Jack Reed

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I wish to recognize the accomplishments of LTC Kenneth McDonald, who is retiring this month after a distinguished career of over 28 years of service to the United States Army and the Nation. Lieutenant Colonel McDonald graduated from West Point in 1985 with a degree in Civil Engineering and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He subsequently served as a platoon leader, support platoon leader, and executive officer in the 299th Engineer Battalion (Corps Combat) at Fort Sill, OK. He later commanded Delta Company, 20th Engineer Battalion at Fort Campbell, KY and served as S3 and executive officer for the 577th Engineer Battalion, Fort Leonard Wood, MO. Throughout his career, Lieutenant Colonel McDonald deployed to Iraq for Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, Kosovo, and Korea. In 2006, Kenny volunteered for service in Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and served as deputy commander, Gulf Region Division South District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Basrah. During his 2 year tour, he was responsible for over $500 million worth of construction projects, including the Basrah Children's Hospital. In 2008, he and members of his team were severely wounded in an ambush while they were inspecting the hospital. He recovered from his wounds at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and later was assigned to the West Point Warrior Transition Unit. While still assigned to the WTU, he requested and was allowed to serve as the deputy commander, New York District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Lieutenant Colonel McDonald also served as an instructor and assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at West Point. In 2009, he was promoted to associate professor and served as engineering program director for the Department of Systems Engineering at West Point. During his tenure, the Engineering Management Program was recognized 3 years in a row as the top Engineering Management Program for undergraduate education in the Nation by the American Society for Engineering Management. His military awards and decorations include the Bronze Star; Purple Heart; Meritorious Service Medal; Joint Service Commendation Medal; Army Commendation Medal; Army Achievement Medal; Joint Meritorious Unit Award; Meritorious Unit Commendation; Army Superior Unit Award; Air Assault; Airborne; Ranger Tab; and Combat Action Badge. Kenny and his wife COL Debbie McDonald, who currently serves as the director of admissions at West Point, have two grown children. Their daughter Anna is a 1LT Quartermaster Officer and Company Commander and their son Joshua is a cadet at West Point. I congratulate Kenny on a job well done, and wish him and his family the very best in the years to come.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. This bipartisan amendment, cosponsored by Senator Collins, Senator Merkley, and others, would add resources to energy programs for the purpose of increasing support for the Weatherization Assistance Program. It would also include weatherization in the investments under the deficit-neutral reserve fund on clean energy and environmental protection. Weatherization does several things: It puts people to work, helps low-income people control their energy bills, and helps us move toward energy independence. We need to do more of this, not less. This amendment will put us back on the track of doing more, not less. I would urge passage of this amendment.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, the Marketplace Fairness Act is about leveling the playing field for brick-and-mortar businesses. We have a bipartisan and bicameral bill to do just that. So I am pleased to join Senators Durbin, Enzi, and many of my colleagues in offering this budget amendment today to add a deficit neutral reserve fund to ensure marketplace fairness by allowing States to enforce their State and local sales tax laws. This is a big issue in Rhode Island, where businesses have a hard time competing against out-of-State retailers because of outdated rules that require shops on Main Street to collect revenue, but their out-of- State online competition does not. When Internet commerce was still in its early stages online companies were basically exempted from collecting State and local sales tax for sales to States where they do not have a physical presence despite the fact there was an obligation to collect sales tax on those purchases. This puts Main Street businesses at a competitive disadvantage, hurts the ability of Rhode Island to keep jobs in the State, and has strained State budgets all across the United States. In 2012, Rhode Island lost out on estimated $70 million in uncollected revenue. Revenue that was owed but because of an outdated Supreme Court decision went uncollected. It is past time that we fix this loophole. I have talked to a lot of local business owners about this in Rhode Island and many of them say the same thing: Since when is requiring all customers to pay the same sales tax rate a tax increase? This is a bipartisan proposal. It seeks to keep jobs in our communities, and bring much-needed revenue to strained State budgets all across the United States. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and continued efforts to close this long-outstanding loophole. I thank them and yield the floor.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. I want to thank the Senator from Michigan for allowing me to participate in this colloquy. I also commend her for a thoughtful, insightful, and extremely compelling argument about creating jobs as a way not only to give people a chance to rise in the middle class but also to accomplish our other objective, which is ultimately to reduce the deficit. As the Senator pointed out, when I was here with her in the late 1990s, we reached the point where we had a projected surplus of perhaps $5 trillion over 10 years. She has catalogued the way in which that surplus has been eroded. What we need to do is focus, as she suggests, on the urgent need to create jobs and ensure our Nation's budget makes investments in growing and strengthening the middle class. We are all here as beneficiaries of the programs and policies of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, which consciously built the middle class and invested in us. Our parents invested in us. We need to do the same thing. She is absolutely correct, the investments we are proposing in this Democratic budget will be critical not only to individual success but to our success as an economy, and as a global competitor. I thank her for her words. I am here to join her to address this pressing need to create jobs, to strengthen the economic recovery, and to underscore the vast differences between the proposal we are making, and the budget proposed by the House of Representatives, by our Republican colleagues. Let me state what is a very disturbing figure. There are 12 million unemployed Americans, with 4.8 million of these individuals unemployed for more than 6 months. We are seeing unprecedented levels of long-term unemployment. Americans are struggling to stay in their homes, put their children through school and put food on their table. In my State we are unfortunately among the top States in a category no one wants to be leading, and that is unemployment. The harsh reality of what we are facing in Rhode Island was brought home with a stunning article in last Sunday's Washington Post. It noted some 180,000 Rhode Islanders, over 15 percent of our population, receive SNAP benefits, supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits. Some are receiving SNAP because they don't have jobs, although they have looked from month to month to month. Some have jobs, but the pay is so little they qualify under the income limits of the SNAP program. I want to particularly thank the Senator from Michigan for her valiant efforts to increase SNAP funding. Literally we are talking about putting food on people's tables. Fifteen percent of my State of Rhode Island depends on food support to have a healthy diet for them and particularly for their children. When we talk about what we want to do with the budget, it is about getting people back to work. That is what they want. They don't want a SNAP benefit. They want good jobs. They want the same opportunities, from which we benefited, which helped build a strong middle class. What is their greatest fear? Not just falling out of the middle class, but that their children won't even have a remote chance of middle-class income or a middle-class lifestyle, those opportunities which we in our day took almost for granted. We must turn things around. As the Senator pointed out, the Republican policy is focused on cutting taxes for the very wealthy. This policy has been demonstrated over the last decade to not produce good-paying jobs for middle-income Americans. However, it does produce very substantial benefits for the wealthiest of Americans. That is not the way to grow a country. That is not what many people today and through our history have sacrificed their lives for. They are not out there serving in Afghanistan and other places so those who have much could have more. It is so those who have very little would have a chance, at least a chance. This is what we are talking about behind all the numbers. We are talking about investing in America. We need to make that investment. The other side of the aisle indulges in what I believe is a fallacy: The only way of fixing the economy is cutting the deficit. But, instead of focusing exclusively on deficit reduction in the near term, we need to pass legislation which will put people back to work, give them a job, give them hope, and give them an opportunity, give them a sense they can make their lives and their children's lives much better. The Democrats have proposed a series of initiatives over the last several years to do just that, such as tax incentives for small business to hire people, repairing schools, roads, bridges, or tax breaks for low- and middle-income Americans so they may have a little bit more in their paychecks. We have tried to pass these measures but have been frustrated consistently, even though we have the majority, because of filibusters and procedural delays. The American people understand that we need to create jobs. They want us to act. They want us to act to their benefit, not for the very few but for the majority of Americans. The other approach Republicans espouse is hand-in-hand with this notion of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans is that austerity through spending cuts can grow the economy. That you can cut programs, cut everything, and that will grow the economy. That is not reality. What we see and what history suggests, when you are cutting during an economic recovery, you are basically counteracting the recovery. You are contracting economic expansion. You are not adding to the momentum of growth, you are subtracting from the growth. If you want a current example, look across the ocean to Europe and Great Britain. They embarked upon an austerity program several years ago. Most commentators suggest they are in worse shape today than they were 3 or 4 years ago when they started this austerity program. This is the result of cutting, cutting, cutting. If we proceed down that pathway, we will be in worse shape several years from now than we are today. We can be in better shape by investing in our future and by creating jobs. Another aspect of this too is it is not only the question of filibustering our proposals to create jobs--but that we know in August 2011 there was a real threat to undermine the full faith and credit of the United States, to refuse for the first time in modern history to increase the debt ceiling, to pay the debts which we owed. And the majority of those debts, at least the much of the recent ones, resulted from the previous administration. And so the debt ceiling crisis triggered the whole process which has led us today to sequestration. Now Americans will have to suffer through sequestration. The Congressional Budget Office has already said if we don't reverse sequestration, we will lose 750,000 jobs. Those are the jobs middle- income Americans are expecting and hoping for. We are losing about .6 percent of growth. We will be headed where our friends across the ocean are headed, not expanding but contracting; not increasing employment but decreasing employment. We are worse off because of these austere policies, not better off. What the Democratic budget does--and my colleague from Michigan has outlined it very well and with great articulation, that the way you should deal with these issues is through a balanced approach--a balance of revenue and spending cuts which will not harm our economy. That is what we did in 1993 and 1994 when I was a Member of the House of Representatives. President Clinton came to us and said: Here it is, we are going to cut spending and we are going to raise revenue. And we passed it by one vote in the House, one vote in the Senate--not one Republican vote, but still by one vote here and one vote in the House of Representatives. That set the stage for the later efforts that finally led not only to a balanced budget but to a surplus, and that is the approach we have to adopt today. It's an approach that works. The Republican budget calls for a total of $4.6 trillion in cuts and would leave the sequester in place. So it would compound the damage of the sequester. The Republican budget has also been estimated to provide millionaires an average tax cut of $400,000. Once again, the big winners in this proposal are the wealthiest Americans, not those who are struggling to put food on the table, to get a job, to see their children have a better future. And, again, the Republican budget refuses to responsibly address the $1 trillion sequester. They provide nearly $6 trillion in tax cuts that, again, overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans, but don't address the $1 trillion sequester. So essentially their budget is compounding the difficulties we have in growing this economy and creating jobs.

Mr. REED. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. REED. I would like to reemphasize the point the Senator from Michigan has made and Senator Murray has made, which is that we have been down this road before. We can't simply cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans to magically create jobs. What it produced in reality was a huge deficit, along with two unfunded wars. But that seems to be the message again from the other side--let's just cut taxes and then, of course, cut spending too. That is not the balanced approach we need in the Nation. That is not the balanced approach that in the 1990s, as my colleague pointed out, got us to a surplus, got us to a sense that we were really moving forward and that the middle class had a chance, that their children would have a better life. And that is what we have to do again. When I look at my State of Rhode Island, I can cite a myriad of examples of the harm that would be caused by the Republican budget. The budget they are proposing, which leaves the sequester in place would result in about a $4.5 million cut in Federal support for our public schools. I can tell you that every city and town in Rhode Island is struggling just to keep the lights on. If they lose $4.5 million of Federal aid, that is going to make it even harder. And do you know what happens? Well, guess what happens to property taxes. They go up. And not just Rhode Island, all across the country because one of the ironies here is that every mayor understands that ultimately they have to balance their budgets, and so they will raise taxes and they will cut spending. But they will do it, hopefully, in a balanced way, similar to what we are espousing in our approach to the budget. Now, we also have a situation where, if we look at the Republican budget, there are all sorts of abstract cuts--nondiscretionary domestic spending, et cetera--that translates into real harm, and that affects real lives. For example, there is an estimated $3.3 trillion in cuts to programs that benefit low- and middle-income Americans. Of that $3.3 trillion, $2.6 trillion are cuts to Medicaid and subsidies that help modest-income American families across the country to get health insurance. As I mentioned before, there is a projection--and the Senator is an authorizer for this program--of $135 billion being taken out of the SNAP program. Again, let me go back to last Sunday's Washington Post story. Fifteen percent of the people in Rhode Island depend on this to help them get just adequate nutrition including children--and we are going to cut $135 billion out of this? And on the other side of the spectrum, we are giving a $400,000 tax cut or more to the wealthiest Americans? That is not fair, and it is not good economics. We can't have a generation of children who have been deprived of good nutrition, who have been deprived of good housing; if we do, we are not going to have the productive workers who will lead this Nation forward in this century and beyond. These spending cuts and tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans just do not make any sense. It doesn't balance the books, and it doesn't keep our obligation to the majority of Americans to give them a fighting chance. Our budget, in contrast, has $100 billion in projects to put Americans to work and repair the worst of our crumbling bridges and roads. There is not one of our colleagues who can't find some 20 or even more bridges in their State that require repair right away, and that would put hundreds of people to work productively and would increase the economic efficiency of our Nation. Let me give an example. We had a major portion of I-95, the north- south road in Rhode Island--north-south right past Providence- Pawtucket, RI. for several years being rebuilt. The good news is that it is being rebuilt, but before we could rebuild, we had to divert truck traffic, which meant they couldn't efficiently deliver their loads. We had to station State police 24 hours a day to prevent the trucks from going there. So we had to engage all those individual law enforcement officers because the bridge couldn't support basic travel. We are now close to completing the whole project so we should no longer have to have State troopers out there 24 hours a day, and truckers no longer have to take a 20-mile detour to deliver their loads. When we talk about infrastructure, we are talking about economic efficiency as well as putting people to work. The Democratic budget does this. I think we have also made very difficult choices--tough choices--in making sure that we are paying our way, that we are paying down the deficit and doing it in a way that doesn't cost us the recovery and creating the jobs we need right away. I commend Chairman Murray because she has done a remarkable job of shepherding this bill through, of balancing so many complicated issues and making sure we have kept faith with the Americans who sent us here. They just want a chance. They just want to be able to think that their child is going to have a better life than they have had. I think this budget goes much further than our colleagues' to give them that chance, to give them that hope, and to give them that opportunity. With that, I yield back to the Senator from Michigan.

Mr. REED. Senator.

Mr. REED. Those are the estimates I have received, and I believe they are reliable. Many commentators have looked at the budget and concluded that this represents a remarkable reduction in taxes for the wealthiest Americans. And once again, it shouldn't come as a surprise because, as we recall--and I was here in 2001, when I voted against the Bush tax cuts--the mantra back then was that they are the job creators; just cut those taxes and those jobs will grow. But we saw during the Bush administration one of the poorest private job creation records of any President since World War II. And here Republicans are repeating the same line, as they say, deja vu all over again: Cut the taxes, and magically the jobs will grow. But, you grow jobs by having a balanced approach and through investment in human capital and physical capital, such as roads and bridges, and also by having the revenue to be responsible so you pay your way.

Mr. REED. Well, no. In fact, there was a front page story today, I believe, in one of the major newspapers declaring the fact that they are home from the battlefront and are now in the unemployment line. So we are seeing a remarkable number of veterans who are unemployed. And these are men and women in their twenties. They certainly want to work. They worked very hard defending this country, yet now they are coming home and have significant levels of unemployment. That is one of the real problems, as well as our need and our obligation to support veterans health care, particularly mental health care, to support the Veterans' Administration. The irony, of course, is that we are seeing even higher levels of unemployment, in some cases, among young veterans than we are in the population at large. That is particularly bitter and ironic for those people who have served and sacrificed and are continuing to serve and sacrifice.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I would like to speak on the amendment, but I see the sponsor is here. If he has no objection, I will speak, then ask for a vote. The Coburn amendment proposes to reduce funding for 49 national heritage areas by $8 million and redirect $6 million to park operations. It also strikes the reauthorization of 12 areas located across the country, including one in my State of Rhode Island but also in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia, among other States. The amendment doesn't provide a real fix for the problems with respect to national park funding. Moving $6 million is not going to make up for the $134 million cut we have had to impose upon the Park Service. In addition, there has been some suggestion this would help restore White House tours. Those tours are governed by the Secret Service budget, which is not part of this amendment. So that would not be affected. These heritage areas are private-public partnerships. They are not national parks. They provide huge economic development. They are located across the country. It is something we should restore, maintain, and not cut. With that, I would simply add the National Park Conservation Association opposes the amendment, and I ask my colleagues to oppose the amendment.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Madam President, I would ask my colleague, Senator Mikulski, Chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, if she would join me and our colleague Senator Collins in a colloquy on the Weatherization Assistance Program.

Mr. REED. I thank the Chairwoman for that response. I look forward to working with her, Senator Collins, and others to support this program in fiscal year 2013 and during the fiscal year 2014 funding cycle.

Mr. REED. I thank the Chairwoman. I know a major reason that the Chairwoman wants to get back to regular order is that continuing resolutions are blunt instruments that do not allow for the adjustments for specific programs. One place where that has played out is in the Energy and Water Development bill, specifically with respect to the Weatherization Assistance Program. I know the chairwoman has long supported the weatherization program, which helps provide energy efficient retrofits to low-income individuals and families. It also provides jobs, which is so important given the continuing challenges in our economy. President Obama described the program this way in an interview in 2009, ``[y]ou're getting a three-fer. Not only are you immediately putting people back to work but you're also saving families on [their] energy bills and you're laying the groundwork for long-term energy independence. That's exactly the kind of program that we should be funding.'' Under the Recovery Act, we made a one-time investment of $5 billion in this program, which has historically received $175 to $200 million in annual appropriations. As the program worked through this infusion, funding for the regular program was temporarily scaled back. In FY 2013, funding for the program will be only $68 million even before the sequester is applied. Since there will no longer be carry-over funds available, there will not be enough funding to mount a viable program in all 50 States. That is regrettable, particularly when the Senate bill contained $145 million, $6 million more than the budget request. It is also counterproductive to our goals to create jobs and increase energy efficiency. I would ask the Chairwoman if she would work with us and the Department of Energy to find ways to sustain the program through appropriate reprogramming so that it does not cease to be a 50-State program. I would also ask if she would work with us in fiscal year 2014 to see how we can support this important initiative. Before I yield to the Chairwoman to respond, I would ask Senator Collins if she would like to comment.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Yes, that is correct.

Mr. REED. Yes, I will welcome the opportunity to work with the Senator and our colleagues here in the Senate on priority needs within the Interior bill, including American Indian and Alaska Native health and education issues, to the extent possible given the overall budget constraints we face.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Madam President, before I begin, I want to thank Chairwoman Mikulski. She has demonstrated both leadership and resolve in her new role and in assembling this bill under very challenging circumstances. Overall, this bill provides a total of $1.043 trillion for discretionary spending, and it reflects a number of reductions that the Appropriations Committee had to make in order to accommodate the $4 billion cut to the discretionary spending caps mandated by the January agreement on the so-called ``fiscal cliff.'' In addition, because of a point of order raised by Senator Toomey last year, the emergency designation was removed for $3.5 billion in disaster and mitigation funding in the Superstorm Sandy appropriations bill. I opposed this point of order because I believe disaster funding should be treated as an emergency, as it has been in disasters past. Because we fell three votes shy of the 60 needed to waive the point of order, we must now absorb $3.5 billion in cuts in this bill. That will have real impacts on critical programs. Moreover, I am deeply disappointed we have not been able to come up with a commonsense and balanced solution to turn off sequestration. These crippling across-the-board spending cuts 7.8 percent for defense programs and 5 percent for domestic discretionary programs will be applied to virtually every discretionary program in this bill. If left unaddressed, they will translate into an estimated 750,000 fewer jobs across this country, including in my home State of Rhode Island, where the unemployment rate is just under 10 percent. I was one of a majority of Senators who voted for a reasonable solution to replace sequestration with a balanced mix of revenues and spending reductions. I am frustrated that a minority in this Chamber blocked this plan, which would have prevented the self-inflicted job losses and economic pain of sequestration. Now, in order to avoid a government shutdown on March 27, we must forge ahead and pass the best appropriations bill we can, despite these limitations. Even in the face of these limitations, the Senate bill represents a better path because it makes responsible investments and saves jobs. Without the funding provided in this bill to meet the funding levels promised in MAP-21, last year's transportation authorization bill, we would lose an additional 25,000 jobs. As chairman of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, I worked to provide $2.4 billion in funding for clean water and drinking water projects, $336 million more than the President requested. This investment, when combined with state matches and leveraging, will support 849 projects and 130,000 jobs. Let me turn to the Interior title of this continuing resolution in more detail. The CR provides $29.8 billion, which is an increase of $650 million over the Subcommittee's FY 2012 allocation. While that amount is a 2 percent increase, most of it, approximately $600 million, is needed to fully fund the 10-year average for fire suppression. In addition, we must also absorb the cost of $423 million appropriated as part of the September continuing resolution to repay fire borrowing that occurred in FY 2012. Even though the subcommittee's allocation rose, so did the costs of programs we must fund. The House was able to avoid tough decisions for the Environmental Protection Agency and Interior funding in its CR because it had an even larger allocation for this title. But it only accomplished that by shortchanging other important investments in other titles, including transportation, child care, education, health research, police, and firefighters. Lest anyone be confused by the House's new-found commitment to the EPA and other environmental priorities, one should only review the devastating cuts it made to these programs in its initial FY 2013 committee-reported Interior Appropriations bill. With the resources available and the challenges we face, I believe we in the Senate have funded all agencies in the Interior Appropriations title fairly, and we have still been able to achieve a number of important environmental goals. As I have already noted, we have been able to provide a solid level of funding for infrastructure through the clean water and drinking water State revolving funds. We were able to hold funding levels steady for grants that help States run their environmental programs at $1.1 billion. These funds create jobs at the State level and provide for enforcement of our Federal pollution control laws. As I mentioned, we also fully funded the 10-year average of fire suppression for both the Interior Department and Forest Service, in anticipation of a tough fire season. We were able to include $53 million in new funding to hire doctors, nurses, and support staff at newly constructed Indian Health Service facilities. These funds will allow seven facilities to open their doors to patients that would otherwise sit vacant. I am pleased to say this bill also includes language to extend the authorizations of 12 national heritage areas so they will continue to receive their partnership grant funding from the National Park Service. We want to make sure these heritage areas continue to thrive, so I am proud we were able to extend their authorizations in this bill. And it is worth noting that these grants don't require new funding they are already paid for within the existing National Park Service budget. This is important in my State, with the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, but for many others, as well. Finally, land and water conservation funding is sustained at the FY 2012 level of $322 million. Of course, there are tradeoffs within this bill, and places where we had to sustain cuts below the FY 2012 enacted level. This is in part due to the hand we were dealt by the President in the budget he submitted for FY 2013. We accepted cuts proposed by the administration for several programs, including construction programs and Superfund. The Senate bill funds the EPA at $8.34 billion, which, while a reduction of $107 million from the FY 2012 level, is the amount requested by the President for FY 2013. Additionally, the Senate bill spares the agency from the debilitating cuts set in the FY 2013 House Interior bill, which funded the EPA at a level that is $1.29 billion less than FY 2012. Yes, that is a billion. Unfortunately, however, those reductions alone were not enough to meet our obligation to provide an approximately $1 billion increase for fire. We had to make cuts to other operating programs in the bill cuts that I know will only be more difficult because they will come in addition to sequestration. Before I conclude, I want to address a few other aspects of this bill and the consequences of continuing resolutions and the sequester. A major reason we are now confronting such huge deficits is the utter collapse of our financial markets beginning in 2008. Some of this collapse occurred because parts of our financial system were either lightly or barely regulated such as our derivatives and subprime mortgage markets. However, we also learned the severe costs of having an under- resourced and outmatched Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission. I still remember an April 2008 hearing with former SEC Chair Christopher Cox, in which he stated the SEC didn't need more resources meanwhile Bernie Madoff was scamming more and more victims in the largest Ponzi scheme in history, and Lehmann Brothers was levered 30-1 and hiding its precarious financial condition through repurchase agreements. By starving the SEC and CFTC of resources, we are repeating the mistakes of the recent past. The CFTC is already suspending its examinations of key market participants and ``shelving'' enforcement actions because of budget constraints. The impact of static funding along with the sequester will further erode its oversight. Indeed, under the CR, the CFTC will operate with a budget that is 37 percent less than the administration says it needs. The case of the SEC is more disturbing. While subject to appropriation, the SEC has no impact on the deficit since its expenditures are offset by transaction fees applied to the industry. With the impacts of the sequester, the SEC will operate at 20 percent less than the administration has requested. This failure to appropriately fund the SEC will do nothing to improve the fiscal situation. At the same time, our economy and our capital markets will be more vulnerable. That makes no sense. If we want American markets to be the most liquid, transparent, efficient, and orderly in the world, we need to provide the cops on the beat--the SEC and CFTC with an adequate and stable source of funding. I also want to speak about the impacts CRs can have on specific programs because they offer no nuance or flexibility. That has been shown to be the case this year with the Weatherization Assistance Program, a program that creates jobs and helps provide energy efficient retrofits to low-income individuals and families. President Obama described the program this way in a 2009 interview: ``[Y]ou're getting a three-fer. Not only are you immediately putting people back to work but you're also saving families on [their] energy bills and you're laying the groundwork for long-term energy independence. That's exactly the kind of program that we should be funding.'' Under the Recovery Act, we invested $5 billion in this program, which annually received only $175 to $200 million. As the program worked through this infusion, funding for the regular program was scaled back. In FY 2013, funding will be only $68 million even before the sequester is applied. Since there will no longer be carry-over from earlier years, there will not be enough funding to mount a viable program in all 50 states. That's not only regrettable, it is also counterproductive to our goals to create jobs and increase energy efficiency. I hope we can work with the Department of Energy to find ways to sustain the program in 2013 as we seek to address the shortfall in 2014. Finally, while this should be the case for all of our spending priorities, I want to note that this package includes a full defense appropriations bill that provides DOD with the funding for programs it needs. I am particularly pleased that the bill provides funding to build two Virginia-class submarines in FY 2013 and to purchase equipment for two submarines in FY 2014, which will ensure that we will have the capital resources and workforce in place to move forward. This also retains thousands of good paying jobs for highly skilled workers in my State and elsewhere. There is much to comment on about the tough choices we have had to make in this bill and the sequester cuts that loom over every discretionary program. Given the very challenging circumstances we face, Chairwoman Mikulski has done her best to craft a bill that can clear the Senate and hopefully get to the President's desk so that we can avoid a government shutdown, which would be even more disastrous.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Personnel of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 13, 2013, at 10 a.m.

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Special Committee on Aging be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 13, 2013, to conduct a hearing entitled ``876-SCAM: Jamaican Phone Fraud Targeting Seniors.'' The Committee will meet in room 562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building beginning at 2 p.m.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Well, I thank the Senator for bringing that to my attention because one point I would make--and I think Senator Inhofe does want to engage also--but one point I would make is that in this EPA rulemaking process there is a requirement to evaluate the cost and benefits with respect to the rule. In that sense, many of these issues have been addressed, and they have been done so in a very careful way. Two, it has been done by listening to--in fact, requiring legally to take the opinions, the comments of many people, stakeholders from all sides. And then, frankly, the other cost and the traditional cost to protest a rule is not to legislatively eliminate it, particularly in an appropriations bill, but to contest the rule in court based upon the facts.

Mr. REED. I would like to, at the appropriate moment, be recognized to speak, respectfully, against the Senator's amendment.

Mr. REED. Now is the time? Well, in that case, let me go ahead and speak.

Mr. REED. Mr. President, Senator Inhofe is proposing a very sweeping amendment that would affect a rule the EPA has developed over the normal rulemaking process, with notice and comments over many, many, many months. It is scheduled to go into effect in May of this year. The amendment the Senator is offering, as I understand it, exempts all farms from this EPA oilspill regulation. Again, this rule is designed to prevent or significantly prevent the pollution of navigable waters by oilspills coming from agricultural operations. One of the issues here is the definition of what appropriate farm should be exempt. As I understand the amendment, it is all farms. That includes large agribusinesses that have the capability not only of mitigating these hazards but also the resources to do so and, collectively, would contribute to environmental quality. I know the agricultural community is concerned. And I know also this the type of very complicated legislation that is best resolved at the authorization level. The Senator from Oklahoma, I think, has already indicated there are bills pending, and these bills are much more finely attuned in nuance to address more specifically the problem rather than a total effective preemption from the rule for all farms. So I would urge very strenuously that--and I know the intentions of the Senator from Oklahoma are to assist the agricultural community, but I do not think this is the place or the time, as we try very seriously to get a bill through by the end of the week, essentially, that will keep the government operating, to decide on these complicated authorization issues, effectively cutting out completely a very serious and detailed rulemaking process that the EPA has undertaken. So I will urge my colleagues at the appropriate time to resist the amendment.

Mr. REED. I appreciate very much that clarification. But let me retain my time and then yield to the Senator from California.

Mr. REED. I will certainly yield.

Mr. REED. I will yield.