Child Tax Credit Integrity Preservation Act of 2011

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I am pleased and proud to follow Senator Harkin, one of the chief authors of the FDA bill, and to thank him and Senator Enzi for this truly bipartisan, monumental work on a measure that is essential to the future of the health of our Nation as well as our economic security.

This bill is a big one. It is a big bill with complex provisions and an essential purpose: to safeguard the public, to protect patients, and encourage innovation and invention, which are so important to treating and curing diseases in this country as well as other problems. This measure is revolutionary in many ways. It contains complex new provisions with bipartisan support. Truly, the bipartisanship in support of this bill makes it noteworthy as well.

I am pleased to say it includes the GAIN Act, which I helped to author and champion with my colleague, Senator Corker, and 15 other Senators who have joined in this effort to incentivize the development of new antibiotics, to treat, stop, and conquer the superbugs, as they are known, germs that are resistant to antibiotics that now exist. To provide more drug security, the supply chain needs greater safeguards. I have worked with Senators Burr, Bennet, Harkin, Grassley, and Whitehouse on this measure. I am proud to say it is in here. The bill includes provisions on treatment and research on pediatric diseases and conditions that is the work of Senators Reed, Alexander, and Murray. I have been very proud to add to their efforts. Of course, it includes the work on medical device innovation and safety, which I have done with Senator Grassley and Senator Kohl.

This measure, in a way, epitomizes the approach we should take to FDA regulation, which is to enable devices to reach the market more quickly, to make sure they are safe but available more promptly, to guarantee surveillance and oversight after they reach the market, and reporting by industry so we enlist industry as a partner and make the FDA an ally, not an adversary, with industry in innovation and patient care.

Nowhere is this approach more necessary than in addressing the drug shortage problem in this country. It is a problem, it is a crisis, it is an outrage. The United States should be embarrassed and outraged that the greatest country in the history of the world, the strongest on the planet, having developed lifesaving medicines and devoted extraordinary research and development to make those medicines available to the people of this country, still has shortages, crisis shortages in those very pharmaceutical drugs.

That crisis is inexcusable and unacceptable. The bill takes a step in the direction of addressing and solving this crisis. It is a first step. I leave no doubt, as I stand here, that I will continue to work on this problem, to advocate other steps--some that I will suggest today and others that will be forthcoming in measures I will propose later.

I first became aware of the drug shortage problem through contacts with people from Connecticut, patients who suffer as a result of these drug shortages and doctors who are hugely concerned about the choices they have to make and the dilemmas they face every day in their practices, and hospitals that engage in what they call triage, trying to find drugs to substitute for the ones that are in shortage so they can care for patients who are literally dealing with life-and-death situations.

We are not talking about just one or a couple of drugs. Methotrexate was recently the subject of a New York Times front-page article. It provides cancer treatment, but there are other cancer-treating drugs that are also in short supply, essential for both prolonging life and giving life to patients who otherwise would lose it more quickly. We are talking about Mitomycin, about Doxil, about Cytaraline. In other areas of treatment we are talking about epinephrine, which is important for allergy treatment, zinc injections, which are necessary for nutrition deficiencies, Propoful, a workhorse medicine commonly used in emergency rooms across the country when people arrive in need of anesthesia. For these drugs and hundreds of others, literally hundreds of others, to be in shortage is unacceptable and inexcusable.

What illustrates this problem perhaps most dramatically are the faces and voices of the people in Connecticut and in every State around the country who suffer because of these drug shortages. They are your neighbors, your friends--my colleagues' constituents. They are coping with pain, anxiety, sadness, grief, anger--and there are drugs available to them that would provide relief and remedies. Their docs cannot get them because they are in shortage.

We are talking about people of great courage and fortitude, such as Susan Block. She is just illustrative. I have her picture here. My office helped her to get a drug called Doxil to treat her cancer because halfway through her chemotherapy treatments for ovarian cancer she arrived at the hospital one day to learn from her doctor that Doxil would no longer be available. She called my office in a panic upon learning that information. Ovarian cancer causes more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system and Susan was unwilling to settle for half a treatment. She was right, and her doctor supported her and my office supported her in securing an emergency delivery of Doxil for Susan, allowing her to complete treatment.

She has allowed me, graciously, to share this photo with you today.

I am pleased we have been able to help constituents in Connecticut again and again to secure these medicines when they have been in shortage, working with manufacturers as well as hospitals in that effort. But it should not have happened at all.

Not everyone has been this lucky. Stephen Hine of Bethel wrote to my office after he lost his wife Ann. She died of terminal ovarian cancer. Ann was also on Doxil. While the drug was not going to save her life-- these drugs do not always save lives--it could have prolonged her life expectancy. But she could not get Doxil in time and she lost her battle with cancer. Stephen, her husband, understood that the drug would not have cured her but it would have helped her live longer to spend more time with her family, her daughter, who was going to graduate that spring. It would have meant so much for Ann to see her daughter graduate. We have a right to ask what kind of nation allows patients to go without these drugs and forces doctors to make decisions about who needs them the most.

I thank Senators Klobuchar and Casey particularly for championing this effort even before I arrived in the Senate and later, personally, the Chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and the Ranking Member, Senator Harkin and Senator Enzi, for their support.

There are proven measures that will help solve these issues. More needs to be done, but the drug shortage provisions contained in the bill before this chamber, which provides for a requirement of notification in the event of a discontinuance or interruption of the production of life-supporting, life-sustaining drugs or drugs intended for use in the prevention of a debilitating disease or condition or a sterile injectable or a drug used in an emergency are critical. The reasons these drugs are in short supply was illustrated and documented by a GAO study. It showed that drugs are in short supply--not just once, but they are chronically in short supply, some of them many times--it showed definitively that these drugs are old, sterile, often injectable, and generic. The market simply is not working for these drugs. The profit margins are not sufficient to sustain the supply. The market for these drugs is broken.

If these drugs--to draw the analogy to a utility--were electricity, the lights would go out. We would not accept that situation. The lights are going out for patients in Connecticut

and across the country because the markets are not working and the government, the FDA, is failing in its responsibilities--under great pressure, perhaps with good intentions, but still not working effectively enough. The President of the United States recognized it when he issued an Executive order that required the FDA to use its current powers of notification more effectively and to refer price- gouging cases to the Department of Justice when there is evidence of them. The markets are not working so there is now a gray market that involves markups of 200, 300, 500, 800 percent, sometimes even higher, in the prices of these drugs as they are resold in secondary markets.

Beyond this requirement of notification that is contained in the bill, there are other measures that are important or necessary so that we do more to address these problems. I have refiled my amendment from the HELP Committee markup, along with Senators Franken, Schumer, Cardin, and Klobuchar, to impose penalties, tough penalties for manufacturers who fail to notify. Notification is fine but it will be less effective if there are no penalties for failure to notify. We may try to walk a balance between enforcement and incentives, but enforcement in this area is critical, and this measure imposing penalties for failure to notify is critical as well.

The amendment is a fair one. It provides for penalties of up to $10,000 per day--up to $1.8 million per violation--for failure to notify the FDA within a reasonable time frame of known discontinuance of a lifesaving drug.

I am proposing as well an amendment that would require critical manufacturing reinvestment. I have worked with the manufacturing industry to create a public/private partnership to incentivize the development of additional manufacturing capacity. The root of the drug shortage problem is that these products are old and generic and difficult to make so that we need more capacity, we need more plants making more of these drugs. Over the long term, this kind of partnership will strengthen the markets and strengthen our capacity. It says the Secretary of Health and Human Services has authority to implement an analysis of the root causes of the drug shortage and to proactively seek these kinds of partnerships with manufacturers to produce more of the drugs that may be in shortage right now, but to predict, to forecast, what will be in short supply in the future.

Market manipulation must be addressed more effectively and I have proposed an amendment that will stop the gray market so far as it is possible to do, to prohibit market manipulation of drugs that are in shortage and prohibit the distribution of false information. It gives the FTC authority to assess penalties for these actions. I thank my colleagues on the Commerce Committee, Chairman Rockefeller, and also thank Senator Schumer for his leadership, because he has shown a similar commitment to addressing these issues.

Our doctors and our health care providers deserve some recourse from market manipulation. The gray market must be stopped and the FTC must immediately establish a reporting mechanism for price gougers and gray- market profiteers.

These measures are a beginning. The notification provision now in the bill is a start. I thank, again, Chairman Harkin and Ranking Member Enzi for their leadership and the FDA for its cooperation. The work cannot stop with this bill. Drug shortages are unacceptable and inexcusable, and the people of America, if they are aware of it, will demand that we heighten the fight toward a comprehensive solution.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we are now on the motion to proceed, as you know, to the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act of

2012, which is basically the reauthorization of FDA for the prescription drug user fees and the medical device user fees. There are a couple of new provisions in this bill dealing with the generic drug user fees and the biosimilar drug user fees as well. So this bill is extremely important.

We have been working in our committee for over a year on it, working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle. As both Senator Enzi, my ranking member, and I pointed out yesterday, this has been a true bipartisan effort. We did not divide up in terms of party--Democrat or Republican--we divided up in terms of interest areas, and we had working groups within our committee so that Senators who had a particular interest in one area or another were on that working group. We also had Senators who were not on the committee but who had interest areas in it involved in our working groups. So they and their staffs had full working knowledge of what was going on all the time and it was a true collegial effort. Those working groups completed their work earlier this year.

We also called in all the stakeholders--the prescription drug manufacturers, the pharmacists, the drugstores, consumer groups, and practitioners. So we had all the stakeholders involved in this too. And now we have come up with a bill that has very broad support. I put in the Record yesterday a list of over 100 different organizations, everything from the drug manufacturers to consumer protection groups and consumer groups that are supporting this bill. It has very broad- based support. And, again, I believe that is due to the fact we proceeded on the reauthorization of this bill in the time-honored tradition of the Senate, which is for the committee to take the reauthorization prospect, to do its due diligence--and we did that for over a year, as I mentioned--and to make sure people were involved at every step of the process on both sides of the aisle. We brought in the stakeholders and continued this effort, as I said, for over a year to the point where we now have a bill that is broadly supported.

As I said, everyone has a common interest in ensuring our products don't hurt patients. I have said in our hearings, and I continue to believe, safety is the paramount consideration. We cannot sacrifice patient safety on the altar of other considerations. Patient safety is still the highest standard, the highest mark at which we aim our sights. But getting the products to patients quickly is also important.

I have heard heartwrenching stories of patients desperately waiting for treatments, and of inspiring accounts of small startup companies seeking to fill the needs of these patients with innovative medical products. Patient groups and industry alike have stressed the need for efficient FDA processes to get products to patients quickly.

Again--and I will be pointing out later also--FDA does a very good job of getting products, both drugs and devices, to market quickly. In fact, of the 154 drugs approved in both the United States and Canada, in a study done by the New England Journal of Medicine, 132 were approved here first. So we have not been dragging our heels and FDA hasn't been dragging its heels in terms of getting the job done.

Some say, well, sometimes products get approved more rapidly in Europe than they do here. That is true, but it is important to note that foreign approval standards are different. So it is kind of an apples-and-oranges kind of comparison. The FDA here approves drugs and devices based on their safety and effectiveness--safety and effectiveness. Are they safe and do they actually do what they say they are supposed to do?

Other countries--basically in Europe--only consider safety and not whether the device is effective. So as long as it is safe, they approve it. So, yes, they have a shorter approval time, but they don't take into consideration effectiveness.

I strongly believe the United States should keep this high standard of both safety and effectiveness. It is important to know if a device is effective because that affects a patient's decision whether to accept the device's risks and whether to forego maybe alternative treatments.

FDA officials testified before our committee this year. They submitted documentation showing that 95 percent of medical device applications were reviewed within the deadlines set in the past user fee agreement. Now, despite all this good work FDA is doing, patients were sick or dying. Promising therapies can't be approved quickly enough. So the bill we have before us will continue to support the agency and its good work, but it will allow for some very big improvements.

The medical device industry has agreed to double its user fees, to pay twice as much, and in return the FDA has agreed to speed review times, increase transparency, enhance communications--all of which will get devices to patients more quickly but still keep safety in mind. So anything we can do to both streamline the process, get drugs and devices to patients sooner, and make sure we keep our high standard of safety and effectiveness is not only good for business but critical for the patients who need them.

I expect the FDA Safety and Innovation Act will have significant impact on FDA's ability to approve medical products in an efficient and transparent way. As I said, that benefits everyone. Investors will feel better about putting their money into medical technologies, companies will translate their research and development work into sales more quickly, support for innovation will allow the United States to maintain its leadership position in the biotech industry, and this will preserve and create jobs all over America.

In this sector, as long as we preserve safety standards--which is, what is good for business is good for patients--then, again, if companies and their investors believe the climate is right to commit resources to new medical therapies, this means patients who did not previously have options will have treatments to turn to. So I say this bill is a win-win for everyone.

Inspiring innovation and improving patient access to medical therapies are two of the many ways this bill modernizes our regulatory and oversight system to benefit both patients and the biomedical industry. The FDA Safety and Innovation Act is a truly bipartisan consensus bill that reflects the input and shared goals of a wide range of stakeholders. I hope we will be on the bill shortly after our noon caucuses and conferences for the two parties this afternoon. I trust that we will have only relevant amendments to the bill. I hope that has been accepted on both sides, and that we can discuss the bill and have the relevant amendments and have them disposed of sometime this week.

So I am hopeful we can get this bill done before we go home for the Memorial Day recess. But we will be back on the bill this afternoon. I urge all my colleagues to give this bill their support. We will have some amendments, I am sure, that will be relevant to the bill. They will be debated and voted upon. But, nonetheless, I hope we can expeditiously move this bill and get it done.

The clock is ticking. The FDA authorization runs out at the end of this summer. You might say, well, we have until then to get it done. We are out of here the month of August. We are out of here for the Fourth of July break. We have a Memorial Day break. We have appropriations bills to do. We have all kinds of things we have to do this summer. Plus, it is not waiting until the last minute.

FDA needs to know very soon whether they are going to have these resources. The drug companies need to know whether FDA will have the resources to continue to do its work. So sometime midsummer FDA will probably have to start sending out pink slips to people they will not be able to keep past the end of the summer because they will not have the funds. It has been estimated that up to 2,000 people could lose their jobs at the end of this summer if we don't do our work and get this bill reauthorized.

So time is of the essence. We need to get it done so we can go to conference with the House, work out whatever little disagreements we may have, and get the final bill to the President, hopefully sometime in June so the FDA then will not have to go through any processes of seeing who they are going to lay off and how they are going to close things down at the end of the summer.

So, again, time is of the essence. I urge all my colleagues to support this well-thought-out bill that has taken over a year to put together. All of the

stakeholders support it with broad support across America. So I hope we can get on the bill this afternoon and bring it to a close as soon as possible.

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

Madam President, I am pleased to see that Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Pai have been confirmed to the Federal Communications Commission. They are both highly qualified, and it is unfortunate that the FCC's stubborn refusal to respond to my very simple request for information forced me to place a hold on their nominations for the past 4 months in order to get the FCC to move on giving me the information to which any Member of Congress ought to be entitled.

The FCC needs to learn a simple lesson from this episode: The public's business ought to be public, and transparency brings accountability. Eventually, the truth will be known, so you

might as well get it out there when the questions first come up.

I initially placed my hold on the FCC Commissioner nominees because the FCC had stonewalled a document request that I submitted on April 27 last year regarding their actions related to a company called LightSquared and the hedge fund, Harbinger Capital, that owns LightSquared.

Before I wrote my letter on LightSquared, many concerns had already been raised regarding the company's plans for a terrestrial network and its potential to interfere with the global positioning system, or sometimes that is referred to as GPS. In my first letter, I raised those concerns as well. Unfortunately, the FCC does not appear to have taken those concerns seriously, but months later, independent testing verified the danger LightSquared posed to industries, from commercial aviation to even our own Armed Forces.

It seems strange that a project that was so obviously flawed was allowed to go so far. But LightSquared had help. In total, LightSquared has paid 53 different lobbyists, some registered, some unregistered. They paid one former Governor, three former Senators, nine former Members of Congress, including a former Speaker and former minority leader, and a former White House Counsel to advocate for them. These lobbyists provided entry into the FCC and the White House. But they could not change the fact that LightSquared's network simply could not coexist with GPS.

LightSquared has now declared bankruptcy, and it appears its plan to build a terrestrial network is over, but many questions still remain. Some of those questions: Why did the FCC give LightSquared this unusual waiver in the first place? Why did LightSquared's lawyers mention campaign contributions when they sought meetings at the White House? Why did a four-star general claim he had been pressured by the Obama administration not to criticize LightSquared?

When I first asked the FCC for documents, I was told they would take about 2 years to respond to my request through the Freedom of Information Act. Then they told me they do not voluntarily turn over documents to the 99.6 percent of the Members of Congress who do not chair a committee with direct jurisdiction over FCC. After a lot of back and forth with the FCC, they told me the reason they do not respond to 99.6 percent of Congress is because of just a one-line statement in the Congressional Research Service report. The line reads, ``Oversight is most effective if it is conducted by Congressional committees of jurisdiction.'' Now, the FCC somehow took this quote and conveniently came up with the idea that they do not have to give this Senator any documents. Of course, to anybody in the Congress, this makes no sense whatsoever, but that is what the FCC hid behind. And, of course--you know me--I did not give up. The FCC's response to me is just another variation on what the Justice Department told me when I started asking questions about Operation Fast and Furious.

Fortunately, we have Members of the House of Representatives who are not afraid to ask this administration some tough questions. In Fast and Furious, it was Chairman Issa who held the Justice Department's feet to the fire to make sure they responded fully and responded completely. With LightSquared, it was another committee in the House of Representatives, the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Chairmen Walden, Upton, and Stearns and their staff have done an excellent job in making sure the FCC is open, transparent, and provides documents to Congress, even when they do not want to give those documents to a Senator who asked for them, meaning this Senator.

I would also like to thank Commerce Committee Chairman Rockefeller here in the Senate for pressing the FCC personally to release documents. With all of this help, we are making sure the FCC is open with the American people about the way they operate because transparency brings accountability.

In over 30 years of conducting oversight, I can say that when it comes to providing documents to the Congress, the FCC is one of the worst Federal agencies I have ever had to deal with. Even after receiving a document request from the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House of Representatives, the FCC still tried to play the tired old games agencies play when they are not acting in good faith.

When they finally turned over their first batch of documents--would you believe it?--those documents were already publicly available on the Internet through the Freedom of Information Act. So they weren't giving us anything we didn't already have access to.

When they didn't convince us they were acting in good faith--because, quite frankly, they weren't--they gave us a second production. But in that production, of the first 1,968 pages they produced, all but 3--in other words, 1,965 pages--were newspaper clippings. Again, the FCC was playing games. And, of course, that is not acceptable.

Fortunately, we have continued to press the FCC, and we now, with the help of the House of Representatives, have approximately 8,000 nonpublic internal documents. Still, we have not received all responsive documents from the FCC yet. We just received another 4,000 pages of documents, and I have been told that approximately 7,000 more documents are on their way to Congress. We now at least have a path forward. That is why I lifted my holds a couple weeks ago, so these nominations could move forward.

I trust the House committee will ensure that the FCC provides those 7,000 or so additional documents. I have always said if you are hiding something, it is best to get it out in the open, because the longer you stonewall--in this case the FCC--the worse you are going to look when those facts finally come out.

The FCC has attempted to stonewall my request for documents for almost a year, and they have failed. But they failed only thanks to the help provided by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and because of that help we are finally able to review internal documents from the FCC--the very same documents we should have gotten when we first asked in our request on April 27 of last year.

As I said when I initially filed my intent to object, I strongly believe it is critical for Congress to have access to documents in order to conduct vigorous and independent oversight. Whether it takes 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, or even 1 year--as it did in this case--I will continue to pursue transparency across the Federal Government because transparency brings accountability. That is essential so that Congress can practice its constitutional role of oversight over the Federal Government.

The role of oversight is this simple: Congress passes laws and appropriates money. That is not the end of it. Our government is a government of checks and balances. We have a responsibility, after passing laws and appropriating money, to make sure the laws are faithfully executed and the money spent according to the intent of Congress. That is oversight.

Even now as we review these documents we have already gotten and begin conducting interviews with key FCC staff, the investigation, obviously, continues. Step one was getting access to the FCC e-mails. We took this step so we could make sure we had the facts before we jumped to conclusions.

Now it is time for step two--asking hard questions of the key FCC personnel who approved the LightSquared waiver. This process may continue to take more time, but however long the process takes, I will continue to press for transparency at the FCC because, again, with transparency comes accountability.

This agency must operate in an open and transparent manner, and we must have answers regarding the LightSquared waiver. The people at the FCC work for the American people, they don't work for themselves.

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

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

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

Madam President, I take this time to bring to the attention of my colleagues that we are celebrating National Small Business Week, which is a very important occasion because, as the Senator from New Hampshire understands, the growth engine for America is our small businesses. When we are looking at job growth, which we all know we need in order to get our economy moving again, we know there will be more jobs created from small companies than from large companies. About two out of every three jobs created in America will come from small companies.

We also know when we are looking at innovation, it is the small businesses that file the patents and come up with the creative new ideas for America to become as competitive as we need to be. There are an incredibly larger number of patents per employee from small companies than from large companies. So the growth engine for America's economy rests with our small businesses.

I am proud to serve on the Small Business Committee under the leadership of Chairman Landrieu. We have brought forward many initiatives that help small businesses, and I think it has made a huge difference as our economy is starting to recover. We are now looking at 25 consecutive months of continuous private sector job growth where we have turned around the economy and we are now growing. In large measure I think it is because of the attention we have paid to the small business community. We are proud of what it has meant for our entire country.

Let me speak a little bit about my State of Maryland. We have over 500,000 small businesses in Maryland that employ over 1 million people. So it is by far a huge part of the Maryland economy. Our strategy over the last several years during the Obama administration has been to concentrate on small businesses and, in particular, to help them recover from this economic recession.

The first effort was to increase the capacity of the Small Business Administration. I was proud of the Obama budget that put more money back into the Small Business Administration. I was proud of the initiative we had in the Senate to add funds to the Small Business Administration so that the SBA could indeed be the advocate for the small business community; so that small businesses have an agency in the government that is fighting for their issues. It has made a huge difference. When I speak with the small businesses in Maryland, they tell me they now have a much greater capacity for help through counselors and advocates at the Small Business Administration.

We then dealt with the No. 1 issue that was brought to our attention--and I am sure the Presiding Officer has heard the same stories in New Hampshire I have heard in Maryland--that small businesses have had a hard time getting access to capital; that we need to do a better job of providing capital, particularly during a tough economic period where small businesses don't have the same deep pockets as the larger companies.

So we increased the SBA loan limits, increased the amount of the Federal loan guarantee in order to make it more attractive for banks to lend money to small businesses, knowing full well the government was standing behind those loans. That made some monies available. We looked for creative new programs to help our small businesses, including one in the Treasury Department. We also looked at helping our States by initiating partnerships with our States.

The additional funds we made available in Washington to help build the State programs has made many more loans available to small companies in Maryland. All of that has helped in providing opportunities for our small businesses.

The reauthorization of the SBIR Program and the STTR Program has made

a huge difference. Since 1983, in my State of Maryland, $1.5 billion of funding has come from the SBIR Program. For those who are listening who may not know what this program is about, it is about innovation. It is small companies that are involved in biotech and cybertech areas where they use innovation to create jobs. In my State and in the Presiding Officer's State, they are using these funds to create opportunities for America to be competitive internationally.

We can state chapter and verse for our national defense research or for clean energy technology where small businesses are taking advantage of these innovative research grants and have been able to build jobs in our communities and make America more competitive for the future. The reauthorization and thus predictability of funding under the SBIR Program and the increased amounts that are available will create, and has already created, more job opportunities. We got that done, and that was certainly a major step forward.

We passed bills providing tax breaks to small businesses, including the expensing of their equipment, so they can go out and buy equipment and keep things moving.

I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 minutes.

Madam President, I thank my friend from Arizona for his courtesy. I will try not to use the entire 5 minutes.

There are other areas where we have also moved forward to help our small businesses, including credits for their health insurance so they can cover their employees. In my own State of Maryland, we have set up an African Trade Office which has provided opportunities in international trade--an area where we think we can still make progress.

I could talk about many of the success stories of Maryland small businesses that have used the SBIR Program, including one to develop new treatment for smallpox vaccines to make them more efficient. We have had examples of where we are now developing a vaccine to deal with the common cold.

I was at an SBA event where we honored the leading entrepreneurs in our State, and I can cite an example of a small businessperson, Janet Amirault, who was the small businessperson of the year--the CEO of a software development company. She has had some personal issues with her health, but despite that, for the last 3 years she has had 90 percent growth in her revenues. This is the innovation we have in Maryland that comes out of the small business community.

Taylor Made Transportation Services, which first qualified under the 8(a) program, has now graduated from that. They started with a small transportation company that provided transportation for people with special needs and is now providing for diverse transportation needs in our communities. All of that has developed through small business programs that we helped develop.

So I come to the floor today to announce a new initiative that I will be filing today, the Small Business Goaling Act, to deal with another problem we have with small businesses that I hope we will be able to take up on the floor of the Senate in the very near future. It would increase the prime goals for small businesses in government procurement from 23 percent to 25 percent and increase the subcontracting goals to 40 percent, adding transparency to how government provides procurement opportunities for government contracts to small businesses.

We have also taken some action in dealing with bundling and trying to prevent the bundling of small contracts into large contracts that makes it more difficult for small businesses to get prime contracts. I believe this legislation will improve transparency and visibility so we can, in fact, provide more opportunities; so the government leads by example, by using small companies more to help them grow. It will help a variety of small businesses, including disabled veteran companies, women-owned companies, and minority-owned companies so that all will benefit from these opportunities.

I wish to thank the chairperson of the Small Business Committee, Senator Landrieu, for her extraordinary help in getting this bill together. It will help small businesses by allowing them to grow and create jobs, thereby helping our country in recovery.

Once again, I thank my friend from Arizona for giving me these extra few minutes. The best way to help celebrate National Small Business Week is for us to pay more attention to helping small businesses grow.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Senator Sessions and I come to the Senate floor today to discuss the Child Tax Credit Integrity Preservation Act, the bill I introduced last year, to address a real problem with IRS enforcement allowing illegal aliens to access the additional child tax credit.

The reality is, because of this enforcement problem and this loophole in terms of how the child tax credit is enforced, illegal aliens who pay no taxes and are not entitled to this check from the government received $4.2 billion in 2010 alone. These are checks from the government through the Child Tax Credit Act.

There have been several studies under the President Obama administration that say this is ridiculous, this is unintended, we need to stop this. I am proposing we do and that we move forward in a simple, bipartisan, commonsense way to stop it. Let me briefly note some of those studies.

In March of 2009, the Treasury Department said:

As it now stands, the payment of Federal funds through this

tax benefit appears to provide an additional incentive for

aliens to enter, reside, and work in the United States

without authorization, which contradicts Federal law and

policy to remove such incentives.

In July 2011, the Treasury Department, through its inspector general, issued a report that was actually entitled ``Individuals Who Are Not Authorized to Work in the United States Were Paid $4.2 Billion in Refundable Credits.''

So, again, under this administration the Treasury Department and the IRS underscore that this is a huge problem to the tune of $4.2 billion every year.

I urge all of us to come together in a straightforward, commonsense, bipartisan way to fix this problem. The IRS and the Treasury Department have told us that the fix is simple, and it is clear. We simply need to mandate that folks applying for the credit use valid Social Security numbers. That will cut off the fraud, and that will cut off $4.2 billion going improperly to illegal alien families. It will not cut off the benefit going to anyone who deserves it under the law.

Unanimous Consent Request--S. 577

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 577, the Child Tax Credit Integrity Preservation Act, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, before the distinguished majority leader has to leave, I would just ask, through the

Chair, if we can get some clarification and hopefully come to some consensus, is he suggesting that illegal aliens in the country should continue to receive the credit? Is he suggesting that citizens who qualify for the credit but happen to live outside the country should not get it?

It seems to me the problem is illegal aliens receiving the credit, wherever they are physically, not the people outside the country who are receiving the credit, some of whom qualify for the credit.

If I could bring that point up through the Chair.

I would say, through the Chair, thank you for that clarification. We have exactly the same goal in mind, and I believe this approach of the Vitter bill--the House has already passed this approach recently, and its budget outline actually accomplishes that. By requiring a valid Social Security number, we allow everyone who truly qualifies for the credit to get it, and we stop it from going to illegal alien families who do not deserve the credit under the law.

I invite my distinguished colleague from Alabama to add to the discussion.

Mr. President, if I could respond through the Chair.

I absolutely agree with the Senator from Alabama. Too often folks in Washington want to make things overly complicated. Some issues debated in the Congress are complicated. Other issues are not complicated, but they are made a whole lot more complicated than they need to be made, and this is one of those.

All we are saying is folks who qualify for this benefit under the law should get it, but folks who don't qualify, including illegal alien families, should absolutely not get it. The law is clear on that. What we have is an enforcement problem. We also have the Obama administration, through the Treasury Department, absolutely agreeing that this is an enforcement problem and that this bill is the legitimate and proper solution.

Again, in March 2009 the Treasury said:

As it now stands, the payment of Federal funds through this

tax benefit appears to provide an additional incentive for

aliens to enter, reside, and work in the United States

without authorization. . . .

That means it is a magnet to draw more illegal crossings into the country.

Again, in July 2007, the Treasury inspector general had a whole report, and the title was ``Individuals Who Are Not Authorized to Work in the United States Were Paid $4.2 Billion in Refundable Credits.'' That inspector general said what we need is fixed legislation just like this.

In fact, this is what we do with regard to the earned-income tax credit. We require a valid Social Security number for that separate tax credit. We are simply applying that valid fix to this different tax credit.

Again, let's not make a pretty straightforward situation difficult. Let's fix a glaring problem. As the Senator from Alabama said, it is a $4.2 billion-a-year problem. We come to the floor every day to talk about soaring deficits and debt, to talk about impending cuts in defense and other areas, and yet we have this glaring $4.2 billion savings that we are not taking advantage of.

The House has acted. The House recently acted and passed exactly this provision. Let's act in a bipartisan, commonsense way in the Senate and tell the American people we are going to stop wasting $4.2 billion a year for this completely unauthorized purpose.

Mr. President, I wish to thank very much my colleague from Alabama for his leadership on the Budget Committee and his leadership on issues such as this. I want to encourage the distinguished majority leader to look at the actual details of the problem and this legislation. When he does, he will see that this legislation is very finely tuned to the actual problem, and it is an outrageous problem.

There has been quite a bit of media attention on this abuse over the last several months. A lot of it came out of Indiana. A tax preparer there brought cases in Indiana and said he got no response from the IRS when he tried to report completely fraudulent returns using fake income and documents. He pointed to a number of actual tax forms in which illegal aliens were exploiting this. He said: ``I can bring out stacks and stacks. It is just so easy, it is ridiculous.''

An illegal alien who was actually interviewed admitted in another case that his address was used by four other illegal aliens who didn't even live there. All told, they claimed 20 children were living in one trailer, and they received checks from the government through this program totaling over $29,000. Only one child was ever observed at that mobile home. Twenty other children who live in Mexico have never even visited the United States.

Again, let's not make a simple fix overly complicated because it is not. This is an outrageous abuse. The Obama administration Treasury Department has said so. They have endorsed this fix. The House has passed this fix. Let us in the Senate pass this fix on a bipartisan basis and save the American taxpayer $4.2 billion each and every year.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.