and pillaging of innocent people? It is not as simple as everybody here wants to make it seem. It certainly should not be political. But that is where we are going. The very comment that we cannot have a debate on supporting the policy, that we will not allow a resolution that says we are going to support our troops--why don't they want that? It is because that will get the highest number of votes. That will become the story--not the story that somebody postured in a position that is well-intended and well-meaning, that they don't think a surge or a reinforcement in Iraq is correct. America is at a crossroads. The crossroads is whether we will fulfill and carry out the responsibilities, some of which we added to ourselves by our very position, but whether we will fulfill that. We will be judged by history. To undermine many of the steps that the Iraq Study Group said, which is in the President's plan, nobody knows if this will work, but I guarantee it will not work if we send a signal to those who oppose us that this is it. All they do is sit and wait. More of Iran's influence and more dollars from Iran coming into Iraq--more to defeat us. If you defeat the will of the American people--and, by doing that, that is our problem--if we allow that to happen as leaders in this country, then we will be responsible for that 5 million displacement, for those million deaths, and the millions that will follow when you have a Middle East dominated by Iran with a nuclear weapon. We should think long and hard. The American people should not respond just to the urge to get out of Iraq but respond to the well-thought-out consequences of what happens next. And what happens next is a disaster, not only for the people of Iraq, for the people of the Middle East, but also for the national security of this country and our ability to carry out our foreign policy in the future. I earnestly pray that we will consider the actions here and the words here in light of what comes next, not in terms of politics but what happens to our country. Denying the heritage we have of sacrifice for freedom and liberty and denying that it costs something and walking away from that, we will reap that which we sow as we walk away from it. Caution to us as we do that. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I will withhold.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I come to the floor to follow up on the comments made by my senior Senator, Mr. Inhofe, from Oklahoma, on the qualifications of Judge Gregory Frizzell. He has enumerated many of those. This is a fine young man with impeccable character and integrity. He is a living example of a life of service, not just in what he does as a judge in Oklahoma, but what he does in his community in Oklahoma. It has been a real pleasure to get to know him, to also watch him as he went through the process of getting a unanimous vote out of the Judiciary Committee and having no significant questions raised about his judicial philosophy, integrity, character, background, or his qualifications. So it is with a great deal of pleasure that I look forward to his vote today. I might comment for a moment that he was capable of being confirmed in the last Congress, and there was no reason, no good reason why he wasn't, other than the answer: We are not going to approve any more judges in this Congress. That is the reason I was told by the now majority leader that he would not be approved. There is no question as to his qualifications, but it should remind us again of the dangers of partisanship for party instead of partisanship for our country and for future generations. I am very thankful to the Judiciary Committee chairman, Patrick Leahy from Vermont, for the speed and quickness with which he has brought this to the floor. I thank him for that, and I look forward to working with him with the same speed on any other judges the President might bring up and that the committee would put out. It is my hope we can get beyond partisanship on judiciary nominees and get to the business of filling the significant number of voids or vacancies that are out there today and that are limiting justice for people in this country. Justice delayed is justice denied. And a lack of available judges is denying justice to hundreds and thousands of Americans every day. So the chairman of the Judiciary Committee has my commitment as a member of the Judiciary Committee to help him in any way I can to move those. It is a great honor that Greg Frizzell will sit as a Federal judge in the northern district of Oklahoma, and it is my hope we will see many like him fill the spots across this country. With that, I yield the floor, Mr. President, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I come to the floor to follow up on the comments made by my senior Senator, Mr. Inhofe, from Oklahoma, on the qualifications of Judge Gregory Frizzell. He has enumerated many of those. This is a fine young man with impeccable character and integrity. He is a living example of a life of service, not just in what he does as a judge in Oklahoma, but what he does in his community in Oklahoma. It has been a real pleasure to get to know him, to also watch him as he went through the process of getting a unanimous vote out of the Judiciary Committee and having no significant questions raised about his judicial philosophy, integrity, character, background, or his qualifications. So it is with a great deal of pleasure that I look forward to his vote today. I might comment for a moment that he was capable of being confirmed in the last Congress, and there was no reason, no good reason why he wasn't, other than the answer: We are not going to approve any more judges in this Congress. That is the reason I was told by the now majority leader that he would not be approved. There is no question as to his qualifications, but it should remind us again of the dangers of partisanship for party instead of partisanship for our country and for future generations. I am very thankful to the Judiciary Committee chairman, Patrick Leahy from Vermont, for the speed and quickness with which he has brought this to the floor. I thank him for that, and I look forward to working with him with the same speed on any other judges the President might bring up and that the committee would put out. It is my hope we can get beyond partisanship on judiciary nominees and get to the business of filling the significant number of voids or vacancies that are out there today and that are limiting justice for people in this country. Justice delayed is justice denied. And a lack of available judges is denying justice to hundreds and thousands of Americans every day. So the chairman of the Judiciary Committee has my commitment as a member of the Judiciary Committee to help him in any way I can to move those. It is a great honor that Greg Frizzell will sit as a Federal judge in the northern district of Oklahoma, and it is my hope we will see many like him fill the spots across this country. With that, I yield the floor, Mr. President, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN. I will withhold.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I want to speak a few minutes about what we are doing. I also have several things I would like the American people to see. I have spent a lot of time thinking about the minimum wage and kind of the farce of what we are doing here. If we tell people we want them to have a real minimum wage, the debate ought to be about $13 an hour. If we, as the Government, are going to tell the States and the employers what they ought to be paying, giving them a real minimum wage, then surely they deserve to earn $28,000 a year. That is a livable wage. You can make it on that. The fact that nobody wants to do that and it will be voted down proves they know how onerous that would be on the economy. Nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to so disrupt wages. But it is OK to do it in a small amount. That is what we are talking about. The first poster I have shows that 29 States and the District of Columbia have a minimum wage that is higher than the Federal minimum wage.