Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to spend a few minutes talking about the budget that is before us and make some simple notes. In 73 pages, this budget spends $3.5 trillion in 1 year. That is an astounding amount of money. It spends $17.9 trillion, at a minimum, over the next 5 years. This budget is more than a document full of numbers. It is a statement of priorities. My feeling is it does not address some of the key fundamental challenges we face as a nation. In fact, it is going to make some of the challenges we have worse because we are going to be spending money we don't have on things we don't need. Every family in this country today, as we know by decreased consumer spending, is making hard choices. They are making priorities. Their priorities are: How do we do the absolute minimum necessary, as well as how do we say we are going to have the largest savings rate we have had in 40, 50 years in this country so we can save for tomorrow? Most of the time, those families are not just thinking about the adult members of those families; most of the time those families are making those decisions because they are thinking into the future about their children. We are not doing that with this budget. As a matter of fact, the only thing we are thinking about in this budget for our children is how much we are going to put on their backs because we refuse to face the realities of living within our means as every family is trying to do out there today. We are going to transfer a doubling of the publicly held debt. Over the next 5 years, it is going to double, and over the next 10 years it is going to triple. That is going to have a serious impact on us as a nation, but it is going to have a personal impact on every young child out there today. Let me tell my colleagues what the impact is going to be. We are going to steal opportunity from them because we refused to make the hard choices today. The impact is going to be that a large portion of them aren't going to be able to afford to go to college. We know education is one of the areas that advance our society, that create opportunities for American exceptionalism, that create opportunities for advancement of all through education. Yet the things we are doing today, by stealing the money from them in the future and burdening them with an interest obligation that most of them won't earn the amount we are going to have to pay every year, seem to me to be penny wise and pound foolish. The other thing this document does is it has go-pay. It doesn't have pay-go in it; it has go and pay. What it says is: We are not going to be responsible, so you--meaning the next two generations--you go and pay for it. We claim pay-go, but, as seen in all of the documents, there is no pay-go application to the biggest expenditures in this bill. We just take it off line and we allow us to create all of these new programs and new items. Yet we don't have to be responsible to make the hard choices about what is important, what is a priority, and what is not a priority. Last year, families across this country saw less than a 2-percent increase in their incomes. After a 9-percent across-the-board--not counting the stimulus, just the omnibus bill--we are going to then bump up another 7.2 percent. So we are going to grow the Government 4 times faster than the income increase was last year, and now we are going to grow it 3\1/2\ times more, faster, than what personal income has risen and 70 times greater than what the net inflation is going to be. That is called real spending, real growing the Federal Government, not making the hard choices. What it results in, in spite of what we call it--whether it is my favorite pet program or somebody else's--what it results in is less liberty, less freedom for the generations that will follow. You tell me a country where you can have real freedom when you have no economic freedom. There isn't freedom when there is no economic freedom. What we are doing with this budget is slashing into the economic liberties of the children and grandchildren who follow us. During the Senate consideration, I offered numerous amendments that were designed to make us make hard choices, including allowing penalty- free withdrawals from retirement accounts to make some of the mortgage payments people are having trouble with today, to allow us to help. It was accepted unanimously. Not one person voted against it. It is not in this final document. Ending bogus performance bonuses by Government contractors and executives--not one person expressed an objection to that--it is not in the final budget. Reviewing the budget line by line for waste, fraud, inappropriateness, and metrics was agreed to. As a matter of fact, the chairman said right before we voted on the final bill that this is one we will try to protect in the conference. It comes out of conference, nothing is there. That is one of President Obama's promises. We won't even help him do the things he said he wanted to do. To set performance standards to identify failing Government programs, not one person objected on the Senate floor. It was unanimous. Yet when it comes out of the conference, none of it is there. Ending no-bid contracts--something every American knows this Congress has a problem with because we let the favorite one get no-bid contracts, the well-connected, the well-heeled; requiring competitive bidding on anything above $25,000 outside of national security issues, nobody objected to that. It actually had a vote prior where we had a 97-to-nothing vote. When it comes out of the conference, it is not in there. Protecting patients and health care providers from health care coercion, it is not in there. So we are going to pass a budget and say: You go pay, and all the things we really need to do to make the programs we have today efficient and to measure the programs we have today and control some of the waste, fraud, and abuse that is over $300 billion a year--all of the things that needed to be in this budget to make sure that happens got rejected in the conference. What should the American people think about that? They are certainly not going to go out and have their plumbing redone in their bathroom without getting some quotes on it. They are going to make people competitively bid. If they buy a car, they are not just going to go to an automobile showroom and pay the first place they go; they are going to price that because it is a necessity to get good value today. Yet we reject that as a body. The House rejected it. The Senate rejected it in conference. What should the American people think about us? We won't do any of the commonsense things they are having to do right now so we can get rid of some of the $300 billion of waste that we don't want to charge to our children. We won't do it. Why is that? Why is it we won't do that? Is there some other reason? Can somebody explain to me why we would not want to go through the budget in a time when we are going to run close to a $2 trillion budget deficit that is all charged to our kids, that we wouldn't want to go through it and find the waste, fraud, and abuse in the programs that don't work? This conference report rejects doing that. Are we just lazy? Maybe we don't care. Which is it? It certainly can't be that there is a logical reason we wouldn't do that. Yet we didn't do it. Why would we not get rid of some of the waste? We have $80 billion worth of fraud a year in Medicare and Medicaid. Nothing is being done about it. We are going to have a reconciliation process that is going to totally change the history of the Senate forever in terms of the 1974 Budget Act. We are going to hand to us a redo of all of the health care, and the health care we run today, which accounts for 61 percent if you count everything that the Federal Government is into, is the most wasteful, fraudulent, lame system in the world. Yet we won't address it. I don't want a legacy of stealing opportunity from my grandchildren or anybody else's. If you vote for this budget without this kind of hard work that we should be required to do, of accountability to the American people to get rid of some of the waste, and do what any other prudent person would do in terms of competitively bidding projects, you are saying that is OK, it is OK to steal. There is no other word for it. It is theft of opportunity from our children and our grandchildren because we don't have the backbone to stand up and do the hard work. President Obama has asked for this. He has asked for us to go line by line. We have an opportunity with a bill moving through the Senate to do that. What do we do? We say, no, it is our way or the highway, Mr. President. You can do it over there. But we are the ones who control all of these programs. And we have done a terrible job. As a matter of fact, if you look at the oversight hearings that occurred in the Senate and measure them compared to all of the other hearings, they count for about 2 percent of the hearings we had. What do we do when a new problem comes up? We don't look to see how the present program is working and what we can do to fix it; we just create another one and charge that to our grandkids rather than say: Where are the metrics to measure what this program is doing? Is it accomplishing what we want? Is it efficient? Could we do it a different way? We just ignore it and we create a brandnew program. This budget is full of that. So I will finish my remarks by again saying that if you vote for this budget, there is a real question in my mind whether you actually can represent to your constituencies that you feel their children are worth the hard work of this body. There is also the question of whether what President Obama ran on in terms of doing a line-by-line, of getting rid of the waste, of actually measuring the effectiveness of programs, whether we are going to help him do that. This document says we are not. So all the commonsense reforms that would put some burden on us we have taken out, and then in this budget we have said: Children, we are going to be at $17.3 trillion of publicly held debt in 10 years, and you go pay for it. You go pay for it because we don't have the courage and we don't care for you enough to make the hard work and hard decisions now to lessen that burden on you. That is what this budget is about. It is about growing the Federal Government at a size and a pace that we have never seen before in this country--have never seen--and growing the debt to a level that is going to cripple productivity and opportunity in the future. There are the votes to pass this budget, but the American people need to know what this budget really is. What it is is an escape from responsibility, an expansion of the Government knowing best, and an elimination of opportunity of generations to come. With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending motion be set aside, and I offer a motion to instruct the budget conferees.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to make a note for the record there was no ``no'' voiced on the vote.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I will be very brief. This is fulfilling a campaign promise of Barack Obama. He said he wanted us to go through the budget line by line to eliminate wasteful programs, eliminate duplicative programs. We accepted this earlier. This is a vote to say we are going to do that. We are going to hold up our end of the bargain, as the President is going to hold up his end of the bargain, and we are going to go through and find some of this $300 billion worth of waste. With that, I yield back.

Mr. COBURN. I will accept a voice vote.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, this was accepted during our debate. The reason I bring it back is that if you ask the American people what they are worried about, they are worried about their jobs, they are worried about their health care, but they are also worried that we are spending their children into oblivion. And they are right--we are. One of the great things about President Obama's promises was that he said he recognized we have waste in the Federal Government. He recognized we have duplication in the Federal Government. He recognized we have programs that aren't working in the Federal Government. And the commitment he made--and he has made three times since being sworn in as President--is to do a line-by-line evaluation of every Federal program out there, to check it for waste, No. 1; No. 2, to check to see if it is duplicative of something else, which a third of them are; and No. 3 is, does it have any metrics on it and is it being defrauded? The fact is, it is now common knowledge that at least $300 billion a year--at least $300 billion a year--is either wasted, defrauded, or duplicated in the Federal Government. The real problem is that even though we now have a President who wants to attack that, Congress hasn't been willing to do it. We have not been willing to keep our side of the bargain in terms of oversight and evaluation. It strikes me that if all the money we are borrowing to run the Government today was really our money, none of us would ever allow what is going on in the Federal Government. None of us would. None of us would allow the duplication. We had a hearing yesterday in Senator Carper's Federal Financial Management Subcommittee on the waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. It went up to $74 billion--$74 billion, and we are not doing anything about it? Total improper payments. We only have improper payments in about three-quarters of the Federal Government even though it is a mandated law that they have to supply it. But they can't measure it because they don't know what they are paying for. The fact is, we know we have big problems. We have a fraud bill in front of us that we haven't finished working on that is to go after fraud. Well, the biggest fraud is right here. The biggest waste is right here. So the point ought to be, as we go into a conference on the budget, that we ought to commit to the American people that we are willing to do what they are having to do right now; that we are going to look at where things aren't working, we ought to look at where things are wasted, we ought to look at things we are not measuring and start measuring them, and the things that are not effective, we should get rid of. That is all this says. It just says we will go line by line through every Federal program; that we will have oversight at least once a year on everything that is out there, and we will make a dent in this $300 billion-plus. Here is the question. Is it moral to waste $300 billion and that $300 billion come out of lost opportunity of our children? Is this a moral position the Senate wants to stand on? Does the Congress want to stand on that? Can our country ultimately survive, if we keep doing what we are doing? The answer to that is emphatically no, we cannot. Every republic in the history of mankind has died under fiscal collapse. They have not been invaded from outside until they rotted from within. This is a straightforward commitment by the Senate and the Congress, through the budget, to meet President Obama's request that what he is going to do we are going to do, and we are going to weed out a large portion of the ineffectiveness, of the duplication, and of the waste that is in our Government and our grandkids' Government. There is no reason for us to have anything other than a unanimous vote on this motion to instruct. If you do not think we should be doing that, you do not belong in the Senate. If you do not think we have a constitutional obligation to evaluate where we are spending the money, get rid of the waste and go line by line through all these programs, we need some other people up here. That is because right now our Republic is in jeopardy. It is not from terrorism. It is from our own potential fiscal collapse. The time to attack that is now. It is my hope the Senate will send a huge vote on this motion that we mean business, we are going to join hands with President Obama, and we are going to fix most of what is wrong, in terms of these programs. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. I withdraw that. I see Senator DeMint is here.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, earlier today amendment No. 1006 was passed by a voice vote. If there had been a rollcall vote, I would have opposed this amendment, as it added more than $40 million to a bill that already costs nearly half a billion dollars.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Arkansas be given 5 minutes as in morning business and then that we return to me and go back on the bill.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and that amendment No. 983 be called up.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I appreciate the chairman giving me this time to offer this amendment. We have adopted an Isakson amendment. We have a McCain-Dorgan amendment. This is a similar amendment, but I think it gets to the root of the problem. It does not cost very much, and it actually will tell us something we need to know. The underlying assumption with the bill is that fraud is the primary, if not the sole, cause of this crisis. That may be true. We do not know that. But what we do not know is how much we as Members of Congress played and the extent to which we played a role in helping create this crisis. This is a fairly straightforward amendment that asks the IG to come give us information so we get the answers to the question about our own role in the evolution of the problems we find today. What we do know is the GSEs undertook an unprecedented assumption of subprime and all-day loans, and those need to be investigated--the extent of them, the amount. We also know they invested more than $1 trillion in those loans. But what we do not know is the volume, the timing. What we do not know is the impact of the significant amount of lobbying by these GSEs and what effect that had on policies and procedures both within the administration and the Congress. For example, when did Freddie and Fannie begin to purchase large quantities of subprime and all-day loans? In what years were those types of purchases the highest? To what extent were these purchases induced by congressional action or executive order? To what extent were those purchases induced by the Department of Housing and Urban Development affordable housing regulations issued in 1995? What actions by Fannie and Freddie contributed to the overvaluation of mortgage- backed securities? The amendment also looks to the possibility that congressional action could have contributed to the risky changes in behavior of Fannie and Freddie. What we know is, between the 2000 and 2008 election cycles, GSEs and their employees contributed more than $14.6 million to the funds of both Senators and representatives. We also know Fannie spent $79.5 million in that period and Freddie spent $94.9 million in that period on lobbying Congress. Mr. President, $170 million was spent lobbying Congress making them the 20th and 13th largest lobbying spenders in the country. This amendment will assure and ensure that some of the toughest questions are asked regarding the GSEs'--Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's--special relationships with Congress and whether any conflict created by those relationships influenced the GSEs' behavior, especially to the taxpayers' detriment. It requires the inspector general to study what political contributions were made, what lobbying expenditures were made, what contributions were made to any other lobbying organization. It is a compromise step. It is something we already have the people in place for. It is something they have the access to the numbers for. We ought to be able to get that. We have a mess. Usually, as a physician when I have a mess, I start thinking back: What did I do before? And what caused part of the mess? Where was I wrong in my diagnosis of the signs, symptoms, and history? And then what do I do about it? If we do not look through the IG at these things, then it is highly unlikely--no matter how many commissions we put together because commissions are going to ask for this anyway--but we are going to ask for it as a special report from the IG under this amendment. There are a lot of additional considerations, and I will not take time on the floor at this time to do that. But if you want to have a transparent Congress, this is the first question we have to ask: How much were we involved? How effective were the lobbying efforts to change things that were detrimental? Maybe they were positive. But the fact is, we ought to know those things. The idea is we will be transparent with the American people, both in terms of the lobbying efforts, the contributions they made, and the timing--not just for Congress but also the executive branch; where we look at the actions of both of those--so the American people can see the culpability. Where is it? I happen to believe it is right here in this body, us. We allowed this to happen. I think the onus of the blame needs to be here rather than pointing at other people. That is not to distract from the idea that we ought to go after fraud. But the biggest fraud is to deny the fact that we had some culpability, and this amendment is designed to measure how much culpability we had by using the IG, the inspector general, to tell us this very specific information. With that, I yield the floor. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I ask unanimous consent to be recognized until Senator Kyl returns to the floor or for a shorter period of time, whichever may be the shortest.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, nobody disputes the intent that we ought to go after the fraud that has been associated with the mortgage industry and some of the problems thereof. We passed the stimulus bill that had a lot of money for the Justice Department in it. We didn't tell them they should use the money on this. We passed an omnibus bill, none of which did we put money in. We put $10 million in for the FBI. Now we come before the Senate wanting to authorize $500 million more for a bill in a department, the Justice Department, that will end this fiscal year with over $2 billion in the bank. Since I have been a Senator, they have had over $2 billion at the end of the year. There is something unique about the Justice Department. The Justice Department is the only Federal agency that doesn't ultimately have to send its unspent money back to the Treasury. They get to keep it. In a time where we are spending money to the tune of $112 billion a day every day we have been in session so far in this 111th Congress, to say that we ought to send another $500 million to an agency that is going to have $2 billion left over at the end of this year and the next few years to come tells us we are not good money managers, but most of the American people know that already. On fiscal grounds, what we are doing is, we are authorizing money. And that is what will be the response to this debate: It is just an authorization. The fact is, if you are authorizing, you intend to spend it. You are going to try to get another $500 million appropriated on this bill. Secondly, we don't have ex post facto laws. So everything this bill does has no application in terms of a statute change to any of the crimes committed, either the fraud or money laundering or anything else. It has no application. None of it will apply to misdeeds and infractions of the law that happened that got us into this crisis. Additionally, every act that was committed that broke a law under the statutes we have today, both Federal mail fraud and wire fraud, can be prosecuted already. What is going on? What is going on is, we are going to pass a bill in reaction to a problem that Congress created in the first place by incentivizing poor behavior at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, by not doing oversight, and we are going to make everybody feel better because we reacted to it. We don't need new laws on the books. What we need to do is enforce the laws we have today. It may be true that the Justice Department might need additional moneys. But where is the oversight? We released a report earlier this year that showed $10 billion over the last 5 years of waste in the Justice Department. Here is a department that has wasted $10 billion over the last 5 years, has $2 billion at the end of this year with which they could fund this. We didn't fund any of it except $10 million in the stimulus bill or the omnibus bill, and we are adding new laws to the books that we don't need to prosecute the people who broke the law. It is a typical congressional reaction when what we should be doing is enforcing the laws already on the books and supplying on a priority basis the funding for the Justice Department to prosecute that. I see Senator Kyl is here. I will continue my comments later. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss S. 386, the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. Although I certainly support the well-intended purpose of this bill, I have concerns about the proposal that I would like to explain today. S. 386 aims to ``beef up'' the Government's efforts to combat fraud, particularly in the mortgage industry and Federal assistance programs. To that end, the bill creates a host of new criminal provisions and authorizes nearly half a billion dollars in spending over the next 2 years. As a threshold matter, I am concerned about the necessity of these new criminal provisions. In my mind, Congress should have a compelling reason for adding to the already monstrous Federal criminal code. With more than 4,400 Federal offenses already on the books, it is hard to imagine there being conduct the Government cannot reach. The Federal criminal code is often criticized for being overly broad, and legislators on both sides of the aisle have been known to bemoan its growth. Yet when ``tough-on-crime'' bills come before Congress, nobody wants to stand in their way and risk political consequences. This is a truly unfortunate trend. Turning back the tables on over-criminalization isn't a partisan issue. Legislators from both sides of the aisle have seen first-hand the sometimes devastating unintended consequences that flow from the application of Federal law. Democrats and Republicans could be working together to reevaluate some of these provisions; instead, we are doing business as usual, responding to every crisis by further littering the criminal code. With respect to S. 386, two prominent organizations, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Heritage Foundation, formed an unlikely alliance in opposition to the bill. Both organizations believe that S. 386 contributes to overcriminalization, and their concerns are detailed specifically in a joint letter that describes the new criminal proposals as ``redundant and risks overreaching.''It notes that within the 4,450 offenses already in criminal law, prosecutors have all the tools needed to reach crimes associated with fraud. In general, it points to the Federal mail and wire fraud statutes as being sufficiently broad to cover mortgage fraud and other related crimes. As further evidence, it references an FBI press release identifying nine existing Federal criminal statutes that can be used to prosecute mortgage fraud. Because it is not my intention to prevent law enforcement from pursuing truly criminal conduct, I studied the issue to determine whether there are any insufficiencies within existing law that would give perpetrators of fraud safe haven. I have found no examples of conduct or entities outside the reach of current law. It is true that not every provision of the criminal code reaches certain fraudulent acts. It is also true that not every entity in the mortgage industry is regulated by the Federal Government. It is not true, however, that the conduct or entities targeted by this bill are currently going unpunished. Prosecutors have successfully used other laws, particularly the mail and wire fraud statutes, to aggressively prosecute these crimes at the Federal level. The FBI's recent successes serve to demonstrate this point. The FBI has handled mortgage fraud since 1989 and is actively pursuing these crimes now. It has 65 mortgage fraud task forces and working groups across the country that coordinate federal, state and local law enforcement officials. The FBI has 180 agents devoted to the sector. They are handling more than 2,000 investigations, and have opened 734 cases this year. In fiscal year 2008, they obtained 560 indictments/ informations and 338 convictions. Last year, one operation resulted in the roundup of more than 400 people accused of inflicting more than $1 billion in losses, who were caught up in a nationwide sweep named Operation Malicious Mortgage. The Secret Service has also been working hard to combat fraud directed at financial institutions. It has an established network of 35 financial crimes task forces and 24 electronic crimes task forces. The Secret Service also partners with U.S. Attorney's Offices across the country to participate in mortgage fraud working groups. In fiscal year 2008 alone, the Secret Service indicted and arrested 5,633 individuals responsible for $442 million in fraud losses. These impressive statistics, from both the FBI and the Secret Service, suggest that Federal criminal law is more than sufficient to address crimes of fraud associated with the ongoing economic crisis. Federal prosecutors are not alone in pursuing mortgage fraud. Just last month, the New York Times ran an article saying, ``Across the country, attorneys general have already begun indicting dozens of loan processors, mortgage brokers and bank officers. Last week alone, there were guilty pleas in Minnesota, Delaware, North Carolina and Connecticut and sentences in Florida and Vermont, all stemming from home loan scams.'' The article gave specific examples of State actions being taken to address the crisis: State and local prosecutors, it seems, do not need the nudge. Last week, the district attorney's office in Brooklyn announced the creation of a real estate fraud unit, with 12 employees and a mandate to ``address the recent flood of mortgage fraud cases plaguing New Yorkers.'' In late February, Maryland unveiled a mortgage fraud task force, bringing together 17 agencies to streamline investigations. As the joint letter from the Heritage Foundation and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers correctly notes, States are the ``primary regulators of mortgage brokers and the insurance industry. State governments are also closest to the people and are well- situated to detect and prosecute these crimes. Aided by the recent allocation of nearly $5 billion in Federal funding for State and local law enforcement, states should be able to continue and enhance their existing efforts to pursue mortgage fraud. In short, both Federal and State criminal law is sufficient to combat mortgage and other financial fraud crimes. Congress should resist the temptation to overreach on this issue by enacting new criminal laws, and instead focus its efforts on enforcing existing law. Enforcing existing law, of course, requires resources. In addition to the significant resources already being expended by the Federal Government to address fraud, S. 386 authorizes $490 million for fiscal years 2009 and 2010. CBO has scored the bill and estimates that implementing it would cost the full amount over the 2010-2014 period. Proponents argue that the recent influx of Federal dollars into the economy is sure to invite fraud. I do not disagree, but this problem did not develop overnight. Surely Congress realized the possibility for fraud when it wrote these checks just months ago? Instead of taking time to include safeguards in the bill or otherwise ensure responsible, effective allocation of hard-earned taxpayer dollars, Congress rushed the bills out the door at break-neck speed. In doing so, Congress created an environment ripe for fraud. The answer to this problem is, of course, to ask the taxpayers to shoulder even more of the burden. The 111th Congress has now spent more than $1.5 trillion, yet it has somehow neglected to fund a priority as important as combating fraud. The omnibus appropriations bill, passed just weeks ago, only contained $10 million for the FBI to pursue mortgage fraud. The stimulus bill, which provided $4 billion for State and local law enforcement, amid nearly $1 trillion in spending, failed to provide any money specific to fraud enforcement. Why, when opportunities to address this problem arose, did Congress not do the right thing and prioritize the funding authorized by S. 386? In this time of economic crisis, Congress no longer has the luxury of spending money haphazardly. We must learn to set priorities and make sacrifices, and perhaps even think creatively about how to stretch limited resources to meet our needs. For example, the Department of Justice has access to ``unobligated balances,'' which are unspent dollars that have been appropriated but not obligated during a fiscal year. Such money is typically required to be returned to the U.S. Treasury, but the Justice Department has unique authority to retain and carry over its unobligated funds for use in the following year. Fiscal year 2007, DOJ had almost $2.9 billion in unobligated balances, and it is estimated to have had nearly $2.3 billion at the end of fiscal year 2008, and to have $2 billion at the end of fiscal year 2009. This excess would be a good source of funding for priorities such as investigating and prosecuting mortgage fraud during a housing crisis. Moreover, the Department of Justice has become infamous for its wasteful spending. Last year, I released a report titled, ``Justice Denied: Waste & Mismanagement at the Department of Justice,'' which identified more than $10 billion in wasteful spending. The Justice Department should be required to make more responsible use of the funds currently within its authority before Congress entrusts it with even more of the taxpayers' hard-earned money. Unfortunately, many of the dollars wasted at the Department of Justice are done by way of congressional earmarks. Earmarks consume scarce resources and prevent experts at DOJ from allocating money to areas with the most pressing need. Congress should allow DOJ officials to reprogram existing earmarks so that higher priority needs, like combating mortgage fraud, can be met. One thing is certain, the American taxpayer has already paid too high a price for irresponsible governance. Continuing ``business-as-usual,'' by funding parochial pet projects before we take care of legitimate business, cannot continue. While I surely support the legislation's goal of addressing fraud, especially in the mortgage industry, I do not believe S. 386 is either necessary or prudent at this time of economic crisis. Our national debt is more than $11 trillion, and CBO recently set this year's deficit at $1.7 trillion, projected to rise to $1.845 trillion by year's end. I believe Government can and should prioritize spending to fulfill its responsibilities without asking more of the American people. I also believe that State and Federal criminal law are sufficient to address fraud and would father see efforts focused on enforcing those existing laws, rather than on creating new ones. Amendment No. 982

Mr. COBURN. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 982 be called up.

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

Mr. COBURN. Earlier today, I spoke for a short period of time on this bill. I wish to retrace some of that before I talk about this amendment. It is important that the American people understand what this bill is doing. All of us wish to get rid of the fraud, the money laundering, we wish to punish the people who have, in fact, helped cause part of this problem. I would tell you the biggest person or group of people responsible for the problem we face today is the Congress, this body and the House of Representatives. We failed to do our job on oversight. We incentivized and socialized housing, we incentivized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to do things that were inappropriate, to take risks they should not have done, and then we did not have the regulatory mechanisms in place, nor did we do the oversight to see what was going on. This bill, however, is attempting to fix a problem with a statute, criminal statute. Most people know we do not need more criminal statutes. The fact is, nobody can name an act that occurred on any of this fraud or any of this money laundering that is not prosecutable under the Criminal Code we have today. Off the record, when we asked some pertinent people from the Justice Department, they laughed when asked if we needed these new criminal statutes. The other point I would make is, none of this, with the exception of the false claim portion, has any application to what has already happened because you cannot apply a new law to a crime that already existed under our Constitution. So what are we doing? What we are doing is trying to make the American public think we are doing something now that, in essence, does not need to be done. We may need to fund the Justice Department at a greater level because we did not do what we should have done earlier. It is the typical knee-jerk reaction. We have plenty of laws on the books. As a matter of fact, the new penalties in some of this stuff are greater for fraud and mortgage than for manslaughter under the Federal Code. We need to be very careful as we approach this. I am not saying we should not go after all those people. I am not saying we should not put in the resources to do that. But when we put the resource there, we ought to make sure they are used just for that. No. 2, we ought to look at the Justice Department and how they spend money. Late last year I released a report on the $10 billion worth of waste in the Justice Department over the previous 5 years, $10 billion that was wasted over the previous 5 years. Nobody disputed it. I mean, the Justice Department did not even answer it and say, that is not right, because they knew it was right. The fact is we refuse to make priorities. This amendment is very simple. If we are going to appropriate a half billion dollars in increased funding to go after the fraud and money laundering associated with this financial situation that the Congress created and incentivized individuals, should we take it from the American taxpayers or should we take it out of money that we have already allocated? The Justice Department is different than every other agency in the Federal Government, because at the end of the year, every other department's unexpended balances, unobligated balances eventually filter back to the Treasury. Not so at the Justice Department. They actually get to keep theirs. They are the only agency that gets to keep it. Now, what have they averaged over the last 5 years in unobligated and unexpended balances? Over $2 billion a year. So here is an agency with $2 billion that they have not spent, and we are going to give them another $500 million, and their incentive is not to spend the money on the things we need to do; it is to keep it to do with what they want out of the direction of those that control the purse strings. What this amendment says is we have already allocated money in terms of TARP funds; that if, in fact, we are going to send more money, which I do not think we should--I think we ought to spend it from the money we have--but if we are going to do it, let's take it from the money we have already taken from the American taxpayer, and it is not the American taxpayer; it is their grandkids, and let us use some of that money because the return on that money will be far greater than the return we are going to get on any TARP money. It is very simple, very straightforward as a funding treatment. What we will use is money that has already been appropriated in the TARP funds, which they have a significant balance--in the billions--and we will take, over the next 2 years, $250 million or so to give to the Justice Department, if we agree we should be giving it to the Justice Department. Do not be fooled by the typical Washington turnaround that happens all the time up here, the sleight of hand that says: We are fixing a problem. We tend to fix problems that are not broken and not fix the problems that are broken. The mess we are in demonstrates that very straight forwardly. We are going to have a $2 trillion deficit this year. We are going to double the national debt in 5 years. We are going to triple it in 10 under the Obama budget. Should not we be about priorities? Should not we be about holding the agencies accountable? Should not we be about making sure the money is spent properly? If we are going to spend new money, try to get it from areas we already are not spending the money in but it has been appropriated. The American people would agree with that. I hope my colleagues will as well.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, Jane Holl Lute has been nominated to become the Deputy Secretary for Management at the Department of Homeland Security, (DHS). If confirmed, she would be responsible for the following at DHS: budget, appropriations, expenditure of funds, accounting and finance; procurement; human resources and personnel; information technology systems; facilities, property, equipment, and other material resources; and performance measurements tracking. After reviewing the parts of her U.N. record that had to be leaked for any of us to know about it, it is clear that Ms. Lute is either not qualified or not experienced to manage the DHS. When pressed to explain the mismanagement, fraud, and corruption that took place under her watch at U.N. Peacekeeping Operations, Ms. Lute consistently diverted blame to other U.N. officials or departments--making it appear she really didn't manage much of the U.N. If accurate, she is not experienced. When pressed to explain how she is experienced enough to manage DHS, Ms. Lute then claims she was at the center of Peacekeeping Operations, managed the internal operations--making it appear that she was responsible for everything. If accurate, this means she is also responsible for the mismanagement and waste. Ms. Lute cannot have it both ways. An overall assessment of Peacekeeping Operations is that they are saturated in fraud and abuse. In 2007 and 2008, the U.N. Procurement Task Force, a branch of the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services, OIOS, issued several reports that had to be leaked in order for anyone outside the U.N. to know about them. The reports were based on investigations related to U.N. peacekeeping management and procurement that uncovered a significant amount of corruption, fraud, waste, overpayments, abuse, negligence and mismanagement in a number of high value contracts. This reflects a lack of an internal control system within U.N. Peacekeeping procurement under Ms. Lute's management.\1\ The findings of the U.N. audit reports are alarming. For example, the reports found 43 percent of mostly U.N. peacekeeping procurement tainted by fraud. Out of $1.4 billion in U.N. contracts internally investigated, $610 million was tainted by 10 ``significant fraud and corruption schemes.'' \2\ Since 43 percent of the procurement contracts are tainted and the U.S. taxpayer contributes up to 26 percent of all U.N. funding, it is safe to say the entire U.S. contribution in this case was tainted by corruption an waste. ``Total disregard for controls'' is how the task force described senior U.N. officials involved in peacekeeping procurement fraud.\3\ In an environment of no controls, Ms. Lute's Peacekeeping Operations suffered from numerous problems that greatly increased the cost of operations or lost resources altogether. Specific examples listed in the report include criminal acts such as bribery and kickback schemes, overpayments to vendors, lack of competitive bidding, lack of acquisition plans, lack of qualified procurement staff, splitting single contracts apart to avoid reporting requirements, transactions with no contract in place, unauthorized contracts issued, use of uneconomical contractors, unnecessary expenditures, and dysfunctional asset and property management. The task force found that significant Peacekeeping missions lacked ``indicators of achievement and performance measures'' for the political and civilian affairs components of operations. Specifically, roles and responsibilities were not formally established, and there were no defined reporting lines and accountability.\4\ The task force reports that a major roadblock to its investigation is due to ``limited cooperation'' from U.N. staff and vendors due to the lack of a compulsory process for obtaining documents and testimony.\5\ Even after the task force exposed Peacekeeping mismanagement, peacekeeping and procurement management were not ``consistent in applying the standards to which they are supposed to hold staff accountable.'' \6\ For each of its audits and investigations, the task force made recommendations to Ms. Lute and her U.N. Peacekeeping team on how to address the serious fraud and mismanagement issues. A number of critical recommendations were not accepted.\7\ Regarding Peacekeeping procurement, Ms. Lute tries to have it both ways by diverting blame but also claiming she still has procurement experience. When asked at her nomination hearing about the procurement corruption under her watch, Ms. Lute claimed that the corruption and mismanagement was not her fault but the fault of procurement staff in the field. Since she indicated at the hearing that she had little or no responsibility for the Peacekeeping procurement, Ms. Lute was asked in her questions for the record what other procurement experience she had that would qualify her for managing procurement at DHS. Her written response reveals that Ms. Lute was much more responsible for Peacekeeping procurement than she admitted at the hearing. She wrote in her response that she had ``responsibility for oversight of personnel responsible for directly engaging and supervising the provision of contract services.'' Another indication that Ms. Lute has a much larger role and influence on Peacekeeping procurement than she admitted at her hearing is how she pushed through a no-bid contract for her mission to Darfur in 2007. In 2007, Lute personally steered a $250 million no-bid contract for U.N. peacekeeping in Darfur to a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. At the time, the Officer-in-Charge of the U.N. Department of Management where much of the U.N.'s procurement took place sent Ms. Lute a memo responding to her charges that Peacekeeping procurement problems was the fault of the U.N. Department of Management. While the Department of Management has many faults and has an equally tarnished record within the U.N., the comments in the memo are telling in that they reinforce the findings of several OIOS and Procurement Task Force reports. According to the memo, Ms. Lute failed to plan for the Darfur peacekeeping mission which led to sole source contracting despite having 18 months to prepare. The memo also indicates Ms. Lute failed the preparedness test by not having a logistics concept in place to embark on a logistics delivery capability at short notice that will also meet U.N. procurement rules. Finally, the memo states that the delays in startup of the mission were due to Ms. Lute constantly changing mission requirements. According to the memo, these delays ``constitute a pattern, to which oversight bodies of the U.N. may be less charitable towards and may well find the pattern as troubling.'' In a 2008 OIOIS Procurement Task Force report, U.N. auditors expressed concerns that based on prior audits and investigations that Peacekeeping Operations will face a ``higher-risk exposure to mismanagement, fraud and corruption'' as a result of the no-bid contract requested by Ms. Lute.\8\ It is also important to point out that almost the entire U.N. shares concerns about what Ms. Lute did with this contract. In 2007, the U.N. General Assembly voted 142 to 1, sadly with only the United States dissenting, to express concern about the no-bid contract \9\ Even though Ms. Lute claimed at her hearing that she had little responsibility in contracting decisions or oversight, she clearly had enough influence on the process to pressure her U.N. colleagues to accept a no-bid contract. Why would she then be unable to use this same influence to press for controls, transparency, and accountability in order to protect her Peacekeeping Operations from being undermined by cost overruns, waste, and illicit behavior? If the assessment from the U.N. official in the Management Department is correct, Ms. Lute failed the preparedness test when it came to rapid deployment of resources and personnel to respond to new crises. Preparedness is what she was responsible for at U.N. Peacekeeping, and it will be what she is responsible for at DHS. Another indication that Ms. Lute had more responsibility for Peacekeeping procurement than what she admitted to at her hearing was that she publicly defended the Peacekeeping procurement fraud when it was made public in the media. In 2007, the Washington Post published its report on the Peacekeeping procurement fraud after the U.N. audits were leaked. Ms. Lute chose to respond on behalf of U.N. Peacekeeping. In her op-ed, she makes excuses for the fraud, claims there is no pattern of abuse in peacekeeping procurement, and misrepresented the Washington Post article in order to discredit it. She claims the article was misleading when it said that peacekeeping ``suffered losses in the hundreds of millions.'' In reality, the article quoted directly from the U.N. audits saying correctly that U.N. auditors found multiple instances of fraud that tainted $610 million worth of contracts.\10\ If Ms. Lute was truly not responsible for the massive amount of procurement fraud, it is odd that she would then choose to represent peacekeeping procurement and rebut this article. Even if she had no responsibility for the mismanagement and fraud, it would have been much more productive if Ms. Lute chose instead to use this opportunity in her op-ed to make the case for reforming Peacekeeping operations and procurement, offer suggestions for cutting waste, and laying out a better preparedness plan and logistics concept. Unfortunately, we have no record of Ms. Lute speaking out about the problems that were undermining U.N. Peacekeeping or offering reform ideas whether at a press conference or in a report to the U.N. Security Council. The Procurement Task Force released a report in July of 2007 regarding its investigation of ground fuel procurement in the U.N. peacekeeping mission to Haiti, MINUSTAH.\11\ The conclusion of the report indicated the ground fuel procurement process was not conducted in a fair and transparent manner resulting in bid rigging and the awarding of the contract to a company initially ranked as ``non- compliant.'' U.N. staff from both Procurement and Peacekeeping Departments was responsible. This report made several findings that reflect on Ms. Lute's performance as manager of resources and field deployment. For example, it reports that Ms. Lute failed to staff MINUSTAH with experienced fuel staff that could evaluate the technical and commercial aspects of the fuel contracting.\12\ It also illustrates that Ms. Lute failed to act on the continual supply chain inconsistencies. The report shows that Peacekeeping staff reported problems including the discrepancy between how much fuel was purchased and what was actually delivered, the contractor's use of substandard fuel tankers, and other problems. Even after the problem had been flagged, the contract was never pulled and reassigned.\13\ Making the U.N.'s risk exposure even worse, under Ms. Lute's watch, MINUSTAH received its fuel supply with an expired contract. The initial fuel contract expired, and while the long-term contract was being prepared, the poor-performing contractor continued to supply fuel to the mission without a written contract.\14\ Ms. Lute failed to step in when poor-performing contractor was given long-term contract despite repeated reports of inconsistent fuel supply and poor performance measurements.\15\ Bid rigging by U.N. Peacekeeping and Procurement staff was again to blame.\16\ Since this took place towards the end of her time managing U.N. Peacekeeping, it is telling that, even after five years managing Peacekeeping Operations, Ms. Lute failed to have the proper controls in place that would prevent this from occurring or from being overlooked so many times. Another U.N. audit report written towards the end of Ms. Lute's time managing Peacekeeping revealed another mission she deployed without proper controls in place. The Procurement Task Force released an audit in May of 2007 regarding its assessment of procurement fraud indicators in the mission to Liberia, UMIL.\17\ The audit was designed to test whether UNMIL had the proper controls in place to protect against fraud and corruption. Regarding UNMIL's requisitioning office, which is under Ms. Lute's management, the audit found that Ms. Lute failed to initiate good business practice and internal control principles by not limiting the number of persons that can raise requisitions.\18\ It also found that Ms. Lute failed to staff the requisition office with qualified staff that could ensure specifications on the requisition are accurate. This could lead to inefficient procurement, wasteful purchases, and loss of funds.\19\ Ms. Lute's record responding to Peacekeeper rape and sexual exploitation of women and children is also troubling. For years, U.N. watchdogs, human rights groups, and now U.N. auditors have been documenting hundreds of allegations and confirmed instances of sexual crimes against women and small children under U.N. peacekeeping care and protection. The perpetrators include both military and civilian Peacekeeping personnel. Allegations of misconduct have been made in every major Peacekeeping operation including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bosnia, Burundi, Cambodia, Guinea, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Kosovo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Sudan.\20\ Ms. Lute was responsible for the U.N. response to and prevention of the rape and sexual exploitation. Despite claiming a ``zero tolerance'' policy and having systems in place to help prevent this abuse, Ms. Lute's record suggests otherwise with abuse continuing to plague peacekeeping operations and no known prosecution and imprisonment of a single perpetrator. In 2004, reports first began emerging of the rampant sexual exploitation of children at the Republic of Congo, DRC, peacekeeping mission. According to press reports, in June 2004, U.N. Peacekeeping managers were informed by the head of the DRC Mission that there were initially 50 allegations of sexual abuse, 42 involving minors, but total allegations rose to 72 in a followup report.\21\ The report detailed acts such as the rape of a minor in a U.N. armored personnel carrier and a prostitution network of minors at the U.N. airport. The media reports indicate that the investigation done by Ms. Lute and the other managers of U.N. Peacekeeping Operations was fatally flawed. There was no witness protection offered to the victims which led to witnesses being bribed or threatened to change their testimony. Investigators were reportedly ordered to only investigate claims in one town while ignoring the numerous claims made throughout the DRC. It is also reported that a high-ranking Peacekeeping official for the U.N. Mission to the DRC was sexually exploiting minors as young as 13, and eventually 150 cases were brought against Peacekeeping soldiers and civilians ranging from abduction and rape of minors to the finding of more than 250 images of child pornography involving Congolese children on the laptop of a U.N. official. The OIOS documented in January, 2005 at least 7 cases of underage sexual abuse committed by U.N. peacekeepers, and all but one of them were fully substantiated. There were also press reports of abuses in the Sudan during this same time period. According to The Daily Telegraph, in 2005, U.N. officials knew of the sexual abuse of children as young as 12 that began in 2005 soon after the U.N. Peacekeeping mission in Southern Sudan, UNMIS, went to work to rebuild the region.\22\ A leaked internal report compiled by the U.N. children's agency, UNICEF, in July 2005 referred to the sexual exploitation perpetrated by U.N. peacekeepers, military policy, and civilian staff. According to the paper, this report was substantiated by a preliminary report from a leading U.N. affiliated NGO that was unwilling to be named for political reasons. Allegedly hundreds of children have been abused, and the Telegraph has independently documented at least 20 victims claiming U.N. peacekeepers and civilian staff regularly picked up young children in U.N. vehicles and raped them. As Under Secretary General for Field Support, Ms. Lute was responsible for responding to this issue and implementing policies to prevent this abuse and bring the perpetrators to justice. Sadly, even after implementing weak reforms--such as what amounts to sexual harassment training for peacekeepers--the abuse continued and there are no known prosecutions or imprisonments for the perpetrators. In 2006, U.N. investigators at the OIOS substantiated reports that U.N. peacekeepers in Liberia had sexually abused an under-age girl and U.N. peacekeepers in the Sudan had sexually abused four women.\23\ In 2008, the NGO Save the Children reported that peacekeepers were sexually abusing very young children in war zones and disaster areas in the Ivory Coast, southern Sudan, and Haiti-- and going largely unpunished.\24\ Save the Children reports, ``Children as young as six are trading sex with aid workers and peacekeepers in exchange for food, money, soap and, in very few cases, luxury items such as mobile phones.'' According to Marianne Mollman of Human Rights Watch, the current status of the U.N. response to peacekeeping abuses continues to be poor.\25\ Mollman describes investigations of the abuse carried out by Ms. Lute as follows: lack of speed of investigations, lack of transparency and follow through of investigations, and lack of breadth of investigations. There are other instances of illicit behavior going largely unpunished during Ms. Lute's tenure at Peacekeeping. In 2008, Human Rights Watch issued a letter regarding several cases where Peacekeepers were involved in other illicit activities such as gold-smuggling and weapons trading. In these cases, like the sexual abuse case, Human Rights Watch reports that ``the slow process in carrying out this investigation and the continued lack of action raises important questions on how the U.N. investigates itself.'' \26\ When I questioned Ms. Lute about the number of victims she provided assistance to, the budget of her victims' assistance program, the number of perpetrators she successfully had prosecuted, and other basic information, she responded saying she knows of no reports that track this information. This is a disturbing answer from someone claiming to effectively deploy victims' assistance into the field while reports on the ground claim there are many victims that have been waiting for over 4 years but still have not received assistance from Ms. Lute. This certainly does not sound like a policy of ``zero tolerance.'' In her response, Ms. Lute also points out that she coordinated meetings and discussions and conferences at the U.N. regarding Peacekeeping abuse and victims' assistance. But she cannot produce any evidence or information illustrating she carried out the victims' assistance programs or whether any such programs were effective. In my questions for the Record, in order to ascertain whether or not Ms. Lute has the qualifications to manage DHS, I asked Ms. Lute whether she had experience managing DHS issues and activities such as border security, immigration, port security, counterterrorism, or other DHS- specific portfolios. In her written response, Ms. Lute claims she had ``responsibilities for border security and management where stopping the flow of illegal arms and narcotics is a central part of the Mission's mandate.'' It is important to point out that we have no evidence or data that suggests Ms. Lute has been successful in this endeavor. Using the Peacekeeping Mission to Lebanon as an example, this one mission alone illustrates Ms. Lute's poor performance at stopping the flow of illegal arms as Hezbollah has, on multiple occasions, successfully armed and rearmed on the Israeli border. There are also multiple reports of illegal arms smuggling involving Peacekeepers in Africa supplying arms to local militias.\27\ Ms. Lute also pointed out that she operated a port in the Congo along a river. When I questioned her at the hearing regarding her responsibility for the abuse that took place in the Congo on her watch, she claimed that she had little ``on the ground'' management responsibilities. Her story changes when asked to provide her experience and qualifications to manage DHS. In her response to my prehearing questions, Ms. Lute indicated that she utilized several performance indicators to determine whether or not her programs were effective. I then asked Ms. Lute whether there is any record of these performance measures or any reports that audit her operations based on these indicators. Ms. Lute responded that she ``cannot recall specifically which report or which measure'' were tracking her performance. In other words, it appears Ms. Lute has not received specific performance reports and lacks a working knowledge of how she performed according to those standards. I believe it is impossible to manage what you do not measure. Unfortunately for Ms. Lute, the entire U.N. system, including Peacekeeping Operations, lacks even the most basic transparency or accountability. Without transparency, we cannot discover whether or not there is evidence that Ms. Lute, during her tenure at U.N. Peacekeeping, was able to turn her operations around, institute controls, make policy reforms, and whether these efforts were successful. Every U.N. report that we were able to receive after they were first leaked indicates that operations under Ms. Lute's management were undermined by fraud, waste, corruption, and mismanagement. We have no positive record of Ms. Lute's performance measurements. Several former U.N. officials have written letters of endorsement for Ms. Lute, but the endorsements were based on Ms. Lute's verbal commitment to address the waste and fraud, and none of these officials actually investigated what Ms. Lute did in response or whether her response was effective. I believe that Ms. Lute is unqualified and inexperienced to manage the Department of Homeland Security. Given her record that we are able to document, I cannot in good conscience support her nomination.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, imagine tomorrow morning, if we are in session, and you no longer get to vote your conscience, that a Federal bureaucrat will tell you what you can and cannot do. The fact is, we have wonderful physicians in this country who make decisions every day based on a multitude of factors, including what they think in their conscience is right. This is an amendment which simply protects that right, just as you would want the right for your vote in this body to be protected. It also protects the conscience of a patient to be able to choose the physician and the caregiver to whom they trust their body and their health. I hope this body will support this amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, in a few minutes there will be a unanimous consent request on a voice vote for a nominee to the No. 2 position at Homeland Security--a very nice lady by the name of Ms. Lute. I would make the point, as the second most senior member on Homeland Security on the minority side, I cast a ``no'' vote for this person in committee, and that is very well detailed in my statement. But I think there are some important things the American people should know about her previous service in terms of the peacekeeping forces under her direction as far as the procurement, management, and followup. Here is what we know. Forty-three percent of all the money spent on international peacekeeping at the United Nations was either involved in fraud or kickback schemes and illegal contracting. The other thing we know is that the international peacekeepers raped and abused hundreds and hundreds of people, for which at this time today the services under the direction of Ms. Lute have not been directed toward or the care given for those individuals who suffered those consequences. The other thing we know is that the contracting associated with her administration in the U.N. was associated with several no-bid contracts that were inefficiently done and ineffectively carried out. It is on that basis that I agreed not to hold up her nomination. She will go through, and she will be confirmed. But this nominee has to prove herself at the Department of Homeland Security. I am willing to be proven wrong, but the fact is, her reason for the problems she had at the U.N. was the lack of cooperation at the U.N. She is going to be running a much larger budget with greater responsibilities, and if, in fact, that is the case, and it was all the U.N., then her limited experience, we can hope, will grow, and she will be an effective Assistant Secretary. There are other people much more qualified who could fill this position. As I said, this is a very humble lady. She has served with great distinguished service in the Armed Services of this country. There is no personal animosity nor direction toward her individually. But the fact is, one of our most difficult agencies is the Department of Homeland Security. It has big problems, conflicts, lack of transparency, and inefficiency. It is my hope that after she is confirmed, she will, in fact, be up to the task, and we, both in the Senate and as American taxpayers, will get real value out of her service. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, the thing many of my colleagues don't know is, before I was a physician I was an accountant, and the thing about numbers is you can make them show anything you want. That, historically, is what Republicans and Democrats have done with budgets. They play games. The only year that counts is the next year, this next 2010 fiscal year. That is the only thing that counts in terms of what they are going to do. The important thing before us ought to be the following: At the end of the budget that is offered by both President Obama and the majority, the deficit will be higher than it has ever been any time prior to this year, and it will not go down. It will never go down, in light of that, in terms of a sustainable level. The second point I want to make on this budget is this budget is a real budget that says to every American except our fighting men and women and our seniors and our veterans: Everybody has to sacrifice for us to get out of the mess we are in. The sacrifice will not necessarily be hard because of the tremendous amount of waste that is in the Federal Government right now. At a conservative minimum, 10 percent of everything we spend is pure waste or fraud. We will not do anything about it. One of the things with the McCain budget, the Republican budget, is that it will force us to do something about it. We take some of that $380 billion a year that is now defrauded of the Federal Government, or pure waste, and we will recapture that to do something positive. But the underlying point is, as Americans, if we are going to get out of the problems we are in, we cannot spend our way into prosperity, and we can't borrow our way out of debt. That is what this budget does. It attempts to grow Federal Government. The claim is that it only grows it 2 percent over 5 years. But when you look at the numbers in this budget, it grows at 7 percent in the next year, in terms of discretionary spending. Then all the pain is after that. We all know the reality of the Senate. There will not be any pain. It will be 7 percent the year after that. You watch what comes from the appropriators. The House budget has a 12-percent increase in it. The President's had an 11-percent increase. We can hear all these statements on the floor, but the No. 1 fact is, everybody in this country is going to have to sacrifice except those who have already sacrificed. If we do anything less than that, then what we are doing is sacrificing the future of our kids and our grandkids. In this budget we have a proposal that will pick up the 11 million Americans who are eligible for Medicaid who are not even getting health care now and, at the same time, save the States $88 billion a year and save the Federal Government $40 billion a year and improve the health care of everybody on Medicaid today. That is $1.3 trillion of efficiency in health care that we will save. The States will love the plan. Does it fit into the overall plan of what we have now? Is it the only way we can do it? No. But the fact is, 40 percent of the doctors and caregivers in our country today will not even see a Medicaid patient. We are up to almost 20 percent not seeing a Medicare patient. We have to do something about that. But we don't need more money in health care; what we need is a more efficient market and common sense in the way we spend the money so we get great quality care at a fair price, which is not happening today. I hope my colleagues will consider the McCain budget because of the significant truth that underlies it, that everybody is going to have to sacrifice some. Everybody has to sacrifice if we are to get out of the mess we are in. You can be critical of it, but the fact is, there is no program, in terms of total dollars, that is going to see a marked decrease in terms of spending without getting exactly the same or better results. Our President said he wants a line-by-line review of every program, that he wants competitive bidding, he wants metrics. That is what we do. We actually do what the average American would do. We apply common sense to the way the Government spends money, and we look at it and say we cannot continue on the path we are on without bankrupting our kids. The very real possibility that out of the budget that is being presented today we will have a fiat currency or a currency that is inflated, which will devalue the assets of everybody in this country, is absolutely real and recognized.

Mr. COBURN. I thank the Senator from Arizona for the time to speak on his budget, and I yield.

Mr. COBURN

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