Jim DeMint

Mr. DeMINT

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and bring up DeMint amendment No. 1026.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I would like to take a few moments to explain this amendment. I appreciate the chairman allowing me to offer this amendment. It relates to what we call TARP funds or troubled asset funds we passed last year. If I can take my colleagues through a little bit of history on how this happened, at the end of last year, the President and the Secretary of the Treasury came to us and explained a very dire crisis, not only in the United States but the world, that the whole financial system was on the verge of collapse, and if we did not pass this $700 billion Troubled Asset Recovery Program, it was very likely we would have financial chaos and even depression in the United States and around the world. It was a pretty stunning presentation. It curiously lacked a lot of facts. There were no PowerPoint slides or statistics or graphs. It was more: Trust us, we know this is going to happen. We need to pass this immediately. What they were going to do with the funds--and Secretary Paulson was very specific--was they were going to take this money and buy troubled assets in financial organizations that were too big to fail, that if they failed, it would cause severe problems all around the world. We were being told that unless we pass this money and use it immediately-- and they were talking within 24 to 48 hours--to buy troubled assets, the financial system in this country so many depended on would collapse. At this point, after hearing a number of stories, we started this time last year mailing out checks, mortgage bailouts, all kinds of spending programs. None of it worked. None of it had been done exactly like they said it would. I did not trust the whole process. This was a Republican President. I voted against it, but many of my colleagues voted to pass the troubled asset funds to buy toxic assets, troubled assets in this country and around the world. It passed, and the President signed it. Not one of these troubled assets has been purchased. Not one. A funny thing happened. The world financial system did not collapse. The people who told us it would either did not have the facts or they were not telling us the truth. What they did with the money was loan some to the banks. Some of the banks had to have it immediately, apparently, or they would fail. They were too big to fail. We had to have the money. What our Government did was go to a whole lot of other banks that were doing OK and say: You have to take this too. If you don't take it, then it will be harder for these other banks to take it. We need to have this money spread around. They did not buy the toxic assets. They loaned it to banks and put a lot of pressure on other banks to take it. As soon as they did, we got more and more involved with their business, regulators on the banks' backs. Some of the banks want to give it back. Guess what. We won't let them unless they pass some kind of test. The Government has moved closer and closer--it kind of reminds me of the children's story, ``The Gingerbread Man.'' It is was one of my favorite stories growing up. If you remember, an older couple did not have any children. The husband was out working in the garden. The wife was making some gingerbread. She had a little left over and made a gingerbread man and put him in the oven. An hour or so later, she heard some rattling in the oven, opened it, and out jumped a gingerbread man. The gingerbread man ran around. She couldn't catch it. It ran out of the house. The husband tried to catch him. All they heard from the gingerbread man was: Run, run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I am the gingerbread man. Long story. The gingerbread man ran through the whole community. The townspeople were chasing him. The horses and the mules and everyone were chasing the gingerbread man, who kept saying: Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I am the gingerbread man. The gingerbread man came to a wide river and not accustomed to swimming--gingerbread probably doesn't hold up real well in a river--he was stuck with all the town running behind him. Then appeared a fox that offered to give him a ride across the river. The gingerbread man was real suspicious. He knew that fox would probably eat him. The fox said: Don't worry, you can sit way back on my back on my tail way away from my mouth. No trouble, not to worry. Gingerbread man didn't have a lot of choice. He jumped right on his back. As the fox got out farther and farther in the river, he sank a little deeper and deeper. Gingerbread man howled and jumped up a little closer on his neck. Out a little farther, the fox went down a little bit deeper. Gingerbread man jumped right up on his head. As he got close to the other side, he started sinking his head down and gingerbread man jumped right up on his nose, and as soon as he did, slap, gingerbread man was in the mouth and gone. Gingerbread man is a lot like our free market system, free enterprise system, and what our whole free market system is in America--fast, dynamic, made our country exceptional and prosperous. Our banking system is the same way. Some of the greatest people in our communities are running banks. With this TARP program, what we did is similar to a fox. We invited our whole financial system to jump on the back of the Federal Government. What they told us they were going to do they did not do, and each time the Government took another step, a different step, like the gingerbread man and the fox, the gingerbread man jumped closer and closer to the mouth. What our whole free market system is doing now is sitting on the nose of the fox, the Federal Government, which keeps taking us deeper and deeper into this river. The Federal Government did not buy toxic assets. They kind of pushed loans out into the market. They said they had to do that. Now we see where they are, telling us this does not look good on the books of banks for it to be a loan. So we are going to just change the balance sheet from a loan to an asset. We are going to turn these loans into common stock, equity, which will make the Federal Government owners in the banks, voting owners. Folks, there is kind of a sacred line in this country we had not crossed. There is a separation between what the Government does and what the private sector does, and this Government does not own private companies. But just like this fox, we have been led into this thing with misinformation--I hope that is all it is and not outright deception--but we are at the point where the Government is now telling us they are going to own a lot of these banks. They will not let them give it back. They are going to convert it to ownership. All these private companies out there are going to be owned, in part, by the Federal Government. What we are hearing from investors--Chairman Bernanke said it at lunch today--is when they are trying to get people to invest in financial institutions, what they are finding is a strange thing. The private investors, smart investors, do not want to get in bed with the Federal Government because they do not know what we are going to do. They have every reason not to know what we are going to do because we have yet to do what we said we were going to do with this $700 billion, which will ultimately be over $1 trillion, with which we are now playing in the private stock market. As we pass this bill that is supposed to protect homeowners, I am offering an amendment. It is an amendment that would force this Government to do at least part or keep it from going further than it already has into the private sector. It would prohibit the Government from converting these loans, which are sometimes referred to as preferred stock now. It is not voting. It would prohibit them from converting this to common stock, to ownership, to equity in these banks. It should not surprise anyone. We were told this would not happen in the first place. We were told the money was going to buy these toxic assets. This amendment would at least put up a firewall that says: You cannot go any further, fox; you cannot take over private enterprise in America. A lot of my colleagues are going to give a lot of excuses why they cannot vote for this amendment, but I hope America is looking in at this and remembering that it was not this Government that made this country great, that made us exceptional and prosperous and good, that put us on the top of the world in a lot of ways, the envy of the world. It was not this Government. It was a limited government. It was free markets and free people. This Government now has pushed and pushed and intervened in the private market to the point where it is not working. We wonder why people are not investing and why the markets are erratic. Because no one knows what the Federal Government is going to do once it starts playing in the stock market in this country, once it starts arbitrarily converting loans that were for a crisis to own our banks, to own our private companies. They took the TARP money and made loans to General Motors. What are they going to do with that? They are going to convert it to common stock so this Federal Government owns General Motors. That is not America. That is not free markets. That is not free enterprise. That is not what we signed up for, and we shouldn't allow it. This amendment is pretty simple: Government, you cannot go any further. Enough is enough. You cannot convert these loans to common stock. We are going to have a firewall between where you are now and where you want to go. Folks, we cannot let them go any further. We have lost the line between Government and the private sector. The Government is not set up to manage things and control things. Everything we try to do, we mess up. What we are here for is to develop a framework of law and predictable regulations so free markets and free people can operate. We are not set up to manage auto companies. I was in a meeting this morning talking about how we were going to manage General Motors and Chrysler. I have been in a lot of boardrooms because I have done a lot of strategic planning for private companies in my lifetime. It is so obvious, we do not have the capability to manage a dynamic, complex, global marketplace. That is central planning. That is what Karl Marx thought we could do. But every time it has been tried in the history of the world, it has failed because there is no way a legislative body and a large national government such as this can manage the private sector. What happens, though, is we get involved, we make things worse, and then we say we need more government to solve the problem. We are doing that now with AIG, the largest insurance company in the country. We have gotten in, we own most of the stock, mismanagement is rampant, and we are talking about we need more government, we need more money. Folks, it doesn't work. I would encourage my colleagues to consider what I think we are hearing from all across America: Enough is enough. We can't do this under the guise of one crisis after another. Let's stop this rampage of the Federal Government into our private lives, the free markets, the whole concept of America. Please support this amendment that would stop the conversion of loans--TARP money--into common stock. It is a simple concept. We shouldn't be able to excuse our way around this one. I thank the Chair, I yield back, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, if I could have my colleagues' attention, the next amendment is one that would prohibit the Federal Government from converting TARP loans to common equity. Millions of Americans are telling us that enough is enough. We were told that the TARP money would be used one way, and it hasn't been used that way. It has been used for loans. We cannot let it go further to let these loans convert to common stock. I urge my colleagues to support at least some firewall between what the Federal Government does and the private sector. We didn't approve TARP funds so the Government could become common equity shareholders in banks across the country. Let's let them give this back when they are capitalized, but let's not get the Government in the business of owning banks. My amendment would prohibit the conversion of these loans to common equity. I encourage my colleagues to support it.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, in a moment I would like to bring up an amendment, but in deference to Senator Dodd, I wish to wait for him to be back on the floor. In the meantime, I would like to explain amendment No. 1026 and talk about it briefly until the Senator returns. We are all well aware of the bailout bill that was passed last October. It had one purpose, at least as that purpose was described to us, and that was to purchase what they called toxic assets that were clogging up the credit system. That $700 billion was then used in other ways, and I believe unconstitutionally, to loan money to banks, insurers, auto companies, and to actually turn those loans into preferred stock, in some cases. It now appears the administration is going to take this a little bit further. We have seen the hiring and firing of executives. We have seen the Government, in effect, break contracts that were established in the private sector. We see the Government continuing to use this TARP money to gain more and more control over private sector industries, particularly the financial industries. The administration appears now to have a plan that would swap this loan money in the form of preferred stock for common stock, which means we not only own but we have voting rights and, in some cases, controlling interests in General Motors. My amendment addresses specifically financial institutions, but we are talking about financial, auto companies, and other aspects of our economy using this TARP money in ways that were totally different than we ever imagined. My amendment addresses specifically banks. It would prohibit the Federal Government from converting preferred stock to common stock and basically taking ownership and control of banks across the Nation. Many banks that participated in the TARP funds suggest they were pressured to take it when they did not need it. Many banks now say they would like to give it back, and they are not allowed to give it back. We need to back the Federal Government out of our private sector financial system and set up a good system of laws and regulations so it can work in a way that is transparent, honest, and good for the American people. But we don't need the Federal Government to own our banks and to try to run the day-to-day business in our banks, just like we do not need the Federal Government to own General Motors and to run General Motors. My amendment would address, specifically, the financial institutions in our country and prohibit the use of TARP funds to be translated into common stock ownership and voting rights. Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, I would like to bring up amendment No. 1026.

Mr. DeMINT. I thank the Senator and yield the floor.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I appreciate the offer very much, but knowing that the chairman probably doesn't see my nature as good as Senator Coburn's, I suspect it might not stay in, in conference. I would like a rollcall vote, but I thank the Senator from North Dakota very much for his offer.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, my motion simply codifies some promises during the last campaign focusing on health care as part of this budget. My motion would create a 60-vote point of order for any legislation that takes away a person's right to pick their own doctor, to choose their own plan, or to keep the health plan they already have. These are promises the President made, that no health care reform would take away those rights, and my motion is to insist that the budget conference report include that.

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, we are here to talk about the budget. Obviously there are a number of different things in the budget of concern and some controversy. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this motion which addresses a particular part of the budget related to health care. During the campaign the President promised that any changes in health care would protect the patient's right to pick their plan, their doctor, and to keep the plan they have if they want it. My motion simply codifies that, in a sense, we make sure we keep the promise. In the budget there is a downpayment which has been referred to of, I think, around $700 billion on some massive changes in health care. My concern is this could mean an expansion of Government plans rather than making private health insurance more available to patients. We do not need to just speak of the public interest when we are talking about health care; it is important that we talk about the patient's interests. I think most of us agree that when the patients can work directly with their doctors, choose their own doctors, choose their own health plans, the Nation is better off. There is an old saying that success has many fathers while failure is an orphan. Our health care failures have a father. In most cases it is the Government. See, our policies make it hard for individuals to have a health insurance plan they can afford and own and keep. One part of that is the Government today pays for over half of the health care in America through Medicare, Medicaid, children's health programs, and veterans health programs. But, unfortunately, when they pay doctors in hospitals they often pay below cost. In fact, it has been estimated that Government payment causes private health insurance to be 20 percent to 30 percent more expensive than it would be if everyone paid their fair share of the cost. So the Government at the beginning is a big part of the problem of making health insurance too expensive for individuals. A number of us had the opportunity this week to hear from the President and CEO of Safeway Supermarkets. They have over 200,000 employees. He was going through a lot of the statistics about their health plan and how they have been able to keep the cost of health care level for the last 4 years. They have done a lot of things not only to make health insurance and health care more accessible, they have done a lot of things to make their employees healthier. You see, they use a lot of incentives, recognizing that 70 percent of our health problems as Americans are caused by our own behavior--whether it be smoking or overweight or poor diets. It is pretty obvious through the statistics that people have a lot of control over how healthy they are and therefore how much they have to spend on health care. Safeway, through a lot of incentives that discourage smoking and encourage people to get in better shape--eat better, lose weight--are able to save their employees money and to make them healthier and to reduce the cost of the health care for the company and for the employees. There are a lot of demonstrations like this around the country that show private health insurance can work. Freedom can work if we let it. The President of Safeway asked us to make some changes that would give them more flexibility to offer even more incentives for people to cut their own cost of health care by changing their behaviors. This is something we should all want. Instead of moving immediately to some massive new Federal plan, let's look at what we can do to let the free market system work, where patients and doctors and employers and associations can work together to make private health insurance work. There are a lot of things we do here that make it harder. I will list a few. Small businesses could do the same thing as Safeway if we allowed them to work together in associations to buy their health insurance and to provide these incentives for better health and better access to health care. But, yet, we have consistently voted against allowing this to happen. Why will we not let that happen? Why will we not let individuals deduct the cost of their health insurance, like we do employers? It is almost as though we do not want individuals to have health insurance. Then we throw up our hands and talk about how many people are uninsured in our country. Health insurance would work much better if it were portable. We could change some of our laws and regulations to make it much easier for people who have insurance with one company to take it with them when they leave to go to another company or to start their own business. Yet we refuse to do those things that would allow the market to work. Right now in this country, individuals can only buy health care or health insurance from companies that are in their State, that are certified in their State. Why not let people buy health insurance from any State in the country as we do with other services? Why restrict it to a one-State monopoly, where regulations or mandates or other things could shoot up the cost of health care? We could create a more competitive, higher quality health insurance market if we let it become national market. We do other things that seem absurd, such as we will allow a small employer to put money in a health savings account for their employees but we will not let that employee use the money in the health savings account to pay for a health insurance premium. Why do we do that? If we want people to have health insurance, to have the freedom to buy and own their own health insurance, we would do these simple things that put the patient more in charge. They would have better health care, better health insurance, and probably a lot better health. What we are doing every day is sliding closer to a national or socialized health care system, saying the system we have does not work when the fact is we have done about everything we can to make it impossible for a free system to work. We do have serious problems and challenges in our health care system but almost all of them are made worse by the people who work in this place everyday. The question now is whether more Government will make those problems better or worse. I think to ask that question answers it on its face. We know the free market did not create these problems because there is no free market for health care in the United States today. Government dominates the market. It does not pay its fair share. It regulates everything to the point where it makes it very difficult for the private market to work. Let's not give up on freedom and go to socialism here in America before we have tried to fix the simple things that are obvious, in front of us, the things that companies such as Safeway say we can do to provide better insurance and make people healthier and lower their cost and give them plans they can keep. No matter what the problem is in Washington, people here seem to think the solution is more Government. But we do not need a new Federal program for health care. We need to remove the Federal barriers that keep freedom from working in health care. We have taken over banks, auto industry, mortgage lending, education, transportation system. Look at the areas the Government is running today and ask yourself, do you want to run health care the way we have been running education in America; as we have been running the financial markets for the last few months; or how we are doing with the auto industry now that we have essentially taken it over? Health care is the best in the world here in America because of that small segment of the private market, the free market, that is working-- the best pharmaceuticals, the best technology, the best private health care. Socialism does not work. There is not an example in the world where it does. We keep hearing here, why don't we be more like Europe or more like Canada, where people have to wait 6 months or more to get an MRI. The only reason theirs works as well as it does is they are the beneficiary of a lot of American technology that is developed in the free market system. They are the beneficiaries of a lot of the prescription drugs that come out of our country that are developed here because there is still a free market. This is a reason that the technology and the prescriptions are not being developed in other countries that are socialistic. Freedom works and we need to expand it here in America. Let me talk briefly about this motion to instruct conferees. Hopefully it will not be controversial because it is essentially a promise from the President of the United States. My amendment would require a supermajority vote to consider any legislation in the future that would take away people's freedom to keep their own health plan or take away people's freedom to choose their own doctor or decrease the number of people with private insurance while increasing the number of people in Government-rationed health care programs. All my amendment says is give freedom a chance. The American people have not given up on freedom and neither should their elected officials. I thank the ranking member, I thank the Presiding Officer, and ask for the consideration of my motion. I yield the floor.

Mr. DeMINT. I send a motion to the desk.

Mr. DeMINT

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

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, our economy has shed 3.3 million jobs in the last 5 months. The Dow Jones is down 25 percent since September. When the bank bailout or TARP was conceived, it was conceived, ironically, to save the market. We had been told by both President Bush and President Obama that we needed this massive spending in order to get the financial markets working again and the economy moving. It has been 6 months since Congress gave away $700 billion to the Bush administration with essentially no strings attached. The Obama administration has, unfortunately, continued conducting massive and risky experiments in central planning since taking control of the TARP in January. We need to remember that we have yet to use this money the way it was promised. We were told, when this money was requested during the last months of the Bush administration, that if we didn't have all this money to buy the toxic assets, the world financial market would collapse. I am afraid we were not told the truth. Clearly, the world financial market did not collapse, although it continues to have trouble. But we did not buy up any of the toxic assets, and the world financial market didn't collapse. The Bush administration--and now the Obama administration-- set about figuring out different ways to use the money rather than admitting the ideas they had were not right. Sixteen of the 19 banks that received the largest amounts of this TARP money are loaning less now than they did when the money was provided. We received a report this week that the design of the TARP was ripe for corruption, waste, and fraud. There are already a number of cases in the media that this is happening. Yet we continue to toy with this money in ways that are unprecedented. Now the Obama administration has announced President Obama is going to use the money in a totally different way. We need to look at what they are proposing. What our economy needs now more than anything else is certainty, certainty that the Government will not undo contracts retroactively, which we are talking about doing here, certainty that spending will be brought under control to avoid future tax increases and runaway inflation, and certainty that failure will not be rewarded by a government bailout. Of course, there has been anything but certainty from our Government in the last several months. Government intervention has become the norm rather than the exception. Now we understand the Treasury Department has concocted a new scheme to convert these loans, which are preferred stock in certain banks, into common equity in order to increase those banks' capital. This is only a paper change. We move it from a debt to an asset, and we say we have done something. The problem is, when the Government has common stock in banks, it owns banks. It would likely have positions on the board. The taxpayer, who is making this money available, is at risk. If a bank goes under, the common stock is gone. So we are taking what was some security for taxpayers and shifting it to another place. We are crossing a dangerous line where the Government owns and controls banks and insurance companies, auto companies, a line we have never crossed before as a country, a country based on free markets, not central planning by government. The American people are starting to send us a signal that they are concerned, alarmed by the amount of spending, all these bailouts, the rewarding of failure, the debt we are creating. We saw about a million Americans last week in numerous tea parties across the country take to the streets, hold up their signs, express to their elected officials that we need to stop this out-of-control spending and waste going on in Washington. Loaning banks money temporarily is one thing. It is something I oppose because I have seen government operate long enough to know that it can't do it effectively. It can't do it without waste and fraud and corruption. Our own Treasury Department has now told us that. We can't put this much money out there without bad things happening. We need to let the market work. If we have banks that are too sick to succeed, then we need to allow them to fail while we protect the depositors in that bank. The amendment I offer focuses attention on the idea of government owning banks. It is pretty simple. It would prohibit the Government from converting TARP loans to common stock. We have heard of other amendments that would allow banks to give this money back and allow the money to go to paying down debt. This is not a slush fund that we created for politicians to play with, to scheme in different ways on how we could come up with new ways to spend money we don't have. It is all borrowed money. If it is not needed the way it was intended, it needs to come back to the taxpayer rather than what is happening now. The idea that we are going to have the Federal Government actually own stock in banks, insurance companies, and other private companies is an idea we need to stay away from. I hope all of my colleagues will support this amendment that simply prohibits our Government from converting what was supposed to be loans, what was promised to be loans, what was promised to be used to buy bad assets so banks could loan again, it would prohibit this money from being used for common stock and ownership in the banking system. I thank the Chair for the time and encourage my colleagues to support the amendment. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DeMINT. I object.

Mr. DeMINT. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 994.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Kansas for making such a powerful, persuasive case for human rights and freedom in North Korea and around the world. I wish to change subjects slightly for a few minutes and talk about some experiences over the last couple of weeks. Stop The Spending Last Wednesday, tens of thousands of Americans celebrated tax day by speaking out against the direction of this Federal Government. I attended three tea parties in South Carolina. What struck me the most was how nonpartisan these events were. These were families, couples with children, not necessarily Republicans or Democrats, but both were there. They did not care about parties or candidates. They cared about their kids and the debt we are saddling them with, with almost everything we do in Washington. They cited with their signs and their voices that every American today has a $35,000 share in our national debt. That is just today, not counting what we have added. And it does not count the unfunded costs of Social Security and Medicare that we borrowed from our future. The way we are spending up here, the per capita debt in our country will soon exceed the per capita income. We are not just bankrupting our country, we are bankrupting generations of Americans not even born yet. This is a moral issue. Every dollar spent represents another freedom seized, another constitutional principle ignored, another opportunity squandered. The American people are tired of politicians--Republicans and Democrats--borrowing and spending money on programs we do not need, programs they know will not work. The message of the tea parties is clear: Stop growing Government and spending all our money, all our kids' money, all our grandkids' money. But will we get the message? We keep hearing that we are in the middle of an economic crisis, but we are in the middle of a political crisis. We hear a lot about corporate greed, but that pales in comparison to the political greed of elected officials who continue to make promises that we cannot pay for and borrowing the money to do it. A poll conducted last week suggests that while a majority of American people have a favorable view of these tea parties, only 13 percent of the political class does. It is the same pattern over and over again on the stimulus, on earmarks, on socialized and rationed health care, on the proposed tax on electricity and energy. Americans disagree with Washington on these socialistic experiments, and our leaders act as if it is the American people who are the ones who are out of touch. Indeed, no sooner had the protesters gone home than they learned that their preference for freedom, limited Government, and local control marked them as potential terrorist threats, according to a report by the Department of Homeland Security. Americans have been misled and lied to by elected officials who promise the world while stealing our future. And they have had enough. Tea parties are only the beginning. Americans have come to understand that many of our problems are caused by more Government and that they can only be solved by more freedom. Think of the things that are categorized as crises today--a crisis in education, a crisis in health care, a crisis in energy, our transportation infrastructure, banking and finance, the auto industry. But who has been running these services for the last several decades? Who has been running our education system? It has not been the free market. It has not been the free people. It has been Government, with the price we are paying expanding faster than any other service. We spend more per capita than any other country in the world, yet consistently we lose ground to other industrialized nations. We do not need more Federal control, we need more freedom in education, more choices, more competition, more technology, the kinds of things that Government and union control cannot provide in our education. It may be a crisis, but it is not one caused by freedom, it is one caused by politicians. What about health care? We talk about the number of uninsured Americans, but have we given freedom a chance? The rules and laws we pass here make it virtually impossible for individuals to own and keep their own insurance policy. There are ways we can solve this problem, there are ways we can get every American insured without spending one additional dime of tax dollars. But instead, the movement in Washington is toward Government health care, socialized medicine, and we have made a downpayment in our recent budget in that direction. We have an energy crisis, but who has held back this country from exploring and developing our own energy reserves? It has not been the free markets or the free people; it has been this Government. And under the name of environmental protection, we have actually made the environment worse by blocking nuclear energy, blocking natural gas development, and not moving where other countries have toward cleaner energy sources that are within our reach. What about our transportation infrastructure? Who has been running that? Increasingly, the Federal Government takes more and more gas tax dollars and instead of giving them back to States for their priorities, we earmark it in every different direction. The last Secretary of Transportation basically said we cannot have a transportation program because it is all politically directed. That is political greed. That is not a fault of freedom. What about banking and finance? The Government was going to help our financial system, so they made loans, not just to those too big to fail. If you talk to local bankers, the Federal Government essentially forced these banks to take this money, and now they will not let them give it back. And they are now talking about converting these loans into common stock so the Federal Government owns the banks. That is not freedom. That is not the America we know. That is nationalization, that is socialization of a country. Freedom has not failed in the financial markets. It has been this Government, our oversight, and the Government intermediaries of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that essentially packaged and brokered all of these so-called toxic assets. Freedom has not failed. Has freedom failed in our auto industry? Of course not. The Government and the labor unions have been running the American auto companies for years. Management has very little discretion. If you look at other auto companies that are free of Government control, free of the barnacles of unionization, we see these companies succeeding in the United States. You cannot bail them out with more money; you have to bail them out with freedom. Over the work period, I had a chance to visit Europe and the Middle East. I had a chance to welcome the new Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, back to office. It was interesting to hear him talk. He is concerned about the direction of our country moving toward a more socialist direction, while he realized the opportunities in Israel were to move away from socialization to more free markets, more land reform that allowed more property ownership, exactly the opposite of where we see us going. He realized that in order to have a prosperous Israel and a strong military and a bright future, he needed to move his country more toward freedom. I heard the same thing in Brussels from a lot of our European allies, startled at the level of spending and debt the United States has taken on, concerned that we have the ability to pay it back, concerned that our commitment to the military is falling off, concerned that America will not be there as promised as part of a NATO partner sometime in the future. But it was concern about our abandonment of free market principles, free trade, the things that can make the world safe and prosperous, that the United States seemed to be pulling back from those principles. I just wanted to share a few thoughts today because as we talk about more Government and more spending in almost every area of our lives, and we continue to blame our problems on freedom and capitalism--the people who work hard and take personal responsibility--it seems we have it backwards from what actually made America great and exceptional and unique and prosperous and good. I keep hearing our economic problems were caused by the free market. But what free market? What have I talked about that has had a chance to work as a free market? If you look at those areas where the Government has not yet reached its tentacles in to regulate to the point of paralysis, look at our telecommunication system, which we are talking about in committee as to how we can regulate it. The incredible explosion of innovation and choice and competition--the cell phones, the BlackBerrys, the fantastic ways we have to communicate all over the world--could never have been created by a government system. It was created by free people and free markets, and that can work in every area, as it has before in America. Let's not blame this financial crisis and the housing problems on freedom and free markets. The Government itself, through its public- private partnership of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was the broker of these deals--the middle man of toxic assets. No private company would take the kind of risks that were taken unless they could first get cheap money, which the Federal Reserve provided, and then have a basic government guarantee for these loans that they were making and packaging. The Government is in the middle of this crisis. It is political greed. It is not the fault of freedom. This Congress and this Federal Government are really at a crossroads, and the American people are standing there with these tea parties telling us: Don't give up on freedom. Government does not work. Socialism does not work. There is no example in history where it has. Yet we contemplate every day another step closer to more Government control. I am thankful the American people are standing up. They are alarmed at what we are doing. It has nothing to do with politics. It has nothing to do with a political party. It has everything to do with what makes this country great and good. But we have abandoned it in Congress, and this crossroads at which we stand is the crossroads between freedom and socialism. Some folks say you shouldn't use that term, ``socialism.'' But, folks, when the Government basically controls or owns most aspects of economic production, which is where we are headed today, we are talking about socialism, and socialism that is to the left of where many European countries are. We can stop it, but we have to stop it starting today, and that is why these tea parties are so important. I hope they will shake up a few people here in both parties. I hope they will send a message that this Government is for the people, and of the people, and by the people. If we don't get it right, if we don't listen to them, these people can take it back, and I am thankful they are willing to stand up and express their voices. And I am very sorry anyone in this administration or this Government would categorize them as a threat in any way just because they are willing to speak out against what they know is wrong in Washington. I encourage my colleagues, as we think about one spending program after another, one Government takeover after another, that we not give up on freedom and that we listen to the American people. With that, Mr. President, I yield back.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, there are a number of concerns about this budget, and I have heard from a number of Americans who see in the budget hundreds of millions of dollars for health care which suggests that the Government is not only going to expand into banks and auto companies and education but to expand into health care. One of the propositions President Obama made is that Americans will always be able to pick their own plans and choose their own doctors. This amendment simply codifies that. It creates a point of order against any legislation that would eliminate the ability of a patient to pick their own plans or their own doctor. I encourage my colleagues to support it.

Mr. DeMINT. If you can assure me we will win.

Mr. DeMINT. I call up amendment No. 965.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I wish to call up DeMint amendment No. 963.

Mr. DeMINT. It is a done deal. Thank you.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I wish to call up amendment No. 964.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add as cosponsors Senators Bennett, Enzi, Brownback, Coburn, and Vitter.