Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I object to the unanimous consent agreement to pass S. 2338, the FHA modernization bill. The Senate has twice attempted to pass a complex and critical mortgage reform bill without the opportunity for debate or amendment. I certainly understand the importance of this issue, which is why I believe the bill must be afforded time for proper scrutiny and debate by the Senate. It is naive, irresponsible and reckless for the Senate to claim it can fix this national challenge by rubberstamping our approval for this legislation without the opportunity to improve the bill through amendments. More importantly, however, this bill is not the proper response to the housing crisis. This bill increases the availability of government- backed mortgages, adding a liability to the taxpayer of $1.6 billion in government-backed loans. This bill greatly increases the loan limit which the government may insure, while simultaneously decreasing the down payment requirement for borrowers. This only makes taxpayers liable for billions of dollars in loans that may default. The solution to the mortgage crisis is fewer risky loans, not more. Proponents of the legislation have argued that this bill is a low- risk way for the government to prevent future subprime foreclosures. However, this bill only creates more opportunities for borrowers to receive government-backed loans, increasing the liability on American citizens, but not preventing the possibility of delinquency or default. According to a recent analysis by the Wall Street Journal, many subprime borrowers are not delinquent because they cannot afford increasing adjustable rates, but because they cannot afford their initial rates in the first place. The Wall Street Journal states: It is true that many subprime borrowers were sold a toxic mortgage by unscrupulous mortgage brokers. However, the primary reason for the spike in subprime delinquencies so far is that many subprime borrowers have taken on more debt than they can pay back using any reasonable interest rate. It would be unconscionable to shift this burden on to the Federal Government, especially at a time when our national debt stands well over $9.1 trillion, or $30,132 per citizen. Sixty-one economists from universities and think-tanks from across America released an open letter to the U.S. Congress advising against ``excessive new regulations or federal interventions'' to deal with credit repricing in the subprime mortgage market. The letter warns: ``Legislation to create new underwriting standards will reduce competition and restrict consumer access to credit. Additionally, efforts to bail out or shore up lending institutions create a moral hazard that would slow the adjustments required in the marketplace. . . . These [bail out] proposals would fundamentally alter the workings of the mortgage market, leaving consumers with fewer choices when seeking to buy a home and potentially increasing taxpayer exposure for bad loans.'' The American people agree that making government-backed loans more available is not the right response. According to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of the National Taxpayers Union, NTU, when asked which statement most closely reflects their views of allowing Federal agencies to increase the size of the loans they can insure and reduce downpayment requirements, 66 percent of respondents answered that ``these proposals are nothing more than a taxpayer-funded bailout of banks and lenders that provided and profited from these risky loans.'' Furthermore, 60 percent of respondents said taxpayers would be most negatively affected if the government were to bail out the subprime mortgage market. I do believe the Senate should debate this issue, and examine what can be done to keep borrowers from defaulting and ensure that Americans are able to stay in their homes. I believe lenders must take responsibility for their loans, including full disclosure about the terms of the agreement and the possibility of default, and borrowers must be responsible for the agreement into which they enter. Mortgage brokers, real estate agents and other lenders should be transparent with their lending conditions and must be accountable for full disclosure to borrowers. However, I do not believe it is the job of the government to bail out default mortgages and loans and it is not the proper role of the government to insure loans with taxpayer dollars.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, let me, first of all, take a minute to talk about this bill for which unanimous consent was just requested. I think it is important in light of what the majority leader just said. Here we have a bill for which unanimous consent was requested. The American people need to understand what it means to get unanimous consent. It means all of us agree to it. It does not need to be further amended, it does not need to be changed, and it should be passed without ever having a vote on it. This bill has a section in it that so far has lost over $3.5 billion of your money doing venture capital investing by the Small Business Administration. The OMB analysis says there is absolutely no need for this venture capital investment, especially because of the fact it has lost such a great amount of money. And venture capital investing itself is a highly risky business that requires tremendously acute knowledge and people of great acumen in terms of investing, and they lose lots of money investing. The last thing we ought to be doing at the end of a session is passing a bill without vetting it, without debating it, without talking about the problems that are in the bill. This portion of the bill, the portion that is the Small Business Venture Capital Act, if anything, should come out of this bill. We should not reauthorize something that has lost already in excess of $3 billion, and something for which we do not get to look at the results until 10 years after it happens. The last thing we ought to be doing is investing the American people's money in venture capital when we cannot pay for the things we need to be paying for that the American people are dependent on. I look forward to working with Senator Kerry. I have had a good relationship with him. We will sit down and talk about this bill. But I think it highlights what we need to be doing and not spending time in quorum calls but spending time debating bills. I also want to spend a minute on this issue. I think the American people ought to be asking us about this. Here we sit, and we have one appropriations bill passed for the year that started October 1. I think I am correct. Other than the THUD bill, there has been no objection raised by the minority to proceeding to any of the appropriations bills. As a matter of fact, the choice was made not to bring up the appropriations bills in a timely manner and debate them because of the choice it was not a priority. I do recall the tremendous criticism we rightly received for what happened last year in the appropriations process. What is going to happen? I am happy to be here for Christmas to do the business we should have already done. But let me lay out what will happen, and then let me also give a warning. At the end of sessions, what happens is we get the request to pass all sorts of legislation--much like this bill to which I just objected. Committees do good work on legislation. But a bill that has passed committee has to be agreed to by a majority of the Senators to be able to become law. When we do unanimous consents, that means we are going to let it pass without looking at it, without amending it, and without voting on it. Well, at the end of the year, the time pressure comes. Everybody wants to get something passed. So what happens is we do a poor job of legislating because we do not look at it. We do not amend it. We do not have a debate so the American people can know about it. We just pass it. I sent a letter to all of my colleagues today outlining and reinforcing four statements I made at the first of this year. I will object to any bill coming forward by unanimous consent at the end of the session unless it meets the requirements I laid out. That means no new authorizations unless you deauthorize something else. We are not going to grow the Government any more when we cannot pay for the Government we have. No. 2, it has to be constitutional. It has to be a true duty of the Federal Government, not an obligation of the State governments that we are going to stand up for, when they have a $6 billion to $7 billion surplus. Easily, when you look at any combination of any 10 States, they have an over $36 billion surplus totally, and we are running, in real numbers--non-Enron accounting but real numbers--a $250 billion surplus. I am not going to allow--unless we want to put it on the Senate floor, unless we want to debate it--I am not going to allow us to pass bills at the end of the session by unanimous consent. So if you have a bill that you want to try to pass by unanimous consent, I would suggest we sit down and talk about it now, not 2 weeks from tomorrow but now. If they come in the last week, we will not have the time to look at them. So not agreeing to unanimously consider the bill as passed will be the standard fare. Now, let's talk about the appropriations process. What we have is $23 billion more than what we agreed we are going to pass in total for the appropriations bills, not counting the emergency things we have already done that we have charged to our grandchildren. As the game is played in Washington, what will come is the pressure of chicken. We are going to play chicken because we chose not to do the appropriations bills at the appropriate time, and lots of Members have lots of earmarks in bills. So they do not want us to continue to fund where we are. They want us to have an omnibus bill where we can have all these earmarks, about $26 billion worth of earmarks, so we can look good at home--not competitively bid, not based on priorities but based on our political priorities individually as Senators. We are going to spend about $23 billion more than what we said we are going to spend. That $23 billion is almost $300 billion over the next 10 years. And we are fighting about $80 billion on an AMT fix for 1 year. But we are not concentrating on the fact we are going to institute $300 billion worth of more spending. I will remind my colleagues again, we do not have to raise taxes. We can eliminate the AMT. What we do not want to do, and what we fail to do, is get rid of the waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication that numbers in excess of $250 billion every year--every year--because we will not do the hard work of oversight. So we are going to line up, and we are going to get a package from the House, and we are going to get a chance to vote on it, and the President has already said he is going to veto it if it has this excess number and all these earmarks in it. I would think this would be better than playing chicken: Why don't we live within our means like every family has to? That $250 billion comes to 20 percent of everything we spend in the discretionary budget. If you ask homeowners and families who are having a lot of pressure now, would they dare waste 20 percent of their budget, would they dare not look and reconsider how they are spending their money when it comes to their family budget, they would not. Yet we continuously refuse to do the hard work of oversight. We do not want to offend anybody. In the process we are offending the next two generations. My hope is we don't end up here at Christmas, but I was dead serious when I took my oath. I am going to defend the Constitution and I am going to work to make sure bills that are outside of that Constitution don't pass this body. I am going to defend my obligation to the next two generations and the heritage this country was built on--one generation sacrificing for the next--so future opportunity is there. I am going to do everything in my power to not let $23 billion of extra spending go through this Senate at the end of the year. Now, I may not be successful in that, but at the end of the day, I am going to sleep real well knowing I am fulfilling my oath, knowing that I know what the Constitution says. When we get outside the bounds of the Constitution, in terms of Federal responsibility, what we do is we say in name we are helping somebody and we are charging it to our grandchildren and undermining the very opportunity we all experience. My hope is we can come together during this season and say: Let's get it right. Let's not spend a bunch of extra money. Let's put it back. We could be facing some pretty severe economic times in this country in terms of how things look, especially people who were sold homes and mortgages they didn't qualify for and now are struggling. How are we going to address that? How are we going to help them through that? How are we going to accomplish that which empowers people, not Government? We need to be working on those things. We do not need to be spending the extra money now that we may, in fact, need to spend later. We may, in fact, need to borrow money later. So we should be doing the job right the first time, staying within our means, doing what is necessary, even though it offends people who might not get something from the Federal Government through an earmark. I believe the people of the Senate are great people. I believe, ultimately, they want what is great for this country. I know all of those who have children and grandchildren wish and hope for the very best for their lives and to experience the kind of opportunities we have had. But I wish to tell my colleagues it is at risk. It is not a small risk, it is a great risk. Mr. President, 2012 is coming fast; 2012, that day when the baby boomers are taking both Social Security and Medicare, when we start down this road of $79 trillion worth of unfunded mandates. How can we be trusted to fix those problems when we can't even live within our own budget? I said before, about a year and a half ago on this floor, that there is a rumble in America and it is real. The American people are sick and tired of the partisan games we play. They don't want to see Republicans pointing their fingers at Democrats. They don't want to see Democrats pointing their fingers at Republicans. What they want us to do is the job of governing within our means. Our problem is we have difficulty identifying what is most important: Our political careers or the future of the country. What gets in front of us too often is how do we look good at home rather than how do we look good in the future so we secure the promise America stands for. My hope is we will work together. One final comment on the farm bill. We need a farm bill, but we don't need a farm bill that continues to have programs that wealthy people who aren't real farmers take advantage of--people who aren't farmers, yet suck the money out of the farm program. Twenty percent of our farmers produce 80 percent of our goods, but a large portion of the farm program goes to gentlemen farmers--doctors, lawyers, who happen to own a small acreage and then suck the programs dry for their own benefit for things they could very well afford to pay for. So the farm bill isn't going to go forward until we have an open amendment process. I agree with the majority leader. We shouldn't have all of these votes that aren't necessarily related to the farm bill, but we should certainly fix the crop insurance program. We should certainly mandate that if you are getting a government benefit as a farmer, you ought to be a farmer. You shouldn't be an investor who is investing in making money off the hard-earned tax dollars of middle-class America. That is what too much of the farm program is. We shouldn't be setting about saying that if we are going to incentivize to get greater production, and then all of a sudden if somebody is successful at it, then you can't do it anymore. If an incentive is put in place to work, then let's make it work. We haven't done that with ethanol. We haven't said you can only produce so much ethanol. So if an incentive works, we ought to use it. But we ought to make sure the people getting those incentives are real farmers. Again, I thank the Chair for his indulgence and I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I object and will take my morning hour time to explain why.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Oregon, I look forward to looking at the bill he just introduced. I, too, am very concerned. We had a hearing yesterday in the Homeland Security Oversight Subcommittee on credit card bills. There was some very revealing information. I think the Senator is addressing a problem we need to look at on the Senate floor. I will look at his legislation, and hopefully I will be able to cosponsor it with him.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I will take a few short minutes because I know others want to honor Senator Byrd, and there is some other business to discuss. The bill I objected to today comes before us because we have some questions. The chairman of the committee, Senator Kerry from Massachusetts, and Senator Snowe, the ranking member, have it right, wanting to help our veterans and to make sure they have great opportunities as they return. But I remind my colleagues that this last year, in the SBA, we stole $26 million worth of their salaries to run that, to do directed earmarks. So we have this great new leader at the SBA, Steven Preston. Yet we have handcuffed him in his ability to do what he needs to do at the SBA. We noticed in the paper yesterday a tremendous, large number of loans where things have been faked. The SBA hadn't had the capability of managing the SBA properly. So our purpose in doing this is not to go against the veterans we see. Nobody stands as a greater supporter than I in terms of protecting their privacy, their second-amendment rights, and honoring them. We do want to do this. The offset that is in this bill comes out of a microloan that is also designed to help veterans. So we are taking money from one area and not the other at the same time we are stealing money from the SBA's operational money to do earmarks that don't do anything to help veterans. My pledge to both Senator Kerry and Snowe is to look at this and see if we can't come to some resolution about our concerns over the intervening time between now and the time we come back and make a commitment to try to do that. But most important is, what we want to do is preserve freedom. An ever-encroaching Federal Government does not preserve the very freedom that those veterans fought for. I yield.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I do object. I would like to make a statement on this after the majority leader finishes his request. Maybe I can do that in morning business. I do want to say how much I appreciate both the ranking member and the chairman of the Small Business Committee for their thoughtfulness toward our veterans. We have some things to work out, and hopefully we can get this done in December.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. COBURN. Absolutely.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I heard the majority leader's speech. I wanted to put him on notice that I will object to the bringing forward of this bill. It was introduced September 19 and reported out of the Banking Committee on November 13, 2 days ago. We received notice, via hotline, that they were attempting to clear the bill by unanimous consent yesterday afternoon. This bill addresses a very delicate and complicated area of housing policy on which we cannot afford to make mistakes. I know many Senators, including myself, are strong advocates of how we can help those who find themselves in trouble now. I know the authors of the bill would like to pass it expeditiously. However, it is a big bill. It is an important bill. Under the unanimous consent request, that would mean we would not debate it and offer amendments. For those two reasons, I object, as a Senator from Oklahoma, and I know several other Senators would as well. The problem with hotlining bills is they don't get due deliberation. Here is a stack of bills that were offered by unanimous consent in the Senate before the August break. Most of the Senators had never read the bills, didn't know what was in the bills. Thankfully, many of them were objected to by Members of the Senate. It is not a good way to legislate. This is an important issue. We seem to have a tendency that we are afraid to do the real work we need to do because we will be criticized as the one stopping the bill. I am not afraid to stop a bill. I believe we need to get things right. It is not about not wanting to help those in need today, but there are several significant things in this bill. First of all, the bill changes it so that if you have a $417,000 home, you can get a mortgage; if you are in trouble, we are going to take care of that. That is twice the median price of a home in this country. It lowers the downpayment to 1.5 percent. It exposes American taxpayers to $1.6 billion over the next 5 years. We can solve this problem. We cannot solve this problem by blowing a bill through here without good debate, rigorous discussion of the issues, and alternative options, via amendments, which will address, No. 1, how we got where we are in terms of the subprime mortgage mess; No. 2, how we restore confidence in that market; No. 3, how do we work to secure better oversight on the mortgage industry that put people in the position of owning property they could not afford; and the predatory lending practices Senator Reid talked about. We can address those. Doing it under a hotline, under unanimous consent, where we don't have an option to study the bill and think about what other options there can be or how many hearings were held on the bill and what is the response, is not the way to legislate. I believe the President has not said he would not support this bill. I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that from the past. I also would like to put in the Record an article from the Roll Call of September 17 entitled `` `Hotlined' Bills Spark Concern.'' I ask unanimous consent to have this article printed in the Record.

Mr. COBURN. The increasing practice of this body of passing bills by unanimous consent rather than debate and knowledge about what we are agreeing to does the Senate a disservice. All you have to do is watch C-SPAN and see how much time is spent in quorum calls in this body. I, for one, would never object to unanimous consent for us running several bills at the same time so we can continue to discuss them. We should not be passing bills without good thought, good debate, and an amendment strategy that will improve the bill and protect the future taxpayers of this country. That has to be a requirement as we address it. I thank Senator Reid for his attention to what is truly a real problem. But the process is really what matters on this issue. We need to get it right. There is too much risk. Therefore, if we decide to bring this request back up, I will come back down and object. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wanted to spend a few moments this morning talking about the business as usual in Washington. As a nearly 60-year-old male baby boomer, I believe we face some of the most serious challenges we have ever faced as a nation, and certainly in my lifetime. The challenges are going to continue to grow unless Congress changes how it works, how it does business, and starts setting priorities. The last election was about change. We heard a lot of great promises, and I think they were well-intentioned. But let's look at what has happened. After the last election, we were told we would have an earmark moratorium until we had a real reform process that was in place. We do not have a reform process; we have a faint claim for a reform process. Instead, we have seen thousands--the average is 2,000 earmarks per bill. The American people were told that the earmark process would be more transparent. Yet we have seen Congress backtrack on that at every opportunity. The earmark reform has really been a triumph of ``business as usual.'' The original Senate version of S. 1 required Senators to publicly disclose the following within 48 hours of the committee receiving the information: the earmark recipient, the earmark's purpose, certification that neither they nor their spouse would directly benefit from the earmark. Now, what is in the real language? The real language was secretly changed. It no longer requires public disclosure of who is going to get the earmark or the earmark's purpose. That is the Senate's rules. You know, there is a foundational principle; that is, you cannot have accountability in anything unless you have transparency. What we have is obfuscation of transparency. We don't want the American people to see who is going to get an earmark or what its purpose is. Thankfully, we passed the transparency and accountability act that starts this January so the American people are going to see it anyway, except they are going to unfortunately have to see it after the fact. Yesterday my office learned of another attack against transparency. The just-released conference report for the Transportation-HUD spending bill contains an earmark provision that attempts to prohibit the White House from releasing publicly its budget justifications. When they send up their budget, they send the reasons for why they want that money spent in certain ways. I worked last year to make sure that OMB agreed that the American people were entitled to see the justification for why they would want to spend money in certain areas. The appropriations process doesn't want that to be public. Why should it not be public? Why should we not want to know why the administration wants to spend certain money in certain ways and their reasoning and justification? There is a reason why this was added. This was added so the authorizing committees won't have the same information the appropriations committees have. We are not supposed to be appropriating anything that isn't authorized, yet we continue to do so. This is a commonsense approach to make transparent to the American public as well as the rest of the Members of this body the justification and reasoning of the administration. I agree, the broken promises we have seen have contributed to the 11- percent favorability rating of Congress. It isn't a Republican or Democratic issue. No Americans want their leaders to say one thing and then do another. The American people are tired of hearing the same defenses of the earmark favor factor. They didn't work when Republicans were in control, and they will not work today. Let's talk about that for a minute. The earmark system exists to serve politicians, not local communities. Members earmark funds rather than advocate for grants because they want the political credit for spending money. Earmarks oftentimes are worthwhile, but the system under which they are propagated is not. Earmarks are the gateway drug to overspending, one of the No. 1 issues for which the American people have a problem with Congress. Our problem is, we refuse to make the tough choices families have to make every day, every week within their own budgets. Consequently, we now have this last week surpassed $9 trillion on the debt. We have $79 trillion worth of unfunded liability which is going to cause us to break the chain of heritage of this country. That heritage is one of sacrifice where one generation works hard, makes sacrifices to create at least the same or hopefully better opportunities for those generations to come. We have heard complaints that it is illegitimate to single out or strike an earmark with an amendment. It is not our money. It is the American people's money. What is scandalous is how few of the special interest projects are ever challenged on the floor. Only one-tenth of 1 percent of the more than 60,000 earmarks passed since 1998 have ever received a vote. Where is the accountability with that? Where is the transparency? Finally, we hear Senators complain that it is partisan to strike individual earmarks. I can't speak for anyone else, but I have been going after this process for a decade. No one has gone after more Republican earmarks than I. Plus, if you don't like my amendments, I ask the body to offer some of their own. I would appreciate the help. In spite of a lot of grand talk about earmark reform, we haven't seen anyone on the other side of the aisle attempt to strike an individual earmark. Does that mean all these projects are worthwhile? Is there not a single earmark in the 32,000 requests this year that should not be debated on the floor of the Senate? The conference report on the Transportation-HUD bill includes a number of questionable earmarks, some of which I will try to eliminate when the bill comes through the Senate. We developed a new rule that one can't earmark in conference. Yet in the new conference report on the Transportation-HUD bill, 18 new earmarks were air dropped, new earmarks violating the rules the Senate just set up. We can't help ourselves. Such earmarks as an international resource center, the Coffeyville Community Enhancement Foundation, Minihaha Park development, buses, upgrades to airports, may be good things to do, but are they good things to do when the projected budget deficit is around $300 billion? Are these the priorities we should have? I won't spend a whole lot more time on this issue today, but I can tell my colleagues that the American people are fed up with this process, not just the process of earmarking but the lack of accountability and the absolute lack of transparency when it comes to how we make priorities in spending their money, not ours, every year. I think preserving Social Security, fixing Medicare to where it is available for those after the baby boom generation, solving our budget deficit today might be greater priorities. The real balance is between us and our grandchildren, and we lack the courage to make the hard choices now because it impacts our political careers. We have taken our eye off the ball. The ball is what about the future of the country? What about the opportunity for those who follow us? What about the liberty and freedom they are going to have or not have as a consequence of us ducking the hard choices today? I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I rise today to support the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey to be Attorney General of the United States. Judge Mukasey is eminently qualified for this position. For almost 20 years he served as U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York, presiding over prominent terror trials and gaining familiarity with complex national security issues that continue to challenge our Nation. Specifically, Judge Mukasey presided over the trial of the ``Blind Sheik,'' who was involved in planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Upon conviction, Judge Mukasey sentenced the terrorist to life in prison. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in affirming the verdict, praised Mukasey by saying: ``The trial judge, the Honorable Michael B. Mukasey, presided with extraordinary skill and patience, assuring fairness to the prosecution and to each defendant and helpfulness to the jury. His was an outstanding achievement in the face of challenges far beyond those normally endured by a trial judge.'' Indeed, Judge Mukasey's ruling in the Blind Sheik case presented extraordinary challenges--his ruling drew death threats that required him to receive years of 24-hour armed protection. Yet Judge Mukasey maintained his objectivity as a judge, ruling years later that while Jose Padilla--a U.S. citizen later convicted of Federal terrorism support charges--could be held by the government as an enemy combatant, he was also entitled to legal counsel. One of Padilla's defense lawyers who said he had ``more cases before Mukasey than I can count,'' praised the judge saying, ``I don't always agree with where he comes out . . . [but] I am always happy to draw him as a judge. You are going to get your day in court.'' Another of Padilla's lawyers said about Judge Mukasey, ``I admire him greatly,'' describing herself as ``another weeping fan.'' Since his nomination, many of Michael Mukasey's colleagues and lawyers who appeared before him have offered statements of praise and support. While it would be impossible to reiterate them all, perhaps former U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White's statement best encapsulates the general sentiment. She said that Judge Mukasey ``is a man of great intellect and integrity with an unswerving commitment to the rule of law. He is independent, fair-minded and has a wealth of relevant experience from his years of service on the bench, in the private sector and as an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of New York.'' I agree that Judge Mukasey's intellect, integrity, and experience make him uniquely qualified to serve as Attorney General. It is, however, imperative that our Attorney General put his oath to protect and uphold the Constitution before all other loyalties. As such, I looked to Judge Mukasey for assurances that he would put the Constitution first. Judge Mukasey gave the first of such assurances on October 5, 2007, the day that he was nominated, when he said, ``The department faces challenges vastly different from those it faced when I was an assistant U.S. attorney 35 years ago. But the principles that guide the department remain the same--to pursue justice by enforcing the law with unswerving fidelity to the Constitution.'' After studying his record and participating in the confirmation process, I am confident that Judge Mukasey's great respect for the Constitution and the rule of law is sincere. The Justice Department has undergone difficult times of late, but I know Judge Mukasey has the integrity and intellect to carry out the necessary work to restore the American public's trust in the department. America has been well-served by Judge Mukasey's past public service and is fortunate that such an accomplished individual--who entered retirement just one year ago--is willing to answer the call to public service once again. I thank Judge Mukasey for his continued sacrifice. I am pleased to vote in favor of Judge Michael Mukasey's nomination to be Attorney General of the United States and look forward to working with him in the future.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I am not going to exercise my privileges under the unanimous consent request.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I submit the following notice in writing: In accordance with Rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby give notice in writing that it is my intention to move to suspend paragraph 4(b)(3) of Rule XXVIII for the purpose of proposing to the amendment of the Senate to the bill (H.R. 3043), making appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, and for other purposes; as follows: At the appropriate place in division A, insert the following: Sec. ___. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, none of the funds made available under the heading ``office of museum and library services: grants and administration'' under the heading ``Institute of Museum and Library Services'' in title IV may be used for for the Bethel Performing Arts Center.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to share my concerns regarding the process currently being utilized by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to pass legislation on the Senate floor. As many of my colleagues know, I am currently objecting to unanimous consent on two en bloc packages reported by the committee, containing more than 40 bills. I want to make clear to my colleagues that I do not object to all of the bills contained in the two packages. In fact, I have offered to give consent to all those bills where I have no fiscal or policy concerns. Unfortunately, the committee is insisting on passing all of the legislation en bloc and will not allow the noncontroversial bills to be released for passage. These bills are in effect being held hostage by the committee. As my colleagues know, I evaluate all unanimous consent requests, in part, on whether the proposed legislation increases authorizations for spending. If it does, I also look to see whether the new cost has been offset by a corresponding reduction in another program authorization. I also review each bill for specific policy concerns. Of most concern to me, the two packages authorize over $150 million in new spending, without a single offset. This does not include the $640 million reauthorization for the Geologic Mapping Program. I have offered to work with the committee to identify possible offsets that would allow the en bloc packages to move forward. Given the considerable program oversight performed by the committee, I am eager to hear where it believes other programs may not be working as intended or where they may have become of a lesser priority than the bills currently under consideration. As stewards of the Federal tax dollar, I believe it is imperative we proceed with the hard but necessary work of prioritizing our spending. Every American taxpayer is forced to do this every day, and so should we. Prioritization begins with the authorization process, and so does long-term fiscal discipline. I renew my pledge to work with any Member of this body to identify offsets, to ensure that our actions today never add to the already heavy financial burden we have placed on the next generation of Americans. It is my hope the committee will abandon the practice of en bloc unanimous consent requests. Each bill should be considered on its merits, and if it is truly worthwhile, should be allowed to stand on its own. As an institution, this Senate is more than capable of this task. To make the Record absolutely clear, I am including the list of noncontroversial bills in these packages that should be cleared and allowed to pass under unanimous consent: S. 216, S. 266, S. 241, S. 202, S. 232, S. 262, S. 220, H.R. 386, S. 320, S. 553, H.R. 497, H.R. 658, S. 1139, H.R. 235, H.R. 482, H.R. 467.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I reclaim my time to say the following: I think the Senator from Missouri makes a good point on consistency. I think they are finally awakened to what the American people want at the White House. I think they are finally starting to pay attention that being efficient in the Federal Government is important. But having not been, maybe, efficient with Medicare Part D, I applaud the President for now taking a stand on something that is common sense that would say: If we are going to have a program for poor children, let's make sure it covers poor children. Let's make sure it covers poor children. Right now it does not. Right now it does not. Rather than expand the program that is not meeting what it is supposed to do and raise taxes on the poorest of the poor, I think the President's response and the CBO's score, which is $7.8 billion more over the next 5 years instead of $35 billion more over the next 5 years, is a reasonable response to really cover poor children. And what we know, by what CBO says, is that will do it. Now, let's talk about the difference in what we are going to be having the cloture vote on now versus the bill that the President just vetoed. This bill covers 400,000 less kids; it spends $500 million more. So we are not at $4,000 anymore, we are at about $4,200 to buy $2,300 worth of health insurance. It does not fix the fast lane for illegal immigrants as the authors claim. It does not fix adults on the SCHIP program. CBO says in 2012, at least at a minimum, 10 percent of the enrollees will still be adults. It does not fix the crowdout issue. This bill will cause 2 million people to lose private insurance coverage and come in a government-run program, crowding them out of the private insurance market. Despite a fix for the problem of enrolling more higher income kids than currently eligible kids in SCHIP, the CBO still projects only 800,000 currently eligible, currently eligible SCHIP kids, will get enrolled. But 1.2 million kids of families making more than $60,000 will get enrolled. So for every two kids we enroll who are poor, we are going to take three kids out of the private sector. We have talked about what kids lose when they go to the Medicaid Program. What are the other problems? In this bill are earmarks for specific hospitals to violate CMS payment rules to pay those hospitals more than what the rules say because some Congressman or Senator thinks they should not have to live within the rules. I would love to be able to tell that to people in a community in Oklahoma who just had to shut down their hospital because they could not make it under what CMS rules pay. So what we have is about seven of those in here, where we are going to take care of the little hospitals of seven Members of Congress, but we are going to ignore all of the rest of the community hospitals in this country that are struggling under a payment system that does not pay for the care of people they are supposed to be caring for. There is still an income disregard loophole, which means it does not matter what you said because we have a loophole that says if States want to, they do not have to follow the income guidelines. You can still enroll families making more than $100,000 a year in the SCHIP program. Well, that is in there by design because the desire and design of this bill is to move to single-payer, national health care. I think the Presiding Officer sitting in the chair right now probably believes that is where we should go. I do not have any problem debating that. But the incrementalism and the real effort of this bill is to expand SCHIP to a point where Americans who have insurance are going to pay higher taxes so everybody can get covered. If you look at the mess that is trying to be created by these five or six hospitals in here right now, how are we going to solve that problem when everything is Medicare? Some say we are going to take the profit motive out of medicine. We are going to take the profit motive out of the drug industry. We are going to have a 220,000-physician shortage in 15 areas in this country. The applications for enrollment at medical school are diving. Why are they diving? Because they cannot afford the education and then have an income to pay off their student loan, let alone pay for housing and income to feed their kids. How did that come about? It could have been Medicare creating that. It could have been that we were not willing to pay. What else is going to happen? Eighty percent of all innovation in health care in the world comes from this country. Eight out of every ten new ideas that are lifesaving, eight out of ten of every new treatments, eight of ten new devices are developed in this country. Why are they developed? Because we still have 48 percent of the health care system that is not run by some government program. And through there, there is enough risk taken, based on the reward that can be gained, to invest in capital and research to develop these lifesaving treatments. We say we want to move SCHIP in the name of kids, but what we really want to do is to have national health care. Well, we better think about that hard and long because here are the statistics on cancer treatment in this country compared to everywhere else in the world. It does not matter what cancer you get in this country, you have a 50-percent greater chance of living 5 years than anywhere else in the world. Why is that? Is it those big, bad pharmaceutical companies that have to spend a billion dollars just to get through the maze at FDA? Is that what it is? Is that why? I am a two-time cancer survivor. I am so thankful for the pharmaceutical industry. I would not be here without them. Two times they have developed, researched, and made drugs that have saved my life. I do not disagree that we have some excesses in corporations in this country. But the pharmaceutical industry, with all the negatives that are out there, still leads one of the most positive responses we have ever seen in this country to solving real problems for real Americans. So we can beat them up and we can beat the President up and say Medicare Part D. I do regularly on Medicare Part D. I don't think we ought to steal from our children to have drugs paid for. But this bill steals from everybody. It also steals from the poorest. It steals from the poor, blue-collar, low-income worker who has the benefit of a lot of other programs. It says: We are going to raise your taxes because you happen to be addicted to nicotine. We are going to steal from you to pay for somebody who is making $61,000 a year who already has insurance. Do we want to do that? Do we want to steal from the people who are working, barely getting by, so we can pay for people who already have insurance? Is that what we are doing? That is what we are doing. I have listened to the debate. I offered some ways to change this. Senator Burr and I offered an amendment. We didn't get a vote on it. It solves through tax credits a way to insure, not go into a Medicaid program but insure with choice, so you take the stigma of Medicaid off patients' foreheads. We offered a way that every kid could get covered. It is called a refundable tax credit. It can only be spent on health insurance or health care. But people don't want to do that. Why would those who are more progressive in thought not want to do that? Because they offered the original income tax credit. Why would they not want to do that? It is because the agenda is different than we say it is. The agenda is to start toward a nationalized, single-payer, government-run, no-choice health care system that will eliminate that 80 percent of innovation in the world made by American ingenuity, American capitalism, American idea that ``I will invest some of mine to see if I can come up with an idea that will help somebody else and, by the way, I will profit from it.'' What we are saying is, we don't want markets to work. We want the Government to run it. If you think about everything else we have today, everything with the exception of health care and primary and secondary education, we believe in markets. They have been very good to us. They have given us the highest standard of living of any society ever in the history of the world. They have advanced causes in terms of treatment of disease more than any advancement ever in the history of the world. What this bill is about is saying: We don't believe markets ought to apply. Myself, Richard Burr, and five others have a bill called the Health Care Quality and Choice Act. It creates a tax credit for everybody to buy their health care. We treat everybody the same. Everybody gets the same amount. Everybody gets to buy a private health insurance plan. We create a market so the insurance industry doesn't steal 25 percent of the cost of that. We set up a way to create markets. The Every Child Insured Act, legislation offered by Richard Burr, creates a way where every kid is covered. Senator Martinez and Senator Voinovich have a bill that covers up to 300 percent with tax credits of all the kids in the country who don't presently have health insurance. This bill isn't about covering kids. This bill is about putting the Government in control of the last 48 percent of health care. As P.J. O'Rourke says, if you think health care is expensive now, wait until it is free. A couple other things the American people should know is that England is pouring billions of dollars into their national health care system now. Why? Because on average when you get cancer in England, up until 18 months ago, once you were diagnosed, you waited at least 12 months before treatment started. They have a goal by 2010 to get to 3 months to start your treatment. Do you know what the average length of time, insured or uninsured, in this country is from the time you have a diagnosis of cancer until you start getting treated? It is 3 weeks and 2 days. Why do you think we are doing better than they are on these things? We are about to go into a system that destroys innovation, destroys quality. I agree, there is plenty wrong in health care. I have a bill that changes us toward prevention. I am all for working on the problems we have in health care. But the question the American people ought to ask is, do we want to tax ourselves to pay for care for kids who are already covered in the name of not doing a good job under the SCHIP bill now, and should we have the kids who need to be covered covered before we start reaching beyond those who already have care? They are not going to answer that question. Because the real debate is, the first step is to get away from your choice of choosing a doctor, your choice of what facility you will go to, your choice in getting to choose what drugs you will take and what options you will have, because the Government bureaucrats are going to decide all that for you. If you believe that is not true, look at what Medicare is doing right now for women who have osteoporosis. They get diagnosed with a DEXA- scan. They get treatment. But because doctors in this country have ordered too many DEXA-scans, according to the bureaucracy in Washington known as the Center for Medicare Services, we have now limited physicians. You can't check to see if the medicine you are giving is working and maybe change the medicine to give them one that might be working, because a bureaucrat has decided we are doing too many tests. That is called rationing. That is why health care costs are lower around the world, because they let people die from cancer. They let people die with a broken hip. They let people die with congestive heart failure. We don't. We value individual lives and we are willing to put the resources in for the best, longest, and best quality life. Don't be fooled about what this bill is about. This bill is the first step toward national health care. This bill fails to address the problems in SCHIP as they are today. This bill raises taxes on the poorest of the people in the country--all in the name of having a political issue in 2008 to say those people who oppose this don't care about kids. I have spent my whole life delivering babies, 4,000 of them now. That is a false claim. If you care about these kids, you will balance the budget, pay for the war by the expensive, duplicative, wasteful programs we could eliminate. We would have a balanced budget, and we wouldn't be charging the very thing we are getting ready to pass on to our kids, which is a $300 billion deficit this year alone. Caring about kids means you will make the tough choices, that means you go against the interest groups to do what is right for the future, not what is best for the next election. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to spend a few minutes of time speaking about the ``revised'' SCHIP bill and what it means to the American people. The rhetoric associated with the bill is that we want to cover children. That is a laudable goal. But that is not what this bill is about. If that were what this bill is about, what we would be doing is having a bill on the floor that expands the current payments of $5 billion a year to $7 billion a year, which is what is required by the CBO to truly cover the kids whose parents make $41,000 a year or less. That is not what this bill is about. The bill is about having the American taxpayers, and especially the poor American taxpayers, pay $133 billion over the next 10 years to cover families presently with insurance. What does the Congressional Budget Office say about this bill? First of all, it spends $400,000 more than the bill the President vetoed; it covers 500,000 fewer kids. It still maintains that 10 percent of the people in 2012 on SCHIP will be adults. It gives exemptions for the State of New Jersey--a family of five earning $89,00 a year, they will still be covered. It creates loopholes where rural hospitals get paid the same as metropolitan hospitals, as a favor or an ``earmark'' to certain Members of Congress. What it does not do is solve the problem. What is going on here? There is not anybody in America who does not think we corporately should be helping poor children with their health care. But this isn't a bill about helping poor children with their health care; otherwise, we would not be taking 1.2 million middle-income kids and putting them on SCHIP, at the same time the only increase we see on the poor kids, families making under $40,000, is $800,000. So what is going on? What is going on is this is a political campaign. It is a political campaign that, under the guise of helping children, what we want to do is start the march toward single-payer, government-run health care. That is OK if you believe that and you want to put that out. But this idea of, we are going to wink and nod to the American public under the name of poor children when, in fact, this bill will cover not poor children and 10 percent of the people covered will be adults 5 years from now and we are going to take kids off their parents' insurance. One of the things people will not talk about is in 35 States, the SCHIP program is Medicaid. Of those 35 States, over 50 percent of the doctors will not see a Medicaid child. Why is that? Because Medicaid will not pay a rate at which the doctor can pay their overhead and still see the child. So what we are going to do is we are going to take the parents' right away to choose the doctor they want for their kids, and we are not going to lower their insurance premium at all by taking the kids off--the ones who have insurance, the 1.2 million who the CBO says will come off private insurance--and then we are going to take away the parents' right to pick the doctor to care for their kid. What this is, is moving to single-payer, government-run health care. What I would say is, if that is what we want to do, let's call it that. But that is not what we are calling this. We are claiming we want to help poor children. President Bush got it right. Before we expand to families of $60,000 or $80,000 a year who have insurance and put them on a Government program, shouldn't we make sure the program we have now has enough money to cover the kids whose families make under $41,000 a year? And shouldn't we make sure that, when we say we are giving you coverage, we are giving you coverage? The other thing we ought to ask is: Why aren't the American people going to get value out of this? The cost in this program, to buy $2,300 worth of insurance--and that is the highest level at which the average kids cost, the average is probably around $1,700--why would we be spending $4,000 in this bill to buy $2,300 worth of insurance? The American people have to look at that and say: What is wrong with this picture? The other side of it is we are going to get all the money, we say, by taxing tobacco. Who pays tobacco taxes? Who are the majority of people in this country who pay tobacco taxes? I will tell you who they are, they are disproportionately poor. They are disproportionately the disadvantaged. They are disproportionately those people who can least afford to pay a tax. So it is no wonder the CBO, in this evaluation of this program, said: This is the most regressive tax we have seen in years. It is going to hurt the very people we say we want to cover. Does the Senator have a question?

Mr. COBURN. There is no objection.

Mr. COBURN. I would be remiss if I thought I could speak for the President. But I will tell you what this Senator thinks. Medicare Part D hung on the shoulders of our children $8.3 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities. So today we are giving prescription drugs to seniors, and we are taking away future opportunity from our kids. Had I been here, I would not have voted for Medicare Part D. In fact, I lobbied a lot of my former friends from the House to vote against Part D. That is not what we are talking about today. What we are talking about today is, if we are going to have a program for poor children, which I support, we at least ought to cover up to 95 percent of the kids who are eligible before we expand the eligibility. That is where the $7.8 billion over the next 5 years needs to be added to this program, and then with the caveat that says: States, you cannot go to the higher income until you cover the poor. This is a typical example of what Washington does and America rejects all the time. We do not measure what we are doing to see if we are accomplishing things. What we do know about SCHIP is that in many places it has been a valuable lifesaving tool for the poor people in this country. But, in fact, the States have done a poor job of enrolling many of those kids. What we also know about SCHIP is that 35 of the States put their kids on SCHIP into Medicare. Now, what does that mean? Since you get no choice of half the doctors who are out there who are eligible to care for the kids, what we have said is, we are going to give you care, but you get no choice. You get care, but you get no choice. You get no freedom when the Government helps you with who your child is going to see. So I do not doubt that there are inconsistencies in any President's position. I can debate Medicare Part D all day. I am with you. I am on your side. But the point is, this debate is not about helping kids. This debate is about changing the underlying structure of our health care and starting to build a Medicare from the ground up, and we have a Medicare here and merging them in the middle. I am willing to debate that, too, but I want us to be honest about what we are debating; otherwise, we would not have a family of five in New Jersey making $89,000 a year eligible under this program, someone who already has insurance. So here is the question for the American people: Do you want to pay taxes to buy health insurance for 1.2 million kids, for parents who already have it, and give them a program that is subpar to what they already have with no decrease in the insurance cost to parents for the insurance they are covering now? That is the question. And do we have a way of covering poor kids that would be better? I would propose to the Senator from Missouri that a refundable tax credit to poor children, allowing their parents to have enough money to buy a policy, which the average is truly $1,700 per year, per kid, a refundable tax credit that gives them the freedom to choose any doctor they want, that does not put a Medicaid on their forehead, that automatically excludes 50 percent of the physicians in this country, is a far better way to do it and a more equitable way to do it. If we did that, that would pay for itself without raising taxes anywhere because you would eliminate the cost shifting that goes on in the health care industry for the kids who do not have care today. And we will not raise taxes on the poorest of the poor because that is who is going to be paying for this. Plus, we all know, 21 million new Americans are not going to start smoking. We all know that. But yet that is how we chose to meet the requirements of pay-go here, through a false claim that we will have enough revenue to pay for it by raising the tax on cigarettes. So I am all for having a debate on national health care. Senator Wyden and I and Senator Bennett and Congressman Conyers and myself and Senator Burr had that debate in New York this week at the New School. That is a good debate to have. But this is a slight. This is a slight about what we are doing. And the question to the American people has to be: Do you really think, if you are making $45,000 a year or $65,000 a year, that your taxes ought to go up to pay for somebody who is making 61,000 or less, and at the same time limit the availability of those same children to have the physician of their choice? That is what we are talking about. I believe we ought to cover poor children. I think that the SCHIP program now ought to be held accountable to cover the poor children. If we are going to pay for it, I am willing to put the money and find offsets somewhere else to pay for it, if we do not do a tax credit.

Mr. COBURN. I wasn't in the Senate or the Congress.

Mr. COBURN. Absolutely.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Reclaiming my time, the reason we do is we subsidize for $6 per 1,000 miles traveled on the airlines, and we subsidize $210 per 1,000 miles of travel on the railroad. That is a significant reason we ought to be all the more efficient with what we do. The Senator is correct. The last year, we only subsidized $80 million worth of food, but on average, every 3 years, it is a quarter of a billion dollars. That was my statement. So ask yourself, should we be subsidizing $80 million worth of food on Amtrak. This is a straightforward, commonsense amendment that most Americans would say makes sense. We at least ought to cover the cost. If we can't cover the cost, then maybe we ought to renegotiate the contracts with the food service workers who make $43,000 a year who are selling you a bottle of water. Compare that to somebody who is working at an airport or a stewardess on an airplane who is serving you and who is making less than that. So the consequences of our actions have great impact. Why is it important? Is it because of the subsidy we give Amtrak? Do you know what it is? It is borrowed from our grandkids. We can't deny it. We have the administration claiming a $160 billion deficit this year, and the real deficit is going to be $300 billion because we are going to borrow $140 billion from Social Security to pay for Medicare, and then we are going to borrow $200 billion to pay for a war that we are charging to our grandkids. So that is important because the subsidy isn't coming from us. It is coming from the next two generations. I yield the floor. I understand all time has expired. I ask for the yeas and nays on this amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, the difference is, that becomes a management decision of the airline, which has to compete. Amtrak has no competition. They have no competition. So, therefore, they continue to do things, because we will subsidize them, that somebody in the private sector would not do. That is a decision that is made that says-- American Airlines saved $30 million last year by their restriction of food services. It was in the paper today, $30 million they saved on all the routes by a restriction of the food service. To them, in an airline industry that has been struggling, that is a significant amount of money. You know what. We still flew American Airlines; we just bought it before we got on. The statement that there is no food available in all of the Amtrak stops is not true. That is true in the most remote areas, but there is food available. So if we, in fact, would pass this amendment, and Amtrak would run the food service like any other business would run it, this number would become a flat line. In other words, we would go up here and then we would come across, and the American taxpayer would save about $1 billion over the next 5 years if, in fact, we would do that. So the opposition--I want to finish my point. The opposition to this amendment is the fear that we may lose a route because we may not offer food service. I would be happy to offer----