Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and call up amendment No. 1500.

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

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, today I understand Senator Toomey is going to be offering an amendment that will--it is quite an oversimplification to state it this way, but it would make permanent the temporary ban on earmarks. I think this is something we have talked about and talked about and talked about on this floor. In fact, the last time we talked about an amendment to put a moratorium on earmarks, my conservative rating of No. 1 in the U.S. Senate moved to No. 20 because I was telling the truth and not demagoguing an issue. The problem we have is this: When the House of Representatives, first of all, came up some time ago--2 years ago--with doing away with earmarks, putting a moratorium on earmarks, then they defined what that moratorium was and defined an earmark in a certain House rule. The bottom line is this: It said it is any kind of an appropriation or authorization. Now, here is where the problem is. Because everybody is upset with the process that has taken place by Democrats and Republicans on the floor of this Senate--and I will not name names, but I think most of the Members know the ones I am talking about. Many of them are members of the Appropriations Committee, where they would sit down during the course of an appropriations bill, and they would swap out deals, favors, and get things for their State. This is the type of thing that is wrong, and it should not take place. But I have to remind my friends here that we have a Constitution for this country. Article I, section 9 of the Constitution makes it very clear that we--those of us in this Chamber and in the House Chamber across the hall--have a primary constitutional responsibility; that is, to authorize and appropriate. That is what article I, section 9 of the Constitution says we are supposed to be doing. If you go back and study what Justice Joseph Story, back in 1833, talked about, he kind of made the interpretation of the intent of the Constitution so far as what our duties and the President's are. He said very clearly that we are doing this because if the President has the power to do the appropriating--or if you want to call it earmarks, you can call it earmarks--appropriating or authorization, that is too much power in the hands of one person. So he is very specific that our Founding Fathers wanted to make sure the President does not do this. So what happens today? Today we get a budget from the President, which is taking place right now as we speak. I could talk about this, all the deficits in the budget and all that, but that is not my purpose for being here. My purpose for being here is to articulate how things are working today and how they have worked up until the moratorium language came into effect. The President sends a budget to Congress. Then that is supposed to go to authorizing committees. I am on two authorizing committees--one is Environment and Public Works, one is the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Senate Armed Services Committee is staffed with experts in areas of missile defense, in areas of national defense, in areas of strike vehicles, in areas of lift capacity--all the areas that are in his budget in every area of national defense. But here is the thing: These are experts, so they advise us as we have our meetings and we are drafting in the Senate Armed Services Committee--SASC--the defense authorization bill, the NDAA, as we did just a few months ago. We come up with how we think we should be spending the money to defend America within the parameters of the President's budget. I will give you an example. A couple years ago, before there was any discussion on the moratorium, the President had in his budget $330 million to go to a launching system. It was called a bucket of rockets. It was a good system, something we need, something that would be very helpful to have. But with the limited resources we have and the fact that we were fighting a war on two fronts at that time, we made a determination in the Senate Armed Services Committee that $330 million would be better spent if we bought six new F-18E/F models. Those are strike vehicles. One of reasons for that was the President in his budget did away with the only fifth-generation fighter we had, the F- 22. That was back in his first budget, and he is talking about delaying the F-35, the Joint Strike Fighter, which is going to be necessary to have. So we made that decision, and that was made by a majority of the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It had nothing to do with whose home State makes the F-18. None of that made any difference. It was just that we could do a lot more to defend America by having six new F-18s than we could by having the launching system called a bucket of rockets. Now, if you do that today, that is an earmark, to say: Well, no, that was not in the President's budget. I have to remind everyone, it does not matter whether the President of the United States is a Democrat or Republican; the President is the guy who designs the budget. A lot of people do not know that. It is not the Democrats, not the Republicans, not the House, not the Senate. It is the President. When he designs this budget, he makes the determination as to how he thinks everything should be spent. If we say we cannot do authorization and appropriation, then that would be called an earmark, and there is a ban on earmarks. The reason I have kind of walked around the barn a long way on this issue is that I have an amendment, the amendment I have just now brought up for consideration, amendment No. 1500. What that does is it merely defines an earmark as an appropriation that has not been authorized. I just described the authorization process. If we go through that, then there are not going to be any earmarks in the way most people think of earmarks, but we will be doing our duty. I feel very confident we are going to be able to get this passed. Several of the individuals here very responsibly have talked about this issue. For example, Senator Toomey said yesterday on the floor that some earmarks ``ought to be funded. But they ought to be funded in a transparent and honest way, subject to evaluation by an authorizing committee.'' So here is the author of the ban on earmarks agreeing that if we go through an authorization process, it is all right to fulfill our constitutional function of appropriating and authorizing. Senator Coburn, my junior Senator, said: It is not wrong to go through an authorization process where your colleagues can actually see it. It is wrong to hide something in a bill. . . . Agreed. We all agree on that. That was a year ago when he made that statement. Senator McCain--by the way, I introduced this amendment in bill form last year. He was my cosponsor. We introduced it together. That was merely changing the definition of an earmark to be an appropriation or spending that has not been authorized. Senator McCain said: Some of those earmarks are worthy. If they are worthy, then they should be authorized. That is the whole issue. I can understand some Democrats wanting to do away with congressional earmarks because if they do that, it goes right back to Obama. If I were in a position where I felt President Obama or any other President could do a better job of appropriating money, that would be another motivation to do this. But for responsible conservatives who believe in what the Constitution says, this is a very easy solution to the problem. The amendment will be brought up. I do not know when yet. I suppose I could find out just what our timing is going to be. But the amendment I have offered simply bans any congressional earmark that is not first authorized. If we do this, instead of an outright ban, it will preserve our ability to keep the President's power in check. I would hope that many of my colleagues go back and read what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they talked about article I of the Constitution. I think they would find that they made it very clear we want to have a separation of those powers so we do not have either the House or the Senate or the Presidency doing everything. Instead, we should follow the Constitution. So that is what my amendment is all about. I will be looking forward to bringing it up. I think it probably will be considered today. I look forward to that. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I first wish to thank the Senator from Iowa for allowing me to move in front of him; and I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my remarks he be recognized.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, let me say to Senator Hatch and his remarks, there has never been anyone I can recall who has been so relentless in trying to stop all this deficit spending whom I associated with and served with in the Senate. One month ago we were standing here trying to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and Senator Hatch was right in the middle providing leadership. We wanted that to be a reality. My activity with the balanced budget amendment goes all the way back to the 1970s, when then-Senator Carl Curtis was trying to preratify an amendment to the Constitution. I was a State Senator at that time, and we were the first State to preratify the Constitution. So we know it has been a real up-hill battle. It has been very difficult. I think it is important, though, and one thing that hasn't been said in this debate is why we have this deficit and why we have this debt. It is important for people to understand, and I know most people don't. But to overly simplify it a little bit: The debt is the responsibility of the President. It is not the Republicans, it is not the Democrats, it is not the House, it is not the Senate; it is the President who puts together a budget every year. We have a President who put together his first budget, and the Obama first budget had a deficit of $1 trillion; the second budget he had in 2011 was $1.3 trillion; then, last year, his budget deficit was $1.1 trillion. But if you stop and think about what has happened in the past, that 2011 deficit was going to be much more than that because they have now upgraded that to $1.65 trillion. So we are talking about a President who is going to have in excess of $5 trillion in deficit, in the 4 years he has been in office, by his own budgets. I remember back in 1996, when President Clinton came out with the first $1.65 trillion budget and I was outraged that we couldn't sustain that kind of spending. Yet that was to run the entire country of the United States of America, and this is just the deficit alone. So it is estimated the President will have presided over $14 trillion in spending by the end of the year. By then, our national debt will be over $16.3 trillion, making this President accountable for increasing the national debt by about $6 trillion. That is more debt than all Presidents, from George Washington to George W. Bush, combined--one President, in a 4-year period. Over the last couple years, the President has been warned and warned and warned that we have to do something about it. He has ignored these warnings and instead went after the single largest contributor to the deficit and to debt that this government is having; that is, government-sponsored health care. He did this with the passage of ObamaCare, a bill he talked about was going to be fiscally responsible. In reality, the bill will increase the Federal expenditures by $2.5 trillion in the first 10 years following the law's full implementation. After that, it will only skyrocket. Their own estimate on ObamaCare is, after the first 10 years, it will go up $4.4 trillion in addition to the $2.5 trillion. We are talking about trillions, and every time I hear a projected cost, I know it is going to be a lot more than that. I recall back in 1967, when the House Ways and Means Committee projected what Medicare was going to cost. Medicare was put in, in 1966, and they said by 1990 Medicare was going to cost $12 billion. Guess what happened. In 1990, it wasn't $12 billion; it was $110 billion--10 times more than what they were expecting. So I know this is going to cost a lot more than the $4.4 trillion they are projecting after the first 10 years. The President convened groups, gangs, commissions to figure out, Why is our Nation going so far in debt? We are going in debt because we have a President whose budget reflects over $1 trillion of deficit each year, and that is for four budgets. They talk about forming those commissions; they come out with recommendations. Some of the recommendations, by the way, were good, but the President rejected all those recommendations. In fact, I would say the only cuts he is willing to go along with are cuts that are in our national security spending. He has decimated our military, and right now we are looking at a reorganization that is going to be an even more difficult situation to recover from after this President is gone. By the way, when the President says he inherited deficits, it is interesting that when President Bush went into office, he took over a military that had been cut down during the Clinton administration by about 40 percent. That was back during the euphoric chant that the Cold War is over and so we don't need to have a military anymore, and so they did that. Right after that, of course, we know 9/11 came. So President George W. Bush did have deficits. His deficits averaged $240 billion a year for 8 years. Add that and it is $2 trillion. But this President, in 4 years, will have done nearly $6 trillion--three times as much as President George W. Bush did in 8 years. So we still have the problems. Unemployment is ticking around 8.5 percent, the labor market is very weak, the regulatory train wreck, and the regulations right now. People have talked an awful lot about the deficit spending. That is what we are talking about this morning. I don't want to confuse this issue, but I wish to tell you the overregulations we are having--here we have a President who is now trying to invoke a cap-and-trade through regulation that he was not able to do through legislation. There is another cost that would be somewhere in excess of $300 billion, not once but every year. So the regulations, the train wreck is on its way. It is alive and well, and we have to do everything we can to try to stop it. So they came up with a deal. They said: Let's put together something where, over a period of 10 years, we are going to try to come up with $1.5 trillion. Keep in mind, that is over 10 years when this President does that much in deficit each year. So the first phase of this grand program they had was to increase the debt limit by $900 billion to the current level of $15.2 trillion. It was matched by discretionary spending cuts--or it was supposed to be-- in the same amount. Then the supercommittee went to work to find $1.5 trillion. Keep in mind, we are supposed to have $1.5 trillion to reduce as a justification for increasing the debt limit, which we did before, and that was over a period of one decade. So they are trying to find $1.5 trillion over 10 years that this President has been accountable for increasing the deficit, the same amount, every year--or what will be every year--for the 4-year period. But because we all know it failed, we are facing additional automatic spending cuts of $1.2 trillion. In exchange for this, the President is going to be allowed to increase the debt limit by $1.2 trillion to a staggering level of $16.4 trillion. That is a lot of money, and it is hard for people to understand. I think the best way to explain it is, what he is doing is he is administering an increase in the debt of more than this country has sustained since the country's beginning. In the President's first State of the Union Message, he promised to cut Federal deficits in half by the end of the first term, but we know what happened. Before we agree to an increase in the debt limit, I think they are going to have to have some kind of reforms that actually reduce spending to levels that can put our Nation in a fiscally sound position. If we are serious about this and want to do something about the debt, want to do something about the deficit, do you know how we can do it? It would be very simple. All we would have to do is repeal ObamaCare. That is all we would have to do. As already mentioned, the law is a fiscal nightmare, and it hasn't started yet. But as things stand, our $15 trillion debt is weighing us down, and now the President wants the authority to add another $1.2 trillion to it. We can't allow this to happen. I know the President thinks he has us over a barrel. What he has done now three times in a row, and he is planning to do it again, is say: If you don't do something about increasing the debt limit, we are going into default. He talks about the horrible results that are going to happen. But when would that end if we don't have any sincere effort to stop the spending of the Obama administration? Here is the last chance we have--the first chance we have is this resolution of disapproval that will be voted on. If we can do this, then that is going to shock the President into knowing he has to be fiscally conservative. I am not speaking on my behalf. I am speaking on behalf of my 20 kids and grandkids who are going to have to pay for all this fun we are having. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I guess I am one of several Senators who doesn't know for sure what is going to happen tonight or tomorrow. I do know that we have one very contentious issue in the pipeline. Several people have been talking about this. I would like to give, perhaps, a different, maybe a historic perspective on this issue as we are looking at it. I think with all the talk and all the demagoging people want us to be independent from the Middle East when producing our energy in fact we have the recoverable resources in the United States to be totally independent--for the North American Continent to be totally independent in providing its own energy. We are the only country in the world that does not exploit its own resources. We have more recoverable reserves in oil, gas, and coal than any other country in the world. Yet it is a political problem because there are people who do not want to exploit our own resources. They do not want to go offshore. They do not want to go there. Eighty-four percent of our onshore public land is off-limits, so we cannot drill there. It is very disturbing when we see the real reason. We have an administration that doesn't want us to exploit our own resources. We have a Secretary of Energy who said we are going to have to get the price of gasoline in the pumps comparable to Europe, $8 a gallon, before people realize we have to go in another direction other than fossil fuels. We have an Assistant Secretary of Energy who said we have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. All this green energy stuff is fine, and someday when the technology is there we will be able to do something with it. But it is not there. In the meantime, we have to run this machine called America. So here the rest of the world is laughing at us, looking at us and saying why is it we have a country that does not use its own resources. It is pretty mind-boggling to me. The first effort of this administration, in order to hide this agenda of not wanting to provide our own energy, was to do away with hydraulic fracturing. A lot of people don't know what that is. Hydraulic fracturing is a technique started in my State of Oklahoma in 1948. There has never been a case of groundwater contamination in over 1 million of these applications since 1948. Yet the President made a speech about 6 months ago saying we need to use this good, clean natural gas, and it is plentiful, cheap, and we have a lot of it, we should use it--but we have to do something about hydraulic fracturing. The reality is we cannot get into any of these tight formations for oil or gas without using hydraulic fracturing. It is a perfectly safe process. They are trying to kill fossil fuels by stopping it. Just last week the EPA said, like an endangerment finding, that we have now said in the State of Wyoming, in this very shallow well up there, only 600 feet, that somehow there is some contamination, and it was due to hydraulic fracturing. It is not. Hydraulic fracturing is done 1 mile, 2 miles down deep. That is one of the efforts. The second issue we are addressing tonight--and this is significant. It is almost as if, with all the majority they have supporting the President with the 2012 elections coming up, I am in shock a lot of my colleagues on the left side, on the Democratic side, are following President Obama off this plank and going along with these efforts to kill fossil fuels. The most recent one is the one we are talking about tonight, and that is the pipeline. On November 10 the Obama administration State Department announced it would delay the Keystone XL Pipeline decision until after the 2012 elections. This delay came shortly after the head of the Sierra Club, the executive director, Michael Brune, tied their political support for President Obama's reelection to the Keystone decision--and they went along with it. That is what we are facing right now. It is something that is very punitive to our whole country, not just in terms of the fact that we cannot use our good, cheap energy we develop right here but the number of jobs. The Keystone XL Pipeline is estimated to add more than 250,000 permanent jobs for U.S. workers and add more than $100 billion in annual total expenditures to the U.S. total economy. During the construction phase alone, it would generate more than $585 million in State and local taxes. I am particularly interested in this. As to my State of Oklahoma, I did not bring it with me, but there is a map that shows where this pipeline would go in order to get to the tight formations in Alberta. You will notice two-thirds of the way down is Cushing, OK. Cushing, OK, is kind of the intersection of all the pipelines. Right now it is clogged. It is full, and we cannot open it. Oklahoma alone, it is expected, if they would open the Keystone Pipeline, would have some 14,000 new jobs. That is just in my State, in Oklahoma alone. The construction of the pipeline is expected to add about $1.2 billion in new spending in my State of Oklahoma. We have heard Senators from Nebraska and North Dakota and South Dakota talk about how it would affect their States. Just in my State alone, once operational, it is projected that it would add more than $667 million in property taxes. Cushing, OK is a very important part of this. It is mind-boggling. When I go back to Oklahoma--I hope we go back sometime tomorrow--and people ask the question of why is it, since we want cheap oil and gas right from the North American Continent--why would they stop a pipeline to carry it? They do it because politically they do not want that to happen. I believe it is important to look at the other aspects. Jim Jones--a lot of us knew him when he was a four-star general who served with a lot of dignity. He was very successful. He became the National Security Adviser to President Obama. He said: In a tightly contested global economy, where securing energy resources is a national must, we should be able to act with speed and agility. And any threat to this project, by delay or otherwise, would constitute a significant setback. He ties this in to national security. He further said the failure to move forward with the project will prolong the risk to our economy and our energy security and send the wrong message to job creators. One of the opponents of the pipeline thinks that stopping the construction would prevent Canada from developing its tar sands. We have the far left environmentalists who think somehow they can stop this activity in Canada when we know what will happen if we continue to stop the transportation through the pipeline all the way from Alberta down into Texas. According to Austan Goolsbee, a former Obama chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers--keep in mind he is on their side. He said: It's a bit naive to think the tar sands would not be developed if they don't build that pipeline. He went on to say: Eventually, it's going to be built. It may go to the Pacific, it may go through Nebraska, but it's going to be built somewhere. They go ahead and talk about the fact that they have already approved a way of getting it to the west coast of Canada and shipped to China. So this is something where there is no justification for stopping it other than the political justification. Other than the administration looking at the far left environmentalists--it all started in Nebraska-- they said there is one little area that might not want it. So what do they do in Nebraska? They got together and changed the routing of it so it goes to an area where there is no opposition, and there is still no pipeline. I think even if we were to have to stay here--and I am the last one who wants to stay here for any length of time--a key issue right now is getting that open again. I will yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, let me thank the chairman of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to have this colloquy because something has happened that shouldn't have happened. It happened over on the House side, and we had no control over it. While I support and will vote for the fiscal year 2012 Defense authorization bill, this is the third year in a row we have bypassed the formal conference process. I am pleased we finished the bill, but this broken process allows for abuse, and we have certainly had some abuse that I will allude to here. If the proper procedure had been followed, some of these problems would not have happened. On December 3, the House Armed Services Committee staff inserted new language into the conference that would impact how DOD maintains its ships, maintains its aircraft, maintains its ground vehicles--private and public--impacting thousands of jobs in a number of States. That was December 3. It wasn't until the morning of December 7 that I, along with several other Senators, were shown the new language. That was just 6\1/2\ hours before we were to have our first conference. We were going to be asked to support the new language without a full vetting from the concerned Members' offices or from the depots and shipyards, arsenals, the Shipbuilders Council of America, the Virginia Ship Repair Association, and all of the rest of these stakeholders and those who were concerned. That was November 7. Then on November 9, 2 days later, I, along with Senators Chambliss, Sessions, Ayotte, Collins, Hagan, and Shaheen sent a letter to Chairman Levin and Chairman McKeon from the House and ranking members McCain and Smith opposing the new House Armed Services Committee language and asked that it not be included in the conference. That was on December 9. We assumed they dropped the language, but they didn't. The new language was put in the bill at the insistence of staff, apparently, from all we can determine. Several Members of the Senate complained that the new language was not in either the House or the Senate bill, so it should not have been able to be dropped in. They took the position that this was just a clarification of language that was already in, when in fact that wasn't the case because the new language was a complete and comprehensive rewrite of depot language contained in the original House bill. Stakeholders were not included in drafting the language. Senators were not included. Nobody knew. The problem we had at that point--that was done on December 9. We were all committed to passing out the bill at that time, and many of the House Members had already signed the conference report. Then there was a rollcall vote, so they all disappeared. So our choice was to go back and open up everything again and nobody wanted to do that. So we had language contained in the Senate bill, but it was dropped out in conference. That language specifically called for DOD to provide their inputs by March 1, 2012, on a recent study on the capability and efficiency of the depots before--and I emphasize this--before any change in legislation because the study alone does not provide Congress with a comprehensive view. This is what we requested. I thank Senators Levin and McCain for their support of this colloquy. I wish we had time to take care of this in conference, but I hope that by doing this we can slow down the implementation of the new language contained in the bill until the Senate has had time to fully vet these changes. I certainly don't blame Chairman McKeon. His staff told him--because he stated this in the meeting--his staff told him the new language was fully vetted, but it was not, and we were not contacted. So the process is wrong. I have to say this is the first time in my 8 years in the House on the House Armed Services Committee and my 17 years in the Senate that I have seen anything such as this happen. I hope we can delay implementing these changes until we in the Senate can be heard. That is what this colloquy is all about.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, one of the things about a debate such as this is that I have something I always do, and that is I will sit down and cross off things I was going to say that somebody else has already said. Unfortunately, almost everything has been said, but there are a few things that have not. I wish to put this in a more of a historic perspective. I can remember back in 1968. In 1968 I was elected to the Oklahoma State Senate, and at that time we were all concerned about the deficit spending and the debt in this country. I remember so well a kind old gentleman from Nebraska. He was U.S. Senator Carl Curtis. Carl Curtis contacted me--because I was kind of an aggressive person at that time-- and said, I have an idea. I have been up here trying to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and I have been trying for years to do it. One of the primary objections they have is they could never get the majority, the three-fourths necessary to ratify the Constitutional Amendment. He said, this is my idea: Let's go ahead and get three-fourths of the States to preratify a budget-balancing amendment to the Constitution. I thought that was an ingenious idea, and so we did. I passed a resolution in the Oklahoma State Senate in 1968 that said we were going to preratify it. In fact, we came within one State of having the three-fourths necessary to do that; not that that would have preratified it, but it would have taken away the argument that Carl Curtis had that they objected to in that they would never be able to ratify this in the States. I thought that was a great idea. We came close to doing it way back in 1968. I remember this very well. I was trying to impress upon the American people how much that debt was, and at that time the debt was $240 billion. I said, if you take dollar bills and stack them up, by the time you get to $240 billion, it is the height of the Empire State Building. That was only $240 billion. A lot of the groups and Members who are opposed to passing the balanced budget amendment think we don't need one. They actually believe Congress and the President can balance the budget without any enforceable accountability. But in 1986 when the amendment failed by one vote--and I remember that year so well because that was the year I was elected to the House of Representatives here in Washington--the national debt at that time was $2.1 trillion. By 1997, when the Senate considered the amendment again, the debt had risen to over $5 trillion, and it got up to about $10 trillion when this President took office, and that is where this all starts. What has happened since President Obama has been in office is something that is totally unprecedented in the history of this country. In the years he has been there, it has gone up 42 percent. I was concerned back in 1968 with $248 billion, and now the increase in this short period of time has gone from $10 trillion to $15 trillion. I think everyone knows the need to reduce spending is evident. We don't have to do anything more than look across the Atlantic. I think my friend from Wyoming covered that pretty well. When you stop and think what has happened to these countries over in Europe--and it is not just Greece and Italy; there are other countries too. They could not resist their insatiable appetite to spend money they did not have. What has happened there is happening in this country. I agree with my friend from Wyoming, we are right behind Europe in this case. I remember, and probably everyone in this Chamber remembers, during your elementary years reading about the history of this country. A guy named Alexis de Tocqueville came to the United States. He came here, oddly enough, to study our penal system. That was back in the founding years of this country. When he got here, he was so impressed with the wealth of our Nation that he stayed and wrote a book. In this book he talked about how one plot of land was given to each person who came over and they were able to keep the benefits of their hard labor, and the prosperity was indescribable at that time. It is said in the last paragraph of the de Tocqueville book that once the people of this country find they can vote themselves money out of the public trust, the system will fail. That is why I say this is not an ordinary time. This is not 1968, 1986, 1997, where we tried this before. This is to the point where we will realize the accuracy of de Tocqueville's prediction. It has been publicized recently that 47 percent of the people are not paying Federal taxes and not paying income taxes. That is dangerously close to that 50 percent he was talking about several hundred years ago. So this year Washington has been patting itself on the back with the Budget Control Act we passed in August which cut spending by $900 billion over the next 10 years. We are slowly starting to chip away at appropriations bills. These have not been as advertised. They have not come close to solving the problem. This is demonstrated by the fact that next year's deficit is still expected to be right around $1 trillion. I know this is kind of offensive to some of the people who participated in this great committee that was charged with the great responsibility of finding $1 trillion over 10 years. When I talked to a large chamber group in Oklahoma on Monday morning--we had over 500 people there--I said: Can you understand what is happening here in terms of the request that has been made of coming up with $1 trillion over 10 years? As the Senator from Wyoming said, the President submits a budget. It is not the Democrats, not the Republicans, not the House, not the Senate. It is the President. He has now submitted three budgets. In his three budgets he has had deficits each year of almost $1.5 trillion. I remember in 1997 going down to the floor when Bill Clinton was President of the United States, and that was the first $1.5 trillion budget to run the country. That was $1.5 trillion to run the entire United States of America. Yet this President has come up $1.5 trillion in deficit over and above the revenues we had each year for 3 years. If you have the requirement of coming up with $1 trillion over 10 years and yet this President has increased the deficit by almost $5 trillion in the short period of time--it probably will be $6 trillion by the time the last budget is realized--then how in the world are you ever going to dig out of this? Well, the answer is you cannot. Further, when I was talking to the people in Oklahoma on Monday, and I said, the requirement for the first year was $44 billion--if you take $44 billion as a requirement to cut spending in the first of 10 years and yet the President has had an increase of $1.5 trillion in his budget for 1 year, obviously that is not much of a requirement. Obviously, that is not much of a requirement. That is not going to do. So to me that demonstrates what we are not able to do without having a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. The amendment we have makes it difficult to raise taxes. It also requires that the President and Congress pass a balanced budget each year. It does something else that is very significant. The amendment would also limit the amount of spending allowed to 18 percent of GDP, which is the historic level of revenue the Federal Government has collected since World War II. So it covers these things. People complain about it, saying: Well, we do not know. There could be times of crisis. There could be times of war. This has it built in. If we are in a declared war, you do not have to follow the guidelines in the balanced budget amendment. In fact, you could actually violate it because that is in times of war. We understand that. If it is not a declared war, you can do it with a supermajority. So this has those built in safeguards to take care of contingencies that we cannot determine what they are right now, such as war, such as a crisis we have. Now, some of those people--not too many people will come to the floor and say this, but in their own minds they still believe this idea that more government spending can actually make the economy grow. And I do not know how they can still believe that after what they call the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It was $825 billion. That was supposed to be a stimulus package. That was supposed to stimulate the economy. Yet only 3 percent of that actually went to things that specifically would stimulate the economy, such as roads, bridges, and things we were supposed to do. It was all financed with extra government debt and with projects such as Solyndra, which has gotten a lot of attention recently, and other projects. It was more social engineering. We all know that. So we know you cannot increase spending to pull us out of the situation we are in. They also said that would cause the unemployment rate to get down to well below 8 percent. Of course, we know now that it did not do that. So none of the projections actually came to be realized. The economy is still very weak despite the fact that the President was able to secure nearly $1 trillion in stimulus spending. It did not help this time. It is not going to help again. It never helped in the past. To enforce the amendment, the courts would be prevented from mandating tax hikes. Further, to raise the debt limit, a three-fifths majority of both Chambers--both, not just one--would be required. So it does take care of all of these contingencies that I think would be necessary and answers the complaints that people have who say it would be dangerous to have a balanced budget amendment. I know it works. The funny thing about it, when they say it will not work, look at the laboratories we have for the Federal Government. My State of Oklahoma, balanced budget amendment. It has all of these things built into it. In fact, it is not as generous as the one we are advocating. But nonetheless, I remember my years in the State legislature. We would get up toward the end of the year, and they would say: Well, wait a minute, we can't do that because we can't go into a deficit. If the States can't do it, we can pass the same thing. So I would merely say, try to put it in the historic perspective. If you do that, then you will see why it is a sense of urgency that 47 percent of the people are on the receiving end of government. It would turn around and get to that point where, as Tocqueville said, we cannot go beyond. Remember in 1968 the Carl Curtis thing. That was a $240 billion deficit; 1986, $2.1 trillion; in 1990, it was up to $10 trillion. It took all of that time to get up to $10 trillion. That has almost doubled with this one administration, with this President. So this is not business as usual. This is not like the balanced budget amendments have been in the past. They are structured very much the same way, but the sense of crisis is here. I have 20 kids and grandkids. What we do here is not going to affect me personally, but it is going to affect future generations. This is an opportunity to really do something meaningful. I urge the support of S.J. Res. 10, a strong balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I do appreciate that. Sometimes we stand on the floor and we talk about jobs. But here is the evidence, Oklahoma has a big dog in this fight. Not only do we have Cushing--when the Senator from North Dakota talked about Cushing, that is Cushing, OK, right there on his map. That is kind of a choke point in this pipeline. They all kind of converge. There is no way of getting down to Texas without getting through what we have in Oklahoma. But more so, if you do not think this is a jobs bill, you have a very famous Oklahoman working in your State. I would say Harold Hamm is probably the No. 1 producer out there today. I have talked to him. Do you know what his biggest problem is in North Dakota? His biggest problem is he cannot find anyone to work. They are full employed up there. What better evidence is there that this solves the problem--that this is a jobs bill--than the jobs in North Dakota? I think there is something sadly lacking in this debate, though; that is, that this is just an extension of what this administration has been trying to do. They have been trying to kill fossil fuels from the very beginning. Let me quote Alan Kruger, who is chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. He says: ``The administration believes that it is no longer sufficient to address our nation's energy needs by finding more fossil fuels.'' He wants to kill fossil fuels. Steven Chu, the Energy Secretary said: ``Somehow we are going to have to figure out how to increase the price of oil to be equal to that in Central Europe.'' That is $8 a gallon. He is trying to wean us off fossil fuels. We cannot run this machine called America without it. I only wanted to mention that, and I appreciate the Senator from North Dakota talking about the Environment and Public Works Committee. It has been an effort of this administration through the backdoor, through regulation, to do away with fossil fuels. The boiler MACT-- MACT, by the way, means Maximum Achievable Controlled Technology. By increasing the emission requirements on boilers and on utilities, we are talking about around $83 billion a year of cost. Compare that to the cap and trade. Cap and trade right now is--and we have gone through this on the floor with all these bills trying to have cap and trade and the greenhouse gases and all that. The cost of that is between $300 and $400 billion a year. That is more than all the other regulations combined. It is all aimed at one thing. What is that one thing? To stop fossil fuels. Of course, when we talk about my State of Oklahoma being kind of the choke point, as the Senator has pointed out in his chart over there, I say to my good friend from North Dakota, we have done an analysis of jobs just in my State of Oklahoma. By the construction of the Keystone XL, that would be 14,000 new jobs just in Oklahoma--just in my State--and an increase of personal income by $847 million. So this is a huge thing that we have in my State of Oklahoma. Cushing just happens to be the crossroads. That is where they all come together. They are clogged up now. As the Senator pointed out, they cannot do anything. Their hands are tied because they are in total capacity right now. It should be a no-brainer. But the problem is there is one man, as the Senator from Nebraska said, one man can make this a reality, the President of the United States. He has made it very clear he does not want to do anything to help fossil fuels in America. It is a political problem we have.

Mr. INHOFE. It is, and this is something that is understood. The term a ``no-brainer'' has been used several times because we do not have to think this through. One of the problems I have had--back when Republicans were a majority, I chaired the Environment and Public Works Committee. That has jurisdiction over the Environmental Protection Agency, which has been making every effort to overregulate, to the extent--we know everybody knows of the spending crisis we have, the deficit and the debt and all that. They do not understand the overregulation actually costs us more than all these fiscal issues combined. I mentioned just a few of those. I can recall, before the Senator from North Dakota was in this body, back during the Kyoto treaty--in the Kyoto treaty, they were trying to get this through to have a type of cap and trade, something that they said somehow greenhouse gases were going to cause catastrophic global warming and all that. That went down the tubes. Then they started introducing legislation to do the same thing. Then we had--and I appreciate the honesty of Lisa Jackson, who is the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, when she came out and said: No, if we were to have this strictly in the United States, it is not going to reduce the emissions. This is kind of a long way around. The point I am trying to make is, it is very difficult for people to understand. Just the cap and trade this administration is trying to do through regulations, because they could not do it through legislation, is going to end up having the same effect: kill fossil fuels. That is what they are trying to do. But the point the Senator from North Dakota is making is that is kind of complicated. That is hard to understand. This is not. This is already out there. As I mentioned, just in my State of Oklahoma alone, 14,000 new jobs. Who would be against it? The only ones against it are people who do not want to keep this machine running in America because they know they cannot do it without fossil fuels. Maybe someday that will be different. It is not different today. The way to get it down, to bring it down, is through this pipeline. I am very selfish. It is not just the country; I have 20 kids and grandkids right there in Oklahoma who are depending on us doing what we are supposed to be doing.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to an exceptional leader, superb officer, and friend, LTG Loren M. Reno, the deputy chief of staff, logistics, installations and mission support for the Air Force, as he prepares to retire after more than 38 years of dedicated and distinguished service to our Nation. General Reno is a consummate professional and, truly, the most humble, genuine general officer whom I have had the pleasure of working with during my years in the Senate. Thankfully, I have had the opportunity to get to know him very well. We worked closely together during his two tours at the Air Logistics Center in Oklahoma City, and that relationship continued during his time back on the Air Force staff. General Reno accomplishments over his 38-year career have been remarkable. He is a senior navigator with more than 2,500 flying hours in the C-9, C-130, T-29, and T-43 aircraft, a master maintainer with over 24 years experience keeping the Air Force flying, and an accomplished leader of airmen. General Reno commanded two aircraft maintenance squadrons, a technical training group, and the Defense Fuel Supply and Defense Energy Support Centers, and, of course, the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center at Tinker Air Force Base, OK. A native of Port Jefferson, NY, General Reno graduated from Cedarville University in Ohio in 1970 and spent 4 years teaching middle school science before attending Officer Training School. After earning his commission from OTS as the distinguished graduate and his initial training where he was also the distinguished graduate, he was assigned to the 21st Tactical Airlift Squadron in the Philippines. It was from there that he flew missions into Saigon, Vietnam, at the close of the war in 1975. His prowess as a navigator earned him selection to attend instructor training at Mather Air Force Base, CA, in 1978, where he once again graduated as a distinguished graduate. His subsequent performance as an instructor earned him the award as the Instructor Navigator of the Year in 1979. Next, General Reno worked in legislative affairs on the Air Staff in the Pentagon and then for Air Mobility Command from 1981 to 1985. Following his staff tour, General Reno moved to Dyess Air Force Base, TX, in 1985 where he continued to shine on the ground and in the air as the chief navigator for the 773rd Tactical Airlift Squadron. It was during this assignment that he left the navigator career field and cross-trained as an aircraft maintenance officer. In 1987, General Reno took command of the 463rd Avionics Maintenance Squadron and then the 463rd Field Maintenance Squadron there at Dyess. After Air War College, he moved back to the Air Staff from 1990 to 1992, working as a program manager and as the chief of maintenance policy for the Air Force. After two years in the Pentagon, General Reno moved back to Texas, this time to Sheppard Air Force Base, where he commanded the 396th Technical Training Group and the 82nd Training Group before moving to Fort Belvoir, VA, to work in the Defense Logistics Agency from 1994 to 1998 in positions of increasing responsibility, working on joint logistics for contingency operations and strategic programming, before being selected as the commander of the Defense Fuel Supply Center and Defense Energy Support Center. Upon the completion of his command at the DLA in 1998, General Reno moved to my home State of Oklahoma to work at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center. While there, he was promoted to brigadier general and appointed as the center's deputy commander. After his first Oklahoma tour, General Reno returned to Scott Air Force Base in 2002 as the director of logistics for air mobility command. In this capacity, he was responsible for developing policy logistics plans for 14 major active air installations in the United States and 17 locations throughout the world. It was also in this position that General Reno was selected for his second star. After this, General Reno returned to the DLA, where he served as the vice director and was responsible for providing logistics to the various military departments and combatant commands. We were able to get him back to Oklahoma in 2007 when he returned to command the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, where he provided maintenance for the Air Force's KC-135s, B-1, and B-52s, as well as numerous types of aircraft engines while also commanding Tinker Air Force Base. He also helped shepherd through one of the biggest growth opportunities for the base by working with the local community to acquire an abandoned automotive plant that was located adjacent to the base. The new facility vastly increased the base's ability to accomplish the Air Force's depot maintenance mission and ushered in an era of new possibilities for Oklahoma City and the Air Force. It is this kind of performance that characterized General Reno's whole career. Based on this performance, he was promoted to lieutenant general and sent back to the Pentagon in 2009 to be the Air Force's deputy chief of staff for logistics, installations and mission support. During that time Lieutenant General Reno's demonstrated a mastery of complex issues, decisive leadership, and dedication to both mission and people. He advocated and defended over $30 billion annually in logistics and installation programs and developed long-range strategic guidance for Air Force weapons systems, facility sustainment, military construction, and contingency support to achieve national security objectives. He led the Air Force's first-ever worldwide inventory of all nuclear components at 581 sites. This epic venture allowed the Air Force to reestablish control of more than 34,000 items valued at $1.3 billion and was the first of many crucial logistics milestones needed to reinvigorate the nuclear enterprise, the Air Force's No. 1 priority. His leadership was invaluable to the success of the $1 billion Expeditionary Combat Support System Program, the culmination of a decade-long effort in developing and modernizing Air Force business operations that will ultimately save the Air Force $9 billion in supply chain costs. Finally, as a hands-on leader and champion of airmen resiliency initiatives, he was instrumental in the creation of the Air Force's Deployment Transition Center providing a critical, strategic, physical, emotional, and spiritual respite for thousands of airmen. He provided the leadership and support to ensure outside-the-wire airmen are provided an opportunity to decompress before they return to their home station and families. What I appreciate most about Loren is his dedication to others. He doesn't have hobbies because he works for the benefit of everyone else. He set aside hobbies like golf and instead made spending time with his children and wife his hobby. As a man of deep faith in Jesus, he sacrificed personally so he could give extravagantly to missions and to ministry. Although General Reno's service in the Air Force will come to an end, his service to God, his family, and his country continues. I can't wait to see what's next. On behalf of Congress and the United States of America, I thank Lieutenant General Reno, his wife Karen, and their entire family for their extraordinary commitment, sacrifice, contribution, and dedication to this great Nation during his distinguished career in the U.S. Air Force. I congratulate him on the completion of an exemplary career and wish him, his wife Karen, and their family God's speed and continued success and happiness in the future.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have amendment No. 1098, as modified. I ask that it be considered.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I appreciate that. First of all, I don't recall seeing the majority and minority working so closely together and in the right way for a while. Several of my amendments have been accepted. I think they agreed to this one. It directs DOD to have a report on the effect of boycotts against our domestic contractors. It is modified, and I ask for its adoption.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have two amendments that I believe are very significant. However, I don't believe they will clear, and that is the reason I will not be bringing them up. But it is important we do address the problems. The Military Leasing Act prohibits military installations from receiving any revenues from mineral exploration of these lands. Exploration has taken place in Oklahoma and other places, where we have, with the new horizontal drilling, been able to get at some of these reserves. The problem is that this incurs an expense by the military operations. The one I am talking about right now happens to be the depot in McCallister, OK. Under the Mineral Leasing Act that governs oil and gas leasing on Federal lands, it gives the responsibility to the Bureau of Land Management. The problem is, we want to explore it and accommodate others who are going after these tremendous reserves and not just in Oklahoma but elsewhere. But there is not a mechanism by which they can be paid for expenses incurred by the local installation. We are going to be working on this and coming up with some kind of a solution. I will not be offering this as an amendment. The second one I will not be offering is one that is very significant, which is treating what we refer to as the sub-S, or subpart-S carriers, nonscheduled carriers, that are currently taking materiel and personnel into areas such as Afghanistan. We have crew rest responsibilities, saying they cannot be--a crew cannot be working for more than 15 hours. The problem is this: 95 percent of the military personnel going into Afghanistan and some of these other areas go in by subpart-S operators. They are exempt from the crew rest. Right now, there is legislation that is pending that would make them fall under the crew rest requirements. Military can take them in, but military doesn't have the capacity. That is why 40 percent of all materiel and 95 percent of personnel are being brought into these zones. As an example, if they are going from the logical place, which would be in Germany to go into Afghanistan, they would carry it in, but they would not be able to offload whatever cargo or personnel and then get back and go to Stuttgart or whatever location it is in Germany because that would exceed crew rest. On the other hand, they are precluded from having civilian aircraft staying in places such as Afghanistan. So there is no solution to it. We want to address this. We are going to try to do it. We feel this will not clear as it is now. So I will not be offering it tonight, but it is one I think is very significant. With that, I yield the floor. Amendments Nos. 1094, 1095, 1096, and 1101 Withdrawn

Mr. INHOFE. I don't have that one with me. I would rather wait until I get the amendment. There is one other I will want to have passed-- several amendments are on Guantanamo Bay detention. This is on long- term, high-value detainees. It is my intention to offer that tomorrow. I have currently four amendments that I will withdraw at this time so we can unclog some of this. I ask unanimous consent to withdraw amendments Nos. 1094, 1095, 1096 and 1101.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I had a number of amendments that I was just going to discuss, unless the chairman is planning to speak.

Mr. INHOFE. No, that is not my intention. I just want the chance to talk about them.

Mr. INHOFE. Until the chairman is ready to speak.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, there are a number of amendments I think will probably not come up, but they should. We talked about this some time ago. The Federal Aviation Administration has come up with a change for their SUB-S nonscheduled carriers that is going to make them comply with certain of the wage and hour--the crew rest requirements. Here is the problem we have. About 95 percent of the passengers who go into-- this is our troops--Afghanistan today are carried by nonscheduled airlines as opposed to military and about 40 percent of the cargo that is going in. Now, the problem we have is, with the 15-hour restriction on crew rest, they are unable to bring them in, leave them there, and then go back to their point of origin--someplace in Germany--without exceeding that 15-hour limitation. The only choice they would have is to leave them in Afghanistan, which they cannot do because that is a war zone. So I want to have a way of working this out. We want to pursue this because the carriers understand what the problem is. These are the nonscheduled carriers. So it is something I think is very significant, and we need to be addressing it. Another issue is, JIEDDO is the group that is the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization. They have done great work in their technology in stopping the various technologies over there, the IEDs that have been killing and causing damage to our troops and to our allies. The problem we have is it is set up just for Iraq and Afghanistan. When everything is through in Iraq and Afghanistan, that might put them in a position where they would cease to exist, and yet the technology and what they are doing right now is useful in the United States even though it is not designed by the legislation to do that. I believe this is something that can be corrected. Another area that needs to be addressed--and I have some ideas, and this is one I would like to get in the queue; it is not pending at this time, so there is a little bit of a problem there, but it might be something that could be addressed in conference--is the military bases should be able to benefit from the production of domestic energy and resources on those bases. In the case of the McAlester depot, they could horizontally drill and come out with some pretty good royalties that would otherwise go to the general fund or go to the State of Oklahoma. It is kind of divided in that way. Well, the problem is there is a cost that is incurred by the military operation. We need to have something that is going to allow them to receive the benefits of the production that takes place under the military installations through horizontal drilling. I think everyone is for doing this. But the problem is, it could be scored in that if we took all of the existing production, then that would be money that would not otherwise go to our general fund. So what I would propose is to have this in the form of an amendment, and then change it to say: Any operation from this point forward--that money, those royalties, could go back to the military base because what we all agree on is we do not want our bases to have to foot the bill for these things that are taking place. I have an amendment, No. 1101, that would stop the transfer of the MC-12W ISR aircraft from the Air Force to the Army. I think it is something that is pretty significant. We are talking about intelligence and reconnaissance. The MC-12W is a King Air or a C-12. Right now it is under the jurisdiction of the Air Force, and this bill would change it from the Air Force to the Army. Well, neither the Air Force nor the Army wants to make that change, and there ought to be a way to support that. There are several other amendments that will be coming forward that will be offered. One I feel very strongly about has to do with the sale of the F-16C/D models to Taiwan. Then, lastly--and I feel very strongly about this--back in 2007, we changed the commands to create AFRICOM. AFRICOM, prior to this time, was part of three commands: Central Command, Pacific Command, and European Command. Well, it is so significant in terms of national security, in terms of our economy and the activity that is going on there right now. For example, ever since 9/11, we have been working with the Africans to help develop in Africa our programs--our 1206 programs, our train- and-equip programs. More recently, we have been involved in the LRA issue in poor countries in Africa. Well, there is an effort now--almost any Member I guess would feel the same way--to take that command that is now in Stuttgart, Germany, and put it in Texas or Florida or someplace in the United States. I think that would be something that would inure to the benefit maybe of a Member, a Senator, but, on the other hand, it creates certain problems. When the African Command came into effect--and I think that is one of the few issues that I, probably, am more familiar with than most other Members--the obvious place would have been to have that command located in Africa itself. My choice at that time was Ethiopia. I think there is a lot of jurisdiction for that. But they said because of the political problem--if we go back historically in Africa, and we look at the colonialism, there is this thing embedded back in the minds of people in Africa, thinking that having a command, a U.S. command located in Africa, it might revert back to some of the colonial days. That is the concern people had. So, anyway, I thought it would have been better to have it in Africa itself. But because of this--and, by the way, I have talked to many of the Presidents of countries over there--President Kikwete in Tanzania and President Kagame in Rwanda and President Kabila in the Congo, and several of the others--and they say: Yes, you are right. It would be better to have that command located somewhere in Africa, but we have the political problem with the people who would think that is a move back toward colonialism. So it is a complicated problem. However, I do believe all of the generals pretty much believe that AFRICOM should remain where it is. At least Stuttgart is in the same time zone. It is easier to transport people and equipment back and forth. So I would support defeating any of the amendments that would change that situation. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendments be dispensed with.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment for the purpose of the consideration of 10 amendments en bloc. I will read these: 1094, 1095, 1096, 1097, 1098, 1099, 1100, 1101, 1102, and 1093.