Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. With that, Madam President, I yield the floor, and I thank the Senator from Connecticut.

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

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I wanted to spend a minute talking about the Wicker amendment No. 607. I am having trouble, from a philosophical viewpoint, understanding why the language is in this bill the way it is. There is no confusion as to my stand on pro-life issues, pro-choice versus pro-life. I stand in the corner of pro-life. But I want to debate this issue as if I were pro-choice, that I believe that the law as we have it today should be enforced. If, in fact, we believe that if, in fact, women have a right to choose, why in the world would we send money to UNFP that is going to take that right away from women in other countries? It is beyond me that these little six words in the bill, ``notwithstanding any other provision of law,'' are intended to eliminate the ability of the President to certify that our UNFP money is going to be used for coercive abortions and coercive sterilizations. I am having trouble understanding why those in this body who absolutely believe without a doubt that a woman has a definite right to choose on whether to carry a pregnancy to term, have a definite right to choose the number of children they are going to have or have none, we would allow this bill to go through here this way that will deny that ability to Chinese women. If somebody in our body can explain that to me, I would love them to do so. You can't be on both sides of this issue. Either you believe in a woman's right to choose or you do not or you only believe in a woman's right to choose in America. And because the Chinese have too many people, you don't think that same human right ought to be given to women in China. I won't go into the details. There is no question that UNFP will mix this money, and we will fund forced abortions in China. That is what these six words do. They mean American taxpayer dollars are going to go to China to enforce coercive abortion against the will of women and force sterilization against the will of women in China. China is not in bad shape. They don't need our money in the first place. But then we are going to send that money over there to enable and allow that policy to progress. I find it disconcerting that anybody who is pro-choice could not vote for the Wicker amendment. Because what it says is, you are double minded. The standard applying in this country is one thing, but human beings throughout the rest of the world, that same standard doesn't apply. I think it is unfortunate that this was put in here. We will rue the day it was. In fact, we lessen our own human rights campaigns for equal treatment and the protection of human rights around the world as we do that. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. I renew my request to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 623.

Mr. COBURN. On amendment No. 623, lines 19 through 21.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I have to identify with the words of Senator Hutchison about how the American public have to view this bill, especially in light of the fact of the stimulus bill we just passed. I will add some more to those comments as we go through this amendment. This is a very straightforward amendment. It has been voted on by the Senate several times. Last time it passed 97 to 0. All it requires is that the money expended in this, where appropriate, be competitively bid. I am sure there is going to be people who vote against this this time because of the situation in which we find ourselves. I wonder how you go back to your State and say that you do not think we ought to competitively bid the money we are going to spend on behalf of the American people. But some are going to say that. We will hear all sorts of things. What this requires is all contracts, all grants, and cooperative agreements awarded under this act to be competitively bid. What do we know about competitive bids and what do we know that President Obama campaigned on? His campaign was, anything over $25,000 in the Federal Government ought to be competitively bid. So I have no doubt that my friend, the President, will endorse this idea. It is an essential part of his campaign to help us clean up the corruption, clean up the cost excesses, and clean up the overruns that we have seen. The other thing is, we already have several laws that require it. But then we have words in the appropriations bill that exempt us from those laws requiring competitive bidding. So what do we do in this bill? We actually take away the enforcement of existing statutes so we do not have to competitively bid. Is it not interesting that the reason we do not want competitive bids mainly has to do with earmarks. It has to do with the fact that people have earmarks in the bill that they want to go to a certain set of people; maybe not the best qualified to perform that function or task under which the Government wants this service to be done, but you can bet your bottom dollar it is where the Senator or the Congressman wants it to go so he can get credit for it. So not only do we have a tendency for less than sunshine, what we have bred is tremendous inefficiency. And it goes back to the very idea of why earmarks are so damaging to this country, which is because they give elevation and attention to the politically entitled money class. That is where 80 percent of the 7,700 earmarks in this bill are; they are to the politically entitled money class in this country, the people who can give campaign donations. That is who they are to. So we do not want competitive bidding because the person we are counting on sending money back for a campaign contribution will not get the contract. So the deal does not get completed. In May 2006, the Senate voted 98 to 0 to require that we have competitive bidding on the stimulus package. We voted 97 to 0. What did we do in conference? They took it out so their friends do not have to competitively bid. Where I come from, in Oklahoma, we call that corruption. We call it corruption. That is a tough word. But that is what is going on with a lot of the money that our grandchildren are going to pay back that is going to go on this bill and in the stimulus bill. The other reason we should do this is because no-bid contracts historically, when you look at them, never give value. What we get is cost overruns. Great example: The census this next year is going to cost close to $20 billion. The census in 2000 cost $10 billion. Now we have to be scratching our head to say, why would it double? Well, $1 billion of that is because the Census Bureau had a no-bid contract for electronic data collection that fell on its face. In spite of oversight by this body, in spite of assurances that it would not happen, we wasted $800-plus million on one contract that we cannot utilize anything from. That is the competency of no-bid contracts. If we do a review of this bill in the future, and we did not put in competitive bidding, we are going to see that same thing to a lesser degree across the whole board. The other thing, the reason we should use competitive bidding, is that all of us would do it if it was our own money. We would want to get value. We would want to make sure we got the most value for the dollar that was spent. We do not do that because it is not our money. Now there is a Congressman on the other side from Arizona who has above his desk written in great big red ink: The greatest pleasure in the world is to spend somebody else's money. But it instills all sorts of mischief when we do it. So this is very straightforward, very direct. There are no tricks. It just says: Let's do what everybody else in the country would do who was making the decision about spending $410 billion. They would make sure each segment of it got some competitive bidding so we could reassure ourselves that at least we were getting value. It is not hard to do. It is easy guidelines. It is straightforward. Let's not exempt this bill from that. Amendment No. 608 I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment 608.

Mr. COBURN. This is an amendment that is about a serious issue. I agree that $10 million in a bill of $410 billion is not a lot of money in relationship, but let me tell you what this $10 million is going to do. There are 100 unsolved civil rights murders from the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s that have not been investigated, that have not come forward because Congress hasn't put the money there. Last year, under great fanfare, several of my colleagues were critical of me because I wanted to pay for it as we passed the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime bill. What I said in opposing that bill initially, which I never was successful in getting it paid for, was that there is plenty of money at the Justice Department if we just direct the Justice Department to put $10 million to this. There are three cases recently that are coming due, three that have been solved now. We have several other leads. Timing is of the essence. What I was told is: No, we will appropriate this money this year. That is what we were told. I won't go into the five pages of quotes by the general cosponsors of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime bill, about how they would put the money in right now. Guess what is not in this bill. What is not in this bill is any money to the Justice Department to be directed to the Emmett Till unsolved civil rights crimes. They said to my staff: Don't worry about it. There is plenty of money at the Justice Department to do it. So the same argument that was not good enough last year when we tried to pay for it is now turned around, and they say: It is the same amount of money. We now have it, in their judgment. But we didn't last year. The fact is, there is a sham being perpetrated. It is to claim a moral position and say you will fund something and then, when it comes time to have to give up an earmark or have to eliminate something else, you can't quite have the courage to pull up to the level of moral transparency and keep your commitments. The information is fading away quickly. They are old crimes. People who have testimony are dying and won't be available for the future. Yet we have the insistence to say it doesn't matter to spend that money now. There is nothing in this bill more important than solving unsolved civil rights crimes. The reason is because it says something about our justice system. It says we realize that justice delayed is justice denied, and the hurt and trauma that came out of this country in the civil rights movement will only get closed when we have true justice. For us to now in a petty way say: We will get it next year, do you realize that ``next year'' is coming September 30, and 6 months from now, two or three more witnesses will be gone, two or three more people who committed a crime will not get convicted because the evidence and the testimony will be gone? Yet we can't bring ourselves to the point of saying this is a priority. This says something about who we are, that we are going to give up a few earmarks so we can actually stand on the side of justice. The hypocrisy of the debate we heard last year and then what we hear today at the staff level about why we can't fund this is unfortunate. I advise the Senator from Connecticut, I have two more amendments to offer. I will talk a very short time and then be finished, if that is OK with him.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I will end now so I can yield to my friend, the chairman of my committee, the Senator from Connecticut, so he will have an opportunity to speak on the floor but not before I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a listing of the earmarks provided today by Taxpayers for Common Sense. I ask unanimous consent that list be printed in the Record.

Mr. COBURN. I gave my assurance yesterday to the majority leader that I would offer no division of any amendments so he would not worry that we would have more votes than he wanted. But I will make the point at this time, at the rate we are going, we will have less than 12 amendments on a $410 billion bill that spends $363 million a page. I would love for every American to know we are so good in the committee that none of us should be able to have significant amendments to modify this bill that I guarantee has $50 billion worth of waste, fraud, abuse, or lack of direction in how the money is spent. So to be able to get four amendments on the floor, just four on a $410 billion bill, which we are only going to spend 3 days on, I have to agree to limit what the American people should know about this bill. That tells you where we are in the Senate. But I agreed to do that to be able to at least bring some forward. This amendment is entitled PMA earmarks. We are in the midst of an investigation of a lobbying firm that is alleged to have committed some very serious felonies. It is uniquely curious that as this has progressed, they have decided to shut down. However, within the bill, not through necessarily their clients' fault, and not saying what they are trying to do was necessarily wrong in terms of the intent of the earmark, within this bill are 14 earmarks that you can see, if you have any common sense, if you look at the lobbying efforts of the PMA firm and then look at campaign contributions in the Congress, you can see a very worrisome pattern. That is the very reason I don't do earmarks. If I did earmarks, the last thing I would do would be take any campaign money from somebody for whom I did an earmark. Needless to say, the accusation and the alleged straw donor technique used by this lobbying firm to funnel campaign funds to Members who then give earmarks through this bill, 14 of them listed in this bill--all this amendment does is say: In the cloud of this and the way it looks, ought we be continuing to do that under the cloud of what look to be very serious allegations of impropriety at the least and, at the worst, quid pro quos for placing earmarks in campaign funds? We will vote on this amendment. It probably won't pass. Then the American people make a judgment about how well connected we are to reality. The stench associated with this investigation is at the root cause of us having $300 billion worth of waste a year in Congress in the money we spend. It is at the root cause that we can't get commonsense amendments passed that lack competition, lack funding, real priorities in a timely fashion, such as the Emmett Till bill. This is at the root of it. It is the pay-to-play game. All this amendment does is wipe out those. It just strikes them. It won't delay the bill. It does nothing but strike them. If they are legitimate, let them come back in this next year's bill and be done in an ethical, straightforward, aboveboard, transparent manner that doesn't utilize the concept of under-the-table, false campaign contributions, allegedly. Amendment No. 610 I ask unanimous consent that that amendment be set aside, and I call up amendment No. 610.

Mr. COBURN. I will come back to the floor and discuss these amendments again, but I will give the courtesy to my friend from Connecticut of being fairly short. Amendment No. 623 The next amendment is amendment No. 623. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment number 623 be called up.

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

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, before we get started----

Mr. COBURN. Yes, I am happy to yield to the chairman.

Mr. COBURN. I will not at this time.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, it is interesting--and the American people ought to pay attention to this--what we have right now is a bill that is $410 billion. It is $363 million a page. And now we have instructions from the majority leader that no amendments are allowed to be offered. That is what the intent of the quorum call was. That is why the honorable chairman asked me that question. The only way I can talk on the floor is if I agree not to offer an amendment to $410 billion worth of spending, at $363 million per page. What are we coming to? Now we can't offer amendments. I reached out to Senator Reid and said I would work with him on packaging amendments in a way that would not delay this bill, in a way that we can still have a good debate and lots of amendments offered. My goodness, you have 57 votes. You can win almost any vote here. Why do you not want to have amendments? They don't want to have amendments because they really don't want the American people to know what is in this bill. That is why. This bill represents the spending for all of these agencies we have not sent the money to this fiscal year. But it also represents the worst excesses of Congress. It represents parochialism ahead of principle. It represents putting politicians first and putting the people last. That is what this bill represents. It represents the exact opposite of what our President said he wanted, which was ``change you can believe in.'' Now we have change that is exactly what we saw before President Obama became President. We have the same standard of behavior. Tons of earmarks are in this bill. That is a totally different question. This bill has grown by over $32 billion from the same period last year, of which we just increased most of these agencies on an average of around 80 percent with the stimulus bill. Now we are going to increase it another 8.4 percent, and we are not supposed to offer amendments. We are not supposed to take out things that are obviously quid pro quo in terms of earmarks and campaign contributions, as the Senator from Arizona just mentioned, from the donors we are seeing who are being investigated right now. The way to get our Government back is to have free and honest debate in the greatest deliberative body in the world, which is supposed to be the U.S. Senate. Now we cannot offer amendments on a bill that is almost half of the entire discretionary spending of the country because we are not sure they want to take a vote on a bill. I have not been bashful about what I want to do. There is an Emmett Till bill that we passed under controversy here. We got it passed. There is not one penny for funding for the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes in this bill, which your side totally promised would be in this spending. You are abandoning Alvin Sykes and all these families who had unsolved civil rights crimes over the last 30, 40 years in this country and reneging on a promise that said you would put the money in the Justice Department. Yet there is not a penny there. We are high and mighty when it comes to authorizing and when we promise we will do the right thing. But when it comes down to it, we would rather give earmarks for pig smell than fund the solution for unsolved civil rights crimes. I tell you, by doing that, I think we have dishonored a great number of people who worked hard to make sure that bill got passed, the least of which is not Alvin Sykes, a man who has dedicated the last 10 years of his life to seeing that justice was not denied to these families. Here we have a bill which we made promise after promise that we would take care of, and we have done nothing. Of course nobody wants to change this bill. They don't want to change the bill because we are running up to a deadline we have known about since the fiscal year started. No, you cannot change the bill because we will have to extend the CR. There are a lot of benefits to extending the CR: One, we save our grandkids $38 billion--that is one of the benefits-- and two, we don't reward behavior that causes us to be less than honorable. There are 8,570 earmarks in this bill. I am not opposed to earmarks if they are authorized and go through a committee and Senators say they are a priority. But the average American, when they look at all these earmarks, is going to say: How in the world is that a priority? Yet we spend $7.7 billion out of that $30 billion--increased spending--so we can help Senators get reelected and so they will look good at home. Mr. President, I worry about our Republic. You should be worried too. In the face of the greatest economic difficulty we have seen in over half a century in this country, the status quo has not changed in the Senate. We have not called up the courage to do what is best for this country. What we have done is relied on what is best for the politicians. I worry about what our kids are going to see, what standards of living they are going to have, because it is exactly this behavior that will mortgage their future, and it is not just the dollars, it is the misdirection of funds against a standard that common sense would say is not a priority now. We ought to be doing what is most important for this country first and what is best for the politicians last. This bill has it wrong. It has it backward. I told the majority leader a moment ago that I would work with him to make sure we didn't obstruct. But maybe we should obstruct this bill, we should stop this bill. Based on the waste in it, the lack of oversight, lack of metrics in the programs, the earmarks in it, and the outright greed for the special class in this country--and that special class is the connected class of the politician. That is who benefits most from this bill. It makes me want to vomit. You should worry about process in this Chamber because process is the thing that creates transparency. The American people are going to get to see--if we get an opportunity to offer amendments--what is really in this bill. I will finish my rant by saying that I wonder what the Senators before us, 50 and 100 years ago, would say about what is going on with process in this Chamber right now. You have the votes to defeat anything. Yet you don't want to have an amendment that you have to take a vote on that says this is a priority or this isn't a priority. To me, I think that lacks honor, I know it lacks courage, and it lacks the dignity this institution deserves. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object, and I do, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 5 minutes to make comments regarding what has just been said.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, on February 16, 2009, a pet non-human primate, NHP, attacked Ms. Nash, a friend of the pet's owner--almost killing her. My thoughts and prayers are with Ms. Nash and I am sure I join all of my colleagues in wishing her a speedy and full recovery. This unfortunate event has rushed consideration of the Captive Primate Safety Act, H.R. 80. H.R. 80 would make it illegal to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase non-human primates, such as monkeys and apes, by amending the over 100-year old Lacey Act to include ``any nonhuman primate.'' H.R. 80 does not affect laboratory animals, zoos, and some veterinarian cases. This bill does not address a national priority and should not be considered by Congress. Last Congress, I held the similar Senate version of the Captive Primate Safety Act, S. 1498, because of concerns with its fiscal impact and because I did not believe it was appropriate for the Federal Government to be regulating pets. Today the Senate is trying to pass the similar House version that still seeks to increase Federal regulation of pets in a fiscally irresponsible manner without amendments or debate. Supporters of this bill hope that somehow creating a new Federal law to prohibit transporting pet primates across State lines, on top of the Federal laws and regulations that already make it illegal to import them and the dozens of State laws that outlaw owning non-human primates as pets, and giving the Fish and Wildlife Service $5 million to hire extra ``law enforcement'' staff to pursue chimps will make Americans safer. Supporters of this measure are using the tragedy that occurred this month to ram this bill through Congress with no debate. This attack occurred in Connecticut, where a State law already existed that outlawed the possession of NHP's weighing more than 50 pounds without a permit. The NHP weighed 200 pounds and should have not been allowed under state law to live with its owner as a pet, but passing the Captive Primate Safety Act last year would not have prevented this tragedy and is not a national priority. The bill authorizes $5 million in fiscal year 2010 to hire additional United States Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement personnel to enforce the new monkey provisions and CBO says the bill will cost taxpayers $17 million over 5 years. To enact such legislation without any offsets and therefore simply add to our national debt is extremely imprudent at this time in our nation. There still have been no hearings and therefore no official statement or testimony available from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as to whether or not this law is necessary and/or enforceable within the agency's current resources. There is even a more basic question of whether or not a Federal wildlife agency should be regulating interstate pet transportation at all. This law may be duplicative, unnecessary, and ineffective. This matter of pet ownership may be more appropriately and effectively handled by local and State governments and agencies. The UC does not allow an opportunity to amend this bill to address cost concerns. This Bill spends money we don't have on something that is unnecessary. CBO estimated last Congress that both the House and the Senate versions of the Captive Safety Act and last Congress's Senate bill, would cost $17 million over 5 years. H.R. 80 is almost identical to last Congress's House bill. According to CBO, the cost of hiring four additional U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, FWS, employees to conduct inspections and investigations and storing, transporting and boarding confiscated NHP's totals $17 million over 5 years. The costs may in fact be even higher. According to one chimp sanctuary the annual cost to house two chimpanzees can exceed $35,000 a year. According to the Humane Society of the United States and various Members of Congress, there are an estimated 15,000 non-human primates in private hands. If the FWS were to try and confiscate and then house all 15,000 chimps, that could add up to a total cost of $262.5 million a year for the federal taxpayers, or $1.3 billion over 5 years. The unanimous consent agreement would not allow anyone to offer amendments to offset the cost of this bill or perhaps cut back on other areas within the Fish and Wildlife's jurisdiction to pay for these new responsibilities. Fourteen Monkey bites a year do not justify annual appropriations of $4 Million. While the Humane Society of the United States said in a February 2009 press release that the Captive Primates Safety Act is an ``urgently needed public safety and animal welfare measure,'' other Americans may feel differently about prioritizing this issue above more pressing national issues. The group justifies prioritizing H.R. 80 with American taxpayer resources because of recent captive primate incidents. An analysis of its list of ``recent incidents involving captive primates'' finds: In 2008, 11 monkeys were reported as being involved in biting 14 people. One of the monkeys was in a university laboratory and another was in a wildlife sanctuary. Both of these types of monkeys are exempted and therefore would not be affected by the Captive Primates Safety Act. In 2008, there were 39 non-human primates involved in 21 incidents, but 28 of the 39 monkeys involved in the reported incidents were not noted as having harmed humans. Similarly, last Congress, the Humane Society and the Senate EPW committee justified the creation of a new Federal law by citing 132 reported incidents of human injury from captive or escaped captive primates over a 10-year period--which still averages out to only 13 a year. In contrast, 4.7 million Americans are bitten by dogs each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Taking both the Humane Society and the CBO score together, the bill before us today, essentially calls for the Federal Government to spend the equivalent of over $444,000 per year to take nine biting monkeys out of their private owners' hands. Using another measurement, the FWS would spend the equivalent of over $285,000 per bite--$4 million divided by 14 people who were bitten by monkeys in 2008--if this bill passed. Yet even these cost estimates may be understated because it is possible that none of the nine offending monkeys will ever cross State lines. In that case, unless State or local laws and officials caused their removal, these pets would remain with their owners. While not seeking to diminish the physical or psychological effects of any monkey bites or attacks, taxpayers have a right to question if such a small number of incidents justify the large cost to the Federal Government of taking on additional animal control responsibilities. In contrast, though some of the 4.7 million Americans bitten by dogs each year die as a result of these bites, Congress is not adding interstate dog transport to the lists of Federal wildlife responsibilities and prohibitions. If preventing human injuries caused by pets was a national priority, why aren't Senators and special interest groups pushing to outlaw the private ownership of dogs? Passing the Captive Safety Act last Congress would not have prevented the recent attack. Tragically, a 200-pound, 15-year-old chimpanzee named Travis--who was raised by the same owners since he was an infant--brutally attacked one of his owner's friends, Charla Nash, outside his house in Stamford, CT, in February 2009. The chimp, for still unknown reasons, attacked Ms. Nash, severely damaging her face and hands, according to news reports. She is in critical but stable condition. Travis died after being stabbed by his owner and being shot by a police officer after he charged the officer. Following the recent chimp attack, the Humane Society has argued that if I had not held last year's bill, S. 1498, Ms. Nash would not have been attacked. This statement, however, is incorrect, because this bill would have only have removed Travis from his owner if the NHP crossed State lines. Additionally, since 2004 under Connecticut State law it has been illegal to own an NHP weighing more than 50 pounds if the animal is not registered. Yet, State officials did not even require Travis--a 200 pound NHP--to be registered, even though he was well known. It appears Travis lived in Stamford, CT, for most of his life. His attack took place in front of his home. With the possible exception of an appearance on the Maury Povich show, which may or may not have been filmed in the New York City studio, nothing indicates that Travis was crossing state lines on a regular basis, nor did his unprovoked attack have any interstate aspect to it. The fact that he might have been born in another State 15 years ago, would not have affected Travis's private ownership 2 weeks ago if this bill had been signed into law last year. What if Travis or his siblings grew up in the same State where they were born? The bill does nothing to address this situation; they have to cross State lines to fall under Federal jurisdiction. Why is a chimp native to and living in Missouri ok, but one moving to Connecticut, for example should suddenly become the business of the Federal Government? It is very unlikely that Travis' trip 15 years ago across a few State lines led to his attack in February. This is yet another reason why this bill is a misplaced priority and misguided effort. If people are saying all chimps are dangerous and are against private ownership of nonhuman primates, why doesn't this bill simply make it a Federal crime to own them and take away the estimated 15,000 animals in private hands? Instead, to justify questionable Federal involvement, Congress is using the interstate commerce clause even though this approach is both inappropriate and ineffective. In a recent Boston Herald article April Truitt, director of the Primate Rescue Center in Kentucky, had the following to say regarding H.R. 80: ``It's better than nothing, which is what approximately 30 states have right now,'' she said. But if the bill becomes law, it will affect few dealers in exotic animals. ``Dealers are not one bit concerned about this,'' Truitt said. ``They know that they still can continue to do what they were doing. Most dealers are USDA licensed, and the USDA licensing has been and is used by private owners rampantly to circumvent state and local legislation.'' Others, such as Sian Evans, the director of the DuMond Conservancy for Primates and Tropical Forests, contend that in general, NHPs do not carry disease and should not be considered a threat to the safety of others. While the recent attack is tragic, this bill is not an appropriate or responsible use of taxpayer funds and Congressional resources. Federal law already exists banning non-human primate imports. It has also already been illegal for the past 30 years to import non- human primates, such as monkeys, for pets. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: ``Since 1975, the Federal Quarantine Regulations, (42CFR71.53), have restricted the importation of NHP . . . Importation of NHP for use as pets is not permitted under any circumstances.'' The Humane Society of the United States previously acknowledged, ``Most states regulate keeping primates as pets, and the trend is for states to prohibit the practice altogether.'' Yet the group also claims, ``federal legislation is needed to complement state laws'' because ``many of these animals move in interstate commerce.'' In conclusion, Congress recently justified swift passage of a massive spending bill that increases the national debt by more than $1 trillion to more than $10 billion in the midst of a struggling national economy. In January, the national unemployment rate was 7.6 percent--the highest it has been in more than 15 years. In December, national home prices plunged at the fastest pace on record, leading to predictions of 6 million foreclosures over the next four years. Consumer confidence levels have dropped to a new low of 25 in February from 37.4 a month earlier as people worry about losing their jobs, earning less, and deteriorating prospects. Yet the Humane Society and certain Members of Congress are seeking to make this pet regulation bill a national priority and are pushing to have it enacted quickly. How is potentially preventing a few monkey bites a bigger national priority than trying to address the weakening economy and collapsing consumer and business environment? These ``little'' bills add up and once privately owned monkeys are added to the Department of Interior's jurisdiction, they will likely be there forever, not just for the 5 years authorized in this bill. This bill would not have stopped the attack on Ms. Nash. My objection does not question the seriousness of her attack but lies in moving an inappropriate, ineffective, and irresponsible bill in the midst of a time of real need in our country for strong leadership. Congress cannot afford to continue to misprioritize scarce resources and must focus on truly national priorities--not on monkey bites and inappropriate special-interest legislation. Madam President, not once have I had a call from my colleague asking: Will you work with me on this issue? Will you protect people as a result of this issue? Will you help us pass this? What it has been is: Take it or leave it. I note for the record that 90 Members in the House voted against the bill. It was not a smattering few. A fourth of the House did not agree with this legislation. I have never been asked: Would you care if we eliminated the ownership of these pets? I don't have any problem with that, but I have never been asked that. That has never been offered. The question in the case that brings this back up is Connecticut has a law and the law says you can hold and register a nonhuman primate if it weighs under 50 pounds. What happened in Connecticut is they violated their own law. They had a restriction on it. I am not opposed to commonsense eliminating the risk from nonhuman primates, but I have never been approached in how I would work with that to try to accomplish what the Senator from California would like to accomplish and still meet the needs of individual Americans and their civil liberties. The second point I note, if we are going to do this, look, there were 4.6 million dog bites last year that caused hundreds of thousands of serious injuries. Are we going to stop the interstate transport of dogs that caused thousands and thousands more injuries, some even deaths, to individuals? Nobody is proposing that. What I ask my colleague is reach out. I would gladly work with Senator Boxer in a way so we eliminate any future ownership of these types of animals in a way that does not violate those who presently have them and encourages the States to enforce their laws that they have today and enforce them in the future. We can start at a time certain tomorrow and say: You can't have new ownership of any nonhuman primate. That stops all interstate commerce. That stops it completely. But our problem is we have about 30 States that have regulations in regard to this issue. The incident that happened in Connecticut is very unfortunate, I agree. But what happened was you had the law broken. So instead of enforcing a law that is on the books, we are going to create another new law, and it is not going to accomplish the very purpose. We are still going to have nonhuman primate bites if we do not have some way to ultimately end this type of pet selection. I reach out to my colleague. I am sorry I had to object. I will gladly work with her in the future to come to some accommodation. I yield the floor.

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 to offer a perfecting second-degree amendment to Senator Ensign's amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this is simply a perfecting amendment to change the date of the actual enactment of this bill. I ask unanimous consent to speak for a few moments on the underlying bill.

Mr. COBURN. I will do that for a very short period of time. We have heard a lot about the constitutionality of this, but I think there is an important point that has not been raised, and I would take exception to the fact that this is not a partisan debate. This is about whether we really follow this wonderful little document each of us in this Chamber has sworn an allegiance to and what it says. I wish to quote a legal scholar because I think it leads to a lot of common sense. Here is the quote: It would be ridiculous to suggest that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention or ratification conventions would have worked out such specific and exacting rules for the composition of Congress, only to give the majority of Congress the right to create a new form of voting members from federal enclaves like the District. It would have constituted the realization of the worst fears for many delegates, particularly the Anti- Federalists, to have an open-ended ability of the majority to manipulate the rolls of Congress and to use areas under the exclusive control of the Federal Government as the source for new voting Members. I have no doubt that if this present bill is passed, it will be found unconstitutional. As my colleague from Alaska stated earlier, if what we want to do is change the Constitution, the way to do that is through a constitutional amendment and a joint resolution. So there is no question that people who are taxed have the right to representation, but there is another way to solve that. The best way to solve it is to eliminate the tax on the citizens of the District of Columbia. I will be offering an amendment this afternoon that will do just that. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, what is the pending amendment?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I know my colleague from New York wishes to speak and I will be very brief. I should not take more than 10 minutes. We are in a debate about the District of Columbia and the fact that they are taxed and not represented with a vote in the Congress. It is a legitimate debate. I tend to look at the Constitution and, as a matter of fact, as I read the Constitution--and I am not a constitutional lawyer, but I will tell my colleagues that anybody who reads the Constitution can say this is an unconstitutional bill we have in front of us. I also reject the idea that the District of Columbia does not have representation. All one has to do is look at the facts: $66,000 per resident of the District of Columbia, that is how much money the Federal Government spends per capita in the District of Columbia. That is $5.5 for every dollar they pay in taxes. So the 535 votes in the Congress have well represented them greater than any other group of citizens in the country. But there is a claim--a legitimate claim--that they don't have their own representative and that they are taxed. This is a simple amendment. What it says is while we work this out, the way to be fair is to eliminate Federal income tax on citizens of the District of Columbia. They don't have a vote. Their tags even say taxation without representation is unfair; no taxation without representation. This solves that. They will have to change all of the auto tags. I don't know what that will cost. But the fact is we will take away Federal income taxes on money earned in the District of Columbia from every citizen of the District of Columbia. Now, two things happen with that, especially since they have 535 representatives already. Think about what will happen to the District of Columbia in terms of income. Think about what will happen to the District of Columbia in terms of economic progress. Think about what will happen in terms of the value of the ownership of any asset in the District of Columbia. Think of the growth. Think of the modernization that will happen as we make this the center of progress based on the idea that because there is no representation, there should be no Federal taxation. It is a very simple, straightforward amendment. It solves the immediate problem. When we finally do a constitutional amendment with a joint resolution, which we are ultimately going to have to do, what we will have done is given the people of the District of Columbia the benefit of having a tax advantage because they don't have, under their thinking, representation in the Congress. I am not trying to have a cute vote. If I had my way, I would try to eliminate almost every Federal income tax. As the Senator from New York knows, I try to do that quite often, and try to eliminate a lot of spending. The whole point being, there is a legitimate point to be made by the citizens of the District of Columbia in that they are treated differently than everybody else in this country. My argument is they actually have 535 representatives plus their Delegate, and it has shown to be very effective for them, because no place else in the country gets as much Federal money per capita as the District of Columbia. So if we want to treat the citizens of the District of Columbia fairly--by the way, this excludes all Members of Congress, so if my colleagues are thinking about voting for it for a selfish reason, please don't. If you are thinking about voting for this amendment on the basis of fairness, please consider it. Amendment No. 575 I wish to take a few more minutes to comment on the Ensign amendment, if I might, and then I will finish. The Ensign amendment isn't about concealed carrying, it is about the right that is guaranteed under the second amendment to be applied to people in the District of Columbia. James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 46: Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation . . . forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. If you look at the murder rate in the District of Columbia, what happened when the gun ban in 1975 was first instituted, we didn't see it rise that much because we allowed people to keep their guns. When the complete ban took place, we saw a fivefold rise that is still going up--except for the last 2 years--in the murder rate compared to the rest of the cities in this country. There is something to be said for the thinking that a perpetrator of a felony thinks he or she may possibly be harmed significantly. That tends to drive down violent crime--we know that--in the States that have concealed carry, and that, I believe, is 26 or 28 States. It may be even more than that now. The fact is, this isn't about concealed carry; this is about guaranteeing the rights of individual citizens in the District of Columbia to represent themselves with a right that every other citizen in this country has. Because Congress didn't act on that right, it took the Heller decision to give them that right. All this does is bring into line the District of Columbia with the rest of the States in the country. I will have taken the amount of time that I should in favor of Senator Schumer. I thank him very much for the consideration of allowing me to go first. I thank the chairman of the committee as well.