Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, again I say to my colleague from New Mexico what a fine Senator he is, as is the Senator presiding. What a privilege it is to serve with the likes of the both of you. Indeed, the Members of this body are extraordinary individuals, and we have all anguished with what we have been through as the clock was constantly ticking down to midnight tonight and knowing the consequences. This Senator always had the feeling that it was going to work out, that we were going to reach agreement. Interestingly, the financial markets had that same feeling as well because the financial markets never did go off a cliff. Even the Asian financial markets felt the same thing as we were coming out of the weekend. Even though we, in this capital city of our Nation, have gone back and forth over ways to cut this public debt, here we are, we have an agreement. Members of this body, as well as the other body down at the other end of the Capitol, clearly are sincere in their differences. But I think what we saw in the overwhelming vote yesterday in the House of Representatives was most of the Members agree that gridlock doesn't do anything to help the country, and especially the economy. So we have this compromise plan in front of us, and later today one of two things will be true: Either we will have done what is in the best interests of the American people or we will have failed. I think, overwhelmingly, what we will see when we vote at noon today is that there may be as many as 75 Members of this 100-Member Senate who will vote in favor of this package. I think not only is it obvious this package is the way to avoid default, but it starts us on the path of getting serious about what we have to do. The plan contains more than $2 trillion to bring down the deficit over the course of the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and it is going to cut about half of that now. It leaves the rest of it up to a supercommittee of 12 Members-- half from the House of Representatives, half from the Senate--with each half appointed by its respective leaders of the Chambers. It is possible this supercommittee will deadlock, but I think with the concern about the financial precipice we have been teetering on, that supercommittee is going to come up with a plan for significant deficit reduction. They have a target of an additional $1\1/2\ trillion over the next 10 years, but they are not limited to that, and everything is on the table. What they could do--and this is a moment, if we can seize it, that would be tremendous--is set us on the path to do major tax reform. No one is happy with the existing Tax Code. We talk about all these tax loopholes--the technical term is tax expenditures--and they are simply special interest tax preferences for individual special interests. It blows my mind to realize they will cost $14 trillion over the next 10 years. Why should this one special interest have a tax preference and this one have a tax preference, and yet we find it difficult, as we go through this harangue here in our debate, as to what is the level of the tax bracket for taxation on ordinary people? What we could do--and the supercommittee can do this--is take a lot of those tax preferences--that $14 trillion worth of them--and by taking only 15 or 20 percent of those away and utilizing that revenue, we could simplify the Tax Code into three tax brackets for individuals and lower everybody's tax in that income bracket, and we could lower the corporate income tax. That is a real possibility for this supercommittee. They could give the instructions back to the Ways and Means Committee in the House and the Finance Committee in the Senate and then start to do reform, as well as bringing down the national annual deficit. The backup, if this supercommittee fails to agree, is a series of spending cuts that automatically happens. This agreement also calls for a vote on a balanced budget amendment. I have voted for balanced budget constitutional amendments in the past, and we are going to have another opportunity to vote for one. I assume we are going to have a vote for two different versions. The version that is being offered by Senator Udall is the one I intend to vote for. So here we are with a plan that is not a perfect plan, although it clearly avoids default. But all of us agree on what it must do: Government spending must be cut, the public debt must be reduced; otherwise, our economy will not recover and America will no longer be in good standing around the world. That is the bottom line. I often quote from the Book of Isaiah, in which the Lord is speaking to the people and he says: Come now, let us reason together. Isn't that so true here? And was it not avoided for so long, where reasonable people of good will--and every one of these Senators is a person of good will--could not get out of our ideological rigidity and out of our momentary excessive partisanship so that we could, as the Good Book says, ``Come now, let us reason together?'' But I think now that is what we have done. So when we pass this legislation--and it will be an overwhelming vote--in about 2 hours, and the President then signs it into law, we can turn our attention back to the economy and creating jobs, which we so desperately need to bring us out of this recession that has been lingering far too long. Madam President, I thank the Chair for this opportunity, and I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I ask consent to speak as in morning business.

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

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I rise to recognize the important contributions of a special Floridian for his unrelenting determination to protect one of our Nation's unique natural resources; that is, the Florida Everglades. He is a prestigious attorney. He is a commanding litigator. This individual, Thom Rumberger, has dedicated much of his personal and professional life to advancing the restoration and protection of the river of grass. His brilliant, incisive mind, his creativity, and his fearlessness combine to make Thom one of Florida's most influential Everglades leaders. He has been a man proud to serve his country and his community. It goes back to the time he interrupted his college career to volunteer for the Marines. He served in the Korean war. Over the course of his life, he has continued this service as a dedicated public servant, a respected judge, and a respected prosecutor. In his family, he is a dedicated father and grandfather who obviously has always found great happiness with that ever-expanding family of his, and the relentless efforts he undertakes to preserve Florida's natural heritage is a legacy gift, certainly to his family and to his colleagues but to all us Floridians--indeed, to us as residents of planet Earth. He served 2 years in the Marines, earned his degree with honors, a law degree, and was associate editor of the Florida Law Review. He became the youngest circuit judge serving in a district in central Florida. He was the Brevard County solicitor, he was special assistant State attorney, he was county attorney for Seminole County, he was Assistant to the Florida Governor, and he served as a member of the Florida Land Sales Board. I knew Thom back in those early days in Melbourne and Brevard County as we were experiencing the explosive growth, at the time, of the Nation's attempt to catch up with the Soviet Union since they had surprised us by putting up Sputnik and then later beat us into orbit with Yuri Gagarin before we could get Alan Shepard into suborbit and then John Glenn into orbit. Those were exciting times. I will never forget I heard Thom, as we were sitting around one day, saying I am impatient having to sleep because I am so excited about getting up in the morning and going out and doing all these things. Of course, I just listed all those important positions of public service. Along the way, Thom became a good friend of another Brevard County man, George Barley. Actually, I think George was from Orange County. George was married to Mary. Both of them dedicated their lives to restoration of the Everglades. George and Mary established the Everglades Trust and the Everglades Foundation and then, when George died a very tragic death back in 1995, Thom joined with Mary to make sure George Barley's dream of a restored Everglades became a reality. Thom was an active member of the Republican Party, but I can tell you that in the friendship between us, partisan membership did not mean anything. We had a personal friendship, and one could often see that as he engaged in public service, but that was especially so when it came to the preservation and the restoration of the Everglades. His success extends, other than his community and country service, to a career in private practice. He was one of the founding partners of Rumberger, Kirk & Caldwell, and under Thom's leadership the firm's modest beginnings were quickly surpassed as it moved to all kinds of new legal successes. Today, that firm includes 75 trial attorneys in 5 offices all across several southern States. Of course, he has been listed as one of Florida's superlawyers every year for the last several years. Legend has it Thom Rumberger once convinced a Federal judge to allow a real automobile in the courtroom as evidence. He convinced the judge to have a window in the courtroom enlarged--in a historic courthouse, nonetheless--to accommodate a crane that lifted the car right into the courtroom. He has been known throughout his life for his infectious sense of humor, often referred to--because he had so many different careers--somewhat derisively as a career chameleon. Thom worked his way all the way through college, all the way up to these present successes. Let me tell you what he did to support himself and to pay for his college education. A lot of people do not remember Ross Allen's Reptile Institute in Ocala, at Silver Springs. Guess what the main attraction was: the eastern diamondback rattlesnake. Thom's job, at which he earned enough money to put himself through school, was to milk those rattlesnakes. Clearly, that is a tourist attraction because that is a fascinating thing, to see that snake coiled up, ready to strike, and they stick a stick down there and pin his head and then reach down behind the head and pick him up and they have this 6-foot rattlesnake. But there is a purpose to this other than charming their guests. They squeeze behind that head and the mouth opens and those two fangs come out and they put those fangs down into a glass and they milk that rattlesnake. The poisonous venom that was then collected and stored becomes the basis for the anti-snake bite serum that has saved so many lives. I remember one time he actually went back after he had been judge and prosecutor and all these things. He told me he was invited to come back to the Ross Allen Reptile Institute. He said when he walked into that cage with all those rattlesnakes, the snakes looked so big. He didn't remember the snakes looking that big when he was a college kid earning his way through college. Thom promises that it was right there in that snakepit that he learned the skills of public speaking and working with the public because he had to explain how he was milking the rattlesnake to all of the guests who were there, and obviously he had their attention. He even enjoyed a brief acting career as a stuntman for the movie ``The Creature of the Black Lagoon.'' Remember that one that scared the wits out of all of us when we were children, ``The Creature of the Black Lagoon''? He has had quite a few varieties in his life. He has generously committed himself to public service. Beyond the positions I have already mentioned, he was appointed to Florida's Federal Judicial Advisory Commission and the Board of Supervisors of the Spaceport Florida Authority. Presently, he is chairman of the Everglades Trust. He has served as chairman of the Collins Center for Public Policy, which was named after one of our great Governors of Florida--former Governor, now deceased--Gov. Leroy Collins. He has been a member of the Board of Visitors of Florida State College of Law and Board of Trustees for the Law Center Association of the University of Florida. He has represented about every environmental organization, including Save the Manatee, the Everglades Trust, and Save Our Everglades. He has been the lead counsel for the Everglades Foundation well past two decades. Notably, Thom was instrumental in the passage of two Everglades- related Florida constitutional amendments, the Federal Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, and in obtaining several billion dollars in funding for Everglades restoration. That has been one of my primary duties as the senior Senator from Florida, and I have worked with him over the years on this Everglades restoration. He has been primarily responsible for Florida's acquisition of one of our natural resources, the 75,000-acre Babcock Ranch in the southwest part of Florida, which now provides necessary corridors for wildlife, especially the endangered Florida panther. In the late 1980s, Thom worked to implement some of the first manatee protection laws. Throughout his four decades in public service, he has demonstrated the importance of looking out for the common good. I just did an interview today in the aftermath of our vote on what started out to be highly contentious on what we were going to resolve in debt reduction and deficit reduction with the pending guillotine hanging over our head, the default that would occur at 12 tonight, which has now been averted. The reporter who was asking me the questions in the interview said: Well, why is it that everything is so contentious and people are all so wrapped up in themselves that they talk past each other and they are only looking out for their own interests and don't respect the other fellow's point of view? Thom Rumberger represents that kind of person who always respected the other person's point of view. So when it was time to draw up the solution to whatever the problem was, then the parties could come together and find that consensus. That has been sorely lacking in Washington and around this country. We saw a shining little moment yesterday and today--yesterday in the House of Representatives with an overwhelming vote and today on the floor of the Senate with an overwhelming vote--to start the process of deficit reduction. It is folks such as Thom Rumberger whom we ought to be looking to in how they have demonstrated their community service instead of what we have seen play out over the last several months. Thanks to the selfless commitment of folks such as Thom, America's Everglades will be restored for the benefit of future generations. It is not just Florida, it is America that owes Thom a great deal of gratitude. My bride of 40 years, Grace, who has known Thom almost as long as I have, joins me in thanking him and his wife Debbie for their many contributions to Florida's treasured landscapes. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the important contributions of a very special Floridian for his unrelenting determination to protect one of our nation's most unique natural resources--America's Everglades. A prestigious attorney and commanding litigator, Thom Rumberger has dedicated much of his personal and professional life to advancing the restoration and protection of the River of Grass. His brilliance, creativity and fearlessness combined to make Thom one of Florida's most influential Everglades leaders. A man proud to serve his country and his community, Thom interrupted his college career to volunteer for the Marine Corps and serve in the Korean War. Over the course of his life he has continued his service as a dedicated public servant, a respected judge and prosecutor. Thom is a dedicated father and grandfather who has always found great happiness and comfort in his ever-expanding family. The relentless efforts Thom undertakes to preserve Florida's natural heritage will be a legacy gift to his family, his colleagues, and to the American public. After serving two years in the United States Marine Corps, Thom earned his bachelor's degree, with honors, and his law degree from the University of Florida, where he was Associate Editor of the University of Florida Law Review in 1960. Before becoming Florida's youngest Circuit Court Judge in 1969, serving in the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit, he was the Brevard County Solicitor and Special Assistant State Attorney in the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit. From 1971 through 1974 he was the County Attorney for Seminole County, Assistant to Florida's Governor Claude Kirk, and served as a member of the Florida Land Sales Board. Thom has been a long-time friend of George and Mary Barley, both of whom dedicated their lives to restoration of the Everglades. George and Mary established the Everglades Trust and the Everglades Foundation. Upon George's untimely death in 1995, Thom joined with Mary to make sure George's dream of a restored Everglades became a reality. An active leader in the Republican Party, Thom was able to elevate Everglades restoration to a bi-partisan issue at both the state and federal level. Thom's success extends to his career in private practice, as he is one of the founding partners of the Rumberger, Kirk & Caldwell law firm. Under his leadership, his firm's modest beginnings were quickly surpassed as it moved to the forefront of business litigation, representing such multi-national corporations as American Airlines, Sears, Roebuck and Co., General Motors Corporation, Honda Motor Company, Ford Motor Company, and Toyota Motor Corporation. Today, his firm includes 75 trial attorneys in five offices across Florida and Alabama. Thom has been listed in Florida Super Lawyers every year from 2007 to 2010. Legend has it that Thom once convinced a Federal judge to allow a real automobile in the courtroom as evidence. Yes, Thom convinced the judge to have a window enlarged in a historic courthouse to accommodate a crane that lifted the car right into the courtroom. Thom has been known throughout his life for his infectious sense of humor as well as the breath of his various careers. Often referred to as a ``career chameleon'', Thom worked his way through college as a snake handler at the Ross Allen Reptile Institute at Florida's Silver Springs performing shows with lethal snakes to the thousands of visitors who came to watch the dangerous performance. Thom promises that it was there that he learned the skills of public speaking and working with the public which would become such a critical component of his future success. Thom also enjoyed a brief acting career as the stunt man for the Creature of the Black Lagoon before beginning his legal career. In addition to building an impressive legal career, Thom has generously committed himself to public service. He was appointed to Florida's Federal Judicial Advisory Commission and the Board of Supervisors of the Spaceport Florida Authority. Currently, Thom is Chairman of The Everglades Trust, and has served as Chairman of the Collins Center for Public Policy, and as a member of the Board of Visitors of Florida State College of Law and Board of Trustees for the Law Center Association of the University of Florida. He has represented environmental organizations including Save the Manatee, The Everglades Trust, and Save Our Everglades. Thom has also served as lead counsel for The Everglades Foundation since 1999. Notably, Thom was instrumental in the passage of two Everglades related Florida constitutional amendments, the Federal Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, and in obtaining several billion dollars in funding for Everglades restoration. Thom also was primarily responsible for Florida's acquisition of the 75,000-acre Babcock Ranch which provides new and necessary corridors for the endangered Florida panther. And, in the late 1980's, Thom worked to implement some of the first manatee protection laws. Throughout his four decades in public service, Thom Rumberger has demonstrated the importance of looking out for the common good. Thanks to the selfless commitment of folks like Thom, America's Everglades will be restored for the benefit of future generations. America owes Thom a great debt of gratitude. Grace joins me in thanking Thom and his lovely wife, Debbie, for their contributions to Florida's treasured landscapes.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, while the distinguished Senator from Michigan is on the floor, who is one of the best legal minds in the Senate, I wanted to engage him to further to take us through the delay tactics that are presently now underway. Given the fact that we have a solution right underneath our noses, a solution that is so close between the two opposite sides that all we would have to do is to have a majority vote or all we would have to do is to have a few Republican Senators but we are engaged in this stalling tactic that is literally going to take us all night, I would like to ask the distinguished Senator from Michigan, given the rules, given the fact that a filibuster is now underway, what can the minority in the Senate hope to achieve, since we are so close to agreement?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I will make comments later. I see the Senator from New Hampshire is here.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

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

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, we are here awaiting the action of the House of Representatives. We don't know whether the House is going to pass the John Boehner proposal, but regardless of what they do, we have the solution right underneath our noses. There have been discussions today. I have had a number of discussions with our colleagues. I have had a discussion first this morning with my colleague from Florida and I have had discussions with others. It seems to me the obvious solution, since we are now at the eleventh hour and getting close to the 59th minute of the eleventh hour, is that we take elements of the Reid proposal, the McConnell proposal, and the Boehner proposal. So I would suggest our leadership consider, regardless of what happens in the House--because the Senate is going to have to act on something to get 60 votes to meet the filibuster threshold in this Chamber and then send a package back to the House. I would suggest it be this: that we take the Reid proposal which includes the larger amount of spending cuts. Senator Reid at first said that is $2.7 trillion. Maybe it has been by CBO marked down to about $2.2 trillion. But whatever that larger amount--clearly larger than the Boehner proposal, even though some would argue it is the Iraq and Afghanistan war wind-down savings we would get, but whatever it is, it is larger than the House proposal--and use that as the first cut by lifting the debt ceiling. But there would be a sequence of events that would happen after that to avoid what the Senate Democrats do not want, which is that the markets and the rating agencies cause the debt instruments--the U.S. Treasury bills--to be downgraded. There needs to be certainty for those rating agencies, for the U.S. Government debt, and it could be achieved this way: We have a BRAC-like committee--that being a committee that would be composed equally of Republicans and Democrats--that would come up with a package that would then come back to each House, no amendments, for an up-or-down vote. The fail-safe backup, in case that committee were not able to come to agreement or in the event that it came back to both Houses and one of the Houses did not pass it, that we would then have the McConnell proposal, which is that the President would request the increase of the debt and there would be this procedure that Senator McConnell laid out that there would be a resolution of disapproval. If there were such a disapproval, then the President, of course, could veto it. In order for the President's veto to be overridden, there would have to be a two- thirds vote. There would not be a two-thirds vote, and, therefore, there is the assurance that we would have the raising of the debt ceiling to get us through this next year and a half. It seems as though it is right under our nose, if the parties will just realize that now is the time we have to act to find a workable solution so we can get the votes. If we can get, with that kind of proposal, 60 votes in the Senate, then it goes down to the House, whether they pass the Boehner proposal or not. At the eleventh hour and the 59th minute, recognizing what is at stake for the country, then the House of Representatives is going to do the right thing and they are going to pass it. I am just a little country boy, but it seems to me sometimes we get so wrapped up in all the intricate details that the obvious solution is right there under our nose, staring us in the face. I respectfully request the Senate consider this. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, yesterday the space shuttle Atlantis came back in the early morning darkness with those xenon lights illuminating that 3-mile-long runway at the Kennedy Space Center. That is a location that a century ago a set of grandparents of mine had homesteaded under the old Homestead Act, worked the land for the required 4 years. I have a copy of the deed signed by Woodrow Wilson in 1917 to my grandparents. Over three-quarters of a century later, the thought was not lost on me, when we went in that early morning darkness to the launchpad, that my grandparents would have never, ever believed that, so many years later, a grandson was going to literally leave the face of the Earth from almost the old homestead where they had to swat mosquitoes and fight off rattlesnakes and alligators as they eked a living out of that Florida soil. That was the location Atlantis came back to yesterday morning after a 13-day flawless mission after having been launched by the finest launch team in the world. That launch team is now having to disperse in part because we are shutting down the space shuttle program after 30 glorious years. It is an incredible flying machine, with 135 very successful missions that allowed us to do incredible work in space with human beings interacting and, of course, 2 tragic missions--the destruction of Challenger on ascent 25 years ago and the destruction of Columbia on reentry just a few years ago, in the early part of this last decade. There would not be as much angst in the space community if the new rockets were ready. The problem is that the rockets are being designed, and in some cases being built, but they then have to be human-rated; that is, all the redundancies for safety as well as the escape systems have to be designed and developed for the new rockets. One of those new rockets is going to fly this fall. It will launch and rendezvous with the International Space Station and will deliver cargo, but it is going to take a few years to rate that for humans. That all the more adds to the angst, the angst of people who have lost their jobs and now do not see the American rocket that is ready to fly immediately upon the shutdown of the space shuttle program. I have been surprised that we have a lot of people in America who think the space program is being shut down. We have an International Space Station up there at about 225 miles. This thing is huge. It is 120 yards long. From one end zone to another of a football field, that is how big it is. There are six human beings up there doing research right now. We have trials in the Food and Drug Administration on drugs that have been developed on that International Space Station. The first one that is in trials right now is a vaccine for salmonella. Another one that is getting ready to start trials is a vaccine for MRSA, the highly infectious bacterial disease in hospitals that we find so difficult to control because you cannot get an antibiotic that will control it. I wanted to say for America's space team, ``a job well done.'' A number of us, including Senator Hutchison and myself, had introduced and we passed last week the resolution commemorating the men and women of NASA. Indeed, their congratulations and commendations are certainly in order on a job well done. The space program lives. The space program will go to greater heights. We will go to Mars, and we will see Americans venture out into the cosmos for even greater discoveries. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I know that the Senator from Massachusetts has time. I just want to take this time while he is coming into the Chamber to say that you can almost hear in the background very foreboding music as we are counting down the days. Here we are in a situation in which we cannot get a certain group of people over in the House of Representatives to be willing to sit down, and, as the Good Book says, to come and let us reason together. If we are going to govern this country, we have to come and reason together, people of goodwill who will respect each other's point of view, to hammer out a final agreement in order to start bringing this country into balance. It is sad that it is taking this long and this much of a difficult torturous process. Florida's History On a much happier note, at a subsequent time I want to share with the Senate the wonderful heritage that we have in this country, not from the English but from the Spanish. We are about to celebrate 500 years of the discovery of what is now America, the United States, from the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon who first came to the shores of my State. Then soon thereafter we will celebrate the 450th anniversary of the oldest continuous settlement, a settlement that is 42 years before the English came and settled Jamestown. Those celebrations are going to be not just for Florida and not just for St. Augustine but for all of Florida and all of the country. We have a commission that has been appointed by the Secretary of the Interior. We have just kicked off that commission. I will be sharing with the Senate a lot about this historical restoration in the public's mind of all of those Spanish explorers who helped establish this country, first with Ponce de Leon in 1513, and he came back in 1539. By the way, the Puerto Rican community is quite energized and excited about this because Ponce de Leon, when he came and found at the Feast of Flowers, Pascua Florida--and thus he named La Florida--he was the Governor of Puerto Rico. So they are quite excited, as they should be, and they will be part of this celebration. After him came a Spanish explorer named de Ayllon, who sailed up the coast. Later, in 1527, came Spanish explorer Narvaez, who landed somewhere in the Tampa region and went up into the panhandle of Florida. After him came the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in the late 1530s. He ended up landing also in the Tampa Bay region when, all over Florida, they celebrated the first Christmas because he had Spanish priests with him and was in what is today Tallahassee by Christmas Day. They celebrated the first Christian Christmas by Europeans in this new world of what is now the United States. That was the late 1530s. Then he ended up traveling all over the United States, what is now the Southeastern United States. Then along came de Luna thinking he would have the first permanent settlement in 1559 in Pensacola, and in 1561, along came a hurricane, and it wiped them out. We had the King and Queen of Spain in Pensacola on that anniversary back in 2009. Then later came the French thinking they were going to set up the first permanent settlement at Fort Carline at the mouth of what is today the St. John's River at Jacksonville in 1564. But when they heard that the Spanish explorer Menendez had come 30 miles to the south to set up this permanent settlement at St. Augustine, they sailed to wipe out the Spanish colony and instead got hit by a hurricane and were shipwrecked and thus dispatched by the Spanish explorer Menendez. From there, St. Augustine continued all the way to the present day. You ought to see that restored city. It is a sight to behold, and it is not only the history of St. Augustine, the history of Florida, it is the history of this United States. I will share a lot more about our Spanish history, our roots in this country. I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his kind indulgence so that I might share this with the Senate. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, the Budget Committee chairman, the Senator from North Dakota, has, in fact, laid out a budget. It puts us on a serious road toward budget balance by utilizing real numbers, not sleight of hand numbers, not budget fakery numbers, not a budget as a political document but a budget as an economic document. And it nips--indeed, it savages--the annual deficit and the Federal debt of $4 trillion over 10 years. This is real money, and it is real money that is basically in balance between $2 trillion of spending cuts--which we have had all of those kinds of talks going on down at the White House, and they seem to get to an agreement of $2 trillion of spending cuts. But when it comes to the revenue side, there seems to be an unwillingness to accept revenues. What I would like to do is elucidate further on the Budget Committee chairman's presentation yesterday or the day before of this budget on how we can produce $2 trillion of new revenue and it not be considered as just straight tax increases but, instead, of going to two other parts of the Tax Code that have been off limits to so much of the tax planning and tax cuts that we have been talking about. Of course, I am talking about the $14 trillion of tax expenditures that the Federal Government expends by not having that tax revenue coming in to the tune of $14 trillion for special tax preferences over the course of the next decade. Now, if that were not enough in itself, there is also an additional $1 trillion that is money that is kept abroad that is not brought back into this country and, therefore, is not taxed. Just a little portion of that money being kept overseas could be brought in and used in productive activities in the United States. But it would be brought in as income instead of housed in one three-story building in the Cayman Islands for 18,000 corporations, where all it is is a residence for a corporation to use to avoid U.S. taxes. Now, if we are going to do anything serious about lowering the deficit, we are going to have to try to stop this nonsense that is going on. In the case of tax preferences, the tax expenditures, the $14 trillion, the Senate, in an overwhelming vote a couple of weeks ago, actually attacked one of those tax preferences. Remember when we voted something like 95 to 5 here to get rid of the subsidy on ethanol made from corn? It was a subsidy put in years ago to encourage ethanol made from corn as a way of blending it with gasoline that would then lessen our reliance on oil, particularly foreign oil. But now we know we can make ethanol from a whole bunch of other things, and it doesn't have to be making ethanol from something that we eat, which all it was doing was driving the price of corn higher and, of course, corn is being used as a feed in the feed lots and, therefore, the meat products that the American consumer was getting at the grocery store went much higher in price. So we realized here was a tax subsidy, a tax preference, in other words, a tax expenditure, that had outlived its usefulness. There are $14 trillion of these tax preferences that are, in effect, for the next decade, and it would not be an unreasonable question to ask: Could we reduce those tax preferences just a little bit? If you reduced them, just 17 percent of all those tax preferences, you would produce $2 trillion. If that $1 trillion that is kept overseas--if you could stop some of those laws that keep foreign income held by U.S. companies abroad, if you could just tax a little bit of that, then we could even lower the percentage that we needed to get into the tax expenditures. Now, there are some tax expenditures that are obviously very popular and very necessary. Charitable contributions, which include contributions to churches, they get a charitable deduction that you deduct from your overall income in order to get your adjusted gross income. From that you subtract the various deductions you have to get to your taxable income. Clearly, giving charitable contributions is an activity that we want to encourage, and we encourage that in the Tax Code. Another example is, you own a home. You go to the bank, you get a mortgage, the mortgage payments that include principal and interest. You are able to deduct the interest that you are paying on that mortgage, and that is a tax preference. It was originally put in to encourage home ownership. Well, should that preference continue for those who don't need the help? I think these are questions. So if we start just doing little things with this $14 trillion of tax preferences, we can make major reductions in the annual deficit. Let me give another example: Oil and gas. There are a lot of tax preferences for the oil and gas industry. Normally, when a business goes in and provides capital to get a business up and going, that capital equipment is allowed to be deducted over the life of that piece of equipment. Well, so much of oil and gas equipment is allowed to be written off in the very first year as an expense of doing business in that first year. That is just one other example. So if we look at it, are we capable of taking $14 trillion of tax preferences--some people call them tax expenditures; some people call them tax giveaways--and, therefore, reduce those, especially the ones that are ineffective and inefficient, even though it is going to step on somebody's toes? Some special interest that has that tax preference, they are not going to like it. They want their goodies. But for the purpose of balancing the budget, for the purpose of bringing this deficit down so we can get on the road to fiscal order instead of the fiscal chaos that we have now, is that not a legitimate question to ask and a legitimate road to go down? No less than one of the senior economic advisers to President Reagan--his name is Martin Feldstein. He was a Harvard professor and the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Reagan. I want you to see what he says about reducing tax expenditures. Cutting tax expenditures is really the best way to reduce government spending. Eliminating tax expenditures does not increase marginal tax rates or reduce the reward for saving, investment or risk-taking. It would also increase overall economic efficiency by removing incentives that distort private spending decisions. And eliminating or consolidating the large number of overlapping tax-based subsidies would also greatly simplify tax filing. In short, cutting tax expenditures is not at all like other ways of raising revenue. Martin Feldstein, well regarded in conservative circles. With this crisis looming, why can't we get people to recognize that if we want balance, they have to give, too, and here is a good way. I want to expand on this--another way we could do it. We could actually, as the Simpson-Bowles commission suggested, lower these tax expenditures Martin Feldstein is talking about. We could even take that additional revenue and pour it into the rest of the Tax Code and lower the tax rates for everybody, including corporate tax rates, and in the process we could also simplify the Tax Code into three tax brackets. All of the tax brackets would be lowered if we got rid of some of those tax expenditures. There are multiple ways we can use this, and in the process, then, we are starting some serious tax reform. The Senator from North Dakota has laid this out. He has explained this to the Senate. He has the unanimous support of the majority of the Senate Budget Committee. He has the near-unanimous support of the entire majority in the U.S. Senate. He has explained this to the President and to the Vice President. Of course, one of the easy ways to react to this is, well, there is not enough time. If we want to do major tax reform and tax simplification for the sake of our consumers, there sure is time because we could solve this debt ceiling crisis with a commitment down the line to doing just exactly what I have talked about. As we are in this maelstrom of all of these different ideas going around about what we are going to do before August 2 so the debt ceiling can be raised and so the country can pay its bills, I have heard about some disturbing things out there on the horizon. One is that Social Security is going to get whacked and that Medicare is going to get whacked. By the way, what the Budget Committee is proposing does not whack Social Security or Medicare providers. In the first place, Social Security is not in financial trouble in the foreseeable future. It is not until the late 2030s that it starts to get into difficulty. It is around 2035 that it would not, in that year, be able to pay 100 percent of its payments. We can correct that before then. Our problem is now. Our problem is this next decade of bringing this budget on a path toward balance and bringing the annual deficit down to a much lower percentage of gross domestic product. The budget I have just outlined, that is the work product of the Senate Budget Committee chairman, brings it down at the end of the decade to 1.8 percent--the deficit--to GDP. Anytime we get below 3 percent of the deficit being a percentage of GDP, we are on the path to fiscal stability, and we would be moving toward that position of balance--a position, by the way, we enjoyed 11 years ago because we were in surplus. Eleven years ago, we had 4 years of surplus in a row, but we started enacting policies--and, I might say, not with the vote of this Senator--that caused the revenues to drop off considerably. Then, of course, when we got in the situation where we started increasing expenditures for one reason or another--increasing expenditures for national defense, for two wars--and those were wars we were not paying for with a revenue source; in fact, we were just going out and borrowing the money. So this brings me now to Medicare and Social Security. It might make some people in Washington, DC, feel good to whack Medicare. It certainly wouldn't make this Senator feel good. It certainly wouldn't make an awful lot--as a matter of fact, some 45 million senior citizens in this country are on Medicare, some of whom are living from hand to mouth, from Social Security check to Social Security check, and from Medicare reimbursement to Medicare reimbursement for their health care. It certainly wouldn't make them feel good. And it is not going to do anything immediately for the deficit we are having to confront. So why trade off, saying we are going to whack these two programs and not attack things such as tax expenditures that are inefficient and don't produce what they are supposed to do via the incentives in the Tax Code? It simply doesn't make sense. Oh, by the way, isn't it interesting, isn't it almost ironic that the people who are now attacking Medicare and saying we have to whack it are the very people who were criticizing us 2 years ago in the health care bill when we eliminated $\1/2\ trillion of inefficiencies and overpayments out of Medicare to put the program on a more financially solvent path? And they were the very ones who were criticizing us for taking that money out of Medicare. Well, I say to my colleagues, we already took on Medicare, so we ought to get down to the hard choices of budget deficit reduction, which means cutting spending and getting rid of some of these tax expenditures so we can start bringing our budget into balance. My final subject is Social Security. Now, why in the world would we want to scare the bejabbers out of 45 million senior citizens of this country, some of whom literally are living hand to mouth and from Social Security check to Social Security check and some of whom cannot afford the cost of drugs even partially provided for through Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit? I don't think we want to do that. As we get closer to August 2, I am hearing--and I hope every other Senator is hearing from all of these senior citizens and these disabled workers who are relying on Social Security--that they are concerned about Washington's failure to get its house in order, and if we fail to get our house in order, it is going to threaten the very source of income they count on. So to risk a government default and to say the only way we can do it is by taking it out of Social Security is not going to do anything for us in reducing the deficit over the next decade, which is the problem at hand. Yesterday, the President was asked if he could tell the folks at home that no matter what happens, Social Security checks are going to go out the day after the government is supposedly going to go into default. Do my colleagues remember what the President said? He said: I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3 if we haven't resolved this issue because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it. So the people who are relying on a fixed income of Social Security to survive--Social Security payments are more than just a government statistic. For them, Social Security is more than just a Federal outlay or an entitlement expenditure. There are almost 4 million Social Security beneficiaries in my State. I can tell my colleagues that their Social Security pays the rent, it pays for the groceries, and it helps pay their medical copays. It helps pay for that over and above what is provided in Medicare. It is interesting, these speeches I hear. It is all ``it is your fault, and it is your fault, and it is the other guy's fault, and it is so partisan, and it is so ideologically rigid.'' The only way we are going to solve something that is as tangled up as this is for people of good will to be willing to respect the other fellow's point of view and come together and build consensus to find a workable solution. So as we get closer--and we can almost hear the background music; it is getting more ominous day by day as the clock ticks down to August 2--there is something we can do about it. The threat that Social Security payments could be delayed should not be used as a weapon to force a slash-and-burn cut to these entitlements. I said 45 million earlier; it is actually 56 million retirees who rely on these payments. A recent report from the Congressional Research Service states: Under normal procedures Treasury pays Social Security benefits from the General Fund and offsets this by redeeming an equivalent amount of the Social Security Trust Funds' holdings of government debt. Treasury now may need to issue new public debt to raise the cash needed to pay benefits. Treasury may be unable to issue new public debt, however, because of the debt limit. In other words, if the debt ceiling is not raised, Social Security benefits could be delayed or jeopardized. So perhaps what we ought to do is enact some legislation that takes Social Security out of the equation in the event we don't reach a deal on the debt ceiling by August 2. In the past, the President and the Congress have agreed to exempt Social Security from the debt ceiling in order to ensure that the payments go out to Social Security recipients. As a matter of fact, as recently as 1996, Treasury reported it had insufficient cash to pay Social Security benefits in March of that year. In response, Congress then passed--and it was a bipartisan Congress; it was headed by a majority of the Republican Party, and there was a Democratic President, President Clinton. They passed--and it was signed into law--a measure that provided the Treasury with temporary authority to issue securities to the public in the amount equal to the Social Security benefit payments due. I will conclude by pointing out that after that was done in 1996, Congress later extended the borrowing authority for an additional 2 weeks. I believe we should use what we know works and not play games with Social Security benefits. So I am introducing some legislation, and I am introducing it today. It is called the Social Security Benefit Protection Act. What it suggests is the way we ought to go. Now, I know we are not going to take up and pass this legislation, but I have a means by which I can get this idea out. What it does is guarantee that the Social Security Administration will be able to continue paying Social Security benefits to retirees, survivors, and disabled workers regardless of what happens to this political gridlock here in Washington. Similar to the 1996 legislation, this legislation gives the Treasury Department temporary authority to issue new debt to ensure the payments can be made to Social Security beneficiaries, but only to the extent necessary to cover the needs of the Social Security Program. I urge our colleagues to try to come together and give the assurances to millions of retirees that they are not going to be whacked and, especially so, they are not going to be whacked out of political gridlock by all the rest of us for these excessive reasons. I urge my colleagues to take a look at the ideas in this legislation that I have filed.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 233, submitted earlier today.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, because I was on the floor, the remarkable Senate staff, who do this so much in a routine fashion, asked me to do this. Of course, it was with enormous emotion that I watched Atlantis soar into the heavens last Friday. This is a fitting tribute to the people who have made this program possible for 30 years, with 135 flights, not without tragedy for we lost two space shuttles and 14 souls. Now we are going to a vigorous new program with new, more efficient, and safer rockets that will take us into the heavens. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, the Budget Committee chairman, the Senator from North Dakota, has, in fact, laid out a budget. It puts us on a serious road toward budget balance by utilizing real numbers, not sleight of hand numbers, not budget fakery numbers, not a budget as a political document but a budget as an economic document. And it nips--indeed, it savages--the annual deficit and the Federal debt of $4 trillion over 10 years. This is real money, and it is real money that is basically in balance between $2 trillion of spending cuts--which we have had all of those kinds of talks going on down at the White House, and they seem to get to an agreement of $2 trillion of spending cuts. But when it comes to the revenue side, there seems to be an unwillingness to accept revenues. What I would like to do is elucidate further on the Budget Committee chairman's presentation yesterday or the day before of this budget on how we can produce $2 trillion of new revenue and it not be considered as just straight tax increases but, instead, of going to two other parts of the Tax Code that have been off limits to so much of the tax planning and tax cuts that we have been talking about. Of course, I am talking about the $14 trillion of tax expenditures that the Federal Government expends by not having that tax revenue coming in to the tune of $14 trillion for special tax preferences over the course of the next decade. Now, if that were not enough in itself, there is also an additional $1 trillion that is money that is kept abroad that is not brought back into this country and, therefore, is not taxed. Just a little portion of that money being kept overseas could be brought in and used in productive activities in the United States. But it would be brought in as income instead of housed in one three-story building in the Cayman Islands for 18,000 corporations, where all it is is a residence for a corporation to use to avoid U.S. taxes. Now, if we are going to do anything serious about lowering the deficit, we are going to have to try to stop this nonsense that is going on. In the case of tax preferences, the tax expenditures, the $14 trillion, the Senate, in an overwhelming vote a couple of weeks ago, actually attacked one of those tax preferences. Remember when we voted something like 95 to 5 here to get rid of the subsidy on ethanol made from corn? It was a subsidy put in years ago to encourage ethanol made from corn as a way of blending it with gasoline that would then lessen our reliance on oil, particularly foreign oil. But now we know we can make ethanol from a whole bunch of other things, and it doesn't have to be making ethanol from something that we eat, which all it was doing was driving the price of corn higher and, of course, corn is being used as a feed in the feed lots and, therefore, the meat products that the American consumer was getting at the grocery store went much higher in price. So we realized here was a tax subsidy, a tax preference, in other words, a tax expenditure, that had outlived its usefulness. There are $14 trillion of these tax preferences that are, in effect, for the next decade, and it would not be an unreasonable question to ask: Could we reduce those tax preferences just a little bit? If you reduced them, just 17 percent of all those tax preferences, you would produce $2 trillion. If that $1 trillion that is kept overseas--if you could stop some of those laws that keep foreign income held by U.S. companies abroad, if you could just tax a little bit of that, then we could even lower the percentage that we needed to get into the tax expenditures. Now, there are some tax expenditures that are obviously very popular and very necessary. Charitable contributions, which include contributions to churches, they get a charitable deduction that you deduct from your overall income in order to get your adjusted gross income. From that you subtract the various deductions you have to get to your taxable income. Clearly, giving charitable contributions is an activity that we want to encourage, and we encourage that in the Tax Code. Another example is, you own a home. You go to the bank, you get a mortgage, the mortgage payments that include principal and interest. You are able to deduct the interest that you are paying on that mortgage, and that is a tax preference. It was originally put in to encourage home ownership. Well, should that preference continue for those who don't need the help? I think these are questions. So if we start just doing little things with this $14 trillion of tax preferences, we can make major reductions in the annual deficit. Let me give another example: Oil and gas. There are a lot of tax preferences for the oil and gas industry. Normally, when a business goes in and provides capital to get a business up and going, that capital equipment is allowed to be deducted over the life of that piece of equipment. Well, so much of oil and gas equipment is allowed to be written off in the very first year as an expense of doing business in that first year. That is just one other example. So if we look at it, are we capable of taking $14 trillion of tax preferences--some people call them tax expenditures; some people call them tax giveaways--and, therefore, reduce those, especially the ones that are ineffective and inefficient, even though it is going to step on somebody's toes? Some special interest that has that tax preference, they are not going to like it. They want their goodies. But for the purpose of balancing the budget, for the purpose of bringing this deficit down so we can get on the road to fiscal order instead of the fiscal chaos that we have now, is that not a legitimate question to ask and a legitimate road to go down? No less than one of the senior economic advisers to President Reagan--his name is Martin Feldstein. He was a Harvard professor and the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Reagan. I want you to see what he says about reducing tax expenditures. Cutting tax expenditures is really the best way to reduce government spending. Eliminating tax expenditures does not increase marginal tax rates or reduce the reward for saving, investment or risk-taking. It would also increase overall economic efficiency by removing incentives that distort private spending decisions. And eliminating or consolidating the large number of overlapping tax-based subsidies would also greatly simplify tax filing. In short, cutting tax expenditures is not at all like other ways of raising revenue. Martin Feldstein, well regarded in conservative circles. With this crisis looming, why can't we get people to recognize that if we want balance, they have to give, too, and here is a good way. I want to expand on this--another way we could do it. We could actually, as the Simpson-Bowles commission suggested, lower these tax expenditures Martin Feldstein is talking about. We could even take that additional revenue and pour it into the rest of the Tax Code and lower the tax rates for everybody, including corporate tax rates, and in the process we could also simplify the Tax Code into three tax brackets. All of the tax brackets would be lowered if we got rid of some of those tax expenditures. There are multiple ways we can use this, and in the process, then, we are starting some serious tax reform. The Senator from North Dakota has laid this out. He has explained this to the Senate. He has the unanimous support of the majority of the Senate Budget Committee. He has the near-unanimous support of the entire majority in the U.S. Senate. He has explained this to the President and to the Vice President. Of course, one of the easy ways to react to this is, well, there is not enough time. If we want to do major tax reform and tax simplification for the sake of our consumers, there sure is time because we could solve this debt ceiling crisis with a commitment down the line to doing just exactly what I have talked about. As we are in this maelstrom of all of these different ideas going around about what we are going to do before August 2 so the debt ceiling can be raised and so the country can pay its bills, I have heard about some disturbing things out there on the horizon. One is that Social Security is going to get whacked and that Medicare is going to get whacked. By the way, what the Budget Committee is proposing does not whack Social Security or Medicare providers. In the first place, Social Security is not in financial trouble in the foreseeable future. It is not until the late 2030s that it starts to get into difficulty. It is around 2035 that it would not, in that year, be able to pay 100 percent of its payments. We can correct that before then. Our problem is now. Our problem is this next decade of bringing this budget on a path toward balance and bringing the annual deficit down to a much lower percentage of gross domestic product. The budget I have just outlined, that is the work product of the Senate Budget Committee chairman, brings it down at the end of the decade to 1.8 percent--the deficit--to GDP. Anytime we get below 3 percent of the deficit being a percentage of GDP, we are on the path to fiscal stability, and we would be moving toward that position of balance--a position, by the way, we enjoyed 11 years ago because we were in surplus. Eleven years ago, we had 4 years of surplus in a row, but we started enacting policies--and, I might say, not with the vote of this Senator--that caused the revenues to drop off considerably. Then, of course, when we got in the situation where we started increasing expenditures for one reason or another--increasing expenditures for national defense, for two wars--and those were wars we were not paying for with a revenue source; in fact, we were just going out and borrowing the money. So this brings me now to Medicare and Social Security. It might make some people in Washington, DC, feel good to whack Medicare. It certainly wouldn't make this Senator feel good. It certainly wouldn't make an awful lot--as a matter of fact, some 45 million senior citizens in this country are on Medicare, some of whom are living from hand to mouth, from Social Security check to Social Security check, and from Medicare reimbursement to Medicare reimbursement for their health care. It certainly wouldn't make them feel good. And it is not going to do anything immediately for the deficit we are having to confront. So why trade off, saying we are going to whack these two programs and not attack things such as tax expenditures that are inefficient and don't produce what they are supposed to do via the incentives in the Tax Code? It simply doesn't make sense. Oh, by the way, isn't it interesting, isn't it almost ironic that the people who are now attacking Medicare and saying we have to whack it are the very people who were criticizing us 2 years ago in the health care bill when we eliminated $\1/2\ trillion of inefficiencies and overpayments out of Medicare to put the program on a more financially solvent path? And they were the very ones who were criticizing us for taking that money out of Medicare. Well, I say to my colleagues, we already took on Medicare, so we ought to get down to the hard choices of budget deficit reduction, which means cutting spending and getting rid of some of these tax expenditures so we can start bringing our budget into balance. My final subject is Social Security. Now, why in the world would we want to scare the bejabbers out of 45 million senior citizens of this country, some of whom literally are living hand to mouth and from Social Security check to Social Security check and some of whom cannot afford the cost of drugs even partially provided for through Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit? I don't think we want to do that. As we get closer to August 2, I am hearing--and I hope every other Senator is hearing from all of these senior citizens and these disabled workers who are relying on Social Security--that they are concerned about Washington's failure to get its house in order, and if we fail to get our house in order, it is going to threaten the very source of income they count on. So to risk a government default and to say the only way we can do it is by taking it out of Social Security is not going to do anything for us in reducing the deficit over the next decade, which is the problem at hand. Yesterday, the President was asked if he could tell the folks at home that no matter what happens, Social Security checks are going to go out the day after the government is supposedly going to go into default. Do my colleagues remember what the President said? He said: I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3 if we haven't resolved this issue because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it. So the people who are relying on a fixed income of Social Security to survive--Social Security payments are more than just a government statistic. For them, Social Security is more than just a Federal outlay or an entitlement expenditure. There are almost 4 million Social Security beneficiaries in my State. I can tell my colleagues that their Social Security pays the rent, it pays for the groceries, and it helps pay their medical copays. It helps pay for that over and above what is provided in Medicare. It is interesting, these speeches I hear. It is all ``it is your fault, and it is your fault, and it is the other guy's fault, and it is so partisan, and it is so ideologically rigid.'' The only way we are going to solve something that is as tangled up as this is for people of good will to be willing to respect the other fellow's point of view and come together and build consensus to find a workable solution. So as we get closer--and we can almost hear the background music; it is getting more ominous day by day as the clock ticks down to August 2--there is something we can do about it. The threat that Social Security payments could be delayed should not be used as a weapon to force a slash-and-burn cut to these entitlements. I said 45 million earlier; it is actually 56 million retirees who rely on these payments. A recent report from the Congressional Research Service states: Under normal procedures Treasury pays Social Security benefits from the General Fund and offsets this by redeeming an equivalent amount of the Social Security Trust Funds' holdings of government debt. Treasury now may need to issue new public debt to raise the cash needed to pay benefits. Treasury may be unable to issue new public debt, however, because of the debt limit. In other words, if the debt ceiling is not raised, Social Security benefits could be delayed or jeopardized. So perhaps what we ought to do is enact some legislation that takes Social Security out of the equation in the event we don't reach a deal on the debt ceiling by August 2. In the past, the President and the Congress have agreed to exempt Social Security from the debt ceiling in order to ensure that the payments go out to Social Security recipients. As a matter of fact, as recently as 1996, Treasury reported it had insufficient cash to pay Social Security benefits in March of that year. In response, Congress then passed--and it was a bipartisan Congress; it was headed by a majority of the Republican Party, and there was a Democratic President, President Clinton. They passed--and it was signed into law--a measure that provided the Treasury with temporary authority to issue securities to the public in the amount equal to the Social Security benefit payments due. I will conclude by pointing out that after that was done in 1996, Congress later extended the borrowing authority for an additional 2 weeks. I believe we should use what we know works and not play games with Social Security benefits. So I am introducing some legislation, and I am introducing it today. It is called the Social Security Benefit Protection Act. What it suggests is the way we ought to go. Now, I know we are not going to take up and pass this legislation, but I have a means by which I can get this idea out. What it does is guarantee that the Social Security Administration will be able to continue paying Social Security benefits to retirees, survivors, and disabled workers regardless of what happens to this political gridlock here in Washington. Similar to the 1996 legislation, this legislation gives the Treasury Department temporary authority to issue new debt to ensure the payments can be made to Social Security beneficiaries, but only to the extent necessary to cover the needs of the Social Security Program. I urge our colleagues to try to come together and give the assurances to millions of retirees that they are not going to be whacked and, especially so, they are not going to be whacked out of political gridlock by all the rest of us for these excessive reasons. I urge my colleagues to take a look at the ideas in this legislation that I have filed.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I know we have a vote that is coming up momentarily, but I just wanted to say my wish for those folks who are huddling up down at the White House every day: Don't miss this opportunity for a grand bargain to do something serious about deficit reduction. That is why I am concerned about Senator McConnell's proposal because it would take us off that practice. When they look at that real opportunity for $4 trillion of deficit reduction, they ought to look at the proposal of the Senate Budget Committee--$4 trillion, $2 trillion of which over 10 years comes out of the $14 trillion of the tax expenditures--or tax preferences that special interests have. We would only have to take from 9 to 17 percent of all that $14 trillion of tax preferences in order to produce the $2 trillion of revenue over 10 years. I have just put that issue to a panel of experts in a joint Ways and Means-Finance Committee meeting as to what they would recommend, and I will talk about that later today. With that, I yield the floor.

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, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I request unanimous consent to speak up to 20 minutes.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, there will be up to two rollcall votes at approximately 10:30 a.m. tomorrow. The first vote will be on the motion to invoke cloture on S. 1323, the sense-of-the- Senate bill on shared sacrifice in resolving the budget deficit. If cloture is not invoked, there will be a second cloture vote on the motion to proceed to H.R. 2055, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies appropriations bill.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

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

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, let me just say that with the last space shuttle launching last Friday--and it was a beautiful launch--of course, the expertise of the finest launch team anywhere in the world was very evident. When they got down to T-minus 31 they saw an indication on the controls that there had not been a retraction of one of the arms, which is a servicing arm, but they were ready for that, and as it turned out, it was a faulty sensor. Of course, the way they checked is they have cameras all over the launch tower. So they turned the cameras on and trained them over there and saw that it had, in fact, retracted and was pulled into a safe position. So with only 53 seconds left in the launch window--the window being that they had to launch the shuttle at that time so that it, once in orbit, could catch up with the space station, which was its destination, with 53 seconds to go, the count continued then, starting at T minus 31 and went down to a flawless launch and flawless flight, as they are now docked with the space station, and as they are now transferring this 20,000 pounds of cargo and equipment and supplies that will keep the International Space Station supplied for the next year. I don't think people realize how big the International Space Station is. It is 120 yards long. If you sat on the 50-yard line of a football stadium and looked from the end of one end zone all the way to the other, that is how big the International Space Station is that we have built with another 15 national partners. Primarily, our partner in building it was Russia. Of course, you remember that the iteration before the International Space Station was originally the Soviet space station that became the Russian space station called MIR, which we used to fly our astronauts with the space shuttle to the Russian space station. So the Russians have been our partners. Remember, when we have been down--for example, after the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia in early 2003, for over 2 years we would not fly the space shuttle as we went through and made the corrections that had caused the destruction of Columbia and the loss of seven astronauts. We relied on the Russians to get us to and from the space station. The sad thing is that the new rockets that we are building to go to and from the space station--there is one version of those rockets that, in fact, is going to fly later this year, rendezvous and dock with the space station and deliver cargo. But it has not been human rated. To do that, we have to go through and put in all the redundancies for safety, all of the escape mechanisms on the capsule, and once that is done this will be a rocket that will be much safer than the space shuttle--as a matter of fact, we can save the crew even from--if they had an explosion on the pad, the crew can safely eject in the escape rocket with the capsule parachuting to safety, all the way, 8\1/2\ minutes to orbit--if they had a malfunction. Contrast that with the space shuttle. When we saw Atlantis lift off, for the first 2 minutes there is no escape. You are married to those big solid rockets. If there is a failure then, there is no way out for the crew, and, as we saw, that was how Challenger, 25 years ago, was destroyed. They had a malfunction in one of the rockets. It caused the whole thing to explode--one of the solid rockets--within the first 2 minutes of flight. We are going to have a much safer way to get to and from the space station. The sad thing, however, is that the rocket for humans is not ready. It is going to take about another 3 years. Therefore, it is sad that with all of that finest launch team in the world at the Kennedy Space Center, a good part of them are having to be laid off. That employment will ramp up over the next several years as we build and launch those kinds of rockets. There is another set of human-rated rockets. I am talking about the manned space program now, not the unmanned. This year we are going to Jupiter. Later on we are getting ready to launch a Volkswagen-size rover that will go to the surface of Mars. Do you know what those little rovers have done over the last number of years? They have gone, like the energizer bunny, all over the surface. This one is going to be the size of a Volkswagen. So we have these kinds of mixes going on, but the human space program--the next big one to get NASA out of the Earth's orbit is the rocket that we are developing, a monster rocket. The capsule contract has already been let, and we are now going on in the process of--pursuant to the NASA law we passed last year--proceeding with the design and building of this rocket, which will take us, on the goal set by the President, to Mars with interim stations along the way. He has suggested an asteroid--to rendezvous and land with an asteroid by 2025. We have a vigorous space program going ahead. Senator Hutchison, who has been a wonderful partner in helping set NASA policy in all of this, and I are going to have something to say about this in the next few days because we think there is a holdup in the Office of Management and Budget with regard to the rocket design and the architecture for the big rocket. We are wondering why this delay keeps occurring. But we will talk about that in the later session. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.