An Act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to make technical corrections to the pension funding provisions of the Preservation of Access to Care for Medicare Beneficiaries and Pension Relief Act of 2010.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Stabenow control the time from 9:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.; that I control the time from 10 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.; that Senator Stabenow control the time from 10:30 a.m. to 11 a.m.; that I control the time from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.; and that Senator Stabenow control the time from 12 p.m. to 12:30 p.m.

I yield to the Senator from Michigan.

Reserving the right to object.

I think my colleague realizes that, in fact, this will add $9.2 billion to the debt, and she also realizes, in spite of her claim that we could vote, that there is nobody in town to vote because there are only 10 or 11 of us still in town. And because every Republican voted against adjourning so that we could stay and work this out, I would object.

Mr. President, let me set the record straight. Yesterday in this body we offered the same bill in a way that would not increase the debt. It was immediately tabled, with all Republicans voting not to table it and the majority voting to table it. So there is a little bit of confusion.

We worked out an agreement with Senator Stabenow and Senator Levin from Michigan where we came together with an agreement for 2 weeks where this would be paid for, so the reason this bill is not moving forward is because the House leadership rejected that compromise. In other words, we had a compromise. We developed a plan where our children will not pay for this, we will, by offsetting and not adding to the debt.

With that, I wish to recognize my colleague from Wyoming, Senator Barrasso, for what time he might consume.

Will the Senator yield for a moment.

He talked about a tornado in Oklahoma. When the Oklahoma City bombing happened and we sent emergency funds to Oklahoma City, we paid for them. We decreased spending somewhere else to pay for that spending. His point falls on a flat wall because when we had an urgency such as that in 1995, we paid for it.

Mr. President, I want to set a little bit of a tone. First, I thank the Senator from Michigan. Yesterday, it was through her work and Senator Levin's work that we were able to come to an agreement on a compromise in the Senate. I think that shows when we get down to issues we can work together; when we get to the position. It was her efforts, along with several others, that allowed us to reach that compromise.

But I wanted to make a point--a couple of points. No. 1, there is nobody on our side who does not want to extend the unemployment benefits. The difference is we want to extend them without hurting her future. Whether you are a conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, or an Independent, the consequences of our actions are going to affect everybody. I used this last year, and this little girl is saying: I am already $38,375 in debt, and I only own a dollhouse.

Well, let me show you what is going to happen this year. This year alone, she is $45,000 in debt. We moved from $39,000 to $45,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country. That only reflects the outstanding debt we do not owe ourselves, that we have stolen from Social Security and that we have stolen from other trust funds, that we put in an IOU.

There is another thing that is happening that Americans should be aware of. In the past year, the average interest rates on the debt obligations we are issuing have risen 1 percent. So we have $12.8 trillion worth of debt. Multiply that by 1 percent, and in this next year we are going to pay an extra $128 billion in interest just from that 1 percent.

So for every 1 percent interest rates go up, we have interest costs of $128 billion. What will happen as we continue to project trillion- dollar deficits over the next 9 years is, that is going to rise and rise and rise.

She is the one that is going to pay for that, and this will not be $45,000; it will be $75,000. Then it will be $85,000, and then pretty soon--and by the way, that only reflects the debt. That has no reflection on the unfunded commitments that we have made to veterans, social security benefits, Medicare, none.

If we add those in, we have another $37 trillion that has to be accounted for just over the next four decades. So debt is a big problem for us. I would also make a point, the Senator from Michigan mentioned the long-term debt extender that we have. It is 12 months. It is going down each time we do it. We sent that to the House. You know what. It did not increase the debt because we offset it. We paid for it.

So the House has a bill the Senate has passed that was paid for, and they stole some of the pay-fors for the health care bill. So the House has not sent it back because the House refuses to make the hard choices to pay for the things that are necessary to be done right now. That is what happened yesterday. The Senate came to an agreement. We decided we would pay for 2 weeks so nobody will have any hitch in their unemployment, no hitch in their COBRA, no hitch anywhere. When it was sent over there, it was rejected.

Now, I want to posit something to you. The reason it was rejected is we do not want to create the precedent that when we spend money we have to pay for it. Where in the world is that a normal thinking process? In other words, we want to make sure we always have the option to spend money that is not paid for. There could be nothing more economically unreasonable than that.

So this is not a battle about not wanting to help the people who need our help today, this is a battle about helping the people who need our help today without hurting the children of tomorrow, without rescuing them.

If we are talking about emergencies, the fact is, because we cannot control our appetite for spending, our interest costs have gone up another $128 billion this year. That is an emergency. The other thing is that we have over $300 billion worth of waste, of fraud, of duplication in the Federal Government every year. So if you dispute it, you can say there is only--let's say it is half that. Why would we not get rid of that and pay for this rather than charge this intermediate $9.2 billion to those little children?

I actually had the pleasure of meeting this little girl in my office after I saw this photo. She has parents. They are worried. So what is her future going to be like? Is she going to have the same opportunity I have? So what I would posit forth is that we can do both. We can meet the needs of those who are dependent upon us now because of the economic downturn, and we can protect her and all of those of her generation.

To not do so says we are going to take the easy way out. We are not going to act responsibly. We are not going to act like every other family in America acts. They look at what is there, what is the priority, what we can do, and what we cannot do. Then they make a decision about what is most important.

The process the Senator from Michigan wants us to do, even though she agreed yesterday, is to not put a priority on it that considers both the short term and the long term; that cares both for the children as well as the unemployed; that considers both the future of our country and her opportunity to take advantage of the freest Nation in the world.

This is not a Republican-Democrat thing. Republicans have been irresponsible in spending too. It is a whole new era now. Everything has changed. It does not matter what party we are in. If we do not get hold of the debt in this country, everyone is going to suffer.

I spoke on the Senate floor yesterday, and I will reiterate it: Whether you call it a filibuster or whether you call it obstruction, as a grandfather of five children, truly reflective of tons of grandparents out there and tons of grandkids out there, I am not going to agree in the future to spend money we do not have until we get rid of the things that are not a priority, the $300 billion, before we move. Someone has to start saying no to the addiction we have that every time we have a problem we will just spend money.

Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 4915

I would like to make a unanimous consent request. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to H.R. 4915, a revenue measure from the House; provided that the only amendment in order be a substitute amendment, the text of which is the 2-week extension that we agreed on yesterday of unemployment benefits that is paid for, that will not increase the debt, with agreed-to offsets from the Finance Committee that was agreed to yesterday; proceeded further that the amendment be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, with a motion to reconsider laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I am sorry we have an objection. The fact is, we agreed to it. The fact is, the Senator from Michigan is having to protect the House of Representatives. She knows we are not going to go forward with this unless we pay for that, until we get back.

The only way to do that is through unanimous consent. The only way we are going to accomplish that is what we agreed to yesterday and send it to the House and let them do it by unanimous consent, even though they said they will not do it.

The fact is, we agreed in the Senate. We came to an agreement, and because the House has said they will not do it, they do not want to-- they want to increase the debt to do it rather than to do it and not increase the debt. I think that speaks of where we are in the country.

We cannot do this. We have agreed on the way to do it in our body.

After we had an agreement yesterday that maybe the House did not like, it actually solved the problem and solved the problem for these little kids as well as those unemployed in Michigan and across the country. We now have the House saying: No, we cannot do it.

So I am sorry. I apologize to the Senator from Michigan for putting her in that position. I sincerely do. But I think we have to be recognizable of the fact that what looks like may be happening as both Houses recess is that it will not get done. It will not get done because we cannot get it done. It will not get done because the House refuses to take a position to not add to the debt as we solve this problem, as we meet both priorities--those people who are hurting and the priority of what is to come in the future. I think that is unfortunate for us.

I would yield the remaining time I have, which is only about 2 or 3 minutes, to the Senator from Georgia, and then I hope he will join me when we come back.

I must say to my colleague, I agree with him--what he said--but under the conventions that we use, Senators can ask others to object on their behalf, and, regrettably, I have been asked to do that and will do that on Senator Vitter's behalf.

Mr. President, I would be happy to give the Senator some additional time, and we will roll the time off of your later time, if you would like time now, I say to the Senator.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, again, I would note this is the fourth time I have done this and, regrettably, because we had an agreement yesterday that the House would not go along with, I have to object because we will be adding to the debt.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, since the majority took an additional 5 minutes of our time, that our original unanimous consent be changed to give us the time from 11:05 to 12:05, and the majority from 12:05 to 12:30.

Mr. President, I yield to Senator Chambliss at this time.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Georgia. I ask unanimous consent to have a colloquy on our side between the Members who are here. If there is no objection, I wish to proceed with that.

I recognize the Senator from Florida and the Senator from Alabama to start that off. I yield to the Senator from Alabama.

I thank the Senators from Alabama and Florida for their comments.

Many have heard us use the word ``pay-for'' sometimes. When we say that, what we are actually saying is, we don't want the debt increased. So we don't want to get that confused.

I also want to make one comment in relation to what Senator Reed from Rhode Island said earlier today. He said nobody on the other side of the aisle will be objecting to the supplemental coming for the military if it is not paid for. I want to state for the record that I voted against it the last two times. It is not because I don't want to support the military, but it wasn't paid for. We didn't make the hard choices. I will vote against it again, and I will try to make that a pay-for. So it is an unfair characterization to say ``nobody.'' I am pretty consistent on that. If we are going to spend new money, we should cut some of the money we are spending now that isn't as important.

Under the Constitution, the No. 1 responsibility for us is defending the country. One of the reasons we are in trouble is we have ignored the enumerated powers clause of the Constitution, which sets out a very limited role for the Federal Government and reserves the rest of the programs we are talking about to the States and to the people.

With that, Mr. President, I would like to recognize the senior--the Senator from Arizona, Mr. Kyl. I started to say senior, but that is not so.

I comment on the Senator's point, there is not anybody in this body, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, who does not want a great future for our kids. Everybody does. The Senator from Oregon has a set of twins, beautiful kids. He wants the best for them. What we want is the same thing other Americans want.

I showed this little sign earlier. I actually got to meet this girl because I thought it was so unique that she had the wisdom or somebody in her family had the wisdom to make the contrast. She doesn't even have a home yet, and when she had this her share of the debt was $38,375. That is just external debt. That does not include what we borrowed and stole from Social Security and all the other trust funds. If we included that, she would have been about $42,000. I marked through that this morning because it is now at the end of this year, September 30 of this year, every man, woman and little girl and little boy will be responsible for $45,000. It is going to grow $6,000 per man, woman, and child this year alone. That is just talking about the external debt. That is not talking about what we are stealing from other people.

Is there a point in time when we are on a downslope, where we get to a point in time where there is no return? We know that. Senator Sessions talked about it in terms of 90 percent of GDP, and how that has a depression. I made the point earlier. We saw a 1-percent increase in interest rates last year. We owe $12.8 trillion. That is $128 billion we are going to pay more in interest in this next year than we paid in the last year, as you float through all the bonds and recognize that 1 percent increase. What was 2.4 percent 1\1/2\ years ago on 10- year Treasury bonds is 3.88 percent right now, this morning. I checked it before I came over here. That is 1.48. As our debt balloons, that interest cost is going to go up.

You heard Senator Sessions say in 2019 we will spend $850 billion on interest. We are going to spend $850 billion on interest. Of the $9.8 trillion we are going to borrow over the next 9 years, $5.6 trillion of that is going to be interest. So now we are borrowing trillions of dollars to pay the interest on trillions of dollars.

It has to stop. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle recognize that. It is not that they do not want to fix it too. I agree with the Senator from Arizona. I think we will come to that realization across party lines. I was proud of the Senate yesterday because we actually worked together and came to a compromise that we could all agree to, and we got shot down by those who are thinking short term.

I am not doing this to score political points, as the Senator from Michigan alluded. I am not doing anything that I have not believed all the time I have been here, and my colleagues all across this body know that. The problem right now in our country is the debt. It is the debt.

If, in fact, we want a future--I have a 7-month old new one. I have five grandchildren. She is as cute as she can be. Her name is Katie Rose. I got to see her a couple weeks ago as my daughter came through. She hadn't seen me in a couple months and didn't like what she saw. I can't blame her for that. But the fact is, everybody has a Katie Rose. If this is your child, the new birth we are going to celebrate, Senator LeMieux's this weekend--everybody has one. So the contrast is, Can we do both? Can we take care of the Katie Roses of this world and take care of the unemployed or do we just say: No, it is too hard. If it is too hard, we are over. And I believe it is not over. It does not have to be. We can come together and solve both the debt problem and the needs of our country. We can do that.

I wish to give one little example. In the month of December, I had my staff search through programs that are duplicative. In 2 weeks, my staff found 640 duplicative programs--640. Let me just give one example. In our Federal Government, we have 105 programs run by nine different agencies to encourage people to study math, science, engineering and technology. One hundred five? So after that experience in December on one of the bills out here we put through, that passed, my colleagues on both sides of the aisle agreed we should have GAO do that study for us to give us all of them. That is just what we found in 2 weeks--there are thousands--because that tells us where to start eliminating duplication, start asking for metrics on what you are doing. If you have a program for math, engineering, science and technology, we ought to measure whether it is effective. We might only want to have one program instead of 105.

In the Judiciary Committee in the past 2 months, we have had two different bills that have come forward to solve problems. When the bills were offered, we didn't even know we had agencies out there and a program ready to do it.

There were some positive things with the health care bill. There are tons of negatives in my experience as a doctor who has practiced 27 years. But one of the negatives is, we are going to have 88 new government programs and we are probably going to add about 50,000 or 60,000 or 70,000 people to that. I know we are going to add 16,500 to the IRS to make sure you bought your health insurance. Why would we do that?

It is time for us to make the difficult choices. The choice does not have to be do nothing or pay for it. The choice can be we can take care of both.

I will close with this discussion. This is what we did last year--43 cents of everything the Government spent we borrowed from Katie Roses. That is who is going to pay it back. We are not going to pay it back. This year it is going to be over 45 cents, maybe 46 or 47 cents this year, because when you take the real projections for what our addition to the debt this year is--in terms of recognizing all the debt such as an accountant would do, not like the Government does--we are going to have a $1.8 trillion deficit.

This means, externally and internally, we are going to borrow $1.5 trillion externally, but internally we are going to borrow $300 billion from trust funds and programs and everything else we have.

Let me give you a little example people never think about. It is called the Inland Waterway Trust Fund. It is the trust fund that has paid for all of our inland waterways. There is no money in it because we have taken it all out. We cannot do what we need to do on our navigable waters where we haul freight and barges because we have stolen all of the money. There are hundreds of those trust funds where we have emptied the coffers.

I will end with this last request. When we come back, my pledge is to work with anybody in this body who will seriously work with me on making the appropriate tradeoffs of what is important and what is not in terms of priorities.

You know that our nature as elected officials is not to offend anybody. If we continue with that process--I am talking about those who support programs we cannot afford--we are all going to be offended because every Katie Rose in the world, in our country, will have her future squelched.

And the last set of numbers you should pay attention to: If you are under 25 years of age today--that means from 25 to 1--20 years from now, you plus everybody who is born in that 20 years will be responsible for debt and unfunded liabilities of $1,113,000. Think about that. In the next 20 years, those under 25 and below and everybody born will be responsible for $1,113,000. Think about what that costs. If you apply a 6-percent interest rate to that, let's round it at $60,000--it is more than that; $66,000-something--you are going to have to pay $66,000 in carry costs either through interest on the national debt or through direct taxes before you ever pay the first income tax to run anything for the Federal Government. What does that mean in terms of opportunity for those Katie Roses and this little girl? It means they will have trouble buying a home. They will have trouble educating their kids to give them opportunity.

So I believe we are at a point where we have to start making the hard decisions. My pledge to my colleagues is that I will work with you in a way that is positive to make sure we do not put these people at risk. But I also will work with you to make sure you understand that I am going stand up every time, including the supplemental that is coming forward, and say that we must pay for it rather than charge it to our children.

With that, I yield our time to the Senator from Oregon. I would note that we have until 12:30 to finish this discussion.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Oklahoma.

Mr. President, we are here today because Republicans are objecting again to critical legislation and critical problem-solving efforts that are going to help middle-class families, that are going to help move us forward as a country.

We have seen, over and over, a pattern in the last year and 2 years ago when they first began to move this kind of a strategy forward, of blocking, blocking, blocking, saying no, saying no, saying no, rather than working together to solve critical issues. People are facing some of the most daunting challenges right now, more than they ever have in their lifetime--either trying to hold on to their job, trying to find a job, trying to make sure they have medical care for their families--and we have taken a very critical step this week to be able to ease some of those challenges and fears. Americans are struggling in an economy they didn't create, and when we look over this pattern, I am compelled to speak for a moment about it.

Over the history of our country, we have never seen such obstruction, efforts to block what we are doing, as we are now seeing. In the last 2 years, there were a total of 139 filibusters and efforts to block. That was in a 2-year period. Today, barely into the new year, after a little over a year, we are at 130 different times that the other party has said no to doing things that would help middle-class families, that would help small businesses, and that would help us move this country forward. One hundred thirty times. Unheard of, never happened before.

I know for people watching, they probably wonder: What in the world is going on here, and why should we care about procedure? We just want you to solve problems. But it is the effort we saw in the past with the Senator from Kentucky, who blocked for days our effort to move forward and extend unemployment benefits for families who are out of work through no fault of their own. People want to work, Mr. President, as you know, and they work hard. It is not their fault this economy went into a tailspin, which, quite frankly, in my judgment, was caused as a result of the policies of the previous administration that for 8 years chose to focus on just a few people. So the people in Michigan are saying: What about the rest of us? What about the rest of us? We are not the Wall Street fat cats. We are not the CEOs with the big bonuses or the people who got the big tax cuts. We are just working every day. We just want the American dream for our kids. We want to know things are going to be better. We want to know we can send our kids to college so they will have a great opportunity to be the best they can be.

That is who we are fighting for, and that is why we took subsidies from banks this week and gave the money directly to students, to create opportunities for those who want to go to college. That is why we have focused on lowering costs for middle-class families and small businesses on health insurance. But we are back here today because, unfortunately, our Republican colleagues are trying to score political points on the backs of people who have lost their jobs.

Now, I know a great way to bring down the deficit, and one that hasn't been tried. The 8 years that our colleagues were in control, along with President Bush, they focused on the people at the top and said that was going to do it. If it had worked, that would have been great, but unfortunately they left everybody else behind, and we saw what happened. So I have a great idea. Let's focus on putting everybody back to work so they can contribute to our economy by paying their taxes, and that will pay down the deficit. That is what President Clinton did. That is what the Democrats did when we were last in control. That is what we are focused on doing now--putting people back to work--because that is the formula for bringing down this deficit.

The challenge we have is that we have one job for every six people who are looking right now. So we aren't in a situation yet where we have the jobs available for every person who wants to work and is able to work. That is what we are laser-focused on here in the Congress. But we need to continue to understand, as Senator Harkin has said, that too many families are caught in this economic tsunami. Whether it is a flood, a hurricane, or the fact that your community got wiped out because a plant closed, it is an economic emergency.

We have always stepped up and funded the extension of unemployment benefits as an emergency with emergency funding. We have always done that, and now we are being asked to change that. We weren't asked to change it for Wall Street and the bailout. We weren't asked to change it for the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. But we are being asked to change it on the backs of working people, and I believe that is wrong.

We are still recovering from the worst economic situation since the Great Depression, but we are recovering. When President Obama took office, we were losing 800,000 jobs a month--too many of them in my great State of Michigan. We are now, at the end of the year, down to losing close to zero a month. That is better--not good enough, so we must stay focused, but we are hearing that we are going to have some pretty good numbers from March, where people are actually going back to work and jobs are being created. I don't want to stop and I know the Presiding Officer doesn't want to stop until every single person who is able to work and who wants a job has the dignity of work so that we give breadwinners the ability to bring the bread home. And that is what this is about.

So we are in a situation where we are in transition, and too many families are caught. In my great State, the unemployment rate is still the highest in the country--14.1 percent. It is coming down slowly, but it is still way too high. We have almost 700,000 people who have lost their jobs and are looking for work. But that is only the official number. That doesn't include the people who are working one part-time job, two part-time jobs, three part- time jobs trying to hold it together or people who have been out of work so long they no longer qualify for any kind of help. Those numbers are much bigger.

Every day, the unemployment insurance agency in Michigan gets 13,000 to 15,000 phone calls from people asking for help--every day. Every single day, up to 15,000 phone calls come in from people in Michigan who are desperate about what they are going to do in this situation. Well, we can help them. That is what this is about. That is what we are trying to do.

If this isn't an emergency, I don't know what is. The other side says: No, it is not an emergency. But for families who have lost their jobs and who are trying to find work, trying to put food on the table, I can assure you, this is an emergency. It is an economic disaster. When 14.9 million people around the country are unemployed, to me, that is a disaster. And those are the people we are fighting for today, yesterday, tomorrow. Those are the people who, when Wall Street got bailed out, said to us: What about us? Well, part of the answer is, to make sure they can keep a roof over their head and food on the table, to allow them to receive unemployment benefits. And these aren't huge numbers. They do not begin to match the Wall Street bonuses. We are talking about $250, $300 a week. But it may be the difference between being able to keep your family going or not.

In this legislation, we have a very important provision on health care--on COBRA. When COBRA was put in place, it was a great idea. If you lost your job, you could pay to continue the health insurance your employer was providing. The problem is, it is way too expensive when you are paying both the employee and the employer side. So last year, in the Recovery Act, we put some help in place: 65 percent would be paid for by the Federal Government to help families keep their insurance going. That is also a part of this--to keep that going so families can keep their health care. That is extremely important.

We need to focus on the real challenges families are facing today and work together across the aisle to tackle those. People are so tired of the

games. They are so tired of it. They watch what is happening here, and they say: What are these people thinking? What are they doing?

I know that politically folks may gain points by objecting, blocking, filibustering 130 times, but it makes the whole process look messy-- terribly messy. It causes people to lose faith in their government. That may seem to have some short-term advantage, but I believe that is a disastrous direction for our country. People want to know we are going to work together. People are going to want to know we put priorities in the right place so that we are focusing on the majority of Americans, not an elite few.

The great thing about our country is the middle class. That is what has always differentiated us from other countries--the fact that we make things, we grow things, and we add value to it. And by the way, we make things and grow things very well in Michigan, Mr. President. We will take on any State. We will take on anybody. We know how to do things. We know how to work, we know how to make things.

But we have not had this focus over the last decade on strengthening that middle class. We are turning that around now, and I am very proud of the fact that we are seeing manufacturing begin to turn, that we are seeing efforts that we put in place through the Recovery Act putting people back to work.

Too many families are not yet feeling that economic recovery, and this is for them. This is about saying to the American people, middle- class families across the country: You know what, we get it. We are sorry you are having to go through this, and we are going to do our part. We are going to do whatever we can to make sure you have the resources to keep things together while you are going out and looking for that job or going back to job training and holding things together with bits and pieces--odd jobs, part-time jobs--until this economy turns around.

We know, ultimately, that it is about jobs. We know, ultimately, it is about the private sector creating those jobs. But there is a partnership we need to have between the Federal Government and our industry so they can successfully compete in a global economy. Rather than focusing on Democrats versus Republicans, who can score the next short-term gain in the election, we should be coming together and realize that this is an economic race between the United States and China, it is the United States versus Japan, it is the United States versus Korea. We are in a global economic race. Instead of spending time objecting, playing games, filibustering at an unheard of rate in our history--absolutely unheard of; never before have we seen this kind of obstruction--we ought to be coming together and be laser-focused on China, which is spending $288 million every day--$288 million every day--to beat us on clean energy technology. Let's make that the fight. Let's make that the fight together.

This is the wrong place and time to be obstructing and playing games. It is the wrong place to say that suddenly we want to balance the deficit on the backs of people who are out of work through no fault of their own; that we are going to change the rules now; that it is no longer an emergency and no longer emergency spending. We shouldn't be changing the rules now and doing it to people who are out of work. That is not fair.

I say to my colleagues: Don't block democracy. Just vote--today. We can vote on this up or down. We can vote on it. Don't obstruct; just vote. You want to make a motion, you want to vote, a majority vote, fine. Let's vote. But don't force a filibuster and don't object and don't threaten a filibuster. Just vote. We are happy to vote.

Unanimous-Consent Request H.R. 4851

Mr. President, at this point, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 323, H.R. 4851, to provide a temporary extension of certain programs, and that the bill be read three times, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, could you indicate the time remaining on our side for this portion?

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, I would just indicate to my colleague that from our perspective this is an emergency, an economic disaster for families right now. We need to do as we have done three other times in the Congress and extend this emergency spending to help families who are out of work.

Given that, I will object.

Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to my distinguished colleague, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the terrific senior Senator from Michigan.

Yes.

Unanimous Consent Request--Executive Calendar

Mr. President, I thank my colleague for his extraordinary leadership on the Armed Services Committee and his efforts to make sure we have the staff, the leadership in our Department of Defense, our military, on behalf of our troops. It is very regrettable that once again we are seeing obstructionism, blocking us from moving forward.

I do not know the exact number now, but I know we have over 70 different positions that are being held up. They have been held up, many of them, for over a year now in the Obama administration--many related to jobs, to commerce, to trade, to the Department of Defense-- and it continues to be part of what we are seeing over and over and over again in efforts to just function, have government be able to function.

Mr. President, for so long--I know there are all the politics of people believing they can gain points because of debating whether government is good or bad, whether it is the problem, whether it is the solution--I think the majority of the American people just want it to work well. They want us to work together, and they want the services that are to be provided, whether it is supporting our troops in the military, whether it is providing education for our children, whether it is police officers on the street, whether it is making sure the water our children drink is safe, or whatever it is. They want it to work well and make sure every dollar we are spending on their behalf is spent with them in mind and it is done well and we are doing it efficiently and effectively.

I do have to say, in looking at the beautiful picture of the child my friend from Oklahoma held up--talking about children and the future-- this week, we completed a process that will make sure it is illegal to block that child from getting health insurance because of a preexisting condition. I wish our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle had chosen to join with us in that very important effort to make sure every child can receive the health insurance they need, that every parent can have freedom from the fear that when they go to bed at night they are not going to have to say one more time: Dear God, please don't let the kids get sick because I don't know what I am going to do.

So we do care about those children. We have put into place a health insurance reform plan that is going to make sure every pregnant mom gets prenatal care and has maternity care, which in a majority of private-sector insurance plans you can go out and buy for yourself, they do not cover it. I am happy to have a discussion about children and about making sure they can afford to go to college, which was also in the bill

we passed this week--providing more opportunity for children. I am happy to have that discussion.

But it is amazing to me we continue to be lectured by the people who got us into this mess because of their economic policies. We are now lectured on probably a daily basis about the size of the deficit. We understand that. I was very proud to be in the House of Representatives when President Clinton and the Democrats balanced the budget for the first time in 30 years. When I came into the Senate, the big debate was what to do about the surplus. We were looking at almost a $6 trillion surplus over 10 years. Well, unfortunately, under President Bush, under a Republican Congress, that went away pretty fast: by not paying for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans--somehow that was OK--by not paying for two wars, by not paying for a prescription drug effort under Medicare. During those 8 years, somehow it did not matter there was a credit card being run up, that a huge surplus that had been accumulated through tough decisions, very tough choices, in the 1990s was somehow squandered away. So I have a hard time hearing over and over again about the deficit and being lectured as if somehow President Obama or the Democrats caused that deficit.

I am not saying we do not have a challenge right now and a huge hole, and that we are not in a situation where we need to do emergency spending because of this economic disaster that has gone on. I understand that. I understand we are currently in a situation to be forced into a position because there are no savings to help people. Now we are in a deficit position. But I find it interesting that all of a sudden, when we are in a situation where middle-class families need help--all of a sudden, when working people in this country need help-- this is an issue, when it was not an issue for 8 years during the Bush administration. That is what I find difficult.

We have put back in place the budget rules that were in place during the Clinton years, and we are going to dig ourselves out of this deficit. We passed a health insurance reform bill that over the next two decades is going to decrease the deficit by over $1.2 trillion. We know there is a hole. We understand that. But we also understand that middle-class families--who are under the crunch, who are losing their jobs, who are trying to figure out how to pay the bills--did not cause that, and the solutions being proposed now would put it right on their backs. That is what we say no to. Because it is about time, as people in my State say, we focus on the rest of us. What about the rest of us in this country--not just those in the privileged, few powerful positions, the people on Wall Street? That is what this is about. This is fundamentally a debate about that. That is what we are talking about today.

I also want to indicate what we are talking about is extending an emergency program put in place in 2008 because of the economic disaster that families are facing. It is not the regular unemployment program. It is what was put in place in 2008 because of job loss, because of the fact that we got to a point where we are losing 600,000, 700,000, 800,000 jobs a month. That is a disaster as much as a hurricane, a flood, or anything else that could happen to families and communities.

Since that time, we have extended it--as we are asking to extend it-- on four different occasions. We are asking right now for at least 2 weeks until the long-term extension gets passed by the House. For 2 weeks let us extend it, or 30 days. Let us extend it so there is not a gap in coverage, so we do not have families, who are feeling stress already, now reading in the papers that the unemployment extension is going to stop and trying to figure out what in the world they are going to do during this period of time. We are asking for 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks to be able to extend it until the House is able to pass the long- term extension.

We are right back where we were again: objection, objection, objection on being able to do that--more objections than we have ever had in the history of our country in terms of process. We find ourselves in a situation where, even though we have not adjourned--I will emphasize that: Senator Reid, the majority leader, did not adjourn. We could have votes. I realize people have left. We could have voted last night. We wanted to vote last night. Our only option to overcome this was to start a process to stop a filibuster, which takes 2 days and voting and 30 hours, and all of this, and they know that. So we could have voted last night: yes or no. We could have done that last night. But, once again, as we have had 130 different times, we are in a situation where there has been objection, objection, objection.

This is very much about priorities. My friends on the other side of the aisle talk about priorities. Yes, this is about priorities. It is about values. And it is about who you are fighting for. Fundamentally, it is about who you are fighting for. I can tell you, the people in Michigan--hard-working people, middle-class Americans, families who care deeply about this country; they love this country--are tired of decisions being made for a few at the top. They are tired of the games and the obstructionism that has gone on and on and on. They want us to get things done--real things that affect their lives. That is what they want to have us get done.

I see my distinguished friend from Rhode Island on the floor--a champion on this issue, a fighter for Rhode Island, working men and women, and someone who has been on this floor over and over again fighting to make sure people who are out of work through no fault of their own have the opportunity to receive some help, some short-term help.

I now yield to my friend from Rhode Island up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, today we have an opportunity to assist literally hundreds of thousands of families across this country who are out of work through no fault of their own, who are battling with the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, who are chasing jobs that have disappeared, and they are looking everywhere to try to find work. We have the opportunity to extend unemployment benefits for an additional year.

In my State of Rhode Island, people are in a very serious situation. They are struggling to stay in their homes, to educate their children, to deal with the challenges of everyday life. They

have worked hard and long all of their lives, and now they are finding it difficult to find a job.

In every situation previously in this country, we have come to their assistance. We have done so by extending unemployment benefits. We have never failed to do that as long as the unemployment rate was above 7.2 or 7.4 percent. Today across the country, it is close to 9 percent nationally. In my State of Rhode Island, it is much higher. We have always done it on an emergency basis because it truly is an emergency. We haven't had to offset because we have always determined that it was necessary to get the money to the people who could use it, who needed it desperately, and we should do that again.

I find it difficult to understand how some of my colleagues on the other side would object to an extension of unemployment benefits for a year that are not offset but at the same time insist that we provide tax cuts to the very richest Americans, without paying for them, and insist that we add approximately $700 billion to our deficit by extending tax cuts for people making over $250,000 a year--and many making many times that amount--yet for unemployed Americans desperately seeking work and not finding it, they would insist that we not only have to pay for it, but we have delayed and delayed the process of getting them assistance. It is difficult to justify those two positions.

It is also difficult to justify those two positions because what we know is that unemployment compensation benefits give us a much bigger bang for the buck than the extension of tax relief to upper income citizens. The Congressional Budget Office has rated the effectiveness of various techniques to provide assistance and stimulate demand in the economy. They have found that unemployment insurance is far and away the most effective form--much more effective than tax cuts to the wealthy.

CBO estimates that for every dollar of unemployment compensation benefits that we inject into the economy, we get $1.90 of economic activity, which is almost a 2-for-1 payback. So we are in a situation where this is not only the appropriate policy to pursue, but it is the most effective one in order to keep demand and the economy and growth moving forward.

I am someone who believes in fiscal responsibility. That is why I took, in the 1990s, difficult votes in order to balance the budget under President Clinton, to raise not only our output but also to balance the budget and have a surplus in 2000. I opposed the proposal and the tax cuts favored by Republican colleagues in 2000 because I understood that the difficult, hard fought, fiscal responsibility could easily be frittered away because what looked like a surplus in 2000 could be affected by unforeseen events, such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters, or changes in the world economy that we could not contemplate. I knew how difficult it was in the nineties to get our house in order. I was opposed to these tax cuts. I hope everybody else realizes the demographics of the country at that time.

In 1993-1994, we took tough votes to build up a surplus because we knew what was coming. We had a demographic wave--the baby boomers--that would qualify for Medicare and Social Security, and that would, by the nature of the sheer size of that population, put extra demands upon our budget.

Despite all of that, taxes were cut, wars were pursued unpaid for. For the first time in the history of the country, we engaged in major military operations and didn't even make an attempt to pay for them. That is not the definition of fiscal responsibility. Yet many of the same proponents of that policy are urging us today that we cannot do unemployment compensation insurance unless we pay for it. But, of course, let's extend the Bush tax cuts for all Americans, including the wealthiest, and in that case add another $700 billion to our deficit over 10 years. That doesn't seem to make any economic sense.

This proposal is supported by people who are knowledgeable about the way the economy works. In a statement released today, 33 economists, including 5 recipients of the Nobel Prize in economics and 5 former chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers, have said:

Continuing the about-to-expire federal emergency

unemployment insurance program, which provides extra weeks of

benefits to the long-term unemployed, is sensible economic

policy that will not only assist the unemployed but help

maintain spending, overall demand, and employment at this

critical point in the recovery. . . . Eliminating these

benefits, on the other hand, will cause hardship for the

long-term unemployed, scale back spending, and weaken the

economy since unemployment benefits are one of the most

effective means available to support overall demand.

Unemployment has remained above 9 percent for 18 months

already and will likely remain high for some time to come,

making a strong case for continuing the current program for

another 12 months. Moreover, the special provisions for

extending unemployment insurance during recessions have

traditionally been financed by short-term fiscal deficits and

this remains a prudent approach. The program will not

contribute significantly to long-term deficits because its

costs will diminish automatically as the economy recovers and

unemployment returns to more normal levels.

Let me say that again in my own words. Our colleagues are suggesting a permanent extension of tax cuts that will cost, over 10 years, $700 billion, and presumably 10 years after that and 10 years after that. That is a huge structural change to our revenue. Unemployment compensation benefits are cyclical. They rise in difficult times, like today, and they fall as the economy recovers. So we are not talking about a long-term commitment to a program of deficit enhancement; we are talking about short-term relief for struggling Americans.

I think these economists make the case extraordinarily well. I ask unanimous consent that their letter be printed in the Record.

As I indicated before, their view has been echoed by the CBO. Tax cuts, in their view, are the least effective form of economic stimulus, and the most effective is unemployment insurance benefits.

On November 16, the Department of Labor released an independent study that was commissioned during the Bush administration. It found that since mid-2008, the Federal unemployment insurance program has saved 1.6 million jobs in every quarter, averting 1.8 million layoffs per quarter at the height of the downturn, and reduced the unemployment rate by 1.2 points.

Separately, the Economic Policy Institute has found that continuing the programs through the end of 2011 will support the creation of 700,000 full-time equivalent jobs.

People who get unemployment insurance benefits tend to take that money and go to the grocery store or buy shoes for their children or pay down, if they can, some of their credit card debt. Maybe in this holiday season they will buy an extra present for their children. That keeps our economy moving, and it keeps the people in the grocery stores working, people at department stores working, and the manufacturers producing these goods working.

Our economy grew at 2 percent in the third quarter and in a recent Wall Street Journal article, Goldman Sachs analyst Alec Phillips estimated that if unemployment insurance benefits expired, it would shave half a percentage point from growth. Such a decline would cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. So here is a policy that will expand jobs, maintain jobs, and if we don't pursue it, we will find ourselves contracting employment at the very time that all Americans are asking us to do something very clear-cut: get jobs, keep jobs, produce jobs, and find a way to create them. This could also engender a downward spiral because if the jobs contract, that could be the beginning of further contraction, and it could leave us in a worse situation.

So not only will families feel the brunt of this lack of unemployment compensation benefits, it is the small businesses throughout every community--it is the retailers and the people who depend upon their neighborhood customers to come in and buy the goods and services that not only provide them what they need but also provides the cash flow for small businesses to keep operating.

Failure to maintain unemployment insurance will mean that 2 million jobless workers will lose benefits in December. Two million Americans, this December, will stop receiving benefits. Several hundred thousand unemployed workers will lose their benefits every month, culminating in up to 6 million losing benefits by the end of 2011. Now is the time to govern, the time to act, and now is the time to do what we have always done in a situation like this. It is the time to act promptly and timely and pass an extension of the unemployment insurance benefits.

We have seen over the last year delay after delay. We have seen benefits expire only to retroactively be restored through procedural votes and delays.

One of the ironies is that we get these procedural votes that we can't move forward on a bill but, finally, when the bill comes up to a vote, there is overwhelming support, which suggests to me that the process of delay has taken primacy over the substance of policy. That is not worthy of our constituents and the crisis they face today in this country. We have, as I said, continuously maintained unemployment compensation benefits, and we have extended benefits whenever our unemployment rate nationally is above 7.2 percent. Republican administrations, Democratic administrations, Republican Congresses, and Democratic Congresses have always recognized that at the level of 9 percent unemployment, extended unemployment benefits were almost automatic--something you had to do for all the reasons I have cited, such as the economic effects on the economy, but most fundamentally it is giving people a chance to just make ends meet until they can find a job.

So I think we are in a position where we must go forward. Acting now is the right thing to do, the responsible thing to do, and the wise economic thing to do. We need to swiftly pass this 1-year extension.

Many colleagues are joining Senator Baucus, the chairman of the committee, in introducing this legislation. I urge at this point that we move forward, and at this point I make the following request.

Yes.

I think the Senator from Illinois has stated it very clearly, very succinctly, and very accurately. That, apparently, is the choice. It is a choice I find difficult to understand for the reasons the Senator has laid out. We want to respond to the needs of so many families, working families. And this is one of those programs that, by definition--if you qualify for unemployment benefits, you had a job, you just lost it. So these are working families who are now looking for some support as they search desperately for jobs.

As we pointed out too, not just in terms of the individual recipients but for the economy overall, the benefit is substantial. It is about $1.90 in economic activity for every $1 that we put into the benefit. On the other side of the spectrum, economists have looked at the impact of these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and find very little growth in economic activity, and, frankly, that makes sense. This is not economics at MIT or Harvard or anyplace else. If you are struggling at $368 a month, it is not going to go into your vacation fund or for buying objects of art. It is going to go to the grocery store and into all of the demands of a family. If you are fortunate enough through your hard work and through your ingenuity to be making over $1 million a year, your consumption package is not going to be altered dramatically by these tax cuts. That is the conclusion of the economists, and I think the Senator said it very well.

Unanimous-Consent Request--S. 3981

So I thank the Senator from Illinois, but at this juncture, I would like to formally, Madam President, ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 3981, a bill to provide for a temporary extension of unemployment insurance provisions, and that the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be read three times, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; and that any statements relating thereto appear at the appropriate place in the Record, as if read.

If the Senator will pause for a moment, I am concluding, and then the Senator will have his own time.

Again, I think it is unfortunate that we cannot move this bill. I think, to put it very succinctly, we will try again. I hope we can. I hope we will for the sake of our country, small businesses, and families across my State and in this Nation who need this help and assistance.

With that, I yield the floor.

I object.

Madam President, my colleague from Massachusetts has made a rather vigorous and impassioned statement. What I sense, though, is he is quite willing to put $700 billion of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans on the credit card but not extend unemployment benefits, as we have done persistently, decade after decade, without offsets, for people who are struggling without work. So if we are talking about coming together, avoiding increased deficits, let's look at this big issue of these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Let's look at the offsets there, I suggest.

I also suggest, in terms of his argument we are not doing anything, that the record, unfortunately, of my colleagues on the other side, with respect to this issue--and we are talking about the issue of unemployment compensation benefits extension--has been one of delay and delay and delay. June 17 of this year we tried to extend these benefits and it failed in a cloture vote. They would not even let us get to the substance of the bill or amendments, perhaps, which could have paid for them or tried to offset them.

Then we came back on June 24, a week later, and had another vote. Of course, again, by 57 to 41 it was opposed.

Now we come to July 20. It finally passed 60 to 40, the minimum number of votes. The vast majority of the opposing caucus still says no.

The notion that we are somehow blocking dealing with the economic issues is so far from reality. What we have seen is obstruction, particularly when it comes to unemployment compensation benefits. Now here we are again. As I said, when you look back to Republican administrations and Democratic administrations, when we have had this level of unemployment, we have always managed to come together and to go ahead and pass these measures on a bipartisan basis and not with three cloture votes but with one perhaps procedural vote and then a substantive vote.

The issue, though, is let's not be selective. If we are serious about the deficit, let's take some positive steps to reduce the deficit. One is not to extend tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans at $700 billion over 10 years. That is a positive step. If that is something that is going to be entertained by the other side, I encourage that discussion. But as we go forward, we are going to come back, again, because ultimately we have these discussions.

I think my colleague from Massachusetts has passion, sincerity, and great energy which he has brought to this body, but ultimately we are going to have to go to people in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, several million of them over the next year, and say: Sorry, you are not getting any unemployment compensation benefits.

Will we go to the wealthiest and say: Oh, by the way, we took care of you folks; you are getting $100,000 in tax benefits. I think we have to deal with the immediate crisis. I think we have to deal with the families who are struggling today. I think we have to do it now. I hope our leaders could work out an arrangement where we could come to this floor and, in a scheduled debate, 5 hours on one side, 5 on the other, and take the vote. That has not been the record on unemployment compensation in this Congress.

Again, I object. The issue, the offset, discretionary spending--I think if you burrowed down into that, you would find that would be funds of a whole category of programs that could be spent, should be spent, to help the economy move forward.

But I again urge we reconvene, that we once again see if we can work our way forward on these unemployment compensation benefits. We have done this before through these procedural delays that were as a result of votes by my colleagues on this side not to take up the bill in a timely manner. We had periods of time where unemployment lapsed and we had to retroactively restore it. We may have to do that again.

If there is delay, if we are at the 11th hour, I, frankly, looking backward, and others would have preferred an extension of benefits that would have gone way past this point, would have gone into next year if we had to. We are talking about a year's extension now. I hope we can get that. We will continue to fight.

Madam President, I object. And I have a pay-for alternative on which I would like to speak.

Madam President, I wish to thank the Senator from Rhode Island, who passionately spoke about his proposal, his bill to deal with a very important problem we are facing in the United States.

I am not the new person here anymore. Somebody came in yesterday. But I will say that it is still new to me that here we are, with 6\1/2\ hours before the benefits will expire, and we are now discussing this. God forbid we actually think ahead and spend a little bit of forethought in preparing and working together to try to come up with some type of solution before being faced with a 6\1/2\-hour deadline before the benefits expire. So, once again, I know I am not the newest guy anymore, but I have to say that this is not the way to do business in the Senate. And if it is, it needs to change.

So here we are. The Senator just spoke about our needing to do this to keep the economy moving. No, we have to start focusing on jobs. That is what we have to do to get this economy moving. We have to start focusing on the things that are important--the deficit, the spending. Yesterday, we couldn't even pass the 1099 fix--something small businesses and all businesses in this country are clamoring for. We could not do that one thing--one thing. Now all of a sudden we are going to do another extension.

I have complete and total sympathy and understanding for this. I want to help. More than anybody here, I want to help. But to just keep throwing money at a problem when it is not paid for, with 6\1/2\ hours left, to put people on the spot instead of doing it the right way-- working together, getting together in an office with the leadership and the people who care about these issues and coming up with a common solution--makes no sense to me.

The reason we are having this high unemployment which my colleagues keep referring to--9 percent unemployment--is because there is no certainty in business. There is so much uncertainty right now in the business world, whether it is with the financial services people or the estate planners. Right now, we have zero percent. If you die--folks say it is a good year to die because next year it could be 55 percent or it could be less. Who knows. So there is so much money on the sidelines right now that we don't know what to do. It is not coming in to get the economy moving.

We can't do the 1099 fix, we can't do the R&D tax credits, we can't work on accelerated depreciation, and we haven't repatriated any of the monies that are offshore. What do we do? We put up more and more roadblocks for businesses, so they do not want to hire these people off the unemployment rolls. Yet here we are with 6\1/2\ hours left, people aren't hiring, and we spent 7 days on food safety. Listen, I love to eat as much as the next guy, but give me a break. We should have spent 7 days working on the one thing the people who voted in November wanted--and they sent us a very powerful message--and that is getting our economy moving again; focusing on jobs, jobs, jobs; streamlining the regulatory process; and firing away to get this economy moving. But we needed to work on food safety. Oh my gosh, that was so important. I am glad I rushed back from our break to work on food safety. Now, I know we have some issues in that regard, but don't you think the 1099 fix and unemployment benefits and all these other things are a little bit more important?

Some of my colleagues will say--the Senator from Illinois just said it--that we are here debating tax cuts. No, we are not. We are not debating tax cuts. I have been here for every vote we have had. I have been to every meeting since I have been back here. Where were we talking about tax cuts? Am I missing something? No, we haven't been talking about tax cuts. We haven't debated or discussed anything to do with business and getting our businesses and our economy moving again.

The recent job numbers in Massachusetts reflect over 280,000 people unemployed in my State alone--over 8 percent of the Massachusetts workforce. As the Senator from Rhode Island mentioned--and I know Rhode Island well; I eat in Federal Hill regularly--the unemployment is much higher there. They have very serious problems. And one of the reasons we have problems is because we are not focusing on anything to do with business. We are not giving them the tools and resources they need to actually hire the people on the unemployment rolls. It is like a catch- 22.

Nearly 15 million people across the country are unemployed, 6 million of them having been without work for 6 months or more. That is roughly five people for every one job opening. Families in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Illinois are all struggling. They sent that very powerful message a couple of week ago. They are struggling to make ends meet and, as the Senator from Rhode Island said, to buy food, to buy shoes, to buy extra Christmas presents. I understand that. But if they had a job and had the pride of going out and working hard each day and if businesses had that certainty of hiring that new employee, they could do that and a lot more. They could actually invest in the future of our country.

We are in the midst of a historic economic crisis. I realize that. People are unable to find work, and I recognize that as well. The longer they are out of

work, the harder it is to actually find work and become employable.

I could go on and on as to how Congress has chosen to spend its time. I remember that before we went on break, before the elections, we wasted so much time on stuff that did nothing to help the economy. So here we are. I figured that when we came back, after the message was sent, we would get it loudly and clearly--big change over in the House. Here we are. We are going to get right back to the economy. But what do we do? We do food safety. Are you kidding me? People deserve better. The people who are unemployed deserve better.

The consequences of our failure to act are the 15 million unemployed workers in our country because they are unable to find that job. So here we are, 6\1/2\ hours before the benefits are going to expire. And I do not want to see that happen. Let me make it very clear to anyone listening or watching or however the press wants to regurgitate my statements: I don't want this to happen. It doesn't need to happen. As many of my colleagues know, if we fail to act today, 60,000 Bay Staters will see their unemployment checks evaporate at the end of the week and 800,000 workers will see their checks disappear. That number will increase to 2 million by the end of December.

So we are faced with another important decision, as we are with every other decision we make here: Do we provide the important benefits by burdening future generations, by adding on to that almost $14 trillion national debt, or do we provide the important benefits by raising taxes on businesses that are already struggling?

If you want to talk about the Bush tax cuts, listen, that was a tax policy proposed by a President, supported by Congress, and it has been the tax policy for the last 10 years. To put a tax increase on anybody in the middle of a 2-year recession is going to add to these unemployment numbers and will be an absolute job killer.

So is there a better way? Of course. There is always a better way, especially when we work together. We can always find a better way, as I have tried to work with the Senator from Oregon and other Senators to find commonsense solutions to our very serious problems. That is why I am once again offering an offset extension of unemployment benefits.

The funny thing is that the proposal--and this is what I find so ironic. I will see where everyone wants to stand. If my colleagues want to do something today, I say to the Senators who are here and listening, we can provide that 1-year extension. In fact, I am offering an offset that was supported by 21 Democrats yesterday when we tried to do the 1099 offset bill, which I supported. I was a cosponsor, in a bipartisan manner. I supported both the Republican and the Democratic proposal just hoping, God forbid, we could get one thing done--just one. Twenty-one Democrats supported that bill.

So here I am with my offer. My proposal is to offset the unemployment insurance--sorry, I need to take a breath here--the offset they supported yesterday would rescind unobligated discretionary funding. It is the same offset we did yesterday. So what is the difference? Do you know what the difference is? People are hurting, and they need the help in 6\1/2\ hours. The 1099 fix we can address down the road, but others need it in 6\1/2\ hours.

So for those who supported it yesterday, I am certainly hopeful that they will support it again today. I don't know, is it me? I ask my colleagues to join in and be cosponsors. Is it because I am a Republican that we will not pass it? It is because it is my idea? I am the almost new guy. I get that. But what about looking past party politics, as I have done since the day I got here, to try to find commonsense solutions for people who are hurting. And trust me, there are a lot of people hurting. Why don't my colleagues join me in supporting this proposal that 21 other Democrats proposed yesterday and who actually went down in the well and voted on? This is a truly bipartisan proposal that we should be able to rally around. I am confident that we can work together, as the people demanded only a couple of weeks ago.

As we enter the final weeks of this 111th Congress, there are several priorities that lie ahead. As I said earlier--I know I am getting worked up, but it just incenses me--we are here with 6\1/2\ hours remaining, and we just found out really today, or late yesterday, that we were even going to talk about this. We have to provide that certainty to businesses, from small mom-and-pop businesses all the way to the biggest corporations. They need to know what is up. They need to know they can actually rely on us to set policy that allows them to plan for the future, so they can get those 9-plus percent people off of unemployment.

Do you think we are going to keep creating more and more government jobs; that is it? We are just going to keep printing the money and there is no consequence? There is plenty of consequence. The consequence is not on our grandchildren now; we are at our great-great- grandchildren as to paying this obligation back.

We still have to ensure that the Federal Government keeps running. Let me see: We have the estate tax issue, we have dealing with tax proposals or policy at all, we are trying to get the regulatory scheme in place so we can give businesses the incentive to maybe bring money back from the offshore accounts they are holding so they do not invest in other businesses in other countries, we have this issue--we have a lot of other things on the table and we have done nothing. We spent time on food safety.

I love to eat. I have seen many people around here, we all love to eat. I want my food safe, make no mistake about it. I do not want to belittle that effort. But we need to provide money so people can actually go out and buy the food we are trying to make safe. We cannot keep spending and borrowing with no regard to our future, to our fiscal future. We need to be fiscally responsible and find ways to pay for the initiatives and policies that we think are important.

When you talk about the money--listen, it is not the government's money. It is people's money. When they have money, they traditionally invest it, and they invest in businesses and they continue to get that economic engine going. It is not the government's money.

It is also very clear to me that people want to work and they want us to focus on that one issue. I do not know why we are avoiding it--I do not. Did you know we are avoiding that one issue that can get our country back on track? Let's just say we took all the recommendations from the debt commission that have been proposed. If we do not do the other things, it is going to be short-lived, if it works at all.

Creating jobs and supporting policies that improve economic growth have been my priority and will continue to be my focus in the Senate. There is nothing more important. I encourage the administration to immediately drop everything and focus on the economy. It is the one thing that is our ticket out of the economic mess we are in right now; instead, we are doing food safety.

I also think we need to give people that lifeline in order to get them through the tough times. Make no mistake, I agree they need help. But I look at it, are we going to do it from the bank account or are we going to put it on the credit card--bank account, credit card? How about you folks up there--bank account, credit card? OK. I know what I want to do. I will use the bank account. Let's use money that is already in the system and put it to good use immediately by 12 o'clock tonight. Let's do it.

We can settle this tonight. We can provide that extension of benefits tonight. My bipartisan idea will allow that to happen and will prevent millions of Americans from losing their benefits. Providing this 1-year extension will allow us to focus on the many other important priorities we have and that we have to handle before the end of the year.

You want to stay through the holidays and everything. Hey, I am here. Whatever. My kids are grown; they do their own thing anyway. Do I want to stay here? Sure, I will stay. We will stay and we will go out and celebrate Christmas here. Whatever. But we have so many things we need to do and we could do them right now.

I am glad food safety is done. We do not have to do it anymore. So what is next? Let me see--just pick something. I guarantee, I bet--I know betting is illegal here--I will bet we do not do anything that has to do with the economy. I will bet you.

I encourage my colleagues to join with me and stop using the credit card and burdening additional generations with this tremendous debt that we cannot afford.

Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 4915

I ask unanimous consent the Finance Committee be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 4915; that all after the enacting clause be stricken and the substitute amendment at the desk be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

I yield.

Madam President, once again, make no mistake, I have great respect for the Senator from Rhode Island. We worked on many regional issues--fishing and military issues. I respect his service not only to the military but also to his State. But I have to respectfully disagree with his presentation and representation on some of the issues.

He keeps referring back to the tax cuts for the rich. That is great. We are not dealing with that right now. It is not something we are dealing with because we have not dealt with anything to do with any tax policy or structure since I have been here--zero. We have not done the estate tax, we have not done any tax policies, we have not done anything. Now you want to kind of muck it up and talk about if you do this, we should not do that. Listen, we are here, we have 6 hours and 15 minutes to deal with this issue. I am not quite sure why it took so long to get to this point. Why couldn't we have spent the last 7 days, when we were doing food safety, dealing with this? Why? Because there is no priority in taking care of people who are hurting and dealing with the issues that are affecting our economy and our country on a very real and personal basis.

My colleague says there have been delays, we should just do it for longer than 1 year. He wants to do it for longer than 1 year? Great. Pay for it. The reason there have been delays is because we wanted to find a funding source. We could have initially taken it out of the unallocated stimulus dollars that were being used as special slush funds for folks and agencies. That was one of the delays, I remember, being part of that. That didn't pass. I think I got two Democrats.

Yesterday, we did a 1099 fix and 21 Democrats supported it. What is the difference? Now we are talking about real people--about kids. It is about the kids. I keep saying it is about the kids. It is not just about the kids who are here right now; it is about the future generations who are going to have to try to figure out a way to pay for this insurmountable debt.

I reiterate, it is pretty simple--bank account, credit card. That is all I am saying. Happy to help, folks. The folks up there listening, go back and say to your friends and family: Senator Brown of Massachusetts said bank accounts, credit card. It makes sense.

I want to help. But I also want to streamline, consolidate this, weed out any fraud, waste, abuse, any money we are not using properly, and get it out the door into businesses and families and get the economy moving again.

So here we are. I am very curious to see what is next. I enjoyed the food safety. I voted for it. I gave some input on it, and I voted for it. I am happy to help. It is not going to be implemented in 6 hours and 15 minutes. The people need our help right now.

Madam President, I appreciate your paying attention and leading us. I am just hopeful that we can come together and use some common sense and start to focus on the economy. It is the economy, period.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from Alabama. Senator Sessions has been an outstanding leader on many issues but specifically on this issue of fighting against this debt. He and I often talk about these concerns. He comes to the floor, and he articulates these concerns so the American people can understand how dangerous this situation is. But he does not just come and talk about the problem; he offers real solutions to cap our spending, to find mechanisms to get this Congress on the right course.

As my friend mentioned, I am new to the Senate. I was appointed and came here in September of last year. My experience is in business and my experience is in State government back home in Florida. The comparisons to how Congress manages its money--your money--versus how a family does or a business does or even a State government does, those comparisons are striking because this is the only institution I have ever been a part of where we do not have to make ends meet, where we just spend money we do not have, where we never have a discussion about, well, if we raise this budget for this particular part of the money we spend, how much are we going to have to lower this budget. That discussion does not happen in the U.S. Congress.

In 2011, we are going to take in an estimated $2.2 trillion in revenue from taxes--money that is coming from you, the American people--but we are going to spend $3.8 trillion. That is like a family in my home State, say, in Ocala, who makes $22,000 a year and they are going to spend $38,000. Oh, by the way, they have $1 million in debt. It is unsustainable.

The way the American people run their families, the way businesses have to run their budgets, the way State governments that are constitutionally required to balance their budgets have to cut spending in tough times--we do not have those mechanisms in this body, and we do not have enough people, such as Senator Sessions, Senator Chambliss, my friend from Georgia, and Senator Coburn from Oklahoma, who come to the floor and bring forth good ideas to talk about this spending problem.

This current bill to extend unemployment insurance and add money for doctors who give Medicare services--a lot of those folks in my State in Florida--and for money for COBRA, which is health care when you are unemployed, so government can put in that portion your employer would normally pay for--these are all good things. Every Member of this body, all 100 Senators, all 41 Members of the Republican side want to vote for this bill.

Last night, as my friend from Alabama said, we had a deal worked out with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to pay for this. What a novel idea: We are going to spend new money, and we are actually going to cut money from someplace else in the budget so we do not add to the deficit and the debt--shockingly good idea in Washington. But the deal fell apart because our friends in the House of Representatives, the Democratic leadership, would not agree to it.

Let me tell you, there is probably no State in the Union that needs this money more than Florida. I want to vote for it, but I cannot vote for it because it is not paid for.

My friend from Georgia just talked about the unemployment number that came out--more than 10 percent unemployment in Georgia. He has a new number coming out today. The number came out in Florida. We are at 12.2 percent unemployment announced today--12.2 percent, the worst unemployment in the history of keeping records in Florida. The second worst time was in 1973 to 1975, during that recession. There are 1,126,000 Floridians out of work. By the way, that is just the unemployed number. We know those who are underemployed--people who lost their jobs and now have to work part time and cannot get full-time employment--we know that number, if you add it with those who are unemployed, is probably 17, 18, 19 percent of the people.

When I go home to Florida and I am walking down the street, one out of every five people I see of working age and ability either does not have a job or does not have enough work. That is the issue on which we should be focused. But we cannot continue to pay for things here that we cannot afford. We cannot continue to burden our kids and the next generation with debt they will not be able to pay.

The hour of awakening and the hour we will be responsible and feel the impact for this spending is not just 5 or 10 years from now; it is now, it is today. Let me give an example.

Today in the Wall Street Journal, there is an article by Tom Lauricella. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this article in the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. President, the article talks about the fact that when we are selling our debt, which is what the Federal Government does when we do not have enough money to pay for our expenditures, when we spend more than we have, we borrow and we issue debt instruments-- bonds, Treasury notes. Now we find out in today's Wall Street Journal that the demand for our debt is falling. As my friend, Senator Sessions from Alabama, said, Warren Buffett now is a better investment than the U.S. Treasury. What an important statement that is for us to think about, that we no longer are the best investment, that an individual in this country is a more worthy investment.

Now Treasury note demand is down. What happens when less people want to buy our debt? When they turn their nose up at our Treasury offerings, the bond prices go down and the yield goes higher. The interest rate goes up. That does a couple things. One is that we have to spend more money on interest payments. That means more of our spending in the year will go to pay for our debt. The third or fourth-- depending on how you count it--biggest expenditure every year in our budget is our interest payments. There is more than $200 billion a year in interest payments alone. That is money that could be sent back to you, the taxpayer, or could be used to pave roads or hire teachers or send kids to college, and we are sending it to finance bad decisions we have already made. But now, with the interest rates, the yield rates going higher on the debt we are offering, guess what it is going to do. It is going to increase the cost of borrowing money, which is going to increase the cost of mortgages.

So here I am from Florida, and I sure want to extend unemployment insurance to folks who are suffering, but I also don't want to do any more damage to our real estate market. We have some of the worst foreclosure rates in the country. So what is going to happen when that family of four in Naples, FL, who has been struggling through this economy, has a problem keeping a job? Maybe mom lost a job and now she is underemployed and dad is unemployed, and they are trying to make their mortgage payments. They have an adjustable rate mortgage and their interest rates are going to go up. What happens if someone wants to buy a new house in our struggling real estate economy? They can't go buy that house because that house is now more expensive because the interest rates have gone up.

So the problems of our debt and our deficit are not just going to be visited on our kids, they are being visited now. Other countries around the world, their economies are booming. Their growth is coming back-- places such as Brazil are on fire. Their stock market is up incredibly because the world is finding it a better place to invest than the United States. Our debt is making us a bad investment. So not just for our kids or our grandkids, right now this economy is going to have problems recovering because of the debt we have now.

But let's talk a second about the future. Sometime between now and Monday my wife and I are going to have our fourth child. I have the cell phone in my pocket. If it rings, I have to go. That baby is going to be born in a country where he or she will be responsible for about $40,000 in debt. What is the future of our baby, along with our other three sons who are 6, 4 and 2, going to be like in this country with all of this crushing debt, with $10 trillion more in debt expected by the end of this decade?

We are going to pay $800 billion in interest payments by the end of this decade if this spending continues. That is more than we spend on the defense of the United States, more than our Defense Department budget. More and more will go to interest; less and less will go to spending. Then what will happen? Taxes are going to have to go up, and by the way, 70 million people are going to retire and they are going to go into Medicare. Those two programs right now don't have enough money in them.

So while I am high on the American people, and I am optimistic this country can do anything, I am seriously worried about this government. I am seriously worried about the fact that we spend money we don't have, and I am seriously worried about the fact that there are too few Members of this body and the body down the hall who want to make the tough decisions to start cutting our spending now to save our future.

By the way, it wouldn't be that hard to do. It wouldn't be that hard to do for us to come together, Democrats and Republicans alike. The American people should know we have colleagues on the other side of the aisle who want to do this. We talk to them. They are concerned too. But we have to come together and address this, and we are going to have to make, as the President would say, grownup decisions about the future of this country. Some things are going to have to get cut, and we are going to have to spend less.

Let me give an example of the framework--for when we come back from the break--of a piece of legislation I will introduce to give us the mechanism for doing this. If we went back to the spending that we had in 2007, which is just 3 years ago, and we froze spending at that level for the next 10 years--until 2020--we would balance the budget in 2013, and we would cut the deficit of $12 trillion in half by 2020.

Now, the question I ask when I am back in Florida talking to constituents is--as my friend from Georgia said--whether at a supermarket, at a townhall meeting, or at a church--would you be able to live off the money you made in 2007? Well, the answer unanimously is, yes; it is more than I am making now. The economy didn't go into recession until December of 2007. So why can't government go back to what we spent in 2007 and cap it? Then we could do something we don't do in this Congress: We could look at the money we are spending now as opposed to trying to spend new money and find out whether we are doing it efficiently.

We could cut the wasteful programs. My colleague from Oklahoma has already been identifying hundreds of duplicative programs in government. We could go and find ways to combat waste, fraud, and abuse. For example, we know there is $60 billion to $100 billion a year in Medicare fraud--health care for seniors. My State, unfortunately, is the leading place for health care fraud in the country.

I have a proposal I have talked to my friend, the chairman of the Finance Committee, about--Chairman Baucus--and other Democrats, and I think we are going to get some bipartisan support to pass that this year, and that may save us $20 billion by stopping waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare. Does anyone think there is not waste and fraud and abuse throughout the spending of government? When is the last time someone went and looked under the hood of one of these agencies and said: Could we do the same work with less? Do we need to spend as much money as we spent last year?

Businesses do this every year. They are doing it right now, just as families are doing it. They are saying: Do we really need to do what we did last year? We have less money; what do we cut? Government doesn't do that.

Our friends on the other side are more interested in new programs. We should all spend a year or two focusing on the programs we have. My friend from Oklahoma, Senator Coburn, is a champion at oversight and gets under the hood of these agencies and looks at the spending. It is not just in the social services agencies, it is in all the agencies--in the Defense Department and everywhere.

We have a duty to the American people to make sure that every dollar we spend, we spend wisely. Let's spend a couple of years questioning the money we are spending now. Let's have our agency heads, our Secretaries, our Cabinet members, instead of devising new programs, go into the programs they have and see whether they are helping the American people. If they are not, let's cut them. Let's freeze hiring across the Federal Government. A lot of folks are going to retire out of the Federal Government when the baby boomers retire. It is an easy way to shrink the size of government, to let those folks retire and not replace them. Technology in the private sector gives us great opportunities to do more with less. In government, we do less with more.

So I am appreciative of my friend from Oklahoma for bringing up this point and objecting. It is not politically popular to do. None of us wants to stand in the way of unemployment compensation. I need it in Florida for my folks who are out of work. But we are impacting our way of life now, and we are going to impact our children's lives. When my baby is born this weekend, or on Monday, I am going to be extremely happy--and I know my wife is--about bringing a fourth child into the world, but it will still be in the back of my mind: Is he or she going to inherit the same America I have, with all the same opportunities I was able to enjoy? I hope so.

With that, I yield the floor to my friend from Oklahoma.