Al Franken

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today to give a voice to Minnesotans to relay their thoughts on how Congress should resolve this impasse and raise the debt ceiling to avoid a default. On Wednesday, I received an e-mail from a constituent in St. Louis Park, my hometown. His e-mail reads: Dear Senator. I am a Republican. I am a Minnesotan. I am a small business owner. I am considered to have a high income relative to the average American. . . . Here's my request: Please work together to get this debt limit impasse settled. On Thursday, I received this e-mail from a man in Bloomington. He writes: I'm a small businessman in the middle of a fund raising effort. The concern over the debt ceiling has caused all the angel investors to put off any discussion of investment until they know what is going to happen. This has stopped my ability to raise funds which will lead to new high quality jobs in Minnesota. I support a simple bill that increases the debt limit to get us through the 2012 elections as has been done hundreds of times before. Yesterday, I received an e-mail from a couple in Bemidji: We are retired small business owners who are watching our very very conservative retirement account drop and plunge due to the inability of Congress to come up with a plan for the debt ceiling. We trust your judgment as a Senator, but plead with the Congress and the Senate to come up with a solution. We absolutely cannot afford to see our retirement savings sink again like it did in 2008. . . . And it is not just individual citizens. I received a letter from Dakota County's administrator. The letter reads, in part: If the federal government does not resolve its fiscal issues in a timely and responsible manner, it will drive up costs to taxpayers here in Dakota County. . . . Being able to borrow at the lowest possible rates has meant that our County's taxpayers have gotten more and better public facilities--from libraries to senior housing to highway interchanges--and saved hundreds of thousands of dollars for both property taxpayers and senior housing residents in the past several years alone. The city of Chaska reached out to my office, explaining that they are planning to sell debt in August to fund a street reconstruction program and refund their water treatment plant. If Congress fails to act, these projects will come at a much higher cost to residents of Chaska. I received a particularly compelling e-mail yesterday from a woman from Falcon Heights. She wrote: I am writing again to say I support the President and realize a need to compromise. It is scary for a 66 year [old] retired schoolteacher who has Medicare and social security. Scarier is a default and what it would do to the economy. That is advice from Sue. Sue gets it. She gets that Congress's failure to act may have a direct impact on her but the impact is really for the whole economy. And Sue is asking for us to compromise. And compromise we have. Let me make one thing clear: Leader Reid's plan is a compromise. Let me make another thing clear: House Speaker Boehner's plan is a tea party plan. Harry Reid's plan is a true compromise. It contains all spending cuts and zero revenues. During these debates, there have been lots of ratios floating around. Senator Conrad, the budget chairman, proposed a balanced and sensible plan that had a 1-to-1 spending cut to revenue ratio. Personally, I liked that approach. President Obama was negotiating a 4-to-1 or even 5-to-1 spending cut to revenue ratio. In the Reid plan, there is no ratio. It is 100 percent cuts and zero revenue. Secondly, it contains dollar-for-dollar spending cuts to match the debt ceiling increase. This is exactly what the Republicans had been asking for. Yet, this morning, I learned that 43 of my Republican colleagues have signed a letter to Leader Reid signaling their opposition to his proposal. Why? Well, they say the savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan do not count. Specifically, they say these savings are ``a widely ridiculed accounting gimmick that breeds cynicism.'' Yet all but 3 of the 43 Senators who signed this letter voted for the Ryan budget on May 25 of this year. That budget counted the same drawdowns as almost identical in savings. So those savings were legitimate enough to secure their support for the Ryan budget but not legitimate enough to secure their support for Leader Reid's debt ceiling compromise. Here we are on the precipice, and suddenly they have done a 180-degree turn. Either these savings count or they do not. You cannot have it both ways. So we are proposing exactly what Republicans have been saying they want. Yet, instead of accepting this deal, they are using what precious time we have to push forward with their agenda. And it is not even their agenda, it is the tea party agenda. Their radical agenda is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Last night, we voted down Speaker Boehner's plan, which requires the passage of a balanced budget constitutional amendment. A balanced budget amendment sounds, on its face, sensible, but in reality, all of the current House proposals for a balanced budget amendment would have disastrous consequences for our Nation. A balanced budget constitutional amendment would do permanent damage to our social safety net by slashing spending to 18 percent of GDP. That is what they all propose. We have not had a spending ratio that low since 1966, and today's America is very different than in 1966. We have a much older population. Today, we have a higher percentage of people drawing on Social Security and Medicare benefits--more than ever before. Health care costs are 50 percent higher. Even during President Reagan's tenure, spending averaged 21 percent of GDP. What would an 18-percent cap really mean? Well, let's use the Republican Study Committee's budget, proposed in April, as an example. A budget such as theirs is roughly what we would expect if we capped spending at 18 percent of GDP. Their budget cut nondefense discretionary funding by 70 percent by 2021. Like the Ryan plan, the Republican Study Committee's budget ended Medicare as we know it, changed it into a voucher program, and raised eligibility to 67, but it did it more quickly. Their budget raised the Social Security retirement age to 70. It resulted in important programs such as food stamps and Medicaid getting cut by 50 percent. The Republican Study Committee's budget was the Ryan budget on steroids. I would like to remind you of what happened to it on the House floor--this is an interesting story--because this story shows you just how extreme this budget was. Most House Republicans did not actually want such a harmful, Draconian budget to be the official House budget, but many of them wanted to go on record to brag to their tea party supporters that they voted to slash $9 trillion in Federal spending. So they scheduled a vote and just assumed Democrats would vote it down for them. Then they could just blame the Democrats. Well, the minority whip, Steny Hoyer, caught wind of their plan and had an idea. Moments before the vote, he asked Democrats to vote ``present.'' This would leave the onus squarely on the Republicans to vote it up or down. Chaos erupted in the House, as Republican leadership realized what was happening. Too many votes had been cast in favor of the radical budget, and it was on the verge of actually passing. Frantically, Republican leadership got a number of their Members to switch from ``yes'' to ``no.'' In the end, 119 Republicans voted in favor and 120 against. Crisis averted. That is how bad this plan was. And a balanced budget amendment that caps spending at 18 percent would essentially do exactly the same thing. This is a perfect example of political posturing. We voted down Speaker Boehner's plan last night for that very reason. His plan was not about finding a real solution; it was all about political posturing. If it became law, it would subject Americans to a very scary Republican Study Committee reality. House Republicans have shown they do not really want that. The American people definitely do not want that. The American people have clearly said they want compromise, they want an honest effort to meet in the middle. Sue from Falcon Heights is one of them. Leader Reid has responded to the pleas of the American people by offering us a sensible compromise. I urge my colleagues to be statesmen for the sake of the country. Please come to the table. We are trying to work with you for the sake of the country. The clock is ticking. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to former Minnesota Twins pitcher Bert Blyleven, who this week received his sport's highest honor when he was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. To Bert, I offer hearty and well-deserved congratulations. To the rest of the baseball world, I ask the question: What took so long? In the 14 years since he first became eligible for the Hall of Fame, we in Minnesota all assumed that, with his rare talent and Hall of Fame numbers, Bert was a shoo-in, and for many of those 14 years he was considered the best player never to have been inducted. I am proud to say as a Minnesotan and a lifelong Twins fan that this year Bert Blyleven was officially voted into the Hall of Fame. People in Minnesota all know Bert belongs on the distinguished list of Minnesota Twins already in the Hall of Fame, including Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, and Kirby Puckett, as well as two other baseball greats who grew up in St. Paul, MN, and later played for the Twins and were inducted into the Hall of Fame: Paul Molitor and Dave Winfield. Each of them had Hall of Fame careers, and now Bert has finally joined them. Bert pitched 22 seasons in the Major Leagues, 11 of them for the Twins, but he also took his talents to Texas, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and California. During his career, he won 287 games, he struck out an amazing 3,701 batters, and is fifth on the alltime career strikeout list, with more career strikeouts than pitching greats Tom Seaver, Walter Johnson, Bob Gibson, Greg Maddux, Cy Young, or even his boyhood idol, Sandy Koufax. He pitched 60 shutouts and led the league in shutouts three times. He had a career earned run average of just 3.31. He pitched 242 complete games, something that would be unheard of today. He played on two world championship teams: in Minnesota, with the 1987 Twins and in Pittsburgh. For Twins fans, we all know Bert was a major part of that 1987 Twins world championship team which we all revere for finally bringing a world championship to our State. And we won again in 1991. Bert mentioned in his acceptance speech on Sunday that he is the first Hall of Famer born in Holland. He moved to California as a child and became interested in baseball by watching Sandy Koufax pitch for the Dodgers. His father Joe, also a baseball fan, built him a pitcher's mound in the backyard, where he developed one of the best curveballs in baseball history. I would like to think if my dad had built me--no, I don't think so. Bert finished his playing career in 1992. In 1996, he rejoined the Twins in the broadcast booth, where for many years he and Dick Bremer have become familiar voices to Twins fans all over the upper Midwest. I personally love nothing more than watching a Twins game on TV and listening to Dick and Bert, who, in my humble opinion, are an authoritative and amazingly entertaining broadcast team. During broadcasts, Bert has created a phenomenon using his telestrator to circle Twins fans who, whether they are in the Target Field or on the road, are holding up signs that catch Bert's interest, and then he will circle them. There is no higher honor for a Twins fan than to be circled by Bert, and every game is packed with fans holding signs that simply say ``Circle Me, Bert.'' It was great to see that Bert was joined at Sunday's induction ceremony by his wife Gayle, their children, Bert's siblings, and his mother Jenny. During his speech, Bert spoke about his father Joe, who died in 2004 of Parkinson's disease, saying, ``I know he is up there right now looking down.'' In memory of his father, Bert and his wife Gayle started the ``Circle Me, Bert'' Web site to raise research money for the National Parkinson Foundation Minnesota. That says volumes about Bert Blyleven. Bert is known in Minnesota for his dedication to other charities and to the community there. So, once again, Bert, as a lifelong Twins fan, thank you and congratulations. After 14 years of waiting, you are hereby ``circled'' by the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, where generations of fans from Minnesota and around the country and around the world will know of your career and of your amazing contributions to the game of baseball and to the community of Minnesota. Thank you very much. I yield the floor and maybe also put in a word for Tony Oliva and also suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, are we in morning business?

Mr. FRANKEN

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

Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I rise today to discuss the urgent need to raise the debt limit. I wish to take this opportunity to remind my colleagues of our obligation to represent our constituents' best interests and those of our great Nation, for at this late hour, with the deadline for an agreement fast approaching, the consequences of inaction are clear. They have been made clear by economists, they have been made clear by credit rating agencies, they have been made clear by the Federal Reserve and by our Treasury Secretary, and they have been made clear by respected leaders of each side of the aisle. And soon, if we do not act, they will be made clear by the market itself. I keep hearing from some Members talking about the August 2 deadline as if it is no big deal. They say they have their own theories about when the real deadline is. That leaves me dumbfounded. I, for one, am going to take the Treasury Secretary and virtually every economist at their word. We need a solution before August 2 or we risk economic catastrophe. There are some Members who are essentially saying the Treasury can prioritize payments to avoid default, but getting Social Security checks out should not be a problem. I heard a Republican Member of the House Budget Committee on Public Radio this past weekend say the money for Social Security checks is in the trust fund. Well, yes, we have $2.6 trillion in assets in the trust fund, but they are all in Treasury securities, not cash. I find it stunning that a Member of Congress, let alone a member of the Budget Committee, would not understand the most basic functioning of our government. If there is no debt limit increase, Treasury may be able to juggle payments to get Social Security checks out on August 3, and I am sure they will do everything they can to do so, but August 3 would be just day one of Treasury's improvised prioritization strategy. August 3 is a date that about half of the Social Security checks go out. But we have another round scheduled to out on August 10, and another on August 17, and another on August 24. In fact, the Treasury sends out over 70 million checks a month. August 3 is not the end of the problem, it is the beginning. About 1 month ago, the Bipartisan Policy Center briefed members of the House Republican caucus on the actual implications of the August 2 deadline, what we can pay and what we could not pay. Jay Powell, the former Under Secretary of Treasury under President George H.W. Bush, presented at the briefing. He outlined his research on what is likely to happen on August 3. He suggested that in the month of August we could pay our debt interest, Social Security checks, Medicare and Medicaid, vendors for Defense projects, and unemployment insurance benefits. That is what we could pay, but no pay for active-duty military, no benefits for veterans, no Federal loans for low-income students about to head off to college in the fall, no Pell grants, no Federal Government employees, including counterterrorism agents in the FBI, for example, no border agents. Before we default, we could have time to make this sign for all points of entry. This is the tip of the iceberg. That is a symbol of things we definitely could not afford to do. That does not even address the global economic impacts of playing it so close to the edge. The dollar would be devalued, our credit rating would be downgraded. It would cost us much more--much more--to borrow and to pay the interest on our debt, and thus our debt would actually increase. More importantly, all adjustable interest rates would rise, including credit cards and mortgages and student loans. New loans, of course, would be more expensive. These impacts could have a legacy that dogs us for decades, if not centuries. This is serious business and we should not be testing this deadline. Yet that is exactly what some of my colleagues are doing. I worry that Republicans in the House are blind to research, deaf to reason, and are simply ignoring facts that are contrary to what they want to hear. Throughout this debate, conservative House Republicans have stood in the way of a deal. We have offered them some pretty sweet deals, and they have walked away. They treated the August 2 deadline as advisory, as optional. They suggest that the Treasury can figure out something to prevent a default. Now they are opposing Senator Reid's sensible deficit reduction plan because of how it calculates some of its savings. Specifically at issue is the Reid plan's $1 trillion in savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Republicans are calling a budgetary gimmick, not real savings. Yet the Ryan budget, which almost every House and Senate Republican voted for, counted the same cuts almost identically. So to say it is real savings in the Ryan plan but fake savings in the Reid proposal--I am sorry, but you cannot have it both ways. Further, Senator Reid's plan is actually all cuts. I do not necessarily like that. It contains dollar for dollar spending cuts to match the debt ceiling increase. And as much as I do not like this aspect of it, it does not include any revenues, even though a Washington Post-ABC News poll says that 72 percent of the American public believe we should have those making over $250,000 pay more--72 percent. But a cuts-only plan is what Republicans have been saying they wanted all along. Now we have given it to them, we have it out there, it is there, and all of the cuts in the Reid plan have been supported by Republicans in the past. So we are presenting a plan that is all cuts, no revenue. The pretense they are using to reject it does not pass the smell test. According to CBO, it saves $1.3 trillion more in savings than the Boehner plan, such as it is. You know, I often hear Republicans say corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars of cash instead of investing, expanding, and creating jobs, because businesses are facing so much uncertainty. Well, Senator Reid's plan offers certainty. But suddenly Republicans want a short-term deal, one that would very well put us in this same crisis again in 6 months. What kind of certainty is that? No, a short-term deal will not offer our businesses and markets the certainty they need. A short-term deal may very well induce a credit downgrade, according to Standard & Poor's. Yet Republicans say they prefer a short-term deal over Senator Reid's plan, which would take us through the end of next year. I do not get it. It sounds to me as though they care more about politics and winning than they do about their constituents' well-being and the prosperity and economic security of the Nation. Their hard line and cavalier attitude is frankly dangerous--very dangerous. Playing fast and loose with the facts is reckless. The American people deserve better. We need to raise the debt ceiling now, and Leader Reid has shown us the way forward. I do not like all of the cuts in his package. I wish there were increases in revenue from those who can afford it. But I know we have to pass it because it will keep us from defaulting, and it will do so responsibly and sensibly. We owe it to the American people to pull back from the brink and pass the Reid plan so we can avert disaster. We owe it to our constituents, and we owe it to our children. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, this weekend, driving around the Twin Cities, I was listening to public radio. The host of the program introduced a Republican member of the House Budget Committee. The member, whom I will not name to spare him or her a great deal of embarrassment, was asked about the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling. The member assured the host and listeners that failing to raise the debt ceiling would not create a default for a number of reasons. Among them was, according to this member, we can pay out all the Social Security checks to seniors because--and I quote--``the money is in the trust fund.'' Well, of course, there is $2.6 trillion of assets in the trust fund, but the Social Security trust fund is composed entirely of Treasury notes. Allow me to quote from the Congressional Research Service: By law, Social Security revenues credited to the trust fund . . . are invested in non-marketable U.S. government obligations. These obligations are physical (paper) documents issued to the trust fund and held by the Social Security Administration. When the obligations are redeemed, the Treasury must issue a check (a physical document) to the Social Security trust fund for the interest earned on the obligations. CRS continues: However, unlike a private trust that may hold a variety of assets and obligations of different borrowers, the Social Security trust fund can hold only non-marketable U.S. government obligations. The sale of these obligations by the U.S. government to the Social Security trust fund is federal government borrowing (from itself) and counts against the federal debt limit. Now, I have no idea what this Republican member of the House Budget Committee believes is in the Social Security trust fund. Stacks of hundred-dollar bills? Gold bricks? Warehouses of freezers with steaks in them? To me, it is shocking--shocking--that a Member of Congress--let lone a member of the House Budget Committee--can be so wildly ignorant of the basic workings of our government. We come to Washington to work together to solve our Nation's problems. How are we to do that if Members are unwilling or unable to come to even the most rudimentary understanding of our government? None of us is immune to making mistakes. Yet we find ourselves in this moment of existential crisis, with the full faith and credit of the United States being held hostage by a menagerie of ideologues who invent their own realities and are only too happy to share these fantasies with an unsuspecting public. We are playing with disaster. Can we please just stick to the facts? The fact is, if we do not act immediately, we will see a downgrade of our credit rating and possibly even default on our debt. Both would be entirely counterproductive to our goal of shrinking our deficits and growing our economy. We cannot control the fantasies of clueless ideologues, but we must act responsibly and do our jobs. And we must do it now. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about our debt crisis, our short-term debt crisis and our long-term debt crisis. I come here today to discuss ways to address them and ways not to address them. Our most immediate debt crisis is now upon us. In order to maintain the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government, Congress will have to vote to raise the debt ceiling within a matter of weeks. This is something Congress has done as a matter of course many times over the years as our national debt has grown. Let us be clear about what exactly it means to raise the debt ceiling and why it is necessary. As a nation, we have accumulated $14.3 trillion in debt. This in and of itself is a very bad and dangerous thing. That means our national debt is currently 93 percent of our gross national product. Again, this is a very bad and dangerous thing. We have been in this situation before. Actually, it has been worse. After World War II, our national debt was at 121.7 percent of our gross national product. We certainly had something to show for it. We had won World War II. Through the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, we worked our way to a point where our national debt fell to 32.5 percent of GDP in 1981. We did this through a combination of growth and some inflation. Our debt was in pretty good shape until we hit the 1980s, during which we quadrupled our national debt under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. We have hashed over time and again who is to blame for the situation we find ourselves in. But let me leave that alone for the moment and get back to what it means to raise the debt ceiling. As I said, our debt currently stands at $14.3 trillion. I think we can agree on this: That number reflects past choices, not current ones. The debt ceiling also stands at $14.3 trillion. We have to raise the debt ceiling because we as a nation have certain obligations we must meet. We have to pay for the wars we are currently engaged in. We have obligations to veterans who have served our Nation. We have obligations to have the dedicated men and women at FEMA who have been responding to the many floods and fires our Nation has been facing. We have obligations to seniors who have paid into Social Security all their working lives and have a right to expect a check every month of their retirement. We have obligations under Medicare, not just to seniors, who again have paid in, but to clinics and hospitals and health care providers and to those who supply medicine and medical equipment. We have contractual obligations of all kinds to many different businesses, whether they are building roads or water towers or providing IT services to the VA or the Park Service or the Senate. I think almost everyone would agree it is good to have guards in our Federal prisons, except maybe the prisoners. The list of obligations goes on and on, and one of our most fundamental obligations is to pay principal and interest to bondholders who have invested in what has been for decades and decades considered the safest investment in the world: the U.S. Treasury bond. Currently, we simply are not taking in enough revenues to meet all these obligations, so we must borrow more. Of course, we must pay interest on our debt, at an interest rate that is now actually quite low. The surest way to increase the interest on our debt would be to default on our debt obligations. And make no mistake, that is exactly what will happen if we fail to raise the debt ceiling. Even an increase in interest rates of just 1 percent would add $1.3 trillion to our interest payments over the next decade. So, as you can see, defaulting on our debt to make a point about the seriousness of our current position would, to say the least, be counterproductive. Yet some of my colleagues are willing to do just that, and that is irresponsible. As to the notion that bondholders could be paid while other obligations were postponed, Scott Elmendorf, Chair of the Congressional Budget Office, said: Defaulting on any government obligation is a dangerous gamble. We are not absolutely certain what exactly will happen if we default, but we have a pretty good idea. We know it would roil the international financial markets, induce rating downgrades of our Treasury notes, create fundamental doubts about the creditworthiness of the United States, and force us to pay higher interest rates to induce people to buy our bonds. It would damage the dollar and the special role of Treasury securities in global markets for decades to come--a dangerous gamble, one we cannot afford to take. Defaulting on our debt would also be, as David Brooks so aptly put it, a stain upon our national honor. Are we actually going to become a country that cannot be relied on to pay its debts? Yet we have Members of the House and Members of this body threatening to vote against raising the debt ceiling unless the President and Democrats in Congress meet their demands on how to address the deficit going forward. Are my friends suggesting we act like a deadbeat who buys a new car and then, some time down the line, decides: ``You know, I just don't feel like making the payments''? I think these Members are doing an enormous disservice by holding our Nation's economy and, indeed, the entire global economy hostage to their demands. Because the U.S. Treasury bond has been the foundation of the world financial system, it is not an overstatement to say that defaulting on our debt at this fragile point in the global economic recovery could throw us into a worldwide depression. I am hardly alone in this regard. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce shares my alarm. It is no small secret that the Wall Street backers of the Republican Party are beseeching their allies in Congress to come to their senses. Yet Republican leaders know there are also those in their party who believe this is their chance. This is their opportunity to exact concessions from the White House and Democrats in Congress precisely because the situation is so fraught with peril. They know the President of the United States cannot play a game of chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States of America. And in a game of chicken, the irrational and irresponsible player holds a distinct strategic advantage over the rational and responsible player. So we find ourselves in this place at this time. What are the demands? Well, Republican leaders here in the Senate are holding the debt ceiling hostage so they can end Medicare as we know it. Democrats are trying to protect Medicare and ensure its solvency, and the Affordable Care Act is already doing that. Not only does the Affordable Care Act provide more benefits to Medicare recipients, it also extends the solvency of Medicare by 7 years. That is the conclusion of the most recent report of the Medicare trustees. Of course, the first big idea from our friends on the other side of the aisle this Congress was to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and they all voted to do that. So please understand that one of their first votes this Congress would have had the effect of diminishing the solvency of Medicare, shrinking the solvency of Medicare by 7 years. Not only that, but according to the Congressional Budget Office, the Affordable Care Act will reduce the debt over the next decade by $210 billion, and over the decade following that by more than $1 trillion. So rather than saving money by making our health care system stronger, making our delivery of care more efficient, and keeping our constituents healthy, Republicans voted to repeal the health reform law. So the big Republican contribution to the sustainability of Medicare and our national debt was to vote to shorten Medicare's life expectancy by 7 years and to add well over $1 trillion to the debt in the next two decades. There is no doubt that the biggest threat to the sustainability of our long-term debt is the cost of health care. That is why so much of the Affordable Care Act is designed to address the cost of the delivery of medical care. Let me give you a couple of examples. First, the value index. The value index will direct that health care providers be reimbursed by the value of the care they provide rather than by the volume--the quality of the care rather than the quantity of care. In Minnesota, for instance, we do health care a lot better than most other States. We provide higher quality care at a lower cost than almost any other State. There is room for improvement in Minnesota, of course. As a health care economist told me: In Minnesota, we get an A, but that is because we grade on a curve. In Texas, they get reimbursed 50 percent more per patient in Medicare than we do in Minnesota and yet we have better outcomes. Why? Well, we have a different health care culture in Minnesota. We tend to do more coordinated, fully integrated care. We tend to see patients as people who we want to keep healthy and out of the hospital. In Texas, patients are more often viewed as profit centers. There are some excellent, high-value centers of health care in Texas, such as Baylor University. Then, there are some egregiously low-value ones, like some in McAllen, TX. And, by and large, Texas doctors order more procedures than Minnesota doctors so they can bill for more procedures. But the idea here isn't to pit Minnesota against Texas. The idea is to incentivize low-value States to do health care more like high-value States. Imagine if we could bring down the cost of health care in Texas by one-third. Imagine the savings to Medicare and Medicaid. One more example. Senator Lugar and I wrote a provision into the bill called the Diabetes Prevention Program. It is based on a CDC program piloted in Indianapolis and in St. Paul. They took folks that had been diagnosed with ``prediabetes'' and gave them 16 weeks of nutritional training and 16 weeks of physical exercise at the YMCA, all at a cost of only about $300 per person. The number of people with prediabetes who later developed full-blown type 2 diabetes was reduced by almost 60 percent--60 percent! Caring for chronic disease is the most expensive piece of our health care system in this country. One of the most common chronic illnesses is diabetes. It costs our Nation $218 billion a year to treat diabetes. A couple weeks after the Affordable Care Act passed, I brought the Under Secretary of Health and Human Services into my office to meet with diabetes experts from the CDC and with United Health Group, the country's largest insurance company. The goal of the meeting was to get HHS on board to bring the piloted Diabetes Prevention Program up to scale nationwide. The executive from United Health said she would definitely reimburse their policy holders for going through the 16-week program. She said, ``You know why? Because for every dollar we spend, we'll save four dollars.'' The value index and the Diabetes Prevention Program are but two of the many programs in the Affordable Care Act that have been written into the law. Jonathan Gruber, the MIT professor who helped put together the health reform system in Massachusetts when Mitt Romney was Governor there, has said of the Affordable Care Act, ``It's really hard to figure out how to bend the cost curve, but I can't think of a thing to try that they didn't try . . . You couldn't have done better than they are doing.'' Since then, in the House, Representative Paul Ryan and the Republicans in Congress have taken an entirely different approach. Instead of putting in the long, hard hours of consulting with health care providers, health care economists, patient groups, hospitals, rural health groups, and medical researchers to actually try to build on protocols that have been proven to bring down the cost of delivering quality medicine, Representative Ryan decided just to slash the funding of Medicare, give the money left over to seniors, and let them fend for themselves to buy their own health care from insurance companies. Now, we know there was no functional market for health insurance for folks 65 and over before Medicare and Medicaid started in 1965. It is doubtful that there would be one now. Under the Republican plan, seniors would essentially get a voucher for a significantly lower amount than their Medicare is worth now. Remember that the cost to Medicare for administering its program is less than 2 percent. Insurance companies, on the other hand, spend around 11 percent on administration. The CBO estimates that under the Ryan plan, out-of- pocket cost for health care for each senior will more than double to over $12,500 a year. This is not Medicare as we know it. It is not Medicare. So, understand this: the Republican plan to end Medicare would make huge cuts in Medicare benefits and put insurance companies in charge of seniors' health care. This would double the out-of-pocket costs for seniors and toss aside all the new benefits offered by the Affordable Care Act. There is no question which vision of Medicare holds more hope for seniors and which takes a scientific, evidence-based, best practices approach to addressing the long-range cost of delivering health care to all Americans. And yet my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are telling us that they are willing to risk throwing the global economy into depression if Democrats don't act more responsibly on Medicare. Well, ok. Here is an idea. Allow Medicare to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies on drugs for Medicare Part D. The VA does it. And guess what. The VA pays an average of 48 percent less than Medicare does for the top 10 most prescribed drugs. Now the pharmaceutical industry tells us they need us to pay the higher price because they need the money for research. But, in fact, they spend more money on advertising and marketing than they do on research. Almost every other developed country uses its size to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies. Why does the American taxpayer have to be the chump who pays full price? I say we negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies and bring down the cost to Medicare by as much as $24 billion a year, or $240 billion over the next 10 years. That could go straight to paying off the debt. There. I got you a $240 billion cut to Medicare. Now can we please vote to raise the debt ceiling and avert a worldwide economic catastrophe? If my friends on the other side are really serious about getting our deficit under control, couldn't we start by getting rid of a measly $2 billion a year in taxpayer subsidies to oil companies--the companies that are getting record profits because the price of oil is so high? Unfortunately, according to my Republican colleagues, this would be a tax hike. In order for us to agree to balance the budget, everyone has to pay. Who is in a better position to give? Exxon or a little girl in Minnesota named Evelyn. You see, Evelyn was born with cystic fibrosis. When she was 10, her liver failed, and her own toxins started to poison her. But Medicaid helped her get the care she needed. That is what this is about. Exxon or Evelyn. Frankly, it makes me kind of sad. So there are some more billions for deficit reduction. Get rid of the subsidies to the five biggest oil companies--$21 billion over the next 10 years. And you know what? If we are seriously going to address our debt crisis, we have to increase revenues. Now under the Republican plan, the cuts to end Medicare as we know it and to slash Medicaid all go to pay for tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. That's right. The Republican plan cuts taxes on the top marginal rates for millionaires and billionaires from 35 percent to 25 percent. Now my Republican friends like to say that tax cuts always produce revenue increases. Besides the fact that that is simply not true, it also contradicts the other argument Republicans use for not raising taxes. Raising taxes, Republicans often argue, would just give the government more money to spend. According to that oft-repeated Republican argument, cutting taxes will lower revenue and ``starve the beast.'' Here is President Ronald Reagan making this exact point in 1981: There were always those who told us that taxes couldn't be cut until spending was reduced. Well, you know, we can lecture our children about extravagance until we run out of voice and breath. Or we can cure their extravagance by simply reducing their allowance. In other words, cutting taxes cuts revenues and forces the children, in this case, the government, to cut spending. So, at the heart of my friends' argument on why we must cut taxes are two completely contradictory, mutually exclusive arguments. On the one hand, according to my friends, lowering taxes always increases revenues and therefore brings down the deficit. On the other hand, they argue, lowering taxes decreases revenues. Which is it? Because you can't have it both ways. I will try to provide some context for my friends. After President Reagan cut taxes in 1981, we immediately started amassing enormous deficits. They were so bad that President Reagan felt compelled to raise taxes in 1982 and then again in 1983. In fact, President Ronald Reagan, the supply-side icon, raised taxes 11 times. If President Reagan did that today, the Tea Party and, in fact, the entire Republican Party would run him out of town on a rail. But, you see, President Reagan knew that to raise revenue, you have to either raise marginal tax rates, or get rid of tax loopholes for the wealthy and for big corporations. Which is what he did repeatedly. Even so, our national debt nearly tripled during the Reagan Presidency. The national debt continued to grow rapidly during the George H. W. Bush administration. In fact, in 1993, he handed President Bill Clinton what at that point was the largest deficit in history. So what did President Clinton do? Well, in his 1993 deficit reduction package, he added two new marginal tax rates at the top end--36 percent for those making over $180,000 and 39.6 percent for those making over $250,000. Every Republican voted against the package. They said that raising the top marginal tax rate would cause a recession. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich said: I believe this will lead to a recession next year. This is the Democrat machine's recession, and each one of them will be held personally accountable. Senator Phil Gramm of Texas said: The Clinton plan is a one-way ticket to recession. This plan does not reduce the deficit. But it raises taxes and it puts people out of work. Representative John Kasich, then ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said: This plan will not work. If it was to work, I'd have to become a Democrat. Well, it worked. Not only did we have an unprecedented expansion of our economy for 8 years, creating more than 22 million new net jobs, but we balanced the budget and Bill Clinton handed George W. Bush a record surplus. I call that ``working.'' Now President Clinton, and especially the Democrats in Congress, paid a political price for the 1993 deficit reduction package. The Democrats went down to defeat in 1994, losing control of the House for the first time in 40 years. You could say that Democrats took a shellacking. Nevertheless, between 1993 and 2001 the Nation created an unprecedented number of jobs benefiting every quartile of our economy, decreasing the number of Americans in poverty, increasing median income, and creating more millionaires than ever--to which my colleagues on the other side of the aisle might say, ``Sure, it worked in practice. But does it work in theory?'' President Clinton's deficit reduction plan not only reduced the deficit as planned, it eliminated it entirely and gave incoming President George W. Bush a record surplus. In fact, when President Bush took office, we were on track to completely pay off our national debt with $5 trillion of surpluses projected over the next 10 years. In other words, we would have zeroed out our national debt this year. Five days after President Bush took office--again, after President Bush took office--Alan Greenspan testified to the Senate Budget Committee that we were in danger of paying off the national debt too quickly and entering uncharted territory in which the Federal Government would have too much money. The Federal Government, Greenspan warned, would have to put its excess money into private equities, thereby distorting and decreasing the efficiency of our markets. President Bush told the country that a surplus meant that Americans were paying too much in taxes. This was our money, he told us, and so we all deserved a tax cut. Then after the economy went into recession, Bush told us that what we needed was another tax cut to stimulate the economy. So, in other words, ``when the economy is going strong, tax cuts are in order.'' And ``when the economy is weak, tax cuts are in order.'' Combine those with the aforementioned contradictory ``tax cuts reduce revenues forcing government to spend less of our money'' and ``tax cuts always increase revenues'' and you have an exquisitely incomprehensible economic theory. But that exquisitely incomprehensible theory needed just one more element to make it downright dangerous. And that element would be provided by Vice President Richard Cheney. By late 2002, the surplus President George W. Bush had inherited from Bill Clinton was turning once again into huge deficits. According to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, he tried to warn Vice President Cheney that budget deficits were growing at an alarming rate, posing a threat to the economy. Vice President Cheney cut O'Neill off, saying, ``You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter.'' By the end of his Presidency, George W. Bush left President Obama a budget deficit projected at $1.2 trillion for fiscal year 2009. Meanwhile, President Bush had doubled our national debt. What was to blame? Could it have had anything to do with the fact that for the first time in history we cut taxes while we were at war? Well, not according to the Republican leader. In July of last year Senator McConnell said: ``There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue.'' But adjusting for inflation, since the Bush tax cuts were enacted, revenues have fallen 17 percent. And that is not even taking into account growth in our population, which was 9 percent over this period. When you add the effect of population growth, revenues declined by about 24 percent per capita. I think this clearly constitutes evidence that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. So it should be no surprise that reduced revenues are responsible for a lot of our deficit, as you can see here. This chart by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is based on CBO data and shows that the Bush tax cuts were responsible for 25 percent of the deficit in 2010. And that is only going to grow. By 2019, the tax cuts will account for almost 60 percent of our deficit. And the fact is that not only did the national debt double during the Bush administration, we also had a dismal record of job creation. And during the Bush years, for the first time since we started keeping records, median income fell in America. And more Americans fell into poverty. One in five children in America now lives in poverty. It is even higher in rural America. There is one group that did very well during the Bush years, and continues to do very well: The extremely wealthy. We now have in this country the greatest disparity in income and wealth that we have had since the 1920s. So the one thing that there is no evidence whatsoever of is that cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans can create jobs and keep the deficit under control. So why would we do it, when the evidence is so stark that the Bush tax cuts coincided with a huge spike in both the debt and unemployment? Why not look back on what has worked in the past and learn from it? As I said earlier, after World War II our debt as a percentage of GDP was, in fact, significantly larger than it is today. But what did we do? Well, we passed the G.I. bill so that our troops returning from the war could go to college. Truman started the Marshall plan to help Europe get on its feet. And it is not as if we had smooth sailing as far as Defense spending. We went to war in Korea, losing nearly 35,000 Americans. After that war ended, we found ourselves in an extended Cold War. We built the largest infrastructure project in our history, the Interstate Highway System-- it added enormously to our economic development, because now we could transport our goods around the country so much more efficiently. When the Soviets launched Sputnik into space, we jump-started our space program and our investment in science and math education. My brother and I were Sputnik kids. He was 11 and I was 6 when it was launched. My parents took us into our living room in Minnesota and told us that we had to study math and science in order to beat the Soviets. I thought that was a big burden to place on an 11-year-old and a 6- year-old. But we were obedient sons, and so we studied math and science. And wouldn't you know it, my parents were right. We beat the Soviets. The space program created all kinds of dividends in technology and to our economic development. I watched a Senate debate last fall in which the Republican candidate said that government had never created a job. The debate, of course, was broadcast by satellite. I think you get the idea. The fact is the investments we made in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s in science and technology, in our State universities, in infrastructure that was the envy of the world brought our debt as a percentage of GDP from 121 percent in 1945 to 33 percent in 1980. Erskine Bowles is right. We can't get out of our current debt crisis with growth alone. But I will tell you most certainly that we will not get out of it without growth. And so we have to choose wisely in what we invest in, in when we invest, and in how we invest; and in what we cut, and when we cut, and how we cut--which we must do--and in how we increase revenues, when we increase revenues, and from whom we get those revenues. Why not invest in retrofitting our buildings when we have so many in the building trades out of work, sitting on the sidelines, and knowing that we can recoup that investment in energy savings within 3 to 5 years? Let's find creative ways of financing that, such as PACE financing, which lets families get a loan from their local government and pay it back on their property taxes. This is how cities pay for streetlights and sidewalks. It adds value to homes; and when the family moves, the loan stays with the property. We should also create incentives for banks to lend to small businesses for retrofitting commercial buildings. There is a company in Minnesota called McQuay that makes heating and air conditioning systems for commercial buildings. They are actually supplying the system for the new World Trade Center, and their systems are so energy efficient that they pay for themselves in 3 to 5 years through energy savings. They have been taking out loans from banks since they are a large creditworthy company, but then they give out loans to customers who install their systems. It is a win-win, because they are selling more units and putting people back to work, and their customers are actually making money in the long run through energy savings. McQuay has a good model, and we should be figuring out how to encourage others to do the same thing. Why not cut our Defense spending when $100 billion in cuts have been identified by our service chiefs at Secretary Gates' request, and when cost overruns on our weapons systems are absurdly high? The GAO recently revealed that when you add up the growth in costs of major Defense weapons systems over their original estimates, the total is over $402 billion. Why not raise revenue by increasing taxes on the wealthiest in this Nation--those who have benefited the most from the economy in recent years--especially when we can look to the recent past and see that their tax cuts created virtually no jobs and contributed mightily to our deficit? Only when the middle class is strong does our economy grow, because the middle class has always been the part of our society that creates demand. There are just not enough rich people to buy enough stuff. The middle class spends its money. But today, companies are sitting on trillions of dollars because there is just not enough demand. And that is because there is a lot of unemployment and because wages for the middle class have gone down over the last decade. Creating a middle class is not an end unto itself. A strong middle class leads to strong consumer spending, and therefore to a strong economy and to national prosperity. The middle class is also where you get entrepreneurs and small businesses--it is the engine of our economy. Why not invest in early childhood education when we know that the return on quality early childhood education is up to $16 for every $1 spent? We know that children who have had quality early childhood education are less likely to need special education, less likely to repeat grades, they have better health outcomes, and that the girls are less likely to get pregnant as teenagers. We know children who have quality early childhood education are more likely to graduate from high school, more likely to go to college, more likely to get a good job and pay taxes, and much less likely to go to prison. My friends on the other side say that we must cut the deficit for our children's sake, and I agree. But why then are such a disproportionate amount of the cuts aimed at programs that help kids? As I said, one of every five children in America lives in poverty, and even more in rural areas. But the Republicans want to cut Head Start and Early Head Start. We currently serve about 40 percent of children who qualify for Head Start and less than 4 percent of children who qualify for Early Head Start. Do we really want to cut that? Do we really want to cut Pell grants? The Republican budget slashes Medicaid. About 50 percent of the recipients of Medicaid are children. We know we are going to have to make shared sacrifices to get the budget under control, but do we really think that sick kids should make those sacrifices? You know, immediately after this last election, Republican leadership said that their No. 1 priority was seeing to it that Barack Obama is a one-term President. They didn't say their No. 1 priority was getting Americans back to work, or educating our kids, or even balancing the budget. Their No. 1 priority was winning the next election. But I don't think that is what Americans want. The American people want us to get to work to solve problems, to improve their lives. We don't have to agree on how to do that but they sent us here to work together. If the time between elections just becomes about jockeying for the next election, then what in the world is the point of getting elected in the first place? I thought we were here to work together constructively in the interest of the American people. Now the Senate Republican leader is saying that raising any new revenues is off the table; that he will not vote to raise the debt ceiling if part of our compromise on the budget going forward involves any tax increase on anyone, no matter how wealthy they are, no matter what their income. I ask all my colleagues, for the good of the country, to step back from the brink, to step back from brinksmanship on this debt ceiling. Let's not panic. We are going to be on this planet for a while. Let's have some confidence in ourselves to do this in a smart thoughtful way so that our children will say, ``Well, they might not have been the Greatest Generation, but they were a Pretty Good Generation.'' I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I would like to honor a leader from my home State of Minnesota, William A. Hawkins. Bill, who is retiring with distinction as the chairman and CEO of Medtronic, has achieved great professional success through his dedication to and advancement of life- saving innovations. Approximately every 4 seconds, the life of someone somewhere in the world is improved by a Medtronic product or therapy. Medical technology is an important solution to our Nation's health care challenges. Under Bill's leadership, Medtronic has helped to maintain Minnesota's world leadership in medical innovation. Bill has nearly 35 years of career experience in the medical device industry, serving in leadership positions at Novoste Corporation, American Home Products, Johnson and Johnson, Guidant Corporation, and Eli Lilly. He began his medical technology career with Carolina Medical Electronics in 1977. While reflecting on his career at Medtronic, he recently said, ``I have seen many product launches--from the ear thermometer to the automatic external defibrillator.'' He joined Medtronic in 2002 as senior vice president and president of the company's vascular business before serving as corporate president and chief operating officer. Bill Hawkins was named chief executive officer of Medtronic in 2007 and assumed the additional role of chairman in 2008. Under his guidance, Medtronic's capacity to serve patients extended further to provide an array of diagnostic, preventive, and chronic disease management solutions. With a breadth and depth of expertise across more than 30 major chronic conditions, he recognized the unique position to play a larger role in the health care industry. In March of 2010, Bill received the Biomedical Engineering Society's Distinguished Achievement Award. This award is given to recognize those that have made great contributions to the field of biomedical engineering and bioengineering. Mr. Hawkins serves on the Board of Visitors for the Duke University School of Engineering and the Board of Directors for the Guthrie Theater and the University of Minnesota Foundation. I ask my colleagues to join me, his friends, family, and colleagues in commending Bill Hawkins on his numerous achievements and wishing him well as he begins a new journey. Congratulations, Bill.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 15, 2011, at 10 a.m. in Dirksen 406 to conduct a hearing entitled, ``The Clean Air Act and Public Health.''

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 15, 2011, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 15, 2011, at 9:30 a.m. in SR 328A.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 15, 2011, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 15, 2011, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 15, 2011, at 10 a.m.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. I thank the Chair. Madam President, I rise today to discuss what I think is one of the clearest threats to Americans' digital privacy and to discuss legislation I think will go a long way toward addressing this problem. Americans have valued and sought to protect their right to privacy for a long time, and so have the representatives they have elected to be a part of this Chamber. But in the past few decades, there has been a fundamental shift in the nature of our right to privacy and the privacy threats we face. Because when I was young, when people talked about their right to privacy, they talked about protecting themselves from the government--from government intrusion. They asked: Is the government keeping tabs on my political beliefs? Is it staying out of my family business? Today, we still need to worry about protecting our privacy from the government, but we also need to protect our privacy from private entities--from corporations that are obtaining and aggregating increasingly large amounts of our personal information. Nowhere is that need clearer and more urgent than on the Internet. Within the Internet ecosystem, I would argue that some of the most sensitive information out there comes from our phones. Smartphones are the future of the Internet and can actually be more powerful than desktop computers from a decade ago. There will be more smartphones sold in 2012 than laptops and desktops combined. There is a reason for that. These are incredible devices. Using a smartphone, a mother or father can see his or her child, wish him or her goodnight, even if that child is half a world away. A smartphone can give a driver directions and can tell that driver where the nearest gas station is. Smartphones also enable emergency responders to find and respond to an accident in a matter of seconds. But the same technology that allows these wonderful benefits also raises very clear privacy concerns. Our smartphones know where we are all the time. Unfortunately, the last 6 months has shown that our legal framework hasn't kept up with technology and isn't protecting our privacy when we use these devices. Last December, an investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that of 101 top applications for Apple iPhones and Google Android devices, 47 disclosed information about a user's location to third parties, without asking consent from the user. In April, security researchers discovered that for almost a year, Apple iPhone devices have been creating a detailed log of the different places a user had visited--and stored that log on both the phone and on every computer a user synched his or her device to in an unencrypted manner. That same month, Americans learned that both iPhones and Androids were automatically transmitting location information back to Apple and Google. In the case of the iPhones, the user had no clear way of knowing this was happening. In many cases, they actually had no way to stop it. In February, I became chairman of the Judiciary Committee's new Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. I decided to use my new role to dig down and find out more about smartphone privacy. When I learned of the events in April, I wrote Apple about what was going on, and in May, I held our first subcommittee hearing on the issue. We took testimony from the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, privacy advocates, technologists, representatives from app developers, and we took testimony from Apple and from Google. I will tell you, the more I learned about this problem, the more I became worried for consumers. I learned that an app on your phone can access an incredible amount of information on you. It can monitor your Web browsing habits. It can access and read your address book. And, of course, it can access your location. But in most cases, a user has no way of knowing that all of this information can be freely sent to third parties that the user has never heard of. A recent study of the top 340 free applications found that only 19 percent provide users with a link to a privacy policy. That is less than one in five apps. I also learned that our Federal laws on this subject are a confusing hodgepodge full of gaps and loopholes, and that in many cases our current Federal laws explicitly allow wireless companies and companies such as Apple and Google to disclose our location information to whomever they want. Let me give you an example. If I use my smartphone to make a phone call, my wireless company cannot go out and give my location to third parties without getting my express consent. But if I use that same smartphone to search the Internet, my wireless company can disclose my information to almost anyone they want. Here is another example. If I use a mapping application on my smartphone to find out where I am or to find the nearest supermarket, Apple and Google would have to ask my consent before telling third parties where I am. But if my same phone automatically transmits my location to one of these companies without my knowing it, then, arguably, under current Federal law, again, these companies would likely be free to disclose my information to almost anyone they want. You do not have to take my word for it. Over the past several months, I have asked privacy experts and officials from the Department of Justice and the Department of Commerce about these issues, and they have confirmed that this is, in fact, the case. This does not make sense. In fact, it is kind of a problem. But the most alarming thing I heard is that there are real-life consequences when we do not do enough to protect location information on our smartphones. The very first group that contacted me after I wrote my letter to Apple in April was the Minnesota Battered Women's Coalition. They told me they have seen time and time again how smartphone location technology can be abused by batterers and stalkers. I asked the Minnesota Battered Women's Coalition to submit testimony for my hearing. Two stories from their testimony jumped out at me. One was of a woman from St. Louis County, MN. The Presiding Officer knows St. Louis County very well. It extends from Duluth all the way up to the Canadian border. It is a huge county, actually. Recently, this woman had gone to a domestic violence program located in a county building. Within 5 minutes of entering the building, her abuser sent her a text message and asked her: Why are you in the county building? Soon after that, an advocate helped her get an order of protection against her abuser. To get that, she needed to go to the local courthouse. Soon after she filed the order of protection, the abuser texted her again. This time he asked: Why did you go the courthouse? Did you file for an order of protection against me? The advocates later concluded that this woman's abuser was tracking her via a location tracking service on her phone. Another woman in Minnesota had a similar experience when she secretly entered a domestic violence shelter and her abuser started sending her text messages asking her: Why are you at a shelter? In fact, he started calling taxicabs to wait for her outside the shelter at all hours of the day. Again, in this case, advocates realized that this woman's abuser was tracking her through an app on her phone. My goal with the Privacy Subcommittee is to try to find a balance between the wonderful benefits of modern technology and our need to protect our privacy. Right now, when it comes to smartphone location technology, we have an imbalance, because we are getting all the wonderful benefits, but we are not keeping our privacy. I think we can get both. This problem is not going to fix itself. Let me tell you why I say that. After the hearing with Apple and Google, I asked representatives from each of those companies a simple question: Will you require that the apps you sell have privacy policies? In fact, I also asked them this: Even if you do not require that all the apps you sell have privacy policies, will you at least require privacy policies for just the apps that can get your location? Well, by last week, both companies had answered my questions. Let me summarize their answers: No. I think Congress needs to act. That is why today I am introducing the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011. This piece of legislation is founded on a simple principle: that consumers have a right to know what information is being collected about them and how it is being used, and that they have a right to decide who will get that information, and with whom they can share it. This bill will fill gaps and loopholes in current Federal law to give consumers four simple protections. First, the bill says that anytime your wireless company or a company such as Google or Apple or an app developer wants to get your location from your smartphone, they need to get your permission first. Second, if they want to give your information to a third party, they also need to get your permission. This does not mean that our smartphones are going to be clogged with permission screens. No. This can be done with one simple screen. My bill does not require a new permission screen from every subsequent company that gets your location. That would be impractical. It would not be smart. The third thing it does is require companies that collect and aggregate the location information from thousands of consumers to take reasonable measures to protect that information from foreseeable threats. Finally, if a consumer writes one of these companies and asks: Hey, do you have my location information, that company has to answer that user yes or no. And if the user asks for his or her information to be deleted, the company has to honor that request. When I wrote the bill, I looked at the way other current digital privacy laws were being enforced. Most of them have what is called a private right of action that allows a consumer to get their day in court if their rights are violated. I know that many entrepreneurs find these burdensome, so I wrote the private right of action clause such that it would only kick in if no Federal or State authority decides to act. I also included exceptions in the bill to make it easier for parents to keep track of their children, for companies to protect against fraud and use location information that is anonymous, and for emergency responders to get to the scene of an accident without any redtape. In fact, this bill does not cover law enforcement at all. It governs only what private companies do with our information, and what companies they share it with. I am proud to have worked on this bill with my friend from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal. I am equally proud the bill has the support of the Center for Democracy and Technology, Consumers Union, Consumer Action, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the National Consumers League, the National Women's Law Center, the National Center for Victims of Crime, the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group. This bill will bring us back to a better balance between the benefits of smartphone technology--and they are wonderful--and our right to privacy, which is basic. It was written with input from consumer advocates and industry alike. But even after today, I will continue to work with these groups to make sure our bill is getting that balance right. I look forward to those conversations.

Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today to express my strong opposition to the amendment offered by my colleague from Oklahoma which we will be voting on tomorrow. Before I talk about the substance of the amendment, I wish to comment on the procedure through which it was offered. There was no warning to Senate leadership or to any of our colleagues. And while technically it wasn't in violation of Senate rules, it undermines the basic comity that makes this body work. It is a disservice to do business this way--to our colleagues, to bipartisanship, and to the American people who sent us in Washington to get work done by working together. So I am disappointed in the way this was handled. Now let me talk about the amendment itself. Today, families in Minnesota and around the country are paying painfully high prices at the pump as oil still hovers around $100 a barrel. What this amendment does is cut the legs out from under the most viable alternative to foreign oil we have. Despite decade after decade of rhetoric about weaning our country off foreign oil, we are still dependent on it. And while about a third of our oil imports comes from Canada and Mexico, close to half come from the Persian Gulf, Africa, or Venezuela. Last year at this time we were dealing with the gulf oilspill, the worst environmental catastrophe we have ever had. That was maybe the most jarring reminder of what has been clear for decades--that we have to kick our addiction to oil. While that is not something we can do overnight, we need to do everything in our power to transition to alternatives. There is no more viable alternative than biofuels. Today, the industry that has been most successful in displacing oil is under attack. We are talking about an industry using homegrown American resources, an industry that has created thousands of jobs and catalyzed economic development across rural America. The first generation of biofuels has paved the way for the next generation of advanced biofuels. The first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant is being built this year in Emmetsburg, IA, where it will be making ethanol from corncobs. According to a recent study done by the researchers at Iowa State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the growth in ethanol production reduced wholesale gas prices by an average of 89 cents per gallon in 2010. In the Midwest, that number was higher: $1.37 per gallon. Let me repeat that. At a time when so many American families are struggling to pay their bills and make ends meet, they would have paid an average of 89 cents more per gallon of gas last year had we not had ethanol. But instead of giving this industry the tools it needs to grow and reduce our oil dependence even more, this amendment hangs the ethanol industry out to dry. It makes no sense. I share the concern of my colleague from Oklahoma about the deficit and our national debt. To cut our deficit, everyone in America will have to make some sacrifices, and that includes the ethanol industry. The easy part here is that the ethanol industry agrees. Ethanol producers stand ready to phase out the ethanol blenders credit. But we need to be consistent. If the ethanol industry is being asked to make some sacrifices, other fuel industries need to be willing to do the same. Yet, just a month ago, many of my colleagues, including my colleague from Oklahoma, voted against repealing billions of dollars in subsidies we pay every year to the biggest five oil companies. We are talking about companies that have made almost $1 trillion in profit over the last decade. My colleagues chose to leave those tax breaks in place, amounting to 21 billion in taxpayer dollars to oil companies over the next 10 years. Expert after expert has basically concluded these subsidies are not lowering the cost of gas and would not cause it to increase if they were eliminated. But we do not need experts to tell us that. Subsidies for oil and gas are on the books right now, and some have been on the books since as far back as 1916, but they have done nothing to stem the skyrocketing gas prices that are squeezing the budgets of American families. Yet when we are talking about ethanol--a homegrown alternative to foreign oil that lowers prices at the pump--my colleagues seem to think it is absolutely imperative to repeal this tax credit now. When it is repealing subsidies for oil and gas companies operating in oil-producing States such as Oklahoma, that somehow is a tax hike. But cutting a tax credit that supports an American renewable fuel, that is ``fiscal responsibility.'' The hypocrisy here is stunning. Regardless, America's ethanol producers are ready and willing to phase out this credit. But there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. The Coburn amendment, which abruptly ends the credit at the end of this month, is the wrong way. The right way is to responsibly phase out the tax credit in a manner that allows the industry to build out the infrastructure it needs to bring advanced biofuels into the U.S. market. Today my colleagues and I are introducing legislation that does it the right way, and I urge every Member of this body to support it. Right now, our biofuels industry is hitting a wall because of the national 10-percent ethanol blend limit we have had on the books. It also is hamstrung by the inability of most cars and gas pumps to use blends higher than 10 percent ethanol. That means cellulosic ethanol and other advanced biofuels have no market access or market to grow into. This isn't an industry problem, it is a public policy problem. The EPA's E15 waiver was a step in the right direction to address this very problem. But without pumps that can deliver higher ethanol blends, American consumers have no way to access additional ethanol that would and should be on the market. What our legislation does is reform our ethanol tax policy by ending the ethanol tax credit in its current form at the end of the month. It then invests part of the savings into biofuels infrastructure, part toward extending the cellulosic ethanol credit, and puts $1 billion toward reducing our deficit. Reducing America's dependence on oil is going to require a national strategy, and biofuels are just one part of that strategy. We also need to do things such as deploy more electric vehicles and make our entire economy more energy efficient. We have to recognize that if we don't fix our national policies to allow the biofuels industry to grow, we are actively choosing foreign oil and dirty fossil fuels over domestic, homegrown, renewable fuels. Let me tell my colleagues something: We are never going to see a massive ethanol spill in the Gulf of Mexico that kills 11 workers, destroys thousands and thousands of livelihoods, and does irreparable harm to vital ecosystems. We are never going to see foreign countries collude to restrict the supply of ethanol and drive up gas prices for American families. As we transition to advanced biofuels and expand this industry, we are not going to see these jobs go overseas. This is an American industry, it is American jobs, and it is American energy independence. I urge my colleagues to make the responsible choice--one that will keep this industry moving forward. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. FRANKEN

Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I rise to talk about a Minnesota icon. Minnesotans and baseball fans across this country are celebrating the life of Harmon Killebrew today. We lost the great slugger yesterday. I never met Mr. Killebrew, which is kind of hard for me to believe, because, similar to so many Minnesotans, I felt that I knew him. He was the heart of the Minnesota Twins franchise, not just because of the towering home runs he hit but because, on and off the field, he carried himself with so much dignity and grace and humility. I was 9 years old when the old Washington Senators moved to Minnesota and became the Minnesota Twins. We were so excited to have a major league team in Minnesota, and Killebrew was the heart and the anchor of the franchise, batting cleanup and cracking out 400-foot-plus home runs with his unbelievably powerful swing. By 1965, Killebrew, along with Tony Oliva, Zoilo Versalles, Bob Allison, Earl Battey, Jim Perry, Jim Kaat, and Mudcat Grant unseated the Yankee dynasty and took the American League pennant. I was sitting along the left field line of Metropolitan Stadium the game before the All-Star break that year when Killebrew hit a ninth-inning walk-off homer to beat the Yankees. It was not a typical Killebrew home run. It was a line drive that just shot out of the park into the left field stands, and it sent us into the All-Star break in first place. I, along with lots of Twins fans, believe that was the blow that was the key to that season. As I said, that rope of a homer was not a typical Killebrew home run. He was known for these towering blasts. I remember one in particular. I was watching the Twins on TV one summer night with my dad and my brother, and the Twins were playing the Tigers in Detroit in the old Tiger Stadium. And Killebrew got ahold of one and it cleared the left field roof, one of just four shots that cleared that roof in the 87-year history of the stadium. My recollection is that by its trajectory, the ball was estimated to be a 480-foot home run. Killebrew hit the longest ball in the history of Metropolitan Stadium--a 530-foot shot! Now Killebrew was not that big a man. He was 5 feet 11 inches and about 210 pounds. In his major league career, Harmon Killebrew hit 573 home runs, all without the aid of steroids. Killebrew grew up in rural Idaho. According to one press account I read last night, Killebrew claimed to have gotten his strength from carrying 10-gallon milk cans during the summers as a youth. But I know a little something, second hand, about where the power for those home runs really came from. His legs. See, about 20 years ago, a friend of mine did a little film with Killebrew, and travelled to his home in Idaho. My friend asked Killebrew where his power came from, and Harmon said that it came from his legs. Killebrew told my friend that the Killebrews all had incredibly powerful legs and that his father, Killebrew's father, could jump over a cow from a standing position. I had always hoped to meet Killebrew and ask him about that. I had a chance to. In 2005, there was a commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the 1965 Twins team. It was held in a tent after a Twins' game at the Metrodome. I was in the tent and I got Tony Oliva's autograph, and Camilo Pascual's. And I saw Killebrew and he was surrounded by fans. And I just wanted to give him some space. He was a totally accessible guy. Every Twins fan knew that from his years on the team and his years in the Twins broadcast booth. But for some reason I decided to talk to another member of that great team, and figured I would talk to Harmon a little later. But by the time I tried to find him again, he was gone. So, I never met Harmon Killebrew. But, again, like all Twins fans, I felt I knew him. A gracious, humble man that we in Minnesota were privileged to watch, and who we were privileged to have represent our State.