[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 167 (Thursday, November 3, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7095-S7113]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REBUILD AMERICA JOBS ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED
______
LONG-TERM SURFACE TRANSPORTATION EXTENSION ACT OF 2011--MOTION TO
PROCEED
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 1769,
which the clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to proceed to the consideration of the bill (S.
1769) to put workers back on the job while rebuilding and
modernizing America.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the time
until 3 p.m. will be equally divided and controlled between the two
leaders or their designees.
The motion to proceed to S. 1786 is also the matter before the
Senate.
The Senator from Utah is recognized.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, while I have been interested in the
comments between the two leaders, I have to agree with the Republican
leader that this is an exercise, in many ways, in futility because the
bill brought forth by the other side has very little chance of passing
through both Houses of Congress because it is a partisan bill.
Let me just mention a few things this morning. While growth remains
sluggish in our economy, unemployment high, and job growth insufficient
to drive unemployment lower, the number of pages in the Federal
Register is at an all-time high. Pages devoted to final rules rose by
20 percent
[[Page S7096]]
between 2009 and 2010, and proposed rules have also risen by close to
20 percent to 2,439 in 2010.
Of the 4,257 regulatory actions already in the pipeline, 219 are
considered economically significant, meaning they are estimated to
impose a cost of $100 million or more on the economy. By comparison,
that is 28 more than this time last year and 47 percent more than in
2009. In total, the Obama administration has imposed 75 new major
regulations costing over $38 billion annually. And we wonder why our
country is in such trouble.
The minutes of the late September meeting of the Federal Reserve
monetary policymaking committee reveal that in talking to businesses
and market participants, many contacts have ``cited uncertainty about
regulatory and tax policies as contributing to businesses' reluctance
to spend.''
If businesses are not spending because of regulatory uncertainty,
then their customers will see lack of demand for their products. The
lack of demand explanation for economic sluggishness offered by the
administration and its Keynesian advisers begs the question of why
there is a lack of demand. While there are likely several reasons, the
Fed clearly identifies one of them: Uncertainty about regulatory
policies.
Indeed, uncertainty regarding future regulatory policies as a
contributing factor for business reluctance to hire and invest has been
cited in minutes of the past three policymaking meetings of the Fed's
monetary policymaking committee. Those identifying that such
uncertainty is impeding job creation are American businesses and not
government bureaucrats insulated from the front lines of businesses and
not their Keynesian advisers. They are the boots on the ground in the
American economy--the very people who create jobs--most of whom are
small businesspeople.
The legislation I have introduced seeks in part to ease the burden of
Federal regulations on businesses, including smaller and younger
businesses--where vibrancy is critical for job creation--and to provide
a rational regulatory decisionmaking process to provide greater
certainty to businesses about the future regulatory environment.
Provisions in this act represent ideas that have garnered bipartisan
support. Indeed, many of the provisions follow directly from the
President's own jobs council. The President's Council on Jobs and
Competitiveness, according to the council, ``was created to provide
nonpartisan advice.''
I am talking about the bill we have filed on this side.
The jobs council presented recommendations to President Obama on
October 11, 2011, in Pittsburgh, PA. Those recommendations stem from
the council's interim report titled ``Taking Action, Building
Confidence: Five Common-Sense Initiatives to Boost Jobs and
Competitiveness.'' Many of the provisions in my act stem directly from
recommendations in the council's report and from the report's call for
a more rational Federal regulatory system.
Allow me to offer some quotes and comments related to the President's
jobs council's interim report recommendations in the context of this
act.
First, the President's job council says:
The nation's complex federal, state, and local permitting
system can lead to unnecessary delays. In fact, large
Department of Transportation projects can spend years getting
the required Environmental Impact Statement process completed
under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
I agree. This legislation--my legislation--promotes more efficient
regulation to rein in some of the burdensome Federal redtape that
stymies transportation infrastructure projects and job creation. At the
same time, it fully recognizes environmental and safety concerns
surrounding those projects. Relative to those concerns, the President's
jobs council remarks that ``what's gotten less attention, however, is
the number of jobs at stake.''
Second, the President's jobs council says:
Current markets face significant uncertainty--tax policy,
pollution restrictions, and performance standards are all in
flux.
I agree. This side's legislation serves to reduce some of that
uncertainty and promote rational regulatory decisionmaking with
congressional review of rules and regulations that are of major
economic significance and required approval of the very rules that
would impose major costs on the U.S. economy and job creators.
Third, the President's jobs council states:
There is broad consensus that a key step towards jump-
starting economic growth would be removing regulatory
barriers and simplifying overly complex government processes.
Their inefficiencies cost businesses time and money.
I agree. This legislation seeks, through rational regulatory
decisionmaking and reviews, to remove unnecessary and costly regulatory
barriers and provide simpler, more rational government regulatory
processes.
Fourth, the President's jobs council--this is referring to Executive
orders to review regulations--says:
Unfortunately, the Executive Orders mandating regulatory
analysis and review did not apply to IRCs [independent
regulatory commissions] such as the Securities and Exchange
Commission or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
because the law won't allow it. While some IRCs employ
economic analysis when crafting new regulations, many do not
routinely do so. As an example, in 2010, IRCs issued 17
economically significant regulatory reactions--16 of which
were promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission
and the Federal Reserve System. None underwent the
comprehensive regulatory impact analysis or included the
cost-benefit analysis that is expected from executive branch
agencies. The Council therefore recommends that legislation
be passed that requires that IRCs conduct cost-benefit
analysis for all ``economically significant'' regulatory
actions that may have an annual impact on the economy of $100
million or more as well as any significant guidance that
meets the same threshold.
I agree. This legislation we have filed on this side will provide
congressional oversight on any such performed by IRCs such as the
Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve, the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission, and other Federal regulators for
economically significant actions.
Fifth, the President's jobs council says of its recommendations for
economically significant regulatory actions:
These recommendations are not designed to weaken regulation
or regulatory agencies, but rather to improve the rulemaking
process, and to create more effective and less burdensome
regulations that will promote economic growth and job
recovery.
I agree. The Republican legislation promotes a rational regulatory
system with improved rulemaking oversight to create more effective and
less burdensome regulations in order to help promote jobs growth.
I also agree with the spirit of the jobs council remarks that efforts
such as this legislation, far from ``gutting regulations and
threatening safety,'' will promote economic efficiency and renewed job
creation. The call for rational regulation and rulemaking is in no way
a gutting of regulations or a sacrifice of public safety or of
environmental quality efforts. We all know that rules and regulations
are quite likely to continue to grow and evolve. This legislation seeks
only to put rational decisionmaking into the foundation of our
regulatory and rulemaking processes that are too often driven by
special interests of largely unaccountable and fully unelected Federal
regulatory bureaucrats wishing to impose their preferences on America's
job creators.
Proponents of the so-called infrastructure bank have actively cited
in recent advocacy speeches findings from Global Competitiveness
Reports of the World Economic Forum. Well, if ratings from the World
Economic Forum guide their views and guide them to advocate hundreds of
billions of dollars from taxpayer resources for a risky new GSE that
they call an infrastructure bank, let's look at what the forum has to
say regarding the United States.
First, in their recent Global Competitiveness Report, in what are
called ``the most problematic factors for doing business'' in America,
the top 4 factors out of 15 are tax rates, No. 1; inefficient
government bureaucracy, No. 2; access to financing, No. 3; and tax
regulations, No. 4. Inadequate supply of infrastructure rates No. 10,
right below policy instability and restrictive labor regulations.
There you have it. The Global Competitiveness Report the
administration and my friends on the other side of the
[[Page S7097]]
aisle use to advocate a risky new infrastructure bank places taxes and
inefficient government bureaucracy as the top two leading problems in
doing business in America. Those are the top two factors that are
holding back job growth, and a brandnew, risky infrastructure bank
bureaucracy funded by permanently higher taxes would only make those
problems worse.
By contrast, the legislation I offer directly addresses inefficient
government bureaucracy by acting to ease the inefficient regulatory
burdens imposed on job creators by largely unaccountable and unelected
Federal bureaucracies throughout our massive regulatory agency maze and
their special interests. And, I might add, those regulatory agencies
seem clearly not to have job creation and easing of the plight of
America's 14 million unemployed workers as part of their main
interests.
The legislation I am proposing also provides for a fully paid-for
highway extension through 2013 that will give States and contractors
the certainty they need to begin large projects and create jobs.
It calls for an elimination of dedicated funding for transportation
enhancements and gives States the authority to decide whether to spend
resources on bike paths or other such transportation add-ons.
It reforms the National Environmental Policy Act--NEPA--to eliminate
the inefficient bureaucratic environmental redtape and to accelerate
project delivery and contracting, just as called for by the President's
own jobs council. It addresses the bureaucratic redtape associated with
the NEPA that the President's own jobs council identifies, and it
contains reforms that receive the support of the Department of
Transportation.
It includes a provision to stop Environmental Protection Agency rules
that serve to drive up costs of concrete and steel, which are key
ingredients in the road and construction projects.
It includes provisions for waivers of inefficient environmental
reviews, approvals, and licensing and permitting requirements on road,
highway, and bridge rebuilding efforts in emergency situations.
It imposes a regulatory timeout on regulations to help stem the
regulatory tsunami that is impeding job creation. We face a national
jobs and unemployment emergency. It is truly a crisis. The Federal
Reserve, the President's own jobs council, and job creators in Utah and
across America have made clear that onerous regulations and regulatory
uncertainty are acting to cast a wet blanket on job creation in
America, and the 14 million unemployed Americans are painfully in need
of jobs. My fellow Republicans and I are listening.
The legislation I propose goes straight to the matter in the interest
of job creation now, not years from now once some inefficient, new,
politicized, unelected Federal bureaucracy called an infrastructure
bank is up and running to supply taxpayer funds to specially chosen and
favored risky projects--something we have seen plenty of in this
administration and some administrations in the past as well.
The legislation I propose addresses the repeated calls from job
creators who are stymied by inefficient, burdensome regulatory redtape
derived from special interest Federal bureaucracies rather than the
interests of American workers.
The legislation I propose draws from bipartisan recommendations,
including recommendations from the President's own bipartisan jobs
council.
The legislation I propose accommodates fully paid-for infrastructure
projects to be undertaken to help build roads, bridges, and a host of
other projects without imposing permanent, job-killing, higher taxes
during a national unemployment emergency.
I urge all of my colleagues in the Senate to support this
legislation. This idea of an infrastructure bank appears to me to be
just a future example of what Fannie and Freddie were all about. I
think we can do this without having an infrastructure bank, we can do
it better, and we can do it pushing a lot of the President's ideas
forward, a lot of the World Economic Forum's ideas, and a lot of ideas
that both sides of the aisle have to conclude are important for
overcoming this regulatory mess that is making it almost impossible to
create jobs and almost impossible to get legislation through this body.
Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Utah is
recognized.
Mr. HATCH. 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. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time be
divided equally and not charged to one side or the other.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. HATCH. I note the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown of Ohio). The senior Senator from
New Hampshire.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor this morning to
speak to the legislation that is pending before us, S. 1769, the
Rebuild America Jobs Act. This legislation, in fact, would put
literally millions of Americans back to work rebuilding our Nation's
roads, our bridges, our airports, and our railways.
The bill that is before us has two components. The first is a direct
$50 billion Federal investment in our infrastructure, and it would be
split between roads, rail, transit, and airport projects. More than
half of that would go to our well-established, formula-driven highway
and transit programs, and that would include about $132 million for New
Hampshire.
The second piece of this proposal would create an infrastructure
bank. That is legislation I cosponsored, and it has had bipartisan
cosponsorship in the Senate. The bank, as it is structured, would be
able to leverage public dollars to attract private capital, and that
would, if it is successful, lead to hundreds of billions of dollars in
infrastructure over the next 10 years. It is a bipartisan idea, as I
said, and it has attracted support from both the AFL-CIO and the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce. Clearly, it is a good idea if it has both of those
organizations onboard. Together, this legislation that is pending
before us would mean immediate jobs for our construction industry. It
has been one of the hardest hit by this recession.
In New Hampshire the number of people working in the construction
industry in 2010 was the lowest it had been in a decade. It was 25
percent lower than it was just in 2006, according to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics.
Christian Zimmerman, who is the head of one of our biggest
contractors in New Hampshire, Pike Industries in Belmont, told me he
has had to lay off 150 workers in the last couple of years as Federal
funding to build New Hampshire's roads has run out.
The Federal Highway Administration estimates that every $1 billion in
highway spending supports more than 27,000 jobs. Economists at Moody's
estimate that for every dollar we spend on infrastructure, our gross
domestic product goes up by $1.59. That is because of the ripple effect
this spending has in economic activity. There are a number of good
reasons to support the legislation that is before us.
In the short term, this proposal would help put those who are
unemployed in the construction industry back to work. That is something
that would be critical as we are thinking about how to help the
millions in this country who are unemployed and who have been
unemployed, many of them for more than a year.
In the long term, the benefits of this investment in our
infrastructure are equally important. A quality infrastructure is
critical to our businesses. It is critical to our future economic
growth, and it is critical to our future competitiveness in the world.
[[Page S7098]]
According to numerous studies, deteriorating infrastructure costs
businesses more than $100 billion a year in lost productivity. There is
very good evidence to show that our lack of investment in recent years
is making itself felt in the condition of our roads and our bridges.
This past June, the New Hampshire Society of Civil Engineers issued a
report card on the condition of our State's roads and bridges, our
dams, our wastewater facilities, our airports, and our waterways, those
major projects we all consider part of our infrastructure. Sadly, the
engineers' report card gave New Hampshire's infrastructure a grade of
C. That is better than the grade the national organization has given
the United States as a whole; that was a D. It is not as good as we
want it to be, and it is not as good as we need for New Hampshire or
this country if we are going to continue to be competitive.
Mr. President, 15 percent of New Hampshire's bridges are rated
structurally deficient by the Federal Highway Administration, and 148
of them are red-listed. When I was first elected to the State senate,
we had a controversy in New Hampshire because we had a highway
commissioner who said because of the number of red-listed bridges, when
we all drove around New Hampshire and went over a bridge we should
drive fast and not look back.
Well, fortunately, we are not in that position right now, but we have
a lot of bridges that need investment, and this bill before us would
provide New Hampshire with additional Federal highway funding that
would help us address these bridges that are red-listed and address our
other transportation needs.
The most important project that should be addressed by this
legislation in New Hampshire is a project that has been under way for
years in the southern part of our State that has been threatened by the
uncertainty surrounding Federal funding. It is the widening of
Interstate 93 between southern New Hampshire and Massachusetts. This
project is long overdue. It is badly needed by commuters and businesses
in the area. The I-93 project was budgeted and planned based on the
idea that the Federal Government would provide a consistent level of
funding, but, unfortunately, the Republican budget the House has called
for would produce a 35-percent cut in our highway program.
Unfortunately, Congress has not yet been able to reach an agreement on
a long-term reauthorization of our highway program. The uncertainty
around this and the prospect of such a drastic cut has made this
project, I-93, very difficult to finance.
Right now New Hampshire transportation officials have $115 million
worth of bonding authority for this project that is just sitting on the
sidelines because the Federal Government has not made good on its
funding commitments. The bill before us would help complete this
critical project for New Hampshire and so many others like it across
the country.
If we want to see the benefits that investment and infrastructure can
provide in New Hampshire, we only need to look at the new airport
access road that goes to our largest airport and our largest city of
Manchester. It is going to open to traffic a full 2 years ahead of
schedule. The project was accelerated because of the funding it
received from the Recovery Act.
I remember the winter after we passed the Recovery Act and looking at
the bridge that was being constructed and talking about how we were
going to be able to speed up this project because of those Recovery Act
dollars. In fact, it has happened. It is going to open 2 years early.
Local planning boards along the Manchester Airport access road are
already seeing increased interest from commercial developers for the
land that is along that road, that has been opened because of this new
highway. Of course, Manchester's airport is also going to benefit from
the investment in our airport access road.
Another piece that is in this legislation that is critical to our
infrastructure investment in New Hampshire and across the country is
the funding for a next-generation system of air traffic control which
would transfer our system from a ground-based radar system to a GPS-
based system--something most of us have in our cars these days. That
would allow the entire airline industry to plan more efficient, point-
to-point routes, and it would allow everybody to save on fuel costs.
I had the opportunity to meet with Southwest Airlines a couple weeks
ago. It is the largest air carrier at the Manchester Airport. They
talked to me about the challenges they are facing and the entire
airline industry is facing because we haven't invested in this next
generation system of air traffic control. They said it will save us
money because it will be more economical in terms of fuel usage because
they can go point to point, and it will save time because we can
provide for more efficient routes.
This is a no-brainer. Right now, our system of air traffic control is
behind even the country of Mongolia. It is time for us to make this
investment, to make it easier for airlines to fly into a small hub
airport such as Manchester. It would save us all money. It would be
safer. It is an investment that is long overdue.
A couple weeks ago, I also had a chance to speak at an infrastructure
summit that the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce supports for the
Greater Manchester region. There was a whole day of talking about why
investment in our infrastructure is important, because without reliable
power, without reliable bridges and public transportation and roads,
businesses can't thrive. The Manchester Chamber believes investment in
infrastructure is critical to growing our economy and creating jobs,
and I share that belief. It is a belief that I came to as a State
senator way back over 20 years ago, when I served in the New Hampshire
State Senate. It is something I continued to support as Governor. In
those days, we worked together on a bipartisan basis because we all
understood, Republicans and Democrats, investing in infrastructure
produces returns.
New Hampshire and the rest of our country need this investment that
this legislation pending before us would provide. Our unemployed need
the work. Our businesses need to know we are going to make these
investments so they can depend on this certainty for their long-term
growth and competitiveness.
So I hope, as we come to this vote today on the motion to proceed to
this legislation, my colleagues, particularly those across the aisle,
will give up their opposition to this legislation. I know they know how
critical it is to invest in our infrastructure. So this is something we
all ought to come together around. Just because this is a proposal that
has been put forward by the President is not a reason not to support
it.
I urge all my colleagues to support the passage of this legislation.
Let's make these investments. Let's put people back to work. Let's make
sure we are going to be competitive in the future. Thank you very much.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, we know that investment in our
infrastructure means jobs and economic development now and in the
future. We know as a country that in the fifties, sixties, seventies,
and eighties we built infrastructure--highways, bridges, water, sewer,
community colleges, medical research, modernizing high schools--all the
things we did in the postwar years for five decades, in the forties
through the eighties. The world had never seen this before.
We know that American prosperity--the postwar prosperity--in large
part was based on the foundation we had set in infrastructure--again,
the physical infrastructure of bridges across the Ohio River joining
the Presiding Officer's State and mine in Huntington, Ironton,
Parkersburg, Marietta, and Wheeling, and across to Belmont County in
Ohio. We know that the infrastructure of building community colleges
such as Jeff Tech and building branch campuses at OU, and now building
broadband, but then funding medical care--those things created the
long-time prosperity of our country.
[[Page S7099]]
These are forward-thinking investments with payoffs that last for
decades and benefit our Nation, our small businesses, and our workers
for generations.
History tells us that our Nation's infrastructure has been critical
to our Nation's economic, competitive, and industrial strength. Let's
look back a bit. Abraham Lincoln created the transcontinental railroad.
Thousands of jobs were created, and the development of the American
West was possible. President Roosevelt modernized our Nation's electric
grid during the New Deal. More than just electricity came to the
Tennessee Valley in rural America. Americans were put to work setting
the poles, stringing wire, building the hydroelectric dams that
improved the quality of life, and attracting countless businesses to
the region. So the infrastructure was built, creating jobs. But even
more so, the foundation was set where many more jobs were created.
President Eisenhower and the Congress established our interstate
transportation system. A generation of workers carved out highways and
roadways, allowing commerce and people to travel from coast to coast.
Our Nation used its postwar infrastructure boom to become the
economic superpower that we are today. Public work investments not only
create good-paying, middle-class construction jobs, they spur economic
development projects in small towns and rural communities and urban
areas. We know what happens when a highway comes into a community, what
it does to spawn other kinds of work. It serves as a multiplier effect
and attracts businesses and workers and foreign companies to build in
America, and benefits from that clear competitive advantage. That is
why we led the world for five decades.
It is clear that when companies decide where to locate or expand or
invest, that infrastructure, broadband, energy, transportation, all are
critical factors in the decision. Businesses rely on solid
infrastructure.
Companies such as Ohio's Proctor & Gamble in Cincinnati recognize
that our infrastructure provides a competitive advantage, enabling them
to ship their products anywhere in the world. Ohio manufacturers, such
as General Motors and Honda and Smuckers, rely upon our infrastructure
as they operate with just-in-time manufacturing.
Yet we are falling behind in maintaining the very infrastructure that
made us a superpower. Unsafe bridges have cost lives. Clogged roads and
congested air space cost billions of dollars in lost trade and
productivity. Some people tell us they spend more time commuting than
they are at home with their families.
We are seeing 19th century water and sewer systems failing our 21st
century cities. Meanwhile, more and more people depend on these
services, while cities and States can't meet demand--where States face
budget and revenue shortfalls that make these investments difficult, if
not impossible.
And there is China--which is fast becoming one of our chief economic
competitors--building more roads, better airports, and faster rail
systems than we are. Why do we let that happen? No one in this
Congress--nobody--and in State legislatures, as Senator Shaheen said
earlier--should be proud of the condition of our roads. No one in this
Congress should be proud of the fact the newest airports and train
stations are being built somewhere far from our shores. Yet there
remains an unwillingness here--and I am still incredulous about this--
to make the sort of investments necessary to improve our Nation's
infrastructure.
I guess we have to cut taxes more for rich people instead of asking
them to pay a little more to put that money into infrastructure.
Historically, infrastructure has been bipartisan. I have heard some of
my colleagues saying there is no such thing as a Democratic or
Republican bridge. But it seems there is now because we see time and
time again some of my conservative colleagues saying: No, we are not
going to spend money on infrastructure. We are not going to do that.
Let me show a picture of a bridge I have been across many times. I
have seen it from Cincinnati many times. This is a view from the
Kentucky side. This is called the Brent Spence Bridge. The President
was there not too long ago. I was not with him that day, but I have
been on this bridge many times. It was named after a Congressman from
Kentucky who served from 1931 to 1963. The bridge was inaugurated by
President Johnson. So the bridge construction began and came later.
This is I-75 through Cincinnati, going from Kentucky to Cincinnati
into Dayton, if you can follow it all the way north, and then into
Toledo and ultimately into Detroit. This bridge carries millions of
dollars' worth of freight and millions of drivers across the bridge.
Someone said this bridge accounts, perhaps, for as much as 4 percent of
our gross domestic product going either north or south across this
bridge.
Today, the Brent Spence Bridge is 1 of 15 the U.S. Department of
Transportation has deemed functionally obsolete. But the Brent Spence
bridge is not alone. We can see there is no real space if a car breaks
down. There is not much of a lane to get over if someone has a heart
attack while driving or all the problems one can imagine having while
on the bridge. This is major, major bridge across one of the most
important rivers in this country--the Ohio River.
A recent study of our Nation's infrastructure found there are more--
get this--more structurally deficient bridges in the United States than
there are McDonald's restaurants. Think about that: There are 14,000
McDonald's restaurants. But according to Transportation for America,
there are 18,000 deficient bridges and 70,000 structurally deficient
bridges.
From a public safety and commerce perspective, fixing a bridge is a
necessity. The largest hurdle remains financing. Under the President's
proposal we will vote on this afternoon, more than $60 billion,
completely paid for, would go toward road and bridge construction,
fixing our airports and transit systems. It would make our roads and
skies safer for transportation.
The bill includes a national infrastructure bank that would fund
infrastructure projects of regional or national significance, such as
this almost 50-year-old bridge. Increasing private sector
infrastructure lending, a national infrastructure bank could couple
Federal loans with private equity, ensuring a private-public
partnership that meets local needs.
For the Brent Spence Bridge, it would mean Ohio and Kentucky could
obtain the necessary funding to complete the project ahead of schedule,
create jobs, and protect the public safety.
We have to do this. We have to renovate and update our
infrastructure. Why wait? Interest rates are as low as they have almost
ever been. Construction costs--because there is so much competition
among construction companies to get work now--are as low in historical
times as perhaps they have ever been, and we need this work now because
of the job employment situation. So we will benefit from replacing and
fixing this bridge for years into the future.
For freight rail investments in Columbus, it would mean reducing the
bottlenecks that prevent goods from moving across the country. For
airports, it means reducing congestion and improving runways; on our
rivers, such as the Ohio River, it means fixing locks that slow barge
traffic.
Lake Erie, at the other end of my State, has made such a difference
in the settlement of Buffalo--although there is also Lake Ontario
there--Cleveland, Ashtabula, and Toledo. We know what these Great Lakes
have done for the economic development of our country. It means fixing
these ports. For all our States, it means jobs and economic
development.
This is about a construction manufacturer in Peoria selling equipment
to contractors working at the Port of Toledo. It is about dock workers
loading American-made steel and Ohio-grown soybeans for export to
markets around the world. That is what this bill is about.
This bill is about jobs now. It is about setting the table for jobs
in the future. We know that. Republicans and Democrats alike know that.
Yet Republicans, I guess, just want to see Barack Obama fail. That is
what the Republican leader has said repeatedly, though I don't
understand that. But that is what he says.
[[Page S7100]]
This bill is fully paid for. The bill before the Senate is funded by
a very small tax on people making over $1 million a year. If someone is
making $1 million a year, their taxes will not go up, but they will pay
a little bit of money on the second million they make. So this isn't in
any way going after small business, it is just saying the people who
have done well have to pay a little more money. It is common sense and
it is the American way.
We are asking those who have benefited the most--many on Wall Street,
many of them on Main Street--people who have done very well to make
this investment. We know it is infrastructure that has helped people
make lots of money in this country. Without infrastructure, many of
these companies never would have been successful.
World-class infrastructure is how we move goods across the country
and export around the world--on our trucks, on our rails, on our
barges, and on our airplanes. It is how we get to work and school, it
is how we attract businesses, and it is how we protect the public
health, through clean water and sewer systems.
This will create jobs immediately--good-paying, middle-class jobs.
These jobs provide workers with health care and retirement. These are
exactly the kind of jobs the Presiding Officer welcomes in Wheeling and
Charleston and Beckley and I welcome in Portsmouth and Cleveland and
Akron. These jobs enable people to buy a home, to save for their
children's education, and to plan for their future. These jobs not only
create the construction jobs we need, putting money in people's pockets
they will spend in the community, but they also create manufacturing
jobs in steel and cement and all kinds of materials. They also create
long-term jobs as companies grow because they have better
infrastructure.
This is about rebuilding our infrastructure. It is about rebuilding
our middle class. I ask my colleagues to support this legislation later
today when we vote on it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I would like to speak about an issue that
I and most Americans, I believe, find extremely troubling and one I
have been seeking to have properly addressed for many years now;
namely, the outright corruption and blatant abuse of the American
taxpayer that has been taking place at the hands of Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac for decades.
Since they were placed in conservatorship in 2008, the two
government-sponsored enterprises--GSEs; i.e., supported by the
taxpayers--have soaked the American taxpayer for nearly $170 billion in
bailouts. Just this morning, the Associated Press reported that Freddie
Mac has now requested an additional $6 billion to continue their, so
far in my view, failed efforts. I quote from the Associated Press:
Government-controlled mortgage giant Freddie Mac has
requested $6 billion in additional aid after posting a wider
loss in the third quarter. Freddie Mac said Thursday that it
lost $6 billion, or $1.86 share, in the July-September
quarter. That compares with a loss of $4.1 billion, or $1.25
a share, in the same quarter of 2010. The government rescued
McLean, Virginia-based Freddie Mac and sibling company Fannie
Mae in September 2008 after massive losses on risky mortgages
threatened to topple them. Since then, a Federal regulator
has controlled their financial decisions. Taxpayers have
spent about $169 billion to rescue Fannie and Freddie, the
most expensive bailout of the 2008 financial crisis. The
government estimates it will cost at least $51 billion more
to support the companies through 2014, and as much as $142
billion in the most extreme case.
Freddie and Washington-based Fannie own or guarantee about
half of all U.S. mortgages, or nearly 31 million home loans
worth more than $5 trillion. Along with other federal
agencies, they backed nearly 90 percent of new mortgages over
the past year. The two mortgage giants buy home loans from
banks and other lenders, package them into bonds--
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So here we are. We have spent $169
billion and now they are asking for $6 billion more. What do we find
out? Fannie and Freddie now will dole out big bonuses. I am not making
this up.
Quoting now from a Politico article:
The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the government
regulator for Fannie and Freddie, approved $12.79 million in
bonus pay after 10 executives from the two government-
sponsored corporations last year met modest performance
targets tied to modifying mortgages in jeopardy of
foreclosure. The executives got the bonuses about two years
after the federally backed mortgage giants received nearly
$170 billion in taxpayer bailouts--and despite pledges by
FHFA, the office tasked with keeping them solvent, that it
would adjust the level of CEO-level pay after critics slammed
huge compensation packages paid out to former Fannie Mae CEO
Franklin Raines and others.
I might add, these huge bonuses and packages that were given to Mr.
Johnson, Mr. Raines, and many others--and there is clear evidence of
this--was done by cooking the books. Yet not a one of them has been
held accountable in any way, shape or form.
Continuing to quote from the article:
Securities and Exchange Commission documents show that Ed
Haldeman, who announced last week that he is stepping down as
Freddie Mac's CEO, received a base salary of $900,000 last
year yet took home an additional $2.3 million in bonus pay.
Records show other Fannie and Freddie executives got similar
Wall Street-style compensation packages; Fannie Mae's CEO
Michael Williams, for example, got $2.37 million in
performance bonuses.
That was after the taxpayers paid $160 billion. That is why they are
on the hook for another $6 billion and God knows how much more. So we
are giving these individuals $900,000 a year in salary, millions of
dollars in bonus pay, and who in the world is the Federal Housing
Finance Agency to award these bonuses?
FHFA's Acting Director Edward DeMarco--and I must admit to my
colleagues I had not heard of Mr. DeMarco--told Congress last year that
the managers who were at the helms of the mortgage companies during the
market collapse were dismissed but also argued that generous pay helps
lure ``experienced, qualified'' executives able to manage upward of $5
trillion in mortgage holdings.
Whatever happened to asking patriotic Americans to come and serve and
help homeowners out of this crisis? Whatever happened to patriotic
Americans who would serve and help the nearly half of all homeowners in
my State of Arizona whose mortgages are underwater?
DeMarco told lawmakers he is concerned that suggestions to apply a
Federal pay system to non-Federal employees could put the companies in
jeopardy of mismanagement--could put the companies in jeopardy of
mismanagement--and result in another taxpayer bailout. They just asked
for $6 billion more. He said the compensation packages at Fannie and
Freddie are part of the plan to return them to solvency while reducing
costs to the taxpayers.
A March report by FHFA's inspector general--obviously ignored by Mr.
DeMarco--said the agency ``lacks key controls necessary to monitor''
executive compensation, nor has it developed written procedures for
evaluating those packages. In other words, the beat goes on. Business
as usual, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It is unconscionable. It has been proven time and time again that
Fannie and Freddie Mac are synonymous with mismanagement, waste,
outright corruption, and fraud. And their Federal regulator has the
audacity to approve $12.8 million in executive bonuses to people who
make $900,000 per year. This body should be ashamed if we let this
happen, especially in these economic times. Every day more and more
Americans are losing their jobs and their homes, and we are allowing
these people to take home annual salaries of $900,000 and bonuses of
millions of dollars, all while they ask the taxpayers for $6 million
more today.
It has come to my attention that some of my colleagues are writing
letters, calling for committee hearings on this issue. Letters are
fine, hearings are fine, hearings are great. They are not the answer.
The answer is for us to stop it from happening, and we can do that with
an amendment on the pending appropriations bill. I will be offering an
amendment, and I hope all of my colleagues would join in.
Let me just bring the attention of my colleagues to a book called
``Reckless Endangerment,'' written by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua
Rosner. The title of it is ``How Outside Ambition, Greed and Corruption
Led to Economic Armageddon.'' So we are talking about pay and bonuses,
and I read from the book:
Because bonuses at Fannie Mae were largely based on per-
share earnings growth, it was
[[Page S7101]]
paramount to keep profits escalating to guarantee bonus
payouts. And in 1998, top Fannie officials had begun
manipulating the company's results by dipping into various
profit cookie jars to produce the level of income necessary
to generate bonus payouts to top management.
Federal investigators later found that you could predict
what Fannie's earnings-per-share would be at year-end, almost
to the penny, if you knew the maximum earnings-per-share
bonus payout target set by management at the beginning of
each year. Between 1998 and 2002, actual earnings and the
bonus payout target differed only by a fraction of a cent,
the investigators found.
Investigators uncovered documents from 1998 detailing the
tactics used by Leeane Spencer, a finance official at Fannie,
to make the company's $2.48 per-share bonus target. That
year, Fannie Mae earned $2.4764 per share.
In a mid-November memo to her superiors, Spencer forecast
that the company was on track to earn $2.4744 per share, just
shy of what was needed to generate maximum bonus payments to
executives.
Look, this story goes on in this book. It goes on and on how the
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives intentionally ripped off the
American people, describing profits in a way that was totally false,
getting tens of millions in bonuses. This is a government-sponsored
enterprise. Mr. Johnson, bailed out with $100 million or so of
taxpayers' bonuses:
In 1999, Johnson joined Goldman's board, stepping into a
highly lucrative position that offered rich investment
opportunities overseen by the firm and opened doors for
Johnson around the world. In 2000, the Goldman board position
paid Johnson $50,000, not counting stock awards.
With brokerage firms such as Goldman Sachs, which flourished from the
fees by underwriting securities issued by Fannie and Freddie, with fees
totalling $100 million a year, guess who came on Fannie's board. Mr.
Johnson.
Johnson was still on the board in 2010, when the Securities
and Exchange Commission sued the investment bank for
securities fraud related to its sale of a dubious mortgage
security. By that time, Johnson was earning almost $500,000
for his work on the Goldman board.
The accounting fraud at Fannie went undiscovered until 2005
when an investigation by OFHEO unearthed it. In a voluminous,
intensely detailed 2006 report, OFHEO noted that if Fannie
Mae had used appropriate accounting methods in 1998, the
company's performance would have generated no executive
bonuses at all.
A lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission
in 2006 said the company's 1998 results were ``intentionally
manipulated to trigger management bonuses.''
Although a highly kept secret at the time, Johnson's--
This is Mr. James Johnson--
Johnson's bonus for 1998 was $1.9 million, investigators
determined. It later emerged that the company had made
inaccurate disclosures when it said Johnson earned a total of
almost $7 million in 1998. In actuality, his total
compensation that year was like $21 million, OFHEO said,
referring to an internal Fannie Mae analysis it had turned
up.
So one of the great scams in American history is going on, and the
people responsible for it have never been held responsible. They have
never been held responsible. I refer my colleagues, take a look at this
book, and I recommend taking blood pressure medicine before you read
it.
Now, here we are, business as usual in Washington. The approval
rating of Congress is now down to 9 percent. As I have said
continuously, we are down to paid staffers and blood relatives.
Why aren't they happy with us? Why haven't we solved the housing
crisis in America? Why is it that half the homes in Arizona are still
underwater, worth less than their mortgages, while the financial
institutions on Wall Street are doing just fine, with record profits,
and Fannie and Freddie continue to act as if they did nothing wrong?
And to add insult to injury, after a third quarter loss of $6 billion,
they are going to get millions of dollars in bonuses.
I may be a bit of an idealist, but I will bet you there are some
patriotic, talented Americans who would be willing to serve on Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac without being paid $900,000 a year and millions of
dollars in bonuses. I really believe that. I really believe that. Yes,
people are sitting in around the country; and, yes, I don't agree with
a lot of their agenda. But when they read of things like this, their
anger is justified. Already, $170 billion in bailouts. This morning, an
additional $6 billion. Yet the American taxpayer is told they are
making progress? And who has been held responsible at these
organizations, at these government-sponsored enterprises that were
responsible? To my knowledge, no one.
So it seems to me the least we can do is cancel these bonuses, make
sure it doesn't happen, and maybe ask for some qualified, experienced,
talented Americans to come in and take over this agency. And the first
guy I think ought to go is the guy who approved these payouts, Mr.
Edward J. DeMarco.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I couldn't agree more with the Senator who
just spoke that we are in a situation where the all-time approval
rating of this body seems to have reached an all-time low. There are
justified reasons for the frustration and for the anger of a very broad
run of our constituents, of the folks who hired us to come here from
our States of West Virginia and Delaware, from Arizona, and others to
try to fix the problems confronting this country. And much of the mess,
many of the things that got us into this problem have not been solved.
I rise today to speak about one way forward out of it. I think one of
the reasons there is so much frustration with Congress and the general
public is there is broad support for some simple solutions to get
Americans back to work, to revive and strengthen our economy, and we
just seem incapable of reaching across this partisan divide and moving
forward. One of those is an infrastructure bank.
I rise today to follow up on a speech I gave yesterday about why
investing in American infrastructure means investing in America's
future. Infrastructure--building roads and bridges, highways and sewer
systems, modernizing America's backbone--enjoys very broad support from
all across the United States, from all different sectors, because
Americans understand it will put folks back to work in the building
trades industries that have taken the hardest hit in this recession and
in a way that will lay the groundwork for our long-term future
competitiveness.
This is smart spending. This is investing in the best tradition of
Federal, State, local, and private partnerships to make America more
competitive for the future.
I want to talk about one element of the bill which I hope we will
move to later today, the American Infrastructure Financing Authority,
or known more colloquially as the National Infrastructure Reinvestment
Bank.
If this idea sounds familiar, it is because it has already been
introduced. It is a bipartisan bill, the BUILD Act, championed by
Senator Kerry and Senator Hutchison, of which I am a cosponsor, and one
that provides a creative financing vehicle for building infrastructure
going forward.
Before becoming a Senator in the election just 1 year ago yesterday,
I served for 6 years as the county executive of Delaware's largest
county, and one of the services our county was responsible for was
running a county-wide sewer system. We had 1,800 miles of sanitary
sewer, and it was a constant challenge to maintain. That is a lot of
pipe, a lot of pump stations, and a lot of sewage backing up in
people's homes in the middle of the night, which led to a lot of
aggravated calls from constituents.
It was an aging system like so much of America's infrastructure, one
in which we had underinvested for too long. From personal experience, I
can tell you that the lack of infrastructure, of adequate sewer
capacity was a major to barrier to future growth. So, too, across
States and counties and cities all over this country. Where the roads
and rail, the ports, and the sewer systems aren't up to current global
standards, we can't expect to grow to meet our global competitors.
When we talk about capital infrastructure improvements at the local
level in the government I used to be with, it wasn't some wish list.
This wasn't some future technology. This wasn't some risky investment.
It was triage. It was critically needed investment in pipes in the
ground that would protect our water, strengthen our community, and grow
our economy.
As a nation, the American Society of Civil Engineers has told us we
need $2.2 trillion over just the next 5 years in infrastructure
investments to keep America moving forward. We are talking about fixing
unsafe bridges, dealing with clogged highways, and rebuilding
[[Page S7102]]
airports so they can handle larger modern aircraft safely. That is an
enormous scope, $2.2 trillion over just the next 5 years. We are
already asking so much of the supercommittee in terms of finding
dramatic savings and reductions in Federal spending. Where will this
level of investment come from to put America back to work?
So, in my view, we have to get creative. We have to leverage. We have
to bring in more resources than are currently on the field, and
especially now, especially in this country I think we have to be smart
about how we spend our funds.
The Rebuild America Jobs Act, to which I hope we will be moving later
this afternoon, would put $50 billion directly into infrastructure, put
$10 billion as a downpayment into making possible this new
infrastructure bank, seed money that makes possible loans and loan
guarantees--not grants--for a wide range of infrastructure projects,
including energy, water, and critically needed transportation.
Remember, we need more than $400 billion a year in investment right now
just to keep up. But we all know the constrained budgets of our
counties, State, and local governments can't get the financing they
need. This infrastructure bank would provide the leverage, a vehicle to
finance desperately needed projects.
Just a few things about it. It would be for big projects, projects
that cost more than $25 million in rural communities, $100 million in
the rest of the country. It would only be allowed to finance up to 50
percent of a project to avoid crowding out private capital and to make
sure that private capital has skin in the game so it is a viable
project. It is my expectation, in fact, that the infrastructure bank
would finance a much smaller piece of most projects, just enough to
bring private investment to the table. It would be government-owned but
independently operated, have its own bipartisan board of directors, and
function much like the successful Ex-Im.
An infrastructure bank passed by the Senate this week could provide
up to $160 billion in direct financial assistance over its first 10
years to infrastructure for transportation. That would be paired with
private investment that could double, triple, or even quadruple,
increasing the full impact of this bank.
I said yesterday that infrastructure is a smart investment for our
country and that a national infrastructure bank as a part of that
strategy would provide a vehicle for the private sector to get in on
this investment as well and to help us accelerate our move toward the
future. This is smart policy.
It is a funny thing about infrastructure, how we inevitably take it
for granted. Whether you are running a State highway system or a county
sewer system, you never know how much people miss it until it isn't
working the way they expect.
Unfortunately, in cities, counties, and States across our country
today, companies and communities are discovering that our aged
infrastructure is imposing costs on us we cannot bear. The American
Society of Civil Engineers, which I have referred to before, recently
released a study saying that our Nation's deteriorating surface
transportation infrastructure alone could result in the loss of nearly
1 million jobs and will suppress our GDP growth by nearly $1 billion
between now and 2020. That is an enormous loss of future economic
activity.
We cannot put this off any further. As a country, we cannot keep
swerving to avoid these potholes on the path to prosperity. Eventually
we are going to hit them, and eventually they will continue to be a
drag on our Nation. The Rebuild America Jobs Act would fill these
potholes, would patch these pipes, would lay the new runways to allow
America's economy to take off.
This Rebuild America Jobs Act, which would rebuild 150,000 miles of
roadway, maintain 4,000 miles of train track, upgrade 150 miles of
airport runways, restore critical drinking water and wastewater
systems, is nothing short of the smart investment we need to be
competitive for the future. It would put people back to work, it would
steer us on the right road to sustained recovery, and it would fix the
problems that lie right in our path as we try to do our jobs for the
folks who hired us to come here and help them get back to work.
We need to act today. It is my hope that my colleagues will join us
this afternoon in voting for the motion to proceed to the Rebuild
America Jobs Act, a critical piece of which is this smart
infrastructure bank.
The Nomination of Richard Andrews
Mr. President, I move now briefly to support the nomination of
Richard Andrews, who has been nominated to be U.S. district court judge
for the District of Delaware. Rich Andrews is an exceptional lawyer, a
dedicated public servant, and a good man. When the Senate confirms his
nomination, hopefully later today, Rich will become the fourth active
judge serving in the District of Delaware. This will mark the very
first time in 5 years that this very busy court will operate without a
vacancy. For a small district such as Delaware, albeit one with such a
specialized and complex caseload, even a single vacancy places a
significant burden on the court.
Mr. Andrews' nomination has been pending 177 days, and while I am
grateful for the consent agreement that I hope will allow his
nomination to be considered today, I remain concerned that such a
noncontroversial and qualified nominee as Rich could take nearly half a
year to reach floor consideration. The judicial vacancy rate hovers
near 10 percent, we have 31 judicial emergencies, and it is my hope
that this body will continue to move expeditiously to fill vacancies
throughout the country.
As a member of the Judiciary Committee, I had a chance to chair the
nominations hearing for Rich and to take part in the committee's
consideration of his nomination. I have reviewed his record, listened
to his testimony, met with him personally, conferred with my senior
Senator, Mr. Carper, and as a result of all this, I assure my
colleagues I have every confidence that Rich is a qualified judge and
will serve Delaware and this Nation brilliantly.
During his 30 years of service for Delaware so far, he has
established himself as a talented, dedicated, and humble public servant
who possesses the strongest work ethic and the highest integrity and
intellect.
He began his service to our State when, after graduating from
Berkeley Law School, he came to Delaware as a law clerk for Chief Judge
Collin Seitz of the Third Circuit. Luckily for us, he never left.
After completing his clerkship, he joined the U.S. Attorney's Office
for the District of Delaware, where he spent the next 24 years, much of
it serving as the first assistant U.S. attorney and chief of the
Criminal Division. During this time, he has tried, in that role, more
than 50 felony jury cases and argued 17 cases before the Third Circuit
Court of Appeals.
Since leaving the U.S. Attorney's Office in 2007, he has served as
State prosecutor for the Delaware Department of Justice and leads more
than 70 deputy attorneys general in the Criminal Division and has
overseen tens of thousands of prosecutions each year. I am confident
that his experiences as a prosecutor have given him the knowledge,
skills, and temperament to join and serve ably on the District of
Delaware Federal bench.
When I chaired his nomination hearing, I was impressed by his
professionalism, intelligence, and demeanor. Rich enjoys broad
bipartisan support, having been reported unanimously by the Senate
Judiciary Committee.
I urge all my colleagues to join Senator Carper and me in supporting
Mr. Andrews so he will have the opportunity to continue his selfless
service to the people of our State and our Nation.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
recognized to speak as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. RUBIO. I also ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Rhode
Island be recognized immediately after me.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Human Trafficking and Slavery
Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today for a moment to
introduce an issue I have become interested in in the last few months,
one that, quite frankly, I didn't know a lot about--the issue of human
trafficking and slavery.
[[Page S7103]]
For many Americans, for many of us in the 21st century, we think of
slavery as a concept of the 18th and 19th centuries, something that
happened in other places a long time ago, when, in fact, it exists
today around the world. The issue is actually pretty startling. The
State Department estimates that there are between 700,000 and 800,000
people in the world each year who are trafficked. The number of people
trafficked in the United States is about 16,000 to 17,000. That is a
lot of people in the 21st century who are being trafficked and are held
in bondage. I saw a special on a cable network recently that outlined
this issue. I then started researching it. I was shocked to learn that
my home State of Florida is particularly affected by this issue.
Recently, I had the honor and the privilege of being appointed to the
Helsinki Commission, the group here in the Senate that works, along
with the House of Representatives, as Commissioners on that Commission.
We held a hearing yesterday on the issue of human trafficking, and it
is an issue I am going to be increasingly speaking about over the next
few weeks because I truly believe it is one of the great humanitarian
causes of this new century. It begins with awareness, with a clear
understanding of what is happening around the world with regard to this
issue, the fact that there are these people. As we speak, as I
stand here today, perhaps within walking distance of this very building
there are people held against their will in servitude.
The one that gets all the publicity--and rightfully so because it is
so painful and outrageous--is sex trafficking, children and young girls
and young women brought into this country and held against their will
as sex slaves. It happens all over the world. It is sad to learn there
are governments around the world that cooperate with this and tolerate
it and are corrupted by it. That gets a lot of publicity and attention,
and we are going to be paying a lot of attention to that.
We heard stories of diplomats who work in this city, diplomats from
other nations who come here and bring domestic workers with them to
their homes and hold them here against their will and take their entire
paycheck. We are going to be denouncing some of these people on the
floor by name in the weeks and months to come.
The other thing that is shocking--although I said the sex trafficking
gets a lot of attention--is the forced-labor aspect of it. People are
recruited in other countries, brought here, and they are told: We are
going to bring you to the United States, and you are going to come
here, you will make a living, make some money, and you can send some
back home. When they get here, they are held against their will, and
they are not paid. In fact, sometimes they owe traffickers money, and
they are held in squalid conditions. That is happening here in this
country underneath our very noses, not to mention the egregious cases
around the world, and we are going to focus on those cases around the
world as well.
The State Department, by the way, ranks every country on the basis of
how much they cooperate, on the progress they are making in prosecuting
and investigating these issues. Those are available. A report came out
recently. It identified the countries that are doing well, the
countries that are trying to do well, and the countries that, frankly,
couldn't care less and actually do not mind this stuff going on in
their jurisdiction. They deserve to be condemned not just on this floor
but in the international community, and we will talk about that as well
in the weeks to come.
I do not think we can point the finger at anyone unless we look at
ourselves as a nation and society and call attention to this issue. So,
as I begin to introduce this issue and my involvement in it, there are
a couple of things I would like to point out from yesterday's hearing.
The first is that this is largely occurring as a result of criminal
enterprises. The same people who traffic drugs and are involved in all
kinds of organized crime are also involved in human trafficking. We see
that increasingly in major areas, and we have seen prosecutions, but we
have also learned that increasingly what we are finding are small-scale
operations, sometimes families.
We heard the case of a mother and her two sons who were involved in a
human trafficking ring. It is very profitable, very lucrative. It costs
about $10,000 to bring a young woman into this country, and they can
make that money back in the sex trade within a few days, and after that
it is all profit. It is outrageous and has opened the door to small-
scale operations that are doing this.
What are the impediments to dealing with this? There are a few, and
it will take a long time to work on.
The first, unfortunately, is lack of recognition. I think that at the
local level and even at the Federal level, our law enforcement officers
and personnel who want to do the right thing probably need more
information about identifying these cases, seeing the markers of human
trafficking, identifying cases that clearly reek of human trafficking,
and identifying those and treating them for what they are.
The second thing we need is better protections for these victims. You
know you are not going to be able to prosecute people and put them in
jail unless the victims are willing to testify, and victims are not
going to testify if they don't feel secure. If they believe you are
going to deport them or put them in immigration jails or, worse, if
they think these organized crime rings are going to harm their families
overseas, it is going to be very hard to get victims to cooperate.
Last but not least--and I know this is a complicated issue--our
immigration system is contributing to this. We have a very complicated
immigration system, and it is an expensive one, a burdensome one. What
it is creating is the need for middlemen, and, guess what, more often
than not, unfortunately, nowadays the middlemen, these foreign labor
agencies--too many of them--are, in fact, human traffickers who are
utilizing this system, the legal immigration system, to bring people
into this country and, once they are here, to hold them against their
will. We have to focus on that because ultimately that has to be
solved. Our legal immigration system has to be modernized. If it is
not, one of the problems we will continue to face is this issue of
human trafficking.
The good news is that here in Congress there is a bill--
reauthorization of the TVPRA. It passed out of the Senate Judiciary
Committee in October of this year by a 12-to-6 vote. It does a few
things.
It promotes increased cooperation among Federal agencies, between the
United States and other countries.
It supports and enhances the victim-centered approach, which
basically says we are going to approach this from the viewpoint of the
victim and create protections and security for the victims so they can
cooperate and help us prosecute these people.
The bill focuses on cutting off human trafficking at its roots by
supporting international efforts to focus on this issue. There are a
lot of countries out there that want to do the right thing; they either
do not have the resources or knowledge base to do it. There are some
countries out there that do not mind this. In fact, they cooperate with
this stuff. They like that it is going on in their countries. They are
on the take, so to speak. They need to be called out for what they are
doing as well.
Finally, it promotes accountability. It ensures that the Federal
funds are being used for their intended purposes, and it reduces the
authorization levels to address fiscal concerns but focuses on the
programs that have been most effective.
My hope is that bill, which is a bipartisan bill, will come to this
floor soon and that we will have an opportunity to make it better, to
get it passed, and to work with our colleagues in the House to send a
very clear message that this is a priority, that this is something we
should all agree on and work on together. It is a great cause to be
involved in. It is one of the great humanitarian, human rights causes
of the 21st century, and I think how we deal with it or fail to deal
with it will say a lot about us as a people and as a nation. I hope I
can encourage as many of my colleagues as possible to take up this
cause as their own. I look forward, in the weeks to come, to coming to
the floor and talking more about it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
[[Page S7104]]
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Rebuild America
Jobs Act because it responds to two critical needs: the jobs crisis we
face throughout this country and the need to improve our national
infrastructure, which is obvious to everyone, in every part of this
country.
Over the 4 years of this economic crisis, the unemployment rate in
Rhode Island has been one of the highest in the Nation. It now stands
at 10.5 percent. For many families, it has been a stressful and
demoralizing time. Very few have avoided the impacts of this economic
crisis in their own lives or in the life of someone close to them.
It has been particularly devastating for those involved in
construction, a sector where more than 2 million Americans, including
7,000 Rhode Islanders, have lost their jobs since 2007. It is
frustrating for these workers because all around them they can see the
need to maintain and improve our infrastructure, which, by the way, is
essential to the free-flow of commerce and the economic prosperity of
the country going forward. Indeed, all of us, regardless of our
economic status, benefit from a sound transportation system.
A few weeks ago, Senator Whitehouse and I joined Rhode Island
transportation officials at the Providence Viaduct. This is a 1,300-
foot stretch of Interstate 95 that runs directly through the heart of
Providence, RI, our capital city. It connects New York and Boston and
the whole north-south highway system on the east coast. It is one of
155 bridges in our State alone that have been found to be structurally
deficient. It must be replaced within the next few years. It no longer
can be repaired time and time again; it has to be replaced. If it is
not replaced, then traffic will have to be rerouted, which will have a
major impact on our economy and the regional economy. Route 95 is the
highway link between New York City and Boston. If suddenly you put up a
roadblock in that highway link and restrict traffic to one lane, you
are going to see economic activity throughout the Northeast affected.
Already, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation has installed
wooden planks beneath the viaduct to catch any concrete or debris
before it falls on cars and pedestrians below. That is an example of
the first signs of the increasing decay. This is the kind of
commonsense project this jobs bill addresses, but it is not the only
one.
Indeed, 21 percent of Rhode Island's bridges are listed as
structurally deficient, while nearly 30 percent are functionally
obsolete. There is a huge amount of work that we can do to improve
existing conditions that make us more productive going forward. For
Rhode Islanders, passing this jobs bill would translate into
approximately $141 million of highway funding to help us respond to
these obvious needs. Moreover, it would provide approximately $21
million in transit funding, which would provide a real shot in the arm
to help maintain an efficient public transportation system. We take
pride in that. We have a statewide transportation system. It is
oriented around our bus system. It travels the length and breadth of
the State. It is very efficient, but it needs support, and this bill
would help provide that support.
The bill would also provide funding for airport improvements, which
could help Rhode Island's major airport, T.F. Green Airport, with a
major runway safety and expansion project. This project would make air
travel not only safer, but it would make our airport more capable of
intercontinental and international service. Right now we don't have
that effective option. If we did, that would be a huge multiplier for
our economy, and it is based on sound infrastructure improvement.
These are not new, novel techniques or new, advanced technologies.
This is old-fashioned extending a runway, fixing a bridge, getting the
economy moving again. Everyone understands that. Everyone on Main
Street and East Street and South Street and West Street in every corner
of this country understands that, and we have always done it, and this
bill will help us do it.
Finally, the bill establishes a national infrastructure bank, which I
believe can play a critical role in financing these projects going
forward. These projects would include clean water projects, energy
projects, as well as transportation projects. There is absolutely no
doubt that these investments in infrastructure will benefit our
economy.
According to economist Mark Zandi, every dollar invested in these
types of projects will generate approximately $1.59 in economic
activity, so there is a significant multiplier effect. Importantly, it
is part of getting us moving again and building up a self-sustaining
momentum. Again, these projects will employ private companies that will
hire individuals in all of our home States to begin the work that must
be done to improve our infrastructure, to provide the kind of vital
transportation links that are critical to any economy. It is also very
important to know that this proposal is fully paid for, and you have
both business and labor supporting the investments in the bill.
I would hope we could all join together in a sign of not just common
unity but common sense and adopt this provision. Build infrastructure.
It is paid for, and it puts people to work. That is what the American
public is asking us to do and we should do it.
I want to comment briefly on the Republican alternative proposal. It
fails to provide the investment to deal with the infrastructure and the
job crisis we face today. In fact, it does the opposite. It effectively
cuts $40 billion in discretionary funding without addressing the needs
of our highway trust fund and other infrastructure improvement
vehicles.
More importantly, it scales back important public health protections
under the EPA. The Republican package includes the so-called EPA
Regulatory Relief Act, the REINS Act, and the Regulatory Time-Out Act.
Together these provisions not only threaten our economic progress but
also our public health, and they would nullify the EPA boiler rule.
This rule has been calculated to produce $10 to $24 in health benefits
for every dollar spent, at least a 10-to-1 ratio of health benefits
versus dollar spent, preventing approximately 6,600 premature deaths
and about 40,000 asthma attacks each year.
This translates, again, into another major crisis we face, and that
is an affordable health care system. One way to make the health care
system affordable is to prevent premature deaths, asthma attacks, and a
host of other things, and that is not incidental to what environmental
protection does. That is at the heart of environmental protection.
Finally, it would place a moratorium on most regulations, including
financial regulations. We have seen, sadly to our chagrin, the effect
of lax regulation in 2008 when our financial markets were on the verge
of collapse. Unless we have effective regulation, unless we can
effectively deploy the new tool provided under the Dodd-Frank act,
unless we can resource regulators to keep a watchful eye on the
marketplace, frankly, we are going to once again relive those very dark
and daunting days of 2008 when we saw markets on the verge of collapse.
And we do so, frankly, in a global economic environment where there are
pressures coming from Europe and pressures coming from around the
globe, economic pressures. If our markets are not strong and well
regulated, can they withstand the backwash from a crisis in Greece, a
crisis in Italy, a crisis across the globe?
I do believe the legislation that has been proposed by Leader Reid--
proposed essentially by the President--makes sense, and I hope we can
unite in common purpose to do what is common sense and invest in
bridges and roads in America, fully paid for, and avoid the diversion
of this alternate proposal that would essentially impair our health,
the public health of America, and not advance our financial stability
as a nation.
I yield the floor and I note the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. ENZI. 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. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to make some brief
remarks about a judge who is coming up for a vote, and I ask that both
myself and the other Senator from Wyoming be allowed to speak
consecutively.
[[Page S7105]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Nomination of Scott Skavdahl
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I wish to thank Senator Leahy and Senator
Grassley and their staffs for moving this nomination. Because of their
efforts, I have this opportunity to express my support for Judge Scott
Skavdahl's nomination to serve on the bench of the U.S. District Court
for the District of Wyoming.
Although Scott grew up in Harrison, NE, it wasn't long before he made
his way to my home State and enrolled at the University of Wyoming. The
university must have felt like a whole new world to him because he had
just graduated from a high school that had less than 50 students.
Still, while others might have been intimidated, Scott saw it as
another of life's challenges to be faced and overcome, so he worked
hard to complete the requirements for his undergraduate degree. In
between his classes, Scott managed to find the time to pursue another
interest of his, as he joined and played on the university's football
team for 4 years.
After graduation, Scott made a decision that was to start him on a
path that would set the tone and the direction of his life when he
applied to and was accepted by the University of Wyoming Law School.
His classes were difficult and demanding, but Scott knew what he wanted
to do with his life, and, as was true for him in so many things, he
just wouldn't quit until he had accomplished what he set out to do.
That attitude of confidence and commitment to setting goals and
achieving them is one of the reasons Scott has been able to establish a
reputation for himself throughout his career as a serious and
thoughtful litigator and as a judge. Whenever someone speaks of him,
they always seem to use the same words to describe him. They say he is
incredibly smart, a hard-working attorney, and a highly competent and
capable judge. They also say: Although he wasn't born in Wyoming, we
are very glad to have him.
Looking back over each step along the way that led him to this
nomination, it is clear that Scott has used his time and his talents
wisely and well. Because of his background and his experience on a
daily basis, Scott has come to know in detail the issues that face the
people of Wyoming and how the people feel about him. That is why it was
no surprise that I have heard nothing but good things about Scott, his
approach to the law, and his demeanor as a judge. Simply put, Scott
knows all about the administrative ins and outs of the District of
Wyoming, and he has used his courtroom as a classroom to help us all be
informed and aware of the issues that come before him and the reasons
for his decisions on all of them.
At times such as these, it is always interesting to take a moment to
look back at someone's life and connect the dots that brought him or
her to this important moment in time. For Scott, a childhood in
Nebraska led him to Wyoming, where he obtained the knowledge and skills
he needed to pursue a career in something that really interested him--
the law. He then used those credentials he earned in the classroom and
his life to move step by step through our legal and judicial system.
His talents and abilities soon caught the attention of former Wyoming
Governor Dave Freudenthal and President Obama. The President has now
nominated him to serve in this very important post, and he has been
unanimously voted out of committee. In and of itself, that recognition
is a powerful endorsement of Scott's background, his ability to
interpret and apply the law, and his experience both in the courtroom
and in his community. It also expresses our confidence that Scott will
continue to serve as an integral part of the court system of Wyoming,
the West, and our Nation for many years to come.
I urge my colleagues to support this nomination, and I look forward
to the Senate's approval of the nomination of Judge Scott Skavdahl.
I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor for my fellow Senator.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, in the 19 years since his graduation
from the University of Wyoming School of Law, Judge Skavdahl has
distinguished himself both as an attorney and as a trial judge.
After working in the private sector and clerking for U.S. district
judge William Downes, Judge Skavdahl was appointed by former Governor
Dave Freudenthal to serve as a district judge for Wyoming's Seventh
Judicial District.
During his time on the State bench, Judge Skavdahl earned the respect
of the attorneys and the parties appearing in his court. He earned that
respect for his integrity and his ethics to carry out his duties. He
earned that respect for his reasoned decisions. He earned that respect
for the manner in which he conducts himself in the courtroom and for
being prepared and for his knowledge of the law. There is no doubt in
my mind that Judge Skavdahl will bring those same skills and that
respect for the law that he exhibited in the Seventh Judicial District
to the Federal bench. Wyoming's Federal judges have a long tradition of
being widely regarded by their peers and respected by the people who
appear in their courts. Judge Scott Skavdahl will continue that
tradition for many years to come.
I know Judge Skavdahl. I know his family. He is a judge I respect and
admire from a family I respect and admire. I strongly encourage all of
the Members of the Senate to join with Senator Enzi and join with me in
supporting Judge Skavdahl's nomination.
Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SESSIONS. 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. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I see the Senator from West Virginia in
the Chamber. Is he prepared to speak? I do not want to take advantage
of the Senator from West Virginia. I was going to speak for about 5
minutes, if I could.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the plan that has been introduced to the
Senate today is an affront to common sense, the plan presented by
Senator Reid. It is an affront to the financial condition this country
is in. I am working and hope to be able to support a highway bill that
will have a modest increase in highway spending that is paid for that
does not increase the debt. We can do that. It is not that hard.
Apparently, it is hard because nobody wants to make any tough
choices. They do not want to set priorities. So then it becomes very
hard. We just want to keep everything going at the same rate. But we do
need to invest some money in our infrastructure to maintain it, our
highways, bridges, roads, and expand certain highways that need to be
fixed. I think we should do that.
Senator Reid comes in with a tax increase plan, a big spending plan,
totaling, I think, $60 billion. We are supposed to pass this, and we
have not yet found the money to pay for the fundamental highway bill
this Congress is supposed to be working on. I believe it is wrong. I do
not believe it can be justified by any stretch of the imagination.
They say: Don't worry. We are raising taxes to fund this new
transportation infrastructure program. Only a small portion of it is
the infrastructure bank. This country is spending enough. We are
wasting enough money now. It would be a mistake for the American people
to allow Congress to extract more money from them to spend today on
even a new program while we are doing nothing about the surging debt
that is running on in our country, while we are doing nothing about the
Solyndra-type loan programs that are wasting money in huge amounts.
That loan failure alone amounts to as much money as Alabama gets from
the general fund, the highway bill, and infrastructure bill, period--
one loan. So we need to get our act together, and I do not believe it
is legitimate.
I am the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee. I am looking at
these numbers, and I am astounded. So we raise taxes. One time they
said we have to raise taxes to reduce our debt. Now we raise taxes to
increase spending on a new program, and we still do
[[Page S7106]]
not have the basic $12 billion that is being looked at to be found to
fund the basic highway bill.
I am flabbergasted. I do not believe it is right. I think it is some
sort of clever gimmick that political thinkers got together and
conjured up, that they could imagine: This will be a fun thing. We will
bring it up on the floor. It has no chance of passage. We will bring it
up on the floor. Republicans will oppose it, and we will accuse them of
being against highways. We will accuse them of giving tax breaks to
millionaires. That is what we will do. That will be clever. That will
be fun.
Sometimes we have to get serious about this debt. For the third year
in a row--we have just completed the fiscal year on September 30--we
have had over $1 trillion in debt. Forty percent of the money we are
spending is borrowed. If we ever have to raise taxes--and that would be
the last thing--it ought to be done only after we have squeezed every
wasteful dime out of spending in this country before we go back and ask
the American people to give more money to a Congress that plays games
with their money, that has allowed the deficits to be maintained at a
rate beyond anything this Nation has ever seen before and are projected
to continue indefinitely under plans that are out there from the budget
the President submitted to us, which, fortunately, is not going to be
accepted.
We have a real problem. I wish to be on record as saying I do not
believe this is a responsible way for us to proceed. I know there are a
lot of politics around here. But we are at a point where we need to be
thinking about a responsible way to find the funding to maintain a good
highway program, and that is not going to be easy. To have this bill
thrown in here that is going to be dead as a doornail is not a good
approach to it. We need to be worrying about that problem rather than a
huge new spending program, allowing a bunch of bureaucrats to pick and
choose where they want to send the money. That is the way the
progressives like to do it: We give them money and let these smart
people decide where to pass it around. They probably will not give any
to West Virginia and Alabama. They have bigger projects in their minds
than that.
I wanted to share those thoughts, and I thank the Presiding Officer.
I hope my colleagues will oppose the Reid idea that will be coming up
later today.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, we have had a lot of conversation today.
We all agree we need infrastructure. On both sides of the aisle we have
had a good conversation. I have said before, a road is not a Democratic
or Republican road, a bridge is not a Democratic or Republican bridge,
nor is a water line or a sewer line. So I rise to address the competing
proposals to build infrastructure in this country and to start getting
America back to work.
Earlier this week, I attended a ribbon-cutting at the Bluestone Dam
in beautiful Hinton, WV. When they started work on that dam, I was the
Governor of our great State of West Virginia. I was sitting in my
office and said to the Corps colonel: Explain to me what the problem
could be.
He said: Maybe the bedrock, and there might be some possibilities
with unusual flooding where we could lose that dam, breach that dam.
I asked: What does that mean?
He said: Think of it this way, Governor. We are sitting in your
office in the capitol, in Charleston, WV. We would be underwater right
now.
So it brought it to reality for me, the extent of the water we are
dealing with and the billions and billions of dollars in downstream
costs that would be incurred. So we decided we had to fix that. With
the help of our Federal Government, we started working on that way back
in 2002, and we are going into our third phase of that project.
Roads and bridges are in terrible condition all over the country and
in every part of everybody's State. Every Member of the House and every
Member of the Senate has a road or a bridge--all 535 of us--Republicans
and Democrats alike have a road or a bridge or a water line or a sewer
line in our area that needs repair. As the Presiding Officer from
Delaware had noted with the work he did for all the good people of
Delaware, there was still an awful lot of repair that was needed.
I believe in infrastructure. In West Virginia, we say: Our economy
can't grow if people can't go. With that, you have to be able to be
mobile. We also say in West Virginia: You have to drive to survive
because we are one of the most rural States in the Nation. Our people
drive as far, if not farther, than people in most other States do for
their jobs.
With that, we have to make sure they have the ability to get to those
good jobs and be able to provide for their family.
I have said before--and it has been heard on the floor over the last
few hours--that infrastructure is not a Democratic idea or a Republican
idea. It is a commonsense idea.
In 2007, we Governors at that time met in Philadelphia. Knowing the
economy was slowing down, we asked: What can we do? We looked back in
history and saw President Roosevelt, in the 1930s, basically invested
in infrastructure. We had the WPA projects which we see today. A lot of
us have used the projects and still are. Tremendous value was returned
to this country and the infrastructure of this country through those
hard-working people at that time who just needed a helping hand.
President Eisenhower, in the 1950s--after the Korean war, the economy
needed a jump-start, and we saw the Interstate Highway System being
built for a very mobile society coming off the wars. We are still using
that same infrastructure that was put in place then.
This issue is bipartisan because building infrastructure is
bipartisan. It solves two problems. It fixes our crumbling roads and
bridges, and it creates much needed American jobs. Of all the people in
my State applying for unemployment--and it might be true in most every
State--construction workers are the biggest group of unemployed people
today, with the most skill sets in America. Almost 20 percent of the
unemployment is in the construction trades. That is unacceptable in
this great country when we have repairs being needed everywhere.
We are going to vote on two proposals today. I know one was just put
on quick order, and there is another one we are going to be voting on.
One is a Democratic measure, which is our Rebuild America Jobs Act, and
the other one is a Republican measure that funds transportation, and it
reins in the EPA, for which I have been trying to make sure there is a
commonsense approach to how we balance the economy and the environment.
In West Virginia, I think we can do it as well if not better than most
because we are dealing with those types of challenges.
I believe both these bills will help kick-start the economy and
create American jobs--I do--and we all know we need that. I will vote
for both of them. One is a Democratic proposal and one is a Republican
proposal. But I do believe I was sent here as a West Virginian to help
my State.
It is not because they are bad ideas or wrong ideas that they are
probably going to fail. They both have good merits to them. But as our
good friend from Alabama just said, it is politics of the order. That
is what we are dealing with, and we will find reasons, probably, why we
can't give our support.
On our jobs bill, there is $60 billion--$50 billion, which I think
the Presiding Officer spoke so eloquently on earlier, and $10 billion
for an infrastructure bank. I know what an infrastructure bank does in
my State. In my State, we have $2 billion of need. We have a $300
million resolving account. It is the same as what we are talking about
here. It has helped us tremendously. But everybody comes to the table.
We are able to bridge some financing and put projects together that we
never could have done, and it is tremendously needed.
With that being said, it probably will not pass because our dear
friends on the other side of the aisle, our Republican colleagues, and
our friends over in the Republican Party, are going to say: It has a
seven-tenths-of-1-percent tax on incomes over $1 million--seven-tenths
of 1 percent.
I can vote for that. I support that. But I also recognize that is a
problem for them. So in recognizing that, I am
[[Page S7107]]
willing to reach out and look for other ways to pay for this. I think
that is the spirit we should be working in. Are there offsets or
credits? I think 73 of us have voted in a bipartisan fashion for an
ethanol credit. Isn't that something we could work on? How about the
money we are spending in Afghanistan and Iraq and rebuilding those
nations' infrastructures? I have said this before: If you help us build
a new bridge in West Virginia, we will not blow it up. If you help us
build a new school, I guarantee we will not burn it down. We are so
proud to say the good people all over this country have helped us in
West Virginia, and we like to help other people in other States. We
will work together. That is what we should be doing, rebuilding
America.
That is what I have asked of everyone: Come together. Let's make sure
the infrastructure need we have all over our great country is the first
and foremost thing we are working on together because we do agree, as
Democrats and Republicans and as Americans, we need it. That is
something I think we can come together on.
Let me turn now to the Republican bill, which a few hours ago I was
notified will be coming up. This bill is not perfect either. A 2-year
extension of transportation spending does not give States the certainty
they need. We have usually had a 6-year authorization. I know when I
was Governor of West Virginia we did 6 years. We did our 6-year
planning of our roads in our State based on the Federal bill, the
authorization of the Federal highway bill. With only 2 years, it is
hard to get any project completed. Sometimes it is even hard to get it
on the drawing board.
That being said, I am a strong supporter of reining in the EPA, which
this bill does. I believe we have to set our transportation priorities.
Unfortunately, Washington and all of us here seem to have become so
dysfunctional that politics--whether it is the party politics or the
personal politics--is put before the good of the country. This has to
stop.
I heard one of our good Senators from Arizona this morning saying we
are down to a 9-percent approval rating. If it was not for our staff
and our family, we don't know if we would be within the margin of
error. With that being said, we have to come together. We have had
disagreements throughout the history of this great country, and we have
come together many times on very difficult issues.
This is one I think will challenge all of us to come together as
Americans. The people of West Virginia did not send me to Washington to
play the blame game. I have said many times, I have never fixed a
problem by blaming somebody else for it. I fixed a problem by
identifying that we had a problem and then trying to bring all sides
together to fix it. That is what we need more of in Washington. I do
not think any of us were sent to blame each other. I think we were sent
to work together.
Again, I am going to urge all my colleagues and friends on both sides
of the aisle to focus on the next generation. We see them every week we
come here, our young pages. They are our next generation. We need to be
making votes for them, not our next election, which will be in 2012.
That election is going to come and go. But if we do not give them the
opportunity to have the building tools they need to build a foundation
that they can be the greatest next generation this country has ever
seen, then I do not know what we are going to say for the future of
this country.
I, for one, am not going to vote along those lines, to where it is
going to be based on what is good for me, based on what is good for the
party I belong to but strictly based on what is good for America and
this next generation.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. JOHANNS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for
about 12 minutes as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The remarks of Mr. Johanns pertaining to the introduction of S. 1805
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills
and Joint Resolutions.'')
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I listened with interest to the Senator's
explanation of the cross-air rule. I would just say he is off the mark,
because if you produce deadly pollution in your State--deadly--you have
an obligation to clean it up before it goes into another State.
It is like taking your garbage and dumping it in your neighbor's
front lawn. We don't do that in America. So we are going to have a
robust debate next week on the cross-State air rule.
I hope people keep in mind that we are talking about deadly pollution
produced in one State and moving over to a series of other States which
have no defense. So anyone who wants to come and claim that is the
right thing to do morally--just walk away from that rule--I think they
are going to have a hard time explaining it back home. I would not dump
garbage on the front lawn of my neighbor's house. I think that patina
is the best explanation of what this is about. More on that later.
Today we are going to be facing a very interesting choice. As we
know, President Obama has put together a major jobs package, and he
pays for it by going to the millionaires and saying that once they make
$1 million, after that we think they could pay a little bit more to
help us get out of this recession. My Republican friends voted that
down. They were appalled we would even suggest there would be even a
few dollars of increased taxes on people who make over $1 million. They
would rather not do any job creation and protect the people who earn
over $1 million.
(Mr. MANCHIN assumed the Chair.)
Mrs. BOXER. We have a very stark choice today. We have a small
version of the jobs bill--this one focuses on infrastructure, mostly
transportation investments--paid for by a seven-tenths-of-1-percent tax
on people who earn over $1 million, and it would not go into effect on
any of those funds until they pass the million. So it would be taxed
seven-tenths of 1 percent on income over $1 million.
I make that point because it is not going to hurt anybody. A person
making $1.5 million would pay an additional $3,000. This is not
anything that will hurt the millionaires and billionaires. It is going
to make this country stronger. It is going to grow this economy.
Here is what we have: We have a Democratic jobs bill. It is $60
billion--$50 billion for roads and bridges and $10 billion for an
infrastructure bank.
To put that into the context of why this is such a good bill and why
it would create 650,000 jobs, let me tell you what it is doing in
essence. It is taking an extra year of transportation funding--we spend
about $50 billion a year, approximately, through the highway trust
fund--and it would inject essentially another year of spending over the
next 12 months, creating well over 650,000 new jobs.
The Republican alternative actually loses jobs. They say they will
continue the highway trust fund for 2 years. So they are just
continuing what we are already doing. That is great. But then they cut
the equivalent amount from police, fire, food inspection, and the FBI,
and it will result in a loss of many jobs--200,000 jobs. So we have one
bill, the Democratic bill, that creates a minimum of 650,000 jobs, and
we have the Republican bill that cuts 200,000 jobs.
What are they thinking, Mr. President? What are they thinking? This
is not the time to cut 200,000 jobs. Then they end health care reform
which we all know, while not perfect, is going to help reduce our
deficit. What they have done is continue the highway spending at
current levels--it doesn't add one job--and then they cut all those
other jobs to pay for it--200,000 jobs--and then they repeal health
care reform, which will add to the deficit.
They cannot stand the thought of a millionaire paying a little bit
more to help us at this time even though everybody knows we are at a
point in time where the gap between the wealthiest and the middle class
has never been bigger. Four hundred families earn more than 50 percent
of all the rest of us; 400 families earn more than 50 percent of all
the rest of us. It is unbelievable.
My State has many wealthy people in it, many poor people in it, and
has a good middle class. But it is getting tougher to be part of that
middle class.
[[Page S7108]]
The middle class is hit hard with health costs, with college costs that
keep going up, and with gas prices going up. They are hit hard with
mortgages they can't refinance because their mortgage is now higher
than their home is worth. So we have to act on these issues. We have
the ability to do it.
If we just read the Preamble of our Constitution, it tells us what we
are supposed to do: work for a more perfect union, establish justice,
domestic tranquility, and promote the general welfare. We have to do
these things today because we are losing the middle class.
This bill before us, the Democratic jobs bill, is an excellent place
to start this very day by infusing $60 billion into spending that will
go mostly to private sector contractors, people who build roads and
bridges. Do you know that 70,000 bridges in America are deficient?
My colleague, Senator Inhofe, and I are working closely on a highway
bill. We are going to have one soon. He tells the story of a woman
walking in Oklahoma. She is simply taking a walk, and the bridge starts
to fall apart; it falls down and traps her and kills her. He said she
was a young mother. This is America in the 21st century. That is not
acceptable. We can't have a country like ours neglect its
infrastructure. It is wrong.
But our Republican friends will not work with us because they don't
want to ask people earning over $1 million to pay just a little bit
more. For example, if someone makes $1.1 million, they will have to pay
$700 more in their taxes. That is it. But they don't even want to go
there. What they want to do is say: Oh, yes, we will just renew the
highway bill, but we will slash across the board everything but
defense. That is how we are going to pay for their jobs bill, which
actually will lose hundreds of thousands of jobs. It is unbelievable to
me.
I don't think this is the time to say we will turn our backs on jobs.
As a matter of fact, in order to extend the highway trust fund we are
going to fire cops, firefighters, food safety inspectors, FBI agents,
and Border Patrol agents. That is their alternative. So don't vote for
it unless you think it is the time to put all those people out of work.
What Republicans also do in this so-called jobs bill--which is a no
jobs bill; it is a jobs loss bill--is they decide they want to block
implementation of very important health and safety rules. I want to go
through what those rules are. We are going to talk about the Clean Air
Act right now.
The Republicans are repealing two rules that deal with clean air.
Here is the thing. It is going to make people sicker. It is going to
mean lots of jobs in clean tech. It is the last thing the country
needs. It flies in the face of the views of the people. Let's talk
about one of the rules they want to cut back: industrial boilers and
incinerators.
This bill, called a jobs bill, would halt an EPA rule issued in
February 2011 to reduce toxic air pollution. What do I mean? Toxic
means it is toxic to our health; it will hurt us. People will die from
toxic air pollution. People do die from toxic air pollution. The toxins
the boilers and incinerators rule would reduce include mercury, lead,
and other hazardous air pollution released by boilers and incinerators.
They can write it the way they want it, but here is what happens when
we go back to those days when we allowed these toxins to be emitted. We
saw developmental disabilities in our children. We saw more cases of
cancer, more cases of heart disease, aggravated asthma, and premature
death.
These are not just words. Congress commissioned a study, and we now
know exactly what we are doing, how many lives it saves, and how many
visits to the hospital it saves. Let me remind my friends who think
that it is good for the economy to have toxic air pollution, if we
cannot breathe we cannot work. If someone has to rush to the hospital
or their child is rushed there because of an asthma attack, they lose a
day's work. If a pregnant woman now has a problem with the child, and
the child is disabled or has problems mentally from too much mercury,
this is a tragedy.
Some people say: Oh, the EPA is regulating too much and it costs too
much. Let me tell you the price of the Republican agenda: sick people,
loss of jobs in the clean tech industry, lost days of work, loss of
kids' schooldays.
I urge my colleagues in the Senate, when they have their next meeting
with a large group of people--whether it is 100 or 50 or just a
couple--ask them how many of them have asthma. Ask them how many know
someone close to them with asthma. I guarantee the hands of one-third
to one-half of those in the room will go up. That doesn't just happen--
asthma--because a person just woke up on the wrong side of the bed. It
happens because of the air they are breathing. It is toxic.
But in the Republicans' so-called jobs bill--which I already told you
loses jobs--they not only do that, but to add insult to injury they
repeal all of these rules.
Let me put it into context for you, since I have now spoken
emotionally about what it does to people when they breathe in toxins.
Let me cite the numbers.
Congress demanded a study. We said, give us the numbers, and so a
study was done. We believe the protections from this industrial boiler
rule will annually prevent up to 6,500 premature deaths, 4,000 heart
attacks, 4,300 hospital emergency room visits, 310,000 days when people
miss work or school, and 41,000 cases of aggravated asthma. The
benefits from these safeguards are expected to be $54 billion annually
by 2014. That is the rule my Republican colleagues want us to set
aside.
If you went to your constituents and said to them: You know, we have
a rule here that says industry is going to have to use the best
available technology and clean up their pollution, and here is what it
is going to do--it is going to prevent 6,500 premature deaths, 4,000
heart attacks, 4,300 hospital visits, 310,000 days when people miss
school or work, and 41,000 cases of aggravated asthma, and it is going
to deliver $54 billion a year in health benefits--I think your
constituents would say, go for it, Senator; that makes sense.
Let me talk about a poll that just came out that reflects how people
feel about this. Listen to this. We have our Republican friends
offering what they call a jobs bill, which I have proven contains job
cuts because they simply continue the highway trust fund. They do not
add anything new, but they cut a couple hundred thousand jobs to pay
for it. That is their so-called jobs bill.
They then want to repeal two rules that fall under the Clean Air Act,
and I just talked about the boiler rule. But let me tell you what the
people think, since we are supposed to represent the people.
There was a bipartisan poll done in October, a few days ago,
reflecting 88 percent of Democrats, 85 percent of Independents, and 58
percent of Republicans opposed Congress stopping the EPA from enacting
new limits on air pollution from electric powerplants.
Who is speaking for the people? We need to vote down the Republican
alternative because 88 percent of Democrats want us to, 85 percent of
Independents want us to, and 58 percent of Republicans want us to. They
do not want Congress stepping in.
On Tuesday, Senator Paul is going to have a motion to repeal the
cross-state air pollution rule, which is a rule that says to the States
if they are creating toxic air pollution and it is flowing to another
State, it has to be cleaned up. Now, 67 percent of voters support the
cross-state air pollution rule and 77 percent of voters support the
mercury air toxics rule. So 65 percent of voters surveyed are confident
the health and environmental benefits of air pollution standards
outweigh the costs, and 75 percent of voters believe a compelling
reason to implement these air rules is the boost to local economies and
thousands of new jobs that are created from investments in new
technologies.
If we are representing the people of these great United States, we
better listen to what they are saying in a bipartisan way. They are
telling us to leave the EPA alone. When people come to this floor and
demonize the EPA, they are going against the beliefs of the American
people.
There are some incredible quotes I want to read, because, to me, it
is amazing what is happening around here. When I get to the place here
I want, I am going to cite some quotes from unlikely sources.
Mr. President, how many minutes remains on our side?
[[Page S7109]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 14 minutes 10 seconds.
Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Chair.
Here is a quote from General Motors:
General Motors company recognizes the benefit of the
country continuing the historic national program to address
fuel economy and greenhouse gases that the EPA began.
That is signed by the chairman and CEO of General Motors.
Here is a quote from a letter from a whole group of electricity-
producing companies: PG&E, Calpine Corp., NextEra Energy, Inc., Public
Service Enterprise Group, National Grid USA, Exelon Corp.,
Constellation Energy, and Austin Energy. This is a quote from their
letter to the Wall Street Journal:
Our companies' experience complying with air quality
regulations demonstrates regulations can yield important
economic benefits, including job creation, while maintaining
reliability.
Kind of amazing, isn't it? And there is Gerald Ford, the Republican
President who signed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974--also under
attack, by the way--who said:
Nothing is more essential to the life of every single
American than clean air, pure food, and safe drinking water.
Yet if you look at the Republican plan, they roll back clean air
regulations and they roll back food safety. Even after we had people
die from contaminated cantaloupe, my friends on the other side think
now is the time to cut back on food safety inspection. Give me a break.
Who are we here representing?
This is why people across the country are upset. They see things such
as this and they say, is this Alice in Wonderland?
Listen to what Christine Todd Whitman and William Ruckelshaus wrote--
two Republicans who were former EPA Administrators under Republican
Presidents. They said:
It is easy to forget how far we have come in the past 40
years. We should take heart from all this progress and not,
as some in Congress have suggested, seek to tear down the
agency that the President and Congress created to protect
America's health and environment.
They wrote that letter in March of this year. They understand. This
isn't a partisan issue. Republicans breathe the same air that Democrats
and Independents breathe. That is why it is so frustrating to see, in a
so-called jobs bill from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle,
an actual loss of jobs and loss of clean air regulations and loss of
food safety inspectors.
I have to say I find myself quoting Richard Nixon more and more these
days. He signed the Clean Air Act. Listen to what he said at a State of
the Union speech. He said:
Clean air, clean water, open spaces--these should once
again be the birthright of every American.
I have cited these quotes from Republican Presidents and former
Administrators of the EPA under Republican Presidents, so I am stunned
at this so-called jobs bill. I have talked about the industrial boiler
rule, but they also roll back the cement manufacturing facilities rule
that would indefinitely delay standards to address smog and toxic soot
pollution from over 150 cement kilns nationwide. These facilities
contain hazardous air pollutants, including mercury, arsenic, lead, and
other heavy metals.
Remember the movie ``Arsenic and Old Lace''? Arsenic kills you. Too
much of it does that. Come on. We need to clean up the air, and we need
to be sure we do it in a reasonable way. I am on that side--the side of
doing it in a reasonable way. And no one could be more reasonable than
Lisa Jackson. I tell you, the woman has the patience of a saint. She is
not going to go out and hit people over the head with this. She is
going to phase in these regulations, and she is going to listen
carefully. And you have to listen. Mercury, arsenic, lead, and other
heavy metals are the third largest mercury source in the country. These
relate to cement manufacturing facilities.
Let me tell you what these pollutants do. They cause cancer and they
harm the reproductive system and the developmental system. Pregnant
women and children are at risk. We hear a lot of talk about life--when
does life begin? That is up to each individual and their God to decide
that. But one thing I hope we can agree on is that a pregnant woman
shouldn't be subjected to too much mercury or too much arsenic in the
air.
We have a rule here, a reduction of mercury and toxic soot emissions.
We know that rule will prevent 2,500 premature deaths, 1,500 heart
attacks, more than 1,700 emergency room and hospital visits, that it
will prevent 17,000 cases of aggravated asthma attacks, 130,000 days of
lost work, and it will provide up to $18 billion of benefits annually
by 2013, which is a benefits-to-cost ratio of 19 to 1. Yet my friends
on the other side think it is a terrible idea and want to indefinitely
delay it.
Let me tell you something. If we had that kind of attitude in
Congress years before, we wouldn't have a Clean Air Act. I can tell you
what happened in Los Angeles. We used to have about 160 days in Los
Angeles where people could not go out. They were warned to stay
indoors. As a result of the Clean Air Act, we have had none of those
days--none--in Los Angeles in 2010.
So why on Earth does anyone want to delay these rules? If you want to
sit with Lisa Jackson and sit with me, as the chairman of the
Environment and Public Works Committee, and sit with others and see if
there is a way we can do this in a fair manner, of course. But the
public wants us to act, and the action they want us to take is to
support the EPA, not to put our noses in there and stop them from doing
what the Clean Air Act requires them to do.
Poll after poll shows that voters are on the side of clean air. They
are on the side of protecting the public health. They are not on the
side of polluters. So I wish to say, we know two things today: People
want jobs, and they also want their health protected. We also know that
when you protect the people's health, what happens is a huge economic
boost is given to the clean tech sector, and that boost has resulted in
many jobs. As many as 1.7 million jobs are created because of these
clean air rules and clean water rules.
The whole world wants these technologies. I had the amazing
experience of visiting China, and I didn't see the Sun--I didn't see
the Sun--for the 7 days or so I was there. The air is filthy, and
people complain about it. One day we had the hint of sun--the hint of
sun--breaking through the pollution, and the people there said, what a
beautiful day. You must have brought the good weather. I said, you know
what, come to California, I will show you a blue sky.
We cannot go backward. We need to move this country forward.
If the arc of history bends toward justice, it also bends toward
health, public health, making sure our people get that health care,
that they don't have those public health enemies out there--the soot,
the arsenic, the lead, the mercury--and, yes, jobs. We have seen our
GDP explode since we passed the Clean Air Act, and we grew more than
any other industrialized nation while we had these laws in place, for
two reasons. One, these laws create clean tech jobs. Two, if we can't
breathe, we can't work. When we have a healthy society, we are far more
productive.
So we have the Democratic alternative that will create over 600,000
jobs in transportation. It doesn't go into these extraneous issues such
as the air pollution laws, and it is paid for by seven-tenths of 1
percent of income over $1 million.
Then we have the Republican alternative that just continues our
transportation at the same levels and pays for it by cutting 200,000
jobs--police, fire, and the rest, FBI agents, food safety inspectors,
Border Patrol agents. Just what we don't need. That is what they do.
Plus, just for good measure, they repeal basically two Clean Air Act
rules that I talked about from boilers and cement plants.
Folks, if ever there was a difference between the parties in
evidence, this is it. If one person comes up to me and asks if there is
really a difference between Democrats and Republicans, I will point
them to this debate.
So I hope very much that we will get enough votes to take up the
Democratic bill that is fully paid for and will create over 600,000
jobs, that will fix our deficient bridges and our deficient highways,
that will say to the construction workers: We know you are out of work,
and we are going to put you back to work--or the Republican alternative
that would result in 200,000
[[Page S7110]]
jobs lost and overturn these clean air rules that are so important that
the vast majority of people, including Republicans, who are asked about
it would say: Congress, keep your hands off these rules because, you
know what. We think they are working.
I reserve the remainder for other speakers, and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, let's be clear about what the Democrats'
Rebuild America Jobs Act is and what it is not about.
It is about expanding infrastructure spending, financed by tax
increases. It is about setting up a brand-new government bureaucracy in
the form of an infrastructure bank that will take years to get underway
and will subject taxpayers, once again, to private sector risk-taking
and to bailouts.
It is about following in the footsteps of the ongoing costly
government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, called Fannie and Freddie.
It is about increasing the Federal footprint in the infrastructure
arena. It is about increasing taxes on those with incomes above
$500,000, now creatively called millionaires, including incomes of many
business owners who risk their own capital to create jobs.
It is about further Federal wage controls on construction projects
which lead to inefficient use of taxpayer funds. It is also about
creating political talking points for the upcoming Presidential
election. They know their bill is doomed to fail. It is all a game.
Here is what the legislation is not about. It is not about creating
jobs. It is not about engineering a more efficient and a more fair tax
code. No, this is the same tune, different song: A bill for more
spending, financed with new taxes.
It remains baffling to me that this is all the other side ever seems
to have to offer. The Democrats' proposal incorporates more spending on
various infrastructure initiatives, including one of the President's
favorites, high-speed rail.
As columnist Robert Samuelson wrote in the Washington Post in
February of this year:
High-speed rail is not an investment in the future. It's
mostly a waste of money.
As for the arguments by some that we risk losing our global
competitive edge without things such as high-speed rail, I would
encourage them to pay attention to what is going on beyond our shores.
China, facing safety concerns, high debt associated with high-speed
rail, and political scandals involving kickbacks and undue influence on
rail spending has scaled its plans back and operates some high-speed
rail at 30 miles per hour.
Spain, a one-time darling of those who promote high-speed rail
spending, is also scaling back, having identified such spending as
imprudent in the current economic environment.
Here at home, States have rejected high-speed rail initiatives. We
just learned in recent days that California's bullet train is now
projected to cost close to $100 billion, nearly twice its previous
projection.
Nonetheless, the administration and my friends on the other side of
the aisle wish to plow forward by shoveling more taxpayer funds into
exactly those sorts of projects, with little more than rosy projections
of future costs and benefits that justify the expense.
I am deeply skeptical that the Democrats' legislation to fund more
infrastructure projects is a good way to address our current national
unemployment emergency and need for jobs.
According to CBO:
Large-scale construction projects of any type require years
of planning and preparation. Even those that are ``on the
shelf'' generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to
provide timely stimulus to the economy.
More often than not, the delays are because of burdensome and
inefficient regulatory red tape.
As President Obama discovered too late, shovel-ready projects are
hard to find. In June he joked about his first stimulus, saying:
Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we had expected.
Now, that may have been humorous, except they should have known
better. Unfortunately, Americans looking for jobs and the American
taxpayers who are now on the hook to pay off President Obama's
stimulus-driven debt do not find this to be a laughing matter.
The infrastructure bank proposed by the other side would not even be
up and running for well over 1 year, and probably longer. It will take
1 year or more just to set up the bureaucracy. How can this possibly
have anything to do with creating jobs and lowering unemployment today?
There are worrisome details about the proposed new government
infrastructure bank bureaucracy and the power it will wield. The
proposed bank's board is required to give ``adequate consideration''--
whatever that means--to a host of features, including ``whether there
is sufficient State or municipal political support for the successful
completion of the infrastructure project.''
While proponents of the infrastructure bank are selling it as a new,
politics-free way to fund projects, even the authorizing legislation
explicitly calls for political considerations.
The Democrats' bill also claims the bank would be a ``United States
Government-owned independent'' institution--government-owned and
controlled by political appointees but somehow independent, just like a
GSE, government-sponsored enterprise.
The definition of ``eligible infrastructure project'' in their bill
includes a wide range of possible projects, including high-speed rail,
which Americans do not want or need, and solid waste disposal
facilities such as the one that drove Harrisburg, PA, into bankruptcy.
Most worrisome, the infrastructure bank board is provided with the
authority to make any modifications it would like, at its discretion,
to what constitutes an eligible infrastructure project. How long do we
think it would take for the board to start doling out taxpayer funds to
non-viable projects? Haven't we seen enough of that in this
administration?
Proponents of the infrastructure bank make the peculiar argument that
somehow because the bank would not be able to make grants, taxpayers
face no risks of losses. Yet the bank is empowered to make loans, which
are risky. The bank is empowered to issue loan guarantees just like
taxpayer-backed government guarantees of Fannie and Freddie. Really.
Stop and think about it. This just looks like a rebirth of Fannie and
Freddie. That is all we need. How is that not risky?
Also problematic is direct authorization in the Democrats' proposed
infrastructure bank for deferral of payments of direct loans in the
event ``the infrastructure project is unable to generate sufficient
revenues to pay the scheduled loan repayments of principal and interest
on the direct loan under this Act.''
Translation: If a project's revenues streams are insufficient to pay
off the government loan, then the loan gets modified and extended.
This, of course, benefits any private partner of the taxpayer-funded
infrastructure project while taxpayers are put on the hook for the
losses.
Have we been here before? We all know what the answer to that is.
This is an explicit admission, in the authorizing legislation, that
contingencies are expected in which taxpayers suffer losses and end up
bailing out private entities. This is the essence of a corporate
bailout. This is corporatism at its worst--privatized profits and
socialized losses.
The whipsawing is too much to handle. On one hand, the President, a
former community organizer, stands with the Occupy Wall Street
protesters, criticizing the so-called rich. On the other hand, he and
his congressional allies support legislation that would make taxpayers
responsible for the bad decisions of wealthy contractors. I look
forward to the critiques of this crony capitalism at the Occupy Wall
Street gatherings.
Taxpayers are on the hook for billions. Keep in mind it is not merely
the advertised initial price of $10 billion of taxpayer money necessary
to start up the proposed new infrastructure bank bureaucracy that would
be at stake. The bank will be empowered to ``leverage'' taxpayer
dollars to support 10, 20, or maybe 30 times that amount for so-called
public-private partnership projects.
Have we already forgotten that leverage is what helped create the
largest financial crisis since the Great Depression? Yet, amazingly,
for proponents of the infrastructure bank, leverage in this case is a
good thing.
[[Page S7111]]
Make no mistake, leverage means risk, and more leverage means more
risk. Why, when taxpayers have not even seen the last of the losses
from Fannie and Freddie, would we even consider setting up a brand-new
public-private mongrel called an infrastructure bank that will again
subject taxpayers to losses? Why would we set up a new Federal
bureaucracy that will require bailouts on projects specially selected
by unelected political appointees with the power to pick winning and
losing projects eligible for government assistance?
It is of interest that one of the new pitches for an infrastructure
bank is that we need it to help us be more globally competitive.
Sometimes comparisons are made with the growth of infrastructure
spending in developing countries such as China. But, of course,
developing countries devote many resources to infrastructure spending.
It is almost a tautology. Those countries are starting with a much
smaller beginning base, so we would expect a need for greater growth.
Proponents of infrastructure spending cite rankings of the United
States globally on its infrastructure from a recent World Economic
Forum's Global Competitiveness Report. If they had read the most recent
report carefully, they would note that it identifies that the top two
most problematic factors for doing business in America are tax rates
and inefficient government bureaucracy. Yet the Democrats' bill seeks
to increase tax rates and construct a new bureaucracy called an
infrastructure bank.
We do not need a new Federal bureaucracy filled with politically
appointed bureaucrats. We do not need a government picking economic
winners and losers. We do not need more government spending years from
now to deal with an unemployment crisis today. We do not need more
taxes at a time when the unemployment rate is stuck at 9.1 percent. And
we most definitely do not need another GSE. But if you like Fannie and
Freddie, you will love the proposed infrastructure bank.
Once again, the other side has turned to divisiveness and class
warfare. Evil millionaires and billionaires, whom Democrats now define
as an individual with income starting at $500,000, need to be brought
to economic justice. A 0.7-percent tax--or whatever the rate-of-the-
week special cooked up by the Democratic war room happens to be--
imposed on individual incomes that begin at $500,000 will bring
equality and justice for all.
A few points need to be made about the surtax proposal. First, it is
more taxes to pay for more government spending. We need to keep that in
mind when we hear Democrats talk about the need to raise taxes to
reduce the deficits.
Second, it is not real economic or tax policy. It is designed to
deliver a talking point to an administration increasingly concerned
about its reelection prospects.
I remind my friends on the other side of the aisle again that those
earning $500,000 or more, whom they creatively call millionaires and
billionaires, are not a static group of people. Many who earn those
amounts in 1 year are likely to earn far less in the next year or in
the prior year. In fact, the highest income taxpayers are a dynamic and
rapidly changing group. Any one of us could get there if we just work
hard enough and are smart enough to get there. That income group is
constantly changing.
Keep in mind that a significant number of people hit by the
Democrats' tax hike would be business owners--the same people we need
to create new jobs. Significant fractions of net-positive business
income and of active flow-through business income would be subject to
Senator Reid's new surtax. This is especially harmful to small
businesses, which are often organized as flow-through entities,
including sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, and S corporations.
We do not need higher taxes that will fall on job creators to write
checks for the President's special preferences, such as spending on
high-speed rail that Americans do not want or need. We do not need a
risky, GSE-like, taxpayer-funded infrastructure bank populated by
political appointees, able to pick and choose whatever spending they
would like to define as an infrastructure project, while subjecting
taxpayers to private risk-taking.
Fortunately, there is a better way, and it is contained in my
legislation, the Long-Term Surface Transportation Extension Act of
2011. Briefly, here is what it does.
It eliminates dedicated funding for transportation enhancements and
gives States the authority to decide whether to spend resources on add-
ons, such as bike paths.
It reforms the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, by
eliminating inefficient bureaucratic red tape and accelerating project
delivery and contracting, just as called for by the President's Jobs
Council.
It supports job creation by placing a temporary timeout on job-
killing regulations that are estimated to have significant economic
effects.
It includes provisions for waivers of inefficient environmental
reviews, approvals, and licensing and permitting requirements for road,
highway, and bridge rebuilding efforts in emergency situations.
It goes straight to the matter of job creation, and it draws from
bipartisan recommendations, including recommendations from the
President's own bipartisan Jobs Council. We have not ignored the
President. We are taking some of his ideas and putting them in this
bill.
It allows fully paid-for infrastructure projects to be undertaken to
help build roads, bridges, and a host of other projects without
imposing permanent, job-killing, higher taxes during our national
unemployment emergency.
I urge all of my colleagues to vote in support of my legislation and
to vote against the tax-and-spend alternative offered by those on the
other side. We have had enough of this. We had enough with Fannie and
Freddie. Yes, it was set up to do good, but it has wound up putting us
in hock, and then just this week we find that they all--many of the
leaders of Fannie and Freddie--are taking home huge bonuses for running
the place. The new ones, the new leadership--maybe that is a little
harsh, but the fact is, why should they be taking bonuses when we know
Fannie and Freddie are in real trouble? I predict that if the
Democratic bill passes and we get this infrastructure bank set up, it
is only a matter of time until this will be another Fannie or Freddie.
That is what happens when government bureaucrats decide who wins, who
loses, and interferes with the private sector and those who have always
made the private sector go and work well for all of us.
I yield the floor.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the Rebuild
America Jobs Act. This bill is about jobs today and jobs tomorrow
across the Nation and in my home State of Maryland. It also is about
repairing our crumbling infrastructure.
This bill does three things. First, it provides $50 billion for
immediate transportation investments. It will provide formula funding
and award competitive grants to our States for transportation
infrastructure projects. This includes funding for our highways and
bridges. It also includes our transit systems and passenger and freight
networks as well as our aviation system and ports.
Second, it provides $10 billion to establish a national
infrastructure bank. This bank will leverage private and public capital
to fund large infrastructure projects. These include not only
transportation projects but also desperately needed water and sewer,
and energy projects. The bank will provide direct loans and loan
guarantees for projects of regional and national significance.
I have been a strong proponent of establishing a national
infrastructure bank for several years now going back to the original
Dodd-Hagel legislation. I am now a cosponsor of Senators Kerry,
Hutchison, and Warner's bill.
Third, this bill pays for itself. It implements a surtax of less than
1 percent on those that make more than $1 million a year. This tax will
begin in 2013.
This bill is so important because it will create hundreds of
thousands of jobs across America by putting construction workers and
engineers back to work. According to Moody's, every $1 spent on
infrastructure spurs economic activity raising GDP by about $1.59.
Without this investment, nearly 1 million Americans will lose their
jobs and our economy will lose nearly $1 trillion over the next 10
years.
[[Page S7112]]
Our failing transportation infrastructure is costing everyone money
we don't have: State and local governments, motorists, and companies
shipping their goods. Americans pay approximately $333 in car repairs a
year because of poor road conditions and more at the pump because of
congestion. We just learned Marylanders have the longest commute in the
country--even longer than New Yorkers. Can you believe that?
Freight bottlenecks and congestion are costing us about $200 billion
a year. It is estimated that our failing infrastructure will drive the
cost of doing business up by adding $430 billion to costs in the next
decade. This means it will cost more to ship goods and consumers will
feel it in their pocketbooks.
My State of Maryland has a 6-year transportation plan with $10
billion worth of needs. A recent blue ribbon commission found the State
needs another $500 million annually to meet these needs. This bill will
help close this funding gap by providing nearly $600 million in
transportation formula funding to Maryland. This funding will support
about 7,500 jobs.
This formula funding will pay for repaving and improving safety on
our highways and byways. It will be used for to replace diesel buses
with more environmentally friendly hybrid models. Improvements also
will be made to Maryland's commuter rail service, MARC, and the light
rail and metro in the Baltimore region. Lastly, Maryland would be
eligible for competitive grants for all modes of transportation
including high-speed rail investments along the Northeast corridor.
In addition, the infrastructure bank will provide new financing
options for Maryland. It will help move along projects of regional and
national significance that currently are harder to get underway with
traditional financing options. Most promising is that the bank will
provide financing for water and sewer and energy infrastructure
projects too. Maryland alone has $14 billion in water and sewer
infrastructure needs.
I firmly believe that a reliable and well maintained infrastructure
is a vital to sustain economic growth and create jobs. That is why we
must pass this bill and get Americans back to work.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to
5 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
nomination of richard andrews
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, last year, I was pleased to provide the
President with the names of three superbly qualified Delawareans for
him to consider for the one open seat on the U.S. District Court in
Delaware. Any one of them would have made an excellent addition to the
court, and all of them uphold the high regard in which this court is
held, not only in Delaware but across the country.
The President has made a particularly strong choice in nominating
Richard G. Andrews for this judicial appointment this past May. The
Senate Judiciary Committee used sound judgment in approving his
nomination unanimously in September. We are grateful for the
expeditious handling and approval of this nomination--unanimously.
When I travel across Delaware, I often hear from people who are
convinced that the Senate is overwhelmed by partisan tensions. I am
sure that my colleagues--both Republicans and Democrats here today--
have heard similar concerns. Confirming Rich Andrews will help to win
back confidence that we can work together to do the right thing, not
just for the people of Delaware but the people of America.
Throughout his career, Rich Andrews has been supported by members of
both parties. He was appointed to U.S. Attorney under Attorney General
Janet Reno and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Most recently, the
Senate Judiciary Committee supported his nomination without one single
dissent.
Our country is fortunate that someone with his outstanding
credentials has stepped forward to do this critical work. Mr. Andrews'
education, background, and legal experience make him superbly qualified
for this position.
As a student at Haverford College, Rich Andrews graduated with a
bachelor of arts degree in political science, after which he earned his
law degree at the University of California at Berkley--where he served
as Note and Comment Editor for the California Law Review. After law
school, Rich Andrews launched his career as a Clerk for the Honorable
Collins J. Seitz, legendary chief judge of the Third Circuit Court of
Appeals.
Following his clerkship, for 23 years Rich served as a prosecutor in
the U.S. Attorney's Office in Wilmington--serving in a number of high-
profile positions and eventually rising to the position of assistant
U.S. attorney. When duty called, he stepped up to serve as acting U.S.
attorney on three separate occasions. I kidded him and said he served
as acting U.S. attorney longer than other people have served as U.S.
attorney in other States. During his time with the United States
Attorney's office, Rich prepared and prosecuted countless Federal
cases, and in so doing, gained wide-ranging trial experience that he
will draw upon heavily while serving as District Court Judge, if
confirmed today.
Currently, Rich serves as the State prosecutor for the Delaware
Department of Justice, where he manages the Criminal Division, oversees
more than 70 deputy attorneys general, and makes critical decisions
about how to proceed in high-level criminal cases.
Finally, in addition to his professional experience, Rich is a family
man and a person of great character. His wife, Cathy Lanctot is the
associate dean and a professor of law at Villanova University. Their
son Peter is a sophomore at Columbia University, and their daughter Amy
is a senior--and student council president--at Mount Pleasant High
School, not far from where my family and I live.
In his ``free time,'' Rich has coached for the Concord Soccer
Association of Delaware for more than a decade--and I understand that
Rich also has spent the last 4 years grading answers for the Delaware
bar exam.
In every facet of his life, Richard Andrews has performed with
distinction. Let me conclude by saying that I am proud to support
someone who has provided, and who will continue to provide, exemplary
service for the people of our State and Nation.
His sound legal judgment, his tireless work ethic, and his experience
as a Federal prosecutor have prepared Richard Andrews well to fill this
seat on the U.S. District Court in Delaware. I urge my colleagues to
join me in supporting his confirmation.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). The Senator from Minnesota.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I would like to speak on the vote that
is about to occur in this Chamber on the Rebuild America Jobs Act.
Over the past few days, we have been discussing how to best address
our Nation's crumbling infrastructure. The cracks in this broken system
became tragically clear on a beautiful summers day in Minnesota, August
1, 2007, when the I-35W bridge simply crashed into the Mississippi
River, killing 13 people and throwing dozens of cars in the river. As I
said that day, a bridge should not fall down in the middle of America,
but it did, and an eight-lane highway should not fall down, not a
highway that is literally six blocks from my house, a bridge that I
drive over every day with my family, but that is what happened.
Four years after the I-35W bridge collapsed and was fixed a year
later, still 25 percent of the Nation's 600,000 bridges have been
declared structurally deficient or obsolete--25 percent. Our country
has gotten a near-failing grade from the Civil Academy of Engineers.
Our construction workers have an unemployment rate that is over 13
percent--more than 4 points above the national average. These are not
acceptable realities in this country.
Americans spend 4.8 billion hours every year stuck in congestion,
stuck in traffic.
When you look at what happens in other countries, other countries
that are spending 7, 8, 9 percent of their gross national product on
infrastructure, we are barely hanging in at 2 percent. Yet we want to
be a competitive nation, we want to be a nation that makes things
again, that exports to the world. If we do not have the air traffic
control system that works, if we
[[Page S7113]]
don't have the bridges that work, if we don't have the highways that
work, if we don't have the waterways to bring our barges down to bring
our goods to market, we are not going to be able to compete in this
economy. This is simply not an acceptable reality for a country such as
America.
Think about the Interstate Highway System, built during Eisenhower's
Presidency with a Democratic Congress. Think about rural
electrification. These things were built during difficult times in this
country. Why? Because we didn't think America was about just tinkering
at the edges, we believed America was about moving ahead. That is why
we need to move forward today on the Rebuild America Jobs Act. All of
us recognize the urgent need for new and bold initiatives to fix what
is broken and to build the roads, the bridges, and the airports we need
to fuel a 21st-century export economy.
The infrastructure bank, which is, of course, included in this
legislation, is something that has enjoyed bipartisan support from the
beginning. It is one of those initiatives that will foster public-
private partnership, with the potential to leverage hundreds of
billions of dollars for infrastructure investment. It is about big
projects, but it is also about rural projects in States such as Vermont
and Minnesota. It is about wastewater treatment plants and water
projects and sewer projects--work that has been neglected for way too
long.
Fixing our Nation's infrastructure will provide a broad range of
benefits. We can reduce our congestion, we can better compete globally,
and we can create jobs and improve public safety. This is about working
to ensure that no bridge ever again collapses in the middle of America.
This is our challenge. We cannot put it off any longer. This is the
time to act.
Traditionally, there had been no such thing as a Democratic bridge or
a Republican bridge. In fact, the Transportation Secretary for
President Obama is a former Republican Congressman. We have come
together on infrastructure. We cannot come apart. This is the time to
come together.
I urge my colleagues to vote to allow this bill to proceed to a vote.
Mr. President, I yield back all the time on both sides, and I ask for
the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to
be a sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to the motion to proceed to S. 1769.
Under the previous order, 60 votes are required to adopt the motion.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 49, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 195 Leg.]
YEAS--51
Akaka
Baucus
Begich
Bennet
Bingaman
Blumenthal
Boxer
Brown (OH)
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Conrad
Coons
Durbin
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Hagan
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson (SD)
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Manchin
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Stabenow
Tester
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Warner
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden
NAYS--49
Alexander
Ayotte
Barrasso
Blunt
Boozman
Brown (MA)
Burr
Chambliss
Coats
Coburn
Cochran
Collins
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Enzi
Graham
Grassley
Hatch
Heller
Hoeven
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Johnson (WI)
Kirk
Kyl
Lee
Lieberman
Lugar
McCain
McConnell
Moran
Murkowski
Nelson (NE)
Paul
Portman
Risch
Roberts
Rubio
Sessions
Shelby
Snowe
Thune
Toomey
Vitter
Wicker
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. McCaskill). On this vote, the yeas are
51, the nays are 49. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for
the adoption of this motion, the motion to proceed is rejected.
The majority leader.
Mr. REID. Madam President, we wish to outline what the rest of the
day appears to be.
I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous order,
following the next vote, the Senate proceed to executive session to
consider the following nominations: Calendar No. 353 and Calendar No.
356; that there be 15 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual
form; that following that debate, Calendar No. 356 be confirmed and the
Senate proceed to vote with no intervening action or debate on Calendar
No. 353, with the provisions of the previous order remaining in effect;
and that the next 2 votes be 10 minutes in duration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The question is on agreeing to the motion to proceed to S. 1786.
Under the previous order, 60 votes are required to adopt this motion.
Under the previous order, there will now be 2 minutes of debate,
equally divided.
Who yields time?
The Senator from California.
Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, what is before us now is supposed to be
a jobs bill. Actually, all they do in this alternative, my Republican
friends, is extend the highway trust fund at the current levels. That
is something we intend to do, and Senator Inhofe and I are going to
bring the bill to the floor that does that, but they decided they want
to do it now. And how do they pay for it? They cut $40 billion out of
such functions as firefighters, police, Border Patrol, food safety
inspectors, and we will lose 200,000 jobs from that action.
In addition, there are two rollbacks of environmental laws that
deserve a heck of a lot more notice than putting them in this bill.
That is going to hurt our people because if you can't breathe, you
can't work. We have to get the mercury and the soot and the arsenic out
of the air.
I hope we will vote no on this. It is not a jobs bill.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
All time is yielded back.
Mr. COCHRAN. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to the motion.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 47, nays 53, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 196 Leg.]
YEAS--47
Alexander
Ayotte
Barrasso
Blunt
Boozman
Brown (MA)
Burr
Chambliss
Coats
Coburn
Cochran
Collins
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Enzi
Graham
Grassley
Hatch
Heller
Hoeven
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Johnson (WI)
Kirk
Kyl
Lee
Lugar
Manchin
McCain
McConnell
Moran
Murkowski
Paul
Portman
Risch
Roberts
Rubio
Sessions
Shelby
Thune
Toomey
Vitter
Wicker
NAYS--53
Akaka
Baucus
Begich
Bennet
Bingaman
Blumenthal
Boxer
Brown (OH)
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Conrad
Coons
Durbin
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Hagan
Harkin
Inouye
Johnson (SD)
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (NE)
Nelson (FL)
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Snowe
Stabenow
Tester
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Warner
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 47, the nays are
53. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of
this motion, the motion to proceed is rejected.
____________________