Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, there is a simple reason we are all talking about the debt limit increase. It is the fact that this President has spent more money than I ever believed would be possible. So far, he has spent over $10 trillion in 3 years, and next year, if he has his way, he will spend another $3.5 trillion. I remember so well back during the Clinton administration--I think it was 1995--I was outraged. I came down to this podium. I said: Can you believe a President has a budget of $1.5 trillion? And this President has spent $10 trillion in this short period. If he had not spent all of this money, then we would not be here talking about a debt limit increase right now. I hate to sound so partisan about it, but it is truly a partisan issue. The Democrats have supported his spending, and the Republicans have not. The Boehner plan we are going to vote on--they are going to vote in the House today, and I think we may have an opportunity to vote here later on tonight--may not be perfect. None of the stuff around here is perfect. But it is good. It has dramatically improved over the last 12 hours. It allows the debt limit increase but only after we significantly cut spending. Never before have we tied--in the history of this country--a debt limit increase to spending cuts, but it is something we have to do now that we are so far into this mess. The first step to this plan cuts spending by over $900 billion in exchange for a $900 billion increase in the debt limit. That will last the President until around February. I think it is a fair deal. I would like to cut the spending more, but we can only do so much when we only control the House. The second step of this plan is also good. It establishes a mechanism to quickly consider $1.8 trillion in additional spending cuts between now and the end of the year. It also requires Congress to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and send to it the States for ratification. This is something that just happened in the last 12 hours. People were talking about, well, do we really want to do something? A balanced budget amendment is the only way it is going to be good for now and for the future. We have been talking about this for many years. I remember so well, way back in the 1970s, I was in the State Senate in Oklahoma when Carl Curtis, a very wonderful gentleman from Nebraska--he was a Senator, had been a Senator for quite some time. He was the perennial author of the balanced budget amendment, but he never could get it through. He had an idea. He came to me in the State of Oklahoma and he said: You know, Inhofe, we have been trying to get this balanced budget amendment for a long time, and they excuse they use is, you are never going to get the required number of States to ratify it. He said: I have come up with an idea. We will get three-fourths of the States to preratify a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Well, that is kind of ingenious. He said: Why don't you be the first State? So I did. We passed, by resolution in my State of Oklahoma, in 1975 I believe it was, a ratification of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution that did not exist. That is kind of neat. We actually got up to almost three-fourths of the States, and some of the other forces knocked it down. But that is how long we have been doing this. But in the intervening years, there hasn't been 1 year where we have talked about a balanced budget amendment that it has not come up for discussion. Well, this is probably the first time it is a possibility because we have never been in the spending situation we are in right now--as I said, $10 trillion just 3 years. So right now, we have added that in the last 12 hours. If that legislation passes, the President will get an additional debt limit increase. So we are tying it to behavioral patterns in spending and austerity. That is a smart way to do it. This proposal would keep the debt limit and the spending debate at the forefront of the national conversation. We must have this conversation. If we do not, we will be worrying about things a lot worse than an increase in the debt limit. The President wants nothing to do with it. He just wants a blank check to increase the debt so he can continue to raise the deficit. Why do I think this? Well, if we undid all of his policies today, the policies that so rapidly increased spending and are killing our economy, then we would not need a debt limit increase. The President's spending addiction is the only reason we are here talking about a debt limit increase. This is unilateral. This is the President--his budget. It is not a group of people, it is him. A lot of people are asking: Does anyone in Washington really care? One guy doesn't--the President of the United States. His actions are what we are talking about today. We are looking at failed policies. Referring to the chart, first is ObamaCare. We are talking right now about trying to get something like $800 billion in these negotiations so we can increase the debt limit. In one fell swoop, ObamaCare was $1.5 trillion. This plan costs over the current decade, when fully implemented--the 10-year cost nearly doubles to $2.5 trillion. This law dramatically expands government's influence in the health care sector, and together with Medicare and Medicaid, it will result in the financial ruin of this great country. Second, we have the failed stimulus plan. We all know it didn't meet any of President Obama's expectations. It met all of mine because I didn't expect much. It didn't help the economy. It expanded the size of government. Even though we were opposed to it--I am among the most conservative Members, and Senator Boxer is a very proud liberal. She and I together tried to have an amendment to take some of the $800 billion and put a large amount into infrastructure. Right now, we have to have roads and highways and bridges. We are supposed to do that here. Of course, they didn't do it. Only 3 percent of the $800 billion went for that type of infrastructure. Over $1 trillion of this amount, once you add in the costs, that is how we get up to $1 trillion, the cost of interest we have to pay for extra spending. That is a total of $2.5 trillion. So we have the stimulus of $1 trillion and ObamaCare of $1.5 trillion. Then there is the President's relentless pursuit for regulation. Whatever the President hasn't been able to do legislatively, he is attempting to do through regulation--most of it through the EPA. Cap and trade is a good example. We have debated that since the Kyoto Treaty was up. Clearly, the votes are not there. Right now, in this Chamber, we would not get 25 votes for cap and trade. Yet everybody is talking about how it is important to have cap and trade. Now he is trying to do it through regulation. That alone would cost the American people $300 trillion to $400 trillion a year--not just one shot; that is a year. There is the boiler MACT legislation, which is maximum attainable controlled technology. In other words, what can we do? What do we have the technology to do to stop emissions? We don't have it. But he has that, and that was billions of dollars a year. Ozone regulations: He was going to announce this week a tightening of the ozone regulations that would put 608 of our counties in America out of attainment. I am from Oklahoma, and it would put 15 of our counties out of attainment. They cannot recruit industry in those counties, and they cannot hire people, and many will have to go out of business because of the ozone regulations. It is not, in my opinion, legal the way he is doing it because he is supposed to address it every 5 years. It was done in 2008 on new technology, which is a requirement. Today, he is trying to do it using the same 2008 technology. Again, it is extremely expensive. That casts a tremendous cloud of uncertainty over the business sector, and that is a key reason they announced today that the economy is growing at 1.3 percent a year. That is terrible, especially when we consider the recession we are in. As a general rule, economies recover rapidly when coming off of a financial recession. It is not unusual for countries to grow at 4, 5, 6 percent for the years following a recession. But we can't even get around 2 percent. That has a huge negative effect on the economy and the government. The President's regulatory agenda is the reason our unemployment rate is above 9 percent, and it is the reason our economy is growing so slowly. Because of this, our tax receipts are way off their historic levels. If we can get the economy to grow faster at a sustained period of time, the effect on tax revenues is unbelievable. This is pretty well accepted. I always said that every 1 percent increase in the economy equals about $50 million in new revenue. That is the way to grow revenue. Certainly, President Kennedy knew it, President Reagan knew it, and so the best way to increase revenue and get the economy moving again is, of course, to increase growth. If the economy grows at a rate that is 1 percent faster than presently forecast for the next decade, Federal tax revenues will grow by $3 trillion. I conservatively estimate that the cost to Federal revenues of the President's regulatory agenda has been $1 trillion. So we have, through his regulatory behavior, another $1 trillion. That brings our total to $3.5 trillion. Then in there is an increase in nonsecurity discretionary spending, which has added up to $500 billion in spending. There is the expanded and increased spending on unemployment benefits, which is also a consequence of his regulatory policies that have killed the economic recovery, and the cost of that is another $500 billion. Together, all these failed policies add up to a $4.5 trillion contribution to the Federal deficit. Since Inauguration Day, the debt has increased by $3.7 trillion. It is on pace to increase by more than $5 trillion by the end of the President's first term. If we undid all of these failed policies, we would not find ourselves in the situation we are in today. We would not be debating this because it would not be necessary. It is because of the President that we are even talking about raising the debt ceiling. If we could undo the President's policies, we would not need to raise the debt ceiling at all. Where is the President? He has been totally absent from this entire debt conversation. Today, he is meeting with terrorists from Cote d'Ivoire, and he is probably going to play golf in the afternoon--I don't know. But he is not participating. He doesn't seem to care about debating the debt ceiling. He wants to raise the deficit. If he did care, he would see the need for the Boehner plan, endorse it, and sign it into law. I guess that is too much to ask. We are going to have a chance to do that tonight. They are going to have a vote in the House around 6 o'clock on the Boehner plan, and it will come over here, and we will have an opportunity to do that. If the Democrats support us--a handful of them--we will be able to get that passed. We will wait until tonight to see what happens.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, there is a terrorist visiting with the President right now. I will elaborate. So many people are looking the other way and don't know what is going on in Africa. I have been on this floor nine different times talking about the atrocities that have been committed in Cote d'Ivoire. They had a President there named Laurent Gbagbo. He and his wife are great people, friends of this country. An election took place, and I stood here and showed how it was fraudulent, and the guy who won is named Alassane Ouattara. Right now, as we speak, at this very moment, President Obama is meeting with the rebel leader and potential war criminal Alassane Ouattara in our Nation's Oval Office. This is an unwise and grossly misguided decision on behalf of President Obama. It is, in fact, an outrage that our President would welcome with open arms a man who is responsible for the deaths of at least 3,000 people and the displacement of a half million refugees in Cote d'Ivoire. Ouattara is an illegitimate usurper who has scandalized Cote d'Ivoire's electoral system and wrongfully ousted democratic incumbent Laurent Gbagbo. Beginning late last year, Ouattara fraudulently won Cote d'Ivoire's Presidential election, and after Gbagbo revealed the fraud he led a rebel army that violently overthrew the Gbagbo government, with the support of the French military, which wrongly intervened in this former French colony. This is a picture that depicts one of Ouattara's death squads murdering, maiming, raping. This is happening as we speak. Who is in the President's office? Alassane Ouattara. As a result, Amnesty International reported on July 28 that half a million Ivorians are displaced in postelection violence and are prevented from returning home because of a ``climate of fear'' that continues to reign in this country. Amnesty International specifically singles out Ouattara's security forces and his state-sponsored militia composed of Dozos--they are called--who continue to target pro-Gbagbo ethnic groups. Dozos, traditional hunters, are a mercenary group that both Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross blame for carrying out a massacre in April of at least 220 people in the western town of Duekoue. Here they are in this photo. You can see the charred bodies of those murdered by Ouattara, who is in the President's office right now. There are executions going on. There is a photo of a person who was burned and beaten on the back--from the political opposition. That is what is happening today. Amnesty International alleges that these forces under Ouattara's command are continuing to engage in ``documented crimes under international law and human rights violations and abuses, including extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings, rape, and other sexual violence, torture, other ill treatment and arbitrary arrest and detention, as well as the consequences of a high level of displacement, pervasive insecurity, and intentional destruction of homes and other buildings not justified by military success.'' They are talking about this. We can see that this person was being tortured. This photo is of someone from the cabinet--the Gbagbo cabinet. He tried to make a statement--Ouattara said he is trying to keep some of those people, but here he is in the middle of killing him. He died after this. Here they are executing another person they found as a Gbagbo supporter. This is happening today as we speak. Ouattara's bloodletting seems unabated, and he doesn't seem to be interested in restraining his forces from eliminating perceived pro-Gbagbo supporters. He does not deserve an invitation to our White House or an audience with the President in the Oval Office. Instead of participating in our Nation's debt crisis, President Obama is meeting with this killer and human rights abuser. Even today, while Ouattara is in the President's office, his death squads are roaming the streets of Abijan. It is an outrage, and maybe now we understand where some of the priorities are. With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, let me make a comment on something totally unrelated to the subject of the day, which is that we have a significant bill coming up that the occupant of the chair and I have put together. It is called the pilots' bill of rights. The reason I want to say something about it is it is getting toward the end of the week. It happens a week from today--the largest gathering anyplace in the world of pilots who will get together in Oshkosh for the big event. I have been going to that for 32 consecutive years. We have probably the most significant piece of legislation we have ever introduced at Oshkosh. We are going to have literally thousands--I am talking about 200,000 pilots who are single-issue people. I have been a pilot for 50 years. I know how these people think. The pilots' bill of rights is going to offer an opportunity to these people, who might be accused of something by the FAA, to have access to the evidence against them. It is something that everybody is for. As a matter of fact, it is something that--I haven't said yet, but I just heard that the air traffic controllers are supporting this effort. So we are going to have a lot of people. We already have 34 cosponsors. The reason I want to say this, I know not many Members are listening, but a lot of staffers are. Pilots are single-issue people. They are going to want to know who is cosponsor of the bill. We will be talking for a period of 2 hours in two different settings. We will have literally thousands of pilots there. I encourage very strongly people who may be listening to us right now to have their Members look at this carefully. As I say, pilots are single-issue people, and this is their issue. I did this twice--once in 1994, when we were able to use the population at Oshkosh to push over the top the first product liability bill that changed our manufacturing of aircraft from a major importer to a major exporter. That all happened at Oshkosh. Another time it happened was with Bob Hoover, whom I think would be considered to be the best pilot in America today. He is up in years, but this guy had a problem that we helped him with, an emergency revocation. We did it in Oshkosh. I hope we get a lot more people who are interested in general aviation, and particularly if you are on the general aviation caucus and you are not on this bill. There are going to be an awful lot of questions. Cut, Cap, and Balance Let me make a few comments about the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act. I can remember coming to the floor standing at this podium about 15 years ago, and this was during the Clinton administration. I came here because the Clinton budget for the entire country at that time was $1.5 trillion. I came down and stood here and said: How is it possible to sustain a level like $1.5 trillion? That was to run the United States for the entire year of 1996. Now I think the outrage this year is that in President Obama's current budget, the deficit alone was $1.65 trillion. In other words, the deficit alone, right now, is greater than what it took to run the entire country for a period of a year in 1996. That is something we can't continue doing. I believe the spending has gone so out of line that it is not believable. It is not possible for people to think this could be happening. President Obama has managed to increase Federal spending by over 30 percent, to an average of $3.6 trillion a year--$3.6 trillion. I was complaining about $1.5 trillion, and this is just 15 years later. Is anybody listening out there? Does anybody really care? Maybe since I have 20 kids and grandkids I am a little more sensitive to the fiscal destruction of this country. This has caused our national debt to increase by 35 percent. Today, we have to borrow 40 cents for every dollar we spend. It just happened. This is something that we have to address. I think we are so wrapped up now in saying how are we going to get this done by this deadline of August 2. I remind everybody of something that most people don't know, and it is a shock. They think this is the first time in the Obama administration that we have talked about increasing the debt limit. It is the fourth time. He keeps coming up with trillions of dollars of deficit each time--$5 trillion in three budgets. Believe me, it is not anybody else in this Chamber. It is not in the other Chamber, the House. It is one person--the President--who has come out with his budget. He signs it and sends it to us. Well, that is a total of $5 trillion over the last three budgets. Some may think it is just not possible that this could be happening. This is the fourth time he wants to increase the debt limit. This is the strategy: Go out and spend all this money like drunken sailors, and then come right up to the last minute and say the world is going to come to an end unless you increase the debt limit. You have to stop someplace, and I decided the last time he did this that I was going to stop unless we had some type of discipline. The only discipline out there is the cut, cap, and balance budget amendment. I think we need to look at this carefully because if you stop and put this down--what I normally do on something like this is say: How does this affect the average person? This increase in debt just in this period of time would be $11,000 for every man, woman, and child--an increase from the time this President took office. That is an increase, and the total amount of debt they would owe would be $46,000. That is the day they are born. Happy Birthday. Well, over the past several weeks, we have talked about what to do about the debt limit. I have looked at the three major plans out there. Looking carefully, the problem I have with the plan that has come up-- called the Gang of 6, or the Gang of 7 depending on which group you are looking at--is that it has some intangibles in there. For example, the military cuts--it doesn't say where they are, but we are talking about it--almost $1 trillion over a period of 10 years. I am on the Armed Services Committee. I can tell you that I don't know where that will come from until they come up with more specifics-- and they might do it, and it might be plausible. As it is right now, the cut, cap, and balance legislation is the only one I have seen that would really work. I haven't been involved in all these discussions. A lot of people are certainly working to try to come up with answers, the ones going to the White House every other day talking with the President. I don't happen to be one of those. My major concern right now--and I will at least mention this, because I have done several shows today to try make people understand--is, yes, the deficit and the spending, all that is terrible, but what is equally as bad--and that nobody knows about--is what is happening in terms of the regulations. We have all these programs this administration has tried to pass. I would say the main one that people are familiar with is cap and trade. Remember the old thing that has been going on for 10 years now--the cap and trade? That would cost the American people somewhere between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. That is a huge thing. Bringing that figure down to every taxpaying family in my State of Oklahoma, it would be a little over $3,000 a year, and you get nothing for it. According to the President's own Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, when I asked her on the record if we were to pass any of these cap and trade bills, would it reduce CO2 emissions--assuming you want to reduce CO2 emissions--she said no, because this is only applying to the United States. Let me carry it one step farther. As we run out of ways to create energy in America, we will have a job flight from our manufacturing base, which would have to go to places such as China, India, and Mexico, where they do not have any emission restrictions. So, if anything, it would increase emissions. I am very proud of the Senate, because now we have perhaps, at the very most, 24 votes to pass cap and trade. So what does the President do? He says: Fine, we will do it through regulations. So, through regulations, he is attempting to do that. And we will hear next week of another example. In fact, there are six major areas where regulations are costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. Another one he is going to announce next week is going to be a tightening in the standards on MACTs, and it is one that is going to cost in the neighborhood of $90 billion each year. So in just two of these regulations you have $400 billion a year in costs to the American people. People just aren't aware of that. Some smart guy in my office went back and said: You know, you are not the first person to be concerned about the cost of these regulations. Politicians don't talk about it because no one understands it. But Ronald Reagan, back in 1981, said this: Overregulation causes small and independent businessmen and women, as well as large businesses, to defer or terminate plans for expansion. That is what he said. And then he said: I have asked Vice President Bush to head a cabinet-level task force on regulatory relief. That was the first Bush he was referring to there. So they realized it back then, the cost of overregulation. But it has gotten to the point now where it is every bit as important as the spending problem. But we are talking about the spending problem right now, and there is nothing complicated about it. When you spend more than you take in, you go into debt, and we can't keep doing that forever. We keep getting these budgets from the President each year--three budgets now totaling a greater increase in debt than all Presidents since George Washington combined. Nobody seems to understand and no one seems to care that we can't keep doing that. We are going to have to do something about it for future generations. I think we are going to do it. I hope when this vote comes up--and I think it has been set for tomorrow--on the cut, cap, and balance legislation, it will be something that will be seriously considered, particularly by people who are coming up for reelection in 2012. They need to be thinking about this, because this will be a huge issue. To stand here on the floor and not vote for a balanced budget amendment--during this crisis we are facing now--is something everyone will have to answer to. So while the caps we talk about in the cut, cap, and balance legislation would be over a period of time, it is no good unless you have some kind of enforcing mechanism. This bill we will be voting on tomorrow, I understand, does have that enforcement mechanism. It has sequestration. These are automatic cuts, so that if Congress decides it is going to spend above the caps that are allowed, then automatic sequestration goes into effect. It works. It is enforceable. We have watched spending go up. I am reminiscing here that this has been going on for a long time. People are saying: Well, we are not going to be able to pass a cut, cap, and balanced budget bill because they have been trying to pass a balanced budget amendment for some 40 years or so and they haven't been able to do it. I think this is a unique time that is different than the past 40 years. This is the first time I have seen where the average person knows we can't sustain this thing. We can't go from a budget running the United States of America from $1.5 trillion and then all of a sudden it is $3.5 trillion under just one President. You can't continue to do that. I remember way back many years ago, when I was in the State legislature, there was a great Senator named Carl Curtis from Nebraska. Carl Curtis was quite elderly at that time, and he had been trying to do a balanced budget amendment for probably 20 years at that time. This was back in the 1970s. He came to me in the State legislature in Oklahoma and said: I have an idea. The argument they use against a balanced budget amendment is that three-fourths of the States would never ratify it. So, he said: Let's preratify a budget balancing amendment. He was kind of a genius. I happened to be the first State legislator he approached, and he asked me to take it on as a project. So the State of Oklahoma was the first State in history to preratify a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. It was kind of fun. Then it was so popular that others started doing it, and we got right up to the three-fourths but couldn't quite get over that. But that is something that took place many years ago. This is something we know is not easy, it is something that is difficult to do, but we now have another chance. It is the first time we have had a chance where the majority of the people, by polling, are expressing their outrage and stating that we are going to have to do something. Even though we have raised the debt limit countless times, this is the one time it is getting all this attention, and it is getting this attention because we all know we have something that is no longer sustainable. So we have another chance at the balanced budget amendment provision in the cut, cap, and balance bill, and it would prevent the debt limit from being raised until Congress sends one of the three balanced budget amendment proposals to the States for ratification. In other words, the amendment would have to pass both Chambers by two-thirds majority before the debt limit is allowed to increase. This makes sense. It is a permanent solution to our problem. Within 5 years of ratification, the amendment would require Congress to pass a balanced budget every year, and it would cap total spending at 18 percent of GDP. Right now it is above 20 percent of GDP, so it is even lower than the caps we have had before. It would also require a two-thirds majority to raise taxes. We all know conditions could change--we could be in a war--so this does have a deficit provision which I think is very responsible. The balanced budget amendment is the only reform that will put our Nation on a true path for permanent fiscal stability. It will force comprehensive and real changes to the Federal Government and its spending priorities. If it is ratified, it would avert the risk of a debt crisis. In short, it would put our Nation on a path to limited government it has not seen in years. So I think this is the opportunity. We have three different opportunities coming up. We have heard about the proposal by the Republican leader and by, I think, the majority leader. That might be some kind of last effort, and maybe that is what we will be considering. But the first and the best and the easiest--and the most fiscally responsible--is the cut, cap, and balance bill. So we will have that opportunity tomorrow. It is very significant we take advantage of that opportunity. I am not the pessimist most people are. I think we have a shot at this thing. If the American people are watching carefully, we could pass this thing. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, first, I stand in total agreement with everything my good friend from Indiana has said, particularly the emphasis on the time is right; it is now. We have been talking about a balanced budget amendment. We have been talking about this problem for many years. To me, I feel great frustration that I am even in the Chamber right now. Quite often what I do--I have a very regular schedule. If I am not on a weekend in Iraq, Afghanistan or Africa, someplace having to do with the duties I have as the second ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, I am back in Oklahoma. I have been a pilot for 50 years and I get in a little plane and I go out and talk to real people. People shake their heads and say: Why are we still talking about this? Why aren't we doing it? Why is it we are so wrapped up in this thing? There is not an easy answer. We are supposed to be back here, I guess, talking about a Libya resolution. We all realize that is something that kind of diverts the attention of the American people from the real problem. The real problem of course is the deficit. As I see where we are and look at some of the alternatives they have--the Senator from Indiana said the Democrats want to, I guess tomorrow morning, vote on some kind of a bill that is going to be a tax increase on the millionaires. We are right back again with our class warfare. If we are to rephrase that statement from an economic perspective we would say something like this: It is the sense of the Senate that we should raise taxes on America's job creators and entrepreneurs to prevent the economy from recovering from this recession. That is exactly what we would be doing. Yesterday, I searched through a database of the IRS, their historical tax data. If we were to tax all the income of those individuals making $1 million or more at a 100- percent tax rate--in other words, take every cent they have, tax them all--the total amount of revenue that would be generated would be $700 billion. Stop and think about that, $700 billion is way less than half the deficit President Obama gave us just this year, a $1.65 trillion deficit. It is clearly a deceptive thing. The American people, I think they assume they are so dumb they can tax millionaires and get us out of this mess. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the 750,000 Americans in the highest tax bracket report less than half of the total net business income earned in this country. This is income that comes from flow-through entities such as the LLCs and partnerships. In other words, it comes from small businesses. If we were to tax the small businesses as they are going to attempt to do by saying they are taxing the millionaires, who is going to be able to grow their small businesses? I don't know. No one, I guess, has the answer. There is no answer. There is no question we have a serious problem in Washington. Our debt is at the legal limit of $14.3 trillion, and what caused this problem is spending. In the short 2\1/2\ years since coming to office, President Obama has managed to increase spending by 30 percent. Thirty percent. He incurred a trillion dollar deficit each year and pushed our national debt up by 35 percent. The statistic that no one seems to care about, and we say it over and over, is this President has increased the debt of America more in his 2\1/2\ years than all Presidents throughout the history of America from George Washington to George W. Bush. Let me say this is not the first time this is coming up. Every time you turn around in this administration: Well, we are going to have to increase the debt limit. If not, some great crisis will take place. We did this on February 17, 2009. I voted against it. They increased the debt limit at that time. If you remember, that was the $800 billion stimulus bill. In December of 2009, a stand-alone bill to increase the debt limit of $290 billion passed. We remember so well Tim Geithner saying if we don't do this, it will ruin our credit nationwide. Then again in February of 2010, $1.9 trillion. They increased it again. The same thing. You have to draw the line someplace. There is going to be some point at which you are going to say, no, we are not going to do it unless we get some reductions and some fiscal sanity that is built into it. Right now, since reaching the legal limit, the Treasury has been shuffling money around to pay bills and they will run out of ways to do this on August 2. If an agreement to raise the debt limit has not been reached by then, Treasury will have to decide which bills to pay and which bills not to pay, and nobody wants that. In order to raise the debt ceiling, we have to lock in the reforms necessary to permanently prevent this income debt crisis. We all know the scary statistics, but, to me, solving the problem is easy. We spent our way into this problem so we need to stop spending to get out of it. Tax revenue has not been our problem. Tax hikes should not be a part of the solution. Regardless, President Obama has made very clear he wants tax increases to be included in any kind of a debt limit deal. Sure, he may say he wants to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires. You are going to hear it over and over. All these people out here are supposed to believe this. It is not true. I said earlier the folks he is targeting are those who own small businesses and ones that are creating jobs. When you target tax hikes on folks such as these, you hurt everybody. This is not what we need to do. Our economy is stalling and our unemployment rate is still above 9 percent. We need to cut spending in the short term. This is a program that many people adhere to now. I don't know how many we have. I think the pledge includes about 30 Members who say we need to cut spending in the short term, cap spending in the medium term, and balance the budget in the long term to put the Nation on a sustainable, limited government path. This is the only way out of this mess. I have been a leader here. I can remember back when I introduced the HELP Act. That was when this President first came in and he wanted to take the discretionary nondefense spending and freeze it at the new level after he increased it by 20 percent. I said, no, let's go back to 2008 levels. If we had done that, we would not be facing the problems we have. Decades ago when I was in the State legislature, there was a great Senator from Nebraska named Carl Curtis. He came to me one day and he said, I have been trying to pass a balanced budget amendment here in the Senate for decades. The argument they use against it is the States will never ratify it. So he came up with the idea, let's preratify a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Well, that sounded great to me so I introduced a resolution in the Oklahoma State Senate preratifying, which we did, a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. That was kind of fun. We came within two or three States of doing this. Had it passed, we wouldn't be here today with the problems we are facing. When you look and you say it is going to be difficult, it is not difficult. But I believe the only way to be able to pull this off and to resolve the problem is to do something about a balanced budget amendment. We have proposed one. It is out there. Senator Hatch is active in this. We are all looking at it. During peacetime the amendment would require a two-thirds majority in both Chambers of Congress to authorize the specific deficit funding level for a fiscal year. We all understand emergencies can come up. We have wars in which case we need to do something about it. This allows an escape, but it means two-thirds of the majority of the House and the Senate would have to agree to it. Importantly, the balanced budget amendment would require a two-thirds majority in both Chambers to pass any kind of a tax increase. Our problem is our tax increases. That is what the President wants more of. The balanced budget amendment is the only reform that will put our Nation on a true path to permanent fiscal stability. This is what we need to do. This balanced budget amendment is the reform we need, and I pledge to oppose any deal to increase the debt limit that does not immediately cut the spending in the short term, cap the spending in the medium term, and include a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I urge the Members to seize upon this opportunity. We have not had a serious opportunity at a balanced budget amendment now for decades. The time is here because we have never faced this before. We have never had a President who has proposed and passed $5 trillion of deficit in 2\1/ 2\ years. The people of America are not dumb. They know we cannot sustain that. They are going to say, all right, we all have to bite the bullet and do this thing. We need to do it. The time is right. I agree with the Senator from Indiana who said, there hasn't been a time before that is right, but this time is right. Now that this legislative agenda is dead that we have been talking about, the President has pursued aggressive regulations, especially through the EPA, that seriously harm the economy. I think a lot of people are confined in their thinking about the fact that we are spending too much money. They don't realize there is also a cost to overregulation. Right now almost everything the liberals have tried to pass through here, such as cap and trade, the President and his colleagues in the House and the Senate are trying to do through regulation through the EPA, and that is as expensive as spending money. I don't think this is rocket science. It is something we can pass, the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, and put Americans back to work and these are the only things that will resolve our debt problems. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, just one comment on the subject at hand, and then I want to talk about something completely different that is very significant happening today. I listened to the Senator from New Jersey down here. He kept talking about only in Washington what can happen, only in Washington. Yet never was anything said about cutting spending. It was all about passing tax increases, and that is what we will be faced with tomorrow. (The remarks of Mr. Inhofe pertaining to the introduction of S. 1335 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, just a few minutes ago I did introduce and we have a bill number that is S. 1335. It is the Pilot's Bill of Rights. It is very significant that we get this done today, and I will explain why. First of all, when Senator John Glenn from Ohio retired, that left me as the last active commercial pilot in the Senate. Consequently, I probably get more complaints than anybody else does about problems and abuses with the FAA. I have to say this: I was very complimentary yesterday to so many of the people. The vast majority of the inspectors, the controllers, and others at the FAA are so talented. In fact, the first thing I do when I go up to Oshkosh every year, the largest air show in the world, is I go up to where they are all gathered together and I compliment them on the fact that they are taking on the toughest job for a 6-day period in Oshkosh as a volunteer. So I love their virtues. However, we have to keep in mind that any bureaucracy can become abusive. So I have introduced the Pilot's Bill of Rights. The reason I am speaking right now is because we have 25 cosponsors at this time, which means 25 percent of the Senate has signed on as cosponsors. The way the rules work around here, any of the Members who might be listening right now--and I know the occupier of the Chair is very concerned about this and he is very active with me on this legislation--any staffers who are watching, they should advise their Members that they have until close of business today, probably 1 more hour, to put their names down as original cosponsors. Now, the bill simply does four things. First of all, it requires the FAA, for any enforcement action, to make sure the pilot is fully aware of what he is being accused of before any ultimatums are put forth. Consequently, that pilot is able to defend himself. The second thing is it clarifies what they call statutory deference. Right now, statutory deference relates to the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB is the only area of appeal, so that if a pilot is accused of something and he looks at it and thinks it is unfair, he would have to go to the NTSB. Yet because of deference, they merely rubberstamp in almost all cases what the FAA does. As an example, of the emergency determinations that were made last year, only one was actually granted and the rest of them were denied. This bill will allow, in terms of fairness, that if something is going on and they refuse to consider a case, there will be an appellate process where the pilot can go to the Federal District Court and be heard there. The third thing it does is it has to do with notice. That is notice to airmen. That is very significant. Those of us who are pilots know that when we go into a field, we check and see what the NOTAMs are, so that if there is any work on the runway, any problem there, any taxiways that are closed, they will give the pilot that information. However, the problem is it is the pilot's responsibility to do this and the FAA many times doesn't even post these NOTAMs. So what we are saying with our FARs, or our laws, is we are saying to a pilot, You have to be responsible to know what is going on at the airport, where you are going to be landing. Yet there is no place you can find out. So this requires that they revamp this system so that there is a central location. We specify that in the legislation, so that can be found. Then the fourth and final thing, there is another problem in terms of medical certification. Those of us who are pilots have to have medicals and we have to have a certification process. This has been a problem for a long period of time. I have had countless people call me and talk about the problems they are having with their medical certification. In fact, of all the requests for assistance to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association--they represent hundreds of thousands of pilots--of all the requests for assistance they receive each year, 28 percent are related to the FAA's medical certification process. So I would say this of this very simple legislation. Two sections actually change the statutes so that it offers protection to pilots, but the other two are working together to come up with a system where we can have a central location for NOTAMs as well as having a fair process for medical evaluations. I think it is very obvious that there are a lot of bureaucracies where one or two people can be bad. When I was in Tulsa, I can remember all it took was one or two bad cops and that gave a black eye to everybody else. I remember actually, when I was running--it is the whole reason I ran for office in the first place. When I was out in the private sector, I was doing things that I thought I was supposed to be doing, and I had one old building called the Wrightsman Oil Estate. I was going to take this old eyesore and make it into a building and preserve it as it was originally. Old, in my city of Tulsa, OK, in this case was maybe 1910 or 1912. We weren't even a State until 1907. This is something everybody wanted. I went to the city engineer and I said, I want to take this eyesore of a fire escape on the second floor and move it from the south to the north end. It is the same thing; it will service the same number of people, but it is an eyesore and this gets it out of the way. No one is against it. He said, You can't do that until this committee meets. So let's see. You have to have notice. That would be 3 more weeks before you can get notice. A month after that, you can get on the agenda. I said, Look, everyone is for it. He said, That is your problem, not mine. I said, I will run for mayor and fire you, and I did, and I fired him. This can happen in any bureaucracy. So the reason there is a sense of urgency is because we have already told all of the groups--the Experimental Aircraft Association, ALPA, all of these groups that represent these different organizations--that we are going to be getting this bill ready with all of our original cosponsors and then cosponsors so that when we arrive and when I arrive at the end of July, at Oshkosh, WI, I am going to do the same thing I did in 1994 that caused us to be able to pass the first product liability bill on aviation and aviation products that had the effect of changing us from a major importer of aviation products and of airplanes to a major exporter, just by changing that. It was an 18-year repose bill. I did that at Oshkosh with an audience of 200,000 people. These are single issue people. I can assure my colleagues that they will be just as interested in this bill. So I will be presenting this, and I am going to encourage Members of the Senate who want to get their name in today, they can be cosponsors, original cosponsors, as is the occupier of the chair at the present time, and myself, and 23 other Members of the Senate. One last reminder. This is S. 1335. This is the last chance. Colleagues have 1 more hour to be an original cosponsor. I hope my colleagues will join me in sponsoring this legislation.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, just a few minutes ago I did introduce and we have a bill number that is S. 1335. It is the Pilot's Bill of Rights. It is very significant that we get this done today, and I will explain why. First of all, when Senator John Glenn from Ohio retired, that left me as the last active commercial pilot in the Senate. Consequently, I probably get more complaints than anybody else does about problems and abuses with the FAA. I have to say this: I was very complimentary yesterday to so many of the people. The vast majority of the inspectors, the controllers, and others at the FAA are so talented. In fact, the first thing I do when I go up to Oshkosh every year, the largest air show in the world, is I go up to where they are all gathered together and I compliment them on the fact that they are taking on the toughest job for a 6-day period in Oshkosh as a volunteer. So I love their virtues. However, we have to keep in mind that any bureaucracy can become abusive. So I have introduced the Pilot's Bill of Rights. The reason I am speaking right now is because we have 25 cosponsors at this time, which means 25 percent of the Senate has signed on as cosponsors. The way the rules work around here, any of the Members who might be listening right now--and I know the occupier of the Chair is very concerned about this and he is very active with me on this legislation--any staffers who are watching, they should advise their Members that they have until close of business today, probably 1 more hour, to put their names down as original cosponsors. Now, the bill simply does four things. First of all, it requires the FAA, for any enforcement action, to make sure the pilot is fully aware of what he is being accused of before any ultimatums are put forth. Consequently, that pilot is able to defend himself. The second thing is it clarifies what they call statutory deference. Right now, statutory deference relates to the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB is the only area of appeal, so that if a pilot is accused of something and he looks at it and thinks it is unfair, he would have to go to the NTSB. Yet because of deference, they merely rubberstamp in almost all cases what the FAA does. As an example, of the emergency determinations that were made last year, only one was actually granted and the rest of them were denied. This bill will allow, in terms of fairness, that if something is going on and they refuse to consider a case, there will be an appellate process where the pilot can go to the Federal District Court and be heard there. The third thing it does is it has to do with notice. That is notice to airmen. That is very significant. Those of us who are pilots know that when we go into a field, we check and see what the NOTAMs are, so that if there is any work on the runway, any problem there, any taxiways that are closed, they will give the pilot that information. However, the problem is it is the pilot's responsibility to do this and the FAA many times doesn't even post these NOTAMs. So what we are saying with our FARs, or our laws, is we are saying to a pilot, You have to be responsible to know what is going on at the airport, where you are going to be landing. Yet there is no place you can find out. So this requires that they revamp this system so that there is a central location. We specify that in the legislation, so that can be found. Then the fourth and final thing, there is another problem in terms of medical certification. Those of us who are pilots have to have medicals and we have to have a certification process. This has been a problem for a long period of time. I have had countless people call me and talk about the problems they are having with their medical certification. In fact, of all the requests for assistance to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association--they represent hundreds of thousands of pilots--of all the requests for assistance they receive each year, 28 percent are related to the FAA's medical certification process. So I would say this of this very simple legislation. Two sections actually change the statutes so that it offers protection to pilots, but the other two are working together to come up with a system where we can have a central location for NOTAMs as well as having a fair process for medical evaluations. I think it is very obvious that there are a lot of bureaucracies where one or two people can be bad. When I was in Tulsa, I can remember all it took was one or two bad cops and that gave a black eye to everybody else. I remember actually, when I was running--it is the whole reason I ran for office in the first place. When I was out in the private sector, I was doing things that I thought I was supposed to be doing, and I had one old building called the Wrightsman Oil Estate. I was going to take this old eyesore and make it into a building and preserve it as it was originally. Old, in my city of Tulsa, OK, in this case was maybe 1910 or 1912. We weren't even a State until 1907. This is something everybody wanted. I went to the city engineer and I said, I want to take this eyesore of a fire escape on the second floor and move it from the south to the north end. It is the same thing; it will service the same number of people, but it is an eyesore and this gets it out of the way. No one is against it. He said, You can't do that until this committee meets. So let's see. You have to have notice. That would be 3 more weeks before you can get notice. A month after that, you can get on the agenda. I said, Look, everyone is for it. He said, That is your problem, not mine. I said, I will run for mayor and fire you, and I did, and I fired him. This can happen in any bureaucracy. So the reason there is a sense of urgency is because we have already told all of the groups--the Experimental Aircraft Association, ALPA, all of these groups that represent these different organizations--that we are going to be getting this bill ready with all of our original cosponsors and then cosponsors so that when we arrive and when I arrive at the end of July, at Oshkosh, WI, I am going to do the same thing I did in 1994 that caused us to be able to pass the first product liability bill on aviation and aviation products that had the effect of changing us from a major importer of aviation products and of airplanes to a major exporter, just by changing that. It was an 18-year repose bill. I did that at Oshkosh with an audience of 200,000 people. These are single issue people. I can assure my colleagues that they will be just as interested in this bill. So I will be presenting this, and I am going to encourage Members of the Senate who want to get their name in today, they can be cosponsors, original cosponsors, as is the occupier of the chair at the present time, and myself, and 23 other Members of the Senate. One last reminder. This is S. 1335. This is the last chance. Colleagues have 1 more hour to be an original cosponsor. I hope my colleagues will join me in sponsoring this legislation.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for such time as I shall consume.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, first of all, we came back. We weren't anticipating coming back from this recess that we were going to be on. I can't help but think a lot of that was a result of the statements President Obama made, criticizing the Senate for leaving at a time when the debt was so bad when, in fact, I think that is a bum rap. We have a serious problem I think we need to address and that is spending. All of these things President Obama is doing right now to make everyone think we are trying to address it--appointing committees and groups to get together; having the Vice President head up this group and the other group; and Republicans and Democrats meeting--all the President has to do is quit spending. I have been here for a few years and I remember during the Clinton administration in 1995, I came down to this podium on the floor complaining that President Clinton had come out with a new budget and that budget was $1.5 trillion. I said, this is unbelievable. It is not sustainable. We can't do it. That was $1.5 trillion to run this country for a period of 1 year. Now this President has come up with three budgets. Each one of the budgets is a multitrillion-dollar deficit budget. The last one was $1.65 trillion. This is more than the total amount of money it took to run the entire country. It is all in the President's budget. It comes out initially $800 billion for stimulus that didn't stimulate. This was something that--I don't know why-- either nobody cares or the American people aren't listening. It is very simple. We have a problem because the President spends money as no one else has in history. Here he has right now actually raised the debt-- from every President, George Washington to George W. Bush--yet he comes out and says, What are we going to do about spending? The answer is to quit spending. I hope the American people remember this. This is not the reason, frankly, why I am down here today. In spite of what we have been led to believe in various publications, other things are going on. There is one piece of legislation I will be introducing tomorrow. I have been working on it for about 6 months, and I have talked to people. We have caucuses in the Senate about every kind of concern. We have an Army caucus, and we have an Air Force caucus. We have caucuses on caucuses. One of the caucuses we have is a general aviation caucus. I am particularly sensitive to this in that I have been flying airplanes for over 50 years, and it is one where we are dealing with single issue people. Anyway, tomorrow, Wednesday, I am going to introduce legislation that is going to be very important to people who are the single issue people who fly airplanes. I know a lot of us don't even care. I have heard people say they are all fat cats. I defy anyone to go up to Osh Kosh once a year, the last weekend of every July, and see the hundreds of thousands of people there who are not wealthy people, they are single issue people. Many of them have made experimental airplanes in their garages. This is something we have enjoyed for many years, and it is something I have enjoyed. I think because of my involvement, I have probably received more complaints and more requests from people out there in the real world--pilots--over things that have happened when the Federal Aviation Administration has cause to try to either revoke their license or give them the fear of revocation. Over the years, there have been several instances where I have passed legislation to fix the system by which the FAA proceeds in these enforcement actions. I can remember back in the year 2000. Probably yet today the greatest single pilot, most gifted pilot in America is a guy named Bob Hoover. Bob Hoover is up in years now. He is actually older than I am. As am I, he is still flying airplanes. They did what is called an emergency revocation on Bob Hoover. I never did find out what allegedly he did wrong. But it was actually in the field where this great pilot would take a twin engine Shrike up to 10,000 feet, come down and roll right up where the crowd is. He does all of that with a glass of water up there on his dash. He is one of these unbelievable human beings. Anyway, he came to me and said, What am I going to do? They have taken away my livelihood. All of these airline pilots who make a living flying airplanes could have a revocation. I passed a law. It took 2 years to do it--and it shouldn't have--so if something happens with a pilot and he gets his license revoked, there is a process he can go through that offers appeals and makes it a fair process. So I have been dealing with this for a long period of time. I have to say this: With any bureaucracy that has the power to take action against an individual, it is our job in Congress to ensure there are appropriate safeguards in place to prevent agency overreach. This bill provides that. The bill does simply four things. Those out there who are pilots will understand exactly what I am talking about. First, it requires in an FAA enforcement action against a pilot, in a case where there is enforcement action, the FAA has to grant to the pilot all the relevant evidence, such as the air traffic communications tapes, flight data, investigative reports, flight service station communications, and other relevant air traffic data 30 days before any action can proceed, an enforcement action against the pilot. That is a matter of fairness. If a person is going to be accused of something, he has to know what he is being accused of. This is currently not done. It often leads to a pilot being grossly uninformed of his alleged violation and recourse. The same section of the bill requires the FAA to advise a pilot who is the subject of an investigation relating to approval, denial, suspension, modification, or revocation of an airman certificate of the nature of the investigation, that an oral or written response to a letter of investigation is not required, that no action can be taken by the FAA against a pilot for declining to respond, that any response can be used as evidence against the pilot, and that the FAA's investigative report is available. That sounds like a lot of talk. All we are saying is the pilot is entitled to have all the information other people have. I will give a good example. One of the things we know--and I have heard this all of my 55 years of flying--is that when you talk to a controller--he can be a controller at a control tower or anything else--that they have to keep that recording and the pilot can have access to the recording. I have always thought this was true until something happened to me and I found out that isn't true. So this means that until we change it, that is not going to happen. Secondly, it clarifies ``statutory deference''--that is a legal term--as it relates to the National Transportation Safety Board on actions by the FAA. This is what happens. The FAA would do something, and this could theoretically be appealed to the NTSB. The problem with that is, the NTSB--the National Transportation Safety Board--has routinely rubberstamped anything that comes from the FAA. It is called statutory deference. So that decision has been able to take place in the appeals process. To give an example, in fiscal year 2010, there were 362 aviation certificate appeals filed with the NTSB's Office of Administrative Law Judges. The Board's judges held 61 hearings on these appeals and reversed the FAA order only 5 times. Also during this time period there were 40 petitions seeking review of FAA emergency determinations. Of these, 6 were procedurally defective and were dismissed and on that basis, and 10 were voluntarily withdrawn. The remaining 24 petitions were considered on their merits with only 1--1--being granted out of 23 being denied. So we know this is a serious problem. What this does is not only clean up statutory deference, but it does a second thing. It allows an airman at his own discretion to be able to appeal to the Federal District Court. The third thing the bill does is require that the FAA undertake a notice to airmen. This is kind of complicated. But a notice to airmen is called a NOTAM. A NOTAM is something they are supposed to involve the people in--the pilots flying--so if they are going to go to a certain airport, they will have all the information as to what is wrong with that airport--a system might be down; a number of things can take place. But, nonetheless, it simplifies that system. Any pilot knows what a NOTAM is, but for those who don't, they are notices provided by the FAA to give information to pilots about air space, runways, flight conditions, and all that. The procedure hasn't worked, because they have actually said there are NOTAMs and they didn't even file the NOTAMs and there is no way for the pilot to be able to tell if there is a NOTAM out there, even though he is required to determine that there is. The current system says it is the pilot's responsibility to be aware of a NOTAM even if the FAA has not posted it. Fourth and finally, the FAA's medical notification process has long been known for a multitude of problems. Of all the requests for assistance the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association receives each year--28 percent of all of the legal assistance--28 percent are related to the FAA's medical certification process. The bill requires a review of the FAA's medical certification process and forms, to provide greater clarity in the questions and reduce the instances of misinterpretation that have, in the past, led to allegations of intentional falsification against pilots. Nonprofit general aviation groups, aviation medical examiners, and other qualified medical experts will make up an advisory panel to advise the Administrator, again giving the right people a voice in the overall determination. So this is just an advisory board. The same way with revamping the NOTAM process. These are advisory boards that are to work with the FAA in coming up with a system. There are two provisions in the bill that will require an FAA review of current practices and two other provisions that make the system specifically fairer for pilots. After years of intervening to help fellow pilots, I was never fully appreciative of the feeling of desperation until it happened to me. This happened last October. I was flying a group of nonpilots in my twin engine--one of my planes, a twin engine, it holds six people--we were flying into Cameron County Airport. A lot of people don't realize how big Texas is. It is way down on the tip of Texas. It is about the same distance south as Key Biscayne, FL, or some place down there, but it is way down there. I used to be a builder and developer there. I have landed there over 200 times. I was flying a group down there. The Corpus Approach handed me off to Valley Approach who took me all the way down to runway 13. I will actually read what they said. Approach control said: You are cleared for visual approach to runway 13. Then I responded, and he said: Yes, 115 echo alpha roger, before you go there is traffic that appears to be in the pattern landing there at 900 feet. That is fine. So this is what they do. That is wonderful. I started landing, and you get to a point in a twin-engine plane full of people where you have slowed down enough where you cannot make a go- around. I was almost touching down when I saw they were working on the runway. It was too late to go around. The three problems I had and have heard about countless times from pilots, which we correct with this legislation: When I tried to get the voice recording, it took me 4 months, and I am a Senator. I thought: What about these people out there and the frustration they are going through? We will correct that. I was required to respond to allegations within 10 days or they would proceed in an enforcement action against me. By the time I received the 10-day notice, there were only 4 days left to respond to the accusations, enforcement actions, and I did not even know the reason for the enforcement actions. And, No. 3, we found out the NOTAMs were never posted by the FAA until 11 days after this took place. In other words, I did nothing wrong. But at any time I could have suffered a revocation of my license. I think it is important to mention that most of the people who work at the FAA--be it the controllers, inspectors, investigators--are helpful. This year is my 32nd consecutive year to attend the Osh Kosh fly-in. The first thing I always do is go up there and talk to all the controllers. They are up there as volunteers, and I thank them for what they are doing. Less than 2 weeks ago, I was flying from Oklahoma to Wyoming. I called on an instrument flight. I had to get an IFR clearance at 5 o'clock in the morning. The guy was so courteous, I asked him his name. It is Bill Liebeno. He could not have been more helpful to me. Talk about giving me all the NOTAMS, he said: The localizer is out, the DME is out, Runway 14-32 is closed, taxiway B is closed, the approach lights are out. He could not have been more factual. I have a lot more to talk about. I know there are others who want to speak before this very significant vote that is coming up at 5 o'clock, which I think is a live quorum call. I would only say this: I am going to introduce this bill on Wednesday. If there is anyone here--we already have Senators Begich and Johanns, who are the cochairs of the Senate Aviation Caucus. Of course, this is bipartisan. They are on as cosponsors. We have several others as cosponsors. I would say to any staff--I know no Members are listening--who happen to be listening right now, if your Member wants to at least be sensitive to the needs of general aviation, this may be his or her only chance this year. I suggest those individuals who care about the problems I outlined become cosponsors of this legislation before I introduce it tomorrow afternoon. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I am going to wait until the Senator from Illinois arrives before making a motion, but I wish to explain what I am going to do. I am going to make a motion when he does arrive. I have an amendment. First of all, being the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I have more than just a passive interest in this EDA bill. But one of the things I have been trying to do is get people to understand we have all these amendments, and a lot of these amendments have nothing to do with the Economic Development Administration. They have to do with everything else that is out there. In fact, I am guilty of the same thing. I have, I think, five unrelated amendments. They are all good stuff, things I wish to get through, and that seems to be what this bill is all about. But under all these amendments there is a bill and there is a reason for introducing it. It is a foregone conclusion--I think we all understand if we were to pass the EDA bill out of here in any form similar to the way it was introduced, it would never pass the House, and that would be a done deal. What I am going to attempt to do is--I am going to attempt today and tomorrow and however long it takes--to get an amendment in there that is going to provide oversight authority by the GAO. Through the audits and assessments, the GAO can ensure that the EDA grants are distributed, and put some spending discipline in there, such as through a competitive award process--it is all drafted in the amendment; by the way, the amendment is No. 459--and in accordance with the EDA criteria and requirements. Additionally, the GAO would submit a report every year to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the House T&I Committee, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, to have efficiency assured. What we are doing here is, instead of having a jump ball and saying we are going to do any kind of an EDA program that we can sell through the administration, we will actually have discipline in there so it will have to be, first of all, gone over with the Government Accountability Office. Then, after that, it is not over because it has to come back to both committees in the House and the Senate. And, of course, I am the ranking member, and by the time that gets started, I may end up being the chairman, if it is after the next election. But you never know those things. So we would be able to look at it again. The purpose of the amendment is to make certain that grant recipients are determined based on competitive procedures and to create more accountability for the EDA. Overall, I think Washington bureaucrats should not be picking winners and losers but, instead, rely on a formula and strict rules to determine where agency dollars flow. I know we are not on the bill now. We are still in morning business. I understand we are going to go back on the bill at 6 o'clock this evening. But I have to get a request in that my amendment be--at that time, I am going to ask that the pending amendment be set aside for consideration of amendment No. 459, which I have just described. I think the chief complaint about some of the EDA process--by the way, I have to say about the EDA process, it has done so well in my State of Oklahoma. We had one project in Elgin, OK--a very small community adjacent to the live range at Fort Sill--for a $2.25 million EDA grant. They ended up planning to construct a 150,000-square foot building that would employ--the numbers were almost the entire population of Elgin, OK. It is something that would revive that part of the State. The southern part of the State of Oklahoma and the south central part have historically been an area that is somewhat impoverished, and through these EDA grants we have done a good job. The good thing about EDA grants is they require a lot of local participation. Generally, it is through the city funds, the State funds, and the county funds, and then an equal amount or a greater amount from the private sector. In my State of Oklahoma, the grants are usually about one to nine in terms of public participation. So the program is good. I am the first one to admit, however, it may not work the same way in every State. I can only say what our experience has been in Oklahoma. What I am going to suggest with this amendment is something we are doing anyway in Oklahoma. We are going through a competitive award process. That is a process that everyone understands. It is one that is all outlined in our rules. We know what they have to go through for competition. Then it is in accordance with the criteria. The criteria is very important. One of these days we are going to get around to a transportation reauthorization bill that will come out of my same committee. The last one we had was in 2005. Since then, that has run out, and we are going kind of month to month. We have a dire need for infrastructure in America with the roads, highways, and bridges. It is something we have fallen behind on, and we are going to be getting to that. The reason our 2005 bill was so successful in infrastructure for transportation in the reauthorization bill is because we had a formula. The formula took into consideration money to be spent on bridges and roads and highways, State by State, with such factors as to the fatalities in that State, the number of road lanes, miles, and all this criteria. When we got through establishing the criteria in 2005, it must have been good because nobody liked it. If it was something that upset everyone, then, obviously, it was one that was pretty good, and we passed it. That was a $284.6 billion reauthorization bill. We should be able to do something comparable now. You might say, everyone is goosey about spending money nowadays. And that is understandable with the deficits. President Obama's three budgets have suggested and have put into effect $5 trillion of deficit--not debt but deficit. This last budget was around a little over $2.5 trillion. And I can remember back in 1995, back when President Clinton was in office, going down to the floor and complaining because he had a budget to run the entire country of $1.5 trillion. Well, the deficit alone in the last budget we have had here, as prescribed by the President, has exceeded the amount it took to run the country during that period of time. I see the Senator from Illinois is here. I would say to my good friend from Illinois, what I am doing here is I am going to attempt now--and it will be objected to, and I understand that because we are not on the bill yet--I am going to continue to attempt to have an accountability amendment that takes the EDA process and subjects it to a competitive award process, along with oversight by the GAO and by our committee and by the T&I Committee in the House of Representatives. I think it is something that would make--frankly, if we do not do it, in my opinion, there would be no way in the world that the House of Representatives would pass it. This offers discipline to it. I will go so far as to say that if we are not able to pass this amendment, to have accountability, I will probably end up voting against the bill if it comes up for a vote. So with that in mind, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to resume consideration of S. 782 so that I can call up my amendment No. 459 which is at the desk.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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, I rise today to express my support for Senator Shelby's recently introduced bill, the Southeastern Disaster Tax Relief Act, of which I am an original cosponsor. As an Oklahoma native, I have seen and experienced just how devastating severe weather can be. Since 1950, there have been approximately 3,300 tornadoes that have killed nearly 500 people in Oklahoma alone. Scores more have been injured. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, tornadoes cause $1.1 billion of damage on average per year, and this does not account for the unquantifiable cost of the loss of a loved one, a home, or a business. You may recall the F5 tornado that swept through Oklahoma on May 3, 1999. This storm alone caused $1.9 billion in damages, killed 48 people, and destroyed the town of Moore, OK. Survivors of this storm described being trapped under the debris of their homes, the panicked rescue effort to find neighbors, and the overwhelming sadness accompanied by loss. When I visited Tushka, OK, on April 15 of this year, following its devastating storms, I witnessed firsthand the same type of devastation. It is estimated that the damage caused by tornadoes in Oklahoma on May 24 of this year will cost between $200 and $300 million. In addition, the storms in Joplin, MO, may have caused an additional $3 billion in losses. Clearly, these areas are in need of assistance, particularly since insurance payments will not remove out-of-pocket expenses families and businesses will have to pay as they rebuild their lives. Under the current Tax Code, there is some relief available to families and businesses that experience damage in hard hit areas. In addition to being able to deduct most losses from the disaster on their taxes, individuals who receive disaster mitigation assistance, such as a FEMA grant, do not have to report the assistance as income. Additionally, Congress has, in the past, passed a number of temporary provisions to provide additional relief to victims of severe natural disasters, such as the Heartland Relief Act, the Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act, and the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act. Senator Shelby's Southeastern Disaster Tax Relief Act does the same thing and provides targeted, temporary tax relief to folks who have been hit by strong storms in recent months. The provisions of his bill have been selected from a number of the previous emergency tax relief acts enacted in past years. This is beneficial and worth mentioning because the IRS has already drafted guidance documents for all of the relief provisions, making it easier for taxpayers to take advantage of the relief. We also know the provisions in this bill will actually help people recover. The relief has worked in the past, and it will work again today. Any individual or business located in a county that has been declared a major disaster area by the president is eligible for the relief provided by this bill if those counties are eligible for either ``individual'' or ``individual and public'' assistance through FEMA. These assistance designations are allowed only to the hardest hit areas. In my State of Oklahoma, the qualifying counties include Canadian, Delaware, Grady, Kingfisher, Logan, McClain, and Atoka. These are the areas around Piedmont, Tushka, and Grove, Oklahoma. Public assistance funds are generally made available to States and localities to help pay for the removal of debris and to repair, replace, and restore disaster-damaged publicly owned facilities. Individual assistance, provided through FEMA and the SBA consists of grants and loans made directly to individuals. These grants are need-based, and can be issued to provide temporary housing or to help repair or replace a family's home if their insurance coverage falls short. In the most severe cases, additional assistance is provided. While it is good FEMA provides this assistance, many individuals and businesses will not qualify despite being hit hard by the storms. And while permanent tax provisions do help individuals and businesses account for their losses and insurance payments, they do little beyond that to help folks get back on their feet. This underscores the need for the Southeastern Disaster Tax Relief Act. Under the act, individuals would be allowed, among other things, to make early withdrawals from their tax-preferred retirement plans without having to pay tax penalties. Current tax law discourages early withdrawals by imposing a 10 percent tax penalty on most early withdrawals from accounts like Roth IRAs. This is fine under normal circumstances, but as individuals recover from disasters like this, they should be able to tap into their own resources without being penalized. This will likely help many families avoid going into debt or relying on government grants to repair their homes and property. Individuals will also be able to deduct an unlimited amount of cash charitable contributions to nonprofit entities when the donations are allocated toward disaster relief efforts in the affected areas. Current policy limits the amount of income that can be deducted from charitable giving. This bill would temporarily suspend this provision. Businesses will be allowed to immediately expense 50 percent of the cost of demolishing and/or cleaning up damaged property. This will allow them to recognize their losses more quickly than current policy, which requires them to capitalize cleanup costs into the construction or repair of their property. Small businesses will also be provided with a tax credit for 40 percent of wages up to $23,400 paid to employees retained while a business is inoperable because of the storm. With unemployment hovering around 9 percent, this provision will help struggling employers retain and continue paying employees despite the fact that their business have been destroyed by the storm and remaining closed for business. Public utility companies in Oklahoma and other states will be allowed to carry back the disaster losses to their property for 5 years. This will allow them to quickly realize their losses from a tax perspective, and the consequent savings will be available for them to more swiftly rebuild their infrastructure so that service can be returned to their customers. Lastly, States will be allowed to float additional private activity bonds beyond the caps presently set by statute. The amount will be limited by the number of people whose primary residence is located in the areas affected by the disasters. The provisions I mentioned are only a sample of what is provided in this bill. I must underscore, however, that this bill is highly targeted and temporary. It is also deficit neutral. Most of the provisions in the bill only last for the next year or so; others expire at the end of 2013 and 2014. In total, this bill is expected to provide over $5 billion in tax relief. This bill has been designated an emergency--as I believe it should be. It is targeted, temporary relief in response to an unpredictable disaster. Usually we do not require ourselves to find immediate savings to offset the cost of emergency provisions, but in our present age of trillion dollar deficits, we need to offset deficits wherever possible. Senator Shelby has offset the cost of this bill by rescinding $12 billion in unobligated appropriations that remain unexpired. This provision applies to all Departments except the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. In short, this bill is a necessary and commonsense tax proposal to help tornado victims. It is also fully paid for, making it fiscally responsible. I urge swift consideration and passage of this act.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. All right. While I am holding off, it is my understanding that some of the rest of them are getting in the queue, and I am trying to get these three in with the same treatment that has been afforded those before me. Amendments Nos. 430 and 438 Madam President, I amend my previous request and ask unanimous consent to set the pending amendment aside for the consideration of two of the amendments, Nos. 430 and 438.

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

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

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask by unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business, which I know the Chair will honor. However, I want to mention one of these two amendments. I think it is very significant. It is somewhat similar, I think, to the amendment offered by the senior Senator from Maine. What it has to do with is these various regulations, and actually most of these are coming from the Environmental Protection Agency. One of the serious problems we have in the committee on which I am the ranking member, the Environment and Public Works Committee--that is chaired by Senator Boxer from California--we have oversight over the Environmental Protection Agency, and we have been watching what has been happening in the last several months. Many of the things they have been trying to get through, they have been unable to get through legislation here on the floor of this Senate, so they are trying to do the very things they are unable to get done through legislation by regulation. And these are very expensive. Right now, we have a problem with our economy. We have overregulation that is killing a lot of the businesses that are out there. What I am trying to do is an amendment--and that is what amendment No. 438 is--to get it into the Record. The bill sets up a committee to assess the effects of the EPA's regulatory mandates, including key provisions of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Solid Waste Disposal Act. This would include greenhouse gas regulations, Boiler MACT, Utility MACT, ozone and particulate matter standards, coal ash disposal, and water discharge requirements. The assessment includes an evaluation of the cumulative effects of the EPA's mandates on employment, economic development, and this type of thing. It does not otherwise modify or affect the statute. The reason I wish to have this in here is we have now quantified what it is costing the American people in terms of employment, in terms of dollars, and just-- greenhouse gas, for example. We know that the costs, if they do anything like the cap and trade that they have tried to do through legislation--and that is exactly what they are attempting to do right now through regulations at the EPA--are somewhere between $300 and $400 billion of loss in GDP per year. That is every year. You can call that a tax increase if you want to because that is exactly what it is, the same as a loss in GDP. In my case, in Oklahoma, because it is confusing when we--and this administration has been talking about hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars. Nobody truly has a handle on what it costs. I keep track as to how many families file tax returns. In my State of Oklahoma, if you take the number of families who file tax returns and divide it and do the math, that would be somewhere around a little over $3,000 per family if we were to pass a cap-and-trade regulation. What is wrong with this? A lot of people are out there saying: Inhofe, you have been wrong all this time. Since you are wrong on the-- you may be wrong or what if you are wrong. My response is this: We have a very fine Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson. I can remember talking to her about what would happen if we were to pass any of these bills where we are going back to maybe the Warner-Lieberman bill or Waxman-Markey bill or even by regulations, cap and trade, the costs would be excessive. However, my question to her was: If we were successful in doing this, would this reduce the greenhouse gases? The answer was no. The reason it would not is because it only applies to the United States of America. So if we were going to pass a tax increase on every tax-paying family in my State of Oklahoma of $3,000 a year, and they admit we are not going to get anything for it, then we need to stop them from doing that. I could do the same thing about the ozone, the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. That would be $676.8 billion lost in GDP by 2020; the boiler MACT rules and regulations, some $1 billion lost in GDP; utility MACT, $184 billion in compliance costs. That is just between the years of 2011 and 2030; the cement MACT, some $3.5 billion. I am saying this because we need to have our eyes open and tell the American people what the cost is of all these things. This will be done by this amendment, No. 438, and we will hopefully be able to get a vote on that. Cote d'Ivoire Madam President, I am going to take a little time on something else that has to be said, and that is what I have been on the floor six times already talking about. The only reason I am continuing to do this is because somehow the State Department, the French, the United Nations, and all of them seem to be laboring under this misconception that I will go away and I will not talk about it anymore. I am not going to go away. I am going to keep talking about it. The problem we have right now started some time ago. I will share with you some of the new developments today. We are talking about the rigged election that took place in Cote d'Ivoire and the fact that someone whose name is Alassane Ouattara--we have demonstrated very clearly--won the election by fraudulent means. The President of that country is Laurent Gbagbo. He has been President now for a number of years. His wife, Simone Gbagbo, has been a gracious and great First Lady. What I wish to do--this is the seventh time I have been on the floor talking about this--is give you the latest on this grave situation in Cote d'Ivoire. I can only say it continues to be a targeted genocide against supporters and perceived supporters of the deposed President of Laurent Gbagbo. This will be, as I said, my seventh time speaking about this on the floor. The last time we talked about it was on April 4. When we first started talking about this, we were hoping we would be able to stop this, the State Department and others from going along with what is going on now in Cote d'Ivoire. I know it is complicated. A lot of people do not remember the genocide in Rwanda of 1994. Now we look back and say what a horrible event that was. Sure, it was horrible. But right now what is going on in the streets of Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire is something that has to be raised to the surface in front of the American people. I have new information that proves what I have been saying for the last 7 weeks, that the rebel leader Alassane Ouattara is still carrying out death squads, killing people in the streets of Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire. There they are. That is a death squad. These are the people who are murdering and torturing people in Abidjan as we speak. I bet there are not a handful of people who even know where Abidjan is. But this is the city, the capital of Cote d'Ivoire, a beautiful country. These people, coming in from the north, under this Alassane Ouattara, are in there today. I do not know how many hundreds of people they are murdering just today, but they are doing it and they are torturing and they are raping. Before I tell you the most recent information that came out from Human Rights Watch, I wish to remind you of what I said back on the May 27. That was when Amnesty International reported that a manhunt--I am quoting now from Amnesty International--they reported that ``a manhunt''--what I said right here from this podium. ``A manhunt was launched against Gbagbo loyalists in Abidjan and several senior officials close to him were beaten in the hours after his arrest.'' That was 2 weeks ago. I am further quoting now from Amnesty International. ``In the west of the country, thousands of people who fled their homes are still living in the forest, too frightened to return.'' Look at this. There are the burned, charred bodies of people who have been tortured to death. This just happened. This is going on today, right now. Here is a man who was severely beaten. He died right after that. Here is a small child who was put to death in the same way. Here they are in the middle of executions. That is going on right now. Gaetan Mootoo, who is Amnesty International's west Africa researcher, said: Human rights violations are still being committed against real or perceived supporters of Laurent Gbagbo. Alassane Ouattara's failure to condemn these acts can be seen as a green light by many of his security forces, and other armed elements fighting with them, to continue. Ouattara must publicly state that all violence against the civilian population must stop immediately. That is what the mandate was 2 weeks ago. That is what they were supposed to do 2 weeks ago. They went on to say from Amnesty International: Attacks against villages inhabited by people belonging to ethnic groups considered supporters of Gbagbo-- The legitimate President-- continued in the first weeks of May. . . . Between 6 and 8 May several villages were burned and dozens killed. Ouattara's republican forces justified these acts by saying they were looking for arms and Liberian mercenaries. They went on to describe this. There is an article in Guardian magazine that talked about this. This, again, was a little over 2 weeks ago. They said ``an Amnesty delegation spent 2 months in Ivory Coast, gathering more than 100 witness statements from people who survived the massacre in Duekoue. . . . '' That is what this actually is in that small town of Duekoue and the neighboring villages on March 29. All the statements indicated a systematic and targeted series of killings committed by the uniformed republican forces [loyal to Ouattara], who executed hundreds of men on political and ethnic grounds. Before killing them, they asked their victims to give their names, show identity cards. . . . Some of these cards were found beside the bodies. A woman who lived in Duekoue told researchers: ``They came into the yards and chased the women. Then they told the men to line up and asked them to state their first and second names and show their identity cards. They then executed them. I was present-- Quoting a woman who was watching her husband-- while they sorted out the men. Three young men, one of whom was about 15, were shot to death in front of me.'' Amnesty's report also accuses the UN mission, which has a base less than a mile from Duekoue, of fatal inertia. ``Fatal inertia,'' means they did nothing. They let this go on. We are talking about the United Nations. People around here--there are a lot of liberals in this body who do not think that anything is worthwhile unless it comes from some big body such as the United Nations. That is what is happening right now. So I wish to go ahead--I know there is someone else on the floor who wants to speak, but I just want to be sure we are informed that what was going on then--what I talked about 2 weeks ago--is still happening today. What happened today? The newly released report by Human Rights Watch states--this is a different group from Amnesty International and this came out today: Armed forces loyal to President Alassane Ouattara have killed at least 149 real or perceived supporters of the former President Laurent Gbagbo since taking control of the commercial capital of Abidjan in mid-April, 2011. The report goes on to describe the gruesome details, barbaric episodes of torture and the deaths at the hands of the Ouattara forces. This is happening today--right now. Here are a few examples. This is from Human Rights Watch. Ouattara's Forces . . . sealed off and searched areas formerly controlled by pro-Gbagbo militia . . . and the majority of documented abuses occurred in the longtime pro- Gbagbo stronghold of Yopougon. That is the town in that stronghold in the south part of the--you have to keep in mind Ouattara's forces came from the Muslim area up north. Most killings were point-blank executions-- You are seeing a point-blank execution. That is what it looks like right there, the gun to the head. Most killings were point-blank executions of youth from ethnic groups generally aligned with Gbagbo, in what appeared to be collective punishment for these groups' participation in Gbagbo's militias. One man described how Republican Forces soldiers killed his 21-year-old brother: ``Two of them grabbed his legs, another two held his arms behind him, and a fifth one held his head,'' he said. ``Then a guy pulled out a knife and slit my brother's throat. He was screaming. I saw his legs shaking after they'd slit his throat, the blood streaming down. As they were doing it, they said they had to eliminate all of the [Young] Patriots that had caused all the problems in the country.'' During the raid in Abidjan, the forces, the UN forces, the French and Ouattara, they went in--and it happens that the seated President, President Gbagbo, had not a lot of armaments, but he had a whole lot of young people. They were armed not with weapons but with baseball bats, with wooden clubs, and they surrounded the palace to try to protect him, knowing they would kill their President. This is where they are today. These are the young kids. That is in a gas station up here. They are all lined up there. They are executing some of them, starving, beating the rest of them. But look at that. There are the pictures of what is going on. These young patriots were young supporters to President Gbagbo, who surrounded his palace in a human chain, armed with just sticks and bats against the UN and French attack helicopters, which were bombing Gbagbo's residence, now being searched out by Ouattara's forces for torture and death. The report goes on. This report came out today. Another woman who witnessed the killing of 18 youths . . . was brutally raped by a Republican Forces soldier after being forced to load their vehicles with pillaged goods. On May 23, an elderly man in the same neighborhood saw Republican Forces execute his son, whom they accused of being a member of the pro-Gbagbo militia. Another witness described seeing the Republican Forces slit the throat of a youth in front of his father after finding an AK-47 and grenade in his bedroom during a 4 a.m. house-to- house search. The witness was stripped and forced to hand over his laptop computer, cell phones, and money. And was murdered. Human Rights Watch documented similar pillaging of scores of houses in Abidjan. By the way, I personally talked to these people in Abidjan who witnessed this going on. The witness, like many others interviewed by Human Rights Watch, wanted to flee Abidjan to his family village, but had no money for transportation since the Republican Forces had taken everything. Human Rights Watch says it documented 54 extrajudicial executions at detention sites, including police stations and the GESCO oil-- That is the station we just now saw. Those were the executions of the young kids taking place. In addition to the killings-- I am reading now-- Human Rights Watch interviewed young men who had been detained by the Republican Forces . . . and arrested for no other apparent reason than their age and ethnic group. Nearly every former detainee described being struck repeatedly with guns, belts, rope, and fists . . . for alleged participation in the Young Patriots. Those were the young people surrounding the palace. Several described torture, including forcibly removing teeth from one victim and placing a burning hot knife on another victim, then cutting him. Human Rights Watch reports ``witnesses consistently identified the killers and abusers as the Republican Forces'' of Ouattara, and they were ``overseen'' by Ouattara and Soros. Soros is a general of Ouattara. He is the one who is responsible for going into Duekoue. That is where they murdered all the people. The Soros they speak of is the one who was responsible for that under the supervision and direction of Ouattara. So the Human Rights Report calls on Ouattara ``to immediately ensure the humane treatment of anyone detained'' by his forces. This is something I have been demanding for 7 weeks. I hope now this report is going to draw attention so at least the State Department knows what is going on because our State Department is going along with all of this. They had an opportunity to voice their opinions and come up with a solution. The solution is to offer amnesty or to send him to a country where he will be able to live. I have been very critical of the State Department's handling of the situation in Cote d'Ivoire. I sent them evidence months ago that showed Alassane Ouattara engaged in massive election fraud during last year's Presidential election. I called for an election and then a new election. Of course, it was met with deaf ears. I called on the State Department to inquire as to the health and safety of President Gbagbo and his wife Simone. To date, we have heard nothing. Last year, I urged the State Department to use its power and influence and allow the reconciliation process in Cote d'Ivoire by allowing Gbagbo to go into exile. I pointed out that at least half of the population of Cote d'Ivoire supports Gbagbo. I acknowledged one African leader who is willing to accept Gbagbo in his country--a Sub- Saharan African country. The State Department has been aware of this for over a month. I strongly suggest that is a solution. It has been done before. It was done in Haiti with ``Baby Doc'' Duvalier. I know people are tired of hearing me talk about Cote d'Ivoire. I had a pleasant experience yesterday. I met the nominee for the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Bill Burns. I had a chance to visit with him about this and other problems. I found him to be very receptive. I am convinced he embodies the high traditions of the foreign service--selfless, nonpartisan diplomatic service. He indicated to me he will follow through with my requests of the State Department regarding the health and well-being of the Gbagbos. I appreciate that. I will finish by letting you see a photo of the two Gbagbos. Here is the President, Laurent Gbagbo, who I believe should be the legitimate President of Cote d'Ivoire. The first photo was a happy guy I knew. This next photo was him right after they took him. This side of his face is bashed in. His wife is a beautiful lady, Simone. Here is a picture of her. I have known her for over 15 years. She is a gracious lady and everybody loves her. After Alassane Ouattara took her, here is what she looked like. They ripped her hair out by the roots and went dancing up and down the streets of Abidjan with the hair. You have to use your imagination. This is what is going on today in Cote d'Ivoire. There they are, the death squad, and there is the First Lady, Simone. The last thing is that I hope somebody in the State Department cares enough to intervene and allow that party to go into exile. There is already an operation for that. Almost every President of every African country who called me is in agreement to what we are trying to do. I yield the floor. Amendment No. 427

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the presentation by the junior Senator from Oklahoma I be recognized as in morning business.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment for consideration of the following three amendments: Nos. 429, 430, and 438.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, with all due respect, I plan to support the amendment that has been addressed by my good friend from Iowa. Having come from the small business world, I am fully aware of the cost of these things, and tomorrow I will be introducing an amendment that is going to address something different, but really something with higher figures on it; that is, the cost of the EPA regulations. This is something that is a little bit different than what my friend from Iowa has been talking about. When we stop and think about the regulatory things that are going on right now with the Clean Water Act and the Solid Waste Disposal Act--we are talking about greenhouse gas regulations, things that should be addressed by legislation but are not, so they are trying to do it through regulation: boiler MACT, that is the maximum-achievable technology; utility MACT; ozone, actually the changing of the ozone standards when they are not using--as the law requires--the newer, updated information; and particulate matter and coal ash and some of the rest. But I am saving that for tomorrow. I am only saying that now because there is a cost to overregulation. That is what I know my friend, Senator Snowe, is trying to get at. It is my understanding--correct me if I am wrong--that we are not trying to get recognized and move current amendments aside. Is that correct now? I will not try to do that. However, I do want to mention that probably the most significant single amendment we are going to have on the EDA reauthorization bill would be the one to take down the maximum amount from $500 million to $300 million. It is kind of interesting because this program in my State of Oklahoma has been very successful. Believe it, time and time again, we have been able to do things, attract businesses and industry. Down in a little town called Elgin, OK, adjacent to the Ft. Sill live range, we have been able to put together something that is going to attract about a 150,000-square-foot building, all of that with a very small initial grant. So it has worked well. I understand some of the critics of this program. In some areas maybe it has not worked that well, if it has. However, I have noticed this, and since some of this jurisdiction is in the committee of which I am the ranking member, the Environment and Public Works Committee, it is important to look at these things. In these difficult times, I think it is important not to authorize more than we could anticipate would be very prudently appropriated. Since we have been authorizing $400 million in the past, and the total amount is something less than $300 million, I am going to have an amendment that would take down the existing limit on this, which is $500 million, down to $300 million. That will be amendment No. 430. It is already submitted. Interestingly enough, while I do not agree with President Obama on many things, he seems to agree on this, and I am going to read a statement he made: ``The Administration supports the passage of S. 782.'' But down here it says: However, the bill would authorize spending levels higher than those requested by the President's budget, and the administration believes that the need for smart investment to help Americans win the future must be balanced with the need to control spending and to reduce the deficit. The administration looks forward to working with Congress in reducing the limits of this bill. So I am going to make it easy for the administration and introduce this amendment No. 430. It is submitted right now. We are hoping to be able, at some point, to start setting aside and getting up these amendments for votes. That is one of the major reasons, as one of the sponsors of this bill, we have a lot of things we need to be talking about on the Senate floor. We have done nothing around here. We have not done appropriations. We have not done anything except a handful of noncontroversial judges--and some controversial, I might add. But, nonetheless, we should be talking about these things. There are a lot of things we want to get done, and certainly this is one of them. The other amendment, though, that is a little less understandable because it involves something that I throw in the category of being just not believable. We have a critter in Oklahoma and it is also around other parts of the country. It is called a Lesser Prairie Chicken. Going all of the way back to my days in the State legislature--I am talking about a long time ago, before a lot of you guys were born--people were concerned about the Lesser Prairie Chicken and were always trying to protect it. Yet our farmers and ranchers had a problem with that because they burrow down and make holes and our cows and our horses will break legs and all of that kind of thing. That has nothing to do with what is happening today except they are talking about having that--right now it is actually a candidate for an endangered species, and the reason is because they are claiming that, of course, the population is dwindling. Well, it is not. The problem is, we have too many of them. This is kind of interesting. The State-- for those of you whose geography is not too good--immediately north of my State of Oklahoma is Kansas. In Kansas they have a hunting season for the Lesser Prairie Chicken, but you can go a mile south across the Oklahoma border and it would be protected. It is ludicrous that they would do that. Here is another reason--a problem. First of all, federally mandated uses of alternative energy such as wind and all of that I think is inappropriate. We have all the resources we need in fossil fuels to run this country. We have the resources, in terms of oil, gas, and coal. We have enough to run this country for 100 years without being dependent on the Middle East. These are things we should be doing. Well, when you have these mandated percentages, that means you have to go into other forms of energy where the technology is not quite there. Now, wind technology is there, although a lot has to happen before it is going to be in a competitive match and not have to be subsidized. Nonetheless, Oklahoma happens to be in the wind belt. You go through Oklahoma, you can see in northern Texas all the way through Oklahoma and southern Kansas, we are in the wind belt. The problem we have--I have airplanes. I have many vices; flying airplanes is one of them. So I am over the western part of Oklahoma almost every weekend. When I take people who have not been there, they are amazed at the numbers of windmills. At any one place out there you can see 200 or 300. So it represents a huge investment. A lot of stakeholders are involved in it and they have said that certain things are going to happen. But wait a minute. If they end up listing the Lesser Prairie Chicken, that is going to all of a sudden put Fish and Wildlife in a position where they can stop this wind energy that is taking place right now. The reason they can, and it will not be their fault--they will say, well, it is a habitat. It is threatened because there are towers, and predators are on these towers and looking down. Then they would have to stop that from taking place. They could conceivably have to take down millions of dollars' worth of investments that are there right now. So I have an amendment to this bill that is going to preclude them from being able to list it. By the way, I have had a visit with the candidate who has been nominated to be Director of Fish and Wildlife, Dan Ashe. I had him, along with Secretary Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, in my office. We talked at some length about some of these things, and he has made a commitment to come out to Oklahoma and to see what a hardship this would be. So I think it would be an excellent idea to find some vehicle--and this vehicle seems to be the one that is being used right now to put such legislation on--that would preclude them from listing the Lesser Prairie Chicken. The private investment in Oklahoma wind power is, of course--we are one of the top States--we are at No. 13 of all 50 States in terms of wind. It could be significantly curtailed. State Senator Bryce Marlatt in Oklahoma noted that it was already a $300 million investment just in the last 3 years. So we want to protect this investment. We have OG&E, Oklahoma Gas and Electric, recently announcing the construction of a high-power line from Oklahoma City to Woodward. Woodward is kind of the mouth of the Panhandle. Then, eventually going into Guymon, all the way through what used to be called no man's land in the Panhandle of Oklahoma. These would be multimillion-dollar investments that could be severely challenged by the listing of the Lesser Prairie Chicken. So I will be offering that amendment. I already submitted the amendment and would look forward to explaining that further as the time comes. In the meanwhile, tomorrow I do want to get into the cost of the regulation. If we are really sincere in this country right now about doing something to promote business and industry, the first thing we need to do is get the bureaucrats off the backs of the businesses out there that are planning to expand and those that are in existence today. So we will be addressing that tomorrow. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, the EDA is something that has worked very well in our State of Oklahoma. First, let me say the Senator from California is right--there are many issues on which we do not agree. In fact, we have fought tooth and nail for a long time against the cap- and-trade and a lot of these environmental issues and will continue to do so. However, what we agree most on is not necessarily the EDA program but the need for reauthorization of transportation. We have a very serious problem. In my State of Oklahoma, just a short while ago a young lady, the mother of two small children, was driving under a bridge, and it crumbled and fell and killed her. There are things like that, crises that are going on right now. We were very proud when we had what we thought at the time was a very robust highway reauthorization bill, a transportation reauthorization bill in 2005. While the amount sounded like quite a bit, it was really just barely enough to maintain what we had. There are some things government is supposed to be doing. I am always ranked as one of the most conservative Members, but I am a big spender in areas such as national defense and infrastructure. Those are needs we have. In putting together this bill and taking it out of committee--and it did come out of committee unanimously--there had been a GAO report that talked about duplication. I put in language in order to have them identify anything that would be duplicative so that would come out. That was a little bit of a surprise to a lot of us. I don't question the report. I think it was probably accurate. But we took care of that because we don't want to have any duplication of efforts. The chairman said there is a 7-to-1 ratio. We have actually done better than that in the State of Oklahoma. In one area, it was a $2.25 million EDA grant, in Elgin, OK, which is adjacent to Fort Sill, OK, which is adjacent to a live range. It was one that was intended to actually produce a 150,000-square-foot manufacturing business employing many people. Because this administration axed some of the military programs, it did not turn out to be that beneficial, but the ratio there was still well in excess of 10 to 1. If we want to get the economy moving, this is a way of doing it. We have to do it in a way that is well thought out. I am hoping this bill will be. It is my understanding it will be open to amendments, and there will be a lot of amendments and a lot of my friends who are not supportive of this want to have this vehicle for that purpose. I certainly respect that and look forward to working on this bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 10 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have made four speeches on the floor in the last month about the disaster, the catastrophe that is taking place in a country in west Africa called Cote d'Ivoire. Cote d'Ivoire is a country whose President, the legitimate President, I might add, is Laurent Gbagbo, with his wife Simone. Someone named Alassane Quattara, from the northern part of Cote d'Ivoire, with a rigged election, came in; it was certified. It was all set up before we knew what was going on. That individual's name is Quattara. His death squads today, this very moment as we speak, are roaming the streets of Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire. He is murdering and he is raping. Right now they have in captivity Laurent Gbagbo, the legitimate President of Cote d'Ivoire. I think they are in the process of perhaps killing him right now. We don't know that. The State Department does not know it. No one knows it. We had a hearing. The State Department was totally without compassion or concern over what is happening in the streets of Abidjan. We saw, we witnessed on video, the helicopters coming through and destroying that city. We have friends there right now who tell us that even today the death squads of Alassane Quattara are roaming the streets murdering people. No one can say within 10,000 people how many people they murdered. My concern is it is too late to do anything about that. They rigged the election. I documented it. I sent the documentation to the State Department. They paid no attention to it. France was behind the whole thing. France wants to have as much control as they can of west Africa. They conned the United Nations into it and our State Department went along with it. What is happening right now is so inhumane. I wish I had the pictures I showed before. The beautiful First Lady, Simone Gbagbo, is a beautiful lady, and they took her into captivity, pulled her hair out by the roots, and ran through the streets of Abidjan, holding up her hair in their hands. They are murdering everyone who is a friend of that administration. Well, I have one plea right now. There are a lot of options on what they can do. They can murder the President and First Lady--and they are considering that now. They are trying to consider some way to make it look like suicide. I don't know what they are doing. The State Department doesn't know what they are doing. Unfortunately, the State Department doesn't even care what they are doing. One of the options would be to allow the President and the First Lady and some who are close to go to another country in Sub-Saharan Africa and be able to stay in that country. We have already located host countries to allow that to take place. So I am making an appeal right now. I can't get the Secretary of State to talk to me about it. I can't get anyone else but just a handful of people, but we need to do something and do something now-- today. If we wait until after this recess, I would almost say their blood will be on the hands of the State Department because we can do something about it now. All we have to do is encourage the new, illegitimately elected President of Cote d'Ivoire--Alassane Ouattara-- and his administration to give an opportunity for another state to host these two individuals. Quite frankly, I think that would be a very smart thing politically for him to do because with the other two options, we all know what happens. We know what martyrs are, and that is what would happen. So this is, I guess, a final appeal to anyone who is sensitive to the torturing, raping, and murdering that is going on today to join me in encouraging the State Department, the United Nations, France, and Alassane Ouattara to turn over President and Mrs. Gbagbo to a host country for their asylum. With that, I yield the floor.