Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, this is a fairly simple bill. I have spoken on the floor several times about this bill. As I made very clear before, and there is no sense debating it now, I have been opposed to some of the moratoria we have been talking about on earmarks because, No. 1, they don't save any more if you kill an earmark and, No. 2, it is something I have serious problems with in terms of our oath of office. We raise our hands, as the Senator from North Dakota knows, and swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. We don't say we are disenfranchising ourselves from article I, section 9 of the Constitution, which is very clearly the responsibility of the legislative branch to pass or to introduce authorization bills and appropriations bills. This bill--I do have quite a few cosponsors on this--is a proposal that would freeze discretionary spending at the 2008 level. Here is the reason I am doing this. President Obama and some of the Democrats had proposed that they would freeze the nonsecurity discretionary spending at 2010 levels. The problem I have with that is, this is after it has already been increased by 20 percent, so it is kind of a big deal. You increase it by 20 percent and then you freeze it. What I am doing is taking the same interpretation or the same definition of the nonsecurity--this would exempt Defense, Homeland Security, State, Veterans' Administration, and national security functions of Energy, so it is the same language that is in the Obama proposal, but I am taking it back to 2008. This would have the effect over a period of time, over a 10-year budget cycle, of reducing the amount by about--just under $1 trillion, $900-some billion. So I wish to have this considered. I would inquire of the Chair if I am now in the queue or what is the status of this at this time?

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

Mr. INHOFE. All right. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, in 5 minutes we will be voting on an amendment I have. I have explained the amendment several times. I first introduced it as S. 3095, the Honest Expenditure and Limitation Program Act of 2010. Let me say what it is. We will be voting, if this goes down, on the McCain amendment and another amendment like we voted on before. There is an honest difference of opinion. What I thought would be appropriate is, since we will be voting, very likely, on another earmark amendment and since I don't think anyone is going to question the fact that defeating an earmark doesn't save a nickel, if we have an alternative that really does mean something, this would be our chance to vote on it. What I would like to do is briefly explain what the amendment is that we will be voting on in a few minutes. Some time ago, President Obama came out with his program where he said, during the State of the Union: I plan to freeze nondefense discretionary spending at 2010 levels. A lot of people applauded, believing that to be some type of a gesture that was a conservative gesture that would reduce spending when, in fact, it didn't because he was talking about the 2010 levels--that is after 1 year--and it has been increased by 20 percent. What he was saying is we are going to raise the nondefense discretionary spending by 20 percent and then freeze it. Rather than raise it by 20 percent and freeze it, the fiscally responsible thing to do is to go ahead and freeze it at the previous level. Quite often, we have heard President Obama say what he inherited from the previous administration. I always hasten to say that, yes, there were some deficits during the Bush administration. But the deficit in the first year of the Obama administration--about $1.5 trillion--is more than the last 5 years collectively of President George W. Bush. It is important for people to understand that. We have an unsustainable debt. You are looking at someone who has 20 kids and grandkids. It is the next generation that is going to face it. We can't continue to do this. Yes, it is a nice gesture. A lot of people think you can eliminate earmarks and eliminate funding. That has nothing to do with it. You don't save a nickel. But you do with this. If we pass this amendment, we would be able to effectively reduce the expenditures over a 10-year budget cycle of just under $1 trillion. What we are trying to do is have a freeze on discretionary spending at 2008 levels for all nonsecurity appropriations, worded the same way President Obama's effort was worded. The only difference is that we use the 2008 spending level. We have a lot of cosponsors. I hope people will seriously consider this. If they really want to reduce spending, this is their chance to do so. I understand we have a vote that is coming at 15 after the hour; is that correct?

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I call up a second-degree amendment No. 3459 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, the regular order is amendment No. 3475?

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, let me say that I do like all the guys I am opposing on this legislation. I have been particularly close to Jim DeMint for quite some time. It happens that Senator DeMint and I, almost every rating that comes along, are considered always in the top five most conservative Members of the Senate. In fact, I tell the occupier of the chair who already knows this, that just last week I was declared by the National Journal to be the most conservative Member of the Senate. I say that because I am disagreeing with a lot of my friends who have come forth to try to do something about what they call earmarks. Let me try to make a couple points that I think are significant. First of all, an earmark that is in a current underlying bill, if it is defeated, does not save one cent, not one. People out there believe--and I have heard the talks on the floor where they say: Well, we have to do something about the next generation and all that. Look, I have 20 kids and grandkids. I am the guy who is concerned about the next generation. So when you try to make people believe you are doing something that is saving money and doing something about the horrible spending that is going on, it is not sincere, because an earmark does not add money. What you do when you kill an earmark is redirect it or you might say you have an earmark, but you do not like what they put in, so you are going to reearmark it to something else. I will give you a couple examples. These examples, I know the Chair is familiar with this because he serves on the Armed Services Committee. They are two earmarks that Senator McCain had; one was the earmark for the F-22, where the President had had an amount of money for the F-22, our fifth-generation fighter. I thought it was not enough. Several of us added more, about $1.75 billion to that program. Senator McCain--and I respect the fact that he disagreed--disagreed on this issue. But he had an amendment to strike that earmark, which was a successful effort. So he struck it. However, that did not change the fact that the NDAA, that is the National Defense Authorization Act, was still at $679.8 billion, the same as it would have been had that earmark not been struck. What happens to that money? That was the $1.75. Well, that goes back into the defense system, into the Pentagon, where President Obama and his people can make a determination as to how to spend that. Using another example very similar to that, when we had the appropriations bill--that was authorization--when we had the appropriations bill, it was at $625.8 billion. We had an earmark that-- you can call it an earmark because we increased the amount of money within the bill, and we offset it to increase the number of C-17s. We felt, in our judgment, that is what should happen. That would have been $2.5 billion. So Senator McCain tried to get that out of it, and he was unsuccessful. So I have given you two examples, one where you successfully defeat an earmark, one where you are not successful. But neither one changes the underlying bill. So for that reason, it does not happen. Another one the Senator had was having to do with transportation. I respect him. I do not agree with him. But he had an amendment that would strike some things from the Transportation bill amounting to about $1.7 billion. He redirected that to NextGen. NextGen is a program I am very familiar with because it has to do with the next generation of avionics and all of it. I know the Chair is aware of this; that when Senator Glenn retired, that left me as the only active pilot in the Chamber or the only commercial pilot. So I stay on those issues. I found out I disagreed with Senator McCain on that because CBO said we could do the NextGen without this additional money. So the point I am trying to make is, eliminating earmarks does not save any money. Here is another thing that I think is significant. Sean Hannity had a three-night report that I enjoyed. What he did, he had a list of 102 earmarks. He went down these earmarks, and everyone enjoyed it. Last night he had the last 20. So he went: Earmark No. 20, 19, 18, 17, 16-- went all the way down to earmark No. 1. There is not time to cover all 102 of these. I did this on Monday on the floor, by the way. But it was such things as the $3.4 million to the Florida Department of Transportation to build an ecopassage to allow turtles to cross under the highway so they would not get hit by a car. That was $3.4 million; $450,000 for 22 concrete toilets in the Mark Twain National Forest; another earmark, $325,000, to study the mating decisions of female cactus bugs. That was another one. This country needs that, of course; $300,000 to buy a helicopter equipped to detect radioactive rabbit droppings; $400,000 to study whether adults with attention deficit disorder smoke more than other adults. This is one that really wound me up: $500,000 in a grant to a researcher named in the climategate scandal. Here is a guy who has been cooking the science, and we are going to give him half a million dollars. Then there is $500,000 to study the impact of global warming on wildflowers in Colorado. I could go through all 102. But there is one thing they all have in common. I will bet you not many people know what that is. Not one of these 102 was a congressional earmark. These were all Presidential or bureaucratic earmarks. There is where the problem is. But they won't talk about it because the public has been duped into thinking congressional earmarks are a problem. Let me tell you what happened over in the other House. I am criticizing my own Republicans now. The Republican caucus got together and they had a resolve. They said: Resolved, that it is the policy of the Republican Conference that no Member shall request a congressional earmark, limited tax benefit, or limited tariff benefit, as such terms are used in clause 9, rule XXI of the Rules of the House . . . That finally defines what an earmark is. I was thankful for that. Even though their policy was bad, at least they talked about what an earmark is. Here is what it is. Clause 9, rule XXI applies to all legislation in the House of Representatives, whether it be authorization or appropriation. That is what we do for a living around here. There is an old document nobody pays any attention to anymore. It is called the Constitution. If you look up article I, section 9 of the Constitution, it says that no money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of the appropriations made by law. That is us. Besides, if you remember studying about this--I know the Chair and I have talked about his knowledge of the Constitution--it was James Madison who was the father of the Constitution. He was the one who came up with the three coequal branches of government--the judiciary, executive, and legislative. He is the one who coined the phrase ``power of the purse.'' That was James Madison. If you read the Federalist Papers, he made it clear what we were supposed to do. What we in the House and we in the Senate are supposed to do is pass laws that are necessary to have appropriations and authorization. The Chair and I are both on the Senate Armed Services Committee. That is the authorization committee. We go through and study what we need to defend America--missile defense, for example. We need to have redundancy in all phases--the boost face, the midcourse face, the terminal phase. All these things are complicated, and we really can't expect the general public to be aware of it because they are too busy making money to pay for all this fun we are having up here. We have this authorization. That is what the Constitution says we are supposed to be doing. Then appropriations. After we authorize something, study as to whether it should be a priority, then we have an appropriation to put it into law. That is, again, what we are supposed to be doing. The Constitution tells us we have to appropriate and authorize. The oath of office--everyone here has taken the oath of office. In that oath, we say we solemnly swear we will support and bear true allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. Wait a minute. They are going to uphold the Constitution, but they have just said by their own resolution that they are going to break the Constitution. I look at this, and I think about how people, if they only knew this was going on, if they only knew that all these earmarks Sean Hannity talked about, all 102 were earmarks that came from unelected bureaucrats--people not responsible. There was an interesting article in the Hill paper the other day. It was from February 4. They say lobbyists are now going to Federal agencies because of all these efforts because of earmarks and all that. So we have turned over and given to unelected bureaucrats what we are supposed to be doing under our sworn oath. I know Senator McCain is going to have an amendment coming up tomorrow. I would like to suggest that people who talk about not doing earmarks have done earmarks. In the case of Senator McCain, there was an article titled ``McCain Breaks Own Pork Rule.'' This was from November 7, 2003. Then we have Senator DeMint, who--again, I really value him. He is one of my closest friends. I remember when he was first running for office. I went to South Carolina, and they talked about how roads were so important down there, and he swore he would support them. So he did. He kept his word. These are earmarks. Senator DeMint: $10 million for the construction of I-73 at Myrtle Beach; $15 million to widen U.S. 278 to six lanes; $10 million, engineering, design, and construction of a port access road; $10 million in improvements to U.S. 17; $5 million, widening SC 9; $3 million to complete construction. These are earmarks that were done by Senator DeMint. I don't blame him. That is what we are supposed to be doing. I have done the same thing. You add up all these earmarks on just that bill, and it comes to $110 million. Those are Senator DeMint's earmarks on that one bill. What I am saying is, these guys all earmark, but somehow the public thinks there is something wrong with earmarks. I say: Fine. Define earmarks. Be as honest as the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives says earmarks are authorizations and appropriations. What we need to do is remember what our jobs are here. Again, the thing that frustrates me is that there are so many people writing editorials thinking earmarks are going to somehow cut spending. They don't cut any spending. Eliminating an earmark merely transfers it from our constitutional responsibility to the executive branch. I am hoping people will understand this. I can remember 8 years ago. Everyone said at that time that global warming was caused by manmade gases, anthropogenic gases. I thought, it must be true; everybody says it is true, until the Wharton School of Economics came along and did a study during the Kyoto Treaty days. They said: What would it cost America if we were to sign and ratify that treaty and live by its emissions restrictions? The range they gave us was between $300 and $400 billion a year. We are talking about $300 to $400 billion a year. I see my friend from Arkansas. I suggest to him, that $300 to $400 billion a year would cost every taxpayer he has who files a return in the State of Arkansas just under $3,000 a year. That is what it would cost. We didn't ratify that. Along came, in 2003, the McCain-Lieberman bill--another cap-and-trade bill to do essentially the same thing Kyoto did--and then the McCain- Lieberman bill in 2005 and the Warner-Lieberman bill in 2008 and the Sanders-Boxer bill in 2009. All of these have one thing in common; that is, cap and trade. Right now, we have Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator John Kerry trying to change the word, not use ``cap and trade,'' but essentially it would be cap and trade. All of that would have cost between $300 and $400 billion a year. I bring that up because it is pertinent to this. I brought it up because 8 years ago nobody believed me when I said it is going to cost that much money and it will not accomplish anything. Then, as the years went by, finally the Environmental Protection Agency director, appointed by President Obama, in response to a question I had--I asked: Let me ask you this. If we were to pass this bill--that was the Markey bill; they are all the same; cap and trade is cap and trade--how much would it reduce the emissions of CO2? Her answer was: It wouldn't reduce it. Common sense tells us it wouldn't. If we do something unilaterally in America, it will not reduce the worldwide amount. As we lose our jobs here, they to go China and Mexico, places where they are generating more electricity. It will have the effect of increasing not reducing it. It took America 7 years. I was a bad guy for 7 years because in advance I said that this is what it was going to cost. It was a phony issue. Finally, they agreed. This has endured 3 years. I have been trying to explain to people for the last 3 years that you don't save any money if you kill earmarks. We need to define what they are. The House has been honest. They have defined it as authorization and appropriation, which is what the Constitution says we are supposed to do. Everybody who says they are against earmarks has been introducing earmarks. The bottom line is, we need to really address something meaningful. What I have done is I have introduced a bill that will do what President Obama said he was going to do; that is, freeze the nondefense discretionary spending at the 2010 levels. The only problem with that is he increased it in his budget by 20 percent. You are talking about increasing the nondiscretionary or the discretionary nondefense spending after you have increased it by 20 percent. So I introduced a bill that says let's take it back. This President is always talking about what he inherited from the Bush administration. In 2008, the amount of money that was called discretionary spending was 20 percent less than 2010. If it is good for 2010, let's bring it down to 2008. We have an opportunity that would save just under $1 trillion in the next 10-year budget cycle. That is the answer. That is what I think we ought to be doing instead of sitting around and deceiving the public into thinking that just because the media doesn't understand it, somehow earmarks are going to accomplish something worthwhile. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent to be recognized to speak as in morning business for such time as I may consume.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, I would like to make one statement on the DeMint amendment that was just defeated. I have to say this, as the person who was most recently characterized as the most conservative Member of the Senate: If there is anyone out there who thinks that was a conservative vote on earmarks, they are wrong. There has never been one case where an earmark has saved one penny that has been reduced. I have to say this: Senator DeMint had $70 million worth of highway earmarks that were in the amendment that we are talking about right now. Real quickly: The Feingold amendment does not reduce the deficit one penny. Because of environmental laws and other things, the CBO and the administration have said the average time for a highway project is 13 years. For example, in my State of Oklahoma, Highway 40--a huge project--was started in 1991. If this amendment had been in there, that project would have been terminated in 2001. I urge my conservative friends, unless you just don't like highways and roads, to kill this amendment.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have a response.

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, could I ask unanimous consent to have 15 seconds---- Mr. ROCKEFELLER addressed the Chair.

Mr. INHOFE. For a question?

Mr. INHOFE. Would you be willing to give me 2 minutes? That is all I need. I want to say and make sure everyone understands this. I have a totally different argument against this. I happen to be ranked as the most conservative Member of the Senate, and all you are trying to do with this thing--all you will end up doing, if you are successful, is giving all this to the executive branch.

Mr. INHOFE. Well----

Mr. INHOFE. I ask for a unanimous consent request, please.

Mr. INHOFE. For a unanimous consent request.

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. INHOFE. Let me ask----

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, after weeks of the global warming scandal--and we talked about it on the floor, what happened with climategate just prior to the Copenhagen convention--I had the opportunity to visit and to uncover some of the things we had suspected were going on for a long period of time. Five years ago, I had occasion to give a speech on this floor, where I outlined, from information that had come through the backdoor to me from scientists, how bad the science was and how it had been, in fact, cooked. Then, of course, along came climategate. After weeks of the global warming scandal, the world's first potential climate billionaire is running for cover. Yes, I am talking about Al Gore. He is under siege these days. The credibility of the IPCC is eroding, EPA's endangerment finding is collapsing, and belief that anthropogenic global warming is leading to catastrophe is evaporating. Gore seems to be drowning in a sea of his own global warming illusions. Nevertheless, he is desperately trying to keep global warming alarmism alive. It is my understanding that tonight he is having a high-level meeting of all his global warming alarmists around the country to see how they can resurrect this issue and regroup. Consider Gore's nearly 2,000-word op-ed piece that recently appeared in the New York Times. It is a sure-fire sign of desperation. Gore's piece was about China, solar and wind power, globalization, rising sea levels, big polluters, melting glaciers, and cap and trade. One searches in vain for any explanation of the IPCC's errors and mistakes or of Phil Jones, the former director of the Climate Research Unit. That is in East Anglia. We heard a lot about him. He was the one who was actually assembling a lot of the science--or so-called science--or creating the science, I should say, to support the position of those who believe anthropogenic gases cause global warming. Seven years ago, I believe this month, I had occasion to study on the floor and find out that, in fact, we had spent so much time on this issue that everyone was believing this to be true. When we realized the science was not there, I made the statement that the notion that anthropogenic gases are causing catastrophic global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. What is Gore's take on the climategate scandal? Climate scientists, he wrote, were ``besieged'' by an ``onslaught'' of hostile information requests from climate ``skeptics.'' That is it, nothing else. Even the IPCC announced last week an independent review of its process and procedures. You see, former Vice President Gore was saying: Oh, that was nothing; that was just a few comments. I might add, one of the largest and most respected publications in the UK, which is called the UK Telegraph, said this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation. The Atlantic Monthly, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsweek and Time and many others are saying this is a legitimate scandal and reform of the IPCC is absolutely essential. Let's keep in mind, IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is the United Nations. They put this together back in 1988 to try to scare people into changing our policy in this country. By the way, I mentioned Time magazine as one of the many magazines and publications that have now said, looking at climategate, this investigation should be there. This is the same Time magazine--and I don't blame them for doing this; I would have done the same thing--that back in 1975, on the cover they had: Another Ice Age is coming, we are all going to die. A couple years ago, you might remember the last polar bear standing on the last cube of ice and it said: Global warming is coming; we are all going to die. Anyway, the publications are coming around. When it comes to reform, openness, transparency, and peer review, when it comes to practicing good science, Gore stands alone. He wants the world to put its head in the sand and pretend nothing is happening. It reminds me of the story of the two boy ostriches chasing two girl ostriches through the woods, and they were catching them. One girl ostrich said to the other, when they came up to a clearing: What do we do? Well, let's hide. Each of the girl ostriches stuck their heads in a respective hole, and the boy ostriches came galloping up to the clearing and one looked at the other and said: Where did the girls go? That is what we are looking at here. They are hiding their heads in the sand. Then Gore is writing in this op-ed piece, even if all these disasters will not happen, we still have to deal with national security risks and energy independence. Of course, Gore fails to mention that the United States leads the world in technically recoverable resources of oil, coal, and natural gas. According to a recent release from a report from the Congressional Research Service, America's combined recoverable natural gas, oil, and coal endowment is the largest on Earth. America's recoverable resources are far greater than those of Saudi Arabia, China, and Canada combined, and that is without including America's absolute immense oil shale and methane hydrate deposits. It is always kind of humorous when people say: We have to get rid of our oil and gas and our coal. Yet those are the things which we are using to generate the energy necessary to run America. They say: Well, we have to become independent. But they want to do away with all of that. We have enough oil and gas and coal--and now nuclear, which we are expanding--to take care of our needs so we wouldn't have to be dependent upon any foreign country for any of our energy. The problem is a political problem. Democrats will not allow us to go ahead and explore our own resources and exploit them. We are the only country that doesn't do that. Gore has to know the edifice of alarmism is starting to crumble, so he is swinging for the fences, hoping for a home run to change the game. But Gore is striking out, as he loses his support almost daily in Congress and from the American people. Let's face it; Gore's side of the argument is collapsing. He and his allies are running short on facts, and Gore's criticism of recent events rings hollow. For example, after the climategate scandal broke, Gore was asked by an online publication called Slate as to what he thought of it. Gore's response: Well, I haven't read all of the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old. Obviously, of course, that is not true because they go all the way up to 2009. So all he is left with is a two-pronged fork of anger and attack. Just read the New York Times op-ed piece. By the way, I was told his op-ed piece in the New York Times was three times larger than that which they normally will receive. He wrote that those who question climate alarmism are members of a ``criminal generation.'' That is me--a criminal? Is Roger Pielke, Jr., a criminal? How about Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama, Richard Lindzen of MIT, Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center? No, they haven't committed any crimes. They just want honest, open scientific debate. I might add that thus far the only scientists who commit crimes are those at the CRU. Again, that is the collection point of all the science that the United Nations has put together in this thing called IPCC--those involved in climategate, according to findings of the UK's Information Commissioner. The Weekly Standard recently placed Al Gore on its cover--we have that right here--showing that the emperor has no clothes. The cover story, by Steven Hayward, of the Weekly Standard is entitled, ``In Denial: The Meltdown of the Climate Campaign.'' Hayward writes a compelling narrative of climategate and its consequences. This story is a must read for anyone interested in the recent implosion of global warming alarmism. Let me mention this: If you look at the movie ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' the one where he made, I guess, most of his money, the last sentence says, I believe: Are you willing to change the way you live? Well, we thought that was probably a good idea, so let's put that up here. It has now been 1,009 days since we have invited Al Gore to sign this pledge. Here is what it says: As a believer that human-caused global warming is a moral, ethical, and spiritual issue affecting our survival; that home energy use is a key component of overall energy use; that reducing my fossil fuel-based home energy usage will lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions; and that leaders on moral issues should lead by example; therefore, I pledge to consume no more energy for use in my home, my residence, than the average American household 1 year from today. Well, it hasn't been a year; it was 3 years ago. It was 1,009 days ago. Then, of course, there is always the question: What if we are wrong? What if we should do something? Since the Kyoto treaty failed--and we came this close, Mr. President. You weren't in your current position at that time, but this is how close we came to actually signing on and ratifying the Kyoto treaty. We didn't do it. Then along came Members of Congress in 2003, where we had the McCain- Lieberman bill--cap-and-trade bill--and in 2005 we had the McCain- Lieberman bill, then the Warner-Lieberman bill in 2008, we had the Boxer-Sanders bill in 2009, and now it looks as if we are going to have the John Kerry and Lindsay Graham bill that is up. What do they all have in common? It is all cap and trade. Mr. President, I have some respect for James Hansen. But the one thing I really respect is that he has made this statement about cap and trade. He said cap and trade is a devious way of getting away from the issue. The main issue is that we have to do something about greenhouse gas emissions, anthropogenic gas, CO2. Well, why not just go ahead and have a tax on them? There is a good reason the cap and traders don't want a tax. Because then the American people would know what it is costing them. What is the cost of cap and trade? With any of these bills I just mentioned, it is approximately the same because cap and trade is cap and trade. You have to somehow make everyone think they are winners and everyone else is a loser. So we had the ranges come from the Wharton School of Economics, from MIT, from the CRA, and the range is always somewhere between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. Now, that is significant--$300 to $400 billion a year. Mr. President, if you are like I am, it is kind of hard to relate to billions and trillions of dollars. So what I try to do is relate it to what it would cost the average family that pays taxes in my State of Oklahoma. How much would this cost that family? It comes out to be a little over $3,000 a year. Now, $3,000 a year is an awful lot of money. What do we get for that? Let's get the other chart up here. I had occasion the other day to hear from Lisa Jackson, who is President Obama's Administrator of the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency-- a fine lady whom I think an awful lot of--when she was testifying before us. Now, this chart--and people are not questioning this chart's reliability--reflects what would happen: U.S. action without international action will have no effect on world CO2. It just stands to reason. And these are the bills that have been introduced that I mentioned before--the McCain-Lieberman bill in 2003, McCain-Lieberman in 2005, Warner-Lieberman in 2008, and some of the rest of them. It reflects what would happen if we had passed those and what would happen if we don't pass them. The chart shows nothing. I asked the question of Lisa Jackson, President Obama's Administrator of the EPA. I said: This chart up here, is this an accurate chart? In other words, to put it in plain words, to better understand it, if we were to pass--at that time it might have been the Markey bill. I am not sure which one it was, but it doesn't matter because cap and trade is cap and trade. If we had passed that bill or any of the Senate bills we have talked about, how would that have reduced CO2 worldwide? Her response: Well, it wouldn't really reduce it because we are doing that unilaterally in the United States of America. What happens when we take away our ability to have energy in America? We have to manufacture it somewhere, and they have estimated how many thousands of manufacturing jobs if we were to pass any of these bills. Those are polar bears, by the way, and they are all smiling in case you can't see that too well, Mr. President. We would lose our manufacturing jobs to countries such as China and Mexico and India. Right now, in China, they are cranking out two new coal-fired generating plants every week. Some people are saying: Oh, they are going to follow us and our example and start restricting their CO2. No, they are not. They are preparing right now to be able to generate the electricity necessary as the people start coming in. So that is what is happening right now. I would say this, though. I don't want you to feel--even though his world is crumbling, don't feel sorry for Al Gore because he is doing all right. There is actually an article that just came out--this is the National Review--at the same time a New York Times article did, and I have kind of put together things from both of them. This from the New York Times says: Former Vice President Al Gore thought he had spotted a winner last year when a small California firm sought financing for an energy-saving technology from the venture capital firm where Al Gore is a partner. The company, the Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient. It came to Mr. Gore's firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of Silicon Valley's top venture capital providers, looking for $75 million to expand its partnership with utilities seeking to install millions of so-called smart meters in homes and businesses. Mr. Gore and his partners decided to back the company, and in gratitude Silver Spring retained him and John Doerr, another Kleiner Perkins partner, as unpaid corporate advisers. The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contacts. Wait a minute, we are talking about Silver Spring, the company with which Al Gore is connected. Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr. Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in the coming years. Silver Spring Networks is a foot soldier in the global green energy revolution Mr. Gore hopes to lead. Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation if and when it comes. Critics, mostly the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world's first ``carbon billionaire,'' profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures that he has invested in. Representative Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, asserted at a hearing this year that Mr. Gore stood to benefit personally from the energy and climate policies he was urging Congress to adopt. Mr. Gore says that he is simply putting his money where his mouth is. ``Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in this country?'' Mr. Gore said. ``I am proud of it. I am proud of it.'' In an e-mail message this week, he said his investment activities were consistent with his public advocacy over the decades. ``I have advocated policies to promote renewable energy and accelerate reductions in global warming pollution for decades, including all the time I was in public service.'' Mr. Gore wrote: ``As a private citizen, I have continued to advocate the same policies. Even though the vast majority of my business career has been in areas that do not involve renewable energy or global warming pollution reductions, I absolutely believe in investing in ways that are consistent with my values and beliefs. I encourage others to invest in the same way.'' Mr. Gore has invested a significant portion of the tens of millions of dollars that he has earned since leaving government in 2001 in a broad array of environmentally friendly energy and technology business ventures, like carbon trading markets, solar cells, and waterless urinals. He has also given away millions more to finance the nonprofit he founded, the Alliance for Climate Protection, and to another group, the Climate Project, which trains people to present the slide show that was the basis of his documentary ``An Inconvenient Truth.'' Royalties from his new book on climate change, ``Our Choice,'' printed on 100 percent recycled paper, will go to the alliance, an aide said. Other public figures, like speaker Nancy Pelosi and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who have vocally supported government financing of energy-saving technologies have investments in alternative energy ventures. Some scientists and policy advocates also promote energy policies that personally enrich them. As a private citizen, Mr. Gore asked not to have to disclose his income and assets, as he did-- as I do, as others do in this Chamber in his years in Congress and the White House. When he left government in 2001, he listed assets of less than $2 million, including homes in suburban Washington and in Tennessee. Since then his net worth has skyrocketed, helped by timely investments in Apple and Google, profits from books and his movie, and the scores of speeches for which he can be paid more than $100,000 . . . a speech. I suggest now that price may be going down a little bit for Al Gore. Mr. Gore's spokeswoman would not give a figure for his current net worth, but the scale of his wealth is evident in a single investment of $35 million in Capricorn Investment Group. . . . It goes on and on. I ask unanimous consent to submit the rest of this for the Record because it is pretty good reading.

Mr. INHOFE. ``Marc Morano, a climate change skeptic who was recently a top aide to [me], Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said that what he saw as Mr. Gore's alarmism and occasional exaggerations distorted the debate and also served his personal financial interests.'' I say don't feel sorry for Al Gore. He is doing fine right now. Last, on this subject, my wife and I have been married for 50 years. We have 20 kids and grandkids. They are achievers. They are great people. All 20 of them, all but 6, live within walking distance of my home in Tulsa, OK. Not many people can say that. The one who doesn't is the family of six of my daughter Molly, her husband, and four children. It happens one of these children you can't see very well right here, Zegita Marie, actually was one we found in Ethiopia. My daughter adopted her. Molly only had three boys and always wanted a girl so she adopted this cute little girl. This little girl, by the way, is 9 years old. She is reading at college level. She came up to Washington to speak to a group I sponsor every year. It is called the African Dinner, about 400 or so of them. Anyway, when they are up here, I say to my friend in the chair, they found, because of the global warming problem we had, we had all these snowstorms and blizzards and consequently the airport was closed and they were stuck here. What do you do with a family of six when they are stuck? They went out and built, of all things, an igloo. They are kind of engineering oriented. This is not an igloo. It sleeps four people with ice bricks and all that. On top of that they put ``Al Gore's New Home.'' It is right next to the Library of Congress. This is a picture of it. I thought that was fun. I regret to say one of the real liberal stations, Keith Olbermann, declared my daughter's family as ``The Worst Family in America.'' One last subject here I want to address. I want to compliment Sean Hannity for something I saw last night. I happened to get in at the last of it, so I found out what this guy is up to. What he has done is he has taken--there is a lot of wasteful, stupid spending in America. He has taken 102 of the ridiculous things that we spend money on around here and he has listed them. He started several days ago. No. 102: Protecting a Michigan insect collection from other insects--$187,00O; No. 101: Highway beautified by fish art in Washington-- $10,000. It goes on and on. Over those last few evenings he listed these. Last night was the last 20 of them. Let me quickly run over these in reverse order. No. 20: Researching how paying attention improves performance of difficult tasks in Connecticut. That was just $850,000. No. 19: Kentucky Transportation Department awarded contracts to companies associated with the road contractor accused of bribing the previous state transportation secretary--$24 million. No. 18: Amtrak losing $32 per passenger nationally but rewarded with windfall--$1.3 billion. No. 17: Widening an Arizona interstate even though the company that won the contract has a history of tax fraud and pollution--$21.8 million. I am going to submit this for the Record. To get on down to the last items-- No. 9: Resurfacing a tennis court in Montana--$50,000; No. 8: University in Indiana studying why young men do not like to wear-- I will not say that. No. 7: Funds for Massachusetts roadway construction, to companies that have defrauded taxpayers, polluted the environment, and have paid tens of thousands of dollars in fines for violating workplace safety laws --in the millions of dollars. No. 6: Sending 11 students and 4 teachers from an Arkansas university to the U.N. climate change convention in Copenhagen, using almost 54,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from air travel alone--$50,000. No. 5: Storytelling festival in Utah--$15,000. No. 4: Door mats to the Department of the Army in Texas-- $14,000; No. 3: University in New York researching young adults who drink malt liquor and smoke pot-- that is only $389,000; No. 2: Solar panels for a climbing gym in Colorado-- $157,800; No. 1: Grant for one Massachusetts university for ``robobees''--miniature flying robot bees. That was $2 million. I want to ask you, Mr. President, what do you think all 102 of these projects have in common? Do you think they are congressional earmarks? A lot of people probably believe they are. They are not. The one thing they have in common is they are all done by the President, President Obama. He said back when they passed the $787 billion stimulus bill, there would not be one earmark in this bill. Everything you are looking at there was all in this bill. That was not done by Members of Congress, that was done by unelected bureaucrats. The inconvenient truth is that we do have a problem with earmarks in America, but it is not congressional earmarks. I was distressed, the other day, last Thursday, when I saw my fellow Republicans over in the House did something they should not have done. They actually said we are going to stop, we are going to put a permanent moratorium on all earmarks that we in the Republican Party have over there. Let's stop and think about that. One of the things people do not understand is if you kill what they call--what people think is a Congressional earmark, it does not save a penny. What happens to it, because it is part of an underlying bill, is it goes to the bureaucracies, the unelected bureaucrats, the President, President Obama. I suggest there is a serious problem with what the House did. They resolved that it is the policy of the Republican conference that no Member shall request a Congressional earmark, limited tax benefit, and so forth, all in conjunction with clause 9, rule XXI of the Rules of the House of the 111th Congress. Let's see what that is. Clause 9 of rule XXI applies to all legislation in the House of Representatives, whether it be authorization, appropriation, tax or tariff. That is what we are supposed to be doing here, and then said we are not going to do it. I think that is rather interesting because we all, everyone in this room who serves here--I have done it four times--takes an oath of office. In that oath of office we solemnly swear we will support and bear true allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. Here they have come out and said we are not going to do that. This is mind boggling, that this can take place. It is something that will have to be reversed. When you go back and look at the Federalist Papers, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, made it very clear. He is the one who coined the phrase ``power of the purse.'' That is what we do here in the Constitution. In article I, section 9 it says what we are supposed to do. We are supposed to do the appropriations and spend the money that comes in. That is what we are supposed to do. That is our constitutional responsibility. We have a serious problem in this, what they are talking about, the moratorium. I think there are some of those who want the Senate to do it. I am hoping we will not follow that course. I respect my friends over in the House but they made a mistake and we do not want to march down that same path. I think it is very important for us to understand earmarks, what they call appropriations over here; that is what an earmark is, if you want to define it. They do not save any money. That money merely goes to the bureaucracy so they can spend it. All 102 of the things I mentioned were bureaucratic earmarks. Not one of them was a congressional earmark. We have this as a very serious problem right now. One of the reasons I have always said I do not like the idea of the earmark discussion is that people do not understand. They think they are something if you eliminate you save money. You don't save a cent. By the way, earmarks of the spending that takes place are discretionary, not mandatory spending. It constitutes 1.5 percent. I am concerned about the 98.5 percent. For that reason I have introduced a bill that is very similar to something President Obama said. Everyone rejoiced during the State of the Union Message when he stood up and said I am going to freeze nondefense discretionary spending at the 2010 level. Everyone applauded. They thought that was a great statement to make until I went back and I looked and found out that this nondiscretionary spending had increased between 2008 and 2010 by act of this President, Obama, by 20 percent. So what he is saying is we are going to increase discretionary spending by 20 percent and then we are going to freeze it. I do not want to freeze it. I want to bring it back down. So I have taken the same bill and said we are going to freeze that at 2008 levels. I encourage my friends, we have now about 40-some cosponsors of that legislation. That being the case, I hope we will look very carefully and consider not just what people are thinking out there but do them a great service and tell them in fact what the real issue is on earmarks. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Arizona for yielding. I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized in morning business for such time as I may consume.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I come to the floor this evening to announce the introduction of a bill, S. 3095. It is called the Honest Expenditure Limitation Act of 2010. It spells HELP. It is the HELP Act of 2010. On February 1 of 2010, President Obama released his fiscal year 2011 budget with a funding request of $3.8 trillion. In it he announced a 3- year freeze on discretionary spending for all nonsecurity-related agencies at the fiscal year 2010 levels, which amounts to a total spending level of $460 billion each year for those agencies. Nonsecurity spending is defined as all agencies except the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of State, and one of the national security-related agencies in the Department of Energy. The administration's Office of Management and Budget estimates this initiative will save $250 billion over the coming decade. Keep in mind, that is $250 billion from where it started, which I will address in a minute. On the surface, this proposal gives the President the appearance of being fiscally prudent--something the American people have been demanding of their government, especially in recent months. But when you look closely at the numbers he has presented, it is clear as day why he is able to offer this spending freeze without batting an eye. For one, discretionary spending has increased by 20 percent in 2 years. Secondly, the massive $787 billion stimulus package provided a substantial spending cushion for nearly every agency, making a spending freeze such as the President's inconsequential. Let's stop and look at that. We are talking about $787 billion in a stimulus bill, but we are also talking about having increased from fiscal year 2008 to fiscal year 2010 by 20 percent. So what he is doing here is raising it 20 percent and then freezing it. What he ought to do, if he had to raise it 20 percent, is start bringing it down. Additionally, this spending freeze proposal does too little to improve the long-term fiscal aspects of our Nation. We all know we stand at the edge of disaster. Doug Elmendorf, who is the Director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, recently testified about our Nation's fiscal outlook before Congress and he didn't deliver very good news. I will tell my colleagues what he said. He said that last year our budget deficit was a staggering $1.4 trillion. Remember, just a minute ago I said if you add up all of the--well, let's say that is actually more than all of the last 6 years of the Bush administration deficits. That amounts to less than the $1.4 trillion. So he said last year our budget deficit was a staggering $1.4 trillion, which represented about 10 percent of the total economy. He expects 2010's deficit only slightly lower at $1.3 trillion or 9.2 percent of GDP. Looking further out, the average deficit between now and 2020 is forecast to be $600 billion per year. This is all coming from Elmendorf. This is the CBO we are talking about. Additionally, CBO estimates the amount of debt held by the public will skyrocket to $15 trillion by 2020. If it sounds like a staggering number, that is because it is. When you consider the amount of interest we will be paying to China and Japan and others, it is embarrassing: $700 billion each and every year until 2020 and beyond if we do nothing about our rising deficit levels. In other words, if we keep on what we are doing right now with this administration, with the help of the Democratic legislators in both Houses, it is going to be $700 trillion. Let's do the math and put that in perspective. If $700 billion of interest were paid evenly by every household in the United States today, it would amount to more than $6,000 per household. That is kind of interesting. I always try to do my math. When I was fighting the effort by this administration to have a cap-and-trade bill which would have been somewhere between $300 billion and $400 billion, whether you are talking about the McCain-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill of 2003 or the McCain-Lieberman bill of 2005 or the bills of 2008, or later on the Boxer-Sanders bill, or even going back to Kyoto, it is going to cost somewhere between $300 billion and $400 billion. I understand when we talk about billions and trillions of dollars what we are really talking about. So I do my math all the time and say, How much is this going to cost my average taxpaying families in my State of Oklahoma? It amounted to $3,100 a year. This would have been, if they had been successful in passing a cap-and-trade bill--it is all dead now. They are not going to do it. I don't care what Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator John Kerry say, it is history now. People are not going to pay that kind of thing to get nothing for it. Back when we were talking about the $700 billion interest that would be paid every year, that is what is going to happen by 2020 with this administration if we let it continue. That would cost each tax-paying family in the United States of America $6,000 per household each and every year after 2020. Put another way: The entire financial industry bailout--remember the famous bank bailout? I know Republicans were partially responsible for that too. That happened. That vote took place in this Senate on October 1 of 2008. It was back during the Bush administration. It was back when Hank Paulson came in and told everybody that he was going to save our Nation and so Republicans bought into it and many of my good conservative Republican friends voted for a $700 billion bailout. I did not and a few others didn't, but a vast majority did. That is kind of interesting because that $700 billion is the same figure we are using right now that it will cost people by the year 2020--just the interest alone. But the $700 billion that we could spend on interest in 2020 happens each and every year. We don't get anything for it. It is the cost of living having this much debt in the first place. At this rate, it will become more and more difficult for the government to fund priorities we truly think are important, such as national security and infrastructure spending. For some reason, nobody around here wants to spend money on infrastructure. I know I get criticized. I am considered to be a conservative. I have been rated the No. 1 most conservative Member of the Senate some time ago by the American Conservative Union and just last week by the National Journal. So you are looking at a conservative, but I am a big spender on some things. One is protecting America. That is what we are supposed to be doing around here. The other is infrastructure. We have a crumbling infrastructure system. Look what happened with some of the bridges crumbling down. I guess that was in Minnesota. People died up there. Our infrastructure is crumbling. It is aging. We need to do something about it, but I can't find anyone who wants to spend money on infrastructure. Instead we are spending money on social engineering. To combat this, several proposals have been recently introduced that I support. In the House, Congressman Pence and Congressmen Hensarling introduced a constitutional amendment that would cap the Federal spending at 20 percent of the economy--20 percent of GDP. It is one way of doing this. I think it is a good idea. I am all for it. Additionally, Senator DeMint introduced an amendment requiring a balanced budget. I am all for that. Some of my colleagues are supporting a year-long earmark moratorium. That is kind of phony. It was reported on Monday that Speaker Pelosi has suggested a year-long earmark moratorium as well. My colleagues need to consider a couple of issues in talking about earmarks. One, an earmark moratorium does nothing to combat the increasing government spending. In other words, if you have a moratorium on earmarks, it doesn't save a cent. Funding that would have been spent in earmarks will simply be spent by the Obama administration, by their bureaucrats. I suppose it should come as no surprise that Speaker Pelosi supports the Democratic administration fully funding its own priorities. Secondly, last year's earmarks accounted for only 1.5 percent of discretionary spending--1.5 percent. Where is the focus on the other 98.5 percent? Where is the focus on what I call bureaucratic earmarks? Here is what happens. If you stop earmarks--if you read the Constitution, article I, section 9 of the Constitution, it says what we are supposed to be doing here in the House and in the Senate. We are supposed to be making priorities. We are supposed to be doing the spending, and our Founding Fathers recognize that we do a better job knowing what our needs are in the local communities than the central government does. If we let the President and the President's budget dictate everything and then we try to make changes within that, people will say, Oh, that is an earmark. Well, wait a minute. If you don't do that, then you are having the unelected bureaucrats in government in the Obama administration do the earmarking. So the President earmarks too. If you don't believe it, look at the Appropriations Conference Report, where the focus is on the vast majority of discretionary spending which is doled out every year by unelected bureaucrats. I wish more people would understand this, because I find that a lot of the people who hammer and demagog the earmark mantra are the ones who are the biggest spenders and it is a nice way of deviating from your behavior. I think something needs to be done immediately and seriously. So today I am introducing the HELP Act, as I mentioned. It is called the Honest Expenditure Limitation Program Act of 2010. The bill does three things. One, it places caps on nonsecurity discretionary spending which I define exactly as President Obama's budget does. I do this because I wish to show the similarities between what he said he wants to do and what I want to do. The second thing is it enforces the caps by sequestering any spending above the cap through across-the-board cuts, a process that currently applies to mandatory spending, but not to discretionary. Three, it disallows Congress from evading the sequestration cuts through a 67-vote point of order against any attempt to exempt new spending from this legislation. That is going to make it pretty tough to get through. Rather than simply freezing the spending as the President wants to do at the 2010 levels--let's keep in mind, first, he increased discretionary spending for a year by 20 percent, and then he wants to freeze it there. Instead of doing that for 3 years and then allowing spending to explode again, which is what his proposal does, my bill would actually cut discretionary spending for nonsecurity agencies, the same exemptions he has, back to fiscal year 2008 levels. It is cutting it back by 20 percent of what he tries to do, about $400 billion a year. Spending would be frozen for 5 years--not 3 years but 5 years, through 2020. Rather than simply freezing spending levels for only 3 years and at an artificially high level, as the President's proposal does, my initiative would hold the Federal Government more accountable for the next 10 years by creating real, meaningful spending cuts and then placing the cap at reduced levels. The difference in savings between my plan and President Obama's plan is clearly displayed on this chart. If we look at the chart, the blue bars represent how nonsecurity- related discretionary spending levels will rise over the next 10 years if allowed to increase. This is according to OMB's numbers. The red line illustrates the impact of Obama's plan and what will happen if spending is allowed to increase following the 3-year freezing on the estimates of OMB, the Office of Management and Budget. They are nonpartisan, by the way, and very accurate. Clearly, the $250 billion in savings is not substantial when spread over a 10-year period. It really does not tighten the belt at all. My proposal is represented in the green bars. These are the spending levels. Watch as they go down over the period of time from 2010 to 2020. We phase down spending levels from the high point in 2010 to a more reasonable level between 2011 and 2015 and then stay flat thereafter. My plan, when compared to the blue bars of doing nothing, will save more than $880 billion over the next 10 years. Let me say that again. By reducing nonsecurity discretionary spending levels, using the same definition of ``nonsecurity'' as the President is using, to 2008 levels and then holding them there through 2020, our Nation can save nearly $1 trillion. When I compare my plan directly with President Obama's, my plan saves $634 billion more than his. I have made my estimates using the methodologies of the Office of Management and Budget, and they are probably conservative. First off, if you look at the history of discretionary spending, annual increases are far greater than what they assume they are here. Second, we do not estimate how much we would be saving in interest by not having to borrow the spending we are cutting. Overall, this proposal will likely save much more than the nearly $1 trillion we estimate. If we do nothing to curtail skyrocketing government spending or merely freeze it at an artificially high, elevated level for a few years, as the Obama administration is trying to do, we will find ourselves in a tragic situation. The clock is ticking. Congress is going to have to act. Some of my colleagues will probably attack this proposal because the hardest thing to do around here is cut spending. Without cutting spending, we only leave one alternative, and that is massively raising taxes. That is not what the American people want, and it would harm our economic recovery. Around these halls, we seem to forget. Most of the Members of the Senate have forgotten the recess last August when they had all the tea parties out there and people were yelling and screaming and people wanted to get involved. People were getting involved in politics who never had been involved before. They were concerned primarily about two issues. At that time, it was government-run health care and cap-and- trade, which would have been the largest tax increase in the history of this country. Right now, the Obama administration is saying: I don't care what anybody says, we are going to stay with it; we are going to be tough; we are going to have this government-run health care system and bring back cap-and-trade. They have just completely forgotten what happened. I have to agree with Senator McConnell. I hope people remember that all the way through the election because that is going to repeat what I remember in 1994. Others may charge this proposal will harm the government's ability to help citizens in their time of need. But what is important to realize about this spending reduction is that it will have no impact on mandatory spending programs such as unemployment benefits, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those programs are in need of reform, but this bill does not do that. This bill only affects the agencies identified by President Obama as nonsecurity. My bill, the HELP Act of 2010, would take President Obama's proposed spending freeze and truly make an impact. Rather than merely freezing spending at the inflated 20-percent increase of the 2010 levels, this would bring it back down to 2008. I think this can be done. I really do believe the American people are going to start getting involved. They have not forgotten. I was giving a speech in Florida. This particular group was actually Club for Growth. Their group is concerned about spending. I told them some of the things we could be doing, some of the things to watch out for. Watch out for those who say you can have a moratorium on earmarks and somehow affect--if you affected all of that, it would be something like 1.5 percent. My bill affects the other 98.5 percent. We are going to have to do it right now. If we wait, each month that goes by--as I said, the budget he increased and his deficit was as much as the last 6 entire years of the Bush administration. This is the HELP Act. It is one that will work, and it is one that has come along at the right time. Now is the time to act.

Mr. INHOFE

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