[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 22 (Monday, February 22, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S600-S604]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


 COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 
                                  2010

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will resume consideration of the motion to concur with an 
amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 2847, 
which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A House message to accompany H.R. 2847, a bill making 
     appropriations for the Department of Commerce, Justice, 
     Science, and Related Agencies for the fiscal year ending 
     September 30, 2010, and for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Reid amendment No. 3310 (to the House amendment to the 
     Senate amendment), in the nature of a substitute.
       Reid amendment No. 3311 (to amendment No. 3310), to change 
     the enactment date.
       Reid amendment No. 3312, to provide for a study.
       Reid amendment No. 3313 (to amendment No. 3312), of a 
     perfecting nature.
       Reid amendment No. 3314 (to amendment No. 3313), of a 
     perfecting nature.

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for as much time as I may consume.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, later this afternoon, the Senate will 
consider a piece of legislation to try to create some jobs. I 
understand that the Federal Government, by passing legislation, doesn't 
automatically create jobs, although it can in some circumstances. For 
example, a summer youth program can put some kids to work in the summer 
if the Federal Government or State government sponsors it. By and 
large, the private sector creates jobs.
  This piece of legislation this afternoon is a payroll tax exemption--
trying to encourage small- and medium-sized businesses that are ready 
to expand and capable to expand--giving them extra incentive to hire 
people and put them back to work. Section 179, business expensing, is 
another incentive to business. The highway trust fund extension--we 
know building highways puts people to work almost instantly. We have 
plenty of backlog in highway and bridge repair.
  This is a piece of legislation that will put people back to work and 
create the incentives for companies--whether it is highway contractors 
or small- and medium-sized businesses--to hire those employees. Why is 
that important? Because we have probably somewhere around 25 million 
people today who wake up without a job. The hard-core unemployment, as 
known in the statistics, is about 17 million people. But 20 million to 
26 million people are effectively unemployed in this country. They woke 
up this morning wanting a job and looking for a job but cannot find a 
job.
  I recognize that one of the prevailing moods in the Congress is to do 
nothing. Those are the two words that best describe what we have seen, 
particularly from the minority recently, ``do nothing.'' It is a pretty 
easy position to take, but it is so wrong. Generally, it has always 
been wrong on the significant issues of the day. If this country 
doesn't believe that having 20 million, 25 or 26 million people out of 
work--and they don't believe that is something that is significantly 
wrong, something that weakens our country, then there is something 
wrong with their thinking.
  This is a serious and urgent priority the Congress must address.
  The do-nothing approach to public policy is something we have seen 
before. It goes all the way back to the basic rights of people--women's 
rights, civil rights, workers' rights. I have spoken on the floor 
previously, talking about the struggles to improve in those areas. 
Those struggles were against those who said let's do nothing. Women 
didn't have the right to vote for over the first half of this country's 
existence. They weren't allowed to vote. It took the beating in 
Occoquan Prison in 1917, when Lucy Burns, at night, was manacled and a 
chain between her wrists, hung over a cell door, with blood running 
down her arms all night long; and Alice Paul, a tube forced down her 
throat, force-feeding, to where she nearly drowned in her own vomit. 
She and 33 other women were arrested and chained to the White House 
gate. That is how women got the right to vote in this country. It is 
not because we had people who said let's do nothing, it is fine that 
women cannot vote. People pushed back and said what is going on is 
wrong.
  Workers' rights. I wrote a book about the struggle to get workers' 
rights in this country. I said James Fyler died of lead poisoning. 
James Fyler was shot 54 times. Why? He felt people who went underground 
to mine for coal ought to be paid a fair wage. Think of the struggle 
for workers' rights and civil rights. I served in the Congress with 
John Lewis in the House of Representatives, who was beaten in 
Montgomery, AL. He was beaten because he believed one ought to be able 
to sit at a lunch counter as an African American. In some areas, it was 
against the law to drink from certain water fountains and ride in the 
front of the bus. It was against the law to sit at the lunch counter at 
Woolworth's.
  Workers rights, civil rights, women's rights--all these things were 
struggles. There were those all along the way who said let's do 
nothing. Today, they say let's do nothing about the fact that 25 
million or 26 million Americans are out of work.
  By the way, here is a new report that shows that not everybody is out 
of work. We know that. A lot of people are working. In fact, there is 
full employment, according to the Northeastern Center for Labor 
Studies, among those who earn more than $150,000 a year. Their 
unemployment is 3 percent, but that is called full employment. Not 
everybody is having trouble. The more affluent Americans have full 
employment. It is a lot of folks at the bottom who are struggling and 
getting laid off and are out looking for work. So change is very hard.
  The question is, Is this Congress going to do something about it? 
Does it care about it? In every case, you can go back a century, and 
the wailing and the whining of those who have opposed everything for 
the first time and said it can't be done, it will not work, it will 
ruin our country--they are the ones who dug in their heels and said 
let's do nothing.
  What about today? What is our responsibility today? Well, it seems to 
me, in this economic crisis--a crisis, by the way, that is not some 
natural disaster; this wasn't some massive storm that enveloped 
America, some tornado or cyclone or some massive natural event that 
occurred. This was an economic wreck that was caused by unbelievable 
avarice and greed in some of our Nation's largest institutions. There 
was nearly criminal negligence on the part of regulators who wouldn't 
regulate. There was shameful, greedy behavior by people at the top of 
the financial food chain, whose business philosophy was to maximize 
profits at any cost, it doesn't matter.
  Now we find ourselves in a desperate position. Yes, I think we have a 
foundation where we have found the bottom and are going to try to build 
from this point on. The question is, How do we move this process along 
to give hope to people who, at this point, get up this morning and 
don't have a job? Some say let's work on the faucet--that is what this 
bill is today, and I will support it. Let's work on the faucet that 
will put more jobs in this tank. I say also let's work on the drain 
because you can turn the faucet on, if the drain is wide open you are 
not going to make much headway. I will talk about the drain, but first 
I will talk about the faucet.
  There is no social program as important as a good job that pays well. 
That is why this needs to be a priority with us. It is why we should 
pass this piece of legislation this afternoon. No, it is not going to 
fix every issue. I understand that. I mentioned we have full employment 
with the people on the top. What about the people who shower after 
work--the people who work hard all day and have to take a shower after 
work to get rid of the evidence of that work? Well, let's talk about 
them for a moment. I met with a group of people who were losing their 
jobs just before Christmas this year--500 people who worked for a 
company that made one of America's best products. They were told their 
plant was going to close down--500 of them. Can you imagine the 
Christmas they spent with their families, because there were no other 
jobs in that area. Yet 500 jobs is a reasonably small amount of the 
total number of jobs we have been losing.

[[Page S601]]

That describes the drain on this economy of ours with respect to jobs. 
Let me talk a bit about that.

  I am talking about particularly jobs in which Americans make 
something, produce something. Our manufacturing sector is rapidly 
losing steam. We have lost 5\1/2\ million manufacturing jobs since 
2000. We now have 11.7 million manufacturing jobs left. That is the 
fewest number of manufacturing jobs since the early 1940s. Since 2001, 
we have seen the closing of 42,000 factories in America. One-third of 
all the factories that employ over 1,000 people have closed since 2001 
in this country. They are gone. Some people blame the workers because 
they want a living wage. They say: If you cannot compete with 50 cents 
an hour in China, tough luck, you don't deserve to compete. It is an 
international economic system and if you cannot compete, that is too 
bad. That is a pretty ignorant way to look at it. This is a global 
economy, but who decided, after spending a century lifting standards, 
requiring safe workplaces, better labor standards, better wages and 
benefits, that all that should be washed away because we can't compete 
with somebody who worked for 50 cents an hour, somebody who works in a 
factory where they live in cinder block, little rooms, with 12 in a 
room at night, and they work 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day--who 
decided that ought to be the standard with which we have to compete? 
That doesn't make sense to me.
  I guess there are people who believe that ``made in the USA'' doesn't 
matter anymore. We don't have to be a country that manufactures. If we 
don't have a strong manufacturing base, we will not long remain a world 
economic power. That is a fact. This manufacturing base of ours is 
being sequentially and systematically destroyed.
  We have, essentially, lost the area of producing machine tools in 
this country. We have lost electronics. We have lost automobile parts. 
We have lost furniture manufacturing. We have lost telecom. We have 
lost appliances. I am talking about the manufacture of these things. In 
1960, 30 percent of our GDP in this country was manufacturing. Now it 
is 11 percent. There are 1.2 billion cell phones sold on this planet 
every year. Not one is made in America--1.2 billion and not one is made 
in America. We have lost 60 percent of the furniture manufacturing. You 
don't need to know all the stories, but I have spoken about the one we 
lost in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania House Furniture, which was an 
upscale fine furniture company. Governor Rendell did everything he 
could to stop it from moving to China. They used a special Pennsylvania 
wood to make this furniture. What they did is closed the plant and 
shipped the wood to China, made the furniture there and shipped it back 
and called it American production. The last piece of furniture that 
came down off the line--for a company that lasted 100 years, making 
top-of-the-line furniture--the very last piece of furniture, those 
workmen in that plant turned it over and all the people who worked in 
the plant signed their names because they said there would not be 
furniture such as this made again. Their jobs were gone in an instant, 
and 60 percent of furniture manufacturing is gone.
  The list goes on and on and on. Eighty-four percent of the circuit 
boards, which used to be ours--we developed circuit boards--are now 
made in Asia. We defend, as all of us understand, our military security 
aggressively. Do we care about our economic security--that we are 
hollowing out the manufacturing base of our country? Apparently not.
  In this economic recovery bill that was passed, I included on the 
Senate side something called ``Buy American.'' One would have thought I 
was exploding all of the relationships that existed around the globe. 
People here even had apoplectic seizures: What are you doing? Are you 
trying to start a trade war? No, I was not. ``Buy American'' is 
perfectly permitted in the WTO trade rules. In fact, Mr. Pascal Lamy, 
the WTO chief, says ``Buy American meets world trade rules.'' If we had 
not put a ``Buy American'' provision in so State and local governments 
and the Federal Government, when contracting to buy steel and to buy 
products with which to make highways and other items we are investing 
in, had we not done that, we would be spending our taxpayers' money to 
purchase from China, to import the steel from China. I thought we were 
doing that to put Americans back to work. So I put in a ``Buy 
American'' provision. If you read the New York Times and the Washington 
Post, you just thought they were having seizures about it. 
Unbelievable, they say. No, it is not unbelievable to me. If you are 
going to try to get economic recovery in this country, you do not do 
that by incentivizing production in China and Japan. By the way, in 
their programs in China and Japan, they have their own provisions to 
purchase at home.
  Here is the trade deficit we have with the world. This is why I say I 
support trying to do something with the faucet about jobs, to put more 
jobs in this economy. I am going to vote this afternoon on the proposal 
coming before the Senate. But here is the drain. Even as we do that, 
more and more jobs are leaving this country. Anybody who talks about 
fiscal policy deficits and is really worried that these fiscal policy 
deficits are going to sink this country, you can make a case--I used to 
teach a little economics in college--you can make a case that the 
fiscal policy deficit is money we owe to ourselves. You cannot make a 
case that this amount of red--these red lines go down, down, down, $800 
billion a year for the last 3 years in a row. That is money we owe to 
other countries. That is money that will be repaid by a lower standard 
of living in the United States.
  I say to all of those who care about fiscal policy deficits--and I 
do--you better care about this as well because this is a description of 
moving American jobs overseas in addition to indebting ourselves deep 
in debt to especially China, as this chart shows. This chart shows the 
red lines. This is only China, a country with which we have a $260 
billion trade deficit and growing every single year.
  By the way, we have with the country of China a reasonably ignorant 
bilateral which says to China--I am taking one piece of it now--it 
says: You are ramping up a very large automobile export industry, and 
we will very soon see Chinese cars on the streets of America. When they 
come to America under our agreement with you, you have a very large 
deficit with us, China, so when you ship us your cars--and they are 
coming--we will impose a 2.5-percent tariff on automobiles from China 
into the United States. We agree that if we ship cars made in the 
United States to China, you may impose a 25-percent tariff. A country 
with which we have a $260 billion trade deficit, we agreed to give them 
a 10-to-1 advantage on tariffs on bilateral automobile trading. I don't 
know how other people define ignorance, but I believe that is ignorant 
of our country's economic interest.
  That is the reason I indicated in the economic recovery--what is 
called the stimulus program--that if we are going to spend money to try 
to restart this economy, to try to get this engine restarted and put 
people back to work, we at least ought to have some understanding that 
the products we are purchasing with that are not purchased from China 
and Japan, with which we have these very large budget deficits.
  Since repetition is so very important here--I received a letter the 
other day from someone who said: Mr. Senator, if you are, at the end of 
your third term in the Senate this year, going to leave the Senate, who 
is going to speak for Huffy bicycles?
  I said: I don't know who is going to speak for Huffy bicycles, but I 
am going to continue to do so until the end of the year because it is a 
perfect description of what is wrong in this country with respect to 
this so-called bathtub which should hold jobs but has a wide open 
drain.
  Huffy was an Ohio company. Not anymore. They all got fired, all of 
them, because all these bicycles are produced in China. Why? Because 
the folks in Ohio were making $11 an hour and that is way too much 
money to pay an American worker. I know where they are made now. They 
are made in China for 50 cents an hour by people who work 7 days a 
week, 12 to 14 hours a day.
  The poignant story about Huffy bicycles is when the last factory 
closed and the last Huffy bicycle was made in America, all the workers, 
as they drove out of the parking lot, left a pair of empty shoes in the 
space where their car once parked. It was the only way they could send 
a message to the company: You can ship our jobs to China,

[[Page S602]]

but you are never really going to fill this space of ours. So no more 
Huffy bicycles.
  The list is endless. Huffy bicycles and Radio Flyer, the little red 
wagon every child has ridden in, are examples of what we do not make 
here anymore. Radio Flyer was made in Illinois for 110 years. The 
little red wagon was made by an immigrant who came to this country who 
not only loved airplanes--and so he named a red wagon ``Radio Flyer''--
but was a very good businessman. Every American child sat in those 
little red wagons and played in those little red wagons for 110 years, 
made in America. Not anymore. They are all made in China.
  My point is this: I am going to vote for this bill this afternoon. It 
is the right thing to do. We will have people come here and spread the 
mantra again today as they have for so many weeks and months: Do 
nothing. Do nothing. Things will be fine.
  Things are not fine. It is our responsibility to do something to 
address these issues. I want us to do something to try to create new 
jobs.
  I chaired a hearing of the policy committee not too long ago. We had 
three small to medium-size businesses come testify. All of them were 
ready to expand and ready to hire new people. All of them were 
profitable businesses, all of them were ready to expand, and none of 
them could expand because none of them could find credit from the 
banks. Think of this: The biggest banks in America are now making 
record profits. I am talking about the biggest banks on Wall Street. 
They are making record profits and are prepared to pay record bonuses 
at a time when small and medium-size businesses that create the jobs in 
this country cannot find credit to expand even when they are 
profitable.
  There is something wrong with this system. This system is not 
working. There are a lot of reasons for us to care a lot about what has 
happened in this country. I regret that there has never been the kinds 
of hearings with subpoena power that develops the master narrative of 
what has happened in the last 6 or 8 years that caused this economic 
wreck. The American people need to know. I understand there is now a 
commission, but that is not a substitute for what the Congress has a 
responsibility to do.
  In 200 years in this country, we have gone from times when the 
productive sector--those who produce and manufacture--had the upper 
hand to other times when the financing sector had the upper hand. More 
recently, the financing sector has had the upper hand in this country. 
Manufacturing is an afterthought, and we are losing, losing, losing our 
manufacturing base.
  The financing side, as all of us know, has become much larger. In 
fact, just about 15, 18 months ago, then-Treasury Secretary Paulson and 
the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board came to the Congress and 
said: Look, we are facing near imminent collapse of this entire 
economy. At that time, one of the things they said was that we have too 
much concentration in the biggest financial firms in the country. Yes, 
that was true, except, you know what, the concentration is even much 
greater now, engineered by some of the same people who said there is 
too much already.
  This is not rocket science. Too big to fail meant no-fault 
capitalism. The biggest financial firms in the country got bailed out. 
Why? Because it was feared they were too big to fail. I think too big 
to fail is just too big. This is not rocket science. If you are too big 
to fail, you are too big. Yet the very institutions that are too big to 
fail are getting bigger, not smaller, imposing more risk.

  By the way, the biggest ones that are showing significant record 
profits and ready to pay record bonuses--we are told somewhere around 
$140 billion to $160 billion--the biggest firms are engaged in the same 
kind of activity that steered the country into the ditch. We still have 
the credit default swaps and derivatives out there that represent very 
substantial risks.
  If anybody really wants to understand how this relates, just go to 
Las Vegas or a casino someplace. Look up and understand what a 
synthetic derivative means. It means you are buying a credit default 
swap to insure a bond, except this transition does not relate to 
anything that is real. It is just a wager. That is exactly what has 
gone on in this country, unimpeded by regulators who did not look, who 
were woefully blind, and who boasted about it for some years. Who pays 
the price for all of that? The 25 or 26 million people who got up this 
morning and could not find a job. In some cases, they got up on a 
morning a month ago, a morning a year ago, in some cases 2 years ago, 
and still could not find work. They are the victims. And the very folks 
at the top who steered this country into the ditch are reporting record 
profits. The folks at the top, as I just described with the new study 
from Northeastern University, have full employment.
  It seems to me there is something wrong with this picture. How does 
one come to the floor of the Senate this evening and say: Let's do 
nothing. I have an idea: let's keep doing nothing, they say.
  We have watched that inaction, and that does not work. The American 
people deserve better than that. I hope this afternoon we will have 
most Members of the Senate coming to the floor to say: Let's do 
something. Let's care today not about the people at the top of the 
financial food chain who are now making record profits and preparing to 
pay record bonuses, but let's do something for the folks at the bottom 
who have lost their jobs--5.5 million manufacturing workers just in the 
last decade. Let's do something to see if we can find a way to put them 
back to work. If we do that, maybe we will get a strong vote today for 
people saying we care about jobs.
  We would like to work together--Republicans and Democrats--to get the 
best ideas both have to offer rather than the worst of each and see if 
we can advance the economic interests of this country once again.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time from 
5 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. today be equally divided and controlled between the 
leaders or their designees, with the majority leader controlling the 
final 15 minutes prior to the 5:30 p.m. cloture vote.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, jobs. We are here today to help create 
jobs. Everyone is thinking about jobs and ways to create more of them.
  Business owners, workers, community leaders across the country, 
especially in my home State of Montana, are asking what Congress is 
doing to create jobs. I might say when I was home last week, Mr. 
President, I had some job forums. At one of them, we had lots of 
different ways to create jobs and a lot of ideas.
  At the end, I said: OK, everybody. What does this all boil down to? 
Give me one or two or three things that we can do to create more jobs. 
There was a big chorus of: more jobs, more jobs, better-paying jobs. So 
it is there, and it should be there because unemployment is so high and 
there is a huge need.
  In his State of the Union Address, President Obama said: ``Jobs must 
be our No. 1 focus in 2010.'' Here in the Senate, a group of us have 
been working on finding the best way to create new jobs. I am pleased 
to have worked together across the aisle with a thoughtful bipartisan 
group of Senators to craft legislation to create tax incentives for job 
creation. I applaud my colleagues, Senators Schumer and Hatch, for 
working together to bring good ideas to the table. I thank my very good 
friend, Chuck Grassley, for

[[Page S603]]

working with us once again, and I appreciate the tremendous help from 
Senators Dorgan, Casey, and Durbin who have been spearheading the 
broader jobs effort.
  Some of the provisions on which these Senators have worked are before 
us today. The provisions before us today would address the immediate 
needs of businesses on many different levels. For example, it would 
allow smaller businesses faster depreciation of equipment purchases. 
This provision helps create jobs, clearly. As the demand for services 
and products increase, so does the demand for workers.
  But the amendment before us would do more. The amendment would go to 
the heart of the matter to provide simple and immediate tax incentives 
for businesses to employ new workers. The amendment answers the 
challenge of doing something that would make a difference for the 
unemployed right now. Let me explain the tax incentive for hiring in 
the amendment.
  This year any business that hires someone who has been out of work 
for 60 days or more would qualify for the credit. The business would 
not have to pay its share of Social Security payroll taxes on that 
employee for the remainder of the year. It is that simple.
  This incentive would be available for every new worker hired no 
matter the size of the business. Moreover, if that business retains the 
new employee for a full year, then the business would be able to take 
an additional $1,000 income tax credit against next year's taxes.
  So, for example, the mom-and-pop grocery store owner in Billings, MT, 
that employs a previously unemployed store clerk and pays him $25,000 
for the rest of the year would save $1,550 on payroll taxes. The 
medium-sized trucking company that can employ 10 new workers at $35,000 
each for the rest of the year would save $21,700 on payroll taxes.
  The large manufacturer that employs 100 new assembly-line workers at 
$45,000 each for the rest of the year would save almost $300,000 in 
payroll taxes. All of these businesses would get another $1,000 for 
each new employee they retained for a full year.
  Let me explain why this is a good package. First of all, the 
incentive is simple. We want all businesses to be able to take the 
incentive, not just those that can afford an attorney to explain it or 
an accountant to prepare the necessary paperwork. All private 
businesses that create jobs and employ the currently unemployed would 
be entitled to a payroll tax holiday; and because it is simple to 
understand, we hope the program will enjoy broad news coverage. That 
way more employers would hear about the incentive and opt in.
  Second, the amendment would provide an immediate benefit. Employers 
need help now, and we want to create jobs now. As soon as a business 
hires a new employee, the business would receive the benefit as a 
payroll tax holiday on that new employee. The business would get the 
benefit of every payroll tax deposit it would make. The business would 
not have to wait until it filed its tax return next year, and the cash 
that the business would save from the payroll tax cut could be used to 
help pay the wages of the new employee or the cash could be invested in 
the business. That is right now. The amendment would not hurt the 
Social Security trust fund. The government would make the trust fund 
whole in the full amount of the payroll tax holiday.
  The third reason this is a good provision is the amendment would 
encourage faster hiring. An employee with a salary of $50,000 hired on 
July 1 would save the business about $1,500 in taxes. But the same 
worker hired earlier, say, on March 1, would save the business about 
$2,600 in taxes. The faster a business hires, the more benefit the 
business would receive. The incentive would boost the economy today, 
and it would create an additional demand for workers sooner.
  What is the fourth reason this is a good idea? Just this one 
provision I have been talking about--and that is the payroll tax 
holiday. The amendment would encourage jobs that pay good wages. The 
higher the wage, the higher the credit. That is because the incentive 
is directly tied to the wages subject to the Social Security payroll 
tax.
  Fifth, the amendment targets the unemployed. The incentive would 
reward businesses that hire those who are currently out of work. It 
would reward those businesses that create employment, not those that 
shift workers from another job. Yet it would not require the employee 
be collecting unemployment insurance benefits. For all sorts of 
reasons, not all persons take unemployment benefits. The incentive 
would be as broad as possible. It would help all those currently not 
working who want to be.
  What is the sixth reason for this payroll tax holiday provision? It 
is fair. The incentive sets no limits on the size of the business that 
can utilize it. Job creation happens with all sizes and types of 
businesses--from the sole proprietor seeking to expand, to the largest 
manufacturer recovering from downsizing. Because the credit would be on 
payroll taxes rather than income taxes, the incentive would also help 
tax-exempt organizations and businesses currently operating at a loss. 
Those businesses have no income tax to offset with an income tax 
credit.
  Seventh, the amendment would provide ease of hiring. The employer 
would only have to get a signed affidavit from a new employee that the 
employee had been out of work for the previous 60 days. That is pretty 
simple--no lengthy certification process through State agencies, as 
some current wage credits require.
  Eighth, the amendment would encourage employee retention. Employers 
that retain their new employees for a year would get an added bonus.
  Ninth, and most importantly, the amendment would increase employment. 
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office studied a number of options 
for job creation in the year 2010. After receiving many ideas, CBO 
stated that the payroll tax deduction for firms that increase their 
payroll is the most cost-effective policy for creating jobs. Economists 
suggest the same thing. While all thoughtful observers are careful to 
point out no company would hire unneeded workers just for a tax credit, 
many economists believe that a hiring incentive may be the push that 
many companies waiting on the sidelines need to hire those extra 
people.
  Business owners have flexibility in hiring. They can work longer 
hours themselves, substitute machines for labor, or pay overtime to 
current employees. But those employers on the fence may believe this 
package of tax cuts and hiring incentives are enough of a boost for 
them to hire new employees now.
  The National Federation of Independent Businesses indicated in 
December that there are many companies starting and growing businesses 
during this recession. In the past, the NFIB has supported a fixed-
length payroll tax holiday. Economist Mark Zandi reported that 
``various business surveys suggest firms are more open to expanding 
their payrolls.''
  He added:

       A tax break for hiring could be particularly effective this 
     summer. By then, businesses will have had more time to come 
     to terms with the Great Recession, and banks should be 
     extending credit somewhat more freely by then.

  Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has suggested a new jobs tax 
credit for every new job created by small businesses this year. 
Although he thinks that a job credit does not do much under normal 
circumstances, he says that these are not normal circumstances, and 
businesses need a boost.
  David Greenlaw and Ted Wieseman of Morgan Stanley Research have said 
that a new job credit, designed correctly, could represent an important 
source of effective stimulus.
  And Ted Gayer of the nonpartisan Brookings Institution said that 
timing of an employment tax credit matters. He warned:

       The more you dither, then people will wait on the sidelines 
     and not hire now. You want it to be immediate and you want it 
     to go a set length.

  Let us not delay. Let us answer the call from Americans to help and 
let us enact this package to get more people to work.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

[[Page S604]]

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I thank the Chair.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The minority leader is recognized.

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