[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 10 (Tuesday, January 24, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S62-S63]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         LEGISLATIVE CHALLENGES

  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, it is good to be back at work here in 
Washington, DC. We have the big State of the Union tonight, which is 
kind of the beginning of the legislative year. I am looking forward to 
the challenges and, hopefully, accomplishments we will have together 
both in this Chamber and in this building in the coming year.
  As we prepare for the State of the Union, I think it is always a good 
time for us to reflect on where we are as a nation and where we have 
been. I think all of us can look back on the 20th century and say it 
was truly the American century. I was blessed to be born in that 
century and to be a beneficiary of so much of America's greatness. 
Those of us who have been beneficiaries of America's past have an 
obligation--certainly those who serve here--to be defenders of 
America's greatness in the future. At the core of everything we debate 
today are these issues about America's future and how we make the 21st 
century an American century as well.
  If we examine some of what has really distinguished us from the rest 
of the world, that has made America and life in America different from 
life in other countries, there are three things that come to mind. The 
first is this concept of fairness. We are a people who strongly believe 
in the concept of fairness. For Americans, fairness has meant equality 
of opportunity--in essence, the belief that it doesn't matter where you 
come from, it doesn't matter if your parents are poor, it doesn't 
matter if you grow up in a disadvantaged background, every single 
American should have the equality of opportunity, the same opportunity 
to succeed and accomplish their hopes and dreams.
  Maybe we take that for granted from time to time, but that is not a 
universal concept. In multiple societies and economies around the 
world, I daresay that in the majority of them there is not a strong 
belief in this notion. In fact, people believe that what you are going 
to be in life should be determined by the circumstances of your birth. 
Not in America. This Chamber, the membership here--basically everywhere 
you go in America--is a testament to people who were born in a very 
different place or into very different circumstances than the ones they 
live in now and that which they have been able to achieve.
  As Americans, we have always embraced the concept of prosperity, the 
ability to accomplish your economic dreams and hopes. Sometimes that 
means people make billions of dollars, and sometimes that means you 
make enough money to provide for your family and give them the 
opportunity to do even better than yourself, but we embrace the concept 
of prosperity.
  Last but not least, we Americans have always embraced the concept of 
responsibility, the responsibility that all of us have as individuals, 
as neighbors, as members of a community, as family members. Deep in 
this concept of responsibility is the notion that while we want 
fairness and equality of opportunity and while we want prosperity, we 
are also a compassionate people who do not want to see others left 
behind. In essence, we do not want the price of our prosperity to be 
leaving people behind. To that end, Americans, as I outlined in a 
speech earlier last year, have always struggled and have fought for the 
notion of balancing those two important goals--being a nation of 
prosperity and also a nation of responsibility.
  These are the central things, these are at the core of our values as 
a people that defined our greatness in the last century, and therefore 
they must remain at the core of who we are as a nation if we want the 
21st century to be an American century as well. Let's examine some of 
the challenges to those three principles that are so important to our 
future.
  On the issue of fairness, on the issue of equality of opportunity, 
what are the things standing in the way of equality of opportunity in 
America? In essence, what are the things keeping some people from 
climbing the ladder, from doing better than their parents did, from 
being able to pursue and fulfill their dreams as they should in a 
nation so deeply committed to equality of opportunity?
  In essence, there are a few things that are standing in the way. The 
first is skills. There are some Americans right now who do not have 
access to the kind of training they need to build the skills they need, 
for example, to create or to have a middle-class job. Part of that is 
our own doing as a nation. We have, for example, stigmatized career and 
technical education. For the life of me, I do not understand why we 
have done that. Not every kid wants to go to a 4-year university. Not 
every kid wants to graduate with a Ph.D. Some kids want to grow up and 
fix airplane engines or build things. That is good and important, 
necessary work. Yet we do not train our kids to do that. A number of 
jobs in America require more than a high school education but less than 
a 4-year degree in college. Why can't kids graduate from high school 
with a high school diploma and an industry certification and a career 
that will employ them right away? That is one of the impediments that 
are standing in the way of growing middle-class jobs. If we are truly 
committed to the principle of fairness, we should invest in that, 
encourage that, particularly at the State level.
  There is another thing standing in the way of fairness, equality of 
opportunity; that is, the playing field is not always even. And there 
are two things in particular that stand out: our regulations and our 
Tax Code. It is not me saying that, it is the job creators, small 
businesspeople trying to make it. Let me tell you what I mean by that. 
We have a complicated Tax Code, and it is broken. Here is the deal. If 
you are a large, major, Fortune 500 company, you can afford the best 
lawyers and accountants in the world to navigate it. You may not like 
the large, complicated Tax Code, but you can deal with it. The people 
who cannot deal with a large, complicated Tax Code are the people who 
are trying to make it--the sole practitioner, the entrepreneur, the 
small businessperson starting out in the garage or spare bedroom of 
their home. They cannot deal with the taxes, and they cannot deal with 
the regulations because they cannot hire the army of specialists it 
takes to navigate these things.

  In case you say somehow we are making this up or somehow this is 
coming out of nowhere, let me tell you that the U.S. Chamber of 
Commerce did a survey of small businesses earlier this year. They found 
that 86 percent of small businesses--which are, by the way, not just 
the backbone of America's economy, they are the backbone of America's 
prosperity--86 percent of them say they are worried that regulations, 
restrictions, and taxes are hurting their ability to do business. This 
is a fact.
  In terms of there not being a playing field that is even in America, 
in my

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opinion, the single greatest contributor to making it more difficult 
for people who are trying to make it is some of the policies--as well-
intentioned as they may be--that are being implemented at the 
governmental level. We need to invest and commit deeply to this notion 
of fairness, which is defined in America as equality of opportunity.
  The second thing we need to continue to believe in is prosperity. 
Prosperity in America has and must continue to mean private sector 
economic growth. The private sector grows and creates private jobs 
which employ people and turn those people into parents who can send 
their kids on to college and consumers who can spend money in our 
economy. The creation of middle-class jobs is not just the backbone of 
our economy, it is the backbone of our prosperity.
  How are jobs created in the private sector? It is simple. Someone has 
an idea, they have a business or product they want to invest in, they 
have access to money, whether it is their own money or someone else's 
money, and they use that money to put that idea into practice. They 
start a business, it works, and as a result people get jobs, people are 
employed, and the cycle repeats itself. The job for us in Washington is 
to make it easier for people to do that at every level. No. 1 is to 
make it easier for people to have ideas, and that is the easiest one of 
all. Americans have not run out of good ideas, and Americans have not 
forgotten how to create jobs. There are plenty of great ideas. There 
are great business ideas for the 21st century. There are a bunch of 
them that exist in the minds of hundreds of thousands of Americans who 
are waiting for the chance to put that dream into practice.

  The second thing we have to do is make it easier for them to get 
access to the money they need to start their businesses, and that means 
to encourage investment. I do not understand why we would punish or 
discourage investment. Why raise taxes on people who want to invest in 
businesses that allow these businesses to grow and hire more people? It 
is important we make that easier as well.
  I would like to talk again about small businesses. The survey I 
outlined a minute ago showed that 78 percent of small businesses say 
taxes and regulations coming from Washington also make it harder for 
them to hire more employees. So in addition to making it easier for 
people to make money available to investors to allow these ideas to go 
into practice, we also have to lower the cost of doing business and the 
barriers to entry, and the equation is pretty straightforward.
  If you are an employee working for somebody and decide you can do a 
better job than your boss and want to start your own business and want 
to compete against him, well, the regulations that impact that industry 
and the tax code that applies to that industry are too complicated and 
too burdensome so you cannot do it. If you are a small business trying 
to grow, no matter how much money you have invested, you may not be 
able to deal with that as well.
  By the way, there are two industries I hope we will look at as real 
growth opportunities and prosperity in America. We are an energy-rich 
country and advances in technology have made certain deposits of energy 
once inaccessible to us accessible. Natural gas is a great example. We 
need to stop punishing investment in the energy sector by raising 
taxes. We need to stop passing regulations that put entire areas of 
this country completely off limits and make it difficult to access our 
energy deposits. I think energy is an area on which we should focus.
  The other is manufacturing. As labor costs rise around the world, 
there is no reason more and more manufacturing cannot return to the 
United States. But this is not going to happen if we regulate people 
looking to do manufacturing in a way that they decide America is not 
the place they should do business and if the tax treatment of America 
puts us at a competitive disadvantage.
  Let me close by saying that the opportunity before us is real. The 
21st century holds promise, promise that holds no parallel in human 
history. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say we can see the kind 
of economic growth here and around the world that we have never seen 
before. That is how promising the 21st century is. It all comes down to 
a choice. We have to make a choice. Are we prepared to abandon the 
principles and ideals that made us unique and special or are we going 
to reembrace those principles and ideals and in so doing make this new 
century an American century as well?
  When I hear some of the talk in this building, it concerns me. When I 
hear people telling the American people that the way to protect their 
jobs is to raise their bosses' taxes, I think that is 
counterproductive. When I hear policymakers in Washington pitting the 
American people against each other, telling people that the only way 
they can do better is if someone else is worse off, I get concerned. 
Not only is it not true, that type of thought has never worked anywhere 
in the world. In fact, people flee from countries that think in that 
way.
  The American experience has been something very important. The 
American experience has been that this is a country where everybody can 
do better, where the people who have made it can stay there, and the 
people who are trying to make it can join them. We have never believed 
that the way for us to do better is for other people to do worse. We 
have never believed in order to climb the ladder, we have to pull 
somebody else down. For me, it is not theory, it is the experience of 
my life.
  My parents raised me with middle-class jobs in the service sector. My 
dad, for example, was a bartender, and I thank God every night there 
was someone out there willing to risk their money to build a hotel in 
Miami Beach and later in Las Vegas where he could later work. I thank 
God there was enough prosperity in America so people could go on 
vacation and leave tips in my dad's tip jar. With the money he raised 
as a bartender, he gave me the opportunity to do what he never had a 
chance to do.
  We had help along the way. I had student loans and grants from the 
government to help me get my education. I went to a public school 
system, and that is an important role for government to play.
  Let's not forget we cannot have more government than our economy can 
afford. That is why those of us who desperately want to see a country 
that continues to have prosperity but also compassion believe safety 
net programs should exist to help those who cannot help themselves and 
help those who have fallen to stand and try again. That is why we 
believe we have to have a strong and robust economy.
  What is startling is that we, the largest and most prosperous Nation 
in human history, have built a government so massive that not even the 
richest country in the history of the world can afford it, and we 
cannot continue on that road either.
  I will close by saying that I hope this new year will be the 
beginning of our work toward a new American century. I know it worked 
in the past. I know this is a nation where anyone from anywhere can 
accomplish anything. It is not just something I read about in a 
magazine. I have seen it in my own life. There is no reason it cannot 
continue here if only we are creative.
  I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up 
to 18 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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