[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 57 (Wednesday, April 24, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2909-S2911]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MARKETPLACE FAIRNESS ACT
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I had a number of meetings yesterday with
Democratic and Republican proponents of the Marketplace Fairness Act.
This
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is a piece of legislation that is overwhelmingly supported by Democrats
and Republicans. I appreciate the remarks of the Presiding Officer
yesterday on behalf of this legislation.
Succinctly, what this legislation would do is level the playing field
between online sellers and brick-and-mortar retailers. As everyone
knows, we have had a lot of problems with the economy. But in Nevada we
have been hit very hard. We led the Nation for 20 years with a vibrant
economy. In the last 4 or 5 years it has been difficult. We are doing
better now but we are not doing great. For lack of a better
description, I was going to say it breaks my heart. I am not sure that
is proper. But I feel very badly when I drive in Reno or Las Vegas and
see these little strip malls with ``for lease'' signs. They would not
be for lease if they had the ability to compete with these online
sellers.
As indicated yesterday on a number of occasions in presentations I
heard made, people come to the retailers who pay money for brick and
mortar. They will find a pair of shoes, they will find a coat they
like, or whatever else, and they immediately walk out of there and go
on line and do not pay the sales tax. That prevents that business from
succeeding.
The reason I mention this today, we could finish this legislation
today, on Wednesday, and move on to the other bipartisan legislation.
We have a small number of Senators who are holding this up, stalling.
This has 50 Democratic votes and at least 25 Republican votes. I know
many of my Republican colleagues want to attend--and I think that is
appropriate; I wish I could--the opening of the Bush Library in Texas.
Unfortunately, there are Senators who are playing procedural games that
are going to prevent that from happening. I do not say this often.
There is no chance they can prevail. We have three States basically
holding up this legislation. For people to talk, you are coercing us to
do something. We are coercing those States to do nothing. Zero.
Nothing. We are just trying to make the playing field level.
So I want everyone to understand, just a handful of Senators is
preventing us from doing our work. We are going to finish this
legislation this week. I know this sounds like me crying wolf, but this
may be the time the wolf is really coming.
We have a bipartisan bill we have to move to next work period. It is
the WRDA, Water Resources Development Act, supported by one of the most
liberal Members of this Senate, Barbara Boxer, and one of the most
conservative Members, Senator Vitter. They have worked out a bill. It
has been reported out of their committee. It is on the calendar right
now. We are going to move to that.
In addition to that, we have another bipartisan bill in the wings
coming out, the agriculture bill. We need to complete those bills next
work period, because we have to get to immigration. So everyone
understand, this is not crying wolf. We are going to finish this bill.
I spoke yesterday to Senator Enzi who has worked on this bill for 11
years. I spoke to my good friend--and certainly Mike Enzi is my good
friend; I do not mean to choose favorites here--Lamar Alexander. They
both said we have got to finish this bill this week. We are going to do
that. When I have requests from Dick Durbin and my Republican friends
to move forward on this bill, we are going to move forward on it. If we
have to be here Friday and Saturday, I am telling everybody we are
going to finish this bill.
We have a 3-week work period next time. We have to jam in WRDA and
hopefully the ag bill so we can move before July 4 and finish the
immigration bill which is going to take up quite a bit of time. We have
too much to do when we return from our in-State work period.
I have a lot to do. I have a conference. I am going to do some things
there with Eric Cantor. We do not do things together very often, but we
are going to talk about some issues people want to talk about. I want
to be able to do that. It is not here in Washington. If I have to put
that off, it would be a shame for me and Eric Cantor, and I think the
people putting on the conference. But if that is what it takes, that is
what it takes. I want to go home. So we are going to finish this bill.
I am going to read an editorial from one of the world's leading
newspapers. It says, ``Budget Cuts, Minus the Inconvenience.''
Headline: Republicans encourage a sequester affecting the poor, but
they are furious about travel delays.
Here is what it says. I am not editorializing, I am just telling you
what they put in this newspaper editorial today.
On Monday, after the sequester cuts forced the Federal
Aviation Administration to begin furloughs for air traffic
controllers, delays began to build up at airports around the
country. Travelers had to wait, but nothing delayed
Republicans from scurrying away from all responsibility.
Speaker John Boehner started using the Twitter hashtag
#ObamaFlightDelays, the latest effort in his party's campaign
to blame all the pain of the sequester on the Obama
administration while claiming all the credit for its effect
on reducing the deficit.
``Why is President Obama unnecessarily delaying your
flight?'' Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, wrote in a
message on Twitter. If the President wanted to, Republicans
said, he could easily cut somewhere else and spare travelers
any inconvenience.
As it happens, the sequester law is clear in requiring the
F.A.A. and most other agencies to cut their programs by an
even amount. That law was foisted on the public after
Republicans demanded spending cuts in exchange for raising
the debt ceiling in 2012. Since then, the party has rejected
every offer to replace the sequester with a more sensible mix
of cuts and revenue increases. Mr. Boehner is so proud of
that strategy that he recently congratulated his party for
sticking with the sequester and standing up to the
president's demand for tax increases.
But drastic cuts in spending carry a heavy price.
Republicans certainly don't want voters they care about--
including business travelers and those who can afford to fly
on vacation--to feel it. They continue to claim that the $85
billion in this year's sequester can be covered by
eliminating waste, fraud, consultants, and the inevitable
grant to some obscure science or art project. And of course
to programs for the poor.
You don't see any Republican hashtags blaming the president
for cutting housing vouchers to 140,000 low-income families,
which has begun. These vouchers are given by cities to
families on the brink of homelessness, and about half of them
go to families with children.
There aren't any tweets about the 70,000 Head Start slots
about to be eliminated, which is forcing some school
districts to distribute these valuable services by lottery.
This is not the editorial. The Presiding Officer's colleague, Senator
Rockefeller--a wealthy man with this great name--as a young man went to
West Virginia and fell in love with the poor because he was a VISTA
volunteer, and he never left. He is now here in the Senate.
Let's get to the editorial. I am sorry about that.
Continuing:
Or about the cuts to Vista [Volunteers in Service to
America], which is hurting the program that performs
antipoverty work in many States. Or the 11 percent cut in
unemployment benefits for millions of jobless workers.
The voiceless people who are the most affected by these
cuts can't afford high-priced lobbyists to get them an
exception to the sequester, the way that the agriculture
lobby was able to fend off a furlough to meat inspectors,
which might have disrupted beef and poultry operations. And
what was cut in order to keep those inspectors on the job?
About $25 million from a program to provide free school
breakfasts.
As bad as the sequester was, it was being made worse by
these special-interest demands for exceptions, as well as
politically motivated attempts to deflect the responsibility
for pain.
The maneuvering shows the futility of trying to reduce the
deficit with crude and arbitrary cuts. Both Senate Democrats
and the White House have proposed budget plans that replace
the sequester with a much better mix of spending cuts and
revenue increases.
On Tuesday, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid,
proposed replacing the sequester for 5 months with unspent
money from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is what one of America's major newspapers said today that
millions of people will have the opportunity to read.
The sequester was designed as a tool to bring Democrats and
Republicans together to reduce the deficit in a responsible way. By now
we can all see that didn't work, and we can see that sequester's costs
far outweigh the savings.
As indicated in this editorial, these across-the-board cuts would
cost, this year, 750,000 jobs--three-quarters of a million jobs. They
will cost us investments in education that keep America competitive.
They will cost millions of
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seniors, children, veterans, and needy families the safety net that
keeps them from descending into poverty.
Most of the headlines are focused on the hours the sequester has cost
travelers in airports across the Nation. The frustration and the
economic effects of those delays should not be minimized.
The sequester could also cost this country, and humankind, a cure for
AIDS, Parkinson's disease, or cancer. These arbitrary cuts have
decimated funding for medical researchers seeking cures for diabetes,
epilepsy, and hundreds of other dangerous and debilitating diseases.
The National Institutes of Health has delayed or halted vital
scientific projects and reduced the number of grants it awards to
research scientists. Thousands of research scientists will lose their
jobs in the next few months. Research projects that can't go on without
adequate staffing will be cancelled altogether. Ohio State University,
which is known for more than a good football and basketball team, is
also one of the premier research centers in America. Grants for cancer
research and infectious disease control have been axed. They are over.
At the University of Cincinnati, which is at the forefront in research
on strokes--a leading cause of death in the United States--scientists
are bracing for some more cuts. Vanderbilt University and the
University of Kentucky are accepting fewer science graduate students
because of funding reductions. At Wright State University, scientists
researching pregnancy-related disorders, such as preeclampsia, will
lose their jobs. Boston University has laid off lab scientists, and
research laboratories in San Francisco have instituted hiring freezes
and delayed the launch of important studies. Grants to some of Harvard
University's most successful research scientists were not renewed
because of the sequester.
The research I have talked about today--and these are only a few of
them--saves lives and saves misery. These scientists are looking for
the next successful treatment for Alzheimer's or the next drug to treat
high cholesterol. They might never get the chance to complete their
groundbreaking work or make their lifesaving discoveries because of
these shortsighted cuts.
We have seen the devastating impacts of these arbitrary budget cuts.
Now it is time to stop them.
Be prepared, everybody--the House is now working on another bill
because we have the debt ceiling coming soon. They are working on
another bill to make it even more painful for the American people.
Last night I introduced a bill that would roll back the sequester for
the rest of the year, and just like the editorial indicated, it is
something we should do. The bill would give Democrats and Republicans
time to sit down at the negotiating table and work out an agreement to
reduce the deficit in a balanced way. It wouldn't add a penny to the
deficit. It would use the savings from winding down the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq to prevent cuts that will harm our national
security and our economy.
Before the Republicans dismiss these savings, they should recall that
235 Republicans voted to use these funds to pay for the Ryan Republican
budget. They didn't consider it a gimmick when it served their own
purposes.
We can stop the flight delays and the pink slips. We can stop the
devastating cuts to programs that protect low-income children,
homebound seniors, and homeless veterans. We can stop the cuts to
crucial medical research. But Democrats can't do it without
Republicans' help.
Republicans overwhelmingly voted for these painful, arbitrary cuts,
and Republicans bear responsibility for their consequences. Remember,
these cuts came about because of the debt ceiling they refused to move
on until these devastating cuts came about, and Republicans bear
responsibility for the consequences, from travel delays to cuts to
vital programs. Now Republicans must accept that they have an
obligation to cooperate with us to help stop these Draconian cuts and
mitigate the consequences.
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