Chuck Grassley

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, we have seen a whirlwind of activity on this so-called economic stimulus package. We began by watching the partisanship in the House prevail, where the House passed a package strictly along party lines. No House Republican voted for it. And 11 Democrats joined the Republicans in voting no. Then we had a mark-up in the Senate Finance Committee, the committee that I am ranking member on. Over 200 amendments were filed. Some amendments were agreed to, like the amendment I filed for a 1-year alternative minimum tax ``AMT'' patch. But many others, specifically Republican amendments, failed or were never brought to a vote. Unfortunately, there was a tacit agreement among the Democratic members of my committee to vote no on any Republican amendment, regardless of the merits. Those on my side of the aisle did not find that very bipartisan. Then a floor debate in the Senate ensued. It lasted a full week. I am happy that the debate gave many Members on my side of the aisle an opportunity to discuss how this legislation could be improved. I was dismayed, however, on the process. For example, there were a number of amendments that I filed that were never given a fair vote. Bottom line, they were blocked. I was not the only Republican Senator that got locked out of the process. And speaking of process, let me briefly discuss how this conference committee process worked. Or shall I say did not work. It was not a conference that permitted bipartisan negotiations. I have often used the following analogy to define bipartisanship. It is an analogy that married couples can understand. That analogy comes from the example of Barbara and Chuck Grassley going to buy a car. If I buy the car and take it to Barbara that is not a truly marital decision. If we both go to the dealership and agree on the car, then that is truly a joint marital decision. The same logic applies to bipartisan legislating. If Senator Reid shows me a deal that has been done by Democratic conferees, which he was courteous enough to do Wednesday morning, without my participation as the leading Republican tax writer, that's not bipartisan. There is no ``bi'' in that partisan. So let no one be mistaken that this conference agreement is the result of bipartisan negotiations. While Republicans were courteously consulted at the member and staff level, we were never at the negotiating table. Speaker Pelosi best described the bottom line on the process. She said: ``Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election.'' That quote comes right out of the front page of the Washington Post, dated Friday, January 23, 2009. Now, one can argue that all that I have just described is water under the bridge. We now have a conference agreement that both Houses of Congress are on the verge of approving. I will be voting against the package. But before I cast my vote I wanted to take this time to applaud the inclusion of specific proposals in this conference agreement that I advocated for. While being locked out of the process, I am happy to see that my commonsense proposals were ultimately included in this final bill. The first commonsense proposal is placing income limits on the subsidy for COBRA benefits. As the provision was originally drafted, which provided involuntarily terminated workers a subsidy to help pay for their health insurance, there were no income limits on the eligibility for the subsidy. I want to remind my friends in the media that the House passed this provision with no income limits. The Senate Finance Committee approved this provision with no income limits. And the Nelson-Collins substitute, which garnered 61 votes in the Senate, was passed with no income limits. That means if the original provision that cleared so many legislative hurdles made it into law, Wall Street CEOs and hedge fund managers, who made millions of dollars while running our economy into the ground, would have received a taxpayer-funded subsidy to pay for their health insurance. In my opinion, this is outrageous. Just last week the Obama administration released guidelines for capping compensation paid to executives whose financial institution receives taxpayer dollars through the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The COBRA subsidy provision was in clear contradiction to our President's policy. During the Senate Finance Committee mark-up, however, I offered an amendment that would have placed income limits on the eligibility for the COBRA subsidy. When I offered my amendment, some Democratic committee members rebuffed my efforts with trumped up charges that the IRS would not be able to administer income limits. It appeared that my Democratic friends on the committee, who voted in favor of the chairman's mark, wanted to give the taxpayer-funded subsidy to Wall Street CEOs and hedge fund managers. But in the end, Chairman Baucus gave me a commitment to at least look at an income cap. So I filed an amendment during the floor debate. And I continued pressing the point both publicly and privately. I was disappointed that my amendment was never given a fair vote. Simply put, my amendment provided that if a worker who was involuntarily terminated from their job earned income in excess of $125,000 for individuals and $250,000 for families during 2008, this worker would not be eligible to receive the subsidy. Some Members of this body asked me why I set these limits at $125,000 and $250,000. It is simple. When candidate Obama was campaigning to be President Obama, he continually said that he wanted to raise taxes on families making over $250,000 a year. Why? Because then, candidate Obama felt that these people are too ``rich'' to pay lower taxes. So it logically followed that if these families are too ``rich'' to receive a tax benefit in the form of lower taxes, are these people not too ``rich'' to receive a taxpayer-funded subsidy for health insurance? I applaud the inclusion of income limits for the COBRA subsidy. Although, the income limits are set at $145,000 and $290,000, I am happy that my work was the reason it was added during the conference committee. The second proposal included in this final conference agreement is something that is of vital importance to workers who have been displaced by trade. I am talking about the temporary reauthorization of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act, or TAA. At the beginning of this year, I engaged with Chairman Baucus and our counterparts on the Ways and Means Committee, Chairman Rangel and Ranking Member Camp, to see if we could work out a compromise to reauthorize the trade adjustment assistance programs that we could all support. That engagement led to weeks of intensive negotiations. They were not easy negotiations. But they were truly bipartisan and bicameral negotiations. And they resulted in a compromise that I am proud to support. That is the way the process should work. I wish the rest of the provisions in the conference report had been developed in such a bipartisan way. If they had, we would have seen more Republican support for this conference report. Hopefully, the majority will not repeat the partisan process that produced this conference report. I want to highlight some of the reasons why I support our compromise on trade adjustment assistance. The fact is, the current trade adjustment assistance program is not doing enough to help American workers. It is outdated, overly rigid, and fails to incorporate appropriate oversight and accountability at the State and Federal level. Our compromise addresses each of those concerns. First, it extends the benefits of the program to service workers. Services now account for almost 80 percent of our economy. It doesn't make sense to exclude service workers from eligibility for trade adjustment assistance if they lose their job due to trade. If a call center in the United States is closed and the operation moved to India, for example, those workers are not currently eligible for trade adjustment assistance. Our compromise changes that. But it does so in a way that preserves the requirement that there be a causal link between trade and the loss of a job. Our compromise treats manufacturing workers and service workers the same, if trade contributed importantly to the workers' job loss, then they may be eligible for adjustment assistance. We also improved the program by interjecting much more flexibility, so that individual workers are empowered to decide for themselves how best to respond if they lose their jobs. Workers can choose between full-time and part-time training, or full- time work with limited wage insurance. Trade-impacted workers can even take advantage of training and case management services before they lose their jobs. Our compromise increases the funding for worker retraining to accommodate these expansions in the pool of potentially eligible workers and the array of benefits that are made available to eligible workers. But it does so in a way that protects against inefficient spending of taxpayer dollars. For example, for the first time, we have capped funding for administrative expenses at an amount equal to 10 percent of training funds. I insisted on that. In addition, our compromise requires changes in the way the Secretary of Labor allocates and distributes funds, so that States that do not need additional funds are not building up their kitties at the expense of States that need those funds now. We also require States to implement control measures to ensure that the data they collect and report is accurate and timely. The Department of Labor needs accurate data in order to administer the trade adjustment assistance program efficiently. And we require the Department of Labor to collect and post the data on the Department's Web site, to increase transparency and make the information more readily accessible to the public. I am confident that the compromise legislation that it have helped to craft will provide immediate and long-term benefits for workers in Iowa and across the United States. Separately, our compromise reauthorizes the trade adjustment assistance for firms program, and it improves and reauthorizes the trade adjustment assistance for farmers program. The farmers program was enacted as part of the Trade Act of 2002, and it has not operated as planned. We have made it easier for farmers to demonstrate that they are eligible for benefits under the program, and we have redirected those benefits to focus on developing and implementing business plans to better adjust to imports. We also established a trade adjustment assistance for communities program to help entire communities respond to the pressures of globalization. One component of that program is a new community college and career training grant program which I have been working to develop over the past few years. This is a timely, targeted, and temporary grant program to help educational institutions develop and offer the most appropriate courses to retrain trade-impacted workers. The program will improve and expand the educational opportunities available to eligible workers. It is an investment in the long-term competitiveness of the American workforce. Mr. President, I have already noted that our compromise is the result of a bipartisan effort that reflects the work of four offices. There are portions of the amendment that I might have done differently if it were solely up to me. But that is the nature of compromise. And the overall policy embodied in this amendment is a good one that will do a lot of good for a lot of Americans, in Iowa and across the United States. Equally important, if we enact this amendment into law, it will help unlock the trade agenda so we can progress with other important priorities. Chief among those is implementation of the Colombia trade agreement, which is my top trade priority. And then we need to turn to our other trade agreements with Panama and South Korea as well. We need to level the playing field so that our exporters, service suppliers, and farmers can increase their sales to foreign countries. It is more important than ever. We have had a social compact on trade for over 45 years. One side of that compact is to address them of trade-displaced workers, and we are doing that with the compromise I have helped to negotiate on trade adjustment assistance. The other side is to open up new markets for U.S. exports. That was a driving principle when President Kennedy established the Trade Adjustment Assistance program. President Obama should hold true to that principle by doing everything he can to create new export opportunities, starting with implementation of our pending trade agreements. A pro-growth trade agenda should be integral to our economic recovery strategy. I stand ready to work with the President and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to accomplish that.

Mr. GRASSLEY

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

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor to raise questions about whether Mr. Lynn ought to be Deputy Secretary of Defense. I do it with the normal courtesy, that a President ought to be able to name people to his team, and I do it based upon two questions: One, the use of the waiver for him to be in this position contrary to the Executive order of President Obama; and, secondly, to raise questions about his activity as chief financial officer in the second Clinton administration, and now coming to be Deputy Secretary of Defense. I will try to lay this out as best I can with documentation. I will not be able nor do I need to document the first consideration on the waiver. I wanted to express views on it. I thought I had seen the last of Mr. Lynn when President George W. Bush first took office. I was dead wrong. So I had to send my staff out to where the Senate buries old skeletons. It is the Records Center out in Maryland, the scenic countryside about 20 miles from the Capitol. There I had my staff dig up the remains of what came to be known, and what I came to know about Mr. Lynn's activities as chief financial officer about 10 years ago. I would give a little bit of word of advice to my colleagues, archival of your materials. I found that political nominees, good and bad, come back like Australian boomerangs. Some take longer than others to return, but eventually you will see them again. Mr. Lynn is currently employed as senior vice president, government operations, of a major defense contractor, Raytheon. Until June 2008, Mr. Lynn was registered as Raytheon's principal lobbyist to the Department of Defense. I have serious questions about the nomination. My first area of concern is that Mr. Lynn does not appear to meet President Obama's strict new ethical standards for executive branch appointees. Those standards were laid down in an Executive order of January 21, 2009. It is important for me to say what ethics means to me. Everyone has a different idea as to what ethics represents. This is a complicated issue, and I don't want there to be any confusion about this word or principle. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines the word ``ethics,'' one, as the discipline dealing with what is good and bad, with moral duty and obligation. This definition is very clear, but I want to go a step further to say that, to me, ethics are very uncomplicated principles of life. Simply put, when faced with tough choices or decisions, we must always do what is true and correct. Throughout the Presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama repeatedly promised to close the revolving door and change the political culture in Washington. This was one of his top priorities. Consistent with those promises, within 24 hours of being sworn in, he signed the Executive order that set new ethical standards in stone. Under the ``revolving door ban'' section of those rules, Mr. Lynn should have been barred from serving as Deputy Secretary of Defense until July 2011. I understand Mr. Lynn has been given a special order by the administration to further the public interest. According to a letter I have received from OMB Director Peter Orszag of February 3, 2009--and I have it here if anybody is interested in reading it. Senator Levin has already had this letter printed in the Record. According to this letter from OMB Director Peter Orszag of February 3, 2009, Mr. Lynn's waiver was based on ``exigent circumstances relating to national security.'' Director Orszag stated: Mr. Lynn is uniquely qualified for this position and is urgently needed to serve on the President's national security team. Mr. Orszag was responding to my letter of January 29, 2009, asking for the justification of the waiver. I ask unanimous consent to have that letter printed in the Record.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I also understand that President Obama's picks for these key positions should be respected. I said that about President Bush. I have to say it about President Obama. They were elected. They have a certain respect of the people, and that respect should not be questioned by the Senate except under extraordinary circumstances. I think these are extraordinary circumstances, and I am bringing it up. Mr. Lynn has informed me that he would be divesting his financial stakes in Raytheon in the next 90 days. He also said he would not engage in any Raytheon-related decisions for 1 year at DOD unless he receives a special waiver. Regrettably, for Mr. Lynn and for American taxpayers, getting rid of conflicts of interest is not as easy as it might sound. The Raytheon Corporation has hundreds of potential contracts and programs with the Department of Defense. As such, the Office of Government Ethics will have to set up a full-time department just to handle Mr. Lynn's conflict-of-interest Raytheon waivers. On the one hand, I believe the best leaders lead by example. So mean what you say. For that reason, I challenge Mr. Lynn to take control of this ethical debate and demonstrate true leadership on this issue by sticking to the principles set forth by President Obama's Executive order on ethics commitments by executive branch personnel. Special waivers and exemptions undermine the basic principle of good government. Changing the rules as you go along tends to foster a basic sense of distrust of the Government of all Americans. We all know that is a problem. We have to be cautious to make sure we don't make the situation worse. Why make rules if you know you are going to break them? How can gutting the ethical heart of the new ethics rule be in the public interest when those very same rules were created in the first place in the public interest? Even the best qualified nominees with the highest recommendation should recognize when serving in his or her post would not be in the public interest. I believe the American people expect nominees to be true and honest. Given his chosen career path, Mr. Lynn should know he does not comply with the spirit or intent of the Executive order on ethics. If he is seriously devoted to serving his country and this President, Mr. Lynn should consider withdrawing his nomination and ask to be reconsidered when he is within the ethics ``revolving door'' principles laid down by my President, Mr. Obama. Then he would come back in 2 years to seek such appointment. This country will always need good leaders who lead by example. By doing this, he would set the standard of excellence for all other nominees to follow. It would restore integrity and credibility to President Obama's new ethics rules. As it stands now, unfortunately, the Lynn nomination is rolling down a very low road at high speed. By setting the new rules aside for the first top-level appointee to come down the pike, President Obama and his administration appear to embrace the very same culture President Obama promised to change. None of us knows for sure whether Mr. Lynn's nomination is truly in the public interest. We can only hope it is. In time, we will find out. What is going to take me longest to explain is documentation of some activity of Mr. Lynn when he was Chief Financial Officer and how that fits into some questions I have about the position to which he was nominated. My second area of concern pertains to Mr. Lynn's financial management record at the Pentagon. Mr. Lynn served as Chief Financial Officer at the Department of Defense from November 1997 through 2000. I first came to know Mr. Lynn in 1998, after he was appointed to the position. Between June 1997 and July 1998--1 month, approximately--I conducted an in-depth investigation of internal financial controls at the Department of Defense. I was testing basically internal controls within the Department. I reviewed about 200 financial transactions from Pentagon offices where the fraud had occurred. We examined purchase orders, contracts, invoices, delivery verifications or receipts, and, finally, we examined final payments. We even checked to see if remit addresses were correct. In short, we looked at the whole ball of wax. The results of this investigation were presented in a report in September 1998. This is a report my staff and other people put together. The report concluded, in September 1998, involving the Chief Financial Officer and/or things under his command or jurisdiction: Internal controls at the Department of Defense were weak or nonexistent. The Government Accountability Office, then called the General Accounting Office, concurred with my assessment. Our investigations found that not one of the accounts payable files examined was 100 percent up to snuff. I was alarmed to find they all had either minor or major accounting deficiencies. If the Department of Defense had followed standard accounting practices, none of the bills should have been paid. Unfortunately, all went out the payment door. The most glaring and persistent shortcoming observed was the near total absence of valid receiving reports in the accounts examined at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Center in Denver, CO. A receiving report is one of the most important internal control devices. They provide written verification that the goods and services billed on an invoice were received and matched with what was ordered. In all the files examined, we found only 6 out of 200 genuine receiving reports, or what they call DD-250 forms. The rest of the files contained none. Of the six receiving reports found, all were either invalid or incorrect. We also noticed gaping holes in another key control mechanism, remit addresses. A remit address is important because it is at the end of the money trail, where the money goes. The review found zero control over remit addresses. A total of 286 technicians in the Dallas center had authority to alter remit addresses. This was a violation of another basic internal control principle--separation of duties. A person responsible for paying bills should never be allowed to change a remit address. On September 23, 1998, I met with Mr. Lynn to discuss the findings of my investigation. I provided him with a draft of the report. I asked him to review it and provide comment. In his response, dated 5 days later, September 28, 1998, Mr. Lynn did not challenge the findings in this report. So we have this report I have been referring to, and I asked Mr. Lynn for comment on that report. I have his letter here not challenging the findings. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRASSLEY. In this letter, Mr. Lynn appeared to agree with all of my findings and recommendations 100 percent. That is a conclusion I make. The letter will be in the Record, so Members can read it for themselves. He said that he was ``very troubled'' by every one of the control weaknesses cited in the report. Mr. Lynn further stated: There are unacceptable weaknesses in our internal control programs. He promised me he would be taking aggressive corrective action to improve and tighten controls. He concluded by saying: I want you to know that I place the highest priority on ensuring that we have the best possible protections against fraud and wrongful payments. I also shared my concerns with Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen in a letter dated October 5, 1998. In his response on November 16, 1998--and I have that response from Secretary Cohen here--he offered identical assurances. I ask unanimous consent to have that letter printed in the Record.

Mr. GRASSLEY. While Secretary Cohen and Chief Financial Officer Lynn, the nominee now under consideration, both assured me over and over that they were taking steps to tighten internal controls--I am shocked to say this--they were already quietly moving in the opposite direction. They were busy pushing other policies to weaken and undermine internal financial controls. So I want to get into that. In 1998, when Mr. Lynn was chief financial officer, something we call pay-and-chase was the Pentagon lingo used to describe the Department of Defense vendor paying process. With pay-and-chase, the Pentagon paid bills under $2,500 first, and then worried about chasing down receipts later. You get it--pay-and- chase: pay without worrying about what you are buying or the invoice and then, after you pay, go out and find some justification for the payment. Ever wonder why there is waste in the Defense Department? Sometimes receipts were found under pay-and-chase, sometimes not. Nobody seems to care either way. This is how the Department of Defense ended up with not $2,500 here and there but with billions of dollars in what they refer to as unmatched disbursements--another big control problem with which chief financial officer Bill Lynn was thoroughly familiar. Pay-and-chase accurately characterized the core DFAS problem I witnessed during my review of internal controls from 1997 through 1998. I saw pay-and-chase up close and personal. Pay-and-chase was not an official policy; it was an unofficial policy. It was actively practiced but not authorized by any Government regulation or laws. As I understand it, pay-and-chase was supposed to end in October 1997 when the Department of Defense general counsel determined it was illegal. But it did not stop. Secretary Cohen wanted to, instead, legalize pay-and-chase and make it the law of the land. On February 2, 1998, when Mr. Lynn was chief financial officer, Secretary Cohen asked the Senate for legal authority to pay bills without receipt with no dollar limit. Now, that is pretty high up in the Department that you are deciding that we ought to have a policy to pay bills without receipts, and to do it not with a $2,500 limit but with no dollar limit. This proposal was embodied in section 401 of the Defense Reform Initiative. It was touted--can you believe it--as a measure to ``streamline'' the DOD payment process. Fortunately, the Congress rejected this absurd and misguided legislative proposal. But you know what the thinking was at the highest levels of the Defense Department. So I discussed Secretary Cohen's pay- and-chase proposal in great detail in a speech on the floor of this body on May 5, 1998. You will find that on pages S4247 through S4250. I placed, at that time, Secretary Cohen's request in the Record. So what was Mr. Lynn's position on section 401 of Secretary Cohen's Defense Reform Initiative? I asked him this question on February 5, 2009. This is what he said: He could not ``recall'' taking a position on it but agreed it was wrong ``to pay bills without a receipt.'' This seems like a real cop-out. I responded this way: In February 1998, you had been [chief financial officer] for several months. This issue fell directly under your purview. How could you possibly avoid taking a position on an issue the Secretary of Defense was urging the Senate to adopt? As the Chief DOD Lobbyist for Raytheon, you say it was wrong. As the DOD [chief financial officer] back in 1998, why didn't you know it was wrong and speak up about it [at that time]? My records appear to indicate that pay-and-chase continued as the unofficial policy through 1998 and eventually evolved into another more troublesome policy known as ``straight pay.'' This policy was even more dangerous for the taxpayers. The straight pay policy had much higher dollar thresholds than the old pay-and-chase plan. Believe it or not, it was a whopping half million dollars. Straight pay was Mr. Bill Lynn's baby. This policy was personally approved by Mr. Lynn in a memorandum on December 17, 1998, and reauthorized in another memo on March 9, 1999, and possibly again later. This is that document: Memorandum for Director, Defense Finance and Accounting Service Subject: Prevalidation Threshold In a memorandum dated December 17, 1998, I authorized a temporary $500,000 threshold on new contracts paid by the Mechanization of Contract Administration Services (MOCAS) system. This temporary authorization is scheduled to expire on March 22, 1999. However, while the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Columbus Center has made significant improvements in the backlog of payments, we are not at the point where we can lower the threshold to $2,500. Therefore, the temporary threshold of $500,000 is extended for another 90 days for Columbus MOCAS payments only. I request you continue to provide me with a monthly report showing progress in resolving the current prevalidation process delays. The monthly report should include your plan to lower the threshold at the appropriate pace to reach the goal of total prevalidation by July 2000. As we improve our systems capabilities, we will continue to aggressively reduce the threshold until all payments are prevalidated. William J. Lynn. On January 19, 1999, I addressed a letter to Mr. Lynn expressing grave concern about straight pay and requesting verification of certain facts surrounding this policy. The facts in question were provided to me anonymously by a DFAS employee. I wanted Mr. Lynn to check out all of this for me. Prior to the implementation of straight pay, the DFAS center in Colombia, OH, had a prevalidation policy that required that all disbursements over $2,500 be matched with obligations or contracts prior to payment, which is the way it ought to be--well, no; it ought to be for every dollar, but at least over $2,500 it had to be matched. When an invoice was submitted to the center for payment, a DFAS technician searched the database for supporting obligations and receipts. If supporting documentation could not be found, a red warning flag was supposedly run up the pole. Accounting due diligence was needed to confirm if this particular invoice was valid, a duplicate, or fraudulent payment. In theory, these red flags had to be resolved. As you would expect, in practice, that did not always happen. Mr. Lynn's straight pay policy raised the prevalidation threshold by $497,500, up to finally a half million dollars. This allowed the DFAS technicians to make payments up to a half million dollars without a valid obligation. To cover these payments, technicians were ordered to create a bogus account known as negative unliquidated obligations. Now, that is a Harvard word, isn't it. But they called it NULO for short, the acronym. So we have these negative unobligated obligations. Bills were then paid from these bogus NULO accounts which carried negative balances. Mr. Lynn's policy gave DFAS accountants up to 6 months to link the payments to valid supporting obligations in the accounting records. If valid supporting documentations could not be found in that timeframe, then the center was authorized to cover the payments with other available funds with no further investigation. This is how the unmatched disbursements of the Department of Defense were born and eventually built into the billions of dollars. In my January 19, 1999, letter to Mr. Lynn, I drew some comparisons between straight pay and the case of Air Force SSgt Robert L. Miller. Now, Robert L. Miller may not be a very famous name to most people around here, and he would not be to me if I had not run into him through this investigation. So I wanted to draw a comparison between the straight pay policy and the case of this Air Force staff sergeant. I think Mr. Lynn and others in the Pentagon at the time remember the Miller case, and remember it all too well, or at least they did at that time. I examined that case and several others just like it in great detail at a hearing before my Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight on September 28, 1998. As chief of vendor pay at a DFAS center, then-Staff Sergeant Miller had pursued his own unlawful versions of straight pay. Miller had full access to the Integrated Accounts Payable System. As such, Miller was able to manipulate Department of Defense systems to create obligations and invoices where none existed and generate nearly $1 million in allegedly fraudulent payments to his mother and his girlfriend. Miller was not apprehended because internal controls at DFAS were effective, the things that were under the control of Mr. Lynn; he was caught because a coworker blew the whistle on him. She was one of Miller's subordinates who had allegedly been sexually harassed by him. At that time, I told Mr. Lynn--the same Mr. Lynn whose confirmation we are considering now--that his straight pay policy appeared to authorize DFAS accountants to do essentially what Staff Sergeant Miller did: create false bookkeeping entries to cover large payments in the absence of valid obligations. DFAS and Miller obviously had different goals, but there was a common denominator, and that common denominator was manipulation of the accounting system. DFAS payment policies practiced on Mr. Lynn's watch left the barn door wide open to fraud and outright theft of the taxpayers' dollars. The Government Accountability Office, which provided excellent support all the way through my investigation, fully agreed with this assessment. There was another disturbing facet of the Miller case that I took up with Mr. Lynn. On October 19, 1995, the date that Staff Sergeant Miller became chief of vendor pay at the Dayton center--a position considered far above his rank--he was already under investigation in connection with, one, the alleged disappearance of Government checks at Castle Air Force Base and, two, allegedly directing at least eight fraudulent checks valued at $50,769 to his mother. On October 26, 1995, just 1 week after Staff Sergeant Miller became chief of vendor pay at Dayton, an investigating officer at Castle Air Force Base made this recommendation about Miller: Management should not place SSgt Miller in a position where he is entrusted with funds again . . . After this report was issued, Miller should have been removed from his position at the Dayton center immediately. But it took 2 years, until June 1997, when Miller was arrested for allegedly stealing the million dollars. The whole Miller story, of course, is unbelievable. In view of his problems at Castle Air Force Base, why did the DFAS center place him in charge of vendor pay? Why did DFAS keep him there after an official report indicated he could not be trusted with the money? That makes as much sense as hiring a bank robber to be the bank teller. On September 18, 1998, I wrote another letter that I have. This is letter No. 9, which I ask unanimous consent be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I wrote this letter to Mr. Lynn and asked him two questions: Who at Dayton--that means the financial center at Dayton-- had knowledge of the Castle Air Force Base report on Miller? Who in the finance center management was responsible for totally ignoring this very dangerous red warning flag? I ended my letter to Mr. Lynn this way: Bill, the responsible person or persons in your organization need to be held accountable for ignoring obvious and repeated warning signals about SSGT Miller's trustworthiness and giving him unrestricted access to your department's money vault. I asked for answers to these two questions by September 23, 1998. That would have been 5 days after I wrote the letter. None ever arrived, as far as I know. When I did not get a prompt response to my January 19 letter to Mr. Lynn on straight pay, I raised those same issues with Secretary Cohen. I did that at a hearing before the Budget Committee on March 2, 1999. This is what Secretary Cohen said at the time: There is no authorized procedure called Straight Pay. Now, get that. You have straight pay that people talk about, and you have a Secretary of Defense saying there is no authorized procedure called straight pay. The process described is not correct and is not authorized. These answers do not square with the evidence I have tried to lay out. Then, on March 9, came further explanation from Chief Financial Officer Lynn. He said essentially the same thing but with a slightly different twist: The Straight Pay policy you refer to in your letter is not used at our Columbus Center. . . . There are some words left out. It goes on to say: ``Straight Pay,'' as reported to you, does not exist at the Columbus Center. This letter No. 10 explains that in great detail, and I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record letter No. 10.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I felt as though then-Secretary Cohen on the one hand and Chief Financial Officer Lynn were trying to convince me that straight pay did not exist. Their statements appear to be, even today, misleading and inaccurate. Just because I didn't explain the policy exactly right did not mean the policy did not exist. Everything that was coming over the transom at night to me was telling me that I was on the right track. I responded to the denials this way--and they are in this letter, my letter No. 11. I wish to quote a couple of sentences: If this statement is indeed accurate--and ``Straight Pay'' doesn't exist, then why do I have official DFAS documents establishing ``Straight Pay Procedures?'' Are these documents a fake? Are these documents I am getting a fake if they come directly from the financial center? I later discovered another DFAS document, dated March 8, 1999, which states: Due to concerns over the use of the term ``straight pay'' and its connotation, we must delete all references to ``straight pay'' the from the policy. . . . Now, how does that square with what the Secretary of Defense Cohen told me? How does that square with the exchange I had with Bill Lynn, Chief Financial Officer at that time? Those things are in this document No. 12. I ask unanimous consent to have document No. 12 printed in the Record.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I say to my colleagues, is the March 8, 1999, date on this document a coincidence or was this a bureaucratic tactic to suppress, to bury or to rename the policy to conform with the highest level of rhetoric that I heard in March of that year? Not getting the straight story from the Pentagon, I brought the issue of straight pay to the attention of one of our colleagues now and a colleague back then, Senator Inhofe, who was chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee on Armed Services. My letter to Senator Inhofe is dated April 8, 1999, and I have that letter here as No. 13 document. I ask unanimous consent to have document No. 13 printed in the Record.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I told my friend from Oklahoma that I considered straight pay to be ``a very dangerous and misguided policy that might violate the law.'' I also told him about the Miller case heretofore referenced. I urged Senator Inhofe to ask Secretary Cohen and Chief Financial Officer Lynn five questions on straight pay at an upcoming hearing. Mr. Lynn attempted to clarify the Department of Defense position on straight pay in a letter dated June 18, 1999. That is document No. 14. I ask unanimous consent to have document No. 14 printed in the Record.

Mr. GRASSLEY. In his followup letter, Mr. Lynn backed away from his assertion that straight pay did not exist. So they said it didn't exist, and now you see an assertion backing away from that. While he never used the term ``straight pay,'' he did not try to disassociate himself from the policy. His description of the policy was generally accurate, though somewhat incomplete. I raised essentially the same question with Mr. Lynn in a recent letter, dated January 29, 2009, because of his appointment to this position of Deputy Secretary of Defense. Regrettably, he provided essentially the same answers in a letter dated February 3, 2009. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record those two letters, documents 15 and 16.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. Lynn continues to defend straight pay, a policy that Secretary Cohen said didn't exist back then. He said it was necessary ``to ensure that contractors were paid on time.'' Well, can't you pay contractors on time by having invoices and all the proper documentation to write even a $1 check? That is the streamlining effect that former Secretary Cohen argued for in his failed June 2, 1998 DRI legislative initiative. I exchanged followup Q and A on these matters with Mr. Lynn on February 5 and 6 this year, and I will include those letters in the record as well. As Chief Financial Officer at one of our biggest departments, Mr. Lynn signed the memo authorizing straight pay policy. It was his policy. I ask unanimous consent that the followup documents be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I believe this policy developed under Mr. Lynn's leadership was dangerous, misguided, and irresponsible. It demonstrated a lack of sound business judgment. It may have been inconsistent with various provisions of law. Because don't the taxpayers expect you write a check, you have a reason for writing it, you have an invoice or something that says you owe X number of dollars? Straight pay left the taxpayers' hard-earned money vulnerable to fraud and theft, and we have had that. I was not alone in this assessment. At my subcommittee hearing on September 28, 1998, the Government Accountability Office witness said essentially the same thing. DFAS payment policies in Mr. Lynn's watch left the door wide open to fraud. For all these reasons, I have to say Mr. Lynn, as Chief Financial Officer, did not do everything humanly possible to protect the taxpayers' interests. When he pushed the straight pay policy and went silent on pay-and-chase, he did not act in the public interest. As Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Lynn was also supposed to do his part to develop and integrate a finance and accounting system that would allow the Department of Defense to produce a financial statement that could earn a clean audit opinion. I know this is a massive and complex undertaking, but Mr. Lynn could have gotten the ball rolling in the right direction, even if he didn't get it under control. I can guarantee one thing: The principle of straight pay was not conducive to the creation of an integrated accounting system. One of the first steps in that process is to link obligations to disbursements. Straight pay truncated that link and undermined integration. Although he claimed to have launched several important reform initiatives, there appears to be little or no measurable progress toward the goal of integration on his watch. In fact, his payment policies probably took us in the wrong and opposite direction and had an opposite effect. The Department's books of account were a mess when Mr. Lynn became Chief Financial Officer, they were a mess when he left, and I have a feeling they remain a mess today, with no fix in sight. Congress passed the Chief Financial Officers Act in 1990 in an attempt to fix the problems in accounting of Government finances in every department. Eighteen years after this legislation, the Department of Finance, as a whole, has yet to earn a clean audit. Mr. Lynn should not be the only person held accountable for poor accounting at the Department of Defense. He was one of many individuals in a long line of Chief Financial Officers and Comptrollers who, for whatever reason, were unsuccessful in solving the financial misstep at the Defense Department. Mr. Hamre, his predecessor, used to say: ``Fixing this problem is like changing a tire on a car going at 100 miles per hour.'' I have shared some of my sentiments on Mr. Lynn's performance as Chief Financial Officer. I hope these insights are helpful to my colleagues before they vote yes or no on this nomination. If confirmed, we hope he will do everything possible to protect our national security. We hope he will protect the taxpayers' hard-earned money, and we hope he will make sure the taxpayers' money is wisely spent and, most importantly, spent according to law. We hope he will usher in a new era of financial accountability at the Department of Defense. At this point, we simply don't know what Mr. Lynn will do. I don't own that crystal ball that would be necessary to make that determination. It is all about the future, and that is relatively unknown. But we do know something about what he did in the past as the Department of Defense Chief Financial Officer. As Chief Financial Officer, he advocated very questionable accounting practices that obviously were not in the public interest. Writing a check in any department without knowing what that check is paying for is not in the public's interest. It is not a wise expenditure of public money. We need accounting systems that account for every dollar going out, having a purpose of a service or a product that it bought. I urge my colleagues then to weigh those considerations in reaching a decision on how to vote on the Lynn nomination. Lastly, I wish to take a moment to thank the Senate Armed Services Committee leadership, both Republican and Democratic, and their staff for their patience on this issue. I appreciate the time Chairman Levin has given me to discuss this nomination. I lay everything I have said before the Senate for consideration. I have already sought permission to have some of these documents printed in the Record, so I don't think I have to do that. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I apologize to Chairman Levin. I had to leave the floor to attend a conference meeting on the stimulus bill before he finished his remarks. I would like to rebut his remarks regarding Mr. Bill Lynn. In regards to the Executive order on ethics, I agree President Obama is attempting to set high standards for executive branch appointees; however, giving special waivers to nominees such as Mr. Lynn water down the spirit and authority of his own Executive order. I would ask President Obama: How many more waivers will you grant in the next 4 years? I say to Chairman Levin, you seemed to blame former Defense Secretary Cohen for the financial troubles at DOD, not Mr. Lynn. I could not disagree with you more on this issue. Chief Financial Officer Lynn was chiefly responsible for the policies and regulations governing accounting practices. His straight-pay policy went against all commonsense accounting practices. DFAS technicians should not have paid bills like they did without first confirming that the proper obligations were in the books of account. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Is it possible to get 3 more minutes?

Mr. GRASSLEY. I appreciate that. I have to get out of here at that time anyway. I have a radio program I have to do.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, we have the chart that you have seen before, and nobody has disputed the chart. Maybe you can dispute the interpretations of it, but these are figures you can rely upon. If my comments were meant to be partisan shots, I could say this favorable fiscal path from 2003 to 2007 was the only period, aside from 6 months in 2001, where Republicans controlled the White House and the Congress. But unlike the fiscal history revisionists, I am not trying to make any partisan points; I am trying to give you the fiscal facts. We have another chart that compares tax receipts for the 4 years after the much ballyhooed 1993 tax increase and the 4-year period after the 2003 tax cut. On a year-by-year basis, this chart compares the change in revenues as a percentage of GDP. In 1993, the Clinton tax increase brought in more revenue as compared to the 2003 tax cut. That trend, though, reversed as both policies moved along in years. You can see from the chart how the extra revenue went up over time relative to the flat line of the 1993 tax increase, which ought to make it very clear that you don't necessarily bring in more revenue because you increase taxes, and you can decrease taxes, stimulate the economy, encourage business activity, encourage investment, and bring in more revenue. The progrowth tax and trade policies of the 1990s, along with the ``peace dividend'' had a lot more to do with deficit reduction in the 1990s than the 1993 tax increase, which was only 13 percent of deficit reduction. In this decade, deficits went down after tax relief plans were put in full effect. That is the past. We need to make sure we understand it. But what is most important is the future. In fact, the last election, based upon President Obama's very own statements, was about the future, not about the past. So we should not be talking about the past. People in our States sent us here to deal with future policy. They don't send us here to flog one another similar to partisan cartoon cutout characters over past policies. They don't send us here to endlessly point fingers of blame. Now let's focus on the fiscal consequences on the bill in front of us. That is what this vote, before we end this week, is all about. President Obama rightly focused us on the future with his eloquence during the campaign. I would like to take a--paraphrase a quote from the President's nomination acceptance speech: We need a President who can face the threats of the future, not grasping at the ideas of the past. President Obama was right. We need a President, and I would add Congressmen and Senators, who can face the threats of the future. This bill, as currently written, poses considerable threats to our fiscal future. Senator McCain's spending trigger amendment showed us the way. We can rewrite this bill to retain its stimulative effect, but turn off the spending when the recovery occurs. Grasping at ideas of the past or playing the partisan blame game will not deal with the threats to our fiscal future. It is not too late to do a clean stimulus bill, which is what the American people want and need. There is a way to reach a real bipartisan compromise, not just picking off a few Senators that frequently vote with the Democrats. We can have a significant amount of infrastructure spending for roads and bridges. Even though some on our side of the aisle have issues with the making work pay credit, we could take that and expand it to cover all those making up to $250,000--which is the level that President Obama and his surrogates said during the campaign that he wants to cut taxes for people. Instead, the making work pay credit phases out starting at $70,000 for individual workers. So we are saying a large part of the middle class by President Obama's definition won't get the tax cut. In fact, the ``we give a tax cut to 95 percent of working families'' number that has been bandied about is wrong. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, 87 percent of workers qualify for some or all of the credit, and even less get all of the credit. So there is a way forward. It is a clean stimulus bill. All the Democratic agenda items and spending items that should go in the appropriations bill can get done in regular order. The Democrats have the votes. They don't need to push that agenda on the American people and dig a deficit ditch an additional $1.2 trillion deeper with this bill, when interest on the bill is considered. They have the votes to push their agenda later in the year. For now, let's give the American people what they want, a clean stimulus bill, and not scare them into thinking that the Democratic agenda needs to be pushed in the stimulus bill. It is reminiscent of that famous chicken--Chicken Little, who said ``The Sky is Falling.'' Let's do a clean stimulus bill instead. I think this clears up the record. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, earlier today the junior Senator from California was discussing President Clinton's 1993 tax hike bill that broke his campaign promise to cut taxes on those making $200,000 or less and instead raised taxes on those making more than $20,000 a year. The junior Senator from California said this morning: Charles Grassley: I do not think it takes a rocket scientist to know that this bill will cost jobs. That is what he said of the Clinton plan that created 23 million jobs. That is the end of the quote of what this Senator said. It is an accurate quote, but I want to make sure there is a context. I made that statement about the 1993 Clinton tax hike bill on seniors and the vast majority of other Americans. The junior Senator from California is saying that one tax hike bill in 1993 is solely responsible for the creation of 23 million jobs between 1993 and the year 2000 and, in a sense, we should ignore all other economic events, including the work of the Republican Congress, free-trade legislation, and many other factors that actually caused the job creation during that period. Other than being simply wrong, it revises fiscal history. I felt the need to respond to those remarks because the junior Senator from California called me out by name on the Senate floor. I gave a speech on the Senate floor just yesterday that clearly rebuts her mistaken assertion that the Clinton 1993 tax hike bill was the cause of 23 million jobs. Perhaps she was involved in partisan negotiations on the stimulus bill instead of watching my speech at that time. I will note that as one of five Senate conferees on the stimulus bill, I have been excluded from participating in conference negotiations and instead will only be invited to a photo op today scheduled at 3 p.m. which the Democrats are referring to as the one conference meeting that is required under the rules. Dave Camp, the only other Republican tax writer who is a conferee, has also been excluded from conference negotiations. There will not be any negotiations, give or take, or compromise at that meeting; it will simply be to ratify a deal that Democrats and three Republicans out of 219 Republicans in the entire Congress have agreed to. In fact, there were more Democrats--11 in the House of Representatives--who voted against the stimulus package than there were the three Republicans who voted for it. This bill was handed over to the House Democratic leadership to write, and they wrote a bill that was loaded down with a lot of unnecessary--well, I shouldn't say unnecessary spending; I should say spending that goes way beyond the 2- year window of stimulus; a window that Dr. Summers, the President's economic adviser, said ought to be timely, temporary, and targeted. That is 2 years, that is not forever. So this bill is not stimulative, then, or goes way beyond being stimulative, and it tended to include items that reward Democratic supporters such as unions and environmental groups. It has an enormous bailout of States that overspent their budgets and a lot of spending that belongs in an appropriations bill but which has no place in a stimulus bill. Less than 34 percent of the Senate bill was tax relief, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which is the official scorekeeper on that matter. Less than 1 percent of the Senate bill was tax relief for small business, and small businesses are the engine for job growth in our economy, creating three-fourths of new jobs in our economy. Since the junior Senator from California clearly did not hear my speech from yesterday, I wish to go over some of the key items she has overlooked. Two days ago, and again this morning, there was a lot of revision or perhaps editing of recent budget history. Our President alluded to it. I agree with the President there is a lot of revisionism in the debate. The revisionist history basically boils down to two conclusions: that all of the so-called good fiscal history of the 1990s was derived from a partisan tax increase of 1993; and No. 2, that all of the bad fiscal history of this decade to date is attributable to bipartisan tax relief plans earlier this decade. Now, not surprisingly, nearly all of the revisionists who spoke generally oppose tax relief and support tax increases. The same crew generally support spending increases and oppose spending cuts. In the debate so far, many on this side have pointed out some key, undeniable facts. The bill before us, with interest included, increases the deficit by over $1 trillion. The bill before us is a heavy stew of spending increases and refundable tax credits, seasoned with small pieces of tax relief. The bill before us has new temporary spending that if made permanent will burden future budget deficits by over $1 trillion. All of this occurs--all of it occurs--in an environment where the automatic economic stabilizers are kicking in to help the most unfortunate in America with unemployment insurance, food stamps, and other benefits--things that are part of the social fabric of America that are meant to take care of people in need, and particularly right now when we are in a recession, they automatically trigger in to higher levels of spending. That antirecessionary spending, together with lower tax receipts and the TARP activities, has set a fiscal table of a deficit of $1.2 trillion. That is the highest deficit as a percentage of the economy in post-World War II history, not a pretty fiscal picture. It is going to get a lot uglier as a result of this bill. So for the folks who see this bill as an opportunity to recover America with Government taking a larger share of the economy over the long term, I say congratulations. If a Member votes for this bill, that Member puts us on the path to a bigger role for the Government, but supporters of this bill need to own up to the fiscal course they are charting. That is where the revisionist history comes from. It is a strategy to divert, through a twisted blame game, from the facts before us. One can ask: How is this history revisionist? So I would take each conclusion one by one. The first conclusion is that all of the good fiscal history was derived from the 1993 tax increase. To knock down this assertion, all you have to do is take a look at this chart--not a chart produced by the Senator from Iowa but a chart produced from data from the Clinton administration, and it is right here. It is the same chart I had up a couple of days ago. The much ballyhooed partisan 1993 tax increase accounts for 13 percent--you can say 13 percent or you can say just 13 percent, and I prefer the latter--just 13 percent of the deficit reduction through the decade of the 1990s. The biggest source of deficit reduction, 35 percent, came from, as you can see, cuts in defense spending. Of course, that fiscal benefit originated from President Reagan's stare-down of the Communist regime in Russia before 1989, and we didn't have to spend as much on defense because the Cold War was--well, there wasn't a Cold War, I suppose you could say. The same folks on that side who opposed President Reagan's defense buildup take credit for the fiscal benefit of a peace dividend. The next biggest source of deficit reduction, 32 percent, is other revenue. It came from various sources. Basically, this was the fiscal benefit from progrowth policies, such as the bipartisan capital gains tax cut of 1997, and the free-trade agreements President Clinton, with Republican votes, established. The savings from the policies I have pointed out translated into interest savings. So you get the 15 percent that is from interest savings. Now, for all the chest-thumping about the 1990s, these chest thumpers who push for big social spending didn't bring much to the deficit reduction table of the 1990s. That contribution was the 5 percent you see up there. What is more, the fiscal revisionist historians in this body tend to forget who the players were. They are correct that there was a Democratic President in the White House. But they conveniently forget the Republicans controlled the Congress for that period, where the deficit came down and turned to surplus. They tend to forget they fought the principle of a balanced budget that was the centerpiece of our policy at that time, the Republican Party's policy. Remember the Government shutdown in late 1995? They ought to remember that. Remember what it was about? It was about a plan to balance the budget. Republicans paid a political price for forcing the issue. But, in 1997, President Clinton agreed. Recall, as well, all through the 1990s what the year-end battles were all about. On one side, congressional Democrats and the Clinton administration pushed for more spending. On the other side, congressional Republicans were pushing for tax relief. In the end, both sides compromised. That is the real fiscal history of the 1990s. Let's turn to the other conclusion of the revisionist fiscal historians. That conclusion is that, in this decade, all fiscal problems are attributable to the widespread tax relief enacted in 2001--which was a bipartisan bill--2003, 2004, and 2006. In 2001, President Bush came into office and inherited an economy that was careening downhill. Investment started to go flat in 2000--you know, the NASDAQ bubble that lost 50 percent of its value. In February 2000, we started down the road of more than 40 months of downturn in the manufacturing index. Then we had the economic shocks that related from the 9/11 terrorist attacks and then you can add in the corporate scandals to that economic environment. It is true, as fiscal year 2001 came to a close, the projected surplus turned to a deficit, and we have a chart that shows the start of this decade's fiscal history.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Tom Edwards, a Secret Service fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges during the consideration of the nomination of Mr. William J. Lynn, III, to be the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I want to speak about the trade adjustment assistance amendment that Senator Baucus and I have introduced. It is amendment No. 404, and it is called the Trade and Globalization Adjustment Assistance Act of 2009. My colleagues are used to hearing me talk about the importance of trade. Trade creates good, well paying jobs for American workers, farmers, and service suppliers. Those jobs are more important than ever in this time of economic difficulty. So we need to keep working hard to open new markets for U.S. goods and services. But if we are going to engage in international trade, we need to make sure we are looking out for U.S. workers who are affected by foreign competition. Our trade adjustment assistance program is the primary program the Federal Government has for helping those workers. Unfortunately, the program is out of date. It isn't doing enough to help the workers who need it. And that is why I have joined with Senator Baucus to update it. Today's amendment is the culmination of months of hard work on the part of Senator Baucus and myself. And this work reflects years of oversight and careful thought. It is also the product of close collaboration and intensive negotiations with our counterparts on the House Ways and Means Committee, Chairman Rangel and Congressman Camp. I want to thank my colleagues for their cooperation and good will. This amendment truly is a bipartisan, bicameral product. The amendment would update the trade adjustment assistance program in important ways, so it better serves the needs of our workers in the globalized economy of the 21st century. I will mention some of those changes now, and I anticipate that Senator Baucus and I will introduce report language into the Record to reflect the legislative intent behind the provisions we have included in our amendment. One of the most important changes that the amendment makes is to open the trade adjustment assistance program to workers in the services sector. Those workers aren't currently eligible for trade adjustment assistance. So, if you are a customer service representative, and your job is outsourced to India, you are out of luck. That limitation makes no sense to me. Services make up almost 80 percent of our economy, so it makes sense that service workers should be eligible for adjustment assistance if they are adversely impacted by trade. But that last point is critically important. Trade adjustment assistance should be made available to service workers, but only if they can demonstrate a causal nexus between trade and the loss of jobs. The amendment I introduced with Senator Baucus requires an express determination of such a causal nexus before service workers can be certified for trade adjustment assistance. I wouldn't be here supporting this compromise if it didn't. The same goes for manufacturing workers. Trade adjustment assistance is premised upon an adverse trade impact, and this amendment preserves that nexus. Our amendment fills the hole in existing law so that software developers, customer service reps, and other service workers will be able to seek the same benefits that are currently available to workers in the manufacturing sector, and on the same terms. That is only fair. We also increase the availability of training funds so that States can handle this expansion in eligibility and provide better training opportunities for displaced workers, to help them train for new careers. Our amendment expands the trade adjustment assistance for firms program to help individual firms better respond to foreign competition and avoid having to cut jobs to begin with. It improves the trade adjustment assistance for farmers program to provide targeted training and to help agricultural producers develop new skills and business plans. It creates a trade adjustment assistance for communities program to help entire communities respond to the pressures of globalization, and to help community colleges and other educational institutions develop new and more targeted courses to assist trade- impacted workers. And it helps States fund caseworker time spent with TAA clients, so that laid-off workers will have someone to help them examine their options and plan next steps. Our amendment introduces a great deal more flexibility into the program, so that workers can choose between full-time and part-time training, or full-time work with limited wage insurance. Trade-impacted workers can even take advantage of training and case management services before they lose their jobs. Our amendment also improves the accountability and internal oversight of the program, at the State and Federal level, to provide additional assurance that taxpayer monies will be well-spent. I have already noted that this amendment is a bipartisan effort that reflects the work of four offices. It is a compromise in many respects. There are portions of the amendment that I might have done differently if it were solely up to me. But that is the nature of compromise. And the overall policy embodied in this amendment is a good one that will do a lot of good for a lot of Americans--in Iowa and across the United States. Equally important, if we enact this amendment into law, it will help unlock the trade agenda so we can progress with other important priorities. Chief among those is implementation of the Colombia trade agreement, which is my top trade priority. And then we need to turn to our other trade agreements with Panama and South Korea as well. We need to level the playing field so that our exporters, service suppliers, and farmers can increase their sales to foreign countries. It is more important than ever. We have had a social compact on trade for over 45 years. One side of that compact is to address the needs of trade-displaced workers, and we are doing that with the Baucus-Grassley amendment. The other side is to open up new markets for U.S. exports. That was a driving principle when President Kennedy established the trade adjustment assistance program. President Obama should hold true to that principle by doing everything he can to create new export opportunities, starting with implementation of our pending trade agreements. A pro-growth trade agenda should be integral to our economic recovery strategy. Now let me turn to the provisions in this amendment dealing with the health coverage tax credit. The health coverage tax credit was the creation of a bipartisan effort in 2002. It was designed to help those who were losing their jobs and their health coverage due to trade- related restructuring. The health coverage tax credit represented the first time that the Federal Government offered assistance in the form of a tax credit to purchase health coverage. It was a new way of doing things. Instead of the government offering government-run coverage, the government was offering a tax credit to purchase private coverage. That is a good thing. As a new program, it had start-up challenges. And the program has special challenges that we don't see in the regular insurance market. You see, the trade adjustment assistance program is for a limited number of people. And it is offered just while people who have lost their jobs are going through retraining and finding another job. Health insurers do their best when they are insuring a larger group of people for a longer period of time. That is how insurance normally works. But the TAA program is the opposite. So this program has some special challenges to manage. And for a new program, I think it has managed those challenges pretty well. But there is always room for improvement. That is especially true for a new program like this one. The Government Accountability Office and the Internal Revenue Service have studied the health coverage tax credit program and offered their recommendations. The health plans have also offered suggestions for how to make the program work better. The amendment that Senator Baucus and I have worked out would make a number of improvements to the program. These are improvements needed to make it work better for eligible workers. First, we need to make coverage more affordable. That is something I hope we can address in more comprehensive health reform. But in the meantime, this amendment will make coverage affordable by increasing the tax credit to 80 percent of the cost of coverage. By providing more assistance, we can make private insurance options more affordable. Let's not forget that if we don't preserve access in the private market, many of these unemployed workers and their families will be forced into Medicaid. This amendment also makes important changes that will raise awareness about the program. One of the biggest barriers to enrollment is that people just don't know about the program. We are also going to help people with up-front costs during enrollment, and improve coverage for family members. As I said before, this is not a perfect program and today's changes are not going to make it perfect. I hope as this process moves forward, we can still look for ways to expand the number of coverage options for people that want to use the credit. We should make sure they have a variety of choices in the individual market. But even though today's changes don't do everything we would like, they represent another step in making this program work better for unemployed workers and their families. And I compliment Senator Baucus for his hard work and commitment to moving forward on these important reforms. With that, I invite my colleagues to join me in supporting amendment 404, the Trade and Globalization Adjustment Assistance Act of 2009. The reforms in this amendment will provide immediate benefits to workers impacted by trade in Iowa and across the country. Over the long term, these reforms will help to strengthen the global competitiveness of our workforce. And that translates into maintaining good-paying jobs right here in the United States.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I must object. Before I do so, I will make this little statement. Obviously, the chairman, in keeping his word to me, has gone on to deliver on that word by working out arrangements on some amendments I wanted. It might look confusing to the public at large as to why on this side we are objecting. As we do things in the Senate on unanimous consent, any one person can object. We have asked a lot of Members on our side what they thought about this particular UC request because we knew about it ahead of time. On behalf of a number of Members on our side of the aisle, acting for them, I must and do reluctantly object.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, if I may have the floor, I wish to make some remarks about the stimulus bill generally and about an upcoming vote we have in the Senate that we call waiving the Budget Act. Today, the Senate will consider whether we should apply budget discipline to this bill before us. Yesterday, there was a lot of revision, or perhaps editing, of recent budget history, and I come to the floor to speak about it in an intellectually honest way. Even our President alluded to it. I agree with the President that there is a lot of revisionism in the debate. The revisionist history basically boils down to two conclusions: One, that all of the ``good'' fiscal history of the 1990s was derived from a partisan tax increase of 1993; and, two, that all of the ``bad'' fiscal history of this decade we are in now is attributable to the bipartisan tax relief plans of 2001 and 2003, and maybe some lesser tax bills. Not surprisingly, nearly all of the revisionists who spoke generally oppose tax relief, and somehow always seem to support tax increases. The same crew generally supports spending increases and, not oddly, opposes spending cuts. In the debate so far on this bill, called the stimulus package, many on this side have pointed out some key undeniable facts. The bill before us, with interest included, increases the deficit by over $1 trillion. The bill before us is a heavy stew of spending increases and refundable tax credits, seasoned with small pieces of tax relief. The bill before us has new temporary spending that, if made permanent, will burden future budget deficits by over $1 trillion. That antirecessionary spending, together with lower tax receipts, plus the TARP activities, has set a fiscal table of a deficit of $1.2 trillion. That is the highest deficit, as a percentage of the economy, in post-World War II history. It is not a pretty fiscal picture, and it is going to get a lot uglier as a result of this bill. So for the folks who see this bill as an opportunity to recover America, with Government taking a larger share of the economy over the long term, I say congratulations. That is where the revisionist history comes from. It is a strategy to divert, through a twisted blame game, from the facts before us. How is history revisionist? I want to take each conclusion, one by one. The first conclusion is that all of the good fiscal history was derived from that 1993 tax increase. To knock down this canard, all you have to do is look at this chart I put up. This chart was not produced by a bunch of Republicans. This chart was produced by the Clinton administration. We can see down in the right corner, the ``Office of Management and Budget.'' The much ballyhooed 1993 partisan tax increase accounts for 13 percent of deficit reduction in the 1990s. We can see in green the 1993 tax increase that has been ballyhooed about the floor of this body several times did not have as much to do with deficit reduction as we are led to believe. What is more, fiscal revisionist historians in this body tend to forget who the players were. They are correct that there was a Democratic President in the White House, but they conveniently forget that Republicans controlled the Congress for the period where the deficit came down and actually turned into a surplus. They tend to forget that they fought the principle of a balanced budget that was the centerpiece of my party's fiscal policy. Remember the Government shutdown of 1995? I want the people on the other side of the aisle to remember that, remember what it was all about. It was about a plan to balance the budget. Republicans paid a political price for forcing the issue. But in 1997, President Clinton agreed. Recall as well all through the 1990s what the yearend battles were about. On one side, congressional Democrats and the Clinton administration pushed for more spending. On the other side, congressional Republicans were pushing for tax relief. In the end, both sides compromised. That is what our Government and Constitution forces, and a lot of that is done because in the Senate we have rules that do not allow one party to push something through. That is the real fiscal history of the 1990s. Now let's turn to the other conclusion of the revisionist fiscal historians. That conclusion is that in this decade, since the year 2000, all fiscal problems are attributable to the widespread tax relief enacted in 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2006. In 2001, President Bush came into office. Just last night, we heard on television about all of the problems today are the result of the last 8 years. Let's take a look at that. President Bush inherited an economy that was careening downhill. Investments started to go flat in 2000. Do you know NASDAQ lost 50 percent of its value in the year 2000, not in the year 2001 and beyond? Then came the economic shocks of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I might add, we had 40 or more months of downturn in the manufacturing index that started in February 2000, also before President Bush became President. And then we add in the corporate scandals to that economic environment. We had the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It is true, as the fiscal year 2001 came to a close, the projected surplus turned into a deficit. I have a chart that shows the start of this decade's fiscal history right here. As we can see, in just the right time, the 2001 tax relief plan started to kick in. The deficit grew smaller. This pattern continued through 2007. I have another chart that compares the tax receipts for the 4 years after the much ballyhooed 1993 tax increase and the 4-year period after the 2003 tax cuts. If we go to the tax increase, the blue line, we can see there was some uptick, but it stayed flat. Look at tax relief coming, the red line, what that has done for income into the Federal Treasury. On a year-after-year basis, this chart compares the change in revenues as a percentage of GDP. In 1993, the Clinton tax increase brought in more revenue as compared to the 2003 tax cut. But that trend reversed as both policies moved along. We can see how the extra revenue went up over time relative to the flat line of the 1993 tax increase. So let's get the fiscal history right. The progrowth tax-and-trade policies of the 1990s, along with a peace dividend, had a lot more to do with the deficit reduction in the 1990s than the 1993 tax increase did. In this decade, deficits went down after tax relief plans were put into full effect. That is the past. We need to make sure we understand it. But what is most important is the future. All I can say is that my President, President Obama, talked about the future all during the campaign. Why Members of his party have been talking about the last 8 years and not about the future, I don't know. We need to talk about the future. People in our States send us here to deal with the future. They do not send us here to flog one another like partisan cartoon cutout characters and to do it over past policy. They do not send us here to endlessly point fingers of blame around. Now let's focus on the fiscal consequences of the bill in front of us. That is what the vote in less than an hour is all about. President Obama rightly focused us on the future with his eloquence during that campaign, as I have already referred to. But I would like to be more specific and paraphrase a quote from the President's nomination acceptance speech: We need a President who can face the threats of the future, not grasping at the ideas of the past. My President was right. We need a President--and I would like to add Congressmen and Senators--who spends all the time facing the threats of the future. This bill, as currently written, poses considerable threats to our fiscal future. Senator McCain's spending trigger amendment showed us the way. We can rewrite this bill to retain its stimulative effect but turn off the spending when the recovery occurs. Grasping at ideas of the past or playing the partisan blame game will not deal with the threats to our fiscal future. With a vote to sustain the budget point of order against this bill, I say to my fellow Senators, we can start to deal with threats to the fiscal future in the way Senator McCain would or the way other people might bring good ideas forth. According to the Senate Finance Republican tax staff analysis of the Joint Committee on Taxation's revenue estimate of the Nelson-Collins substitute amendment, less than $6 billion is provided in that amendment in tax relief for small businesses. Let me be clear, small business tax relief makes up less than 1 percent of the bill. I think that is truly outrageous. Small businesses create approximately three- fourths of the new jobs in our economy. So if this bill is all about jobs, certainly more tax relief would have been provided to small businesses because they are the job-creating engines of our economy. Less than 1 percent of the bill going to small business tax relief is a puny amount. For example, according to Senator Nelson's Web site summary of this bill, here are just some of the provisions that the Senate Democratic leadership has spent more money on than small business tax relief. The Senate Democratic leadership is putting your money where their mouth isn't and saying that these items are a higher priority to them than small business tax relief is. Some of these items are: $7 billion for Federal buildings fund, $6.4 billion for State and Tribal assistance EPA grants, and $13.9 billion for Pell grants. While some of the provisions in the bill are worthy of being done in regular order, certainly none should get higher funding than small business tax relief because this is supposedly a stimulus bill that is about creating jobs. Mr. President, in remarks a few minutes ago, the senior Senator from New York referred to my amendment on the current year's alternative minimum tax, AMT, hold-harmless or patch. He was correct that I pushed for the patch very early in the stimulus discussions. I mentioned it at before and after our bipartisan Finance Committee Members' meeting. I filed it at the Finance Committee markup. To be fair, so did Senator Menendez. The committee adopted the AMT patch amendment. If I heard the Senator from New York correctly, he agreed with me on the merits of adding the AMT pacth. His point seemed to be to say I, and others who oppose the bill in its present form, we are taking an inconsistent bill. Let me repeat what we, on this side, have been saying about the need for this bill. We agree there needs to be a stimulus. But we need to do it right. Including the AMT pacth improves what is an otherwise poorly designed bill. The patch does not remedy the outyear spending problem. It does not eliminate the rest of new broad entitlement spending. I am hopeful that, in conference, the senior Senator from New York, and other members of the Democratic leadership, will fight for the Senate position on the AMT patch. There are 124,000 Iowa families who could face an average tax increase of $2,300 per family if the AMT patch is not enacted. I am looking out for them. I hope the Democratic leadership is looking out for them too. I urge my colleagues to vote for budget discipline, sustaining the point of order. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Total of 10 minutes.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, first of all, let me express great appreciation to the chairman for giving me an opportunity to use some of his time when I am going to be speaking against the legislation. It is very much brotherly love and I appreciate that. Today I wish to talk about some of the questionable spending in this bill and some of the amendments we aren't going to be able to vote on. First of all, there is $87 billion in Medicaid funds in this bill. As I have said on this floor several times, it is more than States need to pay for enrollment-driven increases in Medicaid spending due to the recession. We all accept the fact that there needs to be more money for Medicaid, as long as it is directly related to an increase in unemployment. However, I explained last week how the facts show that this amount is far more than States need for the cost of the new Medicaid enrollment resulting from a downturn in the economy. What the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office determined was that what States need to pay for increases in Medicaid enrollment is not the $87 billion in the bill but a lot smaller amount--$10.8 billion--directly related to an increase of unemployment Medicaid use. So the question is, Why does the bill provide almost eight times what the States actually need for the new enrollment resulting from that downturn? I say we shouldn't kid ourselves. This bill gives States, in a sense, a slush fund. Now, I am willing to admit States might need money for other programs, but it shouldn't be covered up by saying it is Medicaid money. On Friday night, I had an amendment to ensure that Medicaid funds would have been distributed fairly. Amazingly, 17 Members of the Senate voted to give their States less money, but at least in that case, I was able to get a vote. I had several other amendments that were never allowed to be made pending. All day Wednesday we were prevented from making amendments pending. Retreats and signing ceremonies got in the way. Thursday evening we spent more time arguing over whether amendments would be made pending rather than actually processing amendments. It seems contrary to what President Obama said on Monday night. He said the Republicans have a lot of good ideas and we ought to make this a bipartisan bill. So we get to 10 o'clock on Friday morning. We were encouraged to bring our amendments to the floor so they could be debated. For some reason, the first amendment was not allowed until 4\1/2\ hours later. So I am disappointed that several amendments on this side of the aisle, including some of my own, would not receive a vote. I am not convinced the majority wanted to have open debate and take votes on many of these amendments, including mine. It is too bad because this bill still can be made a bipartisan bill, and this bill can still be made a more effective bill. Congress is giving States, then, $87 billion for Medicaid and resting on the hope that States don't strip the health care safety net for low- income families and then pocket money. For instance, in my State of Iowa I recently read in the paper that they are going to cut $20 million out of Medicaid. So if we can do things with all the money we are going to give to the States to make sure these programs aren't cut, it seems to me, for that additional $76 billion, we ought to get some of that assurance. I use the word ``hope'' that they don't do that because the underlying bill doesn't do enough to make sure States do what is best with the Medicaid Program. Does the bill prevent States from getting Medicaid Programs? It does not. The bill only prevents States from cutting Medicaid on one of three propositions, this one being income eligibility. So that is a good thing. But if Congress is giving States $87 billion and telling them not to cut Medicaid eligibility, shouldn't Congress also tell States they can't cut benefits? If Congress is giving States $87 billion and telling them not to cut Medicaid eligibility, then shouldn't Congress also tell States they can't cut payments to providers? Will Medicaid beneficiaries who are elderly or disabled be able to receive home- and community-based services? Will there be enough pharmacists taking Medicaid? Will there be enough rural hospitals or public hospitals taking Medicaid patients? Will there be enough community health centers taking Medicaid people? Will Medicaid beneficiaries who are elderly or disabled be able to get into nursing homes? Will States cut mental health services because Congress didn't prevent them from doing so in this bill? Will there be pediatricians or children's hospitals there for children on Medicaid? So if the Senate does nothing to protect access to these vital providers, nobody will be able to assure the people who count on Medicaid that the care they need will be there. I filed an amendment that prevents States from generally cutting eligibility and benefits and providers. In other words, I am building on what the bill's authors did. They said don't cut eligibility. I agree with that. But shouldn't we, at the same time, not allow States to cut benefits and providers while all the time the States are getting $87 billion, which is about $75 billion, $76 billion more than what the recession-driven unemployment qualifiers for Medicaid need? The other day, if we had a chance, Members could have voted, in other words, to protect Medicaid providers and people who are on it. That should have had a vote. The bill provides in addition a COBRA subsidy to involuntarily terminated employees. The bill places no limits on the eligibility for the subject. Why? I haven't quite figured it out. I know the amendment we are now considering lowers the subsidy, but it still has no limits on eligibility for that subsidy. Last week, President Obama and his administration issued guidelines for capping compensation paid to CEOs whose institutions receive taxpayers' dollars through the TARP program, but the fact of the matter is this: Former Wall Street CEOs and hedge fund managers who have made millions of dollars while running our economy into the ground will get a taxpayers' subsidy equal to now 50 percent of their health care insurance. It seems to me that is outrageous. I filed an amendment that simply said if a worker who was voluntarily terminated from their job earned income in excess of $125,000 for individuals or $250,000 for families as a whole, this worker would not be eligible to receive the subsidy. What is magic about $250,000? It is the same level President Obama in the campaign said that people above that level should have tax increases. So I figured $250,000: You shouldn't be eligible for a subsidy for your health insurance, particularly if you are coming from a company that as a CEO you drove into the ground. That amendment should have had a vote. It is not just the health care amendments. This bill could be improved by increasing the tax credit for education expenses. Senator Schumer and I filed an amendment--now, that is a bipartisan amendment-- that would have done just that. It would have increased the American Opportunity Tax Credit from $2,500 to $3,000. It was a bipartisan amendment. It should have had a vote. I also remain deeply concerned about the oversight of this bill. On the front page of today's Washington Post, there is a story with this headline: ``If Spending Is Swift, Oversight May Suffer.'' Well, a person such as I was very interested. I spend more time on oversight than I do on legislating because I don't think we do enough of it here. The article says: The Obama administration's economic stimulus plan could end up wasting billions of dollars by attempting to spend money faster than an overburdened government acquisition system can manage and oversee it. When there is a potential for waste, fraud, and abuse, Congress needs to be proactive, not reactive. This is why I filed an amendment to ensure Congress has the ability to get information from the executive branch and respond to the allegations that will inevitably come in. The amendment would ensure that any agency that gets funding under this bill would be required to provide records upon written request by a chairman or ranking member of a committee of Congress. The committee records should not be kept secret from the elected representatives of the people. I have always tried to focus on good Government issues such as waste, fraud, and abuse. That is what my amendment did. That should have had a vote. I know a lot of people have worked very hard putting this bill together. I have done some of that myself, so I know what work it takes. I know a lot of people worked very hard putting a substitute amendment together. I respect that they have worked hard. Hard work doesn't mean, though, that it is necessarily good work. We should all have been allowed to consider and vote on more amendments than we have. I would say on all the amendments I have discussed in my remarks today, giving $87 billion, even though that is as much as eight times what they need to stay ahead of enrollment-driven Medicaid increases, is still not well thought out. Giving States $87 billion while still allowing them to cut their Medicaid Programs is still not well thought out. Giving a COBRA subsidy to millionaires is still not well thought out. It is still not well thought out. It is still out of control. The Senate should have been allowed to vote on the numerous amendments I have discussed today to address the shortcomings that occur when partisan bills are moved too quickly. We could still do that. We could process these amendments today. But as we have seen throughout, the majority is not interested in true bipartisanship or in process that allows for full and open debate on amendments. We have the House of Representatives and the ``House of Representatives in training,'' given how this debate has been run. Today we are being told ``just do it,'' at the expense of doing this very important and urgent legislation in a way that does right by the American people in the short and longer term. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, today I want to talk about some of the questionable spending in this bill and some of the amendments that we aren't going to be voting on. First of all, there is $87 billion in Medicaid funds in this bill. That is a huge payment to the states. And as I have said on this floor several times, it is more than States need to pay for enrollment-driven increases in Medicaid spending due to the recession. I explained last week how the facts show that this amount is far more than States need for the cost of new Medicaid enrollment resulting from the economy. What the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office determined was that what States need to pay for increases in Medicaid enrollment is not $87 billion but $10.8 billion. That is about $76 billion less than what this stimulus bill gives the States. So the question is, why does this bill provide almost eight times what the states actually need for the new enrollment resulting from the downturn? Let's not kid ourselves; this bill gives States a slush fund. This outlandish sum of money is not needed for Medicaid. It is a slush fund for the States. I thought that money should be spent fairly. I thought there should be some accountability. On Friday night, I had an amendment to insure the Medicaid funds would have been distributed fairly. Amazingly, 17 Members of the Senate voted to give their States less money. But at least in that case, I was able to get a vote. I had several other amendments that were never allowed to be made pending. All day Wednesday, we were prevented from making amendments pending. Retreats and signing ceremonies got in the way. Thursday evening, we spent more time arguing over which amendments would be made pending rather than actually processing amendments. At 10 o'clock Friday morning, we were encouraged to bring our amendments to the floor so they could be debated. For some reason, the first amendment was not allowed until 4\1/2\ hours later. I am disappointed that several of my amendments will not receive a vote. I am not convinced the majority wanted to have open debate and take votes on many of my amendments. It is too bad, because this bill still needs fixing. Congress is giving States $87 billion and just resting on hope that States don't strip the health care safety net for low income families and then pocket the money. I use the word ``hope'' because the underlying bill doesn't do enough to make sure States do what is best for the Medicaid Program. Does the bill prevent States from cutting their Medicaid programs? It does not. The bill only prevents States from cutting Medicaid income eligibility. But if Congress is giving States $87 billion and telling them not to cut Medicaid eligibility, shouldn't Congress also tell States they can't cut benefits? If Congress is giving States $87 billion and telling them not to cut Medicaid eligibility, shouldn't Congress also tell States they can't cut payments to providers? States can't change income eligibility, but under the bill as written, they can cut provider payments or benefits to providers. Will there be Medicaid beneficiaries who are elderly or disabled able to receive home and community based services? If we want to keep seniors and the disabled in their homes, rather than institutions, paying direct care workers to provide home and community based services is critical. Will there be enough pharmacists taking Medicaid? Will there be enough rural hospitals or public hospitals taking Medicaid? Will there be enough community health centers taking Medicaid? Will Medicaid beneficiaries who are elderly or disabled be able to get into nursing homes? Will States cut mental health services because Congress didn't prevent them from doing so in this bill? Will there be pediatricians or children's hospitals there for children on Medicaid? If the Senate does nothing to protect access to these vital providers, nobody will be able to assure the people who count on Medicaid that the care they need will be there for them. I filed an amendment that prevents States from generally cutting eligibility and benefits and provider payment rates while they are receiving the $87 billion in additional aid. Members could have voted to really protect Medicaid. That should have had a vote. As written, the bill gives states $87 billion also in the hope that States don't take actions that are contrary to economic growth. I use the word ``hope'' because the bill doesn't do enough to make sure States do what is best for our economy either. We should ask for more guarantees that States will spend the money appropriately and not make decisions that work against economic recovery. If Congress gives states $87 billion and tells them not to cut Medicaid, should Congress also tell States not to raise taxes? If states react to their deficits by increasing taxes, they will defeat the goal of economic recovery. It makes no sense for us to leave the door wide open for States to raise taxes while getting an $87 billion windfall from the Federal Government. I filed an amendment that prevents States from raising income, personal property or sales taxes as a condition of the receipt of $87 billion in federal assistance. That should have had a vote. If Congress gives states $87 billion and tells them not to cut Medicaid, should Congress also tell States not to raise tuition at State universities? If States can price young people out of an education, that does nothing for preparing our workforce for the 21st century. I filed an amendment that prevents States from raising tuition rates at State colleges and universities as a condition of the receipt of $87 billion in Federal assistance. That should have had a vote. For $87 billion, what does this bill do to ensure that all those Federal taxpayer dollars are being spent appropriately? Almost nothing. Senator Cornyn and I filed an amendment that requires States to do something to improve their waste, fraud and abuse in exchange for the $87 billion in Federal taxpayer's money. It provides a list of eight options to combat waste, fraud and abuse, and the Secretary can provide more options as well. These are all very reasonable steps States could and should take if Congress is going to send them 87 billion in additional Medicaid dollars. They don't have to do all of these various options. Just four. Just show the American people that States can take four simple steps to reduce fraud, waste and abuse. Shouldn't Congress at least ask that much of States for $87 billion? That should have had a vote. If Congress passes all this Medicaid spending, what guarantee do we have that the fiscal challenges facing Medicaid in the future will be solved? Sooner rather than later, we must recognize that our entitlements are unsustainable as currently constructed. President Obama has acknowledged this himself on numerous occasions recently. One of my concerns about the additional Medicaid funding that is in this bill is that it places too much emphasis on Medicaid in the here and now and ignores future fiscal challenges. Just last year, the CMS Office of the Actuary reported that Medicaid costs will double over the next decade. That is simply unsustainable. It is critical that both the Federal Government and States recognize the fiscal challenges we face and take action now. Senators Cornyn and Hatch and I filed an amendment that requires States to submit a report to the Secretary detailing how they plan to address Medicaid sustainability. It is critical that we look at the future of Medicaid if Congress is to give States $87 billion in additional Medicaid funding. That should have had a vote. The bill provides a COBRA subsidy to involuntarily terminated employees. The bill places no limits on the eligibility for the subsidy. Zilch, Zero. Why? I haven't quite figured it out. I know the amendment we are now considering lowers the subsidy, but it still has no limits on eligibility for the subsidy. Frankly, I am surprised my Democratic colleagues--and especially the Obama administration--have not tried to place limits on the availability of the subsidy. After all, the subsidy is paid for with taxpayer dollars. Last week, the Obama administration issued guidelines for capping compensation paid to CEOs whose institution receives taxpayer dollars through the TARP program. But the fact of the matter is this, former Wall Street CEOs and hedge fund managers who have made millions of dollars--while running our economy into the ground--will get a tax payer-funded subsidy equal to now 50 percent of their health insurance policy. That is outrageous. I filed an amendment that simply said that if a worker who was involuntarily terminated from their job earned income in excess of $125,000 for individuals and $250,000 for families during 2008, this worker would not be eligible to receive the subsidy. Some of my colleagues may ask why we set the cap at $125,000 and $250,000. Well, when Candidate Obama was campaigning to be President Obama, he continually said that he wanted to raise taxes on families making over $250,000 a year. Why? Because then, Candidate Obama felt that these people are too ``rich'' to pay lower taxes. If these families are too ``rich'' to receive a tax benefit in the form of lower taxes, aren't these people too ``rich'' to receive a taxpayer-funded subsidy for health insurance? That should have had a vote. And it is not just the health care amendments. This bill could be improved by increasing the tax credit for education expenses. Senator Schumer and I filed an amendment that would have done just that. It would have increased the American opportunity tax credit from $2,500 to $3,000. Senator Schumer has shown great leadership in the area of education, and I thank him for partnering with me to help families better afford college through the tax code. It was a bipartisan amendment. That should have had a vote. I also remain deeply concerned about the oversight of this bill. On the front page of today's Washington Post, there is a story with this headline: ``If spending is swift, oversight may suffer.'' The article says, The Obama administration's economic stimulus plan could end up wasting billions of dollars by attempting to spend money faster than an overburdened government acquisition system can manage and oversee it. When there is a potential for waste, fraud, and abuse Congress needs to be proactive, not reactive. We have created a special inspector general for the TARP program and we have the Government Accountability Office reporting to Congress every 60 days on the use of that money as well. However, there is nothing like that for the money in this bill. That is why I introduced an amendment to ensure that Congress has the ability to get information from the executive branch and respond to the allegations that will inevitably come in. The amendment would ensure that any agency that gets funding under this bill would be required to provide records upon written request by a chairman or ranking member of a committee of Congress. In my experience, the executive branch consistently misinterprets a number of statutes in order to claim that it is legally prohibited from complying with oversight requests from Congress. This amendment would make the will of the Congress clear that when we ask for records, the agencies have an obligation to comply. The public's records should not be kept secret from the elected representatives of the people. The idea that only the majority should be able to request documents from the executive branch is just an invitation for a timid legislative branch. The President's choice to head the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, Dawn Johnson, wrote in July 2007: With regard to Congress, oversight obviously tends to be least effective when the President's political party dominates. . . . Now that the White House and the Congress are controlled by the same party, I am worried that oversight will suffer, just like Dawn Johnson said it would. I have always tried to focus on good government issues like waste, fraud, and abuse. That's what my amendment did. That should have had a vote. I know a lot of people have worked very hard putting this bill together. I know a lot of people worked very hard putting the substitute amendment together. I respect that they have worked hard. Hard work doesn't mean that it is good work. And we should have been allowed to consider and vote on all of the amendments I have discussed here today. Giving States $87 billion even though that is as much as eight times what they need to stay ahead of enrollment-driven Medicaid increases is still not well thought out. Giving States $87 billion while still allowing them to cut their Medicaid programs is still not well thought out. Giving States $87 billion while still allowing them to raise taxes or tuition is still not well thought out. Giving States $87 billion without requiring them to do a better job of addressing fraud, waste, and abuse is still not well thought out. Giving States $87 billion without making them address the fiscal sustainability of their Medicaid programs is still not well thought out. Giving a COBRA subsidy to millionaires is still not well thought out. It is still not well thought out. It is still out of control. The Senate should have been allowed to vote on the numerous amendments I have discussed today to address the shortcomings that occur when partisan bills are moved too quickly. We could still do that. We could process these amendments today. But as we have seen throughout, the majority is not interested in true bipartisanship or in process that allows for full and open debate on amendments. One of the key questions in the stimulus debate has been whether one side or the other is acting in a partisan manner. To put a finer point on it, you could break it down to two precise questions. The first question would be: Has the majority party, meaning my friends on the Democratic side, ever invited my side, the Republicans to the negotiating table? That is, has an offer, with an intent to negotiate, ever been extended by the Democrats? If the answer to the first question is yes, then the second question would be: Has the minority party, the Republicans, ever responded to the offer and taken the next step in the negotiating process. These are the fundamental questions that need to be asked and answered to determine whether the stimulus bill before us is a bipartisan process. Let's go to the first question. It is a basic question. My friends on the other side did very well in the last election. We congratulated our new President, Barack Obama, on his victory. The Democrats have robust majorities in both houses of Congress. They have their biggest majority in the House since 1993. They have the biggest majority since the Carter administration. We Republicans recognize they set the agenda. It is kind like the role of the point guard in a basketball game. They have the ball. Just as a point guard runs the plays, so too does the Democratic Leadership in both bodies decide the plays. Republicans don't have the ball. We are in a position of responding. That's all we can do. It's really up to the Democratic majority to make the first move. So, with the context in mind, let's bear down on that first question. Did the House Democrats make an offer? Did the Senate Democrats make an offer? Maybe I missed something, but I don't recall receiving an offer. As I said in committee and in the opening floor debate, my friend, Chairman Baucus, courteously and professionally consulted with me. But consultation is not the same thing as negotiation. They are very different actions. As a former chairman, I know well the pressure from the leadership, the caucus, the House, and an administration of one's own party. You really have to push uphill to get a bipartisan deal. The benefit of a bipartisan deal is the policy is likely to stand the test of time. The leadership, caucus, and administration are likely to understand that benefit in the abstract, but unlikely to take concrete actions to realize it. All of those partisan pressures will look to pull apart any bipartisan plan. I know my friend, Chairman Baucus understands that dynamic. He would probably prefer a bipartisan process and product, but the partisan edge is too great. The expectations on the Democratic side are too high. It's like the old saying: ``our way or the highway.'' So, Madam President, we can't get to the second question. That question, whether Republicans have engaged in a bipartisan process, can't be answered. It can't be answered because the process was never started. An offer was never made. We were not invited to the negotiating table. We have the House of Representatives and the House of Representatives-in-training given how this debate has been run. Today we are being told ``just do it'' at the expense of doing this very important and urgent legislation in a way that does right by the American people in the short and longer term.