Barbara Mikulski

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess until 2:15 for the respective party conferences to discuss important issues.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, before the Senator from Missouri leaves the floor, I wish to make a comment. First of all, I would personally like to thank him for all of his cooperation in trying to help move this bill forward within the Senate. It is characteristic of both him and the spirit in which Vice Chairman Shelby and I have undertaken this effort. We have tried to work together to get this bill disposed of in an orderly way in order to avoid a government shutdown. It is not the bill we like, but it is the bill that was presented to us. At the same time we are beginning to establish both a tone, a decorum, and a process so we can get back to regular order. I share the frustration of the Senator from Missouri in that we are dealing with a really big bill. The legislation that is pending here includes all 12 of the separate appropriations bills. It is very difficult to parse them out and to have rational conversations on matters of policy. I hope as we get to October 1, which is our fiscal New Year's Eve, we will have had an orderly disposal of all 12 of the bills. I truly believe we can agree on the process and procedure. We can and should have a debate on policy. There should be a debate on funding. I am not one who likes to contain debates or contain amendments, but the clock is ticking. We have two big issues before us. One issue is the funding for the rest of the fiscal year--fiscal 2013--and then we have the budget for fiscal 2014 which Senator Murray and Senator Sessions want to bring to the floor. I would like it if we could bring our bill to an orderly close and move to the budget debate so when we take our Easter-Passover break, if we do that, we will have shown the people of America that we can govern by disposing of two major policy considerations with decorum, dignity, civility, and pretty robust conversation. I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I want to say, first of all, we have had three astronaut Senators. We have Senator Bill Nelson, who just spoke so eloquently about the planet and the way he saw it, we have had our own very beloved and hero with the right stuff, Senator John Glenn, and also Senator Jake Garn, our wonderful colleague who retired many years ago but was also on the VA-HUD Committee. When I first came to the Senate, Senator Garn was one of the Members from the other side of the aisle who helped me learn the Senate and he gave me a tremendous introduction to the space program. In fact, we went, in a bipartisan way, to every space facility in this country so we could learn: what were the great assets we had, how we needed to fund them, and what was the future of the American space program. So we have had three Senators who were certified astronauts and actually went into space. We have had other Senators who have been in orbit. Some maybe still are out there somewhere. But I say to my two colleagues, with my feet firmly on the ground, we want to thank them for what they are doing to save the planet. Because of the advocacy talked about by the Senator from Rhode Island and the Senator from Florida, we, in the Commerce, Justice, Science bill, which I fund--which funds not only the American space program but also funds the National Science Foundation--we need to understand our great planet. Another great astronaut, Sally Ride--a very happy and blessed memory who passed away last year--was asked by NASA to do a strategic plan. What should NASA be looking at? Should we be going to Mars? Dare we go even further? Venus? What about, should we do it with human beings? Should we do it with robots? Dr. Ride came back with many suggestions, one of which was, she said we should study planet Earth as if it were a planet in our solar system. She said there was a great belief that there was even intelligent life on planet Earth, and we will continue to search for it from time to time here. But, really, Dr. Ride encouraged us to look at our own planet, and our own planet as if those from outside of our solar system were looking at us. Because she said that what every astronaut feels--and I have talked to many, along with Senators Nelson, Glenn, and Garn--is that when they go up and see the majestic universe that God has created, their greatest thrill is to look back on planet Earth, and how touching and how moving it is, and how we want to protect it. We need to protect it because there is life on this planet. There is the life of human beings, and there is the life of the bounty that God has given us in both the sea and on the land in agriculture or in others that help take care of us, and we are now called to take care of them. I pledge to them, if we can work together on a bipartisan basis, it is really not about global warming, it is about saving the planet. We need to look at all of our science across all of the subcommittees and say: What are the best practices that nourish us and nourish our planet and nourish the way we wish to continue to proceed in the 21st century? I believe science and technology leads the way. It is a great gift given to us: the gift of reason and the gift of discovery. So let's all work together, and I thank the Senators for what they said.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, we are now a few minutes before we are going to recess for the luncheon hour. Pope Francis I want to comment briefly to say for those of us of the Roman Catholic faith this is, indeed, a great day. We now have a Pope who has been formally invested as the leader of our church: Pope Francis. We know there are many Members of the Senate who would have liked to have gone to that investiture. But duty called and we are here bringing to a close our debate on the continued funding resolution to make sure we are funded through fiscal 2013 in an orderly, agreed-upon way and move to our big budget debate. But Pope Francis is calling us today, as he has in other sermons, to think about the poor, the elderly, the children, and the vulnerable in our society, as well as the very planet. So we say to His Holiness, we really wish him well. We wish him well in the ministry we believe he will provide to the world. But we should also take heed to this message about the children, about the elderly, and about those who are vulnerable populations. Again, we think what we have in here, our step, is an appropriations that will guarantee funding through fiscal year 2013. I do not want to link it to His Holiness's message. We wish him well. But I also wish now we could do what we could in these closing hours. We have been guaranteed 30 hours of debate--we have used probably about 5--that we look at how we can bring this debate to a close in an agreed-upon way on both sides of the aisle so we can then move on to the budget debate of fiscal year 2014. I am sorry, I did not know the Senator from Kansas was here. We will not recess until the Senator has a chance to speak.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I appreciate the tenacity and persistence of the Senator from Kansas in being an advocate for his constituents. I would hope that during this noon hour--I can give no promises. There are leadership concerns on both sides of the aisle. But we have to acknowledge the Senator is a real fighter for what he believes in. We admire that. How that gets translated will be subject to further discussion during this noon hour.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, we are waiting for the two party conferences to conclude and for the majority leader to come to the floor and kind of talk about the path forward. Let me outline the pending business here. We are now continuing the 30 hours mandated under cloture on the continuing funding resolution. Other Senators have come to the floor and spoken quite passionately about the budget that Senator Murray and Senator Sessions have worked on. I am eager to get to that discussion, too, because it will be about the fiscal funding for 2014 and the path ahead. The way we get to the budget is to finish the bill I have pending. The methodology for getting to that is for yielding back the 30 hours. So if you want to get to the budget--which I really want to--let's yield back the time under the 30 hours. Right now it is scheduled to expire sometime after midnight. We can talk about talk, we can talk about bills, or we can actually move expeditiously to conclude the continuing funding resolution. Because, remember, when we finish our business on the continuing funding resolution, it must return to the House for them to say yea or nay to our substitute which we are sending back. I know we are waiting for the leaders to come. We have had great cooperation on both sides of the aisle. I am very appreciative of the cooperation I have received within the Democratic caucus and the cooperation from the other side, which we too have done. But if you want to get to the budget, let's yield back time on the continuing funding resolution. I know the Democratic leadership will be here momentarily and others are waiting for what the leader has to say. In the meantime, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. The Senator is correct.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I would be pleased to join my colleagues.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I thank the Senators for their comments and would be pleased to work with them on this important issue and ways to maintain a 50-State weatherization program.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I object.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I object.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I want to bring my colleagues up to date on where we are. Right now the vice chairman of the committee, Senator Shelby, and I are in conversation on some possible agreements we could make on the outstanding amendments so we can get them down to a manageable list. We are waiting for his arrival. He was at the airport, and we have been in communication. Our conversations have been constructive. When Senator Shelby arrives, we look forward to perhaps presenting something to the Senate that will give us a clear path on specific amendments. While we are waiting for that, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business about some very sad events that occurred in Maryland.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, over the weekend, we in Maryland were saddened by three separate yet poignant deaths. CPT Sara Cullen, one of our very own--a wonderful woman who served in the U.S. military--died in Afghanistan. Kristina Quigley, a young woman who showed enormous promise, was killed in an awful bus crash. She was the lacrosse coach at Seton Hill. Also, someone beloved to so many of us, Larry Simns, was the head of the watermen's association. For those who are from different parts of the country, they are called fishermen's associations. For people who enjoy Maryland crabs and oysters, they are harvested by the men who sail the Chesapeake Bay in open waters. The head of their association was Larry Simns. I wish to talk briefly about all three. Honoring Our Armed Foreces Captain Sara Knuston Cullen Captain Cullen died on March 11 from a crash in a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter in the Kandahar Province in Afghanistan. It was during a training mission in a very heavy rain. She was assigned to headquarters and the combat aviation brigade. She was a wonderful woman with enormous promise. She was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. She graduated from West Point in 2007, and she got married very recently to another pilot, Chris Cullen. I want to comment that we in Maryland mourn the loss of Captain Cullen. She was well known and well regarded here locally in Carroll County. She went to a school called Liberty High School. Isn't that a great name? She wanted to go to West Point. She was not nominated by me but by another member of the Maryland delegation. We try to share that responsibility in order to maximize our talent. I know the gentlelady from Hawaii does that as well. We have so much talent in Maryland, we don't want to waste one nomination, so we all work together. By all accounts, Captain Cullen was on her way to being an outstanding officer with a deep commitment to her country. Friends and family of hers in Eldersburg, a community in Carroll County where she grew up, said she was dearly loved. ``She was always looking for the next adventure, the next challenge, and the next task to being a better person,'' said her best friend Katie Owens. NATO told us of the crash last week, and I was mortified about this over the weekend. On behalf of all of Maryland, we want to extend our condolences to her husband, to her family, and to her parents, who obviously gave her a great home and saw to her education. It is a sad day when we lose somebody in Afghanistan, and it is a very sad day for those of us in Maryland. Remembering Kristina Quigley We also remember another wonderful woman by the name of Kristina Quigley. Kristina Quigley grew up in a community called Dundalk. Dundalk is a blue-collar suburb outside Baltimore City. She went to Dundalk High School and then to Duquesne and then, because she was a great athlete, she went on to a sports career in college at Duquesne and then fulfilled a dream of hers to be a coach. On a road trip of the college women's lacrosse team, there was a terrible accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The bus went off the road and she was, obviously, sitting in a place where she received one of the first impacts. She was only 30 years old. She was married with a young child. She was 6 months pregnant at the time of the accident. Her unborn child perished as well. This is very sad. There were many who were injured on this bus. Several were from Maryland who were also members of the team, and the assistant coach is also from Maryland. The assistant coach is from Baltimore. There were 23 students on board when this happened in Cumberland County. We are now awaiting details. We are now awaiting the investigation. But it is a very sad day when this promising young woman with the world ahead of her who, by all accounts, was not only an athlete who could teach athletics, but she was an inspirational leader. Girls and young women just loved her. Lacrosse is a tough sport to play. They were on their way to a great game. Seton Hill is a great Catholic college. There was excitement on the bus, anticipation, and we are sorry about this terrible tragedy. Again, we extend our heartfelt condolences to her parents who live in Baltimore and to her husband who lives on the Seton Hill campus. Remembering Larry Simns In addition, because each one has a story, is my own pal and good friend Larry Simns. Larry Simns was a great Marylander. His official name was Lawrence Simns, Sr., and he passed away Thursday. He fathered three children. He had 5 stepchildren, 12 grandchildren, and 3 great- grandchildren. He was a friend to a host of people up and down the Chesapeake Bay. If you were involved in cleaning up the bay or making sure the people who live alongside the bay had jobs, you knew Larry Simns. He was a true champion. For me, he was a wonderful adviser on how we could clean up the bay but ensure that our watermen could continue to work on the bay. We have been plagued over the last several years with the declining of our species, including our crabs and our oysters. If we want to save them, it means rules and regulations. If my colleagues know our watermen, they know they are kind of like the Wild West guys who want to ride the range. They don't like rules and regulations. They are not rules and regulations kind of guys, but they also know we have to be able to save the species. For decades Larry himself saw the bay's declining health: poor water quality, fewer fish and crabs, barren oyster reefs. Then he worked with me to help the watermen navigate through these tough environmental factors, tough economies, and stiff regulations. He did not have an easy job, but he approached it with such tenacity, such persistence, and in such a way where he spoke with humility about what God had given us, this spectacular Chesapeake Bay, and how we had to preserve it and the jobs. He became an unlikely spokesman because, he said: I am not much for words; you know me. We did know him and he spoke eloquently for these men and women. I worked very hard with the watermen on how we could help them clean up the bay, along with Senator Cardin and the Members of the House delegation, and worked with our watermen and worked with our scientists studying the bay so we could make sure we could preserve the livelihoods and heritage of the bay and the men who work on it. Fortunately, working together, we were able to do many wonderful things. But we could only do it because Larry Simns was such a great advocate. We are going to miss him. I just can't believe Larry will not be with us anymore. When I first came to the Senate--now over 20-some years ago--Larry was one of the first to reach out to me, to help me learn the ways of the watermen, learn what they were up against, including tough weather, harsh working conditions, escalating fuel prices, because our men and women go out on those waters using boats that consume diesel oil, and, again, the declining species. But working together, we were able to accomplish a lot. So I wish to say to his family: Thank you for lending Larry to us, because he spent much time in government meetings, regulatory hearings, sitting with me at Fisherman's Inn or pulling the watermen together for a roundtable so we could talk things over to find a sensible center to preserve their jobs and still have the smart science and smart regulations. We want to thank Larry for all the time he put in, taking a very green Senator--and by green I don't mean only in the environmental sense but as a new Senator--and helping me learn the ways of the people because we want to preserve their way of life. It is a sad day. It is a sad day for all of us. So when Memorial Day comes and the restaurants open and piles of Maryland crabs start coming in and the restaurants start serving the steamed crabs and so on, I just want to say this: Larry, wherever you are, whenever I pound the crab claw, I will be thinking of you and all you meant in terms of what we did to be able to create jobs, clean up the environment, and be able to keep our way of life going on the Chesapeake Bay. The Presiding Officer can see we had three great Marylanders, each doing a very different thing. But what I am so proud of with Captain Cullen, Larry Simns, and Kristina Quigley is that each in their own way was trying to make a difference, one to protect America, the other to protect jobs and a way of life on the Chesapeake Bay, and the other to inspire young women not only to be ready for the playing fields of lacrosse but for the playing fields of life. All three in their own way were inspirational leaders. All three in their own way made a difference in the lives of the people I came in contact with. I wish to say God bless them and God treat them kindly and may their souls rest in peace. I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise to ask all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote for cloture on the Senate bill. I want to say to my colleagues, we have come very far on this bill, and as of Thursday we had 126 amendments. I love the Senate. We love to talk, and we love to amend. Everyone has, in many instances, outstanding ideas to improve the bill. We are now at the point where we have dueling amendments. We have matters of policy to discuss, but we are now at the point where the bill must come to a close, and that is why we proposed this limited number of amendments. Some of my colleagues have amendments on the issue related to flexibility. If I could ask the Senator from Kansas a question, it is not that we dispute what the Air Force is going to face or what our poultry farmers are going to face. Both sides of the aisle--whether it is Blunt of Missouri, Isakson of Georgia, Pryor or Boozman of Arkansas, or Mikulski and Cardin of Maryland, chicken is the mainstay of our eastern shore. We are all facing this. In my original underlying bill, I had a 1-percent transfer authority subject to the approval of Congress that would have solved all of these problems. It was the other Chamber--and even those on the other side of the aisle--that insisted I remove that from this bill. For all of those who wanted flexibility, I wanted to fix it. We could not fix it. Believe me, I wanted to fix it. Each and every one of these individual amendments has merit in and of itself. We are now at the point where we have to decide whether we want the Senate bill to stand and be voted on with further amendments subject to the Parliamentarian determining what is germane and therefore eligible for consideration or do we want the House bill? It is as simple as that. We have come so far. I want to thank the vice chairman, Senator Shelby, his staff, and all the clerks on the other side of the aisle for working so assiduously. We have to decide: Do we want to make the perfect the enemy of the good? Do we want to have a bill that substantially improves the House bill? It does not accomplish every objective we want, but, in fact, does do several things. No. 1, it would avoid a government shutdown. Say what, Senator Mikulski? Avoid a government shutdown? We could show that we could actually govern and that we could actually pass a bill that I believe the House will accept as well. Hallelujah. That in and of itself would be a major accomplishment. We would have taken the House bill and we would have made substantial improvements that I think both sides of the aisle agree are important. We could get that done. The question is: Can both sides of this Chamber take yes for an answer? If we take yes for an answer, again, we avoid a government shutdown. We will show we can govern and make substantial improvements not only in the areas of defense and national security, but in other areas where people protect us, such as border control and food safety. Do we get what we want? No. But we do get a bill that we can feel has made a major accomplishment. I could go through this item by item. I have a speech that would take me 20 minutes to go through. I am not going to go through it. What I am going to say to my colleagues is: Both sides of the aisle have worked together for the common good in such areas as the security of our country, meeting compelling human needs, and investments in research and technology. I think we ought to say yes and vote to move to cloture on the Senate bill.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I want to follow up.

Ms. MIKULSKI. To be clear, the first vote is on the cloture for the Senate bill. If this vote on cloture fails, we will go to the House bill. We have two choices tonight; we have two paths which we can go down. We can go down the Senate path, which is bipartisan in its approach. It is a good and solid bill, but if it goes down, we will immediately go to cloture on the House bill. If that passes, then essentially everything that we as U.S. Senators have worked on will be rubberstamping what the House sent us. So the path and choice are ours. I intend to vote aye on the Senate bill and I urge all of my colleagues on this side of the aisle to follow my lead. I know Senator Shelby feels the same about it.

Ms. MIKULSKI

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

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I know we are going to go out. I thank the majority leader for his kind words. I assure the leader and the Republican leader that the staffs on the Appropriations Committee will be working once again through another weekend to scrutinize these amendments. We now have 99 amendments pending. In order to properly advise the Senate and to ensure that they would get good scrutiny from both a budgetary standpoint and policy, to be able to consult with one another, it requires us working through the weekend. We are ready to do it. We worked last weekend. Senator Shelby and I were in frequent contact. We were in frequent contact with our House counterparts, Congressman Rogers and Congresswoman Nita, who graciously made themselves available to get their view on their lay of the land. So we will do it again. Every Senator has a right to offer amendments. Every Senator has a right to have his or her day. But I would hope they wouldn't do it all on this amendment or all on this bill. This is the continuing funding resolution. We have worked with such diligence and such a sense of cooperation and bipartisanship. Our goal is to get the Federal Government funded through the fiscal year October 1 to avoid a government shutdown. This isn't a Barbara Mikulski threat. We have a due date on March 27, when it expires. Congress leaves for the Easter-Passover break next Friday, March 22. So I would say to my colleagues, now that we have the amendments, we will do our due diligence, and Senators will know our analysis and their own respective staff's analysis. So on Monday, once again, on the floor will be Shelby-Mikulski, Mikulski-Shelby. We will be ready to move amendments. We need our colleagues ready to move on their own amendments and to cooperate with us on offering them, debating them, and putting them in the sequence that has the greatest leverage to get the job done. I really can't say enough about the help I have gotten from Senator Shelby, my vice chairman, the distinguished Senator from Alabama, his staff, and the cooperation we have received from the minority. This is not the usual slamdown party politics. This is a big bill. It is the funding for the government of the United States. There is a lot of pent-up desire to participate in policymaking. Let's keep it not to what we would like to do, but let's keep it to what we must do. What we would like to do can come on the budget next week and can come as we bring up individual bills, where we can really dive deep into the issues and policies and the funding. So let's do what we can. I would hope that on Monday Senators come ready to really wrap it up because we would have liked to have sent our bill to the House at noon today. Well, it didn't work out that way. So we are ready to do business. We are ready to get the job done. We would love to get this job done Monday night, if we could. Mr. President, I again thank everyone. I also thank our staffs on both sides of the aisle who have been working so assiduously for the last several weeks to get this bill ready to present to the Senate on the floor and for what they will continue to do to help us do our jobs. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, what a wonderful speech. I am proud to serve with Senator McCain. America has so few heroes. America needs all the heroes we can get, and people whom we can identify with--not comic book figures wearing weird costumes. There are men and women who put themselves in harm's way and do daring and dashing things for the good of other people, and it is just an honor. We have our dustups, but that is part of the fun. I just want to salute Senator McCain in the warmest and most sincere way. God bless Senator McCain, and we wish him good health--and even a good voice and occasionally a good amendment. Again, it is an honor. If I might speak to the Republican leader, I am so glad Senator McConnell did this today because I think we need to take a pause to understand why we are in it together, why we should respect each other, work with each other, and take a moment or two to recall a great story about a great hero.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I thank the Senator.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I have a unanimous consent request that I understand has been cleared on both sides of the aisle. I ask unanimous consent that it now be in order for Senator Coburn to call up his amendment numbered 66; that there be 60 minutes equally divided in the usual form for debate on the Harkin and Coburn amendments to run concurrently; and that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the Harkin and Coburn amendments in the order offered; that there be no amendments in order to either amendment prior to the votes; and both amendments to be subject to a 60-affirmative-vote threshold.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I note that the Senator from Oklahoma is on the floor. I yield the floor.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Coburn amendment. I am not going to go into the process of wanting to keep the bill as free of amendments as possible which has been something the House has requested us to do. This is the continuing resolution. It is not the authorization legislation and so on. We have to get this funded for the rest of the fiscal year 2013. I wish to comment about the Senator from Oklahoma in that he is often on to something very good. Sometimes we are so worried about clinging to party positions we don't listen to one another. He has been a big help to me on my Commerce-Justice-Science bill, where we uncovered just ridiculous catering situations, and we had a very good amendment one time that addressed an agency paying $4 for each meatball at some reception. I mean, truly folly, truly stupidity. So at this time, whether it is big government or small government but smart government, we do have to have a sense of frugality. However, I will come back to this: The Coburn amendment would propose a hiring freeze on all Federal employees except those deemed essential. In late February, OMB issued guidance instructing agencies to apply increased scrutiny to areas such as new hiring and to ensure that such actions were taken only when vital to carrying out the agency's mission as a result of the uncertainty in terms of agencies facing a possible government shutdown on March 27 and the Draconian sword of sequester that is already underway. The Coburn amendment would force agencies to rely on contracting out functions the Federal Government should be handling or that are more expensive to outsource simply because they are not allowed to hire necessary staff. We can debate essentials, but we are not going to do that this morning. What is an essential Federal employee? I have close to 300 people working as Federal prison guards in Garrett County this morning. They have increasingly violent prisons. We are increasingly overcrowded because of the skimpy funding that even I and the Justice Department have to put into the prisons. We had a prison guard killed just a few weeks ago in our neighboring State of Pennsylvania. In any organization, whether it is a Federal agency or Microsoft, there might be a position we don't want or need or when we hear about it, it seems to have no value. Let's take the travel specialist. I am not standing here with a manual of all the civil service jobs, but here is what I think a travel specialist does. The Department of HHS has to travel, whether it is the CDC, whether it is NIH. They are involved with other agencies in other parts of the country and they are involved with counterparts in other parts of the world. They have to get the best deal when they travel. How many of us, when we have tried to book an airline--booking an airline is similar to commodity trading; one day it is this, one minute it is that if I call Delta. Maybe American is going the way I want to go, but they only land at 7:17, when I have to be there at 12:14. So it is akin to being a commodity trader. Should Sebelius be doing that on her own? I don't think so. Should the head of CDC be doing that? No. They need a travel specialist who knows how to work it and maybe, in the long run, provide safe travel. I support the direction the Senator is going in. He told me something I didn't know about, where some of these VA international conferences take over 50 people, for which I don't know what more than 50 people would do. So he is on the right track with many things. I think we have to be very careful when we are dealing with the entire civil service-- millions of people, 2 million people who work for the Federal Government--and put a freeze on them. Some Federal agencies have had a hiring freeze for some time. The Department of Defense is already under a civilian hiring freeze. It is important to recognize a hiring freeze would only have limited savings. A hiring freeze does not solve these problems, and it is just one more blow to a battered civil service. Remember, we have had civil service pay freezes in effect. So we have now frozen their pay for several years. They are facing increased costs in their pension program and now they are going to face furlough, and then we are going to tell them we don't think a lot of you are essential. I come back to what I said a few days ago. If we are going to have a democratic government, we need to have an independent civil service. We might not always like what they do. We might not like every position that is in an agency. We need a civil service that goes beyond party, goes beyond the administration, and performs their jobs based on educational qualification and a skill set, and one that is meritocracy based. We then can focus on making sure we have the best civil service in the world so we can point to what a real civil service is; thereby, encouraging new, emerging democracies to be able to follow our lead. I hope we do not accept the Coburn amendment. I hope if we are going to talk about the size of the government, we should do that next week on the budget bill. I yield the floor.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.