John Thune

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. I will proceed accordingly and try to conclude this in 2\1/2\ minutes. That, unfortunately, does not give me enough time to say favorable things about the substitute of the Senator from Montana. But I do want to close the debate on this amendment by saying that I do think this presents to us a very clear choice about how to accomplish what this legislation strives to accomplish; that is, as we have all talked about--something I think both sides agree on, Democrats and Republicans--extending unemployment benefits to those who have lost jobs; extending expiring tax provisions that are currently in law, such as the research and development tax credit, that are important to our economy and to our competitiveness; and, finally, making sure the reduction or the cut in physician reimbursements under Medicare does not go into effect. So those are basically the elements we are talking about today in terms of the things we are trying to get done. The difference occurs as to how we would propose paying for that. The Democratic majority has put forward their proposal which does include tax increases, about $50 billion now in the current version of it in tax increases. It does raise the debt by about $50 billion, adds more onto the Federal debt, notwithstanding the commitment to pay for things under the pay-go rules that were enacted in the Senate, and it does increase spending substantially. What I am offering as an alternative for Senators to vote on is an approach that is very different. It reduces taxes. There are no tax increases in it. The tax reductions occur because of extending existing tax law, actually reducing taxes by $26 billion. It reduces the Federal debt, according to the Congressional Budget Office, by $68 billion, and it reduces spending by $100 billion. As I said earlier, I think it is important the Federal Government go on a diet. We have all kinds of issues, and Americans across this country have lost jobs, unemployment is at a high rate, people are having to make decisions. There has been a loss of income. They are reducing their personal budgets, their family budgets, their business budgets. Here in Washington, DC, we continue to spend and spend and spend like there is no tomorrow and hand the bill to future generations. So this is the debate. It is a clear difference in approach, and I hope my colleagues will vote in favor of fiscal responsibility, vote in favor of paying our way, vote in favor of living within our means, and vote in favor of reducing the debt on future generations. So I would ask my colleagues in the Senate to support this amendment. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. I will be happy to yield to the leader.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, the amendment I offer is cosponsored by Senators McCain, McConnell, Bond, Coburn, Isakson, and Roberts. It is an alternative to the legislation that is under consideration by the Senate today. That is the tax extenders bill that was the subject of some debate last week, that we will continue to do this week, perhaps into next week. I am not sure exactly when it will conclude. What my amendment does is present an alternative because the amendment under consideration that has been offered up by the Democratic majority here in the Senate adds almost $80 billion to the Federal debt, it raises taxes by $70 billion, and increases spending by $126 billion. To put that into proper context, it is important to remember that we have a current $13 trillion debt. The amount of publicly held debt is $8.6 trillion, but if you include the amount of debt owed between intergovernmental agencies, intergovernmental debt is $13 trillion that our government owes and is in debt. What has been proposed by the other side is in direct contradiction of some legislation that we passed here a few months ago that suggested everything we were going to do around here, or almost everything, was going to be paid for. It was called pay-go. We passed the pay-go rules. It was highly touted at the time. There was great fanfare associated with the passage of pay-go rules that would insist when there is new spending or tax cuts that those be offset by some spending cuts or some combination of tax increases that would make sure there was no net impact on the deficit. What is happening here is the exact opposite of that because what we are seeing happen with the legislation that is before the Senate today is, if in fact this bill were enacted and became law, it ends up being about $200 billion in new debt, debt we have added to the public debt since pay-go has been enacted. I appreciate the Senator from Nevada, the majority leader, yielding back time so I can continue to speak about this amendment. I understand the process for consideration of this legislation will now be somewhat truncated if in fact cloture is invoked. I suspect it will not be long now we will be having a vote on that. But I hope my colleagues will defeat the motion to invoke cloture until such time as we have had an opportunity to debate many of these important amendments. Clearly I believe the amendment I am discussing right now is one we need to vote on. I suspect there will be others of my colleagues who will want to offer amendments that I hope we will be able to debate and vote on before this legislation moves forward. The point I wanted to make is this. Since the enactment of the pay- as-you-go rules here in the Senate, about $200 billion, if the current legislation on the floor today is enacted, will have been added to the Federal debt. That is $200 billion which we hand to our children and grandchildren to pay, notwithstanding what we have said publicly here in the Senate a few months ago, that all these things are going to be paid for and we are now going to be serious here in the Senate and in the Congress about making sure we are not piling more and more debt on future generations. That is completely contradicted by the legislation we will be voting on here in the near future on this tax extenders bill because it does increase the debt by almost $80 billion and, as I said earlier, raises taxes by almost $70 billion. What I offer is an alternative to that approach. What this alternative does is, rather than increasing and raising taxes, it reduces taxes by $26 billion, it cuts spending by $100 billion, and it reduces the debt by $55 billion. So instead of more spending, more taxes, and more debt in the middle of an economy that is trying to get back on its feet and create jobs, my alternative and the one I will offer on behalf of my colleagues--who, as I mentioned earlier, are cosponsors of this amendment--will in fact reduce spending, reduce taxes, and reduce debt. I think that is a good deal for the American taxpayer. I think it strikes at the very heart of what we ought to be focused on, which is job creation. We hear the other side talk a lot about job creation, but when it comes time to create jobs, you cannot find many policies coming out of Washington, DC, today that actually are additive when it comes to job creation. In fact, as I said earlier, it is just the opposite. You have a massive new health care entitlement that, when it is fully implemented, will cost $2.5 trillion over 10 years, which in my view will add enormously to the Federal debt because of all the double counting that was used to understate the true cost of that legislation; you had a trillion-dollar stimulus bill passed a year ago which was totally put on the debt for America's future generations; you have now discussion of a new energy tax in the form of some cap-and-trade legislation that could come before the Senate in the next few months--and you just go down the list. At every turn, what this Congress has done in the last several months, in the last year and a half since the new administration came to office, is to increase taxes, to increase spending, to increase debt, and to increase the size and the scope of government. We continue to see this effort to expand government. When we expand government, obviously it takes more revenues to fund that government, create new bureaucracies--which is what we will see with regard to the health care legislation--and in the end takes more and more of those dollars out of the private economy where the real permanent job creation should be occurring. Instead, what we should be focused on is creating incentives for small businesses to create jobs. Rather than creating more government, expanding the size of government here in Washington, DC, we ought to be looking at what we can do to provide incentives for the economic engine in our economy--and that is our small businesses--to go out there and do what they do best, which is create jobs. But what you hear from small businesses not only in South Dakota but all across the country is there is so much policy uncertainty coming out of Washington and there is so much concern about the spending and the debt and the taxes, that a lot of the small businesses that might be making investments that would create jobs--hire new personnel, hire new people, buy a new piece of equipment, make capital investment--are sitting on that investment for fear the next policy to come out of Washington, DC, could be a new energy tax, it could be higher taxes. We all know starting next year you are going to see higher taxes on dividends, higher taxes on capital gains, higher taxes on marginal income, unless Congress takes steps to extend some of these expiring tax provisions. That being said, what we are doing here today is we are going to make matters that much worse. If you are a small business person in this country, if you are someone who is in this economy and is concerned about Federal debt, is concerned about Federal spending, is concerned about taxes, then the legislation that is before the Senate right now, if adopted, is going to add, as I said earlier, another almost $80 billion to the Federal debt, will raise taxes by $70 billion, and increase spending by $126 billion. There is a better way. That is why I offer this amendment. This amendment does a number of things. It reduces spending in a number of areas. It deals with some of the provisions of expiring tax law that everybody here agrees needs to be fixed. There are things both sides agree on. Both Democrats and Republicans here in the Senate believe it is important that we extend unemployment insurance for those people who have lost jobs in the economy. Both Republicans and Democrats think it is important that there are certain expiring tax provisions that need to be extended--a research and development tax credit, for example, is one thing that comes to mind. But there is a whole list of these expiring tax provisions that need to be extended that both sides agree should be done. The difference in how we go about doing that is I think what is going to be the difference in the amendment that I offered versus the underlying legislation. Again, what I will do is reduce Federal spending and address the expiring tax law, the need to extend unemployment insurance in a way that does not raise taxes, add to the debt, and increase dramatically Federal spending in this country. What does the amendment essentially do? Very briefly, it includes all the major priorities that both parties want to accomplish but it drops the spending that has been rejected by the Senate. It would eliminate the $24 billion that is in the Senate bill that was not in the House bill that deals with the bailout for States around the country. It does offer, by the way, an additional year of the so-called doc fix. There has been a lot of discussion here about extending the doc fix into the future. And the underlying bill the Democratic majority has put forward does extend the doc fix. The reimbursement physicians receive under Medicare would drop dramatically if nothing is done by Congress to address that, and both sides agree that needs to be addressed. Frankly, it should have been done during the health care debate, but it was not. So the underlying bill, the majority Democratic bill before the Senate, would extend the doc fix through the end of 2011. What my alternative amendment would do is extend the doc fix through the end of the year 2012. So you get an additional year for the doc fix. That is something physicians around the country are interested in, and I know for a fact that it is because my physicians in South Dakota--and I am sure most of my colleagues hear on a regular basis from their physicians around the country. It drops all the tax increases in the bill, including carried interest, the tax on professional service S corps, the international provisions, and the increase in the per-barrel tax that funds the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund that will raise gas prices for consumers around the country. The alternative amendment I filed is fully paid for with spending cuts. It offers more than $100 billion in savings by actually doing what the American people want; that is, reducing spending. Every American is dealing with a tough economy. A lot of Americans have lost jobs. A lot of Americans certainly have lost income. A lot of Americans have seen their net worth plummet as a result of the economic circumstances in which the country finds itself. So they are all making hard decisions. They are sitting around the kitchen table and they are having these discussions with their family about what part of their budget to cut or what they are going to have to do without. The only place where that hasn't been true is here in Washington, DC. Why shouldn't we, as the leaders of this country, be willing to make the hard decisions that every American family is having to make? Well, this legislation does that. It takes $37.5 billion of the $50 billion in unobligated stimulus funds and uses that to extend existing tax and benefit provisions. It cuts money from the government by reducing congressional budgets right here close to home. We ought to have to do what every American family and what every American business is having to do right now; that is, make some hard decisions and reduce our own spending. So it does reduce congressional budgets. It rescinds unspent Federal funds, those funds that have been appropriated but not spent. It requires the government to sell unused land and auction off unused equipment. So it generates some additional revenue that way. It imposes a 1-year freeze on the salaries of Federal employees and eliminates their bonuses, and it caps the total number of Federal employees at current levels. In other words, the Federal Government can't continue to grow and expand at a time when we see a lot of our businesses around this country having to lay workers off or cut back their hours. It collects $3 billion in unpaid taxes from Federal employees. It encourages responsibility and prioritizing by requiring a 5- percent across-the-board discretionary spending cut for all agencies except the VA and the Department of Defense. So 5 percent across the board for all agencies except VA and DOD. And we think, again, that is an important step to take if we are serious about getting our own spending under control and addressing what is a very serious problem for the future of this country; that is, the ballooning Federal debt, the continual growth of government and spending and taxes. It saves $5 billion by eliminating nonessential government travel, and it eliminates bonuses for poor-performing government contractors. Finally, it adds a new deficit-reduction trust fund where rescinded balances and money saved through this amendment will be deposited for the purposes of paying down the Federal debt. This amendment ought to be a no-brainer for all of our colleagues in the Senate because it reduces the deficit by over $50 billion; it cuts spending by over $100 billion; it extends the existing tax law, the provisions we have all talked about that both sides think are important; and it provides 6 more months of stimulus unemployment benefits for those who have lost jobs in our economy. As I said earlier, that is the exact opposite of the approach taken by the Democratic majority, which is, as I said before, the way they finance all of these things is through $70 billion in new taxes. Again, many of those taxes are going to hit squarely on our small businesses, which are the economic engine and the job creators in our economy and are going to hopefully lead us out of this economic malaise and get us on to times where we are growing and expanding and creating more and more jobs. And it adds $80 billion to the Federal debt, which, as I mentioned earlier, is at $13 trillion. If you include all of the Federal debt--that amount held by the public, held by foreign countries, held by people here in this country--and then you add in the government, the intergovernmental debt that is owed to various agencies of government, we are at $13 trillion and counting. In fact, if you look at the trajectory going into the future, we are talking about doubling and tripling that debt, doubling it in 5 years and tripling it in 10. And we are going to get to the point where over 4 percent of our entire economy is spent just paying interest on the debt. Think about that. Over 4 percent of our entire economy--we have a $14 trillion economy--would be spent just paying for interest on our Federal debt. There is going to come a point, 10 years out from now, when the amount of money we have to spend to finance our debt, to pay for the interest on the debt, exceeds the amount we spend on our military. Think about that. We would spend more financing the debt we owe, spend more on interest payments on the debt we owe, than we actually spend on our national security. That is a staggering thought, if you think about it. That is what we have to try to avoid. The only way we do that is by getting serious and starting here and starting now. My colleagues on the Democratic majority side have said that because they passed pay-go, now we are on a different path; it is a different set of rules, a new sheriff in town; we are going to deal with these issues differently. But unfortunately what we are seeing is the same pattern, the same old way of doing things, which is to declare everything an emergency, borrow the money from China, and hand the bill to our children and grandchildren. It is time that stopped. This amendment gives us an opportunity to do that. To put things into perspective because I think sometimes these numbers get to be very abstract, and you listen to politicians get up and talk about debt and spending and deficits and that sort of thing, and it is hard to kind of comprehend, if you will, the dimensions we are talking about--I mean, $13 trillion. It is hard to even contemplate what $1 trillion is. So just to put that into proper perspective, if you were to equate a dollar to a second, how much is 1 trillion seconds? I spoke at Boys State a week ago or a little over a week ago now, and I asked the Boys Staters to sit down and do the arithmetic and to figure out how much 1 trillion seconds is because I think it helps put into perspective how much $1 trillion is. It is hard to even wrap your mind around what $1 trillion represents. But if you equate that to 1 trillion seconds, 1 trillion seconds is 31,746 years--31,746 years. That is what 1 trillion seconds represents. Well, we are not $1 trillion in debt; we are $13 trillion in debt. How much is 13 trillion seconds? Over 412,000 years. Over 412,000 years. If you were to help people understand and put it in a certain perspective, that is the amount of money--the $13 trillion that we now owe, that is today. As I said before, if you look at the publicly held portion of that, we are expected to double that in 5 and triple it in 10 years. It took us 200 years of American history to get to $1 trillion, and we have exploded that. If you look at the trendlines and where we are headed as a nation, it is a very, very scary thought. It should be scary to all Americans, and I know it is. It certainly should be scary to the Members of this Chamber. That is why, every time we deal with a major piece of legislation, foremost in our mind ought to be, how is this going to impact the fiscal balance sheet of this country? How is this going to make the next generation--how is it going to improve their standard of living, their quality of life? What is it going to do to them? Are we going to be the first generation to bequeath to the next generation a lower standard of living and a lower quality of life because we haven't been willing to make the hard choices and to make the hard decisions that are so essential if we are going to get our country on a fiscal path? This amendment does address the issues on which both sides agree. It addresses the issue of extending expiring tax provisions that many people on both sides care about. It extends unemployment insurance until the end of the year. It does extend the doc fix beyond what the base bill does. The base bill extends it through the end of the year 2011. What this amendment would do would be to extend it to end of the year 2012. So we have an opportunity for Senators to take a vote and to let everybody know, let their constituents know whether they are serious about getting spending under control; about making sure we are doing everything we can to create the right economic conditions for job creation, and by that I mean keeping taxes low on small businesses, not raising taxes by $70 billion, which is what this bill does; and whether we are serious here in Washington, DC, about listening to the American people and what they are saying with regard to spending. They want us to cut federal spending. They want us to do what they are having to do in their family budgets and in their small business budgets. What every American is now having to deal with is becoming more fiscally responsible, dealing with austere measures that will keep them from having to go deeply into hock or into bankruptcy. We are doing that here--we are going into bankruptcy. We just have the luxury here in Washington, DC, of being able to continue to borrow and borrow and put it on the credit card and hand the bill to our children and grandchildren. It is time for that to stop. It can stop with this amendment. I hope that as we continue debate on the underlying bill and get votes on those amendments, my colleagues in the Senate will do the right thing for the future of this country and start to get spending under control and start to pay for what we continue to borrow for so that we are not piling more and more debt on future generations. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask to call up amendment No. 4333, and ask it be made pending.

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

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, today I recognize Agar, SD. Founded in 1910, the town of Agar will celebrate its 100th anniversary this year. Located in Sully County, Agar possesses the strong sense of community that makes South Dakota an outstanding place to live and work. Agar is a little town with a big heart, and has continued to be a strong reflection of South Dakota's greatest values and traditions. The community of Agar has much to be proud of and I am confident that Agar's success will continue well into the future. The town of Agar will commemorate the 100th anniversary of its founding with celebrations held June 11 through June 13. I would like to offer my congratulations to the citizens of Agar on this milestone anniversary and wish them continued prosperity in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. John Dingell called this a ``glorious mess,'' if the EPA moves forward with this. I have other statements from the Democratic Members of the House of Representatives which I will be happy to submit for the Record, as well as a letter from a bunch of Representatives in my State supporting the Murkowski resolution. I yield my time and hope my colleagues will support this resolution.

Mr. THUNE. I will yield at the conclusion of my remarks to the Senator from Massachusetts, but I have some things to get to before that. Mr. President, what is important is that everyone acknowledges, including the Obama administration, that moving forward with the EPA regulating CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act would cause the economy to suffer. I want to quote something the Office of Management and Budget put out last August in a document. It says: Regulating CO2 under the Clean Air Act for the time is likely to have serious economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the U.S. economy, including small businesses and small communities. If you look at the impact on small businesses, farms, and ranches, the proponents are going to say: Well, the EPA is not intending to regulate smaller entities like that; we just want to get the big polluters. OK. We start at 100,000 tons. Well, in 2012, we move to 50,000 tons. I would argue--and it is supported by statements made by folks in the administration--the EPA Administrator has indicated that by 2016, they intend to regulate smaller emitters, if we get to 2016, because what will happen is this so-called tailoring rule will get challenged in the courts and it will likely get overturned because the Clean Air Act said the threshold for regulation is 250 tons. At 250 tons, you don't get just the big emitters. You don't get the large polluters. You get over 6 million entities, to include farms, ranches, small businesses, churches, hospitals, and you can go right down the list. That is what happens when you regulate at the 250-ton level. As I said, they are saying that is not going to happen, that we have this tailoring rule. Well, the law is very clear. If we are going to use the Clean Air Act as the authority to do this, the Clean Air Act stipulates 250 tons. That captures a whole lot of entities that strike at the very heart of the American economy. The cap-and-trade legislation that was passed by the House last summer has yet to be voted on here in the Senate, but there has been a lot of analysis of that done in my State of South Dakota. The public utilities commission in my State suggested that, if passed, that would increase power rates in States such as South Dakota by 50 percent. If you look at what the actual impacts are going to be on small businesses across this country--not only because of the cost of the original construction permits that would be included in this but also operating permits--the Wall Street Journal said in a May 2009 story that in 2007 the Clean Air Act cost those who had to apply for permits $125,000 per permit and 866 hours to obtain it. So whether you subscribe to the notion that this is only going to apply to large entities or whether you subscribe, as I do, to the belief that this is ultimately going to cover a lot more smaller entities that are going to be adversely impacted and deal with much higher power rates, I think it is pretty clear that whoever is covered by these new regulations is going to be faced with a lot higher costs when it comes to permits, a lot higher costs when it comes to the implementation of best available technology, and therefore a lot higher cost to the American consumer who will deal with the burden of that when it is passed on by these various emitting entities. My State of South Dakota, of course, is composed of a lot of farmers and ranchers. Agriculture is a 45-percent energy-intensive business, if you look at the inputs that are necessary to make a living in a farm or ranch operation. That means 45 percent of a farmer or rancher's costs are going to be increased by this backdoor energy tax imposed by the EPA. The fees and fines that are placed upon machinery manufacturers, energy companies, and fertilizer companies starting in 2011 and 2012 will be immediately passed down to the farm and ranch families who are going to be impacted by this. If the EPA is forced to regulate at the statutory 250-ton threshold-- which, as I said, once this is litigated I believe that is what the courts are going to find--farms with as few as 25 dairy cattle would be forced to apply for a title 5 permit and pay a fee for each ton of greenhouse gases emitted by their cattle: the cow tax. That is what this is about. This is not, as I said, about the science of climate change. It is not about Republicans wanting to delay. We don't control the agenda around here. It is not about big oil. It is about small businesses, family farms, and ranches trying to make a living, trying to create jobs in the economy and constantly having Washington stand in the way and throw new hurdles and impediments and obstacles and barriers in their way. What the Murkowski resolution does, very simply, is it forces us to answer a fundamental question and that is should Congress be acting on legislation that would direct these activities or do we allow a bunch of unelected bureaucrats at an agency downtown to move forward with regulations that would impose massive new costs on the American economy at a time when we are trying to create jobs and get this economy on its feet. That is the straightforward, simple question put forward by the resolution from the Senator from Alaska. I hope my colleagues here realize, irrespective of what they think about the science of climate change, irrespective of all the other arguments that are being used as a distraction here on big oil and Republicans delaying this debate, when you get down to the fundamental question, that is what the issue is, whether this Senate wants to be on record about allowing a bunch of unelected bureaucrats to move forward with the regulations that would impose massive new costs on our economy, not just on big polluters, large polluters--who, by the way, are going to pass those costs on--but directly hitting the small businesses, farms, the ranches that are the very backbone of the American economy. This is not, by the way, just a Republican issue. There are lots of Democrats who have weighed in on this and there are lots of Democrats I believe here in the Senate today who I hope will be willing to support this resolution. But I want to read for you very quickly here, because I know my time is running out, a couple of things that have been said by Democrats in the House of Representatives. Collin Peterson, a Congressman from Minnesota, has said: The Clean Air Act was never meant to be used for this but they're trying to do it anyway. . . . Most everyone I've heard from about this thinks that elected officials--not EPA bureaucrats--should decide how to address our energy problems.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I wish to thank the Senator from Alaska for her leadership on this issue. This is an important debate to have, and I wish to remind my colleagues what this debate is about because I have heard lots of discussion on the floor today about how this is somehow about the science of climate change. This isn't about the science of climate change. Maybe we ought to have that debate. Perhaps that is something we should debate, but that is not what this debate is about. This debate is also not about some of the other issues that have been thrown out here--that this is about big oil or this is about the Republicans wanting to delay or protect somehow the status quo. That is not what this debate is about. This is a very simple, straightforward question. That question is, Do we, the U.S. Senate, want to be on the record with regard to the issue of whether the EPA ought to move forward and try to regulate CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act or should we wait until Congress takes up and deals with that issue? What is ironic about what my colleagues on the other side are suggesting is that a lot of people have said that Republicans just want to delay; they want to delay because they do not believe in the science. Well, we don't control the agenda; the Democratic leader controls the agenda. They have a climate change bill they could bring to the floor and we could debate it. They do not want to do that because they don't want to put a lot of their Democrats on record on that vote. So what do they do instead? We allow the EPA--a bunch of unelected bureaucrats--to move forward and do something that would have tremendous consequence to the American economy without hearing from the Congress. I think that, in a very simple, straightforward manner, is what this debate is about. It is about, do we want the EPA to move forward with the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions absent direction from the Congress--the people's representatives--or do the voices of the people need to be heard through the debate we ought to be having here in the Congress? I will say that irrespective of what you believe about the science behind climate change and whether or not human activity is contributing to it, one thing we know with great certainty is that it will have profound economic impacts on the American economy.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize Derek Johnson, son of Wayne and Nancy Johnson, of Aberdeen, SD. Derek will graduate from Aberdeen Central High School on May 23, 2010. Derek has a very unique and touching story. He has overcome much adversity to become the positive role model and impressive young leader he is today. While playing for the Aberdeen Central Golden Eagles' high school football team in the fall of 2007, Derek suffered a serious injury that would change life as he knew it. After much contemplation and several extensive surgeries, Derek's lower left leg was amputated. Throughout his struggles, and the long painful recovery process, Derek maintained a positive attitude and steadfast work ethic that served as an inspiration to his teammates, classmates, the community, and entire State of South Dakota. In March 2009, Derek's invincible attitude and courageous spirit were highlighted when he was selected as one of seven nationwide regional winners of the National High School Spirit of Sport Award. This award, selected by the National Federation of State High School Associations, is presented to high school athletes, coaches, administrators, managers and trainers that best exemplify the ideals of the positive spirit of sport. Perhaps nothing embodied Derek's spirit more than when he returned to the athletic field this past school year. He returned to the football team to provide encouragement for his teammates. Through his hard work and determination, he was also able to compete as part of the Aberdeen Central Golden Eagles' varsity wrestling team. As a reflection of his athletic talent and perseverance, Derek earned eighth place in the South Dakota Class A Wrestling Championships. Throughout his high school career, Derek has served as a shining example and genuine role model. I want to thank Derek for being such a positive influence on all of the lives he has touched and wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors. On behalf of the Aberdeen community, the entire State of South Dakota, and all of us here serving in the U.S. Congress, I am pleased to extend my sincere congratulations to Aberdeen Central's Derek Johnson. This young South Dakotan will continue to be a true hero and inspiration. He has made us all very proud. Congratulations.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I wish to speak for a few moments this morning about a subject that is on the minds of many Americans and I think should still be on the minds of everybody in this Chamber because the health care bill that was passed and signed into law recently is going to have impacts across this country for some time to come. I am interested in the discussion that has occurred here on the floor of the Senate over the past several weeks, as Senator Barrasso from Wyoming--who also happens to be an orthopedic surgeon, a physician--has come to the floor to engage in a series of remarks, what he calls the ``second opinion.'' I think his second opinion series of remarks here on the floor has been extremely well pointed in illustrating, in many respects, what is wrong with the health care bill and why this is not something that is going to improve the lives of most Americans but, in fact, is going to worsen the lives of most Americans because they will be faced with higher health care costs, higher taxes, and probably higher deficits for years and years to come. There is a lot of supporting data now, validation of those arguments we heard during the course of the health care debate. The Democrats, who were supporting it, as was the President, said this health care legislation was going to, No. 1, reduce health care costs for most Americans, and No. 2, reduce the deficit. Of course, they talked a lot about how it was going to extend the lifespan of Medicare as well, even though they were cutting Medicare and using those funds to create a new entitlement program. So all those promises made by the President and made by the Democrats here in the Senate when we were debating health care are now all being completely rebuffed by evidence that comes out all the time from those who study this issue closely. Frankly, as we get more and more businesses trying to figure out how to interact with this new health care legislation, they are coming to the conclusion that it might be cheaper for them in the long run to drop their coverage and put everybody in the government plan, which is what we predicted would happen all along. But I think probably the biggest bombshell--certainly the most damning piece of evidence--came out just a few weeks ago when the Actuary of Health and Human Services, HHS, came out with his analysis of the financial impacts the new law would have once it was passed and implemented. I wish to share a few things from that report because I think it is very important. It does, as I said before, illustrate exactly what Senator Barrasso and others said throughout the course of the debate in the Senate when health care was under consideration. The Actuary of the Department of Health and Human Services--bear in mind, this agency is supposed to look at these things in a totally objective, nonpolitical way--the Actuary concluded that the Federal Government and the country will spend $310 billion more under the new law than we would have without it. The Actuary's report went on to say that national health expenditures would increase from 17 percent of GDP, which is what it is today, to 21 percent under the new law. But what is interesting about this is that the $310 billion increase in health care costs they now say will result from the passage and implementation of this legislation is more than what would have happened had we done nothing. Had this body done nothing in terms of health care reform, health care costs would have gone up less than they will with this legislation. As I said before, this completely refutes any argument made by the other side during the course of this debate that their legislation would, in fact, drive down health care costs. The Actuary has now concluded the point that we made throughout the course of the debate; that is, that health care costs will go up, not down; the cost curve will be bent up, not down; and for most Americans, health insurance premiums are going to go up as a result of this legislation. That is what the Actuary is now saying. What is even more interesting about that report is it goes on to say that health care shortages and price increases are ``plausible and even probable'' under the legislation. The report suggests there will be perhaps as many as 15 percent of Part A providers--Part A providers are hospitals--that will become unprofitable within the 10-year projection period absent further legislative action. In other words, up to 15 percent of hospitals would have to close as a result of this legislation. Because of that, the report says the law will jeopardize ``access to care for seniors.'' So all these promises about greater access, lower cost--the promises that were made during the course of this debate--are being completely now rebutted by the report that the Actuary came out with just a couple of weeks ago. The other thing I think is important--we emphasized this as well during the debate--the Actuary concluded that new taxes that are going to be imposed on medical devices, on prescription drugs and insurance plans, were generally passed on through to consumers in the form of higher drug and device prices and higher insurance premiums. Remember, during the course of the debate we said all the new taxes that will be levied on medical device manufacturers, pharmaceuticals, health insurance plans, would be passed on. This is clearly what they are suggesting as well. So not only do we get the double whammy, we get the whammy of higher insurance premiums, but we get the double whammy of higher taxes that are going to be borne by a lot of people across the country. That also is being substantiated and supported by the Joint Tax Committee, which took a good look at the distribution of the impacts of the tax increases in this bill. A lot of Americans are going to see their tax burdens go up as well. With respect to the issue of the deficit--which, again, is something I will get to in just a moment--the Actuary notes the bill's Medicare provisions ``cannot be simultaneously used to finance other federal outlays--such as the coverage expansions--and to extend the [life of the Medicare] trust fund, despite the appearance of this result from the respective accounting conventions.'' Essentially what they have said is what they said in a letter in response to questions we posed about how this would impact the Medicare trust fund. Basically, the Actuary is saying what the CBO said; that is, you are double counting revenue, you are basically spending the same money twice. In other words, all the additional revenues that are supposed to become available because of reductions in Medicare benefits or reductions in Medicare payroll taxes that were going to extend the life of Medicare and also going to be used to finance the new health care entitlement program--that is what we said all along, and that is double counting. You can't spend the same money twice, and as a consequence of that you are going to see what they promised in terms of deficit reduction can be very different from what actually happens. They went on to say that the CLASS Act, which is a long-term care entitlement program--described, believe it or not, by one of my Democratic colleagues as a Ponzi scheme of the highest order, the kind of thing Bernie Madoff would be proud of,--will result in net Federal cost in the longer term. The program is designed to someday down the road to pay long-term care benefits for people who pay premiums into that plan and will face significant risk of failure because of the way they are counting the revenue. It says it is going to be ``a net Federal cost in the longer term'' because, obviously, when you take premiums today to pay for the unrelated provisions in the health care reform law, and then there is a demand for the CLASS Act benefits at some point in the future by the people who paid those premiums, you cannot use those revenues to pay for the benefits because they have already been spent. To assume otherwise is double counting that revenue. So you have all this double counting that went on in the course of this bill which, again, as I said, understated the overall cost of the bill and also the deficit numbers I think were attached to it. To me, this study, this analysis was absolutely a bombshell in terms of the impacts of the actual implementation of the health care bill. As I said, it completely refutes all the arguments that were made that it would lower costs, reduce deficits, and it would improve access. All three of those points are refuted by the analysis that was done by the Actuary at the Health and Human Services Department. More recently, last week about this time, the Congressional Budget Office came out with a new report. They predicted that the health care overhaul will likely cost about $115 billion more in discretionary spending over 10 years than the original cost projections. So the promises that were made about deficit reduction as a result of this--it was going to somehow save $143 billion over a 10-year period--now are reduced by $115 billion because, as we said throughout the course of the debate, it is going to cost a lot to implement this bill both in the form of cost to HHS, as well as cost of the Internal Revenue Service, which is going to be required to now impose the individual mandate that will fall on a lot of people across this country and the penalties associated with that. So we have all these implementation costs that are going to add an additional $115 billion in spending over the next 10 years which reduce dramatically any promises about deficit reduction, not to mention what I just stated in terms of the double counting that goes on. My view on this is, not only is it not going to reduce the deficit, it is going to explode the deficit, particularly in the outyears when the demand for Medicare benefits comes and the demands of the trust fund for those people who paid into the fund and reached the retirement age--a lot of the baby boomers are going to require health care, the Medicare fund is going to be tapped for that, and there will not be any money there to pay for this program. So you have the Actuary at HHS, you have the CBO coming out with new information which completely validates the argument we made during the course of this debate; that is, it is not only going to increase costs for most people across this country and increase taxes, but it is also going to have a detrimental impact on the budget and the deficit over the long term. One of the promises that was made, the so-called good points in the health care bill, was that small businesses would benefit from a small business tax credit. That is something administration has been trying to sell to small businesses, putting out notices from the IRS that there are 4 million small businesses that could qualify for the small business tax credit. That kicks in in 2010. But, even there, as is now coming out, there is a lot of fine print I don't think people read very well. The Chamber of Commerce said of all the small businesses in this country, about 78 percent of those small businesses are self-employed people. Self-employed people are not covered. Families are not covered under this. More important, there is a disincentive to hire people. We have an economy where we are trying to get jobs growing and come out of the recession and get people back to work. This small business tax credit caps it. In other words, if you get up to 25 employees you are no longer eligible for it. If your average wage is $50,000 you are no longer eligible for it. So there is a real disincentive to pay people higher wages or hire more people because if you do, you are not going to be eligible anymore for the small business tax credit. A lot of those small businesses are saying: What benefit is there to me if I want to grow my business? Yes, I can take advantage of it for a short period of time--a very short period of time--but I am not going to be able, if I am at that threshold where I start hitting-- first, it says it is available for businesses with fewer than 10 employees, then it phases out at 25. But if you get to 24 employees and you are thinking: My gosh, I would like to hire another person; I no longer will be eligible for the small business tax credit, or I want to pay my employees higher wages but then I hit the $50,000 threshold--it is a real disincentive to create jobs. One of the things that is being touted as a positive about this legislation is it is, in fact, a disincentive for us to get people back to work and to create jobs. The overall impacts of this, I think, that are still out there I don't think we are going to know for some time. In fact, I don't think CBO has any idea about what this is going to cost in the second decade. They have estimates of the cost in the second decade. They can make some predictions, but they will admit there is tremendous volatility about that, and unpredictability, when we get into the second decade. But one thing we know in the first decade, one thing we are finding out now as we get more analysis being completed, is in the first decade, according to the HHS Actuary, this is going to increase the cost of health care more than if we did nothing. In other words, if we had done nothing and we still had health insurance costs going up as they were about double the rate of inflation, if we had done nothing we would have locked that in. But now we are going to continue to have health insurance costs going up, not only at that rate but a significantly higher rate to the tune of $310 billion in more, higher health care costs over the course of the decade. If we look at how that impacts individual people across the country, most Americans are going to see their health insurance premiums go up. In fact, some of the provisions of the bill also, as part of the--it was just reported last week that this provision that would allow people to keep their kids on their health insurance plans until they are 26 years old will, in fact, increase health insurance premiums by about 1 percent. That is something that was hailed as one of the benefits or virtues of this legislation. My point is, contrary to the assertions that were made during the course of the debate with respect to lower costs, deficit reduction, greater access--none of that, according to these studies and analyses, is going to be the case. In fact, it will be the opposite. We will see higher health care costs for most Americans. We will see higher taxes for a lot of Americans. We will see higher taxes for sure--for certain--for a lot of small businesses. And I think we are going to see a lot of businesses that are going to just say--and we have already seen reports of that, as a lot of these businesses look at the impact this would have on their bottom lines--it will cost them a lot to cover their employees. It might be cheaper to pay the penalty and to just shove them into one of the government-run exchanges. I think that is something we have yet to see the impact from. My prediction would be we will see a lot of small businesses, and for that matter a lot of large businesses, that will come to that conclusion and say it makes absolutely no sense for them to continue to provide health coverage for their employees when they can have the government do it and save their companies a lot of money. So I think the unintended consequences are something we have yet to see, but we do know for certain the consequences of this legislation, these analyses that have been completed, and studies that have been done by those who are supposed to know a lot about this subject--by that I mean the Actuary at the Health and Human Services Department, as well as the Congressional Budget Office--they are now seeing higher insurance costs, higher premiums, and a significant reduction in the so-called deficit reduction that was promised by the administration. Furthermore, because of the double counting that is done and the way in which Medicare revenues are double counted--CLASS Act revenues are double counted--even for that matter Social Security revenues, payroll taxes are double counted in this--dramatically understate the deficit impact and the long-term debt implications of this legislation and what it will mean to the next generation of Americans who are going to be stuck paying our bills. I say all that, not to be the Grim Reaper. We tried during the course of this debate to illustrate as much as we could these very points. We tried to offer amendments that we thought made more sense in terms of controlling costs; to actually address the actual underlying drivers of health care costs in this country as opposed to just expanding coverage, which is essentially what the legislation did. It will cover more people. In some ways it will cover more people by putting more people into Medicaid which will pass on more mandates and more costs to our States. We have already seen a lot of Governors across the country reacting to that, talking about that, how we are going to pay for that. But there is an additional 34 million people, additional people, who are supposed to be covered in this legislation; about 16 million of those are already going into the Medicaid Program which already under- reimburses providers and also imposes huge new costs and new burdens on our State governments. There is not a lot of good news to report about this. I think that is going to be the case. I think, regrettably, we could have gone a different direction. We should have gone a different direction. But that being said, we are where we are. I hope over time we will have an opportunity to revisit this issue. If we do not, it is going to have a dramatic impact on future generations, on our economy, both in the short term and long term, as a result of higher costs built into the cost structure for health insurance, higher taxes that will impact small businesses and families across this country, and higher deficits for which future generations are going to be assessed and have to pay. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I understand amendment No. 3987 has been called up by the manager of the bill, and I think it has been made pending, so I wish to speak to it. I hope at the appropriate time we will be able to get an agreement for a vote on it, and I will ask for the yeas and nays following my remarks. This amendment is a very simple, straightforward one. It is one paragraph long. It is not complicated. What it essentially does is it sets a sunset date for the newly created bureau of consumer protection, allowing Congress to reevaluate the bureau after 4 years. I think most Americans, if they knew we were creating a big new bureaucracy here in Washington, DC, would want us to have some oversight. They would want some accountability. They would want to make sure their tax dollars are being spent wisely and well. This new consumer protection bureau will have lots of new Federal employees here in Washington, DC. It will spend hundreds of millions of dollars every single year. Yet Congress has literally no oversight or authority with regard to this new bureau. It seems to me, at least, that when we have a fiscal situation as we have today in this country where we are running trillion dollar deficits literally every year, where our debts are continuing to pile up to the tune of doubling our Federal debt, publicly held debt in 5 years, tripling it in 10 years, we would want to do something to make sure that any new expenditure of taxpayer dollars is spent efficiently, effectively, and that we are being as frugal as we possibly can. I, for one, would not like to see us go down this path. I don't think creating a huge new bureaucracy here in Washington, DC, is necessary. I think we can address the issue of consumer protection through existing agencies and authorities. Frankly, I wish to see this particular title in this legislation go away entirely, but it doesn't look as though that is going to happen. We offered an amendment earlier this week that would have been a substitute for this consumer protection title in the bill and addressed it in what we think is a more reasonable way, but that was voted down. My amendment simply says that 4 years from now, once this bureau has been created, let's have it sunset, and then, if necessary, Congress can come back and reauthorize it. Congress then would have an opportunity to fine-tune it, perhaps. Congress would have an opportunity to look and see if it is performing the function it was intended to perform; whether it is doing it in an efficient and cost- effective way. Clearly, we have a responsibility to the American taxpayer to have some accountability with this new bureaucracy we are going to create as a result of this legislation. It is straightforward. We have other agencies of government that we do this with--that we sunset, that we reauthorize. We just did that with the CFTC, which is an agency that was reauthorized during the farm bill last year. When we did that, we were able to fine-tune its mission. It also gives the opportunity to reorganize an agency, if it has to go through a reauthorization process and a sunset process. I don't think it is asking too much, when we are talking about literally hundreds of millions of dollars annually and what would appear to be thousands of new Federal employees in this new agency, and what would also appear to be incredibly broad and vast new powers and authorities that will be unchecked because there isn't any accountability to the Congress-- Congress is not going to appropriate annually as we do with most agencies the power of the purse. This is all going to be run through the Federal Reserve. Yet it is taxpayer dollars that are at risk here. It is taxpayer dollars that are being used to finance this new bureaucracy. I hope my colleagues will be able to find their way to support this amendment. I think it is a reasonable approach. Again, I don't think it is asking too much. The American taxpayers are paying the bills every year for this government and are having to deal with the burden of debt we are piling on them because of the spending going on in Washington. Of course, if you look at what we are spending this year and what we spent last year in the Federal Government, much of it was borrowed. Out of all the spending last year, about 43 cents out of every dollar was borrowed. This year it is about 39 cents out of every dollar. When we are running those kinds of deficits and piling up that kind of debt with this kind of spending going on in Washington and the fiscal problems we have as a Nation, it makes perfect sense to me. I think it makes perfect sense to the American taxpayer. If we are going to create a huge new bureaucracy--which I said I don't believe is necessary, but, nonetheless, if it is going to happen in this legislation--let's take a look at this again 4 years from now. Let's allow it to sunset and allow us to go through a process where we reauthorize, reevaluate and review and see if it is functioning the way it is intended, and whether these authorities and powers created by this new bureaucracy is what the American people want to see happen. One final point I will make. There are lots of entities out there other than banks that are worried about this particular title of the bill because of the rulemaking authority that exists. We have auto dealers, jewelry businesses, furniture stores, orthodontists, and lots of small businesses that are concerned they are going to be covered by the reach of this new agency with these broad new authorities with very little accountability and oversight by the Congress. That is a concern to a lot of small businesses to whom we look to create the jobs and, hopefully, initiate an economic recovery in this country and get the economy growing and back on track. This, in fact, could put lots of new burdens, lots of new bandaid, lots of new costs on many of these small businesses. That is yet another reason why I believe this is a bad idea in the first place, but at a minimum we ought to allow it to sunset so we have an opportunity to review it and reevaluate it and make some decisions with regard to its future 4 years from now. It is very straightforward. It is one paragraph long. Sunset the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and allow Congress to reevaluate that bureau after 4 years. I hope my colleagues will support this amendment. I ask for the yeas and nays and would hope at the appropriate time to be able to have a recorded vote. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Arizona for yielding me time. I would say Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is a pox on all of us. But shame on us if we do not try to do something in this legislation to address this issue. What the McCain-Shelby-Gregg amendment does is responsible. It does allow for a wind-down of this conservatorship. But, as the Senator from Arizona has pointed out, it goes squarely at what I think most economists argue was a huge contributor to the meltdown we experienced a couple years ago: the runaway lending and irresponsible lending practices that were involved with the plight we now see with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, where they have, up until, I think, this last quarter--or taking the last quarter combined, it is about $145 billion now that the taxpayers are on the hook for. As the Senator from Arizona pointed out, last Christmas Eve the administration lifted the cap. There was a $400 billion cap on the amount of taxpayer assistance that could be provided to these two institutions. But now that cap has been lifted. Imagine the scale and dimension of what we are talking about, when we already have $145 billion of taxpayer exposure. We assume it could be as much as $400 billion. But just in case, the administration lifts the cap because it could go well beyond that, which suggests, if history is any indication, it will go well beyond that. What this does is say we need to exercise some responsibility with regard to the regulation of all the financial institutions in this country. What the Senator from Connecticut, in his bill, does--with the financial services regulation reform bill--is to attempt to get at what contributed, in many respects, to the meltdown we experienced a couple years ago. But it ignores perhaps, as has been pointed out by the Senator from Arizona, one of the biggest contributors to that problem; that is, these two toxic institutions, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The administration has said they need time to come up with a plan. The side-by-side that is going to be offered by the Democrats is going to be a study. We are going to study this for about 6 months. I think their argument is, it would be dangerous to rush the process. I think the contrary is true. I believe it is dangerous to ignore this problem any longer. We cannot afford to wait so more taxpayer money can be lost, can be wasted in trying to keep these two entities afloat. As I said before, last week we were informed that Freddie Mac needs an additional $10.6 billion in taxpayer funds due to an $8 billion loss in the first quarter of 2010. Since September of 2008, that brings the taxpayers' invoice for Freddie Mac to $61.3 billion. Fannie Mae reported a first quarter loss of more than $13 billion, needing $8.4 billion from the government, putting their bill to the American taxpayers at $83.6 billion. So the grand total of taxpayer loss from these two entities since their takeover in 2008 is a whopping $145 billion. The losses racked up by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae exceed--exceed-- the government's losses on AIG, General Motors, and Chrysler. Yet the current legislation in the Senate is completely silent on these two entities. That is outrageous. We cannot continue to funnel unlimited amounts of taxpayer money into Freddie and Fannie and have no plan to end this siphon. In a time when we are faced with crushing debt and out-of-control deficits, we are willing to turn a blind eye to a $145 billion problem, which is going to only magnify over time. Last Christmas Eve, the administration lifted the cap of $400 billion, which is what initially was put in place that would limit the amount of taxpayer exposure. But what we are now saying is that may not be enough. Yet we do nothing-- nothing--in this legislation to remedy this problem. Obviously, the administration knew there was more bad news ahead when they decided to lift the cap on government assistance on Christmas Eve of last year. The Obama administration decided that taxpayers could afford unlimited funding for Freddie and Fannie rather than keep a $400 billion cap on assistance in place. It is frightening they believe that $400 billion is not going to be enough--unlimited funding may not be enough. Who knows where this ends. That is why I think it is important right now that we deal with this issue, and the McCain-Shelby-Gregg amendment does it in a responsible way by winding down and providing a timeline. It sets a 30-month date out there by which this conservatorship has to be wound down. If you look at what the current exposure is in terms of Freddie and Fannie, they own or guarantee over 30 million home loans, worth about $5.5 trillion. The CBO estimates that Freddie and Fannie could cost the taxpayers as much as $380 billion through 2020. As I said before, my assumption is that because we lifted--``we,'' the administration lifted--the cap on the $400 billion of exposure, the assumption is, it is going to go much higher than that. So I think we have to ask ourselves this fundamental question: Is this the direction in which we want to continue heading or is it time to change course? The time to change course is now while we are debating a bill that is designed to address the very problems we encountered a couple years ago. Freddie and Fannie, as the Senator from Arizona said, were at the very heart, the very core of that issue. According to a recent Washington Post article, with the government's conservatorship of Freddie and Fannie and the increase in FHA and VA loans, the government backed nearly 97 percent of home loans in the first quarter of 2010. Madam President, 97 percent of loans are backed by the U.S. Government. Is this where we want to end up? Is this where we want to head? Is this the best course for our housing market? Is this the role the Federal Government should be taking when it comes to housing in this country? I firmly believe it is time we change course. I think there is great value--we all agree there is great value--in home ownership and helping families achieve the American dream of owning their own homes. But we have to bring personal responsibility back into the conversation. We need to go back to a time when families saved up money to make a downpayment on a house. They went to their banks. They provided the necessary documentation to prove they could pay back their loans, and they bought a house that was within their budgets. Buying and owning a home should be a goal people work to achieve, not a government mandate funded by the taxpayers. That essentially is what we have created. So I believe it is about time to take responsibility for our actions. My constituents in my State who bought houses they could afford and paid their bills on time want to see Congress start taking some responsibility. I believe the McCain-Shelby-Gregg amendment does just that. It shows our commitment to getting our fiscal house in order in Washington, DC. As I said, it is a sound plan for winding down the government backstop to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. It mandates that conservatorship will end in 30 months or less. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will have to reduce their portfolios by 10 percent each year, and if they are not viable enough to exist after the 30 months they will be liquidated. If they are a viable company after the 30 months, they would only enjoy their Federal GSE status for another 3 years. The amendment repeals the affordable housing goals that persuaded the two entities to enter into the subprime loan business in the first place, which I believe was the slippery slope that got us into all the problems, all the troubles we are facing today. It creates new underwriting requirements on loans purchased by Freddie and Fannie. Freddie and Fannie will have to reduce their mortgage assets by more than 50 percent within 2 years and increase their capital reserves. It repeals the temporary increase in the conforming loan limit, returning it to $417,000. The two would have to pay State and local taxes, register with the SEC, and pay a fee to the government to repay their debts to the taxpayer. These are all responsible reforms. Contrary to the assertions that have been made by the other side, this amendment is the correct way to proceed in dealing with these two giant institutions that have lost their way and are costing the taxpayers literally billions and billions and billions of dollars every quarter that passes that we do not take steps to fix this problem. The amendment would reinstate the $400 billion cap that the administration lifted in December so the taxpayers know for certain they are not going to be on the hook for unlimited financial support. The amendment establishes a new special inspector general at the GAO to investigate and report to Congress on these two entities. Freddie and Fannie would be included in the Federal budget until their conservatorship has ended, which is the fiscally responsible thing to do when we all know they do, in fact, have an impact on our budget and on our debt. As I said, I have heard the arguments on the other side of the aisle, and I think they are ignoring the clear will of the American people. The American people get this. They know why we are where we are. They are sick and tired of subsidizing the mistakes of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. We need to put an end to the taxpayer bailout. I think it is important to the credibility of our economy and our credibility with the American taxpayers--but it is important to the credibility of the markets and to our economy--that they understand we are serious about solving this problem. That is why the McCain-Shelby- Gregg amendment is the correct way to proceed. We are going to have a vote on that very soon, and I hope we will not leave this subject, that we will not dispose of this financial services regulation reform bill without addressing this very important topic. To suggest for a minute, as the other side has, that somehow we can do a study, we can put this off for 6 months--and who knows. By the time they complete the study, they will have to think about the results of that study and formulate a plan, and that will take another 6 months or a year. Every single month, every single quarter that goes by, we continue to hemorrhage more and more money at the cost of billions and billions of dollars to the American taxpayers. They have had enough. We should say we have had enough and we are going to bring some discipline. This amendment does that, and I hope my colleagues will support it. I yield the remainder of my time. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I compliment my colleague from Florida. He has addressed an issue which is an important part of this debate; that is, making sure loans that get made in this country, both on the borrower side and the lender side, are responsible loans. I think the amendment he will offer is one on which we ought to have a debate and on which we ought to have a vote. I hope this body will act in a way that leads to more responsible practices, a higher level of responsibility, both with borrowers and lenders in this country, which was at the heart of why we ended up where we did. It is interesting to me that we continue to watch the problems we are experiencing in our economy. Probably by far the most important one is the high level of unemployment. That has become sort of a chronic problem. Even though the economy appears to be recovering and growing again, we still continue to see these very high rates of unemployment, certainly worse in some parts of the country than in others, but, nonetheless, something that we cannot tolerate. We ought to be attacking every single day. Everything we do ought to be focused on what we can do to eliminate this high level of unemployment, to provide incentives to small businesses to create jobs, to grow their businesses and expand, get the economy going again, and, obviously, in my view at least, the small businesses in this country are the economic engine of our economy. They are our job creators. We ought to be focused on making it easier for them to create jobs rather than harder. That is why I think it is ironic that almost everything the Congress has been doing of late makes it even more difficult for small businesses to do that. We passed a big, massive expansion of the health care entitlement in the Congress a while back. That is going to impose lots of new taxes, lots of new mandates on small businesses. It is going to raise their insurance premiums, which we are seeing now more and more. The CMS Actuary, with their recent report, suggests what we suggested all along; that is, this is going to drive up the cost of insurance and health care in this country. It is not going to drive it down, it is going to drive it up. So I think what we are going to see with small businesses across this country is not only a higher tax burden associated with paying for that, and also many of the new mandates that are associated with it, but you are also going to see them having to deal now with higher insurance costs that will be associated and come with this massive health care expansion that was passed, not to mention the fact that, in my view, this is going to end up in a tremendous amount of growth in the debt in the outyears when we realize this is going to cost way more than it was anticipated, and that many of the offsets or pay-fors are probably not going to come to fruition. But that being said, it seems to me at least that having all of this uncertainty coming out of Washington, whether it is the implementation of the new health care bill, whether it is questions about a climate change bill that could impose a crushing new energy tax on our economy, questions about what is going to happen with tax rates with regard to dividends and capital gains and marginal income tax rates next year, what is going to happen with the death tax--all of this uncertainty is just hanging a cloud over this economy and making it very difficult for our small businesses to do what they do best; that is, to exercise that entrepreneurial spirit, to grow the economy, to create jobs. It is very difficult to do that when you pile more and more burdens and more and more costs on top of the very small businesses that we are hoping will lead us out of this recession. That is why I think in all of our efforts we ought to have a very close eye on what impact they are going to have on the small business sector of our economy. This is no exception. The debate on financial services reform is about some very critical issues, issues that need to be addressed, issues that we should be focused on: how to deal with the issue of systemic risk and make sure that systemically risky enterprises in this country, that that risk is constrained, that there is appropriate oversight, there is appropriate transparency. I think there is an important issue to be debated in terms of derivatives, which is a $600 trillion economy in this country that has been operating in the shadows. The legislation that is before us, I think if it is amended the right way--and I hope it will be on the Senate floor--will bring all of that into the light. There will be transparency, something that I think is desperately needed in that area. I hope this will be done in a way that does not impose new burdens on end users, those who are trying to legitimately hedge against higher commodity prices, currency rates, and interests rates and those sorts of things. But there is work to be done in this legislation to deal with the issue of systemic risk, to ensure that we take all of the steps we possibly can to avoid and prevent the type of economic collapse and meltdown we witnessed a couple of years ago. I think it is ironic this legislation does not encompass something that was at the very heart of that economic meltdown; that is, the issue of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. It is ironic to me, at least, the focus of this legislation is to deal with the issues that lead to the economic malaise that we found ourselves in and the collapse that we experienced a couple of years ago that would attempt to accomplish the objective of preventing that in the future, absent dealing with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which was a huge contributing factor to what we witnessed a couple of years ago. So it does not include that. It does get at derivatives; it does address, in some fashion, the issue of too big to fail. Then it also addresses this issue that we are debating right now, which is the issue of consumer protection. I would argue this is an important part of the debate when it comes to the regulation of our financial markets, perhaps even the most important part; that is, protecting consumers. Having said that, I think what the recent financial crisis highlighted was the fact that there were a number of bad actors out there in the marketplace who were out for a quick profit, without concern for the consumer, and this consumer protection effort as part of this legislation is designed to correct that, or at least address and get at that problem. I strongly support some of the consumer protection ideas that have been put forward. There is a Republican alternative amendment that has been offered to the base bill. But as is typically the case in the Congress, instead of just dealing with the issue that needs to be fixed, trying to fix the issue that needs to be fixed, it seems like the pattern is that we try to go beyond that and fix issues that do not need to be fixed; in fact, in this particular case, with a whole new bureaucracy, creating the whole new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau manned with lots of new Federal Government employees with lots of new powers, in my view, extending a reach way beyond what should ever have been contemplated to deal with the important issue of protecting consumers in this country. Why do I say that? I had in my office last week a bunch of community bankers. I have met with credit unions. I have met with auto dealers. I have met with a lot of small businesses. I would argue these are not the types of entities that led to all of the problems we experienced. Those are not systemically risky entities or companies. These are hard- working, in most cases, small businesses. When I sat down with my community bankers--I am not talking about big Wall Street banks; I am talking about Main Street banks, local banks, banks that are about their customers because they care about their customers; they are their neighbors; they are the folks they hang out with; their friends and their kids go to school together; these are people who are far removed from Wall Street--they told me about how this bill does not level the playing field and how they are going to be subject to a whole now layer of regulation they cannot afford. They told me stories about how they would make sure their customers are always satisfied and how they cannot afford to make bad loans. In these smaller banks in smaller communities where there is a tremendous amount of accountability, obviously these are not the types of banks at which this legislation should be targeted or directed. These are banks that provide capital to our farmers, our small business owners. In my State of South Dakota, these are the people who--most of my constituents would rather bank with these big, large chain banks that we talk about when it comes to the issue of systemic risk. The Democrats' bill, in its current form, places new burdens on these banks, costly regulation on banks that are already heavily regulated, that have already proved to be sound financial entities. I also recently sat down with some car dealers from my State, again small Main Street businesses in South Dakota, who have personal relationships with their customers. They told me how they may have to cut some of the services that they provide to their customers because of the broad authority that is granted to this brandnew agency, this Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. These business take great pride--when I say ``these,'' the auto dealers--in the service they provide to their friends and neighbors who come into their businesses to buy a car. To have bureaucrats in Washington, DC, looking over their shoulder does not seem like the right approach to me. I have heard the arguments that these small banks are somehow not going to be affected because of the $10 billion exemption, but I think it is important that we point out here, and that we clear up some of the facts on this issue. That $10 billion exemption is from enforcement and examination authority by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The new bureaucracy still has the ability to oversee every product and loan and transaction these small banks enter into with their customers. I have also heard the argument that section 1027 excludes many of the small businesses that are calling me and e-mailing me and coming to my office because they are concerned. However, it seems to me, once a small business decides to give their customers an option to pay for their goods or services over time, this new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can come knocking on their door. What Washington bureaucrats are going to tell them is what is in the best interest of their customers in South Dakota. So you can imagine the implications of this type of authority. Currently, the legislation provides very few checks on this new bureau's broad new authorities. I want reforms to our current regulatory oversight structure. We need better protections for our consumers. But the bill that is before us creates a new bureaucracy that has a funding stream outside of congressional oversight with very few checks and balances, and that is not reform. What I would like to see is this bureau removed from the bill. There are other ways to provide better protection for consumers without burdening small businesses, which, as I said earlier, are the engine of our economy. Just to illustrate or to put a fine point on that, I have a letter from the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents businesses all across this country, has a very large membership, including many businesses in my State. They write to express their concerns with certain parts of the bill that are too far reaching and would impose major new costs on small business. They go on to say: The establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will cover many small businesses strictly because they set up flexible payment arrangements with their customers. According to a study they did a few years back on getting paid, approximately 50 percent of small businesses offer special terms or credit-type arrangements to allow customers to pay for goods or services. Then they go on to describe the nature of some of those arrangements. But I think it is fair to say a lot of small businesses-- and car dealers are probably the most notable example. But as was said earlier, that could extend to furniture stores, jewelers; that could extend to orthodontists and dentists. People who allow their customers to spread out the payments over time to pay on terms and have these flexible types of payment arrangements would be covered by this. That makes no sense. At a time when we are trying to have our small businesses help lead us out of this recession, start creating jobs instead of dealing with the systemically risky entities that got us into this mess in the first place, we are talking about piling a whole new burden and lots of new costs on top of our small businesses at a time when they can least afford it. So I would hope the amendment that is being offered, the alternative to the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau in this bill, will be adopted; that my colleagues in the Senate will take steps to improve the way this bill treats consumer protection and in the way it treats small businesses under this bill. I, frankly, as I said earlier, would like to see this title removed entirely and us deal with this in a way that makes more sense; that does not create a whole new bureaucracy, with all kinds of new government employees with all kinds of new powers. There are certainly ways in which we can address the issue of consumer protection absent having to go to these great lengths and this great cost, expense to the taxpayer, and great new burdens imposed upon small businesses in this country. So I am one who will be supporting not only the amendment that is before us but other amendments that address this title in the bill. I have one I am working on that would exempt many of the small businesses that would be covered by this bill, some of which I mentioned in my remarks earlier. But I think this is an issue that is incredibly consequential in this legislation and so far removed--so far removed-- from the purpose of this bill in the first place. As I said earlier, we ought to fix the things that need to be fixed. But we should not try to fix things that do not need to be fixed, particularly when it calls for creating a whole new government bureaucracy in Washington, DC, with new government employees, at great additional cost and, of course, as I said earlier, at great additional expense to America's small businesses, which are the economic engine and job creators in our economy. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize Dorothy Clara Kralicek and Della Marie Goegen. Dorothy and Della were born on April 8, 1920, at the family farm near Menominee, NE, where they learned about the true riches of family life. Today, they both live in Yankton, SD, continuing to pass along family values and faith as matriarchs of their vast families. Between them, they have 18 children and numerous grandchildren. Dorothy and Della are both excellent homemakers and have recently enjoyed traveling together to several sites in Europe. On Mother's Day, May 9, 2010, both ladies will be honored by a gathering of family and friends in Sioux Falls, SD. This honorable recognition is clearly well deserved. Dorothy and Della's dedication to their families is a shining example of the steadfast commitment, devotion, and inspiration they have freely given to everyone throughout their lives. It gives me great pleasure to commemorate the 90th birthdays of Dorothy and Della and to wish them continued health and happiness in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize the Sioux Falls National Weather Service, a public weather informer that has been serving the U.S. since 1870. Volunteers began making weather observations in the Sioux Falls area in 1890 creating the basis for the Sioux Falls station. From its first local forecast to the public in 1955 to the harsh weather South Dakota experienced this past winter, the station has kept State residents apprised of current conditions. There is a strong need for the weather service to effectively communicate information to the public regarding storms, floods, wildfires, tornados, hail, and blizzards. The Sioux Falls National Weather Service provides these advisories for the area to keep families safe and informed. The Sioux Falls National Weather Service played a vital role in helping the news media inform South Dakotans about the snow storms that hit South Dakota last winter. I would like to offer my appreciation to the staff at the Sioux Falls Weather Forecast Office for their devotion to residents during times of critical need.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize Dakota BUSINESS Finance, a company in South Dakota being awarded as the Certified Development Company of the year by the U.S. Small Business Administration. Dakota BUSINESS Finance will be presented with this award as part of the U.S. Small Business Administration's Small Business Week in Washington, DC, on May 23-25. Since becoming a certified development company, Dakota BUSINESS Finance has become one of the fastest growing certified development companies in the Nation. Dakota BUSINESS Finance has created nearly 500 jobs after processing more than $45 million in approved SBA 504 loan applications to more than 50 applicants. The 504 loan program provides a number of financing options for businesses that are looking to procure land or other types of fixed assets. Dakota BUSINESS Finance has also been recognized with the Asset Builder Award for Federal Fiscal Year 2009 by the South Dakota Small Business Administration's District Office. This award is for the largest approved load volume for a certified development company in South Dakota in 2009. Dakota BUSINESS Finance has come a long way, and I look forward to their continued success. It is organizations such as Dakota BUSINESS Finance that keep South Dakota small businesses growing and flourishing. So it gives me great pleasure to commemorate Dakota BUSINESS Finance on this special occasion and wish them continued successes in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, today I recognize Ashley Van Den Top, an intern in my Sioux Falls, 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. Ashley is a graduate of Western Christian High School in Rock Valley, IA. Currently she is attending National American University, where she is majoring in paralegal studies. She is a 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 Ashley 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, today I recognize Christopher Sidney Espinosa, an intern in my Washington, DC, office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several months. Christopher is a graduate of Bethany High School in Bethany, OK. Currently he is attending Southern Nazarene University, where he is majoring in 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 Christopher 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, today I recognize Kelli Gill, 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. Kelli is a graduate of Yankton High School in Yankton, SD. Currently, she is attending Northern State University, where she is majoring in English. She is a 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 Kelli 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, today I recognize Meagan Lynn Robins, an intern in my Washington, DC, 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. Meagan is a graduate of Plainfield South High School in Joliet, IL. Currently she is attending Olivet Nazarene University, where she is majoring in political science and social science. She is a 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 Meagan 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, today I recognize Brooke Jean Anderson, an intern in my Washington, DC, 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. Brooke is a graduate of Stevens High School in Rapid City, SD. Currently she is attending Montana State University, where she is majoring in business marketing. She is a 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 Brooke for all of the fine work she has done and wish her continued success in the years to come.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, this amendment would strike the CLASS Act from the bill. The CLASS Act, as we all know, is a new entitlement program. We have two entitlement programs that are already destined to be bankrupt that have unfunded liabilities in the neighborhood of $60 trillion. It does not make a lot of sense to add a third one. Here is what everybody said about this. One of our Democratic colleagues has called the CLASS Act ``a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would be proud of.'' Even the Washington Post described it as a ``gimmick . . . designed to pretend that health care is fully paid for.'' The administration's Chief Actuary said ``there is a significant risk of failure, there is a significant risk that the problem of adverse selection would make the CLASS program unsustainable,'' and the CBO said the additional deficit increases would amount to ``the order of tens of billions of dollars for each 10-year period'' after 2029. We know what this is. This is a gimmick. It is a budgetary gimmick used to make this bill look like it is paid for when it is not. We ought to strike it from the bill, and I hope my colleagues will support this amendment.

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to temporarily set aside the pending motions and amendments to offer an amendment which is at the desk.

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.