Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, let me give some praise to my chairman of one of my committees. He hit right on the nose. Confidence is what the American people need to see. We have great resources in this country, and I am not talking materially. The resource we have that is the most bountiful and most productive and strongest and made of steel is the American people. When we get together, united as a nation, there is not anything we cannot accomplish. I appreciate his words very much. I also appreciate some of his wisdom and foresight we heard today. I am hopeful that in the months and years to come, we can continue to work and we can draw on that American spirit which he so directly outlined, which is what makes us unique and allows us to come from behind and accomplish the things in front of us. I thank him for his words. I wish to spend a few minutes--we are going to have several votes between now and next week over the Bingaman lands bill. I thought we ought to spend some time today to do that since I know we won't want to come in early on Sunday. I wish to talk about procedure for a moment so we can understand. We are going to be here on Sunday not because we have to but because the majority leader has decided that we will. There are other things we can be accomplishing. And goodness knows, the problems in front of this country require extra effort on our part. We are going to have a $10 billion to $12 billion bill in front of us again that will have no amendments available to it and very limited discussion. As a matter of fact, I think I am the only one who has discussed anything on this bill thus far, and we probably will not see a lot of discussion. There are a lot of issues we need to address, and my colleague, Senator Dorgan, just outlined the most important of them; that is, confidence, how do we reestablish confidence in this country. It is my position that we are not going to reestablish confidence in the country until we reestablish confidence in this institution. Since July 16, the Republicans have had one amendment allowed on the floor of the Senate. In the last 6 months, one amendment--that was September 10. In 6 months of legislation, we have had one amendment allowed to the minority side to express the views for greater than 50 percent of the American people. If the Senate is about anything, it is about the ability to debate and amend the interests of the American people. What we have seen over the past 6 months is that the rights of Americans have been taken away in terms of discussion, debate, and amendment of the very large issues that are in front of us. My position on this bill--which the American people should know is a hodgepodge of a ton of bills; it is not just all lands bills--is about priority. It is about reestablishing confidence. It is about doing the most important things that are of the highest priority for our country and not doing the things that are of the lowest priority even though it may make us look extremely good back home. Some will contend this is just an authorization bill, that it doesn't spend any money whatsoever, that it will have to be appropriated. I remind them there is mandatory spending in this bill, so there is actual spending involved. Also--and I won't do this, but I am prepared to do so if I need to--I will offer into the Record the press releases of everybody talking about all the money that is going to be spent because of this bill. You cannot be on the Senate floor saying this does not spend any money and at the same time send a press release out telling your constituency that you just passed a bill that will spend money that will do something because you are actually creating a false expectation if you don't expect to appropriate the money. So let's be clear about why we cannot afford to pass this bill. It has to do with a whole lot of things. One is we cannot continue to operate the Senate where there are no amendments for the minority because what it does is it cuts off the voice of over half the American public, by populations that are represented by the minority. But there are other greater reasons. We have a $10.6 trillion debt at this point. We are going to have a $1.8 trillion deficit next year. That is $1.2 trillion as a minimum estimate by CBO, which does not include the $160 billion we will steal from Social Security and will not include half of the money that is coming in a stimulus package. If you take 300 million Americans and divide them by $1.8 trillion, what you get is $6,000 per man, woman, and child that we are going to run in the red next year, real dollars, real loss in the future, and we are going to have to pay that back sometime. The people in this room, the Members of the Senate are not ever going to be attached the cost of the price to pay that back. Last year, we paid $230 billion in interest alone. That is about $900 per man, woman, and child in this country--$860, actually--that we are paying in interest, which is going to double over the next 4 years. So not only are we going to run a $6,000 deficit, we are going to run another $800 in interest costs that are going to take away the potential of families across this country who are struggling, and that is what we are going to put into their future. So when my colleague talks about confidence, what I want the American people to see is us working on the real problems that are at hand, not problems that are not real or are not a priority. We offered several amendments. We were told we were getting no amendments to this bill. I am going to spend some time going through those amendments because I think a lot of them make sense. I am also going to spend the majority of my time talking about the main reason I oppose this bill. If you will recall, back in the summer we were paying $4 for gasoline. We saw oil at $146 a barrel, which is now around $40. And the assumption of this bill is we will never see high oil and gas prices again. The very time to be fixing our future energy needs is now, not when there is a crisis again. What this bill does is essentially take 1.3 trillion barrels of oil in this country and say: You can never touch it. That is 1.3 trillion barrels that we will never, ever--regardless of our technology, regardless of whether we can do it totally without any impact whatsoever on the environment, we will never be able to touch it under the auspices of this bill. It takes 9.3 trillion cubic feet of known natural gas that is in proven reserves right now, enough to fuel this country for 2\1/2\ years, and it says: You cannot touch that; you can never touch it. And then another couple hundred trillion cubic feet that are known to exist, with the technology that is here today. Why would we do that? We just went through a big problem, and because we are in an economic cycle, we are seeing the only benefit of that is lower energy costs. Yet through this bill, we are going to tie the hands of our children for available energy. This is not about whether you believe in global warming or CO2 as an anthropogenic gas because even if I agreed with that 100 percent, and everybody would agree with it, we are going to take 20 years to transition away from hydrocarbons. Every dollar we send out of this country for the purchase of energy is part of that $700 billion my colleague, Senator Dorgan, just noted as one of our big structural financial problems. So why would we pass a bill that is going to eliminate our ability to achieve some greater level of energy independence? Another area of why I oppose this bill: property rights are--should be--pristine in this country, and this bill adds 15 new heritage areas, and the Federal Park Service will then fund those who are against the development of the land around it or in it, against the homeowners, the landowners who are actually part of it, through zoning. Even though several of the individual bills in this bill put a prohibition on eminent domain, the vast majority of the bill has no prohibition on eminent domain. One of the rights fought for, one of the foundational principles of this country, is property, the right to have and hold property and be free, as long as you are not endangering somebody else with that property. Yet we are going to step all over that with this bill. Five separate property rights groups who recognize this is a protected guarantee under the Constitution have come out supporting the defeat of this bill because it tramples on property rights. Finally, one of the reasons I am opposing the bill is the fiscal nature of what it does. It sets in motion $12 billion ad infinitum over the next 5 years--year by year by year by year--that we are going to spend, and it is going to go into the mix of priorities that are not a priority. Now, there are some things in this bill, I will admit, 20 or 30 items, that should go through here. But the vast majority of the bills in this mega bill are not a priority for this country. They are not a priority whatsoever right now considering the condition in which we find ourselves. So as we contemplate this bill, I believe it demonstrates that we are more interested in looking good at home than fixing the real problems that are facing the country. So let me for a moment summarize the bill and highlight some of the things that are in it, and then ask the American people to answer this question: Should we add four new National Parks at a time when we have a $9 billion backlog in maintaining the parks we have today? We can't even take care of the parks we have today. We have 10 million gallons of raw sewage in Yellowstone, in the Grand Tetons, which seeped out because we didn't maintain the pipelines. We have a $700 million backlog on The National Mall; in Lake Mead, NV, a $258 million backlog. We are not addressing any of the backlogs whatsoever. Yet we are creating greater responsibilities for the National Park Service and the resources they have today. In a declining discretionary budget, because of the fiscal nature in which we find ourselves, we are going to make worse and worse this situation. We are going to create 10 new heritage areas and study 15 others. Now, remember what happens when we create a new heritage area. We create the inability to ever extract minerals, oil, gas, timber, and other resources. We are saying: Off limits and, by the way, if you like to enjoy the outdoors--maybe you want to go hunting or maybe you want to ride a three-wheeler or four-wheeler or a motorcycle--that may not be available to you. It may be limited. There are 19 separate provisions in this bill that directly withdraw Federal land from mineral leases, such as oil and gas and geothermal. Nineteen specific. That doesn't have anything to do with the undergirding statutes in terms of the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and heritage areas that will eliminate the opportunity for exploration of energy and make us more energy independent. There are 130-plus bills in this legislation, 1,300 pages, that was introduced two nights ago. I will tell you, other than my staff and probably the committee staff, nobody in this body has looked at it-- 1,300 pages. It is going to get passed out through the body next week, and the vast majority of the Senators and their staffs will have never taken a look at it, at a time when we should be about building confidence not undermining it. We have 1.2 million acres in one small area of Wyoming that in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s contained the greatest and largest and most powerful pressurized source of natural gas the country had ever seen. As a matter of fact, we didn't have the technology to handle it, so we capped it. It eliminates any additional leasing. It sets it up so those people who have a lease will have a lawsuit filed against them. It will never be developed. It will never be developed because the cost of fighting the lawsuits will be greater than the benefit of developing the natural gas. The companies that developed that came from Oklahoma. We now have the technology to handle that. It is a proven reserve. We have 92 new scenic rivers in this bill. Now, I am all for scenic rivers, but we should understand the consequences of a scenic river designation. What does it mean? There will be no power lines across it, there will be no transmission lines, there will be no natural gas pipelines, water pipelines, or slurry lines that can cross a scenic river. What we know, with our desire to use alternative energy, especially in terms of the Southwest for solar and in my part of the country on up through the wind corridor, is that we are going to have to develop transmission lines, probably up to 40,000 miles of transmission lines, and we are going to double the cost of developing those lines because we would not be able to cross a scenic river. There is a prohibition in this bill. We will eliminate the ability to take the natural gas that is available in abundance in Alaska today, in proven known quantities, and the pipeline that is scheduled to come down to the greater 48 will be tripped up by these designations. Again, another way to shoot ourselves in the foot when energy independence ought to be part of our goal. The people who want to do the things in these bills are highly motivated for good reasons, but the judgment is suspect at the time in which we find ourselves. We find ourselves dependent on energy and in a financial mess. Yet we are going to make both of those problems worse with this bill. Today, in this country, we have 108 million acres of developed land. Now, that is cities, that is manufacturing sites, that is towns, and that is highways. That is all of it. We have 109 million acres right now of wilderness designation already, which is twice what was ever thought about being accomplished when the wilderness designation was first started in the 1950s and early 1960s. Then the Government owns another 656 million acres of land. So we are not only robbing the future from our children because we have been fiscally irresponsible, we are robbing their future potential to make decisions about independence and freedom in the future because we are going to be totally indebted in the 20 years that we transition from a carbon-based economy to a noncarbon-based economy. We are going to make that extremely painful, much more difficult, and extremely more expensive. Let me talk about why the National Park Service is overburdened for a minute and the things we ought to be doing. We have in Hawaii the USS Arizona Memorial. Now, 1,117 Americans died on that ship. The visitors' center--and if you have ever been there, you go out on a boat to the visitors' center--is sinking. The maintenance backlog is about $33 million. What are we going to do? What should we be doing? Creating these new ones or should we take care of the memorial for the USS Arizona? Which one is a priority? Should we maintain what we have or should we do something and say we did it through a press release, even though we are probably not going to have the money to do much of this, and create a false sense of expectation with the American people? The Gettysburg National Battlefield has a $29 million backlog; the Statue of Liberty Park, a $197 million backlog right now. Remember when Lee Iacocca helped to raise funds for the Statue of Liberty in 1976, and we did all that. That is the last time we have done any regular maintenance. So we have let it fall down. We haven't been responsible. We haven't put the money there. As a matter of fact, today President- elect Obama, in a press conference, asked for ideas as to how to spend money that will actually create jobs and create an investment. Well, I can tell you how I would spend the money. Let's fix up our parks, let's fix up The Mall, let's take care of the $29 million backlog we have on some of the greatest treasures we have in this country before we add to the maintenance headaches of the National Park Service by creating new National Parks. That is a way we could actually create some jobs and invest our money; things we are going to have to invest in someday anyway. The Grand Canyon National Park has a $299 million backlog. These aren't my numbers, these are National Park Service numbers. And there is the National Mall, as I talked about earlier. What is in this bill that doesn't make sense just from a commonsense standpoint, maybe something we should do at the right time? How about spending $5 million to compensate ranchers for losses from gray wolves that we reintroduced into the wild? We put them back in there, and now we are going to pay ranchers for the cattle they lost to them. We repopulated a species that is now overgrowing its habitat and coming onto private lands, and our answer to that is, well, we will just pay the losses. Do we have the money to waste $5 million paying for cattle losses from wild wolves? We might at some point in time. I hardly think we have the money to do that right now. The ranchers aren't going broke. There is no question it is an irritation and a cost to them, but I am not sure the Federal Government ought to be responsible for the cost. What about the coyotes in Oklahoma that kill our sheep and our chickens? Should we compensate the chicken farmers and the sheep farmers for the coyotes that kill their livestock? How about $1 billion and counting on the San Joaqin River project to make sure we restore 500 salmon? You heard me right--$1 billion is going to be spent over the next 10 years, and then money after that, to make sure we restore at least 500 salmon. How does that fit with our priorities? It may be something that we ultimately ought to do. How is it that we should do that now? Why should we even be thinking about doing that? How does that fit with any air of common sense? How about building a road to 800 residents, after we provided a hovercraft to get there? One hundred environmental groups are against building this road through a very pristine area. We do have access another way. Yet we are going to do that, and we are going to spend $2 million per mile over 17 miles, building a one-lane road that many times is not going to be accessible in the winter, through some of the greatest pristine areas that we have. Therefore, 100 environmental groups are adamantly opposed to including this in this bill. You can understand why they think that might not make sense for protecting such pristine land. This is my favorite: $3.5 million to the city of St. Augustine, FL, to plan--just to plan--for a birthday party 16 years from now for the 450th birthday of St. Augustine, FL. Does that restore confidence in the Senate, that we would say we are going to spend $3.5 million on a city that has been having a birthday party every year? Yet we are going to put another $3.5 million into the kitty to plan for a big one? There is no doubt we should recognize the historic significance of the longest lived settlement in this country at 450 years. But the question is, in today's economic climate, is that something we should be doing? Who out there without a job today would agree that we should do such a thing? How about spending a quarter of a million dollars to go down to the Virgin Islands to study whether Alexander Hamilton's old home down there ought to be made into a park? Is that a priority now? What would a quarter of a million dollars do for somebody who is unemployed right now? How many mortgages would it get people out from behind who are in arrears? How many people would not default if we could leverage $250,000 to them? We have our priorities messed up. The reason there is a lack of confidence in the Congress, with an approval rating of 9 percent, is because it is deserved. There is also $12 million for us to build a new greenhouse for orchids for the Arboretum. We may need to do that. There is no question we should preserve the things that mark our heritage. But is now the time to build a new greenhouse in Maryland to grow orchids? Is it the time? What can we do with that $12 million? Who could we help with that $12 million? Could we use it in a better, more efficient way so that the American people would benefit? If we are going to spend $12 million, couldn't we spend it in a better way? My State has Route 66 all through it. We have all these tourism things that are in this bill. Now is not the time for us to be working with grants to promote Route 66 in Oklahoma. Now is the time to be putting that money to work on something that is going to create a job or save a foreclosure or absolutely make a difference in somebody's life, not an aesthetic benefit of the past. We need to start thinking about the benefits of the future. I talked about the Wyoming range. It will be disputed by the Wyoming Senators, but the fact that the Bureau of Land Management used the latest geologic data and their study uses one that is 2 years old and makes the assumption that all land in Wyoming is the same would refute some of my statistics. But all of the geological engineers in this country and all the oil and gas exploration would remind us of the tremendous loss we are going to achieve by cordoning all that off and not making it available. I talked about the wilderness designations. I am not against, necessarily, new wilderness designations as long as we limit their impact on property rights. But we do not. As a matter of fact, they directly impact property rights. They directly limit individual property rights. So as we add wilderness areas and zoning requirements within them, we take away the right of the landowner because we fund a specialized group through the National Park Service to change the property rights to the disadvantage of the property owner. People who have no ownership in it will decide what the property's zoning rules will be because they will be funded by the Federal Government. If you are opposed to that, you are disadvantaged because the Government is going to send dollars to your opponent, so we attack property rights at the very basic level. Not only do we challenge them, we take your own money and support your opponent on what you can and cannot do with your own property. I love scenic rivers. We have the Illinois River in Oklahoma. It is a beautiful, pristine river. It has had some tributary problems, but we actively worked and cleaned it up and it is markedly improving every day. It is a real pleasure. Should every river in America be a scenic river? And, if it is, how are we going to cross them with utility lines, power transmission lines, natural gas lines, coal slurry lines, bridges, roads? How are we going to do that? We can't. Yet the goal of some is to make everything, every river, a scenic river. Now is not the time for us to do that because it will limit our ability to achieve greater energy independence. Those are not just threats. A 2001 lawsuit was filed against the U.S. Forest Service for failure to protect wild and scenic rivers in Arizona because a transmission line was coming across a 30-yard segment of it. Guess what happened. We didn't build the transmission line, so power was not made available. As we think about wind energy and solar energy, especially in the Southwest in the wind corridor, it will do us no good to put windmills out there if we do not have a way to send that energy somewhere else. Yet with this bill there are multiple instances, over 50 instances, where we are going to block our ability to send transmitted power to other areas of the country. In 2002, on scenic rivers, the lawsuit was won that said within the collection territory of the Los Padres National Forest in California we will not ever permit oil, gas, or mineral development within the river corridor. What happens if we can drill from outside? What if we can send a line 20 miles from the outside? What we are doing is we are saying no matter what the technology you ever develop, no matter how you ever attempt to make us energy independent, it is never going to be OK; we are never going to allow it. If you look at what this bill does in terms of geothermal--this is the potential geothermal source of energy. It is clean, renewable in this country. We markedly go after some of the most potent areas of geothermal availability in this bill. We say you can't use them. We can use geothermal--clean, alternative energy. But because we want to look good, because we want to say we did something, we changed that. Just so we might all be informed about how much land the Government actually owns, as you can see in the Western States, in Alaska, the vast majority of the land is owned by the Government. But that is not nearly as significant as what is happening with this bill because large portions of what is not owned by the Government now is very difficult to develop because when we try to get a permit for extraction of minerals, geothermal, gas, coal, or oil, it is hit with lawsuit after lawsuit. Now, in addition to these high percentages, nearly 50 percent, we are adding all these other things on top of it, the vast majority of which are moving to the west. It makes no common sense, no matter whether you are an avid global warming enthusiast or you are an energy explorer, if we want to stay warm in the winter, it doesn't make sense to anybody. Mr. President, 29 percent of all the land in this country is owned by the Federal Government. We are markedly increasing that by 2.2 million acres in this bill. We are going to threaten property rights. We are going to use eminent domain. We are going to use very sophisticated and poised sleight-of-hand zoning requirements to change land that is not owned by the Federal Government--to change the ability of the owner of that land to use that land if we pass this bill. There are about 40 of the bills in this bill that we don't have any problem with. They make sense; they don't cost a lot of money; they accomplish some of the things that are a priority. Let me spend a minute, if I might, just talking about the amendments we were going to offer had we had the ability to offer them. I note again, since July 16 the minority has had the opportunity to offer one amendment in this body, one amendment. In the greatest deliberative body in the world, the minority has had the opportunity to offer one amendment. One amendment we wanted to offer that I thought made sense: ``No funds can be made available . . . to establish a new unit of the National Park System or National Wilderness Preservation System, a new National Heritage Area . . . new Wild and Scenic Rivers, new wilderness areas . . . until the Secretary of the Interior certifies that the maintenance backlog at the Statue of Liberty National Monument, Grand Canyon National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Glacier National Park, Gettysburg National Park, Antietam National Battlefield, the National Mall'' in Washington, are up to date. Why wouldn't we want to take care of what we have now before we add to it? The Grand Canyon cannot even keep its trails open right now, or employees, due to lack of funding. There are 10 million gallons of raw sewage in Yellowstone. The Pearl Harbor USS Arizona Memorial is sinking. The manager of the Glacier National Park declared his park bankrupt--the manager. His words: ``We are bankrupt.'' At Gettysburg the number of employees has gone down. Their ability to maintain that significant monument to the history of us coming back together through war, through the results of ending that war and the tremendous number of lives that were lost on that day, General Pickett's charge--the fact is, we are ignoring them. According to some, the National Mall has now become a national disgrace because it is not maintained. We are going to see some of the great difficulties with that when we swear in our next President, with the tremendous burden being placed on it. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the delegate from DC, said we should be ashamed of what the average Mall visitor sees. It is not a priority. We made it politically expedient. We made looking good at home a priority. We have not taken care of our national treasures. The second amendment we offered, having been through this crush of energy price escalation, what we did was to prohibit new restrictions on American exploration and production--new restrictions; have not changed any of the old ones; we just said: Let's not put any more roadblocks in the way right now until we have a cogent energy policy that does not put us at the mercy of the nations that would like to see us destroyed. That is all we said: Let's not hurt ourselves any worse. But let me show you what occurs in this bill 19 times. Here is what it says: Subject to valid existing rights, all Federal land within this proposed area is withdrawn from all forms of entry, appropriation or disposal under the public land laws (in other words, we can never sell it) location, entry and patent under the mining laws, or disposition under all laws relating to mineral or geothermal leasing. It says that 19 times. What we have done is we have completely excluded any ability to get any energy. The ability for us to solve our energy problems over the next 20 years is being tremendously hampered by this bill. That does not include the 2.2 million acres that are added to the wilderness area. Amendment 3 to strike the Wyoming Range leasing withdrawal provision--if we can extract natural gas and oil and do it in a totally clean, environmentally friendly way and we know we have 300 million barrels of oil and 8.8 trillion cubic feet, probably closer to 15 trillion cubic feet of proven reserves now, why would we take that away? Why would we do that? Tell me how it makes sense to tell OPEC: Keep doing what you have been doing through the years because we know we have some oil, but we are never going to touch it. In the fields around this Wyoming Range, we know there are another 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Locking the resources away is not a partisan issue. My colleague from Louisiana, Senator Landrieu, claims this bill is moving us backward, not forward. Amendment 4 was to strike the $1 billion and counting for 500 salmon. Amendment 5 was to not spend $3.5 million on a birthday party for St. Augustine, FL, even though it is not directed at--Florida beat Oklahoma last night. It is kind of hard for me to offer that today thinking that is just revenge, but I wrote this long before we lost that game. Cut the $200,000 for a tropical botanical garden in Hawaii. Should we be spending $200,000 on a tropical botanical garden right now? I mean, does it make sense to anybody in America, when we are going to have a $1.8 trillion deficit, that we just throw $200,000 out there for a botanical garden? Is that a priority? I am not suggesting that we abandon everything, but what I am suggesting is that we ought to be about priorities, and I cannot see that as a priority at this time. How about a cave institute in New Mexico to receive unlimited Federal funding, an authorization that puts no limits on this funding. What happened is this used to be a Federal program, but it could not take private money. So they took it and made it to where it was a private program, hoping to get matching money from Federal grants. Well, they were not successful in getting matching money for Federal grants, so now we are going back and saying it is going to be a Federal program and it gets all the Federal money it wants. Is it a priority for us to have a cave institute right now? I do not think it is a priority. An amendment to limit Federal employees from using eminent domain to take away the private property rights of American citizens. We either have a right or we do not. But the more we take away property rights, it is not going to be long before we lose other rights. Simple, straightforward amendment, vote it up or down, but at least let the American people see where you stand on property rights for them. How about an amendment, very straightforward--the Federal Government does not know what it has and what it does not have. How about an annual report detailing the amount of Federal property the Federal Government owns and the cost of Government land ownership to taxpayers. As an aside, we do know the Federal Government is currently holding about $20 billion worth of property that is costing them about $4 billion a year to maintain that they do not want but we can't sell. And last year, property disposal legislation failed to go through this body, even though it costs us $4 billion a year. Common sense. How about to make sure we can always have a hunting preserve in this country, to limit the restriction on hunting activities as far as the land use on Federal lands with reason, control. We have lots of Federal lands that are overpopulated with species that need to be thinned. Yet we limit the ability of sportsmen to address that. There were several others. We do not expect to get all of those amendments or the rights for those. As a matter of fact, if the record is right, if you look at what the last 6 months have been, the minority will get one amendment over the next 6 months. We represent over half the population of this country in the greatest deliberative body in the world. So how are we to rebuild confidence in this country? Is it by packaging 134 bills together and ramming them through because everybody has something in it? Even though some of them may be very much a priority, the rest of them do not have and do not pass the priority test. Is that what we are about? Is that going to build confidence in this country? Is that going to restore the American people's confidence that we are up to the task of attending to the very real and practical, severe needs of this country at this time? Is this something President- elect Obama would say: This is the first thing I want you to pass out of the Senate in terms of a priority. It would not even pass his smell test. My hope is that we go forward, but that as we go forward, we do it in a way that the American people would like to see us do. The goal is not to delay, the goal is to make the point that we ought to have an option to amend and debate bills. These bills got here because they were trying to be passed without any debate, with no amendment, passed by a procedure called unanimous consent. It is important that the American people know what that is. Unanimous consent is where a bill comes to both cloakrooms, whether it has gone through committee or not, and it is said, can we pass this bill? Well, the problem is, I read the bills and I put a test on them: Are they a priority? Are they a necessity? Are they something that lessens our debt? Are they within the role that has been granted to us under the enumerated powers of the Constitution as something we ought to be doing? If they are not, I am not trying to stop the bill; all I am saying is, bring it to the floor and let's have some debate and amendments on it. And what we have seen is that there is something wrong if you won't, in the dark of night, let bills go through that the American people never hear anything about. Well, the American people need to hear about it all. This stuff all needs to be online. There needs to be 30 Senators here today debating this. Instead, we are not. And we are going to let status quo, poor priority, lead us down the path to where we do not have the courage to do what is necessary to fix what is wrong in our country. And this is symbolic of what is wrong, is that we do what is politically expedient rather than what is in the best long-term interests of our country. I have already readily admitted there are several, maybe 60 bills I have no problem with; I think they are a priority. But when they are packaged together, that takes away property rights, that eliminates our ability to be independent in terms of energy in the future, and that blocks the ability to take alternative forms of energy and create transmission lines so that we can use it somewhere after we produce it. I am going to stand up every time--every time. As a Senator representing 3.8 million people from Oklahoma, that voice is going to be heard; it is not going to be stifled. It may not have an amendment, but it is going to be heard. This country is worth us fighting for. And this is not worth our priority at this time. At the dilatory state we find ourselves in, we ought to be about bigger and better things that really impact people both in the long run and short run and get us out of the problems we are in. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business, the time I might consume not to exceed 1 hour.

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I would like to be recognized for a period of time. The majority leader has been very gracious to offer me an opportunity to have some discussions about some amendments that he is going to possibly allow on a bill that he is going to introduce this evening. I wanted to take some time now rather than later so that we would not keep staff here, and that way we could be efficient with our time. I want to talk about several things. I want to preface it with a statement, that I have been very pleased to see a man I respect a great deal, even though not in office as of yet, but the President-elect, be very firm in the principles he outlined as he ran for President and now is about to be sworn into that office. One of the themes that has characterized his campaign and has characterized him ever since I have known him has been the idea of hope and change. So I, like many other Americans, look forward in great anticipation to the leadership that will be brought forth in the next few weeks and what that means to the millions of Americans who are going to look to Washington this month with a level of hope and excitement that we have not seen in this country in decades. While most of the attention is going to be focused on the White House, the institution at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, this Congress, will arguable have a greater role in determining whether President-elect Obama's invocation of change is remembered as an election slogan or a true new era in American politics. My hope and prayer is it is a new era. While many commentators have noted, with some justification, the concepts such as hope and change were never defined much and were not given a specificity during the campaign, I believe the American people have already defined those concepts very clearly in their hearts and minds. I believe what hope, change, and optimism represent to the average voter is very simple: It is a real expectation that Washington will be different. Voters have not undergone an ideological shift nearly so much as they are demanding that Government be more competent, that we be more mature, that we be less corrupt, and that we be less selfish. That last part is one of the things that has driven us to do things that are not very good. The concept of self-promotion, the concept of promoting one's career at the expense of our country. I believe what both parties in Congress must do, and do very quickly, is ask themselves the hard question of why Congress has a historic low approval rating of 9 percent. Why do we have an approval rating of 9 percent? That is according to a recent Rasmussen Poll. Both parties are accustomed to analyzing what they and the other party did right or wrong in recent election cycles, but yet neither party has come to terms with the fundamental public rejection of how Congress as an institution has governed and behaved in recent decades. In many respects the American people understand us far better than we understand ourselves. While politicians tend to believe the public is put off by ideologic debate, what alienates voters is the truly debilitating division in Congress between statesmen and those who view reelection as the ultimate goal. Careerism is not driven by any set of ideas but by pure parochialism and the short-term pursuit of power for power's sake. The real division, then, that blocks progress and commonsense solutions is not between ideas or parties but between every Member's self-promoted interests. The American people understand this intuitively, which is why Congress has had historic low approval ratings long before we entered this recession. What the public knows is that a Congress that debates ideas tends to develop the best solutions, while a Congress that is driven by careerism and parochialism builds bridges to nowhere and fails to conduct oversight over entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In short, the American people can handle serious debate, but they cannot handle incompetence, corruption, stupidity, and self-interest put above that of the Nation. Congress's handling of an economic stimulus bill will no doubt be an early test. Although the policy may be suspect, Congress seems willing to try to avoid embarrassing the new President by turning the package into an orgy of parochial porkbarrel spending. He said today there will be no earmarks in the stimulus package. Congress's real test, though, will come next and will be repeated hundreds of times over the next 4 years with each piece of legislation. So far Congress has signaled little desire for a long-term commitment to change. Some would ask why would I say that? I would say that because here in a little while this evening we are going to reintroduce a bill that nobody knows right now how many other bills it has in it-- that is going to be the first order of business of this Congress--that allocates $10 billion, some to some very worthy projects but tons of that money to projects that do not have a priority anywhere close to what we ought to be doing. This is an omnibus lands bill that indulges the worst habits of a parochial Congress. The bill, which is a holdover from the last Congress, includes such things as a $3 million road to nowhere through a wildlife refuge, a $1 billion water project--$1 billion--designed to assure that 500 salmon will be repopulated. It does not take long to divide 500 salmon into $1 billion to see that what we have is $2 million a salmon. They are worth more than gold. There is $3.5 million to give to the City of St. Augustine, FL, so they can prepare a celebration 6 years from now to recognize their 450th birthday. I hardly see, in the midst of the economic times we face, how that can be a priority for the Nation as a whole. I know it is a priority from a parochial standpoint, but is it in the best interest of the Nation? It has been claimed that this bill is noncontroversial, and it should pass essentially without amendment, without debate. However, it is to note that over 100 different organizations on both the left side of the political spectrum and the right side of the political spectrum are opposed to this bill because it is controversial, a point noted by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The earmarks in this bill have angered many groups, as has the significant, anti-energy, more foreign dependence on oil programs that are in this bill. This bill contains a provision that will eliminate 8.8 trillion cubic feet of known natural gas reserves, proven reserves, today that we will not be able to take for our consumption. What that means is we are going to import 8.8 trillion feet of natural gas because we are going to say: You cannot have this. It also contains 300 million barrels of proven oil that we are no longer going to take. We just went from $146 oil to $35 oil, $40 today. If we have learned anything, we ought to be about as much energy self- sufficiency as we can. The controversy over whether we get off fossil fuels is a debate for another time. But no one can deny the necessity of us discontinuing sending our fortunes to countries that are supplying us oil and are also ultimately our enemies. The energy resources walled off by this bill will match the annual production levels of our two largest natural gas-producing States, Alaska and Texas. My worry about bringing this bill--and, again, I am thankful the majority leader has reached out that we might be able to offer amendments--is, what does this send as a signal to the American public? Here is what it sends. It says: There may be change in the White House, but there is absolutely no change in Congress. Why would we bring a bill that is going to spend $10 billion of our money--at least $9 billion of that is not a priority in terms of the priorities facing this Nation--why would we bring that to the floor as the first order of business of the 111th Congress? The only reason we could be bringing it to the floor is because it makes us look good at home with multiple parochial projects. If our country has a failing that will cripple us forever, it is the fact that we have allowed parochialism, not the oath we saw all new Members and newly reelected Members take today, where we uphold the Constitution. What we do is, we uphold the future of our own political careers. History is interesting. The 1994 Republican revolution unraveled not because they made a lot of big mistakes--some were made--but because Republicans made a ton of little mistakes they didn't realize they were making. The new and expanded majority will realize that with greater numbers comes a greater share of the responsibility and blame for whatever happens in this country. If we go back to that 9-percent approval rating, it has to do with this: Congress, we don't believe you are going to do at every turn, at every opportunity, what is in the best long-term interests for this Nation. And we are going to prove it. Because this bill ultimately will probably pass out of this Chamber and be passed, and we are going to spend, at a time when we are going to have a $1 trillion deficit this year, another $800 billion trying to stimulate the economy. We are going to say: Priority doesn't matter but parochialism does. Looking good at home matters more than the long-term interests of the country, matters more than the financial future of our grandchildren--my political career, my party, me, me, me. The historical basis of our country is built on sacrifice. It is built on sacrifice by one generation for the generations that follow. Our political history used to be that as well. My worry, my concern is we can't live up to the hope and the change the President-elect has set before us. By bringing this bill to the floor as the first order of business in the 111th Congress, we have confirmed to the American public that business as usual is business as usual, that we don't recognize the severity of the situation we find ourselves in, that we are not going to change our habits, that we will continue to promote those things that promote us rather than promote the long-term good and benefit of the country. It is pure selfishness. It is saying what I want and what I need and my political future or my State has to come above the long-term interests and the best interests of this wonderful country. The real challenge doesn't come from any of the parties. It comes from parochialism. The public has told Congress it is time to start acting in the best interest of the country rather than the best interest of our next election. The sooner Congress realizes change requires a cultural shift in both parties, the sooner that change will come. I would like to spend a moment outlining a few components of this bill. We have not actually gotten to see the bill, but I have been told by the majority leader that we have added, I think, 12 or 13 other bills to it. But from what we have known in the past, let me go through and explain to the American public what is in this bill. The national parks today face a severe shortage of money to maintain them at their current level. It is about $9.8 billion. In this bill we add four new national parks. The U.S. Arizona Memorial in Hawaii is sinking. The visitors center is sinking. We haven't put the money in to repair it, but yet we are going to create more national parks that will further dilute the maintenance budget of the National Park Service so we can't even maintain what we have. We have a $700 million backlog just on The National Mall in Washington. We didn't address any of that in terms of the priority of fixing that. Yet we are going to add four new national parks. We are going to add 10 new heritage areas. It is great for us to protect and think about the environment. But we never talk about how that impacts property rights, one of the rights given to us as our Nation was created. We are going to threaten that area. We are going to threaten through eminent domain. We are going to threaten through councils that will impact individual ownership of what you can do with your own property because you might be in proximity to a heritage area. We have 14 studies that would create or expand future national parks; in other words, 14 more. That is what we are funding in this bill. We don't have the money to take care of the parks we have today, but yet we are going to put into this and spend money to potentially create 14 more. There are 17 provisions in this bill that will totally prohibit any exploration, oil extraction, coal extraction, natural gas extraction from 2.98 million acres in this country, many of which have proven reserves underlying. There are 53 rivers that are designated or portions of which are designated as scenic rivers. We have a great scenic river in Oklahoma called the Illinois. I am glad it is a scenic river. But with scenic river designation comes a trampling on the rights of people who are far away from it. We didn't change scenic rivers designation in light of our energy needs. Once a river is designated a scenic river and we need to move natural gas or a coal slurry or oil from point A to point B, we are totally prohibited from ever doing that on a scenic river. So it is another strike at any sort of increasing in our independence on energy because we are going to designate scenic rivers. Why not designate scenic rivers with an option to make sure we don't handcuff ourselves when it comes to energy? There are 65 new Federal wilderness areas. Here is an important matter we came across as we studied this bill. In the United States today, right now, before this bill, there are 107 million acres of wilderness. All the developed land--cities, suburbs, towns--across the whole rest of the country is only 106 million acres. We are going to be adding to that and limiting our opportunity to the resources we have. There are 1,082 pages in the bill. I understand it is now 1,200 pages. There are 1.2 million acres in Wyoming that are withdrawn from mineral leasing and exploration. There are 1.93 million acres of Federal wilderness land. There are 3 million additional acres withdrawn from leasing and energy exploration. There are 331 million barrels of oil that we know are there and we are never going to take. We are just going to help those who drive up our energy costs because we are going to know it is there but we can't touch it because we are going to make it off-limits. There are 592 spending and 15 new State and local water projects. There is nothing wrong with State and local water projects, as long as they are a priority, but these are earmarked, specific projects for specific Members. There is $10 billion of total spending money we don't have. We are going to borrow it. There are 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that we know is there that we will never touch. What the Department of Interior tells us is there is much more there, but these are the proven reserves. I will end my conversation, only to be continued in a more thorough manner as the bill actually comes to the floor by asking the American public: What would they hope we would do in terms of trying to change, trying to meet what they see as the problems in front of us? Would it be that we would be about passing things that are small but make us look good that we can't pay for or would it be that we should attend and address the pressing and also long-term needs of the country? It is about trust. The reason we have a 9-percent approval rating is because we are not trusted. We are addicts. We are self-indulgent addicts over our power. My query to the body and to the American people is, will you hold us accountable? You have to do an intervention with us, each one of us, every time we are home: Are you being a good steward with the limited dollars we have? Are you making choices that may not look good for you as a politician but are truly the best choice for the country? Are you putting yourself second and our country first? Are you acting as a statesman or are you acting as somebody who wants to get reelected? The real paradox is, with trust comes confidence. With that confidence comes the involvement and support of the very people we actually do represent. We have a choice. I hope the introduction of this bill does not portend that we will not take President-elect Obama's lead and offer the American people real hope, real change, that we will get away from our addicted self-indulgence to look good at home and start making the hard, tough decisions that will right our ship and put our country first. Anything less than that says the people who took their oath today and those of us who have taken it before, we violate it. We raise our hand and put one on the Bible and say we will uphold it, but then when it comes to the first tough choice, look good at home or do what is in the long-term best interests of the country, we swivel, we back down, and we opt for the short term, the self-aggrandizement, and the stroke on our own back. We are better than that. The people in this body are better than that. My hope is we can prove to the American people over the next 6 to 9 months that we got the message, that it is about making the tough choices. It is about doing what is right in the long term. It is not about what makes us or our party look good; it is about what is best for the country as a whole. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I would raise objection to the filing of the bill at the desk, the Bingaman land package.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I will be happy to in a moment. I have given positive comments to the press on Mr. Holder, so I am not necessarily someone in opposition. But I can tell you I am in opposition to not being in a position to do my job. It is going to be impossible, and I will tell my colleague that, with the schedule that has been set forth. I will not be able to be prepared at the time. I have one staff lawyer. For us to go through everything to my satisfaction, for me to fulfill my oath, that is not a possibility between now and January 9. The other thing I would say is much of the information we have requested is not even going to be available to us until January 6. So it would be terrible to start the next Congress off having a fight about a fight. My hope is we can come to a compromise so we all feel very well prepared. There is no intent to delay Mr. Holder's nomination. There is every intent to make sure we are prepared to thoroughly vet his qualifications of independence and judgment. It is not his qualifications as to whether he has the capability to fulfill the role. It is whether he will demonstrate the independence and the judgment with which to fulfill it. As my colleague knows--he was at the hearing when I asked the Attorney General to resign--I am not a partisan. The President-elect who nominated this man I have a great deal of respect for. But I am going to do my job. If it means holding up a nomination until I get all the answers, then that is what I will do. So there is no reason for us to do that by not accommodating the ranking member on this committee and setting the schedule with which the minority on that committee are not prepared to be prepared to answer that. With that, I am happy to yield to my colleague.

Mr. COBURN. Reclaiming my time----

Mr. COBURN. I suggest we did a poor job with Attorney General Gonzales, that is No. 1. No. 2, I was not here then so I don't know whether we did or did not. Mukasey--the difference that would lie is there is a large red flag on one or two specific actions of this gentleman as he acted as assistant Attorney General. That requires good scrutiny. I assure my colleague that does not mean, and I think he knows this-- I have not made a decision on this gentleman and I will not until we have gone through the hearing process. As I have said to the press, I am generally inclined to think he is very well qualified for this. But the question of judgment will require a lot of research on associated issues that have been outlined here. So, to me, it is not a game I am playing. I think my colleagues in the Senate know I work very hard to stay informed and up to detail on every issue that is before us. I would say to my colleague, to me, I don't care what the time was ever. What I care about is do we do it right so we do not have a repeat. I am sure my colleague knows he doesn't want us to have a repeat of making a mistake and not thoroughly vetting someone to the degree we should. My hope is the Judiciary Committee in the next Congress operates very smoothly, that we stand on the principles that we spoke about as we went through this last year, and that we do not see the process of trying to slow down judicial appointments because it is a partisan issue. He has my pledge that will never be anything I will pertain to or participate in. If somebody is qualified and they are this President's nominee and they are qualified after going through the Judiciary Committee and I believe they should be voted on, I intend to vote for them and not hold them up. But I think this is a very different instance. There are two specific problems that have to be very well vetted. From what we have seen so far, the vast majority and minority have not met Mr. Holder. We are going to be asked to meet with him on the day before the committee hearing so we will not have had the time even after we meet with him to be able to cross-check what we have asked him against what facts we know because we will not have all the facts in, because we will not even have all the records from the Clinton library at that time. I suggest we ought to start it off in more of a spirit of cooperation. My ranking member is of the learned opinion for the years that he has been here, and he is a proven expert in the law, that we need more time. We hope that request would be honored. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague and his informed words. Much of what he has stated I agree with, but there is a significant difference. No. 1 is I was not in the Senate when Mr. Holder was confirmed. Given the facts that played out associated with pardons that President Clinton had, the look needs to be refreshed without any question because there is no question that Mr. Holder erred in his judgment and has essentially said so, in association with one Mr. Marc Rich, a fugitive. I do not doubt Mr. Holder has a distinguished record. He is well qualified for lots of areas. I do not think it ought to be on the floor that we debate whether we have a hearing. But I can tell you that the information we have requested, both from the Clinton libraries and others, will not be available to us to peruse and to study. I may in fact in the long term end up voting for Mr. Holder, but I am not about to do anything less than a very thorough job. I also remind my colleagues I was the first Republican Senator in the midst of the committee to call for the resignation of Attorney General Gonzales--rightly so. The position of Attorney General, although it is appointed by the President, is very different than all the rest of the appointments because he is for all of us, every citizen in this country, the chief law enforcement officer of this land. His loyalty is not to the President. His loyalty has to be to the Constitution. It has to be to the responsible bodies that guide this country, although if we in fact have hearings early, we will have to have additional hearings. We will not allow a vote to occur until we have thoroughly, to each member of the Judiciary Committee's satisfaction, had the record examined and had the questions answered that are going to need to be answered with regard to some of the events that have taken place late in the Clinton administration. That is not to cast any aspersions on Mr. Holder. I think he is a fine man. But judgment is the key thing that is most important and there is a red flag. So if it is insisted that we go early, earlier than we are prepared so we can truly ask the questions we think the country would need us to ask, then I think we will have a difficult time ever moving that nomination. That should not be the case. The fact is this gentleman deserves the best, the most thorough opportunity to explain himself in a way where people are asking proper questions, not improper questions. More important, the American people deserve for us to do our job. That means we have to be very well briefed, very well studied on the questions and circumstances about which we will apply them.

Mr. COBURN. I ask to speak in morning business.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Let me describe for a moment the problems that are coming if we get past this one. Here are the problems that are coming. We are on an unsustainable course. The unfunded liabilities for Medicare alone are $100 trillion. A child born today in this country faces $400,000 for taxes for things they will never get a benefit from--$400,000. Who in this country starting out even could absorb that debt, pay the interest on it, and ever hope to own a home or have a college education? Yet this body continues to spend more, authorize more, and create bigger and more intrusive Government, limiting the power of the great American experiment to, in fact, supply an increased standard of living. We are in tough times, but they are going to get tougher until the American people hold this body accountable to live within the rules set out in a very wise, a very providential way that served this country well. We ignore this book, this Constitution, at our peril. We are reaping exactly what we have sown. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, it is tremendously ironic that we are here today. It is ironic in the sense that as we ignore what the Constitution tells us, we embrace defeat, difficulty, and peril. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of article I, section 8 of the Constitution be printed in the Record.

Mr. COBURN. For those of you who are not familiar with those two portions of our Constitution, they are very clear. Article I, section 8 is the enumerated powers that are given to Congress. They are very specific. They are very direct. It tells us what we are to be dealing with and what we are not to be dealing with. It tells us the extent to which the Federal Government is to intervene in the lives of Americans. The 10th amendment, on the other hand, says that whatever is not included, specifically listed right here in the enumerated powers, is totally and absolutely reserved for the rights of the States. As a practicing physician, I compare where we are today to a physician who commits malpractice. We have a patient with cancer. They have a secondary pneumonia because of the cancer. We are going to treat the pneumonia. We are going to give the antibiotics, we are going to give something to lower the temperature, we are going to give something to suppress the cough, we are going to give something to thin the mucous, but we are not going to fix the cancer. We are going to ignore the cancer. Let me tell you what the cancer is. The cancer is Congresses that, for years upon years, have totally ignored the Constitution of the United States and taken us to areas where we have no business being. There is no way you can justify, in the U.S. Constitution, that the country ought to be the source of mortgages for homeowners in this country. Yet Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac control 70 percent of the mortgages in this country. I plan on voting for this bill. I support that we have to do something now. But how we got here is very important if we are going to fix things in the future. The fact is that, at the same time we are debating this very important issue, we have on the floor another violation of the enumerated powers, which is the Amtrak and Metro earmark fiasco. It is going to be very interesting to see the Members of this body as they vote to bail out the financial institutions in this country while at the same time they continue to commit the same error that got us there in the first place. There is no question Amtrak is going to get reauthorized. The American people are going to spend $2.3 billion subsidizing the riders on Amtrak in this country. In 2006 we subsidized food on Amtrak to $100 billion--I think it is down to $70 million now--despite an explicit provision within the Amtrak bill that says they will never sell anything for less than its cost and they were to lose no money on food. Where is the answer? The answer is there has been no oversight to make sure Amtrak doesn't lose money on food. We have ignored it. We have ignored the enumerated powers of the Constitution. We are now committing the same Federal error in a much smaller way on Amtrak as we did on housing. If anybody in America is mad about this situation, there is only one place they need to direct their anger and it is right in the Congress of the United States. It is not specific Members, it is bad habits. We are not going to cut out the cancer. We are not going to give the radiation therapy. What we are going to do is we are going to continue to treat the symptoms rather than directly go after the cause that has created the greatest financial risk and peril this country has ever seen. We are not going after the cause. The cause is get back within the bounds of the Constitution that very specifically says where we have business working and where we do not. Because we are out of those bounds, we have now put at risk every job in this country, the savings and retirement of people who worked for years, because we decided we would ignore the wisdom of our Founders and create systems that are outside the enumerated powers that were given to us because we know better. We do not know better. It is obvious. There is no administration to blame. It is not the Clinton administration or the Bush administration's fault we are in this mess. Because if you say that, what you have to say is you did all the oversight, you had all the hearings, you knew what was going on and you didn't do anything about it. So either we didn't know or we did know and did nothing about it. There is only one place to come to hold accountability and it is in this body. You are going to get to see tonight people continue to vote outside the bounds of the Constitution, as we reauthorize $2.3 billion of subsidies for Amtrak, and we do not hold Amtrak accountable. We are going to give $1.5 billion and the mother of all earmarks to Virginia and Maryland for a Metro system that the Federal employees use more than anybody, and we are subsidizing an additional $100 million through individual agencies to pay them to ride it. And we wonder why we have these problems. It is very simple. We are committing malpractice. We are not living up to the oath we undertook when we became Members of this body. That oath says you will defend and uphold the Constitution. It doesn't say you will rewrite it because it pleases you politically. We are here today because of fatal errors on the part of Members of this body to do something that is totally outside the bounds of the wisdom and foresight our Founders gave us. Those are tough words. But we are in tough times. If we do not get about withdrawing and getting back within the realms of the power granted to us, this is just the first in a very large roll of problems this country is going to face. Madam President, how much time do I have?

Mr. COBURN. I also ask unanimous consent that the 10th amendment to the Constitution be printed in the Record at this time.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. In response to the Senator through the Chair, that is a rarity that occurs here. The fact is, the Federal Government is growing three times faster than the income of the people in this country. It is because we will not put our own financial house in order. I want to do the best we can do for people with paralysis. I think we ought to get rid of some of the 380 billion dollars' worth of waste and double the money in NIH. That is what I think. But we will not, nobody can, including my colleague from Iowa. When I have offered amendments on the floor to get rid of wasteful spending, rarely, if ever, have you joined me to get rid of the wasteful spending. Instead, we have continued wasteful spending. Just like we are going to talking about Amtrak. Amtrak has a $100 million subsidy. Nobody in this country, other than us, would allow Amtrak to continue losing $100 million a year on food subsidies on the train. No airline does that. No bus company does that. But because we have a $2.6 billion subsidy, we think it is fine that we should subsidize people's food on the train. I can give you a thousand examples of things that we should be doing that we are not. I am not opposed to the efforts that you want to try to accomplish. What I am saying is we need a discipline change in this Congress. The American people have had it with us. We are wasting money hand over foot. And it is not what you want to do is bad, I am for what you want to do, I am saying let's get some discipline and let's make some priority choices. Every family out there has to choose among priorities. They have to make a hard choice on what is important and what is not. This is important, yes. We have told your staff the moment this passed the committee that we were going to hold it on the Senate floor unless it was offset. That is not a new threat. That is not news to your staff. They have known that for a long time, and so does every Member of this body. In fact, you received a letter from me in January of 2007 that said very specifically: If you bring a bill to the floor that is not offset, that is going to spend new money, unless we are going to get it debated and offer amendments, we are going to object. So that is where we stand.

Mr. COBURN. I will gladly deliver to the Senator a copy of his letter. You can read it. What he objects to is any disease-specific bill. The reason for that is very simple. There are over--let me give you the exact number. There are 12,161 subcategories of diseases. His principle is we ought to let the scientists decide the direction of the research, not Congress. Because if we decided on this and we set it up and a consortium will take it directly from the research--if we did that on everything, we would have the most misguided, misdirected, and wasteful expenditures on research you could imagine. He lists specifically the fact that we had 2,036 categories and over 12,000 subcategories, and philosophically he objects to all disease-specific bills.

Mr. COBURN. That is true.

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object, first let me say to my colleague, I know he is dedicated to this cause. It is an important cause. I have four basic problems with what we are doing here. We did negotiate this bill. I also expressed in public that I would not allow this bill to go unless we had a full debate on the Senate floor. That has never been in confusion. I also stated if we were in fact to offset the authorizations in the bill with some of the wasteful spending that we have today--and I understand the contention by the Senator from Iowa, who is also an appropriator who does not believe this will lead to spending--if we do not believe it will lead to spending, why authorize it in the first place? It is a false hope. The third point I would make is everything this bill wants to do can already be done, except name it after Christopher and Dana Reeve-- everything. So what I would like is a unanimous consent request, after rebuttal from the Senator from Iowa, that I be given 10 minutes to explain my objections to the bill in detail, and also to offer for the record a letter from Dr. Zerhouni, dated July 30 of this year, in which he adamantly opposes any disease-specific bills. He outlined specifically why they should not be there. The final point I would make, we spend $5.9 billion on this right now. We should spend more, but we do not have the money to spend more because this Congress will not get rid of $300 billion worth of wasteful spending. We appropriate $300 billion that is pure waste every year. It is not that we do not have the money. It is not that this bill will spend the money. It is not that we cannot have this; it can happen right now under the leadership at NIH. It is the fact that the very problems we are faced with today in terms of the financial collapse of this country and the liquidity of this country is because we have gone down a road of fiscal irresponsibility. On that basis, I will object and await Senator Harkin's rebuttal. I do congratulate him for his commitment and his dedication. I believe the people at NIH want to solve this as well as anybody else and they recognize that they already have the power to do this. I will make one final comment. This bill could have come to the floor. We could have taken care of it in 2\1/2\ hours if we had debate and amendments. The majority leader refused to let this bill come to the floor. It is important for the American people know what a hold is. A hold is saying: Let the bill come to the floor, but I don't want to pass it with my vote unless I have an opportunity to debate it and amend it, and what has been done has precluded us on that. We did a lot of negotiations on this. The one thing we couldn't get negotiated is offsetting the negotiating level. Everybody knows that is a nonstarter with me. That is the only way we establish fiscal discipline in this country.

Mr. COBURN. Absolutely. In response to your question, the Emmett Till bill, we attempted to do that. It was passed in connection with other bills, and we believed, since we had assurances that the appropriators would in fact take care of that inside the Department of Justice, we did not have that in the bill but outside, the appropriators would take care of that and we wouldn't spend additional money.

Mr. COBURN. It would be more than acceptable provided the bill comes to the floor and offsets the authorizations. The problem we have is that in the last year, in your subcommittee alone on appropriations, we had 398 million dollars' worth of earmarks outside of the authorization process. None of them were authorized. Now you want to spend more money on programs that you want to authorize, but you will not take away the $398 million of earmarks that were never authorized. That is my whole point. Bring the bill to the floor, offset some spending somewhere else, and we will not even have to go to the floor. Just offset it; you can have the bill. But the fact is, nobody wants to offset it. The intention is to spend this money. Even though we play the games, how did we get $9.6 trillion in debt? We got it playing this same game, saying: Here is $115 million; it does not cost anything. But that is really untrue because it does. If you authorize it, you are going to spend more money. We have grown 61 percent since 2001 in terms of discretionary spending in this country, and we are broke. And we have a financial crisis in front of us. I am trying to stand and say, if you want to do something, get rid of some of the 300 billion dollars' worth of waste, which I consider 398 million dollars' worth of earmarks that were unauthorized waste. So it is easy to bring it up. Bring this bill without the authorizing money, put it in, you got it.

Mr. COBURN. We received assurances that it would be offset at the appropriations level.

Mr. COBURN. Absolutely not. I voted against it and proudly did so because we had $16.8 billion worth of earmarks in there that will be forced onto the American taxpayer that will never see the light of day. They were in the report language, and we put something in the bill that said you couldn't amend it. None of those are competitively bid; $16 billion worth of earmarks, none of them competitively bid. So what happens? Defense authorization, we got $16 billion that we probably could have bought for 10, but because we have a system that says we are not going to watch out for the taxpayer, we will not do it. So what I would say to the Senator is, what you want to do is great. I am not against it. How you are doing it I am against. Unless we change how we do things here, until we start becoming responsible fiscally, there has to be somebody putting on the brakes. I don't want to be known as a Senator who blocks research, but in fact, as the doctor related, this can all be done, and they are probably doing it. The Senator from Iowa voted for the reform of NIH. You proudly voted for the reform of NIH. Paralysis is a disease-specific category because it is based on a problem in terms of mobility. So it falls into a category. I don't know whether he wants this specifically, but what I am saying to you is, if you will bring a bill with $115 million worth of offsets to the floor in terms of authorization, we will say yes tomorrow. The point is, until we establish with the American people that we are going to be as wise with their money as they are with their money, then we have to do some changing. I do not apologize at all for standing in the way of this bill on principle. Somebody has to say timeout in this country in terms of spending. A newborn child born this year faces $400,000 in unfunded liability. When you fund the $115 million and if you offset it with something else, something else will get offset. The average increase in this area has been about 7.5 percent per year. What is the name of all those children who aren't going to get to go to college, will not have a great opportunity economically for the future, because we won't live within our means? The last time I knew, when the airlines made money, they paid taxes. So, in fact, they are contributing to all those things that were mentioned because they are taxed at one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. One of the reasons the airlines can't compete is because we have a tax rate that essentially is close to 50 percent by the time we add in State income taxes. So they participated in the development of all those programs. They are great advancements. Let's finish this debate. Let's talk off the floor. I will gladly work with Senator Harkin to accomplish whatever he wants, but I will not break down on the letter I sent in January of 2007 that says I believe we have to change the way we operate. I know there is tremendous resistance to that in this body. I understand that. But the American people don't understand it. What they understand is they have to make hard choices. Either we mean to fund the $115 million or we are sending a charade to the people who want this bill passed. It is one or the other. The fact is, they have had a chance. I will also put in the Record that in the last Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill, there was $105 million that Senator Harkin specifically put in for earmarks that he directed. That is real spending. That is enough to pay for the whole bill over 10 years. The fact is, we have a major disagreement on specifics on how we control and how we change this country. I will fight for the taxpayer every time. I apologize to the Senator for some of my emotion. It is because I am thinking about the kids who are coming, not the political realm of today. I understand that we need to do more in NIH. I am on public record to take that to $60 billion. I will pay for it, easily pay for it. There is $80 billion worth of fraud in Medicare. What have we done about that? Nothing. We gutted the very program that cut spending for medical devices, durable medical equipment, the last bill through here. We had a way to save over $2 billion a year. We gutted it. The Senator voted for it. He voted to gut the $2 billion worth of savings. So there are plenty of things we can do, but what we are not going to do anymore with my consent is to pass bills that increase the liability for our children in the future, even when we do it for the sake of doing something good. I yield the floor.