John Thune

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, today I recognize India Aderhold, an intern in my Aberdeen, SD, office, for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several months. India is a native of Bath, SD. Currently, she is taking classes from Thomas Edison State College, where she is pursuing a major in English. She is a very hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of her internship experience. I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to India for all of the fine work she has done and wish her continued success in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I rise to talk about our Nation's security and what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ADM Mike Mullen, recently said is the greatest threat to America's future. He mentioned not too long ago that the greatest threat to America's national security is our national debt, not al-Qaida or the Iranian nuclear threat or instability in the Middle East or Russian spies but our national debt. That is a stunning statement, but I think it is backed up by the numbers. We are more than $14 trillion in debt. It took 220 years of American history, up to the beginning of 2009 and with 43 American Presidents, to pile up $6.3 trillion in publicly held debt. Under the Obama administration's latest budget, we will double that in another 2 years and triple it in 10. That budget calls for a sizable annual deficit every single year for the next 10 years. The smallest budget deficit we would face would be $607 billion in the year 2015, and then our deficits would start rising again. That is what the White House calls a balanced budget. I would call it a joke, but it is no laughing matter. We just learned China holds even more of our debt than the Treasury had previously thought--26 percent of total U.S. debt held by foreigners. The President's budget inevitably would add to that. That crushing debt burden we are imposing on future generations will seriously limit their ability to live the American dream. For generations in this country, parents have sacrificed so their children could have a better life, but today we are standing that tradition on its head. Excessive spending and debt threaten to make the next generation the first in our history to have a lower standard of living than the one that came before. That was not what my parents did. My father fought in World War II. He worked hard as a teacher, a coach, he drove the schoolbus, ran a motel in my hometown, and basically did any job he could and made whatever sacrifices he needed to make in order to keep our family fed, clothed, and sheltered. His father before him, my grandfather, traveled to this country from Norway and worked doing hard labor laying the railroad across the Plains. He started his own hardware store and ran it through the Depression and war until he couldn't work anymore. He knew what it meant to sacrifice to take care of his family. But today, Washington seems to be saying the generations to follow us will have to sacrifice so we will not have to make the tough choices. We don't want to do the hard work of living within our means, so our children and our grandchildren will just have to get by on less. Every one of us in this Congress should be ashamed of that prospect. But more than shame for what we are doing to future generations, we should be alarmed about what we are doing to our economy today. That skyrocketing debt means a burden of uncertainty on our businesses, small and large alike. When businesses and people are uncertain if there will be a fiscal crisis, they limit their investment. Added to the stifling amount of overregulation coming out of Congress and the administration these past 2 years, it means businesses have one more reason to worry about whether they can afford to add another person to the payroll. That means fewer jobs. One influential study, endorsed by none other than Treasury Secretary Geithner, found that countries with very high debt burdens suffer from lower economic growth rates. Median growth rates for countries with public debt above roughly the 90 percent of GDP threshold are about 1 percent lower than otherwise. The reasons for this are simple: Government borrowing crowds out private investment. The less productive public sector takes resources that could and would be better used by the more productive private sector. We have already crossed the dangerous 90 percent threshold--gross debt was 93 percent of GDP at the end of last fiscal year and will top the 100 percent barrier by the end of this fiscal year. Under the President's budget, the debt will continue to grow rapidly, eventually reaching 107 percent of GDP--and that is even with the gimmicks and questionable assumptions the White House budget proposal contains, including what I believe are very unrealistic economic growth assumptions. President Obama's own economic advisers have estimated that a 1- percent increase in GDP translates into 1 million more jobs. Many more people would have jobs today if it weren't for this crushing debt burden. We did finally have some good news last Friday about private sector job creation. Nobody was happier than I to see that. But the fact remains that the labor force participation rate in the latest unemployment figures was unchanged at 64.2 percent, the lowest level it has been since the early 1980s. A lot of workers have been so discouraged with the lack of jobs they have simply stopped looking. Let us not forget our recovery so far has lagged far behind past recessions. At this point after the 1981-1982 recession, the economy had already expanded to 10 percent. But the current recovery has only expanded the economy by .14 percent. That is not good enough. We all know if we don't act soon to get control of Federal spending and our soaring debt, any good news will be short-lived. For 2 years, the Pied Pipers of big government told us they could spend their way out of financial troubles; that the money was free and it would lead to jobs, jobs, jobs. Well, they were wrong, and 2 years of their policies have left us dramatically worse off. It is simple: Too much government spending means too much government debt. That means a weaker economy and fewer jobs. I think we are finally at the point where most people, even here in Washington, are willing to concede we need to get a handle on our spending. Even the Obama administration--the biggest spending White House in history--has finally come around to the realization that just maybe we should let the credit card cool off a bit. There is no better time in America's history to change course regarding Federal spending. We are at a moment when we are about to get hit by a succession of three budgetary waves. First, the end of the 2- week continuing resolution on March 18. Then we will have to address the debt limit sometime this spring. After we have dealt with those two matters, we need to take up the budget for fiscal year 2012 because the new fiscal year is only 6 months away. None of those is a mystery. None of them snuck up on us. We have seen them all coming. We have had plenty of warning. We have no excuse for being unprepared. I am confident we can come together and solve all three of those issues. We showed we can do it with the 2-week CR, finding $4 billion of spending that we could agree was not our most important national priority right now and could be cut. Thanks to the great work of our friend and colleague, Dr. Coburn, the GAO has confirmed there are hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and duplication we can begin to scrub out of our Federal budget. That is our short-term situation--those three challenges. But there has also been talk of a balanced budget amendment, and I am a cosponsor of two balanced budget amendments. That is not a short-term fix. That is a long-term issue. So that is the short term and the long term. In the midterm, we need to come up with additional solutions to get us off what I call Federal fiscal irresponsibility, budgetary brinksmanship, and deficits as far as the eye can see. We need to get back on the path of prosperity, and that path cannot be built on borrowed money and reckless spending. Getting back on the right path will require us to fix our broken budget process. To that end, I am proud to reintroduce a bill I introduced last year that would establish commonsense reforms to improve transparency and efficiency in our budgeting process. I am proud Senators Chambliss, Crapo, Inhofe, Johanns, Kirk, Portman, and Wicker have joined me in cosponsoring S. 439, the Deficit Reduction and Budget Reform Act of 2011. If we don't do something to fix this broken system and soon, we are going to keep getting hit by these budget waves, and sooner or later they are going to sink us. My proposal has three main parts. The first is budget reforms. I propose we start by reforming pay-go rules to prevent the double- counting gimmicks that too often are used around here, particularly with regard to our trust funds. We saw that double counting occur during the health care debate last year, when hundreds of billions of dollars were doubled counted--essentially spent twice--during the health care debate. My proposal would make the Federal budget a binding joint resolution signed into law by the President. Today, it is a nonbinding resolution and routinely gets waived. My proposal calls for a biannual budget timeline. There is more time for oversight and to see what is working doing a budget every other year--during the odd-numbered years--and then during the even-numbered years doing oversight. So instead of looking for ways to spend taxpayer dollars, we look for ways to save taxpayer dollars. My proposal also calls for a legislative line-item veto. Governors have it; the President should too. My proposal would prevent the abuse of emergency spending designations, which, again, have become all too routine and all too frequent around here, to get around spending caps. My proposal calls for the creation of a new CLASS Act trigger, if that new entitlement program is not solvent over a 75-year timeframe. I would also modify the Medicare cost containment trigger to have honest accounting with respect to revenues and savings in the new health care bill. My proposal also would update the Credit Reform Act to score the purchases of debt, stock, equity, and capital using a discount rate that incorporates market risk rather than the procedure that has been used in the past which, in my view, completely understates the cost of many of these programs. I call for a new standing joint committee of Congress for budget deficit reduction. If you can believe this, there are 26 committees or subcommittees that spend tax dollars and not one that saves tax dollars. That joint committee would be responsible for producing a bill to cut the deficit by at least 10 percent every budget cycle without raising taxes. This bill would get expedited consideration in both Chambers of Congress and use only spending reductions, not tax increases. Tax increases would be off the table. A standing committee-- not just issuing one report and closing up shop--its recommendations would get an up-or-down vote in Congress. There is a precedent for doing this. I see the Senator from West Virginia on the floor. Back in the 1940s, there was a Senator from West Virginia named Harry Byrd. As they were debating whether to raise taxes to fund World War II, he came up with an idea and said: Before we do that, we ought to look at savings we can find in our Federal budget. So he proposed a joint committee called the Joint Committee on the Reduction of Nonessential Federal Expenditures. They went about the process of scrubbing the Federal budget to see if there might be savings that could be achieved that would prevent having to raise taxes to fund the war effort. In the process of doing that, that committee achieved a great many things. It was in existence for about 30 years. What this would do is draw on that precedent and create a joint standing committee in the Congress that would be bicameral--10 House Members, 10 Senate Members--bipartisan--10 Republicans and 10 Democrats--and would have a statutory requirement each budget cycle for coming up with a specified amount of savings in deficit reductions through spending reductions. What would we do in the short term? This proposal would freeze and cap spending. It would propose a 10-year spending freeze at 2008 levels adjusted for inflation. After all, nondefense discretionary spending has increased at an alarming rate since 2008--a 22-percent increase, when inflation has been roughly 2 percent. In other words, nondefense discretionary spending has grown in the last 2 years at 10 times the rate of inflation. As I said, this is not a quick fix. No plan is going to solve our problems overnight, and I hope we do not take seriously anyone who claims to have a plan that will. But just the same, I do not think we should take seriously any plan that claims that an annual deficit of $607 billion is the same as a balanced budget. It is not the same, and it is not good enough. The only thing that is good enough for our children and for the future prosperity of this great country is for us to get our fiscal house in order and to embrace responsible budgeting. We cannot continue to spend money we do not have. We have to learn. Like the American people have learned to live within their means, we have to learn how to tighten our belts. I wish to close with a couple of statements. I mentioned earlier the statement by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ADM Mike Mullen, with regard to the greatest threat to our national security being our national debt, but I also want to quote what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the unexpected $1.3 trillion U.S. deficit. She referred to it as a ``message of weakness internationally,'' and she went on to say: It poses a national security threat in two ways: it undermines our capacity to act in our own interest, and it does constrain us where constraint may be undesirable. That is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with regard to these year- over-year massive deficits we continue to run. Just today, we heard that PIMCO, one of the largest mutual funds in the country, has decided to dump government debt--its government debt. In that story that came out today that was discussing that particular move on their part, there was a quote from a gentleman, Jim Rogers, who is the cofounder of the Quantum Fund. He said: U.S. Government bonds are not a safe haven. I cannot conceive of lending money to the U.S. Government for 30 years. Think about that--the United States of America is being viewed increasingly as an unsafe investment because of this massive debt we are running and what it could mean to the future with regard to inflation and interest rates and the health of our economy and its attractiveness to people not only here at home but around the world as a place for investment. We have a major problem. These are serious times. These are serious problems. These are serious challenges. They require serious solutions and serious leadership. I hope here in the Senate we are up to that. As I said before, it starts on several levels. In the near term, we need to get the spending under control. We are trying to do that with the discretionary spending bill that is in front of us. We need to deal with the longer term issue. I hope we can pass a balanced budget amendment. We have had votes on that in the past here in Congress, unsuccessfully, narrowly. But we need to put in place what so many States have that require them on an annual basis to balance their budgets. Then we need to put in place budget process reforms that, in my view, will put more of a straitjacket on the Congress and force us to make more of these hard decisions. I think, frankly, because we do this every year, this budget every year, we get very occupied with 12 appropriations bills in the budget-- although last year we did not even pass a budget, nor did we pass a single appropriations bill, which is a major failure of this Congress when you are running a $3.7 trillion enterprise called the Federal Government. But in our annual schedule, we need to provide time to do oversight, time to look at what we can be doing not to spend more money but to save money. If we had a biennial budget process where we are spending money in odd-numbered years and doing the appropriations bills in those years, and then in the even-numbered years, when people go home to run for election, instead of looking for ways to spend money, we are actually looking for ways to save money, I think these reforms are long overdue. I hope my colleagues will take seriously this issue of budget process reform. I know it is not glamorous subject. In fact, most people's eyes glaze over when we talk about budget process reform. But, in my view, there is not anything we could do that would more fundamentally change the way Washington works than reforming this budget process because it drives everything else. If we do not start there, we are never going to get this issue of spending and debt under control in the long term. I thank my colleagues who have cosponsored this bill. I hope there will be more colleagues who will join on this bill--if not this one, something like it--that will once and for all change the way Washington works by undertaking reforms in our budget process that will lead us to greater fiscal responsibility and greater prosperity for future generations. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I want us to remember why we are here. The reason we are here right now debating this issue is because last year the Democratic majority failed to pass a budget. They did not pass a budget and did not pass a single appropriations bill. This is a $3.7 trillion enterprise called the Federal Government. Last year, we did not pass a budget. We did not pass a single appropriations bill. So this is cleaning up the unfinished business of last year. It was always said that we could not do this before the election. So when the election was over with, instead of dealing with these important budget issues, we did a START treaty, which, of course, was important to debate; don't ask, don't tell; the DREAM Act; all kinds of other things but never the budget. We did not deal with the budget. So here we are dealing with last year's unfinished business. So when my colleagues come in here and make all these arguments about how terrible it is that we are having to do this and the House Republicans have sent us this budget that shaves $60 billion from last year's spending levels, the reason we are having to go through this exercise in the first place is because last year the Democratic majority did not even pass a budget. Where does that leave us today? Well, we all know we have a $14 trillion debt--$14 trillion. I think that has sunk in with the American people. To put that into perspective, historically, this last month-- the month of February--our debt was $223 billion. Our deficit, in other words--what we added to the debt--was $223 billion in 1 month--the largest single monthly total ever. We added more to the debt last month than we did from the founding of our country until 1945--in just 1 month. The projected deficit for this entire year is $1.65 trillion--the largest ever in nominal terms. And OMB predicts it to be the largest as a share of our economy since World War II. That is as much debt as we ran up from the founding of our country until 1985. This is the dimension of the problem we are dealing with. There is an old saying that if you are in a hole, stop digging. Well, we continue to dig the hole deeper and deeper and deeper. So we are going to have votes today on a couple of alternatives. One is the alternative that was sent over from the House of Representatives which shaves $60 billion off of last year's spending level. So there are lots of people coming down here, and there is all kinds of gnashing of teeth and statements of how Draconian these various cuts are going to be. Mr. President, $60 billion, remember, in a $3.7 trillion budget is less than 2 percent. Now, to the average American, if they were like we are at the Federal level and out of every dollar they spent, they were borrowing over 40 cents and running $1.5 trillion and $1.6 trillion deficits year over year over year, I think they would figure out a way to tighten their belts a little bit and be able to absorb a 1.5-percent cut over last year's spending level. Now, couple that with the fact that since 2008 spending has increased by 22 percent. Nondefense discretionary spending, which is what we are talking about here, has gone up 22 percent--10 times the rate of inflation. All we are talking about here is going back to 2008 levels. This is not Draconian. I think the American people think this is reasonable. So what does the other side put forward? The other side said: Well, we think this is Draconian, and so we are going to put forward a proposal that cuts $4.7 billion--$4.7 billion compared to $60 billion. Mr. President, $4.7 billion is what the other side puts on the table in terms of spending reduction in trying to do something about our runaway Federal debt. Well, if you look at the clock today, it is 2:45 p.m. By this time tomorrow--2:45 p.m. tomorrow--we will have added over $4 billion to the debt--almost as much as they are proposing to save for the balance of this entire year. So they are laying forward savings of $4.7 billion for the rest of the fiscal year, when between now and this time tomorrow we will add over $4 billion to the Federal debt. That is the dimension of what we are talking about. It is so bad that former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said recently that he views the probability or the possibility of a debt crisis occurring in the next 2 to 3 years to be 50 percent--debt crisis. If that is not enough, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking military official in this country, ADM Mike Mullen, said a few months back that the greatest threat to America's national security is our national debt. How much more do we have to hear? It is not just a threat to our future and to future generations; it is a threat to our national security, and it is a threat to our economy. We have all kinds of evidence out there that this level of spending and this amount of debt costs jobs in our economy. Everybody says the most important thing we want to focus on is the economy and job creation. I agree with that. One of the best ways to do that is to start getting spending and debt under control. There is a great variety of research out there that studied the last eight centuries of governments and concluded that when your gross debt reaches the 90- percent level of your total economy--in other words, gross debt to GDP equals 90 percent--that it costs you about 1 percentage point of economic growth every year. According to Christina Romer, the former economic adviser to the President, every time you lose 1 percentage point of economic growth, you lose 1 million jobs. So if we continue to sustain this level of debt, it is costing us economic growth, which is costing us literally jobs every single day. A couple of weeks ago the Government Accountability Office issued a report and in it they looked at the government and the various agencies of government and how much it costs and looked for duplication and redundancy and inefficiency. What did they conclude? They concluded that there are 82 programs in this country across 10 different agencies and departments of government that are designed to improve teacher quality; granted, a very noble goal, but does it take 82 Federal programs and 10 agencies or departments to administer programs improving teacher quality? There are 56 Federal programs out there which teach people how to manage their finances. When you are running a $14 trillion debt, arguably this is probably the last place that ought to be advising people about managing their finances. But 56 Federal programs? The American people have to be looking at this, and it is incomprehensible to them, I think, to see what their Federal Government wastes money on. What we are talking about here is a fairly reasonable reduction in nondefense, nonnational security discretionary spending. I hope today we will take a step forward and demonstrate we are serious. What the Democrats put forward, $4.7 billion, isn't serious. It completely ignores and appears to be in denial of the dimensions of this problem, which I think are wholly grasped by the American people. In fact, we had testimony yesterday in front of the Senate Budget Committee from Erskine Bowles and Senator Al Simpson who headed the debt commission and said this is the most predictable crisis we have ever had. We see it coming. We know it is coming. We can do something about it, and we are trying to today. It is about jobs. People have gotten up on the other side and said, Well, it is going to cut this or cut that. The majority leader said yesterday we can't do this because it would cut funding at the Cowboy Poetry Festival. When you are out of every dollar you are spending, borrowing more than 40 cents; when you are running a $14 trillion debt--there are priorities, arguably, that are important in terms of Federal priorities. I don't think that probably counts as one of them and I don't think the American people would think so either. The Senator from Montana said this is going to cut people from Medicare Advantage. What about the health care reform bill last year? That cut $2 billion in Medicare Advantage and would leave literally a quarter of those people who get benefits under Medicare Advantage without that coverage today. That wasn't a big talking point for the other side when we were doing health care reform last year. Yet, today, again, we hear typical rhetorical scare tactics. But what I want to remind my colleagues of and remind the American people of is that over the last 2 years, nondefense discretionary spending has increased 22 percent. All we are talking about is going back to 2008 levels. Since that time, it has increased 10 times the rate of inflation. We need to start living within our means. We cannot continue to spend money we don't have. I hope my colleagues will support H.R. 1 and let the American people know we are serious about getting our fiscal house in order. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize the formation of the Dakota Territory. It was on February 26, 1861, that the Senate passed the legislation creating the territory. In the year of the 150th anniversary, I would like to honor the dedication of those who made this status a reality. Dr. J.M. Staples of Dubuque, IA, paved the way to develop the Dakota region, leading the new settlers to desire territorial status. When Minnesota became a State on May 23, 1857, the Dakota area was left without a form of government. Therefore, the settlers unprecedentedly created a provisional government in October of 1858, including electing Henry Masters as Governor and in the autumn of 1859 nominating the Honorable J.P. Kidder as delegate to Congress. Congress continued to thwart desired territorial status as U.S. Senator Fitch in December 1858, Senator James I. Green on January 29, 1859, and House Representative Alexander II Stevens on February 4, 1859, assertively introduced bills, all of which failed. Senator Green would not be deterred and continued to push for the creation of the territory, introducing another bill on February 14, 1861. His persistence resulted in the passage of the act. This bill successfully passed in the Senate on February 26, the House on March 1, and President James Buchanan signed it into law less than 48 hours before his term ended on March 2. After taking office, President Abraham Lincoln had the honor of appointing the first Governor to the territory, Dr. William Jayne of Springfield, IL, a personal friend of his. General J.B.S. Todd, a relative of Mrs. Lincoln, became the first officially recognized territorial delegate to Congress. I would like to posthumously recognize the efforts of those who worked to secure the designation of the Dakota Territory. For it is through their labor that eventually on November 2, 1889, the Dakota Territory became, in part, the State of South Dakota of which I am proud to be a citizen.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I rise to join with my colleagues. I appreciate what the Senator from Tennessee had to say about our former President, as we look upon his 100th birthday coming up this weekend and all of us pay tribute to the legacy he gave this country and the tremendous contributions he made during his time in office. We all have different remembrances of his Presidency. I was a sophomore in college when he was elected to his first term as President. It was the first election in which I had the opportunity to vote. I guess I could say I was sort of coming of age at the time he was coming on the national political stage. He had run for President 4 years earlier. I remember, as a young person, beginning to pay a little bit of attention to politics, at the time being so impressed with the attributes that characterized him personally and were primarily responsible for his tremendous success as President and for the great legacy he left behind. I was someone who grew up in a small town in South Dakota, and my father and mother had both come through the Great Depression. They were similar in terms of their remembrances of that period and could identify in many respects with some of the things President Reagan talked about. But he was a person of strong convictions. I think he had a strength of conviction that was really appealing to a lot of Americans. He was someone who believed in American exceptionalism. He understood that the greatness of this country was not in its government institutions but in its peoples and its ideals. He was someone who was willing to confront the threats we faced around the world. The way he took on the threat of communism and promoted freedom and democracy around the globe is something for which he will always be remembered, not only here at home but by other countries around the world. I think he possessed, in many respects, a lot of the qualities we value in the Midwest. He was a very humble person. I think his humility is something that really stood out. He was always referred to as ``Dutch Reagan'' in his growing up, his formative years. I think the impact he had on this country was because he saw himself as just an ordinary American like every other American, and he was able to connect and identify with the challenges and the opportunities that were facing Americans across this country at the time. I think he also possessed, although he was the Governor of California, a midwestern sensibility that never left. He had, in many respects, values that, as I said before, many of us in the Midwest find really important--his belief that you ought to live within your means. His sort of midwestern bedrock values of individual responsibility were things he always touched upon, themes he referenced in his remarks. I think those were the types of qualities that really differentiated him on the national stage. I remember, too, as a young person being impressed with his sense of humor. Often today there are serious matters we deal with, matters of great gravity and great weight, and they need to be taken with the right level of seriousness. But he also was able to see the best in people and to use his sense of humor to connect with people about what was really distinctive and really unique about America. I remember the story that was told while we were fighting the Cold War about the guy in the Soviet Union who went in to buy a car, and he said: I want to buy a car. The guy at the transportation bureau said: Well, you can have your black sedan and you can pick it up 10 years from today. The guy thought about it for a minute, and he said: Will that be in the morning or in the afternoon? The guy at the transportation bureau said: What difference does it make? It is 10 years from now. And the guy said: Well, because I have the plumber coming in the morning. Ronald Reagan had a way of putting into very simple and understandable and sometimes humorous terms what was so distinctive and unique about the American experience. I think that is something that also really set him apart. When it came to the big issues of the day, he had a statement he made that I quote. He said: There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. I think oftentimes we face these complex problems, and we overanalyze a little bit. And the truth is, in a lot of the challenges we face today, not unlike the times when he was President, there are not easy answers, but I believe there are simple answers. Those very basic, core principles and those values that helped shape his Presidency and the things he never lost sight of are what made him an effective President. I believe that is a lesson we can apply today. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. When we believe in the greatness of America, when we look at the foundation of this country--personal freedom, personal liberty, coupled with individual responsibility--he believed profoundly that you achieve peace through strength. He was willing to confront communism at a point in this Nation's history when it posed a great threat to freedom-loving countries around the world. I think those are the types of qualities for which President Reagan will be remembered. As, again, someone who was very impressionable at that time, he was a great inspiration to public service. I think he represented the very best of public service. He got into it for all the right reasons. He understood the importance of what he was doing, the issues with which he was dealing, but always had an eye toward making a difference and providing a better future for the next generation. That is a lesson that I think all of us need to remember: that sometimes we have a tendency to believe it is about us, it is about today. We always have to keep an eye on tomorrow, on the future, and what we are doing to build a better and brighter and more prosperous and stronger nation for future generations. When I think about and remember President Reagan as we come upon his 100th birthday, those are the types of things that strike me as really standing out--his humility, his sense of humor, his belief in American exceptionalism. Those are what history has already written about him, but they certainly are permanently impressed upon my mind, my experience, in my time in public life--just the types of qualities I want to apply and bring to the work we do in the U.S. Senate. So I rise along with many of my colleagues today to pay tribute to our 40th President and to his family. Of course, we thank them for their great service and sacrifice too, because anybody who has been in this arena knows the sacrifice that comes with public service. But we are indeed grateful for his great service to our country, for the way he impacted so many, both here at home and around the world, and for the way he continues through his legacy to impact generations of Americans today. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I wish to add to the comments made by my colleague from Wyoming, who in his former life was a physician, and so he understands this issue probably better than any of us here in the Chamber. I think he very eloquently pointed out why this amendment we are hopefully going to be voting on, which will repeal the health care law, is so important. Obviously, there is a big debate that has been raging in the country over the past year about this legislation as it was being considered here in the Congress, and I think the one thing that is clear about the public's view of this is that they think it was a bad idea. And that hasn't changed. That was true a year ago, that was true 6 months ago, and that is still true today. I think the administration had tried to argue they had merely done a poor job of communicating to the American people how great this health care reform idea was. But that excuse misses the point entirely. The American people are not clueless. They know a bad idea when they see one, and they understand that the Democratic health care plan was a bad idea. So despite the administration's full court PR press in trying to reverse the public opinion, the health spending law remains unpopular in the polls. In fact, as was quoted by my colleague from Wyoming, there was a poll that came out today where 58 percent of likely voters in a recent Rasmussen poll favor repeal. In fact, if you drill down a little further into that survey, it says 47 percent strongly favor repeal, 38 percent oppose repeal, and 29 percent strongly oppose repeal. But you have a decisive majority in this country--58 percent of the population--saying they wish to see this repealed, and nearly half are strongly committed to that position. So notwithstanding efforts by the administration to reverse the public's view, the American people still get it. I think the administration had hoped this would get behind them, that people would, once they were educated about the benefits, come to a different conclusion, but I think they see clearly now that hasn't happened. That hasn't been the case. This whole health care law has failed the test of being something the American people think is important and something they want to see done. I don't doubt for a minute they want to see the issue of health care addressed in this country--health care reform. Unfortunately, this particular proposal didn't do anything to reform health care. It expanded health care dramatically and expanded the cost most people are going to bear when it comes to paying for their health insurance premiums. So it failed the test of public support of the people in this country who have been following this debate very carefully, because it affects them in a very personal and profound way. Health care is something every American understands. It is something they get, and it is regrettable we passed it. I think the American people have turned a thumbs down on it, and that should speak to the importance of this amendment and our trying to go back and do this the right way. The other test it failed--which everybody here talks about, and there is a great deal of lip service and a great deal of rhetoric paid to it--is the issue of jobs. Honestly, I think if there was a message coming out of November's election it was this: The American people want us focused on three things. They want us focused on jobs, they want us focused on spending, and they want us focused on the debt. On the issue of jobs, this also fails the test. Why? Because it raises taxes so dramatically. If you look at the tax increases in the bill--$569 billion in taxes on virtually every sector of the American economy. For instance, the measure penalizes employers for hiring more workers by raising the Medicare payroll tax by $210 billion, levying new taxes on many small businesses that will serve as the engine of economic growth and job creation. If we want to get this economy recovering again and creating jobs, the one thing you don't want to do is to impose new mandates, new burdens, new taxes, new regulations on the economic engine, the job creators in America today, and that is our small businesses. So if we are serious about the issue of jobs, this certainly didn't do anything to create jobs. I think the American people made it plain, and it is clear, they want us focused on jobs. They want us exclusively focused on getting this economy back on track, creating jobs and getting the American people back to work. So it failed on that test. How about on the test of spending? I think the American people understand that very basic sort of adage--if you want to call it that-- which says when you are in a hole, you don't keep digging. What we have done is we have dramatically expanded the size of government at a time when we are running year-over-year trillion-dollar deficits. So what did this do? When it is fully implemented, it will increase spending by $2.6 trillion. That is the 10-year score between 2014 and 2023. That is a massive expansion--the most dramatic expansion we have seen in government, literally, since the 1960s. So this doesn't do anything to address the issue that the American people spoke loudly about, and that is getting Washington spending under control. Arguably, as I said before, I think they care deeply about the issue of health care and getting health care costs under control. As I will get to in a minute, this does little, if anything, to address health care costs. But it certainly increases Federal spending and increases the role and the size of government at a time when most Americans are saying we want the government reined in. We want less government. We want the government to start living within its means. Instead, we have increased and expanded the size of government dramatically. How about the issue of debt? A lot has been made by our colleagues on the other side that if we were to repeal this, it is going to add to the deficit. Let's go back to the reason why they can make that argument. The reason they can make that argument is because of all the gimmicks, all the phony accounting that was included when this bill was passed in the first place. We have all referenced and talked about the double counting of Medicare savings, to the tune of about $400 billion, new payroll taxes, savings that are supposed to be achieved by reductions in Medicare spending double counted, counted both as a ``paid for,'' an offset to pay for the new health care entitlement program, and as a credit to the Medicare trust fund. You cannot double count. You cannot score these things in a way that dips into the same revenues twice. That was one of the great ironies of this legislation, when it was being debated here, that issue did not become more fully discussed, the way this thing was accounted for and the way in which the trust funds were credited with saving or extending the lifespan of Medicare at the same time the same dollars were being used to pay for this new health care entitlement. You cannot spend the same money twice and that is exactly what happened. The American people get that. I cannot feature any other place in America where you could get away with what happened here during the health care debate. So you had the $400 billion--$398 billion, to be exact--that was double counted on Medicare. You also had $29 billion in Social Security revenues that was double counted as well. The Social Security trust fund was credited with $29 billion at the same time the revenue that was coming in from higher Social Security payroll taxes because some changes that were made in the legislation were counted to pay for the new health care entitlement. So you had Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes that were double counted, that were essentially scored twice, to credit the Social Security trust fund and the Medicare trust fund, at the same time they were being used to finance the new health care entitlement. Add in the $70 billion that was listed as revenues to pay for this from yet another new entitlement program called the CLASS Act, which is a long-term care entitlement program. As was described by my colleague from Wyoming, even the Senate Budget Committee chairman, the Senator from North Dakota, described the CLASS Act as a Ponzi scheme of the highest order, something Bernie Madoff would be proud of. Yet $70 billion was scored as being a revenue raiser to pay for the new health care entitlement program, knowing that full well, at some point in the future, the people who paid premiums into this new program were going to demand some sort of payment when it came time to stake a claim against that, against that trust fund, those benefits were going to have to be paid out. So in the outyears it dramatically expands and explodes the deficit, even though in the near term it was counted as revenue that was used to shield the true cost of the health care bill. If you add in the cost of implementation, which turned out to be $115 billion, something that was not discussed nor included in the debate nor was it included in the initial CBO score, you have about a $208 billion cost to do the doctors fix, to take care of the physician fee issue, which will be coming to us, which was left out of this bill to understate the true cost of this bill to put it into balance, my point simply is, by any objective measure, if you look at the games that were played, the gimmicks that were used, the phony accounting that was used to claim that somehow this was going to be a positive impact on the deficit, it does not pass the smell test. No rational American would look at this and say this makes any sense at all. In fact, if you add up everything I just said, if you take all these accounting gimmicks, all the phony accounting that was used, and you offset that against what is claimed as a budget savings, you actually get not a $143 billion savings, you get about a $700 billion deficit. That is what we would be looking at over the 10 years. Remember also that you have the 6 years of spending in this bill in the first 10-year window, which is what the CBO used to score this, and about 10 years of revenues. So the tax increases start right away, the revenues are counted immediately, but the spending doesn't come until later. You front-load the revenue, you back-end load the spending in that decade and try to claim that somehow this thing balances out. Again, the American people see through this. They get it, which is why they have taken the position they have on the health care bill in the first place. On the test of debt, on the test of how does this impact the deficit, how does this impact America's long-term fiscal standing, this bill is a failure. One other point I would like to make--I wanted to come back to it earlier--I think a lot of Americans were hoping that when Congress took on this issue of health care, it actually would be with an eye toward reducing the cost of health care insurance premiums for most Americans. What we are seeing is the contrary. Actually, what we predicted would happen is coming true. Many of us who were involved in that debate said, at the time, this was going to lead to higher health care costs for most Americans, and it is actually true. Actually, the CBO said the same thing. They said the individual health insurance premiums would increase by about $2,100 per family as a result of the new law and that some consumers would face total premium increases of more than 20 percent. Those are things we are seeing come to fruition now. A lot of people are seeing their health insurance premiums go up. That is a fact. It is a reality. It is a complete contradiction of what was promised when this bill was being debated. You have not only higher taxes on small businesses that are costing us jobs, that are destroying jobs, you have this massive expansion of spending, you have the debt and the deficit which, in the outyears, are going to explode because of all these accounting gimmicks, and then when all is said and done, you still have not done anything that lowers health care costs for most Americans. I believe, for most Americans, that is what they wanted to see come out of the health care debate in the Congress. They wanted to see reforms passed that put downward pressure on health care costs to them and their families rather than increase it. In fact, what we have seen is the opposite. It has not decreased cost; it has increased costs. I think we are going to continue to see costs go up because as these tax increases kick in, a lot of businesses around the country obviously are going to pass these costs on to the American consumer. So it fails the test of doing anything to lower costs for most Americans. Finally, it is also now failing the legality test, as we are seeing these courts coming out and determining that this whole exercise was unconstitutional. That triggers a whole other debate in this country, a debate that I think we are going to watch probably for a while, but I hope, as this moves through the courts, it does engage the American public about what is the role of the government and how intrusive should it be and what kind of mandates can it impose on the American people. There was a very well-reasoned decision that came out of the Florida court yesterday which says this legislation is unconstitutional. Again, that makes the argument that many of us were making as this was being debated last year. The bottom line is, we are in a position to do something about it. This is not the end. This should not be the end of the debate. We should look at this as an opportunity. If the amendment that was offered by the Senator from Kentucky, Mr. McConnell, actually were to pass and we were to repeal this, we could start over. We could go about this in a way that actually does reform health care in this country in a way that lowers costs rather than raises costs for most Americans. I think that would be a welcome thing for the American people. The other side is going to argue we do not need to do this. We do not need to repeal this. We just need to ``repair'' it. We can make these little modifications to it. But the fundamental fact is, this was a mistake in the first place and we should acknowledge it. I think, again, the fact that it passed last year on a total party-line vote, a total partisan vote--there was not a single Republican in the Senate who voted for this. Usually, when you are doing big, bold things, when you look historically in the country, it is done in a bipartisan way. It is done in a way that incorporates the best thoughts, best ideas, best inputs from both sides, and you generally get a bipartisan vote in support of something such as that. This was passed on a party-line vote. It is now facing a challenge--and I think a very direct challenge--in the courts, which is going to play out in the course of the next several months. But we in the Senate could do something by repealing this law and starting over and going about this the right way. That is not to say for a moment there are not issues that need to be addressed with regard to health care in this country. Many of them have been touched upon by speakers who have come down here before me. But there is a better way to do it. There is a way to do this that does not dramatically expand, increase the size of our Federal Government, that does not add and explode the debt in the outyears, that does not raise taxes on our small businesses when we are asking them to create jobs, that actually does lower the cost of health care insurance for most people in this country rather than increasing it and is done in a way consistent with what our Framers intended, in terms of the basic parameters that are allowed by our Constitution. I hope the McConnell amendment will be voted on. I think it is important for all of us, obviously, to be on record. But I hope my colleagues on the other side may reconsider the position they took when this was voted last year and conclude with many of us that this was a failure and that starting over is the very best solution for the American people, if we are serious about giving them a health care system in this country that is affordable, that delivers the high quality they expect, and enables them to have the maximum amount of choice and decisionmaking authority when it comes to something that is so personal and so important to them; that is, their health. I yield the remainder of my time.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize Chad Miller, an intern in my Sioux Falls, SD, office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several weeks. Chad is a graduate of Washington High School in Sioux Falls. Currently he is attending the University of Saint Thomas, where he is majoring in psychology and political science. He is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of his internship experience. I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Chad for all of the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

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

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I rise to speak about the issues that I think are most important to the American public. I appreciated the opportunity I had last evening, along with the Presiding Officer, to sit and listen to the President's State of the Union Address, which is an annual rite of passage where the President lays out his blueprint and his vision for the next year. In those remarks he did, as he did last year, touch on a number of themes that I think speak to issues that are important for the country to face. Certainly, there were statements in that speech I agree with, in terms of the things he said we need to be focused on. There are some statements with which I did not agree. But in terms of the broader agenda, what strikes me about the speech is he talked about the need for tax reform, which is something I agree with. I think it is an issue of competitiveness. He talked about medical malpractice reform, which is something many of us have been trying to get to be part of the health care debate in this country for a long time. Unfortunately, that got left on the cutting room floor last year. He talked about strengthening Social Security and entitlement reform, also a critical priority if we are serious about getting spending and debt under control. He also talked about regulatory reform, looking at government reform and the types of actions we might be able to take to streamline or shrink or make more efficient the Federal Government. He also talked about the importance of enacting trade agreements, and I could not agree more. I think trade is a critical part of our economy. Export opportunities for businesses in this country would create economic growth. It would create jobs. Unfortunately, again, those are trade agreements that have been stalled out here for some time in the Congress. What strikes me about the speech is this. Last year, we heard a lot of the same themes. The President this year, I forgot to mention, talked about a 5-year freeze on spending. Last year, he talked about a 3-year freeze on spending. He talked about trade agreements 1 year ago. Many of those same themes were struck 1 year ago. Yet we have not seen the results of the rhetoric. What I would argue to the American people and to all my colleagues is, it is important that we judge people not by their rhetoric but by their actions. Don't watch what we say, watch what we do. I think that is true of anyone in public life. We all need to be judged by what we do and whether we are following through with what we say we are going to do. So when the President talks about those priorities, I could not agree more. But, frankly, in order for any of those things to happen, it is going to take Presidential leadership. If we are going to do something on tax reform, if we are going to do something on entitlement reform, if we are going to do something about spending and debt, the President is going to have to step forward with bold proposals in order to accomplish that because bold things, big things, need to be done on a bipartisan basis. The opposite example of that we saw a year ago, when the health care reform bill was being debated on the floor of the Senate. This is something that impacts literally one-sixth of the American economy. Yet you had a bill that passed the Senate without a single Republican vote. In fact, in most cases Republicans were not included, were not consulted, did not have input into that legislation. So you had a bill that literally impacts one-sixth of the American economy pass out of this Chamber on a party-line vote. That is historic. Because in most cases, if you look throughout our Nation's history, when this country needs to do big things, there is a bipartisan effort to try to get a bill that can attract broad bipartisan support. So as much as I support many of the things the President said last night, I would argue that the proof is in the pudding. We are going to wait and see now whether his actions comport with his words because the talk about spending and debt rings hollow if, in fact, you are not willing to take on spending in this country, spending in our government, and willing to take on the issue of entitlement reform. In fact, notwithstanding the President's talk last year about a 3-year freeze on spending, we saw the largest buildup, the most massive expansion of government we have seen literally since the 1960s. The health care bill is a $2\1/2\ trillion new expenditure for the Federal Government when it is fully implemented, at a cost, I believe, to be much larger than that over time when you start seeing these costs pile up and more and more people shifted over into the government program. Hopefully, we are going to have a vote here in the Senate. I believe we will have a vote. Our leader has indicated that we will get a vote on repealing health care reform. In my view, before this begins to get implemented, it would make sense to throw it overboard and start over and do this right and do it in a way that attracts bipartisan support and actually does something to drive down the cost of health care rather than increasing it because what we have seen already is what we predicted would happen; that is, insurance rates are going up, not down. The massive taxes on that bill, of course, get passed on, so consumers end up paying more for their health care, not less. I would argue that we are going to see some disastrous results from some of the pay-fors in the bill. The so-called CLASS Act, which is another new entitlement program, is something that even the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, a Democratic chairman, a year ago when this was being debated, said is a Ponzi scheme of the highest order, something Bernie Madoff would be proud of. It has a tail on it that is going to create deficits in the outyears and make the financial fiscal picture we face even worse. There are so many things about this bill that argue for us starting over and doing it right. But I want to say this morning, because I want to focus specifically on this issue of spending and debt, that much has been made of the fact that we are going to have a vote coming up. On March 4, the continuing resolution expires, at which point we will have to decide what we are going to do in terms of funding the government. I hope that debate or the lead-up to that vote sparks a debate about spending because if we don't start getting spending under control, this problem we have continues to snowball. We have a $14.3 trillion debt. The other point I would make is there is another big vote looming sometime between late March and early May--in the April timeframe most likely--where we are going to have to raise the debt limit. We are already $14.3 trillion in debt as a nation, and we are going to have to extend the nation's borrowing authority above that so that we can finance the government. We have maxed out the credit card. We cannot do this any longer. We don't have the luxury of time. When we are facing a $14.3 trillion debt, much of which we owe to other countries around the world, we put ourselves at great peril. We put our economy at great peril. I would argue it is a national security issue, and I am not the only one saying that. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ADM Mike Mullen, said a few months back that the greatest threat to America's national security is our national debt. That is the top ranking military official in this country saying it is not the--when we talk about the greatest threat to America's national security, he could have talked about al-Qaida, he could have talked about the Iranian nuclear program, he could have talked about China, he could have talked about North Korea. But what did he say? The greatest threat to America's national security is our national debt. That speaks volumes about what we need to be focused on and what we as public officials here in the Senate need to devote our energies to. So when we think about that, there are a couple of things that, obviously, we can do. I have advocated, as have others, that we go back to the 2008 spending levels because in the last 2 years, we have seen spending on the non-national security discretionary part of the budget increase by 21 percent, at a time when inflation in the overall economy is 2 percent. So the government has grown at 10 times the rate of inflation in the last 2 years. When the President talks about freezing spending this year, he is, in my view, dealing with an issue that really--the only analogy I can use--is like closing the barn door after the horse has already gotten out. We have a major problem. We had a dramatic runup in spending in the last 2 years, and freezing it now will enshrine and lock in to the baseline that massive increase in spending. If we go back to the 2008 levels, it will be painful, but we don't have the luxury of not dealing with this now. It is going to be painful, but it is going to be necessary if we are serious about providing a better future for our children and grandchildren. The alternative is that we continue to run up these trillion-dollar, $1.5 trillion deficits year over year over year, adding significantly more to that debt and putting ourselves on a trajectory when I think our economy is in great peril in the future. That is one aspect of it. We talk about the non-national security discretionary part of the budget. Of course, the national security part of the budget is already being scrutinized and scrubbed. The Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, has made it clear that they are going to try to find savings and efficiencies in there to the tune--in fact, I think they have already determined they can save somewhere on the order of $150 to $170 billion in the defense budget over the next 5 years. But then you have this other part of the budget, the entitlement programs-- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--which, of course, Medicare and Medicaid are driven by health care costs, and until we figure out what we are going to do on health care to rein that in, to get that cost under control, it is going to be complicated to try to fix. But that being said, I think that is what argues for actually putting remedies in place that will put downward pressure on health care costs, on utilization, so we can bring health care costs back under control. There are a number of good ideas out there about how to do that. The debt commission made some recommendations, although most in the area of Medicare and Medicaid were largely cosmetic because they couldn't come to an agreement about how to fix health care. Social Security, on the other hand, is available. It can be fixed. I think the debt commission made a series of recommendations that I hope the President and his team will take seriously and come to the Congress. I think Republicans here in Congress are willing to work with him because that is something we can put on a sustainable path. We ought to do it, and we ought to do it now because the longer we wait, the worse the problem becomes. So you have the entitlement issues, you have the non-national security discretionary spending--things that can be done, that this President, if he is willing to put his rhetoric into action and take leadership, can actually put up as a record of accomplishment for the American people. The alternative is that we continue to add to the $14.3 trillion debt. I am not going to sit here and say for a moment that we are not all responsible for this. Obviously, there were previous administrations and previous Congresses. We have gotten where we are today because we did not make the hard choices when he should have, and now the choices become much harder. I would also say that in the last 2 years, that debt has grown by over $3 trillion, largely because of a trillion-dollar stimulus bill that we borrowed from our children and grandchildren, which didn't do anything to create jobs but did add $1 trillion to the debt, and the health care bill, which, again, many of the costs of that we are going to see into the future, but it has a profound impact on the fiscal picture the country is going to be considering. What does it mean to finance a $14.3 trillion debt? Well, it means this: We spend so much on interest that next year the amount we spend on interest will equal the amount we spend on national security. Think about that. The entire security budget to defend this country, that amount of money will be equalled by the amount we spend on interest to finance the debt, and that continues to explode in the years ahead. If for some reason we were to have a runup in interest rates, if something happened in the economy, which, with inflation starting to take off a little bit, generally interest rates would follow that--and at some point in the not too distant future, we could see interest rates tick up. Well, we have been able to manage our debt by the way we financed it and the short-term borrowing. If you saw interest rates reset and go up, it would have an even more profound impact on the amount we pay to finance that debt and the amount we make in interest payments. Every child in America today under the age of 18 owes $114,000 because of that debt, and 6 years from now it will be $196,000. What are we doing to future generations when we saddle them with this enormous debt and put them in a position where they are going to be faced with a lower standard of living and a lower quality of life than what we have experienced simply because we did not have the courage to make the hard decisions that were necessary to get this situation under control. So I would suggest to my colleagues and to the President after his speech last night that this is not about talk. It is not about rhetoric. It is about action. It is about what the American people asked us to come here and do. I think there were three messages coming out of the election last fall: The American people want us focused on jobs and the economy, they want us focused on spending, and they want us focused on debt. We are going to have an opportunity in the next few months, when the continuing resolution expires and we look at the issue of funding the government into the future, to deal with the issue of spending When we get to the debt limit vote that will come up sometime this spring, we will have an opportunity to talk about the debt. But it ought to generate and spark a serious effort here in the Congress, not a cosmetic one, not a superficial one, not one where we provide lipservice but where we are serious about reining in spending--not just non-national security spending but also looking at the long-term issues that are going to affect this country's balance sheet well into the future, and those are our entitlement programs. It is going to be tough stuff. It is not easy to do this. I can't help but think that if we had made some of these hard decisions a few years ago, we wouldn't be in the situation we are today. I came here as a freshman Congressman back in 1997. One of the first votes we had--big votes, I should say, on the floor of the House of Representatives at the time--was a vote on a balanced budget amendment, something that I think 38 States have. Our State of South Dakota has a balanced budget amendment, which means our legislature and Governor can't go home until they balance the budget. That vote passed. It takes two-thirds majorities in both the House and the Senate and 38 States to ratify to get a constitutional amendment approved. We got a big, larger than two-thirds vote in the House of Representatives at that time. It came to the Senate, and it failed by one vote. Now, 67 votes here is the magic number to get the two-thirds threshold. It got 66 votes in the Senate 14 years ago. I can't help but think how much better out financial picture would be today had we taken that step back in 1997 and put a balanced budget amendment--enshrined that into our Constitution and imposed a discipline on the Congress that hasn't existed. Clearly, for politicians here in Washington, it is too easy, when it comes down to making hard choices, to take the easy way, to hand the bill to our children and grandchildren. It is time to stop. We cannot afford this any longer. We are at $14.3 trillion and adding $1 trillion every single year. So this is going to require tough decisions, hard decisions. But I believe this is a great country with great people. We have met big challenges before. I think the American people are ready to step forward and deal with this challenge. I think they are looking for political leadership to do that, to join them in that quest. As I said before, Presidential leadership is critical. It is going to take leadership here in the Senate and the House of Representatives. We cannot afford to kick the can down the road any farther, to punt the ball to the next generation. It is not fair to them. For generations in this country, we have had a sort of guiding principle; that is, one generation sacrifices so the next generation can have a better life. We may be the first generation that turns that ethic on its ear and asks the next generation to sacrifice because we have not been willing to live within our means. So I hope we can muster the courage that is necessary, and I am going to do everything I can to continue to shine a light on this issue when we get into these budget debates. I, frankly, have a series of budget reforms. I think that, absent a constitutional amendment, we ought to be putting some statutory reforms in place that would force downward pressure on spending. I have a bill that calls for a 2-year or biennial budget where we budget in one year, in the odd-numbered year, and in the even-numbered year we do more oversight. So when people here are running for reelection, instead of worrying about how to spend more money to curry favor with a particular constituency, we will be doing oversight and looking at how we can save money for the next generation. So I would like to get a debate on that. I think we ought to make the budget resolution we pass here binding and give it the teeth and the force of law which it does not have today. I think there are a series of prescriptions that would be worthwhile for us to not only entertain but hopefully implement to really take seriously the challenge that is before us. I thank the chair for the time, and I look forward to engaging in a debate about spending and about debt and how to better create jobs in this economy for the American people, which is what I think they want us focused on. I hope it will be not just rhetoric but action that follows. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I do want to rise in support of the Kyl amendment No. 4892 and echo the sentiments expressed by my colleague from Tennessee about the good work of the Senator from Arizona. He has been a tireless advocate for modernization. It is something that needed to happen, irrespective of whether there was a treaty, but it certainly became a condition in order to have a treaty. If you are talking about reducing the number of your nuclear weapons, you certainly want to improve the quality of the ones you have. Unlike other nuclear powers, the United States has not had an active modernization program for our nuclear deterrent. We have heard from people who recognize the importance of modernizing our nuclear deterrent. I will not reiterate all of those, but I wish to point out, Secretary Gates said recently--he couldn't be any more clear that nuclear modernization is a prerequisite to nuclear reductions when he said: To be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the numbers of weapons in our stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program. Similarly, Thomas D'Agostino, the head of the National Security Administration or NNSA said nuclear modernization is a prerequisite to nuclear reductions, stating: `` . . . as our stockpile gets smaller, it becomes increasingly important that our remaining forces are safe, secure and effective.'' In the same speech I just quoted from by Secretary Gates, he pointed out: ``Currently, the United States is the only declared nuclear power that is neither modernizing its nuclear arsenal nor has the capability to produce a new nuclear warhead.'' It is difficult to overstate the dire condition of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Its physical infrastructure is crumbling and its intellectual edifice is aging. The Strategic Posture Commission, chaired by William Perry and James Schlesinger, found that certain facilities of the nuclear weapons complex are ``genuinely decrepit'' and the complex's ``intellectual infrastructure . . . is in serious trouble.'' I met with experts throughout the Senate's consideration of New START, and they confirm for me the accuracy of these descriptions. I might say to the Presiding Officer, whose State is home to Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, we were able to visit those along with Senator Kyl, the Senator from Tennessee and others, and had an opportunity to observe some of the facilities and buildings which are referenced in this amendment. It is absolutely clear, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that we have to make the necessary upgrades and improvements if we intend to keep our nuclear arsenal modern and prepared to deal with the threats we might face in the future. The idea that the modernization of the U.S. nuclear complex and delivery force is an absolute prerequisite for nuclear reductions envisioned in New START has been clear to the Obama administration throughout the New START process. In fact, in December of 2009, 41 Senators wrote to the President and said in that letter: Funding for such a modernization program beginning in earnest in your 2011 budget is needed as the United States considers the further nuclear weapons reductions proposed in the START follow-on negotiations. Just to be clear, what is modernization? This includes improvements to the physical elements of the nuclear weapons complex. It involves the warheads and delivery vehicles themselves as well as facility infrastructure. Modernization also requires maintenance of the intellectual capacity and capabilities underlying that complex; namely, the designer and technical workforce. The amendment, as proposed by Senator Kyl, makes clear in the resolution of ratification how critical modernization is to the United States while it is reducing its nuclear arsenal. First, the amendment places a condition in the resolution of ratification requiring the President to submit an annual update to the section 1251 report. The 1251 report is something annually that comes up here that gives us an update on the nuclear weapons arsenal. Now we will have, thanks to the amendment adopted earlier, a certification with regard to the necessary investment in delivery vehicle modernization, which is an issue I addressed in an amendment earlier in this debate and a critically important one. The Senator has already addressed that in a previous amendment that was accepted by the proponents of the treaty. That was an important step forward. This particular amendment deals with the facilities and is also critically important. What it will do is require, in the 1251 report, that the President, when he submits his 10-year plan with budget estimates for modernization of the U.S. nuclear complex, that he also presents an accelerated design and engineering plan for the nuclear facilities and a commitment to funding those. So this amendment, such as the one that would call for modernization of the delivery vehicles, is a critical part of the nuclear complex we have, of making sure it is reliable, that it works, and that it is ready and prepared for whatever challenge may face us in the future. As I said earlier, there are many of the experts, and you talk to the Lab Directors themselves, who recognize the importance of making the investments that need to be made in this if we are going to keep that nuclear arsenal ready. I wish to read one other quote again. Deputy Administrator D'Agostino said: Our plans for investment in and modernization of the modern security enterprise are essential, irrespective of whether or not the START treaty is ratified. I suspect before all is said and done, the START treaty will be ratified. But in any event, this process needed to be undertaken irrespective of whether there is a treaty because it is that important to the future of our country and our national security. Again, if I might point out, very briefly, what this amendment does, the resolution of ratification must clearly call for a condition that the President will provide an annual update to the section 1251 report in that as a condition the President will certify prior to entry into force of the treaty that he intends to accelerate the design and engineering phase of the chemical facility and the uranium processing facility, request full funding for both of those facilities upon completion of the design and engineering phase of the plan, and an understanding that failure to fund the modernization plan would constitute a basis for withdrawal from the START treaty. This is, again, a fairly straightforward amendment. The Senator from Arizona has done, as has already been noted, a superb job of putting on the radar screen of all Members of the Senate the essential and critical nature of getting this issue of modernization addressed. He deserves great credit for doing that. I appreciate the work of the Senator from Massachusetts in cooperating with him in this treaty process to have these amendments and this language accepted because it is essential. I think it will make not only this treaty stronger, but it will also make the nuclear complex that much stronger. And that, of course, is absolutely essential when it comes to America's national security interests. So I support the amendment of the Senator from Arizona. I hope it will be accepted and adopted in the resolution of ratification, and that before this treaty is adopted this essential issue will be not only addressed, as it is in the underlying treaty, but addressed--that language even strengthened and made more durable by these amendments. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Casey.) The Senator from New Mexico.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that amended No. 4920 be made pending.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I say to my friend from Massachusetts that if he would allow me to vote on the amendment, I would try to break that 35-vote threshold that we have seen, to blow through that cap. I appreciate the fact that the Senator shares the concerns I have about Iran. All I would say is I think what this provides is an additional safeguard as we move into this process and we have this treaty and a clearly established connection between what is a great threat, a regional threat and, I would argue, a threat beyond the region, certainly to our national security as well, the Iranian threat, and the relationship we have with Russia and this treaty and the good- faith effort that we are making through this treaty with the Russians to reset, that this would provide an additional level of assurance that they are, in fact, cooperating and that they are following through on the commitments they are making to the administration and to us as we debate this treaty. Again, I will not belabor the point. The point has been made. I do think this is a germane amendment. I take issue with the chairman's contention that it is not. But at this particular late hour and with his objection to this, I know I am probably not going to have an opportunity to have this amendment voted on, but I hope the issue continues to stay front and center, in front of this body and before the Foreign Relations Committee and the Armed Services Committee on which I serve.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, if I might, given that, speak to the amendment. I regret that the amendment can't be voted on. The process has been fairly open. A number of amendments have been considered. This amendment was filed sometime this afternoon. It deals with an important subject, which is germane to the debate that we are having with regard to the New START treaty. One of the predicates for improving the START treaty is the so-called reset of our relationship with Russia. Of course, the President, as recently as November 18, 2010, made a statement, which is in this amendment: ``The New START Treaty is also a cornerstone of our relations with Russia'' for the reason that ``Russia has been fundamental to our efforts to put strong sanctions in place to put pressure on Iran to deal with its nuclear program.'' Accordingly, the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification of the New START Treaty is conditioned on the expectation that the Russian Federation will cooperate fully with United States and international efforts to prevent the Government of Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability. What this amendment does is to provide some assurance that all those intentions and statements actually come to pass. It would require the President to certify to the Senate the following: Prior to entry into force of the New START Treaty, 1, the President shall certify to the Senate that (i) the Russian Federation is in full compliance with all United Nations Security Council Resolutions relating to Iran; (ii) the Government of the Russian Federation has assured the United States that neither it nor any entity subject to its jurisdiction and control will (I) transfer to Iran the S-300 air defense system or other advanced weapons systems or any parts thereof; or (II) transfer such items to a third party which will in turn transfer such items to Iran; (iii) the Government of the Russian Federation has assured the United States that neither it nor any entity subject to its jurisdiction and control will transfer to Iran goods, services, or technology that contribute to the advancement of the nuclear or missile programs of the Government of Iran; and (iv) the Government of the Russian Federation has assured the United States that it will support efforts at the United Nations Security Council and elsewhere to increase political and economic pressure on the Government of Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program. That would be a commitment, a certification, that would be issued prior to the entry in force of the treaty by the President each year, and on December 31 of each subsequent year a similar certification would be issued by the President. In fact, if the President fails to certify, then it would require that he consult with the Senate and submit a report on whether adherence to the New START treaty remains in the U.S. national security interest. I say this because I think there is a direct connection and correlation between this treaty and the efforts of the Russians that we assume the Russians are going to commit to in terms of putting pressure on Iran regarding its nuclear program and not doing things that would put in jeopardy the security of the region. I have to say, obviously, this has a big impact on our great ally, Israel, as well as the whole region. It would be very destabilizing if the Iranians have a nuclear weapon. So I think the effort made by the administration to ``reset relations with Russia,'' bears directly on this treaty. As I said, it was stated clearly by the President as recently as November 18, where he recognized that important relationship. I simply say this amendment, I don't think, is anything that anybody would not agree with. All it does is require not just a statement that this is going to be part of our ongoing relationship with Russia, but it provides an assurance, a certification that the administration would make to the Senate before the treaty would enter into force and each year subsequent to that with those basic issues. The issues are fairly straightforward. It simply requires a condition that the Russian Federation is in full compliance with all U.N. Security Council resolutions relating to Iran and the government of the Russian Federation assures the United States that neither it nor any entity subject to its jurisdiction and control will transfer to Iran the S-300 air defense system or other advanced weapons systems or any parts thereof or transfer such items to a third party, which will in turn transfer such items to Iran. While the S-300--for the time being, Russia has refrained from doing that. There are concerns and reports that Russia has recently provided Tehran with a new radar system allegedly through third party mediators from Venezuela and Belarus. So the concern about that coming into Iran through some third party is also something that I think is of great concern to America's national security interests as well as those of our allies. Mr. President, the amendment, again, is very straightforward. It requires a certification before the entry into force of the treaty, and then each year thereafter about those basic conditions that the Russians be in compliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions, that they would not try to get the S-300 to the Iranians, directly or indirectly, and they would continue putting pressure on the Iranians with respect to their nuclear program. We know too that the nuclear reactor in Bashir is now producing plutonium. Russia has fueled a nuclear reactor there that is now producing plutonium in Iran. That ought to be of great concern to everybody here as we pass judgment on this treaty, which is obviously important to our relationship with Russia, but also bears on the relationship we have with other countries around the world. I think anybody in the foreign policy community that you talk to today, when you ask what is the most dangerous threats the United States and its allies face around the world today, Iran and nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran top that list. So the efforts that we make to persuade the Russians to put pressure on the Iranians and make sure there isn't anything going on there that would destabilize or put in peril America's national security interest is certainly an objective we have. This would require the President certify that those things are taking place rather than relying on the statements and good intentions of the Russians. I wish, again, that I could get this amendment pending and get it voted on. I think it is important to have the Senate on record with regard to this issue. I regret that the amendment has been objected to. I appreciate the opportunity to at least raise the issue, and I certainly hope it is something that the administration and our leaders in the Senate and the entire military establishment of this country pays close attention to in the days ahead. This issue will not go away. I think it bears definitely on the treaty. With that, I will conclude my remarks and say I wish we had an opportunity to get a vote on it. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, it is my understanding that I have a minute in which to wrap up debate on this amendment; is that correct?

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I will make a couple quick points before we vote on the delivery vehicle amendment, and the first one is this because it has been observed that this would impact Prompt Global Strike. The supporters of the treaty have said it will not impact Prompt Global Strike. The fact is that the 700 number of delivery vehicles--if, for example, we were to mount a conventional warhead on an ICBM to strike a target in some geographic area that is hard to hit and we need to get there in short order, the ICBM currently is the best way to do that. If we do that, it reduces the number of nuclear delivery vehicles we have one for one. If we were to do that on 20 ICBMs, we would mount conventional warheads on those, and it would reduce by 20 the number of nuclear delivery vehicles we would have. That is a fact in the treaty. The final point I will make about the number 700, because it has been pointed out that military personnel in the country support that number, but I also want to mention that it is important to recall that General Chilton's support for New START levels was predicated on no Russian cheating. He testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 22, 2010, that one of the assumptions made was an assumption that the Russians in the postnegotiation time period would be compliant with the treaty. We all know it has been pointed out many times on the floor how Russia is a serial violator of arms control commitments. I think it is important, as we discuss the 700 number, that people bear in mind that number was agreed upon by our military commanders assuming there would be no cheating by the Russians. There still is a conflict between the 720 called for in the nuclear force structure plan and the 700 in the treaty. All I am simply saying is, let's make those two numbers consistent. Let's get the 700 number up to 720. With that, I yield back my time and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. THUNE. I also request the yeas and nays on the Inhofe amendment.

Mr. THUNE. I ask unanimous consent to have a couple minutes to summarize a couple points. I had 5 minutes which I think just got burned.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for yielding some time. We are going to vote on his amendment and on the amendment I have offered. Both address important subjects in the treaty. The Senator from Oklahoma is dealing with the issue of verification and pointing out the shortcomings in the treaty with regard to that very important issue. The amendment I will have voted on deals with the issue of delivery vehicles, which, in my judgment, is a critically important element in this treaty as well. As I have said earlier today on the floor, what this amendment does-- it is very straightforward and it is very simple--is it just increases the number of deployed delivery vehicles, which are the bombers, the submarines, and the ICBMs allowed for in the treaty from 700 to 720. In terms of background about why that is important--and I want to inform my colleagues in the Senate about why it is important we get that number up to 720--I asked at an Armed Services Committee hearing at what point between the range of 500 and 1,100 delivery systems that GEN James Cartwright, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would be comfortable and where we would avoid making our triad into a dyad. He said: ``I would be very concerned if we got down below those levels about midpoint,'' meaning that he would be concerned if the negotiated number fell below about 800 delivery vehicles. They have made a distinction--the administration has--between deployed and nondeployed, that there are 800 there. And he has subsequently said he could live with a 700 deployed number. But the fact of the matter is that the concern that was voiced initially about dropping down below that midpoint level suggests that we need to at least increase up to where the administration's I guess you would call it their nuclear force structure plan settled, and that was 720 delivery vehicles. So the amendment raises from 700 to 720 the number of delivery vehicles. As I said earlier in my remarks, if you look at what the 1251 report says, it says up to 60 nuclear-capable bombers, up to 420 deployed ICBMs, and 240 deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles on 14 submarines. If you add up, up to 60 bombers, up to 420 ICBMs and 240 deployed SLBMs, you get a number of 720 delivery vehicles. That is what the nuclear force structure plan calls for. Yet the treaty specifies 700 delivery vehicles. So there is a 20-delivery vehicle cap there, which I think is important. Frankly, if you ask the question about where would those reductions come from, obviously it would come from either ICBMs or bombers. People have suggested it doesn't have to come out of the bombers, but if you did take it out of the bombers, if you reduce the number of bombers from the 60 that is specified in the nuclear force structure plan to get down under 700, you would have to take the bombers from 60 down to 40. As I said earlier today, we have about 96 B-52 nuclear bombers, about 20 B-2 nuclear bombers, and those are total deployed and nondeployed, the number we have in our inventory arsenal. We have about 94, I think, that are combat ready. But in any case, we are talking about a significant reduction in the number of bombers we could deploy at any given time under the treaty if you get it down to the 700 number. The question as to whether that would come out of ICBMs or whether it would come out of bombers to get from 720 down to 700, it could be some combination of both. But the thing that concerns me about this is we have a bomber fleet that is aging. Most of our bombers today are pre- Cuban missile crisis-era vintage bombers--about 47 percent of them are. We need a follow-on, a next-generation bomber that will fill that role, that will be survivable in the types of modern-era defenses we are going to encounter, sophisticated air defense systems that are being employed by some of our potential adversaries around the world. So if you think about what we need in terms of a next-generation bomber, we need a field bomber and we need to do it sooner rather than later and it needs to be nuclear. But when asked the question about whether the next bomber would be a nuclear bomber, the military and the administration have been very ambiguous on that point. They haven't been able to answer clearly, with any degree of certainty, about whether the next bomber, the follow-on bomber, would, in fact, be a nuclear bomber, which would suggest to me the commitment to the bomber wing of the triad is a lot less than it is to perhaps the other two legs of the triad. That being said, let's assume for the moment that if we have up to 60 bombers, we have up to 420 ICBMs, and we have 240 submarine launchable ballistic missiles, we are talking about a 720 number, not a 700 number. So that is why I think this debate is important and why we are trying to be insistent in getting those two numbers to match. The other point I wish to make is with regard to delivery vehicles in the treaty. We start out right now with about 856 delivery vehicles, if you add up ICBMs, submarine launchable ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers. We will end up down at 700. So we are going to take about 156 of our delivery vehicles, reduce that, retire those, and get down to that 700 number. The Russians, on the other hand, start at about 620. So they are already well below the 700 number called for in the treaty. It has been suggested that through attrition they will probably get down to somewhere in the 400s in delivery vehicles. So this particular provision in the treaty costs them nothing. We give up 156 delivery vehicles. They give up nothing. In fact, they can come up to the 700 number. They could increase the number of delivery vehicles they currently have to come up to that 700 number. So I think it is important to point out the difference that exists today and the disparity that exists between the Russian number of delivery vehicles and the number the United States has at our disposal and the number called for in the treaty and why that disparity is so important. Just one final point, if I might, with regard to the nuclear posture of the country. We also have to defend not only the United States but about 30 other countries around the world that fall under the nuclear umbrella, under our deterrence. The Russians have none. So these delivery vehicle numbers become even more important, given the geographic realities the United States has to deal with in terms of our strategic nuclear forces and what they are expected to do in terms of providing extended deterrence not only to the United States but to many of our allies around the world. So I think it is important in this treaty debate--this particular part of it--that we get a vote on this amendment. It has been suggested that if this amendment gets adopted, we will have to go back to the Russians. That is part of our goal of advice and consent in the Senate. If it were just consent, we would be nothing more than a rubberstamp. I think we have an important role; that is, to look at these critical issues, and where there are areas of disagreement, to provide our advice. I think, in a very straightforward way, we can vote on an amendment that would increase from 700 to 720 the number of delivery vehicles specified in the treaty. It is a very straightforward amendment and one that would then go back, obviously, to the Russians, but it is certainly consistent with the Senate's traditional and historic role of advice and consent. Former Defense Secretary Schlesinger testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 29, 2010, that: ``As to the stated context of the strategic nuclear weapons, the numbers specified are adequate, though barely so.'' Well, ``barely so'' does not seem to be good enough for me when we are talking about the important obligations we have in defending America's vital national security interests as well as those of many of our allies around the world. I don't think settling for barely enough or barely so is sufficient. So I hope my colleagues will support this amendment. I think, as I said earlier, the triad is critical to our nuclear deterrence and maintaining both ICBMs and SLBMs, but then also having a very robust bomber component of that is critical. That is why investing in a next- generation, follow-on bomber that is nuclear is important. I think the ambiguity that surrounds the question, the uncertainty that surrounds the question about whether a follow-on bomber would be nuclear speaks volumes about the commitment to that leg of the triad, but it is also important to remember bombers are the best form of extended deterrence. If you want to make those who would proliferate nuclear weapons pay attention, you send a bomber in. A bomber is very visible, it is recallable, it is survivable, and it brings great psychological and political advantage to our country when it comes to trying to discourage proliferation by other countries around the world. So I hope my colleagues will support this amendment. It is an important amendment. The delivery vehicle issue is, to me, critical to this debate not only in terms of the numbers but also the modernization of those various elements of the triad. The triad, over time, has given us great survivability, great flexibility, and if ever called upon, we want to be as prepared as we possibly can be to encounter any nuclear threat that might exist to the United States. I hope my colleagues will support this amendment. I will reserve my time and yield back now to the Senator from Oklahoma, who I think probably wants to continue to talk about the verification issues.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The Senator from Arizona made some good points, I think, about the importance of the triad in maintaining our nuclear capability and deterrence. I am interested in knowing if the Senator is aware that even if you assume the numbers that are in the 1251 report that would take the number of bombers down to 60--and it is up to 60, but the treaty calls for 700 delivery vehicles, which, if you took that out of bombers, would take you down to 40--that even taking it to 60 would cut in half the number of nuclear bombers. Is the Senator also aware bombers are the best vehicle to enforce extended deterrence? The ICBMs, the missiles we have, our adversaries sometimes cannot see those. A bomber is visible. A bomber can be sent into theater. It has an impact, a psychological impact, a political impact. It is recallable. It is something that can be out there that makes those who would proliferate nuclear weapons even more concerned about the capability we have to respond. The importance of maintaining that leg of the triad is, in this Senator's judgment, critical. It sounds like, from what the Senator is saying, he understands that as well. I want to know if the Senator is aware that the limits that are imposed not only in the 1251 report but, more important, in the treaty would significantly reduce the number of nuclear bombers we have at our disposal today.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Massachusetts, we do have others who want to speak, not only on this amendment but also on the amendment of the Senator from Oklahoma. These, as I said, are very significant, substantive amendments that deal fundamentally with the issues that are important to this treaty. I do not think we are prepared at this point to cut off that debate. Until we get some indication from some of our colleagues about who else might want to come down and speak to either of these issues, I object to entering into any kind of time agreement.

Mr. THUNE. For those watching this debate who may be unfamiliar with some of the terminology used in these arms control treaties such as the term ``delivery vehicles,'' it is important to understand that delivery vehicles simply means the nuclear triad of systems: bombers, submarines, and land based intercontinental ballistic missiles or ICBMs. This triad of delivery vehicles is very valuable because it is resilient, survivable, and flexible, meaning that if, God forbid, we suffer a nuclear attack, those who attacked us can never be sure that they have knocked out our ability to respond with a nuclear strike. Obviously, without the means to deliver nuclear weapons, an adversary would not take seriously our ability to respond to a nuclear attack. As the numbers of delivery vehicles goes down, it becomes more and more important to make sure they are modernized and that they work as intended. And as numbers get reduced, it begins to have an impact on whether we can effectively retain the triad, making it more likely that our nation would have to eliminate a leg of the triad. On July 9, 2009, at an Armed Services Committee hearing, I asked GEN James Cartwright, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, about the administration's commitment at that time to reduce our strategic delivery vehicles to somewhere in the range of 500 to 1,100 systems, and to specify at what point in this range would he become concerned that delivery vehicle reductions would necessitate making our nuclear triad into a dyad. General Cartwright responded that he ``would be very concerned if we got down below those levels about mid point,'' meaning that he would be concerned if the negotiated number fell below 800 delivery vehicles. This treaty caps delivery vehicles at 700, substantially below the number that General Cartwright stated a year and a half ago. Now, the treaty makes this odd distinction between ``deployed'' and ``non-deployed'' delivery vehicles, and the treaty's proponents will point out that the total cap for the treaty is 800 ``deployed and non- deployed'' systems. And of course, there is a letter from General Cartwright in the committee report accompanying the treaty stating that he is comfortable with the distinction between deployed and non- deployed delivery vehicles, and the overall limits to delivery vehicles. But it is important to understand that the administration has not articulated how it will deploy a nuclear force conforming to the number of 700. Instead, the administration has presented a plan for how it will deploy 720 delivery vehicles. And that is the motivation behind this amendment. I find it very troubling that the administration has yet to articulate how it will deploy a nuclear force conforming to the number of 700. The comprehensive plan for delivery vehicle force structure the administration was required to present to Congress under section 1251 of the fiscal year 2010 Defense authorization bill, known as the 1251 report, provides a very troubling lack of specificity concerning force structure under the New START treaty. Specifically, the administration's fact sheet on the section 1251 report explains that the U.S. nuclear force structure under this treaty could comprise up to 60 bombers, up to 420 ICBMs, and 240 SLBMs. The only number that is a certainty in the 1251 report is the number of SLBMs. I hope the members from states with bomber bases and ICBM bases will pay attention to this important point. Since deployments at the maximum level of all three legs of the triad under the explanation provided by the administration's 1251 report add up to 720 delivery vehicles, it is mathematically impossible for the U.S. to make such a deployment and be in compliance with the treaty's limit of 700 deployed strategic nuclear delivery vehicles. Clearly, additional reduction decisions will be made with respect to U.S. force structure under this treaty, and obviously those reductions will come out of bombers and/or ICBMs. Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen acknowledged in a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on June 17, 2010, that further reductions would still be required to meet the treaty's central limits. They went on to argue that because the United States will have 7 years to reduce its forces to these limits, they did not find it necessary to identify a final force structure at this point; meaning the Senate will commit the United States to a delivery vehicle force of 700 without knowing how that force will be composed. Compounding this problem of not knowing what the final force structure will look like is the fact that the Obama administration conceded to Russian demands to place limits on conventional prompt global strike systems by counting conventionally armed strategic ballistic missiles against the 700 allowed for delivery vehicles. For those who are unfamiliar with prompt global strike, it is simply a program that would allow the United States to strike targets anywhere on Earth with conventional weapons in as little as an hour. Development of these systems is an important niche capability that would allow us to attack high-value targets or fleeting targets, such as WMD, terrorist, and missile threats. A recent Defense Science Board report states that ``the most mature option for prompt, long-range, conventional strike is the ballistic missile'' and that ``Building on the legacy of these [intercontinental ballistic missile] weapon systems provides a relatively low-risk path to a conventional weapon system with global reach.'' Yet this treaty will not permit us to develop this low-risk concept for conventional prompt global strike without it having an impact on the central limits under this treaty of 700 delivery vehicles. To be very blunt, this treaty was so poorly negotiated that for every ICBM or SLBM deployed with a conventional warhead, one less nuclear delivery vehicle will be available to the United States. This one-for-one reduction in deployed nuclear forces is one we can ill afford at the levels of delivery vehicles allowed under this treaty. When the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, General Chilton, testified before the Armed Services Committee on April 22, 2010, he specifically said that we could not replace the deterrent effects of nuclear weapons with a conventional capability on a one-for-one basis or ``even ten-for-one.'' Treaty proponents will point out that there are other potential new conventional prompt global strike systems on the drawing board that may not fall under the treaty's limitations, such as a hypersonic glide delivery vehicle. But why are we tying the hands of future administrations that may need to quickly field such systems, especially since converting ICBMs to carry a conventional warhead are the most advanced systems we have right now on conventional prompt global strike? The Senate should not ratify the treaty without knowing what kind of conventional prompt global strike systems may be counted and how that will affect our triad at the much reduced delivery vehicle limits. According to the DOD, an assessment on treaty implications for conventional prompt global strike proposals will not be ready until early 2011. If we pass this treaty now, Senators won't know the details on this important issue until the treaty enters into force, when it is too late. Adopting my amendment would provide a hedge against the issues that are raised by the conventional prompt global strike niche capability and its impact on the treaty's limit of 700 delivery vehicles. With a 700 delivery vehicle limit, conventional prompt global strike counting against that number, we will have fewer nuclear delivery vehicles, and this limit will be a disincentive to develop and deploy conventional prompt global strike as a result. Moreover, why should we accept these constraints in a treaty that was about strategic nuclear weapons? While we are required under the treaty to cut the number of delivery vehicles to the bone, Russia will not have to make any similar cut to their delivery vehicles, leaving one to wonder what we received in return for this significant concession. The treaty essentially requires the United States to make unilateral reductions in delivery vehicles, as Russia is already well below the delivery vehicle limits and would have drastically reduced its arsenal with or without this treaty. As CRS writes, ``[Russia] currently has only 620 launchers, and this number may decline to around 400 deployed and 444 total launchers. This would likely be true whether or not the treaty enters into force because Russia is eliminating older missiles as they age, and deploying newer missiles at a far slower pace than that needed to retain 700 deployed launchers.'' So I want to put a fine point on that, Mr. President. Essentially what we are doing here is we have about 856 delivery vehicles in our arsenal today. We are reducing that down to 700. So we are taking a significant haircut, a significant cut in the number of delivery vehicles that would be available to us. The Russians, on the other hand, are currently only at 620 launchers, delivery vehicles, which is already well below the 700. On the attrition path they are on, it would very soon be down to about 400 deployed launchers and 444 total launchers. So the United States has made huge concessions regarding delivery vehicles in this treaty, and the Russians have conceded nothing on this point. It seems to me this is another area in which we made significant concessions and received very little in return. Mr. President, we are binding ourselves to the number of delivery vehicles we negotiate with Russia, even though we have security commitments to extend our nuclear deterrent to more than 30 countries, while Russia has none. Given geographic realities, U.S. strategic nuclear forces are part of how the United States provides this extended deterrence. As we face an uncertain future, where other nations like China continue to modernize their nuclear forces, we will need to be able to hold more potential targets at risk to deter attacks. That means we need to be very careful about reducing delivery vehicle levels, and this amendment would simply use the administration's 1251 report force structure plan of 720 delivery vehicles as the ceiling for delivery vehicles under this treaty, rather than the current number of 700 reflected in the treaty. Some of my colleagues will probably warn that even this modest amendment is a ``treaty killer'' amendment. But article II, section 2 of the Constitution says that the President ``shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties.'' When the other side admonishes us about ``treaty killer'' amendments, it becomes apparent that we are supposed to be a rubberstamp for this treaty, wanting us to provide our consent but not to provide our advice. It should be made clear what a ``treaty killer'' amendment is. It is any amendment seeking to remedy an issue with the treaty the Russians steamrolled us on during the negotiation process but which New START proponents do not wish to adopt because protecting American interests will annoy the Russians and perhaps jeopardize entry into force of the treaty. One thing should be clear: The Senate cannot kill New START in the way some are suggesting. If the Senate gives its consent to New START with amendment to the text, that just means the treaty is sent to Russia for its approval with the amendment. The ball will then be in Russia's court. As CRS has outlined in its study on the role of the Senate in the treaty process: ``Amendments are proposed changes in the actual text of the treaty. . . . [They] amount, therefore, to Senate counter offers that alter the original deal agreed to by the United States and the other country.'' Simply put, an amendment to the treaty text would not kill the treaty, it would merely require Russian consent to the amendment as a matter of international negotiation. If Russia chooses to reject that amendment, it will not be the Senate that kills the treaty, it will be the Russian government. As a side note, I believe it is important to recall that General Chilton's support for New START levels was predicated on no Russian cheating. He testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 22, 2010, that one of the assumptions made when the Nuclear Posture Review was completed was ``an assumption . . . that the Russians in the post negotiation time period would be compliant with the treaty.'' It has been pointed out many times now how Russia is a serial violator of arms control commitments. In conclusion, reducing U.S. strategic nuclear forces, especially with delivery systems, is a very serious matter that has received insufficient attention. We have little to gain, and much to lose, if we cannot be certain that the numbers in New START are adequate. I think it is worth noting that former Defense Secretary Schlesinger testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 29, 2010, that ``as to the stated context of strategic nuclear weapons, the numbers specified are adequate though barely so.'' Again, this is a modest amendment that takes into account the administration's own force structure plan of 720 delivery vehicles. This amendment would simply use the administration's 1251 report force structure plan of 720 delivery vehicles as the ceiling for delivery vehicles under this treaty rather than the current number of 700 reflected in the treaty. In light of all of these issues, I ask my colleagues to carefully consider this amendment, and I respectfully ask for a vote in its favor. Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to support this amendment. I simply say that with regard to maintaining a triad and a system of bombers, ICBMs, and SLBMs, in order to do that, the 700-number ceiling makes that very complicated. If you assume 420 ICBMs and 240 SLBMs, that leaves room for some bombers but not a lot of room. Frankly, if you go down from the 720 number to the 700 number, if you assume up to 260 bombers--that is, if you assume the 700 number and take it out of bombers, you would be down to 40 bombers, 96 B-52s and B-1s that are nuclear capable, nuclear weapons we use with nuclear-launch vehicles for extended deterrence around the globe. Going down to 40 would be a two-thirds reduction in the number of bombers we have to provide that type of extended deterrence. It strikes me that we are getting perilously close with this number to moving from a triad to a dyad. Furthermore, we are tying our hands when it comes to our ability to have the necessary delivery vehicles at our disposal, if and when that time would ever come. Again, this is a very straightforward amendment. It takes the number from 700 to 720. It is consistent with the 1251 report and what the administration says they can accommodate in terms of launch vehicles. I hope my colleagues will support it. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE. I guess the concern and observation the Senator raised I would make as well. With regard to a follow-on bomber, a next- generation bomber, much of our bomber fleet today--47 percent of it is pre-Cuban missile era. So they are older. They need to be replaced. We need a next-generation bomber. The question the Senator raised about the ambiguity coming out of whether a next-generation bomber would, in fact, be nuclear is a real concern because that would put at risk the existence of the triad, which I think allows us to maintain the flexibility, the versatility we have today in terms of nuclear deterrence. So I would echo what the Senator from Arizona has voiced as a concern about this discussion of a next-generation bomber and whether, one, it will be done, and, two, it will be a nuclear bomber.

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, to answer the question of the Senator from Michigan, that I believe to be the case. It is not proscriptive. All I am simply saying is if you make an assumption that you are going to take the additional 20 delivery vehicles out of the bomber fleet, you would take it from 60 down to 40 at a time when we have about almost 120 bombers in our inventory. That is a significant reduction in our ability to provide extended deterrence, and the bombers are the best form of extended deterrence.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I wish to speak to an amendment I have pending at the desk, but before I do that, I wish to make some general observations as well about where we are with regard to this process because there has been a lot said about Republicans not wanting to vote on this or trying to delay this. But I think one would have to admit that we have now talked about missile defense, which I think is a very valid issue with respect to this treaty. There are very significant areas of disagreement with regard to how it treats missile defense. We have had a discussion about tactical weapons, which, in my judgment, also is a very important issue relative to our national security interests and the interests of our allies around the world. We have had a debate about verification, about which the amendment of Senator Inhofe is currently pending. Those are all very valid and substantive issues to debate and discuss with regard to this treaty. The amendment I will offer will deal with the issue of delivery vehicles, which is something that is important as well where this treaty is concerned. So I would simply say that it is consistent with our role in the U.S. Senate to provide advice and consent. If it were just consent, if that is what the Founders intended, we could rubberstamp this. But we have a role in this process, and that role is to look at these issues in great detail and make sure the national security interests of the United States are well served by a treaty of this importance. So I think the words of the treaty matter, and I think the words of the preamble matter. I am not going to relitigate the debate we have already had on missile defense, but I believe that if we have language in a preamble to a document such as this, not unlike the preamble we have in our Constitution which is frequently quoted, it has meaning. To suggest that the preamble doesn't mean anything, that it is a throwaway and has throwaway language, to me really misses the point. Obviously, it matters to someone. It matters greatly to the Russians, and I don't think, if it didn't, it would be in there. That is why I believe that having this linkage between offensive strategic arms and defensive strategic arms in the preamble--it is in there for a reason. Somebody wanted it in there, obviously, and I think it certainly has weight and consequence beyond what has been suggested here on the floor of the Senate. I would also argue as well that the signing statement we have already talked about where the Russians made it very clear in the signing statement, in Prague on April 8 of 2010, that the treaty can operate and be viable only if the United States of America refrains from developing its missile defense capabilities qualitatively or quantitatively--if you tie that back to article XIV of the withdrawal clause of the treaty where it talks about being able to withdraw for exceptional circumstances, you can certainly see the pretext by which the Russians may decide to withdraw from this treaty. So missile defense is not an inconsequential issue. It is a very important issue with regard to this treaty, and the amendment that was offered on Saturday and voted on attempted to address that. Unfortunately, that failed. I hope we have subsequent opportunities to get at the issue of missile defense because I certainly think it is an unresolved issue in my view and in the view of many of us.