National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Thank you very much.

Mr. President, I thank the minority whip for his statement on the floor. I would like to suggest I see things a little differently and suggest there are a couple items I would like to speak to.

First, on Guantanamo:

President Obama took office and realized we had a serious problem in Guantanamo Bay. It is a safe and secure facility, but it has become a recruiting tool for terrorists around the world. That is not just his conclusion; it is the conclusion of people I respect very much. Among those who called for the closing of Guantanamo include the following: GEN Colin L. Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State under President George W. Bush; Republican Senators JOHN MCCAIN and LINDSEY GRAHAM; former Secretaries of State James Baker, Henry Kissinger, and Condoleezza Rice; Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served President Bush and President Obama; ADM Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and GEN David Petraeus.

These are not politicians, these are people who represent both sides of the political aisle--Democrat and Republican--who have concluded that keeping Guantanamo open, unfortunately, is going to continue to give encouragement to the recruitment of terrorists around the world.

President Obama announced that we should start to close Guantanamo, we should start deciding the fate of each of these prisoners, and it is high time we do.

Under President George W. Bush, hundreds of Guantanamo Bay detainees were released. They were arrested, incarcerated, questioned, and released, no charges against them. It was accepted. We made mistakes on the battlefield. People came up collecting bounties for turning in prisoners who turned out not to be dangerous. These people were released. The overwhelming majority of these people didn't cause any trouble beyond that. Some did. That is a fact. I will not ignore it.

Now comes the Republican side of the aisle arguing that it is unsafe for us to transfer Guantanamo prisoners from Guantanamo to Federal prisons in the United States. I have heard the arguments. They say it is unsafe in my community of Springfield, IL, to have a convicted terrorist; that it is a threat to all the people, the 12.5 million people who live in Illinois, and they believe that is the case around the country. But if we look at the facts, that argument doesn't stand up.

Today, in the prisons of the United States, the Federal prisons, we have 355 convicted terrorists currently incarcerated, being held safely and securely. They are no threat to our safety. In my hometown of Springfield, not far away, just in southern Illinois, maybe a little over 100 miles, is Marion Federal Penitentiary. I visited there several weeks ago and talked to the men and women who are the guards and those running the prison, and they said to me: Senator Durbin, send them here. We have dealt with terrorists. We have terrorists now on our cell block. We have had crime syndicates. We have had people from the Colombian drug cartels. We can handle them.

The mayor of Marion, IL, went out and said to the people: Are you frightened if these detainees come to Marion?

They said: No.

These guards know how to do their job. This is a Federal penitentiary that is safe. So the fear that is being espoused and bred by the other side of the aisle about Guantanamo Bay is not well placed. What the President is doing systematically and carefully is evaluating each of these prisoners.

I know of one who received notice from our government last year, after having been held for 6 years as a prisoner, that we had no case against him. No charges were going to be pursued. He is still a prisoner. We are looking for a place to put him. He is from the Gaza, a bottled up area. There is a question about whether he goes back there. But the fact is, we have no reason to believe we can convict or prosecute this man for anything. He is being held. It will be his seventh year now. He came in at age 19. He may leave at age 26 or 27. His life is dramatically changed because, unfortunately, our early inclination that he was a danger to this country turned out not to be a basis for a crime that could be prosecuted. That is the reality.

The President has addressed this issue. Just a few weeks ago he announced one of these detainees in Guantanamo Bay was finally going to face justice, and despite the protests of some on the other side of the aisle, he moved that prisoner to New York for a trial. It wasn't the first time the city of New York has had the trial of a terrorist. It has happened before. They know how to hold these terrorists in jail during the course of the trial. We don't hear panic in the streets in New York over it. The only panic and fear we hear comes from the other side of the aisle in the Senate.

The President is doing the right thing closing Guantanamo Bay and saying to the world: We will not engage in torture. We will close Guantanamo Bay. This is a new chapter and a new day for America. With this approach, we are closing down a recruiting tool for terrorists and opening the door for allies to come back to the side of the United States to join us in stopping the kind of extremism that led to the tragedy of 9/11.

So I disagree with my colleague from Arizona who has argued that we shouldn't close Guantanamo Bay. I agree with GEN Colin L. Powell and other military leaders that closing it is in the best interests of the security of the United States.

Senator Kyl initiated his remarks by noting that we have reached the 6-month anniversary of the inauguration of President Obama. It is hard to imagine. It seems to have just been flying by if you are on the floor of the Senate with all of the activity and all of the business we have considered. But he made special notice of the stimulus bill.

I wish to remind people what the President inherited when he took his oath of office 6 months ago. Our economy was losing on average 700,000 jobs a month when President Obama took his oath of office. The growth rate was at a negative 6.3 percent, the worst since the 1982 recession. Home foreclosures, mortgage foreclosures were at record levels, and residential investment had fallen by more than 40 percent in just 18 months. Banks were in crisis, freezing lending, and nearly $10 trillion in wealth had been lost in the stock market. Virtually all of us who had 401(k)s or savings involved in the stock market know exactly what happened to those savings. We lost a lot of value.

As President Obama took office, this is what he inherited. He came to the
Congress and said: We can't stand idly by. We have to do something. We have to try to energize this economy, create and save American jobs; give businesses and families a fighting chance. He asked for both sides of the aisle to cooperate.

On the House side not a single Republican House Member would join the President in this effort, in this attempt at a bipartisan effort to deal with the economic situation in our country. On this side of the Rotunda, three Republican Senators stepped up and said they would work with the Democrats to try to find a way to help put our economy back on its feet--only three, despite the President's invitation for all of them to join in this conversation to try to find a compromise to work toward a solution to the problems we faced.

At the end of the day, the bill was a $787 billion recovery and reinvestment bill to be spent over 2 years. We are now 4 months into that 2-year period--150 days, roughly, into that 2-year period--and Senators are coming to the Senate floor, as did the minority whip, and saying it has failed.

Well, let's take a look and see what it has done. So far we have actually spent about $56 billion out of the $787 billion, a very small amount. We have obligated--which means we have promised to spend--up to $200 billion, 4 months into it. We are trying to address this carefully so taxpayers' funds are not wasted. But there are still those who voted against it initially who come to the Senate floor, as the previous Senator did, and say it was a failure; we shouldn't have done it.

Several things should be noted. First, they had no alternative. They had no substitute. They had no option for the economy other than to stand idly by, take two Excedrin, try to take a nap, and hope it would be better in the morning. Not good enough.

If we are going to deal with an economy with so many jobs lost, so many businesses failing, standing idly by waiting for the economy to work its way out would have been a disaster.

This stimulus package from President Obama stopped what could have been the collapse of the U.S. economy and the global economy. We still have a long way to go. We are not out of this recession, but it could have been worse. For those who say we shouldn't have done it, let me tell my colleagues: Over 40 percent of the money in the stimulus package went back to tax breaks for working families in America. Ninety-five percent of working families across America will see the benefits of the Making Work Pay tax credit in their paychecks. Those dealing with job loss, unemployed people, got an additional $25 a week. It doesn't sound like much unless you have no other source of income.

I take it from their statements those on the other side of the aisle think the tax breaks for working families should not have been enacted. They oppose the unemployment compensation benefit increases.

We also gave a helping hand to unemployed families to keep health insurance for their kids and their families. That was part of the stimulus package, as well as money for nutrition assistance, food stamps for some of these unemployed families. So when the other side of the aisle says we shouldn't have done this, they are basically saying we shouldn't have helped these unemployed families and a lot of other families across America. I think it was the right thing to do.

We are making investments in the infrastructure of America as well. Basically, we are trying to make an investment that will give us a recovery in jobs. We were losing about 25,000 jobs a day when this initially hit. Now we are trying to build back from that to create and save jobs across America. In my home State of Illinois, it means infrastructure projects, transportation infrastructure projects, and many others. So we are just beginning. We are moving in the right direction. We have stopped the worst from occurring in the economy. We are going to see a turnaround, I hope, sooner rather than later.

The President's words warrant repeating: This is not going to happen overnight, and we have to be open to the idea that it is going to take some time for us to make the kind of recovery we absolutely need.

Secondly, the Senator from Arizona talked about health care reform. Republican after Republican has come to the Senate floor--not all of them but many of them--and criticized the idea of health care reform, but they are ignoring the obvious. We have a serious problem with health care in America. We are spending twice as much per person as any nation on Earth for health care, and the results--the health care results don't show it. Many times countries spend far less, have far better outcomes in terms of curing diseases and life expectancy.

So we should ask the hard questions: Shouldn't our money be better spent? Shouldn't it be more effectively spent? Then we take a look at what we face when it comes to health insurance premiums, and we find out that premiums over the last several years have been going up three times the increase in the average worker's wages in this country.

We are falling further and further behind as the costs of health care go beyond the grasp of individual families and small businesses. So we have to tackle this, and the American people know we do. They understand this system is, unfortunately, out of control. They have called on us to fix what is broken and to preserve those parts of our system that are important.

One of the things we want to make sure we do is to say: If you have a health insurance policy today you want to keep for your family or your business, you can keep it. Nothing we say or do in the law will change that. It is ultimately your decision.

Secondly, we want to preserve the relationship between doctor and patient--the confidential relationship, the trust that has developed between them so that you can take a member of your family or yourself to a doctor and believe it is a confidential conversation and that doctor is giving the best advice possible for you. We want you to have that choice and make that decision.

What we want to stop is the mistreatment of Americans and American families by health insurance companies. You know what I mean: If you happened to have had an illness last year and it becomes a preexisting condition this year and you find out your health insurance won't cover it, or if they are going to cover it but dramatically increase your premiums, in fact, they increase your premiums without notice or any kind of forewarning that it is going to occur, these sorts of things trouble people.

The fact that their doctors have to get into a fight with health insurance clerks as to appropriate medical care and whether a person should be hospitalized; the fact that health insurance companies, private health insurance companies, have turned out to be some of the most profitable companies in America, even during the recession. All of these things are fair warning that if we don't do something about health care in this country, the costs are going to break the bank, not only for individuals, families, and businesses, but for governments at every single level.

Today many Americans live in fear of the astronomical costs that will occur if they or their families experience a health care emergency. Two and a half Illinoisans in my State of 12.5 million, more than one out of every five under the age of 65, is in a family who must spend more than 10 percent of its income on health care costs. Among those, one-fourth of those are spending more than 25 percent of their income on health care costs.

The other side says: Just leave well enough alone. This isn't ``well enough.'' For these families, this is intolerable and unsustainable. It is an astounding burden. It is 30 percent more people than the number facing the 25-percent payment than faced it 8 years ago.

There is also concern on the other side about cap and trade. Well, cap and trade is a bill that has passed the House to address global warming, to try to assign a value to carbon in our economy. Just last week we had the CEOs of three major companies come speak to us: Duke Energy, one of the largest energy companies in America, DuPont, and Siemens.

They favor the establishment of a cost for carbon. They said: Give us a transition period so that we can make our plants cleaner, our processes more energy effective, and we can meet that goal. We have the creativity to do it.

So we can reduce global warming and reduce the pollution and our dependence on foreign oil. In the meantime, we will create new businesses; new products; new technology that will be energy efficient; new jobs, 21st-century jobs that will pay well, and jobs we can keep right here in America. There are those who oppose this and say leave it as it is. Our continued dependence on foreign oil should be a source of concern to every single person.

I am also genuinely concerned that the world I am leaving my grandson might be a compromised world because of some of the bad environmental decisions that have been made by my generation. We have an opportunity to change that, to make this a cleaner planet, to show ourselves as good stewards of the Earth that God gave us, and we can work together in a bipartisan fashion to find a way to encourage the right conduct and discourage bad conduct when it comes to these energy issues. Some don't want to touch it; they just want to criticize it. At the end of the day, we won't be judged as having met our responsibility if we do nothing.

I know Senator Kaufman is on the floor and will ask for recognition at this time.

I yield the floor.

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