[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18345-18346]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    MIDDLE CLASS TAX CUT ACT OF 2011

  Mr. REID. Madam President, I now move to proceed to Calendar No. 238, 
S. 1917.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to S. 1917, a bill to create jobs by 
     providing payroll tax relief for middle class families and 
     businesses, and for other purposes.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. REID. Madam President, I have a cloture motion at the desk.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The cloture motion having been 
presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the 
motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to Calendar No. 238, S. 1917, a bill to create jobs 
     by providing payroll tax relief for middle class families and 
     businesses, and for other purposes:
         Harry Reid, Robert P. Casey, Jr., Jack Reed, Richard J. 
           Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Carl Levin, Jeff Bingaman, 
           Patty Murray, Patrick J. Leahy, Kent Conrad, Sheldon 
           Whitehouse, Benjamin L. Cardin, Barbara Boxer, Al 
           Franken, Max Baucus, Robert Menendez, Joseph I. 
           Lieberman.

  Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory 
quorum under rule XXII be waived.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. REID. I now withdraw my motion to proceed.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The motion is withdrawn.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, on one of the Sunday shows, the assistant 
leader, the Republican whip, my friend, the junior Senator from 
Arizona, indicated that Republicans would not support the withholding 
tax proposal we had made. On Monday, that was what the Senate 
leadership said. So I am very happy there has been a conversion and now 
they agree to support it but be careful. Remember, they are very clever 
and unclear on how they want this paid for. One Republican Senator said 
he didn't want it paid for, and that, in fact, has been the standard 
mantra of the Republicans: Tax cuts should not have to be paid for. The 
Bush tax cuts, amounting to trillions of dollars, were not paid for. 
That is, of course, one reason we have this huge problem with the 
deficit.
  I think we also have to recognize that one thing our country lacks is 
confidence. There are a lot of reasons, but one reason the country 
lacks confidence is people out here are talking about how bad the 
economy is doing. It is doing very poorly, and I recognize that. But we 
have had growth over the last many months. Is it as significant and as 
robust as we want? Of course not, but we have a growing economy; that 
is to say about my friend, the prior President, President Bush, we had 
no growth there. That was downhill. When he came into office, there was 
a surplus of trillions of dollars. That was taken away with not paying 
for all these tax cuts, the unpaid war in Iraq, the unpaid war in 
Afghanistan, and at least 8 million jobs were lost. We are trying to 
work our way out of that, and we have worked very hard.
  My friend talks about the stimulus bill, the Economic Recovery Act. 
Let's just talk about something I know a lot about, the State of 
Nevada. But for that bill, in the State of Nevada, which is very hard 
hit with the economic recovery, a State that for two decades had been 
the No. 1 place in America to come to start a business, to get a job, 
to buy property, that is no longer the case. That is no longer the 
case. But the stimulus bill has kept the schools open, has allowed 
people on Medicaid to continue getting some help, and we have had--
because of that bill--thousands and thousands of jobs created with 
solar projects, geothermal projects all over the State of Nevada. Is it 
enough? Of course not. But let's start building some confidence and 
allowing people with these companies that have trillions of dollars, 
let's have them start spending some of it and creating jobs.
  We are for tax reform. I agree with my friend the Republican leader, 
we should have tax reform. It is important because the Tax Code is not 
working. It is helping the wrong people, and we look forward to doing 
what we can to work that out. I was hoping in the supercommittee that 
one of the things they would have given was instructions to the Ways 
and Means Committee and the Finance Committee to come up with some tax 
reform that would be meaningful and build the economy even more than we 
could have ever dreamed, and a lot of that can be done with tax reform. 
So I acknowledge that.
  We look forward to working with my friends on the other side of the 
aisle. They say they are in favor of now extending withholding and we 
know that has created lots of jobs and we are glad they are going to do 
that. But, I repeat, let's be very careful of how it is paid for. The 
American people believe we should pay for it the way we have suggested. 
The only people in the world who don't think it should be paid for in 
the way we suggested are the Republicans in the Senate. All the polls 
show the vast majority of Americans believe the richest of the rich 
should contribute a little bit to bringing this country out of the 
economic problems we have.
  So I would hope we can move forward. We are going to have a cloture 
vote on this matter soon. We have to get through this very important 
Defense bill, which is to take care of our troops. One of the managers 
of that, of course, is someone we look to for guidance with military 
matters. That is John McCain, who, as we know, is a certified war hero. 
When that is finished, we will work this out on the payroll tax.
  I hope that prior to the cloture vote having taken place and being 
necessary, we will have some agreement on how to move forward because 
there are a lot of other things to do before the end of this year. 
There are other tax issues that are extremely important that 
traditionally have been completed before the end of a year such as we 
are in right now.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. The last time my good friend the majority leader and I

[[Page 18346]]

had a discussion on the floor, he reminded everyone he would get the 
last word. Of course, since he has prior recognition to me, he can get 
the last word if he chooses. So I will just remind him of that at the 
outset. He will get the last word if he chooses to. I will not fight 
for the last word, but I will make this point with regard to the 
observation from my good friend.
  We have just heard essentially the argument going into next year's 
election. Argument No. 1 is it could have been worse. That is an 
inspiring message to take to the American people. It could have been 
worse.
  We also heard argument No. 2. The second argument goes essentially 
like this: After being in the administration in power for 3 years, No. 
1, it is George Bush's fault. Among other causes of our current dilemma 
that have been cited by the President and others, in addition to the 
previous administration, it was a tsunami in Japan, it is the European 
debt crisis, of course it is the Republicans in Congress, it is those 
millionaires, it is those people in Wall Street. In short, it is 
everybody's fault but ours. That is the argument they are left with 
when they are going into an election year facing the American people 
and they have nothing else to say.
  People don't think the stimulus worked. People don't like ObamaCare. 
They don't like Dodd-Frank. There is absolutely nothing, in terms of 
positive accomplishment, our good friends can cite; thus the argument: 
It is anybody's fault but mine.
  It will be an interesting discussion going into next year, but it 
strikes me that our job in the Senate is not to frame campaign 
arguments on a weekly basis but actually try to get something done. As 
my friend indicated, there are things that need to be done before the 
end of this year: The Defense authorization bill that we will finish 
this week, the appropriations bills in one way or another--either a 
combination of them or a continuing resolution, each of them, through 
the end of the next fiscal year.
  We have tax extenders. We have the doc fix. We have the completion, 
in spite of the exercise we will engage in tomorrow, with two 
approaches to continuing the payroll tax extension. I have already 
indicated the overwhelming majority of Republicans think it should be 
extended, and so we will have to figure out how to package that and 
actually accomplish something, not just come out on the floor and score 
political points but actually accomplish something for the American 
people on things such as unemployment insurance, extension of the 
payroll tax reduction enacted a year ago, and the doc fix. These are 
the kinds of things that actually have to be done. The more time we 
spend on the floor with these political messaging votes, the less time 
we actually have to do what the American people sent us to do.
  So I will be working with my friend, the majority leader. I mean, we 
work together every day. When we get past the political speeches and 
the show votes, there are things that need to be done, and we will be 
working together to get those things accomplished before Christmas.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. I agree with virtually everything the Republican leader 
said. I do think the Presidential election will be based on what took 
place in the Bush administration and how we have tried to recover from 
that, and how things have been exacerbated because of the tsunami and 
because of the European debt crisis.
  I also agree wholeheartedly with my friend that we need to work 
together the rest of this Congress. It is difficult to do, but we need 
to set aside Presidential politics and work in our sphere as 
legislative leaders to try to move this country along. So I look 
forward to that, and I appreciate the constructive remarks of my 
friend.
  Madam President, 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.
  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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