Edward Kaufman

Mr. KAUFMAN

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 29, 2010, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 29, 2010, at 9 a.m., in room SH-216 of the Hart Senate Office Building, to continue the hearing on the nomination of Elena Kagan to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 29, 2010 at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 29, 2010, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. KAUFMAN

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 23, 2010, at 2:30 p.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The U.S.-China Trade Relationship: Finding a New Path Forward.''

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 23, 2010, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Finding Common Ground with a Rising China.''

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on The Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 23, 2010, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Oversight of the Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator.''

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules and Administration be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 23, 2010, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Examining the Filibuster: Silent Filibusters, Holds and the Senate Confirmation Process.''

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 23, 2010, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Having Their Say: Customer and Employee Views on the Future of the U.S. Postal Service.''

Mr. KAUFMAN

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

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

Mr. KAUFMAN

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to remind my colleagues that the Recovery Act has worked and is still working. It has been almost a year and a half since I took office and since President Obama was sworn in. Remember, we came into office in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Our financial system was collapsing. We had already lost millions of jobs and were losing millions more at a truly frightening pace. We had roughly a $2 trillion hole in our economy, and instead of a surplus of $710 billion that was projected in 2001 for 2009, we wound up with a $1.6 trillion deficit. Remember back in 2001 when the Bush administration came in? One of the problems was our surpluses were growing too fast. We had projected a $5 trillion surplus through 2009. What did we end up with? We ended up with $5 trillion in deficits during that period, a $10 trillion turnaround. In 2009 where we had projected a surplus of $710 billion, we ended up with a $1.6 trillion deficit. Fortunately, the Recovery Act brought us back from the precipice of disaster. It saved us from another full-blown depression and allowed us to rebuild our economy and add jobs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office just recently completed an analysis that demonstrated what a big impact the Recovery Act has had. The CBO, nonpartisan CBO, indicated that in the first quarter of this year, the Recovery Act accounted for anywhere between 1.8 million and 4.1 million more jobs, 2 to 4 million jobs. I would call that a success. The CBO also told us unemployment was .7 percent to 1\1/2\ percent lower because of the Recovery Act. Our gross domestic product was 1.7 percent to 4.2 percent higher. The CBO is not the only one telling us this story. The Conference Board reported the latest version of its Leading Economic Index. The chart I have shows this index since last January, since the President and I took office. This is when we passed the Recovery Act. As my colleagues can see, it bottomed out in March 2009, shortly after passage of the Recovery Act, and has been steadily climbing ever since. Other major economic indicators tell a similar story. Take the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Now, take the Dow Jones Industrial Average as a guide to the health of our financial markets. This chart shows that shortly after passing the Recovery Act, the markets hit bottom with the Dow at 6,547 on March 9, 2009. I wonder what happened in March that caused the Dow Jones to go up like this? The Dow since then has risen dramatically, rising above 11,000 a couple of months ago, and even remaining above 10,000 amidst recent market turmoil. Take a look at this chart. Let's throw the last chart up here again. In March 2009, we passed the Recovery Act, and guess what happened. The Dow Jones average takes off. March 2009, guess what. We passed the Recovery Act and the major economic indicators take off. Let's look at another one. How about the Purchasing Managers Index, a leading indicator of business confidence. Any score over 50 means the businesses around the country believe conditions are better than they were the previous month, and we are headed in the right direction. Take a look at this chart. Oh, my goodness. Guess what. Early 2009, we are crashing. Now we are up. I wonder what happened during March 2009 to cause this Purchasing Managers Index to go up. Why all of a sudden did businesses around the country believe conditions were getting better? I wonder what that was all about? Let's look at another chart. Let's look at gross domestic product, one of the very best indicators of our health. From 2007 to the first quarter of 2010 it tells the same story: Things started getting better after the Recovery Act was passed. Here is the first quarter of 2009. Oh, my goodness, look at this. Going straight down. We get to the first quarter of 2009, straight up. Either this is one of the truly great coincidences of our time, or the Recovery Act turned this economy around. The key point, as we have said all along, is not the economy, but it is jobs. So let's take a look at jobs. The most recent unemployment report indicated that we added 431,000 jobs last month. Unemployment is still too high, much too high. Without our efforts to help the economy, most notably the Recovery Act, it would be even higher still. Take a look at this chart. Here we are, folks. March 2009. What happened in March? I wonder what happened in March 2009. I wonder why jobs went from losing 753,000, which is what we lost in March of last year, to gaining 431,000 in May. I wonder. What could have happened to these charts? We know the unfortunate thing about this is the economy is coming back, and the economy is coming back because of the Recovery Act. But we know from past experience that job growth lags behind economic recovery, and this chart shows how long that took from previous postwar recessions. The problem is not that the Recovery Act did not work. It worked and the economy came back. The problem is, if you look back--and we knew this at the time--if you go back to 1949 where the jobs lagged by 5 months, or you go back to more recent history, November 2001, where jobs lagged 22 months, the problem is not that the Recovery Act did not work, the problem is the time it takes from when the economy comes back until jobs come back. That is not hard to explain. Businesses need to use up their existing capacity and they need to feel confident in the economic climate before they start expanding again. That just makes sense. The process can be especially painful during a financial collapse where businesses and households are forced to pare down their savings and reduce their spending, thus tamping down economic and employment growth. Due to this lag, which was totally predictable, the jobs have been slower to return than anyone likes. But make no mistake, thanks to the Recovery Act, we have gotten our economy back on track and growing again. We must not, however, take these results for granted. For those who said at the time we could get by with less, my Republican friends-- and they are my friends, and I hold them in high regard--but to those who said the economy will come back without the Recovery Act, just look at the example of Japan in 1990. Remember on this floor, and the vote against this was almost complete, against the Recovery Act. I think we ended up getting three Republican votes. They were saying: We do not need to do anything. The economy will come back. Let me show you something. Japan tried that. Approximately 20 years ago, Japan also experienced a serious economic downturn that was precipitated by the bursting of speculative bubbles in real estate and financial assets. Sound familiar? However, Japan was slow not only to address the crisis in the banking sector, but also to use fiscal stimulus to help jumpstart the economy. This chart shows the results. They call it the ``lost decade'' in Japan. Literally no growth in gross domestic product. That is what happens if you do nothing, if we had done nothing. We must not allow that to happen here. There are those who continue to present a false choice between balancing the budget and fiscal stimulus necessary to get our economy back on track. This is a false choice. But we should know by now there are times in which fiscal stimulus and deficits are necessary-- necessary. Good deficits to spur growth and get our economy on track. There are other times when deficits are unnecessary and short-sighted. Deficits are sometimes necessary, looking back through history, to allow fiscal stimulus to jumpstart an economy that is contracting due to a precipitous decline in private sector investment and consumer spending. There is a hole in the economy because private sector investment and consumer spending stopped. The economy is frozen. That is the time you have to get the economy going. If you have a $2 trillion hole in the economy, you can't let it sit there, as Japan did, and fester. You have to do something. That is what the Recovery Act did. It put money into the economy. However, my friends on the other side of the aisle are absolutely right when they say deficits are inappropriate during good economic times, which is what we had for the 8 years previous to this. At those times, they are typically the result of irresponsible decisions to cut taxes and put in place unfunded spending programs--tax cuts that were not paid for; the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not paid for; Medicare prescription drugs, not paid for. So during a period when the Congressional Budget Office said: In 2001, we are going to run a $5 billion surplus, we ran a $5.6 trillion deficit because we went out and spent and spent and spent with no provision for paying for it. I cannot believe it when I am presiding here and colleagues come to the floor and talk about the unemployment extension like, man, this is a bad situation. These folks are going to spend money and not pay for it, because we have these incredible deficits. These deficits didn't just show up in the last year. The deficit in the last year was to get the economy moving again. It was a good idea. Where did the $10 trillion turnaround come from between 2001 and 2008, when time after time, on big programs such as tax cuts and going to war, the decision was made not to pay for it? That is where we got the deficits. That is where the deficits came from. Those are the bad deficits. We were irresponsible. We had good times. That is when we should have built up the deficits. That is when the bipartisan CBO said we would have surpluses, remember? In fact, the rationale for the first tax cut was: It is better in their pockets than in our pocket. We should not have been giving out these tax cuts. But let's just give them to the American people because of the surplus. And we ran up a $5 trillion deficit. While we have serious structural and budgetary problems--and we do-- that need to be resolved for the long term, getting our economy growing again has to be our first priority, and had to be. President Obama has established a bipartisan commission to address those long-term problems. In the short-term, we need to grow ourselves out of deficits--a phrase my colleagues across the aisle have invoked many times in the past. They are absolutely right. We have to grow out of this. One of the ways we grow out of this is to get the economy moving. One of the ways to get the economy moving is by the Recovery Act. I remember February 2009 all too well. No one in the Senate should ever forget what it was actually like in February 2009. We were looking into the abyss before we passed the Recovery Act. The American economy was in free fall, and another Great Depression was imminent. Those were truly scary days. The Recovery Act helped divert another Great Depression. It has our economy growing again. It has improved our fiscal situation. Imagine the size of our budget deficits if we had another Great Depression, which was an all- too-real possibility just over a year ago. Do you think these deficits are bad? Suppose we had the Great Depression. We are now on the path to recovery, but it is a narrow ridge, not a broad field. If we do not keep our eyes forward, we will too easily lose our way. We have a fragile economic recovery that has been made even more so by the massive oilspill in the gulf and by serious fiscal and financial strains in Europe. We could have a double-dip. We could turn this around. This is a very fragile time for the economy. Given these perilous circumstances, we need to be vigilant to avoid another double-dip recession. To conclude, the Recovery Act has done its job and will continue to do so. Now, as we get through this crisis, as this recession passes, we need to create new jobs. That is the key. It isn't enough to try to win back the jobs we lost. We have to do that. To keep pace with our population and keep a sacred promise to our children and grandchildren, we need to create a whole new generation of jobs. As former President Clinton said in recent years: In the last 10 years, we were creating jobs in three areas--housing, finance, and consumer economy. Unfortunately, all three of these have suffered in this economy. All three of these have benefited from loose credit and easy money to build up a bubble. I am sorry to say that many of these jobs are not coming back, especially in the short term. We cannot look forward to the day or depend on the day where carpenters were scarce because we built more housing than people could afford to buy. We do not need a revitalized legion of clever bankers any more than we need another Starbucks one block closer. Going forward, we need to transform our economy by revolutionizing how we produce and consume energy. To do this, we will need more scientists and engineers. It is in this area where future job and economic growth will happen. The Recovery Act, thank goodness, began this process, not only by turning our economy around but also by promoting green jobs and investment in clean energy initiatives. Our challenge in the future will be to build upon its foundation. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAUFMAN

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

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business.

Mr. KAUFMAN

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize another of our Nation's great Federal employees. Americans continue to watch closely the efforts in the Gulf of Mexico to clean up the worst oilspill in our Nation's history. That oilspill has been a reminder to all of us just how important clean water is for wildlife, businesses, and our food supply. The Federal employee I have chosen to honor today designed innovative software to identify risks and solutions to possible attacks against our Nation's water supply. Dr. Regan Murray is a native of Cincinnati, OH. She holds a bachelor's degree from Kalamazoo College and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Arizona. After completing her doctorate, she worked in the private sector but soon realized she wanted to make a difference by serving her country. Then came the attacks of September 11. Shortly after that tragic day, Regan started working at the Environmental Protection Agency as a mathematical statistician. Looking back at her decision to pursue public service, Regan said: I wanted to do more meaningful work that directly impacted people's lives. Regan was instrumental in leading the development team for new software that identifies security vulnerabilities in our water supply and helps devise solutions to make it safer. One of these programs, TEVA-SPOT, helps find the best locations in water utility distribution systems in which to install sensors. Another, called CANARY, is a real- time data analysis program to monitor the sensors and identify contaminants. Regan attributes her success to a strong background in mathematics. She has said: Math is the language of science, which is perfect when leading an interdisciplinary group of researchers. I have spoken often on this floor about the desirability of more of our students, especially women, to consider careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM. Regan is a wonderful example of how someone who studies mathematics can make a real and important difference. Her story, though, does not end with her success in developing these software programs. Regan also worked hard to build and maintain important relationships with water utilities in order to ensure that these programs would be put to use. Furthermore, despite her long hours of work for the agency, Regan cofounded a nonprofit that focuses on improving the lives of children affected by HIV-AIDS and poverty in Africa. She visits Zambia annually and has raised thousands of dollars to benefit the schools there. Outstanding government employees such as Dr. Regan Murray are making a difference each and every day. So many of them also serve as volunteers in their communities and around the world. I hope my colleagues will join me in thanking Dr. Regan Murray and all those working at the Environmental Protection Agency for their hard work and dedicated service on behalf of the American people. They are all truly great Federal employees. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KAUFMAN

Mr. KAUFMAN. Madam President, I may need 3 or 4 or 5 more minutes.

Mr. KAUFMAN. I thank the Senator. Madam President, when I was appointed to the Senate, I made a promise to myself not to let this opportunity pass without helping to recognize the contribution made to this Nation by its government workers. This is why I began my weekly ``great Federal employee'' series last May. In all my years working as a Federal employee, I have met so many wonderful individuals who have dedicated their careers to working for the American people. So many are deserving but will not make it onto the poster I bring to the Senate floor each week commemorating great Federal employees simply because there are so many of them. Over the years, as I have witnessed countless acts of personal courage, devotion to country, and real sacrifice, I have also seen and heard such disheartening and baseless attacks against those who choose to serve. The pending amendment is just the latest assault. It comes on the heels of a new myth being peddled on television, on talk radio, in print, and on this very floor--the allegation that somehow Federal employees are overpaid; that their salaries have been rising unfairly compared to those with similar jobs in the private sector; that we should freeze or cut their pay or lay them off; that we should make it nearly impossible to hire any new government worker at all. Before I rebut these arguments piecemeal, I remind my colleagues and the American people what we are talking about. This is not an exercise in the abstract. There are concrete facts. There are names, faces, and real life stories of achievement and hard work. Nearly 2 million wake up every day and go to work for the American people, for their neighbors, their friends and family, for folks they have never met or will never meet. They do it for substantially less pay than the same job in the private sector and with considerably more at stake. As I have said before, there are no Wall Street bonuses, and there is rarely ever recognition for their hard work. For many, working as a Federal employee is a tough choice. In his keynote address at the annual dinner on Monday honoring the winners of this year's Arthur S. Flemming Awards for public service, NIST physicist Dr. William Phillips--whom I honored as a great Federal employee this past December--told his audience about a colleague who decided to work for the Federal Government. This scientist had been working most of his early career in the private sector. At a certain point, he realized it was more important for him to make a difference and serve his country, so he went to work in a government lab. He told Dr. Phillips that, to do so, he took a pay cut that was a factor of 10. That is 10 times less pay. I am sure it was a difficult decision, but ultimately he made the choice to work for his country. I met an appointee the other day who is taking a 95 percent pay cut. I have constantly been amazed by the number of highly skilled and highly experienced individuals willing to take 20, 40, 60 percent salary cuts to work in the Obama Administration. These political appointees join the career personnel, so many of who would also be making much more in the private sector. Just look at some of those I have honored as great Federal employees this past year. By the way, I do not pick the people at the top of the spectrum. When I honor a great Federal employee, it is at any level in the government. Anybody who does their job well should be honored. We have so many great Federal employees who operate at all levels of government that I try to honor them all. I am hard pressed to think of any who would not be making a lot more in the private sector. Not only do we have brilliant physicists such as Dr. William Phillips who won a Nobel Prize. We also have those such as Brian Persons, the executive director of NAVSEA who has spent his career designing and maintaining our Navy's ships and who holds an engineering degree from Michigan State. Or Erica Williams, an enforcement attorney with the SEC with a degree from the University of Virginia Law School, who I am sure could be making a lot more if she worked for a Wall Street firm. Or Judge Timothy Rice, a Temple Law School graduate who could have chosen to work as an attorney in private practice but, instead, went to work for the Justice Department and on the Federal bench. I am not saying that all Federal employees earn 10 times less than their private sector counterparts. I am not even saying all Federal employees earn less. Still, those who claim that Federal employees are making more on average than private sector counterparts simply don't have all their facts straight. We know how these things happen. In this case, much of the data used to make these claims are from a USA Today study a few months ago, which analyzed findings from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The big problem with that study is that it is both highly selective of the job categories compared and it fails to take into account the demographics of our Federal workforce. The number of employees in various private sector job categories dwarfs that of the Federal Government, skewing salary data lower for the private sector, where there are more minimum wage jobs. Also, a large number of Federal jobs require highly specialized skills and, as a result, employees are often older and more educated than the average worker in comparable private sector roles. Many Americans do not realize that about 20 percent of Federal employees hold a master's or professional degree, compared to 13 percent in the private sector. Fifty-one percent of Federal employees have at least a bachelor's degree, while this is true for only 35 percent of the private sector workforce. In the words of Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service which, by the way, is a nonpartisan organization this is ``not an apples-to-apples comparison.'' You cannot simply ask what the average salaries for budget analysts are in the private sector and for budget analysts in government. The same goes for librarians or statisticians or paralegals. The occupational categories might be called by the same name, but the work is very different. There are different skill sets required, different types of experience necessary. When actual job tasks are compared, few government jobs have exact equivalents in the private sector. Contrary to what many have said, Federal workers' salaries are actually lower, not higher, than those in the private sector. Indeed, the Federal Salary Council reported last October that Federal employees were making an average of over 26 percent--less--than those in the private sector doing comparable work. Moreover, this represents a widening of the private-public pay gap from the previous year, continuing a recent trend. However, this line of attack continues from those who routinely disparage the role of government. Unfortunately, it has become all too common to criticize Washington by defaming the civilian employees who work across our government. Federal employees continue to serve as a convenient scapegoat. That, essentially, is what this amendment does. It assigns blame and does not really address the budgetary problems we face. It reminds me of an amendment proposed by one of my friends on the other side of the aisle when we were considering the health insurance reform bill. It would have mandated that ``for each new bureaucrat added to any department or agency for the purpose of implementing the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the head of such department or agency shall ensure that the addition of such new bureaucrat is offset by a reduction of one existing bureaucrat at such department or agency.'' In effect, we would have to fire a Federal worker to hire one. This so-called ``bureaucrat offset'' amendment--using a word that has become, unfortunately, pejorative in our political discourse--was bad enough. The Thune amendment, with its blanket pay freeze and hiring caps, takes this a step further, prohibiting any Federal agency from hiring a new employee until one retires. At a moment when we are faced with a difficult choice about how to reduce our deficit and get our economy moving again, this amendment represents an easy cop-out. All those who blame Federal employees for our Nation's problems or believe that cutting their salaries or capping their number will in any way solve those problems remain averse to making difficult decisions. The cuts to the Federal workforce in the Thune amendment would only save the taxpayers a meager amount compared to what we need to save. Its provisions on the Federal workforce and the ongoing, gratuitous disparagement of America's public employees from many directions constitute a dangerous distraction from the very tough steps we as a nation must take. The greatest challenges we face today--the gulf spill, two wars, carbon pollution, illegal immigration, market volatility--all of these will be tackled by hardworking Federal employees. All of these challenges require a readiness on our part to make difficult choices. Scapegoating and playing the blame game won't get us anywhere. Federal employees know firsthand about making tough choices. They do so every day. Many of the great Federal employees I have honored from this desk came to my attention because they faced difficult tasks, took risks, and achieved great accomplishments. Some of those I honored have served overseas in dangerous regions; one gave his life while working for USAID. One left a lucrative private sector job after September 11th to join the Justice Department as an anti-terror prosecutor. Others immigrated to this country from places like Afghanistan and Vietnam and became Federal employees because they wanted to give back to the country that took them in as refugees. These stories go on and on. They are as diverse and numerous as this great country of ours. Additionally, all of my honorees share with every other government employee the experience of making that initial decision to pursue government work hardly an easy one to make considering the sacrifices involved. Ultimately, those who support Federal salary cuts and hiring caps mistakenly view our civil service as a cost. Rather, it is an important national resource with real benefits for all of us. At the end of the day, I must remind my colleagues that it is our outstanding Federal employees who will carry out the programs we pass everyday in this Chamber. We will continue to count on the Federal workforce to keep our skies safe for travel, our troops provisioned and veterans cared for, our schools held to high standards, and our homeland secure. Woodrow Wilson, as a young political scientist during the civil service reform debates of the 1880s, advocated for a system of public administration because he believed that the conditions of modernity require it in order for a democratic state to function at its best. Indeed, our civil service has developed into one uniquely suited to our needs and incorporating America's best constitutional traditions. We have a Federal workforce of which we can be proud. Federal employees play a critical role in our national life and, through their work, exemplify so many of our Nation's great values. These include exemplary citizenship; industriousness; a willingness to take risks; perseverance; modesty; and intellect. Contrary to popular myth, most Federal employees work outside of Washington. In fact, no State--and I include the District of Columbia-- no State is home to more than 8.5 percent of the total Federal workforce. Our government employees work in communities large and small, spread out from coast to coast and overseas. One of the challenges we face is a Federal retirement boom. As the baby boomers get older, the Office of Personnel Management has estimated that one-fifth of the Federal workforce will retire by 2014. This comes at the same time that more new hires are needed in mission- critical jobs dealing with public health, national security, transportation safety, financial regulation, and many other important areas. Now is not the time to talk about laying off Federal workers or freezing their pay. We should be talking about how to invest in recruiting the next generation of Federal employees. The scapegoating and baseless attacks against Federal workers only serve to demoralize those who are on the front lines of confronting our national challenges. It also discourages talented young Americans from making that difficult choice whether to start a career in service to their country. Let me reiterate. Federal employees make less than those in the private sector, not more. They represent some of our very best and brightest, a dedicated and hard-working group of Americans across this country. We need to recruit a new generation of government workers to help us tackle great challenges, and unfairly labeling Federal employees as a problem fails to realize their important role in finding so many solutions to the very difficult problems we face. The pending amendment's pay freeze and hiring restrictions will do almost nothing to reduce our deficit; rather, its effect on our government's ability to address serious issues will be disastrous. For those looking to shift the blame for our troubles and who have their sights on America's Federal employees, I suggest look elsewhere. For those who want easy, let's-deal-with-this-later answers and are looking for a convenient distraction, I say look elsewhere. For those who support this amendment, for those who habitually shy away from making the tough choices we in this Chamber need to make, I say, though, look no further than the public employees you so casually fault. They know how to make tough choices. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that it be charged against both sides.

Mr. KAUFMAN

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, it has been nearly a year since deadly ethnic rioting between ethnic Han Chinese and the native Uighur population engulfed the city of Urumqi in China's vast, far-western region of Xianjiang--one of the worst ethnic clashes in China in decades. Last year, after the protests began, I spoke on the floor, expressing my concern about human rights abuses and a lack of press freedom in Xianjiang, as demonstrated by the decision by the Chinese government to block access to journalists, which prevented the world from knowing the truth of what was occurring. Unfortunately, it is now clear that things were even worse than we knew at the time. The Chinese police, the People's Armed Police, and the military responded with a heavy hand, conducting many large-scale sweep operations in two mostly Uighur areas of the city, operations that reportedly continued at least through mid-August of 2009. Internet and text-messaging services were immediately limited or cut off, and were only restored last month, depriving the people of Xianjiang from access to news, information, means of communication, and other benefits of connective technology. The official death toll from the July 5, 2009, rioting was reportedly 197--though human rights observers say the actual number of casualties is higher. At least 1,700 people were injured, and some 1,500 people, by the government's own account, were detained. According to an insightful article published in the Washington Post this week, as of early March, there have been 25 death sentences among the 198 people officially sentenced. Twenty-three of those 25 were ethnic Uighurs. The Post, which sent a reporter to Urumqi for a look at the city 1 year after the riots, reports that residents ``seem most terrified of talking,'' and not just with journalists but also with each other. Uniformed and plainclothes police officers are pervasive, the newspaper reports. Most Uighurs are Sunni Muslims, but their religious freedoms have been sharply curtailed. Economically, they lag well behind the ethnic Han population. I condemn the continued repression of the Uighurs, as well as the violence perpetrated against all innocent civilians in China, and I call on the Chinese government to bring this reprehensible behavior to an end. I also reiterate my call from last year on the Chinese government to open Internet and mobile phone access, end jamming of international broadcasting, and lift the grave and growing restrictions on the press. If China is going to assume a position of leadership in the international community on par with its economic standing, it must lead by example in granting essential freedoms and human rights to its citizens. I ask unanimous consent that the Washington Post article entitled ``One year later, China's crackdown after Uighur riots haunts a homeland'' published on June 15 be printed in the Record.

Mr. KAUFMAN

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time used during the quorum call be charged equally to both sides.

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

Mr. KAUFMAN

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 16, 2010.

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 16, 2010, at 9 a.m.

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate to conduct a business meeting on June 16, 2010, at 11 a.m., in room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 16, 2010, at 9:30 a.m., to hold a hearing entitled ``The New START Treaty (Treaty Doc. 111-5): Views from the Pentagon.''

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 16, 2010. The Committee will meet in room 418 of the Russell Senate Office Building beginning at 9:30 a.m.