[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[SE]
[Pages 16594-16613]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              REBUILD AMERICA JOBS ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED

                                 ______
                                 

   LONG-TERM SURFACE TRANSPORTATION EXTENSION ACT OF 2011--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 legislative 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. Under the previous order, the time 
until 3 p.m. will be equally divided and controlled between the two 
leaders or their designees.
  The motion to proceed to S. 1786 is also the matter before the 
Senate.
  The Senator from Utah is recognized.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, while I have been interested in the 
comments between the two leaders, I have to agree with the Republican 
leader that this is an exercise, in many ways, in futility because the 
bill brought forth by the other side has very little chance of passing 
through both Houses of Congress because it is a partisan bill.
  Let me just mention a few things this morning. While growth remains 
sluggish in our economy, unemployment high, and job growth insufficient 
to drive unemployment lower, the number of pages in the Federal 
Register is at an all-time high. Pages devoted to final rules rose by 
20 percent between 2009 and 2010, and proposed rules have also risen by 
close to 20 percent to 2,439 in 2010.
  Of the 4,257 regulatory actions already in the pipeline, 219 are 
considered economically significant, meaning they are estimated to 
impose a cost of $100 million or more on the economy. By comparison, 
that is 28 more than this time last year and 47 percent more than in 
2009. In total, the Obama administration has imposed 75 new major 
regulations costing over $38 billion annually. And we wonder why our 
country is in such trouble.
  The minutes of the late September meeting of the Federal Reserve 
monetary policymaking committee reveal that in talking to businesses 
and market participants, many contacts have ``cited uncertainty about 
regulatory and tax policies as contributing to businesses' reluctance 
to spend.''
  If businesses are not spending because of regulatory uncertainty, 
then their customers will see lack of demand for their products. The 
lack of demand explanation for economic sluggishness offered by the 
administration and its Keynesian advisers begs the question of why 
there is a lack of demand. While there are likely several reasons, the 
Fed clearly identifies one

[[Page 16595]]

of them: Uncertainty about regulatory policies.
  Indeed, uncertainty regarding future regulatory policies as a 
contributing factor for business reluctance to hire and invest has been 
cited in minutes of the past three policymaking meetings of the Fed's 
monetary policymaking committee. Those identifying that such 
uncertainty is impeding job creation are American businesses and not 
government bureaucrats insulated from the front lines of businesses and 
not their Keynesian advisers. They are the boots on the ground in the 
American economy--the very people who create jobs--most of whom are 
small businesspeople.
  The legislation I have introduced seeks in part to ease the burden of 
Federal regulations on businesses, including smaller and younger 
businesses--where vibrancy is critical for job creation--and to provide 
a rational regulatory decisionmaking process to provide greater 
certainty to businesses about the future regulatory environment.
  Provisions in this act represent ideas that have garnered bipartisan 
support. Indeed, many of the provisions follow directly from the 
President's own jobs council. The President's Council on Jobs and 
Competitiveness, according to the council, ``was created to provide 
nonpartisan advice.''
  I am talking about the bill we have filed on this side.
  The jobs council presented recommendations to President Obama on 
October 11, 2011, in Pittsburgh, PA. Those recommendations stem from 
the council's interim report titled ``Taking Action, Building 
Confidence: Five Common-Sense Initiatives to Boost Jobs and 
Competitiveness.'' Many of the provisions in my act stem directly from 
recommendations in the council's report and from the report's call for 
a more rational Federal regulatory system.
  Allow me to offer some quotes and comments related to the President's 
jobs council's interim report recommendations in the context of this 
act.
  First, the President's job council says:

       The nation's complex federal, state, and local permitting 
     system can lead to unnecessary delays. In fact, large 
     Department of Transportation projects can spend years getting 
     the required Environmental Impact Statement process completed 
     under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

  I agree. This legislation--my legislation--promotes more efficient 
regulation to rein in some of the burdensome Federal redtape that 
stymies transportation infrastructure projects and job creation. At the 
same time, it fully recognizes environmental and safety concerns 
surrounding those projects. Relative to those concerns, the President's 
jobs council remarks that ``what's gotten less attention, however, is 
the number of jobs at stake.''
  Second, the President's jobs council says:

       Current markets face significant uncertainty--tax policy, 
     pollution restrictions, and performance standards are all in 
     flux.

  I agree. This side's legislation serves to reduce some of that 
uncertainty and promote rational regulatory decisionmaking with 
congressional review of rules and regulations that are of major 
economic significance and required approval of the very rules that 
would impose major costs on the U.S. economy and job creators.
  Third, the President's jobs council states:

       There is broad consensus that a key step towards jump-
     starting economic growth would be removing regulatory 
     barriers and simplifying overly complex government processes. 
     Their inefficiencies cost businesses time and money.

  I agree. This legislation seeks, through rational regulatory 
decisionmaking and reviews, to remove unnecessary and costly regulatory 
barriers and provide simpler, more rational government regulatory 
processes.
  Fourth, the President's jobs council--this is referring to Executive 
orders to review regulations--says:

       Unfortunately, the Executive Orders mandating regulatory 
     analysis and review did not apply to IRCs [independent 
     regulatory commissions] such as the Securities and Exchange 
     Commission or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission 
     because the law won't allow it. While some IRCs employ 
     economic analysis when crafting new regulations, many do not 
     routinely do so. As an example, in 2010, IRCs issued 17 
     economically significant regulatory reactions--16 of which 
     were promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission 
     and the Federal Reserve System. None underwent the 
     comprehensive regulatory impact analysis or included the 
     cost-benefit analysis that is expected from executive branch 
     agencies. The Council therefore recommends that legislation 
     be passed that requires that IRCs conduct cost-benefit 
     analysis for all ``economically significant'' regulatory 
     actions that may have an annual impact on the economy of $100 
     million or more as well as any significant guidance that 
     meets the same threshold.

  I agree. This legislation we have filed on this side will provide 
congressional oversight on any such performed by IRCs such as the 
Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve, the Commodity 
Futures Trading Commission, and other Federal regulators for 
economically significant actions.
  Fifth, the President's jobs council says of its recommendations for 
economically significant regulatory actions:

       These recommendations are not designed to weaken regulation 
     or regulatory agencies, but rather to improve the rulemaking 
     process, and to create more effective and less burdensome 
     regulations that will promote economic growth and job 
     recovery.

  I agree. The Republican legislation promotes a rational regulatory 
system with improved rulemaking oversight to create more effective and 
less burdensome regulations in order to help promote jobs growth.
  I also agree with the spirit of the jobs council remarks that efforts 
such as this legislation, far from ``gutting regulations and 
threatening safety,'' will promote economic efficiency and renewed job 
creation. The call for rational regulation and rulemaking is in no way 
a gutting of regulations or a sacrifice of public safety or of 
environmental quality efforts. We all know that rules and regulations 
are quite likely to continue to grow and evolve. This legislation seeks 
only to put rational decisionmaking into the foundation of our 
regulatory and rulemaking processes that are too often driven by 
special interests of largely unaccountable and fully unelected Federal 
regulatory bureaucrats wishing to impose their preferences on America's 
job creators.
  Proponents of the so-called infrastructure bank have actively cited 
in recent advocacy speeches findings from Global Competitiveness 
Reports of the World Economic Forum. Well, if ratings from the World 
Economic Forum guide their views and guide them to advocate hundreds of 
billions of dollars from taxpayer resources for a risky new GSE that 
they call an infrastructure bank, let's look at what the forum has to 
say regarding the United States.
  First, in their recent Global Competitiveness Report, in what are 
called ``the most problematic factors for doing business'' in America, 
the top 4 factors out of 15 are tax rates, No. 1; inefficient 
government bureaucracy, No. 2; access to financing, No. 3; and tax 
regulations, No. 4. Inadequate supply of infrastructure rates No. 10, 
right below policy instability and restrictive labor regulations.
  There you have it. The Global Competitiveness Report the 
administration and my friends on the other side of the aisle use to 
advocate a risky new infrastructure bank places taxes and inefficient 
government bureaucracy as the top two leading problems in doing 
business in America. Those are the top two factors that are holding 
back job growth, and a brandnew, risky infrastructure bank bureaucracy 
funded by permanently higher taxes would only make those problems 
worse.
  By contrast, the legislation I offer directly addresses inefficient 
government bureaucracy by acting to ease the inefficient regulatory 
burdens imposed on job creators by largely unaccountable and unelected 
Federal bureaucracies throughout our massive regulatory agency maze and 
their special interests. And, I might add, those regulatory agencies 
seem clearly not to have job creation and easing of the plight of 
America's 14 million unemployed workers as part of their main 
interests.

[[Page 16596]]

  The legislation I am proposing also provides for a fully paid-for 
highway extension through 2013 that will give States and contractors 
the certainty they need to begin large projects and create jobs.
  It calls for an elimination of dedicated funding for transportation 
enhancements and gives States the authority to decide whether to spend 
resources on bike paths or other such transportation add-ons.
  It reforms the National Environmental Policy Act--NEPA--to eliminate 
the inefficient bureaucratic environmental redtape and to accelerate 
project delivery and contracting, just as called for by the President's 
own jobs council. It addresses the bureaucratic redtape associated with 
the NEPA that the President's own jobs council identifies, and it 
contains reforms that receive the support of the Department of 
Transportation.
  It includes a provision to stop Environmental Protection Agency rules 
that serve to drive up costs of concrete and steel, which are key 
ingredients in the road and construction projects.
  It includes provisions for waivers of inefficient environmental 
reviews, approvals, and licensing and permitting requirements on road, 
highway, and bridge rebuilding efforts in emergency situations.
  It imposes a regulatory timeout on regulations to help stem the 
regulatory tsunami that is impeding job creation. We face a national 
jobs and unemployment emergency. It is truly a crisis. The Federal 
Reserve, the President's own jobs council, and job creators in Utah and 
across America have made clear that onerous regulations and regulatory 
uncertainty are acting to cast a wet blanket on job creation in 
America, and the 14 million unemployed Americans are painfully in need 
of jobs. My fellow Republicans and I are listening.
  The legislation I propose goes straight to the matter in the interest 
of job creation now, not years from now once some inefficient, new, 
politicized, unelected Federal bureaucracy called an infrastructure 
bank is up and running to supply taxpayer funds to specially chosen and 
favored risky projects--something we have seen plenty of in this 
administration and some administrations in the past as well.
  The legislation I propose addresses the repeated calls from job 
creators who are stymied by inefficient, burdensome regulatory redtape 
derived from special interest Federal bureaucracies rather than the 
interests of American workers.
  The legislation I propose draws from bipartisan recommendations, 
including recommendations from the President's own bipartisan jobs 
council.
  The legislation I propose accommodates fully paid-for infrastructure 
projects to be undertaken to help build roads, bridges, and a host of 
other projects without imposing permanent, job-killing, higher taxes 
during a national unemployment emergency.
  I urge all of my colleagues in the Senate to support this 
legislation. This idea of an infrastructure bank appears to me to be 
just a future example of what Fannie and Freddie were all about. I 
think we can do this without having an infrastructure bank, we can do 
it better, and we can do it pushing a lot of the President's ideas 
forward, a lot of the World Economic Forum's ideas, and a lot of ideas 
that both sides of the aisle have to conclude are important for 
overcoming this regulatory mess that is making it almost impossible to 
create jobs and almost impossible to get legislation through this body.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Utah is 
recognized.
  Mr. HATCH. 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. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time be 
divided equally and not charged to one side or the other.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. HATCH. I note the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown of Ohio). The senior Senator from 
New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. 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. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor this morning to 
speak to the legislation that is pending before us, S. 1769, the 
Rebuild America Jobs Act. This legislation, in fact, would put 
literally millions of Americans back to work rebuilding our Nation's 
roads, our bridges, our airports, and our railways.
  The bill that is before us has two components. The first is a direct 
$50 billion Federal investment in our infrastructure, and it would be 
split between roads, rail, transit, and airport projects. More than 
half of that would go to our well-established, formula-driven highway 
and transit programs, and that would include about $132 million for New 
Hampshire.
  The second piece of this proposal would create an infrastructure 
bank. That is legislation I cosponsored, and it has had bipartisan 
cosponsorship in the Senate. The bank, as it is structured, would be 
able to leverage public dollars to attract private capital, and that 
would, if it is successful, lead to hundreds of billions of dollars in 
infrastructure over the next 10 years. It is a bipartisan idea, as I 
said, and it has attracted support from both the AFL-CIO and the U.S. 
Chamber of Commerce. Clearly, it is a good idea if it has both of those 
organizations onboard. Together, this legislation that is pending 
before us would mean immediate jobs for our construction industry. It 
has been one of the hardest hit by this recession.
  In New Hampshire the number of people working in the construction 
industry in 2010 was the lowest it had been in a decade. It was 25 
percent lower than it was just in 2006, according to the Bureau of 
Labor Statistics.
  Christian Zimmerman, who is the head of one of our biggest 
contractors in New Hampshire, Pike Industries in Belmont, told me he 
has had to lay off 150 workers in the last couple of years as Federal 
funding to build New Hampshire's roads has run out.
  The Federal Highway Administration estimates that every $1 billion in 
highway spending supports more than 27,000 jobs. Economists at Moody's 
estimate that for every dollar we spend on infrastructure, our gross 
domestic product goes up by $1.59. That is because of the ripple effect 
this spending has in economic activity. There are a number of good 
reasons to support the legislation that is before us.
  In the short term, this proposal would help put those who are 
unemployed in the construction industry back to work. That is something 
that would be critical as we are thinking about how to help the 
millions in this country who are unemployed and who have been 
unemployed, many of them for more than a year.
  In the long term, the benefits of this investment in our 
infrastructure are equally important. A quality infrastructure is 
critical to our businesses. It is critical to our future economic 
growth, and it is critical to our future competitiveness in the world.
  According to numerous studies, deteriorating infrastructure costs 
businesses more than $100 billion a year in lost productivity. There is 
very good evidence to show that our lack of investment in recent years 
is making itself felt in the condition of our roads and our bridges. 
This past June, the New Hampshire Society of Civil Engineers issued a 
report card on the condition of our State's roads and bridges, our 
dams, our wastewater facilities, our airports, and our waterways, those 
major projects we all consider part of

[[Page 16597]]

our infrastructure. Sadly, the engineers' report card gave New 
Hampshire's infrastructure a grade of C. That is better than the grade 
the national organization has given the United States as a whole; that 
was a D. It is not as good as we want it to be, and it is not as good 
as we need for New Hampshire or this country if we are going to 
continue to be competitive.
  Mr. President, 15 percent of New Hampshire's bridges are rated 
structurally deficient by the Federal Highway Administration, and 148 
of them are red-listed. When I was first elected to the State senate, 
we had a controversy in New Hampshire because we had a highway 
commissioner who said because of the number of red-listed bridges, when 
we all drove around New Hampshire and went over a bridge we should 
drive fast and not look back.
  Well, fortunately, we are not in that position right now, but we have 
a lot of bridges that need investment, and this bill before us would 
provide New Hampshire with additional Federal highway funding that 
would help us address these bridges that are red-listed and address our 
other transportation needs.
  The most important project that should be addressed by this 
legislation in New Hampshire is a project that has been under way for 
years in the southern part of our State that has been threatened by the 
uncertainty surrounding Federal funding. It is the widening of 
Interstate 93 between southern New Hampshire and Massachusetts. This 
project is long overdue. It is badly needed by commuters and businesses 
in the area. The I-93 project was budgeted and planned based on the 
idea that the Federal Government would provide a consistent level of 
funding, but, unfortunately, the Republican budget the House has called 
for would produce a 35-percent cut in our highway program. 
Unfortunately, Congress has not yet been able to reach an agreement on 
a long-term reauthorization of our highway program. The uncertainty 
around this and the prospect of such a drastic cut has made this 
project, I-93, very difficult to finance.
  Right now New Hampshire transportation officials have $115 million 
worth of bonding authority for this project that is just sitting on the 
sidelines because the Federal Government has not made good on its 
funding commitments. The bill before us would help complete this 
critical project for New Hampshire and so many others like it across 
the country.
  If we want to see the benefits that investment and infrastructure can 
provide in New Hampshire, we only need to look at the new airport 
access road that goes to our largest airport and our largest city of 
Manchester. It is going to open to traffic a full 2 years ahead of 
schedule. The project was accelerated because of the funding it 
received from the Recovery Act.
  I remember the winter after we passed the Recovery Act and looking at 
the bridge that was being constructed and talking about how we were 
going to be able to speed up this project because of those Recovery Act 
dollars. In fact, it has happened. It is going to open 2 years early. 
Local planning boards along the Manchester Airport access road are 
already seeing increased interest from commercial developers for the 
land that is along that road, that has been opened because of this new 
highway. Of course, Manchester's airport is also going to benefit from 
the investment in our airport access road.
  Another piece that is in this legislation that is critical to our 
infrastructure investment in New Hampshire and across the country is 
the funding for a next-generation system of air traffic control which 
would transfer our system from a ground-based radar system to a GPS-
based system--something most of us have in our cars these days. That 
would allow the entire airline industry to plan more efficient, point-
to-point routes, and it would allow everybody to save on fuel costs.
  I had the opportunity to meet with Southwest Airlines a couple weeks 
ago. It is the largest air carrier at the Manchester Airport. They 
talked to me about the challenges they are facing and the entire 
airline industry is facing because we haven't invested in this next 
generation system of air traffic control. They said it will save us 
money because it will be more economical in terms of fuel usage because 
they can go point to point, and it will save time because we can 
provide for more efficient routes.
  This is a no-brainer. Right now, our system of air traffic control is 
behind even the country of Mongolia. It is time for us to make this 
investment, to make it easier for airlines to fly into a small hub 
airport such as Manchester. It would save us all money. It would be 
safer. It is an investment that is long overdue.
  A couple weeks ago, I also had a chance to speak at an infrastructure 
summit that the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce supports for the 
Greater Manchester region. There was a whole day of talking about why 
investment in our infrastructure is important, because without reliable 
power, without reliable bridges and public transportation and roads, 
businesses can't thrive. The Manchester Chamber believes investment in 
infrastructure is critical to growing our economy and creating jobs, 
and I share that belief. It is a belief that I came to as a State 
senator way back over 20 years ago, when I served in the New Hampshire 
State Senate. It is something I continued to support as Governor. In 
those days, we worked together on a bipartisan basis because we all 
understood, Republicans and Democrats, investing in infrastructure 
produces returns.
  New Hampshire and the rest of our country need this investment that 
this legislation pending before us would provide. Our unemployed need 
the work. Our businesses need to know we are going to make these 
investments so they can depend on this certainty for their long-term 
growth and competitiveness.
  So I hope, as we come to this vote today on the motion to proceed to 
this legislation, my colleagues, particularly those across the aisle, 
will give up their opposition to this legislation. I know they know how 
critical it is to invest in our infrastructure. So this is something we 
all ought to come together around. Just because this is a proposal that 
has been put forward by the President is not a reason not to support 
it.
  I urge all my colleagues to support the passage of this legislation. 
Let's make these investments. Let's put people back to work. Let's make 
sure we are going to be competitive in the future. Thank you very much.
  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. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, we know that investment in our 
infrastructure means jobs and economic development now and in the 
future. We know as a country that in the fifties, sixties, seventies, 
and eighties we built infrastructure--highways, bridges, water, sewer, 
community colleges, medical research, modernizing high schools--all the 
things we did in the postwar years for five decades, in the forties 
through the eighties. The world had never seen this before.
  We know that American prosperity--the postwar prosperity--in large 
part was based on the foundation we had set in infrastructure--again, 
the physical infrastructure of bridges across the Ohio River joining 
the Presiding Officer's State and mine in Huntington, Ironton, 
Parkersburg, Marietta, and Wheeling, and across to Belmont County in 
Ohio. We know that the infrastructure of building community colleges 
such as Jeff Tech and building branch campuses at OU, and now building 
broadband, but then funding medical care--those things created the 
long-time prosperity of our country. These are forward-thinking 
investments with payoffs that last for decades and benefit our Nation, 
our small businesses, and our workers for generations.

[[Page 16598]]

  History tells us that our Nation's infrastructure has been critical 
to our Nation's economic, competitive, and industrial strength. Let's 
look back a bit. Abraham Lincoln created the transcontinental railroad. 
Thousands of jobs were created, and the development of the American 
West was possible. President Roosevelt modernized our Nation's electric 
grid during the New Deal. More than just electricity came to the 
Tennessee Valley in rural America. Americans were put to work setting 
the poles, stringing wire, building the hydroelectric dams that 
improved the quality of life, and attracting countless businesses to 
the region. So the infrastructure was built, creating jobs. But even 
more so, the foundation was set where many more jobs were created.
  President Eisenhower and the Congress established our interstate 
transportation system. A generation of workers carved out highways and 
roadways, allowing commerce and people to travel from coast to coast.
  Our Nation used its postwar infrastructure boom to become the 
economic superpower that we are today. Public work investments not only 
create good-paying, middle-class construction jobs, they spur economic 
development projects in small towns and rural communities and urban 
areas. We know what happens when a highway comes into a community, what 
it does to spawn other kinds of work. It serves as a multiplier effect 
and attracts businesses and workers and foreign companies to build in 
America, and benefits from that clear competitive advantage. That is 
why we led the world for five decades.
  It is clear that when companies decide where to locate or expand or 
invest, that infrastructure, broadband, energy, transportation, all are 
critical factors in the decision. Businesses rely on solid 
infrastructure.
  Companies such as Ohio's Proctor & Gamble in Cincinnati recognize 
that our infrastructure provides a competitive advantage, enabling them 
to ship their products anywhere in the world. Ohio manufacturers, such 
as General Motors and Honda and Smuckers, rely upon our infrastructure 
as they operate with just-in-time manufacturing.
  Yet we are falling behind in maintaining the very infrastructure that 
made us a superpower. Unsafe bridges have cost lives. Clogged roads and 
congested air space cost billions of dollars in lost trade and 
productivity. Some people tell us they spend more time commuting than 
they are at home with their families.
  We are seeing 19th century water and sewer systems failing our 21st 
century cities. Meanwhile, more and more people depend on these 
services, while cities and States can't meet demand--where States face 
budget and revenue shortfalls that make these investments difficult, if 
not impossible.
  And there is China--which is fast becoming one of our chief economic 
competitors--building more roads, better airports, and faster rail 
systems than we are. Why do we let that happen? No one in this 
Congress--nobody--and in State legislatures, as Senator Shaheen said 
earlier--should be proud of the condition of our roads. No one in this 
Congress should be proud of the fact the newest airports and train 
stations are being built somewhere far from our shores. Yet there 
remains an unwillingness here--and I am still incredulous about this--
to make the sort of investments necessary to improve our Nation's 
infrastructure.
  I guess we have to cut taxes more for rich people instead of asking 
them to pay a little more to put that money into infrastructure. 
Historically, infrastructure has been bipartisan. I have heard some of 
my colleagues saying there is no such thing as a Democratic or 
Republican bridge. But it seems there is now because we see time and 
time again some of my conservative colleagues saying: No, we are not 
going to spend money on infrastructure. We are not going to do that.
  Let me show a picture of a bridge I have been across many times. I 
have seen it from Cincinnati many times. This is a view from the 
Kentucky side. This is called the Brent Spence Bridge. The President 
was there not too long ago. I was not with him that day, but I have 
been on this bridge many times. It was named after a Congressman from 
Kentucky who served from 1931 to 1963. The bridge was inaugurated by 
President Johnson. So the bridge construction began and came later.
  This is I-75 through Cincinnati, going from Kentucky to Cincinnati 
into Dayton, if you can follow it all the way north, and then into 
Toledo and ultimately into Detroit. This bridge carries millions of 
dollars' worth of freight and millions of drivers across the bridge. 
Someone said this bridge accounts, perhaps, for as much as 4 percent of 
our gross domestic product going either north or south across this 
bridge.
  Today, the Brent Spence Bridge is 1 of 15 the U.S. Department of 
Transportation has deemed functionally obsolete. But the Brent Spence 
bridge is not alone. We can see there is no real space if a car breaks 
down. There is not much of a lane to get over if someone has a heart 
attack while driving or all the problems one can imagine having while 
on the bridge. This is major, major bridge across one of the most 
important rivers in this country--the Ohio River.
  A recent study of our Nation's infrastructure found there are more--
get this--more structurally deficient bridges in the United States than 
there are McDonald's restaurants. Think about that: There are 14,000 
McDonald's restaurants. But according to Transportation for America, 
there are 18,000 deficient bridges and 70,000 structurally deficient 
bridges.
  From a public safety and commerce perspective, fixing a bridge is a 
necessity. The largest hurdle remains financing. Under the President's 
proposal we will vote on this afternoon, more than $60 billion, 
completely paid for, would go toward road and bridge construction, 
fixing our airports and transit systems. It would make our roads and 
skies safer for transportation.
  The bill includes a national infrastructure bank that would fund 
infrastructure projects of regional or national significance, such as 
this almost 50-year-old bridge. Increasing private sector 
infrastructure lending, a national infrastructure bank could couple 
Federal loans with private equity, ensuring a private-public 
partnership that meets local needs.
  For the Brent Spence Bridge, it would mean Ohio and Kentucky could 
obtain the necessary funding to complete the project ahead of schedule, 
create jobs, and protect the public safety.
  We have to do this. We have to renovate and update our 
infrastructure. Why wait? Interest rates are as low as they have almost 
ever been. Construction costs--because there is so much competition 
among construction companies to get work now--are as low in historical 
times as perhaps they have ever been, and we need this work now because 
of the job employment situation. So we will benefit from replacing and 
fixing this bridge for years into the future.
  For freight rail investments in Columbus, it would mean reducing the 
bottlenecks that prevent goods from moving across the country. For 
airports, it means reducing congestion and improving runways; on our 
rivers, such as the Ohio River, it means fixing locks that slow barge 
traffic.
  Lake Erie, at the other end of my State, has made such a difference 
in the settlement of Buffalo--although there is also Lake Ontario 
there--Cleveland, Ashtabula, and Toledo. We know what these Great Lakes 
have done for the economic development of our country. It means fixing 
these ports. For all our States, it means jobs and economic 
development.
  This is about a construction manufacturer in Peoria selling equipment 
to contractors working at the Port of Toledo. It is about dock workers 
loading American-made steel and Ohio-grown soybeans for export to 
markets around the world. That is what this bill is about.
  This bill is about jobs now. It is about setting the table for jobs 
in the future. We know that. Republicans and Democrats alike know that. 
Yet Republicans, I guess, just want to see Barack Obama fail. That is 
what the

[[Page 16599]]

Republican leader has said repeatedly, though I don't understand that. 
But that is what he says.
  This bill is fully paid for. The bill before the Senate is funded by 
a very small tax on people making over $1 million a year. If someone is 
making $1 million a year, their taxes will not go up, but they will pay 
a little bit of money on the second million they make. So this isn't in 
any way going after small business, it is just saying the people who 
have done well have to pay a little more money. It is common sense and 
it is the American way.
  We are asking those who have benefited the most--many on Wall Street, 
many of them on Main Street--people who have done very well to make 
this investment. We know it is infrastructure that has helped people 
make lots of money in this country. Without infrastructure, many of 
these companies never would have been successful.
  World-class infrastructure is how we move goods across the country 
and export around the world--on our trucks, on our rails, on our 
barges, and on our airplanes. It is how we get to work and school, it 
is how we attract businesses, and it is how we protect the public 
health, through clean water and sewer systems.
  This will create jobs immediately--good-paying, middle-class jobs. 
These jobs provide workers with health care and retirement. These are 
exactly the kind of jobs the Presiding Officer welcomes in Wheeling and 
Charleston and Beckley and I welcome in Portsmouth and Cleveland and 
Akron. These jobs enable people to buy a home, to save for their 
children's education, and to plan for their future. These jobs not only 
create the construction jobs we need, putting money in people's pockets 
they will spend in the community, but they also create manufacturing 
jobs in steel and cement and all kinds of materials. They also create 
long-term jobs as companies grow because they have better 
infrastructure.
  This is about rebuilding our infrastructure. It is about rebuilding 
our middle class. I ask my colleagues to support this legislation later 
today when we vote on it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.


                       Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I would like to speak about an issue that 
I and most Americans, I believe, find extremely troubling and one I 
have been seeking to have properly addressed for many years now; 
namely, the outright corruption and blatant abuse of the American 
taxpayer that has been taking place at the hands of Fannie Mae and 
Freddie Mac for decades.
  Since they were placed in conservatorship in 2008, the two 
government-sponsored enterprises--GSEs; i.e., supported by the 
taxpayers--have soaked the American taxpayer for nearly $170 billion in 
bailouts. Just this morning, the Associated Press reported that Freddie 
Mac has now requested an additional $6 billion to continue their, so 
far in my view, failed efforts. I quote from the Associated Press:

       Government-controlled mortgage giant Freddie Mac has 
     requested $6 billion in additional aid after posting a wider 
     loss in the third quarter. Freddie Mac said Thursday that it 
     lost $6 billion, or $1.86 share, in the July-September 
     quarter. That compares with a loss of $4.1 billion, or $1.25 
     a share, in the same quarter of 2010. The government rescued 
     McLean, Virginia-based Freddie Mac and sibling company Fannie 
     Mae in September 2008 after massive losses on risky mortgages 
     threatened to topple them. Since then, a Federal regulator 
     has controlled their financial decisions. Taxpayers have 
     spent about $169 billion to rescue Fannie and Freddie, the 
     most expensive bailout of the 2008 financial crisis. The 
     government estimates it will cost at least $51 billion more 
     to support the companies through 2014, and as much as $142 
     billion in the most extreme case.
       Freddie and Washington-based Fannie own or guarantee about 
     half of all U.S. mortgages, or nearly 31 million home loans 
     worth more than $5 trillion. Along with other federal 
     agencies, they backed nearly 90 percent of new mortgages over 
     the past year. The two mortgage giants buy home loans from 
     banks and other lenders, package them into bonds--

  Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So here we are. We have spent $169 
billion and now they are asking for $6 billion more. What do we find 
out? Fannie and Freddie now will dole out big bonuses. I am not making 
this up.
  Quoting now from a Politico article:

       The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the government 
     regulator for Fannie and Freddie, approved $12.79 million in 
     bonus pay after 10 executives from the two government-
     sponsored corporations last year met modest performance 
     targets tied to modifying mortgages in jeopardy of 
     foreclosure. The executives got the bonuses about two years 
     after the federally backed mortgage giants received nearly 
     $170 billion in taxpayer bailouts--and despite pledges by 
     FHFA, the office tasked with keeping them solvent, that it 
     would adjust the level of CEO-level pay after critics slammed 
     huge compensation packages paid out to former Fannie Mae CEO 
     Franklin Raines and others.

  I might add, these huge bonuses and packages that were given to Mr. 
Johnson, Mr. Raines, and many others--and there is clear evidence of 
this--was done by cooking the books. Yet not a one of them has been 
held accountable in any way, shape or form.
  Continuing to quote from the article:

       Securities and Exchange Commission documents show that Ed 
     Haldeman, who announced last week that he is stepping down as 
     Freddie Mac's CEO, received a base salary of $900,000 last 
     year yet took home an additional $2.3 million in bonus pay. 
     Records show other Fannie and Freddie executives got similar 
     Wall Street-style compensation packages; Fannie Mae's CEO 
     Michael Williams, for example, got $2.37 million in 
     performance bonuses.

  That was after the taxpayers paid $160 billion. That is why they are 
on the hook for another $6 billion and God knows how much more. So we 
are giving these individuals $900,000 a year in salary, millions of 
dollars in bonus pay, and who in the world is the Federal Housing 
Finance Agency to award these bonuses?
  FHFA's Acting Director Edward DeMarco--and I must admit to my 
colleagues I had not heard of Mr. DeMarco--told Congress last year that 
the managers who were at the helms of the mortgage companies during the 
market collapse were dismissed but also argued that generous pay helps 
lure ``experienced, qualified'' executives able to manage upward of $5 
trillion in mortgage holdings.
  Whatever happened to asking patriotic Americans to come and serve and 
help homeowners out of this crisis? Whatever happened to patriotic 
Americans who would serve and help the nearly half of all homeowners in 
my State of Arizona whose mortgages are underwater?
  DeMarco told lawmakers he is concerned that suggestions to apply a 
Federal pay system to non-Federal employees could put the companies in 
jeopardy of mismanagement--could put the companies in jeopardy of 
mismanagement--and result in another taxpayer bailout. They just asked 
for $6 billion more. He said the compensation packages at Fannie and 
Freddie are part of the plan to return them to solvency while reducing 
costs to the taxpayers.
  A March report by FHFA's inspector general--obviously ignored by Mr. 
DeMarco--said the agency ``lacks key controls necessary to monitor'' 
executive compensation, nor has it developed written procedures for 
evaluating those packages. In other words, the beat goes on. Business 
as usual, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
  It is unconscionable. It has been proven time and time again that 
Fannie and Freddie Mac are synonymous with mismanagement, waste, 
outright corruption, and fraud. And their Federal regulator has the 
audacity to approve $12.8 million in executive bonuses to people who 
make $900,000 per year. This body should be ashamed if we let this 
happen, especially in these economic times. Every day more and more 
Americans are losing their jobs and their homes, and we are allowing 
these people to take home annual salaries of $900,000 and bonuses of 
millions of dollars, all while they ask the taxpayers for $6 million 
more today.
  It has come to my attention that some of my colleagues are writing 
letters, calling for committee hearings on this issue. Letters are 
fine, hearings are fine, hearings are great. They are not the answer. 
The answer is for us to stop it from happening, and we can do

[[Page 16600]]

that with an amendment on the pending appropriations bill. I will be 
offering an amendment, and I hope all of my colleagues would join in.
  Let me just bring the attention of my colleagues to a book called 
``Reckless Endangerment,'' written by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua 
Rosner. The title of it is ``How Outside Ambition, Greed and Corruption 
Led to Economic Armageddon.'' So we are talking about pay and bonuses, 
and I read from the book:

       Because bonuses at Fannie Mae were largely based on per-
     share earnings growth, it was paramount to keep profits 
     escalating to guarantee bonus payouts. And in 1998, top 
     Fannie officials had begun manipulating the company's results 
     by dipping into various profit cookie jars to produce the 
     level of income necessary to generate bonus payouts to top 
     management.
       Federal investigators later found that you could predict 
     what Fannie's earnings-per-share would be at year-end, almost 
     to the penny, if you knew the maximum earnings-per-share 
     bonus payout target set by management at the beginning of 
     each year. Between 1998 and 2002, actual earnings and the 
     bonus payout target differed only by a fraction of a cent, 
     the investigators found.
       Investigators uncovered documents from 1998 detailing the 
     tactics used by Leeane Spencer, a finance official at Fannie, 
     to make the company's $2.48 per-share bonus target. That 
     year, Fannie Mae earned $2.4764 per share.
       In a mid-November memo to her superiors, Spencer forecast 
     that the company was on track to earn $2.4744 per share, just 
     shy of what was needed to generate maximum bonus payments to 
     executives.

  Look, this story goes on in this book. It goes on and on how the 
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives intentionally ripped off the 
American people, describing profits in a way that was totally false, 
getting tens of millions in bonuses. This is a government-sponsored 
enterprise. Mr. Johnson, bailed out with $100 million or so of 
taxpayers' bonuses:

       In 1999, Johnson joined Goldman's board, stepping into a 
     highly lucrative position that offered rich investment 
     opportunities overseen by the firm and opened doors for 
     Johnson around the world. In 2000, the Goldman board position 
     paid Johnson $50,000, not counting stock awards.

  With brokerage firms such as Goldman Sachs, which flourished from the 
fees by underwriting securities issued by Fannie and Freddie, with fees 
totalling $100 million a year, guess who came on Fannie's board. Mr. 
Johnson.

       Johnson was still on the board in 2010, when the Securities 
     and Exchange Commission sued the investment bank for 
     securities fraud related to its sale of a dubious mortgage 
     security. By that time, Johnson was earning almost $500,000 
     for his work on the Goldman board.
       The accounting fraud at Fannie went undiscovered until 2005 
     when an investigation by OFHEO unearthed it. In a voluminous, 
     intensely detailed 2006 report, OFHEO noted that if Fannie 
     Mae had used appropriate accounting methods in 1998, the 
     company's performance would have generated no executive 
     bonuses at all.
       A lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission 
     in 2006 said the company's 1998 results were ``intentionally 
     manipulated to trigger management bonuses.''
       Although a highly kept secret at the time, Johnson's--

  This is Mr. James Johnson--

       Johnson's bonus for 1998 was $1.9 million, investigators 
     determined. It later emerged that the company had made 
     inaccurate disclosures when it said Johnson earned a total of 
     almost $7 million in 1998. In actuality, his total 
     compensation that year was like $21 million, OFHEO said, 
     referring to an internal Fannie Mae analysis it had turned 
     up.

  So one of the great scams in American history is going on, and the 
people responsible for it have never been held responsible. They have 
never been held responsible. I refer my colleagues, take a look at this 
book, and I recommend taking blood pressure medicine before you read 
it.
  Now, here we are, business as usual in Washington. The approval 
rating of Congress is now down to 9 percent. As I have said 
continuously, we are down to paid staffers and blood relatives.
  Why aren't they happy with us? Why haven't we solved the housing 
crisis in America? Why is it that half the homes in Arizona are still 
underwater, worth less than their mortgages, while the financial 
institutions on Wall Street are doing just fine, with record profits, 
and Fannie and Freddie continue to act as if they did nothing wrong? 
And to add insult to injury, after a third quarter loss of $6 billion, 
they are going to get millions of dollars in bonuses.
  I may be a bit of an idealist, but I will bet you there are some 
patriotic, talented Americans who would be willing to serve on Fannie 
Mae and Freddie Mac without being paid $900,000 a year and millions of 
dollars in bonuses. I really believe that. I really believe that. Yes, 
people are sitting in around the country; and, yes, I don't agree with 
a lot of their agenda. But when they read of things like this, their 
anger is justified. Already, $170 billion in bailouts. This morning, an 
additional $6 billion. Yet the American taxpayer is told they are 
making progress? And who has been held responsible at these 
organizations, at these government-sponsored enterprises that were 
responsible? To my knowledge, no one.
  So it seems to me the least we can do is cancel these bonuses, make 
sure it doesn't happen, and maybe ask for some qualified, experienced, 
talented Americans to come in and take over this agency. And the first 
guy I think ought to go is the guy who approved these payouts, Mr. 
Edward J. DeMarco.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I couldn't agree more with the Senator who 
just spoke that we are in a situation where the all-time approval 
rating of this body seems to have reached an all-time low. There are 
justified reasons for the frustration and for the anger of a very broad 
run of our constituents, of the folks who hired us to come here from 
our States of West Virginia and Delaware, from Arizona, and others to 
try to fix the problems confronting this country. And much of the mess, 
many of the things that got us into this problem have not been solved.
  I rise today to speak about one way forward out of it. I think one of 
the reasons there is so much frustration with Congress and the general 
public is there is broad support for some simple solutions to get 
Americans back to work, to revive and strengthen our economy, and we 
just seem incapable of reaching across this partisan divide and moving 
forward. One of those is an infrastructure bank.
  I rise today to follow up on a speech I gave yesterday about why 
investing in American infrastructure means investing in America's 
future. Infrastructure--building roads and bridges, highways and sewer 
systems, modernizing America's backbone--enjoys very broad support from 
all across the United States, from all different sectors, because 
Americans understand it will put folks back to work in the building 
trades industries that have taken the hardest hit in this recession and 
in a way that will lay the groundwork for our long-term future 
competitiveness.
  This is smart spending. This is investing in the best tradition of 
Federal, State, local, and private partnerships to make America more 
competitive for the future.
  I want to talk about one element of the bill which I hope we will 
move to later today, the American Infrastructure Financing Authority, 
or known more colloquially as the National Infrastructure Reinvestment 
Bank.
  If this idea sounds familiar, it is because it has already been 
introduced. It is a bipartisan bill, the BUILD Act, championed by 
Senator Kerry and Senator Hutchison, of which I am a cosponsor, and one 
that provides a creative financing vehicle for building infrastructure 
going forward.
  Before becoming a Senator in the election just 1 year ago yesterday, 
I served for 6 years as the county executive of Delaware's largest 
county, and one of the services our county was responsible for was 
running a county-wide sewer system. We had 1,800 miles of sanitary 
sewer, and it was a constant challenge to maintain. That is a lot of 
pipe, a lot of pump stations, and a lot of sewage backing up in 
people's homes in the middle of the night, which led to a lot of 
aggravated calls from constituents.
  It was an aging system like so much of America's infrastructure, one 
in which we had underinvested for too long. From personal experience, I 
can tell you that the lack of infrastructure, of adequate sewer 
capacity was a major to barrier to future growth. So, too,

[[Page 16601]]

across States and counties and cities all over this country. Where the 
roads and rail, the ports, and the sewer systems aren't up to current 
global standards, we can't expect to grow to meet our global 
competitors.
  When we talk about capital infrastructure improvements at the local 
level in the government I used to be with, it wasn't some wish list. 
This wasn't some future technology. This wasn't some risky investment. 
It was triage. It was critically needed investment in pipes in the 
ground that would protect our water, strengthen our community, and grow 
our economy.
  As a nation, the American Society of Civil Engineers has told us we 
need $2.2 trillion over just the next 5 years in infrastructure 
investments to keep America moving forward. We are talking about fixing 
unsafe bridges, dealing with clogged highways, and rebuilding airports 
so they can handle larger modern aircraft safely. That is an enormous 
scope, $2.2 trillion over just the next 5 years. We are already asking 
so much of the supercommittee in terms of finding dramatic savings and 
reductions in Federal spending. Where will this level of investment 
come from to put America back to work?
  So, in my view, we have to get creative. We have to leverage. We have 
to bring in more resources than are currently on the field, and 
especially now, especially in this country I think we have to be smart 
about how we spend our funds.
  The Rebuild America Jobs Act, to which I hope we will be moving later 
this afternoon, would put $50 billion directly into infrastructure, put 
$10 billion as a downpayment into making possible this new 
infrastructure bank, seed money that makes possible loans and loan 
guarantees--not grants--for a wide range of infrastructure projects, 
including energy, water, and critically needed transportation. 
Remember, we need more than $400 billion a year in investment right now 
just to keep up. But we all know the constrained budgets of our 
counties, State, and local governments can't get the financing they 
need. This infrastructure bank would provide the leverage, a vehicle to 
finance desperately needed projects.
  Just a few things about it. It would be for big projects, projects 
that cost more than $25 million in rural communities, $100 million in 
the rest of the country. It would only be allowed to finance up to 50 
percent of a project to avoid crowding out private capital and to make 
sure that private capital has skin in the game so it is a viable 
project. It is my expectation, in fact, that the infrastructure bank 
would finance a much smaller piece of most projects, just enough to 
bring private investment to the table. It would be government-owned but 
independently operated, have its own bipartisan board of directors, and 
function much like the successful Ex-Im.
  An infrastructure bank passed by the Senate this week could provide 
up to $160 billion in direct financial assistance over its first 10 
years to infrastructure for transportation. That would be paired with 
private investment that could double, triple, or even quadruple, 
increasing the full impact of this bank.
  I said yesterday that infrastructure is a smart investment for our 
country and that a national infrastructure bank as a part of that 
strategy would provide a vehicle for the private sector to get in on 
this investment as well and to help us accelerate our move toward the 
future. This is smart policy.
  It is a funny thing about infrastructure, how we inevitably take it 
for granted. Whether you are running a State highway system or a county 
sewer system, you never know how much people miss it until it isn't 
working the way they expect.
  Unfortunately, in cities, counties, and States across our country 
today, companies and communities are discovering that our aged 
infrastructure is imposing costs on us we cannot bear. The American 
Society of Civil Engineers, which I have referred to before, recently 
released a study saying that our Nation's deteriorating surface 
transportation infrastructure alone could result in the loss of nearly 
1 million jobs and will suppress our GDP growth by nearly $1 billion 
between now and 2020. That is an enormous loss of future economic 
activity.
  We cannot put this off any further. As a country, we cannot keep 
swerving to avoid these potholes on the path to prosperity. Eventually 
we are going to hit them, and eventually they will continue to be a 
drag on our Nation. The Rebuild America Jobs Act would fill these 
potholes, would patch these pipes, would lay the new runways to allow 
America's economy to take off.
  This Rebuild America Jobs Act, which would rebuild 150,000 miles of 
roadway, maintain 4,000 miles of train track, upgrade 150 miles of 
airport runways, restore critical drinking water and wastewater 
systems, is nothing short of the smart investment we need to be 
competitive for the future. It would put people back to work, it would 
steer us on the right road to sustained recovery, and it would fix the 
problems that lie right in our path as we try to do our jobs for the 
folks who hired us to come here and help them get back to work.
  We need to act today. It is my hope that my colleagues will join us 
this afternoon in voting for the motion to proceed to the Rebuild 
America Jobs Act, a critical piece of which is this smart 
infrastructure bank.


                   The Nomination of Richard Andrews

  Mr. President, I move now briefly to support the nomination of 
Richard Andrews, who has been nominated to be U.S. district court judge 
for the District of Delaware. Rich Andrews is an exceptional lawyer, a 
dedicated public servant, and a good man. When the Senate confirms his 
nomination, hopefully later today, Rich will become the fourth active 
judge serving in the District of Delaware. This will mark the very 
first time in 5 years that this very busy court will operate without a 
vacancy. For a small district such as Delaware, albeit one with such a 
specialized and complex caseload, even a single vacancy places a 
significant burden on the court.
  Mr. Andrews' nomination has been pending 177 days, and while I am 
grateful for the consent agreement that I hope will allow his 
nomination to be considered today, I remain concerned that such a 
noncontroversial and qualified nominee as Rich could take nearly half a 
year to reach floor consideration. The judicial vacancy rate hovers 
near 10 percent, we have 31 judicial emergencies, and it is my hope 
that this body will continue to move expeditiously to fill vacancies 
throughout the country.
  As a member of the Judiciary Committee, I had a chance to chair the 
nominations hearing for Rich and to take part in the committee's 
consideration of his nomination. I have reviewed his record, listened 
to his testimony, met with him personally, conferred with my senior 
Senator, Mr. Carper, and as a result of all this, I assure my 
colleagues I have every confidence that Rich is a qualified judge and 
will serve Delaware and this Nation brilliantly.
  During his 30 years of service for Delaware so far, he has 
established himself as a talented, dedicated, and humble public servant 
who possesses the strongest work ethic and the highest integrity and 
intellect.
  He began his service to our State when, after graduating from 
Berkeley Law School, he came to Delaware as a law clerk for Chief Judge 
Collin Seitz of the Third Circuit. Luckily for us, he never left.
  After completing his clerkship, he joined the U.S. Attorney's Office 
for the District of Delaware, where he spent the next 24 years, much of 
it serving as the first assistant U.S. attorney and chief of the 
Criminal Division. During this time, he has tried, in that role, more 
than 50 felony jury cases and argued 17 cases before the Third Circuit 
Court of Appeals.
  Since leaving the U.S. Attorney's Office in 2007, he has served as 
State prosecutor for the Delaware Department of Justice and leads more 
than 70 deputy attorneys general in the Criminal Division and has 
overseen tens of thousands of prosecutions each year. I am confident 
that his experiences as a prosecutor have given him the knowledge, 
skills, and temperament to join and serve ably on the District of 
Delaware Federal bench.

[[Page 16602]]

  When I chaired his nomination hearing, I was impressed by his 
professionalism, intelligence, and demeanor. Rich enjoys broad 
bipartisan support, having been reported unanimously by the Senate 
Judiciary Committee.
  I urge all my colleagues to join Senator Carper and me in supporting 
Mr. Andrews so he will have the opportunity to continue his selfless 
service to the people of our State and our Nation.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
recognized to speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. RUBIO. I also ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Rhode 
Island be recognized immediately after me.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                     Human Trafficking and Slavery

  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today for a moment to 
introduce an issue I have become interested in in the last few months, 
one that, quite frankly, I didn't know a lot about--the issue of human 
trafficking and slavery.
  For many Americans, for many of us in the 21st century, we think of 
slavery as a concept of the 18th and 19th centuries, something that 
happened in other places a long time ago, when, in fact, it exists 
today around the world. The issue is actually pretty startling. The 
State Department estimates that there are between 700,000 and 800,000 
people in the world each year who are trafficked. The number of people 
trafficked in the United States is about 16,000 to 17,000. That is a 
lot of people in the 21st century who are being trafficked and are held 
in bondage. I saw a special on a cable network recently that outlined 
this issue. I then started researching it. I was shocked to learn that 
my home State of Florida is particularly affected by this issue.
  Recently, I had the honor and the privilege of being appointed to the 
Helsinki Commission, the group here in the Senate that works, along 
with the House of Representatives, as Commissioners on that Commission. 
We held a hearing yesterday on the issue of human trafficking, and it 
is an issue I am going to be increasingly speaking about over the next 
few weeks because I truly believe it is one of the great humanitarian 
causes of this new century. It begins with awareness, with a clear 
understanding of what is happening around the world with regard to this 
issue, the fact that there are these people. As we speak, as I stand 
here today, perhaps within walking distance of this very building there 
are people held against their will in servitude.
  The one that gets all the publicity--and rightfully so because it is 
so painful and outrageous--is sex trafficking, children and young girls 
and young women brought into this country and held against their will 
as sex slaves. It happens all over the world. It is sad to learn there 
are governments around the world that cooperate with this and tolerate 
it and are corrupted by it. That gets a lot of publicity and attention, 
and we are going to be paying a lot of attention to that.
  We heard stories of diplomats who work in this city, diplomats from 
other nations who come here and bring domestic workers with them to 
their homes and hold them here against their will and take their entire 
paycheck. We are going to be denouncing some of these people on the 
floor by name in the weeks and months to come.
  The other thing that is shocking--although I said the sex trafficking 
gets a lot of attention--is the forced-labor aspect of it. People are 
recruited in other countries, brought here, and they are told: We are 
going to bring you to the United States, and you are going to come 
here, you will make a living, make some money, and you can send some 
back home. When they get here, they are held against their will, and 
they are not paid. In fact, sometimes they owe traffickers money, and 
they are held in squalid conditions. That is happening here in this 
country underneath our very noses, not to mention the egregious cases 
around the world, and we are going to focus on those cases around the 
world as well.
  The State Department, by the way, ranks every country on the basis of 
how much they cooperate, on the progress they are making in prosecuting 
and investigating these issues. Those are available. A report came out 
recently. It identified the countries that are doing well, the 
countries that are trying to do well, and the countries that, frankly, 
couldn't care less and actually do not mind this stuff going on in 
their jurisdiction. They deserve to be condemned not just on this floor 
but in the international community, and we will talk about that as well 
in the weeks to come.
  I do not think we can point the finger at anyone unless we look at 
ourselves as a nation and society and call attention to this issue. So, 
as I begin to introduce this issue and my involvement in it, there are 
a couple of things I would like to point out from yesterday's hearing.
  The first is that this is largely occurring as a result of criminal 
enterprises. The same people who traffic drugs and are involved in all 
kinds of organized crime are also involved in human trafficking. We see 
that increasingly in major areas, and we have seen prosecutions, but we 
have also learned that increasingly what we are finding are small-scale 
operations, sometimes families.
  We heard the case of a mother and her two sons who were involved in a 
human trafficking ring. It is very profitable, very lucrative. It costs 
about $10,000 to bring a young woman into this country, and they can 
make that money back in the sex trade within a few days, and after that 
it is all profit. It is outrageous and has opened the door to small-
scale operations that are doing this.
  What are the impediments to dealing with this? There are a few, and 
it will take a long time to work on.
  The first, unfortunately, is lack of recognition. I think that at the 
local level and even at the Federal level, our law enforcement officers 
and personnel who want to do the right thing probably need more 
information about identifying these cases, seeing the markers of human 
trafficking, identifying cases that clearly reek of human trafficking, 
and identifying those and treating them for what they are.
  The second thing we need is better protections for these victims. You 
know you are not going to be able to prosecute people and put them in 
jail unless the victims are willing to testify, and victims are not 
going to testify if they don't feel secure. If they believe you are 
going to deport them or put them in immigration jails or, worse, if 
they think these organized crime rings are going to harm their families 
overseas, it is going to be very hard to get victims to cooperate.
  Last but not least--and I know this is a complicated issue--our 
immigration system is contributing to this. We have a very complicated 
immigration system, and it is an expensive one, a burdensome one. What 
it is creating is the need for middlemen, and, guess what, more often 
than not, unfortunately, nowadays the middlemen, these foreign labor 
agencies--too many of them--are, in fact, human traffickers who are 
utilizing this system, the legal immigration system, to bring people 
into this country and, once they are here, to hold them against their 
will. We have to focus on that because ultimately that has to be 
solved. Our legal immigration system has to be modernized. If it is 
not, one of the problems we will continue to face is this issue of 
human trafficking.
  The good news is that here in Congress there is a bill--
reauthorization of the TVPRA. It passed out of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee in October of this year by a 12-to-6 vote. It does a few 
things.
  It promotes increased cooperation among Federal agencies, between the 
United States and other countries.
  It supports and enhances the victim-centered approach, which 
basically says we are going to approach this from the viewpoint of the 
victim and create protections and security for the victims so they can 
cooperate and help us prosecute these people.

[[Page 16603]]

  The bill focuses on cutting off human trafficking at its roots by 
supporting international efforts to focus on this issue. There are a 
lot of countries out there that want to do the right thing; they either 
do not have the resources or knowledge base to do it. There are some 
countries out there that do not mind this. In fact, they cooperate with 
this stuff. They like that it is going on in their countries. They are 
on the take, so to speak. They need to be called out for what they are 
doing as well.
  Finally, it promotes accountability. It ensures that the Federal 
funds are being used for their intended purposes, and it reduces the 
authorization levels to address fiscal concerns but focuses on the 
programs that have been most effective.
  My hope is that bill, which is a bipartisan bill, will come to this 
floor soon and that we will have an opportunity to make it better, to 
get it passed, and to work with our colleagues in the House to send a 
very clear message that this is a priority, that this is something we 
should all agree on and work on together. It is a great cause to be 
involved in. It is one of the great humanitarian, human rights causes 
of the 21st century, and I think how we deal with it or fail to deal 
with it will say a lot about us as a people and as a nation. I hope I 
can encourage as many of my colleagues as possible to take up this 
cause as their own. I look forward, in the weeks to come, to coming to 
the floor and talking more about it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Rebuild America 
Jobs Act because it responds to two critical needs: the jobs crisis we 
face throughout this country and the need to improve our national 
infrastructure, which is obvious to everyone, in every part of this 
country.
  Over the 4 years of this economic crisis, the unemployment rate in 
Rhode Island has been one of the highest in the Nation. It now stands 
at 10.5 percent. For many families, it has been a stressful and 
demoralizing time. Very few have avoided the impacts of this economic 
crisis in their own lives or in the life of someone close to them.
  It has been particularly devastating for those involved in 
construction, a sector where more than 2 million Americans, including 
7,000 Rhode Islanders, have lost their jobs since 2007. It is 
frustrating for these workers because all around them they can see the 
need to maintain and improve our infrastructure, which, by the way, is 
essential to the free-flow of commerce and the economic prosperity of 
the country going forward. Indeed, all of us, regardless of our 
economic status, benefit from a sound transportation system.
  A few weeks ago, Senator Whitehouse and I joined Rhode Island 
transportation officials at the Providence Viaduct. This is a 1,300-
foot stretch of Interstate 95 that runs directly through the heart of 
Providence, RI, our capital city. It connects New York and Boston and 
the whole north-south highway system on the east coast. It is one of 
155 bridges in our State alone that have been found to be structurally 
deficient. It must be replaced within the next few years. It no longer 
can be repaired time and time again; it has to be replaced. If it is 
not replaced, then traffic will have to be rerouted, which will have a 
major impact on our economy and the regional economy. Route 95 is the 
highway link between New York City and Boston. If suddenly you put up a 
roadblock in that highway link and restrict traffic to one lane, you 
are going to see economic activity throughout the Northeast affected. 
Already, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation has installed 
wooden planks beneath the viaduct to catch any concrete or debris 
before it falls on cars and pedestrians below. That is an example of 
the first signs of the increasing decay. This is the kind of 
commonsense project this jobs bill addresses, but it is not the only 
one.
  Indeed, 21 percent of Rhode Island's bridges are listed as 
structurally deficient, while nearly 30 percent are functionally 
obsolete. There is a huge amount of work that we can do to improve 
existing conditions that make us more productive going forward. For 
Rhode Islanders, passing this jobs bill would translate into 
approximately $141 million of highway funding to help us respond to 
these obvious needs. Moreover, it would provide approximately $21 
million in transit funding, which would provide a real shot in the arm 
to help maintain an efficient public transportation system. We take 
pride in that. We have a statewide transportation system. It is 
oriented around our bus system. It travels the length and breadth of 
the State. It is very efficient, but it needs support, and this bill 
would help provide that support.
  The bill would also provide funding for airport improvements, which 
could help Rhode Island's major airport, T.F. Green Airport, with a 
major runway safety and expansion project. This project would make air 
travel not only safer, but it would make our airport more capable of 
intercontinental and international service. Right now we don't have 
that effective option. If we did, that would be a huge multiplier for 
our economy, and it is based on sound infrastructure improvement.
  These are not new, novel techniques or new, advanced technologies. 
This is old-fashioned extending a runway, fixing a bridge, getting the 
economy moving again. Everyone understands that. Everyone on Main 
Street and East Street and South Street and West Street in every corner 
of this country understands that, and we have always done it, and this 
bill will help us do it.
  Finally, the bill establishes a national infrastructure bank, which I 
believe can play a critical role in financing these projects going 
forward. These projects would include clean water projects, energy 
projects, as well as transportation projects. There is absolutely no 
doubt that these investments in infrastructure will benefit our 
economy.
  According to economist Mark Zandi, every dollar invested in these 
types of projects will generate approximately $1.59 in economic 
activity, so there is a significant multiplier effect. Importantly, it 
is part of getting us moving again and building up a self-sustaining 
momentum. Again, these projects will employ private companies that will 
hire individuals in all of our home States to begin the work that must 
be done to improve our infrastructure, to provide the kind of vital 
transportation links that are critical to any economy. It is also very 
important to know that this proposal is fully paid for, and you have 
both business and labor supporting the investments in the bill.
  I would hope we could all join together in a sign of not just common 
unity but common sense and adopt this provision. Build infrastructure. 
It is paid for, and it puts people to work. That is what the American 
public is asking us to do and we should do it.
  I want to comment briefly on the Republican alternative proposal. It 
fails to provide the investment to deal with the infrastructure and the 
job crisis we face today. In fact, it does the opposite. It effectively 
cuts $40 billion in discretionary funding without addressing the needs 
of our highway trust fund and other infrastructure improvement 
vehicles.
  More importantly, it scales back important public health protections 
under the EPA. The Republican package includes the so-called EPA 
Regulatory Relief Act, the REINS Act, and the Regulatory Time-Out Act. 
Together these provisions not only threaten our economic progress but 
also our public health, and they would nullify the EPA boiler rule. 
This rule has been calculated to produce $10 to $24 in health benefits 
for every dollar spent, at least a 10-to-1 ratio of health benefits 
versus dollar spent, preventing approximately 6,600 premature deaths 
and about 40,000 asthma attacks each year.
  This translates, again, into another major crisis we face, and that 
is an affordable health care system. One way to make the health care 
system affordable is to prevent premature deaths, asthma attacks, and a 
host of other things, and that is not incidental to what environmental 
protection does.

[[Page 16604]]

That is at the heart of environmental protection.
  Finally, it would place a moratorium on most regulations, including 
financial regulations. We have seen, sadly to our chagrin, the effect 
of lax regulation in 2008 when our financial markets were on the verge 
of collapse. Unless we have effective regulation, unless we can 
effectively deploy the new tool provided under the Dodd-Frank act, 
unless we can resource regulators to keep a watchful eye on the 
marketplace, frankly, we are going to once again relive those very dark 
and daunting days of 2008 when we saw markets on the verge of collapse. 
And we do so, frankly, in a global economic environment where there are 
pressures coming from Europe and pressures coming from around the 
globe, economic pressures. If our markets are not strong and well 
regulated, can they withstand the backwash from a crisis in Greece, a 
crisis in Italy, a crisis across the globe?
  I do believe the legislation that has been proposed by Leader Reid--
proposed essentially by the President--makes sense, and I hope we can 
unite in common purpose to do what is common sense and invest in 
bridges and roads in America, fully paid for, and avoid the diversion 
of this alternate proposal that would essentially impair our health, 
the public health of America, and not advance our financial stability 
as a nation.
  I yield the floor and I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ENZI. 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. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to make some brief 
remarks about a judge who is coming up for a vote, and I ask that both 
myself and the other Senator from Wyoming be allowed to speak 
consecutively.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Nomination of Scott Skavdahl

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I wish to thank Senator Leahy and Senator 
Grassley and their staffs for moving this nomination. Because of their 
efforts, I have this opportunity to express my support for Judge Scott 
Skavdahl's nomination to serve on the bench of the U.S. District Court 
for the District of Wyoming.
  Although Scott grew up in Harrison, NE, it wasn't long before he made 
his way to my home State and enrolled at the University of Wyoming. The 
university must have felt like a whole new world to him because he had 
just graduated from a high school that had less than 50 students. 
Still, while others might have been intimidated, Scott saw it as 
another of life's challenges to be faced and overcome, so he worked 
hard to complete the requirements for his undergraduate degree. In 
between his classes, Scott managed to find the time to pursue another 
interest of his, as he joined and played on the university's football 
team for 4 years.
  After graduation, Scott made a decision that was to start him on a 
path that would set the tone and the direction of his life when he 
applied to and was accepted by the University of Wyoming Law School. 
His classes were difficult and demanding, but Scott knew what he wanted 
to do with his life, and, as was true for him in so many things, he 
just wouldn't quit until he had accomplished what he set out to do. 
That attitude of confidence and commitment to setting goals and 
achieving them is one of the reasons Scott has been able to establish a 
reputation for himself throughout his career as a serious and 
thoughtful litigator and as a judge. Whenever someone speaks of him, 
they always seem to use the same words to describe him. They say he is 
incredibly smart, a hard-working attorney, and a highly competent and 
capable judge. They also say: Although he wasn't born in Wyoming, we 
are very glad to have him.
  Looking back over each step along the way that led him to this 
nomination, it is clear that Scott has used his time and his talents 
wisely and well. Because of his background and his experience on a 
daily basis, Scott has come to know in detail the issues that face the 
people of Wyoming and how the people feel about him. That is why it was 
no surprise that I have heard nothing but good things about Scott, his 
approach to the law, and his demeanor as a judge. Simply put, Scott 
knows all about the administrative ins and outs of the District of 
Wyoming, and he has used his courtroom as a classroom to help us all be 
informed and aware of the issues that come before him and the reasons 
for his decisions on all of them.
  At times such as these, it is always interesting to take a moment to 
look back at someone's life and connect the dots that brought him or 
her to this important moment in time. For Scott, a childhood in 
Nebraska led him to Wyoming, where he obtained the knowledge and skills 
he needed to pursue a career in something that really interested him--
the law. He then used those credentials he earned in the classroom and 
his life to move step by step through our legal and judicial system.
  His talents and abilities soon caught the attention of former Wyoming 
Governor Dave Freudenthal and President Obama. The President has now 
nominated him to serve in this very important post, and he has been 
unanimously voted out of committee. In and of itself, that recognition 
is a powerful endorsement of Scott's background, his ability to 
interpret and apply the law, and his experience both in the courtroom 
and in his community. It also expresses our confidence that Scott will 
continue to serve as an integral part of the court system of Wyoming, 
the West, and our Nation for many years to come.
  I urge my colleagues to support this nomination, and I look forward 
to the Senate's approval of the nomination of Judge Scott Skavdahl.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor for my fellow Senator.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, in the 19 years since his graduation 
from the University of Wyoming School of Law, Judge Skavdahl has 
distinguished himself both as an attorney and as a trial judge.
  After working in the private sector and clerking for U.S. district 
judge William Downes, Judge Skavdahl was appointed by former Governor 
Dave Freudenthal to serve as a district judge for Wyoming's Seventh 
Judicial District.
  During his time on the State bench, Judge Skavdahl earned the respect 
of the attorneys and the parties appearing in his court. He earned that 
respect for his integrity and his ethics to carry out his duties. He 
earned that respect for his reasoned decisions. He earned that respect 
for the manner in which he conducts himself in the courtroom and for 
being prepared and for his knowledge of the law. There is no doubt in 
my mind that Judge Skavdahl will bring those same skills and that 
respect for the law that he exhibited in the Seventh Judicial District 
to the Federal bench. Wyoming's Federal judges have a long tradition of 
being widely regarded by their peers and respected by the people who 
appear in their courts. Judge Scott Skavdahl will continue that 
tradition for many years to come.
  I know Judge Skavdahl. I know his family. He is a judge I respect and 
admire from a family I respect and admire. I strongly encourage all of 
the Members of the Senate to join with Senator Enzi and join with me in 
supporting Judge Skavdahl's nomination.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. 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.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I see the Senator from West Virginia in 
the Chamber. Is he prepared to speak? I do not want to take advantage 
of the Senator from West Virginia. I was going to speak for about 5 
minutes, if I could.

[[Page 16605]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the plan that has been introduced to the 
Senate today is an affront to common sense, the plan presented by 
Senator Reid. It is an affront to the financial condition this country 
is in. I am working and hope to be able to support a highway bill that 
will have a modest increase in highway spending that is paid for that 
does not increase the debt. We can do that. It is not that hard.
  Apparently, it is hard because nobody wants to make any tough 
choices. They do not want to set priorities. So then it becomes very 
hard. We just want to keep everything going at the same rate. But we do 
need to invest some money in our infrastructure to maintain it, our 
highways, bridges, roads, and expand certain highways that need to be 
fixed. I think we should do that.
  Senator Reid comes in with a tax increase plan, a big spending plan, 
totaling, I think, $60 billion. We are supposed to pass this, and we 
have not yet found the money to pay for the fundamental highway bill 
this Congress is supposed to be working on. I believe it is wrong. I do 
not believe it can be justified by any stretch of the imagination.
  They say: Don't worry. We are raising taxes to fund this new 
transportation infrastructure program. Only a small portion of it is 
the infrastructure bank. This country is spending enough. We are 
wasting enough money now. It would be a mistake for the American people 
to allow Congress to extract more money from them to spend today on 
even a new program while we are doing nothing about the surging debt 
that is running on in our country, while we are doing nothing about the 
Solyndra-type loan programs that are wasting money in huge amounts. 
That loan failure alone amounts to as much money as Alabama gets from 
the general fund, the highway bill, and infrastructure bill, period--
one loan. So we need to get our act together, and I do not believe it 
is legitimate.
  I am the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee. I am looking at 
these numbers, and I am astounded. So we raise taxes. One time they 
said we have to raise taxes to reduce our debt. Now we raise taxes to 
increase spending on a new program, and we still do not have the basic 
$12 billion that is being looked at to be found to fund the basic 
highway bill.
  I am flabbergasted. I do not believe it is right. I think it is some 
sort of clever gimmick that political thinkers got together and 
conjured up, that they could imagine: This will be a fun thing. We will 
bring it up on the floor. It has no chance of passage. We will bring it 
up on the floor. Republicans will oppose it, and we will accuse them of 
being against highways. We will accuse them of giving tax breaks to 
millionaires. That is what we will do. That will be clever. That will 
be fun.
  Sometimes we have to get serious about this debt. For the third year 
in a row--we have just completed the fiscal year on September 30--we 
have had over $1 trillion in debt. Forty percent of the money we are 
spending is borrowed. If we ever have to raise taxes--and that would be 
the last thing--it ought to be done only after we have squeezed every 
wasteful dime out of spending in this country before we go back and ask 
the American people to give more money to a Congress that plays games 
with their money, that has allowed the deficits to be maintained at a 
rate beyond anything this Nation has ever seen before and are projected 
to continue indefinitely under plans that are out there from the budget 
the President submitted to us, which, fortunately, is not going to be 
accepted.
  We have a real problem. I wish to be on record as saying I do not 
believe this is a responsible way for us to proceed. I know there are a 
lot of politics around here. But we are at a point where we need to be 
thinking about a responsible way to find the funding to maintain a good 
highway program, and that is not going to be easy. To have this bill 
thrown in here that is going to be dead as a doornail is not a good 
approach to it. We need to be worrying about that problem rather than a 
huge new spending program, allowing a bunch of bureaucrats to pick and 
choose where they want to send the money. That is the way the 
progressives like to do it: We give them money and let these smart 
people decide where to pass it around. They probably will not give any 
to West Virginia and Alabama. They have bigger projects in their minds 
than that.
  I wanted to share those thoughts, and I thank the Presiding Officer. 
I hope my colleagues will oppose the Reid idea that will be coming up 
later today.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, we have had a lot of conversation today. 
We all agree we need infrastructure. On both sides of the aisle we have 
had a good conversation. I have said before, a road is not a Democratic 
or Republican road, a bridge is not a Democratic or Republican bridge, 
nor is a water line or a sewer line. So I rise to address the competing 
proposals to build infrastructure in this country and to start getting 
America back to work.
  Earlier this week, I attended a ribbon-cutting at the Bluestone Dam 
in beautiful Hinton, WV. When they started work on that dam, I was the 
Governor of our great State of West Virginia. I was sitting in my 
office and said to the Corps colonel: Explain to me what the problem 
could be.
  He said: Maybe the bedrock, and there might be some possibilities 
with unusual flooding where we could lose that dam, breach that dam.
  I asked: What does that mean?
  He said: Think of it this way, Governor. We are sitting in your 
office in the capitol, in Charleston, WV. We would be underwater right 
now.
  So it brought it to reality for me, the extent of the water we are 
dealing with and the billions and billions of dollars in downstream 
costs that would be incurred. So we decided we had to fix that. With 
the help of our Federal Government, we started working on that way back 
in 2002, and we are going into our third phase of that project.
  Roads and bridges are in terrible condition all over the country and 
in every part of everybody's State. Every Member of the House and every 
Member of the Senate has a road or a bridge--all 535 of us--Republicans 
and Democrats alike have a road or a bridge or a water line or a sewer 
line in our area that needs repair. As the Presiding Officer from 
Delaware had noted with the work he did for all the good people of 
Delaware, there was still an awful lot of repair that was needed.
  I believe in infrastructure. In West Virginia, we say: Our economy 
can't grow if people can't go. With that, you have to be able to be 
mobile. We also say in West Virginia: You have to drive to survive 
because we are one of the most rural States in the Nation. Our people 
drive as far, if not farther, than people in most other States do for 
their jobs.
  With that, we have to make sure they have the ability to get to those 
good jobs and be able to provide for their family.
  I have said before--and it has been heard on the floor over the last 
few hours--that infrastructure is not a Democratic idea or a Republican 
idea. It is a commonsense idea.
  In 2007, we Governors at that time met in Philadelphia. Knowing the 
economy was slowing down, we asked: What can we do? We looked back in 
history and saw President Roosevelt, in the 1930s, basically invested 
in infrastructure. We had the WPA projects which we see today. A lot of 
us have used the projects and still are. Tremendous value was returned 
to this country and the infrastructure of this country through those 
hard-working people at that time who just needed a helping hand.
  President Eisenhower, in the 1950s--after the Korean war, the economy 
needed a jump-start, and we saw the Interstate Highway System being 
built for a very mobile society coming off the wars. We are still using 
that same infrastructure that was put in place then.
  This issue is bipartisan because building infrastructure is 
bipartisan. It

[[Page 16606]]

solves two problems. It fixes our crumbling roads and bridges, and it 
creates much needed American jobs. Of all the people in my State 
applying for unemployment--and it might be true in most every State--
construction workers are the biggest group of unemployed people today, 
with the most skill sets in America. Almost 20 percent of the 
unemployment is in the construction trades. That is unacceptable in 
this great country when we have repairs being needed everywhere.
  We are going to vote on two proposals today. I know one was just put 
on quick order, and there is another one we are going to be voting on. 
One is a Democratic measure, which is our Rebuild America Jobs Act, and 
the other one is a Republican measure that funds transportation, and it 
reins in the EPA, for which I have been trying to make sure there is a 
commonsense approach to how we balance the economy and the environment. 
In West Virginia, I think we can do it as well if not better than most 
because we are dealing with those types of challenges.
  I believe both these bills will help kick-start the economy and 
create American jobs--I do--and we all know we need that. I will vote 
for both of them. One is a Democratic proposal and one is a Republican 
proposal. But I do believe I was sent here as a West Virginian to help 
my State.
  It is not because they are bad ideas or wrong ideas that they are 
probably going to fail. They both have good merits to them. But as our 
good friend from Alabama just said, it is politics of the order. That 
is what we are dealing with, and we will find reasons, probably, why we 
can't give our support.
  On our jobs bill, there is $60 billion--$50 billion, which I think 
the Presiding Officer spoke so eloquently on earlier, and $10 billion 
for an infrastructure bank. I know what an infrastructure bank does in 
my State. In my State, we have $2 billion of need. We have a $300 
million resolving account. It is the same as what we are talking about 
here. It has helped us tremendously. But everybody comes to the table. 
We are able to bridge some financing and put projects together that we 
never could have done, and it is tremendously needed.
  With that being said, it probably will not pass because our dear 
friends on the other side of the aisle, our Republican colleagues, and 
our friends over in the Republican Party, are going to say: It has a 
seven-tenths-of-1-percent tax on incomes over $1 million--seven-tenths 
of 1 percent.
  I can vote for that. I support that. But I also recognize that is a 
problem for them. So in recognizing that, I am willing to reach out and 
look for other ways to pay for this. I think that is the spirit we 
should be working in. Are there offsets or credits? I think 73 of us 
have voted in a bipartisan fashion for an ethanol credit. Isn't that 
something we could work on? How about the money we are spending in 
Afghanistan and Iraq and rebuilding those nations' infrastructures? I 
have said this before: If you help us build a new bridge in West 
Virginia, we will not blow it up. If you help us build a new school, I 
guarantee we will not burn it down. We are so proud to say the good 
people all over this country have helped us in West Virginia, and we 
like to help other people in other States. We will work together. That 
is what we should be doing, rebuilding America.
  That is what I have asked of everyone: Come together. Let's make sure 
the infrastructure need we have all over our great country is the first 
and foremost thing we are working on together because we do agree, as 
Democrats and Republicans and as Americans, we need it. That is 
something I think we can come together on.
  Let me turn now to the Republican bill, which a few hours ago I was 
notified will be coming up. This bill is not perfect either. A 2-year 
extension of transportation spending does not give States the certainty 
they need. We have usually had a 6-year authorization. I know when I 
was Governor of West Virginia we did 6 years. We did our 6-year 
planning of our roads in our State based on the Federal bill, the 
authorization of the Federal highway bill. With only 2 years, it is 
hard to get any project completed. Sometimes it is even hard to get it 
on the drawing board.
  That being said, I am a strong supporter of reining in the EPA, which 
this bill does. I believe we have to set our transportation priorities. 
Unfortunately, Washington and all of us here seem to have become so 
dysfunctional that politics--whether it is the party politics or the 
personal politics--is put before the good of the country. This has to 
stop.
  I heard one of our good Senators from Arizona this morning saying we 
are down to a 9-percent approval rating. If it was not for our staff 
and our family, we don't know if we would be within the margin of 
error. With that being said, we have to come together. We have had 
disagreements throughout the history of this great country, and we have 
come together many times on very difficult issues.
  This is one I think will challenge all of us to come together as 
Americans. The people of West Virginia did not send me to Washington to 
play the blame game. I have said many times, I have never fixed a 
problem by blaming somebody else for it. I fixed a problem by 
identifying that we had a problem and then trying to bring all sides 
together to fix it. That is what we need more of in Washington. I do 
not think any of us were sent to blame each other. I think we were sent 
to work together.
  Again, I am going to urge all my colleagues and friends on both sides 
of the aisle to focus on the next generation. We see them every week we 
come here, our young pages. They are our next generation. We need to be 
making votes for them, not our next election, which will be in 2012. 
That election is going to come and go. But if we do not give them the 
opportunity to have the building tools they need to build a foundation 
that they can be the greatest next generation this country has ever 
seen, then I do not know what we are going to say for the future of 
this country.
  I, for one, am not going to vote along those lines, to where it is 
going to be based on what is good for me, based on what is good for the 
party I belong to but strictly based on what is good for America and 
this next generation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. JOHANNS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 
about 12 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The remarks of Mr. Johanns pertaining to the introduction of S. 1805 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I listened with interest to the Senator's 
explanation of the cross-air rule. I would just say he is off the mark, 
because if you produce deadly pollution in your State--deadly--you have 
an obligation to clean it up before it goes into another State.
  It is like taking your garbage and dumping it in your neighbor's 
front lawn. We don't do that in America. So we are going to have a 
robust debate next week on the cross-State air rule.
  I hope people keep in mind that we are talking about deadly pollution 
produced in one State and moving over to a series of other States which 
have no defense. So anyone who wants to come and claim that is the 
right thing to do morally--just walk away from that rule--I think they 
are going to have a hard time explaining it back home. I would not dump 
garbage on the front lawn of my neighbor's house. I think that patina 
is the best explanation of what this is about. More on that later.
  Today we are going to be facing a very interesting choice. As we 
know, President Obama has put together a major jobs package, and he 
pays for it by going to the millionaires and saying that once they make 
$1 million, after that we think they could pay a little bit more to 
help us get out of this recession. My Republican friends voted that 
down. They were appalled we would even suggest there would be even a 
few dollars of increased taxes on people who make over $1 million. They

[[Page 16607]]

would rather not do any job creation and protect the people who earn 
over $1 million.
  (Mr. MANCHIN assumed the Chair.)
  Mrs. BOXER. We have a very stark choice today. We have a small 
version of the jobs bill--this one focuses on infrastructure, mostly 
transportation investments--paid for by a seven-tenths-of-1-percent tax 
on people who earn over $1 million, and it would not go into effect on 
any of those funds until they pass the million. So it would be taxed 
seven-tenths of 1 percent on income over $1 million.
  I make that point because it is not going to hurt anybody. A person 
making $1.5 million would pay an additional $3,000. This is not 
anything that will hurt the millionaires and billionaires. It is going 
to make this country stronger. It is going to grow this economy.
  Here is what we have: We have a Democratic jobs bill. It is $60 
billion--$50 billion for roads and bridges and $10 billion for an 
infrastructure bank.
  To put that into the context of why this is such a good bill and why 
it would create 650,000 jobs, let me tell you what it is doing in 
essence. It is taking an extra year of transportation funding--we spend 
about $50 billion a year, approximately, through the highway trust 
fund--and it would inject essentially another year of spending over the 
next 12 months, creating well over 650,000 new jobs.
  The Republican alternative actually loses jobs. They say they will 
continue the highway trust fund for 2 years. So they are just 
continuing what we are already doing. That is great. But then they cut 
the equivalent amount from police, fire, food inspection, and the FBI, 
and it will result in a loss of many jobs--200,000 jobs. So we have one 
bill, the Democratic bill, that creates a minimum of 650,000 jobs, and 
we have the Republican bill that cuts 200,000 jobs.
  What are they thinking, Mr. President? What are they thinking? This 
is not the time to cut 200,000 jobs. Then they end health care reform 
which we all know, while not perfect, is going to help reduce our 
deficit. What they have done is continue the highway spending at 
current levels--it doesn't add one job--and then they cut all those 
other jobs to pay for it--200,000 jobs--and then they repeal health 
care reform, which will add to the deficit.
  They cannot stand the thought of a millionaire paying a little bit 
more to help us at this time even though everybody knows we are at a 
point in time where the gap between the wealthiest and the middle class 
has never been bigger. Four hundred families earn more than 50 percent 
of all the rest of us; 400 families earn more than 50 percent of all 
the rest of us. It is unbelievable.
  My State has many wealthy people in it, many poor people in it, and 
has a good middle class. But it is getting tougher to be part of that 
middle class. The middle class is hit hard with health costs, with 
college costs that keep going up, and with gas prices going up. They 
are hit hard with mortgages they can't refinance because their mortgage 
is now higher than their home is worth. So we have to act on these 
issues. We have the ability to do it.
  If we just read the Preamble of our Constitution, it tells us what we 
are supposed to do: work for a more perfect union, establish justice, 
domestic tranquility, and promote the general welfare. We have to do 
these things today because we are losing the middle class.
  This bill before us, the Democratic jobs bill, is an excellent place 
to start this very day by infusing $60 billion into spending that will 
go mostly to private sector contractors, people who build roads and 
bridges. Do you know that 70,000 bridges in America are deficient?
  My colleague, Senator Inhofe, and I are working closely on a highway 
bill. We are going to have one soon. He tells the story of a woman 
walking in Oklahoma. She is simply taking a walk, and the bridge starts 
to fall apart; it falls down and traps her and kills her. He said she 
was a young mother. This is America in the 21st century. That is not 
acceptable. We can't have a country like ours neglect its 
infrastructure. It is wrong.
  But our Republican friends will not work with us because they don't 
want to ask people earning over $1 million to pay just a little bit 
more. For example, if someone makes $1.1 million, they will have to pay 
$700 more in their taxes. That is it. But they don't even want to go 
there. What they want to do is say: Oh, yes, we will just renew the 
highway bill, but we will slash across the board everything but 
defense. That is how we are going to pay for their jobs bill, which 
actually will lose hundreds of thousands of jobs. It is unbelievable to 
me.
  I don't think this is the time to say we will turn our backs on jobs. 
As a matter of fact, in order to extend the highway trust fund we are 
going to fire cops, firefighters, food safety inspectors, FBI agents, 
and Border Patrol agents. That is their alternative. So don't vote for 
it unless you think it is the time to put all those people out of work.
  What Republicans also do in this so-called jobs bill--which is a no 
jobs bill; it is a jobs loss bill--is they decide they want to block 
implementation of very important health and safety rules. I want to go 
through what those rules are. We are going to talk about the Clean Air 
Act right now.
  The Republicans are repealing two rules that deal with clean air. 
Here is the thing. It is going to make people sicker. It is going to 
mean lots of jobs in clean tech. It is the last thing the country 
needs. It flies in the face of the views of the people. Let's talk 
about one of the rules they want to cut back: industrial boilers and 
incinerators.
  This bill, called a jobs bill, would halt an EPA rule issued in 
February 2011 to reduce toxic air pollution. What do I mean? Toxic 
means it is toxic to our health; it will hurt us. People will die from 
toxic air pollution. People do die from toxic air pollution. The toxins 
the boilers and incinerators rule would reduce include mercury, lead, 
and other hazardous air pollution released by boilers and incinerators.
  They can write it the way they want it, but here is what happens when 
we go back to those days when we allowed these toxins to be emitted. We 
saw developmental disabilities in our children. We saw more cases of 
cancer, more cases of heart disease, aggravated asthma, and premature 
death.
  These are not just words. Congress commissioned a study, and we now 
know exactly what we are doing, how many lives it saves, and how many 
visits to the hospital it saves. Let me remind my friends who think 
that it is good for the economy to have toxic air pollution, if we 
cannot breathe we cannot work. If someone has to rush to the hospital 
or their child is rushed there because of an asthma attack, they lose a 
day's work. If a pregnant woman now has a problem with the child, and 
the child is disabled or has problems mentally from too much mercury, 
this is a tragedy.
  Some people say: Oh, the EPA is regulating too much and it costs too 
much. Let me tell you the price of the Republican agenda: sick people, 
loss of jobs in the clean tech industry, lost days of work, loss of 
kids' schooldays.
  I urge my colleagues in the Senate, when they have their next meeting 
with a large group of people--whether it is 100 or 50 or just a 
couple--ask them how many of them have asthma. Ask them how many know 
someone close to them with asthma. I guarantee the hands of one-third 
to one-half of those in the room will go up. That doesn't just happen--
asthma--because a person just woke up on the wrong side of the bed. It 
happens because of the air they are breathing. It is toxic.
  But in the Republicans' so-called jobs bill--which I already told you 
loses jobs--they not only do that, but to add insult to injury they 
repeal all of these rules.
  Let me put it into context for you, since I have now spoken 
emotionally about what it does to people when they breathe in toxins. 
Let me cite the numbers.
  Congress demanded a study. We said, give us the numbers, and so a 
study was done. We believe the protections from this industrial boiler 
rule will annually prevent up to 6,500 premature deaths, 4,000 heart 
attacks, 4,300 hospital emergency room visits, 310,000

[[Page 16608]]

days when people miss work or school, and 41,000 cases of aggravated 
asthma. The benefits from these safeguards are expected to be $54 
billion annually by 2014. That is the rule my Republican colleagues 
want us to set aside.
  If you went to your constituents and said to them: You know, we have 
a rule here that says industry is going to have to use the best 
available technology and clean up their pollution, and here is what it 
is going to do--it is going to prevent 6,500 premature deaths, 4,000 
heart attacks, 4,300 hospital visits, 310,000 days when people miss 
school or work, and 41,000 cases of aggravated asthma, and it is going 
to deliver $54 billion a year in health benefits--I think your 
constituents would say, go for it, Senator; that makes sense.
  Let me talk about a poll that just came out that reflects how people 
feel about this. Listen to this. We have our Republican friends 
offering what they call a jobs bill, which I have proven contains job 
cuts because they simply continue the highway trust fund. They do not 
add anything new, but they cut a couple hundred thousand jobs to pay 
for it. That is their so-called jobs bill.
  They then want to repeal two rules that fall under the Clean Air Act, 
and I just talked about the boiler rule. But let me tell you what the 
people think, since we are supposed to represent the people.
  There was a bipartisan poll done in October, a few days ago, 
reflecting 88 percent of Democrats, 85 percent of Independents, and 58 
percent of Republicans opposed Congress stopping the EPA from enacting 
new limits on air pollution from electric powerplants.
  Who is speaking for the people? We need to vote down the Republican 
alternative because 88 percent of Democrats want us to, 85 percent of 
Independents want us to, and 58 percent of Republicans want us to. They 
do not want Congress stepping in.
  On Tuesday, Senator Paul is going to have a motion to repeal the 
cross-state air pollution rule, which is a rule that says to the States 
if they are creating toxic air pollution and it is flowing to another 
State, it has to be cleaned up. Now, 67 percent of voters support the 
cross-state air pollution rule and 77 percent of voters support the 
mercury air toxics rule. So 65 percent of voters surveyed are confident 
the health and environmental benefits of air pollution standards 
outweigh the costs, and 75 percent of voters believe a compelling 
reason to implement these air rules is the boost to local economies and 
thousands of new jobs that are created from investments in new 
technologies.
  If we are representing the people of these great United States, we 
better listen to what they are saying in a bipartisan way. They are 
telling us to leave the EPA alone. When people come to this floor and 
demonize the EPA, they are going against the beliefs of the American 
people.
  There are some incredible quotes I want to read, because, to me, it 
is amazing what is happening around here. When I get to the place here 
I want, I am going to cite some quotes from unlikely sources.
  Mr. President, how many minutes remains on our side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 14 minutes 10 seconds.
  Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Chair.
  Here is a quote from General Motors:

       General Motors company recognizes the benefit of the 
     country continuing the historic national program to address 
     fuel economy and greenhouse gases that the EPA began.

  That is signed by the chairman and CEO of General Motors.
  Here is a quote from a letter from a whole group of electricity-
producing companies: PG&E, Calpine Corp., NextEra Energy, Inc., Public 
Service Enterprise Group, National Grid USA, Exelon Corp., 
Constellation Energy, and Austin Energy. This is a quote from their 
letter to the Wall Street Journal:

       Our companies' experience complying with air quality 
     regulations demonstrates regulations can yield important 
     economic benefits, including job creation, while maintaining 
     reliability.

  Kind of amazing, isn't it? And there is Gerald Ford, the Republican 
President who signed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974--also under 
attack, by the way--who said:

       Nothing is more essential to the life of every single 
     American than clean air, pure food, and safe drinking water.

  Yet if you look at the Republican plan, they roll back clean air 
regulations and they roll back food safety. Even after we had people 
die from contaminated cantaloupe, my friends on the other side think 
now is the time to cut back on food safety inspection. Give me a break. 
Who are we here representing?
  This is why people across the country are upset. They see things such 
as this and they say, is this Alice in Wonderland?
  Listen to what Christine Todd Whitman and William Ruckelshaus wrote--
two Republicans who were former EPA Administrators under Republican 
Presidents. They said:

       It is easy to forget how far we have come in the past 40 
     years. We should take heart from all this progress and not, 
     as some in Congress have suggested, seek to tear down the 
     agency that the President and Congress created to protect 
     America's health and environment.

  They wrote that letter in March of this year. They understand. This 
isn't a partisan issue. Republicans breathe the same air that Democrats 
and Independents breathe. That is why it is so frustrating to see, in a 
so-called jobs bill from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, 
an actual loss of jobs and loss of clean air regulations and loss of 
food safety inspectors.
  I have to say I find myself quoting Richard Nixon more and more these 
days. He signed the Clean Air Act. Listen to what he said at a State of 
the Union speech. He said:

       Clean air, clean water, open spaces--these should once 
     again be the birthright of every American.

  I have cited these quotes from Republican Presidents and former 
Administrators of the EPA under Republican Presidents, so I am stunned 
at this so-called jobs bill. I have talked about the industrial boiler 
rule, but they also roll back the cement manufacturing facilities rule 
that would indefinitely delay standards to address smog and toxic soot 
pollution from over 150 cement kilns nationwide. These facilities 
contain hazardous air pollutants, including mercury, arsenic, lead, and 
other heavy metals.
  Remember the movie ``Arsenic and Old Lace''? Arsenic kills you. Too 
much of it does that. Come on. We need to clean up the air, and we need 
to be sure we do it in a reasonable way. I am on that side--the side of 
doing it in a reasonable way. And no one could be more reasonable than 
Lisa Jackson. I tell you, the woman has the patience of a saint. She is 
not going to go out and hit people over the head with this. She is 
going to phase in these regulations, and she is going to listen 
carefully. And you have to listen. Mercury, arsenic, lead, and other 
heavy metals are the third largest mercury source in the country. These 
relate to cement manufacturing facilities.
  Let me tell you what these pollutants do. They cause cancer and they 
harm the reproductive system and the developmental system. Pregnant 
women and children are at risk. We hear a lot of talk about life--when 
does life begin? That is up to each individual and their God to decide 
that. But one thing I hope we can agree on is that a pregnant woman 
shouldn't be subjected to too much mercury or too much arsenic in the 
air.
  We have a rule here, a reduction of mercury and toxic soot emissions. 
We know that rule will prevent 2,500 premature deaths, 1,500 heart 
attacks, more than 1,700 emergency room and hospital visits, that it 
will prevent 17,000 cases of aggravated asthma attacks, 130,000 days of 
lost work, and it will provide up to $18 billion of benefits annually 
by 2013, which is a benefits-to-cost ratio of 19 to 1. Yet my friends 
on the other side think it is a terrible idea and want to indefinitely 
delay it.
  Let me tell you something. If we had that kind of attitude in 
Congress years before, we wouldn't have a Clean Air Act. I can tell you 
what happened in Los Angeles. We used to have about 160 days in Los 
Angeles where people could not go out. They were warned to stay

[[Page 16609]]

indoors. As a result of the Clean Air Act, we have had none of those 
days--none--in Los Angeles in 2010.
  So why on Earth does anyone want to delay these rules? If you want to 
sit with Lisa Jackson and sit with me, as the chairman of the 
Environment and Public Works Committee, and sit with others and see if 
there is a way we can do this in a fair manner, of course. But the 
public wants us to act, and the action they want us to take is to 
support the EPA, not to put our noses in there and stop them from doing 
what the Clean Air Act requires them to do.
  Poll after poll shows that voters are on the side of clean air. They 
are on the side of protecting the public health. They are not on the 
side of polluters. So I wish to say, we know two things today: People 
want jobs, and they also want their health protected. We also know that 
when you protect the people's health, what happens is a huge economic 
boost is given to the clean tech sector, and that boost has resulted in 
many jobs. As many as 1.7 million jobs are created because of these 
clean air rules and clean water rules.
  The whole world wants these technologies. I had the amazing 
experience of visiting China, and I didn't see the Sun--I didn't see 
the Sun--for the 7 days or so I was there. The air is filthy, and 
people complain about it. One day we had the hint of sun--the hint of 
sun--breaking through the pollution, and the people there said, what a 
beautiful day. You must have brought the good weather. I said, you know 
what, come to California, I will show you a blue sky.
  We cannot go backward. We need to move this country forward.
  If the arc of history bends toward justice, it also bends toward 
health, public health, making sure our people get that health care, 
that they don't have those public health enemies out there--the soot, 
the arsenic, the lead, the mercury--and, yes, jobs. We have seen our 
GDP explode since we passed the Clean Air Act, and we grew more than 
any other industrialized nation while we had these laws in place, for 
two reasons. One, these laws create clean tech jobs. Two, if we can't 
breathe, we can't work. When we have a healthy society, we are far more 
productive.
  So we have the Democratic alternative that will create over 600,000 
jobs in transportation. It doesn't go into these extraneous issues such 
as the air pollution laws, and it is paid for by seven-tenths of 1 
percent of income over $1 million.
  Then we have the Republican alternative that just continues our 
transportation at the same levels and pays for it by cutting 200,000 
jobs--police, fire, and the rest, FBI agents, food safety inspectors, 
Border Patrol agents. Just what we don't need. That is what they do. 
Plus, just for good measure, they repeal basically two Clean Air Act 
rules that I talked about from boilers and cement plants.
  Folks, if ever there was a difference between the parties in 
evidence, this is it. If one person comes up to me and asks if there is 
really a difference between Democrats and Republicans, I will point 
them to this debate.
  So I hope very much that we will get enough votes to take up the 
Democratic bill that is fully paid for and will create over 600,000 
jobs, that will fix our deficient bridges and our deficient highways, 
that will say to the construction workers: We know you are out of work, 
and we are going to put you back to work--or the Republican alternative 
that would result in 200,000 jobs lost and overturn these clean air 
rules that are so important that the vast majority of people, including 
Republicans, who are asked about it would say: Congress, keep your 
hands off these rules because, you know what. We think they are 
working.
  I reserve the remainder for other speakers, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, let's be clear about what the Democrats' 
Rebuild America Jobs Act is and what it is not about.
  It is about expanding infrastructure spending, financed by tax 
increases. It is about setting up a brand-new government bureaucracy in 
the form of an infrastructure bank that will take years to get underway 
and will subject taxpayers, once again, to private sector risk-taking 
and to bailouts.
  It is about following in the footsteps of the ongoing costly 
government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, called Fannie and Freddie. 
It is about increasing the Federal footprint in the infrastructure 
arena. It is about increasing taxes on those with incomes above 
$500,000, now creatively called millionaires, including incomes of many 
business owners who risk their own capital to create jobs.
  It is about further Federal wage controls on construction projects 
which lead to inefficient use of taxpayer funds. It is also about 
creating political talking points for the upcoming Presidential 
election. They know their bill is doomed to fail. It is all a game.
  Here is what the legislation is not about. It is not about creating 
jobs. It is not about engineering a more efficient and a more fair tax 
code. No, this is the same tune, different song: A bill for more 
spending, financed with new taxes.
  It remains baffling to me that this is all the other side ever seems 
to have to offer. The Democrats' proposal incorporates more spending on 
various infrastructure initiatives, including one of the President's 
favorites, high-speed rail.
  As columnist Robert Samuelson wrote in the Washington Post in 
February of this year:

       High-speed rail is not an investment in the future. It's 
     mostly a waste of money.

  As for the arguments by some that we risk losing our global 
competitive edge without things such as high-speed rail, I would 
encourage them to pay attention to what is going on beyond our shores.
  China, facing safety concerns, high debt associated with high-speed 
rail, and political scandals involving kickbacks and undue influence on 
rail spending has scaled its plans back and operates some high-speed 
rail at 30 miles per hour.
  Spain, a one-time darling of those who promote high-speed rail 
spending, is also scaling back, having identified such spending as 
imprudent in the current economic environment.
  Here at home, States have rejected high-speed rail initiatives. We 
just learned in recent days that California's bullet train is now 
projected to cost close to $100 billion, nearly twice its previous 
projection.
  Nonetheless, the administration and my friends on the other side of 
the aisle wish to plow forward by shoveling more taxpayer funds into 
exactly those sorts of projects, with little more than rosy projections 
of future costs and benefits that justify the expense.
  I am deeply skeptical that the Democrats' legislation to fund more 
infrastructure projects is a good way to address our current national 
unemployment emergency and need for jobs.
  According to CBO:

       Large-scale construction projects of any type require years 
     of planning and preparation. Even those that are ``on the 
     shelf'' generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to 
     provide timely stimulus to the economy.

  More often than not, the delays are because of burdensome and 
inefficient regulatory red tape.
  As President Obama discovered too late, shovel-ready projects are 
hard to find. In June he joked about his first stimulus, saying:

       Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we had expected.

  Now, that may have been humorous, except they should have known 
better. Unfortunately, Americans looking for jobs and the American 
taxpayers who are now on the hook to pay off President Obama's 
stimulus-driven debt do not find this to be a laughing matter.
  The infrastructure bank proposed by the other side would not even be 
up and running for well over 1 year, and probably longer. It will take 
1 year or more just to set up the bureaucracy. How can this possibly 
have anything to do with creating jobs and lowering unemployment today?
  There are worrisome details about the proposed new government 
infrastructure bank bureaucracy and the power it will wield. The 
proposed

[[Page 16610]]

bank's board is required to give ``adequate consideration''--whatever 
that means--to a host of features, including ``whether there is 
sufficient State or municipal political support for the successful 
completion of the infrastructure project.''
  While proponents of the infrastructure bank are selling it as a new, 
politics-free way to fund projects, even the authorizing legislation 
explicitly calls for political considerations.
  The Democrats' bill also claims the bank would be a ``United States 
Government-owned independent'' institution--government-owned and 
controlled by political appointees but somehow independent, just like a 
GSE, government-sponsored enterprise.
  The definition of ``eligible infrastructure project'' in their bill 
includes a wide range of possible projects, including high-speed rail, 
which Americans do not want or need, and solid waste disposal 
facilities such as the one that drove Harrisburg, PA, into bankruptcy.
  Most worrisome, the infrastructure bank board is provided with the 
authority to make any modifications it would like, at its discretion, 
to what constitutes an eligible infrastructure project. How long do we 
think it would take for the board to start doling out taxpayer funds to 
non-viable projects? Haven't we seen enough of that in this 
administration?
  Proponents of the infrastructure bank make the peculiar argument that 
somehow because the bank would not be able to make grants, taxpayers 
face no risks of losses. Yet the bank is empowered to make loans, which 
are risky. The bank is empowered to issue loan guarantees just like 
taxpayer-backed government guarantees of Fannie and Freddie. Really. 
Stop and think about it. This just looks like a rebirth of Fannie and 
Freddie. That is all we need. How is that not risky?
  Also problematic is direct authorization in the Democrats' proposed 
infrastructure bank for deferral of payments of direct loans in the 
event ``the infrastructure project is unable to generate sufficient 
revenues to pay the scheduled loan repayments of principal and interest 
on the direct loan under this Act.''
  Translation: If a project's revenues streams are insufficient to pay 
off the government loan, then the loan gets modified and extended. 
This, of course, benefits any private partner of the taxpayer-funded 
infrastructure project while taxpayers are put on the hook for the 
losses.
  Have we been here before? We all know what the answer to that is.
  This is an explicit admission, in the authorizing legislation, that 
contingencies are expected in which taxpayers suffer losses and end up 
bailing out private entities. This is the essence of a corporate 
bailout. This is corporatism at its worst--privatized profits and 
socialized losses.
  The whipsawing is too much to handle. On one hand, the President, a 
former community organizer, stands with the Occupy Wall Street 
protesters, criticizing the so-called rich. On the other hand, he and 
his congressional allies support legislation that would make taxpayers 
responsible for the bad decisions of wealthy contractors. I look 
forward to the critiques of this crony capitalism at the Occupy Wall 
Street gatherings.
  Taxpayers are on the hook for billions. Keep in mind it is not merely 
the advertised initial price of $10 billion of taxpayer money necessary 
to start up the proposed new infrastructure bank bureaucracy that would 
be at stake. The bank will be empowered to ``leverage'' taxpayer 
dollars to support 10, 20, or maybe 30 times that amount for so-called 
public-private partnership projects.
  Have we already forgotten that leverage is what helped create the 
largest financial crisis since the Great Depression? Yet, amazingly, 
for proponents of the infrastructure bank, leverage in this case is a 
good thing.
  Make no mistake, leverage means risk, and more leverage means more 
risk. Why, when taxpayers have not even seen the last of the losses 
from Fannie and Freddie, would we even consider setting up a brand-new 
public-private mongrel called an infrastructure bank that will again 
subject taxpayers to losses? Why would we set up a new Federal 
bureaucracy that will require bailouts on projects specially selected 
by unelected political appointees with the power to pick winning and 
losing projects eligible for government assistance?
  It is of interest that one of the new pitches for an infrastructure 
bank is that we need it to help us be more globally competitive. 
Sometimes comparisons are made with the growth of infrastructure 
spending in developing countries such as China. But, of course, 
developing countries devote many resources to infrastructure spending. 
It is almost a tautology. Those countries are starting with a much 
smaller beginning base, so we would expect a need for greater growth.
  Proponents of infrastructure spending cite rankings of the United 
States globally on its infrastructure from a recent World Economic 
Forum's Global Competitiveness Report. If they had read the most recent 
report carefully, they would note that it identifies that the top two 
most problematic factors for doing business in America are tax rates 
and inefficient government bureaucracy. Yet the Democrats' bill seeks 
to increase tax rates and construct a new bureaucracy called an 
infrastructure bank.
  We do not need a new Federal bureaucracy filled with politically 
appointed bureaucrats. We do not need a government picking economic 
winners and losers. We do not need more government spending years from 
now to deal with an unemployment crisis today. We do not need more 
taxes at a time when the unemployment rate is stuck at 9.1 percent. And 
we most definitely do not need another GSE. But if you like Fannie and 
Freddie, you will love the proposed infrastructure bank.
  Once again, the other side has turned to divisiveness and class 
warfare. Evil millionaires and billionaires, whom Democrats now define 
as an individual with income starting at $500,000, need to be brought 
to economic justice. A 0.7-percent tax--or whatever the rate-of-the-
week special cooked up by the Democratic war room happens to be--
imposed on individual incomes that begin at $500,000 will bring 
equality and justice for all.
  A few points need to be made about the surtax proposal. First, it is 
more taxes to pay for more government spending. We need to keep that in 
mind when we hear Democrats talk about the need to raise taxes to 
reduce the deficits.
  Second, it is not real economic or tax policy. It is designed to 
deliver a talking point to an administration increasingly concerned 
about its reelection prospects.
  I remind my friends on the other side of the aisle again that those 
earning $500,000 or more, whom they creatively call millionaires and 
billionaires, are not a static group of people. Many who earn those 
amounts in 1 year are likely to earn far less in the next year or in 
the prior year. In fact, the highest income taxpayers are a dynamic and 
rapidly changing group. Any one of us could get there if we just work 
hard enough and are smart enough to get there. That income group is 
constantly changing.
  Keep in mind that a significant number of people hit by the 
Democrats' tax hike would be business owners--the same people we need 
to create new jobs. Significant fractions of net-positive business 
income and of active flow-through business income would be subject to 
Senator Reid's new surtax. This is especially harmful to small 
businesses, which are often organized as flow-through entities, 
including sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, and S corporations.
  We do not need higher taxes that will fall on job creators to write 
checks for the President's special preferences, such as spending on 
high-speed rail that Americans do not want or need. We do not need a 
risky, GSE-like, taxpayer-funded infrastructure bank populated by 
political appointees, able to pick and choose whatever spending they 
would like to define as an infrastructure project, while subjecting 
taxpayers to private risk-taking.
  Fortunately, there is a better way, and it is contained in my 
legislation, the Long-Term Surface Transportation

[[Page 16611]]

Extension Act of 2011. Briefly, here is what it does.
  It eliminates dedicated funding for transportation enhancements and 
gives States the authority to decide whether to spend resources on add-
ons, such as bike paths.
  It reforms the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, by 
eliminating inefficient bureaucratic red tape and accelerating project 
delivery and contracting, just as called for by the President's Jobs 
Council.
  It supports job creation by placing a temporary timeout on job-
killing regulations that are estimated to have significant economic 
effects.
  It includes provisions for waivers of inefficient environmental 
reviews, approvals, and licensing and permitting requirements for road, 
highway, and bridge rebuilding efforts in emergency situations.
  It goes straight to the matter of job creation, and it draws from 
bipartisan recommendations, including recommendations from the 
President's own bipartisan Jobs Council. We have not ignored the 
President. We are taking some of his ideas and putting them in this 
bill.
  It allows fully paid-for infrastructure projects to be undertaken to 
help build roads, bridges, and a host of other projects without 
imposing permanent, job-killing, higher taxes during our national 
unemployment emergency.
  I urge all of my colleagues to vote in support of my legislation and 
to vote against the tax-and-spend alternative offered by those on the 
other side. We have had enough of this. We had enough with Fannie and 
Freddie. Yes, it was set up to do good, but it has wound up putting us 
in hock, and then just this week we find that they all--many of the 
leaders of Fannie and Freddie--are taking home huge bonuses for running 
the place. The new ones, the new leadership--maybe that is a little 
harsh, but the fact is, why should they be taking bonuses when we know 
Fannie and Freddie are in real trouble? I predict that if the 
Democratic bill passes and we get this infrastructure bank set up, it 
is only a matter of time until this will be another Fannie or Freddie. 
That is what happens when government bureaucrats decide who wins, who 
loses, and interferes with the private sector and those who have always 
made the private sector go and work well for all of us.
  I yield the floor.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the Rebuild 
America Jobs Act. This bill is about jobs today and jobs tomorrow 
across the Nation and in my home State of Maryland. It also is about 
repairing our crumbling infrastructure.
  This bill does three things. First, it provides $50 billion for 
immediate transportation investments. It will provide formula funding 
and award competitive grants to our States for transportation 
infrastructure projects. This includes funding for our highways and 
bridges. It also includes our transit systems and passenger and freight 
networks as well as our aviation system and ports.
  Second, it provides $10 billion to establish a national 
infrastructure bank. This bank will leverage private and public capital 
to fund large infrastructure projects. These include not only 
transportation projects but also desperately needed water and sewer, 
and energy projects. The bank will provide direct loans and loan 
guarantees for projects of regional and national significance.
  I have been a strong proponent of establishing a national 
infrastructure bank for several years now going back to the original 
Dodd-Hagel legislation. I am now a cosponsor of Senators Kerry, 
Hutchison, and Warner's bill.
  Third, this bill pays for itself. It implements a surtax of less than 
1 percent on those that make more than $1 million a year. This tax will 
begin in 2013.
  This bill is so important because it will create hundreds of 
thousands of jobs across America by putting construction workers and 
engineers back to work. According to Moody's, every $1 spent on 
infrastructure spurs economic activity raising GDP by about $1.59. 
Without this investment, nearly 1 million Americans will lose their 
jobs and our economy will lose nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 
years.
  Our failing transportation infrastructure is costing everyone money 
we don't have: State and local governments, motorists, and companies 
shipping their goods. Americans pay approximately $333 in car repairs a 
year because of poor road conditions and more at the pump because of 
congestion. We just learned Marylanders have the longest commute in the 
country--even longer than New Yorkers. Can you believe that?
  Freight bottlenecks and congestion are costing us about $200 billion 
a year. It is estimated that our failing infrastructure will drive the 
cost of doing business up by adding $430 billion to costs in the next 
decade. This means it will cost more to ship goods and consumers will 
feel it in their pocketbooks.
  My State of Maryland has a 6-year transportation plan with $10 
billion worth of needs. A recent blue ribbon commission found the State 
needs another $500 million annually to meet these needs. This bill will 
help close this funding gap by providing nearly $600 million in 
transportation formula funding to Maryland. This funding will support 
about 7,500 jobs.
  This formula funding will pay for repaving and improving safety on 
our highways and byways. It will be used for to replace diesel buses 
with more environmentally friendly hybrid models. Improvements also 
will be made to Maryland's commuter rail service, MARC, and the light 
rail and metro in the Baltimore region. Lastly, Maryland would be 
eligible for competitive grants for all modes of transportation 
including high-speed rail investments along the Northeast corridor.
  In addition, the infrastructure bank will provide new financing 
options for Maryland. It will help move along projects of regional and 
national significance that currently are harder to get underway with 
traditional financing options. Most promising is that the bank will 
provide financing for water and sewer and energy infrastructure 
projects too. Maryland alone has $14 billion in water and sewer 
infrastructure needs.
  I firmly believe that a reliable and well maintained infrastructure 
is a vital to sustain economic growth and create jobs. That is why we 
must pass this bill and get Americans back to work.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 
5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                     nomination of richard andrews

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, last year, I was pleased to provide the 
President with the names of three superbly qualified Delawareans for 
him to consider for the one open seat on the U.S. District Court in 
Delaware. Any one of them would have made an excellent addition to the 
court, and all of them uphold the high regard in which this court is 
held, not only in Delaware but across the country.
  The President has made a particularly strong choice in nominating 
Richard G. Andrews for this judicial appointment this past May. The 
Senate Judiciary Committee used sound judgment in approving his 
nomination unanimously in September. We are grateful for the 
expeditious handling and approval of this nomination--unanimously.
  When I travel across Delaware, I often hear from people who are 
convinced that the Senate is overwhelmed by partisan tensions. I am 
sure that my colleagues--both Republicans and Democrats here today--
have heard similar concerns. Confirming Rich Andrews will help to win 
back confidence that we can work together to do the right thing, not 
just for the people of Delaware but the people of America.
  Throughout his career, Rich Andrews has been supported by members of 
both parties. He was appointed to U.S. Attorney under Attorney General 
Janet Reno and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Most recently, the 
Senate Judiciary Committee supported his nomination without one single 
dissent.

[[Page 16612]]

  Our country is fortunate that someone with his outstanding 
credentials has stepped forward to do this critical work. Mr. Andrews' 
education, background, and legal experience make him superbly qualified 
for this position.
  As a student at Haverford College, Rich Andrews graduated with a 
bachelor of arts degree in political science, after which he earned his 
law degree at the University of California at Berkley--where he served 
as Note and Comment Editor for the California Law Review. After law 
school, Rich Andrews launched his career as a Clerk for the Honorable 
Collins J. Seitz, legendary chief judge of the Third Circuit Court of 
Appeals.
  Following his clerkship, for 23 years Rich served as a prosecutor in 
the U.S. Attorney's Office in Wilmington--serving in a number of high-
profile positions and eventually rising to the position of assistant 
U.S. attorney. When duty called, he stepped up to serve as acting U.S. 
attorney on three separate occasions. I kidded him and said he served 
as acting U.S. attorney longer than other people have served as U.S. 
attorney in other States. During his time with the United States 
Attorney's office, Rich prepared and prosecuted countless Federal 
cases, and in so doing, gained wide-ranging trial experience that he 
will draw upon heavily while serving as District Court Judge, if 
confirmed today.
  Currently, Rich serves as the State prosecutor for the Delaware 
Department of Justice, where he manages the Criminal Division, oversees 
more than 70 deputy attorneys general, and makes critical decisions 
about how to proceed in high-level criminal cases.
  Finally, in addition to his professional experience, Rich is a family 
man and a person of great character. His wife, Cathy Lanctot is the 
associate dean and a professor of law at Villanova University. Their 
son Peter is a sophomore at Columbia University, and their daughter Amy 
is a senior--and student council president--at Mount Pleasant High 
School, not far from where my family and I live.
  In his ``free time,'' Rich has coached for the Concord Soccer 
Association of Delaware for more than a decade--and I understand that 
Rich also has spent the last 4 years grading answers for the Delaware 
bar exam.
  In every facet of his life, Richard Andrews has performed with 
distinction. Let me conclude by saying that I am proud to support 
someone who has provided, and who will continue to provide, exemplary 
service for the people of our State and Nation.
  His sound legal judgment, his tireless work ethic, and his experience 
as a Federal prosecutor have prepared Richard Andrews well to fill this 
seat on the U.S. District Court in Delaware. I urge my colleagues to 
join me in supporting his confirmation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I would like to speak on the vote that 
is about to occur in this Chamber on the Rebuild America Jobs Act.
  Over the past few days, we have been discussing how to best address 
our Nation's crumbling infrastructure. The cracks in this broken system 
became tragically clear on a beautiful summers day in Minnesota, August 
1, 2007, when the I-35W bridge simply crashed into the Mississippi 
River, killing 13 people and throwing dozens of cars in the river. As I 
said that day, a bridge should not fall down in the middle of America, 
but it did, and an eight-lane highway should not fall down, not a 
highway that is literally six blocks from my house, a bridge that I 
drive over every day with my family, but that is what happened.
  Four years after the I-35W bridge collapsed and was fixed a year 
later, still 25 percent of the Nation's 600,000 bridges have been 
declared structurally deficient or obsolete--25 percent. Our country 
has gotten a near-failing grade from the Civil Academy of Engineers. 
Our construction workers have an unemployment rate that is over 13 
percent--more than 4 points above the national average. These are not 
acceptable realities in this country.
  Americans spend 4.8 billion hours every year stuck in congestion, 
stuck in traffic.
  When you look at what happens in other countries, other countries 
that are spending 7, 8, 9 percent of their gross national product on 
infrastructure, we are barely hanging in at 2 percent. Yet we want to 
be a competitive nation, we want to be a nation that makes things 
again, that exports to the world. If we do not have the air traffic 
control system that works, if we don't have the bridges that work, if 
we don't have the highways that work, if we don't have the waterways to 
bring our barges down to bring our goods to market, we are not going to 
be able to compete in this economy. This is simply not an acceptable 
reality for a country such as America.
  Think about the Interstate Highway System, built during Eisenhower's 
Presidency with a Democratic Congress. Think about rural 
electrification. These things were built during difficult times in this 
country. Why? Because we didn't think America was about just tinkering 
at the edges, we believed America was about moving ahead. That is why 
we need to move forward today on the Rebuild America Jobs Act. All of 
us recognize the urgent need for new and bold initiatives to fix what 
is broken and to build the roads, the bridges, and the airports we need 
to fuel a 21st-century export economy.
  The infrastructure bank, which is, of course, included in this 
legislation, is something that has enjoyed bipartisan support from the 
beginning. It is one of those initiatives that will foster public-
private partnership, with the potential to leverage hundreds of 
billions of dollars for infrastructure investment. It is about big 
projects, but it is also about rural projects in States such as Vermont 
and Minnesota. It is about wastewater treatment plants and water 
projects and sewer projects--work that has been neglected for way too 
long.
  Fixing our Nation's infrastructure will provide a broad range of 
benefits. We can reduce our congestion, we can better compete globally, 
and we can create jobs and improve public safety. This is about working 
to ensure that no bridge ever again collapses in the middle of America. 
This is our challenge. We cannot put it off any longer. This is the 
time to act.
  Traditionally, there had been no such thing as a Democratic bridge or 
a Republican bridge. In fact, the Transportation Secretary for 
President Obama is a former Republican Congressman. We have come 
together on infrastructure. We cannot come apart. This is the time to 
come together.
  I urge my colleagues to vote to allow this bill to proceed to a vote.
  Mr. President, I yield back all the time on both sides, and I ask for 
the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to 
be a sufficient second.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion to proceed to S. 1769. 
Under the previous order, 60 votes are required to adopt the motion.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 49, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 195 Leg.]

                                YEAS--51

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Bingaman
     Blumenthal
     Boxer
     Brown (OH)
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Conrad
     Coons
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Inouye
     Johnson (SD)
     Kerry
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Manchin
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Webb
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--49

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Brown (MA)
     Burr
     Chambliss
     Coats
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Crapo
     DeMint
     Enzi
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johanns
     Johnson (WI)
     Kirk
     Kyl
     Lee
     Lieberman
     Lugar
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Nelson (NE)
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio

[[Page 16613]]


     Sessions
     Shelby
     Snowe
     Thune
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. McCaskill). On this vote, the yeas are 
51, the nays are 49. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for 
the adoption of this motion, the motion to proceed is rejected.
  The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, we wish to outline what the rest of the 
day appears to be.
  I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous order, 
following the next vote, the Senate proceed to executive session to 
consider the following nominations: Calendar No. 353 and Calendar No. 
356; that there be 15 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual 
form; that following that debate, Calendar No. 356 be confirmed and the 
Senate proceed to vote with no intervening action or debate on Calendar 
No. 353, with the provisions of the previous order remaining in effect; 
and that the next 2 votes be 10 minutes in duration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion to proceed to S. 1786.
  Under the previous order, 60 votes are required to adopt this motion. 
Under the previous order, there will now be 2 minutes of debate, 
equally divided.
  Who yields time?
  The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, what is before us now is supposed to be 
a jobs bill. Actually, all they do in this alternative, my Republican 
friends, is extend the highway trust fund at the current levels. That 
is something we intend to do, and Senator Inhofe and I are going to 
bring the bill to the floor that does that, but they decided they want 
to do it now. And how do they pay for it? They cut $40 billion out of 
such functions as firefighters, police, Border Patrol, food safety 
inspectors, and we will lose 200,000 jobs from that action.
  In addition, there are two rollbacks of environmental laws that 
deserve a heck of a lot more notice than putting them in this bill. 
That is going to hurt our people because if you can't breathe, you 
can't work. We have to get the mercury and the soot and the arsenic out 
of the air.
  I hope we will vote no on this. It is not a jobs bill.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  All time is yielded back.
  Mr. COCHRAN. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  The result was announced--yeas 47, nays 53, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 196 Leg.]

                                YEAS--47

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Brown (MA)
     Burr
     Chambliss
     Coats
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Crapo
     DeMint
     Enzi
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johanns
     Johnson (WI)
     Kirk
     Kyl
     Lee
     Lugar
     Manchin
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Thune
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--53

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Bingaman
     Blumenthal
     Boxer
     Brown (OH)
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Conrad
     Coons
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Inouye
     Johnson (SD)
     Kerry
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murray
     Nelson (NE)
     Nelson (FL)
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Snowe
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Webb
     Whitehouse
     Wyden
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 47, the nays are 
53. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of 
this motion, the motion to proceed is rejected.

                          ____________________