Jim DeMint

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. I ask the Senator to modify his request to allow me to bring up my amendment No. 2755 and allow me 10 minutes to speak.

Mr. DeMINT. I appreciate the question. I appreciate the support of the Senator. In New Jersey, the average cost for a single person to buy health insurance is over $4,000 a year. Right across the river in Pennsylvania, the average is less than $1,500 a year. This amendment will give consumers the option of buying the health insurance that meets their needs and is right for them, even if it is right across the border. This amendment will result in significant cost savings. A recent study found that consumers would save an estimated 77 percent in New Jersey, 22 percent in Washington, 21 percent in Oregon, and 16 percent in Maryland, if those States eliminated some of their mandates. There will also be cost savings from cutting redtape because insurance plans won't have to go through 50 different certification processes. By mandating benefits, State legislators have swelled the number of Americans without health insurance, making each health policy's coverage very different. They have added things such as acupuncture and marriage therapists and in vitro fertilization, things that may be important to some people but not to everyone. They should not be mandated to everyone. Finally, this amendment is widely supported by Americans across the political spectrum. A poll conducted by Zogby International in September of 2004 found that 72 percent of respondents support allowing an individual in one State to buy health insurance from another State, if the insurance is State regulated and approved, as it would be under this amendment. The poll showed that only 12 percent of Democrats opposed it. People understand intuitively that it doesn't matter. As the Senator from Mississippi just said, it doesn't make sense that we limit people to buying health insurance in only one State. I encourage my colleagues to support the amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DeMINT. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DeMINT. Are there particular States that you think the regulations are unacceptable for the people who live there?

Mr. DeMINT. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DeMINT. We don't change any of the State regulations. We only allow the people not to be regulated anymore. They get to buy insurance wherever they want to buy it. But regulations in the States don't change.

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

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I would just like to advise my colleagues that the majority has just objected to adopting the DeMint amendment for earmark reform that has been gutted in this rule. This is all we have been asking for throughout the process, that we put in this ethics bill the exact same language we all voted on that was written by Speaker Pelosi, rewritten by Senator Durbin, and has been gutted in this process, and it is still being called earmark reform. The Parliamentarian has just confirmed for us and the world that the certification is a complete sham. I thank the President, and I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for this good and open debate. I remind them that I supported this bill in the beginning and have asked unanimous consent a number of times that it go to conference. As many of us have pointed out, the earmark provision is a Senate rule that doesn't need to be conferenced with the House. The only reason to make it part of a conference bill is so it can be changed. I offered all along that if there were changes the majority wanted to make, we were very open to that. We wanted to end up with some real earmark transparency that all of us have voted on. As we have pointed out this morning, it is not disclosed, and it is not transparent if the majority can simply say it is, without having to prove its accuracy. That has been the cause of so much corruption. I think it is certainly worth stopping and looking at what we have done. This language is hardly minor, as far as the change that has taken place. If it were, the majority would not insist that their version rule today. I urge all my colleagues to vote against cloture--not to vote against ethics reform, which we all support, but to vote against this process that will not allow us to reinsert something we all voted for and we all said in public is the right way to handle earmark reform. I thank the majority leader for all his work. I yield back the remainder of my time. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I wanted to talk about a couple of amendments that I have to the Homeland Security appropriations bill today. First, I would like to bring up the matter of security itself and how it affects our ports. Certainly, it is unfortunate that we have to be here once again to talk about threats to our homeland, but that is the reality we face today. The amendment I am talking about now has been filed. It is amendment No. 2481. It will help us address some of the vulnerabilities and help secure the American people. This amendment, No. 2481, which I will bring up later today, prohibits the Department of Homeland Security from using any funds to remove items from the list of offenses that disqualifies individuals from receiving a transportation worker identification credential--what we call the TWIC card. Mr. President, we can spend all the money in the world screening cargo and hiring security personnel, but if someone working in our seaports looks the other way when something dangerous enters our country, all of our spending and all of our work is for nothing. Serious felons are prime targets for those trying to smuggle a nuclear device or a chemical weapon into our country, and we must close that security gap. My colleagues will no doubt recall that I have tried to address this issue two times in the past year, and both times my amendments received overwhelming support. Yet we have not yet seen a sufficient result from the effort to secure the American people's safety. Last fall, the Senate accepted an amendment I offered to the SAFE Port Act to close this dangerous loophole by codifying the Department of Homeland Security's rules banning serious felons from gaining access to the secure areas of our Nation's ports. In effect, it would have prevented these felons from obtaining this TWIC card. It was a commonsense amendment, and I suspect that is why it was included in the Senate's bill, without any objection from any Senator here. Let me repeat. It was included in the SAFE Port Act without objection. I also suspect that is why no Senator has come forward to this day to take credit for gutting the amendment when they went behind closed doors in a conference with the House. The amendment that left this body was a codification of disqualifying felonies, developed after an exhaustive process by the Department of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Departments of Justice and Transportation. The offenses listed are very similar to those that have worked well to protect our airports and hazardous materials shipments for years. Unfortunately, the provision that came back to this body after the conference committee was a list of offenses so short and rare that the TWIC restrictions offered by the so-called SAFE Port bill are essentially meaningless. The conference committee chose not to ban murderers, rapists, arsonists, smugglers, kidnappers, and hostage- takers from accessing the most secure areas of our Nation's ports. In short, they chose to override the expressed will of the Senate and make America less secure. I trusted that Senators chosen to sit in conference with the House would act to protect items included by the Senate; especially those items with unanimous or near-unanimous consent in this body that are critical to our homeland security. But that trust was betrayed last fall, anonymously, behind closed doors. It is not only those backroom deals that bring me here to offer this amendment today, but also the episode witnessed out in the open, on the Senate floor, during consideration of the 9/11 Commission bill in February of this year. At that time, I again offered an amendment to codify the Department of Homeland Security's final rule on TWIC disqualifying offenses. But this time, I requested a rollcall vote, since the conferees clearly gave no regard to the unanimous voice of the Senate last fall. This should have been another noncontroversial passage. However, knowing they would be forced to actually go on record this time around, a separate side-by-side amendment preferred by Democrats and, no doubt, their allies in the labor unions, was introduced. Its language was less restrictive, allowing the current or future DHS Secretary to modify--in other words, remove--disqualifying offenses on the list. It passed 58- 37. My amendment was voted on immediately after, and passed 94-2. An article in the Roll Call newspaper from July 9 recounted the episode: In February, 13 Democrats and Senator Bernie Sanders (I- Vt.) voted against an amendment offered by Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) to prevent people convicted of terrorism or other felonies from getting access to secure areas of American seaports. But before the vote was over, they all switched to ``yea.'' What happened was Democrat leadership made it clear to their caucus that their version, allowing removal of felonies from the list, would replace my language in conference. My Democrat colleagues switched to supporting my version because they knew it was irrelevant; that it would be ``taken care of'' behind closed doors, just like last time. Again, the final vote in favor of my amendment was 94-2. And it is not just the Senate that overwhelmingly supports my language. The House of Representatives, just last week, voted 354-66 to instruct conferees to include my language in the conference report. The conference report for the 9/11 Commission bill is beginning to circulate, and I understand that the conference committee has now denied the will of the Senate and the House, by including language allowing the removal of serious felonies from the list of TWIC interim disqualifying offenses. The language has been watered down to reopen loopholes allowing smugglers, arsonists, kidnappers, rapists, extortionists, and people convicted of bribery, money laundering, and hostage taking to obtain access to secure areas in our ports. We have a chance now on this appropriations bill to ensure that whatever is done to weaken these provisions on the 9/11 Commission bill, that it will not have the effect of weakening our port security this year. We must not allow our constituents to be betrayed again by deals made in secret. That is why I am offering this amendment. Again, it prohibits the Department of Homeland Security from using any funds we are appropriating in this Act to remove items from the list of offenses disqualifying individuals from receiving transportation worker identification credentials, also known as TWIC cards. I will ask my colleagues later in the day to support this amendment, and hopefully we will have a vote on it. Mr. President, how much time is remaining on the minority side?

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, in fairness, as I have seen Republican amendments taken down with rule XVI, I raise a point of order that the pending amendment constitutes legislation on an appropriations bill and violates rule XVI.

Mr. DeMINT. I object.

Mr. DeMINT. I appeal the ruling of the Chair and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DeMINT. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DeMINT. I thank the leader. We were rushed, and I didn't have a chance to explain what I was trying to do. As I was listening to the debate of the last couple of days, I have seen rule XVI used against Lindsey Graham's bill. I have seen other Republican bills, such as David Vitter's, taken down because it violated rule XVI, legislating on an appropriations bill. Yet when I heard Senator Dorgan's amendment, I realized there was a double standard. We were being inconsistent. It was OK to legislate on a Democratic bill but not a Republican bill. My intent was to make a point, to raise a point of order that Senator Dorgan's amendment does violate rule XVI. But when the Chair ruled, I appealed the ruling of the Chair, which the Parliamentarian said she did not hear. But what I wanted to vote on was the ruling of the Chair to establish are we going to use rule XVI against Republicans but not Democrats; are we going or are we not going to have a fair debate? Obviously, our preference would be not to be legislating on appropriations bills, but if we are going to do it for some, we should do it for all. In this case, I say to the leader, my hope had been to vote on an appeal of the ruling of the Chair, which I had asked for, but was not recognized apparently, before we went into a quorum call.

Mr. DeMINT. I had asked for the yeas and nays on appealing the ruling of the Chair because that was my intent, to question whether we should be legislating on appropriations bills. That was more of a vote on rule XVI than it was the Dorgan amendment. That is what I was here for, to ask for a vote on appealing the ruling of the Chair, which was my language: ``I appeal the ruling of the Chair and ask for the yeas and nays.''

Mr. DeMINT. Am I correct in that I have another minute to do the same thing again?

Mr. DeMINT. I can summarize. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank the Senator for demanding order. This is a very important amendment. There is no need to spend billions of dollars keeping our ports secure if we are going to allow serious felons to work there. We all know that. We voted already, 94 to 2, for this exact same provision, only in an appropriations bill. In order not to attract rule XVI, this is just to prohibit the use of funds in eliminating or deleting or changing any of the list of felonies for 1 year. I encourage my colleagues to vote yes.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I would like the yeas and nays.

Mr. DeMINT. I have asked for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, in the interest of comity, I will agree, but may I bring up two amendments that have already been filed while I am here?

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2481.

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

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, over the last year this body has taken a strong bipartisan stand to make our ports more secure. After the Department of Homeland Security established regulations to bar felons from the secure areas of our ports, the Senate passed an amendment by 94 votes to codify that regulation into law. These regulations are very similar to the ones we use at our airports. Unfortunately, our strong stand on the Senate floor was diluted in conference with the House. My amendment would prohibit the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security from using any funds appropriated in this bill from being used to delete or modify any of the lists of felonies in the regulation. I would encourage all of my colleagues to be consistent and vote again yes for this bill.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for helping to start a very important national discussion about how we get every American insured. We can see in Washington, as we expand government health care, as we continue to expand unfunded liabilities into the future, and we add administrative costs, we are not covering people who need to be covered still. When we look at our Tax Code and realize that there has been a lot of inequity there, that we are helping some buy health insurance but only if they work for the right employer, we need to look at being fair with our Tax Code and developing a policy that will help every American have a health policy they can own and afford and keep. We will be talking a lot more about health care later.