Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN. If the Senator will yield, it put forth a parliamentary idea that the Byrd rule applies on bills consistent with reconciliation, if I am correct. What this is intended to do is proactively have--this does two things: It requires the university to know what they are doing, which is one of the things we found in my subcommittee--that they didn't know what they were doing. They weren't aware of where the money was going or how they were spending the money. It makes them look at that. Two, it makes them proactively say they are within the law in terms of how they are spending the student money and the Federal money. I appreciate the colloquy on this issue. I hope we have clarified the intent of the amendment. I am more than happy to accept a second degree that would clarify it more and that would give Senator Kennedy the safeguards he is concerned about. Nevertheless, there is a gigantic problem out there today, not the least of which is that it is hard to find in the Constitution where we should be earmarking $2.6 billion a year to private and State universities for education.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, is there an order in which the votes are going to roll this evening? Can this be combined into those votes? I thank the Senator. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, Senator Kennedy makes my point. In 1980, we had a program that was designed on merit, scientific, and peer- reviewed analysis. We had no earmarks then. Now we have 2,000 earmarks, and about 1 out of every 3 accomplishes something, and then not to the level of what it should because most of the money did not go to the best place to get the research done. The Senator makes my point. We have a corrupted process in how we fund much of the money that goes to universities. Personally, the Senator from Massachusetts recognizes, I believe, that is not necessarily a legitimate role for the Federal Government, but it is one that is there. So if it is there, it ought to be transparent. We ought to be able to hold all universities accountable, and we ought to know where the money goes, how it is spent, and what money was spent to accomplish the receipt of that money in the first place. Those who vote against transparency like the status quo. You cannot fight against transparency. The facts are the facts. You cannot put a political spin on it. The facts will be the facts. The American people--actually, our American grandchildren, against whom we charged $434 billion this last year, ought to have the right to know where their money is being spent, and the devil is in the details on whether they are taking Federal money and using that Federal money to turn around to hire a lobbyist to get more Federal money. That is a corrupt system, and transparency will clean that up. I ask consideration of the amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. COBURN. What we are trying to get is this. It is true that the Byrd amendment makes that illegal. The problem is that nobody has to certify it. So whether it is illegal or not, it is obviously happening. Yet we don't have any proactive basis going on at the universities for them to certify that they are not doing it. That is the difference between this and the Byrd amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. COBURN. It does not limit that in any way.

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

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 2369 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to thank Senator Kennedy and Senator Enzi for allowing me to offer this amendment. Everything I try to do is toward transparency in our Federal Government, because what you cannot measure, you cannot manage. This is a very simple amendment. What we know is that in the last 7 years, the cost of a 4-year college education has doubled. It has gone from $2,700 to $5,800 at State universities. It has gone from about $10,500 to $23,000 at private universities. The costs have doubled. It is the only thing in this country that is rising twice as fast as the cost of health care. We ought to ask ourselves why. This amendment is very clear. What it says is if you are a university and you are lobbying Congress, you have to certify to Congress that you are not spending tuition money or other Federal money that you have gotten for a project for your students or for your university in terms of lobbying to get more money. This, by the way, was excluded from the lobbying and ethics bill we considered. I have some experience on it because last year, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, I queried 500 colleges and universities in this country, asking them about their earmarks. I asked them how they spent the money. The interesting thing is only 50 percent of them replied, and of the 50 percent that replied, only half of them actually knew where the money went. The other half didn't dare reply, either because they didn't know where the money went or the money didn't go for the purpose it was earmarked. So we have a grave problem in terms of earmarks. Let me give my colleagues some statistics about what has happened. First of all, in 2005, $127 million were spent by universities to lobby our institution to get earmarks--$127 million. Divide that and see how many kids we could educate in this country with that amount of money that was spent on lobbying. What we do know is between 1996 and 2005, the number of earmarks at the Department of Education increased by 29,375 percent. I wonder if that has anything to do with this marked increase of 14.5 percent per year in the cost of a college education. Those earmarks--the overall cost of the earmarks came to a half a billion dollars a year last year--a half a billion dollars in earmarks. What we also saw--that was in the Department of Education. Then, separate earmarks for separate universities and colleges in the same time period increased from 369 to 1,964, up to $2 billion a year. Now, you would think that for $2.5 billion a year, we ought to be able to see where the money is spent. We ought to have transparency to see. There are several problems with our earmarking, and the biggest problem is we choose to pick winners and losers. When we do that on research and development at our universities, which are the ones we want to do it to, when we do it, we say that the peer review scientific community shouldn't have any input. That is what we are saying. Consequently, when we spend $2.6 billion on earmarking specific projects at universities, what we are doing is getting a whole lot less value for our money. What we do know is if we let the scientists, through peer-reviewed guidance of scientific discovery, tell us where to go next, we will get two to three to four times return on our research than when I, as a Senator from Oklahoma, decide to earmark a specific research project at a university in the State of Oklahoma. Now, the question we should be asking--similar to the amendment of the Senator from Illinois--where is the money going to come from? The true deficit last year was $434 billion. That is not what we told the American people, but that is how much our debt increased, so that is what the actual increase in expenditures over the increase in revenues was. If I was a prosecutor, I would love Senator Durbin's amendment, if I owed the money. But the principle we should be thinking about is this: Why are we having trouble getting the best into the offices of the public defenders and the prosecutors? Because we don't pay enough. What Senator Durbin is attempting to do is a State function. It is an indirect payment. We are going to pay off loans, we are going to have loan forgiveness for this group of people when, in fact, the way we should be enhancing that is having States choose to increase reimbursement for people who fulfill that very worthy task. So what we are actually doing is jumping all over States' rights, because States haven't increased those fees, as they should, because they don't evidently value it the way the 38 cosponsors of the Durbin amendment do, and we are saying: Time out. It is not your responsibility; we are going to do it. It is the same type of thing we have in terms of earmarks. This amendment is very simple. Certify to Congress, if you are getting Federal funds and you want more Federal funds in terms of earmarks or grants, that you are not going to spend that money or your students' tuition to come up here to get more money. What you ought to do is use your endowment. There are some very interesting statistics on endowment that I would like to alert my colleagues to so everybody can be aware. I commend to my colleagues a 2006 National Association of College and University Business Officers Endowment Study. The top 25 universities in this country have $178 billion in endowments. Now, if they earn 6 percent on that, that is $9 billion a year that they have funds available to them to do research with, or whatever else they want to do. If you take the entire group of endowments, which is some 20 pages long, what you find is a massive amount of money that is endowed. Why do people give to universities? They give to universities to secure their future because they felt rewarded by the gift they gave them of education. Yet we have almost $1 trillion in endowments in this country in universities, and we are saying we need earmarks. We need extra moneys. Fine. If we do need extra moneys for research, let's let the peer-reviewed scientific community tell us where to go. Let's put the research at the place that it is going to get us the best return, rather than one that has the greatest political pull. That makes absolute sense to anybody outside of Washington. Now, it doesn't make sense if you are trying to get something for your university, and University X obviously has the expertise, but you want it at your university. So what do we do? We end up paying double. We are going to fund one that is not as efficient, not as capable, and not as successful at the expense of the university that is far more capable of doing that. A lot of the university earmarks came about because it was stated they couldn't compete on the grant process; that the major universities--those top 25 research universities in the United States-- could outcompete them all on grants. So we did some things when we doubled NIH funding. We did allow for things. What has happened is a pox on our house. We have gone to this large number of earmarks, 2,000 earmarks a year for universities, and we are not getting our money's worth for them. I come back to one of the reasons I would like for us to consider this amendment: How do you tell a student who is working a second job, who can't afford a tutor, he has borrowed student loans up to his gills and is trying to make it, that a percentage of his university's budget out of his tuition is coming up here to get another earmark that is not necessarily going to be efficient or not going to enhance or advance his education or her education? So it is real simple. Transparency creates accountability. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record four case studies--one from the University of Alaska, one from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, one from the University of Georgia, and one from Iowa State University--on what they have done with earmarks and how they have spent them. It is remarkable.

Mr. COBURN. With that, I will cease discussing this other than to say we ought to figure out why a college education and the costs thereof are growing twice as fast as health care, which is four times as fast as everything else in this country. Something isn't right. Transparency is the key to getting accountability for that problem. To vote against this amendment would be saying you don't want the universities to be transparent, to be accountable. I believe they should be accountable and certify to us that not one penny of tuition, one penny of Federal money is spent back here. Mr. President, $127 million was spent last year to lobby this body on university grants and earmarks. We ought to change that. That could educate a ton of our young people. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Yes.

Mr. COBURN. No. What I am looking at is for them to, in a positive, forward way, assert that as they take Federal funds, those funds are not used to, in fact, pay a lobbyist. When a university President calls you, he is not calling as a lobbyist. He has a right to lobby this as an individual. My amendment is fairly narrow in that those funds are not spent to lobby, i.e. lobbying payment.

Mr. COBURN. No.

Mr. COBURN. No, sir.

Mr. COBURN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Major Thomas Rogers, a Department of Defense fellow in Senator Pete Domenici's office, be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of the debate on the fiscal year 2008 Defense authorization bill.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I do not speak very often on the floor on issues such as that we are talking about today. We have a wonderful heritage in this country, and somehow we find ourselves in the midst of a mess. We find ourselves in a position where we have made decisions, some of them poor, some of them good, but we find ourselves--and I agree--at a crossroads. The question in front of us is threefold: One is we have a plan which we instituted less than a month ago and that we set up early this year, which we are now wanting to change with the Reed-Levin amendment before we have data to tell us one way or another, and that is debatable. We have a large number of Americans who have given the ultimate sacrifice in the war in Iraq. But the question before us is what is the world like today? What is it that is going to change if we leave Iraq? What are the consequences? Senator Lieberman spoke very eloquently about what the plans of al- Qaida are and what they have told us, but what happens to the Middle East when we leave? I am reminded of the history of this country that we do not walk away if we have a mess and allow millions of people to die and millions of other people to be displaced without having a strategy that will solve that situation. And I do not see that in the Reed-Levin amendment. I know the contention is that because we are there, we incite more violence; because we are there, al-Qaida has focused there. But the very thing we attempted to do in Afghanistan, we will recreate the situation prior to our going into Afghanistan if we leave Iraq. But the more important question for me is: Do we as a nation have a moral obligation, regardless of the past? The fact is we are in Iraq today and some situations are improving and some are not improving nearly as fast as any and all of us want. But is there a moral obligation for this country not to allow this to lead to 2 to 3 million deaths, not to allow for sure the 450,000 people who have been successful helping us who will come under the threat of death, not to allow the displacement of another 2 to 5 million Iraqis out of Iraq? Do we have a moral obligation not to allow Iran to be in control and use Iraq as a basis for their dominance of the Persian Empire again in the Middle East? Is there any obligation for us in that regard? I think there is. I look at the situation in Iraq as a cancer, as a physician and also as a cancer survivor. There is lots wrong in Iraq right now. We are at the point where we have to make very hard choices about whether the patient can be saved. My concern is that because the treatment is tough, because the risk of the treatment is high, we are to the point where we are going to let the patient die. The fact is the patient does not have to die. I do not dispute my colleagues who have a different opinion on where we should go in Iraq. What I do dispute is whether we recognize fully the obligations we have for the future. What is going to happen as we withdraw? Can anybody in this body guarantee to me 2 or 3 or 4 years later down the road that we are not going to put a whole lot of American lives at risk because of the decision we made to turn off the chemotherapy, to turn off the radiation for the patient? What we are saying is, we are going to ration this; we started down the road, but we are not going to finish it. There has not ever been a time in my life, being alive during the Korean war, the Vietnam war, and this war, that I have not seen controversy about any war we have been in. Anybody who has been around those three wars knows that is the truth. The question for me is what is the best long-term--long-term, not short-term--policy for our country in terms of stabilizing the Middle East? What is the moral obligation for us as a nation? Having invaded Iraq and set in motion many of these situations, how do we measure it and how do we live up to the heritage we have as a country that stands to fulfill moral obligations? I have to answer a couple of statements that were made earlier. Any innuendo that members of the Republican conference are having their arms twisted to support the President in this war is a bold face misrepresentation of the facts. On issues such as this, all my colleagues know nobody is twisting their arm to be against it and no one is twisting my arm to support the policy. As a matter of fact, the statement by the Senator from Ohio that Vice President Cheney comes in every week and gives us a pep talk on the issue--I have been attending the conference for 2\1/2\ years, and I heard him speak once in 2\1/2\ years on Iraq. So the politics of negative comments taken out of context should be labeled what they are. The other fact I know, the Senator from New Jersey talked about maybe more of the Members of the Senate should have our children in Iraq. I know the Presiding Officer had a son recently return, but I know there are people in this body who have children in Iraq--one of Senator McCain's sons is due to ship out this month--who have an opinion, a different opinion than what the Reed-Levin amendment would consider. So I think it is highly unfair to speculate as to what I think is divided with those who have had children with this experience. There are some facts I do know about our country. I do know the war is tearing at the fabric of our Nation. I do know that we as a nation are war weary. I think we ought to talk about what is great about our country, what is good about the military. My impression from being in Iraq and here is I do not know of finer individuals in our country than those who are serving in the military. I can also tell you I do not know of more informed citizens of all the issues that face our country than the military. We have made a lot of mistakes in the policy in the Middle East, there is no question. I think we can agree with that point, and I think we can all admit to it. But it does not change where we are and what the consequences are if we leave. I served as a medical missionary in Iraq after the first gulf war. I developed friendships with Kurds and Shia and Sunni. We talk in the abstract over here about the Iraqi people and their leadership. But I wish to tell my colleagues, I didn't see a whole lot of difference in what those people wanted and what we want for our families. For us to speak in a sterile way that there will be no impact whatsoever on all those Iraqis, no matter what their faith or their heritage, belies the fact that millions will die. That is not my estimate, that is the estimate of many very learned scholars on the Middle East. We heard this week a mention from the Secretary General of the United Nations advising against a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq in terms of how that would play out in the Middle East. I think of the children that I did skin grafts on in Iraq who are now in their middle twenties, and the hope that they have for a safe and secure freedom, to actually have a Government that is a function of the beliefs of the multitudes who live in Iraq. Despite all our mistakes, should their hopes be dashed? We look at the sacrifices, we look at the moneys we have spent, but we never look at it in terms of the lives of the Iraqis. The contention is we cause more violence because we are there than what will happen when we withdraw. If I could know for sure that what the experts tell us is wrong and millions of Iraqis will not die, I could probably be in agreement with some of the positions of those who want to change our course right now. But I don't know that and, as a matter of fact, the experts say the exact opposite will happen and millions will die. So we do have a moral obligation. The other question we ought to bring forward is the contention we want to change the rules of the Senate on a vote tonight when everybody knows that a cloture vote and a requirement of 60 votes on major issues has been the rule of the Senate for years. It is a precedent longstanding that we have found on both sides of the aisle, no matter who is in charge, works well on contentious issues. The vast majority of Republicans are ready to vote on cloture tonight. We didn't have that opportunity. We are going to vote on cloture tomorrow morning at 11. But we also know that if cloture fails, we probably will not be on the Defense bill. The question I have for my colleagues is, they control the Armed Services Committee. They wrote the Defense authorization bill. Why in the world, when our troops need guidance, when we need new reauthorizations, when we need items for the military that are highly important to the success now, not just in Iraq but throughout the world, would we pull a bill and not continue to work on it? As a matter of fact, this debate, which we had 2 months ago and now are having again, is keeping us from doing some of the business we need to be doing in terms of observing and doing oversight of the Federal Government. This Defense authorization bill has $13 billion worth of earmarks, earmarks that the Pentagon does not want, but we want, we want for constituencies, we want for campaign supporters, we want because we know better--the very type of thing that is going to hurt in the long run the confidence of the people in this Chamber. So instead of continuing to work on the Defense authorization bill, it is going to get pulled in the morning and we are going to go to higher education reconciliation. The question we ought to be asking and what the American people ought to ask is, because one vote fails on cloture, do we not have an obligation to go on and authorize defense expenditures? I believe we do. One vote should not make or break that bill. It was not part of the original Defense authorization bill that came out of committee. Why would we not continue to work on it and give our military the authorization to do what they need to do in the future? Someone asked me earlier today if this was a political stunt? No, I don't think so. I think we need to have this debate. I think the more the American people learn about what the consequences are when we leave Iraq, the more likely they are to have a second thought about the pressure and tension they feel on this terrible situation. And as they learn what the consequences will be and also see a perspective about at least giving General Petraeus until September 15, as they hear that debate, I think minds will be changed or at least attention will be turned to it. A couple of things that I think also ought to be asked on the Reed- Levin amendment are, How does the Reed-Levin amendment address Iranian influence in Iraq in the future? How does the Reed-Levin amendment address increasing Iranian influence in the region, including Iran's adverse influence on the Arab-Israeli peace process? How does the Reed- Levin amendment guard against a regional conflict? If the policy of the Reed-Levin amendment became law, would the United States stay out of the humanitarian catastrophe and ethnic cleansing that will surely follow with a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces? If the policy of the Reed-Levin amendment became law, would the United States offer financial assistance to neighboring countries forced to absorb the massive number of refugees fleeing such a conflict? If the policy of the Reed-Levin amendment became law, what would the cost be to the U.S. Treasury in lives if the United States eventually had to return to the Middle East, in terms of forces? I don't think those questions can go unanswered in this debate, and yet they have not been addressed. What we do know is we have a tinderbox. What we don't know, but some are suggesting, is the tinderbox will quiet down if we leave. If we leave, I hope they are right. I don't think they are right. I think this is a time that will really test the mettle of this country. I think the conflict we see over the debate in this body is not bad for our country; I think it is good for our country. It is one of the attributes that make us strong. Leaving Iraq, losing in Iraq will be terrible for our country in the long run--not in the short run but in the long run. It will limit our influence in the Middle East. It will limit the trust and viability of our Nation with every other nation under which we have any type of security arrangement. But most importantly, it will put us back 10 to 15 years in terms of doing what we need to do in the world. Senator Durbin and I are working hard on the Darfur situation. Darfur is going to seem like a blip on a screen compared to what is going to happen in Iraq when we leave. What we do know is what is happening in Iraq today, the concentration of the violence, especially the suicide bombers. Two things are happening. One is they are moving away from the areas in which the surge is employed. That is why you see Kirkuk the first time hit. But we also know that 85 percent of the suicide bombers aren't Iraqis; they are al-Qaida, from outside of Iraq. I suspect they are going to overplay their hand like they did in Anbar Province, which is why those Sunnis now are allied with coalition forces. So I would ask the Members of this body, No. 1, to not assume that any of us who support the present course until September in Iraq have had our arms twisted. We have not. We actually believe it is the best policy. I don't believe we need to have our moral compass checked, as suggested by the Senator from New Jersey. We just happen to have a difference of opinion. And the difference really doesn't stem on any factual basis, but it stems on long-range versus short-range thinking. When I took the oath for this office, my oath was to uphold the Constitution and to do what was best for the country--not for my political career, not what will win the next election, not what will get me more seats in the Senate, but what I truly thought in my heart and mind would be great and best for this country. The Iraq war is a perplexing situation for all of us. I believe it is wrong for us to stop in the middle of a surge that is having some progress. Not what we would like, maybe, not to the degree we would like, but for the first time, in approximately 2 years, it is making positive things out of things that were very negative. It is my hope that as we continue this debate, we will recognize that the most important question is, Then what? What happens if the Reed- Levin amendment becomes law? What happens to our military? What happens in the Middle East? What happens in Iran, which is now known to be training a vast number of people to influence the outcome? What happens to the morale of our military? What happens to our relationship with allies around the world when we can no longer be counted on as a reliable partner? What next? That is the question we should be debating--what next? What are the consequences of not fulfilling a moral obligation to clean up a mess we helped create? You can say we don't have that obligation, but we do. History will judge this Nation on how it handles this situation. We may, in fact, walk away, but if we did, and if we do, I believe we belie the heritage of the sacrifice that has been made by so many people for so many years in our history that predates us. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. That is the only objection I have.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I have no knowledge, I say to the majority leader, that has been worked out. The last memo I have from my staff director is that it has not. If that is the case, again, I will live up to my word that I promised the majority leader and senior Senator from New York that you would not have an objection from me--

Mr. COBURN. If that is the case, then I don't have a basis for objection.

Mr. COBURN. My staff has relayed to me, the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee minority staff, who have been working on this issue since we passed the bill, relayed to me before I came over that they still will not grant us that access in the bill.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I say to the majority leader, I do not mean to delay this bill. I am on that subcommittee. I worked hard on this bill. I agree with the majority leader that many of those recommendations need to go forward. This bill spends $12 billion over the next 3 years. We have worked tirelessly and worked hard. Mr. President, $9 billion of that $12 billion is grants. It is certainly not in the best interest of those most at risk, but I lost that fight. So I am willing to let that go. But the postgrant review process, which we asked for and were told would be in the bill before we went to conference, is not in it. Every time we ask about it, we get pushed back. Until we look at how we are going to spend the money, until we can satisfy that, I don't believe we are ready to go to conference, and I also believe there are still some problems with ports in terms of solving those problems and some of the tier 1 issues we have. My objection is not meant to be dilatory or anything else, other than to make the point that if we are going to spend $9 billion in grants to carry these recommendations out--and that is a small portion of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, but it is the $9 billion--and we refuse to have a postgrant auditing process where we look to see-- because we know from what IGs have told us and the GAO, much of the money we have been spending post-9/11 has been wasted, and it hasn't gone to prevent the next terrorist act. I have a personal interest as well. I have a daughter who lives in New York City. I want her protected. I don't want to do something that might stop that, but we have to do it in a way that makes us good stewards of the taxpayers' money. That is my reason for objecting. It is not on behalf of the Republican leadership. It is on behalf of myself and my staff in trying to get good value for our money.

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, if I might be recognized, I say to my colleague for New York, I have been working on this for 6 months. This isn't new. They knew this was coming. These are commitments that were made that were not kept. This is not a reflection on Senator Lieberman. This is a staff-driven problem. The only leverage I have to get staff to do what they are supposed to be doing is this. I apologize to the Senator and to his constituents. If my colleagues fix it over the break, when we come back, I would not have any objection.