Tax Lien Simplification Act

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, in a few minutes we are going to be voting on a bill that has been put on the floor that would address many of the emergency disaster needs that have come our way this last year.

In my State of South Dakota, it has been a year for the record books. We have had historically cold winters the last couple of winters. We had a historically wet spring and, if you look at the Missouri River basin, unprecedented amounts of runoff, to the point where we had flooding on the Missouri River throughout the entire basin, up and down. My State of South Dakota, of course, was impacted dramatically by that, as were many of the States in the basin, and I think, like a lot of parts of the country this year that have experienced weather-related disasters, there are a lot of people who have been hurt by that. In my State of South Dakota, we have a lot of homeowners in the Pierre and Fort Pierre area and the Dakota Dunes area and the Yankton area. We have had tremendous wet weather in northeastern South Dakota, and there are a lot of people who have been flooded up there.

We have people in these areas of my State who literally have lost everything--their homes. It was not one of those situations where you get an event that comes through, it is gone quickly, and you can go in and clean up and recover. In this case, they were floods that persisted over long periods of time--in this case months. I remember touring some of those areas in my State and in some cases having to go out there literally in a boat to see homes and having to walk into a home in waders because the water in the living room was literally up to my waist.

And the water was there literally for weeks. There were a lot of black mold problems, of course, just a tremendous amount of damage.

As I said, in many cases these are people who for various reasons did not have flood insurance, in most cases because they were told they didn't need it, they were not in the flood plain. These were homeowners who, when the Missouri River dams were built, thought, at least, that they were protected by those dams and as a consequence, perhaps, did not purchase flood insurance, with rare exceptions. Of course, in all of these cases too there are homeowners who, if they did not have flood insurance, have in some cases lost everything. I am not talking about just homeowners who have resources and means, I am talking about people--I met with retired schoolteachers who put everything they had into these homes along the Missouri River, and now they have literally lost everything. So I can appreciate how important it is that we do everything we can to respond to this enormous weather-related disaster that has come our way.

I have great sympathy for those other areas of the country that have been impacted this year as well. I know that on the east coast, we had flooding from the hurricane, and we have had tornadoes this summer that have wiped out parts of entire communities.

It has been a very difficult weather year, and as we approach this issue of how to deal with that, I think it is important that we bear in mind--that we do everything possible to address the needs these homeowners have and try to help them rebuild their lives and put things back together.

So as we get into this debate, certainly I recognize the importance of us having a response. I think that one way or the other, Congress will respond, whether it happens today or in the form of some relief that may be coming over from the House of Representatives. But I believe it is important that we do that. It is also important, given the budgetary circumstances in which we find ourselves, that we pay for it. I think there are a couple of amendments we are going to vote on this afternoon that would accomplish just that.

The Senator from Oklahoma has proposed an amendment which many of us have voted for in the past. I think it got 64 votes here in the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats supporting it. It would do away with some of the duplication we have in our Federal Government.

The Government Accountability Office has identified lots of areas of duplication. In fact, I think the Senator from Oklahoma has already gone through some of those, but I have been here on the floor and addressed some of these as well: 56, or thereabouts, programs spread across 10 or so agencies that deal with financial literacy; 82 programs that deal with the issue of teacher training. I think you have to argue that there is plenty of waste and duplication and redundancy in our Federal Government, and we ought to be doing everything we can to eliminate that, particularly if we are looking at prioritizing where we spend our tax dollars.

In a case such as this, we have people across our country who have been hurt by these natural disasters who need our assistance. It strikes me, at least, that if we are serious about priorities--and I think all budgets are about priorities--we ought to be able to find some savings in these programs and agencies that have been identified by the GAO that would enable us to find the funds that are necessary to cover the disaster effort.

So I would come down here and speak in support of the Coburn amendment.

I think the Paul amendment as well seeks to use unobligated balances from USAID, the State Department. Of course, we are getting to the end of the year, and if there are funds that have not been obligated, that have not been used, that strikes me as well as a way in which we can find some resources that would help us prioritize and put them where they are really needed right now; that is, to deal with these impacted communities, these impacted families, these impacted homeowners, and helping them rebuild their lives.

But fundamentally, when you have a $1.3, $1.4 trillion annual deficit and when you are already at $14 trillion in debt and it is growing at the rate it is, when you have a debt-to-GDP which is literally about 1 to 1, about 100 percent--you have to go back to the end of World War II to find a time in our Nation's history when we have seen that kind of debt. These deficits to GDP, debt to GDP, spending to GDP are at historic highs. It strikes me that even for important matters such as disaster relief, we have to be as responsible as we possibly can and make sure we are doing justice to the American taxpayer and not spending money we do not have.

I think the House of Representatives--and what they intend to do is address this through the continuing resolution which will be coming our way sometime next week. Their approach is to put some additional money, supplemental money, into FEMA, into the Corps of Engineers--those agencies that are kind of on the front lines in responding to many of these disasters. I hope we have an opportunity to vote on that legislation. That will be paid for. That will be within the budget. That will not be deficit spending or borrowing from our children and grandchildren, adding more to the debt. So I think it is a responsible and reasonable way to deal with this, and maybe in the end that is where this ends up.

But the debate we are having today is whether we are going to appropriate $6.9 billion, around $7 billion for disaster relief. I don't think we have a full grasp yet of what some of these damages are. The assessments are still coming in. But I think it is important that we be responsible in how we distribute disaster relief, that we know as much as possible about the full scale and the dimensions of the problem and what those damages are and then, secondly, that we do everything we can to find areas in the budget in which we can offset that disaster relief.

So I hope we can support the amendments that are before us today. As I said before, the Coburn amendment is not something new to the Senate. The Coburn amendment is an amendment many of us have supported in the past. Sixty-four Senators--that is a very large bipartisan majority here in the Senate--have supported this amendment to do away with these duplicative programs and to try to gain some efficiency and some savings in our Federal Government.

It strikes me, at least, that when we are dealing with an issue as important as disaster relief is to so many Americans, we certainly ought to be able to prioritize and take some of those duplicative programs and some of those redundant programs we have in the Federal Government that have been identified by the Government Accountability Office--ask the OMB to identify $7 billion in savings in order to offset the costs of what we are doing here with regard to disaster relief.

So I am certainly going to support these amendments--and I hope my colleagues will--for a lot of reasons. Again, we need to respond when we have a natural disaster such as this, but we need to do it in a responsible way. And when we are running these massive annual deficits we are running today, we need to do everything we possibly can to see that we are paying the Nation's bills, that we are not adding it to the credit card, not handing the bill to our children and grandchildren, not spending money we do not have, but doing everything we can to live within our means. It is the responsible way to go about this. In my view, it is a reasonable way to go about this. I think it is the right way to deal with the Nation's business; that is, to pay your bills. The Coburn amendment does that. His amendment, I guess of the two, specifically directs the $7 billion. I am not sure whether the Paul amendment has a specific score on it. But either would be an important, in my view, message to the American people that we are serious about getting our fiscal house in order. So I hope we will have both Republicans and Democrats here in the Senate that would support both of those amendments.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, over the last week or so I have outlined, here and in a letter to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, a seven-part plan to reduce the deficit in ways that do not overburden American working families or damage economic growth. In my letter and in three previous speeches on the Senate floor, I have pointed out that revenues, and not just spending cuts, are necessary if we are to achieve significant deficit reduction. And I have discussed four proposals for restoring revenues: combating offshore tax havens; ending the corporate stock option loophole; and ending loopholes for hedge fund managers and derivatives traders.

Today I want to discuss three additional changes to our tax system that will make it more efficient and more equitable. We should make two tax rate changes: ending the unsustainable Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and restoring capital gains tax rates to something approaching the rates in place under President Reagan. Also, we should replace the IRS's antiquated tax lien system. These proposals, combined with the other points of my plan, could reduce the deficit on the order of $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

Now, some of my colleagues may balk at the notion of reversing years of tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. But I believe if we take off our ideological blinders, if we look at facts--hard, stubborn facts--the need for these reforms is clear.

First, we should allow Bush-era tax cuts to end for those making more than $250,000. The case for this change is straightforward: It would restore a measure of fairness to the tax code that has been sadly lacking for more than a decade, and it would reduce the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Supporters of the tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 made a number of promises. President Bush said his cuts ``will bring real and immediate benefits to middle-income Americans.'' And yet in the decade since they began, the incomes of middle-class Americans have stagnated. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the typical American household's income, when adjusted for inflation, actually fell more than 8 percent from 2001 to 2010. President Bush said his tax cuts would increase the pace of job creation. And yet during the Bush years, jobs grew at roughly one-third the rate that we enjoyed during the Clinton administration. President Bush said ``we can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens.'' And yet just those tax cuts going to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans have added hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit since 2001. So, these tax cuts have failed to deliver the promised benefits, and they have driven us deeper and deeper into debt. Ending them will bring down the deficit; President Obama's proposal to end the cuts for high-income earners would reduce the deficit by an estimated $866 billion over 10 years.

What these tax cuts did deliver is a striking and continuing rise in income inequality. It's no coincidence that as we passed a series of tax cuts whose benefits overwhelmingly flow to the wealthiest Americans, those wealthy individuals have seen their fortunes rise. A few decades ago, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans took home 10 percent of all income. Today, they get 24 percent of all income. As those at the top have prospered greatly, middle-class wages have stagnated--again, down more than 8 percent, for the median American household, since the Bush tax cuts took effect.

A second proposal also would bring down the deficit and bring more fairness to the tax code: restoring capital gains tax rates closer to those in place during the Reagan administration. Capital gains are income from the increase in value of an asset, such as a stock. Today, thanks to the Bush-era tax cuts, the top rate on capital gains is 15 percent. That's substantially lower than the 28 percent rate included

in President Reagan's Tax Reform Act of 1986.

The theory in slashing capital gains tax rates was that lower rates would encourage investment, job creation and economic growth. But as has been the case with slashing ordinary income tax rates for the wealthy, cutting capital gains taxes simply has not delivered what supporters promised. Given the stagnation in middle-class living standards that we have seen since the 1980s, it is difficult to argue to middle-class Americans that reducing capital gains rates made them better off.

Instead, this is another benefit that flows overwhelmingly to the wealthiest among us. According to the Tax Policy Center, more than 75 percent of the benefit from lower capital gains taxes goes to those with incomes over $1 million a year, and 94 percent of the benefit to those above $200,000.

This tax break for the most fortunate of our citizens also adds tens of billions of dollars each year to the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office earlier this year estimated that raising the capital gains rate by just 2 percentage points would reduce the deficit by about $50 billion over 10 years. Raising the top rate closer to Reagan- era levels would bring far more deficit reduction.

Those who fight to preserve these high-income tax cuts call attempts to end them ``class warfare.'' Ending these tax breaks won't start a class war. It will help end one--a war that, for more than a decade, has taken a devastating and immediate toll on the middle class, and created huge new deficits that damage their future prospects as well.

The simple fact is that if we are to ensure that the burden of deficit reduction falls equitably, and that all our citizens are asked to contribute toward this goal, we must address these upper income tax cuts that have helped balloon the deficit. Deficit reduction will require spending cuts, and some of those cuts will fall hard on working families. But we can't ask them to carry the entire burden. That would be contrary to common sense, because spending cuts alone cannot achieve real deficit reduction. And it would be contrary to any sense of fairness. We all have to contribute.

Our constituents are speaking, and speaking loudly, on this topic. And they are speaking eloquently. Let me tell you about an email I received from a constituent a few weeks ago about our deficit.

This Michigan resident and her husband consider themselves upper middle class--though she wrote that ``many would call us wealthy.'' She wrote to me that we need to cut spending, and to compromise to do it. ``I will like some cuts and hate others and that is OK with me!'' she wrote.

But she also wrote: ``I also strongly urge you to consider passing what many would call tax hikes. . . . We are willing to pay a bit more to help our country and safeguard our children's futures.'' Upper income Americans, she wrote, ``aren't paying taxes at a fair and just rate. Fix this.''

And we should fix it. This constituent of mine said she was part of a ``silent majority'' in favor of increasing revenue. I am not sure how silent they are, but she is certainly part of a majority. In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 72 percent of Americans--and 54 percent of Republicans--said they favored increasing taxes on those who make more than $250,000 a year as part of our deficit reduction strategy. Americans are strongly in favor of a balanced approach to deficit reduction that protects working families. They are asking us to fight for the middle class, and it is time we did so.

Let me discuss briefly the tax lien proposal. Tax liens are a basic tool to collect unpaid taxes. Today, Federal law requires liens to be filed on paper in more than 4,000 locations around the country, determined by the location of the lien. The IRS maintains a service center that does nothing but monitor dozens of varying local requirements for lien filings, track filings, and release liens once they are paid.

I have introduced legislation, S. 1390, along with Senator Begich, to replace this antiquated system with an electronic federal tax lien registry available to the public on the Internet at no cost. The IRS estimates that this change would not only save millions of dollars in administrative costs, but also enable the IRS to release liens more quickly once they have been paid and free up employees and resources for other work. Equally important, a public electronic registry could help encourage those who owe taxes to settle their bills and take enormous pressure off taxpayers who have paid what they owe.

Let me come back to where I started last week. Congress faces a difficult task in the weeks ahead. We must agree to $1.2 trillion or more in deficit reduction over the next decade. Failure to agree on a plan means automatic budget cuts through the sequestration process-- including greatly damaging cuts to defense and other important Federal programs.

In my letter to the Joint Select Committee and here on the floor, I have outlined ways to avoid that outcome, proposing commonsense changes that bring equity to our Tax Code and restore lost revenue. If we reject that course, it almost certainly means damaging cuts in important programs--programs that keep our nation safe, that keep our faith with senior citizens and veterans, and that prepare our children for the future. Rejecting that course almost certainly means a failure to significantly reduce the deficit, because spending cuts alone are not enough to accomplish the deficit reduction we need.

The choice is ours. I hope we will not allow ideology to blind us to the reality of our budget situation, to the needs of middle-class families, or to the strong and consistent message from Americans who are demanding a balanced approach to reducing the deficit.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 613.

I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, this is an amendment to pay for the emergency funds. I think for too long in this body we have just simply added on funds, often for good causes, but we keep spending money we do not have. I think the mark of a good legislator is making priorities. If we choose to spend some money on an emergency, we should take the money from somewhere else in the budget.

In this amendment we have proposed to take the money from foreign aid. When the American people are asked if they think we should be sending welfare to other countries or building bridges in other countries when our bridges are falling down in this country, 77 percent of them think we should not be sending money overseas when we have problems at home. This amendment would take unspent foreign aid money from this year and apply it toward the disaster funding. It would also take some unspent money from the State Department.

I think it is responsible budgeting. It is essentially taking money from another area, spending it, and not adding to our debt. There are repercussions to the debt we have. I tell people the debt has a face. Every time we drive to the store our gas prices are rising or our food prices are rising. The reason our prices are rising is because we have to pay for the debt by printing new money. As we print new money at the Federal Reserve to pay for our debt, we diminish the value of the dollar so our gas prices rise and our food prices rise.

Also, economists have said up to 1 million jobs a year are being lost to pay for our debt. What I ask for is, as we pay for these natural disasters we take the money from elsewhere in our budget.

I also rise in support of the plea of Senator Coburn not to target the transportation funds. Right now we are asking that highway funds, 10 percent of them, go to beautification projects--turtle tunnels, movie theaters. In our State of Kentucky, we have a bridge that was closed this week, the Sherman Minton Bridge. Of three bridges in Louisville, one of them is closed. Traffic is stacked up for hours and you are telling me we need to have turtle tunnels? Something is seriously wrong with government when we are forcing State governments to spend 10 percent of their transportation money on turtle tunnels, white squirrel parks, and movie theaters.

Another bridge is needed in the northern part of our State, Brent Spense Bridge, where debris from the bridge is falling. Four years ago we had a bridge in Minneapolis that fell into the river and killed 13 people. We, as a nation, need to set our priorities, but I think it is incorrect and a real problem that we are telling people they have to take 10 percent of the transportation funds and put them into bike paths.

I am a bicyclist and I like bike paths as much as anybody. But when bridges are falling into a river and a major metropolitan area such as Louisville, KY, has one-third of it's bridge capacity closed because the bridge is dangerous to travel on, these are emergency problems.

It also buys into what I am talking about with foreign aid. We cannot send welfare to other countries that we do not have. We are not sending them money that is from our savings. We are sending money that we are borrowing from China or that we are printing. There are ramifications to this debt. We are borrowing money at $40,000 a second. There are ramifications to this borrowing. It has a face. It is just not an empty number.

When we say our national debt is $14 trillion or that we are adding $1.5 trillion to the debt every year, there are ramifications to that, and there is a face. The face is unemployment. The face is people losing jobs. We see it in the grocery store with our prices rising. The debt has ramifications.

In Europe, we are seeing the end stages of this in some cases. We are seeing chaos and rioting in the streets. We had rioting in London recently. We had rioting in Greece, Portugal, Spain. All of these countries are tumbling under a burden of debt, and it has been predicted that this is coming to the United States. It is coming soon. It is a contagion of debt that is sweeping the world, and it is all pyramided upon the U.S. dollar.

Once upon a time, banks in Europe held gold as their reserve. They now hold the dollar as reserve. When the dollar tumbles or when we have trouble paying for our debt, there will be massive worldwide problems. We are in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression, and there are no signs that any of the policies coming from the White House are working. In fact, the first stimulus package did not work. Two million more people are out of work since the President came into office. The price of gasoline has doubled. Our debt has been downgraded. We are set to accumulate, under this administration, more debt than all 43 previous Presidents combined. It is not working.

Recently, the President came over to a joint session of Congress and presented to us the ``son of stimulus''--the son of a stimulus that did not work in the first place. He said we are just going to tax those rich people.

Rich people hire poor people. Most of us have jobs because rich people hired us. They are talking about adding $400 billion in new taxes on those who make $200,000 a year or more.

You say the rich ought to pay their fair share. The rich are paying for the income tax--47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. So half of Americans are already paying for all of the income tax. The Bush tax cuts actually made the Tax Code more progressive because they dropped off more people from the lower end. If we look at those who make more than $200,000 a year, it is 3 percent of the public. They earn 30

percent of the income and pay 50 percent of the income tax.

If you are saying the Tax Code needs to be made more fair, it would probably be that we would have to make the Tax Code less progressive.

The bottom line is, if I thought it would help people, we could do it. It is going to hurt people. The head of the Congressional Budget Office is an objective spokesman who analyzes government. He testified before the supercommittee yesterday that it would be a mistake to raise taxes. The preponderance of economists say it would be a mistake to raise taxes in the middle of a recession. It will lead to more joblessness.

Pitting one group--class envy--pitting one group against another gets us nowhere. Years ago we tried this. We said we will have a special tax on those who own yachts. Guess who lost their jobs. The men and women making $40,000 and $50,000 a year lost their jobs. It does not work. It is unhealthy. It is not good for America to blame one class of people versus the other. We want to lift everyone in America. We want a thriving economy. When we lowered tax rates in the 1980s, we had 6 percent and 7 percent growth in a year. We are at 1 percent growth and we look like we are headed in the wrong direction. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

This new jobs plan by the President is the ``son of stimulus.'' It is the son of a stimulus that did not work the first time. When we calculate it, it cost $400,000 per job. It did not work. We should not be doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

I would say in conclusion that my amendment is the responsible budgetary amendment, and it pays for the new disaster funding. If we wish to help people and we think our Federal Government should be involved with disaster funding, it should be paid for. It should not be borrowed from China, and it should not be simply printed up at the printing press. We should pay for it.

I urge other Senators to support my amendment which would offset the disaster funding by reducing a corresponding amount from foreign aid, the welfare we give to other nations, many of them rich nations. I would ask serious consideration of it.

I would also ask serious consideration of Senator Coburn's proposal that when we have bridges crumbling in our country, we not force States to build turtle tunnels, squirrel sanctuaries, and movie theaters. We have crumbling bridges and we need to get this through and we need to say we are not going to force the States to decide to have these beautification projects.

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

Madam President, I think we ought to make just one clarification of fact. Israel gets all their foreign aid in the beginning of the year. They get it differently than any other country. This amendment will not affect any funding to Israel. This funding will take away a percentage. It is about 10 percent of foreign aid.

Foreign aid or welfare is opposed by 77 percent of Americans. Even if you thought it was a good idea to give welfare to foreign countries, you do not have it. So you are borrowing this money from China or you are printing it up and you are adding to the debt. Our country faces a debt crisis. We are borrowing $40,000 a second. I think it is unwise, when bridges are falling down and being closed in Louisville, KY, to send money to other countries, particularly money we are borrowing and printing.

I urge the support of my amendment to eliminate the 10 percent of foreign aid. I think it is a very reasonable proposal.

I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 minutes.

Mr. President, let me say to the Senator from Louisiana, she has been a clarion and consistent voice on this issue because she has seen it and lived it. Anyone representing the State of Louisiana can give a lesson to all of us about what happens when the unexpected occurs and people lose their homes, their businesses, their lives. They are uprooted.

We had some folks from New Orleans in Chicago. They were leaving New Orleans to come to one of our fabulous winters because they had nowhere to go, and I saw the look in their eyes. They did not know where to turn. At that moment in time, many people across America count on the American family. That is who we are and we represent that family in the Senate.

We stand for this country and for the families who are suffering through no fault of their own. When the Senator from Louisiana comes and tells us: Be

careful when we set a standard that says before we can send the first dollar to someone who has lost their home or their business or their farm or whatever we have to come back to Washington and go through a budget debate and decide where we are going to cut--out of money for education and medical research and the like. That is not the way it has ever happened. Emergency spending is emergency spending.

I have lived through it--nothing like what my colleague went through in Louisiana, but the floods of 1993 in downstate Illinois, I was in pretty decent shape when it was over for all the sandbags I filled and pushed around with thousands of volunteers. We saw what happened. There were terrible things that happened, and I think the Senator from Louisiana would agree with me that flooding is one of the worst. It doesn't go away. It sits there destroying people's homes and everything they own, and when it finally goes away, what a mess. Also, in the Midwest, we have a little thing called a tornado. I grew up as a kid in downstate Illinois listening for the siren and heading for the basement. We did that I don't know how many times, sometimes in the middle of the night. But look at what happened to Joplin, MO. This beautiful town in Missouri was almost wiped off the map by a tornado.

What do we tell the people who survive the next day? Sorry, Congress has to meet and debate and we will get back to you? Of course not. We stand and help people--scores of volunteers, hundreds of volunteers who come in for the Red Cross and so many other agencies and all the first responders. Governors don't say: We will see if the Federal Government will pay for this before we go in and help and provide lifesaving efforts. They do it, anticipating we will stand with them.

Now Congressman Cantor of Virginia decides there should be a new approach: We need Congress to get together and debate before we help people who are victims of disasters.

That is a serious mistake. We have to stand by people, whether they live in red States or blue States, whether they are Democrats, Republicans, Independents. We stand by one another and that is critically important.

Let me say to the Senator from Louisiana, I think the thing I noticed over the weekend in Illinois, as I traveled around, was how fed up people are with what is going on in Washington on Capitol Hill. When they see us break down into another cussing match over shutting down the Government, they say: For goodness' sake, grow up--grow up and accept your responsibility.

We are here today accepting a grownup responsibility. The House of Representatives is not here today. I hope they are going to send a message to us that they found a solution or, if not, I hope they are planning on returning this week because we have work to do.

On Saturday, the spending for the Government ends. Once again, we face a shutdown, a shutdown which would cause unnecessary hardship to innocent people all across America. If you think you have heard this script before or watched this movie before, you have. This is the third time this year the House leadership has pushed a shutdown in front of us and said: That is it. Take it or leave it.

That is no way to run a Congress, and it is no way to run a great nation. We need to come together and agree. I will tell everyone what Senator Reid, the leader on the Democratic side, did to try to reach an agreement. We had originally asked for $7 billion additional money for FEMA for next year. I will bet we need it. But Senator Reid said: In an effort to compromise, I will cut that request in half. We can get back together if we need it. There was an effort in consensus and compromise. It was totally rejected by the House. That is not a good way to act.

I also wish to add to what the Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer, said earlier about this idea that the only way to pay for disasters is to eliminate jobs in America. How wrong is that? To go from a natural disaster to making our economic disaster worse? But that is what the House wanted to do. They wanted to eliminate jobs that are created by programs that have worked. Let me give an example.

This intelligent, fuel-efficient vehicle program has put money into major automobile manufacturers to create more manufacturing jobs in Illinois, where we have had more jobs, good-paying American jobs for workers, that cannot be shipped overseas, with a good salary and good benefits. What is wrong with that picture? Isn't that what we are hoping for the rest of America as well?

All across the Midwest, these car manufacturers have used this program and more than 40,000 jobs have been created and the House Republicans have said: Let's eliminate that and pay for disasters with it--totally upside-down thinking. We have to be thinking about helping those in distress, and we have to be thinking about creating jobs. We can do both.

I take no backseat when it comes to tackling the deficit and debt in this country. I have been engaged in this debate for quite a while now and intensely over the last year and a half. But every economist and every clear-thinking person has said, before we start serious deficit reduction, take care of our immediate needs--that would be the defense of America and responding to disasters--and make certain this recession is behind us. We cannot balance the budget with 14 million Americans out of work. So get busy creating jobs. And we are going to. The President has come up with a proposal which I think makes sense, giving a payroll tax cut to working families. In my State of Illinois, where the average family makes about $53,500 a year, President Obama's payroll tax cut would mean an additional $1,500 a year for them, which is going to be about $125 a month in their paychecks. I bet they can use it as they watch the price of gasoline go up to $4.50 and go back down and go up again. They can use it.

It also said: Let's give small businesses a tax credit and a tax incentive to hire the unemployed. I know, we all know, creating jobs in America has to start with small business. The Senator from Louisiana heads up that committee. She knows it. She has been the most aggressive spokesperson for that cause of any in the Senate.

The same is true of where we are spending our money. We should be investing in America. In the suburbs of Chicago, in Morton Grove, IL, at the Golf Middle School, they took me on a tour of the 60-year-old school, and it is hard to imagine how they keep it going. They took me down to the boiler room. I don't think too many Senators spend too much time in boiler rooms in schools today, but I did, looking at a 60-year- old boiler. The fellow, Jim Burke, who keeps it running, said it cost them $180,000 last year to keep this old, antique system going. They need a new HVAC system for the hundreds of kids going to this school. That is an example of buying products in America, installing them in America, and investing in America, so kids can be educated and can succeed in America. That is a plan we all should endorse in both political parties.

In just a few minutes, we will have a vote on the floor, and I hope we will vote in a bipartisan fashion in a clear voice to say we are going to stand behind the victims of disasters across America, the American family can come together, and we are not going to cut jobs in order to reduce the pain people feel in disasters.

We can do both, create American jobs and make certain those who are struggling through those disasters have the help they need.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from Washington (Ms. Cantwell) and the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Webb) are necessarily absent.

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

I ask that amendment No. 610 be considered as pending, brought up, and read.

I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, the bill we have before us today is a bill to fund emergency relief through FEMA for a lot of the emergency disasters our country has experienced over the past 6 months.

I don't think there is a large disagreement that we ought to take care of the areas that are the Federal responsibility in the respective States for the extreme weather as well as fire-related tragedies that have been experienced by a multitude of States. However, the question is, given where we stand as a country, do we just borrow the money to do that and add it to the debt or is the government running so efficiently that we can't cut something else and make a choice about how we pay for it? The bill as brought forward has no pay-for at all. In other words, the assumption is that if we pass this bill, we will go and borrow approximately $7 billion more in the international markets.

What I would put forward is that we know we have plenty of areas we can cut now that are not effective, not efficient, that are wasteful, that are duplicative, and we would not have to borrow that additional money. The easiest thing in the world is to spend somebody else's money. And what we are doing with this bill by not paying for it is actually asking our grandchildren to pay for an obligation we have today.

The amendment I have asked to be called up is nearly identical to an amendment this body passed by a vote of 64 to 36 in April of this year.

The Government Accountability Office brought forth a report on duplication that showed hundreds of millions of dollars in wasteful duplication. This is not the only area we could go, but this is an area we have already agreed as a body is an effective way to pay and save money. We could easily find $7 billion by eliminating multiple programs that accomplish the same thing. Let me give some examples of what the GAO showed.

The Department of Defense and the VA are both creating new medical record systems as we speak, both paying for independent contractors doing the same thing. They are going to have intertwined medical records ultimately. We do not need to set up two different programs. By doing that, we could save a couple of billion dollars, just by having one program for both VA and DOD.

We have multiple contracts, according to the GAO, in terms of interagency and areawide contracts that actually increase our procurement costs, where we could consolidate those and have one contract and actually save money. But we have not done that. That is something that can be done by the OMB at our direction.

The other area which is extremely interesting--and the President has already agreed to this. They are already starting to do it. But we could do it much faster and save a significant amount of money. We could save $150 billion to $200 billion over the next 10 years just by consolidating data centers. We initially had some 500 of those. I think we are up to around 2,000. We had 434 in 1998 and 2,000 Federal data centers in 2010. What everybody knows is we could cut that by about half, not have any change in the effectiveness, and save about $150 billion over the next 10 years.

This amendment identifies the areas listed in the GAO report and instructs the OMB to find those that are most likely to be achievable to come to $7 billion. We have agreed to do this in the past on a previous bill when Senator Warner and I offered this amendment jointly to pay for the spending.

I can go on with a lot of other areas in terms of wasteful spending. I will not. But I make this one plea: In August we left after passing a debt limit increase, the largest debt limit increase we have ever incurred in segments, and said we were going to start living within our means. We have created a supercommittee to find $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years in savings. While they are doing that, if we decide to pass an emergency supplemental bill for FEMA and do not pay for it, we are going to be working in exactly the opposite direction of what we said we needed to do.

The facts are, we are almost schizophrenic. We say we need to cut spending. Yet we are going to spend $7 billion more. Yet we do not want to find some spending to cut to pay for it; we just want to borrow it. You can understand why very few Americans have confidence in us. On the one hand we are addressing the problem, and on the other hand we are ignoring the problem.

I think it would behoove the confidence level in this institution if, in fact, we tried to pay and found the courage and the willpower to say if we are going to spend additional money, we are going to create priorities, and we are actually going to eliminate spending somewhere else to be able to pay for this, to be able to do this more important thing.

I have trouble understanding, even when I talk to our colleagues privately, why we would not do this; why we would not pay for this $7 billion by reducing wasteful spending elsewhere.

As we go to the vote at 4 o'clock, the question that people ask is, Why was it OK to cut the spending from these departments back in April, but it is not OK to cut the spending now? Sixty-four of our colleagues voted to cut this spending in April. I know several are opposed to paying for this, but we are in a new day. We live in a new world.

The Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce was here this week. The title of their meeting was ``New Realities.'' The new reality is that we are going to run to the end of the time at which we can borrow money or afford to pay the interest rate on the money that we can borrow, and the discipline we need is to live within our means.

This is one step that will be the right thing to do for future generations. It is the right thing to do to build confidence in our institution, and it is the right thing to do to eliminate waste and duplication in the Federal Government.

I yield the floor, suggest the absence of a quorum, and make a point I will talk again on this prior to the vote.

Mr. President, I would like to say Senator Reid and I have had several discussions today and we are working to try to resolve an impasse we have, but we are not there yet. I wanted to be clear with my colleagues what my intent was, and if we can work the problems out, I am happy to try to do that.

I have three separate unanimous consent requests I am going to be asking for. One will separate the FAA bill, pass it, and send it to the House. Another will separate the Transportation bill, eliminating the transportation enhancement component of it and send it to the House, and another one eliminates the transportation component of the combined bill and sends it back to the House. I understand the leader is concerned with those but felt I would exercise my right to offer those unanimous consent requests.

Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 2887, the House-passed FAA surface transportation reauthorization bill, and my amendment at the desk related to a 4-month extension shall be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 2887, the House-passed FAA surface transportation reauthorization bill, that the Coburn amendment at the desk related to repealing the 10-percent transportation enhancement mandate be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 2887, the House-passed FAA surface transportation reauthorization bill, that my amendment at the desk related to a 6-month surface transportation extension that repeals the 10-percent transportation enhancement mandate be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

I object.

First, Mr. President, let me thank my colleague from Florida. He knew I was waiting, and I know he cut short his remarks, so I appreciate that. But more importantly than that, I appreciate his insight, his articulation of our situation, and his desire to help the people of Florida. Nobody works harder for the people of Florida than the Senator from Florida. They know disaster just about better than anybody else, given their geographic situation. So his fight for FEMA dollars is a fight for every citizen of that great State of Florida, where I must say many of my former constituents now reside, so I have a special care about Florida as well. I thank him for both his courtesy and his insightfulness.

FEMA runs out of money very soon. Already, recovery projects in more than 40 States have been halted so FEMA can focus their last dollars on responding to the latest disasters. To have FEMA not working in Joplin, MO, where we all saw the pictures, and because of the dangers that Hurricanes Irene and Lee created, is unheard of in this country. It is unheard of.

The Senate has already passed the bipartisan bill to replenish FEMA's coffers, providing $7 billion in immediate relief, not just for FEMA but the Army Corps. I can tell you that in my State we need Army Corps relief as well as FEMA relief because so many of our rivers have changed course. They have flooded. I think I mentioned earlier the Erie Canal--the locks--are no longer by the river because the storm's force changed the course of the Mohawk, so the river is here and the locks are here--the great historic Erie Canal. So we provided this $7 billion.

A reasonable person might say--all our constituents are saying--to get government to work, the most logical thing to do would be quick passage by the House so we could begin to get those dollars out the door. Instead, House Republicans decided to take emergency disaster aid and leverage it to force cuts to a jobs program they themselves used to support. If there has ever been a case of playing politics, that is it. If they don't like this jobs program, fine, fight it out in the regular course of business, but don't hold FEMA dollars hostage to cut jobs. The American people don't want that choice. Help those who are in the middle of a disaster. Is the only way we can help them to cut jobs in Michigan or Louisiana or other States, at a time when our country is hurting for jobs? That is not America, and that is not what our constituents have asked us to do. The jobs program they want to end, before they are willing to provide more disaster aid, is not some radical program. It was started under the Bush administration. It was passed with a bipartisan majority.

I understand their anguish. We have to cut funding. But we don't have to do it like this. We don't have to do it on the backs of the people of Schoharie County, whose homes have been blown away, or the people of Binghamton, who are in shelters because there is no rental housing for them. We don't have to do it on their backs. That is not fair. If our Republican colleagues want to have a fight over a program they used to support but now say the circumstances have changed, fine, we should have that. That is what we are here for. But don't hold disaster aid hostage.

I want to say this, lest people think the Democratic stand is some way-out-there, leftwing stand. Guess who supports us. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. Because they know what we are doing is right. Those are groups that are almost always supporting Republican initiatives. So when they say we are right, doesn't that send a shot across the bow to my colleagues to back off this ideological, narrow, my-way-or-the-highway position?

Most importantly, the House Republican approach would require that we kill 40,000 jobs in order to help our fellow Americans put their lives and businesses back together after this year's record disasters. That is not right, it is

unprecedented, and I would say it is not the way we have done things in this country in the past.

The CR we will vote on this afternoon is a fail-safe measure. It is a bill that will keep the government running at funding levels agreed to by Democrats and Republicans in the debt ceiling negotiations. It is a good-faith effort to compromise and contains the same amount of disaster relief funding House Republicans supported.

It falls short of fully funding FEMA, as we did in the bipartisan bill passed 2 weeks ago, with 10 Republican votes, but we are working to meet our colleagues on the other side of the aisle in the middle in order to break the impasse. Will they move a little to the middle to meet us, or will they insist the only way to go is a bill that failed in this Chamber with a bipartisan vote against it of 59 to 36? Is Speaker Boehner saying to us a bill that fails in the Senate 59 to 36 is the only way to go, when it is so wrong and not supported by the Chamber of Commerce; when it is pitting jobholders, and the future of this country in terms of energy independence, against each other versus disaster assistance? That is not fair. The only difference between our bill and the House bill is it doesn't require the job-killing cuts the Chamber of Commerce opposes and that our fragile economy can't afford right now.

We know there has been a lot of pressure on the 10 Senate Republicans who joined us 2 weeks ago to fight full disaster funding. I hope they do not cave in to the pressure exerted by the extreme minority in the House that demands job cuts as a precondition for disaster relief. I would urge them not do it. If they can't resist that pressure, what is their solution? They know the House bill is a dead letter here.

The path forward is clear. The Senate has already spoken on the political bill sent to us by the House. We must pass this commonsense, middle-of-the-road compromise measure that is now before the Senate. It will provide disaster aid to hard-hit communities across the country immediately and prevent an unnecessary government shutdown.

We shouldn't even be talking about shutdown. Why are we? Because the other body decided to attach disaster relief to government funding. We are not just holding jobs hostage, we are holding government funding hostage in a my-way-or-the-highway presentation take it or leave it or your government shuts down, take it or leave it or 40,000 people lose their jobs. That is not fair and that is not right.

Every aspect of our plan has already received major bipartisan support. Voting for it is the right thing to do. We must put politics aside at a time when the economy of this country is so fragile. We must avoid even coming close to a government shutdown. We must do what is right for our country. And what is right for our country is to pass the compromise measure that has had bipartisan support in the past and vote for it on the floor of the Senate in the next half hour.

One other comment. My great colleague from Louisiana has done an incredible job. She has been showing this, but in case people missed it over the last hour, it is a great little cartoon. There is a nice lady with a gray bun and little glasses talking on the telephone. There is her TV on the roof of her house, which has, obviously, been flooded. This cartoon is humorous, but I have seen flood levels up to this level on house after house after house across large parts of the eastern part of New York. She is on the phone, saying: ``Welcome to the Republican disaster relief hot line. At the tone, please tell us the emergency and how you plan to offset the cost of your rescue.''

When the next disaster comes and people are struggling, are we going to have to debate how much to cut education funds? In the next disaster, when people have experienced an earthquake, are we going to have to debate how to help those people while we talk about how much to cut Border Patrol funds? In the next disaster, when fires are ravaging across Texas or New Mexico or California, are we going to debate how much we have to cut food safety inspectors? That is not our way, and that is why we need to support this bill which has bipartisan elements and has been supported by Members of both parties. That bill is a compromise bill. It is the middle-of-the-road bill that is on the floor of the Senate.

Mr. President, I yield my time, and I thank my great colleague from Louisiana for the great job she has done.

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

Mr. President, we are looking at a FEMA emergency supplemental. There is no doubt this country has sustained a series of disasters that will require Federal support and funding. We have seen them in Alabama, my home State, where we had the worst series of tornadoes in history, and some of the most powerful, that completely demolished two-story brick homes with nothing but foundations left. Lives were lost to an extraordinary degree, and people were injured.

We have had floods. We have had fires and droughts around the country. We have some of that every year, and some of this is unusual. So it is incumbent upon us in Congress to wrestle with that and to try to figure out what should be done and how we can best supplement the insurance and State actions and local people's abilities to respond and share a bit of the pain throughout the country.

Since I have been interested in the emergency bill and I have some ideas, I was surprised we were told it was going to be added to the Burma sanctions bill, and it was going to be $6.9 billion. I hadn't had a chance to know and review and see what those numbers were and whether they were justified. But Majority Leader Reid said we want to move to that. That is what we want to do.

Some said--and surely it is not true--that Senator Reid was setting a trap for the Republicans; that he would offer this bill, throw it out there, and he would have extra money in it and we would complain. Then he would say: The Republicans don't love people who have suffered with a disaster as I love people who have suffered with a disaster. You don't care. You don't want to help people who are hurting. You are not good people. I am a good person. I love them more than you do.

I hope that is not true. I do not believe it is true. Surely, it is not true. But I will just point this out: that President Obama's funding request for this supplemental that we have seen was for $500 million in 2011, $4.6 billion for next year, totaling $5.1 billion. That is what the President proposed. But the Senate Democrats' proposal that Senator Reid has moved forward has $804 million in 2011, $6.1 billion in 2012, for a total of $6.9 billion. That is about almost a $2 billion difference.

You know they say: That is not much money, just $2 billion. We spend a lot more money than that around here on all kinds of things, and we shouldn't worry about it, Sessions. You are just slowing down the emergency bill. It has to go through right now.

I just pointed out previously that $2 billion is a lot of money. We have an education budget in my State that is pretty sizable, but the basic general fund budget of Alabama is about $2 billion. We are an average-sized State. We are about one-fiftieth--4 million people--of the United States. So $2 billion is $2 billion. A billion here and a billion there, you are talking about real money. I am just raising a question. I suggest that this kind of rapid spending, emotional, political movement of money through this body is why this country has gotten into financial trouble. We just increase the pricetag for a bill by $2 billion and rush it through and attack anybody who has the gumption to stand, such as Senator Tom Coburn, and raise some real questions about it. How much of this can we pay for? Can we pay for it all--we probably could and probably should--or pay for part of it so it is not borrowed? You see, an emergency in general is debt. When we declare something an emergency, we are adding to the debt. It means it is not under the budget. We have a budget limit, and all spending is supposed to be under our budgetary limit, although we have not had a budget in 2 years. But when we do a supplemental, it does not count that way.

I have seen the Presiding Officer be pretty sophisticated in these things. I remember, I was talking to a senior Congressman about an emergency bill years ago that was not truly an emergency, and he said: Well, Jeff, we need to put it on the emergency supplemental.

I said: Why?

He said: It doesn't count against the deficit.

I said: Why?

He said: I don't know. It just doesn't count.

What he meant was it was not part of the budgetary numbers. It was on top of it. It added to the debt in general.

We have to be careful about that. We are borrowing now 40 cents of every $1 we spend. That is not a misprint. I am not speaking erroneously. Forty cents of every $1 that is spent this year is borrowed.

Responsible senatorial management requires us to examine the legislation. When we have a bill that is about 40 percent more than the President asked for, maybe that ought to throw up a red flag around here. Maybe we ought to examine it more closely because every single penny that is spent should be spent wisely. There are two areas: Are we spending money that is not needed at all--and we have had some of that under emergency spending--or are we spending money that could be spent better on other problems that arose from the emergency than the problems we are spending it on?

I have been to hurricane damages, I have been to flood damages, I have been to tornado damages, drought damages. It is hard to get the money to the people who truly need it and whom you can justify. This is not just throwing money at something.

So we can do a better job of that. Congress needs to be more involved. I think $2 billion is a lot. We ought to be careful before we do that. Most of the money is not going to get spent until next year, by far. Overwhelmingly, 80 percent of it is to be spent next year. I believe we ought to be taking time to do this right.

I would also like to take the opportunity, while I have the floor, to address this morning's hearing in the Budget Committee, on which I am the ranking member. At today's hearing, I emphasized the economic danger our country is facing as a result of the increasing deficit. We had three economists testify. Two of them were selected by our Democratic majority colleagues. We asked whether they agreed that it would be wise to pursue policies that create jobs without creating debt. They all acknowledge that increasing debt is a dangerous thing.

We discussed whether we should seek ways to create jobs and growth in America without adding to the debt. Wouldn't that be smart? They all agreed it would--things such as producing more American energy, reducing costly bureaucratic regulations, and instituting growth- oriented tax reform. All three witnesses said those are good things to do for America.

I would say, if we are going to spend $7 billion or $5 billion on an emergency, it helps Americans' growth, productivity, and competitiveness if that money is spent the best possible way, every penny of it to help people truly in need and to help increase our national productivity.

Those are some of the concerns I have. I just wanted to share those thoughts because I think we would have been better off had this bill come through the regular process, we had full testimony from the administration witnesses, from FEMA, which will be handling the money, setting forth in detail where they expect to spend the money, how it is needed, and how they are going to do it in a way that is fair and helps the people in the right way. I do not believe the way this bill is moving is careful enough, and I believe it places at risk the treasury of the United States.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the EPA Regulatory Relief Act of 2011. I am pleased to be joined in this effort by my colleagues Senators Wyden, Alexander, Landrieu, Pryor, and Toomey. Our legislation is straight forward: it would allow the EPA the time it needs, by its own estimate, to adequately consider and propose a reasonable, workable rule that affects boilers.

Our bill includes four key provisions. First, it provides the EPA with the 15 months it requested to properly analyze the best methods for implementing the application of the Clean Air Act to certain boilers. Second, it will give businesses adequate time to comply with any requirements the EPA adopts by extending the compliance deadline from 3 years to 5 years. Third, our bill will direct the EPA, when developing the new rules, to ensure that renewable and carbon-neutral materials remain classified as fuel and not solid waste. Fourth, our legislation will help ensure that the rules are achievable by real- world standards consistent with the President's directive to improve Federal regulations.

At a time when manufacturers are struggling to retain jobs, it is essential that this rule not jeopardize thousands of jobs in manufacturing, particularly in the forest products industry, by imposing billions of dollars of new costs. Our legislation provides common sense solutions to the challenges the EPA is facing in attempting to draft and implement these complicated rules, which if written without proper data, analysis, and consideration, would cost the industry billions of dollars and potentially thousands of jobs.

To be sure, the EPA performs some vital functions in helping to ensure that the air we breathe is clean and the water we drink is safe. We need, however, to make sure that as the EPA issues new regulations, it does not create so many roadblocks to economic growth that it discourages private investment, which is the key to maintaining and creating jobs.

The EPA's proposed ``boiler MACT'' rules, which would affect tens of thousands of boilers, have been an issue of great concern to many of my constituents in Maine. The forest products industry, in particular, is the economic backbone of many rural areas in our country, including in Maine. Mill managers and workers in Maine have expressed their concern to me about the impact of imposing excessively costly regulations on their mills at this time of economic hardship.

Since these rules were first proposed in April 2010, I have been very troubled that the cost of implementation would

be far greater than EPA originally estimated. According to industry estimates, this rule could cost Maine businesses alone hundreds of millions of dollars and put many jobs at risk, when less expensive approaches could be used to address emissions from boilers. This is simply unacceptable in this economic climate.

Furthermore, these rules might force some of our mills in Maine to stop using biomass, a source of renewable energy, and instead dump the biomass in landfills and switch to fossil fuels. This makes no sense. As the President has stated, biomass is an important renewable energy source that our nation should promote in working to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Converting to fossil fuels alone would also cost mills hundreds of millions of dollars.

My colleagues and I have been concerned about this issue since the EPA proposed these new boiler MACT rules in April 2010. Last year, 40 of my Senate colleagues, including 17 Democrats, wrote to the EPA expressing our deep concern that the boiler MACT regulations would impose onerous burdens on U.S. manufacturers. We asked the EPA to set emissions standards based on what real-world, best-performing units actually can achieve. This letter reflected the widespread bipartisan concern about the proposed boiler MACT rules.

It is important to remember that, under The Clean Air Act, a Maximum Achievability Control Technology rule, or ``MACT'' rule, is designed to reduce emissions to an achievable degree while also considering the economic impact on businesses. The MACT rule must also set its standard according to the best performing practices existing facilities. However, in the case of the boiler MACT rule, the EPA cherry-picked data without considering the real world operating practices of the facilities that will be affected by this rule.

In March 2011, I also asked Administrator Jackson at a hearing to explain why the EPA is not considering alternative standards for emissions since the MACT limits may be far more stringent than necessary to protect public health. Additionally, I have pressed officials at the Office of Management and Budget, such as Administrator of the Office of Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein, about the very negative impacts EPA's Boiler MACT rules would have on the forest products industry.

In 2010, the EPA did request more time from the court to analyze and prepare the boiler MACT rules after it received thousands of comments that raised technical and cost concerns the agency had not originally considered. In response, the EPA appealed for an additional 15 months to implement the rule, noting that the public interest would be best served if it could obtain additional input from the public on these complex rules. Unfortunately, this plea was rejected by the D.C. District Court, and the agency was forced to re-propose the rule in a mere 30 days.

The stakes are too high for the EPA to be forced to rush a complex, multi-step process that could cost thousands of American jobs. Our bill will provide a balance that will help the EPA protect the environment and public health while ensuring that businesses in Maine and throughout the country are not faced with needlessly onerous burdens.

The EPA has claimed that the cost of the final rule has been lowered by 50 percent since the proposed rule last year; however, this is little comfort to manufacturers because the initial rule, according to industry estimates, was approximately $4 billion in capital costs to the forest industry and over $14 billion for all industrial sectors nationwide. The industry experts that I've talked with are very concerned that the standards are being set so high that they are going to have to make a massive new investment at a time when they can least afford it.

The EPA is making progress in reducing the costs and coming up with a more practical approach to the boiler MACT rules, and I believe we can achieve the health benefits that we desire without putting thousands of people out of work. This bill will help ensure that result.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure that the EPA has sufficient time to propose a well thought-out rule that minimizes the negative effect on the economy, while helping to protect public health and the environment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter of support be printed in the Record.