[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16505-16543]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              REBUILD AMERICA JOBS ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 1769, 
which the clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to the consideration of the bill (S. 
     1769) to put workers back on the job while rebuilding and 
     modernizing America.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, the Rebuild America Jobs Act addresses 
two of our most fundamental responsibilities: first, the need to 
respond to the urgent jobs crisis and, second, the duty to create the 
physical framework for economic growth now and into the future.
  There should be no debate about our duty to fulfill those two 
responsibilities. Yet, once again, we are in a situation where the 
refusal of our Republican colleagues to compromise, even on 
consideration of measures they have supported in the past, prevents us 
from acting on behalf of the American people.
  I am encouraged by reports that perhaps finally the need to act has 
convinced some of our colleagues across the aisle to at least consider 
allowing the Senate to debate this legislation. I hope for the sake of 
millions of people in Michigan and in every other State who are waiting 
for us to act that at least some of our Republican colleagues will 
relent and allow us to at least debate this measure.
  What would this bill accomplish? Simply put, it seeks to create jobs 
now

[[Page 16506]]

and into the future. It does so by funding a wide array of 
infrastructure projects, including roads, bridges, rail transport, mass 
transit, airport facilities, and updated air traffic control systems. 
These projects would put construction workers on the job immediately. 
They would, according to estimates by Moody's, boost economic growth by 
more than a dollar and a half for every dollar we spend. And the 
benefits would continue into the future as American companies and 
American workers benefit from the increased competitiveness that 
modernized infrastructure provides.
  In my home State of Michigan, this legislation would result in more 
than $900 million going to infrastructure projects. It would create 
about 12,000 jobs. Residents of my State are keenly aware of the need 
to act, and to act now, on the jobs crisis, and they are keenly aware 
of the terrible costs we pay if we allow our economic competitors to 
establish advantages over our workers. In my State, nearly one-third of 
our bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. More 
than one-third of our major roads are in poor or mediocre condition. 
About 40 percent of our major urban roadways are congested. The people 
of Michigan want us to act on jobs, and they want us to act now to 
maintain America's competitive edge.
  These are not controversial ideas--at least they have not been in the 
past. Support for infrastructure is traditionally bipartisan. It was a 
Republican President--Dwight Eisenhower--who launched the Interstate 
Highway System. This bill includes an infrastructure bank based on a 
bipartisan idea once supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Every 
Member of this body, Democrat and Republican, fights for adequate 
infrastructure spending for their State. Why, when faced with the dual 
challenges of a jobs crisis and increasingly outdated infrastructure, 
would we hamper our ability to grow now and in the future by not 
allowing a debate on this bill and adopting this bill?
  Perhaps some of my Republican colleagues object to the way this bill 
is paid for. As has been the case with previous jobs bills, this 
legislation would not add a dollar to the deficit. It would pay for 
these much needed infrastructure efforts by asking those with incomes 
of more than $1 million a year to pay a fraction of a percentage point 
of their income above $1 million a year in additional taxes. Again, 
outside the Halls of Congress, this is not a controversial notion. A 
strong majority of Americans, including a majority of rank-and-file 
Republicans, support the idea of asking the wealthiest among us to 
contribute to solving our jobs crisis.
  I might say, in terms of investing in infrastructure, a recent CNN 
poll shows that 72 percent of Americans support investing in 
infrastructure to create jobs. We know from this poll that a huge 
majority of Americans want us to invest in infrastructure. They want us 
to invest in infrastructure now to create jobs. That is mirrored by 
other polls which show a vast majority of Americans believe the fair 
way to pay for this investment is for the wealthiest among us to pay a 
small fraction of the income they make above a level such as $1 
million, which is what is provided for in this bill. Now, make no 
mistake, if Republicans reject this legislation because of the funding 
mechanism, they are voting directly in opposition to the will of the 
American people and against the concepts of basic fairness that should 
guide our actions.
  Finally, relative to this pay-for, there is only one group of 
Americans who have done well financially in the last few decades; that 
is, the wealthiest 1 percent. The rest of Americans, middle-income 
Americans, have either lost ground or gotten nowhere, but the 
wealthiest 1 percent of Americans have done exceedingly well, and their 
proportion of the national income has grown dramatically. So to say 
income above $1 million should not pay a small fraction of a percent in 
a surcharge to help pay for what this country desperately needs and 
would create jobs flies right against the feelings and beliefs of the 
vast majority of the American people.
  Finally, the vote we are going to take in the next couple days is not 
even a vote on the bill. This is a vote on ending a Republican 
filibuster on the motion to proceed to the bill. It is a motion which 
would allow us to begin to debate a bill.
  I have been continually surprised at the lockstep opposition of 
Republicans to even beginning to debate on these matters. I would make 
a simple request, and a number of us have done the same. Let's debate 
this legislation. Allow us to debate the legislation. If the 
legislation can be improved, offer ideas to improve it. If there is a 
better idea, offer the better idea. I believe Republicans would have a 
very receptive audience if they propose ideas for which there is strong 
evidence of benefits and economic growth and job creation. But until we 
can get a job-creation measure to the floor of the Senate, we cannot 
even discuss those issues in a legislative setting; we can only really 
hear debate as to whether we ought to be allowed to debate those 
issues.
  A bipartisan vote to begin the debate on jobs legislation would send 
an important signal to the people we all represent, a signal that we 
are ready to put aside partisanship and address the problems our people 
face. I hope Republicans will end their filibuster so we can adopt the 
motion to proceed to this jobs bill.
  Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I rise to address our Nation's job 
crisis and to share some thoughts about why it is important that we 
proceed to debate on the Rebuild America Jobs Act. It may come as a 
surprise to some across the Nation that at this point this Chamber is 
not debating the Rebuild America Jobs Act but that we are debating 
whether to debate. Only in the Senate could we be engaged in that type 
of question, when across America millions of folks want to see us act, 
want to see us create jobs.
  It was only a few weeks ago we had a similar debate. That debate was 
over the America Jobs Act, a broad portfolio of measures to put our 
economy back on track and create jobs for Americans. To get closure on 
whether to debate, we had to get a supermajority under the rules of the 
Senate.
  My colleagues across the aisle opposed that and we could not get to 
the debate of the bill on how to create jobs. Now we have before us a 
smaller segment of that bill, one that focuses on the construction 
industry. Again, we find ourselves debating whether to debate rather 
than getting down to work and creating jobs. So I hope this time the 
outcome will be quite different.
  The jobs crisis has hit hard across this Nation. It hit especially 
hard in my home State of Oregon, where the job rate has been lowered as 
the unemployment rate has been higher than in most States across this 
Nation. One of the main reasons Oregon is hurting is because our 
construction industry, our residential and commercial construction 
industry, is flat on its back. More than 40,000 construction jobs have 
been lost in Oregon since 2007. Thousands more have been lost in 
related industries such as forest products and nursery stock and grass 
seed, all of which only thrive when we are building homes in America. 
Right now, we are not building homes in America.
  So we need a boost to get the construction industry moving again. If 
you do not believe me, just listen to the people in the State of 
Oregon. A few weeks ago, I asked my constituents to write in and share 
their stories. Today, I am going to share some of those stories with 
all of you. Carolann from Marion County writes in and says:

       I am a construction cost accountant with 47 years of 
     experience and two masters degrees. I have been widowed since 
     1996. I am 69

[[Page 16507]]

     years old. I fully support my 67-year-old sister who has 
     dementia and is in remission from colon cancer. Wall Street 
     and my own bout with cancer just before I turned 65 has wiped 
     out a lifetime of savings, my retirement nest egg. I have to 
     work or we will be homeless in about 3 months. I drive a 16-
     year-old vehicle that is on its last legs. I have aging 
     parents who are struggling to keep their farm. Those are the 
     facts. In late 2008, for the first time in my career, I was 
     laid off from my construction accounting job. Since that time 
     I have been unable to find another job in any field despite 
     my good references. Currently I work part time for a start-up 
     dot-com. My prognosis for continued employment is shaky. 
     Banks will not loan money to a start-up. This summer I went 
     from June 26 to September 7 without a paycheck of any kind. 
     Last week I applied for a job at Wall Mart for Oregon's 
     minimum wage. I will probably get hired, but I am not kidding 
     myself about job security. That does not exist any more for 
     most of us. Senator, the worst thing about all of this is our 
     do-nothing Congress. Washington, D.C. has lost touch with 
     America.

  Her words ring powerfully in this Chamber. She, similar to millions 
of other Americans, is saying this economy is tough. Family 
circumstances are rough. Why does Congress not get down to work and 
debate and pass job-creating legislation? She is frustrated with this 
do-nothing Congress and we are debating whether to debate a jobs bill. 
I encourage my colleagues to listen to Carolann from Marion County. 
Let's get past this point and get down to debating the jobs bill.
  Hank from Marion County writes:

       Three years ago, I was at the top of my more than 35 years 
     in construction management working as a senior project 
     manager on a large project. As the economy tanked, the 
     projects were terminated. Today I am unemployable after 
     hundreds of applications. I am left able, willing and highly 
     experienced, yet undesired. Our farm was foreclosed and my 
     wife and I had to file bankruptcy. Currently our mortgage 
     lender refuses to complete a home loan modification, although 
     they qualified us 2 years ago for the program. And since then 
     we have been making the required payments each month even 
     without a final agreement. We have met with community groups, 
     written letters, made calls, yet nothing seems to happen. In 
     another year when the bankruptcy period ends, we fear the 
     bank will simply foreclosure again and we will lose our farm.

  Again, another voice from a family deeply affected by the collapse of 
the construction industry and a call to us to help put it back on its 
feet.
  Brian from Yamhill County writes:

       I have worked in the lumber industry for 35 years. In 2009 
     I was laid off for 11 months. I did go back to work in June 
     only to be cut again after only 5 days of work. I went back 
     to work in December for the same company. In September 2010 
     there was a cutback. More than 70 people lost their jobs. I 
     was lucky. I made the cut. But my pay was reduced by nearly 
     $5 an hour. I went from driving a fork lift to a clean-up 
     position. 6 months went by and then another cut. This time 
     another 60 people lost their jobs. I was lucky again. And I 
     worked at a new position for nearly a year until September 
     2011, and then came another cut. This time I was one of 42 
     people to be laid off with no chance of a call back. Now 
     there are rumors that the entire plant is closing. I have 
     been out of work for 1 month now. And in my job search I have 
     been running into the same thing everywhere I go: No work 
     available.
       Every industrial area I go into I see many buildings where 
     companies have gone out of business. Windows and doors are 
     boarded up. I want Congress to do the job they are being paid 
     to do so I can go back to work.

  That is the line he closes on: that we here in this Chamber should do 
the job we are assigned; that is, to take on, amend, and pass job-
creating legislation so he can find a job, so he can go back to work. I 
think his sentiment is echoed by millions of American families. There 
is no substitute for a job. No program can come anywhere close to the 
important role a job plays in the personal satisfaction, the structure 
it gives us in our life, in the knowledge we are putting a roof over 
our family's head and putting food on the table. No program can 
suffice. A job is the heart of the success of our families. Yet here we 
are fiddling while Rome burns or, in this case, filibustering while 
millions of Americans go without jobs. It is not right.
  I say to my colleagues, particularly I wish to encourage my 
colleagues across the aisle who filibustered the last effort to put the 
jobs bill on the floor: Stop. Talk to the folks in your home State who 
are unemployed, who expect us to do what every American worker expects 
us to do, which is to debate and pass job-creating legislation.
  The bill which we are debating whether to debate, the Rebuild America 
Jobs Act, is a commonsense strategy to put people back to work in an 
industry that needs it, making investments our country will have to 
make sooner or later anyway. One in four bridges in America is rated 
deficient. We get a D grade on our infrastructure from the American 
Society of Civil Engineers.
  This is not the America we know. It is not the America we want. Let's 
build the America of the future that will have the infrastructure to 
drive our economy positively. Infrastructure is not an option; it is a 
necessity. We can build it now when interest rates are low and jobs are 
needed or we can spend more later when our infrastructure has 
deteriorated further and it is more expensive. We can do it earlier, 
with lower interest rates and more bang for the buck, or we can do it 
later, when it will be more expensive, more difficult, with a higher 
interest pricetag. It doesn't seem to be a difficult choice. It 
certainly doesn't seem to be a difficult choice as to whether we should 
at least be on the bill, debating it.
  I know many folks are coming to the Chamber to address the question 
of how we get a jobs bill actually before the Senate. I hope all of my 
colleagues will get on the line with folks back home, go to that town 
meeting, and say: Do you want us to debate a bill or do you want me to 
keep stalling and preventing a debate on how to create jobs? I am 
pretty confident 9 out of 10 people--and maybe 10 out of 10 people--
will stand up and say: Quit stalling. Let's get to work here so America 
can get back to work.
  Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, today I want to discuss the jobs bill 
we are currently debating and how important it is that we pass this 
right away.
  I also want to respond to the minority leader's remarks this morning 
in which he tried to deny the bipartisan nature of this proposal and, 
instead, sought to divert this Chamber toward a hodgepodge of bills 
taken up by the House.
  All across the country, and in our State of New York, from 
Poughkeepsie to Buffalo, there are roads, bridges, and sewer systems in 
need of serious repair. In each of these places, there are thousands of 
middle-class families desperately looking for work.
  In the construction trades--the backbone of the middle class in many 
of our communities, in New York and around the country--there is 25, 
30, 40 percent unemployment. That is true for many of my colleagues on 
both sides of the aisle. We all know that in previous recessions, 60 
percent of the new jobs were in construction. That is because they 
lower interest rates and build more housing. There is no more lower 
interest rates because, when the recession began, they were already 
very low and, of course, there is a surplus of housing now in America.
  This week, by voting to pass the Rebuild America Jobs Act, the Senate 
can get thousands of Americans off the unemployment line and back into 
the workforce. Because they get paid good salaries, the money they get 
flows into the economy and creates a multiplier effect that creates 
other jobs. These are good, solid, high-skilled American jobs--jobs we 
need.
  Investing in our roads, bridges, and sewer systems could not be more 
urgent. More than one in four of our Nation's bridges is either 
structurally deficient or obsolete. I put out a list of those in New 
York State and it was astounding, in every part of our State.
  We all know that, as we get closer to winter, our deteriorating roads 
will place a heavy burden on commuters and local taxpayers. Our local 
towns,

[[Page 16508]]

villages, counties, and cities cannot afford the infrastructure work 
that is needed right now because of tight budgets and budget cutbacks 
at the Federal, State, and local levels. As this past weekend's storm 
made clear, investing in our crumbling sewer systems has never been 
more essential. All up and down the Northeast, old sewer systems have 
given way to serious flooding. We can make a downpayment on these 
priorities by passing this bill, and we should do so in a bipartisan 
manner.
  When I travel across New York State, two of the first things people 
bring up to me are jobs and fixing our infrastructure. This bill does 
both. It doesn't matter whether the people are Democratic, Republican, 
Independent, from upstate or downstate, men or women, liberal or 
conservative, they all say the same thing, and we see this reflected in 
public opinion. A recent CNN poll showed nearly three-quarters of 
Americans support additional Federal investments in our infrastructure. 
Yes, they are worried about the deficit and our long-term fiscal 
health, but they know we can't cut our seed corn--infrastructure 
projects that create jobs and help America grow economically.
  Here is the best part of this bill. It invests in projects that 
create jobs, but it is fully paid for by asking the wealthiest among 
us--those who have incomes of over $1 million--to pay a fraction more 
in taxes. They pay that not on their entire income but just on the part 
that is above $1 million. So if a millionaire--someone worth a lot of 
money--has an income of $1.1 million, they only pay the small .7-
percent increase on the $100,000 that is over 1 million. Their first 
million doesn't change. The tax policy doesn't change.
  Over the last decade, the middle class has taken a punch in the gut. 
The cost of sending kids to college has gone way up, the job market is 
tougher and tougher, and middle-class incomes are declining while costs 
to the middle class are rising. As a middle-class family sits around 
the dinner table Friday night trying to figure out how to pay all those 
bills and provide a great life for their future and for their children, 
it is very hard for them. However, the very wealthy--the very wealthy--
have done very well over the last decade.
  A lot of those wealthy people live in our State of New York. We say: 
God bless them. They started successful businesses and have done well 
over the last decade. So to pay for this bill, we are just asking them 
to pay a sliver more--.7 percent more of each $1 they earn over $1 
million. This is a situation where they can't say: We are afraid the 
money will be wasted, because it goes to infrastructure--directly to 
infrastructure. The way this is set up, there is no politics in the 
process. It is the most needed projects that get the work.
  Let me cite a fact. I know many of my colleagues joined with me and 
Senators Brown of Ohio, Stabenow, and Casey in saying China has to play 
fair, and we are all worried China will get ahead of us economically. 
But right now China is spending four times as much on infrastructure as 
the United States--four times as much. That is not four times as much 
per capita, that is four times as much period.
  Here is the real kicker: According to a recent survey of 1,400 
business leaders in 142 countries, the United States ranks No. 24 in 
overall infrastructure quality. Is that a shame? We are behind 
countries such as Barbados and Oman. We also rank No. 20 in roads 
behind the United Arab Emirates, Portugal, and Namibia; No. 22 in ports 
behind Malaysia, Bahrain, and Panama; and No. 31 in air transportation 
infrastructure behind Chile, Thailand, Malaysia, and Malta.
  How can it be that these great United States that we dearly love, and 
which always was at the top in creating roads and bridges and tunnels 
and great water systems--the third water tunnel in New York is being 
built right now, and it is an engineering wonder, though the planning 
for it started in the 1950s, I believe--is now ranked No. 31 in 
transportation, 22 in ports, 20 in roads behind countries such as the 
United Arab Emirates, Portugal, Malaysia, Thailand, and Chile? If that 
isn't a wake-up call, I don't know what is. We can't afford to let our 
global competitors get the edge.
  So this bill builds back infrastructure, creates good-paying jobs 
that will send a shot into the arm of an economy that desperately needs 
it, and pays for it only by taxing the income over $1 million of those 
who are very wealthy and have done very well in our society.
  How can anyone vote against something such as this? One could think 
maybe the only reason is because some people don't want the economy to 
grow and prosper. I hate to think that, but infrastructure has always 
been a bipartisan issue in this body, and it should continue to be.
  Let me respond directly to the minority leader's comments this 
morning. He derided the proposal on the floor as something that had 
already been tried, something that had no chance of passing, and 
something that was not bipartisan.
  First, already been tried? Oh, yes. Is the minority leader saying 
because we built the Erie Canal or built the highway system in the 
1950s we shouldn't do any more infrastructure? That makes no sense. 
That just makes no sense. Every study shows the infrastructure part of 
the stimulus bill created lots of jobs and left us with better 
infrastructure.
  The minority leader then said, as I mentioned, not just that it had 
been tried already but that it was not bipartisan. We know the need for 
infrastructure is a bipartisan priority. Just because the minority 
leader may be imposing a top-down strategy that bars anyone on his side 
from voting for any proposal offered by the President to improve the 
economy doesn't mean these proposals aren't bipartisan.
  Just yesterday, the former Republican Senator from Ohio, a fiscal 
conservative if there ever was one--Senator Voinovich--was quoted as 
saying he believed the need to repair our roads and bridges was so 
great he thought President Obama should be raising the gas tax to fund 
those investments. I don't know if I agree with him on that specific 
solution, but isn't it remarkable, a Republican Senator calling for 
revenue increases to pay for infrastructure investment?
  That is what we do in this bill. Let me say once again that Senator 
Voinovich is no longer in the Senate, so he is free to pretty much do 
as he wants. But I would hope other Senators who are in the Senate 
would join in that call because I believe they know in their heart it 
is the right thing to do.
  The only difference between what we propose and what Senator 
Voinovich proposes is that instead of asking middle-class Americans to 
pay more at the pump, we ask those who have an income above $1 million 
to pay their fair share and to help put construction workers back on 
the job. That seems like the right set of priorities to me.
  So the minority leader is clearly wrong when he says this concept 
isn't bipartisan.
  Another former Senator--Chuck Hagel from Nebraska--has been a leader 
in calling for an infrastructure bank, which also is in this bill. 
Senator Hagel sponsored one of the first pieces of legislation creating 
an infrastructure bank and has continued to call for it since leaving 
the Senate.
  So there are lots of Republicans out in the country who support this 
measure, and the polling shows a large number of Republicans who 
support the kind of proposal we have on the floor--building 
infrastructure and having those who make over $1 million pay for it so 
we don't increase the deficit. This is a bipartisan proposal.
  So let's not hear from the minority leader or anybody else that the 
proposal on the floor isn't bipartisan. Just this morning, the top 
Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee was quoted 
discussing the progress he and the chairwoman of that committee are 
making on a 2-year surface transportation bill. This is great news. I 
am glad to hear they are close to advancing that bill. But if one 
believes infrastructure is enough of a priority that they can support a 
long-term highway bill, why would they object to speeding up some of 
that investment now so we can put more Americans to work quickly?

[[Page 16509]]

  This bill is bipartisan for sure. The minority leader has a political 
strategy to block all our President's initiatives to improve the 
economy. What does the minority leader call for instead? He has called 
for the Senate to take up a hodgepodge of bills sent over by House 
Republicans that, even when taken together, don't do enough to tackle 
the jobs problem.
  Who would believe this hodgepodge of bills will do more for jobs than 
the traditional way we get out of recessions--infrastructure building? 
Most of the ideas cited by the minority leader have next to nothing to 
do with jobs at all. Many of these ideas belong more on a lobbyist's 
wish list rather than any serious jobs agenda.
  It is a stretch to call many of these bipartisan. Many of these bills 
are items Republicans would be seeking to pass even if we were in a 
boom and had full employment. Many are just ideological priorities 
dressed up as job solutions.
  It is laughable for the House leadership to act as though these 
proposals would address the jobs crisis when they are sitting on real 
solutions such as the China currency bill. The Speaker and the majority 
leader over in the House say they want to do something about jobs. They 
say they are worried about the two Houses not working together. We had 
a large bipartisan majority--65 votes--saying we are going to force 
China to play fair on currency because their failure to do so causes 
millions of jobs--good manufacturing jobs, primarily, though not 
exclusively--to leave this country. There is nothing more Congress 
could do that would lift our manufacturing sector than to confront 
China's unfair trade practices. But Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader 
Cantor sit on that bill and then tell us to take up this hodgepodge of 
items. The China currency bill passed with a bipartisan supermajority 
in the Senate. Yet the House leadership continues to sit on the 
sidelines as China takes advantage of us. The China currency bill is 
languishing in the House for no good reason.
  I suggest Speaker Boehner heed the will of his Chamber and put that 
bill on the floor and that the minority leader in the Senate would be 
well served to stop pretending these pieces of the President's jobs 
bill are not bipartisan just because he is withholding his support in 
service to a strategy that, perhaps, outlines his No. 1 goal: the 
defeat of the President.
  It is time to stop the games and accomplish something that can make a 
real dent in the jobs crisis. I say to my colleagues on both sides of 
the aisle: Pass this bill, rebuild our ailing and aging infrastructure, 
create jobs, and make sure what we do here does not increase the 
deficit by having those whose income exceeds $1 million pay a small, 
little increase to pay for it.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                            USDA APHIS Memo

  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, yesterday we concluded our work here in the 
Senate on our version of the Agriculture appropriations bill. I am a 
member of the Appropriations Committee, a member of the agriculture 
appropriations subcommittee, and I supported the legislation we passed, 
but there is an outstanding issue at the Department of Agriculture of 
which I was only recently made aware. To me, it is a very serious 
issue, and given more time I would have taken action here on the Senate 
floor. It is an issue I will continue to pursue as a member of the 
conference committee as we work toward our final fiscal year 2012 
Agriculture appropriations bill.
  The issue involves a memo issued by the Department of Agriculture 
last month, October 6, authorizing the Department of Agriculture Animal 
and Plant Health Inspection Service, APHIS, to conduct an animal 
welfare scientific forum. This forum was approved by Under Secretary 
Edward Avalos on October 12.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the USDA's 
memo.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              Decision Memorandum for the Under Secretary

     Through: Gregory Parham, Administrator, Animal and Plant 
         Health Inspection Service.
     From: William H. Clay, Deputy Administrator, Wildlife 
         Services.
     Subject: APHIS Animal Welfare Scientific Forum.


                                 ISSUE

       How can APHIS effectively engage animal advocacy groups in 
     ongoing scientific reviews and discussions of animal welfare 
     issues related to APHIS program activities?


                                SUMMARY

       At a meeting on July 26, 2011, between representatives from 
     USDA's Marketing and Regulatory Programs (MRP) and the Humane 
     Society of the United States (HSUS), HSUS representative John 
     Hadidian requested that USDA establish an Animal Welfare 
     Working Group to address animal welfare concerns regarding 
     the use of existing and emerging lethal control technology.
       The Under Secretary agreed with the general concept. APHIS 
     recommends hosting a scientific forum facilitated by Animal 
     Care (AC) at the APHIS Center for Animal Welfare in Kansas 
     City, MO, to bring together animal advocacy groups as well as 
     industry organizations to discuss the latest science 
     regarding lethal control technology and other animal-welfare 
     related activities carried out by the Agency. Wildlife 
     Services (WS), AC and Veterinary Services (VS) activities in 
     use now or those that may be used in the future would all be 
     open for discussion at the forum. Pertinent scientific 
     information gathered at the forum would be presented to the 
     appropriate APHIS programmatic advisory committee for 
     consideration.
       Senior leaders from WS, AC and VS would meet with HSUS and 
     several other advocacy groups in advance of the forum to 
     identify priority topics for discussion and potential 
     speakers.


                               Background

       In the past several meetings with MRP and APHIS 
     representatives, HSUS representatives have consistently 
     raised concerns regarding horse slaughter, horse transport, 
     and WS' use of lethal control methods, as well as several 
     welfare issues related to enforcement of the Animal Welfare 
     Act. At a meeting between Under Secretary Avalos and HSUS on 
     July 26, 2011, HSUS representative John Hadidian requested 
     that an animal welfare working group be established to 
     address animal welfare concerns regarding the use of new and 
     emerging lethal control technology. Under Secretary Avalos 
     agreed with the general concept.
       APHIS representatives believe that HSUS' intent is to 
     position the organization to be recognized nationally as 
     influencing APHIS policy on critical and sensitive welfare 
     issues. Where and how emerging and existing lethal control 
     technology can be used is one of many issues HSUS wishes to 
     influence. By expanding the proposed group to other APHIS 
     programs besides WS, and establishing a scientific forum, 
     APHIS would be able to engage HSUS and other advocacy groups 
     on a range of animal welfare issues and focus on science-
     based, practical application approaches, using best practices 
     recognized and developed with input from a variety of 
     stakeholders, including industry groups, animal advocacy 
     groups, and State and Federal partners.
       The National Wildlife Services' Advisory Council (NWSAC) is 
     the recognized body to make recommendations to the Secretary 
     regarding future WS activities. Topics of discussion from the 
     forum that might aid or impact APHIS activities could be 
     passed to the NWSAC or equivalent advising bodies for VS and 
     AC, as appropriate.
       HSUS and other welfare advocacy groups would be invited to 
     participate in a preplanning meeting for the forum with 
     senior leaders from WS, AC and VS. These groups would have 
     input into the topics to be discussed, potential speakers for 
     the topics, dates and times for the forum, how the forum 
     should run, etc.
       The APHIS Center for Animal Welfare in Kansas City, MO is 
     experienced at managing dialogue between diverse groups on 
     controversial and emotional issues and in facilitating group 
     interaction so that individuals stay focused on established 
     topics. Holding the forum at the Center would make it 
     convenient for transparent interaction with all interested 
     stakeholders from across the country.


                                OPTIONS

       Option 1. Establish an Animal Welfare Scientific Forum 
     consisting of representatives from APHIS, animal advocacy 
     organizations, industry groups and other interested 
     stakeholders. This would allow APHIS to engage animal 
     advocacy organizations with concerns about WS' use of lethal 
     control methods, as well as other APHIS issues, such as

[[Page 16510]]

     horse slaughter and transport This process would also refocus 
     attention from prescriptive protocols based on subjective 
     criteria to science-based approaches while still allowing for 
     input from diverse groups, including end users.
       Option 2. Do not establish a scientific forum and continue 
     operating under existing protocols. HSUS and other advocacy 
     groups currently meet with APHIS programs individually at 
     random intervals to discuss issues of concern. Multiple 
     meetings of these advocacy groups with the different APHIS 
     Programs are less efficient than a single forum that covers 
     multiple issues.


                             RECOMMENDATION

       APHIS recommends Option 1. This will provide cross-program 
     participation and will allow animal advocacy groups to 
     participate in a non-prescriptive manner.


                    DECISION BY THE UNDER SECRETARY

       Option 1: (Signed) Edward Avalos, October 12, 2011.

  Mr. MORAN. What is ironic about this forum is there is little science 
involved. It is little more, in my view, than the Department of 
Agriculture spending taxpayer dollars on a forum to provide the Humane 
Society of the United States a public forum to espouse its anti-
agriculture views. The document speaks for itself in this regard. On 
page 2, the document states:

       APHIS [the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service] 
     representatives believe that the Humane Society's intent is 
     to [promote and] position the organization to be recognized 
     nationally as influencing APHIS policy on critical and 
     sensitive welfare issues.

  After reading that statement, it becomes clear that the Department of 
Agriculture is catering to an outside organization instead of relying 
on the advice of animal scientists at our land grant universities or 
even at the Department of Agriculture. If the Department of Agriculture 
was interested in science, why would it allow an animal rights 
organization to steer its agenda? Why wouldn't APHIS simply request the 
latest animal research from scientists across the country to make sure 
its guidance is up to date?
  In addition to catering to HSUS, in planning this forum the 
Department of Agriculture APHIS is precluding input from members of the 
agricultural industry it is supposed to promote. The memo states:

       HSUS and other welfare advocacy groups would be invited to 
     participate in a preplanning meeting for the forum with 
     senior leaders from Wildlife Services, Animal Care, and 
     Veterinary Services. These groups would have input into the 
     topics to be discussed, potential speakers for topics, dates 
     and times for the forum, how the forum should run, etc.

  That is quoting from the memo. No mention in the memo is made of 
asking any agricultural organization or animal scientists for 
preplanning assistance. According to the memo, HSUS is going to set the 
agenda for this forum. Even if the agricultural industry is later 
invited to the event, Agriculture would have the cards already stacked 
against them.
  I believe it is important for most Americans to understand that HSUS 
is not your local animal shelter. HSUS is a national lobbying 
organization that spends most of its budget to lobby against farmers 
and ranchers who provide us with food or clothing that we enjoy. In 
fact, tax documents show that HSUS spends less than 1 percent of its 
budget on grants to animal shelters. Given these facts, you would have 
to wonder why the Department of Agriculture is giving this organization 
this platform and shunning producer organizations. This is one more 
demonstration that this organization is no real friend of rural America 
or the American farmer and rancher.
  My purpose this morning is to inform my fellow Senators of this 
troubling development at USDA and to put the Secretary on notice that 
this type of conduct from the Department is unacceptable.
  The Department's mission statement reads as follows:

       We provide leadership on food, agriculture, natural 
     resources, and related issues based upon sound public policy, 
     the best available science, and efficient management.

  USDA should live up to its mission statement and work to promote 
agriculture, not work against farmers' and ranchers' best interests 
and, I would say, not work against the best interests of the consumers 
of food in this country. Going forward, I will do my best to make sure 
the Department of Agriculture adheres to its mission statement.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Updating the Postal Service

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, just a few minutes ago, Senators 
Lieberman, Collins, Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, and I 
gathered in the press gallery upstairs to unveil a proposed compromise 
that is designed to help ensure we have a viable, strong U.S. Postal 
Service in this country for the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years and 
longer.
  There has been a lot of time spent in debate over jobs: How are we 
going to save jobs? How are we going to create jobs in this rough 
economy we are moving through? As it turns out, there are about 7 
million jobs that flow from the Postal Service. There are only about 
500,000 people who actually work for the Postal Service these days. 
There are roughly another 7 million who are associated with the Postal 
Service in one way or the other.
  If we do nothing, the Postal Service--which lost $10 billion last 
year, is on track to lose a couple hundred billion dollars over the 
next 10 years--will literally go out of business next year--not in 10 
years, not in 5 years but next year. That is a consequence none of us 
can look forward to and we need to provide predictability and certainty 
and part of that is to make sure we have a Postal Service that meets 
the needs of our businesses and the interests of our citizens.
  The situation is dire, but it is not hopeless. This is one we can fix 
and the four of us believe this legislation will fix this problem not 
in 5 years, not in 10 years from now but literally provide the fix that 
is needed this year.
  I mentioned in our press conference that a couple years ago my sister 
and I went to the home of my parents. My parents are now both deceased. 
We went to their home and we rooted through all kinds of nooks and 
crannies and boxes in the attic. We came across a treasure trove of 
letters they exchanged during World War II. They wrote to one another 
when my dad was overseas. They wrote several times a week. They saved 
the letters.
  When I was in Southeast Asia back during the Vietnam War, the 
happiest day of the week for us was the day the mail came. The letters, 
the postcards, the birthday cards, the packages we received, magazines, 
the newspapers, made that the best day of the week.
  When our Presiding Officer and I go on a CODEL to Afghanistan or to 
Iraq to visit our troops and see how they are doing and what we need to 
be doing, they still get the mail over there, but it is not like it was 
when I was serving or when my dad or my uncles were all serving. Troops 
today communicate with their families back home with Skype. They have 
the ability to use the cell phones. They have the Internet, Facebook, 
Twitter. You name it, it is a different game today. As the way we 
communicate in this country and in this world has changed, the Postal 
Service needs to change the way they do business and they are ready and 
anxious to do just that.
  I think there is a good analogy in trying to figure out what the 
Postal Service needs to do to right size its enterprise. There is a 
good analogy we can draw from by looking back just 3 or 4 years ago at 
the situation the U.S. auto industry was in. Think about this: In 1970, 
my first trip to Southeast Asia, the market share of Ford, Chrysler, 
and GM was just about 85 percent. In 2009, their market share dropped 
to less than 50 percent.
  When the auto industry reported to us and to the rest of the country 
in 2009 that given their market share, they had more employees than 
they needed, they had more auto plants than they

[[Page 16511]]

needed, and there was a mismatch in terms of the wage-benefit structure 
they were paying their own employees versus the wage benefits that were 
being paid to their competition selling cars, trucks, and vans in this 
country, they asked us for a bailout--not exactly a bailout. They asked 
for a cash transfusion. They promised to pay it back with interest. Lo 
and behold, they have, and 3 years later Ford, Chrysler, and GM are 
still in business. They have fewer employees than they had 3 years ago. 
They have fewer auto plants than they had, but they have changed the 
wage-benefit structure and made some changes in their health care costs 
and the way they administer health care costs which are now overseen by 
the United Auto Workers. As I said earlier, the moneys we invested in 
those two companies, Chrysler and GM, was money that has been repaid, 
largely, with interest.
  The Postal Service, in 2011, is in a situation not unlike where our 
auto industry was a couple years ago. Given their market share, the 
Postal Service has more employees than they need. The Postal Service 
has more post offices than they need. They have more processing centers 
around the country than they need. What they would like to be able to 
do is not to fire employees, not to abrogate labor contracts. What they 
have asked to do is to do what the auto industry did in working with 
their workers; that is, to incentivize people at the Postal Service who 
are eligible to retire to go ahead and retire. There are about 125,000 
of them. We have seen the Postal Service head count drop from 800,000 
employees a decade ago to a little under 600,000 today. The Postal 
Service needs to reduce the head count by another 100,000 or so over 
the next couple years by incentivizing people eligible to retire to go 
ahead and retire. The Postal Service thinks they can do that for about 
$2 billion. By doing that, 100,000 Postal Service employees will be 
eligible to retire. That will save the Postal Service $8 billion a year 
going forward.
  Last year, the Postal Service lost $10 billion, and in the years to 
come they are projected to lose about $20 billion. We could literally 
address about half of that financial challenge with one fell swoop, 
incentivize employees eligible to retire.
  The Postal Service is interested in being able to close some post 
offices. They would like to be able to consolidate some post offices--
where they have two, make one. In some cases, they would like to be 
able to take the services they provide at a post office and offer them 
at maybe a retail outlet that is open more than 6 days a week or maybe 
a retail outlet open 24/7, potentially put postal services in some 
supermarkets in communities across the country, put them in some 
convenience stores or maybe in pharmacies. The idea would not be to 
provide worse service; the idea would be to provide better service in a 
lot of instances.
  There are 33,000 post offices in the country. The Postal Service is 
looking today at 3,700 of them to decide whether they are viable. Under 
current law, the Postal Service can close a post office. They cannot do 
it solely on economic grounds, but they can close a post office pretty 
much at their volition and maybe have a cursory conversation with the 
community but not much.
  The legislation we have proposed would say that the post office, as 
they look at these 3,700 post offices that are under review--and 
perhaps others in the future--that before they go about closing any of 
them, the Postal Regulatory Commission--which is responsible for 
setting service standards for the post office--would have to be part of 
that decisionmaking process in these communities across America. They 
would make sure the service standards the Regulatory Commission--the 
regulators, if you will, for the post office--has established are going 
to be met in the future if a post office is closed or post offices are 
consolidated or the services are colocated. This has to be a 
transparent process, where the folks who live and work in those 
communities have the opportunity to be full participants in that 
decisionmaking.
  With respect to the closure of mail processing centers, there are 
over 500 of them across the country. The Postal Service would like to 
close as many as 300 of them. Under the legislation we have proposed, 
there would be the opportunity for communities, businesses, small and 
large, postal customers, residential customers, and others to have the 
opportunity to make clear whether the close of a mail processing center 
in their town or community would somehow be inopportune and a real 
detriment to that community in ways that are not fair.
  Those are three things that the postal service wants to be able to 
do: address their head count needs, take a close look at how many post 
offices we have and whether those services can be provided in a more 
cost-effective way, and the third is to look at the 500-plus mail 
processing centers we have and try to figure out how many of those can 
be closed.
  The Postal Service delivers mail from my State to the Presiding 
Officer's State in Minnesota--I can mail a letter today and probably it 
would get out there on Friday or maybe Saturday. The standard service 
today is, in some cases, next-day service; in some cases, service can 
be as much as 3 days. What the Postal Service has asked is, they will 
still be able to do 1-day service, but they would like for the standard 
to be officially 2 to 3 days. That is one of the things they are asking 
for the opportunity to do, and our bill let's them do that.
  The other thing the Postal Service has asked for is some relief, if 
you will--not a bailout, not taxpayer dollars--with the health care 
costs. Currently, the Postal Service pays into Medicare for its 
employees. They are the second largest payer into Medicare of all the 
employers in the country. They also pay into something called the 
Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. We have the Postal Service 
sort of paying twice for health care service for its retirees. People 
65 and over, 85 percent of them are eligible for Medicare. If they are 
not, they are still eligible for the Federal employees health benefits 
as retirees. The Postal Service has asked to do what a lot of other 
companies do. What a lot of other companies have asked is that Medicare 
would be their primary source of health care coverage. In addition to 
that, the Postal Service would provide a Medigap plan to fill the gaps 
that Medicaid and Medicare do not cover. We think that is a reasonable 
request. We have also given the Postal Service the opportunity to 
negotiate with the labor unions to see if it might make sense for the 
Postal Service to withdraw from the Federal Employees Health Benefit 
Program and establish their own plan for roughly 1 million people. They 
will have a chance to study that and decide whether that makes sense.
  I will mention three other things we believe the Postal Service can 
do to reduce costs. One of those is the way they deliver the mail. For 
a lot of folks in my home, the mail is delivered to our front door. 
There is a mailbox by our front door. What we are suggesting in our 
legislation is that in some cases the Postal Service looks at whether 
that is an efficient way to deliver the mail or maybe is curbside 
delivery fine. If someone has a mailbox, the letter carrier puts the 
mail in the mailbox and doesn't have to get out, park the vehicle, walk 
up to the house and put it in the mailbox and walk back to the vehicle. 
A fair amount of money can be saved there.
  There is money that can be saved in the way workers' comp is handled 
for Postal Service employees--and we also believe for Federal employees 
and the President agrees--and we have that legislation in this bill 
too.
  In addition, in finding ways to save money, I would hasten to add it 
is important for the Postal Service to find new ways to make money. We 
have seen the TV ads about flat-rate boxes. If it fits, it ships. The 
price is pretty good, and the service is pretty good too. That is the 
kind of idea we need more of from the Postal Service. The Postal 
Service has a partnership with FedEx and UPS. Most people think of them 
as competitors, but actually the Postal Service has partnered with

[[Page 16512]]

FedEx and UPS. FedEx and UPS don't want to deliver to every door in 
America every day for 6 days a week. They don't want to do that. They 
simply ask the Postal Service to deliver to those doors that FedEx and 
UPS don't want to deliver to on a particular day, and the Postal 
Service makes money doing this. They make a lot of money doing this. 
When the holiday season comes upon us, we will find there is a need 
for--a lot of people don't just go to brick-and-mortar stores to buy 
holiday gifts, they want to order online, and the Postal Service can 
participate broadly in that business too.
  The last thing I wish to mention is this: In addition to making 
money, we have to come up with new ideas. Those are a couple ideas that 
work. There are others. We are looking for ways to save money in State 
and local government. Why not consolidate some of the operations in 
post office buildings. We have a couple more tenants and we can provide 
service there for other purposes. We do that for passports. Why not do 
it for other things? We will hear a lot about virtual mailboxes in the 
days to come and whether that might be a new piece of business for the 
post office to be involved in as well.
  Let me close by saying this: I think as we go forward in this 
process, we need to be mindful of the Golden Rule, to treat people the 
way we want to be treated. That includes customers of the Postal 
Service, be they businesses or residential customers, employees of the 
Postal Service, the taxpayers. We need to treat everybody the way we 
want to be treated.
  The last thing I would say, my friend from Tennessee, who is 
standing, and I are two people here who believe we ought to be serious 
about solving the big problems, as is the Presiding Officer. There are 
a lot of people who think we are incapable of dealing with big 
challenges these days.
  This is a big challenge. The Postal Service is one of the two largest 
employers in this country. The consequences of the Postal Service going 
down next year are not what we want to see visited on this country. 
Seven million jobs would be in jeopardy. If we simply try to put them 
on autopilot and let the taxpayers pay for it, it would be over $200 
billion more of a hit on the Treasury.
  This is a big challenge. This is one we can fix. To the extent we can 
pull together in the Senate, as we have done in our committee on this 
issue, I think we will set a good example for our Nation to say: Yes, 
we can still take on a tough problem, and we can fix it--not in a year 
or two or three from now but this year.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I know we are rotating right now. What I 
thought I might do is yield just a couple of minutes to Senator 
Blumenthal, and then let him yield back to me if that would be OK.
  But I do want to thank Senator Carper for his leadership on this 
issue. We have looked at this bill and others, and we are glad they 
have been able to come to an agreement between each other. Obviously, 
the issue of the Postal Service is one of the big issues we need to 
deal with. I agree with him. I think that is something we can do now. I 
thank him for his leadership.
  I yield back for the Senator from Connecticut.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee, 
Mr. Corker, for very graciously beginning this discussion. I want to 
join in thanking the distinguished Senator from Delaware for all of his 
hard work and his very successful and insightful discussion this 
morning. It is a problem that concerns all of us very deeply and 
immediately, and his leadership has been an enormous contribution to 
the Nation on this issue.


                              The GAIN Act

  I am pleased to be here today with Senator Corker to discuss a 
problem that is spreading across the country. It is a public health 
threat to our troops, our children, our frail, and our elderly 
involving the spread of mutant germs, so-called superbugs, that are 
resistant, sometimes even immune to existing antibiotics.
  I have been very proud of the work Senator Corker and I have done 
together. He has joined me, and we have been joined by Senators Bennet, 
Hatch, Casey, Alexander, Coons, and Roberts in the Senate, and by 
Representatives Gingrey and DeGette in the House, along with a very 
bipartisan group of respected Members there on an issue that is truly 
bipartisan. I wish to yield to Senator Corker and then continue my 
remarks on an issue that ought to concern us very closely and 
immediately.
  Reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest 
that these infections are not only prevalent but spreading across the 
country. I have a detailed set of charts that demonstrate this problem. 
He and I have developed what I think is a solution the Congress can 
consider in order to provide incentives for development of new 
antibiotics, new medicine, that can help the Nation prevent the spread 
of these kinds of diseases.
  So with that, I yield for the distinguished Senator from Tennessee.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of New Mexico). The Senator from 
Tennessee.
  Mr. CORKER. Thank you, Mr. President. I am sure the Chair is familiar 
with us going back and forth, and I thank the Chair. I thank my friend 
from Connecticut. I know he mentioned the Senators who have joined us 
in this effort, as well as the House Members on the other side of the 
Capitol, in a bipartisan way.
  First, I thank him for his leadership on this issue and for 
approaching our office about it. I know the public watches Washington 
and wonders if there is ever anything that is done in a bipartisan way. 
There are actually lots of efforts that are undertaken that way, and I 
am very glad to be working with him and his staff who have been very 
professional and, hopefully, this bill can become law.
  The problem is that we have these drug-resistant bacteria called 
superbugs. All of us have read and heard about them. They are becoming 
harder and harder to treat because we lack the new antibiotics capable 
of combating these infections. It is actually scary when we think about 
what is happening in many facilities across our country. So it is 
obviously crucial to discover new antibiotics so we can stay ahead of 
this growing trend of drug resistance.
  Drug discoveries, obviously, don't happen overnight. Action is needed 
now to ensure that we have access to these lifesaving medications when 
we need them.
  These are serious infections. They are definitely life threatening to 
the patients, especially children and the elderly. In fact, the CDC, 
the Centers for Disease Control, has named this antibiotic resistance 
as one of the top public health concerns in our country.
  According to the Infectious Disease Society of America, 100,000 
deaths and 360,000 hospitalizations result from antibiotic-resistant 
infections each year in the United States. In my State of Tennessee, 
nearly 2,000 cases of MRSA are reported annually. MRSA is a common and 
very dangerous type of antibiotic-resistant bacteria often found in 
hospital settings. Again, I am sure all of us know of cases where this 
has happened to loved ones, friends, and others.
  The financial impact of these infections is also staggering, costing 
our health care system $35 billion to $45 billion annually.
  This problem is also threatening the health of our troops abroad. One 
particular type of bacteria, known as a Ramibacterium, is striking 
hundreds of wounded soldiers coming back from Iraq. Since 2003, more 
than 700 U.S. soldiers have been infected or colonized with this life-
threatening bacteria.
  While bacterial infections continue to become more resistant to 
traditional antibiotics, innovation of new antibiotics capable of 
combating these infections has slowed by an alarming rate. FDA approval 
of these new antibiotics has decreased by 70 percent since the 1980s. 
Between 2003 and 2007,

[[Page 16513]]

there were five new antibiotics approved by the FDA compared to 16 new 
antibiotics from 1983 to 1987.
  This bill, the GAIN Act, provides meaningful market incentives and 
reduces regulatory burdens to encourage the development of new 
antibiotics that will help us save lives and reduce health care costs. 
Specifically--and I appreciate the way the Senator from Connecticut has 
approached this--the bill provides 5 additional years of exclusivity to 
new drugs developed to treat these superbugs.
  The bill also gives these antibiotics priority status during the FDA 
review process so they can move through more quickly. It encourages the 
FDA to revisit the clinical trial guidelines for antibiotics. By 
encouraging a more robust antibiotic pipeline, we can help ensure 
patients have access to lifesaving treatments while also reducing 
health care spending.
  The GAIN Act is a straightforward, commonsense bill that provides 
market incentives to encourage innovation without putting Federal 
dollars at stake. Antibiotic resistance is a growing issue that we must 
address to properly prepare for the future.
  Dr. William Evans, the director and CEO of St. Jude Children's 
Hospital in Tennessee, recently wrote a letter supporting this bill. 
Many of my colleagues know of St. Jude and the wonderful work they do 
for children across our country. Here is his quote:

       We don't want to find ourselves in a situation in which we 
     have been able to save a child's life after a cancer 
     diagnosis, only to lose them to an untreatable multi-drug 
     resistant infection.

  I wish to thank my colleague again, Senator Blumenthal from 
Connecticut, for his leadership on this bill, and I look forward to 
working with him to ensure it gets proper consideration in the Senate.
  Also, I ask unanimous consent that letters of support be printed in 
the Record from the following organizations: St. Jude Children's 
Hospital, Le Bonheur Children's Hospital, University of Tennessee 
Health Sciences Center, and East Tennessee State University Quillen 
College of Medicine.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:
                                                          St. Jude


                                 Children's Research Hospital,

                                    Memphis, TN, October 14, 2011.
     Hon. Richard Blumenthal,
     Hon. Bob Corker,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senators Blumenthal and Corker: I am writing on behalf 
     of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital to express our 
     support for the Senate companion bill of H.R. 2182, the 
     Generating Antibiotic incentives Now (GAIN) Act of 2011. The 
     mission of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is to 
     advance cures, and means of prevention, for pediatric 
     catastrophic diseases through research and treatment. The 
     GAIN Act represents an important first step in addressing a 
     public health issue that significantly affects our mission. 
     We believe that the legislation is of great importance not 
     only to our children's hospital and the children and families 
     we serve, but to children and families across the country.
       Many of the children we treat at St. Jude have compromised 
     immune systems, and are particularly vulnerable to bacterial 
     infections. At the same time that multi-drug resistant 
     strains of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) 
     and gram negative bacteria are on the rise, the number of new 
     antibiotics being approved has dropped precipitously. A study 
     conducted at St. Jude and published in Pediatric Blood & 
     Cancer compared MRSA colonization rates in pediatric oncology 
     patients in 2000-2001 with rates in 2006-2007. The study 
     showed an increasing prevalence of colonization with MRSA 
     observed in children with cancer at our institution, and that 
     the colonization was associated with infection. Recurrent 
     MRSA infections were seen in 22 percent of patients. A copy 
     of the study is enclosed.
       We applaud the work that you and your bipartisan group of 
     colleagues are doing to address the issue of the dwindling 
     antibiotic pipeline. We believe that the GAIN Act is an 
     important first step in stimulating new antibiotic 
     development and getting lifesaving drugs to the children we 
     treat. We don't want to find ourselves in a situation in 
     which we have been able to save a child's life after a cancer 
     diagnosis, only to lose them to an untreatable multi-drug 
     resistant infection. Thank you for your leadership in the 
     Senate to ensure that we have the tools we need to treat the 
     children entrusted to our care.
           Sincerely,
                                                 William E. Evans,
     Director and CEO.
                                  ____

                                                       Le Bonheur,


                                          Children's Hospital,

                                    Memphis, TN, October 26, 2011.
     Hon. Bob Corker,
     U.S. Senate, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Corker: on behalf of the patients, families, 
     physicians and associates of Le Bonheur Children's Hospital, 
     I commend your efforts to invigorate the development of new 
     antibiotics to combat the spread of antibiotic resistant 
     bacteria with the introduction of the GAIN Act. Thank you for 
     taking the lead on this important public health concern.
       Antibiotic infections have been on the rise for many years, 
     disproportionately affecting children and increasing the cost 
     of care. We applaud your efforts to encourage antibiotic 
     innovation, an important step to ensuring that lifesaving 
     medicine will be available to the many children who need 
     them.
       Please let us know how we can assist in passing this 
     important legislation. Our many pediatric physicians, 
     researchers and clinicians are available to lend whatever 
     support you need. Thank you, Senator Corker, for working to 
     improve healthcare for children.
           Sincerely,

                                                  Meri Armour,

                                              President and C.E.O.
     Le Bonheur Children's Hospital.
                                  ____

                                       The University of Tennessee


                                        Health Science Center,

                                    Memphis, TN, October 25, 2011.
     Hon. Bob Corker,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Corker. We, here at Le Bonheur Children's 
     Hospital and the Department of Pediatrics at the University 
     of Tennessee Health Science Center, applaud your efforts to 
     spur development of new antibiotics to combat the spread of 
     antibiotic resistant bacteria with the introduction of the 
     GAIN Act. Thank you for taking the lead on this important 
     public health concern.
       Antibiotic-resistant infections have been on the rise for 
     many years, in many cases disproportionately affecting 
     children. For example, infections caused by methicillin-
     resistant Staphylococcus aureus (``MRSA'') have been 
     particularly frequent in children and may be life-
     threatening. My colleagues Steve Buckingham and Sandy Arnold 
     and I have published a series of articles summarizing our 
     experience with these infections and discussing the impact of 
     antibiotic resistance on the treatment of children with 
     serious infections.
       We commend your efforts to encourage antibiotic innovation 
     that will bring lifesaving medications to the many children 
     (and adults) who need them.
       As a pediatric infectious disease specialist, please let me 
     know how I can assist and support your efforts on this 
     important issue. Thank you, Senator Corker, for your hard 
     work and vision.
           Sincerely,
     B. Keith English, M.D.,
       Professor and Interim Chair, Department of Pediatrics, 
     University of Tennessee Health Science Center Interim 
     Pediatrician-in-Chief, Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases 
     Le Bonheur Children's Hospital.
                                  ____

         East Tennesssee State University, Office of the Vice 
           President for Health Affairs,
                               Johnson City, TN, November 2, 2011.
     Hon. Bob Corker,
     Dirksen Senate Office Building, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Corker: We are writing on behalf of East 
     Tennessee State University to express our support of S. 1734, 
     the Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now (GAIN) Act of 2011.
       At the turn of the last century, infectious diseases were 
     the leading cause of death in America. Between improvements 
     in sanitation and the development of vaccines and 
     antibiotics, the impact of infectious diseases on human 
     health has been greatly reduced in our country. However, we 
     are concerned that as microorganisms develop resistance to 
     existing antimicrobial agents there is an increased 
     possibility that we will see a resurgence in some infectious 
     diseases that are currently under control. Additionally, with 
     continued growth of the world's population, and the shortened 
     travel times between continents, resistant organisms have the 
     capacity to spread quickly across the globe. We believe that 
     the GAIN Act, S. 1734, will be a first step in stimulating 
     new research in antibiotic development to address a 
     predictable public health crisis.
       East Tennessee State University Division of Health Affairs 
     (including the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, 
     Public Health, and Clinical and Rehabilitative Health 
     Sciences) has research programs strongly focused on meeting 
     the needs of our region, particularly needs of the 
     underserved and other vulnerable populations. We recognize 
     the necessity to promote advancements in

[[Page 16514]]

     research related to infectious disease and currently conduct 
     clinical and basic science research in these areas. We feel 
     that the GAIN Act will expedite our efforts to produce novel 
     treatments for disease and in turn, reduce the related burden 
     of illness to the region and state.
           Sincerely,
     Wilsie S. Bishop,
       Vice President for Health Affairs and Chief Operating 
     Officer.
     Philip C. Bagnell,
       Dean of Medicine.
     Gregory A. Ordway,
       Chair of Pharmacology.
     Priscilla B. Wyrick,
       Chair of Microbiology.

  Mr. CORKER. With that, I yield the floor for my good friend, someone 
with whom I have thoroughly enjoyed working on this issue. I thank him 
again for his leadership on a very important issue that matters to all 
of us.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Again, my thanks to my very distinguished colleague 
from Tennessee whose leadership and contribution to this bill has been 
instrumental from the very start. I welcome him and have been thankful 
for his partnership on this issue.
  As my colleague from Tennessee said so well, these antibiotic-
resistant drugs are a spreading scourge. Reports from the Centers for 
Disease Control and Prevention suggest that MRSA infections are 
responsible for more than 17,000 deaths in the United States every 
year--more than AIDS and many other diseases that are regarded as 
public health threats. All 50 States have seen rates of antibiotic-
resistant E. coli infections double in less than 10 years.
  A lesser known bug, Acintobacter, a bacteria that affects increasing 
numbers of our troops serving in Iraq, has infected more than 700 of 
our servicemembers since 2003. The numbers are continuing to rise. 
Those numbers are alarming. I have some charts I will show in just a 
moment that will be even more graphic. But to put a human face on this 
problem, Jamel Sawyer, a former college football player from Norwalk, 
CT, knows all too well the crippling impact of these antibiotic-
resistant infections.
  He was in school in Boston. He suffered from severe back pain and a 
rising temperature. He went to the hospital and was told he was 
suffering from a kind of antibiotic-resistant staph infection which 
surmounted multiple rounds of antibiotic treatment. He was left 
paralyzed and unable to walk. He was paralyzed from the waist down and 
remains very severely handicapped as a result. Right now he is fighting 
to gain back his ability to walk and function normally.
  We are in an arms race with superbugs. We are in a fight with 
antibiotic-resistant mutating germs that are a spreading, persistent, 
and pernicious problem all around the country. The resistance is fueled 
by careless use of antibiotics, the overuse of certain kinds of 
antibiotics, or failure to use them properly, as when they are not used 
for the full round when they should be and thereby lead to greater 
resistance on the part of these germs.
  Failure to use these antibiotics properly and failure to exercise 
good stewardship is important, but it is not the only cause. We need to 
stay ahead of these germs in an arms race to develop new antibiotics 
and provide incentives for those antibiotics.
  The problems we are encountering are shown by these charts, beginning 
first in the year 2000 with antibiotic-resistant E. coli. As this chart 
makes clear, nowhere--in no State in the United States--was there a 
rate above 10 percent. That accounts for the light yellow pattern here.
  In 2009, the situation was very different. In States across the 
country--major States, including New York and the entire East--the rate 
was above 35 percent. In many parts of the Midwest, including the 
Presiding Officer's State, the rate was above 25 percent. E. coli 
resistance to treatment by this commonly used antibiotic presents a 
threat particularly to our children and our elderly.
  The next chart I wish to show concerns Acintobacter. This bacteria 
has afflicted particularly our troops coming back from Iraq. It is, in 
fact, nicknamed ``Iraqtobacter'' by many military doctors, and it has 
literally jumped enormously in the number of cases.
  This was the case in the year 2000, showing almost everywhere rates 
below 5 percent. The present incidence is very different, alarmingly 
so. In some States it is above 50 percent, including, I believe, New 
Mexico, and in many parts of the East above 30 to 40 percent.
  This Acintobacter incidence is something that is a major national 
security problem insofar as 700 troops have been infected with 
Acintobacter, and as Robert Jackson, the director of Military Families 
United said so eloquently about this disease:

       The worst part is that many of our men and women in uniform 
     survive the war effort only to return and die of this 
     infection in the continental United States. Thus Military 
     Families United strongly supports the GAIN Act, which would 
     ensure that American companies have the motivation to combat 
     the most modern, multi-drug resistant diseases.

  I brought these charts simply to show how the spread of these 
superbug infections has affected the entire United States. There are 
other diseases like MRSA and VRSA. They are a set of acronyms that are 
comparable to, in effect, a modern plague.
  Fully one-third of all deaths from H1N1 Swine Flu, for example, in 
2009 were actually caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. According 
to the Infectious Disease Society of America, 100,000 deaths and 
360,000 hospitalizations in the United States resulted from antibiotic-
resistant infections, at a cost of $26 billion to our health system 
annually.
  What is the reason for the rise and spread of these diseases? Well, 
the main reason is we do not have new antibiotics to treat and cure 
them. The reason for that dearth of new antibiotics goes to the 
fundamentals of modern economics involving the drug industry. 
Antibiotics are prescribed and used for a course of 2 weeks, if they 
work. There are blockbuster drugs and miracle drugs that are used for 
the treatment of chronic diseases and, therefore, are used often for 
lifetimes. The revenues from those blockbuster drugs are themselves 
blockbuster products and profits.
  The problem with antibiotics is the lack of economic incentive to 
develop them in the modern economics of the pharmaceutical industry. 
The GAIN Act would remedy that problem. It would incentivize the 
development and research required to implement and discover these new 
drugs. It would extend the data exclusivity rights for 5 years. It 
would speed and expedite consideration of these drugs by the FDA. It 
would provide a fast track, essentially, and enable prompt review. It 
would moderate and eliminate the kinds of regulatory hurdles which is 
so important in providing not only incentives but also a track to 
consumers so they would have the availability of these drugs.
  I personally would welcome other ideas if there are any for 
strengthening the incentives for development of these antibiotics that 
are so important to treat and cure the antibiotic-resistant germs that 
cause these problems. I hope we will continue to have the kind of 
bipartisan momentum in favor of these new developments.
  I close by saying we are all talking about jobs on the floor of the 
Senate these days. This proposal is also, in a way, a jobs-related 
program. It would enable small innovators and small businesses--one is, 
for example, Rib-X Pharmaceuticals in New Haven, a 50-person company 
trying to develop new drugs through innovation. The kind of boost and 
incentive this bill will provide is very important for the innovators 
of America who are out there trying to provide cures for Acintobacter, 
MRSA, E. coli--all of them superbugs--providing a solution to this 
problem that I think is very much urgent and in the interests of our 
Nation.
  This measure is a first step. I hope we can come together to enact 
it. I urge the Senate to join me in doing so.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois is recognized.

[[Page 16515]]




                         Somalia and Al-Shabaab

  Mr. KIRK. Mr. President, I rise today to thank the Government of 
Kenya and its President Kibaki for the difficult decision he and his 
government have made with regard to Somalia.
  We all recall Somalia as the site of the Black Hawk Down tragedy in 
1993. As much as Americans might wish to ignore that troubled country, 
I do not think we can. Somalia is a country whose government collapsed 
in 1991 but has now given rise to what is arguably the second largest 
terror presence on planet Earth, called al-Shabaab. The country also 
represents a new 21st-century threat of piracy across America's Persian 
Gulf oil supply lines.
  On October 16, at the invitation of the Somali Transitional Federal 
Government, the Kenyan Government launched Operation Protect the 
Country against the al-Shabaab terrorist organization based in Somalia.
  We all recall that al-Shabaab is an al-Qaida affiliate that has been 
designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States 
since 2008. It is responsible for multiple attacks in Somalia, Kenya, 
and Uganda, including a suicide bombing in July 2010 in Kampala that 
killed 76 people, including an American citizen, 25-year-old Nate Henn 
of North Carolina who worked for the Invisible Children nonprofit 
organization. Also, on October 25, al-Shabaab kidnapped and is still 
holding another American citizen, 32-year-old Jessica Buchanan of 
Virginia.
  About 4,000 Kenyan troops are now approaching the critical Somali 
port city of Kismayo where al-Shabaab makes most of its money and is 
headquartered. The success of the Kenyan operation would mean a 
significant weakening of al-Shabaab's ability to plan and execute 
terrorist attacks and would greatly support the security of the region 
and the United States.
  Also joining in the fight against al-Shabaab are prominent local 
tribal militias, including the Ahlu Sunnah Waljamaah, the ASWJ; the 
Raas Kaambooni Front; and the Jubaland militia formed under the former 
TFG defense minister, Mohamed Abdi Mohamed.
  I commend the Kenyan Government and the allied groups for their 
action, and the United States and NATO should support this Kenyan 
action.
  Al-Shabaab poses a significant threat to America's national security 
and to Kenya's safety. Since 2009, al-Shabaab has conducted at least 10 
attacks on Kenyan soil and the territorial seas along her coastline. In 
a particularly heinous crime, on October 1, al-Shabaab kidnapped a 
disabled French woman on Kenyan soil and dragged her to Somalia, where 
she later died. Last week, al-Shabaab militants also threw a grenade 
into a Nairobi nightclub.
  Because of al-Shabaab's refusal to allow access for humanitarian 
organizations to relieve famine, Kenya is also now home to 600,000 
Somali refugees. In many ways, the famine and distress that is now 
evident in Somalia should be called the al-Shabaab famine.
  Al-Shabaab also poses a direct threat to the United States by 
actively radicalizing and recruiting American citizens.
  On October 29, a suicide bomber attacked an African Union base in 
Mogadishu, killing himself and 10 other human beings. The suspect, 
Abdisalan Hussein Ali, was a 22-year-old American citizen who grew up 
in Minneapolis and studied to be a doctor before he suddenly 
disappeared to join al-Shabaab in 2008. The recording he allegedly made 
before his death contained a disturbing message aimed at young 
Americans. He said:

       Today, jihad is what is most important. It's not important 
     that you become a doctor, or some sort of engineer.

  According to the FBI, Ali was one of 30 American citizens who have 
now joined al-Shabaab. In August of 2010, the FBI arrested 2 and 
charged 12 more individuals in Minnesota, Alabama, and California 
``with acts of terrorism that include providing money, personnel, and 
other material support to the Somali-based terrorist organization al 
Shabaab.'' At the time, Attorney General Eric Holder called it ``a 
deadly pipeline that has routed funding and fighters to al Shabaab from 
cities across the United States.''
  On July 27, an investigation by the House Committee on Homeland 
Security found the following:

       Al-Shabaab has an active recruitment and radicalization 
     network inside the U.S. targeting Muslim-Americans in Somali 
     communities. It also ensnared a few non-Somali Muslim-
     American converts, such as a top Shabaab commander:
       At least 40 or more Americans--

  According to the House--

     have joined Shabaab;
       So many Americans have joined that at least 15 of them have 
     been killed fighting with Shabaab, as well as three 
     Canadians;
       Three Americans who returned to the U.S. were prosecuted, 
     and one awaits extradition from The Netherlands;
       At least 21 or more American Shabaab members overseas 
     remain unaccounted for and pose a direct threat to the U.S. 
     homeland.

  The House said:

       Al-Shabaab has the intent and capability to conduct attacks 
     or aid core Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in 
     Yemen with striking U.S. interests and the U.S. homeland.

  They said that al-Shabaab has openly pledged loyalty and support to 
al-Qaida and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen and has 
cemented an alarming set of operational ties to both groups.
  The House report also points out that after the successful U.S. 
operation to kill Osama bin Laden, al-Shabaab's leadership eulogized 
bin Laden and vowed revenge against the United States. Omar Hammami, 
another al-Shabaab leader raised in the United States, said he ``swore 
[a] blood revenge against his own homeland for the May 1 killing of 
Osama Bin Laden.''
  Al-Shabaab poses a grave threat to regional stability and to our own 
national security. I thank the Kenyan Government and their allies in 
Somalia for taking action. Our administration and our NATO allies 
should support Kenya. We should also make sure that in this support we 
have the objective to collapse al-Shabaab in Somalia. With luck, while 
al-Shabaab may have found a recruit or two among American citizens to 
wage jihad against their own country, there, hopefully, will be no al-
Shabaab to fight for if they ever reach Somalia.
  Mr. President, I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
  Mr. KERRY. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I believe we are currently debating the motion to 
proceed to go to the energy, water, et cetera, package. Included in 
that is the proposal of the President that he has sent up asking the 
Senate to vote on the question of an infrastructure bank.
  I believe there was a prior vote in the Senate on that in the context 
of the Jobs Act, which we all know failed at that time. There are some 
signs that this may wind up being a partisan effort here, but I hope 
colleagues will stop and think very carefully about the infrastructure 
bank proposal and what it represents to our country.
  Whether we can get it over the hurdle at this moment, I do not know. 
But it is an idea whose time has come, and I am confident in the next 
weeks or months, hopefully, the Senate will embrace this concept. The 
reason for doing so is very simple. Colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle are increasingly reminded when they go home, as well as familiar 
here just in the general dialog about where we are going in our 
country, of the enormous deficit reduction--the deficit; it is on my 
mind--of the infrastructure deficit we face in this country as a whole.
  So I want colleagues to stop and think hard about a simple question: 
How are we going to build America? How are we going to build America 
going forward so that we can do what our parents and our grandparents 
did for us, providing us with the basic infrastructure of a nation that 
has been able to allow people to move easily from home to work to 
places of commerce across the country, an interstate highway system, 
all of our airports, our train stations, all of the assets that 
provided for the strength of our Nation and for the kind of communities 
we live in? None of it appeared out of nowhere. It was built because 
people had a vision, people had an idea about how

[[Page 16516]]

you make communities strong, and also how economies work. The fact is 
that some of the greatest projects in our country, whether it is some 
of the great bridges we look at today--Golden Gate Bridge, Triborough 
Bridge, George Washington, countless bridges across the Potomac and 
elsewhere--the tunnels, the roads, our water treatment facilities, our 
airports, and the airline system we have, all of those things 
contribute to the strength of our country.
  But everyone here knows we are not currently pursuing a set of 
projects calculated to make America more competitive and to continue 
that rich history and tradition of building for the future. We are busy 
living off the assets that were created by the generations that 
preceded us. So the question has to be asked by every colleague here: 
Are we going to appropriate the money for grants? And the answer is no, 
partly because the deficit and the debt are telling us in loud terms we 
do not have those kinds of funds right now, but also because everybody 
here sees the difficulty we are having trying to get the highway bill 
reauthorized or the FAA bill reauthorized in order to do the things we 
need to do.
  The proposal for an infrastructure bank is a proposal that recognizes 
this fiscal reality. We simply do not have and will not allocate the 
types of funds necessary to do the job every American knows has to be 
done. That does not mean the job cannot be done. There is a way to do 
it. And the way to do it is to invite other people's money, the private 
sector, not tax dollars, to come to the table and invest in these 
projects, where these projects have revenue streams that will support 
that kind of investment.
  One of the important features of the infrastructure bank that I ask 
colleagues to focus on is the fact that this bank is not a grant 
entity. There will be no grants. It is exclusively loans, and 
exclusively loans that meet the fiduciary test of their ability to be 
able to be repaid, to have a revenue stream that will support the loans 
themselves.
  I would say to my colleagues, some of them I know have asked me 
occasionally: Well, is this going to be an entity such as Fannie Mae or 
Freddie Mac? Is it going to be one of those government-supported 
entities that got some folks in trouble? The answer is no, resoundingly 
and profoundly no. It is not similar in any way whatsoever. Fannie Mae 
and Freddie Mac issued stock. They were for-profit entities listed on 
the New York Stock Exchange. They were using the Federal guarantee on a 
loan to actually leverage their position in the marketplace in 
competition with other entities and for-profits. This bank is not for 
profit. No issuance of stock will be listed on any exchange. It will 
exist exclusively for the purpose of lending to those types of projects 
that meet the highest fiscal standards with respect to the ability of 
those projects to be repaid.
  In fact, in each and every lending situation, the infrastructure bank 
will make a risk analysis, just as you do on any deal in Wall Street. 
There is a risk analysis, and a risk factor will be assigned to that 
deal. In fact, fees will be charged to the borrowers, to the 
dealmakers, in order to cover that level of risk. That will be part of 
the cost of the transaction.
  The benefit of this infrastructure bank is that by virtue of the 
Treasury Department providing a discount for the Federal Treasury 
guarantee, you actually make the loan attractive in terms of the 
private sector in competition, and it does so at a level, as I said, of 
risk analysis that does not put the Federal Government or the taxpayer 
on line and at risk for the measured level of the loan itself, but only 
the risk which is credited or put on the books in terms of what is 
carried by the Treasury Department as the risk of this particular loan.
  So, in fact, if you look at the type of projects that are authorized 
by this--only energy projects, transportation projects, and water 
projects--in the better part of the country, they are limited to $100 
million size or up, and there is a set-aside for rural communities. In 
the rural communities, the level of loans could be $25 million or up, 
because obviously in parts of rural America, you have smaller kinds of 
projects, and we want everyone in the country to be able to share from 
the benefits of this kind of an infrastructure bank.
  I would say to my colleagues, this bank has bipartisan support. It 
has been introduced in slightly different forms from what the President 
has put it in. But the fundamentals of the bank in structure and 
concept are the same. It has been introduced by Senator Kay Bailey 
Hutchison of Texas, who is a coauthor; Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator 
Mark Warner are the original cosponsors. But it has other cosponsors 
and broader support including, I might add, the U.S. Chamber of 
Commerce, which is a strong supporter of the infrastructure bank, and 
was present at the announcement of this legislation, as well as the 
AFL-CIO.
  Why is this infrastructure bank necessary? What is it we need? Well, 
everybody knows that the experts are telling us we have a $2.2 trillion 
infrastructure deficit in America. That means there are over $2.2 
trillion of projects around the country, countless bridges in countless 
communities around the country, roads or tunnels or airports, countless 
projects which need to be repaired, upgraded, or put in place at first 
instance.
  We are that far behind, a $2.2 trillion deficit to what we ought to 
be doing. The American Civil Society of Architects and Engineers tells 
us that we could spend about $250 billion a year for the next 40 years 
just to bring our roads up to par, and we are not about to do that, we 
know, because we do not have the money, because we are not getting that 
kind of an appropriation now for our initiatives.
  Listen to what Oklahoma City Mayor Mike Cornett says: Mayors see up 
close the deferred maintenance that is going on in the Nation's cities. 
It is a ticking timebomb. We also know it puts people to work.
  Well, Cornett is president of the Republican Mayors and Local 
Officials Coalition within the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He knows what 
he is talking about in terms of this deferred maintenance. But the 
truth is, every Senator here knows. You can go back home and find 
mayors and State senators, State representatives, Governors, 
Departments of Transportation--all of them are pleading with us to try 
to help provide the kinds of funding necessary because they are simply 
overwhelmed. I might add many of our States are living under court 
orders to do some of these projects, particularly the water, the 
combined sewer overflow-water treatment facilities, where communities 
have sued and you need to do those projects in order to meet the 
standards. And they are under court order, without understanding where 
the money is going to come from. But they are under a court order.
  The fact is that whether we decide to do these things is going to 
determine how competitive America is going to be. Right now, everybody 
knows we are facing a transformational economic challenge. It is 
different from the challenge we faced in the last century. During that 
period of time, as we came out of World War II, we were the only major 
economy in the world left standing. At the end of the war, we had both 
the vision and foresight as well as the courage to put a lot of money 
on the line in the Marshall plan to help rebuild Europe and rebuild 
Japan. And we saw throughout the Cold War the ways in which that 
investment paid back for the United States of America, indeed for the 
western world and for the values that we made central to that kind of 
an investment.
  That has changed. It started to change in the eighties and nineties, 
and now we are seeing, with the rise of less developed countries that 
are, after all, doing the very things that we encouraged them to do--we 
told them you have got to liberate your societies to be able to go out 
and compete in the marketplace, that they needed to open up that 
market, they needed to trade, they needed to excite capital formation 
and invest and so forth. That is exactly what they have done. They have 
not changed their political systems, in many cases, which remain 
totalitarian and closed, one party, but they have

[[Page 16517]]

certainly changed their economic systems, and in doing so, they have 
transformed the marketplace we are competing in. So the United States 
is not looking at the same playing field, where we had unlimited 
resources, unlimited capacity to go out and, frankly, win. We could win 
many times without even trying that hard. But now other people are 
doing the same things we took for granted. They are competing in 
science, they are competing in technology, they are competing in 
manufacturing, they are competing in software, and they are competing 
all kinds of things that were our domain for a long period of time.
  The market globally has changed significantly enough that we are 
facing a challenge to our ability to be able to remain the No. 1 
economy. I heard today that China will probably be the No. 1 economy in 
the world within 5 or 6 years, much faster than we had anticipated 
previously. So if the United States is going to compete and get its act 
together going forward, we have to invest in the infrastructure of our 
country, because that is how you, No. 1, create jobs, but, No. 2, you 
provide the ability to move goods, to provide for people, to provide 
for the quality of life and the kinds of institutions that make a 
difference to our ability to be able to compete and to live the quality 
of life we want.
  The figures of other people's commitment to infrastructure tell us 
the story. China is investing 9 percent of its gross domestic product 
in infrastructure. Europe is investing 5 percent of its GDP in 
infrastructure. Here in the United States, we are investing somewhere 
around 2 percent. Figures vary--2.2, 2.1, 2 percent. I think Brazil 
invested over $240 billion in its infrastructure in the last 3 years, 
and the Brazilian economy is growing in double digits. North Korea, 
Mexico, Brazil, China, India, all growing in double digits, and the 
United States is stuck in this recession, maybe just breaking out of 
it, but with very uneven growth.
  The infrastructure bank is geared to fill a void in our investment 
abilities in this country. Again, Senators know we are not going to 
invest billions of dollars of appropriated money--taxpayer dollars--
because of the competition we have in our discretionary funds now 
because of the way we are heading in terms of the fiscal cliff and debt 
cliff and because of the challenge of the rising costs in health care 
and entitlements. We don't have that money.
  While we get control of those components of our economy, we need to 
be investing in the infrastructure of our Nation and putting people 
back to work. We need to invest in highways, roads, bridges, mass 
transit, inland waterways, commercial ports, airports, air traffic 
control systems, passenger rail, including high-speed rail and freight 
rail systems, and the water sector. We can invest in wastewater 
treatment facilities, storm water management systems, dams, drinking 
water treatment facilities, levees, and open space management systems.
  In the energy sector, we need transmission in America. We need an 
energy grid that is modern. We need distribution, storage, energy 
enhancements for buildings, public and commercial.
  There is an extraordinary amount of work to be done--if we decide to 
do it. Hundreds of billions of dollars is sitting on the side lines 
right now. It could come in and help us with these projects. The 
infrastructure bank is precisely the entity that will bring that 
private capital to the table so that it is the Chinese who are 
investing in an American infrastructure project that they cannot take 
back to China; it is here in America. It improves our lives, but it 
gives them a return on investment for the money they put on the line in 
a deal, which, frankly, is the kind of deal that will produce the sort 
of long-term, patient capital investment that I think a lot of people 
are going to be turning to given the nature of the financial turmoil we 
see going on in the world today.
  We are in a competitive race with other countries to attract this 
private equity investment. An infrastructure bank could help us put 
that money to work here at home.
  Some people say: Senator, why do you need the infrastructure bank to 
do this if these deals are so attractive? Why doesn't the money come 
and they will invest it anyway and so forth?
  It doesn't work that way for a number of reasons. First of all, our 
financial institutions have not developed a long-term infrastructure-
lending business. We don't have that in this country the way other 
banks in other parts of the world do.
  If you look at a major American infrastructure transaction over the 
last few years, guess what. Non-U.S. banks--mostly Australian and 
European--are the ones providing most of the financing. They are doing 
it at an average of 20 to 1--20 parts by the non-U.S. banks, the 
European and Australian banks, and 1 part U.S. investment. Given the 
troubles the European sovereign market has today, I think it is going 
to be a very long time before we see a lot of European banks looking to 
invest over here. Maybe I am wrong.
  The lack of investing by our institutions is not because the 
investment is too risky. The problem is that for a very long time, the 
vast majority of American infrastructure has been financed through the 
municipal bond market, the rest largely through Federal grants, which I 
have said are now under pressure. So there has been no need for large 
bank lending to be created. As we all know, large bank lending--that 
market just doesn't happen overnight.
  The municipal bond market also relies principally on small retail 
investors for most of its funding. Because of the way it is designed, 
it can't access large global pools of capital or, for that matter, 
pension funds. Pension funds are prohibited from investing in those 
bonds.
  The municipal bond market is not well-suited to fund large, cross-
State, cross-boundary projects, so we need something else. That 
something else is this kind of infrastructure bank, with all of the 
very strict limits that have been put into place to keep it from 
reaching too far. It doesn't cost a lot of money--$10 billion of 
startup funding. It becomes self-financing. Every loan is a loan that 
can be repaid because they rely on sources of revenue that are among 
the most dependable sources of revenue in the marketplace--from energy 
projects that sell electricity, and you have a pretty regular stream of 
buyers for that. You have a pretty regular stream of people who need 
water in their homes and pay for the water. All of these revenue 
streams--the tolls on bridges, for instance, and these others--have a 
certainty and longevity to them that make these kinds of deals very 
attractive.
  I say to my colleagues that one of the silver linings of this kind of 
infrastructure investment is this: For every $1 billion, the Federal 
Highway Administration tells us you will create, I think, 30,000 jobs. 
The range of jobs, depending on whom you listen to, goes from about 
20,000 to 35,000. Let's say it is 20,000 jobs per billion. People say 
this bank investment of $10 billion can leverage more than $\1/2\ 
trillion--$500 billion--of investment, so you are talking 20 million 
jobs over the course of perhaps 10 years.
  I think there are so many compelling reasons for engaging this. 
Europe has an infrastructure bank. We have State infrastructure banks, 
but the State infrastructure banks don't have the advantage this bank 
has of being able to do transboundary, cross-State deals. They also 
don't have the advantage of having a discount on the lending component 
coming through the Treasury Department of the Federal component of 
this--done, as I said, under the strictest fiduciary standards. Only 50 
percent of any project can be lending. The rest has to be equity and 
has to be invested by the other investors in the deal. It could be a 
combination of investors, but they need to invest.
  I close by saying that a modern infrastructure is really the 
lifeblood of our economy. I don't know how many of my colleagues have 
taken the Acela to New York, but it is a train that has the ability to 
go 150 miles an hour. It only goes 150 miles an hour between here and 
New York for about 18 miles of the trip because you cannot go fast 
under the Baltimore tunnel because vibrations might cause it to fall 
in. You cannot go fast over the bridges of the

[[Page 16518]]

Chesapeake because the train will wind up in the Chesapeake. This is 
absurd.
  Many of us have had the pleasure of having a train ride in China. I 
rode recently from Beijing to Tianjin--a trip that used to take 8 to 10 
hours takes 29 minutes. You are going 200 miles an hour. The water on 
your table is barely jiggling during the entire ride. It is an 
extraordinary accomplishment. They are building something like 55,000 
miles of that kind of high-speed rail system over there, as they spend 
their 9 percent of GDP on infrastructure.
  We can do better. The United States of America can do better. We know 
that. We are the country that had invention and building construction 
in our DNA, the country that went to the Moon and developed these 
extraordinary technologies that connect human beings around the world 
instantaneously.
  I am convinced that if we put this infrastructure bank together, all 
of a sudden the United States will attract capital, create jobs, 
modernize our economy, and have benefits that spill out all across our 
Nation. I hope our colleagues will get rid of the politics and embrace 
this idea, which is long overdue.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before the Senator leaves the floor, I 
commend the Senator from Massachusetts. He has said much this afternoon 
that I certainly agree with.
  I also want to touch on one other point about the Senator's work--the 
Senator from Massachusetts--in this area. The public, perhaps more than 
anything else, is talking about why people in Washington, DC, cannot 
work together, why we can't come up with ways to build coalitions. I am 
not sure people picked up on it in the Senator's remarks, particularly 
with respect to China. They are investing far more than we are. But he 
has pulled together the chamber of commerce and the AFL-CIO for an 
infrastructure package. That doesn't happen by osmosis or because 
somebody puts out a press release. He put in the time to try to build 
that coalition, which, of course, is key to getting bipartisan support 
up here. I want the Senator to know I very much appreciate it. I know 
he brought exactly the same approach to his work on the supercommittee, 
trying to find common ground on some of the most challenging issues so 
that we will generate growth and deal with health care costs.
  I have some remarks to make, but I am glad I had a chance to listen 
to the Senator from Massachusetts because I thought the point he made 
about bringing people together was important. And I hope people will 
say, as we look at this transportation package--I just want to get on 
the bill, frankly, so we can open other kinds of ideas. The Senator has 
put in a lot of time, and it paid off with coalitions such as the 
chamber of commerce and the AFL-CIO. That is the kind of approach that 
will solve some of these big problems.
  Mr. KERRY. I thank my friend from Oregon. Nobody works harder on 
building coalitions than the Senator from Oregon. He has done a superb 
job on health care and tax policy, so those words mean a lot. I 
appreciate that. Thank you.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, my sense is that if you tune in on the 
Senate today--and, of course, the ways of the Senate are always hard to 
follow. The occupant of the chair is involved in changing the rules of 
the Senate and has a sense of what I am talking about. You try to 
figure out what the Senate is up to, and at this point you have learned 
that today the Senate is working on infrastructure. You hear that word 
again and again. You roll your eyes and you say: Wake me when the 
potholes get fixed.
  What I want to do for a few minutes this afternoon is try to tie this 
to what I believe is first and foremost on the minds of the American 
people, and that is jobs. That is what we hear about morning, noon, and 
night.
  The fact is that we cannot have big-league economic growth in America 
with little-league transportation systems. It is not possible. If our 
bridges and roads are falling apart, we simply cannot have the growth 
we need, and job growth is the No. 1 issue for our people, and 
literally infrastructure improvement--roads, bridges, and 
transportation systems and jobs are two sides of the same coin. They go 
hand in hand. That is point No. 1.
  Point No. 2 is on the question of how we stack up to some of our 
competitors worldwide. If we can't move goods and services efficiently 
in this country, our businesses are practically in the position where 
they have to put up a sign and say: We cannot compete with China 
because when China is making these kinds of investments that we heard 
Senator Kerry and other colleagues on both sides of the aisle talk 
about in the last few days, you know what we are up against.
  Transportation is the key to moving goods and services efficiently. 
We have bottlenecks, for example, in my part of the country, in the 
metropolitan area and, frankly, in rural areas where people could not 
have dreamed there would be a traffic jam even a few years ago.
  Point No. 3 is there is no economic multiplier in our country like 
transportation. When you make well-targeted investments in 
transportation, you create jobs for the folks who are building those 
projects, you create jobs for the people who are selling the equipment, 
you are creating jobs for folks such as the people in the restaurants 
who make the ham sandwiches for the workers who are out there building 
the projects and trying to find ways to help our people avoid traffic 
and save gas as they try to get to and from work. So this is a big 
economic multiplier.
  And, No. 4, Mr. President, as you know from your experience as a 
westerner, the history of our part of the world is that private 
investment has always followed well-targeted public investments. You 
look all over the West and the great distances our folks have to 
travel, and you will see again and again the key to getting more 
private sector investment. In my view, the key to economic recovery is 
the private sector job growth that is behind the tax reform bill I have 
with Senator Coats--the first bipartisan tax reform bill. We need 
private sector job growth in the West. The history of our region is 
that private sector employment has traditionally followed well-targeted 
public investments.
  What I want to see us do--and what the vote that is coming up is all 
about--is to have a chance to move to the bill. If we move to the bill, 
I believe there are all kinds of opportunities for Democrats and 
Republicans, through amendments and a variety of opportunities, to 
exchange ideas and to come up with bipartisan approaches. I have had a 
chance to be part of those kinds of discussions in the last few years.
  Look, for example, at the common ground that has developed between 
Senator Boxer and Senator Inhofe on the Environment and Public Works 
Committee. They are making a lot of progress in reauthorizing a 
transportation bill. That is only one example here in the Senate of 
Democrats and Republicans coming together.
  Let me cite two others. In the Economic Recovery Act, I had a chance 
in the Senate Finance Committee to advance an idea I have been working 
on for more than 5 years. There was a very large and bipartisan group 
of us who worked on it. Former Senator Talent was the original 
Republican, but Senator Thune was involved, Senator Wicker, Senator 
Collins, and a very large bipartisan group working with colleagues on 
our side of the aisle. The Senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar, is 
one who comes to mind, who has been a very thoughtful advocate of 
improvements in transportation. So in the Senate Finance Committee, as 
we moved forward with the Economic Recovery Act, Chairman Baucus and 
then ranking minority member Senator Grassley, in effect, said: Well, 
we have been hearing about some of these ideas this bipartisan group 
has been advancing. Let's give them a chance to make their case. I 
offered the proposal to create something called Build America Bonds. 
This was a chance to, for the first time, move the Federal Government 
into the bonding area. It has long

[[Page 16519]]

been done, of course, at the State and local level, and it received 
good reviews from the private sector.
  I recall the day when Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley asked me 
what I predicted in terms of the results of the Build America Bonds. I 
said: We have gotten basically about a year and a half. As you know, 
the Recovery Act was passed in the winter of 2009, and the IRS had to 
implement the rules. But when we wrapped up the period for which we 
issued Build America bonds, more than $181 billion worth of Build 
America bonds had been used all across the country for capital 
infrastructure projects. They had been used in big projects on the east 
coast of the United States--the New Jersey Turnpike was one--and they 
had been used for roads in southern Oregon.
  If you want to talk efficiency, look at the Web site of our State 
treasurer, Ted Wheeler, who said they were saving in our State 10 
percent by issuing these Build America bonds.
  I see my friend from California is here, Senator Feinstein, and I 
believe California was one of the largest users of Build America bonds. 
To have a program that was envisioned as perhaps selling $5 billion or 
$36 billion worth of bonds selling more than $180 billion is an example 
of what we can do on a bipartisan basis that will put people to work 
and will actually save money.
  The savings we found in Oregon can also be illustrated by the 
analysis done by the Department of the Treasury that finds the same 
sort of savings we found in Oregon.
  With respect to the Build America bonds, in some respects they were 
too successful. People said: Oh, perhaps they are being used for more 
kinds of projects than was acceptable to some people. So once again we 
said, we are going to come back and try to find a way to generate 
bipartisan support. My colleague from North Dakota, Senator Hoeven, and 
I got together and we put forward another proposal--a different 
version--that we call the TRIP program--the Transportation and Regional 
Infrastructure Program. Our plan would allow State infrastructure banks 
to issue bonds to pay for transportation projects, once again having a 
small supportive role from the Federal Government. The folks who run 
the numbers at the Joint Committee on Taxation say that with this 
bipartisan proposal--a Republican from North Dakota, a Democrat from 
the State of Oregon--it would be possible to get $50 billion worth of 
transportation projects with this model, with only $12 billion worth of 
cost over 10 years.
  I only illustrate this fact to suggest that if it is possible to get 
on the bill, I think we are going to see colleagues on the Republican 
and the Democratic side look to try to cooperate and find some common 
ground. Senator Kerry made the point about the infrastructure bank, how 
we got the support of the Chamber of Commerce, Senator Graham and 
Senator Hutchison and others. I have gone through some of the history 
of other transportation efforts--that progress is being made now with 
Senator Boxer and Inhofe on the transportation bill; and the Build 
America bonds effort, which produced a thirtyfold increase over what 
was anticipated, literally revolutionizing the municipal bond market 
and was utilized for big projects, such as the New Jersey Turnpike, and 
small projects, such as roads in southern Oregon; and now if we can go 
to this bill--and that is what the vote is all about, whether we 
actually get on the bill--we will be able to offer alternatives and 
ideas. Frankly, the provisions that are in the bill in its current 
form, I don't see how anybody can be against them. The question of 
highway repair is about as fundamental a function of government as 
anything one can imagine. So there is plenty in this bill I think 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle could support.
  I have cited a number of examples of bipartisanship in this area, 
where we can do more in the infrastructure field while we save money, 
and I hope colleagues will vote--I gather the vote will be tomorrow--to 
move to the bill and give us a chance to get serious about what I think 
is central to growing the American economy and at well-targeted 
investments in transportation.
  To me, the question of job creation and infrastructure are literally 
two sides of the same coin, so I hope the Senate moves to this 
legislation tomorrow and begins to beef up our effort to deal with a 
fundamental part of job creation in this country. It is so fundamental 
that in much of the country, if we don't make the investments, it will 
literally be the equivalent of saying to our businesses: Put up a sign 
that says you are not going to be in a position to compete with China 
right now; come back another time. That is unacceptable to me and to 
Oregon businesses and Oregon workers. That is why I hope my colleagues 
will vote to go to the bill.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oregon and 
the Senator from Massachusetts. I happened to hear their comments, and 
they are both very good and they are both right on.
  I was thinking while Senator Wyden spoke about the fact that in the 
past 6 months those of us on this side have tried on four different 
occasions to pass legislation related to jobs. We began on May 4 to 
reauthorize the Small Business Innovation Research Program, which would 
direct grants to small businesses to develop technologies. That fell on 
a cloture vote. It did not get 60 votes. It only got 52. We then tried 
to reauthorize the Economic Development Administration, which I think 
most of us know essentially is a cost share for communities in 
distress. That didn't get cloture. It fell 49 to 51. We then tried the 
President's big jobs act on October 11. That vote fell. It did not get 
cloture. It only got 50 votes. We then tried taking a part of that on 
October 20, in order to fund 400,000 school jobs and thousands of jobs 
for police and fire departments--first responders--throughout the 
Nation. That was paid for with a .5 percent surtax on people who could 
well afford to pay for it and probably would want to pay for it, but 
that fell on a 50-50 vote. We did not get the 60 votes for cloture.
  Today, we are trying for a fifth time on a part of the President's 
bill which has to do with infrastructure. Again, there is a pay-for. It 
is paid for by a .7 percent tax on people who can well afford to pay 
that .7 percent. And I think Senator Wyden and I both know the value of 
keeping this Nation No. 1, because we come from the West. We are on a 
burgeoning trade basin. We seek competition with countries that have a 
blooming infrastructure, and we see the plugs and the bumps and the 
stoppages in this country because of an absence of adequate 
infrastructure.
  I am delighted the Senator is here and that we share this same cause. 
Hopefully, there is going to be some change in the mindset on the other 
side of this great Hall and people will realize if we are going to 
remain No. 1--and we are not No. 1, and I will go into that in my 
speech--then we have to pass this segment of the President's bill. So I 
thank Senator Wyden very much for his comments.
  As I said, this legislation offered by the majority leader includes 
the key infrastructure provisions of the President's Jobs Act. It is 
$50 billion for our roads, bridges, airports, and transit systems, and 
it capitalizes a freestanding infrastructure bank with $10 billion. 
This bill makes the investment without increasing the deficit. Funds 
appropriated are offset by a .7 percent surcharge only on people who 
can afford it.
  I come from a State where unemployment is high--11.9 percent--and 
employment in our construction sector is down 44 percent, as you can 
see from this chart. This is actually California's construction jobs, 
and you can see where it was in 2000. You see it rise to 900,000 in 
2006, and since that time it has plummeted. The fact of the matter is, 
construction, to a great extent, drives the economy in a number of 
States, and I think California heads that list. So infrastructure and 
employment go directly together.
  Last week, this body passed legislation authorizing the sale of power 
from the Hoover Dam. The Hoover Dam is on

[[Page 16520]]

the border between Nevada and Arizona, and it was built in the 1930s. 
But it reminds me of the invaluable contribution that infrastructure 
investments have made in generations past. During the depths of the 
Great Depression, we stepped forward to help build Hoover Dam. Between 
1931 and 1936 our Nation made a massive effort involving thousands of 
workers--more than 100 of whom lost their lives--to build a powerplant 
unlike anything the world had ever seen.
  This is kind of a working picture of Hoover Dam being built. At the 
time, many in Congress argued the cost of this engineering marvel was 
too high and the investment of taxpayer dollars too risky. They opposed 
efforts to invest in an unproven energy technology like hydropower. The 
debate was strikingly similar to the debate we hear today. Luckily for 
the people of California, believers in American infrastructure and 
technology won the Hoover Dam debate. As the years have passed, the 
investment has been repaid and the wisdom of Congress' investment 
remains clear.
  Today, Hoover Dam, all these years later is still owned by the 
American people.
  It produces power for the Southwestern United States at less than 
one-quarter of the market price. It is the quintessential example of 
why infrastructure spending and investment makes sense. During the 
depths of the Depression, it gave people jobs and hope. But its 
benefits were permanent, not fleeting. The investment made in the 1930s 
is still paying dividends for the economy of the Southwest.
  Today, this legislation invests $50 billion in America's 
transportation infrastructure. That is specifically $27 billion for 
highways, $9 billion for transit, $4 billion for high-speed rail, $2 
billion for Amtrak rail improvements, $3 billion for airports and air 
traffic control modernization, and $5 billion for discretionary grants 
and TIFIA loans to multimodal projects. These funds are actually in 
addition to funding levels in the surface transportation bill which 
authorizes $52 billion annually and the FAA authorization which 
authorizes $16 billion annually. The proposal also appropriates $10 
billion to capitalize an infrastructure bank. With its own appointed 
board and CEO, this bank would have the power to issue loan guarantees 
and loans, at the Federal funds rate, to large projects in water, 
transportation, and energy.
  The bank's authority is similar to the functions performed by EPA's 
State Revolving Fund, the DOE's Loan Guarantee Program, and the 
Department of Transportation's TIFIA and RRIF Programs.
  In the long term, centralizing these functions in a single 
infrastructure bank will establish more consistent lending rules and 
policies. So I think a lot of us have gotten together from time to time 
to see what could be done to fund a real infrastructure bank. 
Presently, when we build infrastructure, we have no way of financing 
it. We put up the whole cost upfront. Most States and cities don't fund 
their infrastructure that way. They float bonds, and they are amortized 
over time. So the ability to have an infrastructure bank to loan money, 
to look at various instruments, to move infrastructure production 
throughout this country I think is vital. Because the bank will lend, 
not grant, funds, it will leverage $10 billion into approximately $100 
billion in actual investment dollars.
  The bank would be particularly beneficial to California--I must say 
that--and we lead the application list for Federal financing 
assistance.
  For example, Los Angeles citizens voted to tax themselves by raising 
the sales tax in order to build a desperately needed subway and transit 
system. They seek a Federal loan. They have the money to pay it back; 
it comes every year due in sales taxes, but they seek a Federal loan to 
build the system in 10 years, not 30 years because they need it sooner 
rather than later. The County of Riverside seeks a Federal loan to 
build a toll road on the Highway 91 goods movement corridor, through 
which millions of containers move from the Ports of Los Angeles-Long 
Beach to every community in America.
  I think most people in this body don't understand that approximately 
50 percent of all the containers that come into this country, east 
coast, west coast, come in at Los Angeles-Long Beach, 40 to 50 percent, 
and they go out in multimodal areas in stacked trains into the Midwest. 
But they run into all kinds of impediments. There is not separated 
grades. There is not the ability to move these trains as rapidly as 
they should be. So if we are going to keep up with the delivery of 
cargo into the heartland of this country, most of which comes from 
Asia, we need to do something. California's communities are prepared to 
repay these loans, but they need help in the beginning.
  The Federal Highway Administration estimates that for every $1 
billion of Federal transportation spending, 27,822 jobs are produced. 
It is one of the biggest bang for the buck programs I know of. For 
every $1 billion in spending, nearly 30,000 jobs are generated. So this 
bill is a job generator. For every $1 spent on infrastructure projects, 
it also spurs economic activity, raising the level of gross domestic 
product by $1.59.
  So what is the conclusion? Investing in infrastructure is essential 
to addressing our nationwide unemployment crisis. Oh, I only wish we 
could see this.
  Congestion is a big problem in this country. I told you about Los 
Angeles-Long Beach. What I should also tell you is that the average Los 
Angeles commuter spends 63 hours per year stuck in traffic. That costs 
$1,400 a person. In Greater Los Angeles, commuters spend 515 million 
hours stuck in traffic every year. They waste 407 million gallons of 
fuel, at a total economic cost of $12 billion. That is just L.A.
  I see the Senator from Illinois is on the floor. That is just L.A. I 
wonder what the Chicago numbers would be. They have to be large. San 
Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, and Riverside County face all the 
similar congestion. In each area, the average commuter spends more than 
30 hours a year stuck in traffic. That costs us $6.4 billion, and 
nationwide, congestion is causing Americans to travel 4.8 billion hours 
more and to purchase an extra 3.9 billion gallons of fuel, for a 
congestion cost of $115 billion in 1 year. That year happens to be 
2009. This is the equivalent of wasting 130 days of flow from the 
Alaska pipeline each year. It is enormous.
  So is this bill necessary? The answer is clearly a resounding yes. In 
my State, 66 percent of our major roads are in poor condition, 68 
percent of our urban interstates are congested, vehicle travel on our 
highways increased by 27 percent from 1990 to 2007, and 30 percent of 
our bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.
  One of the best infrastructure projects in the Nation is the repair 
of Doyle Drive going onto the Golden Gate Bridge. Senator, I wish you 
could see it because this is a stimulus project and it is amazing 
because you actually see these dollars at work. Huge ramps are being 
rebuilt going down to ground level, this great icon of America. The 
Golden Gate Bridge would never be built today. We just wouldn't build 
it. If we did, it would take 100 years to do it with all the permits we 
need. But it is there, it is an icon, and there is a major 
infrastructure package working on it.
  Our Nation's deteriorating surface transportation infrastructure is 
going to cost the economy more than 876,000 jobs. It is going to 
suppress GDP growth, it is estimated, by $897 billion by 2020. Poor 
road conditions cost U.S. motorists $67 billion a year in repairs and 
operating costs--$333 per motorist. Failing infrastructure will drive 
the cost of doing business in this country up by $430 billion in the 
next decade, as the costs to ship goods and raw materials will increase 
due to bottlenecks and roads that beat up vehicles.
  There was a time when America built big things. In the 1800s, we 
built the transcontinental railroad in one of the great private-public 
partnerships of all time. We built projects such as the Bay Bridge, the 
Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Dam in the 1920s and the 1930s. In the 
1950s and 1960s, we built an interstate highway system unlike anything

[[Page 16521]]

else anywhere on the planet. In the 1970s, we built the Bay Area Rapid 
Transit system in San Francisco. This multidecade investment gave 
America an economic advantage over every country around the world.
  Now listen to this. As recently as 2005, the World Economic Forum 
rated U.S. infrastructure as No. 1 for economic competitiveness--No. 1 
in 2005 for economic competitiveness. But in just 5 years, we have 
slipped to No. 15--not 5, not 10 but 15 in 5 years because we haven't 
kept up what is a deteriorating infrastructure caused by overuse. The 
argument is so solid to pass this bill, I can't understand how anyone 
could vote against it.
  China is spending today 9 percent of its GDP on infrastructure. They 
are our competition. I live on the Pacific Rim. I can tell you, every 
time any one of us goes to China they will look around the city, 
whether it is Beijing or Shanghai, and you will count 20 to 50 cranes 
building in that city, improving infrastructure.
  I stood in Shanghai when the head of the government told me: In 10 
years, we will build 375 kilometers of underground subway and 25 
stations. Guess what. They did and are doing it. We can't do that. It 
is a problem. Of course, China doesn't have NEPA, it doesn't have CEQA, 
it doesn't have three dozen permits you have to get. It is easy to 
write a letter to Mrs. Lee or Mrs. Chu and say: You will move in 30 
days because your apartment building is going to be destroyed. That 
doesn't happen here.
  But there is no excuse not to do what is in this bill. There is no 
impediment to do what is in this bill. It might not take us back to No. 
1, but it might take us back to No. 3 or No. 4.
  China spends 9 percent. Do you know what we spend? I will tell you. 
According to the Economist, on April 28, we spent 2 percent of GDP on 
infrastructure.
  A lot of people are doing columns on whether America remains No. 1 in 
the world, whether we have lost our clout, whether we have lost our 
competitiveness, whether we have lost our ability to invest in the 
future. This bill is a good testing ground because this measure is all 
infrastructure, with the ability to get it done in the future by a bank 
that can specialize in the arena.
  So it is a good test. It seems to me, if we want this country to be 
No. 1, we have to vote yes. I believe the will is on this side of the 
aisle and I send a challenge to the other side of the aisle. There is 
no reason not to vote for this bill.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cardin). The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator from California for her presentation. 
As she talked about her wonderful hometown of San Francisco, one of my 
favorite cities outside Illinois, I thought about my most recent trip 
there to that Golden Gate Bridge and the wonderful work that is done in 
the Presidio. What a tribute it is to that beautiful part of our 
country that the investments are being made now so people can enjoy it. 
It was filled with people, bicyclers, walkers, runners, families, 
tourists, and everybody. It is an indication to me that if you build 
it, they will come.
  In this situation, I couldn't help but reflect as the Senator went 
through the litany of all the great achievements in America over the 
last 60 years from the viewpoint of infrastructure. Think back to 
President Eisenhower and the big debate that was on then about the 
interstate highway system: Was it going to be bonded or paid for with 
taxes? It went back and forth, and it ended with a bipartisan 
agreement, and thank goodness it did. We need that kind of bipartisan 
agreement right here.
  Were it not for the interstate highway system, your State would be 
much different today. So would mine. Thank goodness, 60 years ago, a 
Republican President and a Democratic Congress reached an agreement. It 
can be done.
  The Democrats did not say if Eisenhower gets this, people are going 
to think better of him. They thought better of the Nation, and that was 
a commitment that made a difference.
  I thank the Senator for telling us this story. I appreciate it.
  Mr. President, we had a meeting this morning with economists from 
labor and business, and they came and talked to us about what is going 
on with the American economy. Nothing they said was a great surprise, 
but it sure was troubling. One-fifth of all men in America are 
currently out of work. Just a few years ago, it was one-twentieth.
  Since 1969, there has been a 28-percent decline in purchasing power 
of the average working family. Even though they are working, they have 
fallen behind. The level of fear and anger in our country is growing. 
We have had slow economic growth rates, and we are facing some serious 
issues. The United States today has the same number of jobs it had in 
the year 2000, 11 years ago, but we have 30 million more Americans in 
2011 than we did in the year 2000. We can lament this and read about it 
and say isn't it a darn shame or we can do something about it.
  Fortunately, for those of us who have been elected to this Chamber, 
we have a reason to do something. In fact, that is the reason we have 
been sent here. People didn't send us to give inspiring speeches; they 
sent us to solve problems, to make life better for America, to make 
this a stronger Nation--a secure, safe, and stronger Nation. We have 
that power to do this, and the question is whether we will.
  I can tell you many people argue that the President's efforts to get 
this economy moving have failed. I could not disagree more. I have been 
around Illinois, and I have taken a look at what we have built in 
America with the stimulus funds. It is impressive. In my home State, it 
is impressive, not only in terms of infrastructure but helping 
businesses get started and to succeed.
  Douglas Holtz-Eakin is the president of the right-leaning American 
Action Forum and was Senator McCain's top economic adviser during the 
2008 Presidential campaign. In the Washington Post, on Sunday, he said: 
``The argument that the stimulus had zero impact and we shouldn't have 
done it is intellectually dishonest or wrong.''
  That is from a conservative, Republican-leaning economist. He knew 
the stimulus helped. America would have been in a deeper hole today had 
we not acted to reduce taxes and to help build America in ways that 
will serve us for generations to come.
  We know now we need to do more. Tomorrow we are going to give our 
colleagues in the Senate a chance to join us in making that happen. We 
are going to try to move this country forward by putting people to work 
building things that count. Highways and bridges and airports and 
schools, community colleges and things that will serve us for years to 
come. It will create thousands of jobs all across America. We know the 
stimulus bill did that.
  The Department of Transportation estimates that $48 billion in 
transportation funds put 65,000 people to work on 15,000 projects. I 
just saw one last week. It is the new Intermodal Transportation Center 
in Normal, IL. It is amazing. Right next to the Amtrak station, they 
have built an intermodal center which has kicked off a renaissance in 
downtown Normal, IL. There are restaurants, a brandnew hotel I stayed 
in, a Marriott. There are all sorts of shops and a lot of activity. It 
is all focused on the centerpiece that is now under construction and 
will soon be completed. This intermodal center is paid for by the same 
stimulus funds that many come to the floor and question or mock. This 
multimodal center is a centerpiece for the growth of a great town in 
the Midwest.
  Incidentally, the rail service of that Amtrak station is being funded 
with $1.1 billion in high-speed rail grants that were part of the 
stimulus as well. We didn't just build the buildings, we are putting 
down new rail with concrete to make sure people have a safe, secure, 
and faster ride. The station is built with $22 million in TIGER grant 
funds through the same Recovery Act.
  These investments are doing great things for Normal, for Illinois 
State University that is there. The mayor of Bloomington, who is right 
next door, came over to say he agreed too.

[[Page 16522]]

  The Peoria airport is another story. They just completed a brandnew 
airport terminal. It is beautiful. Mr. President, $6.4 million in 
Federal stimulus funds are going right into Peoria, creating jobs in 
Peoria, and building an airport for the 21st century. There were 120 
workers at work building this terminal--good pay, good benefits, jobs 
right here in America.
  The Englewood Flyover Project in Chicago is going to eliminate the 
biggest railroad bottleneck in the Midwest. It will mean that goods and 
passengers move more quickly through that great city and to their 
destination. It will put hundreds to work for this construction, and it 
came right out of the stimulus package.
  I listened earlier when Senator Feinstein talked about choices we 
have to make in this country. I think the choices are pretty clear. We 
know what China is doing. If we go to China today, we will see building 
cranes in every direction. She talked about a 375-mile underground 
subway system. When I was there, they talked about 50 new airports they 
are going to build in the next 5 years that can land every Boeing 
aircraft. They are building the ports, the airports, the roads, and the 
railroads to compete with us in the 21st century. What are we doing? We 
are locked in a partisan debate on the Senate floor, where we cannot 
get one Republican vote to support the President's jobs bill to create 
jobs building America's economic future--not one.
  Why? I will tell you why. Let's get down to brass tacks. The 
Republicans say we cannot vote for any bill that raises taxes. The 
President's jobs bill--the part we are going to bring--does raise 
taxes, and here are the taxes that are raised. For those making over $1 
million a year in income--that is over $20,000 a week in income--we 
say, on the income over $1 million, they have to pay a surtax of .7 
percent. That would mean that the first $100 that the millionaire makes 
over $1 million, they would have to pay 70 cents. The Republicans have 
said: No way. We will not make the millionaire pay 70 cents on the 
first $100 he earns over $1 million, even if it means putting people to 
work in America. Who disagrees with that position? A majority of 
Democrats, Independents, and a majority of Republicans, a majority of 
the tea party members disagree with the Republican position, but not a 
single Republican has broken ranks yet to join us in a bipartisan 
effort to put Americans back to work and pay for it by having the 
wealthiest, the most well off in our country pay 70 cents on $100.
  To me, that is not too much to ask. I would ask that and more of 
those who have been blessed with a comfortable life and a good income 
and a nice home and no worries. For them to pay a little more so 
America can get moving forward and we can reduce this unemployment rate 
is not too much to ask. It is what we were sent here to do.
  I encourage my colleagues to join us. Let's get together, if we can, 
in a bipartisan basis tomorrow and pass this portion of the jobs act 
and put America to work.
  Incidentally, at this point, the Republicans have produced no jobs 
bill. They have no ideas. As we are united in fighting this recession 
and unemployment, they are united in opposing anything proposed by 
President Obama. I don't think that is the way we need to operate.
  Thank goodness when President Eisenhower built the interstate system, 
a Republican President and Democratic Congress looked beyond the next 
election and into the next century and what America needed.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.


                            A Second Opinion

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, the October 2011 issue of the AARP 
bulletin contains an interesting opinion piece. It was written by the 
Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. It is right there on the front 
page, Senate Leader Reid. His opinion piece is entitled ``The Health 
Care Law is Already Working.''
  I come to the floor, as I do from time to time, to give a doctor's 
second opinion. I have a second opinion today about the piece in the 
AARP paper. I find the choice of the words in the title, ``The Health 
Care Law is Already Working,'' ironic, especially as the American 
people continue to express negative views about President Obama's 
health care law.
  I come to the floor--as a physician who has practiced medicine in 
Wyoming and taken care of Wyoming families for a quarter of a century--
to talk about the health care law and to talk about health care in 
America. What we see is a growing majority of Americans who want to see 
the entire law repealed and replaced with patient-centered reforms.
  Don't take my word for it. Let's look at the facts. On October 18, 
2011, just last week, the Kaiser Family Foundation released its monthly 
health tracking poll. This is a nonpartisan Kaiser survey and it tracks 
the public views about the health care law, and they have been doing it 
ongoing. The results this month are truly astonishing. About half of 
all Americans have an unfavorable view of the health care law. Overall 
favorability of the health care law stands at just 34 percent, an 
alltime low. The number of individuals who view the health care law 
very favorably stands at 12 percent, an alltime low. The number of 
people who think they will personally be better off due to the health 
care law stands at 18 percent, an alltime low. The number of 
individuals who think the country, as a whole, will be better off due 
to the health care law stands at just 28 percent, an alltime low. 
Approval of the law among Democrats dropped 13 percentage points to an 
alltime low. These results make it clear that the new health care law 
does not work.
  About 19 months ago, Mr. Schumer, the senior Senator from New York, 
claimed on NBC's ``Meet The Press'' that:

       . . . as people learn about the bill, and now that the bill 
     is enacted, it's going to become more and more popular.

  The President and Washington Democrats miscalculated. They made 
numerous promises to the American people and they said we need to act 
fast. We can answer questions later. They asked the American people to 
trust them. Then the Nation watched as weeks went by, new stories 
uncovered another health care law glitch, another health care law 
unintended consequence and another of the President's broken promises. 
Seniors all around the country know that the President's health care 
law took over $500 billion from a broken Medicare Program not to save 
Medicare but to start a whole new government spending program for 
someone else, not for seniors. Medicare patients know the health care 
law failed them and failed to address the broken physician payment 
system. America's seniors understand that Washington Democrats can't 
cut $\1/2\ trillion from Medicare and then claim those cuts will not 
impact their own health care.
  When we look at Medicaid, Governors all across the country know the 
health care law's Medicaid expansion will restrict patient access to 
care and very likely bankrupt our States. Medicare only pays health 
care providers cents on the dollar. That is why about 40 percent of 
physicians don't accept Medicaid patients. Having a government health 
care card doesn't mean patients will actually have access to medical 
care.
  We also have concerns since the law was passed about employers 
dropping coverage. President Obama promised that if Americans liked 
their current health care plan, under the law, they would be able to 
keep it. Over the last 19 months, employers have made it clear that the 
law's mandates are too expensive, threatening their own ability to 
offer health insurance to their employees.
  A reputable national consulting firm surveyed employers across 
industries, geographies, and employer sizes. The company produced a 
report titled ``How U.S. Health Care Reform Will Affect Employees' 
Benefits.'' The company, McKinsey & Company, found that overall 30 
percent of employers will either definitely or probably stop offering 
employer-sponsored coverage after 2014. That is when the President's 
health care law goes into full effect. Among employers with a high 
awareness of the

[[Page 16523]]

health care law, understanding the specific implications of the law, 
that number of those who will either definitely or probably stop 
offering employer-sponsored coverage jumps to 50 percent. At least 30 
percent of employers would actually gain economically by simply 
dropping coverage even if they compensate employees through other 
benefit offerings or higher salaries. So how did we get from ``if you 
like the plan you have, you can keep it'' to ``30 percent of employers 
will either definitely or probably stop offering health insurance''?
  The problems continue to mount. Recently, on October 20, 2011, 
Walmart announced its decision to scale back health insurance for some 
part-time employees. A New York Times article explained that future 
part-time Walmart employees working less than 24 hours per week won't 
be allowed to join the company's plan. New part-time employees working 
between 24 and 33 hours a week won't be able to buy insurance for their 
spouses. The New York Times article quotes Walmart as saying that the 
increasing cost of health care is the reason for the change.
  Now let's take a look at people's premiums. In 2009, President Obama 
promised that his health care plan would reduce health insurance 
premiums $2,500 a year for families in America. Well, the opposite has 
occurred. President Obama's law has forced Americans to pay more for 
their health care premiums. On September 27, 2011, the Kaiser Family 
Foundation issued a report showing that the employer average annual 
family premium increased 9 percent, from $13,770 to $15,073. The 
employer average annual single premium--the other was a family, now for 
singles--the single premium increased 8 percent, from $5,049 to $5,429. 
Of course, part of this premium increase is tied directly to the health 
care law.
  Then let's look at the CLASS program. That program has recently 
failed. Remember, President Obama's health care law established a 
brandnew Federal long-term care entitlement program. It was referred to 
as CLASS, but the letters stood for ``Community Living Assistance 
Services and Supports.'' Well, to qualify, people would have to pay the 
government a monthly premium for 5 years, and then after those 5 years, 
they could begin collecting benefits. It is now known that the CLASS 
program was an intentionally designed budget gimmick. The Congressional 
Budget Office estimated that the CLASS program would reduce the deficit 
by $86 billion. These ``savings'' came from the premium dollars the 
CLASS program would collect for the first 5 years, all while the 
program wasn't required or allowed to pay out any benefits to 
individuals. So all the money would be coming in. Instead of holding on 
to that excess money being collected to pay out for future expenses, 
Washington Democrats here in the Senate used those funds to pay for 
President Obama's health care law.
  Fast forward, and we now know for sure that the program is not 
financially viable and does not work. How do we know that? Well, many 
of us knew it when it was going on here on the Senate floor a few years 
ago, but on October 14 of this year, Health and Human Services 
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the administration will not 
implement the CLASS program.
  An op-ed she has written appeared in the Huffington Post, and it 
said:

       . . . as a report our department is releasing today shows, 
     we have not identified a way to make CLASS work at this time.

  The Obama administration had 19 months to figure out how to implement 
the program, and they couldn't do it. Administration officials at the 
Department of Health and Human Services knew the CLASS program was 
unsustainable, and I believe they knew it before President Obama signed 
the health care law. They knew it, the administration knew it, and the 
administration failed in their duty to be honest with the American 
people and tell them.
  Today, the White House still refuses to admit that the CLASS program 
is a colossal failure. In the middle of last month, October 17, 2011, 
White House spokesman Nick Papas said:

       Repealing the CLASS Act isn't necessary or productive. What 
     we should be doing is working together to address the long-
     term care challenges we face as a country.

  How can the White House admit that this part of the health care 
spending law will burden taxpayers with yet another unsustainable 
entitlement program and at the same time demand that it stay on the 
books? How do they do that?
  After having received the AARP bulletin with the headline ``The 
Health Care Law Is Already Working'' from the Senate majority leader, I 
came to the conclusion that I needed to come to the floor with a second 
opinion. The health care law needs to be repealed. It must be replaced 
with reasonable, commonsense, and financially sound alternatives. This 
health care law is not working. It is not good for patients; it is not 
good for providers, the doctors and the nurses who take care of those 
patients; and it is not good for the American taxpayers.
  I will continue to come to the floor of the Senate as we learn more 
and more about this health care law. It seems that just about every 
week or so there is a new, unintended consequence that comes forward, a 
new concern for patients, a new concern for providers, a new concern 
for the taxpayers. I will continue to work with my patients and with my 
colleagues to find a health care law that gets patients the care they 
need from the doctor they want at a price they can afford.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I am here today to discuss the critical 
need to address our Nation's crumbling transportation and 
infrastructure system. The cracks in this system became abundantly 
clear to all of our country and, in fact, the entire world when, on the 
afternoon of August 1, 2007, the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed 
into the middle of the Mississippi River, taking the lives of 13 
Minnesotans and injuring so many more.
  As I said that day, a bridge just shouldn't fall down in the middle 
of America, especially not an eight-lane interstate highway which is 
one of the most heavily traveled bridges in our State, especially not 
at rush hour in the middle of a metropolitan area, especially not a 
bridge six blocks from my house that I take my family over all the time 
to go visit their friends. That is what happened on that day, in the 
middle of a sunny day in the middle of America. Yet, years after that 
bridge collapsed and then was rebuilt, 25 percent of our Nation's 
bridges are still structurally deficient or obsolete.
  I wish I could say the bridge collapse was the only tragedy my State 
has suffered because of a broken infrastructure system. It is not. We 
saw another one just this October in Goodhue County on Highway 52, 
which connects the Twin Cities with Rochester, home to the Mayo Clinic. 
Within a 10-day span, one intersection on Highway 52 between Rochester, 
MN, and the Twin Cities of Minnesota was the site of two fatal crashes 
that claimed three lives and injured others. Even before these tragic 
crashes, everyone agreed that an interchange was needed so that drivers 
weren't forced to risk racing across a four-lane, divided highway, but 
the county and the Minnesota Department of Transportation didn't have 
the funds to build an interchange which could have eased the situation 
and could have saved lives. The worst part is that intersection of 
Highway 52 isn't even the most dangerous stretch of that road. In fact, 
local leaders have marked other projects as higher priorities. Yet the 
funds aren't there, the money isn't there to address these problems.
  These are just two examples of the impact of our infrastructure and 
transportation needs in this country. There are tens of thousands more 
in small towns and big cities from Maryland to Minnesota. That is why I 
have come to the floor to discuss the Rebuild America Jobs Act, 
legislation I introduced with several of my colleagues, including 
Senator Manchin of West Virginia and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of

[[Page 16524]]

Rhode Island. We have come together as Senators from all corners of the 
country because we recognize the urgent need for new and bold 
initiatives to rebuild America.
  Our legislation would get the ball rolling on desperately needed 
improvements by establishing an infrastructure bank--something that has 
long garnered bipartisan support in the Congress--and directing $50 
billion toward infrastructure. Both of these ideas, as I have noted, 
have enjoyed bipartisan support in the past. In fact, standing there 
with us this afternoon was Ray LaHood, a former Republican Congressman 
who is now the Secretary of Transportation under a Democratic 
President.
  We have also said there is no such thing as a Democratic bridge or a 
Republican bridge or a Democratic or Republican highway. Transportation 
has always been a bipartisan issue in this country, and it must 
continue to be. That is why we are continuing to push this legislation. 
We may not pass it this week, but I know from my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle that there continues to be interest in moving 
ahead on infrastructure funding.
  This legislation is about improving public safety so that no bridge 
ever collapses again in the middle of America, but it is also about 
creating better opportunities for our businesses and jobs. I say that 
because if we look back through history, it is clear that many of the 
major milestones that contributed to America's greatness were rooted in 
our infrastructure. Whether it was connecting the east and west coasts 
by rail in 1869 or the WPA in the 1930s or the construction of the 
Interstate Highway System that began in the 1950s with a Democratic 
Congress and a Republican President--Dwight Eisenhower--or even the 
amazing innovations of the early American auto industry, our country 
did not move forward because our leaders tinkered at the edges of the 
status quo. America flourished because of innovators such as Henry 
Ford, who once said: ``If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, 
they'd have said a faster horse.'' Then he turned around and built the 
Model T.
  If Henry Ford were alive today, he would say that America cannot 
afford to take a horse-and-buggy approach to infrastructure. That is, 
in fact, what we have been doing. While other countries are moving full 
steam ahead with infrastructure investments, we are simply treading 
water.
  In an increasingly competitive global economy, standing still is, 
sadly, falling behind.
  China and India are spending about 9 and 5 percent respectively of 
their GDP on infrastructure. Even Europe spends 5 percent of its GDP. 
Yet how much are we committing right now? About 2 percent. The effects 
of this shortsighted strategy are increasingly clear. In its 2007 and 
2008 report, the World Economic Forum ranked American infrastructure 
sixth in the world. That was only a few years ago, and yet we have 
already slipped to 16th place, putting our roads roughly on par with 
those of Malaysia and far behind those of Germany, Canada, and Hong 
Kong. This is a huge problem because the strength of our infrastructure 
is directly tied to the competitiveness of our economy. Just look at 
the numbers. As our country slipped in the rankings for infrastructure, 
we also dropped in the World Economic Forum's rankings on 
competitiveness. Last year we were in fourth place, and this year we 
are in fifth place.
  Competitiveness is a huge element here, but it is not just about 
global bragging rights. Fundamentally, it is about lifting the parking 
brake that has kept our economy idling and addressing the major 
inefficiencies we have seen in our infrastructure system.
  If we want to move to this next-century economy, it is going to be 
about exports. It is going to be about making stuff again, inventing 
things, exporting to the world. If we do not have the roads to carry 
the trucks to bring those goods to market or the waterways and the 
barges to do it or an air traffic control system that is up to speed on 
a competitive basis internationally, we are not going to be that 
economy that so many of our workers and so many of our businesses want 
us to be.
  Failing to move ahead will have consequences no one likes. For 
example, it would not be altogether different from levying a 
multibillion-dollar tax on American industry. I say that because 
inefficiencies in infrastructure are expected to drive up the cost of 
doing business by an estimated $430 billion, according to the American 
Society of Civil Engineers. That is just in the next decade.
  America spends 4.8 billion hours in traffic--just sitting there in 
traffic--every single year. When trucks idle in traffic on the highways 
or wait at port facilities to be loaded and unloaded or when freight 
trains sit waiting to pass in our congested rail network, our economy 
hemorrhages dollars, losing roughly $200 billion each year. To put that 
number in perspective, it is roughly 1.5 percent of our gross domestic 
product.
  Increased transportation costs will make it more expensive for 
companies to ship goods and purchase raw materials. We can only expect 
that those costs would be passed on to customers.
  Traffic congestion, as I mentioned, costs us billions. When I said 
4.8 billion hours per year, actually, I thought: Did I get that wrong? 
Is it millions? But, no, it is, in fact, 4.8 billion hours each year 
stuck in traffic. That is $101 billion in lost revenue. That is $713 
per motorist.
  The bad news is that without action those numbers are only going in 
one direction--up. By 2020, it is estimated that our crumbling 
infrastructure will cost our economy more than 876,000 jobs and $897 
billion in lost GDP growth.
  As I alluded to earlier, the public safety aspect of this debate is 
also incredibly important, and it is something we cannot afford to 
ignore, particularly in the context of population growth. According to 
the Census Bureau, the American population is expected to add another 
120 million people by 2050. That is a 40-percent increase in 40 years, 
and it is like adding the entire nation of Japan or more than three 
States of California. Think about that. We cannot stand still on our 
infrastructure. That is 120 million more people on our roads, bridges, 
tunnels, highways, and airports--structures that are already 
insufficient for meeting the needs of today's population.
  But here is the good news. Addressing this challenge does not just 
make sense from a long-term competitiveness perspective, it also makes 
sense because it would be an immediate shot in the arm for our economy. 
We are still looking at an environment where too many Americans are out 
of work or have seen their hours cut back. And people who have taken it 
the hardest are people in the construction industry. In construction, 
the unemployment rate now is 13.3 percent--more than 4 points higher 
than the national average.
  The Rebuild America Act will help get these workers back on the job. 
Here is how we do it:
  First of all, we will need to make smarter decisions to stretch our 
transportation dollars further. This is a compelling case for public-
private partnerships--we all know government cannot do this alone--
public-private partnerships for private sector jobs. That is why the 
infrastructure bank part of the Rebuild America Jobs Act is so 
important. The American Infrastructure Financing Authority would 
provide loans and loan guarantees to finance projects that would 
otherwise be too expensive for any one city, county, or even a State to 
accomplish on its own. The bank would serve as an incentive for the 
creation of public-private partnerships and the mechanisms necessary 
for repaying loans once the projects are completed. This will help 
ensure the quality of projects too, because no private firm is going to 
invest in a project that is likely to fail.
  The infrastructure bank would allow State transportation departments 
to move more projects off the books and to tackle other critical needs. 
So the Minnesota Department of Transportation could finally have the 
resources

[[Page 16525]]

to focus on fixing Highway 52 and Goodhue County Road 9--or projects in 
Missouri or projects in Maryland or projects in Oregon. There are needs 
all over this country.
  I wish to make an important point here that the American taxpayers 
need to know; that is, they would be protected as well. Projects would 
be considered and reviewed by expert staff, separate from the 
independent and nonpartisan board that would select the projects. There 
are strong oversight protections, and projects would have to be backed 
by a dedicated revenue stream.
  All of this is part of the reason this infrastructure bank has always 
had bipartisan support. Senator Kerry has worked very hard on this 
legislation, as have many of my Republican colleagues. They have 
suggested a similar model in the BUILD Act, many of the sponsors. The 
BUILD Act has 10 bipartisan cosponsors.
  Beyond bipartisan congressional support, an infrastructure bank has 
earned the support of people as far-ranging as from the chamber of 
commerce to the AFL-CIO.
  With the initial infusion of $10 billion that the Rebuild America Act 
proposes, it is estimated it could leverage private investment to 
generate between $300 billion and $600 billion for infrastructure 
improvements. The infrastructure bank is the kind of bold and new 
action we should be taking as a nation.
  Coming from a State, as I do, where there is a large rural 
population, I also think it is important to note that rural America--
whether they are in South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, or Nevada--
should not be left behind. The infrastructure bank would be structured 
so that the kinds of projects that are important to rural regions, such 
as clean drinking water and sanitary sewer systems, could also compete 
for loans and loan guarantees.
  Right now, too many repair and replacement projects in our Nation's 
drinking water and sanitary sewer systems are endangered by a lack of 
funding. According to the 2008 EPA survey of needs, Minnesota needs 
$4.1 billion to upgrade our drinking and sanitary water systems. And in 
2011 alone, my State has $400 million worth of projects that are just 
sitting there.
  Clean water projects are vital to the safety and health of our 
communities, particularly our rural communities. We all benefit from 
projects that can promote public health, protect our environment, help 
create jobs, and support local infrastructure. Let me give you an 
example. In southwestern Minnesota, we are working on a three-State 
effort--consisting of Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota--to get water 
to 20 communities. The region's current lack of water has brought 
economic development to a standstill in an area where there are all 
kinds of possibilities for development in an agricultural community. 
According to the manager of the Lincoln Pipestone Rural Water System in 
Minnesota, this lack of clean water has forced the community to turn 
away businesses that would have otherwise opened in the area, including 
a large dairy plant, a large cattle-feeding operation, and biofuels 
plants. That is just in the last 5 years. In other words, the community 
has lost untold jobs and economic growth because it lacks the water.
  Importantly, the infrastructure bank that the Rebuild America Jobs 
Act would create also includes technical assistance to rural 
communities. Five percent of the initial investment to capitalize the 
bank would be designated for projects in these very areas. That is $500 
million for rural America.
  As we move forward with this conversation, we cannot lose sight of 
the critical importance of the multiyear surface transportation bill. 
This is something we need, and we need it now.
  The surface transportation bill gives certainty to State departments 
of transportation so they can make the multiyear planning decisions on 
how best to spend Federal and State resources.
  The certainty of a multiyear bill also benefits the private sector. 
Once States know how much they can put toward infrastructure projects, 
they can begin contracting with companies--private companies--in 
engineering, design, and construction. These are companies such as 
Caterpillar, which employs 750 people at its road-paving equipment 
manufacturing facility in Minnesota. I visited there in August. 
Caterpillar's employees are the kind of people who are out there on the 
front lines of American industry. They are people who make the slogan 
``Made in America'' not just a slogan; it is real. They depend on the 
certainty that only a multiyear Transportation bill provides. We have 
an opportunity to give them that certainty.
  I know Chairman Boxer and Senator Inhofe have been working on this 
out of their committee, but I did want to keep in mind that as we work 
on the rebuild America jobs bill, as we work on the Transportation bill 
we are talking about today that I would like to get passed by the end 
of this year, that we also are cognizant of the fact that there is a 
very important 2-year bill they are debating at this very moment.
  When we look at the state of our Nation's infrastructure, there is no 
escaping the fact that we are far from where we need to be. Our 21st-
century economy depends on a 21st-century transportation network. It is 
that simple. Fixing our infrastructure is one of the best possible ways 
to strengthen our Nation's most basic foundation--the channels we use 
for everything from commerce and exporting to emergency management and 
disaster response.
  But I also believe it is about bringing America back to the brass 
tacks. We know we have to do something about our debt, and I personally 
believe we can get there with a balanced approach, with spending cuts 
and looking at closing some of these loopholes. But even then, we must 
focus on what will move our economy forward in the long term. We simply 
can no longer base our economy on being a country that just simply 
churns money and shuffles paper, simply being a country that consumes, 
that imports and spends its way to a huge trade deficit. That has not 
worked.
  What we need to be now is a country that makes things again, that 
invents things, that exports to the world. The only way we are going to 
make that happen is if we have the roads and the bridges and the rail 
and the barges and the airports to carry these goods to market. That is 
what this is about. We cannot put it off any longer. We must move 
forward now in a bipartisan manner to get this done for our country.
  I urge my colleagues to support this bill.
  Thank you very much, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on this 
infrastructure jobs bill, and actually I think my good friend from 
Minnesota has done a great job of explaining why we need to be focused 
on infrastructure. I think if I was going to summarize my comments, as 
they might compare with hers, they would be that we need to be focused 
on the longer term problem.
  We certainly do have a committee that is working on a 2-year bill, 
and here we are spending time today talking about a bill that I think 
is likely not to happen. Even if it did happen, would it be better than 
a 2-year bill? Of course not. Does it do anything better than the 
traditional infrastructure focus of the country that includes 
communities and cities and States instead of Federal bureaucrats? Of 
course it does not. We need to be focused on the right thing, at the 
right time.
  The top concern on American minds today is righting our Nation's 
economy, having an economy that creates private sector jobs. While we 
take different approaches to addressing this issue, I think the 
Congress is genuinely united in understanding what the goal should be; 
we just have such a difference of opinion as to how to get there.
  What role does infrastructure play in private sector job creation and 
competition? It plays a critical role. In fact, it is one of the few 
places where the Federal Government actually can take actions that 
specifically create private sector jobs.

[[Page 16526]]

  Roads and bridges are maintained and kept clean and kept open and 
supervised by State and local authorities, but they are built by 
private sector contractors. So that is a good thing. The question is, 
What is the best way to get there? Unfortunately, we are 2 years 
removed from the expiration of the last surface transportation bill, 
and we are talking in the Transportation Committee--I am told; I am not 
on that committee--I know Chairman Boxer and the ranking Republican, 
Mr. Inhofe, are talking about how you can have another 2-year extension 
of that bill. It is unfortunate we are not talking about the 4- or 5- 
or 6-year surface transportation bill we have traditionally talked 
about because that is the kind of time it takes to really make a 
project that matters work.
  We have been holding the surface transportation bill together with 
duct tape and Super Glue for a couple of years now, and the last time 
we did this, in September, we extended that bill for 6 months. The 
President frankly began to put his energy behind this different 
proposal that I have lots of concerns about. But I have even greater 
concerns about the fact that the energy and focus is there instead of 
on how do we get at least a 2-year extension of a transportation bill, 
a surface transportation bill that would work.
  I said we were holding the bill together--the legislation together--
by duct tape and Super Glue. Unfortunately, that is how we are also 
holding the transportation system together, because you cannot have the 
Eisenhower vision that was mentioned earlier of an interstate system, 
you cannot have an Eisenhower vision that has a 6-month shelf life or a 
6-month window of opportunity. If you are going to have that kind of 
system put in place, you have to have a system that is put in place 
with an understanding that this is an ongoing program, that we have 
ongoing sources of funding, that we have an ongoing ability to 
contract.
  That is why we need to be talking about the best way to find new and 
innovative ideas to invest in our infrastructure development. I am 
increasingly concerned that this legislation we are talking about today 
takes a short-term ``Federal bureaucrat knows best'' approach, rather 
than the approach we have had good success with in the country when we 
were building roads and bridges and airports and infrastructure in ways 
that mattered.
  In all of our home States, certainly in my home State of Missouri, 
community leaders and job creators tell me that they are clearly 
looking for more certainty of how to create jobs. They need the ability 
to look beyond 3 or 6 months in order to plan and anticipate investment 
levels to expand their operations. We need to make smart investments in 
our Nation's infrastructure so people who build infrastructure can look 
forward with certainty, and communities that are dependent on 
infrastructure can look forward with certainty, and a business that is 
thinking about making a job-expanding commitment to a community knows 
what the highway plan is for the decade, not for the next day.
  We have to get there, and you cannot get there 6 months at a time. 
This piecemeal approach, including the continuing resolution, and the 
so-called stimulus bill, and other things that postpone other efforts 
for communities to get funding, the whole idea of an infrastructure 
bank that would go for projects that had some ability to pay for 
themselves--when you ask questions about that, nobody knows what that 
means. Nobody knows why. If these things have an ability to pay for 
themselves, States could bond them out tomorrow. If you have a revenue 
stream that will pay off the building of a bridge, if you figured out 
how to create that revenue stream, States could issue that bond right 
now.
  The only reason to have a Federal infrastructure bank is because the 
infrastructure bank is insolvent and not planned to be solvent, and 
only the Federal Government can give it the credibility it needs so it 
can ever possibly be used. But that is not the long-term solution to 
infrastructure.
  As we have witnessed in recent months, the President's idea of a jobs 
plan apparently is focused on holding press conferences in front of 
bridges--he had one today--to sell the idea that another stimulus bill 
will create more jobs. How does the President ever expect shovel-ready 
projects to be shovel ready? They only get to be shovel ready if you 
have a lot of time to plan and you know what the funding source is, and 
you know how you are going to not just start the project but complete 
the project--bridge replacement and major infrastructure investment and 
critical projects.
  But if this bill does become law, 10 percent of the money, the 
Congressional Budget Office estimates, would be spent between now and 
September 30 of next year. So this is no economic recovery plan. It is 
also no long-term highway plan. And 10 percent of the money spent in 
the next 11 months is not what it takes to get this job done.
  Of course, 50 percent of that--of all of the money--would be spent by 
the Federal highway department rather than allocated, as we have 
allocated Federal highway money since the 1950s, back to the States 
with incentives for them to match that money and to do the best they 
could to have a fair distribution of highway and surface transportation 
money across the country.
  These piecemeal solutions will not work. There are many examples of 
communities that are facing challenges and they want to know how that 
question is going to be met. In Washington, MO--not Washington, DC, but 
Washington, MO--there is an 80-year-old bridge that goes across the 
Missouri River. It needs to be replaced. It has needed to be replaced 
for some time now. But are we going to let the President of the United 
States decide if that is the bridge we replace? There are some things 
that the President should not decide. The President is without any 
question in the best position to decide what is the best way to go into 
Abbottabad and get Osama bin Laden. The President is not in the best 
position to decide what are the bridges to be built between Kentucky 
and Ohio.
  I know he likes to give that example a lot because the Republican 
Senate leader is from Kentucky and the Republican Speaker of the House 
is from Ohio. And he says, we need a bridge between Ohio and Kentucky. 
That may actually be true. But the President of the United States is 
not the best person to solve that problem. The best people to solve 
that problem are the people in Kentucky and Ohio who get their gas tax 
money, their transportation money, whatever kind of funding we can 
figure out meets the needs of the future and say, here is our 10-year 
plan. Here is how we are going to fund our 10-year plan. In year one we 
are going to do the bridge planning for which of these bridge 
possibilities we need. In year two we are going to plan the bridge we 
decided we needed. In year three we are going to build the bridge. 
Maybe by year six or seven someone is using the bridge. This is the 
idea. These ideas, these short-term solutions, simply do not work.
  State departments of transportation are hesitant to commit to long-
term projects without the assurances of a funding stream in the future. 
The President's bus tour will not provide individuals with more 
certainty, but instead a long-term investment plan would work to answer 
these questions. We need a clear Federal infrastructure blueprint to 
help county commissioners, to help contractors and cities, to help 
statewide departments of transportation lay the groundwork to plan, to 
assess local needs, to hire more employees, to make the decisions 
necessary to encourage economic growth.
  In addition to the short-term approach that I think this bill has, I 
am concerned with some of the policies included in this proposal. With 
the increased funding for discretionary proposals, grant programs such 
as the Federal TIGER grants and now the infrastructure bank, the 
message being sent to the States is that Washington bureaucrats will 
set the priorities. Our entire infrastructure network is in desperate 
need of comprehensive updating that refuses to be put off any longer. 
We need to refocus all our efforts on the modes of transportation, the 
flexibility between them. Why we continue to rely on fragmented 
programs makes

[[Page 16527]]

no sense to me or lots of other people. The answer is not to continue 
writing blank checks to the administration and then hoping that the 
people who will make the decision--with zero accountability, frankly--
will somehow make that in the best interests of all of our States. We 
need to do the hard work of crafting and investing in a formula that 
works for the future.
  Chairman Boxer and Ranking Member Inhofe have been working hard 
putting together a new reauthorization bill. I wish that were a 6-year 
bill, not a 2-year bill. But I tell you, a 2-year bill has far greater 
possibilities for success than a 6-month bill that will go away before 
it is able to do any good.
  I look forward to starting the work. I hope we can stop taking time 
on things that will not work and start solving the problems that have 
to be solved for the country, that have private sector job recovery 
that we need to be prepared for the next century, as people in this 
body worked in the 1950s to see that we could be prepared for the last 
50 years of the last century.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant editor of the Daily Digest proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, most every Republican in this body and 
probably outside of this body would admit that President Obama 
inherited a very bad economy by the time he was sworn in. The only 
thing is, by every measure of the economy, this economy is much worse 
now than what he inherited.
  The Obama economy is bad because there is a prospect of taking more 
money from the American taxpayers with the biggest tax increase in the 
history of the country next year; and many brand new regulations that 
are very costly to the economy. Particularly small businesses do not 
know where they are going to be hit next and where their costs will be.
  We have this big budget deficit that is a damper on the economy. In 
every respect, things this administration are doing are putting a wet 
blanket on the economy. We have wrongheaded energy policies as well.
  We hear the President say, when he puts forth his jobs bill, touring 
the country in his bus: Pass this bill right now. Pass this bill right 
now. We have had some experience with efforts to pass bills ``right 
now.'' They got passed, like the stimulus bill, 1 month after he was 
sworn in, which was supposed to keep unemployment under 8 percent. But 
it has never been under 8 percent since 1 month after that time. We 
have to pass the health care reform bill ``right now.'' And the health 
care reform bill was passed that very first year when the other party 
controlled everything, all three political branches of government. They 
had everything their way. And it was passed ``right now.''
  We are finding out that passing something right now is not the way to 
do business, particularly if it is done in a partisan way. I think the 
extent to which the President would lead instead of being on the fringe 
would help this process along, because he is the only elected official 
in this country who speaks for the national voice. Each one of us 
representing our constituencies has a national perspective, but we also 
have to be worried about the needs of our constituents.
  Let's go to what the latest effort is of this President to turn this 
economy around his way and get this bill passed ``right now.''
  Just a few weeks ago, the Senate considered a so-called jobs bill 
that would have provided $35 billion of the $447 billion for the 
purpose of creating or saving jobs for teachers and policemen and 
firefighters. This bailout was included by President Obama in this $447 
billion stimulus bill No. 2 that he proposed in his speech before 
Congress this September.
  When it became apparent the Senate leadership didn't have the 
necessary votes for the whole package, then Majority Leader Reid chose 
to move this bill in parts instead of in one big package. Most of the 
reason he had to do that is because people in his caucus were not ready 
to vote for big tax increases or taking more money away from the 
American people and sending it to Washington.
  Proponents of that bill argued that this $35 billion bailout was 
necessary to prevent the layoff of teachers and public safety 
employees. Don't forget, this isn't the first time the Senate has 
considered this type of bailout because it was that bailout that just 
had to pass ``right now,'' in February of 2009, which was supposed to 
keep employment under 8 percent. That was the $814 billion stimulus 
bill Congress enacted in early 2009. It included bailout money for 
State and local governments.
  That is one of the reasons it didn't work, because whether it is the 
State, local, or Federal government, governments consume wealth. They 
don't create wealth. When we put half of that $814 billion bill into 
public employment, it doesn't create jobs. That money should have been 
used to stimulate private sector employment.
  President Obama stated that bill would save or create up to 4 million 
jobs over the following 2 years. That bill was supposed to create or 
save 150,000 jobs for teachers, nurses, firefighters, and police 
officers according to our President.
  Then, in August 2010 Congress passed another State and local bailout, 
this time sending $26 billion to States to save or create public sector 
jobs. At that time, Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, stated 
that this bill was ``a very important proposal, particularly to ensure 
that 160,000-plus teachers don't get fired as a result of bad State 
budgets.'' This $26 billion was the second effort by Congress to help 
States plug their budget holes while claiming that we were saving the 
jobs of teachers and other government workers.
  The truth is, these efforts to save State and local public sector 
jobs are more simply a bailout of State and local governments that have 
failed to rein in their own spending. State and local governments 
became addicted to tax-and-spend big government policies, and Federal 
bailouts have only aided the addiction.
  Rather than making the necessary and difficult budget decisions, 
these State and local governments come to rely on the spendthrift 
behavior of their Congress to spend more and plug budget holes. 
Nationally, the debt held by States is approaching $3 trillion. That 
doesn't even figure in unfunded pension liabilities. Some of the States 
in the worst trouble are Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New 
Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, and California. The increase in debt has 
had a significant impact on their budgets or on their bond rates and 
their ability to find competitive bond rates and competitive financing.
  The free-spending State legislatures, coupled with a huge public work 
force, have driven up the cost of doing business in these States. It 
has negatively impacted their unemployment rate and their economic 
growth.
  For much of the history of our country, States have been responsible 
for financing their schools, police, firefighters, first responders, 
and other public employment. We know that throughout the 224-year 
history of our country most of the time these State and local 
governments have done a pretty darn good job. States that have done 
well have grown economically and attracted more jobs. With economic 
growth we are going to have more taxpayers. What this country needs is 
more taxpayers, not more taxes.
  States that haven't managed their budgets well have had, as you might 
expect, the opposite result. This competition among States has created 
a system that demands and rewards good government and, in the process, 
attracts employers and workers.
  A Federal bailout of States upsets this balance. It rewards bad 
behavior and ultimately hurts the American economy. Federal bailouts 
eliminate the risks associated with poor economic policies. The moral 
hazard of Federal bailouts is that it sends a message to bad actors 
that there are no

[[Page 16528]]

negative consequences for their failure to effectively govern.
  At the same time, this type of Federal stimulus is ineffective at 
saving or creating jobs, and it does nothing to promote private sector 
growth. Annual Federal deficits are close to about 8 to 9 percent of 
GDP, and our national debt is $15 trillion. We cannot afford to bail 
out States and continue to encourage poor fiscal behavior by our 
States.
  The bailout of Democratic Governors and State legislatures--and I 
suppose I ought to include Republican Governors and Republican State 
legislatures, as well--and public employees may be good politics, but 
it is terrible economics and creates even worse fiscal situations. 
Rather than propose political solutions during this economic downturn, 
the President should work with Congress to find real, authentic, 
genuine solutions to our economic and unemployment problems.
  The recession began in December 2007, and nearly 1 in 10 Americans 
remain unemployed today. More than 26 million Americans are either 
unemployed or underemployed. The policies of the past 2\1/2\ years have 
not worked; they have made things worse.
  Now, for the benefit of people--and maybe we can't say this too often 
because it looks strictly partisan--but we all ought to admit that this 
President inherited a bad economic situation. It is nothing to be proud 
of for a Republican President or any of us Republicans who were in 
office at that time. But by any measure of the economy, this President 
has made things worse.
  The time for political documents has long past. It is time to govern, 
to work together, to get our economy growing again, and move the Obama 
economy into a bipartisan economy, at least to job creation.
  For those who are unemployed, it is a depression. It is time we did 
something to help turn this situation around. Private sector employers 
need an international trade agenda that opens new doors to sell U.S. 
agricultural goods and manufactured products and services. Obviously, I 
am glad the President finally sent to the Senate three trade agreements 
and that they were passed last month. They were delayed, though, 
unnecessarily for years, and the rest of the world is moving ahead 
without us. We are more than capable of increasing exports, but we need 
the markets to do it. It is very simple. Why worry about exports? 
Because only 4 percent of the people on the face of the Earth live in 
the United States. The other 96 percent live outside the United States. 
Who are we going to market to, the 4 percent? Yes. But if we are going 
to expand our economy, we are going to have to market to the other 96 
percent.
  Thank God, President Obama has set an agenda that he wants to double 
exports. But in order to reach this goal and do everything possible to 
generate economic activity and opportunity in the United States, the 
President needs to move forward on other job-generating and trading 
initiatives without delay.
  It is time to put an end to job-killing Federal regulations--as I 
move on to a new subject of why the economy is not so good. New 
regulations from EPA, the Department of Labor, National Labor Relations 
Board, and others are making it harder for businesses to grow. 
Understand that I said ``new'' regulations. I think sometimes people, 
when they hear us talk about a moratorium on regulations, they think we 
ought to take all of the present regulations off the books. They may 
not necessarily be good, but the economy has accounted for them 
already.
  When we have 9.1 percent unemployment, and we have all these new 
regulations coming out--66,000 pages of new regulations so far just 
this year--that just makes it very hard to decide whether we ought to 
hire somebody--particularly, for small business.
  Remember, small business creates 70 percent of the new jobs and about 
25 percent of all employment in America. In some cases, new regulations 
are actually destroying jobs. With unemployment at 9.1 percent, it is 
time for the Federal bureaucracy to stop harmful, job-killing, new 
regulations.
  What we are calling for is not to stop ever regulating into the 
future, but to put a short-term moratorium on regulations so that 
people have a chance to get us out of the hole we are in with this 9.1 
percent unemployment--let's say a measure of getting unemployment down 
to 7 percent before we have new regulations.
  It is also time to develop domestic energy resources that will create 
jobs while increasing domestic energy supplies. Nobody seems to be very 
concerned about spending $830 million every day--just in case that 
sounds phenomenal, $830 million a day is the amount of money we send 
overseas to bring oil into this country. That is a terrible subsidy to 
the volatile Middle East, which wants to train Americans to kill us or 
to reward Hugo Chavez, who badmouths us almost every day.
  We need to make more energy available, driving down prices, making 
our country more energy independent. The President's energy agenda is 
moving us backward because of not enough emphasis on the fossil fuels 
that are available in this country. It was only 3 years ago that 
natural gas was $14, $15 per unit because we thought we were using it 
all up in America. Recent discoveries tell us that we have natural gas 
for maybe 100 years. It is down to around $4 or $5 now per unit.
  But it is not a case of finding fault with the President on green 
energy because whatever source of energy we have, if we want a growing 
economy, we are obviously going to use more energy. We just must use it 
more conservatively. We ought to encourage conservation, and we should 
also encourage the use of fossil fuels wherever it can be found. It 
ought to encourage all sorts of green energy, and that is all the 
biofuels we in the Midwest talk about--the wind energy that my State is 
second in production of, and it is also solar, biomass, cellulosic, 
biofuels, all of the above.
  I said conservation, and I guess the fourth one would be nuclear 
energy. It is time to change course and develop energy sources at home 
and create jobs in the process.
  Finally, in 2009, President Obama said we don't raise taxes in a 
recession. He stated his position clearly: The last thing you would 
want to do is raise taxes on anyone during a recession because it would 
harm businesses and economic growth. We know when he said that 
unemployment was under 8 percent. So if we have 9.1 percent 
unemployment now and will for quite a bit into the future, aren't we 
still in a recession? So isn't the President's own benchmark the 
benchmark we ought to be using yet today? Yet we have the biggest tax 
increase in the history of the country--taking more money away from the 
taxpayers and sending it to Washington--coming up next year.
  Wouldn't it do a great deal of economic good if this President said 
exactly what he said about the time he was sworn in; that we shouldn't 
increase taxes during a recession. Yet we have all these jobs packages 
put before the Senate that include job-killing tax hikes. That is why 
they have been received with bipartisan opposition. To those who say 
the packages the President has proposed have been killed by 
Republicans, one of the reasons the majority leader had to change the 
President's tax packages for a vote here a couple weeks ago is because 
there is opposition within his own conference about that. A few 
courageous Senate Democrats have consistently said no to their 
leadership when it comes to raising taxes on small business and other 
job creators.
  The only bipartisanship we have seen so far is the bipartisan 
opposition to ill-conceived political documents. The Democratic 
majority needs to get serious about addressing our economic problems. 
It is time to consider policies that will get people back to work 
without harming the economy. It is time to stop the political aspects 
of this debate. The best way to do that, it seems to me, is to look at 
the other body--controlled by Republicans--that has passed 15 pieces of 
legislation that will help turn this economy around. We haven't taken 
up any of them, although I think we are about ready to take up, thank 
God, one of the 15 that is referred to as the ``3-percent 
withholding.'' Unemployed Americans need

[[Page 16529]]

to know we are going to do something to help create jobs and grow the 
economy, and taking up more of those 15 bills would be getting 
something done in a bipartisan way. Unfortunately, so far the 
Democratic majority and President Obama are more interested in 
political strategies than creating jobs and economic growth. The only 
reason I say that is it seems to me there is little intellectual 
honesty on the part of the President when in a speech given to a joint 
session of Congress one evening--as he did in September--he would plead 
for bipartisan support and then, the very next day, go out on the road 
on a political venture and say he can't get the cooperation of the 
Republicans--pass that bill right now.
  I yield the floor, and 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. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, later this week--I assume sometime 
tomorrow--the Senate is expected to vote on the Rebuild America Jobs 
Act. This is a practical, commonsense piece of legislation that does 
two urgent and important things: It will help to modernize America's 
crumbling infrastructure, and it will help to put Americans back to 
work and get our economy going again.
  Not surprisingly, this bill enjoys overwhelming popular support among 
the American people. Every day, Americans see the infrastructure crisis 
with their own eyes. They see interstate highways increasingly 
overwhelmed--potholes everywhere. They see bridges and overpasses that 
are structurally unsound and in danger of collapse. Need I mention the 
gridlock in some of our major cities because of inadequate roadways and 
access points for automobiles? China and Brazil are building world-
class seaports, while ours are left over from early in the last 
century.
  We know we need to make major Federal investments in modernizing 
America's infrastructure, so why not do it now, at a time when our 
Nation is suffering from the most protracted period of joblessness 
since the Great Depression. The construction sector is the hardest hit 
part of our economy. We can put those people back to work renewing our 
infrastructure and, again, as I said, boosting our economy.
  Why aren't we doing this? The answer is, Republicans have made it 
clear they intend to block this legislation tomorrow, just as they have 
blocked so many other bills designed to put Americans back to work and 
get the economy moving again. They filibustered and killed the American 
Jobs Act. Two weeks ago, they filibustered and killed the Teachers and 
First Responders Back to Work Act. It seems to me if the word ``no'' 
were removed from the English language, our Republican friends would be 
rendered speechless.
  Let me state the obvious. The word ``no'' will not put 28 million 
Americans back to work. The word ``no'' will not allow us to strike a 
balanced agreement to bring deficits under control. The word ``no'' 
will not allow us to undertake a robust program to modernize our 
transportation system.
  The job-creating investments in this bill are fully paid for with a 
tiny fractional tax on the richest of the rich in the United States. 
These wealthy Americans would pay a 0.7-percent surtax on incomes in 
excess of $1 million a year. Let me repeat that. This infrastructure 
jobs bill we will be voting on tomorrow, which the Republicans have 
indicated they are going to filibuster and kill, is fully paid for with 
a 0.7-percent surtax on incomes in excess of $1 million a year. If 
those making more than $1 million a year even noticed such a negligible 
tax, I would be astonished. Still, the Republicans say no.
  Let's put this in context. Just last week, the nonpartisan 
Congressional Budget Office reported that over the last three decades 
the aftertax income of millionaires and billionaires increased by 275 
percent. That is correct. The Congressional Budget Office said over the 
last three decades the aftertax income of millionaires and billionaires 
increased 275 percent. During the same 30 years--the same three 
decades--the average take-home pay of middle-class workers in America 
actually declined. So is it any wonder the middle class is upset when 
they see what has happened to them over the last 30 years--flat, 
slightly declined in terms of their living standards and their income--
while the superrich increased their take-home by 275 percent.
  The top 1 percent of income earners in America now take home more 
than half of all the money earned each year in America. Again, that 
needs repeating. The top 1 percent of income earners in America take 
home over half of all the money earned in America every year. Mind-
boggling, isn't it? Mind-boggling. Yet Republicans adamantly oppose any 
tax increase on these people--even 0.7 percent--which would go toward 
the infrastructure of America and putting people back to work.
  Certainly, no one questions the solicitude of Republicans toward the 
rich and the superrich. I just wish they would show even a fraction of 
that concern on behalf of the besieged middle class in this country. 
Republicans on this so-called supercommittee are willing to block all 
progress in order to prevent any tax increase at all on the rich, but 
they are demanding--demanding--deep cuts to Social Security, Medicare, 
student loans, and other Federal programs that undergird the middle 
class in the United States. Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate 
continue to block the bills we have proposed in order to put people 
back to work and get the economy moving again.
  Some pundits have speculated that, for political reasons, Republicans 
are deliberately blocking any legislation that would boost the economy 
or create jobs because that would make President Obama maybe look good. 
These pundits point out the Senate's minority leader has been explicit 
in stating that his No. 1 priority is to prevent the reelection of 
President Obama. So many of the pundits say that, to the extent 
Republicans can prevent us from doing anything--keep this place in 
gridlock, keep us from having a jobs program--and the economy gets 
worse, then they will say to the American people: See, President Obama 
is not doing his job. The economy is getting worse.
  I just heard my colleague from Iowa. In his speech, he was at least 
honest enough to say President Obama had inherited a bad economy. That 
is true. He admitted that. My friend from Iowa, my colleague, went on 
to say, however, that President Obama has made it worse; that he hasn't 
improved anything over the last 2\1/2\ years; that his plan hasn't 
worked.
  I daresay it is the Republicans who have been blocking anything we 
could do to put America back to work, including their voting no 
tomorrow, which I understand they will, in order to prevent us from 
getting this infrastructure and jobs bill through.
  A more charitable explanation is Republican ideology is simply that 
government can't create jobs. This may be a sincere belief of most 
Republicans, but I must point out it is sincerely wrong. Across our 
Nation's history, an often visionary Federal Government has funded and 
spearheaded initiatives that have expanded private commerce, given 
birth to countless inventions and new industries and created tens of 
millions of jobs in the process.
  Let's take a look at history. One of the most visionary advocates of 
Federal investment to create jobs was, believe it or not, the father of 
the Republican Party--Abraham Lincoln. Despite the disruption of the 
Civil War, Lincoln insisted on moving the Nation forward through bold 
Federal investments and initiatives. For example, in 1862, he signed 
the Pacific Railway Act, authorizing huge Federal land grants to 
finance construction of the transcontinental railroad--one of the great 
technological feats of the 19th century. To produce the rails for this 
railroad, he enacted a steep tariff on foreign steel in order to get 
the American steel industry going.
  There is a story--I don't know if it is real or apocryphal--about 
Abraham

[[Page 16530]]

Lincoln. He was approached by, I guess, the free traders of his time 
who said: If you are going to build this transcontinental railroad, it 
would be cheaper to import the rails from England. They have the steel 
mills, they know how to do it, and it would be cheaper to build them in 
England and ship them here. It is said Lincoln thought about this for 
some time and came back and said: Well, it seems to me, however, if we 
buy the rails from England, they have our money and we have the rails. 
But if we build the rails here, we have our money here and we have the 
rails.
  As I said, I don't know if that story is true, but I have heard it 
many times in my lifetime. Thus, he put in place a steep tariff, kept 
England's rails out, rebuilt our steel industry, and, as they say, the 
rest is history.
  These and other Federal initiatives during Lincoln's Presidency had a 
transformative impact on the U.S. economy--creating new industries and 
millions of new jobs. Again, Lincoln did this despite the fact the 
Federal Government was deeply in debt--deeply in debt--and running huge 
deficits to finance the Civil War.
  It is almost humorous to imagine how today's Republicans would have 
reacted to Lincoln's agenda. No doubt they would have attacked him as 
reckless and irresponsible. They would whine that we are broke and 
can't afford to invest in the future. I keep hearing this all the time: 
We can't afford to do this. We can't afford that. We are broke. We are 
broke. Doesn't anybody understand we are broke?
  I keep pointing out the United States is the richest country in the 
history of mankind--the richest country in the history of mankind. We 
have the highest per capita income of any nation in the world. So if we 
are so rich, why are we so broke? We have got to keep asking that 
question. I am sure the tea party contingent would have demanded that 
Lincoln be expelled from the party, all of which reminds us how far the 
modern-day Republican Party has strayed from its progressive, forward-
thinking beginnings. Indeed, the present-day Republican Party would 
have excoriated President Reagan. I see they just put a new 9-foot 
statue of him out at National Airport. They should put underneath it, 
``He raised taxes in 1982, 1983, and 1984.'' Yes, President Reagan 
raised taxes in 1982, 1983, and 1984.
  Dwight Eisenhower, another Republican, championed one of the greatest 
public works projects in our history, and that is the building of the 
Interstate Highway System. A 1996 study of the system concluded that:

       The interstate highway system is an engine that has driven 
     40 years of unprecedented prosperity and positioned the 
     United States to remain the world's preeminent power into the 
     21st century.

  And, of course Franklin Roosevelt in the depths of the Depression put 
a lot of people to work, and they built a lot of good things. So I 
thought I would bring this over here. I hang this on the wall in my 
office. This is my father's--not my grandfather's--WPA card. For all 
you young people here, you can read your history. WPA stands for the 
Works Project Administration. It was instituted in the Depression to 
put people back to work building public works projects. So this is my 
father's WPA card because he was out of work, and he went to work on 
WPA. It has his name here, Patrick F. Harkin, Cumming, IA. It says 
here: You are asked to report, ready for work at once at a project as a 
laborer, $40.30 per month, 138 hours max, Warren County. Signed by my 
father.
  So my father went to work on WPA, and this is his card. I keep it as 
a reminder of a lot of things, but also a reminder of the good things 
the government can do. They gave my father a job. He was married and 
had five kids and the sixth one on the way--me; no work, no income. Of 
course, that was before Social Security or Medicare or anything else.
  What did they do? Did they stand around doing nothing? Years later, 
my father took me out to visit some of the projects he worked on, on 
WPA. There is a place out in Des Moines called Lake Ahquabi. It is a 
huge State park, it is a recreational facility, campgrounds, Boy 
Scouts, a big lake there, conference centers, still being used today, 
built by my father. Well, not by him alone, but he worked on it in the 
WPA, still being used today. You can go in and look at the high school 
built by WPA, still being used today, I might add. My father was rather 
proud of the things he worked on.
  When they built the high school, did the government do it? Was it 
some kind of government entity that built it? No, it was a private 
contractor. Who dug out the lake and built the things at Lake Ahquabi? 
Private contractors.
  The bill we are going to vote on tomorrow, the public works bill, the 
putting America back to work jobs bill, would put people all over 
America back to work on highways and bridges, and sewer and water 
systems and things such as that, who would be employed by the private 
sector, by private companies to do the work. And the work needs to be 
done.
  Many of the things my father and others in the WPA worked on in the 
1930s still are being used today, although they are crumbling. Someone 
recently said that we are still driving on Eisenhower's highways and 
going to Roosevelt's schools.
  What is our generation going to do to rebuild that infrastructure for 
future generations? Well, I guess we are going to sit around here and 
do nothing, because the Republicans continue to filibuster and block 
any meaningful jobs bill getting through the Senate.
  Mr. McCAIN. Will the Senator yield for a question as to how much more 
time the Senator will be taking, so we can adjust?
  Mr. HARKIN. I would say to my friend from Arizona, less than 10 
minutes, about 7 minutes.
  Mr. McCAIN. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator.
  Investments such as these, investments such as what Abraham Lincoln 
did or what Eisenhower did or Franklin Roosevelt did, investments that 
were led by Lyndon Baines Johnson to educate our workforce and to 
retrain our workforce, to make sure every child had a good education in 
America, all of these helped people who were unemployed, helped them to 
get jobs, helped them to become taxpayers, and it set the stage for 
economic growth in our country.
  To me, the most obvious and quickest way to dramatically ramp up our 
Federal investments in infrastructure is to pass this jobs bill. The 
American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that America faces a $2.2 
trillion infrastructure backlog. Bringing the U.S. infrastructure into 
the 21st century would rapidly create millions of private sector jobs, 
especially in the hard-hit construction industry, while modernizing our 
arteries and veins of commerce.
  There could be no economic recovery without robust, forward-thinking 
investments to boost our competitiveness and put people back to work. 
This means to invest in education, innovation, the infrastructure in 
America. It means restoring a level playing field with fair taxation, a 
good ladder of opportunity to give every American the education they 
need to gain decent employment and achieve the American dream.
  Again, it is all wrapped up in the Rebuild America Jobs Act that we 
will be voting on here tomorrow. I wish I could say I am hopeful that 
we could pass it, but I understand the Republicans are going to 
filibuster it and we won't have the 60 votes needed. That is a shame, 
because we need to put people back to work and we need to rebuild our 
infrastructure, and we can't wait much longer to do it.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 720

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee 
on Finance be discharged from

[[Page 16531]]

further consideration of S. 720 and the Senate proceed to its immediate 
consideration; that the bill be read a third time and passed, the 
motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements 
relating to the measure be printed in the Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Reserving the right to object, which this Senator 
does, I want to make a comment and then I will give my answer.
  Mr. President, the good Senator, who is on the Finance Committee, 
wants to repeal the CLASS Act. It is called long-term care. To be sure, 
the CLASS Act is not perfect, but little of what we do in the Senate is 
perfect. But if there is anything in this country that we ought to be 
driving toward, it is a long-term care policy, which right now consists 
of impoverishing yourself and getting rid of your assets, homes, house, 
whatever, car, in order to classify for Medicaid. That way you can get 
it. It is called the humiliation of Americans with legitimate health 
care needs.
  The CLASS Act could be amended through the regular legislative 
process to make it sustainable over the long term, but always our 
friends on the other side of the aisle find it easier to object and 
repeal. ``Let's repeal something.'' You don't have to have an 
alternative in mind. You can leave people in the same sense of 
suffering as we found way back during the Pepper commission, where 
people would prostrate themselves in order to qualify for Medicaid, in 
which they would have a chance at getting some long-term care. We need 
to discuss this, because it is a huge problem.
  In 2008, 21 million Americans had a condition that caused them to 
need help with their health and personal care. Why? Because Congress 
has shied away from this subject forever. We have made a habit of 
shying away from it. Medicare does not cover long-term services and 
other supports, yet about 70 percent of people over age 65 will require 
some type of long-term services and support at some point during their 
lifetime--70 percent of people over 65. As our population ages, the 
need for services will grow. A little known fact is that about 40 
percent of the individuals who need long-term care are under the age of 
65, and long-term care services and supports can help these individuals 
be more independent and be part of the workforce and to have a sense of 
self-esteem.
  Medicare, as I say, does not cover these services. The difference 
between Medicare and Medicaid and what each of their roles should be is 
such that there is now a separate agency in Health and Human Services, 
which I helped promote, which is now sorting out what is the best 
relationship between the two so they don't have to duplicate each other 
and so they can clarify roles and get at the problems.
  Medicare doesn't cover these services, so Medicaid is in fact the 
real, de facto, long-term care program in the country. That is what it 
is. Only after middle-class Americans impoverish themselves are they 
allowed to get into that situation.
  Again, the CLASS Act is not complete as an answer, but it was at long 
last an attempt on the part of the Congress to do something about it. 
That in itself was a signal victory. An attempt to help people live 
with dignity in their homes and communities is not something which we 
should consider a frivolous matter.
  Those who are gloating today about the administration's decision not 
to carry forward with the CLASS Act are not the fiscal heroes they make 
themselves out to be. They have no answers. They have no answers. They 
have no alternatives. But if you can repeal something, boy, you can 
take that home and people say, Boy, they got rid of that part of 
government, not having any understanding of what it does to people who 
have situations either of age or other problems which they cannot help. 
And they are called people.
  Instead, they use this as a political opportunity to bash the 
President. I was disappointed when the President did this. I was very 
disappointed. But it doesn't mean we have to go along. Imagine that, 
bashing the President, using seniors and people with disabilities as a 
political prop instead of putting forward real solutions. What this 
place lacks is in fact real solutions. A lot of people like to tease 
the health care bill. They are, for the most part, wrong. Not entirely 
wrong. But one thing they can't tease is the fact that a whole bunch of 
people called Senators and Congressmen and staff members worked hard 
for a very long 2 years to try and come up with answers. And we did.
  Let's have a serious discussion how to meet the current and future 
needs of seniors and people with disabilities. They are all of our 
friends. We know them. Those needs are not going away.
  Having said that, I object to the Senator's request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I appreciate the objection of the Senator 
from West Virginia and I appreciate his comments about the importance 
of long-term care. I agree, it is something we need to address in this 
country. There are other ideas out there, and I think better ideas, 
ideas that are based upon incentives as opposed to creating a new 
government program. But let me get, if I might briefly here, for a 
moment at what I believe is the real issue.
  This was a program destined to fail. It was clear from the beginning 
many of us said that. There were 12 of my colleagues on the other side, 
12 Democrats who voted to strike this particular provision from the 
health care bill back in December of 2009. I think at that time many of 
us were making the same arguments the experts are now conceding at the 
Department of Health and Human Services. In fact, there were colleagues 
on the other side, one of my Democratic colleagues, who called this ``a 
Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff 
would be proud of.'' That is how it was described before it was voted 
on and put into the health care bill to help demonstrate the health 
care bill would actually reduce the deficit.
  The fact is, after having had several months to look at this, here we 
are 19 months or so later, the Department of Health and Human Services 
has concluded that this doesn't work. They can't make it work. Now the 
CBO has come out and said it doesn't impact the budget. My view is we 
ought to pull this, we ought to get it off the books, and we ought to 
address the issue in a way that makes sense for the American people, 
not in a way that adds trillions of dollars of additional debt.
  If we look at what we have today in terms of unfunded liabilities, we 
have $61.6 trillion in unfunded liabilities in this country or $528,000 
for every family. That is five times what most families have in terms 
of home mortgages, car mortgages, other types of debt. That is what we 
are piling on the American people today. This would have been yet 
another unfunded liability, and the experts warned us at the time.
  Now, we did an investigation of this. It was published in September. 
I worked with some of my House colleagues on it. It was ``The CLASS 
Act, The Untold Story.'' It concluded that the actuaries at HHS were 
saying before this bill was even passed that it would be a recipe for 
disaster, that it would lead to an insurance death spiral, and the 
Chief Medicare Actuary at HHS said at the time:

     . . . 36 years of actuarial experience lead me to believe 
     that this program would collapse in short order and would 
     require significant Federal subsidies to continue.

     That is what the experts were saying about this program way 
     back before it was even voted on in 2009.

  I think we ought to acknowledge what now everybody concludes to be 
the case; that is, this program will not work. It is actuarially 
unsound. We ought to repeal it. We ought to get it off the books, and 
that was simply what my motion would do. I regret that the other side 
has objected to it, but I have some of my colleagues today who have 
been very active on this issue.
  I say to my colleague from Arizona, in light of this report that came 
out from the HHS last month outlining exactly why they cannot move 
forward with CLASS, it seems difficult to understand why the 
administration

[[Page 16532]]

doesn't support repeal of this program. Can my colleague make any sense 
out of this contradiction and apparent hypocrisy to say a program 
doesn't work, yet we want to keep it on the books?
  Mr. McCAIN. I say to my colleague I do not quite understand it 
either.
  In response to the comments of the Senator from West Virginia about 
the importance of long-term care, I think all of us understand that. I 
think all of us who meet and have interface with our constituents 
recognize that the issue of long-term care is one of transcendent 
importance. The Senator from West Virginia said he would be glad to 
make some changes or tweaks to the program. We would be eager to hear 
of those. We would be eager to hear how we could change the program, 
the CLASS Act, so it is not, as Senator Conrad, the chairman of the 
Budget Committee, said of the CLASS Act, ``a Ponzi scheme of the first 
order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.''
  I think it is pretty clear if we accept Senator Conrad's and other 
objective assessments of the CLASS Act that we have to go back to 
square one. We are not going to be able to fix a program about which, 
the Congressional Budget Office said:

     . . . the programs would add to budget deficits in the third 
     decade--and in succeeding decades--by amounts on the order of 
     tens of billions of dollars for each 10-year period.
       The CLASS program would add to budget deficits in future 
     decades even though the proposals require the Secretary of 
     Health and Human Services to set premiums to ensure the 
     program's solvency for 75 years.

  I would like to interject. I know my colleagues share my view. When 
Senators leave we kind of forget them. Maybe we do not mention them 
anymore. But we owe a debt of gratitude to Senator Gregg, former 
Senator from New Hampshire, who put in this provision that required 
solvency over a period of 75 years before it could be implemented. If 
it had not been for that provision, we would now be moving forward with 
a program that, according to the CBO, would add tens of billions of 
dollars to the deficit in each 10-year period.
  Wherever you are, Senator Gregg, and I know you are happier than if 
you were here, I offer my appreciation and my thanks.
  I note the presence of Dr. Barrasso. I think there is something we 
ought to understand about the CLASS Act. It did have a short-term 
impact according to the way the Congressional Budget Office ``scores'' 
things, tells us how much things will add or detract from the deficit, 
either plus or minus. The fact is, the CLASS Act, in the first 10 
years, because younger people would be paying in premiums and would not 
have gotten to the point where they are eligible for the benefits, it 
disguised the cost of what we know now as--what we call ObamaCare.
  Because of the way they are restricted on scoring, the CLASS Act, at 
least for 10 years, contributed $70 billion and helped them estimate 
that the Health Care Reform Act, known as ObamaCare, would have $122 
billion in savings, when in reality after the first 10-year period it 
was tens of billions of dollars in added deficit and burdens on average 
Americans.
  I ask my colleague, Senator Barrasso, Isn't there a way we could 
address the long-term care problem in America? Isn't there a way we 
could address this issue without piling on, as the CBO judged the CLASS 
Act, an increase of tens of billions of dollars to the deficit, which 
we all know right now is $44,000, I believe, for every man, woman, and 
child in America?
  Mr. BARRASSO. I respond to my colleague from Arizona that we all have 
concerns for the people of America. That is why we were here trying to 
offer constructive ideas to make sure people would get the care they 
need, from the doctor that they want, at a price they can afford.
  We heard the President make promises that the cost of premiums would 
go down $2,500 a family. We have seen instead the premiums have gone 
up.
  We heard the President say: If you like what you have, you can keep 
it. We saw that we lost out on that. So many people are going to lose 
the health coverage they like under this new health care law. So I say 
to my colleague, absolutely there are things we can do and should be 
doing.
  It is astonishing. I received through my medical office the AARP 
Bulletin. On the cover of this AARP Bulletin for this past month, 
October 2011, the headline is, ``Senate Leader Reid: The Health Care 
Law Is Already Working.'' This is what the Senate majority leader has 
said on the cover of the AARP Bulletin. Yet the Kaiser survey that 
tracks public views about health care every month has come out with 
their recent numbers, and the results are astonishing. The American 
people have seen through this health care law to the point that a 
majority of Americans now have an unfavorable view of the health care 
law.
  Mr. McCAIN. So we now have about two-thirds of what was advertised as 
a savings now going by the boards; in other words, $70 billion of the 
advertised $122 billion in total savings that we voted on not that long 
ago; is that correct?
  Mr. BARRASSO. That is exactly the way I read it, that is the way the 
American people read it, which is why the overall favorability of the 
health care law now stands at only 34 percent, an all-time low.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent we be able to enter 
into a colloquy now for 25 minutes?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. THUNE. I would simply say--we have the ranking member of the 
Budget Committee here too--that it strikes me that there were probably 
lots of other budget gimmicks in the health care law that are going to 
come to the surface in the same way this CLASS Act gimmick has. The 
Senator from Arizona pointed out they tried to understate the true cost 
by taking a lot of savings in the early years as people were paying 
premiums, knowing full well in the outyears it was going to add 
billions of dollars to the deficit. So it was a gimmick that was used, 
again, to make this salable to the American people and salable here.
  In spite of that, there was still a majority of Senators who voted 
again against this, who actually voted to strike the provision from the 
health care bill in December of 2009 when I offered that amendment.
  It seems to me at least we ought to have bipartisan support now that 
everyone has come out and recognized what we were trying to tell them 
in advance: this doesn't work, it was a gimmick, and we ought to get it 
off the books.
  I ask my colleague, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, about 
this budget gimmick that was used. Is it illogical to think if we have 
this $2.5 trillion expansion of government in the form of this new 
health care bill that somehow it is going to reduce the Federal deficit 
because that was the argument that was made at the time, and that is 
one of the reasons they were able to make that argument? I suggest 
there are going to be lots of other gimmicks we are going to uncover to 
demonstrate this thing was way out of line at the time, but I ask for 
his comments as being the ranking member of the Budget Committee.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, Senator Thune deserves a lot of credit 
for pursuing this issue tenaciously and seeing his prediction validated 
now by President Obama's own Secretary that this cannot be a viable 
program. But he is exactly correct. One of the greatest financial 
misrepresentations in history, if it continues to be on the books, will 
be the contention that this health care bill would actually create 
money for the U.S. Treasury, actually produce a surplus.
  They used a 10-year scoring model; $70 billion, 60 percent or so of 
the total savings this bill is alleged to produce--not savings, actual 
revenue, net revenue increase--was this program. Now it is gone.
  As Senator McCain correctly said, Judd Gregg deserves great credit 
for it because he put in the bill that the Secretary had to certify 
that this was a sound program. So after all the political smoke had 
been going on, after the bill had been passed, while they were 
defending it as a viable CLASS Act program that would actually produce

[[Page 16533]]

revenue for the government, when she had to certify it, I suppose, 
under penalty of perjury--she could go to jail if she didn't do it 
correctly--she said she could not do so.
  It was never possible this bill was going to be a moneymaker for the 
U.S. Treasury. They double-counted, maybe $300 billion, $400 billion, 
$500 billion in money that is Medicare money also counted as income to 
fund an entirely new bill. That is going to come out also.
  As Senator Barrasso has noted, their estimates have been wildly 
inaccurate concerning the ability to bend the cost curve down, to 
actually reduce health care costs. This was something a lot of people 
thought was a good idea. This was going to produce a reduction in our 
insurance premiums, and since the bill was passed they have gone up 
dramatically, just the opposite of what was promised.
  I think this is a death knell for the entire health care concept. 
This is just one more example of it. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. McCAIN. I say to my colleague, what is a little hard to 
understand--maybe Dr. Barrasso understands it--the Secretary of Health 
and Human Services said they can find no way to implement it, after 
nearly 2 years. So why would there be an objection to Senator Thune 
having just moved to repeal the CLASS Act?
  If they tried for all of these months since the passage of the bill 
to figure out a way they can meet the Judd Gregg proviso that required 
the 75-year sustainability, then one would wonder why--one would wonder 
why we would not just go ahead and repeal it. If there is a better 
proposal, as we have all agreed, to address the long-term care issue in 
America, then why don't we sit down at the drawing board and find a way 
to care for people who, in their most vulnerable years, need government 
assistance?
  I know of no one in this body who is opposed to a viable, reasonable, 
fiscally sound long-term care program. This is not it. This is not it. 
It is not even close. So I wondered why my colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle would refuse to repeal it unless it is some distorted 
pride in authorship.
  Mr. THUNE. I would say to our colleague from Wyoming, who is a 
physician and has a lot of experience on these issues, who comes down 
every week with a second opinion talking about all the various issues 
regarding the health care bill--the more recent one, as we have all 
seen now is contrary to predictions--health care costs are going up. 
The predictions were that they would go down. That is also something 
many of us saw coming.
  The question is if we leave this on the books, and if they decide at 
some point to resurrect it--after they have already acknowledged it 
doesn't work--and come up with some new language that does away with 
the Judd-Gregg proviso, what are the fiscal consequences of this 
program being resurrected? We talked about this, and there were lots of 
predictions made at the time.
  In fact, the Senator from Arizona had statements from some of our 
colleagues who said on the floor at the time how this was going to be a 
great deal and how it was going to work. The administration said at the 
time that this was not a budget gimmick. That is what they were quoted 
as saying. Clearly this was a budget gimmick. We all know that now. It 
is a Ponzi scheme. Clearly that is what the actuaries are saying at 
Health and Human Services.
  If, in fact, we don't get this repealed and at some point this 
program ends up being resurrected, what are the fiscal consequences and 
implications for the country and future generations who will be saddled 
with yet another unfunded liability, another entitlement program that 
is not paid for?
  Mr. BARRASSO. I think this is devastating for the country. I told the 
President directly that overall I thought his proposal was going to 
bankrupt the country. We stood here and debated over a year ago the 
fact that the Democrats in this body were voting to take $500 billion 
away from our seniors on Medicare--not to save Medicare, but to start a 
whole new government program for somebody else. And when we talk about 
long-term care and what people need over the course of their lifetime, 
they took money away from hospice. They took money away from home 
health. They continue to take money away from hospitals and the 
physicians who take care of our seniors.
  Mr. McCAIN. The popular Medicare Advantage Program.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Which has an advantage because it coordinates care. It 
does a number of things that are important. I believe this is the 
reason why last week in the Kaiser poll, the number of individuals who 
have a very favorable view of the overall health care law has dropped 
to 12 percent, an all-time low. The number of people who think they 
will personally be better off under the health care law is only 18 
percent, an all-time low. The number of people in the country who think 
that the country as a whole will be better off due to the health care 
law stands at 28 percent, an all-time low. The American people realize 
we need truth, honesty in budgeting.
  I know my colleague from the Budget Committee is working on that. He 
has an op-ed I read and has a proposal and is working on that. That is 
what the American people want. They want some honesty in budgeting, not 
the kind of politics and budget gimmicks and tricks we see happening 
here. The American people are tired of being misled and sold a bill of 
goods. They see through it. They don't like it, they don't want it, and 
that is why all of the polling on the health care law shows it at an 
all-time low.
  Mr. THUNE. We all saw this coming and we tried our best to prevent 
it, but now we know and we have these statements that came out as part 
of the report that was done by the House and Senate, an investigative 
report called the CLASS Act, the untold story. It was published in 
September. What it revealed was that the Health and Human Services 
Department actuaries--the people who are the experts, not the 
politicians, not those of us who are making many of these statements 
during the political debate we are having here in the Senate--who are 
actually responsible for doing the math on this came up and called the 
CLASS program a recipe for disaster. Those were in internal e-mails we 
discovered when we were doing this investigation.
  Prior to their announcement in October that HHS is not moving forward 
with the CLASS program at this time, Secretary Sebelius and other 
officials at the Health and Human Services Department claimed through 
much of 2011 that the Department had sufficient authority to modify it. 
What they were trying to suggest is that we can make this work. Yet 
these internal documents cast significant doubt on all of those 
assertions.
  I will repeat this because I think this is important. The Chief 
Actuary, during 2009, when this program was being debated--it was a 
part of the health care bill. It was during the debate here in the 
Senate. Richard Foster said:

     . . . 36 years of actuarial experience lead me to believe 
     that this program would collapse in short order and require 
     significant Federal subsidies to continue.

  That was what they were saying in 2009 before this vote ever 
occurred. He also went on to say:

     . . . this would end in an insurance death spiral because the 
     coverage would only be attractive to sicker people who will 
     need costly services. This will force premiums higher and 
     deter healthy individuals from enrolling.

  You have all the experts who were putting all this information out 
there and sharing this with their superiors, all of who were out there 
on the record promoting this as being something that would work and 
something that is not a budget gimmick, but actually could, in fact, be 
actuarially sound. We all know now it was not. It wasn't then and isn't 
now and that is why we ought to repeal it.
  Again, I appreciate my colleagues' input and work on this. I think 
this is something we ought to end. We need to put the final touches on 
this program and end it once and for all so it doesn't come back in 
some other form and saddle future generations with trillions of dollars 
of additional unfunded liabilities and debt. There are ways we can 
approach this issue.

[[Page 16534]]

  In fact, I have some ideas that I introduced in 2007 that deal with 
long-term care and providing incentives for people that we all are 
going to be faced with at some point in our lives. But this is the 
wrong way. It was the wrong prescription at the beginning. It is the 
wrong prescription now. That is why it ought to be repealed.
  Mr. SESSIONS. If I recall, Senator Thune quoted the Chief Actuary, 
Richard Foster, in his statement that this would collapse during the 
debate on the floor. This was talked about, but the administration and 
our Democratic colleagues refused to listen. They continued to repeat 
the idea that they would have this large surplus. They counted this 
money as surplus money in justifying voting for passage of this bill 
when common sense told us in a host of areas, including this one, it 
was not going to produce a surplus. It goes to mean something systemic 
about our problem and why this Congress now going into the third year 
will be borrowing 40 percent of the money the United States spends. It 
is because the politics here is that we want to pass the bill. When 
somebody shows it is not actuarially sound and it is going to cost 
money in the outyears, they don't worry about that; somebody will take 
care of that in the outyears. It is that kind of mentality that I think 
has helped overrule commonsense budgeting.
  We have not had a budget now in over 900 days in this Senate. So this 
is not the kind of responsible approach to managing the taxpayers' 
money.
  I know Senator Barrasso raised this repeatedly, that this should not 
be counted, but did we hear Secretary Sebelius at that time? Back in 
2009 she wrote to Senator Kennedy and said to express the 
administration's support for inclusion of this bill, calling it an 
innovative bill. They were supporting it, promoting it, totally 
ignoring the critics and, as a result, they got the bill passed on a 
straight party-line vote. As a matter of fact, I believe had Senator 
Brown from Massachusetts taken office 2 weeks sooner, there would not 
have been the 60 votes necessary to pass it. There would have only have 
been 59 and the bill would not be law today.
  I thank both Senators for their consistent, steadfast explanation of 
the financial danger of this legislation and their willingness to 
continue to carry on that fight. I hope we learned something throughout 
our whole budgetary and financial process here. We cannot continue to 
play games with the American people's money. We have to be honest with 
them--honest about our budget, honest about what things are going to 
cost, and only then can we get the country on a sound footing.
  Mr. THUNE. We have to quit making promises we cannot keep. What we 
are seeing today in Europe and the meltdown that is occurring in the 
economies over there is a result of too many promises that were made, 
too much government debt, governments that have gotten too big, that 
can no longer be supported by the economy in those countries.
  That is where we are headed. That is why we have to start living 
within our means. We have to quit spending money we don't have, and 
this was a perfect example of the tendency around here to want to grow 
government, to have a government answer, a government solution for 
everything, when this makes matters not better but much worse. It makes 
it much worse for hardworking taxpayers in this country and for future 
generations of Americans for whom this would become an enormous 
liability added already to the $528,000 that every family in this 
country owes, the mortgage they have on their families already as a 
result of the unfunded liabilities we have already racked up. We cannot 
keep making promises we cannot keep.
  I hope we can get this repealed, and I appreciate my colleagues' hard 
work in that regard and look forward to getting an opportunity to get 
it voted on. I am sorry our request this afternoon to repeal it was 
rejected, but I hope we will get another opportunity to revisit that 
and perhaps a vote that will actually put people on the Record. I 
believe there is a majority of Senators who agree with us on this 
point.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I would say a couple of weeks ago the Wall Street 
Journal, after all of this happened, wrote that ``including this CLASS 
Act was a special act of fiscal corruption.''
  If a private business said: Invest in our company; I have a plan that 
is going to be sound and it is going to make money in the future, trust 
me, invest your money with me, vote for me, yet they knew and had 
evidence in their files and their own employees were saying it was not 
sound, it was actually going to cost money, I wonder what would happen 
to them.
  Mr. BARRASSO. You would hear about it. This speaks to the problems we 
have in this body. When they write legislation in the cloak of 
darkness, behind closed doors, and come in and vote at 1 in the morning 
and try to jam things through at a time when an administration calls 
for openness and transparency and then they do this sort of thing with 
the books in a manipulative way and try to come up with ways to say 
that it saves money--in any other true, real business, people would go 
to jail for this sort of behavior, I would assume. Is it wrong? All the 
way wrong? We have seen other so-called bets that this administration 
has made which have the American people scratching their head.
  Yesterday it was noted that at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, bonuses 
have been paid to 10 of their executives to the tune of over $12 
million. I called for the President to cancel those bonuses. The White 
House is fairly silent on that. Yet when Senator Obama was running for 
President, he wrote a letter to the Treasury Secretary and said: Make 
sure no bonuses go to Freddie and Fannie. Now under his administration, 
$12 million, it was reported yesterday, went to 10 executives. It 
doesn't seem to be a problem now. The White House said there is nothing 
they can do about it. Well, why not get the Secretary of the Treasury 
involved? That is what Candidate Obama did in 2008. It is time for this 
White House to stand up and do what is right.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Let me say a more accurate explanation of how this 
happened. The Congressional Budget Office scored this as a surplus, 
indeed, over 10 years. And, as Senator McCain said, the benefits only 
come out after 5 years and these are people paying in, so the real 
benefits and payments take place in outer years.
  The question is, Is the plan sufficient to be actuarially sound for 
the distant future when the payouts occur? So what happened was, Mr. 
Orszag had been CBO Director. He said it was not a gimmick and not a 
Ponzi scheme. In one sense, he was telling the truth. He was using a 
window score from the Congressional Budget Office over the first 10 
years, when it didn't pay out any benefits and had a surplus, to claim 
that this was going to make the bill itself financially sound. In a 
sense, to me, it is these kinds of gimmicks that might keep somebody 
from being prosecuted and sent to jail if they were a private person.
  This ought to end in the Congress. I think the American people are 
crying out for honesty in budgeting. They want us to be responsible. 
They want us to tell them the good news but to also tell them the bad 
news financially that we face.
  They know we can't do things we would like to do if we don't have the 
money. They know we don't have the money to keep taking on new 
obligations. So I feel as though this is not healthy.
  When Secretary Sebelius came along and had to certify that they had a 
75-year actuarially sound program, there was no way she could do it. It 
knocks a gaping hole into the entire scheme, this health care bill.
  I think it is a lesson for all of us. On every vote we do, we need to 
be sure we are honest not only in the short-term window but in the 
long-term window also.
  Mr. THUNE. Too often, the practice around here is focused on the 
short term, the near term, the gain, to be able to have some sort of 
political victory at the expense of what is in the best interests of 
this country and our children and grandchildren. This is a perfect 
example of that. I appreciate

[[Page 16535]]

my colleagues being here. This discussion will be continued.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator 
Sessions and I have up to 15 minutes for a colloquy.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           LSU Versus Alabama

  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, Senator Sessions and I come to the floor 
following a discussion of a lot of important issues on the floor to 
discuss the most important issue back home for us this week, which is 
the upcoming regular season national championship game between LSU and 
Alabama. In the history of the SEC, this is the first ever regular 
season matchup between a No. 1 and No. 2 team in the SEC. As most folks 
probably know, LSU and Alabama are both 8 to 0 overall and 5 to 0 in 
the SEC.
  Obviously, I know who is going to win. The Tigers are going to win. 
They have beaten five ranked opponents this year, three of those away 
from home, as we are going to have to play Alabama. They have outscored 
all opponents 314 to 92 this year. Not to get cocky or anything, but 
LSU has beaten Alabama 8 out of the last 11 years, including 4 of the 
last 5 times in Tuscaloosa.
  We have a lot of strengths. Our senior quarterback Jarrett Lee leads 
the SEC in passing efficiency. We have a ferocious defense led by 
lineman Sam Montgomery and defensive backs Tyrann Mathieu and Mo 
Claiborne. Tyrann, by the way, is much better known as Honey Badger. 
This is a prelude to the BCS championship which, by the way, is going 
to be in January in New Orleans in the Superdome.
  So we feel great going into this game, and that is why I was very 
eager to get with both Senators from Alabama and have a friendly wager 
which the Senator from Alabama will explain. The loser is going to 
treat the winners to some great gulf shrimp and other seafood. We feel 
great about it, so we look forward to it.
  As I turn the floor over to Senator Sessions, I would just summarize 
our feelings in Louisiana in a simple way: You all have a great team--
maybe one of the best Alabama teams ever--but it doesn't matter who 
LSU's opponent is because, as we say in Louisiana, the Honey Badger 
takes what he wants. We are looking forward to doing that on Saturday 
night.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Vitter for those 
comments. We are going to look forward to being very hospitable to the 
fabulous LSU fans who will be in Tuscaloosa for the ``Titanic tussle in 
Tuscaloosa,'' the game of the century, many are calling it, the match 
of the millennium, between Alabama and LSU. It is always a big game, 
and it is going to be a big game especially this year.
  While we have a minute on the floor and there is no other business 
being conducted, I just wish to celebrate college football, 
particularly in the Southeastern Conference. When we go to those games 
and see the color and the crowd and the enthusiasm and the roar for the 
home team, it is a thrilling event. It is very special. The fans in 
Tuscaloosa are very sophisticated. They know this is a big game, one of 
the biggest games in the history of the University of Alabama, and they 
know when good plays are good and bad plays are bad. It is going to be 
exciting. They know LSU is consistently one of the great teams in 
America.
  So Alabama is doing pretty well: Eight and zero, their all-star 
defense is No. 1 in scoring and No. 1 in total defenses. They also have 
their No. 1 rushing defense in the country, allowing only 44 yards per 
game, a historic number that ranks better than Alabama's national 
championship game in 1992 and the undefeated and untied 1966 team. So 
it is going to be a special time.
  Our university is a great university. The University of Alabama has 
been growing in strength for years now. It has one of the greatest 
presidents in America: Dr. Robert D. Witt, who was my high school 
classmate, and Judy Bonner is the provost there, sister of Congressman 
Jo Bonner. So it is an exciting time in Alabama in general. 
Academically and otherwise, the University of Alabama is doing great--
one of its best years in its history.
  I wish to also point out and thank the LSU fans and chefs John Folse 
and Rick Tramonto, along with Bob Baumhower and Steve Zucker from 
Alabama, for sponsoring the LouisiBama Gumbo Bowl to benefit tornado 
victims in Tuscaloosa. That shows true class in both of the schools' 
fan base. For all the talk going on this week, I hope to see the kind 
of respect this partnership indicates among all our fans.
  While I don't think it will happen, should Les Miles and his team 
somehow manage to get out of Tuscaloosa with a victory, I would love to 
treat Senator Vitter and Senator Landrieu to some of the finest gulf 
seafood there is, healthy and straight from the Gulf of Mexico, which 
my colleague knows is fresher and cleaner and finer than it ever has 
been, and maybe we could garnish it with some of the best grass that 
marks the field at Bryant Denny Stadium. I understand Les Miles is a 
fan. I would also be more than happy to bring my friend, Senator 
Vitter, an Alabama tie on the Monday after the game, which I think 
would look good if he were to wear it on the floor of the Senate.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, should the unthinkable happen, I will do 
that. Should the unthinkable happen, I will deliver fresh, healthy gulf 
seafood to Senator Sessions' office as well as Senator Shelby's. We 
have been in contact with Senator Shelby's office and Senator 
Landrieu's office and they are part of this friendly arrangement as 
well. So we will look forward to that. But, most of all, we will look 
forward to a great game Saturday night, and we will both look forward 
to a win Saturday night. One of us will have to be disappointed--we 
will see who--but it is going to be a great game.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I thank Senator Vitter for his friendship and good 
service in the Senate. We work on so many things together. But college 
football is special, and I think the game this weekend will be one of 
the great games in college history. I am so excited about it. I know 
the fans in both our States, and throughout the country, are excited 
about it.
  Mr. VITTER. Amen.
  With that, we yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I came to the floor to speak about a 
different type of football. It seems to be a political football that 
some of our colleagues are playing on the question of getting America 
back to work again. I am amazed at the political posturing we have seen 
this year.
  I know for some of our colleagues on the other side, this election 
cycle has been driven by tea party economics that demand political 
purity over good governance. They have said no to just about 
everything. The problem with no to everything is that no doesn't create 
a job, no doesn't build an economy, no doesn't create prosperity, no 
doesn't get America moving again. They have said no to every different 
venture we have had to try to put America back to work.
  Certainly, back in my home State of New Jersey, what I hear from the 
average citizen is: Senator, help me get back to work. Because I have 
New Jerseyans who come up to me, sometimes with tears in their eyes, 
and say: This is the first time in my life I have been unemployed. 
While that has created a significant economic consequence to them and 
their family, it

[[Page 16536]]

has shaken something even more profound, which is that social contract, 
that promise in America that if I prepare myself, work hard and 
sacrifice, I get ahead, and my children will do better than I did 
growing up. That has been shaken to the core by the economic challenges 
we inherited as a result of the crisis of 2008 and that we have been 
working out of.
  So I have a problem when, every time we come to the floor to offer an 
opportunity to get those New Jerseyans, to get those Americans back to 
work, all I hear is no.
  They say no, refusing to invest in rebuilding our infrastructure, to 
creating jobs, to keeping us competitive in a global economy.
  They know roads and highways and bridges in their States--in every 
State--are in critical need of improvement, and yet we have to come 
here time and time again, day after day, to fight back a politically 
charged, ideologically fueled opposition that says one thing but does 
another.
  The fact is, even those who oppose this legislation for political 
reasons know good governance means investing in our future. It means 
putting Americans back to work. In an economy in which 70 percent of 
GDP is consumer demand, if there is no job, there is no money, and if 
there is no money, there is no demand. So in addition to the lives of 
New Jerseyans and Americans which we could positively affect, this is 
about our global picture in terms of our economy. It means also keeping 
us competitive in this global economy.
  Let me talk about that global economy for a moment because we are in 
it. We see what happens in Europe, and we see how we are affected here 
at home with our markets and whatnot. But let's look at a different 
place. Let's look at China. Let's look at the competition. According to 
China's 5-year plan, they have a range of investment priorities for the 
future: clean energy technology; biotechnology, including 
pharmaceutical and vaccine production; high-tech equipment for 
manufacturing airplanes; a new space program and satellites.
  In fact, this week they launched a satellite, the first step toward a 
Chinese space station by the end of the decade.
  China is planning more high-speed rail, next generation powerplants 
and manufacturing facilities, new nuclear, solar, and wind energy 
technologies.
  The plan calls for building new energy-efficient cars and adding 
9,000 kilometers to their highway system, expanding their national 
high-speed rail system to 45,000 kilometers, and building light rail 
systems in 21 urban metropolitan areas.
  They are planning 6 new heavy material ports, adding 440 new 10,000-
ton shipping berths; a second Beijing airport; and 11 regional 
airports.
  This is some pretty stiff competition that will allow Chinese 
businesses to thrive.
  This is the challenge we have. Yes, we have a debt question in our 
country, and we must meet that challenge. There is no question we 
should and we can and we must. But by the same token, we need to grow 
this economy as part of meeting that challenge, an economy that was on 
the brink of ruin when this administration inherited it, an economy 
that--I will never forget that famous meeting or infamous meeting in 
September of 2008 that was called by the Chairman of the Federal 
Reserve that members of the Banking Committee and others were called 
to. I remember going to it and listening to him describe a series of 
financial institutions that were on the verge of bankruptcy and 
collapse and in doing so would have created systemic risk to the entire 
country's economy and being on the verge not of the great recession we 
talked about but a new depression. That is what we have been working 
out of.
  But even in this economy, we have to make investments and build for a 
competitive future. We invest just 2 percent of our gross domestic 
product on infrastructure projects. Europe and China invest between 5 
and 9 percent, respectively.
  The President today called on Congress to up the ante. The American 
Jobs Act would invest $50 billion in our transportation infrastructure 
and $10 billion in a national infrastructure bank, putting hundreds of 
thousands of construction workers back on the job. But it is not just 
the construction workers. Certainly, we want to get them back to work. 
It is all the architectural firms, all the engineering firms, all the 
people who work at those firms who will help build this infrastructure. 
It is all the suppliers for all the materials that will be needed to do 
this and everybody who produces those supplies and everybody who 
transports it and everybody who installs it. So it is an enormous 
ripple effect in getting our people back to work--hundreds of thousands 
waiting to work, working for America's future.
  Clearly, opposition to the Rebuild America Jobs Act is not about good 
governance because we have ways and we have offered ways to pay for 
this fully. It is about politics. It is about playing political games. 
But it is playing political games with the lives and livelihoods of 
American families.
  While China is planning major investments in retooling for their new 
economy, we cannot even seem to agree to fix our own roads. It is akin 
to the story of Nero fiddling while Rome burned, except American 
families and businesses are the ones who are going to get burned in 
this story.
  The President today released a report that highlights the importance 
of rebuilding our roads and bridges and railways and airports and has 
cited important projects around the country. They include over 17,000 
jobs in New Jersey that would put people to work making our future 
brighter.
  One of the projects the President's report highlights as an example 
of success is in New Jersey: the Route 52 causeway bridge replacement 
between Somers Point and Ocean City in Atlantic and Cape May Counties. 
This is a critical emergency evacuation route for Ocean City during 
floods and hurricanes. The new bridge eliminates the need to raise the 
drawbridge at the old section that is still being replaced. This is a 
critical $400 million project that is an investment in New Jersey, in 
our community, in our infrastructure that will upgrade an old bridge to 
meet today's needs, protect the community, and put people to work.
  We can make these investments and still find ways to responsibly 
reduce the deficit. An investment is not even just about new projects, 
of course. It is about maintaining the very infrastructure we have 
already spent money on in the past that we need to preserve for future 
use.
  Thirty-six percent of New Jersey's bridges are structurally deficient 
or functionally obsolete. Seventy-eight percent of New Jersey's major 
roads are listed in poor or mediocre condition. Sixty-four percent of 
New Jersey highways are chronically congested because of a 29-percent 
increase in vehicle travel on New Jersey's highways from 1990 to 2007. 
All of that, and we already have $13 billion worth of maintenance 
projects on hold because we do not have the money to pay for them.
  Those are just numbers in one respect, but those numbers are about 
lives. Because when we have infrastructure--major roads, major 
highways--that are in bad condition, it means we are sitting more time 
in traffic and less time being productive at work or having more 
quality time with our families. It means businesses that have a product 
they need to get to the marketplace are going over an infrastructure 
that means it takes more time. It takes longer to get that product to 
market. It has consequences. It adds to the costs. It creates an 
uncompetitive set of circumstances. It is about the quality of our 
lives and our economy at the same time.
  That $13 billion is not to add even any capacity to New Jersey's 
transportation system. It is just to keep the status quo. As I have 
said for quite some time, as we have attempted, with my colleague, 
Senator Lautenberg, to build a new Trans-Hudson Passenger Rail Tunnel, 
which is critically needed in that region--and we have learned since 
September 11 that multiple modes of transportation are incredibly 
important so that, God forbid, if we have a tragedy again--we learned 
on

[[Page 16537]]

that day, when all the bridges were closed and all the tunnels were 
closed that ferries brought people out of downtown Manhattan to New 
Jersey, ultimately, to be taken to hospitals--multiple modes of 
transportation and options are critical for our economy. They are also 
critical for our security. Yet we cannot even keep up-to-date that 
which we have, much less create a new Trans-Hudson tunnel that would 
open the entire region with its economic opportunities. We cannot grow 
if we are stuck. In that region, as in many regions of the country, we 
are stuck.
  We can begin the long-overdue process of maintaining, rehabilitating, 
and replacing if we pass this legislation. We can do it if we act 
together as a nation, as we did in 1956. In 1956, it was a Republican 
administration that created the Interstate Highway System, and now we 
cannot seem to get one Republican to vote to maintain that system. In 
2011, we cannot get one Republican to vote to help keep us competitive 
and put Americans back to work.
  We need our Republican colleagues in Congress to end the roadblock 
and fix the roads. They need to vote yes to providing every State with 
the resources they need to repair and rebuild aging roads and bridges 
and put people back to work.
  Think of the jobs we could create nationwide if we publicly committed 
to investing enough to keep up and stay competitive with the Chinas of 
the world. Even if China is able to meet only a fraction of its 
ambitious goals, it will be far beyond the course we are presently on.
  In 1956--I want to go back to that history--under a Republican 
President, Dwight Eisenhower, Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway 
Act. It took 35 years, but we committed this Nation to building 46,876 
miles of highway--one of the largest public works projects at that time 
in the Nation's history. Why? Because a young Army officer, Dwight 
Eisenhower, saw the need.
  He drove across the country in an Army convoy that left Washington on 
July 7, 1919, went to Gettysburg, and took the old Lincoln Highway to 
San Francisco. On the journey, bridges cracked and had to be rebuilt, 
vehicles got stuck in the mud, equipment broke, and they did not arrive 
on the west coast--they left on July 7--they did not arrive on the west 
coast until September 6--a 2-month journey that gave birth to the 
American Interstate Highway System.
  Let's not be so shortsighted that we will turn back the clock to the 
days of the old Lincoln Highway. I understand the need to reduce our 
deficit, and these provisions I have talked about that I support are 
paid for. But I do not understand the blind commitment to doing 
nothing, refusing to invest in our future and create American jobs in 
the process and calling it good governance.
  Good governance is what President Eisenhower did when he signed the 
Federal Highway Act into law. Now it is up to us to invest in 
maintaining it. Let's be honest with ourselves about the fact that good 
governance means investing in our Nation, in our people, in our 
progress, in our prosperity, in our future. Investing in our 
infrastructure is an investment in our country and in our future. Let's 
put today's ideologically driven politics aside and recall the 
practical Republican politics of President Eisenhower who saw a 
national need and had the will and the wisdom to put the Nation to work 
to build it.
  So I ask my colleagues: Where is the Grand Old Republican Party that 
united America behind an interstate highway system and put government 
and people to work to make it happen?
  If we put aside the ideological posturing, if we put aside the 
suggestion I have heard many times that the major goal is--by some of 
our Republican colleagues--to make Barack Obama a one-term President 
and then, ultimately, use both the filibuster to stop progress in the 
Senate and/or use a constant ``no'' vote to stop progress for the 
Nation under the guise that is the way President Obama will fail--the 
problem with that is, that is, at the end of the day, in my mind, not 
about President Obama failing, that is about the Nation failing at one 
of the most critical times in our country's history and one of the most 
critical times in our economy.
  If we can put aside the ideological posturing, if we can put aside 
the political strategy and gamesmanship, if we are honest with 
ourselves about what good governance means and what it means to 
American families to invest in creating jobs and keeping us globally 
competitive so that we can continue to grow that economy and create 
other jobs for individuals that will help them realize their hopes and 
dreams and aspirations, that will help them contribute to the Nation, 
that will create new revenues that will be part of meeting our debt 
challenge, we would pass this legislation and make it happen. That is 
the opportunity before the Senate. It is one I hope our colleagues will 
grasp.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                            Sanctuary Cities

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, earlier today my friend and colleague 
from Illinois, Senator Durbin, came to the floor and criticized--
wrongly, I believe--my State of Alabama and the State of Arizona for 
something that I would think we would all want every State and locality 
to do; that is, cooperate in the enforcement of Federal immigration 
law.
  Alabama and Arizona are undertaking a legitimate effort in attempting 
to help enforce the laws of the United States when this administration 
too often has failed to do so. The American people and the rule of law 
in our country have suffered as a result.
  This administration has flatly refused to enforce our national laws--
generous immigration laws that they are--despite the fact that there is 
on the books extensive and a fair code of laws designed to facilitate 
substantial, legal immigration into our country. Moreover, the Obama 
administration is systematically going after States that attempt to 
assist--Arizona, Alabama, now South Carolina, and Indiana next. Even 
more egregious is that the administration has refused to take any 
action against States and localities that affirmatively, proactively, 
and intentionally impede the immigration enforcement in the United 
States. These jurisdictions include San Francisco County, Santa Clara 
County, Washington, DC, and perhaps the most egregious example: Cook 
County, IL, which recently passed an ordinance--passed an ordinance 
directing local Illinois law enforcement officials to ignore U.S. 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers.
  The detainers are sent to local jails, and they request that 
officials at those jails detain illegal aliens for an additional 48-
hour period, statutorily provided, after that local jurisdiction's 
business with that immigrant ceases so that an ICE officer may place an 
alien into Federal custody. This is done on all kinds of crimes 
throughout the country. People are arrested in Alabama; Georgia has 
charges against them, and they send a detainer. If someone is arrested 
in Illinois and the Federal Government has a charge against them, they 
place a detainer. So when they are finished in that trial or with their 
sentence, before they are released out on the street, they are turned 
over to the other jurisdiction. Maybe it is a murder charge. Maybe it 
is a serious felony charge. This happens every day in America. It is 
common practice. If it were to cease, law enforcement in this country 
would be dealt a devastating blow.
  Cook County has decided that it gets to decide who gets deported from 
the country and when, and acting in this way directly undermines 
Federal law enforcement. When testifying before the Senate Judiciary 
Committee last week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet 
Napolitano said, incredibly, that she has had no contact

[[Page 16538]]

with Cook County and has had no discussions with the Attorney General 
of the United States on this issue.
  So today Senators Grassley, Cornyn, Coburn, and I sent a letter to 
Secretary Napolitano, and we requested that she and others in the 
administration consider taking action against Cook County and other 
local jurisdictions that purposefully and deliberately undermine the 
laws of the United States and offer sanctuary to illegal aliens who 
have broken our laws by entering the country illegally. Is there no 
consequence to that in this country now? If that is so, aren't we, in 
fact, putting up a sign on our borders that says: Just get by the 
border and you are home free, nothing will ever happen to you. Isn't 
that a magnet to more illegal immigration? Isn't that a mixed message 
to the world? Don't we need to be sending a good and decent message; 
that is, we believe in immigration. We are a nation of immigrants. We 
have the most generous immigration laws in the world, but you must 
comply with them. We can't accept everybody who would like to come 
whenever they would like to come. We have to ask people to file 
applications, meet certain qualifications, and come when your time has 
come to come to America.
  That is what law is all about. That is why people want to come to 
this country, frankly, because in their countries they have no law, and 
they don't have the opportunity to earn something and be able to keep 
it.
  Since the implementation of this ordinance in Chicago, over 40 
suspected illegal aliens arrested on felony charges have been released 
from Cook County jails. Last week, the Executive Associate Director of 
Enforcement and Removal Operations at the Federal Department of 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, told my staff that Cook 
County presents a major problem for immigration enforcement efforts. In 
fact, he said that Cook County, IL, is the most egregious example of 
sanctuary city policies and is ``an accident waiting to happen.'' Yet 
the head of the Department of Homeland Security stands silent, and the 
Justice Department is too busy prosecuting States that are trying to 
cooperate and uphold the law of the United States.
  Senator Durbin said that no State is above the law, but it is these 
sanctuary jurisdictions, such as Cook County, and not States such as 
Alabama, Arizona, South Carolina, and Indiana that need to remember 
they are not above the law.
  The truth is that this is yet another example of a longtime trend in 
Chicago of elected officials placating immigration law breakers while 
thumbing their noses at Federal law enforcement, jeopardizing public 
safety, and pretending that what they do is honorable and good and for 
the taxpayers who elected them. But releasing dangerous criminals is a 
dangerous thing to do. Releasing dangerous criminals--it could be a 
person who goes and murders someone, as we have seen time and time 
again.
  The Cook County commission passed this order less than a month after 
Chicago-based open-borders group National Immigrant Justice Center sued 
the Department of Homeland Security, challenging the constitutionality 
of these ICE detainers--things that have been done by every State, 
city, and county throughout America for decades, hundreds of years--
since the founding of our Republic, I suppose. The lawsuit undoubtedly 
influenced the Cook County commission. They decided they would be open 
about it in voting in favor of this ordinance. So if one of those 
illegal aliens arrested on felony charges and released by Cook County 
commits a crime now, Cook County officials are to blame for it.
  We should not release someone when the Federal authorities place a 
detainer on them. They do not do that very often. They do not do it 
nearly enough, frankly. So there will be a good reason for sure if they 
place a detainer on them, and to ignore that is really stunning.
  So sanctuary jurisdictions such as Cook County, IL, undermine the 
ability of law enforcement personnel to enforce the laws that are on 
the books now and represent a threat to our security. These 
jurisdictions cannot choose if and when they will turn over illegal 
aliens charged with a crime and wanted by ICE.
  So if we are going to talk about who is and who is not above the law, 
I suggest that my good friend--and we have worked together on a number 
of things, some of them criminal justice issues--the Senator from 
Illinois needs to clean up his own backyard rather than casting 
unfounded criticisms on States that are taking up a valuable effort to 
see that our immigration laws actually are enforced, to help end the 
lawlessness that has caused so much disruption in our country and upset 
the American people.
  The American people are not anti-immigrant. We are a nation of 
immigrants. The American people are not opposed to people being able to 
come to our country. The American people do not dislike people who are 
here. Their anger is basically addressed to those of us in authority 
who are failing to maintain a lawful system of immigration, one that we 
can be proud of, one that is consistently enforced throughout the 
country. I believe that is what we should be striving for in our 
Nation, and if somebody wants to change the law and allow more people 
to come or fewer people to come, let's vote on it and have it right 
here on the floor of the Senate, and maybe we can have some changes.
  But, fundamentally, it is the duty of Homeland Security, it is the 
duty of the Department of Justice to enforce the laws as they exist. 
They do not get to make the laws and enforce them. It is the duty and 
responsibility of Cook County to participate with the Federal 
Government in fulfilling its basic duties, such as honoring detainment. 
When you do not have that, we have a real problem in our country.
  So I would suggest that the Attorney General take a little timeout 
from his lawsuit against Arizona or Alabama or other States and focus a 
little bit of his attention on a major jurisdiction such as Cook County 
that is willfully and deliberately acting to undermine Federal law 
enforcement.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the bill 
before the Senate--the Rebuild America Jobs Act. The Rebuild America 
Jobs Act contains a variation of a bill that I cosponsored with Senator 
Kerry--we call it the BUILD Act. It is the Building and Upgrading 
Infrastructure for Long-Term Development Act, and so we call it BUILD. 
But the changes that have been made in the bill that is before us today 
are untenable, and I cannot support it.
  Last March, I introduced the bipartisan BUILD Act along with Senators 
Kerry, Warner, and Graham. It puts forward a method of addressing our 
infrastructure needs that I think is the right way forward. The need 
and demand for greater infrastructure investment is unprecedented. The 
American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that a $2.2 trillion 
investment is needed over the next 5 years to restore our 
infrastructure to an adequate condition. Ignoring these needs hampers 
our economic growth, impedes the flow of inter- and intrastate 
commerce, and slows the development and distribution of domestic energy 
production. We should consider new, innovative ways of financing our 
infrastructure. Traditional government mechanisms alone cannot keep 
pace with our national demand.
  Our legislation--Senator Kerry's and mine--creates the American 
Infrastructure Financing Authority. This would be an independent 
authority designed to facilitate private investment in critical 
infrastructure projects. It is designed like a bank, providing loans or 
loan guarantees for regionally or nationally significant projects in 
transportation, energy and water sectors.

[[Page 16539]]

  Let me emphasize that this will not provide grants. Grants will not 
be given. They will not be allowed. Nationally significant projects or 
regional projects would be at least $100 million. There is a $25 
million category for rural areas, but we are not looking at a stimulus 
where we go in and provide financing for small projects. This is for 
dams, for desalination plants, or for an electric grid that isn't 
working and causing brownouts in major areas.
  We are talking about big dollars that are not easily raised in the 
government sector or the private sector alone because it doesn't make 
economic sense, unless we put the loans and the loan guarantees 
together. There is a prohibition against spending more than 50 percent 
of the project cost, and the other 50 percent has to have come from 
another source--a private source or a State or local government source.
  In addition, there has to be a revenue stream that will have the 
ability to pay this loan back. We want the loans paid back so that more 
infrastructure can be built. So we are talking about a revenue stream 
from, say, water bills, if it is a water desalination plant that is 
going to provide water for economic development, or if it is a dam that 
is going to provide electricity, we have electric bills. But we have to 
have a revenue source. So we have narrowed our legislation so that it 
will have the ability to pay back the loan. It is going to be something 
that can work.
  In its first 10 years, it is estimated that our BUILD Act would 
provide $160 billion in financial assistance for major projects like 
this. So if it would be highways or bridges, there would be a toll that 
would be necessary for the transportation--something that would have a 
revenue stream to pay these back but allow them to be built because the 
private sector is sitting on the sidelines right now.
  The bank would not replace our existing Federal funding mechanism, 
but it would supplement them for the large projects that have a major 
public benefit. The bank administering this fund would apply sound 
underwriting principles to assess the risk of a loan or loan guarantee.
  The BUILD Act would require an initial appropriation. Senator Kerry 
and I have committed to identifying a reasonable offset. Additional 
deficit spending has never been an option for the BUILD Act. So it 
would be $10 billion that would be taken from a program today and put 
into this long-term bank so we can match loans and loan guarantees with 
private funds or State or local funds and do big things, not little 
things, except in rural areas where there is a $25 million threshold. 
It is going to be $100 million or more, and no more than 50 percent of 
it can be from this program.
  I appreciate the fact the bill before us incorporates some elements 
of the BUILD Act and seeks to correct some of the flaws in the previous 
infrastructure bank proposals that have been put forward by the 
administration. However, I think the differences between our BUILD Act 
and the legislation brought forward by the majority leader take away 
the bipartisan appeal of the bill.
  Let me also say there is in this legislation--in addition to the $10 
billion in the long-term plan Senator Kerry and I introduced--a $50 
billion stimulus package, which is why I couldn't possibly support this 
bill. It is another $50 billion stimulus package. I appreciate the need 
for investment--obviously, that is why I support the BUILD Act--but $50 
billion in the bill in addition to the $10 billion bank is more of the 
same type of stimulus that has not worked. It is more debt. Well, I 
guess it isn't more debt because they pay for it with a tax, which is 
even worse. The bill before us has the $50 billion added to it, and it 
is paid for with a surtax on people who are making more than $1 million 
a year, and mostly from their businesses. That is why I can't support 
it. It proposes a permanent tax increase to pay for a temporary 
spending program. That is bad policy in itself.
  Raising taxes on incomes that would harm business owners and job 
creators is part of the reason people aren't hiring today. The 
President keeps talking about more taxes on business. On top of the 
Obama health care plan, it is causing businesses not to hire people, 
and we have a 9-percent unemployment rate in this country.
  So I think it is important we defeat the bill before us and try to 
come up with something that is more akin to the BUILD Act that Senator 
Kerry and I have put forward. Data from an August 2011 Treasury report 
says four out of five people who would be hit by the surtax are 
business owners--the same people we need to encourage to create jobs.
  I think it is going to be essential, if we are going to try to create 
jobs in our country, that we stop talking about surtaxes on businesses. 
We have to stop talking about more costs, and we have to stop the 
overregulation. We have overregulation, the talk of more taxes, and we 
have the Obama health care plan that is going to have fines and taxes 
that are coming after the next election when that all comes together. 
Businesspeople are seeing this and saying: I am going to hold where I 
am now instead of hiring people and getting our economy jump-started.
  So I think job creation should be the key of anything we do in this 
Congress. It should be our focus. It should be the priority, and that 
means we should have conditions in the private sector that will create 
job growth. The bill before us today is simply another $50 billion 
stimulus plan that we have already seen doesn't work, and it is paid 
for with a new tax that is going to further stifle business hiring.
  Now more than ever we must focus our efforts in this Congress on 
commonsense measures that will jump-start the economy and make our 
businesspeople think it is worth hiring. Then we will have a surge in 
the private sector, which is the sector that can create jobs that will 
last.
  So I am not going to be able to vote for the bill before us, but I 
would like to urge my colleagues to look at the Kerry-Hutchison bill 
that offers a long term approach. It is not going to be immediate 
because it would take up to a year to set up this bill. But we 
shouldn't be just talking about today. We shouldn't just be talking 
about something that will jump-start the economy between now and the 
end of the year. We should also be looking at the long term as well. We 
should be looking at the long term fiscal situation and how we assure 
that not only are we trying to jump-start right now but that we are 
looking forward to the future. That is what a true BUILD Act would do. 
That is what an infrastructure bank that is put in place with solid 
principles would do.
  The Kerry-Hutchison bill is such a bill. The bill that is before us 
is not.
  I hope we will be able to have a chance for our bill to go through 
the Finance Committee and to get suggestions from our colleagues on 
ways to strengthen it. But the bill before us today would hurt our 
economy, hurt job creation, and that is not the direction we should be 
going.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennet). The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I just left a meeting with President Obama 
at the White House, and we discussed the jobs bill that is pending 
before the Senate. It is a bill which the President put together and 
presented to Congress almost 2 months ago. He invited the Republicans 
at that time to come forward with their ideas, and hoped that we could 
come up with a bipartisan approach to dealing with the 9-percent-plus 
unemployment in our country and the 14 million people out of work, not 
to mention another 10 million who are underemployed and could do better 
with a better job.
  We had a briefing this morning from an economist from labor and 
business

[[Page 16540]]

who talked about some of the realities facing America today, and they 
are daunting: that one out of five men in this country is out of work; 
that we have seen, since 1969, a 28-percent decline in the purchasing 
power of working families in America; that we are seeing growth rates 
which are at least anemic and maybe even worse in terms of the future 
of our economy.
  There are those who are criticizing the President and saying his 
approach is all wrong. But what those who criticize him offer is 
nothing. Nothing. There is no Republican plan for creating jobs in this 
country. It is a litany of complaints that they have had about the 
Federal Government for decades. For example, they argue there are too 
many rules and regulations, and that is what is impeding job growth.
  I spent 2 straight weeks going across Illinois visiting businesses, 
large and small, that have done well in this recession. Not a single 
one has raised that issue. None. I don't think that is a real issue. It 
is an issue that we should be concerned about when it comes to job 
creation. It is not an issue for causation.
  Secondly, the Republican approach has been, and consistently so, that 
the most important thing they can do is to protect the income taxes 
paid by the wealthiest people in America. That is not why I was sent to 
Congress. I believe my responsibility is to look to the common good and 
beyond the wealthiest in this country, particularly to help working 
families who are struggling so much.
  The bill that will come up tomorrow will give the Republicans a 
chance to join us again in part of the jobs bill which they used to 
support. Some of the elements of that bill are pretty straightforward: 
$60 billion that will be spent on infrastructure, $50 billion for 
transportation funding, and another $10 billion for the infrastructure 
bank. Of that, $27 billion is for highways across America. I will take 
a big chunk of that in Illinois, and I will bet you will in Colorado. 
There is plenty to be done out there to alleviate congestion, to make 
the roads safer. There is another $9 billion for mass transit. We need 
it desperately. Mass transit, of course, keeps people off the highways, 
moves them back and forth to work in a most economical way. Our mass 
transit systems in Illinois and most places could use a shot in the arm 
with an investment for safety and for reliability. There is $4 billion 
for high-speed inner city passenger rail corridors. That is working in 
Illinois, proof positive, almost $1 billion in our State. We got the 
money, incidentally, that the Republican Governor of Wisconsin said he 
didn't want. We said we will take it in Illinois and the people in 
Wisconsin can wave as the train goes by. We are going to put that money 
into better rail beds, faster service, more reliability.
  We broke all records in Amtrak passenger volume a few weeks ago, 30 
million passengers, the most ever in any 1 year in Amtrak history. 
Eighty-two percent of passengers say they are satisfied with the good 
service of Amtrak. It is an enterprise that has a lot of support in 
America, and we want it to grow. Unfortunately, the other side has come 
out against it many times. So the President has put $2 billion directly 
into Amtrak. They can use it for new trains, new locomotives, and 
passenger cars built in America. How about that? Good-paying jobs in 
our country. There is $3 billion for TIGER and TIFIA grant loan 
assistance, $2 billion for FAA improvement grants, $1 billion for FAA 
NextGen air traffic control. And for the record, those of us who fly on 
airplanes every week think this is long overdue. The air traffic 
control system in America is based on science that is decades old and 
goes back to World War II, and it is time to move beyond it. And we 
can, but we need to invest to make sure that happens. Then there is $10 
billion for the national infrastructure bank. That is absolutely 
critical for us so that we can continue to grow and continue to build.
  When I look at this, what it translates into is pretty amazing. It 
would put people to work upgrading 150,000 miles of road in America, 
laying or maintaining 4,000 miles of train tracks, restoring 150 miles 
of runways at airports, and putting in place a NextGeneration air 
traffic control system to reduce time delays and add safety. The plan 
includes $27 billion for roads and bridges, $9 billion, as I mentioned, 
for transit systems, and money for a competitive grant program, $5 
billion, $4 billion for construction of high-speed rail. It is no 
wonder this has been supported not only by the labor unions--they want 
to put people back to work--but by businesses all across America that 
have an interest in highway construction.
  The national infrastructure bank, of $10 billion, will leverage 
private and public capital to fund a broad range of infrastructure 
projects. The bank would be based on a bill introduced by Senators John 
Kerry and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, which has been endorsed by the 
U.S. Chamber of Commerce. So if you think these are all Democratic 
ideas with no business support, one of the central elements here, the 
infrastructure bank, has the support of the Chamber of Commerce. It 
builds on legislation offered by Senators Rockefeller and Lautenberg, 
and long-time bank champion Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro.
  How do we pay for this? I think that is where the conversation starts 
falling apart on the floor of the Senate. We pay for it and don't add 
to the deficit by adding a new income tax surtax on those making over 
$1 million a year. Listen carefully. Those making over $1 million a 
year. So you have to already be making $20,000 a week before you pay 
the first penny in new taxes, and the tax just applies to the 
additional money over $1 million, and it is 0.7 percent.
  I want to apologize, for the record. I think I misstated this earlier 
when I said that for the first $100 of new income over $1 million, that 
those who were millionaires would pay 7 cents more in taxes. I 
misstated it. I missed it by a factor of 10. It turns out to be 70 
cents instead of 7 cents. So the burden is 10 times what I suggested.
  For every $100 a millionaire earns over $1 million, under this bill 
to put America to work, they would have to pay 70 cents. The 
Republicans have said, ``Unacceptable.'' It is unconscionable that we 
would tax what they call the job creators.
  We did a survey, incidentally, and found out that 1 percent of small 
business owners make $1 million or more--1 percent. For 99 percent of 
small business owners this is no tax increase, so it is not hurting job 
creators. It is creating jobs and that is what we need to do, and I 
cannot believe we are going to see this fail tomorrow again because we 
do not want millionaires to pay 70 cents out of every $100 more they 
make beyond $1 million, 70 cents in taxes. I think it is worth a lot 
more than 70 cents to get America back to work, and I think the sooner 
we do it, the better.
  The Congressional Budget Office released a report that highlights the 
trend in household income between 1979 and 2007. As I mentioned 
earlier, American families, working families, have fallen further and 
further behind. The data showed that the top 1 percent of earners saw a 
dramatic increase in their share of household income. The remaining 99 
percent were relatively unchanged.
  The share of aftertax household income for the top 1 percent of the 
population more than doubled, climbing to 17 percent in 2007 from 8 
percent in 1979. For the top 1 percent of household earners, the 
highest earners in America, average real aftertax household income grew 
by 275 percent between 1979 and 2000.
  What happen to the others? The top quintiles were receiving 53 
percent of aftertax household income in 2007, up from 43 percent in 
1979. People in the lowest fifth of the population received about 5 
percent of aftertax household income--that is 20 percent of the people 
receiving about 5 percent of aftertax household income in 2007, going 
down from 7 percent in 1979.
  People in the middle? Three-fifths of the population saw their share 
of aftertax income decline by 2 to 3 percent in those years, 1979 to 
2007.
  If you wonder why people are sitting in tents in these ``occupy'' 
areas and why there is a rage across America, it has a lot to do with 
this. People are

[[Page 16541]]

working hard, playing by the rules, and falling further and further 
behind. They are looking up at the top and saying, I don't understand 
this. Why is it that the bank CEOs are getting multimillion dollar 
bonuses and the management of my company is getting a dramatic 
increase, while they tell us we are the most productive workers in the 
world? It is understandable they want a fair shake, and it starts with 
putting people to work.
  With 14 million people out of work today, getting them jobs where 
they can start paying taxes instead of drawing benefits is something 
they want and we should want. It is worth saying to the wealthiest in 
America, pay your fair share; maybe a little bit more than you did 
today. If it makes America a stronger nation and the economy stronger, 
my guess is those folks making over $1 million a year will prosper too. 
That has been the story of America. I am sure that story will be 
repeated.
  The question tomorrow is whether there will be a single Republican 
vote to support us. I am not certain. I have to think back. I do not 
believe we have had one Republican vote supporting the President's jobs 
bill so far, any aspect of it. We are going to keep trying, and the 
American people expect us to.
  The President spoke today at Key Bridge, right here between 
Arlington, VA, and DC, a bridge right near where I went to college and 
crossed hundreds of times. It is a bridge that needs some work and he 
was making that point, let's put Americans to work right there, 
creating good American jobs with this jobs bill. The President made a 
point of noting that while we are talking about passing a jobs bill in 
the Senate, the House of Representatives is talking about commemorative 
coins and reaffirming our belief in the phrase ``In God we trust.'' The 
President said in the speech there is no doubt in his mind that people 
do trust in God, they just don't trust in the House of Representatives 
to get the job done here, to pass a jobs bill that will get people back 
to work.
  That is the challenge we face. That is the challenge America faces, 
and a bipartisan solution will serve the Nation well.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. President, I come to the floor tonight to 
discuss an issue I have addressed many times in this Chamber over the 
course of the past few years, and that is the urgent need for this 
Congress to come together to pass policies that will spur job creation 
in our country. I know the Presiding Officer, my colleague from 
Colorado, has done so in powerful ways himself. I want to talk 
specifically about the Rebuild America Jobs Act, legislation that is 
pending as I stand here and as you sit here for Senate debate.
  We both know that the Rebuild America Jobs Act is one component of 
President Obama's comprehensive job creation package which he and the 
American people have been urging us in this Congress to pass. But my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the Republicans, have 
uniformly filibustered the President's comprehensive job creation 
package, so we are now attempting to debate the package in smaller 
legislative pieces. This week we are attempting to begin debate on the 
Rebuild America Jobs Act, which would put hundreds of thousands of 
Americans back to work rebuilding our crumbling bridges, our roads, and 
our airports. It is an important bill. It is worthy of this Chamber's 
debate consideration. It should not be subject to another filibuster 
that leaves the American people wondering why the heck we cannot 
charter a path forward that would help create jobs and build our 
economy.
  Before I specifically address what is in the Rebuild America Jobs 
Act, I thought it would be informative to briefly talk about how our 
economy got in the rough place it is in today. We are 3 years removed 
from a near global economic meltdown. If you think about it, in the 
final year of the Bush administration we lost nearly 4.5 million jobs. 
That is very significant. Our economy was bleeding over 800,000 jobs a 
month when President Obama was sworn in. Credit markets were frozen, 
job losses mounted, and there was real concern that we as a nation 
risked slipping into another Great Depression. The Presiding Officer 
remembers all too well, as we all do, the concerns and the dynamics 
that were present at that point.
  Fortunately, President Obama took a leadership role and the Congress 
worked with him to take steps to avert a catastrophe. But we are left 
with an enormous hole we are trying to climb out of. Beginning in 2009, 
we slowed the economic free fall that we passed and we put an end to 
the great recession--at least on paper. The Presiding Officer knows 
that. But, as typical of any recession, let alone the great recession, 
job growth has trailed economic growth.
  Under the President's leadership, in the last year and a half, the 
economy has added nearly 2 million jobs. We are nearly halfway 
restoring the jobs lost under the Bush recession. Yet with unemployment 
standing at 9.1 percent nationwide, we still have a long way to go.
  As I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, in order to speed up 
economic recovery and bring down this stubborn unemployment rate, the 
President presented to us a few months ago an ambitious job creation 
package called the American Jobs Act. The bill, which consisted of 
bipartisan proposals, as we well know, proposals that both parties had 
supported time and time again, ran into a wall of uncooperative 
partisanship in this Chamber and was grounded by a Republican 
filibuster.
  Mr. President, you and I both adhere to the concept of 
bipartisanship, working with the other party, but this kind of 
obstructionism has become way too common in the modern Senate and it 
truly is getting in the way of our capacity, our desire to create jobs. 
I say that in a plain and simple way. It has put in jeopardy our 
future, frankly. We have to win a global economic race. We have traded 
the burden of governing--I should say also the responsibility of 
governing and legislating--for seemingly a set of ideological positions 
and gamesmanship, and you know and I know Coloradoans are flat out 
tired of it. They want their elected leaders to lead, to work across 
the aisle and produce some results that will help working Americans, 
will help small businesses.
  I could not agree more with our citizens at home. I have to say that 
I think impartial observers would say with regularity, tea party 
interests in the Congress have taken our economy, have walked our 
economy, driven our economy to the edge of a cliff with the repeated 
threats of a government shutdown. If I could use the words of my 
colleague from Colorado: Can you imagine a city government leader 
allowing Denver, for example, to forfeit and default on its financial 
obligations? It would not happen. It feels as though we are creating in 
this Congress crises out of thin air, to rattle our economic markets.
  You do not have to look back to August, to those dark days when the 
debate over the debt ceiling and then threat of default was an economic 
crisis completely of this element's own making. Then what followed? 
What was predicted to follow: Our credit was downgraded and it had 
economic effects.
  I have been meeting with businesspeople this week who can give you 
example after example. I was a businessman in the private sector. My 
colleague from Colorado was. We know the Federal Government can only do 
so much to grow jobs and positively affect the economy. But when you 
have self-inflicted wounds, such as those that were produced in August, 
you are going to stifle recovery and you are going to create real 
business uncertainty in the private sector.

[[Page 16542]]

  If we were serious about economic recovery, we would stop taking the 
Federal budget to the brink of disaster at every opportunity. I know 
there are people in this town who want to score points, but hard-
working Americans, hard-working Coloradoans, and our businesses 
ultimately pay the price for this kind of increased uncertainty. If we 
were serious about providing businesses, particularly small businesses, 
with the capital they need, we would look for opportunities to do so.
  One of the ways I believe the Senate could help would be to consider 
and pass a bipartisan piece of legislation that I have introduced now 
in a series of Congresses that will double the amount of loans credit 
unions can offer to small businesses.
  This would literally help tens of thousands of Americans. It would 
allow businesspeople to create jobs for hundreds of thousands of 
Americans and there would be no cost to the American taxpayer. This is 
a form of lifting a regulation. Credit unions are overly regulated and 
this simple change in the policy that applies to their access to the 
small business sector would make a difference.
  Instead--and this pains me to say--what I hear from the other side of 
the aisle, what my Republican colleagues offer are proposals that rely 
almost entirely on attacking the administration or suggesting that we 
implement the failed policies that got us into this situation in the 
past. This is one area where the commonsense rules that protect our 
consumers and preserve our clean air and our clean water are designated 
as the problem. There is, frankly, scant evidence to support their 
regulatory boogeymen. They offer no hard evidence of these claims. I am 
convinced the constant drumbeat about regulations is more harmful to 
our country's job creation potential than the alleged effect of the 
regulations themselves.
  In fact, a recent Bloomberg study noted that this administration has 
issued 5 percent fewer regulations than the Bush administration at the 
same juncture. Economic data shows that these regulations have a minor 
effect, if at all, on the economy. I have in hand studies that show the 
right kinds of regulations, particularly when it comes to protecting 
the public's health, that actually can create jobs. The Assistant 
Secretary of Economic Policy at the Department of the Treasury recently 
wrote: ``None of these data support the claim that regulatory 
uncertainty is holding back hiring.''
  On the contrary, she found that a lack of demand in the market and 
global financial and economic conditions are the primary culprits for 
our slow recovery.
  This jives with what we hear generally from business leaders who, by 
large margins, point to a lack of demand and uncertainty in the 
marketplace as the primary barriers to their businesses, not Federal 
regulation. What feeds this uncertainty and lack of demand is the 
constant political threats to send our economy off a cliff and the 
constant scare campaign that tells Americans to fear the Obama 
administration.
  I am not unsympathetic to the plight of the regulated sectors of our 
economy. President Obama said it well. He said: ``We should have no 
more regulation than the health, safety, and security of the American 
people require,'' and we should make compliance with the ones we do 
have as easy as possible. I don't want to overstate this, but that is 
why I have taken steps to eliminate unnecessary Federal redtape, such 
as easing the cap on how much credit unions can loan to small 
businesses. But to constantly spread fear about our Government's work 
to provide oversight and protect clean air and clean water is a further 
uncertainty and worsen the lack of demand we see in the economy.
  To break through this nonsense--and I don't use this word lightly--
this ``nonsense'' about the effect regulations are having, President 
Obama has offered a real path forward based on sound economics and 
bipartisan ideas. The Rebuild America Jobs Act was introduced 
yesterday. As I said, it is a part of the President's overall 
comprehensive approach. I hope we can move to debate this important 
infrastructure bill.
  We are going to have a vote tomorrow morning, I believe, that would 
allow the Senate to move to actually debating the bill, and it would 
significantly and immediately boost job creation across the country. We 
would be able to ensure that we keep our roads and our bridges and 
other infrastructure safe, while investing in new projects that will 
stimulate businesses to invest and begin to create new, good-paying, 
American-based jobs, the type of jobs that cannot be shipped overseas. 
The American people, without question, overwhelmingly support the ideas 
in this projobs bill. It is all about investing in the future of hard-
working Americans and making sure they have the tools to achieve the 
American dream.
  In Colorado alone, the investments for highway and transit projects 
in the bill are estimated to support the creation of at least 6,400 
local jobs. We would accept those jobs in a minute. We know those 
people. We know the construction sector is one of the ones languishing 
in our State. These are trained, committed Coloradans who are dying to 
improve our State, to improve our infrastructure, to improve our 
economy. Why is that important beyond our State or beyond our country? 
We cannot compete if we do not have the infrastructure that allows 
commercial activity to thrive. That has been one of our competitive 
advantages for decades. Our competitors are not sitting back and 
waiting for us. They are investing in their infrastructure now. We 
don't have to go any further than China, India, Africa, South America. 
Those countries and continents are investing in their infrastructure.
  What was heartening is that recently we have seen a great coalition, 
one that maybe we could mirror in the Congress, to support the 
President's proposal. That is the AFL-CIO, the leading labor 
organization in the United States that speaks for all the various 
unions across our country, allied with business interests such as the 
U.S. Chamber of Commerce. These are diverse interests. They are often 
at loggerheads. They have come together to urge us to pass such a 
measure that would build America.
  The bill will not solve all our infrastructure challenges. It will 
not respond to every infrastructure opportunity we have. For example, 
we ought to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration. That is 
another less-than-valiant effort we made this year. As the Presiding 
Officer knows, we left in August with the FAA not funded and that cost 
us some economic growth. It put people out of work. Even for a week or 
two, that was too much time to be out of work. We ought to fully 
reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration and in the process 
upgrade our national system of air travel.
  I served in the House. I worked on the NextGen concept, which would 
upgrade the way in which we direct airplanes to travel across our 
country using satellite technology. Now we use radar technology. That 
is a 20th century technology. We need a 21st century technology. So 
let's pass a full authorization of the Federal Aviation Administration. 
We ought to pass a robust highway bill. For too long we have not had 
the full funding and full direction on a robust highway bill. I wish to 
applaud the bipartisan work that has gone into that. Senators Boxer, 
Inhofe, and Vitter have taken the first steps on a bipartisan proposal 
to do just that.
  I note that many of my Republican colleagues object to the Rebuild 
America Jobs Act on the grounds that we would pay for it with 
additional revenue from those who make annually more than $1 million. I 
wish to point out that the American people disagree with them. Polls 
show close to 70 percent of Americans support offsetting the costs of 
the bill--because we are going to pay for this. We heard that message 
loudly and clearly; that those who make over $1 million a year could 
help shoulder more of the burden. I know I talked to people who have 
done quite well at home in Colorado who are willing to make that kind 
of investment if they see the return on the investment. The American 
people are

[[Page 16543]]

ahead of us on this. They know it is a matter of simple fairness.
  If I were in an ideal world--therefore, I am running the show--I 
would make some changes to the bill to address our broader 
infrastructure challenges. I would fold in the FAA; I would fold in the 
highway bill I mentioned. But let's take the first modest step. Let's 
open the floor of the Senate to debate on the Rebuild America Jobs Act 
just like the American Jobs Act more generally. We could discuss how to 
pay for it and what are the best mechanisms. Perhaps there is another 
way to pay for it, but let's begin the process.
  I wish to close by focusing on our home State of Colorado. I return 
home, as the Chair does, almost every weekend and take the time to hear 
out my fellow citizens and those who hired me to represent them in the 
Senate. They will briefly complain about our inability to get things 
done, as we know, even the simplest things it seems like this year. I 
know my colleagues have similar experiences. But they quickly move to 
what they are doing at home and how they are making their lives better. 
I get energized by their commitment to working in their own 
communities. The other thing I don't hear much at home is a litmus test 
as to what political party we are a member of or what their concerns 
are about who is up for reelection next year. They come together all 
across our State, in Alamosa and Durango and Grand Junction, Sterling, 
and the list goes on and on of communities that come together. That 
isn't to say there isn't disagreement or that the solution comes easy, 
but they don't deal in the kind of partisan bickering that has become 
so common here.
  I know the Presiding Officer feels that sense of possibility at home. 
So let's match that sense of possibility. Let's match their energy. We 
can take some heart from the fact that our economy is beginning to show 
some signs of improvement.
  The Department of Commerce report showed a 2.5-percent growth in 
Gross Domestic Product. That is welcomed news and signals that we are 
slowly making progress. I want to underline unemployment remains 
stubbornly, maddeningly high at 9.1 percent. We must do better. I hope 
we can start by a minimum voting tomorrow to at least debate the 
Rebuild America Jobs Act.
  Let's end the filibusters, particularly when it comes to starting a 
debate. Literally, we are not even going to debate this bill. If we 
were to open the debate tomorrow, in a few days' time, we would have to 
have an additional cloture vote to end debate on the vote itself. If 
the minority and my Republican colleagues don't want to move to end 
debate, they certainly have that option at that time.
  Let's keep faith with the description of the Senate, which was one of 
my motivations for wanting to represent Coloradans here, which is the 
most deliberative legislative body in the world. If we are the Chamber 
that many look to for debate, for time spent to understand the best 
policies for the country, let's keep faith with that. Let's keep faith 
with our obligations as Senators. So the time for filibusters is over. 
Let's go to work on behalf of the American people.
  I remain optimistic. I think we can bring forth creativity and a 
sense of cooperation. That is what we see at home. That is what happens 
in Colorado. That is what happens in all the States that are 
represented here. That is the American way. Let's bring the American 
way to the Senate and put Americans back to work.
  I thank the Chair for his patience, his interest, his partnership, 
his service to the State of Colorado and the United States itself.
  I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that on Thursday, 
November 3, 2011, when the Senate resumes consideration of the motion 
to proceed to S. 1769, the Rebuild America Jobs Act, it be in order for 
the Republican leader or his designee to move to proceed to S. 1786; 
that the motions to proceed be debated concurrently, with the time 
until 3 p.m. equally divided between the two leaders or their designees 
prior to votes on the motions to proceed in the following order: Reid 
motion to proceed to S. 1769 and McConnell or designee motion to 
proceed to S. 1786; that the motions to proceed each be subject to a 
60-affirmative-vote threshold; that if the Reid motion to proceed is 
agreed to, the vote on the McConnell or designee motion to proceed be 
delayed until disposition of S. 1769; finally, that the cloture motion 
with respect to the motion to proceed to S. 1769 be vitiated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________