[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 108 (Wednesday, July 21, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6044-S6067]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AMERICAN JOBS AND CLOSING TAX LOOPHOLES ACT OF 2010
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of the House message on H.R. 4213, which the clerk
will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate
amendment with an amendment to H.R. 4213, an Act to amend the
Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to extend certain expiring
provisions, and for other purposes.
[[Page S6045]]
Pending:
Reid motion to concur in the amendment of the House to the
amendment of the Senate to the bill, with Reid amendment No.
4425 (to the amendment of the House to the amendment of the
Senate to the bill), in the nature of a substitute.
Reid amendment No. 4426 (to amendment No. 4425), to change
the enactment date.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona is recognized.
Unemployment Insurance
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, in the Rose Garden on Tuesday, President
Obama stood with three long-time job seekers and reminded us that out-
of-work Americans want to find work, and no one here, of course,
questions that. I hear every day from Arizonans who look for a job day
after day, week after week. They are just getting by.
I realize that few things can be more frustrating and demoralizing
than struggling to find a job and that the effects of unemployment for
families are deep and severe.
President Obama would have the American people believe congressional
Republicans have been blocking an extension of unemployment benefits in
order to make some political point. He accused us of this again on
Tuesday and claimed we are refusing to help out-of-work Americans.
I wish to set the record straight. This is not a dispute about
extending unemployment benefits. There is broad bipartisan agreement
that we should do that. Republicans have voted several times in the
past to extend benefits. I have.
The dispute, rather, is over who should pay for those benefits.
Should we finance this $34 billion obligation in the short term with a
loan from a foreign government and pass the tab on to our kids and
grandkids or should we pay for it now by cutting other Federal
spending? That is the question. It is a matter of who is going to pay
for the benefits we provide to people.
I do not think we should be sending that tab to our kids. I believe
we should pay it now. This is our generation. This is our problem
today. We have an obligation to help take care of our fellow citizens
when they are in time of need. We should find a way to pay for that.
Our kids and grandkids are going to have their own problems in their
day. We do not need to compound those problems by adding our
obligations to those that they will need to deal with.
Republicans have offered an array of constructive solutions to the
problem, proposals to pay for what we are spending, including using
unspent money from the President's failed stimulus package. Almost half
that money remains available.
We have tried five times to pass an extension of unemployment
benefits that does not add to the debt. But our Democratic colleagues
have repeatedly rejected our proposals. So the principal they are
defending is not the need for unemployment insurance extension, it is
that they will not pass a bill unless it adds to the debt. They will
not pass a bill to extend unemployment benefits unless it adds to the
debt.
The extension likely would have passed weeks ago if Democrats had
simply agreed to pay for it now by cutting other Federal spending. In
this $3 trillion budget that we have, obviously, there are plenty of
places for us to find the offsets. Our national debt has been increased
again and again during this recession. That creates long-term burdens
for everyone--the employed, the unemployed, and generations to come.
While President Obama argues that we have increased the debt in the
past to pay for other items, I will note that we were not in the middle
of a debt crisis back then, for one thing. I suggest we pass a bill
that is paid for now and recalibrate efforts to encourage private
sector job creation.
As unemployed Americans know, while unemployment benefits provide a
lifeline, they are only a temporary fix. They are not a substitute for
new private sector jobs. I will venture a guess that everybody who is
unemployed today would much rather have a job tomorrow than another
check from the government for unemployment benefits.
So what do we do to create jobs and get the economy moving again?
Well, you do not do it by borrowing more money. The President's job-
creation initiatives have been a bust. Since his enormous stimulus bill
passed in February of 2009, the private sector has lost over 2 million
jobs.
While there has been some anemic economic growth since the recession
started, employers are still clearly reluctant to hire. That probably
has to do with the reality that businesses, both small and large, look
down the road. They see massive tax increases beginning next year, on
top of all the new regulations imposed by this administration.
They hear about a proposed national energy tax and proposed new pro-
union policies. So they are reluctant to take a chance on the future
because of all the uncertainty and the burdens we have already placed
upon them. The key to job creation, and thus helping unemployed
Americans, is having stable and sound policies in place for employers
to make long-term decisions.
More spending, taxing, regulating, and debt are not the answers. I
would hope we can find a way to extend unemployment benefits without
asking our children to pay the tab for this generation's problems.
I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CARDIN. 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. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in
morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Water Quality
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has
dominated the headlines since April 20. Because of that tragedy, we are
more aware than ever of the important role great water bodies and the
rivers that feed them play in our economy, our environment, and even
our sense of who we are as a people.
Late last month, the Environment and Public Works Committee reported
out a number of bills addressing America's precarious water resources.
The committee approved a bill to hold BP accountable for the
devastation it has caused to the people and the ecosystem of the gulf.
As all of America has seen in the morning newspapers and nightly news
accounts, the current $75 million limit on oilspill liability damages
represents a very small fraction of the actual costs of the damage done
by BP. Senator Menendez's bill, S. 3305, which the committee adopted,
will make sure that BP is legally bound to honor its pledge to pay all
legitimate claims. I am proud to be a cosponsor, and I look forward to
the adoption of this legislation by the full Senate.
As we do everything we can to make sure the BP Deepwater Horizon
disaster is not a knife through the heart of the Gulf of Mexico's
ecosystem, we know that other great water bodies are also suffering. We
are responding to those troubled waters as well. The Puget Sound,
Columbia River Basin, Great Lakes, Long Island Sound, San Francisco
Bay, and, yes, the Chesapeake Bay, are each special and iconic, yet
each is threatened by degraded water quality.
Marylanders know from our experience with the Chesapeake Bay, just as
the residents of the gulf are demonstrating for all Americans, that the
health of these water bodies is critical to sustaining regional
economies, plant and animal species, our cultural heritage, and our
treasured way of life that has been passed on from generation to
generation. The National Academy of Public Administration has
recommended ``making large-scale ecosystem restoration a national
priority.''
Large ecosystem programs, from Long Island Sound to the Great Lakes
to Puget Sound, are addressing some of the Nation's most complex water
resource management challenges. For this reason, EPA's strategic plan
prioritizes protecting these ecosystems as a complement to their core,
national water quality programs.
The Water and Wildlife Subcommittee that I chair has devoted
considerable time to the Chesapeake Bay and, more recently, to the
other water body bills.
I thank Chairman Boxer for her strong support on these bills, for her
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help in shaping the legislation, and for marshaling these bills through
the full Environment and Public Works Committee.
Throughout my career in public service, I have had no greater cause
than to save the Chesapeake Bay. There has not been one dramatic
incident that has killed off our fisheries, oyster beds and crab
populations, so we have not seen the same sustained attention to lives
and traditions ruined as we are witnessing in the gulf today.
That does not mean it isn't happening, family by family, across my
State and my region. I have seen it and I am committed to doing
everything I can to make sure the bay and the economy and ways of life
it sustains don't die away.
The Chesapeake Bay encompasses 64,000 square miles. Its watershed is
home to more than 17 million people, with tributaries in Delaware,
Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and the
District of Columbia.
Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama have called it a national
treasure.
The Chesapeake is the economic, historic and cultural center of the
region, providing commercial waterways, important fisheries, and
countless recreational opportunities.
The first English settlers in the New World came here; Captain John
Smith's original voyages of discovery in 1607 first mapped its borders.
The capital cities of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the United
States sit upon its major tributaries.
Since 1983, the Chesapeake Bay Program has undertaken a largely
voluntary effort to restore America's largest estuary. This State-
Federal partnership program has provided innovative leadership and
remarkable scientific understanding of the restoration effort.
In recent years, however, it became apparent that voluntary efforts
to restore water quality to the Chesapeake and its tidal segments would
be unsuccessful.
The basin States agreed that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
would be responsible for developing a basin-wide pollution reduction
program. The Chesapeake Bay total maximum daily load, TMDL, would
address all segments of the Chesapeake Bay and tidal tributaries that
are identified on the currently applicable lists of impaired waters by
nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment of the Chesapeake Bay States under
section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act.
It is against that backdrop that I introduced S. 1816, the Chesapeake
Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act. The purpose of S. 1816 is to
amend the Clean Water Act to improve and reauthorize the Chesapeake Bay
Program authorized in section 117 of the Act.
The bill has four primary objectives:
1. Establish a deadline of 2025, along with appropriate milestones,
for all restoration actions to be implemented throughout the Chesapeake
basin that will lead to attainment of water quality in the Chesapeake
Bay and its tidal segments; 2. Assure that the basin States, as
delegated authorities under the Clean Water Act, be given maximum
authority and flexibility to meet the restoration pollution limits
through ``watershed implementation plans'' that each State designs for
itself; 3. Require that the Federal Government be an active partner in
the restoration effort, by developing the overall pollution reduction
targets on a State-by-State basis through the Chesapeake Bay TMDL;
implementing the terms of the Presidential Executive Order; paying
local stormwater fees; and providing clear and meaningful
accountability for the basin States; 4. Provide the States,
municipalities, developers, and especially agricultural producers with
significant new tools and financial resources to meet the restoration
demands within the 15-year time frame contained in the legislation.
The bill authorizes a number of new grants programs, including two to
assist local governments manage polluted stormwater and three to assist
the agricultural community manage nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment
pollution. Grants programs for States are expanded and a number of
independent reviews of the program's implementation and progress are
required over the next 15 years.
I am proud that the Environment and Public Works Committee reported
out this bill on a voice vote, without a single Senator expressing
opposition.
In fact, each of the individual great water bodies bills that the
committee considered was adopted in a similar nonpartisan fashion.
S. 1311, Gulf of Mexico Restoration and Protection Act, was
introduced by Senator Wicker and it addresses the long-standing issues
facing the gulf that predate the oil spill disaster that has dominated
headlines.
S. 3550, Columbia River Basin Restoration Act of 2010, is a bill
jointly developed by the junior Senator from Oregon, Mr. Merkley, and
the senior Senator from Idaho, Mr. Crapo. This bipartisan legislation
will address one of America's great river systems.
S. 3073, Great Lakes Ecosystem Protection Act of 2010, has several
bipartisan sponsors, including Senator Levin and Senator Voinovich, who
have worked for years to protect the Great Lakes, which hold 20 percent
of the fresh water on the Earth.
S. 3539, San Francisco Bay Restoration Act, sponsored by California
Senators Feinstein and Boxer, will help direct the restoration of that
essential estuary.
H.R. 4715, Clean Estuaries Act of 2010. Senators Whitehouse and
Vitter worked together on a substitute version of this House bill. It
will reauthorize the program that supports the 28 estuaries around the
country that are part of the National Estuaries Program.
S. 2739, Puget Sound Recovery Act of 2009, sponsored by the Senators
from Washington State, Ms. Cantwell and Mrs. Murray, addresses the
restoration of this water body, which borders two nations.
S. 3119, Long Island Sound Restoration and Stewardship Act, sponsored
by New York Senator Gillibrand, will help with the recovery of this
body of water which serves millions of residents of New York and
Connecticut.
Each of the restoration efforts takes a somewhat different approach
to deal with the specific concerns of that region.
This is as it should be. Each of these great water bodies is unique,
and each deserves its own restoration strategy developed by its own set
of stakeholders.
I am proud of the work done by dozens of Senators from both parties
who have contributed their time and legislative expertise in drafting
and supporting these Great Water Body bills.
These bills prove that we can work together on substantive
legislation in a constructive, bipartisan fashion. They prove that we
can say ``yes'' to bipartisanship, ``yes'' to meeting America's need
for clean waters, ``yes'' to locally driven restoration strategies, and
``yes'' to a bright future for some of the most iconic places in
America.
Mr. President, I look forward to the opportunity to bring all of
these fine bills to the Senate floor for adoption.
With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Michigan is recognized.
Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I wish to take a few moments to talk
about what is currently happening in the Senate, in my judgement,
representing a State with now the second highest unemployment rate in
the country--Michigan. We are glad not to be No. 1, but we sure would
like to be No. 50. We have an awful lot of people right now who are
waiting for us to complete action on extending unemployment insurance
benefits.
I continue to be appalled at the lengths to which the Republican
minority will go to stop people who are out of work from getting some
help. We are in a situation where we finally, after eight different
votes and weeks and weeks of trying, had enough votes to overcome a
filibuster. As we all know, that takes 60 votes. I am very grateful to
our Republican colleagues from Maine for joining with us to make that
happen. We had a vote yesterday that was a supermajority vote. We
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know extending unemployment benefits is going to pass because we had 60
votes to overcome a filibuster and the vote on the actual bill only
takes 51.
We know we have the votes, but under the procedures of the Senate,
technically, unless there is a bipartisan agreement, we have to wait 30
hours before we can actually vote. It used to be that once we secured
the votes of a supermajority, then everyone would agree: OK, the votes
are there, and they would agree to yield back time so we would not have
to wait; we could go on to something else.
That is not what is happening now. While people in Michigan and
around the country are waiting, trying to figure out: OK, can I pay the
rent tomorrow, can I get gas for my car to look for another job
tomorrow, can I put food on the table tomorrow, what is going to happen
on Monday, what is going to happen on Tuesday--while people are
waiting, we have nothing happening on the floor of the Senate. We are
just burning time, 30 hours of time. In my judgment, it is just mean,
because when we look at what has to happen yet--we will pass the bill.
We know we are going to pass the bill. It has to go back to the House
and then to the President for signature. This, at least, is the
difference between families getting some help on Friday so they can
feed the kids for the weekend or whether they are going to have to wait
until Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. For a lot of folks, for a lot of
us--we have a salary, we have a job--that may not seem like much. For
over 2.5 million people in this country who have lost their insurance
benefits--and these are insurance benefits. You pay in when you are
working to get some temporary help if you lose your job through no
fault of your own. Mr. President, 2.5 million people think waiting from
Friday to Monday is a big deal. They, in fact, think Thursday and
Friday is a big deal. We have a situation that, frankly, I cannot
characterize any other way than saying it is just plain mean.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
Ms. STABENOW. I will be happy to yield.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, first, I thank the Senator from Michigan.
Her State more than any State in the Nation has been hit harder by this
recession and high employment. I am sure, as I have found and the
Presiding Officer has found back in Illinois, that many of these people
who are out of work are desperate; that in the Senator's State of
Michigan, it has been rough for a long time.
I wish to ask the Senator from the State of Michigan, for those who
may not follow where we are at this moment in the Senate, if she could
help refresh my recollection. Is it not true that we tried three or
four times to get the Republicans to go along in a bipartisan way to
extend unemployment benefits to those who lost their jobs through no
fault of their own so they could keep their families together while
they are searching for work?
Isn't it also true that this historically has been something where we
put the party labels aside and say: This is an American emergency, just
like a tornado hitting Chicago or Springfield, IL, or flooding hitting
some part of Michigan; that we will stand behind the people of our
country, the 8 million unemployed people who are struggling to get back
on their feet? Isn't it true that historically we have done this
without this kind of political rancor and argument?
Finally, yesterday, when we got the breakthrough--we have our new
Senator from West Virginia, Carte Goodwin, who came in to succeed the
legendary Robert C. Byrd. He cast the deciding vote, with two
Republican Senators, I might add, who richly deserve credit for it. At
that point, we could have moved forward to send these unemployment
benefits, give these people in Detroit and Chicago peace of mind, and
instead the other side of the aisle is insisting that we burn 30 hours
off the calendar and even consider amendments on such issues as the
immigration law in Arizona, the future of the estate tax--all these
unrelated issues. Is it true that is where we are in this moment of
time, where there are no votes taking place on the floor of the Senate?
Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I say to our distinguished leader in the
Senate--and I thank him for his advocacy--he is exactly right. We have
waited--I am not sure now if it is 10 or 11 weeks--trying to extend
unemployment benefits. We have had multiple votes. We finally get the
votes through all kinds of different means. We finally get the votes
yesterday, and it is unheard of that we would be in this spot, after
getting a supermajority of 60 people and after having this go on as
long as it has. It is unheard of. Never before with a Democratic or
Republican President have we ever seen this, but now we are stuck
again, and I don't understand why. I cannot fathom the motivation of
why the folks on the other side of the aisle, the leadership on the
other side of the aisle, would say: Let's wait another 30 hours, which
for most people means it is on into next week, and most people have
already been without that little bit of $250 or $300 a week. We are not
talking about a lot of money.
Mr. DURBIN. That is right.
Ms. STABENOW. But it is a difference between having a roof over your
family's head, food on the table, and not. So now we are pushing into
next week.
Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator would yield for a question, through the
Chair.
I have a chart given me by my staff that says in my home State of
Illinois--and the State of the Presiding Officer--137,600 people in
Illinois have had their unemployment benefits cut off because of the
filibusters on the Republican side, and our numbers show 104,000 people
in Senator Stabenow's State of Michigan.
Ms. STABENOW. That is right.
Mr. DURBIN. Not to mention the State of the Republican minority
leader, Kentucky, with 32,200 people who have had their unemployment
benefits cut off.
I would say to the Senator from Michigan that I am contacted by these
families, and they describe to me what life is like when they lose that
$250-a-week check and they are out of work. First, they exhaust their
savings, then they start putting off paying bills, and then they pray
to God they don't get sick because they have lost their health
insurance. Then comes the day of reckoning. One lady called and said:
They are cutting off my gas to my home, and the electricity is next.
Another said: I am 1 month away from moving out of my little efficiency
into my car. That is where I am going to have to live.
That is the reality of life, and that is while these people are
looking for work. Imagine those burdens--and anyone facing them would
be preoccupied by them--at the same time trying to dress up nicely, put
on a happy face, and fill out the forms to find a job.
I ask the Senator from Michigan what she is finding with these people
who have been cut off from basic unemployment benefits because of the
Republican filibuster.
Ms. STABENOW. Well, you are exactly right. I also hear, on top of
that, about people who have done what we have told them they should
do--they should go back to school and get retraining. So they go back,
and the only reason they can actually afford to go back to school to go
through one of the job training programs is that small check that has
allowed them to have a little income for their family while they do
what we have told them to do, which is to get a different skill to go
into a different career and then hope there will be a job there.
I have had so many e-mails from people not only about losing their
homes and what is happening to their families but that they have had to
drop out of school. Well, how does it make any sense, when we are
trying to make sure people are productive in the workforce and are able
to find a job that people are dropping out of school because of this as
well?
Mr. DURBIN. Let me ask this question of the Senator, through the
Chair.
I have had heard an argument from the other side of the aisle that
says these checks make people lazy; that they don't go out and look for
work. With $250 a week, they take it easy.
These aren't the people I am talking to in Illinois. I would ask the
Senator from Michigan, who sees thousands of people who have been out
of work for long periods of time, what she thinks about this Republican
argument that unemployment checks make people lazy.
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Ms. STABENOW. Well, people in Michigan are extremely offended by
this, and I am very offended on their behalf. The people we are talking
about have never been out of work in their lives. They are mortified.
The idea of having to go get food assistance is unbelievable to them.
These are people who built America. They built the middle class. It is
not their fault Wall Street had the crisis.
We had the good fortune to be with the President signing a bill that
will change that, but it is not their fault what happened. It is not
their fault there was recklessness on Wall Street and then the
financial system collapsed so small businesses can't get loans and
manufacturers can't get loans.
It is not their fault we went through a decade of policies where the
previous administration was not enforcing trade laws so our jobs went
overseas. It is not their fault they find themselves in this economy.
So they are saying to me: I want to work. Hey, I want a job. I don't
want to extend my unemployment benefits. Give me a job.
That is what we are focusing on too. I say to the distinguished
Senator from Illinois, one of the things I find doubly insulting about
wasting this time is that the legislation we are trying to get to is a
small business bill so small businesses can get loans to hire people.
So we are trying to create jobs and, instead, all this time is being
wasted on an effort just to try to help people get by.
Mr. DURBIN. Let's get to the hot-button issue--the deficit. Because
every Republican who comes to the floor tries to explain why we should
change the rules when it comes to unemployment compensation, why we
should deny to millions of Americans that basic unemployment check to
get by while they are out of work, by saying it is all about the
deficit.
I would ask the Senator from Michigan if she would reflect on the
fact that many of the same Republican Senators making that argument
were Senators who, when they had a chance under the previous President,
added to our deficit by waging two wars without paying for them, who
added to our deficit by giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in
America without paying for them, and in fact doubled the debt of the
United States in 8 years' time with that economic policy and those
decisions.
These same Republican Senators--such as Senator Kyl of Arizona--now
argue that if we give more tax cuts to the wealthy people in America
and take that money out of the Treasury and add it to the deficit, it
doesn't count because tax cuts for wealthy people don't count when it
comes to this deficit discipline they want.
I ask the Senator from Michigan: How do you reconcile this; that all
of a sudden now this is all about a deficit, which the Republican
Senators virtually ignored for 8 years while we reached the stage of
today.
Ms. STABENOW. Well, the Senator is absolutely correct. That is the
fundamental question. It goes to a question of values and priorities.
We will never get out of deficit with over 15 million people out of
work, and that doesn't count people working two or three or four part-
time jobs or who are underemployed. If people aren't back to work,
aren't able to purchase as consumers, aren't able to contribute, we
will never get out of deficit, which is why we start with jobs in the
beginning.
But to add insult to injury, we hear that giving another round of tax
cuts to the only part of the American public that has dramatically
increased its income--those who are at the very top; the top 1 and 2
percent--doesn't matter if it adds to the debt. Adding to the debt for
tax cuts for wealthy people doesn't count, but changing the rules, such
as we have never done before, and focusing on helping out-of-work
people does count. That counts. We can't do that, if it is somebody who
is out of work. But we don't worry at all about deficits when it is
helping the privileged few.
I can't imagine that. That is not the America I know and the majority
of Americans care about right now.
Mr. DURBIN. I would say to the Senator from Michigan, by way of a
question in closing, that it would seem to me a person who is
unemployed, who doesn't get the basic check they need to survive and is
forced to live in their car, that is a more compelling argument to me
than giving a tax break to someone who needs to buy a newer car. That
is what is being argued on the other side of the aisle. It is a
complete mismatch of priorities.
What I struggle with is the notion of how many times the Senator and
I have been called on, as Members of the House and Senate, to stand by
some part of America that is struggling--farmers who are struggling
because of drought or flood, people who are victims of flood and
tornadoes or our friends in the Gulf of Mexico whose lives are changed
because of BP. How many times have we said, as an American family, we
stand together? When it comes to something as basic as food on the
table and utility bills for the poorest people in America because they
are out of work--when there are five unemployed people for every
available job--why in the world our Republican friends want to take it
out on them at this point in time I don't understand.
If there is anything this Congress should do, it is to rally behind
those who have lost their jobs and are worrying about losing their
jobs--those working part time, the Senator just referenced, and who
want to work full time. If we can't stand together as a Senate behind
those families, I think we have lost something very basic. I know I had
to put that in the form of a question, so I am going to hazard a guess:
Does the Senator?
Ms. STABENOW. Well, I absolutely agree. I wish to thank the Senator
for his continuing leadership and passion on this issue.
I would simply say, if over 15 million people out of work in this
country isn't an emergency, I don't know what is. Those are the folks
we are fighting for right now--the people who want to work, the people
who have been part of this great middle class in our country and who
now find that slipping through their fingers because of a global
economy, where we have not understood the rules should be fair, where
we have had policies put into place that affect only the privileged
few, with the theory that it will trickle down to everybody else.
You know what. I wish it had. I wish the policies of the former
President and my friends on the other side had worked. I don't want
people to be out of work. If trickle-down economics would work, I would
celebrate it. But my folks are still waiting for the trickle down. They
are still waiting. Instead, what is happening to them is they have lost
their jobs or they are finding themselves with fewer hours or they are
finding themselves in a situation where they are working two jobs,
three jobs just trying to hold it together. I mean I have seen numbers
that show almost half the families in Michigan have somebody in their
immediate family who has lost their job.
The idea of saying that somehow that is all because people are lazy,
well, I would not say the words I would truly like to say, but I would
just say that is a bunch of bunk--the idea that somehow Americans who
have worked all their lives and are caught up in this are somehow just
lazy. But this goes to a broader pattern that is extremely concerning
to me, and it is the difference in world view and how we view what
should happen and what is important in our country.
When we had a bill in front of us--the President just signed it
today--to put back some commonsense regulations on Wall Street so there
are no more big bailouts and consumers can get good information to be
able to protect themselves and their 401(k)s and their savings and to
be able to address all the jobs--the 8 million jobs lost since the
financial crisis started over a year ago--and when we have a bill on
the floor that takes on the big banks, the big bonuses, the
recklessness of some on Wall Street, our colleagues on the other side
of the aisle vote no. Almost every single one of them sided with the
big banks and the big bonuses.
We are going to have a big debate about whether to extend tax cuts
for the wealthiest Americans, whether we should give even bigger tax
cuts to the top couple hundred families with huge estates in this
country--to do even more than President Bush did on tax cuts for the
wealthy and the wealthy estates that are literally only 200 or 300
families in the country. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle
will argue for that. They will argue that is the right thing to do.
That is a different
[[Page S6049]]
view. It is a different view than we have about what is happening in
this country and where the priorities ought to be.
Middle-class families in my State are saying: What about us? What
about us? The big banks got their bailout, what about us? That is why
we have been focused on jobs and on innovation. While we aren't out of
the hole--we are nowhere near out of the hole--we are at least digging
our way out. There were 750,000 a jobs a month being lost when
President Obama took office. We changed the focus to working families,
to middle-class families, and by the end of the year that was zero. Now
we are gaining 100,000 or 200,000 a month, but we are at least gaining.
I am not happy at all about the unemployment levels in Michigan. But
when President Obama took office we were looking at 15.7 percent--
unbelievable--and that is just the people being counted. Now it has
come down a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, and now it is 13.2.
That is still way, way too high, but at least it is moving in the right
direction. We had 8 years of it moving in the wrong direction and we
have turned the ship and it is beginning to turn around.
The problem we have is that while it is slow in terms of job
creation, too many families are caught in the middle on this, waiting
for that next job, wanting that next job that is going to pay enough so
they can care for their family. They are caught in a situation they
never thought they would be in, in their life and they are embarrassed
and they are mortified and they are angry. They are looking at the
Senate and saying: What is going on here? You can't even get it
together to do what every other President, Democrat and Republican, has
done in the history of our country to come together and to understand
this is an emergency--15 million people plus is an emergency--and that
we ought to be extending the small unemployment insurance benefits to
families who are caught in this.
That is what this is all about. We find ourselves in a situation
where we are wasting time right now on the floor of the Senate that we
could be using after voting to extend unemployment benefits to go on to
small business, which is also absolutely critical for us. The No. 1
concern from businesses is the inability to get a loan, to get the
capital they need to extend their line of credit to do business or be
able to expand, to get the loans they need. That is the bill we have
waiting in the wings. That is the one we are trying to get done.
Instead of focusing on that, which is jobs and small business, which
is the growth engine of the country, we wait. We watch the clock--30
hours. For whatever reason I do not know. But I think it is a shame.
I want to close reading a letter. I get thousands of e-mails. I am
sure my colleague does too. I find them very heartbreaking. I want to
read a little bit to put it in the Record, from Philip, from Belding,
MI:
I have just learned I exhausted my unemployment benefits. I
am going to school under the worker retraining programs
through Michigan Works. I have a mere 5 months left until I
graduate. I am raising my daughter on my own. My life has
been a rough ride, trying to do this on the limited funding
already.
Now I have to make a choice. This is an incredibly hard
choice. I have to quit training to get a job or continue
training and live with no income whatsoever. My decision must
be made in the best interests of my child. I worked
tremendously hard to be at the top of my class in my training
and now I am faced with the fact that it was all for nothing.
The last year of hard work and study is lost. The grants I
received for Michigan Works were used fruitlessly. I know you
are fighting for me and all the others in my position but I
feel I need to let someone know . . . what is happening.
There are so many people who have sent letters and e-mails and who
have called me. They are just trying to play by the rules and care for
their families and get another job or go back to school or do the
things we all want to do for our families to be able to live a good
life, be able to have that American dream as we define it. It is
extremely unfortunate that we find ourselves in a situation where we
continue to see objections and blocking and efforts just to stop
something as basic as temporary assistance for people who have lost
their jobs.
We will get this done. We will get it done. It will pass. The
difference between what is happening here and what could have been if
we had gotten it done yesterday is it is going to be a few more days
before somebody gets the help they need. I do not know how many people
will lose their houses because those few more days mean they can't make
that payment in time and they end up on the street or how many missed
meals, how much hunger, how many times their kids go to bed at night
hungry because we are wasting all this time on the Senate floor.
I can tell you there are many of us, those of us on our side, who
understand what this means for people. We are deeply sorry families are
in this situation. They need to know we are going to continue to fight,
we are going to continue to be there, we are going to continue to do
everything we can to support them and their families until everybody in
this country who needs a job and wants a job and is able to work has
one and can get themselves back on their feet and have the kind of life
they want for themselves and their families.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. JOHANNS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
The Senator from Nebraska is recognized.
Mr. JOHANNS. I thank the Chair.
(The remarks of Mr. Johanns pertaining to the introduction of S. 3622
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills
and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. JOHANNS. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CASEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CASEY. Madam President, we are spending time today in so many
ways talking about where the American people are right now with regard
to this horrific economy, where we had and still have some of the worst
job numbers in a long time.
Fortunately, the economy is recovering. The American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act, which I voted for, and many of us did, has a positive
impact along with other job creation strategies. We are happy about
that. But we know we still have a way to go to fully recover.
One of the best ways to ensure that those who are out of work,
through no fault of their own, can get from a situation of joblessness
to a job, is to make sure we use programs that we put in place over
years and that workers and families have contributed to to give them
the opportunity for unemployment benefits as they transition or go
across that very long bridge from unemployment to a situation where
they are back at work.
We have had months and months of debate about this issue. Finally,
yesterday, we were able to get beyond yet another hurdle that was
erected by the Republican side of the aisle, and now we are at a point
where we are beyond that procedural hurdle.
Instead of allowing the Senate to finally at long last vote on
unemployment insurance and to extend it, to give families some peace of
mind in this terrible economy they have lived through, to give
businesses some certainty in terms of what the job picture will look
like in a matter of months, and also to take a step when we extend
unemployment insurance, to take a step in the right direction to
continue to jump-start the economy--one of the best ways to do that is
by extending unemployment insurance, because when you do that, you have
an additional benefit. The obvious benefit is to a worker and his or
her family and, by extension, the community or neighborhood they live
in.
But there is yet another benefit, a second or a third benefit, that
is depending on how you count each benefit. You know, if you spend a
dollar on extending unemployment insurance, you get a lot more than a
dollar back.
[[Page S6050]]
So you spend a buck on unemployment insurance, by one estimate--Mark
Zandi--you get more than a buck sixty back. The Congressional Budget
Office tells us that number may be higher. It might be $1.90 that you
get back if you spend a dollar. So there is an economic benefit for the
whole country when we extend unemployment insurance. This isn't simply
about the obligation I believe we have to help those families who don't
have a breadwinner, as someone who has lost their job, to help them get
through this difficult period. That is reason enough to extend it and
it is reason enough to treat it as the emergency it is and to even, in
my judgment, add to the deficit to do that. But there is also that
other benefit, isn't there, the benefit to the economy overall--spend a
buck and get a lot more back--because we know that when we extend
unemployment insurance, those dollars go right back into the economy
and create other jobs and other economic activity and therefore
economic opportunity for people who have nothing to do--have no
connection to unemployment insurance. Thank goodness a lot of people
don't have to worry about unemployment insurance because they still
have a job. They have some security.
So there are at least two or three basic reasons we should be
extending unemployment insurance. With all of the evidence, with all of
the very compelling and, I would argue, irrefutable evidence that this
is good for workers and their families, it is necessary to help them,
and it is also good for all of us in the larger economy because of the
jump-starting and stimulating aspect of the expenditure of those
dollars, you would think the folks on the other side of the aisle would
agree with us. But they haven't for many, many weeks.
Now we know we have the votes to get this done. Yet they are still
allowing all these hours to pass that they could waive very easily and
say: We know we lost--I am speaking from the Republican side of the
aisle--we have lost the procedural votes, so let's just vote on final
passage and get this extension approved. They seem to want to play
politics with the critically important issue for the American people.
We are going to extend the unemployment insurance, and it is going to
happen. So why would you insist on the hours that are required--not
required but the hours that are part of the process and allow that to
slow this down?
I was on the floor yesterday talking about a number of
Pennsylvanians. One gentleman I spoke about, I talked about, reading
from his letter, the worry he had, a gentleman out of work, worried
about his family, worried about his 12-year-old daughter who has cystic
fibrosis, worrying about how he is going to have insurance cover her
condition, and also worrying about whether he can make ends meet, would
he find a job, would he be able to provide for his family. That worry
is universal when it comes to this issue, the worry a parent feels when
they lose their job and lose their health care, the worry that consumes
them when they feel they are helpless, almost, to provide for their own
family.
We point to individuals within our States who write to us or send us
an e-mail or somehow communicate with us about their own circumstances.
Not too long ago, I received an e-mail from a woman named Kimberly.
She and her husband have two children in college. Her husband has been
out of work for a year. It is hard to comprehend that, what it is like
to need a job to provide for your family and you not only don't have a
job but you don't have a job for a year or longer. So many families
have been living through that.
She said:
We have been struggling for a year while he looks for full-
time employment with which he can again support our family.
Then, speaking about her job, she says:
I don't make a lot of money. I don't make enough to support
us. And I especially don't make enough to put my kids through
college.
Then she goes on to say:
We may not starve, but we won't be able to pay our
creditors. We'll be looking at possible bankruptcy. I may
have to pull my daughter out of her 4-year university and
send her to a community college, and we won't be able to buy
clothes or even enjoy simple pleasures like dining out or
going to the movies.
Something as simple as that.
I spoke yesterday about a woman who had written to me, Rachel, who
talked about her husband having lost his job and deciding to join the
National Guard in order to be able to have some job, some livelihood,
as well as be able to get a little bit better health care coverage.
These stories are real. They are not anecdotal. They are common in
one sense or another. There might be differences from one family to the
other, but there are a couple of universal realities here for people.
Joblessness, being out of work, does, in most instances, lead to a
situation where you lose your health insurance coverage. Joblessness
robs people of their basic dignity. It diminishes their confidence in
their own worth, their own value to their family, whether it is a
mother being out of work or a father or a sibling. This kind of worry
and anxiety plus the basic insecurity of not being able to pay bills is
horrific, absolutely horrific, something that not many people--maybe a
few, maybe a few Senators can understand it, but not many can
understand what it is like not to have income and not to have health
care.
Everyone here, every Senator has a steady income. It is reliable. It
is there every month. You get paid every month. Every Senator gets
health care coverage. We have that security for ourselves and for our
families. I realize that some at some point in their lives might have
an experience that would give them an insight into what someone is
going through now who is unemployed, but not many, not many U.S.
Senators, not many Members of the House of Representatives or those who
work with us in the Federal Government.
So when folks come to this floor and talk a lot about, we want to
help, the argument basically is, we want to help, we understand, but we
don't want to run up the deficit. They make that argument. I wish the
same folks who make that argument and the passionate arguments about
the deficit and not using an emergency strategy to help the unemployed,
I wish they had that same sense of worry and outrage about the deficit
when they were giving tax breaks--hundreds of billions of dollars--to
very wealthy Americans, hundreds of billions year after year after year
to very wealthy Americans and not being too worried about the deficit
in those days. In fact, some on the other side of the aisle were heard
to say at the time that deficits don't matter; that if it is tax cuts,
if that is your priority, if you want to vote, if you want to put forth
and move forward a tax cut policy for the very wealthy, at that time,
in their judgment, there was nothing wrong with running up the deficit.
Now when we make the argument that this is an emergency, the way it
has been treated for years by people on both sides of the aisle--
unemployment insurance in the midst of a horrific recession is, in
fact, an emergency--and they voted that way, now they are inconsistent,
not only inconsistent when it comes to all of a sudden insisting that
they can't support anything that would increase the deficit even in a
limited manner--that is inconsistent, but I believe it is even more
outrageously inconsistent when you say: I will vote for tax cuts for
the wealthy and run up the deficit, but I am not going to take steps to
increase unemployment insurance or to extend unemployment insurance.
So what you have is not only hypocrisy and blatant inconsistency, but
you have hypocrisy and inconsistency and political gamesmanship that is
hurting real people. There are hundreds of thousands of people. If we
look across a couple of months, literally millions of Americans have
been denied unemployment insurance and will be denied unemployment
insurance if these games keep playing out, if these political obstacles
are erected every couple of weeks or every couple of months.
It is a very basic choice: We can vote right away and get beyond this
and extend unemployment insurance or we can still have the games people
are playing and the hypocrisy we have seen on display and continue
playing games while people are out of work, while people are hurting,
and while families are suffering. It is very simple. There is no kind
of in-between here--you are either on one side of this issue or the
[[Page S6051]]
other. Then we can get through this period. I think we can move on to
other debates about our economy, about how our job-creation strategies
are working. We can have debates about the deficit and a lot of other
issues. But the first thing we have to do is make sure we are taking
every step necessary to help people who are out of work through no
fault of their own and to continue this recovery by creating the jobs
that we know have been and will continue to be created as we move
forward. But we have to get beyond this. We should not be waiting hours
to get this final vote in place so we can pass an extension of
unemployment insurance and move forward and help those workers and help
those families.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Health Care Reform
Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor to visit about the
continuation of revelations to the American people about the health
bill that has been signed into law by the President. I come as someone
who has practiced medicine in Wyoming, taking care of the families of
Wyoming for the last 25 years. I come as someone who is the medical
director of the Wyoming Health Fair, offering low-cost blood screens,
low-cost preventive services to let people identify health problems
early so they can get early treatment, keep down the cost of their
medical care. This is something we have done all around the State of
Wyoming for almost a quarter of a century now.
I come today to offer a doctor's second opinion. I have done this
every week since the health care bill became law because every week
there is a new revelation, a new finding, something that once again
affirms what those of us who opposed this health care bill and this law
had said would happen if this actually became law.
I come to the floor to tell my colleagues what I have found in the
last week. After all, the goal of health care reform was to lower
costs, to increase quality, and to improve access for patients around
the country. I continue to believe week after week, as Americans learn
more and more about this law, that this is a law that is going to be
bad for patients--I heard that as I traveled the State of Wyoming this
past weekend talking to folks; bad for providers, nurses and doctors
taking care of patients; and something that is going to be bad for
payers, people who are going to have to pay the bills for their own
health care, because costs are going up, people paying for their own
health insurance because costs are going up, taxpayers who are going to
have to pay for this because those costs continue to go up.
I come to the floor having just taken a look at the Sunday New York
Times, an article by Robert Pear: ``Changing Stance, the Administration
now Defends Insurance Mandate as a Tax.'' I stood on this floor week
after week hearing people on the other side of the aisle say: No, this
isn't a tax. Now, all of a sudden the administration says differently.
But then who can forget Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, who said:
You don't get to find out what is in the bill until the bill is passed.
There have been so many broken promises made by this administration
and this President to the American people. It is no surprise that a
majority of the American people continue to want to have this law
repealed and replaced.
Well, let's review a couple of those promises. One is the President
said:
The plan I'm announcing tonight--
and he said this to a joint session of Congress, with those
of us here attending--
The plan I'm announcing tonight. . . .will slow the growth
of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and
our government.
Well, the Chief Actuary for Medicare and Medicaid said, of course,
the President is wrong.
Then the President said: If you like your health care plan, you will
be able to keep your health care plan, period. He said: No one will
take it away, period. He said: No matter what, period.
But then the Chief Actuary of Medicare and Medicaid said 14 million
Americans would lose their employer-sponsored health coverage under the
law. And when the White House came out with its own recommendations and
rules and regulations, even they have said a majority of Americans who
receive their health coverage through work will not be able to keep the
coverage the President of the United States promised them they could
keep.
And now the one where the President said: I can make a firm pledge.
Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any
form of tax increase.
He went on to be specific. He said: not your income taxes, not your
payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.
That is what the President happened to say.
Well, that was not just a candidate speaking that way. Even as
President, in September of 2009, in a speech before Congress, President
Obama again promised the American people:
The middle class will realize greater security, not higher
taxes.
What a difference a year makes. The President's new health care law
does contain tax hikes--lots of them. In fact, there are at least 18
new taxes in the health care law, and it raises approximately $500
billion over a 10-year period.
Here are a couple of examples: new taxes on medical devices and
supplies, new taxes on brandname prescription drugs, new taxes on
health insurance providers, increased Medicare payroll taxes on
employers. But the most egregious is the individual mandate tax. That
is the one that the American people are so concerned about right now.
The new health care law requires all Americans to buy Washington-
approved health insurance, and they have to do it by the year 2014. If
they do not, they have to pay. Some call it a penalty, others call it a
fine. For the first time in our Nation's history, the Federal
Government is ordering the American people to use their own hard-earned
money to buy a specific good or service.
Most people I talk to, who see through all of the games and the
wording, say this is a tax. Even ABC News's George Stephanopoulos
clearly pointed this out during a September 2009 interview with then
President Obama. In that interview, Mr. Stephanopoulos pressed
President Obama, pressed him to admit that the individual mandate is a
tax. He asked President Obama:
But you reject that it's a tax increase?
And the President responded:
I absolutely reject that notion.
Well, Mr. President, apparently your own administration disagrees
with you. And clearly your Justice Department disagrees with you.
Because as the New York Times reported, on July 16--just this past
Sunday--it said:
Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin
of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul
and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by
more than 20 states and several private organizations.
It is so interesting. Just the first paragraph:
When Congress required most Americans to obtain health
insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats--
In this very Chamber--
denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the
Obama administration and its allies now defend the
requirement as an exercise of the government's ``power to lay
and collect taxes.''
So there you have it. The article says the Justice Department now
believes--the Justice Department takes direction from the President--
the Justice Department believes the individual mandate penalty is a tax
precisely because it generates money, $4 billion per year through 2017.
That is according to the Congressional Budget Office. So you have the
President promising the American people one thing and directing his
Justice Department to say exactly the opposite.
Well, you might say, is this partisan? No. We are talking about a New
York Times article. The New York Times goes on to quote Jack Balkin,
who is a professor of law at the Yale Law School. This is somebody who
actually supports the health care law. This is a supporter of the
health care law. What does he say about President Obama? He said he
``has not been honest with the American people about the nature of this
bill.'' He says: ``This bill is a tax.''
So here you have a supporter of the health care law, a supporter--a
Yale Law School professor--who goes on to say of President Obama, he
``has not been honest with the American people about the nature of this
bill.'' He said: ``This bill is a tax.''
[[Page S6052]]
We have President Obama's own administration now admitting the
individual mandate to buy health insurance is a tax increase. Well,
this clearly violates the President's repeated promises that no one--no
one--making less than $250,000 a year would see a tax increase.
Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation confirms the tax hikes in the
health care law absolutely will hit millions of middle-class, working-
class families struggling in this economy.
Once again, we see and hear the President of the United States
promising the American people one thing and delivering something
entirely different.
The President went on national TV and said his individual mandate was
not a tax. Now the President's administration says it is.
So I come to the floor again today with a doctor's second opinion,
outlining the broken promises of this health care law--the broken
promises made by this President and this administration to the American
people, and forcing through, cramming down their throats, against the
wishes of the American people, a law the American people did not want,
and still do not want. Because if you go to any senior center, if you
go to any civic organization, if you travel around this country and you
ask the question: Under this law, do you believe the cost of health
care will go up, all the hands will go up. And if you ask the question:
Do you think the quality of your own care under this new law will go
down, the same number of hands continue to go up.
That is why it is important we repeal and replace this health care
law with something that is patient centered, with something that
focuses on patients, not Washington bureaucrats and not insurance
company bureaucrats. There is no reason to not allow Americans to buy
insurance across State lines. There is no reason not to allow Americans
who want to buy individual insurance to get the same tax breaks. They
should be able to get the same tax breaks as those who get their
insurance through work from the big companies with those tax breaks.
We have to allow people to have individual incentives if they stay
healthy and take measures to keep down the cost of their own care. We
have to deal with lawsuit abuse, which was essentially neglected in
this over 2,000-page health care law. We need to encourage and allow
small businesses to join together to get the cost of their health care
down and the cost of their insurance down.
Those are the things that will get the cost of care down--not this
monstrous bill that is bad for patients, bad for providers, and bad for
the payers of health care. That is why week after week I continue to
come to the Senate floor to once again go over what we have learned in
the past week. This week we have learned the President of the United
States, who promised there would be no increased taxes, has now changed
the tune of his entire administration and his Justice Department by
saying: Oh, no, we are changing our stance. Now the insurance mandate
is a tax.
I offer my second opinion, and it is time to repeal and replace this
health care law.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. KAUFMAN. 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. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in
morning business for up to 5 minutes.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
PRAISING JAYNE ARMSTRONG
Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I rise once more to honor one of
America's great Federal employees.
Last week, the Senate focused a lot of its attention on reforming our
regulation of Wall Street. As important as that is, we must not forget
that the health of our economy depends on the success of businesses on
Main Street. Small businesses form the backbone of our prosperity and
embody the American dream for millions of families.
From the colonial merchants at our beginning to those who opened
stores in frontier towns in the 19th century, from the mom and pop
shops in the postwar years to the online start-ups of our day, small
businesses have driven our economy.
Over the past 57 years, the Small Business Administration has been
helping small business owners obtain loans and find resources to help
them prosper. By guaranteeing loans that small businesses take out from
banks, the SBA enables entrepreneurs to grow and develop their
businesses with confidence, which helps create jobs and improve local
economies.
It was created out of the old Reconstruction Finance Corporation,
which was set up during the Hoover administration to lend capital to
businesses hurt by the Great Depression. The SBA was founded in 1953,
on the cusp of an economic boom that saw the proliferation of new small
businesses throughout the Nation.
In 1964, the SBA's Equal Opportunity Loan Program helped tackle
poverty by encouraging new businesses started by entrepreneurs living
below the poverty line. In the aftermath of natural disasters, the SBA
provides emergency assistance to help keep small businesses running.
Today, the SBA continues to play an important role in helping small
business owners launch and grow their businesses.
The great Federal employee I am honoring this week has worked at the
SBA for 16 years.
Jayne Armstrong currently serves as the SBA district director for
Delaware. I have known her for several years, and I have seen firsthand
her dedication to helping Delaware small businesses thrive.
Jayne, a native of Pittsburgh, worked in advertising, high-tech
economic development, and higher education development before joining
the SBA in 1994. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees from West
Virginia University. First serving as the district director for West
Virginia and regional advocate in the SBA's Office of Advocacy, Jayne
helped organize the White House Conference on Small Businesses in 1995.
She also represented the SBA in Russia during the first-ever formal
exchange between American and Russian entrepreneurs the following year.
Since coming to Delaware and, Mr. President, I should add that she
has lived in my home State for the past 10 years--Jayne has become one
of the greatest advocates for First State entrepreneurs. She has helped
hundreds of Delawareans turn ideas into businesses. Nothing, including
the economic downturn, slows her down in her drive to help small
business owners obtain the loans they need to open or expand.
Jayne has placed a particular emphasis on helping entrepreneurs take
advantage of SBA loan programs created through the Recovery Act, such
as Queen Bee Beauty Supply in Smyrna, a minority woman-owned business,
and Miller Metal Fabrication in Bridgeville, a design engineering and
manufacturing company.
These are just two of the hundreds of businesses that have Jayne and
the SBA to thank for helping them get their start or expand into new
opportunities.
Jayne is also substantially involved in our State's nonprofit
community. She serves on the boards of Girls, Inc., the Caesar Rodney
Rotary Club, and Delaware Tech's Entrepreneurial Advisory Consortium,
among others. Former Governor Ruth Ann Miller appointed her to serve on
the Delaware Commission for Women.
The SBA serves as a fitting example of how the Federal Government
works with the private sector to fuel job creation--a goal we are
continuing to focus heavily on in this Congress.
I hope my colleagues will join me in thanking Jayne Armstrong and all
of the men and women at the Small Business Administration for their
hard work to help our small business sector grow and prosper. They are
all truly great Federal employees.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
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The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in
morning business.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
American Jobs Act
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, today, hopefully, we will finally extend
unemployment insurance to those who can't find a job in this difficult
economic climate. Our next task is to help small employers and
entrepreneurs grow their businesses and hire new workers. That is the
only way we will fully emerge from this recession.
Over the past 15 years, small businesses have created almost two-
thirds of the new jobs in America. Small businesses are the cornerstone
of New Hampshire's economy. Over 96 percent of businesses in the
Granite State are small businesses with fewer than 500 employees. That
is why we need, once we have passed the extension of unemployment
insurance, to pass the Small Business Jobs Act as soon as possible.
This is legislation that will dramatically increase lending to small
businesses, it will enhance the ability of small companies to export,
and it will provide tax relief to small firms.
I am proud that as a member of the Small Business Committee I helped
craft this bill under the leadership of the chair of that committee,
Senator Mary Landrieu, and ranking member Senator Olympia Snowe. I want
to thank both of them for their work and for their leadership on this
bill.
While many community banks in New Hampshire have increased their
lending, I consistently hear from small businesses that they have run
out of financing for the working capital they need. Last year, my
office organized a financing fair to bring together lenders and small
businesses who need financing, and over 500 people showed up. It was a
huge turnout. But still, wherever I go in New Hampshire, small business
owners tell me they are running out of financing options. In some
cases, their only choice is to turn to credit cards, often personal
credit cards, paying exorbitant interest rates to get the working
capital they need to keep their businesses going.
The small business jobs bill will enhance Small Business
Administration loan programs that help small businesses in New
Hampshire and throughout the country as they try to access the credit
they need to hire workers, to grow their businesses, and to weather the
economic storm.
In the past year, many small businesses in New Hampshire have taken
advantage of the enhancements to the SBA programs that were included in
the Recovery Act. One business owner in New Hampshire, Janet Dunican,
was able to save her business with an SBA loan. Janet owns an
innovative manufacturing company in Hooksett, NH. She has over 50
employees, and what they do is help take trucks that are owned by other
small businesses and transform them by adding custom-fit utility
buckets--the kind we see when the cable company fixes the power lines
after a storm.
When Janet needed a loan to save her company, she looked everywhere
for help. But with credit tight and with this uncertain economy, she
had a hard time finding a bank that would finance her project to keep
the business afloat. Then she turned to a bank that participated in an
SBA loan guarantee program. She was able to work with her bank to get
the credit she needed to save her business.
Unfortunately, too many small businesses can't take advantage of loan
guarantees because the loans have been too limited, and they do not fit
their needs. But the small business jobs bill opens these programs to
more businesses. It increases the size of the loans that businesses can
obtain, it allows small businesses to refinance their debt at lower
rates, and it extends the higher guarantee rates that were included in
the Recovery Act. The SBA estimates that these provisions will put over
$5 billion in credit into the hands of small businesses.
The bill also funds successful State small business lending
programs--programs that have helped save many small businesses and
helped others finance their growth. These programs, such as our own--
the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority's Capital Access Program--
and other successful small business lending programs, can quickly get
credit into the hands of the small companies that need it the most.
The bill also includes a proposal that I worked very hard on to allow
more small businesses in New Hampshire to access the SBA's Express Loan
Program. The Express Loan Program is popular with banks in New
Hampshire because it cuts redtape and allows them to use their own
paperwork in making the loans. It is a simple way to quickly put
working capital into the hands of small business owners.
Another important way we can increase the bottom lines of small
businesses is by helping them sell their products overseas, something I
have been supportive of for a very long time. Of the small- and medium-
sized businesses in this country, only about 5 percent are selling into
markets overseas. Yet 99 percent of those markets are outside of the
United States. For many of these small businesses that would like to
export, it can be very challenging because, unlike big companies, they
often don't have the technical capacity or the resources to identify
new markets, to go on trade missions, and to market their products to
foreign buyers.
The small business jobs bill will help these small firms access new
markets because it boosts Federal and State programs that help small
businesses export their products. It also strengthens SBA export
financing programs so that small businesses can get loans to put them
in a better position to compete locally.
Finally, this legislation also provides over $12 billion in targeted
tax relief for small businesses. These are tax cuts that will help free
up capital for small firms to make investments and, most importantly,
to hire workers because that, in fact, is what the small business jobs
bill is all about. It is to help provide the boost that small
businesses in New Hampshire and across the country need, not just so
they can be successful and grow, but so they can create jobs--the jobs
that we need to put people back to work in this country.
I am excited that we are going to be taking up this legislation. I
hope it is going to be today. I urge my colleagues to join me in
supporting this critical bill to help improve job prospects for people
across the country.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant editor of the Daily Digest proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SANDERS. 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.
Estate Tax
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, every day it becomes harder and harder
for me to listen to my Republican friends who race down to the Senate
breathlessly telling the American people how concerned they are about
the $13 trillion national debt we have and how ``we have to get our
financial house in order.'' That is what they tell us every single day.
But a funny thing happened: under the leadership of President George W.
Bush, these very same Republicans turned a recordbreaking Federal
surplus left by President Clinton into recordbreaking deficits. Back
then, as we all recall, not so many years ago, their rallying cry was
``deficits don't matter.'' That was articulated by Vice President Dick
Cheney. This ``deficits don't matter'' philosophy gave us two wars that
were not paid for, including the war in Iraq, which may end up costing
us $3 trillion. It gave us $700 billion in tax breaks--no worry about
paying for those tax breaks that went to the very wealthiest people in
our country. It gave us $400 billion in an unpaid-for prescription drug
Medicare Part D bill. And, of course, it gave us a $700 billion bailout
of Wall Street developed by President Bush and his Secretary of the
Treasury, Mr. Paulson. No worry; in those days, we did not have to pay
for any of that. It is OK, just add it onto the debt of our kids and
our grandchildren.
But it seems our Republican friends recently, about a year and three-
quarters ago, had a change of heart. Coincidentally, that was when
President
[[Page S6054]]
Obama came into office. I am sure it was just a coincidence, but now it
appears that deficits do matter. For 8 years, deficits didn't matter.
Now they do matter. Now they are telling us we cannot afford to extend
unemployment benefits to over 2 million Americans who lost their jobs
in the worst recession in modern history. They tell us we just cannot
afford to invest in our economy to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure
or transform our energy system, which would create, over a period of
years, millions of good-paying jobs. We can't do that. We don't have
the money to do that.
The Republican hypocrisy is about to reach a whole new level,
literally, today. In the name of fiscal responsibility, while they
oppose every effort to help the middle-class and working families of
our country, today an amendment is going to come onto the floor which
is specifically designed to provide huge tax breaks to millionaires and
billionaires. In other words, there is no money available to help
desperate families who have lost their jobs, but there is all kinds of
money to provide huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.
Finally, last night, as a result of the appointment of a new Senator
from West Virginia, we got the 60 votes we needed to end the Republican
filibuster so that we can extend unemployment benefits. But instead of
allowing this bill to pass yesterday, as common decency would allow, so
we can begin to get the money out to those families who are wondering
right now how they are going to buy the food they need, pay the rent,
pay the mortgage, the Republicans are forcing the Senate to wait
another 30 hours before final passage.
Adding insult to injury, my good friend from South Carolina, Senator
DeMint, wants to suspend the rules so the Senate can take up
legislation to permanently repeal the estate tax. This, even for the
Senate, is really weird and really extraordinary. In the midst of
telling us how serious the deficit is, how serious the national debt
is, these folks want to give tax breaks to billionaires by permanently
repealing the estate tax and, as this chart shows, adding more than $1
trillion to the deficit over 10 years. That is a very unusual way to
deal with our deficit crisis, by adding $1 trillion to the national
debt over a 10-year period. Furthermore, as this chart shows--and maybe
this is the most important point I want to make in my brief remarks--
only a tiny fraction of estates from death in 2009 owed any estate tax.
In fact, 99.7 percent of Americans would not receive a nickel from
Senator DeMint's legislation.
Four years ago, every Republican except two voted to completely
eliminate the estate tax, a tax that has been in existence since 1916
and impacts only the very richest families in America, the top three-
tenths of 1 percent. Let me tell you who the major beneficiaries of
this huge tax break would be. Would it be the average middle-class
worker who during the Bush years saw a $2,200 decline in his income,
people who really need the money? No, they are not being helped by Mr.
DeMint or the repeal of the estate tax. Would it be a small
businessperson, the people who are creating almost all of the new jobs
in our economy? Would small business be helped when we repeal the
estate tax? No, not those guys. Would it be a single mom who wants to
send her kid to college for the first time in their family's lifetime?
No, that single mom is not going to be helped, not anybody on Social
Security, not the people who need the help the most. They don't get one
penny from the repeal of the estate tax, as Senator DeMint is
proposing.
Who benefits? Who are the beneficiaries of the estate tax or, as my
Republican friends and their pollsters like to refer to it, the death
tax? If we pass what Senator DeMint wants us to do today, completely
repeal the estate tax, it would provide an estimated $32.7 billion tax
break for the Walton family, the founders and owners of Walmart--a
$32.7 billion tax break for a family that is worth almost $87 billion.
Some people here may think the Walton family--worth almost $100
billion--is in desperate need of a tax break at a time when we have a
$13 trillion national debt. I am not one of those people. I do not
think they do.
But it is not just the Walton family, obviously, who will benefit.
Other very wealthy families will. Do you remember those hedge fund
managers on Wall Street who made $1 billion a year or several billion a
year? They are going to benefit. Those are the guys--the people who
drove us into the recession, who made huge amounts of money gambling on
Wall Street. They will be very happy if that amendment passes. They
benefit. The Mars candy family will get an $11 billion tax break; the
Cox cable family, $9 billion tax breaks.
Remember, this law has been in existence since 1916. And remember
again, it only benefits the top three-tenths of 1 percent, and 99.7
percent of the American people, working people, middle-class, lower
income people, upper middle-class people, don't benefit one nickel from
this tax break which costs us $1 trillion over a 10-year period.
At a time when our country has a $13 trillion national debt, the
highest level of childhood poverty in the industrialized world, a
crumbling infrastructure, a desperate need to transform our energy
system--I see Senator Boxer, who has been a leader in that effort--it
is beyond comprehension to me that anyone at this moment in American
history would advocate huge tax breaks for millionaires and
billionaires.
This concept of the estate tax was developed by Teddy Roosevelt. He
was concerned about two things. He was obviously concerned about
raising revenue for the Federal Government, but he was also concerned
about making sure we did not maintain an oligarchy in the United States
where billionaire families--people worth tens of billions of dollars
now--are able to give away their fortunes to their own heirs. He
believed in a meritocracy and that it was appropriate that those people
pay a fair share of taxes.
This is what he said:
The absence of effective state and especially national
restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a
small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful
men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power .
. . Therefore I [Teddy Roosevelt] believe in a . . .
graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly
safeguarded against evasion and increasing in amount with the
size of the estate.
Teddy Roosevelt, 1910. I think our Republican friends have kind of
disowned Teddy Roosevelt, and we don't hear him quoted terribly much
anymore.
In order to sell this concept of repealing the estate tax to the
American people, Republican pollsters--I have to admit, we have to be
honest about this--have done a very good job. They framed this tax
break for billionaires into a death tax. So people on the street in
Burlington, VT, come up to me and say: Bernie, I want to leave my kids
$20,000. Why are they going to tax me? The Republican pollsters have
done a very good job and their lobbyists have done a very good job in
misleading the public. As usual, Republicans are using the old tactic
of pretending to worry about the needs of ordinary people as a
smokescreen to serve the wealthy special interests.
That is what they do very well. If you are in the middle class and
you want to leave your family $1 million or $2 million or $100,000,
this doesn't apply to you; you don't benefit one nickel. This is for
millionaires and billionaires.
The other thing they talk about is, we have to preserve the family
farm and the estate tax is wiping out family farms. I am a strong
advocate of family-based agriculture, and in terms of the preservation
of family farms, the American Farm Bureau was asked to come up with an
example of one single family farm being lost as a result of the estate
tax. They could not find one farm that had to be sold as a result of
the estate tax. This is not legislation to help family farmers. This is
legislation to help provide tax breaks for millionaires and
billionaires.
Let me quote from an article that appeared in the New York Times July
8, 2001:
Neil Harl, an Iowa State University economist whose tax
advice has made him a household name among Midwest farmers,
said he had searched far and wide but had never found a case
in which a farm was lost because of estate taxes. ``It's a
myth,'' Mr. Harl said.
As it happens, I called up Professor Harl this afternoon, just a few
hours ago. Interestingly, he told me he has conducted over 3,000
seminars on the
[[Page S6055]]
estate tax and agriculture. This guy is an expert on the issue. I just
wanted to get an update from him. What he told me 2 hours ago is that
after studying this issue for decades, he has not heard of one family
farm that had to be sold because of the estate tax--not one.
When my Republican friends talk about preserving the family farm--
something we have to do--this estate tax issue has nothing to do with
that.
In terms of small business, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, as
this chart indicates, has estimated that only 80 small businesses and
farm estates throughout the country paid an estate tax in 2009,
representing 0.003 percent of all estates.
This legislation is not for the family farmer. This legislation is
not for small business. This legislation is specifically designed to
provide huge tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country,
millionaires and billionaires, at the same time as we have a $13
trillion national debt.
Let me conclude by saying this.
We have heard our Republican friends week after week, month after
month, coming down to the floor of the Senate and saying, no, we cannot
extend unemployment benefits to desperate Americans all over this
country who, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs. We
cannot afford to do that.
Finally yesterday we got the votes to go forward. But having said
that, that they cannot help working families and people who have lost
their jobs, they are now coming down to the floor and saying, we
desperately need to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.
You know, Woody Guthrie had a song some years ago. The title was:
``Whose Side Are You On?'' The Republicans have answered that loudly
and clearly. But when it comes to the needs of the unemployed and
uninsured, when it comes to protect the interests of the struggling
middle class, the Republicans are deficit hawks. We know they are going
to go after them. But if you are a billionaire family who needs a huge
tax break that will cost $1 trillion over 10 years, they are on your
side.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from California is
recognized.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, the Senator from Vermont speaks in very
clear words. When he says this debate is about whose side are you on,
he could not be more on target. We have a situation where we know that
when President Obama took office and the Democrats were increasing
their majority, we inherited the worst recession since the Great
Depression. Those are not just words; that is a fact.
We inherited the worst deficit ever, because under the Republicans,
the hugest tax cuts ever to people earning more than $1 million a year,
$1 billion a year, went right on the credit card; two wars went right
on the credit card; nothing paid for.
Then at the end of George Bush's term, when we started to see jobs
being lost, 700,000 jobs a month, that is when we took over, and we
took some tough votes. We said to the American people: We are going to
focus like a laser beam on jobs and this economy, and we are going to
get back on our feet. Yes, we are going to tackle that deficit.
I happen to have the privilege of having been sent here by my State
when Bill Clinton was President of the United States. You know what. He
inherited huge deficits, and he inherited a tough economic time, and we
proved that we could both balance the budget and create 23 million
jobs. When George W. Bush took the keys to that Oval Office, it took
him a matter of minutes, figuratively a matter of minutes, to turn
surpluses into deficits, and to bring down the jobs market until we got
to a point where we were losing and hemorrhaging jobs at 700,000 a
month.
This is important for us to remember, because it is this date where
we say to our Republican friends, if you care about the people who are
trying desperately to get jobs, if you care about people who have been
hit by this great recession, then come with us. Work with us. Let's
make sure we are there for those who deserve to have this help.
By the way, if I could say, the rules that go along with getting this
unemployment extension, people do not talk about that much. You have to
prove you are ready and willing to work. You have to prove you are
actively seeking a job. You cannot have been fired for cause. And, by
the way, you have to have paid into the unemployment insurance fund as
well. This is unemployment insurance that the workers have paid into.
These are people who are actively seeking work. Guess what. When they
get there, they find out there are five job seekers for every job. So
we say to our friends on the other side of the aisle, where is your
heart? Where is your heart?
A couple of them proved that. They stepped up and voted with us. That
is all. When history is written, I think this time is going to go down
as a time when right triumphs over wrong, because we did get these
votes.
But guess what. Even though the other side knows we have those votes,
they are stalling and stalling and having us vote on amendments that
would give the wealthiest Americans their tax cuts, without paying for
it. So when a deficit is caused by helping those who earn $1 million a
year, $1 billion a year, oh, they are happy with that. But when you are
trying to help mainstream America, middle-class America, the hard-
working people, oh, my goodness, where are they? They are not here.
Only to delay they are here. They are here to delay.
This is an important moment in history, because we always had
bipartisan support for extending unemployment compensation. My God, we
had it when George W. Bush was President in 2003. The Republicans
joined with us and extended unemployment. No problem. So I do not know
where this is coming from.
You are going to hear: Oh, the deficit. That is hogwash. They admit
it. They admit it. They do not care about the deficit. When they are
cutting taxes for their friends, they said: It does not matter. I have
chapter and verse, quotes from their leadership. So this is about
values. It is about whose side are you on? I am on the side of the
American people, the working people. Most of us. Bernie Sanders is on
that side. The Republicans who are joining us in this vote today are on
that side today. This is a history-making day. It is the first time we
have ever had a standoff on this issue. It is the first time we have
ever seen the Republican Party walk away from working Americans like
this. Again, when I was here and we balanced the budget, we created
surpluses. The Republicans were not with us on that. I can honestly
say, I voted to balance the budget. We did it, and we know how to do
it, and we are going to do it. But do not turn your backs on people who
paid into the unemployment compensation funds. It is insurance. They
paid into it. And they have to be actively seeking work.
I wanted to read to you a couple of stories from my State, of real
people. But before I do, I want to talk about Mark Zandi. Mark Zandi,
chief economist at Moody's, was one of the top economic advisers to
then-Republican Presidential candidate John McCain. He says that every
dollar invested in unemployment benefits, such as we are going to vote
on today, produces $1.61 in economic activity. The CBO estimates it is
$1.90.
Why is that? It is because the people who are getting those funds to
survive are going to spend it in the local economy. They are going to
go out to the supermarket; they are going to go to the local gas
station. Economists of all stripes agree that there is an actual return
on investment here, let alone the morality of standing up for people
who, through no fault of their own, cannot find a job.
Let me read what a Sacramento woman said to me.
Days go by when I hardly sleep at all, worrying about our
bills. Since my benefits were cut off on July 1 at the end of
my first extension, we have had to concentrate all of our
income on paying the rent and buying food and gas. I have not
been able to pay any of our other bills. I don't know how
long we can make it like this.
I don't know how long we can make it like this. And our friends are
stalling and stalling and stalling. Two months already they have
stalled.
A city planner from Los Angeles writes:
The effects of the recession were especially acute for
anyone whose industry was decimated by the financial crisis.
Since municipalities are struggling and real estate
development is frozen, jobs in my industry are few . . . my
unemployment checks stopped abruptly last week before the 4th
of July. I
[[Page S6056]]
called my benefits office thinking this must be a mistake,
only to find that the benefits ended because Congress didn't
pass the Federal extension.
Another Californian said:
I am very scared of what might happen if I lose the
unemployment income. We don't want to lose our home. My
children catch me crying at times and ask me why are you
crying, mom? I can't tell them . . . Please pass this bill
until this economy strengthens and more companies start to
hire again.
If people on the other side of the aisle can have a good night's
sleep knowing this is what is happening in the greatest country in the
world on our watch, then fine for them. But I have to tell you, this is
a defining moment of who we are as a Nation. As a Nation.
I actually had the experience of a political analyst, someone who
comments on politics, say, well, you could understand why people might
need two yachts, one on each coast. You know what. We better get back
to the basics here: people who need to feed their families, people who
need to pay their rent, people who do not want to lose their home.
We have to do everything we can to revitalize the jobs market. We
have taken it from 700,000 jobs lost a month under the Republicans, and
we have turned it around, but not fast enough, not far enough.
That is why the bills we passed here are so critical. But we have no
cooperation on that. It would be one thing if the other side said, you
know, let's not do unemployment, but let's work on jobs bills. Oh, no,
they do not want to work on jobs bills. We have got a small business
jobs bill. We are praying to God--I am--that we get one or two
Republicans. This is a bill that is supported across the board by
chambers of commerce, everybody. I know, Mr. President, how hard you
have worked to make sure our community banks can start lending again to
small businesses.
I have been through nine cities in my State. I have met with small
businesses. They want access to credit. This small business bill is a
terrific bill, and we can leverage it without it costing the Federal
Government a dime, these loans to qualified small businesses through
qualified and strong community banks, and leverage all of this to be a
huge stimulus, and it actually has. Because of the paybacks to the
government, we even make a little bit on it.
But we do not have our friends helping us with that. After they stall
this unemployment bill, they will stall into the night. Hey, it is
their right. It is their right. But it is my right to talk about how I
feel about it.
They will start stalling small business just as they stalled the tax
breaks that they claimed they wanted. They stalled the bill that would
have given the research and development tax credit to businesses all
over this great nation that need that tax break.
They have stalled a lot of other tax breaks to businesses. There are
huge tax breaks to small businesses in the small business bill they are
stalling. So this is a moment in history. This is a moment when
partisanship is way ahead of the needs of the people of this great
Nation.
I think it is a sad day when some of my Republican friends come down
here and start to demean the people, the people like the one who wrote
to me, the woman who said: I am scared of what might happen if I lose
this unemployment income. We do not want to lose our home. My children
catch my crying and ask me why are you crying, mom? I cannot tell them.
Please pass this bill until this economy strengthens.
Well, I make this commitment: if we have to stay here through the
night, until 1 or 2 a.m.--I do not know what the other side wants; they
have got their plan of delaying this--fine, then we will stay here
until we get it done. But we are getting this done, because it is the
right thing to do, because it is the right thing to do to people who
are actively seeking jobs, who have lost jobs through no fault of their
own, who have paid into the unemployment compensation fund.
We are going to keep on working to create those jobs so we do not
have to be here again and again doing this. There are things we can do
to set the stake for economic recovery. We have done some of them. I
have met the workers. I have met the workers in my State who are
working on the 405 freeway, the 215 freeway, the 805 freeway, the
Sacramento Airport, the Caldecott tunnel extension, the Doyle Drive
extension, all up and down my State.
I have met those workers who have those jobs because of the Economic
Recovery Act. Our Republican administration in California has stated
that at least 150,000 jobs have been saved or created, and other
studies show it is more than that. It is not enough. We have to keep
working at it. I am sad to say all we can hope for are two or three
Republican votes at that. We are grateful to those brave Republican
Senators who helped us. We are grateful. I thank God for them that they
have the courage to stand and say yes to the American people, yes to
America's families, and no to partisan politics. I am so grateful to
them.
When I say that, it probably hurts them on the other side. I don't
mean to do that. I am just being honest about how I feel about it. If
anyone ever tells you one vote doesn't make a difference, one vote
makes a difference. We swore in a new Senator from West Virginia to
take the place of a leader, Robert C. Byrd, who lived his life for
working people, for the workers in the mines. How appropriate it was
that his first vote was to help working people, working people who,
through no fault of their own, can't find work.
I will wrap up at this point. I am ready, so ready for this final
vote. If we have to stay here through five motions and debate the fact
that the wealthiest American billionaires shouldn't have to help us
with this recession, I am happy to do that. I am a believer that we all
have to do our share. We all have to work together. Hopefully, tonight,
whatever time it is, or in the early hours of the morning, my
constituents, 200,000-plus in California, will be able to look at their
kids and smile a little and say: Honey, we still have a chance. We are
going to get out of these tough times. Honey, we are going to do it.
That is what this place should be about at a time such as this,
creating the policies that create the jobs, working together to do so
but never forgetting there are people who just need that bridge until,
when they go for a job, there are not four other people there for the
same job. That day will come, if we can work together. I make that
commitment.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I have listened to my colleague from
California. I am somewhat amazed to think she would imply we don't care
about the unemployed. The fact is, we do. I went through the list of
the things she mentioned, as did the Senator from Vermont. I was not
here in 2001. I was not here in 2003. I was not here when both the wars
were initiated. I had no part in any of that. But even had I been, the
fact is, we can help two groups of people with this unemployment
insurance. There isn't anybody on our side of the aisle who doesn't
think we ought to pass extended unemployment benefits. To state or
imply that is absolutely absurd. It is not about stalling. The majority
leader did not allow one amendment to allow us an opportunity to have a
vote on whether we ought to pay for it.
The question isn't whether we help the unemployed. Every time we have
offered ways to do so--as a matter of fact, five times it has been
rejected that, in fact, our grandchildren should not have to pay for
the unemployment benefits of the people who are unemployed today. Five
times it has been rejected. Multiple times we have chosen to not do the
responsible thing for two groups of people. It is easy to come to the
Senate floor and throw darts at people who have a drastic disagreement
on where we stand in this country. But to imply that they don't care is
out of bounds. The people in Oklahoma who are not getting unemployment
checks today I care about just as much as the people who don't have a
job who aren't getting one. But there is another group of people whom I
am pressed to serve in Oklahoma as well; that is, their children. The
assumption that this body can't make the hard choices to eliminate
things that are much less important, much more wasteful, an absolute
waste of Federal dollars and eliminate those things to pay for
unemployment insurance is out of the bounds of reality.
[[Page S6057]]
My colleague from California mentioned several times that all the
people who are getting these extended benefits have paid into a fund.
They paid zero. This is extended benefits. The extended benefits are
100 percent paid for by Federal tax dollars. It is the 26 weeks, the
routine unemployment, that is paid for through the unemployment fund.
The extended benefits, long-term benefits, don't come from any pot of
money except the pot of money of our grandchildren's future.
Let's put that to rest. There is not a Republican or a Democrat or an
Independent in this body who does not want these folks to get extended
unemployment benefits. We do. The question is, at a time when we are
going to borrow $1.6 trillion this year alone against the future of our
children, whether maybe we can find $30 billion, that doesn't come
anywhere close to the priorities of helping people who are unemployed
today. I reject out of hand the idea that we don't have any compassion.
The fact is we do.
As a matter of fact, our compassion is both short term and long term.
We are thinking about the habits of Congress that continually put the
credit card into the machine and borrow against the prosperity and
well-being of generations that follow. Let's not have any more talk
about the fact that we don't want people to have unemployment. We do.
We do want them to have unemployment. Multiple times we offered ways
for that. It may, in fact, pass this afternoon or early this evening
that we are going to extend them and not pay for it. But as the Senator
from California said: It is a defining moment. It certainly is. Is the
Federal Government, in this difficult economic situation, going to at
least make some small attempt to rein in the $300 billion worth of
waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication in the Federal Government? The
answer we get is no. Discretionary programs over the last 2 years, not
counting the stimulus--we can have the stimulus debate some other
time--have risen 19.6 percent, when the average wage went up less than
2 percent. The Federal Government is now twice as big as it was in
1999, not counting the stimulus. We have 6,400 sets of duplicative
programs that the body will not touch. They are all designed to do good
things for people. They are highly inefficient, highly ineffective. Yet
what we will do is not that hard work to get rid of the things that
aren't working. We will just charge our children so we can say we took
care of unemployment.
Hard times require hard decisions. What we are seeing is the easy way
out. The easy way out is to not pay for this. The easy way out is to
charge it to our children and grandchildren. There is no difference in
the level of compassion. Everybody wants to take care of those who are
unemployed. The easy way is to put it on the backs of our children and
grandchildren.
The question is, Will we do the right thing for the country? Will we
do the best right thing for the country or will we do the easy thing,
the politically expedient thing, class envy, ``I am going make somebody
look bad because they don't agree with me on the timing of something''
or will we act as a body that will ensure both caring for the now and
ensuring the future? It is easy in the Senate to spend money you don't
have. The bias is for it. The hard thing is to take and do the best
right thing. My colleagues, many on both sides of the aisle, in
numerous cases over the last 5\1/2\ years, have too often done the easy
thing. We have all these fingers pointing at this administration did
this and this administration did this. There are plenty of problems for
every administration and every political party to be considered guilty
on because too often both groups have done the short-term politically
expedient thing rather than the best right thing for the country.
I had, at one of the events that my staff attended this weekend, an
individual in Oklahoma who lost his unemployment insurance. He said:
You tell Dr. Coburn to be sure and continue to pay for it. I want my
unemployment insurance. I need my unemployment. I will not be able to
make my house payments unless I get that. But I don't want that to come
from my children and grandchildren. I want it to come from the excesses
and waste in Washington today.
So there is another viewpoint, even though we hear it is a critically
nonpertinent viewpoint. This isn't a partisan issue. This isn't a
delaying tactic. This is a real philosophical difference on how we get
out of the mess we are in.
A lot of my colleagues are not happy that I am a Republican a lot of
times because I go after my party just as much as I go after anybody
else's. But the fact is, core principles matter. Go look at the history
of republics. The Senator from California talks about a defining
moment. The defining moment for the Athenian Republic was when they
decided to start spending money they didn't have on things they didn't
need.
Here is our option today. The reason we are going to have motions is
because we were given no opportunity to amend. That is the only reason
we will have motions to suspend the rules. It has nothing to do with a
delaying tactic. It has to do with a debate and a Senator's right to
offer amendments. The Senator from California would be doing the same
thing if the shoe was turned the other way. If she was precluded from
offering amendments, she would find a way to offer an amendment, if she
believed from a position, a conscientious position that can be defended
on the basis of facts. You don't have to agree with it, but you can't
deny there are economic factors that should play in how we pay for
unemployment insurance.
You can demean us. You can say we are mean. You can say we don't
care. But the fact is, none of that is true. It is an absolute untruth.
The defining moment is, Will we embrace the quality that built this
country in the first place? That is, being responsible for the problems
that are in front of us and not shifting that responsibility to
generations that follow. That is what this debate is all about. When we
left here for one break, we had agreed with Senator Reid and Senator
Levin about extending unemployment insurance. We were told by the
Speaker of the House that she wasn't about to set the precedent of
starting to pay for unemployment insurance. Why not? When we have a
$1.6 trillion deficit, when we have $13.3 trillion worth of debt, when
we are mortgaging the future of our children, we are stealing
opportunity away from them as we do it, why not? Why not meet the
challenges that are in front of us by responding in a way that says
meeting people's needs today is important, and it is important we not
take away from the needs of the future as we do so. Yet we are lectured
that it is a partisan debate.
There is nothing partisan about this. In my soul, I want to help
everybody out there who is unemployed and facing the tough times. But
also in my soul is that I do not want to mortgage the future of any
more American children, when we have tremendous amounts of waste,
fraud, and duplication that can easily be eliminated.
One of the motions I am going to offer is to cut $40 billion from the
Federal Government. America, tell me what part of this you do not agree
with. The fact is, we are going to ask that we quit wasting money on
real property. We spend $8 billion a year maintaining property we do
not want. We have $80 billion worth of empty buildings. It is costing
us $8 billion a year. Should we continue to spend that $8 billion or
should we not spend that $8 billion and take that $8 billion and pay
for unemployment insurance?
How about collecting unpaid taxes from Federal employees and Members
of Congress. That is $3 billion. As to currently hired Federal
employees, it is already adjudicated they owe $3 billion. I think we
ought to pay it back. I do not think we ought to borrow from the future
of our children and grandchildren because we do not have the guts to
say: Pay up. Quit cheating the Federal Government, employee of the
Federal Government. That is a small number in terms of the number of
employees, but that is a big number: $3 billion. Let's have them pay
up.
Why is it we are not going to eliminate $8 billion in bonuses to
Federal contractors who did not meet the requirements to get a bonus,
yet we gave the bonus anyway? Why not eliminate that rather than charge
this to our children? Tell me why you will not vote for that? Do you
think we ought to be paying bonuses to people who do not deserve them,
contractors? It is $6 billion over a 4-year period in just the
[[Page S6058]]
Defense Department alone. But you do not want to get rid of that? You
would rather charge the money to our kids than make the hard choice of
alienating some defense contractor or some government contractor
because they got something they did not deserve in the past, when
somebody is unemployed who deserves to get unemployment insurance? I do
not understand it. Or eliminating nonessential government travel--one
of the things President Obama wants to do. We spend billions--$14.8
billion, in excess of that--on Federal travel. We are some of the worst
abusers. Yet we will not discipline ourselves and set an example that
we can use a teleconference rather than getting on an airplane and
going somewhere--a video teleconference. At a time such as this, when
we are having an economic problem, we will not make the hard decision
to make tough choices that are maybe not as fun, maybe not as easy.
What I have found is a video teleconference is a whole lot easier than
travel, but we will not make that hard choice. We are not going to tell
the agencies they are going to have to do it.
We will not even put on a Web site all the times we violate our own
rules on pay-go. On February 12, we passed a law. It used to be a rule
in the Senate, but now we passed a law. It is called pay-go. It says
you cannot have new spending unless you pay for it. Since February 12,
when the President signed that law, we have violated it to the tune of
$223 billion, where we said: Oh, time out. The pay-go statute does not
apply. We don't have to pay for it. We don't have to eliminate all the
inefficiencies, all the duplication. We don't have to go after any
fraud. We are just going to charge it to our children and
grandchildren.
Where is the integrity in that? Where is the integrity? Where is the
character in that? Where is the courage to do the tough thing that
accomplishes both helping the people who are unemployed but helping our
kids and helping our Nation? There is not any. There is none. It is the
easy way out.
Lest you think I am making up this stuff, let me give you some
examples of Federal duplication. I will just give you four easy
examples. We have 70 different government programs--70 different sets
of bureaucracies--that spend billions of dollars a year, and on none of
them is there a metric to measure whether they are effective to help
people with food who are hungry. Why 70? Why across six or seven
different agencies? Why not one or two programs keenly focused with
metrics on saying: Are we feeding them or not? Why not eliminate 68
sets of bureaucracy and overhead? That is a small one.
We have 105 different sets of programs to incentivize our young
people to go into math, engineering, science, and technology. It costs
$3 billion a year, for 105 different programs, in 9 different Federal
agencies. They are not in the Department of Education. They are
everywhere.
Nobody knows the data, but nobody will vote to make them accountable,
make them transparent, eliminate the overhead, streamline the
bureaucracy. No, we do not want to do that. This body has voted against
doing that multiple times when those amendments have been offered.
We have a total of 78 job training programs outside the Department of
Labor, costing billions of dollars a year, none of which have a metric
on them. Yet we do not want to streamline that, eliminate it, get it
down to two or three that are focused--some on the chronically
unemployed, some on the new workers coming in, some on those who are
handicapped who might need special assistance. No, we are going to keep
the 70-plus programs we have because they are somebody's baby, all of
which are highly inefficient and none of which can prove effectiveness
when you measure them with a metric because they do not have a metric.
They cannot demonstrate they are effective.
So the debate is not about whether we want to help people who are
unemployed. The debate is about whether we want to help the people who
are unemployed as well as the generations that follow us.
I am amazed, and continue to be so, how easily this body can abandon
common sense. I do not know if we do not have it to begin with or if we
are similar to a magnet, and it is two positives, so we repel any
common sense. But nobody would run any organization--private, public--
business or anything else the way we run the agencies in the Federal
Government.
When you start wanting to do something about it, the only thing you
get is: We can't. Well, the American people are asking us today:
Please, do what you can. Do what you can. What we can do is we can pay
for unemployment for the next multiple periods of months by eliminating
things that are absolutely unnecessary.
Do you realize we can save $4.5 billion over the next 10 years by not
printing stuff that people do not want. It is all online. We can save
$450 million a year just by putting common sense into the Government
Printing Office. It has been voted down three times on this floor this
year. Why not? Why do we continue to take the easy task when the future
of our country is going to be determined on whether we take the hard
road and do the hard thing that benefits both the coming generations
and those who are experiencing problems today?
I tell you why it is. It is because we say we care, but we do not. We
play the game, but we do not get in the game. Getting in the game means
that you get criticized, that you offer ideas, some of which may work
and some of which may not, but you are not afraid to change the game
because our kids' future, our country's future depend on changing the
game.
What we have heard today is the resistance to changing the game. We
do not have a future if we do not start making hard choices. It is an
easy choice for me to vote with the Senator from California to pay for
unemployment benefits. I want those people to get it. It is a hard
choice for me to vote against it and say: Let's pay for it. If, in
fact, you will pay for it, I will vote with you. It is not like we
cannot find $40 billion. Every third grader in this country can find
$40 billion in this budget. There is no rocket science to it. There is
so much waste, so much duplication, and so much fraud that anybody can
find it.
The question is, Do we have the will to do the best right thing for
this country? One of the things I have learned in 5\1/2\ years in this
body is that when people use straw men and people use half-truths, it
is usually because they are hiding something. What is being hidden from
the American public today? What is this debate truly all about? Is it
just about unemployment or is it about we like the way things are?
We do not want to change the way things are, we do not want to get
out of our comfort zone to solve the real problems of America, so,
therefore, we will use all sorts of tactics to deflect what the real
issues of the day are.
What are they? The Senator from California rightly outlines that
millions of Americans need unemployment compensation right now. I am
all for it. What is the other truth about where we are? The truth is,
this country is on an absolute unsustainable course. The American
people have awakened to it. They know it.
As the Senator from California knows, this is not new for me. I have
been doing this for 5\1/2\ years. So it did not matter if it was the
``bridge to nowhere,'' which a Republican authored, or unemployment
compensation today, I think we use common sense and do the best right
thing for America, not the politically easy thing.
So the challenge before us today is to go home and explain, when this
bill passes, why we charged it to the least of us. That is whom we are
charging it to: to the least of us.
I told a story not long ago. In my profession as a physician, I have
delivered nearly 4,000 babies--maybe over that. I quit counting. But
the thing that has always gotten me, when I am delivering a baby--and I
have a mother there and a father there and that baby comes out--is to
see the glow on the face and in the eyes of those parents. The glow is
about hope and promise for the future and about what things can be and
the potential that is unlimited when that new life is here. You see it
in the parents, and you see them puff up and say: Wow, what a
phenomenon.
As I think about what we do today, we are stealing that. We are
taking it from those kids because we refuse to have the backbone and
courage to do the hard, yet the best right thing for this country.
We will hear a lot of speeches about how bad we are because we want
to pay
[[Page S6059]]
for it. We will be talked down. It will be said that we want to
obstruct. I honestly admit I don't want anything to go through this
body that isn't paid for. You can count on it every time. Everybody on
that side of the aisle, and most on my side of the aisle, have run in
cross-wise with me on things that aren't paid for. They know. It is not
a fetish; it is that I actually recognize the long-term future of this
country depends on us getting our fiscal house in order.
So it is a defining moment, as the Senator from California said. But
it is not the defining moment she thinks it is. It is the defining
moment of whether this body is going to grab onto and truly accept the
responsibility given to us by the American people. Will we truly accept
it? How we act on it determines our commitment to this country.
I don't disagree with those who just want to get it through and get
people paid. They have a right to have that position. I am not
demeaning that position. I am just saying the country can't last if we
keep doing it. Our kids don't have a future if we keep doing it. If we
look at the budget projections for our country, we will run--even with
the tax increases that are coming at the end of this year--we are going
to run $1 trillion deficits until 2020.
Let me close with one final thought. We have a $4 trillion budget. We
are going to run a $1.6 trillion deficit this year. That means we are
going to borrow that from our children. The deficit by this time next
year will be close to $14 trillion.
Have my colleagues ever thought about what $1 trillion is? My
colleague from Georgia explained it to me. I didn't believe him, so I
did the math.
If we spend $1 a second, so that means we spend $60 a minute, or
$3,600 an hour--$3,600 an hour, the wealthiest in our country probably
don't spend that, but let's say we did--how long would it take us to
spend $1 trillion? The answer is 31,709 years spending $3,600 an hour
before we ever get to $1 trillion. We get $1 trillion deficits $30
billion, $40 billion at a time, which is the cost of this bill. The way
we start getting out of debt is to stop adding to it.
If we go back to February 12 when the law went into effect on pay-go,
and we add this bill to it, we are going to be at $\1/4\ trillion since
February 12 that this body will have added to our children's deficit.
It is not our debt. Nobody in this room and probably very few people
listening to this debate are going to pay one penny against it. It is
all going to be borne by the children coming.
So what is pay-go about? Pay-go is about this, America: You pay and
we will go spend. We are seeing evidence of it today on the Senate
floor. It is not just that we pay; We pay, our children pay, and our
grandchildren pay. We are going to pay with real dollars, but our
grandchildren are going to pay with lost opportunity, lower levels of
education, lower levels of everything in the future.
There is not one problem in front of this country we can't solve. We
can't solve them by borrowing money that we don't have to spend on a
good thing, let alone a bad thing, but on a good thing while we allow
hundreds of billions of dollars to be wasted every year in this
country.
So when we hear the cry that somebody doesn't care, we have to ask
the question, What do they care about? Can we care for those who are
unemployed today as well as care for our kids? Yes, we can. It is
really not all that hard, with the examples of waste and duplication.
There is $100 billion worth of fraud in Medicare that we can document.
So there are all sorts of things we can do. The question is, Do we have
the courage? Will we step to the line? Will we do what is best for our
children and the unemployed? That is the question. It is not that
somebody doesn't have compassion for the unemployed.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). The Senator from California.
Mrs. BOXER. Thank you so much, Mr. President. As Senator Coburn was
talking about the need to balance the budget, I was remembering that I
voted to do that. With the leadership of Bill Clinton and the
Democrats, we not only balanced the budget but we created surpluses. It
was a great feeling. We did it, we know how to do it, and we will do it
again.
Let's talk about what is before us right now. It is not about the
unemployed versus our children. Our long-term unemployed have children,
and these children are seeing their dads and moms with their heads in
their hands, they see tears, and they don't know why. I have letters
from my constituents. They don't know what to tell their kids. They are
working so very hard.
So let's talk about what is before us today. We know how to get to
the balanced budget. That is why we have budgeting. That is why we have
authorizing. That is why we have appropriations. That is why President
Obama has said he will cut the deficit in half at the end of his first
term, and I am confident that will be the case, and maybe we can even
do more. We know how to do that.
Hearing the Senator from Oklahoma say we are being partisan makes no
sense at all. I sang the praises of my Republican friends who have
joined with us in making sure we can extend unemployment benefits
today. I thank God for them, frankly. So this isn't about partisanship.
It is about pulling together as a country and recognizing that we are
in the worst recession since the Great Depression. It is no time for
partisanship. It is time to pull together and help our kids and help
our families and help those who, through no fault of their own, find
themselves in this predicament.
Why are we treating this like an emergency? That is what we are
doing. It is something that has always been done because it is an
emergency. President Ronald Reagan signed three extensions of
unemployment compensation without paying for it because he believed it
was an emergency and because he understood what we understand. He
understood that when we, in fact, make sure unemployed people have this
insurance--which they paid into, by the way--they will spend it
locally, and every dollar of that unemployment compensation brings to
the economy either $1.61 under calculations done by John McCain's
economic adviser, Mark Zandi, or CBO, the Congressional Budget Office,
which said it yields $1.90.
Some of the proposals we have seen from the other side are to cut
other jobs in order to pay for extending unemployment benefits. That is
not going to help us at this time.
So, yes, I remember the wonderful feeling I had when we balanced the
Federal budget when Bill Clinton was President, when we created
surpluses as far as the eye could see. The debt was on the way down.
The minute the Republicans took over, they put tax cuts to the
wealthiest on their credit card. They put two wars on their credit
card. Spend, spend, spend, spend, spend. All that work we did was,
unfortunately, reversed.
What is before us today is a very simple proposition. My friend from
Oklahoma says he cares deeply about the unemployed. I have no reason to
doubt that. He should join us today in voting to extend these benefits.
Ronald Reagan saw it clearly. He extended them three times as
emergencies because it is an emergency. He knew it was
counterproductive to cut other jobs to pay for the extension of
unemployment benefits.
We know how to balance this budget. Pay-go is a part of it. Pay-go:
Pay for everything you do except emergencies. That is what we should be
doing because to do otherwise is counterproductive.
I am so grateful we are nearing the point where we can extend these
benefits. Yes, we have been delayed. We have been delayed for 2 months.
I read letters into the Record before. Here is one:
I have kept up a relentless job search. I have applied for
at least 600 jobs. This is discouraging, not receiving any
information back. Days go by when I hardly sleep at all
worrying about the bills. We have had to concentrate all of
our income on paying the rent and buying gas. I can't pay for
other bills.
Another Californian:
I am very scared of what might happen if I lose the
unemployment income. We don't want to lose our home. My
children catch me crying at times and ask me: Why are you
crying, Mom? I can't tell them. Please pass this bill until
this economy strengthens.
So, again, this isn't about the way the Senator from Oklahoma phrases
it.
[[Page S6060]]
He makes it sound as though children aren't involved in this situation.
They are. They are the children of the unemployed. So it is clear that,
yes, we are going to have to tackle the deficit. Of course, we are
going to have to tackle the deficit. We don't need to be lectured about
that because we are the party that did it. We are the party that
created the balanced budget. We are the party that created the
surpluses, plus 23 million jobs, and the other side, unfortunately,
didn't take very long to turn that whole thing around. This economy
went into a ditch, and we are working hard to get it out of that ditch.
So I wish to close with this: Let's take care of this emergency. It
is going to help our families. It is going to help our children. It is
going to help our local communities when people can go down and buy the
gas at the local gas station, buy the food at the local grocery store,
and be able to be stable in the community. Then let's get back
immediately to working on bills that are going to create jobs.
The small business bill that the Senator from Oregon has worked so
hard on and the Senator from Louisiana has worked so hard on, and many
of us have worked with them, that is a good bill and it is 100 percent
paid for. It even has a plus to it. It is going to create jobs through
small business. Small business creates more than 60 percent of the jobs
in this Nation. We have a chance to help those who are struggling.
So we need to get this bill behind us and go to the small business
bill. We are going to need 60 votes. They are filibustering that as
well. So everything we do takes 60 votes.
If I read the list of supporters for the small business bill, it
includes the Chamber of Commerce, the regional Chambers of Commerce,
and businesses and community banks. They want to see this bill happen
because our small businesses need access to credit. Our very good small
businesses are being turned away. I visited so many of them. They are
thriving even in this climate, but they need to expand and they can't
get access to the capital.
So, please, let's not see a filibuster there as well. Please, let's
not see delay there as well. Let's do this unemployment compensation,
get the assistance to the people who deserve it, those who are actively
seeking work, who can't find it through no fault of their own, and who
paid into the unemployment compensation fund. Let's get that behind us.
That will help our communities. Then let's get to the small business
bill. It is a small business jobs bill. Let's do the right thing. We
can get this economy back on its feet, but we need to work together.
Thank you very much, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, during the debate, I had a chance to sit
in the chair for a while and listen to one of my colleagues from across
the aisle. In the space of just a short period of time, that colleague
turned this into a debate about courage, about integrity, about
character, and about easy versus hard choices. In other words, he took
all of his time to use attacks on those who do not share his version of
economic policy and where our country should go. Rather than making the
arguments, he made the personal attacks.
He also said something that struck me as right-on, which is that
often when people are using personal attacks, they are trying to
camouflage and only give half the story and trying to set up a straw
man. That is certainly accurate.
What is the real debate we are having on the floor? Well, on one
side, there is the argument--an argument I would weigh in favor of--
that says we need to put this economy back on track, put families to
work, and that it is through jobs for American families, and that we
will restore the financial foundations not only of families but of our
communities and of our Nation as a whole.
There are certain key things we can do now to accomplish that. Those
things include helping our school districts create a bridge through
this recession so we don't see thousands of teachers being laid off.
There is a provision to assist our school districts in the Defense
supplemental bill we will have in the Senate in the near future.
Second, we can assist families who are unemployed through no fault of
their own and help them create a bridge through this recession.
Third, we can help our small businesses create jobs because there is
a dysfunction right now in which our community banks that best
understand Main Street are at their leverage limits and therefore
cannot make additional loans. Indeed, the Chairman of the Federal
Reserve was speaking to this challenge in the Capitol just an hour
ago--the systemic dysfunction in which capital is hung up and
unavailable to our small businesses. It is our small businesses that,
by utilizing that capital, can seize economic opportunity and put
people back to work. It is a good strategy to enable those funds to be
available to small businesses and help recapitalize community banks. It
makes money for the Treasury. The CBO estimated it will make $1 billion
for the Treasury. It does it by enabling $300 billion in liquidity to
small businesses. The CBO estimate of the funds that come back to the
Treasury doesn't include the revenue created by families who are put
back to work and pay income taxes or by small businesses that are more
successful and pay more in business taxes.
So it is a win-win. We create a path by supporting our States through
funds for education, and we create a path through this recession by
helping families who are unemployed because the economy is in such a
mess. We create a path out of this recession by creating jobs for
American families by supporting our small businesses through our
community banks. That is one version of how we can go forward.
My colleague across the aisle has a different version. The different
version is--and this is the leadership of the Republican side that has
been talking about this all this week. Their version is, no, instead of
helping families, small businesses, and schools, we want to extend the
Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. That is the path out of this
recession, say my colleagues across the aisle.
There is a fundamental difference of economic strategy involved. What
is striking to me is that we have a lot of information about the
strategy being proposed by my colleagues across the aisle because this
was the Bush Presidency strategy. We tried it. We found out that when
you give away the National Treasury to the wealthiest Americans, you
drive this Nation into debt. In fact, under the Bush administration, we
doubled our national debt.
Under the very idea and plan for which my colleagues across the aisle
are advocating, we drove this Nation's economy into the ground. To
counteract that, the Bush administration said: Let's deregulate the
banks and Wall Street and make everything move a little faster, and
maybe consumers will spend a little more and banks will take more risk,
and we will take away all the lane markers and the traffic signals in
our financial system, and, by golly, somehow we will make this economy
flourish.
Do you know what. They built a house of cards. It was a house of
cards built on predatory mortgages and the securitization of those
mortgages, with extraordinary leverage of up to 40 to 1 under that
deregulation. That house of cards came down, and that house crashed on
the American family, and that American family lost their savings for
retirement. Families in my State lost their jobs, and the unemployment
rate is huge. The families lost the health care that went with their
jobs. Well, that is not a very pretty picture. But my colleagues, who
brought us that Bush economic nightmare that crashed on the heads of
the American families, are coming to this floor and saying: We want
more of the same.
Earlier, my colleague across the aisle characterized that strategy as
the ``tough'' choice, while he characterized the strategy of helping
American families and small businesses and schools as an ``easy''
choice. Well, let's try to set these pejoratives or characterizations
aside and just say that they are different choices--one, the revival of
the Bush strategy, which is something like the summer sequel to a cheap
horror story that wrecks the economy of the United States. That
strategy is sitting as a potential idea and threat to our Nation.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask, through the Chair, if my friend will
[[Page S6061]]
yield for me to make a unanimous consent request.
Mr. MERKLEY. I am pleased to yield to the majority leader for that
purpose.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all postcloture
time be considered expired, after the use or yielding back of time
specified in this agreement; that upon the expiration of time,
amendment No. 4426 be withdrawn; that debate on the motions to suspend
the rules with respect to H.R. 4213, and that the motions not be
divisible, as specified here, be limited to 20 minutes each, with the
time divided equally between the proponents and the majority leader or
his designee; that upon the expiration of all time, the Senate proceed
to vote on the motions to suspend in the order in which offered; that
after the first vote and prior to each succeeding vote in this
sequence, there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided as specified
above, with succeeding votes limited to 10 minutes each; that upon
disposition of the motions, the motion to strike, which is at the desk,
be agreed to; no further motions or amendments be in order; that the
pay-go statement from the Budget Committee be read into the Record, and
without further intervening action or debate, the Senate proceed to
vote on the motion to concur with amendment No. 4425, as amended;
further, that the motions to suspend be those which appear on pages
S6034 and S6035 of the Congressional Record of July 20: two Coburn
motions, the Brown motion, and two DeMint motions.
I also ask that my friend from Oregon now have whatever time
necessary to complete his statement. How much time does he need?
Mr. MERKLEY. Five minutes.
Mr. REID. I ask that my request be amended in that regard.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, for everyone's information, we should be
able to proceed through these pretty quickly. It is likely--and this
doesn't take away from the statements to be made by my friends on the
other side, and we may not use much of our time--that we can move these
along fairly quickly. There will be five votes, and, as indicated in
the consent agreement, the first will be the regular time, and after
that there will be 10 minutes on the final four.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I note that there are a couple of issues
raised that really are false issues. One is in regard to the debt. My
colleagues across the aisle are proposing a massive increase of the
debt by extending the Bush tax cuts, and they are saying that helping
those who are unemployed through no fault of their own is an increase
to the debt. This is coming from the same folks who brought us the Bush
policy, the ones who doubled our national debt during the Bush
administration and created the house of cards that crashed down upon
the American families over the last 2 years.
So it is not about debt. When it comes to our children--and I hate to
see the abuse of this argument--sound economic policy is the right
thing. If we put families to work, those families are far healthier,
those families have a foundation, they have a future, and they
recognize there is a horizon that is brighter. They recognize they will
be able to move forward to create opportunity for their children. That
is the foundation of a successful family. But giveaways to the
wealthiest at the expense of helping families is wrong for our
children. If you don't put people back to work, you don't create an
economic revival, you don't create revenues in the Treasury, and
therefore you don't create the ability to pay down that debt.
So do we want the Bush policy 2, the nightmare that doubled our debt,
or do we want the investment in families and education that we had
under the Clinton administration and that we have under the Obama
administration, which will put money back into the Treasury? I think
the choice is clear: Let's shore up small businesses and our families,
let's shore up education, let's put this economy back on track, and
let's put people to work, and in so doing we will address and resolve
the issue of the deficit.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
Mr. BROWN of Massachusetts. Mr. President, I enjoyed the prior
speeches. I don't necessarily agree with them, but I enjoyed them.
There is plenty of blame to go around. We can go back to the fact that
the majority party has been in charge for 4 years and President Bush is
no longer in charge, so saying Bush this and Bush that--that gets old.
We need to focus on problem-solving today.
One of the prior speakers mentioned that it takes 60 votes for
cloture to move things forward. Sometimes you have those 60 votes.
Other times, there are going to be 41. There are going to be 41 when
you try to overspend, overtax, and overregulate and, I feel, make it so
businesses cannot move forward to create those jobs that were just
referenced and that we need to start to focus on.
Since I have been here, with all due respect, we haven't done much on
jobs at all. That is frustrating not only for me but for the American
people and the people of Massachusetts.
I am standing before you today to once again consider legislation to
extend the unemployment benefits, and once again this legislation, as
we know, will add approximately $30 billion to our Nation's debt, which
is currently $13 trillion and rising. To put that into perspective, I
have been here about 6 months, and I remember that when I first got
here, the debt calculator was about $11.95 trillion. It is now $13.1
trillion--give or take--and rising, with no end in sight. I find that
deeply troubling.
While it is clear that it appears we have the votes to advance this
measure and it will pass the Senate, I have felt--and I have talked
about it for a month now--that there is a better way. I stand before
you to propose an alternative that will be fully paid for by using the
bank account and not the credit card because rather than putting the
cost on that credit card and passing it on to our children and
grandchildren, it is the great-grandchildren who are being affected as
well.
Listen, we on this side of the aisle want to help as well, and my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle do too. It is not a partisan
issue. I agree with the Senator who spoke before me. I agree with her.
But no one is disputing the value of these programs, not only what it
means to the citizens of Massachusetts and across the country who are
having a difficult time, but our economy, as we know, is slow. It is
showing signs every once in a while of recovering, but it is very slow.
People out of work need extra assistance while they search for that new
employment.
What I want to debate is whether we continue our spending ways to add
to the credit card, to the debt, versus finding ways to pay for it with
the money we have. I can tell my colleagues as the ranking member on
the contracting subcommittee, looking at the amount of waste in Federal
Government, we can find a way to pay for this program by using the bank
account, not the credit card.
I am flabbergasted as to why we do not think outside the box. Some of
the speakers before me said the Republicans are doing this; the
Republicans are doing that. With all due respect, I have made many
efforts to work across party lines, as you know, Mr. President, and as
the other Members do too. Bipartisanship is a two-way street. You
cannot tell me we also do not have good ways and good ideas to finance,
to find ways to solve these problems.
The American people have made it very clear they want elected
Representatives in Congress to start paying for the initiatives we are
trying to push without raising taxes and start exercising the type of
fiscal restraint they use in their own homes and that they use in their
businesses.
Last month's vote on larger tax extenders legislation raised taxes by
almost $60 billion and increased the deficit by $33 billion. It was
defeated, and I feel rightly so. Congress must start listening to the
American people. They are telling us they are tired of the
overspending, the overtaxation, the increasing debt, the
overregulation, and the involvement in their lives. They just want to
be left alone and be able to go to work, pay the bills, take the kids
out to a movie, pay for their mortgages, pay for school, and they do
not want to have this constant reaching
[[Page S6062]]
into their pockets--just take your wallet and give it to them, just
give it to them. Enough.
We have to start listening as a body. Forget the party bickering.
Forget all that. I am way past that. I proposed a fiscally responsible
way to pay for everything we are trying to do today. We can find a
funding source without adding to the credit card, to that debt we all
know about and is rising uncontrollably. We cannot keep spending like
we are doing. I know it and many people in America know it.
This is not the first time Republicans have come to the floor to
offer a path forward on emergency unemployment insurance that is paid
for. We tried four times already to do just that, and each and every
time it has been opposed.
As I said, my amendment pays for the cost of extending unemployment
insurance by rescinding unobligated stimulus funds and cutting other
stimulus funds that are estimated not to be used for years. We have
already heard the stories about the waste and the fluff. Let's get the
money out the door right now. Let's put it to work right now.
If this is an emergency as is being said, then let's get the money
that is not being used out the door right now.
My amendment reduces the deficit by $7 billion instead of increasing
it by $34 billion, as the present legislation that is being proposed
will do.
Yes, my amendment is about hard choices. Recently, the Governors of
both parties expressed concerns about how the stimulus funds have been
spent and whether the true impact is accurate. States have also weighed
in asking Congress for extended unemployment benefits and additional
FMAP funding. I believe we have a clear choice where we can offset the
amount of money we have and get it out the door, not using it as a
Washington, DC, slush fund, as it is looked at in America.
The amendment I am offering today represents another compromise--
listening to the concerns of so many Americans and their calls to
extend emergency unemployment insurance specifically but also not
burdening future generations and making sure we can actually pay for
things, truly pay for things.
As I mentioned earlier, I have been in Washington for a little over 6
months now. Sometimes, as you might know, Mr. President, it seems like
6 years. You have followed my voting record, as I said. When I see a
good bill, regardless of party, I will support it, no questions asked.
Once again, it is a two-way street. Bipartisanship is a two-way street.
It needs to come both ways.
Motion to Suspend
In closing, I move to suspend rule XXII, paragraph 2, for the purpose
of proposing and considering my amendment No. 4492.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion is pending.
Mr. BROWN of Massachusetts. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Motion to Suspend
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I move to suspend provisions of rule XXII
for the purpose of proposing and considering my motion to commit with
instructions with respect to H.R. 4213, which is at the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection the motion is pending.
Motion to Suspend
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I move to suspend provisions of rule XXII,
including germaneness requirements, for the purpose of proposing and
considering my amendment No. 4493.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the motion is pending.
Mr. COBURN. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I agree with my colleague from
Massachusetts. The blame game has gone on long enough. There is
certainly enough blame to go around. But I need to remind the majority
that they have been in control of Congress for 4 years. Presidents do
not write economic policy, spend money, or add to the debt. Congress
does. The Democratic Party has been in control of both Houses since
2006.
When the Democrats took control, unemployment was below 5 percent,
the economy was growing, and the debt was half of what it is today.
Certainly looking at the projected debt of this administration, we are
looking at tripling the national debt over the next decade.
It is time for us to focus on solving problems rather than trying to
wax eloquent about a President who effectively did not write economic
policy for over 4 years.
It is important today that we are extending unemployment benefits.
But it is curious to a lot of us when the majority has often said
unemployment compensation is one of the most important forms of
stimulus, that when Republicans ask that we pay for the extension of
unemployment benefits with unspent stimulus money, there appears to be
outrage. Instead, there is a strong consensus on the Democratic side
that we not pay for this; we just add it to the national debt.
I, frankly, do not think we can help people for a few months by
bankrupting our country. We know our debt is unsustainable. To bring up
bill after bill that we are not even willing to talk about how we pay
for is disturbing to millions of Americans right now.
I certainly support my colleague from Massachusetts, as well as my
colleague from Oklahoma, who are presenting amendments today,
reasonable, commonsense ways that we can pay for the unemployment
benefits extension so that helping people today does not diminish the
quality of life of millions of Americans tomorrow.
Another issue that is going to affect millions of Americans is in
just over 5 months tax rates for almost every American who pays taxes
is going to go up. It is something that is not talked about, and
Republicans are not talking about a tax cut. We are talking about
keeping current tax rates the same.
A few weeks ago, I offered an amendment that would at least keep
capital gains and dividend taxes the same rather than allow them to go
up--dividend taxes to nearly 40 percent and capital gains from 15
percent to 20 percent. Many senior citizens count on dividends, as well
as cashing in their retirement savings. Capital gains and dividend
taxes have a huge impact on our senior citizens as well as millions of
other Americans. Unfortunately, the majority voted this amendment down
and voted effectively to raise these taxes on Americans.
Income taxes will go up. But today I want to focus on what I think is
probably the most immoral tax that we impose on people from the Federal
level, and that is the death tax.
This year, the death tax is gone, the first year since the early
1900s. Americans who work and save, start businesses, start farms,
their heirs do not have to sell their property in order to pay the
death tax.
The Heritage Foundation says if we allow the death tax to go back up
to 55 percent, it will cost Americans over 1.5 million jobs because
this is not just for the people who pay the death tax, it is for the
people who work in the businesses and the farms that are often
liquidated or at least sold in part to pay this heavy tax.
What right does the government have to take someone's property
because they die? They have paid taxes on the property and on the
income throughout their entire lives, and many times they paid a very
high tax rate if they worked hard and made a good living.
What right do we have when they die to take that property? Why should
the government get a bigger inheritance from someone dying than their
family?
That is what is going to happen if we allow the majority to continue
with their plans to allow the death tax to go up. This will cost lots
of jobs, break up many family businesses and family farms, and cost, as
I said, 1.5 million jobs. It makes absolutely no sense at all.
I am going to offer an amendment today to keep current tax rates the
same for the death tax which was eliminated this year.
Another amendment I am going to offer relates to the Arizona
immigration law. I took the time to read the immigration law that
Arizona passed and found that much of what has been reported in the
media is completely false. I was actually stunned as I read through it
how often it refers to just the enforcement of existing Federal law.
There is nothing in it about racial profiling, except that we cannot do
it, and we cannot stop someone if we suspect them of being illegal. We
can only
[[Page S6063]]
ask for documentation if we stop them or arrest them for some other
crime. This is, in effect, the Federal law.
It is interesting that the Obama administration is suing Arizona for
enforcing Federal law while ignoring many sanctuary cities that openly
flaunt their resistance to Federal law. It makes no sense in a free
country, in a democracy where we are built on the rule of law, for the
Federal Government to try to intimidate the people of Arizona who are
only trying to protect themselves.
As many Americans know, Arizona waited for years for the Federal
Government to do its job, to secure the borders, and to protect the
people from the drug trafficking, the human trafficking, and the people
who come across and who have murdered the citizens there.
Many States are suffering the same fate of a Federal Government that
has failed to secure our borders and to protect our people.
The amendment I am offering today is going to disallow any funding to
be used by the Federal Government to carry out this lawsuit against
Arizona. This is something we know, if the American people could vote
today, they would vote in favor of. The question is, Will the majority
vote to support the people of Arizona or to support this political move
that we are now seeing from the White House to attempt to intimidate
the people of Arizona?
I can say proudly that the people of Arizona are not going to be
intimidated by this government. If we can provide some help today, that
is certainly what I intend to do.
Mr. President, I wish to offer a couple of motions.
Motion to Suspend
In accordance with rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I move
to suspend rule XXII for the purpose of proposing and considering a
motion to commit with regard to the estate tax, which is at the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the motion is pending.
Motion to Suspend
Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, according to rule V of the standing rules
of the Senate, I move to suspend rule XXII for the purpose of proposing
and considering a motion to commit with regard to the Arizona
immigration law, which is at the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the motion is pending.
Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my high school English teacher always used
to say: All right, let's review things. So let's review things just for
a moment.
I have listened to some of this debate in the Senate today, and as
best as I can tell, we have people standing, saying the deficit is a
bad thing. I think there is general agreement about that in the Senate,
and we have to do something about it. There is general agreement about
that.
They say: We are going to make our last stand here on this deficit
with respect to those who are out of work and who need extension of
unemployment benefits. We were quick to give help to the wealthiest
Americans, to the biggest investment banks that needed help. We gave
hundreds of billions of dollars to those interests at the top of the
economic ladder, who nearly ran the country right into the ditch. But
those at the bottom of the ladder, who are out of work, who are
unemployed, and who are having trouble, that is where they say they are
making their last stand on deficits.
So let me try to understand this with a review. We are told the
deficit is too high; that we cannot give help to the unemployed in the
manner we used to give help to the unemployed. We always did that when
there was an economic downturn. We have always done that. But, oh, by
the way, what we need to do is to repeal the estate tax for the
wealthiest individuals in America. I don't know. I took mathematics in
a high school senior class of nine students, and I passed it at least.
I can understand how things add up now and then. But I don't know how
that adds up at all.
There are those coming to the floor of the Senate and having great
apoplexy about giving help to the unemployed. By the way, some have
even said: You give help to the unemployed, it just discourages them
from work. Well, you know something, a guy told me the other day about
a young third grader who was asked in his school--it was going to be
his birthday--what he would like for his birthday; what kind of
birthday present he would like. This little third grader said: A
flashlight. The guy said: A flashlight? He said: Yes, so I can read at
night. They turned off our electricity.
How many in this room would even understand having your electricity
turned off and having a third grade son who can't read at night because
there are no lights and asking for a flashlight as a gift? There is
nobody in here who is unemployed--not one person in this room. This is
a roomful of people who take their showers in the morning, not at
night. They get up and put on a blue suit, a pressed white shirt and a
tie and come to work--all fully employed--and we talk about the
unemployed.
We are short 20 million jobs in this country. There are millions of
people out of work. Five million manufacturing employees alone have
lost their jobs in the last 9 years. As we ran into this deepest
recession since the Great Depression, a whole lot of folks--yes, at the
lower end of the economic ladder and in middle-income areas--have lost
their jobs and can't find another job. When they worked, from their
paychecks they paid a small premium for unemployment insurance. They
paid for that insurance, and now they can't get the extension of that
unemployment insurance in the Senate. Why? Because the last stand on
deficits is to take place with respect to restricting the ability of
those who are out of work from getting the funds to extend their
unemployment benefits. That is the last stand.
Did my colleagues make that last stand with regard to the big
investment banks that ran into trouble? No, not at all. They rushed
that aid in on a pillow. Can we help you? How much do you need? But now
that it is the folks at the bottom of the ladder, all of a sudden we
don't have the capability.
Some of my colleagues just complained about speakers who wanted to
talk about the past. You know, if you don't understand the past, you
are destined to repeat it. I understand that neither side is much of a
bargain--Republicans and Democrats. This country deserves more from
both sides. I understand that. But I also understand what has caused
this problem. I was on the floor of the Senate in February of 2001. By
the way, when President Clinton left office 2 months prior to that we
had the first budget surplus in 30 years--over $200 billion in surplus.
President Bush said: You know, we have these projected surpluses now
for 10 years. Let's get rid of them. Let's give big tax cuts, with the
biggest by far going to the wealthiest Americans.
I stood on the floor and said: Let's be a little conservative. What
if something happens? They said: You know what, we are going to give
these tax cuts, and the biggest cuts are going to the wealthiest
Americans. If you made $1 million a year, that bill gave you, I think,
$80,000 a year in tax cuts. So everyone on that side voted for it.
Absolutely. Happy to vote for it, to reduce this country's income. What
happened? Very quickly, we ran into a recession. Then we had a
terrorist attack against our country on 9/11. Then we were at war in
Afghanistan, then at war in Iraq, and this Congress appropriated
massive amounts of money as it sent young men and women to war and did
not pay for one penny of it--not a penny. All of it went right onto the
debt.
Those who cry the loudest on the floor of the Senate these days,
right now, are the very ones who voted to reduce this country's income
with the biggest benefits going to the wealthiest Americans. Yet now
they come to us and say: Well, you know, now we are making our last
stand for the unemployed--to prevent the unemployed from getting what
they should get. By the way, while we are on the floor, they say: Why
can't we repeal the estate tax that will help the wealthiest Americans?
Let me mention the estate tax for a moment. First of all, my
colleague said death tax. He knows, and I know, there is no such thing
as a death tax. If my colleague should die, his estate is not
[[Page S6064]]
taxed. His entire estate goes tax free, under current law, to his
spouse. It is true this year there is zero estate tax for anybody, and
my colleague didn't mention that was created in an architecture of tax
cuts in 2001 that many of us voted against.
By the way, that turns out to have been just fundamentally goofy.
They created estate tax relief that goes down, down, down, and down to
zero in this year and then springs way back up in 2011. We didn't do
that. That wasn't us. That was the other side. Now what they say is
that they would like to repeal the estate tax altogether because they
think it is a tax on death. It is not. It is a tax on inherited wealth
and they know that.
But this year, because there is zero estate tax, about four
billionaires have died and not one penny of their estate will be taxed
and most of their estates were never taxed. They were growth
appreciation of stocks and various assets never subject to a tax. Most
people have an income and it is subject to a tax. They help send kids
to school with that tax, pay to build roads, pay for police, pay for
defense. But that runup in tax for the billionaires or that runup in
income, I should say, has never borne a tax to support anything. My
colleagues say: You know what, I want to make sure it doesn't ever bear
a tax. Let's have the little folks pay a tax. Let's have the rest of
the folks pay a tax but not the people at the top.
What an unbelievable irony that on the very day that we have people
digging in the heels of their cowboy boots and saying we are making our
last stand to prevent the unemployed from getting unemployment
compensation they deserve--on the very day that they say we can't do
that--they come to the floor of the Senate saying: But what we have to
do as a priority is to relieve the richest Americans, the wealthiest
Americans, of the obligation to pay estate tax. If there is any
narrative that tells the American people whose side they are on, this
little vignette describes it completely, in my judgment.
Let me mention that the reason it is important to understand how we
got to this point is, we will never get out of it unless we understand
that. A lot of my colleagues have been perfectly content for most of
the decade standing on this floor deciding that we will ship men and
women to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight, but we will not pay for
the cost of a penny of it. They have been perfectly content to do that.
I have come to the floor of the Senate to say: You know what, sacrifice
works a number of ways in this country. If we are going to ask young
men and women to sacrifice their lives, to go 12,000 miles away and
strap on body armor in the morning and risk their lives by going in
harm's way, perhaps we could ask the American people to provide the
money to pay for it.
I have proposed that in the Senate. President Bush, at one point,
said: You all do that, and I will veto the bill. My colleagues were
content to say: Let's spend the money and put it all on the deficit. We
will send kids to war and they can come back and pay the bill. That is
how we got here. The second portion of how we got here is about 10
years ago we passed what was then called financial reform. I voted
against that as well. That said to the biggest financial institutions
in this country: Katy bar the door. Do whatever you want. We will not
watch. We are taking away the protections that existed since the Great
Depression. We will not look and we will not care.
As a result, we saw in recent years unbelievable speculation and
gambling. It was not business, it was just flatout gambling. We saw the
creation of exotic instruments--CDOs, derivatives, credit default
swaps, naked credit default swaps, and the like--and we saw
unbelievable, rampant gaming going on as opposed to thoughtful
investing in this country's future. As a result, this country nearly
had an economic collapse.
It is important for us to understand how that happened because we had
regulators come to town who were supposed to regulate, and they boasted
about being business friendly: Don't worry, we will not look. There is
a new sheriff in town and this sheriff doesn't have a weapon. So don't
worry about it. Then we saw a decade go by in which this country's
economy nearly collapsed. So that is how we got where we are. It is
important for people to understand that.
They say: Let's not review the past, but let me review one final
point. When President Obama walked through the White House door, had he
gone to sleep for 12 months, had he done nothing at all, he would have
had a $1.3 trillion budget deficit because that is what the previous
President left him--$1.3 trillion on autopilot.
Having said all that, let me say this. This deficit, in my judgment,
is unsustainable. It cannot continue. We have to diffuse it. This is a
timebomb that will destroy this country's economy inevitably at some
point. We can't have a government the size and cost of which is such
that the American people are either unable or unwilling to pay for it.
You can't do that. So we have to fix it, and we have to fix it
together. But if we don't learn from what happened, if we don't
understand the past decade of what happened--going from a $200 billion-
a-year budget surplus to the largest deficits in history and to a near
economic collapse--we are destined to repeat it.
Again, it seems to me that everybody here are people of good faith. I
don't come here suggesting that there are people of bad faith here, but
there are some people with bad judgment here, for sure. All you have to
do is look at the record. Those who say: Let's don't look at the
record, I guess they do not want the record to be understood. I think
the only way we get out of this unbelievable deficit and debt trap is
to understand what has caused it. I will tell you this for sure. We are
not going to get out of this mess by having people come to the floor of
the Senate and say that one of the biggest problems in the country is
the death tax, when no such tax exists. What an unbelievable spoof.
Death tax my eye. We have a tax on inherited wealth and the only people
who have been paying it are the people at the upper income levels.
We have had a $3\1/2\ million-a-year exemption for the husband, and a
$3\1/2\ million exemption for the wife. That was last year's exemption.
That means you don't pay a penny unless you have $7 million clear,
husband and wife. How many families have that? But that is not enough,
my colleagues say. In the middle of all this economic trouble we face,
in the middle of wars and a near economic collapse, what is their
priority? Get rid of the so-called death tax, which doesn't exist, or
perhaps I can rephrase it for them: Get rid of the tax on inherited
wealth for the wealthiest of Americans.
These are billionaires' best friends, I guess. I have nothing against
billionaires. I guess I wish I was one. But when billionaires die,
they, I think, ought to expect to be able to contribute something to
this country. It is unbelievable to me. I hope people have listened to
this discussion today and understand that their priority is to
eliminate the estate tax, the tax on inherited wealth, which would only
apply to the wealthiest Americans. It is unbelievable to me.
I have seen other unbelievable things, some of which have led to this
current economic trouble. I hope perhaps in calmer times and perhaps
more sober times we can discuss the best of what both parties have to
offer this country because I think both parties do make a contribution.
We cannot wait much longer. This is not something we can delay, it is
not something we can decide to postpone. This country is in trouble. We
have a deep Federal budget deficit. It comes from the steepest decline
in the economy since the 1930s. As a result of that decline, we have
victims at the bottom of this economic ladder who have not had work, in
some cases for 2 years. They wake up in the morning feeling helpless
and hopeless, wondering, How on Earth can I find a job? What do I tell
my family today?
This Congress, in my judgment, ought to at least pay as much
attention to those folks at the bottom of the economic ladder as it has
paid in the last 2 years to the interests at the top of the economic
ladder. We shoveled hundreds of billions of dollars toward those at the
top--the most comfortable pillows to make them rest, the medicine to
calm their nerves. But when it comes to the people at the bottom, Will
Rogers had it best. Here is what Will Rogers said 80 years ago and it
applies today in this Chamber. Will Rogers said: ``The unemployed here
ain't eating regular but we'll get around to
[[Page S6065]]
them as soon as everybody else gets fixed up OK.''
Let me say this. A whole lot of other folks got fixed up at the top
of the economic ladder, at the top of this country's economy. A whole
lot of folks got fixed up and it is the case that the unemployed here
``ain't eating regular,'' and this Congress, this Senate ought to care
about that. It is part of our responsibility. Then let's get about the
business of having a real debate, a thoughtful rather than thoughtless
debate about all of the issues that affect us, such as spending and
taxing, and let's use real terms, not things like ``death taxes'' that
come from a pollster who decides they want to fool people. Let's use
real terms in serious discussions between adults and try to figure out
how we fix what is wrong with this country to put this country back on
track.
This country deserves better. It is the first generation of
Americans, I think, that believes its kids are not going to do as well
as they did. We have to change that. This country has a lot to offer
with a good future if we make some good decisions going forward.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, for weeks we have sought to continue
extended emergency unemployment benefits. We must do this because,
while our economic recovery has begun, it has a long way to go. Our
economy is not yet generating enough jobs to put people back to work
who are searching for work. The repercussions of the worst financial
crisis in generations are still felt across our country.
And so to help Americans who have lost their jobs through no fault of
their own, we have sought to continue these extended unemployment
benefits. We have met opposition and delay. Yesterday, we finally broke
through the Republican filibuster that was the source of that delay.
Now we have a chance to do what we should have done weeks ago. In
State after State, thousands of people await our decision, including
more than 70,000 in my State. We cannot give them back the weeks of
anxiety our delays have caused. But we can act today. I urge my
colleagues to support this measure and give struggling American
families the help they need and deserve.
Mr. DORGAN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The 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 PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is that all time has now
been used.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, all postcloture time
is yielded back.
Amendment No. 4426 is withdrawn.
Motion to Suspend
Under the previous order, the question is on agreeing to the Brown of
Massachusetts motion to suspend rule XXII, paragraph 2.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Bayh) is
necessarily absent.
Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 42, nays 56, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 210 Leg.]
YEAS--42
Alexander
Barrasso
Bennett
Bond
Brown (MA)
Brownback
Bunning
Burr
Chambliss
Coburn
Cochran
Collins
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Ensign
Enzi
Graham
Grassley
Gregg
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Kyl
LeMieux
Lincoln
Lugar
McCain
McConnell
Murkowski
Nelson (NE)
Risch
Roberts
Sessions
Shelby
Snowe
Thune
Voinovich
Wicker
NAYS--56
Akaka
Baucus
Begich
Bennet
Bingaman
Boxer
Brown (OH)
Burris
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Conrad
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Goodwin
Hagan
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson
Kaufman
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Specter
Stabenow
Tester
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Warner
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden
NOT VOTING--2
Bayh
Vitter
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote the yeas are 42, the nays are 56.
Two-thirds of the Senators voting, a quorum being present, not having
voted in the affirmative, the motion is rejected.
There is now 2 minutes equally divided before a vote with respect to
the first Coburn motion.
The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this is a very straightforward amendment.
It is a re-vote where we voted 100 to 0 to make sure we are transparent
with the American people about when we change and go around pay-go. All
it does is create a Web site so the American people can see when we
have done that and how often and what the total amount is. We voted 100
to nothing for it the last time it was presented to this body.
I yield back my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time in opposition?
Mr. DORGAN. I yield back our time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.
The question is on agreeing to the motion.
Mr. COBURN. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Bayh) is
necessarily absent.
Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 49, nays 49, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 211 Leg.]
YEAS--49
Alexander
Barrasso
Bennett
Bond
Brown (MA)
Brownback
Bunning
Burr
Chambliss
Coburn
Cochran
Collins
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Ensign
Enzi
Feingold
Graham
Grassley
Gregg
Hagan
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Klobuchar
Kyl
LeMieux
Lincoln
Lugar
McCain
McConnell
Murkowski
Nelson (NE)
Nelson (FL)
Pryor
Risch
Roberts
Sessions
Shelby
Snowe
Tester
Thune
Voinovich
Webb
Wicker
NAYS--49
Akaka
Baucus
Begich
Bennet
Bingaman
Boxer
Brown (OH)
Burris
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Conrad
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Goodwin
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson
Kaufman
Kerry
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murray
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Specter
Stabenow
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Warner
Whitehouse
Wyden
NOT VOTING--2
Bayh
Vitter
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 49, the nays are
49. Two-thirds of the Senators voting, a quorum being present, not
having voted in the affirmative, the motion is rejected.
There is now 2 minutes evenly divided before a vote pertaining to the
next Coburn motion.
Is all time yielded back?
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
If all time is yielded back, the question is on agreeing to the
motion.
[[Page S6066]]
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Bayh) is
necessarily absent.
Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 54, nays 44, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 212 Leg.]
YEAS--54
Alexander
Barrasso
Bennett
Bond
Brown (MA)
Brownback
Bunning
Burr
Cantwell
Chambliss
Coburn
Cochran
Collins
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Ensign
Enzi
Feingold
Graham
Grassley
Gregg
Hagan
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Klobuchar
Kyl
LeMieux
Lincoln
Lugar
McCain
McCaskill
McConnell
Murkowski
Murray
Nelson (NE)
Nelson (FL)
Pryor
Risch
Roberts
Sessions
Shelby
Snowe
Tester
Thune
Voinovich
Warner
Webb
Wicker
Wyden
NAYS--44
Akaka
Baucus
Begich
Bennet
Bingaman
Boxer
Brown (OH)
Burris
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Conrad
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Goodwin
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson
Kaufman
Kerry
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Specter
Stabenow
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Whitehouse
NOT VOTING--2
Bayh
Vitter
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 54, the nays are
44. Two-thirds of the Senators voting, a quorum being present, not
having voted in the affirmative, the motion is rejected.
There will now be 2 minutes evenly divided prior to a vote with
respect to the DeMint motion.
The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, this year is the first time in many
decades that death in America is not a taxable event. For the first
time in many, many years, folks who worked hard and built businesses,
built farms, do not lose what they have worked for when they die.
The Heritage Foundation estimates that if we do nothing as a Senate
and allow the death tax to go from zero to 55 percent, America will
lose 1.5 million jobs because when we take the money and the property
of the people who are working and running businesses and farms, it not
only affects the families of those who die but those who work for those
businesses and work on those farms.
It is immoral for us to take what people work for throughout their
lives. Their property, their income has all been taxed at least once
before. Let's do the right thing and vote for this amendment today.
Let's keep the death tax at zero. This is not a tax cut; it is just
leaving the tax rate the same.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this is an absurd amendment. This
amendment would provide $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top three-
tenths of 1 percent, and 99.7 percent of the American people do not get
a nickel. Despite all the rhetoric we hear around here about fiscal
responsibility, this isn't paid for. It is another $1 trillion over 10
years to our national debt.
I yield to the Senator from Michigan.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I wish to thank our colleague from South
Carolina for giving us the opportunity tonight to decide whose side we
are really on. We are talking about upward of $1 trillion in spending
to help a few hundred of our wealthiest Americans. We would not be
helping small businesses or family farmers, all of whom we support
helping, but the wealthiest Americans--close to $1 trillion--or helping
2.5 million people who lost their jobs, are out of work through no
fault of their own.
The crash on Wall Street, the crisis on Wall Street, which,
unfortunately, colleagues chose not to vote to repair and to fix, has
caused a situation where families are hurting.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). The Senator's time has
expired.
Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to the motion.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Bayh) is
necessarily absent.
Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 39, nays 59, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 213 Leg.]
YEAS--39
Alexander
Barrasso
Bennett
Bond
Brown (MA)
Brownback
Bunning
Burr
Chambliss
Coburn
Cochran
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Ensign
Enzi
Graham
Grassley
Gregg
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Kyl
LeMieux
Lincoln
Lugar
McCain
McConnell
Murkowski
Nelson (NE)
Risch
Roberts
Sessions
Shelby
Thune
Wicker
NAYS--59
Akaka
Baucus
Begich
Bennet
Bingaman
Boxer
Brown (OH)
Burris
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Collins
Conrad
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Goodwin
Hagan
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson
Kaufman
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Snowe
Specter
Stabenow
Tester
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Voinovich
Warner
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden
NOT VOTING--2
Bayh
Vitter
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 39, the nays are
59. Two-thirds of the Senators voting, a quorum being present, not
having voted in the affirmative, the motion is rejected.
There will be 2 minutes equally divided prior to a vote with respect
to the second DeMint motion.
The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, this amendment disallows any use of
taxpayer money to fund the lawsuit against Arizona for its immigration
policy.
I hope all my colleagues have taken the time to read this bill
because what has been reported on it, in most cases, is false.
This bill is very clear. Its intent is to support and enforce the
Federal law to protect the citizens of Arizona. Our Federal Government
should be doing its job to secure our borders rather than trying to
bully and intimidate the people of Arizona. We should not be suing and
hassling the people of Arizona for doing what we should be doing here,
and that is protecting the citizenry.
I encourage all my colleagues to support this amendment to disallow
any funding for this lawsuit.
I reserve the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time in opposition?
Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
Is all time yielded back?
All time appears yielded back.
The question is on agreeing to the motion.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Bayh) is
necessarily absent.
Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
[[Page S6067]]
The result was announced--yeas 43, nays 55, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 214 Leg.]
YEAS--43
Alexander
Barrasso
Baucus
Bennett
Bond
Brown (MA)
Brownback
Bunning
Burr
Chambliss
Coburn
Cochran
Collins
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Ensign
Enzi
Graham
Grassley
Gregg
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Kyl
LeMieux
Lincoln
Lugar
McCain
McConnell
Murkowski
Nelson (NE)
Pryor
Risch
Roberts
Sessions
Shelby
Snowe
Tester
Thune
Wicker
NAYS--55
Akaka
Begich
Bennet
Bingaman
Boxer
Brown (OH)
Burris
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Conrad
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Goodwin
Hagan
Harkin
Inouye
Johanns
Johnson
Kaufman
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Specter
Stabenow
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Voinovich
Warner
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden
NOT VOTING--2
Bayh
Vitter
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 43, the nays are
55. Two-thirds of the Senators voting, a quorum being present, not
having voted in the affirmative, the motion is rejected.
Amendment No. 4497
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to
strike, which is at the desk, is agreed to.
The amendment was agreed to, as follows:
Beginning on page 7, line 14, strike through page 11, line
18.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pay-go statement from the Budget Committee
shall be read into the Record.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Mr. Conrad hereby submits this Statement of Budgetary
Effects of PAYGO legislation for H.R. 4213, as amended by
Senate amendment 4425, as amended. Total Budgetary Effects of
H.R. 4213 for the 5-year Statutory PAYGO Scorecard, zero
dollars. Total Budgetary Effects of H.R. 4213 for the 10-year
statutory PAYGO Scorecard, zero dollars.
Also submitted for the Record as part of this statement is a table
prepared by the Congressional Budget Office, which provides additional
information on the budgetary effects of this act, as follows:
CBO ESTIMATE OF THE STATUTORY PAY-AS-YOU-GO EFFECTS FOR SENATE AMENDMENT 4425, THE UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION EXTENSION ACT OF 2010, AS AMENDED BY
UNANIMOUS CONSENT ON JULY 21, 2010
[Millions of dollars, by fiscal year]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2010-2015 2010-2020
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Net Increase in the Deficit
Total Changes.................. 8,545 24,684 218 214 148 76 56 2 0 0 0 33,885 33,943
Less:
Designated as Emergency 8,545 24,684 218 214 148 76 56 2 0 0 0 33,885 33,943
Requirements \1\..........
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Impact. 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Memorandum--Components of the Emergency Designations
Change in Outlays.......... 8,545 24,495 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 33,040 33,040
Changes in Revenues \2\.... 0 -189 -218 -214 -148 -76 -56 -2 0 0 0 -845 -903
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Components may not sum to totals because of rounding.
\1\ The bill would designate Sections 2 and 3 as an emergency requirement pursuant to section 4(g) of the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010.
\2\ Negative numbers represent a DECREASE in revenues.
Source: Congressional Budget Office.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to
concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 4213,
with amendment No. 4425, as amended.
Mr. NELSON of Nebraska. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Bayh) is
necessarily absent.
Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 59, nays 39, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 215 Leg.]
YEAS--59
Akaka
Baucus
Begich
Bennet
Bingaman
Boxer
Brown (OH)
Burris
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Collins
Conrad
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Goodwin
Hagan
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson
Kaufman
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lincoln
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Snowe
Specter
Stabenow
Tester
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Warner
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden
NAYS--39
Alexander
Barrasso
Bennett
Bond
Brown (MA)
Brownback
Bunning
Burr
Chambliss
Coburn
Cochran
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Ensign
Enzi
Graham
Grassley
Gregg
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Kyl
LeMieux
Lugar
McCain
McConnell
Murkowski
Nelson (NE)
Risch
Roberts
Sessions
Shelby
Thune
Voinovich
Wicker
NOT VOTING--2
Bayh
Vitter
The motion was agreed to.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I move to reconsider that vote and lay
that motion upon the table.
The motion to lay upon the table was agreed to.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. LANDRIEU. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum
call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. LANDRIEU. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes
as in morning business. I may ask to extend my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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