Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 15 minutes.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the three pending trade agreements with Korea, Colombia, and Panama. Let me say at the outset that I am in favor of free trade, if that term is allowed its true meaning. I have great confidence in the American worker and American businesses to compete and succeed in the global marketplace if given a free and level playing field. For generations, our country has shown that hard work and ingenuity are the engines of progress and economic prosperity. The innovations that have shaped our 21st century economy were, in great measure, conceived and produced here in the United States. And in return for allowing other countries to benefit from our hard work and innovation, America was rewarded with a strong middle class. Unfortunately, however, in a post-NAFTA world, being the best is no longer good enough. Instead, we have engaged in a race to the bottom, where to succeed you have to be the cheapest. And so, through our trade policy, we have too often put our workers at a real disadvantage. Indeed, since 1994, when NAFTA went into effect, manufacturing sector employment across the country has fallen by over 5 million jobs, including over 42,000 in my State of Rhode Island. Contributing to these staggering losses are our trade agreements with Mexico, Central American and Caribbean countries, as well as the entry of China into the WTO. That is why I cannot support the three trade agreements that are before the Senate today. The Korea Free Trade Agreement is especially troubling for Rhode Island, particularly with respect to its treatment of textiles. According to the U.S. International Trade Commission's report, the textile industry is expected to lose jobs because of the favorable tariff reductions Korean manufacturers would receive under the agreement. Rhode Island has a long history in textiles. In fact, the modern textile industry in this country can be traced back to Slater Mill in Pawtucket, RI, in 1793. Textiles were an important part of the State's economy throughout the Industrial Revolution and into the 20th century. But many of the business owners I have been talking to have told me how hard it has been for them, shrinking, laying off workers, and watching as factory after factory closed their doors around them. I am working with what's left of the textile industry in Rhode Island--a small group of companies that are making really great products. Darlington Fabrics in Westerly, for example, makes performance athletic-wear, including products for our military. Coated Technical Solutions, based in Newport, works with coated fabrics for things like inflatable boats and tarpaulins. Northeast Knitting makes specialized medical fabrics, and Hope Global exports shoelaces. I have heard from some textile companies that their sole competition comes from manufacturers in South Korea. These foreign competitors will disproportionately benefit from the tariff reductions in the Korea FTA. This is just another in a long line of examples of how our trade policy has failed American manufacturers. With respect to the Colombia agreement, Colombia has a history of violence toward trade unionists, with 51 labor members murdered last year alone. Although the Obama administration negotiated a labor action plan with the Colombian government, there are no guarantees that its provisions will be enforced, and in fact, indications are that the violence has continued. In short, I see no reason why we should put American jobs at risk to benefit a country that cannot provide its citizens the most basic rights that we offer to ours. The Colombia free trade agreement is a bad deal for Americans, and it may be a worse deal for Colombians. Panama has its own labor abuses, but its status as a tax haven is perhaps most troubling. Approximately 400,000 multinational corporations are registered in Panama, many of which have license to conduct business without reporting or paying taxes. While the Obama administration stepped in and negotiated a tax information exchange agreement, this agreement lacks the transparency required to assure compliance. The benefits of a trade agreement with Panama barely register by any economic measure. I believe it would be a mistake to encourage trade with a country that offers little to the United States but that so brazenly facilitates the breaking of our tax laws. I will object to these agreements until we make a wholesale revision of our trade policy and put enforcement at the forefront. Representing a State that may have suffered the most from unfair Chinese competition, I can't support more of these agreements until I see serious and sincere enforcement. We should refrain from passing further free trade agreements until we can ensure that American workers and businesses are protected. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this evening, I cast my vote in favor of the Senate moving forward with critical job-creation legislation. With 61,000 Rhode Islanders and millions of Americans currently looking for jobs, we must take swift action to help put people back to work. Sadly, as they have all-too-many times this Congress, Republicans chose to obstruct our efforts by blocking us from even debating the American Jobs Act. This filibuster is particularly disappointing because the American Jobs Act, as introduced in the Senate by Leader Reid, represents a balanced and already-tested approach to job creation. Indeed, the bill includes a host of provisions that have received wide bipartisan support in the past. It may not be the exact bill each of us would draft on our own, but it is a thoughtful and reasonable place to begin working on a Senate jobs plan. I say the bill is ``balanced'' because it includes a full range of job-creating provisions from tax credits to help businesses hire, to infrastructure programs that will put people to work updating and upgrading our roads, bridges, and schools. In addition to being ``balanced,'' I say the American Jobs Act is ``tested'' because it includes programs that have worked in the past. For example, the Federal Highway Administration estimated that $1 billion invested in our highways supports about 28,000 jobs. That means that the President's proposed investment of $27 billion would generate or save over 750,000 jobs. In addition to the upfront investment, the bill would deposit another $10 billion in a National Infrastructure Bank which could leverage the money with private investments to create hundreds of thousands of additional jobs. We know how well the National Infrastructure Bank would work from the experiences of local revolving funds like Rhode Island's Clean Water Finance Agency. We also know that funds provided by the bill would prevent hundreds of thousands of teachers, police officers, and firefighters from losing their jobs. According to the Department of Education, $10 billion in emergency funds provided last summer have already spared 114,000 teachers' jobs. The $35 billion included in the American Jobs Act would keep hundreds of thousands of additional teachers and first responders from getting pink slips. A lot of small businesses count on teachers and firefighters and police officers with paychecks coming in to do business. We are not just talking about statistics in this debate. The millions of jobs that would be created or preserved under the American Jobs Act would hit home for families who have been trying to find work for so long. Just last week, I held a telephone town hall with Rhode Islanders from all across our State. We took questions from folks on issues from jobs to the future of Medicare and Social Security. There was one call in particular that really stuck with me. It was from a woman named Diane in Narragansett. Diane, a Marine veteran, and her husband are both out of work and struggling to put food on the table for their three young children. Her husband a trained heavy equipment operator and welder has taken temporary employment as a landscaper and a fisherman, but can not find a steady paycheck. They have missed bill payments and have struggled to keep a roof over their heads. On the call Diane said, ``[o]ur dream of owning a house is shot out the window . . . [We] don't know where to go [We] don't know what else to do.'' Diane and her husband are hardworking people doing their best to survive in a frustratingly sluggish economic recovery. They are just asking for a fair chance to provide for their kids and reclaim their portion of the American dream. We owe it to Diane and her family to set aside our differences and focus on getting something done to create jobs for the American people. It is not too late for us to work together to help solve our Nation's jobs crisis. Let us cut the politics and delay tactics and begin that critical work.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011, and I would note the presence on the floor of one of its principal sponsors, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, whom I have been very pleased to work with on this legislation. I am proud to be one of the original cosponsors of this bill, an important piece of bipartisan legislation that will help protect American workers from the trade-distorting effects of currency manipulation. In particular, this legislation will allow us to fight back against policies China has used to gain an unfair advantage over American manufacturers. Our American trade deficit with China rose from $83 billion in 2001-- the year China joined the World Trade Organization--to $273 billion in 2010. That trend is discouraging enough on its own, but it is more troubling to consider that the growing trade deficit ultimately represents goods no longer made in the United States by U.S. workers. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute estimates that the trade deficit with China has cost 2.8 million American jobs over the past decade, including nearly 12,000 jobs in my home State of Rhode Island. With so many families still struggling with unemployment in the wake of the recession, it is important that we examine just how we came to lose so many jobs to a single country and respond accordingly. It would be one thing if the answer was that China's workers are just more talented, their products are of higher quality, and they have simply bested us in the open market. But that is not the case. The evidence suggests another explanation: that China is gaming the international system. First, China provides subsidies to critical industries, which likely violates World Trade Organization rules and gives Chinese companies an unfair competitive advantage over American manufacturers. Second, by restricting exports of their raw materials, China drives up the cost of making products here in the United States. Third, by turning a blind eye to or even facilitating the rampant theft of American intellectual property, China benefits from what may be the largest illicit transfer of wealth in history. Finally, of course, China appears to be intentionally manipulating the value of its currency. Indeed, through controlled purchases of massive amounts of U.S. currency, the Chinese central bank has made the value of its currency--the yuan--artificially cheap relative to the U.S. dollar. Economists estimate the yuan is currently undervalued by as much as 28 percent against our dollar. The depressed value makes it 28 percent cheaper to buy goods from China than from the United States and it makes U.S. goods correspondingly more expensive. It is essentially a subsidy for Chinese products and a tax on U.S. products. This is much more than a problem of abstract economic theory. The consequences of currency manipulation are deeply felt in households in Rhode Island and across the country. In the Presiding Officer's home State of Pennsylvania, in the floor manager's home State of Ohio, and all across the United States, it is felt by families who for generations have contributed to our growth as a nation by going to work every day and building things, from cars and boats to toys and electronics. These workers helped define our American character, from the start of the industrial revolution at Slater Mill on the banks of Rhode Island's Blackstone River through the first decade of the 21st century. But they have watched in recent years as job after job has been lost to China. This unfair competition needs to stop. The advantage the undervalued currency gives to Chinese companies has put American manufacturers out of business and middle-class Americans out of work. The Wall Street Journal reported last week on a study that measured the impact of unbalanced trade with China on communities across the country. The research shows that areas with industries exposed to Chinese import competition have higher unemployment rates and lower wages, and the people in these areas are forced to rely more heavily on government safety net programs. That study ranked the Greater Providence, RI, area second among regions exposed to competition from China. This comes as no surprise to Rhode Islanders. Rhode Island was once a world leader in textiles and jewelry manufacturing. But these industries have been hit hard by a flood of cheap imports from China, greatly straining our State's economy. If we regained the nearly 12,000 jobs estimated to have been lost to China over the past decade, our unemployment rate in Rhode Island would drop by two full percentage points. As I travel around Rhode Island, I have heard time and time again from workers and business owners about the costs of Chinese currency manipulation. George Shuster is the CEO of Cranston Print Works, a textile manufacturer that traces its roots in Rhode Island back to 1807. He told me: We know first-hand the impact that China's disruptive policies have had as we have seen factory after factory close their doors around us. Addressing China's manipulation of its currency would be a good first step to bringing our trade policy to where it needs to be to help get American manufacturers moving in the right direction again. Leslie Taito is the CEO of the nonprofit Rhode Island Manufacturing Extension Service. She has worked with a diverse set of manufacturers across the State to help them increase their efficiency and become more competitive. She told me this: U.S. manufacturers are resourceful, agile, and fully capable to meet national and international demand. Currency manipulation creates an uneven playing field that has cost the United States countless jobs and has dramatically increased our trade deficit. I equate it to telling a boxer to go into the ring with one hand tied behind his back and asking him to come out the victor. Manufacturers in this country aren't asking for special consideration, they just want it to be fair. Mr. President, this is why I made addressing currency manipulation a central part of my ``Making It in Rhode Island'' manufacturing agenda, and why I was one of the original cosponsors of the legislation that is before the Senate today. The Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011 will strengthen the tools that we have at our disposal to counter the actions of countries such as China that choose to manipulate their currency rates. This legislation will first improve the oversight of exchange rates and allow us to identify currencies that are misaligned. For countries found to manipulate their currency values or that fail to correct a misalignment, this law will trigger tough consequences. Our trade enforcement agencies will gain clear authority to eliminate the advantage created by currency manipulation by imposing tariffs on products imported from offending countries. This should send a clear message to China, or any currency manipulator, that if they abuse the currency markets, they will not benefit. Simply put, this legislation will help level the playing field for American companies. Economists have predicted that a fair market for our exports would reduce our annual trade deficit by between $100 billion and $200 billion. The resulting increase in production would add over one-quarter of $1 trillion to our GDP and create up to 2.25 million American jobs. Are the Chinese squawking about this? Are the big multinational corporations who have no allegiance to any flag or nation squawking about this? Yes. Of course, they are. America has for too long been taken advantage of, allowing the wiles of others to erode our wealth. The winners at a rigged game will always object when the other party gets wise to the fact that the game is rigged and begin to do something about it. But if we are to solve the problem of China's currency manipulation and stand up for American companies, American manufacturers, and American workers, we should pass this legislation. I applaud my colleagues from both sides of the aisle for their work on this bill, and I commend in particular Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio who is here on the Senate floor managing the bill right now. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the job market these days is tough. I have heard from countless Rhode Islanders who have worked all their life, but who have lost their jobs and are now struggling to make ends meet. Sadly, many of these jobs have been lost because big companies are taking advantage of cheaper labor overseas. We should take action to stop this pattern, and I have introduced legislation to end tax giveaways to companies that ship jobs overseas that I hope we will pass. In the meantime, we need to do everything we can to help those displaced workers get back on their feet. Therefore, I am pleased that the Senate has acted to extend the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program for American workers who have lost their jobs due to the effects of international trade. TAA benefits are designed to help displaced workers transition back into the job market, and that is precisely what we need during this prolonged period of high unemployment. In my State of Rhode Island, the unemployment rate has been over 10 percent for 30 straight months and currently stands at 10.6 percent. TAA benefits will help advance our economic recovery and get Americans back to work. In the past 2 years, over 1,400 Rhode Islanders have been helped by the job training services provided through, and the readjustment allowances have offered those workers a modest bridge until they can get back on their feet. I have said throughout the economic downturn that we need to stand up for people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, and this is especially true for trade-displaced workers. President Kennedy made this point when he signed TAA into law in 1962. He said then, regarding the effects of U.S. trade policy on our workers, that ``those injured . . . should not be required to bear the full brunt of the impact. Rather, the burden of economic adjustment should be borne in part by the federal government.'' I know that American workers can compete and succeed in the global markets when given a level playing field. But for too long, our policy has been to encourage cheaper imports from countries with lax environmental standards and few protections for their workers. TAA benefits help workers in the manufacturing and service sectors to adjust to a rapidly changing global economy. This legislation will ensure that this help remains available, especially with so many people still out of work in Rhode Island and throughout the country.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, this February I joined with colleagues from both sides of the aisle to offer an amendment to the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Act to secure aircraft cockpits by making it a Federal criminal offense to knowingly aim the beam of a laser at an aircraft. Our commonsense and bipartisan amendment to protect passengers and pilots received overwhelming support in this body, and was agreed to by a vote of 96 to 1. A similar measure subsequently passed the House, without controversy, by voice vote under the suspension rules. Unfortunately, the larger bill to which my amendment was attached has been held up because of unrelated issues. As a result, today I am joining with Senators Kirk, Boxer, and Feinstein to re-introduce this provision as a stand-alone bill. When targeted at aircraft, laser pointer strikes can instantly flash throughout the cockpit, temporarily blinding the pilot and crew. One pilot described the feeling of being hit by a laser like this: ``It immediately [lit] up the whole cockpit and it hit both of my eyes and burned both of my corneas. Instantly, I was blinded. It felt like I was hit in the face with a baseball bat-- just an intense, burning pain.'' FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt warned that lasers can ``damage a pilot's eyes or cause temporary blindness.'' In an event on this topic held last year at T.F. Green Airport in my home state of Rhode Island, a pilot explained that the temporary blindness from a laser hit can last several seconds or longer, and when a plane is rapidly approaching the ground for landing, ``one second can make a big difference.'' This kind of threat to a pilot's sight--particularly during the critical phases of takeoff and landing--poses an unacceptable risk to the travelling public, our pilots and crew, and citizens on the ground. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has thus described laser incidents as ``a serious safety issue.'' The problem has grown in recent years. According to a report earlier this year by the Federal Aviation Administration, 2,836 pilots reported they were targeted with lasers in 2010, nearly double the number in 2009. These strikes occur at airports all across the country. At T.F. Green Airport, for example, there were 12 such reported incidents last year. The threat, which puts interstate commerce and travel at risk, requires attention at the national level. Current Federal law does not provide prosecutors with sufficient tools to prosecute and deter this dangerous conduct. Ill-fitting existing statutes can only be used in limited cases, leaving even identified perpetrators to go unpunished. My legislation would solve this problem by creating a criminal offense that clearly covers this harmful conduct. It would explicitly criminalize knowingly aiming the beam of a laser pointer at an aircraft. Violations would lead to punishment of imprisonment for up to 5 years or fines up to $250,000. The bill would exempt valid uses of laser pointers in the aviation context, such as designated research and development activities, flight test operations, training, and emergency signaling. Prosecutors thus would have a new valuable tool to protect air safety without any burden being imposed on legitimate use of lasers. I thank Senators Kirk, Boxer, and Feinstein for their leadership on this issue, and our partners in the House for their work. I hope Senators from both sides of the aisle will join me in enacting this legislation to protect American aviation.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is a great honor and a great pleasure to join my senior Senator Jack Reed in welcoming Rabbi Leslie Gutterman from Providence, RI, here onto the Senate floor to open the Senate on this day by leading us in prayer. Rabbi Gutterman is a personal friend, but he is more than that. He is a person of real significance in the Rhode Island community. He has served as the rabbi of Temple Beth El for 40 years, which means he has officiated at the weddings of the children of people whose bar mitzvahs at which he officiated, and he has officiated at the bar mitzvahs of the grandchildren of people whose weddings at which he officiated. He is an important part of the Rhode Island community. He has been described as a community asset and a moral compass for Rhode Island. In addition, he is just a beautiful person. He and his wife Janet have come here today to join us, and we are very proud and delighted that we could share this moment of the morning with our colleagues and with Rabbi Gutterman. I yield the floor back to the majority leader with great pride in the presence of Rabbi Gutterman on our floor this morning.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we all traveled over to the House Chamber a few days ago to hear President Obama present his jobs plan, a jobs plan for which I intend to support and fight. But during the course of that speech, we also heard the President indicate that he was going to come and make some recommendations to the Senate and to the House regarding our debt and deficit strategy. I come to the floor today to urge the White House, in dealing with our debt and our deficit issues, to pursue a strategy for cost reduction in our health care system that does not rely on harmful cuts to our seniors' Medicare benefits. I cannot tell you how important this is in Rhode Island where we have a significant senior population. Many of our seniors are low income. The average Social Security benefit is around $13,000 to $14,000. Some of the ideas that have been floated in this body--more than just floated; they have actually passed the Congress, the House of Representatives--would be devastating to Rhode Island seniors: an end to Medicare in 10 years; $6,000 in increased costs to each senior, on average, per year, hidden in what the Republicans like to call their cut, cap and balance plan, with an even worse attack on Medicare and on Medicare beneficiaries than was in the House budget that passed, which was a bad enough attack on its own. That simply is more than seniors in Rhode Island can manage. It is not fair; it is not right. And, most importantly it is not necessary. I do concede that rising health care spending has placed a lot of stress on our national budget. In the joint session of Congress in September 2009, President Obama himself said: Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close. If you go to the other side of the political spectrum and to the other Chamber of Congress, Congressman Ryan said: Our debt and deficit problem is, at its core, a health care problem. I agree with that. We need to address it. The question is how. The fundamental fact that so many of our colleagues overlook in their urgency to attack Medicare--a program that Republicans have been against from its very founding and that the renewed tea party assault on Medicare has revived--has misled the debate, because the cost problem in Medicare is not a problem that is unique to Medicare. Wherever you look in the American health care system, costs are exploding. They are going up in Medicare probably at a lower rate than other quadrants of the health care sector, but they are going up. They are going up in Medicaid. States are having trouble dealing with that burden. They are going up in TRICARE and in veterans' care. Indeed, Secretary Gates said: Health care costs are eating the Defense Department alive. Eating the Defense Department alive, health care costs are. And if you are in private insurance, whether it is Kaiser or United or Blue Cross, pick your insurer, the costs are going up dramatically. Our own hospitals in Rhode Island, which provide health care, are watching their health care costs accelerate at significant rates far above a multiple of our rate of inflation. This problem of rising health care costs is creating real strain. It is not just creating strain on the Federal budget--granted, it is creating strain in the Federal budget--but it is also creating incredible stress on seniors, on small business owners who can't afford health insurance for themselves, or have to whittle away at the health insurance their employees have in order to keep it affordable, or have to give it up entirely as they face the stresses of this economic downturn. As the Presiding Officer, the senior Senator from Colorado, knows because his, like Rhode Island, is a small business State. When you are a small business, your employees are pretty darned close to family. When you have to whittle away at their health care benefits, when you have to whittle away at what they get, when you have to raise their costs, that is a hard decision for that small business owner/manager to make. It is tough on American families. It is tough on big businesses. It is tough on American big export companies. Our automobile industry, the tractor manufacturers, the road building equipment manufacturers, the folks who build big American products that we export overseas, we build enormous amounts of health care costs into those products. It has been estimated that nearly $2,000 in health care costs goes into an American car. Well, the foreign car that competes in the international market with that American car comes out of a national health care system. So that health care cost isn't in the cost structure of the company that makes the car. And because they collected most of their taxes through a value-added tax, it doesn't even come in through the tax system, because the export products get out of those companies and into the international market without a tax burden. So there are our products, trying to compete overseas, with this weight of our health care system cost on them and it helps make America uncompetitive. So it is not just Medicare. It is everywhere in the American health care system. It is systemwide. A couple of years back, when we were first discussing this issue and the White House held a couple of health care conferences, I was fortunate to be invited to those conferences. The President used a metaphor in discussing where we were in health care in those discussions. He used the discussion of us being headed for a cliff. If we didn't do something about our health care costs as a country, we were headed for a cliff. Well, nothing has changed. We are still headed for that cliff, and the solution we have to find is to take the bus that we are all on and turn it before we get to the cliff. It is not an adequate solution to simply throw seniors off the bus in order to lighten the Medicare cost load without doing what we need to do to change the direction of the American health care system to alleviate this cross-system, this economywide burden. Fortunately, we gave President Obama tools to do this in the Affordable Care Act. We fought about all sorts of elements in the Affordable Care Act. We fought about the public option. We fought about universal coverage. There were imaginary claims raised that there were death panels in the health care bill. It was considered to be socialized medicine, the same phrase that was trotted out years ago to oppose Medicare. They brought that old stalwart phrase out again-- totally false. The only socialized medicine we have in this country is the kind we give our veterans, which is the very best quality care they are entitled to--what Bob Dole has said is the place we should look toward for health care reform. But that is a separate argument. But my point is there was a whole lot of phony controversy about that health care bill. What was completely not discussed was that a huge chunk of that bill was dedicated to delivery system reform of the health care system, to turning the bus before we hit the cliff. There is a lot in there for the President to work with. There are literally dozens of programs and pilots to turn us in this new direction. I urge very strongly, as we address the government health care cost problem that we face, we look at it as a systemic problem, and we address it as a health care cost delivery system problem rather than pick out seniors, throw them off the bus, and keep it careening toward the cliff without changing its underlying direction. That would be, in medical parlance, a misdiagnosis of the illness and a mistreatment of it as a result, and fundamentally malpractice. But that is the direction we are being led, and I am here to urge us that we go in a different direction. There is a lot to be gained. America's health care system is provably, wildly inefficient. We burn more than 18 percent of America's gross domestic product on our health care system every year--18 percent. To put that into context, the next most inefficient industrialized competitor that we deal with internationally runs at around 12 percent of gross domestic product. So here we are, the United States of America--the most innovative, the most technologically developed country in the world, a country that prides itself on efficiency, on common sense, on making smart decisions--and what are we doing? We are 50 percent more inefficient than the most inefficient other industrialized country in the world. One would think that we would not be the most inefficient. One would certainly think we would not be the most inefficient by a margin of 50 percent over the second most inefficient country in the world. It just does not make any sense, but that is how bad it is. That is a pretty strong measure of how laden with excess costs our national health care system is. For all of that, we do not get better outcomes. I wouldn't mind spending 50 percent more than Switzerland or France or any other country if we got 50 percent better outcomes, if we lived 50 percent longer, if we were 50 percent healthier, if we had 50 percent better care, if we had 50 percent better maternal mortality in childbirth--but we do not. When we look at the measures of how we do for our people in the American health care system, we compare with countries such as Greece and Croatia. We are down in the thirties in the ranking if you look at most of the quality measures. Incredibly overbloated expenditure and at best moderate performance are the two prevailing characteristics of our health care system. That means there is a lot of ground to be gained. It has been quantified by President Obama's own Council of Economic Advisers who estimated $700 billion every year could be saved if we cleaned up the health care system and made it moderately efficient. We could save that $700 billion without harming the quality of care for Americans. That seems like a big number, but actually the New England Healthcare Institute says that number is $850 billion a year. George Bush's Treasury Secretary, Secretary O'Neill, who knows a lot about this from his time as CEO of Alcoa and as the person leading the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, combined with the Lewin Group, which is a very well regarded Washington institution that looks at health care issues and evaluates them, they both agree that the number is $1 trillion a year that we could save without harming the experience or quality of care for the American consumer. We tried to throw pretty much everything we could at this problem in the Affordable Care Act. A consultant to the administration, MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber, said about the Affordable Care Act and its delivery system reform component: Everything is in here. I can't think of anything I would do that they are not doing in that bill. We gave the administration literally everything they could want, everything they asked for. I had a group that met with me as we were designing the Affordable Care Act, people from unions, people from NGOs that work on health care issues, people from the business sector, people who are experts in this area--to say, What are we missing? What more could we put in to help get at this problem of excessive costs for moderate results? By the time the bill came to the floor, this was the answer from my group: Nothing. We can't think of anything else. We tried. It is all in there. So I agreed with Professor Gruber's assessment. What is the nature of what we did? It boils down to what I contend are five basic strategies. One is quality improvement. The quality of American medicine is not anywhere near as good as it should be. Anybody who was listening to me talk, who has had a loved one in their family seriously ill, ill for any length of time, or who has been seriously ill themselves, they know that from their own experience. They know of the lost records. They know of the confusion between multiple doctors who are treating them and not talking to them, maybe both prescribing medications that are contra-indicated with each other, but they don't know the other one is doing it. They know the experience of having to be your own navigator through this complex system. They know what a nightmare that is. They know it. It is not a debatable proposition. It also works out in some pretty identifiable data. Nearly one in every 20 hospitalized patients in the United States gets a hospital- acquired infection. A hospital-acquired infection should be a ``never'' event. If we apply the Pronovost principles and do things started in Michigan and are carried out around the country now, we can knock that down by about 90 percent, but still it is endemic. Everybody knows somebody who has gone to a hospital for a procedure and came out with a hospital-acquired infection, often a life- threatening one. Just treating those infections costs about $2.5 billion a year. They are completely avoidable. That is just one element of the health care system. If we got after the quality gaps in our health care system, the savings would be far greater. So there is a lot to be gained in quality. That is one of the five. The second is prevention. We do not analyze and evaluate and implement prevention strategies very well as a country. We don't even evaluate effectively what prevention methods save enough money in the long run that we should just pay for them for everybody because it saves money to have people do this. We don't differentiate between what is probably a good idea for an individual to pay for and what is such a good idea and saves so much money that it should be part of the baseline of medical treatment that every American gets. It doesn't matter how sick they are, doesn't matter how old they are, doesn't matter how wealthy they are, doesn't matter where they live, they should be getting this prevention treatment because it saves all of us money. We should be analyzing those things, proving them and putting that prevention strategy to work because the cheapest way to treat an illness is to prevent it in the first instance. The third is payment reform. We pay doctors more--the more they prescribe, the more tests they order, the more medications they order, the more procedures they direct, the more they get paid. It should come as no surprise that when you send that incentive out there into that particular marketplace, you get dramatic overuse, which has been quantified in study after study. This bill, the Affordable Care Act, has pilots to start directing the payment for medical procedures and for medical care based on the outcomes so that its value is how well you get that dictates payment, not how much the doctor does to you. That will be a paradigm shift in health care. You have to get it right. It is not easy to do. It is going to take some doing, but it is vitally important. That is the third part. The fourth is administrative simplification, in particular, administrative simplification in the area of the warfare that currently exists between health insurance companies and hospitals and doctors. Ask any hospital, ask any doctor what it is like dealing with the insurance companies, trying to get paid for the services they deliver. They will tell you it is torture. The last time I was at the Cranston Community Health Center in Rhode Island, they told me half of their personnel are dedicated to trying to get paid. The other half do the health care work. Half of their personnel are dedicated to trying get paid. And they have a $200,000 a year contract with experts to try to help train the 50 percent of their personnel who are dedicated to trying to get paid in what the latest tricks are from the insurance industry so they can keep ahead of the game. Because it is an arm's race. Well, my guess is that about 10 percent of the health care dollar that goes through the insurance companies goes to delay and denial of payment. There is 10 cents right off the top, leaving only 90 cents for the rest of the health care equation. The doctors and the hospitals have to fight back. They have to hire their own consultants and their own experts and their own billing companies. They are not as efficient. There are more of them. They are more spread out. It is not what they are expert at. It is harder for them to fight back. I think they pay more than 10 cents out of every dollar. You put the 2 together, that is 20 cents out of the health care dollar on the private insurance side that does not go to health care at all. It goes to fund the arms race between insurers and doctors over getting paid. This year Health Affairs: Journal of Health Care Policy published a study that compared the administrative costs of physician practices in Ontario, Canada, and physician practices in the United States. It found if doctors in the United States could lower their administrative costs to match those of the Ontario physicians, the total savings would be approximately $27.6 billion a year. The Ontario doctors have administrative costs, but they have a single-payer system and it is pretty easy to deal with. The $27.6 billion is primarily fighting with the different insurance companies that all have different systems about claims and billing. There are big savings to be had by eliminating that unnecessary and expensive warfare that produces zero health care benefit to anybody. The last piece, which is the structure for most of the rest of it, is a solid, strong health information technology infrastructure for this country. I can go to a bank anywhere in this country and I can take out my ATM card and access my checking account. I can find out what is in my savings account. I can do transactions. I can make deposits. However, if I step out of that ATM booth and get whacked by a taxicab and rushed to the emergency room, they have no idea what my health history is or what my health records are. We do not have a modern electronic health record in this country. We do not have modern electronic infrastructure in this country. When I started arguing about this a few years ago, I can remember The Economist magazine publishing an article that said the health care industry in America was the worst industry for the deployment of information technology of all of the American industries except one. The only industry that was behind the health care industry and the deployment of information technology was the mining industry. We have improved, thanks to President Obama and this administration putting a big investment in this area, but we have a long way to go because we were way behind the curve. Those five things--quality improvement, serious investment and prevention where it saves money, payment reform so that the system has incentive to provide value rather than volume, knocking down the administrative overhead that drapes over this system and weighs it down, and a robust health information technology infrastructure, those are the five keys and almost every single one of the programs I referred to that is in the Affordable Care Act fits one of those principles. Why are we not doing this? Why is this not a bigger part of the debate if it is $700 billion to $1 trillion a year, if the result is better care for Americans, fewer medical errors, more prevented illness, less nonsense and unnecessary care from their doctors in chasing the payment model of volume, less fighting with the insurance company over trying to get paid and a health information record that is yours, that is private, that is secure, that goes with you wherever you are? There was a fellow in Rhode Island whose daughter was taken ill. She had a pretty serious condition. She was taken to the emergency room in Rhode Island, and they realized that this was bad. They needed specialty care, specialty machinery and treatment, and they had to rush to the specialty hospital in Massachusetts that could do the work on her she needed to save her life. So off they went. When they got there, they discovered that they had not brought her paper health records with her. They had to redo all the testing. They had to start from scratch. Seconds counted as they fought for this woman's life. Thankfully it all turned out fine, but it put her life at risk and it cost a fortune to redo all the tests. It made her recovery harder because a lot of time was wasted. Are you kidding me, a paper health record? But that is where we are. All of this is win-win. Where is the pressure to do it? Well, there is a problem, and the problem is that it is not the kind of change that CBO--the people who guide our budget decisions around here--can score. I asked Alan Simpson from the Simpson-Bowles budget group during one of our Budget Committee hearings if he believed that reducing health care costs through delivery system reform is an important part of addressing our debt and deficit problem. And he answered: What you are saying is exactly right. It is not, unfortunately, scoreable. That is why it is not in our report. I get it. It is not scoreable. It is not in the report. We should not overlook these factors as we make these decisions on behalf of the American people because even if you cannot score how you get to that $700 billion in savings or if the New England Health Care Institute is right, that $850 billion, or if Bush Secretary O'Neill is right, that $1 trillion a year in savings using methods that improve both our experience and quality of care needs to be a priority even if it is not scoreable. Tomorrow I will send a letter to the President, which the Presiding Officer has been good enough to sign, along with a broad array of my colleagues who have agreed to cosign, which reiterates the case I make here tonight. The letter urges the President's attention to the potential of delivery system reform rather than Medicare benefit cuts for seniors. It should be our first priority to fix that overloaded 50 percent more inefficient than the most inefficient country in the world system, the one with $700 billion or $850 billion or $1 trillion in annual savings that are possible. Fix that before you go to a senior who had no part in this, who cannot help but try to do their best, and say to them, we are taking away your benefit. That is not the way to proceed. That is the wrong way to proceed. It is morally wrong and it is wrong as a matter of policy. Where I contend we are--and I will say this in closing--there is a movement and an industry emerging in the area of health care delivery system reform. It is strong in the private sector, whether we look at places such as Palmetto down the Carolina Coast; Geisinger in the Pennsylvania area; up in the Wisconsin area, Gundersen Lutheran; out toward Utah, the west, Inner Mountain; Mayo in Minnesota and Florida; or Kaiser, based in California. These are all major American health care delivery companies that have seen the potential delivery system reform. They are working hard to make it happen. They are committed to it, and they are getting results. We need to have their back. We need to support them as they do this. But it is never going to be scorable because this is not a mathematical equation where we say: You are not getting this benefit. We are going to take away 20 percent of what you get. We are going to run it through the same nonsensical system that causes most of our cost problems and at the end we are going to say it is going to be 20 percent cheaper. It is easy to do the math that way, but it is a pretty cruel way, and it is lazy because we need to be in the middle fixing that piece. But it is not arithmetically easy because where we are is like the early stages, I contend, of the airline industry--I should say of the flight industry. What did we know when the Wright Brothers first put their flying machine into the air at Kitty Hawk? We knew a curved surface sped through the air, generated lift. We knew a whirling air screw generated propulsion, and we knew that if you twisted the ends of the wings, you could control the direction. Those principles haven't changed. I just got back from Afghanistan and Pakistan. We flew for 14 hours from the Arabian Peninsula back to Dulles Airport. That plane had movies on it. It had food on it. Everybody was comfortable. It had air- conditioning. We landed a plane that was the size of probably the average small town in America at the time the Wright Brothers were flying and everybody on it felt perfectly safe and comfortable. It came down a tube of electronic decision support for those pilots so they knew exactly what was going on every moment. If you went back to the Wright Brothers, you could not score in the actuarial sense the progress that would lead us in less than a century from a rickety wooden canvas, manned kite, puffing down the beach at Kitty Hawk, to these sleek, computer-guided, miraculous aircraft that fly us in comfort around the world today. You could not do it. But that didn't mean we shouldn't bet on it. That didn't mean we shouldn't pursue it. That didn't mean it wouldn't make a huge difference in the quality of mankind's life to be able to have that technological lead. So that is where we are. These five principles are a little bit beyond the Kitty Hawk stage perhaps but not by much. If we invest and if we get behind this, the day will come, and it will come soon, when the quality of health care each one of us receives--we will look back and we will think, what we are getting now, that was canvas and wood sticks. That was primitive. We will have personalized electronic health care. Companies will emerge to create applications so whatever illness you have, the very best treatment will be downloaded so you know what you should be doing, when, and it will be adjusted for your blood type and family history and gender, if it is a factor that makes a difference, and for your body mass. Whatever it is that is relevant to you getting the best treatment as an individual, that is the kind of stuff that will be available. We will aggregate the data about what is effective, and people who have far more brilliance than I will plow through all the data about America's health care experience and they will start learning things about what works and what doesn't, what two things we didn't notice are connected. We will start to find those anomalies or those associations, and that will open a whole new era of discovery and treatment. Between those new applications that will guide in a personalized way health care for Americans, based on their own data and based on the best available information so your doctor is a little bit like that pilot landing the plane out of Dulles, making their own decisions, flying the plane directly but surrounded by that decision support that makes plane landings so safe--if your wheels aren't down, the alarms go off. If you get out of the glide slope, the alarms go off. If there are wind gusts on the field, the alarms go off. All that information and more is captured so the pilots can focus on flying the plane. That is the kind of support our doctors can have. That is the kind of support we can have. Those are American industries that will grow and emerge. So we need to get behind this. I feel very strongly about this, as my colleagues can tell and as the four pages have had to wait and listen to me at this late hour can tell. But I say now it would be a shameful act on the part of the Congress of the United States if, with an opportunity like that in front of us, if with a compelling cost target, as we have from delivery system reform in front of us, and with the proven thesis that by getting there we actually improve the quality of care for people--we are not taking anything away; we are making their quality and experience of care better, which is a win-win-win. If we turn away from that win-win-win and instead take the easy, lazy way of throwing seniors off the bus and putting Medicare benefit cuts on them and let that bus just keep rocketing toward that cliff, that will be a moment that will merit the scorn of the American people and the shame of our own conscience because we will have done the wrong thing and we will have done it because it was the easy way out. I urge the White House not to take that road and to instead redouble their efforts on delivery system reform, back Secretary Sebelius in what she is doing and Don Berwick in what he is doing and, most significantly, put a hard date and dollar metric out there so the world can evaluate how well the administration did. If this is as important as I think it is, if this is as important as the administration thinks it is by the work they have already dedicated to it, then they should be willing to set for themselves a date and dollar savings target to tell the country: By this date, we will save this many hundreds of billions of dollars a year through delivery system reform. If we don't, then it is murk, it is mush. There is no accountability to it. It is generally going in the right direction. A young President many years ago had a similar opportunity. We were losing the space race to the Soviet Union. He could have said in his speech: I think it is time that we bent the curve of America's space program. I think it is time we bent the curve of America's space exploration. But he didn't. He said something much more specific. He said: Within a decade, the United States of America is going to put a man on the Moon and bring him home safely. If President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had given that first speech, we would never have put a man on the Moon. The reason we put a man on the Moon is because when a President of the United States sets a hard target for the Government of the United States, that vast bureaucracy moves to achieve that purpose. If the President of the United States denies that vast bureaucracy, the clarity of that purpose does not give a specific measurable goal, and it makes that goal far less likely to achieve. So not only do I ask the White House to turn away from Medicare benefit cuts and redouble their efforts on delivery system reform, I ask them to decide how much they are going to save, and by when, and let us know so we can evaluate their success in meeting that goal. I promise them every support in reaching that goal. I thank the Presiding Officer for his patience and yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, today I rise to offer my support for the President's request for immediate supplemental assistance for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This funding will enable FEMA to continue to provide critical aid to victims left in the wake of Irene's deadly path, and victims of other natural disasters that have struck throughout the country. My home State of Rhode Island has experienced two major disasters in the last couple of years, so I know firsthand how hard homeowners, businesses, and municipalities have struggled to recover, even with Federal assistance programs. This is not the time to play politics. If Congress fails to provide this emergency funding between now and September 30, we run the risk of completely running out of disaster funds. Our fellow Americans need this funding to recover from catastrophic disasters. Mother Nature does not distinguish between blue and reds States, and both Democratic and Republican Governors--and in Rhode Island's case an Independent Governor--have asked for immediate disaster aid. This supplemental funding will help replenish FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund, which pays for Federal disaster response and recovery activities. The fund has been running dangerously low as a result of the devastating tornado in Missouri, tornados in Alabama, major flooding in the Midwest and South, wildfires in Texas, and the historic flooding caused by Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee. This year's disasters have been particularly destructive and I urge my colleagues to remain committed to all the victims as they struggle to become whole again. We should approve this disaster aid to ensure that communities aren't left in ruins. The shortfall in funding has already forced the administration to put certain disaster recovery activities on hold. My State, like many others, sustained a federally declared disaster last month as a result of Hurricane and Tropical Storm Irene. In order for FEMA to ensure it had the resources to provide immediate relief for new disasters such as Hurricane Irene, the agency had to freeze long-term recovery and mitigation projects. This funding conundrum really hits home because in Rhode Island communities are still reeling from the historic flooding that occurred in the spring of 2010. Rhode Island saw more rain during that disaster than any month on record, and the devastation wrought by those storms exceeded anything in living memory. I was on the ground during the flooding last year and have been intimately involved in the recovery process. I know how important FEMA's long-term recovery and mitigation programs are for revitalizing damaged communities, especially in States like mine that were already hurting from the difficult economic environment. I urge my colleagues across the aisle to let us pass this critical legislation to provide supplemental funding for FEMA. Not only will it go a long way toward providing peace of mind should another disaster strike, it will also ensure that communities across the country that are still recovering from past disasters can continue to move forward in their recovery. This will make us a stronger and more resilient nation.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in favor of H.R. 1249, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. This is a vital piece of job-creating legislation and I urge my colleagues to support it. Before I turn to the merits of the bill, let me start by applauding the long, hard work of Chairman Leahy. He has led the effort on this legislation for many years, patiently working towards a bill that would win broad support from the many interested stakeholders while achieving the crucial goals of spurring innovation, generating jobs, and securing America's place as the world leader in the intellectual property economy. It has been a pleasure to work with him on this important issue. I likewise applaud the hard work of colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have sought to support continued American leadership in technology, medicine, and countless other fields. Our patent system unfortunately has become a drag on that leadership, largely because it has gone 60 years without improvements. It is long past time to repair that system and thereby energize our innovation economy and create jobs. Our Nation long has led the world in hard work and ingenuity. My home State of Rhode Island, for example, has a long and proud history of industry and innovation, from the birth of the American industrial revolution to the high-tech entrepreneurs leading our State forward today. An area has developed in Providence, for example, that is rightfully known by the nickname ``the Knowledge District'' for its remarkable innovation. Rhode Island likewise is the home of remarkable research universities, individual inventors, and businesses of all sizes that have contributed giant leaps forward in the fields of technology, medicine, and mechanical science. Innovators like these in Rhode Island, and across America, are the drivers of our future economic well-being. My conversations with these Rhode Islanders, however, have made clear to me that the current patent system is making it unnecessarily difficult for them to innovate. Innovators who can solve the most complicated problems of medicine, mechanics, or technology are losing out because of basic problems in our patent system. We need to fix these problems now. Fail to do so and we will pay the price in jobs and international competitiveness. I have heard two complaints over and over back home in Rhode Island. The first relates to delays in the issuance of patents. Enormous backlogs persist at the Patent and Trademark Office. As a result, our innovators have no certainty whether they have successfully established intellectual property rights in their inventions. This dampens and frustrates innovation. The America Invents Act takes on the backlog in a number of different ways. It allows the Patent and Trademark Office discretion to set its own fees and includes a provision that will discourage fee diversion. While I would have preferred to have seen Senator Coburn's anti-fee- diversion amendment accepted by the House, I am confident that these provisions, coupled with exceptions that will ensure low fees for small businesses, will enable the Patent and Trademark Office to better manage its resources and reduce examination times. My conversations with Rhode Island inventors also identified a second clear problem in our patent system: the threat of protracted litigation. Unfortunately, numerous poor quality patents have issued in recent years, resulting in seemingly endless litigation that casts a cloud over patent ownership. Administrative processes that should serve as an alternative to litigation also have broken down, resulting in further delay, cost, and confusion. The America Invents Act will address these problems by ensuring that higher quality patents issue in the future. This will produce less litigation and create greater incentives for innovators to commit the effort and resources to create the next big idea. Similarly, the bill will improve administrative processes so that disputes over patents can be resolved quickly and cheaply without patents being tied up for years in expensive litigation. The bill also moves America to the simple First-Inventor-to-File system which will eliminate needless uncertainty and litigation over patent ownership, and it eliminates so-called ``tax patents.'' In all, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act is an important and much- needed reform of our patent system. True, every intellectual property stakeholder did not get everything they wanted in this version of the patent bill. I am sure every participant in this process would like a few things added to the bill and a few things taken out. That is inevitable in a bill that has been crafted in a true spirit of compromise. The result is a bill that may not please everyone in all respects but that satisfies its core responsibility to remove existing burdens on American innovation and allow the growth of high quality, high technology jobs in our country. It is extremely important in this time of economic hardship that we put people to work. That is exactly what this bill will do and I believe we should pass it immediately. We should not amend it further in a manner that will risk the bill's ultimate defeat. This is a long journey and we are at the finish; let's get this bill done for American inventors and workers. Let's see this much-needed piece of patent reform passed into law. I once again urge my colleagues to vote to pass this important piece of legislation into law.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here this afternoon to discuss our work toward addressing the national debt and staving off a collision with our debt ceiling or a default on our financial obligations. First, I wish to commend Majority Leader Reid for putting forward a proposal which would make a very serious $2.4 trillion downpayment on deficit reduction and, most importantly, end the impasse over the debt ceiling. I encourage my Republican colleagues to support it or offer some reasonable changes that would allow them to support it. But let me also address some developments on the other side of the Capitol, where an extremist group of House Republicans is continuing their ``my way or the highway,'' what President Lincoln called ``rule or ruin,'' approach to these negotiations. Amazingly, news reports indicate that Pell grants--Pell grants--may be put on the chopping block in Speaker Boehner's latest effort to appease the most extreme members of his party. This is getting ridiculous. Rhode Island's great Senator Claiborne Pell first proposed the grants that now bear his name. He envisioned a grant that would enable low-income students to attend our country's wonderful colleges and universities so they too could share in the American dream. Why do these far-right extremists in the House want to snuff that out? In 1976, the first year Pell grants were fully funded, a full Pell grant paid 72 percent of the cost of attendance at a typical 4-year public college. Today, a full Pell grant covers 34 percent of those costs, and even that they are willing to attack. This vital assistance from Pell grants can often mean the difference between being able to attend college or not. With many families in Rhode Island and across America still struggling in this struggling economy, we should be looking for ways to strengthen Pell grants, not weaken them. America needs more college graduates, not fewer. During my time in the Senate, we have taken steps to improve the Pell grant program. After 4 years of level funding under President Bush, we began to increase the maximum grant from $4,050 in academic year 2006- 2007 to $5,050 for this coming academic year. We also increased the minimum family income that automatically qualifies a student for the maximum Pell grant, a change which better reflects today's economic realities. Despite the clear need for continued investment in our future through Pell grants, a need that has long had bipartisan support and backing, a group of House Republicans this year began an outright assault on Pell grant funding. These grants are needed more than ever, as the economic downturn has led more people to seek higher education in an effort to find a job. But not to this band of extremists. The House Republican budget would have slashed Pell grants, reducing the average award by $1,775, and cutting off more than 1.3 million Americans, including nearly 5,800 students in Rhode Island. I understand the need to find savings in the Federal budget and to make difficult choices, and Leader Reid's proposal offers up $2.4 trillion worth. But we could also make bad choices in going about this, and of all the bad choices we could make, cutting Pell grants is among the worst. America needs a highly trained workforce, and Pell grants help make the promise of a college education a reality. After America spoke out and the Senate defeated the extreme House Republican budget, I hoped the assault on the Pell grant was behind us, at least for a while. Yesterday, however, The Hill, a newspaper here in Washington, reported that some Republican House Members are opposing Speaker Boehner's debt ceiling increase bill over funding if it provides for Pell grants. In this article, someone called Pell grants welfare. Some welfare, helping kids afford college and pursue their dreams. Today there is talk that cuts to Pell grants are being discussed as the pound of flesh required by the most far-right Members of the Speaker's caucus as the price of supporting his bill. Remember that these House Republicans continue to protect every tax giveaway to special interests, every one, while they want to cut off access to college for regular kids. The simple fact is Pell grants help lower income people achieve dreams of college and improve those young people's prospects for careers and employment. It is good for them and it is good for America. The Pell grant program doesn't give a free ride, but it does give a boost and is a wise investment in the future of our country, a future where the fates of nations will depend on the education of their people. Earlier this week, student and education advocacy organizations, including the Education Trust, Campus Progress, the National Council of LaRaza, and the United States Student Association, joined together to ``Save Pell.'' I applaud their advocacy and commitment in fighting for Pell grants, and I am proud to join their effort. I strongly urge the far-right extremists who are pulling their party and the House of Representatives and this country over the cliff to end their reckless attack on the American middle class, take the victory you have been offered, and stop the damage. Ronald Reagan in 8 years I believe raised the debt ceiling 18 times. The Tea Party has been here 6 months and has put the country on the brink of default days away. Instead, I ask my colleagues to work with Democrats on a bipartisan solution that does not attack the fundamental underpinnings of a successful middle class, such as Medicare, Social Security, Pell grants. Avert the looming debt ceiling collision and reduce our deficits. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am very pleased to follow Rhode Island's distinguished senior Senator with remarks about our friend and our former Governor, Bruce Sundlun. As Governor, he served with some of our colleagues who are in the Senate today, including Ben Nelson, who was Governor of Nebraska, and Tom Carper who was Governor of Delaware. They served with Bruce, and he was one of those irrepressible characters they remember very distinctly to this day. Bruce Sundlun had a remarkable Rhode Island life. He was the son of a jewelry store owner, who was the son of an immigrant watchmaker. It turns out that he had real athletic talent. He was a track star, breaking record after record around Rhode Island. It was as a competitor in that era that he first felt the sting of discrimination over being Jewish, and that gave him a lasting characteristic to stick up for the underdog. As I mentioned at his funeral service, he was the opposite of a fair- weather friend. He became a better friend the stormier the weather got around you. He went on, with his great generation, to defend our country and fight for freedom around the globe in World War II. He was a pilot of a B-17, the Damn Yankee, at a time when the life expectancy for bomber crews over Europe was not very long. Unfortunately, his aircraft was shot down and crashed in Belgium. He was able to survive the crash, although, as the pilot, he was the last living person out. When he went back to Belgium years later, people who remembered that day remembered being astonished at the parachute that appeared out of nowhere just above the ground, just before he hit, just in time to save him. But he was injured and hid in the manner of the purloined letter. He hid in plain sight as troops swept the area looking for the survivors of the bomber crash. He laid out in the middle of the field in a deep place in the plowed furrow where you could only see him if you got down at the end of the furrow and looked. As the Nazi's were poking through the hay bales and prowling through the sheds and looking under whatever they could find, there he lay more or less in plain sight. But still, he was shot down on December 1, 1943. You can imagine how cold it was lying in that field in Belgium while the search went on around him for hours. For the rest of his life, he hated the cold. There was no weather that was too warm for him. I remember when First Lady Hillary Clinton came to speak in Rhode Island when he was Governor, he was wearing this enormous black sheepskin coat--very thick and warm--as he prepared to step outside of the statehouse and go out on the stone deck looking out over downtown on a cold winter afternoon. Mrs. Clinton started needling him and saying how Jack Kennedy didn't need a coat and it was not really very fashionable and people would question how tough he was if he went out with this big coat on. So he ended up taking off the coat. He went outside into the bitter cold, made the introduction of the First Lady, turned to welcome her to the podium, and out she came with a smile from ear to ear wearing his coat. He loved that kind of exchange with people. I think he immensely loved the Clintons. He was one of the first Governors--if not the first--to endorse President Clinton, and the Clintons never forgot it. Bruce did not get to Switzerland until May 5, 1944. He spent 156 days as an American Jewish bomber pilot behind Nazi lines in Belgium and France. No greater testament to this man's resourcefulness and drive could be imagined than succeeding for that long in that circumstance. When he came back from the war, he went to Harvard Law School and became an attorney at the Department of Justice. He was an assistant to a Rhode Islander who became Attorney General, J. Howard McGrath. He began a successful career in the law. It was also at a time when President Kennedy came to office representing that ``greatest generation''--then a new generation--and he trusted Bruce Sundlun to run his inaugural parade, which was the kind of logistics feat that Governor Sundlun loved. The fact that it snowed like crazy the night before didn't phase him a bit. The entire parade went off on schedule and without incident, as planned, in very inclement weather because Bruce prepared so well in advance. He was appointed to the board of COMSAT by President Kennedy. He was the longest serving director of COMSAT, a public-private partnership that helped open the skies to the space age. His business career was remarkable. He took a foundering airline, called Executive Jet, and turned it into the largest private and charter airline in the country. He took a department store in downtown urban Providence, at a time when New England cities were in decline, at a time when cities across the country were losing ground to the suburbs that were sprouting up around them--he took this dying business, I guess you would say, and he saw in that downtown department store a media empire. He went off and began buying radio stations and TV stations and created this remarkable company, the Outlet Corporation, as a media empire. He also turned it into a refuge from time to time. In the blizzard of 1978, the State of Rhode Island was clobbered by snow. People were trapped downtown for hours and hours, in some cases days. He saw to it that the Outlet Company stayed open, that the cafeteria kept serving, and that the department store that sold clothing gave clothing to whoever needed it. The part of the store that sold bedding was spread all over the store so people could sleep on the bedding. He responded to a crisis better than anybody I know. It brought out his best characteristics, which were certainly necessary when he was elected Governor, because on the very first day of his administration, he was obliged to close more than 30 different lending institutions across Rhode Island, serving more than 300,000 of Rhode Island's 1 million population. He went from being sworn in, to the receiving line where he greeted all his happy supporters and all the welcoming officials and the well- wishers who came from Rhode Island, and rolled immediately from that into a press conference in which he announced they had to close these institutions because the deposit insurance provider ended up having been crooked and had failed and they could not operate without deposit insurance. So they had to be closed. That was a heck of a way to start a governorship. He also found out that he had inherited the biggest budget deficit the State had ever seen, and we could never find a State with a bigger percentage deficit than he inherited. The compensation system melted down, and every worker's compensation insurer said: I am leaving the State. A lesser person might have failed under all that pressure. Not only did Bruce meet all of those exigencies of the moment, he also worked very hard to set a better ethical tone and restructured our State government so that it would be lasting because most of those things went wrong because of failures in ethics in the Rhode Island State Government. That was a pretty remarkable added accomplishment on top of solving all those underlying problems. He had confidence in Rhode Island and in America, and we were in a terrible recession. So he went to work and got things done. He built a new airport terminal, he got a new mall started that would be built, he built a new hotel that allowed for the convention center to go forward and so he built a new convention center. He changed the skyline of Providence. He moved one of our universities to a downtown campus. He understood that in times of economic distress, activity was good and positive activity that brought jobs was better still. In his personal characteristics, he was a remarkable individual. He was relentless, determined, and decisive when issues were presented to him. With his staff, he was demanding and abrupt and terse. I asked him once why he didn't bother to say hello. When a person got a phone call from him, he just started talking at them, and when the conversation was over, he hung up without saying goodbye or any pleasantries. I said: Don't you think it would go a little further if you said hello and goodbye in your telephone conversations? He said: How much time do you think I would waste in my entire life? Add up all the times you have wasted saying hello and goodbye. Doesn't do anything that is productive. He had that kind of attitude. But he was bold and he was willing to take big leaps. I guess, back to his early days as a broad jumper, he was willing to take big, big leaps. As a staff person, he was extraordinary to work for. I have told the story of opening day. A few of us were in on that news, but it had to be very closely held because it would have created a run on all those banks if word had leaked. So even many of his staff people had no idea this was going on until he announced it. So that was kind of a shocker and made for an interesting time to be a staff person. On another occasion, he had a couple of raccoons on his property and they were bothering a den of baby foxes. He didn't want the baby foxes to be killed by the raccoons, so he took out a shotgun, went down to the end of his property and shot the two raccoons. He then climbed in the car with his State trooper and headed off to work and, of course, he described the exciting episode of his morning and the trooper said to him: Governor, don't you realize it is against the law to fire off a weapon in the city of Newport? In his customarily brusque and decisive way, he said: Well, take me to the courthouse. A trial was going on in the Newport County Courthouse, but into the trial walks the Governor and he interrupts the trial and tells the judge: I would like to plead guilty. The judge, thankfully, said: I am not going to accept your plea, I am doing something else right now. Plus, you don't have the benefit of counsel. To which he tartly responded: I am as good a lawyer as there is in Rhode Island. The judge responded: Well, a lawyer who is representing himself has a fool for a client, and on your client's behalf, I tell you I will not accept that plea. So there is the Governor's staff. The phone rings and the message is: Your boss is in court trying to plead guilty to a criminal offense. One can imagine how that lights up a staff's day. So down we went to help take care of that. Another day saw the arrival of his daughter. When he was elected Governor, Sundlun had three sons--Tracy, Stuart, and Peter. It turned out there was also a daughter, and at age 16--in midterm--Kara arrived and was recognized as Bruce's daughter from a relationship he had years before. She was taken into the family and is now--and was to the end of his days--as beloved as any of his sons. But that was an exciting day for staff members, when suddenly the boss turns up with a brandnew 16-year-old daughter nobody knew about before. He had five wives, in addition to those four children. He led a rich, full, exciting, passionate life, and I miss him very much. He died on Thursday. He died very peacefully, with his family around him. He was 91 years old. I think he probably put about 151 years of living into those 91 years, and he left a family who loved him, a State he had served incredibly well, and staff members who had their lives changed by their exposure to this remarkable, hard-driving, affectionate, bold man. We are in Washington, as I close, and we are in a situation in which one party is holding the economic future of the country hostage in order to force changes the American public doesn't want, wouldn't vote for, and wouldn't accept if they were consulted on them. But by virtue of having, in effect, a gun to the head of the economy, they want to force these things, such as killing off the Medicare Program. Americans are wildly opposed to that in huge numbers, and when they found out that was in the House Republican budget, they rejected it by 4-to-1 margins. The response to that was to bring back something called cut, cap, and balance, which had hidden beneath the slogan an even worse cut to Medicare. They didn't learn their lesson the public didn't want this, so they insisted on doing even worse and doing it by holding the economy hostage. That is the kind of thing Governor Sundlun would not accept. He was, first and foremost, a patriot. As hard as he worked and as much as he challenged everyone around him, he always had the purpose of making America better, making America stronger, making Rhode Island better, making Rhode Island stronger, and building toward the future. He had incredible confidence. The notion of holding an economy hostage and threatening the well-being of people to force down their throats something they would not want would be completely alien to his patriotic character, and it makes me miss him a lot as we are trapped in this day. The other party appears to be, in large part, acquiescing to this. Governor Sundlun's streak of willfulness and determination to do the right thing, I think, is missed on the other side of the aisle as much as his patriotism and desire to put the well-being of people first is missed on the first. So he was a man whose life and accomplishments made a great difference in Rhode Island and have great relevance and resonance as we stand here today. As I said, I miss him very much. He was very important to me, and I wish we had his forceful, patriotic, buoyant, and determined spirit with us today. Mr. President, I mentioned in my remarks the speech I gave on behalf of Governor Sundlun, which was delivered at his funeral service. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record those remarks.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am about to yield the floor to my distinguished senior Senator Jack Reed. I ask unanimous consent at the conclusion of his remarks I be granted recognition.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, Senate majority leader Harry Reid has presented a plan to address our deficits and to end the debt ceiling impasse that threatens to cripple our economy. The Treasury is projected to run out of money next week and time is running short. Senator Reid has shown great leadership with his pragmatic package. Leader Reid's proposal would give the Treasury the authority to ensure the United States does not default on its debt, while at the same time cutting $2.7 trillion from our budget. The unprecedented set of cuts would have a significant effect in balancing our budget and restoring fiscal sustainability to the Federal Government. I wish to highlight one key fact. Unlike the House Republican budget and unlike the so-called cut, cap, and balance plan, Leader Reid's plan will preserve Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Protecting Social Security and Medicare benefits is particularly important. The Republicans have long coveted Social Security and wanted to turn it over to Wall Street. George Bush tried and failed to do this because the American people wanted none of it, but they tried. The House Republican budget attacked Medicare, effectively turning it over to the private health insurance industry in 10 years. When the American people found out this was hidden in the Republican budget, they wanted none of it. Huge majorities of the American public disapproved of the Republican budget attack on Medicare. But instead of relenting, the Republicans came back with cut, cap, and balance. Hidden behind that slogan was an even worse attack on Medicare. The House budget would have raised senior's costs more than $6,000 a year. Cut, cap, and balance would have gone $2,500 beyond that. Cut, cap, and kill Medicare was a better name for it. Against that relentless Republican effort to go against the will of the American people and kill off Medicare, Leader Reid's proposal protects this vital program and the freedom and security it provides to American families. Make no mistake about it, our deficit reduction plan will not be easy. It will cut discretionary spending by $1.2 trillion over the next decade. These budget reductions will require some tough but necessary choices. The plan would also count for an accelerated wind-down of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, saving $1 trillion in the process. Our troops in the Middle East deserve our admiration and praise for so successfully carrying out their missions. We must, however, continue to press for a strategy that will bring our troops home as soon as we safely can. The Reid deficit plan would find an additional $40 billion savings by cutting fraud and abuse in tax compliance and a number of nondefense Federal programs and $60 billion in other savings, including cutting unnecessary spending on agricultural subsidies and auctioning off electromagnetic spectrum that the government currently holds. Finally, by cutting the budget by over $2 trillion, we will have to borrow less money than anticipated, and that will save an additional $400 billion in projected interest costs. In total, the Senate Democratic plan on which we will vote would cut the deficit by $2.7 trillion over the next 10 years. While Senator Reid's proposal would not address the tax gimmicks and loopholes throughout our Tax Code that help favor the well-connected, this omission does not mean Democrats have given up on ensuring that there is shared sacrifice as we work to balance the budget. Instead, this package acknowledges the political realities of the moment. Many House Republicans have flatly refused to entertain raising any revenue: not one tax loophole, no cutting of taxpayer subsidies to profitable oil companies, no closing down of offshore tax havens. That is wrong. The Reid package reserves the tax side of budget reform for another day. We look forward to a robust discussion in the weeks and months ahead over Republican priorities that put special interest loopholes ahead of the interests of American families and ahead of the interests of the American economy. The Reid plan would establish a bipartisan commission to recommend budget changes and those recommendations would then be guaranteed an up-or-down vote in both Houses of Congress before the end of the year. These recommendations should focus on cutting the unjustifiable tax giveaways--the tax earmarks--that allow profitable companies to avoid taxes entirely and permit megamillionaires and billionaires to pay lower effective tax rates than do middle-class families. The Reid plan meets the Republicans' initial demands in the debt ceiling negotiations. It cuts $2.7 trillion from the budget--greater than the amount by which the debt limit would be increased--and leaves tax reform for the next round of budget reform. But it does not yield to the Republican attack on Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. I hope Republicans in the Senate and the House will appreciate the balance of Senator Reid's approach and support it. But what if they do not? The House is in disarray. The Speaker does not appear to have the votes. Some of the extremists will not take yes for an answer, and some of the most extreme appear to relish the prospect of America's economy colliding with the debt ceiling. Let's consider what should occur if Congress fails to lift the debt ceiling. Congress will have sent President Obama three different messages, and they create an irreconcilable conflict. Think about it. Message 1 is: We want him to spend money on all these things. We want him to conduct our wars and our national defense. We want him to send out Social Security checks. We want him to pay the doctors and the hospitals that provide Medicare services. We want him to keep guards on our borders and in our prisons, keep air traffic controllers in the towers, run the rest of the Federal Government. We tell the President to do that by passing laws. It is by law that the President does these things. Message 2 that we send is: Here is the money we will allow him to collect for the Treasury to pay for all those things. Again, it is by law that we authorize the President to collect that money for the Treasury--by law. There is a slight problem. The things we have instructed the President to do by law add up to a lot more expense than the money by law we allow him--the executive branch--to collect. So the executive branch has had to borrow--and borrow they have--up to $14 trillion. If we do not lift the debt ceiling, we send message 3: Do not borrow any more. We do not change message 1, and we do not change message 2. We just add message 3: Do not borrow any more. As anyone can see, there is no way to reconcile those three instructions. One, by law, we tell the executive branch to send out all these checks and make payments; two, by law, we appropriate too little money to pay for what we have told the executive branch to do; and, three, by law, we would tell the executive branch of government they cannot borrow the difference. That creates an irreconcilably mixed signal. Do this, but there is not enough money, and do not borrow. This is irresponsible and it is bad government. If Congress wants to stop paying the troops, stop sending out Social Security checks, shutter agencies of the Federal Government or defund Medicare, we should have a proper debate and say so and be responsible for it. But we have not, and that failure creates an impossible situation for the executive branch under our constitutional principles of separation of powers. Remember why officials in the executive branch pay the soldiers and contractors who support our war efforts. Because Congress has told them to. Congress has the power of the purse. Remember why the executive branch sends out Social Security checks and payments to doctors and hospitals for providing Medicare services. Because Congress has told them to. Congress has the power of the purse. Remember why the President pays the salaries of Border Patrol agents and prison guards and air traffic controllers and FBI agents and staff in our veterans hospital. Because Congress has told him to do that. Congress holds the power of the purse. Who is responsible for not giving the President enough money to pay for all of this, for forcing the Treasury to borrow? Congress has set how much the executive branch can collect because Congress has that power of the purse. Now we are telling the President to do all we have told him to do but without enough money and do not borrow. We all learned in civics that Congress has the power to make laws and the power of the purse. We learned that the President has the solemn obligation to faithfully execute the laws Congress has passed. That is the basic structure of American Government. Outside of a few narrow and specific areas that are assigned exclusively to the executive or judicial authority by our Constitution, the constitutional rule is clear: Congress instructs the President by law what to do, and the President faithfully executes those laws. But what happens if Congress will not instruct clearly? What happens under our Constitution when faithfully executing one law Congress has passed requires the President to fail to faithfully execute another law? How can the President faithfully execute irreconcilably conflicting instructions from Congress? As a matter of constitutional principle, there is only one logical resolution I can see to this constitutional predicament which Congress has created. When the matter is sufficiently grave to merit the President's attention, and when Congress sends irreconcilable messages for the President to faithfully execute, a zone of executive discretion must necessarily open to allow the President to make the best decisions for the American people in the area where Congress has sent those irreconcilable mixed signals. Of course, the instant Congress resolves its conflicting signals, stops speaking out of both sides of its mouth, and sends a clear direction, that zone of executive discretion disappears. Congress has the power. Congress makes the laws. Congress controls the purse. Whatever fiscal path Congress instructs the President to embark on, he must faithfully execute that instruction from Congress. But Congress can't put the President in the untenable position of having to fail in the ``faithful execution'' of one set of laws in order to ``faithfully execute'' another. That is exactly where it seems to me we would put the President if we failed to lift the debt ceiling. The damage to the country from such failure would be profound. At least 40 cents of every Federal dollar would suddenly stop flowing into the economy. Considering what would have to be done with the remaining 60 cents, it is not very likely that the Federal regulatory process would keep running. That means every job in the country, depending on a Federal permit or Federal approval or a Federal grant or a Federal contract, would likely grind to a halt. There would be a jump in interest rates that would hit Federal, State, municipal, corporate, and family budgets. A lot of other stuff might also go wrong, but those three are a bare minimum, and they alone would constitute a brutal shock to our struggling economy. The damage would be grave. Bad enough if Congress instructed the President to do this kind of damage, but do we really expect him to do that sort of damage without our clear instruction? The scale of this damage lights up in sharp contrast to the constitutional predicament Congress would create through Congress's failure and inaction to send clear direction. The 14th amendment provision, that the public debt of the United States of America ``shall not be questioned,'' may or may not be controlling here. That specific amendment is not my point. My point is a more basic one: How, under our separated powers, when Congress gives conflicting directives, does the President ``faithfully execute'' those conflicting directives? The conflicting directives problem is ultimately a problem for Congress to solve. But until Congress sorts itself out and gives a clear directive, all that can be constitutionally expected of the President is to do the best he can for the country. He cannot ``faithfully execute'' conflicting directives. In a sense, conflicting directives by Congress are a form of abdication by Congress--an abdication of the duty imposed on Congress by article I of the Constitution to make and pass laws. It is only reasonable and proper to infer that the constitutional duty of Congress to make and pass laws implies that the Congress will make and pass laws that are capable of faithful execution by the executive. A Congress that cannot meet that standard is in no position to complain that the executive branch has usurped its authority. More to the point, the constitutional cure is always right in Congress's hands: Sort out your differences; give the executive branch the direction it is Congress's duty to provide. To me, at least, this is a reading of the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution that makes sense, that is consistent with the underlying principles of that great document, that is practical and workable, and that allows for governance rather than paralysis in circumstances when congressional dysfunction deprives the President of the clear legislative direction that by clear implication is Congress's duty to provide. I hope before we pitch over the looming fiscal precipice, the executive branch gives these views thoughtful consideration. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask for a second reading and object to my own request.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 235, submitted earlier today.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 236, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 87, and the Senate proceed to its consideration.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I wish to say a few words about the debt ceiling that is rapidly approaching. But on this particular day, I cannot come to the floor and speak about anything without just making one, I guess I would say, note of personal privilege; that is, that today is a particularly sad day in my home State of Rhode Island because one of the great Rhode Islanders has passed away. Former Gov. Bruce Sundlun, whom I worked for for many years and formed a very devoted affection for has died peacefully at home with his family after one of the most accomplished and eventful lives in Rhode Island history. I know my senior Senator, Jack Reed, and I will be back on the floor at a later time to give Gov. Bruce Sundlun his proper due and recognition. But for all he has meant to me, for all he has meant to our State of Rhode Island, for all he has meant to the people whose lives have been made so much better or who have been protected from very bad outcomes by his courage and by his determination, I simply could not overlook that at this point. So more will follow on my dear friend, Bruce Sundlun. So to the matter at hand. Less than 2 weeks from now, our Nation is going to hit its statutory borrowing limit, and it may begin, for the first time in its history, defaulting on its obligations. Unless we act very soon, the Treasury of the United States of America, long the issuer of the safest and the most conservative securities in the world, will simply run out of money. Social Security checks, as the President has already said, would be at risk. Millions of American families would suddenly lose their household income. The Treasury would have to suddenly stop paying more than 4 out of every 10 Federal dollars, choking off all the economic activity supported by those funds. Private sector projects across the country that depend on Federal dollars or Federal permits or Federal regulatory approval, all would grind to a halt--a catastrophic triple whammy on our economic activity. In addition, an increase in interest rates would likely freeze investments and cause the financial markets to plummet. So reaching the decent limit will not just put us back into recession, it would risk economic calamity. With the stakes so high and with time so short, it is unfortunate that the House Republicans who created this completely unnecessary crisis have sent us this so-called cut, cap, and balance bill. This bill, which cuts no tax loopholes, not one, and puts no cap on corporations offshoring jobs or earnings and dodging U.S. taxes, would do one thing: It would kill Medicare. Consistent with the Republican 2012 budget, this bill puts the costs of deficit reduction right down on those who can least afford it: senior citizens, the disabled, and our children. The cut, cap, and kill Medicare plan the House Republicans have proposed would begin with steep cuts to Federal programs in 2011, while we are still in this recession, slashing domestic spending by over $111 billion, and eliminating 700,000 jobs from our economy when we need them the most. It would also require immediate cuts to social safety net programs likely reducing--or eliminating even--student loans, Pell grants, school lunches, Medicaid, and food stamps, some of the most important programs to families who are struggling to get back on their feet during this prolonged period of high unemployment. This is simply unacceptable. The second part of the cut, cap, and kill Medicare bill would limit Federal spending beyond 2012 to levels significantly lower than during the Reagan Presidency. In fact, our Nation has not seen spending at those low levels since 1966. Mr. President, 1966 was a time when only 9.2 percent of the population was retired and drawing benefits, compared with 12.9 percent today. So the effects of those spending levels would be even harsher. The cap on Medicare and Social Security makes no adjustment for the $2.5 trillion of Social Security reserves that Americans have paid into that system, that the government then went and borrowed. It makes no adjustment for that being their money or for the aging population that we are experiencing. So with a fixed cap, and baby boomers retiring in greater numbers, the Republican plan forces devastating cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits. There is simply no other way. It would address our deficit in the worst way possible, by taking an axe to the retirement programs on which tens of millions of retired Americans rely and which most every working person in America looks forward to. For ordinary Americans, this approach is wrong. Frankly, it is unthinkable, although it is the goal of a few determined extremists who are driving things within the House Republican Party. Finally, the cut, cap, and kill Medicare bill would hold the debt limit hostage to an extremist constitutional amendment that has been widely criticized, even by many responsible voices on the right. If this dangerous constitutional amendment were to pass, the Congress of the United States would be unable to respond to an economic or national security emergency without steep supermajority votes, giving even more leverage to small extremist factions in Congress, as if it is not clear that is already not too much of a problem. As dangerous, this constitutional amendment--this is hard to believe--this constitutional amendment would make it easier to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits than to take away tax subsidies from Big Oil, from offshoring corporations, and from billionaires. It would make it easier, as a matter of law, to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits than it would be to go after these special interest corporate tax loopholes and the gimmicks that allow billionaires to pay lower tax rates than truck drivers in this country. It builds a constitutional preference for corporate and special interest loopholes into our Constitution, a Constitution renowned around the world for its commitment to equality. Into this great document that has shown the light of equality around the world, we would build a preference for corporate special interests over working people and the retirements they count on. Constitutional amendments traditionally move this country forward. This would be a colossal step back. In summary, adding all those different features of the cut, cap and kill Medicare bill together, the Republicans in the House would require such severe spending cuts that the only way to achieve them--the only way to achieve them--would be to, in fact, get rid of Medicare as we know it and slash Social Security benefits for seniors. It would hurt those who depend on government the most, while giving special protection to special interests and corporations with tax loopholes and subsidies that permit them to pay lower tax rates than middle-class families--in some cases, with some of our most profitable corporations--no taxes at all. That is what gets protected. House Republicans know their cut, cap and kill Medicare plan has zero chance of passing the Senate. It is not going to happen--not now, not ever. It has already drawn a veto threat from President Obama. Nevertheless, as this deadline looms closer and closer, with those terrible consequences portending, the House Republican extremists have forced this piece of political theater while ignoring serious and constructive proposals for deficit reduction such as Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad's plan, which would reduce deficits by $4 trillion, more than the House's budget plan. We actually do better at solving the deficit than they do. But we do it with every dollar in spending cuts matched by a dollar in new revenue from closing tax loopholes and tax gimmicks. This plan would stabilize the budget and would reassure the financial markets, and would do so without cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits on which our seniors rely and which all working Americans are counting on. It is one of the basic freedoms we have as Americans--to know that that is waiting for us. I was proud to introduce a resolution earlier this month which would express the sense of the Senate that ``any agreement to reduce the budget deficit should not include cuts to Social Security benefits or Medicare benefits.'' I am grateful to Senators Blumenthal, Sherrod Brown, Merkley, Franken, Boxer, and Gillibrand who have joined with me on the resolution, and I invite all of my colleagues to do the same. The Conrad budget proves that we need not attack Medicare and Social Security to deal with our deficit. His budget is living proof that there is no reason to attack Medicare and Social Security to get through our deficit situation. That attack on Medicare and Social Security is a willful and unnecessary act by the Republicans. Well, Rhode Islanders, in increasing numbers, have been writing to me urging me to continue fighting to preserve these retirement programs, to preserve this infrastructure of American freedom. Time is running short, and Americans are counting on their elected representatives to do the right thing. It is time to do the right thing. Let me close by reading a piece from an editorial in The Economist magazine. The Economist is a very conservative publication, and it is very much in favor of free markets. I would say, by and large, it is a Republican journal. Here is what The Economist said about the situation we are in now: The sticking point is not on the spending side. It is because the vast majority of Republicans, driven on by the wilder eyed members of their party and the cacophony of conservative media, are clinging to the position that not a single cent of deficit reduction must come from a higher tax take. This is economically illiterate and disgracefully cynical . . . even Ronald Reagan raised taxes when he needed to do so. And the closer you look, the more unprincipled the Republicans look. Earlier this year, House Republicans produced a report noting that an 85 percent to 15 percent split between spending cuts and tax rises was the average for successful fiscal consolidations, according to historical evidence. The White House is offering an 83 percent to 17 percent split (hardly a huge distance) and a promise that none of the revenue increase will come from higher marginal rates, only from eliminating loopholes. If the Republicans were real tax reformers, they would seize this offer. Both parties have in recent months been guilty of fiscal recklessness. Right now, though, the blame falls clearly on the Republicans. Independent voters should take note. So it is not just Democratic Senators coming to the floor to point out that the crisis we are at is an unnecessary one. It is a manufactured crisis, a crisis driven by extremism, and it is a crisis that threatens the survival of Medicare and Social Security--two cornerstone programs in the economic security and in the freedom of ordinary Americans. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.