Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. So that is a false argument, that it is going to cause any improvement on voter fraud. There is hardly any voter fraud. That is one thing the new election law does. What is another thing? It makes it harder if a person moves their residence to another county in Florida. As a matter of fact, if a person moves to another county and they do not register to vote in that county, but they have a voter identification card that shows an address in another county in Florida where the person came from, that person will not get a regular ballot. That person will get a provisional ballot. Sadly, what we know from the experience of provisional ballots in Florida in the 2008 Presidential election is that half of the provisional ballots were not counted. Well, what group is that going to affect? Did my colleagues hear about how young people and college students got so interested in government and politics that they went to the polls in record numbers? Where did they vote? A lot of them got interested while they were away at their colleges and universities and they registered to vote and they voted in record numbers. Don't we want to encourage that? No. Not this election law. This election law says when that college student shows up because they have suddenly gotten energized, and they have not registered to vote in that county where they go to school, when they pull out their voter registration card that has their parents' address back home in another county, they are not going to get a regular ballot. They are going to get a provisional ballot. Is this the kind of nonsense we want going on? It is happening in front of our eyes, and it is happening in the State of Florida. Let me tell my colleagues what else it does. It subjects voter registration drives to redtape and even fines up to $1,000 per person, so much so that the League of Women Voters was forced to abandon its registration drives after doing it in our State for 72 years. What does the law do? It says: If you are going to register somebody to vote, you first have to register with the State of Florida that you are going to be a third party registrar, and when you register those names you have to turn them in to the supervisor's office within 48 hours. Why, for four decades has the law been that you had 10 days to turn them in? If you don't get it in by the 48th hour and 1 minute, you are now subject to fines of $50 per registration, up to $1,000 that you could be fined, thus the case of the teacher at New Smyrna Beach High School, Jill Cicciarelli, who had preregistered her students and had held the registrations for more than 48 hours. Of course, Jill did not even know about the law. Listen to what the Orlando Sentinel said about it. This is about the new election law: It amounts to . . . ripping apart election laws and weakening democracy. Listen to what the Tampa Tribune said: This bill isn't fooling anybody. It's not about clean elections. Listen to what Florida Today, a Gannett newspaper, said. It called the law an ``assault on the most cherished of American rights.'' I see you are calling my time. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, no State should have the right to make a law if it abridges people's basic rights. I have requested the Department of Justice to look into that. I requested this several months ago. At this moment, I cannot tell you to what degree the Department of Justice is questioning this. They have been engaged in a lawsuit, because the State of Florida has sued them. The State of Florida is suing them to invalidate the entire Voting Rights Act of 1964, if you can believe that. Look back in history. After being arrested for casting an illegal vote in the Presidential election in 1872, Susan B. Anthony, a schoolteacher, called it a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they were being denied the use of the only means of securing that, and that is the ballot. That is what Florida's new election law and others like it around the Nation are, a downright mockery. Dr. King warned Americans that all types of conniving methods can be used to keep people from being registered voters. That is what these new so-called election reform laws amount to, democracy turned upside down. I hope the Senate will look at this. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I wish to inform the Senate of something that has just happened to a civics teacher in my State of Florida who tried to help her students register to vote. It was nothing new for this teacher, Jill Cicciarelli, to be prepping 17-year-old students for the privilege and responsibility of voting in a democracy. She has been doing this for a number of years. But it turned out that when Jill organized a drive at the start of the school year to get students preregistered to vote, she ran afoul of Florida's new election law. How could that be? But, sure enough, the law, which is basically an attempt at voter suppression, causes her to face hefty fines. For what? For helping students to register to vote. As ridiculous as that sounds, that is what the law says. But there is more, unfortunately. There is a lot more. I met with Jill Cicciarelli and her students last week. They are extremely concerned, and they are extremely surprised that a good government attempt to register students so they will be ready to vote in the next election has run afoul of the law. They were not happy; but, interestingly, neither was their elected Supervisor of Elections in Volusia County who, under the law, was required to report the teacher and the students to the State authorities. The Supervisor of Elections, Ann McFall, has now publicly, openly criticized the parts of the law as being egregious and unenforceable. She has done that speaking out, she has done it in an op-ed and in the local newspaper. She has been unambiguous in her criticism that not only is it egregious in the substance of the law, but that the burdens they place on the Supervisors of Elections are unenforceable. I have written to Governor Scott. I have talked to him personally, asking him to support the revamping or the repeal of this law. I have also just asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to conduct a congressional investigation to see if Florida's law was part of an orchestrated effort that resulted in voting law changes in 14 States thus far this year. These new voting laws could make it significantly harder for more than 5 million eligible voters in many States to cast their ballots in next year's election in 2012, and that is according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Last month they completed the first comprehensive study of the impact of those State laws. The Florida law is probably the strongest of all the 14 States. It requires third parties who sign up new voters to register with the State first and then to submit applications from the new voters for registration within 48 hours. For almost four decades, the Florida law has been that they had 10 days in which to submit the names--for four decades. Now it is within 48 hours. Can anybody say with a straight face that Florida isn't taking a step backwards in making it harder to vote and harder to register to vote and harder to have a person's vote count as they intended, especially a step backwards when it involves protecting one of our most fundamental rights, the right to vote? I hope people are going to start to realize that this is not just happening in Florida, but that a number of States have passed laws that are going to make it harder to vote and harder for people to cast their ballots. We simply should not sit back and watch as a handful of lawmakers and Governors approving this legislation in those States continue to block the path of voters to the polls. When we think back in history, when Lyndon Johnson was President there were poll taxes and literacy tests aimed at blocking African Americans from voting. President Johnson went on TV and spoke to the Nation about passing civil rights laws for African Americans, including the right to vote. He told us: ``We are going to give them that right.'' If he were alive today, I wonder what he would think as he watched these legislatures across the country--in what the Miami Herald recently called a disturbing trend--pass laws that place unnecessary hurdles between the voting booth and minorities, young voters and seniors. In Florida, the so-called election reform law rapidly made its way as a legislative bill into law this past spring despite public outcry as the legislature was considering it. Here is what the law does: It reduces the number of early voting days from 14 to 8. Of course, it was explained in the guides that the Supervisors of Elections can increase the voting hours on those days. But when they do that, they have to pay overtime, time and a half. Look at the budgets of all the States and the counties. They are in distress. So they are not going to have the money to do it. So, in effect, it is reduced from 14 days for early voting to 8 days. Why was early voting ever instituted in the first place? Remember the debacle we had in the Presidential election in Florida in the year 2000? As a result, there was an effort to increase the number of days so it would make it a convenience and make it easier to vote--14 days constricted to 8. Oh, by the way, the 14 days goes all the way up through the Sunday before the Tuesday election. The new election law in Florida stops it on the Saturday before the Tuesday election. Well, guess who that is going to hurt? What group do we think goes in record numbers to vote after church on Sunday, the day before the Tuesday election? The election laws were set up to make it easier to vote for seniors and for many others, so much so that it was such a tremendous success in the last several elections that 40 percent of all the people voted before Election Day. One can imagine the administrative help it was, that only 60 percent of the people voted on Election Day. But that is constricted under the theory that it was going to stop election fraud. By the way, there has been very little election law fraud reported in Florida and in other States.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, we have a judge who will be in front of the Senate, and it is my understanding it has been worked out that there will be a voice vote. I want to thank the leadership of the appropriate committee, the Judiciary Committee, for handling this with dispatch. In a big-growth State such as Florida, where there is such a caseload in the Federal judiciary, when we have a vacancy it needs to be attended to right away. Fortunately, the two Senators from Florida have tried to take the politics out of the selection of judges by letting the interviewing process, the selection process be done by a panel of prominent citizens called a judicial nominating commission, and they recommended these three to the two Senators. The Senators then interviewed them and let the White House know, and the White House agreed--much to the credit of this White House--that they would select from among those we submitted. Those we submitted are the ones who came out of the judicial nominating commission. Thus was the selection of Judge Robert Scola, whom we will confirm today, and who was nominated in May of this year. Judge Scola received his bachelor's from Brown University, went to Boston College for law school, and graduated cum laude. He practiced law as a criminal defense attorney representing individuals and corporations in both State and Federal courts and then he spent 6 years working as a prosecutor in the Miami-Dade County State Attorney's office. He was then appointed back in 1995 by the Governor to the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court bench, where he has sat as a State court judge all the way up until today. He received his well-qualified rating from the American Bar Association. Certainly Senator Rubio and I told the White House when we submitted the names from the judicial nominating commission that we agreed with all of these nominees. So with this strong tradition of bipartisan support for our judicial nominees, I bring to the Senate's attention for confirmation Judge Robert Scola.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I came to the Senate floor because over the weekend a very noble lady in Cuba passed away of a heart attack, and I want to tell you about her. Her name is Laura Pollan. She founded the group Ladies in White, Damas de Blanco. She did so to protest the brutal Castro regime in Cuba, and her protest was specifically the jailing of 75 people in a crackdown on dissidents in 2003, one of which was her husband. Many of those who were imprisoned were married to the ones who became known as the Ladies in White, including Senora Pollan's own husband, Hector Maseda. Since 2003, Laura had gathered the group on most weekends in central Havana after church. Everybody would wear white and they would hold gladiolas, a flower that is typical in warm climates. They would stage their marches, and they would demand the release of their loved ones, since 2003 when their husbands were jailed. Damas de Blanco defied this brutal dictatorship, the Castro regime. For its human rights work, the European Parliament awarded the group the 2005 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Just this year, the U.S. Government gave Damas de Blanco the Human Rights Defender Award for ``exceptional valor in protecting human rights in the face of government repression.'' Damas de Blanco succeeded earlier this year--succeeded. In the face of this brutal dictatorship, it succeeded when the last of the 75 imprisoned were finally released, including Laura's husband. She and her husband only had 8 months together before she died of a heart attack last week. Despite this group's achievement, Laura Pollan lamented earlier this year that: As long as the government is around, there will be prisoners . . . while they've let some go, they've put others in jail. It is a never-ending story. Mr. President, it is a never-ending story, and isn't it typical; here is a regime that still holds an American citizen there now for 2 years, Alan Gross. Alan Gross is in ill health. His daughter here in the States has cancer. Is this regime showing any kind of compassion? Of course not. Did it show any kind of compassion to those Ladies in White and their husbands when they swept in, in the middle of the night, scooped them up and put them in prison because they dared to speak out their free thoughts? It reminds us of another regime, one on the other side of the globe, Iran, which still imprisons an American, Bob Levinson, a former FBI agent. They still deny they have him, and yet there is plenty of evidence they do have him. And yet we wait. In Bob Levinson's case, a wife and seven children wait, and have waited for years and years. So we say, like Damas de Blanco--just like they said they will continue to challenge the regime until the day all the Cuban people are able to enjoy the blessings of freedom--that is all they want. It is so sad that because of the ties between America and Cuba, with so many families having been split, with it being only 90 miles away from Key West, there is a brutal dictatorial regime that still imprisons its people. But there is one thing they can't imprison: they can't imprison their minds and their yearning for freedom. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Indeed, one of the areas hardest hit in the entire country is southwest Florida, in and around Fort Myers. I note the Senator's comments are very accurate. We need to find a way for people to stay in their homes, afford their payments, and see what that does not only for the individual homeowner but what it does for the neighborhood. It keeps people in the homes. The weeds don't start growing. The values of the rest of the homes in the neighborhood don't plummet because the house is now vacant and perhaps ransacked. There is kind of a spiral downward when people are forced out. So we need a program that would come in and make the mortgage as affordable as the homeowner can work out. Yet we find, in many cases, the banks don't want to do that or there is not a governmental incentive for the banks or the homeowner to do that. We have missed out on that. Several years ago, when this crisis started, I implored the Secretary of the Treasury to look at exactly what was happening, and they came up with a program whereby they were going to give some cushion of 5 percent of a mortgage that was underwater. In the Senator's State and my State, if a home is just 5 percent underwater, you are rather fortunate because a home today 20, 25, and 30 percent underneath the value of the first mortgage is not uncommon. That is the problem we have not addressed. There have been some other good things. There are now programs coming out on small business, in trying to get money into small business. Even though some of the banks did not want to take the Federal money, even though it went to their capital, we are starting to see some signs of life there. We are starting to see some signs of life, I am told by the Florida Association of Realtors, that sales are occurring all over the State, not just certain parts of the State, such as Miami. There is a huge influx of Brazilian investors coming in and absorbing the condo market. But it is not just Miami, it is the entire State that sales are occurring. They are, of course, sales at rock-bottom prices, but they are beginning to occur. We need to accelerate and give assistance to this rejuvenation of the real estate market. Until the housing market recovers, we are not going to have an economic recovery out of this recession.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Of course.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I could spend my whole time talking about the housing crisis--as the Senator from Arizona has so appropriately commented--that has hit his State and mine and many others. I happen to agree it is going to be hard for us to recover economically until we can start to work off this huge inventory of houses out there and the dire economic straits it has put the owners of those houses in. It is a truth in America that so often our family assets are in our home. When that home goes away--because you can't sell it or its value has plummeted and the bank is coming after you and you can't get loans for your small business--then people are going to be hurt. That is what is happening to our people right now.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. And also in a bipartisan way that we are supporting this. Isn't that a wonderful term to suddenly throw around, ``bipartisanship,'' where we can come together, not as partisans, not as ideologs, but in the best interests of the country?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I wish to speak on the trade bills, but first I would like to comment on the fact, as the Senator from Utah has reminded us, of the sacrifice a lot of young Americans are enduring. One of the more difficult tasks that I have is to sign the letters of condolence to the families on the loss of one of their members anywhere in the world having to do with the armed services. I might say that another major part of our protection of our national security is the young men and women we do not hear about, the men and women of the intelligence community all across the globe who likewise are protecting our national security interests, many times in direct coordination with the U.S. military. From time to time, we have casualties in the intelligence community as well. I just want to again express my profound thanks and gratitude to those across the globe who are protecting the national security interests of our blessed country. It is interesting because we just learned of a plot that was a threat to our security interests. Can you believe--a plot to assassinate a diplomat here in our Capital City of Washington; a plot that has intrigue like a B novel, that brings in the Mexican drug cartels; a plot that, according to the Attorney General, has been hatched by high levels of the Iranian Government. Now, the question is, who is in control in the Iranian Government? Is it the Supreme Leader? Is it the President, Ahmadi-Nejad? Is it what this plot was traced to, which is one arm of their governmental apparatus, the Revolutionary Guard, the Quds Force? It doesn't seem that Iran has its act together. Even though we hear the protestations by the Iranian Ambassador at the United Nations that this is all a fabricated lie, this perpetrator has already confessed. According to the news reports, they are saying this plot included bomb attacks, plotting on the Saudi and Israeli Embassies here in Washington, and that is all here in our National Capital. It was, according to the Attorney General, conceived, sponsored, and directed from Iran. This is obviously a flagrant violation of international law. An FBI informant, in the transcript the Justice Department released yesterday, asked the alleged plotter whether he was worried about innocent people being killed by a bombing in a restaurant where the supposed plot was to have taken place, where the Saudi Ambassador was going to be dining. In a reference to his Iranian superiors, this bomber said, ``They want that guy done'' even if ``a hundred go with him.'' The people of the United States have every reason to be outraged, to view this plot as an outright attempt to assault our Nation and our allies. I appreciate the Secretary of State calling for tougher sanctions. I want to hear what the administration is going to do, to make it very clear that these kinds of actions are not going to be tolerated. I thank, again, the intelligence community, which is how I started my comments. I thank the intelligence community for what they are doing around planet Earth, day in and day out, gathering the information that protects us. I want to comment on the matter at hand, the trade bills. I thank the chairman and the ranking member for their hard work in bringing to the table and shepherding these trade agreements through the Finance Committee and now here to the Senate. I came here to talk about what is good about these agreements and other people are coming here to talk about what is good, but all you hear is people want to blame the administration for something. Why don't we say something good? Not only are these agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama critical to the U.S. economy, they are certainly critical to the economy of my State of Florida, and they send an important signal that the United States is not going to turn its back on economic engagement. These trade agreements are creating a level playing field for American companies by removing foreign barriers to U.S. exports and U.S. investment. And, by the way, some of us would not have let these trade agreements go forward unless there had been also the passage of the trade adjustment assistance, which is assistance for workers who might be displaced as a result of the trade bills, especially with regard to retraining. The bottom line of these trade bills, then, means real jobs for struggling American workers. If there is any doubt with regard to an economy such as Florida's, there is no question that trade with Colombia, trade with Panama, trade in our agricultural sector with South Korea, is in the interests of my State. But this is also in the interests of the economy of the United States. The U.S. International Trade Commission estimates American economic output will grow more from the U.S.-Korea agreement than from the last nine trade agreements of the United States combined; just from this one agreement with Korea, more economic output than the last nine agreements combined. The administration has taken extra steps to obtain these labor protections I talked about and further labor protections in the agreement with Colombia and the necessary tax transparency in the agreement with Panama. There is no question that free trade, if it is done right, creates jobs and opportunities. My State, Florida, is the launching point, the gateway to Latin America. Thousands of jobs in Florida depend on maintaining a vibrant commerce in the economic relations with our trading partners to the south. If we fail to move these agreements with Colombia and Panama, we are going to run the risk of losing these jobs. I often say why does Florida reflect the Nation in a lot of our political mood? It is because the country has moved to Florida. But what is also reflective of Florida, Florida is increasingly a reflection of the Western Hemisphere because of all our ties into Central and South America and the Caribbean. Under these agreements we are going to pass, emerging industries in Florida, such as aerospace, will be able to increase sales abroad while we are going to be able to hire more people here at home. In the agricultural sector, our ranchers, our farmers, our growers are going to significantly benefit from these agreements. Korea's 54-percent tariff on certain citrus products is going to be eliminated immediately or reduced to zero over 5 years. Do you know who that helps? It helps a specialty section of citrus called the Indian River region, the region this Senator grew up in, on the banks of the Indian River. The delicacy fruit of the world comes from the Indian River region. They are a huge exporter of fresh grapefruit, and especially that grapefruit going into Korea as a result of this agreement is going to be helpful. The changes will create new export opportunities for the entire citrus industry and the tariffs on Florida beef exports to Korea will also come down. A lot of people do not know--the Presiding Officer being from New York, people they do not know that New York is a great agriculture State. A lot of folks do not know that Florida is not only how they would identify it--citrus--but it is a huge agriculture State. A lot of people do not realize how much the beef industry, the ranches this Senator grew up on, are so much a part of our economy, and among the 50 States Florida is a leader among beef ranches. This is all going to benefit as a result of this trade agreement with Korea. The Colombia and Panama agreements include important protections to prevent Brazil, a major producer of orange juice, from shipping orange juice through these other countries to the United States. These trading agreements are important for strategic reasons as well. Obviously Colombia is a key ally in the region. You have to give credit where credit is due to the Colombian Government, the previous government of President Uribe and the present government, for the close working relationship with the U.S. military, as well as our intelligence community. Give credit where credit is due, that the Government of Colombia pulled off that ruse that helped us bring our three American hostages, who were held by the FARC for years, out of the jungles. South Korea and Panama are strategic partners and share regional interests in security and economic stability. With all of these trading partners, we are bound by our commitment to freedom and the rule of law, and these trade agreements are certainly going to help us solidify our converging aspirations. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. As the Senator from Arizona is in the back of the Chamber, I just want to say this Senator appreciates his long public service and his dedication to this country. Mr. President, as one of the Senators from a State that borders the Gulf of Mexico, naturally we have been quite concerned in the followup to the Deepwater Horizon oilspill. You will remember that was an oilspill that at first BP said: Oh, it was only 1,000 barrels a day. It was not until Senator Boxer, the chairman of the environment committee, and I were able to wrangle the actual streaming video from 5,000 feet below the surface and put it up on my Web site that the scientists could then calculate how much oil was coming out. It was not anywhere close to 1,000 barrels a day. In fact, it ended up being 50,000 barrels of oil a day that was gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. As a result of that total number of days, almost 5 million barrels of oil has gushed into the gulf, we can expect some serious economic and environmental consequences and particularly the consequences on the critters. It is hard to go down to 5,000 feet and get data, because of the pressure there, about what is happening to the critters. But we have an opportunity to find out what is happening by where all that oil seeped in toward shore, onto the beaches and into the estuaries. Of course, the estuaries that were closest to the oil spill were the ones along the coastline of Louisiana and a lot of those marshes. What I have learned in public service is that when we are addressing a problem, if it is a problem of this enormous consequence to not only the livelihoods of people who live up and down the gulf, whether their livelihoods be tourism, as so much of our State of Florida was affected, or whether it be the health of the actual critters themselves and, therefore, the livelihoods of a lot of people because of the shrimping and the fishing industry, which is major, coming from the gulf--what I have learned over my years in public service is what we have to do is dig down and start relying on science to inform us as to what is at the root of the problem and how we go about solving the problem. I can tell my colleagues that even though they shut off the oil gushing in, the spill is not over yet. So we are going to have to do the kind of informed planning as to what we are going to do to address this environmental disaster, and science is the key to developing a plan. We got a pretty good indication from former Gov. Ray Mabus, who is now our Secretary of the Navy and whom the President had tapped to head the task force on what is the best way to address the damage. Based on Governor Mabus's recommendations, the President then issued an Executive order, and it established an ecosystem restoration task force comprised of the relevant Federal agencies and each Gulf Coast State. In the meantime, what we have done is worked with our colleagues in trying to figure out how to fund this important work. For this work, for this Senator, science is one of the key components. I can tell my colleagues from my experience in doing Everglades restoration in the State of Florida, if we don't have the science first to determine what to do, then we don't know how to do it; we waste a lot of money and a lot of time in the process. The science will help us make sure we accomplish what we are planning to do. Then our efforts are going to pay off. In other words, when a patient is sick, the doctor is first going to determine what is wrong and then will figure out the treatment options and then will monitor the patient's progress. Similarly, in this case, to get the best outcome for restoring the gulf, we must use the same scientific framework. Why am I harping on this? Nine gulf coast Senators--minus only one gulf coast Senator--and all five State Senators signed up as cosponsors of this legislation headed by Mary Landrieu. When we filed this RESTORE Act, to take care of the money--in fact, most of the money is from the fine the Department of the Interior is going to level under the already existing law of the Oil Pollution Act--whatever that fine turns out to be, we have filed legislation to direct that money that comes from the fine. Naturally, some of it is for environmental restoration. Some of it is for economic restoration. Some of it is for planning for the future. A lot of it we hope will be going into the determination of science. Even though some economic development will come out of this legislation that passed unanimously out of the environment committee just a few weeks ago--even though economic development is going to be part of it--we have to know if we, in fact, are achieving our goal. The science is the key to that. So just this week I met with two scientist professors at Louisiana State University. I will not say what the outcome was of what happened in the football stadium that afternoon when the University of Florida met with Louisiana State University, but that morning I met with these two LSU professors who received a RAPID grant from the National Science Foundation. In their research on what are called killifish, Dr. Whitehead and Dr. Galvez found that even in areas where the visible oil has disappeared, these little fish--about that large--and their embryos sustained long-term genetic damage. Let me show my colleagues what I am talking about. The killifish is a small egg-laying fish found in the Gulf of Mexico. They spawn from March to October in shallow water in the marsh grass beds. Killifish, which when adult are about that long, are a popular bait fish and they eat a lot of mosquito larvae, so they become part of Mother Nature's natural pest control. So in April of 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon began to gush the oil, it was in the midst of killifish spawning season. When the oil continued to flow all summer, inching ever closer to the marshes, the killifish were exposed to it. Here is the proof. The LSU researchers set minnow traps near the oiled areas off Louisiana in an area close to a barrier island between Barataria Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. This is what that particular marshy area looked like. We can see all the oil on the surface in this photograph. The problem is not the oil on the surface. When it gets into the marshes and gets into the grasses, this oil will eventually sink all the way through the water column and then it gets mixed up in the sediment. These small fish that are part of the natural chain of fisheries out in the gulf will root around down in that sediment. I wish to show my colleagues now the gill tissue of healthy killifish. This is the tissue taken from the gills that were not exposed to the oiled marsh. The LSU professors had set these traps in six different locations, from Louisiana all the way to Alabama, where the oil had come in. It went, of course, as far as on into Florida, but they set these six locations. They found the area outside this area near Barataria Bay was where there was very little exposure. So this is a cross-section of some of the gills of killifish. Remember, for a fish, its gill is like our lungs. It oxygenates the blood and it removes the carbon dioxide. It is like us breathing, except it is a fish that is breathing. This gill tissue looks as though it has the main trunk and the branches coming off and they are evenly spaced. This was outside the area where we found a lot of the oil down in the sediment, as in the previous picture of where that marsh was off Louisiana. What this healthy tissue does is it provides a lot of surface area for oxygen to enter into the fish's bloodstream. Let me show my colleagues the slide that shows the gill tissue of a killifish from the marsh where all the oil was. The reddish brown we see is the staining used by the researchers. There is a protein that will react to the uptake of oil and show where there has been exposure. That is the reddish brown we see on these branches coming off the trunks. We can see just how dark it has stained. Look at something else on this exposed tissue of the fish's gill. Look how disorganized and warped these branches now look. Compare that to the symmetrical shape of what we saw on the healthy fish. This, of course, is going to interfere with oxygen and carbon dioxide and the ion transfer in the bloodstream of these fish, and it is going to make it harder for the fish to breathe. So in an area that is as economically and ecologically important as the gulf, this information is crucial to determining the extent of the harm. The gulf provides almost one-third of the Nation's gross domestic product--about one-third of the seafood--one-third of the Nation's seafood is coming from areas that are being exposed. I asked the professors: Does that mean we can't eat the fish? They said there is no evidence it is harmful to eat the fish. But what it is showing is that when their ability to breathe starts being incumbered, it means these fish are not going to live or they are going to be significantly reduced in size or the population is going to be significantly reduced. If that is happening to this little fish called the killifish, can we imagine what is happening to the whole food chain? I talked to one of the owners of one of the major New Orleans restaurants. I said: Tell me about your fishing. Tell me about your shrimpers. He said that some of the shrimpers off Louisiana are having to go 200 miles away in order to get their catch of shrimp. Naturally, that is having an economic effect because they are having to spend all that much extra time and money and fuel to get their catch of shrimp. In a region that is so economically and ecologically important as the gulf, as a producer of one-third of all this Nation's seafood, you can see we potentially have a problem. Historically, we do not know much about the gulf. It is, on the average, a mile and a half deep. Where the Deepwater Horizon spilled, it is a mile deep. As the oil hit, we began to realize we did not have good baseline data about the resources that are in jeopardy. So moving forward, science is going to have to be a priority. We have to know the extent of the impacts so the American people do not pay for BP or Transocean's actions. Why should the American taxpayer pay for this? We have to find out how best to restore the gulf so it can continue to be the source of the environmental and economic wealth it has historically been to this country. There are a number of us here who are going to continue to press for baseline data collection, long-term monitoring, and innovative research to inform gulf coast restoration. I hope our colleagues are going to join us in the first step toward that, which is the passage of the RESTORE Act, which has come out of the Environment Committee, which is bipartisan, supported by almost all the Senators from the gulf, and for which we need to allocate defined money so it will go to good uses instead of, under current law, being poured into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. We are going to have the opportunity in the coming weeks to pass it in the Senate, send it to the House, and see if we can get our colleagues there to make a strong and bold step for letting science inform us as we try to restore the health of the gulf. It is somewhat providential that my colleague from Alabama has come to the floor, probably to speak on another subject. But I would point out to the Senate he is a cosponsor of the RESTORE Act to try to restore the health of the Gulf of Mexico and to understand the changes I have just talked about, some of the initial research that has come from--sourced by, funded by--the National Science Foundation. I thank the Senator from Alabama for his cosponsorship, along with our other colleagues from the gulf coast. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I want to comment before the Senator from Louisiana leaves the floor. It is kind of like we have seen this movie before. If I recall, it was Friday. The Senator from Louisiana and I were out here with this chart talking about the same thing, showing all of these paths of hurricanes and how those folks who live along the gulf and the Atlantic coast understand what natural disaster is. We are playing with people's lives when we threaten not to fund FEMA, which can respond to these. How many of these do we have to have to get through to these decisionmakers who are blocking the funding of FEMA because of some ideological position? There are people out there who are hurting in Tuscaloosa, AL; in Joplin, MO, all throughout New England, and along the Atlantic coast--and who knows what is going to happen? Hurricane season goes until the end of November. I want to tell the Senator from Louisiana how much I appreciate her bringing this to our attention over and over again. We need to remind people that there are certain things that only the government can do, and this is one of them. When people are in need, they have to rely on emergency functions from their government. That is one of the main reasons of having a government. Hopefully, that message will get through. Mr. President, I want to speak about, basically, this budget conundrum in which we find ourselves. In a little less than an hour, we are going to vote on a motion to cut off debate just to get to the bill that would continue to fund the government after this Friday so that the government can operate. Speaking of movies that we have seen before, didn't we see this movie back in early August? Then it was over a different question of whether the government could continue to pay its bills. But in essence it was the same thing. In that case it was the lifting of the debt ceiling. In this case it is to keep the appropriations going, starting October 1. So if we have seen this movie before, didn't Senators and Members of Congress go home in August? And didn't they hear from their people, and the people said: What in the world are you all doing? What are you thinking? Have you guys gone off the rails, that you would threaten the shutdown of the government and all the necessary functions of the government, which would then imperil our economy more already than it is now imperiled in this recession? One would think Members of Congress got that message. Yet here we are again, in late September, after having gone through that drill in early August. We are going through the same thing again--this brinkmanship, this partisan ideological brinkmanship that has all the vestiges of being all balled up in electioneering politics and a Presidential election. That is not any way to run a country. Let me tell you why I think--if the folks out across America will start letting their elected representatives know they have had enough-- why we might see some change. With that cataclysmic confrontation we went through in early August, in order to get the government to pay its bills, we set up a structure--a process in law--where there was immediate debt reduction of some $1 trillion, but there is supposed to be--and I am rounding--another $1\1/2\ trillion done by this supercommittee that is supposed to report by Thanksgiving, and then we are to vote on it. Remember, a week and a half ago, the Presiding Officer and I and 34 other Senators--Republicans and Democrats alike-- went to the Senate press gallery and we stood and said: We want a big deal of deficit reduction. A lot of us were suggesting what we want is tax reform in the process, getting rid of a lot of the clutter in the Tax Code that is so inefficient in the way of tax preference to individual special interests, which have grown exponentially over the last 20 years, since the last tax reform measure, which was 1986, and instead utilize that revenue, which would be revenue gained, to simplify the Tax Code and lower rates. The actuaries tell us that would, in fact, crank up the engine of growth and from that growth would come additional revenue. Why is that so hard? Every constituent I have talked to seems to think that is a fairly good idea. You know what they say? They say it sounds like common sense. Mr. President, I see other Senators on the floor who wish to speak. I want the Senator from New York to know I have been speaking to some of his constituents--the titans on Wall Street--who are saying the same thing: What in the world are you guys doing? Have you all lost your minds? We have an opportunity to do something. If we will have as our north star some common sense, bipartisanship, and keeping in mind what is good for the country and not for our particular little ideology, then we can get something done. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I came to speak on a different subject. A retired FBI agent named Bob Levinson, over 4 years ago, disappeared when he checked out of his hotel in the Iranian tourist attraction of Kish Island in the Persian Gulf. He disappeared. It is only recently that his family--and he leaves behind a family of a wife and seven children--only recently have they had the belief that he is alive. We have brought this to all levels of our government. This Senator, who represents the State Christine Levinson lives in, went to the Iranian Ambassador at the United Nations years ago trying to intervene. Our Secretary of State has, in fact, pushed this very hard. Why am I saying all this? Because on the occasion of the release of the hikers by the Iranian Government, for whatever compassion they have shown--the government bringing together disparate parties that had their own little power centers in Iran--whatever success they had in bringing that together and releasing those hikers back to their loved ones, we pray that same decisionmaking apparatus in Tehran would now activate the process to bring Bob Levinson home to his wife and seven children. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, first of all, I want to thank the Senator from Louisiana. I also want to point out, look at all those red lines. Those are the paths of hurricanes. Where do you think most of them were going between 1851 and 2008? And why are folks like us on the gulf coast and the Atlantic coast so sensitive about disaster money? It is because we have been hit over and over. Our lands we call paradise. But they happen to be, as the Senator from Louisiana said, in the middle of ``hurricane highway.'' It is a part of our lifestyle. When I was a kid, it was an excuse to get out of school. When I was a bachelor, it was an excuse to have a party. But now that I have the privilege of representing one of those very large gulf coast States and Atlantic coast States, it is absolute, utter destruction. When Hurricane Andrew hit Miami, had it turned one degree to the north, and instead drawn a bead on the Dade-Broward line in north Miami, it would have been a $50 billion insurance loss storm in 1992 dollars. That would have been upward of $80 billion today. It would have taken down every insurance company that was doing business in the path of that storm. This is the destructive power. Do our people need help? Of course they need help.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, first of all, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for no more than 5 minutes and that the Senator from West Virginia follow my presentation.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I wanted to call to the attention of the Senate the aftermath of having passed the health care reform bill. There was a great deal of consternation at the time, while we were deliberating, that Medicare was going to be cut. We will recall that $500 billion was cut out of Medicare over the course of a 10-year period, and the amount that was being cut was considered to be a threat to Medicare. As a matter of fact, when we passed it, the Medicare cuts came from providers--often providers that stepped up and offered to have greater efficiencies and therefore Medicare savings over the decade. For example, the hospitals of America came forth and said that we will save $150 billion. So one of the considerations in Medicare was that we were going to have to lean out the Medicare HMO Program called Medicare Advantage. If we will recall, back in 2003 when we passed the prescription drug bill, Medicare Advantage--the Medicare HMO--was actually given a bump up in Medicare reimbursement, some 14 percent over and above Medicare fee for service. As a result, people had the great incentive to go into a Medicare HMO because the insurance companies--the HMOs--were getting so much more per Medicare beneficiary. But the fact is, we saw, on a long, projected basis over time that it was going to be unsustainable financially for the U.S. Government to keep giving a 14-percent differential to insurance companies over what the average Medicare recipient would get in Medicare fee for service. That was one of the reforms of the health care bill--to take that 14 percent differential and lean it down over time, but at the same time make it more efficient, make the health care benefits better by having a greater percentage of the actual delivery of that premium dollar go to health care instead of all the administrative costs and all of that of an insurance company. I am happy to report to the Senate that the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services came out last week with their new results on Medicare Advantage--the Medicare HMO Program--as a result of the new health care bill. Nationally, the premiums for seniors on Medicare Advantage have gone down 4 percent and the enrollment is up 10 percent. Now that is a significant little victory coming out of the new incentives that were put in the health care reform bill--new incentives to insurance companies to improve their Medicare Advantage; nationally, 4 percent down in premiums, but they are becoming more attractive and so the enrollment has gone up 10 percent. I am happy to tell you, in my State of Florida, where there are more Medicare Advantage enrollees than any other State--over a million--the premiums are down 26 percent and the enrollment is expected to go up almost 20 percent because of the incentives in the health care reform bill. What in this reform bill has given new life to insurance companies to improve their Medicare coverage that would cause the premiums to come down and the enrollment to go up? Because CMS has now instituted a series of financial incentives for the insurance company. And that is, if the insurance company boosts the quality of the service to its Medicare enrollees, then it will get a bonus per Medicare enrollee. So if it is rated as a 3-star or higher, each additional star gives more of a bonus and incentive to the insurance company, responding to the fact they have increased the quality. That is a good thing. The insurance companies that are only rated 2\1/2\ stars now have the financial incentive to get to 3 stars. What we have is a win all the way around. We have a win, clearly, for the enrollees, who are the Medicare beneficiaries, because they are getting better quality and their premiums have gone down in Florida by 26 percent. We have a second win for the insurance company, because now the higher quality it achieves, it is getting reimbursed from Medicare all the more as a reward for having a higher quality plan. The third win is to the U.S. taxpayer. It lowers the overall amount the U.S. taxpayer is going to have to pay as a result of the greater efficiencies in the Medicare Program. I wanted to come and share with the Senate this win-win-win--triple win--as a result of our having passed the health care reform bill a couple of years ago. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

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

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, there is a tax scam that is going on in this country for which you certainly have to give some creativity to these thieves and robbers--and that is exactly what they are. I first started to get wind of this when people in the Tampa Bay region of my State called in saying an interesting thing happened. They had sent in their income tax return, and they got back a notice from the IRS that their return had already been filed. What they found out was that somebody had stolen their Social Security number, had in their name filled out a tax return, and then, guess what. It showed they had a tax refund due. When I started hearing from about 25 or 30 people, I knew there was something going on. Sure enough, law enforcement in the Tampa Bay region--the sheriff's office, the city police, combined with the State attorney and the U.S. Attorney--a couple of weeks ago had a bust and arrested 49 people who were in a scam whereby they procure people's Social Security numbers. What is unbelievable is the amount of money they were getting back, estimated at being, just in the Tampa Bay region, something like $100 million in refunds. That is a rip-off of the American taxpayer because that is their money. But the story doesn't stop there. Oh, if you were one of the victims whose Social Security number had been stolen and you wanted to file your tax return, the IRS is telling you you can't do it because you have already filed a tax return. Guess what a nightmare that is for the legitimate taxpayer. So we have filed legislation. A number of Senators have joined me. No. 1, one of the unbelievable things was that it was difficult to get the IRS to cooperate with the local and State law enforcement agencies, because the IRS is prohibited because of privacy from sharing any of this information. And, of course, we want to protect the privacy of people, but we also want to go after these crooks. We had done it a few years ago with regard to inmates in the Federal prison system by allowing the IRS, under the law we passed back in 2008, to cooperate with the Federal prison system in order to get the inmates who were filing false tax returns to get tax refunds. That was extended administratively into the State prison system with the IRS. But then this has been taken to a new level, one in which it is a great rip-off of the taxpayers. What was incredible is when the Tampa police department and the sheriff's department ended up arresting some of these people, it was as if they didn't know they had done anything wrong. What is going on? They did not know they had done anything wrong, and they are driving around in BMWs, with Rolex watches and gold chains all over them. It is the use of tools in the electronic age just the same as yesterday, when the thief used a crowbar to break in and steal somebody's possessions. This has to stop. What we do not know is the extent to which this is all over the country. So the first thing we have to do is get the legal ability for the IRS, without divulging people's private financial information, to be able to cooperate with local and State law enforcement and the U.S. attorney to be able to go after these people, to identify them so the U.S. attorney and the State attorney can prosecute. Additionally, we have to help the victims. In this legislation we filed, we say the IRS will give the victims a special PIN number so they can file a return and that PIN number will identify them as a victim and it will not be kicked out of the system. Additionally, since so much of this is being done electronically, we have to give the taxpayer the option to file what we called in the old days a paper tax return and in the process see if we can stop this; otherwise, if $100 million has been stolen from the American taxpayer just in the Tampa Bay region of Florida, you can imagine how extensive this crime probably is across the entire country. It is important we act and that we get to the bottom of it. If we pass a law, a crook will try to figure out a way to get around it. But when somebody in this electronic age can just sit at a computer, steal a Social Security number and then file a false tax return, enough is enough. It is my delight to see my colleague from Maryland. It looks as if he has some good stuff to tell us. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I am very happy to announce to the Senate that today NASA announced its new, big rocket design, with the President stepping forth to indicate that he will request funding for the design and building of this rocket. I want to take the opportunity to share with the Senate what this rocket is going to be. To set the stage, you will recall that we have the International Space Station up in orbit now. There is a combination of six astronauts on board. It is an international crew. The space station itself--people don't realize how big it is. If you think about sitting in a football stadium on the 50-yard line, and looking from one end zone to the other, that is how big the space station is--120 yards long. The space shuttle has been the vehicle that we have used now for 30 years, the last 10 of which have been used to build the International Space Station. The Russians have been taking up some components, but the major components, the heavy components are being taken up in the cargo bay of the space shuttle and assembled over the last decade into the station. We have six astronauts doing research in the zero gravity of orbit. The future rockets going to and from the space station--a space taxi, if you will--are a competition among commercial rocket companies, and we think that competition will bring down significantly the cost of those rockets to take cargo and crew, and at the end of this year one version of those rockets will in fact launch, rendezvous, and dock with the space station and deliver cargo. To make those human rated, with all of the redundancies and escape systems to save human life, it is going to take another few years. Of course, it is a disappointment for so many of us that the new rocket, ready to go to and from the space station, as the space shuttle used to, is not ready for humans, even though we are launching cargo. Thus, in the interim, we have to rely on the Russians with their spacecraft, which we have done before, because when the Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed on reentry back in 2003, for well over 2 years we were down and not flying the space shuttle, until we could make sure that it was fixed. We relied on the Russian Soyuz to get to and from the space station. All right, that is going to low-Earth orbit. But NASA, with its human space program, has another mission. Now, with the nonmanned space program, we just launched to Jupiter, we just launched a mission to the Moon, next month we are going to launch a mission on Earth observations, and before Thanksgiving we are launching a Volkswagen- size Recovery to Mars, with six wheels powered by a plutonium source so it doesn't have to go to sleep in the Martian night. This will rove all over. It has a pole that will stick up, with a laser, and it can zap rocks so we can analyze their chemical content. It has a big scooper that can also get us additional samples. It has two eyes that will pop up as it roams around so we can see in real time the surface of Mars. So we have a vigorous space program. But we still have to do what NASA is supposed to do; that is, leave the orbit of the Earth and venture out into the heavens with humans. That is what was announced today--announced by Senator Hutchison and myself, with NASA Administrator General Charlie Bolden making the formal announcement. The President has signed off on the specifics. I am going to explain this rocket. But before I do, let me say there have been a lot of critics saying: Oh, it will cost too much. Remember, last year we passed the NASA bill unanimously in the Senate and passed it in the House with an overwhelming three-quarters vote. That set the parameters on the funding for this new rocket, and all of NASA's figures have come in underneath those levels that we set in the NASA authorization bill. Those are the numbers the Office of Management and Budget and the White House have scrubbed to make sure they are realistic, and that is what has been announced today. Here it is. This is the rocket. Just to give an idea of the scale of this monster, the space shuttle in the stack, with the external tank and the two solids on either side, the tallest point of that stack is the top of the external tank. From here that would come up to right there. That gives an idea of how much larger this rocket is. This rocket will launch more payload than any rocket in America's space program and probably the Russian/Soviet space program, certainly, now. Back in the old Soviet days I don't think the Soviets had one that was anywhere near this one. What this rocket has is a core, and this is a core with liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen fuel tank. It is taking the space shuttle engines--so we can keep the cost down, and a lot of this has already been developed--and putting five in the tail of this first stage. So first stage, liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen. But it is boosted on either side by those solid rocket boosters--in this case a new one. Under the space shuttle it was four segments, but this one has five segments. So it is elongated and gives more thrust. These, on future versions, will be competed as to whether it is going to be solid rockets--and, by the way, the consistency of this pencil eraser is what the solid rocket material looks like--or whether those in the competition will be liquid boosters. All right, that is the core. That comes up all the way to here. Then there is the second stage. We have second-stage engines we have been using in the past called the J-2. They are now updated with a new, more powerful version called the J-2X. So we have a lot of history on these engines. That is what is going to be the second stage, which then takes the housing for a lot of the electronics, and then the capsule. The tower at the top is an escape tower. We could actually have an explosion right here on the pad, and the crew could survive because they would eject in the full capsule, being thrust away from the explosion, and then the parachutes would deploy and the crew saved; likewise, we could save the crew on this rocket all the way to orbit. So if there was a problem, we could still save the human life of the four to seven astronauts who are going to be in this crew capsule. We could save their lives, and that was one of the mandates after we lost Columbia in the reentry over Texas. The investigation board said: Build a safer rocket, and certainly one that is more economical. This is now on a schedule for its first test--this version. This is the smaller version. This thing can evolve. This is about 70 to 77 tons. This thing can evolve to 150 tons, and then we are talking about a monster. On this version they will test it on a schedule for 2017. They will have several other tests, and they are on a schedule to put a crew into this rocket in 2021. They are then scheduled to rendezvous, or land, on an asteroid--this will be the first time that has ever been done--as a way of preparing us to then go to Mars. So that is what NASA has announced today. I want to give great credit--great, great credit--to Senator Hutchison. She has been the ranking member and, alternately, chairman of the Subcommittee on Science and Space and is now the ranking member of the full Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. She has been a princess in helping guide, first of all, the NASA authorization bill and the funding. Tomorrow, she and Senator Mikulski--the chair of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies of the Committee on Appropriations--will be taking up NASA's budget as they get ready to come to the floor. This rocket will now allow us to get out of low-Earth orbit, assemble components--heavy components--that ultimately will take us out into the heavens exploring in ways we never have even started to design. Remember, 40 years ago we went to the Moon. That was quite an accomplishment. But the Moon is about 250,000 miles from Earth. With rockets like these, we are going to go far out into the heavens to explore the origins of the universe, to explore that which we have never even dreamed of, as we fulfill our destiny as a people who are explorers and adventurers by nature. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I ask unanimous consent that I speak as if in morning business.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, today I am filing legislation aimed at stopping criminals from filing fraudulent tax returns with stolen Social Security numbers. Specifically, the bill unveiled today would make it a felony punishable by as much as five years in Federal prison and/or a fine of no less than $25,000 for using another's Social Security number or other identifiable information to file a federal tax return and increases penalties for negligent or reckless disclosure of taxpayer information by tax preparers; require the IRS to develop a nationwide PIN system in which identity theft victims can receive a pin number to put on their tax return; and, allow identity theft victims to ``opt- out'' of electronic filing of their Federal tax returns; protect Social Security numbers of deceased taxpayers by restricting public access to the records; direct an investigation by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to examine the role of prepaid debt cards and commercial tax software in facilitating fraudulent tax refunds; and permanently extend the information-sharing authority between the IRS and Federal and state correction authorities needed to prevent inmate tax fraud and require the agency to work specifically with state and local law enforcement officials on criminal investigative matters that involve violations at Federal and State or local level. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, today I am filing legislation aimed at stopping criminals from filing fraudulent tax returns with stolen Social Security numbers. Specifically, the bill unveiled today would make it a felony punishable by as much as five years in Federal prison and/or a fine of no less than $25,000 for using another's Social Security number or other identifiable information to file a federal tax return and increases penalties for negligent or reckless disclosure of taxpayer information by tax preparers; require the IRS to develop a nationwide PIN system in which identity theft victims can receive a pin number to put on their tax return; and, allow identity theft victims to ``opt- out'' of electronic filing of their Federal tax returns; protect Social Security numbers of deceased taxpayers by restricting public access to the records; direct an investigation by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to examine the role of prepaid debt cards and commercial tax software in facilitating fraudulent tax refunds; and permanently extend the information-sharing authority between the IRS and Federal and state correction authorities needed to prevent inmate tax fraud and require the agency to work specifically with state and local law enforcement officials on criminal investigative matters that involve violations at Federal and State or local level. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.