[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 21581-21582]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 21581]]

                    IMPORTANT ISSUES FACING CONGRESS

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we will begin this week with a vote at 6 
o'clock this evening, and we will turn to other issues. I want to make 
some comments about the most important issues we face in Congress and 
what I think we ought to be doing to address them.
  I just flew in from Chicago a few moments ago and noticed in the 
Chicago papers this morning that yesterday a man got through the 
screening process at Chicago O'Hare Airport with nine knives and a stun 
gun. He was selected for advance screening at the gate in addition to 
going through the metal detectors.
  When they opened the baggage of this particular person, they found 
nine knives and a stun gun that had been missed at the screening as the 
individual entered the concourses.
  That ought to demonstrate, as so many other studies have 
demonstrated, that the current system for screening passenger baggage 
and passengers is not working. That is quite clear.
  The largest company that employs workers to screen baggage at 
airports has been found guilty of violating all kinds of FAA rules and 
regulations. They have violated training. They have hired ex-criminals. 
They have not adequately supervised them. They have falsified records. 
They were fined by the Federal Government for their behavior and 2 
years later, after being put on probation, were discovered to have 
violated their probation with the same problems. This is the largest 
company in this country that hires these workers. In fact, it is a 
foreign company, but it is the largest employer of screeners in 
America.
  One wonders why this company is still working at airports screening 
passengers when it has already been fined, when it falsified reports 
and then violated the probation that was established for it.
  My point is that we have just had a significant debate in the U.S. 
House of Representatives on the issue of airport security and baggage 
screening. We in the Senate passed legislation 100-0--all Republicans 
and all Democrats supported it. Then we had a couple of our friends 
from a southern State, Texas, whom I shall not name, who decided that 
the legislation was not good and needed to be altered. God forbid 
somebody was going to make Federal workers out of the screeners. So 
they ramped up a huge effort in the House of Representatives to defeat 
the proposal we passed 100-0 in the Senate.
  My hope is that in the next week or so--in the next few days, in 
fact--we will convene a conference and work aggressively and to 
immediately pass an aviation security bill. It is unforgivable we have 
taken this long. After September 11, everyone understood we had a new 
requirement, a new duty, and a new responsibility to pass an aviation 
security bill, and that legislation has not yet passed despite the fact 
we passed it through this body with every Republican and Democrat 
supporting it--100-0 only to have it languish week after week in the 
other body.
  I regret the House did that, but now that they have passed 
legislation that will get us to conference, it is very important that 
we take this seriously and find a way to develop the compromise 
necessary so the American people will feel confident that when they 
walk through airports about to board an airplane, there is not some 
goofball someplace carrying nine knives and a stun gun.
  This person explained he had forgotten. How do you forget you have 
nine knives and a stun gun, for God's sake? How do you forget you have 
that in your luggage? How do you qualify to fly if you have a mind like 
that--that you take nine knives and a stun gun to the airport?
  In any event, having said that, that is just the latest information 
in this morning's paper. Last week, it was the audit that was done at 
Dulles Airport and the screeners who missed what they should have 
known.
  Why does all this happen? Because people leave screening jobs to fry 
hamburgers so they can make more money. These are low-paying jobs. The 
people are ill trained by companies that want to put the least cost 
employees in those positions and make good money doing it.
  I am not interested in that. I am interested in accountability and 
security for the American traveling public. That is all I am interested 
in. I am not interested in the debate about for whom they work. All I 
am interested in is accountability.
  We have had a circumstance where these employees have been working 
for very large firms, one of which I already described that has been 
fined by the Federal Government and is guilty of falsifying records. We 
have already had that experience. We know that does not work. So 
perhaps we ought to try what the Senate has suggested in the 
legislation it passed 100-0.
  That is what is in front of us in the next few days, and I hope, as a 
member of the committee that generated the bill that passed the Senate 
unanimously, with the help of Senator Hollings and Senator McCain 
leading the effort, we can find a way to solve this very quickly.
  Let me turn to the next challenge we have in addition to aviation 
security. The other challenge we have is to pass a stimulus package. 
What does ``stimulus'' mean? Stimulus means pass legislation that will 
provide some incentives to help boost this economy of ours.
  Last Friday, we received word that another 415,000 people lost their 
jobs in the last month. Mostly, these are people at the lower end of 
the economic ladder. These are not people making a lot of money, in 
most instances. These people and their families know about second jobs, 
secondhand, second mortgages, and second shifts. They are the same 
people who during tough times find they have lost their jobs. Then they 
find out, at least with some people in the U.S. Congress, they are also 
second choice. There are some people in Congress who do not want to 
help them very much because they say that would not provide the 
incentive for those families to look for work again.
  In my judgment, these people who are laid off during a very difficult 
and soft economy require our help. We have always, during a severe 
economic downturn, extended our hand and said: We will extend 
unemployment benefits to help those who have lost their jobs and are 
down and out.
  That is stimulative. That money is spent immediately by the families 
who have lost their incomes and are struggling. That is a way to 
stimulate this country's economy. We must do that when we construct a 
package of incentives to provide lift to this economy.
  What are the other incentives we could provide that would help this 
economy? We can do traditional things, such as tax credits that would 
incentivize investment. We can do things that will incentivize 
consumption. We can do things that will incentivize production. There 
are all kinds of menus with which to do that: Expensing, bonus 
depreciation, and targeted investment tax credits, for example.
  In addition to tax credits and other incentives in the Tax Code, we 
can stimulate economic activity by building roads and bridges, by 
repairing schools, and by making other public investments that put 
people back to work so that at the end of the time when we have enacted 
a stimulus package and made those investments, we can look back and 
say: We not only stimulated the economy, we have something to show for 
it.
  My colleague, Senator Byrd, the chairman of the Appropriations 
Committee, is working with a number of us in the Senate. He has taken 
the leadership position on the infrastructure needs and the investment 
in infrastructure as part of a stimulus package. That is important as 
well.
  We have the issues of extending unemployment benefits, health care 
issues for the unemployed, the issue of what kind of tax cuts might be 
employed to stimulate and lift this economy, and then the issue of what 
kind of

[[Page 21582]]

infrastructure investment we can make that puts people back to work 
building, repairing, and making things. All of these should come 
together in a package designed to stimulate this economy.
  This economy is in much more trouble than most people understand. It 
was a very soft economy prior to September 11, and September 11 cut a 
hole right through the belly of this economy. We are beginning to see 
the evidence of that now each day with each additional number that 
describes the condition of our economy.
  It is going to have an impact in every part of this country. It will 
touch virtually every family. So the question is, What can we do and 
how can we do it? How can we lift this drowning economy?
  President Bush has said he wants Congress to act and act quickly. He 
is right about that. We should. We must. But just acting, if it is not 
the right thing, will not be the right approach. If we do not do the 
right thing, taking action is pretty irrelevant. What we need to do is 
take action now to do the right thing to give help to this country's 
economy. The House of Representatives passed what they called a 
stimulus package. I describe it as leftovers.
  My mother used to talk about leftovers when she was talking about the 
supper table. What is for supper? We called it supper in my hometown. 
When she said leftovers, we all understood in our family what leftovers 
meant.
  Well, I view the stimulus package that the House passed almost the 
same way, as leftovers. It is all the things they had left over from 
previous tax bills that they did not get, but they always wanted to do. 
It did not have very much at all to do with whether it is going to help 
this economy, whether it is going to stimulate this economy, whether it 
is going to lift this economy. It was just leftovers.
  In fact, I will mention one. I will not go into great depth. One of 
them, at a cost of $21 billion, was stuck in the House-passed stimulus 
package to incentivize investments overseas. Now, tell me how that 
stimulates the economy in this country. It is a big giveaway to 
companies that move and keep needed investment capital overseas and 
earn income overseas and do not want to repatriate the money. Now talk 
about the nth degree of goofy. At a time when our economy is on its 
knees, we have the U.S. House passing a tax provision that incentivizes 
additional investments overseas. Our investments ought to be to 
incentivize creating jobs in the United States, not elsewhere.
  So we have a big job ahead of us to try to pass legislation that 
provides a real lift to this economy. The President is right, we need 
to do it. It would be unforgivable, in my judgment, if Congress left 
town sometime between now and Christmas, whenever we finish our work, 
and had not passed a stimulus package to try to provide some lift to 
this country's economy.
  I know some will argue we have economic stabilizers that we did not 
used to have in this economy and that recessions are not quite as deep 
as they used to be. We do not know that. We do not know what the 
consequences of September 11 will be on this economy. We do know that 
going into September 11, we were in the business cycle and we were on 
the contraction side of a business cycle. It is inevitable that there 
is expansion and contraction, and we were on the contraction side of 
that business cycle.
  Then September 11 occurred. We shut down the airline industry. The 
entire travel industry in this country is in a huge amount of trouble. 
Some of us have proposed some loan guarantees to try to provide 
assistance in those areas. This economy took a huge body blow, and I 
think most do not understand how deep this likely recession could be or 
how long it could last if all of us do not now do the right thing.
  This is not about Democrats or Republicans. It is about good ideas, 
having the capacity to employ opportunities for investment and 
consumption in this economy to try to rev this economic engine once 
again.
  We went through unprecedented growth in our country for a good many 
years. We were blessed with that. In fact, some looked at those numbers 
and they looked at NASDAQ and the stock market and they thought this 
economy only goes one way.
  It is true of the President. It was true of the Congress. Everybody 
said: You know something, we are going to have surpluses for 10 years 
in a row. The next 10 years we are going to do so great we are going to 
have surpluses every year. So let us put in a very large tax cut 
anticipating surpluses for the next 10 years.
  That was just months ago. Those surpluses are very quickly vanishing, 
regrettably, and this economy has changed in a very significant way. I 
hope we can get back to the position where we have economic strength 
and opportunity, hope for American families who have lost their jobs 
and a growing economy that provides new opportunities for others in 
this country who are going to enter the job market. At this point, this 
Congress has no choice but to be with this President and, between the 
two parties, construct a stimulus package that really does give a lift 
and some hope to the American economy. If we do not do that, the 
American people should judge us harshly, in my judgment. Between now 
and when we leave this year, we have a responsibility to do that.

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