Pat Toomey

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise to discuss amendment No. 3016. This is an amendment that would eliminate the corn ethanol mandate from the fuel standards that we have. I wish to thank my cosponsors on this amendment, including Senator Feinstein from California and Senator Flake from Arizona. This is a bipartisan amendment. I think this is a really important issue. What this amendment does is it eliminates the corn component of the renewable fuel standard. The renewable fuel standard, as my colleagues know, was created in 2007, and this is a Federal mandate that forces drivers to burn, actually, billions of gallons of biofuels, the vast majority of it derived from corn, in our vehicles, in our cars. It is on the order of 100 billion gallons of corn ethanol, and because this mandate establishes specific and increasing quantities of ethanol that has to be burned in our cars, when total gasoline consumption stays flat or declines, then it becomes an increasing percentage that we are all forced to buy. Let me be clear about one thing. The amendment I am specifically addressing, amendment No. 3016, eliminates the corn portion of the renewable fuel standard mandate, and that is 80 percent by volume. The optimal policy is to get rid of this whole thing. It was a well- intentioned but bad idea to begin with. It is now abundantly clear this is bad policy and we should get rid of the whole thing. But I understand we don't have as broad an interest in getting rid of the whole thing as the interest we have in getting rid of at least the corn component. And since that is, after all, 80 percent, this would be significant progress. There is probably not an enormous universe of things on which I have agreed with Vice President Al Gore over the years, but he got this right. Vice President Gore has acknowledged that ethanol was a mistake in the first place. It was created, as I say, with all good intentions. It was thought that by forcing people to make ethanol mostly from corn and burn it in our cars, we would reduce air pollution. It was thought that it would reduce costs for families. It was thought that it might even be good for the economy. All three are completely wrong. Factually, that is not the case. The mandate has failed to achieve any of these goals. Instead, in fact, it increases air pollution, it increases costs for families, and it is harmful to our economy. Let me take the first one, because the real motivation for this was to do something to improve the environment. The real idea behind ethanol--the impetus in the first place--was that somehow we would reduce air pollution if we are burning ethanol derived from corn rather than gasoline. Well, unfortunately, it hasn't worked out that way. That isn't just my opinion. There is plenty of documentation. In 2009, Stanford University predicted: ``Vehicles running on ethanol will generate higher concentrations of ozone than those using gasoline, especially in the winter . . .'' In 2011, the National Academy of Sciences observed: ``Projected air- quality effects from ethanol fuel would be more damaging to human health than those from gasoline use.'' That is the National Academy of Sciences. In 2014, Northwestern University researchers did a little research on the real world. They went down to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where they had recently required an increase in the use of ethanol, and what did they find? A corresponding, significant increase in ground-level ozone, which we all know is a harmful pollutant at the ground level and causes smog and other health problems. So there is no dispute about this. There is no question about this. Ethanol is harmful to our air quality and our environment. The Environmental Working Group agrees. The Environmental Working Group, a group of environmentalists, have said: ``The rapid expansion of corn ethanol production has increased greenhouse gas emissions, worsened air and water pollution, and driven up the price of food and feed.'' I know that many of my colleagues are very concerned about carbon emissions. So separate and apart from ozone, CO2 that is being released into the atmosphere is a concern for a lot of people. Studies show that ethanol creates more carbon dioxide emission than gasoline. It is just a fact. The Clean Air Task Force estimates that the carbon emissions from corn ethanol, over the next 30 years at current projected consumption rates, would exceed 1.4 billion tons, which is 300 million tons more than if we used gasoline instead of the ethanol. So there really isn't any debate that I am aware of anymore about this. Air quality is better if we are not using ethanol than when we are. But there are other impacts of this mandate. One is the higher cost on families. The fact is that ethanol is more expensive to make per unit of energy than gasoline. So we need to spend more for our cars to go the same distance. The New York Times reported that ethanol increased costs to gasoline purchasers by billions of dollars in 2013. The Wall Street Journal estimated that in 2014 alone, the RFS mandate--this mandate that we burn ethanol in our gas--raised the cost of gas by an average of anywhere from $128 to $320 per year for the average family. So let's be very clear. This mandate is costing American families several hundred dollars a year of their disposable income because they are having to spend to buy the more expensive fuel to move their vehicles. It is not just the direct effect of having to pay more when we gas up our cars. These ethanol mandates take a huge segment of our corn production off the market and they drive up the price of corn. Again, this isn't just me saying so. In 2008, USDA Secretary Ed Schafer and Department of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman acknowledged that ethanol increases the food price. Their estimate is just under 1 percent per year. In 2012, a study by economist Thomas Elam observed that ethanol increases food costs for the average family of four by just over $2,000 per year. So the increased food cost is actually multiples of the increased gasoline costs when we fill up our tanks, and families are hit by both. Of course, the food cost goes up not only because of the direct effect of higher corn--and many of us consume corn directly--but corn is the principal feed for all livestock. So the price of meat and poultry is very much correlated to the cost of the feed, and we make that feed much more expensive than it needs to be because of the ethanol mandate. There is another way in which this mandate is harmful to consumers and to families, and that is that it increases engine maintenance costs. The EPA acknowledges that ethanol is harmful to engines. They say: ``Unlike other fuel components, ethanol is corrosive and highly water soluble.'' Gasoline is not. So gasoline doesn't have this physical property; it doesn't damage engines. But ethanol does. The moisture that is dissolved in ethanol is corrosive. In fact, the EPA warns that fuel blends containing as little as 15- percent ethanol--which, by the way, this year there will be gas stations selling gasoline that is 15-percent ethanol--should not be used in any motorcycle, schoolbus, transit bus, delivery truck, boat, ATV, lawnmower or older automobile because of the damage that we know the ethanol will do to these engines. AAA warns that raising ethanol content--just rising it above 10 percent, which is where we are--will damage 95 percent of the cars that are on the road today. How can this possibly be good for a family to be systematically degrading the engines in their vehicles? There are other ways in which this is damaging to our economy. I mentioned that part of the reason that food prices for families are higher as a result of the ethanol mandate is because corn is such an important source of food for livestock. Well, in fact, the Federal Reserve and the USDA estimate that the ethanol mandate alone has contributed to a 20- to 30-percent increase in corn prices, and that has had a terrible impact on livestock operations and the dairy industry. It is also bad for American refineries. There are 137 oil refineries that operate in 28 States and employ thousands of people with good family-sustaining jobs, but because the oil refiner has to either blend in ethanol with the gasoline they make or they have to go out and pay a fine--a penalty, essentially--if they don't, it diminishes jobs in the refining sector. Again, this isn't just my opinion. I got a letter from the Philadelphia AFL-CIO business manager Pat Gillespie, and I will quote from the letter because he lays it out very clearly. He says: Our resurrected refinery in Trainer, Pennsylvania . . . once again needs your intercession. The impact of the dramatic spike in costs of the RIN credits-- the system by which EPA enforces the ethanol mandate-- from four cents to one dollar per gallon will cause a tremendous depression in . . . [our refinery's] bottom line. . . . Of course at the Building Trades, we need them to have the economic vitality to bring about the construction and maintenance projects that our Members depend on. And the steel workers, of course, need economic vitality so they can maintain and expand their jobs with the refinery. . . . We need your help with this matter. I completely agree. This is disastrous policy. Just to summarize, corn ethanol--ethanol generally but corn ethanol in particular--is just bad policy. It is bad for the environment, it increases air pollution, it raises costs for families to drive their vehicles and to put food on the table, and it costs us jobs. It is bad for the economy. Let's end this practice. Let's end this mandate. It was well-intentioned at the time, but now it is clear it is doing harm, not doing good. I will close on one other point. We in Congress, in Washington, should not be forcing taxpayers and consumers to subsidize certain industries at the expense of others. That is what is going on here. The magnitude of the consumption of ethanol is entirely driven by the mandate Congress has required the EPA to impose. That is why this is happening. We use the power of the government to force consumers to pay more than they need to pay to drive their car and to buy their food. This makes no sense at all. It seems to this Senator that a big part of what we are hearing on both sides of the aisle in this very unusual and raucous Presidential election cycle is voters who are disgusted with Washington. They don't trust Washington. They don't have a very high opinion of Congress. Part of it is because they are convinced that Congress goes around doling out special favors for special industries, special groups, and the politically well-connected. Well, guess what. They are right, and this is an egregious example of that. It is a clear example where the taxpayer and consumer get stuck with the bill so as to benefit a select preferred industry that has a lot of political clout. It is outrageous. The American people are right to be angry and tired of this. Mr. President, we should end the renewable fuel standard entirely. As I say, it started with good intentions, but the evidence is in and there is no mystery anymore: This policy is bad for the environment, bad for families, bad for budgets, and bad for our economy. There is no reason we should be continuing this, and I urge my colleagues to support this and any other effort to completely eliminate the renewable fuel standard, and if we can't do that, at least take the 80 percent out that is comprised of the corn component. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise this morning to speak about the legislation we will be considering this afternoon. Specifically, my understanding is we will be voting on a procedural measure which will allow us to take up legislation that is commonly known as auditing the Fed. I want to address that. Let me start with the context that I think is important to think about when we consider whether we ought to even modestly change the relationship that exists between Congress and the Fed. It starts for me with the simple observation that the financial crisis of 2008 is over. It actually ended a long time ago. It has been a number of years now that our financial system and our economy has not been in the imminent- crisis-meltdown mode that it was in the fall of 2008. In fact, for several years now we have had meager but some economic growth. Our banking system has been massively recapitalized. There is no current or imminent wave of bankruptcies in really any segment of the economy. Yet despite the fact that we are clearly not in a financial or economic crisis, we have crisis-era monetary policy, policy from the Fed that one would expect to occur--presumably--only in a crisis. The recent very modest change in Fed policy, the movement in the Fed funds rate from a target of zero to 25 basis points to 25 to 50 basis points is arguably the most modest tightening in Fed history. You couldn't even begin to suggest that this is a tightening of monetary policy. This is just a very slightly less easy money policy. That is what we have. So in my view there are huge dangers and problems that are associated with the Fed pursuing this completely unprecedented and, I would say, radical experiment in monetary policy. I wish to talk about a few of those this morning. One of the first and clearest problems is because the Fed has kept interest rates so low for so long, the Fed has caused a big misallocation of resources. This undoubtedly caused asset bubbles that are existing today that would not have occurred had it not been for the abnormal monetary policy. For instance, take sovereign debt markets. In many cases--especially in Europe--we have debt issued by governments and the return on those instruments is negative. In other words it doesn't cost the government money to borrow money, which is abnormal. You have to pay interest to borrow money normally. In fact, the government gets paid to borrow money, which is ridiculous and it is extremely abnormal. It has happened in the United States, not at the moment but in recent history. As a result of this Fed policy, we have had the bizarre world of negative interest rates. That is just one category that has clearly been in the bubble. Most observers believe that the high-yield market, the junk bond market, was in a bubble. That has gone through a very turbulent time and a big selloff--arguably, some of the years coming out of that bubble, but who knows. There has been considerable speculation that there are real estate bubbles, other financial assets. This is inevitable when the Fed distorts monetary policy, and it is a disturbing echo of the distortion that occurred back in the early part of the very beginning of this century, when the Fed's extremely low monetary policy of very low interest rates contributed to a housing bubble which of course ended up collapsing in the financial crisis, but that is just one category of problems the Fed causes with these ultra- low interest rates. Of course, the second is the corollary that people who have saved money and want to invest in a low-risk investment are completely denied an opportunity to get a return. The savers are forced to--the expression is--reach for yield, which is to say: Take your money out of the bank and buy something else because you are earning nothing with the bank. Well, you know what, for a lot of people a savings account at the bank is appropriate for their circumstances, for their risk tolerance, but they are driven away from that because bank deposits yield pretty much zero. Consider the case of an elderly couple who lives in Allentown, PA. They worked their whole lives, saved whenever they could, sacrificed, chose not to squander their money, and they lived modestly rather than lavishly. They did it in the expectation that when they retired, this nest egg that they had worked decades to build, this savings account at the bank, was going to yield a little bit of income to help them make ends meet in their retirement, to help supplement whatever Social Security and whatever pension they might have. What we have done to those folks--and they are all over America--who have spent a lifetime living prudently, carefully, sacrificing savings, we have said: Well, you made a huge mistake because the government is making sure you earn nothing on those savings. Joseph Stiglitz is a very respected economist. His research has demonstrated that this zero interest rate and quantitative easing--as it is described, this Fed monetary policy--has contributed significantly to expanding income and wealth inequality. It is not a surprise. This Fed policy has been very good for stocks. Stock prices have gone up, generally. It has been terrible for people with a bank account. While wealthy people have a lot of money in stocks, people of much more modest means tend to have more of their money sitting in a savings account which, as I have just described, earned zero. So the income inequality problem is exacerbated. In addition, what the Fed has been doing is encouraging fiscal irresponsibility in Washington. What the heck, borrowing is free, which it basically has been for the Federal Government. Why not run big deficits and borrow lots of money? That is an attitude that some people have. It frankly diminishes the pressure on Congress to pursue sensible and responsible monetary policy. When the Fed is willing to just buy up all the debt and buy it at an extremely low interest rate, it encourages irresponsible behavior. Now, of course, because the Federal Government has accumulated this $18 trillion mountain of debt, if and when interest rates return to something like normal--which one day they will, whether the Fed likes it or not--then that is a devastating problem for our budget outlook. So all of this is particularly disturbing to me when you consider that this massive creation of money, this flooding the world with dollars that the Fed has engaged in, does not create wealth. It is the difference between money and wealth. So some people might feel wealthier when they see stock prices rise if they have stocks, but that can be a very artificial phenomenon. It is an inflation in asset prices. It is not an improvement in productivity. It is not an expansion in our economic output. It is not actual wealth. It is numbers on a piece of paper. Of course, what the Fed is able to inflate in this artificial means by creating lots of money, well, that can eventually deflate. Whatever good they think they were accomplishing on the way up, why should we think we couldn't see the reverse on the way back down? This is what I think is the fundamental problem. The fact is, we have factors that are holding back our economy that are very real and very important, and the Fed's monetary policy can't correct that. We have a Tax Code that is completely uncompetitive. It discourages work. It discourages savings. It discourages investment. It makes us less competitive in countries around the world that have more sensible tax codes than we have. We need to fix the Tax Code. Monetary policy cannot make up for a badly flawed Tax Code. We have unsustainable entitlement programs. They are the ultimate drivers of large and growing deficits, and we will not be on a sustainable path until we fix these programs, and monetary policy can't make up for the cloud they cast over our economy. We have a declining percentage of Americans who are participating in the workforce. This is a huge problem for us. Again, monetary policy does nothing about that. Finally, we have been overregulating this economy on a completely unprecedented scale. The massive wave of overregulation that this administration, and on some occasions Congress, has inflicted on our economy clearly contributes a great deal to the subpar economic growth we have been living through. Again, monetary policy doesn't reverse that. It doesn't change that. It seems to me that, despite all their good intentions, their intentions themselves were flawed in that the Fed seems to be trying to compensate for the flawed policy in these other areas. Given the magnitude, the persistence, and the dangers of pursuing this kind of monetary policy, I think it is time that Congress reassert its authority over monetary affairs. The Constitution clearly gives Congress the responsibility to mint coins and to print money. In 1914, Congress delegated the management of our currency to the Fed. For a long time there was a sense that we ought to just leave them to their own devices and not pay very much attention. I think those days are past. I think the Fed's behavior obligates us to take a different approach. One good beginning step is the legislation we are considering today, which would audit the Fed. All it really does is give Congress and the American people the opportunity to examine and understand the mechanics and the thinking behind changes in monetary policy in something close to real time. I think we absolutely need that. I will say that I was a skeptic about this for a long time. I thought: I am not so sure it is such a good idea to have Congress looking over the shoulders of the folks making monetary policy. But I think the dangerous behavior that the Fed has engaged in for years now means they have squandered the right to be independent. We need to have more supervision. A next step which I think would be very important is for Congress to require the Fed to adopt a rule that would govern monetary policy. If we let the Fed decide what that rule should be and if circumstances require it, in the opinion of the Fed, they ought to be able to deviate from that rule. But they should come and explain to the American people and to Congress when and why they are deviating, rather than have year after year of this bizarre, unnatural policy that is very hard to explain and understand. So I am going to support the legislation we are considering this afternoon, the audit the fed bill. It is one of many important steps we can take to restore the accountability that the Fed ought to have. It is important that we get on a different path with our monetary policy. I understand it is not going to occur overnight, and it is not going to occur entirely as a result of this legislation. But this policy has been going on too long, and it is time for Congress to reassert its authority. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the upcoming confirmation vote of Judge Luis Felipe Restrepo to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. I wish to thank Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Leahy for moving Judge Restrepo's nomination through their committee. I also thank Leader McConnell for scheduling this confirmation vote, which will take place in short order. I also wish to thank my colleague Senator Casey. Senator Casey and I have been working very closely for 5 years now, since I joined the Senate, working to fill the vacancies that occur on the Federal bench across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that we represent. With Judge Restrepo's confirmation tonight, which I am hopeful and confident will occur, Senator Casey and I will have been able to play a role in filling 16 vacancies on the Federal bench, including 14 district court vacancies that have occurred since the time I arrived in Senate and two Third Circuit court vacancies. There are only two States in the Union that have had more vacancies filled in the last 5 years, and those two States are California and New York. They are very large States, of course, and have a large number of vacancies. Again, I thank Senator Casey for the very constructive working relationship we have developed to make sure that the people of Pennsylvania are able to access justice in a sensible and efficient fashion. Because we have worked closely together, not only have we filled these vacancies, but we have filled courthouses--Federal courthouses meant to house Federal judges--that have been vacant for years. As a result, Reading, PA, now has a Federal judge serving in that courthouse. People in the surrounding area of Williamsport, PA, had to drive great distances to get to a Federal court, and now there is a judge serving in Williamsport. Easton, PA--likewise, the people in North Hampton County who had to drive all the way to Philadelphia to have a case dealt with can now do that in Easton. I think, and I hope, we are close to filling an empty courthouse in Erie, PA. Erie is kind of by itself out there in the northwest corner of our great State, and there ought to be Federal judge in the Erie courthouse. We are well in the process of making sure that there will be, and I am sure it will come to a close soon. Back to Judge Restrepo. The fact is Judge Restrepo is very well qualified to serve on the Third Circuit. He has served as a Federal district court judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania since June of 2013. I was very pleased, along with Senator Casey, to have recommended Judge Restrepo to the White House for that post and to have supported his confirmation to the district court. In 2013, Judge Restrepo was confirmed unanimously on the Senate floor. I would love to see that occur again this evening with respect to his confirmation to the circuit court. Prior to his appointment as a district court judge, Judge Restrepo served for 7 years as a Federal magistrate judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and for 13 years prior to that, Judge Restrepo was a partner in the law firm of Krasner and Restrepo, handling criminal defense cases. Before that, he worked at the public defenders' office at the Federal and State levels. In many ways, Judge Restrepo's life story is a classic American dream story. He was born in Medellin, Colombia, and became a U.S. citizen in 1993. He has devoted a great deal of his time and energy and considerable intellect to serving his community. He served on the board of the Make-a-Wish Foundation for Philadelphia and Susquehanna Valley. This is a foundation that grants wishes to children who have life- threatening illnesses. Judge Restrepo also gave his time to the Russell Byers Charter School in Philadelphia. I am very confident that Judge Restrepo has the judicial experience, legal acumen, intellect, integrity, and dedication to public service to do the job that we expect him to do on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The Senate Judiciary Committee apparently shares my confidence, having passed his nomination out of committee with a voice vote. I am pleased to speak on behalf of this highly qualified nominee, and I urge all of my colleagues to support his confirmation.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I wish to commemorate the 100th Pennsylvania Farm Show, which is being held this week in Harrisburg, PA. Established in 1917, the Pennsylvania Farm Show is held every January and showcases the Commonwealth's vibrant farming traditions and finest foods. With 24 acres of exhibition space, it is the Nation's largest indoor agricultural event. This year's show will display more than 13,000 exhibits and is anticipated to draw half a million visitors from across the Nation. The farm show always provides free admission and allows everyone the chance to learn more about Pennsylvania agriculture. It hosts a wide variety of events and displays including livestock exhibits, art displays, and educational workshops. In addition to its hands-on exhibits, the farm show allows visitors to sample products that are grown and produced in Pennsylvania. Farmers display their fruits and vegetables while vendors sell local favorites, including pretzels, apple butter, and shoofly pie. As the occupant of the Senate candy desk, I would be remiss not to recognize the small, family-owned candy companies that also sell their products at the farm show. With a nod toward education, the Pennsylvania Farm Show sponsors the scholarship foundation for students pursuing their post-secondary education in the agriculture field. Since its creation, the foundation has donated over $1 million in scholarships to youth involved in 4-H, Future Farmers of America, and other agriculture organizations. It is encouraging to see such a strong commitment to agriculture's continued success in Pennsylvania for the foreseeable future. This weekend, my family and I will attend the 2016 Pennsylvania Farm Show. Farming is a vital component to Pennsylvania's economy, and I am proud of our State's dairy, livestock, and agriculture products. I look forward to the farm show every year, and I encourage all Pennsylvanians to attend this event to experience firsthand our State's rich agriculture history.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, again, I want to thank Senator Casey for his excellent work on this. At this time, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 238 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I am going make a unanimous consent request, but first I want to say a few words about the legislation about which the request pertains. I want to thank my colleague Senator Bob Casey for joining me on this. It was back in 2014 that Senator Casey and I introduced the Eric Williams Correctional Officer Protection Act. It is a bipartisan bill, and it is a simple idea. The idea is to better enable these men and women who protect us every day by working as corrections officers--to better enable them to protect themselves in the very dangerous environments in which they go to work every day. Amazingly enough, under the Bureau of Prisons policy, prison guards are often placed on duty, guarding large numbers of inmates by themselves, unarmed, and with no meaningful way to defend themselves. Officer Eric Williams of Wayne County, PA, paid the price for this policy. In February of 2013, Eric Williams was working alone in a housing unit of a Federal prison, a unit of 125 inmates. Carrying only a radio, handcuffs, and a set of keys, he had no means of self-defense and no one with him to provide back-up. A gang member serving a life sentence for first-degree murder savagely attacked and killed Officer Williams. The inmate used a homemade weapon to stab Eric Williams 129 times. He beat Eric so badly that his skull was crushed. The damage was so severe that Eric Williams' father stated: ``I didn't even recognize my boy laying in that casket.'' Eric was just 34 years old. This Bureau of Prisons policy is very misguided. We send our law enforcement officers alone, without defensive gear, to guard large numbers that include convicted killers. So, working with Senator Casey and with Eric Williams' parents, Don and Jean Williams, we introduced the Eric Williams Correctional Officer Protection Act. I should point out that Don and Jean Williams have been absolutely heroic advocates in insisting that correctional officers have this tool at their disposal. This is a bill that would require the Bureau of Prisons to issue nonlethal pepper spray to guards at high- and medium-security prisons so that these guards will have some means to protect themselves, some means of self-defense. We know this works. We know this works because there are many, many documented cases where a violent attack is immediately ended by deploying pepper spray. The fact is, pepper spray completely and immediately incapacitates an attacker. It does so while doing no permanent damage. Well, it is too late for Eric Williams, but there are thousands of correctional officers across America who are working in dangerous environments every day. If we pass this legislation, we are probably going to save some of their lives over time. The bill is bipartisan, as I pointed out. It has been endorsed by the American Federation of Government Employees, by the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, by the Council of Prisons Local 33. I am pleased to announce that thanks to the concerted and, as I said, heroic efforts of Eric's parents, Don and Jean Williams, and many law enforcement and correction officers across the country, I believe that today the Senate is ready to enact this legislation. I also thank my cosponsors, Senators Manchin, McConnell, Cornyn, Inhofe, Capito, Lankford, Kirk, and Vitter. Before I make the formal unanimous consent request, I yield to the senior Senator from Pennsylvania who has joined me in this effort, Mr. Casey.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I wish to address an issue that has kind of been pushed into the background by virtue of a series of events that has, quite understandably, captured all of our attention. The atrocities committed by ISIS has justified a focus of attention on how we can make America more secure from this very frightening and dangerous threat, but we shouldn't lose sight of an ongoing threat that is simultaneously developing, and I am referring to the Iran nuclear deal and the very disturbing developments that have occurred just in the short period of time since the JCPOA, the agreement between the Western powers, including the United States, and Iran, was announced. This is a deal that in its own right is very disturbing. I found it impossible to defend. Since then, it has gotten worse, and in my view additional developments clearly indicate that we don't really have an agreement here, and the President should not be lifting sanctions in a few weeks. My fear is that is exactly what the President intends do. Let me walk through several of the items that have occurred recently that are particularly disturbing. Item No. 1, almost immediately after the deal was announced, the Iranian leadership insisted they would essentially rewrite some very important parts of the deal. Specifically, they demanded that the sanctions had to be permanently lifted rather than suspended indefinitely. The JCPOA language says the United States will ``cease the application of sanctions.'' The administration has been very clear. They told us that means the sanctions are suspended, but the framework remains in place in case they need to be reapplied. They have predicated the entire viability of this agreement on the ability to reimpose sanctions, so it is essential that they in fact be available to reapply. The Iranians have said: No, absolutely not. That is not what the agreement says. It says these sanctions are to be lifted and permanently removed and they cannot be restored for any reason under any circumstance. Well, which is it? The Iranians have clearly indicated that they have a very different understanding than our administration does, and this matters because whether sanctions can be reimposed in the event of a violation is absolutely central to the enforcement of this agreement, and that is according to the administration. Item No. 2, shortly after the deal was announced, a couple of our colleagues--a House Member and a Senator--discovered the existence of two secret side deals. While on a trip to Europe, they discovered that these agreements were negotiated between the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, charged with much of the enforcement of this agreement, and the government in Tehran. It went to the heart of the past nuclear weapons activity that the Iranian Government was involved in. The administration didn't tell us about these side agreements or give us these side agreements, but it turns out they exist. The nuclear review act stated very clearly that the President was obligated to give us all related documentation--all of it. The actual language is ``any additional materials related thereto, including annexes, appendices, codicils, side agreements, implementing materials, documents, and guidance.'' I think it is abundantly clear that the legislation actually in fact says, and intended to say, that anything in any way related to this agreement had to be handed over to Congress. It never happened. We never got it. To this day, we haven't gotten it. In fact, no Member of Congress has seen these agreements--these two documents. It is not just that no Member of Congress has seen them, nobody in the administration has seen them because the administration thought it was OK to just trust some other entity to negotiate a very central enforcement provision of this agreement without ever being able to even see it. It is unbelievable. No. 1, the President is in violation of the law if he lifts these sanctions because the law clearly states that process can't begin until we have gotten all the documents, and we still haven't, and a very important aspect of this agreement is something that the administration has never seen. Item No. 3, October 3, just a few weeks ago, Iran launched a new long-range, precision-guided ballistic missile. Even the Obama administration acknowledges that this is a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929, which prohibits any ballistic missile activities on the part of Iran. Let me briefly quote from that resolution. It is a resolution that, by the way, supports the JCPOA. It is an integral part of the nuclear deal with Iran. It states that Iran is ``not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology, until the date eight years after the JCPOA.'' The intermediate-range ballistic missiles that the Iranians launched could absolutely hold nuclear weapons. They have a 1,000-mile range and could reach Israel. A few weeks after that, on November 21, Iran launched a second ballistic missile. In spite of everybody pointing out that they were in violation of the JCPOA with the first launch, they demonstrated just how concerned they were about that by a second launch. It was a slightly different system, quicker setup time, more mobility, more maneuverable, and still capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Why does this matter? Well, it matters because it demonstrates that Iran has every intention to continue to improve its ability to deliver nuclear weapons great distances, with great precision. It demonstrates the continued intent of Iran to develop the capability to threaten and attack Israel and U.S. allies. It is a fact that with this technology in place, if and when they violate this agreement and develop nuclear weapons--or even if they just wait until it is over and develop nuclear weapons, which the agreement permits--they will be immediately prepared to launch these weapons great distances. Maybe most fundamentally, Iran is in open violation of the JCPOA. They obviously have contempt for this agreement. How can we trust them when they are blatantly and flagrantly violating central parts of it? Item No. 4, October 29, Iran sends weapons to the Assad regime on Russian cargo planes, violating another U.S. Security Council Resolution, as was part of a bigger deal. It included, in the negotiation of the deal, that Commander Soleimani travel to Russia, which is in violation of the U.S. Security Council Resolutions because a travel ban had been imposed personally on him. That didn't matter. He went to Russia and negotiated an agreement that included weapons for Assad, in violation of another U.N. Security Council resolution, and Russian delivery of the SA-300 Air Defense System for Iran. Why is this important? Well, it is yet another flagrant violation of international law and U.N. Security Council resolutions but also because the delivery of these surface-to-air missiles diminishes the ability and credibility of a military strike against Iran, which we have been told is always the ultimate backstop. You would think that maybe the administration would have some concern about this. Item No. 5, October 29, Iran arrests an American and convicts another American. The Iranian regime arrested the Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi and convicted Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian in a show trial. This American reporter has now been held for over 500 days. Meanwhile, of course, the Iranian hardliners continue to hold their anti-American rallies, burn American flags, and shout ``Death to America.'' Why does all of this matter? After all, this was not contemplated by the JCPOA directly. It matters because it reveals the ongoing open hostility of the Iranian leadership to the United States. In response, of course, America has taken no steps and no action, but it is fundamentally clear that this deal has not changed the mindset or attitude of the regime toward America, and now it appears that Iran is holding some additional chips, if you will, in the form of American hostages and that should be pretty disturbing. Item No. 6, December 2, just a few days ago, the IAEA report came out on the previous military dimensions of Iran's weapons program. What did they conclude? They concluded that up until and through at least 2009, Iran was, in fact, working on a nuclear weapons capability. That is from the IAEA's report. That is not my opinion. That is their conclusion. They confirmed, among other things, that the Iranians were working on neutron triggers for detonation purposes, miniaturization efforts for warheads so they could be put on ballistic missiles, and specific designs for fitting them on weapons. In addition to confirming the nuclear weapons activity of the Iranian regime, the IAEA report highlighted that the Iranians were not fully cooperating as they were trying to determine the extent of the past military dimensions. Again, according to the IAEA, the Iranians consistently tried to mislead investigators. At the Parchin site, where much of the research and weaponization process was underway, the Iranians were heavily sanitizing the site. In recent months, they were trying to destroy the evidence prior to the IAEA investigation and determination, and the Iranians did not provide all of the information that was requested of them. This is all from the IAEA. Why does all of this matter? First and foremost, it is absolutely indisputable proof positive that Iran has been lying through this entire process. They have always said they have no nuclear weapons program and that all of their nuclear research has always been exclusively for peaceful purposes. It has been a lie. It was always a lie. It was a lie through the entire negotiations. If they are willing to lie about this, what else are they lying about? Since they were not willing to fully cooperate, how much do we really know about exactly how far along their weapons process was? And if and when we discover future weapons developments, we might not know whether that was prior to the agreement or post-agreement. It just creates a great deal of dangerous ambiguity. Finally--and this to me is maybe the most shocking--on November 24, the State Department acknowledged that the Government of Iran had never ratified and had not signed the JCPOA. They haven't signed the agreement. The administration acknowledges this. In a letter to a Member of Congress, Congressman Mike Pompeo, on November 19, 2015, the State Department said, among other things, the ``JCPOA is not a treaty or an executive agreement, and is not a signed document. The JCPOA reflects political commitments. . . . '' The President had previously called it a negotiated diplomatic agreement and attached great weight to it. The President said: The agreement now reached between the international community and Iran builds on this tradition of strong principled diplomacy. After two years of negotiations, we have achieved a detailed arrangement that permanently prohibits Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Except that it doesn't and Iran hasn't signed it. The President even compared it to the START treaty and the nonproliferation treaty. It is very different. The fact is, the State Department letter openly admits that this agreement, if you can call it that, is not legally binding on Iran, and the Iranians have refused to sign it. Instead, it is supposed to depend on extensive verification, and we have talked about the problems with that, and the ability to snap back sanctions, which, likewise, have been dramatically undermined at best. Then let's look at what the Iranians have done. President Ruhani pushed the Iranian legislature specifically not to adopt the JCPOA. They have ignored it. They have not voted on it. They have not ratified it. They have not affirmed it. So, in addition to not signing it, they have not had an eradication vote to approve it. In fact, they voted on some other framework. Ayatollah Khamenei has suspended further negotiations with the United States, so they have not signed the agreement, they have not voted on the agreement, and they have announced that they have no intentions of discussing any more with us the substance of it. It looks pretty clear to me that the Iranians are creating the ability to completely deny any obligation on their part to honor the terms of the agreement. It looks pretty obvious to me that that is what is going on here. Yet we are just a few weeks away from what this agreement, which hasn't really been agreed to, calls the ``implementation day.'' That is the day on which the sanctions will be lifted. By all accounts, it appears as though the administration intends to go ahead and lift the sanctions. Principally among them is the release of many tens of billions--maybe $100 billion--to Iran, despite the fact that the Iranians have demanded that these sanctions be permanently lifted, despite the discovery of these secret agreements, despite at least two ballistic missile launches in direct violation of the agreement, despite the violations of the arms embargoes, despite the arrest of Americans, despite the confirmation that we all now know that Iran has been lying throughout this entire process about the past weaponization, and despite the fact that they refuse to sign or pass this agreement. Despite all that, we apparently are just a few weeks away from lifting the sanctions, releasing upwards of $100 billion to the Iranians, and, of course, at that moment, losing virtually all leverage over Iran and their pursuit of nuclear weapons. I think it is time the President of the United States realizes and acknowledges that there is no agreement here. There is not a deal. Any reason one would think of at this point that Iran is going to honor this agreement that is not really an agreement I think is extremely naive at best. I hope that in the very short time that remains, we are able to persuade the administration to reconsider their apparent intent to lift these sanctions and reward this regime with a staggering amount of money with which they will do, in my view, very likely great harm. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

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

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the education reform conference report that we will be voting on tomorrow, which I think is a good bill for two big reasons. First, it restores a significant level of decisionmaking power to the States and local school districts, which is where decisions about things like curriculum should occur. It diminishes the ability of the administration to pressure school districts and States into adopting the Common Core curriculum, for instance, leaving it to the discretion of the States and school districts to decide exactly what their curriculum will be. I think that is a sensible and appropriate approach. There is another big reason I think this education reform bill is an important bipartisan victory for kids, and that is for the first time I am aware of, the Congress is acting to protect our kids from pedophiles who infiltrate our schools and who have sexually abused children in the classroom. I know you are actively supportive of this effort, as many of our colleagues are, and I am delighted we were able to make it through the entire process, as painful and slow as it was. This important provision survived this process, and we will be voting tomorrow on the overall bill. I want to talk about this a little bit, but let me make it clear right up front that I understand--as I assume we all do--that the vast, overwhelming majority of teachers and school employees would never harm children in their care. They would never hurt them. They would never do it. They care deeply about the kids, and that is probably a big part of the reason they pursued a career in education. But it is also a fact that schools are where the children are and pedophiles in our midst are very aware of that, and they are attracted to schools for exactly that reason. The number of pedophiles who are succeeding in abusing children in schools is absolutely shocking; it is to me. Last year there were 459 school employees, mostly teachers--not all teachers but employees in schools--arrested for sexual misconduct with the children they are supposed to be taking care of. That is more than one a day, and unfortunately 26 of them were in Pennsylvania. So far, 2015 is almost over. We have already exceeded the number from 2014. We are on a path to have well over 460 teachers and other school employees arrested for sexual misconduct with kids. Let's be honest; an arrest occurs only when there is sufficient evidence to press charges, to make a criminal case in a court of law. How many more cases are occurring where we haven't had sufficient evidence to prosecute? The story that put this need on my radar is the absolutely horrendous story of a child named Jeremy Bell. This story begins in Delaware County, PA. One of the schoolteachers was molesting young boys. In time, the school administrators discovered what was going on. The local district attorney didn't feel there was enough evidence to actually prosecute a case. You know, it is hard to fire a teacher, so what the school did is it sat the teacher down and said: Here's the deal. You need to leave, but don't worry. We will give you a letter of recommendation so you can get a job somewhere else. That is exactly what happened. This monster went to West Virginia, got hired as a teacher, and eventually became a principal. Of course along the way he continued to abuse children. In the end he raped and murdered a 12-year-old boy named Jeremy Bell. Justice finally caught up with this monster. He is serving a life sentence in prison as we speak, but it was too late for Jeremy Bell. As a father of three young children, I find this whole idea so appalling that it is hard to talk about it and hard to think about it. We would all like to think that a story like the story of Jeremy Bell is a freak occurrence, a once-in-a-million-years kind of thing, but that is not the case. It is just not true. In fact, it has happened so frequently that it has its own name. It is called passing the trash. The people who spend their lives serving and helping the victims of these horrendous crimes to cope with them know about this phenomenon all too well. I will give you more recent examples. Just this year, WUSA News 9 reported that the school district of Montgomery County, MD, had a record of passing the trash. An elementary school teacher named Daniel Picca abused children for 17 years. The Maryland school district knew what was going on. What did they do? The teacher's punishment was to be moved from school to school to school, reassigning him every time a problem emerged, as though the problem was the school and not the pedophile. For 17 years they were passing a known child molester from one group of victims to another. Consider a case of the Las Vegas, NV, kindergarten teacher who was recently arrested for kidnapping a 16-year-old girl and infecting her with a sexually transmitted disease in the course of abusing her. That same teacher had molested six children--all fourth and fifth grade children--just a few years before when he was working in the Los Angeles school district. The Los Angeles school district knew about the allegations, but when the Nevada school specifically asked if there were any criminal concerns regarding this teacher when he was applying for a job there, the Los Angeles school district not only hid the truth, it provided three references for the teacher--so strong was their interest in making him become someone else's problem. These are examples that are all the more disturbing when you consider that, according to a study by the GAO--Government Accountability Office--the average pedophile working at a school victimizes 73 children over the course of a lifetime. We have an opportunity tomorrow to say enough is enough. This is enough. This has been way too much--no more children falling prey to these monsters who have been able to infiltrate our classrooms, no more childhoods shattered, no more families devastated with grief, no more Jeremy Bells. The amendment itself is just common sense--really just common decency. It simply holds that if a State accepts Federal education funds, it has to have a law that bans the practice of knowingly recommending a pedophile to another school. Is there anybody in Pennsylvania or Colorado who thinks that is unreasonable? I don't think so. I am delighted that we have gotten to this point. There are a lot of people I would like to thank for their help. I have to start with Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who joined me at the very beginning. We introduced this legislation over 2 years ago as a freestanding bill. In addition to banning passing the trash, it would require thorough and rigorous background checks for any school worker who has unsupervised access to children. That part was not included in this. I am not giving up on that. We will have that fight again. The part that bans passing the trash did succeed and demonstrates that with perseverance the right outcome can occur. I would like to thank the other cosponsors of this legislation, Senators McConnell, Alexander, Capito, Cotton, Gardner, Heller, Inhofe, Johnson, McCain, Roberts, Vitter, and Wicker. I would particularly like to thank the chairman of the HELP Committee, Senator Alexander, and Senator Murray, the ranking member. We talked about how we could make this work mechanically and make sure that we have legislation that will in fact achieve the desired outcome. I also need to send out a huge thank-you to all the child advocates and the law enforcement folks around the country, especially in Pennsylvania, who worked so hard to make this legislation happen. They were invaluable. I hope they realize how much of a difference they made in helping to persuade our colleagues to get this done. I thank Terri Miller and John Seryak of S.E.S.A.M.E., who have been fighting to protect children in the classroom for decades. I also thank the National Children's Alliance and the many child advocacy centers across Pennsylvania, most of which I have been able to visit, for the wonderful work they do for kids who need it badly; the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape; the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; the Center For Children's Justice; MassKids; the American Academy of Pediatrics; the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys; the National District Attorneys Association; the Pennsylvania District Attorney's Association; the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association; the National Sheriffs' Association; and the National Association of Police Organizations. Every one of these groups weighed in on this legislation and helped us to get this over the goal line over the course of a long, protracted series of negotiations. Tomorrow I think we are going to have an important victory in our ongoing effort to protect children from sexual abuse. It is the first time that the U.S. Congress has acted to protect children in this way. There is more that needs to be done. I still think we need to revisit the state of the background checks that are applied. There are States that do not have an adequate background check system in place, and if they are taking Federal funding--which they are--they ought to have an adequate background check system. The truth is that this is a big step forward, and I am delighted we were able to get here. I am grateful for the help of every Senator who helped us get to this point. For this reason, for the sake of this amendment as well as the general thrust of the legislation, which is to move decisionmaking power back to the States and school districts where it belongs, I would urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the conference report tomorrow. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I want to address an amendment that I have for the ObamaCare repeal bill we will be voting on, possibly soon. It is a simple amendment. I think it is an important one, and it addresses part of the $1.2 trillion in tax increases that are embedded throughout ObamaCare. This, in particular, is a tax increase on middle-class Americans who are battling with catastrophic health care challenges and costs. So I think it was a particularly ill-conceived tax increase and I want us to repeal it. This is what the tax increase was about. Prior to ObamaCare, if a family had out-of-pocket medical expenses that exceeded 7.5 percent of their income, they could deduct from their taxable income any cost above 7.5 percent of their income. ObamaCare raised that threshold to 10 percent, and that has very real consequences. There was an exception for senior citizens, but that exception expires in 2016, and this tax increase on middle-class Americans makes it harder for families who are trying to deal with, to battle some kind of very problematic health situation they are in. It could be a chronic disease. It could be a catastrophic event. Let me be specific with an example. Prior to ObamaCare, if a family who earned $50,000, for instance, had extraordinary medical costs, for whatever reason, that were, say, $4,500--so 9 percent of their income-- that is a huge medical bill for a family who earns $50,000, obviously. Well, at least prior to ObamaCare, they could deduct $750 of it. That portion which exceeded the 7.5 percent of their income was deductible. Under ObamaCare, they can't deduct any of it. They get no deduction. So think about what we are doing. We are saying that a middle-class, working-class family with unusually, extraordinarily high medical bills should lose the opportunity they have historically had to at least get a modest deduction to help soften the blow of the catastrophic health crisis they are dealing with. I think this is a terrible idea--to hit these folks with this tax increase--especially at a time when they are dealing with these very difficult circumstances or they wouldn't get the deduction anyway. So I think it was a bad idea and one of many bad ideas in ObamaCare. What my amendment would do is simply restore that deduction to where it was before ObamaCare. It would restore the ability to deduct that extraordinary health care cost when it exceeds 7.5 percent of income rather than having to hit the 10-percent hurdle ObamaCare created. By the way, I should point out that this is totally a tax increase on middle-class families. The IRS quantified this. They determined that 86 percent of the taxpayers who claim this deduction--86 percent--earn less than $100,000. This isn't a tax deduction for rich people. This is a tax deduction for ordinary Americans who are going through very difficult times. Having the ability to take this deduction is more important now than it has ever been because ObamaCare has done so much to drive up people's costs. That is not just I saying this. A November 15 New York Times headline read: ``Many Say High Deductibles Make Their Health Law Insurance All but Useless.'' That is the New York Times. High deductibles are one of the main contributing factors to people having high out-of-pocket costs. So ObamaCare has driven these plans into these high deductibles, thereby forcing people to lay out more cash and at the same time they are saying: Oh, but you can't deduct it like you used to be able to. On November 2 CNBC reported that ``ObamaCare's cheapest plans just got more expensive.'' There are deductibles that are soaring to over $12,000, out-of-pocket maximums that are near $14,000. People are incurring out-of-pocket expenses like never before, and they are getting hit with the fact they can no longer take the kind of deduction they used to. This was a bad idea in the first place. It is a tax increase on those who can least afford it--people who are sick, people who are undergoing maybe a terrible accident, some other disaster that caused them to incur these expenses. It could apply to someone who has long-term care expenses for a relative in a nursing home. It could be the special education expenses for a handicapped child. It could be a mom undergoing reconstructive surgery after a mastectomy. It could be a couple seeking to conceive a child needing fertility treatment. There are any number of circumstances for which I don't think we should be punishing people in this fashion. My amendment would simply, as I said, restore the tax deduction to the threshold we had before ObamaCare and I would urge its adoption. As I mentioned, I think this medical expense deduction issue is just one flaw of ObamaCare. It is important, but it is a narrow aspect of an unbelievably flawed bill. It is hard to know where to begin with the flaws of ObamaCare, but I would suggest several big categories of problems: The first is higher costs; the second, I would suggest, is the loss of employment; and the third, which is indisputable, is the loss of freedom. I think higher costs are undeniable. The President promised us that average premiums would fall, they would fall by $2,500 in fact. He was confident enough to give us a figure, and of course the exact opposite is what has actually occurred. ObamaCare premiums have gone up dramatically. In my State of Pennsylvania, premiums are up, for next year alone, 11 percent. That is after several years of increases prior to an 11-percent increase. Whom do you know who has gotten an 11- percent pay raise? I don't know anybody. That is not what is happening. Yet their expenses are going up because of ObamaCare. Deductibles are rising at the same time. So not only does it cost more to buy the insurance, but the insurance covers less. I have gotten letters from literally thousands of Pennsylvanians explaining their personal circumstances. One letter came from the DiBello family of Montgomery County and says that before ObamaCare they paid $662 a month for a health insurance plan for their family and they had a $6,000 deductible. They were happy with their plan. They were promised if they were happy with their plan they could keep their plan. We all heard that promise. How many times was that promise made? That promise was made to the DiBello family. The only slightly unfortunate problem here is everybody knew it was untrue, including the people making the promise because the legislation explicitly forbids whole categories of plans. How could you keep your plan if it is being banned by the Federal law? Unfortunately, the DiBello family experienced that. So the plan they are buying that goes into effect in 2016, instead of a $662 monthly premium, they are going to have to pay $1,141, and instead of a $6,000 deductible, they are going to have a $12,800 deductible. You almost have to wonder what is your insurance paying for if the deductible is that high, but that is what ObamaCare has done to the DiBello family of Montgomery County, PA, and let me assure you they are but one of thousands and thousands of families I have heard from across Pennsylvania who are experiencing similar real difficulties. I mentioned jobs as another category of problem that ObamaCare has created. Again, I think it is completely irrefutable. We know if you as an employer hire a 50th employee, you are suddenly subject to all the mandates of ObamaCare. That means the costs of health insurance for your workforce go through the roof. It creates a huge incentive not to hire the 50th employee. That is a terrible incentive to have, especially at a time when we have too few people working and we have inadequate wages. Yet this provision guarantees that it will be more difficult to get a job with a company that has 40-some employees. In addition, ObamaCare puts pressure on employers to cut back on hours for workers because you are deemed to be a full-time worker if you work 30 hours or more. One way to deal with that is to have people work less than 30 hours. The problem is, employees want 40 hours. They want a normal workweek. But they can't get it because of the costs ObamaCare triggers if they were to have it. Third is the loss of freedom. Again, that is completely irrefutable. If you had a plan you were happy with, if you had a plan that worked for you and your family, if it was the right mix of benefits, premiums, and deductibles for you and you wanted to keep that plan, well, good luck--you can only keep it if the government approves of it. So now we don't have the freedom to have the health insurance plan we want. We are forced to buy the health insurance plan the government dictates we should have whether we like it or not. What an egregious affront to the personal freedom of Americans to decide what is right for them and their families. The last thing I want to point out is a very fundamental structural flaw in the model of ObamaCare--yet another reason why this needs to be repealed--and that is, this bill was designed with the idea that young and healthy people would buy health insurance through ObamaCare at an inflated price. Of course, in addition to dictating what is in a health care plan, ObamaCare dictates pricing as well. The theory was, what we will do is we will have all these expensive mandates, but we will force this category of people who tend to be younger and healthier--we will force them to pay more than it costs to actually insure them, and that is how we will subsidize coverage for people who are older and need more health care. There is only one small problem with that; that is, the younger and healthier people figured out pretty quickly that they are being forced to buy a product that doesn't suit their needs very well and they are forced to pay more than it is worth. So guess what. They are not doing it. And ObamaCare is falling short by millions on the number of these younger, healthier people their model depended on. What is the result of that? Insurance companies are left insuring a population that therefore tends to be older and sicker. That costs more. When insurance companies lose many millions of dollars, which is what they have been doing, they go back to ``We have to raise premiums even further.'' That creates an even more powerful incentive for younger and healthier people not to buy the product. What started off as overpriced is now even more overpriced for them. This is known in insurance terms as a death spiral, this downward spiral whereby it becomes impossible to have a viable continuation of these insurance policies, because, increasingly, the only people who will buy them are the people who are very sick, and people who are relatively healthy are priced out of the market. This explains why half of all insurance co-ops in America have already folded. Many seem to be heading in the same direction. A year from now, I doubt there will be many co-ops remaining. This also explains why, increasingly, insurance companies are simply saying: We are going to have to consider getting out of this market altogether. We are going to have to consider simply not participating in ObamaCare. What does that mean for Pennsylvania families? It means they are going to be out of choices. If there are no insurance plans being offered through this exchange because the whole dynamic doesn't work, then how are my constituents going to get health insurance? This is the problem when the government steps in and tries to take control over an industry--in this case, something so important and so personal as our health care. This is a fatally flawed piece of legislation. Americans have been living through its disastrous consequences in the form of losing the health care plans that they want, that they valued, that they chose; experiencing much higher premiums, higher out-of-pocket costs, and higher taxes on the costs they do incur; and fewer jobs and less hours for those who are employed. Now, in addition to all this, we see what I think is the relatively early stages of this death spiral that is going to result in probably a pretty massive exodus from this market. It is long overdue that we repeal this legislation. I am very glad we will be able to consider this over the next day or so. I urge support for my amendment, which would restore the ability of people facing catastrophic costs to have the deduction they were able to have before ObamaCare, and I urge adoption of this repeal legislation. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I wish to honor and congratulate National Review for 60 years of valuable contributions to American political discourse. When a 29-year-old William F. Buckley, Jr., published National Review's first edition on November 19, 1955, it marked not just the birth of a magazine, but also the birth of the modern conservative movement. Under 45 years of Mr. Buckley's leadership, National Review served as the standard bearer of conservative thought in America, where readers could expect to find leading thinkers such as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Milton Freidman to name a few. It influenced generations of conservatives, including this conservative, with its frequently humorous and always intelligent writing, and it consistently published valuable commentaries on public events and figures, foreign and domestic affairs, culture, politics, and the economy. During Mr. Buckley's tenure, National Review did more than just observe and comment on the course of human events; it helped shape them. It played a central role in the ``Reagan Revolution.'' Its steadfast defense of liberty, free markets, and personal responsibility provided much of the intellectual underpinnings of America's triumph over communist tyranny in Europe and around the world. Mr. Buckley's successors have ably carried on this proud tradition at National Review. It remains tremendously influential. With over 150,000 subscribers, it is the most read opinion magazine in America. Millions more visit National Review Online every month. More importantly, Mr. Buckley's successors have carried on as champions of the conservative movement. Every 2 weeks National Review arrives on my desk and serves as a reminder that conservative thought is alive and well in America. Over the past 60 years, National Review has lived up to its founding statement so eloquently expressed by Mr. Buckley. To paraphrase, National Review continues to stand athwart history, yelling ``stop,'' when no other is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it. Congratulations to all those who have made National Review a success over these last 60 years. Your contributions to American political discourse will serve as an inspiration and as a challenge to future generations of conservative thinkers.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I wish to honor the skilled, brave, and determined sailors who served aboard the USS Pittsburgh. The third of four naval vessels named after the Steel City, the USS Pittsburgh was a Baltimore-class heavy cruiser that served 6 months in the Pacific theatre during World War II. In that short time, the cruiser earned two battle stars. However, her greatest accomplishment was assisting in the rescue of the crew of a disabled ship in enemy waters. In March 1945, Japanese bombers began an air raid on a task force assigned to the U.S. 5th Fleet. This attack severely damaged the aircraft carrier USS Franklin and set it ablaze. The USS Franklin lost 725 crew members, with another 264 injured in the bombing, and it was left stranded in the water just 50 miles from the Japanese coast. The USS Pittsburgh quickly came to the rescue, saving 34 men from the water. Along with another ship, a light cruiser, the USS Santa Fe, the USS Pittsburgh was able to tow the carrier to safety while fighting off enemy attacks. The crew of the USS Franklin was highly decorated for their bravery during the fight, but the crew of the USS Pittsburgh has never received any honors for their bravery. Today I rise to recognize and honor the crew of the USS Pittsburgh for their heroism and bravery displayed rendering aid and assistance to the USS Franklin on March 19, 1945. Along with this heroic action, the USS Pittsburgh faced another big fight against a different kind of enemy: Mother Nature. On June 5, 1945, the ship encountered a typhoon and suffered extensive damage, including loss of its bow, but was kept afloat because of her skilled crewmembers' damage control efforts. The USS Pittsburgh's captain maneuvered the boat entirely by cleverly manipulating the ship's engines until the storm subsided, returning to Guam a few days later. I would especially like to recognize three veterans of the USS Pittsburgh who are still living in southwestern Pennsylvania. Their names are: Robert McKnight, seaman 1st class, of Connellsville, Fayette County; George Jock, seamen 1st class, of Somerset, Somerset County; and Paul Gaudi, seaman 1st class, of Jeanette, Westmoreland County. I thank them and their fellow USS Pittsburgh crew members for their valiant heroism and service to our country. I ask unanimous consent that the additional information that was obtained with the help of the Congressional Research Service and National Archives be printed in the Record. Lastly, I appreciate having the opportunity to provide my remarks about the USS Pittsburgh and its crew's unique and extraordinary contributions to our Nation's history in World War II. It is an honor to serve in the U.S. Senate on behalf of the great city for which this cruiser was named and represent those veterans who served aboard her.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I am a little surprised and disappointed to be accused of not operating in good faith when I attempted to reach a compromise by allowing one of these two bills to go exactly as the proponent advocated. I would be happy to extend fair value accounting treatment to the Risch bill as well. The Senator from New Hampshire is concerned about consistency. Let's consistently apply honest accounting for the risks we are imposing on taxpayers. And to think that is not an appropriate conversation to have at a time when we are asking taxpayers to take new risks--I don't know what better time there could be, especially after we have saddled taxpayers with over $3 trillion of guarantees that they have been obligated to already. If somehow my modifications would make it impossible to make the loans, that should tell us something about this program. In other words, if we say that they can't proceed with a loan if a fair and honest accounting, as prescribed by CBO, shows it to be in a loss, then apparently they are concerned about the program being at a loss--as well they should be since the most closely related program has lost hundreds of millions of dollars for taxpayers. So I think this is exactly the time to have this conversation. We have been having this conversation for months with the Senator from New Hampshire's staff and the small business committee's minority staff. If we can reach an agreement on this, as I said before, I am happy to allow this program to resume, but it should be done in a way that it actually creates jobs and actually does provide some protection to taxpayers. So since we can't agree to that today, I object.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I want to address the unanimous consent request, and I am delighted to continue the ongoing conversation we have been having about this for many months now with the minority staff on the small business committee and with the office of the Senator from New Hampshire. I might preface my comments by observing that I used to own and operate my own small business. I helped launch a little community bank in eastern Pennsylvania, western New Jersey. I have some firsthand personal experience both as a small business borrower and as a small business lender, and that experience informs my judgment about this and other things. I should also point out that this is a unanimous consent request to consider two bills together en bloc. I have made it clear that I have no objection to S. 552, but I do have some concerns about S. 966 that I want to address. Let me be clear about what this does. This legislation would reactivate an expired program that requires taxpayers to guarantee certain loans. By the way, taxpayers are already on the hook for over $3 trillion of loans we force them to guarantee through many different programs. This would bring back to life another taxpayer loan guarantee program. It does it by specifically requiring taxpayers to guarantee loans that would refinance existing debt. So this particular legislation that we are considering today is about the refinancing of existing debt. It is not taking on new debt for the purpose of expanding an existing business or something like that; it is refinancing existing debt. As the Senator observed, this would sort of reincarnate a program that was launched in 2010. This was launched in 2010 because we were still in the very early days of recovering from a severe financial crisis. It was designed intentionally to be temporary--to require taxpayers to finance these loans for small businesses but only for this 2-year period. And that is what happened. Here are my problems with this. I have two problems. One is the cost this imposes on taxpayers. I have heard it described as a no-cost program on several occasions. That is absolutely not true. The fact is that no small business goes through the hassle of applying for and participating in this program unless it can get the loan at a lower rate than what is generally available from banks. That difference between this taxpayer-subsidized lower rate and a market rate is the cost to the taxpayers. You don't have to take my word for it; that is what the Congressional Budget Office said. I will say more on that in a moment. In addition, the parent program that provides similar types of loans has lost $300 million for taxpayers over just the last several years. How is that no cost? The second concern I have is that there is no job requirement whatsoever in this particular legislation, unlike the existing program--the parent program, if you will, the 504 program that never suspended. That has an explicit job requirement for additional taxpayer liabilities. This one doesn't. It explicitly exempts the business borrowing this money from having to create or even retain so much as a single job. So I would like to modify the unanimous consent request, and my modification does three things: No. 1, it allows the resumption of the program. That is the first thing it does. It allows this program to resume, which is the intention of the Senator from New Hampshire, I believe. But what it also does, after 1 year of resumption, is require that we begin to have some taxpayer protections on this. Specifically, the form that would take would be to require the Office of Management and Budget to certify that the program doesn't cost money on a fair value basis. The fair value basis is taking into account the fact that not all credits are equal. For instance, the corner pizza shop is not as creditworthy as the Treasury of the United States of America. So a true cost of a loan differs between that which you would extend to the Treasury of the United States of America and the local pizza shop. If you don't have a differential between those two, then someone is getting the wrong rate. And if you lend to the pizza shop at the same rate you lend to the Federal Government, you are surely not being compensated adequately for the risk you are taking. So this methodology, the fair value methodology, is the same one we use when we quantify the cost of the TARP program, when we quantify the cost of GSE guarantees, and when we quantify IMF liabilities. That is what I am suggesting we use. The Congressional Budget Office has weighed in with their views on fair value accounting, and they said: When the government extends credit, the associated market risk of those obligations is effectively passed along to taxpayers, who, as investors, would view that risk as having a cost. Therefore, the fair-value approach offers a more comprehensive estimate of federal costs. That is the second thing we do. First, we extend the program and allow it to resume. Secondly, we impose fair value, which is to say an honest assessment of the true cost to taxpayers. Finally, my suggestion is that we enact the very same jobs test that the parent legislation-- the alternative, similar legislation, the 504 program--requires, and that is, for every $65,000 of new risk that taxpayers are being forced to take, let's at least make sure we are creating or retaining at least one job. Think about the alternative. Someone could go out and refinance an existing loan at a lower rate because the government--the taxpayers--is subsidizing the rate. They could use the savings to buy automation equipment and actually eliminate jobs. How could that make any sense at all? My modification would restore the program, would provide some protection to taxpayers, and would require job creation in the process. I ask that the Senator modify her request, that the bills be passed en bloc, and that my amendment to S. 966, which is at the desk, be agreed to.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I wish to speak this evening a little bit about the budget deal that was recently enacted. There are three parts of that I wish to address. One is the spending increases, another is the debt ceiling, and finally there is the Crime Victims Fund, which--I am very upset about this. Starting with spending, it shouldn't be controversial--but of course it is--that we spend too much money here. We spend way too much money. There are any number of metrics that would confirm and demonstrate how much we overspend, but I think the most compelling is the size of the deficit that all this spending is creating, with record revenue. I want to underscore that. The Federal Treasury is taking in record amounts of tax revenue. So with alltime-record levels of revenue, we are still spending so much above and beyond that that this year we are going to run about a $450 billion deficit. There are some people in this town who practically sprained their arms patting themselves on their backs because it used to be a $1 trillion deficit. That is true, but $450 billion is still way too much. We have too much debt now, and a $450 billion deficit this year is going to add $450 billion to a debt level that is already too big. And guess what. All forecasts, everybody's forecasts--liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, CBO, private sector--everybody agrees the deficits are on path to get worse. So we are spending too much. Our deficits are too big. They are adding to a debt that is already too high, already doing damage to our economy, our ability to create jobs, because of all the uncertainty and the risk that all this debt creates. And what happens? The only spending discipline we have been able to achieve in recent years--the spending caps that were enacted in 2011--the President insists we have to bust them. Many of us believe we should be spending more on defense. If we are going to do that--I think part of our job is to prioritize spending. National security, defending our country, should be our No. 1 priority, and since we need to spend more there, you offset that with spending reductions somewhere else. That would be the prudent thing to do. But that is not what the President insisted on. The President insisted that if we were going to spend anything more on defense, we had to match that dollar-for-dollar with increased spending elsewhere. So not only were we not offsetting the increase in defense spending, but we were compounding the spending by increasing the nondefense spending. So this deal busts the spending caps, and, in fact, the deficits will be larger than they otherwise would be. That leads me to the second point, and that is the debt ceiling. Let's think about the context of where we are. When President Obama took office, the total amount of debt owed to the public--the amount of money the Treasury had borrowed because of previous deficits was less than $6 trillion. It was a very big number, but it was less than $6 trillion. By the end of next year, it is going to be over $13 trillion. So this President, by the time he leaves office, will have more than doubled the total amount of debt we have borrowed to fund these deficits. Another way to think about it is that this President will have added to our debt burden by an amount greater than the sum total of every single one of his predecessors combined, from George Washington to George W. Bush. This is a staggering amount of debt that we have imposed on ourselves, our kids, our grandkids, our economy, and on our ability to be a productive country. And what did the President say in response to all this debt? Give me the authority to borrow more with no conditions. We are not even going to have a discussion or a negotiation about the underlying problem that is causing all of this debt. I think that is, frankly, outrageous, and it is extremely unusual because for decades now American Presidents have met with Congress, and when we have had discussions in the past about the level of debt and what we are going to do about it--when the Presidents have said we need to increase our debt ceiling so that we can borrow more money--that has very typically included a discussion about dealing with the underlying problems. There are many examples of this. Back in 1985, during the Reagan administration, it was in the context of a debt ceiling debate that we passed the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings measure, which was about limiting our deficits and reducing the amount of debt we would incur going forward. In 1990 George Herbert Walker Bush negotiated with Congress the Budget Enforcement Act, which again was related to a debt ceiling increase at the time and which adopted measures to deal with the deficits of that day. In 1997, William Jefferson Clinton--President Clinton--with a Republican Congress sat down and negotiated a balanced budget agreement. And you know what happened? They balanced the budget. So President Clinton decided to work with Republicans in Congress to deal with this underlying problem, and within a few years we actually had balanced budgets. Then in 2011, in the context of the debt ceiling increase that was discussed at the time and eventually raised, these spending caps were established as a way to at least do something about this runaway spending and these excessive deficits and the debt. But this time the President had a different view. His view was that he would not even have a discussion. There would be no negotiations, no consideration. We are not even going to talk about the underlying problem. He wanted to have unlimited authority to borrow more money through the end of his Presidency, and that is what is in this deal. So what can we expect? We can expect a whole lot more debt. That is exactly what is going to happen. By the way, contrary to what some in the administration like to say, this has nothing to do with paying for past bills. We have paid for those bills. This is to enable excessive spending going forward--the deficits we are going to incur because this President is insisting on this overspending. Let me get to the last point I wanted to stress today, which is one of the really disturbing things about this budget deal and what it has done with the Crime Victims Fund. By way of background, the Crime Victims Fund was a fund established in 1984. It consists exclusively of monies that are assessed to convicted criminals--corporate or individuals. As part of their punishment, they are made to pay a fine, and the fine goes into an account with the Federal Government. It actually is quite substantial. Year in and year out this ends up being actually billions of dollars. The statute requires, first of all, that all this money go to victims of crimes and their advocates, and specifically, it requires a priority for victims of child abuse, sexual assault, and domestic violence and that those three categories of crimes be given a special priority. There are organizations that do wonderful work across Pennsylvania and across the country in helping people who are victims of these terrible, terrible crimes that are so difficult to recover from. There are groups of people who do great work in helping these victims to recover. The whole idea of the Crime Victims Fund is to take these dollars from the criminals--not a penny of tax dollars--and give it to the victims of crimes and the people who are advocates for them. But what this budget deal does is it takes $1.5 billion out of the Crime Victims Fund and it spends it on other things. I think this is outrageous. This is not taxpayer money in the first place. It is not as though we don't have victims of crimes anymore. Obviously, we still do. And we have organizations that can do great work if they had the resources. But in the absence of resources, it means that children who are victims of child abuse don't get the counseling and the care they need. It means a victim of domestic violence doesn't have a place to stay when she needs protection from an abusing spouse. It means people who really need these services are going to go without because we are diverting this money that is supposed to be going to crime victims and we are spending it somewhere else. The most important thing I want to say tonight is that it is not too late to fix this. What the Congress passed and the President signed last week paves the way to misallocate this money from the Crime Victims Fund, but it doesn't require that to happen. So I have a bill that will fix this problem. I have a bill called the Fairness for Crime Victims Act, and what it will do is it will require that the money go to the victims, as it was always intended. By the way, the idea that we should not be diverting the Crime Victims Fund to these other miscellaneous spending categories is a bipartisan idea. There is broad bipartisan support for the idea that the money in the Crime Victims Fund should go to victims of crime. The Wall Street Journal ran an article on Sunday, and they quoted a crime advocate describing the budget deal saying, this deal ``violates the integrity of a decades-old program that funds safe havens for domestic violence victims, counseling for abused children and financial aid for murder victims' families, among other programs.'' Josh Shapiro is the chairman of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, and he wrote about this provision in the budget deal. He said that it ``puts in danger our commitment to victims of crime throughout our country.'' Democratic members of the Pennsylvania State House agree with me that this money should not be diverted this way. They sent a letter, among other things, saying that the budget deal increases spending to ``the detriment of current and future crime victims'' and that this constitutes ``a terrible precedent.'' I couldn't agree more, and that is why I hope we will pass my legislation, the Fairness for Crime Victims Act. It ends this injustice. Here is the way it works. It is very simple. It simply requires that Congress allocate to crime victims and their advocates an amount equal to the sum of the previous 3-year average that went into the fund. So the short way to think about it is that it means we are going to send to crime victims the money that comes in for crime victims, and we are not going to send it somewhere else. This means that victims of crime and their advocates are going to see a big increase in this funding, because for years Congress has refused to allocate all of the money that has been coming in. In the past, they just refused to allocate it. There are budgetary gimmickry reasons for doing that, and this needs to come to end. We certainly can't continue diverting this fund for other purposes. We have had colleagues--Members of this body--come to the floor and make the point that we shouldn't use Medicare and Social Security funds as an ATM to fund other programs. I agree. We also shouldn't use the Crime Victims Fund, which is not a single dime of taxpayer money. We shouldn't use that to fund other programs either. It is not too late to do the right thing for victims of some of the most heinous crimes that are committed anywhere. I urge my colleagues to help pass this piece of legislation. This was reported out of the Committee on the Budget unanimously. There was very broad bipartisan support. What happened in this budget deal is an illustration of why my legislation is necessary. Money that is left around in a pot somewhere in this town gets spent pretty quickly by someone for something. This money needs to go to crime victims. If we pass my legislation, that is where it will go. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask the Record to reflect that had the Senate's vote on H.R. 3819 been a recorded vote, I would have voted no.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to address the budget standoff we are in and the looming debt ceiling issue we are facing. I wish to address this briefly. There will be more to say about this in the near future. The administration tells us that November 3 is the date after which the extraordinary measures they have been taking run out, and they say that on that date, they will need to start borrowing more money. As we know, we have temporary legislation that funds the government through December 11, I think it is, after which we have not yet resolved how we keep the government operating. I would like to address this a little bit. First of all, the fundamental problem we have on the debt ceiling increase is we are spending too much money. We are running annual deficits, and we have to borrow money to make up the shortfall. That is what is happening. That is why we reached the debt ceiling, and that is why and the administration wants to borrow more. What is particularly problematic is the President's position that we ought to increase the debt ceiling and allow him to borrow a lot more money without even so much as having a discussion on--much less actually addressing--the gross fiscal mismanagement that is requiring us to borrow all of this money in the first place. Let's go back to a recent occasion in which we had this debate. In 2011, we reached the debt limit and had a big debate about how we should proceed, and what happened was Congress insisted on--and the President resisted but eventually agreed to--some very modest spending cuts. They established caps, or limits, on discretionary spending, which consist of 37 to 38 percent of all Federal spending that Congress controls through the annual appropriations process. So some caps were put in place, and the idea was that for every dollar that we raised the debt ceiling, or for every new dollar of debt we would impose on the American people, we would at least cut one dollar of spending over the next 10 years, so that even though we were making a bad situation with our debt load worse by increasing the debt, we would at least be improving the underlying dynamic by diminishing the total spending so that in the future our deficits would be smaller. At least that was the idea. If you take a look, there was actually a lot of progress in the category of Federal spending--the discretionary spending. We have a graph that shows the increase in Federal spending. This red line shows a huge surge that happened when the President insisted on that massive stimulus spending bill. That is the big spike. It dropped off a little bit because that single, individual gargantuan bill wasn't replicated the next year. Then, a short time thereafter, we reached this agreement with the President where Congress said: Mr. President, you get the debt ceiling increase, but in return for that, let's reduce our discretionary spending over time, and then we will allow it to grow at the rate of inflation after a certain number of years. That was the nature of the agreement. The idea was to address the underlying problem of overspending that is requiring all of this debt. As this chart demonstrates, this black line shows where we are today. We have made some progress. There is a gradual, modest decline. This is the big surge that came from that gigantic stimulus bill, but after that, there is a gradual, steady, modest decline, so that in this category of discretionary spending--as I said, almost 40 percent of the Federal budget--we actually limited that. It is the first time, that I am aware of, in years--maybe even decades--when we have had several consecutive years in which the Federal Government has actually spent less each year than the year before in discretionary spending. By way of full disclosure, I voted against this overall agreement because I knew then, as I know now, that while this makes some progress, it doesn't solve the underlying problem. One could argue that it moves in the right direction, but it does not fix the huge debt problem that we have, and this chart illustrates that. This chart shows that in recent years we have had a slight decline in the size of our deficits. If we go back further, we would see that the deficits were even higher earlier. We have made some progress. The annual deficit, which is the red line, is corresponding to each year since 2014. We can see that it has come down a little bit. This year the deficit will be $426 billion. It is still too big of a number, but it is less than it was in recent years. Here is the problem: There are people around this town who talk as though we have this problem solved. A few years ago, the deficit was $1 trillion, and today it is $426 billion; so everything is OK. Take a look at where this line is going. This isn't OK. This isn't 100 years from now. This is 5 years from now. This is 10 years from now. What is happening is our deficits are going to explode. This isn't just my projection. This is the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan CBO. By the way, their numbers are wildly optimistic. I will give three examples of assumptions they make, and you can judge whether you think these are reasonable assumptions or not. First of all, as to the whole package of tax extenders, the individual tax cuts that we renew every year, they assume that we stopped renewing them and so there will be this surge of revenue that will come into the Federal Government every year thereafter, and that is all baked into these numbers. They also assume that we are going to stick to the spending caps that I illustrated in the previous chart. In this body we all know that negotiations are underway right now to bust those spending caps, and the President is insisting on it. In fact, the President has gone so far as to say that he is vetoing the National Defense Authorization Act in part because we haven't yet agreed to bust the caps on nondefense spending. Despite that, these numbers assume that the caps are all complied with. Finally, the Congressional Budget Office makes extremely optimistic assumptions, in my view, about economic growth going forward in the next several years, and that means they are making optimistic assumptions about how much revenue the Federal Government is going to be taking in. Despite that, as we can see, deficits are set to explode, and when deficits explode, the corresponding debt total goes right along with it. This is our debt. This is the gross Federal debt, and the gross Federal debt is exactly a function of how much we borrow every year. The annual deficit is the shortfall between revenue and spending, and we make up the shortfall by going out and borrowing, and that adds to the borrowing from previous years, and the total is our debt. If we go back to 1980, it was practically zero. The gross Federal debt was a very modest number. Now it is about $18 trillion, and it is set to just continue rising. This is totally unsustainable. No country has been able to rack up debt on this scale and have it end well. It doesn't end well. My point this afternoon is really a simple one. We have a choice before us. We are up against the debt limit, and the President says: Just give me more debt, and I don't even want to have a conversation about the underlying cause or what we might do differently to solve this issue. At the same time, they are saying: By the way, let's increase the rate at which we rack up this debt by busting the spending caps and abandoning the one element of spending discipline that we have been able to achieve in this town in I don't know how many years. I think most Republicans--and I know this Republican Senator--think it would be a very bad idea to just rack up even more debt and do nothing at all about the underlying cause of it and bust the spending caps without finding some offsetting way to save money in other places. By the way, when President Obama was Senator Obama, he thought it was a bad idea then too. In 2006, he said: The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Two years later, then-Senator Obama said in 2008: ``Adding $4 trillion in debt is irresponsible, it's unpatriotic.'' Isn't it a little bit ironic that under President Obama we added $8 trillion in debt and now he wants more? He wants more, and as I said before, his insistence is that we can't even have a discussion about dealing with the underlying problems. It is not clear to me why this President should be one of the only Presidents, if not the only President, who gets a debt ceiling increase without even having a conversation about underlying reforms. In 1984, Gramm-Rudman-Hollings was a major, important budget deal that was done in the context of a debt ceiling increase. In 1990, the Budget Enforcement Act imposed some spending discipline in return for a debt ceiling increase. In 1997, we had the Balanced Budget Act, which actually achieved a balanced budget within a short period of time. That came up in the context of a debt ceiling debate. In 2011, as I mentioned at the beginning of my comments, we established spending caps because we wanted to do something about the underlying problem at the same time we increased the debt ceiling. Unfortunately, as I said, the administration seems unwilling to even have the discussion. There are two charges that I hear from this administration which are completely untrue, and I want to dispel this. One is this notion that I hear all the time, that raising the debt limit merely enables us to pay the bills that have already been incurred. They tell us how irresponsible we are for not raising the debt limit. After all, these bills have already been incurred. That is nonsense. It is completely untrue. However many times they repeat it doesn't make it true. I can prove it very simply. If we started running balanced budgets tomorrow and kept running balanced budgets, we would never need to borrow any more money. It is as simple as that. If we didn't spend any more than we took in, we wouldn't need to borrow more money, and we wouldn't need to increase the debt limit. The precise reason you need to raise the debt limit is because you need to borrow more money because you intend to spend more than you are taking in. That is what the President is planning. That is what he wants to do. That is what his budget calls for. We haven't committed to any spending going forward. We don't even have an appropriations bill. We don't have an omnibus. We don't have a CR. We haven't done that yet. How can it be that this is paying for bills that have already been incurred? It is not. The second issue is that if we don't raise the debt ceiling by November 3, it is implied--they don't say it this way--that we will have a devastating and disruptive default in the markets and will not be able to pay our Treasury debts. That is ridiculous. It is never going to happen. Ninety percent of all the money the government is going to spend comes in the door in the form of taxes. It is the other 10 percent that is the shortfall that we have to go out and borrow. Ninety percent of everything that the government is going to spend comes in the form of taxes. You know how much goes out in debt service? About 7 percent. For every $1 of government spending about 7 cents is service on our debt at the moment, and 90 cents comes in from taxes. And you are going to default on the debt? You would have to willfully choose to do that, and I don't think even this administration would do that. I will conclude by saying that I hate the idea of raising the debt ceiling because we already have too much debt, but I understand that it would be very difficult and not realistic to get from where we are to a balanced budget overnight. I get that. So I would be willing to raise the debt ceiling, and I think the obvious thing to do here is to tie it to some structural reforms, even if they are just modest reforms. I know the President is not willing to consider the kind of architectural changes to the entitlement programs that it will take to actually solve the problem, but could we at least make progress on the problem? Could we at least go after the low-hanging fruit? There are dozens of reforms that would at least modestly improve this fiscal imbalance--the size of these annual deficits. We could have more means testing of Medicare. In other words, very wealthy Americans could contribute more to the cost of their Medicare. We could save tens of billions of dollars a year if we did that. We could reduce some of the subsidies that go to big corporations, including big agricultural corporations. We spend many tens of billions of dollars a year on corporate welfare. Why don't we wipe that out? We have green energy research, which is another way of forcing Americans to pay for inefficient production of electricity. We spend $18 billion over the next several years on that. Medical malpractice liability reform would save the Federal Government $50 billion a year. These are not my numbers. This is according to the Congressional Budget Office. Maybe we could reduce the size of the Federal workforce. Between the Departments of Energy, Agriculture, and Commerce, we have 163,000 employees. How much energy do they produce? How many crops do they grow? How much commerce do they really generate? I think we could probably do with a few less. There are hundreds of billions of dollars that could be saved. We could slow down the growth of the entitlement programs for future beneficiaries. These would be reasonable things. Many of these suggestions have had some level of support by the President at one time or another. I am not looking for something radical. I am looking to make some progress. But I think it is completely unreasonable for the President to insist that he simply have the opportunity to saddle us, our kids, and our grandkids with even more debt without even addressing the underlying problem that is causing us to rack up this debt in the first place. I will have more to say about this next week. I think this will not get resolved between now and then. When it does get resolved, one way or another, I hope we will find offsets to any spending increase that we incur relative to the levels we have agreed upon in the spending caps of the 2011 agreement. If the debt ceiling increase occurs, I hope it will occur in the context of some improvement to the underlying situation. I yield the floor.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 20, 2015, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 20, 2015, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Persistent North Korea Denuclearization and Human Rights Challenge.''

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Multilateral International Development, Multilateral Institutions, and International Economic, Energy, and Environmental Policy be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 20, 2015, at 2:45 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``2015 Paris International Climate Negotiations: Examining the Economic and Environmental Impacts.''

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 20, 2015, at 10 a.m., room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, let me finish by reminding my colleagues that the vote we are about to have is not actually a vote on this bill in its current form. If Members object to a provision in it or they want to add a provision in it, then, by all means, let's vote to get on the bill. Let's open up debate, and we will have amendments, we will have a discussion, and we will have a debate. They are free to attempt to improve this bill and modify this bill, as they see fit. This vote today is not a final passage vote. It is a vote on whether the issue of sanctuary jurisdictions is important enough to merit the Senate's consideration. I was just shocked to hear one of our colleagues describe this bill as a waste of time. Really, a waste of time? That is unbelievable. How could the lives of Kate Steinle and the other victims who have been lost because of this ridiculous policy be a waste of the Senate's time when the courts are precluding the cooperation between local and Federal law enforcement officials because we have not acted? There is a simple solution. It starts with passing a motion to proceed so we can get on this bill and hopefully complete it successfully. I think the lives of Kate Steinle and the other victims are not a waste of time. I think we should be addressing this issue. We should be addressing it today. I urge my colleagues to vote aye so that we can begin considering this very important--and it should be broadly supported--bipartisan piece of legislation. I yield the floor.