[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 137 (Thursday, September 15, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5673-S5676]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       DISAPPEARING MIDDLE CLASS

  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I went back to the office and I saw my 
senior Senator sitting here at this late hour and I wanted to come down 
and keep him company. So I am glad to be here with you tonight, proud 
to be from the West tonight with two great Senators from Wyoming 
remembering Malcolm Wallop's service in this body. It was wonderful to 
hear their remembrances of him. I am glad we were here to share that 
being from the West.
  Similar to the Presiding Officer, I spent most of August in our 
beautiful State--the most beautiful State in the United States, if I do 
say so myself--in townhall meetings, mostly in red parts of the State, 
but in red and blue parts of the State. They do not actually think of 
themselves that way, but that is how Washington would talk about it.
  In the townhalls, I always start the same way. I say: Ask any 
question you have. Bring any criticism you have. I tell them I was an 
urban school superintendent for almost 4 years, it is impossible to 
hurt my feelings. It was beaten out of me a long time ago. Then we have 
a conversation.
  This time, every single meeting started with somebody saying: What is 
wrong with you guys? Why can't you work this out in Washington, DC? We 
are struggling in the worst economy we have had since the Great 
Depression, and what we see are a lot of political games being played 
back there.
  That is the version of the conversation I have heard now for 2\1/2\ 
years in our State.
  Then, one of the things we get into at the very beginning is the fact 
that this is not a garden-variety recession that we are just coming out 
of. This is the first time--this last decade, not just this recession, 
the last decade--the first time in this country's history when median 
family income actually declined instead of going up.
  Generation after generation after generation of Americans saw their 
income rise. Median family income is sort of shorthand for middle-class 
family income in this country. It is the backbone of this country, and 
it has fallen for the first time in a decade, as the cost of health 
insurance doubled on the people who live in Colorado, and the cost of 
higher education went up by 60 percent.
  People are saying: Michael, I have been at my job for this whole 
decade and I am earning less at the end of the decade than I was at the 
beginning of the decade. My costs of not ``nice to haves,'' my costs of 
critical things to move my family ahead to create stability for me and 
my small business--such as health care, such as higher education--have 
done nothing but skyrocket.
  I am going to show you some numbers that are pretty scary that came 
out this week from the Census Bureau that reflect, in numbers, what I 
am talking about and reflect how profound the structural issues are 
that we face in our economy, structural that do not fit on the back of 
a bumper sticker or a political slogan or during a debate at night on 
the television set.
  This week's Wall Street Journal, on Monday, had an article on the 
front page with the headline that reads as follows: ``As Middle Class 
Shrinks, P&G Aims High and Low.'' P&G is Procter & Gamble. There is not 
a more iconic brand in our country's history when it comes to the 
middle class than Procter & Gamble.
  Here are some of the things they make: Crest toothpaste; Head & 
Shoulders shampoo; Tide detergent; Pamper's diapers--I am glad to be 
out of those in my house, by the way--Bounty paper towels; Downy fabric 
softener, Scope mouthwash; Duracell batteries; Charmin toilet paper; 
Bounce fabric softener--nobody needed fabric softener before there was 
a middle class in this country, but they make it--Mr. Clean; Pepto 
Bismol; Pringles; Swiffer brooms and dusters--we have that in our 
closet--Old Spice deodorant; Nyquil cough syrup; Puffs tissues; Ivory 
soap; Covergirl makeup.
  That is what Procter & Gamble makes. That is what they sold to the 
great middle class in this country for decades. Here is this article 
that says Procter & Gamble aims high and low.
  I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 12, 2011]

             As Middle Class Shrinks P&G Aims High and Low

                            (By Ellen Byron)

       For generations, Procter & Gamble Co.'s growth strategy was 
     focused on developing household staples for the vast American 
     middle class.
       Now, P&G executives say many of its former middle-market 
     shoppers are trading down to lower-priced goods--widening the 
     pools of have and have-not consumers at the expense of the 
     middle.
       That's forced P&G, which estimates it has at least one 
     product in 98% of American households, to fundamentally 
     change the way it develops and sells its goods. For the first 
     time in 38 years, for example, the company launched a new 
     dish soap in the U.S. at a bargain price.
       P&G's roll out of Gain dish soap says a lot about the 
     health of the American middle class: The world's largest 
     maker of consumer products is now betting that the squeeze on 
     middle America will be long lasting.
       ``It's required us to think differently about our product 
     portfolio and how to please the high-end and lower-end 
     markets,'' says Melanie Healey, group president of P&G's 
     North America business. ``That's frankly where a lot of the 
     growth is happening.''
       In the wake of the worst recession in 50 years, there's 
     little doubt that the American middle class--the 40% of 
     households with annual incomes between $50,000 and $140,000 a 
     year--is in distress. Even before the recession, incomes of 
     American middle-class families weren't keeping up with 
     inflation, especially with the rising costs of what are 
     considered the essential ingredients of middle-class life--
     college education, health care and housing. In 2009, the 
     income of the median family, the one smack in the middle of 
     the middle, was lower, adjusted for inflation, than in 1998, 
     the Census Bureau says.
       The slumping stock market and collapse in housing prices 
     have also hit middle-class Americans. At the end of March, 
     Americans had $6.1 trillion in equity in their houses--the 
     value of the house minus mortgages--half the 2006 level, 
     according to the Federal Reserve. Economist Edward Wolff of 
     New York University estimates that the net worth--household 
     assets minus debts--of the middle fifth of American 
     households grew by 2.4% a year between 2001 and 2007 and 
     plunged by 26.2% in the following two years.
       P&G isn't the only company adjusting its business. A wide 
     swath of American companies is convinced that the consumer 
     market is bifurcating into high and low ends and eroding in 
     the middle. They have begun to alter the way they research, 
     develop and market their products.
       Food giant H.J. Heinz Co., for example, is developing more 
     products at lower price ranges. Luxury retailer Saks Inc. is 
     bolstering its high-end apparel and accessories because its 
     wealthiest customers--not those drawn to entry-level items--
     are driving the chain's growth.
       Citigroup calls the phenomenon the ``Consumer Hourglass 
     Theory'' and since 2009 has urged investors to focus on 
     companies best positioned to cater to the highest-income and 
     lowest-income consumers. It created an index of 25 companies, 
     including Estee Lauder Cos. and Saks at the top of the 
     hourglass and Family Dollar Stores Inc. and Kellogg Co. at 
     the bottom. The index posted a

[[Page S5674]]

     56.5% return for investors from its inception on Dec. 10, 
     2009, through Sept. 1, 2011. Over the same period, the Dow 
     Jones Industrial Average returned 11%.
       ``Companies have thought that if you're in the middle, 
     you're safe,'' says Citigroup analyst Deborah Weinswig. ``But 
     that's not where the consumer is any more--the consumer 
     hourglass is more pronounced now than ever.''
       Companies like Tiffany & Co., Coach Inc. and Neiman Marcus 
     Group Inc., which cater to the wealthy, racked up outsize 
     sales last Christmas and continue to post strong sales.
       Tiffany says its lower-priced silver baubles, once a 
     favorite of middle-class shoppers craving a small token from 
     the storied jeweler, are now its weakest sellers in the U.S. 
     ``I think that there's probably more separation of affluence 
     in the U.S.,'' Tiffany Chief Operating Officer James 
     Fernandez said in June.
       Firms catering to low-income consumers, such as Dollar 
     General Corp., also are posting gains, boosted by formerly 
     middle-class families facing shrunken budgets. Dollar stores 
     garnered steady sales increases in recent years, easily 
     outpacing mainstream counterparts like Target Corp. and Wal-
     Mart Stores Inc., which typically are more expensive.
       P&G's profits boomed with the increasing affluence of 
     middle-class households in the post-World War II economy. As 
     masses of housewives set up their new suburban homes, P&G 
     marketers pledged that Tide detergent delivered cleaner 
     clothes, Mr. Clean made floors shinier and Crest toothpaste 
     fought off more cavities. In the decades since, new features 
     like fragrances or ingredient and packaging enhancements kept 
     P&G's growth robust.
       Despite its aggressive expansion around the world, P&G 
     still needs to win over a healthy percentage of the American 
     population, because the U.S. market remains its biggest and 
     most profitable. In the fiscal year ended June 30, the U.S. 
     delivered about 37% of P&G's $82.6 billion in annual sales 
     and an estimated 60% of its $11.8 billion in profit. P&G says 
     that Americans per capita spend about $96 a year on its 
     products, compared with around $4 in China.
       During the early stages of the recession, P&G executives 
     defended its long-time approach of making best-in-class 
     products and charging a premium, expecting middle-class 
     Americans to pay up.
       But cash-strapped shoppers, P&G learned, aren't as willing 
     to splurge on household staples with extra features. Droves 
     of consumers started switching to cheaper brands, slowing 
     P&G's sales and profit gains and denting its dominant market 
     share positions.
       In late 2008, unit sales gains of P&G's cheaper brands 
     began outpacing its more expensive lines despite receiving 
     far less advertising. As the recession wore on, U.S. market-
     share gains for P&G's cheaper Luvs diapers and Gain detergent 
     increased faster than its premium-priced Pampers and Tide 
     brands.
       At the same time, lower-priced competitors nabbed market 
     share from some of P&G's biggest brands. P&G's dominant 
     fabric-softener sheets business, including its Bounce brand, 
     fell five percentage points to 60.2% of the market as lower-
     priced options from Sun Products Corp. and private-label 
     brands picked up sales from the second quarter of 2008 
     through May 2011, according to a Deutsche Bank analysis of 
     data from market-research firm SymphonyIRI.
       P&G's grasp of the liquid laundry detergent category, led 
     by its iconic Tide brand, also posted a rare slip over the 
     same period as bargain-priced options from Sun and Church & 
     Dwight Co. gained momentum. Even the company's huge Gillette 
     refill razor market suffered, declining to 80.1% by May from 
     82.3% in the second-quarter of 2008, as Energizer Holdings 
     Inc.'s less-expensive Schick brand gained nearly three 
     points.
       P&G began changing course in May 2009. After issuing a 
     sharply lower-than-expected earnings forecast for the 
     company's 2010 fiscal year, then-CEO A.G. Lafley said the 
     company would take a ``surgical'' approach to cutting prices 
     on some products and develop more lower-priced goods. ``You 
     have to see reality as it is,'' Mr. Lafley said.
       When the company's 2009 fiscal year ended a month later, 
     P&G's sales had posted a rare drop, falling 3% to $76.7 
     billion.
       In August that year, P&G's newly appointed CEO, company 
     veteran Robert McDonald, accelerated the new approach of 
     developing products for high- and low-income consumers.
       ``We're going to do this both by tiering our portfolio up 
     in terms of value as well as tiering our portfolio down,'' 
     Mr. McDonald said in September 2009.
       To monitor the evolving American consumer market, P&G 
     executives study the Gini index, a widely accepted measure of 
     income inequality that ranges from zero, when everyone earns 
     the same amount, to one, when all income goes to only one 
     person. In 2009, the most recent calculation available, the 
     Gini coefficient totaled 0.468, a 20% rise in income 
     disparity over the past 40 years, according to the U.S. 
     Census Bureau.
       ``We now have a Gini index similar to the Philippines and 
     Mexico--you'd never have imagined that,'' says Phyllis 
     Jackson, P&G's vice president of consumer market knowledge 
     for North America. ``I don't think we've typically thought 
     about America as a country with big income gaps to this 
     extent.''
       Over the past two years, P&G has accelerated its research, 
     product-development and marketing approach to target the 
     newly divided American market.
       Globally, P&G divides consumers into three income groups. 
     The highest-earning ``ones'' historically have been the 
     primary bracket P&G chased in the U.S. as they are the least 
     price sensitive and most swayed by claims of superior product 
     performance. But as the ``twos,'' or lower-income American 
     consumers, grew in size during the recession, P&G decided to 
     target them aggressively, too. P&G doesn't specifically 
     target the lowest-income ``threes'' in the U.S., since they 
     comprise a small percentage of the population and such 
     consumers are typically heavily subsidized by government aid.
       At the high end, it launched its most-expensive skin-care 
     regimen, Olay Pro-X in 2009, which includes a starter kit 
     costing around $60. Previously, the Olay line had topped out 
     around $25. Last year, the company launched Gillette Fusion 
     ProGlide razors at a price of $10 to $12, a premium to 
     Gillette Fusion razors, which sell for $8 to $10, and 
     Gillette Mach3, priced at $8 to $9.
       At the lower end, its new Gain dish soap, launched last 
     year, can sell for about half per ounce of the company's 
     premium Dawn Hand Renewal dish soap, which hit stores in late 
     2008.
       Developing products that squarely target the high and low 
     is proving difficult for a company long accustomed to aiming 
     for a giant, mainstream group.
       Conquering the high end is difficult because it usually 
     involves a smaller quantity of products.
       ``We do big volumes of things really well,'' said Bruce 
     Brown, P&G's chief technology officer. ``Things that are 
     smaller quantities, with high appeal, we're learning how to 
     do that.''
       Likewise, the cost challenges at the bottom of the pyramid 
     are also proving difficult, Mr. Brown said. Over the past two 
     years, P&G has increased its research of the growing ranks of 
     low-income American households.
       ``This has been the most humbling aspect of our jobs,'' 
     says Ms. Jackson. ``The numbers of Middle America have been 
     shrinking because people have been getting hurt so badly 
     economically that they've been falling into lower income.''

  Mr. BENNET. I wanted to read a few excerpts from it because I think 
it is instructive about what we are doing.

       P&G's profits boomed with the increasing affluence of 
     middle-class households in the post-World War II economy. As 
     masses of housewives set up their new suburban homes, P&G 
     marketers pledged that Tide detergent delivered cleaner 
     clothes, Mr. Clean made floors shinier and Crest toothpaste 
     fought off more cavities. In the decades since, new features 
     like fragrances or ingredient and packaging enhancements kept 
     P&G's growth robust.

  What is happening now? For generations Proctor & Gamble's growth 
strategy was focused on developing household staples for the vast 
American middle class. Now, P&G executives say many of its former 
middle-market shoppers are trading down to lower priced goods--widening 
the pools of have and have-not consumers at the expense of the middle. 
That has forced P&G, which estimates it has at least one product--and 
you heard the list, so this won't be surprising in 98 percent of 
American households--to fundamentally change the way it develops and 
sells its goods.
  For the first time in 38 years, for example, the company launched a 
new dish soap in the United States at a bargain price. P&G's rollout of 
Gain Dish Soap says a lot about the health of the middle class. The 
world's largest maker of consumer products is now betting that the 
squeeze on middle America will be long lasting.
  If you needed any example of what our families are struggling with in 
Colorado every single day, here is a business plan that is modeled on a 
perpetually shrinking middle class by a company whose whole business 
model in their history was based on a rising middle class.
  I will skip the next one in the interest of time. I will go right to 
the end. I want to show some numbers. This was the conclusion of the 
article:

       To monitor the evolving American consumer market, P&G 
     executives study the Gini index, a widely accepted measure of 
     income inequality that ranges from zero, when everyone earns 
     the same amount, to one when all income goes to only one 
     person. In 2009, the most recent calculation available, the 
     Gini coefficient totaled 0.468, a 20 percent rise in income 
     disparity over the past 40 years, according to the U.S. 
     Census Bureau. ``We now have a Gini index similar to the 
     Philippines and Mexico--you'd never have imagined that,'' 
     says Phyllis Jackson, P&G's Vice President of consumer market 
     knowledge for North America. ``I don't think we typically 
     thought about America as a country with big income gaps to 
     this extent.''

  I don't think we typically thought about America that way either. It 
is not who we purport to be or who we are

[[Page S5675]]

going to be. In order to put us on a path that will actually produce a 
rising middle class again, instead of a division among the very wealthy 
at the top and the poorest of the citizens at the bottom, we are going 
to have to come together on some pretty serious choices.
  I know there have been some who argue that this is all a problem that 
is caused by too many regulations, and I am the first to say we should 
only have the regulations that we need. Some say the threat of any 
revenue--even at a time when we are collecting less revenue as a 
percent of our economy than we have over the last 30 years--some are 
saying any revenue is choking off this recovery.
  Let me show you something very surprising. This is high-tech Senate 
stuff. Here are some lines on a chart. I know people probably cannot 
see the detail at home. They can get it on the Web site. This blue 
line, from 1992 to 2010, which is about 20 years, represents what is 
called the productivity index. It shows that we have become far more 
productive as an economy over the last 20 years. It is not surprising 
that we have, and we have because we have had a technological 
revolution that has made us more productive.
  See at the very end where the recession is, look what happened to the 
productivity index during our recession--because with every single 
month that went by we were losing jobs; American business was doing 
what they had to do, which was figure out how to get through the 
recession and get to the other end; how to ring out every efficiency 
they could, how to make themselves as productive as they could. They 
did and they have. We are much more productive today than we were here.
  The green line is our gross domestic product, our Nation's economy 
per capita, the amount of money per person that our economy is 
generating. Here is an amazing fact. This is where we were before the 
recession. This is where we are today. Our economy is the same size 
today as it was before we went into the recession. We are producing 
about the same economic output as a nation that we were producing 
before we went into this downturn. I was shocked when I learned this 
number.
  But look at this. Here is our employment level. Here is our 
employment level today. We have 14 million people unemployed, but we 
are producing about the same as we were before we went into this 
horrible recession.
  That is a structural unemployment problem. That is not a problem that 
will be solved by slogans, and it is not going to be a problem that is 
solved by companies that have become much more efficient at what they 
do. It is going to be solved by companies that will be started tomorrow 
and the day after tomorrow--small businesses, venture-backed firms, 
people who are inventing the technology of the 21st century, the 
products and services of the 21st century, not the products and 
services of the 20th century. That is the only way we are going to put 
these people back to work. We could be investing in infrastructure too; 
that would help.
  This line is median family income, which is what I started this 
conversation with. This is a terrible story. It is not just a sad 
story, it is a terrible story. That is that line for median family 
income. It was over $53,000 in 1999. It is $49,000 today. It is almost 
$4,000 less in real dollars in a decade.
  I could have brought in another slide which shows that this trend has 
actually been going on a little longer than that. Think about that. It 
means half of the families in 1999 were earning less than $53,000, and 
half were earning more than $53,000. Today half are earning less than 
$49,000 and half are earning more than that.
  These are folks who have done absolutely everything that anybody ever 
asked them to do. But I don't care whether you are a family or a 
business, it makes it very hard for you to make ends meet if that is 
the slope that you are on. I argue that we cannot consume one more 
decade of this new century, with economic policies that are leading us 
here, and expect to have a vibrant middle class. I want to be in an 
economy where Procter & Gamble has to change their business model to 
catch up with a rising middle class, not be in a position that they are 
in today where they believe they have to bet on a falling middle class.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Will my colleague yield for a question?
  Mr. BENNET. Sure.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I compliment him on this outstanding speech. The hour is 
late and many colleagues have gone home, so I hope he will send this to 
every one of our colleagues. It has been a joy for me to stay and 
listen.
  The only question I wanted to ask--and we talked about this last 
night at dinner--here is another interesting fact amid so many that my 
colleague brought up in this great speech.
  If we look at that chart, from 1999 to 2007, before the recession 
hit, median income didn't go up.
  Mr. BENNET. Exactly.
  Mr. SCHUMER. That is a question we have to ponder. We need great 
minds like the Senator's to figure out the answer. If we just blame the 
recession and think it will come back up, it won't. The kinds of 
structural changes my colleague talks about are so needed if we are not 
going to have a continually declining middle class, even in a period of 
growth. Am I right about that assumption?
  Mr. BENNET. I thank the Senator from New York. He is right about 
that. What he will see on another slide--not tonight--is that we were 
already on this decline. This is not news to people living in our 
States. It is not news to people trying to figure out how to make ends 
meet week by week. This is not news to them. It is not news to the 
people who came to my townhalls and said they cannot afford to send 
their kids to the best schools. They sent their first kid to the fancy 
school, but they cannot send their second kid there. They are upset 
that we are not getting done what we ought to be getting done.
  What we see on this other chart is that this decline was happening 
already because the economy wasn't lifting all boats, and it was 
widening in equality terribly. I have things tonight that talk about 
that. Then the recession accelerated that decline. They lost 2.3 
percent of median family income in the recession, which is more than 
any of the previous recessions, going back to the Great Depression. So 
that is how tough this is.
  The Senator is right. If we keep doing what we have done for the 
decade that led us into this recession, if we go back to those policies 
and readopt those policies, and that is where we end up, we will 
continue to see this slide.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I thank my colleague.
  Mr. BENNET. I thank the Senator from New York. This gives a sense of 
the widening inequality that has happened. This is average income, 
which is different from median income. The amazing thing is, while 
middle-class income has been falling, and it fell throughout this 10 
years, average income actually went up because a few people at the very 
top of the economy did incredibly well over this period of time. They 
have done incredibly well. This is the very top 1 percent of our 
earners who went from here to up here.
  The top 1 percent saw that, and here is everybody else. This red line 
is 90 percent of the people in America. Their average income was flat 
from 1967 to 2006. That is 90 percent of the people who live in the 
United States. It is hard to see how people can get ahead under 
circumstances like that.
  It is no wonder that we have these alarming numbers this week from 
the Census Bureau which show there are 46.2 million Americans now 
living in poverty. That is a 46-percent increase since 2000. I had to 
look to make sure I was reading that right. Since 2000, when 31 million 
people were in poverty, it has gone up to 46 million people in poverty 
today, and 22 percent of the children in the United States of America 
tonight are living in poverty. Over one-fifth of the children living in 
the United States tonight are living in poverty. And, by the way, as a 
former superintendent of the Denver public schools, I can tell you we 
are not doing ourselves any favors when the chances of a child living 
in poverty in this country graduating from college are roughly 9 in 
100, which is what their chances are today. Ninety-one out of one 
hundred poor kids in the country can't expect to get a college degree; 
can't expect to be anywhere but on the margin of our democracy or our 
economy. I wonder what effect that will have on our median family 
income going forward.

[[Page S5676]]

  This is the last slide, because I know the hour is late, and it is 
one that was in the Washington Post. I am not going to bother to 
describe the details, but you can find it on the Web site and it is 
worth looking at. It is worth looking at.
  This red line--and it is the only thing I will talk about from this 
slide--shows what the bottom 90 percent--and it seems ridiculous to 
talk about the bottom 90 percent--what the 90 percent of earners in 
this country earned as a percentage of the income that everybody earned 
in the United States from before the 1920s to today, essentially. For 
the vast majority of time or some majority of time in the period from 
World War II--the end of World War II--until the present, the bottom 90 
percent of earners earned roughly 70 percent of the income in the 
United States--a majority of the income, 70 percent of the income--for 
a long time. Now they are earning roughly 50 percent. The bottom 90 
percent is earning roughly 50 percent of the income. That means, by the 
way, the other 10 percent are earning roughly 50 percent of the income. 
That is how it is distributed. It is a unique moment in the country's 
history, actually, uniquely unbalanced. In fact, we have to go back to 
1928--the year before the market crashed, the year before Black Friday, 
the year before our financial markets collapsed and put us into the 
Great Depression--to find income disparity that looks like the income 
disparity we face today.
  In my view, the 20th century represented a period in this country's 
history of limitless opportunity, limitless economic growth, limitless 
educational attainment. Our democracy succeeded in generating an 
economy that gave everybody a fighting chance. Maybe a definition of 
whether we are giving people a fighting chance is whether middle-class 
income is rising or falling. Now we are in a period where it is falling 
and we find ourselves in the position of producing the same domestic 
product we were producing before this recession with 14 million more 
people unemployed.
  The economists tell us we have recovered, that we are in a recovery. 
The technical definition is that we are in a recovery because the 
technical definition is based on whether GDP is growing. That is a very 
cruel definition of recovery for the 14 million people who are 
unemployed. It is a very cruel definition of recovery for a middle 
class that is getting wiped out because median family income is 
falling.
  Look, the people who live in Colorado, notwithstanding all of this, 
are optimistic. They are optimistic about their communities and they 
are optimistic about their families. It gets tougher and tougher, but 
they rise to the occasion. And you know what. That is what they are 
asking us to do. They are asking us to knock off the political games 
that seem to be only about Washington and seem to have nothing to do 
with the challenges they face.
  Today was a good day here. I was pleased. It has been a long time. I 
was pleased to join my senior Senator and about 30 other Democrats and 
Republicans at an event to say it is time for us to think big about 
solving this country's fiscal challenges and that we are anxious to 
work together to do it. We are anxious to create a comprehensive plan 
to deal with it. We should be taking exactly the same approach on jobs.
  Getting our fiscal house in order is incredibly important to 
encourage and inspire confidence in our markets and confidence in our 
businesses and confidence in our local economies. But our work won't 
stop there. We need to reinvent our Tax Code so it is driving 
innovation and driving a rising middle class. We need to reimagine our 
regulatory code so it is doing the same. We need to educate the 
children in this country so they can take on the jobs of the 21st 
century, because the jobs of the 20th century are not coming back. We 
will be waiting in vain for those jobs to come back.
  The people in my meetings back in Colorado are demanding--that is the 
right way to say it, they are demanding--we work together. Our State is 
a third Republican, a third Independent, and a third Democrat, but they 
are Coloradans before any of that, and they are Americans maybe even 
before that, and it is time for us to meet their standard.
  Tonight we had votes on the reauthorization of FEMA--our emergency 
agency--to respond to the incredible tragedies that have happened 
around the country. It got 62 votes and we were able to pass it. We had 
a vote on the transportation extension, the FAA reauthorization, and I 
think the vote was 92 to 6, with Democrats and Republicans moving this 
country forward. That is what we have to do in order to get this 
economy going again. The people in Colorado today are saying: We want 
more of that and less of the bickering, more problem solving and less 
finger pointing. My hope is that on an occasion such as today, when we 
actually have made some progress, no matter how limited, it may give us 
the chance to move forward together.
  Mr. President, I appreciate the Chair's endurance and allowing me to 
speak on the floor tonight.

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