Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I withdrew amendments for things I still do not agree with that are in this bill. I am not going to spend the time in the Senate now, but I will spend the time before we have the final vote on this bill to discuss what is in this bill that is not emergency, that is not an obligation by the Federal Government, that is not prudent or fiscally wise. I will not spend the time on that at this time. Amendment No. 3641, Division XIX

Mr. COBURN. I ask unanimous consent division XIX be brought up.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this is an amendment that removes $11.3 million from our Corps of Engineers, Sacramento River Bank Protection Project in California. I have no lack of understanding of the potential flooding problems occurring in San Francisco and south of there in California and the way the rain patterns have changed. I am not wishing to defeat anything that will make a real difference on that. This amendment is about a program that is 46 years old that, according to the Corps' own statement, is 95 percent complete, that we have already spent $131 million on, that $10.6 million is being spent this year, as we speak, on this program. In this supplemental, they are asking for another $11 million for this program. I don't doubt that the $11 million will be needed. But it won't even get there under this emergency supplemental, through the Corps' own admission, until after September when the new year starts. First of all, it does not meet the definition of ``emergency,'' that it should meet in coming through this bill. What does this program do? This program solves and prevents levee erosion problems while providing fish and wildlife mitigation. That is what the program does. It has been going since 1960. We had $6.3 million included in the energy and water appropriations bill last year and an additional $10.96 million. The Corps also stated that $57 million more is needed for the final completion of this project. This says a lot about the Corps of Engineers and their ability to get things done. Although I might agree we need to eventually spend the money for this project, it certainly ought to be paid for and come out of the energy and water appropriations because the money will not get there to be utilized. They have not even spent the money appropriated on the spend-out this year. I am not, in substance, against completing this project. It comes back to the same things we have been talking about. Is it an emergency that we do it now? And if, in fact, it is an emergency, will the money get there and make a difference? It won't. I am asking this go through the regular process, through the energy and water appropriations, that it be authorized to the extent that the Senators from California would like to have it, and that we do it in regular order. It would be different if we thought this money was really going to make a difference with the problems in California, but it is not. It will not change one thing in terms of how the Corps operates this program this year. By the time the money would get there, it would have to be reprogrammed anyhow. I have some other problems with this program. Ask yourself: If we have spent $131 million plus $6.3 million, $137 million already, and the Corps says it is 95 percent complete, and then they say they need another $51 million to complete it, how can it be 95 percent complete? This is not about the need. This is about the inefficiencies within the Corps. This is about whether we can get the money to solve a problem that is deemed an emergency at this time, but I seriously doubt whether that has been the fact. The Corps has been cited on numerous occasions by the GAO for its inability to predict costs, stay within the forecasted budget. In fact, some of GAO's strong criticisms have come in regard to this very work in the Sacramento area. I made the point in an earlier amendment with Senator Obama that the Corps made $5 a cubic yard on everything we removed in Katrina. That is over 30 million cubic yards. That is $150 million the Corps took out of the Homeland Security and the emergency appropriations. Why don't we spend that money on this? Why do we borrow more money against our children and grandchildren to accomplish this worthy goal? When I ask those questions, we do not get any answers. No one answers the question, can we efficiently be good stewards of our children and our grandchildren's money? When is enough enough? If this project is, indeed, an emergency, as we are being told, we need to be asking the tough questions. How long does it take to shore up levees near Sacramento--46 years for the Corps to do this job? I have a real sneaking suspicion 10 years from now the Corps will continue to ask us for money to shore up levees in Sacramento. And if that is the case and they have not completed it, it means they will not have done a good job on the very job we ask them to do, which is something I contend anyway. These funds may, in fact, be needed. If that is the case, the Corps of Engineers has failed miserably. I intend, in my oversight committee, to ask for an explanation of every penny the Corps has spent on the river bank protection near Sacramento. Representatives of this city and taxpayers all across the country should be outraged regarding the irresponsibility of the Corps in carrying out this project. Forty years and over $130 million later, we are asked to give the Corps an additional $11 million in emergency appropriations, money we will have to borrow, all because the Corps cannot do its job correctly the first, third, fourth, fifth, up to the 46th time. Enough is enough. No venture would ever continue to receive such high funding with this track record. Two other questions I think should be asked. Does the Corps lack the resources to fund the emergency needs? According to the Office of Management and Budget, the Corps of Engineers had $4.5 billion in unobligated balances last year and has an estimate of $5.8 billion in unobligated balances this year. According to the Corps itself, as of March 30, their unobligated scheduled carryover was $1.49 billion. They have the money to do this right now. The Sacramento Corps office will have unobligated balances by the end of 2006 in excess of $13.5 million. I ask again: Why are we going to borrow money when we have the money? If, in fact, it is an emergency, the Corps has the money in unobligated balances to accomplish it. All we need is an authorization to do that. How do we prioritize Federal funds in California? In fiscal year 2006, California has 549 earmarks costing $733 million. In addition, it received $10 million in earmarks for museums alone. That expenditure alone would have been enough to pay for nearly all of this requested work. Are the following museum earmarks more important than protecting the city of Sacramento: $200,000 for the California State Mining and Mineral Museum; $550,000 for development and construction of Noah's Park at the Skirball Cultural Center; $4.35 million for repairs of Sala Burton Maritime Museum, in San Francisco; $300,000 to the city of San Jacinto for improvements to the museum/Extudillo property; $175,000 for the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum; $500,000 for the construction of a museum also at the San Francisco Fine Arts Museum. Just the museum earmarks alone would take care of this. So instead, what we are going to do, we are going to borrow money because we do not have the money to pay for this. Attempting to attach more funds for the project, the project in its 46th year, outside of the regular budget process, is an abuse of taxpayer resources, takes advantage of the emergency appropriations process intended to deal only with the most urgent and immediate needs of the devastated gulf region, and to provide for our soldiers in battle. Senator Boxer said on May 1, 2005, the war should be paid for in the budget, not in an emergency supplemental. The war is known. The cost of the war was anticipated by some people that this administration fired. The cost of this war is spinning out of control. The same can be said for this project. This project was authorized in 1960. It has received over $100 million and its future costs are known. This should be addressed in the regular appropriations process, not in an emergency supplemental. With that, I yield the floor, and I offer time to the opponents of my amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. COBURN. When you were changing Candlestick Park, you did not borrow money from future generations of Americans to do that? You found it within the budget? I believe that is correct; is it not?

Mr. COBURN. Will the Senator yield for an additional question?

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Obama for his hard work. Soon after Katrina hit, one of the things that we noticed from our Federal Financial Oversight Committee was a lack of transparency and accountability in a lot of what the Corps of Engineers does, that FEMA does. We put forward a bill which did not make it out but certainly should have, especially in hindsight, with the waste, fraud, and abuse. I am not going to go through the amendments. The distinguished Senator from Illinois has done that. The American public is entitled to some facts. We held a hearing 3 weeks ago today in New Orleans. The distinguished Presiding Officer was at that hearing. Here is what we know: Out of $1.6 billion for debris removal, we paid three times too much. We paid the Corps on 30 million cubic yards $5 to administer it; $150 million to the Corps that was contracted through, and then they contracted with a major national corporation which then subcontracted with a regional corporation which then subcontracted. Here is what we found. The easy work was cherry-picked. The hard work was left to the people of Mississippi and Louisiana and some in Alabama. The local people actually have to do some of the work. One of the ways to achieve recovery in a disaster is to make sure you encourage the employment of locals. What we actually saw was that when the average price per cubic yard was $32--that is what the Federal Government paid--the average price received by those people actually doing the front-end load of work and the dump trucking was $5 a cubic yard. So it was actually six times greater than what the sub sub sub sub--six levels of contractors down, the one that actually did the work--got paid. Understandably, it is a big task. It is understandable that we need somebody. But what we had was a bureaucracy that hired a bureaucracy which then hired five layers of contractors, and each one took something out of the pie and didn't contribute much except the ones actually doing the work. In our subcommittee we have a poster that says: Accountability and transparency. There is no transparency to this. We have to dig, fight, and almost bite to get the information out of the agencies. These are four very commonsense amendments that will aid in transparency and accountability in the Federal Government. The Presiding Officer asked during that hearing: Why couldn't the Corps have hired a contract manager or why couldn't the Corps have been the contract manager and taken some of that profit that was consumed, which was about 60 percent, that didn't actually get to the folks in cleaning up the debris? Why couldn't the Corps have functioned that way? It was such a good hearing that FEMA didn't even stick around to listen to the people from Louisiana talk about their dealings with FEMA. That explains the real problems with FEMA. The contracting officer didn't stay for the hearing to hear the criticisms, factually based criticisms, that were very enlightening. The second area I will discuss is the Travel Trailer Program. The American people ought to ask: When a trailer costs $16,000 to $17,000, and it costs $50,000 to install, something is wrong. But when you go to look at the $50,000, we see this layering again. We see a layer to the Corps, to a major contractor, to a subcontractor, subcontractor, subcontractor, subcontractor. The American people aren't getting value, No. 1. And, No. 2, the people who deserve to be helped are getting a delay as the process goes through. I have a couple of pictures to show. This is what we ought to be asking of agencies. We ought to say you ought to be accountable. It ought to be transparent. You ought to be able to find the contractors. As a matter of fact, FEMA doesn't even go down more than one layer in terms of the contracts. That is policy; that is not law. They protect that information so it cannot be available to Members of Congress or to the American public to know what is going on. We ought to be able to see results. We saw that we spent three times as much money to do something over a much longer period of time than what we should have. We know, for example, the major contracts initially were no bid, of which the Corps took something off of the top as well. There has been no priority setting and no responsiveness, and there has been no spending discipline. We ought to make sure the moneys that go forward are under the guise of good accounting practices, transparency, and we ought to be able to put in place, as this money is spent, a way for the Congress to hold the agencies accountable on how they spend this money. It is my hope that the leadership, chairman, and ranking member will look at these amendments closely. I think they are very positive in terms of making the needed adjustments. On homeland security, we had a tremendous number of hearings--I think 24--on FEMA. It relates all the way back up through the Corps and all the way back down. Accountability is sorely lacking. These amendments would correct that. I thank my friend from Illinois for his insistence and hard work in this area. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I will agree with the chairman we are almost ready. I just wanted to make a couple of points.

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object, I have 3 minutes' worth of housekeeping that I would like to get done on amendments that will make the process move faster and offer amendments without debate so they can get in the queue. I would like to do that after Senator Burr, if that is OK with the Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. COBURN. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I thank the chairman for protecting my right to be back on the floor in regular order. But I want to go through again with the American people what is supposed to be an emergency bill by our own rules: It is a bill that is necessary, essential, and vital; sudden, quickly coming into being, not building up over time; it is an urgent, pressing, and compelling need requiring immediate action; it is unforeseen, unpredictable, unanticipated, and not permanent but temporary only in nature. This second division of my amendment is an amendment that removes $15 million. It is simple. In this bill is $15 million for the promotion of seafood. Seafood consumption in this country is at an all-time high. If you look around the country, look on television, look at magazines--the beef producers do this, but they get no Federal money. The pork producers do this, but they get no Federal money. The poultry producers do this, but they get no Federal money. The milk producers do this, but they get no Federal money in terms of their promotion. They pay individually to have a promotional sequence. As a matter of fact, there is a Louisiana Seafood already in existence. So what we are going to do is take and give $15 million to a private entity of the seafood producers to spend to increase demand for seafood. That may be all right, but that is certainly not an emergency. It is certainly not something that should be in an emergency bill that isn't going to be paid for by us but by our children and grandchildren. I am not objecting to the fact that we want to try to increase the demand for seafood, but if you look at the facts, the real problem our fisheries are having, especially with shrimp and those kinds of things, is with foreign competition. As you look at the problems associated with it, there are more in terms of competition than there are in terms of lack of supply. This is real simple. Why should we be subsidizing for one industry what we don't subsidize for any other industry? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is where this money is going to go. There is nothing in the bill to tell them what to do with it. According to them, ``We have no plans for how to spend this money.'' That is what NOAA said. They have no plans. It is not in the report language or in the bill. So what will happen is the committee will tell them how to spend the money. We won't know how it is; it is not published now. If we don't make a decision, we are not going to know. Is there going to be oversight? Is somebody going to take a million- dollar salary out of this $15 million? We don't know. We don't have a mechanism in place to manage it. That is the problem. If this had come through an authorizing committee, studied by our peers, and they said this is something in the long-term best interests of our country, then I probably would not be raising this issue. But I don't think that is what has happened here.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I ask that division II of my amendment No. 3641 be in order at this time.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I have been on the floor for 4 hours today. I filed amendments, brought them up before anybody else brought an amendment up here, other than four prior ones that I brought up. I don't want to stop anybody from offering amendments, but the way we clear them is to debate the ones already on line. Those of us who have amendments that have been out and offered, I suggest that the regular order ought to go forward, and as we finish those--nobody is planning on cutting that off or trying to limit anybody. With that, I believe the proper thing for us to do would be to go to the regular order.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3641, division III, and ask unanimous consent for its withdrawal.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I call up four amendments to place them in the queue. They are the Barak Obama-Coburn transparency amendments, four in order. I ask they be called up.

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

Mr. COBURN. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, reclaiming my time, the other point I wish to make is the proponents say this is to create a new niche market to reestablish the shrimp sales of the gulf coast. I want to help the gulf coast. I want to help them recover, but I want to do it in a way that builds a long-term, satisfactory, strong fishing industry down there. We are at an all-time high in the consumption of seafood. Where our shrimp industry has been hurt is through globalization. The fact is, the real damage done to that industry, besides what has happened as a result of the hurricane, is they are getting beat in the world market. I ask the Members of this body to think: Do we want to start this, and should we be doing it when cattle prices are down and producing more beef? Should we do it for the beef producers? Should we do it for the chicken farmers? In other words, should they not participate in paying for this rather than everybody else in America paying for it? I would portend this is something that is not what we should be doing and it is not just about not wanting to help those people. I want to help them, but I don't believe this is the way to do it. This is a small amount of money in this $104 billion-plus bill, but it is a principle as we walk down the line: how do we say no to all these other agricultural interests when we have said yes to one. I am very worried with the wording in the report language that requires the committee to run this rather than requires the bureaucracy to run it when there is no instruction for the bureaucracy, which means it is not going to have sunshine and it is not going to have oversight. I think that is part of our problems with spending as well. I see the distinguished Senator from Alabama is here. I will be happy to yield time to him for debate on this issue.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I will do this quickly. First of all, what is the definition of ``emergency'' by our own budget rules? Necessary, essential, vital, suddenly, quickly coming into being, not building over time, urgent, pressing, compelling need, requiring immediate action, unforeseen, unpredictable, and unanticipated, not permanent, temporary in nature. That is the first point I would make. The second point is the committee's own report says: Even prior to Katrina, Presidents, business leaders and local and State officials seriously considered relocating the rail line from its present location to alleviate burgeoning traffic which continually worsened as the region's tourism industry grew. This is $700 million. It is a great project for Mississippi. I agree. It is probably something that should be done. The question is, Is it an emergency and should everybody else in this country pay for it? I could go into all the details. I will not do it in deference to the chairman's request that I be brief. But Mississippi people have spoken. This was planned long before this hurricane. The fact is, if we are going to replace this rail line with Federal money which is going to come in and build a new road, that is going to be susceptible to the same hurricane damage. We have to figure out how we should go through a regular process. The final point I would make is the committee report eliminates the ability of the Department of Transportation to say whether it is a safety issue. They specifically take it out so they cannot stop it. The point is, we are leaving the regular process to do something which is maybe a great idea, but our grandchildren shouldn't be paying for it. If we continue to do this, this is going to be costly. This $700 million will cost $4 billion by the time we start paying it back, if we want to sacrifice the next generation--not in terms of trying to take it away from Mississippi but setting a standard of which we can behave in a manner that secures the future. That is what I am asking for. I am sorry it is against two Senators I really like. I want Mississippi to be a hit. This is not the way for us to conduct business in the Senate. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its consideration.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask that this point, division 1 of the original amendment, be pending, and I will withhold my time until I have noticed both Senators Lott and Cochran--and I see Senator Cochran here--because I know they will want to be active on this debate. I would ask their guidance on when I should bring this up for consideration of this first amendment which has to do with the railroad and supplemental moneys for the movement of the CSX railroad in Mississippi. I ask their advice and desire.

Mr. COBURN. I thank the Senator from Mississippi. I want to talk first about this. Our country is facing some pretty significant financial difficulties, and we find ourselves with a supplemental bill, as requested by the President. Basically, the whole idea of this supplemental is something the American people should reject. We have been in a war now going into the fourth year. We should have the money for funding this war as part of the regular budget. It should not be in an emergency supplemental. Of what we know about the Katrina results, that should have been budgeted this year as well, but it was not. It is important for everybody to know why it was not. It is not budgeted because it becomes part and parcel of the debt your children and grandchildren will have to pay, without ever getting on the books of the Federal Government. So when you hear the deficit or the surplus--which it has not been for some time, as a matter of fact not since the early 1970s if you were honest in the accounting--you hear the budget numbers this year, for what the budget will be, and it will not count this money. This money will not be counted, although it will be added to the IOUs that our children and grandchildren will be paying back. I am thankful for the leadership, in terms of giving us an opportunity this June to talk about budget process reform. Nobody would run their household this way. No business runs this way. This is a gimmicky way under which we can disguise how much we put this country in debt, and it ought not to be that way. Most people understood that and would agree with it. Yet we find ourselves here. I am not happy we are doing a supplemental emergency bill in that regard. The second thing is many of the things with Katrina we knew were coming before the budget came through the Senate and the House, and that should not be an emergency. Emergencies are supposed to be reserved for true emergencies, unexpected costs facing the Federal Government. This bill is loaded with things that are not unexpected. We knew the war was going to be expected. We knew some of these costs associated with Katrina and Rita and Wilma were expected. So we need to address the integrity of our process. It is my hope in June we will be able to do that. I know this amendment will, in fact, not win when it comes to a floor vote on the Senate floor. But I want to give a little background. During Hurricane Katrina, large sections of the CSX railroad along the gulf coast of Mississippi were damaged or destroyed. One 40-mile stretch of track was completely destroyed. The railroad hugs the gulf coast and stretches from New Orleans to Mobile, AL. It is one of only two railroads that reach New Orleans from the east. The other passes over Lake Ponchartrain and runs parallel to the I-10 Twin Spans Bridge. Three railroads approach New Orleans from the west. Although the CSX railroad was significantly damaged by Katrina, it was repaired; $250 million in insurance proceeds and I believe somewhere between $30 million and $50 million from CSX to repair it and bring it back up to usable and safe status. Governor Barber, following Hurricane Katrina, created a commission. My hat is off to him. I think he has done a wonderful job for the State of Mississippi and their response to this. This commission was to review and recommend options for recovery and rebuilding in the State of Mississippi. The report released by the Governor's commission recommended purchase of the CSX right-of-way in order to create a new east-west thoroughfare, relieve congestion on US 90, and to provide for light rail or rapid transport through Gulfport. The report also proposes to transform US 90, which runs directly along the gulf coast, into a scenic, pedestrian, friendly beach boulevard. One of the Commission's reports also states: For many years, planners and local leaders have called for the removal of freight traffic on the CSX railway, which runs east-west through the region, roughly 800 feet from the coast. I actually went to Mississippi and visited this area after the hurricane. You can see the hurricane damage, you can see this road, and then you can see the rail. Numerous news outlets, including the Washington Post and ABC, have stated local developers and planners have wanted this railway relocated for years. I agree with that. I think this is a great development plan for the State of Mississippi to enhance the value of their beaches, their waterfront, and the wonderful coastal assets they have. I do not object to the plans behind this. I think it is very good from a developmental standpoint. What is unknown at this point is where the existing CSX freight traffic will be transferred. While the Governor's commission recommends in some areas the relocation of the railroad somewhere north of I-10, which is 3 to 6 miles from the coast, the Commission's final report pegs the cost of that proposal at $795 million and states the idea is no longer seen as practical. If the entire railroad right-of-way of Mississippi is purchased by the State, rail traffic heading west from Alabama would have to be rerouted northwest from Mobile to Hattiesburg, into Mississippi, and then southwest into New Orleans and Lake Ponchartrain. The additional distance of this route relative to the CSX line along the coast is approximately 100 miles. There is currently a railroad that runs from Hattiesburg into Gulfport, but if the CSX right-of-way is surrendered, it would not be possible for a freight train traveling along that line to go from Gulfport to New Orleans. There are a lot of other things I will not go into. I think the principles that we ought to be asking about are, is this a bad idea? No, it is not a bad idea. It is a good idea. No. 2, is it an emergency? I would contend that this is not an emergency, especially on the fact that this has been planned and advocated for years in Mississippi in terms of the development--some for safety. Some will argue the railroad line now has 70-plus crossings. But the statistics on safety are that they are at a 5-year low in terms of injury. For 30 years it has been a declining number. It is not an emergency. The railroad is vulnerable, where it currently lies, to hurricanes. There is no question about that. But so will a five- to seven-lane highway that is going to be put in its place be vulnerable. The current budget resolution for 2006 explicitly defines what constitutes an emergency, and it should be noted that all of the following five criteria must be satisfied in order for something to be considered an emergency: necessary, essential, and violent; sudden, quickly coming into being and not building up over time; an urgent, pressing, and compelling need requiring immediate action; unforeseen, unpredictable, and unanticipated; and not permanent, temporary in nature. The proposal to move this railroad does not meet the definition of emergency as defined by the Congress. The permanent removal of a railroad to make way for permanent construction of a highway does not qualify as an emergency either, as well. While the railroad may indeed be vulnerable to hurricanes because of its proximity to the coast, it makes no sense to replace it with a highway that is going to be just as vulnerable in its proximity to the coast. Despite the vulnerability of the railroad, CSX and its insurers quickly repaired the lines such that it was fully operational within months of its destruction. There is no desire, I believe, by CSX to move this line, and it would be good business sense if CSX thought it was vulnerable to the point it should make a business decision to move the line interior to the State of Mississippi. According to Gary Sease, a spokesperson for CSX: We rebuilt that line across the gulf coast as quickly as possible because it is a critical artery for us. It serves our purposes. It meets our customers' needs. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Furthermore, at a time when it is important more than ever to have freight quickly delivered to devastated regions in New Orleans along the gulf coast, it is inadvisable to remove one of the only railroads into New Orleans from the east, one of two, thus forcing the remaining freight over Lake Pontchartrain. Within the emergency spending bill, the railroad funding is provided through the Rail Line Relocation Capital Grant Program which was created in the 2005 highway bill. That program requires the Secretary of Transportation to analyze the effects of the railroad relocation on motor vehicle, pedestrian traffic, safety, community, quality of life, and area commerce. However, the language providing money for the railroad specifically prohibits the Secretary of Transportation from considering those factors as they apply to the CSX relocation. If safety is a sufficient reason to relocate the rail, it is incredibly odd that the Secretary of Transportation would be prohibited from making judgments as to the effects of the railroad relocation on safety and traffic. We will hear today that hurricane evacuation is a reason to relocate the railroad so it will relieve congestion along U.S. 90 and allow for a better evacuation route in the potential of future hurricanes. They will also say at the same time that the railroad's current location is too vulnerable to future hurricanes. These claims are mutually exclusive and cannot be both true at the same time. If the current location is too vulnerable to future damage, it makes no sense to build a brand new highway in exactly the same place. It will be wiped out in the next massive hurricane as well. Both the railroad and the proposed new east-west thoroughfare are located half a mile from U.S. 90 and the gulf coast. A major interstate highway, I-10, is located only 3 to 6 miles farther to the north. Given that the railroad was completely destroyed by Katrina at least over a 40-mile section, the argument that a new road in its place would be safe is hard to fathom. I have great respect for the Senators from Mississippi. They are great advocates for their State. They are accomplished legislators. They are experienced beyond all means in the operations of the Senate and how to accomplish the best goal that they perceive for their State and our country. I have to say that at some point it has to stop. Americans have to ask the question: No. 1, is something truly an emergency? No. 2, is it truly the responsibility of the rest of the country to do an economical development project that was on the drawing table long before Katrina and to use Katrina as the justification to have the rest of us pay for it? I don't believe that is fair for future generations of this country. I don't think it is fair for the process. I think you can see in the wording of this bill that the very definition of emergency is not met. I think you can also see very clearly that blocking the Secretary of Transportation from making an evaluation on safety was designed because they may in fact not pass that test. It has to stop. Our children and grandchildren deserve for us to preserve the opportunities we have had. We cannot continue to borrow money from their future standard of living so we can do what we want to do today. The heritage of our country is one of sacrifice in the present generation to create opportunity for the future. This is a good plan for Mississippi; it is just not a plan that the people of the rest of the country--especially on an emergency basis-- ought to be asked to do. If in fact it is brought back through the proper process and channels and looked at by the full committee and this body feels it should be done in a prudent and thoughtful way, that would be far better than putting it into this bill. Mississippi will win if this happens. But the future of our country loses if this kind of thing continues to happen. This is called an earmark. It is placed in a bill to benefit one specific area at the expense of everyone else. It has legitimate value for the State of Mississippi. It is not an emergency. And it certainly will be paid for through lost opportunities for our kids and our grandkids. Think about what $700 million could do for everybody else in Katrina. How many classrooms can be rebuilt? How many hospitals to serve the poor and helpless can be made available? How much education can we offer up that will create future opportunities and earnings? The progress we seek to secure for the future is being limited by our own inability to make the hard decisions that aren't pleasing, aren't fun, but that are necessary to secure that future. If you assume an interest rate on our debt--which is going to be very soon 6 percent--this $700 million relocation will balloon to more than $4 billion by the time we start paying it back. The net present value of this isn't $700 million, it is $4 billion. That is what your grandchildren will have to pay back for what we are proposing to do today. I respect a great deal the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. He has a very difficult job. Everybody asks and nobody wants to give when they come to see Chairman Cochran. Everybody has a need. He has the job to find the best way to get a bill out of his committee. This particular project just happens to lie within his home State, and he advised me that his best recommendation would be for me to withdraw the amendment. I understand why. But I cannot in good conscience withdraw what I perceive to be and many are willing to debate on the floor something that is truly not an emergency, and truly even though it will offer great benefits for Mississippi in terms of economic development is not something the rest of us in the country should be paying for. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, is there objection to setting aside the pending amendment?