Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. What I can tell the Senator is I have held every bill that comes before this body that we have an objection to constitutionally, or from the Director of NIH, that does spend money that is already for them.

Mr. COBURN. Will the Senator yield for a moment?

Mr. COBURN. No, I never had a hold on that.

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

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I appreciate the unanimous consent request that allows me to spend a little bit of time on this bill. Before I get into the bill, I wish to answer the most senior Senator we have in terms of the President's request for flatlining a lot of DHS. I happen to be on the Homeland Security Committee, and I can tell you, outside the Pentagon, there is no agency in the Government that has more waste, fraud, and abuse than the Department of Homeland Security. Any business manager or any family could quickly see that you could easily flatline it and make it much more efficient and do a good job for the taxpayers. So the motivation by flatlining is to try to generate some efficiency in the Department of Homeland Security. I also wish to associate some of my words with the Senator from Mississippi on terms of process. We have a tremendous amount of money-- $643 billion--that this bill has. Here is the bill. It is another one of those thick bills we are going to send over. There are going to have to be technical corrections--we know that--in any big bill we do this way. But there is something fundamentally flawed, and it doesn't have anything to do with the bill; it has to do with the process. We have an Appropriations Committee that does generally a very good job on most of these items, but what we have done is excluded the whole body from their input into making decisions about some $640 billion worth of spending. As far as the discretionary budget, it is about 65 percent of the total discretionary budget that we are going to pass, and it is not going to have any input except for 29 Members of this body--no input, no chance to change policy, no chance to put limitations, no chance to truly do what should be done. We have to ask the question: Why is that? Why is it that appropriations bills did not come through this body this year? I think the reason is, not because they didn't really want people to try to improve and perfect the legislation, it is that we didn't want any votes that might make some political party--one or the other, ours or the majority--to have a political advantage through a vote. That is a very terrible way for this body to descend into politics instead of policy. This bill contains tons of earmarks. Some are bright, some stink. Some, when the light of day is shone on them, the American people will actually gasp and say: Where was the common sense? How in the world are my children paying for us spending money like this? I am concerned, not because of the present crisis we have in front of us. I think this body, by the time this weekend is completed, will have addressed that issue and started down the road. But what we are doing is treating a symptom of a disease Congress has, and that disease is lack of oversight to see how we are spending the money, lack of metrics to be able to measure the effectiveness of programs. We are highly resistant to holding administrative agencies accountable, and we are restricting the ability of individual Senators to offer positions for the body to consider. Not that they may be won, but that the whole country loses when we don't have the debate. There are many egregious earmarks that are in this bill, and I will tell you I think our appropriations process this year is broken, that it doesn't serve the country well. There is no question we need to fund the agencies, but what we are doing is we are taking three agencies and we are funding them--we will not allow amendments or allow the body to work--but the rest of the agencies will run in a status quo until March 6. Now, let me give you an example of why that is bad. I had the good pleasure of meeting with a couple of Oklahomans who happened to be traveling back here last Monday. They happen to work for the weather service. They are both acquisition officers for the weather service, and here is what happened to them last year--and it is going to happen again this year. They are going to get their final numbers sometime in late March. We will pass the information on for them as to what they are allowed to spend. They will have less than 3 months to contract and acquire everything for 12 months. They are telling me it is impossible for them to do a good job; that there is no way they can be frugal, efficient, and get great value for the American public the way we are running the appropriations process. Now, that has nothing to do with my colleague from Mississippi. His desire would have been to bring these bills to the floor, have them amended, have them voted on, and send them to the House. But a leadership decision was made that we could not do that. Now, I want you to multiply these two gentlemen who were acquisition specialists in the weather service, multiply that across the whole Government, and what we have done is we have squeezed, into a 3-month period of time, acquisitions that normally take 6 to 9 months to do properly and efficiently and in a frugal way for the American taxpayers. Consequently, we are going to waste another 10 or 15 percent of the money in these appropriations bills. Then, when it comes to the end of the year, if any money is left over, here is what they told me they have to do. They have to spend the money to make sure the Appropriations Committee will give them the money next year, even though they had trouble spending the money this year because we put a time constraint on them. None of us would run our businesses, none of us would run our families that way. Yet we are telling the rest of the Federal Government--great employees whom we have--to do something that is impossible to do in an efficient and orderly manner. There are a lot of things that have happened in the last 2 years in the way this Senate is run. I believe most of them were for political reasons. They were not intended to hurt the policy, but nevertheless the policy is tremendously damaged. It is my hope that come January, when we have a new leader in the White House, no matter who it is, he will recognize the severity of the appropriations process and its impact on waste in this country. As I frequently do, I wish to raise again to the American public and this body the fact that the Government Accountability Office, the various inspectors general, the Congressional Research Service, and the Congressional Budget Office can specifically lay out for the American people at least $300 billion a year of spending that is either pure waste, fraud or total duplication. At a time when we are going to have a $600 billion accounting deficit--because you have to add what we are stealing from Social Security to what we spend to get what our real deficit is--does it make any sense that we would continue to have $300 billion worth of waste, fraud or abuse and duplication in these bills? There is not one attempt in this bill to eliminate that. Not one. Not one. So as you think about your quarterly tax payments or you think about your paycheck stub and the taxes taken from you, your income tax and estimated payments, and you think about what we are not doing, you ought to be awfully dissatisfied as an American taxpayer. We have failed the test. We have failed the test. Why it is important is because what we have done is mortgaged the future hopes, freedom, and prosperity of our children and our grandchildren. I am disappointed, to say the least, with the process. But I am more disappointed in the fact that we are going to earn a reputation that we have not done our jobs. Serious concerns with the economy should turn the attention of Congress away from parochial interests toward national interests. Congress has focused on parochial interests for far too long, spending more time securing earmarks than doing the business of the American people. Our Nation faces an economic challenge today equal to any challenge we have previously faced and now requires our full attention. The following snapshot of our economy should impress upon everyone the seriousness of the job ahead. The national debt currently stands at over $9.58 trillion, the largest in world history. This year's deficit, in real accounting terms, stands above $600 billion. This year alone, taxpayers will spend more than $230 billion just to pay the interest on the national debt. Since 2006, gas has risen from $2.24 per gallon to nearly $4 a gallon. More Americans are out of work; the unemployment rate has increased from 4.9 percent in January to 6.1 percent in August. In 2008, over 600,000 jobs have been lost. According to USDA projections, the Consumer Price Index--CPI--for all food is forecast to increase 4.5 to 5.5 percent in 2008. For example, since 2006 the price of milk has increased approximately 16 percent. According to Reuters news service, the total tab for government rescues and special loan facilities this year is more than $900 billion, not including the proposed $700 billion rescue of the financial markets in the Paulson plan. Already this year, the Federal Government has taken drastic steps to stabilize the economy, all using taxpayer dollar. While several of these amounts may be fully repaid to taxpayer, they involve huge liabilities and expenditures: $200 billion was authorized for use in rescuing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Treasury will inject up to $100 billion into each institution by purchasing preferred took to shore up their capital as needed; $300 billion for the Federal Housing Administration to refinance failing mortgages into new reduced-principal loans with a Federal guarantee; $4 billion in HUD grants to banks to help hem buy and repair homes abandoned due to mortgage foreclosures; $85 billion loan from the Fed for AIG, which would give the Federal Government a 79.9 percent stake and avoid a bankruptcy filing for the embattled insurer; At least $87 billion in repayments to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for providing financing to underpin trades with units of bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers; $29 billion in financing from the Fed for JPMorgan Chase's Government-brokered buyout of Bear Stearns & Co. in March; At least $200 billion of currently outstanding loans to banks issued through the Federal Reserve's Term Auction Facility, which was recently expanded to allow for longer loans of 84 days alongside the previous 28-day credits; Starting last year, Social Security and Medicare projected expenditures exceed revenues. Over the next 75 years, this will cost $41 trillion in present value terms. Of that amount, $34 trillion is related to Medicare and $7 trillion to Social Security. By one account, the current unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security are above $100 trillion. If we think that the current economic troubles are a concern, wait until the bill comes due for all of the reckless spending Congress is engaging in today. Members should focus like a laser on these issues rather than concentrate their efforts on political games and earmarks. Instead of doing any of this, Congress is now planning to ram through an irresponsible continuing resolution to keep the Government operating during fiscal year 2009. None of these issues are addressed in the bill but only compound the problems. Congress seems to have not learned its lesson. The appropriations process is broken and excludes Members from considering serious issues. The Senate is preparing to vote on an appropriations bill that will cost $634 billion, which will include funds for all of our national security agencies, disaster relief, and a continuing resolution for the 2009 fiscal year. Yet the text of the bill only came available late on Tuesday night, with no one having seen a word of it except for a few Democratic staff and Members in the House. Further still, a joint explanatory statement was released yesterday afternoon. This must be what the House Appropriations Committee chairman meant when he said that the continuing resolution would be drafted in ``secret.'' The following is an excerpt from an article yesterday in Bloomberg News. The plan outlined by Obey would give Republicans less than 24 hours to scrutinize legislation spending more than $600 billion on the Defense, homeland security and veterans' affairs agencies including thousands of pet projects known as earmarks. Asked if the process has been secretive, Obey said: ``You're d**n right it has because if it's done in the public it would never get done.'' He said he wanted to avoid his colleagues' ``pontificating'' on the content of the legislation, saying ``that's what politicians do when this stuff is done in full view of the press.'' He said ``we've done this the old fashioned way by brokering agreements in order to get things done and I make no apology for it.'' It is easy to understand why the House Appropriations Chairman would want to conduct his business in secret, as one who received $51.5 million in earmarks for his district. The one constitutional duty of the Congress is to pass legislation funding the operations of Government, and yet his duty has been entirely abandoned by the majority. Congress is now less than 1 week away from the beginning of fiscal year 2009, and yet it has not passed one appropriations bill. The only bill to receive a vote by either body is the Military Construction--Veterans Affairs appropriations bill that passed the House of Representatives. No appropriations bills have even been brought to the floor of the Senate during the entire calendar year 2008 thus far--though the Senate is now expected to vote on three of the largest bills having had 36 hours to review the $634 billion in spending they contain. The appropriations process should have begun long ago. It is unfair to taxpayers when Congress chooses to pass large legislation in the dark of night rather than debate them for all to see. Congress now finds itself considering major national security legislation in one day under pressure of both a Government shutdown and delay on an important piece of economic legislation. Had the majority leader taken action earlier this year, Members would be free to concentrate fully on the Treasury proposal. Instead, they are distracted by making sure that their earmarks and pork-barrel projects are in the CR. The CR has been loaded down with billions of dollars in wasteful earmarks. Despite having had only 1\1/2\ days to look over the bill, it is plain that there are a large number of highly questionable earmarks set to receive funding in 2009. In just the three appropriations bills for the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Veterans Affairs/Military Construction, there are 2,627 earmarks worth $16.1 billion. This means that without even funding the remaining nine appropriations bills, Congress has nearly reached the dollar value of all earmarks in fiscal year 2008. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, there were 11,620 earmarks worth $17.2 billion for all 12 appropriations bills in 2008. In fiscal year 2008, the average dollar amount of each earmark was $1.48 million. In the continuing resolution before the Senate, the average dollar amount for each earmark is $6.1 million-- more than five times higher. Every dollar that goes to an earmark in this bill is a dollar that will not go to important national security programs at the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense. What kind of projects are receiving earmarked funds out our national security agencies in 2009? $3.2 million for the High Altitude Airship--Senator Sherrod Brown. After spending millions to investigate and develop a blimp-based platform for ICBM surveillance, the Missile Defense Agency--MDA-- cancelled the program--called the High Altitude Airship--due to myriad capability limitations. MDA did not request funding for the program for 2008. However, $2.5 million in earmarks in the 2008 Defense appropriations bill revived the cancelled program, despite the fact that no one else at the Pentagon had expressed interest. After shopping the program around, Lockheed Martin managed to pass the program to Army Space and Missile Defense Command, which will now begin investigating if there is any utility for them with the program. The project has been based in Akron, OH, funded by a $1 million earmark toward the program by Senator Brown, who has a long record in opposition to missile defense. $2 million for Hibernation Genomics--Senator Ted Stevens. This earmark would provide funding to the University of Alaska for research into the hibernation genomics of Alaskan ground squirrels. University of Alaska lobbyist, Martha Stewart--no relation--claims that the research into squirrel hibernation will one day help wounded soldiers in the battlefield. According to Ms. Stewart, the university is well equipped to do the work. She insists: ``We have a number of ground squirrels that are in various stages of hibernation in Fairbanks.'' And $800,000 for the Columbia College Chicago Construct Program-- Senator Dick Durbin. Columbia College claims to be the ``Nation's largest private arts and media school in the Nation.'' It offers a wide selection of coursework in audio arts, dance, film, journalism, poetry, and radio. According to the school's annual report, it received $2.7 million in Federal grants during 2007 from the Department of Education, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Corporation for National and Community Service, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Department of Health and Human Services. Since 2000, Columbia College Chicago has received over $275 million in grants, cooperative agreements, and direct payments from the Federal Government. And $800,000 for Partnership in Innovative Preparation for Educators and Students and the Space Education Consortium--Senator Wayne Allard and Senator Ken Salazar. The Space Education Consortium was created by the Air Force in 2004 as a partnership with the University of Colorado and others to promote science education for professionals as well as ``getting space technology and curriculum infused throughout the U.S. education system from kindergarten to post-graduate work. ``It is a chance to grow a cadre of space professionals from the launch pad to the stars,'' said Air Force General Lance Lord, commander of the Air Force Space Command. A July 2008 report by the DOD Inspector General stated that this earmark was not consistent with the department's mission ``to provide the military forces needed to deter war and to protect the security of our country.'' And 24.5 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center-- Representative John Murtha. Every year, millions of dollars for our national defense are siphoned away from the military's budget to pay for a single program administered not by the Pentagon but by the Department of Justice. This funding is directed to the National Drug Intelligence Center-- NDIC--which the Department of Justice has asked Congress to shut down. The former director of NDIC even confessed to U.S. News, ``I recognized that a lot of [NDIC] reports were God-awful, poorly written, poorly researched, and, some cases, wrong.'' Another former director even admitted, ``I've never come to terms with the justification for the NDIC'' and ``the bottom line was that we had to actually search for a mission.'' According to an investigation by the Government Accountability Office, NDIC duplicates the activities of 19 drug intelligence centers that already existed. Since 1992, the center has received over 500 million in federal funding. $15 million for Waterbury Industrial Commons Redevelopment Initiative--Senator Joe Lieberman and Representative Chris Murphy. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, ``This would clean up a decades old munitions factory to be used as a city-owned industrial park. The Fairfield Weekly reports that the State of Connecticut has turned down requests to fund this project--each year the Mayor of Waterbury ``makes the trip to Hartford seeking the money, and each year comes back empty handed.'' Why should the American taxpayer fund that which State of Connecticut will not provide funding? And $4 million to the Go For Broke National Education Center. This earmark is aptly named in light of the fact that Congress is helping the Nation ``go broke.'' And $9.9 million for the U.S.S. Missouri Memorial Asociation. Visitors can go aboard the battleship from World War II that survived the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. While preserving the Nation's history is important, this is not only something that could be funded privately, it is not a priority at this time. And $1.6 million for New Electronic Warfare Specialists Through Advanced Research by Students Representative David Hobson. And $4.5 million for the 2010 Olympics Coordination Center Senator Patty Murray and Representative Rick Larsen. And $800,000 Pseudofoliculitis Barbae--PFB--Topical Treatment--this goes to ISW Group in St. Louis, MO--Senator Kit Bond. There is $10 million for the Intrepid Museum Foundation. And $4 million for the Nimitz Center. And $1.2 million for the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute for International Affairs--Representative Berman. And $10 million for the New Mexico State University Institute for Defense and Public Policy----Senator Jeff Bingaman. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President I support the overall goals of S. 3325, the PRO-IP Act, and believe that our country's intellectual property rights should be protected at home and abroad. However, I believe that Congress should make both realistic and fiscally responsible commitments in the legislation it passes. Intellectual property is important to our country, businesses, and individual rights holders. Illegal importation of counterfeit goods, such as pharmaceuticals, also threatens the health and safety of U.S. citizens. It is necessary for the Federal Government to protect and enforce intellectual property rights domestically and internationally. I believe we are on the way to achieving this goal with this legislation, but we have to ensure that the agencies this bill tasks with enforcement of intellectual property rights are held responsible. All of us, including the members of the intellectual property community, would have to agree that enforcement of intellectual property rights, even with passage of this legislation, will only become a priority of the Federal Government if agencies, such as the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation, are truly held responsible for achieving the goal of increased enforcement. I believe that the only way to ensure these agencies actually answer for their actions, and make intellectual property enforcement a priority, is through effective oversight by this Body. We have included in this bill two reporting requirements for the Justice Department and FBI that will make certain we know: (1) exactly what the agencies were doing before this bill was enacted to enforce intellectual property laws so that we may establish a performance baseline, and (2) what the agencies will be doing in the future as a result of this bill. We have also included other standards for State and local law enforcement agencies that will be receiving grants from the Justice Department, so that the grantees also have standards to meet in order to receive Federal funds. These reports and standards, however, will neither have an effect on how these agencies prioritize and use the funds authorized under this bill, nor ensure grantees appropriately use Federal funds unless we make certain the criteria we set forth in this bill are met. If the Justice Department and FBI continue to receive funding year after year under this legislation without Congress questioning the contents of the reports they are required to submit, all of the efforts of those supporting this bill will be for naught, and we will not have succeeded in making intellectual property enforcement a priority for this country. To be clear, I would prefer actual language in this bill stating that, if the Justice Department and FBI fail to submit their reports on time, any authorizations under title IV of this bill would be suspended until those reports are submitted. However, even though this language was not accepted, the Senator from Vermont has assured me that the Judiciary Committee will hold oversight hearings early each year so we may thoroughly question the contents of the reports required to be submitted by the Justice Department and FBI under title IV. It is my hope that the outcome of any oversight hearings in the Judiciary Committee related to the content of this bill will be effectively communicated to the Appropriations Committee so that the members of that committee will have detailed information to establish whether these agencies have complied with the requirements of S. 3325, and enable them to make informed decision on how to responsibly allocate our scarce Federal dollars. I thank the Senator from Vermont and the Senator from Pennsylvania for their work on this bill. I recognize that we have all made compromises along the way to ensure we pass the most effective enforcement legislation possible, while still maintaining our desire to hold Federal agencies, which spend taxpayer dollars, accountable for their actions so that this country's intellectual property rights holders are protected from counterfeiting and piracy.

Mr. COBURN. I, too, believe that intellectual property is important to our country, businesses and individual rights holders. Illegal importation of counterfeit goods, such as pharmaceuticals, also threatens the health and safety of U.S. citizens. It is necessary for the Federal Government to protect and enforce intellectual property rights domestically and internationally. I believe we are on the way to achieving this goal with S. 3325, but we have to ensure that the agencies this bill tasks with enforcement of intellectual property rights are held responsible. All of us, including those in the intellectual property community, would have to agree that enforcement of intellectual property rights, even with passage of S. 3325, will only become a priority of the Federal Government if agencies, such as the Justice Department and FBI, are truly held accountable for achieving the goal of increased enforcement.

Mr. COBURN. I am glad that the Senator from Vermont is making this commitment and am relying on his assurance of oversight of these programs so that our government is held responsible and informed decisions are made on how to responsibly allocate our scarce Federal dollars. Although the criteria we established in this legislation are necessary, they will neither have an effect on how the Justice Department and FBI prioritize and use the funds authorized under this bill, nor ensure grantees appropriately use Federal grant dollars, unless we make certain these agencies rigorously follow the standards we set forth in this legislation. If the Justice Department and FBI continue to receive Federal funding year after year without Congress questioning the contents of their required reports or grantees' use of funds, all of the efforts of those supporting this bill will be for naught, and we will not have succeeded in making IP enforcement a priority for this country. I thank the Senator from Vermont and the Senator from Pennsylvania for their work on this bill. I recognize we have all made compromises along the way to ensure we pass the most effective enforcement legislation possible, while still maintaining our desire to hold Federal agencies, which spend taxpayer dollars, accountable for their actions so that this country's intellectual property rights holders are protected from counterfeiting and piracy.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I would tell the Senator from Wisconsin I agree with the purposes of this bill. At the beginning of the 109th Congress, I held two hearings on the west coast on the policy associated with our IPs. I am strongly supportive of what you are doing. However, there is a conflict presently in negotiations on this bill about metrics and oversight which has not been worked out. My consternation is we are going to put $300 million plus into this program, but we are not going to force the Justice Department to tell us what they are doing with it. Until such time as there are some teeth to make the Justice Department do what we tell them to do and report to us what they are doing, I am going to have to regretfully object. So I therefore offer an objection.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I wish to expand a minute on the purposes of this. The American people should know we have a law called the improper payments law where every agency is supposed to report to Congress every year the amount of improper payments, both over and under, and how that affects their budgets and their goals. Less than 50 percent of the agencies file that report with Congress. The reason they don't is because we don't make them. We don't say: Your funding is contingent upon you following the law. So, regrettably, I objected to what Senator Kohl--I actually agree with the things we are doing in the bill, but we won't accomplish what we want to accomplish if we don't make the Justice Department report to us and have metrics to see that the money we are going to spend--not ours; actually, it is going to be the money of the next generation--is spent wisely and is effective in doing what we want to get done. It is my hope before we leave here that we can work out a compromise. I have spoken with Senator Specter. I have not had a chance to visit with Senator Leahy. I intend to do that today. We have given in a lot of areas on this bill, especially the spending amounts. I also note the Justice Department ended last year with $1.72 billion in unobligated balances. They are the only agency that gets to keep their money, and they get to decide--not us--what they are going to do with that $1.72 billion. So there is plenty of money in the Justice Department right now to do this program. We have to decide whether we are going to put teeth in what we tell agencies to do. My hope is we will start doing that. I was going to spend some time now talking about the continuing resolution. I am going to reserve that and try to come back at a different time and try to reach Senator Specter and Senator Leahy on this IP bill in the hopes we can get something worked out. With that, I yield the floor and note that we would obviously be in recess.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I will.

Mr. COBURN. First of all, I thank the Senator for his comments, and to answer him: What we saw on the market today, we saw a period of time when there was zero interest on a 2-month T-bill. What that is saying is people have lost interest on anything other than a government security, and they are willing to give the Government their money for that security with no interest. That is fear talking. What we have to do is drive out fear. We have to drive back confidence. So I believe, Senator Gregg, that we will see a bipartisan vote in the Senate and the sooner the better. Because every day we are not fixing this, it is costing jobs, it is costing the ability to promote new jobs in our economy, and it is costing savings for those people who are no longer working but living off retirement. So I feel this body is going to stand and do the right thing. I have been impressed with Senator Schumer, Senator Jack Reed, whom I just saw. The questions he asked and the answers that were put forth by both Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke yesterday, I thought, were right on the money. I don't think we are far apart. But even if we are not far apart, we have to be able to do what is right and we have to do it timely. We should not leave here. There should be no leaving and coming back until this is solved. Our future depends on what we do and how fast we do it. That doesn't mean we should not do it right. It doesn't mean we shouldn't be thoughtful about what we do. But the degree and the magnitude of this problem is something I have never seen in my 60 years, and I doubt the Senator from New Hampshire has ever seen it. Very few people in the history of the world have ever seen the kind of risk this country is facing at this moment. So it is important it have nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats; that it have nothing to do with the Presidential election; that it have nothing to do with anything except the best interest and the future of this country. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to spend a few minutes talking about a perspective that I think is lacking, and I hope we have an opportunity to gain. I was intrigued and interested as I listened to the senior Senator from New Hampshire explain to the American people what actually is going on in terms of our financial system. I don't believe there is anybody in the Congress, or anybody in the country, who is happy about where we are today: contemplating putting the Federal Government as the owner of a bunch of toxic assets that were accumulated on the basis of greed, poor policy, bad management, and bad regulation. I don't believe anybody is happy we are here. I don't believe the regulators are; I don't think Members of Congress are; I don't think people in this country are. But from that, we can learn something. My worry is that we will not. I heard this morning the majority leader--and I have a great deal of respect for him--laying this all at the foot of President Bush. Presidents can do very little other than what we let them do. When we talk about the lack of oversight and regulation, the problem is, we were not watching the regulators, and our constitutional duty is that we should have been. There is a lot of blame to go around--and it is not partisan-- Republicans and Democrats, the executive branch, even the judicial branch in some of their rulings that created some stupid consequences to things that were never intended by Congress. But what we ought to learn, and what I think is most important is, if you are an American right now and you are worried, you have a great reason to be worried. It is not about some impending financial crash. What you should be worried about is the Congress is not listening. Let me explain what I mean. We are going to finish at the end of this year with over $10 trillion in debt. That is over $33,000 for every man, woman, and child. We are about to pass some type of system to salvage credit liquidity in this country that is going to cost another $2,000 to $3,000 per man, woman, and child in this country. We are going to have a continuing resolution that comes to this body this evening or maybe tomorrow morning that continues to do the wrong things that got us into the mess in the first place. The financial mess we are in is because confidence in the country and our response has been eroded. As I got on a plane to come back to Washington, I talked with a businessman from eastern Oklahoma who has a worldwide business. He talked about on August 20, he saw this tremendous worldwide drop in demand for his product. It didn't have anything to do with his product. It had everything to do with people now worried about if they should hang on to cash because the economics don't look good. Whatever they do here, the No. 1 goal has to be reestablishing a confidence in this country that, yes, we can have an economy that works, we can rebuild faith in the financial institutions, and we can do that, best of all, by not repeating the mistakes we have made in the past. To outline, the Defense appropriations bill has over $10 billion in it for airplanes the Air Force doesn't want. Think about that. There is $10 billion worth of airplanes in the Defense appropriations bill that is going to pass that they are going to have to buy that they neither want nor need. Why is that happening? Because we are putting local, parochial politics ahead of the best interests of the country. We are going to buy some ships the Navy doesn't want. Same reason, different area of the country. But we are going to buy them because we are going to put a parochial benefit to a Member of Congress ahead of the best interests of the country. There isn't a family out there who doesn't have to weekly or monthly make hard choices about how they spend their money. We, unfortunately, continue to make decisions on how we spend your children's money and your grandchildren's money on a parochial or political interest that benefits Members of Congress. That is what has to change. If there is a lesson in what has happened to us in terms of the loss of confidence in the financial system in this country, all I have to say is Congress earned it. We created it. We expend 100 times more effort trying to create new programs and new ways of spending than we do managing the very Government you send us here to put under control. I take the Constitution literally. It has a section in it called the enumerated powers. It is article II, section 8. It spells out exactly what the role of Congress is. If you look at how we got into this mess, every example of that goes back to the fact that Congress is violating what the Constitution says is our legitimate role, is doing something that is outside the legitimate role, and we rationalized it for the political benefits for either career politicians or party, one side of the aisle or the other. That is why Congress has a 9-percent approval rating, because we are more interested in us than we are the best interests of the country. And it shows. We have the financial debacle in front of us today to prove it. Imagine what would have happened had Congress been aggressive in its oversight. Imagine what would have happened after the failed attempt 4 years ago to try to put the controls of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that we had a monthly hearing outlining the worsening--worsening--condition so we could have avoided this situation. Instead of us doing that, we did what was easy. We took the easy road, the wide road. We didn't do what our oath calls us to do. I think we are going to see some very different behavior when it comes to us approaching the financial package that we are going to put together that will enable an economic recovery in this country. I believe you are going to see people vote for bills they basically don't like because it is in the best interest of the country. My hope is that when we do that, it would not be a one-time happening; that we will, in fact, move back to the position to take a decision on how we vote on something and not do a finger to the wind on how it looks back home or how it looks for our political career but, in fact, look at the U.S. Constitution and say: Does it square with that, and does it match our oath to do what is in the best interest of the country? When we get through with this exercise, as far as this economic recovery, I think the country can once again maybe start to have confidence in Congress; that we will, in fact, address the issue; that we will vote against our political best interests, but we will vote in the best interests of the American people. Senator Gregg has outlined very eloquently what is happening, what has happened, what the response has been thus far, and what needs to be done in the future. If you have not heard him speak to this, I would suggest my colleagues listen to him. You can get it, what he spoke about this morning, before lunch, an understanding of what is necessary to reestablish confidence. It is not a time for politicians to win, it is a time for the American people to win. The only way they win is when we put them first and us second.

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for such time that I might consume in morning business.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I did.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wanted to thank the majority leader and to spend a few minutes talking about an individual who was key to----

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I thank my colleague from Florida for this short period of time to thank the majority leader for working in good faith on several of these bills. There is a gentleman in this country by the name of Alvin Sykes. If you haven't met him, you should. He is what America is all about. He promised the mother of Emmett Till before she died that he would make sure there would be an investigation into the death of her son, her young son, as well as others who were never properly investigated to the extent they should have been. We have wrangled a lot over this bill, and one of the reasons we have wrangled is because of the financial problem we find ourselves in today in this country. Begrudgingly, I have decided we could not, out of the waste of the Justice Department, get the Senate to concur that we should not spend additional money on it; that there is plenty of money. As a matter of fact, at the end of last year, there was $1.7 billion in unexpended funds and unobligated funds at the Justice Department. They also have a tremendous track record of waste in terms of conferences and of poor management. Moreover, they are the only agency of the Federal Government that, unlike every other agency, the unobligated balances do not automatically go back to the Treasury. They get to spend the money. So we have again failed to do the fiscally responsible thing. But I decided last night this is one of those rare exceptions when I can't convince the body that we ought to be more frugal. We could have accomplished the same thing with the funds over there, but the greater call was to allow this bill to pass. But I wanted to tell you something about America with this bill, and it has to do with Alvin Sykes. If you met him, you would immediately fall in love with him. He is poor as a church mouse. He has led this group with integrity. He has been an honest broker. He has not played the first political game with anybody in Washington. As a matter of fact, he has had games played on him and he has been manipulated. But the fact is he has held true to his belief and his commitment to the mother of Emmett Till. And because of that, we are going to see this bill come into fruition. I think that speaks so well about our country; that one person has truly made a difference, and that one person is Alvin Sykes. I can't say enough about this individual. I can't say enough about his stamina, his integrity, his forthrightness, his determination. All of the qualities that have built this country this gentleman exhibited as he worked to keep a promise to the dying mother of Emmett Till. So I come to the floor now to sing his praises, to recognize him publicly for his tremendous efforts, and all those on his board have made in making this come to fruition. I also wanted to spend a moment saying there is no reason why this body can't do something more aggressively in terms of protecting children in the midst of child pornography. We have the PROTECT Act, which cost $372 million, and which could easily be paid for, but we won't pay for it. The fact is, as the bill is written today, nothing will happen until a year from now with that bill, even if we pass it, because we are not going to appropriate funds for it. It is going to be like the Adam Walsh Act. We promised everybody we would do it, but have barely funded it at all. However, we could make a big difference with that by combining the PROTECT Act with the SAFE Act. The Justice Department has reiterated there are no fourth amendment concerns. The House passed the bill 390 to 2, and yet we have resistance--for political reasons, not for policy reasons--in bringing forth that bill. I also thank the Democratic staff, who have worked so hard to clean that bill up to eliminate the objections. It is my hope that before we leave here this week, we will do something. The reason the SAFE Act is important is because it will do something the moment it is signed into law. Internet service providers will have to start reporting to the Government, to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, child porn sites and the people who are utilizing them and putting them up. The PROTECT Act won't do any of that, but the SAFE Act will. So my hope is that through the rest of the remaining days of this session we can come together and put politics aside and truly make a difference. I talked to a Congressman from North Carolina two nights ago and he said there are 250 fathers who are filming sexual acts with little children and putting it on the Internet. The way you stop that is have the Internet service providers start reporting that to the FBI. And the fact we won't do that--for political reasons, not policy reasons--is a pox on us. That is in North Carolina alone. And not to pick on North Carolina, because it is the same in many other States. But that is a fact, and we know it is happening in other places. This is something where we can make a difference, and my hope is we can work that out. I thank again the Senator from Florida for this time, and I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I spent 8\1/2\ hours yesterday trying to get back here, and I understand during a period of that time my name was mentioned rather prominently several times on the floor, which is fine. I know Senator Reid is going to come out in a little bit and offer some unanimous consent requests, which I am certainly open to considering, but we just got the language on those and so we will be looking at that. I will be objecting until I get a chance to see what changes have been made, and I look forward to working with Senator Reid. But I think this whole debate about 35 bills and $10 billion is a great lesson for us. We stand right now as a nation on a fault line that has created a lack of confidence in the financial system in this country--and not just in this country but in the world as well. While we are facing what is being requested by the head of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and the administration--a task of trying to reestablish confidence and liquidity in our markets--we have failed to learn the lesson. The lesson is this: We cannot continue to indiscriminately create more Government without making the Government we have efficient.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object, five different Government agencies already have significant programs in that. This bill does not eliminate any of those, make improvements in those, just lays a layer of bureaucracy on top of that. With that, I object.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object further, we will relook at what that is. I will object at this time and hope we can work out with the majority leader what we had discussed earlier in terms of a compromise.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I object.

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object, after looking at what was sent over this morning, if there was no change to it, I will not object. Pending that, I object at this time.