[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 1224-1225]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           ORDER OF BUSINESS

  Mr. Reid. There will be no rollcall votes today. I am disappointed we 
have had one rollcall vote all week. There is no reason to point 
fingers. It sometimes happens. We have two extremely difficult areas of 
legislation, one dealing with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act 
and the other dealing with the stimulus package. These two things have 
been very difficult to work out.
  I have been told, with the last conversation I had with the Speaker, 
as a matter of fact, to try to work out one of the chinks we had on our 
side with the FISA legislation. I think that is worked out on our side. 
You never know what is going to come up.
  But that is the way it is. It is my understanding the Republicans are 
going to now, once the agreement has been written, they are going to 
hotline that and see if we can get that done. But regardless of that, 
the Republican leader and I spoke a while ago, and we hope we can get 
this done so it will give us a way to end this early next week.
  But there will be no votes today. It would not be fair to everyone to 
start on this bill, as we would not be able to do it for another 45 
minutes or an hour the way things go.
  I wish to say a couple things. The package we got from the Senate 
Finance Committee yesterday deserves the attention of the American 
people and deserves the attention of this body, Democrats and 
Republicans. Why? Because it is a stimulus package. Is there anything 
wrong with the House package? Of course not. It is a good package. But 
ours is so much better. If we are talking about stimulating the 
economy, I think we need to understand that 21.5 million seniors will

[[Page 1225]]

stimulate that economy. And they would get one of these rebates, all 
21.5 million of them.
  If we are concerned about stimulating the economy, who would spend it 
more than disabled veterans? We have 250,000 disabled veterans who are 
part of our package. That is important and that is good.
  Unemployment benefits. I am not here to boast about it, but my State, 
the State of Nevada, for the first time in a long time, has a problem 
with unemployment. We had, for 20 years, the most booming housing 
market in the country.
  People thought they were economic geniuses. They were buying homes 
and selling them. But when the downturn came, almost half the people 
who are in foreclosure did not live in the home. They are buying them 
for speculation purposes. They made a lot of money in the previous 
years, but the man came to the door and said: You cannot do that 
anymore.
  So unemployment is a difficult problem we have. I visited this 
afternoon with the labor leaders of southern Nevada and northern 
Nevada. We have a real problem. Unemployment benefits are part of the 
Senate Finance Committee package. It is important and deserves a vote. 
We are going to have one on this at the right time.
  Also, housing. The President in his State of the Union message talked 
about a number of items. One of the things he talked about was to set 
up a tax-free bond provision. In the past, most of these bonds have 
been used to build new homes. Well, we are not building new homes.
  So what the President wants and Senator John Kerry wants is to use 
these bonds to refinance homes. A great idea. The President likes it. 
We like it. That is part of the Senate Finance Committee package.
  We also have in this package something, again, being very provincial, 
talking about something important to the State of Nevada, renewables. 
We have to ween ourselves from this oil that we get from despots around 
the world. Venezuela, and some of the most tyrannical governments in 
the world in the Middle East. They are shipping us oil every day and 
around the rest of the world. Venezuela, interestingly enough, the 
leader of Venezuela comes to the United Nations and calls our President 
names.
  Now, the fact is, before the United Nations, on American soil, no one 
should have the right to call my President names like this man did. 
What we should have told him is: Keep your oil.
  We couldn't do that. We depend on his oil. We depend on Venezuelan 
oil.
  This legislation that is coming from the Senate Finance Committee 
sets up some tax incentives for people to develop renewable fuels. 
People say: Is that going to stimulate the economy? You bet. If we 
provide tax incentives for these companies, they will start investing 
tomorrow--tomorrow--which means jobs; not scores of jobs, not hundreds 
of jobs, not thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs. In the 
little town of Searchlight, NV, where I am from, I got a call when I 
was home from Senator Richard Bryan. He owns some property a few miles 
out of Searchlight. He said: They want to put up some windmills on your 
property. Do you want them to do that?
  I said: Look, I don't want anyone to think I am getting any money 
from windmills, so have them put up all the windmills they want. I 
don't want anything from it. So put up the windmills.
  Now I understand they are going to put as many as 200 of these huge 
windmills near my town of Searchlight. These windmills would be maybe 
2\1/2\ miles from my home. Good, 200 megawatts of electricity. And they 
are waiting for tax incentives. Right now we have tax incentives for a 
very short period of time. What we have done with the Senate-passed 
provision, it will extend some of them up to 2 years because there is 
already a year to go on some of them.
  Also extremely important, the business package is something for which 
the business community is clamoring. The House package has some good 
tax incentives in it for small business and businesses, but ours is 
better. This is in no way to criticize what the House did, but it is 
also underlining how good our package is. So we are going to work to 
pass the Finance Committee bill.
  I have been told--I got a couple Blackberries today--by Members of 
the minority, the Republicans, surprisingly, but I don't want to 
mention names on the floor because things can always change--but I was 
surprised that people are supporting this, Republicans are supporting 
our package. So I think we can get 60 votes. If not, we are sure going 
to try. I think as time goes on and people look at what we have done, 
it is going to become even more appetizing. It is going to be better 
each day that goes by. So we will get to this legislation long before 
the cutoff date that I said we would complete it; that is, February 15. 
We have 15 days to go. We are going to finish this bill, I would hope, 
early next week or sometime next week. We are certainly going to try.
  One of the calls I got today was from AARP. This organization, I 
don't know how many members they have, but millions. The one thing they 
have identified this past year is this. This is going to bring the AARP 
out to tell every Senator, all 100 of us, that this is the most 
important thing they have had in a long time before the Senate. It will 
give 21\1/2\ million seniors a few dollars to spend to make this 
economy better. We are going to do it as expeditiously as we can. We 
believe it is the right thing to do, and we are going to move along in 
that manner.
  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. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call 
be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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