Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 2569 be called up.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I have several amendments that go along this line, but my question to the Appropriations Committee is one of trying to clarify for the American people the numbers that were used to downsize the operation and maintenance account based on what the expected inflation rate was. It is important to know. The O&M account is what runs everything. What came out of the bill was $294 million because you chose to use an inflation rate that was less than what CBO and OMB had stated it would be. You did use the one that was the one prior. But the one presently would, in fact, add another $294 million to the operation and maintenance account. I would be glad to hear the reasoning why we chose to use it. I think I know why the reasoning--because it allows more ability to do other things Members would like to do. What this amendment is trying to do is to restore that money to truly reflect the inflation rate that OMB and CBO have said it would be. Three-tenths of 1 percent makes a big difference when you are talking about taking something from our military. I would remind my colleagues that last year the Navy ran out of O&M money and we needed an emergency supplemental to supply it. So by undershooting what the real inflation factor is for their costs, both in fuel and maintenance and operations, if we undervalue that account, what it means is we are going to take away from readiness. I know that is not the intent of this committee. The intent of this committee is to make sure our military has the needs and the means with which to carry out their requirements. Let me get a little more detailed on it. When the committee set the O&M number, they used a GDP index inflation rate from the Congressional Budget Office that was 3 months old, and they ignored the updated one for August, which was three-tenths of a percent higher. That means that if--and I agree, they are estimates; they may not be correct. What I would like to know is, what if you are wrong with the lower number you put in? Are we going to be coming back with a supplemental to be able to drive the O&M? For the American people what that means is, when we do a supplemental, it is outside the budget rules, which means we borrow it. We borrow the money. This amendment says let's realistically predict what the inflation rate is going to be in the operation and maintenance account. Let's truly put the money there that should be there. What this amendment does is simply restore it. We know, by history, that O&M has been rising faster than inflation for the past 9 years. We have not gotten it right once, in terms of the actual amounts. How this amendment technically works is it restores $294 million by striking part of section 8091 of the bill that reduces that funding. I will not spend any more time on it. I will discuss it again later. Amendment No. 2563 Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 2563 be called up.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to spend a little bit of time today talking to my colleagues and the American people about where we are. I don't know of a better description of where we are than this sign. The President said and some in the House have said that certain facts about health care reform are indisputable, but nobody will dispute this one: Forty-three cents out of every dollar we spend this year, we borrow against the future of our children; 43 cents out of every dollar the Federal Government spends. What does that come to per family? What that comes to is $15,603 per family--every family in this country--we borrowed against this year. The reason I came down to the floor--I have a lot of problems with both the CR and this bill, but I want to know where the leadership is in America today. We are in tough times, and if there ought to be one bill the Congress passes with no increase in spending, it ought to be the bill that pays for the things we do. The reason it ought to be that bill is because we ought to lead by example. What we are saying with this legislative branch bill is that, you know what, there is just not 5 percent to cut in our efficiency. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every year I have been here, I have been allocated a certain amount of money for my office. In no year have I turned back less than 18 percent of that money, 460-some thousand bucks. We didn't spend it because we know how to run things efficiently and effectively. That is a misnomer for the Federal Government, as led by the Senate, as exampled by this bill. So what have we done so far this year? Here is what we have done. Here is where the 2009 increases were, and here is what we are proposing this year. This doesn't take into account any of the money we spent in the stimulus or any of the money in the emergency appropriations we passed or that we wanted to increase the baseline. Last year, we increased our own budget by 10.88 percent. Inflation was minus last year; there was a negative inflation. So we had an infinity, as far as recognizing the increase of our own budgets, because, in fact, the costs actually went down in America. CPI declined. This year, we are at a 1.4-percent CPI increase year over year, from September 30 to September 30. Legislative branch is almost three times what inflation is; Homeland Security, four times inflation; Energy and Water--because they got such a large bump with the stimulus bill, we only increased it 1.41 percent. Every other bill, such as Agriculture, is 12.68 percent; but if you look at it, it is almost 22 percent. The THUD bill is 22.54 percent. Interior is 16.28 percent. Here is the inflation rate, 1.6 percent. Where is the leadership? That is what the American people ought to ask. I don't fault the chairman. He is given a number and he is supposed to meet it. I fault our leadership. Things are never going to change until we model the behavior that will set the example to cause everything else to change. When we don't have the self-discipline and the courage to make hard choices in the running of our own offices and our own facilities, how can we ever expect anybody else in the rest of the government to do that? You heard Senator DeMint talk about what kind of shape we are in. Our debt today is $11.790 trillion. That is going to double in the next 5 years. It is going to triple in the next 10 years. Medicare is an unfunded liability. For Medicare alone, it is $89 trillion. What are we doing? Why are we not--Democrats and Republicans alike--saying the problem is in our leadership? The problem is the example we set. We can't even hold our own expenses flat at a time when the rest of the country is making the most difficult choices. Every family and every business is in tough times, and we are flying through it because we don't have to lead by example. We don't want to make hard choices. There is something lacking in America today. It is sorely lacking. The trouble we are in isn't partisan. It is not one party or the other. It is the combined leadership of this country that fails to recognize the depth and severity of the problems before us, and then it is compounded by not making the hard choices and leading by example to give us a result that will change that path. No other appropriations bills have passed Congress. There have been no conference reports passed for this year. The one that we are going to pass is the one for us. That doesn't fit with any sense of reality to the average family in this country. Today, it was released that we have a 16-percent approval rating. That is way too high. That is way too high. Leadership is about sacrifice, giving up something so somebody else can gain. We have none of it in any of these appropriations bills we have passed. But they have not gone to the President because we don't have conference reports. Then we have the gall to bring in our budget at three times the inflation rate for us and pass it as the only one. Everybody else will be frozen, with minor exceptions, in the CR. Everybody else--the rest of the government--cannot plan. They don't know what they can do. But we are going to make sure we take care of us. That is exactly why we have a 16-percent approval rating. I struggled a long time with whether I would seek my seat in the Senate again. Quite frankly, I came down to the fact that, other than three or four of us, nobody in the Senate is speaking about the real long-term problems. Nobody is thinking long term. What we are thinking about is short-term parochial instances such as the $200,000 the chairman put in for his own State. It may be a great project, but now is not the time to do that. It sends a signal to the rest of America that I am going to take care of me and the heck with you. It is the wrong message. Yet we are going to do it anyway. We are going to say: Oh, well, never mind. It is a good cause, $200,000 doesn't matter. When we are growing up, our parents try to teach us a lot of things. It becomes the small things that are important. This legislative branch bill is a small bill compared to all the others we are going to pass. But it is big on symbolism because this is never going to change until we change. The symbolic act of passing this bill, where we are increasing our own expenses three times the rate of inflation, when most people in this country are spending less money on everything they do, some by choice, some out of fear, and some out of absolute circumstances that they have no control over--yet we pass a bill for us that makes us look absolutely foolish in Americans' eyes. America gets it. We don't. This is an embarrassing time for us as a country. The reason is because there is a difference between what the American people expect and want out of Congress and what we are delivering. It is not about Republicans or Democrats. People are scared. What is the future going to be like? I can tell you. If, in fact, we don't reestablish frugality and common sense in how we fund our expenses and every other aspect of the Federal Government, what we will see is the diminishment of the greatest magnitude of freedom this country has ever seen. We are starting to see it. Where do you think we got the 43 percent we are borrowing? We got most of it from people outside this country. They now have an influence over our ability to remain free because they control the money strings. This isn't just a rhetorical statement. We know--and I put it on the floor 10 times--nobody disputes that there is at least $350 billion worth of waste, fraud, and duplication in the Federal Government. Not one time in any of the bills that have come through this Chamber have we addressed the significant causes of those problems or addressed fixing it to right them. When we make amendments, they are defeated but not on party-line votes; they get defeated by the appropriators. The greatest power in the Senate is not Senator Harry Reid, it is the Appropriations Committee. Consequently, when we try to fix the problem, we have a united front that says parochialism and short-term thought is much more important than the long-term future of the country, and our political positions are more important than the health of this Nation. Consequently, tonight, even after points of order will be raised--and I plan on raising some myself--we will pass this. Everybody will say the shower from Coburn is over and we can keep on doing what we have done. America, don't let us get away with this. Don't let us lead by this poor example. Don't let us not sacrifice in our own offices so we can create the kind of leadership that is necessary to right this ship. This is the worst display I have seen in my years of service in the Congress. It is not about the details. It is the very fact that we have the audacity to take care of us before we take care of the rest of America. We have the audacity to increase our own budgets, which are fat. If I can turn back the large amount of money I turn back every year, and every office could do the same thing, we could cut significant moneys from this bill. But we don't have the courage, the spine or the backbone that every American family has today--the actual guts to make hard choices. So we ignore them because it is so easy to take the credit card and say charge it to the next generation. Yesterday, I heard Senator Schumer go after several members on the Finance Committee over Medicare. He said: You can't be against this. You are for Medicare, aren't you? Sure, Medicare is great. The only problem is, the unfunded liabilities with Medicare are going to cripple our economy starting in 2017. Alexander Tyler said all republics die, all republics fail. They fail at that moment in time when the vast majority of the citizens of the republic figure out they can vote themselves something from the Public Treasury. Is it morally acceptable for us to continue to steal from our children? Is it morally acceptable to take opportunity away in this great land of freedom? Or will we sit back some day and tell our grandchildren about what it used to be like to be free in this country? All republics fail because all republics become deficit ridden. It does not have to be that way for our country. Real leadership, real courage, real clarity of character says that now is the time, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, to lead on the issues that will solve the problems in front of this country. This bill doesn't do it. As a matter of fact, this bill conditions more apathy and less confidence in the country and rightly so. We are not going to see that level of confidence come back to the Congress until we start paying attention to the long-term needs of this country and making those decisions in a way that doesn't have any consideration of our political position whatsoever, but every consideration about the truth, welfare, and long-term viability of our country. This bill doesn't do it. The fact that this bill is used as a vehicle to fund the rest of the government, and we put us ahead of everybody else, to me, sends a very clear message to America: It is time to change who is here. It is time to send new people here. It is time to have people who are more interested in the country than their political careers or their party. We example the worst of Washington politics and the worst of parochialism when we put us first and our desires first and our careers first, rather than the long-term viability of this country. The CR contained in this bill violates the budget resolution-- violates 311 of the Budget Act. It is all over the place. Even though we will raise points of order, we probably will not win. But when we don't win on that, America, you ought to ask why didn't we win. It will be because the Members of this body think more about their budgets than they do yours. They think more about their comfort than they do yours. They think more about their future than they do yours. It is very easy to solve this situation. What should happen is the legislative branch should be frozen like everybody else in the country, and we should pass bills coming out of conference committee as soon as we can, and we ought to work hard on doing that. Then we ought to pass a CR tonight that is free of this, that doesn't violate the Budget Act. I want to make one more point talking about the $4 billion and the postal provisions. There are a lot of great people who work for the U.S. Postal Service. There is no question about it. They are a victim of technology today more so than anything else. The fact is we use electronics rather than the mail, and the first-class mail volume and the volume for second and third-class items is going to go down. There is nothing the post office is going to be able to do to turn that revenue around. There is nothing. And that is not the average postal worker's fault. But the postal portion that came out of the Homeland Security Committee contained a very key component that has been ignored in this CR, and that was this: the negotiation of labor rates in this next round. Heretofore, they have never taken into consideration the financial health of the post office. Some of us find that kind of strange, but they never have. But there was an amendment that was agreed to in the committee that said: This time, when you arbitrate the language for the postal service employees, you have to consider the health of the post office, because that is where the revenue comes. Well, that has been conveniently left out of this CR. It passed out of committee. Yet we didn't put it here. What does that mean for the post office? That means when we go to negotiate the labor agreements, the fact the post office is going to lose $8 billion or $10 billion next year--they will lose at least $8 billion this year, maybe even $12 billion or $14 billion next year-- there won't be any consideration given in evaluating the labor contracts. Any other business whose revenue is declining rapidly that ignores the revenue side and ignores expense increases is sure to fail. As Senator DeMint said, this is the third time in 5 years we have tried to put a patch on the U.S. Post Office, and this patch is only going to last for 1 year. It is not going to solve anything. We are going to ignore the hard choices that need to be made both by the postal employees and the post office in order to fix this so it is not a drain. That is what I am talking about--the failure to lead. We duck the hard problems. We don't want to offend anybody. What we have to do is to start thinking long term. We have to start being about a vision of America that is financially healthy, and we have to swallow the hard, tough medicine of getting there. We are setting an example with this bill that says we don't care; it doesn't matter. So America is disgusted. And that is what it is when 16 percent have confidence in us. I guarantee a large percentage don't--84 percent. A good portion of that is disgust with us. You know what. I am disgusted too. I know the individuals in this body. They are great people. But there has to be a change in the dynamics of the thought and the reasoning or we are going to suffer the consequences. Actually, we are not; our kids are. They are going to suffer the consequences. I will end with this point. If you were born today--September 30, 2009--in this country, the first present you get for your birthday is an IOU for $400,000. Because when you take all our unfunded liabilities and apply to it the living segment of Americans over the next 70 years, their portion of our indiscretion is $400,000. It just takes simple math: Take 5 percent interest--and none of us can probably borrow any money at 5 percent interest--and that is $20,000 a year for the first 20 years of their life they are going to have the pay the interest on. So what does that come to, 20 years times $20,000? Now we are at $800,000 before they are out of college. How in the world will they ever own a home? How will they ever send their kids to college carrying that kind of load? There is one of two answers to it: We either enter into the real world and start making the hard decisions and fixing the programs that are broken and eliminating the waste, fraud, and abuse, or we devalue our currency and everybody's assets in this country are going to shrink by about another 30 percent in terms of their real value. That is the answer. But those are inconvenient truths. We don't want to talk about them. We don't want to talk about the consequences of our actions. A former President said: Freedom is a precious thing. It's not ours by inheritance alone. It is never guaranteed. It has to be fought for and defended by each and every succeeding generation. How do you fight for freedom when you owe $800,000 and you are not out of college yet? How do you do that? When will we start to take the shackles off the next two generations? When will we start to eliminate the burden of our excesses on our children? We are not far from a time when it is going to be too late to reverse this course. The international financial market is signaling that now. Wouldn't it be wise for us to lead with courage, to make tough choices, and truly secure the freedom of our children and grandchildren? Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time during the quorum call be equally divided between the majority and the minority.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, Senator Carper successfully offered an amendment to this act that would authorize the EPA to conduct a study on black carbon emissions to ``improve global and domestic public health'' and ``to mitigate the climate impacts of black carbon.'' A similar bill, S. 849, was also introduced by Senator Carper and approved recently by the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. While I did not object to the purpose of the bill, I did object to the bill because the cost of the study--$2 million according to the Congressional Budget Office--was not offset. As I wrote in a letter to Minority Leader McConnell and Senator Carper outlining my objections to this bill, ``At a time when our national debt is greater than $11.6 trillion, we cannot afford to add to this debt that will be inherited by our children and grandchildren. Even our best intentions need to be paid for with offsets from lower priorities or wasteful spending.'' I also requested the opportunity to modify this legislation if no offsets were made. I intended to offer a second-degree amendment to offset the expected cost increase in spending as a result of the Carper amendment by capping the amount of funds EPA can spend on conference travel. According to EPA, $17.296 million was spent on conference travel in 2006--the last year for which we have records. This amendment would have capped conference travel spending at $15 million, thus assuring that the full cost of the study will be offset. In the past couple of years, as Americans were tightening their belts and travelling less, EPA was growing its conference budget and travelling more. This is reflected in its annual costs for conference participation and related expenses, which increased from $10.781 million in fiscal year 2000 to $17.296 million in fiscal year 2006. Conference attendance for Federal employees in many, if not most, cases is discretionary, meaning that it is up to Federal agencies to determine to what conferences agency employees should go and how many employees should go. Some conferences provide valuable educational or agency-related information in a format unavailable in a normal office setting. Many conferences, by the sponsors' design, are held in locations chosen to attract attendees. That being said, it is the responsibility of the U.S. Congress and the managers within Federal agencies to exercise due diligence in performing oversight over an area of Federal spending that has cost taxpayers over $2 billion on conferences from 2000-2006. This spending has increased over 95 percent, from over $200 million a year in fiscal year 2000 to almost $400 million a year in fiscal year 2006. In addition to the financial cost of these trips, oversight hearings I held as the chair of the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee highlighted the lost productivity of government employees when they are out of the office on nonessential travel. The EPA is just one among many Federal agencies that I believe has overspent on nonessential conferences and travel. In my research I found numerous instances where EPA showed questionable judgment in this regard. In September 2006, EPA sent 23 employees to Paris, France, for the International Society of Exposure Analysis Meeting, at a cost of $56,000. This conference featured a gala dinner cruise on the River Seine and a cast of presenters that consisted primarily of Americans. The agency's employees attended an annual National Beaches Conference in Niagara Falls, NY. The 2006 conference was attended by at least seven EPA employees, at a cost to taxpayers of $52,500. One EPA employee attended a December 2006 GSA Small Business Conference in Palm Springs, CA, at a cost of $4,100, with his or her travel costs alone listed at $1,800. A Cancun, Mexico, meeting attended by two EPA employees cost $4,200, with travel costs listed at $2,900. A March 2007 Waste-to-Energy Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico cost taxpayers $48,000 for nine EPA employees and two taxpayer-funded nonemployees to attend. A 2006 ``Beyond Translation Forum'' sponsored by the EPA in Texas to ``engage the Hispanic community in becoming environmental stewards'' costs $52,100 for the attendance of 20 EPA employees and 85 taxpayer- funded nonemployees. Over 2 years, EPA also spent $2.6 million in grants and contracts and over $300,000 in travel and related expenses for brownfields conferences in Oregon and Missouri. EPA spent $235,000 in grants and $25,000 in travel costs for the National Tank Conference in Memphis. Costs included events at BB King's and seeing the Memphis Grizzlies basketball team play. EPA spent $355,000 in grants and contracts and $167,000 in travel costs for the Community Involvement Conference in Milwaukee. In February of 2007, EPA spent $150,000 to sponsor the ``Measuring Program Results'' Conference, to which it sent one EPA employee and paid for the attendance of four nonemployees. Instead of specifically capping the amount EPA could spend on conference travel, Senator Carper has graciously modified his amendment to transfer $2 million from the EPA's Environmental Programs and Management account to fund this study of black carbon emissions. This EPA account ``provides personnel compensation, benefits, and travel and other administrative expenses for all agency programs.'' It is my hope that this transfer in funds will help EPA better manage the funds it is entrusted with by Congress and limit questionable expenditures and unnecessary conference travel and related expenses. I am pleased that the Senate has agreed to this offset and hope that Congress can begin to prioritize funds for its priorities with real offsets.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. We are on amendment No. 2483, which was not agreed to. We could not work out an agreement. I want to take a minute or two--we don't have a time agreement on this--to talk about this amendment, what amendment No. 2483 will do.

Mr. COBURN. I am not sure I was present. Do we have a unanimous consent in that regard?

Mr. COBURN. I should have been here to object. We have an $11 billion backlog in the national parks. It grew by $400 million this year. The Land and Water Conservation Act of 1965 was not meant just to buy land. It was meant to take care of the backlogs and the problems associated with outdoor recreation enjoyment by the American people. There is almost $400 million in this bill to buy more land rather than take care of the things we have today. This amendment simply moves that to take care of the backlog at every national park we have. If we do not do that, we are soon going to be at $12 billion, soon at $13 billion.

Mr. COBURN. The fact is, it is common sense. Every American knows you do not build a garage when your front porch is falling down and that is the only way to get into your house. That is what is happening to our parks. I know there is some increased funding for the parks but the fact is they are falling down, whether it is Yellowstone--I don't care where it is, there are significant maintenance problems in the parks. That ought to be a priority before we add 1 more acre to 650 million acres we already own.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I think we can dispense with two fairly quickly, one with a vote and one without. We have worked out an agreement on amendment No. 2482. I believe the modification is at the desk. We have an agreement between the chairman and ranking member of the committee and the Senator from New Mexico, who is chair of the appropriate authorizing committee, which allows private property owners to opt out of heritage areas. I ask for its consideration now, rather than spending more time on it, and ask unanimous consent it be accepted.

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

Mr. COBURN. I am happy to.

Mr. COBURN. I would be happy to have a UC on this amendment that would exclude the inholdings, if that would satisfy the chairman. In fact, the inholdings are a very small amount of the $400 million. A very small amount of the money for land acquisitions is inholdings. I would be happy to accept a second degree that would exclude the inholdings from this.

Mr. COBURN. I thank the chairman for her comments on that. I am sure it is important. It is important to preserve what we have. You can't go to one national park and talk to the park rangers and talk to the person in charge without hearing them talk about the declining status of their individual parks. We have to start making some choices. We are going to refuse to do that. So next year, instead of it being $11 billion, it is going to be $11.6 billion, and then it is going to grow. What is happening right now is, we are shutting off parts of our parks. We are saying, since it is dangerous or it is in disrepair, we cannot let people experience it. I will put in the Record hundreds of examples where that is happening right now. We have researched and the parks have told us where they are limiting access because of the lack of maintenance funds and funds for repair of required things in the parks. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I wish to put my colleagues on notice that we are trying to work out an amendment so it can be acceptable to all parties concerned. It has to do with the heritage areas. If, in fact, you are a landowner in this country or you are a farmer or you are a rancher or you happen to have 20 acres in the country, you ought to be very worried about the implications and the consequences of those who come in and change the zoning laws on heritage areas. Most people in this country have no idea they are in a heritage area. They have no knowledge that they are in a heritage area. As a matter of fact, the whole State of Tennessee is a heritage area. So what we are attempting to do is to create a mechanism where anybody in the country who is in a heritage area who doesn't want to be in it can be out of it with their property. We also want to respectfully protect some efforts in North Dakota on one specifically where they would have to opt in. So we are working on an agreement. We will come back and talk about this when this is finished. Hopefully, this is the start of restoring property rights to Americans that have been trampled, in my opinion, by those who are empowered through the heritage area name. My hope is we are going to make good progress on this with this bill. It is important. If you are a farmer or a rancher, if you are a farm bureau member, if you are a cattleman or if you are a dairy farmer, it is time to make sure this stays--whatever agreement we come to--in this bill as it goes to conference. Because real property rights are at risk. They have been at risk. They have been trampled on. This is a great solution in terms of solving it.

Mr. COBURN. Well, that is perfectly acceptable to me. I want the problem solved. I think security is just as important as protecting our environment. We are not going to allow one to trump the other.

Mr. COBURN. I would next like to talk about amendment No. 2483. This is the amendment that moves the Federal Land Acquisition Fund to backlog. There is no question my colleagues in this body know of my concern about an ever-expanding, ever-enlarging Federal role in terms of land ownership. In fact, I have had a lot of conflicts with the chairmen, whether it was a Republican chairman or a Democratic chairman, in terms of expanding the amount of property the Federal Government owns. It is not just about expanding. When we expand it costs more money. It costs our kids more money. But in this bill, we have almost $400 million that is going to be put in to buy more land where we cannot take care of the land that we have today. What we know is the following: Federal land management agencies across all these different branches of government, as well as within this bill, are responsible for a large and aging number of structures. As we have continued, through the Federal Government, to consume more private land nationwide, Federal agencies have increasingly been unable to maintain the existing land holdings. All one has to do is talk to any park ranger. Go up to the Statue of Liberty, they have an $800 million backlog. Go to the Washington Mall, well over $1 billion in maintaining some of our most significant structures. If you go to the Grand Canyon National Park, people are continually being limited because we can't maintain the trails and because we don't put the money in to do it. The National Park Service, which receives most of the money to buy more land in this bill, faces an $11 billion backlog. When I first started talking about the issue, the backlog was $6 billion. In 4 years, we have seen the backlog with the National Park Service almost double. Although I am thankful for the increase in maintenance funds this bill does add to the national parks, it does not come sufficiently close. What is the priority? Is the priority for the Federal Government to consume more land, restrict more access, limit the freedom of people around that land and on that land, or is it to let Americans own the land and take care of the land the Federal Government already has? It owns a third of the land. How much land is enough for the Federal Government to own? How much is enough, especially when most of the land we own we are not taking care of. We are letting it fall down. The question has to be: What are the priorities? The committee says the priority is to buy more land. This amendment says the priority is to repair and take care of the land we have. It specifically directs this money to the National Park Service to help with a backlog of falling down structures and the increased risk of safety for both park employees and visitors. I obviously don't have all the information the committee has, but as the Senator from New Mexico knows, I have been looking at land acquisition and land bills for the last few years. I have not been successful in slowing them down, but I think the American people need to know about this. They need to recognize that our priorities are screwed up and that, in fact, we ought to be about taking care of what we have before we add to it. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I switch now to amendment No. 2523, which is a prohibition on funds being spent in this act that would actually limit the effectiveness of the Homeland Security Department in terms of securing our borders and protecting us. This amendment basically ensures that the wilderness areas and other public lands are protected from crime and pollution. I know it is not seen that way, but what is happening is a very big and sad story about what is happening in our wilderness areas. Border violence and trafficking is at an all-time high. Our public lands along the border are being exploited by drug and human smugglers. Wilderness concerns hinder law enforcement efforts. How do we balance properly our concerns for the environment and still secure our borders and still protect our population from both drug smuggling and human trafficking? Wilderness areas also are being destroyed by these very smugglers because we do not allow the enforcement agencies access to be able to make a difference. We have not acted on it; we have not acted on it in this bill. We have to make sure there is the proper balance between protecting our wilderness areas and protecting our country and our citizens. We have sought to address in the last couple of years our border security concerns by appropriating a large increase in Federal funds for law enforcement and for significant legislation to construct infrastructure along the southern border. In the Secure Fence Act of 2006, Congress sought to ensure that the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security was able to take the actions necessary and appropriate to achieve and maintain the operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States. The goal of the act was to prevent all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, narcotics, and other contraband, except it has not had the desired impact, and in large part, to the unwelcome increase of illegal human and drug trafficking through public lands, along our southern border. So we have a conflict of desires by agencies to do their jobs. Amendment No. 2523 would prohibit any funds from within the Interior appropriations bill to be used to prohibit or restrict the activities of Homeland Security on public lands to secure our borders. The effect of this amendment would be to ensure that DHS is able to further secure our borders from terrorists and other national security threats and protect the environment of these lands. I know there is some concern on the other side with the language, the way we have written it. I am more than willing to work with the chairman of both the Resources Committee, Interior Committee, and the Appropriations Committee to try to put that in a way that properly balances it. I know this is a tough amendment. I do not deny that. But when you hear the testimony--and I am going to ask that this be printed in the Record. This is former Border Patrol officers and field supervisory Border Patrol agents who testified in Congress last April about what is going on in our wilderness areas. Do you realize that these people, because we do not have law enforcement in there, they are setting fires in our wilderness areas to distract us to the fire so they can smuggle contraband and humans while we are addressing the fire? Our wilderness areas are being defiled near McAllen, TX. It relates: When a wilderness area or refuge is established near the border, the criminal element moves in and trashes it because the restrictive wilderness or refuge status accorded to these lands effectively prevents all law enforcement from effectively working the area. This is Border Patrol: In other words, refuge or wilderness designation actually serves to put the environment at a greater risk of being seriously damaged and defaced. Law enforcement must have common, unrestricted, free access to all lands near the U.S. border. He goes on to clarify that it needs to be at least 50 miles. The other thing that was especially telling and which is horrific is the comments about what is going on along Interstate 8 and Interstate 10 in Arizona: numerous reported ``rape trees'' have been identified in and near the current Pajarita Wilderness near the U.S.-Mexican border. Rape trees mark the location where drug and alien smugglers habitually sexually assault and rape illegal alien females that are being brought into the United States across the Mexican border. These locations are marked by the perpetrators who prominently display and hang-- I will not use the words that he does. the underwear of their victims on a particular tree. I visited one such reported tree on March 27, 2008, and noticed 30 sets of underwear. These rape-tree trails begin at the Mexican border and travel all of the way through the Pajarita Wilderness. In southern Arizona we are experiencing increased incidents of wildfires from two primary sources. The first source is illegal aliens who cross into the United States illegally and start fires through carelessness. The second is from illegal aliens engaged in other criminal enterprises who start wildfires intentionally to create a diversion so they can smuggle things into or out of the United States. You cannot deny the fact that we are having a conflict between the Department of Interior and the Department of Homeland Security in terms of law enforcement along our border. The tragedy is that the very intent of the Department of Interior to protect the environment is actually being made worse by their policy of not allowing law enforcement efforts, i.e., the Border Patrol, into those areas. So this amendment is intended to do a couple of things. Let me talk about what the claims against this amendment are first, and that I am more than willing to try to work out a sensible agreement. What is driving me nuts is those two Departments have not worked out a sensible agreement themselves, which we ought to have significant oversight hearings on the fact that we are having to do something that they should be taking care of. The claim is that if this amendment passes it will devastate the environment and give the Department of Homeland Security the mandate to show no regard for the environment. Nothing can be further from the truth. The interpretation of congressional intent that we currently have has led to the destruction of much of our wilderness area because human and drug smugglers have been able to use these lands as major thoroughfares without fear of law enforcement. Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security will still be obligated to conduct its law enforcement activities in a manner that seeks to minimize or mitigate any negative environmental impact. Do you realize in Arizona they are cutting down 150-year-old cactuses to block the road to inhibit anybody following them? And the fact that we do not have significant law enforcement, i.e., Border Patrol there, these majestic, 100-year-old cactuses, which are protected, are intentionally being destroyed to protect the smugglers. In the past, when the Secretary of Homeland Security waived 30 environmental and other laws and regulations associated with the construction of tactical infrastructure along the southwest border in compliance with the Federal law, he still required the Department to practice responsible stewardship of natural and cultural resources. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol is also committed to do that. I will stop with this: I do want to have printed in the Record a letter from the National Border Patrol Council, which is the AFL-CIO representative of our Border Patrol agents who fully endorse this amendment because they are the people actually on the ground seeing the problem, and we are not allowing them to do their job.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. We don't know, but most likely half of them will not. The whole debate ought to be how do we get more value out of the health care system we have today rather than how do we add more money to the cost of health care to cover more people. The reason my patients have trouble getting care is cost. Right now, they have choice, except if they are in Medicaid, and they have some choice if they are in Medicare because we are seeing a larger and larger percentage of doctors who cannot afford to take the Medicare reimbursements. But can they afford the care? This bill does nothing to lower health care costs. It does nothing to lower health care costs.

Mr. COBURN. First of all, let me say my biggest concern for my patients in this whole debate is, will the American consumer still have the power and the ability to select who is going to give them this most personal of all care when this is over? The answer to that is ``no.'' It is not ``no'' for everybody, but it is a ``no'' for half of the American public. That is what it means.

Mr. COBURN. Premiums will.