Approving the renewal of import restrictions contained in the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003.

Mr. President, I wish to support the remarks of the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Franken, and the Senator from Vermont, Mr. Sanders, who have described beautifully several different aspects of this debate. Senator Franken said: How is it that so many on the other side rush to support funding for wars and rebuilding in Afghanistan and Iraq and never ask for one dime to be offset, and yet at a time when Americans need help, they are not, let's say, leaning forward?

I think there are a lot of Americans, not only from around the country but from their own States, who might be very puzzled by this sudden commitment to find offsets when it comes to rebuilding neighborhoods in Minnesota or Vermont or neighborhoods in Virginia or in Massachusetts or in other States, such as New York, which have been so hard hit. I think they will have some explaining to do, which is why I hope today, when we retake this vote, many of my friends on the other side will consider the leadership shown last night by Senators Blunt, Brown, Coats, Collins, Heller, and Snowe. These six Senators voted yes to move forward to try to find a way to find the political will to provide funding for disaster victims now, not wait but send them a powerful and strong and clear and unambiguous signal that the Senate and the Congress hear their cry. We know of their anxiousness and distress and we will respond and we will fight about how to pay for this later--but not now.

They need to hear from us now that help is on the way. What they need to hear is that the fund will be replenished. What they need to hear-- the mayors, county commissioners, and Governors, Republicans and Democrats, from Governor Christie in New Jersey to Governor McDonnell in Virginia, who have given their support for funding disasters now-- what they need to do is not worry about us because they have enough to worry about. They have roads to rebuild and neighborhoods to rebuild and rivers to get in their banks.

I heard today from Senator Schumer that in one of the canals--I think the Erie Canal--the lock is no longer connected to the canal. That is how powerful the water was. There is a lock and a canal, but they are not together. That is a problem not just for New York but for the entire northeastern transportation infrastructure, which affects us all.

As a Senator from Louisiana, I, of course, feel particularly strong about this because many of these Senators, Republicans and Democrats, came to our aid 6 years ago when Katrina hit--the worst natural and manmade disaster because, as you know, it wasn't just the hurricane that did us in down there on the gulf coast, it was the collapse of a Federal levee system that should have held and didn't and breached or broke or evaporated in 52 places and left a major metropolitan, internationally famed city underwater and literally fighting for its very survival--a metropolitan area of over 1.5 million people.

This country rallied, after a lot of push from me and others and the private sector stood up and the nonprofit community was terrific. We still have literally thousands of volunteers still

coming. It is so heartwarming. They are coming to Louisiana and to Mississippi to help us rebuild. I just drove the gulf coast 3 weeks ago--my husband and I. We said, let's go see the coast of Waveland and the coast of Mississippi and how it is coming along. I visit our neighborhoods regularly in south Louisiana to see how they are coming along. Still, 6 years later, they are struggling. I don't think there is 1 house up for every 10 destroyed in Waveland today.

That is how hard this work is. It doesn't happen automatically. Mississippi is working hard and Louisiana is working hard. I can only imagine how other States feel, such as Joplin, MO, which was hit by a tornado with winds that might have exceeded 250 miles an hour. That is unheard of.

This is not time for my friends on the other side to sit on their hands or take out their green eyeshade and pencil and figure out how we are going to pay for it this week. We have all year to discuss that. We need to send them emergency funding now and learn how to pay for it later.

This is what our map looks like. Green is too pleasant a color for this map. This indicates the destruction--or the number of disasters that have been declared by the President. For the first time, I believe, in our Nation's history, a disaster has been declared in every State but two--Michigan and West Virginia. Michigan technically could be declared a disaster because it has been under an economic disaster for several years but not a natural weather event. They most certainly are having very tough economic times in Michigan. West Virginia always has tough times as one of our poorest States. The whole country is in need.

Why would the other side sit when America is lit up with disasters? We have to ask them to reconsider and move forward with the $7 billion help now. Not only is it the right thing to do and the moral thing to do and what Americans do for each other and what we should do, but it is all about--besides the moral aspect, which is obviously the most important--there being a real immediate economic benefit to this. If there was ever a jobs bill, this is it. I can promise you, having lived through this disaster recovery, it is like a shot in the arm for these communities. Literally, every single dollar that leaves our hands and goes to theirs will be spent immediately on food, clothes, and building materials. This is the most direct stimulative job creation we could do, and we need to do it now, this week, and send a strong signal to the House of Representatives: Don't fool around with disasters, and let's get this job done.

Let me just show you that when people say you haven't provided funding for disasters, we have provided funding in our base bill for disasters. I see the Senator from California, and I will be just 2 minutes more. I want people to know we have budgeted for disasters. I chair the Homeland Security appropriations bill. It is about a $42 billion bill. As we know from marking the 9/11 anniversary this past Sunday, that department was created after 9/11 to respond to new threats. We pulled disparate agencies together--tried to pull them together. That is still a work in progress. We have $42 billion. So we budgeted for FEMA in that budget, in 2003, $800 million. It was obviously not enough. So then we went up because disasters were increasing to 128. In 2005, Katrina hit and completely shattered the model. The expenses of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma exceeded the entire budget of Homeland Security. It was $43 billion just for Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. The whole budget is only $42 billion.

When people say pay for it out of our budget, we cannot do that. In some cases, it exceeds the entire budget of the country. It is not right to pay for past disasters with money we use to prepare for future disasters. We have beefed up base funding, but we don't have the level of base funding that potentially may be necessary. Now is not the time--we can see--now is not the time to keep the east coast waiting and Missouri waiting and the floods along the Mississippi River waiting and some people in California waiting. Texas, might I say, has had 20,000 fires. This is not the time to keep the people of Texas waiting while we figure this out. Eventually, we are going to have to figure it out, but we don't have to do it this week.

I see the Senator from California. I will yield to her, and then I will be happy to add a few more comments to the record.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

I thank the Senator from New York for those very descriptive and moving comments about his State, and particularly the part of his State that we don't hear a lot about. That is why we depend on the Senators to speak the truth about what is going on and what they are seeing. I know the Senator from New Jersey is here to speak, but pictures are worth a thousand words and I wanted to put this chart up. I hope the cameras can grasp the horror of all four of these pictures. What is I think most telling about them is they are all from a different State in a different part of the country.

This picture is of Joplin, MO. I haven't myself personally been to Joplin, but before the year is out I will go, and I think other Senators should go see what has happened in one of the great tornado disasters in the history of our country.

This picture, which almost brings tears to my eyes because it looks exactly as Lake Pontchartrain looked in the city of New Orleans, I believe is from Irene, from North Carolina. It is heartbreaking. I am sure this is a family who was on the coast, and everything they had is destroyed. It really is quite moving.

This is a picture on the Mississippi River, I am not sure in what county. But when our Senators come to the floor to talk about rural areas and the devastation, at least in Missouri, you can walk down the street and find a neighbor whose home was equally destroyed and at least get a hug. Out here in these rural areas, you are by yourself. It could be miles between your house and your neighbor's home. You cannot even find the church where you worshipped together on Sunday.

Here is Texas. We prayed for the rain last week to go west to Texas. It hit Louisiana again. They are the ones who need it, but they cannot get it. There were 20,000 fires in Texas. There were thousands of homes burned up.

Before everybody starts to think, what is the great help--yes, FEMA is a great help. But let me put this in perspective. You get $2,000 a family--$2,000--to help buy a toothbrush, maybe a few pieces of clothing, some initial toiletries, et cetera, and you get $30,000 for some immediate needs. It is not as if we are trying to send people $1 million a house. How can people stand in the way of $2,000 for immediate needs and $30,000? If you had a house that was worth $150,000 and you ran a little printing business and you lost both, the most you could get out of this bill is $30,000. Do they think we are being too generous? It is minimum support. I want to make that clear--minimum support.

Some people are lucky enough to have insurance. If the insurance company steps up and does not try to pull out the fine print, as they did in Katrina, and come up with 100,000 excuses why they can't fund the homes, maybe they will get homes. This isn't us just trying to dump millions of dollars on people who do not deserve it.

That is what I wanted to say. I will have more to say, but I think these pictures speak 1,000 words. Again, FEMA is out of money. I don't want anybody coming here to vote to say: I didn't vote because FEMA has money. They are out of money. They are stopping projects all over the country because all they can basically do is have enough money to pay those immediate needs on the east coast. Joplin, MO, has been told: No, you have to wait. Louisiana, on the gulf coast, has been told: No, you have to wait. We are happy to wait a few weeks. We understand the dilemma. But this cannot go on week after week, month after month. We have to pass a bill for an entire year and not have to come back to it.

I see the Senator from New Jersey on the floor, so I yield the floor.

I thank the Senator from New Jersey for adding his strong and powerful voice to this. I wished to clarify a few points that I think are important for people to understand.

First, for those who might be engaging in or listening to this debate, we are going to have a vote in about an hour or so, and if we do not get 60 votes, we will likely not be able to replenish the FEMA coffers that are virtually empty. The Federal fiscal year, to remind everyone, does not start January 1. It starts October 1. We run on a fiscal year, not a calendar year. We are coming to the end of our year in September, this month. FEMA has run out of money in the last 11 days. I wish to submit for the Record--this is just an 11-day count, $387 million worth of projects that have been halted because FEMA is stretching the few dollars it has have left to cover the emergency needs, literally, of meals and shelter for the people on the east coast.

In other parts of the country where there are jobs underway, rebuilding highways, rebuilding libraries, rebuilding schools, rebuilding sewer systems, water systems, et cetera, those projects have been sent a pink slip, basically, from Washington saying cease and desist. You know what the worst thing about that is, it is not necessary if we would immediately act and refill this coffer so these projects can get started immediately. What is very bad about this pink slip is that this $387

million worth of projects, many of these projects have already been done by small businesses, private sector contractors. This is not money owed to the government. This is money, in large measure, owed to private small business people or medium-sized business people or, in some cases, large businesses that are in the process of fixing the library. In the last 11 days, because of some ideology here, some sort of political party agenda, they have received a pink slip that says: Stop work.

If these companies that have already purchased the lumber or purchased the concrete or purchased the pipe to build the project do not get paid soon, they will go bankrupt. Believe me, I have companies in my State that have gone bankrupt because the Federal Government is a notoriously late payer even under good conditions. This is not what I would describe as a good condition. This is a terrible condition. So the other side needs to think about the politics of this. This is not just a moral question, it is a business question.

There are many dimensions to this question. We have basically sent a cease-and-desist order to $387 million worth of contractors and businesses that might not be in New Jersey or affected in Vermont but are working on a project. They have a work order from the Federal Government, only to find out, sorry, Congress cannot decide how to pay, so good luck trying to make your payroll on Friday. This is wrong.

The second argument I would like to make to the other side when they are considering this important and significant vote is, when the other side says to me: Well, we need to budget for it, I would like to budget for it, but I do not have a crystal ball. I think I am a pretty good Senator, but one thing I do not do very well is predict the future. I sometimes have instincts about it, but I am not a fortune teller, and one would have to be a fortune teller to see what is happening.

This is not Mary Landrieu's opinion. These are the facts. In 2003, we needed less than $1 billion to fund all disasters. It was a relatively mild year. Had we put $2 billion in the budget, we would have had $1 billion extra. The next year it jumped to $5 billion. The next year it went up to $45 billion. It broke all records. The next year it went down to $12 billion. The next year it fell to $8 billion. How are we on the Appropriations Committee--Danny Inouye is a fabulous chairman from Hawaii and Thad Cochran is a terrific Senator from Mississippi, but neither Thad Cochran nor Daniel Inouye can predict a year and a half out what the disasters are going to be and budget accordingly.

Even if you can't motivate yourself--some people here--to vote for people because they need help, just look at the argument on the finances. We do not know in advance. We could set aside some money, maybe more than the $1.8 billion we have. I do not disagree there, but we still would have missed it every year except for 2 years. Even if we had put $5 billion in the base budget, we would have still missed it. We cannot predict it. Should we set aside $25 billion every year?

The point is, when disasters happen, just fund what we have committed to, which is a base benefit package to people. As I said, no one is going to get rich off $2,000 and $30,000 to help people get themselves started. Hopefully, their insurance comes in, nonprofits step up to help. They can maybe dig into a little bit of their savings.

This is as much a jobs bill, it is as much a business bill as it is a bill that is the right moral thing to do for people. It is not because Democrats do not know how to budget. I am so tired of being lectured on the other side about Democrats don't know how to budget. I would like to remind everyone the last time this budget was balanced, we had a Democratic President. Democrats can balance budgets. I was a State treasurer for 8 years, and I did a lot to help my State get back on a strong financial footing. I am proud of my record and so is every Democrat here. It is impossible to predict in advance.

What we could do is what we always do, send help. Help these companies and help these people get jobs, put people to work in America. Do the right thing. Over the course of the next 6 months, as our big committee is working and trying to figure out lots of big problems we have--and this is one of them--we can have time to sit down and figure out, based on this reality, what we should do. If anyone has a suggestion, please come to the floor now.

My committee has been talking about this for 6 months, and I wish to say thanks to my cochair, Senator Coats, who serves with me on the Homeland Security Appropriations Committee. We have been thinking about this for 6 months. He voted yes yesterday because he knows there are not many good options out there. Can we find a way? Yes. Can we find it this week? No. We might not even be able to find it in the next 30 days, but I am confident that over the course of the next month and year we will find a way to pay for it.

Right now people in New Jersey and Vermont and Louisiana and Missouri and Minnesota and North Dakota do not want to listen to this. They want to tell their kids: Yes, we are going to rebuild. They want to tell their employees: Yes, we are going to put our business back. They do not need to listen to this and they should not have to.

I am urging a strong vote at 4:15. Again, we have, in the last 11 days, $387 million in projects that have been stopped.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the summary of projects on hold due to the immediate needs financing decision as of September 9, 2011.

Every day this list is going to get bigger and bigger. All this is is a pink slip to someone unrelated to the current emergency. They are working on emergencies from 3 years ago and now they are being put out of work because of this bullheadedness that is coming from someplace. I hope we can break through on that today.

Again, these pictures are difficult to see, but I think it is worth seeing them again. This is what people look like who are listening to this debate--this family sitting on those steps. Someone, either they or their neighbor, is going to say: Did you hear Senator Landrieu on the floor? Did you hear the Senate debate? Why would the Senate of the United States be arguing whether we can get aid? Aren't we building in Afghanistan and Iraq and we are not going to build in North Carolina? I think they are sitting on the Outer Banks of North Carolina thinking: What is going on in the Congress? People are going to be angry, believe me.

I do not know what we are going to tell them. What are we going to tell them if we vote no on this? Are we going to tell them we do not have the money? Are we going to tell them we cannot figure out how to budget it?

We will figure it out later. We have to, eventually. Every bill we enter into

has to be paid for, eventually. You know that, Mr. President. We do not have to decide that this week.

Let's tell them yes. Let's do the right thing and let's get help to Joplin, MO. Let's get help to our rural communities that sometimes get very forgotten. Let's get help to our folks in North Carolina and to our people in Texas who have been suffering terribly over this, and let's do it now.

Let me share another quote that I think is particularly significant. The Senator from New York talked about Gov. Bob McDonald, a conservative Republican from Virginia. He said fund it now. Another Republican Governor, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said:

Let's fund it now. It is not a Republican or Democratic

issue.

I wish to read what Gov. Tom Ridge, the former Governor of Pennsylvania and the first Secretary of Homeland Security, a staunch Republican, said:

Never in the history of the country have we worried about

budget around emergency appropriations for natural disasters,

and, frankly, in my view, we shouldn't be worried about it

now. We are all in this as a country. And when Mother Nature

devastates a community, we may need emergency appropriations

and we ought to just deal with it and then deal with the

fiscal issues later on.

He is a very influential leader in our country and was the first Secretary of Homeland Security. He ran the FEMA budget. He understands what is at stake.

Please, let's not make this a partisan issue. Let's get a strong bipartisan vote; the Senate can be very proud of that; and then we can negotiate the issues with the House. I will work with the House leadership to say there are several ways we can pay for this. We can debate it over the course of the next several months and maybe come up with a new way. I know one thing we cannot do is take it out of the Department of Homeland Security. Our budget would be devastated, and it wouldn't be fair to all the perimeters and the security and our ports and our firefighters to use their money to pay for past or present disasters. We could potentially find the money somewhere under some new mechanism, but let's not make the people of the east coast, the people of Joplin, MO, and the people of Louisiana, in the floods that we have just gone through ourselves, scapegoats. We will figure out there is time for debate later, but the time for action is now.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I had to slip away from the floor for a few minutes, and I understand that no one from the other side has come down to speak this afternoon. I cannot say I blame them because it is a very tough position to take.

We are getting ready to take a very important vote in 5 minutes on whether we are going to provide disaster relief for the country, and particularly for the east coast, which has been so terribly hit with Hurricane Irene and then, of course, Tropical Storm Lee that came up through the gulf coast--and you know we have had our share of difficulty--but then it dumped additional rain in an area that was already saturated. We have wildfires raging in Texas. We have the destruction still in Joplin, MO, and other places throughout the Midwest.

The question for Americans in all of these States--Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, and some who are totally unaffiliated with the political process--is: Is Congress going to help? Our answer today needs to be yes. We need to fill the FEMA coffers that are empty. Our fiscal year ends this month. FEMA was given a certain amount of money in the earlier part of this year. The end of the year is coming up, and they are virtually out of money.

I submitted for the Record only 30 minutes ago that in the last 11 days $387 million for ongoing construction projects for past disasters have been put on hold so FEMA can stretch those dollars to make sure people can eat in the shelters and at least have one set of clothes to wear in other parts of the country. This is unheard of in our Nation. We have never, ever gotten so low in our disaster account.

There is plenty of money in the account to rebuild Iraq. There is plenty of money in the account to rebuild Afghanistan. There is money in accounts for refugee camps all over the world. But the account for Americans who are homeless, desperate, and without their businesses, their churches and, in some cases, their neighborhoods is empty, and Members are going to come to the floor today and vote no? I strongly suggest a ``yes'' vote.

I said the reason we cannot budget exactly for these disasters is because we, A, do not know when they are going to happen, and we do not even know the amount of the damage. As I have shown in my arguments this afternoon, the amount wildly fluctuates. One year it was zero, over the last 10 years. One year it was zero. The next year it was $5 billion. One year it was $8 billion. The next year it was $43 billion.

So I am saying, no one here--we are all very good, very powerful people, but we are not fortune tellers, and we do not have crystal balls on our desk, so there is no way we can know.

When people say to me: Well, you don't know exactly, but could you budget something, the answer is, yes, we could figure that out, but we do not have to figure that out today. We do not even have to figure that out this month. We have this supercommittee set up to fix every problem in the world, it seems. We will just give them another one to work on because we have been working on this in the Appropriations Committee for some time. The White House is engaged. The Republican leadership, hopefully, will get engaged. The Democratic leadership is engaged. We will figure it out. But now is not the time to have the victims of these disasters and the survivors of these disasters worry about this.

We need to refill FEMA's coffers, refill the Corps of Engineers that are stretched beyond imagination at this time. You can imagine with the Mississippi River. The highest flooding in 50 years occurred this year. Now they have other flash floods all over the country--a bridge here, several bridges there, dams and dikes bursting. One of the Governors, I understand, just shut down a major bridge because they found a structural fault. So the Corps of Engineers has more than they can say grace over. Now is not the time to cut their budget. Now is the time to give them additional funding and do some reform of the Corps of Engineers that my people are crying for in Louisiana.

I think a picture is worth a thousand words. I know we are getting ready to vote, and the leader will come and, I guess, call for the vote. But a picture is worth a thousand words.

These are people who are desperate. I have shown this picture this afternoon. This is Joplin, MO. This is somewhere along the Mississippi River and the great flood. How lonely is this? At least in Joplin you could find a neighbor to talk to or a group of people who worshipped at a church, and you could pray together. This family is isolated, as others are in many rural communities. They need a yes from us this afternoon.

Here is Texas, and this breaks my heart. I think this is North Carolina. How sad are these pictures? They are real. Behind them are thousands of families and businesses.

In addition, if this argument of compassion doesn't move people, maybe the argument of flat business will move people. We are ready for the vote; I think the time has come. I urge my colleagues to please vote yes on this motion to proceed. If we get 60 votes, we can proceed to the disaster bill and figure out how to pay for it sometime in the next month ahead.

I thank the Chair.

Cloture Motion

I understand that Senator Conrad is on the schedule to speak in just a few minutes, but with his permission I just wanted to say thank you to the Members who voted favorably to move forward with the discussion about how to fund disaster relief and to provide this emergency funding.

The leader has laid down a very responsible $6.9 billion emergency bill for victims and survivors of the many disasters with which our country is struggling. These numbers were not pulled from the air. These numbers came through the appropriate appropriations committees. I think it is a solid amount to deal with the emergencies right before us for the next months and perhaps through the coming year. These numbers will be fine-tuned as we move forward. But it was a very powerful ``yes'' vote for thousands, tens of thousands of people who are waiting for us to say yes to move forward, filling the accounts that are now virtually empty, and giving a positive signal to Governors, both Republicans and Democrats; mayors, Republicans and Democrats; county commissioners, Republicans and Democrats, that help is on the way and that the Federal Government is not, and will not, turn its back on them at this time of need. So I thank the Members.

We had a strong vote, 61 votes. We needed 60; we got 61. But it was a strong vote, and I am glad we were joined by several Members from the other side, and I thank those who said yes to move this disaster relief forward.

I yield the floor.

I would ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I would like to spend a few minutes discussing some things in general.

In making a couple points today, I was referred to by one of our colleagues as a dictator. I am not offended at that; I understand the frustration of what is going on. But I think there are some significant points that the American people ought to hear about where we are and what we are doing.

Quite frankly, if we look at our financial situation and we look at the history of the world, no country has ever recovered from the situation in which we find ourselves in terms of our debt-to-GDP ratio and our debt-to-export ratio.

In August, before we left, we passed a piece of legislation that goes--a small amount--toward fixing the very real problems that are in front of our country in terms of spending money we don't have on things we don't absolutely need. But we have before us, and coming before us, two different pieces of legislation: One is a shell piece of legislation, and the assumption is the majority leader will utilize it to fund supplementation for disaster relief for the many areas in our country that need that funding. There is not a dispute that we should be doing that. There is a dispute about how much that should be. But the greatest dispute is, when we are running $1.3 trillion and $1.4 trillion deficits, and we know we have significant waste, duplication, and fraud in the Federal Government, whether we ought to spend another $6 billion or $7 billion by borrowing or we ought to actually reduce spending somewhere else to pay for a much more important and proper need in which the Federal Government has a role. That is the real debate.

I think we have worked a way to have appropriate amendments to try to pay for that, and we should probably go forward. There are, however, two other programs that are precarious in their funding: One is FAA-- and we have coming to us the 22nd temporary reauthorization--and the Transportation bill, which is, I believe, its sixth temporary reauthorization.

Now, there are some real questions the American people ought to be asking about why 22 times we have temporarily reauthorized the FAA for a short period of time, and why now we are on our sixth temporary--or fifth; I may be wrong on one of those numbers but close--temporary reauthorization. That is because we are not prioritizing what is important for the country in terms of our legislative agenda. We don't control that, but there are some things that the American people are interested in that we do control.

The highway trust fund has received a supplementation over the last 4 years of $35 billion from the American taxpayer outside of the taxes they collect for that trust fund. Out of that amount of money billions of dollars have been spent on things other than highways and bridges.

We now have 146,000 deficient bridges in our country, some in every State in the country. We have more now after the floods in the Northeast. We have significant problems and we have a limited amount of money, and what is in front of us is another short-term extension of 6 months for the transportation funding which continues to spend money on items that are a low priority.

I am not saying we couldn't spend the money on it. But when we are short of money, and we are borrowing money to put money into the trust fund, and our No. 1 priority ought to be safety and quality roads and bridges, to spend significant funds on things that are not a priority now--not when we are head over heels in debt, not when the trust fund is precarious--then we ought to not force States to spend money they don't want to spend. Yet in this bill 10 percent of the surface transportation moneys have to be spent on enhancement.

So that tells Oklahoma, or any other State: If you have an excess number of bridges, it doesn't matter that that is a safety problem for your citizens; we are still going to make you spend this 10 percent money over here that doesn't have anything to do with safety or true transportation, but we are going to require it because we can--except, the problem is, the people in your State pay the taxes in the first place for their highways and their bridges, not for the museums, not for all the hundreds of other things that are spent that are low priority.

So I thought I might give us a little flavor of what some of those things are. If we were at a different time where we had an excess of funds, I am not saying they are necessarily bad. But when we have bridges falling down in this country, and concrete--like the summer before last in Oklahoma--falling out of an interstate highway bridge injuring somebody, falling onto their car as they drove under it, I would think that we would want to repair these 146,000 bridges rather than spend money redecorating a sign.

So I will not go through all of them--I will put all of them into the Record--but let me go through a few of them just to see. If the American people actually believe we should not fix bridges or roads and we ought to spend money, I am fine. If the Senate believes we ought to not fix bridges, we ought not concentrate on safety, we ought not concentrate on the quality of our roads and bridges and they vote it down, I am fine too. But the fact is, we ought not to be spending money when we have the hundreds of thousands of bridges that are dangerous to people in this country.

All we are saying is, if a State wants to continue to spend money on something other than safety and bridges and roads, fine, it can, but don't make those of us who already have a big problem with safety have to spend money on something that doesn't protect our citizens, doesn't enhance their highways by spending money on something that is called an enhancement but doesn't enhance their safety or their ability to commute.

So what are some of them? Lincoln Highway 200-Mile Roadside Museum in

Pennsylvania--it received $300,000 in enhancement funding to commemorate the historic highway along the 200-mile route. Interpretive signage, colorful, repainted vintage gas pumps, engaging murals, refurbishing a large coffee pot.

Notably, Pennsylvania ranks No. 1 in the country in terms of bridge deficiency levels. Forty-six percent of the bridges in Pennsylvania are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Mr. President, $300,000 would have fixed two of them. So we chose to not fix two but spend the money elsewhere. At a different time, sure, or if Pennsylvania wants to spend it, let them. But don't force them to spend money on something that does not protect the quality of transportation for their citizens.

How about Chinatown Gateway, a $250,000 enhancement to supplement the construction of the Twin Dragons Gateway to the Chinatown area? California has over 7,000 bridges that are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. One out of every three bridges in California is in trouble, and we are doing aesthetics instead of fixing bridges.

How about the White Squirrel Sanctuary in Tennessee? Kenton, TN, located in Gibson County, calls itself ``the Home of the White Squirrel.'' They received $110,000 in transportation enhancement funding to construct a white squirrel sanctuary with walking trails, brick crosswalks, a footbridge, and a parking lot. There are 3,856 bridges that are structurally deficient in the State of Tennessee. They didn't necessarily want to do this. They did not have any choice. They had to spend 10 percent of their surface transportation money on things such as this.

Tuscumbia Landing in Sheffield, AL--$104,000 to investigate Tuscumbia Landing's archaeological features. The only problem is, 23 percent of Alabama's bridges are structurally deficient. That could have fixed two of them.

How about the National Corvette Museum Simulator Theater in Warren County, KY--$200,000 to build a grand simulator theater. Mr. President, 31 percent of the bridges they cross in Kentucky are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum--$400,000 to construct the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum. It is a great idea if we are in the black and have a good cashflow. But when Pennsylvania leads the Nation in deficient bridges and dangerous bridges, why would we spend that money? Why would we force them to spend that money?

I can go on. I will add to the record many other examples, all the way up to 40 separate examples of where we are spending money but we are not fixing bridges.

I ask unanimous consent that those examples be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

We are not pouring asphalt, we are not laying concrete, we are not decreasing congestion, and we are not increasing safety. What we are doing is we are following the rules of Washington when we have greater needs. We are in trouble as a nation because Congress does not set priorities, and when they do set priorities, there is no connection to the reality of our financial situation.

We have some options on how to go forward. One of the options would be to take the FAA bill, split it out, approve it, send it back to the House, and FAA is taken care of. The second option would be to pass the highway extension for 6 months with the elimination of enhancements and send it back to the House. But I will not give a unanimous consent, as is my right as a Senator of the United States, for us to continue to spend billions of dollars on things that are not a priority when the country is struggling to survive. Its very survival depends on us changing the way we do business. If that means the highway transportation bill does not get approved, so be it. But there has to be a point in time in this country when we change direction and we start meeting the obligations that are put before us.

The No. 1 obligation is to start spending money where it does the most good and quit spending money we do not have on things we do not absolutely need. With a 35-percent deficit--and we are going to run another $1.3 trillion deficit next year, which will cost a significant amount of funds for our kids and our grandkids just to repay what we are going to waste next year--there ought to be a time at which we say enough is enough.

I know there will be several, including my own senior Senator, who will be unhappy with my position, but I believe it is time to draw a line in the sand for the American people, for our future. It is not popular. It is certainly not expedient. But it is absolutely the right thing to do.

If the Senate wants to solve the problem of these two bills, we can split them or we can keep them together, but we need to end the enhancements right now until we get the highway trust fund healthy again, No. 1, and, No. 2, until we get our country healthy again. When we do, I will be happy to defer.

Remember, we are not saying you cannot do it. We are just saying you ought to have the option to not do it.

Exhibit 1

Kalanianaole Highway, Ka'lwi Scenic Shoreline Trail--

Federal Transportation enhancement funds were used to

intervene in a local land use dispute in Hawaii. A decades

long dispute over the preservation of Hawaiian shoreline

versus local developmental interests was assisted by the

Department of Transportation, which used $11 million in

enhancement funds to acquire land for conservation purposes,

effectively meddling in the local land use. In the mean time,

45 percent of Hawaii's bridges are either structurally

deficient or functionally obsolete.

Antique bike collections--The University of California

Davis received a transportation enhancement grant of $440,000

to purchase 60 unique antique bikes for its Bicycle Museum

Collection.

Shrine to Tennessee state history costs federal government

$23 million-- Nashville, Tennessee received $23 million in

federal enhancement funding to construct its bicentennial ode

to Tennessee state history. The project included the building

of ``a 1,400-foot Wall of History etched with historic events

from the state's first two centuries, 31 fountains that each

represent one of the state's rivers, and a 200-foot granite

state map.'' The only thing more egregious than federal funds

used for a clearly state interest, is that 20 percent of

Tennessee Bridges are either structurally deficient or

functionally obsolete.

ARTwalk--ARTwalk is tagged as a unique outdoor experience

that constructs pathways between shopping areas, galleries,

and museums in Rochester, Vermont. The project used $234,000

in federal enhancement dollars to build the artsy outdoor

museum, while 861 of Vermont's bridges remain either

structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

Old Roman Bath House Renovation--$160,000 worth of

enhancement funding was used in Berkeley, West Virginia for

the renovation of the oldest building in town, an Old Roman

Bath House. While local residents may be interested in

visiting a bath house where George Washington used to

frequent, federal taxpayers may find the connection to

critical infrastructure more puzzling. Moreover, 36 percent

of West Virginia's bridges remain structurally deficient or

functionally obsolete.

Saddletree Factory Renovation--The Ben Schroeder Saddle

Tree Factory, a historical factory in Madison, Indiana,

received transportation enhancement funding for historical

preservation purposes because the factory used to make

Saddletrees, the foundation of a saddle. 21.5 percent of

Indiana's bridges are either structurally deficient or

functionally obsolete.

Toledo Harbor Lighthouse--The Toledo Harbor Lighthouse in

Toledo, Ohio, protected by the ``phantom'' officer Frank,

will receive a $500,000 enhancement grant to restore windows,

doors, bricks, and shutters. This grant will not only help to

restore the facade of the historical lighthouse, but also

carry on the legendary ghosts of the haunted lighthouse.

Unfortunately, ``phantom'' officer Frank will not be able to

protect Ohio drivers from the 6,598 bridges that are either

structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

Critter Crossing--The Monkton, Vermont Conservation

Commission received $150,000 in federal grant money to build

a--critter crossing, to save the lives of thousands of

migrating salamanders and other amphibians that would

otherwise be slaughtered by vehicle traffic on a major

roadway. Thousands of blue- and yellow-spotted salamanders,

frogs, and other amphibians spend the winter months in the

rocky uplands near Monkton, but must return to low-lying

wetlands in order to reproduce. To travel between these two

areas, the salamanders must cross the heavily-traveled

Monkton-Vergennes Road. While some conservationists have

celebrated the project, others remain skeptical. ``I

certainly respect all species. However, I don't see the need

to pay $150,000 for a salamander crossing'', read one email

reportedly sent to the Burlington [Vermont] Free Press

newspaper. ``I realize there are a lot of other stupid things

my tax dollars go toward, but this one is near the top of the

list.'' Maybe the local communities will prevent the critters

from crossing one of the 861 bridges that are either

structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

North Carolina Transportation Museum Spencer, North

Carolina--The North Carolina Transportation Museum has

received over 11 million to renovate and showcase steam

locomotive artifacts. As of 2010, North Carolina has nearly

5000 bridges that are either structurally deficient or

functionally obsolete.

Massachusetts bike and pedestrian allotted millions, but

remain unspent--Massachusetts has received $135 million in

federal funds for bike and pedestrian projects since 1991, of

which it has spent little more than $51 million, according to

The Boston Globe. That means nearly two-thirds of the funds

provided in the last two decades by Congress to the state for

such projects remain unspent. Perhaps Massachusetts would

like to use their unspent funds to work on their 2,548

bridges that are either structurally deficient or

functionally obsolete.

Nevada spending millions of federal transportation dollars

to make Vegas highways beautiful--In 2008, Nevada received

its transportation enhancement allotment of $6,287,466. They

decided to spend it in a variety of ways, a few million went

to biking facilities and trails, a few million went to

welcome centers and interpretive centers. $498,750 even went

for ``decorative rocks, native plants, some pavement

graphics, a few walls, and some great big granite boulders''

to beautify an interchange to Las Vegas' 215 Beltway.

A couple miles down the highway, N-DOT beautified another

interchange with ``striping in the rocks and some native

plants.'' That project has cost $319,163 so far this year.

The people of Nevada might have been able to think of some

better things to spend that money on. One local who uses the

interchange frequently was not impressed by the expensive

beautification project. ``I'm busy watching where I'm going.

I'm not looking at landscape improvements and stamped

concrete.''

Unfortunately, there is little that local officials can do

to re-direct the money to better uses. ``We applied for the

federal enhancement dollars and those federal enhancement

dollars can only be used for landscaping and pedestrian type

improvements,'' explains the top civil engineer at the Clark

County Public Works Traffic Management Division.

The N-DOT deputy director for southern Nevada is just as

frustrated as many citizens that federal restrictions

prohibit states from directing money where it is really

needed. ``It's really getting out of hand to where these pots

of money have these constraints associated with them and you

can't spend money where you want to.'' These restrictions

sometimes leave states no choice but to spend money on

frivolous projects or lose it entirely. The deputy director

notes, ``if N-DOT doesn't spend that money and employ workers

in Nevada, another state is gonna have that money up for

grabs.''

Washington, DC receives Transportation Enhancement grants

for murals and valet bikes--Washington, DC received nearly $2

million in transportation enhancement grants in Fiscal Year

2010, ranging from $50,000 to $579,000. These grants include

items such as the stabilization of historic murals and a

grant for bicycle parking and valet services, along with the

creation of a ``Room to Breathe'' poster. The $2 million

allotment would be much better used for bridge repair, as 158

of the 244 bridges in the District are either structurally

deficient or functionally obsolete.

Railroad Caboose Relocation and Renovation--The Princeton

Railroad Museum received a $78,280 transportation enhancement

grant to help pay for the relocation of a historic train

caboose to be displayed and restored.

Texas Highway Rest Stops--The Texas Department of

Transportation uses a substantial amount of their required

transportation enhancement spending to build highway rest

areas. Texas plans to spend $262 million to build or overhaul

roadside stops along its highways, with a majority of the

funds coming from enhancement grants. However, some residents

question the construction of rest stops in such close

proximity to other commercial areas, leading one local

resident to surmise about the $10 million Salado rest area,

``I think $10 million would have made a nice third lane in a

lot of spots . . . It's pretty spectacular for a rest area,

for, I guess, $2 million worth . . . $10 million? That's a

lot of money.'' Additionally, the Texas Department of

Transportation spent $16.2 million in enhancement funding on

a Battleship Texas restoration project.

California Sculpture Competition--Federal transportation

enhancement dollars were used as prize money for an art

competition to find a sculpture fitting to place in a parking

lot for a Laguna Beach, California Friday Film Series event.

Merchant and Drovers Tavern Museum--The Merchants and

Drovers Tavern Museum in Union County, New Jersey received a

$210,790 transportation enhancement grant to create a museum

on the second floor of the recently renovated building. The

Merchants and Drovers Tavern Museum touts its amenities by

letting visitors ``experience the hospitality of the 1820s''

and ``quench his thirst in the taproom, sit for a while in

the parlor or, perhaps, try a bed for size at this `hands-on'

museum.'' Meanwhile, visitors should also be wary of driving

over any New Jersey bridges on the way to the museum, as 35

percent of them are either structurally deficient or

functionally obsolete.

Museum uses transportation funds for its Heating and Air

Conditioning system--The Sayre Historical Society Museum in

Bradford County, Pennsylvania received a transportation

enhancement grant of $74,704 for the ``Sayre Historical

Society RR Museum Heating and AC project.'' You read that

correctly, American gas taxes are being directed towards

heating and air installation.

War of 1812, Bladensburg, Maryland excavation--Enhancement

funding was used to excavate several historical buildings in

Bladensburg, Maryland to study the ``transportation history''

of the area. Bladensburg was used for troop movements during

the War of 1812, as well as being a transportation hub during

early America.

Funding for a Transportation Exhibit--$300,000 in federal

money will pay for a new exhibit on the history of

transportation at a local museum in Missouri. The fresh

display at the St. Charles County Heritage museum will

explain the influence of rivers, railroads, roads, and trails

in the region over the years. The grant application

highlights how ``The County and its residents have had to

rely on multiple forms of transportation and as technology

changed, the area had to adapt to the changing transportation

methods/patterns.''

Not everyone in the community agrees the federal government

should fund this type of project. A county executive said,

``It's the kind of thing the federal government can't afford

to do.'' Other officials however have a different perspective

on the federal funding. The county parks director explained

how ``the $300,000 grant is `a pretty insignificant amount of

money compared to that total pool' of federal transportation

spending.'' Maybe a more significant number should be 7,021,

the number of Missouri bridges that are either structurally

deficient or functionally obsolete.

Iowa town receives new entrance sign--Fairfield, Iowa used

$40,800 in transportation enhancement funds to upgrade its

``Welcome to Fairfield'' sign. It is likely that Iowans would

welcome their transportation funds upgrading their bridges,

as Iowa ranks 3rd in bridge deficiency rates in America.

Michigan Receives Transportation funds to plant flowers and

rehabilitate an engine house--In 2010, the Michigan awarded

$5 million in federal transportation enhancement grants to

various projects including reconstructing cobblestone roads,

purchasing and installing bicycle racks, and

``streetscaping'' a downtown street in Bridgetown, Michigan

with ``decorative sidewalk treatments, street trees,

perennial flowers and other decorative plantings, planters,

and ornamental street lighting.'' One grant awarded $336,490

to rehabilitate the historic Quincy and Torch Lake Railroad

Engine House while another grant awarded $1,490,280 to the

Detroit Science Center to construct an exhibit depicting

``how roads, tunnels and bridges are constructed.''

Transportation Funding used to replace unaesthetic fencing

around Oklahoma Capitol Oil Derricks--The Oklahoma Department

of Central Services, the controller of Capitol Grounds,

received $216,000 in transportation enhancement funding to

replace fencing around active oil wells on Lincoln Boulevard

with a more aesthetically pleasing form of fencing.

Unfortunately while Capitol Complex may look better, Oklahoma

bridge deficiency rates remain 2nd in the United States.

Over $150,000 in Gasoline Taxes directed towards making

brochures--Over the last 10 years, federal transportation

enhancement grants have been used to produce brochures for

various purposes including monuments paths, scenic trails,

and bicycle safety. The State of Kansas even received a

federal grant to install and replace their brochure display

cases at SRA.

Enhancement funds used to help construct replica of

historical schooner--In 2001, Burlington, Vermont received a

$20,000 grant to subsidize the building a full scale replica

of the 1862-class sailing canal boat, the Louis McClure.

Crandall Farm Restoration project--Washington County, Rhode

Island received a $120,000 transportation enhancement grant

for renovation of Crandall Farm. The project consisted of

renovating the 1870 house on the farm into a welcome center

and educational tool for the traveling public.

South Carolina uses gas taxes to purchase $15,000 ``Welcome

Signs''--Orangeburg County, South Carolina received a $34,965

transportation enhancement grant o help purchase three signs

at a cost of $44,500, or $14,833 per sign. Unfortunately,

South Carolina bridges are not as welcoming, as 22 percent of

them are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

The State of Michigan receives nearly $100,000 to celebrate

mysterious centennial--In 2004, Michigan received a $99,540

transportation enhancement grant for publications, historical

commemorative items, and displays for a ``centennial

celebration.'' The only thing more puzzling than how these

activities are related to transportation is that the

centennial for Michigan Statehood occurred in 1937.

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

Mr. President, I know we have had several speeches over the last couple of hours on very important topics--the jobs bill, our efforts to stimulate the recovery, a response from one of our Democratic leaders to Senator Sessions, and the good Senator who was just speaking talking about health care--but I have

come to focus our attention, if I could, again this afternoon on a particular issue. We spent most of yesterday talking about a matter that is absolutely right at hand; that is, disaster relief funding and calling on this Senate and the House of Representatives to focus some immediate and comprehensive thought and attention on this subject, which is affecting so many of our constituents--Republicans, Democrats, and Independents--in big cities, small towns, and rural areas all over this country.

In fact, this is the first year in our memory and in, I think, the recorded recent history, we have had a Presidentially declared disaster in 48 of our 50 States. Just a few days ago, we along the eastern seaboard and the gulf coast, where I am from representing Louisiana, suffered from the original hit and then remnants of Tropical Storm Lee and then Hurricane Irene.

There are some Senators who joined me in a press conference earlier today. I think it was the Senator from North Carolina who said it has actually been three disasters: an economic disaster, in terms of an economy that is weak and fragile and we are doing our best to lift it and to strengthen it, and then Tropical Storm Lee and then Hurricane Irene.

It has been millions and millions of dollars of damage. Unfortunately, we on the gulf coast tragically are getting to be experts in this field because we, as Senators and House Members from the gulf coast, have battled multiple disasters over this last decade. Katrina and Rita, which broke all records, surpassed any planning this government has ever done.

We had a FEMA that showed up not ready, not comprehensive enough in its view. Our people have suffered. But we have made a lot of changes since then, and here we are today with actually a better FEMA, from all accounts. I wish to give a lot of credit to this administration, particularly, and not just Homeland Security. But the Cabinet of this President has been extraordinary in their reasonableness when it comes to this subject.

I have seen the opposite. So I think I am in a position to see the difference. It is a big difference in this Obama administration in terms of the Cabinet. They want to say yes to disaster victims. They did not want to say no. That is very important. They cannot always say yes to everything, to rebuild every building, repave every street, elevate every home. But they are trying to say yes. Most importantly, the lawyers have been instructed to find a way forward, as opposed to instruction that came from the last administration which was to find a way to say no.

So let me give credit where credit is due, to the Obama administration and their willingness to be flexible, to be forward leaning, to have attorneys who are trying to be on the side of the taxpayer, on the side of the victims, and not shortchanging people in times of desperate need.

Having said that, the administration cannot do it all on its own. They need Congress, as the Constitution says, to provide the funding so the executive branch can do its job. The executive branch, by all accounts, even Republicans have come to the floor from States that have been hard hit and said: It is a more muscular FEMA, it is a more dynamic FEMA, it is a more flexible FEMA.

I wish to thank Senators Lieberman and Collins. They are the authorizers. Yes, I have had a part of it--others have, but they have worked tirelessly after Katrina and the disaster that happened on the gulf coast, where we were all shamed when we saw what did not happen that should have.

We fixed a lot of it, and that is something to be happy and proud about. When government does set its mind to improve things, it can. But we cannot do anything without the funding. Right now, FEMA is empty. The pot of money is empty. Projects, millions, hundreds of millions of dollars today, not just in my State but in California, in Tennessee, in Iowa, in Texas, and in North Dakota--and I could go on and on--but for the Record let me say a couple.

In Tennessee, mitigation of private residences from the 2010 floods has been halted. For those who might not be familiar with the word ``mitigation,'' which most people are, it means one could be elevating their house, one could be putting shutters or storm windows on their windows. Let's see what else. A person could be potentially strengthening the frame of their house if they are trying to mitigate against high winds from a tornado. There are rules that allow people to try to improve their home so the next time it happens not only are they not homeless, but taxpayers are not paying again for the same sort of incident.

The Federal Government, under good policy, requires a certain portion of all disaster funding to be specific, to go to mitigation because taxpayers think, when we are trying to rebuild from a flood or a storm or a tornado or a bridge collapse, do not just build the same old thing, try to mitigate so it does not happen again. That is smart because then we are not double, triple spending taxpayer money.

But in Tennessee this family, let's say, is in the middle of elevating their home. Let's say they have gotten it off the ground by 2 feet, and the contractor showed up on Monday. They were sent home because this project has been stopped. So somewhere there are homes in Tennessee--I am not sure in what particular community--where private sector contractors, many small business owners and their employees, showed up to work and were told: Go home. FEMA is out of money.

We have to fix this this week before we leave and, if not, at the latest by next week.

In Iowa, repairs for an electric utility--I am not sure who provides utilities in Iowa. Potentially, it may be, as in my State in rural areas, the local rural co-op. Everybody knows what a rural co-op is. Their project has been shut down. Potentially, people are still receiving electricity. I do not think people are sitting in the dark. I am hoping not. But whatever they were planning to repair and fix in Iowa has been halted because we have run out of money.

In Texas, repairs to the University of Texas medical facility have been stopped. In Louisiana, roadway construction has been stopped. In fact, there was an article in our paper, the Times-Picayune, just this week that said $100 million for Jefferson Parish--$100 million--that is just 1 of my parishes, 1 of 64, the suburban parish that sits right beside Orleans that was very hard hit by these storms, not as hard as Orleans Parish but received billions of dollars of damage--those projects have been put on hold while we move that money to help the victims in the Northeast. That should not be the case.

We need to act quickly to refill the FEMA funds. In addition, I understand in North Dakota and in other places there are problems. It is not just the DRF. The Corps of Engineers in its budget last year did not have enough money for emergencies. I slipped out of the Chamber a few minutes ago to go actually meet with the mayor of Grand Isle, who was here, as he is quite often, advocating on behalf of the only barrier island that is inhabited in the State of Louisiana, and he brought up pictures. Again, they are too small to see, but I am going to have them blown up for tomorrow. But I have in my hand pictures of the levees that were just ripped up and destroyed again from Tropical Storm Lee. These were levees on the gulf that we just completed.

But because the Corps of Engineers, when they rebuild levees, in their authorizing legislation are prohibited--which makes no sense whatsoever, it is a complete waste of taxpayer money--they are prohibited from betterment. They can build back what was there, but they cannot build it better or higher, unless they are directed to do so.

I am about ready to direct them because I am tired, on behalf of my people and the people of this country and the taxpayers, from rebuilding levees 10 times in a matter of 5 years. It is a waste of money--it is aggravating to the people whose homes are behind these levees--because we do not even have a policy, when we are building levees, to be ordered to build them stronger, higher, except, of course, in the case of some levee systems in Katrina. That was specifically directed, and it is being done.

We are building around the city of New Orleans a much stronger, much better system. One would think that would be being done all over the country. It is not. Why? Because we are

short on funding, short on political will, and short on imagination and creativity when it comes to building infrastructure in this country. I, for one, am tired of it. So are the people I represent.

I am asking the other side of the aisle to step up and to provide funding, funding that is not offset in the middle of a disaster. We will figure out how to pay for these later--these disaster funds later. But as I think Senator Leahy said so eloquently in our press conference today: Do the Republicans, some people in the Republican Party, actually believe we want fire departments all over the United States, when someone's house is on fire and they show up with the engines, to debate in the middle of the street how they are going to pay for the extra overtime to put out the fire? I do not think so.

Even if the fire department is broke, even if the funding has run out, we do not want to have a debate over how they are going to pay for overtime when the fire is burning. Put the fire out. Bring the people to safety. Put the families in shelter. Then go back to the city council meeting next week and they can debate for as long as they want how they are going to ultimately pay for it.

We paid for World War II, obviously. It was a long time ago. It is completely paid for. We paid for World War I. We are paying for Afghanistan. We are paying for Iraq, which, by the way, not one, single, solitary Republican--and not many Democrats, for that matter, but not one Republican whom I can recall stood and asked or debated for 5 seconds how we were going to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But when the people of Vermont stand in front of their bridges collapsed, their homes collapsed, their schools collapsed, and say: We need help, we have to have now a month-long debate on how we are going to pay for it. We have not done this since the 1800s.

We will eventually pay for it. America has to pay for everything. We will pay for it. We do not have to have that debate now. What we do have to have a debate about is how do we repair levees and what is the best way to mitigate it. What are the new technologies that can be used to make our communities stronger and smarter? How can we streamline the process? How can we eliminate the redtape? How can we get help to people faster? That is what we should be debating.

Instead, I have Cantor and Boehner making us argue about what offsets there are. So I have to go to the State of Maryland and say: Senator, what can you give up this year in your State? I have to go to Michigan: What can you up in Michigan? I have to go to California: What can you give up in California, so we can pay for people who are underwater in Vermont and North Carolina?

What kind of government is this? I do not want to be a part of that and I am not going to be. So we have to fund these disasters now. The saddest thing about all this--it is sad and it is also puzzling and it is perplexing and it is aggravating is that we already sort of made this deal 1 month ago, when we negotiated that big agreement we all came to, about how the levels of funding would be for 2012.

Everybody remembers that, before we left for August, and we had this big knock-down, drag-out--in that agreement, our leadership, Republicans and Democrats, already agreed to do something that I think is very smart. I want to show what they agreed to. They agreed--because it is a puzzlement--how do we fund in advance disasters, how do we know how much to set aside. It is a problem because every year is different.

I wish to show what our problem is, so people listening can give me their own suggestions about how to solve it. In 2003, we set aside, in the whole budget of the United States--we can see this a little bit-- $800 million for disasters. But we had $1.7 billion. So we were short $984 million. We funded it. That went on our books.

The next year we said: Well, this year we had $1.7 billion in disasters. So the next year we put $1.8 in our bill, thinking we would cover it because last year was $1.7. But, lo and behold, we had an additional $3 billion worth of disaster funding. We did not know these disasters were going to happen.

So the next year we increased the amount of money in our base budget. Then, lo and behold, in that year, we put in $2 billion dollars. Katrina hit.

The levees broke. Do you know what the bill came in for? It was $43 billion. We had budgeted $2 billion because in the history of the past that is all we needed to cover disasters. It went from $2 billion to $43 billion. Who would have had a crystal ball to know that? Did we sit and debate? Some people tried to, until I said there was no way I was going to have to find a $43 billion offset before we can let the people of the gulf coast know that help was on the way. We spent what was required to help the gulf coast.

You can see the next year here. These numbers are very erratic, unpredictable. So what our leadership did, looking back on these 10 years and listening to the debate and argument, was come up with a pretty good plan. They said, OK, we will throw out the high number, we will throw out the low number--in 2009 we didn't have any emergencies. Can you imagine 1 year that you have no declared emergencies, and the next year you have one in almost every State? That is how erratic this is. It is not as though we are not trying to plan. It is just impossible by the nature of what an emergency or disaster is. You can plan for them, but you cannot always predict how many you are going to have and where they will be. Of course, everybody understands that.

What our leaders did is they threw out the top one and the bottom one and came up with an average. That average is about $11 billion--a very reasonable approach. So they put in our agreement that we made 30 days ago--we said, OK, next year, this is what the Federal Government can spend and, in addition to that, you can go up to the average. You can spend an additional $11 billion, which is a very small amount of money compared to the whole Federal budget.

You would think we would not be having this debate. Why? The need is very evident, the history would dictate that we don't have debate over disasters, and the Republican and Democratic leadership has already provided a way, over and above our 2012 numbers, to pay for these disasters.

I ask this: Why are we having to fight for this? That is a very good question. I think it is because some people on the other side of the aisle think this is a good thing to fight about. They think they have to find a pay-for for everything we do even, as I have described, when you cannot predict. Even if you do plan responsibly, you never know, as in the cases of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. But our leadership negotiated a way forward.

Yet we have people all over the country looking to the Republican leadership and listening to Representative Cantor and to Speaker Boehner saying: I want to help you, ladies and gentlemen, but we have to find an offset.

I think people might say: Why didn't we hear that when they sent troops into Afghanistan or Iraq? Why didn't we hear that when they are rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan? The same people are not yelling and screaming--or didn't do it when we went in there. I think we have a good point.

I am saying I am proud of the Senate for last night, with Democrats mostly--and, yes, about 8 Republicans--who voted to move this debate forward. I thank particularly Senator Blunt from Missouri, who is an outspoken leader on the Appropriations Committee, for the need to act now, act quickly, to fund the DRF, the Corps of Engineers. Of course, Missouri has had terrible tornadoes and flooding. Not only did they have Joplin, but they had the great flood of the Mississippi River, which was the highest in 50 years. It was so high along our capital city when I visited our mayor a couple months ago--that is Baton Rouge, which is our largest city, since 100,000 people left New Orleans to literally live on higher ground, although it has broken their hearts and divided their families. They have moved to Baton Rouge, as we are rebuilding levees and our flood control is stronger in the southeastern part of our State. People spend time walking on levees and riding bikes on the levees. Of course, mechanical vehicles are not allowed. You cannot have cars, trucks, and four-wheelers because that would be destructive to our levees. Our levees are quite huge. They are almost like linear parks. For the first time in the history of anybody who can remember, the mayor had to declare that

everyone stay off the levees because the water was so high and seeping through. We literally thought maybe some of these great levee systems would breach. Happily, they did not. It was a frightening situation for millions and millions.

In some parts of Missouri, and other parts north of us, the levees did breach. Sometimes the levees will blow to protect other areas. It is frightening if your business is behind one of those levees, as North Dakota residents know all too well.

Nonetheless, we should not be debating this. I hope our bill will pass this week and get over to the House for a quick vote. If the House decides to send us a continuing resolution, please, I want the leadership to hear clearly what I am saying--and I will send them a message by letter in the next few minutes--please do not think you can nickel and dime recovery efforts, that you can fund it 6 weeks at a time, or 4 weeks at a time. Disaster recovery doesn't operate that way. Our mayors, Governors, the Republican Governor of New Jersey, the Republican Governor of Virginia, the mayor of Patterson, who was with us today, and mayors up along the east coast who are with their people every day--the mayor of Joplin, MO, who has to be able to know that he can plan a year out or 2 years out--having to rebuild an entire town is overwhelming even if you have the money and the plan. Can you imagine if you sort of have a plan, but you don't know if the Federal Government will provide you money? Do you know the frustrating council meetings and school board meetings that will be had, and they will say, well, the Republican party in Washington cannot figure out if we should get funding, but it is 6 weeks at a time?

I will not allow that to happen. I am going to draw the line in the sand right now. You may get around me on it, but it will take a huge effort to get around this desk on that subject--a huge effort. If I have to shut the Senate down--and I have done it before--I will do it again, because I can tell you, as much as my name is Mary Landrieu, you cannot rebuild communities with 6-week plans. It took us 2 years to put together the Road Home Program--2 years after we got the funding. The reason we could not put it together before was--even though Mississippi had their money because President Bush gave it to them right away but made the people of Louisiana wait--because Congress would not decide how much money to give us. No mayor, no Governor, no matter how great they are, no matter how smart they are, no matter how many engineers they have, no matter how many Rotary Clubs are helping, no matter what the chamber of commerce is doing, I am telling you that it cannot be done without a reliable source of funding, so the planners can say something like this: We lost eight schools in this flood. They bring the community together--and these are how these discussions go--and say we might not have money to build all eight, but we have money to build six. Which six do you want to build, and where, what materials do you want to use, and which kids should go to which schools?

I have been in these meetings. I am not going to allow the mayors and Governors to call their people together and say we lost six schools and we don't know when the money is coming to build them, and we cannot make any plans because the Republican leadership has decided that every 6 weeks they are going to let us know how much money we are going to get.

That is not going to happen.

I want Speaker Boehner to think about this, and I want Mitch McConnell to think about this, and I want the Republican leadership to think about it. I will negotiate on the top number. I will talk about maybe FEMA doesn't need quite this much. I will talk about maybe the Corps of Engineers doesn't need that much. But I will not, under any circumstances, agree to a 6-week or 4-week continuing resolution. You may run the Government of the United States that way. We have, unfortunately, gotten used to it. That is a sad commentary, I might say, that we run the greatest government ever created in the eyes and vision and hearts of mankind, but we operate it on a 6-week basis. That might be the game we play with the government, but I am not going to allow that game to be played with people who have lost their homes, lost their businesses, and who look up from a storm and say, my gosh, what happened to me? Then they don't know what is going to happen because we cannot make a decision that lasts more than 6 months or a year. So the minimum will be 6 months. I hope we can find the will to do a whole year, because without that you are going to shut down recovery operations at a time when it is heartbreaking to think of small business owners who have lost their print shop or their dress store or their shoe store, and they see everybody talking about creating jobs. They used to have three of them last week--selling printing material or selling shoes or whatever--and they are trying to get their business back, and we cannot decide--even though we have the money, even though we already budgeted the money, and although we already made an agreement about how we would do this--we are going to still argue.

I will tell you, if this is on the tea party's agenda, I suggest they take it off. If it is somebody else's agenda, please speak up. I have not had one single Republican Senator come down and defend this position, because it is indefensible. I hope when the leadership is negotiating--and they are doing so now--they will hear me in summary very quickly: The FEMA pot is empty. The Corps of Engineers is always running on fumes. Levees are breaking and flooding, and it is occurring in places that haven't flooded in a hundred years. When we wake up and realize that we have to put more money in emergency funding and be there when our people are hurting, as they are now--and we will eventually pay for this; we don't have to figure that out in the next 30 days. We have to give them a green light and the billions of dollars they need to operate for a year. Everything else is negotiable. But this is not going to be negotiated. We are not going to rebuild pieces of 48 States 4 weeks at a time. That will not happen. Whatever amount of money we give, let it be for as long as we can make it, let it be as robust as it can possibly be, and let's give a green light to our Republican Governors, Republican mayors, Independents, and Democrats out there, who are shellshocked about the work before them.

The people in neighborhoods are still crying and in shock about what they have to do in making decisions. Should we come back? Should we not come back? What should our neighborhood or community do? Maybe we should all move to higher ground. These decisions are being made right now. The last thing they should worry about is Congress debating whether there is money there to turn that hose on.

Let's do our job the way we have done it for 150 years.

Let's continue to do it and let our people know we are there for them, as we try to be there for other people in the world who are caught in situations such as this. We most certainly need to be here for our people in America.

I thank the Chair. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from Alabama who has come to the floor. We see the world differently, but we both acknowledge we are at a moment where action is the only alternative. Doing nothing is unacceptable. When President Obama came to speak to us in a joint session of Congress last week, that is what he told us. He basically said, Let's roll up our sleeves, work together, both parties in Congress, for a change, and do something about this economy.

There are 14 million Americans out of work. The report now from the Joint Economic Committee and others cites the highest level of poverty in our country in decades; the problems working families are having week to week, month to month, and year to year, falling behind, despite all of their hard work. Their wages aren't rising to keep up with the cost of living. Many are surviving paycheck to paycheck.

A survey was taken recently across America asking working families the following question: Could you come up with $2,000 in 30 days if you had to, either from savings or borrowing it? Fifty-three percent of working families said yes and 47 percent said no. That is how close to the edge almost half of working families are living. A $2,000 medical bill at an emergency room is almost nothing these days--it is for a minor injury--and these families could not come up with it. That is what they are facing. That is why the President said let us focus on doing things that will help these families and equally, if not more importantly, help small businesses create jobs.

There is no argument here about creating an army of government jobs. That is not even on the table. The President is not proposing that. Here is what he said: Let's give a tax cut, a payroll tax cut to working individuals so they have more take-home pay. I took a look at what it would mean in the State of Illinois. It would mean that for the average income, which is $53,000 a year, that family would get $1,400 in tax cuts or $120 a month. I think it is worth something to working families to have that much more in their pockets to meet the needs of their families and perhaps make some critical purchases for their children, for their future, whatever it might be. That is a tax cut the President has proposed.

He also proposed a tax cut for small businesses if they will hire unemployed people, a tax credit of up to $4,000 to hire these folks, take them off the unemployed rolls, and put them to work.

I went to several job centers during the August recess. One was in McHenry, IL, and one was in Elgin, IL. I spent the better part of the day sitting with unemployed people and talking to them. You ought to go there. If you think unemployed Americans--the 14 million on whom we hear the statistics--are living the life of luxury on their unemployment checks, they are not. Most of them are struggling to survive, and many of them come each day to a job center to brush up their resume, to find out the latest people asking for new workers and put in new applications day after day. Many of them are discouraged after submitting hundreds of applications with no response. Some go back to school. I met a few who really made the right life choice by going back to take courses at community college, where they could afford it, or at job-training centers where there would be no charge to them, so they could pick up a new skill in an area in which they could get a job. That is the reality. The President is trying to create tax incentives for small businesses to hire those people.

Usually the Republicans who come to the floor applaud tax cuts. My experience is that they are for tax cuts when times are good and bad, but this time they are against these tax cuts. What is the difference between these tax cuts and the ones the Republicans historically support? There are two differences: The President's tax cuts are focused on middle-income families, not the wealthiest, and they are the President's tax cuts. Those are the two differences.

I hope some on the Republican side will reflect on the fact, as the President said, that the American people are not going to reward us for our campaign rhetoric if this economy does not turn around. They want us to work together to solve the problems facing our economy. They want tax cuts for working families. They want small businesses to have an incentive to hire people. They want us to focus on creating good-paying jobs here at home. What kinds of jobs? Building America.

As the President said, if we are going to succeed in this world, we need to outeducate our competitors, outinnovate our competitors, and outbuild them.

I went to China over Easter. What is happening in that country is incredible. They are building in every direction--building cranes and construction activity everywhere. They are building the infrastructure in China to become the No. 1 economic power of the world in the 21st century. What are we doing? We are hearing speech after speech saying that because of the deficit, we cannot invest in America. Some say we cannot invest in education. They argue that we cannot invest in research, we cannot invest in building America. I think they are wrong.

The deficit is a serious challenge. Even the Bowles-Simpson Commission, which I served on and voted for, said: When you get serious about cutting spending, do it when this recession is behind you. They know, we know you can't balance the budget with 14 million Americans out of work.

Let me say a word about the safety net in America. I made a visit in Champagne, IL, to a food-distributing operation. They distribute food to pantries and soup kitchens all around central Illinois. Unfortunately, their business has never been better. More and more families are showing up in these places for a helping hand. I went in there to hear how they are doing. They are getting a lot of help from the private sector that donates food that is near expiration, for example, and a lot of contributions from churches and charitable individuals. It is very heartwarming to see it.

As I went to tour this place, there was a young woman there. She was an attractive, well-dressed woman. I assumed she worked for this food depository. She said to me that she had a job in a local school district as a teacher's aide. I was a little bit puzzled as to whether she was on the board of directors or what her connection was. She came there to tell me that as a single mom with two little kids, even with a job in the school district, which she was happy to have, she still needed food stamps to put food on the table every day for her kids.

I don't think Americans--those of us lucky enough to never have to worry about the next meal--know what families are going through, working families struggling with low income, trying to keep their kids well-fed and to do what every parent wants to do. More and more of these families are going to soup kitchens very quietly because that is a meal they don't have to pay for. They are going to the pantries to pick up the groceries. I have seen them in one of the nicest and most prosperous counties in my State, DuPage County. I went to the pantries there, and I saw the people coming through the door. You would not be able to pick them out, but they are working families who need a helping hand. That is the reality. That is why the safety net is so important.

I am troubled that so many people today are on food stamps. I am not troubled that they are on food stamps; I am troubled because they have to be on food stamps. I hear critics come to the floor who say: There are too darned many people on food stamps. There is something wrong here.

What is wrong is not the food stamps; what is wrong is hunger and low-income and working families struggling to get by paycheck to paycheck. That is what is wrong. The number of Americans now qualifying for this food stamp assistance is even going up among those who are employed, such as the lady I met in Champagne, IL. That is a reality.

Something else is happening too. As more and more people lose their jobs, they lose their health insurance. When I sit down with the unemployed, that is one of the first items that comes up. Once you have lost that health insurance premium your employer helps you pay, most folks can't afford it. It is just way beyond them. So they are out there without insurance, and they are vulnerable. Some of them have sick kids, chronically ill children, and they worry about it. They go to the free clinics. We are seeing more and more working families showing up at free clinics across America. That is a reality of this economy too.

When we talk about cutting spending on Medicaid, keep in mind who receives Medicaid payments in America. In my State of Illinois, 36 percent of Illinois children are covered by Medicaid insurance. When it comes to births in the State of Illinois, 52 percent of all births in Illinois are paid for by Medicaid. But the biggest single expense in Medicaid is neither one of those. Mr. President, 20 percent of the Medicaid recipients in my State account for 60 percent of the cost of the program: the elderly--parents, grandparents, great-grandparents in nursing homes and convalescent centers, on Medicare and broke and stay there because Medicaid steps in and helps them keep things together, so they have at least some care and some attention in the late years of their lives. When we talk about cutting spending in Medicaid, we are talking about hurting the most vulnerable people in America: children, such as the kids of that single mom I met; those who need prenatal care so their babies will be healthy; and, of course, the elderly who are stuck in that situation.

The same thing is true with Medicare. I understand Medicare costs are going up dramatically. I also understand the number of people under Social Security and Medicare is going to rise as baby boomers reach that age. But we have to take care that at the end of the day we protect the basic premiums and benefits that are presently available under Medicare. For a lot of

seniors, it is their only health insurance. It is what keeps them independent and strong. We can't compromise that basic protection by privatizing Medicare or raising the cost of Medicare beyond the reach of senior citizens.

Finally, when it comes to Social Security, let me just say that this is a program which means a lot. For 70 percent of Social Security recipients, it is a majority of their retirement. For 25 percent of the Social Security recipients, it is all they get. That is it. So guarding Social Security and protecting its future is important for our parents and grandparents. It is important for our country and for its future as well.

The President came forward, and he said: This is my jobs bill. This is what I think will help move America forward, put more spending power in the hands of working families, create incentives for small businesses to hire people, focus on putting firefighters, cops, and teachers back to work. That is a priority in our country for sure, and investing in building in America.

One of the few lines the President had that got a bipartisan standing ovation--and there were not many last Thursday--was when he said it is an embarrassment that 10 percent of our returning veterans are unemployed. Let's put our veterans back to work. That is part of our President's plan.

When I listened to the Senator from Alabama--he doesn't like the way the President is paying for the plan, but he does pay for it. How does he pay for it? One thing he does is he reduces the Federal subsidy to oil and gas companies. Filled your tank lately? Take a look at what they are charging at the pump. In Illinois and most places, it is over $4. That is translating into the highest reported profits in the history of American business. Oil companies have never ever had it so good. President Obama has said--and I agree with him--that if there were ever a moment in time when the Federal subsidies to these oil companies should come to an end, this is it. The money saved should go to small businesses and families across America in this difficult economy.

The President also believes--and I agree with him--that the wealthiest among us, those who are most comfortable, should be asked to share in the sacrifice. There are some on the other side who would not accept one penny more in taxes on the wealthiest people in America. I don't get it. As I travel around Illinois, a lot of families are sacrificing in this tough economy. They know they have to. It is the only way they are going to make it. They know that some of the government programs which have been around in the past are not going to be there in the future or may be not as generous.

If working families and middle-class families across America accept that reality, why can't the wealthiest families in America accept it too? Honestly, I think they can. By and large, the people I know who are blessed with a lot of wealth and a pretty comfortable life have said to me: Senator, I don't need all of this. I don't need all of that Social Security payment. I can get by without it. I don't mind paying a little more in taxes.

Those are the people I run into. But you hear from the other side that is totally unacceptable. Some of them have said the President's plan is going to fall flat on its face because it taxes the wealthy in America. I think the wealthy should pay their fair share, and I think the President's plan is an honest, good plan that moves us forward. So for those who are critical of it, give me your alternative.

I wrote down here what the Senator from Alabama suggested. He wants more energy produced here at home. I am for that. I think we ought to go to places where it is environmentally responsible and produce more energy here in the United States. But I will say two things to keep in mind:

No. 1, all of the known oil and gas reserves in the United States of America that we could reach onshore and offshore equal 3 percent of the known oil and gas reserves in the world. Each year, the United States of America consumes 25 percent of the oil and gas consumed in the world.

We cannot drill our way into energy independence. We can expand the base and do it in an environmentally responsible way, perhaps find better sources, newer sources for things such as natural gas, but this is not the answer to our prayers.

Secondly, moving toward energy efficiency is not only good for the environment, it is good for the bottom line for a family and for a business, promoting efficiency.

My wife and I take a little pride in the fact that we own a car, a Ford Fusion Hybrid, and we were kind of patting ourselves on the back a little bit. As we came back from vacation in Michigan, we were getting 36 miles a gallon. We felt pretty good about it. I was bragging to my friends about it, and now I am bragging on the Senate floor. It can be done. We can create more fuel-efficient vehicles. We didn't compromise anything, and we bought American.

I think that is what we need to encourage in this country: cars and other energy-saving equipment made in this country, creating jobs, reducing the need for energy to be imported from overseas and reducing the pollution that, unfortunately, hinders our environment and our health. I think that is a good thing.

So on the Senator's first point, sure, more energy at home, but put it in perspective. That is not the answer to America's economic needs.

The second point he says is to eliminate certain regulations. That could be true. I am sure the President agrees there are regulations now that don't make any sense. Get rid of them. I am not sure this is a big ball and chain being dragged around by our economy, but there is no sense in wasting time or money on regulations that really don't serve a good public purpose.

The final point he said--and I couldn't agree more--tax reform. We lose $1.2 trillion a year to the Tax Code. Credits and deductions and exclusions and special favors written in the Tax Code for businesses and individuals have to come to an end. I actually think that is a good way to raise revenue and maybe even reduce marginal tax rates for corporations and individuals in the process.

That is what Bowles-Simpson said. So even my friend from Alabama who spoke earlier--even he and I can find some common ground. I hope he will agree with me and the President: doing nothing is unacceptable. The President has said: No more games, no more delay, no more politics. Do something. That is the message I got in August, as I returned to Illinois. It is a message I hope my colleagues share as well.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I wish to echo the comments made by my colleague from Wyoming regarding regulations. That is something I hear from small businesses all across South Dakota, traveling my State during the month of August. I toured businesses, and I visited with farmers and ranchers and small businesspeople. That was a recurring theme, one thing people continued to bring up unsolicited. When you asked them questions about what can be done to help create jobs, to get them investing and putting their capital to work, that was the overwhelming response. It came back literally every single time, that businesses are concerned about the overreaching regulations coming out of Washington, DC, and the economic uncertainty that it creates. Part of it just has to do with the predictability that businesses need to make long-term investment decisions. If they do not know what is going to happen next in Washington, DC, it makes it awfully hard for them to plan. So as a consequence of that, we see billions of dollars, trillions of dollars, sitting on the sidelines right now that could be invested and could be put to work, could be getting people back to work in this country.

Last week we all listened with great interest as the President came out to a joint session of Congress and made a speech about a jobs plan. He talked about passing this jobs plan. He has been traveling around the country making that same argument. What was interesting to me about that proposal--and, of course, the speech itself was sufficiently vague. It was very difficult to know exactly what was in that proposal, where more of those details now are coming to light. It sounded eerily similar to the very same proposal we voted on a couple of years ago in the Senate. It ultimately became law. It was called the stimulus bill. It had a pricetag of nearly $1 trillion.

The assertions made at the time were along the lines that if we passed this it would keep unemployment below 8 percent. We know employment is over 9 percent, and since that stimulus bill was passed we have lost 1.7 million jobs in our economy. There are 1.7 million fewer Americans employed today than there were when the stimulus bill passed a couple of years ago. So the question, then, is, Why would we want to go down that same path?

In many respects this proposal is like that one because it consists of more spending and more taxing and more borrowing--all the things we believe are detrimental to the economy in the long run. They do nothing to address the concern that was raised to me by the small businesses across South Dakota and the issue to which the Senator from Wyoming was just speaking; that is, the issue of overregulation that we keep hearing from our businesses across this country, the job creators in our economy.

It strikes me, if the President is serious about actually doing something that would create jobs in this country, it ought to involve putting policies in place that will be conducive toward long-term economic growth to provide the economic certainty these small businesses are asking for.

Right now there is uncertainty with regard to taxes. Tax rates are at least locked in now until the end of 2012, but beyond that it is anybody's guess. There is a concern, of course, that any proposal coming out of Washington right now that deals with deficit reduction might include higher taxes. That certainly is something the President put on the table yet again yesterday as a proposed way to pay for his new stimulus bill.

There is this repeated and consistent assault upon small businesses in the form of more regulations. The President backed off of the ozone regulations, which is something that everybody reacted very favorably toward in the business community and people I

talked to. But there are so many other regulations that are out there: the CO2 emission regulation, appropriated dust regulation, the change in the classification for coal ash. There are all kinds of regulations--particularly out of the EPA, but not exclusively the EPA-- coming out of agencies of this government that are creating greater uncertainty and making it more difficult and more costly for small businesses to create jobs. So why not focus on that issue? Why not focus on getting the free-trade agreements?

There were three free-trade agreements essentially negotiated in the previous administration. They are languishing because they have not been submitted to Congress for ratification. The President talks about free trade and creating jobs through exports. We had three free-trade agreements in 2006 and 2007. Colombia was 2006. Panama and Korea were June of 2007. The President said: I want Congress to approve these free-trade agreements.

We cannot do that until he submits them to the Congress. We would love to approve those free-trade agreements. It would mean thousands of jobs in this economy. We know that. It is low-hanging fruit. It is something we could do today that is something positive to actually create jobs in this country.

Just as an example, in my State of South Dakota in 2008, the top three crops were corn, wheat, and soybeans. In those three commodities we had 81 percent of the market in the country of Colombia. In 2010 that had dropped off to 19 percent. It is a major collapse in our market share in that country simply because we have not ratified this free-trade agreement, and in the interim we have had other countries that have moved in and filled the vacuum.

Most recently the Canadians, on August 15, I think, had their own bilateral trade agreement with Colombia. We may go down to zero market share if we do not act quickly to get the free-trade agreements approved. It is not a function of us wanting to do it; it is a function of the President submitting those agreements to Congress for ratification. We cannot vote on and ratify those trade agreements, put them into effect, and get them implemented absent the President of the United States sending them to Capitol Hill. That is something on which Republicans would love to work with the President.

We would also love to work with the President on a moratorium on regulations. I think it would make perfect sense, given what we know about what small businesses are telling us in terms of creating jobs and hiring people and investing capital, that regulation is a huge impediment to that. So why not--at least for the foreseeable future, until such time as we start getting this unemployment rate down and get people back to work--put a moratorium on all these crazy regulations coming out of Washington, DC?

There are literally millions of jobs that are impacted by these various regulations according to estimates that have been put forward by organizations such as the chamber of commerce and others. There are millions of jobs in this country impacted by the issue of regulation. I would think it would make perfect sense for this President to say to us, as part of his jobs package, his jobs plan: We want to work with you to put a moratorium on regulations for a 2-year period, until the end of his term in office--whatever that period is--but at least some amount of time so businesses know with some certainty that if they invest their dollars, they are not going to be slapped with some new regulation coming out of Washington, DC.

There was a story just this morning about 500 jobs lost in the State of Texas over a new EPA regulation. We have seen examples of that in my State of South Dakota. We have had coal-fired powerplants that have been nixed simply because of this uncertainty that has been created by regulations coming from Washington, DC. That is something that Republicans on Capitol Hill--if the President wants to be proactive in terms of job creation and actually having a forward-looking proposal and plan for job creation, he would certainly get cooperation from lots of folks on our side of the aisle when it comes to the issue of regulations.

Another thing we would be more than happy to work with the President on is broad-based and comprehensive tax reform. We all talk about it, and nobody seems to be willing, at least from the President's perspective, to put forward a proposal that would actually broaden the tax base in this country, lower the rates on businesses and individuals. I think it would lead to an enormous amount of economic growth. Most people and businesses I talk to suggest that right now in America the complexity in the Tax Code, the rates in our Tax Code, make us anticompetitive.

We lose jobs every single day to other countries around the world that have lower tax rates. Businesses are taking their capital and investing it overseas, creating jobs overseas, and are opposed to putting it in our country because our rates are not competitive. Our corporate tax rate at 35 percent is the second highest in the world. We are second only to Japan, and they were going to lower theirs prior to the tsunami.

The fact is, we have tax rates in America today that are making it very difficult for our businesses to compete and to keep those jobs and keep that investment in this country.

What can we do about that? Well, if we had broad-based tax reductions on individuals and small businesses in this country, lowered taxes on investment, I think we would see an explosion of economic growth and get these businesses--provided that there is enough certainty associated with that. In other words, we don't do it for a short period of time, we do it for a long period of time. If we do that, we will see businesses pick up on that signal from Washington, DC, and begin to invest again and get a rate structure that is competitive with other countries around the world.

Tax reform regulations, regulatory reform, a moratorium on regulations, trade, those are all issues that we are more than willing to work with this President on if he is willing to work with us because those are policies proven over time that actually will create jobs. Again, they are the things we consistently hear.

I dare to say that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are hearing the same thing I am hearing. I hear it from colleagues on my side who are repeatedly visited by small businesses in their travels in their individual States, and when they go to make contact with their small businesses they hear this over and over. These are the issues the American business communities are saying we need to address to get people back to work in this country.

I am certainly hopeful the President will change directions away from what he is proposing to do now, which is a very similar path to what was done 2 years ago, which we all know has been unsuccessful. If we look at it based upon the metrics--and, again, I am talking about job creation. If we look at it based upon the employment rate, the unemployment rate has gone up. The number of jobs lost has gone up. The amount of our debt has gone up by $4 trillion. We have borrowed more, we are spending more, and we are getting nothing in return--in fact, the very opposite of what we hope to get; that is, job creation. That approach has not worked.

Let's not double down on that and go back and try the same failed policies again. Let's change direction. Let's go in a different direction for this country, and I would hope the President would do that.

The other thing that I think is particularly troubling about his proposal--not to mention some of the things that he put out in his speech last week that give me a good amount of heartburn in terms of the direction he is headed--is how he proposes to pay for that. It was indicated yesterday that 90 percent of the cost of this stimulus bill would be paid for by allowing or preventing people from taking deductions--the two top income tax rates in this country and the people who are in those income tax brackets, to be able to claim deductions on their tax returns.

Well, that impacts millions of Americans and millions of job creators, millions of small businesses, not to mention a lot of charities. Many of the people who contribute to charities today don't do it simply because of the tax consequence, but the amount they contribute to a charity is affected by the Tax Code, and reducing the amount they can deduct is going to make it more difficult for many of our charitable organizations that rely upon the

generosity of people. In many cases these are high-income people in this country.

That being said, raising taxes, in my view, is not the way to pay for a new stimulus, a stimulus 2.0, an approach that has been tried and failed. It is something we should not be moving toward, but moving away from, and moving in a different direction.

Again, we have no greater priority in America today than getting this economy growing, creating jobs, getting people back to work. That helps bring in more revenue in the Federal Government and helps deal with our issue of the deficit and the debt. There are two ways we can deal with that: We can reduce spending, and we can grow the economy. We have to do both.

Certainly, those are not unrelated. When we reduce spending, that is essential to growing the economy. We also have to put policies in place that will grow the economy and create jobs. Raising taxes is not the way to do that, and so the President's proposal to pay for his new stimulus bill which raises taxes on people is a wrongheaded approach that has not worked in the past. It will not work in the future. We need to try a different direction.

Republicans are willing, ready, and able to work with this President on passing trade agreements that have been languishing around here, literally, for 4 to 5 years; on reducing the overreaching regulations, which are creating economic uncertainty for our small businesses across this country; and on tax reform that would lower rates and broaden the tax base and bring in an incredible explosion of economic growth and jobs.

Those are the types of things we ought to be looking at--long-term policies that will affect in a positive way the environment, the atmosphere for our job creators, not doing another Washington-directed spending program that has already demonstrated that it doesn't work.

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