Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I will just respond by saying to Senator Coburn, I think he should use the remainder of the time, and then I will be able to work with the Democrats to get time.

Mr. SESSIONS. I say to the Senator, take the remainder of the time, if you would like it. I will get my opportunity in a few minutes.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments that have been made about preexisting illnesses, and I do think we can do something with this legislation to fix that. We just have to be careful. If you have two people both making the same salary, they have both worked for 20 years, one individual saved and paid his health care insurance for those 20 years and got sick and is covered by it, and another one chose not to, it is not insurance if a person then walks in and wants somebody else to pay for it. But we can do that. I think we can work through those difficulties, and I would definitely support moving in that direction. My colleagues earlier mentioned about Medicare Advantage, that this is a program some are critical of, and they think we can deliver health care better without the Medicare Advantage part of the Medicare Program. I would say Medicare Advantage can and probably should be reformed, but we shouldn't address the problems in Medicare Advantage by directly cutting its seniors' benefits. With regard to the physicians, in my hometown of Mobile, the medical association ran a poll of their members and 94 percent of them opposed a government option which is in this bill, a part of this legislation. They opposed the bill in general in large numbers. A similar poll in Montgomery, AL, showed the same thing. What I wish to talk about today is the Gregg amendment. The purpose of his amendment is to prevent Medicare from being raided for new entitlements and to use those Medicare savings, any that we can achieve, to save Medicare. I note for the record Senator Gregg, the former chairman of our Budget Committee and the ranking member on the Budget Committee today, is probably the most knowledgeable person in the Senate--not probably, I am pretty certain he is the most knowledgeable person in the Senate on the financial instability of Medicare. He has worked hard over the years to try to identify some way to fix it. A number of years ago he proposed an amendment, an idea that would have saved, over 5 years, $10 billion through cost effectiveness and smart actions within Medicare, and that $10 billion would have enabled the Medicare Program to extend its life. Because all the actuaries tell us--and there is no dispute about this--that by 2017 Medicare will be in default. Less money will be coming in than going out. So Senator Gregg saw that coming and he attempted to fix it. He was attacked by my colleagues on the other side for this $10 billion efficiency idea that would have strengthened Medicare, not spent it on something else, but he would spend it to strengthen Medicare. I do not think a single Member of the Democratic Party voted for it and several Republicans didn't. It was a tie vote. The Vice President had to break the vote. The idea now that we are going to find $465 billion in Medicare savings without damaging the care and take that money not to strengthen Medicare and put it on a self-sustaining basis, as we should be trying to do, but to take it and create an entirely new entitlement program, is something I cannot support. Actually, I understand my colleagues in their speeches say they don't support it. They say they don't. They voted for the Bennet amendment which sort of seemed to say that. But we knew, those of us who read it carefully, that the amendment of the Senator from Colorado wouldn't do anything. Even the New York Times which supports this bill said it was a meaningless amendment. So let's talk about where we are. The Gregg amendment, unlike the Bennet amendment, means what it says. This is a serious vote. It simply says if you take money from Medicare, it ought to be used to strengthen Medicare, not to create a new program with it. It is pretty clear about it. It has teeth. It means what it says. It is not a joke. It is not a flimflam. It is a serious amendment. So we will now be, I think, ascertaining how people in this body actually believe with reference to Medicare and whether we ought to be taking money from it. The amendment says if non-Medicare savings--which are very few, if you want to know the truth--if the non-Medicare savings in this proposal do not offset the new cost of this new bill, the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of HHS are prohibited from implementing new spending or revenue reduction provisions in the bill. The reality is there are not going to be any--or very few say non-Medicare savings. That is where the savings are, frankly. The amendment prevents Medicare cuts from being used to create new and expanded entitlement programs and to fuel massive government growth on the backs of Medicare beneficiaries. I recall for my colleagues that people who pay into Medicare have paid into it all their lives and they are now at a point in their life where they are drawing from it. The social contract we had with them was that they would pay into this program, and when they got to be 65, they would get the benefits from it. They didn't get the benefits of it when they were 30. They didn't get the benefits when they were 40. They didn't get the benefits when they were 50, yet they were paying in all these years, and now when the time comes to benefit from it, we have a massive plan to raid that program that clearly is the most unstable, actuarially unsound program we have in our country. It is heading into default. When it goes into default, it is not going to gradually go beyond the break-even line; it is going to drop below it dramatically. It accelerates. One study from the Heritage Foundation, I believe, said as much as $80 trillion over the lifetime of instability in this program. So I don't think anybody disputes the numbers and the problems that Medicare faces. The bill says we are going to have a budget-neutral piece of legislation here, and don't worry, it is not going to add to the debt. In fact, we are told by the President that not one dime will be added to the debt. We have Members of this body who say the bill on the floor will create a $130 billion surplus over 10 years. Well, that would be good if it were true. How do you do that? Well, there are a number of things, but one of them is you have a $494 billion tax increase, and an $848 billion fund achieved largely from Medicare. That is where the $465 billion comes from: Medicare. But the truth is that is not an accurate number, because the tax increases start immediately and the benefits don't start until 2014, 5 years down the road, the fifth year. When you add that up and you take the first 10 years of the real implementation of the legislation that is on the floor, it is going to cost $2.5 trillion. That is a big amount of money. Also, it does not fix the doctors payments that everybody assumed and thought and we were told would be part of health care reform. That is not done. Why is it not done? Because the bill wouldn't balance. You wouldn't be able to tell the American people that it brings in revenue when it doesn't. That is $250 billion to fix an essential payment to our doctors that we cannot cut. We need to put that on a sound financial basis. It should be a part of this reform. But since they couldn't--they figured they had raised enough taxes and they couldn't claim to cut anymore from Medicare, they put it out here on the side somewhere and we will do as has been done in the past, unfortunately: Pay the doctors their payments by increasing the debt. Every penny of the money that goes to make up the shortfall in doctor payments increases the debt and it is going to continue and it should end. The bill is not balanced in any fair analysis. It is a shell game. It moves the $250 billion shortfall for doctors out of the bill. They say we don't have a problem, our bill balances. But there is a $250 billion hole sitting over here; we just moved it across the room here. That is not good and sound policy. The Gregg amendment prohibits the using of the $465 billion in Medicare cuts to pay for the new government spending in this legislation. It would keep the Medicare expansions--Medicaid expansions from going into effect without--by having or saving cuts in Medicare or Social Security. Unlike the Bennet amendment, which had no meaning whatsoever, it has some teeth to it. So we will know something significant about how people feel about Medicare and the financial responsibility when this vote comes up. Senator Bennet has said: With my amendment, the bill strengthens Medicare and preserves seniors' benefits. Well, I think that is not an accurate statement. Once and for all, with this amendment, we will be able to show American seniors who have paid into their health care--Medicare--all their lives, that we mean it when we say we don't want to weaken their program. One asks, how can you have such a disagreement, Senator Sessions? Look, you might ask me, they say the money is there; you say you are cutting Medicare; they say it is not cutting Medicare, $465 billion. Somebody ought to be able to get it straight here. How can you possibly have this kind of disagreement? I say to you the general fund budget for the State of Alabama--we are about one-fiftieth of the Nation's population, 4 million people, it is about $2 billion. So how can we lose $465 billion? Well, this is what they are saying. If you listen to much of the comments carefully, they are saying: We are not cutting guaranteed benefits to seniors. They are not saying they are cutting Medicare, if you listen to most of the people who are careful about what they say. They say, We are not cutting guaranteed benefits. I see. What are we doing? We are cutting home health care agencies; we are cutting hospice programs; we are cutting hospitals; we are cutting the disproportionate share hospitals for poor people; we are cutting program after program after program. So they are cutting the providers and telling everybody we are not cutting Medicare. But if we are going to cut providers, why haven't we already done it and put Medicare on a sound footing? You can't cut providers this much. You cannot do so. They will collapse. Doctors already are refusing to take Medicare patients and they are worried about that. I think in the future, if we go through with this legislation, we will see far more will quit seeing those patients. Well, the Gregg amendment makes sure Medicare savings go to making the program more solvent and not to offset the creation of an entirely new entitlement program. There are many things we can do in this legislation to improve health care in America. I know many on our side have offered many things, some of which are in the bill, many of which are not, but we can do a lot of things together that we could agree on that would strengthen and make health care better in this country. This legislation is unsound. We will be raiding Medicare. We will have a massive, new tax increase. If we were going to raise taxes, let me ask, might that money be best spent to make Medicare solvent instead of creating a new program, when we know Medicare is going to be insolvent in just a few years? We will be raising taxes and creating bogus, phantom cuts in Medicare, and they claim that will make this bill balance. They are adjusting the numbers in the bill so the benefits don't start for 5 years, to make the first 10 years look like it is a sound program--looks like it is going to cost $848 billion for the first full 10 years of implementation, and it costs $2.5 trillion. There is not nearly enough money to pay for that. We are just going to be increasing the debt. That is why the American people have noticed. They have been out there at tea parties and meetings and rallies, pleading with us to be responsible, to quit throwing away money, quit acting like there can be something for nothing. There can't be something for nothing. Somebody has to provide care if we say care will be provided. If they provide it, it has to be paid for. That is simple. We are creating a mindset that has resulted in a budget from the President that will double the entire national debt in 5 years and triple the national debt in 10 years. The national debt--$5.7 trillion last year--will go to $11 trillion-plus in 5 years and $17 trillion in 10 years. That is unacceptable. It is irresponsible. We need to listen to our constituents and respond to their commonsense pleas that we act with more responsibility in the Senate. I thank the Chair.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Senator from Arizona for driving home this point. The reason that malpractice litigation reform is not in the bill is simple, plain, and known to every Member of this body because it is opposed by the plaintiff trial lawyers who are big supporters of Democratic Members of the body and the President. That is true. Let me ask Dr. Barrasso, can the Senator think of any other thing that we could do in reforming health care that could save $100 billion and not diminish the quality of care in America? Is there anything else? How do fellow doctors feel about that?

Mr. SESSIONS. I think the Senator raises a very important point. It seems to me that there should be mechanisms created to settle cases much quicker, without the huge payouts going to lawyer fees and litigation. Don't forget, the insurance company that the doctor hires and that is defending the doctor charges too. That is all money going to increase the cost of health care. I have with me, today, working for me, Dr. Conrad Pierce. On a normal day in Alabama, he would be my Sunday school teacher today. Today he is working. He just retired. He delivered 7,000 babies. He told me, some years ago, that an average OB's insurance for a year is $60,000. I don't know whether it is still that way. That was several years ago. Some smaller town physicians may not deliver more than 60 babies a year. That is $1,000 per delivery in insurance premiums. It is driven by this litigation rush we are having, and the pursuit of these big verdicts that sometimes occur and make lawyers wealthy--and, to be fair, sometimes serious injuries occur and serious malpractice occurs. But I absolutely believe this country can, consistent with our heritage of allowing individuals to sue for wrongs done to them, create a much better system for medical malpractice. One of the steps is the one the Senator has mentioned in his amendment.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Grassley for his leadership on this issue. I am going to share some facts and fictions that are relevant to this bill. I think it will explain to anybody who looks at it carefully why Senator Grassley and others who hoped to be able to support this legislation are not able to support it. It is why I am not able to support it. Supporters of this legislation promise that it will do a number of things. We are being told we should support it and vote for it. But it does not do those things that are advertised of it. I wish it did. I wish we could create something for nothing. I wish we could make these numbers balance, but they do not. Earlier today, one of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle said: We would not do anything about hurting Medicare. We Democrats, 45 years ago, created the program, and we would not do anything to hurt it. Well, then, we are going to have a vote. We are going to have a serious vote coming up, probably tomorrow, on the Gregg amendment. Senator Judd Gregg is one of the most knowledgeable persons in the Senate on Medicare. He has worked hard on it for a number of years. He chaired the Budget Committee when Republicans were in the majority, and now he is the ranking Republican. Everybody respects him. He has offered an amendment that would make sure we do not raid Medicare--and that is exactly what this bill would do. If this bill does not raid Medicare, then why wouldn't everybody vote for the Gregg amendment? We are entering a time in which we will have a defining moment. Some of my colleagues will say they voted for the Bennet amendment. As we said then, the amendment meant nothing. It did not do what they said it would do because it did not prohibit the raiding of the Medicare trust fund. But my colleagues wanted to adopt it. This is why people are angry with Congress--it was a cover amendment. For a day or two it seemed as if the cover may have worked; that by voting for this amendment, my colleagues who are supporting this legislation could say they voted to not hurt Medicare. They could go back home and say: I voted for the Bennet amendment. Well, the New York Times--along with anybody who takes the time to look at the amendment--said it was meaningless. And the New York Times supports the legislation. It is meaningless. It was absolutely meaningless. The amendment does not do anything, and will not protect the Medicare program. We are going to have an opportunity to deal with that tomorrow. The numbers in this bill are not adding up. The way this bill is being financed in part is by a $465 billion raid on Medicare. Well, I am going to raise a number of issues, but I will not do them all today, so you can rest with some relaxation. As to some of the things that are critical to whether a person can support this kind of reform, the fiction that has been stated is that the bill's net total cost is $848 billion. Well, in truth, when the bill is fully implemented, the first 10 years of full implementation costs $2.5 trillion, three times the number that their supporters claim. How can this happen? Well, Senator Reid and whomever he selected met down the hall in secret, and they talked about the numbers, and they were worried about how to meet the president's claim that their bill would not cost more than $900 billion. They were trying to promise it would be only $848 billion, but the numbers were not adding up. So what did they do? They delayed the implementation of the expenditures the bill promises for 5 years. So they delay the expenditures, the benefits they promised, for 5 years, but the taxes start now. That way, you can take the first 10 years of the bill, and it looks pretty good because you only have expenditures--the big expenditures--for 5 years, and you have revenue for 10. Well, this is flimflammery. It is not honest. The numbers do not add up. If you examine the bill's costs when it is fully implemented for 10 years, it is $2.5 trillion, $2,500 billion. So I would say, first of all, that is a fiction. The fact is that these numbers are not accurate. They did not do what they said they were going to do. The bill does not do what it promises. No. 2, the President told us in a joint session of Congress that he will not sign a bill that adds one dime to the deficit. Well, that is pretty good. In fact, they produced this $848 billion bill, they say, that it is going to only cost $848 billion. They say, boy, give us a pat on the back. Not only is it going to be deficit neutral and not add to the debt, it is going to increase revenues by $130 billion, and we will pay down the debt. Have you heard that? We are going to pay down the debt. But they had a number of problems. One of them was they promised to pay the doctors a reasonable fee. Under the existing law, the way it was passed in one of the budget balancing acts, doctors are set to take a 23-percent reduction in their payments in 2011 for doing Medicare work--23 percent--which we know we cannot allow to occur. Doctors will quit doing Medicare. Many of them are having difficulty continuing to see Medicare patients now. We cannot cut them 23 percent. So what did the writers of this bill do? They increased the doctors' reimbursement for 1 year. Next year, they give them a one-half-percent increase. But in the next 9 years, their budget assumptions assume the doctors will take a 23-percent cut. That is absolutely bogus. We are not going to cut the doctors 23 percent. We cannot do so and maintain health care in America for our seniors. And yet, that is one of the major problems with Medicare today: we are not on a sound financial basis. This bill assumes that Medicare expenditures for physicians is going to drop 23 percent in 2011 and remain at that rate--and that amounts to a $250 billion shortfall from 2011 through 2019. So, they ask: how can we figure out how to do this, how to make this bill deficit-neutral and less than $900 billion? We don't want to admit that our bill is not a $130 billion surplus over 10 years if we have to pay the doctors, which we are going to pay one way or the other. If we pay the doctors, it will actually be a $120 billion deficit on that issue alone. So what can they do? They came up with a budgetary gimmick. They just took physician pay out of the health care reform package, and decided to try to pass it on the floor of the Senate, with every penny of it, $250 billion, going to the deficit--not a penny of it paid for. So if you bring the physician pay issue back up, and add it to the health care reform bill that we are supposed to be passing, you end up at the beginning of the whole thing with a $120 billion deficit. So, to avoid that, supporters of this bill moved physician pay out of the bill and tried to pass it. A lot of the Democratic colleagues wouldn't vote for that. It failed because, out in the open before the whole world, people did not want to vote, after all of this deficit that we are imposing on our children and grandchildren, for another $250 billion hit to the debt. How can we continue to do that? So it was voted down, thank goodness. But the problem is still there. You have to raise $494 billion in taxes to make this bill deficit-neutral. Instead of using that money to fund new entitlement programs, maybe we ought to use that tax revenue to pay for the program we have: Medicare, the one that is slipping into serious default, one in which we are not paying the doctors what we should be paying them for the work they do. If we are going to raise taxes, maybe that is what we ought to do with the money--and not create a new entitlement benefit that is going to grow and far exceed costs projections in the years to come and further jeopardize our spending. As I think most of my colleagues are pretty well informed, under the present spending program we will double the entire debt of the United States of America in 5 years. Then, in 10 years, we will triple it. It will go from $5.7 trillion to over $17 trillion in 10 years. We cannot keep doing this. It is unsustainable and the American people know it. So, the cost promises of the bill are not being met. There are a lot of other points too. I would just first mention the fact that it was contended at the beginning that this reform bill ought to be able to keep us from spending so much of our gross domestic product on health care. It is a serious matter. We definitely need to wrestle with the cost of health care. It is not an easy thing to deal with. But what does this bill do? It promised it was going to do something about that. It was going to bend the cost curve. Our cost curve on health care is currently going up, and this bill was going to bend it downward, contain the growth of health care as a percentage of the gross domestic product in America, and free up money for economic growth and jobs and other important items. Well, does the bill do that? No, it doesn't. As Senator Thune has pointed out, and others have, health care currently is about 17 percent of our gross domestic product. Of the total wealth of America, its productivity, 17 percent goes to providing health care. If this bill is passed, it will increase to 21 percent, and that is a faster rate of increase than if we didn't pass this bill at all. That is a big deal. I thought we had a promise and a commitment that the bill would reduce the percentage of growth there. Indeed, it will not. There are a number of other issues that I will be talking about, including how the actual premiums for average families for insurance will be going up instead of going down as has been promised by the President and how this bill will increase the deficit and not reduce it; how it will increase the percentage of GDP to health care and not decrease it; how it will increase taxes and how it will raid Medicare, but not shore up the program. I am just going to repeat this again, because it is important: This bill is a raid on Medicare. It cannot be disputed, in my view. The idea that we could take $465 billion out of Medicare and put it into an entirely new program without having any adverse effect on Medicare is something I don't think anybody can imagine to be true. How did they do that, you might ask. Well, Senator Sessions, surely they thought this through. How can they say that? This is the gimmick. This is how they do it: We are not denying any ``guaranteed'' benefits under Medicare, they say. Don't worry, seniors. All your guaranteed benefits are going to be provided. Where does the $465 billion come from? Well, we are just going to cut the providers, not your benefits. We are going to cut hospitals. We are going to cut hospice. We are going to cut home health care. We are going to cut nursing homes. We are going to cut disproportionate share hospitals that treat the poor, all of these things. We are going to cut all of these institutions and groups that provide health care, but don't worry. You will still get all of the benefits you had before. Study after study indicates that the health care providers are already operating on the margin. Health care will be savaged under this bill. Second, if, indeed, we could save money in Medicare--and I think there are some savings there, and we need to work at it and see what we can do without breaching the promise we made to our seniors--if we could save money there, let me ask my colleagues: What would you do with the money that is saved? Would you use it to try to keep Medicare healthy, or would you create a new entitlement program with it and raid the seniors' money? Well, that is what has happened. The savings that are from Medicare need to be kept in Medicare so that we can keep the program from going insolvent in 2017. We should use that money, those savings to help the seniors. Remember, Medicare is funded and has been funded by people such as Bill Eberle from Huntsville, AL, who wrote me about it. He said he paid into the fund for 40 years and now he is ready to draw down benefits. He didn't get any benefit from his years of Medicare taxes until he hit 65. But now he is ready to draw, and we are considering taking his money and spending it on somebody else. He doesn't like that. He doesn't think that is right, and he is correct. That is why I am not able to support the legislation. It doesn't do what it promised. It is going to make our health care situation worse. It is going to create greater debt at a time when our spending is already out of control. I thank the Chair and my colleagues. I hope as this debate goes forward that we can make some improvements, although I am not confident of the direction that we are headed right now. It seems as though any significant attempt to make real progress with the bill is failing. But Senator Gregg's amendment is important. I hope my colleagues will study up on it and vote to preserve Medicare and to keep the savings that can be obtained in Medicare in the program, and not create a new entitlement. I thank the Chair.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I thank Senator Grassley, and I appreciate his leadership on this very important issue. As I have reviewed the legislation and looked at the analysis, the financial accounting that has gone into it, I have been astounded, beyond my ability to express it, by the errors and fictitious promises that have been made by the bill's supporters. My colleagues and people listening to or reading these words may think what I am saying cannot be true, that this is an exaggeration or has absolutely another side to the issue. But the statements I am making, I believe, are accurate, and if I am in error, I am glad to stand corrected. The numbers are so huge they cannot, in reality, be hidden. The numbers simply do not add up. President Obama had a grand concept in his mind. He was following, I think, a great chimera of reform that he believed he could accomplish. He was able to express it on the campaign trail with cadence, passion, and skill. People liked those promises. As so often is the case with many of us, he came to believe his own rhetoric, his own words, and those words took on a reality of their own. But once one takes office, words cease to be reality. Facts then dominate. Promises easily made in the Iowa spring or the New Hampshire winter, if not carefully constructed when made, become unreachable when a candidate takes office. Realities, I have to say, have risen to defeat his vision. They are not compatible. One, the basic promises he has made financially under this bill cannot be met. The numbers do not add up. They do not work. Two, the present debt crisis we are in, a crisis that will lead to doubling of the national debt in 5 years, the debt accumulated from the founding of the Republic, will double in 5 years and triple in 10, according to our own Congressional Budget Office. That does not include any money spent on this legislation because it is not current law. It will only make it worse. The financial crisis we are facing makes it even more important that we act with care and caution before we move forward. I also note that many people today are happy with the quality of the health care they receive. They are nurses, they are doctors, the quality of the diagnostic equipment, the hospitals they have to utilize. They do not have any desire, whatsoever, for the Federal Government to take that over. What they have been concerned about--and rightly so--are the rising costs. But the promises in this bill to reduce costs for the average American have not been achieved. Costs will continue to go up for average Americans. There are many flaws, many fictions in the legislation. Its promises sound good, but reality, in fact, is interfering. I will point out a number of promises that have been made and the facts that dispute those. I will then point out what I think are the real facts. I will ask and evaluate this bill on how well it meets the promises that have been made for it. From this analysis, it becomes clear to me that it is an offer we can and an offer we must refuse. Fiction No. 1: The allegation has been made and statements have been made from the beginning that the bill would cost $848 billion. The facts are, when the new programs created by this bill are fully implemented, the bill will cost $2.5 trillion. I think the sponsors of the bill acknowledge that. No. 1, is the cost $848 billion as promised? The answer is, no, it is much more than that. In fact, $2.5 trillion--2,500 billion dollars. How can we be that far apart? The bill's new benefits programs, the expenditures the bill calls for are not phased in until 2014, the fifth year of the 2010-2019 period, during which the cost of this bill is scored by the Congressional Budget Office. For example, the insurance subsidies funded by the Federal Government do not begin until 2014. Also, according to the bill, Medicaid will be expanded up to 133 percent of Federal poverty level, but that does not happen until 2014. It is disingenuous at best--just not accurate, some would say dishonest--for promoters of this legislation to claim the costs of the bill are only $848 billion, when they don't begin to pay out the new benefits in the 10-year period until 5 years from now. So shouldn't you score the bill from the time the benefits start and then for 10 years to get a 10-year honest score of the legislation? The Reid bill that is on the floor today, that was written basically in secret and added to this unrelated piece of legislation to get it to the floor, this piece of legislation begins to collect fees from insurers, medical device companies, and others--they are collecting money in increased fees and taxes--as soon as 2010. But when the true 10-year score, when the expenditures start from 2014 to 2023--the first 10 years of real implementation of the bill--that is when the cost of the program is $2.5 trillion. I don't think that is disputable in any significant way. Maybe a little here or there. I am just explaining what the facts are. Overall, costs rise too. They do not go down. The Congressional Budget Office states that, ``Under the legislation, Federal Government outlays for health care would increase during the 2010-2019 period, as would the Federal budgetary commitment to health care.'' So the Federal Government spending on health care, far from going down, is increased under this legislation. We currently spend one-sixth of our total gross domestic product-- one-sixth of the productivity of our economy--on health care. How much more can we afford to pay? And wasn't it the original intent of the bill to rein in health care spending to reduce the percentage of GDP going to health care? Wasn't that one of the concerns our business community has had--that too much of America's wealth is going to health care? They would like to see something that would reduce that. I suppose the fact that it utterly fails in that regard and, in fact, increases the national health care expenditures from 17 percent of GDP now--more than any other country--to 21 percent is the reason groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have said this bill must be defeated and have aggressively opposed it. They do not always get engaged in these issues, but on this question they are engaged, and they have said it will not do and not meet the concerns President Obama reflected upon. He talked about the need to reduce the percentage of GDP on health care, but it is going up under this legislation, according to the scoring of the CBO. One more question. If the benefits don't start until after 5 years from today, why is it so important to pass this monstrous bill today? Why can't we slow down a little bit? Why can't we do exactly as we are asking and go step by step and find out the things we know can work and do those things--particularly those things we can do now--that don't cost money but can actually help increase the quality of health care and maybe even bring costs down? Why don't we do those things? Fiction No. 2: The President said in his State of the Union Address to the Congress, the joint session of Congress, that not one dime would be added to the Nation's surging debt. Now, is that true or not? If it is not true, then I think people--

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to speak. I will talk about the other points as the time avails itself and we have the time to do so. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Senator. I would say the matter is a very serious one we are dealing with. Today, I had the opportunity to talk to a very experienced person involved in health care issues for many years. I expressed my bafflement about some of the disagreements we have, about huge issues. One of my staffers wrote down what he said. He said: ``In all my years I have never seen such transparent dishonesty in the Congress.'' He said ``it is the biggest fraud that has been perpetrated in the history of our country,'' in his opinion. Here we have a situation. I want to say I am going to pursue this in a little more detail. I am not going to go into great length tonight. But we have an amendment--Senator Bennet offered an amendment yesterday that said we wouldn't cut guaranteed benefits for Medicare. But the way this deal is being done is they are cutting payments to providers of Medicare. We are already reaching, as Senator Grassley said, a national crisis because by 2017 we will not be able to have a surplus in Medicare, we are going into default in Medicare. Where are we going to get the money? Could we have efficiencies? Could we save some money in Medicare? Could we do some things to keep the program afloat? Perhaps. But if we do so, should not we use it, should not we use any efficiencies in savings that we could scrape together without damaging the commitment we have to our seniors--should not we use those savings to save Medicare that is going into default? I suggest that is a moral and legal commitment. Mr. Eberle has written to me. He has paid for 40 years. He has not been able to draw anything out of it for the 40 years he has paid into it. Now he gets ready to draw, and we are telling him we are going to cut $465 billion out of the Medicare payment. This is not a little bitty matter. We seem to have amazing--we seem to have this dispute. One group, from the other side, says: Don't worry, we are not taking $465 billion from Medicare, and we wouldn't cut Medicare, and we don't believe in cutting Medicare, and we don't want to hurt Medicare in any way. Our side over here is saying: But you are. According to the numbers that are pretty plain in this legislation, hospitals will have a $135 billion reduction; hospices, you have $8 billion for life-ending care that has been so helpful to so many families; nursing homes have a $15 billion reduction; Medicare Advantage, $120 billion; home health agencies that Senator Grassley talked about, a $42 billion reduction. Are we imagining this? Have we somehow formulated this? It all totals up to about $465 billion. This matter, I suggest, is not going away. Either we have reality here or not. I believe the facts will show that we are raiding Medicare, we are weakening that program when it is already known to all of us in this body that Medicare is not actuarially sound. I remember when President Bush determined, in a failed effort, to try to alter Social Security in a way that he believed would put it on a more sound footing. He got no help at all. We had many of our Senators on both sides of the aisle saying: If you really want to do something, as bad as Social Security is, Medicare is in a much worse financial fix. Why aren't you fixing it? I remember a number of years ago, 10 or more, when Senator Judd Gregg, then chairman of the Budget Committee, tried to come up with some legislation to contain a little of the growth in Medicare. Over 5 years, he had a plan that would contain the growth by $10 billion. Not a single Democrat voted for the Gregg proposal. Now they accuse the Republicans of trying to damage Medicare when, in fact, every penny of the $10 billion to be saved was going to be utilized to strengthen Medicare and try to keep it from going into default. Now we are talking about taking $465 billion out of Medicare and starting a new entitlement program, a new entitlement program at the time that this Nation has just passed or just incurred the largest single deficit in the history of the American Republic, $1.4 trillion. Next year, we will be over $1 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office--not me. Is this smart? To have a program that people have depended on, that we have a moral compact to support--to support our seniors who paid into this plan for 40 years, now taking money out of that to create a new program? It is, in fact, in quite a number of areas, going to cost far more than is being suggested by the people who are promoting the legislation. We are going to dig into this and try to analyze it with more clarity, but the truth is, the numbers just do not add up. They will not work. We just ought not to be establishing a new entitlement program of massive proportions in a way where we really have little concept of how it is going to play out at a time of the largest deficits this Nation has ever had, deficits that, according to our own Congressional Budget Office, will double the national debt in 5 years and triple it to $17 trillion in 10 years. It is an unsustainable course, and one of the first things we have to do is watch how we spend our money. I talked to an individual today. He said: It is like your house is in serious need of repair. You really don't have the money to fix it. You finally decide you have to borrow money to fix the house, and instead you borrow money and add a wing onto the house. We need to fix the house we have. We need to make sure we honor our commitment to Medicare recipients. They have already paid. That is the important point to remember. They have already paid their working life under a compact and a commitment that money would be in a fund that would be available. We ought not to be taking it away. I urge colleagues to think about this. This is perhaps the most significant fatal flaw in the legislation. It just doesn't add up. There are others, but this one, to me, is the most dramatic, the most pernicious, the one that is most unwise. We simply need to slow down, ask ourselves how we can make our health care system better, how we can do it without breaking the bank. Aren't there some things we can do to improve health care without a huge cost? Yes, there are. Let's start with every single one of those we can agree on. If we do that, I think we could make a lot of progress. Who knows, if this economy turns around--and we all hope it will--we would be in a better footing to consider a new benefit in the future. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. He pays into it all these years and just now gets to draw it, and people start taking it out. I thank Senator Grassley for his leadership on this issue. I think he and I come out of the soil of our States, out of the real world. My impression is that nothing comes from nothing. Would you agree? Somebody has to pay?

Mr. SESSIONS. I think you stated that so well. Just to reemphasize, this gentleman, Mr. Eberle, who paid into Medicare for 40 years, until he got to be 65, he got not a dime of Medicare benefit, did he?

Mr. SESSIONS. My constituent, then, is fundamentally correct in his concern?

Mr. SESSIONS. Yes, 65. Yes.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, before the Senator leaves, he is a man of great character and experience in these matters. I have a letter from a constituent who writes to urge a vote against this health care bill. This is from Mr. Bill Eberle in Huntsville, AL. He says: The worst part of this bill is that much of the cost will be paid for by cuts to Medicare. I think the Senator has indicated he believes that is accurate. He goes on to say: I am 68 years old and I have paid into Medicare for 40 years, believing it would cover much of my health care costs when I became 65. Now I am being told that the Government has found people who need the coverage more than I do and they will cut the care for which I have paid for 40 years in order to cover people who have paid nothing into the program. It is not the Government's money. The money belongs to those of us who paid into it for so many years and are watching as it is being taken away from us. My question to my colleague is, since the Senator has been so intimately involved with Medicare over the years, is it not true that every working American has money taken out of their paycheck to fund their Medicare and that they believe and we have a compact with them that when they reach 65, they will have the benefit of that?

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish to share a few thoughts as we go forward on the health care debate and remind our colleagues what we have been hearing at the town meetings that most of us have been having around the country and what people are concerned about. Part of it is they think we don't have a very good perspective on what is going on in America. They are not happy with us. They think we are losing our fiscal minds, that we are ignoring the fact that we are facing a soaring debt. We passed on top of the debt we already had an $800 billion stimulus package--$800 billion--the largest spending bill in the history of America on top of all our other baseline bills. Our baseline appropriations bills, not even including the additions by the stimulus, are showing double-digit increases. These increases are far more than President Bush ever had, and he was criticized for reckless spending. He never had the kind of baseline spending increases that were passed a few months ago, a few weeks ago in some cases. This year, as of September 30, we acknowledged and accounted for a $1.4 trillion budget deficit in 1 year--1 year, $1.4 trillion, September 30. The Republicans never had a deficit so large in 1 year. And in the next year, it is projected to be over $1 trillion, and continue to average $1 trillion each year over the next 10 years. In the 8th, 9th, and 10th years of the President's 10-year budget, the deficit goes up. It does not ever go down, it continues to go up. Therefore, we end up with a huge debt. That is according to our own Congressional Budget Office hired by the Congress--approved by the majority of our colleagues who are, of course, Democrats. They approve the Budget Director, and he tries to do a pretty good job of giving us honest numbers. This is what the numbers show. In 2008, we had $5.8 trillion in debt in America since the founding of the Republic. By 2013, 5 years down the road, that will double to $11.8 trillion. And in 10 years, the 10- year budget the President submitted to us--I did not submit this budget, President Obama submitted it and it was passed by the Congress--increases that debt to $17.3 trillion, tripling the debt of America in 10 years. That is what the people are very concerned about, among other things. What does all this pending mean also? It means government power, government reach, government domination, government takeover. People are concerned about it. They are asking: Are you not getting the message? What is the matter with you? That is what I am hearing. I think people have a right to be concerned. One of the issues I have raised is the fact that the interest on the debt in 2009 was $170 billion for 1 year--that is for interest alone. By 2019, interest on the debt, according to CBO, in 1 year, will be $799 billion. That number is higher than the budget for defense. It is larger than any other program. We spend about $100 billion a year on education, and $40 or so billion on highways. But in 10 years, we will be spending $800 billion on interest alone. And how much of that is owned by foreign governments, many of whom are not our friends and not our allies? So even the President has said this debt is unsustainable. The economists say it is unsustainable. Every politician I know of says that it is unsustainable. Yet we continue outrageous spending, and in the midst of this financial tempest, what do we now have before us? The promise of a $2.5 trillion new health care program--$2.5 trillion as it will cost when fully implemented. The question I have heard asked of the President, and I have heard asked of the Democratic leadership and the Congress: But, Congressman, Senator, we don't have the money. What do you say about that? They say: Oh, don't worry. We have this great new program that is going to help you in so many ways. We are going to spend a lot of money, true, but it is going to be deficit neutral. My goodness, it is not even going to be budget neutral, it is going to save us $130 billion in 10 years. Will you guys just relax? Don't worry about it. We are going to save $130 billion. Thank us. We are going to give you this program, save $130 billion, and you will get a lot more health care out here--still with 24 million uninsured, but we will have a lot of money spent to help you with your health insurance, they will say. The President said he would not sign a bill into law that would add one single dime to the national debt. Well, people say: How are you going to do that? That sounds pretty good, if we can make that happen. How are we going to do it? Well, the answer is we are going to raid Medicare, we are going to raise taxes, and we are not going to pay the doctors who do our work. There will be $494 billion in tax increases, $465 billion in Medicare cuts--and Medicare is already on a glide path to insolvency by 2017--and a $250 billion shortfall for our physicians. Those are payments they have been promised and they thought they were going to get as part of this fix. So I would just make the point that we can give everyone in America a new car if we just raised taxes and raided Medicare. That would be pretty easy, wouldn't it? Anything can count as deficit-neutral if you raise taxes high enough. So this is not a deficit-neutral program. Just because we raise taxes, does it have to be that we should prioritize first to use that money to start a new program? What about addressing the shortfall in highway funding that we are hearing so much about? What about the cost of our effort in Afghanistan? What about other expenses we have? What about saving Medicare, a program our seniors depend on? If we are going to raise taxes, why don't we use the money for that? Who says we have to raise taxes to start a new program? Well, I suggest to you that based on the omission of doctors fix alone we don't have a $130 billion surplus in this bill. The fact that it is unpaid for, we have a $130 billion net deficit because the bill fails to pay $250 billion in doctor fees that I predict we will eventually pay, one way or another. The way we have done it in the past is we have just socked it to the debt. We have just paid the doctors, raised no revenue, and changed the law. We have just paid them and increased our debt that much each year. So I say these are not sound numbers. I am telling you, the American people's instincts are right about this. We are not being responsible about how we manage the people's business, promising that this bill is going to be better for everybody. But let me ask for the average American who is doing the right thing, who is struggling and scraping together money to make insurance premiums each month, will that person pay less for their health care? CBO basically says no. If that individual is not in an employer-provided group plan already, if he's among those who are already paying the highest costs for health care in the country, then he is one of the people who are going to pay as much as 10 to 13 percent more under this bill than he currently pays. Will health care, as a percentage of our total economy, our total GDP, will it be reduced by this bill, therefore getting more health care at a better cost? Not according to the scoring we have seen. In fact, just the opposite is the case. If this bill passes, a larger percentage of our GDP will go to health care than before. So I just raise concerns. This is a plan to create an entirely new government-dominated health care plan. This is a new program. How are we going to do it? By raiding Medicare, raising taxes, and not paying doctors, among a bunch of other flimflammery that is in the bill. We talk about this public option. Well, Senator Baucus says we may not have a public option. It is in the House bill, and it is in this bill that is on the Senate floor. So we don't have the money for a monumental new health care program. We could do a lot of things to improve health care in America that could help contain the rising cost of health care, that could be done in a way that would not diminish the circumstances we are in today. What about Medicare? Do you remember when President Bush proposed fixing Social Security and many Senators--Democrats as well as Republicans--said: Well, President Bush, if you want to do something, why don't you fix Medicare? That is the one in the biggest trouble? In truth, Medicare is sinking faster than Social Security. Medicare will decline by 2017 and go into deficit. We have a shortfall in Medicare now. What we should do is focus on Medicare every way that we can to create efficiencies and more productivity, contain growth and cost and extend that period of time before it goes in default. The last thing we should be doing is taking $465 billion from Medicare. It is only going to accelerate its decline. That is common sense. Mr. President, I would just like to read a letter I received from one of my constituents--Mr. Bill Eberle in Huntsville, AL. He said: I strongly urge you to vote against the health care bill passed by the House. The worst part of this bill is that much of the cost will be paid by cuts to Medicare. I am 68 years old, and I have paid into Medicare for 40 years believing that it would cover much of my health care costs when I became 65. Now I am being told that the government has found people who need coverage more than I do, and they will cut the care for which I have paid for 40 years in order to cover people who have paid nothing. It is not the government's money. The money belongs to those of us who have paid into it for so many years and we are watching as it is being taken from us. Well, I think that is a pretty fair statement of it. Medicare is heading to insolvency in 2017. We have had a number of proposals to try to help on that front. We haven't had much support from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle even for modest fixes. I remember one bill that was going to reduce Medicare spending by $10 billion over 5 years, and you would have thought we were going to savage the whole program, although we were trying to make it more sustainable in the long run. It was a big mess. But now we are talking about $465 billion being taken from Medicare. So, Mr. President, Medicare is a big problem. We need to work hard to bring it under control and honor our seniors who have been paying into this program and not drawing a dime from it on the promise that when they turned 65 they would start being able to draw on Medicare and it would take care of their health care needs in their senior years. That was a solemn commitment. Before we start some monumental new program, we need to make sure we are prepared to honor that commitment because they paid their money. They have paid their money. So if we raise taxes, why shouldn't we pay the Medicare bill first? If we raise taxes, why shouldn't we pay our doctors the money we owe them or some of the other priorities that we have in our country? Mr. President, I feel strongly that the American people are sending us the right message. They are acting like good public-minded citizens would. They are seeing a reckless new spending program that they rightly anticipate will grow and grow and grow and expand far beyond all the projections we have today; that it will result in a government takeover of a whole large portion of our economy, and they have not been impressed that the government can run these kinds of things very effectively and they are not in favor of it. So they are rightly concerned, and that is why polling numbers show the American people don't favor this legislation. I think their instincts are right. I think we should listen to them. I appreciate the effort to improve health care in America. I support a number of reform provisions, some of which are in this bill, but others could be a part of this bill to make health care more affordable, more effective, and help people who are having a hard time financing their insurance premiums. But the truth is, the bill doesn't really reduce the premium cost for most people. Many people who are paying their bills today are not going to get any reduction. In fact, they may see an increase. So for these reasons, I oppose the legislation, I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I thank Senator Bond. He has certainly delineated some of the fiscal impossibilities in this bill, as has our former Budget chairman, now ranking member of the Budget Committee, Judd Gregg. He studied this very hard. The information he provided to this Congress and to the American people is accurate. I have tried to think what I should say about this bill this morning and be realistic and honest and boil it down to its essence. The 2,000 pages that sit on that desk, how should we talk about it? Let me just say the claim from our colleagues is that they have a great plan to reform health care and it will fix the problems in health care. We do have problems in health care that need to be fixed. They are going to provide methods and additional funding and provide millions of people with insurance who didn't have it before--although 24 million will remain uninsured. At the same time, they will save $130 billion over 10 years, and we are supposed to be grateful and say how pleased we are that you have been able to pull off this event. But the first reaction most American people have had, and it is a sound one, is, wait a minute, that is pretty dubious. How can you do that? Do you remember that song from the ``Sound of Music''? ``Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could,'' sang Julie Andrews. The result is the phrase I came up with: ``Shell game.'' Senator Gregg used that phrase. I think that is exactly what we are talking about. When it became obvious to everybody who could add that this great vision, the wild chimera they had that they could do all these things, would not work as they dreamed it, the mountebanks began their chicanery. In my remarks I will not attempt to point out all the manipulations in this bill, just some of the more obvious that are inescapable. First, you ask: Why do they do this? The answer is the numbers don't add up. They cannot make the numbers do what they want them to do. So they either have to be honest and talk about massive cuts openly or massive tax increases. The American people are not sure about that. To add a whole new monumental health care program at a time of colossal financial stress in our country, with debts the likes of which our Nation has never ever seen before, are we now going to start off on a monumental multitrillion-dollar bill that will not pay for itself? We have this great promise, and it is not adding up. Do they slow down? Do they begin to think if they can't do everything they promised in the campaign, and they would love to do, and they wanted to do, what progress can they make step by step in a rational way that we can afford in this time of unemployment and unprecedented deficits? No, that is not what they decided to do. What they decided to do is go forward anyway and call anyone who had the temerity to say their ``emperor has no clothes,'' that they are ``Dr. No,'' they are against everything. They don't believe in any reform. That is kind of the idea we are hearing, and that is not correct. The bill is just too much, it goes too far, too fast, and costs too much. We don't have the money. The American people know this. That is why they oppose this bill. They are not opposed to reform and progress. They are opposed to this legislation, this 2-foot tall, 3-foot tall, 2,000-page piece of legislation. They don't dislike President Obama, but they don't like this policy he is trying to promote. You say: Let's have some facts about it. I can't explain everything, but I want to share a few things. Madam President, I ask to be notified after 5 minutes.

Mr. SESSIONS. A critical, essential part of fixing a broken health care system is to end the growing problem of payments to our doctors. Republicans and Democrats have not been good on this issue in the past, but the problem grows worse each year. Essentially, in the balanced budget amendment of 1997 we limited the amount of payments to doctors. After a while it became clear the cuts were too severe, and each year we put money back in. But the law still mandates major cuts. In fact, today if we don't do what we call the doctor fix each year, they will have a 23-percent reduction in reimbursements, they get paid less. This is for Medicare. And they get paid less for Medicare than other insurance already, so doctors are going to quit doing it if we have a 23-percent reduction in what they get paid for doing their work. How much does it cost to permanently fix that as the medical profession assumed we were going to do and as the President and his team have indicated they plan to do? It costs $250 billion. That is a lot of money. That is not a new program, this is an obligation that we have now. Does this plan fix that? It fixes it for 1 year. So it goes out 1 year and then the CBO score assumes the doctor payments will drop 23 percent and be 23 percent lower for 9 years. If we add that up, that is $250 billion. It allows the folks in the know here to manipulate the numbers and hide a $250 billion debt we owe. We can't cut doctors that much, and we are not going to do it. We have not been doing it, and we will fix it every year, in fact, and that is--what I will say is, we will spend the $250 billion, and it should be in this bill. They didn't do it. Just a few weeks ago, they met in this secret room down the hall, and they got to talking and said: What are we going to do about the doctors? How are we going to fix the doctors? We could raise taxes. Well, we raised taxes $500 billion. We can't raise them any more. Can we cut Medicare? Gosh, we have cut it $500 billion. We can't do that. What can we do? We promised the doctors fix to get them their pay. So they offered--it would be hilarious if it weren't so serious--they offered legislation a few weeks ago to just pay the doctors all this money permanently, outside of the health care reform in a separate bill, every penny of it going to the debt, unpaid for. Even 13 Democrats couldn't swallow that. They voted no, and it failed. But the House did it. They passed it, did they not, I ask Senator Gregg, unpaid for? Horrible. Another $250 billion added to our debt. So that is a shell game. It is like you have a hole in your roof and you don't want to spend the money to fix it, so you move across the hall into another room and pretend the hole isn't there. Somehow you are not going to fix it when you know you have to fix it. They say: Don't worry. See, our plan is budget neutral. It is deficit neutral. If you take the $250 billion, one thing right there, it is not neutral. It is in deficit already. It is in deficit already. You have to watch that pea and see how it moves around in the shell. But what we need to have a sense of is that this is a program we have never had before. It not only adds to the debt by not fixing the doctor payments, it raids existing programs, Medicare and Medicaid, both of which are in serious trouble. It raids them in the first 10 years and, as Senator Gregg said, much more later, $549 billion. And it raises taxes $493.6 billion. So it is pretty easy to say I have a deficit-neutral program if I assume I am going to take $500 billion out of Medicare and raise taxes $493 billion. It is budget neutral. Everybody should thank me. That is what the paper said the other day: Budget neutral. We are so proud of ourselves. The American public are not buying this. They are a little bit skeptical. Medicare is going broke. Everyone knows that. We have been working on that for a number of years. All of us are concerned about this iceberg in front of the Titanic which is Medicare's deficiency.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair. We need to save this program before we create a new one. It is so simple. If we are going to raise taxes $500 billion, has anybody asked where that money should go? Should the $500 billion in new taxes go to create a new program or maybe should it be used to put Medicare on sound footing or maybe it should be used to pay for military expenditures that have the highest budget in years, or maybe to reduce the debt which, I point out to friends and colleagues, is the greatest debt this Nation has ever seen. There has been nothing like it ever. In 2008, our debt was $5.8 trillion. In 5 years, 2014, it will be $11.8 trillion. In 2019, it will be $17.3 trillion, tripling in 10 years. According to the Congressional Budget Office score, it does not include money to fund the health care program. How big are those numbers? I won't spend a lot of time on it. I will point out that people can understand when you borrow money, this debt doesn't come from thin air. You borrow it. China, other places loan us money. We owe them money. That is how we get the money. And look at the interest rate. My goodness. Alabama's budget is about $8 billion a year; $800 billion in this year is 100 years of our budget. The interest the United States paid on our debt in 2009 was $170 billion. That is a lot of money. The Federal highway bill is $40 billion. All of the Federal highway spending is around that amount. But in 10 years, according to the CBO, we are going to be paying in that 1 year interest of $799 billion. It is like nothing we have ever seen before. That is why people say our spending is on an unsustainable course. The first thing we need to do to bring spending under control is to fix the critical problems that must be met. You don't start new programs that are likely to spiral out of control and far exceed the prognostications we have seen today. I thank the Chair for the opportunity to share my thoughts. I am glad our colleagues are here. I know others would like to talk. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish to thank Senator Alexander for his remarks because I think I have heard it said that this new health care bill, don't worry about it, it is going to be revenue neutral. But if you create a bill that is revenue neutral by taking hundreds of billions of dollars out of Medicare, which we already know is heading into default in the next 5 or 6 years, and you do it by raising taxes, both of which are to fund a new program that we don't have the money for, then that is not, in my mind, what the average person would say in commonsense thought is revenue neutral. I think that is what we are talking about. We need to be able to see the details of it. I appreciate Senator Alexander for that fine summary of where we are. I hope our Members will take it to heart.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating the Goodrich Aerostructures Original Equipment Manufacturer and the Alabama Service Center in Foley, AL, on their 25th anniversary. Goodrich Aerostructures became part of the Baldwin County community in 1984, originally as Rohr Industries. Twenty-two years later, Goodrich expanded significantly, and since 2005 Goodrich Aerostructures has been the second largest employer in Foley with approximately 800 people manufacturing, assembling, repairing, and servicing aircraft engine components and structures for military and commercial airplanes. Since its inception, Goodrich Aerostructures has received numerous awards and recognition for continually providing excellent service and outstanding products. For the past 8 consecutive years, employees at Goodrich in Foley have been recognized by the Federal Aviation Administration with Aviation Maintenance Technician awards. In addition, Goodrich Aerostructures in Foley recently reached a significant milestone by delivering its 500th CF34-10 nacelle, and the company is on contract to supply the pylons and nacelle systems for the Air Force's C-5 Galaxy strategic airlifter as part of the Reliability Enhancement and Re-Engining Program to modernize the Air Force airlift fleet and improve support for our military personnel around the world. The men and women of Goodrich have also been recognized as good corporate citizens and civic leaders in Baldwin County. The United Way of Baldwin County recognized Goodrich as the top contributing industry in the county earlier this year, and Goodrich workers actively support education, arts, and civic activities in the local community, including support for the Foley Public Library, the Center for Autism for Baldwin County, and the Baldwin County Council on Aging, and sending care packages to employees' friends and family members that are serving our country in Iraq and Afghanistan. On behalf of my Senate colleagues and the State of Alabama, I thank the men and women of Goodrich Aerostructures in Foley.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Cantwell. I appreciate her courtesy. I just want to share a few remarks tonight. We are now postcloture on the nomination of Judge David Hamilton to the circuit court of appeals. Cloture is a procedure in the Senate generally used to end a prolonged debate. The majority leader, Senator Reid, filed cloture on Judge Hamilton, however, before there had been even 1 hour of debate on the nomination. The cloture motion was filed before I or any of my colleagues had time set aside and had the opportunity to debate this matter. Judge Hamilton's judicial philosophy and record as a district judge were problematic. There are important matters involved considering the fact that President Obama has nominated him to serve on the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. It is worthy of serious consideration, this lifetime appointment. Yesterday, 28 Senators joined me in voting against cloture. I believe they voted no on cloture for a number of reasons. The first is the one I have just mentioned. Cloture is generally reserved to end a prolonged debate, and Senator Reid filed cloture without any debate, before debate had really begun. The second is that Judge Hamilton's judicial philosophy is outside the mainstream--I think well outside the mainstream. As I have said before, if a judge is not committed to following the law whether they like it or not, then that person is not qualified to be a judge. They may be a good advocate, but a judge must, by definition, be impartial. I think there will be more people voting against Judge Hamilton's nomination than voted against cloture--the 29 who voted yesterday. I think we need to spend some time talking about his record and his judicial philosophy. I do not have anything against Judge Hamilton. I understand he may be a fine person, and I really mean that. But there is afoot in this country a philosophy of judging, an approach to law that I think is dangerous and strikes at the very heart of the classical American judicial philosophy and legal system that has served us so well. So that is what this is about. If judges have the wrong philosophy as they approach the bench about how they should go about deciding cases, then that can disqualify them. As Senators, we each have a right to express our opinion on whether we believe a nominee is qualified and should be confirmed or not elevated to a higher court, but the American people expect we will not misrepresent the facts. Let's be fair to this nominee, and let's not in any way misrepresent who he is and what he did and what his philosophy is. I intend to be fair to him. I think any nominee is entitled to that. Even though I might be a critic, I should not be inaccurate in what I say. In this case, I think the facts have been misrepresented by others, and I want to correct the record on some of the issues, where it has been suggested that I or others have been incorrect or unfair in our criticism. Accuracy goes both ways. If you are for a judge and want to move him forward, OK, let's be accurate. Those who are opposed to him, you must be restrained and accurate also. Yesterday on the floor of the Senate, the majority leader, Senator Reid, invoked the Golden Rule. He said that when he became majority leader, he sought to ``treat [President Bush's] judicial nominees the way they would want them treated if the roles were reversed.'' Let's take a look at the way President Bush's judicial nominees were treated by the Democratic majority. Senator Reid complained that Judge Hamilton, the judge before us tonight--tomorrow--waited 166 days for this vote. If Republicans followed Senator Reid's version of the Golden Rule, would he have been confirmed earlier? No. Judge Hamilton would have waited at least another year and a half before he received consideration on the Senate floor. That is exactly how President Bush's nominees were treated for the first group of nominees he submitted to the circuit courts. Priscilla Owen, a fabulous judge at the Supreme Court of Texas, John Roberts, now on the Supreme Court of the United States, and Deborah Cook all waited 2 years before receiving a confirmation vote. Yesterday Senator Reid said: It's really unfortunate we have to file cloture on a judge. Really unfortunate that we have to file cloture on a judge? As if this was something that had never been done before. Indeed, during the Bush administration, cloture had to be filed on at least 17 different judicial nominees because Senator Reid was leading filibusters himself. The majority leader complains he could not get a time agreement. But he never offered a reasonable amount of time. I believe there were discussions about 30 hours of debate, which was rejected. Senator Reid said he was stunned that some people believed there was not enough time to debate the nomination when no debate had been had. He accused Republicans of not entering into a time agreement. But as I said Monday, Senator Reid has a short memory. When Senator Reid was in the middle of filibustering Priscilla Owen, Senator Bennett made a unanimous consent request that the Senate spend 10 hours more debating the nomination and then vote. Senator Reid objected. When Senator Bennett asked how much time would be sufficient to debate the Priscilla Owen nomination, Senator Reid responded by saying: [T]here is not a number of [hours] in the universe that would be sufficient. Later Senator McConnell sought a time agreement on Judge Owen. Senator Reid responded by saying: We would not agree to a time agreement . . . of any duration. Yesterday Senator Reid said: The Democratic majority in the Senate confirmed three times as many nominees [under President Bush] as we have been able to confirm in the same amount of time under President Obama. Senator Reid left out the fact that Democrats filibustered more than three times as many nominees under President Bush. Indeed, there were 30 cloture votes on 17 different judicial nominations during the Bush administration. There were 1,044 total votes against two filibustered President Bush's nominees. The Democrats, under Senator Reid's leadership, cast 99.9 percent of those votes. Yesterday Senator Reid talked about the Senate and the legal precedent and advocated that Republicans follow Senate precedent in judicial confirmations. Ironically, that is exactly what Senate Republicans asked Senator Reid to do during the Bush administration. There had been 214 years of precedent of not filibustering judges. Yet Senator Reid voted more than 20 times to filibuster President Bush's judges. Everyone knows that in a court of law, you follow the most recent precedent, and the most recent precedent was established last time in the Bush administration by the Democrats in this body. Yesterday Senator Reid also said the following: I want to reiterate that every Senator may vote for or against Judge Hamilton's nomination as he or she sees fit. That's what we do here, but that is not the issue before us today. The question before us is whether the President of the United States deserves to have his nomination reviewed by the Senate as the Constitution demands he does. The fact is that Senator Reid did not feel that way about Terrence Boyle who was nominated by President Bush for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and languished for close to 8 years without ever receiving a confirmation vote, even though he passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee with a majority vote. He did not feel that way about President Bush's nominee, the superb legal mind of Miguel Estrada, unanimously voted well qualified by the American Bar Association. He was filibustered through seven cloture votes and was never confirmed, a fabulous nominee to the court of appeals and one capable of being on any short list for the Supreme Court. Or what about Charles Pickering who was filibustered and never confirmed; Carolyn Kuhl who was filibustered and never confirmed; William Myers who was filibustered and never confirmed; Hanry Saad who was filibustered and never confirmed; William Haynes who was filibustered and never confirmed? What Senator Reid meant to say was: Do not do unto me as I have done unto you. You get it? Do not do unto me as I did to you. I don't believe Senator Reid or President Obama would wish for us to return to the Democratic version of the Golden Rule. I don't believe we intend to do that. Republicans have not held a private retreat to figure out how to change the ground rules and to block President Obama's nominations. That is what the Democrats did. It was reported in the New York Times. We have not taken orders from outside groups to block nominees. We have not blocked nominees because we do not want them to sit on a specific case, and we had some of that in the past. We have not attempted to filibuster a nominee in the Judiciary Committee. We let them go through. That is how President Bush's nominees were treated. I am not exaggerating. I was there. Those are the facts. I will express my opinion in more detail when I vote against Judge Hamilton. I have a right to do that, as does every Member. But I do not have a right to misrepresent the facts, and I try to be accurate in what I say. If I am in error, I look forward to being corrected. I hope my colleagues will start making an effort to do that. The way this happened was this: After President Bush was elected, the Democrats met with Marcia Greenberg and Lawrence Tribe and Cass Sunstein. They came up with a new idea. They said: We are going to change the ground rules. We no longer are not going to filibuster, as has been done in the history of the Senate. We are going to do anything we can to block in committee and on the floor good nominees. We had some fabulous nominees, such as Priscilla Owen, Bill Pryor. These are brilliant lawyers, proven people. They were rated highly by the American Bar Association. There was strong support in their home States and communities. They were blocked for months, even years before they could get a vote. Some got through, and some did not. My personal view is that the President deserves deference in his nominees. I fully expect and hope to be able to vote for 90 percent of President Obama's nominees. I voted for well over 90 percent of President Clinton's nominees. But I am not a rubberstamp. I am not going to vote for a judge who I believe, by virtue of their stated judicial philosophy, thinks a judge has the right to write footnotes to the Constitution, as Judge Hamilton has said, who blocks legislation for 7 years and has to be finally slapped down hard by the court of appeals because apparently he didn't appreciate the State of Indiana's passage of a law on informed consent. He kept that bottled up for 7 years. And how much Indiana had to spend on legal fees, and how much of the will of the people was frustrated by one unelected, lifetime- appointed judge I do not know, but it was significant. So those are the issues we will talk about in more detail. But I did want to set the record straight that I do not like not moving forward with a judge and giving them an up-or-down vote, but after the 8 years of President Bush and the repeated filibusters that occurred then, I have to agree with a number of my colleagues that, indeed, the Democrats did successfully change the standard in the Senate. We have to be careful about it. But they changed it to say that a filibuster is legitimate if you believe, according to the Gang of 14, there are extraordinary circumstances. To me, a person can be honest and have integrity, but if they believe, as a philosophical approach to the law, they have the ability to write footnotes to the Constitution, they have an ability to actually amend the Constitution through their decisions, when the Constitution itself provides only one method to amend the Constitution, then that makes the person one who is not qualified to be on the bench. So it is a big deal. We love the American legal system. I so truly admire it. It is based on a firm commitment to the rule of law. The oath judges take that they will impartially apply the law--not allow their personal views but impartially do it--that they will do equal justice to the poor and to the rich, that they will serve under the Constitution and laws of the United States--and not above them--that is the essence of it. I think a judge who cannot follow that oath they must take, one whose philosophy indicates they are not committed to that oath, is not qualified. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I wish to make a few remarks about one of the most remarkable men ever to serve in the Senate, Robert C. Byrd on this milestone of service. When I came to the Senate, he was my teacher. We went to school to him. He told all of the new Members about the rules of the Senate and we all got copies of his book on the history of the Senate. We were all mightily impressed, because he had an encyclopedic understanding of this Senate. I have heard him over the years refer to the Senate as the great Senate or the second great Senate, the Roman Senate being the first great Senate and the U.S. Senate being the next great Senate. The pride he has in this institution, the way he respects it and reveres it, I think is second to none who has ever served here. I believe that. I remember one night--I don't know why it was so late, but it was sometime during the debate over Afghanistan or Iraq, and I was here speaking. It was 8 or 9 o'clock at night, later than this--and Senator Byrd was the Presiding Officer. I told this fabulous story somebody had shared with me. It was a history of Rome, and it was about what the Romans did when they had terrorists and pirates. When they could stand the disgrace no longer, the Romans all got together and said we have to take action, and they selected the leading man of the country and gave him a whole fleet of ships and I think 100,000 or more soldiers. They issued a directive to every city on the Mediterranean that they would cooperate with Rome, and they set about to destroy the pirates. The pirates had captured a Roman leader or two. They raided the coast of Rome, and the disgrace was intolerable and they finally got together and crushed them in short order. I was the last one to speak, as I am tonight, and he asked me to come up to the Chair. He said, that was Marc Antony; ``I think that was 6 AD.'' So he is a real student of history and the Roman Empire and the Roman Senate. I also would normally preside over the Senate on Fridays, and Senator Byrd at 11 o'clock would appear through the door almost every Friday and he would make a speech. They were remarkable speeches. He had a remarkable talent for speaking. He would quote poetry at length without a single note, or quote the Scripture without notes. I still can remember some of his speeches. One of my favorites was his discussion of the failure of modern textbooks. One of the things that irked him--and he quoted from them--is that they didn't recognize the difference between a democracy and a republic, and there is a difference. He delineated that with great clarity. Finally, at the conclusion, he referred to those books as touchy feely twaddle, and I thought that was a phrase I liked. I have remembered it ever since. He also discussed the little school he attended. My father attended one like that and my grandmother taught in one like that. But the highlight of their day was to be selected to be the one to take the bucket and go down to the spring and get a bucket of water to put in the barrel so the kids would have something to drink. They were taught well. He made clear that they were well taught. This was not poor education; it was a good education. But, that is the way the school was conducted. He noted they had a single dipper for the class and all the students used it to dip in the barrel to get the water whenever they needed it. I guess the EPA would have them in jail today if they were to try such a thing as that. He has been and still remains a fierce advocate of issues he considers important. We did not agree on the Iraq war, and Senator Byrd was fierce in his opposition. He articulated it aggressively and fairly and in a tough, effective manner. He was one of the most effective Senators on that matter. We agree on a number of issues involving immigration. I strongly believe that the immigration system in this country is broken and we need to create a lawful system and that we cannot tolerate the continued lawlessness, and he agreed. He doesn't believe people have a right to just walk into the country illegally and claim they are a citizen, then just wait a little bit and get amnesty. What kind of law is that? On many of those votes, we shared a common view. I guess I will say he is a person who answers to his own sense of right and wrong. It is a deep sense of right and wrong. He is a man who understands the Scriptures, a man of deep personal faith and there are things he believes that are right and there are things he believes are wrong and he doesn't do what he thinks is wrong. It is the kind of model that I think is a good one for all of us in the Senate. I find Senator Byrd to be one of the most refreshing and brilliant men I know in the Senate. I say this with some real confidence: Nobody loves the Senate more than Robert C. Byrd. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.