[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2669-2674]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  TAX EXTENDERS ACT OF 2009--Continued

  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I understand the Senator from Illinois is 
planning to speak. I wish to speak after he completes his remarks. I 
ask unanimous consent he be recognized and then I be recognized.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. BURRIS. Madam President, after I speak I ask unanimous consent 
that the Senator from Delaware be able to speak for a period of time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. GREGG. The Senator is speaking after me?
  Mr. BURRIS. Yes, after the Senator from New Hampshire.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Amendment No. 3388

  Mr. BURRIS. Madam President, I rise to speak on H.R. 4213. One 
amendment has already been dropped. I do plan to submit a second 
amendment. This amendment is dealing with the Recovery Act funds.
  During my three terms as State comptroller of Illinois, I worked very 
hard to maintain accountability for the money we spent from our State. 
I have been contacted by my State officials, the various auditors, 
comptrollers, and treasurers, to say the stimulus money that is coming 
into the States is coming in and they have no funds to do all this 
transparency and accountability. I put an amendment on this bill to say 
that we should. I filed amendment No. 3388 which addresses currently 
underfunding the costs of tracking and reporting the stimulus money.
  This measure would set aside up to one half of 1 percent of all 
existing stimulus funds and allow States and local governments to use 
this administrative expense reserve to distribute and track this money 
as it is received and spent. It would allow the American people to hold 
their representatives accountable and it would help ensure that every 
dollar is targeted effectively and spent wisely, without waste, fraud, 
or abuse.
  Agreeing to this amendment will restore oversight to this process and 
will keep Americans on the road to economic recovery without incurring 
a dime of new spending.
  In addition to restoring accountability, I believe we need to take an 
active role--as my second amendment would do, which I have not dropped 
yet; it is coming, though. It would deal with small businesses. I 
believe we should take an active role in supporting small and minority 
businesses because Main Street will be the engine of the American 
economic recovery. That is where jobs will be created. That is where 
the rubber meets the road--where we can turn this crisis around. That 
is why I am proud to offer another amendment which will require the 
Transportation Security Administration, the TSA, to award contracts to 
small businesses and disadvantaged businesses wherever and whenever 
possible. This amendment would ensure compliance with existing 
standards of government contracts and subcontracts and would keep 
dollars flowing into real communities rather than to the corporate 
treasuries.
  By strengthening reporting standards and forcing participation goals 
for TSA projects, we can target Federal spending to the capable worker 
who has always been at the center of the American economic prosperity.
  We are also saying we need these two amendments. They will strengthen 
and improve upon the key provisions of our jobs bill as well. I ask my 
friends in this Chamber to join me in renewing our commitment to 
transparency, honesty, and accountability. I ask them to stand for 
small businesses and minority subcontractors so we can make sure Main 
Street has a major share of our ongoing economic recovery.
  The issue is the amendment to H.R. 4213 which would be the amendment 
No. 3388, and also the other amendment I am getting ready to drop which 
will deal with small and minority businesses.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I rise to go over, for the sake of the 
record and also for those people who may be listening and may be 
reading this dialog, where we stand relative to the health care debate. 
I think it is important for people to understand what has happened. 
There has been a lot of talk about a lot of different things, with 
reconciliation, the term ``reconciliation'' taking a front row seat.
  What is happening here essentially is this. The House of 
Representatives is going to have to make a decision whether they want 
to pass the bill that passed here in the Senate. Remember, the bill 
that passed here in the Senate was a bill that was produced and 
delivered to the Senate on a Saturday afternoon, for all intents and 
purposes--the core of the bill, the managers' amendment. No amendments 
were allowed after that Saturday afternoon and a final vote was taken 3 
days later on Christmas Eve.
  It was a bill that expanded the size of the government by $2.5 
trillion, when fully implemented. It was a bill that reduced Medicare 
by $1 trillion when fully implemented and was scored at $500 billion in 
the first 10-year tranche, by $1 trillion when fully implemented, and 
took those savings from Medicare, from Medicare recipients, and used 
them to fund a brandnew entitlement which had nothing to do with 
Medicare, it didn't involve the people who receive Medicare, and to 
extend dramatically an already existing entitlement called Medicaid.
  It was a bill that basically said to small employers we are going to 
make it so darned expensive for you to keep the insurance you presently 
give to your employees that a lot of you are going to decide to throw 
up your hands, stop insuring your employees and send your employees 
down the street to something called an exchange. It was a bill that 
basically set up a structure which would manage, in a very micromanaged 
way, the delivery of health care in this country from a top-down 
situation so essentially it put a bureaucrat between you and your 
doctor and you and your hospital.
  It was a bill which was going to create so much new spending and grow 
the Government so much that we would now have, after this bill is fully 
implemented, the largest government, as a percentage of our gross 
national product, we have ever had at any time when we have not been 
engaged in a world war. Think about that. That bill takes the size of 
our government and grows it from its historic level, which is about 20 
percent of GDP, up to around 25, 26, 27 percent of GDP when it is fully 
implemented. Most of that, although allegedly paid for--those paid-fors 
will never come to fruition because we know this Congress doesn't have 
the courage to stand up and raise taxes at those levels or cut spending 
at those

[[Page 2670]]

levels. So most of that, in my opinion--and granted, this wasn't CBO's 
score because they had to take the statements as though Congress would 
do something such as cut Medicare by $1 trillion--most of those pay-
fors would not come to fruition and therefore this would fall on the 
deficit and become debt our children would have to pay off.
  In addition, it did nothing, absolutely nothing, about reducing the 
cost of health care in this country. In fact--again according to CBO--
the cost of health care went straight up under this bill. A lot of 
Americans, also under this bill, would still not be insured because the 
estimate was 24 million, I believe, would still have no insurance, even 
after we had spent $2.5 trillion.
  So this bill, in my opinion, was and is and remains a disaster from a 
fiscal standpoint, because it will so massively expand the size of the 
Federal Government and throw those costs onto our children's backs in 
the form of debt; and from a health care standpoint, because it will 
undermine, in my opinion, the delivery of health care. But more 
important, it doesn't do anything substantively to bend the outyear 
health care costs.
  So now this bill, this giant bill on health care, this asteroid 
headed toward Earth, is sitting in the House of Representatives. They 
do not have the votes to pass it. Why? Because the American people have 
spoken. They spoke when they elected Scott Brown in Massachusetts, they 
have spoken in polls across the country, and they have spoken in town 
meetings. They have spoken in letters to Senators and e-mails to 
Senators and House Members.
  They are upset. They know this is bad policy. They know we cannot 
afford it, and they know we should not do it. So there are a lot of 
House Members who are a little queasy about voting for this bill. So 
what does the administration come up with and the House leadership, 
Speaker Pelosi? They have come up with this sidecar to this huge bill, 
and this sidecar is called reconciliation. It is a littler bill.
  What is the purpose of this bill? The purpose of this bill is to go 
around to the different constituencies in the House, the different 
liberal constituencies in the House, ask them what they need to get 
their vote for the big bill, and then put it in this little bill. It is 
a purchasing process. It is a going-out-and-buying-votes process done 
behind closed doors, as this bill was.
  This bill was designed in a back room. The big bill was designed in a 
back room. This is a back room, behind the back room, behind a hidden 
door, where they are negotiating with all of these folks: What do I 
need to do to get you to vote for this big bill, which nobody wants?
  Someone says: Well, you have to spend more money, so they put in 
something that spends more money, or you have to raise taxes on 
somebody, so they put in a tax increase, or you have to change the 
benefit structure, so they change the benefit structure. They put all 
of these little changes, which are fairly significant but are nothing 
compared to the bigger bill, in this smaller bill called 
reconciliation.
  Why did they choose that bill called reconciliation to do this--or 
why will they? Because under the Senate rules anything that comes 
across the floor of the Senate requires 60 votes to pass. It is called 
the filibuster. That is the way the Senate was structured.
  The Senate was structured to be the place where bills which rushed 
through the House because they do not have rules that limit--they do 
have a lot of rules that limit debate and allow people to pass bills 
quickly, but they do not have any rule called the filibuster which 
allows people to slow things down.
  Bills can rush through the House, and they come over here. Sometimes 
they are pretty bad ideas, and the Founding Fathers realized when they 
structured this government they wanted checks and balances. They do not 
want things being rushed through. They had seen the parliamentary 
system. They knew it did not work.
  So they set up the Senate as the place, as George Washington 
described it, where you take the hot coffee out of the cup and you pour 
it into the saucer and you let it cool a little bit and make people 
look at it and make sure it is done correctly. So that is why we have 
the 60-vote situation over here to require that things that pass the 
Senate get thoughtful consideration.
  Unfortunately, it was totally ignored--the 60 votes were not because 
60 votes were used to override thoughtful consideration. But when the 
big bill was passed, it was done in a way that basically limited the 
ability of the Senate to debate it and to amend it.
  But now they know they cannot go through that route again because 
they know there is no longer 60 votes on the other side of the aisle 
with the election of Senator Brown, who was elected, in large part, 
because of people's outrage over what happened when they basically 
tried to jam the Senate, or did jam the Senate procedure, and did not 
allow amendments, did not allow a debate on the biggest piece of social 
policy and fiscal legislation in history--in my experience, in the 
history of my experience in the Congress, the big bill.
  When they jammed us, jammed that thing through here on Christmas Eve, 
the American people got outraged. Senator Brown made that point. As a 
result, people agreed with him in Massachusetts, and they elected him. 
So there are no longer 60 votes on that side of the aisle. They cannot 
use that railroad approach. So they decided to go back to an arcane 
Senate procedure called reconciliation and use that approach.
  Under reconciliation, which is a Senate process, that is the only 
bill around here, the budget and reconciliation, that has the right to 
pass with 51 votes and a time limit on debate, and basically a time 
limit on debatable amendments, although not on amendments generally.
  So this reconciliation is a hybrid vehicle in the Senate. And what is 
it? Well, reconciliation was structured so that when a budget passed 
the Senate, there would be a way for the Budget Committee to say to the 
committees that were supposed to adjust spending or adjust taxes in a 
way to meet the budget that they had to do it. So if your budget was 
coming out $10, $20, or $30 billion over where it was supposed to be, 
the reconciliation structure would say: Change the law to bring it back 
to where it is supposed to be.
  It has been used around here on numerous occasions. I think 19 times 
reconciliation has been used since the Budget Act instituted 
reconciliation in 1976. But it has always been used for the purposes of 
adjusting issues which either, A, were bipartisan, or, B, were pretty 
much purely issues of adjusting numbers, numbers on the tax side, 
numbers on the spending side.
  So of the 19 times that reconciliation has been used, every time 
except two times, reconciliation has been a bipartisan bill. Twice it 
was not bipartisan. Twice it was run through here on a partisan vote: 
once on the tax increases that President Clinton passed, and once on a 
reconciliation bill dealing with adjusting spending. I believe it was 
in 1985; otherwise, there has always been a bipartisan vote for the 
bill. So 89 percent of the time it has been bipartisan. It has always 
been, when it has been partisan, used for the purpose of making these 
numbers adjustments, not for the purpose of creating massive new policy 
that affects every American in very personal ways in the way they deal 
with their doctors and their hospitals and their health care treatment.
  It was never conceived as a concept where the real legislation 
involving substantive issues of policies would be done. Tax rate 
adjustments have occurred under it. Absolutely. But when you move tax 
rates from 39 to 35 percent, as the Bush tax cuts did, or tax capital 
gains from 20--I think they went from 25 percent to 15 percent--that is 
not a complex issue. That is just, you know, taxes are either going to 
go up or go down. It takes about 100 pages of actual legislative 
language. Everybody knows the issue. It is an up-or-down vote. Pretty 
clear.
  In fact, in these instances, there were opposing positions presented, 
and in those issues, there was actually more than one--people of both 
parties voted for them. That is not like passing an entire rewrite of 
the health care system of America.

[[Page 2671]]

  The health care system is 17 percent of our economy, one of the most 
complex issues we have to deal with. You pull a string over here, and a 
string 10,000 miles away is affected. It is just a matrix of 
exceptionally complicated interrelated issues with all sorts of policy 
language that is necessary.
  So reconciliation was never conceived of, and its purpose was never 
to take on big policy like that. Big policy is supposed to be taken on 
the floor of the Senate in an open procedure where there is debate and 
there is amendments, and the amendments are debatable.
  So reconciliation is certainly not the appropriate vehicle to use. 
But I think the point I am trying to make is that reconciliation is not 
the real game. I mean, after the House of Representatives--after they 
have gone around with this reconciliation bill and they bought up the 
votes they need and said to these people: Well, we will just fix that 
in reconciliation if you will just vote for the big bill--after that 
has happened and the big bill has passed, this $2.5 trillion 
monstrosity in spending and government dominance of the health care 
sector, after that is passed, the game is over. That is the law. I do 
not think there will be much incentive at all for the White House or my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle to take up reconciliation. 
There certainly will not be any energy needed to pass it.
  Because this big bill, which America basically rejects--every poll in 
America says it has a maximum of about 25 percent approval of that bill 
and somewhere around 60 to 70 percent disapproval, at different levels, 
``strongly'' or ``fairly strongly''--that bill will have become law, 
and basically what we will have done, or what will have occurred, then, 
is we will have created a government program that is so large and so 
burdensome that it is very unlikely that this country will be able to 
pay for it. As we move into the outyears, our children are going to get 
these bills. In order to pay those bills, they are either going to have 
to have a massive event of inflation to pay for them or a massive tax 
increase. Either one of those events, of course, undermine the quality 
of life and the standard of living of the next generation.
  In addition, of course, we are going to get a health care system 
which has become basically a ward of the government, for all intents 
and purposes, for the bureaucracy that is very dominant and that makes 
it very difficult for citizens to have the choices they need to develop 
a health care delivery system that is tailored to their needs.
  A lot of small businesses will just simply give up on the idea of 
supplying health care. We also know, of course, that the health care 
prices will not come down but will continue to go up. So this is a 
really dangerous time. It is a time when the House of Representatives 
has to take a hard look at what actions it is going to take, obviously, 
and I am sure they will.
  But they have to recognize that voting for that big bill and hoping 
that the Senate will bail them out with a little bill--well, I would 
take a second look at that. First, it will be hard to run a 
reconciliation bill across this floor and have it end up with the way 
it started out because of all of the points of order that will be 
available against it.
  But, secondly, I am not sure there will be all that much energy to do 
it to begin with because once you pass the big bill, those who want to 
essentially dramatically expand our government, and in the end 
nationalize the health care system with a single-payer approach, will 
be well on their road to accomplishing those things.
  There is not going to be a whole lot of energy to do much else. So I 
think it is important to understand that as much as reconciliation is 
an interesting and entertaining point of topic for discussion around 
here as to whether it is appropriate and whether--which I do not think 
it is under this type of scenario--and whether the reconciliation bill 
will actually survive the challenging on this floor from points of 
order, that is an interesting issue too.
  That is not the question. The question is, is reconciliation even 
relevant once the big bill passes? I think it is probably not. So if I 
were a House Member depending on reconciliation, looking to that bill 
as the way that I am going to justify voting for this bigger bill, 
which is such a disaster, I would think twice.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.


                          Recovery Act success

  Mr. KAUFMAN. Madam President, it has been just over a year since I 
took office and since President Obama was sworn in. I think it is a 
good time and appropriate to reflect on just how far we have come. A 
year ago, the Presiding Officer and I came into office in the midst of 
the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
  We had been spiraling deeper and deeper into recession for over a 
year. Almost three-quarters of a million jobs were lost in the month of 
January 2009 alone. Our credit markets were frozen, major edifices of 
our economic landscape had collapsed or were tottering on the brink, 
from Lehman Brothers to General Motors. Alarms were still ringing. 
Emergency policies were thrown in to the breach, things were bad, and 
there was no way to know how much worse they were going to get. We were 
on the precipice.
  We could have fallen into the abyss, if not for the extraordinary 
actions we took. Those actions saved us from another full-blown 
depression. We are still not out of the woods, of course. Although we 
have had some good news recently, too many families, too many 
communities have been hit hard by job losses and falling home values. 
But we are nevertheless beginning to see evidence that we are finally 
turning the corner as a nation. While things are still not good, they 
are no longer getting worse and, in some areas, we have actually seen 
real improvement. I wish to share with my colleagues some of that 
evidence.
  Here I have a chart showing the Dow Jones industrial average since 
October 2008. We all know it is not always the best indicator of 
economic health, but since the downturn was precipitated by turmoil in 
our financial markets, I will start with this.
  As you can see, the market bottomed out just weeks after the Recovery 
Act was enacted, and it has been climbing ever since. The chart clearly 
shows we stopped the free-fall, we stabilized the market, and we are 
allowing it to grow again.
  Here is another chart showing the Purchasing Managers Index. This is 
a survey of purchasing managers who report whether business conditions 
are better than, the same as or worse than the previous month. A score 
of 50 means no change, so anything over that should mean the economy is 
expanding. Anything below indicates the economy is shrinking. In this 
chart, it is clear business confidence plummeted in the fall of 2008. 
Only four times in the postwar period has this index fallen so low and 
never in the last quarter century. We can see it was not until March of 
last year, right after the Recovery Act took effect, that manufacturing 
confidence began to return. With other data, we know this occurred as 
businesses began rebuilding inventories, confident they had weathered 
the cash crisis of the winter.
  This next chart shows our GDP growth over the last 3 years, from the 
beginning of 2007 to the end of last year, the last date for which we 
have good data. I have added a smoothing line to show the trajectory 
our economy has taken. As you can see, in 2008, the bottom fell out. It 
wasn't until last spring that we began to restore order. I will not 
pretend 6.3 percent growth for one quarter is good enough for me. 
Without jobs, it isn't. But it is clearly better than what was 
happening 12 months ago.
  My last two charts, which address jobs, tell the most important tale. 
We know from past experience that job growth lags behind economic 
recovery. This chart shows how long that took in previous postwar 
recessions. In every single postwar recession, jobs have lagged the 
economic recovery, whether it is 1 month in July 1908 or 22 months in 
November 2001 and everything in between.
  There is a reason for this. Businesses need to use up their existing 
capacity,

[[Page 2672]]

and they need to feel confident in the economic climate before they 
start expanding again. This process can be especially painful following 
a financial collapse, where businesses and households are forced to 
pare down their savings and reduce their spending. By doing that, they 
tamp down economic recovery, reduce spending, and that is why jobs have 
been slower to return than anyone would like. Also remember, if you are 
running a company and you have laid off people, that is a very 
traumatic experience. You don't want to do that again. The worst 
situation of all is to start hiring people back and then have to lay 
them off again. Businesspeople, especially those who care, don't want 
to hire people back until they are sure they can offer them a job they 
can keep. Can you imagine putting somebody through this twice?
  It is important to remember this lag. Economists suggest we may be 
around 8 months into economic recovery, and the jobs are coming. We are 
8 months into economic recovery, and the jobs are coming. While the 
record of recent recoveries is a sobering one, the last chart I have 
shows the beginning of our good news. With announcements over recent 
weeks, we have seen that unemployment is stabilized and may even be 
turning around. We have staunched the bleeding. All those charts show 
things started picking up right after we passed the stimulus bill.
  That is not the only thing we did. There were extraordinary efforts 
to stabilize the financial sector through direct assistance and low 
interest rates. But passage of the Recovery Act marked the beginning of 
the turnaround. That is indisputable, looking at the data. Passage of 
the Recovery Act marked the beginning of the economic turnaround. We 
cannot be satisfied until we have all our jobs back, until our economy 
is working for everyone. But one thing we know for sure is that without 
the Recovery Act, we would be a lot worse off.
  I wish to stress, this will not be a smooth path back to a healthy 
economy. There will be good days and bad days, good news and bad news. 
But these indicators show we have turned the corner, thanks in no small 
way to Recovery Act money that is still going out. Nationally, nearly 2 
million jobs have been saved or created by activities funded by the 
Recovery Act. This is not something I alone am claiming. Economic 
experts from Moody's, CBO, Macroeconomic Advisers and more are telling 
the same story. But that is not all the Recovery Act has done. It has 
also given a helping hand to millions of Americans out of work by 
expanding and extending unemployment insurance. Meanwhile, 95 percent 
of working Americans benefited from tax relief. Under the Recovery Act, 
95 percent of all working Americans benefited from the tax relief.
  State and local governments received badly needed fiscal relief that 
allowed them to maintain essential services, including health coverage 
for millions of Americans, and retain workers which kept cops on the 
beat and teachers in the classroom. We will never know how bad the 
economy would have been if we had not acted. That is the nature of 
things. But the charts I have shown all tell the very same story, of an 
economic free-fall that has been slowed, stopped, and reversed.
  Do any of my colleagues believe we would be in a better situation 
today without the Recovery Act? The timeline is clear. The data are 
clear. The Recovery Act is what brought the economy back.
  The challenge we faced 1 year ago was a roughly $2 trillion hole in 
the economy. Consumer spending, fully two-thirds of the whole economy, 
was in free-fall. Failing to plug the gap would have continued the 
free-fall or, just as badly, condemned us to a lost decade similar to 
what Japan saw in the 1990s. During 1990s, the Japanese did not come 
back with a major effort such as the Recovery Act, and they had GDP 
level for a decade. You can imagine what that did to revenues, their 
deficit, and their jobs. That is what we would have been condemned 
with, if we had not gone with the Recovery Act.
  Let's tell the truth about how we got here. It is absolutely 
essential to remember what the situation was 1 year ago when the 
administration came into office, not to go back and go over things that 
happened in the past but to make sure we don't do it again and to 
understand what caused this recession. The circumstances we inherited 
at the end of 8 years of the prior administration were the worst we 
have seen in generations. When the Bush administration came to office 
in 2001, the Federal budget was not only balanced, it was in surplus, 
in surplus to the tune of $236 billion, the largest surplus in half a 
century. Remember that. That was not that long ago. We were actually 
debating how quickly we were going to be free of debt as a country. We 
were on a path to financial independence, able to save for retirement 
of the baby boom generation, able to set aside something for a rainy 
day. That was only 10 years ago.
  Tragically, that inheritance was squandered. Instead of a surplus of 
$710 billion that was projected in 2001 for last fiscal year, 2009, we 
wound up with a $1.6 trillion deficit. I hear my friends on the other 
side talk about deficits. This $1.6 trillion deficit didn't just 
develop. It came out of the policies of the last 8 years.
  Two major factors account for the bulk of this reversal of fortune. 
First were the economic and budget policies of the last administration 
which gave no thought to paying for tax cuts or spending increases. We 
just had a debate about paying for the $10 billion for an employment 
extension. But we actually passed tax cuts, Medicare, other things that 
were never paid for that were hundreds of billions of dollars, not $10 
billion, hundreds of billions. Tax cuts primarily for the wealthy and 
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan together accounted for more than $500 
billion of the 2009 deficit and $7.1 trillion over the next decade and 
none of it was paid for.
  Second, we had the regulatory failures which permitted, even 
encouraged, the financial excesses that brought our markets down. They 
not only permitted it; they encouraged it. There was a feeling you 
didn't have to do any kind of regulation, only self-regulation. Alan 
Greenspan himself said he was dismayed self-regulation didn't work. 
That financial collapse battered our economy, reducing revenues and 
increasing necessary spending on unemployment insurance, food stamps, 
and other support programs. Here we are on the floor debating 
unemployment insurance, food stamps, and other support programs, when 
in the previous administration, when Congress was controlled by the 
other side, they didn't talk about these issues that cost over $7.1 
trillion. They were not funded. There was no funding for the Medicare 
prescription drug program. There was no funding for the tax cuts. It is 
true the budget for next year will not be as close to balance as we all 
would wish, but I believe that is because of the hand we were dealt.
  The best way to bring the budget back into order over the long run is 
to grow our economy. This is something everybody in this building 
believes in. Our inheritance from the previous administration was tax 
cuts, overwhelmingly tilted toward those who were already well off, 
unfunded new entitlement programs, and two wars paid for with borrowed 
money. All these transformed our country's finances, leading us down 
the path to where we are now, potentially on the brink of fiscal ruin. 
Instead of saving for the future, we are borrowing billions from China, 
Japan and other countries and falling deeper into debt.
  There are two kinds of deficits, and we have not done a good job 
explaining this. Economists will agree. There is the deficit you create 
in good times by profligate spending and tax cuts. That is one kind of 
deficit. When the economy is going well, you should be building 
surpluses. However, once you are in the hole, you have to get out of 
the hole, and that is a different kind of deficit. For that kind of 
deficit, you need to get the economy moving again because growth is the 
only way you are going to get out of the hole.
  President Bush inherited a balanced budget, a vast fiscal surplus 
projected at the time to be $5.6 trillion over 10 years. Instead, he 
left office having

[[Page 2673]]

added nearly $5 trillion to the national debt. That is a swing of $10 
trillion. That means the Bush years cost roughly $30,000 for each and 
every American. I hear people from the other side talk about the 
deficit. This was a $10 trillion swing starting just 10 years ago and 
going up 2 years ago. What amnesia. Take a look at what happened. What 
I am telling you are the facts. We can argue about policy but, in fact, 
we were in surplus and had a projected $5.6 trillion surplus when 
President Clinton left office. We ended up with a swing of $10 
trillion, adding $5 trillion to the national debt. Those are facts. 
Senator Moynihan from New York used to say everybody is entitled to 
their opinion but not to the facts. The facts are, there was a $5.6 
trillion projected surplus when President Bush took office, and we are 
left with a $5 trillion deficit. That adds up to $10 trillion. In fact, 
it adds up to $10.6 trillion.
  I think those of us who supported the Recovery Act need to own up to 
our own mistake: We have done a lousy job of explaining why the 
Recovery Act was needed and how it is working. We are doing a good job 
explaining the Web sites, but we have not done the macroeconomic 
explanation of why you cannot have jobs come back until the economy 
comes back. You cannot have the economy come back without having the 
Recovery Act.
  To start with, I will say I know it increases the deficit in the 
short term. I don't like it, but that was an unavoidable byproduct. The 
best long-term solution to our debt problems is not a little frugality 
that cuts down on growth. It is a robust, healthy, growing economy. 
That is why most economists believe--when I say ``most,'' I should say 
the vast majority--that in spite of the short-run deficit hit of the 
Recovery Act, it will bring us closer to fiscal balance over the long 
term.
  I know some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will take 
issue with this statement. I would simply remind them it is economic 
growth--something they have talked about for years--and economic growth 
alone, that will get us out of our present mess.
  There is another mistake we made. As we were diligently working to 
ensure accountability for the program--and we have done a great job of 
that; and that is important--and connected specific parts of the 
Recovery Act to specific jobs created, we have missed the forest for 
the trees in our explanation. We have lost track of the real objective: 
to jump-start the broader economy. That is where the jobs are going to 
come from--the main jobs.
  While the Recovery Act itself has created or saved 2 million jobs--
independent analysis confirms this--perhaps its most important impact 
has been the renewed confidence it has given to our economy. I 
absolutely totally, completely believe that. The jobs will come. The 
jobs will come. They always lag behind the economy. When the economy 
goes up, the jobs are not far behind.
  The charts do not lie. We are rebounding. By returning faith to our 
consumer economy, the Recovery Act has had a much greater effect than 
the sum of its parts. To those who opposed the Recovery Act, I ask: 
What was your plan? Some said--and I presided and listened to the 
arguments--we should fill a $2 trillion hole in our economy with $200 
billion. That was a plan doomed to failure. That is what the Japanese 
did, and they were faced with a decade of no growth.
  Economists far and wide said that a $200 billion Recovery Act would 
have failed to halt a fall into depression. No reputable economists--
none--said this would have taken us from where we were--where we were a 
year ago, with 730,000 jobs being lost--to a 6-percent growth in gross 
domestic product for the fourth quarter of last year.
  We have come a long way in this past year. We have not come far 
enough yet. We have a long way to go. But I believe to move forward we 
must remember how bad things were when we began, just how deep a hole 
we were in, and we are pulling ourselves out of it now. The Recovery 
Act has done its job and will continue to do its job.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.


                Amendment No. 3354 To Amendment No. 3336

     (Purpose: To encourage energy efficiency and conservation and 
    development of renewable energy sources for housing, commercial 
structures, and other buildings, and to create sustainable communities)

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to lay aside 
the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 3354, and at the 
conclusion of my remarks that amendment No. 3354 be withdrawn.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Madam President.
  My amendment, cosponsored by Senators Schumer, Bingaman, and Merkley, 
would authorize a series of new programs designed to encourage energy 
efficiency in homes. I am offering this amendment--based on S. 1379, 
the Energy Efficiency in Housing Act--to the job creation bill we are 
debating today because of the enormous potential of green housing to 
grow the economy, create jobs, and, of course, save energy.
  Clean energy is the next big global industry. According to the U.S. 
Green Building Council, buildings account for 39 percent of all energy 
consumption and 38 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. Clearly, the 
housing sector must be a vital part of our energy efficiency efforts.
  Venture capitalists and companies from Google to General Electric 
have testified before the Senate that this revolution--the clean energy 
revolution--could be even bigger than the digital revolution. The 
countries at the forefront of this clean energy revolution will be the 
economic powerhouses of the next century. Right now, the United States 
is at risk of falling behind in the race to lead this new economy.
  Of the top 10 solar companies in the world, only one is from the 
United States. Of the top 10 wind power companies in the world, only 
two are from the United States.
  When President Obama met with Senate Democrats a few weeks ago, he 
told us:

       China is not waiting, it is moving. Already the 
     anticipation is that they will lap us when it comes to clean 
     energy.

  Well, we can do better than that. We are a country of innovators, a 
nation that has always sought to be on the cutting edge, always sought 
the new frontier. All we need is for the Congress to put the right 
policies in place to promote energy efficiency and encourage the growth 
of the green economy so our companies can compete head to head with 
their international competition.
  My amendment is endorsed by over 35 groups, including Enterprise 
Community Partners, the Alliance for Healthy Homes, and the Local 
Initiatives Support Corporation. The U.S. Green Building Council has 
included it in its list of ``Top 10 Pieces of Green Building 
Legislation in the 111th Congress.''
  These groups know that the provisions included in this legislation 
will boost the green housing sector in a number of different ways.
  First, it would jump-start the market for green mortgages by 
directing HUD to develop incentives for buyers--such as reduced rates 
and greater lending ability--and by boosting the secondary green 
mortgage market.
  Second, it would establish a revolving loan fund for States to carry 
out renewable energy activities, such as retrofits and incentives for 
green construction. It would also encourage the participation of 
community development organizations in our most hard-hit neighborhoods 
in the recession by authorizing a grant program that can be used to 
help those organizations train, educate, and support the workforce for 
these green energy, clean energy projects.
  The final provision I will highlight would provide incentives for 
public housing entities to achieve substantial improvements in their 
own energy efficiency. I believe we can maximize energy efficiency 
savings when we can split the incentives between landlords and tenants. 
The landlords will take an interest in pursuing the clean energy 
initiatives because of the savings they can make from the upgrades, and 
the tenants can participate in the savings

[[Page 2674]]

through their conservation efforts. It has to be joint to be at its 
most effective.
  As we continue to debate ways to put Americans back to work, I 
encourage my colleagues to take a serious look at the green housing 
sector and at my amendment. I think it merits our attention. I hope it 
will have my colleagues' support on an appropriate bill in the near 
future--I hope--and I speak on it today to put a spotlight on it so I 
have that opportunity.
  I thank the Chair and thank my colleagues.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report the previous amendment.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. Whitehouse], for 
     himself, Mr. Schumer, Mr. Bingaman, and Mr. Merkley, proposes 
     an amendment numbered 3354 to Amendment No. 3336.

  (The amendment is printed in the Record of Tuesday, March 2, 2010, 
under ``Text of Amendments.'')


                      Amendment No. 3354 Withdrawn

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the amendment is 
withdrawn.
  The Senator from Michigan.

                          ____________________