[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6496-6516]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   EXPORT-IMPORT BANK REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2012--MOTION TO PROCEED

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I move that the Senate proceed to 
consideration of the motion to proceed to calendar No. 396, H.R. 2072.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The clerk will report the bill by title.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to calendar No. 396, H.R. 2072, a bill to 
     reauthorize the Export-Import Bank of the United States, and 
     for other purposes.

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we are now on the motion to proceed to the 
Ex-Im bill. I hope we can pass the bill today. I haven't had an 
opportunity today to speak to the Republican leader, but I will do that 
shortly, and we will decide if there is a way forward.
  I ask unanimous consent that the next hour be equally divided and 
controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the 
majority controlling the first half and the Republicans controlling the 
second half.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. 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the quorum call be rescinded.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.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, on a strong bipartisan vote yesterday, the 
House passed a piece of commonsense, job-creating legislation--the 
reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank. We refer to it as the Ex-Im 
Bank legislation.
  For many years this legislation has helped American companies grow 
and sell their products overseas, creating tens of thousands of jobs. 
And for years the bank has enjoyed broad bipartisan support. It passed 
by unanimous consent on one occasion and by voice vote on another 
occasion. It is the perfect example of the kinds of smart investments 
Congress should be making to spur job growth.
  I hope the Senate will be able to quickly approve the House-passed 
measure today and do it by unanimous consent. I am optimistic that the 
330-to-93 vote in the House yesterday will be enough to convince Senate 
Republicans they shouldn't hold up this legislation any longer--330 to 
93. The process of reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank has taken 
too long. I hope we don't have to file cloture on this matter, but I 
will if we must.
  Let me remind my colleagues that the Senate considered reauthorizing 
this important legislation in March, 2 months ago. Senate Republicans 
had an opportunity to support the measure then. Instead, all but three 
opposed it and the measure failed. American exporters have already 
waited in limbo for 2 months to see whether Republicans will come 
around in backing this business-friendly, job-creating measure. 
Businesses shouldn't have to wait any longer. We can't afford more of 
the partisan obstruction we saw on this commonsense legislation last 
March. To get this to the President's desk this Congress--and every 
piece of legislation we pass must get to his desk or it doesn't become 
law--we need Democratic votes and Republican votes. That is just a 
reality. It means we absolutely must work together if we want to get 
anything done.


                         Senator Richard Lugar

  One man who has always been willing to extend a hand to colleagues 
across the aisle is the senior Senator from Indiana, Senator Richard 
Lugar. His first priority has always been getting things done for the 
American people, whether that means keeping the world safe from nuclear 
war or looking out for the Hoosiers back home. One of the most historic 
pieces of legislation is known as Nunn-Lugar. It is an effort to reduce 
the number of nuclear weapons in our country and in the Soviet Union. 
It is a very important piece of bipartisan legislation, authored by 
Senators Lugar of Indiana and Nunn of Georgia. It is important 
legislation.
  Senator Lugar has been a great advocate for the people of Indiana as 
well as a dedicated student of international affairs. I have the 
opportunity to call meetings with foreign dignitaries, and he is always 
there, seated at the table. He has always put the American people, in 
my estimation, first and his political party second. I was elected to 
the Senate to serve each and every Nevadan--not only Democrats, though 
I am proud to be one--and Senator Lugar was elected to serve every 
Hoosier, regardless of political affiliation, and he has done that so 
well; it is why he has been in the Senate for more than three decades.
  Throughout the history of this country, even in the most trying of 
times, times of great social and political unrest, our elected 
representatives have

[[Page 6497]]

worked together despite their differences to do what is right for all 
Americans. So I worry when I see dedicated patriots such as Senator 
Lugar drummed out by tea party zealots for being too willing to 
cooperate. But that is what happened on Tuesday. I worry when I hear a 
candidate for the U.S. Senate campaigning against bipartisanship and 
compromise between the two parties. That is really what he said, that 
there is too much compromise in Congress. That is what happened on 
Tuesday. I worry when a candidate for the U.S. Senate says clearly that 
he will put political party and partisanship before country and 
compromise. But that is what happened on Tuesday. That is nothing to be 
proud of.
  That kind of attitude is why longtime political observers Thomas Mann 
and Norman Ornstein described today's GOP as ``ideologically extreme'' 
and ``scornful of compromise.'' And it is why my friend Senator Lugar 
said the following yesterday in his concession speech:

       Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One can be 
     very conservative or very liberal and still have a bipartisan 
     mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the other party is 
     also patriotic and may have some good ideas.

  I want to repeat that. This is what Senator Lugar said in his 
concession speech yesterday:

       Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One can be 
     very conservative or very liberal and still have a bipartisan 
     mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the other party is 
     also patriotic and may have some good ideas.

  We should all remember, regardless of what our party affiliation is, 
that compromise has been the hallmark of this country for more than 200 
years, especially in the U.S. Senate--compromise.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader is 
recognized.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I certainly share my friend the 
majority leader's views about Senator Lugar's record, but he has 8 more 
months to be among us and to serve this country. I think an appropriate 
time to celebrate his outstanding career would be when it comes to an 
end here in the Senate.


                            Time for Action

  With regard to what has been going on here in the Senate, the problem 
clearly is the majority, which seems not to be interested in 
accomplishing anything but, rather, turning the Senate floor into an 
opportunity for show votes for the President and his campaign.
  Earlier this week the President repackaged a list of old ideas into a 
Post-it note checklist for Congress. He said he did not want to 
``overload'' Congress. Unfortunately, besides the weekly political show 
votes to which I just referred to coincide with the President's 
campaign schedule, the work that needs to be done isn't--no budget, 
nothing to prevent the largest tax hike in history, and House-passed 
bills sitting in the hopper.
  While the President is trying to manufacture arguments he can run on, 
House Republicans have spent the last year and a half voting on and 
passing energy and jobs bills. In fact, more than two dozen jobs 
proposals are currently collecting dust on the majority leader's desk. 
One after another, the House has passed a budget, a small business tax 
bill, bills to expand domestic energy production, and bills to reduce 
burdensome, job-killing regulations. Despite some saying nothing can 
get done in an election year, they are not done yet over in the House. 
I commend my House colleagues for their leadership, energy, and good 
work.
  I have a suggestion. Instead of focusing on his political Post-it 
note checklist, the President and Senate Democrats should show some 
leadership and work with Republicans to move on critical progrowth 
bills. These proposals will help provide certainty and provide a much 
needed boost to our economy. They would allow businesses to plan for 
the future and to begin to hire again.
  Common ground can be achieved on these jobs bills, and Republicans 
stand ready to work with Democrats to get them passed. With nearly 13 
million Americans unemployed and millions more underemployed or giving 
up looking for work altogether, inaction and political gimmicks and 
games are really just not acceptable. Action is required by this 
President and this Congress now, not after the election or by some 
future Congress or administration. The country's problems are far too 
pressing. The American people expect us to work together for the good 
of our country.
  This year the Senate should pass a budget. Three years without a 
budget is completely unacceptable. Congress should also move on 
comprehensive tax reform, a true all-of-the-above energy policy, and 
the elimination of burdensome regulations that are hurting businesses 
and hindering job creation. And we can't stop there. Congress must act 
swiftly to put forth a plan to deal with the largest tax increase in 
U.S. history that is only--only--8 months away.
  These are issues that can't be dealt with overnight. We need to start 
now. And anyone who says there is no time to get these things done 
either hasn't been watching the Senate floor lately or does not believe 
this country is headed toward a fiscal cliff. Where is the Democratic-
led Senate and the President? Where are they? What are they waiting 
for? What is the reason for the delay? The President giving another 
speech loaded with the same old ideas that have failed before is not 
going to cut it anymore. The President's Post-it note checklist is 
insufficient to handle the challenges we face as a nation, and, 
frankly, it is completely counterproductive.
  Yesterday the majority leader said Democrats are willing to make the 
tough choices. Well, we are waiting. We are waiting. And with all due 
respect, we have a tough time believing our friends across the aisle 
when the only issues they care about these days are show votes 
coordinated with the White House for political gain. So today let's 
stop the show votes that are designed to fail. Let's stop the blame 
games. Let's come together and do what the American people expect us to 
do. As I said yesterday, our offer still stands. We are ready when you 
are.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.


                       Reservation of Leader Time

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
leadership time is reserved.
  There will now be 60 minutes of debate on the motion to proceed to 
H.R. 2072 equally divided between the majority leader and the minority 
leader or their designees, with the majority controlling the first 30 
minutes.
  The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the motion to 
proceed to the passage of the Export-Import Bank, legislation that has 
come over from the House and passed the House with a vote of 330 to 93, 
a pretty resounding vote in favor of moving forward on the Export-
Import Bank, which is a major tool to financing manufacturing in the 
United States when they have products to be sold around the globe.
  We hear the President talk all the time about the fact that we need 
to increase our exports. This is a very important tool that has existed 
for decades in helping businesses across our country produce product 
and get sales into overseas markets, so the fact this legislation 
passed the House again with an overwhelmingly positive vote--and, I 
should point out to my colleagues here in the Senate, without 
amendment. It was not amended on the floor. That is, my colleagues on 
the House side, both Republicans and Democrats, worked out such a 
positive proposal that it went to the House floor without amendment.
  Now we have the chance to bring it up here and pass this legislation, 
and I urge my colleagues to do so very quickly because this legislation 
and this authorization for the Export-Import Bank is expiring at the 
end of this month.
  So, yes, here we are again at the eleventh hour. Instead of giving 
predictability and certainty to a very important program, we are down 
to the last minutes about whether it is going to continue to operate in 
the normal

[[Page 6498]]

way that it does. I am here to ask my colleagues on the Republican side 
of the aisle to move forward, do as your House colleagues did, agree to 
the legislation, and let's get it out of here so people know in and 
across America that this program will continue.
  I toured Washington State, which has many companies that benefit from 
the Export-Import Bank. One of them was a company in Spokane, WA, 
SCAFCO, which happens to be one of the largest makers of grain silos in 
the world and they export these grain silos. They are used in the 
United States, but they are used all over the world. I saw 200 workers 
there who know firsthand how important it is to get this legislation 
adopted and moved forward, because it means sales of those grain silos 
all around the world. They have used this financing mechanism to expand 
overseas sales to 11 new countries and to make sure they were 
continuing to compete on an international basis.
  If you look over the last 5 years, this bank has supported over $64 
billion of sales and exports in Washington State. Yes, some of those 
jobs are related to aviation, but 83,000 related jobs in Washington 
State are small businesses, companies such as Sonoco in Moses Lake 
which is a machine shop, and they do repair parts for aircraft for 40 
different clients spread across the globe.
  We were at another company in Yakima, a music company. If anybody has 
heard of Manhasset Music Stands, it is an unbelievable story of a 
success of a company that has sales of over $1 million to various 
countries around the globe; and people definitely like the fact that 
Made in America means quality and that they have been able to access 
all of these markets.
  We saw a company in the Everett area, Esterline, which has built 
airplane parts and employs over 600 people, and has used this 
agreement. Basically, they build the overhead cockpit part of airplanes 
and they sell those to a variety of businesses all around the globe.
  Without the financing of the Ex-Im Bank, these companies lose out on 
an international basis to the financing mechanisms that other countries 
have, whether that is Canada, Europe, or other places. This program is 
very successful and, I might add, adds billions of dollars back to the 
U.S. Government. This is not a program that costs us money. This is a 
program that basically generates revenue back to the Federal 
Government.
  I want to say to my colleagues, there were several things that were 
added in the House bill--a GAO report on evaluating the banks and 
capital market conditions, making sure they do an annual report on due 
diligence and the purpose of the loan, additional requirements by 
Treasury, making sure we continue to oversee the Ex-Im Bank; so lots of 
language in making sure there is transparency in the Ex-Im Bank 
financing mechanism.
  This is a good resolution. I applaud my colleagues in the House, 
Representatives Hoyer, Cantor, and Boehner, who all worked on this 
agreement, and I hope my colleagues move quickly on it.
  There is one thing we know right now. We need to do everything we can 
to help our economy and to help jobs. The Ex-Im Bank has been a proven 
job creator in the United States, helping U.S. companies compete 
internationally. It has helped us pay down the deficit in the past. Now 
all we need to do is give it the certainty that it will continue to 
operate as of May 31 this year. So let's get on with this business of 
making sure we are focusing on the economy, and make sure, for the Ex-
Im Bank, we proceed to this measure and pass it as soon as possible.
  I thank the President, and I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Colorado is 
recognized.
  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. President, let me associate myself with 
the remarks of my colleague from the State of Washington, Ms. Cantwell.
  I heard the Republican leader talk about a progrowth agenda. There is 
nothing more progrowth than exporting American goods and services 
overseas to the growing markets all over the world, and the Ex-Im Bank 
has a long record of providing the foundation on which our businesses, 
small, medium, and large, can do that. So let's bring up what the House 
has passed and move it through this Chamber as fast as possible.


            stop the student loan interest rate hike of 2012

  Mr. President, I mentioned I wanted to stand this morning and speak 
on behalf of students all across America.
  In my home State of Colorado, students and recent college graduates 
are literally struggling with a mountain of loan debt. As a mountain 
climber myself, I understand that mountains can be overcome. But in an 
economy such as this one, where recent college graduates are struggling 
to find work, we need to do more. We need to do everything we possibly 
can to make college more affordable. And that is where we, the 
Congress, come in.
  The interest rate, as we all know, on the federally subsidized 
Stafford loans is set to double on July 1, barring congressional 
action, so we don't have much time to play political games here before 
the mountain of debt facing our students begins to grow even higher.
  Student loans play a crucial role in making higher education possible 
for millions of Americans. For many Americans, higher education is the 
gateway to their future careers and to better paying jobs. That is a 
good thing for our families and it is a good thing for our economy, 
again referencing the Republican leader's concerns about a progrowth 
agenda.
  More specifically, let me talk about what the federally subsidized 
Stafford loans do. They are designed for American students from low- to 
middle-income families so that they too can afford to go to college. At 
a time when students are facing escalating tuition costs and an 
uncertain job market after graduation, it would truly be irresponsible 
for us not to act as soon as possible. But I have to report to you and 
our colleagues that we are being blocked from doing just that.
  There is a commonsense proposal before us that would prevent these 
student loan interest rates from doubling, but it is being 
filibustered. All these students want--all the young people we all know 
want--is an opportunity to better themselves and contribute to our 
Nation's economic growth. We have a chance to offer them that 
opportunity, but we have got to end the political games here and get to 
work. We can't let partisanship stand in the way of a college education 
for young Americans. It doesn't make sense, certainly out in my State 
of Colorado. Coloradans understand this, and they are telling me--as I 
think they are in the Presiding Officer's State, and States all across 
the country--just get it done. There is no time left to just get it 
done.
  I asked Colorado students through my Facebook page to contact me with 
their concerns so I could share them here on the Senate floor, and I 
wanted to bring their voices directly to the Congress so we would all 
understand better what is at stake in Colorado and all over our country 
so it might give us some additional motivation. So I wish to share a 
couple of stories here on the floor of the Senate.
  Justyne Espinal is from Aurora. She is a single mother of two 
children. She is currently enrolled in nursing school after being 
displaced from her job in the mortgage industry. She enrolled in 
nursing school so she could provide for her family and contribute to 
the workforce. She said:

       I am just barely making ends meet and need the help of 
     student loans. Please don't double my interest rate.

  Then there is Nicholas Collins, a senior communications major at the 
University of Colorado. He is in the middle of preparing for final 
exams this week, but he took time to write to me, and he wrote:

       Senator Udall, I will be graduating two weeks from today. I 
     could not imagine a future where students would be forced to 
     pay up to $1,000 more per year to pay off their loans . . . I 
     would not be in the position I am today if it wasn't for 
     federal aid.

  The concerns that are expressed by Justyne and Nicholas are just a 
couple of vivid examples of the concerns facing millions of American 
students.

[[Page 6499]]

  As you know, and we all know, there is a broad consensus that we have 
to prevent these Stafford loans from doubling on July 1. However, many 
of our friends on the other side want to raid the Prevention and Public 
Health Fund to offset the cost of these student loans. This fund is 
aimed at preventing chronic disease and it was implemented as a part of 
the Affordable Care Act. The Prevention and Public Health Fund helps to 
reduce chronic diseases, including diabetes and heart disease, while 
also providing much-needed dollars toward immunization for children.
  I understand that the health bill was controversial. But to continue 
attacking it, especially when students' futures are on the line, is 
puzzling, to say the least. While we could be closing unfair tax 
loopholes, as the underlying bill proposes, the Republicans here in the 
Senate are telling us we have to choose between a bright future for our 
students or preventing chronic disease for millions of Americans. That 
doesn't make sense. This is about providing opportunity. To say we can 
no longer care for the sick or help prevent chronic disease if we want 
to help students is a false and, I might say, political choice.
  There are plenty of tax loopholes, big oil subsidies and other 
savings, that don't leave students, the sick, or hard-working Americans 
out in the cold. We owe it to people such as Justyne and Nicholas to 
come together to find a way to ensure that American students continue 
to have access to affordable loans. I look forward to working with you 
and our colleagues here in the Senate to make sure we do right by our 
Nation's students on this. I would urge all of us to end this impasse 
and, instead, work together. Let's roll up our sleeves, literally and 
figuratively, and find the right solution. Let's prove to Coloradans, 
to the students in Colorado and to all the students across our country, 
that the Senate can accomplish something important for our Nation's 
education system, our country, and our way of life.
  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 assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of Colorado). Without objection, it 
is so ordered.


                         Senator Richard Lugar

  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, I rise to just say a few 
words about my good friend and my mentor in the Senate, Senator Richard 
Lugar. I heard both leaders this morning mention Senator Lugar, and I 
thought I would rise for a minute to talk about him because I have been 
lucky to have him as a mentor since I arrived in the Senate. Senator 
Mark Pryor organized for our class, when we came in, mentors, usually a 
senior Democrat, senior Republican, and Senator Lugar was that mentor 
for me. As a result of that, I have spent a great deal of time with 
him, both in the Foreign Relations Committee and in a variety of 
meetings and he has always given me very valuable advice. Above all, 
his advice was to urge bipartisanship, not for its own sake but because 
it is what makes the Senate work and what allows us to move forward.
  As one of the leaders pointed out, he is going to be with us for 8 
more months, but I think there was something very important in the 
statement he made and I will read a few words and ask unanimous consent 
the full statement be printed in the Record thereafter.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1)
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. I want to read a few words from what he said 
after he suffered this electoral loss. These are words we should all 
listen to in the Senate because they are so wise. They give us advice 
and put us on a path we should be on. These are Senator Lugar's words.

       Legislators should have an ideological grounding and strong 
     beliefs identifiable to their constituents. I believe I have 
     offered that throughout my career. But ideology cannot be a 
     substitute for a determination to think for yourself, for a 
     willingness to study an issue objectively, and for the 
     fortitude to sometimes disagree with your party or even your 
     constituents. Like Edmund Burke, I believe leaders owe the 
     people they represent their best judgment.
       Too often bipartisanship is equated with centrism or deal 
     cutting. Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One 
     can be very conservative or very liberal and still have a 
     bipartisan mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the 
     other party is also patriotic and may have some good ideas. 
     It acknowledges that national unity is important, and that 
     aggressive partisanship deepens cynicism, sharpens political 
     vendettas, and depletes the national reserve of good will 
     that is critical to our survival in hard times. Certainly 
     this was understood by President Reagan, who worked with 
     Democrats frequently and showed flexibility that would be 
     ridiculed today--from assenting to tax increases in the 1983 
     Social Security fix, to compromising on landmark tax reform 
     legislation in 1986, to advancing arms control agreements in 
     his second term.
       I don't remember a time when so many topics have become 
     politically unmentionable in one party or the other. 
     Republicans cannot admit to any nuance in policy on climate 
     change. Republican members are now expected to take pledges 
     against any tax increases. For two consecutive Presidential 
     nomination cycles, GOP candidates competed with one another 
     to express the most strident anti-immigration view, even at 
     the risk of alienating a huge voting bloc. Similarly, most 
     Democrats are constrained when talking about such issues as 
     entitlement cuts, tort reform, and trade agreements. Our 
     political system is losing its ability to even explore 
     alternatives. If fealty to these pledges continues to expand, 
     legislators may pledge their way into irrelevance. Voters 
     will be electing a slate of inflexible positions rather than 
     a leader.
       I hope that as a nation we aspire to more than that. I hope 
     we will demand judgment from our leaders.

  Those are the words of Senator Lugar. I think they are very wise 
words. I think we should all read his whole speech and try to put the 
Senate on a better path.

                               Exhibit 1

       Sen. Richard Lugar:
       I would like to comment on the Senate race just concluded 
     and the direction of American politics and the Republican 
     Party. I would reiterate from my earlier statement that I 
     have no regrets about choosing to run for office. My health 
     is excellent, I believe that I have been a very effective 
     Senator for Hoosiers and for the country, and I know that the 
     next six years would have been a time of great achievement. 
     Further, I believed that vital national priorities, including 
     job creation, deficit reduction, energy security, agriculture 
     reform, and the Nunn-Lugar program, would benefit from my 
     continued service as a Senator. These goals were worth the 
     risk of an electoral defeat and the costs of a hard campaign.
       Analysts will speculate about whether our campaign 
     strategies were wise. Much of this will be based on 
     conjecture by pundits who don't fully appreciate the choices 
     we had to make based on resource limits, polling data, and 
     other factors. They also will speculate whether we were 
     guilty of overconfidence.
       The truth is that the headwinds in this race were 
     abundantly apparent long before Richard Mourdock announced 
     his candidacy. One does not highlight such headwinds 
     publically when one is waging a campaign. But I knew that I 
     would face an extremely strong anti-incumbent mood following 
     a recession. I knew that my work with then-Senator Barack 
     Obama would be used against me, even if our relationship were 
     overhyped. I also knew from the races in 2010 that I was a 
     likely target of Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and other 
     Super Pacs dedicated to defeating at least one Republican as 
     a purification exercise to enhance their influence over other 
     Republican legislators.
       We undertook this campaign soberly and we worked very hard 
     in 2010, 2011, and 2012 to overcome these challenges. There 
     never was a moment when my campaign took anything for 
     granted. This is why we put so much effort into our get out 
     the vote operations.
       Ultimately, the re-election of an incumbent to Congress 
     usually comes down to whether voters agree with the positions 
     the incumbent has taken. I knew that I had cast recent votes 
     that would be unpopular with some Republicans and that would 
     be targeted by outside groups.
       These included my votes for the TARP program, for 
     government support of the auto industry, for the START 
     Treaty, and for the confirmations of Justices Sotomayor and 
     Kagan. I also advanced several propositions that were 
     considered heretical by some, including the thought that 
     Congressional earmarks saved no money and turned spending 
     power over to unelected bureaucrats and that the country 
     should explore options for immigration reform.
       It was apparent that these positions would be attacked in a 
     Republican primary. But I believe that they were the right 
     votes for the country, and I stand by them without regrets, 
     as I have throughout the campaign.

[[Page 6500]]

       From time to time during the last two years I heard from 
     well-meaning individuals who suggested that I ought to 
     consider running as an independent. My response was always 
     the same: I am a Republican now and always have been. I have 
     no desire to run as anything else. All my life, I have 
     believed in the Republican principles of small government, 
     low taxes, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and 
     trade expansion. According to Congressional Quarterly vote 
     studies, I supported President Reagan more often than any 
     other Senator. I want to see a Republican elected President, 
     and I want to see a Republican majority in the Congress. I 
     hope my opponent wins in November to help give my friend 
     Mitch McConnell a majority.
       If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a good 
     Senator. But that will require him to revise his stated goal 
     of bringing more partisanship to Washington. He and I share 
     many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan 
     mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance 
     and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the 
     Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is 
     reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid 
     opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party. 
     His answer to the inevitable roadblocks he will encounter in 
     Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who 
     embrace the same partisan outlook. He has pledged his support 
     to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican 
     Party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it.
       This is not conducive to problem solving and governance. 
     And he will find that unless he modifies his approach, he 
     will achieve little as a legislator. Worse, he will help 
     delay solutions that are totally beyond the capacity of 
     partisan majorities to achieve. The most consequential of 
     these is stabilizing and reversing the Federal debt in an era 
     when millions of baby boomers are retiring. There is little 
     likelihood that either party will be able to impose their 
     favored budget solutions on the other without some degree of 
     compromise.
       Unfortunately, we have an increasing number of legislators 
     in both parties who have adopted an unrelenting partisan 
     viewpoint. This shows up in countless vote studies that find 
     diminishing intersections between Democrat and Republican 
     positions. Partisans at both ends of the political spectrum 
     are dominating the political debate in our country. And 
     partisan groups, including outside groups that spent millions 
     against me in this race, are determined to see that this 
     continues. They have worked to make it as difficult as 
     possible for a legislator of either party to hold independent 
     views or engage in constructive compromise. If that attitude 
     prevails in American politics, our government will remain 
     mired in the dysfunction we have witnessed during the last 
     several years. And I believe that if this attitude expands in 
     the Republican Party, we will be relegated to minority 
     status. Parties don't succeed for long if they stop appealing 
     to voters who may disagree with them on some issues.
       Legislators should have an ideological grounding and strong 
     beliefs identifiable to their constituents. I believe I have 
     offered that throughout my career. But ideology cannot be a 
     substitute for a determination to think for yourself, for a 
     willingness to study an issue objectively, and for the 
     fortitude to sometimes disagree with your party or even your 
     constituents. Like Edmund Burke, I believe leaders owe the 
     people they represent their best judgment.
       Too often bipartisanship is equated with centrism or deal 
     cutting. Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One 
     can be very conservative or very liberal and still have a 
     bipartisan mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the 
     other party is also patriotic and may have some good ideas. 
     It acknowledges that national unity is important, and that 
     aggressive partisanship deepens cynicism, sharpens political 
     vendettas, and depletes the national reserve of good will 
     that is critical to our survival in hard times. Certainly 
     this was understood by President Reagan, who worked with 
     Democrats frequently and showed flexibility that would be 
     ridiculed today--from assenting to tax increases in the 1983 
     Social Security fix, to compromising on landmark tax reform 
     legislation in 1986, to advancing arms control agreements in 
     his second term.
       I don't remember a time when so many topics have become 
     politically unmentionable in one party or the other. 
     Republicans cannot admit to any nuance in policy on climate 
     change. Republican members are now expected to take pledges 
     against any tax increases. For two consecutive Presidential 
     nomination cycles, GOP candidates competed with one another 
     to express the most strident anti-immigration view, even at 
     the risk of alienating a huge voting bloc. Similarly, most 
     Democrats are constrained when talking about such issues as 
     entitlement cuts, tort reform, and trade agreements. Our 
     political system is losing its ability to even explore 
     alternatives. If fealty to these pledges continues to expand, 
     legislators may pledge their way into irrelevance. Voters 
     will be electing a slate of inflexible positions rather than 
     a leader.
       I hope that as a nation we aspire to more than that. I hope 
     we will demand judgment from our leaders. I continue to 
     believe that Hoosiers value constructive leadership. I would 
     not have run for office if I did not believe that.
       As someone who has seen much in the politics of our country 
     and our state, I am able to take the long view. I have not 
     lost my enthusiasm for the role played by the United States 
     Senate. Nor has my belief in conservative principles been 
     diminished. I expect great things from my party and my 
     country. I hope all who participated in this election share 
     in this optimism.

  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Student Loans

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, in just 2 weeks, similar to many proud 
parents, I will be watching as my youngest daughter walks across the 
graduation stage. For some students, this important milestone marks the 
end of their college days and the beginning of a professional career. 
This achievement should be filled with hope for a great future, but for 
many it will be a story saddled with student loan debt and uncertainty 
about the economy, their job prospects, and their future.
  As I have listened to many of my Democratic colleagues discussing the 
extension of a special interest rate for the subsidized Stafford loans, 
I continue to hear false statements that would lead one to believe 
Republicans don't support extending this interest rate for students. 
This is simply not true.
  In my State of South Dakota, nearly 30,000 students received 
subsidized Stafford loans during the 2010-2011 school year. While I 
support alleviating financial pressure on students, I did not support 
the partisan legislation brought forward by Majority Leader Reid that 
would extend subsidized Stafford loans while raising taxes on some 
employers, not because the goal of the legislation is misguided but 
because the way the majority leader proposed to pay for the legislation 
is misguided.
  Majority Leader Reid's legislation, similar to its Republican 
counterpart, would extend the special rate of 3.4 percent for 
subsidized Stafford loans that existed for the 2011-2012 school year to 
the 2012 and 2013 school year. I agree with the extension of this 
special rate and would simply ask the majority leader to allow a vote 
on the Republican alternative, which I might add, passed the House of 
Representatives by a bipartisan vote on April 27. I voted against 
moving to the majority leader's bill because I disagree on two grounds 
with the way my Democratic colleagues proposed to pay for the temporary 
1-year extension.
  First, I fundamentally disagree with the idea of a permanent tax 
increase on certain job creators to pay for a temporary 1-year 
extension. We are talking about permanent tax changes to pay for 
temporary spending. That is bad policy. I furthermore believe any 
discussion about raising taxes should be addressed in a comprehensive 
tax reform discussion, not in a student loan bill.
  Second, I disagree with diverting the payroll tax revenue away from 
the Medicare and Social Security trust funds, where it would ordinarily 
be directed. We saw this done during the health care bill a couple 
years ago, where Medicare reductions and revenue increases that were 
supposed to go to extend the lifespan of Medicare were, in fact, used 
to pay for new spending. We cannot continue to try to fool the American 
people that we are somehow extending the lifespan of Medicare when we 
are spending that money on new programs.
  We are essentially double counting revenue and spending the same 
money twice. We cannot do that. We cannot do that anywhere else in the 
country, in this economy. Yet in Washington, DC, that has become the 
practice. What this would do is take changes in the Tax Code that would 
ordinarily go into the payroll tax fund or Medicare trust fund and now 
that is going to be used to pay for something else. This is a

[[Page 6501]]

practice we cannot continue; we cannot sustain. We all know our trust 
funds are headed toward bankruptcy and continuing to raid them and use 
them for other purposes is simply a recipe for disaster.
  I agree with the 37 business groups that wrote a letter to Leaders 
Reid and McConnell strongly opposing the $9 billion tax increase on 
small businesses proposed in the majority leader's legislation. These 
groups represent millions of employers, and they range from the 
National Federation of Independent Business to the Independent 
Community Bankers, to the National Restaurant Association. These 37 
business groups all oppose the tax increases that would be included to 
pay to keep the interest rate at 3.4 percent.
  I believe there could be bipartisan support for a proposal that has 
been put forward by Senators Enzi and Alexander, who are both leaders 
on education policy in the Senate. They proposed an alternative that 
pays for a temporary 1-year extension of a 3.4-percent interest rate by 
taking money from a slush fund created by ObamaCare in 2010. The 
President and Democrats have supported taking money from the slush fund 
in the past, so it seems odd that now they are suddenly up in arms in 
support of a slush fund that is supposedly aimed at prevention.
  The President's own fiscal year 2013 budget proposal recommends using 
the prevention slush fund for other Federal priorities. My Democratic 
colleagues in the Senate supported taking $5 billion from the fund 
merely 11 weeks ago. So there is broad support for the idea of 
prevention, but the recent record of the use of prevention dollars 
shows these dollars are not being spent wisely. Funds in the prevention 
slush fund can be used on almost anything in the name of prevention and 
wellness. For example, jungle gyms, bike paths, farmers' markets, those 
are the types of things this so-called prevention slush fund is being 
used for. Keep in mind that in 2010, my Democratic colleagues used the 
$9 billion in savings in Federal student program aid to pay for part of 
ObamaCare instead of using that money to address the looming issue of 
the scheduled return to these higher interest rates on student loans.
  It only seems rational and fitting to use the money that came from 
the student loan industry to address the interest rates for subsidized 
Stafford loans. At least it strikes me as very logical that since these 
funds were diverted from the student aid fund in the first place to pay 
for ObamaCare, we ought to recapture some of those funds to help keep 
student loan interest rates at the lower 3.4 percent level.
  It is particularly interesting that the President suddenly has taken 
such a deep interest in this issue, when in 2007 he didn't even show up 
in the Senate to vote for the original legislation that created the 
temporary phased-down interest rate for subsidized Stafford loans. So 
despite the President's rhetoric, the greatest threat to young people 
looking for a job isn't the loan rates but the Obama economy.
  This year's crop of college students looking for jobs is confronting 
an economy in which unemployment has remained above 8 percent for 39 
straight months. A recent Associated Press report found that one out of 
every two recent graduates is jobless or underemployed within 1 year of 
finishing school. Graduates who are lucky enough to find a job will 
earn 9 percent less than if they had graduated just a few years ago.
  A Gallup poll released this week gives even more bad news for young 
adults. According to Gallup, underemployment for 18- to 29-year-olds 
has hovered around 30 percent for most of the past year. Those 
graduates lucky enough to find employment are more likely to find jobs 
as waitresses and bartenders than as engineers, physicists, chemists, 
and mathematicians.
  On Tuesday, the President was out touting his to-do list for 
Congress. That is particularly interesting since the President had 3\1/
2\ years to put policies in place that would strengthen the economy. 
Here is what our graduates are getting. Here is what that Obama economy 
has brought about: Long-term unemployment is up 89 percent; the number 
of Americans who are on food stamps is up 45 percent; gas prices have 
doubled; college tuition is up 25 percent; worker health insurance 
costs are up 23 percent; and the Federal debt we are passing on to 
future generations is up 47 percent. The only thing that has gone down 
on his watch is home values, which is down 14 percent.
  Our country and our college graduates have had enough of the Obama 
economy. Instead of the to-do list the President has put forward, we 
have a to-stop list for you. Stop job-killing regulations that are 
hurting our small businesses' ability to create jobs, stop trying to 
raise taxes on small businesses and job creators who are the people who 
are going to hire our college graduates, stop blocking the Keystone XL 
Pipeline which would help wean our country from the dependence we have 
on foreign sources of energy, and stop the divisive use of class 
warfare that does nothing but divide Americans.
  It is time for the President and Congress to come to the realization 
that we have to shift our focus away from election-year standoffs and 
come together to focus on changing the course of our lagging economy so 
we can once again put our young people back to work, which is the real 
objective that should be our focus. These other issues, which are a lot 
of campaign gimmicks, a lot of opportunities to politicize this issue 
or that issue, are counterproductive in the long run. The floor of the 
Senate is being used, it seems more and more these days, to make 
campaign points, political points, rather than to address the 
fundamental issues that are affecting Americans and our economy.
  I would hope we can come together to work in a constructive way on 
policies that will get Americans back to work, and that means doing 
something about these regulations which are crushing the ability of our 
small businesses to create jobs. We hear about it every single day.
  When I travel my State of South Dakota or elsewhere around the 
country, I hear from businesses, the people out there trying to create 
jobs, about regulations, about taxes, about the cost of things, their 
inputs going up. Those are the issues we ought to be addressing. We 
ought to figure out how to reform the Tax Code, how to reduce Federal 
spending and reform the entitlement programs so we can save Social 
Security and Medicare.
  We ought to look at what we can do to put in place a real all-the-
above energy strategy that would help keep energy costs affordable for 
people out there creating jobs. In my view, those are the types of 
things on which we ought to be focusing.
  Frankly, we have seen a lot of action and activity in the other body, 
in the House of Representatives, many bills they have sent to the 
Senate that are small business bills that would address these very 
issues, such as the high cost of regulations, the issue of taxation, 
the issue of energy independence--all these things that we believe 
would lead us toward a stronger economy that would get Americans back 
to work and offer more opportunity to young people, to our college 
graduates as they emerge from their programs of study this year and in 
years to come.
  Yet we continue to have the rhetoric on the floor of the Senate 
suggesting that somehow Republicans are not in favor of keeping 
interest rates low for student loans. Think about that. It is illogical 
to even suggest that. However, we do have a fundamental difference of 
finance as to how we ought to pay for that. The other side suggests we 
could pay for that by raising taxes on people who create jobs.
  We believe we ought to go back and take the funds out of the 
prevention slush fund, which in the first place was created out of 
dollars that were allegedly saved when the Federal Government took over 
the student loan program, which happened as a part of ObamaCare. Not a 
lot of people realize that because it got buried in the whole debate 
over health care.
  The student loan program, which used to be administered out of 
private lenders where they originated and serviced the loans, has now 
been taken over

[[Page 6502]]

by the government. In doing so, savings were counted that were then 
used to pay for the cost of the health care bill. So all we are simply 
doing is saying the slush fund that was created by the funds that 
supposedly were saved by moving the student loan program into the 
government ought to be used for student loan fund programs to actually 
keep the funds that ought to be used to fund keeping the interest rate 
low, down at 3.4 percent for college students today. As I said, it 
seems very fitting to me, very logical, and very intuitive that would 
be the way we would fund this.
  But to suggest for a minute that somehow Republicans in the Senate 
are not in favor of keeping interest rates at as low a rate as possible 
for our college students is completely missing the point. It is massive 
election-year politics, and I hope we can get away from that and focus 
on not only a solution in the near term with this issue but also the 
bigger issue.
  The bigger issue is the fact that I just mentioned, that literally 
one-half of all college students who are coming out are either not 
finding jobs or are underemployed. Those who are finding jobs are 
making significantly less than those who graduated just a few years 
ago. That is an economic problem. That is a problem that needs to be 
addressed not by simply having a debate about student loans but what we 
are going to do to get this economy growing again and get American 
businesses creating jobs.
  We need to make it less expensive and less difficult for American 
businesses to create jobs, not more expensive and more difficult, which 
is precisely what is happening as a result of the policies coming out 
of this administration in the form of regulations and many of the 
legislative initiatives that are coming out of the Congress or at least 
proposed to come out of the Senate.
  I wish to work with my colleagues on solutions that will put 
Americans back to work and give our college graduates greater 
opportunity, greater hopes for a higher standard of living and higher 
quality of life, something many of us have inherited from those who 
came before us. These opportunities are increasingly at risk and in 
jeopardy because of the amount of spending and the amount of debt and 
the policies coming out of Washington that are making it increasingly 
difficult for us to come out from underneath an economy that has anemic 
growth and chronic high unemployment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
  Mr. BOOZMAN. First, I wish to thank the Senator from South Dakota for 
his leadership in this area and very much agree with the comments he 
just made. Last week, while home in Arkansas, I had the opportunity to 
visit some of our State's excellent universities. While spending an 
afternoon at the University of Central Arkansas, I saw firsthand the 
innovative ways that UCA promotes undergraduate education in all areas, 
including science, arts, nursing, and business. For instance, the 
university's nursing program has entered into a partnership with a 
local hospital that will dramatically help address our State's growing 
nursing shortage.
  One day later I was at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock to see 
its brandnew nanotechnology center. It is quite amazing. It is a state-
of-the-art center that prepares students for a future in the exciting 
new world of nanotechnology, which in layman's terms is working with 
matter on an atomic and molecular scale.
  Arkansas is well poised to take advantage of this exciting new world 
of economic opportunities and capitalize on nanotechnology 
breakthroughs discovered in UALR and other universities throughout the 
State. By pooling the brain power of academic and corporate partners 
throughout the State, the center's research is sure to lead to advances 
in the field of nanotechnology.
  These innovative programs at UCA and UALR are perfect examples of how 
Arkansas' universities are moving forward with the future in mind. Our 
higher education institutions are in an elite class. We are blessed 
with top-notch facilities and premier educators. But that comes at a 
price.
  The increasing mandates that Arkansas--and every State for that 
matter--are facing as a result of ObamaCare hurts our ability to fund 
our State schools. The extra burden placed on the State's Medicaid 
Program means much less money to spend for education. Our universities 
are forced to raise their tuition to cover the shortfall. Higher 
tuition puts the dream of college out of reach for many young 
Americans. This is why the Stafford student loan program is so 
important. Loans help students overcome obstacles they face when it 
comes to accessing a quality, affordable education. My three daughters 
attended college, so I am well aware of the financial toll tuition 
takes on a family's finances.
  So we have to fix this issue concerning the interest rate increases 
before July 1. These interest rates should not be allowed to double. 
But the troubles facing young Americans are greater than rising 
interest rates for student loans.
  For our graduates, it doesn't matter from where one gets one's degree 
if there are no jobs to be had once a person has a diploma in hand, and 
that is the problem with the job market our young people are graduating 
into today.
  The reality is it is a tough time to be young. We have the lowest 
employment-to-population ratio for young adults since 1948. Over half 
of Americans under 25 who hold a bachelor's degree are unemployed or 
underemployed. Nearly 25 million adults live at home with their parents 
not out of choice but because they can't find work or earn enough to 
survive on their own. Any way we cut it, college graduates ready to 
chase the American dream have a huge roadblock awaiting them in this 
economy. We have to stop this trend. We have to work together.
  While giving Arkansas students access to the very best education 
possible at an affordable rate, we must also work to ensure there is a 
healthy job market awaiting them upon graduation.
  Earlier this week, the Senate majority brought forth its bill to 
extend the lower interest rate on federally subsidized Stafford college 
loans. I think everyone in this body agrees this needs to be done, and 
I am confident we will find a way to accomplish it before the deadline. 
But the reason the Senate majority's proposal failed is that it is the 
wrong approach.
  Their proposal funded the extension by raising taxes on our small 
businesses. This idea of taxing and spending our way out of our fiscal 
mess is why the economy has not rebounded. Continuing down this path 
will only make it harder for graduates to enter the workforce.
  Let's do what we all agree needs to be done and extend the low-rate 
loans, but let's be smart about how it is paid for. The proposal 
supported on this side of the aisle is identical to the version that 
passed the House in a bipartisan manner. It freezes the rate for 1 year 
by using money from an unused ObamaCare account to pay for it. This 
money is just sitting there, obligated for a program that is not 
operating, and the President already proposed cutting it in his own 
budget. It is likely this money will never be spent. So let's use it 
for a reason we all support: protecting student loans.
  Student loans are supposed to increase access to college by helping 
millions of Americans earn a college degree. The student loan program 
should be a gateway to the workforce, not a barrier. Any extension of 
the low-rate loans paid for by tax increases is simply that--a 
barrier--because tax increases stifle job creation. Let's fix the 
problem without making our economic situation worse and get America 
working again.
  With that, I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
  Mr. JOHNSON of South Dakota. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent

[[Page 6503]]

that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. JOHNSON of South Dakota. Mr. President, I rise in support of H.R. 
2072, the Export-Import Bank Reauthorization Act of 2012. I believe 
this jobs legislation will help provide U.S. exporters and workers with 
an important tool to compete in the global marketplace.
  The Export-Import Bank is the official export credit agency of the 
United States, and it assists in financing the export of U.S. goods and 
services to international markets. Following the financial crisis, the 
bank experienced a dramatic increase in its activities as many 
companies struggled to find financing in the private market. Last year, 
the bank committed almost $33 billion in support of U.S. exports, a new 
record.
  The bank has been self-funding since 2008, returning nearly $2 
billion to the Treasury. In fiscal year 2011 alone, the bank generated 
$400 million to offset Federal spending and bring down the budget 
deficit. When other countries are helping their own companies with 
export financing, we cannot afford to unilaterally disarm in the face 
of this global competition.
  The Export-Import Bank's charter directs it to use exports to support 
American jobs, and last year the Export-Import Bank supported almost 
290,000 Americans jobs. These are jobs in cities and towns across the 
Nation, at large companies as well as small businesses. In fact, last 
year the Export-Import Bank financed more than $6 billion in exports by 
small businesses. In my home State of South Dakota, Ex-Im has worked 
with large and small businesses to help export goods all over the 
world.
  Last September, there was unanimous bipartisan support when we passed 
a 4-year reauthorization bill out of the Banking Committee. 
Unfortunately, that measure was blocked on the Senate floor in March.
  The legislation before us today reflects a bipartisan compromise 
developed in the House. While this bill is not perfect, I believe it is 
important to pass this legislation and ensure that the Export-Import 
Bank is able to continue providing financing assistance to American 
exporters and workers.
  This is a jobs bill. Earlier this week, the House passed this bill by 
an overwhelming majority, 330 to 93. This bill extends the 
authorization of the bank until 2014. Like the Senate bill, this 
legislation will increase the bank's lending authority to $140 billion. 
This is a significant improvement over earlier drafts in the House to 
only increase the cap to $113 billion. Adopting the Senate's proposed 
lending authority limit helped to improve this bill. There are also 
additional provisions in the House bill similar to provisions in the 
Senate bill that will add transparency and accountability requirements 
for the bank, improve the bank's information technology infrastructure, 
extend the bank's Sub-Saharan African Advisory Panel, and provide for 
greater oversight of the bank's financing and any risks it might have 
to taxpayers.
  I am also pleased the House included language that strengthens 
restrictions against companies doing business with Iran. These 
provisions, which reflect an earlier agreement by the House and Senate 
committees of jurisdiction, are vital to our efforts to increase the 
pressure on Iran's illicit nuclear program. I believe they are 
important provisions that strengthen the bill, and I am glad the House 
included them.
  Lastly, the legislation includes the Senate's language on domestic 
content. This language, which is supported by labor groups, has 
important protections in it to ensure that goods exported by the bank 
continue to be made in America. Although there were efforts in the 
House to weaken this provision, I am pleased to see the House accepted 
the Senate's position on this important issue.
  After multiple short-term extensions, I am relieved to see that this 
Congress will finally reauthorize the Export-Import Bank. I believe by 
reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, we are taking an important step 
in supporting American businesses and workers. I commend Minority Whip 
Hoyer and Majority Leader Cantor in the House for coming to an 
agreement. I also thank Majority Leader Reid for his tireless efforts 
in working to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank.
  As chairman of the Banking Committee over the next few years, I will 
continue to closely monitor the efforts of the Ex-Im Bank to ensure 
that it is effectively and efficiently supporting American exporters 
and workers. Today I urge all my colleagues to support this 
legislation.
  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.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The remarks of Mr. Leahy are printed in today's Record under 
``Morning Business.'')
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown of Ohio). Without objection, it is 
so ordered.


                        Password Protection Act

  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, privacy is a fundamentally and almost 
uniquely American value. It is the reason the Colonies rebelled--one of 
the major reasons they rebelled--against the British. The invasion of 
our homes by British soldiers without court approval, the lodging of 
those soldiers in our homes without permission--the invasion of the 
fundamental rights of privacy was one of the basic reasons this Nation 
sought independence from the British. So throughout our history, 
privacy has been a value, a fundamental right affirmed again and again 
in our courts, enshrined in our Constitution and ingrained in our way 
of life.
  That is the reason so many of us were offended and regarded as 
reprehensible and repugnant a practice that was revealed recently--a 
practice involving employers coercing and compelling the disclosure of 
log-in information, user names, and passwords to private accounts and 
private systems by job applicants. And the same kind of coercion and 
compulsion applied to current or existing employees as a condition of 
their continuing in their jobs. That kind of practice is abhorrent, and 
it is the reason that yesterday I, along with a number of my colleagues 
from both this body and others from the House of Representatives, 
introduced the Password Protection Act of 2012.
  These practices are unacceptable for a number of reasons. An employer 
has plenty of ways other than accessing private accounts--Gmail, 
storage data, and accounts on Facebook or other social networking 
sites--to obtain information that is relevant to employer needs and 
interests in offering a position to someone. There are other means that 
are adequate and acceptable. What is not acceptable is coercing and 
compelling access to an applicant's e-mail account, which could contain 
all kinds of personal information that is inappropriate and unnecessary 
for an employer to know, information that is irrelevant, in fact, to 
the terms and duties of a person's employment.
  Second, the disclosure itself endangers the security of that 
applicant's personal data as well as the Web sites themselves. Too many 
careless companies too often have lost customer data or employee 
information, allowing it to be breached through poor security 
practices. That is the reason I have proposed a measure that would 
require safeguards of that data--a separate measure that is before this 
Chamber now--to ensure adequate remedies when there are breaches and to 
require systems in place by employers to guard that information. An 
applicant who takes care to use encrypted networks or other personal 
safeguards may find his or her personal information--financial data, 
medical information--breached through no fault of his or her own simply 
because the company fails to take adequate steps to safeguard it.

[[Page 6504]]

  There is another reason these practices are abhorrent; that is, 
identity theft by the employer itself--a continuing danger. That kind 
of potential danger is a real one that certainly raises this interest 
very squarely.
  But maybe as important as any of these other interests is the danger 
of compromising the security of third parties--loved ones, family, 
friends--who have entrusted the person who is applying for a job or who 
is employed by a company that breaches its responsibility by demanding 
this information. When an employer logs in to an employee's personal 
account, he sees that employee's e-mails with his or her spouse or 
Facebook pictures of siblings and children. Those parties are 
completely unaware that one of their friends' or family members' 
employers may be reading their correspondence or looking at their 
pictures. Imagine a daughter who tells her mother of a pregnancy, a son 
who acknowledges an addiction to a parent, a father who speaks of his 
wife's illness in confidence to his children. Each has an expectation 
of privacy that is betrayed and violated when an employer demands log-
in information, user names, or passwords from a job applicant or a 
current employee. The impact is not only on that employee or job 
applicant but on innocent loved ones--friends, family--whose 
confidential information, e-mails, and other data may be exposed.
  Of course, when information is exposed in this way, there is the 
danger of discrimination based on marital status, sex, gender, and 
other kinds of prohibited categories. So barring the compelled 
disclosure of this information actually is an aid to the employer 
because it ensures that none of these hiring or firing decisions is 
based on a prohibited category or discrimination.
  The Password Protection Act addresses all these concerns and 
prohibits employers from forcing prospective or current employees to 
hand over personal, private financial information that has no place in 
the hiring process. The bill prohibits an employer from compelling or 
coercing an employee or prospective employee to provide access to a 
private system as a condition of employment. This means an employer 
cannot compel a prospective or current employee to provide his Gmail 
password, and an employer cannot force an employee or prospective 
employee to log on to a password-protected account so the employer may 
browse the account's content.
  The Password Protection Act also very importantly prohibits 
retaliation, which is a danger with current employees. That retaliation 
could take all kinds of forms, but the demand for log-in information, 
user names, or passwords certainly creates a kind of presumption that 
the refusal to do so prompts action that can be regarded as 
retaliation. An employer who violates these legally required duties is 
subject to a penalty of $10,000 per violation.
  This act will protect employees from unreasonable invasions of their 
privacy--unreasonable invasions that have no commonsense basis--and it 
prevents unintended consequences. It doesn't prohibit social networking 
within the office on a voluntary basis, it does not bar employers from 
conducting valid investigations of misconduct, it does not prevent an 
employer from controlling the company's own system--its own Facebook 
account, for example--and it provides that States may exempt certain 
categories of employees, such as individuals who deal with children who 
are under 13 years of age or Federal employees who may have access to 
classified or secure national security information. The bill also 
provides for reasonable exemptions that State law may make for State 
employees who are involved, for example, in law enforcement or 
corrections.
  Like so many in this body, I have heard from countless Connecticut 
citizens who are not only offended but outraged by these practices 
reported in the press. Fortunately, many employers have shown they get 
it, they understand this deeply held value, and they have rejected 
these possible practices. Many who might have been contemplating 
engaging in them have likewise retreated and reversed their decisions. 
So merely shining a light, pointing the spotlight, and raising the 
issue has brought many employers to understand the commonsense force of 
objections to these practices.
  I wish to thank grassroots groups, such as the 57,000 citizens at 
Bold Progressives, who signed a petition at ProtectOurPasswords.org to 
let Washington know--57,000 of them strong--they reject the idea that 
their employers will force them to hand over this personal, private 
information. I thank the activists at Access Now, who are similarly 
generating a groundswell of support for this initiative and working to 
protect employees' rights on the job. I also wish to thank companies 
such as Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Google, which have cooperated 
and support this effort because they have an interest in preventing 
invasions of privacy, demands for information that are unnecessary, 
repugnant, reprehensible, and unacceptable. I thank all of them for 
working with us on this legislation.
  Finally, I thank Senators Schumer, Klobuchar, Shaheen, Wyden, 
Sanders, and Akaka, as well as Representatives Heinrich and Perlmutter 
on the other side of this body, for working with me in introducing this 
bill. I am hopeful the Congress will consider it promptly and 
successfully because I think it sets a marker and provides a milestone 
in protecting individual privacy against abhorrent invasions in the 
workplace and elsewhere that have no place in American life.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Rhode Island.


                      Student Loan Interest Rates

  Mr. REED. Mr. President, unless we act quickly, students across the 
country will face the largest increase of subsidized student loan 
interest rates in more than 40 years. In the last 40 years, the 
interest rates on subsidized student loans have never doubled from one 
year to the next. Yet that is what is happening unless we act before 
July 1--just 52 days from now.
  Unless my colleagues on the other side of the aisle relent and allow 
legislation to fix this problem to come to a vote, we will see a 
doubling of the student loan interest rate from 3.4 percent to 6.8 
percent for all borrowing going forward for education in the United 
States related to the subsidized Stafford loan program. I know the 
Presiding Officer of the Senate, Senator Brown of Ohio, has been taking 
an active leadership role on this front, along with Senator Harkin, to 
ensure we can move effectively to prevent this doubling of the interest 
rate.
  We are now in a time where, if you look across the financial 
industry, borrowing rates are at historical lows. We are essentially 
providing banks, through the Federal Reserve, with near zero percent 
interest loans. So it is incomprehensible that at this time, we would 
actually double the loan rates we would charge students who are going 
to college. Students and families cannot absorb these increases. It is 
a tough economy, and they are facing rising tuition and dwindling State 
support for higher education, making it more difficult and more 
complicated. To add to their burden by doubling this loan rate is bad 
public policy.
  This will not only directly affect middle-income Americans, but in 
the longer run, it will affect the competitiveness, the productivity, 
and the success of our economy in a very competitive global economy.
  We have to ensure also that we are not piling more and more debt on 
students. We have reached a point where student debt is becoming so 
extraordinarily difficult to bear that it inhibits people from going to 
school and it inhibits them from pursuing various professions after 
they graduate from college. If we add to this mountain of debt, we will 
create a huge financial problem going forward not just for the 
individual borrowers, the student borrowers, but for our economy.
  According to Georgetown University's Center on Education and the 
Workforce, over 60 percent of jobs going forward will require some 
postsecondary education by 2018.
  That underscores the essential need to go to college. In 2010, only 
38.3 percent of working-age adults had a 2-year

[[Page 6505]]

or 4-year degree. So we are looking at a gap of the prepared 
individuals with a college education versus those jobs in the not-too-
distant future that will require a college education. In order to fill 
that gap, we have to get more and more young people into school, into 
higher education and beyond, and by doubling the rate we will not be 
achieving that goal and that objective.
  That is why I introduced the Student Loan Affordability Act in 
January to permanently keep the interest rate low, and that is why I 
was joined by Senator Brown of Ohio and Senator Harkin and many others, 
to step up and to make it quite clear that we cannot afford--for our 
country's sake and for the sake of many working-class families across 
the country--to double this rate.
  We should be debating today the Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate 
Hike Act. This is a fully paid-for 1-year extension of the current 
rate, to extend it for a year so we can look for a more permanent fix. 
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle insist they agree that we 
have to do this, yet they continue to filibuster this legislation. They 
continue to prevent us from bringing it to a vote. It is clear they 
have an alternative view in terms of how we pay for it. Well, let's put 
that to a vote, but let's not stop dead in its tracks a policy that 
both sides claim has to be fixed and that we have to avoid the doubling 
of this interest rate.
  What we have done is propose to fix this problem and pay for it in a 
fiscally responsible manner by closing a glaring, egregious loophole in 
the Tax Code that enables certain wealthy individuals to shirk their 
responsibility to pay payroll taxes. This loophole predominantly 
benefits professional service providers such as accountants, lobbyists, 
and lawyers who derive all of their income from their professional 
labor. But because they choose to mischaracterize their income as a 
distribution from a subchapter S corporation instead of wages, they 
avoid paying payroll taxes.
  In 2005, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration issued 
an audit report calling for action on this loophole which was described 
as a ``multibillion dollar tax shelter.''
  The report also described a disturbing trend of businesses changing 
their status to the subchapter S corporation for the purpose of 
avoiding payroll taxes--not for the purposes of expanding employment, 
not for the purposes of a new or more efficient way to use capital, but 
essentially a tax dodge to avoid payroll taxes.
  The inspector general reported:

       In fact, advising small businesses to shelter earnings from 
     self-employment taxes through the formation of S corporations 
     has become a cottage industry. A search of the Internet 
     yields multiple sites that offer advice, assistance, and 
     encouragement to sole proprietors to convince them to become 
     S corporations. The sole proprietors are advised that they 
     can save thousands of dollars a year in employment taxes 
     simply by incorporating. It is also possible on the Internet 
     to gauge the size of the savings using computer-generated 
     savings amounts based on the user's entries for anticipated 
     profits and chosen salary levels. Not surprisingly, the lower 
     the salary chosen, the higher the savings become, reaching 
     maximum savings at a salary level of $0.

  Essentially what is being done in these professional corporations--or 
at least professional partnerships, these professional associations--is 
that they have glommed onto a very clever tax shelter. You incorporate 
as a subchapter S; you have your employer pay the subchapter S 
corporation; that subchapter S corporation pays you a modest minimal 
salary, and the rest is dividends taxed at a different rate and not 
subject to the payroll tax. We are trying to close the tax loophole. 
Following the indications of the inspector general, a simple Internet 
search confirms this finding.
  For example, one Web site has a section entitled ``How to Reduce Your 
FICA Taxes If You Own an S-Corporation.'' That section provides a step-
by-step instruction on how to use this loophole and even provides 
advice on how to avoid being caught up in an audit. The Web site 
advises owners of S corporations to pay themselves the lowest possible 
salary to reduce their FICA taxes--even if the distributions they take 
are a product of their labor.
  Here is how the Web site explains how to take advantage of this 
loophole: It explains that as an employee of your S corporation, your 
salary is subject to Social Security and Medicare taxes, but the net 
profit of the S corporation is not subject to payroll taxes. The Web 
site goes on to explain:

       . . . the idea is to pay yourself the lowest possible 
     salary to minimize social security and Medicare taxes. Then 
     you take the remaining net profit as a distribution, which is 
     not subject to payroll tax.

  This is a loophole we are trying to fix. This loophole should be 
fixed regardless of how we use the proceeds; but, frankly, we have a 
situation now where we have a pressing need to help families across 
this country avoid a doubling of the interest rate on student loans, 
and we have an egregious loophole that will allow us to responsibly pay 
for the maintenance of the lower interest rates. This seems to be an 
issue where public policy is well balanced.
  We are told by our colleagues they agree with us you can't double the 
interest rate. They should also agree with us you can't continue to 
tolerate this loophole; and this is not only an appropriate way, but, 
indeed, it seems to me the best way to achieve our objective of 
preventing the increase to doubling of the student interest rate.
  We are working very hard to try to get this bill up for a vote. If 
there are other proposals with respect to tax loopholes or the ways in 
which we can pay for this other than the proposal the House has 
suggested--which is go into the prevention funds for health care 
reform, which to me is adding to and compounding not only our fiscal 
problems but also going forward to our health care problems we are open 
to discussing them.
  We are right now recognizing that unless we aggressively have 
prevention programs, our health care costs will explode going forward. 
Every day, people talk about the increasing cost of obesity in this 
society. Well, how do you get essentially a handle on that? You have to 
have resources for prevention, for counseling, for education, for 
nutritional programs. When we take those funds away, we run up the bill 
for health care. That bill ultimately is being paid, in many cases, by 
the same families who are struggling to find a way to send their 
children to college.
  I urge all of my colleagues to move to get this bill on the floor. If 
we want to debate about different methods about payment, that is fine; 
let's take votes, and let's move on to passage.
  I think we understand that time is running out. On July 1, the 
interest rate will double. We have seen progress going back a few 
months. Our colleagues on the other side were proposing budgets that 
recognized--indeed, supported--the doubling of this interest rate. In 
March and throughout the spring, they were assuming and they were 
supporting measures to double the interest rate. The good news now is 
they have said, no, you can't do that, we have got to keep the rate at 
3.4 percent at least for the next year.
  We are one step closer to a solution, but the final step is going to 
have to be responsibly paying for this proposal. And we have--Senator 
Brown, Senator Harkin, myself, Senator Harry Reid, and so many others--
not only a responsible way to pay for it, but we have underscored and 
highlighted what is an egregious loophole, a tax shelter, a very clever 
ploy to avoid paying taxes on your wages through the mechanism of a 
subchapter S corporation magically converting them into dividends.
  I think we can accomplish two important public policy goals in this 
legislation: keeping interest rates on student loans at the current 
level, helping families send their children to school; and closing a 
glaring loophole for tax dodgers in our tax system.
  Mr. President, 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. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

[[Page 6506]]


  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam President, I want to join Senator Reed of 
Rhode Island, who just spoke very persuasively about the need to freeze 
interest rates for Stafford loans for college students in America. He 
also spoke, I thought very convincingly, about closing a tax loophole 
that has clearly been used to avoid--legally--taxes by lobbyists, 
consulting groups, lawyers--all of whom are using this tax loophole to 
the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, in many cases. The case of 
former Senator John Edwards and his law firm--not like most law firms 
but in his law firm--and former Speaker Newt Gingrich, one a Democrat 
and one a Republican, have shown the size of this loophole and how it 
can turn into tens of thousands of dollars. I am not accusing either of 
these gentlemen of doing anything illegally-- only taking advantage of 
a loophole we should close.
  I come to the floor to make the case how important these subsidized 
Stafford loans are to college students. In my State of Ohio--as in the 
State of the Presiding Officer, the State of North Carolina--we have 
hundreds of thousands of students using these Stafford subsidized 
loans; in Ohio, some 380,000; in North Carolina I assume it is not too 
far off that. Students have enjoyed, if that is the right word, 3.4 
percent interest rates on their loans rather than something higher.
  What is discouraging is that this was a bipartisan effort. In 2007, 
the year I came to the Senate, President Bush and Democrats, the 
majority in both Houses, joining with many of my Republican colleagues 
in this body and the House of Representatives, locked in the subsidized 
Stafford student loan rate of 3.4 percent for 5 years from 2007 until 
this July. That expires in July. It was bipartisan then; it should be 
bipartisan now. But a couple days ago the Republicans filibustered. I 
am hopeful today or whenever this next vote is taken they will not.
  I am going to, for 3 or 4 minutes, read a small number of letters, 
stories I have gotten from students in my State of Ohio who have come 
to my Web site and told us their stories. I urge people in Ohio to come 
to this Web site, brown.senate.gov/collegeloanstories. Just tell us 
your story.
  I am not so cynical, but I think when my colleagues start listening 
to people at home, listening to students--I was at Wright State College 
near Dayton the other day and the University of Cincinnati and Cuyahoga 
in Cleveland. I met with students and I listened to their stories. 
Several of them stood and talked about what these student loans mean. 
Already, the average student who graduates from an Ohio 4-year 
university graduates with debt of about $27,000. That means it is much 
harder for them to start a family, to buy a car, to buy a home, to 
start a business. That is why it is so important not to heap more 
burdens on them, put more debt on them.
  I will close by reading three letters. Cody from Delphos, OH, 
northwest Ohio:

       I graduated high school with the goal in mind to get my 
     doctorate in pharmacy. After five years of hard work I am 9 
     months of practice rotations away from achieving my goal.
       Along with that achievement comes a paralyzing amount of 
     college debt from attending a private university.
       In addition, I have hopes of doing an additional two years 
     of residencies after I graduate to specialize in critical 
     care/trauma, but since residencies pay less than half of a 
     pharmacist's salary I may not be able to go further and reach 
     my goal of becoming a clinical pharmacist specialized in 
     critical care/trauma.
       Help me reach my goals by keeping interest rates low and 
     helping create affordable means by which those from low 
     income families can attend college without having to 
     accumulate the debt I have had to.
       Allow youth to reach their full potential and be able to 
     serve society in their best capacity by finding a solution to 
     the rising cost of an education.

  Nonya from Wooster, OH, east of where I grew up in Mansfield, about 
30 miles away, writes:

       Going to College changed my life and my whole family's 
     lives. The only reason I even considered going to college was 
     because my mom did. The only reason she was able to go was 
     student loans. And because my oldest daughter saw my mom and 
     I doing it she is now attending college.
       My family had a rough beginning, my mother and I both 
     survived sexual abuse and the disease of addiction before 
     finding a solution. School has been our way out. My mother 
     now has a bachelor's and is working as a licensed social 
     worker. I am on my way to a bachelor's as well.
       How could I in good conscience say to my daughter ``go to 
     college'' if I know she'll never be able to pay off her 
     loans. I have never had a job as long as I have had the one I 
     have today.
       I am a student assistant at Wayne College and if it weren't 
     for the availability of school loans I would have never 
     stepped foot in the building that is now the center of my 
     world and my daughter's.
       We go to school to make a better life for ourselves . . . .

  Rebecca from Lorain, where I lived for many years, near Lake Erie:

       When I matriculated at Lawrence University, a private 
     liberal arts college in Appleton, Wisconsin, my family could 
     not afford to contribute more than a few hundred dollars a 
     year to my tuition, fees, and other expenses. I was Pell 
     grant eligible. I took out Stafford loans. I also took out a 
     private loan from my parents' credit union and committed to 
     the full number of hours of federal work-study that I was 
     eligible for. Even as a college freshman, I was deeply aware 
     that the Pell grant, Stafford loans, and federal work-study 
     programs were giving me access to an excellent education that 
     otherwise would have been beyond my reach.
       I worked hard in my classes, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and 
     summa cum laude in two majors: Chemistry and English. I 
     worked hard in my co-curricular activities, editing the 
     college literary magazine and serving as president of the 
     campus feminist organization. I also worked hard in my on-
     campus jobs: grading papers for the French department, 
     tutoring in the Writing Center, mixing reagents in the 
     Chemistry stockroom, and washing dishes in the student union 
     diner.
       With the outstanding education I had obtained--and a 
     manageable amount of student loan debt to repay--I chose to 
     go to graduate school in Chemistry. I earned a Ph.D. from 
     Stanford University in 2003 and am now a tenured professor of 
     Chemistry and Biochemistry at Oberlin College in Oberlin, OH. 
     I teach bright young people who are interested in making the 
     world a better place. I also conduct research on ovarian 
     cancer detection that has been funded by the NIH. This is my 
     dream job, and it began with the access to an excellent 
     education.
       It breaks my heart to think that if I were a high school 
     senior today, I might not have the same opportunities to 
     achieve. The Stafford loans, Pell grant, and federal work-
     study programs helped me become the educated person I am 
     today.

  These three letters were not different from the others. I just picked 
the top three my staff gave me from stories we have gotten because of 
our Web site. I will repeat the Web site: brown.senate.gov/
collegeloanstories.
  This tells us about work ethic. It tells about opportunity.
  I will illustrate it in one other way. I cannot do it as well as 
Nonya and Rebecca and Cody did, but we all remember, if we paid 
attention to our history, in the forties and fifties, the GI bill gave 
literally millions of young American men and women returning from 
serving their country the opportunity to go to school. What the GI bill 
did was help millions of individual Americans, one at a time. But what 
that did collectively is it raised all boats. It created a huge amount 
of prosperity for our country because all these people went to college.
  A lot of these people bought homes. Colleges were growing and 
expanding, creating more jobs. These people started businesses. These 
people were productive workers. These people invented things because 
they had the education, from going to college.
  With these Stafford loans, it is not just helping Cody and Rebecca 
and Nonya and students today, it is helping all of us as a society, 
whether one goes to college or not. Some people don't want to go to 
college. Fine. We have career centers and trade schools and community 
colleges to learn welding, to learn carpentry, to learn how to be a 
health care worker, to learn rad tech, whatever people want to do, or 
go to a 4-year college. Give them the opportunity because we don't just 
help millions of Americans or millions of individual young people, we 
help society as a whole when we do this.
  I pray and beg my colleagues, please pass this, keep student loan 
rates manageable, interest rates manageable so

[[Page 6507]]

we can have more Rebeccas and Nonyas and Codys in our country. We will 
all benefit.
  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. BENNET. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BENNET. Madam President, during the worst recession since the 
Great Depression, which we are now fortunately coming out of, the 
highest the unemployment rate ever got, even at the depths of that 
recession, for people with a college degree was 4.5 percent. We saw 
unemployment rates of 18 percent, 20 percent for certain groups of 
people--4.5 percent if one is a college graduate. It seems to me, first 
of all, that is an incredible stress test of the value of a college 
degree in this 21st century in which we are living. We ought to be 
making it easier, not harder, for students to go to college. However, 
as we know, interest rates on Federal student loans are scheduled to 
double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1, unless Congress can 
get out of its own way and do what is right. For the life of me, I 
don't know why we cannot come to an agreement. This is not a Democratic 
or Republican issue.
  The cost of college has increased 550 percent since 1985. Two-thirds 
of students in this country rely on loans to afford college. In the 
past decade, average student loan debt has increased by more than 25 
percent.
  This, by the way, is not a function of people not doing the right 
thing. It is a function of the fact that median family income has 
continued to decline in this country for the first time in this 
country's history, while the cost of college has escalated like crazy. 
If this increase goes through, it would add thousands of dollars of 
debt to the more than 166,000 Coloradans who currently receive Federal 
student loans. Increasing the cost of loans for students already 
struggling to repay their loans harms both individual students and our 
fragile economy.
  When I visited the University of Colorado at Denver just last month, 
I heard firsthand from students about how important low interest rates 
are to that ability to afford college. Many of the students I heard 
from were worried their student loan debt would prevent them from 
achieving their career goals or buying a house or making other 
decisions they are confronting. In Colorado, the average student 
graduates with more than $23,500 in debt. Just in the last hour, 
Jeremiah shared the following story with me on Facebook. This is less 
than an hour ago. He wrote:

       I am studying geography and environmental science with an 
     emphasis on urban studies and planning at the University of 
     Colorado, Denver. I am the first of my family to attend 
     college and 100 percent of my schooling is paid for by grants 
     and student loans. I worry about the interest rate hike that 
     is bound to happen this summer, and with the economy not in 
     full recovery I worry even more about securing a job after 
     graduation and how to afford repayment of my loans, 
     especially if interest rates are to increase.

  As the Presiding Officer probably knows, in her State and my State, 
college attendance is actually at a record high because there are young 
people all over this country--certainly in my State--who have sought 
refuge on our university campuses from an economy that doesn't have 
jobs for them--which is a great place for them to be. It is a great 
investment in them and a great investment in our future. But for 
Jeremiah and thousands of others, millions of other students just like 
them, we are threatening, through our inaction, to actually drive up 
the cost of college when that is where they need to be. That is the 
reason why, in the last 2 weeks, more than 1,300 Coloradans have 
written to my office to demand Congress act to prevent the student loan 
interest rate from doubling.
  Here is one letter I received from Kim Haas, who is from Granby, CO. 
She wrote:

       While I try to keep informed, I don't generally make a 
     point to contact my representatives. On the issue of student 
     loan rates doubling, I had to speak up.
       My husband and I live in rural Colorado. I have been 
     working toward becoming a professional counselor. Because of 
     our remote location, I have done most of this online while 
     staying home with my son. This takes a lot of self-motivation 
     and time management skills. It also means taking on a lot of 
     debt. Please take the actions necessary to prevent my rates 
     from doubling. It is imperative to our financial, vocational, 
     and life success.

  Her life success. I suspect that most of these students are not all 
that interested in what party affiliation they are in. I think if they 
were here on this floor, which is empty today, they could use some 
Colorado common sense to actually get this done. In the Senate and in 
Washington today we are facing a filibuster even though we know in the 
end we are going to find a way to do what is right and keep these 
interest rates from rising.
  Also, our Facebook page is continually updated. This is from Phil 
Townsend who wrote in--and I thought this was a pressing question about 
what we are focused on today.
  Here is how Phil put it:

       If you had a loan that would take you a decade to pay off 
     even if you lived as cheap as possible and only ate ramen 
     noodles, would you want its rates doubled?

  This is real life for the people we represent, and we should get this 
sorted out.
  Once again, I urge my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, to come 
together and give our students all across the country the security they 
need to pursue their education. For them this isn't a game. For the 
people who came to the University of Colorado at Denver a month ago and 
shared their thoughts with me, this isn't a game. This is real life. It 
is their lives. It is their futures. They are relying on us to sort 
this out and get it done, and we should.
  Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I want to take the opportunity to 
discuss the importance of reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank. Last 
month while in Colorado I had an opportunity to visit innovative 
businesses such as Coolerado, which creates energy-efficient air 
conditioners, Sandhill Scientific, which manufactures medical devices, 
and Leitner-Poma, which builds gondolas for ski resorts. They are 
building the gondola that is being installed in Vail this year to mark 
Vail's 50th anniversary. It was fun to see those American jobs being 
created for that great American industry.
  All of these companies rely on financing options from the Export-
Import Bank to help them compete in the international marketplace. In 
fact, while visiting Coolerado, I actually saw an 18-wheel truck back 
up to the loading dock at Coolerado to load a bunch of their devices to 
be shipped to Europe as a consequence of the work they had done with 
the Ex-Im Bank.
  These are manufacturing jobs right here in the United States, stamped 
``Made in America'' on the outside of these devices, and we have been 
unable to get this through the Senate. Coolerado used credit insurance 
from the Export-Import Bank to help enter the international market.
  As we emerge from the worst recession since the Great Depression, we 
should look for more opportunities to support the next Coolerado, 
Sandhill Scientific, or Leitner-Poma. Instead, we have been in this 
prolonged debate about the very existence of the bank, and now we are 
weeks away from the expiration of the bank's charter.
  I am quite sure there is not a single one of our international 
competitors around the world that is engaged in this debate. In fact, 
they are engaged in absolutely the reverse, which is the question of 
how to create more exports for their domestic industries, and we should 
be doing the same.
  As we look to strengthen and to reverse that curve I talked about 
earlier of median family income falling and to see rising wages again 
in this country and create more jobs, we should be looking for 
opportunities to increase exports at small businesses like the ones I 
saw in Colorado.
  We face a profound structural issue in the economy today in this 
country. As I said on the Senate floor before, our gross domestic 
product is now higher than it was before we went into

[[Page 6508]]

this recession, and productivity has been going off like a skyrocket 
since the early 1990s. As we responded to competition from China and 
India, the use of technology to make businesses more efficient and the 
recession itself drove productivity through the roof because firms had 
to figure out how to get through these difficult times with fewer 
people.
  Median family income has fallen, and we have 23 or 24 million people 
in this economy who are either unemployed or underemployed. Wage growth 
and job growth--for the first time in the country's history--has 
decoupled from GDP growth. That happened during our last recovery under 
the previous administration. I make this statement not as a partisan 
observation; that is just the time that it happened. We saw economic 
growth, but we didn't see wage growth and we didn't see job growth. Now 
I fear we are seeing the same sort of trend in our economy.
  There are two important solutions. One I mentioned earlier, which is 
that education is vitally important because if people are educated, 
they are more likely to get a job in this 21st-century economy. 
Remember, the worst that the unemployment rate ever got for people with 
a college degree was 4.5 percent.
  The other part of that equation is innovation. It is businesses that 
start tomorrow, next week, and the week after that are actually going 
to create jobs that are going to lift wages. This is one of the reasons 
I have been so glad to work with the Presiding Officer as we think of 
new ways of approaching regulations at the FDA to ask the question: Are 
we driving bioscience in the United States or are we driving venture 
capital offshore to look for other opportunities? We should be up day 
and night thinking about this in the Senate because that is how we are 
going to bring an alignment back between the economic growth the 
economists tell us we are having and the job growth and the wage growth 
the people at home want to see.
  There is a lot of talk in this Chamber about winners and losers and 
how the government shouldn't pick winners and losers--we hear that a 
lot here--as if the current Tax Code isn't full of choices that have 
already been made about winners and losers. A lot of those choices that 
have been made have been made for the benefit of incumbents--not here 
but incumbent enterprises. However, it is the innovators that we are 
leaving behind.
  As we think about comprehensive tax reform, which I hope we get to 
sooner rather than later, I think on every one of these questions we 
should be asking ourselves: Is this credit or is this incentive or is 
this inducement more or less likely to drive job growth in the United 
States, to drive incomes up in the United States, or to drive exports 
from the United States? If the answer to that is no, we should stop 
doing it. This has to be more thoughtful than a fight between one 
narrow interest and another narrow interest. I think the American 
people are demanding that, and we should respond.
  In the short term, the work in front of us now is to get this Export-
Import Bank bill to the floor, to get it voted on, and to pass it as 
they did in the House of Representatives yesterday.
  I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I know we are on the motion to proceed 
to legislation dealing with the Ex-Im Bank. I rise today to urge my 
colleagues to proceed to this bill and to move forward and pass H.R. 
2072, which would reauthorize the Export-Import Bank. We have a lot of 
debate on this floor on how we can grow our economy and grow jobs. One 
of the areas where there is agreement is that if America is going to be 
truly competitive in the 21st century, we have got to grow our export 
market.
  Many American companies over the 20th century were blessed with the 
world's largest, most vibrant domestic market. But that market is 
maturing. On a going-forward basis, literally 95 percent of all the 
world's customer base lies outside the boundaries of the United States. 
So while maybe some of my colleagues may disagree with many of the 
President's goals, I think we would all agree that doubling of exports 
in a 5-year timeframe the President laid out at the beginning of his 
administration is an area where there is great agreement.
  If we are going to do that, we have to use all the tools we have 
available because, unfortunately, right now American exports as a 
percentage of GDP rank behind Germany, Canada, China, Italy, France, 
the UK, India, Brazil. We are way down in the middle of the pack. As 
the Chair of the Banking Committee's International Trade and Financing 
Subcommittee, I have spent a lot of time and effort trying to get into 
the details to see how we can make the Export-Import Bank one of the 
tools we have to help American businesses grow their exports, grow that 
percentage of GDP that depends upon trade, grow that ability to reach 
that 95 percent of the customer base around the world, and to make sure 
that this tool, which has been a successful tool for close to 45 years, 
gets reauthorized but also is reauthorized in a way that brings more 
transparency and more accountability to this institution.
  The bill we will have before us, hopefully later today, does that, 
because if we fail to act, the authorization for the Export-Import Bank 
expires at the end of this month, and this tool that is so important to 
growing exports, growing jobs, candidly will be lost.
  The bill we will take up, hopefully later today or shortly, 
reauthorizes the Export-Import Bank for 3 years. While I would have 
preferred a longer extension and a higher limit, higher absolute total 
loan limit, I am glad the bill we will deal with increases the bank's 
lending limit from $100 billion to $140 billion.
  Remember, our Export-Import Bank is so much smaller than any of our 
competitors'. Even taking the lending cap up to $140 billion will still 
mean we will pale in comparison to our competitors. These other nations 
are who we are competing with. I think it is important that we compare 
how our Export-Import Bank--which again in this last year made a 
profit, returned money to the taxpayers, and has been profitable year 
in and year out--how our institution compares with those of our 
competitors: Canada, our largest trading partner, the Canada that has a 
population size about one-tenth--actually smaller than one-tenth the 
size of the United States--has their equivalent Export-Import Bank 
three times the size of our Export-Import Bank.
  Every day our Export-Import Bank and the American companies it 
supports face aggressive competition, as I mentioned, from China, 
Brazil, India, which all have very large export financing banks in 
their own right. In 2010 alone China did $45 billion in lending, two-
thirds of that to a single company, lending that was supported by their 
exporting financing operations, while our domestic Export-Import Bank 
did just $13 billion in total. So China, close to over 3 times, 
supporting their institutions, one of our largest competitors, versus 
our support for our American industry at one-third the size.
  That same year, Brazil, a country much smaller than ours, provided 
$18 billion in export finance; Germany, more than $22 billion; France, 
more than $17 billion; all much more than what we do. Each of them only 
has, as I mentioned, in total about one-fifth of our population.
  So why would we, if we all agree that growing trade, growing exports, 
trying to access that 95 percent of the customer base that would then 
support American companies that are going to hire American workers, why 
would we unilaterally disarm and remove this tool from our toolbox as 
some in this Chamber have suggested?
  Ironically, because in our country, we do not provide, I believe, 
adequate export financing, many American companies have gone to foreign 
export

[[Page 6509]]

agencies, the result being if they get that foreign export support, 
oftentimes the price of that foreign export support means that 
subcontractors to those American companies then have to come from those 
respective countries, whether it is Canada, Brazil, India, et cetera, 
again costing American jobs.
  I think this is a commonsense tool. It is a tool that has had a solid 
track record. It is a tool that has never cost the American taxpayers a 
dime. It is one that needs our immediate attention. Again, I hope we 
will get a large, overwhelming bipartisan majority of Senators who will 
reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, will reauthorize it at this $140 
billion level, will reauthorize it with the new transparency provisions 
that I was proud to add to this legislation, will reauthorize it with 
some of the new requirements in which the Export-Import Bank puts 
together a more comprehensive business plan, all additions that I 
worked on with my colleagues and added to this legislation.
  That is, again, one more example where we can demonstrate to the 
American people we can come and work together, trying to spur that kind 
of job growth and export growth we are all looking for.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. McCASKILL.) The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KYL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KYL. I ask that I be allowed to speak as in morning business for 
up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


             Morality of free enterprise: charitable giving

  Mr. KYL. Madam President, I have been coming to the floor to discuss 
why free enterprise is morally superior to all other economic systems. 
I have explored how free enterprise promotes the pursuit of happiness 
properly understood, by emphasizing earned success, and how it lifts up 
the poor by raising living standards.
  Today, I want to look at another way free enterprise lifts up the 
poor--by promoting the moral principles that make people more 
charitable and more socially responsible.
  This perspective sharply contrasts with President Obama's campaign 
narrative about social responsibility. He and many of his supporters 
paint free enterprise as a system that inherently clashes with social 
responsibility. In his telling, free enterprise is a system that mainly 
promotes Gordon Gekko-style ``greed'' and riches for those who least 
deserve them--a system that must be reformed through higher taxes and 
larger government.
  Most of the policies he has supported during the last 3 years 
demonstrate this perspective. The size and scope of the Federal 
Government has increased dramatically during his presidency. As he 
campaigns to get reelected, his main theme is that the only way some 
Americans can do better is if the government makes others worse off.
  There is an important counterargument to this negative narrative. In 
a new book, The Road to Freedom, American Enterprise Institute 
President Arthur Brooks provides a comprehensive explanation of the 
morality of free enterprise and how it makes everyone better off by 
creating a more positive society. As Brooks writes, the principles that 
underpin free enterprise are moral principles, such as honesty, 
industriousness, thrift, and opportunity. Those principles make people 
more virtuous, not less.
  Participants in free enterprise, for example, must be able to trust 
that those with whom they do business--that they will honor their 
contracts. By promoting greater trust and integrity, free markets 
promote the social and psychological linchpin of democratic prosperity.
  Brooks elaborates:

       The free enterprise system requires a culture of optimism 
     and trust to function correctly--a positive sum, win-win 
     mentality, and a desire for everyone to be better off. For 
     many people, it produces more prosperity than they need to 
     meet their daily requirements, a surplus that they will 
     choose to direct to charitable purposes.

  The prosperity and positive outlook that stem from free enterprise 
encourages people to help the neediest and most vulnerable members of 
society. Indeed, it is no coincidence that the United States is a more 
charitable country than those with bigger welfare states. Those who 
believe in and have benefited from the free-enterprise system believe 
that everyone should have the opportunity to prosper, and they are 
willing to help take responsibility for lifting others up. ``Charitable 
giving appears to be part of most Americans' DNA,'' Brooks writes.
  Americans are remarkably generous not only toward our fellow 
citizens, but also toward those suffering abroad. On a per capita 
basis, we give 3\1/2\ times as much to causes and charities as the 
French, 7 times as much as Germans, and 14 times as much as Italians. 
These findings correlate to volunteering as well.
  Seventy to eighty percent of Americans donate money to charity each 
year. These donations add up to about $300 billion annually. The money 
goes to religious causes and also secular activities, such as 
education, health care, and social welfare. Americans also donate large 
amounts of their time to help the less fortunate.
  Indeed, there is a strong correlation between beliefs about the size 
of government and attitudes toward giving. As Brooks shows, those who 
believe in limited government give more to charity than those who hold 
more statist views. That makes sense. After all, a statist might argue 
that paying high levels of taxation is the equivalent of giving a lot 
to charity, since the government spends a large portion of its total 
revenue on social programs. By contrast, free-marketers would argue 
that government spending tends to crowd out private charity in ways 
that are both socially and fiscally harmful.
  Americans can take well-justified pride in their charitable giving. 
Both in aggregate and relative terms, we are the most generous society 
the world has ever known.
  As budget and tax debates move forward, we must remember that raising 
the top marginal tax rates could conceivably reduce charitable giving, 
because the biggest philanthropists would have less money to donate. 
This is just one of the many unintended--and undesirable--consequences 
that could result from the massive tax hike scheduled to take effect at 
the end of this year. If excessively high rates of taxation were the 
best way to cultivate a more generous and socially conscious citizenry, 
then Europeans would give more to charity than Americans. But that is 
simply not the case.
  America's record on charitable giving demonstrates that free 
enterprise is the best way to boost charitable giving and foster the 
civic virtues that underpin a broadly shared prosperity.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cardin). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. PAUL. 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. PAUL. Mr. President, the ordinary middle-class family is 
struggling to get a home loan. Tens of thousands of homeowners have 
lost their homes or are struggling to make payments on their home 
loans.
  Meanwhile, Congress steadily dishes out billions of dollars in 
taxpayer-subsidized loans to large profitable companies. Eighty percent 
of these export-import loans are given to companies that are in the 
Fortune 500. So we are giving taxpayer loans to very profitable 
companies.
  I am a great believer in capitalism, in the jobs corporations create. 
I defend profit and the benefits that accrue from leaving that profit 
largely in the private sector. I am not one who clamors for punitive 
taxes. I am not someone who thinks we need to punish corporations. But 
at the same time, I do

[[Page 6510]]

not want my colleagues to construe that to mean I believe we should be 
subsidizing profitable corporations. I don't think taxpayer-subsidized 
loans should go to profitable companies.
  President Obama has been passing out loans to his campaign donors. He 
has been using a campaign trough that he has set up over at the 
Department of Energy. Very wealthy multimillionaires and billionaires 
are getting loans through the Department of Energy, including Solyndra 
and BrightSource. People heavily involved in the President's campaign 
have been getting subsidized loans.
  Republicans have been rightly criticizing the President for these 
Department of Energy loans to Solyndra, BrightSource, and others. 
Republicans have been correct in criticizing the President for trying 
to pick the winners and losers in energy production. Yet now a majority 
of Republicans are poised to vote for their own set of subsidized 
export-import loans. In fact, they want to increase the export-import 
loans by nearly 50 percent and pick the winners and losers in the 
export business. The Horse traders may disdain consistency, but the 
American people value principled and consistent opposition to deficit 
spending. The American people know hypocrisy when they see it. The 
American people know corporate welfare when they see it.
  The Export-Import Bank, in fact, provided an $18 million loan to a 
steel mill in China. Our steel industry has been in decline for decades 
and we loan $18 million to our competitors? Who in their right mind 
would subsidize our Chinese competitors with loans? It makes no sense. 
Can we think of anything more insulting than loaning money to our 
competitors? Come to think of it, I might. We actually give foreign aid 
to China. We actually send China economic development assistance. Is it 
any wonder Congress has an 11-percent approval rating?
  Many Americans are trying to hang on to their homes, struggling to 
make the payments on their own home mortgage, while very profitable big 
business is being given subsidized loans by the government. It makes no 
sense. What gives?
  To add insult to injury, we are borrowing money from the same 
countries we are lending the money to. So we borrow money from India 
because we run a deficit of over $1 trillion a year--we borrow money 
from India--and then we are sending it back to them in the form of 
taxpayer-subsidized loans. It makes no sense.
  Ex-Im loans, such as the loans to Solyndra and BrightSource, are 
simply forms of crony capitalism. With trillion-dollar annual deficits, 
surely we can vote to end corporate welfare. If companies are making 
billions of dollars in profits, can we at least end the welfare we are 
sending to these corporations?
  I urge a vote against reauthorizing the Ex-Im Bank, and I hope my 
Republican colleagues will see the inconsistency of criticizing the 
President on one hand for his crony capitalism and then turning around 
and doing the same thing.
  I support not reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, admitting it is 
corporate welfare, and trying to save the taxpayers some of their hard-
earned money.
  Thank you very much, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                                WEST Act

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the Western 
Economic Security Today Act, the WEST Act, which I recently introduced 
with my good friend and colleague from Wyoming, Senator Barrasso. This 
bill is an outgrowth of our work with the Senate Western Caucus and the 
Congressional Western Caucus. These groups, which include my good 
friend from Utah, Congressman Rob Bishop, and Congressman Steve Pearce 
from New Mexico, are truly leading the way. We have been doing the hard 
work of identifying solutions that will promote job creation, boost 
America's energy production, and put our Nation on a better fiscal 
footing by encouraging economic growth.
  We keep hearing from the Democratic leadership that Congress is 
dysfunctional. That may be. But it is not because of a lack of good 
ideas. It is because--in an effort to help the President in his 
reelection and shield vulnerable Democrats--the decision was made to 
promote politically motivated show votes rather than sound job-creating 
legislation.
  Americans do not want higher taxes in the name of redistribution and 
government-dictated fairness. They do not want bureaucrats in 
Washington figuring out how to spread the wealth around, as then-
candidate Obama put it in 2008.
  What they want is economic opportunity and the security that comes 
with it. They want the freedom and opportunity to pursue new ventures, 
start new businesses, and save for their retirement and for their 
children's education.
  If the Democratic leadership ever decides to listen to the American 
people and advance reasonable legislation to grow the economy and 
create jobs, they could start with this WEST Act.
  The WEST Act is a sound and solid bill, one that puts together some 
of the best ideas identified by the Western Caucuses, and my hope is it 
will meet with bipartisan support in the Senate.
  This bill could not come at a better time. The proposals in the WEST 
Act will go a long way toward generating the employment and economic 
growth that citizens and taxpayers are longing for.
  The proposals in the WEST Act should not be controversial in the 
Senate. The President claimed his $\1/2\ trillion stimulus would create 
or save millions of American jobs. As it turned out, this was a hallow 
promise. But the WEST Act is the real deal. If the President and his 
party are serious about stimulating the economy, this legislation is a 
good way to do it and a good place to start.
  The eight bills that Senator Barrasso and I have included in this 
WEST Act have all passed the House of Representatives. They are 
commonsense, progrowth policies, and I am confident these proposals, if 
put to the vote of the American people, would pass overwhelmingly. They 
certainly would in my home State of Utah. They should pass the Senate 
as well.
  The bill has three main objectives.
  First, we are going to put America back to work by producing more 
American energy. Our bill ends the Obama administration's de facto 
moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in a safe, responsible, 
and transparent manner. We set firm timelines for considering permits 
to drill, and we require the administration to move forward promptly to 
conduct offshore lease sales that have been delayed or cancelled in the 
gulf and Outer Continental Shelf.
  The WEST Act sets a production goal of 3 million barrels of oil per 
day by 2027, reducing foreign imports by nearly one-third. At a time 
when every job counts, our bill would produce thousands of high-paying 
jobs.
  Second, our bill will help bring down energy prices, making it easier 
for Americans to drive their cars and heat their homes. We could 
produce over 1 million barrels of oil a day with our bill's elimination 
of confusion and uncertainty surrounding the EPA's decisionmaking 
process for clean air permits.
  The bill prohibits the EPA Administrator from promulgating any 
regulation that takes into consideration the emission of a greenhouse 
gas in order to address climate change using the Clean Air Act.
  And, third, our bill will protect agriculture by reducing unnecessary 
regulatory burdens. It amends the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and 
Rodenticide Act, or FIFRA, to ensure that National Pollutant Discharge 
Elimination System permits are not needed for the application of 
pesticides that are currently registered and regulated under FIFRA.
  This provision of the bill will also ensure that diseases such as the 
West

[[Page 6511]]

Nile Virus can be managed through mosquito abatement. It is very 
important for communities in Utah to be able to address these issues 
without constantly seeking approval from Federal overlords.
  The bill also stops the EPA from imposing more stringent dust 
standards for 1 year. Additionally, it would afford States and 
localities the flexibility to address any rural dust issues before the 
Federal Government would have the authority to do so.
  For the life of me, I do not understand the administration's stance 
on energy production. The Department of Energy claims there are more 
than 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil in oil shale in Utah, 
Wyoming, and Colorado. This is more than the proven reserves of Saudi 
Arabia. If we were able to develop this resource the way we are capable 
of doing, we could have a major impact on the jobless rate as well as 
the cost of energy in our country.
  Last month, one of largest oil companies in the world announced a 
$200 million investment in a commercial demonstration project for oil 
shale. The project will be in my home State, using technology developed 
by a Utah company.
  Another major company that has been successfully developing 
commercial oil shale for more than 80 years is opening offices in Salt 
Lake City and seeking permits for a very large facility in my home 
State of Utah.
  The State of Utah, local governments, and the business community 
support the development of these resources. Yet the President and his 
administration are working to stop this at all costs. The most recent 
roadblock was the rewriting of the final 2008 three-State programmatic 
impact statement to cut back by more than 70 percent the Federal lands 
available for oil shale and oil sands development. Well, I believe 
strongly that Interior Secretary Salazar has no authority whatsoever to 
take that action.
  I recently heard from an energy company in Utah that it is easier to 
do business in Somalia than it is in the United States. Unfortunately, 
that is not a surprising sentiment. But that is what we have come to 
expect from President Obama. He talks a big game about fairness when it 
comes to raising taxes, but his energy policies are both regressive and 
elitist.
  In the interest of appealing to the environmental interests of his 
wealthy supporters, the administration leaves middle-class people 
behind. Obstructing domestic energy production prevents the creation of 
high-paying jobs that provide good wages for families, and it fails to 
bring down the high cost of fuel that hits middle and lower income 
families the hardest.
  In fact, President Obama's energy agenda tops the list of pernicious 
policies that hurt American families, hinder economic growth, and harm 
businesses by dramatically raising the costs of everyday life. The 
administration's position is clear. The President wants to drive up the 
cost of gasoline and drive Americans out of their cars.
  In 2008, when the President still harbored grandiose plans of 
changing the course of world history, his Energy Secretary, Secretary 
Chu, said his goal was to ``boost the price of gasoline to the levels 
in Europe.''
  In the meantime, the President and his party suffered a humiliating 
defeat in the 2010 elections. Now, faced with the prospect of going the 
way of President Carter this fall, the administration is trying to walk 
back this position.
  With voters facing $4-a-gallon gasoline, Secretary Chu now claims he 
is doing everything he can to reduce the price of energy, and the 
President's advisers are suggesting that this is just a gotcha quote. 
It is not. It represents the real view of the President and those in 
his bubble.
  The price of gasoline was no big deal to the President prior to being 
elected to the Senate and the White House. His short commute from his 
Hyde Park house to the University of Chicago might not even have 
required a car. His wealthiest supporters, those being appealed to with 
his anti-energy agenda, do not spend a significant amount of their 
income on gasoline. When Warren Buffett flies in his private jet to 
meet with the President to discuss plans for raising taxes on small 
businesses, he is not worried about the cost of jet fuel.
  But for families who are now spending nearly $100 to fill up their 
cars, the cost of gasoline is a big deal. Members of the President's 
party seem to get this. Even in the Senate, we see Democratic support 
for the President's decision to hold up the Keystone Pipeline 
collapsing, and for good reason.
  The President's unilateral decision to kill that project might play 
well at Midtown Manhattan fundraisers where wealthy elites have the 
luxury of supporting a radical environmental agenda without worrying 
about the real-world consequences of that agenda for the middle class. 
But it was bad for jobs, bad for the economy, and bad for American 
families.
  President Obama has said he wants to find an ``all-of-the above'' 
approach to energy production. He need look no further than the WEST 
Act.
  Having said that, I would like to personally compliment my dear 
friend and colleague, Senator Barrasso from Wyoming. He is the leader 
of our Western Caucus. Frankly, we could not have a better leader. He 
understands these issues very well. We in the West understand that we 
have an obligation and we have the ability to be able to help this 
country from an energy standpoint in ways that it needs help. We have 
the ability to be able to help save this country, and we intend to do 
so. This WEST Act would be a very good step in that direction.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, today I rise to echo the comments made 
by my colleague, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah.
  Throughout Senator Hatch's distinguished career, he has served this 
Senate and this Nation in a number of major leadership capacities. I am 
most grateful for his ongoing leadership and the position he has taken 
in the Senate Western Caucus--that of being chairman of the caucus's 
Subcommittee on Public Lands.
  Senator Hatch, along with Senator Moran and I, has laid out a clear 
path to energy security and job creation. The bill is called the 
Western Economic Security Today Act, or the WEST Act.
  President Obama told Congress he would ``keep trying every new idea 
that works.'' He went on to say he would ``listen to every good 
proposal, no matter which party comes up with it.''
  Well, last year Western Republicans laid out a clear path to energy 
security and job creation for the Western United States and for the 
country. The report is entitled ``Jobs Frontier, Breaking Down 
Washington's Barriers to America's Red, White and Blue Jobs.''
  President Obama should listen to and embrace the findings in this 
report. The House of Representatives has passed key pieces of 
legislation over the past year from this Jobs Frontier Report. These 
are pieces of legislation that will begin to generate quality jobs and 
increase U.S. energy production.
  These bills tackle key critical issues, such as encouraging energy 
exploration and production and removing unnecessary EPA regulations. 
This legislation would create thousands--thousands--of jobs for 
Americans.
  The WEST Act contains language from eight of these bills already 
passed by the House that were part of the Jobs Frontier original 
report. This legislation accomplishes many of the goals of the Jobs 
Frontier Report. It does it by increasing affordable American energy. 
It does it by promoting agriculture and ranching. And it does it by 
overturning Washington's regulatory overreach.
  The bottom line is this act is ready to create jobs now, today, and 
to set the Nation on the path to becoming more energy secure.
  So I am here to congratulate Senator Hatch for bringing this 
important bill forward.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Wyoming. He has

[[Page 6512]]

been such a great addition to the Senate. He has an intimate knowledge 
of western lands and their productivity and what they could do if we 
were given the opportunity. He is just an all around good human being. 
I feel very grateful for his leadership, and I express my support for 
his leadership of the Western Caucus. He is one of the finest people 
here, and I personally want to thank him for the kind remarks he has 
just made.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                       Surface Transportation Act

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, earlier this week, the conference 
committee on the surface transportation reauthorization--more commonly 
known as the highway bill--met for its initial meeting. In the opening 
remarks that were made on Tuesday, it was encouraging that there seemed 
to be a general agreement on how important that Transportation bill is 
to our Nation.
  As I will describe later, it is 2.9 million jobs that are associated 
with this bill. I should be specific and say 2.9 million jobs a year, 
since those jobs do not extend for eternity. But it is the most 
important piece of jobs legislation we could consider. I appreciated 
hearing from the Senator from Utah about the jobs concern of his energy 
proposal. Those are real jobs, they are immediate jobs. They are jobs 
that everybody understands, building our roads, highways, and bridges.
  These local construction jobs are not only important in and of 
themselves, but they also help to maintain the transportation 
infrastructure that lowers the cost of goods and helps our economy 
across the board. We have had to close a bridge where I-95 crosses over 
the Blackstone River in Pawtucket. It is reopening. In the meantime 
people have to drive around 295. That costs time and fuel for 
shippers--and delays. It was an economic cost.
  This is the real jobs bill that we can do something about. It is 
pending right now in conference. So it is imperative not only that the 
conference get this bill done but that they get it done as soon as 
possible.
  Why do I say that? Well, there was a deadline of March 31 to get a 
new bill done, and the House of Representatives, unfortunately, did not 
pass a highway bill by the March 31 deadline. So on the eve of the 
expiration of that deadline, they passed an extension, and we are 
operating under that and a subsequent extension right now. The effect 
of that is not good for jobs. State departments of transportation and 
the private sector companies that provide the services that rebuild our 
roads and highways cannot make long-range plans when funding is based 
on short- term extensions. Particularly in this economy, our States, 
our counties, and the companies that do this business simply cannot 
afford to extend themselves on contracts and on work where they do not 
know that the highway funding is going to be there to backstop them 
when it comes time to make the payments.
  In many instances, for many products, a short-term extension actually 
requires the underlying construction project to be dropped. In Rhode 
Island, our State department of transportation, led by transportation 
director Michael Lewis, who is a very capable and experienced 
individual, has shown me their list of 96 major projects that they plan 
to do this year. But because of the uncertainty here on the highway 
bill, because the conference has not produced a result yet, because we 
are still operating under the extension, he says that about 40 of those 
projects may have to be shelved because until we get the bill done, he 
cannot count on Federal funds being there to help pay for them.
  So every day, every week that goes by without a highway bill costs us 
jobs. It does not just postpone the jobs, it actually costs us jobs. 
The at-risk projects range from things as simple as lane striping to 
road repaving to major bridge repairs.
  What they all have in common is that each one of those transportation 
projects means jobs for the construction workers who build them, the 
engineers who design them, and the companies that supply the materials. 
It is not just me saying this. Standard & Poor's recently published a 
report warning us that unpredictable Federal funding could stall our 
national transportation projects. A quote from the report:

       As construction season begins in the northern half of the 
     country, this continuing uncertainty in funding could force 
     states to delay projects rather than risk funding changes or 
     political gridlock come July. Once a long-term authorization 
     is approved, we believe it will provide an impetus for 
     transportation agencies to reconsider high-priority projects 
     that had been shelved because of lack of funding. But if the 
     authorization is extended by even more continuing 
     resolutions, such high-priority projects will remain in 
     limbo.

  As time goes by, jobs evaporate. Continuing delays in transportation 
funding are putting this year's construction season at risk and are 
making it impossible for States to keep their construction projects 
moving. So it is not enough that we pass a highway bill out of this 
conference; it is imperative that we pass it soon. There have been 
enough delays already. We were supposed to have had it done on March 
31, except that the House never actually passed a highway bill.
  The Senate bill, fortunately, provides a solid framework for action, 
and for rapid action. This Senate transportation bill, called MAP-21, 
first passed out of the Environment and Public Works Committee last 
year, and it passed out of the Environment and Public Works Committee 
on a bipartisan basis--indeed on a unanimous basis. There is not a lot 
that every member of the Environment and Public Works Committee agrees 
on. There is not a lot, frankly, that our chairman Barbara Boxer and 
our ranking member Jim Inhofe agree on. But we all agreed that this was 
an important piece of legislation and reported it out of the committee 
on a unanimous basis. Then the bill came to the floor. There were no 
fast tracks, no ``hide the ball.'' This bill spent 5 weeks on the 
Senate floor. There were a great number of amendments that were 
considered during that period of deliberation. I believe the total is 
at 40 which were accepted either by vote or by agreement. And after 
that long, open, transparent, robust, regular legislative process in 
which Republicans and Democrats both contributed, the bill passed with 
strong bipartisan support of 75 Senators. That is pretty unusual around 
here.
  MAP-21 is projected to save or create 1.9 million jobs. As I said, 
those are not jobs that last for eternity. The conjecture, I believe, 
is that they last for a year. This is 1.9 million jobs with a potential 
to create an additional million jobs through the increased investment 
in the TIFIA financing program, so a total of 2.9 million jobs.
  In Rhode Island, that means the bill is expected to save or create up 
to 9,000 jobs. If its provisions for projects of national and regional 
significance are incorporated in the final bill, and if funding is 
provided through our appropriations process, that number actually goes 
up, because some additional projects can be added that are overdue in 
Rhode Island for work.
  So MAP-21, the Senate highway bill, is a true compromise bill. It 
reflects the hard work of Chairman Boxer and Senator Inhofe, and it is 
a strong bipartisan signal from this body as to what our transportation 
bill should look like. Procedurally, the conference committee is 
reconciling this Senate bipartisan compromise bill with basically an 
empty envelope of a bill, a 90-day extension passed by the House, with 
an authorization to go to conference. Some controversial provisions 
were thrown in, unfortunately, that will make things more difficult and 
slower to get done, and more difficult and slower is not good when you 
are talking about passing the highway bill and the construction season 
is already beginning to get underway.
  The most acceptable action and the one in the best interests of our 
country, the one in the best interests of our economy, the one in the 
best interests of our infrastructure, the one in the

[[Page 6513]]

best interests of jobs in these construction projects, would be for the 
conference committee to report out the bipartisan Senate bill without a 
lot of controversial riders so that we can get a long-term 
reauthorization signed into law while there is still a full 
construction season ahead and get hard-working Americans back to work 
rebuilding--as every American knows we need to do--our Nation's beat-up 
and decrepit transportation infrastructure.
  I am pleased the conference is off to a good start. I am sorry we had 
to wait this long to get to this point. It would have been nice to have 
had this done on March 31 when the deadline came. But now that we are 
here, I urge all of the conferees to come to a quick resolution that 
honors the extensive bipartisan work that went into the Senate bill 
which has gotten us to this point.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Shaheen.) The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              Immigration

  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I am here to speak, I believe, for the 
great majority of Americans who believe the time is long overdue for 
the Federal Government to fulfill its commitment and its responsibility 
to end the lawlessness at our borders. Only then can we put this 
matter, the deep frustrations that are occurring, behind us and move 
our country forward in a positive and united way.
  Immigration security is especially important in these economic times. 
Illegal labor does, in fact, depress wages and makes it more difficult 
for out-of-work Americans to find good-paying jobs. Immigration 
security is also vital to stopping cartels that are creating violence 
around our borders and in our cities. The Federal Government has a duty 
to protect those living in communities which suffer every day from 
preventable drug and gang violence.
  There is nothing compassionate about looking the other way when we 
can take concrete actions to make our schools and communities safer in 
every part of the country. There is nothing compassionate about a 
policy which makes it harder to protect not only Americans but 
immigrants who live in our country from gang violence that occurs in 
cities and at our border today.
  Unfortunately, instead of compelling sanctuary jurisdictions, such as 
the city of Chicago, to cooperate with Federal law enforcement 
officers, the administration has gone after those States that are 
trying to assist the Federal Government to end the lawlessness in our 
country. Under the administration's new ``prosecutorial discretion'' 
guidelines, if the Department of Homeland Security doesn't consider 
someone a priority, that individual's deportation proceedings are 
closed and they are allowed to remain in the country. So far, the 
administration has granted this form of backdoor amnesty to almost 
17,000 aliens illegally in the country, some of whom have been 
convicted of crimes.
  The administration has also been resistant to the popular E-Verify 
program, never once including it in any of its jobs or economic plans. 
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, has effectively ended 
worksite enforcement operations, meaning employers can continue to hire 
illegal workers rather than out-of-work Americans.
  A determined President could take meaningful steps to stem the tide 
of illegality. I have been encouraged by Governor Romney's commitments 
on this issue. This is something I have worked at for some time, and I 
am absolutely convinced that with consistent, smart, effective 
leadership and a commitment on behalf of this country to end the 
lawlessness, it can be done and done quicker and with less difficulty 
than most people realize.
  For example, Governor Romney recounted the following conversation he 
had with a Border Patrol agent, and it is so similar to ones I have had 
with Mr. Bonner, who headed the National Border Patrol Council. This is 
the conversation as Governor Romney recounted it:

       They said, when employers are willing to hire people who 
     are here illegally, that's a magnet, and it draws them in. 
     And sanctuary cities, giving tuition breaks to the kids of 
     illegal aliens . . . those things also have to be stopped. If 
     we want to secure the border, we have to make sure we have a 
     fence, determining where people are, enough agents to oversee 
     it, and turn off that magnet. We can't talk about amnesty, we 
     cannot give amnesty to those who have come here illegally.

  That is what Governor Romney said he was told by the agents who have 
to deal with this every day and who try to do their job professionally, 
and I think that is correct. That is what they are telling me. That is 
what law enforcement officers have told me for some time.
  Another example of how our country is so out of control is this 
government's failure to follow the rule of law with regard to Child Tax 
Credits.
  The Treasury Department's own inspector general for Tax 
Administration, who analyzes problems within the agency and issues 
reports, reported that in 2010 the Internal Revenue Service paid 
illegal aliens a staggering $4.2 billion in child tax credits for 
dependents, a great deal of whom don't even live in the country. This 
has been going on for years. This cannot continue. It must be stopped, 
and fixing it can't be delayed.
  The Treasury IG report states:

       Although the law prohibits aliens residing without 
     authorization in the United States from receiving most 
     Federal public benefits, an increasing number of these 
     individuals are filing tax returns claiming the Additional 
     Child Tax Credit, a refundable tax credit intended for 
     working families. The payment of Federal funds through this 
     tax benefit appears to provide an additional incentive for 
     aliens to enter, reside, and work in the United States 
     without authorization, which directly contradicts Federal law 
     and policy to remove such incentives.

  That is from the inspector general for Tax Administration at the U.S. 
Treasury Department, not my language. Of course, that is exactly 
correct. That is exactly correct. How could it be otherwise?
  In a press report from Indiana, one of the illegal aliens admitted 
his address was used to file tax returns by four other undocumented 
workers who don't even live there. Those four workers claimed 20 
children live inside that one residence, and as a result the Internal 
Revenue Service sent the illegal immigrants tax refunds totaling 
$29,608. A tax credit is not a tax deduction, it is a direct payment, a 
direct transfer of wealth through the tax system to an individual--
$29,608.
  The Treasury inspector general's report further stated:

       Millions of people are seeking this tax credit who, we 
     believe, are not entitled to it. We have made recommendations 
     to the IRS as to how they could address this issue, and they 
     have not taken sufficient action, in our view, to solve the 
     problem.

  Well, that is not acceptable. Now, $4 billion is a great deal of 
money. Four billion dollars a year is about $10 million a day. They 
found that $4 billion was doled out to people who received this one 
benefit illegally. No wonder we have people taking vacations to Las 
Vegas on the government's dime. No wonder we are giving $\1/2\ billion 
loans to failed companies like Solyndra. What are we doing here in 
Washington?
  So I say it is time to end this. I would note that the House of 
Representatives has voted to end this, and so it is now time to see 
what this Senate will do. We need to act to end it also.
  I have been in the Senate for 15-plus years, and being on the 
Judiciary Committee, we have seen the debate over immigration move 
forward, sometimes encouragingly and sometimes discouragingly. But 
every few years, it seems that the Washington masters of the universe 
who have willfully and deliberately failed to follow through on 
consistent promises to end immigration illegality begin to discuss some 
form of amnesty. They continue to incentivize the illegality but remain 
unwilling to take the necessary steps--not impossible steps--to secure 
the border on behalf of all citizens.

[[Page 6514]]

  For example, just this week my good friend and able Senator, Mr. 
Durbin, said that the DREAM Act is a bill that says: If you graduate 
high school and you have no serious problems when it comes to criminal 
convictions or moral issues and you either complete service in the 
military or 2 years in college, we will put you on a path to becoming 
legal and becoming a citizen.
  But we have examined that legislation in its most recent version, and 
it would really in effect grant amnesty to millions of people here 
illegally regardless of whether they go on to finish high school, 
finish college, or serve in the military. That is what the legislation 
does. And the bill is certainly not limited to children. It would apply 
to illegal immigrants who are in their thirties now. Because the bill 
has no cap, no limit, no sunset, no ending, it would allow people to 
remain eligible for the rest of their lives, at any age, to claim this 
benefit. Once they are naturalized, those granted DREAM Act amnesty 
would then have the right to legally petition for entry into the United 
States of their family members, including their adult brothers and 
sisters and the parents who caused their illegal presence in the United 
States to begin with, easily tripling the number of green card holders.
  This is a big issue. We need to be careful about these things. We 
need to consider what we are doing here.
  The bill's provisions are so broad, they are open to those who have 
even multiple misdemeanor criminal convictions that could include drunk 
driving and certain sexual offenses. But the bill goes further, 
offering safe harbor protection to those here illegally, those who have 
pending deportation proceedings against them. Those deportation 
proceedings have to stop even when the individual might pose a risk to 
Americans when that deportation may be based on the commission of 
serious crimes.
  This is especially dangerous because the safe harbor would also apply 
to those from terror-prone regions in the Middle East. In fact, the 
DREAM Act altogether ignores the lessons of 9/11, going so far as to 
open eligibility to those who previously defrauded immigration 
authorities, as did many of those 9/11 hijackers.
  So you say: Well, Jeff, what are we going to do? What can we do here? 
You say no, no, but we need to have a plan. We need to do something.
  Please, colleagues, think this through. The way forward for our 
country, the right way, the way to end the bitterness and develop 
common solutions for all residents is, first, secure the border, as 
Americans have asked their government to do year after year and this 
Congress and this administration have failed to do so.
  We must rebuild the trust, the trust of the American people, before 
other actions are taken. How commonsensical is that? People have a 
right to believe we will promise enforcement and give amnesty. That has 
been the pattern. We give the amnesty but don't do the enforcement. 
That is why people are upset with Washington. Why shouldn't they be? It 
has gone on for several decades. It has gone on since I have been in 
the Senate. We have to follow through on the commitments that have been 
made to the American people to do what we promised. It is time to end 
the lawlessness, not surrender to it.
  With determined leadership from the White House and support in the 
Congress, we can, in just a few years, I am totally convinced, solve 
the problem at our border, restore the rule of law, put an end to the 
border violence, and create a sane, just, and lawful system of 
immigration for America--a system that we can be proud of, a system 
that befits a nation as great as ours.
  Madam President, I yield the floor, and 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.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                    National Travel and Tourism Week

  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, with summer approaching, the travel 
season will soon be in full swing, and this week we celebrate National 
Travel and Tourism Week. It is a time to call attention to the 
importance that travel and tourism play in our national economy and in 
the creation of jobs.
  I know the Presiding Officer understands this issue very clearly 
because, for his State of Alaska, like the State of New Hampshire, 
travel and tourism is a very important industry. The fact is that the 
travel and tourism industry is one of the top 10 industries in 48 
States, and it supports over 14 million American jobs. In New 
Hampshire, travel and tourism is our second largest industry, and it 
supports over 60,000 jobs in New Hampshire.
  The Travel Promotion Act, which Congress passed in 2010, and of which 
I was very proud to be one of the cosponsors, will help the United 
States compete for foreign travelers. This year we will begin to see 
the impact of this landmark legislation.
  For most of our history, the United States has been one of a very few 
developed countries that did not advertise overseas. The Travel 
Promotion Act changes all of that because it created what is called 
Brand USA. It is a low-cost public-private partnership, and Brand USA 
has just started rolling out an advertising campaign for America. Brand 
USA is going to leverage millions of dollars in contributions to the 
private sector to help encourage more foreign travelers to bring their 
dollars to the United States. This is important because what we have 
learned in New Hampshire is that overseas visitors tend to stay longer 
when they get to America and they tend to spend more money. For the 
first time we are going to be advertising overseas to attract visitors 
to come to the United States.
  But there is even more we can and should do working together to 
support the travel sector. Traveling and tourism rely on a good 
infrastructure, on keeping our highways, our bridges, and our airports 
running. That is essential for the travel industry to grow. That is why 
it was so important that this year--after many years of trying--we 
finally reauthorized the FAA, and with that legislation are putting in 
place a new NextGen system of air traffic control that is going to 
allow our airplanes to get from point to point faster and more 
efficiently.
  That is why it is so critical that we pass the highway bill that is 
pending in Congress, which is at a committee of conference. We passed 
that bill in the Senate on an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, and now 
we need to get this bill out of the Congress.
  We also need to look at ways to improve our visa system so we can 
make it easier for foreign travelers to come to the United States. We 
need to pass legislation--and there are several bills that have been 
introduced--that will help us clear the backlog of visa applications so 
we can make sure those travelers who want to come to the United States 
are going to be able to do so, again bearing in mind that those 
overseas visitors tend to stay longer and spend more money.
  I want to conclude by highlighting what is an exciting new campaign 
in New Hampshire to help build New Hampshire's reputation as a world-
class travel destination with something to offer for everyone. I know a 
lot of people have been to New Hampshire every 4 years as part of our 
Presidential primary. A lot of people are familiar with our State's 
slogan, ``Live Free or Die.'' This slogan actually captures what was 
uttered by GEN John Stark, who was a Revolutionary War general talking 
about the British during the Revolution. A few days ago our State 
Division of Travel and Tourism Development launched a new campaign to 
promote New Hampshire to show the world what we have to offer as a 
unique travel destination, and that campaign very cleverly plays on our 
famous State slogan. We can see in this advertisement ``Live Free and 
Explore.'' It is one of our beautiful lakes. We can see the family out 
canoeing.
  We also have another one, ``Live Free and Reconnect.'' Here is a 
family out hiking. We can see some of our mountains in the background. 
They are not

[[Page 6515]]

quite as high as the mountains in Alaska, but we think they are a great 
place for families to come and explore. Hikers can enjoy and reconnect 
and relax.
  This one is ``Live Free and Discover.'' Again, kids getting ready to 
jump into one of our lakes. We can see the wilderness in the 
background. This is another great example of one of the opportunities 
New Hampshire has to enjoy our beautiful State.
  We are very proud of what New Hampshire has to offer. We have a new 
logo that shows how you can visit our travel and tourism site on the 
Web and see what New Hampshire has to offer. We hope all of those who 
come to experience our Presidential primary will come back every 4 
years and maybe in the meantime look at what we have to offer for 
enjoying the natural beauty and activities of the State. We would like 
that, but I understand that all of us here in Washington have very busy 
schedules and sometimes finding time to travel is difficult. 
Fortunately, soon we are going to have a great opportunity for everyone 
on the Hill to experience what New Hampshire has to offer without even 
leaving the building. On June 6, the New Hampshire State Society and 
our office are going to be hosting a reception called ``Experience New 
Hampshire.'' It is a great opportunity to experience New Hampshire's 
signature hospitality, our history, our culture, and our scenic beauty. 
I invite all of my colleagues to enjoy New Hampshire beverages, to 
taste some of the menus from our historic grand homes, our charming 
inns, and to come and celebrate with us.
  As we celebrate travel and tourism this week, I hope all of us will 
take a few minutes to reflect on the importance of this industry to our 
State and local economies and to the country.
  I thank the Chair.
  I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken.) Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the motion to 
proceed to Calendar No. 396, H.R. 2072, which is an act to reauthorize 
the Export-Import Bank of the United States be adopted; that there be 
no amendments, motions or points of order in order to the bill other 
than budget points of order and the applicable motions to waive; that 
there be 1 hour of debate equally divided between the two leaders or 
their designees prior to a vote on passage of the bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. I would ask 
the majority leader to modify his request to accommodate a few 
amendments.
  Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that the request be modified to 
allow the following amendments: Corker No. 2102, financing for 
transactions subsidized by export credit agencies; Vitter No. 2103, 
prohibitions on funds used for energy development outside of the United 
States; Toomey No. 2104, a $40 billion increase contingency; Lee No. 
2100, phaseout; and Paul No. 2101, limitation on Ex-Im support.
  I further ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of the 
listed amendments, the bill be read three times and the Senate proceed 
to vote on the passage of the bill with a 60-vote threshold. Before the 
Chair rules, I would say the sponsors of the amendments would be 
prepared to enter into short time agreements in order to facilitate 
consideration of the bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the modification?
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, these 
amendments that have just been listed, we are familiar with three of 
them. The other two I have not had the chance to review nor has my 
staff, and I do not think anyone else has. We will be happy to continue 
to study these. I will take a look at them--happy to do that.
  The only thing I would say is that--and I have other things to say, 
and I know my friend the assistant Republican leader has places to go, 
so I would give a statement later. But based on what I have just said 
and what I am going to say, I object.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I appreciate that. I hope we can continue to 
work together. As to the original request then, we would have to pose 
an objection as well.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard to both requests.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, yesterday, the House sent the Senate a 
bipartisan reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank. The bill the 
House passed reflects the negotiated agreement that was struck between 
Republican and Democratic leaders. They worked hard to come up with an 
agreement.
  As one would expect with an agreement of that nature, the House 
passed it with a very strong vote. The vote was 330 to 93. Every single 
Democrat voted for the measure. Only the far right tea party wing of 
the House Republican caucus voted against the bill--93 of them. So it 
was 330 to 93.
  The House considered no amendments. The House passed the bill on a 
suspension calendar. For those of us who served in the House, that is a 
bill that comes up and there is almost no debate. It takes a two-thirds 
vote to pass it. They do it for noncontroversial items. This measure is 
noncontroversial. It should have never been controversial. We brought 
it up 2 months ago, and we were stunned when the Republicans would not 
let us move forward on it.
  So the House did the right thing yesterday. This is the sort of bill 
the Senate should now simply pass without amendment. It is so unusual 
here. I have been in Congress 30 years. But this is a new one. Even 
bills that they agree on they want to mess around with. In years past, 
this would have gone through just like this. Forget about what took 
place 2 months ago. But now the House passed something 330 to 93, and 
we are here playing around with it. It should be done. We should have 
passed it yesterday. This thing is going to expire.
  It is hard to comprehend what the new mantra of the Republicans in 
the Senate is. I do not get it. As I indicated in earlier days, the 
Senate would have passed this bill by unanimous consent, as we have 
done before, this same legislation. But these days, the far right tea 
party wing of the Senate Republican caucus--I used to just talk about 
the House wing of the tea party, but it is over here now--thinks 
everything has to be a fight--everything.
  So we are going to have to have a vote on this rather than do it by 
unanimous consent. The bank will hit its lending limit any day. Its 
current authorization ends at the end of this month, May. So it will be 
very important we work to pass the House bill as quickly as possible. 
If we amend the bill and send it back to the House, we have to start 
all over again. The House is basically not in session this month, under 
their very difficult schedule of working 2 weeks on and 1 week off and 
then sometimes longer than that. I do not know when they are going to 
be here. It would be so much better, on a noncontroversial, very 
important piece of legislation--last year, 300,000 jobs--not 30,000 but 
300,000.
  We understand the Senate Republican caucus wants to offer amendments. 
The amendments are--I do not know for sure, but just glancing at them, 
I think they may be relevant. We will take a close look at them. There 
is no question the ones I am familiar with are efforts to gut the 
program. One of the amendments just eliminates it. How about that?
  So we are going to continue looking at the amendments we have and 
those we have not studied and look at them. I will try to be 
reasonable. So as we do that, we are going to vote on this. I am going 
to file cloture in just a second, which I hate to do--another motion to 
proceed. Boy, if there were ever a time when Tom Udall and Jeff Merkley 
were prophetic, it is tonight. These two young, fine Senators said it 
was time to change the rules in the Senate. We did not. They were 
right. The rest of us were wrong or most of us anyway. What a shame.

[[Page 6516]]

  Here we are wasting time because of the Republicans. This week we 
have accomplished a lot. We had a vote on a judge and we voted on 
cloture on the Republicans defeating our ability to get something done 
with student loans. That is our workload this week. I know it has been 
tough.
  That was sarcastic, of course, but it is just absolutely mindless 
what is going on. Then, to top it off, one of the finest Members of the 
Senate we have ever had was defeated yesterday by a man--listen to 
this--who campaigned on the platform that there is too much compromise 
in the Senate. He is going to come back here and not compromise with 
anybody on anything. Now that is what we need in the Senate, more 
people who are willing to do nothing but fight.
  I am going to do whatever I have to do to take the steps to keep this 
measure moving forward. I hope we can do it next week. I hope we can do 
it without a lot of trouble, of which we already have too much.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have a cloture motion at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The assistant 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, 
     hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to Calendar No. 396, H.R. 2072, an Act to reauthorize 
     the Export-Import Bank of the United States, and for other 
     purposes.
         Maria Cantwell, Tim Johnson, Harry Reid, Mark Begich, 
           Mark Udall, Tom Udall, Patrick J. Leahy, Sherrod Brown, 
           Jack Reed, Charles E. Schumer, Richard Blumenthal, 
           Richard J. Durbin, Kay R. Hagan, Daniel K. Inouye, 
           Michael F. Bennet, Kent Conrad, Benjamin L. Cardin.

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory 
quorum under rule XXII be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. I am finished. But I wish to say again for those who are 
listening here or watching, Senator Udall and Senator Merkley wanted to 
do something to change the rules regarding filibusters. If there was 
anything that ever needed changing in this body, it is the filibuster 
rule.
  It has been abused, abused, and abused by my Republican colleagues.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I appreciate the majority leader's 
actions on trying to move us forward on a very important jobs bill. The 
Export-Import Bank is a way to fund manufacturers in the United States 
so their products can be sold around the globe. It is kind of similar 
to a Small Business Administration finance program for exports.
  We know the President has said we need to increase exports. This is a 
program that has been in place for decades, never controversial at this 
degree. Now all of a sudden we are, weeks before the authorization 
expires, sitting here arguing over whether we can move forward on this 
bill.
  I have great respect for the Senate. But there are some times when 
the Senate does not get to work out a deal, and we are presented with 
something that has been worked out by the House of Representatives. We 
can go back to what the majority leader said, how we got in this spot; 
that is, objecting to every motion to proceed, objecting to every 
motion to proceed. Pretty soon all the work stacks up. We try to move 
legislation and every motion is objected to. So the consequence is we 
run out of time and we run out of a way to get to a compromise.
  In this case, guess what happened. The House came up with a 
compromise. The House, even to the degree that some of the amendments 
that some of my colleagues wanted to offer, got implemented into the 
House compromise bill that now passed the House of Representatives 
with, whatever, 300-plus votes to 93.
  With my colleagues, basically, continuing to just try to derail the 
normal process, we have had to take now a House bill that I think 
encompasses many of the things people wanted to see either in reforms 
or ways to make the bank more transparent or ways to make sure we are 
focusing on things that are going to help U.S. manufacturers win the 
day in a very competitive market.
  So I say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, yes; Mr. 
Boehner and Mr. Cantor worked out a compromise. So now we can again 
take more time here and analyze it and see whether you agree with that. 
I certainly like when the Senate works out agreements, and oftentimes 
we have asked our House colleagues to vote on them. But we now have the 
student loan bill that needs to be done, this Export-Import Bank that 
needs to be done, and many other important economic agenda items we 
should get to for this country.
  I hope when the cloture motion comes forward, my colleagues will 
realize the only thing people are trying to do now--they can vote no on 
the program if they don't like it because they are primarily amendments 
to defund the bank. These are not perfecting amendments to a compromise 
that has been worked out. They want to express their opposition. They 
will have a chance to do that.
  I hope for the sake of thousands of jobs in the United States, for 
the sake of U.S. competitiveness in a global market, where these 
companies are competing with other companies around the globe, my 
colleagues will realize this is a compromise piece of legislation. 
Let's get it done next week and onto the President's desk so we can go 
about winning more jobs in a very competitive global economy. That is 
what we need to do. Holding out 1 more, 2 more, or 3 more days, or 
another week just to get an amendment saying you hate the Ex-Im Bank, 
that is not the way to get things done for America.
  I hope my colleagues will support moving ahead so we can get this 
onto the President's desk.
  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. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________