[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 176 (Wednesday, November 19, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10609-S10610]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            STIMULUS PACKAGE

  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, today I am standing here asking for help 
on the stimulus package. I know that part of the stimulus package is to 
extend unemployment insurance. I absolutely support that. But what I 
also wish to do is not only extend unemployment insurance for those who 
are hurting, I am with the parts of the stimulus package that will 
extend employment, where we will do what we need to do to create the 
safety net, but we need to have a launching pad to keep jobs in this 
country. I wish to vote to extend unemployment help, but I wish to also 
vote to extend employment help. Hello. Let's find that sensible center.
  I am for saving and creating jobs, and I am also saying: Congress 
must act now. In the next 48 to 72 hours, we have our own rendezvous. 
If we do not act, we will create an economic framework that means the 
recession will be longer and deeper. The cost of doing nothing is more 
than we can afford to pay.
  I support the safety net in the economic recovery package--help with 
unemployment, energy assistance, help on Medicaid for the children and 
the elderly. Medicaid is a children's and elderly program, for children 
who need health care and elderly who need to be in nursing homes.
  I also support the part of the stimulus that creates jobs. I salute 
our leadership team for coming up with the framework to create jobs by 
making important investments in physical infrastructure--desperately 
needed. We need to make public investments that generate private sector 
jobs. Note what Senator Barb is saying: I am not for make work. I am 
not for a WPA. I am for public investments that create private sector 
jobs. By doing it in building and rebuilding America's infrastructure, 
we will be safer, and we will have a stronger economy--repairing 
bridges, building highways, mass transit that we need to move people 
and improve the environment, also to build water and sewer treatment 
plants to fix aging sewer systems. In my hometown of Baltimore, our 
mayor is under an EPA court order to rebuild the Baltimore sewer 
system. I am for that. My great-grandfather, who came to this country

[[Page S10610]]

searching for the American dream, believing what Lady Liberty said when 
she said: Give me your tired, your poor, yearning to be free, another 
member of my family said: Sign me up. And he was a ditch digger on the 
Baltimore sewer system. My great-grandmother married him because he was 
a man of prospects. We rebuilt Baltimore then. I wish to rebuild 
Baltimore today and put people to work, from designing and engineering, 
moving heavy lifting equipment.
  The Chesapeake Bay is polluted because we don't have enough water in 
sewer treatment plants. That is one of the reasons. So we can build 
that by making public investments in physical infrastructure. By 
sending a dollar of taxpayer money today, we will have jobs today and 
economic recovery on the way.
  Also, I wished to talk about helping the automobile industry. My 
other colleagues will speak on the floor about the need for the $25 
billion plan. My colleagues will also speak about other things to help 
Detroit for which I am supportive. But I also have another idea. See, 
the way I think, I am old-fashioned. My dad ran a grocery store. While 
others talk about the big macro picture, I learned economics at the 
macaroni-and-cheese level in my dad's grocery store. It was about 
supply and demand. I am saying if we stimulate demand, which actually 
gets people to buy cars, people will have to make them. They will have 
to sell them. They will have to service them. They will have to provide 
the insurance and other services to do it.
  Let me tell you how I wish to save jobs in the automobile industry 
and at the same time help our consumers and get our economy back on 
track. It is simple. It is straightforward. It is bipartisan. I am 
joined in my framework, which I introduced as a freestanding bill, by 
Senator Kit Bond of Missouri. More cosponsors are pouring in. My 
provision simply says this: If you buy a new passenger car or light 
truck between November 12 of this year and December 31 of next year, 
you will get a tax deduction on your sales tax and on the interest of 
your loan. Let me repeat that. It is a tax deduction for the sales tax 
on buying that car or light truck. You will also be able to deduct the 
interest on your loan. For many people, depending on the size of the 
vehicle, it can go anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000. It saves jobs. 
Remember where I started. Not only extend unemployment benefits to 
those who have lost their jobs but extend employment so people don't 
lose their jobs.
  One out of every ten jobs in America depends on the automobile 
industry.
  What is it I mean? First of all, in manufacturing--and we know what 
it feels like in Maryland. See this chart. On Broening Highway we made 
minivans for years. Now it is being cleared for who knows what. We know 
it has new uses but not like this. There were 1,000 jobs that paid good 
wages and good salaries. I do not want ``closed'' signs up all over 
America. So it is jobs in manufacturing.
  Then there are jobs in car dealerships. Did you know there are 30,000 
car dealerships in America, and each one employs about 50 or 60 
people--from the people who sell the cars, service the cars, supply the 
parts, and the back office workers handling the bookkeeping and the 
accounting.
  In my own home State there are 300 dealers. If you look at the 
dealers nationwide, we are talking about 150,000 people. In my own 
State, it is over 25,000 people. In many of my rural communities, 
outside the hospital and local government, they are the major employer. 
Dealers are at risk. The people who work at the dealerships are at 
risk. We can change that.
  Now, let me go to the rationale. Why now? Why the urgency? Well, 
first of all, car purchases, whether you are talking about a Toyota or 
a Taurus, whether you are talking about cars made in Detroit or made in 
Kentucky, Alabama or Tennessee or Texas, buying cars, with people going 
into the showrooms, is down by 25 percent.
  But what we also know from the auto research is that people buy more 
cars during the period of Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve than any other 
6-week period. If you pass the Mikulski-Bond amendment, and it is 
signed into law, and people come into the showroom, that is the time 
they want to buy cars, and this is the time we could give them the 
Federal incentive, along with the dealer and manufacturing incentives. 
It could mean tremendous help.
  Now, there are those who will say: Gee, how much does this cost, 
Senator Mikulski? It does cost $8 billion. However, the cost of doing 
nothing is phenomenal. The cost to the Government is about $50 billion 
a year if we do nothing, if our automobile system goes down. If we face 
the ``Armageddon'' of one of them going bankrupt, our pension guaranty 
system would be in great difficulty. We would lose taxes in 
unemployment benefits. In other words, there is a cost to doing nothing 
that is 10 to 20 times greater than what we are talking about here.
  I know my time is about up.
  I say: Pass this stimulus package. Thanks to the leader, my auto 
provision is part of it. We need to talk about saving 3 million jobs in 
the automobile industry. We need to talk about how to help the American 
people.
  I conclude by saying, during the break I went around and talked to my 
constituents. First of all, they are mad as the dickens over the way 
this bailout package has been handled. They feel we gave it to the 
sharks and the whales on Wall Street, and the little guys--the 
minnows--got no help. What they are worried about is the losing of 
their jobs. In many instances, they have already lost their life 
savings, they have lost their homes or they are already in jeopardy.
  Let's talk about a car dealer. I walked in to talk to a dealer in 
Montgomery County. The first thing was I noticed two things: an empty 
showroom and on his lapel he had a Rotary pin. This is a man for which 
that business, in Montgomery County, was started in 1939, during the 
Depression, because they believed in Roosevelt and they believed in the 
American economy. Can they believe in us?
  That man, with his Rotary pin and family, has provided jobs. They fix 
cars. They have sold cars and so on. They kept it going and at the same 
time contributed to the charities in their community, being a good 
corporate citizen.
  You talk to the people who work there. Let's talk to the guy I talked 
to who has worked there for 23 years. He said: Senator Barb, all I have 
ever wanted to do is fix cars. I love fixing cars, and I have fixed 
Chevys and now Accords and Acuras, and I have done a great job. I have 
been happy, and I have made a lot of people happy. But I have two kids 
in college. I was told that for the kind of job I have, there is a 
workforce shortage. But now there is more of a shortage of work than a 
shortage of workers.
  This is whom we are fighting for. We are fighting for our friends. We 
are fighting for our neighbors. We are fighting for the people who have 
kept our communities going. So we come back to wonder: How are we going 
to spend money? We have already spent $350 billion that went to banks 
that do not care. They have no remorse. They have no sense of 
gratitude, and they did not regard us as an investor. Mr. President, 
$350 billion to banks and Paulson is walking around like a passive 
investor. But here, if we make this investment to enable the consumer 
to be in a new car, which will get more fuel efficiency, lower carbon 
emissions, and pick up our economy, I think we are doing something.
  I hope today we get a chance to vote on the economic recovery bill. 
It has major components in it, and one of the major component is it 
extends employment, which is what Americans want.
  On the day Barack Obama resigned from the Senate, let us now resign 
ourselves to follow what the mandate was on November 4. They not only 
gave President-elect Obama a mandate; they gave us a mandate: Get 
America rolling again. The Mikulski legislation puts our economy back 
on wheels.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alabama.

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