Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending business be set aside and amendment No. 3358 be called up.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending business be set aside and that amendment No. 3358 on this bill be called up.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. As a matter of fact, my public statements are that there should be no tax cuts unless you do spending cuts to pay for them.

Mr. COBURN. I appreciate that.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I have a couple points as to Senator Schumer's statement. First, with an unemployment rate six-tenths percent lower than the national average and lower than New York's average, by the way--lower than New York's average--it is hardly in the dire consequences of what we see around the rest of the country. The second point is, we have 60-some million dollars out there for competitive grant competition on museums for which the museum administration does a great job. In other words, everybody in the country who wants to have a museum has to compete against everybody else, and the ones who are most meritorious--by the way, they are also audited to see that the money is actually spent in a proper way; this will never be audited--they have to compete. The major problem with Senator Schumer's argument is that Sullivan County can never be healthy if the country as a whole is not healthy. That is the problem with the argument. We can say we want to make XYZ healthy. It is akin to saying your finger is healthy when you are having a heart attack. The fact is, the country as a whole is at the precipice--D day comes January 1, 2008. That is the demographic day on which all the baby boomers, the ``Woodstockers'' start taking Social Security, and 3 years later they start taking Medicare, $79 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities. How in the world can the American people ever trust us to fix those big problems if we don't even get it on the small problems? If this is a great idea, put it into the competition on competitive grants for museums. To say they are in hardship with an unemployment rate of 4.1 percent compared to the rest of New York and the rest of the country, that is hard to believe. Again, we have to start listening to the rumble in America that says start being good stewards with our money, quit doing things that help you as politicians that hurt us as a country. The fact is, although this may be very worthy, why shouldn't it have to compete against everybody else in the country who wants a museum? Why shouldn't it have to compete? Why is it that I can pick out and place--and I guess I am one of the derelict Senators because I don't believe Oklahoma can be healthy if our country isn't healthy. I believe Oklahoma will ultimately fail if our country fails. I believe that future generations will live a less standard of living with less opportunity and ultimately less freedom if we don't solve the financial problems in front of us as a nation. This is a symptom of our sickness, and until we reject and get rid of this disease of parochialism and start fulfilling our oath--do you realize the oath we take when we come to the Senate never mentions our State? It says you will uphold the Constitution of these United States--these United States, all of us. So the will and the best well- being of all of us as a country has to be our most important goal. Alexander Tyler will be right about us if we don't wake up and change what we are doing. We will collapse under our own fiscal insanity if we continue to do these things. Senator Schumer is a great Senator for the State of New York, there is no question about it. He is going to fight and defend this old way of parochialism. He is going to fight and defend it until we as a country collapse. That is why we have an 11-percent confidence rating. We are collapsing already in terms of our real duty to build confidence, that we are looking out for the country as a whole, not for our own political careers or not for local parochial interests. That is why the Senate was created. It wasn't for parochial interests. If you read the Founders' writings, they never thought about the Senate being considered anything other than a body that looked at the long term, ensure the future, create opportunities, and protect the liberty, and we fall away from that as we go through this process. Mr. President, I know we have a unanimous consent agreement. I ask that all the Members of this body read Comptroller General David Walker's report about what is getting ready to happen to us and read former Secretary Peter Peterson's book ``Running on Empty'' and what they will see is not a pretty picture. The time to diagnose the disease is now, not when we are in ICU and we could have prevented it. I yield the floor. I thank my colleagues for their debate.

Mr. COBURN. I guess we can do that. I would do that if that is what you want to do. I would love for us to finish this before the vote.

Mr. COBURN. Is that OK with my colleague?

Mr. COBURN. Then I think we should be finished. I have no objection to the original request.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I would ask to modify that time on the provision that we be finished this debate. In other words, that being the first order of business after we finish this debate rather than setting a fixed time because I am not sure we will be through at 12:30. If the Senator would care to modify, so that at 12:30, or the soonest thereafter we finish this debate, I would be more than happy to agree.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, so here we have a bill, the Labor-HHS bill, and it has over $400 million in earmarks--some good, some priority, some are high priority, probably should be there, but many are not high priority. When are we going to do what the American family has to do every year? What they have to do is say: Here is how much money we have coming in. Here is what we have needs for, and here is what we have available. What they do is make choices based on priorities. This debate is about making choices. If we had different rules, this debate would have been eliminating the earmark plainly, and several others. But because of the Senate rules, the money is going to be spent, so we have to figure out a higher priority place to spend it, and maternal and child health is certainly the place to do it. The real question the American people are asking us, the 89 percent of the American people who don't have confidence in this institution are asking us is, when are we going to get it? When are we going to start doing what they want us to do? When are we going to start playing for them and their future, rather than playing for us and our future? That is the real question. There is no question that the desirability of what this earmark supports is probably great. I don't have any problems with it. What I have a problem with is that we have a $9 trillion debt. This Senator has never voted to raise the debt limit. We just raised the debt limit $850 billion, to almost $10 trillion, because we can't control ourselves. So the question before us isn't whether this is good or bad. The question is, when are we going to change our behavior? When are we going to start doing $1 million here and $1 million here, up to $398,584,000 worth of earmarks in a bill? That is the question. This isn't conservatives who are asking this question; it is liberal Democrats; it is Independents; it is conservatives, because they know, in fact, this Government can run better, more efficiently, with less money than what we are doing now, if, in fact, we will stand up and do the oversight work we ought to be doing. But we refuse to do that. So the vote will come. We will have a vote. If we don't enhance this amendment and pass it, we will go from 11 percent to 10.95 percent because, in fact, the American people will see, again, that we don't get it. We don't have to live by the rules they live by. The tragedy is, in this bill, the Labor-HHS bill to help those most dependent in America, we are going to take money in the future from those who we are saying we are giving to now, through a decreased standard of living or an increased tax rate. If you don't believe that, read David Walker, the Comptroller General's report about what is getting ready to happen to us as a nation in terms of our finances, or read Peter Peterson's book, ``Running On Empty,'' about what is going to happen to us. Why in the world is the Euro at $1.42 when it was 83 cents 3\1/2\ years ago? Why is that? Is there a beckoning call about our financial condition that the world financial markets recognize, and yet we refuse to pay attention to? So I call on my colleagues. This isn't a partisan amendment. I have gone after just as many Republican amendments--as a matter of fact, one of the amendments I am going to be offering today goes after a Republican amendment. I also plan on offering an amendment to get rid of all earmarks in this bill before we finish this bill. So we will get to see whether this body gets it, whether the 80 percent to 85 percent of Americans who want us to change our behavior have any influence on us whatsoever. Will we listen? There is a rumble. I said this a year and a half ago. There is a rumble in America, and the rumble is this: We don't have confidence in our Government anymore. Where is the legitimacy of our Government when our own people don't have confidence in us? It is a great question to ask about the greatest Republic that there ever was. It is a problem we need to be about solving rather than ignoring. With that, I yield for the moment.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I intend to speak after Senator Schumer speaks as well.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, we heard Senator Kyl talk about the problem. The Woodstock Museum is not the problem; it is a symbol of the problem. Alan Gerry has done great things for the State of New York. He should be praised for what he has done. This isn't an attack on him. This is an attack on the process--the process where we inappropriately send money back on the basis not of priority but on the basis of a low- priority need. Now, there was a historian by the name of Alexander Tyler. These words are attributed to him. Nobody can say for sure he is the author of them, but they bear a very important lesson for us. He wrote about the Athenian Empire which had collapsed, and he was writing this about the time that our Founders were writing our institutional documents. Here is what he said: All democracies eventually fail. They fail because people learn that they can vote themselves money from the public Treasury. Consequently, they only vote for people in elected office who will return them money from the public Treasury. Consequently, all democracies fail over a fiscal collapse. Now, is that where we are headed? Have we walked into the trap of history which talks about how every other democracy in the world has, in fact, failed over fiscal issues? They haven't failed over the principles of their democracy. They haven't failed over their freedom. They failed over the financial collapse of their system because the political class used public monies to pay off private citizens. This is a symbolic vote. It is not about going after Senator Schumer or Senator Clinton and this earmark. I have been going after Republican and Democratic earmarks for 2\1/2\ years. But this is a great example. I am part of the hippie generation. I was a junior in college when Woodstock occurred. It may be great for upstate New York to empower and have this as an economic development tool. It is certainly a part of our history and ought to be remembered. There is no question about it. But the question is, should this be a priority for this body over the priority of women and children, of maternal-child health, which isn't funded adequately in this country? Should we fund $1 million to a worthwhile project but low priority? That is the question. It is not about whether great things have been done in this area or whether great things can continue to be done. New York has a $1.6 billion surplus right now. If this is great, why shouldn't the State of New York fund it more, this $1 million? We have, according to the latest estimate if you use Enron accounting, a $160 million deficit. If you use real accounting, it is going to be about a $300 billion deficit. So why should we put the credit card in and charge another $1 million to our kids for something that is low priority? If we are going to charge another $1 million to our kids, why don't we do it for the kids, for maternal and child health? We will earn the 11 percent if we reject this amendment. The problem is, this is a good thing to do. Senators have a right to do it. We know that. Even though, I disagree that, before we fix the major financial problems that face our country, we shouldn't be sending money home. I am in the minority on that issue. I understand that. You are not bad if you disagree with me. But according to the American public, you don't agree with them either because 85 percent of the American people in the latest poll think we ought to eliminate all earmarks until we get our house in order. The question is, how will they ever trust us to fix Medicare or Social Security if they can't trust us on these small things? And they can't. We can't help ourselves. Surely, $1 million for a Woodstock museum and performance center is not a priority for this country at this time.

Mr. COBURN. I am happy to yield.

Mr. COBURN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. COBURN. Can the Senator recall a time that I voted for a tax cut?

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I was listening to Senator Byrd, the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and he asked who would stand up. I will stand up. I think we ought to cut a lot of things, but the first thing we ought to do is cut out claiming something that isn't true. What we need to claim is that we can live within the same parameters that every family in this country has to live within. We are not doing it on this bill. It is not about whether the FBI is funded. It is not about the ATF or the Drug Enforcement Agency-- it is about priorities. There is just $640 million worth of earmark nonpriority things in this bill. So we could get $640 million tomorrow out of the earmarks that are not priorities, and I will be happy to list for anybody the total for every State, for every Senator who has a priority they think is more important than families having to live within a budget that they have to live with every day. This isn't a debate about the President. This is a debate about the future of our country starting to live within the means of which we have. The very things we claim we want to do for all the States that they don't have money to do--by the way, there are cumulative budget surpluses over $40 billion right now. Ours is, if you take Washington speak, $160 billion; if you take true accounting, it is $330 billion. But the States have a surplus. The Justice Department had the highest unexpended balances they have ever had this last year--almost $1.6 billion. Yet we think they need more money. Does anybody in this country think every agency of this Government couldn't run 5 percent more efficiently? Nobody outside of Washington believes they couldn't. They know they can because they know they have to make those same choices every day in everything they do because they can't run with a credit card and charge it to their grandchildren. Now, 10 percent growth in this bill is too much. This motion to commit doesn't have anything to do with the President. It has to do with whether we will stand up and do what every other American has to do, and that is live within the realities of the money available to them. We can claim that we are doing everything. Since when is fire prevention the total responsibility of the Federal Government? Since when is police protection the total responsibility of the Federal Government? It is not going to go away. If it is a higher priority, then let's make it a higher priority, but let's get rid of some things that aren't. There are no choices to get rid of things that are low priority. We can't have it both ways. Those who want to grow the Government can't have it both ways. Either you want to live within the means, you want to be honest with the American people and say: You are right; we can do a better job. This bill does not do a better job. We ought to relook at it, reformulate priorities. That doesn't undermine what the committee has done. We added $1 billion on the floor. The committee didn't do that, we did. What we ought to say is let's add 2 or 3 percent, live with less than inflation, do what every American has to do, and if we do that all the way across the board, then we will start solving the fiscal problems that are in front of us. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

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

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I thank the Senators for the cooperative way in which they have worked with us. I also wish to comment on Senator Landrieu's amendment that was accepted, which eliminated a copay for a matching portion for the COPS Program in areas that don't have the money to match. It is a smart thing that we are doing. It is right. It will come to an end at some time, but until they get back on their feet, we ought to do it. I wished to spend a few minutes talking about the bill overall. I think even though the chairwoman and ranking member have done a great job with the bill in terms of priorities, I am concerned at the overall spending level, and I think the administration probably will be too. Inflation, last year, was less than 3 percent. In title I, the Commerce portion of the bill, it grows by 13.88 percent, which is 4\1/2\ times the rate of inflation. In title II, the Justice portion, it grows 6.1 percent, which is over two times the rate of inflation. In title III of the bill, in the Science portion, it grows by 8.1 percent over last year's actual appropriation, which is almost three times what the rate of inflation was. That probably would not be a problem if we didn't borrow $454 billion from our kids last year. It would not be a problem if everybody else had an 18-percent or 13-percent or a 10-percent increase. But the fact that this bill has grown this much says we are going to go down the road again of borrowing additional money. This is a rationalization, and I admit it. What we are doing is funding this increase this year on the backs of our grandchildren, because if it goes through this way and coming out of conference, and if the President signs it, the increase in spending for the Commerce, Justice, and State Departments will come on the back of future payments of debt for our kids. The contrast I wish to show is that the average family's income rose less than 4 percent last year. Their taxes aren't going to rise much more than 4 percent, but the taxes on their grandkids are going to rise disproportionately more than that, probably 12 or 13 percent, because we cannot get hold of this Government. That is no reflection on the leaders of this committee. They are given a number, and they have requests out the kazoo from individual members. They have programs that need to be funded, which is very different than the administration. I didn't compare it to the administration's request. I compared it to what we approved last year. I think it behooves us to look at the overall growth in this bill, and if you applied it to the rest of Government, we grew the Government by about $700 billion this year. We cannot do that. We cannot do it. So I have asked for a recorded vote on the bill because I want to be recorded as voting against this appropriations bill--not because it is not important to fund these items but because we cannot continue to have these kinds of increases in funding when we have grown the Government by 62 percent over the last 7\1/2\ years. That does not count Medicare and Medicaid spending. So I wanted to make that point. I have a couple of amendments, again, which are directed at directed spending--what we call earmarks. The programs are not bad programs--the very things I am going to outline that I think we ought to transfer money from to something else. But I think people will have a tough time justifying spending on these programs, these directed earmarks, when we should not be spending as much as we are and could be spending it on something that would give us better value for the dollars we spend. I ask unanimous consent to bring up amendment No. 3243 and make it pending.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent to call up amendment number 3243.

Mr. COBURN. I am absolutely fine with that. I will take no more than probably 25 minutes on both of these amendments. I ask unanimous consent that I be given 25 minutes to cover both of the amendments, reserving the remainder of the time if I don't use it, and allowing any opposition the same amount of time, and I will probably not consume that amount of time.

Mr. COBURN. Yes. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN. I will be on the next airplane with you.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, first of all, I would concede the value of what Dr. Ballard has done. But the question isn't whether this should get funded; the question is, Who should fund it? National Geographic made $15 million last year. They are a nonprofit organization. They had revenues of over $1 billion. The State of Connecticut is going to have over a $300 million surplus. I don't doubt that this is a very worthy cause. The question is and what the American people are asking this body to do is to start making priorities out of priorities. I think this is a very valid project. He is one of 11 resident scholars for National Geographic. I have studied the issue. It is not about whether it is a priority for them. The question is, Who ought to be paying for it? In a time when we don't have any money, when the dollar is sinking, when we are spending more and we are already funding a war and charging the war to our kids, what we are setting up is we are going to continue to do things that don't have to be done by us when somebody else could do it. Consequently, we are going to borrow the money. There is half a billion dollars worth of earmarks in here, I would say to my friend from Connecticut, and all of them have some merit. The question is, Who should be paying for some of these? There are competitive grants on museums that are run well by this Government. They are very competitive. They can get the $450,000 through a competitive grant. They can apply for that. There is oversight on that. There is a competition among priorities when we do that and run it. When we put it in directly, we, No. 1, consign our kids to paying for it, and No. 2, we don't put the responsibility on anybody else. Now, if this is really necessary, National Geographic will stand up and put the $450,000 into it, or if it is important to the education and instruction in the State of Connecticut, with a $300 million surplus, they can put in the $450,000. But our choice here today is, we are just going to charge it to our grandkids. We don't have this money. This bill has grown by almost 10 percent over what we funded last year. If you took all the directed earmarks out of it, we would be growing by about 4\1/2\ percent. So it is important for the American public to see the impact when we direct spending. The purpose of this exercise--and I will continue to do this as long as I am in the Senate--is to try to force us into making the hard choices we really don't want to have to make. I believe this committee did a good job of setting the parameters and trying, but there is a new standard, and the standard has to be, would you put in your own money? That is the standard we ought to go by because what we are really doing is transferring the cost of all these things to two generations, and it goes completely opposite of the heritage of this country. D-day starts January 1, 2008. You know what D-day is? It is the first year of the baby boomers. It is the first year we start going down the tubes on Medicare and Social Security. And we can't even bring a bill to the floor that constrains spending to 4 percent or 5 percent--1\1/2\ times inflation. The American public doesn't have that option with their budgets because they do not have an unlimited credit card. We just increased the debt limit on this country by $950 billion. Five times since 1997 have we done that. When a child is born today, not counting that debt, which is $30,000 per man, woman, and child, there is $400,000 worth of unfunded liabilities lying on each of those children. My point is, and I will quit talking about it--and I am not going to offer the second amendment--we need to wake up and see that we can't do everything we would like to do. We ought to be doing what is absolutely necessary and we ought to be paying for this war. We ought to be making the hard choices and paying for the war. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I want to spend a few minutes talking about this issue of health care and children's health care, the issue about all the politics that are involved, and the issue about the next election and how you can make somebody look bad because they do not agree that we ought to transfer a large segment of our health care to the Government. I think it is most important that the American people ought to be asking some questions. Why is it we have a health care program that we are putting out that the President rightly vetoed that pays $4,000 to buy $2,300 worth of care? It is a simple question. We are going to pay $1,700 more than we should to run it through the Government--to buy $2,300 worth of care. That makes no sense. But whoever said Washington makes sense? As a matter of fact, this bill is more nonsensical than any bill we have passed this year. It assumes that 22 million Americans now have to start smoking to pay the taxes that will pay for this bill. Twenty-two million? Right now we have a problem with the cost of tobacco use in this country and long-term care. The other situation which has not been characterized is, if you look at the CBO scoring, for any one new child who goes on SCHIP under this bill, one comes off of private insurance. It is one for one. That is what the CBO says. So what we are doing is, we are asking the American taxpayers--but, actually, we are not. We are asking the very children whom we are supposedly going to give care to, to allow us to borrow money now to pay for their care so they can pay a higher tax rate 25 years from now. This bill lacks integrity in terms of the way it pays for itself. Everybody knows that. It is another little wink and nod from Washington: Yes, we have a pay-go rule. Yes, we are going to pay for it. But, oh, by the way, it costs $121 billion, but we are only going to tell you it costs $35 billion. And, by the way, we don't have the tax revenues to pay for it, so we are going to lie about the tax revenues on it. It is important that Washington start getting what America has already got; that is, how about some plain words that have to do with our health care situation? If we want to move to national health care, let's have a debate about national health care. Let's talk about the fact that in England the average length of time waiting for treatment for a cancer after it is diagnosed--they are trying to move from 10 months to 3 months. In this country it is 4 weeks. It is 4 weeks. The cure rates for cancers in this country are 50 percent to 100 percent better than anywhere else that has a nationalized health care system. Why is that? Why is it that 80 percent of all the innovation in health care in terms of new medical products, new techniques, new devices, new diagnostics come out of this country's private sector? Let's have a real debate about national health care. But let's quit lying to the American people that in the name of children we are going to spend their future money to create a segue to national health care. In the State of New Jersey, well over half the money for children's health care is spent on adults. In the State of Florida, 750,000 kids under 200 percent of the poverty level are not on SCHIP right now. In the State of Texas, 700,000 are not. Yet we are going to create a system to raise--it is important the American people know what 200 percent of the poverty level is. It is $42,000 a year. What we are saying under the present SCHIP bill--the one that has been extended with the CR--is if you as a family make less than that, we are going to help you out with your kids. But if you make more than that, you ought to be contributing. This body does not care about kids because it voted against a premium support amendment to allow kids in these higher income families a way to buy health insurance. What we have said is no, we cannot do that. But we can certainly be dishonest about what our intentions are in the rest of the bill. So as the American public hears all the criticism of those who say: We don't want more Government; we want less; we want the Government we have to be more efficient, more transparent, and more accountable--as they criticize us for those positions, they are going to say we don't care about children. Do you care about children if you are going to steal their future by undermining their ability to have a future by not paying for and growing the Government and borrowing more and more money? It cannot happen. We cannot give our children a future if we continue to be dishonest with ourselves and dishonest with the American public. I think President Bush is right on this issue. No. I don't think so. I know he is. One of the reasons we are having difficulty at this time in our country with health care is because 52 percent of the health care now is run by the Government. Why is it a large percentage of people who are now coming on to Medicare--and in 3 years the baby boomers start coming on to Medicare--why is it the vast majority of them cannot find a Medicare physician? Why is that? Could it be that we have promised something we are not going to pay for, so we are going to reimburse at a lower level? The next thing to come out of this body will be: If you are a physician in this country, you have to take Medicare, just as in Massachusetts you have to take Medicaid. Our health care system ought to be about freedom and choice and personal responsibility, and, yes, it ought to be about helping those who need our help. But, quite frankly, if you are making $80,000 a year in this country, we ought to be about paying off debt rather than paying for your child's health insurance. That is what this bill does. That is what this bill allows. So we are going to have a debate. We are going to see the political games played out. This bill will not be overridden in the House, and then we are going to have to come back and address it. My hope is when we address it, we will add premium support for those who are on the edge so we can help those who are in private insurance stay in private insurance, we will be honest on how we pay for it. The most disappointing thing about this bill is the lack of integrity and honesty and character in terms of the way it is paid for. It shows the depths of which we fool ourselves and play the game of politics rather than play the game of statesmanship. It is a disappointing aspect, and I would say our approval rating is well earned just on the basis of this bill. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.