Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I wish to make one point. The Institute of Medicine did not recommend this. As a matter of fact, their recommendation was that causality ought to be the only way in which we would do this. I would ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN. Yes, I will.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, the answer is that the Senator is absolutely correct. We have a lot of science that shows causation with this herbicide and disease. We have made the assumption that any other association should fall into that same category, such as hairy cell leukemia, and we know lots of things about this group to which there is only an association, statistical association, and no correlation, no causation, such as if someone has Parkinson's, they are compensated from Agent Orange. Yet there is not one scientific study that will show there is any causal relationship between those two diseases. I will answer that I want every veteran to get the compensation due them when they have a disease related to this chemical. If we find in the future more science that would say so, then we will go on the science. Now, we have had a Secretary who doesn't understand the difference between association and causation, and we are going to spend $42 billion that we don't have, giving it to people whose diseases were not caused by Agent Orange. That is my problem. As a physician, I could never defend myself in a court of law using this logic on anything I would do in practicing medicine. As I stated while the Senator was talking with the chairman, we have both had melanoma. The Senator's came from something that we know is associated with it and also a cause--it is called the Sun, ultraviolet radiation. Mine didn't come from that because I didn't have that kind of exposure, and I experienced it at a very young age. Under the guidance of the Secretary, we both would be compensated as if ultraviolet light was the cause of both of our melanomas--the Senator from Arizona, appropriately; me, inappropriately. So the fact is, no one ever wants to move back, but this is a mistake the Secretary made. My intent is not to harm any veteran who has a disease that is truly caused by Agent Orange. My intent is to make sure we can have the ability to take care of our veterans in the future by spending money wisely to compensate those who are truly injured, truly inhibited and limited by their exposure to that as a result of their service to this country. With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, let me update my colleague. I do plan to call up this amendment, and I do plan to ask for a vote on it because it is important. I will call up the amendment in a moment. What has happened--the Senator from Arizona has had the disease melanoma, cancer melanoma at his age. We kind of know somebody at his age, if they have large amounts of Sun exposure over prolonged periods of time on nevuses or birthmarks, can develop melanoma. There is causation related to that. I have also had melanoma, but I had it as a very young man. What science also knows is that one can develop melanoma without any Sun exposure to a birthmark or a nevus or a mole. What has happened within the VA, we have taken and gone away from causation and gone to any association that could ever be made. I am a survivor of colon cancer. What we know is, our risk for colon cancer goes way up if we eat a highly refined diet, with very few vegetables, and have that kind of a diet associated also with high levels of sugar. I did not have any of those things, but yet I had colon cancer. Because there is an association, we cannot infer causation. So what is happening now? The Secretary of Veterans Affairs has put us on the hook for people who have no causation but do have association. This amendment, which I will call up, does not change our ability to do that in the future when we, in fact, would see causation. But the presumption that association with the Sun caused my melanoma is wrong. The assumption that my diet caused my colon cancer is wrong. It does cause colon cancers, but we cannot show causation. Nobody can speak for veterans better than John McCain, having served the amount of time he did in Vietnam as a prisoner of war. He has the body image that shows his sacrifice. Let me tell you what has happened. We are transferring $\1/2\ million to veterans under this decision by Secretary Shinseki for people who weigh 350 pounds, smoke three packs of cigarettes a day, and have hyperchol- esterolemia because they will not take their medicine. We are saying the reason they have heart disease is because, at some point in time they were in Vietnam, because they moved from causation to association. I can think of nothing unfairer to those who are truly needing to benefit from this than to give the benefit to somebody whose lifestyle absolutely caused their heart disease, and there is no association with dioxin or Agent Orange, the active ingredient that causes disease, which we know several of them actually did have. But now we have moved to a whole new level where we are saying if someone was exposed, both above or in Vietnam, and they have any of these other diseases which he has listed, that there can be an association. Let me remind you that an association doesn't prove anything about cause. It just says there is a statistic out here, and it may be right or may not in fact be right. All of the evidence is the other way. The Secretary has chosen to spend $42 billion--counting last year and this year--on this program for diseases that are not caused by Agent Orange. How is that fair? How is it fair to the people who are administering this? I found out about it because VA workers called me and said: This cannot be right. What are you all doing? Why are you giving money to people who have no association with the disease caused by that? Yet you are paying them out of money that should be reserved for those who have a disease really caused by Agent Orange. Consequently, we are going to spend $42 billion that we don't have to pay people. Another interesting fact is, I have a brother who has idiopathic pancreatitis. The VA told him that under this new guideline he can be eligible for Agent Orange compensation. He served in Korea, but because he has a chronic disease now, they are lining him up to get a payment from the VA because he has idiopathic pancreatitis. He is going to get approved. There is absolutely no association or causation with that. Yet that is what is happening. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 564 be called up, and the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I call up amendment No. 553.

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

Mr. COBURN. I note the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I am sorry. I will finish in just a short period of time. The question then comes over why we would not allow the States to decide whether they think we ought to have a balanced budget. It is true, it will take 5 to 7 years for it to be fully effectuated. But the sooner we start down that road and give the States the option of saying: We think you ought to live under the same rules we live under-- we have all sorts of reasons why we should not have a balanced budget amendment but not one of them makes sense, not one of them fits with common sense, not one of them does anything except continue down the road we are on today. Again I would say, as you hear the debate, think about the real disease we have rather than listening to the symptoms. The disease is we are outside the enumerated powers of the Congress. We have $350 billion worth of waste and duplication every year that Congress will not address. We have a Tax Code that costs one-quarter of a trillion dollars a year just to comply with and then still is not fair. Yet we will not address the real disease. The way you address the real disease is identify the real disease and then give it the treatment it needs. The treatment it needs is discipline forced on Congress by a balanced budget amendment. I guarantee you, if we were to pass it out of here, the States would pass it and send it back to us and our children and grandchildren would be much better off with it. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I have been listening to the debate this morning. It is concerning to me because as a physician, I am trained to diagnose disease. Disease, if you break that word up, is ``dis'' and ``ease.'' We are not at ease, and I hear us talking all around. I listened to the senior Senator from New York very carefully and what he had to say, and I wanted to spend a few minutes actually disputing what he had to say. Because the premise he said was if we don't raise taxes, the vital things that are legitimate roles for the Federal Government would have to be eliminated, and I find that very curious because what is lacking in the Senate body today is an actual knowledge of all that we are doing. I go back to March when the GAO report came out on the levels of duplication within the Federal Government, and that report was eye opening to many Senators. The fact is that report only covered the first third of the Federal Government. I have long said during the past 7 years in the Senate one of our problems is the government is so big, we don't know everything it does. What came out of the report was a tremendous list of duplication, programs that do exactly the same thing in multiple different agencies. For example, we have 124 different programs to encourage students in math, science, engineering, and technology. Why would we do that? Why would we pay for 124 sets of administration? Why would we have the first program for science, technology, engineering, and math that doesn't have a metric on it to see if it works? Well, you know what the report said. None of them have a metric on it to measure whether they are effective. We have 47 different job training programs. The report said all but three of them overlapped one another and none of those have any metric to see if they are effective or work. They cost $18 billion a year. We have 42 different programs to teach Americans how to be creditworthy and financially sound. Mr. President, 42 across 6 different agencies? The fact is the Senate doesn't know what it is talking about. When we make statements that say if, in fact, we make major cuts in the discretionary portion of our budget, the things we count on will have to be sacrificed, it is not true, for there is at a minimum $350 billion a year spent on duplication within the Federal Government, and waste. It doesn't count fraud, which is at least $100 billion a year in Medicare. It doesn't count the Pentagon, where we have the Pentagon having duplicate weapons systems, noncompetitive contracts, cost-plus contracts where we have requirement creep so they end up costing much more than they ever should because we don't have the responsible person over there saying, no, you can't have everything you want. What you want is to have the things you need. This whole idea that the sacrifices that need to be made are going to be highly paid for is not true because that is how much waste there is in the Federal Government--at least $350 billion a year, and that doesn't count the $100 billion in Medicare that is defrauded and wasted and wrongly paid. Their improper payment rate, which is 97 percent overpayments, is in excess of $10 billion a year. So if you have $100 billion worth of fraud, and then an improper payment rate that is around 10 percent, we could easily solve our budget problems by eliminating duplication and eliminating fraud, but it requires a lot of hard work to do the oversight. It requires a lot of legislative work to eliminate duplication. It requires us to stand and do what is necessary for our country. We don't have a problem, in general, with revenues. What we have a problem with is the Federal Government is taking 26 percent of our GDP to operate itself and 40 percent of that is borrowed. As a physician, what my training would tell me to do is go directly to the disease. Don't treat the symptoms of the disease, go directly to where the disease is, and the disease is we have a magnitude, orders of magnitude, of duplication, all well meaning, all well intentioned, that we won't sit down and work on eliminating. I thought I would spend a few minutes going through by department. The Department of Agriculture has 130 duplicative programs--130. I will submit for the record a few of these because I don't want the record to have too many. For example, biomass programs at the Department of Agriculture. We have the Biomass Crop Assistance Program, the Biorefinery Program for Advanced Fuels Program, the Biobased Products and Bioenergy Program, the Biorefinery Repowering Assistance Program, the New Era Rural Technology Competitive Grants Program for biomass. Those could all be combined into one at one-third the cost with exactly the same results. But we do not have the energy, the time or the motivation to go solve these problems. So the problem is not the debt and deficit, the problem is the Congress, the lack of a work ethic to roll up our sleeves and dig into it. We have 16 export assistance programs just for the Department of Agriculture; the Department of Commerce, 18 different duplicative programs; the Department of Education, 230 identical, duplicative programs in different branches. The only reason we know that is because the Department of Education is the only Department in the Federal Government that actually knows all their programs. There is not one other agency that actually knows all their programs. That is why it was important to get the GAO report, and we have just seen the first third of it. When we get the other two-thirds--the next third will come in February of next year, and we will have two-thirds of the Federal Government. Do you know what it is going to show? Over $400 billion worth of duplication. The problem is not that we do not have enough revenue, the problem is we are wasteful in almost everything we do because Congress will not do the appropriate oversight for the things that are legitimate roles for the Federal Government--the first person who does not have to have any risk of no food safety, the first person who does not have to have any risk of not having Medicare or not having their Social Security, the first person who does not have to have any risk if the Congress will actually do its job. Yet we refuse to do our job because each one of these little programs has a little political body in itself that is taking and sucking off the Federal Government, many times not a legitimate role under the enumerated powers of the Constitution that is a role for the Federal Government. I get letters all the time in my office: Please fund this. Please fund this. My answer back is: Show me in the enumerated powers where it is the role of the Federal Government to do that. If it is truly our role, I am for us doing it. But if, in fact, the enumerated powers--as originally written and as evidenced by the Federalist Papers--say it is not a role for the Federal Government, then the States ought to be doing it. Better yet, we as citizens ought to be helping other citizens who have a need. But the fact is, we have created this monster, an out-of-control Federal Government. I am talking out of control because nobody is in control of it. Nobody has the information, which is the power to do it, which is why knowing all this stuff is so frustrating. We will not eliminate the easy things that will have no impact on 99 percent of Americans. The only people impacted are the people who are benefiting directly from administering or gaming the programs. The Department of Energy. When the Department of Energy was created, it was to eliminate our dependence on foreign energy. Our dependence at that time was 30 percent. It reached a peak of 67 percent. Thankfully, due to horizontal drilling and environmentally sound fracking, we now are at 47 percent. We have gone down 16 points since the technology was developed to go after resources that are here. The Congressional Research Service says--and this is a report published this year--that America has energy resources greater than the combined energy resources of China, Canada, and Saudi Arabia. We are the only country in the world where the citizens own the resources and their own government will not let them have it. We deny our own resources to our own people. Consequently, we see $4 gasoline, not because it has to be there--and we blame speculators and we blame the large oil companies. The reason gas is $4 is because the Federal Government will not let us utilize the very resources we have. Mr. President, 92 percent of the 650 million acres the Federal Government owns is unavailable for resource production that can be done in a clean, environmentally friendly way, with no impact whatsoever. Yet supply us with valuable energy that does not make us dependent on countries that are not supportive of our liberties and our freedom. So you are going to hear a lot of speeches today talking about those who have actually lived the American dream, people who have made it. I am not saying there is not excesses. I am one of the very few people on my side who thinks we ought to change the Tax Code, we ought to eliminate all the brackets, we ought to flatten the Tax Code, that it will be clearer, it will create confidence, it will create certainty, and we will see the money--the $2 trillion that is sitting on the sidelines that could be creating jobs in this country--actually come in and create jobs. But our problem is not the people who have been successful. Our problem is we, the Members of Congress, are not successful in accomplishing the task we were sent to do. The Department of Homeland Security. More unregulated grants, 32 duplicative programs, no followup on the grants, no checking to see if a grant that was given actually performed the purpose. There is a significant amount of fraud, a significant amount of improper payments, significant layers of duplication. Not even the Department of Homeland Security knows what is going on, let alone Congress, because we will not do oversight. There are 40 duplicative programs inside the Department of the Interior. Then we have all the duplicative programs across agencies. I did not list all of them here. There are 35 duplicative programs in the Department of Labor, 53 in the Department of Justice, 6 in the Department of State, 19 at the Department of Transportation. Who knows how many there are at the Defense Department because the Defense Department does not even know. The problem we need to address is our lack of aggressiveness in reviewing and oversighting the Federal Government and eliminating the duplication. It is frustrating to me as a physician to see us continue to treat the symptoms and never go after the disease. This disease will eventually kill us. It is bleeding us now, like it is bleeding us as we borrow $5 billion a day--$5 billion. That is the entire budget of the State of Oklahoma every day we are borrowing. Now we have political games being played, finger-pointing, putting our finger in the eyes of those across political lines rather than getting down to work and solving the real problems America faces. We do not have one problem in front of us that we cannot solve as a nation. We can balance our budget. We can accomplish what we are called upon to accomplish if, in fact, we will. But the one little thing that creeps in, that is nauseating, is the vast majority of the Members of Congress are not thinking about the problems that are in front of us right now. They are thinking about the next election: How do I advantage? When you see that happen, what you see and what you should question is, what is the motivation of the Members of Congress? Is it just to get reelected or is it to fix the very real and urgent problems in front of us? I think too often it is about us and not our country, it is about us secure in the next election rather than our children and grandchildren secure in the next generation. I would put forward, as you hear the debate over the class warfare and the unfairness that is propagated--that somebody has become successful and that 20 percent of Americans now pay 74 percent of all the taxes paid, that we want to tax those people more--I believe everybody in this country ought to pay taxes. I do not care who you are. I do not care what program you are on, if you get a benefit from the Federal Government that is rightly under the enumerated powers, something the Federal Government should be doing, you ought to pay a tax on it. Then you are participating. Then we would not have 55 percent of the eligible population voting; we would have 75 or 85 percent because they would have an involvement. We have an earned-income tax credit program which we pay people who are working. We actually pay them every year. But fully 25 percent of that is fraud. That is $17 billion a year paid out to people who are not working who are defrauding the IRS. We have not done anything about it. Mr. President, $17 billion over 10 years is $170 billion. That goes a long way toward reducing our structural deficit and debt. But we will not do that. The same thing on the child tax credit. That is a fraudulent program. Fully 20 percent of it is fraud. Yet we have not done anything about it.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to continue, since nobody is on the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, about 3 months ago, one of the results of the last time we raised the debt limit was a report by the Government Accountability Office. Ninety-seven Senators in this body voted to put that in the last debt limit extension. What was that? That was a requirement for the Government Accountability Office over the next 3 years to list every program for us in every area so that we knew what we were doing. The purpose for that amendment was--and that happened to have been my amendment. I went to the CRS and the Government Accountability Office and I said I want to know every program in defense, education, et cetera. They told me: It is impossible; we cannot do it. So collectively, as colleagues, we said that you will do this. It has been a big job. They have done a fantastic job on it thus far. I cannot wait until we get the second and third part. One of the results in the first report the GAO gave to us showed close to $200 billion worth of duplication. Those are my numbers, not theirs, in terms of looking at it. Let's say I am twice wrong, and say it is $100 billion. The fact is, what we found in just the first third of looking at the Federal Government is that we have multiple duplicative programs that do exactly the same thing; they are just in different agencies or across agencies. In a moment, I will talk about what those are. The response to that report was the greatest response GAO has ever had to any report they have ever listed. The curious thing about that is that 95 percent of what they reported was a culmination of reports I had asked for over the last 6 years put together, which means we had the information, as Members of Congress; we just would not use it. In other words, it didn't get up to the level of being recognized. When we saw it together, we all of a sudden started seeing the magnitude of the problem of duplication. The purpose of this amendment--it is very straightforward--is that on average the Senate considers, in a session of Congress, in a Congress over 2 years, about 700 pieces of legislation. The Congressional Research Service now writes a report on each one of those and advises us about the legislation, what it does, what it doesn't do, and what is out there. But the one thing they don't do is tell us where it duplicates. The purpose of this amendment is that with each of those bills, we would have the knowledge the GAO has put out there, which the CRS will then go and get and say: Here is what is out there, and you need to consider that as you consider, why do we need another program to do something we are already doing? What is wrong with the programs we have now that are not accomplishing this? This great transparency is not just for us but for the American people. We add duplicative programs every year. It raises the question, where is the oversight? The motivations here are wonderful. The motivations are to try to solve problems. Too often, we lack the information and the knowledge with which to make a great decision. The reason we lack that is because we fail in our duty to do oversight. So this information which would be provided becomes powerful. More importantly, it creates tremendous transparency for the American public in saying, for example, if we are going to create another job-training program--we have 47 of them right now that are funded by the Federal Government across 9 different government agencies. None of them are coordinated and all but three overlap each other. If we create another job-training program, maybe we ought to know what all these others are and why we need to create another one rather than make the ones we have now work. I would actually question why we have 47 job-training programs. But the problem is big. Let me spend a moment and put some highlights into the Record. These are just highlights. This represents less than 10 percent of what the findings were of the last GAO report. We have 101 programs for surface transportation. They are run across four different agencies. We have 82 teacher quality improvement programs--82 separate programs across 10 different agencies, and they are not in the Department of Education. There are 10 different agencies--9 of which are outside of the Department of Education--that have teacher training programs. We have 88 economic development programs run by 4 agencies costing $6.5 billion a year--88 separate economic development programs. We have 80 programs to provide transportation for the disadvantaged, across 8 different agencies. We spend $314 million on it. That is a good cause, and it is something we can do, but 80 different programs? We don't know what we are doing. So the purpose of this amendment-- and it will require a rules change to have it--is to ask CRS to show what we are doing and what is there already, just as they analyze every other aspect of a bill before it comes to the floor. This won't be required on emergency legislation or required on committee reports or required on the filing of bills; it will only be mandated if a bill comes to the floor for consideration by my colleagues. Let me finish. We have 56 programs for financial literacy from 21 different agencies. Based on the talk we just heard from the last two Senators, we are the last people who ought to be teaching anybody about financial literacy when we are running the kind of deficit and debt we have and have the kind of duplication we have. Nobody who knows financial literacy would run 88 separate economic development programs and pay for the overhead of all of those through all these different agencies; rather, they would have 2 or 3 and have a concentrated program and direct the emphasis of that economic development program. We have 21 programs for homeless assistance. We spend $62 billion on 18 different food and nutrition assistance programs. We only need 2 or 3, not 18. We need to have metrics measuring whether we are effective in helping people with food and nutrition. We have bureaucracy after bureaucracy, and each of them doesn't know what the other agencies are doing. There is no coordination, and there is no measurement of the effectiveness of what we are doing. CRS claims they don't have the manpower to do this. They have 350 analysts who do nothing but analyze legislation. This would require one analyst, one time a year, to look at the duplication on a bill coming to the floor--one analyst, over a period of a year, one time, looking at it. CRS is a great resource for me, and I want them to have the resources they need because the only way we get out of the bigger problems the Senator from Nebraska was talking about is having the knowledge of what we are doing today. I hope my colleagues will consider this not as a partisan amendment but one to give us the information that gives us the power to make the best decisions for our country. We need to be making better decisions. The final thing this will do is help us not create duplication again. It will let us know what we need to do; that is, before we pass it into legislation. I am so concerned as I look at bringing forward some options for my colleagues to look at in terms of solving our financial problems because everywhere I go, as we dig deeper into this, we see the duplication and inefficiency, the lack of direction, and the lack of pointed purpose to get an end result in program after program in the Federal Government. Some of those truly aren't our role, but on those that are our role, that we are responsible for constitutionally, it is the responsibility of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Government--we ought to know what we are doing, and we ought to know what is being done out there already. We operate in a vacuum when we don't have this information. It is my hope that my colleagues will support this in a way to give us information. There is nothing political about it. It is, how do we make better decisions and how do we do this in a way that will cause us not to create more duplication in the future, and it will cause us to ask the smart questions about legislation. You see, those questions don't get asked unless somebody goes and does the digging now. My hope is that we would all be empowered by having greater knowledge over what we are doing. It is very simple and straightforward. It is my hope that we can accomplish that. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I failed to mention the cosponsors of this amendment, and they are Senator Udall of Colorado, Senators Collins, McCaskill, Burr, Paul, Brown of Massachusetts, and Senator McCain. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, may I inquire of the Chair what the status is on the bill? Are there pending amendments?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 521.

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Again, I will state, if you are against this amendment, you are against eliminating the very cause of our problems in this country, which is duplication, redundancy, overlap, and you are against doing the proper oversight so we make informed decisions. With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I advise the senior Senator from New York that I will ask unanimous consent, if it is agreeable to him, that when I finish my few words, we go directly to the vote.

Mr. COBURN. Fine. You do not want to move it up?

Mr. COBURN. OK. Great. I will withdraw my unanimous consent request. Amendment No. 521 Mr. President, this is a very straightforward amendment. The people who vote against this rule change, what they are going to be telling you is they do not want you to know what is going on in the Senate, and they do not want us to know what is going on in the Senate. Because all this rule does is make it a force of habit of the Senate that before we look at legislation, we ought to determine whether it duplicates what is already out there in the government, and we ought to determine if it is overlapping to other programs. Had this amendment been in effect, a third of what we passed in the past would not have passed because we would then have seen--which we are ignorant of today--all the other programs that were available and out there that accomplished the same purpose for which we passed another new program. In one of my committees last year colleagues offered amendments--well intentioned, with good motives--to accomplish a good purpose. But they lacked knowledge. What they did not know was--and both amendments were ultimately withdrawn when it was explained to them--that, in fact, we already had programs that did exactly the same thing. So what we have is, we have over $200 billion worth of duplication now within the Federal Government. This is a simple, straightforward amendment that says before we consider things on the floor--it is less than 700 bills over 2 years--that the CRS would, in fact, tell us: Here is what you are doing, here is what the government is already doing in these areas, so we do not end up with duplication, so we do not end up with overlapping, and that we actually get results from what we are doing. I remind my colleagues that we have, just in the last GAO report, multitudes of duplicative programs, and I will repeat them so people will know. I also would state, this is a bipartisan amendment in the spirit of what the Senator from New York and the Senator from Tennessee have done. This amendment has Senator Udall, Senator McCaskill, Senator Burr, and Senator McCain, as well as Senator Collins, Senator Paul, and Senator Scott Brown. So this is not a partisan move. This is a move about information and knowledge so we make informed decisions. But for the record, what the GAO told us, less than 5 months ago, is that we have 101 programs across four different agencies for surface transportation. That is 101 sets of bureaucracies. Nobody has ever gone and said: Which ones work and which ones do not? Which ones do exactly the same thing versus what somebody else does? We have 82 teacher programs for teacher quality across 10 different agencies, 9 of which are not in the Department of Education. We have 88 economic development programs spending $6.5 billion a year across 4 different agencies. We have 47 job training programs across 9 different agencies, and we are spending $18 billion a year, and the GAO said every one of them overlaps, with the exception of 3. Yet we have not had the first move in the Senate this year in spite of all of our problems economically to streamline, eliminate duplication, eliminate overlap, and put metrics on what we are doing. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this list of duplicative programs identified by GAO.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, because our minority views were not included in the Senate Judiciary Committee's report on S. 1103, I ask unanimous consent to have them printed in the Record. We hope these views will be of use to Members of the Senate if this legislation is considered on the Senate floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, in a few minutes, I will offer an amendment, but first I wish to speak about a bill that myself and 26 other Senators have introduced today, and it is called The Enumerated Powers Act. Our Founding Fathers understood the only way to preserve our freedom for future generations was to limit Federal authority. They understood the tendency of government to seize increasing power, and thus they created protections in our Constitution for posterity. Earlier this year, newly elected and returning Members of the Senate took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. In my case, that oath never mentioned the State of Oklahoma or any other State an individual Senator might represent. Rather, the oath each of us took was to uphold the Constitution for the betterment of the country as a whole. Yet every day, Members of Congress ignore their oath and the protective principles embodied in the Constitution, trampling both the freedom and the prosperity of the American people. This has never been as evident as in the congressional spending spree we have seen over the last 3\1/2\ to 4 years. At the beginning of the 111th Congress, our national debt stood at $10.6 trillion. Today it is over $14.4 trillion, an increase of nearly $4 trillion in the last 3-plus years. How did we get there? How did we get into such deep debt? How did we shackle our children and grandchildren to an increasing deficit and an inevitable decreased standard of living? It doesn't lie with any President having done that. Where it lies is with the Congress of the United States. Today, along with the Senator from Kentucky, Dr. Rand Paul, and 23 other cosponsors, I am introducing the Enumerated Powers Act. This legislation ensures Members of Congress truly follow article I, section 8 of the Constitution. That section plainly lists the enumerated powers given to Congress, of which there are 18, and they are very well defined. One of the major reasons why we are facing such tough economic times and such tough fiscal challenges is because Congress routinely in the recent past has ignored this aspect of the Constitution. Until we reconnect Congress with its limited and enumerated powers, we will never put our Nation back on a sustainable basis. James Madison stated in Federalist 51: If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. Clearly, we have a government administered by men over men, and the government has failed to control itself. The best way for the Federal Government to appropriately restrain itself is for Congress to abide by the enumerated powers of the Constitution. The Supreme Court noted at the beginning of the 21st century: Every law enacted by Congress must be based on one or more of its powers enumerated in the Constitution. ``The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten, the constitution is written.'' In an 1831 letter, James Madison also stated: With respect to the words ``general welfare''-- Which is what is so often used to justify new government programs-- I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of [enumerated] powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. Moreover, the 10th amendment states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. In other words, everything outside of those 18 enumerated powers are reserved for the States and the people. They are not ours to deal with. Our Founding Fathers intended for the Federal Government to be one of limited powers that cannot encroach on the powers reserved to the States or to the people. What this bill does is highlight the importance of those principles embodied in our Constitution and gives Members of Congress a new procedural tool to stop unconstitutional legislation. A former Representative from Arizona, Congressman John Shadegg, took the lead on this issue starting in 1994, and introduced it every year up until he left Congress this last year. I joined Representative Shadegg in offering this bill, starting in the 110th Congress, and again in the 111th. Today I am delighted, along with these 24 cosponsors--and many other Republicans joining me--to reintroduce an updated version of this important legislation. The Enumerated Powers Act requires each act of Congress, bill, and resolution to contain a concise explanation of the specific authority in the Constitution under which the measure would be enacted. It also states Members cannot merely mindlessly invoke subsections of article I, section 8, such as the Commerce, General Welfare, or Necessary and Proper Clauses to meet that test. The goal of this legislation is to ensure Congress is accountable to the American people for its actions. The very least we can do--if we are going to violate article I, section 8--is explain our constitutional basis to the American people for that. With a sufficient two-thirds vote of the Senate, a point of order raised against a bill for failure to cite specific constitutional authority for the legislation can still be overcome. However, the Enumerated Powers Act requires both Houses of Congress to debate that point of order. The American people need to see the transparency when we violate the Constitution and what our basis is for doing that. As I mentioned earlier, as Members of the Senate, we have each taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to put our individual States first. If each of us abides by that oath, we will improve our country as a whole. For Oklahoma, Kentucky, Maine, or any other State to fare well in our country, they cannot do so if the country as a whole is not faring well. Amendment No. 500 Madam President, let me take a moment and use as an example one of the reasons I would like the Enumerated Powers Act passed, but also why I am going to discuss the amendment I have at the desk. Here is what we know right now from the first third of the Federal Government that was studied by the Government Accountability Office. They just looked at the first third of the Federal Government. We asked them in the last debt limit increase to give us the list of duplications of programs that do essentially the same thing across that first third. We will get the next third about 6 months from now, and the final third a year from then. But what you see and what they came up with is we have more than 100 different Federal programs for surface transportation. That is 100 sets of agencies. That is 100 sets of bureaucracies. That is mindless and thousands upon hundreds of thousands of rules and regulations just on surface transportation. Nobody in Congress knew we had 100 agencies. Teacher quality. We have 82 separate teacher quality programs across 6 different government agencies. One question is whether that is a responsibility of the Federal Government under the Enumerated Powers Act. But to have 82? Or how about economic development. Eighty-eight programs, eighty of which are under four different agencies. We just had a bill on the floor, the Economic Development Act, and it is one of 80 programs run by those four agencies. None of them have metrics to see if they are effective. They have anecdotal evidence, but there are no metrics to see if they are. Again, 88 sets of bureaucracies within all these agencies--duplication after duplication after duplication. Transportation assistance. Eighty different programs. Financial literacy. A government that is $14 trillion in debt, running a $1.6 trillion deficit, has no business telling anybody about financial literacy. Yet we have 56 programs across multiple agencies teaching the American people about financial literacy. I think the source of that wisdom is somewhat questionable. We have 47 different job training programs that cost $18 billion a year, run across 9 different agencies. Not one of them has a metric, and all but 3 duplicate what the other 44 are doing. Why would we do that? Why would we have all that? Homeless prevention and assistance. We have 20 programs out of the Federal Government for homeless prevention and assistance. Food for the hungry. We have 18 separate programs. Disaster response and preparedness through FEMA. We have 17 different programs. So the point is, we got there for two reasons. No. 1, we did not look at the enumerated powers; and, No. 2, too often we are trying to fix a problem with great intent, with the right heart, even when it is constitutional and would meet the demands of article I, section 8, and we have no idea what else is out there, so when we see a problem, rather than go see what we are doing now, we create a new program. I would ask consideration of my amendment, which is amendment No. 500, which is an amendment to change the Standing Rules of the Senate. What it does is it mandates a rule in the Senate that every report that comes to the Senate on every bill or joint resolution shall contain ``an analysis by the Congressional Research Service to determine if the bill or joint resolution creates any new Federal program, office, or initiative that would duplicate or overlap any existing Federal program, office, or initiative with similar mission, purpose, goals, or activities along with a listing of all of the overlapping or [duplication]. . . . '' and ``an explanation provided by the committee as to why the creation of each new program, office, or initiative is necessary if a similar program or programs, office or offices, or initiative or initiatives already exist.'' So it is a rule change. The reason I bring it to this bill is because this is a bill for rule changes. It requires 67 votes for this to pass. I understand we have heard some concerns from the Congressional Research Service. But with the work the Government Accountability Office has done, and will do, it will be very easy for them to look at the results of the Government Accountability Office and their list of duplications. It is very straightforward. It is less than 100 pages. They can see, and then they can advise the Congress on what we have. If we cannot depend on the Congressional Research Service to tell us where we have multiple programs when that is available from the Government Accountability Office, and list what their intentions and what their budgets are, then we need to relook at the congressional office and what it does. They do great work for me. We ask them for things all the time, and they do great. This is something they can accomplish. It is going to get easier as we go forward. But without this knowledge of what we are already doing, we will never solve our problems. I know my chairman has some concerns with this initiative in terms of how it might affect this bill, but I plan on going right back to the Congressional Research Service to have a discussion with them after I have been on the floor. But if we cannot do this, we cannot do anything. If we cannot change the rules so we actually know what we are doing, so we can actually know if a new bill duplicates something that is already operating, when we have this tremendous list--and this shown on the chart is just a small set of the list. I picked some of the obvious ones. There are hundreds of thousands of duplicate programs in the Federal Government, wasting billions if not trillions of dollars every year. So if we cannot do something like this, then what can we do to solve our problems? Knowledge is power. Not knowing what programs are intended to do now before we create another new program to me is the height of insanity. We should be aggressively asking for as much information as we can get, so we know what we are doing when we pass new pieces of legislation. With that, I yield the floor.

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