Homebuyer Assistance and Improvement Act of 2010

If I may, before my colleague speaks--I will yield to him right away.

Before my neighbor from Massachusetts leaves the floor, let me commend him for his comments here without getting into details of the bill he has offered but, more importantly, the general thrust of what he has expressed. As he is a newly arriving Member of this body and may be here for many years, I am wrapping up three decades of service. But I hope people will listen to what he has to say.

People come to the Chamber and to this institution with the idea of getting things done for our country. That is so critically important. What he has suggested, what I have heard others talk about today, is making this institution functional so we can actually come to terms. It is not easy. We represent different constituencies and different interests. But if the spirit expressed by Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts in these brief remarks he has made this morning can carry forward in all the debates and discussions we have, we will find a lot more solutions. I want to say thank you.

Madam President, I should have noted, I will be leaving with my friend and colleague from Illinois as well. He has been a wonderful addition to this institution. He has done a very fine job representing the people of Illinois. I regret we didn't get to serve more years together, that he didn't get a chance to come here earlier. He made a good contribution in the short time we have been here. Had the Senator been here longer, I think he would have made a significant contribution over the years. I thank the Senator for the time he has served and the manner in which he served as well.

Wall Street Reform

I rise this afternoon to spend a few minutes to talk about a most important piece of legislation facing this body and, more importantly, our country, and that is the Wall Street reform bill. In fact, the Presiding Officer has had a deep interest in the subject matter and in her previous life actually worked in the area of financial services. She not only brings an interest from the State of North Carolina, one of the fine States that has a significant involvement in the financial services of our country, but has also a knowledge about these institutions, how they work, and how the financial system works. I am very grateful to her for her thoughts and suggestions as we have been through this rather long journey over the last couple of years in the wake of the financial crisis that befell our Nation most dramatically in the fall of 2008.

I think all of our colleagues here know what is at stake. We do not need to spend a lot of time talking about the circumstances over the last couple of years. We know it, and more importantly, and more poignantly, our constituents know it, because they are living it.

All of us have jobs here. We are fairly well compensated, to put it mildly, by any standard. We have good health care. We own our homes or are not worried about whether we can afford the rent in the places we live--whatever the circumstances. We are in some ways insulated from the day-to-day agonies our fellow citizens go through and have gone through over these last couple of years.

But I also have a deep appreciation of the fact that my colleagues, despite not personally going through these terrible times as their constituents are, understand the importance of this issue. I am deeply grateful to each and every Member of this Chamber over the last 2 years and almost everyone in this Chamber has been involved in this debate or discussion to one degree or another. The fact is we have come as far as we have in this bill because there is that interest and because there is that concern that we need to address the architecture, the financial structures of our Nation so as to avoid the kind of problems we have seen our Nation go through over these last several years.

Again, the numbers have been repeated so often I am almost hesitant to repeat them this afternoon. Certainly we will know better tomorrow. I guess the unemployment numbers will come out again.

But well over 8\1/2\ million jobs have been lost. Frankly, I think that number is an underestimation of what has happened. Some people have found part-time work, falling back in and out of it. But the number, 8.4 million, is used. It is certainly no less than that and, I suspect, as I said, far more than that.

Seven million of our fellow citizens have had their homes fall into foreclosure. Every time I say that sentence it seems it is so brief to cite the number. But imagine, as we must, that moment when, despite all of your efforts, that dream house you have acquired for your family, because of a lost job, the lost retirement, the closed business, all of a sudden that which you had hoped and dreamed for that has brought stability to your family, a great sense of joy and hope, dreams fulfilled, is all of a sudden closed, foreclosed, lost.

Imagine coming home that night when all of the efforts to hold on to that home are gone and facing your family and telling them the house you have lived in--where you have played, you have eaten, you have dreamt, you have laughed, you have cried, you have done all of the things that building enshrines in the American family--is no longer yours. For 7 million of our fellow citizens that night has happened. Many more face the prospect of that occurring in the months ahead, despite the efforts to get our economy moving again. Retirement incomes, of course, have vanished in a flash, watching the markets decline. Literally years of building security for those retirement years, to contribute to a child's higher education costs, to blunt the costs of a health tragedy to hit your family, all of those rainy days that retirement or savings account can provide to weather those storms have been eliminated.

So there has been a shocking loss of wealth in our Nation as well. Trillions of dollars are gone, incomes that will never be made up. As I mentioned, lost home values, even if you have been able to hold on to your home, home values, on average, have declined about 30 percent. So that equity you might have built up in that dream house, where you have raised your family over the last 10, 15, 20 years, you paid one price for it maybe 20 years ago and had the full expectation that property value, while it may not skyrocket, would increase in value over the years.

So as you became that empty nester as your kids went on to college or marriage or jobs on their own, the hope that you would be able to sell that home to another hopeful buyer and come out of it with some equity that would then provide for that security that you needed to contribute to your family's well being has been totally gone in many cases, even if you have held on to your home.

Well, the bill I briefly want to talk about does not do anything about what has happened. I would love to tell you if we passed this bill that you could get your job back; that passing this financial reform bill would give you your job back. I would love to be able to tell you that when we pass this bill you would get your home back or that somehow you would be able to magically replenish that retirement account or savings account.

This bill does not do any of those things. All this bill does is to say that when the next crisis comes--and surely it will as night follows dawn, as tomorrow follows today we will have another economic crisis. I never suggested this bill was going to stop that. What I hope we are able to do with this bill is minimize the effects of that crisis when it occurs so that it does not metastasize. That may be the best word to use in this case, much as a cancer does.

When an economic crisis hits, if you are able to handle it when it happens, much as you are able to handle a cancer when you discover it before it contaminates your entire body--the crisis that will happen if we can control it, identify it early enough, begin to address the problems that it poses, then we might avoid the kind of catastrophic effect this present economic catastrophe has caused, the most significant in almost 100 years, since the Great Depression more than 80 years ago.

So I want to briefly talk about not only the process we have gone through over the past year and a half, but also what this bill is trying to do. Let me be the first to acknowledge and admit that it does not do everything I would like it to do. I am not overly enthusiastic about every provision in this bill. There are measures that I objected to that are in the bill.

But we serve in a body of our fellow colleagues, the 100 of us who serve here, who work with those who work down the hall from this Chamber where 435 of our colleagues serve, with an administration and regulators, not to mention financial institutions and their employees and all that are involved in the financial network of our Nation, all are impacted and affected by this bill. So it is difficult to try to fashion a piece of legislation that accommodates the various interests and allows us to move forward. But that is what we have tried to do.

Process is important. I will not dwell on this point, but as someone who has spent three decades of my life at this very desk--and it is the only desk I have ever sat at since the day I arrived. This desk was planted over in that far corner as the 100th Senator in the body up until I--some 20 years ago when, through seniority, you get to move your desk around. I ended up in this seat, this spot about 20 years ago, next to this remarkable man whose life we are going to celebrate and are celebrating those days, Robert C. Byrd. He has been my seatmate for the last two decades.

As I said the other day, I was an 8-year-old child sitting in the galleries of the other body watching my father, on January 3, 1953, and a 35-year-old new Congressman from West Virginia be sworn in as newly minted Members of Congress. Some 6 years later, I sat in that gallery up here, in the family gallery, watching my father be sworn in as a Senator from Connecticut, along with a new Senator from West Virginia named Robert C. Byrd, never imagining, as a 7- or 8-year-old or as a 14-year-old, that I would spend 20 years of my life at a desk next to the man who has served longer than any other human being in the history of our Nation.

Process meant a lot to Robert C. Byrd. The Constitution meant a great deal. I carry with me, and every day I have for 20 years, the Constitution that Robert C. Byrd gave me and autographed to me. It is rather threadbare and worn today, but he revered this document. He could absolutely quote it verbatim. He gave me a copy, as he did to all new Members when they arrive, and the importance of understanding the role of this body in our constitutional framework.

He was such a great advocate of the civility and the respect for each other as we try to fashion answers to our Nation's problems. We have been through two major bills in the last Congress. There have been a lot of other bills to consider, but the health care debate and the financial reform debate, I would argue, are the two largest in this Congress, and they are two models of how an institution can operate.

Even though I am glad we prevailed with the health care debate and are going to finally end up dealing with cost and access to our health care system and making it more available to people as a result of our actions taken, it was not a pretty process. Anyone who watched it, let alone those of us who were involved in it, certainly would have preferred that we arrive at the conclusion in a manner differently than what we went through. Maybe not everyone would agree with that. I feel that way.

The second model, if you will, is the one we just went through on financial reform, which was about as open a process as you could ever have. We went through literally months of listening in our committee, the Banking Committee which I chair, to hundreds--and I am not exaggerating--hundreds of experts who came and briefed us either formally or informally, literally dozens and dozens of formal hearings to dissect what had happened, how we got into this mess, who caused it, how was it caused, and what steps we should be taking to see to it this problem, another economic crisis, would not explode as broadly as this one has.

I invited my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, to be involved in all of those meetings, to see to it that they would be present, even at White House meetings, to talk about what we needed to do. We laid out our first ideas together a year and a half ago, even before marking up anything close to a bill.

I presented our first discussion draft of this legislation in November of last year, and it was a discussion draft. After that draft was put forward, I assigned bipartisan working groups to attack the major issues in the bill. In March of this year, I unveiled a new bill that incorporated many of the bipartisan ideas that the working groups

had produced. In fact, what I asked to be done in our committee, in the Banking Committee, was divide up the labor between Democrats and Republicans on certain large, complicated subject matters. And to their credit, they worked very hard. It did not always come up with a final answer in various areas, but they contributed significantly to the product we now have before us in the form of a conference committee report coming to this body, coming to the Senate.

So I am grateful to Richard Shelby, who is not supportive of the bill, but was my ranking member and was the chairman of the Banking Committee for 4 years before I took over the chairmanship in January of 2007.

I will not go down the list and mention all of the members, but the committee members worked very hard. Even though we ended up disagreeing with what we finally produced, I am grateful to them for the efforts they put into the legislation. Beyond that, I have worked every day to keep my colleagues informed every step of the process, at least I have tried to, and if not them directly, their staffs, so there was that sense of inclusion, the model that everyone ought to be able to have a role and participate in the debate of a significant bill.

So the point I am making is, this bill was the product of collaboration of many of my colleagues before the debate even began on the floor of the Senate. On this floor, the debate lasted almost a month, one of the longest debates in many years in the Congress of the United States. Nearly 50 votes were cast by Democrats and Republicans over a 4-week period.

One of the many that passed was the very second one, I think. Senator Boxer of California offered the first amendment that said taxpayers should never again be asked to pay for a bailout of a financial institution. I think that passed unanimously. Then Senator Shelby and I offered an amendment where we reached a bipartisan agreement on measures to end all bailouts of financial institutions once and for all, one of the most contentious areas of the bill.

From that point forward, over the next 4 weeks, with almost 60 amendments back and forth, we ended up passing the legislation by the thinnest of margins, overcoming the procedural votes we needed to in order to reach financial passage of the bill.

The last time the Banking Committee held a conference on any legislation was 7 years ago. So I took my committee product, the Senate product, and we went to what is called a conference. The House had passed its bill in December. We had passed our bill in May. So what normally has happened in the past is they never meet, or if they do meet they met in closed-door sessions to work out the differences. Then they would come back with a product.

The last time the Banking Committee had been to a conference with the House of Representatives on any bill was more than 7 years ago. Those meetings were held mostly in private; the public was never even invited into the room, let alone the press, to observe and to cover the event. We changed all of that. Our conference committee, the 42 members of both Chambers who met, again, for a 2-week period, almost 70 hours that we met, we considered 180 amendments in 70 hours. And 54 amendments were offered by Senators, 34 of which were offered by my Republican colleagues in the conference, 20 by the Democrats.

So combined, between the number of amendments we debated on the floor of the Senate and the number of amendments we debated in conference as Senators--forget the House Members and their amendments--there were over 100 amendments by Democrats and Republicans to the financial reform bill. C-SPAN and the press sat there and watched every minute of the conference and covered every second, gavel to gavel, of the proceedings that went on for almost 70 hours over a 2-week period. My point is, this model of conducting our business, listening to each other, debating and deciding what ought to be in this bill, stands in stark contrast to how we went through the health care debate.

What is the point I am trying to make? If at the end of this process it appears as though we still face a procedural objection to going forward, what difference did it make, then, which course we followed if at the end of the process it did not make any difference?

The motion to invoke cloture is a strange phrase that I suspect most Americans do not have the vaguest idea of its meaning, or very few do. It sounds like something a doctor may do if you are ill, to get a cloture or something. That is what I thought it was when I first arrived here.

Briefly, cloture is a method by which you end a filibuster. In this Chamber, under our rules, we respect the rights of the minority, including a minority of one.

Members can talk as long as they can stand up, under most circumstances, and continue. Robert C. Byrd, in fact, held one of the records. It wasn't the record--Strom Thurmond holds the record, a former Senator I served with from South Carolina--but Robert C. Byrd conducted a filibuster for more than 14 hours. We can do that in this Chamber. But if we want to end the filibuster, we have to invoke cloture. That takes 60 votes--more than a simple majority--to say: We have had enough debate. The process has been fair. It is now time to vote. So we invoke cloture. If we don't think the process has been fair, that we haven't been given a chance to express ourselves, that we have been denied the opportunity to offer amendments or contribute to the debate, then we vote against invoking cloture.

There have certainly been many circumstances when that has been warranted, but I don't know how anyone could make a case that a filibuster on procedural grounds is warranted on this financial reform bill such as we have been through. I don't know what else I could have done to make every Member of this Chamber feel more included in the debate on the reform of Wall Street. If there is something else I could have done to say to a Member: You would have had additional rights or opportunities, I would like to hear it. I don't think I could have. You can't spend 4 weeks in this Chamber through almost 60 amendments, 54 more in a conference, virtually allowing unlimited debate on almost anything that came up, and tell me you think you have been denied the opportunity to fully vent your feelings, to be heard, to offer your ideas and thoughts.

As a departing suggestion of one about to leave in 5 or 6 months, there ought to be some value to the process we have gone through. I have heard this morning already concerns expressed because the institution, in the minds of some, is dysfunctional. I don't want to believe that. I want to believe it is still a functional institution. But if, at the end, this process of what I have tried to lead on the banking bill causes people to believe that it doesn't make any difference, we are still going to vote for procedural roadblocks to this bill because we don't like some of the provisions in it or don't like the bill, then I do despair in some ways for whether this institution can ever function. If, at the end of all of that, we end up with the same kinds of procedural roadblocks as we had on the health care debate, where I would argue there was more legitimacy to invoking those procedural roadblocks, then I think the institution is in a lot more trouble than I would like to believe. I mention the process because it ought to be important to people, seeing to it that we have a chance to go forward.

At the end of that conference, we came up not only with the compromises necessary for a bill but also how to offset the cost of this bill. The House rules require that we demonstrate that the cost of the bill to the overall Treasury of the United States is not going to leave it in deeper debt than would otherwise be the case. We had to come up with offsetting costs for the bill.

The first proposal was not met warmly. It was assessments on large institutions primarily. But there were strong objections expressed, and two or three of our colleagues, who have been very helpful on this bill in offering ideas that would strengthen the bill and made significant contributions, expressed their concerns to me that this was an unacceptable offset, in their minds. So I took the extraordinary step of reconvening the conference. We met yesterday to change the offsets. We did so by two things. One we kept the same, and that was by making permanent the insurance fund in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation,

making it permanent at $250,000. That requires an assessment increase in order to meet those obligations. That was already in the bill. The Congressional Budget Office scores that as providing about $8.5 billion in revenues over the next 10 years. That was there.

The second piece we did is end TARP. That is something all of us have wanted to see since the inception of the program. Can we bring this thing to a close? Under our alternative offset, we end TARP immediately, except for its current obligations. The Congressional Budget Office--and I will provide letters from the CBO confirming these numbers--scored that at about $11 billion over 10 years in savings. That money goes into deficit reduction. This is an offset; it is not a pay-for. What do I mean by that? If the budget of our Nation was $100 and the cost of a program was $10, you would have to make up that $10. It doesn't go directly to pay for those programs, but it provides the offset for the cost of those programs.

The third piece of this to make up the difference was by increasing the reserve ratio at the FDIC, which was supported by the chairperson of the FDIC, to go from 1.15 percent to 1.35 percent but to hold harmless all financial institutions or banks that have assets under $10 billion and to do that not over 4 or 5 years but over the next 10 years until 2020. That provides an additional $5.7 billion.

The CBO has thus scored the entire bill as providing an additional $3.2 billion in deficit reduction because the amounts we will be bringing in exceed the cost of the bill.

So, for my colleagues, ending TARP and complying with what the Chairman of the FDIC has said is a far better suggestion.

I would be remiss at this juncture if I did not specifically thank my colleagues from Maine, Susan M. Collins and Olympia J. Snowe. It was Ms. Collins who said this is a better idea to look at as an offset. I am grateful to her, as I am to her colleague from Maine and my colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Brown, who expressed his concerns about the assessment approach. Again, I will let them speak for themselves on these matters.

But it is important that colleagues know that, going back to a few moments ago talking about process, it was at the suggestion of Democrats and Republicans that changes were made to the bill, including the extraordinary step yesterday of opening the conference. There are those who wanted me to go forward anyway with it. Why would I do that if, in fact, Members have said: I can't be supportive under the present circumstances. The opportunity to make a correction in the bill and therefore come up with a better idea that was more acceptable to more of our colleagues seemed the appropriate step to take. That is exactly what we did. That is how we have offset the cost of this bill.

I will provide additional data. If I have misspoken on the numbers, I will correct my own statement for the record. But I believe I am approximately correct.

Again, none of this is easy. I know there is a temptation at times like this for emotions to rise, passions to find expression. I have great respect for all of my colleagues in the efforts they made. There are moments of frustration when you are trying to pass a major bill, seeking cooperation from your colleagues to get the job done. But this is a complicated piece of legislation. More than 2,000 pages are included in the bill. There are provisions that are not ones I would write myself, but this is the legislative process.

I introduced a bill last November, the one I would have preferred, but in the months since, many Members have had their opportunities to make changes. Some changes I liked; some I didn't. But it should not be that because you don't like one or two or several provisions of a bill, that ought to become more important than the total impact of what you are trying to achieve. There are those who don't like the bill, any part of it at all or very few parts of it. Again, I understand that. Those people are going to vote no. But when someone tells me there is one provision or two they don't like and as a result they are going to vote against everything, that I don't understand, candidly.

We have had our debate. We voted on hundreds of individual provisions between the House and this body. There will be procedural votes. I have made my case that at some point, a process that is as open as this one has been, as inclusive as this one has been, as hospitable as I could possibly make it, as civil as I could possibly make it--if the procedural roadblocks are no different than the legislation that was conducted without any civility, without any of the cooperation and inclusiveness of this, then what is the lesson? What is the lesson for the next major bill if, in fact, going through all of that gets you no further in the process than what we have been through?

This bill doesn't bring back your home, your job, your retirement income. What it does do is to try to see to it that the next crisis will not cause the deep problems this one has.

Let me briefly identify the two or three or four things that are major in the bill. In the absence of these, if we defeat the bill, all of this is gone and we are right back to September of 2008, right back where we were when this body voted, with less than 40 days to go before a national election, to ask the American taxpayer to write a $700 billion check to bail out and stabilize financial institutions. If you reject this effort we have been involved in for almost 2 years in the week when we come back, then we are exactly where we were in the fall of 2008, with all of the vulnerabilities we saw our country experience as a result of not reforming the structures to our financial system.

This bill will end taxpayer bailouts by making it tough for companies to engage in the kind of irresponsible behavior that threatened the economy. It sets up a way to shut down the giant, dangerous companies that failed, through bankruptcy or through a resolution mechanism that lays all of the cost and pain on them, not on the American taxpayer. That is a major achievement.

We also include for the first time institutions that are financial institutions that have operated in the shadow economy of the Nation--no regulation, no one moderating their behavior. This bill brings them all in. They will now be regulated and controlled, so they can't engage in the kind of wildcat behavior that brought our Nation to the point we have been.

The bill creates a consumer financial services protection bureau. I get people acting as if this was the most radical idea in America. If you buy a faulty product--a toaster, a car, a television set--and it is a crummy product, you have a place to go to get some sort of redress. In fact, they are required to recall the products under the Consumer Product Safety Commission and others. If you get a crummy mortgage, a crummy insurance policy, you get a crummy piece of stock because someone lied about it, where do you go? Whom do you call? You get a lawyer--I guess that is the answer--if you have the resources. This bill sets up, for the first time in our history, a place where the average consumer of financial services might be able to get a redress of their grievances.

I know people are acting as if this is some wild socialistic idea, some crazy leftwing notion, after what the country has been through, that we could end up having a place where the average American citizen, who wants to have faith and trust in our economic system, can go to get some relief. God forbid they are treated as they have been in too many instances in the past. That is part of this bill.

This bill will create an advanced warning system. Instead of one set of eyes that, frankly, were closed most of the time, we now have what we call sort of a risk assessment council made up of the various Federal agencies that have prudential responsibility over financial institutions to be meeting and looking at what is going on in the economy, not only here in our Nation but abroad as well. Are there things occurring within companies, within interconnected companies, within countries that could pose a financial risk to our Nation? Spotting them early enough to put a stop to them, to break them up, as a last resort, or to insist that certain things be done to avoid these metastasizing events that have contaminated every aspect of our life because no one stood up early enough to stop them when they first spotted them.

The bill further brings transparency and accountability to the derivatives

market, a $600 trillion--that is not misspeaking; that is not a million, not a billion--a $600 trillion market. It is a phenomenal market. Basically, it has been unregulated and out of control.

We have central clearing exchange trading with new margin and capital requirements for large bank dealers and major swap participants. These safeguards will ensure taxpayers are not left on the hook for Wall Street's bets, particularly with depositors' money, as we saw happen, or an AIG circumstance.

The bill has the so-called Volcker rule to prohibit banking organizations from engaging in proprietary trading and strictly limiting their sponsorship and investment in hedge funds and private equity funds. Again, if they want to risk their own money, that is one thing. Risking your money ought to be something else. We have expanded the Volcker rule, with balance to it. We don't totally eliminate the ability of a bank to hedge on things that are critically important for them. We believe it is an important rule. Without it, we are right back where we were before.

The bill brings transparency to the Federal Reserve. I thank Bernie Sanders of Vermont and others who have insisted on greater auditing and accountability out of the Federal Reserve System which under our bill will bring transparency to it with audits of the so-called 13(3) emergency lending that took place during the financial crisis, and a requirement that the Fed disclose who these so-called counterparties are and information about the amounts they are putting at risk and, in turn, for the American taxpayer, setting conditions on how that money can be used, putting real limitations on it, and giving this body, the Congress of the United States, a chance to respond if, in fact, they exceed their authority.

Further, the bill limits the emergency Fed lending through 13(3) so it can no longer be used to prop up an individual company, as they did with AIG.

The bill requires people to have skin in the game, requiring companies that sell products like asset-backed securities to retain at least 5 percent of the credit risk, so there is no longer an incentive to sell garbage and junk loans to people who could never pay them back thus exposing our economy and our country to further abuse.

These are all things in the bill. If we scrap it, we are right back without any of these protections. I will tell you, it will be a generation before the Congress comes back to deal with these issues again because in the absence of the crisis we have been in, we would not have gotten to this. The crisis gave us an opportunity to respond. These were not new issues. These issues had been lingering around. But the financial resources behind many of these operations are totally resistant to the changes we are talking about because there is too much money to be made for them and too much risk for the American consumer to absorb, and it was not going to have the same kind of concerns and interests brought to the bargaining table when these issues and this legislation was drafted.

The bill gives shareholders, the owners of public companies, a say on executive pay and so-called golden parachutes. We require public companies to take back compensation awarded based on phony financial statements. Shouldn't the owners of public companies have some say in these matters?

Further, the bill encourages whistleblowers with a new program at the Securities and Exchange Commission to encourage people to report securities violations. Ask the victims of Bernie Madoff whether that kind of provision might have made a difference, when we had the whistleblowers writing and begging the Securities and Exchange Commission to take note of what was happening with the Madoff scam. No one was willing to do a darn thing about it. Literally thousands of people were wiped out because no one bothered to listen to a whistleblower who identified the problem.

This bill changes that. It is not to say there will not be additional scam artists. I promise you, there will. But instead of denying the existence of a whistleblower standing up and telling a regulatory body their responsibilities, this bill requires them to take note and to act.

Additionally, because of the size and the complexity of this bill, it is almost certain there will have to be a bill with technical corrections in the future.

So when we take the sum total--obviously, I am describing five or six provisions in a 2,000-page bill--we have a product that I think restores financial security and trust. Let me mention just this point on trust because there is no financial number I could put on trust. But it may be the most important element of all. Put aside all of those individual provisions and titles of the bill, the one thing that has been so severely damaged that is the most important to restore is the trust of the American people in our financial system. Today that trust has been shattered by what has happened.

In the absence of people trusting that the financial system is fair and equitable, then I think we are in deeper trouble than any fix I can write into a bill. People understand when they deposit a paycheck in a bank, there is an assumption of risk that ought to be very little. When they buy an insurance policy, it is a different assumption of risk. When they buy a stock, there is an even further assumption of risk. There are no guarantees it is going to give a great return. In fact, it may fail.

But we ought to be able to trust the system; that it is not going to deceive us and defraud us; that it is not going to send people out to lure us into situations they know we cannot afford and they know they can sell off quickly and make a fast buck on. That trust in our financial structure, which was so important for so long, has been severely damaged over what has occurred in these last several years.

More than any other provision of this bill, more than anything else any of us can write into a piece of legislation, is whether we are going to regain the confidence and the optimism and the trust of that hard-working American family to believe that when they deposit that paycheck, there is not going to be someone investing in a hedge fund or some risky venture with their money--that is prohibited in this bill-- or when they buy a stock there is not going to be someone out there who is actually scamming them in a kiting system which ruins them forever and their families, or when they get a mortgage on a home there is someone not sitting across the table promising to be their financial adviser when they are anything but in the process.

That trust has been so severely hurt that our hope is, more than anything else I have written into this bill, we will be able to bring us back to where Americans feel confidence and trust in our country's financial systems again. So nothing less than that is at stake.

This is a fundamental overhaul of the way our financial system is regulated. It is the greatest change to occur since the reforms which were invoked after the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Beyond that, of course, it is important that what we have done could be harmonized with other nations. The American President, Barack Obama, went to Toronto a few days ago to a meeting of the G20. The conservative Prime Minister of Canada pointed to this legislation and said: This is an opportunity for America to lead in helping the rest of the world to harmonize its rules on financial services. Defeat this bill and someone else will set the ground rules, and we will have to harmonize with them.

If my colleagues think that is a better result, to let the European Union or someone else write what the standards are going to be, then have it and defeat the bill. But if my colleagues believe it is better for the United States to lead and provide the guidelines and the structures that the rest of the world can rally around, then get behind us and support this effort because nothing less than that is at risk, as well, in this legislation.

So no one is going to get everything they want in this bill. I certainly did not. No one ever does. I have never seen a bill in 30 years that ended up becoming the prerogative of one small group. This has been a collective effort--a truly inclusive, collective effort. Over 100 amendments have been offered and considered by my fellow colleagues to this bill in this Chamber in the most open process in decades. It is the only time I have ever seen a conference conducted with the public viewing every single second of it, with 42 Members from the House and Senate

participating almost 70 hours in a 2-week period, not to mention the month we spent on the floor of this Chamber.

So I have done everything I know how to do in trying to accommodate my colleagues to make this as fair and as balanced and as thoughtful as we possibly could. But now is the time to act.

I wanted to take a few minutes today before we, tomorrow, participate in the solemn ceremony of celebrating the life of Robert C. Byrd in this Chamber. It will be a historic moment. I know it was a desire of his when he was alive that at the time of his passing he be recognized in this Chamber. Then, on Friday, many of us will travel to his home State of West Virginia, which he served so remarkably well over the 58 years of his service, to participate at his funeral services. Then we will be gone for a week over the Fourth of July break. Shortly after we come back, based on the schedule set by the majority leader and the minority leader, we will vote on the financial reform package and bill.

So today I wanted to take a few closing minutes to say to my colleagues, I do not know what else I could have done to make this more inclusive, to provide more balance and sense to all of this, to respond to the concerns my colleagues have raised in what we have done.

I urge you, I plead with you to give us the vote on this bill and to understand the process we have gone through and to set a template to say that a process followed by which everyone gets a chance to participate ought to be the model of how the Senate conducts its business. I hope my colleagues will not underestimate the value and importance of that approach we have taken with this bill.

I have taken a long time, and I apologize to my colleagues. But I wanted to explain the process of what we have done in conference. Again, I thank the majority leader. The majority leader does not get thanked enough. He is the captain of our Senate, as the majority leader was under Howard Baker and Bob Dole and Bill Frist and Tom Daschle and George Mitchell and Robert C. Byrd. Without his willingness to make sure we are here to conduct that debate, it would not happen.

So I would be terribly remiss, at the conclusion of these remarks, if I did not express a special thank-you to Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, for making it possible and being supportive of this open process we have been through. Without his willingness to allow that to happen, it would not have happened. I am deeply grateful to him and his staff and others for making it possible for us to come to the moment we are in; that is, to vote for this important piece of legislation.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to talk about the underlying bill that we are actually on today, which is the extenders package.

The Democrats negotiated in very good faith with the Republican Party to try to figure out a way to get tax credits, tax cuts to businesses that we all need to make sure continue in terms of research and development. These are credits they have relied on to keep not only their businesses open but keep them hiring. There is a long list. They have been well explained on the floor. They are all very popular with both sides of the aisle. They have been negotiated over and over.

The Democrats have, in good faith, argued or debated with the Republicans that we need to get these extended for the purpose of stimulating our economic growth. But we have said there is one that we are not going to pay for because, A, we don't have to pay for it; and, B, because it is an emergency. So everything in the extenders package is paid for. Every single item is paid for. Although some people don't like the pay-fors, every single item to extend a tax credit--not new spending on the part of the Federal Government through bureaucracy but tax credits--is paid for except for the unemployment benefits because it is an emergency.

With 15 million people out of work, it is an emergency. For anyone on that side to come to the floor and say Democrats are big spenders and we can't pay for anything and we don't know how to run the government, we

have put a great package together. But there is one thing that is not paid for, and that is unemployment because it is an emergency. That is what this debate is about, whether they are going to vote for it. If they don't want to vote for it, it is completely at their feet that people in America today, who have no benefits, will not get them for the Fourth of July. They will not get them as we celebrate the birthday of our country. If they are not going to get them, it will be because the Republican Party decided that we, as a Congress, are going to have to find a way to pay for unemployment benefits, when they never paid for even 1 year of any war they helped lead us into when their party was in charge.

So I hope the leadership over here holds the line. We are going to pass the extenders package the way it was presented. They can continue to vote no on it. That is their choice. But everything in this bill-- many things very important to the State of Louisiana, such as flood insurance--is paid for and is now being held up; for example, the placed-in-service date which keeps four or five of our major housing projects from being built. When I say housing, I mean neighborhoods, really, being rebuilt. That is being held up because this side is trying to make an issue of finding a way to pay for unemployment benefits when it is clearly an emergency, clearly qualifies as an emergency, and in the past was always clarified that way. That is what part of this argument is about.

As one of the managers of the small business bill, which we are moving to, I am very hopeful and will make sure that the extenders debate stays separate from the small business debate. Now that the extenders bill has been set aside, we have another bill we believe we can move forward with more bipartisan support for, and I want to thank the Republican Senators who helped to move this bill to the floor: Senators Grassley, Voinovich, Snowe, Collins, LeMieux, Lugar, Bond, and Brown of Massachusetts. These eight Senators have negotiated in extremely good faith with both the Finance Committee and the Small Business Committee to bring a package to the floor that will actually help create, we hope, millions of jobs in our country.

I want to make one editorial comment before I speak about the small businesses, and as a Senator from Louisiana, I feel compelled to do so.

I have helped to manage and craft, along with my committee members-- and I am very proud of the small business piece of this bill. There are three pieces. There is the finance piece, there is a small business package, and then there is a treasury piece. I will discuss all of them briefly in just a moment.

We have worked hard over this year trying to come up with some things that the government could do that wouldn't cost that much money but could spur growth in small business. As the Presiding Officer knows, it is not the big businesses that are creating jobs. They are still laying off people or are putting in efficiencies, which means holding the line. Even as they get more contracts, they are not hiring because it is not what big business does. They have enough cushion to hold what they have, but small businesses are affected immediately by contractions and expansions. They can't afford to hold three or four people on their payroll without a contract, so they let them go. But the minute they get a new contract, they will hire them back. They are immediately tied to the daily, weekly, and monthly jolts in this economy.

That is why we see that 65 percent of all new jobs created since 1993 have been by small business. When we want to look out from 2009 to the year we are in, 2010, and to 2011 and 2012, which the country is depending on us to do, we should focus our attention where the jobs can be created. Mr. President, that is in small business. So that is what we are here this week and next week to do, and these eight Senators have said yes, basically, to small business in America. The package isn't going to be what all ten of these Senators would write if they could write it themselves, but they understand this is a good package. It is a worthy package to pass--the small business, the finance, and the treasury package--to get small business moving again.

I feel compelled to comment, before explaining some of the pieces of this bill, that it is concerning to me that while we are on the Senate floor talking about a small business package, back home in Louisiana and in Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas, because of events almost beyond the control of any of us here, we are facing a real economic challenge with the oilspill in the gulf and the subsequent moratorium that was laid down by the administration on deepwater drilling. I have to say right now there are, in fact, about 50,000 to 60,000 jobs immediately at risk while that issue is being worked out. So while I am here on the Senate floor to help create millions of new jobs--and I believe this bill will do that--we also want to be mindful of not losing the jobs we have in trying to come up with some very quick, appropriate responses to the BP spill--the Deepwater Horizon spill--and the call for safety in the gulf. We need to be getting our people back to work.

I spent all morning in the Energy Committee on that subject, and I am proud to be leading and helping with some suggestions in that regard. But I have to say I want all the Members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, to understand there is an economic calamity brewing in the gulf that needs our immediate attention. We can do more than one thing at a time here, so we are going to continue to move forward on the small business bill because small business in Louisiana will be helped, as well as those in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas, and small businesses all over this country.

There are a couple of important components in this overall bill. Again, I thank the members of my committee who voted these items out 17 to 1 and 18 to 0. Senator Snowe, the ranking member, did a magnificent job of working with the Republicans on our committee. We had many hearings and several markups. In the underlying bill, one of the most important provisions is the Small Business Jobs Creation Access to Capital Act. It increases 7(a) loans from $2 million to $5 million, 504 loans from $1.5 million to $5 million, and microloans from $35,000 to $50,000. If I had my way, I would like to see that go up to $100,000. Why? Because small businesses need access to capital. They must have access to grow.

If we want small businesses to be able to grow, they have to be able to expand by borrowing more money at relatively low interest rates on favorable terms, and then they can start hiring people to get the jobs necessary to, A, end the recession; and, B, as Senator Stabenow has said so beautifully all week, to start paying the deficit down.

What the Republican Party doesn't understand is that one way to pay the deficit down--not the only way but one way to chip away at it--is to get more people working so they can pay the taxes to the local, State, and Federal Government and we can then take that tax money and apply it to deficit reduction. Yes, we have to cut spending. Yes, we have to stop giving out tax cuts we cannot afford. They never want to do the tax cut piece, and they do not do the cutting piece well either most of the time. But what they need to understand is that creating jobs, both private sector and public sector jobs, where it is appropriate, generates taxes to the local, State, and Federal governments. Then we can begin chipping away at the deficit--a deficit they left, by the way.

When the last administration came in--when President Bush came into office--he was handed a surplus. We handed him a surplus of $5.1 trillion and said: Mr. President, here is a world at peace and here is $5.1 trillion in surplus; the economy is creating jobs.

When he left office 8 years later, he handed the next President a deficit twice that big, with Wall Street in collapse, two wars that hadn't been paid for, and a mess here at home--and they want to ask why we haven't fixed all that in a year and a half? It is quite humorous to me. I know President Obama is smart and good--though I don't agree with him on everything--but I don't think any human being could fix the mess they left in just a year and a half.

We have been plodding along trying to fix different pieces of it, but it hasn't been pretty. All of it isn't working, but we are trying. Most of it is working. That is what the American people expect of us. They do not expect

us to get it 100 percent right every day, but they do expect us to move forward; to say, yes, we will try not to say no and not to lecture Democrats about deficits they created.

Having gotten that off my chest, I want to say here we are in our small business package. I am very proud that eight of these Republican Senators joined us to get on the discussion on the small business bill. This is going to do a lot of good for a lot of people in many places, let me say, not just New York and not just Wall Street. This is a Main Street bill. This is about creating jobs in little towns in Oregon as well as little towns in Louisiana, small towns in Washington State and Maine. That is what this is about.

The second piece is the export piece. This is a very exciting chart to me. I am maybe not as good as Kent Conrad is with charts, Senator Conrad, but I like this one very much. This chart shows the potential of small business in America. Just think about this. We have so many, millions and millions of small businesses, but less than 1 percent of them today are exporting. This is tragic, if you think about it. If we can get a few percentage points, up to 3 percent, 4 percent, 5 percent of small businesses in America exporting their products, using the Internet, using favorable tax provisions that will help--that are in this underlying bill--using new support and technological support from the Small Business Administration, from volunteer organizations such as SCORE, university-based technical support programs that can go to our small businesses and say: You sold 50,000 pairs of shoes last year but you sold them all down the road. We can help you sell them to China or sell them to India. Think about the possibility of that. And it is real.

That is what this bill does. Senator Snowe has done a tremendous amount of work. I am extremely proud of her work on the export portion of this bill. Again, large businesses, percent of firms that do not export, 58 percent. This number could be increased. But the exciting opportunity is small business. But sometimes they are intimidated, as you can imagine. They don't know how to negotiate with foreign governments. Some of the things we are going to do in this bill will help them move that number up and they are going to be able to grow.

Third, the contracting piece. I know some people on both sides of the aisle believe government is too big. Sometimes I agree with that and think it is too. We have to shape it, make sure it is efficient and effective and muscular, not flabby and big but bold and muscular, so it can do things it needs to do that the private sector can't do. But one of the things all governments do is spend a lot of money, and it is not just money to hire their own employees, it is spending money for the private sector. We contract out a lot of our work. When the Government has a job to do, we do not always do it with government employees; we contract it out. I do not have the exact numbers in front of me but it is billions and billions of dollars. We are the largest--if you put us in terms of a corporation--the largest corporation, potentially, maybe in the world. So the contracting provision we have in this bill says: OK, Federal Government, if you were a business, if you could contract with more small businesses, meet your small business contracting goals, then we could create a lot of jobs in America because it is, again, the small businesses that are creating these jobs.

If you give a big company a government contract, they might absorb it into their infrastructure. They are so big, they have millions of employees, or hundreds of thousands. But you give a contract to a small business, you know what happens? They might have five employees. If they get a very nice size contract from the government, they will hire 10 people to implement that contract and they will do it right away. So we have some contracting provisions in this bill that I am, again, very proud of. They have broad bipartisan support.

In addition, in this bill, which is paid for, is an additional $50 million for the Small Business Community Partnership Relief Act which gives $50 million in addition to women business centers, microloan intermediaries. It weighs or reduces the non-Federal share of funding so that for 1 year States all over this country can start enhancing and improving their Women Business Owners' Center, their Minority Business Centers, the centers that are in universities all over the country. I am sorry I do not have a map to show what the Secretary or Administrator of the SBA fondly calls our bone structure, because it is a great structure in the country. It is not just isolated little offices of the SBA.

If you can imagine, so many of our universities have small business development centers and SCORE chapters, which is retired business executives, senior executives who volunteer to help younger businesses. There are hundreds of these chapters around the country.

If you could imagine a map of the United States, you could see, if I could show where these centers are, there are centers at universities and SCORE chapters and community banks, almost within a few miles of any citizen. Any citizen could find a SCORE chapter or a university or a local bank. This bill is sending funding and help to all of those places. Again, not just on K Street here. There are lots of jobs on K Street. In fact, there are so many buildings going up on K Street, I am amazed how many. It never stops. There are lots of buildings going up, maybe, on Wall Street--lots of office space. But where I represent, there are empty spaces. There are lots of vacancy signs.

This bill is trying to push out money, not to the Federal Government but to our universities, to our private sector partners to help them tweak--help support small businesses to help small businesses grow. I am very proud of that piece. The job impact analysis was something Senator Snowe wanted. We worked with her. On everything we do, this is going to be a way to say, in this bill, how many jobs will actually be created, to record them so we can be accountable to the American people for that. I am happy she put that in the bill.

Going back to the 7(a) loan program, this is the major loan program of the SBA. As you can see, it has been sort of a happy and sad situation here over the last couple of years since 2008.

When Congress acts and puts money in this program, loans to small business go way up. When we dilly-dally and cannot agree and the program expires, loans go way down. When we get our act together again, it goes up. I wish this chart did not look like this. I wish it looked straight up, like this. Right now it is down beneath where it was before the stimulus act was passed. It has fallen below the ARRA average of $172 million. It is down to $154 million.

We need to get it back up. When we initially announced that the Small Business Administration was expanding the amount you could borrow, reducing the fees so you did not have to pay as much, and giving you a 95-percent guarantee rate, those loans are good loans. Small businesses need them, particularly because credit card companies are not lending the way they used to or charging you too much for the money they do give you. Credit lines are drying up. This is the core of the small business bill. I hope we will see this number go straight up.

Banks all over our country want this program. Many of them--not every bank participates, but I would say about 1,000 or 1,200 out of the 5,000 banks participate in this program, and they are very excited about getting this funding back in place so they can begin to loan money again to small business.

There are many other things we can do and should do. One of the amendments I have filed--I wish I could have gotten this in the base bill, but even as the chairman of the committee you can't get everything you want in the base bill. So I have agreed to offer one of these as an amendment.

I am very proud to have Senator Cochran's support, Senator Wicker's support, Senator Vitter's support. It is a bipartisan amendment. What it would do is provide in the small business bill interest loan relief for the gulf coast outstanding disaster loans from Katrina and Wilma, Gustav and Ike, from Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

There are 13,207 loans. I will take a moment to try to explain it. I will try to wrap up in about 5 minutes.

There are currently today 13,207 small business loans that were taken out by businesses all along the gulf

coast. Some of these loans are to fishermen whose boats were destroyed and they had just bought the new boat or fixed their net from some of these hurricanes. They were just getting back into the water. The water was coming back, the marsh was coming back after Katrina and Rita, and then all of a sudden the Horizon BP disaster happened.

The same people who were affected by these hurricanes and who may be affected by hurricanes in this season--which unfortunately promises to be a very difficult one--these are the businesses that are struggling to pay these loans on top of the economic disaster they are experiencing. So I am asking the Senate to please give some forgiveness--in the loan forgiveness, but give some special help to this group of loans. What we are asking in the amendment is 3 years of an interest rate reduction; not loan forgiveness, so the taxpayers will be paid back the full principal amount of all the loans these individuals and businesses have made. But if we could give them a little interest relief--let me give a specific example.

I actually took Karen Mills, our Administrator of the SBA, to Louisiana on several occasions to impress upon her the seriousness of this situation. I took her to see the Bergerons, who run a gas station in Lakeview. This entire neighborhood was destroyed, 8,000 families. Three of my brothers and sisters lived in this neighborhood, with four children each. They lost everything, their homes, their clothes, everything was completely destroyed. That was true of their 8,000 other neighbors. This gas station--the Bergerons came back. They operated one of the most successful gas stations in this neighborhood. In order for people to be able to rebuild their house, because they had fled to higher ground hundreds of miles away, families would drive long distances after work to come and gut their homes in Lakeview and try to rebuild their homes. But when they went to go back, there was no gas station for them to fill up their car so they could get back to where they were living until they could get home.

So the Bergerons, like a lot of what I call the pioneer businesses-- the hardware stores, the gas stations--said you know, I have been here 40 years. Mr. Bergeron is in his 70s, still very active, but he said I am going to go back and open my gas station. So he went to the SBA and got a loan. The problem was, he did a great thing, but his business came back so slowly. But without his business no one in the neighborhood could come back because there was no place to get gasoline. He is paying on his loan $1,000 a month. If this passes, his note will go down to about $400 a month. It will give him a little bit of relief because right now in his same neighborhood he has a lot of people who work in the fishery industry or the seafood industry or the oil and gas industry, so some of his customers cannot come and get as much gas as they want to because they are being affected now by this Deepwater Horizon.

I am begging the Members of the Senate to please help this particular group. I wish we could afford to do for everyone in America but not everybody in America right now is on the gulf coast. But these 13,207 people are and we need to give them a little breathing room. That is one of my amendments.

I am going to yield the floor after I make a comment on a nominee. But that is one of the amendments I am going to ask the Senate, when we get an opportunity to offer amendments, to please give us a chance to help these small businesses. It is a temporary relief for them, but I think it is something they deserve and will help this region that has now been hit again.

Nomination of Winslow Sargeant

Mr. President, at this time I want to talk for a minute about Winslow Sargeant.

He is a gentleman who has been recommended by the President to serve at the SBA, in the advocacy position at the SBA. He comes highly regarded and highly recommended. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in electrical engineering and a background as a very successful small business owner. He is managing director of Venture Investors, a Midwest venture capital country with a concentration in starting up health care technology companies.

Dr. Sargeant has a great deal of support from a wide variety of individuals and businesses that I will submit for the Record.

With more than 80 percent of job losses coming from small firms, I believe this is someone who should be in the Office of Advocacy. For some reason, he is being held up by the other side.

I understand there are nominations being held up on both sides of the aisle, but I wanted to ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider--I am going to wait and ask for unanimous consent. I am not going to wait long, but I will continue talking for a few minutes. I will wait for a few minutes, but at some point I am going to ask for unanimous consent that he be moved ahead because here we are on a small business bill, and here is the man whom the President has nominated, who obviously is well credentialed, has tremendous support, who is being held up. We do not really understand why he is being held up, so I would like to know, and in just a few minutes, I am going to ask for him to go by unanimous consent.

In the meantime, I will speak about one other potential amendment to the underlying bill. This amendment is coming from Senator Boxer, and I am so excited that she came up with this idea and this amendment. I think it has a lot of potential, and I think many Members might support it.

Senator Boxer called to my attention that there are many small businesses that operate out of their homes, and if you think about it, there are many people who operate their business out of their homes but particularly women who are trying to raise children, they are still the primary caregiver--not the only caregiver, but in most homes the women are trying to balance being a good wife and a good mother and also contributing to the bottom line of their family income. So a lot of them might be running small businesses out of their homes.

Well, it has come to our attention that in order to take the tax deduction that is rightfully there for anyone, man or woman, who works out of their home--it has come to my attention through Senator Boxer that it is not really very easy to take that deduction. In fact, it is so complicated, to my knowledge, that many people don't take it. Think about that.

If we are really supportive of family values, of people being flexible; if we don't like spending a lot of gasoline traveling back and forth to work and we are kind of trying to encourage people to stay at home and work if they can--many women who are very well credentialed because the government spent a lot of money on our universities getting them the degrees they need, are home raising three, four, five kids, and they can't travel a long time to work, so they set up a business in their home. Senator Boxer's amendment would help them by simplifying this deduction.

I am hoping Senator Boxer will come at some time to the floor over the next couple of days--I am sure she will--and explain the details of this, but I think it would be an excellent provision to add to the small business bill because again, remember, this underlying bill is cutting taxes for small businesses, specifically cutting taxes for small businesses; it is supporting the small business programs to create more of them, both in our country and their export potential; and then it is giving--the third leg of the stool--$30 billion to banks in America, voluntarily. It is not TARP-like, nothing about TARP; it is $30 billion to small banks in Oregon, Louisiana, and other places to be able to then take that money and lend it to small businesses. That is the essence of this bill.

I am very hopeful we can add a couple of amendments to an already very good small business package. So I am hoping Senator Boxer will come at some point and explain this amendment.

My colleagues are here to speak, I guess, on either the extenders package or the small business package. I see the Senator from Ohio, who has been very supportive of small business. Of course, Ohio is one of the States that has been hardest hit, and Michigan has been very hard hit in the underlying economy. So I am very happy to have, hopefully, their support on the underlying bill.

But one more comment about the moratorium. And I started off by saying I am proud to be the chair of the Small Business Committee advocating for small businesses in the country. I think the small business package, the finance and treasury package that we have on the floor will deliver to the American people how to, in a very fiscally responsible way, help us create the jobs we need. But one of the points--and I am going to be very brief because I see the minority leader here, but at the same time I want to say again that the moratorium on the gulf coast--and the Senator from Kentucky will, I believe, agree with me on this point--the moratorium on the gulf coast is really hurting many small businesses now.

I know we have to get this drilling safer and it has to be very safe. The people of my State want that. The people of the gulf coast want that. But we hope sometime in the next few weeks to clarify or fix or modify this. The Federal judge, as you know, has ruled that the moratorium is lifted, because the Federal judge did not agree with the actions taken by this administration, nor do I. So while we are debating a small business bill, I am very hopeful that as soon as this small business package can pass, we can get on to getting more people back to work along the gulf coast who have been affected by both the moratorium and this bill.

Unanimous consent Request--Executive Calendar

I ask unanimous consent for Winslow Sargeant to be Chief Counsel for Advocacy, Small Business Administration; that the nomination be confirmed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the nominee be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then resume its regular legislative session.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley.) Is there objection?

Mr. President, I begin by complimenting the senior Senator from Massachusetts for a remarkable tribute to the late Senator Robert Byrd. It was beautifully delivered, beautifully written. It captured the spirit of this wonderful Senator and highlighted just a few of the extraordinary accomplishments in his life. I was privileged to be on the floor to hear it delivered by the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. President, I was here earlier today, following Senator Baucus's handling of a portion of the small business bill. I am pleased to share in that responsibility on a small business bill that is not immediately before the Senate because, remember, we came off it temporarily to talk about the unemployment measure that is pending about which Senator Harkin just spoke.

I want to return to the small business bill because at some point, after a vote on the unemployment measure before the Senate, we will get back to a very important bill for you, Mr. President, and you have been a leader in this area, as well as many of us.

I want to speak for a moment about a couple of provisions of the small business bill. The bill itself has three major pieces to it. There is a piece that came out of the Small Business Committee about which I spent some time this morning talking, the elements of strengthening the SBA lending programs, expanding the limits for the amount of money that businesses can borrow. There is a piece that is coming out of the Finance Committee that is broadly supported. Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley have done a great job. Basically, it is tax cuts relative to small businesses that can help them with tax provisions. Then there is a piece that has come from the Treasury, the White House, the leadership team, about small business lending.

I want to talk for a few minutes about a piece of the small business package, and then I want to talk about the bank investment program, the $30 billion program.

First of all, one of the most important aspects of the small business bill is the extension and the expansion of 7(a) loans. To put this in plain English, these are the loans that the Small Business Administration partners with banks to make what we call floor plan lending. It is any business that has inventory--maybe it is a tractor company or a manufactured home company or a boat, marine industry with a small business owner--and you have some of these in Illinois, I know, Mr. President, and I have many of them in Louisiana--that has to buy inventory and put it in their showrooms for when people come by and they look at the product.

Madam President, I object.

Madam President, might I inquire of the Senator, we have been trying to move a 30-day extension of existing authorities for the FAA, which is essential and very necessary. Is the Senator holding that up? We have had objection from his side, and my information is that the objection was the Senator's. Is that accurate?

Madam President, I think this will be extended 30 days. Failure to extend the current authority for the FAA for the next 30 days while we finish the conference report will mean that 4,000 people at FAA will be furloughed, laid off. Don't tell me that promotes aviation safety. That is the worst possible thing we can do--to decide that we are not going to extend current authorities, and after July 4, 4,000 people will be furloughed at FAA.

With respect to what my colleague has just done, without consultation with anybody else, he decided to come to the floor of the Senate and talk about ``special deals'' and ``new taxes'' and so on.

Let me describe where we are. We have tried to keep the Senator's staff and him involved so that he understands where we are. In the event there is missing information, let me explain where we are.

No. 1, we passed an FAA reauthorization bill that includes modernization of the air traffic control system, very substantial safety provisions, far more than what the Senator suggests we adopt today.

As the Senator knows because he is ranking member on the subcommittee, we held a good number of hearings on the subject of the Colgan crash and the safety provisions that need to be done as a result of it. The things the Senator raises on the floor today include most of what I have suggested, among other things. I appreciate the cooperation the Senator offered when he was at the hearings we held on these safety issues.

But following the passage of this bill by the Commerce Committee, we have not been able to appoint conferees in this Chamber. That is symbolic of how dysfunctional the Chamber is these days because we have objections even to appointing conferees. Notwithstanding the objections, Senator Rockefeller and I have been working with the House, and we have kept the Senator involved, trying to narrow down most of the provisions that differ between the House and Senate. There are 6 or 8 or perhaps 10 significant differences we are working on now, and the Senator mentioned a couple: the issue of the perimeter rule, slots at Washington National Airport, a FedEx issue, passenger facilities charge, and other issues.

I believe there is almost no dispute at all about the majority of the safety provisions that both the House and the Senate will include in the bill when it is complete. We had hoped it would be complete this week. That is not going to be the case.

Shortly after we return, I fully expect to have a conference report on the floor of the Senate that will include all of these safety provisions and more, I should say--many more--because, as the Senator knows, I chaired the hearings that helped develop these very procedures.

It would have been nice to have gotten some notice about what the Senator chose to do today. I do not think it is appropriate to try to leverage an extension for 30 days for the current authorization of FAA, which, if not extended, will result in 4,000 people being furloughed at the FAA. To try to leverage passing a portion of the FAA reauthorization bill that we are now negotiating with the House and we are very close to concluding does not make any sense to me.

No one cares more about these safety issues than I do. I can speak at length--and perhaps I will--about the Colgan crash. I understand what happened in that cockpit. I read all the transcription. I read all the information available about it. I sat for hour after hour in hearings. What happened there is an enormous tragedy. Some of the things that caused it, in my judgment, will be remedied and can be remedied and some of it is already remedied as a result of the action by the new FAA Administrator.

I simply want to say to the Senator from South Carolina that I think it is very important that we extend for 30 days the current authority of the FAA and avoid the furloughs his objections would entail. If there is any way to quickly and immediately and dramatically injure safety in the skies in this country, it would be to decide to have that kind of furlough.

I did ask unanimous consent for a 30-day extension. I will do so again this afternoon and hope that my colleague will not object to it. I have worked with my colleague all along the way on these safety issues. I wish perhaps he would have consulted us in terms of coming to the floor today at 12:45 p.m. as a ranking member of a subcommittee and saying: I am going to take this on myself and do this, for whatever reasons he described.

I will be happy to yield without losing the floor, if the Senator has a question.

Why don't we stop this sort of thing? It is unbelievable to me how dysfunctional this place is. I say to my colleague, we have worked on this issue for months and months. I wish it had been done in January, but it was not. But we are very close to getting this done the right way. We have a couple things we have to do together, and I hope we would not be debating this. We need to extend the authorities for the FAA--and do it now--for 30 days. I expect--and the Senator knows me because I have had conversations with Senator Kyl, the No. 2 person on his side. We all had conversations with the Senator from South Carolina and his staff. He knows we have been involved in finalizing at long last just the few remaining issues in order to get a conference report to the floor of the Senate.

I have talked with and met with the families of the victims on the Colgan flight many times. I do not know that anybody here has done much more than I have done to reach out to them, to hold hearings, to listen to them, to compliment them, to say to them: Because of what you are doing as families of victims, other people are going to have their lives saved because of aviation safety. I do not take a backseat to anybody in my interest and concern about that and what I have done about that.

I have not had the families of the victims come to me to say: Let's decide to object to extending for 30 days the FAA reauthorization or, by the way, let's decide to take this legislation apart and pull part of it out and leave some of the safety provisions outside the Senator's amendment.

What the Senator is suggesting is that we should pass legislation that came to us from the Senate with an amendment of his that takes a portion of the bill out that he decided he wants out.

This bill, by the way, passed the Senate 93 to 0. The Senator was not there that day, so he did not vote. But 93 Senators voted, and no Senators voted against it. We can get this done, but we are not going to get this done by coming to the floor without consulting anybody; let's take a portion of it and add it to a House provision and threaten to have the FAA not have their authority extended and they can furlough 4,000 people in the coming weeks--that is not, in my judgment, a thoughtful way to proceed.

My hope is that perhaps we, in a rational moment, can just decide: Let's do the right thing. We are in conference with the House--not a formal conference but a substantial number of meetings have gone on. We have another one at 5 o'clock this afternoon. My hope would be that the Senator from South Carolina would agree that there is the right way and the wrong way to do this business. We will get all those safety provisions done and more--much, much more--and we will not leave any safety provisions behind that were in the legislation that passed the Senate 93 to 0. It is going to take another week or so beyond July 4, and we will have this done.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 3371 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Let me say that this is the 30-day extension of the FAA reauthorization bill.

Let me withdraw that request.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I just told my colleague that the unanimous consent request I intend to read is a unanimous consent request that will extend for 30 days the existing authorities of the FAA. The House has passed it, has sent it to us, and is now awaiting action by the Senate. I personally do not intend to support amending it and sending it back to the House. I believe we ought to do what we should always do; that is, try to make things work, and the way to make things work is to give the FAA the extended authority they need while we finish the negotiations with the House.

I indicated that we have a meeting this afternoon. Senator Rockefeller and I have a meeting with the House counterparts this afternoon on these issues. We have had staff working for a long period of time. We are down to very narrow, in my judgment, or at least a few narrow differences that I believe we can resolve. It would be a shame, in my judgment, if we do not, just as a matter of courtesy, decide, yes, this is the right thing to do while we try to negotiate these final areas in that legislation.

This issue of safety, I indicated to my colleague--I guess the Senator was absent when the Senate voted on the bill itself. It passed 93 to 0. The Senator from South Carolina has been at the hearings. My colleagues have been at the hearings I have called on safety. The crafting of the provisions on safety are provisions I largely crafted in consultation with my colleague.

It seems to me to be Byzantine to be standing here and having my colleague come to the floor offering this without consultation with anybody. It does not make sense to do it this way. Let's finish this the way Congress should finish its work: negotiate with the House. We can do that in the next week or two, get a conference report, bring it here, and have a vote on it, and it will include all the safety provisions my colleague wants, which I helped create, and many more. That is the right way to legislate.

The wrong way to legislate would be for us to decide we are going to threaten to not extend the reauthorization of the FAA and have about 4,000 people laid off sometime over the Fourth of July weekend. These are people who work at the airports division, engineering facilities, and equipment division. It makes no sense to do this.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent--this is H.R. 5611, the FAA extension bill for 30 days--I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 5611, which was received from the House.

Madam President, let me make a point very clearly. A number of the provisions dealing with safety that relate to the Colgan air crash are being implemented already by the FAA. Let me make that point, No. 1.

No. 2, in order to successfully do what we really need to do to promote aviation safety, we need to get the bill passed that promotes modernization of the air traffic control system. That is critically important. We are losing ground on those issues. We need to be able to move airplanes around this country and the world with GPS capability. It allows them to fly more direct routes, with a much greater margin of safety for passengers. The modernization of the system is critically important. We worked long and hard on that issue.

This comprehensive bill includes air traffic control modernization, safety provisions, and so many other provisions that are important.

My colleague, who is the ranking member on the subcommittee that helped produce this bill, knows and I know that we have to have a 30- day extension. That has to be done and will be done this week. I cannot believe my colleague would go home and decide: I don't care who is laid off. I will tell my colleagues how to quickly diminish safety in the skies, and that is to do that, to behave like that. That is a nonstarter, in my judgment.

It is also the case that we are not going to have somebody come to the floor without consultation and pull this provision, that provision, or the next provision out of the bill and say: By the way, I want unanimous consent to get this done. That is not serious legislating. It just is not. Everybody knows that.

It is time for us to start working together. This place is pretty dysfunctional these days. This is exhibit A as to why it is dysfunctional. My hope is that in the next couple of days, we can reach an understanding to fix some of the issues that affect the Senator.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I support the comments of and the legislation by the Senator from Louisiana. I think it makes a great deal of sense to strengthen small businesses. They are, after all, the job generators in this country. So I appreciated her comments. We don't always agree on every issue around here, but I am a strong supporter of her work as chairman of the Small Business Committee and of the legislation she has described.

Mr. President, I wanted to come to the Senate floor briefly today because we are talking about extending unemployment compensation, unemployment benefits, to people who are out of work, and we are having a very difficult time doing that. These benefits are for people who worked on payrolls. They actually paid a little of their money in taxes to support an unemployment fund so if they lost their jobs they would be able to get some unemployment help. But in order to do that, this has to be extended by the Senate, and it has become increasingly difficult to extend unemployment compensation to those who are out of work.

I find that kind of inexplicable because for the folks at the top of the economic ladder, there is no problem in their getting what they want out of this Chamber. I noticed in the last 24 hours or so that one of my colleagues objected to something that was in the financial reform bill. He said: Well, you are going to impose a fee on the biggest banks. He said: I won't accept that. He said: If you do that, I won't vote for the bill. The biggest banks in the country shouldn't have to pay this fee.

I was thinking to myself: Why not? They drove the country into the ditch. They are the ones involved in the cesspool of greed, many of them, trading things on things they will get from people who never had it and making money on both sides, which created an

unbelievable orgy of speculation that ran the country right into the ditch. There is nothing wrong, it seems to me, with their having to pay a fee here or there.

But one of our colleagues said: I won't support that. All of a sudden, the conference committee got back together and said: How can we fluff up your pillow, big guy? Can we give you an aspirin, put you to sleep?

If you are at the top of this economic ladder in this Chamber, you can do just fine because somebody will make you comfortable. But what about the people at the bottom? What about the person who came home from work after 18 years on the job and said: Honey, I lost my job today. And they can't find another job? What about that family and that person? What about extending unemployment help for that person?

Things never change. Here is what Will Rogers said many years ago. He said:

The unemployed here ain't eating regular, but we will get

around to them as soon as everybody else gets fixed up OK.

Boy, if there was ever a description of the way things work these days, this is it. Old Will Rogers. And this description is as old as eight or nine decades, isn't it? The unemployed here ain't eating regular, but we don't have time yet. We will get to them after everybody else gets taken care of. And who gets taken care of first? The folks at the top of the economic ladder.

I wonder, I just wonder what would happen with a bill to extend unemployment benefits if the only Americans who were unemployed were investment bankers? Do you think that wouldn't have been passed in a nanosecond, just like that? But, no, the unemployed are people named Smith and Jones and Adams and Johnson. They are the ones somehow at the bottom of the economic ladder who don't seem to matter to some people.

My hope is this Congress will have the good sense to do the right thing. During tough times, we have something called a safety net--that is the unemployment compensation--that helps people when they are laid off, when they are out of work and are having trouble and can't find another job. It is our responsibility to extend that. That is what we should be doing.

As Will Rogers said: Everybody else gets help. In the last 24 hours, the folks at the top of the economic ladder got help--the biggest banks in the country. Why? Because somebody said they needed some comfort--a bedtime story, a fluffed pillow, an aspirin, some comfort. They got their comfort. But we are still waiting to see if the people who lost their jobs and who are at the bottom of the economic ladder will get the help they were promised. I hope so. We will have a vote on that and we will soon see.

Energy Policy

Mr. President, I wanted to mention that yesterday a group of us went down to meet with the President on the subject of energy, and following that meeting a number of my colleagues spoke to the press. I did not. But because there were stories today about the representation of that meeting with the President, I thought I would at least offer my notion of what that meeting meant and what the consequences of it will or should be.

The meeting with the President, calling a number of Republicans and Democrats--about 10 or 12 of us--down to the White House, was to talk about energy and to simply try to evaluate what is achievable, what should be done with respect to energy. We know two things are making this country vulnerable: No. 1, we are way too dependent on foreign oil. We use one-fourth of the oil that is pulled out of this planet every morning. Every day we use one-fourth in this little place called the United States. Yet over 60 percent of that which we use comes from other countries. That leaves us far too vulnerable to others, and, by the way, some of whom are in very troubled parts of the world. We are far too vulnerable to others for our energy supplies. That is a fact.

The second something that is happening to this planet is called climate change. We don't necessarily know exactly what that is, but the wide consensus of scientists tells us we need to be concerned about it and we need to be taking actions to deal with it.

I appreciate the President's leadership on these issues and saying we need to move. We need to do some things here. But the discussion was, What is achievable?

What is achievable, in my judgment, from listening and participating in that meeting, is what I have always believed was achievable. The only thing achievable is that which will get 60 votes to come from the calendar of the Senate to the floor because it takes 60 votes on a motion to proceed to consider anything. I believe the only thing that can get 60 votes, based on not only the meeting yesterday but other discussions I have had, would be to bring the bill passed by the Energy Committee, which was bipartisan, to the floor of the Senate. That does not exclude anything else. That does not exclude anybody from offering climate change amendments, comprehensive climate change amendments. But we will never get to the floor unless we get to the floor with something that can get 60 votes, and I am convinced the only thing that can achieve that is the bipartisan Energy bill out of the committee.

The Energy bill itself is a bill that does reduce carbon. It does all the things I think it should do. Yes, it says we are going to continue to use the fossil energy--coal, oil, natural gas--but we are going to use that in a different way. We are going to decarbonize and take great pains to protect the planet as we do. We are going to build some nuclear. We are going to maximize renewables--solar and wind energy. We are going to do the biofuels, including biodiesel, ethanol, and geothermal. All of these sources of energy are important to our country's future.

All of these areas--conservation, including retrofitting buildings; the first ever renewable electric standard; building an interstate highway of transmission capability; high-voltage transmission so you can collect energy where the wind blows and the Sun shines and put it on a wire and send it to where it is needed in the load centers--all of that was part of the bill that was passed out of the Energy Committee 1 year ago this month. That is, in my judgment, what is achievable to get to the floor of the Senate, and then it is open for amendments. That does not exclude, by the way, any other amendments people wish to offer that can achieve the 60 votes, once it is on the floor, that can address climate change.

As I said before, there is something to climate change, as far as I am concerned. We would be fools not to recognize and fools not to address it. The question is not whether; it is when and how.

I said before that I would support capping carbon and I would support pricing carbon. I also said I will not support what is called cap and trade because I do not intend to give Wall Street a trillion-dollar carbon securities market to trade so they can tell us what the cost of our energy is going to be. But that aside, I really think it is important that we not end this year without doing an energy bill that advances this country's energy and national security.

Let me mention one additional item very quickly; that is, yesterday there was a hearing in the Armed Services Committee with respect to the nomination of General Petraeus to assume command in Afghanistan. I am not going to speak at length about this. I fully support General Petraeus and this nomination. I think the President has made an excellent choice. By the way, I don't think he had much choice but to replace General McChrystal, and replacing him with General Petraeus makes a great deal of sense to me.

I wish to say with respect to Afghanistan that I think it is long past the time for us to have a very significant discussion about Afghanistan. The President has indicated the potential withdrawal date beginning on July 1 of next year, 2011. But I think that even before that, we need to have a discussion in this country about what our role is in Afghanistan. What, in fact, is victory in Afghanistan? Are we fighting al-Qaida? Are we fighting terrorists in Afghanistan or are we fighting insurgents in Afghanistan? What about the Afghanistan Government and President Karzai? What is achievable?

Every day, we are sending young men and women to fight in a war, and many--I should not say ``many''--a number of them will lose their lives. We go on almost ``out of sight out of

mind,'' not thinking about it, not debating it nearly enough. What is it we are achieving? We have been at war for nearly 8 years, spending a great deal of money--lost treasure and lost lives. By the way, with respect to treasure, not a penny of it has been paid for.

I think it is time for us to have a good discussion in this country about what are we doing? How long will we do it? What is victory? What is achievable? Should we, in fact, be engaged in a long-term war against insurgents in that country? Where is al-Qaida? We know where it is in part: northern Pakistan. Where is al-Qaida? What is this--a war against terror or is it a war against insurgents?

My own view is that I think it is highly unlikely, no matter how long this country is in Afghanistan, that we will ever be successful in the rural tribal lands of Afghanistan. But my hope and my desire is to want the best for this country. I think the best will be achieved if we have a thoughtful, good, full, complete discussion as a nation about what our objectives are, how we achieve those objectives, and when, at last, at long, long last, we can bring troops home and be in a position where we are not saying America at this point is at war. We need to be addressing the terrorist threat across this planet, and that will take us a long while, but I think that is a very different circumstance than being engaged in the fight in Afghanistan as it currently exists.

I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam Speaker, I submit the following.

Health Care/Medicare

Congress spent the first part of this session enacting

landmark health reform legislation that substantially reforms

and strengthens the Medicare program. As a result of this

legislation, CBO estimates net deficit reduction of $143

billion from 2010 to 2019, and deficit reduction of more than

$1 trillion in the next decade. In addition, the Medicare

Actuary estimates that the Medicare changes enacted in health

reform will extend the life of the Part A Trust Fund by 12

years--the largest extension in history. Finally, as a result

of the new law, national health expenditures per insured

person will fall by $1,400 by 2019.

The health reform law also includes extensive provisions to

aggressively reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in government

health programs. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) establishes

new authorities to enhance fraud-fighting when providers

first enroll in the program and during the pre- and post-

payment periods.

During the Medicare provider enrollment period, ACA

strengthens provider screening and disclosure requirements

and allows the Secretary to impose a moratorium on new

providers in areas of significant risk. These tools will help

keep fraudulent providers out of government programs before

they have a chance to act. In the pre-payment period, ACA

directs the Secretary to establish a program of increased

oversight for new providers and allows for the suspension of

payment, if deemed appropriate, to a provider or supplier.

For the post-payment and enforcement period, ACA establishes

new penalties for the submission of false data or false

claims and increases funding for proven fraud-fighting

programs used by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) and

the Department of Justice.

Taken together, these provisions reduce fraud, waste, and

abuse by improving payment accuracy, promoting efficiency,

and controlling spending within Medicare and other government

programs.

The Committee's efforts to achieve deficit reduction,

prevent fraud, promote efficiency, and control spending

within government programs extend beyond the ACA. The

Preservation of Access to Care for Medicare Beneficiaries and

Pension Relief Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-192) included two

provisions that address these goals. First, this law

clarifies the 3-day payment window for inpatient admissions

to ensure that all services related to the hospital admission

are included in the bundled payment. Absent this provision,

hospitals would likely have unbundled hospital payments

driving up Medicare spending. Second,

the law established a CMS-IRS data match to identify

potentially fraudulent providers. This provision authorizes

the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to

collaborate with the IRS to determine whether providers

enrolling or re-enrolling in Medicare have failed to file

Federal tax returns or have delinquent tax debts. In doing

so, the law helps to identify potentially fraudulent

providers earlier in the application process and allows the

Secretary to use this information in determining whether to

deny such application or to apply enhanced oversight to the

provider.

Following passage of health reform legislation, the

Committee has held and will continue to hold oversight

hearing on a number of issues, including:

Fraud, Waste and Abuse

While many of the HHS OIG recommendations from their annual

compendium were adopted in the ACA, combating fraud remains a

top priority for the committee. On June 15th, the Health and

Oversight Subcommittees held a joint hearing on combating

fraud, waste, and abuse. At this hearing, a representative of

the HHS Office of Inspector General discussed two new tools

that would improve OIG's ability to prevent criminals from

becoming providers in the Medicare program. The first

recommendation was to provide OIG with broader permissive

authority to exclude permanently from Medicare corporate

executives who have been involved in Medicare fraud. Second,

it was suggested that the OIG permissive authority could also

be expanded to better enable the OIG to reach parent

companies that may be hiding behind corporate shells.

On September 14, 2010, in response to these

recommendations, Health Subcommittee Chairman Representative

Stark and Ranking Republican Wally Herger introduced the

Strengthening Medicare Anti-Fraud Measures Act. The bill

would provide the OIG with this expanded permissive

authority. We are awaiting a CBO score of the legislation.

HITECH Implementation

Enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of

2009 included the Health Information Technology for Economic

and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which created incentive

payments for providers that adopt and meaningfully use

electronic medical records. Increased adoption and meaningful

use of health information technology will arm providers with

information that is usually held only in paper records, lower

duplication rates of procedures, promote efficiency and

quality, and reduce waste as providers coordinate care

through improved exchange of clinical information. The Health

Subcommittee held an oversight hearing on implementation of

HITECH Act earlier this year and will continue to monitor the

program to ensure that the advance of health information

technology improves quality and efficiency of the delivery of

health care in the Medicare program.

Durable Medical Equipment competitive bidding process

The Medicare Modernization Act directed CMS to establish a

competitive bidding process for payment of durable medical

equipment, prosthetics, orthotics, and supplies (DMEPOS)

under Medicare. The first round of competitive bidding for

DME was delayed in 2008 because of implementation problems.

Later this year, CMS will award contracts under the first

round of the revised program. The Health Subcommittee will

examine whether CMS has adequately addressed problems with

the competitive bidding program and explore its potential

effect on beneficiaries' access to the program and supplier

participation.

Tax Provisions to Prevent Tax Avoidance and Fraud

Closing Foreign Tax Credit Loopholes

On August 10, 2010, the House passed H.R. 1586, the

Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act by a vote of 247

to 161. The bill, signed into law the same day (P.L. 111-

226), included changes developed jointly by the Treasury

Department, the Committee on Ways and Means, and the Senate

Committee on Finance to curtail abuses of the U.S. foreign

tax credit system and other targeted abuses. Foreign tax

credits are intended to ensure that U.S.-based multinational

companies are not subject to double taxation. However, multi-

national corporate taxpayers have taken advantage of the U.S.

foreign tax credit system to reduce the U.S. tax due on

completely unrelated foreign income in a manner that has

nothing to do with eliminating double taxation. The bill

eliminated $9.6 billion of foreign tax credit loopholes.

Transfer Pricing

On July 22, 2010, the Committee on Ways and Means held a

hearing to begin initial discussions of the complex areas of

tax law that govern transfer pricing practices among related

parties (multinational corporations). Pursuant to a request

by the Committee in December 2009, the Joint Committee on

Taxation (JCT) undertook a study of transfer pricing issues.

Part of that study involved meetings with tax practitioners

and the IRS to gain a better understanding of how companies

can structure overseas operations to minimize U.S. taxes. The

JCT released a report summarizing its work, beginning with a

study of the issues and specific case studies to illuminate

the potential for income shifting through transfer pricing.

The Committee continues to investigate opportunities for

reducing tax avoidance by multinational corporations through

transfer pricing structures.

First-Time Homebuyer Program

The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 established

the First-Time Homebuyer Credit, which generally provided an

$8,000 tax credit to certain taxpayers for the purchase of a

home. The credit was extended and expanded by the American

Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Worker,

Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009

(Assistance Act). On October 22, 2009, the Subcommittee on

Oversight of the Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on

administration of the credit by the Internal Revenue Service

(IRS). At the hearing, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax

Administration (TIGTA) released a report finding instances of

fraud and abuse in the program. In response to the report,

TIGTA and the U.S. Government Accountability Office made

several legislative recommendations to improve administration

of the credit. On October 22, 2009, Oversight Subcommittee

Chairman John Lewis (D-GA) introduced H.R. 3901, the

Homebuyer Tax Credit Improvement Act of 2009, which provided

the IRS with additional authority to prevent fraudulent

claims and claims by minor children. On November 6, 2009,

H.R. 3901 was enacted into law as part of the Assistance Act

(P.L. 111-92).

Prisoner Tax Fraud

On September 27, 2008, the House passed H.R. 7082, the

Inmate Tax Fraud Prevention Act of 2008. This law allows the

IRS to exchange with officers and employees of the Federal

Bureau of Prisons certain tax return information with respect

to prisoners whom the Secretary has determined may have filed

false or fraudulent tax returns. This provision was enacted

into law on October 15, 2008. In June 2010, TIGTA released a

report estimating that about 1,300 prison inmates (more than

90 percent of whom were state prison inmates) claimed and

received more than $9 million in fraudulent first-time

homebuyer tax credits. On June 29, 2010, a provision to allow

the IRS to disclose tax return information to officers and

employees of State agencies charged with the administration

of prisons passed the House in H.R. 5623, the Homebuyer

Assistance and Improvement Act of 2010. On July 2, 2010, this

provision was enacted into law as part of the Homebuyer

Assistance and Improvement Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-198).

Tax Provisions to Promote Government Efficiency and Reform

Increase electronic filing of tax returns

The Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act

of 1998 (RRA) established a goal for the IRS to receive at

least 80 percent of tax and information returns

electronically. For 2010, the overall electronic filing (e-

filing) rate is projected to reach approximately 59 percent.

To achieve the 80 percent goal, an estimated 40 million

additional returns need to be e-filed. On October 22, 2009,

Oversight Subcommittee Chairman John Lewis (D-GA) introduced

H.R. 3901, the Homebuyer Tax Credit Improvement Act of 2009,

which authorized the IRS to require tax return preparers to

file returns electronically in order to achieve additional

cost reduction and savings. On November 6, 2009, H.R. 3901

was enacted into law as part of the Worker, Homeownership,

and Business Assistance Act (P.L. 111-92). The Electronic Tax

Administration Advisory Committee, established by the RRA,

believes that this is the single most important initiative

that will enable the IRS to reach its 80 percent electronic

filing goal.

Removal of cell phones from listed property

In 1989, Congress passed a law requiring taxpayers to

substantiate the business use of cell phones. At that time,

cell phones were an expensive perk for executives. Cell

phones and similar equipment are now ingrained in daily

business practices at all levels. The Administration has

recognized that cell phone service in this country has

changed dramatically over the past decade and recommended

that the law be modernized to remove the special

documentation requirements for cell phones and reduce the

cost of administering and complying with the provision. On

April 15, 2010, a provision to eliminate the strict

substantiation rules on cell phones passed the House in H.R.

4994, the Taxpayer Assistance Act of 2010.

Repeal of the partial payment requirement on submissions of

offers-in-compromise. Offer-in-compromise (OIC) agreements

are an important collection alternative for the IRS and

taxpayers. Under current law, due to legislation passed in

2006, a taxpayer offering to settle a tax liability must make

a partial payment with submission of an OIC application. The

need to increase the usage of OIC agreements in situations of

economic hardship was raised at a February 2009 hearing of

the Subcommittee on Oversight of the Committee on Ways and

Means. On May 12, 2009, Oversight Subcommittee Chairman John

Lewis (D-GA) introduced H.R. 2343, a bipartisan bill that

would increase the likelihood that some amount of tax is

collected and promote continued tax compliance by repealing

the partial payment requirement. On April 15, 2010, a

provision to repeal the partial payment requirement passed

the House in H.R. 4994, the Taxpayer Assistance Act of 2010.

Study on delivery of tax refunds

The National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA) has stated that the

quickest and cheapest way to distribute tax refunds is

electronically rather than by paper checks in the

mail. However, a large number of taxpayers do not have bank

accounts. These taxpayers are not able to fully

participate in electronic filing because the IRS cannot

transmit their refunds to them electronically. The NTA

recommended that the Department of Treasury develop a

program to enable taxpayers to receive refunds on stored

value cards. On April 15, 2010, a provision to require the

Secretary of Treasury, in consultation with the National

Taxpayer Advocate, to conduct a study on the feasibility

of delivering federal tax refunds on debit cards, prepaid

cards, or other electronic means passed the House in H.R.

4994, the Taxpayer Assistance Act of 2010.

Study on timely processing and use of information returns

Under current law, the IRS processes tax returns before it

processes related information returns, such as Forms W-2 and

Forms 1099. The IRS does not match information on income tax

returns to information returns until after the filing season

has ended. There are two reasons for the delay: (1) the

deadline for filing information returns generally is March 31

and (2) the tax filing season begins in mid-January. A

provision to require the Secretary of Treasury to study, and

make recommendations on, the administrative and legislative

steps required to allow the IRS to receive information

returns before it processes income tax returns passed the

House in H.R. 4994, the Taxpayer Assistance Act of 2010.

Clarify that the bad check penalty applies to electronic payments

Taxpayers are subject to a penalty if their check or money

order in payment of their tax liabilities is not honored. On

April 15, 2010, a provision to ensure fair application of the

penalty by clarifying that the penalty applies to all

commercially acceptable instruments of payment (i.e.,

electronic payments) passed the House in H.R. 4994, the

Taxpayer Assistance Act of 2010. On July 2, 2010, this

provision was enacted into law as part of the Homebuyer

Assistance and Improvement Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-198).

Trade

The Trade Subcommittee is developing Customs and Border

Protection (CBP) reauthorization legislation addressing two

important oversight issues explored at a May 2010 hearing:

(1) correcting the agency's failure to collect antidumping

and countervailing duties; and (2) addressing cost overruns

and delayed implementation of the agency's new, modernized

computer system, the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE).

Combating the Evasion of Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Orders

The U.S. government loses hundreds of millions of dollars

every year when foreign companies employ fraudulent tactics

to evade U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty orders.

Such tactics include misrepresenting the country of origin of

imported products or mislabeling the types of products being

imported on Customs import documentation. The resulting

impact in the United States is two-fold. Not only is there

lost revenue to the government, but also American businesses

and workers are denied relief from the illegal trade

practices that the antidumping and countervailing duties are

designed to neutralize. The Trade Subcommittee is preparing

legislation to counter these kinds of practices and aims to

move that legislation shortly. This legislation: (1)

establishes clear, expeditious timeframes for CBP to

investigate and determine whether evasion is occurring; (2)

requires maximum cooperation between CBP and the Department

of Commerce in making and enforcing such determinations; and

(3) provides authority for CBP to collect unpaid duties and

assess penalties. This legislation will diminish

substantially the duties lost to evasion as well as the

corresponding harm to the U.S. industry.

Ensuring Efficient Use of Taxpayer Dollars in Further ACE Deployment

The Trade Subcommittee is preparing legislation that will

support the positive steps taken by CBP since its May 20th

hearing to get ACE deployment back on track and moving in the

right direction. ACE development to date has cost over $3

billion, and the system continues to have limited

functionality to attract a critical mass of users. Completion

of ACE promises significant benefits to CBP, businesses, and

workers alike, increasing U.S. competitiveness and saving

taxpayer dollars. The Trade Subcommittee is developing

legislation to ensure that: (1) ACE is completed

expeditiously and with strong functionality; and (2) the

funds invested in this project, going forward, are used

efficiently and effectively.

Social Security

In December of 2009, Congress enacted H.R. 4218, the No

Social Security Benefits for Prisoners Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-

115) to prevent retroactive Social Security and Supplemental

Security Income benefit payments from being issued to

individuals while they are in prison, along with

beneficiaries in violation of conditions of parole or

probation, or who are fleeing to avoid prosecution for a

felony or a crime punishable by sentence of more than one

year. The Social Security Act already barred payment of

monthly benefits to such individuals. This new law ensures

the prohibition applies to retroactive benefit payments as

well, and allows payments to be paid once the beneficiary is

no longer prohibited from receiving payments under the

provisions of this bill.

In response to a Social Security Administration Inspector

General report that as many as eight states use prison

industries to perform work that allows inmates access to

individual Social Security numbers, Chairman Pomeroy

introduced H.R. 5854, the No Prisoner Access to Social

Security Numbers Act of 2010. The bill would protect the

accuracy of Social Security records and help shield

individuals from identity theft and other potential crimes by

prohibiting federal, state, and local governments from

employing prisoners in any capacity that would allow inmates

access to full or partial SSNs of other individuals. The

Federal Bureau of Prisons already proscribes such work by

federal inmates by regulation. This bill would extend this

policy to all of the states.

In recent years, we have substantially increased funding

for program integrity at the Social Security Administration,

which will save billions of dollars in overpayments and

payments to people who have become ineligible for benefits.

Because the Social Security Administration uses innovative

predictive modeling techniques to identify cases with the

highest risk of an overpayment and targets those cases for

careful review, they are able to generate savings of as much

as $12 for every dollar invested in program integrity,

despite Social Security's already very low error rate. For

example, in 2008 their computer models allowed them to target

the beneficiaries most likely to have medically improved for

full eligibility reviews, saving $3.8 billion in Social

Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SSI benefits. If SSA had

randomly selected cases for intensive review, they would only

have saved $900 million.

Because the return on investment is so significant, we plan

to work on legislation that will increase our investment in

Social Security's fight against fraud, waste, and abuse.

Mr. President, I am sorry I was not here on the floor-- but I was watching in my office--when my colleague from Ohio, Senator Brown, made his recent statement on the Senate floor. I think Senator Brown pointed out very poignantly what is happening to so many people in our country today who have exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits. I would like to follow up on the comments made by Senator Brown to reinforce what he said just a few minutes ago on the Senate floor and the dire straits that so many people find themselves in going into the Fourth of July holiday.

Recently, a national group of business economists released its 2010 economic outlook, predicting that America's economy is ``on track'' toward recovery. Well, this is encouraging news. It indicates we are moving in the right direction under President Obama's leadership. But we also know the recovery is very fragile.

For example, last week, we learned that sales of new homes plummeted 33 percent in May, to the least level in 40 years. Let me repeat that. Home sales in May fell to the least level in 40 years. Banks are still reluctant to lend to small businesses. It is not that they do not have money. According to a new Federal Reserve report, U.S. companies are hoarding an all-time high sum of $1.84 trillion in cash, but they remain largely unwilling to invest, hire, and expand.

U.S. companies are hoarding an all-time high sum--$1.84 trillion in cash--but they are not investing, they are not hiring, and they are not expanding. So the threat of this double-dip recession is very real.

These economic warning signs are not just abstract facts and figures. They have very real consequences for families across the country. That is what my friend from Ohio was talking about earlier. The unemployment report for May was very disappointing. By the official numbers, there are 15 million hard-working people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, and they are struggling to find work. Those are the official numbers--the official numbers. Many experts in this field agree that the real numbers are far higher.

So when you count the people who have become so discouraged that they have stopped looking for work, or who are working part time involuntarily because they cannot get full time work, the number of unemployed workers is far higher, like about 30 million people.

So as shown on this chart, here is sort of the official figure of 15 million. But that is just people who are right now on the unemployment rolls who are actively looking for work. We have enough data to show that people have been out of work for so long--they have hunted for so long, and they are discouraged; they are not looking right now actively--they are not counted as

unemployed. The young people who have not had jobs for the first time, who are out of school but have not had jobs for the first time, they are not counted as unemployed. People who are working makeshift jobs for bits and pieces here and there, part-time, who one time had a full- time job, they are not counted either. When we add all those up, our real unemployment in this country is right around 30 million people.

The official figures will say there are five unemployed workers for every available job. That is not true. It is more like 10 workers. Job openings in America: 2.69 million. That is how many jobs are in America right now that are open--at least last month anyway. There are 30 million people out there after those 2.69 million jobs; not 1 in 5, but 1 in 10, a little over 1 in 10. It is little wonder that the average spell of unemployment in this country has skyrocketed to 34 weeks, far higher than in previous recessions. This chart shows that--here is the recession of 1980, 10 weeks; in July of 1981, 14 weeks; in July of 1990, 12 weeks; March of 2001, the recession, 13 weeks. These are the unemployment spells we had during those recessions. We are now up to 34 weeks and counting. Compare that to the recessions of the past. It is a small wonder that a lot of people say this is not a recession, this is a depression. People don't want to say it, but in many ways, we are on the edge of a depression.

As a result, a record number of Americans is facing long-term unemployment; 6.8 million Americans out of work for more than half a year, by official numbers alone. That is the highest number of long- term unemployed we have had since we started keeping track in 1948. Let me repeat that. The number of Americans out of work for more than half a year is the highest--the highest--since we have kept track of this since 1948. The families of these long-term unemployed are hanging on by a thread. Their savings are gone. Unemployment benefits are the only lifeline they have to pay the rent and put food on the table.

Again, I know I am not the only Member of this body whose office has been flooded with heartbreaking stories of families back home struggling to make ends meet. We heard a number of those stories from Senator Brown from Ohio. These are people trying their hardest, doing everything they can to find work, but the jobs aren't there.

I heard from a community college professor from Sioux City who was laid off due to budget cuts. She has applied for dozens of jobs, many far below her skill level. She is often told she is overqualified. She has exhausted her unemployment benefits. She and her sons, one of whom is a special needs child, are on Medicaid and they have applied for food stamps.

I heard from a worker in Des Moines who has been in the insurance industry for many years. She was laid off almost a year ago and has struggled to find work. Her benefits were cut off last week. Here is what she writes. She says:

My concern is that my family cannot survive without the

unemployment benefits. We have depleted our savings just to

save the house and not get behind on the bills. I know there

are others far worse off. Please help pass the emergency

unemployment insurance extension.

I heard from a schoolteacher in northern Iowa who was laid off in October of 2008. She recently ran out of unemployment benefits and had to apply for welfare. She writes:

I have not felt so humiliated in 20 years. I have been a

productive and hard-working woman since I was 13, but now I

feel insignificant. Please do not misunderstand. I have been

trying to find full-time employment, but to no avail.

Again, these are hard-working people trying their best, who never imagined they would be in need of Federal assistance. They paid into the unemployment insurance system while they were working. Their employers paid in. They ought to be able to count on it when times get tough. To me, it is a matter of fundamental fairness and human decency.

Yet, in the face of so many families in crisis, an extension--a short-term extension--of unemployment insurance is being needlessly, and I would even say cruelly, obstructed here in the Senate. Time and again we have tried to pass an extension of unemployment benefits and time and time again that effort has been blocked by Members on the other side of this aisle. As a result of this political gamesmanship, as of the end of last week--at the end of last week--1,350,000 Americans exhausted their unemployment benefits because of the lapse in this program. By the end of this week, that will go up to 1,720,000 who will be cut off because we won't extend it here. By July 10, 2.14 million--2,140,000 Americans will have their unemployment benefits cut off.

Blocking this bill may be a political game for some over here in the minority party, but it is not a game to millions of Americans who have lost their lifeline. For them, the obstruction of this bill is a personal and family crisis of the first magnitude.

Imagine: We are about to go out of here in a couple of days for 10 days, 12 days, something like that, to celebrate our Nation's birthday, the Fourth of July weekend. I am sure Senators will be with their families; Congress men and women will be with their families, and all of our staffs. We all have jobs. We have good jobs that pay us well. We have good benefits--health benefits, retirement benefits--as does our staff, Republican staff and Democratic staff. Republican Senators and Democratic Senators, we have good pay. We will have a good Fourth of July with our families. We will watch the fireworks and have hot dogs and hamburgers, listen to patriotic speeches, maybe make a few ourselves. How about all these people? How about these people? How about these families? What are they thinking about on the Fourth of July? They have lost their benefits. They don't know where to turn. What are they going to be celebrating? What are they going to think about their country? What are they going to think about this Congress, that turns its back on these people?

There is no reason why we can't extend the unemployment insurance benefits, none whatsoever. I think that is what we have to be thinking about.

Another thing that I think hits pretty hard, I have heard political candidates out on the stump who want to take a place in the Senate, or maybe in the House of Representatives, out there talking about how we shouldn't extend these benefits because this encourages people not to go to work; it sort of encourages laziness. Well, I think that is insulting and illogical. As I said, there are 30 million people out of work looking for 2 million jobs. They say, Well, but if you give them these unemployment benefits, it makes them lazy. They won't go to work.

The numbers vary from State to State, but the unemployment benefit nationwide is about $300 a week, below the poverty line. So here is the average income for a family of four on unemployment benefits: It is about $15,600. It is more in some States, less in other States. That is an average. So what is the poverty line for a family of four? It is $22,000. That is below the poverty line. They are telling me people don't want to go to work? These are people who had work. They are not out of work because they walked off the job; they are out of work because they were cut off of work. In some States, benefits are smaller. For example, in Mississippi, the weekly maximum benefit is $235 a week. Again, that is thousands of dollars less than the annual salary of a full-time minimum wage worker. Again, I can't imagine anyone who had the alternative to make more money and to have a full- time job would say, No, I want to stay on unemployment benefits. That is insulting. It is insulting.

I have also heard my colleagues object to this benefit extension on the grounds that providing these benefits is too expensive. It will add to the deficit. I understand the concern, and we are all concerned about the deficit of this country. But, it doesn't hold water when we are sitting in the midst of an economic crisis. We are about to pass a supplemental appropriations bill here sometime soon, probably after we get back from the Fourth of July break. It has about $37 billion in there in military aid to Iraq and Afghanistan. We are building infrastructure projects over there. We are putting people to work there. We are continuing to lose a lot of American lives, young Americans getting injured and killed, and that is adding to the deficit. Yet we are not paying for that. That is adding to the deficit.

It seems to me if we are trying to look ahead and trying to protect the people of this country, we want to get people back to work. We want to get the economy going again. We need to get the recovery up and running. Unemployment benefits cost money, yes, but think about it this way. That money is spent here in America. It is not spent overseas and it is not spent someplace else. It is spent here.

What do people do when they get unemployment insurance benefits? What do they do with that money? Do they put it in a shoe box? Do they bury it in a hole in the ground? No. They go out and they spend it. They spend it on food and clothes and the necessities of life: housing, rent, utilities. That money spins around in the economy. That is why the economists all agree that one of the--this is from moodyseconomy.com. The biggest boost for the economy in terms of benefits from the government, the biggest bang for the buck, so to speak, are food stamps. That is because poor people who get food stamps spend it right away on food. Not all, but most of the food is grown in this country and processed; not all of it, but most of it. So you get a big bang for the buck. For every dollar in food stamps, you get $1.73 in economic activity in this country--$1.73 for every dollar invested. Unemployment benefits, $1.63. Right next to food stamps, unemployment benefits. Infrastructure investments that so many of us talk about, very close on their heels: $1.59. If we want to put people to work, let's start doing infrastructure rebuilding in America. Rebuild our sewer and water systems, our highways, roads, bridges, rails, high speed. That is a great investment, plus it will put a lot of people to work too.

A whole lot of people say, Well, we have to extend the Bush tax cuts to get the economy going. Extending the Bush tax cuts is a 49-cent return on the dollar--not a very good investment, folks. Not very good.

So unemployment benefits, yes, they cost money. Yes, they do add to the deficit, but they provide for a lot of economic activity in this country--a lot more than extending a tax cut. For example, in Iowa alone, more than 3,700 jobs were saved or created in my State in 2009 thanks to the benefits of unemployment insurance. That is 3,700 jobs in my State alone because of unemployment benefits.

Again, under these circumstances, obstruction of an extension of unemployment benefits is inexplicable. How do you explain it? How do you explain something such as that to someone who is on their lifeline, has lost their benefits, or is on the verge of losing their benefits right now? It is like a person who is in the hospital with a serious infection. The doctor says, OK, here is a 15-day course of antibiotics. The patient goes home and says OK, 15 days, I have to take the antibiotics every day. But day 8 comes, day 9 comes, the patient feels better, they stop taking their antibiotics. The infection reasserts itself, the patient is right back in the hospital.

That is where we are in this economic recovery. We made the mistake once before; history shows this. In 1937, we were getting out of a depression, the public works projects and things President Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Congress put in place were getting us out of the recession. But then the so-called deficit hawks took over and began then to tighten down on the benefits and these programs. What happened? The Federal Reserve started tightening up the money, Congress slashed spending, the Fed tightened its policy, and the economy plunged back down into a depression.

That is why I used the analogy of someone in the hospital with a serious infection and they are prescribed 15 days of antibiotics, but after 5 to 7 days, they feel better and they stop, the infection then reasserts itself, and they are right back in the hospital. That is where we are now.

Well, quite frankly, there is an infection in our country. The infection is called a recession, a deep recession, a depression. Thirty million people are out of work. That is an infection. There is one thing that will help relieve that infection right now: the medicine of unemployment benefits.

I am delighted to yield to the Senator.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator, who has been a champion of working people and families for all the many years I have known him, and that is many years now. I thank him for telling us about what the CBO said in the deficit commission.

I pointed out a couple of things earlier. The Senator is right on the mark in terms of economic activity, and that is why it is so important right now to get the economy moving again, to keep it moving. The biggest bang for the buck we get is food stamps. People spend those right away on food.

Second to that, for every dollar we put into unemployment benefits, it causes $1.63 of economic activity. That is not a bad return on the dollar. Well, down here on the chart, extending the Bush tax cuts, you only get 49 cents back. That is what my Republican friends say you need to do--more of these Bush tax cuts. That is dismal. Yet an infrastructure investment brings $1.59 cents. If you invest more in infrastructure--sewer and water, plants and highways, roads, bridges, high-speed rail--not only do you get a great return, you get a lot of people employed at the same time.

How can we leave here tomorrow or Friday, when we leave for 10 or 12 days, when we know this is what is happening? At the end of last week, 1,350,000 Americans lost their unemployment benefits. At the end of this week, it jumps up to 1,720,000. By July 10, before we come back, it will be 2,140,000 Americans who will lose their benefits. How can we go home and celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks--the birthday of our Republic--and give patriotic speeches about how great we are, what a good country this is, when we are going to leave all these people out in the cold? What does that say about this body, about the Congress?

I will tell you, I say to all those families who have written me letters, contacted me by e-mail, and have come into my offices, telling me of your joblessness and your struggles: You are not forgotten. We are here fighting to try to get this done.

My Republican colleagues refuse to let us extend unemployment benefits--even for less than half a year, a short period of time. Well, we will do everything we can to get this done. For the sake of these families, our country, and for the sake of, yes, our economy, we can't leave here without extending these unemployment benefits.

I ask my Republican colleagues who have been blocking this to have a sense of humanity on this, a sense of compassion, of caring for these families. We all make good money around here. We get good pay and benefits, good retirement benefits. All our staffs are employed. Everybody here in this Chamber is employed. How about these people who are unemployed? You have to think about them before we close up shop and leave here this week.

With that, I yield the floor.