Congressional Record, Volume 157 Issue 171 (Wednesday, November 9, 2011)

[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 171 (Wednesday, November 9, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7263-S7288]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

3% WITHHOLDING REPEAL AND JOB CREATION ACT

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of H.R. 674, which the clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (H.R. 674) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of
1986 to repeal the imposition of 3 percent withholding on
certain payments made to vendors by government entities, to
modify the calculation of modified adjusted gross income for
purposes of determining eligibility for certain healthcare-
related programs, and for other purposes.

Pending:

Reid (for Tester) amendment No. 927, to amend the Internal
Revenue Code of 1986 to permit a 100-percent levy for
payments to Federal vendors relating to property, to require
a study on how to reduce the amount of Federal taxes owed but
not paid by Federal contractors, and to make certain
improvements in the laws relating to the employment and
training of veterans.

Amendment No. 928 to Amendment No. 927

(Purpose: To provide American jobs through economic growth)

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I call up my amendment numbered 928.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Arizona [Mr. McCain] proposes an amendment
numbered 928 to Amendment No. 927.

(The amendment is printed in the Record of Tuesday, November 8, 2011,
under ``Text of Amendments.'')
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to enter into a
colloquy with my Republican colleague, the Senator from Kentucky, Mr.
Paul, and the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Portman.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I feel it is very important that we spend
some time on this issue. I think all Americans realize we are in almost
unprecedented difficult economic times, and that despite efforts that
have been made over the now nearly 3 years, our economy has not grown
and it has not provided the kind of job growth and opportunity many of
us had anticipated.
When we look at previous recessions--and this is a near depression by
some calculations--the recovery has been amazingly and agonizingly slow
as compared to recoveries from other recessionary periods.
In the view of this Senator, the remedies have, in many respects,
made the problem worse rather than better. If we look at some objective
criteria, I argue that the situation in America today is worse than it
was on January 2009, when this administration came to office. We have
had the stimulus package, the Health Care Reform Act, increases in
spending in numerous areas, and the Dodd-Frank bill, which was going to
fix the regulatory system in this country to prevent any financial
institution in America from ever again being too big to fail--in other
words, no financial institution would ever need taxpayer dollars to the
degree that America's economy would be impacted adversely in case that
institution failed.
Well, here we are. Here we are, nearly 3 years later, and
unemployment is at 9 percent, even though after the stimulus package
was passed all the predictions were that maximum unemployment would be
8 percent and headed down. The recovery has been anemic. In my home
State of Arizona, still nearly half the homes are under water. In other
words, they are worth less than the mortgage payments the homeowners
are required to make.

[[Page S7264]]

Working together with my colleague from Kentucky, Senator Paul, and
Senator Portman of Ohio, we have put together a series of proposals and
ideas that have been generated both within this body and outside of
this body, and we believe--we believe with the utmost sincerity--there
should be areas in this proposal that we and our colleagues on the
other side of the aisle could come to agreement on. We wish to see this
entire package. We think it is important in its entirety. There is no
doubt in our minds that when you look at the 9-percent approval rating
Members of Congress have with the American people, they certainly want
to see us do something constructive as well.
I guess I would ask my colleague from Kentucky how he thinks we
should have put this package together, what we should have included,
and what haven't we included. What is the situation in his home State
as far as a need for this kind of legislation?
Before going to my friend from Kentucky, let me add that I talk to
large and small businesspeople all over this country, and they all tell
me the same thing. They all tell me the same thing. They have no
certainty as to what the future holds for them, which then causes them
not to invest or to create jobs. Overseas, they are sitting on $1
trillion. Here in the United States they are sitting on a $1\1/2\
trillion and not investing because they do not know when the next
regulatory act is going to come down. They do not know when the next
regulation is going to be issued. They do not know when the next tax
increase is going to occur.
I saw on television the other day that the owner and founder of Home
Depot, Kenneth Langone--and he also wrote a piece for the Wall Street
Journal--said he couldn't start Home Depot today. He couldn't start it
today because of the environment that exists. Intended or not--and I
know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have the most
honorable of intentions--the result of all this regulation has been a
climate which has restrained investment, which has then restrained and
killed job creation and caused this economy to be mired in the
doldrums. Obviously, that has had a terrible impact on every-day
Americans.
Before my colleague comments, I first want to thank the Senator from
Kentucky for the key role he has played in putting this package
together, and I hope this is the beginning of our fight for passage of
this legislation.
Mr. PAUL. I hope this is the beginning of a conversation with the
other side and with the President. I told the President personally that
I want to help with the problems we have in our country. We have 14
million people out of work, with 2 million additional people out of
work since this administration began. So we are serious about our
Republican jobs plan, and there can be some areas of some common
interest.
There currently is a supercommittee talking about some of these tax
reform ideas. Our side is putting forth a message, we are putting forth
a plan, and we are willing to work with the other side. The problem is,
it is my understanding the other side has walked away from the table.
The other side is unwilling to talk or to engage with us. I have asked
the President personally to come to Capitol Hill and talk to us. I have
talked with the members of the supercommittee and have indicated we are
willing to work with them.
We have some good ideas to create jobs, and some of these ideas the
other side has already agreed to. Lowering the corporate income tax.
There are Members of the other party who understand we need to be
competitive with the rest of the world. So lowering the overall rates,
simplifying the code, and getting rid of some of these loopholes. These
are things the President talks about as he campaigns. But if he were
serious, he would come and talk to us. Instead, what I have heard at
his campaign stops is Republicans are too stupid to understand his plan
so he is going to break it up. Well, that may get laughs at his
campaign rallies, but it isn't getting anything done.
I think the American people need to know our jobs plan will create
jobs, and we are willing to talk with the President and with the other
side. I think we are willing to get things done, and I think we have
important things in the bill that will do that.
Mr. McCAIN. Maybe my friend from Kentucky and I can talk about many
of the various provisions in this legislation. There are a lot of
provisions that were based on input from outside and inside this body.
Some of this, by the way, closely mirrors legislation which has already
passed the House of Representatives as well.
We lead off with a requirement for a balanced budget amendment to the
Constitution. I was here many years ago when the balanced budget
amendment failed by one vote. When you ask the American people if
government, and the Congress, shouldn't live under the same constraints
they have, they are in total support of that.
I have seen polls--and I wonder if my friend from Kentucky has--that
show 80 to 90 percent of the American people support a balanced budget
amendment to the Constitution when informed what it is. At the very
least we ought to put that up for a vote in this body.
Mr. PAUL. Yes. Routinely, decade after decade, polls show anywhere
from 75 or 80 percent or more support a balanced budget amendment. We
need it, because we have shown ourselves to be fiscally irresponsible.
Through the years, we have had Gramm-Rudman-Hollings and we have had
all different types of restraints, but we disobey our own rules. We
say, oh, it is an emergency. But then suddenly all the routine spending
we do becomes emergencies, and the debt gets bigger and bigger.
Those in the debt commission say the most predictable crisis in our
history is the coming debt crisis in this country. They are seeing it
in Europe. We need to be serious in our country and fix these problems
before we get to a crisis situation. That is what our Republican jobs
plan does. It addresses it--a balanced budget amendment, tax reform,
and a regulatory moratorium. We can't keep heaping on new regulations
that put us at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world.
Mr. McCAIN. I want to go back a second to the point the Senator from
Kentucky made. Congress cannot bind future Congresses. I was here at
the time of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, and Gramm-Rudman-Hollings was one of
the most strict budgetary requirements ever passed by this body. It
required automatic spending cuts in the event that budgets were
exceeded and excess spending was, obviously, taking place. But one
Congress cannot bind future Congresses. So over time--over a very short
period of time--the restraints imposed on spending by Gramm-Rudman-
Hollings went into the mist and we went back to business as usual.

I will be very candid with my colleague. There are people who have
legitimate concerns about a balanced budget amendment and what it would
take to get there and the Draconian measures that may be entailed. But
I ask, what is the alternative? What is the alternative? Mortgaging our
children and our grandchildren's future? I believe currently that
stands at a $44,000 debt for every man, woman and child in America. So
why don't we in this body have a debate over a balanced budget
amendment to the Constitution and find out exactly where people are?
At the same time, we have learned over the years that Congresses
cannot bind future Congresses, and so that is the problem with enacting
automatic spending cuts, or whatever spending cuts or other measures we
achieve here. We cannot bind future Congresses, appropriately. So the
only way to address this issue is by amending the Constitution of the
United States, which I know the Senator from Kentucky and I do not view
as a measure taken lightly. I have been opposed to most changes in the
Constitution. I think our Founding Fathers got it pretty well right.
But this is an issue that I think has to be addressed.
Mr. PAUL. Those who say balancing the budget would be extreme, I
think what is extreme is a $1.5 trillion deficit. We are en route now,
at the rate we are spending money, to a decade within which the budget
will be consumed by entitlements and interest. There will be nothing
left for national defense or for anything else if we keep on the same
spending pattern. So we do have to do something.
What we have shown so far is that fiscal restraint has been an utter
failure up here. After Gramm-Rudman-Hollings we had pay as you go. That
was broken 700 times in the first 5 years we were supposedly paying as

[[Page S7265]]

you go by simply saying it is an emergency. Every routine expenditure
became an emergency and so we went around it. So that is a good context
for the Republican jobs plan--that everything will be in the context of
balancing our budget.
But then there are other important matters, such as tax reform.
Historically, the one thing government can do to create jobs or to
lessen unemployment is to lower the upper rate. Kennedy did it in the
1960s and unemployment was cut in half. Reagan lowered the top rate
from 70 to 50 and unemployment was cut in half. Reagan lowered it again
from 50 to 28 and unemployment was cut in half. And interestingly, as
you cut the top rate, you didn't cut revenue. Revenue stayed at 18
percent of GDP through all the lowering of the top rate.
What lowering the top rate does is it unleashes economic growth. The
other side has this vision they are going to hire people in government
and somehow fix unemployment. You can hire hundreds of thousands of
people and you don't put a dent in it. To cure unemployment, or lessen
unemployment, you need to have millions of people hired, and that can
only be done in the private sector. I think that is the difference in
the vision between our side and their side. Our vision is unleashing
the private sector, and theirs is to hire a few more people to dig
ditches and fill them in. It is a different vision.
Mr. McCAIN. Isn't it a fact that Americans are not only very unhappy
because of the economic condition we find ourselves in but also because
they perceive an inequity and an inequality in our economy today? In
other words, they see financial institutions on Wall Street making
record profits and paying record bonuses. They see large corporations
that pay no income taxes--none--zero. They see that and then see
themselves paying their taxes, the least of which may be withholding
taxes or sales taxes or whatever taxes they are still paying. It seems
to me that tax reform would address these inequities.
I note that Senator Portman from Ohio is here, and he knows this
better than anybody, having been, in his previous incarnation, the head
of the Office of Management and Budget. Over the years, we have carved
out loophole after loophole and have provided some with a better or
special deal. It is a damning indictment of the Congress and the
administration that we let it happen, but it is what it is. So we now
have major corporations--I would cite General Electric as an example--
that paid no taxes last year. An average citizen--who doesn't have a
lobbyist here in Washington and who can't get a carveout or a special
loophole for their small business--is paying these taxes.
So how do we resolve that inequity? It seems to me that is
accomplished through tax reform. Give people a simplified Tax Code. The
Senator from Ohio has some much better ideas about this: three tax
brackets, eliminate all but charitable deductions--even put a ceiling
on that--and home mortgage deductions, and then the American people
would at least believe they are being treated fairly. Today, they do
not believe they are being treated fairly. And I am talking about
middle-income Americans.
I think statistics confirm that most Americans believe there is a
large disparity between the wealthiest and the less well off in
America. I would ask my colleague from Ohio to comment, since he knows
more about that than I do.
Mr. PORTMAN. The Senator from Arizona is absolutely right, and I
appreciate his passion on this issue. He has the whole Senate focused
on the idea of repatriating profits from overseas back to America to
invest in jobs and growth, and he has now focused us on the need to
reform the Tax Code on the individual side and on the corporate side.
On the individual side, as he talked about, we have an incredibly
complex Tax Code--thousands and thousands of pages. By lowering the
rates and broadening the base--getting rid of some of this underbrush--
we will create economic growth. It is a necessary shot in the arm right
now with over 9 percent unemployment.
On the corporate side, right now we have a corporate rate that is the
second highest in the world among all developed countries. The highest
is Japan, and they want to lower theirs. This means jobs are going
overseas instead of staying here. By lowering the rate, getting them
down to the average of these other countries, we will bring more
investment back to this country.
Mr. McCAIN. What is the response to the suggestion of bringing the
corporate tax rate down to 25 percent, let's say, because we say
corporations are taxed too much in America, yet at the same time we
also find corporations paying no taxes?
Mr. PORTMAN. By bringing the rate down to 25 percent on a revenue-
neutral basis, what we do is get rid of a lot of the preferences, the
exclusions, the credits, the tax deductions that enable companies right
now to pay little or no taxes. We think everybody should be paying
taxes. We think everybody should be subject to a fair tax system. We
also think we shouldn't have to spend billions a year in complying with
a Tax Code that is so complex. So instead of hiring more tax lawyers,
we want people to get out there and hire more Americans to do the
work--productive work--to get our economy moving.
Tax reform is a way to give this economy a shot in the arm right now.
It is one of many structural reforms that is in this legislation that
the Senator from Kentucky and the Senator from Arizona have put
together with me. It is very consistent with this idea that America's
best days are ahead of her, if we restructure some of these basic parts
of our economy: Tax reform, necessary; lowering health care costs,
absolutely critical; allowing us to explore for energy on our shores
and create jobs and economic opportunity; being sure we are reducing
the regulations that are strangling small businesses. These are all
structural reforms we can and should do. By the way, there is
bipartisan support for every single one of those elements.
So I commend the Senator from Arizona for raising these issues, for
his passion for them, and the Senator from Kentucky. I hope the Senate
will give us the opportunity to vote on this, and it should be a
bipartisan vote because so many of these issues are issues that
transcend partisanship, and in each case there are Democrats and
Republicans who understand the need to move our economy forward by
making these structural changes.
Mr. McCAIN. For just a minute, I would like to discuss with the
Senator from Kentucky and the Senator from Ohio that enhanced
rescission or what used to be known as line item veto.
The Senator from Ohio once had the misfortune--his reward will be in
Heaven, not here on Earth--of being the head of the Office of
Management and Budget and saw these appropriations bills come over, and
many of them were that thick. Going through line by line, we find these
special interests, special deals we call porkbarrel projects which have
no justification, which were never debated, which were never discussed,
which were never brought to the light of day except maybe occasionally,
but certainly it contributed enormously to our debt and deficit.
So he had the option of going to the President of the United States
and saying: Veto the whole bill and send it back and it may be
overridden or accept these pork-laden, big, thick appropriations bills.
Isn't that a dilemma we should not force the President of the United
States to have, that kind of Hobson's choice?
Mr. PORTMAN. Absolutely. That is one of the elements of this jobs
bill. It was particularly tough on defense bills because we have our
national defense at stake and we have our soldiers and marines and
sailors out there, and the bill comes to the President of the United
States, and is he going to sign it? If he doesn't sign it, there is a
risk there will be at least a gap in funding; if not, as you say, be
overturned. So there is a lot of pressure to sign it.
What happened, the President signed these pieces of legislation with
the earmarks in them, and we have more spending than we should and
spending is not going to the priorities. It is not going to the
national priorities.
So this legislation is simple. It says, back in the late 1990s, 1996,
Clinton signed a line-item veto bill. Constitutionally, it was
questionable, and sure enough the Supreme Court overturned it. Now we
have come back with another way to do this so-called enhanced

[[Page S7266]]

rescission, but it is basically a legislative line-item veto where
Congress would have the right to be able to review what the President
rescinded. If they didn't act within a short period of time, it would
be rescinded. The Congress could act to overturn the President.
We believe it is constitutional, meets all the obligations that were
set out in that Supreme Court case that overturned the first line-item
veto and yet puts the pressure on the Congress not to put this
porkbarrel spending in, and if they do, we would have the light of day
shone on it and Congress would have to individually take up these line
items, these porkbarrel projects.
We think this is a constructive way forward that is constitutional,
that meets all the concerns that have been raised, and would help to
get the spending down and to prioritize spending at a time when we have
record deficits and debt.
Mr. McCAIN. I would say to the Senator from Kentucky, the President
probably would veto some items we wouldn't like vetoed because there
are some differences in philosophy between ourselves and the President
of the United States. But I am willing to take not only that risk but
that penalty associated with trying to get elimination of the
porkbarrel spending.

We have made some progress, I will admit, in the elimination of some
of the ``earmarks,'' but we have a long, long way to go. Frankly, it is
a disease I have watched recede a bit over time and then it pops back
up. Again, it is something like the balanced budget amendment--it needs
to have a permanent fix.
Mr. PAUL. The line-item veto, interestingly, that the Senator
proposed and got to the floor in the form of a bill separate from this
has cosponsors from both parties. It does have bipartisan support. Many
on the other side of the aisle see some of the waste. There is no
reason why we couldn't begin to work together on some of this.
But, once again, I get back to if the President is going to go on the
road and call us too stupid to understand and his jobs plan has to be
broken up, that is not a good way to get to a consensus. The President
needs to come to Capitol Hill and needs to talk with the other side and
work on these ideas.
Do we need a line-item veto and do we need a balanced budget
amendment? Do we need to do something different or just do the same?
The problem with just doing the same is we haven't had a budget in 2 or
3 years around here. The appropriations bills are supposed to agree
with the budget, but they can't because there is no budget. There is a
rumor that the appropriations bill will go to the conference committee
between the two Houses and they will actually airdrop in whole other
appropriations bills.
Do we need more scrutiny? Do we need a balanced budget amendment? Do
we need a line-item veto? Absolutely. Because what we are doing around
here is not working and is adding up to trillions of dollars of annual
deficits.
Mr. McCAIN. If the scenario takes place as the Senator from Kentucky
just pointed out, that all of a sudden everything is decided by members
of the Appropriations Committee, then it does deprive the other members
of this body of their input into the entire process and takes the
authority and responsibility from 100 and puts it in the hands of a
few. That seems, to me, a disservice to the people of Arizona whom I
represent.
Mr. PAUL. I think the overriding message--and I appreciate the
comments from the Senator from Ohio--is that we have a jobs plan and we
have our ideas. There is overlap in our ideas with some of the ideas
from the other side.
The message is, we are willing to talk to the other side. We are
willing to say these are some proposals, and let's try to find areas of
agreement.
We think it is more important than a campaign right now. We think it
is more important, the joblessness and the economy, that we try to do
something about it. We are willing to come to the table. We are willing
to bring our ideas, we are willing to have a debate with the other
side, and we want to get solutions. We are not doing this just to be
partisan. We want to figure out a way to make our economy better.
Mr. PORTMAN. Absolutely. Let me give an example of where we could
come together on something simple, and again it is something the
Senator from Arizona and the Senator from Kentucky have included in
their legislation.
Everybody knows the Federal regulators are putting more and more
pressure on small businesses all around the country. We hear it every
time we go home. I can't think of a time I have been home at a plant
tour where somebody hasn't raised with me a Federal regulation that is
causing them difficulty because it is increasing the cost of hiring
somebody.
At a time of over 9 percent unemployment, we have to do everything we
can to get this economy moving, and one is to lessen that regulatory
burden and make sure it is smart.
So one of the pieces of the legislation we are promoting is to say to
the Federal agencies: Go through a cost-benefit analysis, including
looking at what the impact is going to be on jobs. Who could be against
that? That needs to be done not just in the so-called executive branch
agencies but also in the independent agencies which are not subject to
these current cost-benefit rules. It is more cost-benefit rules looking
at jobs but also making sure everybody has to comply with it.
Then, when they come up with an idea for a regulation, make sure it
is consistent with the policy of the elected representatives because
too often we will see the regulators go off on their own and come up
with ideas that they think might be good for the economy. That is one
reason we have--according to some statistics now--as much of a cost on
the economy from regulations as from taxes.
Finally, it says when you come up with something, it has to be the
least burdensome alternative. If the EPA had done this, for instance,
in some of the legislation that the Senator is concerned about, the
Senator from Kentucky, they would not be able to come up with huge new
costs on business because they would have to come up with a cost-
effective way to meet the policies set out by the Congress. They don't
have to do that now. Who could be against that?
So these are specific items that are within this bigger project of
getting America back on track, increasing our jobs, dealing with the
fact that America's competitiveness is at risk that are commonsense,
bipartisan ideas everyone should be able to agree with.
I again encourage the Senate to allow us to have a vote. Let's
encourage a full debate on both sides of the aisle. Let's have a
bipartisan vote on it. Let's show people whom, after all, we are
elected to represent that we can come together as Republicans and
Democrats and deal with the real problems facing our economy.
Mr. McCAIN. I see the Senator from Washington is here, and I don't
want to encroach on her time.
I would just like to say we are going to spend a lot more time today
on this issue and this proposal. The American people want change in
Washington. They want us to address the concerns and problems they
face, and we believe we have a great blueprint for moving forward in
that direction. As my friends from Ohio and Kentucky have said, we are
eager to sit down with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle
and discuss at least some of these which we think we can come to
agreement on. Maybe our approval rating, if we did so, could climb back
up into double digits.
I yield the floor.

Amendment No. 927

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I have come to the floor this afternoon
to discuss the VOW to Hire Heroes Act, which is an amendment to help
put our Nation's veterans back to work that we will be voting on
tomorrow, on the eve of Veterans Day.
The real meaning of Veterans Day is to remind ourselves to take care
of service-connected veterans and their families. That is what this
amendment does.
We all realize, of course, this Chamber has had its share of
disagreements and discord lately, and it is no secret that we are
sharply divided on any number of economic and political issues that are
facing average Americans right now. But this is one issue we should
never be divided on.
I have served on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee for over 16
years,

[[Page S7267]]

and I can tell you that veterans have never been a partisan issue. We
have all made a promise to those who signed up to serve, and we all
need to keep it. That is why I have been so pleased to work to help put
this amendment together in a comprehensive and bipartisan manner.
This amendment brings all ideas to the table, Democratic and
Republican, Senate and House, those from the President and from Members
of Congress, and it uses all those ideas to address one of the most
daunting and immediate problems facing our Nation's veterans--finding
work.
On this Veterans Day, after almost 10 years of war, nearly 1 million
American veterans will be unemployed. It is a crisis that faces nearly
13 million other Americans. But for our veterans, many of the barriers
to employment are unique.
That is because those who have worn our Nation's uniform, and
particularly for those young veterans who spent the last decade being
shuttled back and forth to war zones half a world away, the road home
isn't always smooth. The redtape is often long, and the transition from
the battlefield to the workplace is never easy.
Too often today our veterans are being left behind by their peers who
didn't make the same sacrifices for their Nation at a critical time in
their lives. Too often they don't realize the skills they possess and
their value in the workplace is real. Too often our veterans are not
finding open doors to new opportunities in their communities.
But as those who know the character and experience of our veterans
understand well, that shouldn't be the case. Our veterans have the
leadership ability, discipline, and technical skills to not only find
work but to excel in the economy of the 21st century. That is why, 2
years ago, I began an effort to find out why, despite all the talent
and drive I know our veterans possess, this problem persists.
To get to the crux of this problem, I knew I had to hear firsthand
from those veterans who were struggling to find work. So I crisscrossed
my home State of Washington and communities large and small, at worker
retraining programs, in VA facilities, and in veterans halls. I sat
down with veterans themselves to talk about the roadblocks they face.
What I heard was heartbreaking and frustrating.
I heard from veterans who said they no longer write that they are a
veteran on their resume because of the stigma they believe employers
attach to the invisible wounds of war.
I heard from medics who return home from treating battlefield wounds
and can't get a certification to be an EMT or even to drive an
ambulance. I spoke with veterans who said many employers had trouble
understanding the vernacular they used to describe their experiences in
an interview or on their resume. I talked to veterans who told me the
military spent incalculable time getting them the skills to do their
job in the field but very little time teaching them how to transition
the skills they have learned into the workplace when they come home.
The problems were sometimes complicated and sometimes simple. Most
importantly, though, they were preventable. But the more I relayed the
concerns of our States' unemployed veterans to Federal Government
officials for answers, the more I realized there were none. It became
clear that for too long we have invested billions of dollars in
training our young men and women with the skills to protect our Nation
only to ignore them once they leave the military. For too long at the
end of their career we patted our veterans on the back for their
service and then pushed them out into the job market--alone.

That is why in May of this year, as chairman of the Senate Veterans'
Affairs Committee, I introduced a bipartisan veterans employment bill
to ease the transition from the battlefield to the working world. It is
a bill that will allow our men and women in uniform to capitalize on
their service while also making sure the American people capitalize on
the investment we have made in them.
For the first time it requires broad job skills training for every
servicemember as they leave the military as part of the military's
Transition Assistance Program. It allows servicemembers to begin the
Federal employment process prior to separation in order to facilitate a
truly seamless transition from the military to jobs in our government,
and it requires the Department of Labor to take a hard look at what
military skills and training should be translatable into the civilian
sector in order to make it simpler for our veterans to get the licenses
and certifications they need.
All of these are substantial steps to put our veterans to work. Today
they are being combined with the other great ideas in this
comprehensive amendment that is now before the Senate, including an
idea championed by my House counterpart, Chairman Miller, that will
ease the employment struggle of our older veterans by providing them
with additional education benefits so they can train for today's high-
demand jobs, and an idea that has been championed by President Obama,
Senator Baucus, and many others that provides a tax credit for
employers who hire veterans.
With this amendment we are taking a huge step forward in rethinking
the way we treat our men and women in uniform after they leave the
military. For many of us, particularly those who grew up with the
Vietnam war, we are also taking steps to avoid the mistakes of the
past, mistakes that I believe we stand perilously close to repeating.
Every day we read about skyrocketing suicide statistics, substantial
abuse problems, and even rising homelessness among the post-9/11
generation of veterans. While there are lots of factors that contribute
to those challenges, failure to give our veterans the self-confidence,
the financial security, and dignity that a job provides often plays a
very crucial role.
On this Veterans Day we need to redouble our efforts to avoid the
mistakes that have cost our veterans dearly and have weighed on the
collective conscience of this Nation. We can do that agreeing to this
amendment, but also by looking back to a time when we stepped up to
meet the promises we made to our veterans.
I mentioned on the Senate floor many times that my father was a
veteran of World War II. But what I do not always talk about is the
fact that when he came home from war, he came home to opportunity--
first at college and then to a job, a job that gave him pride, a job
that helped him and my mother raise seven children who have gone on to
support families of their own. This is the legacy of opportunity we
have to live up to for our Nation's veterans. The responsibility we
have on our shoulders does not end on the battlefield. It does not end
after the parades on Friday. In fact, it does not end.
I urge my colleagues to put aside our differences, to come together
and meet the challenges of putting our Nation's veterans to work.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). The Senator from Wisconsin.
Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. I ask to be recognized for not more than 10
minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 928

Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Mr. President, I rise to speak in support
of the McCain amendment, which is Jobs Through Growth Act. I do not
think there is any question that the No. 1 solution to the deep
financial hole in which we find ourselves in this country today is in
economic growth. The fact is, we do find ourselves in a very deep
financial hole. Within a day or two, or certainly within the next week,
we will surpass the $15 trillion landmark in this country. That would
be a problem, $15 trillion worth of debt, if our economy was $100
trillion large, but it is not. It is about $15 trillion large. So our
debt-to-equity ratio has now reached 100 percent, which is a very
dangerous metric.
In order to understand how that affects our economy I ask people to
understand or think about how their own personal economy is affected if
they are in debt, too deep into personal debt. The fact is, when you
are in debt over your head you simply cannot increase your consumption
because any extra money you have, just beyond the basics, is spent
servicing that debt.
The exact same dynamic happens with our Nation. We find ourselves in
way too much debt. Unfortunately, there is no end in sight. The last 3

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years we added $4 trillion to our Nation's debt, and the prospect for
this year is that we will add another $1 trillion. During President
Obama's term we will have added $5 trillion to our Nation's debt. This
scares consumers, and it scares business investors as well. We all
recognize when the government gets into this much debt and spends so
much money that it does not have, eventually it will have to take from
all of us--either in the form of inflation or in the form of taxes.
We are simply not coming to grips with the problem. I like to put
things into historical perspective as we talk about supposedly cutting
our budgets. Ten years ago, in 2001, our Nation spent $1.9 trillion.
This year we spent $3.6 trillion. We doubled spending in just 10 years.
The debate in which we are engaged right now is whether, according to
President Obama's budget, 10 years in the future we will spend $5.7
trillion or, as the House budget calls for, $4.7 trillion.

Let's take a look at 10-year spending. In the last 10 years we spent
$28 trillion. Again, the debate is whether in the next 10 years we
spend $46 trillion, as President Obama budgeted, or whether we would
spend only $40 trillion.
I don't care how we look at it, $40 or $46 trillion is not a cut in
comparison to $28 trillion. Unfortunately, the supercommittee that is
charged with finding $1.2 trillion worth of savings is at an impasse,
and it is at an impasse because it looks like my colleagues on the
other side of the aisle have walked out. I am afraid they simply do not
want a deal because President Obama is already in reelection mode, and
he does not want a result so he can run against a do-nothing Congress.
I am one Senator who came here willing to work with anybody willing
to acknowledge the problem and who is willing to work with me, work
with our side to seriously address the problem. That is exactly what
the six Members, the Republicans on that committee, were trying to do.
We all recognize the No. 1 solution to our debt and deficit crisis is
economic growth. What is holding back growth? It really is the high
level of uncertainty, the lack of confidence. I say to a great extent
that lack of confidence and high level of uncertainty was caused by
President Obama's agenda. There is no doubt about it. He came into
office in tough economic circumstances, but his policies have made the
situation far worse. They have moved us 180 degrees in the wrong
direction.
I mentioned the $15 trillion worth of debt. President Obama's budget
would have added $12 trillion, but that understates the problem because
we underestimate the cost of health care. That will add trillions of
dollars as more employers drop coverage and people go on the exchanges
at highly subsidized rates. The fact we are not achieving the projected
growth rates in those budgets will add trillions. If we only average
2.5 percent growth, that will add $3 trillion to our debt and deficit
over the next 10 years.
What do global investors, what do American investors take a look at
when they look at the U.S. economy? If we are going to be investing in
business, if we are going to grow our economy. If we look around the
world and say where are there economies growing, it is not the United
States. It is China, it is India, it is in places like Brazil. Strike
1.
Take a look at the tax environment and look at the United States,
with one of the highest tax rates in the world, at 35 percent, and
strike 2.
Then we look at the regulatory environment and we are going to
realize, according to President Obama's own Small Business
Administration, that the cost of complying with Federal regulations is
$1.75 trillion. Think about that. Put that in perspective. That is a
number that is larger than all but eight economies in the world. It is
12 percent the size of our economy. That is what we burden our job
creators with each and every single year. Strike 3.
We need a growth agenda. We need to recognize that America needs to
be an attractive place for business expansion and job creation. The
Jobs Through Growth Act recognizes that and it utilizes pieces of
legislation that are already available to actually address the problem.
We need a credible plan to restrain the growth in government.
As I pointed out earlier, that is all we are doing. We are not
cutting government, we are just restraining the growth in government.
We absolutely need dramatic, significant tax reform. Our marginal tax
rates are too high, our Tax Code is 70,000 pages long and costs $200
billion to $300 billion to comply with. We need to utilize our God-
given natural resources in this country. We need an energy utilization
policy that will create hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs
over the next decade or two.
We need free trade. It must be fair, but we need to recognize as
these billions of people around the world seek to improve their lives
and develop their economies, it actually offers us a phenomenal market
opportunity. We cannot be afraid of that. We need to embrace it. We
need to understand that we do not have a choice whether we are going to
compete in this world. We must compete, and we are certainly capable.
We have the finest, most productive workers in the world.
Finally, we absolutely need regulatory reform. Part of the Jobs
Through Growth Act is a bill I introduced a couple of months ago called
the Regulation Moratorium and Jobs Preservation Act of 2011. It is a
pretty simple bill. It basically says until our economy gets back on
its feet again we will stop issuing new rules and new regulations that
harm economic growth until the unemployment rate drops below the level
it was when President Obama took office, which would be 7.8 percent. It
is a reasonable proposal, one I hope can gain bipartisan support.
I have to believe every Member of Congress, like me, is visited daily
by businesses in their district and in their State. They are coming to
Washington and calling us on the phone and describing the harm that
President Obama's regulatory agencies are inflicting on their ability
to create jobs.
I urge all of my colleague to support the very sensible legislation,
the Jobs Through Growth Act.
I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 927

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, this Friday we will celebrate Veterans
Day, and this year we will also be celebrating Military Families Month.
It is time to recommit ourselves to helping every military family, as
the First Lady and Dr. Biden are doing with a program called Joining
Forces to address the unique needs of those who serve and the needs of
their families.
We as a Congress and as a nation need to do exactly that. We need to
reach across the aisle. We need to put aside our differences and join
forces. We need to help businesses help veterans and their spouses
build careers. We need to make sure schools are doing all they can to
help military children. We need to promote community involvement by
asking all of us to do what we can to help military families in our
local communities. But there is more we can and should do to honor our
heroes.
Honoring our heroes means providing jobs and job training and every
job opportunity possible to unemployed veterans in my State of New
Jersey, where we have over 450,000 veterans, 12 percent of them
unemployed. That is why I am proud to be a cosponsor of the VOW to Hire
Heroes Act.
Every year, 160,000 Active-Duty servicemembers and 110,000 National
Guardsmen and reservists come home. When they transition to civilian
life and are looking for options to get back to work at home, they need
to know that someone will be there to help them, that businesses will
help them to start new careers or continue where they left off. We
should be giving businesses a tax credit for hiring a returning veteran
and giving them more of a tax credit if they hire a wounded veteran.
I would like to see American businesses pledge to hire 100,000
veterans or their spouses by the end of next year. I

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don't think that is asking too much. I hope my colleagues don't think
that is too much either. I don't think it is too much to ask Congress--
both parties, without the politics, in a bipartisan effort--to honor
our veterans by passing a veterans jobs bill the President can sign
into law.
As we approach Veterans Day, as our last troops come home from Iraq,
as our military presence around the world enters a post-Iraq era, we
need to commit ourselves as a nation to helping every one of our men
and women in uniform, particularly in these hard economic times. This
year, with the unemployment rate for veterans at almost 12 percent
nationally, as it is in New Jersey, with nearly 1 million unemployed
veterans nationwide, I would hope we can find bipartisan support for
something we should all be able to agree on; that is, jobs for
veterans. That is the VOW to Hire Veterans Act. Veterans cannot and
should not have to wait for the help they deserve. No delays, no
filibusters, no politics--just a bill for the President to sign and
help for our Nation's veterans now. To me, that is about fairness and
it is about keeping our promise to our veterans.
I think we can always do better for our veterans and their families,
and every veteran deserves better. Our duty to them is not just
remembering their service. It is not just saying ``thank you'' once or
twice a year on Veterans Day or Memorial Day--and we certainly should
march in a Veterans Day parade or go to a Memorial Day observance. We
should do those things. This is also about delivering on the promise of
a grateful nation every day. It means providing the health care and
services veterans need when they come home and helping them transition
back into the workforce.
Our brave men and women did not wait to sign up to serve their
country, and they should not have to wait to get the benefits they
earned defending it. They should not have to come home only to stand on
the unemployment line after putting themselves on the line serving
their Nation. That is why I am proud to have cosponsored a good, solid,
bipartisan jobs package to help our military men and women transition
from their work defending our Nation's freedoms to civilian work
rebuilding our Nation's economy. It would ensure that disabled veterans
who have exhausted their unemployment benefits get the training and
rehabilitation they need, the counseling they need, the vocational
rehabilitation and employment benefits they need, and job assistance
tailored to a 21st-century job market.
It establishes a competitive grant program for nonprofits that
provide mentoring and training programs for veterans. It allows
employers to be paid for providing on-the-job training to veterans.
It would provide returning heroes and wounded warriors work
opportunity tax credits for businesses that hire veterans and more for
businesses that hire disabled veterans. The credit for unemployed
veterans expired at the end of 2010. This provision is essentially a
work opportunity tax credit for hiring vets, a credit up to $2,400 for
short-term unemployed and up to $5,600 for long-term unemployed and an
increased credit of up to $9,600 for hiring unemployed wounded
veterans.
I fully support and believe in this bill. We made a promise to
veterans, and it is a promise we must keep. So while I believe reducing
the deficit is a critical issue, we cannot and should not balance the
budget on the backs of those who have served. Veterans are not
bankrupting America, they are protecting it. It is not veterans
programs, health care, or services that should be cut.
I said it before, and I will say it again: A grateful nation not only
honors its heroes once a year on Veterans Day or Memorial Day, but it
better be able to look every veteran in the eye when he or she comes
home from service and say: We meant what we said, and we will keep our
promise.
We must be prepared to deliver on that promise. I certainly am. I
come to this Chamber on behalf of every New Jerseyan to say to every
man and woman who has served in uniform and to the more than 450,000
veterans in my home State of New Jersey that we will keep working for
fairness for every veteran and their family. There will always be
political obstacles in our way, but we will fight the good fight to
keep our promise to you, as you have served us. Be assured that you
have the respect and thanks of a grateful nation for the sacrifices you
and your families have made. To me, that thanks is ultimately
demonstrated not by what we say but by how we act.
May God bless our troops, and may this opportunity be an example of
our willingness to come together on behalf of those who wear the
uniform and serve the Nation and have the gratitude of a grateful
country.
I yield the floor.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's second-degree amendment is the
pending question.
Mr. McCAIN. That is the pending business before the Senate?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. It is the pending question.
Mr. McCAIN. Is there any unanimous consent on speakers?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is not.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I will continue to discuss the pending
amendment before the Senate, and I would yield such time, without
yielding the floor, as the Senator from Tennessee may use.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Tennessee.

Residential Mortgage Market

Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I rise to speak about a bill we introduced
called the Residential Mortgage Market Privatization and
Standardization Act. I wish to speak briefly on this bill that deals
with the pressing issue that I know the Senator from Arizona probably
as much as anybody in the Senate has spoken about and has championed
for many years.
The current dynamic permit conservatorship is not sustainable with
Fannie and Freddie and the GSEs as they are today. There has been
discussion about various things happening with these organizations. The
FHFA, which actually regulates Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, is begging
Congress for direction but, in their words, is only getting mixed
signals. Today, we introduced a bill to give a very clear direction as
to what ought to happen to these major GSEs.
Together, they sit atop $5 trillion in obligations, plus hundreds of
thousands of our REO properties--in other words, properties they have
taken back and are now overseeing throughout America. With a $5
trillion book, any mistake they make is very expensive, and obviously
the taxpayers of this country know full well that billions of dollars
continue to flow in these organizations to keep them afloat. Yet these
organizations today are lameduck organizations with no clear guidance
on their future. They really have no idea what the future holds. The
organizations themselves basically are treading water.
Over the most recent decade, Fannie and Freddie became corporate
welfare schemes for mortgage banks. There is no question that what was
happening was the governance balance sheet was helping fund corporate
welfare programs or basically mortgage brokers could sell off to Fannie
and Freddie mortgages they had put in place and have them guaranteed.
As they raced to the bottom to lower guarantee fees so they could
take a bigger market share for the biggest mortgage originators, they
actually helped fuel the housing bubble that has led us to where we are
today. There is no question about it.
So many people talk about Fannie and Freddie and say that without
them, we would not have affordability in housing. Well, at the end of
the day, Fannie and Freddie don't make housing more affordable. What
they do is simply make interest rates too low. What that actually does
is push up home prices. That is the exact equation that occurs in this
process. Housing affordability is determined by your monthly mortgage
payment. Fannie and Freddie make interest rates cheap, but the price of
housing ends up being more expensive as a result of that. So, in
effect, the taxpayer is suddenly on the hook for losses when these
housing prices are pushed up, and the fact is we end up having a bubble
like we have had.
The market can and will take over the functions of mortgage credit
risk if we make the transition in an intelligent way, and that is what
this bill

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does. Our plan phases out Fannie and Freddie over 10 years, but it does
so in a way that allows for feedback from the markets. Gradually
reducing the guarantee share of new mortgage-backed securities allows
us to see the market's price credit risk. We also add transparency to
the market by making the valuable data at the GSEs publicly available.
One of the things that has happened in both Fannie and Freddie
through the years is that they have developed, obviously, more
expertise than any entities in the country because they, in essence,
have been almost monopolies in this process. So what we would like to
do is make that data publicly available to folks who will be doing this
on the private side.
Uniform documents managing the servicing process will give investors
and homeowners alike certainty in how they will be treated by their
service. This is part of the plumbing of a system that needs to be
addressed, and our plan does that.
In other words, this plan not only phases down Fannie and Freddie
over a 10-year period through a process that gives market signals so we
can understand what is happening in the marketplace as it is occurring,
but it also creates a mechanism for private investors to come back into
the market. Ten years from now, under our plan, we will have a housing
finance system based more on market fundamentals free of taxpayer risk
and more able to price credit appropriately.
The idea that the private market cannot price credit risk is a total
red herring. The biggest risk in a 30-year fixed rate mortgage is the
prepayment risk. This is called convexity in bond market parlance. The
private market has already figured this out. We have homeowners
throughout our country who constantly prepay mortgages and the market
has figured out a way to price this. So private lenders can and will
price credit risk. We have just been very accustomed to the government
selling this too cheaply, but the market can easily price this. All we
need to do is put those mechanisms in place that allow the private
sector to be able to do that.
It is time to move beyond Fannie and Freddie. We cannot pretend this
problem away. Our plan is thoughtful, and it will earn back private
capital over time.
We have offered a piece of legislation that we think is something
that can receive bipartisan support. It allows Fannie and Freddie to be
phased out over time. It allows us to see market signals as they are
occurring. It allows--and the Presiding Officer and I know because we
have worked on this and looked at these things in the Banking Committee
itself--it allows us to actually put in place those mechanisms that
will allow the private sector to come in and backfill as the guarantee
continues to diminish over time.
I am offering this bill hopefully to be a marker. If people want to
change it and talk with us about things that they think might enhance
this bill, we are open to that. But we believe at this time, a year and
a half after Dodd-Frank passed, it is time for us to actually begin
looking at a real way to phase down Fannie's and Freddie's involvement
in the marketplace. I hope Republicans and Democrats will join with us
and try to make this bill better if they wish to do that, but certainly
move us in a direction of doing something that is thoughtful and will
move us along toward a private market in residential finance.
Thank you very much. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Tennessee. As
Senator Corker knows, we had an amendment on the Dodd-Frank bill to do
away with Fannie and Freddie over a 5-year period. I think it is
obvious that the Senator from Tennessee has done a lot of homework and
in-depth examination of this issue. But I think the Senator from
Tennessee would agree that what went on with Fannie and Freddie is one
of the worst crimes inflicted on the American people all during the
1990s and well into 2000 and which was a major contributor to the
housing collapse, which then triggered the financial collapse which we
still haven't recovered from. I wonder if the Senator from Tennessee
wishes to elaborate.
Mr. CORKER. Well, I don't think there is any question. I know the
Senator from Arizona has been a reformer all of his life. What we find
in this body is we end up having a corporate welfare system built
around many of the things we do here. As much as I hate to say it, both
sides of the aisle through time empowered this organization to be what
it is. We have built an industry in our country around ensuring that
the status quo stays in place. It is unfortunate. As the Senator from
Arizona knows, as well or better than anybody in this body, the
taxpayers are bearing the brunt of this. To me, it is way past time for
us to deal with this.
I know many people say, Well, in the height of the housing crisis,
this is not the time. But the fact is, the way this bill is crafted--
and it sounds as though the amendment of the Senator from Arizona,
which I remember supporting strongly--generally would have phased out
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over a period of time. I think we have gone
to tremendous extremes to phase this out in a way that makes sense and
allows the private sector to come back. If we think about the type of
finance that takes place in this country around all types of
complexities, there is no reason, as long as we create the proper
structure for the TBA market for the private market to function, there
is no reason that the private sector cannot do this on its own.
It is amazing, when we think about what has happened with low
interest rates. Most homeowners in our country look at the payment they
are going to make. When you have artificially low rates, what happens?
The price of housing actually goes up, so we end up in a situation
where we have this bubble and prices drop tremendously, and then what
happens? The taxpayer ends up bearing the brunt of it.
I could not agree more with the Senator from Arizona, who has always
taken on tough issues, and maybe I am responding longer than he wants
me to. This is one of those issues where I know that many people back
home--candidly, there is a whole industry that is built around this,
and I know a lot of times people don't want to take on something, don't
want to change something like that because they know it is tough back
home. I am glad the Senator from Arizona has championed this issue the
way he has. As he mentioned, we have done a lot of work on it also. I
think this is a sensible bill that will allow our country to get back
where it needs to be. I know the Americans the Senator from Arizona so
well represents and cares so deeply about these transgressions on our
citizens--I know they will support this if we will allow this type of
legislation to come to the floor and be voted on.
Mr. McCAIN. I think the Senator from Tennessee--and I want to get
back to the jobs bill--but I think the Senator from Tennessee would
agree, as long as Fannie and Freddie are in existence and have the
opportunity to behave in a manner that they did in the past, we risk
another housing bubble followed by a housing collapse. That is why I
think the Senator's proposal is something that deserves our attention
and that of the country, so we don't have a repetition of the pain that
the people in Tennessee and Arizona are experiencing today.
Nearly half the homes in my home State of Arizona are under water.
They are worth less than their mortgage payments. As long as that is
the case, it is going to be very difficult to see a way for a strong
economic recovery to take place. I think phasing Fannie and Freddie out
is probably one of the key elements in bringing about not only
beneficial change--and a number of other things have to happen too--but
to prevent the kind of catastrophe that was visited on us in 2008.
Mr. CORKER. It is interesting, when we have a bubble that is taking
place, a lot of times the private sector becomes very concerned that a
bubble is developing and they begin to slow down the process. They
begin to see that, wait a minute, there is a lot of risk here, it is
getting pretty frothy. The housing prices in Arizona and California and
other places are getting awfully high. Maybe we should be cutting back.
But as long as there is a government entity on the other side of that
that is going to take all the risk and they can dump it off to them--
all it is is a machine, and the more they do, the more money they make.
That is what is missing in this current formula.

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There is no gauge there to slow the process when the bubble is becoming
overheated. That is one of the huge contributing factors that I know
the Senator has talked about a great deal to what we saw.

Candidly, the reason the Senator is offering this jobs bill today is
because we have been through such a financial crisis and it has brought
our country to its knees. On top of that, we have had a tremendous
amount of regulation that has enhanced the slowdown even more. But the
fact is, I would say to the Senator from Arizona, he might not be
offering this piece of legislation that he has done such a great job
leading on today had it not been for this bubble that was created. He
might not even be here today. We might be talking about a totally
different subject on the Senate floor.
I thank the Senator for his leadership and for his time, and I yield
the floor.
Mr. McCAIN. I thank the Senator from Tennessee, and he also has been
one who is more than willing to take on the tough challenges and issues
we face, with a commitment to a bipartisanship that I think we all
need. I thank the Senator from Tennessee.
(Mrs. HAGAN assumed the chair.)
Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I wish to inform my colleagues that I
have a lot to say about this jobs bill. There is no unanimous consent
agreement. I believe this is of transcendent importance. I see the
Senator from Minnesota here. I apologize ahead of time, but we only
have until tomorrow morning to address this issue. This is a compelling
issue for this Nation. I intend to talk for a fairly extended period of
time.
For the benefit of my colleagues, this amendment is identical to the
Jobs Through Growth Act which was introduced on October 17. I am
pleased about joining most of my Republican colleagues--and I wish to
highlight the hard work done by my colleagues Senators Paul and Portman
in putting this legislation together. In fact, I wish to thank all of
the Senators, and some of them bipartisan, who put this jobs bill
together. It requires a lot of discussion. There are issues of
transcendent importance.
I don't have to tell any American how difficult our economic times
are, how slow the recovery has been, if at all, the risk of further
recession, and it is time we did something different. I would point out
to my colleagues that for 2 years the other party had control of this
body and had control of the House of Representatives--for 2 years,
until the 2010 election. During that period of time, we passed a
stimulus bill, we passed health care reform, we passed other big
spending bills, all on the promise that the American economy would
recover. It didn't. In fact, by any measurement, things are far worse
than they were in January of 2009.
As the President has a jobs bill and the majority leader has put
forth legislation as part of that jobs bill, we Republicans have a jobs
bill. I know my friends on the other side of the Capitol also agree
wholeheartedly with the majority of what we are proposing today. The
difference between our plan and theirs is that we want to create jobs
through growth and they want to create jobs through government
spending, through spending and borrowing and taxing. That doesn't work.
What they have proposed amounts to nothing more than another stimulus
bill, and we saw that movie before. It added to our debt and our
deficit, and we lost jobs.
Today, my colleagues and I are putting forth a plan to create jobs
through sound policies. Economic growth is a fundamental part of long-
term, sustainable job creation, and that is what our plan offers the
American people.
I wish to quote from an article in Forbes magazine by Peter Ferrara
entitled ``The GOP Jobs Plan Vs. Obama's.''

Senate Republicans have taken the lead in proposing a jobs
plan alternative to President Obama's in the form of the Jobs
Through Growth Act, led by Senators John McCain, Rand Paul of
Kentucky, and Rob Portman of Ohio. Republicans are remarkably
unified behind these economic and jobs growth ideas, with
House Republicans having already long supported or even
passed several components of that plan.
The 28 components of their program add up to exciting
prospects for finally sparking the long overdue economic
recovery, based on proven economic logic, and proven
experience concerning what works in the real world. Most
important are the proposals for both corporate and individual
tax reform, closing loopholes in return for reducing the
rates.
Lower marginal tax rates are the key to providing the
necessary incentives for economic growth and prosperity. The
marginal tax rate is the rate on the next dollar to be earned
from any investment, enterprise, or productive activity. That
is the key because it determines how much the producer is
allowed to keep out of the next unit of what he or she
produces.
At a 50-percent marginal tax rate, the producer can keep
only half of any increased production. If that rate is
reduced to 25 percent, the portion the producer can keep
grows by 50 percent, from one half to three fourths. That
powerfully increases the incentives for more productive
activity, such as savings, investment, starting new
businesses, expanding businesses, creating jobs,
entrepreneurship, and work.
The Republican Jobs Plan involves closing the special
interest loopholes that enable Obama corporate cronies such
as General Electric to get away with paying no taxes on $14
billion in corporate profits, in return for reducing rates to
internationally competitive levels. The U.S. suffers
virtually the highest corporate tax rate in the
industrialized world, nearly 40 percent, with a 35 percent
federal rate, and another nearly 5 percent in state corporate
rates on average.
Even Communist China enjoys a 25% corporate rate. In the
supposedly mostly socialist European Union, the corporate
rate on average is even lower than that. In formerly
socialist Canada, the federal corporate rate is 16.5%, going
down to 15% next year.
The GOP Plan would reduce the federal 35% rate to 25%,
which is the minimum reduction to restore international
competitiveness for American companies. Note that closing
loopholes may well raise the average corporate rate, on which
Democrats and liberals have focused, but it is the marginal
tax rate that drives the economy. . . .
The GOP Jobs Plan also includes reducing the top personal,
individual income tax rate to 25% as well, in return for
closing loopholes. The Ryan budget already passed by the
House would apply that rate to family incomes over $100,000,
with a 10% rate applying to incomes below. Those rate
reductions would powerfully boost incentives as well, as
proven by the dramatic response to the Reagan tax rate
reductions in the 1980s. . . .
Another component of the plan would eliminate the double
taxation of U.S. corporate profits earned abroad by the U.S.
``worldwide'' corporate tax code, which adds U.S. taxes on
top of the taxes on foreign profits by the host country. The
GOP plan calls for adopting the ``territorial'' tax code of
most of our international competitors, which allows profits
to be taxed in the country where they are earned, and not
again when they are brought home. That would unlock for
reinvestment in the U.S. the $1.4 trillion in American
corporate profits earned overseas that remain parked there to
avoid U.S. double taxation.
The GOP Jobs Plan also recognizes the enormous problem of
excessive, runaway regulation, which increases the cost of
production, and so further discourages it. Reducing such
costs would consequently increase production, economic
growth, and jobs.
Step one in the plan to reduce such regulatory burdens is
to repeal Obamacare, with its employer mandate adding to the
cost of each job by requiring employers to buy more
expensive, politically driven health insurance coverage for
every employee. That repeal would also reduce future taxes
and spending by trillions as well.
Further critical relief would result from the GOP Jobs Plan
plank to repeal Dodd-Frank, which is threatening to squelch
credit for businesses and consumers essential to jobs and
recovery. The GOP proposal cites research showing that higher
costs for financial services resulting from Dodd-Frank would
cost the economy nearly 5 million jobs by 2015.
Another critical area of overregulation is energy. The
Republican program would require the Interior Department to
move forward in order to free up leasing and development of
drilling on public lands onshore. It also eliminates EPA foot
dragging on air permits necessary for offshore drilling, and
removes EPA authority for unnecessary and burdensome
greenhouse gas regulation altogether. This deregulation would
ensure a steady supply of low cost energy, essential to
booming economic growth.
Also in the proposal is the REINS (Regulations from the
Executive In Need of Scrutiny) Act, which would require
Congressional approval of all major federal regulations
imposing more than $100 million a year in costs. This will
reestablish the original Congressional check on Executive
power, and democratic accountability for regulatory burdens,
so politicians can no longer hide behind faceless bureaucrats
to evade public scrutiny for regulatory drains on our freedom
and prosperity. This would provide an important solution to
excessive regulatory burdens and costs across the board.
The Tea Party will favor the plan's plank for a Balanced
Budget Amendment to the Constitution, which would include
necessary tax and spending limitations in the Constitution.
Also included is a statutory line item veto, giving the
President more power to cut spending. Reduced government
spending, deficits and debt will reduce the government drain
on resources in the private economy needed to create jobs and
growth.

[[Page S7272]]

Finally, the plan even includes a provision for free trade,
giving the President renewed fast track authority to
negotiate further trade agreements eliminating foreign trade
barriers and opening new markets for American goods. For
nearly 3 years, President Obama failed to even send to
Congress free trade agreements President Bush had negotiated
with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. But that didn't stop
him from political rhetoric blaming Congress for failing to
pass them, though Congress did approve them within weeks of
Obama finally submitting them. That abusive rhetorical style
veers into dishonorable.
The GOP program is an exciting, comprehensive strategy for
creating another generation-long economic boom. It includes
all the components of Reaganomics under Congressional
control--lower tax rates, deregulation, and restrained
spending. Besides the economic logic of each of these
components discussed above, the experience with Reaganomics
proves the plan will work within a year or so of adoption to
get the economy booming again.
After Reaganomics was adopted in 1981, the economy took off
on a 25-year economic boom in late 1982, what Art Laffer and
Steve Moore have rightly called the greatest period of wealth
creation in the history of the planet. Twenty million new
jobs were created in the first 7 years alone, even while an
historic inflation was tamed. American economic growth during
the 80s was the equivalent of adding the third largest
economy in the world, West Germany, to the American economy.
By contrast, Obama's Jobs Plan is recycled, brain dead,
Keynesian economics already tried and failed throughout the
Obama Administration, and all around the world for decades
before wherever it has been tried. It is about half the size
of Obama's nearly one trillion dollar 2009 so-called stimulus
plan, but contains otherwise the same policies. That 2009
stimulus didn't stimulate anything except runaway government
spending, deficits and debt.
Part of the jobs plan is devoted to increased government
spending on supposed infrastructure, which only recalls the
laughable ``shovel ready'' jobs of Obama's 2009 stimulus
(even Obama has joked about it). Another part is increased
spending to bail out spendthrift Democrat states, which Obama
calls hiring more teachers, firemen and cops (a state and
local government function, not a federal function).
But economic growth is not based on increased government
spending, a fallacy which Wall Street Journal senior
economics writer Steve Moore has rightly labeled ``tooth
fairy'' economics. That is because the money for
such spending needs to come from somewhere, and so drains
the private sector to the extent of such increased
government spending, leaving no net effect in any event.
What drives economic growth and prosperity is incentives
for increased production, as Reaganomics proved. Obama's
assault on such incentives is why trillions are sitting on
corporate and bank balance sheets, and America is suffering a
capital strike and capital flight. The Occupy Wall Street
protestors in threatening property and profits are just
further undermining incentives and contributing to that
capital strike and capital flight, which only contributes
further to extended and increased unemployment.
The other half of the jobs plan includes temporary payroll
tax cuts, which are a continuation and expansion of temporary
payroll tax cuts Obama convinced the December, 2010 lame duck
Congress to adopt for this year. But such temporary tax
reductions do not stimulate economic growth and jobs either,
as permanent cuts and incentives are necessary for permanent
jobs. That was just proved by the failure of this year's
temporary payroll tax cut to promote the long overdue
recovery.
But even worse than the 2009 stimulus is that this current
half stimulus echo is accompanied by Obama's proposal for
$1.5 trillion in permanent tax increases. That now includes
Obama's support for a 5% millionaire's surtax. Those
permanent increases only further reduce incentives for
production, and only contribute further to economic downturn
and stagnation under any economic theory.
Those tax increases, moreover, would come on top of all the
tax increases Obama has already enacted under current law for
2013, which major media institutions as well as most of the
public are unaware. In that year, the Obamacare tax increases
go into effect, and the Bush tax cuts expire, which Obama has
refused to renew for the nation's job creators, investors,
and more significant small businesses. Under those tax
increases, the top tax rates for every major federal tax,
except the corporate income tax, already virtually the
highest in the industrialized world, with no relief in sight.
. . .
In sharp contrast to Reaganomics, such Keynesian
Obamanomics has already failed miserably to generate a timely
recovery consistent with the history of the American economy.
Before this last recession, since the Great Depression,
recessions in America have lasted an average of 10 months,
with the longest previously lasting 16 months. But here we
are 46 months after the last recession started, and still no
real economic recovery, with unemployment still [at] 9%, the
longest period of unemployment that high since the Great
Depression.
Moreover, it cannot be said this is because the recession
was so bad, as the experience in America has been the deeper
the recession the stronger the recovery. Based on these
historical precedents, we should be nearing the end of the
second year of a booming economy right now. In this crisis,
for Obama to now just advocate more of the same, with only
new, warmed over rhetoric, is a complete abdication of
leadership. Moreover, at this point, outdated economists
still peddling hoary Keynesian fallacies should be subject to
civil liability for fraud.
As I explain in my new publication just out this week from
Encounter Books, ``Obama and the Crash of 2013,'' more likely
than recovery is a renewed double dip recession in 2013, with
all the tax rate increases, regulatory burdens building to a
crescendo, rising interest rates by then, etc. resulting from
Obamanomics. Congressional Republicans should just tell Obama
thanks, but no thanks, on his Jobs Plan, and pass their own
plan proven to work. Then they can insist he explain to the
public why he stands in the way.

It is a very interesting article there in Forbes, and it is a fairly
long one, but I think it puts in adequately the argument for adoption
of this legislation, but it also points out one of the results.
I would point out, in Investors Business Daily, an editorial entitled
``Better in Rwanda.'' It says:

The U.S. has slipped again in world rankings that assess
the ease of starting a new business. If we're to bring down
our stubbornly high unemployment rate, this trend has to be
reversed.
According to the World Bank's ``Doing Business 2012''
report, America is 13th among 183 countries ranked in the
``Starting a Business'' category. In the 2011 report, the
U.S. ranked 11th. The year before, it was No. 8.
In 2009, the U.S. was ranked No. 6. It was fourth in 2008
and third in 2007.

These are not Republican documents. This is not a Republican
assessment. This is the assessment according to the World Bank: that
doing business in the United States of America has gone from the third
best country to do business in, in 2007, to 13th in 2012.
This is ample and adequate proof that we have borrowed too much, we
have taxed too much, we have issued so many regulations that we have
people such as Mr. Langone, the founder of Home Depot--who I will quote
from in a minute--who says that today he could not start Home Depot all
over again, one of the great success stories, by the way, in recent
years.

In the 2012 ranking, the U.S. trailed such job creators as
Macedonia, Georgia, Rwanda, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, Armenia
and Puerto Rico, which are ranked No. 6 through No. 12.
Big companies aren't usually founded as multinational
corporations. Most begin as small businesses. And it's small
businesses--which employ more than half of the domestic
nongovernment workforce--that generate the bulk of new
employment opportunities.

From this article:

Our own research shows that small businesses create more
than 80% of the new jobs in this country. This isn't some
fantasy we've cooked up. It's been confirmed in the New York
Times by reporter Steve Lohr, who wrote in September that
it's an ``irrefutable conclusion that small businesses are
this country's jobs creators. Two-thirds of net new jobs are
created by companies with fewer than 500 employees,'' Lohr
wrote, ``which is the government's definition of a small
business.''
But job creation is more than a function of size. Lohr
cites a National Bureau of Economic Research report that says
the age of a business is the biggest factor. ``Start-ups,''
says John C. Haltiwanger, a coauthor of the study and an
economist at the University of Maryland, ``are where the job
creation really actually occurs.''
Yet it's the small and new businesses that are being choked
by government policy. The capital gains tax rate on
investments held more than a year, Lohr wrote, directly
impacts angel investors' role in providing seed capital for
startups. This is a rate that the administration wants to
hike from 15% to 20% on households earning more than $250,000
a year.
That's just a single instance of poor public policy. There
are many more in the 160,000 pages of federal regulations and
in the web of state and local rules that squeeze small
businesses and start-ups so tightly that they simply cannot
hire. Until this burden is lifted, America's jobs problem is
not going to get any better.

Quite an indictment that the United States of America, the beacon of
liberty and hope and freedom, an example to all the world, has gone
from the third best place to do business, to start a business in the
world, now to No. 13 in just 5 short years.
So what is the result? I would point out to my colleagues that a
person such as Mr. Langone, whom I have watched on television on
several occasions, certainly an outspoken individual to say the least,
says he could not start his business again under the present
environment.
I quote from a Wall Street Journal article, October 15, 2010,
entitled, ``Stop

[[Page S7273]]

Bashing Business, Mr. President,'' by Ken Langone.
The subtitle is, ``If we tried to start The Home Depot today, it's a
stone cold certainty that it would never have gotten off the ground.''
I quote from his article.

If we tried to start Home Depot today, under the kind of
onerous regulatory controls that you have advocated--

Mr. Langone is writing to the President in this--

If we tried to start Home Depot today, under the kind of
onerous regulatory controls that you have advocated, it's a
stone cold certainty that our business would never get off
the ground, much less thrive.

It is quite an indictment. He goes on to say:

Rules against providing stock options would have prevented
us from incentivizing worthy employees in the start-up
phase--never mind the incredibly high cost of regulatory
compliance overall and mandatory health insurance. Still
worse are the ever-
rapacious trial lawyers.

He goes on to say:

I stand behind no one in my enthusiasm and dedication to
improving our society and especially our health care. It is
worth adding that it makes little sense to send Treasury
checks to high net-worth people in the form of Social
Security. That includes you, me and scores of members of
Congress. Why not cut through that red tape, apply a basic
means test to that program to make sure that money actually
reduces federal national spending and isn't simply shifted
elsewhere.

So it is a very interesting article. He says:

A little more than 30 years ago, Bernie Marcus, Arthur
Blank, Pat Farrah and I got together and founded The Home
Depot. Our dream was to create a new kind of home-
improvement center catering to do-it-yourselfers. The concept
was to have a wide assortment, a high level of service, and
the lowest pricing possible. We opened the front door in
1979, also a time of severe economic slowdown. Yet today,
Home Depot is staffed by more than 325,000 dedicated, well-
trained and highly motivated people offering outstanding
service and knowledge to millions of consumers.

Then he goes on to say:

A man by the name of Jim McNerney is the CEO of Boeing Company. He
writes: ``What Business Wants From Washington.'' Again, I quote from
October 31, 2011. Mr. McNerney says:

America works best when American business and government
complement one another: Business plays the vital role in
economic expansion and job creation, while government
oversees the environment in which businesses can innovate
and compete. This approach fueled prosperity for
generations and produced the world's largest and most
powerful economy. We seem far adrift of that ideal today.
The regulatory climate is a perfect example. A tsunami of
new rules and regulations from an alphabet soup of federal
agencies is paralyzing investment and increasing by tens
of billions of dollars the compliance costs for small and
large businesses.
No one wants to discard truly meaningful public safety or
environmental regulations. But what we face is a jobs crisis
and regulators charged with protecting the interests of the
people are making worse the problem that is hurting them
most. Regulatory relief in the energy sector alone could
create up to two million new jobs and we won't have to borrow
a penny to pay for it.

He goes on to talk about the supercommittee. He says the White House
and Congress should build on that momentum and ``enact comprehensive
pro-growth tax reform that benefits everyone; proceed with regulatory
reform; and reform and restructure existing entitlement programs.''

If Washington can once again find the ability to mix
democracy and effective governing, American business will
once again unleash America's economic potential.

So Mr. McNerney, in his article, reflects the views of everybody I
talk to, small businesses and large. They want tax relief. They want
regulatory relief. In fact, what they want more than anything else is
some kind of certainty about the economic future and the playing field
in which they will have to compete. Will there be increasing regulatory
burden? Will there be a raise in taxes, as is facing us in 2013? Can we
have a tax code they can understand and comprehend that is fair to one
and all? Can they unleash their savings accounts and the money they
have kept in reserve and invest and hire with some confidence that
there will be a return on that investment, that they will succeed for
themselves and their children?
That is what this jobs bill is all about. That is what we are trying
to get done. This is an attempt to look at the problems America faces
today, which, by the way, do spill over onto our national security
problems, as the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff pointed
out.
So it affects all of America. It hurts us in so many ways. Yet we sit
here, and apparently the select committee, the supercommittee as it is
called, is at some kind of gridlock. We sit here today with one
amendment here, one amendment here, back and forth, and then run right
out to the media and attack each other for being uncooperative and why
are we not more congenial and why are we not willing to compromise.
Well, I will plead guilty for perhaps not being willing to compromise
on some issues because some issues are a matter of principle. We do not
compromise principle, I have found out. But we do come forth with
proposals and try to find those on which we can agree. I do not know
why we do not agree on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
Every State, every mayor, every city councilman, every county
supervisor, every one of them is faced with the first problem of a
balanced budget.
Why should we exempt ourselves? Why can't we together work out the
details concerning a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution? The
overwhelming majority of Americans would heave a sigh of relief if we
ever did that because then they would know we would be more careful
stewards of their tax dollars. It seems to me we could move forward
with that.
Enhanced rescission authority. I believe the President of the United
States should have enhanced rescission authority, what we used to know
of as the old line-item veto, taking those lines in appropriations
bills he objects to and vetoing them--and I will not go through the
complications of how it is done--but have them taken out, with certain
restrictions as to how many times he could do it. Then, like every
Governor--not every Governor but most Governors in America have--to
line item out, without having to veto the entire appropriations bill,
sometimes maybe even causing damage to our ability to govern.
I am well aware if we voted for an enhanced rescission by the
Congress of the United States, signed by the President, the President
would probably line-item veto some programs that I would object to him
doing so. I am willing--more than willing--to take that pain as opposed
to today where we continue to have appropriations bills which in many
cases people have not read or truly understand.
Tax reform. Every place I go people talk to me about the need for tax
reform. I have yet to meet an American who understands completely the
Tax Code. I have yet to meet an American who believes our Tax Code is
fair. I have yet to meet an American who says: If you would just give
me three tax brackets, a very small number of deductions, and then I
could fill out my tax return on a post card or in the case of some of
the countries--the Baltic countries that used to be under the Soviet
Union--on my computer. Then you would see greater compliance, you would
see less of a need for the IRS, and you would see Americans more than
willing to pay their fair share if they believed the system was fair.
It is not fair when major corporations and individuals pay no taxes
because they have bright lawyers, and they take advantage of all of the
loopholes and deductions they have been able to get put into the Tax
Code over the years with the help of very powerful lobbyists in this
town.
Repatriation and territorial reform. The Presiding Officer, the
Senator from North Carolina, and I have proposed a pretty simple
proposal; that is, the $1.4 trillion that is now sitting overseas
because they will not bring it back because of the tax situation; that
we could bring that money home, and we could provide a permanent
incentive with that for repatriating these foreign earnings.
I say to my friend from North Carolina, I have been kind of
astonished at some of the resistance to this where people say it would
not do any good. Help me out. It would not do any good to bring $1.4
trillion back to the United States of America? Do we really believe
that would just go in peoples' wallets and purses? Of course not.

[[Page S7274]]

The Senator from North Carolina and I have talked to too many people,
corporation executives, who have said: Yes, I will not only create jobs
and invest that money, but I will give you a plan. I will give a plan
that we will implement with that money--that IBM or Boeing or other
major corporations that have this money parked overseas.
They are enthusiastic about it. Yet, unbelievably, there are people
who argue that it would have no effect whatsoever on our economy. It is
hard to understand.
Now we obviously get into ObamaCare. I noticed that the latest
polling showed, I believe, that some 54 percent of the American people
want the health care law repealed. Thirty-some percent still support
it. The fact is that over time, as Americans learn more and more about
the health care law we passed, they have become more and more opposed
to it. They are angry because the whole purpose of the health care act
was to provide all Americans with health care that is affordable but
also to bend the curve of the inflation of health care in America
because we all know the present inflation of health care is
unsustainable. It is unsustainable. Yet what has been the result since
the passage? Inflation of health care continues to go up; the cost of
health care, whether it be to the men and women serving or average
citizens, continues to go up, and it has to stop. We need to look at
that and look at medical malpractice reform. In Texas today, they
passed medical malpractice reform, and it seems to work, and most
people are happy with it.
The Dodd-Frank bill--it still is stunning to me that we passed this
regulatory reform bill; they called it a financial takeover that the
Dodd-Frank bill is commonly known as--the whole purpose of it was that
we would have legislation that would ensure that never again would any
institution be too big to fail because the taxpayers never again should
have to bail out any financial institution. Is there anybody who
believes that these huge institutions on Wall Street haven't grown
bigger, that they are not bigger to fail than they used to be? The fact
is that they are. What did we get? We got a whole bunch of regulations
and different bureaucracies, some of them less accountable than others,
and obviously a damper on some of the financial activities.
We need to make sure no financial institution is too big to fail. We
need to assure the American people that never again will they suffer
the way they have during this period of time because of the malfeasance
of others. Unfortunately, the Dodd-Frank bill did not achieve that
goal.
We need to have a moratorium on regulations. Senator Johnson of
Wisconsin has a bill that prohibits any Federal agency from issuing new
regulations until the unemployment rate is equal to or less than 7.7
percent. Senators Snowe and Coburn have introduced legislation that is
part of this Freedom from Restrictive Excessive Executive Demands and
Onerous Mandates Act, which strengthens and streamlines the regulatory
act by requiring regulators to include ``indirect economic impacts'' in
small business analyses, requiring periodic review and sunset of
existing rules, and expanding business review panels as a requirement
for all Federal agencies instead of just the Environmental Protection
Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
I notice my colleague, Dr. Barrasso, from Wyoming on the floor, who
knows more about programs in the health care reform act. I will try to
be polite and refer to it today as the health care reform act.
I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with the Senator from
Wyoming.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. McCAIN. Does Senator Barrasso believe or could he tell us,
perhaps, the effects on the cost of health care since passage of this
legislation and perhaps what we need to do to really fix health care in
America, which we all agree needs to be fixed?
Mr. BARRASSO. I agree with my colleague from Arizona. I thank him for
his leadership and congratulate him for the piece of legislation that
is currently on the floor. I am here to speak in support of it because
I want to get small businesses hiring again and get people back to
work.
We need to find ways to make it easier and cheaper for the private
sector to create jobs. This health care law my colleague has asked me
about is one thing the President promised, saying: If you pass it,
health insurance for families will go down--he said about $2,500 per
family per year. Instead, we have seen--in response to the Senator--
health insurance rates go up. Across the board, people agree they have
gone higher and faster than if the law had never been signed.
I think it was interesting and telling yesterday that the voters of
Ohio went to the polls and voted overwhelmingly--almost 2 to 1--to say
they don't want to be forced to participate in the President's so-
called health care law. What people in Ohio and people in my State and
in all of the States around the country are asking for--and this is my
goal--is to provide people with the care they want from the doctor they
want--the care they need from the doctor they want at a cost they can
afford.
There are things we need to do, but to put these additional expenses
and mandates on the small businesses of this country, the job creators,
just makes it harder and more expensive for those small businesses to
hire more people. At a time in this Nation when we have 14 million
Americans out of work, over 9 percent unemployment, we need to take
positive steps to help them get back to work. I view this health care
law and the expenses as a heavy, wet blanket on small businesses that
are trying to hire people. We know of small businesses around the
country that know that the penalties are significant when they hire
that 50th employee. We have businesses that could grow, but they are
not going to hire that extra person because of the significant expenses
to the business. They need some certainty. They are getting so much
uncertainty out of Washington with rules, regulations, redtape, the
expense of the health care law, and the threats that keep coming of
increased taxes. Small businesses and businesses are just not hiring.
That is why I am here to commend and compliment my colleague from
Arizona for bringing forth to the American people a positive proposal
to put people back to work.
Mr. McCAIN. I ask the Senator this on two other issues. One issue was
not included in the health care reform act, which is the issue of
medical malpractice, which the Senator, Dr. Barrasso, has had a lot of
personal experience with. The other is this--which I think is
symptomatic of really the way we cobbled this whole thing together,
which is that we have now found a provision in the bill that cannot be
and will not be enforced, the so-called CLASS Act.
Mr. BARRASSO. Both of those are areas where there can be significant
savings.
Folks have said that if they do this sort of legislative approach to
remove this lawsuit abuse, the savings to the Federal budget would be
about $50 billion over the budgeting timeframe--$50 billion. Any
physician, nurse, practitioner, or physician assistant would say the
savings would even be greater because of the additional tests and so-
called defensive medicine that is practiced in an effort to protect
hospitals, physicians, health care providers from the possibility of a
lawsuit. They do a lot of extra diagnostic studies--x rays, CAT scans,
MRIs, and blood tests--to try to not miss something, which is very
unlikely, but they want to protect themselves from a suit. I think the
savings would be even greater, but even the government accountants say
it would save $50 billion.

The other is the so-called CLASS Act--something one of my Democratic
colleagues said was comparable to a Ponzi scheme that even Bernie
Madoff would be proud of. It was an accounting gimmick, a bookkeeping
trick used during debate and passage of the so-called health care law.
It was aimed at trying to bring money in in the first 5 years of an
accounting scheme where they would then not have to pay for any
services and to start paying for services about the sixth year, and
then the expenses would go up and up. What they have now realized and
what we realized on this side of the aisle initially, right away, and
pointed out on the floor before the vote, is that this could not work
long term.
In an effort to try to use this scheme to say the health care law
would pay

[[Page S7275]]

for itself, they forced this through, crammed it through, as they did
with the rest of the health care law. Now we find out that even the
administration says this cannot work, it is not going to work. OK, just
repeal that part of the law. Oh, they sure don't want to do that
because that would admit it was a scheme from the beginning.
Mr. McCAIN. Would it not also disturb the predictions as far as the
fiscal impact of the CLASS Act as well?
Mr. BARRASSO. It would. It would undermine the argument of the
President, who says this is going to pay for itself, when, in fact, it
is not.
It is interesting, if you ask people watching at home or when you go
to townhall meetings, do you think under this health care law your
health care will be better or worse, they will say worse. Very few
think it will be improved under this law the President forced through.
And then if you ask the same group of people, a cross-section of people
in our States, if they think the cost of their care will go down, as
the President promised, or go up, they all say it is going to go up. So
they are going to have to pay more, get less, and be unhappy with it,
which is why I think yesterday in Ohio two-thirds of the voters who
turned out--and the margin was over a 1 million voters difference
between those for and against. They overwhelmingly voted to say: We
don't want to have to live under the Obama health care law; we want to
be able to opt out of that, which is all small businesses want to do.
They don't want to have to deal with these expensive bandaids. Let's
work together and within our States and work with other small
businesses, but we don't want to live under these very expensive
Washington mandates, which makes it that much harder for us to hire
people.
Mr. McCAIN. Can we return just for a minute to medical malpractice
reform because many people, when you talk about that, believe there has
to be appropriate compensation when malpractice occurs. We all know
malpractice occurs, so we don't want the innocent victims of medical
malpractice--however it occurs in the health care scenario--to not be
able to get just compensation in the case of malpractice on the part of
the caregiver.
Mr. BARRASSO. That is exactly right. I agree. Studies have shown that
in the system we live under today, less than one-third of the money
actually goes to people who are deserving and ought to be receiving
that money, and the other two-thirds goes to the system--lawyers,
courts, and expert witnesses. So very little of the money paid in
premiums actually gets to the injured party.
There are ways to do a better job of that with significant savings in
the process--making sure people are appropriately compensated if an
injury occurs but at the same time getting savings out of a system
which is overwrought with money going to the wrong place and which also
results in so many unnecessary tests being done in efforts of doctors
and nurses and hospitals to protect themselves.
Mr. McCAIN. I thank the Senator. I appreciate his unique expertise in
the health care issues that are still transcendent in this country. I
thank him for his enormous contributions.
I want to continue with some of this legislation.
The Unfunded Mandates Accountability Act, which was originally an act
of Senator Portman's, requires agencies specifically to address the
potential effect of new regulations on job creation and to consider
market-based and nongovernmental alternatives to regulation, broadens
the scope of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act to include rules issued
by independent agencies and rules that impose direct or indirect
economic costs of $100 million or more, requires agencies to adopt the
least burdensome regulatory options and achieves the goal of the
statute authorizing the rule and creates a meaningful right to judicial
review of an agency's compliance with the law. If there is anything
that has grown out of control, in the view of this Member, it is
government regulations. First, we had a trickle, but now it is a flood,
of government regulations, which then impose additional costs, which
then take money away from job creation and, in particular, small
business people. This is where accountability of the unfunded mandates
is, at the very least, called for.

Senator Barrasso may want to discuss this next provision. The
Government Litigation Savings Act reforms the Equal Access to Justice
Act by disallowing the reimbursement of attorneys' fees and costs to
well-funded special interest groups that repeatedly sue the Federal
Government. The bill retains Federal reimbursements for individuals,
small businesses, veterans, and others who must fight in court against
wrongful government action by eliminating taxpayer-funded reimbursement
of attorneys' fees for wealthy special interest groups. The legislation
helps eliminate repeated procedural lawsuits that delay permitting
exploration and land management.
If the Senator would like to comment.
Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I would like to comment. Section 8 of
this Jobs Through Growth Act is the Government Litigation Savings Act.
This was something introduced in the House by Cynthia Lummis, a Member
of Congress from Wyoming, and myself in the Senate. This legislation
will return the Equal Access to Justice Act--or what I refer to as
EAJA--back to its original purpose.
The small business entity or individual citizen should not have their
individual liberties overrun by Washington. EAJA was meant to provide
people with limited financial resources--veterans, Social Security
claimants, small business owners--the ability to defend themselves
against harmful government actions. That is how it was intended to be
used. It allows individuals to sue the Federal Government, to recover
part of their attorneys' fees and the costs.
This was a well-intended law, but it has been exploited--exploited by
large environmental groups with large legal departments--and it is
being used now as a profit center for these large organizations through
litigation against our government, and they are all getting paid to do
it. The total amount that has been paid is unknown, and the reason it
is unknown is that since 1995 something called the Paperwork Reduction
Act defunded all the reporting requirements.
There is an attorney in Wyoming, Karen Budd-Falen, who has conducted
research to see how much money a lot of these environmental groups have
made. She found 14 different environmental groups have brought over
1,200--14 groups have brought over 1,200--Federal cases in 19 States
and the District of Columbia. They have collected over $37 million in
taxpayer dollars through this Equal Access to Justice Act and similar
laws, and this doesn't even include settlements and fees that were
sealed from public view. This is what we can find in public documents.
Lowell Baier, who is the president emeritus of the Boone and Crockett
Club, tracked through the IRS 990 forms and found that of the most
litigious so-called nonprofit groups, they average over $9 million a
year of taxpayer money, which of course hinders economic growth, limits
creation of jobs by individuals and by small businesses and by energy
producers, farmers, and ranchers.
So I am very happy to see my colleague included our efforts in this
overall jobs package because I think these are the sorts of things we
are trying to overcome and that make it harder and more expensive for
the private sector to create jobs. I want to find ways to make it
easier and cheaper for the private sector to create jobs.
If I could, we have been talking about the private sector. The
majority leader has said: Oh, the problem isn't the private sector. He
said it was the public sector--the government. Government is doing just
fine. It is the private sector that has lost over 1\1/2\ million jobs
from February of 2009 to September of 2011.
Mr. McCAIN. I thank my friend.
Included in this package is the Employment Protection Act, introduced
by Senator Toomey. It requires the EPA to analyze the impact on
unemployment levels and economic activity before issuing any
regulation, policy statement, guidance document, endangerment finding
or denying any permit. Each analysis is required to include a
description of estimated job losses and decreased economic activity due
to the denial of a permit, including

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any permit denied under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act.
Senator Johanns has contributed the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention
Act, which prevents the EPA from regulating dust in rural America while
still maintaining protections to public health under the Clean Air Act.
The National Labor Relations Board reform was introduced by Senator
Graham of South Carolina. From backdoor card check, to threatened jobs
in South Carolina, the out-of-control National Labor Relations Board is
paying back union officials at the expense of worker rights and jobs.
To create more jobs, legislation prohibiting the NLRB from stopping new
plants and legislation to prevent coercive, quick-snap union elections
should be passed.
I am sure my colleagues are very well aware of the unprecedented and
incredible action by the NLRB that basically prohibited a major
aircraft manufacturing company from locating in the State of South
Carolina, where it is a right-to-work State--an unbelievable overreach
by a Federal bureaucracy--which still staggers the imagination, but it
also shows that elections have consequences.
There is also the Government Neutrality and Contracting Act. It
repeals the President's order requiring government-funded construction
projects to only use union labor. This would reduce costs of Federal
jobs projects by as much as 18 percent. That was Senator Vitter's
contribution.
Senator Shelby has introduced the Financial Regulatory Responsibility
Act, which requires financial regulators to conduct consistent economic
analysis on every new rule they propose, provide clear justification
for the rules, and determine the economic impacts of proposed
rulemakings, including their effects on job growth and net job
creation.
With so many of these pieces of legislation I am talking about, a lot
of Americans might say: Don't we do that already? Unfortunately, we
don't.
Senator Roberts has the Regulatory Responsibility for our Economy
Act, which codifies and strengthens President Obama's January 18
Executive order that directs agencies within to review, modify,
streamline, expand or repeal those significant regulatory actions that
are duplicative, unnecessary, overly burdensome or would have
significant economic impacts on Americans.

Congressman Gibbs, over on the House side, has the Reducing
Regulatory Burdens Act, which eliminates a new duplicate EPA regulation
that will cost millions of dollars to implement without providing
additional environmental protection.
On domestic job energy promotion we have, from Senator Vitter, the
Domestic Jobs, Domestic Energy, and Deficit Reduction Act that would
require the Department of the Interior to move forward with offshore
energy exploration and create a timeframe for environmental and
judicial review.
Senator Murkowski has included the Jobs and Energy Permitting Act,
which eliminates the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the EPA's
decisionmaking process for air permits, which is delaying energy
exploration in the Alaska and outercontinental shelf. It will create
over 50,000 jobs and produce 1 million barrels of oil a day.
There is no one in this body who knows as much about these issues as
the distinguished Senator from Alaska.
Senator Barrasso again has brought forward the American Energy and
Western Jobs Act. The bill streamlines the preleasing, leasing, and
developmental process for drilling on public land and requires the
administration to create goals for American oil and gas production.
The Mining Jobs Protection Act by Senators McConnell, Inhofe, and
Paul requires the EPA to use or lose their 404 permitting review
authority. Under this bill, the EPA will have 60 days to voice concerns
about a permit application or the permit moves forward. Any concerns
voiced by the EPA would need to be published in the Federal Register
within 30 days.
Senator Inhofe has contributed the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which
prohibits the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse
gases.
The Repeal Restrictions on Government Use of Domestic Alternative
Fuels Act would repeal section 526 of the Energy Independence and
Security Act of 2007, which prohibits Federal agencies from contracting
for alternative fuels such as coal-to-liquid fuel.
The Public Lands Job Creation Act of Senator Heller eliminates the
burdensome and unnecessary delay in approval of projects on Federal
lands by allowing the permitting process to move forward unless the
Department of the Interior objects within 45 days. This will streamline
the permitting process for domestic energy and mineral production on
BLM lands without compromising environmental analysis.
Senator McConnell has introduced the renew trade promotion authority,
which would provide the President with fast-track authority to
negotiate trade agreements that will eliminate foreign trade barriers
and open new markets for American goods.
We all know trade promotion authority is vital to the eventual
enactment of free-trade agreements. I am incredibly depressed that we
would not have renewed this trade promotion authority along with the
passage of the long overdue free-trade agreements we just passed
through this body.
The President and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have
become fond of saying Republicans have no plan for creating jobs and
putting America back on a path to fiscal prosperity. Nothing could be
further from the truth. As I have just laid out in the plan before us
today, we have compiled many job-creating measures offered by our
colleagues in the Senate.
Furthermore, since January, our colleagues in the House of
Representatives have passed at least 22 job-creating bills. Guess how
many of the bills that were passed by the House of Representatives have
gotten consideration in the Senate. Five.
Similar to our plan, our colleagues in the House have focused a great
deal of attention on empowering small businesses and reducing
government barriers to job creation. Here are just a few of the
commonsense, job-creating measures passed by the House, none of which
have been considered by the Senate: review of Federal regulations,
reducing regulatory burdens, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, the Clean
Water Cooperative Federalism Act, Consumer Financial Protection and
Soundness Improvement Act, Protecting Jobs From Government Interference
Act, Transparency and Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation Act,
Cement Sector Regulatory Relief Act, and the EPA Regulatory Relief Act.
So the next time we hear the President of the United States say
Republicans are blocking or have failed to take up or failed to bring
forward a proposal, we have proposals, and we have measures that have
been passed by the House. The proposals in this jobs plan bill deserve
the consideration of this body.
We need to prove to the American people that we will do everything we
can to eliminate the waste of their hard-earned dollars. Enacting an
enhanced rescission authority to give the President statutory line-item
veto authority to reduce wasteful spending is an issue we have been
looking at for years.
Why do we need to grant the President enhanced rescission line-item
veto authority? According to a database created by Taxpayers Against
Earmarks, washingtonwatch.com, and Taxpayers for Common Sense, for
fiscal year 2011, Members requested over 39,000 earmarks totaling over
$130 billion. Just last December, we were forced to consider, at the
very last minute, an Omnibus appropriations bill that was 1,924 pages
long and contained the funding for all 12 of the annual appropriations
bills for a grand total of $1.1 trillion. In the short time I had to
review that massive piece of legislation before it was brought to the
floor, I identified approximately 6,488 earmarks, totaling nearly $8.3
billion.
We need an enhanced rescission act.
Thankfully, the massive omnibus was not enacted. But these earmarks,
and the process by which they make their way into spending bills, are
evidence that the system is badly broken and in need of reforms.
I have more to say, and I have taken too much time in the eyes of
many of my colleagues, perhaps, and I want to apologize to any of my
colleagues who had planned to speak on the floor and have been
preempted by my long remarks. But I feel that we have an obligation to
the American people to address the issues that are of greatest concern
and the greatest amount of

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pain to them today, and that is jobs and the economy--jobs and the
economy.
I care a lot about our national security challenges and I care a lot
about what is going in the world. But when I go home and a woman stands
up at a townhall meeting with her two children and says, I don't have a
job and I am being kicked out of my home next week; when we have people
who are being thrown out of their houses, and over half of the homes in
my home State of Arizona are under water--in other words, worth less
than the mortgage payments they are required to make--when we have
chronic unemployment that in some cases, such as down in Yuma, AZ, is
well into double digits, then we have to get going on getting some jobs
and the economy back on the right track.
I want to repeat--and I don't mean to be confrontational with my
colleagues, but we tried for 2 years, when the other side had the
majority in the House and the Senate and they had passed major pieces
of legislation that were advertised to get our economy back on track--
they didn't--can't we try something different? Can't we try the kinds
of things that have brought us out of other recessions? Can't we ask
our colleagues in the Senate to create a simplified tax system that the
Heritage Foundation says, by lowering the corporate rate to 25 percent,
the number of jobs in the United States would grow on an average of
581,000 annually from 2011 to 2020? Can't we look at this regulatory
system, which has put such a damper on small businesses and large?
Can't we give American people a break from the flood of new regulations
that continues to come down and is a major factor in this environment
of uncertainty amongst businesses small and large?
The approval rating of the American people of Congress is now, the
latest poll I saw, 9 percent. That is something that I joke about, but
it is also something that grieves me a great deal because I believe the
overwhelming majority of the Members of Congress are here and are
dedicated to serving their constituents in the most honorable fashion
and in the best possible way they can, according to their values and
their principles.
But it is a fact that the American people are very angry and they are
very upset. One of the major reasons is, of course, they have not seen
progress in the economy. And that is very understandable. We are now
seeing these Occupy Wall Street people. The tea partiers will probably
be rejuvenated. We are seeing expressions of anger and frustration all
over the country, and it is unfortunate. But I believe that a couple of
things are going to happen unless we act in a more efficient fashion
that addresses the concerns of the American people, and that is I
believe you will see the rise of a third party in this country, and I
think also you will see greater and greater manifestations of
opposition to business as usual here in Washington.
As I said at the beginning of my remarks, I am more than eager to sit
down with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and come
together particularly on some of the issues that clearly we have stated
on both sides we are in favor of.
Again, my apologies to my colleagues whose time I may have preempted
on the floor. But I think this issue of jobs, which we will be voting
on tomorrow, is one that deserved more than passing attention.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I thank the Senator from Arizona for his remarks, and
certainly for me, at least, he owes no apology for having spoken his
mind. I always welcome the opportunity to listen, and I have done so,
and am honored to follow him.

Amendment No. 927

Today I speak as we approach Veterans Day, and I believe this
Veterans Day may be particularly significant for our Nation in part
because we have the opportunity in this Chamber to honor some very
special veterans, the Montford Point marines, who graced us with their
presence yesterday as we celebrated the 236th birthday of the U.S.
Marine Corps. They were present then. They were present in 1942, when
they stepped forward to serve and fight for this Nation. They are
African Americans who fought and served for this Nation at a time when
they anticipated no recognition and certainly no honor, and we have the
opportunity between now and Veterans Day to approve a measure that
would grant them the Congressional Gold Medal, which they richly
deserve and they have earned through their service. They are the
epitome of the Marines--they happen to be marines--and of the service
men and women whom we honor on this Veterans Day. They happen to be men
of the ``greatest generation,'' the World War II generation. They are
among the greatest of that generation.
I had the great honor to be with them yesterday, in fact to be the
honored guest in the Russell Building when the commandant and I had the
privilege to honor them. Their presence yesterday reminds us of our
continuing obligation to all veterans and of the need to make the well-
being of our veterans a priority, as I have sought to do.

Indeed, my first bill, entitled Honoring All Veterans, has as its
objective to leave no veteran behind. It offers a comprehensive set of
measures to assure that we keep faith with every veteran, every veteran
who needs a job, every veteran who needs better health care or
counseling or training or education. These commitments we have made as
a nation to all of our veterans and now we have the opportunity to keep
those promises and keep faith with them, as we have a solemn obligation
to do every day, every year, not just Veterans Day.
I want to thank Senator Harkin of Iowa for cosponsoring the
legislation I have offered, and also to thank Senator Tester, Chairman
Murray of the Veterans Committee, and Ranking Member Burr of that
committee for their work to address these challenges recognized by the
Honoring All Veterans Act and this comprehensive measure, VOW to Hire
Heroes amendment. Truly, we should vow to hire our heroes, and we
should do so not just in words but in deed, not just in rhetoric but in
action, and I am proud to be a cosponsor of the important tax credit
provision in the Tester veterans jobs amendment for businesses that
hire veterans.
Helping veterans is a challenge that will require the engagement of
everyone in the community, from Congress to veterans service
organizations and business leaders across the board, across the
country, across the State of Connecticut.
At a recent veterans hiring forum I hosted in Connecticut, I heard
firsthand the challenges in veterans recruitment, and what innovative
companies such as United Reynolds were doing to hire skilled and
talented veterans in this symposium in that setting. They provided an
example of what we can and should do.
I see my cosponsorship of this amendment as honoring a commitment to
push for legislation to provide incentives to firms to hire unemployed
veterans, and to make it easier for companies to connect with veterans
so they can fill some of the jobs that are now available. There are
jobs available, and we should give our veterans the skills they need,
skills they may have acquired in part during their service that need to
be honed and expanded, and we have that opportunity. I want to thank
all of those Senators for championing this measure.
My own legislation, Honoring All Veterans Act, allows a veteran to
take the Transition Assistance Program, known as TAP, an interagency
workshop coordinated by the Departments of Defense, Labor, and Veterans
Affairs for up to 1 year after separation at any military facility. The
bill before us makes participation in the program mandatory. Low
participation rates in this program are especially concerning, as
junior members tend to be those most in need of the services provided
by TAP, and the benefits available through the VA for many skills such
as simple skills, writing resumes or interviewing have never been
needed or learned before. Not having such skills, not knowing how to
interview or write a resume puts them at a severe disadvantage when
they are attempting to enter and succeed in the workplace after they
exchange their military uniform for civilian clothes.
Section 222 of the VOW to Hire Heroes Act authorizes an assessment of

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the equivalence between skills developed in military occupational
specialties and qualifications required for civilian employment with
the private sector.
I like to say that when you call out the National Guard, you call out
the best in America. When you call out the Connecticut National Guard,
you call out truly the very best in America. The military recruits the
most talented men and women in America to serve, and then invests
heavily in those skills and their professional development. Yet when
they enter the civilian world, very often those skills are simply
unrecognized by laws requiring separate training or licensure, and we
ought to do more to recognize the expertise and experience the military
gives to these brave men and women. That is why I authored a similar
provision in the Honoring All Veterans Act to ensure that civilian
employers and educational institutions recognize a veteran's military
training.
The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America reported--and I am
quoting--61 percent of employers do not believe they have a complete
understanding of the qualifications ex-servicemembers offer. And,
recently separated servicemembers with college degrees earn on average
almost $10,000 less than their nonveteran counterparts.
I applaud my colleagues for including section 222 in the VOW to Hire
Heroes Act. It is a vital step toward helping employers find the
employees they need and toward closing the income gap that exists now.
The legislation before us also expands education and training
opportunities for older veterans by providing 100,000 unemployed
veterans of past eras and wars with up to 1 year of additional GI
benefits to go toward education and training programs at community
colleges and technical schools. I am proud of the bipartisan compromise
to extend this period for 1 year. I hoped it would be even further
broadened and extended, but this measure is a great first start toward
providing skills for job opportunities that now exist and can be filled
by men and women coming out of our military to civilian life.
Let me say, to come back to the Montford Point marines, I want to
thank Senator Pat Roberts who was with me yesterday at the 236th
birthday celebration, and most especially I thank the Senator from
North Carolina, Kay Hagan, who is with us today, for her leadership on
this issue. Truly, we can make this Veterans Day special for all of us
in this Nation if we approve this Congressional Gold Medal to men who
stepped forward to serve and fight when this Nation failed to
appreciate their service and valor. Now we have the opportunity to make
good on our commitments to them as veterans--to all of our veterans--in
this measure. I am proud to join colleagues on both sides of the aisle
in nearing now the number that is necessary to approve that measure,
and I hope we can reach that kind of bipartisan consensus on that
legislation, but also on the broader VOW to Hire Heroes Act, that can
lead us back to the kind of bipartisan approach on so many issues that
we need to emulate in this body.
I thank my colleagues for supporting this measure, and I yield the
floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mrs. HAGAN. Mr. President, I stand today, just 2 days away from
Veterans Day, to urge my colleagues to support our courageous service
men and women, our veterans and their families, by voting for the VOW
to Hire Heroes Act of 2011. This legislation would have a tremendous
impact on every part of our country, but it would be especially
significant in my home State of North Carolina, the most military-
friendly State in the Nation.
In North Carolina we are blessed to be home to so many of our
country's heroes. I don't think most people understand that nationwide
military servicemembers account for only 1 percent of our country's
population. But in North Carolina, more than one-third of our
population is either in the military, is a veteran, or has an immediate
family member who is in the military or is a veteran. Over 700,000
veterans call North Carolina home.
I know that makes our State stronger. I know because, like so many
North Carolinians, I too come from a strong military family that
instilled in me a sense of responsibility to my community and to my
country. My husband, my father, my brother are all Navy veterans. My
father-in-law was a two-star general in the Marine Corps, and my two
nephews have both served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I know because I have traveled my State's eight military bases from
Fort Bragg to Cherry Point to Camp Lejeune to bases in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Kuwait. I have seen up close the incredible demands
placed on our military and the remarkable bravery and patriotism they
exhibit each and every day.
I know because whether I am meeting a general, a young private, a
wounded warrior, or a 90-year-old veteran traveling on one of the
Flights of Honor that bring our World War II veterans to DC to see
their monuments, there are certain qualities that I always recognize in
those who serve in the Armed Forces. These are selflessness, personal
integrity, and an unmatched work ethic and unwavering courage.
I take it personally as a Senator from North Carolina, as well as a
proud daughter, wife, and sister of a veteran when our military members
and their families are hurting. I take it personally when this country
of ours does not live up to the promises we make to our service men and
women. Right now our military families are unquestionably hurting.
Right now we have lapsed in our commitment to our heroes.
As has been said many times on this floor, the unemployment rate
among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans is an unconscionably high 12.1
percent. That is more than 3 percentage points higher than the national
average unemployment. That is about a quarter of a million men and
women, all of whom have put their lives on the line to protect our
country, who are now struggling just to earn a paycheck--240,000 heroes
with irreplaceable skill sets and experience who cannot find a job.
We cannot forget that every unemployed veteran has a family, a family
who has likely spent untold sleepless nights worrying if their loved
one is safe. Now, after years of selfless service, these families are
forced to worry if they can pay their monthly bills, if they can even
afford to keep their homes.
According to HUD's 2010 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, more than
1,000 North Carolina veterans are homeless and spend every night
without a roof over their head. That is simply 1,000 too many. This is
not a fate that we can accept for our veterans. This is not the country
we strive to be. We need to support our veterans when they make the
transition from the military to the civilian workforce. We need to
provide them with the training and resources they need to transfer
those skills to the private sector. We need to encourage our business
owners to employ some of our country's most highly trained, highly
ambitious, and highly motivated individuals.
The VOW to Hire Heroes Act does just that. It provides a tax credit
of up to $5,600 for hiring veterans. For our wounded warriors it
includes a tax credit of up to $9,600--for hiring veterans with
service-connected disabilities. It requires our service men and women
transitioning to the civilian workforce to participate in the
Transition Assistance Program, which provides services such as resume
writing workshops and career counseling to help these individuals land
the jobs that are available. It expands education and training
opportunities at our community colleges and technical schools for
100,000 unemployed veterans who served prior to September 11.
I am pleased to say that some provisions of this legislation are very
similar to a bipartisan bill that Senator Scott Brown and I introduced
earlier this year. The priorities this legislation focuses on are not
Democratic priorities. They are not Republican priorities. Supporting
our veterans is and has always been an American priority. We owe it to
them, but we also owe it to our future.
I hope many saw the August cover story in Time magazine that
described our veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan as ``the
next greatest generation.'' If you have not read it, I highly encourage
you to do so. The author, Joe Klein, whom I met on a military transport
plane in Afghanistan, spent the past 5 years visiting with

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Iraq and Afghanistan veterans across the country, including two best
friends he met from North Carolina. These friends, Dale Beatty and John
Gallina, whom I met last year in Charlotte, joined the North Carolina
National Guard together, deployed to Iraq together, and nearly died
together when their humvee was blown up by an antitank mine. Dale lost
both his legs and John suffered a traumatic brain injury.

When a local homebuilders association offered to build Dale a home,
Dale and John were both inspired to assist other handicapped veterans.
Today their nonprofit Purple Heart Homes, headquartered in Statesville,
NC, helps build and adapt homes for service-disabled veterans.
Dale and John represent, as ADM Mike Mullen said, ``part of a
generation who is flat out wired to contribute, flat out wired to
serve.'' As GEN David Petraeus told Time magazine, our veterans ``have
had to show incredible flexibility, never knowing whether they're going
to be greeted with a handshake or hand grenade. They've been exposed to
experiences that are totally unique. . . . I believe they are our next
great generation of leaders.''
There are many more Dale Beattys and John Gallinas out there, but we
cannot leave our next great generation of leaders standing in an
unemployment line. We must come together and fight for our veterans and
their families just as hard as they have fought for our freedoms. We
must pass the VOW to Hire Heroes Act.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BEGICH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the
quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BEGICH. Mr. President, I rise today to express my strong support
for the VOW to Hire Heroes Act. Very simply, it is a bill that will
help our returning heroes get good jobs as they transition back into
civilian life.
The bill is supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. I look
forward to the passage of this bill tomorrow--perfect timing as our
country prepares to honor the bravery, sacrifice, and commitment of our
American veterans.
Since I first walked into this Chamber nearly 3 years ago, it has
been a great privilege to serve on the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.
I am also proudly serving on the Armed Services Committee. From these
positions I have worked on behalf of the 74,000 veterans who call
Alaska home and the more than 28,000 Active-Duty and Reserve component
men and women serving our great country.
My State of Alaska, for all its unique geography and demographics,
has the distinction of being the home of the largest proportion of
veterans per capita of any other State in our country.
Alaska has a proud history of defending our country. This poster
shows our troops preparing for battle on Alaska's soil during World War
II. Although many Americans are still not aware, there was fierce
fighting in the Aleutians as the Japanese launched a diversionary
attack in preparation for the Battle of Midway. One of my most
rewarding moments so far as a Member of this body was making sure that
two dozen brave members of the Alaska Territory Guard, all
distinguished Alaskan Native Elders, finally got the recognition they
earned for their courageous service to this Nation more than a half
century ago. We can see by this poster, a few of them here long before
Alaska was a State and our country was engaged in World War II, these
Alaskan heroes answered their Nation's call on America's most remote
frontlines.

In 2009, the Senate approved an amendment to the National Defense
Authorization Act that I sponsored with my colleague, Senator
Murkowski, that President Obama signed into law. Twenty-five surviving
territorial Guardsmen finally received their retirement pay and
recognition they earned so many years ago. I have done my level best to
support our troops in other ways, including expanding services and
programs for homeless veterans, including more support for women
veterans and expanding telehealth services for our rural veterans.
Supporting the post-GI bill. This provides tuition assistance for
veterans and takes into consideration living expenses so students can
better focus on their education. It allows for servicemembers to pass
this entitlement to their immediate families.
Every time I meet a veteran, I thank him or her for their service to
our country. I know they appreciate that. All Americans should go out
of their way to thank our veterans, not just on Veterans Day but every
day. But thank you only goes so far. It doesn't pay the mortgage or buy
groceries. Our veterans really need good jobs. The statistics are
shameful. More than one in four veterans under the age of 24 is without
a job. A quarter million post-9/11 veterans are unemployed.
As you can see by this chart, that is a 12-percent unemployment rate,
and it simply is unacceptable. The VOW to Hire Heroes Act will create
new direct Federal hiring authority so jobs will be waiting for our
veterans the day they leave the military. It will provide tax credits
for employers who hire veterans and wounded veterans who have been
looking for work. It will improve the transition process as
servicemembers leave the battlefield and enter the workforce. This
legislation also expands training opportunities at community colleges
and technical schools for 100,000 unemployed veterans who served before
September 11. It expands additional Montgomery GI benefits for older
veterans for up to 1 year.
Let me take a few moments to talk about an additional challenge faced
by veterans in my home State. Many of Alaska's returning warriors come
home to the most remote areas of America. Alaska boasts unsurpassed
beauty. It can also be a challenging and dangerous place to live.
Right now, as I speak on this floor, the northwest coast of Alaska is
being struck by winds approaching 100 miles per hour and storm surges
of 8 feet or more. With waves up to 30 feet, coastal erosion and
flooding is truly and certainly going to happen. If this were happening
today on the east coast of America, this storm would have some name to
it, and we would not be hearing or reading about anything else but that
storm. To give you a concept of how far reaching this storm is, imagine
a storm reaching from Mexico, along the west coast, up to Washington
State. That is the size of the storm that is occurring right now.
So if you think veterans in other parts of the United States face
challenges in employment, job training, access to health care, and
there is no doubt they do, you should see some of our circumstances in
Alaska.
Here are two stories about real Alaskans. The first story is about a
disabled Army veteran living in Kipnuk, a small Yupik Eskimo village on
the far western coast of Alaska. This vet suffered a spinal cord injury
in 2006 that requires yearly evaluation. He must travel to a VA
hospital in Seattle to receive his care. That is a trip of thousands of
miles and thousands of dollars.
Additionally, for more routine illnesses, such as the flu, he is
forced to travel to Anchorage, to a VA clinic there, still a jet flight
away from his home, and, again, close to $1,000.
There is the retired Air Force veteran who needed to have hardware
removed from his wrist and shoulder following a failed surgery. The VA
sent him to the hospital in Seattle despite the fact that several
hospitals in Anchorage--closer and less costly to get to--could have
performed the procedure.
There are many stories similar to this that I hear every single day
when I travel my State. It doesn't matter where I go; one veteran or
veteran's family member will tell me a very similar story. That is why
we continue to push for a piece of legislation that I have introduced,
the Alaska Hero's Card. It is so simple when you look at what we are
trying to do.
If health care services are available closer to home, then any
Alaskan veteran would simply present the card at the federally
qualified health clinic and get the services. It limits their time
traveling away from their families, it lowers the costs of the VA, and
it gives services where they need them and can get them. It is truly a
win-win. More importantly, it allows, as I said, veterans to be with
their families.
Mr. President, you have been an incredible advocate on health care
issues. When you try to do health care rehabilitation and services and
take someone from a rural community and take

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them to a large community, the odds are the rehabilitation will go
slower or the service will not be as effective. We have to do what we
can to ensure that they have the service closer to their homes and
their families and at a lower cost.
As we approach Veterans Day, I would like to recognize the Arctic
warriors serving our country. The members of the 4th Stryker Brigade
Combat Team from Fort Wainwright, AK, have been serving with
distinction in Afghanistan since May of this year. The 4th Airborne
Brigade Combat Team will deploy to Afghanistan at the end of this month
for a total of more than 9,000 Alaskan-based troops on the ground
there.
In addition, there are 550 airmen and soldiers still in Iraq today
but will be coming home by the end of the year. Our Alaska National
Guard units and members are in both countries, Iraq and Afghanistan.
To our Arctic warriors, thank you. Thank you for your service and
sacrifice to our country, and thank you to the families who are
supporting our Arctic warriors as they serve this great country. So to
honor them and all the brave men and women who have served and are
currently serving, let's come together on the floor of this Chamber.
Let's put our differences aside. Let's pass the VOW to Hire Heroes Act
and help put America's veterans back to work.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
permitted to speak as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Air Quality

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, with all of the important issues we
constantly face in life, none compares to our concern for the health of
our children. But the health of our children depends not only on us but
what others might be doing--such as poisoning our air with secondhand
smoke or deliberately fouling the air our kids breathe.
Few would stand by while a smoker puffs away where your child is
inhaling. That is why we worked so hard to prohibit smoking on
airplanes--to keep someone else's smoke out of our children's lungs.
Yet when emissions from a powerplant in one State threaten people in a
neighboring State, too often nothing is done about it. Make no mistake,
pollution doesn't recognize State boundaries. Communities across our
country are being forced to bear the consequence of another community's
polluters, and this is happening in my State of New Jersey, where
people are suffering because dirty air is blowing into our communities
from out-of-State smokestacks.
Look at this horrible picture. Anything more threatening would be
hard to imagine. The toxins coming out of smokestacks like these don't
disappear. They typically wind up polluting playgrounds and school
yards in New Jersey, and other eastern States. In fact, a single
powerplant in eastern Pennsylvania is responsible for more sulfur
pollution in New Jersey than all our State powerplants combined.
This year the Environmental Protection Agency took a major step
toward protecting children from out-of-State emissions when it adopted
the cross-State air pollution rule. This commonsense safeguard requires
polluters to reduce the levels of dangerous soot and smog that they
release into the air. The rule sends a clear message to powerplants in
upwind States that they can no longer dump their dirty air on States
that lie downwind.
Unfortunately, one of our Republican colleagues has proposed a
resolution to block the EPA's efforts. This misguided message would put
polluters' profits before the health of our families and children, and
the consequences would be devastating.
Air pollution can cause asthma attacks, heart attacks, strokes, and
cancer. Long-term exposure can also damage the immune, neurological,
and reproductive systems. Nationally, almost 1 in 10 children now
suffer from asthma. That is according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. In some parts of New Jersey, one out of every
four residents has asthma. We should be working to make skies cleaner
for these children--not dirtier.
Some on the other side say we cannot afford to worry about the health
of our children and our communities right now. They claim the new rule
will kill jobs. This is not about killing jobs, it is about saving
lives, and we should not allow ourselves to be misled. According to
EPA, the new rule will prevent 34,000 premature deaths and 15,000 heart
attacks from taking place.
The new standard would also prevent as many as 400,000 asthma
attacks, improving life for children such as my own grandson who
suffers from asthma. My daughter makes sure she finds an emergency
clinic before my grandson plays ball or indulges in a sport because if
he starts to wheeze, he has problems.
My sister, who was on the board of education in a city in New York
State, was at a board of education meeting when she began to start to
wheeze. In her car she kept a small device, a little respirator, and
she ran for the parking lot. She didn't make it. She collapsed in the
parking lot and died 3 days later.
For those who insist we cannot have both clean air and a strong
economy, I say we cannot have a strong economy without clean air.
Simply put, if you cannot breathe, you cannot work.
The fact is, many powerplants, factories, and other companies are
ready to work with the EPA to reduce their impact on the environment.
Take the example of Public Service Electric and Gas, which is New
Jersey's largest utility. PSEG has already invested resources to reduce
soot, smog, and mercury pollution by more than 90 percent. In the
process the company has created over 1,600 construction jobs. That is
why PSEG supports the EPA rule.
Ralph Izzo, the president of the company, said:

Our experience shows that it is possible to clean the air,
create jobs, and power the economy at the same time.

The bottom line is, this rule will protect the health of our economy,
our workers, and our children. I urge my colleagues to reject this
dangerous amendment and protect every American's right to breathe clean
air.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, earlier today in the Environment and
Public Works Committee--the Presiding Officer was at that meeting--
something unusual happened. We had a major bill that will extend the
Highway Surface Transportation Act for 2 years, passed by a unanimous
vote, all the Democrats and Republicans joining together in order to
move forward a bill that will help create jobs. I hope we will find the
same spirit of cooperation on the legislation that is now before us. It
helps create jobs for our community and, with the Tester amendment, we
have a win-win situation.
This, first and foremost, is about creating jobs. The Tester
amendment allows us to create more jobs that will help American
families, help our economy, and even help our budget deficit, because
when more Americans are working, more are paying taxes, and less
government services are needed.
All agree we need to help our returning veterans, those who have
served so well in Iraq and Afghanistan, defending the principles of our
country and defending our basic freedom. On Friday, we will celebrate
Veterans Day, and I know all of us will be speaking about how much we
appreciate the service of our veterans. We need to show our
appreciation not only by words but also by deeds. Yes, we fight to make
sure our veterans have the health services they need, and we want to
make sure all of our military have the support they need. We want to
make sure our military families are properly taken care of. But one
thing we can do with this legislation is help veterans get jobs when
they return home.
The unemployment rate among our returning veterans is higher than the
unemployment rates in our general community. We need to help our
veterans find employment. That is one way we can show our appreciation
for the men and women who have served our Nation.
The bill before us, with the Tester amendment, will give incentives
to employers to hire returning warriors from Iraq and Afghanistan. It
will expand the education and training services so they have the skills
necessary for civilian employment. It will help us deal

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with a chronic problem we have of returning veterans, under the age of
24, where the unemployment rate is 21 percent. This bill, with the
Tester amendment, will allow us to do something to help our returning
veterans and help our economy.
But the underlying bill also goes further. It helps small businesses.
Small businesses are the growth engine of America. That is where job
creation takes place. That is where innovation takes place. We
currently have a requirement that has not yet gone into effect that
would require small businesses that have contracts with the government
over $10,000 to withhold 3 percent of those funds in order to make sure
taxes are paid. We need to repeal that provision, and this bill will
repeal that provision. We should go after those who are delinquent in
taxes, and we have a provision to make sure we do that, but for small
business to tie up that type of capital affects their ability to
compete. It affects their ability to expand job opportunity. Repealing
that provision is important to help small business help our economy.
It also would eliminate an administrative burden for a lot of our
local governments. It also will make it more competitive for small
businesses. The 3-percent withholding would affect actually the cost of
production. All that means a stronger economy and more jobs.
This bill is a win-win bill. It helps our veterans. With the Tester
amendment, it helps small businesses by repealing a provision that is
extremely burdensome. It is fully paid for so it does not add anything
at all to the deficit, and it will help us grow our economy. By passing
this bill, not only will we help our veterans, we will help our small
businesses and we will help our economy.
I urge our colleagues to show the same type of cooperation we did on
the surface transportation bill today in our committee. Let's use that
same spirit of cooperation to get this bill moving, with the Tester
amendment. Let us pass it and send it back to the House and, hopefully,
we can get it to the President shortly for signature and help our
veterans and help our economy.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.

The Global Economy

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I am going to replace the Presiding
Officer in the chair in a few moments, but before that, I wished to
come to the floor and talk about our economy and some work this
Congress needs to be engaged in if we are going to get things moving on
the right track again.
Today, the stock market plunged 400 points because of concerns that
are going on in Europe, especially with Italy. It is a debt crisis that
has been on the front page of every newspaper around the globe for
weeks and in some cases months.
I am reminded of the discussion we had over the summer that consumed
the Congress for an entire summer, about the lifting of the debt
ceiling. Article after article after article said that if the Congress
couldn't figure out how to work this out in a bipartisan way and make a
material difference in the trajectory of our deficit and our debt that,
for the first time, our credit rating would be downgraded. For the
first time in the history of the United States of America, the full
faith and credit of the United States would be called into question.
That was on the front page of every newspaper for weeks. In the end,
we stumbled across that finish line, and in the end our debt was
downgraded. I would argue we are about to face the same thing again and
have the chance again to do the right thing--to act in a bipartisan
way, to create a thoughtful approach to our debt and our deficit that
allows us to continue to invest in our economy.
Families in Colorado, much as the families in Rhode Island, are
struggling in an economy that is the worst since the Great Depression.
We are coming out of it now, but there are significant structural
issues in that economy. I have shown this chart before. There are four
simple lines. The blue one is the productivity index, which shows our
economy has actually gotten substantially more productive since the
early 1990s, substantially more productive during this recession for a
variety of reasons. One reason is that our companies have had to learn
to compete with the rest of the world in a way they have not before, so
they became more efficient. The benefits technology has brought has
driven up this curve. Unfortunately for our workers but understandably
for our businesses, they have had to figure out how to get through this
recession with fewer people so they can get through to the other side.
The second curve is our gross domestic product, the size of our
domestic economy, and it is not where it was before the recession, but
it is headed back there.
The other two lines are the unemployment level, which this chart says
is 14 million people, but I think the number is closer to 25 million,
when we consider who has stopped looking for work and when we consider
who is underemployed in this economy. Then this line is a tragedy for
our families, which is falling median family income.
This chart--it is a little hard to read--is a pretty good depiction
of what is happening. This red line represents the bottom 90 percent of
income earners in this country. Think about that. We are talking about
the bottom 90 percent. That is everyone, except for 10 percent. It
shows the share of the income in the United States that they are
earning. It starts out here in the 1920s and goes to today, where the
bottom 90 percent are earning roughly 47 percent of the income. The
last time that was true, by the way, was 1928, the year before the
Great Depression and the market crash. The top .1 percent earns 10
percent of the economy--.1, not 1 percent--.1. The last time that was
true was 1928. All through the productive times in the 20th century,
the 1950s and the 1960s and the 1970s, there wasn't that kind of
imbalance in our economy. This group earned roughly--90 percent earned
roughly 70 percent of the economy and everybody else earned a fair
share of the economy, and the economy grew and we were able to build
for the future.
Those are structural issues in the economy we can help with, we can
work together to fix, but what we have to do right now is avert
predictable crises that are within our control so we don't make matters
worse.
Sometimes when I travel, people don't know why we need to worry about
what is going on in Europe. This afternoon I wanted to bring a chart
that shows the soaring debt of all these European economies and the
United States. We are the blue line here. This is Greece up here.
Everybody is in tough shape. Everybody has made promises they can't
keep. Everybody has levered up in a way that isn't sustainable. But
what is also true is that we are all interrelated. If something bad
happens in Europe, something very bad is going to happen here, just as
when the capital markets fell apart at the beginning of the last
recession.
This chart shows how dependent our economy is on exports to Europe.
Between one-fifth and one-sixth of the total value of our exports goes
to Europe. If the European banks fail, if the governments can't pay
back their debt and the economy comes to a screeching halt in Europe,
they are not going to buy our exports. Those are American jobs we need
to worry about. Those are American jobs we need to defend and protect
and we need to understand this relationship.

Look at the exposure of our U.S. banks to Europe. This red part is
the euro area. It is 29 percent of the total international exposure of
our banks, with 23 percent to the U.K. More than half of the foreign
exposure of our banks is European debt.
We were unable to come to a rational conclusion on the debt ceiling.
So the Congress punted this decision to a supercommittee and asked them
to please help us make the decision. My own hope is that the
supercommittee takes a page out of the bipartisan proposals that were
reached--the one that was led by Bowles and Simpson, the one by Rivlin
and Domenici. I think the details are less important, frankly, than the
size, but that takes $4 trillion out over the next 10 years, a balance
of cuts to revenue of roughly 3 to 1, that sends a message to the world
that the United States is serious about dealing with its fiscal
matters. If we don't do that in advance of this European crisis that is
on the front page of every newspaper in the country, I can assure my

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colleagues that the choices we have in front of us will be even tougher
than they would have otherwise been.
Sometimes I get the feeling that people around here actually don't
think the American people are watching this screaming match, are
watching the disagreements, are watching the political games, but they
are. They know exactly what is going on here, and they understand the
seriousness of these issues because they are living through that
economy I spoke of earlier. That is what they are worrying about. They
are making less today than they were 10 years ago. They are making the
same amount they were making 20 years ago. They can't afford to send
their kid to college. They can't afford their health care, and they
would like us to help straighten that out, but at a minimum they would
like us to prevent matters from getting worse. They would like to see
us work together.
Some people here think Congress has always been unpopular, that it is
just as an institution an unpopular place. Not so. Look at this. Here
is Congress's approval rating today: 9 percent. That is a pretty
catastrophic fall-off in the last 10 years, and I would argue it has an
awful lot to do with our inability to address problems the way people
in their local communities are doing. There is not a mayor in Colorado
who would threaten the credit rating of their community for politics--
not one. Not a Republican mayor, not a Democratic mayor, not a tea
party mayor, not one would imagine doing it for a second because people
in our communities would know that all that would do would be to drive
up our interest rates, make us spend more money on interest and less on
infrastructure, more on interest and less on education, more on
interest and less on the health and welfare of our citizens.

We know that at the local level, but somehow here we get to color
outside the lines. We are now at 9 percent, which is almost at the
margin of error for zero. We did some research to find out what else is
at 9 percent. We could not find virtually anything in public polls
taken all across this country. My goodness, the Internal Revenue
Service has a 40-percent approval rating compared the our 9 percent. BP
had a 16-percent approval rating at the height of the oilspill, and we
are at 9 percent. There is an actress who is at 15 percent. More people
support the United States becoming communist--I do not, for the
record--at 11 percent than approve of the job we are doing. I guess we
can take some comfort that Fidel Castro is at 5 percent.
Look, we are suffering--and when I say ``we,'' I mean families across
this country--through the worst recession since the Great Depression.
We can see on the front page of every single newspaper what the stakes
are here if we do not act in a comprehensive way on our debt and our
deficit. We know that both parties have different approaches to the
challenges we face. But at the end of the day, these challenges are the
challenges of the American people, not the challenges of a bunch of
politicians in Washington who are worrying about the next election.
My hope is the supercommittee shows leadership here, that it gives
the opportunity for every Member of this body to express their
leadership here, and that all of us are able to go home to red parts of
our State and blue parts of our State and say to the people: We saw the
problem coming, and we led the world. We materially addressed the
problem we faced. We acted in a bipartisan way. We came up with a plan
that said: Do you know what. We are all in this together for the
benefit of our kids and our grandkids, for the people who are suffering
through this economy.
There is $2.3 trillion of cash sitting on companies' balance sheets
in the United States of America tonight that is not being invested
because no one knows what interest rate environment they are going to
be in because they do not know what Washington is going to do. We
shattered confidence in this economy this summer. We should not do it
again.
This is a popular number, this 9 percent, these days, you may have
noticed, on the Presidential campaign trail. It is not a popular number
for the American people: 9-percent approval. Let's do something right
here, and let's drive these numbers back up, and let's restore
confidence in the American people.
With that, Mr. President, I thank you for your patience and yield the
floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennet). The Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in
morning business for up to 15 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Net Neutrality Order

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I rise today in support of S.J. Res. 6, a
resolution of disapproval of the FCC's net neutrality order.
Over the last 2 years, the Federal Communications Commission put
forward a variety of what are considered net neutrality policies. On
September 23 of this year, the FCC published a final rule in the
Federal Register which is set to go into effect on November 20 to
impose harmful net neutrality regulations on our Nation's
telecommunications companies.
The digital world in which we now live has changed dramatically the
way we retrieve information, communicate with one another, and engage
in commerce. Technological advances, even in the last few years, have
pushed our economy forward. These advancements in technology and their
adoption often depend heavily on access to broadband technologies.
While the telecommunications industry has flourished, boosted our
economy, and made critical investments in broadband deployment across
the country, this administration believes that imposing additional
regulations is a step in the right direction.
In places across the country, such as my home State of South Dakota,
there is still work to be done when it comes to unfettered and
affordable access to high speed broadband. With the FCC voting recently
to reform the Universal Service Fund to shift to a focus on broadband
deployment, it seems to me that simultaneously moving forward with net
neutrality regulations will have a chilling effect on this now thriving
industry.
We learned last week from the Department of Labor that the
unemployment rate still hovers around 9 percent. The American people
want to see Federal policies that encourage innovation and spur job
growth, not yet another regulatory overreach by an overzealous agency.
Unfortunately, the FCC net neutrality policy will give considerable
authority to unelected bureaucrats to decide what a company's network
management should look like.
The Federal courts have ruled that the FCC lacks the authority under
the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to move forward with net neutrality
regulations. Still, the Democratic appointees of the FCC have
persisted, without regard to the courts, to settle the political debt
owed by the Obama administration to special interest groups in favor of
regulating the Internet. The FCC and this administration must be
brought into line and abide by the separation of powers. The FCC must
only execute the responsibilities given to it by Congress and not
overreach its regulatory authority.
Freedom of the Internet belongs in the marketplace, not in the hands
of Federal regulators. The FCC has moved forward to fix a problem that
does not exist. This is a solution in search of a problem. Industry-
imposed standards and transparency have the capability to increase
competition, while more unnecessary government regulations will almost
certainly have the opposite effect.

Under a light regulatory structure, the Internet has become vital to
commerce and our Nation's economy over the past 15 years. The Internet
has helped digitally shrink the distance that otherwise would inhibit
the free flow of ideas, information, and business transactions from one
part of the world to another. The Internet's adaptability and
decentralized characteristics are central to that success.
This Federal regulatory action represents unnecessary government
overreach and has the potential to seriously damage an increasingly
important sector of our economy. I do not believe the Federal
Government can successfully regulate network access and development
without negative effects on the consumer or the industry.
Allowing this unnecessary regulation to move forward has the
potential to stifle broadband deployment and competition, which could
ultimately lead to fewer choices for consumers, higher prices, and
discourage innovation.

[[Page S7283]]

I believe the net neutrality regulations, if allowed to move forward,
will have negative effects on this industry and our economy, and I
would encourage my colleagues, tomorrow, to support this resolution of
disapproval.
The economy does not need this. Our job creators do not need this.
And the millions of Americans who are benefiting from the information
revolution that has been brought about by the Internet do not need this
either.
This is an opportunity for us to send a little bit of a message to
industry that we understand, we get what they are saying about
overregulation, we get that these piles of regulations continue to
drive up the cost of doing business in this country.
My colleague, the Presiding Officer, noted in his remarks the need
for economic certainty--businesses need to know what the rules are
going to be. It seems to me, at least, that creating a whole set of new
rules and piling new regulations on this very important medium--on a
way in which we have grown commerce in this country, opened markets
across the world, created opportunities for consumers in this country
to become more productive with their lives--is an absolute wrong
approach at this particular point in time, particularly with the
unemployment rate being what it is.
We want to make it less expensive, less costly, easier for our job
creators to create jobs in this country, not put up unnecessary
barriers and more obstacles and drive up the cost and make it more
difficult for people in this country to create jobs.
Businesses are looking for economic certainty. They are looking to
Washington, DC for policies that will lessen the impediments and the
number of obstacles to job creation in this country.

Access To Capital For Job Creators Act

Mr. President, I also want to mention in that vein that earlier today
I introduced a piece of legislation called the Access to Capital for
Job Creators Act. This bill will make it easier for small businesses to
better access capital in order to expand and create jobs.
If you think about the things the job creators around the country
want and need in order for them to get that capital off the sidelines,
to get out of cash and to get invested again and get that money back
into our economy and back into creating jobs, they want to see a
government that lives within its means. They want to see a government
that does not spend money it does not have.
We have to be serious about cutting spending here at the Federal
level and getting back to more of a historic norm when it comes to the
cost of our government as a percentage of our entire economy.
Historically, for the past 40 years, that has run in the 20- to 21-
percent range. That is what we spend on the Federal Government as a
percentage of our entire GDP. Now it is up in the 24- to 25-percent
range. That means the Federal Government, as a percentage of our entire
economy, is growing relative to our private economy. We want to see the
private economy grow and expand and the Federal economy get smaller.
Our job creators also want to see our Tax Code reformed in a way that
is simple, clear, and fair, and that provides the right types of
incentives for them to create jobs and does not drive investment
overseas and create jobs there as opposed to creating those jobs right
here at home.
If we can get tax reform that lowers rates on individuals and
businesses and broadens the tax base in this country, I think you will
see an explosion of economic growth, which is ultimately the best
solution we could possibly have to all the fiscal, economic challenges
our country faces.
Our job creators want smart, commonsense regulations, not more and
more regulation for regulation's sake, which I think is what we see a
lot today. We have seen bill after bill that has passed the House of
Representatives that is designed to sort of roll back the
overregulation, the regulatory overreach we have seen from this
administration. Many of those bills have come over here to the Senate,
where they have died, unfortunately.

But we need to be looking at these things in a way that will again
lower the impediments, lower the barriers, lower the hurdles to job
creation in this country. That is why I think smart, commonsense
regulation is the way to go, and to get away from the regulatory
overreach we are seeing all too much of today.
We need affordable energy policies, opening access to the vast
resources we have in this country. We need to open markets around the
world and look at ways we can make our small businesses create more
opportunities for them to export their products to other places around
the world.
But the legislation I have introduced today addresses yet another
issue which I think small businesses have talked about; that is, access
to capital. We need to better address the need for capital in order to
create jobs and expand our economy.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed this very bill. It was
introduced by Representative Kevin McCarthy. On a near unanimous vote
in the House of Representatives of 413 to 11 they passed this
legislation and sent it this direction. This bill would allow small
businesses to better attract capital from accredited investors
nationwide under rule 506 of Regulation D of the Securities Act of 1933
by removing the general solicitation provision.
That sounds like a lot of Washington speak, and it is. But the very
simple translation of that is this will make it easier for small
businesses to access the much needed capital they need to expand and
grow their businesses.
This provision is a roadblock in its current form for small
businesses that are looking to obtain needed capital because it
requires investors to have a preexisting relationship with an issuer or
intermediary before the potential investor can be notified that
unregistered securities are available for sale.
So if a small business is looking for investors, unless they have a
preexisting relationship with that investor, there is no way for them
to get the message out that they are looking for capital to those with
whom they do not have that kind of relationship already in place.
The provision as it currently exists severely hampers the ability of
small businesses to obtain needed capital from investors, and as a
result, many businesses are limited to only the universe of investors
with which they clearly have these preexisting relationships.
This legislation would remove that solicitation prohibition and allow
businesses to attract capital from accredited investors nationwide.
With unemployment at 9 percent, we need to pass legislation that will
enable our job creators to expand and to create jobs.
As I said, this bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in
the House of Representatives. I would hope we can do the same in the
Senate and address this very fundamental need among our businesses, our
small businesses, to get access to much needed capital to expand their
businesses; that, along with using a commonsense approach to
regulation, an approach that gets away from this massive 61,000 pages
of new regulations that we have seen issued since this administration
took office, to tax reform that is simple, that is clear, that is fair,
that provides incentives to keep jobs here at home as opposed to
shipping them overseas, affordable energy policies, reducing government
spending, improving export opportunities for our small businesses.
Those are the types of policies our job creators have said they need.
We are going to have an opportunity to vote on the rollback of this
net neutrality regulation and some other regulations tomorrow that are
making it more difficult, more costly for our small businesses to
create jobs. I hope we will see strong bipartisan support both with the
disapproval resolution that we are going to be voting on net
neutrality, as well as the one on cross-State air permitting. Those are
both things that I think will do a lot to make it less expensive for
small businesses in this country to create jobs.
I hope as well that we will look at other opportunities in the form
of the legislation introduced by Senator McCain, Senator Portman, and
others, that has a whole series of the things I mentioned, all of which
will create jobs and grow our economy, make this country more
prosperous and stronger, and put us on a more sound and economic and
fiscal footing as we head into the days ahead.

[[Page S7284]]

I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here this evening to express my
unwavering support for the men and women who have answered the call of
duty in our military services, our Guard and Reserve, and for their
family members whose love and steady support for them have carried our
servicemembers through challenging times and difficult missions.
In honor of Veterans Day, coming up the day after tomorrow, and
Military Family Month, which we observe all month long this November,
we need to reflect on the enormous contributions military families have
made on behalf of all of us.
Since September 11, the spouses, children and parents of our service
men and women have been faced with huge demands. They have endured
repeated deployments, and spent many holidays and birthdays and
anniversaries apart from each other. We should do everything we can in
our communities to help military families cope with the difficulties
and stresses of these multiple deployments.
I commend First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden for their
commitment to our troops' families and for their work on initiatives to
address the unique challenges military families face in this
environment. I especially appreciate the First Lady's recent visit to
Rhode Island. It provided a warm and welcome boost to military family
members in my State, which has the second highest per capita National
Guard deployment rate of all the States, as well as a significant
active-duty presence at Naval Station Newport.
With so many men and women leaving home to serve on multiple
deployments, the strain on the family can be particularly difficult.
Last month I had the privilege of meeting two extraordinary Rhode
Island students, Kathleen Callahan, who goes by Katie, and Kaitlyn
Hawley, who presented a powerful and compelling message to school
superintendents and educators from across Rhode Island who came
together to learn about how they can better respond to the needs of
military families.
These two impressive young ladies shared their personal stories and
described the challenges their families faced while their parents were
deployed. The event was part of a collaborative initiative to help
military-connected children thrive in school through deployments. I was
proud to share in this joint effort with the Rhode Island National
Guard, with Governor Chaffee, with our Commissioner of Education, the
Commanding Officer of Naval Station Newport, our Military Child
Education Coalition, and my senior Senator, Jack Reed.
Katie is the daughter of a National Guard member. She described how
her father's deployment affected the roles in her family. Like most
children of deployed servicemembers, Katie assumed additional
responsibilities in caring for her younger sibling and helping her
mother, whom she referred to as a superwoman. Together, they shouldered
the burden of her father's absence and kept the family intact and
sound.
Katie described the feeling of--to use her words--silent suffering
that can occur when military families feel isolated in civilian
communities that may not completely understand what it is like when a
loved one is deployed.
Kaitlyn is the daughter of an active-duty member. She talked about
her experience living in eight different States and attending seven
different schools. Kaitlyn is a highly motivated student and she
explained how she threw herself into her schoolwork during her father's
deployment. However, she cautioned that for other students, the
opposite can also occur. Some students may have a lot of difficulty
focusing on their schoolwork when a parent is deployed half a world
away. As Kaitlyn so well put it, there is no one-size-fits-all approach
to coping with the stress of deployment.
I am proud of Katie and Kaitlyn for their courage, their resilience,
and their powerful articulation of a message that I hope everyone
hears. We owe our military families an enduring debt of gratitude for
everything they have done. We should do everything we can to ensure
that no family feels isolated or left out or endures the silent
suffering Katie described. I hope every American, as we approach
Veterans Day, will actively support our military families, and do what
we can to make our communities more welcoming and supportive in
accommodating their needs.
As Veterans Day approaches, let's celebrate our military families and
recognize their extraordinary contributions. Let us thank not only our
service men and women but also the spouses, children, and other family
members who have shared in the sacrifice of military service. We should
also remember the families of our civilian and intelligence
servicemembers deployed in danger and away from their families around
the world.
In concluding, I wish to also express my strong support for the
bipartisan legislation the Senate is considering to boost employment
opportunities for veterans. Unemployment has been disproportionally
high among veterans and we must act now. The last thing our returning
service men and women need is to have to face an unemployment line. I
urge my colleagues to swiftly pass this much needed legislation, which
I am very proud to cosponsor.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of the
VOW to Hire Heroes Act 2011, which has been offered as an amendment by
my friend from Montana, Senator Jon Tester. This Friday is Veterans
Day. On this day every year, Americans join together to honor the men
and women in uniform who have served and sacrificed for our country.
Think of the work we do for our veterans. Some of it is very small.
Small to us, but not small to them. We have people call our office all
the time when their benefits are messed up, when redtape gets in the
way. I will never forget one last year where one of the Patriot guards,
who stands on the side and holds the flag during funerals for our
servicemembers, came to me in tears and said her son had been badly
hurt serving our country. In fact, he had lost his leg. When he came
back, he was at Walter Reed. He was fitted with a prosthetic leg, and
then he came home. When he was trying to get his benefits, he was told
he could not get his benefits for losing his leg--this is a true
story--because the records had been lost that showed that he lost his
leg.
He had no leg. We worked on it. And within a week we got his
benefits. Those stories are told all across the country. There is
redtape. We must all help them. But it just goes to show, when you see
those stories what our young soldiers are doing every single day.
This also means fighting for legislation that fulfills American's
promise that we will care for our soldiers when they return. When our
soldiers signed up to fight for our country, there was no waiting line.
And when they come home to the United States of America and they need a
job or they need a home or they need medical care or they need an
education, there should not be a waiting line. Yet, sadly, when you
look at the past decades, too often there is. When I came into the
Senate, as my friend from Rhode Island came in in 2006, we all remember
the horror stories with our veterans' health care. We remember what had
happened at our medical hospitals. We remember the stories of soldiers
getting lost in the cracks. That is why we worked so hard to make sure
they got the health care they deserve.
We provided for historic funding increases to ensure top-quality
health care for American servicemembers and military retirees. We also
passed a post-9/11 GI bill to expand educational benefits for veterans
who have served in the past decade. But there is more work to be done
to support our veterans.
Consider two shocking facts. The unemployment rate for Minnesota
veterans who have served since 9/11 is nearly 23 percent, the third
highest in the Nation. Yet our unemployment rate is one of the lower
ones in the Nation. Our unemployment rate is two points better than the
national average. Yet it is almost double the national average for
veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and more than three times our
State's overall unemployment rate.

[[Page S7285]]

Second fact. An estimated 700 Minnesota veterans are homeless on any
given night. During the course of the year, an estimated 4,000
Minnesota veterans will experience an episode of homelessness or a
crisis that could lead to homelessness. This is not right. That is why
I am calling on my colleagues today to vote to support the VOW to Hire
Heroes Act. This important bill goes a long way in providing our
returning veterans the leg up they need in transitioning into the
workforce.
I will list just a few important provisions of this bill. It
encourages companies to hire unemployed veterans by offering them tax
credits to do so. The bill provides employers a tax credit of up to
$5,600 for hiring veterans who have been looking for a job for more
than 6 months, as well as a $2,400 credit for veterans who are
unemployed for more than 4 weeks. The bill also provides employers a
tax credit of up to $9,600 for hiring veterans with service-connected
disabilities who have been looking for a job for more than 6 months.
Second, the VOW Act increases training for returning veterans so that
by the time they step out of their uniforms they have the skills and
the tools they need to get out there and market themselves to find a
job. The bill does this by making it a requirement for returning troops
to participate in the Transition Assistance Program, a job-training
boot camp coordinated by the Departments of Defense, Labor, and
Veterans Affairs, that teaches veterans how to get those jobs, write
those resumes, apply their military skills to civilian jobs.
Third, the VOW Act expands education benefits for older veterans,
people who are not eligible for the post-9/11 GI bill.
The bill provides 100,000 unemployed veterans of past eras and wars
with up to 1 year of additional Montgomery GI benefits to go toward
education or training programs at community colleges or technical
schools.
Fourth, the VOW Act ensures that disabled veterans receive up to 1
year of additional vocational rehabilitation and employment benefits.
Last, the VOW Act allows servicemembers to begin the Federal
employment process prior to separation, to help them transition
seamlessly into jobs at the VA, the Department of Homeland Security, or
the many other Federal agencies that could use their skills and
dedication.
The fact is our returning veterans have battle-tested skills that are
valuable to employers in all kinds of fields. Helping our veterans turn
the skills they learned in the military into good-paying jobs not only
honors our promise to support those who have sacrificed for our Nation,
it also helps strengthen our Nation.
One of my top priorities in the Senate has been to cut through the
redtape and streamline credentialing for servicemembers who have
achieved certain skill sets through their military training. I am
offering an amendment to the VOW Act that will streamline credentialing
for returning military paramedics. I learned about this one time when I
was driving around our State and I met a number of those who served in
Iraq and Afghanistan. They served as paramedics on the front lines, and
they learned incredible skills and how to save lives. Those skills
weren't all transferable into becoming paramedics once they returned to
the United States. At the same time, we have an incredible shortage of
paramedics in our rural areas.
So I am going to introduce this as an amendment that would fix this
problem by encouraging States to give paramedics credit for the
military medical training they have received. Not only does it help
veterans, but it relieves the shortage of emergency medical personnel
in rural areas.
With commonsense solutions like these and those contained in the VOW
Act, I believe we can help returning veterans transition into the
workforce, not only fulfilling our commitment to them but also helping
to lift our economy. Having traveled to the western part of our State
in the last few weeks, I cannot tell you the number of job openings
right now for welders and tool and die. I have been at companies that
literally have dozens of openings--not only starting jobs but for
engineers. They want military personnel and they need to connect with
them and we need to encourage our employers to hire veterans when they
come back.
Our State has always been a State that understands the debt we owe to
the men and women who have served and sacrificed for us. We literally
wrap our arms around them. I want to end with a story from last
Veterans Day.
After doing our statewide event, I headed up to Wadena, MN, which is
an area that was torn apart by a tornado, literally ripped up. Their
high school was destroyed. The high school bleachers were three blocks
from where they had been. On Veterans Day, they held the annual event,
but they could no longer have it at the high school, which was
destroyed. They could no longer have it at some of the other places
they used to, so they were all in an elementary school the entire
time--all the high school kids and all the veterans sitting on old
bleachers in that elementary school. I spoke there.
What I will never forget is the elementary school kids singing a song
that I had never heard before, but I had heard the melody. I remember
the Ken Burns movie on World War II. These are the lyrics:

All we've been given by those who come before,
The dream of a nation where freedom would endure,
The work and prayers of centuries have brought us to this
day,
What shall be our legacy? What will our children say?
Let them say of me I was one who believed
In sharing the blessings that I received.
Let me know in my heart when my days are through
America, America, I gave my best to you.

That is what those elementary school kids sang after the whole school
had been torn apart--with veterans at their side: ``America, America, I
gave my best to you.''
I think that is what we have to remember as we approach this vote on
this VOW Act. This vote, to me, is so simple--that we simply give a tax
credit so more employers will hire those who have sacrificed for our
country, those who gave their best for our country. That is what this
vote is about.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.

Cross-state Air Pollution Rule

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it was fairly recently that this
summer I came to the Senate floor to commend the Environmental
Protection Agency for finalizing what we called the cross-State air
pollution rule, which limits the out-of-State pollution that one State
can dump into the wind currents that drop on other States.
To my State, Rhode Island, this is particularly important. Nearly a
decade after the EPA began working to address this problem of
interstate air pollution, we finally had a path forward that is
sensible and protective of public health. That was then, this is now.
Today, Senator Paul of Kentucky proposes to halt this progress, to
undo that rule through a Congressional Review Act resolution. That
resolution would, one, void the cross-State air pollution rule and,
two, bar EPA permanently from ever writing a ``substantially similar''
rule. This means that EPA could never use the Clean Air Act to create a
cost-effective pollution trading program to address upwind pollution.
Mr. President, this hits home in my State of Rhode Island. Rhode
Island has the sixth highest rate of asthma in the country. More than
11 percent of the people in my State suffer from this chronic disease,
and many of them are children.
In 2009 there were 1,750 hospital discharges in Rhode Island for
asthma cases. Those hospital stays cost about $8 million in direct
medical costs, not to mention the costs of the medication or missed
days of work and school.
On a clear summer day in Rhode Island, driving along the sparkling
Narragansett Bay, commuting into work, you will often hear the warning
on drive-time radio:

Today is a bad air day in Rhode Island. Infants, seniors,
people with breathing difficulties should stay indoors today.

On those days, people in those categories are forced to stay at home,
missing work, school, and other important activities. Others even in
good health are urged to avoid strenuous activities on these bad air
days. These are real costs--costs paid in lives and reduced quality of
life, in medical bills,

[[Page S7286]]

public services strained responding to health risks, and in missed days
of work and school--all from pollution in our air.
We don't know everything about the causes and cures of asthma, but we
do know one thing: air pollution triggers asthma attacks. We know air
pollution is a preventable problem.
Rhode Island has worked hard and made great strides to reduce air
pollution. We passed laws to prohibit cars and buses from idling their
engines and to retrofit all State schoolbuses with diesel pollution
controls. We require heavy-duty vehicles used in federally funded
construction projects to install diesel pollution controls, adhere to
the anti-idling law, and use only low-sulfur diesel. Our transit agency
voluntarily retrofitted half of its bus fleet with diesel pollution
control equipment.
But Rhode Island cannot solve its air pollution problem on its own.
In fact, Doug McVay, who is acting as chief of Rhode Island's Office of
Air Resources, told me all of Rhode Island's major sources of air
pollution--not just powerplants but any source that holds a major title
5 permit--emit less than 3,000 tons a year of nitrogen oxide, also
called NOX, and sulfur dioxide, also called SO2.
Let me repeat that. All major sources in Rhode Island taken together
emit annually less than 3,000 tons of these two pollutants. Polluters
that will be subject to the cross-State air pollution rule in other
States have single units that emit more than that. Some of the larger
coal-fired boilers may emit 10,000 to 12,000 tons of these pollutants
every year, nearly four times the pollution emitted by all Rhode Island
major sources combined.
In Rhode Island, we are willing to pull our weight in achieving air
pollution reductions. Indeed, we have done more than pull our own
weight; we are pulling above our weight. But we need all States to be
pulling their weight, too, to make the air safe to breathe in America
from coast to coast.
This year at my request the GAO completed a report about tall
smokestacks at coal powerplants. The report found that in 1970, the
year the Clean Air Act was enacted, there were two what they call tall
stacks--smokestacks over 500 feet in the United States--two.
By 1985 there were more than 180 tall stacks. As of 2010, 284 tall
smokestacks were operating at 172 coal powerplants, representing 64
percent of the coal-generating capacity in our country. The industry
literally smokestacked its way into compliance with the Clean Air Act.
What do I mean by that? In the early days of the Clean Air Act, some
States allowed sources of pollution to build tall smokestacks instead
of installing pollution controls. The concept back then was that
pollution sent high enough into the atmosphere would be sent far away
from the source and would not contribute to air pollution problems--at
least in that State. Well, it turns out this air pollution causes
problems downwind in other States.
As the GAO report put it, tall stacks generally disburse pollutants
over greater distances than shorter stacks and provide pollutants
greater time to react in the atmosphere to form ozone and particulate
matter.
For this antiquated practice, Rhode Island pays the price.
Smokestacking, instead of scrubbing, is what is behind a lot of the
ozone in Rhode Island that gives rise to those bad air days. The GAO
found that more than half of the boilers attached to tall stacks at
coal powerplants do not have a scrubber to control sulfur dioxide
emissions--more than half, no scrubber, just a tall smokestack to pump
it out to the downwind States. Nearly two-thirds of boilers connected
to tall stacks do not have postcombustion controls for nitrogen oxide.
So how does it get to Rhode Island? As GAO concluded, in the Mid-
Atlantic U.S. the wind generally blows from west to east. Ozone can
travel hundreds of miles with the help of high-speed winds known as the
low-level jet. This phenomenon particularly occurs at night due to the
ground cooling quicker than the upper atmosphere, which can allow the
low-level jet to form and transport ozone and particulate matter with
its high winds.
This wind map shows that condition. These are all the midwestern
powerplants, and this is the wind that carries them down here to, among
other States, Rhode Island.
Five States on this map--Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois,
and North Carolina--have been identified by EPA as contributing
significantly to Rhode Island pollution.
This electricity that comes from uncontrolled powerplants tied to
these tall smokestacks might seem cheaper to consumers than a well-
controlled powerplant, a powerplant that is scrubbed instead of
smokestacking its pollution, but that is really not so. There are
costs. The costs just got shifted. The lungs of children and seniors in
Rhode Island and other downwind States pay for that cheap electricity,
and, truth be told, the lungs of children and seniors in many of the
upwind States are paying as well. The States upwind of Rhode Island are
downwind of someone else. Ohio and Pennsylvania are upwind of Rhode
Island, but they are downwind of other States. That is why EPA's
regulatory impact analysis determined that instate and upwind pollution
reductions from this rule will save approximately 3,209 lives in Ohio
and 2,911 lives in Pennsylvania every year by 2014 and prevent hundreds
of heart attacks, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations in those
States. This rule opposed by Senator Paul will even save an estimated
1,705 lives in his home State of Kentucky every year by 2014.
It is not just lives saved. EPA estimates that by 2014, the benefits
from this rule will range between $110 billion and $280 billion. At the
same time, EPA estimates that the rule will cost utilities $4.1 billion
to comply in 2012 and another $.8 billion through 2014--a grand total
of $4.9 billion against $110 billion to $280 billion in quantifiable
benefits.
At the lower end of the range, this rule generates a 22-to-1 ratio of
benefits over costs. For every $1 in cost to the polluters who are
creating this pollution, to clean it up, there is $22 in benefit to the
rest of the country. That is a pretty good investment, and that is at
the low end.
At the high end, if it is $280 billion, we are talking about a 56-to-
1 ratio of benefits over costs. We have people from polluting States
who, to save a buck for their polluters who are running it up
smokestacks instead of scrubbing their pollution, to save the buck in
putting the scrubber and quit smokestacking their pollution and dumping
it on Rhode Island and other States, are willing to blow $56 in
benefits to Americans across the country, even in their States. It
doesn't make any sense.
The cross-State air rule is good for public health. It is fair. There
is no other way Rhode Island can affect these States. We have done
everything we can to clean our air. We could stop everything, and we
would still be a nonattainment clean air quality State because of what
gets bombed in on us from other States. If we don't have EPA defending
us, we have no defense at all from States that choose to export their
pollution rather than clean it up. And it is very cost effective,
better than 51 by the highest estimates. So that is why I will be
voting against Senator Paul's resolution to void this rule. I urge my
colleagues to do the same.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I rise this evening to join my colleague
from Rhode Island and those who have come to the floor throughout the
day today, to join them in strong opposition to the efforts by Senator
Paul to nullify the Environmental Protection Agency's cross-State air
pollution rule.
As we have heard on the floor, his resolution would strip the EPA of
its authority to protect our air from certain kinds of air pollution
emitted by powerplants. That rule was put in place specifically to
protect downwind States, such as New Hampshire and those of us in the
Northeast and on the east coast, from air pollution that originates
from outside our borders. I am particularly concerned by the attempts
to stop these protections because in New Hampshire we have been
fighting for them for over a decade, and they are long overdue.
Clean air is a bipartisan matter for us in New Hampshire. As my
friend and colleague Senator Ayotte noted on the floor last night:

[[Page S7287]]

In New Hampshire, we have a long, bipartisan tradition of
working to advance commonsense, balanced environmental
protections.

I couldn't agree with her more. She and I know that even if we
eliminated all local sources of air pollution from within New
Hampshire's borders, we would still have counties in the State with
unacceptably high levels of pollution. That is because of the
overwhelming pollution that comes into New Hampshire and the Northeast
on air currents from the Midwest.
In the Northeast, we are considered the tailpipe for the rest of the
country. That is why, in 1997, when I was Governor, New Hampshire
joined with seven other Northeast States to demand that the EPA begin
cracking down on this transported air pollution. When New Hampshire
joined that effort in 1997, this is what I said about it:

When you climb Mount Washington in New Hampshire and see
smog that is blown in from the Midwest, it's clearly time for
a national crackdown on air pollution . . . it's time to
address the major sources of a pollution that is fouling our
air and affecting the health of our people. We've done our
part in New Hampshire to cut down on emissions, and it's time
for the EPA to get tough on major polluters upwind.

I have here a picture of the White Mountains, which is where Mount
Washington is. That is the highest point in New Hampshire and,
actually, in the whole Northeast. What this picture shows very clearly
is the impact of this air pollution that is coming in from upwind.
We can see these are the White Mountains. On a clear day, you can see
a beautiful blue sky, green trees, beautiful landscape. On a hazy day,
this is the impact of that smog. It looks as if somebody took a gray
paintbrush and painted over the White Mountains in New Hampshire.
It is really unbelievable to me that we are here, 14 years after this
action was brought in 1997, still debating transported air pollution.
The time for debate is over. The air quality improvements from this
rule will benefit over 289,000 children who are at risk for asthma in
New Hampshire. New Hampshire has one of the highest rates of childhood
asthma in the country. In my State alone, air pollution is estimated to
cost businesses more than 17,000 lost days of work annually due to
health problems. Yet we are still hearing the same old arguments that
forcing polluters to clean up will hurt the economy, will hurt our
businesses. No. In fact, we have lots of research that shows that is
not true.

Talking points about job-killing regulations ignore the fact that a
recent economic analysis by the Political Economy Research Institute
found that the EPA's cross-State air pollution rule and the proposed
mercury rule will create 290,000 jobs per year over the next 5 years in
important sectors of our economy such as construction, craft labor, and
industrial manufacturing. Companies such as ThermoFischer Scientific,
which has a plant in Newington, NH, is a leading manufacturer of
environmental monitoring equipment and a great example that good policy
creates jobs right here in the United States.
By reducing air pollution, these protections are estimated to provide
about $640 million in benefits to the New Hampshire economy alone.
Nationwide, the health and environmental benefits are estimated at $120
billion to $280 billion each year. That is because when air pollution
comes across our State borders, it is our New Hampshire companies that
are forced to make up the difference. Without these rules, we have an
unfair system where the burden of keeping our air clean falls
disproportionately on downwind States such as New Hampshire.
Higher air pollution costs our businesses through the loss of worker
productivity and greater medical expenses, and it also affects our
critical tourism industry in New Hampshire which depends on the clean
air of the White Mountains and the health of our beautiful lakes and
forests and streams. In New Hampshire, this tourism industry and the
outdoor recreation economy, much like in Colorado where the Presiding
Officer is from, supports 53,000 jobs, generates $260 million per year
in sales taxes, and accounts for 8 percent of our State's gross
domestic product. Transported air pollution has a direct impact on this
industry, as we can see so clearly in this photograph, and on the
quality of life of New Hampshire's 1.3 million citizens. It is time for
the EPA to move forward with their cross-State air pollution rules.
I urge all of my colleagues in the Senate to reject this resolution
by Senator Paul and to protect the health and welfare of all of the
citizens in this country.
Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich). The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask that the order for the quorum call
be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I want to take just a few minutes to talk
about Veterans Day and important work already going on in Colorado to
support our returning servicemembers and their families.
This Friday, Veterans Day holds special significance. America's part
in the war in Iraq is coming to a close this year, and we have started
drawing down combat troops in Afghanistan. In Colorado, that is going
to mean about 400 Fort Carson soldiers will come home from Iraq in
December alone.
Many of the bravest 1 percent of Americans who shoulder 100 percent
of the responsibility of keeping our country safe will be coming home
all across the country. As these servicemembers return to their
families and many transition to civilian life, we need to make sure we
are ready to make good on the promises we have made.
I asked leaders from the Colorado veterans community to make
recommendations for how to make Colorado the best State for veterans
and military families to live and work. After months of thoughtful
conversation, they produced a comprehensive report called ``Better
Serving Those Who Have Served'' that offers solutions on how to address
the challenges facing America's veterans. A key part of this report is
a new proposal to create a National Veterans Foundation, modeled after
work being done in Colorado Springs that enabled public and private
agencies to better collaborate to support veterans and military
families. This week, I will introduce a bill to bring that Colorado-
based innovation to the rest of the country. The bill would create a
congressionally chartered National Veterans Foundation to support
communities attempting to work on a blueprint model like Colorado
Springs. The foundation would help fill gaps in services to veterans by
helping communities align and leverage their resources.
I have also joined Senator Tester and the Presiding Officer and
cosponsored the VOW to Hire Heroes Act. The VOW to Hire Heroes Act does
much to help veterans find good-paying jobs, including providing
significant tax incentives to businesses that hire veterans. The Senate
will likely be voting on this important legislation tomorrow, and I
urge colleagues to support its passage.
Before I sit down, I wanted to mention that 2 weeks, maybe 3 weeks
ago, I was down in Colorado Springs visiting Fort Carson, and I went to
see an elementary school on the post. As a former school
superintendent, I have spent a lot of time over the years in schools
and tend to want to be there when the children are there so that you
can actually get a sense of whether there is any learning going
on. This meeting was different because it was a meeting after school,
after the children had gone home. Ninety percent of them live on the
post. Their entire lives have been defined by these two wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Their entire lives have been defined by the deployment
of one parent--in some cases two parents--who have served two or three
or four tours of duty on behalf of this country in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

Thousands of our troops are going to be coming home over the next
year. I think we need to be asking ourselves whether we really are
ready to honor the commitments and promises we have made.

[[Page S7288]]

As others have said tonight, when we are coming out of what is the
worst economic calamity we have faced since the Great Depression, we
need to make sure we are doing absolutely everything we can for these
veterans but also for the people who are the moms and dads, the
children at elementary schools just like the one I visited, all across
the country.
The children in this school, according to the teachers with whom I
met, have faced extraordinary challenges at home as a result of all
this. It is another example of the work we should be doing together
here in a bipartisan way as we ask people to serve their country in
these foreign wars.
I continue to hope at some point there is going to be a breakthrough
here and we are going to get past the partisan cartoon we have
confronted for the entire time I have been in the Senate and get back
to the work of the American people and get back to the work that will
support the children in that elementary school at Fort Carson. I want
to say on this floor and for this record how grateful I am to their
teachers for teaching but also for giving their Senator an insight into
the lives of the young people they are serving.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

____________________