Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, the point I wish to make is the American people deserve to have sunshine on everything we do. The conference report would not adequately reflect the earmarks in the House, the directives in the House, or the limitations in the House. We are going to be voting on the bill without the knowledge of what those limitations or earmarks are. I would like to turn for a second to the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. COBURN. The question the American people have to ask themselves is, if we are going into hock and we are going to put this kind of lien on our kids, should we be taking money off tax rolls? Should we be spending more money to maintain the land? Or if, in fact, we are going to do this, should we not see an outcome that reduces our cost by reducing insulin dependence type 2, by reducing dialysis? I believe the choice is very clear, that we ought to be taking care of those who need us the most and not add land that is going to add cost. In fact we should, invest in those people where we are going to decrease the cost of the Indian Health Service. With that, I yield the floor. (At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.) Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I had to be absent from the Senate today, and I missed votes beginning with the motion to waive the Budget Act with respect to amendment No. 1019, offered by my colleague from Oklahoma, Mr. Coburn. I had to miss the votes in order to travel to Charlotte, NC, to participate in a Base Realignment and Closing, BRAC, Commission Regional Hearing at Central Piedmont Community College. I am not absent from the Senate on days when we have votes without good reason. This afternoon there was nowhere more important for me to be than at the BRAC Regional Hearing, which is part of the process whereby the fate of the 130th Air National Guard Wing, based in Charleston, WV, will be decided. I believe it is a crucial part of my duty as a United States Senator from West Virginia to protect the 130th. While I respect the difficult work done by members of the BRAC Commission, and understand that their preliminary recommendations were made in a good faith effort to improve the efficiency and efficacy of our armed services. However, I believe that gutting the 130th is wrong and I must make every effort to oppose it. The 130th plays an important role in our national security, as well as the security of the greater Washington area. It has also provided hundreds of National Guard personnel who responded to the call of duty in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In addition to 340 full-time Guard members, the 130th employs 201 federal technicians, and more than 80 active guards. The State of West Virginia also employs more than 50 State employees whose jobs depend on the continued presence of the 130th. At a time when enlistments and retention for both our National Guard units and regular Army are suffering, the 130th had 96 percent reenlistment, fifth in the nation. Every single job in West Virginia is sacred to me, and as these jobs also protect my home State and are a vital part of our military family and national security, I believe very strongly that they should not be cut. With regard to the amendment by Senator Coburn, I believe he made very persuasive arguments about problems in Indian Country of diabetes and drug and alcohol addiction. When you consider that Native Americans from the ages of 45-74 have a rate of diabetes roughly seven times the rate for all Americans, and that drug and alcohol addiction is rampant, I believe most of our colleagues would feel that all that can be done to help the Indian Health Service--IHS--combat these plagues should be done. However, we are in a time of severe fiscal constraints, and I commend the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee for successfully completing the difficult task of meeting so many priorities as best they could. The underlying bill contains about $100 million in appropriated funds for diabetes programs under the IHS, and there are more than $150 million available in mandatory spending in other programs targeted at the same problem. Similarly, the bill funds alcohol and drug abuse programs at $145.3 million. Senator Coburn would have shifted additional funding to those important causes by transferring funds to be appropriated for land acquisition. The bill contains only about $154 million for Federal land acquisition. While IHS diabetes and drug treatment programs surely could have benefited from an extra infusion of cash, it was also important to fund the land acquisition program at a reasonable level. I will support efforts to adequately fund all programs of the Indian Health Service, and while I would have opposed the Coburn amendment, I commend him for his obvious and careful attention to this matter.

Mr. COBURN. I do. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. COBURN. Do you believe the average American can get on a computer, after this bill comes through conference, and see where all the money is spent?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on my amendment.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 1002 of the Interior appropriations bill be withdrawn.

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

Mr. COBURN. There is no question a significant amount of money is being spent on these two programs, but when you compare it to every other group in this country, what you see is about $1 compared to $3 for everybody else in terms of diabetes. You cannot very well square that when there is six times the rate of end-stage renal disease in Native Americans. That is an important point because if you can prevent end-stage renal disease, you save $50,000 per year per person in not having them on dialysis, as well as the fact it is a miserable life being on dialysis. So the point is that there are increases. I will recognize that. I still say how in the world can we justify buying land when we are stealing $541 billion from our grandchildren? And No. 2 is why not people instead of land? That is a legitimate question, especially in an underserved segment of our population that needs the dollars that will make a tremendous difference. I would just ask the Senator, can't we come to an agreement that a portion of this money should be moved to solve this very tragic problem that affects and afflicts Native Americans at a higher rate than any other group in this country?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his courtesy. I plan, in a moment, to move to waive the point of order, but before I do that I think every American ought to be asking the question this is $544 billion which we are going into the market and borrowing on budget this year, $544 billion that our kids and our grandkids are going to have to pay back at a minimum of 6 percent interest every year. So we are going to pay back about $2 trillion on this $544 billion. That is going to be about $70,000 apiece that we are going to wrangle their future with. And the question is, Should we be buying more land if we are going to put our kids in debt?

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1003. I would like to be recognized to speak on that amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. COBURN. Is it not the offeror of the amendment who places in order the amendments that are called up and lays the other amendments aside?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 1015 be withdrawn.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent to call up amendment 1019.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask to be recognized in support of the amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, we just heard a good observation about the increase in spending, but it is important for the American people to understand, we did ramp up homeland security. We did ramp up defense. Let me read the increases in spending that have occurred in other areas since 2001: legislative branch, 40 percent; judiciary, 40 percent; Agriculture, 25.7 percent; Defense, 55 percent; Education, 109 percent; Energy, 48 percent; Health and Human Services, 53.1 percent; Homeland Security, 153 percent; Housing and Urban Development, 38.2 percent; Justice, 22.7 percent; Labor, Health, and Human Services, 57 percent; Department of State, 74 percent; Transportation, 40 percent; Veterans Affairs, 44.5 percent; General Services Administration, 404 percent; National Science Foundation, 61 percent. The average has been almost 39 percent in the last 4 years. Outside of homeland security and defense, the increase in spending by the Congress has been almost 30 percent. I come to the floor of the Senate to talk about the spending problems. I also want the American people to understand what is happening to us presently. This chart represents the on-budget Federal deficit. It is not the games that we play in Washington. This is the true amount of money we are going to spend that we don't have, that we are actually going to borrow money to pay for. As you can see, this year it is going to be $544 billion. That is $544 billion that we are going to ask our children and grandchildren to pay back. There is no question that we have some belt-tightening to do. There is no question that the authors of this appropriations bill have done some of that in the bill. The amendment I wish to focus on presently is an amendment that reduces funding for land acquisition within the bill by $121.2 million, from $154 million, for a total of $32.8 million. The reasoning behind this amendment is, there is $92 million in reserve accounts right now to buy land that had not been spent this year. The committee put forward another $154 million. Buying land to preserve our scenic heritage, natural wildlife areas, is a good goal. The problem is, do we need to do it now when we are in a time of war, when we are borrowing from our children's future to be able to accomplish that? Is now the time to spend money on it? If not, is there another need? Is there a priority on which we should be spending? I would say that we need to have another priority. The current bill provides funding for land acquisition through four separate programs: $12.3 million for the Bureau of Land Management, $40.8 million for the Fish and Wildlife Service, $56 million for the National Park Service, and $44.9 million for the Forest Service. Within the amendment, land acquisition funding for both the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service is eliminated, while funding for both Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service is reduced by $32 million. According to OMB and staff estimates, the estimated amount of unobligated balances for Federal land acquisition at the end of the current fiscal year will be $92 million. OMB estimates that BLM will have $28 million in unobligated balances. In contrast, the bill provides an additional $12.3 million for BLM. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is set to receive almost $41 million, will have an estimated $32 million in unobligated balances at the end of this year, according to OMB. Of the $121.2 million savings produced, $60 million in this amendment is transferred to a special diabetes program for Indians, and $61.2 million is transferred to the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Program. Both programs are with the Indian Health Service. Why is that important? There are some important things about diabetes with Native Americans that need to be recognized. The question is, Do we spend money on land or do we spend money to improve the people's lives that need us the most? We have a real crisis in health care in Indian Country. The causes are many, but one controllable factor is the delivery of federally funded health care services. Quality of care is severely impacted by poor oversight, lack of competitive forces, and the serious lack of funding prioritization. My amendment addresses the latter. There are 107,000 Native Americans that suffer from diabetes.

Mr. COBURN. We were in the midst of talking about whether we buy land or take care of diabetes with native Americans. That is what this amendment does. It is obvious we are not going to be able to trim the spending in this bill, but it certainly is not obvious that we cannot reprioritize. Let me give some facts and figures on Native American diabetes compared with diabetes in every other group in this country. The national U.S. population rate for diabetes is 6.3 percent. For Native Americans between 45 and 74 years of age, it is 45 percent, 7 times the national average. The most extensively studied, the Pima Indians, an estimated 50 percent of that population suffers from type II diabetes. Native Americans who have diabetes suffer from increased rates of kidney failure, amputations, blindness, heart disease, and stroke. End stage renal disease in Native Americans with diabetes is six times higher than any other group in this country. Diabetic retinopathy, i.e., blindness from diabetes, occurs in 24 percent of Native Americans who have diabetes. Only 2 to 4 percent of the diabetes in the Native Americans is type I; 98 percent of it is type II diabetes. Alcohol and substance abuse is where the other half of this money goes. Nineteen percent of Native American youth age 12 to 17 are consuming alcohol at an alarming rate, headed for addiction; 12.8 percent of the young 12 to 17-year-olds engage in binge drinking. That is five or more drinks, weekly. HHS estimates that 7.6 percent of Native Americans over the age of 26 are classified as heavy alcohol users. American Indians are five times more likely to die of alcohol- related causes than other groups and they face significant increases in carcinoma of the liver and chronic diseases such as psoriasis. Mortality rates from alcohol and substance abuse are seven times higher in Native American populations than in the general population. This amendment does not cut funding. It simply moves money from land to people, moves money from the purposes of why we are here to care for those who cannot care for themselves. I would say in Oklahoma, it is very evident to see the underfunding for the Indian Health Service, the number of true full-blooded Native Americans who cannot receive care that was promised under treaty to get the care they need for their diabetes, for alcohol abuse, and other substance abuse. This is a simple amendment. I understand a budget point of order is going to be raised against it because it spends money faster than the land acquisitions do. I plan on moving to waive that point of order, but I would say to my friends on the committee, and I would say to the people of America, should we be buying more land when we cannot afford it? And if we are going to spend the money anyway, should we not be spending that on something that is going to increase the quality of life and increase the health care of those who are least fortunate in our society? I would also ask, having looked at this and then refer to the increased spending since 2001, how many Americans have received a 39- percent pay increase since 2001? That is how much Federal Government spending, discretionary spending--that is not Medicare, that is not Social Security, that is not Medicaid, but discretionary spending--has risen. It is time for us to tighten our belt. This is one way to move the priorities back to where they should be in terms of caring for real people, not land. The other point that I would make is when we buy land it costs us twice. No. 1, it takes it off the tax rolls which decreases the amount of income coming to the States, local communities, and municipalities. But No. 2, it markedly increases costs to care for that land. With $92 million unspent from last year, we are going to spend another $40 million to $50 million to maintain that land and close the purchase. With that, I yield to the chairman of the subcommittee and thank him for the time to allow me to present my case.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Yes.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, the Senate is embarking on the appropriations process for the year 2006. I think it is important that we start this process by looking at where we are. What concerns me greatly is the fact that we are less than honest with the American people about where we really are today. In fact, if you talk to the General Accounting Office, if you talk to economists worldwide, if you talk to economists here, we are on an unsustainable course in terms of our fiscal discipline. This chart shows the real numbers for the next few years in terms of what the deficit is. Washington is notorious about fudging the numbers in terms of our obligations. The deficits that are listed coming forward through the next 5 years include the off-budget deficit but also the money we are stealing from Social Security, as well as the money we are stealing from other trust funds, which brings us to a true deficit this year that is going to be about $541 billion. If we divide that $541 billion in deficit by 300 million Americans, and we have less than that, it comes very close to $2,000 per man, woman, and child that we are spending for money we don't have. The appropriation process, as well as the budget process, becomes important. In 2004, there were 131,000 taxpayers. Our population by next year is supposed to be somewhere around 300 million. The publicly held debt, not privately held, was almost $5 trillion. Based on individuals, the publicly held debt per man, woman, and child, is around $16,000. As we can see the course, by the year 2035, if we don't massively change the way this country operates, the individual publicly held debt will be in excess of $220,000 per man, woman, and child. If you divide that by taxpayers, the people who are paying taxes, it comes up to $470,000 per taxpayer. This year, as a percent of all the Government is going to spend, 7.5 percent is for interest alone on the national debt. If we look at that portion of the debt that we have some control over, outside of Medicare and Social Security, that percentage of spending is 18.5 percent. In other words, $1 out of every $5 that the Government spends today is to be spent on interest, paying for things that we have spent before that we didn't have the money to pay for. So we are digging a hole deeper than we can imagine. The first principle has to be honesty about where we are. Honestly, this year we are at $2,000 per man, woman, and child in spending money that we don't have, which means we are going to borrow it, which means we are going to pay interest on that. Then, next year, we are going to have $500 billion and then, sooner, the trend line is down, but it is not down fast enough for us to get out of the hole. The reason I bring this up is the appropriations process is where we have a chance to do a small amount of good to bring this down faster. This first bill on Interior is a good bill in terms of what it spends compared to last year. But it is important that we bring up some provisions that are in the bill that if, in fact, we are in debt, if you personally find yourself in this kind of debt, 25 percent of the money you are going to spend you don't have and you are going to borrow it, would you be spending money on buying more land, building new reception centers, adding things that are not necessary for us to function? I praise the authors of the bill in terms of keeping within the budget caps. They have done a good job of that. But I have some questions. For example, we are going to spend $162 million that we don't have to buy land--that is for the cost of the land--another $25 or $30 million to get that done, then another $25 or $30 million on that land every year hence forward to take care of it, let alone the fact that we are taking that land off the public tax rolls. We are diminishing the taxes that will go to the States from that land, and we are absorbing them. If we personalized this, would we be doing these types of things in a budget and financial situation in which we find ourselves borrowing 25 percent of our budget? More importantly, what is the consequence if we continue to do so? The consequence is that our children and grandchildren end up with a standard of living far below ours. The heritage of our great country has been sacrifice by the generations before to create opportunities and prosperity for the generations that are coming. We are about to become the first generation of Americans to not leave that promise for the next generation. David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, has written a book everybody ought to read. It is called ``Saving our Nation's Future.'' He outlines the unsustainable course this Nation is on in terms of our spending. Quite frankly, we don't seem to have the discipline, No. 1, to recognize the gravity of the situation in which we find ourselves, the fact that we are going to lay on our children a debt from which they cannot get out. This is what we can control. This doesn't talk about the unfunded liabilities associated with Social Security, which are rising $700 billion a year, and yet we are not doing anything to fix; the unfunded liability of over $35 trillion with Medicare which we are doing nothing to fix, the $8 to $10 trillion cost of Medicare D, a brand new benefit that we don't have any resources to pay for except by stealing it from the future of our children. We fail to grasp the gravity of the situation and the long-term consequences of our inaction today. I will be offering several amendments over the next 2 days that the Senate is in session, not from a critical point of view but from a commonsense point of view. We have $92 million sitting in accounts now to buy land. We are going to make a decision to add another $160 million, while we borrow $541 billion and charge to it our children? We are worse than any credit card addict ever was. There are no consequences for us. We pay no consequences. But the children and the grandchildren are going to pay a severe price for our lack of fiscal discipline, our lack of long-term vision about what our actions are today. If we had to, there is no question, across every appropriations bill we have, we could find 10 or 12 or 15 percent that is not absolutely necessary to be spent. The contrast isn't about whether or not we spend the money. It is about where the money comes from and who is paying for it. Of all the issues the Senate will discuss--we will talk about all sorts of social issues, and we will talk about the ethics of it and the morals of it--none of them compares to the immorality of putting our children and grandchildren in debtor's prison. That is what we are doing. We need to be talking individually about things that don't have to get done today, that can be deferred for the future, and saving that money today so that we don't compound the debt for our children.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, reclaiming my time----

Mr. COBURN. I am happy to yield.

Mr. COBURN. The important thing to remember--and there is some merit in the words of the Senator from North Dakota--is from 2000 to 2004, this body increased discretionary spending by 39 percent. We were not in a war as we did that. We increased discretionary spending across all accounts, in every appropriations bill in that period of time. We entered a recession. Did the spending decrease? No, it continued. The tax cuts were meant to stimulate the economy. The fact is, there is no discipline. There will not be any great argument on the tax side with me. But there is no discipline within the body of Congress to trim spending. What was the Interior Appropriations bill in the year 2000? It was 35 percent less than it is today. Yet, we are proud that we take 1.7 percent away? It is a good accomplishment. It is almost unheard of in the last 15 years in Congress. But the fact is, it already grew almost 40 percent. So what we are doing is taking away from a much larger pie. My point is that we do a disservice to this country if we fail to recognize we have an obligation to think long term, and a half billion dollar cut is a great start, but it is not near enough, as the Senator said. We need to cut across the board. Do you think we cannot find 10- percent savings in the Pentagon? We are holding oversight hearings. They spent a billion dollars on a travel system that should have cost $20 million. There is no oversight with which to go after the waste, fraud, and abuse within the Federal Government. We are more interested in passing the next bill than doing the hard work of oversight to see where the waste, fraud, and abuse is. We are going to do that. We have a Federal financial management committee. We have an ATP program. It is nothing but corporate welfare. We are going to spend $120 million on that and we are going to give $120 million to GE, IBM, and Chrysler to do research they are going to do otherwise. Yet we cannot get anybody to help us cut that out. The House cuts it out, but this body won't cut it out. The point is, there is a large need for the constituencies in this country to start holding us accountable for the spending increases. If the American public would go through this report language, they would be appalled that in a time of war we think it is fine to build new visitor centers all across this country. Remember, we are going to ask our grandchildren to pay for it--about four times what it actually costs. There has to be the start of some fiscal discipline that says we cannot afford to do that now, period. It is a good idea, but we cannot steal from our children anymore. And throughout this bill are multiple instances like that, which we could wait on. But we don't wait because the next election is more important than the next generation. With that, I say to the American public we are going to be offering several amendments. I doubt they will pass. But their intent is to start making a beginning in trimming and getting us into line, where we need to be--not for us, not for our political future, but for the future of our children and grandchildren. I admit to my friend from North Dakota that part of that--the tax policy--is important. But you cannot just look at one side of it. The stimulative policy of tax cuts was important to get this country out of recession. But while we were doing that, this body and the other body increased the discretionary spending in this country by 40 percent. And we cannot afford that. We cannot be proud, even though it is a good start. We should not be proud we cut a half billion dollars from this, when this whole thing was less than $20 billion in 2000. We could go through, if we wanted to care about our children and grandchildren, and cut 10 percent out of every agency. We don't have anybody here with courage who is willing to make the hard decisions to do that, because in the short run it hurts; in the long run, it is healthy.

Mr. COBURN. Yes.