Repeal the CLASS Entitlement Act

Mr. President, the October 2011 issue of the AARP bulletin contains an interesting opinion piece. It was written by the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. It is right there on the front page, Senate Leader Reid. His opinion piece is entitled ``The Health Care Law is Already Working.''

I come to the floor, as I do from time to time, to give a doctor's second opinion. I have a second opinion today about the piece in the AARP paper. I find the choice of the words in the title, ``The Health Care Law is Already Working,'' ironic, especially as the American people continue to express negative views about President Obama's health care law.

I come to the floor--as a physician who has practiced medicine in Wyoming and taken care of Wyoming families for a quarter of a century-- to talk about the health care law and to talk about health care in America. What we see is a growing majority of Americans who want to see the entire law repealed and replaced with patient-centered reforms.

Don't take my word for it. Let's look at the facts. On October 18, 2011, just last week, the Kaiser Family Foundation released its monthly health tracking poll. This is a nonpartisan Kaiser survey and it tracks the public views about the health care law, and they have been doing it ongoing. The results this month are truly astonishing. About half of all Americans have an unfavorable view of the health care law. Overall favorability of the health care law stands at just 34 percent, an alltime low. The number of individuals who view the health care law very favorably stands at 12 percent, an alltime low. The number of people who think they will personally be better off due to the health care law stands at 18 percent, an alltime low. The number of individuals who think the country, as a whole, will be better off due to the health care law stands at just 28 percent, an alltime low. Approval of the law among Democrats dropped 13 percentage points to an alltime low. These results make it clear that the new health care law does not work.

About 19 months ago, Mr. Schumer, the senior Senator from New York, claimed on NBC's ``Meet The Press'' that:

. . . as people learn about the bill, and now that the bill

is enacted, it's going to become more and more popular.

The President and Washington Democrats miscalculated. They made numerous promises to the American people and they said we need to act fast. We can answer questions later. They asked the American people to trust them. Then the Nation watched as weeks went by, new stories uncovered another health care law glitch, another health care law unintended consequence and another of the President's broken promises. Seniors all around the country know that the President's health care law took over $500 billion from a broken Medicare Program not to save Medicare but to start a whole new government spending program for someone else, not for seniors. Medicare patients know the health care law failed them and failed to address the broken physician payment system. America's seniors understand that Washington Democrats can't cut $\1/2\ trillion from Medicare and then claim those cuts will not impact their own health care.

When we look at Medicaid, Governors all across the country know the health care law's Medicaid expansion will restrict patient access to care and very likely bankrupt our States. Medicare only pays health care providers cents on the dollar. That is why about 40 percent of physicians don't accept Medicaid patients. Having a government health care card doesn't mean patients will actually have access to medical care.

We also have concerns since the law was passed about employers dropping coverage. President Obama promised that if Americans liked their current health care plan, under the law, they would be able to keep it. Over the last 19 months, employers have made it clear that the law's mandates are too expensive, threatening their own ability to offer health insurance to their employees.

A reputable national consulting firm surveyed employers across industries, geographies, and employer sizes. The company produced a report titled ``How U.S. Health Care Reform Will Affect Employees' Benefits.'' The company, McKinsey & Company, found that overall 30 percent of employers will either definitely or probably stop offering employer-sponsored coverage after 2014. That is when the President's health care law goes into full effect. Among employers with a high awareness of the health care law, understanding the specific implications of the law, that number of those who will either definitely or probably stop offering employer-sponsored coverage jumps to 50 percent. At least 30 percent of employers would actually gain economically by simply dropping coverage even if they compensate employees through other benefit offerings or higher salaries. So how did we get from ``if you like the plan you have, you can keep it'' to ``30 percent of employers will either definitely or probably stop offering health insurance''?

The problems continue to mount. Recently, on October 20, 2011, Walmart announced its decision to scale back health insurance for some part-time employees. A New York Times article explained that future part-time Walmart employees working less than 24 hours per week won't be allowed to join the company's plan. New part-time employees working between 24 and 33 hours a week won't be able to buy insurance for their spouses. The New York Times article quotes Walmart as saying that the increasing cost of health care is the reason for the change.

Now let's take a look at people's premiums. In 2009, President Obama promised that his health care plan would reduce health insurance premiums $2,500 a year for families in America. Well, the opposite has occurred. President Obama's law has forced Americans to pay more for their health care premiums. On September 27, 2011, the Kaiser Family Foundation issued a report showing that the employer average annual family premium increased 9 percent, from $13,770 to $15,073. The employer average annual single premium--the other was a family, now for singles--the single premium increased 8 percent, from $5,049 to $5,429. Of course, part of this premium increase is tied directly to the health care law.

Then let's look at the CLASS program. That program has recently failed. Remember, President Obama's health care law established a brandnew Federal long-term care entitlement program. It was referred to as CLASS, but the letters stood for ``Community Living Assistance Services and Supports.'' Well, to qualify, people would have to pay the government a monthly premium for 5 years, and then after those 5 years, they could begin collecting benefits. It is now known that the CLASS program was an intentionally designed budget gimmick. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the CLASS program would reduce the deficit by $86 billion. These ``savings'' came from the premium dollars the CLASS program would collect for the first 5 years, all while the program wasn't required or allowed to pay out any benefits to individuals. So all the money would be coming in. Instead of holding on to that excess money being collected to pay out for future expenses, Washington Democrats here in the Senate used those funds to pay for President Obama's health care law.

Fast forward, and we now know for sure that the program is not financially viable and does not work. How do we know that? Well, many of us knew it when it was going on here on the Senate floor a few years ago, but on October 14 of this year, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the administration will not implement the CLASS program.

An op-ed she has written appeared in the Huffington Post, and it said:

. . . as a report our department is releasing today shows,

we have not identified a way to make CLASS work at this time.

The Obama administration had 19 months to figure out how to implement the program, and they couldn't do it. Administration officials at the Department of Health and Human Services knew the CLASS program was unsustainable, and I believe they knew it before President Obama signed the health care law. They knew it, the administration knew it, and the administration failed in their duty to be honest with the American people and tell them.

Today, the White House still refuses to admit that the CLASS program is a colossal failure. In the middle of last month, October 17, 2011, White House spokesman Nick Papas said:

Repealing the CLASS Act isn't necessary or productive. What

we should be doing is working together to address the long-

term care challenges we face as a country.

How can the White House admit that this part of the health care spending law will burden taxpayers with yet another unsustainable entitlement program and at the same time demand that it stay on the books? How do they do that?

After having received the AARP bulletin with the headline ``The Health Care Law Is Already Working'' from the Senate majority leader, I came to the conclusion that I needed to come to the floor with a second opinion. The health care law needs to be repealed. It must be replaced with reasonable, commonsense, and financially sound alternatives. This health care law is not working. It is not good for patients; it is not good for providers, the doctors and the nurses who take care of those patients; and it is not good for the American taxpayers.

I will continue to come to the floor of the Senate as we learn more and more about this health care law. It seems that just about every week or so there is a new, unintended consequence that comes forward, a new concern for patients, a new concern for providers, a new concern for the taxpayers. I will continue to work with my patients and with my colleagues to find a health care law that gets patients the care they need from the doctor they want at a price they can afford.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

I respond to my colleague from Arizona that we all have concerns for the people of America. That is why we were here trying to offer constructive ideas to make sure people would get the care they need, from the doctor that they want, at a price they can afford.

We heard the President make promises that the cost of premiums would go down $2,500 a family. We have seen instead the premiums have gone up.

We heard the President say: If you like what you have, you can keep it. We saw that we lost out on that. So many people are going to lose the health coverage they like under this new health care law. So I say to my colleague, absolutely there are things we can do and should be doing.

It is astonishing. I received through my medical office the AARP Bulletin. On the cover of this AARP Bulletin for this past month, October 2011, the headline is, ``Senate Leader Reid: The Health Care Law Is Already Working.'' This is what the Senate majority leader has said on the cover of the AARP Bulletin. Yet the Kaiser survey that tracks public views about health care every month has come out with their recent numbers, and the results are astonishing. The American people have seen through this health care law to the point that a majority of Americans now have an unfavorable view of the health care law.

That is exactly the way I read it, that is the way the American people read it, which is why the overall favorability of the health care law now stands at only 34 percent, an all-time low.

I think this is devastating for the country. I told the President directly that overall I thought his proposal was going to bankrupt the country. We stood here and debated over a year ago the fact that the Democrats in this body were voting to take $500 billion away from our seniors on Medicare--not to save Medicare, but to start a whole new government program for somebody else. And when we talk about long-term care and what people need over the course of their lifetime, they took money away from hospice. They took money away from home health. They continue to take money away from hospitals and the physicians who take care of our seniors.

Which has an advantage because it coordinates care. It does a number of things that are important. I believe this is the reason why last week in the Kaiser poll, the number of individuals who have a very favorable view of the overall health care law has dropped to 12 percent, an all-time low. The number of people who think they will personally be better off under the health care law is only 18 percent, an all-time low. The number of people in the country who think that the country as a whole will be better off due to the health care law stands at 28 percent, an all-time low. The American people realize we need truth, honesty in budgeting.

I know my colleague from the Budget Committee is working on that. He has an op-ed I read and has a proposal and is working on that. That is what the American people want. They want some honesty in budgeting, not the kind of politics and budget gimmicks and tricks we see happening here. The American people are tired of being misled and sold a bill of goods. They see through it. They don't like it, they don't want it, and that is why all of the polling on the health care law shows it at an all-time low.

You would hear about it. This speaks to the problems we have in this body. When they write legislation in the cloak of darkness, behind closed doors, and come in and vote at 1 in the morning and try to jam things through at a time when an administration calls for openness and transparency and then they do this sort of thing with the books in a manipulative way and try to come up with ways to say that it saves money--in any other true, real business, people would go to jail for this sort of behavior, I would assume. Is it wrong? All the way wrong? We have seen other so-called bets that this administration has made which have the American people scratching their head.

Yesterday it was noted that at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, bonuses have been paid to 10 of their executives to the tune of over $12 million. I called for the President to cancel those bonuses. The White House is fairly silent on that. Yet when Senator Obama was running for President, he wrote a letter to the Treasury Secretary and said: Make sure no bonuses go to Freddie and Fannie. Now under his administration, $12 million, it was reported yesterday, went to 10 executives. It doesn't seem to be a problem now. The White House said there is nothing they can do about it. Well, why not get the Secretary of the Treasury involved? That is what Candidate Obama did in 2008. It is time for this White House to stand up and do what is right.

Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, later this week--I assume sometime tomorrow--the Senate is expected to vote on the Rebuild America Jobs Act. This is a practical, commonsense piece of legislation that does two urgent and important things: It will help to modernize America's crumbling infrastructure, and it will help to put Americans back to work and get our economy going again.

Not surprisingly, this bill enjoys overwhelming popular support among the American people. Every day, Americans see the infrastructure crisis with their own eyes. They see interstate highways increasingly overwhelmed--potholes everywhere. They see bridges and overpasses that are structurally unsound and in danger of collapse. Need I mention the gridlock in some of our major cities because of inadequate roadways and access points for automobiles? China and Brazil are building world- class seaports, while ours are left over from early in the last century.

We know we need to make major Federal investments in modernizing America's infrastructure, so why not do it now, at a time when our Nation is suffering from the most protracted period of joblessness since the Great Depression. The construction sector is the hardest hit part of our economy. We can put those people back to work renewing our infrastructure and, again, as I said, boosting our economy.

Why aren't we doing this? The answer is, Republicans have made it clear they intend to block this legislation tomorrow, just as they have blocked so many other bills designed to put Americans back to work and get the economy moving again. They filibustered and killed the American Jobs Act. Two weeks ago, they filibustered and killed the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act. It seems to me if the word ``no'' were removed from the English language, our Republican friends would be rendered speechless.

Let me state the obvious. The word ``no'' will not put 28 million Americans back to work. The word ``no'' will not allow us to strike a balanced agreement to bring deficits under control. The word ``no'' will not allow us to undertake a robust program to modernize our transportation system.

The job-creating investments in this bill are fully paid for with a tiny fractional tax on the richest of the rich in the United States. These wealthy Americans would pay a 0.7-percent surtax on incomes in excess of $1 million a year. Let me repeat that. This infrastructure jobs bill we will be voting on tomorrow, which the Republicans have indicated they are going to filibuster and kill, is fully paid for with a 0.7-percent surtax on incomes in excess of $1 million a year. If those making more than $1 million a year even noticed such a negligible tax, I would be astonished. Still, the Republicans say no.

Let's put this in context. Just last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that over the last three decades the aftertax income of millionaires and billionaires increased by 275 percent. That is correct. The Congressional Budget Office said over the last three decades the aftertax income of millionaires and billionaires increased 275 percent. During the same 30 years--the same three decades--the average take-home pay of middle-class workers in America actually declined. So is it any wonder the middle class is upset when they see what has happened to them over the last 30 years--flat, slightly declined in terms of their living standards and their income-- while the superrich increased their take-home by 275 percent.

The top 1 percent of income earners in America now take home more than half of all the money earned each year in America. Again, that needs repeating. The top 1 percent of income earners in America take home over half of all the money earned in America every year. Mind- boggling, isn't it? Mind-boggling. Yet Republicans adamantly oppose any tax increase on these people--even 0.7 percent--which would go toward the infrastructure of America and putting people back to work.

Certainly, no one questions the solicitude of Republicans toward the rich and the superrich. I just wish they would show even a fraction of that concern on behalf of the besieged middle class in this country. Republicans on this so-called supercommittee are willing to block all progress in order to prevent any tax increase at all on the rich, but they are demanding--demanding--deep cuts to Social Security, Medicare, student loans, and other Federal programs that undergird the middle class in the United States. Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate continue to block the bills we have proposed in order to put people back to work and get the economy moving again.

Some pundits have speculated that, for political reasons, Republicans are deliberately blocking any legislation that would boost the economy or create jobs because that would make President Obama maybe look good. These pundits point out the Senate's minority leader has been explicit in stating that his No. 1 priority is to prevent the reelection of President Obama. So many of the pundits say that, to the extent Republicans can prevent us from doing anything--keep this place in gridlock, keep us from having a jobs program--and the economy gets worse, then they will say to the American people: See, President Obama is not doing his job. The economy is getting worse.

I just heard my colleague from Iowa. In his speech, he was at least honest enough to say President Obama had inherited a bad economy. That is true. He admitted that. My friend from Iowa, my colleague, went on to say, however, that President Obama has made it worse; that he hasn't improved anything over the last 2\1/2\ years; that his plan hasn't worked.

I daresay it is the Republicans who have been blocking anything we could do to put America back to work, including their voting no tomorrow, which I understand they will, in order to prevent us from getting this infrastructure and jobs bill through.

A more charitable explanation is Republican ideology is simply that government can't create jobs. This may be a sincere belief of most Republicans, but I must point out it is sincerely wrong. Across our Nation's history, an often visionary Federal Government has funded and spearheaded initiatives that have expanded private commerce, given birth to countless inventions and new industries and created tens of millions of jobs in the process.

Let's take a look at history. One of the most visionary advocates of Federal investment to create jobs was, believe it or not, the father of the Republican Party--Abraham Lincoln. Despite the disruption of the Civil War, Lincoln insisted on moving the Nation forward through bold Federal investments and initiatives. For example, in 1862, he signed the Pacific Railway Act, authorizing huge Federal land grants to finance construction of the transcontinental railroad--one of the great technological feats of the 19th century. To produce the rails for this railroad, he enacted a steep tariff on foreign steel in order to get the American steel industry going.

There is a story--I don't know if it is real or apocryphal--about Abraham

Lincoln. He was approached by, I guess, the free traders of his time who said: If you are going to build this transcontinental railroad, it would be cheaper to import the rails from England. They have the steel mills, they know how to do it, and it would be cheaper to build them in England and ship them here. It is said Lincoln thought about this for some time and came back and said: Well, it seems to me, however, if we buy the rails from England, they have our money and we have the rails. But if we build the rails here, we have our money here and we have the rails.

As I said, I don't know if that story is true, but I have heard it many times in my lifetime. Thus, he put in place a steep tariff, kept England's rails out, rebuilt our steel industry, and, as they say, the rest is history.

These and other Federal initiatives during Lincoln's Presidency had a transformative impact on the U.S. economy--creating new industries and millions of new jobs. Again, Lincoln did this despite the fact the Federal Government was deeply in debt--deeply in debt--and running huge deficits to finance the Civil War.

It is almost humorous to imagine how today's Republicans would have reacted to Lincoln's agenda. No doubt they would have attacked him as reckless and irresponsible. They would whine that we are broke and can't afford to invest in the future. I keep hearing this all the time: We can't afford to do this. We can't afford that. We are broke. We are broke. Doesn't anybody understand we are broke?

I keep pointing out the United States is the richest country in the history of mankind--the richest country in the history of mankind. We have the highest per capita income of any nation in the world. So if we are so rich, why are we so broke? We have got to keep asking that question. I am sure the tea party contingent would have demanded that Lincoln be expelled from the party, all of which reminds us how far the modern-day Republican Party has strayed from its progressive, forward- thinking beginnings. Indeed, the present-day Republican Party would have excoriated President Reagan. I see they just put a new 9-foot statue of him out at National Airport. They should put underneath it, ``He raised taxes in 1982, 1983, and 1984.'' Yes, President Reagan raised taxes in 1982, 1983, and 1984.

Dwight Eisenhower, another Republican, championed one of the greatest public works projects in our history, and that is the building of the Interstate Highway System. A 1996 study of the system concluded that:

The interstate highway system is an engine that has driven

40 years of unprecedented prosperity and positioned the

United States to remain the world's preeminent power into the

21st century.

And, of course Franklin Roosevelt in the depths of the Depression put a lot of people to work, and they built a lot of good things. So I thought I would bring this over here. I hang this on the wall in my office. This is my father's--not my grandfather's--WPA card. For all you young people here, you can read your history. WPA stands for the Works Project Administration. It was instituted in the Depression to put people back to work building public works projects. So this is my father's WPA card because he was out of work, and he went to work on WPA. It has his name here, Patrick F. Harkin, Cumming, IA. It says here: You are asked to report, ready for work at once at a project as a laborer, $40.30 per month, 138 hours max, Warren County. Signed by my father.

So my father went to work on WPA, and this is his card. I keep it as a reminder of a lot of things, but also a reminder of the good things the government can do. They gave my father a job. He was married and had five kids and the sixth one on the way--me; no work, no income. Of course, that was before Social Security or Medicare or anything else.

What did they do? Did they stand around doing nothing? Years later, my father took me out to visit some of the projects he worked on, on WPA. There is a place out in Des Moines called Lake Ahquabi. It is a huge State park, it is a recreational facility, campgrounds, Boy Scouts, a big lake there, conference centers, still being used today, built by my father. Well, not by him alone, but he worked on it in the WPA, still being used today. You can go in and look at the high school built by WPA, still being used today, I might add. My father was rather proud of the things he worked on.

When they built the high school, did the government do it? Was it some kind of government entity that built it? No, it was a private contractor. Who dug out the lake and built the things at Lake Ahquabi? Private contractors.

The bill we are going to vote on tomorrow, the public works bill, the putting America back to work jobs bill, would put people all over America back to work on highways and bridges, and sewer and water systems and things such as that, who would be employed by the private sector, by private companies to do the work. And the work needs to be done.

Many of the things my father and others in the WPA worked on in the 1930s still are being used today, although they are crumbling. Someone recently said that we are still driving on Eisenhower's highways and going to Roosevelt's schools.

What is our generation going to do to rebuild that infrastructure for future generations? Well, I guess we are going to sit around here and do nothing, because the Republicans continue to filibuster and block any meaningful jobs bill getting through the Senate.

I would say to my friend from Arizona, less than 10 minutes, about 7 minutes.

I thank the Senator.

Investments such as these, investments such as what Abraham Lincoln did or what Eisenhower did or Franklin Roosevelt did, investments that were led by Lyndon Baines Johnson to educate our workforce and to retrain our workforce, to make sure every child had a good education in America, all of these helped people who were unemployed, helped them to get jobs, helped them to become taxpayers, and it set the stage for economic growth in our country.

To me, the most obvious and quickest way to dramatically ramp up our Federal investments in infrastructure is to pass this jobs bill. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that America faces a $2.2 trillion infrastructure backlog. Bringing the U.S. infrastructure into the 21st century would rapidly create millions of private sector jobs, especially in the hard-hit construction industry, while modernizing our arteries and veins of commerce.

There could be no economic recovery without robust, forward-thinking investments to boost our competitiveness and put people back to work. This means to invest in education, innovation, the infrastructure in America. It means restoring a level playing field with fair taxation, a good ladder of opportunity to give every American the education they need to gain decent employment and achieve the American dream.

Again, it is all wrapped up in the Rebuild America Jobs Act that we will be voting on here tomorrow. I wish I could say I am hopeful that we could pass it, but I understand the Republicans are going to filibuster it and we won't have the 60 votes needed. That is a shame, because we need to put people back to work and we need to rebuild our infrastructure, and we can't wait much longer to do it.

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

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

Mr. President, just a few minutes ago, Senators Lieberman, Collins, Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, and I gathered in the press gallery upstairs to unveil a proposed compromise that is designed to help ensure we have a viable, strong U.S. Postal Service in this country for the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years and longer.

There has been a lot of time spent in debate over jobs: How are we going to save jobs? How are we going to create jobs in this rough economy we are moving through? As it turns out, there are about 7 million jobs that flow from the Postal Service. There are only about 500,000 people who actually work for the Postal Service these days. There are roughly another 7 million who are associated with the Postal Service in one way or the other.

If we do nothing, the Postal Service--which lost $10 billion last year, is on track to lose a couple hundred billion dollars over the next 10 years--will literally go out of business next year--not in 10 years, not in 5 years but next year. That is a consequence none of us can look forward to and we need to provide predictability and certainty and part of that is to make sure we have a Postal Service that meets the needs of our businesses and the interests of our citizens.

The situation is dire, but it is not hopeless. This is one we can fix and the four of us believe this legislation will fix this problem not in 5 years, not in 10 years from now but literally provide the fix that is needed this year.

I mentioned in our press conference that a couple years ago my sister and I went to the home of my parents. My parents are now both deceased. We went to their home and we rooted through all kinds of nooks and crannies and boxes in the attic. We came across a treasure trove of letters they exchanged during World War II. They wrote to one another when my dad was overseas. They wrote several times a week. They saved the letters.

When I was in Southeast Asia back during the Vietnam War, the happiest day of the week for us was the day the mail came. The letters, the postcards, the birthday cards, the packages we received, magazines, the newspapers, made that the best day of the week.

When our Presiding Officer and I go on a CODEL to Afghanistan or to Iraq to visit our troops and see how they are doing and what we need to be doing, they still get the mail over there, but it is not like it was when I was serving or when my dad or my uncles were all serving. Troops today communicate with their families back home with Skype. They have the ability to use the cell phones. They have the Internet, Facebook, Twitter. You name it, it is a different game today. As the way we communicate in this country and in this world has changed, the Postal Service needs to change the way they do business and they are ready and anxious to do just that.

I think there is a good analogy in trying to figure out what the Postal Service needs to do to right size its enterprise. There is a good analogy we can draw from by looking back just 3 or 4 years ago at the situation the U.S. auto industry was in. Think about this: In 1970, my first trip to Southeast Asia, the market share of Ford, Chrysler, and GM was just about 85 percent. In 2009, their market share dropped to less than 50 percent.

When the auto industry reported to us and to the rest of the country in 2009 that given their market share, they had more employees than they needed, they had more auto plants than they needed, and there was a mismatch in terms of the wage-benefit structure they were paying their own employees versus the wage benefits that were being paid to their competition selling cars, trucks, and vans in this country, they asked us for a bailout--not exactly a bailout. They asked for a cash transfusion. They promised to pay it back with interest. Lo and behold, they have, and 3 years later Ford, Chrysler, and GM are still in business. They have fewer employees than they had 3 years ago. They have fewer auto plants than they had, but they have changed the wage- benefit structure and made some changes in their health care costs and the way they administer health care costs which are now overseen by the United Auto Workers. As I said earlier, the moneys we invested in those two companies, Chrysler and GM, was money that has been repaid, largely, with interest.

The Postal Service, in 2011, is in a situation not unlike where our auto industry was a couple years ago. Given their market share, the Postal Service has more employees than they need. The Postal Service has more post offices than they need. They have more processing centers around the country than they need. What they would like to be able to do is not to fire employees, not to abrogate labor contracts. What they have asked to do is to do what the auto industry did in working with their workers; that is, to incentivize people at the Postal Service who are eligible to retire to go ahead and retire. There are about 125,000 of them. We have seen the Postal Service head count drop from 800,000 employees a decade ago to a little under 600,000 today. The Postal Service needs to reduce the head count by another 100,000 or so over the next couple years by incentivizing people eligible to retire to go ahead and retire. The Postal Service thinks they can do that for about $2 billion. By doing that, 100,000 Postal Service employees will be eligible to retire. That will save the Postal Service $8 billion a year going forward.

Last year, the Postal Service lost $10 billion, and in the years to come they are projected to lose about $20 billion. We could literally address about half of that financial challenge with one fell swoop, incentivize employees eligible to retire.

The Postal Service is interested in being able to close some post offices. They would like to be able to consolidate some post offices-- where they have two, make one. In some cases, they would like to be able to take the services they provide at a post office and offer them at maybe a retail outlet that is open more than 6 days a week or maybe a retail outlet open 24/7, potentially put postal services in some supermarkets in communities across the country, put them in some convenience stores or maybe in pharmacies. The idea would not be to provide worse service; the idea would be to provide better service in a lot of instances.

There are 33,000 post offices in the country. The Postal Service is looking today at 3,700 of them to decide whether they are viable. Under current law, the Postal Service can close a post office. They cannot do it solely on economic grounds, but they can close a post office pretty much at their volition and maybe have a cursory conversation with the community but not much.

The legislation we have proposed would say that the post office, as they look at these 3,700 post offices that are under review--and perhaps others in the future--that before they go about closing any of them, the Postal Regulatory Commission--which is responsible for setting service standards for the post office--would have to be part of that decisionmaking process in these communities across America. They would make sure the service standards the Regulatory Commission--the regulators, if you will, for the post office--has established are going to be met in the future if a post office is closed or post offices are consolidated or the services are colocated. This has to be a transparent process, where the folks who live and work in those communities have the opportunity to be full participants in that decisionmaking.

With respect to the closure of mail processing centers, there are over 500 of them across the country. The Postal Service would like to close as many as 300 of them. Under the legislation we have proposed, there would be the opportunity for communities, businesses, small and large, postal customers, residential customers, and others to have the opportunity to make clear whether the close of a mail processing center in their town or community would somehow be inopportune and a real detriment to that community in ways that are not fair.

Those are three things that the postal service wants to be able to do: address their head count needs, take a close look at how many post offices we have and whether those services can be provided in a more cost-effective way, and the third is to look at the 500-plus mail processing centers we have and try to figure out how many of those can be closed.

The Postal Service delivers mail from my State to the Presiding Officer's State in Minnesota--I can mail a letter today and probably it would get out there on Friday or maybe Saturday. The standard service today is, in some cases, next-day service; in some cases, service can be as much as 3 days. What the Postal Service has asked is, they will still be able to do 1-day service, but they would like for the standard to be officially 2 to 3 days. That is one of the things they are asking for the opportunity to do, and our bill let's them do that.

The other thing the Postal Service has asked for is some relief, if you will--not a bailout, not taxpayer dollars--with the health care costs. Currently, the Postal Service pays into Medicare for its employees. They are the second largest payer into Medicare of all the employers in the country. They also pay into something called the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. We have the Postal Service sort of paying twice for health care service for its retirees. People 65 and over, 85 percent of them are eligible for Medicare. If they are not, they are still eligible for the Federal employees health benefits as retirees. The Postal Service has asked to do what a lot of other companies do. What a lot of other companies have asked is that Medicare would be their primary source of health care coverage. In addition to that, the Postal Service would provide a Medigap plan to fill the gaps that Medicaid and Medicare do not cover. We think that is a reasonable request. We have also given the Postal Service the opportunity to negotiate with the labor unions to see if it might make sense for the Postal Service to withdraw from the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program and establish their own plan for roughly 1 million people. They will have a chance to study that and decide whether that makes sense.

I will mention three other things we believe the Postal Service can do to reduce costs. One of those is the way they deliver the mail. For a lot of folks in my home, the mail is delivered to our front door. There is a mailbox by our front door. What we are suggesting in our legislation is that in some cases the Postal Service looks at whether that is an efficient way to deliver the mail or maybe is curbside delivery fine. If someone has a mailbox, the letter carrier puts the mail in the mailbox and doesn't have to get out, park the vehicle, walk up to the house and put it in the mailbox and walk back to the vehicle. A fair amount of money can be saved there.

There is money that can be saved in the way workers' comp is handled for Postal Service employees--and we also believe for Federal employees and the President agrees--and we have that legislation in this bill too.

In addition, in finding ways to save money, I would hasten to add it is important for the Postal Service to find new ways to make money. We have seen the TV ads about flat-rate boxes. If it fits, it ships. The price is pretty good, and the service is pretty good too. That is the kind of idea we need more of from the Postal Service. The Postal Service has a partnership with FedEx and UPS. Most people think of them as competitors, but actually the Postal Service has partnered with FedEx and UPS. FedEx and UPS don't want to deliver to every door in America every day for 6 days a week. They don't want to do that. They simply ask the Postal Service to deliver to those doors that FedEx and UPS don't want to deliver to on a particular day, and the Postal Service makes money doing this. They make a lot of money doing this. When the holiday season comes upon us, we will find there is a need for--a lot of people don't just go to brick-and-mortar stores to buy holiday gifts, they want to order online, and the Postal Service can participate broadly in that business too.

The last thing I wish to mention is this: In addition to making money, we have to come up with new ideas. Those are a couple ideas that work. There are others. We are looking for ways to save money in State and local government. Why not consolidate some of the operations in post office buildings. We have a couple more tenants and we can provide service there for other purposes. We do that for passports. Why not do it for other things? We will hear a lot about virtual mailboxes in the days to come and whether that might be a new piece of business for the post office to be involved in as well.

Let me close by saying this: I think as we go forward in this process, we need to be mindful of the Golden Rule, to treat people the way we want to be treated. That includes customers of the Postal Service, be they businesses or residential customers, employees of the Postal Service, the taxpayers. We need to treat everybody the way we want to be treated.

The last thing I would say, my friend from Tennessee, who is standing, and I are two people here who believe we ought to be serious about solving the big problems, as is the Presiding Officer. There are a lot of people who think we are incapable of dealing with big challenges these days.

This is a big challenge. The Postal Service is one of the two largest employers in this country. The consequences of the Postal Service going down next year are not what we want to see visited on this country. Seven million jobs would be in jeopardy. If we simply try to put them on autopilot and let the taxpayers pay for it, it would be over $200 billion more of a hit on the Treasury.

This is a big challenge. This is one we can fix. To the extent we can pull together in the Senate, as we have done in our committee on this issue, I think we will set a good example for our Nation to say: Yes, we can still take on a tough problem, and we can fix it--not in a year or two or three from now but this year.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I came to the floor to speak about a different type of football. It seems to be a political football that some of our colleagues are playing on the question of getting America back to work again. I am amazed at the political posturing we have seen this year.

I know for some of our colleagues on the other side, this election cycle has been driven by tea party economics that demand political purity over good governance. They have said no to just about everything. The problem with no to everything is that no doesn't create a job, no doesn't build an economy, no doesn't create prosperity, no doesn't get America moving again. They have said no to every different venture we have had to try to put America back to work.

Certainly, back in my home State of New Jersey, what I hear from the average citizen is: Senator, help me get back to work. Because I have New Jerseyans who come up to me, sometimes with tears in their eyes, and say: This is the first time in my life I have been unemployed. While that has created a significant economic consequence to them and their family, it has shaken something even more profound, which is that social contract, that promise in America that if I prepare myself, work hard and sacrifice, I get ahead, and my children will do better than I did growing up. That has been shaken to the core by the economic challenges we inherited as a result of the crisis of 2008 and that we have been working out of.

So I have a problem when, every time we come to the floor to offer an opportunity to get those New Jerseyans, to get those Americans back to work, all I hear is no.

They say no, refusing to invest in rebuilding our infrastructure, to creating jobs, to keeping us competitive in a global economy.

They know roads and highways and bridges in their States--in every State--are in critical need of improvement, and yet we have to come here time and time again, day after day, to fight back a politically charged, ideologically fueled opposition that says one thing but does another.

The fact is, even those who oppose this legislation for political reasons know good governance means investing in our future. It means putting Americans back to work. In an economy in which 70 percent of GDP is consumer demand, if there is no job, there is no money, and if there is no money, there is no demand. So in addition to the lives of New Jerseyans and Americans which we could positively affect, this is about our global picture in terms of our economy. It means also keeping us competitive in this global economy.

Let me talk about that global economy for a moment because we are in it. We see what happens in Europe, and we see how we are affected here at home with our markets and whatnot. But let's look at a different place. Let's look at China. Let's look at the competition. According to China's 5-year

plan, they have a range of investment priorities for the future: clean energy technology; biotechnology, including pharmaceutical and vaccine production; high-tech equipment for manufacturing airplanes; a new space program and satellites.

In fact, this week they launched a satellite, the first step toward a Chinese space station by the end of the decade.

China is planning more high-speed rail, next generation powerplants and manufacturing facilities, new nuclear, solar, and wind energy technologies.

The plan calls for building new energy-efficient cars and adding 9,000 kilometers to their highway system, expanding their national high-speed rail system to 45,000 kilometers, and building light rail systems in 21 urban metropolitan areas.

They are planning 6 new heavy material ports, adding 440 new 10,000- ton shipping berths; a second Beijing airport; and 11 regional airports.

This is some pretty stiff competition that will allow Chinese businesses to thrive.

This is the challenge we have. Yes, we have a debt question in our country, and we must meet that challenge. There is no question we should and we can and we must. But by the same token, we need to grow this economy as part of meeting that challenge, an economy that was on the brink of ruin when this administration inherited it, an economy that--I will never forget that famous meeting or infamous meeting in September of 2008 that was called by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve that members of the Banking Committee and others were called to. I remember going to it and listening to him describe a series of financial institutions that were on the verge of bankruptcy and collapse and in doing so would have created systemic risk to the entire country's economy and being on the verge not of the great recession we talked about but a new depression. That is what we have been working out of.

But even in this economy, we have to make investments and build for a competitive future. We invest just 2 percent of our gross domestic product on infrastructure projects. Europe and China invest between 5 and 9 percent, respectively.

The President today called on Congress to up the ante. The American Jobs Act would invest $50 billion in our transportation infrastructure and $10 billion in a national infrastructure bank, putting hundreds of thousands of construction workers back on the job. But it is not just the construction workers. Certainly, we want to get them back to work. It is all the architectural firms, all the engineering firms, all the people who work at those firms who will help build this infrastructure. It is all the suppliers for all the materials that will be needed to do this and everybody who produces those supplies and everybody who transports it and everybody who installs it. So it is an enormous ripple effect in getting our people back to work--hundreds of thousands waiting to work, working for America's future.

Clearly, opposition to the Rebuild America Jobs Act is not about good governance because we have ways and we have offered ways to pay for this fully. It is about politics. It is about playing political games. But it is playing political games with the lives and livelihoods of American families.

While China is planning major investments in retooling for their new economy, we cannot even seem to agree to fix our own roads. It is akin to the story of Nero fiddling while Rome burned, except American families and businesses are the ones who are going to get burned in this story.

The President today released a report that highlights the importance of rebuilding our roads and bridges and railways and airports and has cited important projects around the country. They include over 17,000 jobs in New Jersey that would put people to work making our future brighter.

One of the projects the President's report highlights as an example of success is in New Jersey: the Route 52 causeway bridge replacement between Somers Point and Ocean City in Atlantic and Cape May Counties. This is a critical emergency evacuation route for Ocean City during floods and hurricanes. The new bridge eliminates the need to raise the drawbridge at the old section that is still being replaced. This is a critical $400 million project that is an investment in New Jersey, in our community, in our infrastructure that will upgrade an old bridge to meet today's needs, protect the community, and put people to work.

We can make these investments and still find ways to responsibly reduce the deficit. An investment is not even just about new projects, of course. It is about maintaining the very infrastructure we have already spent money on in the past that we need to preserve for future use.

Thirty-six percent of New Jersey's bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Seventy-eight percent of New Jersey's major roads are listed in poor or mediocre condition. Sixty-four percent of New Jersey highways are chronically congested because of a 29-percent increase in vehicle travel on New Jersey's highways from 1990 to 2007. All of that, and we already have $13 billion worth of maintenance projects on hold because we do not have the money to pay for them.

Those are just numbers in one respect, but those numbers are about lives. Because when we have infrastructure--major roads, major highways--that are in bad condition, it means we are sitting more time in traffic and less time being productive at work or having more quality time with our families. It means businesses that have a product they need to get to the marketplace are going over an infrastructure that means it takes more time. It takes longer to get that product to market. It has consequences. It adds to the costs. It creates an uncompetitive set of circumstances. It is about the quality of our lives and our economy at the same time.

That $13 billion is not to add even any capacity to New Jersey's transportation system. It is just to keep the status quo. As I have said for quite some time, as we have attempted, with my colleague, Senator Lautenberg, to build a new Trans-Hudson Passenger Rail Tunnel, which is critically needed in that region--and we have learned since September 11 that multiple modes of transportation are incredibly important so that, God forbid, if we have a tragedy again--we learned on that day, when all the bridges were closed and all the tunnels were closed that ferries brought people out of downtown Manhattan to New Jersey, ultimately, to be taken to hospitals--multiple modes of transportation and options are critical for our economy. They are also critical for our security. Yet we cannot even keep up-to-date that which we have, much less create a new Trans-Hudson tunnel that would open the entire region with its economic opportunities. We cannot grow if we are stuck. In that region, as in many regions of the country, we are stuck.

We can begin the long-overdue process of maintaining, rehabilitating, and replacing if we pass this legislation. We can do it if we act together as a nation, as we did in 1956. In 1956, it was a Republican administration that created the Interstate Highway System, and now we cannot seem to get one Republican to vote to maintain that system. In 2011, we cannot get one Republican to vote to help keep us competitive and put Americans back to work.

We need our Republican colleagues in Congress to end the roadblock and fix the roads. They need to vote yes to providing every State with the resources they need to repair and rebuild aging roads and bridges and put people back to work.

Think of the jobs we could create nationwide if we publicly committed to investing enough to keep up and stay competitive with the Chinas of the world. Even if China is able to meet only a fraction of its ambitious goals, it will be far beyond the course we are presently on.

In 1956--I want to go back to that history--under a Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway Act. It took 35 years, but we committed this Nation to building 46,876 miles of highway--one of the largest public works projects at that time in the Nation's history. Why? Because a young Army officer, Dwight Eisenhower, saw the need.

He drove across the country in an Army convoy that left Washington on July 7, 1919, went to Gettysburg, and took the old Lincoln Highway to San Francisco. On the journey, bridges

cracked and had to be rebuilt, vehicles got stuck in the mud, equipment broke, and they did not arrive on the west coast--they left on July 7-- they did not arrive on the west coast until September 6--a 2-month journey that gave birth to the American Interstate Highway System.

Let's not be so shortsighted that we will turn back the clock to the days of the old Lincoln Highway. I understand the need to reduce our deficit, and these provisions I have talked about that I support are paid for. But I do not understand the blind commitment to doing nothing, refusing to invest in our future and create American jobs in the process and calling it good governance.

Good governance is what President Eisenhower did when he signed the Federal Highway Act into law. Now it is up to us to invest in maintaining it. Let's be honest with ourselves about the fact that good governance means investing in our Nation, in our people, in our progress, in our prosperity, in our future. Investing in our infrastructure is an investment in our country and in our future. Let's put today's ideologically driven politics aside and recall the practical Republican politics of President Eisenhower who saw a national need and had the will and the wisdom to put the Nation to work to build it.

So I ask my colleagues: Where is the Grand Old Republican Party that united America behind an interstate highway system and put government and people to work to make it happen?

If we put aside the ideological posturing, if we put aside the suggestion I have heard many times that the major goal is--by some of our Republican colleagues--to make Barack Obama a one-term President and then, ultimately, use both the filibuster to stop progress in the Senate and/or use a constant ``no'' vote to stop progress for the Nation under the guise that is the way President Obama will fail--the problem with that is, that is, at the end of the day, in my mind, not about President Obama failing, that is about the Nation failing at one of the most critical times in our country's history and one of the most critical times in our economy.

If we can put aside the ideological posturing, if we can put aside the political strategy and gamesmanship, if we are honest with ourselves about what good governance means and what it means to American families to invest in creating jobs and keeping us globally competitive so that we can continue to grow that economy and create other jobs for individuals that will help them realize their hopes and dreams and aspirations, that will help them contribute to the Nation, that will create new revenues that will be part of meeting our debt challenge, we would pass this legislation and make it happen. That is the opportunity before the Senate. It is one I hope our colleagues will grasp.

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

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oregon and the

Senator from Massachusetts. I happened to hear their comments, and they are both very good and they are both right on.

I was thinking while Senator Wyden spoke about the fact that in the past 6 months those of us on this side have tried on four different occasions to pass legislation related to jobs. We began on May 4 to reauthorize the Small Business Innovation Research Program, which would direct grants to small businesses to develop technologies. That fell on a cloture vote. It did not get 60 votes. It only got 52. We then tried to reauthorize the Economic Development Administration, which I think most of us know essentially is a cost share for communities in distress. That didn't get cloture. It fell 49 to 51. We then tried the President's big jobs act on October 11. That vote fell. It did not get cloture. It only got 50 votes. We then tried taking a part of that on October 20, in order to fund 400,000 school jobs and thousands of jobs for police and fire departments--first responders--throughout the Nation. That was paid for with a .5 percent surtax on people who could well afford to pay for it and probably would want to pay for it, but that fell on a 50-50 vote. We did not get the 60 votes for cloture.

Today, we are trying for a fifth time on a part of the President's bill which has to do with infrastructure. Again, there is a pay-for. It is paid for by a .7 percent tax on people who can well afford to pay that .7 percent. And I think Senator Wyden and I both know the value of keeping this Nation No. 1, because we come from the West. We are on a burgeoning trade basin. We seek competition with countries that have a blooming infrastructure, and we see the plugs and the bumps and the stoppages in this country because of an absence of adequate infrastructure.

I am delighted the Senator is here and that we share this same cause. Hopefully, there is going to be some change in the mindset on the other side of this great Hall and people will realize if we are going to remain No. 1--and we are not No. 1, and I will go into that in my speech--then we have to pass this segment of the President's bill. So I thank Senator Wyden very much for his comments.

As I said, this legislation offered by the majority leader includes the key infrastructure provisions of the President's Jobs Act. It is $50 billion for our roads, bridges, airports, and transit systems, and it capitalizes a freestanding infrastructure bank with $10 billion. This bill makes the investment without increasing the deficit. Funds appropriated are offset by a .7 percent surcharge only on people who can afford it.

I come from a State where unemployment is high--11.9 percent--and employment in our construction sector is down 44 percent, as you can see from this chart. This is actually California's construction jobs, and you can see where it was in 2000. You see it rise to 900,000 in 2006, and since that time it has plummeted. The fact of the matter is, construction, to a great extent, drives the economy in a number of States, and I think California heads that list. So infrastructure and employment go directly together.

Last week, this body passed legislation authorizing the sale of power from the Hoover Dam. The Hoover Dam is on the border between Nevada and Arizona, and it was built in the 1930s. But it reminds me of the invaluable contribution that infrastructure investments have made in generations past. During the depths of the Great Depression, we stepped forward to help build Hoover Dam. Between 1931 and 1936 our Nation made a massive effort involving thousands of workers--more than 100 of whom lost their lives--to build a powerplant unlike anything the world had ever seen.

This is kind of a working picture of Hoover Dam being built. At the time, many in Congress argued the cost of this engineering marvel was too high and the investment of taxpayer dollars too risky. They opposed efforts to invest in an unproven energy technology like hydropower. The debate was strikingly similar to the debate we hear today. Luckily for the people of California, believers in American infrastructure and technology won the Hoover Dam debate. As the years have passed, the investment has been repaid and the wisdom of Congress' investment remains clear.

Today, Hoover Dam, all these years later is still owned by the American people.

It produces power for the Southwestern United States at less than one-quarter of the market price. It is the quintessential example of why infrastructure spending and investment makes sense. During the depths of the Depression, it gave people jobs and hope. But its benefits were permanent, not fleeting. The investment made in the 1930s is still paying dividends for the economy of the Southwest.

Today, this legislation invests $50 billion in America's transportation infrastructure. That is specifically $27 billion for highways, $9 billion for transit, $4 billion for high-speed rail, $2 billion for Amtrak rail improvements, $3 billion for airports and air traffic control modernization, and $5 billion for discretionary grants and TIFIA loans to multimodal projects. These funds are actually in addition to funding levels in the surface transportation bill which authorizes $52 billion annually and the FAA authorization which authorizes $16 billion annually. The proposal also appropriates $10 billion to capitalize an infrastructure bank. With its own appointed board and CEO, this bank would have the power to issue loan guarantees and loans, at the Federal funds rate, to large projects in water, transportation, and energy.

The bank's authority is similar to the functions performed by EPA's State Revolving Fund, the DOE's Loan Guarantee Program, and the Department of Transportation's TIFIA and RRIF Programs.

In the long term, centralizing these functions in a single infrastructure bank will establish more consistent lending rules and policies. So I think a lot of us have gotten together from time to time to see what could be done to fund a real infrastructure bank. Presently, when we build infrastructure, we have no way of financing it. We put up the whole cost upfront. Most States and cities don't fund their infrastructure that way. They float bonds, and they are amortized over time. So the ability to have an infrastructure bank to loan money, to look at various instruments, to move infrastructure production throughout this country I think is vital. Because the bank will lend, not grant, funds, it will leverage $10 billion into approximately $100 billion in actual investment dollars.

The bank would be particularly beneficial to California--I must say that--and we lead the application list for Federal financing assistance.

For example, Los Angeles citizens voted to tax themselves by raising the sales tax in order to build a desperately needed subway and transit system. They seek a Federal loan. They have the money to pay it back; it comes every year due in sales taxes, but they seek a Federal loan to build the system in 10 years, not 30 years because they need it sooner rather than later. The County of Riverside seeks a Federal loan to build a toll road on the Highway 91 goods movement corridor, through which millions of containers move from the Ports of Los Angeles-Long Beach to every community in America.

I think most people in this body don't understand that approximately 50 percent of all the containers that come into this country, east coast, west coast, come in at Los Angeles-Long Beach, 40 to 50 percent, and they go out in multimodal areas in stacked trains into the Midwest. But they run into all kinds of impediments. There is not separated grades. There is not the ability to move these trains as rapidly as they should be. So if we are going to keep up with the delivery of cargo into the heartland of this country, most of which comes from Asia, we need to do something. California's communities are prepared to repay these loans, but they need help in the beginning.

The Federal Highway Administration estimates that for every $1 billion of Federal transportation spending, 27,822 jobs are produced. It is one of the biggest bang for the buck programs I know of. For every $1 billion in spending, nearly 30,000 jobs are generated. So this bill is a job generator. For every $1 spent on infrastructure projects, it also spurs economic activity, raising the level of gross domestic product by $1.59.

So what is the conclusion? Investing in infrastructure is essential to addressing our nationwide unemployment

crisis. Oh, I only wish we could see this.

Congestion is a big problem in this country. I told you about Los Angeles-Long Beach. What I should also tell you is that the average Los Angeles commuter spends 63 hours per year stuck in traffic. That costs $1,400 a person. In Greater Los Angeles, commuters spend 515 million hours stuck in traffic every year. They waste 407 million gallons of fuel, at a total economic cost of $12 billion. That is just L.A.

I see the Senator from Illinois is on the floor. That is just L.A. I wonder what the Chicago numbers would be. They have to be large. San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, and Riverside County face all the similar congestion. In each area, the average commuter spends more than 30 hours a year stuck in traffic. That costs us $6.4 billion, and nationwide, congestion is causing Americans to travel 4.8 billion hours more and to purchase an extra 3.9 billion gallons of fuel, for a congestion cost of $115 billion in 1 year. That year happens to be 2009. This is the equivalent of wasting 130 days of flow from the Alaska pipeline each year. It is enormous.

So is this bill necessary? The answer is clearly a resounding yes. In my State, 66 percent of our major roads are in poor condition, 68 percent of our urban interstates are congested, vehicle travel on our highways increased by 27 percent from 1990 to 2007, and 30 percent of our bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

One of the best infrastructure projects in the Nation is the repair of Doyle Drive going onto the Golden Gate Bridge. Senator, I wish you could see it because this is a stimulus project and it is amazing because you actually see these dollars at work. Huge ramps are being rebuilt going down to ground level, this great icon of America. The Golden Gate Bridge would never be built today. We just wouldn't build it. If we did, it would take 100 years to do it with all the permits we need. But it is there, it is an icon, and there is a major infrastructure package working on it.

Our Nation's deteriorating surface transportation infrastructure is going to cost the economy more than 876,000 jobs. It is going to suppress GDP growth, it is estimated, by $897 billion by 2020. Poor road conditions cost U.S. motorists $67 billion a year in repairs and operating costs--$333 per motorist. Failing infrastructure will drive the cost of doing business in this country up by $430 billion in the next decade, as the costs to ship goods and raw materials will increase due to bottlenecks and roads that beat up vehicles.

There was a time when America built big things. In the 1800s, we built the transcontinental railroad in one of the great private-public partnerships of all time. We built projects such as the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Dam in the 1920s and the 1930s. In the 1950s and 1960s, we built an interstate highway system unlike anything else anywhere on the planet. In the 1970s, we built the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in San Francisco. This multidecade investment gave America an economic advantage over every country around the world.

Now listen to this. As recently as 2005, the World Economic Forum rated U.S. infrastructure as No. 1 for economic competitiveness--No. 1 in 2005 for economic competitiveness. But in just 5 years, we have slipped to No. 15--not 5, not 10 but 15 in 5 years because we haven't kept up what is a deteriorating infrastructure caused by overuse. The argument is so solid to pass this bill, I can't understand how anyone could vote against it.

China is spending today 9 percent of its GDP on infrastructure. They are our competition. I live on the Pacific Rim. I can tell you, every time any one of us goes to China they will look around the city, whether it is Beijing or Shanghai, and you will count 20 to 50 cranes building in that city, improving infrastructure.

I stood in Shanghai when the head of the government told me: In 10 years, we will build 375 kilometers of underground subway and 25 stations. Guess what. They did and are doing it. We can't do that. It is a problem. Of course, China doesn't have NEPA, it doesn't have CEQA, it doesn't have three dozen permits you have to get. It is easy to write a letter to Mrs. Lee or Mrs. Chu and say: You will move in 30 days because your apartment building is going to be destroyed. That doesn't happen here.

But there is no excuse not to do what is in this bill. There is no impediment to do what is in this bill. It might not take us back to No. 1, but it might take us back to No. 3 or No. 4.

China spends 9 percent. Do you know what we spend? I will tell you. According to the Economist, on April 28, we spent 2 percent of GDP on infrastructure.

A lot of people are doing columns on whether America remains No. 1 in the world, whether we have lost our clout, whether we have lost our competitiveness, whether we have lost our ability to invest in the future. This bill is a good testing ground because this measure is all infrastructure, with the ability to get it done in the future by a bank that can specialize in the arena.

So it is a good test. It seems to me, if we want this country to be No. 1, we have to vote yes. I believe the will is on this side of the aisle and I send a challenge to the other side of the aisle. There is no reason not to vote for this bill.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, today I want to discuss the jobs bill we are currently debating and how important it is that we pass this right away.

I also want to respond to the minority leader's remarks this morning in which he tried to deny the bipartisan nature of this proposal and, instead, sought to divert this Chamber toward a hodgepodge of bills taken up by the House.

All across the country, and in our State of New York, from Poughkeepsie to Buffalo, there are roads, bridges, and sewer systems in need of serious repair. In each of these places, there are thousands of middle-class families desperately looking for work.

In the construction trades--the backbone of the middle class in many of our communities, in New York and around the country--there is 25, 30, 40 percent unemployment. That is true for many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. We all know that in previous recessions, 60 percent of the new jobs were in construction. That is because they lower interest rates and build more housing. There is no more lower interest rates because, when the recession began, they were already very low and, of course, there is a surplus of housing now in America.

This week, by voting to pass the Rebuild America Jobs Act, the Senate can get thousands of Americans off the unemployment line and back into the workforce. Because they get paid good salaries, the money they get flows into the economy and creates a multiplier effect that creates other jobs. These are good, solid, high-skilled American jobs--jobs we need.

Investing in our roads, bridges, and sewer systems could not be more urgent. More than one in four of our Nation's bridges is either structurally deficient or obsolete. I put out a list of those in New York State and it was astounding, in every part of our State.

We all know that, as we get closer to winter, our deteriorating roads will place a heavy burden on commuters and local taxpayers. Our local towns, villages, counties, and cities cannot afford the infrastructure work that is needed right now because of tight budgets and budget cutbacks at the Federal, State, and local levels. As this past weekend's storm made clear, investing in our crumbling sewer systems has never been more essential. All up and down the Northeast, old sewer systems have given way to serious flooding. We can make a downpayment on these priorities by passing this bill, and we should do so in a bipartisan manner.

When I travel across New York State, two of the first things people bring up to me are jobs and fixing our infrastructure. This bill does both. It doesn't matter whether the people are Democratic, Republican, Independent, from upstate or downstate, men or women, liberal or conservative, they all say the same thing, and we see this reflected in public opinion. A recent CNN poll showed nearly three-quarters of Americans support additional Federal investments in our infrastructure. Yes, they are worried about the deficit and our long-term fiscal health, but they know we can't cut our seed corn--infrastructure projects that create jobs and help America grow economically.

Here is the best part of this bill. It invests in projects that create jobs, but it is fully paid for by asking the wealthiest among us--those who have incomes of over $1 million--to pay a fraction more in taxes. They pay that not on their entire income but just on the part that is above $1 million. So if a millionaire--someone worth a lot of money--has an income of $1.1 million,

they only pay the small .7-percent increase on the $100,000 that is over 1 million. Their first million doesn't change. The tax policy doesn't change.

Over the last decade, the middle class has taken a punch in the gut. The cost of sending kids to college has gone way up, the job market is tougher and tougher, and middle-class incomes are declining while costs to the middle class are rising. As a middle-class family sits around the dinner table Friday night trying to figure out how to pay all those bills and provide a great life for their future and for their children, it is very hard for them. However, the very wealthy--the very wealthy-- have done very well over the last decade.

A lot of those wealthy people live in our State of New York. We say: God bless them. They started successful businesses and have done well over the last decade. So to pay for this bill, we are just asking them to pay a sliver more--.7 percent more of each $1 they earn over $1 million. This is a situation where they can't say: We are afraid the money will be wasted, because it goes to infrastructure--directly to infrastructure. The way this is set up, there is no politics in the process. It is the most needed projects that get the work.

Let me cite a fact. I know many of my colleagues joined with me and Senators Brown of Ohio, Stabenow, and Casey in saying China has to play fair, and we are all worried China will get ahead of us economically. But right now China is spending four times as much on infrastructure as the United States--four times as much. That is not four times as much per capita, that is four times as much period.

Here is the real kicker: According to a recent survey of 1,400 business leaders in 142 countries, the United States ranks No. 24 in overall infrastructure quality. Is that a shame? We are behind countries such as Barbados and Oman. We also rank No. 20 in roads behind the United Arab Emirates, Portugal, and Namibia; No. 22 in ports behind Malaysia, Bahrain, and Panama; and No. 31 in air transportation infrastructure behind Chile, Thailand, Malaysia, and Malta.

How can it be that these great United States that we dearly love, and which always was at the top in creating roads and bridges and tunnels and great water systems--the third water tunnel in New York is being built right now, and it is an engineering wonder, though the planning for it started in the 1950s, I believe--is now ranked No. 31 in transportation, 22 in ports, 20 in roads behind countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Portugal, Malaysia, Thailand, and Chile? If that isn't a wake-up call, I don't know what is. We can't afford to let our global competitors get the edge.

So this bill builds back infrastructure, creates good-paying jobs that will send a shot into the arm of an economy that desperately needs it, and pays for it only by taxing the income over $1 million of those who are very wealthy and have done very well in our society.

How can anyone vote against something such as this? One could think maybe the only reason is because some people don't want the economy to grow and prosper. I hate to think that, but infrastructure has always been a bipartisan issue in this body, and it should continue to be.

Let me respond directly to the minority leader's comments this morning. He derided the proposal on the floor as something that had already been tried, something that had no chance of passing, and something that was not bipartisan.

First, already been tried? Oh, yes. Is the minority leader saying because we built the Erie Canal or built the highway system in the 1950s we shouldn't do any more infrastructure? That makes no sense. That just makes no sense. Every study shows the infrastructure part of the stimulus bill created lots of jobs and left us with better infrastructure.

The minority leader then said, as I mentioned, not just that it had been tried already but that it was not bipartisan. We know the need for infrastructure is a bipartisan priority. Just because the minority leader may be imposing a top-down strategy that bars anyone on his side from voting for any proposal offered by the President to improve the economy doesn't mean these proposals aren't bipartisan.

Just yesterday, the former Republican Senator from Ohio, a fiscal conservative if there ever was one--Senator Voinovich--was quoted as saying he believed the need to repair our roads and bridges was so great he thought President Obama should be raising the gas tax to fund those investments. I don't know if I agree with him on that specific solution, but isn't it remarkable, a Republican Senator calling for revenue increases to pay for infrastructure investment?

That is what we do in this bill. Let me say once again that Senator Voinovich is no longer in the Senate, so he is free to pretty much do as he wants. But I would hope other Senators who are in the Senate would join in that call because I believe they know in their heart it is the right thing to do.

The only difference between what we propose and what Senator Voinovich proposes is that instead of asking middle-class Americans to pay more at the pump, we ask those who have an income above $1 million to pay their fair share and to help put construction workers back on the job. That seems like the right set of priorities to me.

So the minority leader is clearly wrong when he says this concept isn't bipartisan.

Another former Senator--Chuck Hagel from Nebraska--has been a leader in calling for an infrastructure bank, which also is in this bill. Senator Hagel sponsored one of the first pieces of legislation creating an infrastructure bank and has continued to call for it since leaving the Senate.

So there are lots of Republicans out in the country who support this measure, and the polling shows a large number of Republicans who support the kind of proposal we have on the floor--building infrastructure and having those who make over $1 million pay for it so we don't increase the deficit. This is a bipartisan proposal.

So let's not hear from the minority leader or anybody else that the proposal on the floor isn't bipartisan. Just this morning, the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee was quoted discussing the progress he and the chairwoman of that committee are making on a 2-year surface transportation bill. This is great news. I am glad to hear they are close to advancing that bill. But if one believes infrastructure is enough of a priority that they can support a long-term highway bill, why would they object to speeding up some of that investment now so we can put more Americans to work quickly?

This bill is bipartisan for sure. The minority leader has a political strategy to block all our President's initiatives to improve the economy. What does the minority leader call for instead? He has called for the Senate to take up a hodgepodge of bills sent over by House Republicans that, even when taken together, don't do enough to tackle the jobs problem.

Who would believe this hodgepodge of bills will do more for jobs than the traditional way we get out of recessions--infrastructure building? Most of the ideas cited by the minority leader have next to nothing to do with jobs at all. Many of these ideas belong more on a lobbyist's wish list rather than any serious jobs agenda.

It is a stretch to call many of these bipartisan. Many of these bills are items Republicans would be seeking to pass even if we were in a boom and had full employment. Many are just ideological priorities dressed up as job solutions.

It is laughable for the House leadership to act as though these proposals would address the jobs crisis when they are sitting on real solutions such as the China currency bill. The Speaker and the majority leader over in the House say they want to do something about jobs. They say they are worried about the two Houses not working together. We had a large bipartisan majority--65 votes--saying we are going to force China to play fair on currency because their failure to do so causes millions of jobs--good manufacturing jobs, primarily, though not exclusively--to leave this country. There is nothing more Congress could do that would lift our manufacturing sector than to confront China's unfair trade practices. But Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor sit on that bill and then tell us to take up this hodgepodge of items. The China currency bill passed with a bipartisan supermajority in the Senate. Yet the House leadership continues to sit on

the sidelines as China takes advantage of us. The China currency bill is languishing in the House for no good reason.

I suggest Speaker Boehner heed the will of his Chamber and put that bill on the floor and that the minority leader in the Senate would be well served to stop pretending these pieces of the President's jobs bill are not bipartisan just because he is withholding his support in service to a strategy that, perhaps, outlines his No. 1 goal: the defeat of the President.

It is time to stop the games and accomplish something that can make a real dent in the jobs crisis. I say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle: Pass this bill, rebuild our ailing and aging infrastructure, create jobs, and make sure what we do here does not increase the deficit by having those whose income exceeds $1 million pay a small, little increase to pay for it.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 720 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 measure be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I appreciate the objection of the Senator from West Virginia and I appreciate his comments about the importance of long-term care. I agree, it is something we need to address in this country. There are other ideas out there, and I think better ideas, ideas that are based upon incentives as opposed to creating a new government program. But let me get, if I might briefly here, for a moment at what I believe is the real issue.

This was a program destined to fail. It was clear from the beginning many of us said that. There were 12 of my colleagues on the other side, 12 Democrats who voted to strike this particular provision from the health care bill back in December of 2009. I think at that time many of us were making the same arguments the experts are now conceding at the Department of Health and Human Services. In fact, there were colleagues on the other side, one of my Democratic colleagues, who called this ``a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would be proud of.'' That is how it was described before it was voted on and put into the health care bill to help demonstrate the health care bill would actually reduce the deficit.

The fact is, after having had several months to look at this, here we are 19 months or so later, the Department of Health and Human Services has concluded that this doesn't work. They can't make it work. Now the CBO has come out and said it doesn't impact the budget. My view is we ought to pull this, we ought to get it off the books, and we ought to address the issue in a way that makes sense for the American people, not in a way that adds trillions of dollars of additional debt.

If we look at what we have today in terms of unfunded liabilities, we have $61.6 trillion in unfunded liabilities in this country or $528,000 for every family. That is five times what most families have in terms of home mortgages, car mortgages, other types of debt. That is what we are piling on the American people today. This would have been yet another unfunded liability, and the experts warned us at the time.

Now, we did an investigation of this. It was published in September. I worked with some of my House colleagues on it. It was ``The CLASS Act, The Untold Story.'' It concluded that the actuaries at HHS were saying before this bill was even passed that it would be a recipe for disaster, that it would lead to an insurance death spiral, and the Chief Medicare Actuary at HHS said at the time:

. . . 36 years of actuarial experience lead me to believe

that this program would collapse in short order and would

require significant Federal subsidies to continue.

That is what the experts were saying about this program way

back before it was even voted on in 2009.

I think we ought to acknowledge what now everybody concludes to be the case; that is, this program will not work. It is actuarially unsound. We ought to repeal it. We ought to get it off the books, and that was simply what my motion would do. I regret that the other side has objected to it, but I have some of my colleagues today who have been very active on this issue.

I say to my colleague from Arizona, in light of this report that came out from the HHS last month outlining exactly why they cannot move forward with CLASS, it seems difficult to understand why the administration doesn't support repeal of this program. Can my colleague make any sense out of this contradiction and apparent hypocrisy to say a program doesn't work, yet we want to keep it on the books?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent we be able to enter into a colloquy now for 25 minutes?

I would simply say--we have the ranking member of the Budget Committee here too--that it strikes me that there were probably lots of other budget gimmicks in the health care law that are going to come to the surface in the same way this CLASS Act gimmick has. The Senator from Arizona pointed out they tried to understate the true cost by taking a lot of savings in the early years as people were paying premiums, knowing full well in the outyears it was going to add billions of dollars to the deficit. So it was a gimmick that was used, again, to make this salable to the American people and salable here.

In spite of that, there was still a majority of Senators who voted again against this, who actually voted to strike the provision from the health care bill in December of 2009 when I offered that amendment.

It seems to me at least we ought to have bipartisan support now that everyone has come out and recognized what we were trying to tell them in advance: this doesn't work, it was a gimmick, and we ought to get it off the books.

I ask my colleague, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, about this budget gimmick that was used. Is it illogical to think if we have this $2.5 trillion expansion of government in the form of this new health care bill that somehow it is going to reduce the Federal deficit because that was the argument that was made at the time, and that is one of the reasons they were able to make that argument? I suggest there are going to be lots of other gimmicks we are going to uncover to demonstrate this thing was way out of line at the time, but I ask for his comments as being the ranking member of the Budget Committee.

I would say to our colleague from Wyoming, who is a physician and has a lot of experience on these issues, who comes down every week with a second opinion talking about all the various issues regarding the health care bill--the more recent one, as we have all seen now is contrary to predictions--health care costs are going up. The predictions were that they would go down. That is also something many of us saw coming.

The question is if we leave this on the books, and if they decide at some point to resurrect it--after they have already acknowledged it doesn't work--and come up with some new language that does away with the Judd-Gregg proviso, what are the fiscal consequences of this program being resurrected? We talked about this, and there were lots of predictions made at the time.

In fact, the Senator from Arizona had statements from some of our colleagues who said on the floor at the time how this was going to be a great deal and how it was going to work. The administration said at the time that this was not a budget gimmick. That is what they were quoted as saying. Clearly this was a budget gimmick. We all know that now. It is a Ponzi scheme. Clearly that is what the actuaries are saying at Health and Human Services.

If, in fact, we don't get this repealed and at some point this program ends up being resurrected, what are the fiscal consequences and implications for the country and future generations who will be saddled with yet another unfunded liability, another entitlement program that is not paid for?

We all saw this coming and we tried our best to prevent it, but now we know and we have these statements that came out as part of the report that was done by the House and Senate, an investigative report called the CLASS Act, the untold story. It was published in September. What it revealed was that the Health and Human Services Department actuaries--the people who are the experts, not the politicians, not those of us who are making many of these statements during the political debate we are having here in the Senate--who are actually responsible for doing the math on this came up and called the CLASS program a recipe for disaster. Those were in internal e-mails we discovered when we were doing this investigation.

Prior to their announcement in October that HHS is not moving forward with the CLASS program at this time, Secretary Sebelius and other officials at the Health and Human Services Department claimed through much of 2011 that the Department had sufficient authority to modify it. What they were trying to suggest is that we can make this work. Yet these internal documents cast significant doubt on all of those assertions.

I will repeat this because I think this is important. The Chief Actuary, during 2009, when this program was being debated--it was a part of the health care bill. It was during the debate here in the Senate. Richard Foster said:

. . . 36 years of actuarial experience lead me to believe

that this program would collapse in short order and require

significant Federal subsidies to continue.

That was what they were saying in 2009 before this vote ever occurred. He also went on to say:

. . . this would end in an insurance death spiral because the

coverage would only be attractive to sicker people who will

need costly services. This will force premiums higher and

deter healthy individuals from enrolling.

You have all the experts who were putting all this information out there and sharing this with their superiors, all of who were out there on the record promoting this as being something that would work and something that is not a budget gimmick, but actually could, in fact, be actuarially sound. We all know now it was not. It wasn't then and isn't now and that is why we ought to repeal it.

Again, I appreciate my colleagues' input and work on this. I think this is something we ought to end. We need to put the final touches on this program and end it once and for all so it doesn't come back in some other form and saddle future generations with trillions of dollars of additional unfunded liabilities and debt. There are ways we can approach this issue.

In fact, I have some ideas that I introduced in 2007 that deal with long-term care and providing incentives for people that we all are going to be faced with at some point in our lives. But this is the wrong way. It was the wrong prescription at the beginning. It is the wrong prescription now. That is why it ought to be repealed.

We have to quit making promises we cannot keep. What we are seeing today in Europe and the meltdown that is occurring in the economies over there is a result of too many promises that were made, too much government debt, governments that have gotten too big, that can no longer be supported by the economy in those countries.

That is where we are headed. That is why we have to start living within our means. We have to quit spending money we don't have, and this was a perfect example of the tendency around here to want to grow government, to have a government answer, a government solution for everything, when this makes matters not better but much worse. It makes it much worse for hardworking taxpayers in this country and for future generations of Americans for whom this would become an enormous liability added already to the $528,000 that every family in this country owes, the mortgage they have on their families already as a result of the unfunded liabilities we have already racked up. We cannot keep making promises we cannot keep.

I hope we can get this repealed, and I appreciate my colleagues' hard work in that regard and look forward to getting an opportunity to get it voted on. I am sorry our request this afternoon to repeal it was rejected, but I hope we will get another opportunity to revisit that and perhaps a vote that will actually put people on the Record. I believe there is a majority of Senators who agree with us on this point.

Too often, the practice around here is focused on the short term, the near term, the gain, to be able to have some sort of political victory at the expense of what is in the best interests of this country and our children and grandchildren. This is a perfect example of that. I appreciate my colleagues being here. This discussion will be continued.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, before the Senator leaves the floor, I commend the Senator from Massachusetts. He has said much this afternoon that I certainly agree with.

I also want to touch on one other point about the Senator's work--the Senator from Massachusetts--in this area. The public, perhaps more than anything else, is talking about why people in Washington, DC, cannot work together, why we can't come up with ways to build coalitions. I am not sure people picked up on it in the Senator's remarks, particularly with respect to China. They are investing far more than we are. But he has pulled together the chamber of commerce and the AFL-CIO for an infrastructure package. That doesn't happen by osmosis or because somebody puts out a press release. He put in the time to try to build that coalition, which, of course, is key to getting bipartisan support up here. I want the Senator to know I very much appreciate it. I know he brought exactly the same approach to his work on the supercommittee, trying to find common ground on some of the most challenging issues so that we will generate growth and deal with health care costs.

I have some remarks to make, but I am glad I had a chance to listen to the Senator from Massachusetts because I thought the point he made about bringing people together was important. And I hope people will say, as we look at this transportation package--I just want to get on the bill, frankly, so we can open other kinds of ideas. The Senator has put in a lot of time, and it paid off with coalitions such as the chamber of commerce and the AFL-CIO. That is the kind of approach that will solve some of these big problems.

Mr. President, my sense is that if you tune in on the Senate today--and, of course, the ways of the Senate are always hard to follow. The occupant of the chair is involved in changing the rules of the Senate and has a sense of what I am talking about. You try to figure out what the Senate is up to, and at this point you have learned that today the Senate is working on infrastructure. You hear that word again and again. You roll your eyes and you say: Wake me when the potholes get fixed.

What I want to do for a few minutes this afternoon is try to tie this to what I believe is first and foremost on the minds of the American people, and that is jobs. That is what we hear about morning, noon, and night.

The fact is that we cannot have big-league economic growth in America with little-league transportation systems. It is not possible. If our bridges and roads are falling apart, we simply cannot have the growth we need, and job growth is the No. 1 issue for our people, and literally infrastructure improvement--roads, bridges, and transportation systems and jobs are two sides of the same coin. They go hand in hand. That is point No. 1.

Point No. 2 is on the question of how we stack up to some of our competitors worldwide. If we can't move goods and services efficiently in this country, our businesses are practically in the position where they have to put up a sign and say: We cannot compete with China because when China is making

these kinds of investments that we heard Senator Kerry and other colleagues on both sides of the aisle talk about in the last few days, you know what we are up against.

Transportation is the key to moving goods and services efficiently. We have bottlenecks, for example, in my part of the country, in the metropolitan area and, frankly, in rural areas where people could not have dreamed there would be a traffic jam even a few years ago.

Point No. 3 is there is no economic multiplier in our country like transportation. When you make well-targeted investments in transportation, you create jobs for the folks who are building those projects, you create jobs for the people who are selling the equipment, you are creating jobs for folks such as the people in the restaurants who make the ham sandwiches for the workers who are out there building the projects and trying to find ways to help our people avoid traffic and save gas as they try to get to and from work. So this is a big economic multiplier.

And, No. 4, Mr. President, as you know from your experience as a westerner, the history of our part of the world is that private investment has always followed well-targeted public investments. You look all over the West and the great distances our folks have to travel, and you will see again and again the key to getting more private sector investment. In my view, the key to economic recovery is the private sector job growth that is behind the tax reform bill I have with Senator Coats--the first bipartisan tax reform bill. We need private sector job growth in the West. The history of our region is that private sector employment has traditionally followed well-targeted public investments.

What I want to see us do--and what the vote that is coming up is all about--is to have a chance to move to the bill. If we move to the bill, I believe there are all kinds of opportunities for Democrats and Republicans, through amendments and a variety of opportunities, to exchange ideas and to come up with bipartisan approaches. I have had a chance to be part of those kinds of discussions in the last few years.

Look, for example, at the common ground that has developed between Senator Boxer and Senator Inhofe on the Environment and Public Works Committee. They are making a lot of progress in reauthorizing a transportation bill. That is only one example here in the Senate of Democrats and Republicans coming together.

Let me cite two others. In the Economic Recovery Act, I had a chance in the Senate Finance Committee to advance an idea I have been working on for more than 5 years. There was a very large and bipartisan group of us who worked on it. Former Senator Talent was the original Republican, but Senator Thune was involved, Senator Wicker, Senator Collins, and a very large bipartisan group working with colleagues on our side of the aisle. The Senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar, is one who comes to mind, who has been a very thoughtful advocate of improvements in transportation. So in the Senate Finance Committee, as we moved forward with the Economic Recovery Act, Chairman Baucus and then ranking minority member Senator Grassley, in effect, said: Well, we have been hearing about some of these ideas this bipartisan group has been advancing. Let's give them a chance to make their case. I offered the proposal to create something called Build America Bonds. This was a chance to, for the first time, move the Federal Government into the bonding area. It has long been done, of course, at the State and local level, and it received good reviews from the private sector.

I recall the day when Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley asked me what I predicted in terms of the results of the Build America Bonds. I said: We have gotten basically about a year and a half. As you know, the Recovery Act was passed in the winter of 2009, and the IRS had to implement the rules. But when we wrapped up the period for which we issued Build America bonds, more than $181 billion worth of Build America bonds had been used all across the country for capital infrastructure projects. They had been used in big projects on the east coast of the United States--the New Jersey Turnpike was one--and they had been used for roads in southern Oregon.

If you want to talk efficiency, look at the Web site of our State treasurer, Ted Wheeler, who said they were saving in our State 10 percent by issuing these Build America bonds.

I see my friend from California is here, Senator Feinstein, and I believe California was one of the largest users of Build America bonds. To have a program that was envisioned as perhaps selling $5 billion or $36 billion worth of bonds selling more than $180 billion is an example of what we can do on a bipartisan basis that will put people to work and will actually save money.

The savings we found in Oregon can also be illustrated by the analysis done by the Department of the Treasury that finds the same sort of savings we found in Oregon.

With respect to the Build America bonds, in some respects they were too successful. People said: Oh, perhaps they are being used for more kinds of projects than was acceptable to some people. So once again we said, we are going to come back and try to find a way to generate bipartisan support. My colleague from North Dakota, Senator Hoeven, and I got together and we put forward another proposal--a different version--that we call the TRIP program--the Transportation and Regional Infrastructure Program. Our plan would allow State infrastructure banks to issue bonds to pay for transportation projects, once again having a small supportive role from the Federal Government. The folks who run the numbers at the Joint Committee on Taxation say that with this bipartisan proposal--a Republican from North Dakota, a Democrat from the State of Oregon--it would be possible to get $50 billion worth of transportation projects with this model, with only $12 billion worth of cost over 10 years.

I only illustrate this fact to suggest that if it is possible to get on the bill, I think we are going to see colleagues on the Republican and the Democratic side look to try to cooperate and find some common ground. Senator Kerry made the point about the infrastructure bank, how we got the support of the Chamber of Commerce, Senator Graham and Senator Hutchison and others. I have gone through some of the history of other transportation efforts--that progress is being made now with Senator Boxer and Inhofe on the transportation bill; and the Build America bonds effort, which produced a thirtyfold increase over what was anticipated, literally revolutionizing the municipal bond market and was utilized for big projects, such as the New Jersey Turnpike, and small projects, such as roads in southern Oregon; and now if we can go to this bill--and that is what the vote is all about, whether we actually get on the bill--we will be able to offer alternatives and ideas. Frankly, the provisions that are in the bill in its current form, I don't see how anybody can be against them. The question of highway repair is about as fundamental a function of government as anything one can imagine. So there is plenty in this bill I think colleagues on both sides of the aisle could support.

I have cited a number of examples of bipartisanship in this area, where we can do more in the infrastructure field while we save money, and I hope colleagues will vote--I gather the vote will be tomorrow--to move to the bill and give us a chance to get serious about what I think is central to growing the American economy and at well-targeted investments in transportation.

To me, the question of job creation and infrastructure are literally two sides of the same coin, so I hope the Senate moves to this legislation tomorrow and begins to beef up our effort to deal with a fundamental part of job creation in this country. It is so fundamental that in much of the country, if we don't make the investments, it will literally be the equivalent of saying to our businesses: Put up a sign that says you are not going to be in a position to compete with China right now; come back another time. That is unacceptable to me and to Oregon businesses and Oregon workers. That is why I hope my colleagues will vote to go to the bill.

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