Representation Fairness Restoration Act

I appreciate the work of the Senator from Rhode Island and Senator Harkin. Of course, Senator Reed has been working on this issue for months and months. I am still amazed that the Senate refuses time and again and the House refuses to do the right thing.

This started back in 2007. It was bipartisan with President Bush, with the Democratic House and the Democratic Senate. The Presiding Officer was involved, Senator Reed and others, and we passed it. We did a 5-year freeze of interest rates. Now the bipartisanship seems to have gone, and repeatedly this body has either failed to step up or actually voted no or voted wrong in some cases to move forward on this.

As Senator Reed has said, I, too, have tens of thousands of people-- 380,000 Ohioans--who are now in the Stafford subsidized loan program. It will mean about $1,000--as it will in Rhode Island--per student, per year if we fail to act by July 1.

I have been at four campuses just in the last month or so. I have been at a community college in Cleveland, the University of Cincinnati at the other end of the State, Wright State University in Dayton, and Ohio State University in Columbus. I saw students--one was from the Young Republicans on one of the campuses and others are Democrats-- trying to find a way to pay their bills. They are working-class kids, middle-class kids, poor kids--kids who want to find a way to get ahead.

We hear the same stories over and over, but let me just share one. On my Web site people sign up and come to the Web site and tell their stories. I will just share one of them. I know Senator Reed has been hearing from people in Providence and Warwick and all over his State also.

This comes from Dorothy in Mount Sterling, OH. She wants to be a special ed teacher. Dorothy says:

I never thought that student loans would have such a huge

impact on my life. I am studying to be a special ed teacher.

I really want to make a difference so that our youngest

generations have an equal opportunity to succeed in life.

I rely on student loans to pay for my education and assist

me in times of need in this harsh economic climate.

Higher interest rates mean that I will never be able to

afford a home, a reliable vehicle. I will never be able to

provide for my family, and I will always feel in debt for

trying to make myself a better person and trying to be a

better citizen for our country and the State of Ohio.

If given the chance for a better job opportunity outside my

area of expertise, I would surely take it into great

consideration. I know that in the years to come, I will

desperately be looking to relieve myself from the cost of my

college education.

I feel like I have been punished for wanting an education

and wanting to better myself so that I can better the lives

of others. I just wanted to make a difference and I am

fighting against those who do not even realize what it means

to truly struggle.

Please don't stop fighting for me.

We can hear the desperation. We can hear the focus she has on community service and public service, but we can also hear the view that she is being undercut by decisions we are making--or not making.

She also said something else that was pretty interesting. When we saddle these young people with loans, the average 4-year graduate in Ohio has about $27,000 in debt. When we pile more on Dorothy or somebody in Rhode Island or Vermont, it means they are less likely to buy a house, less likely to start a business, less likely to start a family. It is morally wrong to stand in their way or make it harder.

Think what it does to the economy too. I want people such as Dorothy to get an education without huge debt, to buy a home, to begin to provide and prosper and lift the whole community; people who are productive workers and who care about the community. We have no business taking that away from Dorothy and people like her and adding to her debt. That is why we have to do this first.

Will the Senator yield?

Senator Jack Reed from Rhode Island is one of the few graduates from West Point in this body and served his country in so many ways and still does. But I think about Jack Reed when I think about what happened with the GI Bill after World War II. We want to help individual people with keeping these interest rates from doubling, but we know when we help lots of individual people we help society as a whole.

After World War II, literally millions of young men and women returned from fighting for our country, came back to the United States, and the government was farsighted enough in 1944 under President Roosevelt, who signed the GI Bill, to prepare for this huge wash of young men and women coming back from the war. We as a nation were smart enough back 65, 70 years ago to help millions of those young men and women one at a time with their education.

But here is what else it did: Those millions of students who benefited from the GI Bill gave so much to society. Perhaps our best times economically as a nation in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s came out of the GI Bill because when government helps in partnership to give opportunity to thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people, it also helps the country as a whole, and that is part of our philosophy in public service in many ways.

So what these Stafford loans, these subsidized loans do, as do Pell grants--and we are seeing efforts to cut Pell grants by the House of Representatives too, which is just the stupidest thing ever in my mind because I don't understand the way some of them think--but when we provide opportunities for Stafford loans, subsidized loans, or Pell grants, it is helping people such as Dorothy and people in Rhode Island and Vermont. It is helping people in Mansfield and Toledo and Cleveland and Garfield Heights. I think it is one of those things that is hard to understand why we would not do this.

I wanted to ask Senator Reed a question, if I could. He explained on the Senate floor one day how Republicans have said they are for this now, that they don't want to double the interest rate--although I am not sure of that from some of their activities. The Senator from Rhode Island has talked about the way we want to pay for this versus the way they want to pay for this.

I know the Senator talked about closing tax loopholes, and they talked about sort of playing college students against women needing mammograms by cutting health care--if the Senator could explain that to my colleagues.

I thank the Senator.

I appreciate that explanation because this is a tax loophole that almost anybody who is fair-minded about this sees as a giveaway to some. They call it the Newt Gingrich-John Edwards tax loophole, to be bipartisan, where each of them benefited by tens of thousands of dollars. Again, they did not cheat; they did not break the law. They just took advantage of a tax loophole I would think everybody here would want to close because most people play it straight.

Their income is their income. They pay the Medicare tax on it. This is a case where they do not. We, I thought, believed in some fairness in taxation. But back to the individual people who will benefit from this. That is why Senator Reed is involved. That is why the Presiding Officer and Senator Sanders, I know, care about this issue.

Let me share, in closing, one last letter. This came from Courtney in Galloway, OH:

I, like many other students, always had a college savings

account. I remember putting birthday and holiday money in it

every year, and I always assumed that it would pay my way

through college.

Before I even made it to high school, though, my

grandmother fell gravely ill and my family had no other

choice but to use my college savings to pay for her hospital

bills, and eventually, the funeral.

Since then, paying for college has been my own

responsibility.

All the loans are in my name, and it is a burden that is

constantly hanging over my head. I am less than a year from

graduating--likely with honors--from The Ohio State

University with a degree in Social Work, but instead of being

excited and looking toward my future, I am constantly worried

about my loan debt and the possibility of rising interest

rates.

If I could interrupt the letter for a second, think about that. She is about to graduate. She wants to serve the country. She wants to serve her community. She clearly grew up with the right values--putting money aside, not spending it on things she wanted to do--when she was mowing lawns or babysitting or whatever she did in her teens, putting money aside and then spending it on her grandmother's medical expenses, and now she is worried.

Upon graduation--a wonderful moment in her life--she is anxious about what this all means. In the life of a social worker, she is not going to make a lot of money, obviously. That is what she wants to do. Yet she is going to be facing these bills for years to come.

She said:

I know that, as a future Social Worker, I will be not

making as much money as people in other professions, but

helping others is where my heart lies.

Unfortunately, I may be limited in the positions I can take

if my interest rates increase.

Maybe even unable to work within the populations I am truly

interested in helping--veterans, the homeless, and senior

citizens if the pay would render me unable to pay off my

student loans.

I am very passionate about my education, and hold no

grudges . . . for what needed to be done, but the threat of

rising student loan interest rates has affected me in a very

serious way, and I feel as though it is something that I have

no control over, which is a very heartbreaking feeling.

She may not be able to pursue the public service she wants to do as a social worker because her loan debt is so heavy. How dare people in this body make a decision by inaction or make a decision by doing nothing to heap more burden, put more debt on Courtney's shoulders. How dare they and how shameful it is that we simply cannot get bipartisan agreement--which we had 5 years ago with President Bush--to move forward on this and close a tax loophole to pay for it.

Do not put Courtney up against somebody who needs an immunization or a breast cancer screening or a prostate cancer screening. Close the tax loopholes, move forward on this, take the anxiety off of Courtney and others

as much as we can and do the right thing.

I yield.

Mr. President, I thank the leader for yielding. I want to applaud him for asking to bring the legislation that passed unanimously out of the Banking Committee to the floor because there is no one in this Chamber who has been stronger on pursuing sanctions on Iran and trying to defer Iran from achieving nuclear weapons. I support and am on Senator Lieberman's resolution.

But time is of the essence. We must send to the Iranians a clear message that they cannot just forestall negotiations and have negotiations thinking that they are buying time. We must show them that notwithstanding their intentions to buy time, there are consequences.

The consequences of those sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran that are already moving forward and that the administration is fully seeking to enforce, and the continued perfecting sanctions that the Banking Committee sent out unanimously is incredibly important to send the Iranians a message.

I look at what the legislation will do in part. It, in essence, closes loopholes that the Iranians have figured out. It creates sanctions on the national Iranian oil company and the national Iranian tanker company, making them agents of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and imposes sanctions on financial institutions that would facilitate transactions.

This is important. The Iranians are using this as a way to get around it. It has sanctions on satellite companies that impose human rights sanctions on those companies that provide satellite services to the Iranian regime but fail to prevent jamming by Iran of transmissions by others of the same satellite service company. It has sanctions on financial messaging services, and even though Swift, the largest of them, already pulled the plug on the Iranians, we don't want any other messaging service to fill that void. We want to make sure that noose is as tight as possible.

Originally, when we sent a 100-to-0 vote out of here, they said: We are in trouble. But now they are saying to themselves: Well, buying time seems to succeed.

We cannot allow the Iranians to believe, as they head into these negotiations next week, that there is anything but a foot on the head of the snake and that we will continue to do that and drive every possible sanction and close every possible loophole, which is largely what the legislation the leader was seeking to pass accomplishes. That is why it passed unanimously out of the Banking Committee.

Even as we talk about the resolution, there is no reason to stop the very essence of what would send a message to the Iranians--that it will hurt them in their economy and undermine their ability to continue in Iran as a government, and that it is going to be the very strongest set of sanctions we can levy from one government to another. It will have a multilateral effect, which is when sanctions take place the best.

I am beside myself. Are there amendments that I might want to offer? Of course. But I find it far more important to move now and get passage and send this strong set of sanctions so that the Iranians will get the message rather than to linger and ultimately have those negotiations take place and not send a message.

I appreciate the majority leader's efforts. I applaud them. I am certainly for Senator Lieberman's resolution. I don't believe in containment as a policy, but moving the set of sanctions to ensure that the Iranians don't do anything but come to the table and say they are ready to follow a course of disarmament in terms of their nuclear production is incredibly important.

Sometimes things can wait. This is not one of those times in which waiting produces the desired result. On the contrary, it produces a negative result because they believe we will not continue to pursue tightening the noose and closing every loophole and being of one mind. I hope we can achieve that before we leave.

Yes.

Yes, the legislation came from the Banking Committee.

That is correct.

It is.

She did until the majority leader took her from me.

We have thought at various times that we would be on the Senate floor and have it passed, and

there has always been an additional desire or objection. I just think what we have before us, especially in timing, doesn't mean we cannot continue to perfect it as we move to the future, as we are doing in this legislation.

But this legislation, now passed unanimously out of committee, is supported by the major advocates of those who share our vision that we cannot have a nuclear-powered Iran and an Iran with nuclear weapons, and believe that it is important to move now so we can achieve that goal and send a message to the Iranians.

So I think time, in this case, is of the essence. That is why I came to the floor to support the leader's efforts.

Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of both my colleague from South Carolina and my colleague from Arizona. They are leaders in this regard in terms of the national defense. And if I ever had a case, I would want Senator Graham to argue it for me because he is a fine lawyer. I have seen that on the floor and I have seen it in his role as a reservist in part of, as I understand, the Judge Advocate General program. So he does a fantastic job.

Let me make some observations that I think are critically important.

No. 1 is that I share Senator Graham's and Senator Lieberman's concern and the desire to have the Senate on record as saying we do not and cannot accept an Iran that has nuclear power and nuclear weapons. That is why I signed on to their resolution. And I think their resolution moving exactly in tandem, parallel with the sanctions legislation that I played a significant role with the chairman of the Banking Committee, Chairman Johnson, and others to bring to the floor is incredibly important.

But let me make some observations.

First of all, in the committee itself, when it passed unanimously, all of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle had the opportunity to offer an amendment and/or language that would have done exactly what the Senator wants, and no one on either side of the aisle sought to do it because the focus was on the jurisdiction of the committee, which is economic sanctions--economic sanctions that have proven in their first iteration to begin to have real consequences to the Iranians: devaluing the rial by over 50 percent; creating challenges in their economy; closing the financial institutions they can deal with in the world; looking at their oil, having major discounts on their oil and finding it increasingly difficult to sell. And we have the opportunity to perfect that, to make it even stronger, even more viable before they head into negotiations and think they can buy time.

Now, it was silent when it came out of the Banking Committee. And, yes, in the managers' amendment there is that provision because, in fact, in order to deal with one of the objections of our colleague on the other side of the aisle, Senator Paul, provisions saying that this was not a direct military authorization were included so that we could ultimately find the opportunity to pass it on the floor with unanimous consent--the same unanimity the Banking Committee had, the same unanimity we had when we passed the sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran. That unanimity sends an incredibly strong and powerful message to the Iranians.

So it was in the process of accommodating that Senator Reid talked about over the last 2 months to try to get us to a point that we could pass legislation, that in the process of accommodating that, that language comes forward.

The concern is ultimately taken care of by Senator Lieberman and Senator Graham's resolution; that, in fact, the President has said, as the Commander in Chief of the country, that a nuclear-armed Iran is not an option; that containment of a nuclear-powered Iran is not an option.

This President has put all of the military assets that are necessary that did not exist before in the Persian Gulf to both respond to any incident or to initiate any action he thinks may be necessary. Therefore, those actions more than any words have made it very clear to the Iranians that is a real possibility if the national interests and security of the United States are ultimately challenged.

So I really think that insisting on the sanctions part of the legislation, that has the full force and effect of law and real consequences to the Iranians in their economy--which is the most significant way that we undermine their march toward nuclear weapons-- is important to move, while you move independently the legislation that Senator Lieberman and Senator Graham have talked about, which is making the intentions or amplifying the intentions of the President crystal clear. But you should not hold hostage the sanctions legislation in order to accomplish a goal that should be taken care of by the Lieberman-Graham resolution, and you shouldn't hold it hostage when, in fact, you have a powerful tool to exercise before the next round of negotiations.

The Iranians must know that we are one of purpose, and that oneness comes by passing the sanctions unanimously through this Chamber and achieving, ultimately, their effects.

So that is the only point of disagreement with us. Don't hold the sanctions legislation hostage. None of our colleagues sought to include that language. And the language that is included is in response to a colleague from the other side of the aisle in order to be able to move the legislation. So you can't have your cake and eat it too. But we do need to have our ability to move the sanction before the Senate adjourns this week, and I think that will meet our collective interests as a nation.

There is only one piece of turf we should be fighting for; that is, the collective turf that is our country. That is what we can do by passing the sanctions legislation.

I hope Senator Reid will have the opportunity to clear the way and to move it by unanimous consent and in doing so send a very powerful message on behalf of the Senate.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to highlight the introduction of important bipartisan legislation to reauthorize the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act of 2006 and the BioShield Special Reserve Fund. I am pleased to be joined by my colleagues, Senators Harkin, Enzi, and Casey. I thank them for their efforts and leadership on this important legislation. It

is clear that my colleagues share my dedication to strengthening and enhancing our Nation's ability to be prepared for and respond to all hazards that may confront us.

As we introduce legislation to strengthen and improve our Nation's medical and public health preparedness and response programs, it is appropriate to reflect on the progress we have made to date, the seriousness of the threats facing our Nation, and the work that remains to be done if we are going to be prepared to respond to the full range of threats, whether naturally occurring, like an influenza pandemic, or a deliberate bioterrorism attack.

During the 109th Congress, I chaired the Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness. Building on the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina and September 11, Congress took a hard look at how we could better prepare and respond to public health and medical emergencies. The Subcommittee held multiple public hearings, roundtables, and meetings, and Congress received significant input from public health officials, medical experts, emergency managers, biotechnology companies, and stakeholders from across our nation. These actions culminated with the passage of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act of 2006.

Through the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, Congress empowered the Department of Health and Human Services with the tools it needs to protect the American people more effectively and efficiently in response to a public health emergency. This law established the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, or ASPR, to unify the Department's preparedness and response programs and mission and answer the critical question of ``who is in charge?'' when it comes to medical and public health preparedness and response. Since its inception, ASPR has carried out significant preparedness and response planning and coordinated response efforts with federal, State, and local public health partners.

The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act of 2006 also established the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, to speed up the development of countermeasures--such as vaccines or treatments--to protect Americans against a potential chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear terrorist attack, or other public health emergency, such as a pandemic influenza. PAHPA also gave BARDA the ability to make mile-stone based payments through the BioShield Special Reserve Fund--a $5.6 billion medical countermeasure procurement fund established by Congress in 2004 to provide assurances of the federal government's commitment to purchasing medical countermeasures if companies embarked on years long development of these life-saving products. Even without full funding, BARDA has been able to identify promising countermeasures and support the critical advanced research and development necessary for making these products available to the American people. Thanks to BARDA and the investment we have made over the last few years, our nation was much better positioned to quickly respond to the H1N1 pandemic influenza two years ago.

I am very proud to have authored this important bipartisan law five years ago and I am proud to have again joined with Senators Harkin, Enzi, and Casey in a bipartisan manner to tackle the serious challenges that remain in ensuring our nation is prepared to respond to all- hazards. In recent weeks, Congress has been reminded of the urgency of our work in this area. Last month, the WMD Center published a comprehensive Bio-response Report Card evaluating our nation's preparedness against potential bioterror attacks. This report noted that while we have made progress, the U.S. Government received ``Ds'' and ``Fs'' in certain areas associated with responding to large-scale biological attacks that terrorists like Al- Qaida or others may seek to perpetuate against us. This report and recent analysis by the Government Accountability Office calling for improvements to our nation's medical countermeasure programs are a serious wake-up call that cannot go unaddressed. The American people expect the President and Congress to do all we can to prevent an attack, and in the event of an attack, be prepared to respond in order to save lives. When it comes to protecting the American people, failing grades are unacceptable.

Our work on this important legislation has been guided by sound principles. First and foremost any improvements to existing programs and authorities must be targeted and strategic and based on the lessons we have learned over the past five years, including the H1H1 pandemic and disasters at home and abroad. We must ensure the continuity of critical medical and public health preparedness authorities and programs, including the BioShield Special Reserve Fund. Given the significant fiscal challenges facing our nation, we must also ensure that we are maximizing the taxpayer resources supporting this critical preparedness mission, as well as ensuring appropriate transparency and accountability for these resources and programs. Finally, we must ensure a robust medical countermeasure enterprise, from the research bench to the points where patients receive care, including by ensuring that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's regulatory tools and pathways reflect modern-day threats.

The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act Reauthorization of 2011 would strengthen and enhance our nation's medical and public health preparedness and response programs and go a long way in addressing many of the short-comings and concerns raised by GAO and the WMD Center, as well as other stakeholders. Our legislation provides the ASPR with enhanced policy oversight and coordination of medical and public health preparedness and response programs to further unify our response in the event of a public health emergency. Our legislation also ensures an appropriate emphasis on chemical, radiological, biological, and nuclear threats as part of an all-hazards approach to our National Health Security Strategy. Our legislation ensures that an emphasis on strategic initiatives to advance medical countermeasures and community resiliency are incorporated into the National Preparedness Goals, as well as the importance of considering the unique needs and considerations for individuals at-risk in the event of a public health emergency.

Our legislation would reauthorize the National Disaster Medical System, the volunteer Medical Reserve Corps, the Emergency System for Advance Registration of Volunteer Health Professionals, the Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Hospital Preparedness Cooperative Agreement Programs, and the Strategic National Stockpile. Targeted flexibility under our bill will help our State and local partners optimize community resiliency at the local level. By reauthorizing the BioShield Special Reserve Fund, our bill sends the clear signal that the U.S. Government remains committed to purchasing medical countermeasures.

The critical role that FDA plays in our medical countermeasure enterprise has become clear over the past five years and our legislation strengthens this enterprise by making targeted improvements to FDA's role in this important endeavor. For example, our bill allows the Secretary to make medical countermeasures under review by the FDA available in limited circumstances based on either a declared emergency or an identified threat, and requires the material threat posed by the agent of agents for which a product under review is intended is considered when reviewing medical countermeasures for approval, clearance, or licensure. We will stretch taxpayer dollars even further by allowing FDA to extend the shelf life of products stockpiled in the Strategic National Stockpile. Our legislation also charges FDA with promoting medical countermeasure expertise and developing regulatory science tools to advance the review, approval, clearance, and licensure of these products. By enhancing the scientific exchange between FDA and medical countermeasure stakeholders, FDA will not only be identifying problems, but an active partner in solving them to ensure our nation has the medical countermeasures necessary to protect the American people. Medical and public health preparedness and response programs, including the availability of medical countermeasures, are a matter of national security and our bill will ensure the appropriate, senior- level national security focus on these issues.

In addition to reauthorizing PAHPA, I am pleased to also introduce the Medical Surge Capacity Act, critical legislation that I hope we can include in the final version of PAHPA reauthorization. I thank Senators Harkin, Enzi, and Casey for working with me on this important bipartisan legislation that makes strategic improvements to current law to enable the Secretary of Health and Human Services to target and issue waivers under Section 1135 of the Social Security Act in as timely a manner as possible based on the circumstances of an emergency. This legislation authorizes HHS to implement waivers as soon as either a public health or national emergency is declared, and enables the Secretary to institute 1135 waivers in ``host areas'' outside of a declared disaster area, but into which patients are being evacuated to receive care.

I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues in Congress and the administration to do the important work of reauthorizing PAHPA and BioShield in order to ensure our nation is as prepared as possible in the event of the unthinkable, whether natural, or man-made.

Madam President, what is the pending business?

Madam President, I have a cloture motion at the desk.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum under rule XXII be waived.

Madam President, I have spoken before about the importance of the FDA bill. It is something we have to get done. Literally, people's lives depend upon it. It addresses so many things with the FDA to make it a better organization. We have to get this done. As I said before, if my Republican colleagues don't like the bill, offer an amendment--offer an amendment. Take that out. Put something in if you don't like it. But I hope we don't have to go through voting on cloture on this Monday night. We should be legislating on this on Monday. So I am stunned that once again, on a motion to proceed, when there has been an agreement that we would proceed to this with relevant amendments-- everybody says that is what they want to do. It is not germane amendments, which is very narrow, it is relevant amendments. It gives people a lot of opportunity to change this legislation in many different ways. So I hope we do not have to have that cloture vote Monday night.

Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 1905

Madam President, I now ask unanimous consent that the Foreign Relations Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1905, the Iran Threat Reduction Act, and that the Senate proceed to its consideration; that the Reid-Johnson(SD)-Shelby substitute amendment, which is at the desk and is the text of Calendar No. 320, the Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Human Rights Act, as reported by the Banking Committee, be considered; that a Reid-Johnson(SD)-Shelby amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to; that the substitute amendment, as amended, be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed; that the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table; that there be no intervening action or debate; and that any statements related to this matter be printed in the Record at the appropriate place.

Mr. President, is there an objection by either Senator Kyl or Senator Blunt?

This is such an interesting conversation here on the floor this afternoon. I did not have the papers. Now, I do not blame my friend from Arizona for not having the documents. I do not blame my friend from Missouri for only having a half hour to look at this. This was given to the Republican leader yesterday, midday. The language they are objecting to was in the base bill, so unless they did not read the base bill, they have a problem here. Now, they said they want to get it done--strange way of showing they want to get it done.

This has been a classic example of rope-a-dope. I try to be a patient man. I have been very patient with my staff working with Senator Kirk's staff, the minority leader's staff. I have tried to be as patient as I can be.

No, not right now. This is absolutely untoward, what is happening here. We have tried to get this done every day. Oh, it is just we have to do a little bit more. We have this agreement that was agreed to by all of the parties, but, of course, now there is no agreement.

I am deeply disappointed that my Republican colleagues are preventing the Senate from passing additional critical sanctions against Iran. If they want to embarrass the President, this is a strange way to do it. Two months ago I came to the Senate floor and said we needed to pass these sanctions immediately. The fastest way forward was to pass the bipartisan bill sponsored by Senators Johnson and Shelby, which passed out of the Banking Committee unanimously. But Republicans then said no, as they are saying today. Republicans said they wanted to include ideas from Senator Kirk, Senator Paul, and wished to move forward with S. Res. 380 on containment.

We heard their objections. We have tried mightily to address them, with the goal of getting this bill passed and protecting our own national security and that of our ally Israel. This deal includes a bipartisan managers' package sponsored by Senators Shelby and Johnson, with items of importance to Senators Menendez, Kirk, Paul, and Johnson.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has expressed strong support for this package to Senator McConnell and to me. In a letter today, AIPAC urged us to move forward with this package as quickly as possible. I ask unanimous consent that letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, Democrats are ready to move forward and vote on an amended S. Res. 380, the bipartisan Graham-Casey-Lieberman legislation. This amendment would put the Senate on record, along with President Obama, ruling out a policy of containment on Iran. Yet Republicans have objected again. We cannot afford to delay these sanctions and slow them down any longer. On May 23 there is a round of international negotiations taking place with the Iranians on subjects related to this resolution we have.

Democrats are ready to move forward. We are ready to pass both the Iran sanctions bill and the containment resolution now--not later, now. We cannot afford any more delays. Sanctions are a key tool in our work to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, threatening Israel, and jeopardizing the national security of the United States.

I am to the end of my patience. I usually never raise my voice with a Senator. I apologize to my friend from Arizona. I did a few minutes ago. The conversation was between him and me. But I am really upset about this. I feel that I have been jerked around--that is a pretty good understanding of the language people have--because we can never quite get there. The Republicans have kept us from moving forward on this for 2 months. We should have done what Shelby and Johnson told us to do. So I hope something will happen on this in the near future, but I have to be honest with you, I do not have much faith that it will.

Mr. President, when my friend indicates, why is there any problem, and that they agree--it is just like the issue of student loans when they

say they agree, except they will not let us legislate on that bill. They think this is a great thing to do, but we cannot do it. They say they need more communication. How about 2 months? How much more do they need?

I will not get into getting anyone in trouble, but the Republicans were given this in mid-afternoon. Maybe they were busy, but that doesn't matter. The point is we have tried to get something done, and we cannot get it done.

I think it is too bad for this institution. I am not outraged; I am upset because I feel I have been used as a tool to try to adversely affect the President in some way. I will continue to keep an open mind, but I have to say that I am terribly disappointed. It looks as though we are going to arrive at May 23--and the Iranians have people around who are watching this. They are laughing at us. We cannot even come up with a simple resolution. It has no force of law--I should not say that; it does have some. But they are laughing at us.

Here is the U.S. Senate quibbling over a sentence that has been in this resolution since it was drafted.

No matter how many times you say it, the language we are told they are complaining about was in the initial bill.

Mr. President, I appreciate my friend saying most people work 5 days a week. I work more than 5 days a week, and I have been working the last 2 months trying to get this done. Every time we tried to do it in the last few weeks--and Senator Kirk is ill, and I gave him every benefit of the doubt. Let's try to do what Senator Kirk thinks is a good idea. If we can agree, we will do it.

Mr. President, we have been trying to get this done for a long time. It is not just today at 1 o'clock; I wanted to move forward on this a long time ago. They say: Let's just give it another day or so and we will take care of this. But that is not how it has worked.

I yield to the Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. President, if my friend will yield, I want to make sure the record is clear. When I talked about it having no force of law, we were talking about the containment resolution.

I ask this question to my friend from New Jersey: What does he think the Iranians are doing watching this performance today? How does he think they are feeling about what we are doing today--that we cannot pass this resolution?

Before my friend leaves, I direct a question to him. Is it true that he is a member of the Banking Committee?

It is true that this resolution came from the Banking Committee?

The matter about which we talk, the Iranian sanctions legislation, came from the Banking Committee. It was reported unanimously from the committee, right?

During the last 2 months, the Senator from New Jersey and his staff have been heavily involved in what is going on during the negotiations that have taken place; is that fair?

Jessica Lewis, who is seated by me, my foreign policy adviser--is it true that she worked for the Senator from New Jersey?

And it is true that we have worked over this period of time--our staffs, working with Republicans--very hard to try to get something done. I say to my friend, is it true that each time we were there, were not there the next few minutes, the next day--it has taken forever, 2 months, right?

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

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

Madam President, I have high hopes that in the days immediately ahead the Senate will proceed to the consideration of the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act of 2012.

I am pleased to report to my colleagues that the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee has produced an excellent bill, the product of nearly a full year of bipartisan collaboration and good- faith negotiation. The bill reauthorizes critically important FDA user- fee agreements and systematically modernizes FDA's medical product authority to help boost American innovation and ensure that patients have access to the therapies they need.

In this era of often extreme partisanship and legislative gridlock, this bill is truly a refreshing exception. That is why I am hopeful and confident that there will be no objection on the Senate floor to moving to this bill next week.

Frankly, all of us on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee are proud not only of the bill but of the remarkable bipartisan process that produced it. I am especially grateful to the committee's ranking member, Senator Mike Enzi, for his own insistence on a bipartisan process, and for his leadership in moving this very complex legislation forward.

This afternoon I will review the bipartisan process--at every step marked by openness and transparency--that produced this legislation.

More than 1 year ago, beginning in early 2011 for some issues, my office and the office of Ranking Member Enzi convened six bipartisan HELP Committee working groups. Each working group was tasked with developing consensus policy proposals on key issues, such as drug shortages and the integrity of the drug supply chain.

These bipartisan working groups met weekly and, in many cases, biweekly, over the whole course of 2011, discussing and developing draft consensus proposals.

While this consensus process was ongoing, my staff would often meet many times a week with staffers representing both Democratic and Republican members of the HELP Committee.

As I said, every single working group was bipartisan, and staff from my office worked closely with Senator Enzi's office to solicit priorities from other members of the committee. In many cases, we invited all HELP offices to join the groups.

We even invited staff of noncommittee Members who have been leaders in a particular policy area to join the groups. For example, our bipartisan drug shortage working group had staff members from 18 Senate offices, including the staffers for two Senators who are not even members of the committee.

While developing the consensus drafts, each of these bipartisan working groups met with key stakeholders throughout the year to solicit their input. For example, the drug supply chain integrity working group met with more than 40 stakeholders over a period of 9 months.

In addition to the working group meetings, beginning in late 2011, my staff met twice a week for almost 18 weeks with all Democratic HELP offices to brief them on the reauthorization process and update them on the progress of all of the policy proposals.

To further engage committee members, the administration, stakeholders, and the public, we held a total of five full committee hearings on the user-fee reauthorization over the last year. After our first public hearing in July of 2011, we held three hearings on distinct policy issues surrounding user fees, as well as a hearing on the actual user-fee agreements.

As a result of the excellent work of these bipartisan working groups, in March of this year my staff and Ranking Member Enzi's staff released five bipartisan consensus drafts and solicited further stakeholder input. Bipartisan staff conducted stakeholder briefings on the release of each draft, and the drafts were available on the HELP Web site for more than 3 weeks prior to markup.

In response to the five discussion drafts released to the public, our staffs received more than 160 comments and held more than 30 stakeholder meetings on a bipartisan basis over 3\1/2\ weeks.

Bipartisan staff worked to incorporate stakeholder feedback into the drafts, and then the committee publicly released a managers' package on Wednesday, April 18, 1 week before markup.

On April 25 of this year, the committee met to consider the bill. Committee members voted nearly unanimously, by voice vote, to send the bill to the full Senate.

As I said, this entire process has been a model of bipartisanship, openness, and transparency. Believe me, it was tough to achieve consensus on many of the complex and controversial provisions in the bill. At every step, it required difficult and sometimes painful compromise. Even as the committee chair, I did not get some of my highest priority proposals, since I could not get consensus among members and stakeholders.

Compromise and sometimes sacrifice were essential. I was acutely aware, as were other members of the committee, that it is imperative that we pass the user-fee agreements in this bill. We were determined not to allow partisanship to slow this package down or to jeopardize our goal of consensus.

As I said, the end result is an excellent bill. In addition to authorizing the critically important FDA user-fee agreements, this legislation makes it possible for the FDA to keep pace with the ever- changing biomedical landscape.

Here are some of the major provisions of the FDA Safety and Innovation Act, which will be on the floor next week:

It authorizes key user-fee agreements to ensure timely approval of medical products. It streamlines the device approval process, while enhancing patient protections. It modernizes FDA's goal of drug supply chain authority. We spur innovation and incentives for drug development for life-threatening conditions. The bill reauthorizes and improves incentives for pediatric trials. It helps prevent and mitigate drug shortages. It increases FDA's accountability and transparency.

With this bipartisan bill, I think we have a bill, I hope, we can all support and that we can move forward on expeditiously. Neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted. On every issue, we sought consensus. Where we could not achieve consensus, we didn't allow our differences to deflect us from the critically important goal of producing a bill that everybody could support. As a result, this is a truly bipartisan bill, and it is broadly supported by the patient groups and industry.

This is the chart showing over 100 different associations and groups, patient groups, consumer groups, pharmaceutical groups, and research organizations all over America that have come out in support of this legislation. So everyone from the pharmaceutical industry, your drugstores, research institutions, and consumer organizations have all now supported this bill to reauthorize our user-fee agreements.

I am also very pleased that today the Obama administration issued an official statement of administration policy asserting that ``the administration strongly supports passage of S. 3187.''

Lastly, I will mention that the CBO scored the bill as fully paid for and estimates that the legislation would reduce the deficit by $363 million over the next 10 years. Again, not only are we enhancing patients' rights and protections, we are ensuring better integrity for the drug supply chain. As we know, more than 80 percent of the products that go into our drugs manufactured in this country come from

abroad. There have been many stories written, and many television investigative stories included, on problems in that drug supply chain. Well, this bill enhances our ability to ensure the integrity of that drug supply chain from where they get the raw materials to where they put it together in this country.

This bill, as I said, not only does good for our patients, we enhance FDA's authority to streamline and make sure that we bring drugs to market in more rapid order. We save $363 million over 10 years doing it.

I look forward to bringing the FDA Safety and Innovation Act to the floor in a few days. The House has had a similar bipartisan process, and they are also scheduled to take up their version of the bill next week. If the Senate acts quickly, I am confident we can go to conference and get a final bill on the President's desk this summer.

To that end, I am hopeful and confident we can move without objection to consideration of the bill. It is important that we do so. This is absolutely must-pass legislation. It is critically important to the FDA, to the industry, and to our patients to get this done.

I urge all of my colleagues to join in the bipartisan spirit of cooperation we have engineered and witnessed in the HELP Committee over the last year. Let us come together, Democrats and Republicans alike, and get this legislation on the floor and pass it because of its critical importance to the American people.

With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

The Senator wishes to speak now?

Madam President, last week my colleagues on the other side of the aisle blocked a vote that would have eased the burden of debt for millions of college students in Minnesota and across the country. My Republican friends disagreed with us about the best way to pay for this legislation, so a minority of Senators kept us from helping millions of families and taking a step toward keeping our Nation's workforce globally competitive. But this debate is not just about helping students pay for college. I want to talk a little bit about the two competing proposals to pay for this critical legislation. I wish to talk about our national priorities and our national values.

On one side, the Democratic proposal would close a loophole that allows some of the wealthiest Americans to avoid paying taxes they should owe to the Federal Government. This fix, our fix, would only apply to Americans making over $250,000 a year and would not create any new taxes on businesses or individuals. It would close a loophole that allows high-income people to get out of paying taxes everyone else in America is already expected to pay. This is what it is.

You see, some people making a lot of money talk to their accountants and tax lawyers who have figured out that the law was written in such a way that you could use an S corporation to get around paying some of your payroll taxes. Payroll taxes are your Social Security taxes and your Medicare taxes.

S corporations are basically a passthrough. Whatever profits your company makes, you at the end of the year pass it through to you and claim it as income--and you pay regular income taxes on it. It is income. But although the law was never intended to allow this, this is the loophole: You can pay yourself an artificially low amount of money sometime earlier in the year and call that a salary, say, $40,000. Thus you will pay enough to qualify for Social Security later when you retire. You will only pay FICA on this amount. But then at the end of the year you take the rest of the business's profits as income. Remember, this is considered income--but you do not pay FICA taxes on the amount. That is the loophole. You still pay income tax on it because it is income but, because of an accident in the way the law is written--this was not intended--you avoid paying FICA taxes on the part you did not initially call salary.

All of the money you pocketed, both the so-called salary and the profit at the end of the year, again, is income. It is income. It is not capital gains so you should be paying, like everybody else, Medicare taxes on all of it and Social Security taxes on income up to $110,000, like everyone else. There is simply no excuse, no reason for not paying taxes, paying your FICA taxes on the $110,000 Social Security, and all the rest for Medicare, except for an anomaly that was accidentally written into the Code.

This is exactly the type of loophole we should be closing. It is not something that Congress created intentionally, for a reason--to help people buy homes or to encourage investment in research and development. There is no reason this loophole exists. There is no purpose to it. There is no reason to keep it there.

The Democratic legislation would close that loophole for those individuals making more than $250,000 in a year and we would use that savings to prevent the doubling of interest that students pay on Stafford subsidized loans.

By contrast, the Republican proposal which passed the House a few weeks ago, would eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which is our national investment in preventive health care. This proposal would undermine the health of our Nation by cutting funding for cancer screenings, child immunizations, and diabetes prevention, among others. It would be fiscally irresponsible to boot, since according to a study for the Trust for America's Health, every dollar invested in proven community-based disease prevention programs yields a return of $5.60.

My home State of Minnesota leads the country when it comes to providing high-quality low-cost health care. When I was elected to represent the people of Minnesota, I put together a series of roundtables with experts around Minnesota to learn more about our health care system. I heard the same thing from leading national experts at the Mayo Clinic, the University of Minnesota, from providers, from doctors and people in public health and rural health, insurance--everyone said the same thing: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

There is no question that if we catch cancer early the patient will be much more likely to make a full recovery. If every child has access to immunizations, we will prevent outbreaks of infectious diseases and our kids will grow up stronger and healthier. And if we can prevent someone from getting diabetes they will be healthier than if we wait until they have it and then treat them for the rest of their lives.

Not only will people be healthier if we prevent disease but we will save a lot of money too. That is why the health care law included the Prevention and Public Health Fund. The fund already is investing in community-based programs such as the diabetes prevention program, a program that Dick Lugar and I fought to include in the health care law. This program was pilot-tested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Saint Paul, MN, and in Indianapolis. It involves structured nutrition classes for 16 weeks and 16 weeks of exercise at community-based organizations such as the YMCA, with people who have prediabetes.

Guess what. The program, the diabetes prevention program, has been shown to reduce the likelihood that someone with prediabetes will be diagnosed with full-blown type 2 diabetes by nearly 60 percent. Those are pretty good odds.

The program doesn't just make people healthier, it also saves everyone money. The diabetes prevention program, the program I just described, costs about $300 per participant, as compared to treating type 2 diabetes which costs more than $6,500 every single year.

That is why United Health, the largest private insurer in the country--that happens to also be headquartered in Minnesota--is already providing the program to its beneficiaries. In fact, the CEO of United Health told me that for every dollar they invest in the diabetes prevention program they save $4 in health care later on. The money in the Prevention and Public Health Program in the affordable care act is there to scale up this program around the country so everybody in the country, every person who has prediabetes, can have availability to it. It can be available to them.

This homegrown program is exactly what the Prevention and Public Health Fund was designed to support. It is not the only one like it. In Minnesota the fund has gone to support tobacco cessation programs. It has helped prevent infectious diseases. It has expanded our desperately needed primary care workforce. I think we can all agree these are worthwhile investments.

Unfortunately, many of my friends on the other side of the aisle are trying to end this important work, calling the Prevention and Public Health Fund a waste of money or worse. Last week, one of my colleagues on the floor inaccurately claimed that ``a health clinic was using the fund to spay and neuter pets.''

Let me take this opportunity to set the record straight. That is not true. The Department of Health my friend accused of using prevention funds to pay to spay pets has not and will not spend prevention fund money for this purpose. I ask that in these debates we confine ourselves to facts.

This all comes down to priorities. My friends on the other side of the aisle would rather cut the Prevention and Public Health fund than close a tax loophole for wealthy Americans which serves absolutely no purpose. In fact, they would rather keep us from voting on a bill to ease the burden of debt for students across the country than close this loophole. I hear them sometimes talking about closing loopholes so we can bring the marginal rate down. If you cannot close this loophole which has no purpose, I don't see any loophole we can possibly agree to close.

I ask my friends on both sides of the aisle one favor: Talk to your constituents. Talk to the people who have been saved from the affliction of diabetes or who have quit smoking or who have

immunized their children because of the Prevention and Public Health Fund. Talk to your State and local departments of health which are working to prevent outbreaks of the next dangerous strain of flu thanks to the infectious disease prevention fund. Stand with me in support of the Prevention and Public Health Fund.

I thank the Chair.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, never in our Nation's history has the American military relied more on National Guard and Reserve servicemembers than it has in the last 10 years.

More than 800,000 members of the National Guard and Reserves have been called to active duty service since 9/11, many of them serving two, three, and four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan

Our military does an exceptional job of preparing these guardsmen and reservists for combat, but we do far too little to prepare them for transition back to civilian life.

Our guardsmen need a transition from the trauma of combat to the serenity of home in Oregon and throughout our Nation. But instead our guardsmen and reservists are sent back to their community with little or no time to readjust. In a matter of a few days these guardsmen go from holding a gun in the chaos of a combat zone to holding their children in the serenity of their own home. That has to be a difficult transition.

Unlike most active-duty troops who receive a soft landing through a number of carefully monitored reintegration programs and other support services provided on an active-duty base, returning guardsmen lack the support system of a large base.

While active-duty soldiers come home to military bases and the jobs and support systems that they provide, returning Guard members are in many instances left to face the increasingly stark reality of transitioning to civilian life on their own.

The amount of personal and professional requirements placed on guardsmen and reservists pre- and post-deployment are mind boggling. What they need more than anything is time to wind down and tend to their lives.

Even under the best of circumstances, the road back from war is difficult and extremely stressful. Men and women who have served in harm's way experience higher rates of divorce and suicide.

Many battle the debilitating effects and stigma associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In the current struggling economy, nearly half of the guard members and reservists have no job to return to. Some find that the jobs and careers they put on hold to serve their country simply no longer exist.

To compound an unacceptable unemployment problem, Guard members and reservists are immediately taken off the military payroll once they get home.

Imagine that reality for a second. You left your home, your family and your job to serve your country in harm's way for 10 months, only to be welcomed back with no job and no

source of income to pay for your home or support your family.

If they do have a job waiting for them, to keep a steady income, Guardsmen must jump right back into the high stress of relearning their civilian job without a chance to decompress or readjust from the stress of combat.

That is what my bill would help fix.

The National Guard and Reserve Soft Landing Reintegration Act would allow returning guardsmen and reservists to take up to 45 days to decompress, reintegrate, and get their lives in order, while still being paid.

I started this program because I think that citizen-soldiers are one of the strengths of this nation. They and their families should be acknowledged for the level of sacrifices that they are making.

Addressing the post deployment-related needs of returning guardsmen is not only the moral thing to do; it is also strategically wise for our nation.

This is part of the promise our nation made to take care of our troops. They did their best of us. We should do our best for them.

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

Mr. President, today I am being joined by my colleagues Senator Bingaman and Senator Collins on the introduction of the Storage Technology for Renewable and Green Energy Act of 2011 or the STORAGE 2011 Act. The purpose of the bill is to promote the deployment of energy storage technologies to make the electric grid operate more efficiently and help manage intermittent renewable energy generation from wind, solar, and other sources that vary with the time of day and the weather.

Traditionally, peak demand has been met by building more generation and transmission facilities, many of which sit idle much of the time. The Electric Power Research Institute's White Paper on storage technology observed that 25 percent of the equipment and capacity of the U.S. electric distribution system and 10 percent of the generation and transmission system is needed less than 400 hours a year. Peak generation is also often met with the least efficient, most costly power plants. Energy storage systems offer an alternative to simply building more generation and transmission to meet peak demand because they allow the current system to meet peak demands by storing less expensive off-peak power, from the most cost-efficient plants, for use during peak demand.

The growth of renewable energy from wind and solar and other intermittent renewable sources, like wave and tidal energy, raises yet another challenge for the electric grid that storage can help address. These renewable sources deliver power at times of the day or night when they might not be needed or fluctuate with the weather. Energy storage technology allows these intermittent sources to store power as it is generated and allow it to be dispatched when it is most needed and in a predictable, steady of stream of electricity no longer at the vagaries of weather conditions. And equally important, it allows this intermittent generation to more closely match demand. Instead of trying to find a place to sell power at 3:00 am in the morning when demand is down, wind farms for example would be able to sell their power at 3:00 pm in the afternoon when demand is up.

The STORAGE 2011 Act offers investment tax credits for three categories of energy storage facilities that temporarily store energy for delivery or use at a later time. The bill is technology neutral and does not pick storage technology ``winners'' and ``losers'' either in terms of the storage technology that is used or in terms of the source of the energy that is stored. The electricity can come from a wind farm or it can come for a coal or nuclear plant. Pumped hydro, compressed air, batteries, flywheels, and thermal storage are all eligible technologies as are smart-grid enabled plug-in electric vehicles.

First, the STORAGE 2011 Act provides a 20 percent investment tax credit of up to $40 million per project for storage systems connected to the electric grid and distribution system. A total of $1.5 billion in these investment credits are available for these grid connected systems. Developers would have to apply to the Treasury Department and DOE for the credits, similar to the process used for the green energy manufacturing credits the ``48C'' program. This is a 20 percent credit so that means the actual cost of the project that would be eligible for the full credit would be $200 million.

The Act also provides a 30 percent investment tax credit of up to $1 million per project to businesses for on-site storage, such as an ice- storage facility in on office building, where ice is made at night using low-cost, off-peak power and then used to help air-condition the building during the day while reducing peak demand. This is a 30 percent credit so the cost of the actual projects that would get the full credit amount would be around $3.3 million.

The Act also provides for 30 percent tax credit for homeowners for on-site storage projects to store off-peak electricity from solar panels or from the grid for later use during peak hours.

As the EPRI white paper noted ``(d)espite the large anticipated need for energy storage solutions within the electric enterprise, very few grid-integrated storage installations are in actual operation in the United States today.'' The purpose of the STORAGE 2011 Act is help jump start the deployment of these storage solutions so that renewable energy technologies can increase their economic value to the electric grid while reducing their power integration costs as well as to improve the overall efficiency of the electrical system.

I urge my colleagues to take a closer look at what storage technologies can do to help reduce the cost of electricity and improve the performance of the electric grid and renewable energy technologies. If they do, I am confident my colleagues will join Senators Bingaman and Collins in supporting this bipartisan legislation.

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

Mr. President, I ask consent the Senator from Delaware, Senator Coons, and I could have a colloquy for up to 15 minutes.

The Senator from Delaware is not yet on the floor but I know he is coming. Because I know other Senators wish to speak at 2 o'clock, I am going to go ahead with my remarks. When he comes I will let him go ahead with his.

Each year, approximately 50,000 foreign students receive advanced degrees from universities in this country in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. We call those in shorthand STEM degrees--science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Of those 50,000 students, at least 17,000 go home to other parts of the world. These are some of the brightest men and women in the world. They are attracted to the best universities in the world. I always say our universities, our great research universities especially, are our secret weapons for job growth. Since World War II, many estimates by the National Academy of Sciences suggest that more than half of our new jobs have come from increases in technology. It is very hard to think of any important new innovation in biology or in the sciences that has not had some sort of government-sponsored research over that time. So our research universities are job factories and our advanced degree holders are the ones who come up with the great ideas.

As a former president of the University of Tennessee, which is a fine research university, I know that increasingly in the science, technology, engineering, and math programs in those universities many of the students are from other countries. These students line up in India and compete, hoping they will get a chance to come to the United States. They have done the same in China. They do this everywhere in the world. About 17,000 of those 50,000 who come for advanced degrees go home each year.

Yesterday, Senator Coons and I introduced legislation that would help those 17,000 students, and we hope more who may come, to come to the United States, get their advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math, and then stay here and create jobs in our country instead of going home and creating them in other countries.

I will have to admit there is a value to students who go home. It is probably our best foreign diplomacy, to have someone come from another country, live here, learn our values, go home and explain those at home. But we want the next Google to be created here, not in China. We want the brightest people in the world. If we are going to attract them here and provide education for them, we want to give them every opportunity to come here. And today we make them go home because of our immigration policy.

The legislation Senator Coons and I introduced yesterday now has the support already of at least two other Senators, Senator Lugar and Senator Isakson, who have asked to cosponsor. It would, No. 1, create a new student visa for citizens of other nations who want to come here and pursue a master's or doctoral degree in science, technology, engineering, and math. No. 2, once they get that degree, the new visa created in this bill would allow them to remain here for 12 months, to look for a job. And, No. 3, once they are employed, the bill establishes a procedure to allow students to change their immigration status and to receive a green card. Finally, these new green cards would not count toward any existing green card limit.

This idea is not new. It has as much support outside of the Senate Chamber as any idea I know about--from companies such as Microsoft, which tells us they have 2,600 jobs available that require computer science degrees that start at $104,000 a year. They would like to have these students work here and create jobs for us. We know from our own experience the importance of these green-card holders.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, TN, is probably the greatest engineering laboratory in the world. Who runs it? Dr. Jeffrey Wadsworth ran it. He had a green card from the United Kingdom. Dr. Thom Mason, who is there now, had a green card from Canada. Thomas Zacharia, the current Deputy Director at ORNL and the father of supercomputing, has a green card from India.

We want them here, not in India, not in the United Kingdom, not in Canada.

I greatly appreciate the leadership of Senator Coons of Delaware on this issue. He has worked hard on it. He has been a leader on it.

I only have one more thing to say about it before I step aside and let him talk about his ideas. In 2005, we began to work on something called the America COMPETES Act in this body. In 2007 we passed it. It was sponsored by the Democratic leader and the Republican leader. It had 35 Democratic sponsors and 35 Republican sponsors. It passed the House. It was reauthorized last year. We asked the best minds in our Nation to tell us what would be the 20 things we could do as a Congress to make sure we are competitive in the future so that we can keep this high standard of living we have come to enjoy. It is a very high standard of living. We have about 5 percent of all the people in the world. We have about 25 percent of all the wealth in the world that we produce each year. How can we keep doing that?

They gave us these 20 ideas and we passed many of them. It is one of the great successes of our Congress over the last several years, working together. One piece of unfinished business from the America COMPETES Act of 2005 and 2007 was to pin a green card on the foreign student who gets a graduate degree in science, math, technology,or engineering.

The legislation Senator Coons and I offered yesterday would do that. I greatly value his leadership and his approach. I hope we can work with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to take this idea, turn it into a law, and give our country more of an opportunity to create new jobs as we move forward.

I already asked permission for the next 15 minutes that Senator Coons and I would be in a colloquy. I wish to defer to him for his comments at this time.

Mr. President, Senator Coons is one of the most eloquent speakers we have in the Senate. He did a beautiful job in explaining the bill. I hope it attracts support from both Republicans and Democrats. He mentioned the fact there are other immigration issues--and there are. There are a number of ones I wish to work on and get something done. I was here when we tried to get a comprehensive immigration plan a few years ago. It had strong bipartisan support, but one of the lessons we learned in that effort was that we do not do comprehensive well here in the Senate. Sometimes it is better to go step by step. That has been true for a long time.

We remember Henry Clay as the Great Compromiser, but Henry Clay's greatest compromise was not passed by Henry Clay. He failed. It nearly ruined his health and he went to Massachusetts to recover from it. A Senator named Stephen A. Douglas, from Illinois, the home of our assistant Democratic leader, came to the floor and introduced the Clay compromise section by section and each section passed with a different coalition, with Senator Sam Houston being the only Senator who voted for each one of them. So my hope is that with the broad support we have for this very simple idea--pin a green card on the lapel of a gifted graduate of an advanced program in science, technology, engineering, and math, and allow them to stay here and create jobs here instead of forcing them to go home--I hope we have such strong support for this idea that we can go ahead and pass it, and then we can follow that up with the other necessary steps we need to take on immigration, and hopefully we can do that with a coalition that represents Democrats and Republicans as well. This is a great idea.

Somebody might say: Well, why don't they just do it the way we do it now? Right now, it is H 1B visas. As everyone who is an employer knows, they are complicated, burdensome, and there are not enough of them. This is simple. It is a new visa. They get it if they are admitted, and they get to stay 12 months while they look for a job. If they get a job, they get a green card, and there is no cap on the number, and that is the idea.

I thank Senator Coons for his leadership. I look forward to turning this good idea, this piece of unfinished business in the bipartisan America COMPETES Act, into law.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.