H-2A Improvement Act

Mr. President, I rise to offer new legislation that I urge all my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to support. I am pleased to be joined by Senators Carper, Akaka, Lieberman, Collins, and Voinovich as original cosponsors of this bill. The legislation we offer today, the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010, is directly aimed at improving operations and quantifying results across the Federal Government.

I think most of my colleagues know I am a business guy. In fact, I have spent more time in the business world than in the public sector. I have always tried to apply commonsense business practices to the work of government, in my former job as Virginia Governor and now as Senator. This is a point I think most of us on both sides of the aisle would acknowledge: If I ran a business or if we ran any business the way we run the Federal Government, I would be out of business in short order. If we do not change--as we hear the kinds of folks across America say: We want to see more efficiency from our Federal Government--if we do not change, our government might get run out of business as well.

As chair of the Budget Committee Task Force on Government Performance, over the last 18 months I have been looking into how we use data and information to improve government operations. Over the last year, our task force has held a series of hearings, meetings, and conversations with public and private sector leaders from every level of government to learn more about what works and what does not work. Here is what we have learned.

At the beginning of every President's administration, it seems an entirely new performance agenda is established. The Bush administration had the President's Management Agenda, and the current administration has its own accountable government initiatives. With this frequent change in approach every 4 to 8 years, it is difficult to ensure that we are consistent in the data we collect, use the best tools and technology to analyze it, and then put the necessary accountability in place to orderly track performance and the basic functions of what government does. Let me give you a couple examples.

Agencies produce literally thousands of pages of data each year, but too often we do not use it. We do not use it in Congress. Public interest groups do

not use it. Enormous efforts are put into collecting this data, and then it sits on the shelf. Typically, this performance data is only reported once a year, so it is often too late by the time we discover whether we are improving or falling behind.

We also do not compare the results of similar programs. Too often, so many of our government functions are siloed by agency or Department and rarely is this data analyzed in any kind of crosscutting fashion. We in the task force took a look at this. We looked, for example, at workforce training programs across the Federal Government. We are currently funding 44 separate Federal programs in 9 different departments to support workforce training. We all would agree that in a changing world, workforce training is key to America's competitiveness. But 44 programs in 9 different departments without any kind of crosscutting analysis? No business could operate that way. And it is not just workforce training. In food safety--a piece of legislation that we are working on that I and I know the Presiding Officer hope we pass before the end of the year to put new food safety standards in place--in food safety, we currently fund 17 different entities within 7 different departments involved in food safety activities. So how can we assess what is working and what is not working?

In short, government operates in silos. We report by agency and by program, but we do not know what we are doing in government in any particular project area or specific policy goal area. We need a better system that enables us to review the results of each program as a whole in terms of how they feed into a policy objective, where we are having the most impact, and, candidly, where we could find some room to cut or curtail.

Our Federal performance system also needs to increase the accountability of senior agency leadership. In many agencies, the performance planning and reporting is disconnected from the senior officials and not part of the daily operations of the agency. In other words, somebody's got this task, but their functions of performance audits and measurements and metrics do not have a direct line of reporting to whoever the chief operating officer of the particular agency is.

I can say that at the State and local level, we have actually made some progress in changing this around. Let me parochially start with what we did in Virginia. This chart I have in the Chamber is a little bit busy, but we created a Virginia Performs Web site. We use this to track progress we are making in key policy areas that are important to Virginians. So whether it is the economy, education--and we set commonsense goals that everyone can agree on across party lines, and then we look at the measurement criteria that lead to that goal. This is one of the reasons Virginia has earned the recognition as the best managed State in the country.

It is not just happening in Virginia, though. In Indiana, a different tool has been created. It is called the Transparency Portal by GOV Mitch Daniels. It again tries to bring transparency to the policy goals. Then we can argue about how we get there or how we ought to fund how we get there. But unless we have common agreement on the goal and then see which programs lead to that goal and measure the effectiveness of the individual programs, we are not going to get, particularly in these budget-constrained times, the best value for our Federal tax dollar.

I believe Washington has much to learn from these local and State level examples in setting goals, holding managers accountable, and using performance metrics in a consistent, user-friendly way. State and local decisionmakers do not have to wait to look at the results once a year. They do it constantly. That is what we did in Virginia. That is what we need to do in our Nation's Capital as well.

In addition to this reporting and crosscutting, we also need to recognize that not all of these burdensome reporting requirements are of equal value. So the task force has focused on reducing reporting requirements to identify what reporting might be consolidated or eliminated. If you get overwhelmed with data at certain points, the data becomes somewhat less useful. So we want to focus these agencies on what are the key determinants on which they ought to report. I do not want to just add new reports and data requirements on agencies. There are bookshelves all over this town sagging from the weight of unread reports. So we must streamline and modernize what we are currently doing, and we need to examine outdated and overlapping agency reporting. We should only collect information that is useful.

The Government Performance and Results Modernization Act addresses many of our findings to improve the operations and results across government.

First, it will require all agencies to produce real-time data on results. As I mentioned earlier, in the past, agencies would report on performance only once a year. This bill would require agencies to post results quarterly so the public and Congress can use that real-time information about what works on targeted goals. With today's technology and if you are collecting data on an ongoing basis, there is no reason we should have this information only come out once a year. A quarterly requirement will allow us to correct and fine-tune on an ongoing basis.

Second, the bill requires agencies to post data on a single public Web site. This Web site will contain performance information from across government so we can see how we are performing and how national priorities such as education, public health, and safety, are being met. Again, I go back to Virginia Performs, which works. You agree on a top- line policy goal, and then you see across agencies how all these different programs feed in. So posting this on a single public Web site rather than having Members of Congress or the public sort through the myriad of sites right now is a step in the right direction.

Third, agencies will be required to identify low-priority programs that are not adequately contributing to the overall results. Now, this is controversial. Every agency likes to talk about its best performing programs. No agency likes to talk about which programs really are not getting the job done. But as we face increasingly budget constraining times, we must make sure we look not only at the winners but that we have the agencies themselves put forward those areas where programs are not meeting the goals.

Fourth, we need to take important steps to improve the accountability of the senior officers in government agencies. We formally establish that agency deputy secretaries are the chief operating officers and hold them accountable for the results the agencies are looking for. Again, you have to have a chain of command so somebody knows who is the chief operating officer and those people who are performing are responsible and those metrics are reported to that chief operating officer. We also establish a performance improvement officer who reports directly to the COO and, again, works across agencies to meet our crosscutting goals.

We also feel these efforts will generate ``back office'' savings, and we have as a policy goal--I do not believe this will be a stretch--a literally 10-percent reduction in written reports.

We sometimes get overloaded with data. We want to fine-tune the data. We want to make sure the more useful data is reported on a more regular basis, that extraneous amounts--some of the kind of burdensome stuff that has been put in in the past that may no longer be relevant--we want to eliminate. And within the agency, we want to make sure there is a clear chain of command.

I think the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act moves us forward in a major way. So this legislation--commonsense business practices, bipartisan, in an effort that will meet the 10- percent reduction in agency reports; the effort, finally, to make sure we can look at policy goals not by individual department or agency but across programmatic areas; the same kinds of business techniques that are used in Fortune 500 companies all across America and, for that matter, all across the world--will bring these best practices into the Federal Government and make sure we do not have this kind of start-and- stop effort that has, unfortunately, plagued modernization efforts over the past.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--since this is bipartisan supported--to join in this effort. As we think about many of the major issues

that we kind of fight through in these remaining days of this Congress, I hope, for this kind of commonsense piece of legislation, that we could get the time needed to get it passed. Again, I urge my colleagues to join us in this effort.

Mr. President, today, I am pleased to introduce the Honest Services Restoration Act with Senator Whitehouse and Senator Kaufman. The legislation will restore critical tools used by investigators and prosecutors to combat public corruption and corporate fraud, which the Supreme Court dramatically weakened in Skilling v. United States.

In Skilling, the Court sided with an Enron executive who had been convicted of fraud, and in doing so, held that the honest services fraud statute may be used to prosecute only bribery and kickbacks, but no other conduct. That leaves other corrupt and fraudulent conduct which prosecutors in the past addressed under the honest services fraud statute to go unchecked. Most notably, the Court's decision excluded undisclosed ``self-dealing'' by state and federal public officials, and corporate officers and directors, which is when those officials or executives secretly act in their own financial self-interest, rather than in the interest of the public or, in the private sector cases, their shareholders and employees. The Honest Services Restoration Act restores the honest services statute to cover this undisclosed ``self- dealing'' by state and Federal public officials, and corporate officers and directors.

In a hearing earlier today, the Judiciary Committee heard testimony from experts who explored the kinds of problematic conduct that may now go unchecked in the wake of the Skilling decision. The testimony also considered what Congress can and should do to fill those gaps and restore strong enforcement to combat corrupt and fraudulent conduct.

It is clear that in recent years, the stain of corruption has spread to all levels of government. This is a problem that victimizes every American by chipping away at the foundations of our democracy and the faith that Americans have in their government. Recent years have also seen a plague of financial and corporate frauds that have severely undermined our economy and hurt too many hardworking people in this country. These frauds have robbed people of their savings, their retirement accounts, college funds for their children, and have cost too many people their homes.

Congress has acted, by passing the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act and other key provisions, to give prosecutors and investigators more tools to combat fraud. But we must remain vigilant, as the methods and techniques used by those who would defraud hardworking Americans continue to change. Too often, loopholes in existing laws have meant that corrupt conduct can go unchecked. The honest services fraud statute has enabled prosecutors to root out corrupt and fraudulent conduct that would otherwise slip through those loopholes; we must tighten it so it can perform that important role again.

Congress must act aggressively but carefully to strengthen our laws to root out corruption and fraud. By preventing public officials and corporate executives from acting in their own self-interest at the expense of the people they serve, the Honest Services Restoration Act closes a gap created by Skilling and strengthens a critical law enforcement tool. I look forward to working with Senators from both parties to quickly pass this bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, in these challenging economic times, dairy farmers in Vermont, New York, and across America are experiencing particularly difficult conditions. They face both rock-bottom milk prices, and a severe labor shortage. There is an immediate solution for one of these issues. Labor shortages could be met with foreign agricultural workers under a special visa program, called H-2A, which allows farmers who are unable to fill labor needs with domestic workers to hire temporary or seasonal foreign workers. I have long sought to include dairy farmers in the H-2A program, but the Department of Labor has consistently refused to interpret the law to allow dairy farmers access to seasonal foreign workers.

Last fall, the Department of Labor initiated a rulemaking process to reconsider various aspects of the H-2A program. I repeatedly urged the Department to exercise its authority to give dairy farmers access to H- 2A workers, both through comments I submitted in the formal rulemaking and by supporting the comments of the National Milk Producers Federation.

Nonetheless, on February 11, 2010, the Department released a final rule that continues to exclude the dairy industry from this valuable program. Inexplicably, while refusing to include the dairy industry because of its year-round needs, the Department of Labor extends new access to the H-2A program to the logging industry, and continues to offer access to these purportedly seasonal worker visas to the year- round sheepherding industry.

Today, I introduce the H-2A Improvement Act with Senators Gillibrand and Schumer. This bill will finally end the inequity under current law. The H-2A Improvement Act will make explicit in law that dairy farms can use the H-2A program, ensuring that dairy farmers in Vermont, New York, and throughout the Nation can find the labor they need to stay in business, meeting the needs of their communities and American families. This legislation, which also gives statutory access to the H-2A program to sheep herders and goat herders, contains provisions to ensure that the benefit that these workers provide to farmers is maximized. The legislation authorizes this unique class of workers to remain in the United States for an initial period of 3 years, and gives U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services the authority to approve a worker for an additional 3-year period as needed. After the initial 3-year period, the worker may petition to become a lawful permanent resident.

The failure to allow the dairy industry to participate in the H-2A program puts many dairy farmers in the situation of having to choose between their livelihoods and following the law. Late last year, the Department of Homeland Security audited at least four dairy farms in Vermont. Although I strongly believe that the vast majority of dairy farmers want to hire a lawful workforce, there is a critical shortage of domestic workers available to work on dairy farms. Dairy farmers are often ill-equipped to verify the authenticity of documents that job applicants present. As a result, some of the workers the farmers hire may not be lawfully authorized to work. With all the challenges facing dairy farmers today, we should help dairy farmers hire lawful workers, not leave them with the precarious choice of hiring workers who may be unauthorized, or hiring no workers at all.

Expanding the H-2A program to include dairy workers would protect both American and foreign workers. It would protect American workers from having to compete with an unlawful work force, in which unscrupulous employers pay lower wages in often unsafe conditions. At the same time, it would protect foreign dairy workers, by requiring that employers comply with existing H-2A regulations and wage and hour and occupational safety laws. This legislation, if enacted, would give foreign workers who seek employment in the dairy industry the dignity and certainty of lawful status and the opportunity to be productive members of the communities in which they work.

In 2006 and 2007, I worked to include nearly identical provisions in the Senate's comprehensive immigration bills. This legislation reflects those provisions. The measure I introduce today is a simple, targeted fix to our immigration laws that will enable dairy farmers to gain the benefits of this important program. While I recognize that many agricultural employers are frustrated by the current regulatory process, it is a critical first step, and a matter of basic fairness that dairy farmers are afforded the same opportunities to obtain labor as all other agricultural sectors.

Although this legislation is necessary to meet the immediate needs of dairy farmers, I also want to make absolutely clear that I remain in complete support of the more comprehensive AgJOBS legislation, which I joined Senator Feinstein in introducing last year, and on which Senator Feinstein and others have worked tirelessly. I will continue to strongly support that legislation, and Senator Feinstein in her efforts to see it enacted. AgJOBS is broader than the H-2A Improvement Act. It reforms the broader H-2A program to cover agricultural workers that are currently assisting American farmers, but who are not lawfully authorized to work. It also makes important, negotiated changes to streamline the H-2A regulatory process for employers and workers. I recognize that farmers across the country need a comprehensive solution--from Vermont's small dairy farms to the vast fields of California. The solution that the AgJOBS legislation proposes will benefit agriculture across the Nation and is a solution I remain committed to making a reality.

I will also continue to work with Senate leadership and Senators from both sides of the aisle to accomplish our shared goals for broader reform of our Nation's immigration system. In the meantime, America's dairy farmers must at least be placed on the same footing as other agricultural interests with respect to our current H-2A laws.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, in these challenging economic times, dairy farmers in Vermont, New York, and across America are experiencing particularly difficult conditions. They face both rock-bottom milk prices, and a severe labor shortage. There is an immediate solution for one of these issues. Labor shortages could be met with foreign agricultural workers under a special visa program, called H-2A, which allows farmers who are unable to fill labor needs with domestic workers to hire temporary or seasonal foreign workers. I have long sought to include dairy farmers in the H-2A program, but the Department of Labor has consistently refused to interpret the law to allow dairy farmers access to seasonal foreign workers.

Last fall, the Department of Labor initiated a rulemaking process to reconsider various aspects of the H-2A program. I repeatedly urged the Department to exercise its authority to give dairy farmers access to H- 2A workers, both through comments I submitted in the formal rulemaking and by supporting the comments of the National Milk Producers Federation.

Nonetheless, on February 11, 2010, the Department released a final rule that continues to exclude the dairy industry from this valuable program. Inexplicably, while refusing to include the dairy industry because of its year-round needs, the Department of Labor extends new access to the H-2A program to the logging industry, and continues to offer access to these purportedly seasonal worker visas to the year- round sheepherding industry.

Today, I introduce the H-2A Improvement Act with Senators Gillibrand and Schumer. This bill will finally end the inequity under current law. The H-2A Improvement Act will make explicit in law that dairy farms can use the H-2A program, ensuring that dairy farmers in Vermont, New York, and throughout the Nation can find the labor they need to stay in business, meeting the needs of their communities and American families. This legislation, which also gives statutory access to the H-2A program to sheep herders and goat herders, contains provisions to ensure that the benefit that these workers provide to farmers is maximized. The legislation authorizes this unique class of workers to remain in the United States for an initial period of 3 years, and gives U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services the authority to approve a worker for an additional 3-year period as needed. After the initial 3-year period, the worker may petition to become a lawful permanent resident.

The failure to allow the dairy industry to participate in the H-2A program puts many dairy farmers in the situation of having to choose between their livelihoods and following the law. Late last year, the Department of Homeland Security audited at least four dairy farms in Vermont. Although I strongly believe that the vast majority of dairy farmers want to hire a lawful workforce, there is a critical shortage of domestic workers available to work on dairy farms. Dairy farmers are often ill-equipped to verify the authenticity of documents that job applicants present. As a result, some of the workers the farmers hire may not be lawfully authorized to work. With all the challenges facing dairy farmers today, we should help dairy farmers hire lawful workers, not leave them with the precarious choice of hiring workers who may be unauthorized, or hiring no workers at all.

Expanding the H-2A program to include dairy workers would protect both American and foreign workers. It would protect American workers from having to compete with an unlawful work force, in which unscrupulous employers pay lower wages in often unsafe conditions. At the same time, it would protect foreign dairy workers, by requiring that employers comply with existing H-2A regulations and wage and hour and occupational safety laws. This legislation, if enacted, would give foreign workers who seek employment in the dairy industry the dignity and certainty of lawful status and the opportunity to be productive members of the communities in which they work.

In 2006 and 2007, I worked to include nearly identical provisions in the Senate's comprehensive immigration bills. This legislation reflects those provisions. The measure I introduce today is a simple, targeted fix to our immigration laws that will enable dairy farmers to gain the benefits of this important program. While I recognize that many agricultural employers are frustrated by the current regulatory process, it is a critical first step, and a matter of basic fairness that dairy farmers are afforded the same opportunities to obtain labor as all other agricultural sectors.

Although this legislation is necessary to meet the immediate needs of dairy farmers, I also want to make absolutely clear that I remain in complete support of the more comprehensive AgJOBS legislation, which I joined Senator Feinstein in introducing last year, and on which Senator Feinstein and others have worked tirelessly. I will continue to strongly support that legislation, and Senator Feinstein in her efforts to see it enacted. AgJOBS is broader than the H-2A Improvement Act. It reforms the broader H-2A program to cover agricultural workers that are currently assisting American farmers, but who are not lawfully authorized to work. It also makes important, negotiated changes to streamline the H-2A regulatory process for employers and workers. I recognize that farmers across the country need a comprehensive solution--from Vermont's small dairy farms to the vast fields of California. The solution that the AgJOBS legislation proposes will benefit agriculture across the Nation and is a solution I remain committed to making a reality.

I will also continue to work with Senate leadership and Senators from both sides of the aisle to accomplish our shared goals for broader reform of our Nation's immigration system. In the meantime, America's dairy farmers must at least be placed on the same footing as other agricultural interests with respect to our current H-2A laws.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation that will unleash a wave of investment in clean renewable energy. The Clean Renewable Energy Investment Act of 2010 will remove the arbitrary cap on the amount of Clean Renewable Energy Bonds that can be issued by our Nation's consumer-owned public power providers and cooperative electric companies. This legislation will generate significant private investment in renewable energy projects that will create thousands of jobs nationwide.

Congress first created Clean Renewable Energy Bonds, or ``CREBs'' in 2005 in an attempt to parallel the tax incentive offered by the Section 45 tax credit for electricity produced from renewable resources. However, the incentives for consumer-owned utilities have never been truly comparable to the subsidy we provide to for-profit, investor- owned utilities because unlike the section 45 tax credit, CREBs have always been subject to an overall cap on the amount of bonds that can be issued nationwide.

Since consumer-owned utilities operate on a not-for-profit basis and incur no Federal income tax liability, traditional production tax credits otherwise available to for-profit utilities simply do not work--because there is no Federal tax liability to offset with the credit. Yet the nearly 3,000 public power utilities and rural electric cooperatives collectively serve 25 percent of the Nation's electricity customers. These utilities are often ideally situated in terms of both geography and size to integrate clean and renewable technologies into their systems.

The original CREB program has been extended twice and was modified in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 to make it more workable for public power and more attractive to institutional investors. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided for an additional $2.4 billion in CREB funding split equally between public power providers, rural electric cooperatives, and other governmental bodies. In March 2010, Congress passed another very useful modification to the CREB program by giving issuers of CREBs the option to issue the bonds as ``direct-pay bonds'', similar to the structure of Build America Bonds.

In the last round of CREBs, the demand for projects significantly exceeded the availability of the limited $800 million for each category of issuer. Public power and electric cooperative utilities have billions of dollars in projects awaiting these incentives--with some even having the potential to use $800 million for a single project if given the opportunity.

This means we have an opportunity to unleash a wave of investments in clean energy. In Washington State, 50 percent of customers are served by public power providers. Nationwide, public power and cooperatives serve one in four electricity customers. Yet, if we look back over the history of the Section 45 tax credit and CREBs, Congress typically shortchanges the consumer-owned sector. Looking at the Joint Committee on Taxations estimates of the cost of all the major energy tax legislation since 2005, the resources allocated to CREBs have been roughly \1/10\ of the cost of extending or expanding, section 45.

My legislation would correct this inconsistency in our energy policy by removing the arbitrary cap on the volume of CREBs that can be issued, and would instead sunset the CREB program at the end of 2013, which is consistent with the expiration of most components of the section 45 credit.

It would also remove the ``governmental bodies'' category from eligibility for the bonds. The CREB program was originally developed for utility-scale projects and this amendment reflects that intent and puts the program in line with the Production Tax Credit for investor- owned utilities. Since passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Governmental bodies now have their own bond program. They are eligible for the new Qualified Energy Conservation Bonds,

QECBs, which is a more suitable program for these entities as they can finance both renewable and energy efficiency projects with QECBs. Under this legislation, Tribal utilities would remain eligible issuers of CREBs.

In addition, the bill clarifies that any reimbursement with bond proceeds is governed by the reimbursement rules applicable to tax- exempt bonds. It is widely recognized in the public finance community that the existing wording in Section 54A(d)(2)(D) is at best unclear, and at worst incorrect. State and local government issuers of bonds are familiar with the reimbursement rules applicable to tax-exempt bonds and there is no tax policy reason to have two sets of reimbursement rules.

Finally, the bill insures that any new CREBs allocated before the date of enactment of this bill are not affected by any of these amendments. The intent is to ensure that the ``government bodies'' category is still able to issue previously allocated CREBs and will not be retroactively cut out of the program.

This bill is good energy policy because it will lead to the development of thousands of megawatts of renewable power. It is good tax policy because it maintains the integrity of the CREBs program, and it is overall good public policy because it provides parity between investor-owned and consumer-owned utilities.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for speaking out for this important program. I know there are many jobs in his State which are at stake with this decision by the Senate. There are some 26,000 jobs in Illinois that hinge on a decision made by the Senate as to whether we extend this program. What we are discussing this afternoon gets down to the heart of the question: Will we do everything in our power to help Americans find work, particularly those who have struggled so hard in the past? Will we give them a chance to continue working in many instances or to find work? It is an important choice.

Here we have a stark example of this choice in the fate of a program called the TANF Emergency Contingency Fund. In my State, we call this program Put Illinois to Work. It helps States subsidize the cost of hiring workers in mostly private sector jobs.

This small program has had a huge impact in Illinois. Nearly 250,000 jobs have been created in 37 States. It is a program that everyone of both political parties should support. Rather than paying people to do nothing, this program helps private companies hire the employees they need but can't quite afford. Yet Republicans, at least to this point, are saying we should not extend this program past this Thursday. The end of this program in my State means the loss of thousands of jobs. I think the only reason there is opposition to this is the fact that it was originally conceived and offered to the Senate in the President's Recovery Act.

Though many on the other side of the aisle have taken a party-line position

that they will oppose that act no matter what it did is unfortunate, particularly for people who are just trying to find a way to survive in a very tough economy. Many of them earn $10 an hour. These are not jobs on which one could get rich. They can survive on these jobs. We are trying to make sure these people have an opportunity to survive. This is a stimulus that works. Who would argue with the concept or premise that putting people to work is a lot better than paying them to do nothing?

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts has a simple bill that would extend the jobs program by 3 months, but it is fully paid for by reducing the TANF program's future budget. The argument that it adds to the deficit does not work. It doesn't add to the deficit. It is paid for by future budgetary commitments. I am afraid that still we will find an objection from the other side of the aisle. They have objected to continuing this program on the continuing resolution which more or less keeps government in business while we are in recess.

Mr. President, 26,000 jobs are at stake in Illinois, and losing that many jobs would hurt my State. We already have an unemployment rate of over 10 percent. Governor Pat Quinn is trying to figure out how to save some of these jobs, but it is difficult with the budgetary problems we face in the State capital. It is not just Illinois that would suffer; 110,000 jobs would be lost in States represented by Republican Senators: 40,000 in Texas, which is represented by two Republican Senators; 20,000 in Georgia, represented by two Republican Senators; 10,000 in Kentucky, 10,000 people who will lose work this week in Kentucky represented by the minority leader. It is unfortunate that we have allowed some of these ideological positions to get in the way. It makes no difference that over 110,000 constituents represented by those on the other side of the aisle will be impacted by this objection.

I am afraid at this point some of our partisan differences are going to cost a lot of innocent people a chance to bring home a paycheck. I don't think that is what the American people want in Washington. I think what they are looking for us to do is to extend this program and save a quarter million Americans from losing their jobs.

I don't know if Senator Kerry is coming to the Senate floor, but I see some Members on the Republican side of the aisle. I will make the unanimous consent request at this point.

I ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 3849, the Job Preservation for Parents in Poverty Act; that the Senate then proceed to its consideration; that the bill be read three times, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; and that any statements relating to the measure be printed in the Record.