Johnny Isakson

Mr. ISAKSON

Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I rise for a moment--and I will be joined shortly by my colleague, the senior Senator from Georgia--to pay tribute to a great American who passed this Earth 40 years ago on January 21, 1971. His name was Richard Brevard Russell, Jr. He was one of the handful of Senators everybody and every historian rates as the finest of the Senate. He was a great Georgian with an interesting past. He was elected to the State legislature in the 1920s and rose to be the speaker of the house of representatives in the State of Georgia. He then went on to be Governor of the State of Georgia from 1931 to 1932. During that time, he served as Governor at the same time another gentleman was serving as the Governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They became good friends. President Roosevelt even became a constituent of Senator Russell's because, with his affliction, the springs of Warm Springs, GA, were where then-Governor, soon-to-be-President Roosevelt would come to heal and get better and thank his good friend, Richard Russell, for his support. It was that relationship that brought Richard Russell to be one of the first Governors in the United States to come out and endorse Franklin Roosevelt to be President of the United States. In his career in the Senate, Richard Russell served with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He served with Harry Truman--8 years side by side with Harry Truman. He served under President Dwight Eisenhower. He served under President John F. Kennedy. He served under Lyndon Johnson. In fact, in just a minute I will explain why he made Lyndon Johnson who he was. He finally passed away under Richard Nixon's first term as President of the United States. But back for a second to Richard Russell and Lyndon Baines Johnson. Lyndon Baines Johnson became the President of the Senate and later became the President of the United States. In his own works, Lyndon Johnson credits Richard Russell with being the strength of his career as a Senator. In fact, so great was Senator Russell's control of the Senate that in a quote by Powell Moore, his press secretary, a few years ago, he said: When President Kennedy gave advice to newly elected Senators, he said the following: If you want to learn how to be an effective Senator, you should start by going to see Dick Russell. That is exactly what Lyndon Johnson did. So good a friend of Lyndon Johnson was Richard Russell that every Sunday night in their careers in the Senate, Lady Bird would have Richard Russell over at the house to cook him dinner just to thank him for what he had done the week before for Lyndon Johnson. As Lyndon Johnson grew in power, he kept beside him Richard Brevard Russell of Georgia. Richard Brevard Russell of Georgia is the greatest Senator who ever served from our State. Senator Chambliss and I will be the first to tell you, we are way back in the back of the line when you compare our record to his record. He was a great Georgian. He was a great American. When I was elected to the Senate and was asked to pick an office, I said: The only requirement I have is it be in the Russell Senate Office Building because I wanted to serve in the same building, named after the greatest Senator ever to serve from our State. So on the 40th anniversary of his passing, I want to leave this Senate floor by reminding America we had a great Senator from Georgia whose lasting contribution to our country is indelible in the hearts and minds of our people: Richard Brevard Russell, a great American, a great Georgian, and one to whom all of us owe a great deal of thanks and a great deal of credit. I yield back my time.

Mr. ISAKSON

Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that that be extended by 3 minutes.

Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. ISAKSON

Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about jobs, and also to talk about an admonition I got from my father when I was growing up: Judge a man by his actions, not his words. I intend to apply that, as well. We should all be judged by our actions, not just our words. I am very disappointed in what this administration is doing now. On the one hand, they are talking about jobs being the most important thing America needs. Yet every single action of the agencies is a job killer. Here is an example: The most recent nominee to be the new Commerce Secretary of the United States is a former director of the Boeing Aircraft Company. That aircraft corporation is now under a suit from the interim general counsel of the NLRB to stop them from opening a new plant that will employ 1,000 people in the State of South Carolina, alleging they built the plant there to strike back at the unions in Washington State, when in fact the Dreamliner, their main airliner, which they have tremendous orders for, is being built in Washington, but they had to expand another plant to meet the demand for orders. They decided, in the interest of the company, to have one on the east coast and one on the west coast. They weren't retaliating. They were trying to create jobs for a great American product. The NLRB wants to stop 1,000 jobs from being created on an allegation that it is some type of retribution. That is dead wrong. The NLRB this week came out with a new admonition. That is, they are going to change election rules so new elections, instead of being required to take 38 to 42 days, can have quickie union elections in 10 to 12 days, making it much more difficult for management to react to a union vote or a union movement. All these things are job creators. I am not here to demagogue unions or to demagogue this President for that matter. I just think fair is fair. If you say you want to create jobs, don't stop job creation. If you say you want the economy to recover, do those things necessary to empower business. Let me take another example; that is, the National Mediation Board. The National Mediation Board is the agency that regulates employment from the standpoint of airlines and railroads and transportation entities. The NMB is 75 years old. For 75 years, their rule on a union election in a covered company is that 51 percent of the number of people employed who would be unionized had to vote in order for a union to become established. Summarily, 11 days after their appointment under the new administration, that 75-year-old rule was struck to become only a simple majority of the number of people who vote, regardless of how many people are going to be covered in employment. Now, that was specifically targeted at Delta Airlines--an Atlanta company that became the largest airline in the world after buying Northwest and merging the two. Northwest had union flight attendants, Delta did not. Delta's flight attendants had twice in the last decade rejected unionization in a vote of 50 percent plus 1 of all employees covered. The change in this rule was specifically targeted to try to force Delta to go from a nonunion shop in their flight attendants to a union shop. But even after an aggressive change in law and by the unions, the flight attendants still voted--under the new rule, which is much easier--not to unionize. Still not satisfied, the National Mediation Board has now filed an action against Delta alleging improper activities. I find this very ironic since in the FAA conference committee, which I am a part of today, we are trying to get a chance for airlines and those covered to be able to have a legal action against a ruling of the NMB if they suspect the NMB ruled unfairly. The NMB has rejected that entirely, the leadership of this body has rejected it entirely, and that conference report languishes--all over an issue that would create jobs, but instead they want to retard jobs. My message in coming to the floor is very simple. Actions count, words don't matter, simply talking about creating jobs don't mean a thing if we are taking actions that stymie business or punish people from making investments that bring about employment. It is time for this President, it is time for each of us in the Senate, it is time for this administration, and it is time for the Congress to do what the American people have done: put our shoulder to the grindstone and do those things that bring American business back, our economy back, and bring jobs back to the greatest country on the face of this Earth--the United States of America. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ISAKSON

Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, last night, between 6 and 7 o'clock, I did a telephone townhall meeting in Georgia. We had a little over 3,000 people on the call, and I was able to handle 16 questions. As I listened to the answers I was giving to the questions, I was struck by what a real problem we have in Washington. Washington is making things worse. Georgians are frightened for their jobs, the value of their homes, and the education of their children. They are uncertain about everything. As you give answers about what is happening in Washington, you realize Washington is making it worse. I wish to give a couple of examples based on my experience. First of all, let's talk about legislation for a second. We have high unemployment--9.1 percent. We have people without jobs or underemployed. We have a law called the Workforce Investment Act or WIA. I am on the subcommittee that overseas it and the Education Committee. We have basically had an agreement on expansion of the reauthorization for the Workforce Investment Act for months, but it still languishes in committee because there are arguments over labor provisions that some want to be added to it. Here we are, a nation in trouble, and we cannot pass the Workforce Investment Act, which is intended to help the very problem we have. Secondly, I am on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee, which does the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act--the fundamental foundation of training and improving our kids for the jobs of the 21st century. It has gone 4 years without reauthorization, and it languishes in committee because of a lack of willingness to bring it forward. Our children remain educated and taught and motivated under a law now expired for 5 years. That is not right, when we should be educating our children and training workers. We in Washington are doing nothing. On the Commerce Committee, on which I serve, we are over the FAA committee and reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, which is critical to economic development. That conference committee continues to languish. What are the arguments? They are about changes in labor law. We need to get the job done in Washington and go to work. We need to understand that the American people are in trouble and are hurting. Our job is to provide answers, not to make it worse. I wish to talk about a second feature--about regulation for a second--or strangulation, if you will. I have told this story before on the Senator floor, and I will tell it again. On January 3 of this year, I was in a cafe for breakfast and to meet with some businessmen. I walked in the front door and Steve Hennessy of Hennessy Cadillac and Land Rover in Atlanta called to me and came running across the floor. I thought he was going to give me a bear hug, but he said: Johnny, yesterday, I fired a salesman and hired two compliance officers. This financial regulation in the Dodd-Frank bill is strangling my productivity and raising my cost of doing business. We have to recognize that regulation has consequences. It is not our job to eliminate risk in the marketplace. It is our job to mitigate risk so people will take risks, in terms of seeking rewards, which is what the capitalistic system is based on. I will talk about a few other regulations that are causing significant problems in our recovery. The qualified residential mortgage rule that is being promulgated now by the six regulators will, if it goes into effect on August 1--and they have put the effective date off now--probably constrict the real estate market, which is already suppressed by 70 percent, by another 40 percent. It is going to take capital and risk capital and credit away from the Americans who are, in fact, buying homes today. In fact, in order to mitigate risk and try to eliminate it, it requires lenders to hold a 5-percent risk retention until the loan matures. It says you cannot loan anybody less than 80 percent--more than 80 percent, and if you have anything more than that, you cannot even have a private mortgage insurance policy to guarantee the money. So you are going to flood every buyer left to where? Through FHA, which is exempt from the Dodd-Frank bill, or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are going out of business, which means you will shift more of the burden of mortgage financing on people who are already overstressed. Regulatory intent should not do that. My dairy farmers in Georgia are looking at a rule where milk is being categorized where it is going to have to be contained in tanks and reservoirs that now meet the standards of petroleum. That is higher investment and no additional profit for the country. That is protracted. Water--the EPA wants to take ``navigable'' from in front of the word ``water,'' in terms of the Clean Water Act, so the government doesn't regulate just navigable waters but every water. Credit. Credit is becoming nonexistent for Main Street. I am a small business guy. I was in a small business in Georgia for 33 years. A lot of small businesspeople use their credit cards to manage their cash flow over time. Because of the credit bill passed a couple years ago, they don't have the flexibility to do that anymore. Bank credit is suspended primarily because banks are being run by the FDIC under cease and desist orders or, if they are extending credit alone, they are extending it to the extent that a borrower can put that much money in the bank. When you constrict credit, you suppress small business. When you suppress small business, you suppress 72 percent of the employment in the United States. I commend Senator Corker for his remarks about an hour ago on the floor of the Senate because he focused on the big problem we have; that is, debt and deficits. It is kind of disappointing to me we have spent more time on the SBA act, which has been pulled now--it was on the floor the beginning of last month--than we have spent on all the appropriations bills in the last 3 years of this Congress. We debated amendments, we protracted the debate but still nothing happened. We ought to be talking about debt reduction, about deficit reduction, and a long-term plan, over time, to amortize the debt of this country to a reasonable level. We have a debt ceiling vote that is confronting us, and I have heard the political statements made by people in both parties that there is a game of chicken being played right now, with some saying we are going to push it right up to August 2 and force a vote. If we don't get it, we will run the risk of America's credit going up in cost and uncertainty happening. Others are saying we are not going to do anything on a debt ceiling increase period until we have to at the last minute. That is not the way to run a business. That is not the way to expand credit. That is not the way to run a country. We ought to be sitting down at the kitchen table of Washington, DC, in the Senate reprioritizing the way we spend money to begin to rein in our expenditures, lower our deficit and lower our debt. I bet in the last couple of years every family in America, as every family in Georgia, has had to sit around their kitchen table and reprioritize their expenditures. Things have changed. Their nest egg may have shrunk. Their equity may be suppressed. Their job may be in trouble. We have all had to do it. I have had to do it. Almost everybody in America has had to do that. Why doesn't the government do it? At a crisis moment of $14 trillion in debt, with no ceiling above it; with a deficit of $1.5 trillion, $300 billion more than discretionary spending, why aren't we sitting around that kitchen table? The questions I heard last night during my tele-townhall meeting made it clear to me Washington is making things worse. The American people want to be confident that we will address the debt and the deficit problem; that we are working on it and not that we are putting it off to a drop-dead date and then play chicken politics in the Senate. People don't mind regulation that is fair, but they do mind regulation that is suppressive and that suppresses jobs. They don't mind having legislation debated in Washington on the floor of the Senate, one way or another depending on your position, but to leave it languishing in committees and not even bringing it up is not right. So my challenge--for me and for every Member of the Senate, and for this administration and for the President--is for us to lead. We have a clock winding down on a debt ceiling increase that will be important for this country. But without substantial reform of the way we do our business and a game plan for a downpayment on our debt and deficit, and without an indication we are going to work together and have shared sacrifice, there is nothing at all we can do in this government except cause things to be worse. I don't want to be a part of that. My last comment is this: I was 39 years old in 1983. A report was put out by the board of the Social Security Administration saying it was going broke in 2004. President Reagan and Tip O'Neill got together and said: We can't let that happen. President Reagan said: I don't want it to go broke, but I am not going to raise the tax. Tip O'Neill said: I don't want it to go broke, but I am not going to cut the benefit. They went to the actuaries and said: What do we do? The actuaries said: Put out the eligibility. So they changed the law and said if you are an American born after 1943 you can't get Social Security at 65; you have to wait until you are 66. I am 66. They put my Social Security off a year. I didn't miss it. They also made Social Security actuarially sound until 2050. Only in the last 2 years has that date come down, and it has come down because of unemployed Americans at age 62 taking discounted early Social Security and putting more pressure on the system. We could fix Social Security tomorrow just like they did in 1983 and not take a penny away from anybody. We could move the eligibility out to be more reflective of life expectancy. I know Medicare is the big political football and everyone wants to say the Republicans are trying to kill Medicare, and the Democrats love to say they are trying to protect it. Heck, I want to protect it. I have nine grandchildren. The rest of my life is about those grandchildren. I want to see to it they have a country that is as free, as productive, and safe, and that the benefits are there for them that have been there for me. It is important we save Medicare, but we can't save it by looking the other way or by taking it off the table. We can't demonize a Democrat or a Republican for making a constructive decision to save Medicare. Instead of trying to make it the political issue of the 2012 election, we should make it the personal issue of each Senator. We should sit around that kitchen table, work together, and try to find a meaningful solution to a problem that saves Medicare for future generations, and also doesn't cause an escalation in our debt and deficit. We are capable of doing it, but we have not demonstrated a will to do it. I challenge my colleagues to do the same thing, and I challenge my colleagues to do one other thing--to hold a tele-townhall in the next couple of weeks. Talk to 3,500 of the citizens in your State and listen to the questions they are asking. They are scared, they are worried, and they feel threatened, and Washington is making it worse. Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ISAKSON

Mr. ISAKSON. These 39 Senators wrote specifically to these regulators to express their concern with the possible effects of the proposed regulation that the regulators were proposing on qualified residential mortgages. I am pleased to say that a few days ago the six regulators extended the comment period from June 20 now to August 1. I have not talked to them, but I hope it is because they have been listening to speeches, they have been reading the comments, they have been seeing the testimony, and they understand, if left uncorrected, and if put in place, the current rule on qualified residential mortgages will be a second hit to what is already a very fragile U.S. housing market. Just last week, the reports for the most recent month in terms of residential home sales saw the beginning of a second dip in residential housing. This morning the Wall Street Journal reported 40 percent of the homes in America that contain a second mortgage or an equity line of credit are now under water--40 percent. One of the reasons they are is because prices are continuing to decline. One of the reasons prices are declining is the buyers are not there. It is a seller's market, we have too many foreclosures, and too many short sales. The impact of the qualified residential mortgage amendment to Dodd- Frank was an amendment offered by Mrs. Hagan, Ms. Landrieu, and myself--all with experience in housing and knowledge about the marketplace. We put it in because the original Dodd-Frank legislation said mortgage people making mortgages were going to have to hold risk retention of 5 percent in that mortgage, which basically would put most everybody in the mortgage business out of the mortgage business, except a handful of people. We put in the qualified residential mortgage amendment the specific parameters by which a mortgage could be exempt from risk retention, which were a downpayment of at least 20 percent or, if the downpayment was less than that, it had to carry private mortgage insurance to insure the effect of an 80 percent loan; second, qualified ratios that demonstrated the couple could pay back the mortgage under any reasonable assumption; third, the house had to appraise; fourth, the credit worthiness of the individual had to demonstrate they could pay for the mortgage. Those were all the reasonable underwriting criteria that existed before the financial collapse of mid 2006-2007. The rule that was proposed by the six regulators, on which now they have extended the commentary time, completely avoided and made no mention of the private mortgage insurance requirement and said for a qualified residential mortgage to exempt risk retention, the buyer would have to put down at least 20 percent. Most buyers in America do not have at least 20 percent, and under current economic times and what has happened, they have a lot less than that. But for years--and I was in the housing business for 33 years--the 90 and 95 percent conventional loans made in this country were the backbone of the loans that helped support the housing market, and those loans required a private mortgage insurance policy on any amount of loan exceeding 80 percent, up to 95 percent. We need the ultimate rule coming back from these regulators, by August 1, to contain that provision so as to exempt from risk retention any mortgage that meets the underwriting criteria, including private mortgage insurance on any amount above 80 percent, and up to 95 percent. If we do not do it, I want to tell you what will be the outcome, and it is without question. You will remember, Mr. President, when we got into trouble in housing it was because we directed Freddie and Fannie to buy affordable housing loans, which became a consumer of subprime packages that were generated on Wall Street. Subprime packages were loans that had high coupon rates, and they were made to risky borrowers. They were intended to get more people into housing, but they became an abused process. Because we directed Freddie and Fannie to buy that type of paper, it created a demand for that type of paper, which Wall Street fulfilled. So, in other words, you had a premium pricing on the coupon, which made the security attractive, but the risk was greater because the loans were to people with less good credit. We have now gone the other way. The pendulum has swung 180 degrees the other way. With the pending rule being circulated, upon which this commentary time has been extended, if it goes into place, you will create 90 and 95 percent loans being priced just like loans that were subprimer priced because very few people will make those loans--only a few large lenders. They will price the interest rate on those loans high because of scarcity. In other words, a borrower borrowing 95 percent or 90 percent with private mortgage insurance will end up paying a premium--a premium in interest rate or discount points--in order to get that loan because there will not be a wide distribution or availability of that type of conventional financing. The unintended consequence of the rule being proposed--which we, fortunately, have an extension on comment time--would create another ability for lenders with the capacity of risk retention to price a loan at such a rate that it is too high for the average consumer. The other thing it is going to do is a lot of consumers who cannot get a qualified residential mortgage of 90 or 95 percent will be out of the housing market. What is the result of that? The result of that is an extension of what the most recent figures demonstrated: lower demand, declining housing prices, and a protracting continuance of the worst housing recession in the history of the United States of America. So I come to the floor today, first of all, to say thank you to the six regulators for extending the comment period; second, to urge my colleagues to urge the lending institutions, the real estate industry, the consumer interest groups, the housing advocacy groups, to have their input with these regulators on the proposed qualified residential mortgage rule, because if left unamended--as it currently is proposed by the regulators--it will make housing less affordable in America; the access to conventional credit less available in America; it will decline the demand that exists already, which is historically too low; it will protract the continuing decline of housing values in America; and it will cause our economy to continue to slide in an even deeper, deeper depression. It is critically important what the Senator from Kansas said be recognized: Be sure when you pass a regulation that the unintended consequence does not cause a bigger problem than the problem you are trying to correct. I admire our regulators. I appreciate the hard job we have given them. I appreciate the fact they have extended the comment time. I hope now they will also listen to the comments being made, come back, and make a qualified residential mortgage rule that includes the provision for private mortgage insurance on loans in excess of 80 percent and no more than 95 percent. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I commend the Senator from Kansas. I had no idea when I came to make my remarks that they would be so in keeping with a part of his speech with regard to regulation and what the regulatory regimen of the current administration is doing to economic improvement and economic development in the United States of America. I rise for a moment to talk about the Dodd-Frank legislation, to talk about the qualified residential mortgage provision, and to talk about the six regulators of financial services and a recent decision they made. Shaun Donovan, Ben Bernanke, Sheila Bair, Edward Demarco, John Walsh, and Mary Schapiro were challenged with carrying out and writing the rules of intent for Dodd-Frank. When they published, a few weeks ago-- about 2 months ago now--the proposed rule on qualified residential mortgages, it created a firestorm and created a number of speeches on the floor of the U.S. Senate. It also created a letter from 39 Members of the U.S. Senate, which I ask unanimous consent be printed in the Record.

Mr. ISAKSON

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

Mr. ISAKSON

Mr. ISAKSON. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Mr. President, on certain occasions in the life of a public official one is called upon to make difficult and unpleasant decisions. Such is the case for the six members of the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee today. But we recognize it is essential that the institution--this Senate-- that passes the laws which all our citizens must live under must also enforce those laws and rules of standards and conduct which we impose upon ourselves. It is a solemn responsibility, but it is important to the integrity and the future of this institution. The Senate Ethics Committee looks upon itself as an advisory board and a source of information and counsel to our Members. We ask Members to come to us when there are questions about the potential ethical violation of a decision or even something that might, in passing, seem to be trivial. Our job is to make sure everybody who has a question gets an answer and no one unwillingly gets caught in an unethical situation. But it is also our responsibility, when complaints are filed, to follow up on those complaints and, if we find merit in the complaint, to enter an initial investigatory period of time which, if that position bears enough likelihood that a violation has occurred, ultimately goes to an adjudicatory phase and then finally a decision on the floor of the Senate. It is rare, and I can tell my colleagues personally it is a situation I hope I am never involved in again. But, as I said, it is an essential process to the integrity of this body. When the particular complaint in question in the Ensign case came to us, it was, similar to any other case, reviewed initially to determine whether it even merited an investigation. After the initial review determined it did merit an investigation, the Senate staff did an overwhelming and wonderful job of gathering information, evidence, and testimony to help us get to a position to begin to make a decision as to whether we could go further in the case. But we didn't rely just on ourselves. We sought forensic experts and computers and technology so the over 500,000 documents that were reviewed and cross-referenced had a forensic test to them and we knew what we were dealing with and how it was dealt with. We even hired a special counsel, which is rare for the Senate Ethics Committee to do, but it was essential because of where the evidence and the testimony was leading the committee. I wish to say, at this point in time, I have known a lot of lawyers in my day, ones I have hired and ones I have been on the other side of the deposition table from. I have never known anybody more professional or whose ability I admired more than Carol Elder Bruce, and I wish to commend her on the floor of the Senate. It was her report which we are also submitting with the referrals today to indicate that we have looked to see that there was reasonable evidence to conclude that a violation may have occurred. The ultimate decision on that will be up to the U.S. Department of Justice and it will be up to the Federal Election Commission. But the report clearly indicates that the Senate Ethics Committee did not act on what it thought or an opinion or a whim. It acted on facts determined through hundreds of interviews, 500,000 documents that were examined, and testimony that came to our committee. It is the hope of the chairman and myself and each member of the committee that every Member recognizes the Senate Ethics Committee wants to be a source of information, advice, and counsel, to see to it this institution always rises to the occasion as the most ethical body in our government. But we will as a committee, if it becomes necessary and the evidence finds it to be true, pursue our responsibility as a committee and we will do what is required of us in this body. I wish to thank Chairman Boxer for the method in which she has handled this from the beginning to the end, as well as Laura Schiller, who has been her aide throughout and helpful. I also wish to commend Joan Kirchner, Chris Carr, and Glee Smith on my staff for their tireless efforts. The members of the committee also should be commended for their hard work, and it has been hard work. Ben Cardin has been a tremendous legal mind for us. Sherrod Brown has been an insightful person to ferret out information and guide us in the right direction. My dear friend, Senator Roberts, is the dean of the members of the Ethics Committee. On the floor are Senator Roberts, Senator Cardin, and Senator Brown. Senator Risch from Idaho is not here, but he deserves equal credit. As the chairman said, his legal mind and insightful nature helped us come to the conclusions we came to today. I wish to repeat my thanks to Carol Elder Bruce for the tremendous work she did, as well as Brian Stolarz, Mike Missel, and John Songstregth, who all worked with her legal team. The staff of the Ethics Committee, our staff director, John Sassaman, has been invaluable in his tireless hours of work to see to it that every I was dotted, every T was crossed, and the committee did its job. To Rochelle Ford, Lynn Tran, Bill Corcoran, and Dan Schwager, thanks to them for all the effort they made. I will end where I began. No one in public office volunteers for the type of responsibilities we have had in the case of Senator Ensign. But all of us took that responsibility when it came upon us, recognizing the integrity of the Senate and the integrity of our decision was important for the future of this body. As sad as the deliberations were and the ultimate result was, it was proof that this Senate and its Ethics Committee can stand and do the effort necessary to see to it this institution's integrity proceeds in the future uninhibited and unendangered. With that, unless there is a Member who wishes to speak, I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ISAKSON

Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I rise on a point of personal privilege to commend a gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Keith Hatcher. Twenty-five years ago, when I worked with my father--my father, among other things, was the past president of the Georgia Association of REALTORS. I remember one afternoon he came into my office and said: Son, we just hired someone today who is going to be special. His name is Keith Hatcher. I want you to be sure and look him up the first time you get a chance. Well, about a week later I met Keith. I was then a member of the Georgia Legislature, and I showed him around a little bit. He became the assistant to John Cox, who had been the venerable representative of the REALTORS for years in that State. I saw that spark in Keith Hatcher's eye, and I knew he was going to be a great one, and a great one he has been. In his 25 years representing the Georgia association and landowners and homeowners around our State, he has fought hard for limitations and curbs on the power of eminent domain, fought hard for lower ad valorem taxes and transfer taxes, and fought hard for reform of landlord-tenant laws. He has worked day in and day out for the landowners of our State and for the REALTORS of our State, and he has done it in the most professional, comprehensive way anybody could possibly do it. He has another great story to tell. Keith faced a significant health hazard just a few years ago. He was about to lose a kidney, and he could have lost his life, but he went through a transplant program in Birmingham, AL. The transplant was successful, and he rehabilitated himself. Today, he works as hard as he did before the injury. Importantly, as well, he works as a member of the board of the National Kidney Foundation helping to raise money to support the transplant program so others who are afflicted as he was will have the same cure he has had. So this week, as the REALTORS from Georgia come to town, as I think they will from every other State of the Union, to talk to the Members of the Senate about laws that affect their industry and their profession, the one from Georgia will be led by Keith Hatcher. As he has for the last 24 years, he will be a voice for home ownership, a voice for lower taxation, and a voice for wide distribution and ownership of land, which makes the United States of America the most unique country of any on the face of this Earth. I am pleased to commend him today on the celebration of his 25th anniversary representing the Georgia Association of REALTORS. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ISAKSON

Mr. ISAKSON. I will close by just saying amen.

Mr. ISAKSON. I thank the Senator from Alabama for the question. I will tell you this, I was in the real estate business for 33 years. Leverage is essential in real estate. You have to borrow money and put in equity as well to make a real estate transaction work. You cannot just do it for all cash. But too much leverage will destroy you. America has just been through a period where many American homeowners were destroyed by too much leverage. They borrowed more than they could afford to pay in order to borrow for a house. The United States of America is at the point where we have too much leverage. We have too much debt. Our deficit continues to escalate, adding to that debt. I tried to think--when I thought about what I would say this morning, I did not know you would ask the questions you asked. But it is appropriate that you did. I was trying to think of an example we could put forward of a leader in the private sector who addressed a tremendous problem America faced and solved it. You know who that leader was? Lee Iacocca. I do not know how many of you will remember it, but in the 1970s Chrysler was busted. The cars did not work, people did not buy them, they were going broke, they had too much debt. They hired a guy named Lee Iacocca, brought him up from the ranks and said: Lee, we need to fix this company or we are going broke. Lee Iacocca as a leader put everything on the table: benefits, how they made their cars, discipline, rules, everything. He brought everybody to the table, the labor unions, the workers, the advisers, the economists, and the board of directors. He said: Look, we do not even care who takes credit, we need to fix the Chrysler Motor Corporation. In a short period of time, Chrysler went from the worst rated consumer satisfaction to the best. They raised the guarantee on their product. They reduced their debt by efficiencies, and they became the most productive automaker of their time in the 1970s. America has the ability to return to our productive times but only through leadership. I am looking forward to the President's remarks today. I hope he will be a Lee Iacocca. I hope he will not take things off the table. I hope he will not play politics with where we go. All of us have to decide to put everything on the table and make sure we prioritize America's future and get our debt and deficit under control. I just had the Georgia Hospital Association leave my office. I will tell you the last thing I told them. They were talking about, please make sure we do not cut this, that, and the other. I said: You know, medicine is 17 percent of gross domestic product, but it is about 80 percent of our challenge in terms of Medicare and Medicaid with the future years of the debt and the deficit. We are going to have to put everything on the table. We are going to have to make sure we rein in our expenses while not destroying 17 percent of the private sector. Quite frankly, I fear the health care bill that passed in December of 2009, and was signed last year in March, is a bill that is overly prescriptive, overly regulatory, and disincentivizes competition in terms of health care. I hope the President will be open to suggestions in terms of bringing about competition, making our citizens consumers, making sure we are price competitive in the delivery of the best health care in the world, not a government that tries to manage everything and be so prescriptive. Yes, we have a problem, but we are a great country where Republicans and Democrats need to sit down at their kitchen table like the American people and make decisions that are in the best interest of their future. I commend Senator Corker on the CAP Act. It is the right way to go. I also want to bring up the biennial budget. I know the Senator from Alabama is the ranking member of the Budget Committee, and I have talked to Chairman Conrad about this. We have an example that works, and that is to change the way we do our business. In the last 3 years we have had 4 hours of debate on spending $10 trillion. That is not the way to run a railroad. We need to change our process from an annual appropriation to a biennial appropriation where we appropriate money in odd-numbered years and we spend in even- numbered years, which are election years, looking for savings and waste and reprioritizing the way we spend money. I know this must be true for the Budget Committee, and I know myself, if I am given the time and the task of finding savings or overexpenditures, if I am given the charge of doing so, I can do it. But if I am told to come in January, raise my right hand, and then by October pass as much spending as I can, I will spend too much money. It is human nature. The American people ask of us only to do what they have to do. They don't have the luxury of too much leverage. If they borrow too much, they go bankrupt. We need to empower the American people by the Congress doing what the American people have to do. The biennial budget, the CAP Act, and then Senator Hatch, with a number of Senators in this body, have introduced the balanced budget amendment--those are three components that change the paradigm, the process, and I guarantee will change the result.

Mr. ISAKSON. Absolutely. With all due respect, I think the last couple years the government has tried to eliminate risk with overregulation of almost everything. If you eliminate risk, nobody gets out of bed in the morning and figures they are protected. We need to mitigate this and allow people to take a risk in order to get a reward. We can give them a platform of confidence and predictability so they will deploy capital, invest money, and employ people. The interesting point is, the byproduct of that is you have higher revenues. When you have a productive America on a progressive tax system, you get higher revenues. If people are more satisfied, they are more happy and more productive. There is less productivity when there is overregulation and underconfidence. We need to restore the confidence and have fair but equitable regulations and we need to empower the American investor to invest their capital and we will improve employment, improve revenue, and improve the future of the United States.

Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I appreciate the compliment. It is probably overstated, but it is an honor and a privilege to serve with Senator Sessions as well as with Senator Coats. I wish to reflect on something we shared this morning. Senator Coats and myself and others were with Senator Akaka for breakfast this morning. He talked about 1941, living on Hawaii, the youngest of eight children. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and America went to war in the Pacific and in Europe. Sixteen million Americans of that generation went to the Pacific and Europe, fought and died. Some came back to this country and, because of the GI bill, 8 million of them went to universities and got bachelor's degrees and started the small businesses and the industries that took the U.S. economy to dynamic growth and opportunity for every generation that has succeeded them, up until now. Senator Sessions and I and Senator Coats and Senator Akaka, who is a great American, a Democratic Senator from Hawaii who is retiring next year, we are all part of a generation that will, at some time, leave a legacy to our children and our grandchildren. The Senator from Alabama has children and grandchildren, I have them, and Senator Coats does as well. I don't want to be the first generation since World War II to leave my children and my grandchildren worse off than every generation before left their children and grandchildren. This economic war we have on spending and debt is every bit as damaging as a war with bullets and bombs. Because with too much leverage, with an inability to pay our debt, we have what happened to us once before in the last 65 years, and that was the early 1980s when we had the misery index: double-digit unemployment, double-digit interest rates, double-digit inflation. I remember the days when I ran my business when the prime rate was 21 percent. I remember when unemployment was 14 percent and inflation was 12 percent. It was called the misery index. What happened is, America started borrowing too much, spending too much, and business contracted. We need to make sure we don't let that happen again because the greatest economic threats to the security of America are runaway interest rates, runaway inflation, and runaway unemployment. We don't want to be the cause of that. We want to be the platform that allows free enterprise and American business to come back, the American economy to come back, reduce our deficit over time, and reduce our debt over time. We don't have to pay it all off, but we have to stop the increase. We have to begin to get back in order so we are not an overleveraged Nation. I pledge this, as Senator Coats did, and I know the Senator from Alabama did as well: I will not leave my grandchildren and my children worse off than I was left by my parents and my grandparents. We have the greatest Nation on the face of this Earth. Democrats and Republicans, the President, Congressmen, and Senators need to sit down at the American kitchen table and do what we have asked of the American people: get our spending in order and look to a brighter, more prosperous future for those who will succeed us. I thank my colleague for the time.

Mr. ISAKSON. Well, it is, because it will instill a degree of confidence that we have finally been willing to deal with our long-term problem of debt and deficit, with our entitlements but also with our spending. But I want to refer back to a statement the Senator made in his previous remarks before he recognized me, when he was challenging the President to bring forward a budget in this speech he will make in an hour or so. He should bring it and put it on the table, along with putting Paul Ryan's recommendations on the table, putting the deficit commission's recommendations on the table, and putting the group of six who are working on another document on the table--let's don't rule anybody out--and sit down and one by one go through them and find out what is the best answer and the solution for America. It is time to stop the political job of picking and choosing for political purposes. We need to pick and choose for the American people. If we put everybody's ideas on the table, and they are genuine about their interests to solve the problem, we can do it, and we can begin this afternoon.

Mr. ISAKSON

Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, in the South we have an old saying: If you find yourself at the bottom of a hole, stop digging. We are at that point. We accomplished some amazing things in the last 3, 4 weeks. I commend the House on the cuts that have taken place, but we ought to remember we are focusing on the minnow, when the big fish is on the horizon. There is only so much we can cut when 50 percent of a fiscal year is gone. People are talking about how little we are cutting out of small areas. That is because it is all there is to cut from. The cuts have demonstrated that we can begin to get our house in order. The big enchilada is coming up with the big 2012 budget. I did a little research on what we have done in the last 3, 4 years. In the last 3 years, we spent all our money on omnibus appropriations, except one Defense appropriations act. In doing the research, we spent on average 4 days of debate on those three bills. We have had the small business bill on the floor for 12 days, and we haven't finished it yet. We spent 12 days on the small business reform bill, and we only spent an average of 4 days on spending over $10 trillion. It is time that we got the current agreement--and I understand there is one--on how much we cut done. If we have differences on policy, we can reserve them for debates on the 2012 appropriations act. Let's get moving. Everybody here knows we have two big votes on the horizon. One is the pending debt ceiling vote at some time in May or June, and the other is the fiscal year 2012 appropriations. We will not get a second chance on those. The world markets are not going to give us another year to spend our money in a helter-skelter manner. We have the ability and the brain power, and we need the commitment in this body to spend money like the American people have to spend theirs. That is all they ask of us. We don't need to be extravagant, frivolous, and wasteful. Another thing on the current, pending, looming possible shutdown is that it is absolutely crazy, when we have committed our sons and daughters to harm's way--right now, they are in three countries: Libya by the Air Force, Iraq, and Afghanistan. To put them in a position of accruing their income because we have shut down the government is just not right. It is not the right thing to do. We ought to debate these matters on the Senate floor with the government functioning. I hope all of my colleagues will recognize that we are about to take defeat from the jaws of victory. We have won the battle on the short term with the cuts we needed. Let's get this short-term cut done, let's get the CR done, and then let's get to the kitchen table of the American people and get it done for fiscal year 2012 and the years ahead. We have to find out how to pay back over time $14 trillion. That is going to take a lot of commitment, work, and time. Let's get to it. Let's get the CR done. Let's come back next week and finish dotting the i's and crossing the t's and commit ourselves that the rest of the year is about America's future, it is about our children and grandchildren; it is about beginning to rein in expenses and spend our money accountably and predictably so the American people can expect of us what we always demand of them. I yield the floor.

Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, before the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire leaves the floor, I want to commend her on a number of things, but most important is her hard work with me and many others on the biennial budget bill, which we hope will come to the floor in the future. I want to comment, because this potential shutdown, which I hope doesn't happen--we have been speculating or asking the agencies to speculate on what this means. If you read yesterday's Washington Post, you saw that the only agency of the government that will work seamlessly through a shutdown, without any shortcoming or deficiencies, is veterans health care. That is because we biennially appropriate for that. The one thing that will be open during the shutdown is the one thing we do in the 2-year process rather than a hit-or-miss process like the current appropriations act. So the distinguished Senator, who was Governor of her State that has a biennial appropriations process and has worked with it, knows what I know. If you can plan and make things predictable, you will save money and improve the quality of your service. I hope we can get this country to a position where we do biennially appropriate and can spend 1 of every 2 years doing oversight and find waste and find ways to do things better and less expensively.

Mr. ISAKSON. Yes.

Mr. ISAKSON. There is no question that the Senator is correct. We are predictably unpredictable here. We need to be predictably predictable when it comes to the efficiencies we can bring about and how we spend our money. We need to do what people do, which is sit around their kitchen tables and prioritize what comes in and what goes out. And they balance their budgets. They have to. It is about time we have the same discipline the American people have. I thank the distinguished Senator.

Mr. ISAKSON

Mr. ISAKSON. First, I wish to commend the Senator from Colorado and try to ratify what I heard him say. I came in after the first part of his speech, but I know his focus was on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and No Child Left Behind. He is exactly right. There are reforms that do need to take place. We have gone 3 years without a reauthorization, and reauthorization, hopefully, can happen this year. When it does, we can improve the plight of our children, and we can reform the way we do some of the things we do in SEA to open new opportunities for our kids. But accepting the status quo, he is right, is not good enough. We need to make those reforms, and we need to make them now. I look forward to working with the Senator from Colorado in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee when that issue comes up, to reform ESEA, get it reauthorized, to reempower our teachers, our students, our parents, and raise the level of education for all Americans. I congratulate him for his great contribution to the State of Colorado and, further, to the Senate. I wish to steal a line he just gave us 1 minute ago. When I walked in, he was saying there are some things Congress cannot do. He is right. Education does take place at the local level. There are some things we can fix in Washington, but it is primarily done at the local level. But there is one thing Congress can fix; that is, our spending, our debt, and our deficit. For just 1 second, I wish to speak not in the tone of a politician, not as somebody who is a part of the institution, trying to talk about what he thinks, I wish to talk about what I think the people of Georgia think. The people of Georgia do not understand why we cannot do in Washington what they have had to do during the last 3 years. During the economic travails of the last 3 years, every American family has had to sit around their kitchen table, reprioritizing how they spend their money to deal with lower returns on their investments, the consequences of unemployment or underemployment. They have had to adapt to difficult economic times. Yet when they turn on the television and they look at C-SPAN, they do not see us adapting to the economic times we find ourselves in as a country. I was in the real estate business for 33 years and I do not understand a lot of things, but I understand leverage. Leverage is a marvelous thing in capitalism. If you have proper leverage in real estate or proper leverage in business, it can make a lot of things happen. Leverage is good, but too much leverage is a death sentence and we are at a precipice in this country. We are at a precipice where we are about to fall off. If we all fall off, there is no recovery because continued deficit spending and continued increasing debts results in two things: inflating the dollar in future years to pay that debt off with cheaper dollars, which devalues every asset of every American family, and increasing the interest rates to unsustainable and unpayable amounts. I lived through that one in the post-Carter years in 1980, 1981, and 1983 when we dealt with the Misery Index in America--double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment, and double-digit interest rates. In my home State of Georgia today we have double-digit unemployment, 10.4 percent. Interest rates are low, but it is arbitrary, and they are getting ready to go up. The yield spread curve between 2-year Federal debt and 10-year U.S. debt is triple, which indicates the markets that are buying our debt are already looking out in the future and saying interest rates are going higher, three times what they are now, maybe more. If you look at inflation, inflation is arbitrarily low right now. But with what is happening to food and prices, contributed by gasoline and petroleum, what we see happening in the world marketplaces, it is an inevitable factor, unless we get our arms around our debt and our deficit. We owe about $14 trillion in debt. The deficit this year is over $1.5 trillion. Those are unsustainable numbers. We do not have to pay the debt off today. We do not have to reduce the deficit to zero. But we have to get ourselves on a glidepath to reducing our deficit and, in turn, reducing our debt over time. It means we have to sit down at our kitchen tables, the floor of the Senate and the floor of the House, prioritize what we are doing, and get to the business the American people expect us to get to. We are playing some political games right now with short-term CRs, when the big votes, the big debates, and the big decisions loom ahead-- first, the debt ceiling, later the fiscal year 2012 appropriations. There are three things I hope we will do: No. 1 is recognize our system is broken and is not working. I did a little research. Most of my years in Congress, more dollars have been appropriated through omnibus appropriations than through legitimate debate and budget units on the Senate floor. We did not do any last year. The reason we are doing a CR this year on last year is because it was an omnibus appropriation. We are not spending our money like the American people have to spend theirs. We are not prioritizing. We are not looking at cost-benefit analysis. We have to change our system. I am pleased to have joined with former Governor Shaheen of New Hampshire, a Democratic colleague, to introduce the Biennial Budget and Appropriations Act for the Congress, an act which mimics what 20 of our States, 40 percent of the country, already does: appropriate on a 2-year cycle rather than on a 1-year cycle; appropriate in odd-numbered years so that in even- numbered years, which also happen to be election years, we do not do appropriating, we do oversight. We spend a year not making political promises of what bacon we are going to bring home, but we spend a year looking for savings and redundancy and duplication and waste in Federal spending. If we do not spend a minute looking back, we can never spend a minute looking forward. Right now we do not spend any time looking back and seeing where money is being spent and where it might be saved. We do not reprioritize what was introduced and established years ago. The Biennial Budget and Appropriations Act requires the President of the United States to submit a biennial budget, requires Congress to act on the independent budget units in a 2-year fashion, in the odd-numbered years, and requires the oversight in even-numbered years of every function of the Federal Government. We do not do oversight anymore, and we are paying a terrible price for it. That is the first thing we need to do. Second, we need to understand that we need to appropriate our money the way the American people appropriate their money. They measure the benefit compared to the cost, and if the benefit to their family is not equal to or greater than the cost, they do not spend the money. But in the Congress, we do not measure cost-benefit analysis. We measure how much more we can spend in continuation than what we appropriated in a previous year. That is a broken system, and it is a broken cycle. I commend Senator Corker on his introduction of the CAP Act, which is the second part of what we need to do; that is, put ourselves on some type of fiscal constraint through a balanced budget amendment and through a spending cap. A little known secret is 2 years ago the Nation of Israel confronted problems such as the ones we have today--burgeoning debt, a bigger deficit, and spending problems. Prime Minister Netanyahu and their Finance Minister sat down at their kitchen table in Tel Aviv and established a biennial budget process, 2-year appropriations rather than 1, of even-numbered year election oversight and odd-numbered appropriating. Then they did a second thing. They put a cap on their debt, and they put a cap on spending. Do you know what happened in 2 years' time? Israel's GDP has grown by 7.9 percent. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have told the EU and some of the struggling countries in the EU such as Portugal and Spain that they should adopt a biennial spending process and the oversight process of a biennial budget and an appropriations act. Well, I would say this: If 20 of our States are doing it, and they are 20 of our most fiscally sound States, beginning with New Hampshire and Nebraska and Oregon and States like that, and if Israel has done it and demonstrated, in difficult world economic times, they can grow their GDP by 7.9 percent and reduce their debt and cap their spending, and if the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are telling the European Union, which is in most difficult straits today, that it is part of the answer as to how they spend their money and getting an arm around their spending, then I think we should take a look at it, and it should be on the floor of the Senate being debated. We have a window of opportunity. We have the chance to reform our spending process, to set ourselves on a glidepath to reducing our debt and reducing our deficit over time and sending a signal to the world market that the strong America they have known and invested in is going to be even stronger in the future. But if we continue to dilly-dally around, trying to make political headway out of economic events, and push ourselves out in time on debt and deficit, we are going to have higher inflation, higher interest rates. We are going to devalue the assets of the American people and, worst of all, we are going to lose our place in the world. I do not want to be a part of that. The President does not want to be a part of that. I do not think any Member of the Senate wants to be a part of that. So my encouragement to the leadership, Democratic and Republican alike, is, let's let the best ideas flow. Let's let them come to the floor of the Senate. Let's debate them. Let's invite the President to come and sit down with us and do the same thing. Instead of taking entitlements off the table, they ought to be part of the discussion. Instead of saying there are some things we are not going to do and some things we will, we ought to be open and say we will look at everything, and then we will prioritize based on cost versus benefits. If we do that, we will do what the people of Georgia expect me to do, and I think what the people of the United States expect all of us to do. We have a great country made great by a great people who made difficult decisions in difficult times. This is the difficult decision facing our time. I want to be one of the people who is a part of the solution, not a footnote in history at the beginning of the decline of the United States of America. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ISAKSON

Mr. ISAKSON. I would like to be recognized as in morning business. I guess we are in morning business?

Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that remaining time for the majority be reserved.

Mr. ISAKSON

Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I rise for a brief moment to pay tribute to a great career in aviation and aviation manufacturing in the State of Georgia and the United States. Tomorrow, Lee Rhyant, of Lockheed Martin in Marietta, GA, will retire at the age of 60, after giving the last 11 years of his life to that plant and overseeing the remarkable C-130J Super Hercules, the best selling transport aircraft in the history of aviation; of overseeing the completion of the first 187 F-22 Raptors, the stealth aircraft of the 21st century, the backbone of our Air Force; and then the development of the FA-35 Joint Strike Fighter, all being built in part or in whole in Marietta, GA. Lee Rhyant has guided that process through difficult times and he stood up for the Air Force and he stood up for America and he stood up for those airlines, knowing they were the right thing for the American people to have to ensure our defense and our strength nationally. I am sure, Mr. President, you have been to Iraq. I have been to Iraq, Afghanistan. We have flown in the C-130s. I flew out of Baghdad 2 years ago on one C-130 that was built in 1969 in the Marietta, GA, plant. It is still flying today, a great airplane built by great men and women. Lee Rhyant has been the leader of that great company at Lockheed Martin in Marietta for the last 11 years. He came there from Rolls Royce and has been a great leader in aviation throughout his 35 years in business--so great that 2 years ago, in 2009, he was selected the National Management Associate of the Year by the National Management Association, a tremendous credit that only 35 people have received in the past. Lee is my friend; he is my neighbor; he is a great American. He has led a great company and a great community in Georgia. I rise tonight to pay tribute to his dedication, to his commitment, and, most of all, his compassion for the American people and for the defense of our country. I wish him the best in his retirement, knowing that he has given to his country everything he could have given and earned every day of retirement he is about to receive. I yield the floor.

Mr. ISAKSON

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

Mr. ISAKSON

Mr. ISAKSON. I thank the Senator from Louisiana, and I look forward to being in New Orleans this weekend, I might add. It is a great State and a great city. Madam President, there is a pending amendment by Senator Hutchison dealing with medical waivers, which prompts me to come to the floor for a minute and talk about that issue as it affects Georgia today, and in particular to talk about it in the context of what our Governor and legislature are having to deal with right now in terms of the mandates of the health care bill signed on March 23 of last year by President Obama. In fact, on the signing of that bill, there were a couple of statements made, reflecting back on that long debate, and I want to repeat them right now. One was made by Speaker Pelosi, saying about a month before the House passed the health care bill, that you had to pass it to find out what is in it. That was a funny statement at the time, but it became prophetic as we are beginning to discover over and over the unintended consequences of the legislation on our States and on medicine. Secondly, Vice President Biden declared the magnitude of the impact of the health care bill. That magnitude is turning out to be higher cost, less benefit, and more regulation on our States. In particular, I want to bring two points up to talk about why this whole issue of medical waivers is so important. Our insurance commissioner, Ralph Hudgens, has submitted to CMS for a waiver on the medical cost-benefit rule in terms of benefits paid on policies, taking it up to 85 percent. That mandate in the health care bill is going to force not better coverage but less coverage by our insurance companies in Georgia because they will leave when they cannot meet it. It is the intention to regulate the amount of benefits paid. But the application means companies that can't meet it by the time set in the bill will leave the State. So instead, you will have less of what was promised rather than more. You will have less available choice and more people forced to a single-payer system in the government operated through an exchange. This prompts me to talk about the second issue going on in Georgia. Our newly elected Governor, Governor Nathan Deal, is trying to deal with a mandate on setting up the State exchange that will be available to operate by 2014, in a period of time where the public wants no part of the national health care bill and wants to wait on a Supreme Court ruling on June Vinson's opinion from Florida. I come to the floor to say these medical waivers are important. States are having to ask for them because of the impact of the overall health care bill that was signed on March 23 of last year. If some relief doesn't come, we are going to have some cataclysmic events. One will be the impact on employees and small businesses, which is what this bill is all about. I ran a small business. I had independent contractors for whom under ERISA you could not provide health insurance. I tried my best to get this Congress and this President to consider an associated benefit program approval so we could have people, such as those in my profession, assemble together and form large risk pools so they could compete for insurance, the same as major companies and States do. That was rejected instead for an exchange and for a simple system that says small businesses must provide health insurance to their employees, but if they do not provide it, they will pay a modest fine that is much less than the cost of the insurance. That one statement and rule alone forces people in small business to leave health care coverage from an insurance carrier, getting it through their employer, and instead they are forced to go to a government exchange where choice is limited and mandates are many. I want to commend the distinguished chairman and ranking member of the Small Business Committee for the effort they are making on this bill, but also commend Senator Hutchison on the importance of considering the volume of these waivers being filed; why are they being filed, and are they an early warning for what will happen to us when this bill goes into effect if we don't take the ObamaCare legislation and commit drastic surgery or, better yet, start over and build a system that works, where we have the private delivery of health care and a minimum of government interference. I thank very much the chairman for giving me the time to speak.