[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 20 (Monday, February 2, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1266-S1273]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT OF 2009--Resumed
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont is recognized.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, we are on the economic stimulus package. We
are going to start on that early in the morning, 10 o'clock. The first
amendment we are going to offer, I have already told the Republican
leader, is going to be an amendment offered by Senators Murray,
Feinstein, and others dealing with infrastructure.
We look forward to the next amendment. If the Republicans are ready,
then they should be ready to offer their amendment. We will try to move
through the process as quickly and as fairly as we can.
This is an extremely important piece of legislation. The problems we
have economically in the country today are not the problems of
Democrats or Republicans, they are problems that American people have.
We together have to try to work through this bill. I hope we can have
cooperation. There are many things that people have different
responsibilities for. We have had a longstanding partial-day conference
we are going to have, but we are going to have opportunities during the
time we are there listening to Secretary Chu and Secretary Salazar and
others to offer amendments here.
There will be a significant number of votes. We hope if the
amendments are offered tomorrow and Wednesday, we will have a number of
votes all day tomorrow. Starting about 3 o'clock Wednesday afternoon we
can do the amendments that have been offered that day. So we have lots
of work to do, and it is important we do it as quickly, I repeat, and
as fairly as we can.
I ask unanimous consent the following be recognized for the time
specified: Udall of New Mexico, 15 minutes; Brownback, 10 minutes;
Casey, 15 minutes; Snowe, 20 minutes, Kaufman, 15 minutes. This request
is for these Senators to speak this evening.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, as I rise to give this maiden
speech in our Chamber, we all know we are living in very difficult
times. Our current economic crisis has only accelerated problems that
have been growing for years. America's manufacturing sector was
declining before this crisis, and when this crisis has passed, we will
still need a blueprint for creating high-paying jobs and growing the
middle class.
Meanwhile, our energy policies pose a threat to the economic,
environmental, and national security of our Nation and the world. I
believe these two problems, our economic stagnation and our energy
irresponsibility, demand a common solution. We must put Americans to
work building the energy economy of the future, and we must do so now.
I often say our energy policies have produced a perfect storm, a
combination of three extraordinary challenges
[[Page S1267]]
that collectively threaten our future. First, America's dependence on
fossil fuels threatens our economy. As natural gas provides a growing
share of America's electricity, the price of gas has more than tripled
since 1995, and growing demand promises to make matters worse.
Second, America's energy policies threaten our security. America has
3 percent of the world's natural gas reserves, but we consume 25
percent of the world's supply. That increasingly means sending American
dollars to Russia and Iran, two countries that sit on more than 43
percent of the world's gas reserves and two countries that have shown
their willingness to use energy as an instrument of coercion.
Finally, humans have managed to overwhelm the Earth's carbon cycle.
The balance that sustained life on Earth for millennia has been
radically altered. In New Mexico, this means fewer farms and more
forest fires, more thirst and less water, the end of a unique and
treasured way of life.
Some people say the world's demand for fossil fuels has not yet begun
to outstrip supply, or that the climate is not changing back that
quickly. I look at it this way. We are driving toward the cliff. I do
not want to spend a lot of time arguing about how far off the cliff is.
I want to stop accelerating.
So what do we do? In the short term, we need to do it all. We need to
drill responsibly for domestic energy, we should promote conservation,
and nuclear power has to be part of the mix.
But we also need reforms to prepare us for the future. When I was in
the other body, I fought for and we passed a renewable electricity
standard, an RES. This plan would demand that large utilities generate
a portion of their energy from renewable sources and conservation.
Thanks in large part to my colleague who is on the floor today, the
senior Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Bingaman, the Senate has passed
this proposal three times. Similar policies have succeeded at the State
level. In fact, 28 States have renewable standards, including my home
State of New Mexico. But a national RES has never become the law of the
land. It is time for Congress to make it so.
There are many reasons to support this plan. To start, it is good for
consumers. With a 20-percent standard, utility customers could save
$31.8 billion. It will strengthen rural communities and provide new
income for farmers and ranchers. This plan will make America safer. The
billions of dollars it would generate are dollars that will stay in
America and cannot be used to hold our foreign policy hostage. But most
importantly, a national renewable standard will create hundreds of
thousands of high-paying jobs, jobs that cannot be outsourced. Study
after study shows that shifting capital to renewable energy increases
job creation.
Not only will this plan stimulate job creation today, it will put us
on a path toward dominance in the industries of the future. These
benefits will come from the actions of private businesses making the
RES a distinctly American solution to a global problem. That is why it
will succeed. As one writer has put it, the only thing stronger than
Mother Nature is ``father profit.''
Because it works with the private sector, an RES is more than a
government program. It is an appeal to the spirit of innovation. I know
we have enough of that innovative spirit to tackle any challenge we
face. I see it in the people of New Mexico. I see it in the scientists
chasing new ideas, in entrepreneurs betting their time and capital on
the hope of a better world, in engineers searching blueprint sketches
for the submerged outline of a revolution. My constituents are eager to
tackle the problems that face our country. I know yours are too. But
these citizens have been poorly served by their Government. Just last
month, a renewable energy company from my State was forced to lay off
most of its workforce. After investing in a new technology, the company
could not afford to begin manufacturing. As a result, the progress of
their innovations has been delayed, and the dreams of their workers
have been deferred.
It did not have to be this way. Countries that have done more to
shape their energy markets have created driving green energy
industries. With a population roughly a quarter as large as America's,
Germany has twice as many workers developing wind energy technologies.
Spain has almost 5 times as many workers in the solar thermal industry
as America, and China has more than 300 times.
Today our markets do not accurately price the social cost of burning
fossil fuels. As a result, the private sector is effectively being told
to send American dollars overseas, to ignore the coming decline in
fossil fuel supplies, and to radically alter the world's climate. It is
a credit to America's energy companies that so many of them have
invested in alternative fuels and conservation. But individual acts of
responsibility cannot compensate for a market that encourages
irresponsibility. If we are going to make the changes we need,
conservation cannot be an act of personal virtue, and renewable fuels
cannot be luxury alternatives. An RES would structure the marketplace
so those decisions that are best for the American people are also the
best for the bottom line. This approach will make the market a powerful
force for progress because Government cannot tackle this problem alone.
New Mexico contains two of America's preeminent national labs. We
know these public institutions have an incredible innovative capacity,
but we also know Government needs private sector partners to achieve
its goals. From 1970 to 1996, Los Alamos National Lab, the institution
that harnessed the power of the atom and launched America's national
lab system, developed a technique for cleanly and efficiently using the
Earth's heat to generate energy. Estimates indicated that the technique
could eventually power the Earth for hundreds of years. But without
market incentives to encourage continued development, progress
stagnated.
Only recently have American businesses rediscovered the geothermal
technologies this country pioneered. Because our markets do not
appropriately value renewable energy, we lost more than a decade while
the world raced ahead. America cannot afford to let another country
become the world's green energy leader. Someday soon, green energy will
no longer be an alternative; it will be the standard. The CEO of GE
Energy recently testified before Congress that wind and solar energy
are likely to be among the largest sources of new manufacturing jobs
worldwide during the 21st century. The question is whether these jobs
will be in America. That is what I want, and that is what we need to
do.
America has always succeeded by being one step ahead. We mass
produced the car, and American manufacturing built the middle class. We
sparked the IT revolution, and our high-tech industry fueled American
prosperity for years. Today being one step ahead means developing the
green energy economy of the future before anybody else does. The
challenge is huge but so is the payoff if we succeed--a stronger
economy, a more secure future, and a chance to reclaim the mantle of
world leadership by the force of our example and the unmatched capacity
of our people. It is clear these are difficult times. I devoted this
speech to a proposal I believe will allow us to meet these difficulties
head on and to emerge a safer, stronger, more prosperous Nation. I
believe the American people are ready for change, and they are ready
for the change this plan represents. It is up to us to rise to the
challenge.
Should we do so--and I am confident we will--we will remember today
as a time when America again turned a global threat into a national
opportunity. We will remember the day when our Government set free the
power of American industry to tackle one of the world's toughest
problems, and we will celebrate the time when American businesses and
American workers rose and together rebuilt a newer world, a clean
energy world.
I also wish to thank today a number of my colleagues and friends: My
cousin, Mark Udall, from the great State of Colorado; Senator Bingaman,
whom I mentioned, who has been a leader on these renewable technologies
and has gotten this proposal that I talked about today through the
Senate three times. I see Jeanne Shaheen, who is also in my class; Jeff
Merkley, Debbie Stabenow, Sherrod Brown, Bob Casey, many Members who
are here. I am grateful.
I yield the floor.
[[Page S1268]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under a previous order, the Senator from
Kansas is recognized for 10 minutes.
Mr. BROWNBACK. I welcome my colleague from New Mexico, Senator Udall,
a great name in U.S. politics. I am sure he will do a great job in this
body, and I appreciate his comments talking about green expansion and
what we can do to create jobs and opportunities. We certainly need to
do that, and I welcome him.
I rise to speak on the stimulus bill in front of us. Our economy is
certainly in great difficulty. The American people are suffering. Look
at the numbers. They don't tell what is in people's hearts or what is
happening to their pocketbooks, but it does paint a bleak picture. Real
gross domestic product declined 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter this
past year. Consumer spending, which is nearly 70 percent of the
economy, was down 3.5 percent. We had weak consumer spending, weak
exports, weak investment. That translates into a bad job market. I
don't think anybody questions but that we are in difficult economic
times.
For the past 12 months, the economy has lost nearly 2.6 million
payroll jobs. From Friday's forecast, the estimates ahead are looking
at another 500,000-plus jobs lost during the month of January. Ouch.
That is bad. It is hard. It is difficult. The economy is in very
difficult shape, and people are suffering.
I wish to see President Obama succeed in helping to move the economy
forward. I wish to see Congress be a constructive part of the process.
I believe we can do both. If we could slow down a little bit and work
together, we could come up with an economic stimulus package that could
get 80 votes out of this body. Unfortunately, the bill in front of us
is neither prudent nor responsible. I don't think it is going to get us
out of the hole we are in. It just digs the hole deeper. There is an
old saying that if you are in a hole, stop digging. Unfortunately, the
bill we are considering resembles too much the one that passed the
House of Representatives, ignores that advice, and supplies bigger
shovels to dig the hole deeper and faster. That is not the way we
should go.
My hope and prayer for this week is that we will work as a body; if
we can't work as a body and work together to fashion something on a
bipartisan basis that actually stimulates the economy, that we simply
send this back to the committee to start over again. I am on the
Appropriations Committee. We got the bill on our side 24 hours ahead of
voting on it in committee. The committee held no hearings on this bill
whatsoever. We voted within 1 hour 40 minutes to appropriate and spend
$350 billion, basically creating another fiscal year between 2009 and
2010 and then pouring a wad of money into a number of different
segments without rhyme or reason for how it would stimulate the
economy. That is what gets everybody so upset about this bill. It is
spending a lot of money, and it is not going to stimulate the economy.
This notion about what we want to do is just get a lot of money out
the door or maybe use a crisis to spend money in places that people
wanted to do for some time may be more of what is at stake. The White
House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, stated:
You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean
by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you
could not do before.
Unfortunately, what I think is in this package is too much of that
idea, that we have a crisis, let's use this crisis to put a lot of
money into different places that we wanted to all along to get it out
the door and get it passed. You can do it that way, but that doesn't
stimulate the economy. That stimulates the Government and Government
spending and expands the Government to the point that some economists
are looking at the Federal Government becoming 30 percent of the
economy, where normally we run at about 20 percent of the economy. You
are looking at doing that on a permanent basis. We cannot afford that.
We particularly cannot afford that, given the first wave of the baby
boomers who retire in large measure by 2012. Three years from now, you
start hitting that big pool of retirees getting Medicare and Social
Security instead of paying into it. At the same time, you have
ratcheted up your size of Government under this crisis mode to the
point that you could get a mammoth sized Federal Government that cannot
be sustained on the backs of taxpayers, under the idea of you don't
want to waste a good crisis, you want to use it to spend in areas that
you wish you could have all along.
What these packages deliver, unfortunately, is an increasing amount
of debt and a plethora of big Government spending increases
masquerading as a fiscal stimulus. It is a grab bag of different
spending programs with the hope that it would somehow chase the
recession away. Instead, it adds to the debt. This bill will cost
American taxpayers close to $900 billion. That is on top of an already
projected deficit of $1.2 trillion.
It is also interesting that when President Clinton came into office,
he put forward an economic stimulus package that was defeated as being
too big and too costly and that one was priced at $16 billion. We are
looking at $900 billion. That was $16 billion. It was too much and too
expensive. It added to the debt too much at a time that we had a
difficult economy as well.
Here, it appears, billions of dollars are being spent on all kinds of
programs that should be addressed in the normal appropriations process.
We have a process, and we can use that, but now we are putting in
money, and people have heard this litany: $400 million for the
prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, $6 billion for clean water
revolving funds, $6 billion to convert Federal buildings to ``green
buildings,'' $1 billion for the 2010 census, $400 million to replace
the Social Security Administration's National Computer Center. Now, all
this may be fine--$600 million for new vehicles for the Government, $50
million for the National Endowment for the Arts--all of it may be fine,
but that is not a stimulus package. That is a spending package. That is
an appropriations bill that should go through in the normal process.
Economists and members of the President's economic team have stressed
the need for funds to be targeted, timely, and temporary. However, over
$250 billion of the spending in this bill is for income-transfer
payments that will put the Federal Government on the hook for long-term
spending as far as the eye can see--and just when the baby boomers
start to retire in 2012 in large numbers. That is not wise.
We will also hear some rhetoric about how spending is a more
effective means of stimulating the economy than tax reductions. I do
not agree with that. I do not believe that. I do not think economic
theory nor the practice of what we have seen in the past supports it.
Research by the President's own Chairman of the Council of Economic
Advisors suggests $3 of economic activity per $1 reduction in taxes.
The economy needs some gas in the tank, not sugar. We should focus on
creating an environment and incentives for businesses and individuals
to invest and create real jobs, not illusory jobs created by a big
Government handout that will not be permanent in a competitive global
economy and will load too much burden on future generations by debt and
taxes. We should provide real and permanent tax reduction accompanied
by truly timely, targeted, and temporary spending. I could support an
expansion for roads and bridges because we need the roads and bridges.
That is not what is in this grab bag.
I would like to list another example of a tax cut that we could do
that could put as much and would probably put as much as $545 billion
into the U.S. economy--$545 billion. This is from an article written by
Alan Sinai last week. It is something we have done in the past, where
we have lowered the taxes on repatriation of foreign-earned dollars.
The last time we did that, we reduced the corporate tax rate of 5.25
percent for 1 year. We brought back into the United States nearly $360
billion of money.
That is money that is earned by companies such as Hill's pet food in
Topeka, KS, which has pet food plants in Europe and Asia. They make
money there, but they cannot bring it home because they are subject to
this 5.25 corporate tax rate. So they leave it there. But for a 1-year
time period, you could take that down to 1 percent, or a low number,
and they will say: I am going to bring it home. Then it puts gas in the
tank and not sugar in the
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tank. That is a tax cut that will help us. This is capital our economy
needs and needs badly. I cannot see a single rational reason why we
would not take action to encourage American companies to bring capital
home.
Let me close by saying there are a number of worthwhile spending
programs that need to be addressed but not under the guise of fiscal
stimulus. We do need to address infrastructure issues, and I could
support a substantial amount of infrastructure spending, but the lag
time on these is difficult and it is long. On the other hand, there is
defense spending that could take place even now and the pipeline is not
as long and, importantly, that is money we are already scheduled to
spend. It simply would be advancing the timetable, not expanding the
amount.
My point is, as I started off, if we would spend a little more time
here and in committee and work together, we could get 80 votes for this
bill. If this bill is forced through this week and we end up with the
size of Government of 30 percent of GDP, then this will be mostly on a
partisan-line vote. That is not the way we should start. It is not the
way we should go.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from
Pennsylvania is recognized for 15 minutes.
Mr. CASEY. Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr. President, I rise tonight to speak as well on the challenge we
have ahead of us with regard to the legislation we are debating this
week. We will be considering a lot of amendments to that legislation;
that is, the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
I want to speak, first of all, in a broad way about the challenge
ahead of us. I sent a letter toward the end of last year to both our
majority leader Senator Reid, as well as to Senator McConnell,
outlining priorities, as I saw them, from the vantage point of
Pennsylvania's challenges as well as the country's.
I used a phrase that we have heard often, the last word of which
might be a little different than we have heard. We have heard summaries
of this strategy where the priorities of any kind of recovery bill
should be focused on being timely, targeted, and transformative. I
believe all three are essential: Timely, meaning we cannot sit on this
for too long; we have to act. I think that is essential; targeted, in
the sense we cannot have broad spending. We have to make sure we target
the dollars to strategies that work; transformative, in the sense that
as we are making investments in infrastructure or in people to get them
through the recession, and also to generate spending, we also have a
chance to be transformative, to change our economy for the better and
to transform people's lives.
In Pennsylvania--and it is true of virtually any State in the
country; we just saw the data that unemployment went up in every single
State in the month of December, and I know the Presiding Officer
understands this from his work as a Governor and now as a Senator--in a
State like ours in Pennsylvania--whether it is the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania or the Commonwealth of Virginia--we are seeing challenges
all around. We have had record job loss. Even foreclosure rates, which
have been a lot lower than the rest of the country, are now spiking up.
Families have been hit with a kind of economic trauma we have not seen
in more than a generation. The same is true of businesses. Their bottom
lines have been decimated by the downturn in this economy, principally
because businesses and families have not had access to credit to borrow
money for a small business or to borrow money for student loans or for
the purchase of an automobile or something that a family wants to spend
money on but cannot do it without credit.
So we know the trauma that has been visited upon the American people.
We also know that just as that has been happening, there has also been
a real crisis of confidence, some of this emanating from the way the
Troubled Asset Relief Program, the so-called TARP, was implemented by
the Treasury Department in the prior administration.
One of the obligations we have in the Senate in this debate, but even
beyond this debate, is to do everything we can to restore that
confidence. You could express it as confidence, you could express it as
trust. However you describe it, a good bit of that--too much of that--
was lost in the last couple months. As people were feeling the trauma
of this economy on their own lives or on their own families or on their
own communities, there was also a loss of trust and confidence in what
the Federal Government did or did not do and what the Federal
Government can do going forward. So as we consider this legislation,
this is not just about a program and dollars and whether the strategy
will work. This will be a test of the Senate, a test of the Congress
and the administration, in terms of our ability to restore some of that
confidence and literally to restore trust in our Government.
One of the ways we can begin to repair that relationship between the
American people and the Congress, between the people who pay the taxes
and the Government that spends those dollars, is to work on a couple of
areas of oversight. It is not the whole answer, but it goes a long way
to helping. So I have two amendments I will be offering this week on
oversight.
The first amendment will allow for a comprehensive assessment through
the creation of a joint select committee on economic recovery
oversight. This oversight committee will be made up of Members of the
House and the Senate and will be required to submit reports to every
Member of the House and the Senate but, more importantly, to the
American people every 3 months. The reports will focus on, first, the
success of this act in creating jobs and the details behind that; and,
no. 2, any instances of waste, fraud, and abuse in programs funded by
this act.
Membership on the panel will break down as follows: 10 Members of the
Senate, including the chairmen and ranking members of the Committees on
Finance and Appropriations, 4 Members appointed from the majority party
by the majority leader of the Senate, and 2 Members from the minority
party appointed by the minority party itself; secondly, 10 Members of
the House, including the chairmen and ranking members of the Committee
on Ways and Means and the Committee on Appropriations; and it goes on
from there in the same way as the Senate.
While I recognize the administration has pushed for and the bill
before us includes a new Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency
Board, I want to make sure the legislative branch is in a position to
carry out our oversight responsibilities. Congress has not always done
a good job on that, and we have to ensure that a good job is done in
this instance for this kind of oversight.
The second amendment I have would direct the Government
Accountability Office, known by the acronym GAO, to compile reports of
the Offices of the Inspectors General in each of the Federal
Departments or agencies that expend or obligate funds under the
Recovery Act. The GAO would in turn submit reports to Congress that
would contain the following: No. 1, a summary of oversight activities
of the Offices of Inspectors General relating to expenditure of
recovery funds; and, No. 2, an evaluation of the effectiveness of this
act. So you have the GAO, an independent entity, reviewing what has
been happening under this legislation.
The aim of these GAO reports would be to assess which provisions of
the act have been effective at creating jobs. The whole intent of this
legislation is to create jobs. We better make sure that happens. The
reports would be submitted no later than 120 days from enactment of the
act, with followup reports submitted at 180 days after enactment as
well as 240 days, again, after enactment.
Both of these amendments are focused on oversight. That is the
language we use to make sure the bill and to make sure the Government
is doing its job to carry out the purposes of this recovery and
reinvestment act.
But we have to do more than that. This effort with the two amendments
is a way to very specifically begin to rebuild the confidence the
American people must have in what the Congress does and to recover and
reinvigorate some of that trust we should have in our Government,
especially at this time. No piece of legislation can do that on its
own. No Senator or Member of the House can do that on his or her
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own. But we have to try collectively to do all we can to rebuild
confidence because if we do not have that kind of confidence going
forward for the effectiveness of this legislation, then we cannot
expect the American people to support this legislation and the programs
infused with capital by this legislation over a long period of time. So
we have much work to do to strengthen oversight, and by doing that to
begin to increase the confidence the American people have in our
Government and in this legislation.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Under the previous order, the Senator from Maine is recognized for 20
minutes.
Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, I rise today, at this most consequential of
times, and as a member of the Senate Committee on Finance, to speak to
the issue of the economic stimulus we have begun to consider here in
the U.S. Senate.
We are deliberating on this legislation because the gravity of our
economic circumstances is the most dire we have witnessed since the
Great Depression, and in just three months, this recession will
officially become the longest and quite possibly the deepest since the
1930s. We lost 2.6 million jobs last year, the most since 1945. The
U.S. Department of Labor has reported the number of Americans receiving
unemployment benefits has reached 4.8 million, an all-time high since
record-keeping began in 1967--and that doesn't include the nearly 1.7
million getting benefits through an extension last summer.
Mark Zandi--chief economist for Moody's Economy.com, who has advised
both Senator McCain and President Obama--has stated, ``without
stimulus, unemployment will rise well into the double digits by this
time next year.'' And then we learned last Friday that the economy
shrank at its fastest pace in nearly 27 years in the fourth quarter of
2008. Our gross national product dropped at a 3.8-percent annual rate,
worst since 1982.
So, indisputably, the grave nature of the current landscape dictates
the urgency of passing a substantial and comprehensive economic
stimulus package. I want to support a stimulus package. But I cannot
support just any package. This Chamber cannot support just any package.
We have a responsibility--an obligation--to apply a rigorous standard
to determine whether this approach will help extricate our Nation from
this crisis.
And yet, even the best economic minds are not in agreement or accord
on what is the optimal stimulus to pursue--and what it would achieve.
Business Week, in its January 28 issue, asks ``how much does boosting
government spending or cutting taxes help the private sector? Can
massive fiscal stimulus . . . create lobs and increase economic
output?''
David Leonhardt, economics columnist for The New York Times,
stipulated in an article on January 29, 2009, that such a ``bill should
help the economy in both the near term and the long term. But the
government doesn't go out and spend about $800 billion every day. The
details matter.'' He is absolutely right--the details do matter--and
that is why this amendment process is so fundamental. Current CBO
Director Douglas Elmendorf testified before the House Budget Committee
on January 27, 2009, and said, ``stimulative policies, if well
designed, could hasten the economy's recovery and reduce the overall
loss of output during the recession.'' That is precisely the test of
how effective a fiscal stimulus is--does it help bring us out of
recession?
In that light, we must not confuse stimulus with omnibus. For those
who say we cannot burden this bill with provisions that are not within
the strictures of economic stimulus, I couldn't agree more. And to do
otherwise would only compromise the credibility of any package that may
ultimately be enacted.
This is a multidimensional crisis that requires a multidimensional
approach, and it is critical we get this right. Already Congress passed
the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which as we all know has had its own
significant problems. Already the Federal Reserve has essentially
exhausted its options to improve the economy through monetary policy,
having reduced interest rates to zero--something else that hasn't
happened since the 1930s--and lent more than $1 trillion to stabilize
the financial and credit markets. So as I said during the mark-up of
the Senate Finance Committee's portion of this package, we ought to
remember that for us, in crafting fiscal policy to meet this historic
challenge, there are no ``do-overs.'' We only have so many arrows in
our fiscal quiver.
And so this debate shouldn't be about how much we label as ``tax
relief'' and how much we label as ``spending.'' We must not retreat
into our ideological corners or comfort zones. Rather, it should be
about the merits of the individual measures in this legislation and
whether the totality of the package can--in the timely, temporary, and
targeted fashion we have employed on stimulus measures in the past--
deliver job creation and assistance to people in need--who also will
spend funds quickly, further bolstering economic recovery. We must ask,
does this package fit the times--because in the words of an editorial
in the Lewiston Sun-Journal in my home State of Maine: ``right now,
there's a country, an economy and a basic way of life that needs
rescuing. Most of all, though, the country needs a program that works .
. .''
I ask unanimous consent the entire editorial be printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be
printed in the Record, as follows:
Senators, Bring Sense to Stimulus
In economic stimulus, numbers have ceased to matter. The
current package before Congress is $819 billion, but it could
be a quadrillion, for all it matters. What's been proposed is
stimulus at any cost, because continued lagging of American
economic output is a failure beyond comfortable calculation.
Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are center stage this
debate, by virtue of their center-right leanings. Their
lobbies are filled with lobbyists and their ears are filled
with pleas, suggestions and threats, perhaps, of what their
vote on the stimulus means, either way.
Stakes are high. So are the costs. But Maine's senators
must ignore both of those, we think, in favor of the simplest
approach, to evaluating the merits of the stimulus: Prove to
us it is going to work, they should say, and soon.
Shortcomings or delays need not apply.
Praise and damnation for the stimulus from the right and
left are both steeped in truth. The country does need
targeted programs to strengthen safety nets, help states stem
red ink and put people to work through infrastructure and
other investments,
But It doesn't need a wish list, the rush to fulfill an
ideological agenda that's been stewing for eight years under
the former administration. There's time for that later. Right
now, there's a country, an economy and a basic way of life
that needs rescuing.
Most of all, though, the country needs a program that
works. Fast. This is where Snowe and Collins can hold sway,
by bringing common sense to the stimulus legislation through
the application of basic, pragmatic principles.
The country has already spent in haste. The 2007 stimulus
cut checks to every American, which felt great, but flopped.
The 2008 rescue for banks on their eves of destruction is
looking like the money was thrown into a gaping maw, never to
be seen again.
That Congress is now pressuring banks to lend their bailout
funds, instead of hoarding them, is testimony to the
contradictory nature of that bailout/rescue/stimulus. The
$700 billion was meant to stabilize the economy, not those
institutions that acted so recklessly to destroy it.
So here we are, as Americans, burned twice by major
spending packages that haven't spurred the desired effect--
staunching our economic bleeding and injecting fiscal
penicillin to kill the diseases spreading through our
markets. Two strikes. We can't afford a third.
President Barack Obama has presented the most thoughtful
package to date. There's little question that expertise and
intellect replaced emotion and paranoia as the sentiments
driving its creation. The questions that remain are basic:
Does it work, and how soon?
These are what Senators Collins and Snowe should have
answered to their satisfaction before deciding which way to
vote. The numbers and stakes are high, obviously.
What matters is that this stimulus package makes sense, and
that it works. Quickly.
Ms. SNOWE. Moreover, we must calibrate even more carefully the
imperative for speed against the ironclad necessity of getting this
legislation right--given this bill in its current
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form would add nearly $900 billion to our national debt--and that is
before any interest payments--on top of the $10.6 trillion debt that
exists. And that means, we cannot open the door to permanent spending
that exceeds the life and purpose of what is before us today.
In fact, Alice Rivlin, former Director of the Office of Management
and Budget in the Clinton administration, offered the following fiscal
reality-check in her testimony before the House Budget Committee last
week, ``because we're doing this outside the budget process, it means
no one has to talk about what the long-term effects of any of this
might be.'' Well, let us talk about the long term effects here and now.
As my colleagues are well aware, CBO has projected a staggering $3.1
trillion budget deficit over the next 10 years, and that's before we
pass this bill that will add $900 billion to that total. And as we all
know, CBO assumes that any additional funding levels added for Federal
spending will be added to the budget baseline and extended in
perpetuity with an inflation adjustment. In other words, this bill may
exist entirely outside the normal budget process, but it will now be in
CBO's baseline--meaning any future reductions will be considered by
some to be ``cuts.''
Therefore, we must ensure that programs that may well be great policy
but not economic stimulus are not considered in this package and
instead are vetted through the regular budget and legislative process.
And that spending authorized in this bill ends when its emergency,
stimulative function ends--with any continuation again only considered
in the future through the normal process. As the Concord Coalition
among others has called for, we must have an exit strategy to ensure
that we don't create unintended consequences down the road that will
cause additional economic hardship and harm.
On that note, I believe that we deserve from the proponents of this
bill a breakdown in each of the different titles of this legislation
such as what are the job-creation expectations for each, or how
precisely will they assist those displaced by the current recession and
will that assistance itself also bolster our economy in the near term?
Further, I am working on an amendment that will require the new
Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board created in this
legislation to include, in its quarterly reports, a specific listing of
the numbers of jobs being created by each title in this act. But most
critically, the amendment will direct the Board to recommend for
rescission the unobligated balances of any program in the Act that are
not currently creating--or cannot be reasonably expected to create--
jobs or help those displaced by the current recession. These provisions
will hopefully shine a spotlight on the efficacy of the new law in
creating badly needed jobs.
Again, the bottom line question for us must not be exclusively
whether a particular proposal in this package is a good idea. The
bottom line question is, as I conveyed to Vice President Biden in a
conversation between us recently, will this package work in terms of
jump-starting the economy?
Columnist Robert Samuelson spoke directly to that challenge when he
wrote in The Washington Post today, ``...the immediate need is for the
stimulus package to stimulate--now. It needs to be frontloaded.'' I do
think it is positive that the legislation contains some measures to
move money out quickly and effectively, such as shortening the normal
deadline for Federal agencies to commit funds, and setting deadlines on
Federal awarding of formula grants, among others, so States,
communities, or agencies are not sitting on the money. They will be
required to expend it within a given period of time in order to impact
the economy.
In addition, as we heard last year from CBO, extending unemployment
benefits is a preeminent stimulus tool, as it concluded its cost-
effectiveness is ``large'' . . . the length of time for impact is
``short'' . . . and the uncertainty about the policy's effects is
``small.'' Now we have Moody's Economy.com estimating that every dollar
spent on unemployment benefits generates $1.63 in near term GDP. So I
am pleased the finance package I supported in committee included about
$39 billion to extend unemployment insurance. And I thank the Finance
Committee Chair Baucus for including my measure to exclude the first
$2,400 of unemployment benefits from taxation, to further maximize the
provision's stimulative effect.
On the tax side, the Finance package also includes a payroll tax
credit, known as the making work pay tax credit for more than 95
percent of working families in the United States--which Mark Zandi has
said will be ``particularly effective, as the benefit will go to lower
income households...that are much more likely to spend any tax benefit
they receive.''
I am also pleased that Senator Grassley was able to insert an
absolutely vital provision to middle-income taxpayers in America that
addresses the alternative minimum tax, which is an egregious and
onerous tax on so many millions of taxpayers across this country, and,
if left applied, would make the tax credit of $500 and $1,000 less
effective. I am very pleased that was included to add another $70
billion worth of tax relief to middle-income America.
The finance portion also includes increasing eligibility for the
refundable portion of the child tax credit that Senator Lincoln and I
have advocated and championed over the years. We have included this
child tax credit going back to 2001 in the Economic Growth and Tax
Relief Reconciliation Act. This incentive would reach low-income
families earning between $6,000 and $12,667 a year.
I have heard arguments before about refundability, and people will
say we should not provide funding to those families who don't have a
Federal income tax liability. I would point out that although these
people may not earn enough to have a Federal income tax liability, they
do work and contribute to local taxes and payroll taxes and, the
refundable child credit will get additional money into the pockets of
those most likely to spend it.
After all, I don't think that anybody would deny that low-income
families earning between $6,000 and $12,667 on an annual basis should
have some benefits under this legislation. I don't think anybody can
deny that they will not be spending that money and that it will not be
stimulative in the final analysis. I do believe they deserve to be part
of this stimulus plan.
I also believe that preserving and creating jobs over the short term
that will also endure for the long term are not mutually exclusive
goals. To the contrary. As ranking member of the Small Business
Committee, I am very pleased the Finance Committee package included tax
provisions to assist small businesses to sustain operations and
employees. In particular, we extend small business expensing to
$250,000 to promote investment. After all, small businesses are going
to be the lifeline to job creation, as they have been in the past. In
fact, small businesses create two-thirds of all net new jobs in
America. They will be the lifeblood of this economic recovery. It is
important to extend the expensing provision of $250,000, as well as
provide a 5-year net operating loss carryback to firms, giving them an
immediate tax refund they can use to sustain operations and hire new
employees, among other priorities.
But above all--and I underscore this point--those receiving Federal
money under the rescue plan under TARP will not have access or be
allowed to take advantage of these additional taxpayer resources.
In addition, we must neither neglect nor forget our Nation's
distressed and rural communities. Our bill recognizes that imperative
by including an additional $1.5 billion in 2008 and 2009 allocation
authority for the New Markets Tax Credit. I am told that the community
development financial institutions fund, which administers the
incentive, can allocate this 2008 credit authority within 60 days,
which will create 11,000 permanent jobs and 35,000 construction jobs.
Since the only thing we don't want to be temporary in this package is
the jobs it creates, this legislation will place Americans on the
vanguard of the jobs of the future with the extension of the renewable
energy tax credit to promote green technology, which will be absolutely
crucial as nations compete to emerge from this global economic
downturn. In fact, if we had not dithered last year and opted to
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pass the extension of the renewable tax credits at the beginning of
2008, we would have already been on the road to creating 100,000 new
jobs.
I have heard a lot of arguments against renewable energy tax credits,
saying they are not stimulative. We are in the midst of a global
downturn, and every country on Earth is going to be competing for jobs
in the 21st century. Determining what is the best path to creating
those jobs and investments in green technology is on the forefront of
job creation. I want to be sure this country is in the vanguard when it
comes to creating jobs of the future.
Certainly making investments in renewable energy sources is going to
be so critical and so essential to job creation and to competing with
other nations as they attempt to emerge as well from this global
downturn.
In fact, these renewable tax credits will create more than 89,000
more jobs by giving certainty to companies that can start now on
projects and count on these important incentives to take risks and
grow. In fact, there are a number of projects in my own State of Maine
that have been postponed and placed on hold because they cannot receive
the benefits from the tax credits or financial institutions have
suspended their loans and their lending opportunities. That has
prevented these companies from moving forward on projects that they
have wanted to pursue over the last few months. These are major
projects that will create thousands of jobs in my State, and the same
is true in so many States across the country. That is why this
investment in renewables is going to be essential to job creation.
Considering the entirety of the stimulus package, both tax and
spending, and its ability to have an immediate impact, CBO has now
reported that of the current $884 billion size of the bill, $694
billion, or 78 percent, spends out in 2009 and 2010. That is a
significant portion of this stimulus plan. Yet on the purely
appropriations side, the spendout over the next 2 years is only 49
percent, and I believe we can and must do better.
Furthermore, I must say that there are allocations that simply do not
belong in the stimulus package. Do we need to include $575 million for
renovation and research at the National Institute of Standards and
Technology in this legislation? Or $2 billion for advanced battery
manufacturing? Or $135 million for the management of lands and
resources?
Again, there are many more examples in this legislation that
certainly should be identified as ones that should go through the
normal budgetary process.
There are other provisions that are unequivocally worthy of strong
support. But again, we have to identify them as to whether this is the
appropriate vehicle for their consideration, and I would say not.
I am hopeful in the final analysis that we can further address this
pivotal matter of nonstimulative provisions through the amendment
process over the coming days. As the New York Times columnist David
Brooks recently wrote, the package, as currently constituted, ``is part
temporary and part permanent, part timely and part untimely, part
targeted and part untargeted.'' And he also deftly pointed out,
``leadership involves prioritizing.'' I think we will have to work in
the days ahead on both sides of the political aisle to offer amendments
to bring accountability to this process, to bring both sides together,
and to develop the kind of consensus that is going to restore the
integrity and confidence in the package we ultimately pass.
Mr. President, finally, as ranking member of the Senate Committee on
Small Business, I am pleased that the Senate Appropriations Committee
also included multiple small business lending provisions that I think
are critical to the overall objective of this legislation which, of
course, is to create jobs.
Let me also address one provision that I think is critical and that
has been part of the finance package--and that is expanding the
Medicaid Program to assist States all across this country. I have heard
that many have suggested that somehow this is not stimulative, and that
it is not appropriate to include additional funding for Medicaid
assistance to the States.
There are 45 States that are facing significant budget shortfalls
with a combined budgetary gap of $350 billion. Are we suggesting it
would not have a profound impact on our national economy if all 45
States, which are going to have to make some drastic decisions under
any circumstances, had to make even more difficult choices if we did
not provide the $87 billion that is included in the Finance Committee
package to assist them?
In fact, I think it is going to be critically important that we do so
because otherwise they will have to raise taxes and cut spending
dramatically, which obviously will have a tremendous and consequential
impact on the state of the economy, leading to more job losses and a
more severe downturn.
As we know, States are required by their constitutions to balance
their budgets. So, obviously, they will have to resort to raising taxes
or reducing spending. I think we have an obligation to be a strong
Federal partner and provide assistance when it comes to Medicaid
because, after all, not only are States having difficulty with their
existing caseloads and increases in cost, but they are also facing a
burgeoning caseload due to job losses. In fact, for every 1 percent
increase in unemployment, an additional 1 million Americans will
qualify for Medicaid or the children's health insurance program under
the current enrollment criteria.
All that said, I also think we should impose some conditions on the
States. First, they should not be able to expand their current
benefits. They should maintain their existing benefits coverage.
Second, we should require prompt payment, so that states cannot sit on
payments, but rather within a timely fashion of 30 days have to
reimburse providers for care because delays in payments to providers
ultimately threaten their operations, limit their ability to make
investments to take care of their patients, or put them at risk of
ultimately having to cut back substantially, which will have a
tremendous impact on the overall economy.
Time is of the essence and so is the obligation to get this right to
the best of our ability. Hopefully, we can achieve a bipartisan bill,
one that is going to achieve the legitimate objectives of job creation,
of stimulus and assisting those who have been displaced as a result of
the downturn in this economy. These goals are not mutually exclusive.
In fact, I think they are ones that could easily be accomplished as we
go through this process, if we all agree in the final analysis that we
need to move forward with a package that will meet the times and to
accommodate the enormity of the challenge we are facing in this country
today.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I am fortunate to have heard the remarks
of the Senator from Maine. They are excellent, and I find so much of it
I agree with.
I am a brandnew Senator, but I have been around the Senate for 36
years. I think in those 36 years, this is truly one of the historic
moments in all the years I have been following the Senate. We are about
to embark on a task that will test this institution, as we begin the
debate on the response to the profound economic crisis we face.
Last Monday, as my first full week as a U.S. Senator began, thousands
of American workers lost their jobs. In a single day, tens of thousands
of families lost their breadwinners, men and women lost the dignity
that comes with work, and States and cities across the country lost the
productive labor and the tax revenues those workers have provided.
This was just a single bad day. But over the last couple years, the
news from our economy has been increasingly disturbing. American
payrolls shrank by over 2.5 million jobs last year, including 524,000
in December alone, touching every corner of this country. The
accelerating pace of unemployment tells us there is more bad news to
come. Along with laid-off workers, we have unused productivity
capacity. Thirty percent of our manufacturing strength is idle.
It is no wonder that Americans are cautious about spending. But their
caution, as we know, is reinforcing the slowdown.
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With that decline in consumer spending, our retailers are shutting
their doors, laying off sales staff and management. With declining
sales, manufacturers are laying off workers and shutting down assembly
lines. Responses that are perfectly rational for individuals making
their own decisions only add to our problems, making us all worse off.
Our jobs, our savings, our homes, our credit--all are under siege.
Left alone, we know things will only get worse. We have to break that
vicious cycle.
I remind my colleagues of these troubling trends because as bad as
things are, they can get worse. Because we have failed to revive
employment, consumer spending--the key to today's economy--and consumer
confidence--the key to tomorrow's economy--remain in a slump. Because
we failed to restore stability in home prices, foreclosures continue to
spread. Because we have failed so far to clean up our banking system,
lending and borrowing are drying up.
That is the real urgency behind the task of building an effective
economic recovery plan because if we fail to act, we can be sure that
we will lose more jobs, lose more homes, and reduce the value of our
economy.
Because so much has gone wrong, our recovery plan must tackle many
different problems at the same time. Because so much of our economic
value has been lost, the scale of our response must be equal to that
challenge. Because of the risk of further decline, our response must be
rapid.
That is why the Senate is beginning debate today on a historic
economic recovery investment program for America. We must do something
dramatic to turn our economy around. At the same time, the American
people will rightly judge whether we have used this moment wisely,
whether we have invested these hundreds of billions of dollars of their
hard-earned dollars in ways that will improve their lives.
Job creation and job preservation must be our goal. Jobs, jobs, jobs.
Every job lost is another blow to our economy, losing productive work,
spending power, and the revenue that supports the education, health
care, roads, water, police, and fire protection provided by our State
and local governments. Every job lost is truly a human tragedy, for the
man and woman who loses the dignity of work, and the families thrown
into turmoil.
One important way to create jobs is make more investments that will
make our economy more productive--clearly, roads, bridges, clean water.
A smart power grid, as we discussed with former Vice President Al Gore
last week in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, could become to
our economy what the railroads were in the 19th century, what the
highways were to postwar America, and what the Internet has meant to
our digital age. And as we discussed last week in the Judiciary
Committee, we can revolutionize health care records and at the same
time save billions of dollars while digitizing paper records, making
sure we have appropriate privacy safeguards. We can improve health
care, save money, help protect our patients, and create jobs. We will
need to install new computers, routers, and software and educate and
train the people with the skills to make the system work.
Listen, as jobs are created, consumers will be able to spend,
homeowners will be able to keep up with their mortgages, families will
be able to keep their kids in college. That is what economic recovery
means, and that is what we have to do.
Finally, just as important as the jobs we create will be jobs
preserved by keeping State and local governments able to provide the
schools, the health care, the police and fire protection that we cannot
do without. They will need teachers, nurses, firemen, policemen, and
health inspectors on the job. Just today our congressional delegation
from Delaware met with the Governor of Delaware. This crisis, just in
Delaware alone, has slashed our revenue projections by $.5 billion in
just 6 months. We face a $600 million deficit, which will require
shutting down services and laying off workers. This will add to the
economic slowdown and reduce the services on which our citizens depend.
Support directly to State and local governments will get out to where
it is needed. We know that because we know those governments are now
forced to cut back in the face of declining economic activity and
revenues. They need the money and they will use it. We have to get it
to them.
This crisis has knocked a big hole in our economy, and it is
essential we fill it quickly. Because of the size and speed of this
task, we must also have extraordinary oversight and transparency to
assure Americans that we are doing this right and that we are doing it
openly. We must have additional resources and people dedicated to the
sole purpose of auditing and investigating economic recovery spending.
We must have transparency. We must make public all of the grants,
contracts, and the oversight activities themselves. This is a historic
undertaking, and we must have a historic level of transparency and
oversight.
During my years of experience with the Senate, I have developed a
deep respect for this very unique institution. I have seen it tested in
war and peace, in good times and bad. The debate on our economic
recovery plan this week is precisely the task for which this body, the
Senate, was created. This is a moment that will test this institution.
We must deliberate, we must debate, we must decide. There are no easy
choices this week. There will be no easy votes. But I am convinced the
Senate will meet this test, just as I am convinced our country will
meet the test of these extraordinary times.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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