Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record two letters that have been received by the Senate in regard to the nomination of Judge Benita Pearson--one from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association; the other from the Farm Animal Welfare Coalition.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, our plan on our side was for me to have 15 minutes. I ask unanimous consent that I may share some of that time with Senator Chambliss.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I will close with the following comment. The Gallup organization came out today with the latest approval rating on Congress. Do you know what it is? It is 13 percent. Thirteen percent of the people in this country have confidence in what we are doing and 87 percent do not. I side with the 87 percent. I think they have it right. If we continue with the omnibus package, and we continue to have our earmarks, and we continue to pass expenditures by not reducing expenditures elsewhere, it is going to sink even lower. What does that really mean, that only 13 percent of the people in this country have confidence in us? What it really means is that the legitimacy of our positions and our power is in question. Everybody recognizes the problems in front of us. The question is, Will you make the hard choices and do the tough part to get us out of the problems we have? We can no longer borrow money we don't have to spend on things we don't need. With that, I yield the floor and welcome the comments of the Senator from Indiana.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, as we look at the bill we are going to be voting on today, it is an interesting perspective if you are outside of America looking at it. Here is what people are saying. You are going to stimulate the economy with a 2-percent reduction in payroll taxes. You are not going to raise income tax rates. Then you are going to spend another $136 billion. But for all this you are going to borrow the money. We spent 8 months on a deficit commission addressing the very real problems that are about to become acute for our country. I have no disregard for those who bring this bill to the floor. But to bring this bill to the floor without the opportunity to cut wasteful Washington spending to at least pay for the outflows that are going to come as a result of this bill, which will be the $136.4 billion I mentioned-- without an opportunity to at least make an effort for the American people to see we understand that part of the waste and duplication and low priority items that the Federal Government is presently enabling to happen--to not offer and have the opportunity to offer a way to not charge that to our children and grandchildren denies the reality of everybody else in the world that is looking at our country. This afternoon, or later this morning, I will be offering an amendment that will suspend the rule, including any requirements for germaneness, and we will have a vote. We are going to have an amendment that cuts $156 billion from the Federal Government to pay for the $136 billion that is actually going to go out the door in the next 11 or 12 months. It is not an easy vote. But the world is going to be looking to see if we get it. Not only are the people in this country disgusted with our actions, that we continue to borrow and steal and beg from future generations, but the world financial markets are going to see this. You saw the reaction of Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who worked for 8 months trying to drive an issue to get us back on course and create a future for us that will allow us to control our destiny rather than someone else doing it. This is just a drop in the bucket--this amendment--to the waste, duplication, and the fraud. We are going to run trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see right now, with no grownups in the room to say we are going to quit doing that. We are going to continue to do that. What are some of the things in this amendment? A congressional pay freeze; a cut in the executive branch and congressional budget of 15 percent; a freeze on the salaries and the size of the Federal Government; limiting what the government can spend on planning, travel, and new vehicles; selling unneeded and excess Federal property; stopping unemployment benefits to people who are millionaires--by the way, we are sending unemployment benefits to people who are unemployed and have assets in excess of $1 million; collecting unpaid taxes currently in excess of $4 billion owed by Federal employees and Members of Congress; force consolidation of duplicative programs; preventing fraud, taking some of the $100 billion that is defrauded from Medicare and Medicaid every year, and preventing that from happening by the FAST Act; streamlining defense spending and reducing foreign aid, including voluntary excess contributions to the United Nations. The people of the world are astounded that we would spend another $136 billion and make no attempt to get rid of the excesses, waste, and duplication in our Federal Government. Because we are not allowed under the regular order to offer amendments--and I understand the purpose for that--this amendment will require 67 votes. The American people are going to be looking, and they are going to say: Does the Senate get it? Do they understand the severity and the urgency of the problems that face our fiscal future? When the Joint Chiefs of Staff of our entire military say that the greatest problem facing America is not our military challenges but our debt, it should give us all pause to consider the reality and impact of our excess. I yield for Senator Chambliss.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I understand that under the previous order, I have 10 minutes.

Mr. COBURN. I will attempt not to use that complete time. Motion To Suspend We have an amendment No. 4765, which is a motion to suspend the rules and consider the amendment, and I will make that motion in a moment. We have before us a bill. We are going to spend $136 billion more than what we planned to spend before this agreement was made. We have no opportunity under regular order to offset that with less priority, less important items. So we have an amendment for the Senate to vote on. It is not pain free. It is painful. But it cuts $150 billion from Federal expenditures to pay for the additional Federal expenditures that will go out the door as a result of this bill. I actually believe every one of my colleagues in the Senate understands the jam we are in. Where I am confused is that when we bring cuts to the floor, not only do they not vote for the cuts, they do not offer alternative cuts. And you really cannot have it both ways. You cannot say you recognize the significant difficulty our country is in and turn around and vote against somebody making an effort to get us out of that jam and not offer other additional spending cuts for which to pay. We do not have that privilege any longer. So either the recognition of the problem is real or it is not. Let me describe what has happened just in the last 2\1/2\ years. We have run a budget deficit for now 27 straight months, including this month. The 2009 budget deficit, as reported, was $1.4 trillion. It was actually $1.6 trillion when you include the money we actually stole from trust funds and other items--in 2010, $1.3 trillion. On the basis of how we are going now, our budget deficit will probably be, in real terms--not what is reported to the American people but the actual fact of how much the debt will increase--probably $1.6 trillion to $1.7 trillion. How long can we continue to do that? As a matter of fact, the largest monthly budget deficit ever reported was October--$291 billion. The time to act is now. If you do not like what I have put up, then put something else up. Let's have a debate about it. Let's have an honest discussion about the problem and the possible solutions. That is what the deficit commission was trying to do. That is what a group of us, including the President pro tempore, are trying to do on a bipartisan basis. There is no longer a debate on whether we are going to have to cut spending in our country. Almost everybody agrees to it. The question is, When will we start? I will tell you, if this amendment passes, we will send a notice to the world that we get it. The international financial community will start seeing us acting as adults and no longer delaying the time at which we will start chipping and stop digging. We have a hole so deep we may not climb out of it now. The last thing we want to do is make that hole deeper. So, Mr. President, I move to suspend rule XXII, including any germaneness requirements, for the purposes of proposing and considering amendment No. 4765, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I move to suspend rule XXII, including any germaneness requirements, for the purposes of proposing and considering amendment No. 4765, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. COBURN. I will reoffer. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, in accordance with rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby give notice in writing that it is my intention to move to suspend rule XXII for the purposes of proposing and considering amendment no. 4764 to the House Message to accompany H.R. 4853. Mr. President, in accordance with rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby give notice in writing that it is my intention to move to suspend rule XXII for the purposes of proposing and considering amendment no. 4765 to the House Message to accompany H.R. 4853.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Although the Subcommittee on Human Rights held a hearing on child prostitution this year, it did not fully explore the effectiveness of existing law and grant programs, and whether there are loopholes or problems that need to be fixed in order to make the Federal Government's efforts more effective. There are multiple programs for trafficking victims under existing law, but some of them remain unclear and confusing. In fact, many of them have never received congressional funding. Thus, while I agree with the Senator from Oregon that there seems to be a disparity between the resources provided to domestic victims and those provided to international victims, I conveyed to him in our negotiations that I question whether we cannot already provide most of those resources under existing law. As a result, I am committed to vigorous oversight of these issues during the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, TVPRA, which expires next year.

Mr. COBURN. I support the goals of this legislation and believe that slavery, in any form, is morally reprehensible. Sex trafficking is a global epidemic, and we should endeavor to eliminate this industry, especially due to its effects on minors who are victims of this practice. However, I believe we can and must do so in a fiscally responsible manner that avoids duplication of existing laws and programs and upholds the Constitution.

Mr. COBURN. I thank the Senator from Oregon for recognizing the dire state of our economy and his willingness to offset the cost of this legislation. The U.S. national debt is now over $13.8 trillion and growing. As a result, it is irresponsible for Congress to jeopardize the future standard of living of our children by borrowing from future generations. In the TVPRA reauthorization next year, it is imperative that we examine all trafficking victims grant programs, including this one, for waste, fraud and abuse, as well as their effect on the deficit. Our country is too fragile and these minor victims are too important for Congress to shirk its duty to perform oversight. I look forward to working with the Senator from Oregon to ensure this and other trafficking victims grant programs are performing effectively, efficiently and within the bounds of the Constitution.

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN. I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for the time I may consume, probably not longer than 20 or 25 minutes.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I hope the American people are watching Washington right now. We are at a defining moment in our country. There is not anybody in this body who does not recognize that our country is on an unsustainable course. They know it. It is well known. The world knows it. We can argue about how close we are to the debt crisis and the liquidity crisis, but no one disputes that one is coming. We just don't know when. Yet in the next 2 weeks Congress is going to make that problem $1 trillion worse. We can say that a lot of what we are doing is the right thing to do, but what we are not doing is addressing the real issues that need to be accompanied by grownups as we look at this. What should the American people make of this? It is kind of like we are on the Titanic here in America and everybody is saying: The bar is open, we will just have a party the next 2 weeks. We are going to spend another $900 billion or we are going to set it up so that it can be spent. I do not often agree with a columnist by the name of Thomas Friedman, but he has a column today that I think everyone in our collective body should read. It is aptly titled ``Still Digging.'' Here, he writes: Given where we need to go, this tax deal--this tax deal, opportunity scholarship deal, unemployment deal, tax holiday deal--is just another shot of morphine to a country that needs to do things that are big and hard and still only wants to do things that are easy and small. He concludes: Economics is not war. It can be win- win. So it can be good for the world if China is doing better, but it can't be good for America if, every time we come to a hard choice, we borrow more money from a country that is not just outsaving and outhustling us but is also starting to outeducate us. We need a plan. I couldn't agree with him more. I was part of the deficit commission, taken a lot of criticism for saying we needed to have that debate on the Senate floor. I still think we need to have that debate on the Senate floor. But this body will not even agree about having a debate about having a plan. Last week, the members of the debt commission refused to even debate the plan--the Members refused to even debate the plan in Congress. We didn't get 14 out of 18 votes; we only got 11. I wish to congratulate Senator Durbin, Senator Conrad, Senator Crapo, and Senator Gregg for their efforts on that commission. You see, they think we need a plan. Senator Conrad had a wonderful statement about it. He said this: The only thing that is worse than being for this plan is being against it. What he was really addressing is the fact that we are not willing to make the hard choices. We will not come together and do what is best for America. What we will do is just take another shot of morphine, drink another drink on the Titanic, and hope that somehow it gets better. The fact is, we already have a debt commission. It is called the U.S. Congress. That is why I voted initially against the debt commission. I spent 8 months, had a full-time staffer working on that commission for the last 8 months. We are the debt commission. We have to have a plan to avert the catastrophe that is in front of us. America needs to know it is urgent. It is not something that can wait a year. We are going to have a major liquidity crisis, and we are also going to have a major interest rate crisis. Nobody knows when it comes. But the one thing we do know is that if we don't have a plan, we will no longer control our ability to get out of our problem; the people who own our debt will control how we get out of our problem. So if, in fact, we want to hand over our responsibility in the Senate to the bondholders of the world, then we should continue to not have a plan. But if, in fact, we want to embrace the oath we were given, then we should have a plan. As we debate over the next 2 weeks coming up to Christmas, part of that debate has to be whether we are grown up enough to recognize that the party is over and that we better start bailing water, we better form the line, the bucket brigade; otherwise, we are going to go down with the ship. Now, people can say: You are scaring people. That is realism. That is what is getting ready to happen to us. Mr. Bernanke cannot solve our problems in this regard. Only we can solve these problems for the American people. Cutting spending should be the easy part of our solution. We can document hundreds of billions of dollars a year that are either wasted, defrauded, or duplicative in the Federal Government. I have given hundreds of speeches over the last 6 years outlining those things, whether it be the $5 billion the Pentagon pays to contractors for performance bonuses when those contractors do not meet the performance requirements to get the bonus or the $80 to $100 billion a year in fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. Those are facts--the fact that we pay three times as much for a motorized wheelchair as it costs. We have not done anything to address any of those issues. It is not hard to cut spending. It is hard to get the will to have a plan that recognizes that we have to keep on keeping on until we get America out of this very dangerous time period we are experiencing. We just learned that we rank 25th in the world in math, 17th in science. Yet we have 105 different, separate government programs to incentivize excellence in science, technology, engineering, and math. This is just a tiny little example of the work we need to do. We need to have one plan. It needs to have measurements on it. We need to oversight it. Then we need to look at it the next year. Is it working? Is it effective? We have 105 sets of bureaucrats, and we have not made the headway we all know is required for us to be competitive in a global economy. Yet not once this year, not once last year, not when Republicans were in control, not when Democrats were in control, did we do the effective oversight that is necessary to get us out of the jam we are in. Oversight is hard work. It is not easy. It requires that we actually know what is going on in the government, which is part of our oath to begin with. We have to do the work, we have to read it, we have to go to the hearings, we have to interview the people, and we have to have investigators so we know what is going on. Yet we do not do that. I often hear from my colleagues on the other side that we need to pay for the so-called Bush tax cuts, which are really your tax cuts. The assumption is that once the money comes to the government at a certain rate, it is always going to come, and it is not yours, it is the government's. Let's grant that premise for a minute. Let's grant the premise that it is the government's money and not the individual's. I would issue this challenge: Anyone who thinks we ought to pay for tax cuts ought to have to put up a list of programs that we ought to eliminate to pay for them. I put up, every time, when people are wanting to spend money, a list of options we can do to make it to where we do not increase the very problem holes we keep digging in. The fact is, the body is not interested in cutting spending, and the proof is what we did last year. The very same people who claim we need to pay for the tax cuts uniformly voted to override pay-go to the tune of $266 billion last year, just in this last year--not this whole Congress, just this last year. So what we need to do is move away from that rhetoric. The problem is too big for us to take pot shots at each other on what we think is a political point. And we need to get down to the real business of having a plan that gets this country out of the very real difficulties we face. The very fact that we do not know when the problem is coming, the very fact that we cannot control our own destiny unless we start taking action now should give us all chills, that we are about to be the Senate, the Congress of the United States that allowed this to happen. We cannot let that happen, no matter what our positions are. The only way we get out of the hole we are in is if we make shared sacrifices. That means political sacrifices. That means position sacrifices. That means monetary sacrifices. That means sacrifices against our wish list. It means we all have to sacrifice. Some people say it is suicide to tell the American people they have to sacrifice. I adamantly disagree with that. They are grown up. They get it way ahead of us. They have already seen what is happening to us. They are feeling it now. They have this innate sense that we are disconnected from the very real problems they are seeing. They are ready to do their part. I will borrow a line from someone far more eloquent, J.F.K. I remember; I was in high school. Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country. It was a great statement then. It is more appropriate now than ever. What does a shared sacrifice mean? It means that if you live in this country and make a decent income, you need to be more responsible with your health care and retirement than you are today. If you have gamed the system to get disability benefits or workmen's compensation, sorry, your free ride is over. If you are receiving a special tax break because you have a good lobbyist, you are going to have to give that up. If you are a defense contractor, you might only get a bonus for doing exceptional work, not standard work, not for just showing up to work. And if you are a politician, it might mean you have to lose an election to do what is best for this country. If we think about what is required and how we would achieve real change, we have two truths in tension: One, we have a government we tolerate; two, the American people have the power to change that government. We can solve all of the difficult challenges before us, but we can't solve them if Washington will not even debate the problem. And if we can't overcome our courage deficit, the American people have a responsibility to replace us all--to replace every one of us. Courage is having the fortitude to do the right thing for the right moral reason at the right time regardless of the consequences to you. And we lack that in our body politic today. I know a lot of people see this tax deal as a big political victory. I do not see it as a victory at all for the country or for our side. Actually, a former Bush staffer, Don Bartlett, is quoted as saying: We knew that, politically, once you get it into law, it becomes almost impossible to remove it. That's not a bad legacy. The fact that we were able to lay the trap does feel pretty good, to tell you the truth. This gentleman just ignored the magnitude, severity, and urgency of the problems that face America. The political cynicism that accompanies this should give us all pause to think for a minute on the games that are being played in Washington. Congratulations. Somebody embarrassed somebody else. How does making our entitlement dilemma worse by passing Medicare Part D feel? It is now up to $13 trillion in unfunded liability, and the rich get the same benefit as the poor; does that feel good? How about doubling the size of the government since 1999; does that feel good, especially at a time when fraud, waste, and abuse has doubled? Does it feel good that we have done nothing to reform Social Security in the years since people applauded in the middle of the State of the Union address because of President Bush's failed effort to fix Social Security? Does that feel good? Did that solve something or was that political showmanship? That belies the history of this body of coming together. Our Founders created the Senate to try to force consensus. That is what the rules were all about. What we need to do, Democrats and Republicans and our Independent colleagues, is recognize the depth and magnitude of our problem right now. There needs to be a great big time out. Who cares who is in charge if there is no country to run that can be salvaged? It doesn't matter. Economists worldwide and some of the brightest people at Harvard and MIT, the University of Texas, Pennsylvania, they don't sleep at night right now. They know we are on the razor-thin edge of falling over a cliff. The fact is, both parties have laid a trap for future generations by our inaction, our laziness, our arrogance, and a crass desire for power. We are waterboarding the next generation with debt. We are drowning them in obligations because we don't have the courage to come together and address or even debate a real solution. The reason I voted for the deficit commission report? It had a lot of stuff in it I absolutely hated. It had one thing in it Oklahoma can't tolerate that will have to be changed. But the fact is, I believed the problem was so big and so urgent and so necessary that we ought to have that debate. We ought to make sure the American people know the significance of the problems facing us. Both Senator Conrad and Senator Durbin have taken heat. Guys on our side of the aisle have taken heat because we dared to say we should have a debate about the real problems that face this country. The special interests immediately started attacking from both sides. That tells me we were doing some good. I often hear my colleagues assert the power of the purse when it comes to earmarking, but I never hear the same thing when we talk about trying to cut spending. The bias is to spend, not to cut spending. We are either going to do it or outside financial forces are going to force us. Look what has happened so far this year with some other countries. In the first column of this chart, we see the debt in U.S. dollars in fixed terms. The second is what they have done in terms of government spending. In terms of debt, we, of course, lead the world, $13.8 trillion. We have France at $2 trillion, Germany at $1.46 trillion, Spain $602 billion, United Kingdom $1.47 trillion, and Canada. Every one of them froze or reduced the pay of their Federal employees. Every one of them cut their Federal workforce. Every one of them cut Federal spending by significant amounts. What have we done? A big goose egg, zero. That is what we have done. So no wonder the world does not have confidence and no wonder our business investment isn't coming in. We haven't created an environment where they would have confidence. There is no question when the tax bill goes through we will see a bump up in confidence. When people get 2 percent more on their paycheck, we will see some bump up. But it will be short-lived. The problem is not the tax deal but the fact that we are not addressing our real problems. We are addressing the symptoms of the problem. Does a 2-year extension give businesses, small and large, the confidence they need to plan for the future? I certainly hope so. But tax reform that had a meaningful effect on future capital investment would do a whole lot more. The problem is, we are not even willing to consider the hard choices. We will not even have an honest debate about a debate about hard choices. We just want to take our shot of morphine and go on down the road, have another martini on the deck of the Titanic. The history of our country, at least what I saw growing up from the 1940s to the 1950s, the 1960s and the 1970s, was that our Nation thrived because we always embraced the heritage of service and sacrifice when our future was at stake. We actually have seen some of that in the last 10 years. I challenge my colleagues to go to Gettysburg or Philadelphia or visit ground zero and ask: What went through the minds of the brave young Americans when the doors of their landing craft opened on Omaha Beach? What motivated the heroes on flight 93 on 9/11 when they stormed a cockpit occupied by terrorists? What did our Founders think when they signed the Declaration of Independence, knowing their lives and fortunes were on the line? They were thinking about the future. They were making that critical decision to have courage in the face of adversity and take with it what may come. But they knew doing the correct and honorable and right thing was more important than their reputation or any other thing they had. Here is what one of our Founders thought. Almost 234 years ago, on December 19, 1776, Thomas Paine was contemplating the great and uncertain struggle that lay ahead in our battle for independence and freedom. He said: ``If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.'' At the time of Christmas and Hanukkah, isn't that what we want for those who follow, peace of mind to not be threatened by what we have set up as an unsustainable debt dungeon? I think we ought to have it in our day. Let it be our day. Let it be today. Let it be started with this debate we will have on the tax bill that will come before us. Let's make the effort to come to a consensus that we have to have a plan. It doesn't have to be my plan or the plan of Senator Bennet, but we have to have a plan. We have to signal to the rest of the world that we are willing to start making some of the appropriate sacrifices and generate the austerity that will allow us to continue this wonderful experiment. We are now facing the most predictable crisis in our history. We are doing nothing to avert the catastrophe, nothing, zero. In fact, we are still digging. It is time we stopped digging. How will we be remembered? As a generation of politicians who saw a gathering storm and took action or a generation of politicians who put off the hard choices of honor and dishonored the sacrifices of our past? We do have a choice. We can choose to come together and work to solve this problem in the very short term that will have a tremendous impact in the long term. What we don't have is a lot of time. As I heard somebody say today: Time fritters away so fast in Washington. It goes by so fast. We are all so busy. There is no problem in front of us in any committee, on any issue that is greater than the problems facing this country. We need to come together across the aisle to put a plan together that will give security to not only the generations that come and are here already but the peace of mind to know we are listening, we understand, and we are willing to make and lead by example in the sacrifices that have to come for us to solve the problems. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, Senator Harkin and many on the HELP Committee have worked hard on the bill that is before us. But it has fatal flaws, especially at a time when there is a $14 trillion debt and a $1.3 trillion deficit, and it doesn't fix the real problem. We can spend $1.4 billion in this bill. We can cause food prices to go up at least $300 million to $400 million. We can put unfunded mandates on the States for $141 billion a year. That is what we will do if we reject this alternative. This accomplishes the same thing, given that we have the safest food in the world. We will continue to have the safest food in the world, we will move forward, but we won't do it by creating layers upon layers of additional costs and regulations. The problem with food safety is that the agencies don't do what they are supposed to be doing now. They need less regulation, not more. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Would the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after the chairman of the Appropriations Committee speaks we alternate back and forth. We are planning to turn in a bunch of our time--to yield back a bunch of our time--and I would suggest that Senator Udall be given 8 minutes after the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and following him Senator LeMieux, with an intervening statement from the other side, followed by Senator McCaskill for 10 and Senator Inhofe for 15 minutes, alternating back and forth.

Mr. COBURN. I thank the chairman for yielding.

Mr. COBURN. To the Senator from Illinois, I am just bringing these up. I have to bring them up either in the morning or this evening for votes in the morning, so I am just bringing them up to be available for consideration under a suspension of the rules.

Mr. COBURN. Yes, they will.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, we have just invoked cloture on the food safety bill, and I think it is important for the American people to know what that means. That means we are going to spend another $1.4 billion of their money. No. 2, we are going to raise the cost of food over the next year, and therefore we are at about $200 million to $300 million. We set $141 billion per year in unfunded mandates on the States if we pass this bill, and we didn't fix the real problem with food safety in this country, according to the Government Accountability Office. The other point I wish to make is that we went through this process over the last week and a half with no amendments being allowed--no amendments being allowed--which really violates the spirit of the Senate. We could have finished this bill probably the week before Thanksgiving had amendments been allowed. The thing Washington gets wrong--it is not their intent, it is not their well-meaning desire to fix problems that are in front of the country--what Washington gets wrong is they think spending more money and setting up a ton more regulations will fix problems, and it doesn't. What it does is it raises costs. So we are going to see a lot of small food manufacturers no longer making food. We are going to raise the cost of our food and, by the way, see significant increases-- if I could have my charts on the floor, I would appreciate it--this year in food, and we are going to see that extended, but we are not going to fix the real issue. Food safety is on the minds of everybody in this country because of the recent 500 billion egg recall in this country. It is important to know what went on there. It is important to note that the head of the FDA, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, said had their rule been in existence, we wouldn't have had that problem of salmonella with eggs. They promulgated the finished rule around the time of the salmonella infection and contamination on the eggs. The problem with that is it took 10 years to develop that rule. Nobody has asked why it took 10 years. Nobody had a hearing before we passed this rule to say: How did we allow this to happen? But we took 10 years. Senator Harkin has the right idea on food safety. He didn't get it proper, that bill, because he couldn't get it through, but his idea is that we need one food safety organization, not three, and we now have three, and we are going to exacerbate that problem with the bill on which we just deemed cloture. The intent of my colleagues is great, but, as somebody trained in the art of medicine, what I see in this bill is different from what you see in this bill. You see, I see the problem is not lacking regulatory authority; the problem is not holding the regulators in their expertise and carrying out the authority they have. How do I know that for sure? Because it wasn't a week after the recall on the eggs on the salmonella scare that we had two FDA inspectors cross-contaminating farms in Iowa, not even following their own regulations. This doesn't do anything for that because the only thing that is going to fix the real problems with food safety in this country is us holding the regulators accountable, not giving them a whole bunch more regulations, and we haven't done that. We have failed to do that. It is not just in food safety. The reason we have a $1.3 trillion deficit is because we don't hold agencies accountable. We are going to have a debate in a minute on earmarks, and we are going to hear it put forward that the only way we can control it is to direct money ourselves. That is just absolutely an untruth. The way you can direct where money gets spent in this country is having oversight on the agencies and them knowing you are going to look every time on how they are spending the money and make them justify it. But the fact is, we are not looking because we have decided we will take ours and we will put our $16 billion over here, and you, administration, can take your money and put your money where you want to put it. That is the real debate on earmarks. There is nothing in our oath that says anything about our obligation to our State to bring money back to it. And the hidden little secret on earmarks is that they are used as much as a political tool as they are to claim ``I am doing something good for my State.'' Motions to Suspend I ask unanimous consent to move to suspend the rules for the consideration of amendment No. 4696 and amendment No. 4697.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I just want to show my colleagues the difference. One of the motions we will vote on on suspending the rules tomorrow is, here is S. 510, 280 pages of new rules and new regulations. Here is the alternative, which is one-sixth of that. This one costs $1.4 billion in direct costs, $400 billion in food increased costs, and $141 million in mandatory new spending, mandates to the States. This one does none of that. What does this bill do? This bill uses common sense to say what really controls our food safety. Our food safety is controlled by market forces more than anything. And if you look at our history on foodborne contamination, we are by far the safest in the world, and our rates have been coming down since 1996. Over the last 14 years, our rates have come down in terms of foodborne illnesses. I am not fighting against food safety; I am fighting for common sense. What we see in the bill we are going to vote on versus the alternative which I am going to offer is one builds and grows the government, one raises the cost of government, and ultimately we will be taxed to pay for that. One raises the price of food and one puts unfunded mandates on the States. I am saying that we can accomplish exactly the same goal as my chairman, the Senator from Iowa, would like to accomplish without 280 pages of new rules and regulations. So what do we do? We require the FDA and the USDA to immediately establish a comprehensive plan to share their data. They have agreements to share data, but they don't share the data, so we force them to do that. We require a strategic plan for updating their health information technology systems, which the Government Accountability Office for the last 5 years has been saying is their No. 1 problem. We require the FDA to submit a plan to expeditiously approve new food safety technologies and more effectively communicate those technologies to the industry and consumers. We leverage the free market existing food safety activities by allowing the FDA to accredit third-party inspectors, and we provide unlimited new authority without imposing new costs or additional regulatory burdens. These new authorities intend to better leverage the free markets and focus resources on preventing foodborne illness and contamination. They include emergency access to records, clarifying the HACCP authority relating to high-risk foods, and allowing the FDA to develop strategic international relationships. What will this bill do? It will fix the real problem: ineffective government, ineffective bureaucracies. What we are going to do when we pass the food safety bill that is on the floor is we are going to grow the government. We are going to create more barriers. We are going to raise the cost, and we are still going to have foodborne illnesses. So I will end with that and move over to earmarks. I know I have several colleagues who wish to speak about it. I am not going to spend a long time on it. We have debated it and debated it. The fact is that this country did just fine for the first 200 years without the first earmark. And when anybody in the Senate in the first 200 years in this country tried the earmark, they got shouted down in this body because they were told their responsibility was to the country as a whole, not to the privileged, well-connected, well-knowing few who helped them come up here. We have a problem, and the problem isn't earmarks; the problem is the confidence of the American people. They see the conflicts of interest associated with earmarks. It is not wrong to want to help your State. It is not wrong to go through an authorizing process where your colleagues can actually see it. It is wrong to hide something in a bill that benefits you and the well-heeled few without it being shown in light to the American people. If we are to solve the major problems that are in front of this country over the next 2 or 3 years--and they are the largest we have ever seen, they are the biggest problems we have ever seen in this country--we have to restore the confidence of the American people. Utilization of an earmark is not our prerogative; it is our pleasure. We claim a power that we have in fact created. We do direct where the money goes. But we should never do it with a conflict of interest that benefits just those we represent from our States or just those who help us become Senators. All we have to do is look at campaign contributions and earmarks, and there is a stinky little secret associated with that: the correlation is close to one. That is not something this body should embrace, tolerate, or stand for. The American people expect us to be transparent, aboveboard, doing the best, right thing for the country as a whole. The real process is that the Appropriations Committee ignores authorizing committees; $380 billion a year in discretionary funds are appropriated every year that are unauthorized. With that rebuff of the authorizing committees, they also put in any earmarks they want or that any other Member wants. It is time that stops. It is time we re-earn the trust of the American people. With that, I yield to my colleague, the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Oh, very good. Then I withdraw my request and ask that I might be recognized.