Jim DeMint

Mr. DeMINT

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. DeMINT

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 I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I wish to speak for few minutes on the Serve America Act. I think this is a great opportunity to talk about what is good about a lot of the Members of the Senate. I certainly appreciate and applaud the sponsors of this bill for their good intentions and know their hearts are in the right place. Some of my best friends are supporting this bill. But I think, as we look at what is good about the hearts of many Members of the Senate, we need to recognize this bill does represent a lot of what is wrong with our Federal Government today--a lot of our philosophies, and a lot of our departures from a constitutional form of government. What works in America today is our civil society--a lot of the volunteer groups that many of us have been a part of. I know for years I spent more time in United Way and a lot of the charity groups, being on their boards back in my community, and I saw what the volunteer arts groups and PTAs and health groups did to build a strong community. Civil society works in America. They are small groups. They are the true engines of character in our country. They promote service and patriotism. In this time where we have seen some of our economic institutions let us down, we have certainly seen our Government and our policies let us down, civil society does not let us down. It works in America today. It is understandable why Congress would want to get involved. We see that passion to serve, that desire to do something that is greater than yourselves. We look at that working in our civil society and we want to get involved and expand it. Unfortunately, our history shows us when Government gets involved, it tends to take something that is working and make it not work nearly as well. Civil society works because it is everything Government is not. It is small, it is personal, it is responsive, it is accountable. Civil society must be protected from any effort to make it more like Government. That is what we are doing with this bill today. This bill centralizes control of important functions of our civil society. There is a downside to good intentions here in Government. The Founders created a limited government and our oath to support and defend the Constitution means that is our focus here. Our oath is to a limited government. The Founders wanted the people to be free from our good intentions. Government charity is anathema to what our Founders intended and what our Constitution stands for. Despite our good intentions, where we try to implement those good intentions and our compassion through the force of Government, we are effectively violating our oath of office here. Well-intended legislation has left more than half of all Americans dependent on the Government. Today in America over half of Americans get their income from the government or a government source. About 20 percent of the country works for the government or an entity that gets its primary source of revenue from government. Another 20 percent gets their income and health care from Medicare or Social Security. Once you add in welfare and other subsidies, you make it so over half of all Americans are already dependent on the Government. This bill proposes to spend nearly $6 billion over 5 years, which means it will be probably $10 billion, probably more, over a 10-year period. It will have nearly a quarter of Americans working for it, which means it will be the 14th largest company, as far as employees, in the entire world. What have we done here that suggests we can manage anything like that? Do you see anything in our history as a Federal Government that shows we have the ability to effectively manage something like that without extreme levels of waste and fraud and abuse? Look what we have done recently with the stimulus plan and the bailout plans. As soon as it comes to light what is actually happening with that money, people are outraged at what is going on. Despite the good intentions of this bill, we are creating a huge new government entity that will be unmanageable and violates some of the core principles of our civil society. Every time the Government steps in to solve a problem, it creates three new problems in its place. This bill is everything wrong with how Congress sees the world. Government will make service organizations less effective, less responsive, and less personal. When the French historian de Tocqueville came to the United States not long after we were founded, one of the things that amazed him about our country that was so different from France was that in his home country when there was a problem, people would say: Someone ought to do it and government should do it; but in America we were different. When someone saw a problem, they went and got a friend and formed a small group and solved the problem themselves. Much of that was motivated by religious convictions that our place in this world is not only to help ourselves but to love and help those around us. That was key. Jefferson called it little democracies, when he saw these little groups all around America voluntarily doing things to solve problems and make communities better. Burke called them little platoons. Most people who understand America know that those voluntary groups are what made our country great and what sustain us even today. Civil society binds communities, not by its fruits, but by its motives--charity, donations, giving without thought of getting anything in return. This is the selfless sacrifice that happens throughout America today. This is what works. What does not work is what we are doing right here. The big difference is private service organizations exist for the people who receive the aid. Government service organizations exist for the people who give it--in this case, for the people who are paid to do it. You cannot pay people to volunteer and expect the organization to remain focused on its mission. Charity is a private, moral impulse, not a government program. Government will not and, by definition, cannot strengthen and replace the civil society. Volunteerism is something that works in America. When we think of America, we do not think of Congress and Presidents, we think of Little League games and PTA meetings and bake sales. Civil society is America. It responds to needs, meets challenges, and solves problems because it is free from Government. Because volunteers donate their time and money, accountability is acute. I have seen it. I have sat on a United Way board. Every year we evaluate every program and every dollar we have given to someone, and we determine is it working or can we make it more efficient. If the program is not working, the money goes away immediately. That does not happen here. If the program does not work here, we add more money to it. That is going to happen with every program we start, including the one we are talking about today. Projects that do not work in a civil society get cut. Organizers who lose or abuse funds are dismissed. It is voluntary. So everyone is invested in its success. We know the large groups throughout America, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the United Way, the Salvation Army, the YMCA, Catholic Charities, fraternal orders, groups such as Kiwanis, Rotary, Knights of Columbus. These are large organizations, but they work because they are locally controlled. Smaller groups, local arts councils and community theatres, PTAs, youth sports leagues, the animal rescues, the book clubs, crisis pregnancy centers, soup kitchens, food and other clothes drives that go on, church service groups, they are everywhere. Those are the little platoons, the little democracies that make this country work. For us to presume, in the Congress, that somehow we are going to reach out into all these groups and make it work better is pretty presumptuous based on our history. Why now? Why at a time in economic crisis with unimaginable debt and spending do we come in and say: We need to spend another $10 billion over the next 10 years to create another Government program to do something that is already working. At the same time, we are talking about creating this new bureaucracy to replace private voluntarism with Government programming. We are actually cutting some of the incentives for people to give to charity and for the private sector to work. The President's budget actually cuts the charitable donations of the people who give the most to charity in this country. So look at what we are doing. We are making it harder for the private sector to work. You also look at what we have done over the years, forgetting that a lot of private charity and the motivation to serve God and community is a religious-based motivation. What have we done in this country? We have essentially tried to purge that motivation from our country. Most public schools, or at least a lot of them, used to sponsor Boy Scout groups. But after being sued for years because the Boy Scouts have God in their pledge and they set standards for their leaders that some do not agree with, the threat of lawsuits essentially means our Government schools have thrown out the Boy Scouts. More than half our astronauts, half our FBI agents, a lot of the most successful people in this country were trained in the Boy Scouts to serve their community, where their character was developed. But this Federal Government has forced them out of public places. For years we purged religion from our society. Religion was the primary motivation for a lot of civic groups, a lot of services, a lot of charities, a lot of hospitals that were formed, a lot of schools. But we have said that has no place. Because we have unleashed the ACLU and other groups to constantly sue and intimidate groups, that religious motivation has been moved, has been purged in many cases. Now we are going to come in and help solve the problem we have created. We want to promote voluntarism, we want to promote community service, when what we have done over the last several decades is essentially tried to destroy the motivation for people to serve a cause that is greater than themselves. We cannot replace private charity with Government programs. If we try, a lot of people are going to miss meals, suffer cold winters, and leaky roofs. I wish to go back to where I started. I appreciate the motivation, the heartfelt sense of compassion and the patriotism that I know my colleagues feel in sponsoring this legislation. But I think we need to come to a point as a government that we recognize we cannot do everything. That is why we take the oath to the Constitution to defend and protect the very limited form of Government. This Congress, this Government, does not need to start or expand an organization to a quarter million people, when we are paying people to do work that we decided needs to be done and take those decisions out of the hands of millions of Americans who look around every day and see what they can do to make their families, their communities, and their country a better place to live. These are not Government decisions. We need to focus on what we were set up to do and do it much better than we are doing, instead of every week coming in here, bringing our good intentions and our compassion and every problem we see across the country we say something needs to be done. Then we say: The Government needs to do it. That is the fatal flaw of the Congress today, is we forget that sacred oath of office that says: We will protect and defend the Constitution which says this Federal Government has a very limited function. And those functions that are not prescribed in the Constitution are left to individuals and to the States. This is a huge well-intended mistake we are making. It serves a point that we need to realize this Government needs to stop spending and stop borrowing, stop taxing, and let America work. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, everyone is well aware our country is going through some serious tribulation economically. The whole world, in fact, is dealing with serious economic troubles. There are signs of hope in many areas of our economy. I think it is important for us, particularly those of us in elected office, to recognize those good things, and that the strength of the American people will certainly pull us out of this hole, as they have many times in the past. Hopefully, what we do here in Washington will help and not hurt. I think everyone is aware a large part of our recession is the banking and credit problem. Certainly, if it did not cause it, it made it much worse, and continues to today. Unfortunately, the new administration and the Congress have not put forth any plan to fix our credit crisis, to make our banks work appropriately. While many of them are calling me to remind me they are loaning money, they are working, there is still a lot we need to do in the credit area that we have not fixed. Unfortunately, the trillion-dollar so-called stimulus plan we passed only a couple weeks ago--all borrowed money--did not address the credit/banking problem. It addressed issues that had nothing to do with the recession. The stimulus provided a lot of additional funds for education, health care, and infrastructure--a lot of good things. But those things did not cause our recession, and they are certainly not going to get us out of it. I think the failure to bring forth a plan that addresses the real causes of the recession has many people around the country wondering what we are thinking. The fact is, what we are thinking is about the next election and not the next generation. It has become clear we are not addressing the real causes of the problems but are doing things that are more politically beneficial than beneficial to our economy. As we deal with the difficult economic situation, it is almost hard to see the White House going in a lot of different directions, and some that are especially painful, particularly the issue of life. The new President campaigned on reducing the number of abortions, but in the first month or 6 weeks of his Presidency, he has changed the rule where now the American taxpayer is funding abortions all around the world. They put forth an Executive order to strike the conscience clause, which means we are going to require physicians who are opposed to abortion to perform abortions. That makes no sense at all. When there are physicians who make a living performing abortions, why should we take a physician who considers it the taking of a life and force him to do it? Why do we need to do that in the middle of a recession and the economic problems we have? Today, the President reversed a prohibition on Federal funding of certain types of stem cells. It seems to be opening Pandora's box to begin the destruction of unborn human beings. His Cabinet nominee for Health and Human Services has been one of the most radical pro-abortion folks in the country, having encouraged and protected late-term abortion and partial-birth abortions. Many people who are not pro-life believe we certainly should not be performing late-term abortions in this country. Yet the President seems to be going in a rather radical direction, in the middle of this economic storm we have. We have to wonder: What are they thinking? Today we come to this, what we are calling an omnibus spending bill. Only 2 weeks after we passed this huge spending bill we called a stimulus--$1 trillion or more if you add interest and 2 weeks later we are talking about a bill that is over $400 billion. The Federal agencies cannot even spend the money as fast as we are throwing it at them, but now we are here today with this other bill under the pretense that we have to have this money to make the country operate. Americans need to know we have been operating under this year's funding through what we call a continuing resolution, which means we are operating essentially at last year's budget. The country has been operating effectively. The reason we are passing this bill is not that we need it to fund the Government because the Government is funded under a continuing resolution which we could extend through the end of the year. We actually need to be about working on next year's budget and next year's appropriations. That is what we are supposed to be doing now. Instead, we are going back and creating this new spending bill, which I consider an ominous spending bill, not so much an omnibus. What I have in front of me right here is the reason there is such a rush to pass this additional spending bill. All Americans have heard of earmarks. These are the earmarks in this spending bill. This is the reason it has to be passed. Remember, last week they brought it up and said we had to pass it before Friday or the Government would shut down and it would just not be right to pass another continuing resolution. Well, come Thursday, they found out that because the American people had gotten agitated and outraged and had begun to call and e-mail their Senators, they didn't quite have the votes to pass this bill last week. But they will pass it because they have taken over 9,000 earmarks-- special projects--and sprinkled them all around among Republicans and Democrats in the House and in the Senate. It is hard to vote against a bill that has a special project in it. Some Americans have begun to hear a little bit about these earmarks. I will take the one that is sitting right here on the top of this stack. Keep in mind we have over 9,000 earmarks for most of the Congressmen and Senators. Now, a lot of Senators will come today and talk about how it is wasteful and we should cut the earmarks, but they will vote for it because a lot of them have already done the press releases on the money they are taking back home. I will read a couple on the front page. There is an amount column, a project column, a purpose, and a location. Then they have the names of the Congressmen and Senators, but they have struck those. I am not exactly sure why. The first amount is $200,000 to Providence Holy Cross Foundation and it is for tattoo removal to a violence prevention outreach program in Mission Hills, CA. Now, I am sure that is a worthy cause, but in the middle of a recession, when we are borrowing trillions of dollars to try to keep this country going and the President is saying we have to make every dollar count and he is going to strike every item of waste, what is the Federal Government doing funding the removal of tattoos? The second item is $75,000. That is not too bad, although it is more than most families make in a whole year. It is for the city of Albany. It is for Totally Teen Zone. This is Albany, GA. This is where they go and play with Xboxes and things such as that. I am sure that is a fine thing, but you have to wonder, in these times when we are out of money as a country, do we need to be involved as a Federal Government with this kind of thing? The next item is $400,000 for the University of Montana. It is for teacher training, curriculum development, and awareness initiatives to combat bullying as well as the development of emergency protocol for school shootings--something I am sure is very necessary to combat bullying in schools; it is certainly something every school has to deal with. But how can we as a Federal Government send $400,000 to one university and expect to solve problems all over the country? Well, the next one is $50,000 to Los Angeles for after-dark gang prevention. Again, these are all good things, but there is probably no Senator who has read all of these, but they know the ones that are in it for them because that is why they are going to be voting for the bill. The tacit agreement always is, we are going to get the votes to pass this bill so these 9,000 earmarks--these 9,000 press releases-- will go out all over the country. Our only hope of stopping this is if the American people continue to show their outrage and to continue to connect the dots of what we are doing because we are not doing this to fund the Government. This isn't about last year's business. It violates every pledge many people here have run on and certainly the President. If you recall, the President has said he was against earmarks. When I introduced a 1-year moratorium on earmarks, he flew back, along with all the candidates for President--or at least the top three at that time--to vote to have a 1- year moratorium on earmarks because more and more we are seeing the damage this is doing to our country. You can pass almost any bill with any bad policy with almost any level of spending as long as you fill it with earmarks for people back home. They are thinking about the next election, not the next generation. They are not thinking about the families who are hurting because they are losing their jobs right now because this is much more likely to cause additional job losses over the next 5 to 10 years than it is to help create them. So this is the seed. This greases the skids to pass almost any type of bill. If my colleagues remember, when the first Wall Street bailout came through the House, it failed. So when the Senate took it up, what did they add to it to help it get passed? More earmarks. Now, we have had several amendments to strike some of these earmarks, and there have been some heroes on the issue. John McCain has certainly been on the floor talking about the problems with earmarks he has seen over the many years he has been in the Senate, and he has one other amendment that will be on the floor that will basically take all these earmarks--they aren't in the legislation; they are in what they call report language off to the side, so it is not seen in the bill that is on the desk right here. But there is a reference in here to this, and that supposedly makes it all legal. The Constitution says we have to appropriate money based on law, which means it has to be in the bill, but we do everything we can to get around that Constitution and law by attaching some rider in here that says all these should be considered as law. Folks, this is no way to run a Federal government. This is just one bill; it has nothing to do with the trillions of dollars on Wall Street and the banking bailout we have been talking about or the $1 trillion stimulus 2 weeks ago. It is over $400 billion, with over 9,000 earmarks they wanted to rush through last week, but because of people back home, some were shamed into saying they couldn't vote for it unless we had a longer process with more amendments. Now, this is show. There is already a strategy to kill every amendment that comes up, so we are not trying to pass an amendment to strip earmarks. You will see Senator McCain's good amendment, a commonsense amendment that, in the middle of our financial crisis, let's us take these and set them aside and pass the bill that funds our Government. It is a good amendment, but the decision has already been made on the other side to kill that amendment unless the American people can shame a few more into voting against it. John Ensign has an amendment that will strike some language in the bill that seeks to discontinue school choice in Washington, DC. It is a small program--only 1,700 kids are involved with it--but there is a waiting list of parents who would like another choice. In this funding bill, this must-have funding bill, they sneak in a little policy such as that to kill a little bit of freedom in our country that we need to be expanding to every State, not killing it in Washington, DC. David Vitter has an amendment that will force Congress to vote on pay raises for Congressmen and Senators every year instead of what we do right now. Currently, there is an automatic provision in appropriations bills that goes through and gives us a cost-of-living pay raise. This should be done in the light of day. Right now, we can say we didn't vote on a pay raise, and we didn't because it was set up years ago to be automatic. So at a time when many Americans don't have work and some are taking pay cuts to keep their job, Senator Vitter's idea to be more transparent in what we do in Washington makes a lot of sense. The President has promised change. Our growing concern is that the biggest change so far in Washington has been in him. We want to support him as much as we can. He did say he would stop this practice of earmarking, but he is looking the other way on this bill. He is saying he supports it. He could veto this bill and send it back to Congress and tell us to get rid of these earmarks. He could keep his promise and he could force us to change. But right now, this stack of earmarks is so addictive that the Congressmen and Senators who have these projects that they are so proud of back home are not going to vote against the bill. You could double this bill to $800 billion, and I am pretty sure it would pass anyway, as long as it had these earmarks in it. Folks, as Senator Coburn from Oklahoma says, earmarks are the gateway drug to this runaway spending we have in Washington. We are spending our children and grandchildren into such a hole it is going to be almost impossible for them to get out. We are almost guaranteeing them a lower quality of life than we have had, as we borrow more and more money from other countries, as we print more and more money, and as we spend more money as a government than we ever thought possible. This is the time when we need to stop this runaway spending. An amendment will be on the floor to strike these earmarks and to continue to fund the Government through the rest of the year. The other side doesn't want any amendments passed because that would mean we would have to go back and work with the House on a final bill. They want it to go through amendment free. It is up to us to make sure the American people know what is in this bill before we vote on it. That is the whole point of extending the debate. My hope is we will have 2 or 3 days to make the American people more aware of what is in it and, even more importantly, what is in this stack of earmarks, which is the reason this bill is being rushed through the Senate. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. DeMINT

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

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, it was great to hear Mrs. McCaskill, the Senator from Missouri, speaking on the floor. She has been a real champion of fighting one of the real causes of excess spending and waste in Washington. She came down to talk about earmarks. In this case, she was talking about Republican earmarks. I congratulate her because we have to go after them all. If there is one thing in this whole Congress that is bipartisan, it is earmarks. If America wants to know how well bipartisanship works, you can look at earmarks because when it comes to wasteful spending, there is great bipartisan agreement here in the Congress that as long as we get our pork, as long as we get our political projects we can take back home, then we will vote for whatever is in the bill no matter how big it is. Senator McCaskill, though relatively new to the Senate, has been willing to take on not just my party but her own in fighting this root cause of much of the wasteful spending in Washington. So I commend her very much for coming to the floor, not just today but many other times. She has worked with me on several earmark-related bills. She supported a 1-year moratorium on earmarks, which then-candidate Senator Obama flew back to vote to suspend earmarks for a year so we could look at ways to reform them so we would not continue this pattern of very wasteful spending. I honestly believe the reason we are looking at trillion dollar bills today is because of this whole earmarking process. This $400 billion Omnibus appropriations bill we are considering this week, I am convinced would be voted down if the leadership on both sides had not sprinkled earmarks for about every Member of the House and the Senate. It is a way to pass bills that otherwise would not pass. I do need to correct one thing Senator McCaskill mentioned, which is this idea that since the Democrats took over the majority, they have cut earmarks in half. I wish that were true, but, unfortunately, it is not. If you look at this chart I have in the Chamber, earmarks have grown under bipartisan agreement for years. As we came into 2006, we began--several of us in the Senate and the House were putting increasing pressure on both sides to cut the number of earmarks, and they dropped a little bit. But this lower figure here, as shown on the chart, came as the Republicans had lost the majority in the election but had not yet given up the majority in that January. A number of us held back an omnibus bill with thousands of earmarks in it, and we ended the year 2007 with less earmarks than we had had in almost 10 years. But, as you see, under the Democratic majority, it is already back to the second highest number, counting this omnibus we are talking about this week with over 9,000 new earmarks which are totally unnecessary, totally against the things that have been said in the last election, that in 2009, at least counting as of this week, we are nearly at 12,000--the second highest in history. So neither party can boast we have done anything significant about earmarks. As America looks in, they are becoming increasingly outraged at this flagrant waste we are shamelessly involved with every week. So I commend Senator McCaskill for taking on both parties, senior Members in both parties, on this earmark issue. But the real issue now comes back to leadership in our country, and is there anyone in Washington with the power to change this who is willing to take on the issue. My hope has been since the last election that while I know I will disagree with President Obama on a number of things, it was my understanding and my hope he would keep his word on fighting earmarks. He certainly talked about it during his election. He said, in April of 2008: We can no longer accept a process that doles out earmarks based on a Member of Congress's seniority rather than the merit of the project. He said, in October of 2008: We need earmark reform, and when I'm President, I will go line by line to make sure we're not spending money unwisely. But, last week, his Budget Director said: This omnibus we are talking about this year is last year's business. We just need to move on. So I guess this week we have suspended the Presidency, we have suspended hope and change, and we have gone back to nearly 12,000 earmarks. Senator McCaskill said: Do not take anyone seriously who says one thing and does another. That is the worst sin of all. What I am afraid of, at this point in the new Presidency, is that the only change that has occurred in Washington is the change with the President himself. This is an issue he said he would help us on. This is an issue he said he knew was a core problem of waste and corruption here in Washington. This is not a Republican or Democratic issue. Neither party can sit down here and say they are righteous in this. But both parties need to come to the understanding, the realization, that this earmarking process is destroying our whole work as a Congress. You see, what this has done is this has trained the American people to believe that our purpose here in Washington is to take money home to our States and congressional districts. It is teaching the American people that we use earmarks as a reward to help those groups and organizations that helped us get elected. Or we use taxpayer money to bail out people who have been irresponsible in their decisionmaking. But what we have forgotten is that our constitutional oath is to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States of America, not to get projects for our district. But what earmarking has done has perverted the whole purpose of this Congress. Instead of working on fixing a Tax Code that is destroying our economic base in this country, and overseeing our financial system to keep it from financial collapse, and fixing Social Security and Medicare so we can keep our promises to seniors, and defending our country by funding the military properly-- instead of doing that, we spend most of the year here in Washington figuring out which local roads and bridges and water and sewer plants and bike paths we are going to build. In this omnibus bill or ominous bill--whatever you want to call it-- it is hard to read the list and then think about the rhetoric of how treacherous these times are, how difficult they are, and that every penny we spend of taxpayer money has to go to help our economy and help the American people. What does $1.8 million for swine odor and manure management research have to do with these difficult times we are in, or $200,000 for a tattoo removal violence prevention outreach program, or $75,000 for a Totally Teen Zone where people can play Xbox? Folks, if I read this, it is only going to make you madder and madder and madder. This is a mix of Republican and Democratic earmarks. You would hear a lot of Senators say: I know this is a bad bill, I know it is wasteful, but I have something in it for back home. I can't vote against it. There is only one person in Washington who can stop all this because Congressmen and Senators will say, similar to a bunch of drunks: I am not going to drink as much tomorrow. But they don't have the power to stop themselves. I have become convinced, after 10 years of being in the House and the Senate, we don't have the power to stop ourselves. There is one person in Washington who can lead on this issue and he said he would lead on this issue and he said this is a change we could expect from his administration. The President should veto this omnibus bill with over 9,000 earmarks in it--9,000 of what I am reading here. It takes money. They say: It is not that much money; oh, it is just $7 billion or $8 billion or whatever; but the reason we are passing a $400 billion bill that we should not be passing right now is because it has these earmarks in it. The reason you won't see very many people on the floor of this Senate come in and vote no is because they have something in it for back home that they have already done a press release on, taking credit and beating their chests for taking home the bacon, but the taxpayers are paying for it. Folks are getting more and more outraged, and I am, too, because I have children and I have grandchildren now and I know we are taking all these millions of dollars and putting it on their backs for the rest of their lives and taking credit for our little projects in our press reports. There is only one person who can stop this; the person America counts on today for changing the way we do business in Washington. After only a month in office, if this system has changed him rather than him changing the system, then we are all in trouble. We have not reduced earmarks, and we are on track to have the highest number of earmarks in history within the next year, in a bipartisan fashion. There is nothing noble about combining bad ideas from both parties and calling it bipartisanship, and that is what we are doing here today. I would encourage the President to threaten a veto of this bill, to follow through on a veto of this bill, and make this Congress send this bill back to committee and do the things America needs instead of the things we want politically to help us get elected in our next election that is coming up. I wish to thank, again, the Senator from Missouri, Mrs. McCaskill, for bringing up this issue and having the courage to fight both parties on a very important issue to our country. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time during the quorum call be equally divided.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, if I could have my colleagues' attention for just a moment, I think this should be an easy vote for all of us. President Obama has expressed his opposition to the fairness doctrine. Senator Durbin has expressed his opposition to the fairness doctrine. This amendment, the Broadcasters Freedom Act, prohibits the Federal Communications Commission from implementing all or part of the fairness doctrine, which has been repealed. I wish to clear up one misunderstanding that has been stated on the other side. This amendment does not affect the public interest requirements of broadcast radio. It does not change children's programming or opposition to indecency. What it does is, it prohibits quotas and guidelines on programming, which is another way to prohibit the implementation of the fairness doctrine. While the fairness doctrine is a direct and obvious method to burden and chill broadcaster speech, there are also several indirect ways that are not as well-known, but no less available to proponents of limiting the freedom of our national media. Last year's FCC Localism Notice of Proposed Rulemaking--MB Docket No. 04-233, released January 24, 2008, ``Localism Notice''--contained a number of ``tentative conclusions'' that, if adopted, would result in greater regulation of broadcaster speech. First, the FCC proposed to reintroduce license renewal processing ``guidelines'' that would measure specific categories of speech aired by broadcasters. The guidelines would pressure broadcasters to air Commission-specified amounts of programming in Commission-defined program categories. Although the Localism Notice does not specify which categories broadcasters would be measured by, political programming, public affairs programming, and local news are mentioned as possible types of programming to be regulated. Broadcasters that do not meet the thresholds to the Commission's satisfaction would risk losing their license to broadcast. While ostensibly the renewal processing guidelines are meant to increase the total amount of local programming, the adjective ``local'' is ill-defined in this proceeding. It could be expanded to include an almost limitless array of speech and could shift with the political winds. My amendment, DeMint No. 573, would not eliminate the FCC's power to develop license renewal processing guidelines completely, but only its authority to develop processing guidelines that mimic its past authority under the fairness doctrine, hence the language which limits it to quotas or guidelines for issues of public importance. The second way in which the Commission has proposed to indirectly regulate broadcaster speech is by return of ascertainment requirements, which would mandate that every broadcaster develop and meet with an ``advisory board'' made up of community groups and local officials that would ``inform the stations' programming decisions.'' This proposal would make broadcasters very vulnerable to pressure or even harassment by groups that do not approve of their programming. A similar ascertainment requirement was eliminated in the early 1980s after the Commission determined that the rule did more to create bureaucratic burdens than it did to improve broadcasting. Like the processing guidelines, the ascertainment requirement could become a factor for broadcasters at license renewal. Groups that feel a local broadcaster did not listen to their suggestions through the advisory board--suggestions to, for example, air more programming that addresses whatever social or political issue is of concern to these groups--could challenge the broadcasters' license and argue that the broadcaster ignored the ``needs and interests'' of their local community. Talk radio would be particularly vulnerable to this type of harassment, as would religious broadcasters. Again, my amendment, DeMint No. 573, would not eliminate the Commission's authority to mandate ascertainment completely, but only its authority to mandate that broadcasters seek out opposing viewpoints on ``issues of public importance.'' I encourage all of my colleagues to support this amendment.

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

Mr. DeMINT. The Senator is right. We have legal opinions on that, and it doesn't overrule any existing commission regulations. We asked the broadcasters' legal counsel, and this is intended to narrow this fairness doctrine backdoor approach of controlling what people say by establishing quotas and guidelines about how that is done. I thank the Senator for that question. We have probably talked enough about this subject. I reserve the remainder of my time. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DeMINT. Thank you, Madam President. This has been a good debate, not just about DC voting rights but constitutional rights in our country, and if we are going to go by our own opinions and good intentions or are we going to follow the Constitution. Clearly, a lot of us wish to give fair representation to everyone who lives in the District of Columbia. But our oath of office is not to our good intentions, it is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution is very clear that Congressmen and Senators are allocated only to States. The District of Columbia was set up as a neutral entity, certainly where people will live and work associated with the business of the Federal Government, but there is nothing in the Constitution that would give a Congressman or Senators to this Federal District of Columbia. So we are talking about a constitutional issue. We have had other constitutional issues, such as the Bill of Rights guarantee to bear arms, and there will be an amendment to that effect with the bill. I wish to bring up another constitutional issue, which is the right of free speech and the freedom of the press. A number of Members of Congress have been talking about the annoyance of having radio talk show hosts talk about what we are doing here. I do not blame the other side for being annoyed when a radio talk show host actually describes what is in a bill, since we have gotten in the habit of not actually reading them ourselves. When we have radio talk show hosts all around the country going through page by page, contradicting what is actually being said here, I can understand that people wish to muzzle those radio talk show hosts. That could be the opinion of some of those in Congress today, but it happens to go against the Constitution when we try to decide what people can say and what they believe. There is actually a doctrine that was mentioned by the Senator from Kansas called the fairness doctrine that is one of those political doublespeak titles that is radio censorship that actually tries to control what radio talk show hosts could say. That doctrine was dispensed with by Reagan, and since then we have thousands of radio talk shows with wide varieties of opinion. But many are starting to talk about bringing back this radio censorship idea to try to force radio stations to present alternative opinions every time a radio talk show host presents an opinion of their own. What this would do is create a dysfunctional situation where no radio station could afford to have a talk show host express an opinion of any kind if they had to go out and find someone to express the opposite opinion and in the meantime face lawsuit after lawsuit from the ACLU and others. Because whose opinion is going to determine what is fair, what is balanced, what is diverse? But the whole implication here is that the Federal Government and the Federal Communications Commission are somehow going to decide for us what is fair and what is balanced and what is diverse. The amendment I am offering today, which we call the Broadcaster Freedom Act, would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from reestablishing any part of what is called the ``fairness doctrine'' into their regulatory structure today. Plain and simple, most people here have said they do not want it to come back. President Obama said last week he is against the fairness doctrine. So who could oppose us making it a law that some bureaucrat over at the Federal Communications Commission could not write into regulations all or parts of this censorship of radio talk shows across the country? It is a pretty simple amendment, but I have a feeling it is getting ready to sound lot more complicated when the other side starts presenting what is in it. We have found in this body that the facts, the truths, sometimes do not make a lot of difference. But anyone who votes against my amendment, the Broadcaster Freedom Act, is voting against the Constitution. They are voting against the freedom of the press. They are voting against the freedom of speech in this country. The one hope we have to turn this Government around, to stop this spending, and the intervention in all areas of our life, is a free press that can tell people the truth about what is going on. More and more, we have the radio talk show hosts and the bloggers and some cable news that every day are telling Americans more about what we are doing, and Americans are getting more informed, they are getting more engaged and increasingly more outraged about what we are doing. I encourage my colleagues to support my amendment and to vote against this side by side that is being presented by the Democratic majority. What we are seeing in this side by side is the real intention of the Democratic majority as far as dealing with this fairness doctrine. They are going to propose that we as a Congress direct the Federal Communications Commission--that we are going to say: ``shall take actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership.'' Now, they are not just saying radio here. This is ``communication.'' This includes the Web, the Internet, the blogs, blogisphere, television, newspapers. This language would direct the Federal Communications Commission to take action to enforce diversity in communication. This is Soviet-style language that you are going to get some rosy picture of in a minute. But it is so open and so vague that about every communication outlet in this country is going to be faced with accusations that their ownership is not diverse. What does ``diverse'' mean? Does it mean ``white and black''? What they are after is what they believe, what their opinions are. If this were applied to our offices here in the Senate, we could not say anything, I could not express my opinion today without being obligated by law to go find somebody to say something completely opposite of what I am saying. This is not freedom. Anyone who votes for this alternative is voting to repress the freedom of speech in this country, the freedom of media. The second part of what they have after ``promote diversity in communication media''--all media; only the lawyers and the bureaucrats are going to tell us what that means--is ``to ensure that broadcast station licenses are used in the public interest.'' That is already a law, and that is good, and television and radio stations that use the public airwaves all over the country are held accountable by current law to do things in the public interest, and many of them are very good at that, and it is very helpful in our communities. But I will ask my colleagues not to let this distraction confuse them about the real intention. If we pass the broadcaster freedom amendment today, we are going to close the front door to taking away the freedom of speech in this country. But this alternative opens the backdoor to what the Democratic majority is after; that is, to muzzle this annoyance of people on the radio who are telling the truth about what is going on in this Congress. If they can go out and threaten a station that they are not diverse in their ownership, and some judge or some bureaucrat is going to decide whether they are diverse--and who knows what that means--we are going to create such risk and such liability and such intimidation that this will not even look like America in a few years. This is dangerous material that is being offered on the other side. I will encourage my colleagues to remember our oath of office. It has nothing to do with enforcing our opinions or some judge's opinion on some radio station out there that is trying to give its opinion to the American people. We are dangerously close to the enslavement of socialism in this country with the expansion of Government on every front. This is intolerable. Do not let the pretty language you are getting ready to hear confuse you because this is against everything we swear an oath to in this Congress. I encourage my colleagues to vote against the Durbin amendment, vote for the Broadcaster Freedom Act, and I would appreciate their support. Thank you, Madam President, and I reserve the remainder of my time.

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

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up DeMint amendment No. 573.

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to add as cosponsors to my amendment Senators Vitter, Inhofe, Wicker, Bond, Bennett, Enzi, Barrasso, Brownback, and Alexander.

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, I have no objection.

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, I always enjoy a good debate with the Senator from Illinois. He is certainly good at what he does and, in this case, that is confusing facts. The good news for us and all Americans is, this afternoon, on radio talk shows all across the country, they can find out what is in both of these amendments and what it really means. They are not going to hear it here today. There have been a lot of distortions but interesting admissions. Certainly, the Senator from Illinois made it very clear that he should be a part of determining what is fair and balanced and how we should determine what is both sides. He mentioned there are 14,000 radio stations. What he does with his amendment is he orders ``shall take action to encourage and promote diversity and communication media ownership.'' He wants our FCC to monitor 14,000 radio stations to decide if their ownership is diverse. He said it doesn't apply to the Internet, but we do regulate the Internet. We regulate everything in America, folks-- everything that a Federal dollar touches. Believe me, this language is not just about radio stations; it is about doing the impossible, and that is to centrally manage the ownership of radio and other communications in this country. It goes back to his original opinion that, yes, he believes there should be fair and balanced perspective presented in the media. But what he believes--and what many on his side believe--is that fairness should be determined by those of us in Government rather than the listeners and viewers who tune into that radio or the TV station or go to that Web site. It is not for us to determine what is fair and balanced. His distortion about my amendment and what it does is exactly wrong. We do not address or change in any way the requirements of radio stations to act in the public interest. The nonsense about children's programming and indecency has nothing to do with this. It is another section in the law. I don't affect that in any way. What this is about is, saying to your face, America, that they are not for reinstating the censorship of radio, while at the same time introducing an amendment that would allow us to go in and make our judgment, our opinion, about what is diverse ownership of a radio station. Let me read again what this provision in my amendment addresses. He says it takes away the public interest clause. It has nothing to do with that. But it prohibits this backdoor approach to getting back to the principles of the fairness doctrine by saying broadcasters do not have to meet programming quotas and guidelines. In other words, we can't decide how many opinions they have to offer and what the guidelines for those opinions are. It is not for us to say. They have to fulfill their public interest obligations. We don't change that. But this clause would keep the good Senator from Illinois and those on his side who want to censor radio from allowing the FCC to go in and set some kind of quotas on how often, how they need to state their opinions, and the guidelines for that. It creates a license for us to go in and determine what opinions, how many opinions, and basically it is the fairness doctrine through the back door. I will restate that this Broadcasters Freedom Act protects the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It does nothing to dislodge or change the requirement that public stations--radio or whatever communications--meet the current law requirements to act in the public good. But it does keep us, as a government, from setting quotas and guidelines of what opinions can be expressed and how often they can be expressed.

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

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, reserving the right to object--and I will not object--will the time be equally divided between now and 2 o'clock?

Mr. DeMINT. Yes.