[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3451-3455]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  JUMPSTART OUR BUSINESS STARTUPS ACT

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, there is a bill that passed the House of 
Representatives with an overwhelming bipartisan vote. Its supporters 
have characterized it as a jobs bill. It is a bill which, frankly, 
changes many laws and comes over to the Senate. The minority leader, 
the Republican leader, has been on the Senate floor almost every single 
day urging us to take up this bill as quickly as possible and to pass 
it because of the impact it might have on employment across America.
  I might say for the record, I believe the bill we passed today, the 
Transportation bill, is the true jobs bill--2.8 million jobs across 
America. I will tell you, the House bill will not even get close to 
that on a good day. Our bill will save and create millions of jobs. It 
will build an infrastructure for our economy for years to come, and it 
passed with an overwhelming bipartisan vote. Over 70 Members of the 
Senate, Democrats and Republicans, voted for this bill. An 
extraordinary effort by Senator Boxer of California and Senator Inhofe 
of Oklahoma and many others resulted in a bill that was well crafted, 
balanced, and will, in fact, fund our infrastructure needs in this 
country for the next 2 years.
  The House has been at a loss to produce a similar bill, even though 
we are both facing a March 31 deadline for this trust fund that is used 
across America to maintain our infrastructure. The House has moved from 
one extreme to another. They have crafted bills which were way too 
partisan.
  This used to be the easiest lift in Washington. Every 5 years, the 
Federal Transportation bill was an opportunity for both parties to work 
together. Oh, it is true, Members would put in projects for their 
districts and States. That is to be expected. But at the end of the 
day, a bill would emerge which ultimately had strong bipartisan 
support. I cannot think of a single instance in the time I have been in 
the House and the Senate that was not the case.
  The House effort, however, to this date has failed. I hope they can 
use our bill as a starting point. They should. If they bring our 
bipartisan bill to the floor of the House of Representatives and open 
it to amendment, then we will be at a position where we can sit 
together in a conference committee and work this out, as we should, on 
a bipartisan basis. It is a good jobs bill. In fact, it is the biggest 
jobs bill the Congress will have considered in the last year.
  Let's go back to the bill that passed the House, which the 
Republicans have characterized as a jobs bill. I think it is important 
that before we rush into this, taking a look at it, we take a careful 
look at it and ask: What does this bill do?
  This bill is designed to change disclosure, accounting, and auditing 
standards, and to exempt many firms and corporations from the 
Securities and Exchange Commission's oversight. One part of the bill 
exempts newly public

[[Page 3452]]

firms with less than $1 billion in revenue from certain disclosure, 
accounting, and auditing standards over a transition period of 5 years 
after they first go public. It exempts firms with less than $1 billion 
in revenue and less than $700 million in traded stock--what they 
characterize as ``emerging growth companies.'' They would be exempt 
from regulation for the most part. That would, in fact, exempt more 
than 90 percent of the companies going public in America.
  These so-called emerging growth companies would be exempt from SOX 
404(b), which requires a firm's auditor to attest to and report on 
internal controls. It would exempt firms from safeguards we adopted in 
this country after Enron.
  There is little justification for rolling back the Dodd-Frank 
provisions on executive compensation. But firms would be exempt in many 
respects because of this bill. It is hard to imagine that a firm with 
$1 billion in revenue does not have the resources to disclose golden 
parachutes in executive compensation agreements.
  Exempting firms from new accounting standards would create a two-
tiered accounting system that is bound to be confusing. The Financial 
Accounting Standards Board, FASB, says provisions legislating 
accounting standards would ``undermine the rigorous, independent 
standard-setting process [already] undertaken. . . . '' One other part 
of this bill increases the amount of capital private companies may 
raise under a public offering from $5 million to $50 million annually 
and remain exempted from SEC oversight.
  They want to take a lot of this capital formation and business 
formation off the grid. They do not want oversight and disclosure and 
transparency. That is what this bill does. It fails to include a 
multiyear cap on the amount firms may raise and allows firms to raise 
$50 million annually indefinitely while avoiding SEC registration and 
disclosures.
  It goes on with something called crowdfunding. It allows firms to 
remain exempt from SEC registration and raise up to $1 million annually 
through crowdfunding. What does that mean? Large numbers of individuals 
contributing a small amount of money to a company. Retail and 
unsophisticated investors will be allowed to invest up to $10,000 
through crowdfunding sites with few disclosure requirements.
  There is another provision that allows private firms that sell more 
than $5 million in securities to generally solicit or advertise private 
offerings without being required to register with the SEC, provided the 
firm verifies all purchasers are accredited investors. The risk of 
fraud through cold calls and other sales tactics increases 
significantly with the elimination of the requirement that firms have a 
preexisting relationship with potential investors.
  In the early 1990s, the SEC allowed general solicitation but again 
restricted general solicitation in 1999 because of widespread fraud. 
The accredited investor standard is so low as to include individuals 
whose net worth is $1 million or who have earned $200,000 annually. It 
allows banks to raise capital while avoiding SEC registration by 
increasing the shareholder threshold from 500 shareholders to 2,000 and 
from $1 million in assets to $10 million.
  It is no surprise that when we look carefully at this bill, even 
though it received a large vote in the House--I do not dispute that--
many organizations oppose it. They include the Consumer Federation of 
America, AARP, Americans for Tax Reform, AFL-CIO, the Coalition for 
Sensible Safeguards, U.S. PIRG, the National Education Association, the 
National Consumers League, and the National Association of Consumer 
Advocates. There are other organizations with serious concerns, which 
include the Council of Institutional Investors, FASB, and North 
American Securities Administrators Association.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
an editorial from the New York Times from March 11 entitled ``They Have 
Very Short Memories.''
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                     They Have Very Short Memories

       House Republicans, Senate Democrats and President Obama 
     have found something they can all support: a terrible package 
     of bills that would undo essential investor protections, 
     reduce market transparency and distort the efficient 
     allocation of capital.
       Of course, supporters don't describe it that way. They say 
     the JOBS Act--for Jumpstart Our Business Startups--would 
     remove burdensome regulations that they claim have made it 
     too difficult for companies to raise money from investors, 
     impeding their ability to grow and hire.
       Never mind that reams of Congressional testimony, market 
     analysis and academic research have shown that regulation has 
     not been an impediment to raising capital. In fact, too 
     little regulation has been at the root of all recent bubbles 
     and bursts--the dot-com crash, Enron, the mortgage meltdown. 
     Those free-for-alls created jobs and then imploded, causing 
     mass joblessness.
       Unfortunately, election-year politics and powerful 
     constituencies--rather than research and reason--are driving 
     the JOBS legislation forward. It passed the House on 
     Thursday, after the Obama administration endorsed it; the 
     Senate leadership is expected to introduce a similar package 
     this week.
       Republicans love it because deregulation is at the core of 
     their corporate-centered agenda. President Obama wants to 
     burnish his pro-business credentials. Most Senate Democrats, 
     keenly aware of big business's deep campaign contribution 
     pockets, are eager to go along.
       The centerpiece of the bill would curb investor protections 
     in the Sarbanes-Oxley law that require companies to meet 
     specific disclosure, accounting and auditing standards before 
     going public. The legislation is promoted as applying only to 
     small companies, but the parameters would encompass all but 
     the nation's biggest new companies.
       It would also let new public companies delay compliance 
     with provisions of the Dodd-Frank law on executive 
     compensation and shareholder ``say on pay.'' Another 
     provision would permit ``crowd funding''--raising money from 
     small investors through the Internet--without requiring those 
     companies to provide meaningful disclosure and without 
     adequate oversight by the Securities and Exchange Commission. 
     John Coffee Jr., a securities law expert, has dubbed that the 
     ``Boiler Room Legalization Act.''
       Yet another provision, opposed by AARP and state 
     regulators, would allow private companies to solicit 
     investors, a move that could expose unsophisticated investors 
     to offerings that they cannot properly evaluate.
       Dozens of legal experts and advocates for investors and 
     consumers have written to Senate leaders warning that 
     extensive revisions must be made to the House legislation for 
     it to be even minimally acceptable.
       We know memories are short in Washington. But Enron was 
     just 10 years ago. And the entire system almost imploded in 
     2008. There is no excuse.

  Mr. DURBIN. This editorial states, in part:

       House Republicans, Senate Democrats and the President have 
     found something they can all support: a terrible package of 
     bills that would undo essential investor protections, reduce 
     market transparency and distort the efficient allocation of 
     capital.
       Never mind that reams of Congressional testimony, market 
     analysis and academic research have shown that regulation has 
     not been an impediment to raising capital. In fact, too 
     little regulation has been at the root of all of our recent 
     bubbles and bursts--the dot-com crash, Enron, the mortgage 
     meltdown. Those free-for-alls created jobs and then imploded, 
     causing mass joblessness.
       The centerpiece of this bill would curb investor 
     protections in the Sarbanes-Oxley law that require companies 
     to meet specific disclosure, accounting and auditing 
     standards before going public. The legislation is promoted as 
     applying only to small companies, but the parameters would 
     encompass all but the nation's biggest new companies.

  I have been down this path before. I have been in Congress long 
enough to remember some of these bubbles, remember the victims and the 
losers when it was all over, the exuberance of deregulation which led, 
sadly, in many instances, to an unregulated marketplace where greed 
triumphed.
  After each financial crisis, the savings and loan crisis, Enron, the 
housing and economic crash of 2008, this body has investigated and 
attempted to learn from the lessons of the past. How many times on this 
floor have Senators debated measures to ensure that we do not face 
another Enron, where shareholders lost between $40 and $60 billion in 
investments and employees lost $2.1 billion in pension plans, not to 
mention their jobs. We promised that would never happen again. We 
established standards of regulation, which we are now proposing to 
waive in this so-called jobs act.

[[Page 3453]]

  I worked with my colleagues in the wake of the 2008 economic slide to 
pass the Dodd-Frank Act, to close the loopholes that resulted in 
millions of families losing their homes and $17 trillion in lost 
household and personal wealth. We learned from the past and worked 
together to provide oversight where regulation was just too lax. We 
passed commonsense rules to ensure consumers and investors were 
protected.
  Just a few years later, after that crisis brought our economy to its 
knees, it seems some have forgotten those lessons. It was not too much 
regulation that led to the financial crisis of 2008. We did not get 
into that mess because agencies such as the SEC had too much power. It 
was the other way around. It was deregulation of the 1990s and Federal 
agencies turning a blind eye to activities that precipitated the global 
financial meltdown.
  Regulatory agencies were underfunded, overwhelmed, and often limited 
in their authority. That does not mean we should do nothing. There are 
things we can do to ease the burden on companies looking to raise 
capital and create jobs.
  There are commonsense measures to help small businesses access 
capital. We can exempt employees from counting toward shareholder 
limits, so these companies can reward their employees with stock 
options. We can increase the amount of money startups can raise, while 
still being exempt from SEC registration. There are things we can do to 
help companies grow and create jobs, while still protecting investors.
  But the bill passed by the House does not do that. The House-passed 
bill says that more than 90 percent of newly public firms do not have 
to comply with Federal disclosure, accounting, and auditing standards. 
This means that when an investor is making a decision about which newly 
public firms to put their hard-earned money in, they will not have 
access to basic vital information about those firms.
  How can investors make good, sound decisions about where to invest 
their savings and their money when some firms, those that have recently 
gone public, will not have to comply with new and improved accounting 
standards but all other firms will? The House-passed bill does not have 
enough protection for everyday investors who are considered 
unsophisticated in the financial sector, those who may not fully 
understand the risks of investing through an online crowdfunding Web 
site.
  At a recent Senate Banking hearing, Professor John Coffee, from the 
Colombia University Law School, said: The crowdfunding technique is 
especially open to fraud because the companies that use it are most 
likely brandnew entities that do not have any operating history and 
might not even have financial statements.
  Professor Coffee said: Those firms would be flying on a wing and a 
prayer, selling more hope than substance. The House-passed bill would 
allow firms to advertise and sell their stock through cold calls and 
other sales tactics. That is an invitation for fraud.
  In this situation, someone can promise investments with high return 
with little risk. The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College 
calls this ``the magician'' and reports that seniors are three times 
more likely to be the victims of this type of fraud.
  There is room to improve this bill to allow small businesses to grow 
and create jobs, but we have to do it with an eye toward oversight, 
transparency, and rules of the road which protect the average investor.
  This so-called jobs bill creates a job opportunity for any individual 
salesman to set up shop with a barstool and a laptop computer. They can 
be selling worthless stock for phantom companies. This bill invites 
them to fleece unsuspecting customers of up to $10,000, promising that 
they will own certain companies. It can turn out that these companies 
have no assets, no business model, and may not even exist.
  In the name of deregulation, these fraudsters could even include 
those who have been banned for life from the securities industry. That 
was a point that was raised by Professor Coffee's testimony. This bill 
is written to allow new salesmen to come on the scene and does not put 
any provision in there to prohibit those who have been banned by the 
securities industry from sales of securities.
  Why would we invite the thieves back into the marketplace? This half-
boiled concoction of ill-conceived ideas skirts, evades, and nullifies 
investor protection and market transparency standards that were enacted 
in response to the dot-com crash, the Enron debacle, and the litany of 
bubbles and bursts that have cost legions of unsuspecting Americans 
their savings, their jobs, and their retirement.
  I requote one paragraph from the New York Times editorial:

       The centerpiece of the bill would curb investor protections 
     in the Sarbanes-Oxley law that require companies to meet 
     specific disclosure, accounting and auditing standards before 
     going public. This legislation is promoted as applying only 
     to small companies, but the parameters would encompass all 
     but the nation's biggest new companies.

  Literally, 90 percent of the new companies would be exempt under this 
provision. Exempting firms with less than $1 billion in revenue and 
less than $700 million in traded stock, so-called emerging growth 
companies, would exempt more than 90 percent of the companies going 
public, according to testimony before the Senate Banking Committee.
  The delay in compliance with Dodd-Frank on executive compensation is 
particularly cheeky. Do you recall this? We sent billions of dollars to 
banking institutions as a result of the bailout to save them from their 
own stupidity and greed, and they turned around and gave executive 
compensation and bonus awards right and left to the very people who had 
engineered this disaster. We said when we passed Dodd-Frank, that was 
the end of that story. We were going to change it.
  One of the Dodd-Frank provisions: In February 2009, Senator 
Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who was chairman of the Senate 
Banking Committee, inserted a rule about pay at bailed-out banks into 
the economic stimulus. The rule did nothing to change the bonuses that 
had just been paid a few weeks earlier, but it required that bonuses 
paid in the future be paid in stock and not exceed one-third of total 
compensation. The idea was to create the right incentives, the 
incentives to be a larger owner of the company, into decisionmaking, 
not take the money and run.
  Now comes this so-called jobs bill and exempts executive compensation 
standards. Firms with $1 billion in revenue certainly have the 
resources to disclose golden parachutes and insidious good old boy 
compensation packages.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a stunning 
article from the New York Times this morning, written by Greg Smith, 
entitled, ``Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs.''
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 14, 2012]

                     Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

                            (By Greg Smith)

       Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 
     years at the firm--first as a summer intern while at 
     Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London--I 
     believe I have worked here long enough to understand the 
     trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I 
     can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and 
     destructive as I have ever seen it.
       To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of 
     the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm 
     operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one 
     of the world's largest and most important investment banks 
     and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act 
     this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined 
     right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience 
     say that I identify with what it stands for.
       It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but 
     culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs's success. 
     It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, 
     and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the 
     secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to 
     earn our clients' trust for 143 years. It wasn't just about 
     making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. 
     It had something to do with pride and belief in the 
     organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and 
     see virtually no trace of the culture that made me

[[Page 3454]]

     love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have 
     the pride, or the belief.
       But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I 
     recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling 
     interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of 
     a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting 
     video, which is played on every college campus we visit 
     around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program 
     in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students 
     who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.
       I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no 
     longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great 
     place this was to work.
       When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, 
     they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, 
     Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost 
     hold of the firm's culture on their watch. I truly believe 
     that this decline in the firm's moral fiber represents the 
     single most serious threat to its long-run survival.
       Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of 
     advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five 
     of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three 
     of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle 
     East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more 
     than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride 
     in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for 
     them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is 
     becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another 
     sign that it was time to leave.
       How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought 
     about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting 
     an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make 
     enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax 
     murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.
       What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on 
     the firm's ``axes,'' which is Goldman-speak for persuading 
     your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that 
     we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as 
     having a lot of potential profit. b) ``Hunt Elephants.'' In 
     English: get your clients--some of whom are sophisticated, 
     and some of whom aren't--to trade whatever will bring the 
     biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't 
     like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) 
     Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade 
     any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.
       Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs 
     culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend 
     derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is 
     spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It's 
     purely about how we can make the most possible money off of 
     them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of 
     these meetings, you would believe that a client's success or 
     progress was not part of the thought process at all.
       It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping 
     their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five 
     different managing directors refer to their own clients as 
     ``muppets,'' sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the 
     S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God's work, Carl Levin, Vampire 
     Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is 
     eroding. I don't know of any illegal behavior, but will 
     people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated 
     products to clients even if they are not the simplest 
     investments or the ones most directly aligned with the 
     client's goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.
       It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic 
     truth: If clients don't trust you they will eventually stop 
     doing business with you. It doesn't matter how smart you are.
       These days, the most common question I get from junior 
     analysts about derivatives is, ``How much money did we make 
     off the client?'' It bothers me every time I hear it, because 
     it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from 
     their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 
     10 years into the future: You don't have to be a rocket 
     scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting 
     quietly in the corner of the room hearing about ``muppets,'' 
     ``ripping eyeballs out'' and ``getting paid'' doesn't exactly 
     turn into a model citizen.
       When I was a first-year analyst I didn't know where the 
     bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be 
     concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a 
     derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our 
     clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined 
     success and what we could do to help them get there.
       My proudest moments in life--getting a full scholarship to 
     go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected 
     as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal 
     for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as 
     the Jewish Olympics--have all come through hard work, with no 
     shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about 
     shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn't 
     feel right to me anymore.
       I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of 
     directors. Make the client the focal point of your business 
     again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you 
     will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no 
     matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the 
     culture right again, so people want to work here for the 
     right reasons. People who care only about making money will 
     not sustain this firm--or the trust of its clients--for very 
     much longer.

  Mr. DURBIN. I will tell my colleagues, read this article, read it and 
understand that there is a changing ethos and a changing standard at 
some of these major corporations; that the pursuit of profit has led 
this man who was one of the stars on the horizon in this industry to 
pick up and leave one of the largest firms in America.
  It is also an indication of why we need to continue our vigilance 
over this industry to make certain that the right market forces 
prevail. Crowd-
funding, where they try to get a lot of small investors in a hurry, 
brings organized fleecing to the Internet, letting the next generation 
of Ponzi players go viral.
  Let's call this crowdfunding for what it is. It is Internet gambling, 
and the odds will never favor the investor. When these wired Willy 
Lomans are finished exploiting the unsuspecting investors out of their 
savings, their retirements and their homes, guess what will happen. 
Congress will be called on again to come in with a reform bill to clean 
up the mess and repeal this pitiful package until the next wave of 
deregulation is called for by those who are inspiring this piece of 
legislation.
  I know who ends up holding the bag when the deregulators have their 
day. I know who ends up losing when we open the so-called market forces 
without oversight transparency. First, ordinary folks investing their 
savings in something that looks like a good idea, trying to recover 
from the beating they took in the market, trying to rebuild their 
retirement accounts, buying worthless stock in worthless companies that 
is being invited by many of the provisions in this bill.
  Then, when it certainly goes to the bottom, when everyone is 
desperate, no one knows which way to turn, who will step in? Taxpayers 
and Congress. We will be called on to clean up this irrational 
exuberance that is supposedly going to create new jobs. I think we got 
it right. I think the standard we have now establishes the transparency 
and accountability which we need to demand of every aspect of the 
marketplace.
  Certainly, we can change some of these laws. We can be mindful and 
sensitive to some aspects of it. But this bill goes entirely too far. 
There will be a substitute offered. I am working with several of my 
colleagues: Senator Jack Reed, Senator Carl Levin, Senator Jeff 
Merkley, Senator Michael Bennet, Senator Mary Landrieu, and others to 
put a provision forward, a substitute, which makes the changes to allow 
capital formation but does not take down the basic protective regimen 
we have established in the law for those who are in this industry.
  We make a serious mistake and we ignore history if we turn our backs 
on 80 years of this government stepping up to make sure the marketplace 
in America was safe for investors, to make certain the person selling a 
stock was actually a well-qualified person, registered so they knew 
what they were doing and were held accountable for any wrongdoing, to 
make certain that companies we buy stock in actually exist, and to make 
certain those who are the most vulnerable in America do not lose 
everything because this Congress decided to look the other way because 
someone wants to take a profit out of an idea.
  This is an important measure. Every day, the Republican leaders came 
to the floor and said: Call it immediately. Let's go. Let's get it 
done. We need to at least take the time to reflect on it, to offer an 
alternative to it, and to do something which is exceedingly rare on the 
floor of the Senate, have a debate. How about that? The Chair was 
engaged in debate in his youth. He knows that perhaps good ideas can be 
exchanged in that process.
  The closest we have to debates now is 2 minutes, equally divided. 
That does not cut it, not for the Senate and not

[[Page 3455]]

for a bill of this importance. I urge my colleagues, before they rush 
to judgment, that because it passed the House with a big measure, that 
it certainly has to be a good bill, take the time to read it.
  Many people, including myself, who years ago were lured into the 
repeal of Glass-Steagall because of the notion of letting 1,000 flowers 
bloom, realized what happened. When it was all over, there were no 
flowers. Unfortunately, what was left was the rubble of the recent 
recession. It is time for us to vow not to make that mistake again.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  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.

                          ____________________