[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12806-12809]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUESTS--H.R. 2553

  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I rise because we have a crisis on our 
hands with the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration. I know exactly 
why we have this crisis. It is another made-up crisis by the 
Republicans. This is a Republican shutdown.
  We just got past the most, well, I feel made-up crisis we have ever 
seen. Eighty-nine times we have passed a debt limit extension, and it 
took us weeks and months of wrangling to get it done. We finally got it 
done. I am glad we got it done. Unnecessary, people in my State 
panicking that they wouldn't get a Social Security check, small 
businesses saying they couldn't get a decent loan--all that for 
nothing.
  We can do our work. We can take the ideas of the Presiding Officer's 
Gang of 6, Senator Coburn's ideas. We have the ideas on the table. We 
can do this. We did it when Bill Clinton was President. We worked 
together, and we solved the problem. We had a deficit and debt. We 
balanced the budget and created surpluses. We don't have to have this 
taking government hostage.
  So we just got done with holding the full faith and credit of the 
United States of America hostage, and now we are seeing an extension of 
the hostage-taking of the Federal Aviation Administration by the 
Republicans. We need to end it. How do we end it? We end it simply by 
saying we have our disagreements. On this bill, there are a couple of 
broad disagreements. They are important disagreements. I honor both 
sides of the argument. The Republicans want to overturn a ruling by the 
National Mediation Board. This is what they said. They said that rather 
than count votes by an employee who stays home on a union vote as a 
``no'' vote, only the votes that are cast should be counted. Well, I 
ask rhetorically, doesn't that make sense? If you don't vote in an 
election, your vote shouldn't count. If the people didn't vote for me 
and they didn't vote for my opponent, how can anyone ascertain for whom 
they would have voted? Only the people who show up should be counted. 
That is what the mediation board did.
  This affects the airlines and the rails. There is such a desire to 
stop that and overturn it by my Republican friends--and it is going on 
all over the country, this hostility to working men and women, and now 
it is coming here. It is like a contagion. We see what is happening in 
Wisconsin. There are recall elections and everything is in turmoil 
because they want to go after organized working people. It is sad.
  But guess what. It is a legitimate issue for the conference committee 
to deal with. It is a legitimate issue for the Senate--by the way, the 
Senate already had a vote on it, and we said: No, we are not going to 
overturn the mediation board. The vote was well over--I think 56 votes 
said: No. Leave it alone. It is not our business. Let it go.
  But, no, the House wants this. So when they sent over the original 
extension, it had that attached, this overturning of the mediation 
board, and we said: That is not right. We want a clean extension. So 
they sent it back to us, and they took up another controversial issue, 
which is to shut down essential air service in some of our rural 
communities in our country--shut down essential air service.
  Now, I can tell my colleagues that I know for a fact there is room 
for negotiation in this area. We can work together and resolve it, but 
it doesn't belong in an extension of the FAA bill. This is too 
important. We have thousands of people who have been furloughed who are 
not getting work. I have a situation in my home county of Riverside 
where we have a new airport tower being put up, and unexpectedly there 
was a rainstorm the day before yesterday, and because nobody was 
working there, they couldn't do anything about it to protect the 
facility, and we have damage.
  We are losing money because of this terrible shutdown. Four thousand 
FAA employees have been furloughed without their pay. Hundreds of them 
happen to live and work in my State. I wonder how these colleagues in 
the House who went home to take their break would feel if they stopped 
getting their pay. Many of the FAA's engineers, scientists, research 
analysts, computer specialists, program managers and analysts, 
environmental protection specialists, and community planners are 
furloughed because of this take-government-hostage approach by the 
Republican Party.
  I have been here a while. I am a person with many opinions, and I 
have no problem battling out with my esteemed colleagues who is right, 
who is wrong, who is hurt, who is not hurt. But I know there is no 
question that people are getting hurt and jobs are being lost.
  Mr. President, $130 million in investments in California airport 
construction will be delayed. The Associated General Contractors of 
America is already hurting and businesses are hurting. There are 70,000 
construction workers and workers in related fields who have already 
been affected by the shutdown. The FAA has issued stop-work orders at 
241 airports across the country.
  In Oakland, CA, I have 60 construction workers building an air 
traffic control tower. They were told to stay home. They won't get paid 
until an agreement is reached. Well, if we ask most Americans, they 
really do live pretty much paycheck to paycheck. They have some 
savings.
  This is ridiculous. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the 
project contractor from Oakland, Devcon Construction, ``is eating 
$6,000 a day in operating costs'' and ``should the delay stretch much 
past the summer, [we are in trouble because] inclement weather would 
disrupt the installation.''
  I am telling you, this is another manmade, Republican-made crisis. 
What are we trying to prove? That we are tough guys? Let's get a clean 
extension of the FAA. Let's take our battles into the conference 
committee.
  I want to compliment Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. She is working, 
and she is on our side. She is a Republican Senator from Texas who is 
working with Senator Rockefeller, the chairman of our committee. We all 
know the House sent over not a clean extension but an extension that 
cuts this essential air service to some of our rural communities. This 
needs to be worked on, not agreed to in a ``gotcha'' kind of situation.
  In Sacramento, maintenance at the air traffic control facility has 
come to a halt. Seismic modernizations at air traffic control towers in 
Livermore, Palo Alto, and Santa Maria have stopped. At LAX, the biggest 
airport in Los Angeles, and at Carlsbad, power and electrical upgrade 
projects have stalled.
  What is going on? Can't we just get over these differences in the 
proper forum? It is wrong. I am not going to be personally hurt by 
this. The Senator from Oklahoma is not going to be personally hit by 
this. The Presiding Officer, the Senator from Virginia, is not 
personally hit by this. It is the people we represent or are supposed 
to represent. It is the American family. It is the construction 
workers. It is the construction businesses. It is safety. These are 
safety projects.
  At the end of the day, are we saving money? We are losing money 
because we are not collecting the ticket tax that goes to this 
construction fund. And some of the airlines are pocketing it, and that 
is outrageous in and of itself in not reducing the fares.
  I want to compliment a couple of the airlines that are, in fact, 
reducing the

[[Page 12807]]

fares. Virgin America is one, and I will put in the Record the other 
one. Good for them. Good for you.
  So what I am about to do is ask for a clean extension of the FAA 
authorization bill. My anticipation is the Senator from Oklahoma will 
object, and then he will offer his idea of an extension that does, in 
fact, make the cuts in the rural communities, and we are back to square 
one.
  Why not just clear the decks, extend the FAA? We have never added 
anything to the extension in all the times we have done it unless there 
was unanimous consent agreement.
  Mr. CARDIN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mrs. BOXER. I will be happy to.
  Mr. CARDIN. I want to thank Senator Boxer for raising this issue. I 
cannot tell you how many people I have heard from in Maryland, not just 
the workers at the FAA who have been furloughed but small business 
owners who are not getting their contracts who are going to have to lay 
off workers through no fault of their own. So I think it would be 
absolutely wrong for us to go home on this recess, for this district 
work period, and not extend the FAA.
  For those who think it will save the government on the budget 
deficit, let me remind you that if we do not extend the FAA 
authorization, we do not collect the revenues on the passenger tax, 
which, by the way, is currently being charged by the airlines in extra 
ticket prices to the passengers. So the passengers are not even getting 
the break of lower prices, but we are not getting the revenue. It is 
$30 million a day we are adding to the deficit problems because we are 
not collecting the revenue associated with the FAA reauthorization.
  For all those reasons, for the sake of those 4,000 furloughed 
workers, who are really not at fault here, who are currently on 
furlough, and that is hurting our economy; for the sake of the 
contractors, who are depending upon the government funds in order to 
pay their workers, many of which are small companies; for the sake of 
the construction work that needs to be done at our airports, including 
work being done at our own airport, BWI; and for the importance to 
moving forward with modernization of the FAA itself, I would urge us to 
find a way to extend the FAA authorization until we come back. I would 
hope we could get a conference committee together, a reauthorization, 
but at a minimum we should extend the current provisions during those 
negotiations.
  I say to Senator Boxer, she is absolutely right. I strongly urge the 
Senate to allow a short-term, clean extension of the FAA. That is the 
best way to proceed. I hope we can find a way to get this done now so 
the damage that is being done no longer will take place.
  I thank the Senator.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time----
  Mrs. BOXER. Well, I take that as a question, and I will just wrap up 
with my unanimous consent request because I agree with everything that 
was said.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the 
consideration of Calendar No. 109, H.R. 2553, that a Rockefeller-
Hutchison substitute amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to, the 
bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, and the motions to 
reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or 
debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. I would make note there is nothing we can do now new 
because the House has adjourned. So even if we were to pass this, 
nothing would happen with it. I have been assured that from the 
majority leader's office.
  I agree with the Senator from California that any action on the 
mediation board is probably inappropriate for this bill. I would not 
disagree with that. But my reservation--and I plan on objecting, and I 
think the good Senator from California knows that--is both in the House 
and the Senate, by significant votes, we passed limitations on 
essential air services by majorities that said we could no longer 
afford to spend thousands of dollars on individual seats, on subsidies 
for people who live 110 miles from an airport or 140 miles from an 
airport. But what we could do is make sure--to major airports--that 
those under 90, those above 90, we could still do that.
  So I understand we have placed people in difficult positions, but it 
is us as a body, not individual Senators or parties, that has done that 
because we have failed to do our work.
  So I object to this unanimous consent request, and then I offer one 
of my own, noting that if this unanimous consent request is agreed to, 
it will go directly to the President, not to the House. So I ask 
unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate 
consideration of H.R. 2553, which was received from the House, and I 
ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, 
the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any 
statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mrs. BOXER. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  There was objection to the original request.
  Mr. COBURN. Yes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes. Objection was heard.
  The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, so there we are. There was objection to a 
clean extension of the FAA, and as a result of Republican objection, 
people are hurting all over this country. Safety projects are being 
delayed. And this is just part of what we have seen since the 
Republicans took over the House.
  Now, my friend said that everything they have put in this has been 
voted on by the Senate. It is just not true. It is not true. Not 
everything in this extension was voted on by the Senate, so let's get 
our facts straight.
  My friend also said that the House has gone; too bad; give it up. Not 
true. I served there for 10 years. If you can hotline it over there and 
get everyone to agree, they are going to be able to pass it over there. 
So do not give the American people misinformation on this. It can be 
done. It just takes a will to be done.
  House Members have taken off, gone home. Whatever they are doing, God 
bless them. But I have to tell you, I hope when they go home they hear 
from the people who are hurting in their States because of this. I hope 
they hear from the workers. Construction workers are at the highest 
unemployment rate we have seen in generations--15 percent--and now this 
is going to make it worse. Construction businesses are crying for a 
highway bill, and I am working on that with Senator Inhofe in our 
committee. We are almost there.
  But I want to put this obstructionism, I want to put this hostage-
taking into plain view. You just saw everything come to a halt for at 
least 3, 4 weeks because the full faith and credit of America was taken 
hostage by the Republicans. And they said to the President--it has 
never happened before, OK, never. Mr. President, 89 times we have seen 
an increase in the debt limit. We have never ever seen this hostage-
taking. They would not allow the President to raise the debt ceiling 
for things on which they voted to spend money.
  When you raise the debt ceiling, you are paying your past bills. They 
voted for two wars on the credit card. They voted for tax breaks to the 
wealthiest among us, the billionaires and the millionaires. They voted 
for tax breaks for the biggest multinational corporations, including 
Big Oil. Oh, they were happy. They even voted for a prescription drug 
benefit without paying for it. Then the bill comes due, and they say to 
President Obama: Sorry, Mr. President, we are not going to cooperate 
with you. They walked out on him at least three times.
  We finally got a deal because some of us--and I say Harry Reid, 
strong; Vice President Biden, strong; Mitch McConnell, strong; Nancy 
Pelosi, strong. The President made sure that at the end of the day we 
did not default. But

[[Page 12808]]

what a spectacle in the world. The world cannot even believe this. And 
I know of the Presiding Officer's hard work to get what we called a big 
deal, a major deal, a $4 trillion deficit reduction that was fair, that 
asked the millionaires and the billionaires and the multinational 
corporations to do something. But, no, that was not to be. We wasted 
time--a lot of time. And what happened? We almost brought the country 
to its knees. Thank God it did not happen is all I can say. And I felt 
strongly, if we had not gotten an agreement, the President would have 
had to invoke the 14th amendment in order to save our country from this 
hostage-taking.
  So that was a made-up crisis. It never happened before. Do you know 
that the most the debt ceiling was raised was under Ronald Reagan? 
Eighteen times. Under George Bush, 9 times. I never heard anything like 
this before, and I have been around here since the days of Ronald 
Reagan, dare I say. I was in the House for 10 years.
  Ronald Reagan said very clearly--and I am paraphrasing--he was very 
strong--do not play games with the debt ceiling. It is dangerous. He 
said that even the thought of it is dangerous. So we just came out of 
that mess.
  Now let's look at what else they have done since they took power--how 
many months ago? Five months? Is that all it has been? It feels like an 
eternity, OK, since they took over the House. They stopped the patent 
bill, which Senator Leahy says would result in hundreds of thousands of 
jobs--stopped it cold. Why? Because the Patent Office does not have any 
money to work on those brilliant ideas that are coming out of our 
people. They needed more funding. That bill took care of it. The House 
stopped it cold. Hundreds of thousands of jobs.
  The Economic Development Administration--I know about that because I 
brought the bill here. It is a beautiful program. It has been in place 
for generations. It gives a little seed money in areas that have had 
high unemployment, and that seed money attracts private sector money, 
public sector money, nonprofit money, and jobs are created. They build 
office parks. We have great examples in California of shopping malls. I 
am sure my friend, the Presiding Officer, has many examples of the EDA 
at work. They stopped it. They filibustered it. It never got a vote. 
That is the small business innovation bill my friend Mary Landrieu 
brought to the floor. The last time we counted, those bills have 
created 19,000 new businesses. Shut that one down. Then the House 
passed a budget that cut into the highway fund. I want to give you 
specifically what that would mean. If we wind up cutting the 
transportation program at the level they cut it in the House--one-
third--and that is exactly what Chairman Mica's bill does--we know, 
because CBO has told us, we lose 620,000 jobs, construction jobs.
  Then they played with the FAA. They object to a clean 
reauthorization. Projects are shut down and workers are furloughed and 
small businesses do not know if they can hang on.
  OK. I thought this election in 2010 was about jobs. I tell you, I was 
up in 2010. I know it was about jobs. I committed to the people I would 
go back here and fight for jobs, private sector jobs, public sector 
jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Everything the House has done since the Republicans 
took over is to stop our progress--screeching halt. You can hear the 
brakes go onto this economy. It is not just one thing now, it is five 
things I have told you. This is not rhetoric. They have stopped the 
FAA--partial shutdown; they stopped the EPA authorization; they stopped 
the patent bill; they stopped the small innovation bill; they have cut 
transportation in their budget by one-third. That is just the tip of 
the iceberg of what I am telling you.
  I think it is very sad right now that we had a Republican objection 
to a bipartisan request to allow FAA to be reauthorized. It is very 
sad. I want to again thank Kay Bailey Hutchison, my friend from Texas, 
for saying that she stands with Chairman Rockefeller, and she believes 
we should do a clean reauthorization. With that, I think I have made my 
points. But I am going to make sure I continue to make them throughout 
this recess. I would suggest that Senators go home and look at the 
projects in their States that have been stopped due to this Republican 
hostage taking. They are against working men and women having decent 
rights. They are holding this bill hostage. That is what it is all 
about. It is a very sad day.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Casey.) Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I want to take a moment and add my voice 
to the voices who spoke earlier--the Senator from Maryland and the 
Senator from California--about this situation with the FAA.
  I would imagine if you are a visitor to our Nation's Capitol and have 
come to see a little Senate debate, it is a pretty interesting day to 
be here. It was great news that the country avoided default today. 
Although it was an imperfect compromise, I was glad to vote for that. 
We still have obviously a long way to go on debt and deficits.
  There is another issue that has not gotten as much attention as the 
debt ceiling debate, although it is clear that at almost any other time 
in our history this issue would be on the front page of every newspaper 
around the country and on every nightly TV newscast. I am talking about 
the fact that the Federal Aviation Administration--the entity that 
ensures the safety of our skies, the safety of our airplanes, the 
maintenance of our airports--has been in partial shutdown mode for over 
a week.
  Close to 4,000 FAA employees, many from the Virginia/DC area, have 
been furloughed. These folks do not know when they are going to get a 
paycheck or when they are going to be able to go back to work. And they 
have not been furloughed as a result of anything they have done. This 
situation is not the result of complaints about the quality of service 
or about safety of the FAA. In fact this shutdown is the result of a 
dispute over a small FAA program that protects rural airports.
  Only in Washington would a dispute over service to small rural 
airports force the shut down of all ``nonessential services'' in the 
Federal Aviation Administration. Only in Washington would we would put 
4,000 people out of work, and affect the lives of tens of thousands of 
other folks who are depending upon FAA funding for needed improvement 
projects at airports around the country.
  We have a number of airports in Virginia where construction has 
basically stopped as a result of this political standoff. With the FAA 
partially shut down, the airlines, which traditionally charge 
passengers a small tax to help fund the FAA to build, maintain, and 
keep airports safe, are no longer required to collect the tax. So, 
during this shutdown, especially if we go through the next month and do 
not enact an extension, the U.S. Government would lose $1.2 billion as 
a result of political back and forth about a program to support rural 
airports--a program that, in total, costs $14 million.
  If people are scratching theirs head with this math, they have a 
right to scratch their heads. Only in Washington can not collecting 
over a billion dollars in airport ticket taxes because of a dispute 
about a program that costs $14 million make any sense.
  The overwhelming majority of Senate Democrats and Republicans alike 
say we have to go ahead with an extension. We are saying if we have 
issues to dispute let's work those out. But let's not put nearly 4,000 
FAA employees out of work and let's not, as the Senator from California 
said, halt the projects of tens of thousands of construction workers.
  So it is my hope that, once again, cooler heads will prevail. I thank 
the chairman of the committee, Senator Rockefeller, and the ranking 
member, Senator Hutchison, and both

[[Page 12809]]

Democrats and Republicans for working together to try and get this 
resolved. I know the American people have looked at Congress--
understandably--in the last few weeks and have scratched their heads 
and said, what are these guys doing? Why can't they get their act 
together and negotiate a compromise, so they don't put our country into 
default?
  We managed to dodge that bullet in a way that is a fixed but not a 
long-term solution. We will continue that discussion. As everybody 
heads back to their home States, dodging the debt and deficit bullet, 
how are we going to look as we leave town with 4,000 workers 
furloughed, tens of thousands of construction workers without the 
ability to continue projects that are needed, and the U.S. Government 
$1.2 billion deeper in debt--not because of a dispute over of too much 
tax or whether to collect but because we could not reach an agreement 
over a rural airport program?
  I have cosponsored legislation--and I am sure the Presiding Officer 
supports it--to make sure that when the furloughed workers get back, 
they have to get paid. How can we leave town for a few weeks and leave 
this issue hanging out there?
  I hope those folks in the House--and the chairman and the ranking 
member of the committee are working on this issue--will get this done. 
As the Senator from California said--and this is some of the technical 
process stuff that people scratch their head about--the House is in pro 
forma session, so there is a path here to resolve the issue.
  We have to make sure we do our job not only for the public to make 
sure their airlines and airports stay safe, but also for the furloughed 
workers who need to get back to work. We've got to do our job so that 
airports all over the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Commonwealth of 
Pennsylvania can implement their much-needed airport improvements. The 
money has already been appropriated. It is not as though it is new 
dollars. Anybody who can read a balance sheet knows we shouldn't end up 
blowing $1.2 billion over a dispute for a program that costs $14 
million total.
  I hope we get this resolved this afternoon in a way that shows this 
Congress is more up to the task than we have been, unfortunately, over 
the last few weeks.
  A closing comment. I know the Presiding Officer has worked hard on 
the debt and deficit issue as well. I will close with the statement 
that my hope is that we did take a step today, with about $1 trillion 
in cuts over the next 10 years, and we need to make sure those cuts 
don't slow down the economic recovery the Nation is still struggling 
with. But we have to recognize that even with this new supercommittee 
being created--and the Presiding Officer would be a great member of 
that committee when it is chosen--but even if that committee meets its 
goal of $1.5 trillion in additional cuts, that still doesn't get our 
country's balance sheet back in order. We didn't create this debt 
overnight. We will not get out of it overnight. It is not one party's 
fault. Both parties have unclean hands on this.
  Candidly, a lot of our debt and deficit problems are due to the fact 
that we are all getting older and we are living longer through advanced 
medicine. The challenge we have before us is that we have to urge the 
supercommittee to look at something that will get us all out of our 
comfort zones. We have to recognize how do we make sure our entitlement 
promises we made to seniors with Social Security and Medicare and the 
least fortunate in terms of Medicaid--I know two-thirds of the seniors 
in nursing homes are on Medicaid. How do we preserve those programs? 
These programs need some reforms, because with an aging population--for 
example, in Social Security, there used to be 17 workers for 1 retiree. 
Now there are three. It is nobody's fault, but that is a fact. How do 
we make sure that promise exists?
  We have to deal with entitlement reform, and we also need to deal 
with tax reform. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out if we 
are spending 25 percent of GDP in Federal spending, that has to be 
brought down. If we are collecting revenues at only 15 percent, which 
is a 70-year low, we are never going to get that 10-percent 
differential, unless we find some way to generate more revenues and 
make cuts in spending. Along with entitlement spending, which is the 
fastest growing part of the budget, we have to do tax reform in a way 
that will generate more revenue. There are ways we can do that which 
will lower rates and cut back on some of the tax expenditures. It will 
take some hard choices.
  My hope is that while this step of avoiding default was important--
and it is a good day when America doesn't default, but we have much 
more work to do--the work of all the previous commissions that have 
been set up--and they have all kind of come out in basically the same 
scope of the problem--and, frankly, with about the same kinds of 
recommendations. A lot of that work of the so-called Simpson-Bowles 
commission, the President's deficit commission, the Gang of 6--or my 
hope would be the ``mob of 60,'' at some point in the not too-distant 
future--that was the framework we worked on, and we put everything on 
the table.
  I say to the Presiding Officer and any other colleagues who may be 
still around, I urge them to join this effort. We have to make sure 
this supercommittee actually takes on the big issues and that we don't 
default back to a series of cuts come next year that, frankly, are not 
well thought through, or well planned, across the board, without regard 
to effectiveness. The only way is, yes, by additional cutting but doing 
entitlement reform and tax reform.
  With that, I yield the floor, and with the hopes that we will see not 
only the hard work on the debt and deficit, but also the resolution of 
the FAA issue in the coming hours. I yield the floor and suggest the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. JOHANNS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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