[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16848-16849]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        TACKLING THE JOBS CRISIS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, it has now been 2 months since the 
President came before Congress and outlined his plan for tackling the 
jobs crisis--a plan that can best be described as a rehash of the same 
failed policies of the past few years disguised as a bipartisan 
overture, a political strategy masquerading as a serious legislative 
proposal. The President put this plan together knowing the Republicans 
would oppose it. In other words, it was actually designed to fail, as 
the White House aides have readily admitted to reporters for weeks. 
This was not, I repeat, a serious effort to do something about jobs and 
the economy. It was a serious effort to help the President's reelection 
campaign by making Republicans in Congress look intransigent.
  So what I have been saying for the past few weeks is let's put the 
political games aside. We will have time for the election next year. 
The American people want us to do something about jobs right now.
  Well, it appears the message may be finally breaking through. I was 
just listening to my friend the majority leader talking about the 
measure before us--something we support and look forward to passing. It 
has been championed by Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts as 
something that would help contractors who do business with the 
government. I was also glad to see that the Veterans bill, which 
contains many provisions supported by Republicans, will be the first 
amendment. So maybe we are making some progress. This is just the kind 
of thing we have been calling for, just the kind of thing we should be 
doing a lot more of around here because there is a lot we can agree on 
when it comes to jobs legislation, and that is where the focus should 
actually be.
  While the President has been out on bus tours, Republicans in the 
House have been debating and passing bipartisan legislation aimed at 
making it easier for businesses across the country to grow and to 
create jobs. Over the past 2 weeks, I have highlighted some of their 
good work.
  Yesterday, I mentioned in particular a bill the House passed just 
last week called the Small Company Capital Formation Act, H.R. 1070, a 
bill that received 421 votes, including 183 Democratic votes. Only 1 
person of the entire 435-Member House of Representatives voted against 
the bill--just 1. And President Obama endorsed the idea contained in 
this bill in his jobs speech a couple of months ago. The question is, 
Why in the world wouldn't the Democratic majority take it up and pass 
it right here in the Senate? If Democrats are more interested in 
passing legislation that helps put Americans back to work than they are 
in raising taxes, they should at least work with us to pass the bills 
the President himself has endorsed.
  This morning, I want to say again how pleased I am we will be taking 
up Senator Brown's 3 percent withholding bill to help ease the burden 
on government contractors and that we will have a vote on and hopefully 
debate the Veterans bill. I would like to call on the Democratic 
majority in the Senate to keep it up by taking up H.R. 1070 or its 
bipartisan Senate companion bill, S. 1544, sponsored by Senators Toomey 
and Tester.
  Take up this legislation that has already passed the House with the 
support of almost everybody over there and show the American people 
that you care more about creating jobs than creating campaign slogans. 
Let's not make the bills we will be voting on today the exception but 
the rule around here. Why don't we just keep it up?
  Right now, small, growing businesses aren't expanding their 
businesses through a public offering because they simply can't afford 
the high cost of the government paperwork they are required to manage. 
Instead of going out there and raising money to grow and hire, they are 
holding back. They are not expanding. And if they are not expanding, 
they are not hiring. This bill would remove some of that burden from 
smaller businesses and help them gain access to new capital that they 
can invest in their businesses and their employees.
  Yesterday, I mentioned the CEO of a pharmaceutical company in 
Pennsylvania who says that he has a promising new drug for treating 
chronic kidney disease actually in the pipeline but that he can't take 
it to the next level because of all the regulatory costs his company is 
too small to afford right now. We should be removing barriers for 
smaller companies such as his. Nearly 200 House Democrats agree with 
that, and so does President Obama. As I said yesterday, this bill is 
about as bipartisan as it gets. The only thing standing in the way of 
passing it in the Senate is the Democrats who schedule legislation 
around here, and the only reason they could have for blocking it is 
that it steps on their campaign strategy.
  I think that is a mistake. I think the American people can see 
Republicans in the House passing all these bipartisan bills aimed at 
spurring job creation, and they wonder why Senate Democrats won't 
actually take them up.
  This should be easy. They have already done the hard work of finding 
jobs bills that we know can pass both Chambers and that the President 
would probably sign. Let's take up the bipartisan companion bill of 
Senators Toomey and Tester to the House bill--their bill is S. 1544--
and let's pass it, and then let's send it to the President for his 
signature so it can become law.
  If you are for creating jobs, you should be for this bill. As the AP 
put it last month:

       Companies use the cash they raise to grow--and that means 
     hiring people . . . and at a time when 14 million Americans 
     are looking for work and the unemployment rate has been stuck 
     near 9 percent for two years, the last thing the economy 
     needs is for one engine of hiring to stall.

  A recent report by NASDAQ of companies that went public from 2001 to 
2009 found that those companies increased their collective workforce by 
70 percent after making the initial public offering--a 70-percent 
increase in employment after making an initial public offering.
  What this bill does is enable more companies to take that leap and 
start hiring once they have. This is the kind of thing we should be 
doing more of in the Senate. Let's put the partisan bills aside and 
let's focus on bipartisan legislation. Instead, why don't we shoot for 
success.


                       Detaining Enemy Combatants

  Last week, the White House announced that Prime Minister Nouri al-
Maliki of Iraq will be meeting with the President here on December 12. 
This meeting comes at an important time, as our own military forces 
will be drawing down their presence within Iraq, and the future of our 
bilateral security relationship remains very uncertain. But our 
withdrawal from Iraq raises another important matter I hope the 
President will raise with Prime Minister Maliki and which highlights 
some of the difficulties that will result from the military drawdown 
there, and

[[Page 16849]]

eventually in Afghanistan, as well, both of these drawdowns the 
President has ordered. What I am referring to is the law of war 
detention.
  In July of this year, Senate Republicans wrote to Secretary of 
Defense Panetta concerning the custody of Ali Mussa Daqduq, the senior 
Hezbollah operative currently in our joint custody in Iraq. Daqduq is 
in joint custody in Iraq between the United States and the Iraqi 
Government.
  In 2005, Daqduq was directed by senior Hezbollah leaders to travel to 
Iran, where he trained Iraqi extremists in the use of explosively 
formed penetrators, mortars, and other terrorist tactics. Among other 
things, Daqduq is suspected of orchestrating a kidnapping in Karbala, 
Iraq, 4 years ago that resulted in the murder of five U.S. military 
personnel. It is a safe bet that if Daqduq is transferred to Iraqi 
control, he will return to the fight against the United States. 
President Obama should insist in his meeting with Prime Minister Maliki 
that U.S. forces retain custody of Daqduq and transport him to the 
detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
  The detention of Daqduq touches on three important issues in the 
ongoing war on terror. First, with the withdrawal of our military 
presence from Iraq, the United States will lose the ability to detain 
enemy combatants such as Daqduq in Iraq. Current plans are for the U.S. 
military to have completed our transition to the security forces of 
Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and we should expect that we will lose 
the ability to detain enemy combatants there as well. Our military 
commanders in Afghanistan should therefore anticipate losing the 
ability to detain enemy combatants by that date. As we saw in the 
capture of Abdul Warsame, the Somali terrorist accused of providing 
materiel support to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and Al Shaabab 
and detained on a U.S. Navy ship at sea, there remains a strong 
likelihood that our military and intelligence community will need a 
secure detention facility to house these foreign fighters. The issue 
is, what are you going to do with them.
  Rather than being kept in military custody overseas, Warsame was 
flown to the United States and placed in the civilian system. But the 
logical place for long-term or indefinite detention of foreign fighters 
such as Warsame is not on a ship at sea or in our private prison system 
but rather, as I have said many times before, at the secure detention 
facility at Guantanamo.
  Second, it is worth noting that the Obama administration has tied its 
own hands in the matter of indefinite detention of enemy combatants. 
The administration's plan to buy a prison in Illinois for conversion to 
a military detention facility makes clear that the President does not 
oppose law of war detention. He is fine with bringing foreign fighters 
into the United States and indefinitely detaining them in military 
facilities inside our borders, and yet he opposes detaining them 
indefinitely at the military facility in Guantanamo, where they will 
benefit from humane treatment but they won't enjoy the legal rights of 
detainees who are brought here, including the possibility of release 
into the United States.
  Third, the Executive orders signed by the President in January in 
2009 were issued with an eye toward fulfilling candidate Obama's 
campaign promises, rather than after conducting a serious review of 
sound counterterrorism policy. Now, 3 years after taking office, the 
President has had enough firsthand experience dealing with terrorism to 
know that many of the terrorists held at Guantanamo can't be sent back 
to places such as Yemen, where they are likely to return to the fight. 
But the President's own Executive orders have denied our military 
commanders and our intelligence community the certainty they need when 
they capture, detain, and interrogate terrorist suspects. His early 
Executive orders, for instance, ended the CIA's detention program and 
directed the closing of Guantanamo. The order to close Guantanamo makes 
little sense.
  It is not Republicans who are tying the President's hands in 
prosecuting the war on terror. He did that himself with the 
shortsighted Executive orders he signed during his first days in 
office. As our country withdraws from Iraq and transitions further 
responsibilities to the Afghan security forces in Afghanistan, we will 
need a place to send foreign fighters such as Warsame and Daqduq. That 
place is the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
  In his discussions with Prime Minister Maliki, the President should, 
of course, discuss the role the U.S. military will play in Iraq after 
the end of this year and how our two countries can work together to 
preserve the gains made through the sacrifice of so many brave 
Americans, and to combat Iranian influence. But in addition to these 
important matters, the President should also insist that the Prime 
Minister retain custody of Daqduq and send him to Guantanamo as soon as 
possible.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.

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