Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, first of all, I would like to say I support all three of these measures, in terms of their passing. What I don't support is continuing the habit that has put this country $16 trillion in debt. To clarify, as a member of the Finance Committee, if one reads my opening statement at that hearing, in that markup, I objected to this bill on the basis of pay-fors. I offered two separate amendments that, on the floor, everybody would agree are germane because the money to pay for the $200 million comes out of trade areas. Yet they were rejected as nongermane by the chairman. So they weren't offered because he said he would reject them. So to create the impression there was no objection to the pay-for in this bill and that everybody agreed is inaccurate, to say the least. I called Senator Coons of Delaware, who is interested in this, and I called Senator Baucus when this came up, and I told him I have a plan so we can get this all done this week. I was willing to lose a vote on the amendment to have an opportunity to offer the amendment and give my side of the story by splitting these two so the House could pass it. The House has now gone home. Burma sanctions are no longer available to be passed, except if we were to do something extraordinary with the House, which I understand from the Speaker can happen. So Burma sanctions could happen this week. But I wish to go back to the more important point. Regardless of whether I voted for something in the past, using the type of pay-for that is in this bill is what I call the Wimpy mechanism: Wimpy drives up to Wendy's and orders a hamburger, and when he gets around to the window he says: Don't worry about it, I will be back in 10 days to pay for it. What we have done is use custom user fees over 10 years to collect enough money to pay for $200 million. With the waste that is in this government, for us to use a 10-year pay-for on something that will be expended over 3 years means we are not capable of addressing the much bigger issues in front of our country. If we can't find $200 million in a $3.6 trillion budget, we are unqualified to be here. What I would say to my friends and my colleague on the Senate Finance Committee is that somebody has to start saying no. I would remind everyone of a lecture I got from Senator Pete Domenici on a land bill about 2 years ago. He said: We have always done it that way. I said: You know what, you are right, and that is why we are in trouble. So the financing mechanism on this bill denies the situation we are in and charges out over 10 years custom user fees to pay for it. No other American business, no other company, no other family gets that kind of luxury, especially when they are in debt at 105 percent of their GDP. If we look at where we are, the average American, what we can say is that we are taking in $53,000, we are spending $73,000, and what we actually owe is $380,000. We can't keep doing that. That is how it would relate to the individual family in this country. The objection was not on the bills. There was no lack of effort on my part to reach out and solve this problem before now and now the minority leader has offered a way to solve the problem on the sanctions for Burma and it is objected to. So not only do we not get to offer amendments in committee, we do not get to offer amendments on the floor. The one thing we need to accomplish today we are not going to accomplish because we don't want to allow amendments. Because we want to keep doing it the way we have always done it. And the way we have always done it has bankrupted our country and stolen from our children and grandchildren. It is not acceptable anymore. That is the truth. Everything else is the game that Washington plays. And I will tell my colleagues, I am still willing to work on this. I have a commitment to the Senator from Delaware that next week, if this comes up, I will be the first to offer that amendment and get it out of the way, taking a very short period of time with the Senate. But I want a recorded vote of the Senators in this body that they want to steal the customs user fees for 10 years for just a $200 million pay-for. If that is what you really want to do, then vote that way. But go out and defend it instead of taking something this administration has recommended we cut--which is what I am using to pay for it, something this administration has recommended to pay for it--and vote against what your own President says--here is something we need to eliminate. I don't get it. The American people don't get it. No wonder we have a 9-percent approval rating. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

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

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. COBURN. I call up amendment No. 2214 on behalf of myself and the Senator from Colorado, Mr. Udall. I ask unanimous consent that we be given 3 minutes for each side to be divided between myself and Senator Udall.

Mr. COBURN. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the Senator from Colorado.

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

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, 99 percent of the American public has no idea that when they check the box, we are going to take actual American taxpayer dollars and subsidize party conventions for candidates who have already been decided. If we are going to lead as a body on starting to solve some of our problems, this is where we should start. This is $34.6 million that gets doled out that is not spent in the best interests of the American public but spent in the best interests of the politicians for the American public. It needs to be changed. It has no effect on security. It has no effect on the present allocation that was made in January to each party. If we cannot do this, this little simple thing of leading by example, then our country is doomed because that means we cannot solve the very significant problems in front of us either. I would appreciate your support and vote on this amendment.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I assume by the chairman's response that she supports the $20 million that went into a reality TV show in India to purchase cotton other than ``made in the United States.'' That is where $20 million of it went. That is what is wrong with this program. I am not objecting to the fact that we ought to have market access programs. But when we are wasting $20 million on something that has no connection whatsoever with American agricultural products, we ought to reduce or eliminate it.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 2289.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I call up the pending amendment No. 2293.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read.

Mr. COBURN. This is an amendment that falls in line with the recommendation of the administration as well as every outside group that has ever looked at this program. The Department of Agriculture has five access to marketing programs. This is just one of them. The administration recommended a 20-percent reduction. We have put forward an amendment to reduce it by 20 percent. We spend $2 billion over the next 10 years on market access. American contribution of total world agricultural products is on the decline in spite of these programs, and the waste in these programs--if we look at where the money is spent--is unbelievable. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, reducing our national debt--which now exceeds $15.8 trillion--is the most critical issue facing our nation. Our country simply cannot survive if we continue down this unsustainable course. Every area of the Federal budget should be examined to determine, which programs should be priorities. Federal conservation programs are a good place to start. These programs pay farmers and ranchers to either implement conservation measures on their farms, ``working lands'', or to idle their land for conservation purposes, and ``land retirement''. Oftentimes, the financial assistance offered by these programs incentivizes what is already in the best financial interests of farmers. Natural, market-based incentives already exist to achieve the efficiency and conservation purposes of these programs without taxpayer dollars. Not only that, but these programs also pay farmers and companies that have adjusted gross incomes, AGI, of $1 million or more. Special rules allow the USDA to waive income limitations for certain programs, which it does on a regular basis. The result is millions paid to otherwise ineligible millionaires each year. In fact, over the past 2 years, USDA waived the $1 million AGI cap for the programs discussed below and paid a total of $89,032,263 to individuals or entities with an AGI of $1 million or more. Allowing federal conservation programs to make payments to those with an adjusted gross income, AGI, of $1 million or more is simply not a priority for taxpayers. This amendment would prevent USDA from paying millionaires by eliminating the ability to issue waivers that exempt program participants who have an AGI of $1 million or more from adhering to the program's payment limit rules. In total, over a 2-year period, USDA waived program requirements and awarded over $84 million to individuals and entities with an AGI of $1 million or more. In 2009, the USDA waived program requirements and paid two millionaires a total of $10,234,520, which consisted mainly of a $10 million payment to an investment company in California for restoring wetlands to protect the Riparian Brush Rabbit. In 2010, the Wetland Reserve Program, WRP, program paid eight individuals with an AGI of $1 million over $74 million. These included almost $22 million to a ranch in Florida. The company that owns the ranch describes itself as a ``privately held, family-owned company with agricultural, commercial real estate, and asset management operations.'' That company also states that it owns a number of commercial real estate properties in New Jersey and Florida. The company also claims holdings that include multi-tenant office buildings, parking lots, a for-profit educational institution, restaurants, and retail property. In 2010, USDA also paid over $31 million to another ranch in Florida. The payment was part of an $89 million purchase by USDA of an easement that places deed restrictions on the use of the land along 26,000 acres of the Fisheating Creek Watershed, partially located on the ranch. USDA claimed that the easement purchase would provide support for the crested caracara, Florida panther, and the red-cockaded woodpecker. Recently, the owners of the ranch listed 2,600 acres for sale for $18.2 million. The property is described as a working ranch with ``tremendous recreation and hunting attributes.'' The local newspaper has also reported that same ranch was slated for a new 12,000 unit planned community. Other entities and individuals with an AGI of $1 million or more that received WRP payments in 2010 include: $7.92 million to a company in Texas for ``restoration and protection of critical and unique wetlands'' on a property known as East Nest Lake and Osceola Plantation; $5.8 million to a farm in North Carolina to promote a ``habitat for migratory birds and wetland dependent wildlife;'' $5.4 million to a ranch in Florida for land with ``high potential to significantly improve waterfowl and wading bird habitat'' $900,853 to an individual in Kansas to ``protect and [for] restoring . . . valuable wetland resources . . . for migratory birds and other wildlife;'' $227,203 to a company in New Hampshire for ``wetland restoration;'' and $80,000 to two individuals in Mississippi to ``restore, protect and enhance wetlands.'' In 2010, USDA waived the $1 million AGI requirement and paid a ranch holding company over $2.7 million through Grassland Reserve Program, GRP, for ``protection of critical and unique grasslands.'' Last year, USDA paid four millionaires a total of $592,097 through the Environmental Quality Incentive Program, EQIP, $299,847 of which was aimed at protecting the Sage Grouse by a ranch in California; $50,000 went to a farm. That farm is owned by the W.C. Bradley Company, which is best known for producing Char-Broil outdoor grills and Zebco fishing supplies; remaining amounts of $35,250 and $210,000 went to two family trusts. The Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program paid $737,000 to three millionaire recipients, with the majority of the funds $449,662 going to protect the Sage Grouse by a family trust in California. A farm in Georgia also received $100,000 through WHIP for ``promotion of at-risk species habitat conservation.'' The remaining $187,540 went to a company in New Jersey. Farm and Ranch Land Protection Program, FRPP paid $630,000 to a company in 2009 to protect Raspberry Farms in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. Raspberry Farms formerly operated as a ``popular pick-your- own berries and retail farm stand'' in the 1980s and early 1990s. The former farm was scheduled to be developed for housing, but instead, NRCS, in partnership with local entities, paid a total of $1.6 million to ensure the land will never be developed. In 2010 USDA paid four individuals and entities with an AGI of $1 million or more a total of $75,540. Again, this is a very straightforward amendment. Last year the Department of Agriculture paid $10 million to two different individuals, who had an adjusted gross income of over $1 million, through a waiver granted by the Department of Agriculture. Both of these were ineligible, but we give the Department of Agriculture the right to waive that. This amendment would restrict that right for a waiver for people making more than $1 million a year in terms of conservation payments. There is nothing wrong with conservation programs, but most often these payments are paid in addition to what people are going to do anyway. So what the Department of Agriculture has done is given well over $180 million to millionaires through our conservation payment on programs they would have otherwise done themselves.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this is an amendment that both Senator Durbin and I have offered. It is not nearly as severe as the GAO's recommendation for this program. The very wealthiest of farmers, in terms of income in this country, are the people most likely to buy less crop insurance, not more. Yet we subsidize them at the same rate as we do the middle-income and lower income farmers. This is straightforward. If you want to save $1 billion, if you want to tackle the debt, here is a way that will allow us to save $1 billion and not put anybody at risk. Highly capitalized farmers don't insure at the same rate as lower capitalized farmers. This will be the only program, if this amendment doesn't pass, that doesn't have a payment limitation on it in terms of adjusted gross income. So there should be no question we should do this just in terms of fairness of all the sacrifices we are going to ask everybody else in this country to make in the coming years. This ought to be part of this farm program. I yield back.

Mr. COBURN. I thank the Chair.

Mr. COBURN. I call up amendment No. 2439.

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my letter to the minority leader dated May 29, 2012, be printed in the Record.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I assume we are in morning business. Because we are in morning business, I am going to use that time to talk about four amendments I have to the Agriculture bill. I want to make one acute observation to the American people on what is going on in Washington. The four amendments I will have on the Agriculture bill are a symptom of the disease that is in front of our Nation. This year we are going to run about a $1.3 trillion deficit. At the end of this fiscal year we will have 16.25 trillion dollars' worth of debt. I am 64 years of age. My children and grandchildren are going to pay back my portion of that debt. I am not going to be paying it back. The questions in front of our Nation are, No. 1, how did we get to this point, and, No. 2, what are we going to do about it. What we are going to hear today as we begin voting on the amendments, what we are going to hear from the Senate, is why we cannot cut spending, why we cannot limit our appetites, why we cannot end subsidies to some of the richest co-ops in the world, why we cannot stop sending money to the Republican and Democratic Conventions out of the Treasury, why we cannot limit some of the conservation programs that go to millionaires--why we cannot do it. We are going to hear why we cannot. This country cannot wait for us to continue hearing excuses about why we cannot trim our expenditures. The real problem is the Federal Government is going to take in $2.6 trillion, and it is going to spend about $3.8 trillion. That is the real problem. We ignore it politically by not making hard decisions, by not reforming the Tax Code for a progrowth, lower rates, broader base where everybody is participating in the Tax Code. People, through their well-connectedness, don't have to get out of special benefits to them, which is $30 billion a year for the very wealthy in this country in the Tax Code. We refuse to do those things. We have campaigns going on all across the country and nobody is talking about the No. 1 threat to this country, which is our debt and our deficits. The reason there is no job creation is not because politicians don't want job creation. It is because they refuse to reform the very things that are keeping job creation from happening. I am going to have four amendments. All of them actually save money for the American taxpayers, our kids, and our grandkids. They are all common sense. Most people outside of Washington will agree with them except the very people who are getting the benefits. They are the well- heeled, and they are the well-connected who continue to get things for themselves to the detriment of our future. The question the American people have to start asking is when is Washington going to grow up? When are they going to start taking responsibility for their addictive behavior? Everybody who comes into my office who has lobbied me on these four amendments say: You can't take anything away from me. Do my colleagues realize what the answer is when anybody says: You can't take anything away from me? The answer is bankruptcy and a position, in terms of the economics of this country, that will be far worse than the Great Depression ever was and far worse than anything our country has ever experienced. But everybody says: What I am getting now I have to keep, regardless if someone is a multibillion-dollar conglomerate co-op and we are sending someone $100 million every 10 years to advertise their product. The second point I will make before I outline these four amendments is the one thing we refuse to look at that can guide us on how to make these decisions is article I, section 8 of the Constitution. What is the real role for the Federal Government? I will tell my colleagues as we look at these four amendments, we are going to have trouble squaring what our Founders said was our role with what we are doing now in these four areas and then saying we are not violating the Constitution by spending money we don't have--money we are going to have to borrow to be able to spend--and spend it in areas that help the well-heeled and the well-connected. All of these amendments are very straightforward. I wish to make one other point. We spend $200 million a year through five separate programs of the government to promote agricultural products outside of this country--$200 million a year. That is $2 million every 10 years. Let's show how effective they have been by looking at this chart. Whether one thinks it is constitutional, what kind of a job have they done since 1997? I don't think that trend line looks very good. So if we are going to spend $200 million paying for the promotion of agricultural products outside of this country, maybe we ought to ask the question: Why are we on a declining slope, as far as percentage of the world's agricultural sales, at the same time when farm income in this country has never been higher? Why is it? Because the Federal Government is not very good at doing things the private sector is very good at. We have five separate programs within the Department of Agriculture to do this, and the question the American people ought to be asking is: Why do we have five programs? If, in fact, it is a role for the Federal Government, which I highly doubt under the Constitution, why do we have five? So that is how well we are doing. I will talk about the first program. The market access program is one of the five programs the Federal Government has within the Department of Agriculture to do this. The Obama administration actually agrees with this amendment. In their budget, they put a recommendation to trim this. Yet all we have heard from everybody out there who gets the soft ride on this is that we can't take any money away from this program. If we can't take $40 million a year out of a program that is ineffective, history is here. We are going to be belly up, and the consequences of that will be devastating not just for our kids but for us, because it is going to come in the very near future. All this amendment says is out of these five programs, let's cut this one 20 percent. The Obama administration recommended doing that. The GAO says there is nothing to say that this is effective use of tax dollars. One would think we are pulling toenails, to hear the people scream. I won't go into the details on this amendment because my time is limited. It means we are still going to spend $160 million on this one program, which is one of five, to promote agricultural products when we are not being successful in spending that money anyway. The question is, Why would we vote against it? Because there is a parochial interest somewhere that we are going to be beholden to that is greater than our interest and fidelity to the U.S. Constitution or our interest and fidelity to the future of this country. That is why people will vote against this amendment. It doesn't have anything to do with common sense. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that we are going to run this significant deficit when we have a $16 trillion debt. It has to do with how do I make sure I am not in trouble with the parochial interests rather than doing the right, best thing for our country. The second amendment--and I have received a lot of criticism for it-- is in conjunction with Senator Durbin. For those people with adjusted gross incomes of greater than three-quarters of a million dollars a year, all this amendment does is decrease the subsidy the middle- income, hard-working factory worker or service worker in this country pays with their taxes to subsidize a crop insurance program that guarantees a profit and yield. Instead of a 62-percent subsidy by the Federal Government when they are making more than three-quarters of a million dollars per year, we take it to 47 percent. What do we hear? Oh, we can't do that. If a person is making $750,000 a year farming, that person's capital should be in pretty good shape and they should be able to afford to take on some more of the risks. We are going to hear: Well, this will be too hard to implement. There isn't another agriculture program that doesn't have an income payment limitation of some type associated with it, except this one. When, out of every dollar spent on crop insurance, the average, hard-working American is paying 62 percent of it, it is not too much to ask those who are on the upper income stream in the agricultural community to participate a little bit more in helping pay for that subsidy by taking a reduced subsidy. So all we are doing is taking 15 percent of it. Under this agriculture bill that is on the floor, there are three ways to ensure profit, and every one of them the American taxpayer who is not a farmer is paying for. There is no other business in this country where they are guaranteed that profit and revenue will be there through an insurance policy that is paid for by the rest of us. The GAO report said we should actually limit it to $40,000 and we will save $5 billion over the next 10 years. This amendment will only save $1 billion over the next 10 years. But the way we get rid of $1 trillion deficits is to ask everybody to share a little bit. All this amendment is doing is asking the most well-off farmers--the ones we have been subsidizing for years; the ones who are taking hundreds of thousands of dollars every year from the American taxpayers--to pay 15 percent more on their crop insurance so the average individual in this country isn't taking off their table to subsidize somebody who is making three-quarters of a million dollars a year. The third amendment is an amendment to end conservation payments to millionaires. Almost every other program we have in terms of our farm programs has some limitations on it, but the Department of Agriculture has an exception where they can exclude this limitation. All this amendment would do is say to somebody who has an adjusted gross income of $1 million a year: Wouldn't that money be better spent somewhere else in the farm conservation area, No. 1; and No. 2, if it is in the best interests of the farm or production of agricultural acreage, and somebody has that kind of income, isn't it in their best interests to do these things? It is a very simple amendment that says: If you are making an adjusted gross income of $1 million or more a year, then we are going to put some limitations on how much money we spend on your property and then go spend it on other properties where we might, in fact, have more effective resource conservation. The final amendment I have to the bill has nothing to do with the agricultural bill but it has everything to do with the problems in this country. In February of this year, the U.S. Treasury wrote a check to the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention for $18.4 million each. When the Presidential checkoff system was created, the politicians in Washington wired it so that we thought we were giving money to a Presidential campaign when, in fact, they took a percentage of it for both parties. We don't have $18.4 million to spend on a Republican convention or a Democratic convention. The nominees of both parties are known. So what we have done, besides spending $100 million in security for both of those events--$50 million apiece--is we sent $18 million to the heads of both parties to spend any way they want to spend it. What is wrong with that? That $18.4 million we borrowed from the Chinese. So we are borrowing money from the Chinese to fund a hallelujah party in both Tampa and Charlotte this year, each one of them getting $18.4 million. It is time that kind of nonsense stop. This amendment is going to require 60 votes. I don't know why they put it at 60 votes; maybe so a lot of people can vote for it but it still won't pass. But here is a test vote on whether the Senate gets the problems this country faces. If somebody votes against this amendment, what it says is they believe politics is above principle, that careerism trumps character, and that they can pull the wool over the eyes of the vast portion of American citizens. What could we do with $18.4 million times two? Well, there are tons we could do. The first thing is we could quit paying interest to the Chinese for it. The second thing is who could we help in terms of their health care or their housing? How many HIV patients who are waiting on ADAP who can't get the treatment they need could we help with $18.4 million? The point is this amendment is probably going to get defeated, but I want my colleagues to look in that realm of the universe in America where all the politicians reacted with disdain over the GSA conferences spending $880,000 in what was said to be a foolish way. If they made any comment about the excesses of governmental agencies on conferences and parties, how can they not apply the same standard to their own political party? My hope is that America will wake up. I am in the twilight years of my life. I have seen vast changes in our country, both good and bad, but we have maxed out the credit card in our country. We can't get another credit card without severe pain. We are trying to not do the right thing in the Congress of the United States. We are trying to kick the can down the road. We are trying to not make the hard decisions. And everyone who comes and lobbies says: Yes, I agree there is a problem, but please don't take anything away from me. The answer is leadership that says we all have to sacrifice to get our country out of the depths of the problems we are facing today. This will be a great key vote on whether the Senators understand priorities and the depth of the problems we are in. There is no way we should ever again send taxpayer funds to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party for a convention, and this amendment would eliminate that in the future. Mr. President, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I take the leader at his word. I will go back to my caucus and explain that I object to this group of bills, but I would also note we did get two amendments out of the way. The one amendment on sugar that had the potential to pass wasn't the one we chose. So I come back to the point, never in the history of the Senate, with the rate at which we see now, did we give up our rights to allow the majority leader to decide what amendments will be voted on or offered. In fact, for the last 3 days, we could have had a great open process of having the floor open for amendments and moved 8 or 10 amendments a day. I understand the conflict. I understand what he is trying to do, and I understand the political ramifications of that. I will go and seek the counsel and guidance of my caucus and return and give the leader's message. With that, I object.

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. COBURN. I wonder if I might ask the leader a question through the Chair. It would seem to me the process we are planning now is that the leader is deciding what amendments we will vote on and what we will not. I wonder if he would be open to the consideration of us sending up 40 amendments over the next 4 days and coming to an agreement on this, because what we are playing now is a game of low priority amendments versus high priority amendments in the name of saying we are doing something rather than having an open amendment process, which is the tradition of the Senate. My question to him is would he be amenable to have a discussion on a much larger number of amendments so we don't continue to get out of order? This is the first time I remember seeing this list, and this is a very low priority amendment for many.