[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 176 (Wednesday, November 19, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Page S10623]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   UNANIMOUS-CONSENT REQUEST--S. 3684

  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of a bill I have at the 
desk which is the text of title VII of S. 3689 regarding the auto sales 
tax deduction, and further that the bill be read a third time and 
passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no 
intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. SUNUNU. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. It is my understanding I still have the floor?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has the floor.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Boy, am I sorry that is the last act of John Sununu in 
the Senate. I hope it is not the last thing. I feel so badly about 
people objecting to me bringing this up. Mine is a bipartisan bill that 
I thought maybe I would win, maybe I would lose, but at least we could 
bring it up and debate it and discuss it and vote on it.
  My bill was a straight-forward bill. My bill was to help save jobs in 
the automobile industry, from manufacturing, sales to service, to the 
little people who are the bookkeepers in our communities.
  My bill would give a tax deduction to someone who would buy a car in 
these 6 weeks and they would be able to take a deduction of interest 
and sales tax. The total cost of my bill was $8 billion. But the cost 
of not doing my bill is going to be horrific. It is going to be 
absolutely horrific. I cannot get over how these economic conservatives 
have their ostrich heads in the quicksand of our economy.
  You know what is going to happen when our automobile industry goes 
down. Well, let them go. Well, I will tell you, we are going to lose 
$156 billion over the next 3 years in lost taxes, unemployment, and 
health care assistance.
  We are facing the possibility that 3 million people could lose their 
jobs. But oh, no, we object. We object to debate. We object to 
discussion. We object to taking our ideas and putting them into the 
sunshine and being able to do what I thought you do in a democracy, 
vote ideas up or down.
  If I lose my bill in a vote, that is the way democracy works. But to 
move it through a parliamentary maneuver of something called, ``I 
object,'' I object to the objection. I have no idea why anyone would 
object to bringing up an idea that has bipartisan support to see if we 
could stimulate demand in the automobile industry.
  Well, I tell you what. Senator Barb Mikulski is not the only one who 
objects. The American people object. And that is what they did when 
they walked into that voting booth on November 4 and voted for change. 
They said: Yes, we can. They were objecting to what goes on in this 
institution and what has been going on in the White House for the last 
8 years.
  They said: I object. And they voted. They objected and then they 
voted. And they object by their vote. There is a reason a political 
tsunami hit this institution. It is because of this continual way of 
throwing sand in the gears of democracy. So they said: I object. That 
is what the people said.
  So we can go through these parliamentary shenanigans. We can delay 
what we could do in the next 48 hours to get our economy going. But, 
oh, no.
  We are going to do it. The question is, are we going to do it today 
or are we going to do it 8 weeks from today? The longer we wait, the 
deeper and more prolonged the recession will be. Right now we could 
begin to not only turn the page but begin to turn the economy around.
  So those are the rules of the Senate. I signed up for the Senate, so 
I take the rules as they are. But I will tell you, I stand with the 
American people. I object. And I object to the objection. I am going to 
keep fighting this until we leave. It is my view we shouldn't leave 
until we pass legislation to get this economy going. If we cannot do it 
this week, come back next week because the real turkeys will not be in 
our oven. The real turkeys will be close at hand.
  I yield the floor.

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