Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object, a question for the majority leader: Is this bill similar to what we had discussed in our negotiations and does it, in fact, include the SAFE Act or not?

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I would object pending our review of the legislation.

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. Reserving the right to object, I have a question for the majority leader. I understood from your statement that this does not have any of the changes we talked about, this is strictly the House- passed bill.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Continuing my reservation of the right to object, by the same logic that the majority leader has argued on all these other bills, the SAFE Act passed the House 390 to 2. So with the wisdom of the House, under which we are basing all the other requests for unanimous consent, why is that wisdom not any good now with the SAFE Act? The fact is that it isn't. I regret that unless we can pass the PROTECT Act with the SAFE Act and unless we can actually do something-- the SAFE Act actually will do something tomorrow, the day it is signed. The PROTECT Act will not do anything until the money comes through Congress a year from now. So the fact is, if we had the SAFE Act, we will stop child pornography faster than if we don't. The question of the fourth amendment rights of child pornographers versus the rights of children being abused is not a hard thing to figure out. With that, I object until we add that to the bill.

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object, a question again for the majority leader. As confused as I was on a previous act, this does not include the language of the SAFE Act?

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Pending the time we get to review all of that, I will gladly accept a unanimous consent but, reserving the right to object, I will object at this time until I have a chance to look at the bills. They were given to us less than 20 minutes ago and we wish an opportunity to look at that. The majority leader has my word I will not object if that is the case.

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object, will the Senate majority leader yield for a question?

Mr. COBURN. You sent over some 20 or 30 bills to our side. Is this one of those bills and has there been any change in what we have since our discussions?

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Answering the majority leader through the Chair, my staff has advised me a moment ago that we have come to agreement on that. I have no objection to the way that is written at this time.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. This bill has never been before the HELP Committee. It has never had a hearing in the Senate. There has been no discharge of this from the committee. We have never even voted on this bill. With that, I plan on objecting until I see exactly what has been offered by the majority leader later today.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object, again, after looking at this, if what the majority leader said is accurate, I plan on supporting this. But until I have had a chance to read what was sent over this morning--I will object until that time.

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 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. My answer, through the Chair, Mr. Majority Leader, I appreciate that you have made concessions on many bills. I have not seen those. My staff is working on what you have sent over 30 minutes ago. I will communicate to you as soon as we finish the review, which should be before 1 o'clock today.

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object, with the same answer as before, I object.

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.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object, pending the information, I will get back to Senator Reid. I object until that time.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I will be happy to yield.

Mr. COBURN. And he yielded to me.

Mr. COBURN. I say to Senator Sanders, I will finish this very quickly. My concern is, I have talked to the McCain folks. They are very unhappy with this provision. The reason they are unhappy is there is no way the Parliamentarian will allow me to amend report language on the floor because it is not part of the bill we are discussing. I would be happy to work in the background with both the chairman and ranking member to move all of this to the bill so it is not a question. That is what I would ask that you, please, try to accommodate us on because having the debate and amending things--and I will raise that out of the $5.9 billion worth of earmarks in this bill, the vast majority are noncompetitive bid. In other words, there is no competition for value for the American taxpayers' dollar. They are direct mandates that certain money will be spent with certain companies with no estimation, no competitive bidding. So I will not delay this any longer. I would ask that the chairman and ranking member--I think the Senators have done a great job on the bill. I do not think it is significantly different in terms of earmarks than what it has been in the past. But if, in fact, we could figure out a way to make them where we could have them at least discussed and have an opportunity to amend them, I would appreciate that deference.

Mr. COBURN. If I might through the Chair ask another question?

Mr. COBURN. Absolutely.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I appreciate the indulgence of the Senator from Vermont, and I yield back.