[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 151 (Monday, November 5, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11423-S11424]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMPORTANT ISSUES FACING CONGRESS
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we will begin this week with a vote at 6
o'clock this evening, and we will turn to other issues. I want to make
some comments about the most important issues we face in Congress and
what I think we ought to be doing to address them.
I just flew in from Chicago a few moments ago and noticed in the
Chicago papers this morning that yesterday a man got through the
screening process at Chicago O'Hare Airport with nine knives and a stun
gun. He was selected for advance screening at the gate in addition to
going through the metal detectors.
When they opened the baggage of this particular person, they found
nine knives and a stun gun that had been missed at the screening as the
individual entered the concourses.
That ought to demonstrate, as so many other studies have
demonstrated, that the current system for screening passenger baggage
and passengers is not working. That is quite clear.
The largest company that employs workers to screen baggage at
airports has been found guilty of violating all kinds of FAA rules and
regulations. They have violated training. They have hired ex-criminals.
They have not adequately supervised them. They have falsified records.
They were fined by the Federal Government for their behavior and 2
years later, after being put on probation, were discovered to have
violated their probation with the same problems. This is the largest
company in this country that hires these workers. In fact, it is a
foreign company, but it is the largest employer of screeners in
America.
One wonders why this company is still working at airports screening
passengers when it has already been fined, when it falsified reports
and then violated the probation that was established for it.
My point is that we have just had a significant debate in the U.S.
House of Representatives on the issue of airport security and baggage
screening. We in the Senate passed legislation 100-0--all Republicans
and all Democrats supported it. Then we had a couple of our friends
from a southern State, Texas, whom I shall not name, who decided that
the legislation was not good and needed to be altered. God forbid
somebody was going to make Federal workers out of the screeners. So
they ramped up a huge effort in the House of Representatives to defeat
the proposal we passed 100-0 in the Senate.
My hope is that in the next week or so--in the next few days, in
fact--we will convene a conference and work aggressively and to
immediately pass an aviation security bill. It is unforgivable we have
taken this long. After September 11, everyone understood we had a new
requirement, a new duty, and a new responsibility to pass an aviation
security bill, and that legislation has not yet passed despite the fact
we passed it through this body with every Republican and Democrat
supporting it--100-0 only to have it languish week after week in the
other body.
I regret the House did that, but now that they have passed
legislation that will get us to conference, it is very important that
we take this seriously and find a way to develop the compromise
necessary so the American people will feel confident that when they
walk through airports about to board an airplane, there is not some
goofball someplace carrying nine knives and a stun gun.
This person explained he had forgotten. How do you forget you have
nine knives and a stun gun, for God's sake? How do you forget you have
that in your luggage? How do you qualify to fly if you have a mind like
that--that you take nine knives and a stun gun to the airport?
In any event, having said that, that is just the latest information
in this morning's paper. Last week, it was the audit that was done at
Dulles Airport and the screeners who missed what they should have
known.
Why does all this happen? Because people leave screening jobs to fry
hamburgers so they can make more money. These are low-paying jobs. The
people are ill trained by companies that want to put the least cost
employees in those positions and make good money doing it.
I am not interested in that. I am interested in accountability and
security for the American traveling public. That is all I am interested
in. I am not interested in the debate about for whom they work. All I
am interested in is accountability.
We have had a circumstance where these employees have been working
for very large firms, one of which I already described that has been
fined by the Federal Government and is guilty of falsifying records. We
have already had that experience. We know that does not work. So
perhaps we ought to try what the Senate has suggested in the
legislation it passed 100-0.
That is what is in front of us in the next few days, and I hope, as a
member of the committee that generated the bill that passed the Senate
unanimously, with the help of Senator Hollings and Senator McCain
leading the effort, we can find a way to solve this very quickly.
Let me turn to the next challenge we have in addition to aviation
security. The other challenge we have is to pass a stimulus package.
What does ``stimulus'' mean? Stimulus means pass legislation that will
provide some incentives to help boost this economy of ours.
Last Friday, we received word that another 415,000 people lost their
jobs in the last month. Mostly, these are people at the lower end of
the economic ladder. These are not people making a lot of money, in
most instances. These people and their families know about second jobs,
secondhand, second mortgages, and second shifts. They are the same
people who during tough times find they have lost their jobs. Then they
find out, at least with some people in the U.S. Congress, they are also
second choice. There are some people in Congress who do not want to
help them very much because they say that would not provide the
incentive for those families to look for work again.
In my judgment, these people who are laid off during a very difficult
and soft economy require our help. We have always, during a severe
economic downturn, extended our hand and said: We will extend
unemployment benefits to help those who have lost their jobs and are
down and out.
That is stimulative. That money is spent immediately by the families
who have lost their incomes and are struggling. That is a way to
stimulate this country's economy. We must do that when we construct a
package of incentives to provide lift to this economy.
What are the other incentives we could provide that would help this
economy? We can do traditional things, such as tax credits that would
incentivize investment. We can do things that will incentivize
consumption. We can do things that will incentivize production. There
are all kinds of menus with which to do that: Expensing, bonus
depreciation, and targeted investment tax credits, for example.
In addition to tax credits and other incentives in the Tax Code, we
can stimulate economic activity by building roads and bridges, by
repairing schools, and by making other public investments that put
people back to work so that at the end of the time when we have enacted
a stimulus package and made those investments, we can look back and
say: We not only stimulated the economy, we have something to show for
it.
My colleague, Senator Byrd, the chairman of the Appropriations
Committee, is working with a number of us in the Senate. He has taken
the leadership position on the infrastructure
[[Page S11424]]
needs and the investment in infrastructure as part of a stimulus
package. That is important as well.
We have the issues of extending unemployment benefits, health care
issues for the unemployed, the issue of what kind of tax cuts might be
employed to stimulate and lift this economy, and then the issue of what
kind of infrastructure investment we can make that puts people back to
work building, repairing, and making things. All of these should come
together in a package designed to stimulate this economy.
This economy is in much more trouble than most people understand. It
was a very soft economy prior to September 11, and September 11 cut a
hole right through the belly of this economy. We are beginning to see
the evidence of that now each day with each additional number that
describes the condition of our economy.
It is going to have an impact in every part of this country. It will
touch virtually every family. So the question is, What can we do and
how can we do it? How can we lift this drowning economy?
President Bush has said he wants Congress to act and act quickly. He
is right about that. We should. We must. But just acting, if it is not
the right thing, will not be the right approach. If we do not do the
right thing, taking action is pretty irrelevant. What we need to do is
take action now to do the right thing to give help to this country's
economy. The House of Representatives passed what they called a
stimulus package. I describe it as leftovers.
My mother used to talk about leftovers when she was talking about the
supper table. What is for supper? We called it supper in my hometown.
When she said leftovers, we all understood in our family what leftovers
meant.
Well, I view the stimulus package that the House passed almost the
same way, as leftovers. It is all the things they had left over from
previous tax bills that they did not get, but they always wanted to do.
It did not have very much at all to do with whether it is going to help
this economy, whether it is going to stimulate this economy, whether it
is going to lift this economy. It was just leftovers.
In fact, I will mention one. I will not go into great depth. One of
them, at a cost of $21 billion, was stuck in the House-passed stimulus
package to incentivize investments overseas. Now, tell me how that
stimulates the economy in this country. It is a big giveaway to
companies that move and keep needed investment capital overseas and
earn income overseas and do not want to repatriate the money. Now talk
about the nth degree of goofy. At a time when our economy is on its
knees, we have the U.S. House passing a tax provision that incentivizes
additional investments overseas. Our investments ought to be to
incentivize creating jobs in the United States, not elsewhere.
So we have a big job ahead of us to try to pass legislation that
provides a real lift to this economy. The President is right, we need
to do it. It would be unforgivable, in my judgment, if Congress left
town sometime between now and Christmas, whenever we finish our work,
and had not passed a stimulus package to try to provide some lift to
this country's economy.
I know some will argue we have economic stabilizers that we did not
used to have in this economy and that recessions are not quite as deep
as they used to be. We do not know that. We do not know what the
consequences of September 11 will be on this economy. We do know that
going into September 11, we were in the business cycle and we were on
the contraction side of a business cycle. It is inevitable that there
is expansion and contraction, and we were on the contraction side of
that business cycle.
Then September 11 occurred. We shut down the airline industry. The
entire travel industry in this country is in a huge amount of trouble.
Some of us have proposed some loan guarantees to try to provide
assistance in those areas. This economy took a huge body blow, and I
think most do not understand how deep this likely recession could be or
how long it could last if all of us do not now do the right thing.
This is not about Democrats or Republicans. It is about good ideas,
having the capacity to employ opportunities for investment and
consumption in this economy to try to rev this economic engine once
again.
We went through unprecedented growth in our country for a good many
years. We were blessed with that. In fact, some looked at those numbers
and they looked at NASDAQ and the stock market and they thought this
economy only goes one way.
It is true of the President. It was true of the Congress. Everybody
said: You know something, we are going to have surpluses for 10 years
in a row. The next 10 years we are going to do so great we are going to
have surpluses every year. So let us put in a very large tax cut
anticipating surpluses for the next 10 years.
That was just months ago. Those surpluses are very quickly vanishing,
regrettably, and this economy has changed in a very significant way. I
hope we can get back to the position where we have economic strength
and opportunity, hope for American families who have lost their jobs
and a growing economy that provides new opportunities for others in
this country who are going to enter the job market. At this point, this
Congress has no choice but to be with this President and, between the
two parties, construct a stimulus package that really does give a lift
and some hope to the American economy. If we do not do that, the
American people should judge us harshly, in my judgment. Between now
and when we leave this year, we have a responsibility to do that.
____________________