[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 165 (Tuesday, November 1, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6994-S6997]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        REBUILD AMERICA JOBS ACT

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, if we pass the Rebuild America Jobs 
Act, we will immediately invest $50 billion into our transportation 
infrastructure and generate hundreds of thousands of good jobs and 
establish a national infrastructure bank which will generate even more 
good jobs. We need these jobs during the current period of high 
unemployment, and upgrading our crumbling infrastructure will spur 
long-term job growth in addition to the immediate employment benefits. 
So I strongly support this bill and I hope our colleagues can be 
brought around as well.
  The Rebuild America Jobs Act is one piece of the larger American Jobs 
Act which, when Leader Reid brought it to the floor, all 47 Senate 
Republicans chose to filibuster instead of allowing us to begin 
debating and, if they wished, improving the jobs legislation. That 
filibuster blocked President Obama's plan to cut payroll taxes for 
every single American worker, and it blocked his plan to offer business 
owners generous tax breaks to hire new workers and grow their 
businesses. Economists estimated that the American Jobs Act would 
create nearly 2 million jobs--1.9 million jobs. Perhaps for that 
reason, many pieces of the bill have received wide bipartisan support 
in the past. Indeed, just last December, similar job-creating 
provisions were included in the Job Creation and Tax Cuts Act, which 
received 81 votes in the Senate.
  The jobs bill that Republicans blockaded was fully paid for through a 
5.6-percent surtax on income in excess of $1 million. In other words, 
the only tax increase in the bill is a provision that pays for job 
creation in this country by

[[Page S6995]]

having millionaires and billionaires who continue to enjoy the record 
low tax rates brought on by the Bush tax cuts pay a little more and 
only on their income over $1 million. There is no increase on the first 
million.
  A recent study by Citizens for Tax Justice showed that the surcharge 
would only apply to the richest one-fifth of 1 percent of U.S. 
taxpayers, leaving the taxes of more than 99 percent of all Americans--
if my math is right, 99.8 percent of all Americans--unchanged.
  The Rebuild America Jobs Act, which is one piece of the full jobs 
bill, is paid for with a much smaller 0.7-percent surtax on income 
above $1 million. Having one-fifth of 1 percent of the wealthiest 
Americans pay less than 1 percent more in income taxes, and only on 
income above $1 million of income, hardly seems unreasonable to support 
hundreds of thousands of jobs for middle-class families in this 
economic climate.
  As we try again and again to advance jobs legislation in the Senate, 
the supercommittee we established in the Budget Control Act is at work 
on recommendations to cut the deficit. Getting the most fortunate and 
well-compensated Americans to start paying a fair share in taxes ought 
to be a logical component of any deficit reduction plan--at least under 
a theory that we should have a progressive Federal tax system. That is 
a tax system in which we pay higher rates of tax the more money we 
earn.
  In theory, we have a progressive Federal tax system, but, in fact, do 
we? We are often told that the wealthiest Americans are already 
shouldering too great a share of our tax burden. Earlier this year, one 
of the candidates, a leading candidate for the Republican Presidential 
nomination, told NBC that ``the top 1 percent of income earners pay 
about 40 percent of all taxes into the Federal Government.''
  That sounds like a lot--the top 1 percent pay 40 percent of all 
taxes. Let's look at some data to see if the theory proves correct. The 
Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, two very respected 
organizations, estimate that the total share of Federal taxes paid by 
the top 1 percent of taxpayers is, in fact, 22.7 percent--not 40 
percent. Remember that for a moment, 22.7 percent is the amount of 
Federal taxes the top 1 percent of income earners pay.
  If we take a look at the long-term trends in income and taxation, it 
is revealing. According to the Congressional Budget Office, between 
1979 and 2006, the total effective Federal tax rate for the top 1 
percent of households fell. The tax rate went down almost 6 points, 
from 37 percent to 31.2 percent. Over the same period, that group, the 
top 1 percent, went from earning 10 percent of the Nation's income to 
22.8 percent. The amount of the Nation's income that the richest 1 
percent earn in this country climbed over that period from 10 to nearly 
23 percent. They claimed an additional 13 percent of the Nation's 
income.
  Go back to the number. The Urban Institute and Brookings Institution 
estimate that the total share of Federal taxes paid by the top 1 
percent of taxpayers is 22.7 percent, but the share of income the top 1 
percent takes is 22.8 percent. That is not a progressive tax system. 
They may be paying a lot in taxes, but it is proportionate almost 
exactly to what they are taking out of the economy in income. The 
relative burden of the extremely wealthy in this country is going 
steadily down, not up, and it has just crossed to the point where it is 
no longer progressive.
  There is a tale of two buildings that may help explain why. This is 
the first of the two buildings. This is the Helmsley Building in New 
York City. It is on Park Avenue. It is a lovely, wonderful place--a 
great building. Not surprisingly, some very successful and well-
compensated people live there.
  It is also a big building. It is so big it has its own ZIP Code. 
Because it has its own ZIP Code and because the Internal Revenue 
Service calculates and provides information about income by ZIP Code, 
we can learn quite a lot about the occupants of this wonderful 
building. What we know from the latest IRS information that I have been 
able to find is that the very well-compensated and successful 
individuals and corporations that call this building home actually paid 
a 14.7-percent tax rate in 2007. That rate is lower than the Bureau of 
Labor Statistics tells us is what the average New York City janitor or 
doorman or security guard pays. So at least in this building the 
fabulously successful and well-compensated occupants of the building 
who live in those wonderful apartments on Park Avenue are paying a 
significantly lower tax rate in real life than the actual men and women 
who are their janitors, who are their doormen, who are their security 
guards.
  It is not just some fluke about the Helmsley Building. We all 
remember Leona Helmsley saying it is the little people who pay taxes. 
There is no ghost of Leona Helmsley making that true in this building; 
it is true across the board. Each year, the Internal Revenue Service 
publishes a report consolidating the tax returns of the highest 
income 400 Americans and they publish that data. They do not get around 
to it very quickly, but in May they published the most recent data on 
the top 400 taxpayers in America for 2008. In 2008, the top 400 earners 
took home an average of $270 million each. They earned more than one-
quarter of a billion dollars each that year, which is wonderful. That 
is the kind of country we are. One can make a real fortune here. But 
where it gets a little sketchy is that, on average, those 400 extremely 
highly compensated Americans actually paid into the Treasury of the 
United States at an average Federal tax rate of just 18.2 percent on 
adjusted gross income--18.2 percent.

  We have spent time on the Senate floor debating whether the top 
income tax rate should be 35 percent or 39.6 percent. That is not what 
they pay. The top 400 income earners, the $\1/4\ billion-a-year crowd, 
pay actually, on average, just 18.2 percent. This means the 400 highest 
earning individuals in the Nation, in 2008, just like the occupants of 
this Helmsley Building, were paying rates lower than or equivalent to 
what regular working families pay.
  If we went back to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and pulled out the 
information for the Helmsley Building but about the janitors, the 
doormen and about the security guards and we look to see who else in 
America is paying an 18.2-percent tax rate--if a person is a single 
filer they are paying an 18.2-percent tax rate in this country if they 
make $39,350 a year. Where I come from in Rhode Island, the Bureau of 
Labor Statistics says that is about what a truck driver makes--$40,200 
is what a truck driver makes; $39,350 is what it takes to put a person 
in the income bracket where they are paying the same tax rate into our 
Treasury as the 400 members of the $\1/4\ billion-a-year club.
  The choice is very clear. Instead of moving forward on a jobs plan 
that independent economists agree will create millions of American jobs 
in the near term, we are facing an opposition that is fighting to make 
sure people making $\1/4\ billion a year pay lower Federal tax rates 
than regular working, middle-class American families.
  That is the story of the first building, the Helmsley Plaza. This is 
a different building. This is the Ugland building. It is called Ugland 
House. It doesn't look like much, but it is near the lovely aquamarine 
beaches of the Cayman Islands. What is interesting about this little 
building is that 18,000 corporations claim they are doing business 
here. That is not a very big building. The notion that 18,000 
corporations are doing business out of this building--that gives a 
whole new meaning to the phrase ``small business.'' But there is no 
real business going on here. The business that is going on here is 
funny business, under the Tax Code.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. We have a 10-minute time limit and the Senator 
has consumed 9 minutes.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask consent for 3 more minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The companies doing business here are not real 
companies; they are phony-baloney shell corporations that are designed 
to hide assets and to play games with the tax system. This income never 
even makes it into the 18.2 percent of the Helmsley Building. This gets 
hidden away completely.
  When our tax system is rigged so it permits billionaires to pay lower 
tax rates than truck drivers and allows the wealthiest to avoid taxes 
by hiding assets in phony offshore corporations,

[[Page S6996]]

something is not right. With multitrillion dollar budget deficits 
threatening our Nation's prosperity, we have to do something to make 
our tax system more fair for regular Americans.
  I have been working on legislation which would ensure that 
millionaires and billionaires pay an effective tax rate at least as 
high as is paid by middle-class families. This would require all 
taxpayers with income over $1 million a year, indexed to inflation, to 
pay at least a 25-percent rate. A 25-percent rate is the marginal rate 
middle-class taxpayers currently pay on income, from about $34,000 of 
income to about $84,000 of income, depending on the size of the family 
and the deductions they get. It seems fair to me to ask people at the 
highest end of the income spectrum to pay at least the tax rate middle-
class families in the $34,000-to-$84,000 range actually pay. It simply 
doesn't make sense to have the wealthiest abusing these tax gimmicks to 
pay lower tax rates than middle-class families. So whether it is Leader 
Reid's surtax or my proposal, I hope we can act to ensure that the most 
successful Americans actually pay their fair share of our national tax 
burden to restore our Nation to its economic strength.

  I thank my distinguished colleague from Michigan for her courtesy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, first, I wish to thank my good friend 
and colleague from Rhode Island for his important words on the floor 
and for indicating that millions and millions of middle-class families 
and small businesses in this country expect us to figure out a way to 
make sure the tax system is fair and we have the opportunity for 
everyone to be able to be successful in this country and know they have 
a fair chance to make it and that the rules are not rigged for just a 
few folks. So I wish to thank the distinguished Senator for his 
comments and for his leadership and pointing out some very important 
things for the majority of Americans and small businesses across the 
country.
  I rise to speak about a very important issue that will be coming 
before us for a vote that directly relates to jobs. As the Chair knows, 
that is a pretty big issue for me in Michigan. We have over 11 percent 
unemployment. I am laser focused on creating jobs and growing the 
economy because I think it is absolutely critical for us to get out of 
debt. We are not going to get out of debt with more than 14 million 
people out of work, and we are not going to be able to move forward in 
a way that allows families and businesses to succeed in America if we 
are not able to turn this economy around and create jobs.
  Following World War II, our country created a system of roads and 
bridges and railways and airports unlike any in the world. In fact, 
countries are now looking to duplicate what we have done. In the 
decades that followed, this important infrastructure served as the 
foundation of our economic growth and prosperity, being able to move 
commerce and people from one place to another, and we grew. Now that 
infrastructure has fallen into disrepair. Not surprisingly, we need to 
be doing some things to be able to rebuild and make sure our bridges 
are safe and to be able to move forward in a global economy and have 
the ability to compete because we have an infrastructure that is worthy 
of the 21st century.
  More than one-quarter of our Nation's bridges are either structurally 
deficient or obsolete. Think about that, one out of four. If I am 
driving down the road, I don't think I want to bet that one-out-of-four 
probability that the bridge I am driving over with my children or my 
two beautiful grandchildren is safe. I think families want to know 
every bridge is safe, every road is safe, and that they are not going 
to put their families in jeopardy as they are driving on our roads and 
crossing our bridges.
  In Michigan, we have 1,400 bridges that are deficient--more than 13 
percent of Michigan's bridges. Motorists in Michigan are no stranger to 
bad roads. I can tell you as somebody who has the wonderful honor of 
representing Michigan, a very large State, I spend much time on the 
road, as do my brothers in their work, and my family is on the road as 
well. We can tell you every year the freezing and thawing wreaks havoc 
on our roads and every year our roads are full of potholes. I certainly 
can speak from experience about the expense of fixing a car when one 
drives over and falls into one of those big potholes.
  Even our Republican Governor, Rick Snyder, says we need to invest in 
infrastructure. He recently said:

       Michigan's infrastructure is living on borrowed time. We 
     must reinvest in it if we are to successfully reinvent our 
     economy.

  I couldn't agree more. I wish to commend the Governor for those words 
and for his focus and his administration's focus on investing in our 
roads and our infrastructure.
  We are sitting in traffic and paying the price at the pump because we 
have fallen behind in maintaining and improving our physical 
infrastructure as a country to be able to move across town or across 
the State or across the country. If we don't invest to fix our 
crumbling roads and bridges and airports now, the costs will only go 
up, as we know. Failure to act now will cost nearly 1 million Americans 
their jobs. Those are a lot of people. Those are a lot of families. 
Those are a lot of mortgages. Those are a lot of families figuring out 
whether they are going to be able to put food on the table and send 
their kids to college. There are 1 million American jobs in jeopardy. 
It will cost our economy nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years if 
we do not act. We have the opportunity to act and we have the 
opportunity to act right now. We can invest in rebuilding our 
infrastructure and it will, in turn, rebuild our economy and create 
jobs.
  The Rebuild America Jobs Act is an opportunity to turn the corner and 
to head in the right direction. Not only will it upgrade 150,000 miles 
of roadway, improve thousands of miles of train track, and modernize 
our Nation's runways and air traffic control systems, but it will also 
put hundreds of thousands of people to work. This is a win-win. The 
Rebuild America Jobs Act will provide desperately needed repair funds 
and will provide the seed money for a national infrastructure bank that 
will attract private sector capital to help fund a broad range of new 
investments. This is such an important idea to be able to provide seed 
money, to be able to track the private sector, private capital, to be 
able to invest, to be able to leverage the dollars that American 
taxpayers put in and be able to address all our roads and bridges and 
other infrastructure needs in a way that creates jobs.
  It will have a very big impact on my great State of Michigan. The 
plan will make immediate investments in Michigan that could support at 
least 11,700 local jobs that are so critical to us right now as we are 
coming out of this huge jobs deficit hole we have been in for too long. 
The plan to rebuild our infrastructure and put Americans back to work 
has bipartisan as well as strong support from the private sector. The 
presidents of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Republican Mayors 
and Local Officials Coalition have both supported the infrastructure 
investments we are talking about. This approach has strong bipartisan 
support.
  Simply put, the Rebuild America Jobs Act will fix our crumbling 
infrastructure, put hundreds of thousands of people back to work at the 
same time. It will not add a dime to our deficit, and the American 
people support it. So this is a win-win. Why will it not add a dime to 
our deficit? Because we pay for it in a way that I think is very 
reasonable and very fair. We are asking those who are most blessed 
economically in our country, those who earn over $1 million a year, to 
pay less than 1 percent, .7 percent, on any $1 they earn above the 
first $1 million of income. So they would be asked to have basically 
a surcharge to contribute to creating jobs and investing in the future 
of America, rebuilding America--jobs that cannot go overseas, jobs in 
rebuilding America.

  This can be done for less than a 1-percent surcharge, not on the 
first $1 million they earn but on the $1 that comes after or the $2 or 
the $5 or the $10 or the second million. It is anything above $1 
million where we are asking those in our country who are in a position 
to be able to help instead of going back to middle-class families, 
working families, senior citizens, people who have been hurt so hard in 
this recession for so long. Instead of asking them

[[Page S6997]]

one more time to be the ones to carry the burden, we are, instead, 
asking those who have had success, who have been blessed financially, 
and who have benefited from this great country, whether it was with 
what was done to support Wall Street, whether it was other ways in this 
country, for them to be a part of the solution with less than 1 percent 
on any dollars earned above $1 million. I think this is a reasonable 
and fair approach.
  This is about jobs. We are talking about the Rebuild America Jobs 
Act, putting people back to work, doing something that is incredibly 
important for our country and will grow the economy, create jobs, 
rebuild communities, and help our country move forward.
  I urge my colleagues, when we have the vote, to move forward on this 
bill and that we all join in what has been a bipartisan set of issues 
of infrastructure investment and rebuilding America. I hope we will see 
that in the vote that will be coming in the next couple days.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I thank and commend my distinguished colleague from 
Michigan for those very eloquent remarks on behalf of an act that I too 
rise to support. I thank the Presiding Officer for his very eloquent 
and persuasive comments earlier in this debate on the Rebuild America 
Jobs Act and the need for this Nation to focus on the increasing trend 
in inequality and a very troubling absence of focus on the compelling 
obligation we have to rebuild America at this point in our history, to 
rebuild our roads and bridges and ports and airports and schools.
  The Rebuild America Jobs Act would provide $50 billion very directly 
to rebuilding our roads and bridges and railroads and airports, and 
that is a pressing need for America, but equally as pressing and 
important are the people hurting and struggling all across the country. 
People are struggling to find jobs, to stay in their homes, to keep 
their families together, and those struggles ought to be heard and seen 
in this Chamber, on this floor, at this moment in our history. They are 
Americans who played by the rules and who are now out of work, out of 
support, and soon, sadly, out of hope.
  For much of our time recently, we have been mired in the politics of 
deficit and debt, and that is not to say those subjects are 
unimportant. I believe in fiscal responsibility. I believe in cutting 
our debt, restraining spending, and cutting the deficit. But deficit 
cutting cannot be used as an excuse to gut the social safety net we 
have labored hard to create over 75 years. It cannot be used to ignore 
the needs of people struggling to find work. It cannot be used as a 
reason to neglect our critical infrastructure in this country and the 
sad and serious defects we now find in it.
  One powerful and proven means to cut the deficit and the debt is to 
create jobs and enable economic recovery. What matters most to the 
American people now is jobs, work, employment, going back to work, back 
to good jobs, earning a living for the sake of not only their economic 
well-being but their respect and self-worth, their dignity. More is at 
stake here than simply a paycheck. It is the social fabric of our 
communities, our country, our families. That is why it ought to be a 
priority. Right now, investing in infrastructure in those roads and 
bridges and ports and airports is one of the most immediate job 
creators available.
  The Congressional Budget Office has found that returning to full 
employment would reduce the deficit by 25 percent. That is way more 
than the politically charged and severely damaging cuts offered by many 
of my colleagues across the aisle. Thankfully, we have a plan to put us 
on the path to full employment, and it is called the Rebuild America 
Jobs Act. This bill would put America back to work immediately by 
rebuilding our ailing infrastructure.
  There is no question about the need. The American Society of Civil 
Engineers recently rated America's infrastructure and they gave us a D. 
According to the nonpartisan organization Transportation For America, 
Fairfield County in my home State of Connecticut has the fourth highest 
number of motorists using structurally deficient bridges among all the 
metropolitan areas nationwide. That is an indictment not of Connecticut 
but of our Nation, and so is the fact that over 9 percent of 
Connecticut's bridges are considered structurally deficient. 
Nationwide, in fact, the numbers are even worse. One in four of our 
Nation's bridges is either structurally deficient or obsolete. No one 
wants another tragedy such as the one we experienced in Connecticut. It 
is called the Mianus River Bridge collapse. It killed three people. It 
paralyzed the roadways in and around the bridge for months.
  It cost millions of dollars. It led to litigation that spanned years. 
The bridge's collapse almost 30 years ago prompted a major 
infrastructure effort in Connecticut focusing on repair and 
reconstruction to make our bridges and roads more safe and secure. We 
need not await the kinds of tragedies we saw 30 years ago in 
Connecticut and more recently in other States involving bridge 
collapses and other tragedies that show the deficiencies and 
unacceptable defects in these roads and bridges.
  The need is clear. At a time when civil engineers across the country 
are calling for vast improvements in our national infrastructure, the 
measure before this body would accomplish exactly that goal. It would 
provide aid for States to be spent at their discretion and flexibility 
as to the projects but not as to the purpose. The purpose would be 
roads, bridges, airports, railroads.
  This bill would invest $50 billion in upgrading and repairing 150,000 
miles of road, laying or maintaining 4,000 miles of train tracks, and 
restoring 150 miles of runways at our Nation's airports. It would also 
provide seed money--and this purpose is important--for a national 
infrastructure bank that will attract private sector capital to fund a 
broad range of nationally significant projects, going beyond the ones 
that would be immediately supported by the $50 billion in this measure. 
That national infrastructure bank would be capitalized at $10 billion, 
but it would attract money from private investors to do far more than 
would be enabled by the initial seed money.
  This is a bipartisan measure, long supported by Senators Kerry and 
Hutchison. I am proud to have joined them as a cosponsor, and I thank 
them for their leadership. I thank Members on the House side, including 
my colleague, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, for supporting this measure 
over the years.
  A national infrastructure bank would leverage private capital and 
public capital to fund a broad range of nationally significant 
infrastructure projects all around the country--in Connecticut and 
elsewhere. These funds would provide an immediate boost for our 
economy. It is estimated, in fact, that for every $1 spent on these 
roads, bridges, and other infrastructure projects, our gross domestic 
product would be increased by about $1.59--for every $1, an increase of 
$1.59 in gross domestic product. We are talking about investment. We 
are talking about investment in America's future, in Connecticut's 
present as well as its future, because people in Connecticut would go 
back to work, back to jobs, back to livelihoods that give them dignity 
and self-respect.
  With so many people out of work and a dire need for that kind of 
investment, common sense says we ought to pass this bill, we ought to 
do it now, without delay, and we ought to do it on a bipartisan basis. 
There is nothing Republican or Democratic about investment in roads or 
bridges or airports or railroads to make them safer, more secure, more 
efficient.
  I ask my colleagues, regardless of party, to stand with us and 
millions of Americans who are out of work, to come together and find a 
way to pass the Rebuild America Jobs Act. Let's pass this bill now. 
Let's do it together, without any more delay. People are continuing to 
struggle and seek work, and this bill is the right thing for America. 
It is the right thing for Connecticut. Let's do it now.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

                          ____________________