Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I can't say I didn't expect that we would be where we are tonight. But this country needs to know the way this bill we have been talking about, and probably the bill we are going to see, is undoubtedly the largest generational theft bill in the history of mankind. When I say generational theft, I am not just talking about money. I am talking about opportunities and I am talking about futures. There is nobody on this side of the aisle who doesn't want to do something to fix our economy and stimulate our economy. What this bill does--and the families who are listening to this right now, you ought to think: If you are one of those who are unemployed right now and hurting, $12,000 is going to be added to your debt once you get a job again, for your family. If you are struggling out there, but you are holding on, we are going to steal $12,000 from you and your kids. Then those of us who might be doing well, we are going to take $12,000 from you, so maybe that is OK in a time such as this. But what is not OK is how this bill is going to spend that money. If you like how efficient the post office is that lost $3 billion this year, and if you like the way the Federal Government works, wait until this money starts going through the Federal Government. If we have $450 billion that is going to be in programs, 10 percent of it is going to get chewed up before it ever leaves Washington. Then, when it gets to your State to supposedly be a stimulus, another 10 percent of it is going to get chewed up. So we are going to lose $90 billion because we are going to decide to run it through the inefficient bureaucracies. I would ask: What does that stimulate? Federal workers are great, but they don't produce wealth, and the money ought to go into job-creating exercises that create wealth. What is going to happen to your family? The question will be, What is going to happen if we don't do anything? We are not proposing to do nothing. There could be a true bipartisan solution to this, but that hasn't been offered. We have seen slow walked all day the inability to get amendments. It is highly unlikely any other amendments will be offered. I want my colleagues to think how can we best stimulate this economy, and how can we do no harm as we do that? This bill--this generational theft bill--does tons of harm. Let me tell my colleagues the biggest harm it does. There is no guarantee this is going to work, especially when we haven't fixed the housing and mortgage system and we haven't fixed the liquidity issue. Here is the harm it does. Every State, save California and New York, will get more money out of this bill than their deficits are today--every State. We are going to transfer, by what we are doing here, a lack of fiscal responsibility to every State. We have had Governors calling up here from all across this country saying, You are going to send us a whole lot more money than we need. I have legislators who are trying to spend money. They are slow walking me now, so I can't run this State and keep it fiscally sound. That is coming from Democratic and Republican Governors alike. We are going to transfer the incompetence of the Federal Government in Congress to every State house in this country. Think about what we are doing with $12,000 per family. One final point I will make. Barack Obama is my close personal friend. One of the things he said is that we ought to get rid of the programs that don't work. We ought to put metrics on the programs so we can measure them, and then when we look at them we will know whether we are truly investing in an adequate way. We are blindly going to invest in things and there is not one iota in this bill or the House bill that eliminates any of the $300 billion that we know is being wasted right now and can be fully documented--not one attempt to do that. So if we cared about stimulating the economy and we cared about the future and we cared about those who are having a hard time today, why wouldn't we do the hard work to get rid of what doesn't work before we spend more money on things that don't work? I would end with this. We got in trouble and we are in this mess because we spent money that we didn't have on things we didn't need. And the answer for Congress is to do more of the same. When we do more of the same, what we do is we mortgage--the only thing we are doing on mortgages is we are mortgaging our children's and grandchildren's future. This body works on the power of 60, and it will happen, but the precarious nature we find ourselves in today, the responsibility of passing this bill when most of it is not going to make a big difference--not truly going to stimulate the economy--and claiming it is bipartisan when it is not, is going to leave a legacy that nobody who votes for this bill is going to embrace. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Does the Senator have another question?

Mr. COBURN. Yes.

Mr. COBURN. No.

Mr. COBURN. No.

Mr COBURN

Mr COBURN. I will.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, first of all, let me thank the chairman for his kindness. I agree we should be going back and forth. Whatever we do with this bill, we ought to determine what is most important and what is least important. When we take $900 billion and are about to spend it, we ought to do that in a way that again promotes value. We as a body oftentimes are resistant to make hard choices; I know that, but every family out there in our country today is making hard choices. I found it peculiar, when this bill came to the floor, that it didn't include a prohibition that was in the House bill. Somewhat strange. What was in the House bill, which was passed by the House and agreed to by the House, was a prohibition on any funding to pay for aquariums, zoos, golf courses, swimming pools, stadiums, parks, theaters, art centers or highway beautification projects. Somehow, strangely, it was left out of the Senate bill. So I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside to call up my amendment No. 309.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside to call up amendment No. 176.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that after the order we have set up that following Senator Hutchison, the majority have time, then Senator Wicker have time, then the majority have time, and then Senator Hatch.

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

Mr. COBURN. I thank the Chair. Madam President, I have been listening to the debate this morning. I want to make one point. How did we get where we are? We have seen all this finger pointing. We have said that President Bush got us where we are, that we do not want to take responsibility for the fact he could not spend a penny we did not give him, and the vast majority--97 percent of the majority--voted for every appropriations bill that came through this place. So when we point to other people, where we need to be pointing is to us. The vast majority of the majority party voted against every amendment. I offered over $10 billion per appropriations cycle on the bills. The vast majority voted against the cut. So I think if we are going to point to a pox on a house, it ought to come right here--the lack of responsibility, where we demonstrate with our actions every day we are much more interested in the next election than we are in the next generation. We heard Senator Alexander today talking about that it is not our money, it is the taxpayers' money, and we are going to have to pay it back. Nobody alive in this room today will pay back any of this money. Their children and their grandchildren will pay back this money. This bill is doing exactly the same thing we did to get into this mess. We are about to spend $1 trillion of money we don't have for the vast majority of the things in this bill that we don't need. Let me explain to the American people a little bit of the workings in the Senate. There is about $300 billion worth of spending in the bill we have on the floor that has been put in there so we won't have to make hard choices when it comes to the appropriations bills that come through this body this year. So we take $300 billion that we know should be in the regular appropriations bills and we put it in this bill so we don't have to use regular order. That gives us more room to do more Government spending, more interference in the lives of Americans without being responsible for it. When I say $300 billion, the real cost is $600 billion. It strikes me that if you were going to ask the American people how best to stimulate the economy and you are going to spend $1 trillion to do it, the best and smartest allocation of those resources would be to give the money back to the American people. In our wisdom, we think we know better than they do how to spend money. The thing that made this the greatest country in the world is this wonderful market capitalism that said people will serve their own best interests. We have the very ego to think we can decide for them. I think we need some stimulus--I don't disagree with that--but I don't think we need to do it right now. I think we need to fix the mortgage market and the housing market and the credit market before we touch any kind of stimulus. If we do a stimulus, the best stimulus we could do would be to give the money back to the American people and let them allocate it in ways they know are best for them individually. That proposal was rejected out of hand. Now, why would that be rejected? Because we have this false sense that Washington knows better. Well, I will tell my colleagues the predicament we are in proves we don't. We don't know better, we don't have a clue, when we bring a $900 billion spending bill to the floor and we have accepted one amendment to cut $246 million out of it and we have had votes--both voice votes and recorded votes--on less than 20 amendments, and we are told by the majority leader we have to finish so we can get to conference. This bill ought to have 1,000 amendments on it, if we are truly going to do the work of the American people. We ought to debate this bill line by line. I will not agree to any unanimous consent until the next 15 amendments I have, have a scheduled time to be brought up so the American people can hear about all the stinky stuff that is in this bill. The biggest earmark in history is in this bill: $2 billion. There are tons of things that need to come out of this bill. As the American people have learned what is in this bill, their common sense--which is on a one-for-one basis a thousandfold greater than our common sense as Senators--is being totally ignored. That is why the people in this country routinely are rejecting this bill now. You can do all the promotion of it you want; you can use all the moveon.org; you can do all the Web sites you want, but when they smell a skunk--their olfactory senses are quite acute--this is a skunk. This bill stinks. This bill is the biggest generational theft bill that has ever come through this body. What I mean by that is we have a standard of living in this country that is 30 percent greater than anywhere else in the world, and it will guarantee, this bill will guarantee your children and grandchildren will lose every bit of that edge, every bit of it. So how did we get here? We got here by us thinking we knew better, by us ignoring the very principles that created this great country. Then we refused to admit it. We created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Then we blamed an administration when we tied their hands to fix it, and we say it is an administration's fault when it is our fault. We tried to socialize the risk so everybody in this country, even if they couldn't afford it, could have a home. Now what we are doing is we are going to charge our grandchildren to get us out of it when we were in a business where we never had any business. If you look at the enumerated powers of the Constitution, it gives us no authority whatsoever to do what we have done. So when we abandon the principles we were founded upon, we get in tremendously tall, deep weeds. That is where we find ourselves now. The idea that we can borrow more money we don't have to spend on more things we don't need and ignore the wisdom of the average American citizen on how best to spend their money is insane. Yet we have spent 2\1/2\ days--that is all we have spent so far on a $1 trillion bill, 2\1/2\ days--and have had 20 votes, and now we are told by the majority leader we need to hurry up. ``Hurry up'' is what got us in this trouble. We need a methodical explanation to the American people for every line that is in this bill--every line item. We need an explanation of why we are putting in Medicaid funds to bail out the States at twice the level of what the Governors actually asked for. Why would we do that? Because we know better. In our ultimate wisdom, we know better? And while we are talking about the States, the worst thing we can do is bail out the States because we will be transferring our wonderful illogic to the States and saying you don't have to be fiscally responsible. That is what we are going to be telling them, so that in the future, they won't put in a rainy day fund, as Oklahoma has, and plan for the future and control their spending increases. No, they will say: Don't worry about it; the Federal Government will come bail us out. I am adamantly opposed to us transferring the absolute economic chaos we have created to the States. The States need to make hard choices now. We need to do what we need to do, which is fix housing, fix mortgages, fix the banking system. Then, when we have done that, which will fix all these other problems, then come with a real stimulus that allows the American people--the American people--much like what the majority of the McCain bill does--to decide how they are going to spend the money. Since we are so down on the business sector in this country that creates all the jobs, small business and large business alike, why don't we think about maybe having a competitive tax on our corporations that is competitive with the rest of the world. No. What do we do? We have one 10 percent higher than anybody else in the world. Yet it is business's fault we are in this mess. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are in this mess because Congress put us in this mess; not any President, not Bill Clinton, not George Bush, and certainly not Barack Obama. Let's be honest with the American people. Let's fess up: We don't know what we are doing. A $1 trillion bill was cobbled together in 4 weeks with earmarks like crazy through it for every special interest group that is out there so we can look good to certain of our buddies and especially the ones who give us campaign contributions. That is what describes this bill, not an ethical, methodical, ``how do we fix the problem we have'' kind of scrutiny that is required. You cannot fix a problem until you know what the problem is, and the problem is us. We created this mess, and our actions created this mess. The President signed the children's health program. I am not opposed to a children's health program. I am not opposed to helping children get the health care they need. But this body rejected a way to do that which wouldn't have increased taxes $71 billion and would have covered every child. But, no, we are smarter than that because we want to tell people where they are going to get their health care and how they are going to get it. And then, when we can't afford it, do you know what we are going to do? We are going to ration it, just like every other country that has centralized control over their health care. Then what is going to happen to our cancer cure rates which are 50 percent higher than anywhere else in the world? They are going to be the same as the rest of the world: They are going to go down. Now we have comparative effectiveness that we want to put through that says the Government-- some Government bureaucrat is going to tell doctors how to practice medicine. That is in this too. We are going to have them tell us how to practice medicine. We forgot one thing on the way to the barn, and that is the practice of medicine is 40 percent art and 60 percent science and everywhere in the world, where they have a centralized government health care system, they have thrown out the art of medicine, which tends to deal with the whole person and how that interacts with the physical aspects of that person. To me, it is deeply disappointing that we find ourselves where we are today. I don't think pointing fingers anywhere except back at ourselves accomplishes anything. Yet I have heard that three or four times this morning on the floor: It is somebody else's fault. No, it is not; it is our fault. The first thing to getting healthy as addicts is to admit we have a problem. We need to be in a 10-step program. That is what we need, a 10-step program that will put us back on the board to where our Founding Fathers thought we ought to be and where the average American wants us to be. We are addicted to the ego of trying to run other people's lives. We are addicted to the ego of spending money, thinking we know best how to spend it. We are addicted to the ego that when somebody else has problems, we can always fix it. We can't always fix it. We can't fix all the problems that are in front of us today. The American people, through their own ingenuity and their own sacrifice, are going to have to make some hard choices. When we don't make hard choices, we are doubly guilty because what we have done is we have made the choices harder for them that they are going to have to make. My prayer--and it is a prayer--is that we would, as a body, drop the words ``Democrat'' and ``Republican,'' drop the words ``conservative'' and ``liberal,'' and that our goal would be what is in the most efficient, long-term, best interests of those of us who are here today and those who are coming. I ran a campaign to become Senator and the focus of my campaign, unfortunately, was we were about to find ourselves where we are today. I am so sorry I was right. I am so sorry I was right, but it doesn't take a lot of vision to see where we were going. Nobody has voted against President Bush and nobody has voted against more appropriations bills than me. It didn't have anything to do with party politics; it had everything to do with the future. Yet we find ourselves bogged down in debate. I wish to add one other thing. One of the reasons we have to get out of here is because we have Members who have booked hotels this weekend. Tell me how many people in America think that is an important reason for us to hurry up and finish this bill. There is no reason for us to hurry up, No. 1. There is no reason for us not to look at every area of this bill and make sure the American people know about it. There is no reason for us not to do what the average man would do, and that is make priorities. The other problem with this bill, which is extremely disappointing-- and I know it has to be to President Obama because he campaigned on a line-by-line look at the Federal Government to get rid of some of the $300 billion every year in waste, fraud, and abuse. That was one of his campaign issues. One of his campaign promises was to do competitive bidding on every contract over $25,000. There is not one mandate in this bill to force competitive bidding. That is one of the amendments I wish to offer, to force us to do competitive bidding. If we are going to pass this stinky bill, at least if we waste $1 trillion, we will waste it efficiently. When I look at my grandkids, as does everybody else in this country, we wish for the best for our grandchildren. I have to tell my colleagues this body has put the first shackle already on their future. When we pass this bill, we are going to put that lock around their other leg and we are going to put a padlock on it and we are going to throw away the key and we are going to hobble them away from the American dream. We are going to take it away. We are going to take away the very bright light shining on a hill. America, if you are listening, don't let this body do what it is about to do. It will ruin your children's future in the name of us knowing best rather than you knowing best.

Mr. COBURN. Yes, the taxpayers lost $80 billion. I voted for the original TARP money because we were told that money was going to address the toxic assets, which is the problem we need to solve first. I spoke on the floor two nights ago using the corollary of treating symptoms versus treating disease. This bill treats symptoms; it doesn't treat disease. I know several colleagues are waiting to talk. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. That is true.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this is a straightforward amendment. What this amendment says is that all the money we are going to spend in this bill, the American taxpayers are going to get value. I am not going to win the debate on this bill. We are going to spend somewhere between $750 billion and $1 trillion, but the one thing we ought to be able to assure the American people is that when we go to spend the money, they are going to get value for it. This is an amendment that says there will be competitive bidding on all the contracts, all the agreements so we get real value. As malodorous as this bill is in terms of the spending that is not going to produce the first job, the one thing we ought to make sure of is that the American taxpayer is protected. What we know from 40 hearings in the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee is the biggest problem we have in the Government today, besides waste, fraud, and abuse, is the fact that many of the Government contracts, in violation of Federal law, are never competitively bid. That does a couple things. One is it puts people who are connected to the Government in line to get a contract that is not necessarily the best value for our country. Whether that is lobbying here or lobbying at the executive branch, what we know is that at least $50 billion a year right now is wasted because we don't do competitive bidding. All this amendment says is that if you are going to spend the money, if it is greater than $25,000--which is what President Obama has asked us to do--you competitively bid it. You don't play favorites; you make sure we get great value. So my hope is nobody can find a fault with this agreement and this amendment that would say in common sense: Everybody out there who is in business who is going to do something such as that, spend any significant amount of money, is going to get value for what they pay on their money. Every household is going to try to do that as they try to make decisions on how they spend money. So as we spend $900 billion on the items that can be let for contract, we ought to insist that there is competitive bidding. What do we know right now in the Federal Government as far as waste where we have not competitively bid? Here is what we know. We spend as a government $64 billion a year on IT contracts--on IT contracts. The vast majority are not competitively bid. Some people may say: Well, that is no problem. Well, when you hear that 40 billion of them are in trouble, way outside the cost that we thought things were going to cost, what we see is the American taxpayer doesn't get any value when it comes to IT purchasing in the Federal Government. Whether that is the Pentagon, whether it is Homeland Security, whether it is the Small Business Administration, whether it is the Department of Energy, we get no value because 50 percent of the money we spend on IT ultimately gets wasted because we don't competitively contract it and competitively bid it. Out of this $900 billion, there is somewhere around $400 billion of that which can, at one point or another, be competitively bid. To not competitively bid it says, first of all, we are not going to be able to spend it to create as many jobs as we would like if, in fact, we don't get value when we competitively bid it. So my hope is the chairman will consider this amendment take it under advisement. I would also relate that even in spite of the fact that sections 303 of the Federal Property and Administrative Act, 10 U.S. Code 2304 all require it, the Federal Government doesn't do it. Last year, in the Consolidated Federal Funds Report, the Federal agencies issued $1.2 trillion in financial assistance in 2008. Mr. President, $400 billion of that was in grants, so that means grants need to be competitively bid; $453 billion in contracts and $22 billion in direct loans. A large portion of that was never competitively bid. I will shorten the time I spend on this amendment. I ask for its consideration, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I thank my fine friend from Kansas for those questions. As I was saying before I was interrupted for a question, the U.S. Conference of Mayors has a wish list. I would do the same thing. But I want my colleagues to hear what is going across the legislatures of all the States right now: How much of this money can we get so we don't have to do the hard job in our legislature right now to make cuts we need to make? How much of this money can we get? They just happened to have 31,000 requests totaling $73.2 billion. I thought the American people would like to hear what some of them are because I guarantee you, we will fund them. We are going to fund them. If this bill passes, we are going to fund them unless we accept this amendment. How about $192.6 million for 12 projects directed to stadiums, including $150 million for a Metromover extension to Marlin Stadium in Miami, FL, where their average attendance is less than 45 percent, less than 16,000 fans? Is that a priority for the country right now? It is not a priority. Unless we agree to this amendment, that kind of stuff is going to get funded. How about $87 million for 56 projects on paths? Right now, when we are stealing $1 trillion from our grandchildren, is it a priority for this country to build bicycle paths? Tell me that is a priority. Tell the American people that is a priority. How about $700,000 to plant 1,600 trees along the sidewalks in Providence, RI? Is that a priority? Because once this bill moves out of here, it is out of your control, and the bureaucrats are going to grant it based on the pressure you put on them, not on a competitive basis but based on what greases the skids the most. How about $500,000 for eco-friendly golf course improvements in Dayton, OH? We like that one? How about $8.4 million for a brandnew polar bear exhibit at the zoo in Providence, RI? Is that really a priority? When we are in this kind of trouble, we are going to be building zoos? That is what the Senate says we should do with this money, allow zoos to be built? I like this one: $6.1 million for corporate jet hangars in Fayetteville, AR. Those are the kinds of jobs we want to create? We want to create that kind of program? How about $100,000 to rehabilitate a skateboard park in Alameda, CA? We are going to take $100,000 from our kids to rehabilitate a skateboard park. That is what the American people want us to do with this money to put people to work? How about the Sunset View Dog Park in Chula Vista, CA? Just half a million dollars. That is on this list. If we do not accept this amendment, then tons of this stuff is going to go through--low priority, not high priority job creating but everybody's wish list in the country. When they heard this bill was first coming, every city across this country said: Well, what can we get? When you run a country that way, you can expect to get these kinds of requests. In this request is a new museum for Las Vegas, a mob museum. We will spend $50 million on a mob museum? That is really a priority right now for American citizens, especially their grandchildren who are still in the womb who are going to come out owing $500,000 as soon as they hit the ground? If we do not add this amendment to this bill, tons of stuff just like this is going to be included. Let me tell you the other justification for this. One of the best functioning things we have is a library and museum grant-seeking body. They have done a wonderful job through the last few years, except when we earmark around them, which we do routinely every year. But they go through an ordered process. What is going to happen is this is going to go around the ordered process again, and we are going to take away competitive grants. They are the only agency in the Federal Government that 100 percent follows up on every grant. They know the quality of the grants they give, and they never give another one if it was not quality. They make people pay back if it was not quality. There is nothing in this bill that will require us to get back the money from people who abuse the process. In the next appropriations bill--probably the one that is coming in the next week or so--we are going to have well over $100 million for museums. I guarantee you, it is probably in the omnibus that is coming. I bet you we have $100 million in there in spite of this $900 billion bill. I guarantee you we have $100 million in it. Maybe by me mentioning it we will not have it when it comes to the floor. I don't know. There is nothing in here that would say, if you are a highly endowed museum, you cannot get this money. Are we going to give the same amount of money to any museum, even when several have $1 billion or $2 billion in endowment? There is no direction in this bill. None. The golf course industry in the United States boasts approximately 12,000 golf courses. There is no prohibition in this bill that any of this money will not be spent building golf courses. Again, if you don't believe me, ask your 6-year-old grandchild: Do you think we ought to borrow your future to pay for a golf course in this country right now? There is no prohibition on that. It is going to happen. We all know it is going to happen. To go back to the mayors' wish list: $5 million for golf course renovations in Shreveport, LA; $1.2 million for a new golf park restoration in Brockton, MA; $1.5 million to replace the golf clubhouse in Roseville, MN; $2.1 million for Forest Park and urban golf renovation in St. Louis; $3 million for golf clubhouse replacement in Lincoln, NE; $500,000 for an environmentally friendly golf course in Dayton, OH; and $3 million for renovation of a golf course building in Hawaii. I know it is hard to put a bill such as this together, and I am not meaning to be overly critical, but I believe that unless we put a prohibition on what the money can go for, the money is going to go for low-priority items. I think it is reprehensible that we would not put a limit on the worst tendencies of local governments, the worst tendencies of State governments, and our own worst tendencies to spend money, especially when it is 100 percent borrowed; that we would not limit ourselves, that we would not put a choke chain on us to make sure we don't allow projects to go this way. I have talked about this long enough. I appreciate the indulgence of the chairman. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Yes.

Mr. COBURN. What this amendment does is it prohibits stimulus funding to pay for casinos, museums, aquariums, zoos, golf courses, swimming pools, stadiums, parks, theaters, art centers or highway beautification projects. I am not necessarily against those, but if we are going to spend money, we ought to spend money on the highest priority things first, not the finer things that we can't afford. We cannot afford to spend a penny on a museum right now with the trouble we are in. We cannot afford to spend a penny on a golf course with the trouble we are in. We cannot afford to spend a penny on theaters or art centers or highway beautification. Those are not a priority. Plus, most of those won't generate near the jobs as if we were spending it on something more substantive. There are billions of dollars in this bill for various grant programs for State and local governments, for supposedly local shovel-ready projects. How do we know that? Because the U.S. Conference of Mayors has a wish list of shovel- ready spending projects entitled Main Street Recovery Ready-to-Go Infrastructure Report. It includes billions in questionable and wasteful projects that should never be funded by the taxpayers, even if we had extra money--which we don't--and certainly should not be funded at this time, with the limited dollars we have and the way we are funding. We are not borrowing--no, we are stealing this money from our grandkids.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, isn't there a unanimous consent agreement that Senator Schumer goes next, then Senator Inhofe, and then somebody from the majority side, and then Senator Hutchison, and then somebody from the majority side, and then Senator Wicker, and then somebody from the majority side, and then Senator Hatch?

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, we are in the midst of debating a ``stimulus bill'' that has been brought forth in the hopes of alleviating some of the economic pain we have in this country. Principally, I object to many of the provisions in the bill because they are not stimulatory whatsoever. We all know that. We are going to add $1.2 trillion to the debt and we are not fixing the real problem this country is encountering, and that is the absolute collapse of the housing industry. We can spend all the money we want to spend on ``stimulus'' packages--which this one isn't--and it is not going to do a thing, unless we fix housing and the liquidity crisis. I bring up this amendment because it shows how misaligned this bill is. This amendment seeks to eliminate a $246 million earmark. It is nothing but that. It is a tax earmark for the movie industry. Let's put the history out there. The movie industry today can take advantage and write off all of its production costs and take an additional $15 million out of the taxpayers' pocket for every movie they produce in this country, of which 75 percent of the expenses are actually incurred in this country. What we have added is an earmark to markedly increase all movies produced in 2009, which is an additional $246 million. I am not against tax breaks that are general across the board and will be truly a stimulus, but this is a tax break earmark that has a tremendous odor to it. The odor is this: We already created tax breaks, starting in 2004, for the movie industry that are greater than we have for any other industry, and now we are going to add to it--at a time when Hollywood is at one of its zeniths of success. As a matter of fact, yesterday in USA Today is the headline: ``Billion Dollar January is the Box Office's Best in History.'' They had the best January in their history--more profits, more revenue, a 20-percent increase in ticket sales. Yet we are going to take a stimulus bill and add another quarter of a billion dollars to one of the few industries in our country that is faring well. To quote Rob Reiner, whom most people know--and I think this is probably disappointing to him--this is what he said when asked about Hollywood's relationship with Washington, DC: We are a special interest group that doesn't ask for anything, like earmarks, legislation, or tax breaks. We are the one industry that doesn't ask for a quid pro quo. What have we done in this bill? We have sent a quarter of a billion dollars of our grandkids' money to some of the most profitable businesses in this country, which at this point in time have not been impacted and don't project to be impacted at all by the recession we are currently experiencing. This isn't stimulus; this is a gift. It is not going to stimulate the economy at all. What it is going to do is line the pockets of very wealthy individuals who are already not experiencing the downside of the economy. What we should have instead is tax breaks that go across the board to every small business and to every large business. If it is written that way, I would not object if Hollywood got some of the money. But we have singled out one industry to give them special treatment, when they already get special treatment under the Tax Code. This is not an appropriations earmark, this is a Finance Committee earmark. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee is on the floor as we speak. It is not aimed at him. How long are we going to continue to play this game? How long are we going to continue to confuse the American people about what we are doing? I want the American people to respect what we are doing in this body. When we do things such as this and sneak in a quarter of a billion dollars for our friends, when they don't need it, because we can, we demean this institution. But more importantly, we contribute to the undermining of confidence in this country, showing that we are not about the best interests of all Americans, but instead the best interests of the special interests that have effective lobbying that can get a quarter of a billion dollars for this industry into a bill. I will come back later and talk on this again. I want the people in America to ask a simple question: Is this something we ought to be doing right now to help and heal America? Is it going to help people who are out of work? Is it going to help in terms of restarting the engine of consumer spending? Is it going to do the things we need to do to make a difference in our economic situation in the world today? The answer, on this special interest earmark, is absolutely not. What we are going to do is benefit those who are doing the best in the economy today, not those who are doing the worst. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, one of the things the American people have not heard about is everything that is in this bill. I want to spend some time tonight outlining the situation we are in as a nation, the fact that we have never had a bill this large at any time, in any way, shape, or form. I want to first start out by noting my experience as a physician. The greatest mistake physicians make is when they don't listen to the patient. One of the things we know is, if we don't listen to patients when they are sick, we end up making a lot of mistakes. The other thing we know as physicians is that if we treat just the symptoms of a disease, what we oftentimes do is worsen the disease. I want to use an example of pneumonia. I will relate to this example throughout the time I talk. If you come to me as a physician and you have a cough, a pain in your chest, a fever, and you are ill, I can make your symptoms go away, but I won't cure the underlying pneumonia you have as a patient. I can give you a cough medicine to suppress your cough. I can give you an antipyretic to control your temperature. I can give you, with that cough medicine, something to control the pain in your chest. I can do all those things. But if I fail to diagnose your real problem, which is pneumonia, all I am doing is covering up the symptoms of the real disease. I would contend with my colleagues and the American public that the bill we have before us is a bill that covers up the symptoms of the real disease. The real disease we have is the fact that housing and mortgages are in trouble. Everything we do that does not address that disease first, that does not attempt to solve that problem, everything we do that does not address the real disease we have is going to be wasted effort. It is not going to accomplish its purpose. As a matter of fact, there is not an economist out there right now who says if we pass this bill without fixing the mortgage problem, without fixing the housing problem--none of them agree that what we are going to do is going to have a significant impact. There is not one. You can't get one to come and testify unless you fix the real problem. We as American citizens are on the hook for 31 million mortgages. We have 31 million we now own--Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--so whatever happens to those mortgages, the American people are going to pay for them. If they are upside down and they get worse or if they go worse underwater, if they get foreclosed upon, the American taxpayers are going to have to pay for them. Now, who is that American taxpayer? It is not us. We are going to be dead and gone when it comes time to pay off the massive amounts of borrowing we are putting forward in this bill. That American taxpayer is our kids and our grandkids. So we dare not make the mistake of treating just symptoms. My contention is we are way too early with a stimulus bill. We can spend this $1.12 trillion by the time you add in the interest plus the six point some billion dollars we just added on top of it without paying for it. We can pass this bill. But we run the risk of doing exactly what the Japanese did in the 1990s. They passed eight separate stimulus bills, none of which addressed the real underlying disease of the Japanese economy. That is why it is called the ``lost decade'' in Japan. They now have a debt to GDP ratio of 150 percent of their GDP. So what are we to do? Are we to continue down this path with a bill that is going to spend over $1 trillion or should we be about fixing the real disease, which is the housing and the mortgage problems this country faces? Now, it is not easy to fix that. I know that. And I am not putting forward a definitive plan tonight to do that, although I think my side of the aisle is going to be offering one in the next few days that will address the real disease: housing and mortgages in this country. We got here--and it is important to remember how we got here, how we got the ``pneumonia''--we got the ``pneumonia'' because we said we were going to socialize the risk on mortgages so people in this country could buy a home who really could not afford a home, and we were going to put that risk on the rest of the American taxpayers. Well, that bill has come home. That bill now--besides the cost of actually being responsible for the 31-some million failed mortgages, of which probably 30 or 40 percent we are going to end up owning as American taxpayers; besides that cost, the cost in terms of lost jobs, the cost in terms of true, real pain to American citizens who are having trouble feeding their families, paying their bills, the real cost of that is enormous on our society. What I want the American people to know is we caused that. We did that. We created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and then we did not do the regulatory work we should have done. We encouraged them to be irresponsible. We encouraged them to have bonuses, by making more and more and more of the loans and guaranteeing them and packaging them and selling them throughout the world. We did that. The Congress did that. No President did that--not President Clinton, not President Bush, and not President Obama. We did it. So we ought to be about fixing the real problem. Until we fix this problem, we are going to stay in a recession. We can pass a bill that spends $1.12 trillion, and we are still going to be in a recession because what the economists tell us this year is that home prices are going to decline another 11 to 12 percent, which is going to put millions more Americans and their mortgages in trouble. So we can pass a bill that spends $1.12 trillion or we can say maybe we ought to address the real problem. It is not going to be long until the Obama administration comes to this body and asks for $500 billion more to solve the problem with bank loans and mortgages. We ought to be doing that first. That is the real disease. There is not anybody in this body who will deny that the real disease is the housing and the mortgage failure in this country. We are going to spend a week on this legislation. It is going to go to conference. It is going to come back. Most of the stuff we are able to take back is going to be added in conference because the power to do that is there, and it is incumbent on the other side of the aisle that they are going to take care of those who are on their team. I want to make another point. In this bill we are talking about, we are making a fatal mistake. Let me tell you what that fatal mistake is. We are transferring the irresponsibility we have had over the last 6 years in this Congress--or last 8 years in this Congress--to the States because what we are telling them is: You do not have to be fiscally responsible. You do not have to live within your means because Uncle Sam is going to bail you out. That is what this bill says. We are going to bail them out. So for the States, such as my State, that were smart enough and wise enough to create a rainy day fund and live within their means, we are going to ask all the taxpayers of all the States that have done that to pay for the exorbitant spending and growth in Government in all the rest of the States. What is that going to do in the future? What is the signal that sends to the rest of the States? Here is what the signal says. Do not worry about it because if you get in trouble again, the Federal Government is going to bail you out. Remember when New York City was going bankrupt? What did we do? Did we just pay for everything? Did we just send Federal money? No. We created an environment where they made the changes. We helped them. And I am not opposed to helping the States make the changes to put them back on a fiscal course to live within their means. The other thing that is bad about this bill is every American family out there today--I do not care what their income is--they are reassessing every day what they need to do in terms of how to get by in the economic situation in which we find ourselves. They are making tough choices. There is not one tough choice in this bill. Let me explain what I mean by that. President Obama campaigned on the fact that we ought to live within our means; that every program ought to be reviewed; that those that are not effective, those that have waste, those that have high fraud rates, those that are low priority ought to be eliminated. There is not one penny of effort placed in this bill that will get rid of less important Federal programs today. We know there is at least $300 billion a year that is inefficiently, erroneously, and fraudulently spent by the Federal Government. We ask our children and our grandchildren to choke down $1.1 trillion more of debt when we have not done anything--not one thing--to lessen the waste, fraud, and abuse, the inefficiency, and to make choices on what is more important. What we are saying is everything we are doing now is important, everything we are doing is efficient, everything is working fine, and, by the way, we are going to add another $1.1 trillion. I have this chart to show how we got in trouble--because we were spending money we did not have on things we do not need. That is how we got in trouble. This chart shows the deficits of the Federal Government from 2004, plus what CBO expects, without interest costs, by the way, as to what is going to happen to us. We know, last year, under real accounting, accounting for the Social Security money we stole--and that is the only way you can say it; we stole about $160 billion out of the Social Security system--the real deficit, last year, set a record we have never seen. It was $609 billion. That is as of September 30. The estimate of CBO for this year is we are going to have--before we even talk about stimulus, before we do anything on stimulus, and before we account for the interest costs on stimulus--we are going to have a $1.2 trillion deficit. Now, divide that out by 300 million Americans, and what you see is we are going to have a deficit of about $16,000 per family. For every family in this country, we are going to borrow $16,000 against their kids' future before we do this, before we even approach doing this. It does not get a lot better. Note these numbers: $1.4 trillion, if we add what the CBO expects to come out of this stimulus package, and only one-fourth of it is going to get spent this year. Now, what do we know about stimulus packages in the past? Here is what we know. Only two times in our history--only two times in our history--have we ever had a stimulus package that was effective. Two times. John Fitzgerald Kennedy created a stimulus package that was effective, and Ronald Reagan, in the early 1980s, created a stimulus package that was effective. All of the others have been ineffective to fix what was ailing us. If we do not fix the mortgage problem in this country, and housing, this money will be to no avail other than to shackle our children and our grandchildren for years to come. What does that mean when I say ``shackle''? It means stealing their future. Right now the average American has a 30-percent higher standard of living than the average European and the average Japanese. What we are about to do--and we have been doing--is to guarantee that 30-percent advantage in standard of living is going to go away. Other people say: Well, you have to fix the finance, you have to fix the credit markets, you have to fix the liquidity markets. You cannot fix the credit markets, you cannot fix the liquidity problems we have by spending money. We have already spent $400 billion of the TARP money, and other than pulling us back from the precipice of an absolute collapse of our financial markets, we still have the credit markets tied up and frozen in this country. I want to give you an example. I have a farmer friend who has been banking with a bank for 15 years. He has never missed a payment. He has been 100 percent on his payments every time. He has assets far in excess of what his loans are--far in excess--15, 20 times what his loans are. He was told this last week by his bank: We don't want your business anymore. Now, this is a guy who is a premium credit risk. Why do they not want his business? Because they want the money in the bank rather than to have even a good loan outstanding. Our credit problems are not getting better. They are getting worse. We have not solved the problem by putting money on the equity side of the balance sheets of the banks. The reason we have not solved the problem is because we have not approached and fixed the real disease, which is the mortgage markets and the mortgages that are underwater and the housing crisis in this country. I want to spend a moment on another issue. A lot of the rhetoric we have heard in the last 3 or 4 months in this country goes after markets and capitalism. Market forces and capitalism in this country created the greatest country that has ever been or ever will be. When we hear market forces and capitalism criticized as the cause of all of our problems, we need to do a gut check. Market forces and capitalism didn't cause this problem. Congress caused this problem, by our short-term thinking, by thinking, How do I look good politically, how do I do something that isn't based on markets? That is what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were all about. We were actually giving loans to people who couldn't afford them. It wasn't market capitalism that got us in trouble, it was short-term, politically expedient thinking that got us in trouble. So the next time you hear somebody attacking the very thing that generated liberty, that very thing that generated freedom, the very thing that generated the greatest standard of living in the world, you ought to ask the question: Is that true? Did market capitalism get us in this trouble? What got us in this trouble was creating a socialized risk that abandoned the market principles and created a system of loans to people who could not afford the loans. One of the questions I think we ought to ask--at least the American taxpayer ought to be asking every Member of Congress--is what guarantee do you have that passing this $1.12 trillion spending bill is going to solve the problem? You know what. There is not a guarantee out there. No Member of Congress can tell them that. We are going to treat the symptoms with this bill. We are going to solve some of the short-term problems. We are going to create dependency from the States. We are going to outline and do things we have no business doing. We are going to expand Federal bureaucracies. We are going to raise the baseline to $300 billion that will never go away. That is what we are going to do with this bill. We are going to emphasize and fund the most inefficient bureaucracies in the world, not on the basis of what is the best thing to do but because we will look good and we will help out somebody who needs our help right now. I am not opposed to us helping people who are unemployed. I am not opposed to giving extra food stamps to people who find themselves, through no fault of their own, in a predicament they can't change, but that is not what this bill does. What this bill does is take a list of policy options that have been on the table for years and funds them in enormous, extravagant amounts, that will have no impact--zero impact-- in terms of getting us out of a recession, and will have a 100-percent impact in guaranteeing we are going to lower the standard of living in this country and we are going to steal opportunity from our children. Let's look at where we are right now as a nation. At the end of this year, we will have an $11.6 trillion debt, probably an $11.8 trillion debt, very close to our total GDP. We have $95 billion in unfunded liabilities we are going to place on the backs of our children and our grandchildren through Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare Part D--things we are going to give people that they have not paid for or we have stolen the money that was there to pay for them, and we are going to transfer that to our children. Last year, we paid, as Americans, $230 billion in interest. Do you know what it is going to be 2 years from now? It is going to be $450 billion. How many people think the interest rates we are seeing today are going to be stable and the same 5 years from now? All of the economists tell us they are not. As the world looks toward us and we continue to borrow--we have increased our debt by $5 trillion by the time you take what the Federal Reserve has done and what the Treasury has done--how many people think we are going to be able to borrow money for 10 years for 2.6 percent? No economist thinks that. They know it is going to rise 2 or 3 percent. So we are going to go from about 16 percent of our budget for interest payments to about 40 percent of our budget for interest payments. What are we going to do then? The very real important things we need to do--not the superfluous stuff; the important things the Constitution says we should be doing--what are we going to do then? Are we going to borrow more? What happens when we borrow more? What happens when we borrow more is interest rates go up, inflation goes up, and we have one of two choices: We can file bankruptcy as a nation or we can have hyperinflation and a marked devaluation of the value of the dollar. What does that mean? That means you won't be able to keep up with your payments, you won't be able to buy a home, the cost of any good that is imported in here will rise astronomically. This is Armageddon for us. While we are in this shape, how dare we think we can spend money we don't have now on things we don't need now and get out of a problem that was caused by the very same philosophy: It cannot happen and it will not happen. Let me outline what we have done so far in terms of this ``economic downturn.'' Last April, we borrowed $160 billion from our grandkids and we gave everybody a tax credit under $75,000 a year or $150,000 for families. We didn't pay for a penny of it. We didn't get rid of one wasteful program. We didn't make one hard choice. What do the economists tell us we did with that? What was the net effect? The net effect was that 12 percent of it had an effect. Twelve percent. Now, crank that up to $1.1 trillion at 12 percent, which is what the estimate is of this bill in terms of what kind of effect it is going to have. We are going to have about $120 billion that is going to have a positive effect, and then we are going to have another $850 billion or $860 billion that is going to have no effect whatsoever except to steal the future from our kids and our grandkids. We are going in exactly the wrong direction. We ought to be standing on the principles that made this country great. There ought to be a review of every program in the Federal Government that is not effective, that is not efficient, that is wasteful or fraudulent, and we ought to get rid of it right now. We ought to say, Gone, to be able to pay for a real stimulus plan that might, in fact, have some impact. I would be remiss if I didn't remind everybody that next week we are going to hear from the Obama administration wanting another $500 billion. Outside of this, they are going to want another $500 billion to handle the banking system. Still not fixing the real disease--the pneumonia--we are going to treat the fever or treat the cough, but we are not going to treat the real disease. Until we treat the real disease, this is pure waste. It is worse than pure waste. It is morally reprehensible, because it steals the future of the next two generations. I am going to wind up here and finish, but I wanted to spend some time to make sure the American people know what is in this bill. I think once they know what is in this bill, they are going to reject it out of hand. Let me read for my colleagues some of the things that are in this bill. The biggest earmark in history is in this bill. There is $2 billion in this bill to build a coal plant with zero emissions. That would be great, maybe, if we had the technology, but the greatest brains in the world sitting at MIT say we don't have the technology yet to do that. Why would we build a $2 billion powerplant we don't have the technology for that we know will come back and ask for another $2 billion and another $2 billion and another $2 billion when we could build a demonstration project that might cost $150 million or $200 million? There is nothing wrong with having coal-fired plants that don't produce pollution; I am not against that. Even the Washington Post said the technology isn't there. It is a boondoggle. Why would we do that? We eliminated tonight a $246 million payback for the large movie studios in Hollywood. We are going to spend $88 million to study whether we ought to buy a new ice breaker for the Coast Guard. You know what. The Coast Guard needs a new ice breaker. Why do we need to spend $88 million? They have two ice breakers now that they could retrofit and fix and come up with equivalent to what they needed to and not spend the $1 billion they are going to come back and ask for, for another ice breaker, so why would we spend $88 million doing that? We are going to spend $448 million to build the Department of Homeland Security a new building. We have $1.3 trillion worth of empty buildings right now, and because it has been blocked in Congress we can't sell them, we can't raze them, we can't do anything, but we are going to spend money on a new building here in Washington. We are going to spend another $248 million for new furniture for that building; a quarter of a billion dollars for new furniture. What about the furniture the Department of Homeland Security has now? These are tough times. Should we be buying new furniture? How about using what we have? That is what a family would do. They would use what they have. They wouldn't go out and spend $248 million on furniture. How about buying $600 million worth of hybrid vehicles? Do you know what I would say? Right now times are tough; I would rather Americans have new cars than Federal employees have new cars. What is wrong with the cars we have? Dumping $600 million worth of used vehicles on the used vehicle market right now is one of the worst things we could do. Instead, we are going to spend $600 million buying new cars for Federal employees. There is $400 million in here to prevent STDs. I have a lot of experience on that. I have delivered 4,000 babies. We don't need to spend $400 million on STDs. What we need to do is properly educate about the infection rates and the effectiveness of methods of prevention. That doesn't take a penny more. You can write that on one piece of paper and teach every kid in this country, but we don't need to spend $400 million on it. It is not a priority. How about $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs? That might even be somewhat stimulative. New sewers. That might create jobs. How about $150 million for a Smithsonian museum? Tell me how that helps get us out of a recession. Tell me how that is a priority. Would the average American think that is a priority that we ought to be mortgaging our kids' future to spend another $150 million at the Smithsonian? How about $1 billion for the 2010 census? So everybody knows, the census is so poorly managed that the census this year is going to cost twice--in 2010 is going to cost twice what it cost 10 years ago, and we wasted $800 million on a contract because it was no-bid that didn't perform. Nobody got fired, no competitive bidding, and we blew $800 million. We have $75 million for smoking cessation activities, which probably is a great idea, but we just passed a bill--the SCHIP bill--that we need to get 21 million more Americans smoking to be able to pay for that bill. That doesn't make sense. How about $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges? Since when is a community college in my State a recipient of Federal largesse? Is that our responsibility? I mean, did we talk with Dell and Hewlett-Packard and say, How do we make you all do better? Is there not a market force that could make that better? Will we actually buy on a true competitive bid? No, because there is nothing that requires competitive bidding in anything in this bill. There is nothing that requires it. It is one of the things President Obama said he was going to mandate at the Federal Government, but there is no competitive bidding in this bill at all. We have $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas. Well, that will put 10 or 15 people to work. Is that a priority for us right now? There is $6 billion to turn Federal buildings into green buildings. That is a priority, versus somebody getting a job outside of Washington, a job that actually produces something, that actually increases wealth? How about $500 million for State and local fire stations? Where do you find in the Constitution us paying for local fire stations within our realm of prerogatives? None of it is competitively bid--not a grant program. Next is $1.2 billion for youth activities. Who does that employ? What does that mean? How about $88 million for renovating the public health service building? You know, if we could sell half of the $1.3 trillion worth of properties we have, we could take care of every Federal building requirement and backlog we have. Then there's $412 million for CDC buildings and property. We spent billions on a new center and headquarters for CDC. Is that a priority? Building another Government building instead of--if we are going to spend $412 million on building buildings, let's build one that will produce something, one that will give us something. How about $850 million for that most ``efficient'' Amtrak that hasn't made any money since 1976 and continues to have $2 billion or $3 billion a year in subsidies? Here is one of my favorites: $75 million to construct a new ``security training'' facility for State Department security officers, and we have four other facilities already available to train them. But it is not theirs. They want theirs. By the way, it is going to be in West Virginia. I wonder how that got there. So we are going to build a new training facility that duplicates four others that we already have that could easily do what we need to do. But because we have a stimulus package, we are going to add in oink pork. How about $200 million in funding for a lease--not buying, but a lease of alternative energy vehicles on military installations? We are going to bail out the States on Medicaid. Total all of the health programs in this, and we are going to transfer $150 billion out of the private sector and we are going to move it to the Federal Government. You talk about backdooring national health care. Henry Waxman has to be smiling big today. He wants a single-payer Government-run health care system. We are going to move another $150 billion to the Federal Government from the private sector. We are going to eliminate fees on loans from the Small Business Administration. You know what that does? That pushes productive capital to unproductive projects. It is exactly the wrong thing to do. Then there is $160 million to the Job Corps Program--but not for jobs and not to put more people in the Job Corps but to construct or repair buildings. We are going to spend $524 million for information technology upgrades that the Appropriations Committee claims will create 388 jobs. If you do the math on that, that is $1.5 million a job. Don't you love the efficiency of Washington thinking? We are going to create $79 billion in additional money for the States, a ``slush fund,'' to bail out States and provide millions of dollars for education costs. How many of you think that will ever go away? Once the State education programs get $79 billion over 2 years, do you think that will ever go away? The cry and hue of taking our money away--even though it was a stimulus and supposed to be limited, it will never go away. So we will continue putting that forward until our kids have grandkids of their own. There is about $47 billion for a variety of energy programs that are primarily focused on renewable energy. I am fine with spending that. But we ought to get something for it. There ought to be metrics. There are no metrics. It is pie in the sky, saying we will throw some money at it. Let me conclude by saying we are at a seminal moment in our country. We will either start living within the confines of realism and responsibility or we will blow it and we will create the downfall of the greatest Nation that ever lived. This bill is the start of that downfall. To abandon a market-oriented society and transfer it to a Soviet-style, government-centered, bureaucratic-run and mandated program, that is the thing that will put the stake in the heart of freedom in this country. I hope the American people know what is in this bill. I am doing everything I can to make sure they know. But more important, I hope somebody is listening who will treat the ``pneumonia'' we are faced with today, which is the housing and mortgage markets. It doesn't matter how much money we spend in this bill. It is doomed to failure unless we fix that problem first. Failing that, we will go down in history as the Congress that undermined the future and vitality of this country. Let it not be so. Mr. President, I appreciate the indulgence of you and the staff. With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wanted to respond to some comments by the chairman of the Finance Committee. The explanation of why we have a $250 million earmark for the movie industry was that when we attempted to give them this earmark before, somebody took it out, and now we are going to put it back. The consequence, however, belies the fact that we are only doing this for 1 year. If it is something they deserve and it should be equal, why wouldn't it be there every year? The second point is that the movie industry gets to take advantage of every depreciation out there that every other business has. There was some debate in the House last year on whether they were truly manufacturers. But they also now have $15 million for every movie in direct writeoffs above their depreciation if they produce 75 percent of those costs in this country. If they do it in a low employment area, they get another $20 million. To say we are righting something that was wrong before doesn't fit with common sense. If we are righting it, let's put it in forever--if that is what we are trying to do. But in this bill we do it for 2009 only. The second point I will make is that this bill is without any sacrifice. When President Obama was elected, one of the things he campaigned on was an item-by-item look at the Federal budget, to get rid of programs that don't work, get rid of lower priority programs that might work but are not efficient and are not a priority. Nowhere in this bill is there an elimination of one Government program--not one. There is no line by line. There is no attempt to do what we are asking Americans to do every day. Here is what we are asking them to do: We are in tough financial straits. Go through your budget, figure out what you cannot afford, and eliminate it. We have not done that at all with this bill. There is no attempt to make the Federal Government more efficient. This bill is filled with bloating bureaucracies, further lessening liberty and freedom by way of having bureaucracies decide what we will have to follow. I am not against the movie industry. I love the movies they produce-- the vast majority; some I abhor. But I enjoy their entertainment and the fact that they are profitable and viable. They have been very successful this last year. They had the best January in their history. For us to put a quarter of a billion dollars into an earmarked tax benefit for the movie industry at a time when Americans are struggling belies the honor and integrity of this institution. With that, I retain the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask the Senator, if I am a manufacturer and I don't have $15 million that I can come up with in bonus depreciation, do I still get to write off $15 million?