Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I appreciate that very much, Mr. President. I do not object.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on January 22, 2013, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. INHOFE

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, yesterday President Obama made a beautiful speech. I think everyone agrees that he is a very persuasive speaker. Although I didn't agree with anything he said, it was said beautifully. I want to read one part of his speech because I don't want to get it wrong. He said: We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations . . . The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition. We must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries. We must claim its promise. That's how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure. That is a direct quote which came out of the President's speech, and it has a lot of little subliminal things in there that people did not pick up on, but I did. One is--and they talked about that--we must show the leadership. That is because of all the things they try to do to damage the economy, to destroy the economy, in terms of the cap-and-trade agenda. And all of that are things that other countries are just waiting for us to do. It is not that we are going to provide the leadership, and all of a sudden China is going to say: Hey, they are doing it, so maybe we ought to do it. China, instead, is sitting back hoping that will happen in this country, so they can have all the jobs that are chased away from our manufacturing base. There are a few sentences the President dedicated to global warming, and the rest of his speech could be labeled as a liberal laundry list. And I think everyone was expecting that. I was not surprised that the President decided to do this. All during the campaign and during the weeks since the election, the President's extreme environmental base has been very vocal with their frustrations. A lot of them go back and say: At one time, Mr. President, you had the White House and you had the House and you had the Senate, and yet you did not even try to get this stuff done. They are talking about, of course, the cap-and-trade system. In fact, there is one good reason he did not get it done, and that is because the votes just are not there. They want the President to immediately regulate hydraulic fracturing, officially reject the permit for the Keystone pipeline, advance the regulatory powers of the EPA to cut CO2 emissions, use all of his political capital to push a legislative fix to climate change, and to kill America's oil and gas industry. That is what was expected of him. And now, since he does not have to run for reelection, you are going to get a lot more than you did before. So that should make them happy. But it is a lot more rhetoric and not a lot more action. Studies done during the most recent debate--and that would have been the Waxman-Markey bill; that was the cap-and-trade bill just a couple years ago that they had; I think that might have been the last one we had--the estimates--this is interesting--going all the way back to the Kyoto treaty, they said, the cost, if you try to do cap and trade, is going to be between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. Well, that is between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. I do something in my State of Oklahoma, and I suggest that the Presiding Officer may do this in his State of West Virginia. Every year I get the figures on how many families there are in my State of Oklahoma who file a Federal tax return and actually pay Federal taxes. Then I do the math. The way it works out, if you are talking about $400 billion a year--and I have not had one person argue with that figure that I have been using for over 10 years now--but if you do the math, that means for each person in my State of Oklahoma, it would cost them about $3,000 a year to do it. The interesting part of this is, you do not really accomplish anything by doing it. This same agenda at the EPA, under authority he is claiming is under the Clean Water Act, has to be something we are going to talk about. And I do not have any hesitation in doing that. Bills such as the Waxman-Markey bill--and I believe Senator Boxer and several others have had bills--the cost of that being of some $400 billion a year, would affect industries and emitters of CO2 that emit 25,000 tons of CO2 or more a year--25,000 tons. That would truly be just the big emitters. However, the effort of this administration--since they cannot get it passed through legislation--is to do it through regulation under the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act is specific. And the Clean Air Act goes after anyone who emits at least 250 tons of CO2. So stop and think about that because it is very difficult to try to evaluate it and determine just how much it would cost. The regulations they have would force these facilities to receive--anyone who is regulated under this-- EPA construction permits, rehabilitation permits, monitoring devices, and install unnecessary and costly technology to reduce CO2 emissions without any corresponding benefits. This would give the EPA a hand in everything. The cost of this is so great that it cannot be calculated. Stop and think about this. If the Waxman-Markey bill--or any of the other pieces of legislation that were called cap-and-trade regulations--were passed, that would regulate only those 25,000 tons or more of emissions. However, the Clean Air Act is 250 tons. So 25,000 tons would be $400 billion a year. How much would it be for just 250 tons? That means every university, every school, every hospital would be subject to the regulation. That is something they have been attempting to do for a long time. I have to say, there are a lot of appointees of President Obama whom I do not like at all. One I do like--and I am sorry she is not staying--is Lisa Jackson. Lisa Jackson was the Director appointed by President Obama to be the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency. I found one thing really curious about her. While she is very liberal philosophically, she does not lie. That is all I can really ask of people. I can remember in this case, when they finally gave up--this is just 2 years go. They finally gave up and said: We are not going to be able to pass any kind of a bill for cap and trade, but we are going to go to Copenhagen and tell them we are going to do it another way. If we cannot get a bill passed, we will do it through regulation. To do it through regulation instead of legislation--this is kind of in the weeds--you have to have an endangerment finding. That is what the law says. So Lisa Jackson was before our committee, and I asked her a question. I said: Madam Administrator, tomorrow I am going to leave for Copenhagen to be the one-man truth squad--because everybody has been over there lying to these other countries saying we are going to pass something over here--and I have a feeling that once I leave town, you are going to have an endangerment finding and do this through regulation. I could see her kind of smiling. I said: When you do that, the regulation that you have is going to have to be based on science. That is what the law says. What science are you going to use? Her answer was: Well, we will use mostly the United Nations IPCC. A lot of people do not realize--I wrote a whole book about this--this thing all started way back 12 years ago, and it was a thing by the United Nations. They formed the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They are the ones who came up with all this stuff. So she said it is going to be on the IPCC. Well, poetic justice. It could not have been done better if we had planned it, because it was not weeks after that, it was days after that, that what happened? Climategate. All of a sudden, they realized, through some leaked information, that the IPCC had been lying all those years. I will mention a couple things. The UK Telegraph said it is the ``worst scientific scandal of our generation.'' Clive Crook of the Financial Times said: ``The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.'' IPCC prominent physicist resigns because ``Climategate was a fraud on a scale I have never seen.'' Further, another U.N. scientist bails. U.N. IPCC coordinating author Dr. Phillip Lloyd calls out IPCC ``fraud.'' ``The result is not scientific.'' And the list goes on and on. Just stop and think about it. The UK Telegraph--one of the biggest publications in the UK--saying it is the ``worst scientific scandal of our generation.'' So we now know that was the science they were going to use. I will always be appreciative of Director Jackson for being totally honest in her response. But we can guess that would be devastating and cripple the Nation and bankrupt our economy. We know what would happen. The contrast here is stark. On one hand, you have the President saying he wants to control carbon for the sake of protecting our economy and, on the other hand, you have the President's EPA embarking on a regulatory crusade that potentially would be devastating to our economy and America. The President and the EPA have been working for 4 years to build a case to justify the need for Federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing. A minute ago I listed all the things that were in his speech that I think would be devastating to the economy. One is hydraulic fracturing. I will bet you, 5 years ago, if you said hydraulic fracturing, people's eyes would glass over and they would not know what you were talking about. They all know now because hydraulic fracturing is a process that is used to get oil and gas out of tight formations. I know quite a bit about it because it all started in 1949 in my State of Oklahoma. In 1949, in Duncan, OK, we discovered that you could unlock these reserves using hydraulic fracturing. So it is something that has been used that way for over a million--a million--applications, and the States have been regulating it and doing so quite well. Everyone is satisfied with the way it has been regulated. There has never been a case--getting back to Lisa Jackson, I asked her a question in one of our committee hearings--and it was live with TV covering it--I said: Can you tell me and can you identify one case in a million--a million applications of hydraulic fracturing--one case where there has been groundwater contamination? She said she could not. So there has never been a confirmed, documented case of groundwater contamination because of hydraulic fracturing. Because of these facts, the only reason for EPA regulation of hydraulic fracturing is to significantly limit, if not ban, its use. It would kill the domestic oil and gas industry, which I believe, more often than not, that is exactly what they want. Well, in closing, the President's remarks yesterday were not surprising to me. But it did confirm the fact that this President is not interested in pursuing an agenda that would help the growing segments of the economy, such as the oil and gas industry. People talk about our reliance upon the Middle East and people who could become our enemies for oil and gas. All we have to do is produce our own, get the political obstacles out of the way, so we can be totally independent. I wish to mention two things President Obama has said. One, he says that oil and gas production during his administration--his 4 years--has boomed. This is true, but not in the public sector. It has done so because of hydraulic fracturing, horizontal drilling, and all these technologies that have been very successful and have worked. He has made the statement over and again that: Well, it would not do any good if we opened public lands for production because it would take 10 years before that would affect the supply and the cost of oil and gas. Well, there is a guy whose name is Harold Hamm. Harold Hamm is arguably the most successful independent oil man in America today. He is from Enid, OK. I called him because I was going to be on a very liberal TV show and knew they were going to ask this question. I called him so I could document an answer. The statement they were going to make was: Well, President Obama has said it would take 10 years for that, for oil to reach the pumps if you opened public lands. How long do you think it would take? So I called Harold Hamm. I said: Harold, you have to be accurate in responding to this question because I am going to use it on national TV tonight, and I am going to use your name. So I said: If you were to set up your rig in New Mexico and start drilling--you say: Go right now-- how long would it take for the first barrel you brought up to reach the pumps? Without hesitating, he said 70 days--not 10 years, 70 days. Then he went on and told me what would happen each day, how long it would take to go through the refining process and reach the pumps. So that is just one of the things that has been said over and over to make people believe it is true. Let me mention a couple of things in winding this down. Richard Lindzen is from MIT. Richard Lindzen is probably the foremost authority. No one has really questioned him in the past. His statement was: Regulating CO2 is a bureaucrat's dream. If you regulate CO2, you regulate life. That is exactly what it would be. Everyone would fall into that regulation. Getting back to why--I do not want people to sit around and worry about it--you are going to hear a lot of talk and the President is going to do all he can under regulations to try to do cap and trade. We found out--it took extensive research--that the President, in his first 4 years, has actually spent $68.4 billion on cap and trade, and that was not authorized. So he can do a lot of it through regulation, but it is not going to pass. The reason it is not going to pass is, as we have stated, the cost would be extensive. And what would be accomplished--again, going back to when I asked a question of the Administrator of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, in another hearing--I said, if we were to pass any of the regulations, any of the legislation, the Waxman-Markey legislation or any of the rest of them, would this reduce CO2 emissions worldwide? She said: No, it would not. She said: Because the problem is not here in the United States. The problem is in China, in India, in Mexico, and other places. So you can carry that argument even further. If we were to do this in just the United States, if you were one of those who really believes that CO2 emissions are causing all these problems--which I do not agree with--but if you really believe that, it still would not reduce them. It would actually have the effect of increasing them because as we chase away our manufacturing base--because we cannot generate the electricity to sustain it--where do they go? They go to countries such as China and India and Mexico and other countries where they have little or no emissions regulations. So with that, while it sounded real good yesterday in his speech, and I do have a great deal of respect for the President and his persuasive abilities, I want people to realize, those who are out there recognizing that we can become independent in our energy development in this country, that they are not going to be able to pass cap-and-trade any more now than they have failed to do so in the last 10 years. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the period for morning business be extended until 5 p.m. today, and that all provisions of the previous order remain in effect.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, it is my understanding that at 4 o'clock, Senator Durbin from Illinois will be speaking. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak at the conclusion of his remarks, at or around 4:15.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I yield for a point of inquiry. It was my understanding that under the unanimous consent that I would get the floor. I don't mind waiting for the time that they have requested, but I want to make sure I do get recognized after the conclusion of this for such time as I shall consume under morning business.

Mr. INHOFE. Yes, I certainly agree to that. Keep in mind I have already asked for unanimous consent not to proceed for more than 20 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I am going to expand my remarks from my original intent because of what I have been listening to on the floor. I really reserved this time to talk about two very significant things that happened. In fact, 53 years ago in 1959--and I have to ask the question as it gets closer and closer to Christmas: Why are we here? There is always a lot of theater right before Christmastime. The things we are talking about now could well be taken care of afterward. It could be done after we have a chance to look and assess the damages of Sandy. As far as the fiscal cliff is concerned, this is something that we have known about for a long time. Right now it seems that in this body--and the other body down the hall in the House--that they don't want to do anything until it gets close to Christmas, that somehow people are at home watching, and sitting with bated breath and wondering what wisdom we are going to extol. I don't know if that is true in other States, but I know that it is not true in Oklahoma. I told them this was going to happen. I told them before the election in October. I introduced a bill, S. 3473. I introduced that bill because I knew what was going to happen. What we have been talking about here in the last few minutes during the colloquy that I came in and caught the last part of is this Sandy issue. This is always interesting. When a disaster occurs in America and emotions are high, everybody all of a sudden wants to pour money on it, and in this case it will be $60.4 billion. How did they come up with $60.4 billion? I don't know because I wasn't in on that. I come from Oklahoma. We have disasters all the time. We have our tornadoes that are very serious, and of course we take care of the problems when they come up. We do get some Federal help, but nonetheless we analyze what the damages are and what was caused by the particular disaster. We don't just use that to open the door and have something in there for everybody, and that is what is happening now. They are asking for $60 billion, and there is something for everyone in it. That is what we are talking about today. Again, we should not be talking about it right before Christmas and use this as an excuse to take this right up to Christmas. Right now we don't have time to get all the way through this and analyze the actual losses that were attributed to Sandy. It was a disaster, and I understand that. People lost their lives and their property. Nonetheless, we don't know, and we are guessing right now. Some say: Well, how about $60.4 billion? That sounds good. It could be $70 billion, it could be $80 billion, or it could be $30 billion. The Heritage Foundation did an analysis of the damages of Sandy. We talked about the $60.4 billion, which is the amount directly attributed to Sandy. We should get the study before it is criticized. The Heritage Foundation did the study, and it is actually $12.8 billion. That represents the amount that individuals lost as a direct result of this disaster called Sandy that tragically hit our east coast. Now what about the other $47.6 billion? As an example, they have $28 billion in there for future disasters. Oh, wait a minute. We are supposed to be addressing a disaster that just occurred. The $28 billion is for future disasters. Here is a good one. There is 3.5 for global warming. They always have to get global warming in there. That is kind of interesting because we actually had several debates and several pieces of legislation called cap-and-trade. We took it up before this body and we defeated it. I am talking about going back 12 years ago. The last one was the House bill, and that was called Waxman- Markey. It was defeated because people realized that cap-and-trade would be the largest tax increase in the history of America, somewhere between $300 and $400 billion a year. That equates to about $3,000 for each family in my State of Oklahoma who files a Federal income tax return. So people realize that is true. Yet at the same time, the Administrator, appointed by President Obama, Lisa Jackson, when asked the question, If you were to pass any bill here for cap and trade in Oklahoma, would this reduce CO2 worldwide, said: No. That is because the problem is not here; the problem is in countries such as China, India, Mexico, and other places. Nonetheless, how many people in this body even know what this President has done through his executive powers? He has spent $68.4 billion on global warming initiatives in the 4 years he has been President and that is without any authority from this body. Here is another one: $150 million. I was listening to my good friend Senator Begich from Alaska--and I have a great deal of respect for him. He and I have worked on legislation together such as the pilots' bill of rights legislation. Nonetheless, fisheries in Alaska were significant, but they were not on the east coast. This didn't happen-- the last time I looked at a map, it was on the west coast, not the east coast, so it should not be in here. Then we go on to the fiscal cliff. We are all here talking about this fiscal cliff that is here and all of a sudden we have to do something about it. How many people realize that we knew this was coming a long time ago? I mentioned my bill, which is S. 3473, that showed we don't have to raise $1.4 trillion, we can raise $2.7 trillion without any cuts to the military, and it is all right there. Look it up: S. 3473. Now, months later, right before Christmas, we come here and say, Oh, trauma has set in; it is going to be a disaster, so we have to come up with $1.4 trillion. How many people realize that this President--and this is not the Democrats, not the Republicans, not the House, not the Senate--it was the President of the United States, in his budget--there were four budgets he had in his 4 years. He had over $1 trillion of deficit in each budget. If we add up all of his deficits--this is what the President gave us now. Again, it was not the Democrats or Republicans, House or Senate; this was his budget that he drafted and signed, with $5.3 trillion of deficit in it--that is more deficit than all budgets of all Presidents combined since George Washington--and nobody cares. We say this and people shake their heads and they don't seem to care. He said it so it must be all right. So now after this President has given us $5.3 trillion of deficit, now all of a sudden--he did that in 4 years, but in 10 years we can't even come up with $1.4 trillion. It is easy. We could do it. I did it in a bill introduced several months ago. We knew it was coming, but Christmas is coming too so we are all lined up to grandstand--I don't mean grandstand; that sounds demeaning. I don't mean it that way. When we think about the money this President has spent--what about the $800 billion stimulus that didn't stimulate? How many people in America--how many Members of this body--know what that $800 billion was spent for? I suggest not very many. I do, because I made a point to look. There are things that it did not stimulate. Only 3 percent of it went to roads and highways and that type of thing. But, again, he came up with in one fell swoop $800 billion, and now we wonder--that was in the first couple of months and now in 10 years, how can we come up with this much more? So, anyway, I just wanted to say that. While we are talking about the budget, I think it is appropriate to say something else about it, because it was in the budget that was part of disarming America. I can remember going over to Afghanistan after the President's first budget because I knew he was cutting the military and I knew if I were over there responding with the tanks going back and forth that it would get people's attention, and it did. In that first budget he did away with the only fifth-generation fighter, the F- 22; he did away with our lift capacity, the C-17; did away with our future combat system, did away with the ground-based interceptor in Poland; all of these things in one budget. That is what took place. Jon Kyl is retiring, and I noticed that when he made his going-away speech today he talked about the disasters we are facing right now. We are talking here about weather disasters. What about nuclear disasters? What about the fact that we had the New START Treaty, which I opposed, but nonetheless, that put levels on both Russia and ourselves. In terms of our nuclear stockpile, which was supposed to go down equally to 1,550 warheads, it is now down, and they are talking about doing away with them altogether. It is another subject for another time, but I will spend some time talking about it later. Anyway, as we started, I mentioned two significant things happened in 1959. One was--and we are all revering now Danny Inouye. Senator Inouye is different than most other Senators. I remember when my daughter Katie was much younger and she said, My two favorite U.S. Senators--I thought I was going to be one of them--my two favorite ones are Senator Inouye and Senator Jesse Helms. They are such kind, older guys. She wanted to know if they ever got angry at anything. No, they didn't. As a conservative Republican I have gone to him many times for favors, really, to ask if we could get something done, and he never turned me down during that time. I had a long visit yesterday with his son and told him what we feel about Danny Inouye and how much we are going to miss him. So that happened in 1959. That was when he was first elected to the U.S. Senate. The other thing that is significant that happened in 1959, 53 years ago today, is I was married. So this is my 53rd wedding anniversary, and it happened we were married in 1959. In fact, she is watching now. She hardly ever does, but I called and said watch because I can't be there for our anniversary so I have to do it this way, and so she is. Today is only the second time in 53 years that we haven't been together on our anniversary. But I would ask the question: Who will be there today? That is who will be there today, our 20 kids and grandkids. Look at them all. Isn't that neat? Yes, they are going to be there, but I am not, but she won't be alone. Isn't that significant? All of that happened and it started with just us, right there, and there they are. A person might look and see that one little girl is a little bit different than the rest of them. That is the little girl right here. We call her Zegita Marie. There she is. We found her 12 years ago, only 2 days old. She was a cute little girl and she was just near death in an orphanage in Ethiopia and we went back there and got her nursed back to health. My daughter Molly, who had nothing but boys, adopted her. I want to say to my wife who is listening right now, even though I won't be home, 3 days from now on the 22nd--that is Saturday--I want you to watch the ``Mike Huckabee Show'' because she is going to be interviewed and talking about adoption. Senator Landrieu and I head the adoption caucus in the U.S. Senate. There are hundreds of thousands of little kids out there and people who want to adopt little kids, and they can't do it because of the problems. This little girl wouldn't even be alive today and here she is now, 11\1/2\, almost 12 years old, reading at college level and doing wonderful things. So, Kay, be sure to tune in to Mike Huckabee and watch her being interviewed 3 days from now. The last thing I will say is that this is bad enough not to be home during our anniversary, but it is also bad as we get closer to Christmas. If you can only see the celebration that is going on right now, all those kids. They are all there and they are participating. I remember what happened in the year 2009. In 2009, we played the same game here: You know, we were here doing a little theater, making sure everybody knew we were working, and we didn't get out until the afternoon, just about noon, on Christmas Eve. I remember that was the worst snowstorm in the history of northern Texas and of Oklahoma. Where is global warming when you need it? It was terrible. I got to DFW and I wanted to go on to Tulsa. I was in a hurry to get there because Kay and I belong to a church in Tulsa where we were married, all of our kids were married there, and my wife was even baptized there, and every Christmas Eve they have the most beautiful setting and three of my grandkids were going to be singing in that and I never missed it in 50 years. We got to Dallas; they weren't going to take off. I pleaded with them. They took off, the only plane that took off from DFW, and went to Tulsa that day. We went through 6-foot drifts, if my colleagues can believe it, to get down there to see my little grandkids singing. Well, that is not going to happen this time, because I will be back there. I would say this to my wife. We have had kind of a tradition for 53 years now: I always get Kay roses. She loves roses. So I am not there today, but I want to say to Kay that if you will go out in our front yard now and look under the giant oak tree that you and I planted over 50 years ago, your roses are there. Finally, I want to say two more things. One is I want to assure Kay that I love her more today than I did 50 years ago; and secondly, I am not Bing Crosby, but I am going to say-- and all the people in Oklahoma understand this--there may be 99 Senators here playing their games on Christmas, but as Bing said, I'll be home for Christmas and you can be sure of that. You can count on it. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, first of all, let me thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for allowing me to say something about our vote that is coming up. Mr. Dowdell has been nominated to a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, which sits in my hometown of Tulsa. In fact, he is a neighbor of mine in Tulsa. After graduating from the University of Tulsa's College of Law, Mr. Dowdell began his legal career as a clerk to the chief judge of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. Since 1983, Mr. Dowdell has accumulated extensive State and Federal litigation experience representing a variety of clients working at the same firm in Tulsa of which he is a partner. Mr. Dowdell is a native Tulsan and has been extensively involved in the community, in addition to being widely recognized for his work on behalf of his clients. I received a number of letters from members of the legal community throughout Tulsa highlighting Mr. Dowdell's work ethic, his character, and his abilities as an advocate for his clients. Mr. Dowdell already has experience as a mediator and arbitrator and has served as an adjunct settlement judge in the Northern District for the past 14 years, which is the district for which he is nominated. He and his wife of 24 years, Rochelle, like my wife and I, have four children, which I always remind people is just the right amount. If you are ever going to have 20 kids and grandkids, you have to start with 4, and he understands that. Although it often seems as if I am on the opposite side of many of this administration's judicial nominees, I can say with confidence that this is not the case with Mr. Dowdell. Mr. Dowdell has the requisite experience and judicial temperament to make a fine judge in the Northern District of Oklahoma. I am particularly impressed with Mr. Dowdell's commitment to ``render decisions fairly and impartially, applying the relevant law to the facts without bias or prejudgment,'' to interpret a statute or constitutional provision in a case of first impression by first considering ``the statutory text or provision in the context of its plain and ordinary meaning''--that says a lot--and to not consult foreign law when interpreting the U.S. Constitution. Too often in this country we have judges applying their own meanings to the Constitution and to the laws passed by Congress or allowing their own biases to affect their decisions. I can state confidently to my colleagues that Judge Dowdell will not be this type of a judge. In his Questions for the Record to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Dowdell has stated that he does not agree with the notion that the Constitution is a ``living'' document that constantly evolves as society interprets it. He further states that the ``Constitution changes only through the amendment process, as set forth in Article V of the Constitution.'' That is refreshing. ``A court's job is to interpret and apply the Constitution, not to add or amend the rights contained therein.'' That is a quote by him. Based on these statements, I can say that Mr. Dowdell's judicial philosophy is in keeping with the Framers and in lockstep with my own philosophy. My only wish is that we would get more of this type of judicial nominee from the administration. It is for these reasons that I support Mr. Dowdell's confirmation to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, and I hope my colleagues will do the same. This vote should be coming up in about 10 minutes. I do encourage a positive vote on Mr. Dowdell. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, may I ask what we just decided in terms of time?

Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Chair.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I want to make sure people understand there are different thoughts on this convention. It seems as though most of the time when the U.N. conventions or treaties come up that I have been opposed to them, and my concern always has been that of sovereignty. I do oppose the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities because I think it does infringe upon our sovereignty, establishing an unelected United Nations bureaucratic body called the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and a Conference of State Parties. These unelected bureaucratic bodies would implement the treaty and pass so-called recommendations that would be forced upon the United Nations and the United States if the United States is a signatory. We already have the 1980 act. We all remember that. We went through that a few years ago. I was here at that time. It is considered to be the gold standard for the disabled. We don't need the United Nations bureaucrats changing it in our country in the name of worldwide advocation. While the Obama administration affirms that no changes to the Federal or State law will be necessary if the CRPD is ratified, the CRPD can be amended. The Senator from Indiana talked about the fact that there are no changes in this. But it can be amended by the bureaucrats and, therefore, require changes to U.S. law. Further, the ability of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to investigate and recommend changes chips away at the ability of a sovereign nation in governing itself. I know a lot of people feel that no idea is a good idea unless it comes from an international organization. I kind of fall at the other end of the spectrum. Specifically, the treaty could be used to interfere with the ability of parents with disabled children to decide what action is in the best interest of their children. This would especially affect those parents who homeschool their children. I have a daughter--the runt of my litter, I say to the president--who is No. 4. Katie homeschools her children. She and I have talked about this, and this is very much a concern in that community, that unelected foreign bureaucrats--not parents--would decide what is in the best interests of the disabled child even in the home. No less than 40 organizations and tens of thousands of parents who advocate children and parental rights have written us, and me, specifically opposing the treaty. The Home Schooling Legal Defense Fund writes: Article 7 of this treaty establishes the ``best interests of the child'' legal standard, which would override the traditional fundamental rights of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their child with special needs. This could result in forcibly transferring a disabled child from the home to government-run schools if these unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats deem it necessary, even if the Senate puts reservations into this treaty. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record two letters, one from the HSLDA and one from the Concerned Women of America.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have been a consistent advocate for human rights around the world and support ensuring that the world is accessible to those with disabilities. However, I do not support the cumbersome regulations and potentially overzealous international organizations with anti-American biases that infringe upon American sovereignty. If we had not passed what I consider to be the gold standard for the disabled--and I do remember at that time the activity of the Senator from Massachusetts very strongly supporting it. But we have done our job. Other nations maybe haven't, but in our case I think we are looked upon by the outside as doing the responsible thing within our Nation: taking care of our own disabled.

Mr. INHOFE. I would be glad to respond to a question.

Mr. INHOFE. Yes, I do understand that.

Mr. INHOFE. But I would also say that the bureaucrats who would be running the program would have points of clarification where it is otherwise vague, and I think that could happen. And the point I am making here is we don't need to do that when we have our own here. I understand there is a difference of opinion on this, and there are a lot of emotions. I saw in this morning's Roll Call magazine all the people lined up here with the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts. It doesn't say anything in the article, but it certainly attacks the emotions of individuals. So I am not satisfied they would not interfere or through their clarifications could change the intent. And even if they don't, we have taken care of our problem here.

Mr. INHOFE. To answer the Senator, I am not aware of the specific Risch request and what kind of response it drew. I would only say this: It is important to understand that while the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts and I differ on most of these treaties--we had the same disagreement on the Law of the Sea treaty. The question is, in my opinion, our sovereignty. I believe this infringes upon our sovereignty. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I request that the order for the quorum call be rescinded for a point of inquiry.

Mr. INHOFE. It is my understanding that the chair has an amendment that is going be considered at the present time, and my question is, Are we ready to go into that? Is the Presiding Officer going to be able to do that from up there?

Mr. INHOFE. Not more than 7 or 8 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I was not here when the Presiding Officer spoke last night; however, I am familiar with the amendment that is here. Let me share with some of the Members here. I hope they don't look at this amendment as just part of the amendment that was defeated yesterday. We talked about biofuels. There are a lot of people here who are supportive of biofuels. I am supportive of biofuels. In fact, we are very active in Oklahoma right now in developing various biofuels. We are one of the leaders in the Nation, and we actually have a lot of plants located in my State of Oklahoma. This is not that issue. It is not whether you believe biofuels is something we are working toward in the future. We are. We all know that. This is whether we should take our very scarce defense dollars--in this case, the dollars that would otherwise go to the Department of Navy--and put them into subsidizing the private sector in building these plants. What we are looking at now is to either retrofit or build biofuel refineries. This is interesting because right now I have a list of about 100 different biofuel plants--many of which are in my State of Oklahoma--that are not subsidized by the Federal Government, and there is no reason for these to be subsidized by the Federal Government. This is something that can be done. If you look at the Navy and the problems they are having right now, I think people realize their operation and maintenance funds are stretched to the maximum. They have readiness problems right now. They have a higher op tempo than they have had in the past. And I think it is important for people to understand that if you keep giving away $170 million here and more there, that is coming out of O&M. It is coming out of our readiness. Right now, if you talk to any of the higher levels in the Navy, they will say they have never been in this situation before. They have already had readiness problems over the past few years, with more than one-fifth of the ships falling short of combat readiness and fewer than half of their deployed combat aircraft being mission-ready at any given time. I urge us to reconsider whether we should be in the business of building these plants or retrofitting them because this is something we haven't done before. Now, Energy and Agriculture are doing it currently. Yesterday I stood on the floor and talked about how we are taking over the responsibility of the Department of Energy. We are trying to make the decisions as to how we are going to do this. Should we be developing the progress of the biofuels--which we are doing in the State of Oklahoma without any Federal Government assistance--or should we be defending America with these dollars? Now, Energy, yes, they are going to spend money on this, and the Department of Agriculture is certainly currently spending money on it, but we have not been doing it. I understand that the Presiding Officer, who is the author of this amendment and who is from North Carolina--and I am reading now from one of the Web sites, from a newspaper there saying that a private company backed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture will build a $130 million biofuel refinery in Sampson County, with an estimated 300 jobs there. They talk about what they may be doing through the Department of Defense. ChemTex was awarded a $3.9 million grant in June to convert more than 4,000 acres across 11 counties to begin producing miscanthus and switchgrass and biofuel conversions. The USDA, which is supposed to be doing this, estimates that farmers will see a net revenue increase of $4.5 million in growing and selling grass. I come to two conclusions on this. One is, as I just read, they are already doing it now in the State of North Carolina. They are already paying, subsidizing these plants. That is their job, to evaluate and decide whether to subsidize these biotech plants or whether that should be a function of the Department of Energy. When we look at these--I asked my staff before this--we didn't have notice, to my knowledge--I asked my staff on the floor to tell me whether there are any of these plants currently being subsidized in any way by the Department of Defense. His answer was no, after a very cursory look. We do have the DOE and DOA, Department of Agriculture and Energy, doing that. I hope everyone here will look at this. I will actually join the author of this amendment in encouraging the Department of Agriculture and Department of Energy to look carefully at this, as well as some of our plants in my State of Oklahoma. On this list I am going to submit as part of the Record, there are about 100 plants scattered throughout the country, including my State of Oklahoma. We need to look at those and evaluate those and make the determination is this a function government should perform? If so, wouldn't it be more logical to do it as we are doing it today, through the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy and not use our scarce readiness--in this case Navy--dollars that are desperately needed to subsidize this? I retain the remainder of my time. I know the Senator who is offering the amendment may want to make some comments. Maybe not. But I urge my colleagues to stop and realize this is something brandnew, having the Department of Defense do a function that has heretofore been done by the Department of Agriculture and Department of Energy, and keep it that way. When the appropriate time comes, I will ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I also ask to be recognized as in morning business.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, the Senator from Georgia is exactly right. I do not think, in the years I have been here, I have ever seen one issue where everyone is in agreement. If we go back to 2007, 94 Members of this Senate got together and they said--and this is all documented-- that: Detainees housed at Guantanamo Bay should not be released into American society, nor should they be transferred stateside into facilities. We all agreed on that. Then we agreed again in 2009 and every year since then, as the Senator from Georgia has said. But a lot of people have forgotten. We have had this issue for so many years now, they have forgotten some of the original reasons why. One of the obvious reasons--there are three reasons. One was that prisons that hold these detainees become magnets. I do not think people understand that a terrorist is not a criminal. He is a terrorist. His job is to train people to kill other people, to engage in terrorist activities. Do we truly want them in there talking to all our prisoners? That was one of the major reasons people were all coalescing around the idea that we have a great place to put these guys; that is, Guantanamo Bay. The second reason is the prison guards. They have to be specially trained in order to guard a prison that has terrorists as opposed to the normal criminal element. The third is what FBI Director Robert Mueller has said; that there is a very real possibility that Gitmo detainees will recruit more terrorists from among the Federal inmate population and continue al- Qaida operations from the inside, which is how the New York synagogue bombers were recruited. We should not even be debating this. The Ayotte amendment is one that will take care of this so we do not have to worry about it from year to year, we do not have to stand here and anguish over this thing that we have decided several times. I can remember--I guess it was back in the early administration of Obama--when he identified 17 areas in the United States that would be appropriate for incarcerating terrorists whom we would take out of Gitmo. One of those places happened to be Fort Sill in my State of Oklahoma. So I went down to Fort Sill. I looked at the facility we had that was within the Fort Sill facility. There was a lady there whose name is Sergeant Major Carter. I can remember when she came up to me she said: Senator, why in the world? Go back and tell those people back there that they do not understand what is going on. This is coming from a sergeant major. She happened to be a Black lady. She had been down there for some time. She said: Go back and tell them I had two tours in Gitmo. There is no place that is more humane. There is no place that is taking care of them, no place where we can secure the area so we protect our prison guards like Gitmo. She even went on to say one of the biggest problems we had with the inmates in Gitmo is an overweight problem because they are eating better than they have ever eaten in their lives. They had medical attention for diseases they did not know existed. So we have an opportunity there to do it. I applaud Senator Ayotte for wanting to address this so we do not have to go through this every year. Nothing has changed. We know it is a revolving door. People who go out from there, many of them return to the battleground, and there is no place else that offers this security and the confinement. The last thing I would say, we do not have many good deals in government, and let's see anyone here find a better deal. We have had this--it was either since 1901 or 1904. I cannot remember the year. But as I do recall we are still under the same lease agreement. That whole facility that we have at Gitmo, along with the court system down there, all we pay is $4,000 a year. Ever heard of a better deal than that? About half the time Castro does not bill us. So let's take advantage of one of the few good deals we have, one of the few security deals we have, and make this a permanent arrangement. I hope we have the chance to vote on it. It is my understanding we are going to be able to address these and bring them up, put them in the queue and have votes. Hopefully, that will even be tonight. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.