Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, this is another amendment. It is about being prudent with the taxpayers' money. It is about us doing what we are expected to do. It is about us controlling improper payments. This amendment would require that the final rule implementing the payment error rate measurement requirements under section 601(b) shall not be made later than 6 months after the date of enactment of this act. Now, the problem that we have is, the legislation, in its current form, would effectively erase this long overdue progress by placing an unnecessary moratorium on the reporting requirements for Medicaid improper payment numbers. Let me say that again. In its current form, this legislation erases this long overdue progress by placing a moratorium on the reporting requirements for Medicaid improper payment numbers. Section 601 of the bill states: The provision would prohibit the Secretary from calculating or publishing national or state-specific error rates based on

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. That is simply not true.

Mr. COBURN. They are going to get preventive care, and let me tell my colleagues how. What is the number of children who are not getting preventive care in the first 6 months of life right now? We don't know that number, and that is exactly the problem. Here is the point: Every one of us wants children to get health care. It is not about wanting children to get health care.

Mr. COBURN. The fact is, we have an SCHIP program now and a Medicaid Program right now where we have 5.4 million kids who are eligible and who are not enrolled. What we are doing is exactly the opposite of what President Obama stated we should be doing. He stated that we should be being responsible. I would contend that one of the areas of being responsible is to make sure programs work. When we have a program where last year, on average, 5.5 million kids were covered and another 5.4 million kids who were eligible weren't covered, I would tell my colleagues that program isn't working very well. It is not working. So what have we done? We have expanded the eligibility with this bill. The debate over how we cover all the rest of Americans--we will have that debate, and I am sure we are going to have that debate this year. But the fact that 51 percent of the eligible children under the programs we have now, under the requirements we have now, are covered means 49 percent aren't. In this bill is a measly little $100 million to try to expand the enrollment of those kids who are already eligible. I would think the average American out there who does have insurance or who may not have insurance might say: Well, why don't you make the program you have today work? We would have more kids covered than this bill will totally cover if we just made the requirements that the States and Medicaid directors throughout do the outreach to get the kids who are eligible. The fact is, most of the poor women in this country--up to 300 percent right now--deliver under either title XIX or Medicaid. Their children are covered the first year of life. They are not going to miss the first well child visit. As a matter of fact, they are the ones--the biggest problem we have is getting the people who have coverage to be responsible and to bring their kids in. It is not about coverage; it is about responsibility--the very thing our new President said we need to reach up to and grab. The other point that has to be brought forward in this debate is there is a lack of integrity with this bill. Let me tell my colleagues what it is. I do not doubt this Senator's integrity whatsoever. He is a friend of mine. When he speaks, he speaks from the heart. But when we manipulate the numbers and we drop a program from $13 billion to $8 billion in the last year of the first 5 years of its authorization so we don't have to meet the requirements of living within our means, and then we transfer $13.2 billion so we lower the baseline--this is all inside baseball--what, in fact, we are doing is we are lying to the American people to the tune of $41.3 billion. That is what CBO says. That is what CBO says in a letter to Paul Ryan, the ranking member on the Budget Committee in the House, that, in fact, because we manipulated the numbers, because we cheated with the numbers, that it is actually going to cost $41.2 billion or $41.3 billion more than what we are saying it is going to cost. Why is that important? Because we have decided to pay for this with one of the most regressive taxes toward poor people that we can. The consequence is that we are going to tax them and then we are going to wink and nod to the rest of the American public to say: This $41.2 billion, oh, don't worry about it; we are going to fudge the rules; we are not going to play the game honestly and with integrity. There is not going to be change you can believe in because the Senate's bill winks and nods at $41 billion. We all know that is there. We all know that is the only way they can do it to where it is scored in terms of pay-go. So what we did is we paid attention to the numbers but not to the integrity behind the numbers. So the American taxpayer in some way or another will take on, from 2014 to 2019, an additional $41 billion. That is not change, folks, regardless of how good our goal is, regardless that every Member of this body wants to see kids who don't have care covered. Every Member wants to see that. We don't want the first child, we want every American covered--every American covered. But to do that under the guise of ``integrity in our numbers'' puts us right back into the same problems that got us into the deep financial problems we have today. Let's be honest. Let's talk about what this bill really costs, what we know it would cost if we didn't play a game with the numbers, and what we could do to offset some of the programs President Obama says need to be eliminated so we can do the things that are good. There is not one attempt in this bill to do that. As a matter of fact, there is an attempt to cover non-U.S. citizens at the expense of U.S. citizens in this bill. So basically we are going to keep a 9-percent approval rating because we are not going to earn the trust of the American people about being honest about what something really costs. I want to tell my colleagues, that undermines the whole debate. It sends us on a track to where we are going to be a Third World country because we won't even be honest about what things really cost. There is nothing wrong with having an honest debate about what this bill really costs, but to deceive the American people on what this bill actually costs--actually costs and will actually cost them--it is not going to cost us; it is going to actually cost them. It is going to cost them in terms of a lower standard of living and less opportunity. Let's get honest about what it really costs, and it really costs $41.2 billion more than what we say it is going to cost. Let's do the hard work. If the bill is such that the Senator from Pennsylvania thinks it is absolutely necessary so children will develop, so children will become productive, isn't it worth getting rid of things that don't make kids develop and don't make them productive? Isn't it worth us taking the heat to get rid of programs that aren't effective so we can actually pay for this? Instead, we are in essence lying to the American public about the true cost of this bill. That is what has to stop. The integrity of those who want to do this is fine. The integrity of the numbers stinks. For us to say we are for children and have that honorable position that we are for children, but at the same time we want to undermine the faith in this place so they can't believe us in the future because we are going to charge them $41.2 billion more than it actually costs says a whole lot about us. Every child should have an opportunity for health care. Every child should have prevention. Every child should get a hearing screen and a vision screen as we do now at every newborn nursery in this country. Every child should get their immunizations at every opportunity when they encounter--first at 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and a year, their first year of life. The whole purpose for that screening is to see if development is not normal. The Senator from Maryland talked about the mandated oral health care in this bill. The mandated oral health care in this bill is a direct consequence of one of our other programs to help people. It is called food stamps. When we look at the mix of food stamps, what do we see? We see a high predilection for high-fructose corn syrup in the foods that we use food stamps to buy which causes the very dental caries we are fighting. So do we fix the real problem or do we treat the symptoms? We ought to be about fixing the real problems. So if we want to do and mandate oral health care in this bill, why don't we put a limitation on the high-fructose corn syrup products and high-glucose products that are the No. 1 cause of the dental caries the kids are having? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But we didn't do that. We didn't come forward with a total plan on health care, which is the whole problem as we try to expand this bill to meet a need. What we need to do--and I think the Senator from Pennsylvania agrees--is we need to reform all of health care. It needs to be based on prevention. It needs to be based on prevention. It needs to be based on teaching and preventing disease rather than treating disease. My hope is that when we come through this, whatever we do, win or lose--whether my side wins or the other side wins--what should happen is Americans should win. The American people should win. What that means is an honest debate about the numbers--not a game with the numbers, an honest debate about the numbers--and what it really means is an honest debate about what the real problems are and not about things that aren't the real problems. We have plenty of money in health care. We don't need to increase spending in health care. What we need to do is redirect the spending that is there. We spent $2.28 trillion last year on health care. Thirty percent of that money didn't go to help anybody get well or prevent anybody from getting sick. That is $600 billion. If we would look at it and say prevention is going to be No. 1, and No. 2 is going to be every American insured, we could go a long way toward solving this problem. Unfortunately, however, we have chosen to start off the new SCHIP by trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the American taxpayer, by playing funny numbers. Why would we leave that out there? Why would we do that? It lessens the integrity of the debate. It lessens the quality of the work product we put forward. It undermines the very thing we need most from the American people, which is their confidence that we are doing what is in the best long-term interests of the country. This bill isn't in the best long-term interests of the country. The bill doesn't address the needs of the Medicaid populations out there today who aren't served who could be served if, in fact, we should mandate that the States go and do it. But we have chosen not to do that. We have chosen to expand up the chain before we fix the problems down the chain. We have chosen to take dollars and give them to those who are more fortunate instead of spending dollars on the people who are the least fortunate in this country, all in the name of a movement to close in ultimately on a single-payer health system. Let's have the debate about single-payer health system. One final point I will make before I yield to my friend from North Carolina, and that is this: The most important thing after access is choice. We know what. Medicaid offers little choice. SCHIP offers little choice. The reason is because we have a payment system that rewards specialty and doesn't reward primary care. It started with Medicare, and it has worked its way through Medicaid. So our average pediatrician in this country makes about a fourth of what the average surgeon does or about a fourth of what the average gastroenterologist makes, and we ask ourselves: Why can't we get more pediatricians? Our average family practitioner makes a little bit more than that, but not much, and we ask ourselves: Why can't we get people out there into primary care? Our average internist makes just a little bit more but still about a fourth of what the specialists make because we have decided to pay it. Who is going to take care of them? Let me tell you who is going to take care of them: PAs and nurse practitioners. Some are excellent, some are great, but none of them have the training of a physician. We are slowly walking to a health care area where we are going to tell people you have coverage, but the coverage is you do not have choice and you do not have the same level of care because we have not chosen the priorities of compensating primary care, compensating pediatricians, compensating pediatric dentistry, compensating internists to care for these kids. Choice is the most important thing, and the reason is because if a mother is taking her child to a health care professional in which she does not have confidence, do you know what happens? She does do what they say. As we eliminate choice, which is what happens in SCHIP and Medicaid because so few physicians take it because the reimbursement rate is so low, we eliminate the doctor-patient relationship in establishing the confidence necessary to make sure, as the Senator from Pennsylvania said, that these kids will develop, that they will become productive. The idea behind this whole program is we have taken away the most important attribute of consequences of care, and that is confidence in the provider. I yield to my colleague from North Carolina.

Mr. COBURN. I will make this short because I know we have a swearing in. I wanted to make a few points. When President Obama talks about being responsible, if you sign an affidavit that you will cover and be the sponsor for a legal immigrant in this country, you ought to do that. That is what he is talking about. He is not talking about: I will do it until I can get someone else to take care of my responsibility, talking about it, if you sign an affidavit that you will do it. The idea that 22 States already do this is great. If States want to do it, that is what makes our Union so great, that 22 States can, except now they cannot afford to do it, and we are going to be bailing them out to the tune of about $300 billion on Medicaid and SCHIP programs in the supplemental or the spending package or the stimulus package that is coming through. What this bill is going to do is make permanent that people do not have to be responsible when they, in fact, sign an affidavit that they will sponsor a legal immigrant. One final point I would make is, the Senator from Pennsylvania listed all of those premium assistance programs that Pennsylvania has because that is what they are, premium assistance rather than a regular SCHIP program. Well, in this bill you have extremely limited any new premium assistance programs without an absolute mandate and an absolute mandate on what kind of program you have. You will be in an HMO. You will not have the doctor of choice, and you will not go where you want; you will go where you are sent. So great points, great need in our country, great debate, but integrity first. Be honest with the numbers about what they really mean. Everybody in this Chamber knows they are not, but we are not going to change that. Even if we offer an amendment, it is not going to go anywhere because nobody knows what to get rid of to be able to afford to pay for that. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. I control the time.

Mr. COBURN. The number is zero because every one of them is tested.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to ask the Senator from Pennsylvania a couple questions, if he might be so kind as to respond. Your earlier statement was without this, children will not develop, children will not become productive members of our society. Having taken care of 4,000 infants and done well child exams on them, what is the number of children out there who are not getting vision and hearing screens right now?

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wonder if anybody has ever asked the question--it has certainly never been answered--if you are a family and you qualify at the new 300 percent and you are buying your own insurance and you are covering your two kids, what happens when you transfer your kids to SCHIP, the Children's Health Insurance Program? What happens to your premium? I can tell you what happens to the premium. Do you know what happens to the premium? It goes down zero because health insurance is sold as an individual or a family product. So by taking two children, if I am earning 300 percent of poverty, and taking them off and transferring--now I am paying for it--and transferring that to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the taxpayers of this country now will pay for that premium about $2,200 a piece when you can buy it in the private market for $1,100 a piece, but the parents will get no decrease in their insurance premium. That is why the crowdout provision is so negative for the American taxpayer and the generations that follow us. My friend, the Senator from Ohio, mentioned that everybody wants to cover the 200 percent and below. The fact is, we have done a terrible job of covering the 200 percent and below. There are 5.4 million children out there today who do not have health insurance, whose parents do not have health insurance, who are eligible for Medicaid and SCHIP today, and they are not signed up. What are we doing? We are expanding a program that has only gotten about 51 percent of the kids who are eligible right now signed into the program. We are also being dishonest about what it costs. It is actually going to cost $42 billion more than what we say it is going to cost. Nobody will deny that. So why would we not want to have something that will limit the amount of crowdout because as we take money for kids who are now insured and put it to them through a Government program, it means these same 5.4 million kids are still not going to get covered. We have not improved the program by increasing the eligibility. What we have done is we have just moved the income scale up to $60,000, some $62,450 a year, and we say: We will now cover your kids, and even if you have them covered now, you will not get any break from your insurance. But the same 5.4 million kids who are in poverty or at 200 percent of poverty still are not covered. What are we doing? Why wouldn't we want to fix it to where all the kids who are out there today who do not have insurance, who are 200 percent and below the poverty level, why aren't we making sure they are covered? Why are we not doing that? Why are we not saying: States, you can go to the 300 percent if you want but only after you have covered the kids whom the program was designed for in the first place. There is an amendment by Senator Hatch in that regard. Why would we spend all this extra money? By the way, we just met with the President. Other than the short-term financial struggles we are in, one of the big concerns with him is the fact that we have an unending entitlement disaster before us and we are getting ready to make it worse. Why would we not address that? Why would we say we are going to help kids but not really help kids? Why would we say we want to help the poorest children and the families who need it the most but still ignore them? There is an answer to it. There is an answer to it, in that we want to move whichever way we can to eventually have a single-payer system in this country. We gutted the Premium Assistance Program. The Senator from Pennsylvania listed all the great things about the Premium Assistance Program. He listed all the different programs in Pennsylvania. Those are gutted under this bill. You can have one, but by the time you get it, nobody will want to have it. We have taken what people have and said maybe we could spend $500 per kid per year to keep them in a health insurance program that the parents might have at work, but instead we are taking them all out and putting them in a Government program that costs twice as much as it does to buy them the same insurance in the open market. Crowdout is a real phenomenon, but the most important thing is it helps the people who need it the least the most. And it helps the least those people who need it the most. That is what we are doing in this bill. We are not helping the lowest. We are only moving it up the chain and we are saying if you make $62,000 a year in this country, your children can be covered by the Government. Why would you not want to do that? We do not have any other Government program that people do not voluntarily take if we put it out there. That is in the face of the fact that this year--hear my words very clearly--this year the true Federal budget deficit will be $1.6 trillion. The Government will spend $24,000 per family more than it takes in. Hear those words--$24,000 more per family it will spend than it takes in. What is the future to be for this child at the 300 percent above poverty level? Their parents make $62,000 and we are going to give them this gift of health insurance today. But you will not be able to afford a college education. You certainly will never afford a home. It is doubtful you will ever be able to afford a car that is reliable. You will be in a debtor nation. Those are the consequences of our actions in the name of wanting to expand a program that today is highly ineffective in addressing the needs of the real poor children in this country. Why would we do that, and just say: Don't worry, you have a pricetag to pay if you ever hope to get out of college or have the ability to get out of college? By the way, we are going to up your taxes if you get out there and get it up here on the front end. This body is abandoning the very principles this country was built on. This country was built on a heritage of sacrifice, sacrifice by the common man for the common good to create a great, bright shining future for the generations that follow. This bill doesn't fit with that heritage. This bill, as a matter of fact, undermines that heritage. In the name of helping children, we are hurting those children's children. We are stealing opportunity from those children's children. As I said earlier this morning, I want every child in this country insured. If we took the money that was out there today in Medicaid and SCHIP and the State contribution to it, we could insure every child in this country. We could create an insurance policy for every child in this country that gives them total screening exams, could give them prevention care, could give them acute care, and could give them hospital care. Yet when we run it through the Government, it costs twice as much because of the inefficiencies that are inherent in the system. Later on I am going to offer a limitation based on improper payments. The American public may not know this. Certainly Members of Congress know. We do not know how much money is wasted in Medicaid because Medicaid has refused to report it. By law they are mandated to report it. They have refused to report it. We now have the information on 17 States on improper payments. The average is 10.5 percent on the 17 States we have looked at. Of that, 90 percent of those are overpayments. In New York City alone their own inspector general said at a minimum $15 billion a year is wasted in fraud, abuse, and deceit on the Medicaid Program. Where have we addressed any of that in this? Where have we put the safeguards to make sure this doesn't happen here? We have not done that. We are not fixing the problems that are in front of us. What we are doing is creating more problems in the name of expanding a children's insurance program and limiting the future of the things that have been very successful with it, such as premium assistance, and taking that away. There is going to be crowdout and the crowdout is going to benefit the most wealthy of the upper middle income because in some States, by the time you count exclusions, you can earn $120,000 a year and have your kids on SCHIP. We are going to help them. But not the kids of the parents working at $7 an hour, both of them, making $28,000 or $30,000 a year, of which half of them are not on either Medicaid or SCHIP. Why would we do that? Do we truly care about children's health? Are we really about trying to solve it? Where are the ideas of combining where the biggest health care disparities are in our country? We know where those are. Why not design a program to go and attach and direct health care dollars to the large health care disparities? We know it pays big returns in terms of childhood obesity, in terms of precluding the onset of smoking, in terms of prevention and vaccinations, in terms of well-child care? Why would we not look at where the problems are and try to direct dollars to where the problems are? Instead, we are going to allocate across this country, to those who can now afford it, we are now going to start paying for it. Even if we wanted to do that, why would we do it at twice the cost of what you could buy in a private market? Mr. President, $1,156 is the average market cost to insure a child in this country. Why would we spend $2,200 to get the same thing? So we can say we did something? If, in fact, you could take $1,156 or $1,200 for every child out there--we have more than enough money with what we are spending today to accomplish that--we could buy them all an insurance policy. I am not sure this bill is about children. I am not sure it is about children's health care. I have some doubts when we are not frugal. If it is about children's health care now, it is certainly not about those children's long-term financial security, when we are not even going to be honest with how much this bill costs. We have pulled a trick so we do not have a pay-go rule, and the trick keeps us from offsetting $42 billion in expenses associated with this bill. Everybody knows that. Nobody will say that is not right. Nobody wants to talk about that. That is what is wrong. That is why people do not have confidence in the Congress. It is because we have this sleight-of-hand. We want to do something good but we don't want to tell you what it costs and we don't want to get rid of programs that don't work in order to be able to do something good. We are going to hide it under the blanket. So we are hiding $42 billion under the blanket. We are playing the inside baseball game, not being honest with the American people about what it costs; not being honest with the American people that it is a lot cheaper to give premium assistance than it is to give a program directly to a child; not being honest about the fact that this costs twice as much as what you could buy a health insurance policy for, for every child in this country. We are not being honest at all, so our integrity is in question. Would we do the right thing in the long term for these kids that we say we care about their health care? I do not have the confidence we will. I have the confidence that this train is going to roll, we are going to do it just the way we have done it. There are still going to be 5.4 million kids out there 10 years from now, when we look at eligibility. It will be the same 5.4 million under the 200 percent of poverty level that we did not reach, that we didn't get out and actually make a difference. And then we are going to pay a larger cost as they mature as adults because what we could have prevented will not have been prevented, what we could have taught will not be taught, and the health care costs associated with that will be tremendous. Mr. President, 5.4 million children are presently eligible for either SCHIP or Medicaid and we have done nothing to make sure those kids get a program that is readily available to them today. We have done nothing. We put $100 million in for outreach and said we will feel good about it because maybe that will reach some of them. We will still have millions of children who are eligible for these programs who will not get it. We are going about approaching it the wrong way. We ought to be saying let's have a bill that insures every American child. Let's do that. Every American child, universal access with an insurance policy for every American child, why won't we do that? That is what we should be doing. Let's do it for every child. Then the insurance rates on adults will modulate and then husband and wife will not be paying a falsely elevated price once their kids get pulled off of their insurance policy and go into a Government program. Why not buy them all something, from then until the time they are 21, that covers them, that gives them the prevention care, that gives them the counseling, that gives them the immunizations? We know what it costs and we know what we can do it for. Why not do that? Instead, we have created this complex, convoluted system that can be gamed. The estimate on Medicaid fraud--listen to this--the estimate on Medicaid fraud is $60 billion a year. That is enough to pay for where we cheated on this program if we would get rid of 10 percent of it a year over the next 10 years, if we got rid of 10 percent of the fraud. There is nothing in here on fraud. There is nothing in here to make the States accountable for the money we send out there. We have done a poor job. We claim we want to help children, we claim we want children to have health insurance, yet we mortgage those very children's futures by not being honest about how we are going about doing it, about how we are going to pay for it and what the ultimate results will be. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for his comments. There is an easy way to solve this; it is called auto enrollment. You just write a bill. Anybody in any region under 200 percent who has a claim of deduction for children is automatically enrolled in SCHIP or Medicaid. It is not hard. We do not want to do that. Why are we not doing that? Because we do not want to help all of these 5.4 million children. We do not want to do that. We have all of these incentives that have not worked in the past. We have done all of these things. All you have to do is auto enrollment. We can write a law. We can pass it. We can say: The IRS can look at every family who has children under 200 percent who files a tax return or files for the earned income tax credit, and their children are automatically enrolled. They automatically get a notice that says: Here is your insurance. Here is your State card. You have coverage. It is not hard. We can do that. But we have not done it. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Stephanie Carlton and Evan Feinberg of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor during debate on H.R. 2.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, would the Chair be so kind as to advise me when I have used 7 minutes?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, we have before us today a hallmark piece of legislation that is supposed to be about credit and liquidity and the significant problems we ran into this last fall in this country when we no longer had a functioning, or barely had a functioning financial industry that allowed credit to flow which would allow commerce to ensue. It was my belief at the time, based on what I was told and what I saw, that extraordinary measures were going to be required for us to handle this significant problem. Consequently, I ended up voting for a financial recovery package that I must say has been handled in a way completely opposite of the way we were told it was going to be handled. That is now water under the bridge. The question before us today is: Are we going to give another $350 billion--not through an oversight process, through an appropriating process--are we going to write a blank check to the Treasury Department to accomplish again what we are assured by the transition team and the incoming administration is for very specific things? I would like to believe that. As a matter of fact, in a meeting yesterday with some of the officials of the incoming administration, I asked in a closed room where they were giving us this reassurance that this administration was not going to put more money into the auto industry under the pretext it has been done using the TARP funds; that this administration was not going to use this money for other industrial segments of our society but in fact would use this money only when and if it is necessary to keep liquidity rolling, to keep banks' balance sheets to the point where we can accomplish what we need in order to have true commerce in this country. And I must say that I felt somewhat reassured walking out of that meeting. But one of the things I asked for in that meeting was a public statement so that the rest of America could have that same assurance. We find ourselves today, getting ready to vote on this--and that was communicated very directly, by the way, with some of the highest levels of the incoming administration--we are about to vote on it, yet there has been no public statement whatsoever that would assure either Members of this body or the American taxpayers that we are not going to be using it to bail out companies that are not competitive and have not had to do the hard things to maintain themselves to be competitive; we have no assurance we are not going to go to other industries and do the same thing; and we do not have, in fact, a public expression, an explanation, or a letter of intent of the incoming administration that they are going to use it in a very precise and direct manner to maintain liquidity of the financial sector. The other thing that we have not heard, along with maintaining that liquidity, is how the administration will handle the toxic assets, which is what we were told the money was for in the first place. So I come to the floor this afternoon wanting to support our new President. I want to support him. I talked to him about this issue prior to his senior staff coming and talking to us. But I find myself in the predicament of having been fooled once by the present administration not doing what they said they were going to do. They have not been transparent as to where and how the money is being spent. The American people haven't had access. We don't know the priorities under which it was done. And now we are being told again: Trust us. Well, I am willing to do that, provided we put out to the American people exactly what that means. And the only thing that I can figure as to why it has not been forthcoming--that is what we asked for yesterday afternoon in the meeting with those representing President-elect Obama--is that they do not want to commit. And I regret to say that if the incoming administration won't commit on paper and publicly as to how they are going to use this money, I am disinclined to vote to give it to them. That pains me, because I want our new administration to be tremendously successful in the face of all the problems we have. To meet the goal of transparency and accountability--which is what this new administration is all about, and I believe it will be far greater than what we have seen in the past; I will give them credit for that--it is required that they publicly tell the American people how, when, why, and what they are going to use this money for. And my only conclusion would be, in the face of that statement not being forthcoming, is that they either have the votes and believe they can accomplish this without being forthcoming--which again goes exactly the opposite direction of what my friend Barack Obama campaigned on--or they weren't necessarily truthful in what they told us on how they were going to use the money. So I stand ready to try to support them, if in fact we have assurances--public assurances and documented assurances--that they are going to follow the intent of what we originally gave the money for. Absent that, I would find him be unable to support that and would vote for the resolution of disapproval. I yield back the remainder of my time.

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, in thinking about where we are today, I asked myself what the average Oklahoman would ask of me about this bill, or the average person from Wyoming or California. As I think about it, we have a bill that has 45 blatant earmarks in it. It is not a new day in Washington. Despite arguments to the contrary, we are going to significantly alter our access to millions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas by what we are doing. We are going to create a further imbalance. We have almost 107 million acres of wilderness area. We are going to add another 2.2 million acres to that today. We are going to trample on property rights as we haven't in decades, both directly and indirectly. I asked myself: Why are we doing it? I believe we are doing it because we are thinking in the very short term. I also believe we are doing it because we pride ourselves in the parochial benefits that we can return to our States at the expense of the best judgment in terms of decisionmaking for our future. As has been noted on this floor, there are many of these bills that I don't approve that don't have an impact, that aren't earmarks, that aren't going to take property rights away, that aren't going to limit our access to available oil and natural gas, proven reserves, but nevertheless we are going to do those things today, and there are going to be 20 or 25 votes against it. That doesn't mean the people who are promoting this are any more genuine or sincere than I am, but I think what it does mean is we have a short-term, myopic-focused leadership in the Congress that does not weigh properly the benefits of pleasing the parochial interests at the expense of our future. So I have fought very hard for many months to try to make sure a majority of these bills don't become law--not because I am opposed to wilderness or heritage areas but because I am for constitutional right of property ownership, because I know the more and more we take away from our ability to fill the gap as we transition to alternative energy, the more money we are going to fund to those people who would like to see us nonexistent. It is a privilege to serve in this body. It is a privilege to serve with gentlemen such as the Senator from New Mexico, the chairman of this committee, and to benefit from his integrity and his demeanor and cooperation, but it is also a disappointment that, in my line of thinking, when you talk with the average American, we shouldn't be doing anything to take away property rights. We should be doing everything to assure ourselves increased access to energy in the future. We should, for sure, eliminate this blatant, corrupt process of earmarking, not because it is corrupt in terms of at this time or at that time; it is corrupt because it ignores the future and the costs and the lack of priority about how we should be spending what are going to be very limited resources in the future. So I thank my colleagues for giving me the opportunity to attempt to put forward what I think are important principles. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, when President Obama is sworn into office next week, he will inherit an extremely complex and challenging crisis in the Middle East. Since Israel commenced military operations in Gaza to defend its citizens against rocket attacks more than 1,000 have died in Gaza, many of them civilians, while 13 Israelis have died. In spite of this carnage, Hamas refuses to surrender and continues to fire rockets into Israel. No clear resolution is in sight. As a practicing physician, I find this conflict heartbreaking. Israelis live in constant fear that a rocket attack will snuff out an innocent life. Families in Israel go to bed at night wondering if a rocket will slam into their home. At the same time, Palestinians have nowhere to run from a terrorist organization that uses its own civilians as human shields. While we all mourn the loss of innocent life, the world must recognize that Hamas deliberately created a situation in which Israel was forced to respond as any sovereign nation would while under attack. Israel, and every nation, has the right to self-defense. What makes Hamas's actions particularly abhorrent and barbaric is the fact that they are making decisions, I believe, based on a perverse political calculation. While publically condemning Israel, Hamas's leaders and sympathizers in Iran and elsewhere privately welcome the suffering of the Palestinian people as a political opportunity. Hamas knows better than anyone that virtually every area of the densely populated Gaza strip is a civilian area. In Gaza, refugees have no place to seek refuge. The terrible unintended consequences and loss of civilian life we've seen in Gaza is part of Hamas's design and goal. The United States and the next administration can play an important role in preventing Hamas from achieving its goals. What many on both sides long for is not just the cessation of violence but a real, lasting and durable peace. Some believe this is impossible, but it is in the interest of all sides to work toward this goal. I trust President-elect Obama will avoid the false choice between unapologetically defending Israel's security and creating hope and opportunity for people on both sides of the conflict who want the same degree of freedom, peace and opportunity for themselves and their children. As Israel's most important ally, the United States should never waver in our commitment to Israel's security. The strength of that assurance is itself one of our most important contributions in the region because it creates the security and stability that are a prerequisite for meaningful negotiations. At the same time, we enhance security in the region by assuring Palestinians in Gaza with our words and actions that they are not forgotten and that we hear their calls for peace and an end to violence. I've delivered 4,000 babies and I grieve with the pregnant women in Gaza who are being turned away at hospitals because their own leaders have held their lives and the lives of their children in contempt. The next administration can legitimize and support those mothers' pleas for peace while condemning and marginalizing Hamas's tactics of terror. I believe President-elect Obama has the judgment and temperament to not only maintain our vital support of Israel, but to also create hope in the region and help Palestinians embrace alternatives to Hamas's brand of violence and despair. He will have my prayers and support and I hope he can have the prayers and support of the American people as he confronts this difficult challenge.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Let me clear up the data on the Wyoming Range. It is said there is only 1.5 trillion cubic feet, according to the U.S. Geologic Survey. But you have not read the complete report. The letter is new. The data used by them is older than the data used by the Bureau of Land Management. It wasn't based on the latest topographic and geological studies. That is the first problem. The second thing they say in their report is they lacked an official map. So it is their best guess, not based on science, not based on known data. Finally, they only approximated for the following reasons: They only had a general outline of the area and they assumed a homogenous distribution of oil and gas resources across the entire area. Well, that is a no report. The latest report to come from the National Petroleum Council, which is subcontracted to BLM, estimates, at a minimum, 12 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. So where you get your information and what it says and what it is based on is very important. So we have had all this defense that this is not going to impact energy based on an erroneous report based on erroneous assumptions by the National Geologic Survey, when all you have to do is read their own survey and that is the footnote to it, which says we didn't have the information, we didn't have the map, so we used an average, not what was there. Having known that the first three gas wells drilled there had to be capped because we didn't have the technology to take the flow, it was so great, the estimates by the USGS are so far out of range it is laughable. As far as 10 years counting whether it is going to have any impact on our energy, I hope we are thinking longer than 10 years. But that is what the CBO says they are going to use--10 years. Don't forget there is another big issue with this bill in that we step all over property rights in this country. Even though several of the bills in here say they would not use eminent domain, every one of them still has the right to use eminent domain outside the areas we have created in this bill. So we have taken one of the basic rights of Americans in this country, and the Senate, in passing this bill, by saying: Sorry, our parochial interests for what we want to do for the State trumps your property rights. If you believe in property rights, if you believe people who own land ought to have the right to develop that land, if you don't think the Federal Government ought to be funding those people who will take away your rights--which is what they will do with the heritage areas; they actually change the zoning laws as funded by the U.S. Park Service--I have a bridge I want to sell you. We ought to be about doing what is in the best interest of the country, not what is in the best interest of our States right now. Our problems are severe. We ought to be doing things that develop confidence in this body, not undermining the confidence in this body. As far as the land exchanges, almost none of those was objected to. They could have come through here on unanimous consent, and everybody knows that. To use that as a reason for why we are at this point is not only insincere, it is inaccurate. So it is time for us to start behaving and acting in ways that restore confidence in this body and setting priorities that are very similar to the priorities every family has to set. I will say, again, we should have spent the last 2 weeks working on waste and fraud and duplication in the Federal Government because we are getting ready to approve a bill that will spend $800 billion at the same time we know we are going to waste $300 billion in this Government. For us to spend time on this bill rather than the important things that are going to make a difference in the lives of families in this country in the long run, I believe it undermines the best values of the Senate. With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, at 10:30, I believe, this morning, we are going to vote on cloture on this lands package. I wish to take a few minutes--and my colleague has been more than gracious to me in terms of allowing time--to discuss this. Our country is at a very difficult time in terms of our economic growth but, more importantly, in terms of the number of people who are suffering. We have before us a 1,300-page bill that we will hear has been looked at for a year and a half--the proponents of which, I am sure, have--that is nonamendable and that we will spend somewhere between $10 billion and $12 billion, when we think about the long-term consequences of the bill. The questions I have before the body on this bill are, No. 1, is this truly a priority for us at the times we are in, considering the nature of the great difficulties that face this country; and No. 2, is it a priority for us in terms of the things that are out there that we can really be making a difference on today that we refuse to make a difference on. Mr. President, let me highlight that for you for a minute. This last year we put out a report on the Justice Department that showed very clearly $10 billion a year in waste. I gave a speech on the floor this last summer outlining $380 billion in waste. We know we have at least $50 billion a year in waste at the Pentagon. We know we have at least $80 billion worth of fraud a year in Medicare. The first thing we do in this Congress is create $10 billion more of spending. So we are not attacking the structural problems that actually face our Government, but, more importantly, we are not attacking the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the American people do not have confidence in us as an institution to do what they do every day, and that is to set priorities. Every family out there today is going through a process, much like I did at the end of the year, seeing how much is going to come in, what they are absolutely obligated to spend, and if there is any left over, where is the priority at which they do that. We are in reverse of that process. We are saying we are not even going to look at that process, we are not going to look at the $380 billion worth of waste, we are not going to look at the programs. I had a visit with Mr. Duncan, who is the new nominee for the Education Department. To his surprise, he was blown over by the fact that there are more educational programs outside the Department of Education than there are inside. Yet we refuse to work on those very hard things that will actually make a large difference in the outcome. We are going to be voting yet this week on putting another $350 billion in the hands of the Treasury Department to enhance liquidity. But with that, we hear from Larry Summers that we are going to direct the money to whoever needs to borrow rather than whoever needs to try to be liquid in terms of loaning money. We have it exactly backwards. Before us is a bill that will markedly undermine attempts at energy independence, will add to the 107 million acres of land that presently are wilderness areas which will make them truly, in all respects, significantly difficult to ever tap any natural resources, regardless of whether we can do that without any impact on the environment. It is interesting to note that the actual number of acres of land that are in wilderness areas is greater than the total developed land in this country, which is 106 million acres. We are going to take another 2.2 million acres and move them away from any possibility. Yet nowhere in our thought was--whether we were manipulated by supply-demand constraints or we were manipulated by futures markets--the fact that oil reached an all-time high and we were paying $4 for a gallon of gasoline. Completely outside the scope of this bill was any consideration that we might want to preserve our ability to have access to future oil reserves--even the disputed debate on the Wyoming Range on whether we are going to have access to, the lowest estimate, 5 million barrels of oil and maybe 3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, all the way up to 300 million barrels of oil and 15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. My complaint and my reason for voting no on cloture is really fourfold. No. 1 is it is not a priority what we are doing. No. 2 is our problems with demand that we would be doing something different than what we do in this bill. No. 3 is the process which has not allowed for significant amendments of our choice on this bill is flawed. And, finally, No. 4, it does not go towards building back the trust in the Congress to actually do things in order of priority that are going to make a difference for this country. I recognize that I am in the minority opinion of that view in this body. What I don't recognize and what I know is true is that I am not in the minority opinion of the people in this country. We are about to vote on a 1,300-page bill that will not be amended, that very few have read, that very few have studied hard as to the consequences it will have on our energy dependency, and we are going to pass it. It is probably going to be sent to the new President, and he is probably going to sign it, which gives me great cause for worry because my friend, the President-elect, ran on hope and a promise of change. I don't see any change in the Senate. My hope is somewhat diminished because I don't see us as a body collectively addressing the big problems that face us as a nation. There is no question that many of the States that have programs in this bill have wanted them for a long time, and they are going to be happy with them, the fact that we do all these things for these various organizations to create four new extensions to national parks at a time when there is a $9 billion backlog on the national parks we have today. But I wonder if getting something parochially is worth putting the country at risk, and not just at risk with this bill but the risk of process, the risk that we will continue to plow ahead on that which will not make an ultimate difference in the security, the long-term financial outlook of this country. Anybody who reads this bill will say: Why are you doing certain things now? Why would you authorize the spending of $3.5 million for a birthday party in Florida? Why would you enhance botanical gardens now when we are going to run a $1.8 trillion deficit this year? Why would you build a new orchid garden for the Smithsonian now when we have so many other issues that are so far more important that we should be doing? Why in light of the greatest drought California has ever seen would we disrupt the water supply to 10,000 farmers, creating more than $2 billion worth of GDP? Why would we do that? Why would we do that now? I don't understand why we are doing it now. I understand the politics of it. I understand the way the Senate works. I understand the reason Members want to get things done for their States. But right now in our Nation, we ought to be thinking about the good of the Nation as a whole, the long-term good of the Nation as a whole. Confidence--confidence--is what Americans don't have today. They are not confident in their future. They are not confident in the economics of maintaining their family, their lifestyle. As a matter of fact, the confidence is so low that we are going to have a savings rate that we have not seen in 40 years in this country because people are saving for a rainy day, and they think the rainy day is here. What we are doing is destroying what confidence is left. Our President-elect's job over the next year, more than anything, is to restore hope and confidence in the future of this country. I believe we fall far short by bringing this bill to the Senate at this time in this way without an ability to amend it in significant ways that preserve chances for energy exploration, that take the silliness out of it--as I mentioned earlier, the 45 earmarks that are in this bill--and do not address the priorities of which we should be authorizing the spending of money in this bill. It is wasteful. It does not meet common sense. It destroys what little credibility we have left, and in the long run it diminishes the promise of change and hope for which our new President-elect stands. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for what time I might consume.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, we had an interesting day yesterday. We brought a lot of people to work, I believe unnecessarily, to adopt a motion to proceed that we could have voted on today. I want to spend some time today outlining what our new, soon to be President, President-elect Obama, said during his campaign and what he said to me personally several times about how we fix what is wrong with our country. If you go to his Web site or what his transition team has said, what you will find are some very significant things that both he and I have worked on over the past 4 years. He has a plan. It is called the Obama plan for restoring fiscal discipline. It is a good plan. What does it include? It includes conducting an exhaustive line-by-line review of Federal spending and eliminating Government programs that are not performing or are wasteful or are obsolete or are duplicative, paying for new spending commitments--new spending commitments--by cutting other programs--let me say that again--paying for new spending commitments by cutting other programs, slashing porkbarrel spending, rooting out redundancy, and requiring all Federal contracts over $25,000, including earmarks, to be competitively bid, to truly measure program performance without ideologic slant, and enforcing goals and demanding that new initiatives be selected on the basis of merit, not a political process that rewards lobbyists and campaign donors and makes Members of Congress just look good at home. That is President-elect Obama. I don't know anybody outside of Washington who would not embrace that message. That is a great message for our country. It is a message that our country needs to heed. It is one that we need to accomplish. Unfortunately, the first week we are back in session, we are doing exactly the opposite. Here we have President-elect Obama who next week will become President Obama, and one of his main goals we are working to undermine in the Senate today. I am going to be an ally of the President-elect on these issues. Every opportunity when we are not doing what he suggested we be doing, I am going to be raising questions about it. We are going to work hard for the hope and change he promised the American people he would deliver. We have before us a lands package. It is not really a lands package. It has all sorts of stuff in it--165 bills. Initially, it spends $1 billion, but that is not even honest because after 10 years it spends $2 billion to $3 billion more on one program alone. CBO has not even scored this new package. The last package they scored, if appropriated, would be $8 billion. So we have $10 billion to $12 billion in new spending. The opportunity to offer amendments on that has been foreclosed. So I thought, in light of what this bill is and in light of what President Obama said he would like to see us do, that I would highlight some of the amendments I would have offered had the minority, the Republican Party, the Republican Members of the Senate, been given an opportunity to amend this bill. The best tradition of the Senate--the best tradition of the Senate-- is where the best ideas get debated, the back and forth goes on, and then we settle on what is almost always a compromise but a compromise that is thoroughly debated and where an individual Senator has to put their stamp of yea or nay on ideas to either make it better or not. That is not available in this bill. As a matter of fact, it hasn't been available for 124 days. It has been available once to Republican Members of the Senate in 184 days. So if we are to accomplish, or at least move in the direction that our soon-to-be President would like for us to, one of the things that is going to be required for that is taking tough votes. The idea we don't want our Members to have to take tough votes is the height of inside political baseball and it wreaks of a lack of courage. As a Senator from Oklahoma, if I can't go home and defend my votes in a cogent and reasonable manner, I shouldn't be sent back up here. That is all there is to it. If Oklahoma citizens believe I have not stood on the principles of which I told them I would try to represent them in this body, they should not send me back to the Senate. But to not have the votes in the first place, so we don't have to defend anything, goes against not just the culture of the Senate but it goes against the very courage that this whole country was based upon and that is the freedom to express and work and try to accomplish what you think is best for the country in the long run. One of the great qualities of our country is this freedom to get out and express. Until recently, that freedom has been available in the Senate. But this didn't start with Harry Reid. It goes all the way back to George Mitchell and Trent Lott and Bill Frist. It has been perfected under our current majority leader. My thought would be that maybe we ought to take the hard votes rather than ruin the institution. Maybe we ought to do what the American people would expect us to do. Now, my intent has never been, in all my proceedings on the floor, to extend debate. I mean, I think I could accomplish a filibuster if I wanted to do that. Having delivered 4,000 babies, I know how to stay up all night. My goal is to have the opportunity to do amendments and to have a vote on them. As most people know, agreements to time on amendments are easily obtained, and limitation on amendments are most often very easily obtained. So the fact is we find ourselves on a $12 billion bill that has lots of good things in it and has lots of mediocre things that probably would be a priority if we didn't find ourselves with a $1.8 trillion deficit this year and getting ready to pass an $800 billion stimulus package that is about $2,700 per man, woman, and child in this country, or about $10,000 per family, none of which is going to be paid for-- none of which is going to be paid for. It will ultimately be paid for, and here is how it will be paid for. When we look toward our grandchildren, what we are going to find is that not so many of them get to go to college because they will not be able to afford to. When we look toward them owning a home, regardless of the housing crisis we find ourselves in now, 30 years from now the ability to earn an income big enough to be able to afford a mortgage is going to be limited because we have been poor stewards with their taxpayer money. So we will have shackled our grandchildren. So let me spend a minute talking about eliminating wasteful programs, or things that are not a priority, and go over a couple of the amendments we were going to offer simply to point out that we are doing the opposite of what I believe the intent of our new President is going to be. I might also add, it wasn't that long ago that all of us were paying $4 for a gallon of gasoline. There is no question in my mind that a good portion of that price was because of speculation of the very rich in this country asking the very poor to pay out of their disposable income while they made millions upon billions of dollars manipulating the futures markets. But nevertheless, in this bill, we are putting a patch over our eye and limiting our ability in the future to increase our energy independence by taking millions of acres of land and forever closing them to any source of energy. It would not matter what any new technology might be, and it would not matter if we could do it totally without any environmental impact, we are closing that completely off. That set aside, one of the amendments we were going to offer in this bill was to strike $3.5 million to go to the city of St. Augustine, FL. Now, you might ask, what for? Well, they are going to have a birthday party in 6 years to recognize the 450th year of St. Augustine's existence, the longest Colonial outpost on this continent. I would say maybe that might be a St. Augustine, FL, responsibility or maybe the State of Florida, but when we are running a deficit in this country of $20,000 per family per year, it seems ludicrous to me that we would send $3.5 million for a party. How does that set with priorities? How does that set with eliminating wasteful spending? It doesn't. Yet it is in here, and we don't have the opportunity to try to take it out. There is $12 million in the bill to build a new facility in Maryland for orchids for the Smithsonian. We may need to do that, but we certainly don't need to do that right now. That is a luxury item. Every family in this country today is making a reassessment because everybody is afraid, and they are going through their budgets and saying: What is necessary? What is excess? What can we do without? Should we be putting money away in case X happens? Everybody in the country is doing that except the Congress. So here we have a new orchid building, costing $12 or $14 million, I don't remember exactly which, that we are going to put in this bill, and we are going to say this is a priority. Now, some will say: Well, we might not appropriate it. We appropriate $300 billion a year for things that are not authorized anyway, and most of those things are not priority as well. But the fact is, it is a clue to the American public that we don't get it; that in this time of significant economic downturn, in this time of significant debt laying on to the next generations, we continue to want to do things the average person of common sense would say: How can that be a priority? Well, it can't. There is $5 million in here for new botanical gardens in Hawaii and Florida. I don't doubt that could be a great thing that we could do. No. 1, I would ask the question again: Why isn't that a State responsibility instead of a Federal responsibility? If the State of Florida and the State of Hawaii think that is a priority, they ought to fund it. No. 2, if it is our priority, if it is our responsibility, is that something we should be funding now; that we should be authorizing; we should be saying it is okay to do this? We are in perilous times. Yet we act like nothing is going on out there; that the average family isn't getting hit hard, that people aren't worried about their jobs; that 573,000 people didn't lose their jobs last month. That is how we are behaving. One of the other amendments we would have offered is to prohibit the use of eminent domain both in the national trails, the wilderness areas, the new heritage areas, and the new national parks area. It is one thing for the Government to have its land; it is totally different for it, through the force of law, to take your land away from you and tell you what they are going to do with it. There is minimal prohibition in this bill for the protection of property rights in this country--a fundamental freedom guaranteed to every American. This bill steps all over those property rights. We offered a total of 13 amendments, and we would have probably accepted 5 or 6, with less than an hour debate on each one of them. We could have been finished with this bill. We could have accomplished it last Thursday or Friday. But because we don't want to have to take tough votes or we want to protect a Member from a vote on some piece of pork that was put in a bill, we have decided to have no votes, no debate on any amendment will be the standard for this body. It is not a good day for the Senate. More importantly, it is a terrible day for this country because we are saying that, even though we have great hope and promise of change by an incoming President, his own party is going to step on that--the careerists, the people who think politically only, the people who think short term only about political gain, instead of thinking about what is in the best long-term interests of our country. It is interesting to know we have 108 million acres of wilderness in this country right now--more than anywhere else in the world. That number is actually greater than the amount of developed land we have in this country, which is 106 million acres. It is also interesting to know the Government already owns 653 million acres, and we are going to take, at a minimum, another 2.2 million acres and totally wall it off-- can't ride a dirt bike through it, minimal access, can't hunt on it, can't do the things you have always done. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to have property next to it, you fall peril to having the National Park Service fund organizations that are going to take your property rights away, to limit your ability on the land you have that is abutting these areas. As we come into next week, we approach the celebration of a very great milestone in our country, something that speaks volumes about the American system: the installment and swearing in of the first African- American President, one who leads on these issues while we in the Senate say we are going to keep doing it the way we have been doing it regardless of the tremendous hope that he brought to the American people, the hope for change, that we would operate differently. We hope he will lead a Government that operates differently--and I believe he will try. He is a very dear friend of mine. I believe he is going to try to do that as here we sit in the Senate, worrying about the political consequences of taking a few votes on amendments because we might not look good enough at home. Talk about the lack of courage; talk about the decline that will be manifested in our country if we continue to have leadership that operates on the basis of fear instead of courage. My challenge and my hope is that this is the last time we are going to see this tactic brought forward in the Senate. My pledge to the majority leader is I will not delay anything if I get an opportunity to amend it. But if I get no opportunity to amend it, I will delay everything because the lack of an opportunity to amend says that over half of the people in this country, the 160 million who are represented by my side of the aisle, have no voice in the matter. It says, if we don't get it, our voice doesn't count. I look forward with great hope to the leadership we are going to see at the other end of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. My prayer is that the leadership in this body can come up to the same level of character and courage that I believe we will see demonstrated at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I appreciate the cooperation and willingness to work with me of the Senator from New Mexico. He has been a gentleman throughout. We have always had conversations; we just haven't agreed on what we have done. It has been a pleasure to work with him. Here is a 1,300-page bill. People are going to say a lot of this has been around for a long time, that it doesn't need any debate, that it certainly should not be amended, but it is 1,300 pages. The CBO has refused to score this one. The last one they scored was between $6 and $8 billion. This is somewhere between $10 and $12 billion, especially when we take the outyears beyond 10 years out of it. So here we sit with a 1,300-page bill that has 45 blatant earmarks in it with no ability to amend. Since July 16, save one time in September, the minority has not been allowed to offer an amendment on any bill. In 180 days, we have had one amendment. No amendments could be offered. It was announced that cloture would be filed prior to even this vote so that we are going to cut off debate. We could have finished this bill last Friday with four or five amendments. We offered 12 amendments and the thought was that we shouldn't. My concern is, is there reason to hope for change? A lot of my colleagues on my side of the aisle have things that are important to them in the bill. The question the American people ought to be asking is, with 165 bills, 1,300 pages, is now the time for us to set in motion to take an additional 2.2 million acres out of energy production and limit energy exposure to about 5 or 6 million more acres, and raise the total number of wilderness acres to 2 million greater than that we have in total development in the country? How long ago was it we had $4-a-gallon gasoline? Do we not think that is going to come back? So on process grounds, for the ability to amend or at least have a vote on an amendment to see whether we think we ought to be long range in our thinking, I have no doubt President-elect Obama wants to see change, he wants to see change here, he has given our country renewed hope, but the first thing out of the box will be our same old habits. For a good portion of this bill, there is nothing wrong. The chairman knows there are a large number of bills in this bill to which I do not have any objection. But I certainly have some objection to us tying our hand behind our back on energy in the future, which we will do in tremendous ways. My colleagues from Wyoming, and their plans for protecting a very pristine wild area, want to do a good thing, but it can be done better and still preserve tremendous amounts of oil and natural gas in this country. So we are here today for the first time in 40 years on a new weekend of a first session--the first time in 40 years--and we are going to use it to force through a 1,300-page, $10 billion bill with $915 million in mandatory spending--at a minimum because we did not score it past that; it is going to go about $3 billion total above that--without a single amendment being allowed to debate and vote on. As I said, it has been 120 days since the last amendment, 180 days since the last two amendments the minority has been allowed to offer as an amendment to a bill. When you count Republican and Democratic Senators throughout the country, you have 156 million people represented by Republicans. Yet they are shut off from having an amendment on the floor of the Senate--the greatest deliberative body in the world--from having the ability to amend. That is not change. The other problem is our priorities are wrong. We presently have a $9.6 billion backlog in our national parks. They are hurting. The backlog since this time last year has grown by $400 million. With this bill, we are going to load down the National Park Service with spending, administrative fees, doing all sorts of important things. The Clinton birthplace, one which today is run through private funds, we are going to ask the American taxpayer to now pay for it. We are going to spend $3.5 million to help St. Augustine, FL, have a birthday party 6 years from now. That cannot be our priority. It cannot be. But what we have done is we have put together a bill so we can build a broad basis of consensus to pass it, with everybody holding their nose on everything except on their own thing. Everybody would admit this is not a priority for this country at this time. As a matter of fact, if we were really doing what we should be doing, we should be working on getting out of the economic mess we are in rather than creating additional barriers and consequences from the actions we are going to take with this bill. When you think about the national parks and you think about the visitor center in Hawaii with the USS Arizona that is sinking--and in a couple years we are not even going to be able to honor that tremendous site because we do not have and will not have put the funds there to take care of the problems--how is that a priority? Mr. President, 1,117 Americans died on the USS Arizona, and the Senate sits today to spend $10 billion on a large number of things that are not a priority and do not have anything to do with the heritage of sacrifice that so proudly and visibly is demonstrated by that memorial. The Grand Canyon National Park has a $299 million backlog. Trails are closed because we cannot maintain them. The National Mall, in this very city, has a $700 million backlog in maintenance. Without even considering those things and putting them in priority--one of the things I love about Barack Obama is he gets it that you have to do the long-term things and you have to have a priority and you have to be transparent as you go about that so the American people can make a judgement on us. Yet, without a single effort to prioritize spending or honor commitment to our national resources, we are about to add to the burden 10 new heritage areas; 4 new units to the National Park Service; 14 studies to create and expand more National Park Service; 80 wilderness designations, which are an additional 2.2 million acres of Federal land--the Federal Government owns 660 million acres right now; it is the largest expansion in wilderness areas in the last 25 years-- 92 wild and scenic river designations affecting 1,100 miles of shoreline, and every one of those designations will markedly impact our attempts at some sort of energy independence. You cannot deny that it will have an impact. It will have an impact. It will make it much more difficult, even with clean technology and even with alternative energy, to bring that energy to the American people. Another significant component of this bill is it massively threatens property rights in this country. Over 100 different property rights organizations are in opposition to this bill, and for good reason. Because even though several of the bills in here prohibit the use of eminent domain, the vast majority of them do not, and several recommend that eminent domain be used to accomplish their purpose. The Government owns 1 out of 3 acres in the U.S. and 1 out of 2 acres in the West. Eminent domain, whether it be from wilderness areas, heritage areas, national wild and scenic rivers, national trails, will have a major impact on anybody living close or in somewhat proximity to any of these new designations because, in fact, they are impacted, even outside of it. In testimony before the Energy Committee, it was stated by the Park Service and several others that, in fact, they will use that to lessen the effect and impact on these new designations. Let me outline some of the other authorizations we are making in this bill. I know my colleagues disagree with me on authorizing versus what they mean on appropriations, but the fact is, if you read the press releases of Members of this body, when we authorize, they tell the people at home we are going to spend it. We are going to estimate $1 billion for a water project in California that is 84 years old that will never accomplish what it is supposed to and will have a major impact on 10,000 agricultural entities and impact over $2 billion worth of commerce--$2 billion in commerce--and that $1 billion is just the start of annual mandatory expenditures in the future. There is $5 million--and I know the Acting President pro tempore is very interested in this, but we have to ask the question--to create a way to limit the impact of wolves on our cattle ranchers in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. We created it. Is that a priority for us right now, to compensate ranchers who lose cattle to wild wolves? Should that be where we are spending our money right now, especially when everybody will agree at the end of this next year, on full accounting, at the end of the next fiscal year, we are going to be close to a $1.8 trillion deficit? Should we annually spend that money? Should we create another Federal program that is going to dole out money--not that maybe we should not do that, but is now the time to do it? Is now the time to put it in the row of saying: Here is where we are going to spend our money. There is $250,000 to study whether Alexander Hamilton's boyhood home in Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, should be designated as a new national park. Should we spend that money now? Once we authorize that, that is going to come through the National Park Service and they are going to expend the money. They are going to do what Congress tells them to do. There is $12 or $14 million for a new garden for our arboretum to make sure we have taken care of orchids. We should probably do that at some point in time, but is now the time to do that? We have 100 environmental groups that think we should not challenge this road through the wilderness in Alaska to one city when we already have an alternate method of transportation. Yet we are going to do that in this bill because we have put it together. Everybody holds their nose and votes. We are going to authorize the expenditure of money to discover old shipwrecks. We should be doing that now? That is a priority for the Congress and the country in the condition in which we find ourselves? I believe many things in this bill, this 1,300 pages, we ought to do. But if you went through and polled the average American on everything in this bill, what they would say is: It is probably not worth it for me to get what my State wants and give on all these other things. We are going to lose 300 million barrels of proven oil reserves. There is no question about that. The data used by the U.S. Geological Survey is old data. They admitted it is old data. We are going to lose energy, the access to it. We are going to lose the ability to access future energy reserves. But, most of all, what we are going to do is we are going to disappoint the American people because things have not changed. What is a priority for us here in terms of political benefit at home is going to trump doing what is in the best interest, in the long-term interest of the country. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. COBURN. I yield 6 minutes to the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, how much time remains?