Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I want to spend a few moments this morning talking about the budget point of order. But a bigger topic is we are going to have a vote at noon, and the question, in my mind, is: Will we at some point in the future recognize the hole we are in? When I talk to individual Members they all agree we are in a hole, we have a problem, and it is getting ready to bite this country in ways that are unimaginable in terms of its impact on the everyday citizens of this country. Yet in the Senate we have done nothing to address the bigger problems facing the country. Now we have a bill that has a budget point of order that is lying against it, and the question is: Will we continue the behavior that put our country in the problems we are in today or will we take a new track? The desire to help veterans is a noble desire, but there are a lot of points about this bill that the average American and the average veteran ought to be asking. There are also other questions, such as: What are the other things we are doing for jobs for veterans, and how well are they working. We have six veterans job training programs. We already have a preference across the Federal Government for hiring veterans. We have SBA programs like crazy. We have contracting programs 8a and 8b. We have all these programs, but not one hearing has been held by the committee of jurisdiction oversight of the job training programs or the other programs we have to enhance the economic well-being of our veterans. So what we have is a bill that is brought to the Senate floor that has good intentions behind it but shows the absolute laziness of Congress in terms of digging things out. When the GAO issued its duplication report on the job training programs for veterans, four of them do exactly the same thing. None of them has a metric. So we don't know if they are working, and we haven't held a hearing to find out if they are working. But what are we doing? We are proposing another jobs program for veterans without having done the serious work of how we invest $1 billion. Now, the other point that we should know is, we are spending $1 billion a year right now on veterans job training programs. This bill has $1 billion over 5. The second point I would like to make--and I think it was made by the ranking member of the Budget Committee--is there is no honest accounting in this bill regardless of the budget point of order or the blue slip, the nonconstitutionality of originating revenue bills in the Senate. There is absolutely no transparency nor correctness nor character nor integrity in the financing of this bill. When we find ourselves $16 trillion in debt and we are going to pay for another bill over 5 years by 10 years of change, we never get out of the problem. We make the problem worse. What are we doing and whom are we doing it for? Are we truly thinking about veterans when we do not solve the bigger problems? We have the manifest presence in this bill of the very problems we say we need to be addressing. Yet we are making them worse with this bill. We are making the financial problems worse with this bill. I am befuddled and disappointed that we cannot, as a group of individuals who all love this country very much, come together on some certain baseline principles that we ought to be operating under in the Senate. The first of those ought to be we ought to do nothing now that makes the problem worse for our kids and grandkids. We are now over $200,000 per family of debt in this country. We are over $200,000--it is actually about $225,000. Think about the median family income over the last 4 years that has gone down 9 percent in this country, and we are going to make sure it goes down even further if we continue to do what we are doing in this bill. We have gone from $54,900 median family to $50,200 in the last 4 years, median family income, and we have gas prices as high as they have ever been and we are going to perpetuate a system that says we are going to continue to make the problem worse, not better. There is also another little gimmick in this bill that if we were to do it in private, we would go to jail for it; that is, we are going to charge corporations more income tax than what they actually owe to get past 1 year, and then after the year is over, we are going to flip it back so we can say we paid for something when we did not. That violates all aspects of integrity and honesty. Do you know what the answer I hear as to why we are doing it? ``Oh, we have done that in the past.'' It was not right in the past, and it is certainly not right now to lie, to cheat, to be dishonest about the accounting principles surrounding this bill in terms of how we pay for it because, in essence, it violates pay-go--the very rule we said was going to help us get out of our problems that 67 times has been waived in the last 3 years. As a matter of fact, I don't know the last time a pay-go challenge was not waived. The second principle we ought to be dealing with is we ought to follow the rules we set up for ourselves that are supposed to discipline us in terms of getting our country out of the problems which we are, regrettably, continually ignoring. If, in fact, we want to help veterans get jobs, there are a lot of ways for us to do it. One is make sure the job programs we have are working--and they are not. If they are not working, why are we continuing to spend $1 billion a year on them? No. 2, create a level of confidence in this country, by our own behavior, that we are actually addressing the real problems in front of the country rather than the political dynamics of an election that says we want to do something and everybody in this Chamber knows, even if we pass this bill, it is not going to accomplish anything because, in fact, it has a blue slip against it because of the Constitution. On Monday mornings when I get up--I get up about 4:30 to catch a flight to come back here--I have noticed I have an attitude problem. I don't want to come anymore. The reason I don't want to come anymore is because we are not doing anything to address the real problems that are in front of our country. We are ignoring the real problems so we can create political contrasts for an election, all the while the country is sinking and sinking and sinking. What it is is a lack of leadership. We can lead in the wrong direction, knowing what the problems are and making mistakes, and we can be forgiven for that. But when we know what the real problems are and we are ignoring them, that is an unforgivable failure of leadership. That is where we find ourselves. I heard my colleague mention the Defense authorization bill. There is absolutely no excuse for us not to have passed a Defense authorization bill that gives the planning, the direction, and the commitment for this country's future in terms of our defenses--the No. 1 priority for us as a Congress, according to the Constitution. Yet we have not done that. We have made the immediate political situation trump everything. That is the opposite of leadership. It is actually cowardice, because when someone is a leader and they duck the real problems in front of them, they take everybody down with them--the well intentioned and the not well intentioned. That is where we are--as a country, as a Senate-- by not addressing the real issues of this country. I don't know what is going to happen on the votes on this bill, but I know what needs to happen in the Senate. There needs to be a renewed sense of awareness of the real problems facing this country and a redoubling of our commitment to shed partisan roles and get down to fixing the real problems in front of us. Parochialism has no place in that discussion. The political careers of Members have no place in that discussion. The real future of our country is at risk and we are, similar to the proverbial person with their head in the sand, ignoring that risk. The greatest country in the world is on the precipice of falling, predicted long ago by such people as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson--that the day would come that we, in fact, would put the political ahead of the best interests of our country. That is what we are seeing played out in Washington. That is exactly what we are seeing played out with this bill. The American people deserve much better. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, my colleague from Florida raises some good points about us wanting to help our veterans. I don't think there is anybody who does not recognize their significant sacrifice. As a matter of fact, it was not long ago that the 45th from Oklahoma lost 17 people in Afghanistan and hundreds were wounded. The real question is: how do we help them the best? How do we really help veterans? We are going to have plenty of opportunities to say there is a reason to not do the right thing for the long-term best interests of our country. We have never found ourselves in the predicament we find ourselves in today in terms of our financial exposure and the real risk to the veterans who have jobs today--which nobody is talking about but the real risk for them. Because when this thing goes down--and I am talking about the financial collapse of this country--when it happens, those who have jobs who are veterans today are going to lose them. So there could be no more noble cause than to make an exception for veterans, except that is not what the Senate does. We make an exception every time--every time. Here is the question for my friend: Under what system of values, honor, and integrity did these veterans serve? The highest and noblest of honor and integrity, without a doubt. They put their life on the line so I do not have to, so my adult, mature children in their thirties and forties do not have to. The difference is, what they put their life on the line for was to ensure that the freedom and liberty and vibrancy of this country goes forward. We are taking a little pocketknife to one of the legs of the three- legged stool with our actions and slowly nibbling the support of that leg. We are taking it away by our very actions.

Mr. COBURN. Absolutely. Let me give people some hope. Virginia Foxx, a Representative in the House, who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Workforce and Labor, has passed a bill out of her committee that consolidates 33 of those job training programs into 1, puts metrics on every one of them so we will know if they are working and requires mandatory oversight of them. The reason she did not do all 47 is 14 of them are not in her jurisdiction. But add to it another $4 billion, and another 20-plus programs for the disabled, so we actually have almost 70 programs and $23 billion a year we are spending on job training, of which nobody knows--as a matter of fact I know they are not working. We actually released a report on job training in Oklahoma. We looked at every Federal job training and State job training program going on in Oklahoma. Do you know what works? Oklahoma programs. Do you know what does not work? Federal job training programs in Oklahoma. We have 1 city in Oklahoma that is 16,000 people, 17 Federal job training centers, and an unemployment rate of 4.7 percent; 17 different Federal agencies in 1 city of 16,000 people with an unemployment rate of 4.7 percent. What we are doing is employing people in the job training industry--which may be good if they are having results. But we have results that are untenable. Job training is just one area of our Federal Government. The GAO has released reports on duplication. Their final report will come in February of next year, where they will have looked at the entire Federal Government. What we know right now is if we did our work, the 100 Senators who care about our country did our work, over the next 10 years we could save $200 billion by eliminating duplication in Federal programs--$200 billion. I said over 10 years; that is, $200 billion per year. It is $2 trillion over 10 years. We could save over $200 billion per year. We wouldn't be having sequestration if we did our job, if we did our oversight, if we consolidated programs, made them transparent and made them accountable and then put metrics on them to see if they were working and then did oversight to see that they are working. We would not be in sequestration. We would not have near the problems we have today. But the failure is us. The Congress has failed to do its job. The consequences will not be borne by us. The consequences will be borne by the son of my health LA who was just born, by my new grandson who is now almost 7 weeks old. That is who is going to pay the consequences-- the children of this country--when we fail to do our jobs. I appreciate the Senator's leadership. I am going to support his point of order. It is the right thing to do. I did not even talk about the areas he talked about in terms of--we set up this budget agreement for 2 years. I will tell you what, the CR coming--this is the irony of all ironies. Had we not had that budget agreement and we did a CR, we would spend $2.6 billion less next year if we had a clean CR than under the Budget Control Act we passed. By doing the Budget Control Act, we are actually going to spend more money than we did last year. So everything is upside down in Washington because everything is political or parochial and nobody is thinking long term about the big problems facing our country. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. If I could finish. Since the other side has the last 7 minutes, I will be finished well before then. We are going to say the financial condition of the country does not matter. We are going to say it does not matter the $1 billion a year we are spending already on veterans job training programs. It does not matter. We are going to say here is a year's program for jobs for 20,000 veterans and that is going to trump everything else. You would not have any objection from this Senator if you actually really paid for this, No. 1, if you did not violate pay-go and you truly did it in a way that oversighted the present job training programs we have and you truly did it in a way that matches the integrity and honor of our veterans. But we did not do that. No. We played games. We played games with budget rules. We played games with pay-go. We did not do any oversight. We did not even have a hearing. There was no hearing on this bill. You took Senator Burr's suggestions, which were common sense, and applied it broadly across the government. But we did not match the honor and integrity and valor and purpose. When I meet with veterans in townhall meetings, I ask them why they serve. Do you know what they tell me? Because this is the greatest country the world has ever known and they want to keep it that way. What we are doing today does not keep it that way. It perpetuates the same problems that created the very dangerous situation this country is in. So when we make a claim about that everybody agrees with this bill, I just wish to say I do not agree with the bill. There are a whole lot of ways to help veterans that are better than this, that give them a permanent job. We passed the post-9/11 GI bill; right? They can get paid a stipend while they go to college to learn a new skill, the same as a noncom officer. They get paid for the books and tuition and everything else so they can become whole as they learn a skill. We have the capability for studies while we are in the military. We have six separate job training programs that we are spending $1 billion a year on. The best way to help veterans is to fix this country's economic situation to create opportunity, and they will fly because they have already proven they have the initiative, the strength, the moral courage, the integrity, and the valor to accomplish anything they want to accomplish. So I am in disagreement with my friend. I think we have a political device in front of us, and I am going to be very interested to see the character of the Senate on whether it succumbs to the parochial and political over the best long-term interests of the country. If it does, it just proves that the Senate needs to be changed to truly address the real problems in front of our country. That is what it is going to prove, regardless of the outcome: Do we have the character? Do we match the valor, honor, and integrity of the people who serve this Nation in the Armed Forces with our willingness to sacrifice our political careers to do what is in the best long-term interest of the country? They set the example for us. The question is whether we will follow their example. I yield to my friend from Florida.

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

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I would ask to have a back-and-forth real debate on this, recognizing us both, with the Senator from Florida controlling the time, if he has no difficulty agreeing with that. One of the reasons I came out is I don't agree with the substance of this bill and I don't want the Senator from Florida to make a statement on the floor that everybody agrees with it. We have six veterans job training programs that nobody is overseeing. Nobody knows if they work.

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 today to talk about the bill that is pending, and I must say: Here we go again. And let me say that what we are doing today, under the auspices of helping returning veterans get jobs--and there is nothing wrong with wanting to do that and there is nothing wrong with trying to pay for that--is really passing a bill for political reasons so we can say we did things, because this is not going anywhere in the House of Representatives. A couple of points I would make are that, first, yesterday, on the anniversary of 9/11, we started the consideration of this bill, but this bill has had no hearings, no committee work, and essentially no debate until today, despite the fact that it will affect six different Federal agencies, at a minimum. Before I discuss the bill itself, though, I want to mention another anniversary. One year ago yesterday, SPC Christopher D. Horton, Army SPC Bret D. Isenhower, and Army PVT Tony J. Potter, Jr. were killed in Afghanistan. They were 1 of 13 Oklahomans from the Oklahoma National Guard serving in Afghanistan who paid the ultimate sacrifice--a pure and noble sacrifice. As we debate a bill that will largely benefit those who have safely returned home after serving their country, it is important that we not forget those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, this pure and noble sacrifice for the benefit of the rest of us. The bill before the Senate provides $1 billion--$1 billion--in mandatory spending. For the folks at home that means it is not subject to appropriations; it will be spent, period, regardless of what we do if we pass this bill and the President signs it--over 5 years for the creation of a new mandatory program called the Veterans Jobs Corps. One point I will make is that we already have six veterans jobs programs and not one of them has a metric on it to see if it is working. There hasn't been one hearing to see what the jobs programs we are running now are doing, to measure their effectiveness or their cost effectiveness and see if they are actually performing for veterans what we say we want them to do. Yet we have a bill on the floor that didn't go through that committee, where no hearings were held, and we are going to do the same thing again. Because there is not a metric in this bill. So what is happening here is we are playing the political election card to say, How could anybody oppose a veterans jobs corps bill? The real question to be asked is: How callous is it to put forth a political bill when we have no idea whether it may or may not work, for the pure political purpose of an election, without looking at the whole of the veterans jobs programs? There is not going to be any congressional oversight on this. Just 2 weeks ago I released a report on job training in my own State. I was highly effective in looking at every Federal Government job training program, veterans and nonveterans alike, in my State. I looked at every State job training program and then published a report. Here is what the report found. And, by the way, we have 47 other job training programs, of which 90 percent don't have metrics on them, and we spend $19 billion a year on those job training programs. What we found is that State-run, State-financed, State-supported job training programs work in Oklahoma. We actually take our own money, with our own institutions, with our own individuals and our own employees, knowing what businesses and industry and service industries and institutions need, and we match job training to what those needs are and actually put people to work. Consequently, Oklahoma has a 4.7- percent unemployment rate. So we are highly effective at training people for the jobs that are available. But we are not very effective with the Federal programs. The assessment in Oklahoma--and I am not sure it applies across the country, but it certainly does in Oklahoma--is that we are very good at employing people in the job training industry but not very good with Federal dollars when it comes to training people a life skill to keep them employed. This legislation is going to provide $1 billion for the Federal Government to hire veterans on a temporary basis. I understand that Senator Burr's recommendations are going to be incorporated. That is a marked improvement to the bill. His puts them in line for a career, not a temporary job--which shows the lack of thinking because Senator Burr, the ranking member on VA, couldn't get a hearing. We didn't have a markup, didn't have a chance for ideas to flow through. I am not certain we are going to have amendments. I have four I would like to offer to the bill that are better pay-fors and will actually improve the bill. I am not sure we are going to do that either. So we didn't have a hearing, and we didn't have a markup. We come to the floor, and we are not going to have amendments. What is this really all about? Is this about veterans or is this about politicians? I suspect it is about politicians. I suspect it is about elections and not veterans. The legislation grants broad authority to the Department of Justice, Department of Defense, Department of Labor, Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Homeland Security, the Interior Department, and the Army Corps of Engineers to hire veterans in jobs such as conservation and first responders. However, to comply with the pay-go rules, we manipulate the system again. We include revenue increases to equal the cost of the bill. We do that by requiring a continuous levy on payments to Medicare providers and suppliers--which is not a bad idea--and also by denying or revoking passports in cases of seriously delinquent taxes. I have heard that is going to be pulled, but nobody knows. Nobody has seen it. That is why we have committees, so we don't have to play with things before we have a base bill and we know what it will do. The bill already violates the Budget Control Act's allocation for Veterans Affairs funding. It is subject to a 302(f) point of order because it is outside the bounds of their appropriations. The bill also states a distinct preference for veterans of the current war in Afghanistan and the most recent war in Iraq by stating that these jobs are primarily for veterans who have served since September 11, 2001. As with the veterans caregiver bill in 2009, this is blatant discrimination against our other veterans. One class of veterans is better than another class of veterans? Tell me how. Is somebody who died in the Vietnam war less honorable than somebody who has given their life in Afghanistan? Yet we are making that distinction in terms of the benefits available to those who served our country honorably. So we are blatantly discriminating against veterans who served before 9/11. I would also remind us that those veterans didn't have the post- 9/11 GI bill. They didn't have the other significant benefits that have come along and been passed down, both paid benefits, family transfer of the post-9/11 bill, or the educational benefits for in-service that the present veterans have. Another thing I would remind my colleagues is that right now there is a preference in every branch of the Federal Government for hiring veterans. It is already written into law. Since 1944 the Federal Government has stated that veterans with honorable or general discharges are preferred for hiring in competitive positions and may also be hired without competition in many cases. In other words, they get an absolute preference. Disabled veterans get even a higher preference over nondisabled veterans. Veterans also have priority in retention in terms of government downsizing: If you were a veteran, you don't get downsized; if you are not a veteran, you will. Senator Burr's bill--which it appears the majority will take and add to their bill rather than replace their bill--will direct the Office of Personnel Management to require that each of the 10,000 job vacancies presently in the Federal Government today should be filled by veterans. This would actually provide a real career path for veterans, not a temporary make-work job slot that will go away as soon as the $1 billion runs out. According to a 2011 GAO report, there are six job training programs, which I have outlined, already on the books. They are not working, but they are on the books, and we are spending money on them. We have no metrics to know whether they are working. We have had no oversight hearings to know whether they are working. None has ever been held. There is the Labor Department's Disabled Veterans Outreach Program. It does job readiness, skills training, retention training, and employment counseling. The Labor Department's Homeless Veterans Reintegration Project does everything the first one I mentioned does. The Labor Department's Veterans Employment Representative Program does exactly the same thing as the first two. The Labor Department's Transition Assistance Program does job search and job readiness training. The Labor Department's Veterans Affairs Workforce Investment, again, does all the same tasks as the first two I mentioned. The Veterans Affairs' Rehabilitation for Disabled Veterans Program does nearly everything from job training to employment counseling to job referral to on-the-job training to basic adult literacy. This bill and those training programs are in addition to the post-9/ 11 GI bill and the Tuition Assistance Program, which provides 100 percent tuition assistance plus expenses, plus a monthly stipend salary for unemployed or any other veterans to attend college, vocational training, pursue licensure, with fees paid for by the Federal Government, and allows them to transfer this benefit to their spouses. The question I have, with that benefit--and we are doing another one now for political purposes, not because we really care about veterans-- why isn't this one working? We are going to spend billions on the post- 9/11 GI bill, and we are going to pay them at the rate of a noncommissioned officer all the time they are going to college. Why isn't that working? Where is the oversight hearing to see why what we just did 2 years ago isn't working? Instead, what we are going to do is--which the Congress has done under both Democrats and Republicans--we are going to throw in more money and do another one. Instead of measuring what works and measuring what we are doing, we are going to create another program. Granted, supposedly it is only 5 years. When it comes to 5 years, what will happen whether it works or not? Nobody will vote against extending the veterans program, will they? How can anyone be against veterans? So we would not do the hard work of having committee hearings; we would not do the oversight. We would not even change this bill to make sure it has absolute metrics on what it is doing. So we are continuing down the road to bankruptcy, all in the name of putting a bill--that isn't going to pass the House--on the Senate floor so two or three Members of the Senate can go home and claim they did something. I think it is hypocritical. I don't think it matches the pure valor of the three individuals I mentioned. It doesn't come close. It doesn't measure up. Those 13 Oklahomans who died in Afghanistan this last year from the Oklahoma National Guard, the Thunderbirds, represented the real value of America. This bill doesn't. The post-9/11 GI bill pays 100 percent of the highest cost public school in any State. So veterans can go to the best public school paid for completely by the government if they are a post-9/11 veteran. They can get the same equivalent pay as a noncommissioned officer the time they are going. That is what we have already got out there. Without this legislation, today any unemployed veteran who can get into a community college can go for free, receive 3 years' of pay, all their expenses paid, their housing paid--all of those things paid. Well, if that isn't working, why isn't it working? Where is the hearing to find out why that isn't working? No, we are just going to pass another bill without a hearing, without a committee markup, for politically expedient purposes. Oh, it is just $1 billion. Where is our honor? Where is our valor? Where is our sacrifice? The Department of Defense Tuition Assistance Program, another program, while you are in the military, is paid for. All you have to do is make a C or better--online, off line, whatever way you want to go. So let me summarize: We have the Tuition Assistance Program, we have the post-9/11 GI bill, we have the GI bill, we have six separate VA job programs. We have a bill on the floor to do another one, and nobody is asking the question: What is wrong with what we are doing now, and why aren't we fixing it? If what we are doing now isn't working, why aren't we fixing that? Why aren't we going to allow amendments to fix things? Why are we going to fill the tree and not allow the process that our Founders for designed the Senate to work so that all ideas could be considered? No, this is a political exercise. I am going to call it what it is. This isn't about veterans; this is about politicians. My hope is that we wake up before our country fails. When I came to the Senate, the average family's responsibility for public debt per individual was $26,000. Within the 8 years I have been here, it is now 51,400 and some-odd dollars. We are playing a game. We are thinking short term. We are worried about political careers and elections, but we are not worried about the country. This is about the greatest example of the incompetence of the Congress of United States I have ever seen. I am for helping veterans, I am for paying for it, and I am for making sure they get rewarded for their service and their sacrifice. This bill isn't it. This is a charade. That is exactly what it is. To call it anything else dishonors the service of those who have defended and protected our country. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I do. I thank the Chair. Amendment No. 2771

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, first of all, I wish to say I appreciate the leadership for working to ensure a vote on this package. This package was slowed down not because anybody is truly opposed to what we are trying to do, but the package was slowed down because of the way we are paying for it. We are going to see that coming over from the House as well. It is not a Republican or a Democratic problem; it is a problem of all of us because there is going to be an emergency farm bill, a disaster bill, coming over that is going to spend almost $400 million, and it is paid for over 5 years. That has to stop. It has to stop. Right now, in this country, every man, woman, and child is on the hook for $53,000 of debt. So the typical American family is on the hook for 212,000 bucks right now because of what we have done. So my objection was not with the AGOA package, it is not with Myanmar, it is not with any of that. Those are great policy things. My objection is we are addicted to not fulfilling our responsibilities and delaying. So this is a very simple, straightforward message and amendment that does two things: One, it recognizes the recommendation of the Obama administration in terms of duplication and the need for consolidation. That is how we are eventually going to get out of the hole. We have $130 trillion in unfunded liabilities, and we have $16 trillion in debt. It was a good recommendation. We totally ignored it. We have ignored it. Nothing has happened on what they have recommended. There have been no hearings on what the Obama administration recommended in terms of combining some of the departments at OMB. So this is just a step toward trying to meet in the middle with what the Obama administration has recommended and us actually paying the $200 million in costs over 2 years, with $200 million worth of savings in 2 years. The bill, as it presently stands, takes 10 years to pay for $200 million. We have a $3.7 trillion budget--or CR--and we can't find--it is less than one-hundredth of 1 percent, and we can't find it. So what this does is delay the cost--the payment--for this bill over a period of years, all the way out to 2023. No family who is broke gets to operate that way--and we are. Nobody who has maxed out their credit cards gets to do that, and we have maxed them out. So what we are saying is there is a ton of money that is available that we can use. We have had three amendments on this floor that everybody who is going to be in opposition to this have voted for to eliminate duplication. The vast majority of my colleagues on the other side have voted for it, and the vast majority of my colleagues on my side have voted for it. So we are going to use that same skill where we know there is waste and we know there is inefficiency. We have tons of GAO reports, tons of IG, and tons of oversight of the Homeland Security Committee in the Senate that shows where the duplication is. All we are asking is, let's pay for it. Let's pay for it. This place is so manipulated, I couldn't get a score until yesterday because somebody was telling them don't give him a score. Then when we changed the amendment, all of a sudden, because we want to know what the amendment says, CBO says: Well, wait a minute. That might not work. The fact is CBO didn't read our amendment right, and they know they didn't. So OMB was consulted. They said this amendment is implementable, and it fits with what the President was recommending in terms of consolidation of programs. So what it says is let's make this a start today. Let's actually start paying for things in the years in which we are going to spend the money, and let's not kick the can down the road. Let's not charge it to our kids because the history is we take 10 years to pay for something, we come back next year and we will change it. We will change it. So what was paid for this year all of a sudden is not paid for anymore, and it is smoke and mirrors for the American people. So this is very straightforward. It is a clean pay-for. It uses two mechanisms to get there which have been scored that will accomplish it. I fully support the AGOA. I am sorry we got delayed. I am actually sorry it took--because there has already been some damage done, than had we passed it when it came here. That was never my intent, but we can right that today. What I agreed to is if I lose the amendment, fine. But to not try to pay for things, to not create a discipline to get back where we should be--we are going to do this. We may not do this today, but I promise my colleagues the international financial community, in a very short period of time, is going to make us do this. So let's start doing it on our own under our own terms rather than what some foreign bondholder or the Chinese want to do. The other objection that might be there is, well, if we do this, it will have to go back to the House. That is right. This passed on suspension. There was very little opposition to it. It will go back modified; they will pass it. I have talked to the Speaker. They haven't passed the other one first because they are waiting on us to act. We will hold ours at the desk because it has a revenue problem; they will modify theirs; they will do exactly what we did. I would just appreciate us standing up to the real problems in front of us. It is a great goal to want to help these areas. It is a great goal to put the sanctions back on Myanmar so that they can be adjusted and used to create freedom. Those are great goals. But there is a greater goal because none of those things are going to matter if our financial system, our way of life, crashes around us because we are not responsible here. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, it is intriguing to me. We heard the Senator from Delaware absolutely assure us that if we defy this, the House is not going to do the right thing. My conversation with Chairman Camp was different from that. I do not know what the timing was between our conversations. But it is never the right time in Washington to fix our problems. We do a lot of great things. You want to talk about job creation? Job creation has decreased by 1 million jobs a year in this country simply because we continue to add to our debt. And this bill adds to our debt. It is not paid for. It has another trick in there that actually charges more in corporate taxes just to get around pay-go. So the point is--and I will not have any more to say on this bill so we can go on and get to the other--the point is, if we stood and did the right thing and led this country by actually paying for something at the time, the House would change it--just for the very reasons the Senator from Delaware said. It is important. If we had a strong vote that said: Yes, it is important, but, by dingy, we are not going to keep doing the same thing that has been bankrupting this country--but now we use an excuse to say: Well, here is our reason why we cannot do what is right. America should spit us out of their mouth. We never find the right time to actually have the fiscal discipline that will solve our county's problems and create a viable future for our children, let alone African children. So that is a real choice today. I do not expect to win this because this place is not going to change until the people who are here decide that the future of our country is more important than anything else and we start acting like it. And we can do good things internationally, but we can do them the right way that will not put our children at risk. Our debt level is such that our GDP is decreased by 1 percent right now--it is proven--just because of the amount of debt we have. So we are going to pass a bill with great intentions, with which I agree. It will have a great result; I agree with that. We can do both. We can actually do better. But it is because there is not the spine in the Senate to stand up and make the hard choice. This country is full of people outside of Washington who are used to making hard choices, and they are doing it in this tough economic time all the time. They are making hard choices. We lack the intestinal fortitude to do that. We should have them here and us home because they know how to get it done. So what we are going to do is we are going to do the same thing we have always done. We are not going to make the hard choice. We are not going to do the best we can do. We are going to settle for second best because we have an excuse not to make the hard choice. The excuse right now is that the House will not move. Well, I will guarantee you, if it as important as Senator Coons and Senator Isakson say it is, and Representative Smith, and we sit here and say our position is that it is paid for within 2 years, I will bet you by tomorrow it will be paid for within 2 years. But we will not ever do that because we lack the courage to do the hard thing, the right thing. What has that gotten us? It has gotten us deeper in debt, a depressed economy, an anxious American citizenry that has no confidence about the future, which is so self-fulfilling in terms of driving the economy down even further. It is time for us to lead. This is a small issue, but if we cannot even pay for $200 million over 2 years, we do not deserve to be here, we do not deserve it, because what we are really doing--we are helping people in Africa, we are helping the freedom in Burma, but what we are really doing is taking just a little bit of freedom away from our kids. That is the real vote here. It is really not about money; it is about destroying the future prospects of this country because we refuse to make a hard choice. There can be a lot of flowery speeches about it. We can say we are going to do something good. I will tell you that well-intentioned desires by the Members of this body are what has us $16 trillion in debt. I will not spend any more time. I have the greatest respect for the Senator from Delaware. I know he believes in this cause. He is bigger than this. He can make this tough vote. He knows how big the problems are. If we are not going to do it now, when are we going to do it? If we are not going to do it on something small, when are we going to do it? We are not going to do it, and that is what the American people get. That is why there is an uprising in this country to get back to the basics of the Constitution. That is why there are people who are interested--because we have mismanaged it because we will not do the hard part. Mr. President, I yield back my time. I will ask for the yeas and nays at the appropriate time.

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I ask for the yeas and nays and yield back whatever time I had.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, it is pretty unusual for me to come to the floor to say I want to spend money. But I have had a longstanding problem as I sign the letters of condolences to hundreds of families in Oklahoma who have lost their loved one by serving this country. I come to the floor to offer a critique on one of the most important things to the people who truly put their lives on the line for this country. It is a national security issue, but it is truly about our men and women in uniform and the most important deployed weapon system over the last 10 years of war; that is, the Army service rifle and their other small arms. There is nothing more important to a soldier than his rifle or her rifle. There is simply no excuse for not providing our soldiers with the best weapon, not just a weapon that is ``good enough.'' As I go through this, I am going to give a history of what the military has done--or, rather, basically what they have not done--in terms of having available for our soldiers a weapon that is capable of giving them the best possible chance when they serve our country. Over the last few years, we have spent $8,000 per soldier on new radios, but we still are using a weapon that is 25 years old when it comes to their M4. I first got involved in this when I got e-mails. I gave many in the Oklahoma National Guard--who served multiple tours, with lots of life lost in Iraq and Afghanistan--I gave those soldiers my personal e-mail, and I said: If you are having a problem over there, e-mail me. I started hearing about the malfunction, the lack of effectiveness of the M4 for the Oklahomans who were over there. It is the same weapon the career Army has. It is the same weapon everybody who is issued a standard rifle is given, except for our special forces and others in the world who have a better rifle than the U.S. soldier on the ground fighting on our behalf. I have noted before in the Congressional Record that I have lifted my objection to the nomination of Ms. Heidi Shyu to be the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisitions. It is an important position. She is in charge of $28 billion worth of expenditures. My objection was due to the Army's continued lack of urgency in modernizing and fielding new rifles, carbines, pistols, light machine guns, and ammunition for our troops in combat. Ms. Shyu has been very responsive to me and has provided some information regarding the Army's future plans for small arms and ammunition. So when I started getting the questions from our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, I started looking into what was happening. Most of our soldiers know exactly what to do and how to care for their rifle. They know how to take care of it. So we looked into the issue. What we found was that there were several studies that raised questions about the reliability of the M4 rifle and whether there was a better weapon out there for our troops. For example, a special operations forces report in February 2001 said the M4's short barrel and gas tube increased the risk that a round might not eject from the rifle properly after it is fired. In other words, they fire it and the round does not come out. That is called a jam--when you are having bullets coming at you and your rifle is jamming. What we did was we set up a test, and the Army would not do it. So I put a hold on the Secretary of the Army Pete Geren's nomination. We talked, and he assured me we would have a new competition for a new rifle for our troops. That was in 2007. Here we are, 5 years later, and the Army is now telling us we are going to complete a new competition in 2014. But in the meantime, we had a test done against our soldiers' rifle and others available in the world, in terms of a dust test, and we came in last. So we are sending our troops to defend us and fight for a cause that we have put blood, sweat, tears, and $1 trillion into, and we are sending them with one that does not work the best. My question to the Army is, Why? I can tell you why. Because the guys who are responsible for making the decision on purchasing the rifles are not the guys who are out there on the line. Because if they were, we would have already had this competition and our service men and women would be getting new rifles. It is not that we cannot do it because what we learned--as we went back in and reupped in Afghanistan--we determined that the MRAP was not suitable for the rocky terrain as compared to what we used it for in Iraq. In less than 16 months and after rapid testing and fielding, new MRAP All-Terrain Vehicles--that was designed specifically for Afghanistan; a complicated piece of vital equipment, costing $\1/2\ million each-- started arriving in Afghanistan. So it is not that we cannot supply our soldiers with a new rifle. It is not that it cannot be done. It is that we refuse to do it. For $1,500, we can give every person on the line something equivalent to what our special forces have today. Let me show some history. The average age of our troops rifle is 26 years. The average age of the German military rifle, small arms, is 12 years. For the U.S. special operations forces, theirs is 8 years. Guess what. They have new technology. Our regular frontline guys, they do not get it. They cannot have it. It costs the same, but they cannot have it because it is not a priority for the leadership in the Army to give the most deployed piece of equipment our troops need--that defends them, protects them, and gives them the ability to come home alive--we will not give it to them. It is shameful. It is shameful. Let me give a history of what happened just once in Afghanistan. It was called the battle of Wanat. On July 13, 2008, in the battle of Wanat, in Afghanistan, 200 Taliban troops attacked U.S. troops at a remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan. The Taliban were able to break through our lines and entered the main base before eventually being repelled by artillery and aircraft. What is notable about the battle was the perceived performance of the soldiers' small arms weapons in the initial part of the battle. Here are some quotes: My M4 quit firing and would no longer charge when I tried to correct the malfunction. I couldn't charge my weapon and put another round in because it was too hot, so I got mad I threw my weapon down. It would be bad enough if this was the first time it happened. But it is not the first time it has happened. It has happened multiple times to our troops in our present conflicts. All we have to do is go back to what happened with the M16 when they were first used in Vietnam. There were instant reports of jamming and malfunctions. One tragic but indicative marine action report read: We left with 72 men in our platoon and came back with 19. Believe it or not, you know what killed most of us? Our own rifle. Practically every one of our dead was found with his M16 torn down next to him where he had been trying to fix it. That is occurring now, except it is not getting any press. Again, I would ask my colleagues in the Senate: Why would we not give our soldiers the capability that almost every other soldier has except ours? There is another aspect of this that I think needs to be shared; that is, the fact that it is all about acquisitions and culture rather than about doing the right thing. I do not like giving this talk critical of the leadership of the Army. But when it is going to take 7 years to field a new rifle and in 18 months we can build and design a completely new $500,000 piece of equipment, an MRAP, for Afghanistan or when we can spend $8,000 per troop to give them a new radio--which are all going to be replaced in the next 2 years with another $8,000--and we cannot give them a $1,500 H&K or something equivalent, there is something wrong with our system. Our priorities are out of whack. If the Department of Defense had spent just 15 percent less on radios, they could give every soldier in the military a new, capable, modern weapon, and it does not just apply to their rifle. One of the biggest complaints, after the M4, is the fact that the regular Army gets a 9-millimeter pistol that weighs over 2 pounds, but our special operations forces get a .45-caliber pistol that weighs less than 1\1/2\ pounds. That is a big difference when you are out there all day. But the most important thing is, a .45-caliber round is twice the size of a 9-millimeter round, so when you are shooting it and you hit somebody, it is going to take them down. A 9-millimeter does not. So we are giving them an inferior pistol throughout the military. Then, finally, here is what an M4 carbine looks like compared to an HK416, as shown on this chart. One other point I would make. This piece of equipment fires on automatic. This other piece of equipment--because the military wants to save some bullets--will not fire on automatic. So our soldiers are facing people who have automatic fire and they can fire in bursts of three and at half the rate of what they are facing. Why would we do that? The real question is, we are asking people to defend this country. For essentially the same amount of money, we can buy an old-style, 26-year-old M4 or we can buy a brandnew one that gives them everything they need and gives them the best weapon. Do they not deserve that? A lot of people do a lot of things for our country. But nobody does for our country what the soldier on the frontline does--nobody. This is a moral question, Mr. Secretary of the Army. This is a moral question. Get the rifle competition going. Members of Congress, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, do not allow this to continue to happen. Do not allow this to continue to happen. There is no excuse for it. We should be embarrassed. We should be ashamed. Because what we are doing is sending our troops into harm's way with less than the best that we can provide for them. As I have noted, I have lifted my objection to the nomination of Ms. Heidi Shyu to be the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisitions. This is an extremely important position for an organization as large as the U.S. Army which spends $28 billion per year on acquisition of goods and services. My objection was due to the Army's continued lack of urgency in modernizing and fielding new rifles, carbines, pistols, light machine guns, and ammunition to our troops in combat. Ms. Shyu has been responsive to me and provided some information regarding the Army's future plans for small arms and ammunition. I first got involved in the Army small arms issue 6 years ago when Oklahoma National Guard soldiers told me that their issued weapon, the M4 carbine, was jamming in Iraq. These soldiers were told by their superiors that jamming resulted from poor weapons maintenance on their part and not from any fault of the rifle. While cleaning and proper maintenance of a weapon are extremely important, sand and dust in Iraq are a daily occurrence and any small arms weapon our troops use there should be able to fire reliably in spite of some sand and dust. Also, the National Guard soldiers from my State--as is the case for Guard soldiers from many if not all of our States--are somewhat more likely to hunt or serve as police officers or security guards in their civilian lives. In other words, National Guard soldiers in the infantry generally know better than most how to care for rifles. So my staff looked into this issue and found that there were studies that raise questions on the reliability of the M4 and whether there was a better weapon out there for our troops. For example, a special operations forces report in February 2001 said that the M4's short barrel and gas tube increased risk that round might not eject from the rifle properly after firing. I also learned that in the early 1990s Colt received funding from the Army to produce the M4 carbine, which would be a shorter variant on the M16 rifle. This was not done through a competition and was considered merely an extension of Colt's original M16 contract. This lack of competition would later greatly benefit Colt. In 1999 Colt charged the military less than $600 per M4 carbine. This would rise to more than $900 in 2002 and more than $1,200 for a fully equipped carbine in 2010 when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in more M4s being bought. So in 2007 I raised these questions and even put a hold on the nomination of Secretary of the Army Pete Geren. To his credit, he ordered a full and open competition for a new carbine rifle no later than the end of 2009. It is now 2012 and the Army still has not completed a competition for a new carbine rifle, now scheduled for 2014. The window for the regular Army soldiers to battlefield test an improved rifle in a war we have been in for 12 years is rapidly closing. This extended and lengthy process is for a weapon system that--while vital--costs less than $2,000 each. This 7-year effort differs greatly from their effort to field new armored combat vehicles in Afghanistan. According to the Government Accountability Office, in 2008 Army leaders determined that the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected, MRAP, vehicle was not suitable for the rocky terrain of Afghanistan. In less than 16 months and after rapid testing and fielding, new MRAP all-terrain vehicles, M-ATV, a complicated piece of vital equipment costing $500,000 each--started arriving in Afghanistan. In contrast, according to the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Defense spent more than $11 billion buying newer models of existing legacy radios from 2003 to 2011 and is currently planning on spending billions more on even newer radios to replace the ones just purchased for Iraq and Afghanistan. There are only 1.4 million troops on active duty so the Department of Defense has spent nearly $8,000 per troop on new radios. A brand new rifle--that soldiers don't have--costs around $1,000 to $1,500. If the Department of Defense had just spent 15 percent less on the billions and billions they spent on newer models of legacy radios in the last 10 years, every soldier in the Army could have had a brandnew carbine rifle going to war. In addition to the rifle, there remains a great need for improvement of the Army's service pistol. This pistol, usually given to officers but also as an additional weapon to some infantry soldiers, is the M9 Beretta. This pistol entered the Army in 1985, 27 years ago, and fires a 9mm round. The M9 pistol had the lowest satisfaction rate of any weapon surveyed by the military in 2006 on troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with half feeling that the 9mm ammunition is insufficient. Is the Army's failure to modernize its rifles, pistols and machine guns a recent occurrence? Sadly no, the Army's reluctance to field new weapons runs throughout its history. In far too many instances U.S. Army troops have entered battle with an inferior weapon to their adversaries and either during or after the war ended the Army was reluctant to change and adapt to the superior weapons. In 1776 colonial forces faced the British at the Battle of Brandywine where the British used a new breech loading weapon that loaded at the rear of the weapon rather than the muzzle or front of the weapon. As a result trained British soldiers could fire more than twice as fast as trained colonial American soldiers. The breech loading weapon was not used much in the Revolutionary War but where it was used, such as at the Battle of Brandywine, it was described as acting magnificently: 93 British killed and 400 wounded compared to over 300 Americans that died, 600 wounded, and 400 prisoners captured. However when Americans again fought the British in the War of 1812-- 36 years later--the Americans were still using the same muzzle loading weapon they fought with during the Battle of Brandywine. U.S. Army troops at war against Mexico in 1845 did not have breech loading rifles, but rather continued to carry muzzle-loading rifles when fighting against Mexico--nearly 80 years after the breech-loading rifle was invented. During the Civil War one Union officer in particular was unsatisfied with the Army's standard muzzle-loaded rifle and decided to do something about it. Colonel Wilder, commander of the Union's ``Lightning Brigade'' decided to go around the Army bureaucracy. His men spent $35 out of their paychecks to buy Spencer Repeating Rifles direct from the factory for his mounted cavalry. In one of the first battles using this new rifle Wilder's ``Lightning Brigade'' of 1,000 soldiers defended the Union flank against over 8,000 Confederate troops that could not pass. At one point one company of Colonel Wilder's men held off ten times as many Confederate troops using their repeating rifles for 5 hours. However, the Army did not widely adopt the repeating rifle after the Civil War. More than 30 years later in the Spanish-American War, 5,000 American soldiers armed with single shot rifles attacked fewer than 1,000 Spanish soldiers armed with a German `Mauser' repeating rifle. While Americans won the battle by attrition (there were 10,000 U.S. troops in reserve), the U.S. Army suffered over 1,400 casualties, with 205 killed, while the Spanish lost fewer than 250, with 58 killed, before surrendering. A telling American newspaper column title from 1898 aptly summarizes the problems: ``The [U.S. Army] Gun: It is Inferior in Many Respects to the Mauser [rifle] used by the Spaniards.'' The article states unequivocally that the ``enemy's [Spain's] weapon is easier to load [and] can be fired more rapidly''. The 20th Century would see a great deal of further modernization, improvement, and innovation in the area of small arms to include lighter fully automatic assault rifles capable of firing at a rate of more than 10 rounds per second rather than per minute. The United States entered World War I with a Springfield 1903 rifle, named for the Armory and the year it was produced, which was possibly the third best rifle in the world at that time. The British Enfield-Lee rifle held ten rounds instead of 5 and could fire upwards of 20 rounds per minute. The American rifle held only 5 rounds and fired 10 rounds per minute which was similar, but still inferior to the German rifle that was capable of firing more rounds per minute. The U.S. Army did enter World War II with one of the last great battle rifles, the M1 Garand, but its success during that conflict may have blinded the Army to a revolutionary development in small arms: the invention of the modern lightweight fully-automatic assault rifle. From 1942 to 1944 Germany invented the world's first assault rifles--rifles that could fire 550 to 600 rounds per minute and held detachable 30 round magazines. However, it would be over two decades later before U.S. Army soldiers were permitted to have lightweight assault rifles. Shortly after World War II ended the Soviet Union invented the AK-47 fully automatic assault rifle. This rifle's success is easily stated: over 90 million AK-47s or derivatives have been built. It is very likely a weapon that has inflicted more casualties than any other weapon on earth. Soviet troops had this rifle nearly 20 years before the United States Army would issue assault rifles to its soldiers. In 1958, an American inventor named Eugene Stoner developed the AR-15 rifle in less than 9 months, which would eventually become the M16. This revolutionary rifle weighed six pounds and fired at a rate between 700 and 900 shots per minute with little recoil and the lightweight but still deadly 5.56mm ammunition meant soldiers could carry more firepower than before. However, it took the then-Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Curtis LeMay to purchase 85,000 of them for use by Air Force base defense airmen before they got into the military at all. The U.S. Army was strongly opposed to the M16. Some of these weapons were used by Special Forces troops serving as advisers in Vietnam, increasing the pressure for the Army to adopt it. The Army initially refused the AR- 15s stating the ``lack of any military requirement.'' At this point, it should be clarified that the Army has used the phrase ``lack of a requirement'' for more than 50 years to justify slowing down and not innovating in the area of small arms. I first encountered the phrase ``lack of a requirement'' in 2006 when asking why the Army couldn't field a better carbine rifle that didn't jam in the desert. I am hearing the same phrase today when I ask why soldiers can't have a better light machine gun or pistol. Soldiers have complained about these weapons but they can't have a new one because there is no ``military requirement.'' Congress is often frustrated by the term ``military requirement'' because it can be used to deflect responsibility from the person using it. It says the Army is fearful of offering its judgment on whether or not someone made a weapon that is better than what the Army has, so it instead says that the weapon is not needed. It took intervention by President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara to order the Army to adopt the M16 rifle--the military version of the AR-15. Then what happened in Vietnam was a tragic occurrence that took the direct involvement and investigation of Congress and deaths of thousands of soldiers to remedy. When the M16s were first used in Vietnam there were nearly instant reports of jamming and malfunctions. One tragic but indicative Marine after-action report read: We left with 72 men in our platoon and came back with 19. Believe it or not, you know what killed most of us? Our own rifle. Practically every one of our dead was found with his M16 torn down next to him where he had been trying to fix it. Before the necessary fixes could be made to the weapon which included switching back to the original type of ammunition propellant and issuing cleaning supplies in early 1967, nearly ten thousand American soldiers had been killed. Before the Army made the changes these soldiers were told--much as soldiers are told today--that problems with their weapons are their fault: a lack of care and cleaning or operator error. There is no formal process where soldiers are required to provide feedback to Army leadership on a jammed weapon in order to accurately note issues with reliability. There were six warnings from various arsenals and offices within the Department of Defense as to the problems with the M16. However, the Army Materiel Command and Army senior leaders would not listen. It took public pressure and a massive congressional investigation by the House Armed Services Committee to get to the bottom of the problems with the Army's small arms in Vietnam. It was discovered that the Army was using a different ammunition propellant--procured from a sole-source contract--that caused the M16 to jam. After Congressional intervention, the original propellant was used and the problems with the M16 nearly disappeared. After Vietnam, the Army formally adopted the M16 as its service rifle and by 1968 nearly all troops surveyed said they preferred the M16 to any other rifle. The post-Vietnam era saw changes for the M16 weapon, few of them positive. In 1980 the Army adopted a different, heavier 5.56mm round that required different rifling for the caliber which marginally improved penetration of armor and helmets but at the cost of greatly reducing. U.S. troops would find out in Iraq and Afghanistan that the enemy did not wear helmets or armor. As a result the rounds would penetrate through the enemy and exit the other side without causing enough damage to incapacitate him and he kept fighting. Soldiers have regularly reported having to fire multiple rounds into enemy combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result. In 1982 the Army also altered the M16 to prohibit soldiers from firing on full automatic. The current M16A2 rifle has a choice between semiautomatic and three-round burst. The M16A2 is now the only major assault rifle in the world fielded for military use that does have a full automatic capability. As I said the problems we see with small arms procurement may not be sinister, but they are serious and they are current. On July 13, 2008 in the Battle of Wanat in Afghanistan around 200 Taliban attacked U.S. troops at a remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan. The Taliban were able to break through U.S. lines and enter the main base before eventually being repelled by artillery and aircraft. What is notable about the battle was the perceived poor performance of the soldiers' small arms weapons in the initial part of the battle. Some selected quotes from the report: My M4 quit firing and would no longer charge when I tried to correct the malfunction, I couldn't charge my weapon and put another round in because it was too hot, so I got mad and threw my weapon down. Nine soldiers died and twenty-seven were wounded at the Battle of Wanat in Afghanistan. For too much of its history from the Revolutionary War to today the Army has shown a slowness and reluctance to adopt improved small arms weapons and ammunition developed by others. It has also been slow to recognize and fix problems with its small arms. The Army has repeatedly engaged in poor negotiating and contracting on behalf of the American people. Senior Army leaders continue to go work for incumbent small arms manufacturers after they retire. However, a major problem is also Congress. There have been far too few hearings and oversight on the topic of small arms. The House Armed Services Committee report in 1967 stands out as an exception that proves this point. Senior military leaders in uniform and civilians are regularly challenged and questioned--and in some cases chewed out--on all manner of programs and weapon systems here by Members of Congress including medical benefits, stealth fighter jets, missile defense, the size of the Army and Navy, and armored vehicles. However, for some reason Congress, for the most part, has seen fit to give the Army a pass on small arms. For some reason the oversight committees responsible do not aggressively and regularly question whether the Army's rifle--the most deployed weapon system for the last ten years--is the best that American industry can offer our troops. There are many small arms experts that are independent of the industry that can inform Congress on this issue. I call on my colleagues to hold long overdue hearings on this topic with independent witnesses as soon as possible and will continue my efforts on this issue to raise awareness and push the Army to procure the best weapons and ammunition for our troops. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I wished to come to the floor to talk about two or three subjects. The first is to issue an apology to the majority leader. I do not apologize for my frustration with this place, but occasionally my words are harsh and inaccurate. This past week, I used words that were inappropriate in describing his actions in the Senate, and for that I offer a public apology. I do not apologize for how I think the Senate is being run and the damage that I think is being done to the country, but as an individual, he has a very difficult time and I understand that and to him I ask his forgiveness. Fiscal Cliff Madam President, if I was coming to the floor with intelligence about an imminent threat to our national security, Americans would demand that our government and this body take immediate action. If an Army was on our border, if missiles were about to be launched at our territory or if there were a terrorist plot in motion, doing anything less than us uniting in the face of that threat and taking decisive action would be seen as cowardice and foolishness. Yet that is precisely where we are today, which brings me to my frustration with the majority leader. The threat, though, does not come from traditional armies or terrorists, the threat comes from our unsustainable spending and this body's refusal to unite and take action. It is not just the conservatives who are sounding the alarm, the warnings are coming from our military leaders, diplomats, and statesmen on both sides of the aisle, as well as the international financial community. ADM Mike Mullen, the retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while he was still Chairman, said the greatest threat to this Nation is its debt. We have done not one thing since January to address that problem. We are having spats over judges. We are having spats over all the small things. But the greatest imminent danger to our country, we are doing nothing about. I believe we have less than 2 to 5 years to act to make a significant change in our path. No one knows when this Nation will cross the point of no return. We may have already. But there is a point where we will lose control of our own destiny. It is coming. The fact that the Senate, this year, has had fewer votes than at any time since 1947, according to the Congressional Research Service--why is that? Because we have a political year. We don't want to take votes. We don't want to have to explain to our constituencies why we voted yea or nay on something. So the whole goal is to not vote. Ultimately, the whole goal is to not address the very pressing issues facing this country. What do you think is going to happen to the Defense Department with no Defense authorization bill? They are in la- la land. Where do they go? We are not going to give them the direction with which to spend the largest discretionary amount of money in our government--$600 billion. They are going to be coasting, flying by the seat of their pants. They are not going to have radar or anything. There is not going to be any stealth. Yet we refuse to do that. We have spent a larger amount of time in quorum calls--37 percent of the time this year--nothing but quorum calls. Less than one-third an amount of the time available to the Senate has actually been on the business associated with the country, and most of the business we have addressed isn't this critical risk in front of our country. Last week, Vanguard, the largest private owner of U.S. bonds--$186 billion they own of U.S. bonds--said we have until 2016 to act. If we don't act, we will go into a debt spiral. Bond investors will revolt, they will drive up prices--drive up interest rates and drop prices. We already know from CBO that the entitlement programs are on the brink of insolvency. Social Security disability--we have added 3.2 million people to those rolls since January 1, 2009. That system will be bankrupt in less than 18 months; 8\1/2\ million people depend on that. And there has not been a comment from the leadership in addressing a trust fund that will be out of money in less than 18 months. Our Founders believed that republics that lived beyond their means don't survive. They talked about it. History is full of examples. Europe is reminding us of that today. The euro in Europe, as we know it, is on its deathbed. Every month, every week there is a new set of resuscitative efforts that are not working. What is the real problem? The real problem is they spent money they didn't have on things they didn't need. If you want to see what America will look like in 2 or 3 years, just look at Europe. Look at the demonstrations, look at the crying out of the masses to say: How did we get here? The pain of fixing it is too great. That is why we should be addressing our problems now. The reason America looks good is that we are the least wilted rose in the bud vase. The only reason we look good is because they look so bad. We are at 103 percent debt to GDP. It is costing us at least 1.2 million jobs in new job creation every year. We are at historical interest rates. Our interest costs per year would be over $1 trillion. The interest rates are falsely low because of what the Federal Reserve has done. The price to pay for that is coming in the future. What is the contrast? I ask seniors all the time: Do you think we ought to save Medicare? They say: Yes. I say: Do you think we ought to save Medicare just like it is. They say: Yes. I say: If we save Medicare just like it is, do you know that your grandchildren will have a standard of living that will be one-third lower than yours was? Then they say: No. America is used to doing hard things. It is just that the Senate right now will not do the hard things, will not come together, will not make the sacrifices. We value our positions more than we value the country we live in. The consequences are showing. We have an 8.2-percent unemployment rate. If we use the same statistics we used in 1980, our unemployment rate is above 9.6 percent--just measuring it the same way we did it 32 years ago. Now that we are measuring it differently, we don't see the real impact. Today we are dangerously close to a global great depression. Let's remember the last time the world saw a great depression. That depression was a leading cause of the global war that killed 60 million people--2.5 percent of the world's population. Do we dare go down that path by putting politics ahead of principle and policy? Fortunately, many of our leaders see this threat and are calling on us to take action. Consider this exchange between former Secretary of State James Baker and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month on ``The Charlie Rose Show'': Secretary Baker: I know one thing. We are broke. We can't afford wars anymore. We can't afford a lot of things, and the biggest threat facing the country today is not some threat from the outside--Iran, nuclear weapons, or anything else--it's our economy. We better darn well get our economic house in order because the strength of our Nation has always depended upon our economy. You can't be strong politically, militarily, or diplomatically if you are not strong economically. He is giving us a foreshadow of what is coming. Secretary Clinton said this in response: Well, amen to that, because I have had to go around the world the last 3\1/2\ years reassuring many leaders both in the governments and the business sectors of a lot of countries that the United States was moving forward economically, that we were not ceding our leadership position, and that we are as powerful as ever. But we recognized that we had to put our economic house in order. If former Secretary Baker and Secretary Clinton can agree, why can't we? They both see the same thing. The only problem is we haven't put our economic house in order. I know it is the Senate majority leader's position to try to protect both his incumbent President and his Members. I know that conventional wisdom says we cannot get anything done in an election year. But I want to tell you that isn't good enough anymore--not good enough for the country. The country deserves better. By doing nothing, we are pushing our children and grandchildren off a fiscal cliff. By doing nothing, we are guaranteeing the very tax increases and cuts in entitlements that both sides say they want to avoid. If you are an unemployed American right now or someone struggling to make ends meet, when is the right time for us to act? Is it a perfect political moment that is always a mirage beyond the horizon of the next election or is it today or this week? The American people have lost their confidence in us because we refuse to act even as we call on others to do things that we will not do ourselves. Today we are asking our soldiers to risk their lives for our country. Why can't we do the same? Why are we allowed to play it safe when we ask others to make the ultimate sacrifice--especially when we as elected leaders have so much less at stake. I believe the American people want us to do hard things and will actually reward us for demonstrating leadership and courage. The problems before us today can all be solved, but delay means the pain that comes with the solution is much greater. Yet to delay-- that is the path we have chosen in the Senate; that is the path the President has chosen--to not face the real issues, the coming and impending bankruptcy of Medicare, and the fact that the average Medicare couple will take three times more out of Medicare than what they put in, and the fact that the baby boom generation will overwhelm the trust fund that pays the hospital bills the worst-case scenario is that in 4 years the Medicare trust fund will be bankrupt. I know that sounds like a lot of things. Let me show the American people some examples. We hear mindless, partisan rhetoric about which side is to blame, just like the debate we heard before the vote on Judge Bacharach. The truth is both sides are to blame, both Republicans and Democrats, when Republicans had the chance to restore limited government, and we helped double the size of government. Meanwhile, the leaders today--their chief complaint is we didn't overspend enough. I know the Senate majority leader has a tough job and the burden of leadership, but he is refusing to accept the responsibility that is truly ours today. This Congress will be measured by our actions. At the end of this week, for 5 weeks, the Senate is going to take off, and we are going to be just like Rome. Actually, what should happen to every Senator as we leave this place at the end of the week, we should each be handed a fiddle so we can all fiddle while the government and the financial situation and the economic chaos that is ours today grows unabated. Real leadership isn't about being right, it is about doing the right thing. We are not doing the right thing in the Senate today. We are not reforming the Tax Code that is 90,000 pages and takes 110,000 IRS employees to administer. We are not addressing the impending bankruptcy of Medicare. We are not assuring the solvency of Social Security and increasing payments for those on the very low end of the totem pole. We are not addressing the key issues facing our country. Why are we here if we are not going to address those issues? We are addressing every issue but those. Again, it is evident my frustration is high. I want the Senate to return to the body it was when I first came here. I think we can do that. I think Senator Reid can lead us to do that. Every day we waste, every day we are not fixing the real problems, the disease that faces our country means we are responsible for a significant increase in the pain and disruption that is coming. Let it not be so. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Just a question through the Chair to the majority leader. I had planned to make a statement on Judge Bacharach, and the Senator is saying we will have debate only. Will that preclude a unanimous consent for speaking as in morning business?

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for such time as I may consume, and that when I finish, the Senator from Ohio be recognized for 10 minutes.

Mr. COBURN. I thank the Senator. I have no objection.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. COBURN. Yes.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. We just disallowed one of the best candidates for the appellate court in my 8 years since I have been in the Senate. Magistrate Judge Bob Bacharach is a stellar individual rated ``very highly qualified'' by the American Bar Association. What has happened is we are in the position today because of games that are being played, political games. Let me just put into the Record what is going on. There are three judges ahead of Bob Bacharach in line. We have had a Leahy-Thurmond rule for some 20 years. I have been quoted saying I think it is a stupid rule. But the background is that protecting the prerogative of the Senate is one of the most important things the majority leader can do. What we have seen happen with the lack of agreement this last holiday season over the moving forward of judges and their approval was the unconstitutional usurpation of power by the President of the United States in the appointment, during our pro forma sessions, of four individuals, one to CFPB and three to the NLRB. Quite frankly, if we look at what Madison wrote in Federalist 51: The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same branch of government consists in giving to those who administer each branch the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others. Ambition must made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. So started the saga in January of this past year, where the reaction of my colleagues on my side of the aisle was to shut down, in response to the President's move, all circuit court confirmations. I stood in my caucus and fought that. I thought it was the wrong action then. I still think it would have been the wrong action. But I convinced my caucus not to go that direction. To do that, I agreed I would consent to the Leahy-Thurmond rule in this election cycle. But I hope this is the last election cycle we use the Leahy-Thurmond rule. Because on the other side of the constitutional issues is that a duly elected President does have the right to have their nominees considered, whether I agree with them or not. To prove this, that this was a stunt rather than anything other than that, and Bob Bacharach becomes the pawn in that, is that we had an agreement on judges. Then we had cloture filed on fourteen district court judges, of which there was no real controversy. All of those district court judges, after that cloture was filed on them and then withdrawn, have henceforth been approved. To the American public, the game is politics and not policy for our country. To me, it saddens me. It frustrates me that we are at this state because it is not a whole lot different than what we see in the playground at a kindergarten. The person who most has spoken in favor of the Leahy-Thurmond rule is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Yet we find this impasse today. So what we ought to all do, every Member of the Senate and the Judiciary Committee during the break after this election, is work together to try to resolve this so this does not happen to any other President and does not do damage to the Senate and the integrity of the Senate and the game on judges. The President gets elected, with their home State Senators, they make a selection. We should not use the filibuster, unless a judge is highly questionable or biased in their viewpoint. I regret that we are in this position. I think this was just a vote to delay Bob Bacharach's eventual confirmation. If President Obama wins the election, I fully expect Judge Bob Bacharach will be approved. If he does not win the election, I plan on standing and fighting for this judge for this same position under a Republican President because he is exactly what we want on a court, someone who is right down the middle in terms of what the law means, what the Constitution means. He has stellar intellectual capabilities, and he has the qualities we all would want, both from the right and the left, as a fair decider of the facts. That is what we want in judges. He will make an ideal appellate judge, regardless of his political affiliation. If we cannot get there then what that says is the partisan politics of today, as everybody outside Washington recognizes, is killing our country.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, what the chairman said is this bill is paid for. I would put forward to the American public that if they went to Wendy's this afternoon and said: Give me a double cheeseburger; and, oh, by the way, over the next 10 years I am going to pay for it, most Americans would not say it is paid for. What we are doing with this bill is taking custom user fees in the years 2021, 2020, 2019, and all the way down to pay for this bill. That is the problem. We will never solve our other problems until we get out of the mindset of saying because of the rules, we can stretch out the payment and call it paid for. This bill isn't paid for. It is going to be paid for by the people who import things 10 years from now, not now. That is the whole point. That is why we have a $1.3 trillion deficit this year. That is why we have at least 2 to 3 million people unemployed in this country--because of our debt. So the question is, Is there a point in time when we are going to stop paying for things in the future and pay for them now? That is my objection. I am fully open to passing this bill if somebody will just pay for it this year. If we are not going to pay for it this year, then we are not going to pass a bill by unanimous consent. I will tell you, nobody else operates this way. Nobody rationalizes that you can pay--and the other thing, this is just $200 million. To everybody outside of Washington that is one ton of money. Here it is peanuts. To say we can't pay for something worth $200 million in a bill to do this, right now, to start the self-discipline of paying for it, it just says we are not worthy of being here if we would not do that. So I would love to work out a solution, but there is a time and place where we have to change the direction of how we operate. For me, this is the bill that now says to me we are going to start paying for things. And if we can't pay for a $200 million pay-for in the same year, or at least the same 3 years we are going to actually spend it, then we are just not going to pass bills with my help. I am not speaking for just Tom Coburn. The vast majority of Americans want us to pay for things by cutting wasteful spending. The fact that we are going to take custom user fees over 10 years to pay for this is ludicrous. Nobody in the rest of the economy can go out and say: Oh, by the way, I want to consume it now, but I will pay for it 10 years from now--interest free. It doesn't work that way, and we ought not to be doing it. The chairman has my utmost respect. He has a tough job, I know that, of trying to do that. I will continue to try to work on solutions for this problem, but I am not moving from a position that we are going to pay for the things in the year in which we count them. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I have a unanimous consent request. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 3326; that the Coburn amendment at the desk be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed; that when the Senate receives the House companion bill to S. 3326, as determined by the majority and the Republican leaders, the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that all after the enacting clause be stricken, and the text of S. 3326, as passed by the Senate, be inserted in lieu thereof; that the bill be read a third time and passed; that a statutory pay-go statement be read, if needed, and passed with no amendments in order prior to passage, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record at the appropriate place, as if read.