George LeMieux

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I see the roses on the desk of our colleague from West Virginia, as I did in the Armed Services Committee meeting I left a few minutes ago and will return to shortly. It makes me think that what we do here on a day-to-day basis seems very small compared to the legacy Senator Byrd has left us over his many years as the longest serving Member of Congress. We will do our best in the time we have to honor his legacy and thank him today and every day going forward for what he has done for this institution. He kept the flame. He understood the importance of this body constitutionally, and he understood that the rules and procedures of this body were its lifeblood and really understood them and recognized them more than anyone else who has served in this Chamber and spent his life's work protecting them and memorializing them. To him, we owe a great commendation.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, the senior Senator from Florida, for his comments, bringing the proper focus to the issue of skimmers. It is something I have been talking about for weeks. I have been coming to the floor for the past week to talk about the lack of response from the Federal Government in keeping oil off our beaches, out of our intercoastal waterways, out of our estuaries in Florida. I said earlier this week that I would come to the floor every day until we had good answers as to where the skimmers are. It makes absolutely no sense that we do not have a more robust effort from the Federal Government to keep the oil from coming onshore. Right now we have not only tar balls on our beaches, we have large swathes of brown oily slop that have come ashore in Pensacola. It breaks one's heart to see it. When I was there last week meeting with the President, I talked to a woman who was working at the dock, right on the pier. She is a woman who sells food to folks coming to the pier. I asked her: Are people coming out since we have had the oilspill to see the beach? She said: Yes. The folks who are coming haven't seen the beach in a long time. They are coming to see the beach one last time, as if they are visiting a family member who is on his or her deathbed. We know BP is responsible. We know they cut corners. We know they are responsible for ultimately paying for all of the economic damages. But there is another part of this equation, and that is the Federal Government. The Federal Government is here to do what local and State governments cannot do at a time of disaster, and that is to marshal unbelievable resources to prevent harm to the people, to the environment, and to the economy. As I have come to the floor over the past week, I have talked about the fact that we can't get a straight answer as to how many skimmers are actually off the coast of Florida. These are ships that suck the oil off of the water and keep the oil from coming onshore. Today we still don't have a straight answer. The Federal Government tells us in their shore operations report from the National Incident Command that there are 118 skimmers. But yesterday they told us these reports are not accurate and that there are, in fact, 86 skimmers. So we have the number 118 and we have the number 86. We have a number from the State of Florida that is different. The number from the State of Florida was 31, 25 plus 6 additional skimmers that the State of Florida had to go out on their own and get. They took the initiative to get the skimmers on their own because they were not getting them from the Federal Government. Today the report is different. It is shown in a different way. When we called to ask the State of Florida, they couldn't tell us how many skimmers there were. Yesterday it was 31. The Fed said 118. But then they say the number is really 86. Whether it is 31, 86, or 118, it is not enough. Why is it not enough? There is a huge area between Pensacola and Panama City that needs to be treated by the skimmers, let alone the rest of the area that goes all the way over to Louisiana. We know there are about 400 skimmers in the Gulf of Mexico, but there are 2,000 skimmers in the United States. Before I talk about domestic skimmers, I want to talk about the offers of assistance that have been made by foreign countries to help us. We are the greatest country in the world. When there are disasters, whether they be in Southeast Asia with the tsunami or Haiti with an earthquake or Central or South America with an earthquake, we send resources, volunteers, teams of people, aid. We are there to help them. The world community has been offering us assistance--some of it free, some of it they want paid for, but assistance nonetheless. We are coming to find out that we are not responding to their offers of help. The State Department has reported as of last week that we had 56 offers of assistance from 28 countries or international groups. But we have only accepted 5 of these offers, 5 offers of assistance out of 56. We have a lot of great skimmers that are working in the Gulf of Mexico, but some of them are pretty small, to be honest. We are happy they are there. A small skimmer is better than no skimmer. But let me show a skimmer that was offered to the United States that is not a small skimmer. In fact, it is a huge vessel. This was offered to us by a Dutch company called Dockwise. This ship is called the Swan. It could be outfitted with skimming arms. It was available to go to the gulf. The U.S. Government didn't return the call. It was offered on May 6. Now some 50 days later, it still has not been responded to. It is still under consideration. This ship is able to take up 20,000 tons of material, whether it be oil, or an oil/water mixture, 20,000 tons. This is not some skimmer that can go on the back of a train or on a boat or an airplane and be flown down to the gulf or trucked or trained down to the gulf. We are happy to get those too. This is a serious piece of ship equipment. We haven't called them back. Guess what. This is no longer available. Instead it was replaced by a ship with one-twentieth of the capacity, a U.S. ship. I am all for America first. I am all for using U.S. assets. But this is not an either/or situation. We should be using American ships and international ships. We gave up a ship with 20 times the capability that could be out there in the gulf sucking up this oil, perhaps keeping it off the beaches of my State, off the beaches of Pensacola, and we didn't return the phone call. Nor did we return the phone call to the other 51 offers of assistance. It is beyond belief. Let me go back a second and talk about the domestic skimmers. This map I have in the Chamber is going to be a little hard for you to see, but I want to walk through it. This shows different parts of the country, broken up by districts. In each of these districts, there are skimmers. Where did we get this information? We got this information from the U.S. Government, from the Coast Guard because Admiral Allen said, a week ago, there are 2,000 skimmers in the United States. Why are not the vast majority of those skimmers in the gulf right now? What is the holdup? We hear about legal entanglements. Is it the Jones Act, is it Federal law, is it local law, is it EPA restrictions that are keeping skimmers in different parts of the country in case there is an oilspill? I asked the President of the United States about this last week in Pensacola, and he said: Well, we are trying to get all the skimmers we can. Obviously, Admiral Allen wants to get all the skimmers we can, but some of those skimmers need to stay in place in case there is an oilspill. Well, Mr. President, there is an oilspill. It is in the Gulf of Mexico. And saying we are not going to bring skimmers because of legal entanglements or constraints from other parts of the country because there might be an oilspill there is like me saying we are not going to send the fire engine to your house that is on fire because there might be another fire someplace else. This is the worst environmental disaster in the history of this country and every available resource should be used. As shown on the map, this is district 8 right here, which is the Texas area. This is district 7, which is Florida, Georgia, South Carolina. The number of skimmers in the Texas area is 599. The number of skimmers in the Florida district is 251. So between these two areas, 850 skimmers, just between Texas and all the way up to South Carolina. How can it be that there are 850 skimmers in, basically, the Gulf of Mexico States--with the exception of going around to South Carolina; but we are talking about Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas--how can there be this many skimmers--850--but we only have 400 in the gulf right now, if that number is correct? How can that be? How can we be 65-plus days into this and not have those skimmers in the Gulf of Mexico, when they are virtually there anyway, according to this report, or right next door? Beyond this 850 in the district that encompasses all the way from North Carolina up to the mid-Atlantic, we have another 157 skimmers. Up here, in the New England area, there are another 160 skimmers. Up near Michigan, there are 72 skimmers. If you go over to California--and we can bring these things through the Panama Canal or, if they are smaller, they can be flown in--in this California district, there are 227. So we are literally talking about more than 1,000 skimmers that are available, but we only have 400, if this number is correct, at work. It is hard to believe the response is this anemic. It is hard to believe there is this lack of urgency or sense of purpose in getting this done. I see my colleague from Louisiana is in the Chamber. Her State has been impacted worse than any other so far, and I know she wants every available resource off the coast of Louisiana to stop this oil from coming ashore, just as our friends in Mississippi, in Alabama do, and just as we do in Florida. This is not a partisan issue. I want the President to succeed. I want the Coast Guard to succeed. But right now it is not just oil washing up on the shore of Florida, it is failure. We have to do more. We have to get focused and get passionate and get something done about this issue. I will keep coming to the floor to talk about this issue as long as it is a problem, as long as we keep refusing foreign help, as long as we have thousands of available skimmers in this country to do the job that should be done. I should look off the coast of Pensacola and see an armada of skimmers doing the job that needs to be done to keep this oil off our beaches, out of our waterways, and out of our estuaries. So I promise to be back until the problem is solved. I hope I do not have to come back because I hope I can report in a positive way that the Federal Government has gone into action and we are doing what we should be doing for our people and for our environment. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my remarks, the senior Senator from New Hampshire be recognized.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, America is facing a lot of challenges. We have the issue of unemployment compensation that my colleague just mentioned and how to pay for that so we do not put this country into further debt. We have the two wars we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and a myriad of other challenges that are facing this country. But a clear and present danger exists right now in the Gulf of Mexico, a clear and present danger to my home State of Florida. I have come to the floor almost every day over the past week while we have been in session to talk about the need for the Federal Government to have a more robust response in preventing this oil from coming ashore. Unfortunately, the situation has gotten worse. In a report this morning on television that I saw by Mark Potter, the oil now is coming ashore in Pensacola in a way that is profoundly worse than it has been. As he described it: It is oil as far as the eye can see. Watching those pristine white beaches covered in brown splotches of oil this morning-- it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart for what it is going to mean for the people of northwest Florida, what it will mean for the environment; but it breaks my heart even more because I think a lot of this could have been prevented. Many Members of this body, as well as the one down the hall, have been asking for weeks, where is the Federal response? Where are the skimmers off our coast to suck up this oil before it gets on our beaches, into our waterways and into our estuaries? Frankly, I have been extremely frustrated with the response from this government. I believe--and there are many who believe this as well-- that the Federal Government should not be involved in all aspects of our lives. But what the government does, the government should do well. And one thing the Federal Government should do, and should be uniquely qualified to do, is to help in a time of disaster. In this circumstance, however, the government has fallen far short. One thing that has been very frustrating to me is trying to determine how many skimmers are in fact off the coast of Florida. Skimmers are these vessels which are equipped to suck the oil off the water, bring it on to a place where it can be contained and disposed of and get that oil out of the ocean. As of yesterday, we found out that there were 20 skimmers off the coast of Florida, plus an additional 5 skimmers that the State of Florida went out on its own and rented. When I met with the President a week ago yesterday in Pensacola, I raised the issue with him: Why are there not more resources stopping this oil from coming ashore? Admiral Allen, who was at that meeting, and who is the head of the response--the former Commandant of the Coast Guard--told us there are 2,000 skimmers in the United States. So why are there only 20 off of Florida? I have asked the Coast Guard and even the Navy, why are there not more skimmers? I have come to find out that we cannot even determine how many skimmers there are. The State of Florida, as of yesterday, in their Deepwater Horizon incident report, shows 20. We know an additional five were rented. The Federal Government's report, the National Incident Command Report, says there are 108 skimmers. We asked the Federal Government--the Coast Guard--why this number is different than the number in the State Incident Command Report. We can't get a good answer. And when we drilled down on this 108 last week, we were told: Well, that number isn't correct. In followup, and having met with the Navy yesterday, and the Coast Guard--and I thank Secretary Mabus for making the Navy and the Coast Guard available to us to talk to them about this issue--we got a more detailed response about skimmers that the Coast Guard reports are off the coast of Florida, and now the number appears to be 86. So we have the State telling us 25, we have the incident report from the Federal Government saying 108, and now the Coast Guard says it is 86. We can't get a straight answer. This gets to the base of the problem, which is that we don't know what we are doing down there in the Gulf of Mexico. The Federal Government is not putting the focus and attention on this issue that it should be. When I met with Admiral Allen, I asked him about the 2,000 skimmers he had reported were available in this country and why those skimmers weren't in the Gulf of Mexico now, some 65 days after this disaster first started. I got answers ranging from, well, some are obligated to be other places in case there is an oilspill--to me, that is like saying your house is burning down and we can't send a firetruck because we may need a firetruck for another house that might burn down--to this answer: They are legally constrained. This is what I heard from the Navy yesterday when I met with them. Some 35 skimmers they would like to bring down are legally constrained. I asked this question yesterday: Why aren't we approaching this issue with a sense of urgency? Why doesn't the President sign an Executive order waiving any legal constraints? Why aren't we doing everything possible to marshal those resources into the Gulf of Mexico? I have received a new piece of information from the U.S. Coast Guard. It is the National Response Resource Inventory of skimmers and capabilities throughout the whole country. This document shows the different districts in this country. I will get this blown up and, hopefully, come to the floor tomorrow and show this in greater detail. It has the country broken up by area into districts. Florida is in a district with Georgia and South Carolina. That is district 7. These are Coast Guard districts, for the most part. It shows how many skimmers there are. These are not skimmers offshore, of foreign countries, which we will talk about in a moment. These are skimmers here in this country. In district 7, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, there are 251 skimmers--251. In the Texas district, district 8, there are 599. So between the gulf coast of Texas to Florida there are 850 skimmers, and we have somewhere between 25 to 86 to 108, depending on whose number is right. Perhaps they are all incorrect, but given the best accounting possible, there are 108. Where are the other 742 skimmers, and why aren't they being deployed? And that is just in the gulf coast. In the district that includes California, there are 227 skimmers. In the district that includes Washington State, there are 158. In the district that includes Michigan and other Great Lakes States, there are 72. In the district that includes Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, there are 160. In the district that includes the mid-Atlantic, there are still another 157. Why are these skimmers not headed to the Gulf of Mexico? Why are they not there already? It is not a good answer that they are needed for another oilspill, because we have an oilspill--the worst oilspill that we have ever seen in this country, and one that is washing sheets of oil this morning onto the beaches of Pensacola in my home State of Florida. That is the national picture. Internationally, the State Department came out with a report which I talked about yesterday--it came out last Friday--that talks about all the offers of assistance from foreign countries, offers that were made by Belgium on June 15, the European Maritime Safety Agency on May 13, by the Republic of Korea on May 2, by the United Arab Emirates on May 10 to give us skimmers, and all of them are still under consideration. Months have gone by and the U.S. Government hasn't returned a phone call to these offers of help. It is amazing to me that we would not be accepting these offers of assistance to bring in these skimmers from foreign countries. When there is a disaster around the world, whether it is a tsunami in the Far East or an earthquake in Haiti, the United States of America is the first to answer the call. We, because of the goodness of our people, go in and help these countries, as we should. Now they are offering to do for us what we have done for the world and give us assistance, yet we are saying no. That is also beyond belief. The State Department, as of last Friday, reported 56 offers of assistance from 28 countries or international groups. We have accepted 5--5 out of 56--BP has accepted 3, and 46 remain under consideration. I want to talk about one of these offers specifically. This ship is a Dutch ship from a company called Dockwise. This ship is the Swan. This is a huge vessel that, when equipped with skimming equipment, can suck up 20,000 tons of water and oil--20,000 tons. It was offered to the United States on May 6--May 6--and we never answered the call. Instead, a ship that has one-twentieth of its capability was accepted by the Coast Guard. I received some followup information yesterday, and here is the response as to why the Coast Guard did not accept this superskimmer for use in the Gulf of Mexico. The response was that it was going to be equipped with arms--sweeping arms, which are what skims the oil into the boat--and BP was able to purchase two sets of these arms from another company and, therefore, the ship wasn't needed. The arms sweep the oil into a ship; the ship holds the oil. The arms are only half of the equation. And if this ship holds 20,000 tons of oil and water mixture, it is certainly needed. Saying that we didn't need it because we got the arms and we put them on another ship makes no sense. The ship that was used instead has one- twentieth of the capability. That is an American ship, and I am glad we are using it, but we should be using both of them. We should be using every ship possible. And why should we be using every ship possible? Because oil is washing up on the shore of my State and the Federal Government seems anemic, at best, in its response. What is this doing to our oceans, our waterways? The Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota--which I had the privilege to visit a couple of weekends ago--does wonderful work with marine life and has these unique, almost torpedo-like automated vehicles that go out in the water to check to see whether the oil has spread. It is one of the vehicles that helped us determine that this plume of oil, in fact, does exist beyond what you see on the surface. They are reporting yesterday, in an article that was published, that rare plankton-eating sharks are moving toward the coast of Florida. Ten healthy whale sharks were found Friday about 23 miles southwest of Sarasota. They are moving away from the oil--this oil that is growing not just on the surface but underneath. What will be the long-range implications of this disaster, not just on our economy but on our environment? It is hard to tell. This morning, Florida State's marine biologists are reporting that the fish population has been severely damaged in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. President, I will continue to come to the floor every day we are here to sound the siren, to ring the bell and call for more response and a better effort to protect my State of Florida, as well as the other States in the gulf. This response is anemic, and our failure to act is outrageous. This government must do a better job. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor to my friend and colleague from New Hampshire.

Mr. LeMIEUX

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

Mr. LeMIEUX. I ask unanimous consent to speak until the Senate goes into recess at 12:30.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I come to the floor, as I did yesterday and last week, to talk about the economic and environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the lack of response by this government in dealing with the disaster. Everything that can be done should be done to stop this oil from coming on our beaches, from going into our coastal waterways, and from damaging our way of life on the gulf coast. I specifically come to talk about what is happening to Florida. For the last week, I have been making statements and questioning why there are not more skimmers off the coast of Florida. I have been asking for more skimmers to be sent to the Gulf of Mexico for many weeks. A week ago today, I met with the President, ADM Thad Allen, and other State and local officials in Pensacola to address many issues concerning the response to the oilspill. At that time, we were told there were 32 skimmers off the coast of Florida. Today, we are told there are 20. It makes no sense that there are not more skimmers. Admiral Allen has told us there are 2,000 skimmers in the United States. We have heard reports of offers of foreign assistance of skimmers that are still under consideration or have been declined. Why are there not more skimmers in the Gulf of Mexico skimming up the oil before it comes onshore? We can't even get a straight number as to how many skimmers are off the coast of Florida. I have two documents, which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record. One is the Deepwater Horizon response of Monday, June 21, from the State of Florida. The second is the National Incident Command response for June 21 from the Coast Guard.

Mr. LeMIEUX. The first of these, the Deepwater Horizon response from Monday, June 21, says there are 20 skimmers off the coast of Florida. The second, from the National Incident Command, says there are 108 off the coast of Florida. Last week, we had this same discrepancy between these two reports. We questioned the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard told us the information contained in the national incident report was not, in fact, correct. We can't get a straight answer as to how many skimmers are currently off the coast of Florida, but it appears from the most reliable information--and I am still waiting for a straight answer--that there are only 20. One percent of the skimmers of the United States are off the coast of Florida, with the worst economic and environmental catastrophe looming off our shores. Huge swathes of water are washing up tar balls all the way from Pensacola Beach, now to Panama City, FL. We received a briefing this morning from the Navy and the Coast Guard. I thank Secretary Mabus of the Navy, who provided RADM John Haley as well as a captain from the Coast Guard and other folks from the Navy to brief me on the status of what skimmers the Navy has and what they are doing in the gulf. We found out there are 23 naval skimmers, relatively small skimmers that can fit on the back of a truck or be put on a train or in an airplane. That is how they were transported to the gulf. They are welcome. We are happy they are there. There are 6 on the way and 29 skimmers total. There are another 35 skimmers they would like to bring down, but they are under a category called legally constrained. What does that mean? That means that for some reason, the law is prohibiting the Navy and the Coast Guard from getting these skimmers here. Why hasn't this been waived? Why hasn't the President signed an Executive order? Where is the sense of urgency 62 days into this to get these skimmers to the gulf coast? We are going to look into what Federal law may be prohibiting and legally constraining the Navy and the Coast Guard from getting the skimmers. I will offer legislation, if need be, to waive that. I have already offered legislation to waive the Jones Act, which has been cited as a prohibition or perhaps an obstacle to bringing in skimmers from foreign countries. Let's talk about that issue. We know there are 2,000 skimmers in the United States. Yet only 20 are off the coast of Florida, if that is the correct information. We know the Navy wants to bring an additional 35 skimmers, but they are legally constrained and we have not yet undone that or secured those skimmers, some 62 days after the oil started flowing. Let's talk about foreign offers of assistance. There was a State Department report last week: 17 countries have made 21 offers of assistance. The Associated Press reported that they had not been responded to or had been declined. We have more current information than that. The State Department reports about 56 offers of assistance from 28 countries and international groups. Of the 56 offers of assistance, 5 have been accepted. That includes booms--people could use the Internet to send a message about navigation in the gulf--and skimmers or skimmer equipment. BP has accepted three offers of assistance, including booms and skimmers. Two offers are categorized as ``unknown'' or ``declined.'' Forty-six offers are currently under consideration, 62 days into this incident. Where is the urgency? Where is the alacrity of the response to get this done and get these skimmers in the gulf? I have a document, ``U.S. Department of State Chart on Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Response: International Offers of Assistance from Governments and International Bodies,'' dated June 18, 2010. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Mr. LeMIEUX. This document goes through the various offers of assistance and what is the current status of the response. So if we go to the European Maritime Safety Agency, skimmers, under consideration. May 13 is the date of the offer. As of last Friday, no response. Republic of Korea, skimmers, under consideration. May 2, the offer is made. As of last Friday, no response. Sweden, April 30, skimmers; more skimmers offered on June 15. Under consideration. No response. United Arab Emirates, skimmers, under consideration, offer made May 10. No response. Why are we not welcoming all of these offers of assistance to bring these skimmers and put them in the Gulf of Mexico to suck up the oil? I wish to show an example of an offer of assistance made to the United States. The ship here is from a Dutch company called Dockwise. The name of this vessel is the Swan. Unlike some of the skimmers being used and deployed by the Navy, which can be put on a train car or flown on an airplane to the location--and although very welcome are relatively small--this is a massive ship that could take in 20,000 tons of oil or an oil-water mixture off of the water. They rig the ship with skimming equipment that hangs off the sides. So on May 7, Dockwise offered the Swan to the United States. The offer went under consideration. After 48 days, the offer for this massive ship with 20,000 tons of skimming capacity is still under consideration. But the ship is not available anymore because Dockwise now has employed the ship for other purposes because the U.S. Government, from all the information we have, never got back to them. Here is a Dutch company offering us a massive ship to skim 20,000 tons of oil and water off the top of the Gulf of Mexico, and the U.S. Government doesn't return the phone call. They never hear whether we want the ship. People involved with the situation believe the Swan was rejected due to Jones Act considerations and that a similar vessel, the SEAcorp vessel named the Washington, was chosen instead. The Washington is an American flag vessel. Its capacity is 1,000 tons, one-twentieth the capacity of the Swan. I am for America first, but why aren't we using both of them? There is plenty of oil to skim up. Use the American vessel, but don't fail to respond to the Dutch company that has this massive ship that has a 20,000-ton skimming capacity. Why would we not employ both? I could not be more frustrated with the lack of response. I could not be more frustrated with the lack of a sense of urgency from this administration in getting this job done. The people of the State of Florida are scared to death about the oilspill. When I was in Pensacola last week, I met a woman who works at the pier on Pensacola Beach. I asked her how things were going. She serves food at the pier. She said: It has been very harrowing for us. I asked her: Are people coming out? She said: People from north Florida are coming to the beach. These are people who haven't been to the beach in a long time. I said: Why are they coming? She said: They are coming to see the beach one last time, as if they were going to visit a friend who was on his or her deathbed. They don't believe the beach will ever look the way they remember it looking. Why we are not deploying every available national asset, military asset, and accepting every offer of assistance from foreign countries is beyond belief, and it is not acceptable. I will continue to meet with the Coast Guard and the Navy. When I see the President tomorrow at the White House, I will raise this issue with him. I will do everything I can to keep clamoring for this. It is not acceptable that in this, the greatest country in the world, our response would be this anemic. I yield the floor.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, I just want to make some brief remarks this afternoon concerning the ongoing tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico and the Deepwater Horizon response. Sixty-one days ago is when the tragedy started. We are here, 61 days later, and we still have this tremendous pouring of oil from the bottom of the sea floor into the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, the amount of oil that is coming into the gulf now equals the size of the Exxon Valdez oilspill every 2\1/2\ days. Yet while this oil continues to gush, and while we have hope that the containment dome will capture more and more of this oil as it comes from the bottom of the ocean, we are still seeing a weak, at best, response from the Federal Government in trying to keep this oil from coming ashore. Last week--a week ago tomorrow--I met with the President of the United States and Admiral Allen in Pensacola. At the same time, I raised the issue of skimmers. Why are there so few skimmers in the Gulf of Mexico? Why were there only, at that time, 32 skimmers off the coast of Florida? The President and Admiral Allen told me they were making every effort they could to get more skimmers to the gulf and that they were welcoming skimmers from foreign countries coming to our country to aid in the effort. I told them at that time there was a State Department report saying that 21 offers of assistance have been made from 17 foreign countries, and they had been refused. I was informed back that, no; that is not the case and in fact we are using skimmers from foreign countries. I came to find out, through discussions with my office, there are still offers and there have been offers from foreign countries for skimmers and, in fact, those offers were refused. I will come to the floor tomorrow to talk about that in more detail. But the state of affairs is there are now only 20 skimmers off the coast of Florida, when there were 32 last week. There are now just 20, while there are 2,000 skimmers available in the United States alone. That number comes from Admiral Allen. I spoke to Admiral Allen last week, along with my colleague from Alabama, Senator Sessions, and we said: Where are the skimmers? I showed him information like I have today, which is the Deepwater Horizon response report from the incident command in the State of Florida. Then it showed 20 skimmers. Today it still shows 20 skimmers. I asked him to reconcile this for me. If we are asking for all these skimmers, if we are calling for all of them to come here, where are they? The response is anemic at best. So today I have sent a letter to Admiral Allen asking for an inventory of the 2,000 skimmers that he has said are available in the United States of America. When I talked to the President and Admiral Allen about this last week, they said: Look, some of these skimmers are not available because we may need them for an oilspill. Well, we have an oilspill. Just because they may be required to stand on watch somewhere in case an oilspill happens someplace else, that is like saying to the people of Pensacola: Your home is on fire, but we can't send the fire engine because there may be a fire someplace else. It does not make any sense. So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record, as well as this report from the State of Florida about the 20 skimmers off the coast of Florida.

Mr. LeMIEUX. I again call for the fact that every skimmer in the world that is available should be welcomed by this government. They should be steaming toward the Gulf of Mexico, and we should be doing everything we can to make sure we are cleaning up this oil before it gets on our beaches, before it gets into our estuaries and our coastal waterways. It is beyond belief we are not doing more. It is beyond belief this administration has no sense of urgency about stopping the oil from coming ashore. I ask, Mr. President--and I will continue to come every day to the floor to ask the question--where are the skimmers? Where is the help? Where are the domestic skimmers? Why aren't we doing the job we should for the American people to protect our beaches, our waterways, and our estuaries? Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. LeMIEUX

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

Mr. LeMIEUX. I send an amendment to the desk, No. 4300, and I ask that it be called up.

Mr. LeMIEUX. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LeMIEUX. I have offered amendment No. 4300 today. It is a piece of legislation in which Senators Wicker, Risch, and Gregg have joined me. It is called the 2007 Solution. The No. 1 problem facing this country is our out-of-control spending. It is to a point where it is unsustainable. I am new here to the Senate. I came last September. My background is in business as well as in State government in Florida. In both of those venues, I had the responsibility, both in chairing a business I helped to run as well as being the Governor's chief of staff in Florida, to make sure ends met. In the business I worked in, I would look at receipts, and we could only spend as much money as we took in. In State government, we had a balanced budget requirement. We had a balanced budget requirement in Florida. When the economy went bad in 2007, when I was the Governor's chief of staff, I would be on the phone with the budget people almost weekly monitoring how much money was coming in because I knew we could only spend as much as we had. We had three choices if revenues declined: We could raise taxes, we could cut spending, or we could find a new source of revenue. We did not have the option of spending money we did not have. So I always knew there was a problem in Washington when Washington did not understand those basic dynamics that families in Florida and around the country had to deal with in terms of making ends meet, the same decisions families make around their kitchen tables to decide: Well, we cannot afford it this month, so we are going to have to put it off until next month or we are going to have to cut down on some of this spending so we can make sense of our fiscal house. I knew that didn't happen in Washington, but I never knew the degree to which it did not happen. When I came here and was sworn in in September of last year, the national debt of this country was $12 trillion. That is a staggering amount, and it is a number that is hard for us to get our brains around. One trillion--what does it mean? Well, 1 trillion is 1,000 billion-- $1,000 billion--and 1 billion is 1,000 million. Just to put it into some perspective, if you took dollar bills and put them on the floor and laid them side by side, $1 million would cover two football fields; $1 billion would cover Key West, FL--3.4 square miles of one-dollar bills carpeting Key West, FL; $1 trillion would cover Rhode Island twice. If you stacked 1 trillion one-dollar bills on the ground up to the sky, it would go 600 miles into the sky. When I came here in September, this government owed $12 trillion in money that it shouldn't have spent in the past, that it couldn't afford to spend, and it was carrying that debt. That was bad enough, but time has elapsed and now we are in June of 2010, and now the national debt is $13 trillion. The debt has gone up $1 trillion in less than a year's time. It took 200 years for this country to amass its first trillion dollars in debt, and we just did another trillion dollars in less than 1 year's time. Right now in our budget, we spend $200 billion a year paying interest on the debt. That is on expenditures we shouldn't have made in the past--$200 billion. At our current rate of spending, as projected by the White House, by the end of this decade we will spend $900 billion a year just making interest payments on debt. By 2020, it is estimated that our debt, our national debt, will not be $13 trillion, it will be $25.7 trillion. And when we get to that point, our country is going to fail. This is not just a problem for our children or our grandchildren, it is a problem for all of us. And $900 billion is more than we spend fighting both wars and all of the expenditures for the Defense Department right now. And we are going to be paying that just in interest? Perhaps most troubling of all is this fact: Today the money we take in in revenues is only enough to cover Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--the entitlements. Every other dollar we spend for every other function of government--from the men and women who keep us free and safe in the military to the FAA that guides your plane, to the roads you drive on, to the Department of Labor, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Agriculture--every other function of government is borrowed. It is unsustainable. I am new enough to Washington to not think this is normal. This still seems bizarre to me. What this body and what the body down the hall fail to do is set priorities and say: We are going to afford this, but we cannot afford that--just as families do, as the State government in Tallahassee does, as businesses do every day. We do not go into the agencies now that are spending all this money and say, are they spending money on things that are effective, efficient? Are they getting bang for the buck? No. What we do in Washington is create new programs. We pass this financial regulatory reform bill, and instead of firing all the people at the SEC who failed to do their job in policing Wall Street, we create a new governmental institution because that is what Washington does--more and more layers of government on top of government, with nobody looking to see what government is doing now and whether your tax dollars are being spent effectively and efficiently because there is no mechanism in place to balance the budget. I wish we had a balanced budget amendment. I wish we had to do what our States have to do. This past spring, in Florida, our State leaders had to sit down, when there were less revenues than there had been in the past, and they had to make decisions about what to cut. That is what leaders do. We do not do that in Washington. But I have an amendment, a proposal, that would get us into a mechanism to at least have the debate about how we can save this country by stemming this uncontrollable spending. It is called the 2007 Solution. It would require this, simply: Each year, the majority leader will be required to offer a piece of legislation that would have 50 hours of debate, where we would have to go back to 2007 spending levels. Why 2007? Well, 2007 was the last year we had a robust economy. It was not until December of that year that we entered into recession. When I talk with most Floridians, they would be happy to have the money they made in 2007 as income in 2010. It was before the stimulus. It should be enough for us to live off of. And it is not as though things were being done efficiently and effectively in 2007. It is not as though someone was going into the agencies trying to chop out waste and abuse, set priorities. It was not being done then, either. So there should be plenty of wiggle room. So if we go back to 2007 level spending at $2.729 trillion, by 2013 we would balance the budget, and by 2020, instead of having a $25.7 trillion national debt, we would cut the current national debt in half, and it would be somewhere around $6 trillion, and we would save America. What this amendment does, what this proposal does, is require the majority leader to offer an amendment where we will have 50 hours of debate on the floor of the Senate--as they will in the House--to set spending levels at 2007 levels. And guess what we are going to have to do then. We are going to have to be adults. We are going to have to be leaders. We are going to have to make decisions about what is important. The $90 billion Washington spends every year to subsidize different businesses around the country--is that important? The billions of dollars that go into earmarks--are they important? Could we not cut 10 percent from each agency, 20 percent from each agency? The $100 billion of Medicare fraud a year--could we not combat that? Would we not then have a motivation, an impetus, to actually start doing better by the American people and watching the dollars they send to us, and spending them as if they were our own, and doing it wisely? My amendment does not say what has to be cut. It does say there will not be any tax increases. We do not need to create more revenue and create more of a problem because, trust me, if we create more revenue, this Congress will spend it. We do not have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. Let's have this debate. Who is afraid of a discussion? Let's go back and forth and say what we could cut. Should we cut things in the Department of Defense? Is there not waste, fraud, and abuse in the Department of Defense? Sure there is. Let's cut it. Secretary Gates wants to cut spending in defense. No one wants to cut our capabilities. But are there things we could do without, and do things more efficiently, not just in defense but in every department of government? There are 100,000 people working at the Department of Agriculture. By best estimate--and it is less than this--there is 1 person at the Department of Agriculture for every 30 farmers. What are all these people doing? Has someone looked under the hood at that agency? The President is now asking all the agency heads, the Cabinet members, to look for 5-percent cuts, some of which would go toward deficit reduction, some which would go toward other programs they could spend money on. When is the last time we cut any agency? We have not had fiscal sanity in the Congress since the mid 1990s when we balanced the budget. We are talking 13 years, 14 years. Someone needs to look under the hood of these agencies and set priorities. This amendment will require that discussion to happen. We are going to have to look at the entitlement programs. We are going to have to look at Medicare. We are going to have to look at Social Security. This is not a popular thing to talk about. You are not going to see my colleagues come to the floor of this body and talk about reforming entitlements because it is politically dangerous. But the truth is, if we do not reform them, they are not going to be there for our seniors in the generations who follow. We are going to have to have the courage of our convictions. We are going to have to care about the next generation more than we care about the next election. I hope the 2007 Solution will pass. It does not require any specific program be cut. It just requires that we have a debate about it every year. If the majority leader does not introduce it, the minority leader can. If the minority loader does not introduce it, any Senator can. There would be 50 hours of privileged debate. It can go through committees, but only for 30 days so it does not get stuck in the committees. It would require a three-fifths majority to pass. That is a peculiarity of the Senate--our 60-vote rule. So it makes sense, and it is consistent with the history and the precedents of this body. I want to conclude with this: For us to be here and to do anything else, without tackling this debt issue, is unfair to the American people. I have four little kids. My wife and I just welcomed a new daughter into the world. It is our first daughter because we have three young sons. My greatest fear is that my four kids--or one of the four kids--someday will come to me and say: Dad, I am moving to a foreign country. I am going to Brazil or India or China or--pick your country-- because the opportunities in that country are greater than the ones in the United States. The greatest threat we have to this country today is our inability to control this out-of-control spending. If we do not do it, we will violate the American creed, which is that we leave this country a better place than we found it for each generation that follows. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will embrace this amendment. Again, it does not require anything to be cut. It requires a discussion and a good debate on what should be cut. It sets the parameter that if we hold ourselves to that cap, we could save this country. There are folks I know on the other side of the aisle who care about this issue. I have talked to them. This is not a Republican issue. This is not a Democratic issue. This is a moral issue. It is a moral obligation of the people who serve in this body and the one down the hall to fix this out-of-control spending. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. LeMIEUX. Would my friend yield for a question?

Mr. LeMIEUX. Your State has high unemployment and my State does too. I think you are at 14-some percent, and we are at 12 percent. Everybody cares about trying to get folks back to work, but shouldn't we find a pay-for on this bill? Everybody wants to extend unemployment compensation, but why should we put it off on our kids and our grandkids? Is there not $55 billion we could find to pay for this bill?

Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, if I could just ask one more question. I don't disagree with the Senator about spending the money; I would like to extend unemployment compensation. But would my friend not agree with me that there is $50 billion we could find somewhere in this government, money that has not been spent that is sitting in accounts, wasteful spending, programs that aren't working? Why can't we as a body get down to the business of looking at government and all of the trillions of dollars we spend and find money and set priorities and pay for this?

Mr. LeMIEUX. Respectfully, I think the estate tax issue is a different issue, but I will address it.

Mr. LeMIEUX. Ma'am, I let you finish. If I may, we don't have an estate tax right now. The joke is, don't go hunting with your children because right now there is no estate tax in this country this year. So we all agree that needs to be fixed. We have a difference in belief on taxes, but I am talking about just this spending issue. You and I and many of us in this Chamber all agree that we should continue unemployment compensation. People in your State are hurting; people in my State are hurting. My question is, Is there not $55 billion we could find somewhere in the more than $2 trillion that we are going to spend this year-- actually, more than $3 trillion--could we not find an offset so we don't put this upon our kids and our grandkids?

Mr. LeMIEUX. We will do that.

Mr. LeMIEUX. I thank my colleague for the good conversation, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. LeMIEUX. Madam President, I come to the floor again today to talk about the situation in the Gulf of Mexico. Yesterday, I came to report on my meeting with the President of the United States, as well as Jeff Miller, our Governor, and ADM Thad Allen, that we had on Tuesday in Pensacola. I am pleased to report what the President has done with this fund. It is a good idea to get the $20 billion in claims that can be made and can be paid. However, there is another issue. The most pressing issue right now is keeping the oil off the coast of the gulf. We do not have a handle on this situation with the skimmers. We just met with Admiral Allen, and the information isn't any better than it was 2 days ago. In fact, for Florida, the information appears to be worse. On Tuesday, there were 32 skimmers, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the Florida incident command off the coast of Florida--32. There is a plume of oil 2 miles wide and 40 miles long off the coast of Pensacola. There is another plume that ranges from Pensacola, FL, all the way over to Fort Walton, and we had 32 skimmers. Today, the report is we have 20 skimmers--20 skimmers. That is like me and my buddies getting in our boats out there and trying to clean this up. That is not the Federal Government doing its best effort to clean up this oilspill. The incident command from the Coast Guard's report says there are 100-some skimmers off the coast. It is unclear whether those are off the coast of Florida or completely off the coast. It could be the coast of all of the States. I asked Admiral Allen to clarify that. He said he would. Admiral Allen tells us there are 2,000 skimmers in the United States of America. Why aren't those skimmers, where available, steaming toward the Gulf of Mexico? He said he is going to put a process in place where we can request them. It has been 60 days since the oil started spilling. Why are we waiting until now to request skimmers? Why are we contacting Governors now to request skimmers? Why are there only 20 skimmers off of my home State when we have this huge mass of oil? The State Department reported Tuesday morning that 21 requests have come in from 17 countries--rather, 21 offers of support from 17 countries to give us skimming equipment. The State Department says they have been declined. I talked about it to the President on Tuesday and Admiral Allen, and they say: No, it is not true; we have gotten things in from other countries. What is the truth? What is the answer? Are we refusing foreign country assistance or not? Now there is this thing about, we are going to have a process to let people request waivers of the Jones Act. We are 60 days into this. On Monday, I sent a letter to the President, along with Congressman Jeff Miller, asking for the Jones Act to be waived. Why aren't we doing everything possible to bring skimmers to the Gulf of Mexico? What is the problem? I am going to come to the floor of the Senate every day we are in session until this oilspill stops, until every drop of oil is cleaned up, and make a point about this skimmer issue. It is not acceptable. Who is in charge of this? Is it the President? Is it Admiral Allen? Is it BP? Who is in charge? There are only 20 skimmers off the coast of Florida. It doesn't make any sense. Somebody has to do something about it. In my position, what I can do is complain, and that is what I am doing today and will continue to do. I am going to press Admiral Allen and this administration to get as many skimmers there as possible. We need engagement from this administration on this issue, and no other question should be answered until we find out where all those skimmers are. Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. LeMIEUX

Mr. LeMIEUX. Madam President, I just wanted to speak for another moment, if I may, and compliment my colleague from Alabama, who has been very vigorous on this issue. I appreciate his voice to make sure we find out what is going on with these resources, especially as he spoke about the National Guard, which is an important topic. To follow up on my comments before, I have two documents that I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.