[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 155 (Thursday, October 22, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7441-S7445]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CYBERSECURITY INFORMATION SHARING ACT OF 2015--Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
The Budget and Debt Ceiling
Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to address the
budget standoff we are in and the looming debt ceiling issue we are
facing. I wish to address this briefly. There will be more to say about
this in the near future.
The administration tells us that November 3 is the date after which
the extraordinary measures they have been taking run out, and they say
that on that date, they will need to start borrowing more money. As we
know, we have temporary legislation that funds the government through
December 11, I think it is, after which we have not yet resolved how we
keep the government operating. I would like to address this a little
bit.
First of all, the fundamental problem we have on the debt ceiling
increase is we are spending too much money. We are running annual
deficits, and we have to borrow money to make up the shortfall. That is
what is happening. That is why we reached the debt ceiling, and that is
why and the administration wants to borrow more. What is particularly
problematic is the President's position that we ought to increase the
debt ceiling and allow him to borrow a lot more money without even so
much as having a discussion on--much less actually addressing--the
gross fiscal mismanagement that is requiring us to borrow all of this
money in the first place.
Let's go back to a recent occasion in which we had this debate. In
2011, we reached the debt limit and had a big debate about how we
should proceed, and what happened was Congress insisted on--and the
President resisted but eventually agreed to--some very modest spending
cuts. They established caps, or limits, on discretionary spending,
which consist of 37 to 38 percent of all Federal spending that Congress
controls through the annual appropriations process.
So some caps were put in place, and the idea was that for every
dollar that we raised the debt ceiling, or for every new dollar of debt
we would impose on the American people, we would at least cut one
dollar of spending over the next 10 years, so that even though we were
making a bad situation with our debt load worse by increasing the debt,
we would at least be improving the underlying dynamic by diminishing
the total spending so that in the future our deficits would be smaller.
At least that was the idea.
If you take a look, there was actually a lot of progress in the
category of Federal spending--the discretionary spending. We have a
graph that shows the increase in Federal spending. This red line shows
a huge surge that happened when the President insisted on that
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massive stimulus spending bill. That is the big spike. It dropped off a
little bit because that single, individual gargantuan bill wasn't
replicated the next year. Then, a short time thereafter, we reached
this agreement with the President where Congress said: Mr. President,
you get the debt ceiling increase, but in return for that, let's reduce
our discretionary spending over time, and then we will allow it to grow
at the rate of inflation after a certain number of years. That was the
nature of the agreement. The idea was to address the underlying problem
of overspending that is requiring all of this debt.
As this chart demonstrates, this black line shows where we are today.
We have made some progress. There is a gradual, modest decline. This is
the big surge that came from that gigantic stimulus bill, but after
that, there is a gradual, steady, modest decline, so that in this
category of discretionary spending--as I said, almost 40 percent of the
Federal budget--we actually limited that. It is the first time, that I
am aware of, in years--maybe even decades--when we have had several
consecutive years in which the Federal Government has actually spent
less each year than the year before in discretionary spending.
By way of full disclosure, I voted against this overall agreement
because I knew then, as I know now, that while this makes some
progress, it doesn't solve the underlying problem. One could argue that
it moves in the right direction, but it does not fix the huge debt
problem that we have, and this chart illustrates that.
This chart shows that in recent years we have had a slight decline in
the size of our deficits. If we go back further, we would see that the
deficits were even higher earlier. We have made some progress. The
annual deficit, which is the red line, is corresponding to each year
since 2014. We can see that it has come down a little bit. This year
the deficit will be $426 billion. It is still too big of a number, but
it is less than it was in recent years.
Here is the problem: There are people around this town who talk as
though we have this problem solved. A few years ago, the deficit was $1
trillion, and today it is $426 billion; so everything is OK. Take a
look at where this line is going. This isn't OK. This isn't 100 years
from now. This is 5 years from now. This is 10 years from now. What is
happening is our deficits are going to explode.
This isn't just my projection. This is the Congressional Budget
Office, the nonpartisan CBO. By the way, their numbers are wildly
optimistic. I will give three examples of assumptions they make, and
you can judge whether you think these are reasonable assumptions or
not.
First of all, as to the whole package of tax extenders, the
individual tax cuts that we renew every year, they assume that we
stopped renewing them and so there will be this surge of revenue that
will come into the Federal Government every year thereafter, and that
is all baked into these numbers. They also assume that we are going to
stick to the spending caps that I illustrated in the previous chart. In
this body we all know that negotiations are underway right now to bust
those spending caps, and the President is insisting on it.
In fact, the President has gone so far as to say that he is vetoing
the National Defense Authorization Act in part because we haven't yet
agreed to bust the caps on nondefense spending. Despite that, these
numbers assume that the caps are all complied with. Finally, the
Congressional Budget Office makes extremely optimistic assumptions, in
my view, about economic growth going forward in the next several years,
and that means they are making optimistic assumptions about how much
revenue the Federal Government is going to be taking in. Despite that,
as we can see, deficits are set to explode, and when deficits explode,
the corresponding debt total goes right along with it.
This is our debt. This is the gross Federal debt, and the gross
Federal debt is exactly a function of how much we borrow every year.
The annual deficit is the shortfall between revenue and spending, and
we make up the shortfall by going out and borrowing, and that adds to
the borrowing from previous years, and the total is our debt.
If we go back to 1980, it was practically zero. The gross Federal
debt was a very modest number. Now it is about $18 trillion, and it is
set to just continue rising. This is totally unsustainable. No country
has been able to rack up debt on this scale and have it end well. It
doesn't end well.
My point this afternoon is really a simple one. We have a choice
before us. We are up against the debt limit, and the President says:
Just give me more debt, and I don't even want to have a conversation
about the underlying cause or what we might do differently to solve
this issue. At the same time, they are saying: By the way, let's
increase the rate at which we rack up this debt by busting the spending
caps and abandoning the one element of spending discipline that we
have been able to achieve in this town in I don't know how many years.
I think most Republicans--and I know this Republican Senator--think
it would be a very bad idea to just rack up even more debt and do
nothing at all about the underlying cause of it and bust the spending
caps without finding some offsetting way to save money in other places.
By the way, when President Obama was Senator Obama, he thought it was
a bad idea then too. In 2006, he said:
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's
debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. Increasing
America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally.
Two years later, then-Senator Obama said in 2008: ``Adding $4
trillion in debt is irresponsible, it's unpatriotic.''
Isn't it a little bit ironic that under President Obama we added $8
trillion in debt and now he wants more? He wants more, and as I said
before, his insistence is that we can't even have a discussion about
dealing with the underlying problems. It is not clear to me why this
President should be one of the only Presidents, if not the only
President, who gets a debt ceiling increase without even having a
conversation about underlying reforms.
In 1984, Gramm-Rudman-Hollings was a major, important budget deal
that was done in the context of a debt ceiling increase.
In 1990, the Budget Enforcement Act imposed some spending discipline
in return for a debt ceiling increase.
In 1997, we had the Balanced Budget Act, which actually achieved a
balanced budget within a short period of time. That came up in the
context of a debt ceiling debate.
In 2011, as I mentioned at the beginning of my comments, we
established spending caps because we wanted to do something about the
underlying problem at the same time we increased the debt ceiling.
Unfortunately, as I said, the administration seems unwilling to even
have the discussion.
There are two charges that I hear from this administration which are
completely untrue, and I want to dispel this. One is this notion that I
hear all the time, that raising the debt limit merely enables us to pay
the bills that have already been incurred. They tell us how
irresponsible we are for not raising the debt limit. After all, these
bills have already been incurred. That is nonsense. It is completely
untrue. However many times they repeat it doesn't make it true.
I can prove it very simply. If we started running balanced budgets
tomorrow and kept running balanced budgets, we would never need to
borrow any more money. It is as simple as that. If we didn't spend any
more than we took in, we wouldn't need to borrow more money, and we
wouldn't need to increase the debt limit.
The precise reason you need to raise the debt limit is because you
need to borrow more money because you intend to spend more than you are
taking in. That is what the President is planning. That is what he
wants to do. That is what his budget calls for. We haven't committed to
any spending going forward. We don't even have an appropriations bill.
We don't have an omnibus. We don't have a CR. We haven't done that yet.
How can it be that this is paying for bills that have already been
incurred? It is not.
The second issue is that if we don't raise the debt ceiling by
November 3, it is implied--they don't say it this way--that we will
have a devastating and disruptive default in the markets and will not
be able to pay our Treasury debts. That is ridiculous. It is never
going to happen.
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Ninety percent of all the money the government is going to spend
comes in the door in the form of taxes. It is the other 10 percent that
is the shortfall that we have to go out and borrow. Ninety percent of
everything that the government is going to spend comes in the form of
taxes. You know how much goes out in debt service? About 7 percent. For
every $1 of government spending about 7 cents is service on our debt at
the moment, and 90 cents comes in from taxes. And you are going to
default on the debt? You would have to willfully choose to do that, and
I don't think even this administration would do that.
I will conclude by saying that I hate the idea of raising the debt
ceiling because we already have too much debt, but I understand that it
would be very difficult and not realistic to get from where we are to a
balanced budget overnight. I get that. So I would be willing to raise
the debt ceiling, and I think the obvious thing to do here is to tie it
to some structural reforms, even if they are just modest reforms. I
know the President is not willing to consider the kind of architectural
changes to the entitlement programs that it will take to actually solve
the problem, but could we at least make progress on the problem? Could
we at least go after the low-hanging fruit?
There are dozens of reforms that would at least modestly improve this
fiscal imbalance--the size of these annual deficits. We could have more
means testing of Medicare. In other words, very wealthy Americans could
contribute more to the cost of their Medicare. We could save tens of
billions of dollars a year if we did that.
We could reduce some of the subsidies that go to big corporations,
including big agricultural corporations. We spend many tens of billions
of dollars a year on corporate welfare. Why don't we wipe that out?
We have green energy research, which is another way of forcing
Americans to pay for inefficient production of electricity. We spend
$18 billion over the next several years on that.
Medical malpractice liability reform would save the Federal
Government $50 billion a year. These are not my numbers. This is
according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Maybe we could reduce the size of the Federal workforce. Between the
Departments of Energy, Agriculture, and Commerce, we have 163,000
employees. How much energy do they produce? How many crops do they
grow? How much commerce do they really generate? I think we could
probably do with a few less. There are hundreds of billions of dollars
that could be saved.
We could slow down the growth of the entitlement programs for future
beneficiaries. These would be reasonable things. Many of these
suggestions have had some level of support by the President at one time
or another. I am not looking for something radical. I am looking to
make some progress. But I think it is completely unreasonable for the
President to insist that he simply have the opportunity to saddle us,
our kids, and our grandkids with even more debt without even addressing
the underlying problem that is causing us to rack up this debt in the
first place.
I will have more to say about this next week. I think this will not
get resolved between now and then. When it does get resolved, one way
or another, I hope we will find offsets to any spending increase that
we incur relative to the levels we have agreed upon in the spending
caps of the 2011 agreement. If the debt ceiling increase occurs, I hope
it will occur in the context of some improvement to the underlying
situation.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Social Security
Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about some
disappointing news. For only the third time in 40 years, Social
Security beneficiaries will not receive a cost-of-living adjustment, or
COLA, this year. This news will impact the nearly 60 million American
retirees, dependent survivors, and disabled workers who rely on Social
Security to make ends meet.
Social Security is the most effective anti-poverty program in U.S.
history. Without Social Security, about 44.1 percent of America's
seniors would be living in poverty.
In Hawaii, one in six residents depends on Social Security to help
pay their bills and keep a roof over their heads. It is the only source
of income for 25 percent of our seniors in Hawaii.
We live in a world where wages just aren't rising fast enough, and
real pensions are disappearing. More and more workers are working
longer and harder with less to show for it when they retire.
According to a 2014 Federal Reserve study, nearly 1 in 37 respondents
reported having no retirement savings or pensions whatsoever, pointing
out once again that Social Security benefits are essential to millions
of working Americans and retirees.
For many who are already struggling to make ends meet, Social
Security is all they can rely on. Absent a COLA, too many beneficiaries
will see no increase in their primary source of income, making it
harder to afford basic necessities, especially medical care.
One of my constituents from Wahiawa wrote to me recently and said:
I find it incredible that there are people who actually
believe that Social Security is too generous. The average
Social Security benefit is a whopping $14,000 a year and
we've only seen an average 2 percent COLA over the past five
years. I can assure you my health care costs have far
exceeded that tiny increase.
Another constituent from Honoka'a was more direct in her concerns.
She wrote:
I have worked very hard my entire life and have planned to
retire in a few years. My worry is that I will not have
enough money to live. I also may have to continue to work due
to this deficit. My question is what are you going to do
about it and what is your game plan? Year after year no one
has done anything about it and has passed it down to the next
person entering the Senate office or Congressional office. It
is a problem that must be addressed immediately. Please help
me and the rest of my baby boomer generation.
Congress needs to listen to these voices and act to responsibly
strengthen and expand Social Security before it becomes yet another
fiscal crisis.
That is why I introduced the Protecting and Preserving Social
Security Act with Representative Deutch of Florida. Our bill does two
key things that will help seniors now as well as help to ensure the
strength of Social Security for decades to come.
First, our bill would help Social Security recipients by having basic
COLAs on a more accurate formula of what seniors actually purchase.
This formula is called the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, or
CPI-E. The CPI-E more accurately recognizes the rising costs for
seniors and gives them a benefit boost.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, if we were using the
CPI-E right now, seniors would be getting a 0.6 percent COLA increase
in 2016. That is about $100 more in benefits for the average person on
Social Security next year. And while small, seniors tell me that every
bit counts. Changing to the CPI-E will mean increases in Social
Security benefits to more accurately reflect the rising costs that our
seniors experience.
Second, our bill will pay for this benefit increase by requiring
millionaires and billionaires to pay the same rate into the Social
Security trust fund that everybody else pays. Few know that this year,
once workers earned above $118,500, they stopped paying the payroll tax
to support Social Security. In other words, Social Security
contributions are capped for these high-wage earners.
But most workers, as we know, earn far less than $118,500. So with
every paycheck, all year, most workers pay into Social Security. This
is not fair. It is not fair that millionaires and billionaires get a
Social Security tax loophole.
A corporate CEO could earn $118,500 in just one pay period and not
contribute a single additional cent in payroll taxes for the rest of
that year.
Our bill would gradually phase out the cap on payments into the
Social Security trust fund over 7 years. That way, whether you earn
$50,000 or $500 million a year, you keep paying at a fair rate to
support Social Security in every paycheck all year long.
The Protecting and Preserving Social Security Act is a fair way to
strengthen Social Security for decades to come, and it would give
current seniors and beneficiaries a much-needed boost right away.
Social Security is one of the cornerstones of the middle class and
the lifeline for millions of seniors. We must do
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all we can to protect and improve it for not just the current
recipients but for those who will rely upon it in the future.
This bill is supported by groups such as Social Security Works, the
Strengthen Social Security Coalition, and the National Committee to
Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
I urge my colleagues to join me in letting seniors in Hawaii and all
across the country know that you are on their side by cosponsoring the
Protecting and Preserving Social Security Act.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
9/11 Health Program
Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, two days ago another victim of the
September 11 attacks died in New York. He is the eleventh first
responder to die since this year's anniversary of the attacks.
His name was Sergeant Gerard Beyrodt. He served for decades in the
New York Police Department. His entire career was devoted to serving
his community and keeping the people around him safe, and when we were
attacked on September 11, 2011, Sergeant Beyrodt didn't waver. He
banded together with thousands of first responders from around the
country--from every single State--and he rushed to Ground Zero to help.
These heroic men and women ran into the burning towers to try to save
anyone they could. When the Twin Towers collapsed, our first responders
worked day and night to clear the pile, breathing in toxic, poisonous
fumes the entire time. These men and women were heroes. They refused to
abandon their community in a time of terrifying confusion and intense
grief.
But now, because of the poisonous fumes they were exposed to at
Ground Zero, the burning metal and the toxic smoke, these men and women
are sick. Many of them have cancer, and many are dying, and far too
many have already died.
More than 14 years later, the terror attacks on September 11, 2001,
are still claiming American lives. In the 6 weeks since the most recent
anniversary of the attacks, we have lost 11 more responders to diseases
that can be traced directly back to the work at Ground Zero.
I wish to take a moment to actually speak their names now: John P.
McKee, Reginald Umpthery, Kevin Kelly, Thomas Zayas, Paul McCabe, Ed
Goller, Joseph Fugel, Ronald Richards, John Cedo, Dennis Needles, and
Gerard Beyrodt.
The death toll is not going to stop rising. So what is Congress
waiting for?
The bill authorizing funding for the
9/11 health program has already expired. It has expired. But these 9/
11-related illnesses never expire. Neither should their health care.
More than 33,000 first responders and survivors have an illness or
injury caused by the 9/11 attacks or their aftermath. More than 1,700
have passed away from 9/11-related illnesses. More police officers have
died from 9/11-related diseases than those who died on 9/11 itself.
The participants in the 9/11 health program live in every single
State. Every Senator in this Chamber has constituents who are sick and
are registered in the 9/11 health program.
The first responders we have lost leave behind families, spouses, and
children. They leave behind bills, mortgages, car payments, and college
tuition payments. These 9/11 illnesses not only rob families of their
loved ones but leave them to face expenses without, in many cases,
their family's primary bread winner.
If Congress doesn't act now, how many more first responders and their
families are going to suffer because we didn't do our job and
reauthorize the program?
On the most recent anniversary of the attacks, many of my colleagues
here released statements and made posts online to commemorate the
anniversary and remember the victims of
9/11. Well, if you are a Senator and that is all you are doing--if all
you are doing is just talking about the heroism, the courage, and what
happened on 9/11--then we are not actually doing our jobs. If we are
Senators and all we are doing is tweeting about 9/11 and the
responders, then we are not fully fulfilling our duty as Senators.
There is a bill right here, right now, waiting for a vote. The
majority of this Chamber already supports the bill as cosponsors. It is
widely bipartisan, and not one person is opposed to it. So what are we
waiting for? We must reauthorize and make permanent the World Trade
Center Health Program and the Victim Compensation Fund. We must finish
our job.
Let's truly never forget. Our 9/11 heroes deserve and desperately
need this health care. So let's do our job. Let's vote on this bill.
Let's pass it. The clock is ticking.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Export-Import Bank
Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, I rise to express my support for the
Export-Import Bank and to encourage my colleagues in the Senate to take
up and pass bipartisan legislation scheduled for consideration in the
House next week that would reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank until September
30, 2019.
The Export-Import Bank helps American companies export their goods
and services across the globe, helping businesses grow and creating
more demand for American manufactured goods and agricultural products.
Over its 80-year history, the Ex-Im Bank has provided loans to help
businesses start exporting, open new markets, and access new customers.
The Bank provides insurance to help businesses protect their bottom
lines if a foreign buyer fails to pay and works with private lenders to
fill gaps in financing that helps close deals that simply would never
happen without its support. Most importantly, the Ex-Im Bank does all
of this at no cost to the taxpayers. In fact, it makes money. Just last
year, the Bank generated a $675 million surplus to help reduce the
deficit.
The Ex-Im Bank helps level the playing field for American companies
in a tough global market. Last year it supported more than $27.4
billion in U.S. exports and 164,000 jobs. More than $10 billion of that
total--nearly 40 percent--represented exports by small businesses. The
Ex-Im Bank is dedicated to serving small businesses in Michigan and
across the country. Ninety percent of its overall transactions directly
supported small businesses, including many that served suppliers for
large companies.
In 2013, I was proud to attend the opening of Ex-Im Bank's regional
export finance center in Detroit with Governor Snyder and my colleague
Senator Stabenow and Congressman John Dingell. In Michigan alone, the
Bank has supported 229 exporter businesses selling $11 billion worth of
goods to places such as Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Canada. This support
is particularly important for our manufacturing industry, including
motor vehicles and parts, machinery and chemicals--all vital sectors to
our economy.
Over the summer, I had the opportunity to visit a Michigan business,
Mill Steel Company in Grand Rapids, which works with the Ex-Im Bank to
export its products. Mill Steel is one of North America's premier flat-
rolled steel companies. It is also a family-owned business that wanted
to make Michigan products and hire Michigan workers. Mill Steel sells
and ships its steel to auto suppliers in Mexico and Canada. The loan
guarantees provided by the Ex-Im Bank reduce Mill Steel's risk when
exporting to foreign buyers, providing certainty and allowing them to
continue hiring new employees and providing good-paying jobs in
Michigan.
Unfortunately, over the summer, despite bipartisan support for
reauthorizing the Ex-Im Bank, a small, ideologically driven minority in
Congress allowed the charter for the Export-Import Bank of the United
States to expire, risking billions of dollars in exports, hundreds of
thousands of American jobs, and putting our country at an economic
disadvantage in a competitive global marketplace while also increasing
the Federal deficit. The failure of Congress to act on this commonsense
Federal program endangers jobs in Michigan and is simply unacceptable.
General Electric has a plant in Michigan that employees 1,400
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Michiganians. Over the summer, GE announced that it plans to relocate
over 300 jobs from Wisconsin to Canada as a result of the Ex-Im Bank
closing its doors. When this happened, my office was flooded with
inquiries from a number of constituents concerned about what would
happen to their communities and their own job security if a similar
decision was made in Michigan. In the months since Ex-Im Bank's
authorization has lapsed, GE has signed deals with export credit
agencies in competitor foreign nations, creating jobs abroad instead of
right here in the United States.
As a Senator from a State with world-class engineering and
manufacturing talent, I am frankly appalled by these developments,
especially when we have already seen the benefits that the Bank has
produced for Michigan's economy and workers in my State as well as
across the country.
The work done by the Ex-Im Bank is especially critical to Michigan
manufacturers who fight to compete with countries using extreme and
unfair measures such as direct subsidies or currency manipulation to
boost their own manufacturing sectors. According to Ex-Im Bank's most
recent annual report, there are 85 other competing foreign-sponsored
export credit agencies helping their own domestic companies better
compete on the global stage. Other countries, including China, Japan,
South Korea, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany, use their own
export credit agencies to boost their country's exports.
China, in fact, provided more financing through its export credit
agency in the last 2 years--approximately $670 billion--than our own
Ex-Im Bank has offered in its entire 81-year history. These export
financings are expected to significantly increase in coming years,
which means that American firms and workers could fall further behind
if we do not act now.
Without our own Export-Import Bank, American businesses will struggle
to compete overseas and our economy will suffer. As global competition
intensifies, it simply makes no sense to engage in unilateral
disarmament. We must stop the self-inflicted wounds on our economy. We
must pledge to our constituents that we will first do no harm, and we
must stop letting ideology impair our economic growth.
I am pleased that a bipartisan, bicameral group of Senators and
Representatives are saying that enough is enough, and are working to
move a reauthorization forward. I am looking forward to working with
them to get this done as soon as possible. Too much time has already
been wasted, and too many jobs have already been jeopardized. We have
to get back to the business of working together to find commonsense
solutions to help, not hamper, our economic growth in America. Passing
a long-term reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank is a great way to
start.
Once the House passes the reauthorization next week, I urge my
colleagues in the Senate to schedule a vote as soon as possible. We
know we have the votes. The legislation the House will soon consider is
identical to an amendment passed by the Senate with a vote of 64 to 29
in July while considering the long-term highway bill. We should do this
now because there is not a moment to lose. American jobs hang in the
balance.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________