Small Business Jobs and Tax Relief Act

Madam President, I want to indicate, while listening to the remarks of the Senator from Texas about the introduction of a bill apparently on cybersecurity, how critically important that is to the country. I am a relatively new member of the Intelligence Committee, but if there is anything I have learned, it is what a major threat this is to our country and how critically important it is we address it. So I commend the Senator from Texas for her leadership and I appreciate that she and her colleagues have taken this step of actually introducing legislation.

I thank the Senator. I look forward to reviewing her proposal and, hopefully, together we can find a way to get something passed that will further protect our country.

The Economy

Madam President, I come to the floor today to talk about the state of our economy, where we have come from, where we are headed, and the critical challenges facing our Nation. I want to go back and remind people of where we have come from. I think it is very important to put in context the circumstances we now confront.

First of all, the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 was the worst recession since the Great Depression. By the way, this was not the creation of Barack Obama. He inherited this mess, and he has done quite a good job of getting us moving in a better direction, but more of that later.

In the fourth quarter of 2008--that is the last quarter before this President took office--the economy was actually shrinking at a rate of almost 9 percent. In the first month of 2009, we lost 800,000 jobs. The housing market was in crisis, home building and sales were plummeting, we faced record foreclosures, and the financial market crisis was threatening global economic collapse.

In fact, I will never forget being called to a meeting in the Capitol in the fall of 2008, and I was the last one to arrive. It was the leaders of the House and the Senate, Republicans and Democrats, and there was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the Secretary of the Treasury in the Bush administration telling us they were going to take over AIG the next morning. They told us if they did not, there would be a financial collapse in this country within days. I have to say, that gets your attention. But those were the circumstances that were being confronted in late 2008.

Since that time, we have seen a dramatic improvement. Here is the economy in the fourth quarter of 2008 before President Obama took office, shrinking at a rate of almost 9 percent. In the subsequent quarters it continued to shrink until it began to get better in late 2009, frankly, because of the stimulus and TARP that helped start to turn our country around.

Since that time we have had consistent growth in the economy--not as robust as we would like but nonetheless consistent growth. It was a rather remarkable turnaround given how serious the economic downturn was. We also see the same pattern with respect to the private sector jobs picture.

Again in January 2009, in 1 month alone we lost more than 800,000 jobs, and those were private sector jobs--more than 800,000 jobs in a month. Again, in 2009 things began to turn and we got back to growing jobs. In fact, we have had over 4\1/2\ million jobs in the private sector created since the turnaround began. Again, job growth was not as robust as we would like, but nonetheless it was quite a remarkable turnaround from where it was.

What we have seen in looking at previous crises is that economic recovery is shallower and takes much longer after a financial crisis. So we can't compare this to the garden variety of recessions we faced since World War II. I think we have had nine recessions since World War II, but this went far beyond a typical recession. This was enormous damage to the financial sector. In looking back, historically, here is what Dr. Reinhart of the Peter Peterson Institute for International Economics and Dr. Vincent Reinhart of the American Enterprise Institute have found in their research:

Real per capita GDP growth rates are significantly lower

during the decade following severe financial crises . . . In

the ten-year window following severe financial crises,

unemployment rates are significantly higher than in the

decade that presided the crisis. . . .

That is the circumstance we are in. That is not the fault of President Obama. He inherited this mess. The fact is after a financial crisis, if we look back historically, it takes up to 10 years to recover. For those who say, well, the Federal Government response didn't work or that it hasn't made any difference, I don't think that is true. I don't think that will stand up to scrutiny.

Two of the most distinguished economists in the country, Alan Blinder, who was a former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Mark Zandi, who was actually one of the economic advisers to the John McCain campaign, said:

We find that its effects--

Talking about the Federal Government's actions to deal with the crisis--

on real GDP, jobs, and inflation are huge, and probably

averted what could have been called Great Depression 2.0.

They went on to say:

. . . When all is said and done, the financial and fiscal

policies will have cost taxpayers a substantial sum, but not

nearly as much as most had feared and not nearly as much as

if policymakers had not acted at all. If the comprehensive

policy responses saved the economy from another depression,

as we estimate, they were well worth their cost.

Madam President, here are two of the most distinguished economists in the country telling us that had we not taken the actions that the Federal Government did, we would have had a depression. They also looked at what would have happened without the Federal response on the jobs front.

Here is what they found running their econometric models. The green line is the response with the Federal response, the red line is what they estimate would have happened without the Federal response. We can see they find a difference of 8 million jobs. In other words, we have 8 million more jobs than we would have otherwise had had the Federal Government done nothing.

I just say this to my colleagues who say, well, the stimulus and TARP didn't work because we are not growing as rapidly as we would like. Let's think back. What was happening when those steps were taken? The economy wasn't growing; the economy was shrinking. We weren't getting more jobs; we were losing jobs at a record rate. So to those who say none of these Federal actions were successful, I say I don't think that is what the record shows.

I think what the record shows is they didn't accomplish all we would like,

but they really led to quite a dramatic turnaround from the worst recession since the Great Depression. Here are the positive signs we see now that are facts. They are not projections; they are facts. We have had 27 consecutive months of private sector job growth. We have had 11 consecutive quarters of real GDP growth. The unemployment rate is down from the 2009 peak. Manufacturing has expanded for 34 consecutive months. The U.S. auto manufacturers have returned to profitability. And State revenues are now showing signs of improvement.

So, again, this isn't political talk. These are facts, and facts matter. The facts demonstrate there has been quite a remarkable turnaround. Again, these aren't projections; these are facts. These are things that have occurred.

If we then compare the U.S. performance to other countries with which we compete, we can see the United States has done the best in terms of the comparisons here. Some developing nations have certainly done better than we have, but if we look at the developed world, the United States is doing the best. This chart shows our economic performance, the top line, which is far better than the eurozone, all the European countries, which is the green line. Japan is the red line and we are doing much better than them. We are doing much better than the United Kingdom. If we look at how well we have done compared to the rest of the world, we are doing much better, at least in terms of the developed nations.

We know Europe has gone in a somewhat different direction. They have imposed austerity without regard to growth policies. Here are the headlines from the International Herald Tribune: ``Austerity Is Strangling Europe.'' I pulled out a paragraph because I think it speaks very well of what has been the effect of the European strategy:

The direction of European economic and financial policy

must change, away from pure austerity toward growth. Greece,

Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain have made substantial

progress in stabilizing their finances. But the economic and

political situation in these countries shows that austerity

alone is not the way to resolve the crisis. On the contrary,

there is a danger of half-strangling national economies with

a strict policy of austerity. We would therefore be well

advised to cushion harsh austerity measures with programs for

growth.

I believe there is a lesson in that for us as well. I am an unvarnished deficit hawk. I have been my entire career. I have called repeatedly for us to get our fiscal house in order. I believe it is imperative that we do that, but it is also imperative to recognize that we don't impose austerity on a weak and struggling economy. We would only make things worse. Getting back on a more sustainable financial path has to be done in a measured way. Absolutely, we need a long-term plan to take on our deficits and debt. I have made that speech 500 times. Absolutely, that has to be done. But that has to be done in a phased way, and the austerity should not be imposed until we are on a stronger growth path. I think economic history tells us that, and that is a lesson we need to learn.

What is holding back the U.S. economy from a stronger recovery? Well, we have identified these elements: No. 1, the European debt/financial crisis has thrown a cloud over global markets, and they are still our biggest trading partners. So a chilling of economic activity in Europe has had an adverse effect on our own economic performance.

No. 2, the Iran/Middle East situation has threatened to disrupt oil supplies. That creates uncertainty, because we know the Straits of Hormuz would close, prices would jump, economic activity would weaken, and we would be hurting. That has led companies, even though they have $2 trillion on their balance sheets, to be very cautious about expanding their investment and expanding their hiring.

Federal, State, and local government cutbacks have also created economic drag. I will go to that issue in a moment.

The political deadlock on fiscal issues here in Congress has also created uncertainty, and we face, of course, the threat from the fiscal cliff. The fiscal cliff is the fact that at the end of this year, all of the Bush tax cuts are going to expire, which means an automatic tax increase for virtually every American. We also face additional spending cuts, including $1.2 trillion from the so-called sequester, evenly shared between defense and nondefense. That would reduce demand. That would further reduce economic growth. Also, of course, the housing market continues to pose a threat, at least in many parts of the country. Certainly in Nevada, Arizona, Florida, and in parts of California, the housing market crisis still leaves an overhang.

I thought this article in the New York Times on Saturday, May 5, was very interesting. I think if we gave a quiz to the American people listening to the debates here, they would conclude that government has gotten bigger and bigger during the Obama administration, but that is not true. A previous President said ``facts are stubborn things,'' and these are facts. If we take State, local, and Federal Government and we combine them, the government is getting smaller in the United States. In fact, again, I pulled out a paragraph:

For the first time in 40 years, the government sector of

the American economy has shrunk during the first three years

of a presidential administration. Spending by the Federal

Government, adjusted for inflation, has risen at a slow rate

under President Obama. But that increase has been more than

offset by a fall in spending by State and local governments,

which have been squeezed by weak tax receipts.

In the first quarter of this year, the real gross domestic product for the government--including State and local governments as well as Federal--was 2 percent lower than it was 3 years earlier, when Barack Obama took office, in early 2009.

All the talk we hear on this floor about the exploding size of government is bloviation. It is bloviation. Let's get real. The government in the United States is shrinking. Facts are stubborn things.

This is what is happening to the U.S. Government workforce under this President. Obama took office in January of 2009. This chart shows millions of Federal, State, and local employees. We had more than 22.5 million Federal, State, and local employees. Look what has happened. Do we have more employees in government today than when President Obama took office or do we have less? We have less, and we have a lot less. This chart shows very clearly the number of employees has gone down dramatically--dramatically--during the years of this administration. Facts are stubborn things.

What is underlying our current weakness? Well, before the Budget Committee, we had Dr. Joel Prakken, the chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers. This is the testimony he gave earlier this year:

The No. 1 problem that [small businesses] say they have to

deal with right now is lack of demand.

Are my colleagues paying attention? Can we pass a quiz? What is the problem? The problem is a lack of demand. Further tax increases or further spending cuts will only weaken demand in the short term. So we have to be paying attention to what we do here.

Some of our colleagues say, Let's slash spending some more, make government even smaller. Guess what that will do to demand? It will weaken it. That will make the economic recovery even more tepid, even weaker. That is not the answer. Yes, it is absolutely the case over the longer term. We have to be aggressive at reducing spending and reforming entitlements and reforming the tax system. I have been part of virtually every effort here to do that. I was part of Bowles- Simpson and part of the group of six. I am actually actively engaged in that effort now. We have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. What we need to understand is we need a two-step strategy: strengthen growth in the short term, and then pivot and deal with our deficits and debt over the longer term. We cannot get confused about this and think the answer is to impose immediate austerity now. We have already imposed a fair amount of austerity, which I will get into in a minute, with the budget cuts that were included in the Budget Control Act passed last year.

I want to repeat the testimony of Dr. Prakken:

The No. 1 problem that [small businesses] say they have to

deal with right now is lack of demand. They do not say access

to capital. They do not say burden of regulation. They say

their order books are thin.

I say to my colleagues, let's pay attention to what the problem is: weak

demand. We have to take steps to strengthen demand in the short term while at the same time putting in place a longer term plan to get us back on track with our Nation's finances.

One reason we have a weak demand is we have made weak investments in infrastructure. Look at where we are compared to our global competitors. China is investing 9 percent of their GDP on infrastructure. Europe is spending 5 percent, and here we are at 2.4 percent. One of the reasons we have a weak recovery is we are not investing sufficiently in roads, bridges, airports, rail, and, as a result, our infrastructure across America is becoming second rate. That is about as clear as it can be.

I hear my colleagues say: Well, our problem is the Senate has not passed a budget in over 1,000 days. Sometimes I wonder if our colleagues pay very close attention to what they are voting on here, because last year, instead of a budget resolution we passed the Budget Control Act--a law. What is the difference between a resolution and a law? I think any high school student could tell us a resolution is weaker than a law. Yet our colleagues continue to come to the floor and complain and say we have not passed a resolution in more than 1,000 days. That is true. What we did do is pass a law called the Budget Control Act. We passed it last year with an overwhelming vote here in the U.S. Senate--a bipartisan vote. It also passed in the House of Representatives and was signed into law by the President.

A budget resolution never even goes to the President. A budget resolution is purely a congressional document. So a law is stronger than any resolution, and it is true, we didn't pass a budget resolution last year, we passed a law called the Budget Control Act. That law, in part, said:

The allocations, aggregates, and spending levels set in

subsection (b)(1) shall apply in the Senate in the same

manner as for a concurrent resolution on the budget.

That is about as clear as it can be. The Budget Control Act says that the spending levels will apply in the same manner as a budget resolution.

So all these speeches that have been given--oh, we have not had a budget resolution in a thousand days--is not telling people the rest of the story. Instead of a budget resolution, we passed a budget law called the Budget Control Act.

What did that law do? One of the things it did was cut spending $900 billion over the next 10 years. I can tell you, it put in place 10 years of spending caps--10 years of spending caps. A typical budget resolution only deals with 1 year. The Budget Control Act--the law we passed last year--put in place 10 years of spending caps, saving $900 billion.

In addition, it said: We are going to create a special committee to deal with the entitlement programs and the tax system. We are going to say to that special committee: If you can come to an agreement, you will not face a filibuster. You will not face delays, you will be able to bring that proposal right to the floor of the Senate and get a vote.

They further said: But if you do not agree, there will be another $1.2 trillion of spending cuts imposed. Of course, we all know now the special committee could not agree. So that additional $1.2 trillion of spending cuts is now the law of the land, on top of the $900 billion of spending cuts that was in the Budget Control Act as well.

So let's do the math: $900 billion of discretionary savings in the Budget Control Act, plus this sequester--the $1.2 trillion of additional spending cuts focused on defense and nondefense spending-- for a total of $2.1 trillion of spending cuts that were in the Budget Control Act passed last year that is now the law of the land. That is the biggest spending cut package in the history of the United States.

I think facts are stubborn things, and we need to remind our colleagues of what the facts are.

Here is another unfortunate fact: We are borrowing almost 40 cents of every $1 we spend. We can do that for a while. We cannot do it endlessly. We are borrowing almost 40 cents of every $1 we spend, so we have to deal with that.

What does it mean in terms of our debt? This is what is happening to our debt: Gross debt as a percentage of our gross domestic product under what is called the CBO alternative fiscal scenario--that is their prediction of what we might do here--shows the gross debt of the United States is going to be 104 percent of our gross domestic product at the end of this year--104 percent of our gross domestic product. It shows, if we do not do anything, that is going to go up to 119 percent. Our gross debt will be 119 percent of the size of our economy by 2022 if we do not do anything.

That is not a path we should allow to be followed. Why not? Because the best economic analysis that has been done, by Reinhart and Rogoff, ``Growth in a Time of Debt,'' found that once we get a gross debt of more than 90 percent of our GDP, our future economic prospects are diminished. It does not happen all at once. It is not like falling off a cliff when we get to gross debt that is 90 percent of our GDP. It is more like a long, slow decline in terms of our future economic prospects.

So here is what they concluded after studying 200 years' of economic history, 44 different countries:

We examine the experience of 44 countries spanning up to

two centuries of data on central government debt, inflation

and growth. Our main finding is that across both advanced

countries and emerging markets, high debt/GDP levels (90

percent and above)--

Again, this is gross debt, when we get to a gross debt of 90 percent or more.

are associated with notably lower growth outcomes.

So this is not just about numbers on a page. This is about future economic prospects, future economic opportunity, future job prospects, that the future wealth of a nation is hurt when they get to a gross debt of more than 90 percent of their GDP.

The previous chart I showed is that we will be at 104 percent of GDP at the end of this year. So absolutely we have to focus on deficits and debt. But we should not lose sight of the fact that we cannot pivot and do that when the economy is weak or we will make the economy even weaker. So the initial steps we need to take are to strengthen growth. At the same time, we ought to put in place a plan that gets us back on track fiscally that deals with this debt problem for the longer term because this is not a matter of we get to this point and fall off the cliff. It does not work that way.

What is critically important is that we adopt the right economic policies now to strengthen the economy, to lift growth, but at the same time to put in place a longer term plan that deals with deficits and debt.

As shown on this chart here is where we are headed if we fail to act. This is according to the Congressional Budget Office. It is nonpartisan. We have gross debt that I was referencing before: 104 percent. Look at this and you will say: Gee, it is not 104 percent on this chart. That is because this is not gross debt. This is debt held by the public, which most economists like to talk about. I talk about the gross debt because gross debt includes what we owe to the trust funds, and the work of Reinhart and Rogoff focused on gross debt. So if we are going to compare ourselves to the research they did, we have to be talking about gross debt.

This is debt held by the public, and this is what CBO says is going to happen to debt held by the public if we fail to act: We are going to have a debt more than 200 percent of GDP. That is the track we are on. So, hey, we have to sober up. We need a plan that gets us back on track.

When we analyze how we got in this situation, what is critical is that we look at spending and revenue because it is that mismatch which leads to deficits. It is when we are spending more than we are taking in. It is when our outlays are greater than our revenues that we have deficits. It is the accumulation of deficits that is the debt. Right. The debt is adding up all the deficits over all these years.

The red line on this chart shows the spending of the United States. The green line shows the revenue. What jumps out at you is that spending is near a 60-year high. That is not surprising because we just had the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression.

What happens when we have a strong economic downturn? What we call the automatic stabilizers kick in to prevent us from going into a depression. What are the automatic stabilizers?

Things such as unemployment insurance, spending on food stamps, other things that are done to prevent going from a recession into a depression. Those things kicked in, and the result is--and, of course, we had TARP and we had stimulus, which I have already demonstrated worked actually quite effectively. Without them, the best economists in the country tell us we would have been in a depression.

Spending is near a 60-year high. But look at revenue. Revenue is near a 60-year low. Low revenue, high spending, big deficits, big additions to debt. That is what is happening to us. We can see, the spending has come back somewhat now. Revenue has improved somewhat. So things are starting to get better, but we still have a big gap and a deficit of $1.2 trillion for this year--staggering. That over time has to be addressed.

The Budget Control Act we passed last year--the law our friends over there say: Oh, you have not passed a budget resolution for a thousand days. Wow. Did they forget they voted on a law called the Budget Control Act that cut spending by the biggest amount in the history of the United States?

Look what has happened to discretionary spending. Under the Budget Control Act, discretionary spending is going to go to a historic low. So all this talk about the runaway spending around here--yes, spending went up when we had a deep economic decline in order to prevent that decline from becoming even worse and becoming a depression. But do you know what. We have already taken steps to rein that spending back in in the future in the Budget Control Act.

Look how it is going to do it. We saw, back in 1968, discretionary spending--in Federal spending there are two kinds of spending. There is mandatory spending--things such as Social Security, Medicare, that is mandatory spending. Then there is discretionary spending; that is things such as education, law enforcement, parks. And back in 1968, 13.6 percent of budget outlays went to discretionary spending.

In 2012, even after this uptick, we are still far below where we were in 1968. Only 8.4 percent of budget outlays are going to discretionary spending. But look what happens under the Budget Control Act. Discretionary spending, as a share of the total budget, will drop to less than 5 percent. We have not been there going way back. That is a historic low.

So those who say, well, we have runaway spending, nothing has been done about it, they have not done their homework, and they, obviously, have not paid attention to the laws that have been passed. The Budget Control Act that passed last year is taking us to spending for discretionary programs that is a historic low.

Where is the spending going up? Well, it is those mandatory accounts. That is where the spending is going up. Of course, as shown on this chart, this is the picture on Social Security. Again, this goes back to 1972. Social Security was 3.3 percent of GDP. Here we are in 2012 and it is up to well over 5 percent of GDP. It is headed for over 6 percent of GDP as the baby boomers retire. That is not a projection. The baby boomers have been born. They are alive today. They are going to retire. I am a baby boomer. I see a number of others in front of me in the Chamber. That is not a projection. That is baked in the cake. So we know we have gone in 1972 from Social Security being 3.3 percent of GDP to being 6 percent of GDP. That is not because we have had increases in the program; it is because we have increases in the number of people who are eligible for the program.

The same is true in other mandatory parts of the budget.

Here is Medicare. Medicare, Medicaid, and other Federal health spending--if we added it all up in 1972--was 1.1 percent of GDP. In 2050, we expect that to increase to 12.4 percent of GDP. So if we are looking for where the spending is really increasing, it is certainly not in the domestic accounts. That has gone down as a share of GDP.

For Social Security, we have seen an increase because of increased people eligible because of the baby boom generation. But the big place we have seen an explosion is in the health care accounts.

Now, that is not because of the law that was passed--what some people call ObamaCare. That has nothing to do with this. This is long-term trends because of the increase in the cost of medicine and because of the baby boom generation.

That is where we see a large increase in Federal spending. We are seeing Medicare enrollment soaring. Back in 1970, there were 20 million people eligible for Medicare. In 2085, it is going to be 115 million. So a key reason we are seeing increases in costs in the so-called mandatory programs is a dramatic increase in the number of people who are eligible. That is no fault of the program. That is a demographic reality, and we have to cope with this reality.

If we are going to have a Medicare Program that gives an assurance that people in their senior years have medical treatment available to them, we have to deal with this reality of a dramatic increase in the number of people who are eligible for Medicare.

An aging population is the primary driver of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security cost growth--an aging population. The world is changing. As a population, we have a much bigger group that is eligible for these programs--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. It is absolutely essential that those programs be maintained in order for our seniors to have a comfortable retirement and in their aging years to have security.

That is the genius of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. They have transformed lives for people in their senior years. But we also have this reality to confront that because we have a growing number-- because of the baby boom generation the costs to the Federal Government are swelling. Again, it is not on discretionary spending. That part of the budget, as I have demonstrated, is going down as a share of the economy. It is in these areas where our budget is sensitive to the growing number of people eligible for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Interestingly enough, the Medicare trustees say the health care reform law passed has reduced long-term Medicare costs. I hear people, especially our friends on the other side, say the law we have passed has increased these costs. That is not what the Medicare trustees have found. The Medicare trustees have said the ``projected Medicare costs over 75 years are substantially lower than they otherwise would be because of provisions in the `Affordable Care Act' or ACA.

Our colleagues say they want to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They are talking about making the situation worse, not according to Kent Conrad but according to the Medicare trustees. The Medicare trustees--I wish to repeat this--said the ``projected Medicare costs over 75 years are substantially lower than they otherwise would be because of provisions in the Affordable Care Act. . . . ''

So our colleagues who are lining up to say they want to repeal the affordable care act are lining up to increase Medicare costs. By the way, they are lining up to increase the debt because the Congressional Budget Office has told us that in the first 10 years of the affordable care act, it saves more than a hundred billion dollars in the deficit, but in the second 10 years, it saves well over $1 trillion on deficits and debt.

Let me repeat that. The Congressional Budget Office tells us the affordable care act, which some of our colleagues are lining up to repeal, will reduce deficits and debt in the second 10 years by well over $1 trillion. So my friends who are lining up--they want to repeal the affordable care act--they are lining up to increase Medicare costs. They are lining up to increase the debt of the United States, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which is nonpartisan.

This is what the Medicare trustees project in terms of reduction in Medicare costs. The percent change in average per beneficiary cost from 2001 to 2011 was up 94 percent. From 2011 to 2021, they predict it will go up 37 percent, a dramatic slowing of the rise in costs because of the affordable care act.

We also hear colleagues on the other side say the answer to this deficit and debt situation is to have further tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthiest among us. Really? I have just shown a chart that showed our revenue is near a 60-year low. So does digging the hole deeper make much sense before we start to fill it in? I do not think so.

We hear our colleagues say: If we look in the last 40 years, revenue has been about 18 percent of GDP. That is true. But you know what, the five times we have balanced the budget since 1969 the revenue has not been at 18 percent of GDP. The revenue has been at 19.7 percent of GDP, 19.9 percent, 19.8 percent, 20.6 percent, 19.5 percent of GDP. So these friends who say they want to balance the budget, let's study their numbers. It does not add up. It does not add up.

They want to cut the revenue, which already is near a 60-year low-- cut it some more. They say: Sometimes it is going to get back toward historic average. That is not going to cut it, because we can see the times we have balanced the budget, the revenue has not been at 18 percent of GDP. Right now, it is at less than 16 percent. Revenue has been about 20 percent of GDP. I do not know what could be more clear; that we need tax reform in this country. The Tax Code is out of date. It is inefficient. It is hurting U.S. global competitiveness. Complexity imposes a significant burden on individuals and businesses. The expiring provisions create uncertainty and confusion. We are hemorrhaging revenue to the tax gap, the tax havens, to abusive tax shelters.

I have shown on this floor many times a picture of a little five- story house called Ugland House. Ugland House--I am going to put it up in just 1 minute--claims to be the home to 8,000 companies. They all say they are doing business out of this little five-story building. Really? Is that what they are doing? We will talk about that in a moment.

But we are hemorrhaging revenue to the tax gap, the tax havens, to abusive tax shelters. We need to restore fairness. The current system is contributing to growing income inequality. I do not know how anybody can deny this. We have seen a dramatic growth in income inequality in our country.

One of the reasons is we have a Tax Code which favors those at the very top, at least some of them. Very interesting because not all people at the top pay a lot of taxes. Some people at the top and some companies pay nothing, even though they are highly profitable. That is not fair. It is not right. It is hurting the country.

Our long-term fiscal imbalance must be addressed. Revenue must be part of the solution. Martin Feldstein, a distinguished conservative economist--nobody ever accused Martin Feldstein of being a liberal-- said this:

Cutting tax expenditures is really the best way to reduce

government spending. . . . [E]liminating tax expenditures

does not increase marginal tax rates or reduce the reward for

saving, investment or risk-taking. It would also increase the

overall economic efficiency by removing incentives that

distort private spending decisions. And eliminating or

consolidating the large number of overlapping tax-based

subsidies would also greatly simplify tax filing. In short,

cutting tax expenditures is not at all like other ways of

raising revenue.

In this case, I think Martin Feldstein has it about right. One way we can raise additional revenue is to reform the current tax system, making our system more competitive and at the same time raising additional revenue that can be used to help reduce the deficit, along with reform of entitlement programs, along with additional spending restraint.

These tax expenditures go overwhelmingly to the top 1 percent. Here is the increase in aftertax income from tax expenditures. We can see the middle quintile. They get $3,200 a year of value. But look at the top 1 percent. The top 1 percent get over $\1/4\ million a year in benefits from tax expenditures. Overwhelmingly, those tax expenditures that are now costing us $1.2 trillion a year are going to the wealthiest among us.

I have nothing against wealth or people who succeed--all for it. I am for there being a fair distribution of the burden of raising the revenue necessary to support the country, and this is not fair. It is not fair when the top 1 percent get $\1/4\ million in value every year from these tax expenditures. That gets almost no attention.

This is the picture I was talking about. This is a little building in the Cayman Islands, a five-story building called Ugland House. Now, 18,857 companies call this building home. Truly. That is the most efficient building in the world. Can you imagine all these companies doing business out of that little building, 18,857 companies? Are they truly doing business out of that little building? The only business they are doing out of there is monkey business, and the monkey business they are doing is to avoid the taxes they legitimately owe in this country. That is what is going on in this building in the Cayman Islands, the avoidance of taxes, legitimate taxes in this country. There is a reason there are some very large companies that even though they are hugely profitable pay absolutely nothing in taxes. That is not right. That is not fair. It should be stopped. Our colleagues on the other side, they do not want to stop it. They are against it. In fact, they have taken a pledge that they will not increase tax revenues by closing down this kind of tax dodge. They have taken a pledge not to do anything about it. Virtually every Republican has taken a pledge that this would be a tax increase to shut down this kind of tax dodge. That is not right.

When we look at the longer term deficit and debt problem--I have tried to be clear--what we need to do is a two-step approach. The first step, we need more economic growth. We need things to support this economic recovery. We need more investment certainly in infrastructure where we are falling badly behind. But we also need a comprehensive long-term plan to get us back on track, to face up to these deficits and debt. What is the best way to do that? Here is what the American people say: We need a balanced approach.

Some people say cut spending. That is where 17 percent of the American people are. Some say increase taxes. That is where 8 percent of the American people are. But 62 percent of the American people say we have to do some of both. We have to cut spending. We have to raise revenue. We ought to have a balanced plan.

So that is what the American people are telling us. Interestingly enough, that is what the President's fiscal commission concluded, the Bowles-Simpson Commission. I was a member of it. There were 18 members, and 11 supported the recommendations of the commission--5 Democrats, 5 Republicans, and 1 Independent. That is as bipartisan as you can get. We took that balanced approach.

We reformed the revenue system to have a more fair tax system and shut down abusive tax havens and loopholes but also had further savings on the spending side of the equation.

On this chart is an overview of the budget plan I developed based on the fiscal commission's plan: $5.4 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years; lowers deficit to 1.4 percent of GDP in 2022, which is around 10 percent of GDP; stabilizes gross debt by 2015; reduces discretionary spending to 4.8 percent of GDP by 2022, which has already been done; builds on health care reform savings; calls for Social Security reform, with the savings to be used only to extend the life of Social Security itself.

Social Security was not part of the deficit reduction plan because Social Security has not been a contributor to building the deficit and debt. We also know Social Security is in trouble. Its solvency is in question. We recommended that any changes to Social Security be purely for the purpose of extending the life of Social Security itself given the incredibly important role it plays in our country.

We also included fundamental tax reform to raise revenue and to go after these tax havens, these abusive tax shelters, and, yes, to ask the wealthiest among us, some of whom--not all--have gotten away with paying very little, to pay their fair share.

This is what would happen to the deficit as a percentage of GDP under that plan. You can see on this chart that it would be reduced dramatically--from 7.6 percent of GDP this year to 1.4 percent of GDP by 2021, really dramatic reductions as a percentage of GDP by 2016. This chart is what would happen to the debt. Instead of it continuing to grow to more than 119 percent of GDP by 2022, that debt would be at 93 percent of GDP by 2022. In the near term, debt would go up some more, absolutely, because we have to deal with this economic weakness, but over the full 10 years of the plan, the debt would be brought under control and be brought down somewhat.

Those are the elements of the plan. I say to my colleagues that we have to find a way to come together. It is important to the country that we do. I am

retiring at the end of this year, but I hope we can find a way to reform the tax system and make it more fair, reform entitlements in recognition that the baby boom generation is upon us. They are going to retire, and they are putting stress on these programs. These programs are critically important to life in America--certainly the lives of our senior citizens. And we are going to have to do more about the discretionary accounts because, as I have indicated, they have already been hit repeatedly, and we are headed for a share of our budget going to the discretionary accounts that are a record low. I personally don't believe going back and cutting them more, beyond what has already been done in the Budget Control Act passed last year, is a winning strategy.

I think this is an important and defining moment in this country's history. These are problems that are real. Certainly, to the millions of people who are without a job, we have an absolute obligation to do everything we can to strengthen this economy. We also have an absolute obligation to take on this debt threat because that hangs over the country as well.

We can do this. We have done it before. In the Clinton administration, we got back to balanced budgets and strong economic growth, with the creation of more than 20 million jobs, and a country that was prospering and doing better than any competitor on the face of the globe. We can do it. I believe we will.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, as chair of the Small Business Committee of the Senate, I am pleased to come to the floor to give some supporting remarks for Senator Schumer's small business tax reduction bill. The bill will invest, basically, $20 billion to the bottom line of small businesses--owners of businesses that are dynamic and that are growing. I would like to make that distinction. It is not all small business that will get tax relief. It is small businesses that are dynamic and growing and adding employees or increasing wages.

The bill is smartly and narrowly targeted to motivate and to reward those small businesses, a subgroup of the 28 million small businesses that exist in the country today, many of which are in the Senator's State, Minnesota, that has some very high-growth, high-potential small business development in the medical field, I understand. In my State, it would be those businesses that are growing because of the increased demand for energy and the new technologies that are coming out, not only for oil and gas production, which is important, but also other sources of energy. In Ohio and Michigan, it could be those small business suppliers that are rallying around the emerging and strengthening automobile industry, which President Obama and the Democratic Members of this Congress had so much to do with salvaging.

Our business is not just throwing money against the wind. It is taking precious taxpayer dollars and targeting them to those businesses that are growing. That is why, as the chair of the Small Business Committee, I strongly endorse Senator Schumer's proposal over the proposal that came from the House of Representatives.

The House of Representatives' bill basically is taking $40 billion that we do not have--we do not have the $20 billion either but one is half the cost--taking $40 billion and throwing it at businesses, 50 percent of which, according to the CBO study, will accrue to the highest income earners in the country--over $1 million. It is not targeted. It is just about business profits, which are important. I know businesses are in business to make profits. I have no problem with that. We want our businesses to be profitable. But the Schumer proposal, relative to the Cantor proposal, is targeted to those businesses making a profit and reinvesting it in the business to grow-- hiring workers and putting behind this recession we are coming out of-- a recession because of poor policies of previous administrations-- coming out of this recession to help grow the economy.

We can give tax cuts in a variety of different ways. If we had all the money in the world, maybe we could afford to do both, but we are not that fortunate. We have to make choices. That is what we do on the floor of this Senate every day, make choices, make distinctions between wise ways to spend money and poor ways to spend money.

I suggest, if we have $20 billion to spend, if everybody agrees we have at least that, that the Schumer approach is much more efficient, will be much more effective, will get much more bang for the buck than the Cantor approach.

I commend Senator Schumer for putting his bill on the floor, the Small Business Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012. According to the National Economic Council, the tax credit would provide $20 billion in direct tax relief for businesses that hire new workers or increase wages, and it could encourage an additional $200 to $300 billion in new wages and jobs this year.

This tax credit, as I said, makes sense. It will help create jobs. According to the Congressional Budget Office report released last year, the CBO report from November of 2011, policies that have the largest effect on output and employment per dollar of cost in 2012 and 2013 are the ones that would reduce the marginal cost of hiring. That is exactly what the Schumer bill does.

Firms that make capital investments in 2012 would be allowed to deduct the full value of the investment on their 2012 return. We know this kind of targeted tax cut can spark demand that small businesses have been clamoring for. This tax cut is an extension of a tax provision that expires in 2011 and had yielded an estimated $50 billion in added investments and lowered the average cost of capital for business investment by over 75 percent, according to the National Council of Economic Advisers.

We have had a lot of experience in the Small Business Committee and in the Finance Committee, on which Senator Schumer serves, in the last couple years designing and implementing tax cuts for the middle class, tax cuts for the job creators. Again, if we look very objectively, considering the Schumer proposal costs half as much as the Cantor proposal and will probably do three times if not four times better, it is a no-brainer which one is more effective; that is, the Schumer proposal.

Our hope is if Senators come to the floor and begin to look more carefully at the Schumer proposal versus the proposal that came from the House, they will realize the benefit of the Schumer approach and give it the 60 votes we need to move it forward and will reject the Cantor approach as being too expensive relative to the other option that is on the table and much less effective. In the event the Senate decides to do neither, which might happen because there have been logjams around here for a while now, I have to say I was very proud of my colleagues Barbara Boxer and Jim Inhofe for working to break the logjams in a spectacular way just 2 weeks ago on the Senate floor when they finally negotiated a 2-year transportation bill, the flood insurance bill, the RESTORE Act, and the student loan reduction bill, which is the remarkable work the Congress did last week.

In the event the Cantor proposal fails and the Schumer proposal fails, I am hoping to offer an amendment that the leadership is considering now that was put together by the Snowe staff and the Landrieu staff over the course of the last several weeks. The only name on this right now is mine, but it has been put together by a variety of Senators who have been working across the aisle for months on items that are very important to the small business community.

Again, we have 28 million small businesses in America; 22 million of them are single employers. In other words, they are self-employed professionals who are doctors, lawyers, landscape architects, architects, other service providers, network professionals, and IT professionals who are working in their own business and employ themselves. They are very valuable. We encourage entrepreneurship in America. We may have more entrepreneurs per capita than any place in the world. We believe in it and we are excited.

We are also excited for our businesses that start with two or three employees, and before we know it they have 200 or 300 employees. Then, when we close our eyes and open them, they have 2,000 employees. That is very exciting. We

call them the gazelles. We look for accelerating opportunities.

As I said, we put this package together with the significant input of Senator Snowe and her staff, along with input from Senator Kerry, who has been an extraordinary leader in this way. Senator Merkley, Senator Cardin, and a list of other Senators whom I am going to refer to have been working for years on some of these issues. I wish to make sure I give them the credit for these issues.

First in our package is the very popular and very effective 100- percent exclusion of capital gains for investments in small businesses. It was part of the small business tax extenders package. President Obama has recommended this and Senator Kerry is the lead sponsor, along with Senator Snowe, on the Finance Committee.

Let me give a little background. Until 2009, noncorporate taxpayers were allowed to exclude 50 percent of the gain from the sale of the stock of a qualified small business if taxpayers held the stock for 5 years. The Recovery Act increased the 50 percent to 75 percent and the Small Business Act of 2010 subsequently increased it to 100 percent. As of January this year, it was reverted down to 50 percent and startup investments are no longer entitled to the preferred capital gain treatment.

Our proposal would basically take this up to 100 percent exclusion from the sale of capital gains that noncorporate taxpayers purchased in 2012 and 2013 and hold for 5 years. It has bipartisan support. As I said, Senator Kerry has been the lead advocate. Senator Snowe has worked side by side with him, and along with Senator Moran, Senator Warner, Senator Coons, and Senator Rubio have all called for this provision to be permanent. I wish we could make it permanent. This bill will not make it permanent, but we will extend it for another year and a half.

According to the Kauffman Foundation paper published earlier this year--and the Kauffman Foundation, for those who don't know, is the leading think tank. It is not political at all. It is just a middle-of- the-road, well-respected think tank on small business development. They published a paper earlier this year, the 100-percent exclusion ``boosts the after-tax returns on such investments in startups and should induce substantial levels of new investments in startup firms.'' They further estimate that making this provision permanent would increase risky investments by, conservatively, 50 percent more than the overall cost of the provision. So they are supporting this provision very strongly and would like to see it permanent, but we can only afford in this package to have it for the next year as we again build our way out of this recession.

I guess, from a conservative point of view, one of the good things about this provision--after we vote on the Schumer proposal and the Cantor proposal--it only scores at $4 billion. We get a tremendous benefit for a very small investment of taxpayer money, relatively speaking. Not that $4 billion is chump change, but compared to the $20 billion we are considering for the Schumer package and the $40 billion for the Cantor package, we think we can take that $4 billion and, similar to yeast, make it stretch and grow to affect a lot of people and to spur a lot of investment.

The next provision is the small business tax extenders, the increased deduction for startup expenditures. Again, this has been a Snowe and Merkley initiative. I think Senator Merkley has truly stood up to fight for this.

Under current law, taxpayers can elect to deduct up to $5,000 of startup expenditures in the taxable year in which they start a trade or business. The $5,000 is reduced--but not below zero--by the amount by which the startup costs exceed $50,000.

Examples of potential startup costs: studies of potential markets, products, labor markets or transportation systems; advertisements for the opening of a new business, et cetera; compensation for consultants who help get one's business started.

The Small Business Jobs Act temporarily increased the amount of the startup expenditures entrepreneurs could deduct from their taxes in 2010 from $5,000 to $10,000, with a phaseout threshold of $60,000. Senator Merkley fought to have this provision in the Small Business Jobs Act. This proposal has been repeatedly endorsed by the National Association for the Self-Employed and the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

As part of his ``Startup America'' legislative agenda, President Obama has called for making this permanent. Again, my amendment doesn't make it permanent, but it does make it effective through 2013.

According to a Kauffman Foundation survey, on average, new firms inject about $80,000 into their businesses during the first year of operation. The vast majority of small business owners--between 80 percent and 90 percent--also invest significant amounts of their own money. I wish to underscore this. The way this amendment came together is we conducted in the Small Business Committee--and had very good turnout--about three or four high-level roundtables, where instead of just having 2 or 3 people testify, we had 20 people at a roundtable show up. For 2 hours, in a very informal setting, they were answering questions, such as: What is the best thing we could do to help you now? What are the barriers to growth? What does a healthy ecosystem for small business look like and what could we do to strengthen and make healthier that ecosystem in America? That is where these ideas came from.

Of course, Senator Merkley picked up on some of this and understood. The Kauffman Foundation was there. They said that even though I have talked a lot on the Senate floor about how small businesses need to borrow money--and many do--when they start a company, they don't want to borrow money unless they absolutely have to because the chances of it not working are pretty significant. Most new startups fail, and so people do not want to go into debt unless they have to or unless they are a little bit more sure their idea is going to work.

The benefit of this proposal is that we are actually rewarding the risk-takers who are digging into their savings and taking second mortgages out on their homes and putting some of their other savings at risk behind their idea. What we are saying is if they do that, we will give a significant tax break, considering it costs about $88,000 to start an average business. So this is targeted to those risk-takers. It is not just taking money out of the Treasury and throwing it at all small businesses. It is taking that money--and this is only $4 billion total--and saying: Ok. Let's target it to those individuals who are putting their lives on the line. They are putting their livelihood on the line and their future on the line. What can we do to support them? I am a very big believer in this provision, and I thank Senator Merkley for bringing it to us.

I see Senator Casey and Senator Shaheen are on the Senate floor to speak and that my time has expired. Since I am going to be on the floor most of the afternoon explaining this amendment, I would be happy to yield the floor.

I see Senator Sessions is here and ask unanimous consent that Senator Casey speak for 10 minutes, Senator Sessions for the next 5 or 10 minutes and Senator Shaheen for 5 minutes.

I will amend that to 10 minutes each in the order of Senator Casey, Senator Sessions, and Senator Shaheen.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from New Hampshire for not only being such an aggressive and fine and thoughtful member of the Small Business Committee, but for her constant encouragement to me and to Senator Snowe to try to pull together some of the ideas that we all can agree on and move forward.

It may not be the most perfect package, it may not be the most extensive package, but as the Senator from New Hampshire said, it is a package that most all of us can agree to, and it has a pricetag of only $4 billion.

That is a lot of money. But compared to the Republican proposal that has come over here from the House at $40 billion, and the Schumer proposal, which I support because it is much more targeted and much more responsible at $20 billion, this $4 billion amendment could have a tremendous bang, a tremendous leveraging power for its cost. And the two proposals Senator Shaheen explained beautifully actually have zero cost because the 504 program is a program that pays for itself. All we are doing is extending its authorization so people--and there are thousands of them in Louisiana, in Rhode Island, in New Hampshire, and other States--who are caught paying higher interest rates on short-term loans for commercial buildings--and I am sure we all know someone in that category--can now, if this amendment passes, go to their local bank--it is not a government program; it is a partnership with the local banks and through the SBA--and refinance their building and get a longer term loan.

In fact, I am told that this program, this 504 program, is basically taking up the majority of the space in this lending, that still the lenders are very weak. They are not extending credit out in a long fixed rate. They are lending short term. They are lending with adjustable rates. As the Presiding Officer knows, and many others, when a person is starting a small business and taking so much risk, one risk that can be eliminated is the cost of their money. It is very comforting to a small business owner--who has to borrow, who does not have the savings or has run through their savings or the equity in their home and they have to extend and take that risk--to be able to have a fixed, longer term rate.

So again, this proposal came from Senator Isakson, who truly is acknowledged as the expert in this entire Chamber on commercial real estate and on residential real estate. He is known and respected on both sides of the aisle. This is his proposal with Senator Shaheen. I thank him for his leadership.

Also, the Senator spoke about the export coordination. Again: zero cost; just smarter government, at no cost. We need more of that around here: smarter government, less spending. That is what Senator Shaheen's proposal does, which is a portion of this amendment, the Small Business Export Growth Act.

Let me reiterate that 95 percent of the world's customers are located outside of the borders of the United States. It might be shocking to people in America to realize this, but we represent only 4 to 5 percent of the population of the Earth. We think of ourselves as the biggest and the best, and we are the best. We are not necessarily the biggest when it comes to population, though.

So there are growing markets all over the world. Mr. President, 95 percent of our customers and a majority of the market are outside of the boundaries of the United States. What we are recognizing is, right now only 1 percent of the 28 million small businesses in America export. Why would that be? One, it can be intimidating for a small business, even though they have a great product, they have a great idea, they have great technology. And India needs that technology or some countries in Africa might absolutely want that product or that service. The small businesses are intimidated. They do not have the accountants, they do not normally have access to high-powered, expensive lawyers and trade executives and experts. So that is what our government--and, frankly, State governments are doing this. Smart governments at the State level--whether it is

California, Oregon, Louisiana--all States are now recognizing: Gee, we need to get behind our small businesses in our State and help them to export.

I was very proud to put a substantial investment in the jobs act of 2010, which gave competitive grants to States. And it is remarkable; just a little bit of investment at the Federal level is leveraging a tremendous amount of excitement at the State and local level as those governments accept those grants and then put them to work.

In Louisiana, our department of economic development has been very aggressive in using its step grants. So, again, this is not an additional grant program. This Shaheen-Ayotte proposal has no cost. It is perfecting, coordinating this export initiative by establishing an interagency task force between the SBA, the USDA, and the Ex-Im Bank. It is really encouraging cooperation that now does not exist at the Federal level and requires the SBA, in coordination with other agencies, to conduct one outreach event in each State per year, which I think would really help to motivate our State governments and our stakeholders at the State level to be helpful.

Let me go back to the beginning. We have the SUCCESS Act amendment. I talked earlier about 16 provisions in this amendment. We talked about the 100-percent exclusion of capital gains. We have talked about the increased deduction for startup expenditures, which is Senator Merkley's provisions.

Now I want to talk about the S corp holding period. This has come out of the Finance Committee. Senator Snowe and Senator Cardin have been very strong advocates of this provision. Under current law, when a corporation becomes an S corporation--and there are, of course, benefits to becoming that kind of corporation--right now it is required to hold its business assets for 10 years or pay punitive taxes. In our mind, this 10-year holding period is too long. It ties up assets that could be sold to raise capital. In 2010, in our small business bill, we reduced this holding period to 5 years so businesses would be better able to manage their planning cycles. So this proposal is to extend the 5-year holding period through 2012 and 2013. You know, potentially, if we could afford it, we would like to make this proposal permanent, but in the Landrieu SUCCESS Act amendment, it would extend it through 2012 and 2013 and has a minimal cost.

The next provision is a carryback provision--up to 5 years of general business credits. This is a proposal about which Senator Snowe feels very strongly. The proposal would extend the carryback period from 1 year to 5 years for general business credits earned in 2012 and 2013. It would provide tax refunds to businesses that were previously healthy but are currently running losses.

The proposal would improve the effectiveness of business credits that are intended to expand investment and employment. The provision would allow businesses greater immediate benefit from credits designed to encourage specific types of activity. By providing businesses with greater opportunity to claim business credits, the provision would also give an infusion of cash to businesses, which might promote investment. So that is another provision of our SUCCESS Act.

Section 179 is probably the most popular part of our amendment and, again, Senator Snowe has championed this in the Finance Committee. Many Finance Committee members are completely aware of section 179 in the Tax Code, which deals with expensing that many restaurants and retailers use. Basically, it provides a credit for them if a small business buys machinery and equipment or property contained in or attached to a building other than structural components, such as refrigerators, grocery store counters, office equipment, gasoline storage tanks, pumps at retail service stations, even livestock, including horses, cattle, sheep, and goats, other fur-bearing animals-- all of the equipment or products or purchases small businesses make to run their businesses. This would allow an immediate writeoff of up to $500,000 for this kind of property. So, again, it is $2.3 billion over 10 years. It is the most expensive part of this whole amendment, but we think it is $2 billion well invested to encourage those small businesses to make these investments now, to get jobs and expansion opportunities underway.

Twenty-six national business groups, such as the NFIB, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Home Builders, and the National Association for the Self-Employed, have endorsed this and have sent a letter to us with very enthusiastic support.

The next section is expanding access to capital for entrepreneurs. This was actually mentioned in President Obama's State of the Union Message to us when he talked about his small business proposals. He outlined maybe half a dozen things, a few of which we have implemented and a few of which we have not yet implemented. This was on his bucket list, if you will. And I am a strong proponent of this provision.

We created a small business investment company in a bipartisan way decades ago. It has been one of the most successful programs created to spur business development in the country. It basically operates on a sustainable level and does not cost the Federal Government anything. It is like venture capital--not really like venture capital--it is like an investment; not a bank but a nonbank investment company that was created many years before I became chair of this committee. It is something that was done through Democratic and Republicans administrations because it worked.

All this does is raise the statutory cap from $3 billion to $4 billion, and it increases the amount of leverage of licensees from $225 million to $350 million. They are bumping up against that $3 billion cap. It has been very successful. We would like to take it to the next level. And, of course, some of the most successful funds within SBIC are bumping up against their $225 million cap per fund. So this is one of the great ideas that came out of our roundtable. Again, not only does President Obama support it, it has my strong support and Senator Snowe's, the ranking member of the Small Business Committee.

The next provision would be the SBA 504 refinance. This extends for a year and a half the ability of the SBA 504 Loan Program. We talked about this. Senator Shaheen spoke about this, and I have already explained it. So this is really the Isakson-Shaheen-Snowe proposal.

The next is the small business lending activity index. This is something I have put forward. We have talked with the banks and the SBA. They are all on board and accepting of this concept. It is a way to measure the small business lending activity that is being done at the city-State level through the 7(a) and 504 Lending Program.

It was very curious to me, when I became chair of this committee, that we did not have the measurements in place to actually judge whether some of our programs were really working. Were they working really well or working moderately or were they very weak? So I have instructed my staff and we have been working together to see in every way if we measure and really record the activities of the Small Business Administration. It is only a $1 billion agency, one of the smaller agencies of the government, but that billion dollars comes from taxpayers and we want to make sure that money is spent well and wisely.

So this legislation, again, is at no cost. It can be done within the current budget. It will be called the lender activity index. It will be posted on the SBA Web site. It will have the name of the bank, the number of SBA loans made by each bank, the total dollar amount of SBA loans, the ZIP Code of bank activity, the industries lent to, so we can sort of see how our banks are lending and to what areas, the stage of the business cycle, and then whether it was a woman-owned, minority- owned, or veteran-owned business, if that information can be obtained. It is very simple. We made sure the language is easy for the banks. They already have to report this data; it is just not in a useable format. This will require them to put it in a useable format.

The next is access to global markets. This is what Senator Shaheen spoke about. So the major part of this bill is tax cuts to businesses and then some oversight of the SBA, tightening up, coordinating our export strategy. And then the next and final part of this--or next to last part of our amendment is basically access to mentoring, education, strategic partnership.

In our roundtable--I am not going to go into all of the details of these items, but the bottom line is that in our roundtable, experts-- business owners and the Kauffman Foundation and others--came to us and said: Senator, you are right, businesses need capital. You are right, we need access to global markets. You are right that we need a fair tax code. But what businesses also need is technical advice and support and training, and we need more education, entrepreneurship education.

The Small Business Administration is not the education agency, so we have been very careful not to mission creep. We have designed a couple of proposals that can encourage better activity within the SBA to form partnerships with nonprofits and even for-profits, not-for-profits, and schools to promote entrepreneurship appropriately. The Federal Government can be a model. It is only one model. But we believe technical training is important. We have partners already established-- the women's small business centers and minority business centers. Getting them to be more effective and providing additional counseling is very important.

Finally on this amendment, access to government contracting is another method for small businesses to be able to grow. Governments-- whether it is Federal, State, or local--are huge purchasers of goods and services, and if our contracting laws are right and if they are enforced, then small businesses in America will have an opportunity to get started by competing for government contracts or to grow by receiving government contracts. And they are more likely to grow. If a big business gets a contract from the government, they can sometimes absorb that contact and make their company more efficient, giving more work to the people who are already there. And there is nothing wrong with that; that is business. But when a small business gets a government contract, most of the time it results in additional hiring because small businesses have to be lean and agile. So they might have five people but they have a lot of expertise. They land a contract from the government that they are most certainly qualified to do, and then they have to hire. So they have to hire 10 people to carry out that contract, which is why I have been very supportive--Senator Cardin has been a champion on this issue and Senator Levin as well--of giving small businesses an opportunity for contracting. That will really help.

In conclusion on this amendment--I see other Members coming to the floor. I wish to speak for another 5 or so minutes. I came to the floor today to support the underlying bill, which is the Schumer tax cut provision that is targeted tax relief to small businesses in America. I hope our Members will support that.

If for any reason they don't support that, or even if we do, we will still have an opportunity, I hope, to vote on the Landrieu amendment. I say that humbly because this amendment has been put together by Senator Snowe and her staff with me and members of the Small Business Committee on both sides of the aisle. We picked up some great ideas from individual legislation that had been filed, and it got unanimous consent and review, talking to many people.

So we don't believe it is controversial. We know it doesn't cost that much--$4 billion--and we believe it will have a tremendous and immediate impact on small businesses in America.

I wanted to give that explanation. We have received a tremendous amount of support today from a variety of organizations.

I see my colleague on the floor. I will yield the floor at this time and perhaps will take a few more minutes before 6 o'clock.

Mr. President, there are a few other things I would like to say.

I wanted to take a minute to respond to something that Senator Rubio said earlier, and Senator Sessions, while I was on the floor. I have great respect for those two Members, but he came to the floor with a fairly critical diatribe, if you will, against some of President Obama's policies. I have not been a great supporter of the President's energy policies, and I actually appreciate some of the views Senator Rubio holds about the fact that we need to drill more in this country.

I want to show something I think Florida should be mindful of and suggest that the Senator from Florida could start making that speech at home in Florida because Florida is one of the States that virtually produces no energy, from any source. It has been a bone of contention with me for many years that we have had Senators come to the floor and talk about what so-and-so doesn't do and what so-and-so doesn't do.

I want to remind the Senator from Florida that the gas that keeps the lights on in Florida actually comes from the Mobile Bay. These are the pipelines that Mississippi and Alabama and Texas--9,000 miles of pipelines and drilling--have off of our shore and onshore to provide gas and lights to Florida.

This is a chart that is very interesting. Before America can be energy independent or energy secure, each State should be energy secure, or each region. The country is not made up of smoke and mirrors; it is made up of 50 States. If every State and every region would do its part, either producing or conserving or a little of both, we could actually get there. But I get a little tired of the lectures criticizing us--particularly from States that neither conserve nor produce.

California gets a little bit of a break, even though they consume more energy than any State. They are a net consumer of energy. We are down here, a net producer. The States that produce more energy than they consume are Wyoming, West Virginia, Louisiana, New Mexico, Alaska, Kentucky--and North Dakota should be on here now because this was some years ago. Probably Montana also would be on here now.

The Senator from Florida is coming and lecturing everybody about producing, and his own State produces virtually nothing and consumes everything. I wanted to say that I find that offensive. California gets a little bit of a pass from me because if we look at another chart, they do more to sort of consume energy through government regulations, which I know the other side doesn't like. They think we don't need any regulations, and that is their view. California has a lot of regulations--maybe too much for me as well--but they are doing a lot to conserve. Florida doesn't. Maybe if Florida started doing a little drilling, it would help the United States to be more energy independent.

My second point: I want to answer something Senator Sessions said. I will try to find my document on that in a minute. Senator Sessions came to the floor a few minutes ago and talked about the cost of the health care bill. The health care bill has some expensive components to it. The purpose of the health care bill, remember, Mr. President--because the occupant of the chair was in the middle of that battle--was designed to reduce the overall cost of health care for the Nation because the percentage of the gross national product going to health care was moving up dramatically and frighteningly--from 12 percent a few years ago to 14 percent, to 16 percent, and it was on its way to 19 percent. It was on its way to 19 percent before Barack Obama got sworn into office.

I am getting tired--and the American people are getting tired--of the same diatribe coming from the other side of the aisle about how the cost of the Affordable Care Act is causing the country to go off the edge. This country was going off the edge before President Obama even became President. They know that. But they are just bound and determined to keep talking about the same old thing day in and day out, about how the Affordable Care Act is wrecking America. The only thing wrecking America is their stubbornness.

I want to put this into the Record. When President Clinton was President, as you know, it was the last time we had a surplus. It was the Republican President and the Republican leadership that turned that surplus into a

deficit. The ship had already hit the iceberg before President Obama took his oath of office. Now they want to blame the entire deficit on the Affordable Care Act.

When the Affordable Care Act is implemented--now that the Supreme Court has said it is most certainly constitutional--instead of fighting it every step of the way, it would, in the long run, save money.

They want to talk about this tax, tax, tax, tax. I want to call what they do the ``no care tax,'' because that is the Republican position. Before there was the Affordable Care Act, people in America were losing care rapidly. Small businesses were dropping their insurance. They could not afford it anymore. These premiums have been going up for a long time. The Affordable Care Act didn't drive the premiums up; they were going through the ceiling. We had to do something to try to stop it.

When President Obama came into office, and we saw that the trends were going up, in our efforts to try to get the budget back into balance it was obvious that we had to do something with health care. But they keep talking about tax, tax, tax. I remind them that before we passed the Affordable Care Act, there was a tax on every insurance policy that people in America had because it was a tax for the uninsured. It was about $1,200. That tax was on the backs of the American people before President Obama ever became President, before we even began debating the Affordable Care Act.

The other cost that was going on in this country was the people who didn't have Medicare, who didn't have Medicaid, and didn't have insurance--and it was a rising number of people without insurance. And as States cut back on their Medicaid, a rising number of people who didn't have Medicaid went to our hospitals, our private hospitals, our public hospitals, and our not-for-profit hospitals. Do you know what the Republicans want to tell them. Just treat those people for free. There is no one to reimburse you for this cost. Medicaid will not reimburse them because they are not 65. They don't have private insurance. And the Governors cut back on Medicaid because they can't bear to go look for some tax loopholes that people might not need in order to provide working Americans with health care.

They are too busy campaigning for their next election, so they told all the hospitals: You all go ahead and take care of these people for free. So when a non-paying customer went to a hospital, whom do you think picked up the tab for that? The paying customer.

So before President Obama became the President, before we started trying to figure out a way out of this terrible mess, there was a huge tax on the backs of the American people and a huge debt having to be paid every year by every hospital in America. Why don't they talk about that? They don't.

I hope the American people will listen because I am so tired of that same old speech. I have heard it for 3 years--before the debate, during the debate, and I guess we are going to hear it up to the election. I hope the American people will listen. Don't let them talk about the tax that is supposedly in this bill. The Affordable Care Act is alleviating a tax burden. It alleviates a terrible tax burden, an invisible tax that has been on the American people, and a heavy burden on the backs of the taxpayers--and immoral in some ways, as well--with working Americans working 50, 60 hours a week, and when they get sick, they have nowhere to turn.

Instead of putting their proposals on the table, they decided they wanted to block and tackle and stop and not contribute anything. I think the country will make a good decision. I think the country likes the fact that their kids can stay on their health care plan until they are 26, and they like the fact that when they get sick with cancer or diabetes they cannot be kicked off their health insurance. Particularly businesses would like it if the States would step up and cover some of these lower wage workers, and the burden would not fall on us.

For every Governor--and mine may be one--who rejects the expansion of Medicare, who do they think has to pick this up? It is the small businesses.

The burden should be shared for our lower income workers broadly, not on the backs of businesses that are struggling. That is the way we designed this program. The Federal Government said: We know it is tough. We know it is an expansion. Do you know what. We will pick up the 3 years 100 percent to give you some time, to help you so you can look at your Tax Code, and you might be able to find out and let me get this one more thing off my chest. Who made up the rule that the Federal Government is in charge of the health of every American citizen? Do Governors have any responsibility for health? Are we supposed to just do everything up here? Do mayors and Governors have any responsibility for the health and welfare of the people they serve? I suggest the Governors--some of them--get off the campaign trail, get back to their offices, and start putting health care legislation together-- particularly some of the Republican Governors.

I am glad I said that. I am happy to turn over the microphone. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Blumenthal and I be recognized for the next 20 or so minutes to speak on the issue of cybersecurity.

Madam President, I rise to speak about cybersecurity, but specifically about the cyber threat to our Nation's critical infrastructure. By critical infrastructure I mean the power grid that supplies electricity to our homes that keeps us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. I mean the financial services' processing systems that connect our ATMs to our accounts and move money around in our complex financial system. I mean the communications networks by which we talk and e-mail and text and message one another.

The men and women we have charged with our Nation's defense and we have confirmed in these roles in the Senate have repeatedly and consistently warned us about the danger of cyber attacks on this critical infrastructure. It provides power and light and heat, tracks and records financial transactions, allows communication and data transfer, keeps airlines safe in the air, controls our dams, and enables our commerce. The consequences of failure in these areas could be catastrophic. We must pay heed to these warnings about America's critical infrastructure as we consider cybersecurity legislation.

The administration has described this cyber threat in no uncertain terms. The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has stated:

[I]t's clear from all that we've said [that] we all

recognize we need to do something. . . . We all recognize

this as a profound threat to this country, to its future, to

its economy, to its very being.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has warned:

The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a

cyber attack.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has compared this threat to the September 11 attacks.

Prior to 9/11, there were all kinds of information out

there that a catastrophic attack was looming. . . . The

information on a cyberattack is at that same frequency and

intensity and is bubbling at the same level, and we should

not wait for an attack in order to do something.

Attorney General Holder stressed the urgency of responding to this threat in a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. He said:

This a problem that we must address, our nation is

otherwise at risk and to ignore this problem, to think it is

going to go away runs headlong into all of the intelligence

we have gathered, the facts we have been able to accrue which

show that the problem is getting worse instead of getting

better. There are more countries that are becoming more adept

at the use of these tools, there are groups that are becoming

more adept at the use of these tools, and the harm that they

want to do to the United States and to our infrastructure

through these means is extremely real.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey has warned that ``a cyber attack could stop society in its tracks.''

NSA Director and U.S. Cyber Commander GEN Keith Alexander, a four- star general, has stated:

We see this as something absolutely vital to the future of

our country. Cybersecurity for government and critical

infrastructure is key to the security of this Nation.

A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security found that companies which operate critical infrastructure have reported a sharp rise in cybersecurity incidents over the past 3 years. Companies reported 198 cyber incidents in 2011, up from 41 incidents in 2010, and just 9 in 2009. This may reflect that the private sector is just now beginning to catch on. It is unfortunate but true that the private sector cannot be counted on to respond to this growing challenge on its own.

As Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has explained, and I quote again:

There is a market failure at work here. . . . Companies

just aren't willing to admit vulnerability to themselves, or

publicly to shareholders, in such a way as to support the

necessary investments or lead their peers down a certain path

of investment and all that would follow.

These were administration warnings, but the concerns are bipartisan. A wide range of national security experts from previous Republican administrations have echoed this alarm. Former Director of National Intelligence and NSA Director ADM Mike McConnell has said, and I quote:

The United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are

losing. It's that simple.

He explained:

As the most wired nation on Earth, we offer the most

targets of significance, yet our cyber defenses are woefully

lacking. . . . The stakes are enormous. To the extent that

the sprawling U.S. economy inhabits a common physical space,

it is in our communications networks. If an enemy disrupted

our financial and accounting transactions, our equities and

bond markets or our retail commerce--or created confusion

about the legitimacy of those transactions--chaos would

result. Our power grids, air and ground transportation,

telecommunications and water filtration systems are in

jeopardy as well.

That ends the quote from Admiral McConnell.

Admiral McConnell also made a comparison to threats from the past.

The cyber-war mirrors the nuclear challenge in terms of the

potential economic and psychological effects. . . . We

prevailed in the Cold War through strong leadership, clear

policies, solid alliances and close integration of our

diplomatic, economic, and military efforts. We backed all of

this up with robust investments--security never comes cheap.

It worked, because we had to make it work. Let's do the same

with cybersecurity. The time to start was yesterday.

Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has also echoed the administration's warning that a cyber attack has the potential of causing devastation on the scale of another September 11. He stated:

I hope we do not have to wait for the cyber-equivalent of

9/11 before people realize that we are vulnerable.

Former Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security Stewart Baker has compared the threat to the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina.

We must begin now to protect our critical infrastructure

from attack. And so far, we have done little. We are all

living in a digital New Orleans. No one really wants to spend

the money reinforcing the levees. But the alternative is

worse. . . . And it is bearing down on us at speed.

Former NSA Director and CIA Director Michael Hayden has said:

We have entered into a new phase of conflict in which we

use a cyberweapon to create physical destruction, and in this

case, physical destruction in someone else's critical

infrastructure.

Former Republican officials have also noted the cybersecurity gap in the private sector due to this market failure. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Chertoff said:

The marketplace is likely to fail in allocating the correct

amount of investment to manage risk across the breadth of the

network on which our society relies.

The following examples are emblematic of the market failure that both Democratic and Republican national security officials have identified in this cybersecurity area for critical infrastructure.

When the FBI-led National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force informs an American corporation that it has been hacked, 9 times out of 10 that American corporation had no idea.

Kevin Mandia of the leading security firm Mandiant has said, and I quote:

In over 90 [percent] of the cases we have responded to,

Government notification was required to alert the company

that a security breach was underway. In our last 50

incidents, 48 of the victim companies learned they were

breached from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the

Department of Defense, or some other third party.

In operation Aurora, the cyber attack which targeted numerous companies, most prominently Google, only 3 out of the approximately 300 companies

attacked were aware that they had been attacked before they were contacted by the government.

We cannot count on the private sector to defend itself against a threat about which it is so unaware. An advanced persistent intrusion of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's systems also went undetected until the chamber received help from the government. The Wall Street Journal reported that a group of hackers in China breached the computer defenses of the U.S. Chamber, gained access to everything stored in its systems, including information about its 3 million members, and remained on the network for at least 6 months and possibly more than a year. The chamber only learned of the break-in, according to the article, when the FBI told the group that servers in China were stealing its information. The special expertise of our national security agencies is a consistent theme through these examples. As former Assistant Attorney General, OLC Director, and Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith has explained:

The government is the only institution with the resources

and the incentives to ensure that the [critical

infrastructure] on which we all depend is secure, and we must

find a way for it to meet its responsibilities.

By the way, that was Goldsmith at the Department of Justice in the Bush administration. This is a Republican appointee speaking. These warnings have been repeatedly communicated to us in the Senate. We cannot plead ignorance of them.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter to Senate Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell dated January 19, 2012.

This explains that the threat is only going to get worse; inaction is not an acceptable option. This letter was signed by former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former Director of National Intelligence and NSA Director ADM Mike McConnell, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright, former Defense Secretary Dr. Willian Perry, former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, former Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn, III, and former Special Advisor to the President for Cyber Security, Richard Clarke.

I also have a letter written to Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell, dated June 6, 2012, which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.

Secretary Chertoff, Admiral McConnell, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, General Hayden, and General Cartwright urged us to:

. . . bring cyber security legislation to the floor as soon

as possible. Given the time left in this legislative session

and upcoming election this fall, we are concerned that the

window of opportunity to pass legislation that is in our view

critically necessary to protect our national and economic

security is quickly disappearing.

They specifically focused on the threat to critical infrastructure, stating that ``protection of our critical infrastructure is essential in order to effectively protect our national and economic security from the growing cyber threat.''

We must not ignore this chorus of warnings issued by those who are the most informed and most alert about the danger to our critical infrastructure. We must pass cybersecurity legislation, and we must ensure that the cybersecurity legislation we pass addresses our Nation's critical infrastructure. No bill that fails to address critical infrastructure can be said to have done the job of protecting our country.

Our Nation will be vulnerable if critical infrastructure companies fail to meet basic security standards, as they do right now. Legislation must include a mechanism to end this continuing vulnerability. If operators object to a particular approach to cybersecurity for our critical infrastructure on the basis that it is too burdensome or too unwieldy, they will find many Members of the Senate on both sides--myself and Senator Blumenthal included--who are ready and eager to work with them. But if the purpose of the exercise is to come to an end point in which the operators of our critical infrastructure do not have to reach adequate levels of cybersecurity, then we need to move on and we need to vote and go beyond that.

The question of how we get to cybersecurity is one we should engage in the Senate. The question of whether we protect our privately held critical infrastructure in a responsible way is one we should not allow to deter us from getting this job done to protect our national and economic security.

Whatever the ultimate solution, we simply must find a way to improve the cybersecurity of our critical infrastructure.

I yield the floor to Senator Blumenthal, who has been engaged in efforts with me to try to find a way through to a bipartisan bill that will protect our critical infrastructure. He has expertise in this area as a superbly trained lawyer, a multiply elected Attorney General of his home State, a former marine dedicated to our national security, and as a person who brings the highest level of legal talent to this discussion, having argued, I think, five separate cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He has been an enormous asset, and I appreciate his participation.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I am delighted to respond to the Senator in two ways. First, as the Senator so well pointed out, this is not a future threat or a prospective threat that we need to prepare ourselves against; this is an ongoing, current threat. There is a campaign of attacks into our national security infrastructure, into our intellectual property, and into our critical infrastructure, such as the power grids and the communications networks we count on in our daily lives for what we consider the American standard of living here at home. So time is not our friend.

As one of the individuals I quoted said--I think Admiral McConnell-- the day to get this done was yesterday. So the sooner the better. We do need to form a consensus in this body, enough to move through the parliamentary obstacles that exist in this body, which allows us to go forward and will allow us to go forward in a way that does something serious about forcing the operators of our critical infrastructure to put in adequate cybersecurity protections. If they have to do it because they have incentives to do it, that is one way of getting there. If they have to do it because there are regulations that demand it, that is another way of getting there. There are different ways of getting there. And as the Senator from Connecticut and I have discussed--and we are actually working together on this--we are open to different ways to get there, but it should be agreed amongst us in the Senate that getting there, getting to the point where America's critical infrastructure is protected from cyber attack as reasonably well as we can should be the nonnegotiable goal. Anything short of that should be seen as failure.

There is another thing I wanted to add. The Senator was very generous in his remarks and credentialing of a great number of Senators who have been working very hard. I would also like to single out Senator Coons, who has been very helpful in our efforts.

I will stay on our side of the aisle at this point and add in particular Senator Mikulski. Barbara Mikulski serves on the Intelligence Committee. She is keenly aware of the cyber threat. She has taken deep dives into this issue in her role as a cardinal on the Appropriations Committee. She does the appropriations for many of the national security agencies and law enforcement agencies that are deeply involved in this. So when she speaks, she speaks with real authority and she speaks with real impact. Her participation in this effort is extraordinarily helpful, in addition to the efforts of the many Senators whom my colleague singled out as well.

With that, I yield the floor. I see the Senator from Louisiana is here, and I thank the Senator from Connecticut.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, we were here two winters ago, in February, when Washington was hit by a snowstorm that achieved the nickname Snowmageddon. The city and, in fact, much of the mid-Atlantic was buried under feet of snow. It was the biggest snowstorm in 90 years for this area. People in Washington were struggling to get to work and school, and people went without power for days.

This being Washington, some of our colleagues in the Senate seized on that opportunity to mock climate change and to suggest these winter snowstorms were inconsistent with the projections of what would happen from global warming and climate change. As an initial matter, that is a false comparison from the very get-go all by

itself. Climate science models have predicted consistently that as polar icecaps and glaciers melt and more water enters the system, we can expect heavier precipitation events. One of the ways it has been described is that if you have a pot on the stove and you have the heat under it and it is simmering, when you turn up the heat, you get more activity in the pot. You add energy to a dynamic system like a pot of boiling water, and it creates more energy in the dynamic environment.

In the same way, the extra energy coming in because of climate change, our carbon pollution in the atmosphere, is energizing our atmosphere and our weather, and we are getting weather extremes as a result.

There was an article in Science Daily, headlined ``Arctic Ice Melt Is Setting Stage for Severe Winters.'' It says this:

The dramatic melt-off of Arctic sea ice due to climate

change is hitting closer to home than millions of Americans

might think.

That's because melting Arctic sea ice can trigger a domino

effect leading to increased odds of severe winter weather

outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere's middle latitudes--

think the ``Snowmageddon'' storm that hamstrung Washington,

DC, during February 2010.

I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.

That shows the original challenge to climate change theory, based on the incident of Snowmageddon, was like so much that is said to challenge climate change--phony, outright wrong, a misunderstanding of how it works, and misrepresenting what it shows.

Scientists have recently published an article in

Oceanography that demonstrates that link between climate

change and severe winter weather in the northern Hemisphere's

middle latitudes. I think that can be debunked as a phony

claim against the facts of climate change that are

surrounding us. Look around at what is happening now. We are

seeing extreme weather on the other side.

Last week, Eugene Robinson wrote a Washington Post column that was entitled ``Feeling the Heat.'' He wrote:

Still don't believe in climate change? Then you're either

deep in denial or delirious from the heat.

He points out that the evidence is mounting in irresistible and ultimately irrefutable ways. To quote from his article:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says

the past winter was the fourth-warmest on record in the

United States. To top that, Spring--which meteorologists

define as the months of March, April and May--was the warmest

since recordkeeping began in 1895.

Again, this spring--March, April, and May--was the warmest since recordkeeping began in 1895.

He continues:

If you don't believe me or the scientists, ask a farmer

whose planting seasons have gone awry.

The Bloomberg news recently wrote a story entitled ``U.S. Corn Growers Farming in Hell as Midwest Heat Spreads.'' The story reported that corn crops are in the worst condition since 1988 and that 53 percent of the Midwest is experiencing moderate to extreme drought conditions.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, at the conclusion of my remarks, the Bloomberg article I have just referenced.

It is not just the agricultural sector that is getting clobbered by the drought and the heat. As the Presiding Officer, Senator Udall of New Mexico, knows all too well, and to quote from a New York Times story:

Explosive wildfires have burned across much of the west in

recent weeks. In southwestern New Mexico, the largest

wildfire in state history has burned nearly 300,000 acres.

Of course, New Mexico is the Presiding Officer's home State, but the article also describes other fires on the loose in Colorado and Utah.

The High Park Fire, which has been burning for weeks near

Fort Collins and is one of the largest and most destructive

blazes in the state's history . . .

The article also mentions that Colorado had more than half a dozen fires burning and said conditions have not been this bad in a decade.

So we are seeing exactly the kind of extreme weather conditions the climate scientists, whom the deniers have always mocked and made fun of, actually predicted. They predicted this would happen, and it is, in fact, happening.

It is clear we can't take a particular storm and say this storm, this fire, this drought was the product of climate change. The example people use to describe what is going on is that it is akin to loading dice. The more someone loads the dice, the more the numbers they have loaded the dice to show up will show up. So we will get more weather events. Even if we don't load the dice, we are sometimes going to get double sixes. We can't show every double six is because the dice were loaded, but when we see more and more double sixes showing up--more than history would suggest or more than the odds would suggest--then something is going on. That is what we have done by loading our atmosphere with carbon pollution. We have loaded the dice for these extreme weather events, and now we are reaping that bitter harvest from the pollution we have thrown up there.

Unfortunately, the bitter harvest in this city is that we continue to listen to propaganda and nonsense from the polluters designed specifically to create enough doubt to prevent us from taking action about something that is creating these immense consequences for foresters and firefighters in the West, for corn farmers in the Midwest, and for anybody who has to experience extraordinary weather events like ``snowmageddon,'' so-called, here in Washington. These things are beginning to have an effect as real life begins to model what the climate scientists predicted.

NOAA's Chief Jane Lubchenco spoke before an audience in Australia, which is experiencing very similar conditions, and said these extreme weather events are convincing many Americans that climate change is a reality. We are seeing that more and more.

Yale, George Mason University, and the Knowledge Networks did some polling on this subject, and 69 percent of the respondents said they agreed that ``global warming is affecting the weather in the United States'' versus 30 percent who said they disagreed. So better than 2 to 1 the American people are ready for us to do something about this. They know there is a connection and they expect us to take responsible action.

Gallup polls are reflecting a rebound in the public's concern about climate change from 51 percent in 2011 up to 55 percent in March of this year. Before the recession, it was all the way up to 66 percent, until the economic issues pushed it aside.

The contention the polluting industries and their mouthpieces here in Washington make--that the jury is still out on climate change caused by carbon pollution--is simply false. The jury is not still out. The verdict is in, the verdict is clear, and we should start doing something about it.

When I come to the Senate floor to give these talks, I often quote a letter from back in October 2009 that was signed by virtually every major scientific organization in the country--the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the American Society of Agronomy, the Botanical Society of America, the Soil Science Society of American, the American Statistical Association, and I could go on and on. The point is not to name all the multiple responsible and respected scientific organizations that signed the letter but to read what it was they said. If we think about it, as I read it, think about how cautious scientists ordinarily are in the language they use. Here is what they said:

Observations throughout the world make it clear--

Clear--

that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific

research demonstrates--

Not suggests, demonstrates--

that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are--

Not maybe, are--

the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple

independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are

inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of

peer-reviewed science.

That is a very ``sciencey'' way of saying something that is pretty harsh, which is that all these contrary assertions about climate change simply cannot be reconciled with an objective assessment of the facts, of the vast body

of peer-reviewed research. If it can't be reconciled with an objective assessment, what kind of assessment is it getting? What it is getting, I submit, is a phony assessment, a political, propaganda-driven assessment, and an assessment with the purpose of creating enough doubt to slow down political action, to preserve the status quo, and to allow pollution to continue to pour out of these smokestacks.

I speak very specifically about smokestacks because Rhode Island is a downwind State, and so much of the coal pollution that gets piped up into the atmosphere through Midwestern smoke stacks ends up landing in my State. It lands in the form of ozone, in particular. There are days in a Rhode Island summer that look clear, look beautiful, and someone can be driving by sparkling Narragansett Bay in the morning on their way to work when off goes the radio and the radio jock, in giving the news announcements of the day, says: Today is a bad air day in Rhode Island. Infants should stay indoors. The elderly should stay indoors. People with breathing difficulties should stay indoors.

This is an otherwise beautiful day. Yet children, seniors, and people with breathing difficulties should stay indoors? Yes, because corporations, pumping carbon pollution and other forms of pollution out of their Midwestern smokestacks, will not clean up their act. So they get to hold Rhode Islanders, on a clear summer day, captive indoors because they will not clean it up? That is wrong. It is just plain wrong.

I am going to continue to come to the floor on a regular basis to keep pointing this out. For some reason, this has become the issue in Washington that dare not be mentioned. Enough of that. It is time we started to mention it. It is time we started to force this issue, and it is time we started to do something about it because any other form of activity faced with these facts would be wildly irresponsible.

Let me give the example I have used before. You are a parent. You have responsibility for the welfare and well-being of your child. Your child is showing symptoms. You don't know quite what is wrong, but you take her to the doctor and the doctor says: Something is wrong here. She needs treatment. Treatment is not going to be easy, it will not be cheap, but she needs it. You think: OK. That is bad news. I tell you what, I am going to be a responsible parent and I am going to go get a second opinion. So you go and get a second opinion and that doctor says the exact same thing: Your daughter is sick. She needs treatment. So you ask a couple more doctors who are friends. You get a third and fourth opinion.

Let's say you are the most determined parent in the world and you go out and you get 99 second opinions. You contact 100 doctors about your daughter's condition, and 97 of them, 97 of those doctors say your daughter is sick and she needs to be taken care of and she needs this treatment. At that point you say: There is still doubt. There are these three other doctors who aren't so sure about this, so I am not going to do it. That is not something a responsible parent would do. I suspect in some circumstances that would be so irresponsible that it might land you in the child and family services office of your local government.

That is exactly what we are being asked to do about climate change-- to ignore the 97 percent of peer-reviewed climate scientists who understand this is real, this is man-made, and the consequences are going to be ferocious for us because there is a 3-percent doubt. It gets even worse because so many of the scientists involved in the 3 percent are scientists for hire who have economic ties to the polluting industries. Some of them even go back to previous fights, such as those over whether cigarette smoking is good for you or whether lead paint is safe for children. These are scientists who have made a career of manufacturing doubt on behalf of the cigarette and tobacco industry, on behalf of the lead paint industry, and now on behalf of the big carbon polluters. In a nutshell, they are phonies, and we are being asked to believe them.

I see the Senator from Florida is here, and I think my time at this point has probably expired. I appreciate the time to come before this body and share these views again. I will close by pointing out if there is one place we truly need to worry about climate change and about the effects of our carbon pollution, it is not just in our atmosphere, it is not just in the climate or in the weather, it is in the oceans. The oceans are undergoing historic changes as a result of the amount of carbon in our atmosphere. We are acidifying our oceans at a rate that is unprecedented. We are now out of a bandwidth that has lasted for 8,000 centuries--8,000 centuries. Our entire species has developed within a safe bandwidth of atmospheric carbon and of ocean acidity that we have now, for the first time, stepped out of and a long way out of. If we do not take this issue on in a responsible way, we are going to bear an even more bitter harvest.

Exhibit 1

[From the ScienceDaily, June 6, 2012]

Arctic Ice Melt Is Setting Stage for Severe Winters

(By Anne Ju)

The dramatic melt-off of Arctic sea ice due to climate

change is hitting closer to home than millions of Americans

might think.

That's because melting Arctic sea ice can trigger a domino

effect leading to increased odds of severe winter weather

outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere's middle latitudes--

think the ``Snowmageddon'' storm that hamstrung Washington,

D.C., during February 2010.

Cornell's Charles H. Greene, professor of earth and

atmospheric sciences, and Bruce C. Monger, senior research

associate in the same department, detail this phenomenon in a

paper published in the June issue of the journal

Oceanography.

``Everyone thinks of Arctic climate change as this remote

phenomenon that has little effect on our everyday lives,''

Greene said. ``But what goes on in the Arctic remotely forces

our weather patterns here.''

A warmer Earth increases the melting of sea ice during

summer, exposing darker ocean water to incoming sunlight.

This causes increased absorption of solar radiation and

excess summertime heating of the ocean--further accelerating

the ice melt. The excess heat is released to the atmosphere,

especially during the autumn, decreasing the temperature and

atmospheric pressure gradients between the Arctic and middle

latitudes.

A diminished latitudinal pressure gradient is associated

with a weakening of the winds associated with the polar

vortex and jet stream. Since the polar vortex normally

retains the cold Arctic air masses up above the Arctic

Circle, its weakening allows the cold air to invade lower

latitudes.

The recent observations present a new twist to the Arctic

Oscillation--a natural pattern of climate variability in the

Northern Hemisphere. Before humans began warming the planet,

the Arctic's climate system naturally oscillated between

conditions favorable and those unfavorable for invasions of

cold Arctic air.

``What's happening now is that we are changing the climate

system, especially in the Arctic, and that's increasing the

odds for the negative AO conditions that favor cold air

invasions and severe winter weather outbreaks,'' Greene said.

``It's something to think about given our recent history.''

This past winter, an extended cold snap descended on

central and Eastern Europe in mid-January, with temperatures

approaching minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit and snowdrifts

reaching rooftops. And there were the record snowstorms fresh

in the memories of residents from several eastern U.S.

cities, such as Washington, New York and Philadelphia, as

well as many other parts of the Eastern Seaboard during the

previous two years.

Greene and Monger did note that their paper is being

published just after one of the warmest winters in the

eastern U.S. on record.

``It's a great demonstration of the complexities of our

climate system and how they influence our regional weather

patterns,'' Greene said.

In any particular region, many factors can have an

influence, including the El Nino/La Nina cycle. This winter,

La Nina in the Pacific shifted undulations in the jet stream

so that while many parts of the Northern Hemisphere were hit

by the severe winter weather patterns expected during a bout

of negative AO conditions, much of the eastern United States

basked in the warm tropical air that swung north with the jet

stream.

``It turns out that while the eastern U.S. missed out on

the cold and snow this winter, and experienced record-

breaking warmth during March, many other parts of the

Northern Hemisphere were not so fortunate,'' Greene said.

Europe and Alaska experienced record-breaking winter

storms, and the global average temperature during March 2012

was cooler than any other March since 1999.

``A lot of times people say, `Wait a second, which is it

going to be--more snow or more warming?' Well, it depends on

a lot of factors, and I guess this was a really good winter

demonstrating that,'' Greene said. ``What we can expect,

however, is the Arctic wildcard stacking the deck in favor of

more severe winter outbreaks in the future.''

I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the National Flood Insurance Program and the status of the bill that is in the Senate today. This is a bill the Banking Committee has been working on, and we certainly appreciate the chairman and ranking member and all of the members of the Banking Committee for working on this very important piece of legislation.

I will note that when the bill came through the Banking Committee, the chairman and ranking member asked that no amendments be offered and that these be handled on the Senate floor at a later time. Here we are today, and it is time for us to handle those amendments and those changes to this very important piece of legislation. Unfortunately, we hear rumors that in the House and the various negotiations going on with the Transportation bill--as well as the student loan bill--they are trying to include the flood insurance bill with those. I think that is a tragic mistake. I think that endangers the very high chances of those two bills passing the Senate.

In fact, what endangers the passage is the national flood insurance bill needs work. We need to let the Senate work on it. We need to let the Senate be the Senate and offer amendments and debate, and we need to bring this bill to a final vote. But we also need the opportunity, as Senators, to offer amendments to this very important piece of legislation.

I just want to say the fundamental problem--and it is not only me-- many of us have with this very important legislation deals with flood insurance. Insurance is a concept that should be based on risk. Flood insurance has always been based on risk. In fact, if you talk to any private insurance company, that is what they are doing. They manage risk, they assess risk, and they look at risk. They are looking at the chances of something going wrong and some damages occurring, and the third party, the insurance company, pays for those damages and makes people whole.

Well, flood insurance is no different. It has never been any different. For years and years the private sector offered flood insurance. Now I think the Federal Government is the only one offering it in the whole country. There may be a few isolated areas where they do offer it, but I think the private sector has gotten out of the flood insurance business because of the enormous costs when there is a flood. They basically priced themselves out of the market because the premiums don't cover the payouts now. Nonetheless, the risk has always been fundamental to the whole concept of insurance.

This bill changes that. This bill says if someone lives behind a levee or near a dam or some other flood-control structure, then they are going to have a requirement to purchase flood insurance regardless of the risk. If they live behind a levee, near a dam, or some other flood-control structure and they are in the 100-year floodplain, they are going to be required to purchase flood insurance. It is not based on risk. It is a per se mandatory requirement based on location. I am not sure if we can find anything in the insurance world equivalent to this.

Certainly, I think it is bad public policy. There are many reasons it is bad public policy. But the most important reason is we are going to be requiring millions and millions of Americans to purchase flood insurance in areas that will never flood. They will never need it. The reason they will never need it is because they are protected by levees and dams and other flood-control structures. Those structures work.

I will give an example in a minute of the Mississippi River and tributary system. Before I give that example, let me say those structures work. When floods happen, those areas that would otherwise flood don't flood. This bill treats those areas as if there are no levees at all or infrastructure there to protect people.

Senator Durbin has told me the story of an area on the St. Louis side of Illinois--down in the southern area of Illinois, southwest of where they have had flooding. The people locally raised their taxes so they could build levees and design those levees and maintain those levees so that flooding will never happen again. They have done this. They have taken responsibility.

Unfortunately, this bill would say they are going to have to pay twice. They are going to have to pay their taxes to build and maintain those levees, and their people are going to be required to purchase flood insurance. This is flood insurance they will never need or ever use. If they live behind a certified levee--and there are ways for levees to be decertified. If a levee is not safe or up to standards, it should be decertified. But when someone lives behind a certified levee or dam or some other flood structure that will prevent flooding, the Congress should recognize that fact and not require people to purchase flood insurance.

Let me go to this map. Some people may not realize they have levees in their State. This map shows there are levees in basically every State of the Union. For our visual purposes, we did not put Hawaii and Alaska on this map because it would take up so much space. But they have levees as well. Every dark green area shows counties where there are levees. That doesn't mean, obviously, that every single person in that county is protected by that levee, but there are levees in that county. We can see there are levees coast to coast in this country. I don't know if all 50 States have one. There may be one or two that don't, but basically they are everywhere. They are all over the country. These levees work.

Let me talk for a moment about the Corps of Engineers. Everybody here knows I have had occasions where I have criticized the Corps of Engineers when I didn't agree with what they did or when they didn't do something right or they did something I thought was dumb or whatever the case may be. But on this issue, none of us should have any criticism of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers because they know how to do a lot of things, and one of the things they know how to do is how to design, build, and maintain levees.

This map shows they have something called the Mississippi River and tributary system, and that is up and down the Mississippi with some of the tributaries going up and down the Mississippi. The Corps of Engineers, which designs and builds and maintains those MR&T levees-- and this is a very important point--have never failed. They have been around since 1928 with zero failure. Not one time have they failed.

Nonetheless, this legislation that may be included in this package that is coming over from the House is going to require millions and millions of Americans who live behind the safest levees in the world to buy flood insurance for no reason. They are never going to flood. As long as we have the MR&T and as long as the Corps of Engineers is designing and maintaining these, we are going to get a big return on our investment.

In fact, the return on our investment for the MR&T is something like $35 to $1. We get a huge return. For every dollar we put in, we save $35 based on that investment. The MR&T has prevented $478 billion--with a ``b''--worth of property damage in this country. That is $478 billion in savings, and we are going to require all those people to buy flood insurance. The Congress is going to enter into a legal fiction. They are going to pretend as if those levees are not even there. If people are in the 100-mile flood zone, they don't get any benefit from the fact that they live behind this levee system.

Let me say one more thing about the MR&T levee; that is, it not only is the safest in the world, it is the envy of the world. The Corps of Engineers travels around the world, and the world travels to the United States of America to see the levee system and the locks and dams and the other flood-control structures the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has built on our rivers. They are the model that other countries are trying to follow. Why are they the model? Because they work. They design them right, build them right, and maintain them right.

Again, we get $35 to $1. For every $1 we put in, we get a $35 return on that investment. There are over 4.1 million people protected just by the MR&T. That is a small fraction of what the Corps of Engineers does. Again, there are 4.1 million people protected by the MR&T.

Over half the U.S. population lives somewhere near a levee. We don't know exactly how FEMA will administer this law because we don't know exactly what is going to come out of the House, if it does pass. But I can guarantee what is going to happen is very simple. As soon as this takes effect, we are going to have thousands and thousands of people calling us, e-mailing us, and writing us. They will be saying: Why is the Congress making my mortgage payment go up? Because that is how this is going to work. Those lenders and the Federal Government are going to require that people purchase flood insurance.

Again, we don't know the exact numbers because we don't know how this is going to be structured or how it is going to be applied just yet. Our best guesstimate is the average homeowner in this country is going to owe somewhere between $1,000 to $2,000 a year. It is not a one-time deal, but $1,000 to $2,000 a year in flood insurance that they will never need and they will never use. For some people that will be $100 or more a month. Of course, it depends on their house and on a lot of other circumstances, but that is serious money for people especially if we are requiring them to spend that for no good reason at all.

Let me just talk about the Mississippi River and tributary system again for a moment.

Everybody remembers that last year we had the potential of horrendously bad flooding in the midsection of the country. There is no doubt that our levees in Arkansas were stressed. Even the Mississippi River and tributary system levee was stressed last year; there is no question about it. There is a reason for that. In 2011, we saw the flood of record on the Mississippi River. Some people are saying it is actually the 500-year flood. These levees can be built to withstand up to 500-year floods. Some people are saying this was the 500-year flood. That hasn't been certified yet, but certainly there was a huge amount of water flowing through the Mississippi River. It was in every station on the Mississippi from Cairo, IL, to Natchez, MS. They broke the record last year--every single station. And here is the key: Not one levee broke. The biggest flood we have ever had, and not one levee broke.

The Senate bill will say that even though those levees don't break, even though they are the best in the world, even though they can withstand the 500-year flood, we are going to make those people buy flood insurance. I don't think that is right. I don't think that is fair. I think the people should be outraged if we make that requirement on them. That infrastructure last year prevented $110 billion in damages--in one flood, in one spring, $110 billion worth of damages. It protected 10 million acres of land up and down the Mississippi River. So 10 million acres and nearly 1 million structures were spared because of MR&T. We did not lose one life, no flooding where it was not supposed to flood.

My colleagues will remember last year they blew the levee at Birds Point, by design. That is part of the levee system. When the water gets so high and so enormous, we start to get these 500-year levels, they build these safety valves up and down the river. They had to use one last year. They blew the levee at Birds Point in Missouri. It worked exactly as it was supposed to work. I know the farmers up there weren't real happy, but they understood the risks of where they live and how that works. That has been the deal up there for a long time. They blew that levee. The water spilled into there. It took pressure off the river and off the levees. That is what happened, and it works.

Let me show my colleagues this chart. This is sort of an artist's rendering, if you will, of the levee. There is a lot of science and engineering that goes into these levees. The flood of 1927 is so famous because it did change everything in this country. For the first time ever, the Federal Government took responsibility for levees up and down the Mississippi River and took it in a national way and created a national system.

By the way, there is a great book by John Barry called ``Rising Tide.'' If my colleagues haven't read it, it is worth reading. It is a good book about the flooding of 1927. That is the flood everybody talks about because back then we had a very inadequate levee system. There were floods all up and down the whole Mississippi River Valley, the whole watershed. I think it started raining that year on Christmas Eve of 1926, or somewhere in there, and it basically rained every day through Easter. It rained and rained and rained and rained through that area, and we didn't have the flood control to protect it. We had some levees, but they weren't scientifically done and they weren't engineered properly. They weren't big enough or strong enough. After that flood, the U.S. Government took over. So the levee system on the MR&T goes back to 1928, the year after this 1927 flood.

Anyway, the way a levee works is they design most levees--kind of the standard design--for a 100-year flood. That means there is a 1-percent chance every year that we are going to get to a certain level. Once every 100 years, that is what it is going to do, a 1-percent chance. We can see the way the MR&T is built, that isn't the half of it, because they actually built beyond the 500-year flood. In 1937, we saw a much bigger flood than the 1927 flood, but guess what. The levee system worked. They had it built and completed and it worked. It did great.

Levees are very important. We may not think they are very exciting, we may not think they make a lot of headlines, but they work. We can see an example right here. Here is a rural area, a farmland area, protected by a levee, right there. We see a lot of water down here, but there is no water over here, and that is exactly the way they are supposed to work, and they do work.

The point is the Senate bill would say even though we have this levee, these people living over here are going to have to buy flood insurance. It is not going to flood. It is never going to flood there. We have it protected. But they are going to have to buy flood insurance. It is generally unfair and it is not right and we should not do that to our people.

Let me say a few other words here before I move on. This map right here I think says a lot. This is the one I

started with. We really do have levees everywhere, all around the country. There are 881 counties that have levees. Those counties contain more than 50 percent of the population of the United States. So, again, this legislation that is now trying to be attached to whatever vehicle is coming back through is going to adversely affect about half of the U.S. population in one way or the other.

Also, if someone lives in an area that has levees, they can forget about economic development--just forget about it. Once they start doing this and saying everybody has to have flood insurance living in this flood plain--even though it is not going to flood, we are still going to require that--forget about economic development. It is going to be extremely difficult for people to stay there and to have insurance in those areas.

This bill that came out of the Banking Committee I think is a good bill. I think we need to do it. We need to pass it. I am not trying to slow it down at all. In fact, I started this week thinking that we would have a chance to vote on the bill this week, that we would have a chance to debate the bill and offer amendments to the bill. I understand now there are some nongermane, nonrelevant amendments to the legislation. I think that is unfortunate. Hopefully, we can work through that. But I have an amendment that is very germane. In fact, at one point we had to change the language because the Senator from Alabama wanted to do a substitute, so we have changed our language. We still think we have anywhere from 13 to 15 cosponsors on my amendment. Senator Hoeven and many others have joined me--again, about 13 to 15 Senators. In addition, after checking with Senate offices, we have about 50 votes that we know of. I am counting 51. We have about 20 offices that are looking at it that may be leaning toward voting for it, but they haven't committed to saying yes.

I think it is very likely, if we allow the Senate to be the Senate, we will take care of the problem in this Banking Committee bill. I think we can do that. I think we can have that vote. I think the Pryor- Hoeven amendment carries the day. I don't know that. We don't know until we debate and get in here and have a vote and see how it goes. I think right now what we need to do is let the Senate be the Senate and let the Senate debate, let the Senate argue. We fuss with each other sometimes, I know that, but let's have a vote on this amendment. I think there are well over 50 votes in this Chamber right now to take these provisions--it is section 107--out of this legislation and leave in a couple of studies. We think it is fine to have studies. We think we should study this. That is good. Again, we are not trying to slow this down. We are not trying to bury our head in the sand saying we don't think there is any risk at all. So let's study it, let's look at it, and let's see what makes sense.

I will tell my colleagues what doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to ignore the best levee system in the world.

Let me also say this: There are several levees around the country that are not done by the Corps of Engineers. They don't have the kind of resources and expertise the Corps brings to building levees and flood control. We need to acknowledge that. There are levees in this country that should be decertified; they don't meet the standards; they maybe weren't built correctly and/or they haven't been maintained correctly. We have to maintain these levees carefully. We have to trim the vegetation. We have to be watching for things such as sand boils and structural defects. We need to go in and make adjustments from time to time. It is the reality of operating a system of levees. Honestly, there are places around the country where that hasn't been done. Those levees should not be certified unless they are repaired and brought up to standards. And the people behind those levees don't have real flood protection, so maybe they should pay for insurance. I am not opposed to that. I think they probably should. I think that is what these studies will help us sort out: How do we draw that line? How do we make that decision? Why don't we take a little time to study this and try to make sure we get this policy right so we are not charging the people for insurance they will never need?

Let me also say we do have several others here in the Senate who are for this. They have been very supportive from the very beginning. I have several colleagues I wish to thank publicly. I think some do want to come over and talk about this development today, where we may not get a chance to vote on the amendment. Pretty much everybody, almost without exception, maybe one or two exceptions, but almost without exception, pretty much everybody who was with the original amendment is going to stick with this amendment, even though it is structured a little differently because it amends the substitute and it also leaves in these two studies, but that is fine. We have never had a problem with the two studies. Again, if we adopt the Senate bill, the Senate proposal, if it comes over from the House without us having a chance to even offer our amendment, I think we are negating a very wise investment we have made around the country in the levees that the Corps of Engineers has built for us.

It is not logical that we would not consider the actual risks involved and where people live. It is not logical that we would pretend these levees aren't even there. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense in any way, shape, or form, and that is what we are being denied today as Senators. We should have a chance to look at this legislation, open it and read it, to pick at it, to find things we don't agree with, ask questions about it. Certainly I have gone through here. My colleagues can see that I have highlighted this bill and I have written on it and made notes in the margin and have questions about it. I am trying to do what Senators should do. We should work on legislation, be very constructive, if we have problems with it, try to get it amended, try to convince our colleagues that our arguments should carry the day and that we should prevail and that we should amend legislation.

We all recognize the Banking Committee has worked very hard on this issue. We appreciate the chairman and the ranking member for their hard work and the hard work of all their staff. They have been great. But since the bill did not get amended in the committee, it ought to at least have a chance to be amended on the Senate floor, especially when there is at least one amendment where it looks as though well over 50 Senators support that amendment. It would be an injustice if this provision was not included in what is coming over from the House. As I said before, it also endangers the passage of the surface transportation bill as well as the student loan provisions that are very popular with people. I think we have plenty of votes to pass both of those, but if the cost of that means--if the tradeoff for that means we are going to be charging people for flood insurance they don't need--it is mandatory now. This is not an option. It is mandatory. They have to buy flood insurance. I do not think that is a tradeoff we should make.

Also, I was talking to someone earlier, and they said: We need student loans. I agree with that. I am all for lowering the rate of student loans. But I can guarantee it is going to be less money out of pocket for people on the student loans than it is to be buying this flood insurance every year--no doubt about that--because this stuff is very expensive and the difference in the student loans is not going to be $1,000 or $2,000 a year. The difference in student loans is maybe going to be a few hundred dollars a year. It is significant and it helps and we want people to go to college--and I am all for that--but this is the pocketbook issue: the fact that we are going to be requiring people to purchase insurance they do not need.

So what my amendment does is remove the mandatory language in section 107. It basically says people are not going to be required to purchase flood insurance just merely because they live behind a levee or near a dam or some other flood control structure.

As I said, right now the way the banking bill is drafted, it is a per se requirement based on location, not based on risk. It is based on location.

Let me also say something about the Senator from Alabama. He reached an agreement with one of the Senators from Mississippi, and I appreciate that. That amendment does make the bill a little better--it does--because the way the bill was originally structured, it

did not matter if someone lived in a 100-year floodplain or a 500-year floodplain, it did not matter; they were going to buy that insurance.

What Senator Cochran of Mississippi was able to work out was to at least restrict it to a 100-year floodplain. That is good. It is an improvement. But the fundamental principle still applies: We are requiring people to purchase insurance they are never going to need because they are protected by the levees.

With that, I know we have some other Members who want to come over and speak. I think what I will do right now is yield the floor and await my colleagues to come over.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

First, let me thank my colleague and friend from Illinois for his comments and his insights. He is fighting hard for his people in Illinois. We have similar stories in our State, and my guess is that virtually every

Senator who is a Member of this body has a similar story where the people in these areas with levees are taxing themselves. They are taking on the responsibility to protect their property and their communities from floods.

There is no doubt at all that these folks who live behind levees are in a better position than folks who are not behind levees, and the Flood Insurance Program should recognize that fact. In listening to Senator Durbin a few moments ago, I had a thought, and that is, if we are going to do this, if we are going to select the people in these darker areas on this map and we are going to say: Hey, just because you live in an area that has a levee, you are going to have to pay more, is not fair.

I would prefer that we just make everybody pay. Why don't we make every mortgage owner in the country pay for this? Why don't we just say: Look, if you have a mortgage, you are going to have to pay $5 a month, or whatever the number is, just to help subsidize everybody else.

That is a fairer way to do it. Why are we singling out people who live behind levees and dams and have other flood-control infrastructure there? It makes no sense. In fact, those people are more protected than other people.

I know that in the Banking Committee the Presiding Officer had an amendment he was interested in that dealt with the people who have existing mortgages. In effect, when you sign a mortgage, it is maybe a 30-year contract, 15-year contract--however long your mortgage is--and pretty much what you bargain for is what you bargain for. And it changes the equation right now if suddenly, because you live in a certain area, you are going to have to now pay an additional $100, $200 a month for flood insurance. That totally changes the equation for people. We shouldn't do that.

I know the Senator from Oregon offered or talked about an amendment in the committee to say that these new laws, these new regs should not apply to folks with existing mortgages because it is not what they bargained for. I think there is value in that. I think we ought to talk about that. But there again, if some of these folks get their way around here, we are not going to have a chance to have that discussion and offer that amendment.

But the Pryor amendment actually covers that situation the Senator from Oregon has been concerned about because what we do is we say: Do these studies. There are two studies that we include. They are also in section 107 of the bill. Do those two studies. Give this some time. And let's analyze it and look at it and figure out the best way forward. But in the meantime, we are not going to charge people with existing mortgages or people who are trying to get mortgages today--we are not going to charge them unfairly, we are not going to single them out merely because they happen to live in a place that has a levee or a dam or some other flood-control structure.

I know we have others who are coming over soon to discuss this. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, let me thank all my colleagues who have come here today to talk about this issue. It turns out we have had two Democrats and two Republicans. We may have more on the way. I know of at least one or two others who may be on the way.

I would like to say thank you to them for their assistance here, but also, more importantly, I thank them for doing a great job representing their States well. When you look at their States and the number of levees they have in their States, the number of people who will be adversely impacted by this, this is a very significant piece of legislation. It deserves debate.

I do not like the fact that somewhere in this building, behind closed doors, people are trying to negotiate this legislation into a larger package. We should let the Senate be the Senate. We should bring the National Flood Insurance Program bill to the floor by regular order, we should debate it, we should offer amendments, and we should vote on those amendments and vote on final passage. We should not have any funny business. This is an important piece of legislation, but right now the funny business with this legislation is not the fact that there may be an extraneous amendment or two that are totally unrelated to the subject matter; the funny business right now is that they are trying to jam this down the throats of other Senators, especially when they know that there is an amendment that is relevant, that is germane, that is in order, and that amendment would probably get well over 50 votes. They are thwarting the will of the Senate if they include this in the legislation.

I implore my colleagues who are involved in this conference effort to try to bring the surface transportation bill, which I support, and try to bring the student loan bill, which I support--try to bring those bills to the floor. I implore them to not include the offending language of section 107. If they do, I want to state my intention to object to that language when it comes here to the Senate. That is not a very pleasant prospect because that means the House may have to stay longer, and the Senate may have to stay longer. This is completely avoidable.

I think if we have a mechanism in place where we can either take this legislation, the flood insurance legislation, up tomorrow and dispense with it--and pass it, I hope; amend it and pass it, I hope--and/or if we could file cloture if there are problems with extraneous amendments--we could file cloture more or less, say, tomorrow, and then after the Fourth of July recess where we will be back home in our home States, we could take it up the first day or two when we get back.

There are ways to do this. We have to remember that this legislation--excuse me--this law does not expire until the end of July. We have 2 or 3 extra weeks here. It is not going to expire this weekend. We have another month that we can do this, and sometimes things in the Congress take time, we understand that. I would rather do it sooner rather than later. I would rather get it all done tomorrow. But I do not want this included in some larger package where we do not have a chance to offer the Pryor-Hoeven amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the remarks by the Senator from Florida the Senator from Wyoming be recognized, and then I be recognized after the Senator from Wyoming for up to 35 minutes.

Mr. President, I have to say that I enjoy these second opinions when they come from such a well-known doctor who knows what he is talking about. Quite often we in this body are forced to kind of assume we are experts in every area. It is nice to have a few who really are. I think I don't say it very often, but I actually learn something when I hear him talk.

Anyway, that is not why I am here today. I hope to help provide some sense and balance and accuracy which is clearly lacking in the mainstream media trying to drum up support for the global warming hysteria again.

I have to say it is like we are back to the good-old days. We talked about this for 10 years. There are different people coming up with legislation, the cap-and-trade legislation. They found out, of course, that the American people realized it was a gigantic tax and there were no benefits, so it kind of went by the wayside. But there is a new thing happening, and it was interesting because just last Friday one of the Obama appointees to the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Association said to the Associated Press:

The wildfires and hot temperatures over the past few weeks

will likely convince Americans that global warming is real.

In other words, they are now trying to tie them together. They have never tried to do this before because that is one of the few things that all experts agree on: that one isolated case doesn't make a case for major changes in the weather. This is kind of a dangerous game to play because what are they going to say when winter comes and it is going to get cold? As soon as it gets cold I can tell you what they are going to say. They are not going to use global warming; they are going to use climate change.

As the season changes, the terminology changes, and they will start saying just because the temperatures are freezing doesn't mean the planet is not overheating--if you follow through the double negatives.

My good friend from Rhode Island commented on the famous igloo. This was pretty prominent two summers ago. Let me tell you the story of where we got to the igloo. As most people know, because I brag about it all the time, I have 20 kids and grandkids.

This happens to be one family. You cannot see them as well. It is six of the most beautiful people we have ever seen. It happens to be my daughter and her husband and their family of four kids.

Anyway this would have been in February 2010. Some of us remember how cold it was during that time. It happens that one of my kids--the only one who is adopted is a little girl, an orphan from Ethiopia, whom we found and nursed back to health. My daughter Molly, who had nothing but boys, adopted this little girl.

Put her picture up there. She is a pretty little girl. She has become kind of a hero.

Every February I sponsor something called the African dinner where about 400 of our friends from Africa come over, and we are establishing close, intimate relations with them. It happens that 12 years ago, we found the little girl who is pictured on the poster. She is now a 12- year-old little girl. She reads at college level. She is smart and she is the main speaker every time we have this dinner.

In February 2010, little Zegita Marie was up here and she brought her whole

family and made her speech. It was a beautiful thing. Afterwards, as they were getting ready to take the plane back home, the blizzards came, and all of the airports in the area shut down. There was no way they could get back. So what do you do with a family of six when you are snowbound and there is nothing but snow and ice on the ground? You make an igloo. So they did.

That is a real igloo. It sleeps four people. I know that; I was in it. It was right by the Library of Congress. The sign on the top said: Al Gore's new home. Actually, I think it may have said: Honk if you want global warming--or something like that. Anyway, everyone was having a good time.

Some of my liberal friends were so upset. One of them was Keith Olbermann. Keith Olbermann, who was with MSNBC, designated my daughter Molly's family of six as the worst family in America. Now, there is her husband who is very prominent in Fayetteville, AR. My daughter Molly is a professor at the university. She was designated as Outstanding Professor of the Year this year. She will be marching out during the homecoming on November 3 to accept that award. It is quite an outstanding family, and the kids are all straight-A students and all of that wonderful stuff.

So that is the famous igloo. It has been a long time since we had a chance to talk about it. There we have Molly, James, Jase, Luke, Jonah, and Marie enjoying that. Believe it or not, that is the worst family in America.

Well, just after the igloo story broke, a reporter by the name of Dana Milbank warned the alarmists. Keep in mind the terminology we use. Those people who think the world is coming to an end because catastrophic global warming is coming is all due to manmade gases, so we need to shut down America. Those are the alarmists.

The skeptics are people like me, those who look at it and say science has been stripped out by the United Nations for an ulterior motive. Dana Milbank has been very much on the other side of the issue and warned the alarmists to stop using weather to justify global warming because then what do they do when the weather doesn't cooperate with their predictions of the melting planet.

He wrote:

In Washington's blizzards, the greens were hoist by their

own petard.

He said:

If the Washington snows persuade the greens to put away the

slides of polar bears and pine beetles and to keep the focus

on national security and jobs, it will have been worth the

shoveling.

But not everyone got that memo. In July 2010, the hot summer that followed the intense blizzards when my family put up the igloo, Jon Karl of ABC News asked me to do an interview outside in the heat. It was obviously an ambush. People who know me well know I enjoy ambushes, so I went out there in the heat. They got ready with the cameras rolling, and they had a pan with an egg on it. They were going to fry it, but it didn't fry. Nice try, but it didn't work.

I am sure some here may have noticed that somebody else tried this last weekend. Last weekend I happened to be in the Farnborough Airshow, which I go to every year. While I was at the airshow, I got a call from home telling me that they have kind of resurrected the igloo, and they were talking about that. They were planning a great big event on The Mall, and in the event they were going to take the thing, called ``Hoax''--let me go back to 2003.

In 2003 when I realized and I started hearing from a lot of the real scientists that it was a hoax, I made the comment that the notion of catastrophic global warming is due to manmade anthropogenic CO2 and manmade gases. It is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. So that is where ``Hoax'' came from.

So they had a great big thing made of ice. Apparently, it was the size of a car. It said ``Hoax'' with a question mark. They were going to put it out there and it was going to melt and they were going to make a big issue out of it.

The problem is nobody showed. So what did they do? They felt they couldn't do this if there were no cameras, so they called it off. They used the excuse that there had been a storm, and they thought this might be offensive to people who lost electricity in the storm. Anyway, that thing went under too.

So in addition to the recent activity from my alarmist friends, the hot weather has also brought some of my favorite global warming reporters out of hiding, and they have been all too eager to link today's weather events to manmade greenhouse gases. Of course, many of the most outspoken global warming alarmists and scientists have been happy to play along. The important point is that no one, not even the most committed alarmist, can claim that any percentage of the warm weather is due to manmade greenhouse gases. I will go into more detail in just a minute.

This is an inconvenient truth that global warming reporters have kept out of their headlines, and in some cases their stories as well.

Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press is a good guy. He is on the other side of this issue, but he is one of these guys I still like. He is one of the most prominent global warming reporters. He came out last week with another scary headline proclaiming: ``This US summer is what global warming looks like.''

Some quotes and stories appeared in Reuters, The Hill, and Politico. Yesterday morning Time magazine ran a piece by Bryan Walsh with the headline, ``Now Do You Believe in Global Warming?'' I was happy to see that Mr. Walsh began his article in Time magazine with a picture of my family in their igloo. He concluded his piece with:

We're living in an igloo in the summertime, and the ice

melting all around us.

It is kind of interesting that they try to talk about global warming, but all of a sudden they changed it to cooling.

This was in the New York Times. They said:

This summer has been conspicuously different in New York

City, not one 99-degree day in Central Park. Not a single day

that the temperature even approached 90. For just the second

time in 140 years of record keeping, the temperatures failed

to reach 90 in either June or July.

The daily average last month was at or below normal every

day but two. The temperature broke 80 on 16 days in New York.

So it goes on to say that the problem they are having is it is unusually cool. But that didn't inure to the benefit of the alarmists, so that wasn't used.

So it is time to take a trip down Memory Lane. Don't forget that Time is the same publication that told us in 1974 that we should be very concerned about the coming ice age.

There it is. Every magazine had it. Newsweek had the same thing. All the other magazines said another ice age is coming, and we are all going to die.

Since there is time to do this, I will mention one thing which is not in my notes. Think about how many times this has happened. Let's look at the last 100 years. We will start with 1895. From 1895 to 1925, we went through a 30-year period that was a cooling period. Everyone back then was saying another ice age is coming, and we are all going to die.

From 1925 to 1945, for that 20-year period, we went through a warming period. That is when they coined the phrase ``global warming.'' That was way back in the 1930s. From 1945 to 1975 we went into a cooling period. Again, we talked about how an ice age is coming. After that, we went into a warming period that went up to the turn of the century. Now it is actually going down into a cooling period again, but that was actually a chart.

I guess what I am saying is every 20 or 30 years, we go through this. We go through the same hysteria, and everyone goes crazy and says the world is coming to an end. The interesting thing about this is that the time in world history when we had the greatest surge of CO2 was right after World War II. That was in 1945, and that precipitated not a warming period with all of that CO2, but a cooling period that endured for 30 years. Those were the headlines in the paper.

Now 30 years later, during the height of the global warming movement, they changed their tune. The image that is sealed in everyone's mind is the Time magazine cover, which we have: ``Be Worried, Be Very Worried.'' There is the last polar bear standing on the last cube of ice. Everything is melting, and we are all going to die. Again, that is Time magazine.

If I were on the board of directors of Time magazine, I would probably do

the same thing. It is a competitive business, and they have to sell magazines. The truth is when we ask the alarmists directly, they will specifically link the recent weather events to human activity. How do we know this? We recently came across a reported conference held by a group called Climate Communication. This is a very liberal group. As their Web site confirmed, this call was held to spoonfeed talking points to reporters on how to link the heat over the past few weeks to manmade global warming.

To his credit, AP reporter Seth Borenstein asked the most important question of the call. He asked: What percentage of the recent warm weather can be attributed to manmade gases? I want to be completely accurate, so I would like to quote in full Borenstein's question as well as the answers he got from Dr. Michael Oppenheimer and Dr. Steven Running, two of the foremost global warming alarmist scientists. This is what Seth Borenstein said:

Let me try to put you more on the spot, Mike and Steve: I

know there's attribution--you haven't done attribution

studies, but if you ballparked it right now and had to put a

percentage number on this, on the percent that the heat wave,

the percentage of blame you can put on anthropogenic climate

change, on this current heat wave, and on the fires, what

percentage would the two of you use?

Dr. Oppenheimer, who is a scientist, said:

Come on, I'm not going to answer that. Yes, I will answer

it, and my answer is: I won't do it. You know, we have to do

things carefully, because if you don't, we are going to end

up with bogus information out there. People will start

disbelieving because you'll be more wrong, more often. This

is not the kind of thing I want to do off the top of my head.

Nor do I think it can be done, you know, convincingly without

really taking--doing careful analysis, so I'll pass on this

one and see if Steve has a different view.

Well, Dr. Steve Running said:

Well, I already got way too hypothetical on my last answer.

Yeah, it's . . . probably really dangerous for us to just lob

out a number.

Well, this goes on and on and on. I have all of this down. It is actually all in the record at this point, so it is redundant. He keeps trying to get them to say there is a percentage of chance that this warm weather is due to global warming.

Now, we have to stop for a minute because we have seen that Seth Borenstein was asking the inconvenient question. One of the moderators tried to step in and tell the AP reporter that his question was a bad one.

Let me quote that one again, Susan Hossel, moderator for the event, said:

Seth, most of the scientists I talk to say it is a

contributing factor and that's what we can say and that it's

really not even really a well-posed question to ask for a

percentage, because it just--what you're asking really is for

a model to determine the chances of this happening without

climate change or with climate change and models are not very

good.

So we see how he responded. He said:

I understand, I've been covering this for 20 years, I

understand. I don't need a lecture, thank you very much. What

I'm asking for is--

And he went on. Obviously, he was never able to get it.

Here is the irony: Their Web site specifically explains that the purpose of the call is to give reporters a link relating hot weather to human-caused global warming.

It states:

Climate Communication hosted a press conference featuring

experts discussing the connections between extreme heat and

climate change.

But when pressed, they couldn't make the link. Again, Borenstein asked a great question, a question that badly needed to be asked. Unfortunately, none of the information appeared in his article for the AP. Without that link, Borenstein was forced to make his article about what global warming could look like in the future. But in doing so, he left out any mention of uncertainty expressed by the scientist.

Borenstein quoted Chris Field, a leading author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That is the United Nations that started this whole thing, and they are the ones who were stacking the scientists. He is one of the individuals. According to Field, this report warns of ``unprecedented extreme weather events'' due to global warming. But, as usual, Borenstein failed to mention that even the IPCC, which normally heightens the fear factor as much as possible, admitted in that same March report that there is significant uncertainty regarding linking extreme weather events to human causes.

Also missing from the article was the mention of Borenstein's interview from climatologist Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Fortunately, she was good enough to post her answers on her blog since he didn't use it. Curry explained:

We saw these kinds of heat waves in the 1930's, and those

were definitely not caused by greenhouse gases. Weather

variability changes on multidecadal time scales, associated

with large ocean oscillations. I don't think that what we are

seeing this summer is outside the range of natural

variability for the past century. In terms of heat waves,

particularly in cities, urbanization can also contribute to

the warming.

There was another interesting part of the conference call that I think is worth mentioning. When ABC News reporter Bill Blakemore asked about the effect of La Nina and El Nino on today's hot weather, Dr. Oppenheimer was again uncomfortable about this question and said it was ``off message.'' Yet NOAA--that is, the N-O-A-A--came out yesterday with a different opinion. Andrew Revkin of the New York Times explained on his blog:

In a briefing and several postings today, the National

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reviewed the most

notable climate and weather events of 2011. Many of these

events--from an extreme East African drought to Australian

deluges--were significantly driven by a ``double-dip La

Nina'' cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean, agency

scientists said.

In other words, it is La Nina and El Nino that made the difference.

In yesterday's Tulsa World, there was an opinion piece that directly addressed this El Nino and La Nina debate and how it affects Oklahoma specifically; that is, my State of Oklahoma. The editorial mentions an interview in April of 2008 with Tulsa National Weather Service meteorologist Nicole McGavock regarding Oklahoma's record rainfall that month. McGavock said:

Don't go blaming global warming, but rather blame El Nino's

counterpart, La Nina. La Nina happens when the weather is

cooler near the equator along the Pacific Ocean.

It has nothing to do with global warming.

That same opinion piece mentioned another article published in December of 2011 which was about Oklahoma's drought-filled summer of 2011. In it, associate State climatologist Gary McManus said:

Did this hot summer happen due to global warming? [No.] I

think when we study this summer, we will find that we would

have had the warmest summer regardless of global warming.

With all this in mind, it is no wonder that when Time magazine asks the question, ``Now do you believe in global warming?'' the answer is resounding: The American people are no longer buying it. As the Washington Post recently reported, global warming is no longer an issue of concern for Americans, and one of the reasons is that the public doesn't trust those who try to use hot weather as proof of global warming. The public has clearly grown weary of the alarmists' fear campaigns. After all, they have been going on for 12 years.

Just how bad have things gotten for the global warming movement? Well, one indication is that no one is even talking about global warming except for myself and Representative Markey over in the House. As a Politico article said yesterday, Representative Markey accused Republicans of being silent on the threat of global warming and called for Republicans to hold hearings.

While Representative Markey is quick to accuse Republicans of silence, he says nothing about the silence we are hearing from the Democrats here in the Senate. We haven't heard anybody. I haven't heard the term ``global warming'' coming from any Senator. When was the last time anyone heard President Obama or the Democrats mention global warming? In fact, their campaign has failed so miserably that President Obama, running for reelection, is pretending to support oil and gas to gain votes.

The irony is that the President, who came into office promising to slow the rise of the oceans and all that, has presided over the complete collapse of the global warming movement. Since

President Obama took office nearly 4 years ago, not one global warming cap-and-trade bill has been debated on the Senate floor. In fact, if anything, they are regressing in support for their pet issue. Last year 64 Senators went on record as wanting to rein in the Obama EPA's global warming regulations.

We have said several times that there have been numerous bills introduced ever since the Kyoto Treaty was never submitted for ratification. That was back in the early 1990s. Ever since that time, there have been numerous bills that would be cap-and-trade bills and they have gone down. Each time, they go down by a greater percentage than the one before did. In fact, if anything, they are regressing in their support.

So the far-left environmental community has clearly been instructed to keep quiet, although sometimes they can't help themselves and they get into trouble, like 350.org that I referred to. They are no doubt assured that if President Obama is reelected, he will do everything he can to achieve his global warming agenda through regulations because the American people have rejected legislation. That is what has happened. Actually, the cost of it, which is not controversial--it is because people recognize and nobody has actually refuted the fact that if it were to pass either by legislation or by regulation, it would cost the American people between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. So people now realize that and know we can't afford to do something that really is not going to accomplish anything.

Anyway, the Obama administration is already doing--we have identified right now some $68 billion that he has, through regulations, been able to have on all of his climate agenda. So it has already been very expensive. Nobody is really aware of it, but nonetheless that is what is happening. He just doesn't want the American people to know it. How can he convince them that so much economic pain is necessary now that the global warming movement has completely lost its trust in the public? That would stop some of the usual suspects from continuing to try to drum up global warming hysteria, but we wouldn't count on Al Gore coming out of hiding to help or President Obama saying anything to back him up--at least not now, before the election.

Just the other day, George Mason University, I believe it was, did a polling of all of the 480 TV meteorologists. Only 19 percent of them said we are having global warming due to manmade gases. Now, that is a major change from before. So the trendline is going back the other way. The polling has definitely gone the other way.

Back to last weekend's failed effort to blame hot weather on global warming, I would like to mention three things on which scientists agree.

First of all, we can't blame global warming on one event. Let me share with my colleagues what Roger Pelke, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, said:

Over the long term, there is no evidence that disasters are

getting worse because of climate change.

Judith Curry, whom I already mentioned, is a well-established scientist. She said:

I have been completely unconvinced by any of the arguments

. . . that attributes a single extreme weather event, a

cluster of extreme weather events, or statistics of extreme

weather events to anthropogenic forcing.

Myles Allen, the head of the Climate Dynamics Group at the University of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department, said:

When Al Gore said . . . that scientists now have clear

proof that climate change is directly responsible for the

extreme and devastating floods, storms, and droughts . . . my

heart sank.

I was on ``The Rachel Maddow Show.'' She doesn't have Republicans on very often. She is one of my favorite liberals, and I enjoy being on. I found out then that Bill Nye, her science guy, actually is one--one of the things he states is, don't fall into the trap of trying to say that because somebody is at some place that is very, very hot, that somehow that supports global warming. In fact, Dana Milbank, a Washington Post columnist who is a major Maddow contributor, said:

When climate activists make the dubious claim, as a

Canadian environmental group did, that global warming is to

blame for the lack of snow at the Winter Olympics in

Vancouver, then they invite similarly specious conclusions

about Washington's snow . . . Argument-by-anecdote isn't

working.

That was Dana Milbank, who is really on the other side of this issue.

So I mentioned that there are three things. One is a fact that is incontrovertible, that people agree on, which is that one or two events aren't going to reflect climate change or global warming.

The second thing is the cost. Years ago when the Kyoto Treaty was up, I wasn't sure which way to go. I assumed the scientists were all together on this, only to find out they weren't.

One thing we did find out when we got a report from several universities, including MIT, was that the cost of this, if we were to pass any of the bills, would have been between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. What I always do when I hear about billions and trillions of dollars is I try to, if I can, find out how that affects my family and the State of Oklahoma.

Back when we had the largest tax increase in 1993 called the Clinton- Gore tax increase, they increased marginal rates, the death tax, capital gains tax and all of that, and it was at that time the largest tax increase in three decades. We were all pretty outraged about it. Yet that was a $32 billion tax increase. Here we are talking about a $300 billion to $400 billion tax increase.

The last thing I would say is that if we have a tax increase like this, what do we get for it?

I sometimes appreciate--in fact, I always appreciate the Administrator of the EPA, Lisa Jackson. She is an appointee of President Obama. I asked her this question on live TV in one of our committee hearings: If you guys are going to do this by regulation or if you are going to have cap and trade and punish the American people with all of the cost of this and everything else, if they are successful, if that happened, would this reduce the CO2 worldwide? Her answer: No, it wouldn't. Because this isn't where the problem is. The problem is in China and Mexico and India. One could carry that argument on out further and conclude that if we have that kind of a regulation in this country and drive our manufacturing base overseas, they would go to places such as China and India where there are no emissions restrictions, so it would have the effect of actually increased CO2.

Anyway, I appreciate very much Time magazine coming out and bringing up the igloo again. It is a thing of beauty, and it is very meaningful to me, and I think it told a story that a lot of people needed to hear, and they have heard it now.

I yield the floor.