Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. If the majority leader would yield, I think the leader could eliminate motions to proceed very easily by saying that every bill that comes to the floor will have an open and honest debate determined by what colleagues and Members would like to debate, but we have not seen that. That is not just the Democratic control of the Senate; we have seen some with the Republican control of the Senate as well. We are not going to solve that problem now. I will take counsel with my caucus, and I will get back to the leader.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to comment very clearly on what this amendment does. Farm and agricultural production in this country is vital both to the country and to our export markets. We have through the years tried many different approaches to make sure we have the stability and the production power in this country for our needs and also to many beneficial aspects of our foreign policy where we use agricultural products for that. Imagine if you are a business other than agriculture and you have decided that regardless of the mistakes you might make or the uncontrolled variables that might impact your business or the downturn in the economy, that with 62 percent of government funding you can buy an insurance policy that guarantees you a profit. That is what this new farm bill has moved to. That is going to be our agricultural program as far as the Senate is looking at it. There is a real differential there between the rest of business and commerce in America and our farm program. I understand the need for that, but this bill actually increases our costs for the Crop Insurance Program by $5.2 billion as it is written. What the Senator from Illinois and I have proposed is a commonsense earnings limit that is associated with every other program in title I that would say: We are going to help you, but we are just not going to help you as much because you therefore, and by your own success, have the means to help yourself. We are going to spend a lot of money on insurance over the next 10 years in this farm bill. It is $94.6 billion. What Senator Durbin and I are proposing is $1.2 billion in savings. A lot of people don't realize the advances that our farmers and the industries that supply them have made. As Senator Durbin pointed out, farm income has been up the last 5 years and is projected to continue to increase. Input costs for fertilizer are going down. Input costs for seed and other chemicals are going up. We want a viable farm program, but what we don't want is the next generation paying for additional wealth for those who, in fact, can afford to insure themselves. This is a very modest proposal. We could have had an amendment that said: If you make over $750,000, we shouldn't be subsidizing any of your crop insurance. We would still have a crop insurance program for this very well-off 4 percent had we done that. What we said is that now is the time to start looking at that. We will look at it again with the next farm bill, but certainly those who are so well-positioned to maximize profits from agriculture don't need a 62-percent subsidy to their crop insurance. This is a controversial amendment. We understand that. We know a lot of people are going to disagree with us. But the point is this: At how much income should the average, hard-working American still be paying taxes to supplement your income? And that is really the question. Should a factory worker making $45,000 a year continue to supplement somebody who is making $10 or $12 or $15 million a year through a crop insurance program? So we are not taking it away. All we are saying is that this needs to be moderated, and moderated in a manner that won't impact anybody except this top 4 percent. If we do that, what we will do is, as the Senator from Illinois said, start solving some of our budget. It is not a lot compared to what our problems are, but the way you get out of trillion-dollar deficits is a billion dollars at a time. What we are asking and what all of us are going to be asking over the next 2 to 3 years of anybody in this country is to sacrifice some. So what Senator Durbin and I are doing is saying to the best, to the most efficient, to those who make the most money, we want you to start sacrificing now by limiting by 15 percent the subsidy that comes to you for this bill. I think it is common sense. It is also fair. I would have gone further in a lot of areas, but I think we have an agreement that this is something we should do, we can do, and it will have no negative impact in terms of our production of agriculture, in terms of quantity or quality. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I just want to have it noted for the record that I would have voted no on this nominee had we had a recorded vote.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. You bet.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I will speak in conjunction with the majority whip for a short period of time. I don't have a long speech.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, members of Congress are debating fewer bills, casting fewer votes, and holding fewer hearings. Meanwhile, important government agencies including the Department of Defense and the Government Accountability Office are being targeted by Congress for spending reductions. What Congress has not considered cutting is the budget for its own summertime parties. On June 4, 2012, I introduced bipartisan legislation to eliminate taxpayer subsidies for political party conventions in the elections occurring after December 31, 2012. Additionally, the bill would allow Presidential Election Campaign Fund, PECF, funds dispersed before December 31, 2012, to be returned to the U.S. Treasury for the purpose of deficit reduction. Despite our $15.6 trillion national debt, political parties received a $36.6 million check, $18.3 million per party, from taxpayers to pay for the costs of political conventions occurring this summer. The funds that are used to cover the conventions come from the PECF. According to the Congressional Research Service, ``Federal law places relatively few restrictions on how PECF convention funds are spent, as long as purchases are lawful and are used to `defray expenses incurred with respect to a presidential nominating convention.' '' The money is, after all, essentially being used to throw a party. Beside funding the event itself, the money is used to pay for entertainment, catering, transportation, hotel costs, ``production of candidate biographical films,'' and a variety of other expenses. These events will be weeklong parties paid for by taxpayers, much like the highly maligned General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas. The $15.6 trillion debt cannot be eliminated over night. But eliminating taxpayer subsidies for political conventions will show strong leadership to getting our budget crisis in control. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will support this commonsense legislation to demonstrate for once and all the party is over when it comes to travel and meetings paid for by the taxpayers. I want to thank my colleagues for the opportunity to speak on the Senate floor today in support of this bill.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, members of Congress are debating fewer bills, casting fewer votes, and holding fewer hearings. Meanwhile, important government agencies including the Department of Defense and the Government Accountability Office are being targeted by Congress for spending reductions. What Congress has not considered cutting is the budget for its own summertime parties. On June 4, 2012, I introduced bipartisan legislation to eliminate taxpayer subsidies for political party conventions in the elections occurring after December 31, 2012. Additionally, the bill would allow Presidential Election Campaign Fund, PECF, funds dispersed before December 31, 2012, to be returned to the U.S. Treasury for the purpose of deficit reduction. Despite our $15.6 trillion national debt, political parties received a $36.6 million check, $18.3 million per party, from taxpayers to pay for the costs of political conventions occurring this summer. The funds that are used to cover the conventions come from the PECF. According to the Congressional Research Service, ``Federal law places relatively few restrictions on how PECF convention funds are spent, as long as purchases are lawful and are used to `defray expenses incurred with respect to a presidential nominating convention.' '' The money is, after all, essentially being used to throw a party. Beside funding the event itself, the money is used to pay for entertainment, catering, transportation, hotel costs, ``production of candidate biographical films,'' and a variety of other expenses. These events will be weeklong parties paid for by taxpayers, much like the highly maligned General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas. The $15.6 trillion debt cannot be eliminated over night. But eliminating taxpayer subsidies for political conventions will show strong leadership to getting our budget crisis in control. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will support this commonsense legislation to demonstrate for once and all the party is over when it comes to travel and meetings paid for by the taxpayers. I want to thank my colleagues for the opportunity to speak on the Senate floor today in support of this bill.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and that Coburn amendment No. 2131 be called up.

Mr. COBURN. It is my understanding that the time is under our control. At present, there is 10 minutes left.

Mr. COBURN. I will be happy to yield to the ranking member. If he has people who wish to speak in opposition, that is fine.

Mr. COBURN. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and I call up amendment No. 2131, which is at the desk, and ask that it be reported.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this is an amendment that comes out of a study of GAO's findings, and GAO did a wonderful job looking at the FDA. What we found out--part of it will be covered if, in fact, we do this other study on the management, but what GAO is telling us is that there is an irregular pattern of performance review at the FDA. Part of the evaluation of about 40 percent of the people who are involved in the drug and device approval process, in terms of their performance review, has to do with the timeliness of their work product. And it is only a small component, but it is still a component of it. What this amendment does is it says: FDA, make this part of your component on the people who are actually reviewed in the review process--not to try to push them to do it better but to have a management tool with which to evaluate individual employees doing this. The fact that they are already doing this on some--and what GAO really said is that it is just a lack of management effectiveness that they have not installed it everywhere else. All this amendment says is that this should be one component as they evaluate their employees on their performance reviews and ask: How did you do on timeliness? Was your work product timely? The idea behind this is not to push drugs out that should not be approved. It is not to push out devices that should not be approved. But remember that the purpose for PDUFA and MDUFA in the first place was to fund FDA with additional money so they would be more timely. The opposition I hear to this amendment that we are afraid that if this is a component of review, they might review a product and let it go when they shouldn't does not make sense since already 40 percent of the employees doing this are being evaluated on this performance standard anyway. So I would raise the question: If we are in opposition to this amendment, why in the world haven't we eliminated this as a part of all the review process already if, in fact, there is a concern? There is not a concern with it. It is a good management tool. It is used in all sorts of government agencies. And I commend to the attention of my colleagues the GAO report that backs up exactly what I am saying and their recommendation. These are not Tom Coburn's recommendations, these are the GAO recommendations for FDA. They address the concerns of inappropriate pressure for early approval or inappropriate approval for drugs or devices. Again, it is good government and common sense. It is how one would manage a private organization. You would put every component that the employee is involved with as a component as part of the review process. My hope is that we do not have to vote on this. When my colleagues actually thoroughly study the GAO report, they will embrace what they are saying. It is common sense with sound judgment that deals with the FDA. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask that that amendment be set aside, and I call up amendment No. 2132, which is at the desk, and ask that it be reported.

Mr. COBURN. My answer to the chairman through the Chair is that the FDA does nothing quickly now, and he knows that because he has been sitting in oversight over them for years. That is No. 1. The answer to No. 2 is, if the Senator reads the GAO report, they have no explanation on why they do it on some employees and not others. The fact is, if this is a bad thing, why are they doing it on 40 percent of the employees now? The No. 1 and No. 2 things the FDA is charged with are safety and efficacy. Safety comes first. They get graded on how well they do on that. So we have this counterbalance. Well, what we have is a lack of responsiveness even though billions of dollars are going to the FDA from the device companies and the drug companies. Part of the deal was to make them more timely. That means in no way do you ignore safety and in no way do you ignore efficacy. The fact is they do deserve answers, and what is happening a lot of times is they are not. I fully support the bureaucracy of the FDA in terms of them doing their job. I think they do an awfully good job. They are just awfully slow at it, and when you ask why, there is not a good answer. The point is, if there are a large number of employees who are already reviewed as a small component, it doesn't have to be a major one, but it ought to be something you think about. Do I push this off my desk because I am bored with it? Does the timeframe mean anything? We are not going after eliminating safety and efficacy, we are going after smart management, and those two things, safety and efficacy, reign supreme at the FDA. That is why we spend so much in this country. That is why most of the drugs are approved outside of this country way ahead of when they get approved here, because our drugs and devices are safer and we are slow to approve, and rightly so, but we should not be like frozen ice slowly slipping down a hill. All this says is, let's make it one component of many in terms of review. Again, I tell the chairman, this is not my recommendation, this is the GAO's recommendation. So I would appreciate consideration by the chairman and ranking member for these amendments. I think they are common sense. We could look at them again. If the Senator thinks there is a problem, we can put in a caveat. Let's look at it in a year and say: Have there been problems because we have done this? But it is good management, it does make sense, and they are already doing it on 40 percent of their employees who are involved in the approval of both drugs and devices. I thank the chair for his question. I yield the floor, and I will be back.

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

Mr. COBURN. I would be happy to.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, let me say how proud I am of all of the members of the HELP Committee on this difficult and complicated issue they are bringing before us. Having been in business and under the control of the FDA as a medical device manufacturer, this is a very complicated area of law that, if done right, will have tremendous positive effects, and I think the Senators have put out a very good bill. I congratulate my colleagues and all the members on doing that. I have two amendments, and I am going to speak for a very short period of time on both of them. I will work with the ranking member and the chairman to see if we can't get to where we don't have to vote on them. I would like to give just a little history on PDUFA and MDUFA. The reason they were set up in the first place was to help fund the FDA, and the reason the manufacturers agreed to do that was to get more timeliness in terms of response to their applications. That was the whole basis for it. And what we have before us today is some improvement in terms of the FDA's response but really not everything we should have gotten. I, along with Senator Burr, asked for a GAO study to the FDA in terms of meeting stated performance goals, and we found out a whole lot about that, and that is my next amendment, but I say that to preface why I have this amendment. In this bill is a wonderful requirement that causes the FDA to contract with an independent management company to assess the management of the missions and resources of the device regulation component of the FDA. What is missing is that same independent review in terms of drugs. It is one of those situations where we invest in something that would pay us additional big dividends. I know it will pay big dividends in the device area. It will also pay big dividends in the drug area. I don't know what the workings of the committee are and why they decided not to put this in as far as the drug review process, but having a second look at a very complicated regulatory and approval structure could be very beneficial in terms of improving both the quality of the outcome as well as the timeliness. So this amendment simply says that what we are going to do for the device, which is in the bill already, we are also going to do for the drug side of the FDA. It is about gathering knowledge for both the FDA and for us as we help this agency perform very needed things. As a physician, I read a lot about new science on new drugs. The things that are coming in this country are going to be phenomenal in terms of new treatments and new drugs and new capabilities. In terms of our competitiveness worldwide but also in terms of how we address these diseases, we need to have the most efficient regulatory agency we can. All I am asking is that we treat all of the FDA the same in terms of taking a look at how well they are doing, what could they do better, and how they could do it better. That report comes to us and the FDA, and so we can see the weaknesses. We have not been through every area of the FDA as Members of the Senate, and to have an independent assessment of the drug side as well as the device side will pay huge benefits to the FDA, but mostly it will pay huge benefits to people of this country in terms of the timeliness of drug presentation. I won't speak any more to that. It is a commonsense, good-government amendment. Part of it is in the bill, and part of it is not in the bill. It is something that will pay us big dividends not only in terms of health care and improving the operation of the FDA but also in terms of improving our competitiveness worldwide. Amendment No. 2132

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. If the Senator from New Jersey will give me a courtesy of 5 minutes to speak as in morning business and I will be through. I appreciate what the majority leader has said. I will work my side of the aisle, to see if the possibility of moving this is there and I will give it my 100-percent effort between now and next Monday when I see the majority leader to see if we cannot do it. I will make a couple of points. Our Nation is in big trouble and we are not acting as if it is in big trouble. It seems that the way we are operating is from crisis to crisis. That is not good for the country, it is not good for the agencies, it is certainly not good for the individuals, and it makes it where we actually cannot do effective legislating. The idea behind the flood insurance program is almost 50 years old. There is nothing wrong with its intent. But we cannot afford $900 million a year in subsidies to the very wealthy in this country for their second or vacation homes. If we are talking about fairness, as the President talks, then it is time to reform this program--whether it is with an extension or not--this component of it where there is a fair premium, where we are not subsidizing those who can in fact take care of themselves in this country. Whether it is this bill or the farm bill where we are subsidizing 4 percent of the farmers with 60 percent of the crop insurance premium, it is the same issue. I look forward to working with the majority leader and I will do my part to try to gather up the amendments that might be there and work with our leadership to try to bring this bill to the floor. I thank the Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I would respond to the majority leader through the Chair and say I will help him in any way I could with my side of the aisle to make sure we have cogent amendments to this bill and also agree to a limited number of them, since it is important that we reauthorize this program.

Mr. COBURN. The majority leader wants me to go ahead?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I object. I will hold my comments until after the majority leader finishes his talk, so I can explain my position.

Mr. COBURN. We have had 14 short-term extensions to the National Flood Insurance Program. That is over the past 4\1/2\, 5 years. There is a bill set to be brought to the floor. Yet we are going to have a short-term extension again. This program is not financially sound and it is not self-sustaining. It runs a $900 million deficit every year. What is the National Flood Insurance Program? Do we need it? Yes. Am I objecting that we do need it? No. But the vast majority of the moneys that are expended by hard- working Americans go to subsidize the insurance for homeowners of second and vacation homes. Multiple times in the Senate and in the House, both sides have concurred that this should be taken away, this subsidy for those in terms of second homes and vacation properties. What I would expect, if we are going to do an extension, is that then we ought to do an extension with something that both bodies have already passed, which includes making those people who have properties eight times the average value of the rest of the homes in the flood insurance program carry their fair share of their insurance. So I am not inclined, no matter what happens to the flood insurance program, to allow us to continue to extend. I would make one other point. We will not have time in December to fix this, with everything else that is coming up. So the time to fix this is now. I will not object to the 5-year reauthorization coming to the floor. I don't think anybody on our side will as well. We should address this and be done with it. But another short-term extension is not what this country needs. We cannot afford losing another $900 million, plus the American taxpayer is on the hook for $1.34 trillion with this program right now. The average subsidy to the average home-- not the vacation home--is over $1,000 a year. I have no objection to supporting those who actually need our help, who are in flood-prone areas. But for those who have the tremendous benefit and the opportunity to have second and third homes, I think it is objectionable we continue to subsidize their purchase of flood insurance. With that, I object.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Well, let me, first of all, I thank my colleague. I have a couple of charts that are oversized. The reason they are oversized is because we cannot get it all on one chart. I would ask unanimous consent to display those charts.

Mr. COBURN. What most people do not realize is the Federal Government is now twice the size it was in 2001. Think about that. We are spending twice as much money as we did in 2001. As a matter of fact, if we go back 15 years, our deficit this year is bigger than what our entire budget was. That is how out of control the Federal Government is. There is a political reason we are not having a budget. Everybody understands that. Nobody is going to say that. The political reason no budget was proposed and run through the Senate to create a conference committee with the House is because we do not want to make the hard choices in an election year. Budgets for families are about making hard choices, and yet here we are supposed to represent leadership in our country. We refuse to make hard choices about the direction. I had the great opportunity to speak with some members in the War College class not long ago. We got into talking about budgets. They said: Do you realize how difficult it is for us to try to spend money when you send us a continuing resolution, and we do not know about it until 10 days before it is going to take effect, how difficult it is for us to try to manage in a prudent way the money that the Federal Government spends when we have no budgetary guidelines? There is waste out the kazoo when you ask us to do that. So regardless of the fact that there is a law that says we will pass a budget, which has been totally ignored by the majority leader, the consequences of that are tremendous. What most people talk about is how do we get out of the problem. What I would put forward in terms of our budget, there is not a problem in front of our country we cannot solve. What we lack is leadership to pull us together as Americans to say: Here is the problem. Here are the solutions. Let's find a compromise in the middle for the solution, and let's solve our problem. We have refused to do that. But, most importantly, we refuse to look at ourselves. I have a couple of examples. The GAO put out its second annual report--- the first one was last year, the second annual report this year--in terms of duplicative programs. We have had amendments on this floor fail routinely that said we ought to know what we are doing before we pass another bill. We ought to know what is already out there. That has been rejected by my colleagues. But I am going to show charts that show how ridiculous we are in terms of how we are well meaning but absolutely stupid in terms of how we address problems that we perceive is the Federal Government's role. The GAO put out a list of duplications. I am just going to read a few of them. I have given speeches on the floor on others, but there are 209 different programs--209 different programs in the Federal Government for science, technology, engineering, and math initiatives for our educational system. We spend $3 billion a year on that. The overlap is unbelievable. Here is the chart that shows all of the different programs with all of the different agencies involved, all of them overlapping, most of the money wasted in terms of how we spend it because there is no concentration, there is no coordination, and what we have is a ridiculous array--not that it is wrong to want to have more science, more technology, more engineering, and more math students. But we are spending all the money on the bureaucracy when we could have five programs: one for upper level, one for lower level, one for minorities, one for disadvantaged, and one for others. Here is the complex. It is mind boggling how many programs we have, and there is not a metric to measure whether any one of these is effective. That is $3 billion a year. We could have one-tenth as many programs and spend one-half as much money and have more students come out with science, technology, engineering, and math backgrounds. But we have decided to do it piecemeal and never do the oversight and never consolidate. If we wanted to get out of a $1 trillion deficit, we do it $1 billion at a time, not do it with $1 trillion at a time. The other program, which is even more difficult to ascertain, is in the Department of Justice grants. Let me go through those just for a second. There are 253 duplicative programs in the Department of Justice. We spend a total of $3.9 billion a year, and here is what the GAO tells us. People who apply for one grant in DOJ--for one thing-- turn around and apply for it somewhere else for exactly the same thing. The Department of Justice does not know they just gave them two grants for exactly the same thing because there are so many different grant programs and nobody is watching the store. So the point is nobody would run their household this way. No business would operate this way. States that are successful do not operate this way. The reason we do this is because we do not have a budget and we do not have any oversight and we are not minding the store. The way to change what is coming for our country is to start doing everything that is necessary to address the problem. And the problem is this: We are spending money we do not have on things we do not need, and nobody in Congress wants to do the hard work of ferreting out what works and what does not and making the hard choices because every one of these programs has a constituency. So the parochialism and the constituency and short-term thinking we are now bound up in keeps us from saving ourselves. Last quote, and I will finish with this: John Adams said, ``There has yet to be a democracy that did not murder itself.'' We are on that way if we do not change direction. It is not a Democrat-Republican problem. It is all our problem. It will not matter what our political persuasion is when we face the very difficult coming times if we do not respond with a cogent budget for this country.