Jim Webb

Mr. WEBB

Mr. WEBB. He said: This legislation would indeed permit a certification approach as you suggest. . . . The specific concerns you raise will be foremost in my mind as we develop an implementation plan. Without this, I would say, I would not be voting to repeal this. I have spent my entire life in and around the military, including 5 years in the Pentagon. With this understanding and with the notion that we need to be putting a policy into place that allows an open way of living among people who have different points of view, I am going to support this legislation. Exhibit 1 U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, December 17, 2010. Hon. Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense, The Pentagon, Washington, DC. My purpose in writing is to reconfirm my understanding that the certification requirements contained in the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 contemplate a sequenced implementation of its provisions for different units in the military, as reasonably determined by the service chiefs and unified combatant commanders in coordination with the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This was my understanding of the response I received from General Cartwright when I raised the issue during his testimony December 3, 2010. Specifically, I asked if the process could be considered service-by-service, combat arm- by-combat arm, or unit-by-unit. He agreed that this was a correct interpretation. Knowing of your many current commitments, I would very much appreciate a short, written confirmation or clarification on this matter as soon as possible. Sincerely, Jim Webb, U.S. Senator.

Mr. WEBB

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

Mr. WEBB. Madam President, first, I would like to say that Senator Schumer and I are sharing 30 minutes today--we are going to have to do it in divided time--to speak about concerns with respect to the relationship of the United States with China and where we need to move forward. Before I do that, I wish to express my hope that my colleagues on the other side will allow a vote on the National Criminal Justice Association Commission Act which I introduced a year and a half ago after 2 years of hearings. We have bipartisan support on this bill. The identical version of this bill has passed the House of Representatives already. We have met with more than 100 different organizations, from our office. We have a buy-in on the necessity of this bill from people across the political spectrum and the ideological spectrum. The three major criminal justice associations strongly back this bill, as do the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, and the NAACP. There is no controversy on this bill. It passed the House by a voice vote. I certainly hope that before the end of this year, we will see this national commission come into place. It is 18 months of getting the finest minds in America to come together and examine all aspects of our criminal justice system so we can do two things: one, reduce mass incarceration in this country but also reduce the fear in our communities with the present rate of crime. There are two charts for people to look at to see why we need to move forward on this legislation. The first is to look at what has happened to the incarceration rate in this country. From 1980 up to today, it has gone off the charts. We have more people in prison than any other country in the world. We have 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's known prison population. At the same time, any survey you look at, you will see that three-quarters of the people of this country feel less safe than they did a year ago. These two realities do converge in the need to examine our entire criminal justice system. I say again to the one or two people on the Republican side who are not allowing this to come to a vote, this is not a controversial measure. The top three corrections associations in this country want to see it happen, as do people on the other side. I hope we can get a vote before the end of the year on this legislation and start fixing our criminal justice system. United States Relationship With China The main purpose of my speaking today is to join with Senator Schumer in stating to our colleagues and to the people of this country that we need to have the courage and the wisdom to reconfigure our relationship with China in a way that reflects more clearly its emerging status economically and in terms of our own national security and the security of the East Asia region. This has been an incremental process. I have been talking about the need to balance a relationship with China for 20 years. Actually, I will begin these remarks by reading from an article I wrote for the Wall Street Journal 9\1/2\ years ago. I wrote: China engaged in a massive modernization program . . . It shifted its aviation doctrine from defensive to offensive operations, including the ability for long-range strikes throughout Southeast Asia. It has continually rattled its sabers over the issue of Taiwan. It has laid physical claim to the disputed Paracel and Spratly Island groups, thus potentially straddling one of the most vital sea lanes in the world. In the last year-- And this meant 2000 and 2001-- it has made repeated naval excursions into Japanese territorial waters, a cause for long-term concern as China still claims Japan's Senkaku Islands, just to the east of Taiwan, and has never accepted the legitimacy of Okinawa's 1972 reversion to Japan. This is rather relevant, even though this was written 9\1/2\ years ago, as we examine Chinese activities in areas in the South China Sea and the need for us as a nation to stand alongside the other countries in this region on issues of sovereignty. Just in the past 3 weeks, we saw an altercation in the Senkaku Islands. By the way, I mentioned the Senkaku Islands in a debate in my campaign 4 years ago, asking my opponent what he thought we should be doing there. There were some who thought I was being a little bit arcane by mentioning a place of which few people had ever heard. It is a major flashpoint between China and Japan. Both claim these islands just off Taiwan. We saw a very serious diplomatic confrontation with the potential to have a military confrontation just in the past couple of weeks in the Senkaku Islands. The Chinese still claim the Paracel Islands, which Vietnam also claims. They have made naval incursions there. They claim the Spratly Islands, which are also claimed by other countries, including the Philippines, Vietnam, and Borneo. This is a very serious matter in terms of how we approach the stability of East Asia. There was a column written in the Washington Post on Sunday, the title of which was ``The South China Sea, China's Caribbean.'' I emphasize to my colleagues that this is not the Caribbean in terms of the stakes and the threat of the wrong sort of action in this region. From the Strait of Malacca, where a huge percentage of the world's oil and cargo passes, up through the South China Sea into Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, we see a tremendous amount of world trade move through there. In Southeast Asia, in the ASEAN countries, we have 650 million people. We have almost 1 billion people living not in China but in this region who would be affected by Chinese sovereignty claims if we do not responsibly assist this region in getting a balance. This is happening at a time when I think we have deluded ourselves as a nation for economic reasons as to the nature of the governmental system in China. We tend to look at these as comparable governmental systems because we have such a high reliance on trade. And Senator Schumer is going to talk about the trade aspects of this issue. Just as one little data point, every year the Freedom House publishes a record of the freedom of the press. It ranks countries in the world in terms of global press freedom. In their last ranking for 2009, China ranked 181 out of 195 countries in terms of freedom of the press inside the country. Of the 40 countries in Asia, the only countries that scored lower than China in terms of freedom of the press were Laos, Burma, and North Korea. The second-tier countries in East and Southeast Asia watch very closely how the United States articulates its relationship with China. History warns them that they must hedge their bets against eventual change. And any failure by the United States to take firm action when the Chinese manifest aggressive behavior is viewed in this region as a sign of a permeating weakness in the United States. The reality of a smaller size of our naval forces, the turbulence, at times, with relationships we have had with countries that are friends, the mistreatment and sometimes neglect of our major ally, Japan, causes some to wonder if China will become so powerful that we will abandon our friends. On the one hand, this is an administration that has done a good job in terms of reconnecting with eastern Southeast Asia. Secretary Clinton made a strong statement in July at the ASEAN conference about the importance of these sovereignty issues. On the other hand, we have a situation that is now evolving. It is continuing between Japan and China over the Senkaku Islands, where we must be very clear in our signals to China that we will not tolerate instability that can be created with false claims of sovereignty in these regions. There are ways to resolve these sovereignty issues, and the expansionist pressure from military actions and other actions is not the way to do that. My major point today is that we must reinvigorate our vitally important relations with the ASEAN countries and our allies--Japan, Korea, the other treaty allies we have--in order to maintain the stability in this region, to maintain our own national interest in this region economically, with regard to security, diplomatically, and culturally, and ultimately in the long term for a proper balance between our country and China. This will only be done if we stay with our friends and articulate very clearly to China that the wrong type of behavior is not going to be rewarded with a weak form of behavior by the United States. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WEBB

Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I rise to point out to Members of this body that yesterday in the House of Representatives, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2010 was passed in a noncontroversial manner by a voice vote. This legislation is identical to legislation my staff and I have worked on for more than 3 years, which has cleared the Judiciary Committee, which now has 39 cosponsors, including the Senator from Pennsylvania and the Presiding Officer. I urge leadership on both sides of the aisle to bring this legislation to the floor. Let's get the task of reforming our criminal justice system into motion. It has been more than 40 years since we have had a strong look at all the different components of our criminal justice system and how broken it has become. This legislation would provide the right vehicle to do so. I started working on this issue as soon as I came to the Senate. We worked along with the Joint Economic Committee and many nonprofit groups and 501(c) groups to hold extensive hearings on the issues of mass incarceration, drug policy, how these different components of criminal justice interrelate, and why we need to take a larger look at the process. We designed this legislation with input from across the philosophical spectrum in order to provide strong advice to the Congress about how to fix all the components of the criminal justice system, from how people are apprehended, what to do with them after they are apprehended, when do we put people in prison, how long, what happens to them when they are in prison, what does prison administration look like, what do reentry programs look like, and how do we deal with issues such as transnational gains. While it is very difficult to deal with these issues one at a time, we have a vehicle here that has been scrubbed through the entire philosophical spectrum with great support. I will show some of the areas of support in a minute. The starting point is why, why do we need to move on this now. I wrote an article for Parade magazine last March when I decided to move our legislation forward. We got tremendous support across the country once we started talking about it. The two components we all ought to be concerned about are, first, incarceration in the United States has skyrocketed, particularly since about 1980. In the United States today, we have far more people in jail per capita than any other country in the Western world and actually in other parts of the world as well. We have 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's known prison population. At the same time, we have another 5 million people in different parts of the criminal justice process who are not incarcerated. More than 7 million people are involved in the criminal justice process today. At the same time, if we ask people if they feel any safer, more than 70 percent will tell us they feel less safe in their communities than they did 1 year ago. This is a trend that has actually increased over the years since about 2001. We are putting more people in jail, we have more people involved in the criminal justice system, and people feel less safe. Clearly, this is a leadership issue. We need to get our arms around it. We have a responsibility as leaders of the Nation to put the right process into motion so we can make better sense out of the criminal justice system. Another statistic, before I talk about the process we went through, when we look at the increase in incarceration, a huge part of it has been through our inability to get our arms around enforcement of drug policies. If we go from 1980 to 2007 and look at Federal, State, and local prisons or jails, we will see that our incarceration of drug offenders has skyrocketed by 1,200 percent. In 1980, we had 41,000 people in jail on drug offenses. By 2007, it was 500,000. A significant percentage of these people are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, and a very high percentage have been minorities. When we started talking about this issue, we heard a lot of unease, particularly from law enforcement's side. We brought them in one at a time. I am not on the Judiciary Committee. My staff brought them right into the office. We sat down with more than 100 different organizations from across the philosophical spectrum to listen, to get their input on what this Commission ought to do, and to make sure we are reaching out to all aspects of the issue of criminal justice. We have support now from across the philosophical spectrum: Fraternal Order of Police, National Association of Police Organizations, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, nearly 20,000 members who called their own press conference a couple months ago to endorse this legislation. Among their leadership, they were saying this was the most important issue they would be working on in their careers. At the same time, we have received endorsements from people who were more concerned about the individual rights area of criminal justice: the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, the National Association of Social Workers. This is a buy-in from all the elements in our country involved in this issue; that we need to find the type of solution that is going to make our system more fair, more efficient, and, in the end, is going to give us the potential, in terms of the reentry process, to reduce recidivism and reduce crime in communities. The last point I would make--and I hope my colleagues will think about this--with the passage of this legislation from the House last night, we are ready. There is not any major piece of controversy over a piece of legislation that we have sat down and listened to from the Republican side. We have a seven and seven buy-in on the membership of the commission in terms of appointments from different party leaders. This is a copy of the cover of this week's Economist magazine I show you in the Chamber. The Economist magazine, in my view, even though it is a British magazine, is probably the finest news magazine in the world. I have read it for more than 30 years. The cover is ``Why America locks up too many people.'' They have an indepth article in here asking the question, What is wrong with the American criminal justice system, and what needs to be done to fix it? So I would ask the leadership of both our parties, and particularly those on the other side, let's step forward and create this commission. It is a 1\1/2\-year sunsetted commission. It is not something that is going to keep going. We are going to put experts on the commission to come back to us and talk to us about how we can make this system fair, take care of the problems of crime, the worries people have, and at the same time be a lot more sensible in terms of whom we are incarcerating and how we are assisting them in their reentry into our society. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WEBB

Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, today marks the 1-year anniversary of the implementation of the post-9/11 GI bill, landmark legislation I was privileged to introduce on my first day in office. The idea was to provide those who have served since 9/11 with the most comprehensive educational benefits since World War II. We did that. We began with a simple concept even before I decided to run for the Senate, and that was, if we keep calling these people the ``next greatest generation,'' we should, as a Nation, express our appreciation in a proper way--by giving them the same types of educational benefits those who came back from World War II received: pay their tuition, buy their books, and give them a monthly stipend. It was a formula that worked magnificently for those who served during World War II, where 7.8 million of those veterans, because of the GI bill, were able to have a first-class future and make an imprint on the future of our country. We worked very hard in my office, with a lot of staff, pushing this legislation. We eventually achieved the key cosponsorship of three other Senators, including Senators John Warner, my former senior Senator, a Republican from Virginia; Chuck Hagel, of Nebraska, now departed, another Republican; and Frank Lautenberg, of New Jersey, a fellow Democrat. So we approached this in a way that we were trying to show a balance. We had two World War II veterans, two Vietnam veterans, two Republicans and two Democrats. We wanted to strip the politics out of the issue. Along with our colleagues on this side and also in the House and the cooperation of the leading veterans service groups and the higher education community and, quite frankly, despite the continued opposition of the previous administration, which for some reason opposed this legislation all the way to the day before they signed it, we were able to get this bill through. I am so proud of the fact of having accomplished that goal 2 years ago. The bill was signed into law 1 year ago today. This bill went into effect for those who have served this Nation so honorably and so well since 9/11. I can report to this body that as of today, in this first year of implementation alone, more than 550,000 veterans have applied to receive this benefit, and more than 267,000 veterans are now attending classes using the post-9/11 GI bill. That is more than a quarter of a million young men and women who otherwise might not have had the opportunity for a truly first-class future. As my fellow Senators know, I am someone who grew up in the military. I was privileged to serve as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. I am very proud of my son who served as a marine in Iraq and my son-in-law who also served as a marine in Iraq and Afghanistan and continues to serve, and so many of my friends and compatriots over the years. I understand what it means to be a proper steward in this body toward those who have given this type of service. That is our duty, and this GI bill shows a sense of responsibility and the desire of the leadership of this country to see those who serve be able to move forward in their lives after their service and continue to provide great contributions to our country. When I ran for office--also I should point out--I spoke about the need to reclaim economic fairness in this country, particularly in times as we see right now where our economic health is in danger. The health of our society overall is measured by how working people are able to make it through different barriers and achieve alongside people who have had greater advantages. This bill today does that, just as it did after World War II. We should remember, as we look at the implementation of this GI bill, what it did for those who served in World War II, very few of whom ever thought they would be able to have a college education once they went into the military during those dark and troubled times. For every dollar through taxes that was put into that World War II GI bill, our country received $7 in tax remunerations because those people were able to go forward and have a truly first-class future. This is what we are doing now. We have never erred as a country when we have made sustained investments in higher education for our people, particularly when it comes to veterans. This is not simply an advantage for this country, it is an obligation we have. I want to, on this day, remember the contributions of other people in this body and in the House of Representatives in coming together to pass this legislation. I thank the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the Military Officers Association of America, the American Council on Education, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, and many others, including nearly 60 Senators and more than 300 Members of the House who signed on as cosponsors to this landmark effort. We can all take pride today in saying we have been able to provide a proper investment in the future of those since 9/11 who have given so much to this country. I yield the floor.

Mr. WEBB

Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I have not yet had the opportunity on the floor to express my regret for the passing of Senator Robert Byrd and my incredible respect for the service he gave our country. I was only able to serve with Senator Byrd at the twilight of his career. I knew him in my capacities as Assistant Secretary and then Secretary of the Navy years ago, and I admired him for many years as an individual of fierce intellect. He was a strong proponent of the balance of power, particularly protective of the powers of the U.S. Congress as they relate to the executive branch, which is an area I have also focused on over the years. Senator Byrd had great love for the people of Appalachia. He was their greatest champion. He was a self-made man in every sense of the word--self-made economically, born an orphan, and self-made in terms of his own education. I recall that when I was Secretary of the Navy, I had the authority to name various combatants, and I named a submarine the ``USS West Virginia.'' When I made the statement about why I named it that, I pointed out that West Virginia, in every war in the 20th century, ranked either first or second in terms of its casualty rate. He was someone who never forgot the contributions of the people of that much- maligned State to the well-being and greatness of our country. He left his mark on all of us, and I would be remiss if I didn't express my regret in his passing.

Mr. WEBB

Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I rise today in somewhat regrettable opposition to the resolution offered by the Senior Senator from Alaska. I do not believe this is about big oil. This is not about oilspills. It is not about people who like dirty air. It is about the extent to which the executive branch in our government can act without the clear expression of intent from this Congress. I appreciate Senator Murkowski's efforts to illuminate this issue further in front of our body. Like Senator Murkowski, I have expressed deep reservations about the consequences of the endangerment finding on carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases that the Environmental Protection Agency issued on December 7, 2009. As many of us in this body well know, without proper boundaries, this finding could be the first step in a long and expensive regulatory process that could inevitably lead to overly stringent and very costly controls on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. This regulatory framework is so broad and potentially far reaching that it could eventually touch nearly every facet of this nation's economy, putting unnecessary burdens on our industries and driving many businesses overseas purely at the discretion of the executive branch and absent the clearly stated intent of the Congress. Our farms and factories, our transportation system, and our power generating capacity would all be subject to these new regulations. This unprecedented, sweeping authority over our economy at the hands of the EPA is at the heart of Senator Murkowski's concern, and ultimately, whichever way one votes on her amendment, it is what this debate is all about. At a time when the economy continues to struggle under the burdens of the worst recession since the Great Depression, I do not believe that Congress should cede its authority over an issue as important as climate change to unelected officials of the executive branch. Congress--and not the EPA--should make important policies, and be accountable to the American people for them. This is not a new concern for me. When this administration declared last November that the President would sign a ``politically binding'' agreement at the United Nations Framework on Climate Change in Copenhagen, I objected. I was the only Member of Congress to send the President a letter stating clearly that ``only specific legislation agreed upon in the Congress, or a treaty ratified by the Senate, could actually create such a commitment on behalf of our country.'' I have also expressed on several occasions my belief that this administration appears to be erecting new regulatory barriers to the safe and legal mining of coal resources in my state and others. My consistent message to the EPA is that good intentions do not in and of themselves equal the clear and unambiguous guidance from the Congress. In examining this issue, I have also reviewed carefully the Supreme Court's holding in Massachusetts v. EPA. My opposition to EPA's regulation of carbon dioxide for stationary sources stems in part from my reading of the case. I do not believe that prior EPA Administrators acted arbitrarily and capriciously in declining to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Nor am I convinced that the Clean Air Act was ever intended to regulate--or to classify as a dangerous pollutant--something as basic and ubiquitous in our atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Notwithstanding these serious concerns with the endangerment finding and what I view as EPA's potentially unchecked regulation of carbon dioxide, I have decided to vote no on the resolution before the Senate. I have done so for two principal reasons. First, Senator Murkowski's resolution would reverse significant progress that this administration has made in forging a consensus on motor vehicle fuel economy and emissions standards. A little more than one year ago, the Obama administration brokered an agreement to establish the One National Program for fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards. This agreement means that our beleaguered automotive industry will not face a patchwork quilt of varying State and Federal emission standards. Significantly, this agreement is directly in line with the holding in Massachusetts v. EPA, which dealt with motor vehicle emissions. Both in the Clean Air Act and in subsequent legislation enacted by the Congress, there has been a far greater consensus on regulation of motor vehicle emissions than on stationary sources with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. It has been estimated that these new rules, which are to apply to vehicles of model years 2012 to 2016, would save 1.8 billion barrels of oil and millions of dollars in consumer savings. The agreement, however, and the regulations that will effectuate it, both rest upon the same endangerment finding that would be overturned by this resolution. In this sense, the Murkowski resolution goes too far. And it is for this reason that the Alliance of Automotive Manufacturers and the United Auto Workers, UAW, have publicly stated their opposition to the legislation before us. Second, I have concluded that an alternative, equally effective mechanism exists to ensure that Congress--and not unelected Federal officials--can formulate our policies on climate change and energy legislation. Senator Rockefeller has proposed legislation to suspend EPA's regulation of greenhouse gases from stationary sources for 2 years. I am a cosponsor of Senator Rockefeller's bill. His approach would give Congress the time it needs to address our legitimate concerns with climate change, and not disrupt or reverse the important progress that has been made on motor vehicle fuel and emission standards. I note that, to her credit, this was an approach that the senior Senator from Alaska originally proposed, and I am hopeful that we can take this approach in the future. I am also pleased that in my discussions with the majority leader, he has assured me of his willingness to bring the Rockefeller bill to a vote this year. Finally, let me say I share the hope of many Members of this body from both sides of the aisle that we can enact some form of energy legislation this year. I have consistently outlined key elements that I would like to see in any energy package. The centerpiece of any climate policy must be to encourage the development of clean energy sources and carbon-mitigating technologies. We should explore mechanisms that will incentivize factory owners, manufacturers, and consumers to become more energy efficient. We should also fund research and development for technologies that will enable the safe and clean use of this country's vast fossil fuel resources. In November 2009, I introduced the Clean Energy Act of 2009, S. 2776, with Senator Lamar Alexander. This bipartisan bill will promote further investment in clean energy technologies, including nuclear power and renewable sources of energy. Specifically, the Clean Energy Act of 2009 authorizes $20 billion over the next 10 years to fund loan guarantees, nuclear education and workforce training, nuclear reactor lifetime- extension, and incentives for the development of solar power, biofuels, and alternative power technologies. I believe it is a practical approach toward moving our country toward providing clean, carbon-free sources of energy, helping to invigorate the economy, and strengthening our workforce with educational opportunities and high-paying jobs here at home. This legislation by itself is not intended to solve all of our climate change challenges. It is, however, a measurable and achievable beginning and will place the Nation on a path to a cleaner energy future. In addition, through investment in lower emission transportation fuels, incentives to electrify the transportation sector, and support for technologies that will eventually enable the burning of fossil fuels in a carbon-free fashion, it provides a framework for technologies that will eventually enable a more effective response to climate change.

Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 more minute.

Mr. WEBB. I was told last night that I would have 10 minutes. I got down here and discovered I have 5. Let me just say Senator Rockefeller's bill can do the job. I hope my colleagues will look at it.

Mr. WEBB. I appreciate that.

Mr. WEBB. Let me make this a lot simpler. I will take 15 seconds and say I am a cosponsor of Senator Rockefeller's bill. I believe it is an effective approach. To Senator Murkowski's credit, it is an approach she originally proposed, before she was shut off from getting a vote on that type of a procedure. I am going to vote against Senator Murkowski's resolution, but I think she is on the right track. I yield the floor.

Mr. WEBB

Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I would like to speak today on an amendment I filed, amendment No. 4222, which I hope at the appropriate time will be called up on my behalf. Actually, I suggest and hope this will become a part of the managers' package. It is a relatively simple amendment, but I think it is very important in terms of clarifying the role of the Congress versus the role of the executive branch in a lot of decisionmaking. Last October, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs announced his intention to establish a presumption of service connection for three medical conditions, including ischemic heart disease, for veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange. He stated this rulemaking was necessary as a result of the Agent Orange Act of 1991, which requires the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to promulgate regulations establishing a presumption of service connection once he finds a positive association of exposure to herbicides in the Republic of Vietnam and the subsequent development of any particular disease. The Department of Veterans Affairs made a request on the basis of this rulemaking. It is contained in this supplemental. It is an amount of about $13.6 billion for the service connection, principally of coronary heart disease, to Agent Orange in Vietnam. I think we need to proceed very carefully in terms of our role in the Congress in examining this presumption. It is not yet official policy in the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is still in the review process. The Congress is going to have 60 days beginning at some point this summer to examine this decision that General Shinseki made. My amendment basically says: We should fence this money. And I think it is appropriate that, no pun intended, the Appropriations Committee honor the request of the DVA in this issue. But we should fence this money until the review process is complete. This is the difficulty here. When the Agent Orange legislation was passed in 1991, it created two different sorts of presumptions. The first was that everyone who had been in Vietnam, everyone who had served in Vietnam, was presumed to have been exposed to Agent Orange. I would say, as a committee counsel in the House of Representatives more than 30 years ago, I counseled the Agent Orange hearings. There were four Agent Orange hearings. That was a very generous assumption that was made in this law, to say that everyone who was in Vietnam was, in fact, exposed to Agent Orange. We do want to take care of those who were. We do want to take care of our veterans who served and who incurred disabilities or diseases as a result of that service. The second presumption in this legislation was that, as a matter of executive discretion, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs could then look at information and decide which diseases or medical conditions should be also presumed to have resulted from exposure to Agent Orange. So, first, everyone who served in Vietnam is assumed to have been exposed to Agent Orange, and then certain medical conditions are determined so that the presumption is they were the result of Agent Orange exposure. In 2001, it was decided that type 2 diabetes was the result of Agent Orange exposure. It was decided by the then-Secretary of Veterans Affairs. By 2009, more than 263,000 Vietnam veterans were receiving disability compensation related to this decision. That is 10 percent of everyone who went to Vietnam, has been service connected, through this Agent Orange bill, with respect to type 2 diabetes. The estimates we would have on coronary heart disease are much higher. We are talking about the potential, at a minimum, of spending $31 billion in the next 10 years as a result of this presumptive service connection, and I must say I have not had the opportunity, as a member of the Veterans' Committee, to hear from the Secretary of Veterans Affairs as to how he made this connection. Looking at the review chart, there was a category called ``level of connection.'' In other words, when you take the scientific information and you apply it to this condition, what is the level of connection? For instance, when they looked at B-cell leukemia, there was sufficient evidence. That was a category. When we are looking at coronary heart disease, it is ``limited or suggestive evidence.'' I do not know what that means. But what I wish to say is that we have an obligation in the Congress, A, to make sure we take care of our veterans but, B, that we also hold the executive branch to some sort of accountable standard. That accountable standard will be occurring over the next couple of months. I think it is appropriate in this particular supplemental that we mark this--it is either $13.4 billion or $13.6 billion for this increase in the service connection, that we mark this as ``not to be spent'' until we can clarify this issue. This is not in any way an issue as to whether we support our veterans. I take a back seat to no one in my concern for our veterans. I have spent my entire adult life one way or the other involved in veterans law. But I do think we need to have practical, proper procedures, and I do believe that the executive branch, whether it is the EPA or the State Department or the Department of Veterans Affairs, needs to be held to an accountable standard. With that, I hope very much that we can get this amendment as a part of the managers' package. As the issue resolves itself, we can decide the appropriate level of funding that will go to the connection between medical conditions and exposure to Agent Orange. I yield the floor.

Mr. WEBB

Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I rise to speak on an amendment I submitted, amendment No. 3736. This amendment I know has caused some concerns in different places, both in the political process and in the financial sector. I believe it is a very fair, carefully drawn amendment. It is a fulfillment of a promise I made when I voted in favor of the TARP funding on October 1, 2008, when I stated I would do everything I could to make sure, first of all, that we look at appropriate executive compensation issues; second, that we would work to reregulate the financial sector, which we are doing in this bill, thankfully; and third, we would invest the American taxpayers in the upside of the economy when it started to come back because it was the American taxpayers' funding of rebuilding our economy that made this happen, not the funding of the banking system. This amendment simply says that if you received $5 billion or more from TARP and if you are a couple of other companies, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that received significant Federal funding in this bailout, any compensation you received in 2009 that is above your basic compensation and above an initial $400,000 bonus should be shared with the taxpayers who made this possible. This is not a clawback. It is not retroactive. It is moneys earned in 2009 which were paid out in 2010. It is not ongoing. It is a one-shot proposition. It affects only 13 companies. From the executives of those 13 companies, it is estimated the American taxpayers would be remunerated to the extent of $3.5 billion to $10 billion. I believe this is very fair. But at the same time I understand, based on discussions with leadership, that there may be a constitutional point of order that would preclude consideration of this amendment on this particular piece of legislation. I wish to take this opportunity to inquire of Chairman Dodd, through the Chair, whether that is his understanding as well.

Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I thank the chairman for his clarification. The last thing I wish to do in a bill this complex is to tie up the Senate in procedural votes, rather than votes of substance. Even if this point of order were raised, it is my understanding then there would be a mandatory vote which would tie us up. I am not going to call up this amendment. I very much appreciate what the chairman said about the possibility that we be allowed to vote on other appropriate legislation being considered in the Senate. As I previously stated, I believe this is a matter of very eminent fairness, and it would be for the body to vote on it. I would like to have that vote. I yield the floor.

Mr. WEBB

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

Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I understand there is an amendment pending that is not appropriate to set aside to call up another amendment; is that correct?

Mr. WEBB. Having discussed this with the chairman, it is his preference not to set the pending amendment aside; is that correct?

Mr. WEBB. All right. Well, I assume there will be no objection if I speak about the amendment I have introduced, amendment No. 3736?

Mr. WEBB. I thank the chairman for that. Mr. President, I introduced this amendment earlier, on another piece of legislation, and it was not considered germane. I understand there may be some procedural issues with raising it on this particular piece of legislation, but I believe it is an amendment that Congress needs to pass and that the American people need to have. It is a one-shot windfall profit tax on a very appropriately designed group of executives who benefitted enormously from the contributions the American taxpayers made in order to bail out the economy as opposed to bailing out banks specifically. I will address this amendment in detail in a moment. Anniversary of Official End of Vietnam War Before I address the subject of my amendment, I would like to point out, as I have every April 30 since I have been in the Senate, that today is the day--now 35 years ago--South Vietnam fell to a Communist offensive and the Vietnam war officially ended. April 30, 1975, has a very unique meaning among Vietnamese and the 2 million Americans of Vietnamese descent in this country. It is almost as strong as the way many people feel in this country about B.C. and A.D. It is a very clear demarcation line in terms of an effort that was made for many years to assist an incipient democracy in South Vietnam from coming under a different form of government, just as clearly as we attempted to assist South Korea from coming under the form of government that today we see in North Korea and just as clearly as we spent many years and much national treasure preserving the democratic principles in West Germany after the Cold War began, with the hope and the eventual result of the unification of that country. This is not a time, all these years later, to debate the merits of the American involvement in Vietnam. I am one who is very proud to have served in that war as a U.S. marine. I still believe strongly in what we attempted to do. And we have heard from some of the really great thinkers of our generation--the Asian thinkers, such as Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore--that the attempt of the United States to staunch the flow of communism in Vietnam allowed the other countries in Southeast Asia--Singapore strongly among them but a number of the other countries in Southeast Asia--to build governmental systems and free market economies that eventually have had a dramatic impact in that part of the world. Today we see organizations such as ASEAN, the 10 nations of Southeast Asia, having begun to come together and think with commonality about free market principles and different sorts of governments. A great deal of that did come out of the position the United States took during the Vietnam war. This war is not taught in American schools. It goes by so fast in school systems that sometimes it is dealt with in a matter of an hour or two. The contributions of our men and women in Vietnam in the military are generally dismissed or downplayed. We put 2.7 million American military people into that country against a very capable enemy. We fought for years. We lost 58,000 Americans on the battlefield. We lost another 300,000 wounded. The U.S. Marine Corps lost more total casualties in Vietnam than even in World War II. They lost three times as many as in Korea. They lost five times as many combat dead as in World War I. The experience, because of the division in this country, went right past the American populace. It is still not plugged into the comprehension, the quality of the service and the quality--against a very highly capable enemy-- the results we brought onto the battlefield as measured by the standards that our leaders placed upon us. Mr. President, 1.4 million Communist soldiers died in this war--by the admission of the Hanoi government in 1995, not these arguments about whether body counts coming from the battlefield were inflated or not, 1.4 million soldiers. This was a brutal war. The aftermath of the war is almost never discussed in this country. It is as if everything ended in 1975. One million South Vietnamese, the cream of South Vietnam's young leadership, were put into reeducation camps; 240,000 of them remained in those camps for longer than 4 years; an estimated 56,000 died. Another 1 million Vietnamese jumped into the sea, followed by others, including my wife's family. This day, 35 years ago, her family was on a boat having escaped from North Vietnam in 1954 and South Vietnam in 1975, facing unknown futures. The Soviet Union gained a strong foothold which did not expire until the Soviet Union expired, putting into place a command economy and basically a Stalinist system. When I first started going back to Vietnam in 1991, the system was extremely rigid and could only be called a Stalinist system. But the other piece of this, which a number of people in this country--and I count myself among them--have worked assiduously for decades to bring about is the healing of that war here, in Vietnam, between the 2 million people of Vietnamese descent in this country and the existing forces in Vietnam. This has been a very arduous and successful, for the most part, process. When I look at the Vietnam of today--and I have spent a great deal of time there not only during the war but after the war--I am very optimistic. I have always believed, even in my younger days as a marine, that Vietnam was one of the four or five most important countries to the United States when we look at our relations in Asia. This is evolving. The countries, as our trade relations have evolved, as our contacts have evolved, and as the trust level has evolved, our countries are working very well together to assure the stability of this region. I feel compelled to make these points on a day that has such an impact on Vietnamese around the world, and to say I am hopeful that with the progress we have made over the past several years that we can achieve the objectives that we once were trying to achieve at the time on the battlefield--a strong relationship with a country whose government will become more open and more mature, with a people who have a tremendous level of entrepreneurship and energy, and in the end, a relationship that can assure greater stability in east Asia and Southeast Asia. Amendment No. 3736 I would now like to turn to my amendment. I would like to emphasize, this is a very carefully drafted amendment. It is one shot, not a continuing windfall profits tax--which I don't generally agree with. It is a one-shot amendment designed to give the American taxpayers a place on the upside of the recovery of the financial system that they, frankly, enabled. You can understand the anger in this country when we look at the results of this hearing the other day that Senator Levin chaired. We hear in many cases the irresponsible behavior of some executives in the financial sector who brought about the difficulty that threatened our entire economic system. This amendment is very simple. It would provide a one-time, 50- percent tax on bonuses that are above $400,000 of any initial bonus paid to executives at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or financial institutions that received a minimum of $5 billion in the TARP. It is only for income that was generated for work in 2009 and compensated in 2010. Again, this is a one-shot matter of fairness to balance out the rewards that these financial institutions received which were enabled by the contributions of the American taxpayers, particularly in the TARP. We have had estimates this amendment would recover for our economic system somewhere in the neighborhood of a minimum of $3.5 billion and potentially as high as $10 billion--13 companies, on bonuses in excess of $400,000 after all the other compensation has been paid. That is the amount of money paid to these executives. Again, I need to emphasize the American taxpayer did not create the economic crisis. They were required to bail out the people who did create it, and they deserve a share in the upside because these are the rewards that they themselves enabled. Paul Krugman, who is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, wrote in July of 2008 about his concern at the very inception of this economic crisis that we were moving toward a tendency in this country to socialize risk and individualize reward. In other words, whenever we create a situation where there is an economic challenge, the American taxpayer at large is expected to absorb the risk. But when the reward comes in, only the executives, the people who were managing the financial system, are able to actually get the reward. This particular reward in this one-shot tax proposal has come about largely as a result of government intervention, as a result of working people having to put their money forward, having to bail out a financial system that went wrong. As a result, as a matter of equity, the reward should be shared with the taxpayers who made it possible. When I first started thinking about doing this, I actually was drawn to an article that was written in the Financial Times. This actually was last November in the Financial Times. It was written by Martin Wolf, who is a conservative economist. Here you see the logic and the equity of moving forward with this type of windfall profits tax. When we have Paul Krugman, who is known as a liberal economist, a Nobel Prize winner, and Martin Wolf, who is a conservative economist who writes for the Financial Times, agree on principle, we have to stop and think about it. Martin Wolf, in this article, said--and I am going to just read a few excerpts from the article: Windfall taxes are a ghastly idea. . . . So why do I now find the idea of a windfall tax so appealing? Well, this time it looks different. First, all the institutions making exceptional profits do so because they are beneficiaries of unlimited State insurance for themselves and their counterparts. . . . Second, the profits being made today are in large part the fruit of the free money provided by the central bank, an arm of the state. . . . Third, the case for generous subventions is to restore the financial system--and so the economy to--health. It is not to enrich bankers. . . . Fourth, ordinary people-- And we need to think about this when we look at the impact, the incredible anger that is in this country after incidents such as the hearings this week-- ordinary people can accept that risk takers receive huge rewards. But such rewards for those who have been rescued by the state and bear substantial responsibility for the crisis are surely intolerable. . . . Our taxpayers, our working people, rescued a financial system that was on the verge of collapse because of massive acts of bad judgment and greed by the very companies that are now reaping huge bonuses from the government's intervention. It is not too much to ask those who have been so fully compensated and who have received in excess of a $400,000 bonus on top of their compensation, that they pay a one-time tax and share that excess, on top of their $400,000 bonus, with the people who rescued them. I yield the floor.

Mr. WEBB

Mr. WEBB. Madam President, I assume we are now in morning business.

Mr. WEBB. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 5 minutes.

Mr. WEBB

Mr. WEBB. Madam President, last night we had an issue involving the well-being of our veterans who I think got caught up in the give-and- take of the debate on the health care bill, particularly the procedural aspects of it. An amendment was offered to the bill by Senator Burr, and a counteroffer was made to solve these two disparities, one regarding TRICARE and another regarding a certain section of title 38 with respect to veterans health care through unanimous consent, since one of the bills had already been voted on unanimously in the House and the other one certainly there is no real objection to. The request to pass these bills immediately, which would have made them law today, was objected to. Senator Burr's amendment also went down. I wish to say first, I don't think there is any debate in this body about the dedication that Senator Burr has to our veterans. I think that goes for all Members of this body. There is no one in this body who isn't fully dedicated to the well-being of our veterans and our Active-Duty military people as well. I think it is a shame that the procedural aspects of what we were debating overcame something that should have been a simple process. In that spirit, I have been discussing this matter with Senator Burr, and we are going to take two amendments that were offered last night for unanimous consent to see if we can't clear them on both sides and to have these protections, these express protections for the medical care of those who are serving and those who have served take their rightful place as protected in the larger aspect of this health care reform. We are going to work to clear them on both sides, hopefully, to get this matter resolved. We can have our political debates and we will have our political debates, but all of us need to come together to make sure that those who serve fully understand the dedication of this body. So I hope the other side will help us move these two amendments forward. I appreciate Senator Burr's support in that effort. Also, as I said, I very much appreciate the dedication he has always shown to our veterans. He is the ranking Republican on the Veterans' Committee, and no one is in any way questioning that aspect of his service in the Senate. So I just wished to again point out that we are going to attempt to clear these today. We can resolve this matter within a day or two. It will become law. Our veterans and those serving will know they are fully protected. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. WEBB

Mr. WEBB. Madam President, being an eternal optimist, I rise to express my hope that once the process of voting over the next 2 days is completed, we can find a way to move forward with our colleagues across the aisle to fix other provisions in this legislation and make it truly the kind of bill they say they wish to see as well. I will support this reconciliation bill. At the same time, as my colleagues on this side of the aisle know well, I worked very hard to narrow and improve this legislation as it was passed last December, including voting, as I recall, eight different times with my Republican colleagues, which didn't make my chairman very happy, on a few occasions to make changes in the bill. In the end I voted in favor of this legislation despite serious misgivings with portions of it, because it does represent a true step forward in terms of quality, accessibility, and affordability of health care for most Americans. The important point for us to remember today and tomorrow, as we go through the process, is that the bill is now law. The question before us now is how best to implement that law so that the benefits can be put into place and the many detriments I was worried about can be addressed. There are a number of strong points in this bill. Many of my colleagues have laid them out. As we know, insurance companies will be prohibited from denying health care coverage to children with preexisting conditions. Young adults will be able to stay on their parents' insurance plans until they are 26. Uninsured Americans with preexisting conditions will have access to affordable insurance options. Insurance companies won't be able to drop people from coverage when they get sick, and they will be banned from implementing lifetime caps on coverage. Seniors who hit the Medicare Part D doughnut hole gap in coverage will get a $250 check to help with the cost of prescriptions and the doughnut hole will be completely closed by 2020. Access to insurance over the next couple years will be expanded to 95 percent of Americans. It will implement reforms designed to slow skyrocketing health care costs. Working families will not have to worry about losing health insurance or facing bankruptcy because of a job loss or because of illness. Insurance companies will be required to spend the majority of their money on patient care. The law will also provide tax credits to help make health insurance available for individuals, expand access to Medicaid, create a regulated marketplace where people can shop for the health insurance plan that best meets their needs, and will prohibit insurance companies from refusing to sell or renew policies due to an individual's health status. These are just some of the positive points of the law. In fairness--and I understand and appreciate some of the frustration on the other side--there are serious problems in this bill. I don't like the dramatic cuts in Medicare this law proposes. In fact, I voted against them. I share the concerns by my Democratic colleague, Congressman Rick Boucher of southwest Virginia, regarding the potential negative impact these cuts could have on rural areas, particularly the population of southwest Virginia. This legislation proposes to cut approximately $450 billion from Medicare spending over the next 10 years at a time when Medicare is already mired in debt and, as we know, a bow wave of baby boomers is going to start hitting the Medicare system immediately. Medicare Advantage, which provides better benefits than traditional Medicare, is a valuable tool in rural and underserved areas, and that may decrease. This law does little to address the historic disparity in Medicare funding between urban and rural areas. I am also concerned about the cost and spending projections of this legislation. There is a great deal of debate going on right now about the real cost of this bill. Former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin estimated, in an article in the New York Times recently, that the bill may increase the Federal deficit by $562 billion over 10 years because of some of these areas I discussed. The official score maintains that the bill would lower the deficit by $143 billion over that same period, but it includes a number of unlikely assumptions, Medicare being one of them. The system for reimbursing Medicare doctors, called the sustainable growth rate, is widely agreed to be broken, but we have not tried to fix it. That is a $250 billion ticket. Many, including myself, believe the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act, the CLASS Act, is structurally unsound. I voted against that as we were considering the bill. In addition, as my colleague Congressman Glenn Nye from the Norfolk- Virginia Beach area pointed out, there is a great deal of concern among families and small businesses regarding the impact of this bill. Again, the point is, the bill is now law. The question is how to make the law a better law. The process that got us here has been ugly. It has diminished the trust and respect some citizens hold for our own government. We need to restore that trust through a genuine and transparent effort on both sides of the aisle to fix the problems in the law. We also need to start working together again across the aisle, on this and other issues that confront us, in a bipartisan sense and a sense of shared responsibility about the many problems facing the country. We are now preparing to begin a series of votes through the reconciliation process that ultimately, quite frankly, is going to mean little or nothing in terms of the outcome of this legislation. They are not going to seriously address the problems in it. I understand the concerns on the other side. I respect them. These votes in many cases are politically necessary for the other side. But I call on my Republican friends to begin to work with some of us over here on this side to address the inequities that we are concerned about, to implement cost controls, to work together for the good of the country once this next couple of days is done. I yield the floor.

Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I would suggest to my colleague from North Carolina and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that if we want to fix this problem, we can fix it right now and we should fix it right now. We should not allow things to be tied up in the separate melodrama of the moment. I introduced a bill on Monday which passed the House unanimously on Saturday to fix the TRICARE part of this. The chairman of the Veterans' Committee introduced a bill today to fix the spina bifida problem. I ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 3148, a bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code to provide for the treatment of Department of Defense health coverage as minimal essential coverage, sponsored by myself; further, that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration en bloc, along with the bill introduced earlier today by Senator Akaka, S. 3162, a bill to clarify the health care provided by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs that constitutes minimum essential coverage; that all Democratic Senators be added as cosponsors to this measure; that the bills be read a third time and passed en bloc, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. WEBB. Let the American people understand, the Republicans objected to a matter that could have been fixed by law tomorrow.