John McCain

Mr. McCAIN

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, today I voted against passage of the patent reform bill because it contained an egregious example of corporate welfare and blatant earmarking. Unfortunately, this special interest provision was designed to benefit a single interest and was tucked into what was otherwise a worthwhile patent reform bill. As I noted earlier today when I spoke in support of the amendment offered by my colleague from Alabama, Senator Sessions, needed reform of our patent laws should not be diminished nor impaired by inclusion of the shameless special interest provision, dubbed ``The Dog Ate My Homework Act'' that benefits a single drug manufacturer, Medicines & Company, to excuse their failure to follow the drug patent laws on the books for over 20 years. Again, as I said earlier today, patent holders who wish to file an extension of their patent have a 60-day window to make the routine application. There is no ambiguity in this timeframe. In fact, there is no reason to wait until the last day. A patent holder can file an extension application anytime within the 60-day period. Indeed, hundreds and hundreds of drug patent extension applications have been filed since the law was enacted. Four have been late. Four. I remind my colleagues of what the Wall Street Journal had to say about this provision: As blunders go, this was big. The loss of patent rights means that generic versions of Angiomax might have been able to hit pharmacies since 2010, costing the Medicines Co. between $500 million and $1 billion in profits. If only the story ended there. Instead, the Medicines Co. has mounted a lobbying offensive to get Congress to end run the judicial system. Since 2006, the Medicines Co. has wrangled bill after bill onto the floor of Congress that would change the rules retroactively or give the Patent Office director discretion to accept late filings. One version was so overtly drawn as an earmark that it specified a $65 million penalty for late filing for ``a patent term extension . . . for a drug intended for use in humans that is in the anticoagulant class of drugs.'' . . . no one would pretend the impetus for this measure isn't an insider favor to save $214 million for a Washington law firm and perhaps more for the Medicines Co. There was never a problem to fix here. In a 2006 House Judiciary hearing, the Patent Office noted that of 700 patent applications since 1984, only four had missed the 60-day deadline. No wonder critics are calling it the Dog Ate My Homework Act. This bailout provision was not included in the Senate-passed Patent bill earlier this year. It was added by the House of Representatives. The provision should have been stripped by the Senate earlier today. The fact that it wasn't required me to vote against final passage.

Mr. McCAIN

Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate as in morning business, and I additionally ask unanimous consent that I be joined in a colloquy with Senator Graham from South Carolina and Senator Lieberman from Connecticut.

Mr. McCAIN

Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, yesterday, we learned from media reports the Obama administration has made a decision to sharply reduce the number of U.S. forces it is proposing for a post-2011 security agreement with Iraq to roughly 3,000 troops. That media report has not been contradicted yet by anyone in the administration, so one has to assume that is the direction which the administration is headed. As is well known, 3,000 troops is dramatically lower than what our military commanders have repeatedly told us, on multiple trips to Iraq, would be needed to support Iraq's stability and secure the mutual interests our two nations have sacrificed so much to achieve. Our military leaders on the ground in Iraq have told us, in order to achieve our goal--which is a stable, self-governing Iraq, and as a partner in fighting terrorism and extremism--they need a post-2011 force presence that is significantly higher than 3,000 troops. We continue to hear that the Iraqis are to blame because they haven't asked for a new agreement. The fact is, in early August, Iraq's major political blocks reached agreement to begin negotiations with the United States on a new security agreement. This week, Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan regional government and one of the most respected men in Iraq--and, in my view, one of the finest--called for a continued presence of U.S. troops, saying Iraqi security forces are still not prepared to secure protection for Iraq. Perhaps significantly the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, Mr. Stuart Bowen, recently reported: Iraq remains an extraordinarily dangerous place to work. It is less safe, in my judgment, than 12 months ago. Buttressing this conclusion is the fact that June was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in more than 2 years. And, by the way, we continue to hear these quotes from various administration officials about absent a request from the Iraqis, it is difficult to settle on any one thing. Victoria Nuland stated that if they come forward with a request, we would consider it. That is assuming it is only in Iraq's national interests to have additional troops here. It is in America's national security interests not to lose Iraq after the sacrifice of some 4,500 brave young Americans, and the consequences of failure are obvious. Who is it that opposes the continued presence of the U.S. troops most vociferously, strenuously, and sometimes in a very subversive way? Iran and the Sadrists. Iran and the Sadrists want the United States out. It is not a matter of Iraqi national security interests, it is a matter of American national security interests. What do 3,000 troops do? I don't know what 3,000 troops do, but I know they are required to have certain force protection numbers, which would be significant, and then how many troops would be left to carry out the mission of protecting the United States civilians, contractors, and personnel who remain there. I guess you can sum this up, this decisionmaking process, best, and I quote from a New York Times article, ``Plan Would Keep Small Force in Iraq Past Deadline'': A senior American military officer said the planning at this point seemed to be driven more by the troop numbers than the missions they could accomplish, exactly the opposite of how military planners ideally like to operate. ``I think we are doing this thing backwards,'' the officer said. ``We should be talking about what missions we want to do, and then decide how many troops we will need.'' I can assure my colleagues that is the view of the majority of members of the military, many of whom have had multiple tours in Iraq, that is their view of this process we are going through. I would point out that my friends Senator Graham and Senator Lieberman, who are coming--and I have been to Iraq on many occasions since the initial invasion. We have had the opportunity to watch the brave young Americans serve and sacrifice. We have had the ability to see as the initial military success deteriorated into a situation of chaos, beginning with the looting and unrest in Baghdad to very unfortunate decisions that were made in the early period after the victory in Iraq. And we watched. We watched the situation where many of our military leaders, but also those who are now in the administration, say that if we employed a surge, it would fail. The President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the Secretary of State, the President's National Security Adviser, all of them said the surge would fail; it was doomed to failure. The fact is the surge succeeded. The fact is we now have an Iraq that has an opportunity to be a free and independent country, but, maybe more importantly, one that would never pose a threat to the United States of America and, most importantly, a chance for the Iraqi people to enjoy the fruits of the sacrifice that thousands and thousands and thousands of Iraqis have made on their behalf and approximately 4,500 brave young Americans have. The Senator from South Carolina, the Senator from Connecticut, and I recall meeting with military leaders in 2006, where we were told that everything was going fine. The Senator from Connecticut, the Senator from South Carolina, and I recall meeting with a British colonel in Basra who told us that unless we turned things around, we were doomed to failure. We remember the summer of 2007, when we were lonely voices, along with that of General Petraeus, General Odierno, and other great leaders who have been saying the surge could, and must, succeed. I will leave it up to historians to decide whether our venture into Iraq was a good one or a bad one, whether the sacrifice of young Americans' lives was worth it, whether a stable and democratic Iraq, which can be the result of our involvement there, was the right or wrong thing to do. But what we should not do, and in deference to those who have served and sacrificed we must not do, is make a decision which would put all of that sacrifice and all that was gained by it in jeopardy because of our failure to carry out the fundamental requirement of contributing to Iraqi security in this very difficult transition time. I would ask my friend from South Carolina, to start with, perhaps he remembers when we went to Baghdad, I believe it was 2007, and went downtown with General Petraeus and were mocked and made fun of in the media as I came back and said that things had improved in Iraq. Perhaps the Senator from South Carolina recalls when we had that almost triumphant visit in downtown Fallujah, a conflict that was won with great cost in American blood and treasure. Perhaps the Senator from South Carolina recalls going into downtown Baghdad and going to a bakery in an environment not of complete security but dramatically improved. All of it was purchased by the expenditure of America's most precious asset, young Americans' blood. And now we place all of that at great risk in the decisions, I say with respect, made by the same people who said the surge couldn't succeed. I urge the administration and the President to reconsider what apparently is a decision and listen to our military leaders once, and employ a sufficient number of troops to provide the Iraqis with--as Barzai said, a sufficient number of troops to secure. As Barzai said, Iraq security forces are still not prepared to secure protections for Iraq. I would ask my colleagues from South Carolina and Connecticut, aren't there plans for us to have a large amount of American civilians there, contractors, to protect them? Probably the most expensive form that we could do rather than American troops. Is it not a flawed strategy to not have enough American troops there to ensure that the lives of Americans who are serving there in various capacities are protected?

Mr. McCAIN. This was at a hearing?

Mr. McCAIN. Could I ask the Senator, are you leaving out the necessity for peacekeeping in the north between the Kurdish and the Arabs?

Mr. McCAIN. Can I ask my friend to yield?

Mr. McCAIN. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 7 minutes past 12:30.

Mr. McCAIN. Could I say to my colleague, no events in history are exactly similar. But I think we learned in Lebanon and again in Somalia that forces that are too small and do not have sufficient force protection--and I am not saying they are exact parallels, but certainly it puts whoever is there, whether they be military or civilian, in some kind of danger. As that progress has been made--and it has been significant progress in a country that has never known democracy--we have now Turkish attacks on the PKK up in the Kurdish area. We have continued tensions in the areas to which the Senator from South Carolina referred, which at one point, I believe, last June almost came to exchange of hostilities, between the Peshmerga and the others, and there is also increased Iranian interest in Basra. There continues to be the export of arms and IEDs from Iran into Iraq. They have no air force. They have no ability to protect their airspace. Isn't it true their counterintelligence is dependent on our technical assistance, which means personnel? So the argument seems to be that if we want this experiment to succeed, we should not put it in unnecessary jeopardy.

Mr. McCAIN. Could I mention one fundamental here? The question is: Is it in the United States national security interest to have these 10,000-plus American troops carrying out the missions we just described or is it not? If it is, then it is pure sophistry to say: Well, we would only consider this if the Iraqis requested it. If we are waiting for the Iraqis to request it, then it means it doesn't matter whether the United States is there. I think the three of us and others--including General Odierno, General Petraeus, and the most respected military and civilian leadership--think it is in our national interest. The way this should have happened is the United States and the Iraqis sitting down together, once coming to an agreement, making a joint announcement that it is in both countries' national security interest. If it is not, then we should not send one single American there, not one.

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I appreciate your indulgence and yield the floor.

Mr. McCAIN

Mr. McCAIN. I ask that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. McCAIN

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I support the legislation before us today to raise the debt ceiling and at the same time curb government spending without raising taxes. The United States cannot default on our obligations, and this bill prevents that from happening. This deal is not perfect. It is not what I would have written, and I have grave concerns about the cuts to our Nation's defense spending that may have to occur as a result of this bill's passage. What this plan does represent is a fiscally sound path forward, and therefore I support its adoption. I applaud the courageous leadership of Senator McConnell and Speaker Boehner. They have guided Republican members on both sides of the Capitol with tremendous skill and integrity and fought hard to ensure that our party's core principles were not negotiated away. I am proud of them, and I thank them. And I would be remiss if I did not also express my gratitude to Majority Leader Reid. He has a very difficult job in this body, and he deserves a tremendous amount of credit for helping get us to this point. He fought hard for his caucus and their priorities, and I congratulate him on successfully negotiating a fair compromise on their behalf. While I will support this bill, I have a great deal of concern about the direction this compromise takes defense spending. I have said many times, defense spending since 9/11--which was preceded by nearly a decade of drastic reductions in military personnel, equipment, and readiness--is not the cause of the economic dilemma in which we find ourselves. Cutting defense so deeply that long-term, catastrophic damage to our national security interests would result will not solve our deficit spending and debt problem. Since this year began, the President has already asked the Defense Department to cut more than $178 billion by finding efficiencies and taking top-line reductions in proposed defense spending over the next 5 years. But this compromise deal before us will go much further, with initial defense cuts of about $350 billion over 10 years as part of the initial agreement to raise the debt limit by just over $900 billion. The bigger threat of cuts to national security spending, however, will come not during this first round but through the actions of the joint committee this bill establishes to find another $1.2 to $1.5 trillion in cuts as an offset to the next increase in the debt limit that will be required to get us from early 2012 through the balance of the year and into 2013. If the joint committee cannot agree on a package of cuts that can be passed in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and signed into law by the President, then a sequestration process would come into play that would automatically cut both defense and nondefense spending in order to pay for the next $1.2 trillion in debt ceiling increases. Such an across-the-board sequestration of defense funding levels could add another nearly $500 billion to the roughly $350 billion in cuts over the next 10 years. At his confirmation hearing on July 26, GEN Martin Dempsey, who has been nominated to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that cuts above the $400 billion in defense spending that were already being studied would be ``extraordinarily difficult and very high risk.'' I agree. But what concerns me most about our current debate is not just the enormous size of the potential reductions but that the defense cuts being discussed have little to no strategic or military rationale to support them. They are essentially just numbers on a page. Our national defense planning and spending must be driven by considered strategy, not arbitrary arithmetic. These defense cuts, initially about $350 billion over 10 years--but especially those that could result from sequestration that could amount to another $500 billion--reflect minimal, if any, understanding of how they will be applied or what impact they will have on our defense capabilities or our national security. While Secretary Panetta has made it clear that a comprehensive review will precede any decisions he makes on further defense cuts, the Congress currently has no specific indication of how the current debt compromise proposals would impact the size of our military forces, what changes they would require to our compensation system, what equipment and weapons would have to be cancelled as a result, or what additional risk to the readiness and modernization of our forces and their equipment we would have to accept. If Congress is to make informed decisions about our national defense spending, we need information like this, and it will have a crucial impact on how the joint committee created under this compromise goes about its work. And based on that sort of information, we must do everything we can to avoid an exercise in blind sequestration of defense funds that could come into play if the joint committee cannot find a way to find further cuts of $1.2 trillion or more that can be enacted into law. For many months, we have been engaged in a political tug-of-war over whether we should raise the debt limit and allow the President greater borrowing authority. I joined my colleagues on this side of the aisle in our insistence that any increase in our debt ceiling be accompanied by meaningful, real cuts in spending, not just typical Washington-style smoke and mirrors. I believe we achieved our goal with this compromise. The deal before us provides at least one dollar of actual spending cuts, not gimmicks, for each dollar in debt limit increases. It doesn't raise a single dollar in taxes. By including upfront cuts, a joint committee, a balanced budget amendment, BBA, vote, the debt disapproval process and sequesters, it continues the pressure on the President and Congress to continue cutting spending through the next election and beyond. Some of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle have described the debate on this issue as a ``manufactured crisis.'' They cite the fact that, in the past, we routinely raised the debt ceiling with little or no debate, having done so at least 10 times in the last ten years. Well, I say to my friends, you are leaving out one very critical detail in your analysis--a detail that makes our current situation anything but ``routine''--and that is this: Never before in the history of this great nation has our debt been $14.6 trillion. Never before in our history have we faced the possibility of having our creditworthiness downgraded due to our inability to control our spiraling debt, which could very well decimate the good faith and credit of the United States, which would have a severe impact on our standing in the world. This measure represents the beginning, not the end, of what I believe will be a sustained national focus on getting our fiscal house in order. We still have a very long way to go and a great deal of hard work to do. Americans are still hurting. Unemployment remains at unacceptable levels and is estimated to continue to grow. We need to cut spending, spur economic growth, and get people back to work. These goals cannot be achieved by raising taxes on individuals and small businesses, and they cannot be achieved by expanding the size of government and massively increasing federal spending. It is time we learned from the lessons of the past, and the past has taught us that we cannot spend and tax our way to prosperity. America has been driven down that road, and we nearly plunged off of a cliff into economic disaster. I believe that this measure will begin to put us on the right track. I urge my colleagues to seize this opportunity to put America back on a path to fiscal solvency and vote in favor of this compromise.

Mr. McCAIN

Mr. McCAIN. The Senate Armed Services Committee just met and approved the nominations of the Chairman and Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chief of Naval Operations, the Chief of Staff of the Army, and other important nominations. I congratulate all of these nominees and appreciate their service to the Nation. I know that shortly the Senate will approve these positions of great responsibility. I want to take one moment to mention one of the new Chiefs of Staff of the United States Army, GEN Ray Odierno, one of the finest military officers I have had the opportunity to know. He was responsible, along with David Petraeus, for implementing the surge in Iraq. All of us who have had the opportunity of knowing General Odierno are proud of his new position and know he will carry out his responsibilities with the same outstanding leadership and efficiency he has displayed in the past. I congratulate all of the nominees. These are going to be very challenging times. General Dempsey will now be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I believe he is highly qualified, as are the nominees for the Vice Chairman as well as the Chief of Naval Operations. I congratulate them all. A special congratulations and word of praise for General Odierno, who is a great and outstanding leader. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. McCAIN

Mr. McCAIN. Well, I will tell you what. I will be glad to engage in a short colloquy with the Senator from Illinois, if he would like. Does the Senator from Illinois believe we are close to an agreement?

Mr. McCAIN. Does the Senator from Illinois agree that, most likely, that agreement will not have an increase in taxes associated with it, at least in the short term?

Mr. McCAIN. You hope so?

Mr. McCAIN. Well, everything I have heard is that the agreement does not have tax increases in it. Has the Senator heard differently, being in the leadership?

Mr. McCAIN. So I assume that would also mean the Senator from Illinois would advocate another stimulus package?

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

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

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

Mr. McCAIN. So one would have to assume that the Senator from Illinois believes the last stimulus package was successful, which was, counting interest, over $1 trillion. The Senator from Illinois and others who advocated the stimulus package and the administration said: If we pass this, unemployment will be a maximum of 8 percent. This will stimulate our economy and create jobs. Do you know what the Senator from Illinois and others are saying now? It was not enough, that it was not enough, that we didn't spend enough, that we didn't make the deficit larger. Because certainly nothing in the stimulus package was paid for. So I hope the Senator from Illinois understands--the American people understand--that just spending more money has failed and failed miserably. When we look at the latest news, on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post and the New York Times, that our economy is staggering back into a situation of stagnation, and the response--I will be glad to let the Senator respond. The answer on the other side is: Well, let's have some more spending and let's raise taxes. Let's take some more money out of the taxpayers' pockets in the form of spending more money--their money. It is not the administration's money. It is not the money of the Senator from Illinois. It is the people's money. Take some more money of theirs--and this is the Nobel Prize--well, I will not--anyway. Take more money and taxes and more out of the taxpayers' pockets, and that will be the answer to our problems. I will be glad to hear the response of the Senator from Illinois.

Mr. McCAIN. May I say that rather than having the Senator use all our time, I thought I would engage in a colloquy.

Mr. McCAIN. Go ahead, please.

Mr. McCAIN. If I could interrupt on that particular point, Mr. Zandi was one of many advisers to my campaign. The key adviser was Douglas Holtz-Akin, who is, as you know, former head of the CBO--the Senator knows him well--who had no brief whatsoever for that proposal. Please go ahead.