Withholding Tax Relief Act of 2011

Mr. President, before I begin to address the pending amendment I have offered along with a number of Senators in response to regulatory reform, I am going to yield to the Senator from North Dakota, who is a cosponsor of this legislation. I am delighted that he is a cosponsor, and that he recognizes and acknowledges the importance of changing the regulatory environment in America if we are going to have job creation and economic growth.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Hoeven, for his excellent remarks. As a former Governor for 10 years, he knows the impact of regulations on small businesses and how detrimental they can be to job creation, particularly at this time where we have a very difficult economy. We have persistent high unemployment and subpar economic growth. We are at a consequential moment in our economic history, frankly, that deserves the attention of the Senate. So, again, I thank the Senator for his comments in recognizing the effect regulatory reform will have on the performance of small business and, ultimately, job creation in this economy.

I am very pleased to have many colleagues cosponsoring this amendment. I am pleased to have worked with Senator Coburn from Oklahoma, and this amendment is also cosponsored by Senators McConnell, Ayotte, Barrasso, Brown of Massachusetts, Coats, Enzi, Isakson, Kirk, Hoeven, Johnson, Moran, Thune, and Vitter. It is clear to me that many of the Senators understand the value and imperative of reforming our regulatory system. It is absolutely vital that the Federal Government consider the small business economic impact of the rules and regulations that agencies promulgate.

The question might be asked, Why do we need regulatory reform? We had a bill on the floor last month, in early May, wherein I was denied a vote, which was regrettable because it is clear that many people don't understand how important this is and how central it is to small business job creation, how vital it is to the survival of small businesses and the cost of doing business across America. But I keep hearing from certain colleagues, ``Yes, we understand it is important; however'' or ``but'' or ``at some point.'' Let's define ``at some point.'' When?

When I was denied a vote on regulatory reform, on May 4 in the Senate, I heard that we are going to have hearings on the issue. Well, that obviously has not occurred. So it becomes the politics of obfuscation, not the reality. As I heard from a small business owner yesterday, ``When I come into Washington, it is a walled city--walled off from reality, detached from the real world on Main Street.''

I have been told that a concern with this amendment is that we have not had hearings. We had a hearing in the Small Business Committee on regulatory reform, but that is not enough for the Senator from California, who is saying we have not had hearings. She has offered plenty of amendments that haven't had hearings in the Senate. We had a major issue yesterday that was very important to small business--the interchange fee--which didn't have hearings. It didn't have hearings the first time it was offered to the Dodd-Frank legislation last year, and yesterday's amendment didn't have a hearing. So is there a new standard, in the Senate, when it comes to regulatory reform? Do you think there have been any overtures by anybody who opposes my legislation to work with us on this right away?

What is happening on Main Street America is that we are not creating jobs. Why? Because of what is failing to happen in Washington, DC, in the Senate. There is a clear detachment from the real world. Small businesses keep asking me what is going on. I say I can't explain it, other than it is clear that people don't understand what is going on because if they did, we would be working on it.

I heard the Senator from California say, ``at some point.'' But tell that to the person who is running a small business and trying to keep their neck above water and keep their business afloat during these very difficult times. What do these small business owners talk about? They talk about the regulations that are suffocating their ability to survive in a very tough economic climate.

We are dithering. That is what this is all about. It is all a masquerade, a facade, just bringing up bogus arguments. I have been in the legislative process for the better part of four decades, and I know when there is a serious purpose about working together and solving a problem. It appears to me that there is no interest in solving this problem here in Washington. Everybody has their own agenda, but people are wondering why there is this unemployment rate of 9.1 percent.

When I raised these concerns to the Secretary of the Treasury back in early February in the Finance Committee, when he was testifying--I described the concerns about what was happening on Main Street because I take Main Street tours, and I invite people to do that and to actually listen to what people are saying--he said: ``I think your view of the economy is dark and pessimistic.''

I said: Well, maybe I wasn't hearing it right. Maybe I wasn't hearing it right on Main Street. So when I meet with small business owners, I mention the Secretary's comments to them, and they cannot believe it. They cannot comprehend that the Secretary of the Treasury doesn't understand what is going on on Main Street; that the administration doesn't, the Senate doesn't, and the Congress doesn't. If they did, we would be working here day and night.

I was told I had to have a vote on this amendment right now. Why? Because it is Thursday, and certain members of this body are smelling the jet fumes while people are suffering on Main Street. Our fellow Americans are losing their jobs. Have my colleagues heard the stories about what people are facing? Time and time again I hear the same old refrains: ``We don't have time. We have to rush it. It hasn't had hearings. We will do it sometime.'' Well, tell that to the average American who is struggling to keep a job, to find a job or to keep the doors open to their business. That is what this amendment is all about. That is the reality.

We can pretend it is something else, but the macroeconomic numbers are demonstrating time and again there is a desperation out there. Yet, we take 2-week recesses, then we come back and have morning business and chat along, but it does nothing to resolve the consequential issues facing this Nation. There was a time when the Senate used to work, where we could sit down and solve a problem. Now it is all a facade, a few talking points and we move on. In the meantime, people are suffering and they are handicapped by our inability to work together. Regulatory reform is central to that agenda, make no mistake about it.

Let's look at what we are talking about and why we need regulatory reform. The analysts have lowered their forecast for the second quarter growth this year. The first quarter growth was already abysmal at 1.8 percent of GDP. Manufacturing recovery has slowed. Housing remains in shambles. New claims for jobless benefits, as the Senator from North Dakota indicated, exceeds 400,000--again. Growth of consumer spending is sluggish.

The President talks about job creation and stimulating the economy, but the results speak louder than words. Since the President took office, unemployment has dipped below 9 percent for only 5 months. Even that data is skewed because it doesn't account for the millions of workers who have exited the workforce altogether. Just last week, the unemployment rate for May increased to 9.1 percent. We are experiencing the longest unemployment period in American history since data collection started in 1948, surpassing even the 1982 double-dip recession for the length of unemployment.

Despite the President's promise, and an $800 billion stimulus package, a $700 billion TARP program, up to $600 billion in quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve, and over $2 trillion in overall government spending, we are years away from where we need to be in terms of job or economic growth. Mr. President, 40 months after the start of the four deepest postwar recessions our economic output averaged 7.6 percent higher than pre-recession levels. Yet since December 2007, when the most recent recession commenced, our GDP has only increased 0.1 percent. That is why we need regulatory reform. We need to bolster job creation, and the only place we can do that is through small businesses.

The Senator from California says we need hearings on this amendment. Then we should change the rules of the Senate and require that every amendment offered on this floor has a hearing, and every bill. That must be a new standard, Mr. President. We have had hearings on this question in the Small Business Committee, and the focus is that we desperately need reform.

In a small business regulatory reform hearing in November 2010 we heard a witness note if there was a 30 percent cut in regulatory costs, an average 10-person firm would save nearly $32,000--enough to hire one additional person.

When President Reagan entered office in 1981, he faced actually much worse economic problems than President Obama faced in 2009. I know because I served in the House of Representatives at that moment in time. With unemployment soaring into double digits, at a peak of 10.8 percent, huge chunks of industrial America shut down in the recession of 1981-1982 and never reopened. Yet once the recovery began in earnest in the first quarter of 1983, the economy boomed. It exceeded 7.1 percent for five consecutive quarters and kept growing at a 4-percent pace for another 2 years.

The contrast in results between the current recovery and the Reagan years is instructive because the government's response was so different. As a recent Wall Street Journal article reiterated, in the 1980s the policy goals were to cut tax rates, reduce regulatory costs and uncertainty--which is what these regulations are producing day in and day out--let the private economy allocate capital free of political direction, and focus monetary policy on price stability rather than on reducing unemployment. That is the type of policy mix we need to rediscover if we are going to climb out of this economic downturn.

Let's look at the first chart--small business job creators in my State and across America because they are the ones that create 70 percent of all the net new jobs in America. That is why regulation reform becomes so essential and imperative. The total cost of regulation is at $1.7 trillion--that is with a ``t''--and small firms with fewer than 20 employees bear a disproportionate burden in terms of those costs. It is $10,585 per employee, which is 36 percent higher than the regulatory costs confronting larger firms.

I know some people like to dispute numbers and say: Oh, no, that is not really a true number. Oh, really? Just add them up. There was a study that was done by Crain and Crain. They added the estimated cost of four categories or types of regulations--economic regulations at $1.2 trillion; environmental regulations at $281 billion; task compliance, $160 billion; and regulations involving occupational safety, health, and homeland security, $75 billion.

Some studies omit independent agencies. Some even omit the Internal Revenue Service from the calculation cost of regulations. Well, ask a small business or any business in America about whether IRS regulations have a cost for them. Of course they do. We have to include all agencies of government that have an impact directly on small business or any business in America.

Even a separate White House finding acknowledges that the estimated annual cost of major Federal regulations reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget this past decade cost between $44 billion and $62 billion.

The point is, the principal impediment to job creation in this country is a broken regulatory system. We have repeatedly talked about it. It is a top priority for the small business community across America. Every major organization that is a key voice for small business echoes this repeatedly: Federal regulations have placed a tremendous burden on them.

I know many of my colleagues and I understand the critical nature of all of this. We have heard the message loud and clearly. Even the President, interestingly enough, issued an Executive order in January to begin the process of reviewing Federal regulations, citing the need for ``absurd and unnecessary paperwork requirements that waste time and money.'' So in 4 months the administration's preliminarily findings uncovered over $1 billion in savings in 30 agencies. They ran the gamut. They included even environmental regulations.

So, obviously, there is some recognition and acknowledgment that regulations are a barrier and an impediment. The President is making eliminations at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. And yet, I don't think anybody would suggest he is trying to eradicate all environmental protections in America by identifying some that just aren't worthy of support because they are onerous. He would eliminate the requirement that States install a system to protect against fuel polluting the air at gas stations since modern vehicles already have these systems. That would save up to $67 million a year. But no one in this Chamber is going to accuse the President of saying, well, we are undermining all environmental regulations in the country.

It is as if we can't be discerning and discriminating in evaluating what is worthy and what isn't, what is too costly and complex and what isn't, what makes sense and what doesn't in this current context of this economic environment. Can we spend time doing that, since I was denied the time on May 4 and an ability to vote on this amendment? Could we have worked that out? Absolutely not. So why can't we become involved in this effort?

It seems we are turning a blind eye to it. There is no recognition because I don't think there is a full understanding or an appreciation of what is going awry in the economic landscape in every community across this country and why there is that despair, that anxiety.

By the way, about 80 percent of the American people believe we are moving in the wrong direction when it comes to our economy. That should be a Paul Revere wake-up call. It should be a message on which we might want to realign our focus in the Senate.

Maybe we should spend some time in the Senate working out the issues to solve the problems so we can create jobs for Americans who are unemployed, because we know that 9.1 percent doesn't capture all unemployed Americans. There are many who have dropped out of the workforce entirely. You could have, underemployed or unemployed, as many as up to 25 million Americans. That is staggering. That is breathtaking.

Since the time I was denied a vote, we could have been moving ahead on this legislation, or in the interim from when I was denied that vote on May 4, working out a solution, working through these issues. And during that time, the chairman of President Obama's own Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, announced the top four priorities. This just happened on May 10. Understand, on May 4 I was prevented from having a vote on regulatory reform. That is preposterous. We have not had hearings. Hearings sometimes are a path to nowhere; leading to nothing. But since then, have there been hearings called for? No, of course not.

But 6 days later, who is speaking on regulatory reform? The President's own Council on Jobs and Competitiveness chairman, that is who, and he is noting a number of priorities. Guess what. One of them happens to be regulations to support a pro-growth environment and strengthen U.S. competitiveness. He listed improving and innovating education and bolstering exports to the world's fastest growing markets as three of those priorities. Then he called for ``collaboration between government and business with regard to regulation'' as a top priority, noting that ``Decades of overlapping, uncoordinated regulations create unnecessary hurdles and increased burdens for entrepreneurs and businesses, large and small, across the country.''

Let me repeat, this is from the President's hand-selected chairman of a council dedicated to create American jobs and boosting our competitiveness. He made this pronouncement less than a week after the Senate failed to consider my regulatory reform amendment to the SBIR Reauthorization legislation that we were considering for nearly two months, with a mere three days of votes over that time.

You might think that if there were some reasonable concerns about my amendment, the other side would try to work with me since then. Nothing. Nothing. We might have had a recess or two. We had days without votes, days without debating key issues--actually not just days, weeks. Nothing. Nothing is connecting.

What is connecting, though, unfortunately for small businesses and people who depend on them for jobs, is that there is a cause and effect and that is why you are seeing the deleterious effects of our inability to work on the issues that matter, that we have basically relegated all of this to the backseat, we have substituted other things without purpose. It is truly regrettable because of what it is doing to the average American and for those who are struggling. People, rightfully, know it. The American people understand what is happening here--or what is not happening here, I should say.

The breadth of regulations is truly punitive on businesses in America. The Heritage Foundation reported last year that ``[t]he burden of regulation on Americans increased at an alarming rate in fiscal year 2010,'' with a record 43 major new regulations costing $26.5 billion alone, ``far more than any other year for which records are available.''

That is just in 1 year, $26.5 billion. That is on top of the $1.75 trillion in already existing total regulatory costs. That is just 1 year, $26.5 billion.

It is clear the administration and the agencies have gone on a regulatory rampage. Again, it is that detachment from the real world. What does this mean? What are the real, practical implications for the person running a small business and trying to calculate the costs or anticipate future costs? Why are they going to hire a new employee and take on new costs? Why should they make investments? They don't dare. They can't take the risk. They say: We don't know.

I meet with small businesses regularly and talk to them and they say it is the uncertainty with regulations that continues to limit their decisions. This demonstrates it.

The Heritage Foundation reports that ``[r]egulatory costs will rise until policymakers appreciate the burdens that regulations are imposing on Americans and the economy, and exercise the political will necessary to limit--and reduce--those burdens.''

That is exactly what our amendment will do. This is a clarion call for regulatory reform. There should be no political or philosophical boundaries. There should not be philosophical differences. You might have some arguments about what approach you take, but those things could be worked out. In fact, that is exactly what I did with the amendment I offered on which I was denied a vote back on May 4.

From the other side there were some issues. We made five major modifications to my proposal because it is important to build bipartisan support. I have certainly reached across the aisle on so many occasions. I would have thought we could have had a corresponding response to work out these issues. That is what I do not understand. I cannot understand. There should not be any debate. If they talk to their small business community, they will get the same response.

What can we do to make it better? That is the key. The key is making some changes. One, I called for a small business review panel to be required for every agency so they can review the regulations before they are promulgated, before they are implemented, so we find out beforehand what might be of concern to small business, what might have potential costs or risks, or will not work out, and know it beforehand. I hear from some: Oh, no, we will work it out later, afterward. You ask the small business person how you are going to work it out afterward, after they paid astronomical costs to comply with that regulation.

Let's set up the small business review panels. This is not a new model. There are such panels for OSHA and EPA. And due to an amendment that I offered to the financial regulatory reform bill, one also now exists at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and it is part of that mechanism now. There was a model that we adopted from OSHA and EPA, from 1996, when we had a Democratic administration, and it worked exceptionally well. So I thought, Why not apply it to every agency?

But we heard, absolutely not.

So I said OK, what can we do to work it out? I talked to those on the other side of the aisle and we changed it and said for the 3 years that this bill will be authorized we will do it for nine agencies, three a year, to see how it works for the nine agencies who's rules have the most effect on small businesses. I did that. I made that change to address the concerns that were expressed on the other side of the aisle.

Then we said we should start requiring the agencies to do what they are supposed to do by law. You think it is a little redundant to ask them to do what they are required to do already, which is to review the rules? They are supposed to review the rules every 10 years but, guess what, they do not. So I said: If they are not reviewing a rule every 10 years, then that rule cannot be that important. So let's take it off the books. That is what I proposed. If an agency cannot be bothered to review the regulations as they are required to do under the law every 10 years, if they are not doing it, then it must not be that important so let's take them off.

There was some resistance on the other side so I made the change in response to the concerns. What I incorporated is that they would lose 1 percent of their operating budget. That is fair. We have to give them incentives to do what they should be doing by law but we will now give them some greater impetus to comply with the law. It is amazing that we are in that position, but that is where it stands. So I made that change because I thought it was important.

We have tasked inspector generals with assuring that these reviews are taking place and they can do so in consultation with the chief advocacy counsel at the Small Business Administration. It is not unusual for an IG to determine that the agency they are overseeing complies with existing laws. After all, isn't that what they precisely do? Would anybody argue that outdated and ineffective regulations hurt the environment or harm small businesses? The administration's own preliminary review of regulations at 30 agencies in 4 months identified $1 billion worth of savings. Why would we not want to start having those reviews become the norm rather than the exception? I do not understand it. Are we that busy here that we cannot do it? Maybe we could forfeit a few recesses and do some work for America to connect what is going on in Main Street--getting back to Main Street because that is where the jobs are created.

Maybe we could spend more time here doing that instead of deferring to sometime down the road.

I made some other key changes in hopes that we could build that bridge in response to the concerns that were given by the other side. I made five major modifications because I thought it is important to build bipartisan support. Again I was denied that opportunity.

Now we are being told that the main concern is that it has not had a hearing. Does that mean that we ought to change the rules of the Senate, as I said earlier, to require a hearing for every amendment? Perhaps that would slow the train down even more here. Maybe we could get back to achieving some results.

Another provision I have in my Regulatory Reform Act that I have introduced with Senator Coburn and so many others here, is a basic commonsense approach: incorporating the indirect economic effects of regulations on small businesses so we make sure they anticipate the foreseeable indirect economic effects in addition to the direct effects, because we know there are a multiplicity of effects that resonate and reverberate with other industries. That needs to be calculated and incorporated and factored into the equation in terms of cost. And let's be clear. This is not a radical or partisan proposition. In fact, the language was taken directly, word for word, from the President's Chief small business regulatory watchdog, the head of the SBA Office of Advocacy.

I also recommend that we expand the judicial review requirement so we make sure that when an agency proposes a rule, it has complied with its existing legal requirements to consider the economic impact of the rule on small businesses, that it has contemplated less costly alternative ways to make the rule less burdensome.

That is important because they ought to listen to diverse options, in terms of the rule they are proposing, to make sure that they have incorporated the views of small businesses in understanding the implications, being more exact and precise in the process--not waiting until months and years down

the road, after you go through a very extensive, complicated rulemaking process, to try to make your case. Small businesses do not have the resources to do that to begin with, let alone the time or employees to do it. That is not a good use of their capital, by the way, to be spending their time arguing with a government agency time and again.

For 30 years, small businesses have had the ability to seek judicial review of an agency's small business impact statement after the rule has been made. In this entire time period, for over 30 years, even with the ability to obtain judicial review, we know of only two rules that were remanded by the courts. One was a mining regulation that did not account for the number of small businesses that had gone bankrupt under bonding requirements. The other was fishing restrictions issued without realizing the impact on fishermen. This means that waiting until the rule is final is simply too late; the damage is done.

To correct this injustice, our amendment would provide small businesses the ability to bring legal action earlier in the process so we can avert mistakes at the outset so we do not force small businesses to go through this onerous, complicated, costly process, and then find out we made a mistake, the agencies made a mistake, and they say: You know what. You are going to have to fight it and go through another rulemaking process which takes months if not years. It is not going to happen. That is why we are not stimulating economic growth; we have thousands of regulations.

As a result, we have provided small businesses the ability to bring legal action, to seek judicial review prior to the rule becoming finalized, whether an agency failed to comply with its existing small business review requirement. This is a commonsense approach, to ensure agencies abide by the law prior to a rule being made final. It is not a partisan measure. It is just practical sense. If somebody has not run a small business, they probably do not understand it, do not appreciate what it takes to start or run a small business, the ingenuity and the cost involved.

If you take a small operation with 5 employees, 10 employees, 20 employees, they are the majority of small businesses in America. And small businesses account for up to 70 percent of the net new jobs in America. Remember, in the last 2\1/2\ years other than 4 months, we have had 9 percent or higher unemployment rates. I mean, that is a dire commentary of where we stand today after we have spent $2 trillion, and the deficit is growing, the debt is growing. We are facing the potential of a debt crisis if we do not deal with this massive accumulation of debt. That is why job growth becomes such an imperative. This is why regulatory reform is urgent and why we must do something about it.

We could work across the aisle instead of making broad accusations that this is going to decimate the environment, and workplace safety, that this is going to decimate health care. If that is the case, the President must be doing the same thing because he has just proposed revoking more than $1 billion worth of regulations from agencies in 4 months. We cannot even have a hearing in 4 months on the issue if hearings are so important to the outcome. I would be more than happy to have hearings to get it done, but we cannot even get hearings, cannot work it out. It is just talk, talk, talk.

Many of my proposals have bipartisan support. In fact, interestingly enough, this proposal regarding judicial review was a provision that actually the Small Business Committee chair, the Senator from Louisiana, proposed and Senator Cardin from Maryland, in a nearly identical fashion as section 605 of the Small Business Investment and Innovation Act of 2010 in the 111th Congress. They obviously agreed with the approach. There is nothing partisan about this. We ought to be able to work this out. There is nothing complicated about it. There is nothing complicated about addressing a fundamental issue facing small business.

I just want to set things straight so it is clear and we are not misunderstood. Some are making generalized mischaracterizations. People have not read the amendment, or taken the time and effort to understand it. Reason it out, and if you disagree, come up with something so we can move with urgency, with dispatch because we are losing jobs in America. We are losing businesses. This would help enormously.

That is why the legislation I have introduced, and the Senator from Oklahoma and others, has broad support from major small business organizations across America. They understand. They are hearing from their membership. And speaking of this, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record two letters of support, one from 32 major business organizations and another from the Chamber of Commerce.

Our amendment includes a number of other provisions that would be important. For instance, we asked the Internal Revenue Service to consider small business impact on rulemaking, and that agencies review their rule penalty structures. I think we should ask the Internal Revenue Service to consider small business impact as well. It is reasonable. They obviously have a broad effect on small businesses across America.

I have spoken on this issue at great length because I think it is that important. I have been a ranking member of the Small Business Committee. I have been chair of the Small Business Committee, since 2003 in either capacity. My State of Maine is a small business State with over 97 percent small businesses, so I fully understand and appreciate the magnitude of the situation, the circumstances in which they find themselves and struggle to survive. The interchange fee amendment to this bill, was an important issue that consumed a lot of time in the Senate. I certainly did not complain because I understand that. It did not have a hearing. It is a new proposal--that did not have any hearings. I did not complain, but it is important to understand--I just want everybody to understand not every amendment offered on the Senate floor, every proposal, has a hearing. Far from it. Very few ever do.

We had a hearing on small business regulations last fall. That is why I am working this out, but we cannot work it out. There is no process or mechanism. It is all talk. No action for where it matters most, and I feel the despair and anxiety of my constituents. I feel it intuitively. I wish we could do better.

I have been in the legislative process, as I said earlier, for the better part of four decades. My whole reason for serving in public office is to rise to a higher level. I believe it is my responsibility to solve the problems on behalf of people I represent and, hopefully, the country. There are only 100 United State Senators. It matters for our States, and it matters for our country. I would hope we could aspire to a higher level than this; certainly, in the aftermath of the last election, where there was an indisputable, unequivocal message from the American people begging and pleading with us to solve problems.

We have an individual and a collective responsibility. We know how to do it, and we can do it. The genius of America has always been working together to solve our problems. It has been the hallmark of the innovation and the can-do spirit of America. I happen to believe in that can-do spirit. I know it is possible if we have a process and a procedure in the Senate that allows for it.

When I get up every day, it is about what I can do for the people I represent and for this country at a very trying and anguishing moment, where the uncertainty is permeating the American psyche; to feel and to understand the fear that people get up with every day wondering if they are going to find a job or keep a job. Even if they get a job, it is about one-third of what they were making before. I heard that story yesterday from some constituents, about the hundreds who apply for a job for one-third of what they were making. How are they going to keep their families afloat, their homes? If they can keep it. That is what it is all about.

Why is it we cannot replicate it here in actions and speak to the American people and give voice to those fears and say we are going to do it, we are going to do it right here, and then systematically tackle those issues one after the other and just do it and do it as long as it takes, even if we have to work weekends? Americans are working weekends, two and three jobs. They are doing everything. We take recesses. We do this. We ``obfuscate'' is the word that comes to mind, sort of create a confusion, a masquerade that we are doing something to mix it up.

The practical impact in the absence of what we are doing is directly felt at home on the average American. I know we can do better. There have been soaring moments in this Chamber and there can be again. This is one of the most consequential times in our economic history, and we have an obligation to lift up the spirits of the people by working together on the issues that matter, and this is one issue that matters because there are 30 million small businesses in America. They are the job generators and creators, and if we do not recognize the reality of this type of reform and we cannot get it done, then we have failed to do our jobs. And I regret that.

I believe we can do it, and working it out instead of talking about hearings at some point, some ambiguity, as if we cannot appreciate or understand what is happening in the real world and households every day on our Main Streets. If you do not, then I suggest you take a few Main Street tours and talk to small businesses and talk about their fears. These are Americans who are working mighty hard to make a difference in this world. All they want is a better life for themselves and their families and their children and, in fact, we are retreating.

We have an obligation to stand up to do what is right. I hope we can find our way somehow, somewhere. This is a great place to start to make a difference.

I yield the floor, Mr. President.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Reserving the right to object, the Senator from California has been addressing the Senate, so wouldn't it be appropriate for the Senator from South Dakota to speak?

Reserving the right to object, I wish to include the Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Coburn.

Fifteen.

Mr. President, how much time remains on the Republican side?

Thirteen minutes. Thank you, Mr. President.

I want to make a few points. It is about solving problems. That is what this is all about. It truly amazes me that we have an amendment here on regulatory reform that everybody agrees with in principle and everything else, that goes to the heart of the issues concerning the economic well-being of small business and, hence, America's well-being in these desperate times, yet we can't manage to get it together and to work on these issues.

I made a number of good-faith changes in my legislation, and I would have done more if I had heard any response from the other side to working those out. I made five major changes to the proposition back in April to respond to this. But there is no response. Then I hear about these hearings. Can somebody please tell me where it is in the rules of the Senate that every amendment has to have a hearing?

We had a major vote yesterday on interchange for the second time. That is important to small business. But even the committee of jurisdiction didn't have a hearing. So this is, again--as I describe it--the politics of obfuscation. Let's get to the heart of the matter and solve the problems for America. It isn't about who authors it and who is doing it. Let's do it. That is the point: We are not doing it. We are just sitting here talking, recessing, going home today, going to do something else, going to have recesses.

We have five committees that have jurisdiction over this issue. We are going to need a roadmap pretty soon. I don't want to go home and tell my constituents this is what happened on regulatory reform. So let me get this straight. Let me get this straight. We have five committees, there are a number of bills, time is running out, people have to leave, and we can't have enough time to debate this.

That is what I was told this morning. All of a sudden I was given a call saying: Sorry, you have to do it right now. I said: Well, is the bill over? We just started. There are a number of pending amendments that haven't even been addressed yet. Let's vote on those. This is an important issue. Let's give this the equivalency of the interchange amendment. Let's do something that is important for small business. Absolutely not.

This is about jobs at a very difficult time in America.

Let me repeat, 40 months after the start of the four deepest postwar recessions, our economic output averaged 7.6 percent. Here we are, our GDP has only increased .1 percent. Those are terrible numbers. But behind those numbers are people and human beings because it means we are not creating jobs.

We heard here today that sometimes bureaucracy is good. Well, bureaucracies, by definition, and I read, mean ``excessive multiplication of, and concentration of power in administrative bureaus or administrators'' Absolutely. They are unelected. We are elected. We understand the problems. Even the President--let's read this headline, ``Obama to scale back regulations in an effort to spur economic growth.''

What is interesting about all this--nobody is accusing the President of decimating the environment or workplace or health care. Understanding that, 6 days after I was denied a vote on this very amendment where I made five different adjustments to respond to the other side, you have the President's Economic Competitiveness Council coming out with four major priorities, one of which is a need to improve the regulatory process because there are decades of overlapping and uncoordinated regulations.

Even by the administration's estimate, this White House's own estimate, that regulations last decade cost anywhere from $44 to $62 billion, last year's alone with a $26 billion. This is a serious issue.

Can we work it out? Can we do it? Do we have the capacity to work on issues anymore, thoroughly and deliberatively? It has been almost 2 months

and we have not gotten any further. We haven't even had a hearing. Somewhere, somebody has bills. Great. Bring them up. Let's debate them. Let's compare them. Let's do something. Let's do something for small business. They desperately need it. Now I will be glad to yield to the Senator from Illinois.

I now yield to the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Brown.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for additional time on the bill, since the vote is not going to occur until 2:15, and that time be equally divided.

I yield the remainder of the time to Senator Brown. It is regrettable, since this is an important issue, that we couldn't have more time on this key issue.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I would urge my colleagues to support this amendment. It is about jobs. It is about small businesses. It is about the well-being of American families. Just remember this: the stark numbers. The unemployment rate is at 9.1 percent; the average over the last 2\1/2\ years, 9.4 percent. For 23 out of the last 28 months, unemployment has been at 9 percent or higher. Housing prices are at the lowest level since mid-2002. This is the longest recession since modern record- keeping.

These are stark, grim numbers. What I am hearing here today is a bureaucratic process and response, exactly what we are trying to attack. This is not indiscriminate, as some have described on the other side of the aisle about this regulatory reform measure. It is very consistent.

I know the Senator from Louisiana was talking about several of the issues. I would like to go through them.

First of all, she mentioned about the concerns of the judicial review. But this provision is nearly identical to one that she and Senator Cardin introduced in their own legislation in the 111th Congress.

The Senator also was concerned with our tying budget cuts to the SBA to this amendment as a way of paying for some of the costs of it. But, to avoid controversy, we specifically selected as offsets, cuts in the SBA that had been proposed by the Agency's Inspector General, and in the President's very own budget.

The Senator from Louisiana talked about the problems associated with considering indirect economic effects on small businesses when issuing rules. But, for that provision we used the exact same language suggested by the President's chief small business regulatory appointee, the chief advocate at the Small Business Administration.

So this is not indiscriminate and some are mischaracterizing the provisions in this legislation because they have not bothered to read the amendment. I made a number of changes in order to address the concerns on the other side. If there were further concerns, that we could work through, I would have addressed those as well. So I think we better make sure we get our facts straight because it is about small businesses and jobs. That is what it is about. We are just stalling, deferring, delaying.

We heard concerns that we did not have a hearing on my specific amendment. Well, the Senate did not hold a hearing on it since I was denied a vote on it on May 4. And the President came out a few days later and said regulatory reform was one of the top four issues for American economic growth and job creation.

Then we hear a bureaucratic conversation about hearings and multiple jurisdictions and committees and committees. I have to say, I have never known amendments to require hearings before they are considered on the floor. In fact, I believe the Senator from California had 19 amendments in the last Congress--19 amendments--8 of which were accepted and none had hearings. Yesterday we had a major amendment on interchange. We did not have a hearing on that major issue.

I am just making a point. This is just bringing up issues to obfuscate and obscure. I do not know exactly what the concern is, to be honest with you. If there are some issues to address, then let's address them. But to just postpone in conversation, debating--the talk goes nowhere. There are no hearings. There is nothing.

The President scaled back regulations, as I said earlier in an effort to spur economic growth, including some in the Environmental Protection Agency. He did not undercut the Endangered Species Act. Nobody is accusing him of scaling back every environmental law that has ever been on the books.

I think we ought to get away from extreme mischaracterizations, inaccuracies and untruths. Let's talk about the facts. Let's read the bill. Let's know what we are talking about and get our facts straight. This goes to the heart of economic growth. It goes to jobs.

It goes to the American people's well-being.

Madam President, I rise today to discuss a bipartisan amendment I have filed to S. 782, the Economic Development Revitalization Act of 2011. This amendment, the Small Business Contracting Fraud Prevention Act of 2011, is cosponsored by Senators McCaskill, Grassley, Hagan, Collins, Merkley, and Enzi.

In the past year, the Government Accountability Office, GAO, has identified vulnerabilities and abuses in virtually all of the SBA's contracting programs, including the 8(a) Business Development Program, the Historically Underutilized Business Zone, HUBZone, program, and the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned small business, SDVOSB, program. Our amendment attempts to remedy the spate of illegitimate firms siphoning away contracts from the rightful businesses trying to compete within the SBA's contracting programs.

As ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I take very seriously our responsibility of vigorous oversight. That is why, last December, Senator Landrieu and I sent a letter to the SBA highlighting the recent press headlines and GAO reports of fraud and abuse that have plagued the agency's contracting programs. That letter stated unequivocally that our committee's first priority this Congress is ensuring that all of the SBA's contracting programs are running efficiently, effectively, and free of exploitation. Adopting this critical small business legislation is an effective first step at ensuring all small businesses are competing fairly and honestly within the Federal marketplace.

The SBA has begun to take positive steps to address issues of fraud, but reports continue to surface showing additional tools are needed. As recently as Saturday, March 12, the Washington Post, as part of an ongoing investigation, published an article titled, ``D.C. insiders can reap fortunes from federal programs for small businesses.'' This article states ``Government officials were not monitoring contracts for compliance with rules.'' The report exposes a glaring deficiency in contract oversight. Moreover, an SBA spokesperson is quoted as saying the SBA ``long ago transferred that authority to the Pentagon and other agencies.'' This hands-off attitude is unacceptable, and as I told the SBA Deputy Administrator at a recent Small Business Committee hearing, the ultimate authority for monitoring fraud lies with the SBA.

This amendment contains recommendations both from the SBA inspector general and the GAO for combating these reports of fraud and addresses vulnerabilities in the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned small business program, the HUBZone program, and the 8(a) program. Additionally, the bill will work to change the culture at SBA to make the process of suspensions and debarments more transparent.

In order to effectively execute the small business contracting programs, the SBA needs a comprehensive framework to provide effective certification, continued surveillance and monitoring, and robust enforcement throughout the SBA's contracting portfolio. This bill aims to increase criminal prosecutions as well as suspension and debarments for businesses found to have attained contracts through fraudulent means, and requires the SBA to submit a report to Congress annually detailing the specific data on all suspensions, debarments, and cases referred to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecutions.

My amendment provides the SBA more stringent oversight capacity across all the SBA contracting programs. It is SBA's duty to utilize every fraud prevention measure at its disposal and this amendment puts the tools in place to punish the bad actors that have infiltrated the SBA contracting programs.

Mr. President, as I understand it, I will have an hour and a half to present our side on the amendment and Senator Snowe will have an hour and a half. Could the Chair please give me the exact timeframes.

Thank you very much. I was close.

I wish to let Senator Snowe know what my plan is at this time. First, I am going to yield some time on another subject--but it will be used on our time--to Senator Whitehouse, who has something very important pertaining to his State, and then I am going to come back and take as much time as I might consume and it will not be that long. I wish to lay out where we are in this debate, why this bill is so important, and I am going to make some remarks about Senator Snowe's amendment. So I do not know exactly how long it will take, but I will do it as quickly as I can and retain the remainder of my time.

But at this time, I yield 10 minutes of my time to Senator Whitehouse.

Senator Whitehouse is coming back into the Chamber with his charts, and I reiterate, I will yield the first 10 minutes of my time to Senator Whitehouse.

Mr. President, I just want to thank my colleague for his remarks. I offer my deepest sympathies to these impacted by that terrible fire. Unfortunately, in this country we are witnessing so many disasters. It is so difficult for the people to deal with this, but we have to always respond. I am glad he paid tribute to the firefighters, the first responders, because they are the ones who put everything on the line to help us.

We have before us a bill called the Economic Development Revitalization Act of 2011. It is S. 782. It is a good bill. It is a bill that is needed for our economy because it is a bill that is focused on one thing, jobs. When people are asked what our focus should be--and we all know we need to reduce the deficit and the debt--they all say No. 1 is jobs because without jobs, deficits only get worse, debts only get worse, as people have to turn to the safety net that is provided in this great Nation for their very survival. So when we have an opportunity to come together across party lines with a jobs bill, one would think we would be delighted to do it.

This EDA, the Economic Development Administration, was reauthorized back in 2004 when George W. Bush was President. Let me tell a story because everybody came together, and that EDA reauthorization passed by voice vote and was signed into law by President George W. Bush. So it is a bit perplexing for me to note that we have dozens and dozens of amendments that are absolutely nongermane to this reauthorization. We have one amendment that is pending that my colleague, Senator Snowe, is offering, which has never had a hearing. It has never had a markup, and it is absolutely going to change the way we can protect our people from pollution, from danger.

I think it is unfortunate that rather than work on this together, we are seeing this offered as an amendment. It is Senator Snowe's complete right to do this. I respect it. I honor it. I understand how strongly she feels. But I feel just as strongly that something that would ignore public health and safety and not even put that in the benefits column is something that is a danger to the people we serve.

So we are going to have a debate about it, and the votes will come at 2:15. I am pleased we will get to vote. I do hope at some point we will be able to look at regulatory flexibility, we will be able to work to make sure that as we assist our businesses--and we all want to do that. That is what this bill, the EDA bill, does. It is assisting businesses. It is jump-starting business development. We have example after example of that--we also can work to ease their burden a bit while not endangering the life and the health of the people. That is pretty straightforward, and I would be very happy to work with my colleague. But this bill has never even had a hearing. This bill she is offering has never been marked up. I have had no opportunity, other than this one, to basically say how I feel.

I know it is in contrast to the way Senator Snowe feels, and Senator Coburn. I have lots of respect for them. I hope they have respect for me as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee because my view is, my obligation is, to protect the health and the safety of our kids.

How many kids have asthma? If I asked a group here, I bet one-third of the hands would go up. If I asked how many people know someone with asthma, I bet more than half would raise their hands. So I think we cannot willy-nilly just support an approach that would take away the ability to put the benefits of protecting health into any formulas before we say regulation should be thrown overboard. I think there are ways to definitely work together. Unfortunately, today we are going to have an up-or-down vote on the Snowe amendment without that opportunity.

I want to go through the fact that the bill that is before us, the underlying bill, S. 782, has strong bipartisan support. It was reported out of our EPW Committee by voice vote, only one objection, and that is because this EDA has operated for 50 years. It has a very good tradition of creating jobs and spurring growth in economically hard-hit communities nationwide.

This bill is going to ensure that EDA can continue to create jobs, thousands of jobs, protect existing jobs, and drive local economic growth. It is distressing to me to see, for example, an amendment by Senator DeMint. He is very proud of his amendment. What would it do? It would do away with the EDA. So on a bill to reauthorize the EDA, he has an amendment to eliminate the Economic Development Administration.

Now, again, I respect his view, but I do not understand it. Why do I not understand it? Because in 2005, Senator DeMint sent out a press release congratulating local leaders for securing an EDA grant for the City of Dillon, SC. So we have Senator DeMint proposing to eliminate an agency which he lauded not once but more than once.

Senator DeMint was quoted in the press release as saying:

This investment in Dillon County will save and create

hundreds of South Carolina jobs. And I am pleased that the

EDA has awarded these funds.

So what planet are we on? We have a Senator who sends out a press release lauding an agency he now wants to

eliminate. So you would say, well, maybe that was 2005 and he has suddenly changed his mind. No. One year ago, Senator DeMint's staff held a workshop in Myrtle Beach to highlight competitive funding opportunities available to local communities and businesses through EDA and other Federal agencies.

June 16, 2010. Here it is:

Workshop to Highlight Competitive Funding Opportunities.

The office of U.S. Senator Jim DeMint and the Myrtle Beach

Chamber of Commerce will provide a workshop--

It goes on to say that the staff of Senator DeMint will be there.

I don't get what is going on. How do you send out a press release lauding an agency and then say: Let's do away with it. I don't get it. If jobs are our No. 1 priority--and I certainly know the occupant of the chair is fighting 24/7 for jobs, for outsourcing jobs, and for job creation.

For every dollar spent in EDA, $7 of private investment is attracted. Historically, $1 of EDA investment attracts nearly $7 in private sector investment. Now, you say: Well, for our investment with Federal dollars, how much does it cost for us to create one good job? The answer comes back: EDA creates one job for every $2,000 to $4,600 invested. That is a good investment. EDA is a job creator. That is why it is perplexing to me to have a host of amendments that are distracting us from jobs, jobs, jobs.

Between 2005 and 2010, with an investment of $2.4 billion, total jobs generated were 450,000 and total jobs saved were 85,000. At the $500 million funding level authorized, if that was spent, EDA would create 87,000 to 200,000 jobs every year and 400,000 to 1 million jobs over the life of the bill. We don't know that that $500 million will stay, but historically that is what we have authorized through EDA.

Here are the people who are supporting an authorization of the EDA: U.S. Conference of Mayors, American Public Works Association, National Association of Counties, AFL-CIO, American Planning Association, Association of University Research Parks, Educational Association of University Centers, International Economic Development Council, Association of Development Organizations, National Business Incubation Association, State Science and Technology Institute, University Economic Development Association, and National Association of Regional Councils.

We have a letter from an arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lauding this program, citing how well they work with the EDA. They say:

We are the citizenship arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,

and in this capacity we work with thousands of businesses and

local chambers of commerce on community development and

disaster recovery. These local chambers and businesses are

constantly looking for national best practices, lessons

learned, technical assistance, strategy support, and other

insights and tools and techniques to make communities as

competitive as possible.

This is the chamber of commerce arm:

As you consider EDA's future roles and responsibilities, we

would be happy to share with you our experiences and lessons

learned in working with the agency and provide you with

additional information.

They talk about the unique capability the EDA can and does support. They say EDA staff members displayed a high degree of professionalism and technical expertise. They say they have engaged with them on multiple levels, from consultation to sharing valuable field experience at the State and local level.

We have tremendous support. The AFL-CIO, dealing with the loss of construction jobs, says:

EDA has established an admirable track record in assisting

economically troubled low-income communities with limited job

opportunities by putting their investments to good use in

promoting needed job creation and industrial and commercial

development.

The last chart is the American Public Works Association, which builds public works and the water and sewer systems we need. This is from Peter King, executive director of American Public Works Association, dated this month:

I write on behalf of the 29,000 members of APWA in support

of the Economic Development Revitalization Act, S. 782. We

urge the Senate to pass this legislation, which will create

jobs, stimulate economic growth in distressed areas, and

improve the economic growth of local communities.

After Senator Snowe speaks and others speak, I will reserve my time to go into specifically what programs we have seen flourish because of that little spark that gets lit when EDA gets in there. The private sector loves this program, and local governments and State governments love it. It has worked since 1965.

I urge my colleagues, if you have amendments, let's get time agreements and dispose of those amendments. Let's get to a final vote on this very important program, which has flourished under Democratic Presidents, Republican Presidents, Democratic Congresses, and Republican Congresses. For goodness' sakes, does everything have to be a battle royale around here? We ought to be able to reach across the aisle when there is a bill brought up that deals with jobs. If we don't do that, we honestly fail the people.

My very last point is that Senator Inhofe has worked very hard on this bill. Republicans have added a lot of reforms to the EDA. I think those reforms are important. One would eliminate a duplication of effort, and others would give the private sector the ability to buy out the EDA interests. So I think, clearly, at this time, we should get these amendments done.

I am pleased Senator Snowe is here, and she is anxious to speak. I will conclude at this time and reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, how much time remains on my side?

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I appreciate the passion with which my colleague spoke, and I could not disagree more with her when she says we are masquerading as if we are doing something.

Were we masquerading when we brought the small business jobs bill to the floor, and Senator Landrieu, who chairs the Small Business Committee, stood here day after day after day and only faced a filibuster from the Republicans? We could not get that bill done, and millions of jobs were in the balance. Were we filibustering? No, they were. Were we masquerading?

Were we masquerading when we brought the FAA bill to the floor, in which my colleague, Senator Snowe, played a huge role? Thank God, we passed it. Were we masquerading? That bill is held up because the House Republicans have not chosen conferees, and we are waiting to have a 21st-century aviation system in this great Nation where we are using radar that was used in the last century--practically the century before. Come on. We are trying to do our job.

She talked about the last election. I will talk about the last election. I was on the ballot, so I can talk about it. It was about jobs. I told my people when I get back here: Jobs, jobs, jobs. I am proud to say we have on the floor right now a bill to reauthorize the Economic Development Administration, a program that has been around since 1965 and one which has a stellar record of attracting $7 of private capital for

every $1 we spend. The cost of each job created is approximately $3,000 per job, and they are good jobs. The Chamber of Commerce arm is supporting this and the AFL-CIO.

We are dealing with amendment after amendment after amendment, and it is fine. It is everybody's right, and I appreciate the fact that we will be voting on this amendment at 2:15. We even have an amendment to do away with the very agency we are trying to reauthorize by Senator DeMint, even though in 2005 he had a very big press release lauding the EDA and, as recently as last year, his staff attended a workshop where they were working with the EDA and praising the EDA for their work to reinvigorate jobs.

I appreciate being lectured--and it is everybody's right to do it-- and I will do anything to defend my colleagues' right to say whatever they want. It is just not true. The masquerading here is being done by Republicans who filibuster almost every single thing we do.

I hope we are going to get to the series of amendments. We are being very cooperative with our colleagues. We are going to take some of these--some of these amendments are for show. Fine. Everyone has that right. It is fine. But let's get it done, and let's get going with authorization of a bill that is going to create jobs. That is the whole idea of it. The last time we voted on it, we had a unanimous vote. Since 2004, we had a unanimous vote, and George Bush signed this into law.

I just want folks to know I have another couple minutes of remarks, and then I will yield such time as he may require to Senator Brown of Ohio.

Mr. THUNE addressed the Chair.

Mr. President, I am happy to propound a unanimous consent request so that at the conclusion of my remarks Senator Brown will speak for, say, 10 minutes and then it would go to Senator Thune; is that all right?

I have said I would offer a unanimous consent agreement. We are dividing the time between the two of us. It is my decision to yield to Senator Brown because Senator Snowe has spoken for a very long time and I want him to have some time and I am wrapping up my comments. I would be happy to propound a unanimous consent request that after Senator Brown's remarks for 10 minutes, we then turn to Senator Thune for 10 or 15 or 20 minutes or whatever it is he wishes.

I am not yielding time.

Thank you. So is there objection to my unanimous consent request that Senator Thune be recognized immediately after Senator Brown for as long as he wishes?

My unanimous consent request is that I have the right to call on Senator Brown. I can yield to Senator Brown is my understanding.

I wish to yield time to Senator Brown.

So then I will yield to him for some questions. I can do that under the rules; is that correct?

All right. So that is what we will do, unless my colleagues would rather do it the way I said before. If not, I will just yield for questions. Either way. It is up to my colleagues.

Then Senator Thune would be recognized for as much time as he wishes.

Reserving the right to object, and I will not object, could we have some indication of timeframe? It is all fine.

All right. I think I have the time; is that right?

That is correct.

I have one more question. I still have the floor?

I said at the conclusion of my remarks we would turn to Senator Brown. How many minutes remain on each side?

Thank you very much. I will wrap up in a couple minutes and come back later.

I think it is very important to reiterate what I said before. I don't think we are masquerading around here; I think we are trying to do our work. The bill before us was voted out of the committee. It had hearings. It had a vote. It was bipartisan, unlike the amendment offered by my friend who never had a hearing. Let's be clear. We are not masquerading; we are doing our work.

I only hope this bill gets better treatment than the small business bill. My friend is speaking for small business. We all know small business is the engine of jobs, and that is why it was shocking to me that the Republicans filibustered the last small business bill that was on this floor. It is outrageous, when we say we want jobs.

The reason I am going to vote to table the Snowe amendment or against the Snowe amendment--there are many, but one is process. We haven't had a hearing. It is very far-reaching. But I also wish to speak as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. One of our biggest laws and regulations that stem from it has to do with the Clean Air Act. The way my friend has put forward her amendment, there would be no benefit put into a regulation because of its impact on the health of us and our families.

The Clean Air Act has been attacked by those who want to say let's not have regulations for this segment of business and that segment. We just had a vote in California and 60 percent of the people-- Republicans, Democrats, Independents--more than 60 percent said we want to see our health protected.

Here is what has happened. In 2010, the Clean Air Act prevented 160,000 cases of premature deaths--premature deaths. Now we are going to come in with some regulation that has never had a hearing, never had a vote, that is not going to take into account the benefit of a health regulation such as that. By 2020, that number is projected to rise to 230,000 cases of premature deaths.

In 2010, the Clean Air Act prevented 1.7 million asthma attacks--1.7 million fewer attacks. We want jobs. We want

people healthy. They can't go to work if they can't breathe, because if you can't breathe, you can't work. So let's not get up here and pass something that hasn't had a hearing, hasn't had a vote, and suddenly say we are no longer going to take into account the benefits of some of the regulations we have.

In 2010, the Clean Air Act prevented 130,000 acute heart attacks. In 2010, the Clean Air Act prevented 3.2 million lost days at school.

So my point is, yes, we want regulations to be sensible; yes, we want them to be flexible; yes, we should work together to make sure our businesses aren't facing undue delays and all the rest and I am very willing to do that. But what I am not willing to do is pass something that has far-reaching impacts. We don't even know what it would mean to the health and safety of our families, and it would absolutely ignore the benefits of regulations that protect our children's health, their safety, their well-being and our working families because a lot of these regulations are meant to protect them.

I hope we will vote down the Snowe amendment. I appreciate the passion on all sides. I truly believe we are not masquerading. We have a bill with real impacts, a bill that I have shown has made a major difference in job creation, in business creation, and in bringing hope to our most ravaged communities. It is such a good program that even Senator DeMint, who says he doesn't like this program, certainly throughout his career has praised the progress it has made in his State.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are working on a bill that is a jobs bill, plain and simple. It does not have any fancy parts to it. It is a reauthorization of a program that was set up in 1965. The purpose was very clear: to go into areas in our States where the communities are hurting for jobs, where the communities are hurting for business. It works in a way that every $1 we put into the program attracts $7 of private investment.

I will show you the job creation on some of these charts that we see. At the $500 million funding level that is authorized in the bill, the EDA is projected to create up to 200,000 jobs a year and over the life of the bill up to 1 million jobs. It is done at a very low cost per job. Mr. President, $3,000 per job is what it costs the Federal taxpayers because of all the leverage that comes in as cities join in, counties join in, and so on.

I have a list of projects we can talk about today. I have talked about a number of projects that have been funded through the EDA over the course of this debate in the last few days. I have talked about them in California and Minnesota and I wish to add just a couple other recent projects from across the country.

In California, EDA awarded $3 million to the Inland Valley Development Agency in a county that is going through some tough times, San Bernardino, to support the renovation of an existing building at the former Norton Air Force Base. This project is going to help the conversion of that base into a commercial and light industrial area, attracting new companies that are interested in locating there.

This investment, funded by the Department of Defense Office of Economic Adjustment and administered by EDA, is part of a $3.6 million project that will create 100 jobs and generate $20 million in private investment.

So here you have a $3 million investment that is going to be leveraged to $20 million. It is pretty extraordinary, and this is the bill we are talking about.

In Florida, the EDA awarded nearly $4 million to construct a new wastewater system for western Palm Beach County. The region suffered flooding in 2008 from Tropical Storms Hanna and Fay, which caused environmental damage. It closed local businesses.

The construction is going to support three city industrial parks and a general aviation airport, as well as a major inland port and intermodal center that are being developed. That investment is part of a $5.3 million project that will create 240 jobs, save 270 jobs, and generate $48 million in private investment.

So a $4 million investment attracting $48 million in private investment.

In Idaho, we have a very good example of a $4.4 million grant to the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls to fund the construction of the Applied Technology and Innovation Center. This new LEED-certified facility will help the college meet the region's needs for a higher skilled workforce. They will learn to operate computer-driven manufacturing equipment, maintain alternative energy systems, and to use environmentally sound construction processes for these green buildings. This investment is part of a $6.9 million project that will create 486 jobs.

In Indiana, EDA provided $2.4 million; in Kansas, $1.4 million to the city of Hutchinson. I will go on with this in my remaining time that I will have later.

But the point is, this is a jobs bill, and it is being hijacked by a slew of amendments, and I see the handwriting on the wall. I have been here long enough to know what is going on. There is no cooperation. We have everything from the Snowe amendment to endangered species, dealing with a chicken that somebody wants to take off the endangered species list. I mean, I was not born yesterday, as you can tell. I know what is happening. This is a dance. It is a slow dance. It, unfortunately, signals to me maybe the slow death of this bill. I think that is very sad, when you have a bill that has been supported by Republican Presidents, Democratic Presidents over the years, and the last vote on this floor was unanimous, in 2004--by unanimous consent--and George W. Bush signed it. I have fought George W. Bush in a number of areas. He and I saw eye to eye on this one. This is not controversial.

I hope we can dispose of this amendment. I will have more to say on the amendment in a couple minutes.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in my 5 minutes, here is what I wish to say: Yes, I have offered many amendments on this floor, as have all my colleagues. But if I see an amendment and colleagues see an amendment that could hurt, we believe, the health of people, I am going to say, yes, let's have a hearing.

I wish to show you a picture of a child with asthma. She is beautiful. This is not a pretty picture.

I will show you another picture of a little boy with asthma. This is also a beautiful child and a terrible picture.

Let me tell you, we are trying to protect these children. We are trying to protect our families. We are trying to stop premature deaths. How do we do it? Yes, we have regulations. Have they worked? You bet they have. That is why I say, if you are going to change them, yes, I hope we would look at--you know, everybody is motivated in the right direction. Jobs? Absolutely. But I have to tell you, when you are sick, you cannot go to work. If a breadwinner dies prematurely, the family is destitute.

Let me show you just one act that would be impacted by this Snowe amendment and why I think we ought to have an alternative amendment. If you look at the study that was required by Congress, you find out that in just 2010 alone, the Clean Air Act prevented 160,000 cases of premature death; if you look at 2010 alone, 1.7 million fewer asthma attacks; if you look at acute heart attacks prevented, 130,000.

What happens in the Snowe amendment: All you are going to look at is the economic benefits, not the health benefits. It flies in the face of common sense and our moral responsibility.

Here is what I see wrong with this amendment: It hurts protection for families and communities. It stops or delays important protections for those people. It ignores public health and safety benefits. It only looks at the benefits of economics. Yes, we have to do that. But we also need a balanced approach. As I said, if someone is sick and they cannot go to work, they cannot keep a job.

It would also create additional, expensive litigation. The amendment allows polluters to sue Federal agencies during the public comment period on a proposed Federal safeguard that allows one polluter to hold up an important, let's say, drinking water or clean air protection standard for months, maybe years.

So I urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment. Let's get together and come up with something that balances economic growth with the protection of the health of our families.

I yield the floor and hope we would now go to a vote under the previous order.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Would the Senator yield for a question? Is the Senator aware that there are at least four other bills--Senator Vitter, Senator Roberts, Senator Collins, and Senator Portman--and, in addition, that Senator Lieberman is developing a comprehensive bill on reg reform? Is the Senator aware of those other bills?

Through the Chair, I understand Senator Coburn, under the UC, has the next 15 minutes. But, through the Chair, I would end my question by saying that I think the Senator is right. There are some regulations that are coming fairly fast and furiously. But I think the Senator would also understand that the normal process is reviewing the bills at the committee level, comparing and contrasting, and then bringing the best approach to the floor. And that is what some of us are objecting to. It is not the goal of reducing regulations; it is the process.

Thank you.

Mr. President, I understand our side has about 50 minutes left in this debate on the Snowe amendment and we will vote at 2:15. I will speak for the next 15 or 20 minutes. There is nobody else on the floor on our side. I will continue to try to answer some of the issues raised in the last few minutes about this particular amendment.

First of all, I have a great deal of respect for the Senator from Oklahoma, and nobody has worked harder on trying to bring more efficiency to the Federal Government. He has spent hours and hours and hours in meetings, official meetings, informal meetings, on budgets, efficiencies, and regulations. I have a great deal of respect for the Senator from Oklahoma personally. But I do take offense at some of the--not just the suggestions but accusations and specific attacks made on the floor against the government. Two or three were issued in the speech he just gave--statements like this: ``The bureaucracy never takes risks.''

I wish to ask him, what bureaucracy did he think supported the elimination of Osama bin Laden? Does the Senator from Oklahoma believe there were no risks taken by this bureaucracy that he so routinely wants to degrade--to no good end? I would ask him, if he were still on the floor, were no risks taken by anyone when they launched the strike against Osama bin Laden that eventually killed him?

Would the Senator from Oklahoma suggest we have no regulations on Wall Street; that we should trust the big international bankers of the world to do what is right every day for the people of Oklahoma? I know the people on Wall Street wake up every morning and think to themselves while they are eating breakfast: What can I do today to help the people in Oklahoma or in Louisiana?

Of course, that is absurd. There is a place for appropriate regulation, and bureaucracies aren't always bad. When George Washington led the creation of this country, he most certainly had in his mind a government that worked for the people, by the people.

Let's fix the government. Let's not tear it down by statements that have no basis in fact, that do not uplift people, do not encourage people. They numb people. They make people angry. They make people think there is no hope, when there is. There are thousands of people who put on a uniform every day and go to work for this country. They are mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. They work hard and they do not deserve the disparaging remarks that come too often from the other side of the aisle.

If you don't like government--you have made it plain--then fix it. One of the ways to fix it is to take a bill--and this is not an amendment that Senator Snowe has, it is a bill. I have seen it. She asked me to cosponsor it, and I have declined. It is a bill--a major bill--that has jurisdiction that will find its jurisdiction not in one committee--the Small Business Committee--but in five committees that have jurisdiction over the aspects of Senator Snowe's bill. One of the reasons we should not vote favorably is not because we are not for regulatory reform but because this bill has ramifications that go far beyond the Small Business Committee, which I chair, and five or six other committees need to look at the provisions in her bill. That is one reason we have asked to go through the committee process.

No. 2, there are, at least to my knowledge, four other bills that attempt to fix this overregulatory reach which, I agree with Senator Thune, with Senator Coburn, and I agree with Senator Snowe, needs to be tapped down and harnessed--not eliminated--and made less onerous for all business, not just small business. There are at least four other bills I know of that are attempting to do that. One is by Senator Vitter, one by Senator Roberts, one by Senator Collins, and one by Senator Portman. I have not had the opportunity to review in detail all of these other bills, but I am sure they have some very excellent points to them.

The committee process allows a chairman such as Senator Lieberman, who is not here today, whose committee would have primary jurisdiction over this, to bring all five bills before his committee, hear the best aspects of each, potentially combine them into a bill, and bring them to the floor. Do you know what. Senator Lieberman, I know, has offered to do that in his committee. That bill could potentially come out of committee--potentially with Senator Snowe as lead author, with other cosponsors--a bill that both Democrats and Republicans can agree to, which could give relief to reg reform.

This is not about finding a solution. This is about public relations, campaigns, and Republican rhetoric about the election. That is what I object to. If this were about regulatory reform and finding a solution, the five Senators who have bills, and other Senators--Senator McCaskill, for one, who is here today, is developing a bill, and Senator Carper, who has spent years on this subject and is quite the expert--they would all come before the Homeland Security Committee, on which I have the privilege of serving, and in a short amount of time-- just a few weeks--figure out something the majority could support.

This is not about fixing the problem. This is about bumper stickers for elections, and I am very tired of it. I am not the only one. As chair of the Small Business Committee, I can promise you that our committee, with Senator

Snowe as ranking member, has worked every day very hard through this recession to put forward bills on this floor that could help create jobs, bring relief. In fact, regarding one of the most burdensome regulations that the business community was screaming about, our committee was very aggressive in helping to eliminate that. That was section 1099, which would have required every business to report to the IRS any purchase they made for goods over $600. It would have brought many businesses to their knees, buried in paperwork.

Did our committee sit around and twiddle its thumb? No. We worked hard. We had, I think, the only hearing in Congress on 1099, and we repealed it. It took us a while to find the right offset. The minute the business groups brought it to our attention, we said we made a mistake and it will take us a while to find the $20 billion to offset it, but we will look at it before it goes into effect and repeal it. We did that.

When Republicans say Democrats don't care about regulatory burdens, I find that offensive. It is not helpful. This bill is not on the floor on regulatory relief. This bill is on a small but effective economic development program that has worked beautifully in my State. Contrary to what the Senator from Oklahoma and others have said, this program-- in Louisiana, as far as Louisiana is concerned--actually works. One of the reasons it works so well is because many of the decisions about the grants are not done in Washington but at the regional level. Our office happens to be in Austin, TX. When the Chamber of Commerce comes to visit me--and they are not always huge supporters of the Democratic caucus--they say to me: Senator, one of the best programs that our members like and feel the Federal Government does a very good job with is the EDA grants, because they are not that bureaucratic. They make quick decisions and help us fill gap financing in programs that make a meaningful difference to people in our communities. I didn't raise this subject to the Chamber of Commerce; they raised this subject to me.

Maybe the Senator from Oklahoma is correct that some of these moneys were earmarked. But we don't allow earmarks anymore. So this program is going to go on without earmarks directed by Members. It is going to be done on a regional basis, and these programs have been--at least in Louisiana's experience--quite effective. Louisiana Tech, one of my universities, received a $2 million EDA grant. I will submit this for the Record: Our ongoing partnership with EDA has greatly enhanced the university's overall economic development efforts. We are creating the EDA University Center.

This is from the mayors of both cities. You know, I do trust my local elected officials. I do trust the people I represent. When they say a program works, I like to believe them.

There is a list of projects and recent investments in Louisiana--$1.2 million to Tulane University.

Can I tell you one thing about Tulane University, since it was damaged significantly after Hurricane Katrina? We have over 45,000 applicants to this school. Why do people want to come to Tulane? They want to come because not only is it a great school, but it is in a great city that is rebuilding itself. An EDA grant--that some people wish to eliminate--is helping to rebuild our city. So $1.2 million to Tulane University. It is a microloan program.

I believe the people at Tulane University. I have a great respect for Scott Cowen and their board. Everywhere I travel around the United States as a Senator I could not be more proud when people come up to me and comment what a great university Tulane is. I don't need somebody in Washington telling me how good this program is. I have the people I represent at home telling me.

We have $75,000 given to the downtown development district which was underwater after Katrina for the Idea Village. You know where the Idea Village was recently advertised? Maybe on the front page of Enterprise Magazine; maybe in Time magazine. This Idea Village is one of the best ideas in the whole country. You know who funded it? The program Senator Boxer is trying to reauthorize.

We have $400,000 for a startup fund for the creation and development of stimulus funds to support fledgling enterprises in the greater New Orleans region. Our seafood industry went completely--no pun intended-- underwater after the BP oilspill. This agency stood up, when no one else would--BP wouldn't give them a penny, Ken Feinberg wouldn't give them any money--and gave them $350,000 to keep their head above water-- the Seafood Promotion Board. That is why, in large measure, people are eating gulf coast shrimp today.

So I don't know what report Senator Coburn is looking at, but the May 19 GAO report states they have not concluded that duplication exists among programs, and plans to address these issues in their future work on overlap and duplication.

I don't know if the Senator has asked his Chamber of Commerce from Oklahoma, but I am going back to my office and I am going to call them myself, because I wish to find out. Maybe their program works differently in Oklahoma than it works in Louisiana. But when I call my people at home--and they will tell me: Senator, some of these programs aren't worth a hill of beans and you should eliminate them; these programs are too difficult. I have that all the time about some programs. Not all the time, but some programs. This isn't one of them.

The reason I am a little exercised is because this is like deja vu. I came to this floor 4 weeks ago to try to get a similar program in size--a $1.2 billion program that has worked so well. Senator Warren Rudman had created it. It is a great program. It is the country's best venture capital program for all small business. It makes money. It doesn't lose money. We got the same thing done to us by the other side of this aisle that says we don't care about small business over here because we have to talk about X, Y, and Z.

So this is the second time for one of our chairmen. I was the first, and now Senator Boxer is trying to bring to the floor a program that is not that complicated. It is a little program but it has big bang for the buck. It gets rave reviews from the people in my State--Republicans mainly but Democrats as well--and we can't seem to get this program approved until we take bills that Members want to put on this bill that have nothing to do with it and that haven't gone through committee.

I am going to be voting against Senator Snowe's bill. But to make clear, I support Senator Snowe's efforts to reduce regulation. My people in Louisiana are screaming about this. I have tried to communicate this to the administration in many ways, whether it is EPA or the Corps of Engineers, or the more recent one coming out of one agency that wants all my oilfield workers to put on HAZMAT suits to go to work. If you put on a HAZMAT suit in Louisiana when it is 100 degrees, you won't get to the oil rig because you will faint before you get there.

I am not unaware--I want the Senator from Oklahoma to understand--of some ridiculous rules and regulations that come flying out of some of our agencies. But the way to fix them is not to bring a bill to the floor that has not had a hearing when six different committees have jurisdiction, when Senator Lieberman, who has the lead jurisdiction as chair of Homeland Security has indicated a complete willingness to take this on.

There are enough bumper sticker printing operations in America today. There is only one U.S. Senate. I suggest we start acting like the U.S. Senate and stop acting like a bumper sticker operation.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

I object.

Mr. President, the Senator from California was on the Senate floor this morning, Mrs. Boxer, advocating passage of this bill and urging colleagues to vote against the Snowe amendment. I am here to support that position.

I would like to respond briefly to Senator Coburn's last couple of statements about where the bureaucracy failed. He didn't have to remind me, of course, the bureaucracy failed to respond to Katrina and Rita, the largest disasters by far in the history of the country. But we have spent 6 years fixing that bureaucracy, not printing bumper stickers for reelection campaigns. You know what. It has worked because our efforts to fix the bureaucracy have helped the people of Missouri and Arkansas and Tennessee and Montana and Indiana who are currently experiencing terrible disasters as we speak.

The bureaucracy that showed up at the Superdome is a lot better today in many ways--it is better today than the bureaucracy that showed up at the Superdome. That is because we had hundreds of hours of committee meetings, where this hard work is done, to bring

significant and important bills and changes that take debate, not on the Senate floor but take debate in the work of the committee. When you are working on major pieces of legislation that have major impacts, that is where it is done.

Besides the FREEDOM Act that is on the floor today, there is the Regulatory Responsibility For Our Economy Act, sponsored by Senator Roberts with 46 cosponsors. I am assuming--I don't have the list, but I am assuming they are Democratic and Republican cosponsors. That is a major regulatory relief bill.

There is a bill by Senator Collins called the CURB Act, Clearing Unnecessary Regulatory Burdens. The CURB Act has two cosponsors.

Then there is a smaller bill by Senator Portman that has no cosponsors, but he is the lead sponsor. That looks to me like it is a smaller bill and has limited scope but nonetheless on regulatory reform.

There could be 12 other bills filed in the Senate--I don't know--and hundreds of other bills filed in the House. Forget the House bills. When bills like this are filed in the Senate, the usual route and the most effective route is to go through the committee of jurisdiction. You can understand in this topic, which is so broad--regulatory reform--it is regulatory reform in the Department of Commerce and regulatory reform in the Department of EPW, Environmental and Public Works, regulatory reform for the Department of Homeland Security, regulatory reform in the Department of Defense. There are many committees of jurisdiction.

What everyone has agreed to is to have the hearing in the Homeland Security Committee, which has broad jurisdiction, and get the work done. Senator Lieberman is not here today because he is on Jewish holiday. He has said time and time again he will have this hearing in the committee and that is the appropriate place so we can come forward with a bill on regulatory relief.

There are a couple of reasons why this particular approach is flawed. I would like to read the comments from the administration. I would like to read three specific reasons why this particular FREEDOM Act is not in the proper position it should be. But the way to fix it is not debating on the floor of the Senate on a bill that is not really germane to the bill that we are debating, that we are trying to pass. It is to have this kind of debate in committee so we can work out these details. Senator Snowe has shown herself to be in the past, and still today, willing to work in a very cooperative manner, and the place to do this is in committee.

No. 1: The bill as currently drafted would allow judicial

review before the completion of rulemaking. That provision in

the Freedom Act would undermine regulatory certainty, making

it harder for businesses--

not easier, harder--

for businesses to plan for the future and compete in the

marketplace. It would also invite excessively costly and

unwieldy litigation.

We don't want to have more lawsuits. We want to have less lawsuits. That is one of the problems small businesses are facing today--lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit. The last thing we want to do is encourage more of them. Many people have reviewed the technical writing of the bill in its current form and believe it will result in more lawsuits, not less. We wish to fix that in committee.

The amendment would make it harder, not easier, to see the

actual cost of regulation, by expanding the Regulatory

Flexibilities Act definition to include indirect effects.

I can understand why she wants to do it, but in interpreting the language as the Senator has written it, this legislation would likely undermine any reliable and meaningful economic analysis of regulation, thereby distracting the agencies from focusing on what the actual impacts of the rules would be.

Finally, the amendment inappropriately links regulatory

decisions to budget cuts. Decisions about regulation should

be based on sound economic science and not on the threat of

budget cuts.

This is a preliminary review of some of the current problems.

Senator Snowe is right, I guess. We could stay on the floor for the next 2 or 3 or 4 weeks and the other Senators who are not on the floor could agree to come and debate their bills on the floor, which is highly unusual. But why not just go to the Homeland Security Committee, have all of the sponsors of these major pieces of legislation present their bills and have that committee work through these technical difficulties? Because it is an important issue. Many of us support regulatory reform. We know there are some burdens, particularly on small business. We want to get it fixed, so let's fix it instead of continuing to rail on this subject on every bill that comes before the Senate, whether or not it has anything to do with regulatory reform.

One thing I wish to point out to the Senator, and I point this out with the greatest respect, about 6 months ago or longer now, we were both on the floor trying to pass the small business jobs act, a very significant bill that would actually help to bolster this economy and help provide literally billions of dollars of loans to small businesses that couldn't get them anywhere. Their credit card companies had raised the rates so high or their banks had shut down their lines of credit. Senator Snowe and I worked together to bring a bill to the floor--and we did, and passed it, unfortunately, without the support of the other side of the aisle. But in that debate, the Senator from Maine said-- because I included in that bill, with a 60-vote margin--I got Senator Voinovich and Senator LeMieux to vote for the small business lending fund, which was a little unusual. She said:

. . . not included in the overall. First and foremost, it

has not had a single hearing with respect to this issue, and

in my view, it certainly does resurrect the controversial

TARP program . . . and because it hasn't had a hearing, this

should not pass.

Yet, within a year, she is back arguing against that argument--that her bill, which hasn't had any hearing in the committee--should pass.

So there is some inconsistency here. I say this with the greatest respect to the Senator from Maine. But if we want to be serious about regulatory reform, we have to have this debate in the committee of jurisdiction, which is right now Homeland Security, and then have the other chairmen of the committees try to cooperate with that committee and bring something to the floor. We will be happy, many of us, to vote for it. But doing this in this way is not helpful. It is not going to fix the problem. It is only going to make the burden on small business worse. We have to move past it.

I wish to refer my colleagues to the floor remarks Senator Snowe made on July 22, 2010.

Can these be fixed? Yes. But this is not the place, on the Senate floor, when there are many other bills as well. Senator Snowe could remain the main sponsor because she has put in the most work. She has been a tireless advocate. She should get tremendous praise for bringing forth this issue and keeping the fires burning and pushing the Senate to this end, and that would be terrific. Many of us would join that effort. But this is not the bill to do it on. This is not the place to do it. I would suggest that, again, taking this to the committee of jurisdiction, working it out, bringing the administration forward so we can actually make some real progress on curbing regulatory overreach by the Federal Government would be welcomed by all.

I see the Senator from Vermont is here on the floor. I am assuming he wants to talk.

How much time do we have remaining?

I thank the Chair.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the presentation by the junior Senator from Oklahoma I be recognized as in morning business.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment for consideration of the following three amendments: Nos. 429, 430, and 438.

All right. While I am holding off, it is my understanding that some of the rest of them are getting in the queue, and I am trying to get these three in with the same treatment that has been afforded those before me.

Amendments Nos. 430 and 438

Madam President, I amend my previous request and ask unanimous consent to set the pending amendment aside for the consideration of two of the amendments, Nos. 430 and 438.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, I ask by unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business, which I know the Chair will honor.

However, I want to mention one of these two amendments. I think it is very significant. It is somewhat similar, I think, to the amendment offered by the senior Senator from Maine. What it has to do with is these various regulations, and actually most of these are coming from the Environmental Protection Agency.

One of the serious problems we have in the committee on which I am the ranking member, the Environment and Public Works Committee--that is chaired by Senator Boxer from California--we have oversight over the Environmental Protection Agency, and we have been watching what has been happening in the last several months. Many of the things they have been trying to get through, they have been unable to get through legislation here on the floor of this Senate, so they are trying to do the very things they are unable to get done through legislation by regulation. And these are very expensive.

Right now, we have a problem with our economy. We have overregulation that is killing a lot of the businesses that are out there. What I am trying to do is an amendment--and that is what amendment No. 438 is--to get it into the Record. The bill sets up a committee to assess the effects of the EPA's regulatory mandates, including key provisions of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Solid Waste Disposal Act. This would include greenhouse gas regulations, Boiler MACT, Utility MACT, ozone and particulate matter standards, coal ash disposal, and water discharge requirements.

The assessment includes an evaluation of the cumulative effects of the EPA's mandates on employment, economic development, and this type of thing.

It does not otherwise modify or affect the statute. The reason I wish to have this in here is we have now quantified what it is costing the American people in terms of employment, in terms of dollars, and just-- greenhouse gas, for example. We know that the costs, if they do anything like the cap and trade that they have tried to do through legislation--and that is exactly what they are attempting to do right now through regulations at the EPA--are somewhere between $300 and $400 billion of loss in GDP per year. That is every year.

You can call that a tax increase if you want to because that is exactly what it is, the same as a loss in GDP. In my case, in Oklahoma, because it is confusing when we--and this administration has been talking about hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars. Nobody truly has a handle on what it costs.

I keep track as to how many families file tax returns. In my State of Oklahoma, if you take the number of families who file tax returns and divide it and do the math, that would be somewhere around a little over $3,000 per family if we were to pass a cap-and-trade regulation.

What is wrong with this? A lot of people are out there saying: Inhofe, you have been wrong all this time. Since you are wrong on the-- you may be wrong or what if you are wrong. My response is this: We have a very fine Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson. I can remember talking to her about what would happen if we were to pass any of these bills where we are going back to maybe the Warner-Lieberman bill or Waxman-Markey bill or even by regulations, cap and trade, the costs would be excessive.

However, my question to her was: If we were successful in doing this, would this reduce the greenhouse gases? The answer was no. The reason it would not is because it only applies to the United States of America. So if we were going to pass a tax increase on every tax-paying family in my State of Oklahoma of $3,000 a year, and they admit we are not going to get anything for it, then we need to stop them from doing that.

I could do the same thing about the ozone, the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. That would be $676.8 billion lost in GDP by 2020; the boiler MACT rules and regulations, some $1 billion lost in GDP; utility MACT, $184 billion in compliance costs. That is just between the years of 2011 and 2030; the cement MACT, some $3.5 billion.

I am saying this because we need to have our eyes open and tell the American people what the cost is of all these things. This will be done by this amendment, No. 438, and we will hopefully be able to get a vote on that.

Cote d'Ivoire

Madam President, I am going to take a little time on something else that has to be said, and that is what I have been on the floor six times already talking about. The only reason I am continuing to do this is because somehow the State Department, the French, the United Nations, and all of them seem to be laboring under this misconception that I will go away and I will not talk about it anymore.

I am not going to go away. I am going to keep talking about it. The problem we have right now started some time ago. I will share with you some of the new developments today.

We are talking about the rigged election that took place in Cote d'Ivoire and the fact that someone whose name is Alassane Ouattara--we have demonstrated very clearly--won the election by fraudulent means.

The President of that country is Laurent Gbagbo. He has been President now for a number of years. His wife, Simone Gbagbo, has been a gracious and great First Lady.

What I wish to do--this is the seventh time I have been on the floor talking about this--is give you the latest on this grave situation in Cote d'Ivoire. I can only say it continues to be a targeted genocide against supporters and perceived supporters of the deposed President of Laurent Gbagbo.

This will be, as I said, my seventh time speaking about this on the floor.

The last time we talked about it was on April 4. When we first started talking about this, we were hoping we would be able to stop this, the State Department and others from going along with what is going on now in Cote d'Ivoire. I know it is complicated. A lot of people do not remember the genocide in Rwanda of 1994. Now we look back and say what a horrible event that was. Sure, it was horrible.

But right now what is going on in the streets of Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire is something that has to be raised to the surface in front of the American people. I have new information that proves what I have been saying for the last 7 weeks, that the rebel leader Alassane Ouattara is still carrying out death squads, killing people in the streets of Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire. There they are. That is a death squad. These are the people who are murdering and torturing people in Abidjan as we speak.

I bet there are not a handful of people who even know where Abidjan is. But this is the city, the capital of Cote d'Ivoire, a beautiful country. These people, coming in from the north, under this Alassane Ouattara, are in there today. I do not know how many hundreds of people they are murdering just today, but they are doing it and they are torturing and they are raping.

Before I tell you the most recent information that came out from Human Rights Watch, I wish to remind you of what I said back on the May 27. That was when Amnesty International reported that a manhunt--I am quoting now from Amnesty International--they reported that ``a manhunt''--what I said right here from this podium. ``A manhunt was launched against Gbagbo loyalists in Abidjan and several senior officials close to him were beaten in the hours after his arrest.''

That was 2 weeks ago. I am further quoting now from Amnesty International. ``In the west of the country, thousands of people who fled their homes are still living in the forest, too frightened to return.''

Look at this. There are the burned, charred bodies of people who have been tortured to death. This just happened. This is going on today, right now. Here is a man who was severely beaten. He died right after that. Here is a small child who was put to death in the same way. Here they are in the middle of executions. That is going on right now.

Gaetan Mootoo, who is Amnesty International's west Africa researcher, said:

Human rights violations are still being committed against

real or perceived supporters of Laurent Gbagbo. Alassane

Ouattara's failure to condemn these acts can be seen as a

green light by many of his security forces, and other armed

elements fighting with them, to continue. Ouattara must

publicly state that all violence against the civilian

population must stop immediately.

That is what the mandate was 2 weeks ago. That is what they were supposed to do 2 weeks ago. They went on to say from Amnesty International:

Attacks against villages inhabited by people belonging to

ethnic groups considered supporters of Gbagbo--

The legitimate President--

continued in the first weeks of May. . . . Between 6 and 8

May several villages were burned and dozens killed.

Ouattara's republican forces justified these acts by saying

they were looking for arms and Liberian mercenaries.

They went on to describe this. There is an article in Guardian magazine that talked about this. This, again, was a little over 2 weeks ago. They said ``an Amnesty delegation spent 2 months in Ivory Coast, gathering more than 100 witness statements from people who survived the massacre in Duekoue. . . . ''

That is what this actually is in that small town of Duekoue and the neighboring villages on March 29.

All the statements indicated a systematic and targeted

series of killings committed by the uniformed republican

forces [loyal to Ouattara], who executed hundreds of men on

political and ethnic grounds.

Before killing them, they asked their victims to give their

names, show identity cards. . . . Some of these cards were

found beside the bodies.

A woman who lived in Duekoue told researchers: ``They came

into the yards and chased the women. Then they told the men

to line up and asked them to state their first and second

names and show their identity cards. They then executed them.

I was present--

Quoting a woman who was watching her husband--

while they sorted out the men. Three young men, one of whom

was about 15, were shot to death in front of me.''

Amnesty's report also accuses the UN mission, which has a

base less than a mile from Duekoue, of fatal inertia.

``Fatal inertia,'' means they did nothing. They let this go on. We are talking about the United Nations.

People around here--there are a lot of liberals in this body who do not think that anything is worthwhile unless it comes from some big body such as the United Nations. That is what is happening right now. So I wish to go ahead--I know there is someone else on the floor who wants to speak, but I just want to be sure we are informed that what was going on then--what I talked about 2 weeks ago--is still happening today.

What happened today? The newly released report by Human Rights Watch states--this is a different group from Amnesty International and this came out today:

Armed forces loyal to President Alassane Ouattara have

killed at least 149 real or perceived supporters of

the former President Laurent Gbagbo since taking control

of the commercial capital of Abidjan in mid-April, 2011.

The report goes on to describe the gruesome details, barbaric episodes of torture and the deaths at the hands of the Ouattara forces. This is happening today--right now. Here are a few examples. This is from Human Rights Watch.

Ouattara's Forces . . . sealed off and searched areas

formerly controlled by pro-Gbagbo militia . . . and the

majority of documented abuses occurred in the longtime pro-

Gbagbo stronghold of Yopougon.

That is the town in that stronghold in the south part of the--you have to keep in mind Ouattara's forces came from the Muslim area up north.

Most killings were point-blank executions--

You are seeing a point-blank execution. That is what it looks like right there, the gun to the head.

Most killings were point-blank executions of youth from

ethnic groups generally aligned with Gbagbo, in what appeared

to be collective punishment for these groups' participation

in Gbagbo's militias.

One man described how Republican Forces soldiers killed his

21-year-old brother: ``Two of them grabbed his legs, another

two held his arms behind him, and a fifth one held his

head,'' he said. ``Then a guy pulled out a knife and slit my

brother's throat. He was screaming. I saw his legs shaking

after they'd slit his throat, the blood streaming down. As

they were doing it, they said they had to eliminate all of

the [Young] Patriots that had caused all the problems in the

country.''

During the raid in Abidjan, the forces, the UN forces, the French and Ouattara, they went in--and it happens that the seated President, President Gbagbo, had not a lot of armaments, but he had a whole lot of young people. They were armed not with weapons but with baseball bats, with wooden clubs, and they surrounded the palace to try to protect him, knowing they would kill their President. This is where they are today. These are the young kids. That is in a gas station up here. They are all lined up there. They are executing some of them, starving, beating the rest of them. But look at that. There are the pictures of what is going on.

These young patriots were young supporters to President Gbagbo, who surrounded his palace in a human chain, armed with just sticks and bats against the UN and French attack helicopters, which were bombing Gbagbo's residence, now being searched out by Ouattara's forces for torture and death.

The report goes on. This report came out today.

Another woman who witnessed the killing of 18 youths . . .

was brutally raped by a Republican Forces soldier after being

forced to load their vehicles with pillaged goods. On May 23,

an elderly man in the same neighborhood saw Republican Forces

execute his son, whom they accused of being a member of the

pro-Gbagbo militia.

Another witness described seeing the Republican Forces slit

the throat of a youth in front of his father after finding an

AK-47 and grenade in his bedroom during a 4 a.m. house-to-

house search. The witness was stripped and forced to hand

over his laptop computer, cell phones, and money.

And was murdered.

Human Rights Watch documented similar pillaging of scores

of houses in Abidjan.

By the way, I personally talked to these people in Abidjan who witnessed this going on.

The witness, like many others interviewed by Human Rights

Watch, wanted to flee

Abidjan to his family village, but had no money for

transportation since the Republican Forces had taken

everything.

Human Rights Watch says it documented 54 extrajudicial

executions at detention sites, including police stations and

the GESCO oil--

That is the station we just now saw. Those were the executions of the young kids taking place.

In addition to the killings--

I am reading now--

Human Rights Watch interviewed young men who had been

detained by the Republican Forces . . . and arrested for no

other apparent reason than their age and ethnic group. Nearly

every former detainee described being struck repeatedly with

guns, belts, rope, and fists . . . for alleged participation

in the Young Patriots.

Those were the young people surrounding the palace.

Several described torture, including forcibly removing

teeth from one victim and placing a burning hot knife on

another victim, then cutting him.

Human Rights Watch reports ``witnesses consistently identified the killers and abusers as the Republican Forces'' of Ouattara, and they were ``overseen'' by Ouattara and Soros. Soros is a general of Ouattara. He is the one who is responsible for going into Duekoue. That is where they murdered all the people. The Soros they speak of is the one who was responsible for that under the supervision and direction of Ouattara.

So the Human Rights Report calls on Ouattara ``to immediately ensure the humane treatment of anyone detained'' by his forces. This is something I have been demanding for 7 weeks. I hope now this report is going to draw attention so at least the State Department knows what is going on because our State Department is going along with all of this. They had an opportunity to voice their opinions and come up with a solution. The solution is to offer amnesty or to send him to a country where he will be able to live.

I have been very critical of the State Department's handling of the situation in Cote d'Ivoire. I sent them evidence months ago that showed Alassane Ouattara engaged in massive election fraud during last year's Presidential election. I called for an election and then a new election. Of course, it was met with deaf ears. I called on the State Department to inquire as to the health and safety of President Gbagbo and his wife Simone. To date, we have heard nothing.

Last year, I urged the State Department to use its power and influence and allow the reconciliation process in Cote d'Ivoire by allowing Gbagbo to go into exile. I pointed out that at least half of the population of Cote d'Ivoire supports Gbagbo. I acknowledged one African leader who is willing to accept Gbagbo in his country--a Sub- Saharan African country. The State Department has been aware of this for over a month.

I strongly suggest that is a solution. It has been done before. It was done in Haiti with ``Baby Doc'' Duvalier. I know people are tired of hearing me talk about Cote d'Ivoire.

I had a pleasant experience yesterday. I met the nominee for the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Bill Burns. I had a chance to visit with him about this and other problems. I found him to be very receptive. I am convinced he embodies the high traditions of the foreign service--selfless, nonpartisan diplomatic service. He indicated to me he will follow through with my requests of the State Department regarding the health and well-being of the Gbagbos. I appreciate that.

I will finish by letting you see a photo of the two Gbagbos. Here is the President, Laurent Gbagbo, who I believe should be the legitimate President of Cote d'Ivoire. The first photo was a happy guy I knew. This next photo was him right after they took him. This side of his face is bashed in. His wife is a beautiful lady, Simone. Here is a picture of her. I have known her for over 15 years. She is a gracious lady and everybody loves her. After Alassane Ouattara took her, here is what she looked like. They ripped her hair out by the roots and went dancing up and down the streets of Abidjan with the hair. You have to use your imagination.

This is what is going on today in Cote d'Ivoire. There they are, the death squad, and there is the First Lady, Simone.

The last thing is that I hope somebody in the State Department cares enough to intervene and allow that party to go into exile. There is already an operation for that. Almost every President of every African country who called me is in agreement to what we are trying to do.

I yield the floor.

Amendment No. 427

Mr. President, I have listened to this debate all morning, as an original cosponsor with Senator Snowe on her bill. I wish to talk about the EDA first, and then I will talk about what most of us do not realize because most of us have not taken the time to look.

There are 80 economic development programs in the Federal Government through 4 agencies that spend $6.6 billion a year. Not one of them has a metric on it to see if it is successful.

We have heard all morning about $3,000 per job. That is all self- reported stuff. No oversight on it. No committee oversight on it. No hard work to see--there is not a metric on one of these programs to see if it is working. Now we have a bill on the floor to spend another $500 million a year on something we have no idea what--we have anecdotal evidence, but what does the OIG say? The OIG says, first of all, this program has been used as a congressional slush fund to direct money to friends of Members of Congress. That is what they say. Fully one-third of the projects never come to completion. So the money that was spent on it ends up being totally wasted. We are reauthorizing a bill that nobody can show the statistics that it is, in fact, effective. It is not just that we are reauthorizing this bill, we have 79 other programs.

Ask yourself a question. We are $14 trillion in debt. We are nearly bankrupt. We are running a $1.5 trillion deficit. And we have a bill on the floor to spend $500 million, and we do not know whether it works. We claim, anecdotally, we see positive things every now and then. Well, you know, there are positive outcomes to illness too. But the fact is, we do not know what we are doing.

What the Congress ought to be doing is saying: If, in fact, it is a role for the Federal Government to have economic development activities, then we ought to center it in 1 area, and we ought to have 1 or 2 programs, not 80 with 80 sets of administrators, 80 sets of commissions, and $6.6 billion a year, with half of it not accomplishing any purpose for the American people other than make the Senators and Congressmen feel good because they think they may have done something.

So the whole idea that we would put forward a bill that has never truly been oversighted in terms of the way everybody else would oversight the way they spend their money to see if it is effective in the whole, not anecdotal evidence of one company or one benefit--put it all together, and if we have a role, let's put together a program that will work, No. 1; No. 2, that has metrics on it so we can measures whether it is effective when we are actually borrowing the money to do this. By the way, if we actually pass this bill and $500 million gets spent, we are going to borrow $200 million from the international financial community to do it. When we know one-third of it is wasted, that just does not make any sense.

So the whole idea of Congress passing this EDA bill, in light of not doing oversight on the other 79 economic development programs under the other 4 agencies, is the definition of insanity. We don't know what we are doing.

Now, let's talk about regulation for a minute. There is well over $2 trillion in the United States sitting in small, medium, and large businesses right now that is not invested for jobs. Why is that? Why are people afraid to go out and invest and get a return on capital? It is because they do not see any clarity in the future. The administration we have today has issued 40 percent more regulations--40 percent more regulations--than any administration in history in the first 2 years. One of the reasons people do not have confidence is they cannot handle the regulatory framework that is coming at them so fast.

The other thing I have observed is that when regulations are written, they are oftentimes written without people with the real knowledge of what they are writing the regulations for. Eighty percent of the regulations written in this country are written by lawyers within the agency in which they are doing it. Now, I like lawyers. That is good enough. But how about having someone who has real experience in the area in which they are writing the regulation rather than a lawyer write a regulation for it?

A great example is that one of the good things about the new health care bill was going to be where we combine things into accountable care organizations, where we end up putting hospitals and doctors and physical therapists and mental health workers all together, and then we work as a team so we can cut the costs and not have duplication and get better outcomes. The regulations on that were 220 pages long, with 65 things you have to do every day on every patient to report back to the Federal Government. Well, that is just idiotic. It is asinine. Yet that is the regulation that came out on what I view as one of the few positive things about the affordable care act.

The Senator from Maine outlined the cost of business regulation to small businesses and large businesses. It is $1.7 trillion a year; that is, fully 12 percent of our GDP is the cost of regulations that are coming from the Federal Government.

All this bill says is--it is a way to force the administration and the agency--it does not matter if it is a Republican or Democratic administration. They are both the same. It does not have anything to do with what party is in power in the administration, but to hold the agencies accountable, that they will look at the impact of the regulations they write so they are not counterproductive to our country.

We are at a time period where we are at great risk as a nation--great risk--because we are so overly exposed on our debt and our deficit. For every 1 percent increase of interest rates that we are going to see next year, it is going to cost us, the taxpayers of America, $150 billion additional. And there is no question we are going to see interest rates rise in this country. So we do not create the confidence of the small and medium businesses to go out and build that next production line or build a way to produce this next new idea, because what they are seeing is so much blowback from an unaccountable, misdirected Federal Government.

So what Senator Snowe wants to do is totally connected with common sense. But you know what, we don't want to do that. We don't want to do that. And the excuse is that we have not been through committee. Well, let me tell you, one-third of the bills that come to the floor of the Senate have never been through the committee, and now we are saying an amendment has to come through the committee. It is ludicrous. It is also false. It is that we really don't trust the American people. That is what it really says, we really don't trust the American people to use common sense. The reason we don't is because we have no connection with common sense whatsoever in this body, and because we can't figure it out, we don't think they can. So Big Brother has to tell you every time, every location, at every situation what you can do.

The thing that has changed in my adult lifetime is when I was a medical device manufacturer in the seventies,

the presumption was on the government to prove that I was doing something wrong.

With our regulatory framework now, the presumption is on you, the American citizen, to prove you didn't do something wrong. That is why this overregulation, this attendance to detail matters to nothing, except a gnat on the top of a pin. It is out there and is so costly, in terms of the cost of compliance, it makes no difference in terms of somebody's outcome. But, mainly, it is costing us jobs. It is costing us the very thing that built this country--the premise that you can put together an idea and build on that idea with hard work and minimal capital and make it a success.

The thing that is blocking that is the regulation coming from the Federal Government. This is a straightforward bill. Let's hold the bureaucrats accountable. If they will not be held accountable, you will have a way to hold them accountable.

I don't get it. I don't get why anybody would object to this because it is not stopping regulation; it is saying you have to figure out whether it is prudent. If you are not following the Regulatory Flexibility Act, then we are going to make you do it because, we will give you a basis in a court of law to be able to do that.

What is wrong with that? Nobody has addressed what is wrong with that. They have just said, no, we don't like it, we don't want it. So we are going to do everything we can to make sure an amendment, which will fix the problems in this country and start creating jobs, and will actually move money into investment to create new opportunities for jobs for Americans, when we have 17 million Americans who want to work but can't, we are going to defeat it. We are so disconnected with what is important in this country, and it is so frustrating. I am surprised I still have hair on my head.

Senator Snowe knows more about small business in this Senate than any other Senator. She has worked on it for years. She knows the problem. She has offered a solution that is common sense, that will work, that won't cost a lot of money, but will rein in the bureaucracy when they do the wrong thing or they don't follow the law.

For us to say, no, we are not going to do it because there may be a small amount of risk that something might go wrong, that is exactly the same way the bureaucracies work. Let me tell you how they work. They never do what is best for the country, they do what is safe for the bureaucracy. That is why we have so much regulation, because they don't want to be criticized. You can't walk through life without being criticized. Nobody is perfect. No action is perfect. So let's hold them accountable and help them be better. Let's be uplifters to them and put some tools there that will enable us to have a good regulatory framework that actually accomplishes the purpose of the regulations but doesn't destroy what small amount of manufacturing business we have left.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to make a couple of comments. I said in my earlier comments there are some good things about the EDA. But the fact is, they are all self-reported. There is no data. There are no methods. Any time you send money to the State of Oklahoma, I guarantee you the people who are going to get the money are going to like it. But there isn't one metric, one set of metrics that measures the effectiveness of the money that has been spent through EDA in terms of job creation. Fully one-third of the dollars don't get through to completion over the history of the program.

The very idea we would defend the bureaucracy--the bureaucracy didn't help us on 9/11 because they were

stovepiped and they didn't communicate. The bureaucracy failed to ensure the safety of the levees in New Orleans--this same bureaucracy that doesn't need to be controlled. The bureaucracy didn't protect us from the financial crisis of 2008 because we didn't do the oversight. The bureaucracy didn't protect the gulf from the Deepwater Horizon. We had a bureaucracy that was supposed to be in charge of that, but they didn't do their job.

The SBIR--you had my full support on SBIR; the Senator from Louisiana knows that. She had my support on that because that is one of the proven programs inside the SBA that actually has metrics on it that works. So the debate is whether we hold back the regulatory framework.

I find it ironic that you agree with us in principle but won't vote with us on this amendment because it didn't go through a committee. It is amazing.

I want to finish my points and then leave the floor because I have something else I have to do.

It is amazing the negative effects we all are hearing from all across the country. Every Senator is hearing how regulation is drowning out opportunity for investment that creates jobs in this country. Every program has some positive aspects to it. The question isn't whether they have positive aspects, it is what is our priority now that we are bankrupted. Where should we be spending the money so we get the best bang for the buck. How do we pull back the regulatory framework so that it is common-sense oriented rather than bureaucratic oriented? That is what Senator Snowe is trying to do and to give some type of power to the very people who are being regulated. Because we certainly won't do the oversight. We haven't done the oversight.

It is interesting that when the GAO put out this last report on duplication, they are right, they didn't say in these particular programs. But I put out a report 9 months before that detailed the duplication in these programs, and it was published, so you can find the duplication.

The important point is we are strangling business and job development--small and medium. The big guys can take all this regulation, and they are already staffed up. The small- and medium- sized businesses can't. We have to give them a way to force common sense onto the bureaucracy. That is all this does. Everybody hears it from all of their constituents, that regulation is killing business formation and job creation. Why would we not want to put in some balance? I don't understand it.

The real problem with the regulatory agencies is us, because we won't oversight them. There was no oversight hearing on the EDA. Nobody ever asked the question: Where are the metrics? We hear all this anecdotal evidence about how great it is when we give money to the States that they can do things, but where are the numbers that show the job creation for every thousand dollars that gets spent? It is self- reported, but there is nothing that looks at it that says statistically here is the proof.

If the EDA is the best way to create jobs in this country, I am all for it. But I want to see some data that says that right now. We have job training programs, 47 of them in this country, and we spend $18 billion a year on them. We have 104 science, technology, engineering, and math programs across nine different agencies we are spending $16 billion on a year. We have no data on any of those programs anywhere, but we have it out there. We have no idea what we are doing because we won't ask the hard questions and we won't study it. Nobody would have 104 science, technology, engineering, and math programs. We have 64 programs--and 20-some of them are outside the Department of Education-- to improve teacher training quality.

The reason we are in trouble is because we haven't done our job on oversight. So anyone can claim anecdotal evidence that something is good, but you should know that when we spend $1,000 of the taxpayers' money--money we don't have today because we are borrowing it from China--we ought to be certain that it is actually going to create something because our kids are paying the bill. The next generation is going to pay the bill, and they will pay that bill through a markedly lower standard of living.

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and I call up amendment No. 436.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, as a matter of right, I ask that my amendment be modified with the changes I now send to the desk. Further, I make the point that I retain my right to the floor after the modification is made under the precedents of the Senate.

Madam President, I now send a cloture motion to the desk on the pending amendment.

I ask unanimous consent that reading of the names be waived.

Madam President, I ask my colleague, my senior Senator from Oklahoma--who I do not think is on the floor right now--to allow time for Senator Brown to bring up an amendment.

I yield to him at this time.

Madam President, I want to discuss for a minute the modification to my amendment.

Corn prices today are at their highest level since 1974. Corn supply is at its lowest level since 1974. We have tremendous problems with food inflation in this country. What we put forward this afternoon is a modification to the blending tax credit, as well as the import tax fee on ethanol, and we look

forward to that debate as we go forward.

The Federal Government now spends $6 billion a year paying over 40 cents a gallon to have ethanol blended, which is already mandated by law that they have to blend it anyway. So this, in essence, will save $3 billion this year for the Federal Government.

No. 2 is, it will take significant pressure off corn prices, which will lower food prices both here and abroad.

With that, I yield to the Senator from Oklahoma, who wishes to speak as in morning business.