[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3562-3566]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            STIMULUS PACKAGE

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, earlier today the junior Senator from 
California was discussing President Clinton's 1993 tax hike bill that 
broke his campaign promise to cut taxes on those making $200,000 or 
less and instead raised taxes on those making more than $20,000 a year. 
The junior Senator from California said this morning:

       Charles Grassley: I do not think it takes a rocket 
     scientist to know that this bill will cost jobs. That is what 
     he said of the Clinton plan that created 23 million jobs.

  That is the end of the quote of what this Senator said. It is an 
accurate quote, but I want to make sure there is a context.
  I made that statement about the 1993 Clinton tax hike bill on seniors 
and the vast majority of other Americans. The junior Senator from 
California is saying that one tax hike bill in 1993 is solely 
responsible for the creation of 23 million jobs between 1993 and the 
year 2000 and, in a sense, we should ignore all other economic events, 
including the work of the Republican Congress, free-trade legislation, 
and many other factors that actually caused the job creation during 
that period. Other than being simply wrong, it revises fiscal history. 
I felt the need to respond to those remarks because the junior Senator 
from California called me out by name on the Senate floor.
  I gave a speech on the Senate floor just yesterday that clearly 
rebuts her mistaken assertion that the Clinton 1993 tax hike bill was 
the cause of 23 million jobs. Perhaps she was involved in partisan 
negotiations on the stimulus bill instead of watching my speech at that 
time.
  I will note that as one of five Senate conferees on the stimulus 
bill, I have been excluded from participating in conference 
negotiations and instead will only be invited to a photo op today 
scheduled at 3 p.m. which the Democrats are referring to as the one 
conference meeting that is required under the rules. Dave Camp, the 
only other Republican tax writer who is a conferee, has also been 
excluded from conference negotiations.
  There will not be any negotiations, give or take, or compromise at 
that meeting; it will simply be to ratify a deal that Democrats and 
three Republicans out of 219 Republicans in the entire Congress have 
agreed to. In fact, there were more Democrats--11 in the House of 
Representatives--who voted against the stimulus package than there were 
the three Republicans who voted for it. This bill was handed over to 
the House Democratic leadership to write, and they wrote a bill that 
was loaded down with a lot of unnecessary--well, I shouldn't say 
unnecessary spending; I should say spending that goes way beyond the 2-
year window of stimulus; a window that Dr. Summers, the President's 
economic adviser, said ought to be timely, temporary, and targeted. 
That is 2 years, that is not forever.
  So this bill is not stimulative, then, or goes way beyond being 
stimulative, and it tended to include items that reward Democratic 
supporters such as unions and environmental groups. It has an enormous 
bailout of States that overspent their budgets and a lot of spending 
that belongs in an appropriations bill but which has no place in a 
stimulus bill. Less than 34 percent of the Senate bill was tax relief, 
according to the Congressional Budget Office, which is the official 
scorekeeper on that matter. Less than 1 percent of the Senate bill was 
tax relief for small business, and small businesses are the engine for 
job growth in our economy, creating three-fourths of new jobs in our 
economy.
  Since the junior Senator from California clearly did not hear my 
speech from yesterday, I wish to go over some of the key items she has 
overlooked. Two days ago, and again this morning, there was a lot of 
revision or perhaps editing of recent budget history. Our President 
alluded to it. I agree with the President there is a lot of revisionism 
in the debate. The revisionist history basically boils down to two 
conclusions: that all of the so-called good fiscal history of the 1990s 
was derived from a partisan tax increase of 1993; and No. 2, that all 
of the bad fiscal history of this decade to date is attributable to 
bipartisan tax relief plans earlier this decade.
  Now, not surprisingly, nearly all of the revisionists who spoke 
generally oppose tax relief and support tax increases. The same crew 
generally support spending increases and oppose

[[Page 3563]]

spending cuts. In the debate so far, many on this side have pointed out 
some key, undeniable facts. The bill before us, with interest included, 
increases the deficit by over $1 trillion. The bill before us is a 
heavy stew of spending increases and refundable tax credits, seasoned 
with small pieces of tax relief. The bill before us has new temporary 
spending that if made permanent will burden future budget deficits by 
over $1 trillion. All of this occurs--all of it occurs--in an 
environment where the automatic economic stabilizers are kicking in to 
help the most unfortunate in America with unemployment insurance, food 
stamps, and other benefits--things that are part of the social fabric 
of America that are meant to take care of people in need, and 
particularly right now when we are in a recession, they automatically 
trigger in to higher levels of spending. That antirecessionary 
spending, together with lower tax receipts and the TARP activities, has 
set a fiscal table of a deficit of $1.2 trillion. That is the highest 
deficit as a percentage of the economy in post-World War II history, 
not a pretty fiscal picture. It is going to get a lot uglier as a 
result of this bill. So for the folks who see this bill as an 
opportunity to recover America with Government taking a larger share of 
the economy over the long term, I say congratulations.
  If a Member votes for this bill, that Member puts us on the path to a 
bigger role for the Government, but supporters of this bill need to own 
up to the fiscal course they are charting. That is where the 
revisionist history comes from. It is a strategy to divert, through a 
twisted blame game, from the facts before us. One can ask: How is this 
history revisionist? So I would take each conclusion one by one.
  The first conclusion is that all of the good fiscal history was 
derived from the 1993 tax increase. To knock down this assertion, all 
you have to do is take a look at this chart--not a chart produced by 
the Senator from Iowa but a chart produced from data from the Clinton 
administration, and it is right here. It is the same chart I had up a 
couple of days ago. The much ballyhooed partisan 1993 tax increase 
accounts for 13 percent--you can say 13 percent or you can say just 13 
percent, and I prefer the latter--just 13 percent of the deficit 
reduction through the decade of the 1990s.
  The biggest source of deficit reduction, 35 percent, came from, as 
you can see, cuts in defense spending. Of course, that fiscal benefit 
originated from President Reagan's stare-down of the Communist regime 
in Russia before 1989, and we didn't have to spend as much on defense 
because the Cold War was--well, there wasn't a Cold War, I suppose you 
could say. The same folks on that side who opposed President Reagan's 
defense buildup take credit for the fiscal benefit of a peace dividend.
  The next biggest source of deficit reduction, 32 percent, is other 
revenue. It came from various sources. Basically, this was the fiscal 
benefit from progrowth policies, such as the bipartisan capital gains 
tax cut of 1997, and the free-trade agreements President Clinton, with 
Republican votes, established.
  The savings from the policies I have pointed out translated into 
interest savings. So you get the 15 percent that is from interest 
savings.
  Now, for all the chest-thumping about the 1990s, these chest thumpers 
who push for big social spending didn't bring much to the deficit 
reduction table of the 1990s. That contribution was the 5 percent you 
see up there.
  What is more, the fiscal revisionist historians in this body tend to 
forget who the players were. They are correct that there was a 
Democratic President in the White House. But they conveniently forget 
the Republicans controlled the Congress for that period, where the 
deficit came down and turned to surplus. They tend to forget they 
fought the principle of a balanced budget that was the centerpiece of 
our policy at that time, the Republican Party's policy.
  Remember the Government shutdown in late 1995?
  They ought to remember that. Remember what it was about? It was about 
a plan to balance the budget. Republicans paid a political price for 
forcing the issue. But, in 1997, President Clinton agreed. Recall, as 
well, all through the 1990s what the year-end battles were all about. 
On one side, congressional Democrats and the Clinton administration 
pushed for more spending. On the other side, congressional Republicans 
were pushing for tax relief. In the end, both sides compromised. That 
is the real fiscal history of the 1990s.
  Let's turn to the other conclusion of the revisionist fiscal 
historians. That conclusion is that, in this decade, all fiscal 
problems are attributable to the widespread tax relief enacted in 
2001--which was a bipartisan bill--2003, 2004, and 2006.
  In 2001, President Bush came into office and inherited an economy 
that was careening downhill. Investment started to go flat in 2000--you 
know, the NASDAQ bubble that lost 50 percent of its value. In February 
2000, we started down the road of more than 40 months of downturn in 
the manufacturing index. Then we had the economic shocks that related 
from the 9/11 terrorist attacks and then you can add in the corporate 
scandals to that economic environment.
  It is true, as fiscal year 2001 came to a close, the projected 
surplus turned to a deficit, and we have a chart that shows the start 
of this decade's fiscal history.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Is it possible to get 3 more minutes?
  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, if the Senator would like an additional 5 
minutes, that is OK with me.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I appreciate that. I have to get out of here at that 
time anyway. I have a radio program I have to do.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized for 5 additional 
minutes.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, we have the chart that you have seen 
before, and nobody has disputed the chart. Maybe you can dispute the 
interpretations of it, but these are figures you can rely upon.
  If my comments were meant to be partisan shots, I could say this 
favorable fiscal path from 2003 to 2007 was the only period, aside from 
6 months in 2001, where Republicans controlled the White House and the 
Congress. But unlike the fiscal history revisionists, I am not trying 
to make any partisan points; I am trying to give you the fiscal facts.
  We have another chart that compares tax receipts for the 4 years 
after the much ballyhooed 1993 tax increase and the 4-year period after 
the 2003 tax cut.
  On a year-by-year basis, this chart compares the change in revenues 
as a percentage of GDP. In 1993, the Clinton tax increase brought in 
more revenue as compared to the 2003 tax cut. That trend, though, 
reversed as both policies moved along in years. You can see from the 
chart how the extra revenue went up over time relative to the flat line 
of the 1993 tax increase, which ought to make it very clear that you 
don't necessarily bring in more revenue because you increase taxes, and 
you can decrease taxes, stimulate the economy, encourage business 
activity, encourage investment, and bring in more revenue.
  The progrowth tax and trade policies of the 1990s, along with the 
``peace dividend'' had a lot more to do with deficit reduction in the 
1990s than the 1993 tax increase, which was only 13 percent of deficit 
reduction. In this decade, deficits went down after tax relief plans 
were put in full effect.
  That is the past. We need to make sure we understand it. But what is 
most important is the future. In fact, the last election, based upon 
President Obama's very own statements, was about the future, not about 
the past. So we should not be talking about the past. People in our 
States sent us here to deal with future policy. They don't send us here 
to flog one another similar to partisan cartoon cutout characters over 
past policies. They don't send us here to endlessly point fingers of 
blame. Now let's focus on the fiscal consequences on the bill in front 
of us. That is what this vote, before we end this week, is all about.

[[Page 3564]]

  President Obama rightly focused us on the future with his eloquence 
during the campaign. I would like to take a--paraphrase a quote from 
the President's nomination acceptance speech:

       We need a President who can face the threats of the future, 
     not grasping at the ideas of the past.

  President Obama was right.
  We need a President, and I would add Congressmen and Senators, who 
can face the threats of the future. This bill, as currently written, 
poses considerable threats to our fiscal future. Senator McCain's 
spending trigger amendment showed us the way. We can rewrite this bill 
to retain its stimulative effect, but turn off the spending when the 
recovery occurs.
  Grasping at ideas of the past or playing the partisan blame game will 
not deal with the threats to our fiscal future.
  It is not too late to do a clean stimulus bill, which is what the 
American people want and need. There is a way to reach a real 
bipartisan compromise, not just picking off a few Senators that 
frequently vote with the Democrats. We can have a significant amount of 
infrastructure spending for roads and bridges. Even though some on our 
side of the aisle have issues with the making work pay credit, we could 
take that and expand it to cover all those making up to $250,000--which 
is the level that President Obama and his surrogates said during the 
campaign that he wants to cut taxes for people. Instead, the making 
work pay credit phases out starting at $70,000 for individual workers. 
So we are saying a large part of the middle class by President Obama's 
definition won't get the tax cut. In fact, the ``we give a tax cut to 
95 percent of working families'' number that has been bandied about is 
wrong. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, 87 percent of 
workers qualify for some or all of the credit, and even less get all of 
the credit. So there is a way forward. It is a clean stimulus bill. All 
the Democratic agenda items and spending items that should go in the 
appropriations bill can get done in regular order. The Democrats have 
the votes. They don't need to push that agenda on the American people 
and dig a deficit ditch an additional $1.2 trillion deeper with this 
bill, when interest on the bill is considered. They have the votes to 
push their agenda later in the year. For now, let's give the American 
people what they want, a clean stimulus bill, and not scare them into 
thinking that the Democratic agenda needs to be pushed in the stimulus 
bill. It is reminiscent of that famous chicken--Chicken Little, who 
said ``The Sky is Falling.'' Let's do a clean stimulus bill instead.
  I think this clears up the record. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio is recognized.
  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I was glad to yield the additional 5 
minutes to my friend from Iowa. Senator Grassley has always been, as 
far as I could see, bipartisan in my 2 years in the Senate. I thank him 
for that. I often don't agree with his reasoning, but I always agree 
with his motive. I wish to make a couple comments--and I know he has to 
leave and that is fine. I wish to make some comments on his comments, 
and then I will talk more precisely and directly about this stimulus 
package that we are convinced will create millions of jobs for our 
economy and our country.
  I was joined in a press conference today by the President of the 
National Association of Manufacturers, a group that rarely supports me 
in my campaign and rarely supports the Presiding Officer in hers, as it 
is a group that simply doesn't agree with us. The National Association 
of Manufacturers thinks this stimulus package is just right. They like 
the spending part, the tax cuts part; they think it is the right mix. 
They were resounding in their support today. Also joining Senator Jack 
Reed and me was the president of the National Association of Realtors.
  There are a lot of very important economic organizations and business 
groups that are supportive of this legislation. I am sorry it has 
become so partisan to the Republicans and that only three of them could 
see their way to support a bill that has gotten huge bipartisan and 
business support and labor support around the country and not even 
three people in the House of Representatives. So I have a couple 
comments on Senator Grassley's comments.
  I am incredulous when you see people stand and try to make the 1990s 
economy out to have not been very good and the economy of the last 
decade to have been better. Yet anything good that happened in the 
1990s had to do with Republican policies, and anything bad that 
happened in this decade had to do with Democratic policies. It goes 
back to something I am even more incredulous about, and that is this 
cottage industry that has been created in this country in the last year 
that Franklin Roosevelt's Presidency was a failure and that it caused 
the Depression and then caused the second depression and recession in 
1937. It is remarkable. I am not an economic expert. I took economics 
courses in high school and in college, but I am a prolific reader. I 
don't ever recall reading--from conservative or liberal economists and 
people in between, such as academics or business people--that Franklin 
Roosevelt's economic policies were a failure, until 6 months ago when 
it was clear that Barack Obama was going to be President and was going 
to follow some of Roosevelt's ideas of direct spending to put people to 
work, for infrastructure, for health care, education, and a lot of 
things Franklin Roosevelt did, such as regulation of Wall Street, of 
the minimum wage and worker's compensation and unemployment 
compensation--all the things that Roosevelt began.
  On a personal note, I add that this desk at which I stand is desk No. 
88. They each have numbers on them. This desk was occupied, back in the 
1930s, by future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, then a Senator from 
Alabama. Hugo Black supposedly sat at this desk when he wrote the 
minimum wage bill; he wrote it on the Senate floor, apparently, and it 
later became law.
  What intrigues me is that there are Wall Street Journal columnists--
no surprise--and Washington Times, Republican ideologues, and 
conservative think tanks funded by some of the wealthiest outsourcing 
kinds of corporations in America, who are trying to discredit Franklin 
Roosevelt's policies in order to discredit President Obama's policies. 
It is historical revisionism that sounds almost like, I daresay, the 
Soviet Union--this kind of revisionist history that I don't even get.
  There is no question in any fair-minded historian's mind that what 
Franklin Roosevelt did mattered in a very positive way. He built a 
banking structure that kept us safe for 75 years, until the Republicans 
deregulated it in the last 8 years. He built a wage structure that 
created a middle class. He got us out of the Depression, along with 
others he worked with.
  Enough of that. When I heard my friend from Iowa talk about the 
1990s, that the Clinton policies didn't work and that, in 2001, the 
Bush policies did--where I come from, in Ohio, we say that doesn't pass 
the straight-face test. I don't think anybody believes them. These 
columnists and pundits and rightwing ideologues and think-tank 
academics keep saying it, so I guess they are talking to each other but 
not to the American public.
  Let me talk about the stimulus. The Senate, yesterday, took a major 
step toward revitalizing this stumbling economy.
  We passed legislation that would create jobs in construction, 
engineering, green energy, social work, health care, the retail sector, 
the service sector, and the manufacturing sector--preserving those jobs 
now and building jobs in the future.
  These are jobs that stimulate consumer spending, which stimulates 
economic activity, economic activity that fuels growth and gets us out 
of recession. When you build a bridge, you put money in the pockets of 
sheet metal workers and operating engineers and laborers and carpenters 
and electricians.
  When you build an infrastructure project, that money does two things: 
It goes directly into the economy because

[[Page 3565]]

these are good-paying jobs that create a middle class, and they will 
spend that money on homes, cars, and consumer items. It also, as I have 
learned in doing roundtables around Ohio--I have done 125 roundtables 
in all of Ohio; I have been in all the 88 counties listening to people 
talk. I invite 20 or 25 people in a community, a good cross-section of 
people. It is not just the mayors and county engineers who say we need 
more sewers, broadband, water systems, bridges, highways, and roads. It 
is also economic development directors of the communities' chambers of 
commerce, the plant managers, and other business people who understand 
that to do economic development, you need clean water for 
manufacturing, you need a good transportation system, bridges, water, 
sewer systems, broadband, and all these things. That is what this 
stimulus package is about--infrastructure. It creates 4 million jobs, 
some directly and immediately, as we set the table and build a 
foundation for economic development.
  The bill, I also add, invests in alternative energy. That means good-
paying jobs, energy innovation, and energy independence. It means 
fighting for global independence and fighting global warming, a force 
that is threatening animal species and could only jeopardize the human 
species as well. An overwhelming number of scientists say that.
  This bill will not only stimulate our economy, it will make sure our 
Nation can regain its economic footing and does not do it just to lose 
it again in the future.
  We cannot be dependent on foreign oil and hope to thrive in the 
global economy. We cannot let our transportation infrastructure erode. 
That is what has happened in the last 10 years.
  At the beginning of this decade that some of my Republican friends 
brag about, the economic policy of the early Bush years, we had a 
budget surplus when he stood on the Capitol steps and took the oath of 
office. We had a budget surplus in this country. Then the President 
went to war with Iraq, spending $3 billion a week. The President did 
tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. And all of a sudden, we have 
this huge budget deficit that my Republican friends rail against we are 
adding to.
  When President Obama took office, the budget deficit was at $1 
trillion for that fiscal year. It went from zero to $1 trillion. Madam 
President, $1 trillion is a thousand billion; a billion is a thousand 
million. If you spent $1,000 every second of every minute of every hour 
of every day, it would take you 33 years to spend $1 trillion. The 
pages sitting in front of me average in age about half that; am I 
correct? Sixteen years or so? They have lived about half a billion 
seconds. For them to spend $1 trillion, they would have had to spend 
$2,000 every second of every minute of every hour of every day in their 
young lives to get to $1 trillion. You, Madam President, would have to 
spend a little less, being very young but a bit older than they are.
  Let me talk for a moment about what is happening with the States.
  Every State in this country--unless they are energy States, unless 
they make money in their State treasuries from oil production, coal 
production, natural gas production--is faced with a huge budget 
deficit. My State of Ohio, for instance, as so many States, is forced 
to cut services. Cutting services means cutting jobs, it means laying 
off people, and it means hurting communities. It means all of that.
  We cannot dismiss this situation. We must confront it. We must do 
something about it. It means as people lose their jobs, as a plant in 
Jackson, OH, the Meridian plant, closes or a plant somewhere else in 
Gallipolis or Mansfield or Toledo, OH, closes--when a plant shuts down, 
it is not just those workers who lose, as tragic as it is; it also puts 
more demands on the mental health system, more demands on the food 
pantry, more demands on communities that simply cannot afford it. As 
their tax base shrivels, they cannot afford it.
  Economic recovery will not happen at the national level unless it 
happens at the State level. With dramatically reduced revenues, States 
are left with no options. They are cutting basic jobs, and they are 
cutting basic services. They are cutting social workers, teachers, 
mental health counselors, and public safety personnel. We cannot 
function that way. If what we do in the recovery bill adds jobs but the 
States take them away, we will be left treading water.
  The House-passed economic recovery bill includes dollars the States 
can use to weather this economic storm. And if they don't weather it, 
none of us will.
  So I hope Senators and Representatives negotiating the final bill 
will agree upon the House-passed State stabilization fund. It just 
makes sense.
  This bill, as I said earlier, is endorsed by the National Chamber of 
Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Realtors, and 
businesses all over the Presiding Officer's State of North Carolina and 
my State of Ohio. It is endorsed by small businesses, by manufacturing 
businesses--all those companies that create so much wealth and jobs in 
our society.
  In my State, from Toledo to Columbus, our universities are engaging 
in groundbreaking research. From Cleveland to Cincinnati, regional 
partnerships are being formed to advance solar and wind technology. My 
State is well on the way to becoming the Silicon Valley of alternative 
energy. We are about to put wind turbines in Lake Erie--the only place 
in the world where wind turbines will actually be located in 
freshwater. We are building hydropower on the Ohio River. We have the 
largest solar manufacturer of any State in the country in northwest 
Ohio. The University of Toledo is doing all kinds of wind turbine 
research, fuel cells in Stark State and Canton and Rolls Royce and 
Mount Vernon. Fuel cell development and research is far ahead of most 
places in the country, with biomass, Battelle in Columbus, all kinds of 
coal research. We are doing things that, with this bill, we can do 
better.
  There is $33 billion in green energy tax incentives in this bill to 
grow jobs by encouraging green energy production. What value is it if 
we wean ourselves from foreign oil by using solar but we are not 
producing solar in our country?
  Oberlin College, which is 15 minutes from my house, has the largest 
single building on any college campus in America powered fully by solar 
energy built 3, 4 years ago. We got those solar panels from Germany and 
Japan. Why do we do that? We do it because in the early part of this 
decade President Bush pushed through this Senate and the House--I was a 
Member of the House--an energy bill that dumped all of its tax 
incentives, subsidies and incentives, to oil and gas, not to solar, not 
to wind, not to fuel cells, not to biomass, not to where we should have 
been looking. It was the same old game, same old politics, same old 
``help your friends in the oil and gas industry, cash your campaign 
checks, and do the country wrong.'' That is why this bill is so 
important to do something else.
  Lastly, I wish to talk about another provision of the bill which 
probably is the strongest provision of the bill; that is, the ``Buy 
American'' provision Senator Dorgan and I worked on in the last couple 
of years.
  In a recent survey of Americans, 84 percent support the ``Buy 
American'' provision--perhaps the strongest statement of the public on 
any provision in the stimulus bill. The fact is, we are asking people 
in North Carolina, Ohio, and around this country to reach into their 
pockets and come up with hundreds of billions of dollars to spend on 
the stimulus package. They ask three things: first, that we be 
accountable in doing this right; second, they ask that the jobs be in 
the United States; third, they ask that the materials used for this 
infrastructure also be made in the United States. That is the compact 
we have come to, and I believe that is so very important.
  I have had discussions with people at the highest levels of the Obama 
administration about the importance of ``Buy American'' and about 
enforcement. We have had some of these ``Buy American'' laws on the 
books since the Roosevelt years. It is part of the reason he was 
successful. The Bush administration simply turned its back on this

[[Page 3566]]

law. They simply did not enforce it. They granted waivers, waivers that 
were not even public. For instance, the 800-mile fence along the 
Mexico-United States border was made with Chinese steel, probably 
illegally. But the Bush administration just said: OK, buy the steel 
wherever you want, instead of putting Americans to work.
  I close with, as all of us in this body--most of us--understand, we 
need to get this economy back on track, we need to set the stage for a 
prosperous future. Partisanship at this stage is a slap in the face of 
unemployed Americans, families facing foreclosures, communities sinking 
into poverty, and, frankly, to middle-class America, who just wants an 
even break and wants us to get our economy back on track. Action is our 
only option. Let's move.
  I yield the floor. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cardin). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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