Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, the Senate is expected to take up a bill that would repeal $20 billion in outdated, antiquated tax breaks for the oil and gas companies. In many cases, this tax break was created about a century ago. They have little, if anything, to do with modern, job-creating energy policy. It is time for them to go. These oil and gas tax breaks are targeted in this bill we are going to vote on. They are narrow, special interest tax subsidies that distort the marketplace. It happens to pad the profits as a result of the tax breaks, and it does nothing to keep gas prices down. It simply doesn't make any sense to me that we would continue to rely on oil and gas tax breaks that were originally written in 1916. These rules are truly vestiges of another era. In some cases, rather than encouraging energy independence, the tax breaks actually promote energy dependence on the OPEC oil-producing member states and other foreign countries that produce oil. For example, there is a part in it called the ``dual capacity'' provision and it allows major oil companies to claim a foreign tax credit for royalties paid to foreign governments. The foreign tax credit was never intended to offset royalty payments. It was originally intended to offset foreign income tax payments. So a company does business in a foreign country, they pay an income tax. The foreign tax credit was created so you could offset your foreign taxes on your American income taxes. But what has happened is the oil companies have twisted that and are claiming the royalties they pay to foreign governments as an income tax. It isn't. It is a royalty payment. The foreign tax credit was never intended for that, and it is another loophole in our Tax Code that does nothing more than promote reliance and dependence on foreign oil and, for that matter, foreign governments. That is exactly what we ought to be reversing, just from a national security standpoint, not even speaking of the threat to our national economic condition, because we are now importing 70 percent of our daily consumption of oil from foreign shores. In addition to repealing those kinds of tax subsidies, we also need to close a loophole that allows oil companies to claim a tax break for their own irresponsible actions. It turns out that BP has figured out how to shift nearly a third of their cleanup and legal costs of the Gulf of Mexico oilspill onto the backs of American taxpayers. Here is what they have done. They have come out with a projection of future income and profitability in a report. They expect they are going to have somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 billion of payments they are going to make as a result of their irresponsible action of having this huge Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf. Part of that, of course, is payments to local governments. Part of that is payments through the Gulf Claims Facility Fund. Part of that is going to be a hefty fine that is going to be imposed by the Federal Government. Very cleverly, they have gotten their tax lawyers together and figured out what they can do is deduct the oil spill recovery payments as an expense, and save themselves $11.8 billion in taxes. What BP is doing is treating its cleanup and legal expense as an ordinary and necessary cost of doing business. These costs aren't ordinary business expenses and they should not be deductible. When the five oil company CEOs were in front of our Finance Committee, I asked the CEO of BP: Are you going to do this? He said: That is what the law allows and that is what we are going to do. I said: What the law allows doesn't make it right. Why don't you take a cue from the Boeing Company or from Goldman Sachs for the expenses they incurred as a result of untoward activity? They voluntarily did not employ this part of the Tax Code to use it as a business deduction and, therefore, to cut their taxes. Of course, when a company such as this cuts their taxes nearly $12 billion, guess who makes up the difference? The rest of us do. The American taxpayers. I filed a bill, the Oilspill Tax Fairness Act, and it aims to reduce the deficit by billions of dollars by preventing oil companies from shifting the cost of oilspills onto our taxpayers. In the past, Congress has stepped in to prevent unconscionable tax deductions for expenses such as civil and criminal fines, bribes, lobbying expenditures, political contributions, excessive executive compensation. We have done that in the Congress by passing laws to prevent those as tax deductions. Well, we ought to step in and do it again. I think anybody would say BP was irresponsible and negligent to the detriment of a whole lot of people and the company should not be able to claim tax savings for their missteps, especially while our people are being squeezed at the pump every day because of the price of gasoline at the same time that in the first 3 months of this year, the first quarter, those five oil companies had $35 billion in profits. This is pouring salt on the wound. How much more flagellation can the American taxpayer take? Today's rising gas prices reflect more than just record profits for the oil companies. There is also rising demand in Asia. It is clearly evident that our oil and energy markets are no longer governed by supply and demand. Speculation is back with a vengeance. We saw the handiwork of speculators 2 years ago when the price of oil hit an all- time high of $147 a barrel, only to plummet 80 percent of that price a few months later. That is not supply and demand. That is not the workings of the economic market. That is in part caused by speculators running the price of oil up, and then because they had to drop their positions on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the exchanges, they started dropping all of those futures contracts in oil. Now speculators are using the turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa as an excuse to drive the price of oil sky high. It makes no sense that we continue to let the commodities exchanges self-regulate by setting their own margin levels and other rules. Last year, when we passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Congress empowered the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under the new law to rein in excessive speculation so that commodities markets don't fly off the rails. Yet this same commission has yet to finalize new rules to impose speculative position limits, which are hard caps on the amount any one speculator can invest in oil derivatives. There are a number of us who have been working for months in this Senate to push the CFTC to act. The law we passed was clear, and it is time for the Federal regulators to follow through. Sadly, I want to recall a little over a year ago something that a lot of us remember so vividly. Many people cannot forget the images of the oil that was gushing from 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. In my public service for decades, I have warned about the dangers of drilling out there in the gulf. It is now unbelievable that almost a year after the gulf oilspill and the environmental disaster that ensued, folks are still now talking about being willing to risk the economy of the entire gulf coast again. You remember that 11 people died because safety took a back seat to expediency and profit. Last week the House passed three bills that would speed up oil production in a way that ignores serious safety concerns. Now Senator McConnell has a similar proposal. These bills would require the Secretary of the Interior to approve or deny drilling permits within a maximum of 60 days, and if the Secretary does not take action within that time, a permit is deemed approved. That is like saying if a home buyer is not approved for financing within 60 days, they automatically get the financing regardless of their credit. Or it is like saying if a prisoner does not hear back from the parole board in 2 months, that prisoner is going to be automatically out on parole. It is simply irresponsible to deregulate an inherently dangerous activity in this manner, and it is a slap in the face to the commercial fishermen, the hoteliers, and the small business owners on the gulf coast who, to this day, have not been made whole. Yet these bills are out here. The House passed it. Senator McConnell's bill would roll back the Department of the Interior's post-Deepwater Horizon revisions to offshore leasing-- revisions that came about because of what we learned from the oilspill. Senator McConnell's bill seeks to limit the fundamental right of Americans; that is, access to the courts. His bill would not allow Floridians who want to file a civil lawsuit regarding any offshore energy projects in the Gulf of Mexico to have a claim near their home in Florida or their place of business in Florida. Instead, under his bill, they have to go to the Fifth Circuit. That is Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Why should people from Florida have to file a claim there? Why can't they go through the Eleventh Circuit, which is the one for the State of Florida and Georgia? The Fifth Circuit certainly cannot be the only circuit with expertise on the subject of offshore energy. I believe we have a responsibility to protect access to the courts, and Senator McConnell's bill jeopardizes that for the people who do not have the luxury of going far off to another State to bring a lawsuit. Meanwhile, the House has passed a bill last week that seeks to open-- now it is getting personal--they seek to open the eastern Gulf of Mexico off of Florida, that which Senator Martinez and I made off limits in law. There are obvious reasons we have it off limits in law. It is the largest testing and training area for the U.S. military in the world. We have two letters from two successive Secretaries of Defense, including the present one, Secretary Gates, that says you cannot have oil drilling and related activities--they use the word it is ``incompatible'' with the military training and testing mission. That is the largest training and testing area for the U.S. military in the world. It is basically right off of Florida. Of course, you all have heard me over and over talk about all the dry holes. There is not much oil out there off of Florida. The oil is where the Lord intended the oil to be--and that was for years the sediments coming down the Mississippi River and then being compacted, and then for millions of years the compacting of the Earth's crust formed that oil. That is off of, primarily, Louisiana, some off of Mississippi, some off of Alabama and Texas, not Florida. The proponents of these bills claim they will lower gas prices. At the same time, the oil and gas companies are making billions of dollars. Just look at their first quarter report. And we are giving big tax subsidies to the oil companies. The price of oil dropped $17 a barrel last week. It was the largest weekly decline in over 2 years. But do you know what? I do not think the folks at the gas pump saw a commensurate drop. I think it is about time we gave them some relief, and we are going to have a chance to do that. I conclude by saying we are not fooling ourselves. To be able to get an individual bill such as this for specific tax breaks--however objectionable those tax breaks are, it is going to be difficult to get 60 votes to break a filibuster. But help is on the way. There is a group called the Gang of Six. They are meeting, and they are trying to put together a package to solve our deficit crisis and to make real progress over the next decade or so, as we move toward budget balance-- a condition we enjoyed as recently as 2001--not only budget balance, but a budget surplus. It is my hope when we get down to putting this package together of how we are going to lower the deficit, people of good will will come together and recognize there are things in the Tax Code that have to be changed to make them right. I have enumerated but a few here today. Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor, and I look forward to the comments of the very distinguished Senator from New Hampshire.

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. Mr. President, I want to call to the attention of the Senate the fact that a number of State legislatures, including our State legislature in Florida, have been enacting election law bills that severely constrict the right of the people to express their vote. This has just occurred in the State of Florida, with the legislature adjourning in the early morning hours of Saturday, enacting a bill that has been sent to the Governor that would make it harder for the people of Florida to vote, harder for them to have their vote counted, and harder for the people to be able to register to vote. Common sense would tell you what we ought to be doing is exactly the opposite--that we ought to be making things easier to vote, and especially in a State such as ours, which went through that awful experience in November of 2000, when there was so much chaos, not only in the voting in the Presidential election but then in the counting of the votes. Of course, we all know how that ended up--Bush v. Gore in the U.S. Supreme Court, which stopped the recount that was proceeding. Because of that experience, to the credit of the State legislature, they started to make voting easier. For example, instead of just voting on election day, they had a 2-week period for early voting--something that other States have been doing for some period of time, so that people could go to designated polling places prior to election day. It certainly made it a lot easier on the supervisors of elections, the very people who are charged with the responsibility of registering voters and counting votes, because it spread the amount of people coming in to vote over time, so that all of them weren't there just within a 12-hour period on election day. This has turned out to be so popular in Florida that half of the voters in the last two elections voted prior to election day. Well, can you believe that the State legislature has seen fit to cut the 14- day early vote period back to 8, under the guise, well, we are going to make the amount of hours the same by giving the supervisors of elections discretion so that they could increase the voting days on early votes from 8 to 12 hours? But that is a ruse, because that means the election supervisors are going to have to pay time and a half, and those election supervisors are under the same kind of fiscal constraints that all of the other levels of government are right now and, as a result, what is going to happen is the voting hours are not going to be extended, and the State legislature has just constricted the number of voting days from 14 down to 8--and, by the way, they didn't let it run right up to the day before the election; they backed it off several days before the election, which would be the last day of early voting. Why, when we want to make it easier to vote? Well, doesn't the legislature--and I hope the Governor, who has this bill coming to him-- understand that it is a tremendous convenience to senior citizens to make it easier for them, instead of having to stand in a long line on election day, that over a 2-week period they can go and vote in a designated place? Is there some reason they are trying to make it harder for senior citizens to vote? Well, it could be a lot of politics in this, but the fact is they are making it harder to vote, when in fact it ought to be the opposite. I wish I could report to the Senate that that was the only thing they have done, but it is not. They made it harder to register to vote. As a matter of fact, well-respected organizations, such as the League of Women Voters, for years and years have taken it as their responsibility to go out and try to register people to vote. The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan organization, which has as its sole goal to try to promote activities that promote our democracy. Here is what they did. They said if you go out and register people to vote, and under current law, there is a period of something like 1\1/2\ weeks to 2 weeks that you can turn in the names you have registered--no, no. This time, what the legislature has done is said if you don't turn those new registration forms in within 48 hours, you are going to be subject to a fine and possibly a criminal penalty. And the President of the League of Women Voters of Florida, Diedre McNabb, has said, in effect, what that means is that they will not put that onus on their members of a fine and a criminal penalty and, in effect, they will stop registering people ahead of time. What the election laws ought to do is exactly the opposite. We ought to have laws that encourage the registration of voters and try to get more people to participate. But that is not what the Florida legislature has done. It has done exactly the opposite. I wish I could report to the Senate that was the only thing they have done. But they did more. For four decades, Florida has had a law, in a highly mobile society, if you have moved and you go on election day to cast your vote, and your registration address is different than the address that you show, for example, where you registered to vote years ago--maybe even a year ago--but in the meantime you have moved and your documentation--say, your driver's license--shows your new address, for four decades the law of Florida has said that a voter can change their address in the polling place to update that record, showing proper identification of who they are and that their signature matches. Not so now. The legislature of Florida has just changed the law that if your address or your name changes--what happens if you got married in the last year and now your name doesn't match your registration name, but you still want to vote? What has the legislature of Florida done? They are going to require that you not cast a ballot. You are going to have to cast a provisional ballot, and you are going to have to have your authenticity certified after the fact. The experience with provisional ballots in the last Presidential election in Florida, in 2008, was that of the over 35,000 ballots cast, 17,000--half of them--were not counted. Who are the people who have been operating and have benefited by that law in Florida for four decades? They have been people who have gotten married and their name has changed. They have been people in the mobile society in which we live who have moved and bought a new house or moved into a new apartment. In other words, all of us--we and our neighbors. Who else especially might have been the reason for the legislature of Florida to change this four decades-old law? The last Presidential election, college students in Florida voted in record numbers because college students in Florida in the town of their college went down where they had their registration. Yet their identification showed their address as their parents' home, not the registration address they had registered in their college town. That is not making it easier to vote. That is not encouraging college students to vote. That is doing exactly the opposite. That is suppressing the vote. What I am reporting to the Senate has been widely commented on in Florida in almost every editorial page in the State of Florida, with the bottom-line conclusion of what I have just said: It is trying to suppress the vote by making it harder to vote, harder to register to vote, and harder to have one's vote counted as it was intended. I have written the Governor, and I have asked the Governor to consider all these things. It is widely commented in the Florida press that the Governor will sign the bill, thus constricting, restricting-- whatever word you want to use--the right of the people to vote. If the Governor does sign the bill or lets it go into law without his signature, then our only other mechanism at this point, since there are 5 counties in Florida's 67 counties that are under a watch list under the civil rights legislation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965--it is my intention to encourage the Department of Justice, the Civil Rights Division, to examine this legislation with regard to the Voting Rights Act. Preparatory to that, I had sent a letter to Thomas Perez, the Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, alerting him to this fact. I have quoted in that letter several supervisors of election, both Democrats and Republicans, who have said that cutting the early voting period from 14 days to 8 will shrink poll access by 50 percent and disenfranchise a significant number of voters. That is what the supervisors of election, the elected officials in each of the counties, were telling me. I wish to quote a Republican supervisor of election, Deborah Clark, in Pinellas County, which is the county of St. Petersburg and Clearwater, FL. This is what she said: Not allowing address or name change changes on election day will create an undue burden on eligible voters. She continues: It will also result in long lines at the polls and discourage many voters from voting. It is self-evident, and this is an assault upon our democracy that should not be tolerated. But it happened and it happened in the last week of the legislative session. I hope--I hope--there will be such an outcry that this legislative policy gets reversed. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, yesterday the Senate confirmed the nominations of Kevin Hunter Sharp to fill a judicial emergency vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee and Roy ``Skip'' Dalton to fill a judicial emergency vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Though I was necessarily absent from the vote, if present and voting I would have voted ``yea.'' I fully support the nomination of Mr. Sharp to fill a vacancy in Tennessee, and I am pleased that Mr. Dalton was confirmed by unanimous consent. Roy Dalton, nominee for the Middle District of Florida, is currently a partner at Dalton & Carpenter. Mr. Dalton previously worked as a counsel to my friend, Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, and had a long career in private practice in Orlando, FL. I have known Mr. Dalton for many years, and I am pleased that the Senate has acted on his nomination. Madam President, the high level of judicial vacancies puts at serious risk the ability of all Americans to have a fair hearing in court. I congratulate Senator Leahy and Senator Grassley on their leadership and hope that we can all continue to work together to address the backlog of judicial nominations.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, we have come through a crisis. It is not over yet because we don't have a law that has been passed by both Houses averting the shutdown of the government, and once it has passed both Houses--which we anticipate tomorrow--then it will be signed into law by the President, and we will avert the shutdown. Had there been a shutdown or, in the alternative, had a law proposed in the House of Representatives, H.R. 1, been law, what we would have seen is a number of the hunger programs we have being savaged. There would have been a huge savaging of the feeding programs around the world--USAID, an arm of the State Department, which saves untold thousands, if not millions, of lives, particularly of children. They have a program right now in Africa, for example, of just providing mosquito netting, which cuts malaria by 30 percent. But also, USAID uses a lot of American agriculture to help feed hungry populations. Those programs would have been cut significantly had H.R. 1, the House of Representatives' appropriations bill, been the final decision. Fortunately, it wasn't and, fortunately, for the hunger programs, both abroad and at home, the least among us will not have to suffer those cutbacks to the budget for the duration of this fiscal year--for the next 6 months. Even so, there were some significant cuts in what has been agreed to in the funding for hunger programs here in America. There was a $500 million cut in the Women, Infants, and Children Program, otherwise known as WIC, the Federal health and nutrition program for women, infants, and children. We will have to deal with this, as we are now putting together the mathematics in building the next budget for 2012. I decided to come over and talk because I wish to talk about one of my closest personal friends, former Congressman and former Ambassador, Tony Hall of Ohio, who started a fast 16 days ago. That fast he is going to continue, only having water. He is going all the way through Easter, which is another week and a half away. The duration of that fast will be somewhere around a month. You can imagine what happens to your body when you don't take in any nourishment other than water for 30 days. That is what Tony Hall is doing. It is very interesting that people are joining him. Some 35,000 people nationwide have joined Tony in a fast. It may not be a complete fast such as he is doing, with only water, and it may be just that they are doing a fast 1 day a week. It is interesting that 30 Members of the House of Representatives have joined their former colleague, Congressman Tony Hall, in this fast, and that includes--as just announced--14 U.S. women lawmakers who plan to protest the deep cuts in the programs that help the poor and battle hunger in the United States and overseas. In conclusion, you can tell a great nation by how it takes care of the least of those among us. It is certainly a part of our Judeo- Christian heritage, throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, that, over and over, the most referenced part of the Scriptures is the obligation of a society to take care of the least privileged among us. Back in the old days, some 2,000 years ago--and even before--they had a social security system in that agricultural economy of the time called gleaning. Those who owned the wheat fields would go in and reap the wheat, but it was the standard practice of the day that they would leave enough wheat on the stalks so the poor could come in and glean the fields in order that they would have sustenance. That was their social security system of the day. Our systems of aiding the poor are much more sophisticated and include the programs of USAID, and here at home a lot through the Department of Agriculture. But as we have to cut the budget, we must constantly remind ourselves, as Ambassador Tony Hall is reminding us right now with his fast for a month, that it is an obligation of all of us to take care of the least among us. I will close by quoting that passage from Matthew 25: When you did it for the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you were doing it for me. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, may I address the Senate?

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, may I be recognized to speak 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. Madam President, the Paul Ryan/tea party budget of the House of Representatives privatizes Medicare. Let me repeat that. Medicare, the program of medical care for senior citizens that our seniors have come to depend on--the Paul Ryan/tea party budget of the House of Representatives privatizes Medicare. This is not an empty threat. It is not this Senator's or any other Senator's political interpretation. The budget of the House Republican Budget Committee chairman would end Medicare as we know it. It ends Medicare. It hands seniors' health care over to insurance companies. It would break a sacred contract between workers who paid into the system thinking it would be there for them when they retired. But under this new scheme, senior citizens will not have a Medicare Program anymore. They would have to pick an insurance plan, and a voucher would be given directly to the insurance company. Under the proposal--I am not making this up--a voucher, paid for by the Federal Government, would be given not to the senior citizen to go shopping, it would be given to the insurance company that they chose. Medicare for senior citizens would be turned over to insurance companies. If this sounds incredible, it is, because under that plan insurers would decide what doctors seniors get to see and what health benefits get covered. Now, why do I say that? That is an HMO. An HMO is a health maintenance organization. That is an insurance company. They have a panel of doctors, they have a panel of hospitals, and they determine what is in the coverage that a senior citizen gets. Contrast that to Medicare now, that Medicare fee-for-service. The senior citizen makes the choice of their doctor, of what are the things they look for in their total medical care, paid for because they are senior citizens and are eligible for Medicare, of which they have been paying in all of their lives through a Medicare tax. So now this proposal is to privatize Medicare, take it out of being a government fee-for-service plan, and, instead, insert it into a privatized insurance company. Do senior citizens want to change their Medicare and turn it over to insurance companies? I do not think so. If insurance plans raise their costs, which we know they do, seniors then would have to pick up the bill. Seniors would have to pay more out of their pocket for this voucher program. According to the Congressional Budget Office, out-of-pocket costs-- this is according to CBO, the nonpartisan actuarial accounting organization--according to CBO, out-of-pocket costs would more than double for seniors. This voucher program proposed by the chairman of the Budget Committee in the House, Congressman Ryan, is not like Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage has been a great program for senior citizens, and in our State of Florida we have more signed up for Medicare Advantage than any other State because of what it does. It provides benefits at low cost to senior citizens because the Federal Government directly negotiates with the insurance companies' plans. That is different from what Congressman Ryan and the tea party are proposing. So insurance companies, under Medicare Advantage, have to provide guaranteed health benefits at a low price that is negotiated. As a result of the new health care reform law, Medicare Advantage premiums have actually gone down. These are the premiums that are paid by senior citizens. So do not let folks confuse you between what is proposed by the Budget chairman in the House and the existing Medicare Advantage Program. The Ryan/tea party budget leaves these decisions up to the insurance plan. In other words, insurance companies will be in charge of seniors' health care. I do not think that is what our senior citizens intend to have happen. The tea party wants to end Medicare. That is the bottom line. Yet the House budget does little--interestingly, little--if anything to actually reduce the Federal deficit, which is what they say their budget is for, to reduce the Federal deficit. Well, look at it. The House Budget chairman claims his budget includes $5.8 trillion in spending cuts, but when we look at it closer we learn this claim was an accounting gimmick. We have seen these gimmicks over and over in budgeting in the Federal Government. For example, first, we learned that his staff had made a $200 billion mathematical calculating error in calculating interest savings. Then, second, we learned that $1.3 trillion of the savings is artificially derived from a misleading assumption that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would continue indefinitely. Third, and most importantly, of his savings, $4.2 trillion of the savings come from the spending cuts that fly out the back door in the form of tax cuts for millionaires. At the end of the day, those $5.8 trillion in spending cuts in their budget translates into less than $200 billion in real deficit reduction over those years, or less than 1 percent of the total debt held by the public. So the Congressman Ryan/tea party budget does little to address the deficit while making every single senior citizen in this country get their health care from an insurance company. So that is why Senator Baucus, our chairman of the Finance Committee, and I have introduced a resolution. This Senate resolution calls on the Senate to oppose this radical voucher program. Medicare has been providing affordable health care for seniors and disabled Floridians and Americans for decades and decades. It is a very popular program with our seniors. Medicare should not be dismantled. It should not be turned over in a voucher program to insurance companies that will eliminate choices. It should not be turned over to insurance companies that will increase costs, and, certainly, seniors' health care should not be turned over to insurance companies. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, have you ever noticed when someone points their finger and says ``it is all your fault, it is all your fault,'' did you notice that there are three fingers pointing back at them? Here we have the blame game going on. What we have is politics at its worst. In trying to govern a country that is large and diverse and complicated, as our country is, you have to have people of good will who will come together to build consensus, who will respect each other's opinion, who will respect each other, and realize that their opinion may not be the only opinion. That is what we have that is leading us to this point. We have folks who are saying, it is going to be my way or no way. And because of the vote structures, 60 votes required here in order to pass anything out of 100 Senators, we are coming to the precipice, and we are about to fall off. It is not supposed to work this way. You can have people who sharply disagree about a particular issue, but when it is time to build a consensus and get it done, you have got to have that capability of coming together. Some people use the word ``compromise.'' But compromise has a dirty connotation. It should not. It is the glue of solution making. And that is what this world's most deliberative body for over two centuries has done so well, is come together to build consensus to govern the country. Notice something else. You do not govern from the political extremes. If the political extreme says, it is my way or the highway, you cannot build that consensus in the middle. Thus, that is the situation we have gotten into. A radical, in this case--we have had it on the left end of the political spectrum in the past, but that is not what this is. This is a radical rightwing agenda that is saying, from the House of Representatives, it is going to be their way or no way or they are going to shut down the government. That is a sad state of affairs. That is saying we cannot come together and agree and reach a solution. So what is going to be the consequence? Well, do you realize when the government is shut down and people are out of work, this does not just affect Federal employees? What about those employees in the private sector whose business depends on being frequented by Federal employees? For example, someone whose business suddenly goes down, are they going to be able to pay their rent? What about the poor person who is suddenly not going to have a paycheck and they are not going to be able to pay their mortgage? Do you think their bank is going to work with them in order for them not to be in default? Wait. Let's back up. Look at the experience of my State, Florida. How many banks have worked with people who have been unemployed who have not been able to pay their mortgage, and the banks are not working with them? So if we go out of the government being functioning, and all of the activities of government, what about the airlines? Certain essential employees will have to operate the air control towers and TSA for security. But do you think the people who are not going to be able to work in the Federal Government in the hemisphere of aviation, do you not think that is going to ripple through the economy in this example of the airlines? What happens if there is that lapse of safety and this time an airliner does not land safely as we have had where people have fallen asleep in the tower? Let's talk about our military. At the end of the day the other side is saying, oh, is it not awful that those of us on this side are not going to pay the military? We are going to vote over and over to pay our military. Our leadership is going to make consent requests over and over to pay our military if we are going to be shut down. What about our intelligence apparatus, the very apparatus that in far distant lands gets a snippet of information that is passed through the governmental centers that allows us to avert the terrorists from ever doing the attack in the first place? Is that going to be affected? Oh, essential personnel will be there. But what about some of those extended personnel we rely on for our intelligence apparatus? Ladies and gentlemen, we are not only playing with fire, we are playing with superheated fire. What about Gabby Gifford's husband, the commander of the next space shuttle mission? They are supposed to launch April 29. Are all of those workers at the Kennedy Space Center who are preparing the next to the last space shuttle flight going to continue that preparation? Are they going to lay off the astronaut crew because they are not essential as they are training in split-second, very precise training? Is CAPT Mark Kelly, United States Navy, going to be able to command that mission to take the final components up to low-earth orbit to connect those final components of the International Space Station? What kind of effect is that going to have and be felt throughout the NASA centers all over the country? What about the Securities and Exchange Commission? What about the banking regulators? What about the Internal Revenue Service going after the people who are trying to defraud us? Do you know that we have prisoners in the State prison system in Florida--more than any other State--who have been putting in fake income tax returns and getting refunds? We have finally got the IRS working with the State prison system, and they are going to shut that off in the next week. Are we going to be able to stop that fraud upon the taxpayer? What about the fellow who just received a $250,000 IRS refund check, and he has not even filed his income tax return, because somebody has stolen his identity and put in a fake return, and fortunately the check got to him, not to the shyster. Are we going to have those IRS personnel to continue to go after that? You can go on and on. What about our court system? What about the administration of justice? This is what we are facing. Rigid ideology, in some cases placed on top of excessive partisanship, is now bringing us almost to our knees. If we shut down at midnight tomorrow night, and if we go through the weekend, guess what is going to happen to the Asian financial markets come Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening here, when it is Monday morning there, and those Asian markets open up. Oh, and by the way, have not the people of Japan suffered enough? The 20 or so ships we have over there trying to assist the people of Japan, are they going to have to go on furlough too? This is the time, as the Good Book says, for people to come. Let us reason together. This is the time for people of good will--and there are plenty of those people who are Members of the Senate--on this side of the Capitol and on the other side of the Capitol to come together. Come, let us reason together. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator respond to another question?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Would the Senator believe the experience of the State of Florida: When they tried to put all Medicaid into insurance companies--otherwise known as HMOs, health maintenance organizations--those organizations pulled out of serving the poor in rural counties, and yet that is a proposal in front of the State legislature of Florida at this very moment?

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

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Is it true that in the proposal from the chairman in the House of Representatives, he would take the Medicaid Program--which, generally, is a split, something like 55 percent Federal money, with 45 percent State money, for the health care for the poor and the disabled--that his proposal is he would give this as a block grant to the States for the Governors and the State legislatures to decide how they were going to distribute it?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. The Senator has pointed out very accurately the analysis of this most recent proposal by the chairman in the House of Representatives. If I recall, did we not address cutting some $400 billion out of Medicare over the next decade in the health care reform bill that was passed last year?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I say in conclusion--and I thank the Senator for yielding--all you have to do is ask a senior citizen do they like their Medicare or would they prefer to have it done by an insurance company, and I think you will get a resounding answer.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. And a further question to the Senator from Illinois: Would he characterize the proposal by the chairman in the House of Representatives on Medicare as not only cutting the payments to Medicare but the way Medicare is being delivered by altering that into the private sector?

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, first of all, I wish to say to the Senator from Alaska that she knows of my respect for her and my personal friendship with her and my personal opinion that she is one of the finest Senators we have. I do want to ask the Senator a question, and it is a circumstance that I happen to be here next in line to speak about a different subject than the Senator spoke about. This Senator is one of those sponsors of the ``use it or lose it'' legislation. I certainly will defer to the Senator from Alaska with regard to Alaska and the drilling offshore there. My question is about the drilling of the Gulf of Mexico, which this Senator has some familiarity with, and that there are 37 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico under lease, where the oil is. But of the 37 million acres, there are only 7 million that are drilled. Thirty million acres are not drilled, and it has been that way for years and years. The Senator makes a compelling argument with regard to Alaska, but how can that argument apply to the 30 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico that are not drilled but, as the Senator has said, ought to be drilled?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, as the Senator from Alaska is leaving the floor, I will say to her that I appreciate her point of view and what she has expressed. There is certainly an opportunity for working something out. As I stated in my question to her at the outset, this Senator doesn't know a lot about the leases in Alaska, but I certainly do know a lot about the leases in the Gulf of Mexico. For 30 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to go undrilled for years and years, where out of a total of 37 million acres are leased but only 7 million acres are actually drilled and produced, it seems to me there is a wonderful opportunity for a lot more production, not just in 7 million acres but 30 million acres additionally. And if the company that holds that lease, and has held the lease for years, is not going to drill it and produce, then let somebody else do it. That was the theory behind this Senator's sponsorship of that legislation. As the Senator from Alaska has pointed out some differences in her State, it seems to me that this is, as the Good Book says, a place where people of good intentions can come and reason together. Mr. President, I want to speak on another subject. I will tell my colleague that I am not going to be speaking very long. This will be short. I want to bring this to the attention of the Senate. This is the Wall Street Journal from last weekend. Here is an article with the headline ``Transocean Cites Safety in Bonuses.'' This is worth this Senator reading for the Record and calling to the attention of the Senate: Transocean Ltd. had its ``best year in safety performance'' despite the explosion of its Deepwater Horizon rig that left 11 dead and oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the world's largest offshore-rig company said in a securities filing on Friday. Accordingly, Transocean's executives received two-thirds of their target safety bonus. Safety accounts for 25 percent of the equation that determines the yearly cash bonuses, along with financial factors including new rig contracts. It is hard for me to believe that. Even if it were to meet some mathematical formula of awarding bonuses to executives at oil companies, why in the world that company would not have been sensitive enough to the families of 11 people who lost their lives as a result of what the President's task force investigating the Deepwater Horizon oil explosion and spill--the task force cochaired by our former colleague from Florida, Bob Graham--which said that the main responsibility for that explosion was the fact that the blowout preventer did not work as it was designed to. Who was the owner and operator of that? Transocean. We know there are lawsuits that are going on between BP, which had the lease, and Transocean, its subcontractor, which had the equipment that was supposed to work to prevent the spill that malfunctioned. Those lawsuits are going to be going on for some period of time, sorting it out. But the investigation, done by a highly respected investigative task force, came to that conclusion. And here that very same company, whose blowout preventer deep on the floor of the ocean malfunctioned, causing the explosion--11 lives were lost, and untold billions of dollars of damage was done to the economies of the Gulf States, and who knows how many billions of dollars of damage to the marine life and the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico, and safety is cited by this company as a reason for giving bonuses to its executives. That defies common sense. It defies reason. I am sufficiently agitated about this--even with the company coming out and issuing some kind of retraction--that this Senator intends to ask the Secretary of the Interior, Secretary Salazar, what authority he has to regulate not only the leases of oil and gas tracts, such as BP, which held the lease, but also what authority he has to regulate the rig owners, such as Transocean and other subcontractors, which actually had the responsibility for the safety of the drilling operation, and that safety did not work. I am going to ask our Committee on the Environment, chaired by Senator Boxer--I have already talked to her and her staff director--to hold hearings on the questionable response, the cleanup, the environmental and financial practices not only of Transocean but its contractor, BP. What in the world is going on? Why do I bring BP into this? Well, it is not only that they held the lease. It was interesting. Last week, the head of the Washington office of BP came in to give me an update. We had a very good, amiable chat, and I asked a simple series of questions. One of the questions I asked was: With all of our people down there, many of them losing their businesses, losing their homes to foreclosure, because they don't have income as a result of the tourism trade that was affected by the BP bill, what was all this about? The first full payment was a $10 million payment paid in full from the Gulf Coast Claims Facility to a BP partner. The head of BP in Washington said he did not know. It has been in the newspaper over and over. I have asked the question over and over. I have written to the Department of the Interior, as well as to BP, and I have written to the Gulf Coast Claims Facility and have received no answer to the question, why was the first payment paid in full in damages done to a business partner of BP? The representative of BP could not answer the question. I think the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works ought to get into that issue. I am going to also ask the Finance Committee in the Senate to hold hearings on the financial practices of BP and Transocean and other corporations such as those--a corporation such as Transocean that I think is domiciled in Switzerland and that holds a lot of its assets and earnings abroad, earnings that come as a result of doing business in the United States but of which those earnings are held abroad and taxes are not paid for the privilege of doing that business and earning profits in its business that is conducted in the United States. We owe this to our taxpayers. This Senator certainly owes it to his constituents who have suffered mightily as a result of this BP oilspill, along with the malfunctions that went along in the procedures and in the equipment of that tremendous disaster that so many have suffered so long. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I thank the Senator for his erudite analysis.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. In the Senator's opinion, why would the Republicans, particularly from the House of Representatives, want to cut Social Security, since the Social Security system has little, if any, effect upon us getting our arms around the deficit and moving the budget toward balance over the next 10 years?

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

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation on a subject that is never far from the minds of citizens in my home State of Florida, folks along the Gulf Coast, or on the Atlantic seaboard: the threat of hurricanes, and the devastation that these storms leave in their wake. This threat is ever nearer as we approach the 2011 hurricane season. Hurricane damage is certainly not new to Florida. On September 1926, the Great Miami Hurricane was a harbinger of things to come. Two years later, a category four hurricane caused Lake Okeechobee to flood its banks killing 2500 out of South Florida's 50,000 residents. In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida causing an estimated $26 billion in damage to the United States. And we all when in August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region, causing more than $91 billion in economic losses, forcing more than 770,000 people from their homes, and killing an estimated 1833 people. According to the Insurance Information Institute, insurance companies had estimated losses of $40.6 billion on 1.7 million claims in 6 States from Hurricane Katrina, the largest loss in the history of insurance. Insured losses are predicted to double every decade as development along the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts increases. The sheer magnitude of this loss is staggering and underscores the need for increased funding for hurricane research and improved forecasting. But hurricanes do not just affect those living along the coasts. These extreme events have national consequences with increased fuel prices and severe inland flooding. U.S. Census data indicates that more than 35 million people live in areas that are most vulnerable to hurricanes. Emergency managers need to know exactly where a hurricane will strike and how hard it will strike before they can issue an evacuation warning. Improvements in track and intensity forecasts will translate into better preparedness for coastal and inland communities, saving lives and reducing devastating impacts. The impacts felt in the wake of Hurricane Katrina--despite a good meteorological forecast of the hurricane--emphasize the need for additional research and development in these areas. I am committed to the protection of life and property. Hurricanes pose a serious threat to the Nation, and losses are growing. So today I am introducing the National Hurricane Research Initiative. This bill calls for prudent investments that will protect lives and prevent economic devastation, reducing our vulnerability to hurricanes. The National Hurricane Research Initiative will dramatically expand the scope of fundamental research on hurricanes, including enhanced data collection and analysis in critical research areas, and the translation of research results into improved forecasts and planning. Specifically, the National Hurricane Research Initiative will improve our understanding and prediction of hurricanes and other tropical cyclones, including, storm tracking and prediction, storm surge modeling, and inland flood modeling. This research will expand our understanding of the impacts of hurricanes on and response of society and help us to develop infrastructure that is resilient to the forces associated with hurricanes. We never know when the next big storm will hit. This type of research is urgently needed, and that research needs to be well coordinated. I look forward to working with Chairman Rockefeller and the members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on this important legislation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be printed in the Record.