Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I am objecting not solely for myself. I am happy to work on trying to put together a proposal with the administration that would make a difference and then bring it to the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Two weeks.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, there is $38 billion worth of fraud in Medicaid. We are on an unsustainable course as a nation. We have $74 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities. When we talk about controlling spending and earmarks, we always hear it is a mandatory program. Finally, not all of what the administration has done do I absolutely agree with but on key points I do. These rules will make a difference. If we are interested in fraud, let's write the regulations to get out the fraud. That hasn't been the offer. All we are willing to do as a body is say to the administration you have ideas that will get rid of $42 billion worth of fraud over 5 years, but we don't like it because we are feeling pressure from the State Medicaid directors, when we know States game Medicaid. A great example: There is nothing in this to stop any Medicaid Program from taking a child from school to the doctor, but it does stop the 500-some-odd million dollars being spent on transporting schoolchildren back and forth to school who don't have a medical appointment. So what we have is a system that has been gamed. We have allowed it. Now the administration put something forward which we don't like and which we ought to negotiate with them to change, rather than saying you are not going to do any of it. The fact is the unfunded liabilities associated with the Medicaid Program are about $12 trillion. We are going to do something--just forget it. I applaud the administration for making an effort to try to fix some of this. But to say you cannot do any of it, when some of it is very badly needed, is wrong. So unfortunately, Mr. Leader, I have to object again.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I appreciate the majority leader's response to my question. The reason is because the policy is wrong. We passed the NIH Reform Act just to eliminate this sort of issue because what we know is, out of the 2,037 diseases, we don't know which one to fund properly. We don't know which one to spend the most money on, but peer-reviewed science does. So what we have decided is, because we have a very effective lobbying group on this because it does impact hundreds of thousands of women, we are going to step right back in the middle of the NIH reform and say we didn't need it. So the policy of us directing spending on research when we don't have the knowledge base to know that is the right thing to do--and the researchers agree with this, that we don't have the knowledge--in the context of all of the other 2,037 diseases, I will object to moving forward on this because the policy is wrong. It is not about debating it. I am happy to debate it all you want. But the policy is wrong. Who says that the women who died of breast cancer this year are more important than the same number of people who died from lung cancer that is not related to smoking? Are we going to say that? Should we tell the NIH everything they should do, every amount of money, every disease we should decide, based on the effective lobbying of people who are absolutely affected--there is no question about that--but should we make that decision? The answer is no, we shouldn't. We should let the experts, not the Senators, not the Representatives, but the scientific experts make those decisions. We have given that charge to the NIH. That is what we ought to do. They would more sooner come to a cure and solve the problem than with us micromanaging the NIH. With that, I object.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to spend a minute talking about what a supplemental is because oftentimes the words we use up here do not have the clarity for the American public as to what they really mean. A supplemental appropriation is an appropriation that is outside the budget. What does that mean and what does that mean to the average taxpayer? That means all the money that is used to pay for the supplemental will be borrowed. It is not coming from taxes today. It does not fit inside the pay-go rules. It purely and simply is borrowed from our children. I have significant problems with that. If you look back at our history, President Roosevelt cut 29 percent out of his favorite domestic programs during World War II. President Truman cut 26 percent out of domestic programs to pay for the Korean war. We routinely, year after year, charge the war to our children. I raise the issue for two points. No. 1 is that is the way the President has chosen to do it, and I fault him as well as the Congress. But No. 2 is this great propensity of ``legislators'' who add everything including the kitchen sink to it because it is a free pass and it is outside the budget. The last appropriations bill that we did that was a supplemental had $17 billion added to it that did not have anything to do with the war, didn't have anything to do with priorities in this country, didn't have anything to do with that other than adding things on because it was outside the budget so they could spend more inside the budget. I am in my fourth year in the Senate. One of the things we have done ever since I have been here is try to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. There is no question right now that in the Federal budget--almost $3 trillion--over $300 billion right now that is in the appropriated programs and in the mandatory programs is lost to fraud, waste, and abuse. So we are going to be bringing a bill to the floor for $120 or $107 billion, plus probably another $10 or $15 billion that the porkers will add to it and oink all the way, and nobody is going to offer anything to offset it out of the fraud, waste, and abuse--the waste we have because we are not paying attention to the running of the Government. We hear this big debate about earmarks, the prerogative to make sure that we point to things. The fact is, the way you point out things is to do oversight on the waste, fraud, and abuse. If you think this is not accurate, let me give you a list of where the waste is. There is $90 billion worth of fraud in Medicare right now, and there is $10 billion that we pay that we inherently pay wrongly. So that comes to over $100 billion in Medicare alone that should not be going out the door. We are not doing a thing about it. Nobody is going to offer an amendment. It will not even be judged as in order with the rules, to get rid of the fraud in Medicare. Medicaid is same thing--$30 billion in fraud, $15 billion in overpayments for people that we just made a mistake in paying. No, there is not going to be anything offered during the supplemental to fix that, so right there you have $125, $130 billion that would pay--just in fixing Medicare and Medicaid fraud. There will not be a rule that will allow us to vote on that. There will not be a way for us to do it because that is hard work, and we do not want to do the hard work. Social Security disability fraud, $2.5 billion; the governmentwide overpayments, improper payments, overpayments for other things, $15 billion. These are not my numbers, these are documented numbers by either the GAO, the Congressional Budget Office or the IGs; $8 billion that the Defense Department pays out for bonuses for companies that did not earn the bonus or performance awards. There is not going to be anything in this to fix that. It is not even going to be made in order. And $4 billion that we are being defrauded on a crop insurance modernization program, where we allow for crop insurance a higher rate of return than any other casualty or insurance company could earn. No bid contracts, $5 billion. U.N. contributions that are purely waste, that get defrauded and wasted, $2 billion. We buy $64 billion worth of IT projects a year, and at least 20 percent of it is wasted. That is another $12.8 billion. Nobody is going to fix that on this. No, we are going to borrow the money from our children. So I raise the issue that we are going to pass a supplemental, and the games are going to be played on it like they are every year. People are going to add things that are not a priority; they are going to add them in--they are not in the budget--knowing they are going to go straight to the debt. Is it in our interest for us to consider, as we do the supplemental, what we are spending right now per American family on different things? Let me spend a minute to outline that every American family is paying $8,668 for Medicare and Social Security every year; every American family is paying over $5,000 a year to defend this country; we are spending $3,752 for antipoverty programs every year; we are spending $2,000 a family for interest on the national debt, which is going to be higher next year because we are going to borrow all the supplemental and add that to our debt. Federal employee retirement benefits cost every family in this country $1,000 a year--$1,000 a year for every family. Veterans' benefits, $750 per family; health research and regulations, $692; education, $578; highway mass transit, $455; unemployment benefits, $320; international affairs, $300. We have a deficit that is going to be $800 billion this year. While Congress sits on its heels and has debates about legislating or not legislating, we are going to continue the same bad habits of not holding agencies accountable, not being transparent about what we are doing, and we are going to say we funded the war, but we are not going to make any of the hard choices about it. When this bill comes to the floor, it is going to have $17 to $20 billion that does not have anything to do with the war but has everything to do with political directives outside the budget so we can spend more money. Washington does not need a raise, it needs a cut. It is time for us to pay for the war by getting rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse in this Federal Government. Unfortunately, there is not the character or the courage in either the House or the Senate to take on that fight because it might impact political careers. So as you listen to the debate when we come up with the supplemental, we need to fund our troops, there is no question about it, but we should not be funding our troops on the backs of our children. We should be funding our troops on the backs of us, and we ought to be doing that every time. So I am going to do all in my power to try to offer amendments to offset the funds in this war supplemental. I know the rules will prohibit me from doing many of them. But I am not going to stop talking. I am not going to stop talking about the $350 billion that goes down the drain and steals the future and opportunity from our children. That is exactly what we are going to be doing. And we are going to be smiling all the way through and patting ourselves on the back that we funded the war. But we did it on the backs of those who do not have the same opportunities we were given. We are going to steal those opportunities from the next two generations. It is time for Congress to start doing its job. That means tough, rigorous oversight and staying within the budget guidelines and spending the money like it was ours, not like we had an unending credit card that never comes due. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I will repeat the three points I think are important. No. 1 is we do not know enough. The next amendment relates to the Justice Department if we do know enough. No. 2 is I am very hesitant to set a precedent that invites the Justice Department to come into the Senate and House to investigate us. No. 3, and finally, the Justice Department does not have to do it even if we say they shall. They do not have to do it. There is no force of law that we can make the Justice Department come and investigate us. If we did, our forefathers would roll over in their graves. That is what the separation of powers is all about. When we go directly to the Justice Department, we shirk our responsibility to control our own house and bring our own Members under it. I urge my colleagues to not support this new precedent setting seeking of the Justice Department, in violation of the separation of powers, to come into the Senate and the House to do an investigation before we have done our own investigation to find out the jot and tittles. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I wish to spend a few minutes just to make some observations during this short debate we are going to have before the amendments are voted on. We are going to have a vote on the Boxer amendment and then on the Coburn amendment, both trying to get to the bottom of a problem. We have agreed to a 60-vote margin on both of those, but I wonder what happens to this issue if neither of those amendments gets 60 votes, and why are we having a 60-vote margin? Everybody agrees that this amendment about a postenrollment change to a bill needs to be solved. The mystery surrounding how it happened, where it happened, and why it happened needs to be solved. But now we have before us a hurdle which, in all likelihood, will eliminate our ability to find out. It is claimed, and understandably, that my amendment would look into a problem in the House. That assumption, however, is incorrect because nobody knows exactly where this enrollment change happened. Some may think they do, but we don't know that. Second of all, and probably more importantly, is the fact that a bill agreed to by both Houses of Congress was changed before it got to the President without our knowledge. There also is the claim that if, in fact, we would have a bipartisan committee, with Members of both Houses looking into this, it is somehow precedent setting. It is not. In 1992, the House and Senate did combine--not on this specific issue--so there is a precedent there that no one can deny, that we looked at rules and processes and procedures, and we did that without any difficulty. On the other side of the aisle is the Boxer amendment, which says we are going to ask the Justice Department. We are not going to ask them, actually, we are going to tell them that they shall do this. The argument has been made that the speech and debate clause is violated by my amendment. I don't think that is accurate, but I will take that as an argument. But for the Boxer amendment to pass, the separation of powers will be violated. These are not laws. These are rules of Congress. Yet we are going to now invite in the executive branch to handle what we refuse to handle? The cynicism in me says that maybe we don't want to know the answer to this question. We very simply could have had a majority vote on both of these, and the one that got the most votes would have won. We don't have the parliamentary power to force that to happen, and we do have the concurrent agreement of the chairwoman of the EPW Committee to have a vote, which I appreciate. I would not tell her that I do not appreciate that. I do appreciate the opportunity to have a vote. But the question still remains: What happens if we don't get 60 votes? Will something happen on this? What I want us to do is restore the integrity of the enrollment process. If we fail to do that, if we fail to do that and if we invite the executive branch into our Houses, we have failed--we have failed to live up to our own responsibility in the Senate and in the House, and we have failed to protect what is truly a separation between us and the executive branch in how we have gone about it. So I thank the good nature and good humor of the chairman of the committee for the lively debate we had yesterday. But, someday, somebody will write about this issue, and I am not sure history is going to be very kind to us as we worry about partisan issues, who gets credit, who didn't, pointing fingers. The fact is, we have a problem that should be solved by a joint group of Members of this body. To say we can't do that denies the fact that we have integrity. We do have integrity. We do have honor. We do have commitment. And most of all, we want to build the confidence of the American people in Congress. I believe that will happen under my amendment. I am not sure it will happen if we don't pass it. As a matter of fact, I am certain that if we don't have one of these that gets accepted in conference, we will not be able to claim that. I have heard the statements of the chairwoman of the EPW Committee, and I believe her statements. So whatever happens here, it is my hope that she will encourage that to happen in conference. It won't be telling the House what to do; rather, it will be asking them to concur that we ought to look into this. Washington has a problem, and the problem is this: We are not believable to the American public. More than 70 percent of the people in this country have no confidence in us, and we ought to be about repairing the institution and repairing that confidence. With that, Madam President, I yield back.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, we have voted an invitation to the Justice Department to investigate a rules violation in either the House or the Senate. We have set an amazing precedent. What we recommend is a bicameral committee made up of four members of each body, two from each party, that would report back to the appropriate ethics committee or to the Justice Department, if there is, in fact, an infraction of law. My hope would be that we would take care of the problems in our own body. The House would take care of the problems in their body and that we would, in fact, give greater than 36 votes to this amendment.

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I will just make one comment. First of all, the chair of the EPW Committee is very gracious. I appreciate her words, and I intended no disrespect for her in terms of her effort. I know she supports this effort to get to the bottom of it. But I would make a correction. We only say we should share with three people: the appropriate law authorities and the appropriate ethics committees of both the House and the Senate. We did not envision a show. I would envision that the people who might be on this committee would take this very seriously; that, in fact, it probably would not be open hearings but, rather, closed, and that, in fact, we would get to the bottom of the problem. But either way we get to the bottom of the problem, I am happy we are going to get there. I think it is important that we get there. As I outlined, I think the integrity of what we pass, no matter how we get there, as long as we can ensure the integrity, I will be satisfied we have done that. I am not sure we will get that. The final point I would make is we will be setting a precedent. Let us not forget, we will be setting a precedent that the Congress says the Justice Department should investigate us. That is a big precedent. That is a big precedent. I am not a lawyer. I do not know if it has happened before, but I do not like that precedent. I don't like it at all. Because I think the integrity of this body is far greater than that. I think Members of this body are far above that, that we do not need the Justice Department to investigate us. I think we can investigate ourselves and we need to demonstrate to the American public that we do have the will and courage to do the disciplined thing and do the right thing and to solve the problem. Then if a referral is needed to the Justice Department, we should give it. But I have great qualms, great worries about ceding to the Justice Department the power to investigate us. My own personal experience is, we do not know where they will go. We do not know that they will stick on us. The point is, this is a big precedent I would worry about setting. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Why have we not addressed this in the original committee mark or the substitute? We corrected it--and I said, while the Senator was out, I was thankful that the problem was corrected. But the issue of how it got changed is not in the committee mark. This amendment, this second-degree amendment, comes on the fact that we are trying to offer what I think is a cogent way that has precedent in both the House and Senate for solving this. That is probably just an oversight because I know the Senator cares deeply about this. I know she was upset about it. With everything they had to do to bring this bill to the floor as quickly as they did, that is probably what happened. But the fact is, we are at this point. If the body wants the Justice Department--if we want to give up that power to the Justice Department, the body will vote that, and that is fine. The last point I will make, and I will not continue on a lot further, is this does not force the House to do anything. Let me tell you why. This bill will go to a conference committee, I believe, of which Chairman Boxer will be the head, and all the House has to say is: We disagree with this; we do not want to do this; we do not want to have a committee look into this. The House has that option, and if it does not agree to it, it will not come out of the conference committee and we will not do anything on it. The same is true of her amendment in terms of the Department of Justice. But it is important for the American people to know whether something happens on it and whether we do it in a way that emboldens and strengthens the institution of Congress or weakens it. Amendment No. 4540 to Amendment No. 4539 Before I yield the floor, I have a second-degree amendment at the desk. I ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. COBURN. I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I ask that the pending amendment be set aside and at the appropriate place amendment No. 4538 be inserted into the Boxer substitute.

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

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, first of all, I thank the chair for her words. I stated that this amendment language is based on a very big precedent established in 1992 in this body with a joint committee of Members of Congress to look at the rules in both Houses, to look at the processes in both Houses. There is a precedent. There is not a problem with the debate clause. I think that is not a prudent argument to be against this. The Justice Department will eventually get this if, in fact, we find out there was a crime. I also make the point that nobody knows right now where this occurred. At least I don't. Nobody knows what the facts are, so the assumption we are making that we would be involved in investigating the House is--we do not know that. At least I certainly do not know it, and I have kind of been looking at this for quite some time. So it is an assumption that we are going to have, necessarily, an investigation of the House. We may be having an investigation of the Senate. The fact is, we have a good precedent for this. This was a Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, H. Con. Res. 192, in the 102nd, and it looked at everything. It didn't just look at one specific thing. So there is precedent for it. More important is the separation of powers issue. What we are saying to the American public is we do not have the power to control our own body and that we have to ask the Justice Department to come in and do it. If there is a criminal violation, they certainly ought to be involved in that, but we do not know that yet. First of all, these are the rules of the Senate. They are not law. We are asking them to investigate the rules of the Senate, not a law; therefore, we are giving power to the executive branch, we are asking the executive branch to come in. My great worry--there is no question, Senator Boxer's amendment will do this. It will get an investigation, if they will come and do it--there is no way we can force them to come and do it--and we will get to the bottom of it. But I am worried about the integrity of the body, saying to the American public that we cannot police ourselves; we cannot do it; we do not want to take the heavy lifting it is going to take. And I do not believe a four-by-four panel of two Democratic Senators, two Republican Senators, two Democratic Congressmen, and two Republican Congressmen-- and this committee has the right to not do any of this in public if they do not want to. The committee totally gets to do this. Nobody wants a circus. I am even reticent that I am actually here making this point. I think it is a pox on our body that this happened, but I think it needs to be addressed. My hope is that people will not take a partisan viewpoint on how they vote. My hope is they will think about the institution of Congress, they will think about the separation of powers, they will think about the difference between laws and rules of the Senate and rules of the Congress. Then, if a referral needs to be made to the Justice Department, we would do that, but that would most appropriately come from our Ethics Committees, not from this committee--after a referral from this committee to the Ethics Committee. The chair of the Ethics Committee cannot say whether they are looking at this right now. They may be. They may not be. We do not know. The Justice Department cannot say whether they are or not. So we do not know what is happening. The point is, something needs to happen. I worry that when we tell the American public we are not capable of looking into our own dysfunction, that, in fact, what it says is that we give up power to the Justice Department to look at how we enroll bills and whether we violated the rules under how we do it. I have a real concern with that. I have tremendous concern with that, especially since we made such a large issue of separation of powers in this Congress. I will make one other point, and it is not to demean the Senator from California. If this were important to the committee, why was your amendment not part of the committee mark? If, in fact, the committee was enraged over this, why was this not a part of the original committee mark?

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I am on the floor this afternoon because a few years ago something happened in Congress that should never have happened. What happened is a bill passed the House and a bill passed the Senate. A bill that both Houses agreed to was changed before it went to the President. We do not know where it was changed or who changed it. We do not know the details of it. There has been speculation in the press, but we do not have any real knowledge of how this happened. But there is a principle, and the principle is, if we cannot trust what we agree to in both bodies of Congress will be sent to the President, then everything we pass has to be suspect. This is a hard amendment to offer because there is a lot of angst around looking at ourselves and looking at the problems. But the one thing we do know is the American people expect the process to be one that is open, one that is accurate, and that when the President gets a bill, it truly represents what the Congress intended. What actually happened? On the highway bill conference report passed by Congress, item 461, there were widening improvements for the I-75 corridor in Collier and Lee Counties in Florida. What actually went to the President was different. This was changed to Lee County only and for an interchange. Somehow that got changed. This money has been rejected three times by the citizens and their elected representatives in that area because they do not want an interchange. What they wanted was to widen I-75 in terms of hurricane evacuations. As I said, we do not know how this happened. There is press speculation. We don't know if it occurred in the Senate. We don't know if it occurred in the House. What we do know is it did occur, and nobody can dispute the fact. And this bill, thanks to Chairman Boxer, corrects that and puts it back to what the original intent of Congress was, what Congress intended originally. Some will say: Now that we fixed it, we don't need to do anything about it. But the problem the American public has in terms of confidence in us is that we will do the right thing, and the right thing is to figure out how something such as this happened and make sure it never happens again and put in the safeguards so we know it will not happen again. I believe it is time for Congress to look at this issue and fix it. Many of my colleagues say we are treading on dangerous water because if this occurred in the House, we are forcing the House to look at something, one body telling the other body to do something. We don't know where it occurred. The amendment I am offering creates a committee of Members, four from the House, four from the Senate, that will look at this issue and make appropriate recommendations to the appropriate bodies; that is, the House Committee on Official Conduct and the Senate Ethics Committee or any law enforcement officers. I understand that there will possibly be a second-degree amendment, and this ought to be offered and made, that the Justice Department look at this. That can certainly happen in due time, but there is this little issue of separation of powers. We have the responsibility in Congress to do what is right. It is very interesting the debates we have had, especially in this Congress, about separation of powers and not wanting the executive branch to take power away from us. However, we are thinking about offering a second-degree amendment that would do that. I believe in the people in this body. I believe we all do not like that this happened. I believe we all want to see that it never happens again. The best way to do this is to have an investigation, two Members appointed by the Speaker and two Members appointed by the minority leader in the House, two Members appointed by the majority leader in the Senate and two Members appointed by the minority leader in the Senate. So we have eight Members reporting back to us what happened and making recommendations to the appropriate committees, not necessarily to us. As we all know, Senate ethics investigations, as well as House investigations in terms of official conduct, are not public. We don't know if something is going on regarding this issue now. But what we do know is something happened, and we ought to be about fixing it. My worry is if we modify this amendment or we do not agree to this amendment, this is going to be the feeling of the American public: Is this political? Can we not control the rules of our own body in terms of enrollment? It is interesting what Jefferson said when he talked about this in his manual. He described what should and shouldn't be done when a bill has passed both Houses of Congress. The House last acting on it, notifies its passage to the other and delivers the bill to the Joint Committee on Enrollment, who sees it is truly enrolled in parchment. When the bill is enrolled, it is not to be written in paragraphs but solidly, all in one piece, that the blanks between the paragraphs may not give room for forgery. That is, in essence, what happened in this case. Now, that is not a case for the Justice Department to investigate at this time. That is a case for us to investigate and look at our own rules. The fact is, something went terribly wrong on the way of a bill going to the President that was different than both Houses of Congress passed. I understand the angst of someone coming from the Senate and saying this ought to happen, and I understand we don't want to get in a fingerpointing mode. But if the House agrees with this in conference, it will happen; and if they do not agree with this in conference, it won't happen. But what should happen in the Senate should be that we look at this so we can create the confidence that the American people deserve to have in this body to know that when we pass a bill out, that the bill we passed is actually the bill the President signs. I am thankful to the Transportation Committee and Chairman Boxer and Ranking Member Inhofe for clarifying this and fixing it. It is right that it should be done. It is right that the original intention of it should be done. But that is not good enough. That is not good enough for the American public. I understand the desire of the chairman of the committee to move this out of our hands and into the Justice Department's hands, but I have some problems with that. One is this idea of separation of powers. What other powers are we going to give up when we can't handle a simple investigation into what went wrong during the process of enrollment? The second thing is, my legal staff tells me we cannot mandate to the executive branch what they will and will not investigate. So should they choose not to investigate this, we will have been no further down the road. But the 100-percent guarantee that it will get investigated is if we have Members of both bodies investigate this and come to a resolution so it does not happen again. It doesn't matter whose bill it is, and it doesn't matter which party's bill it is. If a bill, no matter whose bill it is, is changed, it affects the whole country, and it affects the confidence in this body. This is an ethical issue for us, if in fact it involved the Senate. The easy thing would be not to offer this. That is easy; you don't make other Senators uncomfortable with you; you don't have the chance that the House could be upset at what we are suggesting in a conference, if they agree to us jointly in investigating this. We could sweep it under the rug as if it never happened because we corrected it. But it did happen. And by not investigating it, it means it can happen again. This is not without precedent. I believe in 1982 or 1992, this same thing happened and it didn't get investigated. It just got changed. So here we have it happening again, and only because of some very good work in the press were we made aware of it. Consequently, we ought to be the ones to fix it. We ought to take responsibility for our actions and we ought to correct the problem that happened with this, wherever it may be. If it happened in the House, the House should correct it. If it happened in the Senate, the Senate should correct it. But at least we ought to know the details of how and why, and then, if appropriate, a referral, if in fact that is justified. If it was a simple clerical error, we will know that. If it was more than that, we will know that. The fact is, by not doing this, what we are saying to the American people is, oops, we had a mistake that is paramount to the quality and the clarity of how this body functions, and we believe it is not a grave error. Well, I happen to disagree. It is an entirely egregious error because it impacts every other piece of legislation. If I as a Senator can no longer trust that the bills we pass in Congress, after they are enrolled, are exactly what we pass, then I now have to spend the time looking at every bill after it has been enrolled to make sure it matches. None of us has the time to do that. That is what we entrust the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House for. So somewhere along the way, something changed. We need to know that. We don't need to play the same political games. We don't need to play a partisan game with it, because nobody knows for sure who did what. What we do need to do is to do the hard work of looking at what went wrong and making the appropriate changes. I note there are several cosponsors, and the Presiding Officer is one. She has been a great addition to our body because she seeks clarity and transparency in what we do here; also Senator McCain and Senator Obama, as well as Senator Martinez and Senator Nelson of Florida. They are the two Senators where this had the most impact. I don't come to the floor lightly saying we want to poke at people, but I do think it is important for the integrity of our body that we, along with the House, get to the bottom of it. It was my hope we could work this out without trying to refer it to the Justice Department. If in fact it needs to get there, it will get there after appropriate investigation. To bypass us and give up our power to correct things that are wrong with our rules--not laws, our rules--seems to me to be the antithesis of what we have debated so many times in this Senate over the past 9 to 15 months about the executive power encroaching on the Senate. Now we are ready to give that power away for something that is duly ours and set a precedent that we are going to ask the Justice Department to investigate us? We ought to be investigating ourselves. We have the integrity, we have the quality, we have the people, and we have the goodwill of all the Senators of this body and all the Members of the House to do that. Because the institution is more important than any one of us. What we do for the American people has to be more important than any one of us. So it is my hope--I will not take much more time--the Senate will concur. This is done with all sincerity. I am pointing a finger at no one. But I think if we do not do this, by a second amendment that takes it away, what we will have done is to abrogate our responsibility in terms of the clarity of our purpose and the quality of our work. And if we choose to do that, here is what we will find. We will find another notch down the confidence in Congress by the American people, if we refuse to look under our own bedsheets for our own bedbugs and give that responsibility away. I appreciate the help of the staff of the committee. They have been very forthright in working with us. As I have said before, I appreciate Senator Boxer's cooperative attitude on this. We disagree on how best to handle this, and I understand her right as the chairman and as a Member of this body, but my hope is we don't give away powers that are ours. The separation of powers is a very important concept in this body, and to abrogate our responsibility and appoint it somewhere else, when we don't have the facts--that can always happen afterwards. In fact, this amendment states that appropriate referrals will be made to both Ethics Committees of the House and Senate and to law enforcement, if necessary. So my hope would be that we could vote this eventually and look at it. I think it is paramount for the quality of our work. Madam President, I reserve any time I may have, and I look forward to the comments of the chairman.

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. If it is not appropriated. But we are not passing these bills under the assumption they are not going to be appropriated. We are passing these bills under the assumption they will be appropriated. As a matter of fact, the promise is made as we pass this. And either it is a hollow promise you are sending back home so you can say, yes, I did this, and lie to your constituents, or we are going to appropriate the money. It is one or the other. So either we are dishonest with whom we are telling we are doing something for or we absolutely intend to appropriate it. There isn't any other option. I will finish up by saying this. Obviously, the senior Senator from New Mexico did not hear my earlier comments. We are in tremendous economic straits in the long term. This debate is not about the lands bill. It is about will we change the philosophy, will we honor our oath, and will we start doing what is right in the long term for those who come after us. The heritage we have embraced in this country is one of sacrifice--one generation sacrifices so the next has opportunity. If we keep doing this without regard--we don't know how much we are spending; we don't know how much the monthly costs are; we are not taking care of the parks as we should because we do not have an idea; we have a hodgepodge; we have a barge floating down the river without a tug on it--we are going to make the problem worse. I will remind my colleagues, the true accounting of this year's estimate is a $607 billion deficit. That is over $2,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. Every child born today in this country inherits an unobligated obligation they will have to pay, that they got no benefit from, of $400,000. Am I frustrating the Senators from New Mexico? You bet. Are our children worth it? You bet. I am not going to stop. I am going to stand and say we are going to think long term, we are going to start protecting property rights, we are going to start thinking about our children, and we are not going to give up because we get lectured because we are not doing it the way we have always done it. The way we have always done it has us bankrupt. It is time for a change. Republicans and Democrats alike, our children are worth it. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent we vote on the amendments in the order in which they were presented.

Mr. COBURN. Assuming appropriation. Yes, it does.

Mr. COBURN. Absolutely.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, here is what I would say in response to the chairman's comment. It is not unreasonable to have somebody who does not own your land, has no real business on your land, ask permission to come on your land. That is an absolute subrogation of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution which we are now embracing and say it is fine to not have to get permission. That is not what comes with property rights under the Constitution. If our defense is we do not believe in the Constitution and the rights of private property rights, then I would say we are misguided in what we are doing. This is a simple way of saying, if we are going to have heritage areas and if I am a private property owner in a heritage area and you want to come on my property and survey, you ought to have to get my permission. You should not be able to come on my land without permission to do so. The fact is, example after example--and I will submit additionally an article from the Nation magazine on examples of exactly what happens in heritage areas to private property rights. It is called ``An Ugly Heritage.'' I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this article.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this amendment requires 1 percent of the new spending authorized in this bill to be used to dispose of excess, unused, and unneeded Federal property to offset some of the cost of the bill. What we know is we have a tremendous backlog in our parks. We have a tremendous backlog in almost every land ownership we have. We have tremendous maintenance needs in the Forest Service and tremendous maintenance needs in BLM. We are suffering to care for what we have. All this amendment says is take 1 percent--they listed 6,500 different items they want to get rid of--and use the money to help them get rid of them so they do not continue to spend money maintaining what they don't want and don't need. At a minimum, this bill authorizes $380 million of new spending, which only represents a fraction when we actually see what will happen. We will track this. My staff will track the actual spending that comes out of this bill in terms of appropriations so we will have it for historical reference. My amendment says to take 1 percent for use to get rid of these items and then take them away. When we have gotten rid of the excess items, we would not use the money to do that and that money will go to maintain the public parks we all value so much. It will help offset the hundreds of millions of dollars of new spending in the 2,000 property assets that in the Park Service alone have been slated for disposal but cannot be sold off solely due to the lack of funding to get rid of them. So all this does is it directs some authorization and says: Park Service, take these 2,000 things, here is some money, get rid of them-- the things you want to get rid of. And everybody agrees we should get rid of them. They haven't because they don't have the money because they have to go through all these various steps under the Federal Government's property rights legislation. But we say to them: Here is the money, so you don't continue to spend money on that, and instead you continue to spend money against this $9 billion backlog in our national parks. What this does is it allows them to get rid of assets they no longer need. This gives them a way and the funds to do that. It allows them to truly dispose of what they want to dispose of. With that, I yield the floor.