Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this amendment is straightforward. There is a bill in the Senate that I am presently blocking from a unanimous consent request, which means I am not necessarily opposed to it; but I don't think the bill ought to come to the floor without being voted on or amended. It is the Emmett Till civil rights bill. This bill is designed to increase the emphasis on unsolved civil rights cases. A year and a half ago, the Department of Justice initiated a new program for that exact purpose. They put staff on it, funded it, and have since gotten 100 referrals from 42 different offices on unsolved civil rights cases that are 50 years old and older. It is something we should be doing and the Justice Department is doing. I don't think we need another piece of legislation and another law to make us do that. The Justice Department has actually shown they didn't need a law. They were actually doing it. What this amendment does is transfers from six directed spending items--earmarks--to the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division $1.680 million to augment that process. What it will do is allow them to hire additional people to further define and further investigate these older civil rights cases. This bill has 600 earmarks in it. This relates to only six earmarks. The total for the earmarks is $458 million. Many of the earmarks in this bill don't do anything to advance the priorities or the mission statements of the three agencies we are funding. What are they? A maritime museum in Mobile, AL; Eye on the Sky Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, VT; Adler Planetarium in Chicago, IL; U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. I have been there; it is a tremendous place. Lastly, the installation of buoys marking the John Smith National Water Trail on the Chesapeake; undersea vehicle for the Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration in Connecticut. Let's start with the first one. There is $500,000 in this to construct a maritime museum in Mobile, AL. It is probably a great idea, although there are two other maritime museums right now in Mobile. Should we spend $500,000 now, when we are borrowing the kind of money that we are borrowing from our grandchildren, when we are fighting a war we are not paying for and charging to our grandchildren? Should we spend that money now or should we spend the money upholding the law and going after people who violated other people's civil rights? Which is a better value? Which is a better purpose? Which is a better core principle? I will not go into the details, although I am prepared to do it in rebuttal. There are now 35 maritime museums in the gulf coast region, including two in Mobile. There are funds for this earmark through the competitive grant system. So it is not that this may not even get funded, because it might have to compete with the rest of the museums in the country. Instead, we have directed it. Earmark offset 2 is for the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in Vermont for the Eye on the Sky Program. It is a $300,000 earmark. It is probably a great idea. But is it a priority when we are borrowing money from our grandchildren? Again, this is another program. There is grant money out there for museums. You would have to compete based on the priorities. There is oversight on the grants. On these earmarks, there is no oversight. It can still be funded, on a competitive basis, without an earmark. The Adler Planetarium in Chicago has net assets right now in excess of $34 million, and we are going to send them $300,000. They have revenues every year in excess of $11 million. There is no reason for us to send that money there now if we are borrowing it from our grandkids. I will limit my debate on that. One of the things I will tell you--and I will put up a chart. Here is what the Administrator of NASA said about directed spending for earmarks: The growth of these Congressional directives is eroding NASA's ability to carry out its mission of space exploration and peer-reviewed scientific discovery. We are taking away the core mission of one of our premier scientific inquiries in this country when we send money. The redirections as a result of congressional earmarks included half of NASA's education budget, one-twentieth of the exploration budget, and one-twenty-fourth of their science budget. So it is not a small amount with which we are impacting NASA. The fourth earmark: Spies and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. We should know that the State of Alabama is going to have in excess of a $2 billion surplus this year. Let me say that again. The State of Alabama is going to have in excess of a $2 billion surplus this year. They had a $1.7 billion surplus last year. I would think that maybe they ought to fund this instead of our grandchildren. This is a $500,000 earmark for the Space and Rocket Museum. I have been there. It is a great thing. You ought to go see it. It is well worth your time. But it is something I believe should not be in the priority when we are borrowing the money. There is $500,000 for an interpretive buoy system. It is a great idea with great historical significance but probably not right now. Should we be spending this money if we are borrowing it against our grandkids? Should we be spending this money when we are growing the budget, this appropriations bill by 11 percent? I don't think so. Finally, $450,000 for an undersea vehicle in Mystic, CT. This is part of the Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, CT. They could apply for a competitive grant with all the rest of the States and probably get it. It is not a bad idea. It is probably a good idea. It probably promotes tourism, probably enhances the experience at that museum. But, again, is it a priority when we are not funding the war and we are not paying for our excesses and, in fact, probably the greatest moral issue of our day is stealing the future from our grandkids? It is not any of the other social issues. They wane in comparison to taking opportunities from our next generation. I also advise that the State of Connecticut, according to Connecticut's Comptroller, Nancy Wyman, has a $350 million surplus. So they are not running a deficit; they have a surplus. They could easily grant $500,000 for this museum. The point of this amendment is let's put dollars where they ought to go and let's stop spending money on lower priorities. It is about priorities. It is not about what is a good program and what is a bad program. It is about what is the greatest priority. The greatest priority is to ensure people of their civil rights. It has to be greater than these. There cannot be a greater priority than securing the future for the next generations, except we are not going to do that with this bill. I reserve the remainder of the time I have under the agreement.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I objected to a unanimous consent request to pass S. 535/H.R. 923, the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. I objected, not because I disagree with the well intended motives of the legislation, but because the authors of the bill refused to work with me to make some commonsense changes. Let me be clear, I absolutely support the goals of this legislation and believe that those who committed civil rights crimes must be brought to justice, but I believe that we can and must do so in a fiscally responsible manner. Just last week, the Senate voted to increase the Federal Government's debt limit to $9.815 trillion. It is beyond irresponsible to pass any bill that will add to this debt that will be inherited by our children and grandchildren. Even our best intentions need to be paid for with offsets from lower priorities or wasteful spending. On February 5, 2007, I sent a letter to my colleagues outlining my intent to object to any legislation authorizing new spending that is not offset by reductions in real spending elsewhere. I strongly believe that Congress should stop borrowing and spending beyond our means. Instead, Congress, like all families, ought to prioritize spending and reduce less important spending when greater priorities arise. S. 535/H.R. 923 violates two of the principles that I outlined in my February letter. These are: If a bill authorizes new spending, it must be offset by reductions in real spending elsewhere; and if a bill creates or authorizes a new Federal program or activity, it must not duplicate an existing program or activity. This bill authorizes unpaid for new spending and creates a new government program that duplicates existing government efforts. Both of these concerns could be easily addressed if the sponsors of the bill were interested in securing its passage. In June of this year, my office contacted the bill's sponsors to suggest possible offsets so that I could give my consent--but there was no desire, at the time, to amend the bill. This was unfortunate because last Congress, when Senator Jim Talent was the lead sponsor, he agreed to include offsets in exchange for my consent, but the compromise language was opposed by an unidentified Senator. It is also unfortunate because there is no shortage of potential offsets for this bill within the Department of Justice, which would administer the proposed program. The bill authorizes $12 million each year for 10 years. The Department has $1.6 billion in unobligated balances, which are funds that have been appropriated but which there are no plans to spend. In fiscal year 2006, the Department spent $45.9 million on conferences, a 34-percent increase since fiscal year 2000. The inspector general examined just 10 conferences and found that the Department spent an estimated $1.5 million on food and beverages. This included paying $4 per meatball at one lavish dinner and spreading an average of $25 worth of snacks around to each participant at a movie- themed party. It is estimated that the current fiscal year 2008 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill contains congressional earmarks totaling $587 million and the bill exceeds the President's request by more than $2 billion. Clearly, there is wasteful spending that can be reduced to pay for this program. Just like American taxpayers, Congress needs to learn to pay for what it spends. This is a reasonable expectation but one that has been ignored by Washington politicians who tend to put off difficult decisions and, as a result, have charged up a $9 trillion debt. This bill also creates a new Federal program that duplicates an existing Federal Government initiative that seeks to address unsolved civil rights crimes. The Department of Justice and the Civil Rights Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation are currently working with States and nonprofit groups to pursue unsolved civil rights era crimes that resulted in death. In February 2006, the FBI began an initiative to identify hate crimes that occurred prior to December 1969, and resulted in death. Since then, the Bureau's 56 field offices began to reexamine their unsolved civil rights cases and determine which ones might still be viable for prosecution. To date, they have identified nearly 100 case referrals. Furthermore, the U.S. Attorney General and the FBI Director announced a partnership with the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Urban League to investigate unsolved crimes from the civil rights era. I am very supportive of this effort and I am also encouraged that these cases are currently being pursued. On August 2, 2007, I sent a letter to the Attorney General requesting more information about these efforts to ensure that any legislation passed by Congress would assist the Department to meet its goals. I am awaiting a response. I do believe that solving these crimes is imperative to remedying past injustices and ensuring future justice. These types of crimes should never have been and never again tolerated or ignored. I also believe that because of the nature of the crime, the time elapsed, and the fact that many witnesses and potential murderers have moved to different States, this is an area of the law that rightly requires Federal assistance. Consequently, it is my hope that the bill's sponsors will support my efforts to find funding for this worthy program. It is unfortunate that such a well intentioned effort is being held up because Washington politicians refuse to live under the same budget rules that every family in America adheres to. In the meantime, the American people can rest assured knowing that the Department of Justice and the FBI are already conducting the investigations that this bill seeks to address.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I object.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this is a very simple amendment. We voted to increase the debt limit. We have a project that the Department of Justice, the DEA, and all the other drug enforcement agencies say is ineffective. I am going to give you some quotes from the people who worked there and what they had said. Former official of the Drug Czar's office put it bluntly: ``We see nothing from this.'' The former, most recently resigned, Director: ``I recognize that many of the reports were god-awful, poorly written, poorly researched, and in many cases just plain wrong.'' Jim Milford, former NDIC Deputy, admitted: ``I have never come to terms with the justification for the NDIC, and the bottom line is we actually have to search for a mission.'' These are good people who work there. It is not about them. It is about whether we are going to be prudent with the money we spend. They have one program that is effective. It is called DOCX. The problem with it being where it is, is it cannot be applied there, it has to be applied at other drug intelligence centers and the other DEA centers throughout the country. The administration, the Department of Justice, the DEA and all the other drug centers, especially the one in El Paso, is where this information ought to be processed. We have spent half a billion dollars and gotten very little return. It is a recommendation that we have a chance to do something. We have a chance to eliminate a program that is not effective by any metric that the Government has applied or the former Directors have applied or the Deputy Directors have applied who have worked there, saying it is not effective. My hope is this body will approve this amendment and start us down the road of eliminating programs that are ineffective. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. COBURN. What you did not hear is what is the mission of the NDIC. It has no mission. That is the problem. The agency running this center says it should be closed--for very good reasons. It does not have an international mandate. They have had people fired because they are doing things that are outside of what restricted mission they have. The one program that works is DOSX, and those people who are functioning with DOSX have to go to wherever the information is, which they are extracting in the investigation. None of that is done in Johnstown. So if they travel, it doesn't matter where they start. The point is, the people who work there, who have run it, the people who are managing it, and the rest of the Drug Enforcement Agency and the rest of our drug intelligence says it has no mission. It has accomplished very little. I rest my case and would appreciate a vote. I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I would like to finish my statement, and then I am be happy to yield to the Senator from Vermont. One reason is Americans believe we are totally out of touch with the realities they live with every day in terms of budgeting and spending. What I often hear in this body, both by statement and by action, is that we really do not have to choose between two priorities because we can do both. The American people can't do both, but we can do both. How can we do both? What we do is we ignore the choices we have and lay our responsibility on generations to come. That is how we do both. We do not do what is required of us in terms of oversight, eliminating fraud, eliminating duplicative programs, eliminating programs that do not work, that have no metrics. That, by the way, comes to $200 billion worth of fraud, waste, and abuse which has been documented, every year, that we spend, that we are not working on, we are not trying to eliminate. But what we are about to do, because we failed to do that, we are about to increase the amount which our children and grandchildren are going to have to repay. The problem is there is nobody outside this body who thinks that way--only inside. In the real world, people have budgets they have to live within. Their choices have consequences, and we choose to make the consequences happen to our children and grandchildren rather than accept the consequences. What has made this country great has been the heritage of sacrifice we have seen by multiple generations that have come before us. We are now denying that heritage, as we in this body refuse to accept the responsibility placed on us to make hard choices. Tonight, we are going to have a vote and we are going to raise the debt limit and we are going to really say: Children, we don't have the courage to do what we need to do, whether it is raise taxes or cut spending or both. We don't have the courage to do that. But we are cowardly enough to shift it off onto you. That is what it really is. We don't want to go against interest groups that are invested in something that isn't working. We don't want to eliminate the $53 billion a year that is estimated to be fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. We don't want to do anything with the excess 41,000 properties the Federal Government owns that cost us $18 billion a year but we won't do anything with them. We will not do what is necessary and sacrifice so that we can secure the future. We are going to raise the debt limit because both parties, mine and the leadership party, have refused to restrain spending. This will be the sixth time since 1997 that the debt limit has been raised. At the same time, earmark spending has skyrocketed. It is over half a trillion dollars in the last 10 years. There are no competitive bids on earmarks, no accountability, no followup, just gifts. Some are great priorities, but there is no system of economic controls. My own party did a lot to create this mess. In 2005, 82 of my colleagues said building a bridge in Alaska was more important than repairing the bridges in Louisiana. We said that. This body said that. Last week I asked my colleagues to make a number of choices. I offered an amendment that said until we fix our at-risk bridges and our high-risk highways that will account for 13,000 deaths a year, we ought to delay earmarks until we make that a priority. We lost that vote 82 to 14. I offered an amendment to prohibit funding on bike paths and horse trails until we have done the same thing. We lost that amendment 80 to 18. I also attempted to strike funding for a peace garden, construction of a new baseball stadium, and a visitor's center, bipartisan amendments. We chose to say, no, we can do that rather than build and restore our highways and bridges. What is as bad as the choices we make are the choices we ignore. And that is the very real need to do extremely heavyhanded oversight on the waste, fraud, and abuse that occurs every day within the Government that we supposedly have our hands on. I know we could cut discretionary spending by at least 10 percent. Okay? That is $100 billion a year if we got together and said we are going to work on these programs together. But we are not going to do that. What we are going to do is keep pointing fingers at one another rather than at ourselves and raise the debt limit. We are not going to do that hard work. I believe the American people are sick of it. Families across America do not have the luxury of loaning themselves new money when they have maxed out their credit. But that is what we are going to do. There is no credit limit for us. One is coming. It is coming as we have seen the price of the dollar fall recently. We will certainly see it fall further in the future. There is going to be a cost. What this vote means is, instead of using this year's appropriations cycle to trim waste, to decrease spending, reduce the national debt, all we have done is made the problem worse. First, we have not passed any bills through Congress. The bills that are in conference, with the exception of one, are at 5 to 6 to 7 percent above last year's spending level. So we have admitted we cannot do it. Only weeks after passing a brandnew ethics law, the Senate has now decided it is okay to add new earmarks in authorizing bills. We have also decided that instead of making sure we know the identity of earmarks, how much money it is, what is it going for, and who is going to get it, we only say: I am offering it, and I do not have any pecuniary interest in it. What we told the American people was a sham. We are not doing what we said we were going to do. Instead of spending our time trying to figure out how to continue to raid the Federal Treasury without getting caught, I believe we ought to be doing our job. Congress should pass individual appropriations bills at a level less than last year, with the waste, the fraud, abuse, and duplication out of them. But we are not going to do that. The vote on the debt limit gives Congress another opportunity to demonstrate to the American public that we do have the courage and the ability to fix what is wrong with this ship. By voting for this debt limit, what you are telling the American people is, you do not have the courage to fix what is wrong here. We do not have the courage to do the oversight that is necessary. Whether it is the $40 billion worth of waste, at least, a year in the Pentagon, or the $43 billion a year wasted on Medicare and Medicaid through fraud, or the $18 billion we are spending on buildings that we do not want, we do not have the courage to do that. What we should be doing is tearing up the credit card and, through not passing an expansion or extension of the debt limit, start acting like every other American family has to do and start making the hard choices even if it offends some of our constituents, because the constituents who matter the most, as we continue the heritage of this country of creating opportunity, are our children and grandchildren. My real hope is this debt limit expansion does not pass tonight, that we all get to reflect on that; we come together, Democrat and Republican, and say: We have not done a good job. Let's make a pact that we are going to do the oversight, that we are going to cut the programs, that we are going to lower spending. It does not matter what President Bush wanted. We have the power of the purse. We can decrease spending. Will we do that? Unfortunately, my belief is we will not because, quite frankly, we are interested in the next election more than we are interested in the next generation, and to that, shame on us. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders.) The Senator from North Dakota.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this evening we have a choice to make that is a true reflection of whether this body has been listening to the American public. We are about to increase the amount of money we can borrow against our children's future by $850 billion. That is almost $1 trillion. What does that say about us? That we can't do what we ask every other American family to do, which is live within our means. It is not about parties. Both parties are guilty. But it is about priorities, and it is about choices. Many of us know that our approval rating is at an alltime low--11 percent. We have a chance tonight to change that. We have a chance tonight to raise that. We have a chance tonight to prove to the American people that we are listening. A new Gallup Poll put it this way: Americans now express less trust in the Federal Government than at any time in the past decade and trust in many Federal Government institutions is now lower than it was during the Watergate era, generally recognized as the low point in American history for trust in the Federal Government. Think about that. How is it that we got ourselves to that position? How did we slip to a level below the Watergate era?

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I thank the leaders of this bill for the time to speak. I am kind of flabbergasted at the last talk. I am one of the physicians in this country who has cared for kids on Medicaid. I have actually delivered over 2,000 babies on Medicaid. I have actually done well-child exams. We have the Senate lecturing the President, and we should be lecturing ourselves. The debate on this bill is not about children. There is not anybody in the Senate who does not want to cover and continue the present SCHIP. What this debate is about is how do we move toward national health care. That is what this debate is. So immoral? Is it immoral to spend $3,000 to buy $1,500 worth of care, like we are going to do in this bill? Is it immoral for the Senate to say it only costs $35 billion and then totally take a program that is costing $12 billion a year 5 years from now and cut it down to $700 million and say we met the budget rules, when in fact we did not? That is immoral. What about the children who are going to pay for the deficit associated with this bill? I have actually cared for these kids. My practice has been a Medicaid-based practice and a SCHIP-based practice. The holier-than- thou attitude that if you oppose this bill, you do not care about children is completely disrespectful to those of us who happen to disagree, who maybe think a better way to cover children would be the Burr-Corker bill, which gives a tax credit to every kid in this country that covers enough to give them insurance and takes that Medicaid stamp off their head, since only 40 percent of the doctors in this country will cover SCHIP kids and Medicaid kids. So the debate is not about the President being immoral. It is not about tax cuts. The real immoral fact of this bill is we are winking and nodding again to the American people that we are going to spend $121 billion over the next 10 years--not $60 billion over the next 5 years--$121 billion, and we have no way to pay for that. We had a $444 billion deficit last year. We could have paid for the war and decreased the deficit if this body would have had the courage to eliminate duplicative and fraudulent programs. There is no holier-than-thou attitude to go after those programs because they have an interest. As politicians, we do not want to upset anybody. So it is easy--the greatest pleasure in the world is to spend somebody else's money and to claim it is in the name of children. I have been on the ground with children. I have taken care of the poorest of the poor. We have a pregnancy component in this bill. Title 19 now is at 300 percent of the poverty level in this country. We have people dropping their insurance to qualify for title 19. We do not need pregnancy covered in the SCHIP bill. It is already covered. But we claim that to rationalize to make the bill better. I have no disrespect for people in this body who claim they want national health care, government-run national health care. Well, American public--guess what--if you think health care is expensive now, wait till it is free. Wait till it is free. That is exactly what we are doing with this bill. We can reauthorize SCHIP, and we can make it higher than a $5 billion increase to truly cover those kids who need it. This body rejected an insurance contribution component amendment I offered that would actually expand further the number of kids. The other point that is not being made is, for every kid you cover who does not have health insurance today, you are going to drop another kid from health insurance that is being paid for by their parents, and they are getting no benefit in terms of a reduction of their health insurance. So what we are doing is shifting taxes to those same parents to pay for a program, twice as much money for the benefit we will get for the kids. I am not against well-child exams. I am not against immunizations. I give them out of my pocket of my own practice now for free. They cost me an average of $146 a kid. The claim of superiority that somehow if you do not want to have this bill you do not care for children is gobbledygook. What about the kids in the future who are going to pay for the mistakes we are making? What about the kids who are born today who owe $400,000 on our unfunded liabilities? We have done that. If we care so much about kids, why aren't we fixing that problem? They are never going to get a college education or own a home, and they are never going to have health coverage because we will have bankrupt this country by the way we do not control how we spend money. So to be lectured and lecturing the President because, finally, he is exhibiting some fiscal responsibility into the future, and us to play games on the true cost of this program, that is what is immoral. It is not the President being immoral. The fact is it is not our money, it is the money of the people of this country, and we are going to decide we are going to spend money and not tell them what it is really going to cost because that is what this bill does in the outyears, the 6th through the 11th year of this bill if we cut this program to $700 million a year. Now, nobody in their right mind will honestly say we are going to let that happen. So if we are not going to let that happen, how about being honest with the American people about the true cost of what we are doing? It is $121 billion. It is not $60 billion. Even the staff admits that. Both the Democratic and Republican staff admit that. For us to sit up here and claim it is only a $35 billion increase-- well, only a $35 billion increase is a 120-percent increase in the program, just a 120-percent increase in the program. We ought to have a debate about national health care and how we solve the problems of health care in this country. There is a way to solve it. It is to make sure everybody in this country has access and give them the freedom and the power to choose what is best for them rather than us tell them what they have to have. That is the debate we ought to have. This is a farce. This debate is a farce. It is a farce about saying we want to cover more children, when we are really taking children who are already covered and putting them under a government program and then charging those children's kids for the cost of the program. That is what we are doing. It is not about caring for kids. It is about lying to the American public about what this program does. So I do not have any hard feelings about the fact that people want to have national health care and a government-run program, but let's have the debate about what it really is and not have a debate demeaning the President when he finally stands up and says we have an obligation, for the next few generations, to start doing it right, and finally he is starting to do it right. And now we are saying he is immoral. Of the 10 million kids, 5 million already have coverage. We are going to ask the American taxpayer--in spite of what we are doing, in spite of the fact we borrowed $434 billion--we are going to load that on them. They already have coverage. They already have immunization. They already have well-child care, and we are going to add that cost to the American taxpayer. Do you know who that taxpayer is? That is that child's child because we are not going to pay for it. We are going to refuse to be responsible. We played the game of pay-go on this, the great pay-go rule, where we now bastardize our own ethics to say we paid for something, knowing we did not. Because nobody in this body believes this is going to go to $700 million 5 years from now. Nobody believes that. Everybody knows that. So everybody knows we are telling an untruth to the American people about the true cost of this program. I care a ton about my patients. But I also care enough about this country to be able to speak the truth about what we are doing. And what we are doing is absolutely untruthful in how we characterize the spending on this program. You can debate that. I will debate that all day with anybody up here. This body knows I know our numbers, and the numbers on this bill are untruthful. So what we ought to say is, we think we ought to expand the SCHIP program, and it costs $121 billion. Let's have a debate about what it really costs. That is why the President says we should not do it. And we should not go to 300 percent, and we should not have adults on a program where in many States it consumes 75 percent of the dollars. I will readily grant you, we have a big problem with health care in this country. One of the major reasons we have a big problem with health care in this country is government-run health care programs that drive the cost and the overutilization in many areas where we cannot function properly. What is happening today in our country with quality of care is because we have so much government run. We have physicians trying to see too many patients. The one thing we are taught in medical school is, if you will listen to your patients, they will tell you what is wrong. Right now, 8 percent of the cost of health care in this country is associated with tests we order that no patient needs. It is because this body will not look at the malpractice situation we have in this country and the liability situation and fix it to where it truly represents a system where people who are injured are taken care of. What we have is a system that games it. So consequently we are all paying 8 percent more for health care because providers have to order tests to cover their backside. The other thing we know is another 3 percent of the cost of health care is associated with tests that doctors are ordering because they are not listening well--$50 billion worth of tests that people do not need because we will not take the time to listen to them. I will summarize and finish my point with this: Washington has an 11- percent approval rating for a very good reason. Because we do not deserve to be trusted, because we do exactly what we are doing on this bill. We are lying to the American people about what it costs, who it will cover, and how it will be delivered. Now, some other details of the bill are debatable, but those facts are not debatable, and the American people, hopefully soon, are going to wake up to the dishonesty and the farce that we perpetrate on them as we debate those issues. Let's have a debate about national health care. Let's really debate it. Let's look at the options. Our bill, in several other places--the Burr-Corker bill, the Universal Health Care Choice and Access Act-- gives everybody in this country an equal tax credit. Everybody gets treated the same. You want to punish the millionaires? Take away some of their tremendous excess tax benefits from health care. But we would not do that. We do not have one person who will come forward and say: Let's equalize the Tax Code on the other side. Let's equalize the Tax Code so everybody has the same shot. Let's let a market help us access that. Let's make sure it is 100 percent access. If you do not have access, you cannot have care. This bill is not going to provide that much access. Fifty percent of what it does has to do with people who already have access. Those are not my numbers. Those are Congressional Budget Office numbers. So let's be honest about what we are doing. Let's talk about health care. If we want to go to national health care, if we have the votes to do it, then let's do it. But let's do not, under the guise of helping children, expand national health care. This Senator will vote to reauthorize a higher level of funding for SCHIP to cover kids who are truly poor--those who don't have access. I will help anytime, any way to do that. That has been my practice. That has been my heritage. That has been my history in caring for poor folks in Oklahoma. But I am not about to go along with a lie, that what we are doing is something different than what we say we are doing. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I quote from the Centre Daily News of this last June: . . . the NDIC has persisted, despite lingering questions about its effectiveness in coordinating the efforts of federal authorities to collect and analyze intelligence on the domestic trafficking of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and other drugs. What is at stake here? Running this center means we will not have enough DEA agents--and we do not. Running this center continues to spend $30 to $40 million a year that could do great things for our military. Why would we not want to redirect or at least prohibit the continued funding through this Defense authorization bill? Now, there are going to be some claims: Why are you doing this here? Why aren't you doing it on an appropriations bill when it comes through? We cannot have it both ways. We heard in the debate on WRDA that authorizations matter, and it is important for us to have priorities. So the claim is you should not be doing this here on the Defense authorization but, rather, on the appropriations bill. The authorization is the place to do this, to limit the expenditure of funds on something that does not pass muster by anybody's standard. So it is my hope that consideration will be given to this amendment, and that we will truly have the courage to make a vote to spend money wisely. To continue to spend money on this center means we are going to continue to throw $40 million away, according to the Department of Justice, which runs this center, in something that will not give them any benefit. I cannot think of a greater thing we could do than to start doing this and look at every program such as this that is not accomplishing any goals. There are no metrics to measure it, other than what the Department of Justice says. There will be claims saying it has programs that work. They have some programs, but they are highly expensive. They are not as efficient, and they are always late. So over the 12 or 13 years this center has existed, only two of those programs have been successful, and they are not as successful as the other programs within the Department of Justice in this very area. So it is hard to justify the basis for this center. Amendment No. 2999 Finally, Mr. President, I want to spend a minute talking about the Webb amendment. One of the things we know is that we do not do a good job on contracting. I know some of the Members on my side of the aisle perceive the potential for this commission to be used in a political framework. I am not worried about that. I do not think it is intended to be used in a political framework. I think it is intended to hold the agencies accountable for how they spend the money and whether we are going to get a handle on our contracting procedures, both through the State Department and the Defense Department so we can see we actually get value for the money we spend. I am highly supportive of the amendment because I think it is going to give us transparency, it is going to give us recommendations, and it is going to make clear where we have confusion now in how we contract and whether we get value for our money. With that, I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. The second question--and I want to make sure you understand as the author of this that it doesn't say anything about Johnstown, PA, which has great folks. This amendment isn't about the people of Johnstown, PA, and what they can offer. They offer great things to our country, and it is not meant to degrade or delineate anything other than the utmost respect for them. What this amendment is about is, are we getting the value for what we are spending? And all you have to do is look at what the Department of Justice says, which is running this program, and what the DEA says, and what every other intelligence-run enforcement center is saying: that, in fact, there is not added value for the dollars that are spent there, and anything that is a positive contribution could be more effectively utilized at some other center. So it is not about the people of Pennsylvania and it is not about who did it or whether we all shouldn't try to get a Federal facility to help areas that are economically depressed across the country. That is not a bad idea. There is nothing wrong with that. The purpose of this amendment is to delineate that there is not good value for the half a billion dollars we have already spent and that taxpayers could get more value out of less money if, in fact, we did what the professionals and everyone else has said, including former directors of that center.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I have an amendment pending. This is a straightforward amendment. Over the last 10 years, we have spent a half-billion dollars of Defense Department money on a program run by the Justice Department that has achieved probably the least of any program in the entire budget of the Department. This is the National Drug Intelligence Center. It came into being initially through directed spending on a Defense appropriations bill. The reason for adding this amendment to the authorization bill is to preclude any further money on spending on this intelligence center and only allowing money to shut it down and have it consolidated with other intelligence centers. If we think about what $500 million could be doing for us now in the Defense Department in the true defense of our Nation and then look at the history of this center, this isn't about trying to direct things against any group of people or any Congressman or Senator. It is about the commonsense view that we ought to be spending money in a prioritized way that gets us results. By any measure--anyone's measure--including the Justice Department, all the other national drug intelligence centers--all of the others-- the former directors of this intelligence center, and the directors of others, this intelligence center has been looking for a mission and has accomplished very little. Of the two things they have accomplished, one is highly expensive and not accurate. The other is the investigation of intelligence information captures on drugs and could be well done at any other facility we have. The Department of Justice believes the drug center's operations are duplicative and reassigning their responsibilities would improve the management of counterdrug intelligence activities and would allow for funds to be spent on the additional hiring of more drug enforcement officers. So we are going to have anywhere from $30 million to $40 million a year continued to be spent on this center. What this simply is, in the authorization, is a prohibition that we will not do this. When the Department of Justice, which is charged with running this center, says it does not work, it is not effective, it is not accomplished, and should be consolidated, we have to ask the question: Why does it continue? It continues through the force of directed spending in the Defense appropriations bill. Now, how is it we have drug enforcement funded through the Defense Department to give the money to the Department of Justice to run a program they say is ineffectual? The whole purpose for this amendment is to not castigate anyone but to say: Shouldn't we be spending the money more wisely? Shouldn't we be accomplishing, with that $500 million we already spent, something of value to the American taxpayer rather than something not of value? This amendment would protect Defense dollars from being misspent and improve the management of our counterdrug intelligence efforts by eliminating the wasteful spending. It would also direct the necessary funds to close the NDIC. It also would say any activities that might be performed by the center that are deemed necessary, which are minimal-- let me emphasize that again: minimal in terms of all the experts we have throughout the rest of the Government--that they would, in fact, be transferred to the appropriate agencies. In 2002, this intelligence center received $42 million--$39 million, $44 million, $39 million, $38 million, $39 million--for a total of $509 million since its inception. It is duplicative, it is unnecessary, and it is unworkable. Even the former director said: Most of the time the work was shoddy, of poor quality, and quite often wrong. This is the same director who is no longer there--a Mr. Horn--who was admonished by the Department of Justice for his excessive spending while he was there, on travel, on international things that had nothing to do with the NDIC's goals or direction. Mr. President, there have been numerous articles written, two of which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, one being a complete dossier on this agency from US News & World Report.

Mr. COBURN. I thank the Senator for answering my question. I guess my debatable point is the offering of the value, in the judgment of the professionals who are running all of the Department, including the Department of Justice and the DEA, which says it doesn't measure up. That is my point. That is why I brought the amendment. It doesn't denigrate the work of the people there. The fact is, if we are really going to continue to send $30 million to $40 million a year, let's find them something that will give us better value. If we choose not to support this amendment, let's give them direction so that the $30 million or $40 million we do invest actually brings us something that is worth $30 million or $40 million. And it is not the employees there who are at fault. In fact, the direction and the mission has been one that hasn't been accomplished because it wasn't needed in the first place.

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

Mr. COBURN. A couple of points. You should be down here defending this. This is something in your State and it is appropriate that you do. The point I raise is the HashKeeper system is ineffective and doesn't work near to the way every other component works. We know it doesn't work, and it costs about 18 times what the NARL system does, plus the NARL system is admissible in court and the HashKeeper system is not, which is developed by the NDIC. So there is no question that some of the work they do is valuable. But every example you cited was the DOCX program, which requires anybody there to travel somewhere else. So the location doesn't matter where. The other point I would make--and the significance of that is we are not, overall, getting as good a value as we could. The idea is not to relocate this to Washington, what the Justice Department is recommending this DOCX portion of it be where it needs to be--which is all across the country--and the rest of the areas that are deemed vital, which is about 10 percent of what the NIDC does, be relocated to El Paso where the drugs come in, where our border is, and where they need it. This is not a criticism of the people who work there or everything they do. What it is, the amendment as made is intended to give us a perspective about value that we are not getting. I have great respect and consider a friend the Senator from Pennsylvania. I understand his defense of this program. I do not believe it meets the scrutiny of any commonsense objective when you look at it, and what the Department of Justice, which runs it and manages it, and also the fact that in a time of war we can spend a whole lot less money and have that money available to defend this country. I thank the Senator for listening to me.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be given 30 minutes to speak on this subject. I have every intention of speaking less than that, but this is to allow me the flexibility to do so. I also plan on reserving that time until such time as we come back from our policy luncheon.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending motion and amendments be set aside, and that amendment No. 2196 be called up.

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

Mr. COBURN. It is.

Mr. COBURN. Will the Senator yield so I can respond to the Senator from Pennsylvania and then we can get this off the floor?

Mr. COBURN. I thank the Senator for his words and his courtesy in answering my questions. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Were they prosecuted, I guess, and did they receive significant punishment?