Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, we have heard a lot in the press, and we have certainly heard a lot from our own Finance Committee, and we have seen what the House passed in terms of the stimulus package. I think, once again, in our hurry to address a problem, we have not asked: Are we fixing the right problem, the problem in connection with the House leadership passing a bill that will spend $150 billion. One of the first questions we ought to ask is, Where is that money coming from, the $150 billion? Nobody can dispute the fact that we are going to borrow that from our grandchildren; we are going to go to the markets and borrow the money to stimulate our economy. Nobody will dispute the fact that there is very little payback into the Treasury, in terms of tax collections, from this stimulus plan. The facts as they are, we had an overheated housing boom. We can deny economic reality, but until we mark the market--the overinflated cost that has extended credit in our country--and recognize that is going to have to be paid for, we are not going to walk out of this slowdown we appear to be facing. The reality is that the model is the Japanese banking industry: When they refused to recognize the losses, what it did was impact their economy for 10 years. So the realities are that there has to be an economic price when we have an economic excess. Our job should be to make that as easy on our economy as we can, thinking about the future of our economy. Now, all the options that have been presented, when scored in the long term, have very little beneficial effect for the economy other than the psychology we are putting through. The reason it is important to discuss alternatives is because there is a way, which is proven in economics, proven in capitalistic societies, in free market societies, where you can generate stimulus and revenue back to the Government so that, in fact, you solve the right problem, the real problem, and you don't bankrupt your children further, which is what we are going to do whether we pass the House bill or the Senate bill. We are going to steal $150 billion or $190 billion from our grandchildren. I think we ought to think twice about that. Do we really, as senior citizens, want to steal $600, to $800, to $1,200 from our grandchildren for us today? Do we want to do that? Is there another way in which we can stimulate our economy without stealing from our kids and ultimately putting the money back in so that our children don't have to pay for this stimulus package? There is. There are a lot of economic theories and experience in this country that prove that. So let's talk some about what we should be doing that we are not. Instead, we are pandering to people, thinking they are going to get $600 or $800, and we don't have any idea other than to think a third of that money might have a stimulus effect, but it will have a negative effect in terms of what our kids have to pay back. One thing we can do is create certainty about economic decisionmaking. We can extend the Bush tax cuts. We can extend them so people will continue to make positive decisions based on a tax rate they know is there rather than one they know is going to go away in 2 years, which will limit their investment. Second, we can lower corporate tax rates. We now have the second highest corporate tax rates in the world. That hasn't been part of any discussion. We know that when we lower corporate tax rates, we see increased investment, which increases the tax revenues for the country, and we also see economic growth. So there is a positive there, but it is not complete. There is a cost associated with that, but at least there is some feedback. But we have not considered that. We have not reduced the capital gains tax rate on corporations--the people who invest great sums of money on the basis of the fact that if there is a capital gain, if we were to lower that, they might invest more or they might recognize the gain they have today, consequently, even generating taxes. We can index capital gains for inflation. That creates a stable investment environment whereby business decisions will invest in capital, create jobs, which create salaries, which create income, which create tax revenue. We can markedly advance--much more so than we have done in this bill--depreciation schedules if we want to have an impact. We could go to full expensing for capital equipment forever. We don't have to stop it now. What that would do is create investment in capital goods in this country, which would create jobs, which would raise wages, which would create incomes, which would create tax revenues for the country. There are other things we can do besides just send money out the door. We can establish a repatriation window for corporate taxes overseas. The best way to not ever have to deal with this again is to have a corporate tax rate equivalent to what is going on in the rest of the world--have one at 25 percent instead of 35 percent so that we, in fact, are competitive worldwide, so that corporations don't refuse to bring income they have earned overseas back to this country because we have an excessive tax on it, so they decide not to do that. Finally, what we can do is make the Small Business Administration work. Seven years ago, the impact of Government regulation on small business was less than $4,000. It is $7,400 per employee. That is the impact of the Federal Government. That is not the taxes you pay, that is the impact of the regulations in terms of the cost impounded onto small business by the Federal Government. I will end with talking about the budget that was just submitted by the administration. We are going to spend probably $150 billion or $190 billion, and we are not going to pay for it. We are not going to reduce any of the wasteful spending, including the inappropriate payments in Medicare, and there is another $40 billion in fraud. Medicaid has $30 billion worth of fraud and another $7 billion in improper payments. Food stamps has $6 billion worth of improper payments, not counting the fraud. There is nothing associated with fixing what is wrong with the Government so that the American people get value from it. We are going to throw money at a problem rather than secure the future for our children and grandchildren. We can do better. We ought to do better. We should not say we are just going to throw money at the problem. Let's make long-term structural changes in the Tax Code that raise the opportunity for our children rather than lower it by putting debt on their shoulders. Let's make the long-term changes and tough choices of eliminating programs that aren't working effectively, or let's refine programs that are wasteful, not efficient, and loaded with fraud. Let's eliminate the wasteful programs that account for $150 billion of money spent each year. Let's get rid of the $30 billion in waste at the Pentagon. Let's get rid of the $3 billion we spend every year maintaining buildings the Pentagon doesn't want. We don't have a way to get rid of them, but we don't have the courage to change the law. There are all kinds of ways to save a couple hundred billion dollars a year, but it means you have to ruffle some feathers. It is time we do that and do the hard work, rather than the easy work. Thank you for the opportunity to speak in terms of what I think is a long-term way to resolve this economic trough we appear to be facing. I am not confident we are going to do it the right way. I think we are going to do it the politically expedient way, which helps people get reelected but doesn't fix the real problem. To me, to my regret, that is a sad misnomer for this body. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, at the end of this week, Americans may find themselves at greater risk of a terrorist attack when the Protect America Act expires on February 1. On that date, we will be forced to revert to the antiquated 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to monitor the communications of suspected terrorists, unless this Congress moves quickly to make permanent changes to that law. It is therefore critical for Congress to enact permanent modernizations to FISA so that our intelligence officials will have every tool they need to monitor the communications of terrorists who seek to destroy the United States. The consequences of allowing the Protect America Act to lapse could be deadly. The PAA was passed last August to modernize FISA so that the statute could do in practice what it was always intended to do--govern certain foreign intelligence surveillance activities directed at persons in the United States, without inadvertently burdening those activities directed at persons overseas. FISA, however, has not kept up with technological advances that have been made since 1978. As a result, prior to the PAA, intelligence officers were often forced to obtain a court order before beginning surveillance against a terrorist or other foreign target located in another country. This unnecessary and burdensome requirement caused U.S. intelligence agencies to lose about two-thirds of their ability to collect communications intelligence against al-Qaida. Thankfully, the Protect America Act helped to close the inexcusable gap that left this country blind to the plans our enemies were making against us. As Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell said, the PAA has ``allowed us to obtain significant insight into terrorist planning.'' To allow such a vital antiterror tool to lapse at this time would be the ultimate dereliction of duty. The United States must remain vigilant against a terror threat that is real and constant. The National Intelligence Estimate on ``The Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland,'' released just 6 months ago, concluded that this country will face a ``persistent and evolving'' terrorist threat over the next 3 years, particularly from Islamic terrorist groups and cells like al-Qaida. No person in America is unfamiliar with the capabilities and determination of such terrorist groups, and Americans trust us to make the right decisions to protect them and their children. Without making permanent changes to FISA to ensure the fast and effective intercept of foreign intelligence information, little else we do will matter. Retroactive immunity is in the best interest of this Nation's security and must be included in FISA modernization, as it was in the Intelligence Committee bill. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to intercept international communications into and out of the United States of persons linked to al-Qaida or related terrorist organizations. The administration's obvious and stated purpose of this authorization was to ``establish an early warning system to detect and prevent another catastrophic terrorist attack on the United States.'' Therefore, the administration made requests for telecom companies to cooperate with its intelligence activities. The companies complied with the government's request for help, relying on written assurance from the executive branch that their actions were both necessary and legal. Now these companies face multibillion dollar lawsuits challenging their actions. Such lawsuits not only create potentially staggering liability for the companies, they also create the risk that sensitive details about our intelligence sources and methods will be revealed through discovery. Moreover, failing to protect those who cooperate with the Government to thwart terrorist activity will undermine the willingness of others to cooperate in the future. A powerful op-ed authored last October by former Attorneys General Benjamin Civiletti, Dick Thornburgh, and William Webster, said it best: The government alone cannot protect us from the threats we face today. We must have the help of all our citizens. There will be times when the lives of thousands of Americans will depend on whether corporations such as airlines or banks are willing to lend assistance. If we do not treat companies fairly when they respond to assurances from the highest levels of the government that their help is legal and essential for saving lives, then we will be radically reducing our society's capacity to defend itself. Recognizing the gravity of the situation, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee voted 13 to 2 to include retroactive immunity in its bill. This overwhelming vote came after the committee reviewed the classified documents on which these companies relied. The committee ultimately concluded that the Government ``cannot obtain the intelligence it needs without assistance from [telecommunications] companies.'' Protecting the corporate good citizens who answered the call to assist our intelligence community during a time of great danger to this country is the right thing to do. Anything short of full immunity for those companies that, at the Government's request, on the written assurance that such action had been authorized by the President and deemed lawful, would undermine the security of the United States is simply unacceptable. The carefully crafted, bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee bill protects privacy interests without undermining our intelligence community's ability to do its vitally important job. The bill was approved by a vote of 13 to 2 after careful consideration of complicated issues and classified documents. It will allow our intelligence professionals to continue collecting foreign intelligence against foreign targets located outside the United States without requiring prior court approval. This is consistent with the intent of the legislators who enacted FISA in 1978 and represents no change in the way that the NSA has always conducted foreign surveillance. In so doing, the bill will also continue to protect the civil liberties of Americans in this country, surveillance of whom has always required prior court approval. Nothing we are considering in the Senate today would alter that. In the event that communication from a U.S. person is inadvertently intercepted, the intelligence community uses ``minimization procedures'' to suppress the data. The result is that the communication is never used or shared. These procedures have been used effectively for 30 years and will remain in place after permanent FISA changes are enacted. Enacting permanent modernizations to FISA is one of the most important duties the Senate will undertake this year. We have known for 6 months that the Protect America Act would expire on February 1 and have no excuse for not getting this done correctly before that date. The stakes in this debate could not be higher. Although the details can be complicated, the basic issue is pretty simple. As Andy McCarthy said in a recent piece for the National Review Online, ``Osama bin Laden doesn't need to apply to a sharia court before blowing up an American embassy; the president shouldn't need to apply to a federal court to try to stop him.'' Unfortunately, I was unable to make it back to town in time for the two cloture votes that were held yesterday. Had I been here, I would have voted for cloture on Rockefeller amendment No. 3911, the Intelligence Committee's FISA bill, and against cloture on Reid amendment No. 3918, to temporarily extend the Protect America Act. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, later today, Senator Schumer will bring up the Criminal Background Check Improvement Act, which is an important piece of legislation. When this bill was originally hotlined, we asked that it be held so that we could discuss the improvements to the bill. This bill came out of the tragedy at Virginia Tech. It is important that the American people understand that what we are changing in this bill would not have prevented what happened at Virginia Tech. What happened to the individuals there was because the law we have on the books was not followed by the State of Virginia. They recognized that shortly thereafter and have made corrective action to it. What is also important to note is that under the previous legislation we have had, over $400 million a year was authorized to help the States implement the programs so that somebody who is truly a danger to themselves or others or has been admitted to a mental institution and considered mentally defective--that is a term of the bureaucracy--is not allowed to purchase a gun. We all agree to that in this country. So when you don't follow the law, the laws don't work. Consequently, the families are suffering great grief at this time because the law wasn't followed. Too often, the first reaction of Congress is to hurry up and pass a bill. There are and have been in this bill some good ideas. But there were some bad ideas. The idea of holding the bill to be able to work with those who are offering the bill to get improvements has come about. The principle is this: As we protect people from the dangers of weapons by withholding both criminals and those people who constitute a threat to themselves and others, we can't do that if we are going to step on the rights of those who have a right and who are not in that category. I wish to take a moment to thank Senator Schumer for his hard work and Elliot of his staff for his hard work and to recognize my staff, Jane Treat and Brooke Bacak and others on my staff who worked through the last couple of months to improve this bill. We have come out to make sure those people, veterans in this country who go out and defend, with their lives, bodies, and their futures, our rights, aren't inappropriately losing their rights under this legislation. It is interesting for the American people to know that at this time, if you are a veteran and you come home with a closed head injury and you resolve that, then, in fact, by the time you wake up and recover over a year or 2-year period, you will have lost all your rights to bear an arm to be able to go hunting, to be able to skeet shoot, to be able to hunt with your grandchildren, without any notification whatsoever that you have lost that right. That is the present law. That is what is happening. We have 140,000 veterans with no history of mental deficiency, no history of being dangerous to themselves or others, who have lost, without notice, their right to go hunting, to skeet shoot, to have that kind of outing in this wonderful country of ours in a legal, protected sense. What this bill does is it attempts to address that by giving them an opportunity for relief. It mandates that, first of all, they are notified if that happens to them so that they know they are losing their rights. What a tragedy it would be if a veteran who lost his rights but doesn't know it becomes incarcerated under a felony for hunting with his grandson because it is illegal for him to own, handle, or transmit a weapon? That is not what we intended to do in this Congress some 10 years ago. Yet that is the real effect of what is happening. Consequently, we are at a point now where we have agreed with the fact that we want to make sure--and we want to put the resources through this authorization--it covers those who could be a danger to themselves and others, and we are going to help the States implement this law, the law on the books, by authorizing significant sums to do this. It is not a new authorization; $400 million was authorized before, but the appropriators didn't appropriate it. They chose to make a higher priority. The most ever appropriated under this, I think, was $23 million a year. So, in fact, what we want to do now is say we mean it, which means when it comes to appropriations time, this authorization will have no effect unless, in fact, we appropriate the money to the States to carry out this notification system. It is something we can and must do. It shows that when we work together to solve the problems and protect the future and honor the Constitution, the rights under the Constitution, we can do that if people of good faith and of good intent work together to solve that. My compliments to Senator Schumer and his staff and Hendrik Van Der Vaart on my staff for the hours and hours we have put in to make sure this happened. A couple other key points. Sometimes the bureaucracy delays whether or not you are on this list. So we have said that, at the end of the year, if they can't decide, it is going to be adjudicated that you cannot have a gun and you will have to prove that you can. That is fair enough, provided we create the means with which you can recover the cost of that adjudication. So if, in fact, you get to Federal court and you win your case that there is not anything wrong with you, the Federal Government is going to pay your lawyer's fees and return your rights--the rights given to everybody else in this country--return your wrongly denied rights back to you. Therefore, we really, truly do give access to those who have been injured under this law and, at the same time, protect the rest of the American public from those who could be injured when we don't follow the law. I also pay tribute to Congresswoman McCarthy. I served with her in the House. She has been dedicated to this issue for years. She suffered a terrible tragedy herself at the hands of somebody who was obviously deranged. This will mark a milestone for one of the things she wanted to accomplish during her service in the Congress. It is my hope that others will not hold this bill. It is my hope that when it comes appropriations time, the moneys that are necessary to put the people who really are a danger to themselves and others on the national criminal background check, that they will get there, and that those who should not be there will not be there. So it is a balance, a balance for protection, but it is also a balance to preserve rights, especially for our veterans--the very people who continue to protect our rights. They are going to be preserved. Myself and Senator Schumer sent a letter to the ATF asking them to reconsider some of the wording in their ruling because it puts people in there who should not be. We are hopeful that they recognize that, and that they, because of a bipartisan query, do a rulemaking process that really directs this where it should be. When that happens, we will have finished everything we need to do, except get the dollars appropriated to implement this act. Again, my hat is off to Senator Schumer and those who have worked tirelessly to get this done. It is with great appreciation for the manner in which it was handled, and it is my hope that we will pass this on and see the great accomplishments of protecting people from those who are a danger to themselves and others. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, Senator Lott is true gentleman: agreeable, good-humored and kind in nature. When I think of Trent Lott, the words consensus and congeniality come to mind. These words come to mind because Trent has become one of the greatest mediators this body has ever seen, his ability to bring all parties on an issue to the table and when the negotiations are done, each person leaves with a smile on their face. Senator Lott's humor and affable personality made working with him a pleasure, even when a compromise could not be found and the time for negotiating was over, nobody would leave the table feeling alienated, or hurt they left with Trent still a friend and eager to work on the next solution. Trent Lott's 34 years of service to his country as a Member of Congress will forever be remembered in chapters of our Nation's history and by his constituents of Mississippi. But the one who deserves just as much thanks and gratitude is his college sweetheart and wife Tricia. While Trent has been dedicated to his job and country for the past 34 years, he has been devoted to his family. Senator Lott's congeniality could be attributed to his humble beginnings, southern upbringing, or a number of things, but no matter the reason he still remains a humble man with many friends and a man who is truly kind to others. As I have grown to know him through our work here in the Senate, I have seen that his kindness stretches beyond the walls of his duties on this floor and to all who encounter him. Trent always has a smile on his face and extends pleasantries to everyone he passes. Here in Washington, it is easy for one to be consumed by self-importance and it is easy to forget to treat others as we wish to be treated, but he never did. While in the lobby of another office, Senator Lott will have a candid conversation with the much overlooked staff manning the front desk or anyone in his path--he will go out of his way to make sure everyone is greeted with warm hello. I have agreed with Senator Lott on many issues, and I have disagreed with him on many as well, but in each scenario we always ended with a handshake and a good laugh. This institution is losing a man who could bring people together and allow bitter enemies to lay down their swords. This is a man who will be missed by many and I wish Senator Lott the best of luck as he retires from his years of political service.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. As we approach the end of the year, Congress once again finds itself on a last-minute spending spree, approving billions of dollars of new spending with few questions asked, no amendments allowed, and little debate, discussion, or inspection permitted. The U.S. national debt now exceeds $9.13 trillion. That means almost $30,000 in debt for each and every man, woman, and child in the United States. The U.S. debt is expanding by about $1.4 billion a day, or nearly $1 million a minute. The unfunded liability placed on a child born today is $400,000. The ``Financial Report of the United States Government'' released this week found that the Federal deficit would be nearly 70 percent higher than the $162.8 billion reported 2 months ago if the Government used the same accounting practices as private firms. Accounting for such liabilities as pensions and health care costs when they are incurred rather than when they are paid would have boosted the deficit to $275.5 billion, the report noted. It is completely irresponsible for Congress to add to this debt that threatens the retirement security of our senior citizens and the economic prosperity of our children and grandchildren who will inherit the debt that results from the spending decisions Congress is making today. The Omnibus appropriations bill, which combines the 11 unfinished appropriations bills to fund the Federal Government's operations in fiscal year 2008, provides approximately $515.7 billion in discretionary spending. The bill also adds approximately $11 billion in emergency spending, of which $3.7 billion is contingent emergency spending for veterans programs. This bill was approved by the House of Representatives last night, and the Senate will vote on it today, even though it has only been available now for 36 hours. The bill is more than 3,400 pages, and I am fairly certain that not a single Member of either chamber of Congress, or anyone else, for that matter, has read it in its entirety. What is most shocking, however, is that the eagerness of Members of Congress to recess for the year and to satisfy the desire to secure pork projects has taken precedent over our responsibility to properly manage the Nation's finances and set national spending priorities. While this bill does not provide the funding that is needed for our brave men and women in uniform fighting on the front lines in Iraq, it does contains over 9,000 special interest pork projects, known as ``earmarks.'' ``An earmark Christmas, Lawmakers deck out omnibus with many a spending project,'' proclaims the front page of the Hill newspaper. ``Earmark Extravaganza, Nearly 9,000 Requests in Omnibus,'' exclaims the front page of Roll Call. Nearly 300 of the earmarks in this bill costing over $800 million were air dropped into this bill during closed- door meetings not open to the public or most Members of Congress. Among the thousands of earmarked projects tucked into this bill are: $113,000 for rodent control in Alaska; $213,000 for olive fruit fly research in France; $1,645,000 for the City of Bastrop, LA. According to Bastrop Daily Enterprise, ``The money is officially earmarked for the purchase of bulletproof vests and body armor. Bulletproof vests only cost about $700-800, however, so $1.6 million would appear to be overkill.'' Police detective Curtis Stephenson agrees, conceding ``There's no way we'd need that kind of money just to put all our people in vests.''; $200,000 for a Hunting and Fishing Museum in Pennsylvania; $150,000 for a Louis Armstrong Museum in New York; $700,000 for a bike trail in Minnesota; $1,000,000 for river walk in Massachusetts; $200,000 for a post office museum in downtown Las Vegas; $1,000,000 for an earmark requested by a House Member who has been indicted on Federal charges of racketeering, money-laundering and soliciting bribes; $824,000 for alternative salmon products; $146,000 for an aquarium in South Carolina; $1,000,000 for managing weeds in Idaho; and $37,000 for the Lincoln Park Zoo in Illinois. It is hard to argue that any of these are national priorities or more important than funding the troops in Iraq or worth increasing the national debt. Members of Congress have, however, learned to rationalize the practice of earmarking, but the truth is every earmark diverts funds away from more important national priorities. I filed two amendments to this bill that would have demonstrated this point that I had hoped to offer but was blocked from doing so. These amendments would have given Congress the opportunity to choose between improving deficient roads and bridges and providing health care to women and children before steering funds toward special interest earmarks. The first amendment, 3860, would have allowed the Department of Transportation to redirect earmarked funds to improve unsafe roads and bridges. On August 1, 2007, the Interstate 35 West, I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, MN, collapsed during rush hour, killing 13 people and injuring another 123. This tragedy exposed both a nationwide problem of deficient bridges as well as misplaced priorities of Congress, which has focused more on funding earmarks than improving aging infrastructure. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, one out of every eight bridges in our Nation is structurally deficient. Of the 597,340 bridges in the United States, 154,101 bridges are deficient. Yet, instead of addressing needed bridge maintenance, Congress has prioritized earmarks for politicians' pet projects, many which do not even involve roads or bridges. The $286 billion, 5-year Transportation authorization bill approved by Congress in 2005, for example, included 6,373 earmarks, totaling $24 billion, including the infamous ``Bridge to Nowhere'' in Alaska. An investigation by the inspector general of the Department of Transportation found that ``Many earmarked projects considered by the agencies as low priority are being funded over higher priority, non- earmarked projects.'' The IG notes that ``Funding these new low priority projects added to the already substantial backlog of replacement projects and caused [Federal Aviation Administration] to delay the planning of its higher priority replacement projects by at least 3 years.'' Earmarks have siphoned away tens of billions of dollars that could and should have been spent to upgrade deficient bridges or improve aging roads rather than being spent on politicians' pet projects. The Senate has already rejected a similar amendment in September, and this bill shows once again that Congress is more interested in securing earmarks than securing our Nation's roads and bridges. The second amendment, 3861, would have allowed the Department of Health and Human Services to redirect earmarked funds to the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant Program. Congress has spent much of this year posturing about who cares most about providing health care for children and the uninsured. Yet Congress has failed to enact any reforms to expand health care access. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in this country there were 9.5 million children who lacked health insurance for at least part of last year, and over 17 million women are uninsured. This amendment ensures that many of these uninsured women and children would receive services from the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant, which provides funding for urgent health needs for pregnant women, mothers, infants, children, and adolescents. It is shameful that Congress has diverted tens of millions of dollars in the health title of this bill towards special interest pork projects when millions of children and women do not have access to critical health care. The Senate rejected a similar amendment in October, and this bill demonstrates once again that while Congress may talk about prioritizing children's health care, the real priority of Congress is its own special interest pork projects. There are plenty of other examples in this bill of Congress's misplaced priorities. The bill, for example, terminates the Baby AIDS Program that provides resources to prevent perinatal HIV transmission and care for mothers with HIV, while ensuring that San Francisco receives funding for deceased AIDS patients. The bill provides another $100 million for the 2008 political party conventions. It allows the Department of Justice to again provide Federal financial support for groups linked to terrorism by removing the prohibition passed by the Senate in October. Who know what other travesties are hidden within this 3,400 page omnibus spending bill that Congress is expected to pass without having time to read, review, or amend? Members of Congress may never know, and apparently few seem to care. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the approval ratings of Congress have reached alltime historical lows. Congress has ignored the needs of our troops in combat, the looming bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare, and the nearly insurmountable national debt that threatens the future prosperity of our Nation while showing virtually no restraint on spending, especially for parochial pork projects.

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, under the cloture rules, I had an amendment for which now it looks like there is the opportunity to have a point of order raised against it, so I am not going to even call up the amendment. I will spend a few minutes talking about it. I know everybody wants to get out of town. I will spend some time talking about it, and I will take as short an amount of time as possible. It was an amendment to eliminate things that are already being done in this country through the Agriculture Department. For example, specialty cheeses, they have grown by 15 to 20 percent per year. We have 16 different marketing agencies the Government, in one way or another, is already funding. We spend $2.5 million a year in Wisconsin already through the Ag Department. We are going to spend $1.6 million with the Vermont cheese marketing program for artesian cheeses. Yet in this bill we are authorizing another program. This amendment was designed to take that out. Also, this amendment deals with areas in terms of USDA loans for golf courses, for resorts, for entertainment complexes, to businesses that have nothing to do with agriculture, to businesses that have assets in excess of $60 billion apiece. So the idea of the amendment was to, first of all, refine where we are loaning the taxpayers' money to businesses and, also, to look at the $1.6 billion the USDA has lost on $15 billion in the last 5 years on loan foreclosures to these types of areas and to redirect this into an area where we are getting better value for the taxpayers' money. I am concerned we actually drafted this amendment, as the committee had asked us to do it, and now we find a point of order will be raised against it following the committee's recommendations. So I appreciate the good work of Senator Harkin and Senator Chambliss on this bill and the way they have worked with us. My hope is we can get a final farm bill through conference and take care of the needs of this country. I am somewhat depressed in the fact that there is a lot of wasteful spending we have put into this bill and we are not going to have an opportunity to amend that. With that, I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I don't disagree we have to take action to help those people who are in a bind now based on both the economics, as well as probably a pretty severe bubble that has occurred. The real fact is some people are going to lose their homes. I have agreed to this debate, not because I was trying to stop all of the FHA modernization, but because I am markedly concerned that in this component what we are doing has nothing to do with the crisis that we see today, but, in fact, will put the next two generations in obligation for a sum somewhere between $50 billion and $60 billion in terms of reverse mortgages. Now, the question I would ask, which has not been asked, is where are the metrics to measure the market forces in reverse mortgages in this country? There are none. As a matter of fact, this bill looks at that by asking for a study. But the other intent of the bill is that we ask for a study, but we eliminate the cap which the study is supposed to help us determine. There are some other concerns the American taxpayer should have, one of which is FHA has what is called a qualified audit. They have two material weaknesses we wouldn't accept from any other corporation in this country in which we would entrust our money or invest our assets. When they are audited, there are two material weaknesses in their ability to control what they are doing, measure what they are doing, and assess what they are doing. We ought to be concerned about that. We are simply asking with this amendment that before we raise the cap on the noncritical area in the home mortgage market, we, in fact, study to know what we are doing. The idea for the study is great, but the study is going to have limited value if, in fact, we move all reverse mortgages to the Government. That is going to be the ultimate impact of this bill. The crisis is in the mortgage industry, not the reverse mortgage industry. But we are applying and using that crisis to absolutely ensure that in the future, our children are going to be hooked for the guarantee for all of the reverse mortgages in this country. We are going to limit the private reinsurance equity reverse mortgage in this country by what we do. I think the other thing we ought to think about as we do this is some ``what-ifs.'' What if we don't get a good handle on this subprime credit and the debt situation that is going on? What if we end up becoming the true guarantor of all of these loans? What if they get to the point where they can't be repaid? It is not going to be the Presiding Officer and me who are going to pay this; it is going to be the next couple of generations. So this amendment is just designed for prudence. It says, if we are going to study this, let's study it and then make a decision. There is no credible source that says there is a shortage of access of credit for reverse mortgages in this country. It is not in the committee report. It is not in the report. So why are we doing this? Because it works and because people--we are doing it because that is the way everybody will go if you can get a Government-guaranteed loan. The banks make more money on it. It is easier--you evidently have to qualify, but conventional reverse mortgages will go out the window. So what have we done with that? We have shifted the risk for all of the reverse mortgages in this country to our kids. If that was where we had a crisis, then I would be in agreement that maybe we should go there, but that is not where it is. What we are attempting to do with the FHA Modernization Act is to help those who are in a crisis now. Probably, had we done this 3 years ago, many of the people who are in subprime loans would have been in FHA, and we wouldn't see the extent of the crisis we have today. So what I would ask is that our colleagues stop for a minute and say: Do we really want at this time to do this? I understand that I am going to be opposed on this by members of the Banking Committee, but I would ask them to show me the data that says there truly is a dent in this aspect of the reverse mortgage market. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I will note for my colleagues' benefit that I do not plan to ask for a recorded vote on this amendment. I also will not demand a recorded vote on the bill itself, so colleagues would not have to come to the floor. Let me summarize. What we are trying to do with FHA modernization is good. We have a crisis. There is no crisis in reverse mortgages. As a matter of fact, there is not hardly any private sector anymore. The reverse mortgages that are growing, I would advise the Senator from Florida, are growing at 60 percent a year at FHA. That is not slow growth. If we take 60 percent a year over the next 10 years, instead of 109,000, we will have 800,000. So that is why GAO estimates that we are talking about $56 billion in new obligations that our kids are going to have to come up with if anything happens. So, again, nobody has answered the question: Is there a crisis in reverse mortgages? There is not. Nobody has answered the question: Where are the metrics in terms of the marketplace, saying there is not adequate credit out there in the private marketplace, not guaranteed by our children? We are not going to guarantee it, our children are. Nobody has answered those two questions. And nobody has said: Here is what the data shows on the market now that we are going to do 130,000- plus, I believe, this year, and how does that impact with the total number of mortgages that are out there this year in the very difficult market that we find ourselves in with the tight credit. So I would ask for a voice vote on this amendment, and then I will not object to a voice vote or a consent after that on the underlying bill. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time.

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

Mr. COBURN. In my normal magnanimous state, I would normally be happy to do that and will do that.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to Senator Martinez in opposition to my amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I yield the Senator an additional 1 minute.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, it is interesting. I will ask a couple of questions. Where is the study that shows the Federal Government ought to be in the reverse mortgage market? It is not there. Where is the study that shows what will happen to the private mortgage market? It is not there. So what we are doing is moving all reverse mortgages and the obligations thereof to our kids. We ought to let private markets work some. We ought to create that ability. We are going to eliminate that ability. There is no question that reverse mortgages are advantageous for a lot of people. As you heard, there are going to be people preying on widows out there, saying: Here is the FHA, and I can sell you this annuity if you want to reverse mortgage your home. There is not going to be any balance on that. So we are going to shift an entire industry, which should be private, with FHA reserve, for those who need it to help them, to the Government. The long-term consequence by the auditors' report is that it is going to be $45 billion that is going to get shifted to debt to our kids. That is the exposure there. I am not against reverse mortgages. I am not against us trying to do everything we can in terms of the real crisis out there, which is associated with the subprime mortgages. This is a totally different category. What we are doing is expanding a program, unlimited. What if the GAO report comes back and says you should not do that, there is a market out there? Every banker in this country, if you give them an option of a conventional mortgage or an FHA-guaranteed mortgage, is going to go to the FHA. What will happen? There is a lower qualification for it. They make more money off of it. Consequently, we are going to direct a whole industry into a Government-backed program by what we are doing in this bill. I am not even opposed to reverse mortgages through FHA. I am opposed to us overreacting and creating only one market, taking the private market totally out of it and putting our kids on the hook for it. Nobody answered the questions about FHA in their audit. No large corporation would still be on the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, or any other exchange, if they had three significantly qualified areas to their financial statements. They have two of the three that are material weaknesses, inability to even watch the programs we have. We are going to ignore all that today. I understand that. We are going to ignore the fact that there are no metrics, no study to tell us what we are doing is right. But we are going to do it. Somebody has to protect and think about the future. So this amendment is common sense. It says, wait--we can wait a short period of time; it will not take GAO all that long. What is the pressure on this? The pressure is the money generation. We are going to collect $1.5 billion from these same elderly people in insurance, who are going to be scammed by people who will sell them annuities. So they are going to get less money out of their reverse mortgage than they would have gotten in the private sector. They are going to get less. And then we are going to say we did something. I am surprised it has not been raised, but what we are doing is a credit card scam. We are being the credit card scam. We are going to enable people to get scammed. We don't know what we are doing. The study is important to do. I will work with the authors of the bill to raise the cap somewhat, but to raise it unlimited, never to have a cap regardless of what the GAO report says? When are we going to come back and fix it? What if they say: You shouldn't be doing this; maybe this ought to be in the private market. There isn't a need for our children to take on the additional risk of these reverse mortgages. What are we going to do? There is no mechanism for what we are doing in the FHA Modernization Act if that comes to fruition. The reason for the amendment is to pause and ask the question: Where are the metrics that say we need to do it? Where is the market failure that says the Federal Government ought to be doing it? This was a pilot. We are now converting a pilot into a full-grown program. Shouldn't we know what we are doing? Shouldn't we assess whether there is a true market failure in reverse mortgages before we do this? No. 2, shouldn't we consider some of the safeguards for a lot of the people who are going to be taken advantage of through this program? Finally, No. 3, with our debt growing $1 million a minute, $1.3 billion a day--and every child now who is born in this country is inheriting $400,000 in unfunded liabilities--do we have an obligation to be maybe a little more prudent and say: Wait a minute, let's fix the subprime, but let's be more prudent on this issue until we really know what we are doing. I understand it is a good idea. For me, it will be great when I retire. I probably will do a reverse mortgage. But we don't know what the markets are. We don't know where they are. And we don't know the 5- year future right now, especially given the subprime crisis in front of us, and we are going to add more to that? What if somebody comes to their elderly mother and says: I want you to do a reverse mortgage on your home so I cannot default on my private one? Is that why we are doing this? Or what if somebody says: I want to sell you the best thing you ever had; I am going to give you an annuity. Sounds good. You have a home, you are an elderly female, no husband, and you buy it, only to find out later you could have bought an annuity that would have given you $300 or $400 more a month if you had been in the private market with checks and balances rather than be scammed. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a summary of the independent auditors' report--Urbach Kahn & Werlin--from this past year on the Federal Housing Administration.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I remind my colleagues, the FHA has significant problems if they cannot pass an audit. That has not been addressed in this bill at all in terms of the audit defects FHA has. I reserve the remainder of my time and ask how much time is remaining?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3854 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, first of all, let me thank both the chairman of the committee and Senator Warner, as well as Senator McCain, for their work for the people who defend this country. I also would be remiss if I did not thank their staffs. They have been highly cooperative with my staff as we looked through several items. This is a large bill. It is an important bill. I intend to vote for it. But I have some heartburn, and I want to spend a few minutes talking about it. Last year, the Defense Department contracted out $110 billion without the first competitive bid on either contracts or grants. When we considered this bill in this body, we approved a competitive bid amendment that would say: We are going to have competition for all of these. We have $5.6 billion worth of earmarks in this bill, of which none are competitive; there is another $12 billion of add-ons, of which none are competitive--just in what we have done. There is a difference of opinion among a few of us with a vast majority of the others in terms of whether the President--whoever the administration is--gets to direct priorities versus us directing priorities. I understand that, and that is a fair debate. Our position is that sometimes we know better. That may, in fact, be the case. But this body passed an amendment that said we are going to use competition on all these earmarks so that, in fact, the American people get value, they get a better product at a lower price. That, unfortunately, was taken out in conference. Senator McCain wholeheartedly supported that amendment on this floor. Now, why would we take that out? What is it that would say we don't want to get the best value for our taxpayers' dollars when it comes to $100 billion worth of spending? Why is that? Why would we do that? We had a very simple process. We said: If you have an earmark and it is something that needs to be done right now, all competitive requirements for that are waived. It does not apply to anything in the past. But for any new spending we earmark, we say: If it is not urgent or unique, then we ought to spread it out to find out how we get the best value for our money. We agreed to that. Then, when we got to conference, we did not hold it. Why did we not hold it? Why is it we do not want to have the winner of competition of grants and contracts to be involved in getting better value for the American people? Could it be we want to protect someone? Could it be we do not want sunlight? The real answer is going to be that yesterday the Accountability and Transparency Web site that we passed went on line, and all of America is going to find out where all this money is going. On this Web site, it shows if it was a directed earmark without any competition whatsoever. So why would we deny the American taxpayers now the ability to get far greater value than what they are going to get because we want to direct something somewhere? If we truly think it is the best thing--and it is not urgent and it is not unique--and we want to say we want to do it, good and dandy, but why wouldn't we want to do it at the best value, at the best price for the American taxpayer? So we end up where the American taxpayer is going to lose about $10 billion to $15 billion this year through inefficiency and the lack of competitive bidding on grants and contracts in the Defense authorization bill. When I met with Tina Jones, the Comptroller, what we found out was that what we label at $5.9 billion in this bill is really closer to $17 billion when you really work it all out. We started discovering this when we asked the Department of Transportation to tell us what was the impact of their earmarks. The other amendment I have offered that has not been accepted by this body--but should--is to do a study of our earmarks to see if we really get value, if they really do turn something profitable. Do they really give us something our military needs? What happens is this $110 billion should have only cost us $90 billion. Now, what does the difference mean? It means buying thousands more MRAPs. It means buying more F-22s. But because we do not competitively bid and because the conference committee did not keep this amendment, the American taxpayer loses, our children lose. But, most importantly, the warfighter loses because if we waste dollars that could have gone to help them better, we disadvantage them in the job we have asked them to do for us. So I am going to keep offering this. I am going to make a big deal about competition for getting Government contracts in this country, based on quality and price. I am going to keep offering the fact that we ought to assess what the effect of our earmarks is. Now, people bristle at that. But if we are right that we know better than the Pentagon and we know better than the generals and we know better than the procurement officers, we at least ought to look at the results of how we know best and see ``Did it turn out?'' instead of blindly continuing to do the same thing without the knowledge of the effect of what we did. There are all sorts of other issues connected with this--parochial issues, campaign issues, political issues--that are connected to earmarks. But the most important issue that ought to be considered is the warfighter. The second issue that ought to be considered is our children. The fact is, we are hurting our children when we are not efficient and proper with the American taxpayers' money. I do intend to vote for this bill. It is very important for our warfighters. I do appreciate the chairman. I admire so much his relationship with all those on the Armed Services Committee, the collegiality under which he has worked on this legislation. My admiration is not limited to the Members of the Senate; there is the staff. They have been tremendously cooperative with us. But this is a great question we need to ask. We fail to uphold our oath when we don't spend money wisely. We fail the next generation. We fail the principle of liberty that we have a Defense Department for in the first place when we waste money. I know there are a lot of other areas we can work on within the Defense Department, but before we have any credibility about working on the other money we waste, we ought to be sure we are clean in terms of what we do. So the fact we are not going to look at what the results were of the money that we directed, and that we are not going to have true competition for about $150 billion this next year of grants and contracts within the Defense Department says we are going to let down the warfighter, says we are going to let down the next generation. To me, my hope is in the future, we will embrace this transparency, this idea that we ought to get the best value for every dollar we spend for our Defense Department, and we ought to do it in a way that is transparent so the American people can see what we are doing. I thank the Senator from Virginia for giving me this time. I thank the majority leader for creating an opportunity for us to at least have some time to discuss this bill. Discussions such as these are important to the American public. My challenge is to the chairman of this committee: Next year, let's make up for this. Let's truly put competition first. Let's get great value for our children and for our warfighters. We can do it. We won't stop anything that is needed now. We won't stop anything that is unique. But those things that are not pertinent to the here and now, that are going to come in the future, we ought to get great value for. We know we don't. The IG report said we don't. There is tons of information we have that says we are not getting great value. With that, I yield the floor and thank my colleagues for giving me the time.

Mr. COBURN. I will make certain it is placed in the Record. I so ask unanimous consent.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wanted to speak for a few minutes on the Gregg amendment simply because I have unique personal experience with it. I am now somewhere close or over having delivered 4,000 children. The last one was an 8 pound, 9 ounce healthy baby, no problems that we know of. I also just signed a check to pay for my malpractice insurance, which next year will come to about $3,000 per baby I deliver--$3,000 per baby, per case. Now, that is excessive because I don't deliver that many babies anymore. But on average, it is $300 to $400 to $500 for every baby that is delivered in this country in terms of malpractice insurance. Why is it important to fix this problem, not just for OB/GYNs but for all doctors? Well, there are a couple of reasons. The cost of defensive medicine today on the basis of the litigious aspect of medical malpractice causes us to spend $600 per person per year on tests nobody needs, except the doctor needs to be able to say he went the extra mile in case they get sued. That comes to about $150 billion a year of tests that were ordered. That doesn't include the cost of the malpractice insurance, which the year before last in Oklahoma rose 98 percent--a 1- year rise. There are significant problems with the tort system in Oklahoma that show the excessive costs. But more importantly, what about the women and children? The heck with the money. What about the women and children? What happens? Well, we know we are not filling the spots for the OB/GYN residencies in this country anymore because you can't afford to pay the loans and get a job and earn enough and then pay for your malpractice to be able to pay off your loan and make a living. So people are opting not to go into obstetrics and gynecology. Why do they do that and what is the result of that? The result is we have fewer trained specialists to actually offer care. Who suffers the most--women in the large cities or women in the smaller rural cities? The reason this is offered on this bill is because it has tremendous direct application to the women who live in rural America. Access is denied. We are now talking an hour, 2- hour, 3-hour drives for OB care in Oklahoma because we don't have the available people who will do this service. There are two other points I want to make as we consider this, thinking only about the women and children. One is that because of the tort system we have, if you are a woman who has a C-section--not because you can't physically deliver a baby, but because you had a sign that your baby may be in trouble--the next time you come to have a baby, there is an almost 80-percent chance that you could deliver that baby naturally, without having to undergo surgery. But because of the litigious environment, we now have hospitals all across the country that forbid vaginal delivery after cesarean section--not because it is that unsafe but because the risks associated with the procedure in terms of the legal consequences make it financially not a risk that hospitals want to take, let alone whether the doctor is capable of doing it and managing that patient at all. So what does that mean? It means we expose women to a major surgical procedure, not because they need it but because the trial bar has forced them to do it. We are now making decisions not based on medical indications; we are making decisions based on legal implications. That is the wrong way to practice medicine. Finally, the third point I will make is as we see this shortage of available obstetrical care in the rural areas, we say: We are going to give you care, but then we give you somebody who is great in terms of caring for you, and has some knowledge, and has some capability, but isn't a fully trained physician. We give you a nurse-midwife. But if you get in trouble, you are still going to have to have somebody come in. Well, what do we know about that? What we know is that time makes a significant amount of difference when we have a baby in trouble. So what we are going to do is we are going to continue to increase the costs of complicated deliveries, with children who get injured, when the whole goal of the tort bar in the first place was trying to prevent that, because we don't intercept and we don't interrupt a process that could have made a major difference in that child's life. In my hospital, you can't deliver a baby unless you have the ability to do an operative procedure to handle every complication of obstetrics. But that is not true around the country anymore because we have decided we are going to do it in a less cost-efficient way. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 additional minutes.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I don't want the small farmer to be excluded, but I think the amount of money going to nonfarmers is a lot greater than you think it is. It is not going to real farmers who have real needs and the vast majority of the acres where we are going to make the biggest difference on the environment. I ask if he would work with me between now and the time the bill comes out of conference to see if we cannot address that, and if he would do so, as well as the ranking member, I will ask unanimous consent to withdraw this amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Will the chairman yield for another question?

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

Mr. COBURN. Thank you, Mr. President. This is a fairly straightforward amendment. It fits with a lot of things they have done in this bill. This is about the EQIP program. This is about environmental capacity to save in terms of runoff, decrease load streams, and do a lot of things in terms of the environment, and the basic goals behind it are good. This amendment is very simple. All it says is that you ought to be a real farmer to get EQIP money. You ought to get two-thirds of your money from agriculture before you are eligible for getting this money. Why is that a problem? The problem is that our real farmers are not getting the vast majority of the money; it is our nonfarmers. If you buy 160 acres, what the marketing guy says is: I have a way for you to refence this land and build a new pond, and it will increase the value and you can turn around and sell it, except the American taxpayers pay for 40 percent of the improvements on it. You never have to run a head of cattle on it; you never have to raise a crop on it. You can just invest in the land and qualify. That is not the intended purpose for EQIP or why we created it. I believe EQIP funds ought to go for what they are intended. What this does is take the doctor who is play-farming or play-ranching and using American taxpayer money to improve the value of his land so he can turn around in a year and a half and sell it and make money. It doesn't save us anything in terms of the intended purpose of EQIP. All this says is that if you are a real farmer and you get two-thirds of your income from farming, agriculture, this would not apply to you. But if you are gaming the system, gaming EQIP to advantage yourself, and not as a person in production agriculture but as an investor in land or as a speculator in land, you ought not to be able to use these moneys to increase the value. Fencing hardly improves the environment. Yet we spend money out of EQIP for farms and ranches that are small and are not owned by real farmers but gentlemen farmers who don't produce anything. Yet they go out and have fun on some land they own and they qualify. We ought not to be paying for that with American taxpayer money. It is straightforward. It says you ought to be a real farmer before we allow EQIP money to be used to improve the environmental conditions on your farm. There is a marked increase in the demand for these EQIP dollars. We see pivots. We can markedly decrease water consumption if we have modern pivots. We help farmers to put them in. We use less water, get less runoff, and do more no-till farming. So the demand for the dollars associated with EQIP, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, was designed for working farms and working ranches, not for the weekend farmer. The Environmental Quality Incentive Program emerged as the most important USDA program providing financial assistance for conservation on working farms and ranches and is measured by the number of participants and acres under contract--the largest financial assistance conservation program in all of USDA. Yet we have real farmers and ranchers who cannot get enough help to make a difference when it comes to the environment. I want real farmers who are really in it to produce agriculture to have this money available, and I don't want the American taxpayers paying for somebody else who has the money to do it already but is using their money to enhance the value of their property, and they are not real farmers, not real ranchers, they are not a vegetable farmer, they are not in production agriculture, they are not an orchard farmer, they are not in timber, but, in fact, they own 40 acres of timber, and therefore they qualify even though it is purely an investment and they have no intent to harvest a crop, but they are utilizing taxpayer money. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I have no problem with that.